Happy Mother's Day

No Sample Sale this week! Instead, let me present you with "All About My Mom," as answered by Baby Razor, Age 3 and 3/4.

My mom is 5 years old.

My mom weighs I don't know because she is short.

My mom's favorite color is purple.

My mom's favorite food is egg salad.

My mom always says "I love you too."

Mom cooks the best macaroni.

My mom's job is to write and serve me food.

My mom laughs when I say gookey-ga.

If my mom had time, she would love to take a nap.

My mom & I like to play outside.

My mom really loves boats.

I LOVE my mom because she always gives me great hugs.

And here I was thinking she was the great hugger!

Thought vs. Speech at the Home Store

"BABY RAZOR, COME HERE." Oh god, I sound so mean. That elderly woman in front of me in line just totally side-eyed me. I know kids like to run around, but if she gets out of my sight, I am never going to find her.

"NO! STOP THAT! Do I have anger issues? I think I might have anger issues. Because it feels like the vein in my forehead is about to explode. "DO. NOT. WIPE YOUR NOSE ON THAT!" Christ, I hope she didn't wipe her nose on that.

Maybe I need to go back to therapy about this anger problem? Why isn't this goddamn line moving? Oh my god, is that man writing a personal check? I hope he gets hit by lightning. "LET GO OF MY LEG, PLEASE."

"Okay, fine, you can run around. Just stay where I can see you." Oh, now they're having a conversation about how the customer learned to drive on his grandfather's farm when he was 12. I am standing in line in 1953. "BABY RAZOR? BABY RAZOR?" Ohshitohshitoshit. I can't see her. Motherfucker, I lost my child in line to buy pillows. I am the worst mother on the planet. Oh, there she is, thank God. "BABY RAZOR, GET. OVER. HERE."

Almost there. I can do this. I am calm. I am calm. "OH MY GOD, GET YOUR FACE OFF THE FLOOR. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" I just insulted my child in public. Fantastic. Mother of the year, here I come.

"Do you want to sign up for our rewards program?"

"Uh, no, thank you." Is he kidding me? "Baby Razor, honey, please stop screaming."

"Would you like to sign up for our store card?"

"No, thank you." I understand he has to ask, but I mean... "Get off the floor, Baby Razor."

"You can save $15." Okay, NOW he's fucking kidding me.


In conclusion: I am buying pillows from the internet from now on.

Return of the Man in the Yellow Hat

Last year, I lamented the closing of Curious George & Friends bookstore in Harvard Square. Many of the square's independent businesses have closed since I moved to Cambridge in 1996, but that loss made me the saddest. (So far, that is. If Tealuxe ever closes, I am going to wear black and listen to nothing but The Cure for weeks.)

So I was delighted when I heard the store was reopening with new owners. I bookmarked their website! I followed them on Facebook! I stalked them all over the interwebs, basically, which is how I heard that they had their soft opening last Tuesday. Accordingly, I bundled up the baby and the husband and headed to Cambridge on a chilly, gray Sunday to check it out.

The new owners (who were charming and nervous, bless them) totally redesigned the store's layout. The cash registers have moved from the center of the store to a corner by the door, completely opening up the space. It's much brighter and easier to navigate with a stroller or hyperactive toddler. There's less merchandise, but I suspect the old store was overstocked, so that's not a complaint.

There are a lot of really sweet, kid-friendly touches, like the little padded space at the bottom of this bookshelf:

I think that spot will be popular, because Baby Razor waited patiently (ok, "stared like a crazy person and repeated I wanna sit in the bed! at increasing volume," but at this age no hitting or pushing = patient) until another little girl left. She then snuggled with a George larger than her for approximately four seconds before sprinting to the other side of the store.

Mr. Razor, meanwhile, hung out with an assortment of Georges on a corner bench seat and read about Margaret & H.A. Rey's amazing escape from Paris during World War II.

I shopped, of course. I didn't look much at the books (although I noted that all of my/my daughter's favorite authors were represented) because Baby Razor's personal library is up over 300 books at this point. I loved the all of the t-shirts from Out Of Print Clothing and the small but beautiful selection of children's clothing and hats from independent makers like Maisey Mae. There are also toys, games, and stuffed animals to be had.

Then, of course, there is every Curious George product known to man and monkey. I liked that they had merchandise featuring illustrations of Curious George from the original books as well as stuff featuring George and his friends from the PBS cartoon. Baby Razor likes the books, but she LOVES the cartoon. Whenever I mention something like going to the library or camping or kindergarten, she says, "Like George!" I got her a t-shirt of the cartoon's animal characters because she knows them all by name.

I realize was predisposed to love the place, but I think even if I were unfamiliar with it and/or my kid wasn't a Curious George superfan, I still would have found it charming. It's clear that a lot of thought, effort and love went into The World's Only Curious George Store, and I wish them the best. I'll definitely be going back!

Celiac Disease 101

The problem with Seasonal Affective Disorder is that even though I have the "crippling depression" part of it treated, the waning sunlight gives me other wacky brain hiccups that SSRIs don't touch. For example, during longer days I can plan a post in my head and write it later, but once Fall hits I'll plot a bit and then my brain will reset like a shaken Etch-a-Sketch, leaving me sitting there going, "wait, what?"

The solution to this is obviously to make myself write for real when I have the time rather than trying to do it in my head, but then I'm tired after a morning of, "Do you want cheese? Yes? Why are you crying? Now you don't want cheese? It's okay!" (Seriously, a toddler is basically just the most rapid-cycling bipolar person you'll ever meet) and when nap time rolls around, I usually feel entirely justified spending all of it on The Hairpin.

I'm told you can make new habits through repetition, though, so here I am typing away as Baby Razor sleeps.

I thought I'd explain a little bit about how celiac disease works, since most people (myself included, prior to two months ago) only know that it means that those who have it can't eat wheat. Keep in mind: I am not a scientist, and everything I'm about to tell you, I got from the internet. This is absolutely the dinner-party explanation. If you'd like to learn about celiac disease from people who didn't major in Medieval literature, you should go here or here. My version will have more swearing though.

Okay, so people with celiac disease cannot eat wheat, barley or rye; or any products made with wheat, barley, or rye; or any products made with byproducts or derivatives of wheat, barley, or rye; or any products grown near or processed with or near wheat, barley, or rye. Does that sound confusing? IT IS. Do you know how many things are made with/from wheat or barley? (Rye: not so much.) The short list includes soy sauce, malt vinegar, some sweeteners, vitamins, and most pre-packaged meals and snacks, Plus pasta, baked goods, bread, and, oh, absolutely anything that goes through a plant that also produces products containing wheat.

I thought that last one was just precautionary until Baby Razor got sick from eating black beans that were processed in a place that also processes wheat. I was like, "There's nothing in black beans but black beans!" and didn't check the label. Which leads to my second point about celiac disease: It is amazing at making everyone around the sufferer feel like an asshole. Despite tons of research and (we thought) careful checking, Baby Razor's mom, dad, grandparents on both sides, and aunt have all accidentally fed her gluten at least once. The only solution is to become completely obsessive-compulsive about reading labels or to grow all of your own food. And since my backyard is about twenty feet square, I've done the former.

So, why can't celiac patients eat wheat/barley/rye? It's because they contain a protein called gluten. People with celiac do not have an allergy or "sensitivity" to this protein--they have an autoimmune disorder. Here's the difference: with an allergy, your immune system identifies a foreign body as dangerous and attacks it. With an autoimmune disorder, your immune system attacks your own body. When people with celiac disease have gluten, the immune response attacks their small intestine, damaging it and keeping it from absorbing nutrients into the body.

In plain English, if you have undiagnosed celiac disease, you're malnourished no matter how healthy you eat, because your small intestine is fucked. No one used to worry about this possibility, though, because doctors thought celiac disease was super-duper rare and people who had it all had really obvious symptoms. In fact, until the last decade or so, med students were told they'd probably only see one case of celiac in their entire careers, so you know they didn't pay much attention to that section of the book.

Yeah, it turns out that's entirely wrong. This fact sheet lays out the many, many ways in which it's entirely wrong. I'll just give you one of the pull quotes: "Celiac disease affects 1% of healthy, average Americans. That means at least 3 million people in our country are living with celiac disease—97% of them are undiagnosed." That's 2.9 million people walking around, thinking they're all good, when really they have an untreated autoimmune disorder that can lead to osteoporosis and higher rates of some kinds of cancer. That is fucking crazy! I still haven't gotten over how crazy that is.

Sweet Jesus, this got long. I think stop here and do a second part tomorrow. Coming up: Diagnosis! Treatment! How to deal with insensitive assholes! Poignant anecdotes about my baby! More swearing!

Oh, hello!

(That's totally me, with gluten as the supervillain.)

Yesterday, a friend on Facebook recommended my blog to someone, and it was like she'd complimented my home decorating when I knew there was a bra on the couch, 67 toys on the floor, and a cobweb with a big, dead spider in the middle sitting up near the ceiling.

Not that my living room has ever looked like that, of course.

Except it was worse, because no one can see my sensible undergarments unless I let them in the house, but all y'all can see that I haven't updated here in three damn months.

Basically, Baby Razor got sick. And it was that kind of sick where she was probably okay? But we had to watch her. So I watched her fail to gain weight for three months, then start throwing up every other day for two terrifying weeks before our doctor's appointment, during which Baby Razor's doctor was like, "Okay, the mood is very Eeyore in here." And God bless her for having a sense of humor about it, because Mr. Razor and I have an unspoken agreement that one of us needs to be the strong one when the other one is freaking out, but that went right out the window the night I was like, "I'm really worried" and he was like, "Oh shit, I can see her hipbones."

The short version is that Baby Razor has celiac disease. The longer version is that Baby R's doctor is awesome (and I don't just say that because I've known her for 15 years), Children's Hospital Boston is efficient and caring but still scary as hell, and wheat is in FUCKING EVERYTHING. The really long version involves a lot of hyperventilating and stress-eating, so I'll skip that one.

Maybe surprisingly, I'm not sad or freaked out by the diagnosis; I'm grateful. Look: I'm pretty sure there is no human body on earth that runs perfectly. Mine likes to panic and randomly throw blood clots. My father-in-law's tries to kill him whenever he's within three feet of shrimp. So Baby Razor's thinks wheat and barley can suck it; that's totally okay. I'm just glad we know! For awhile there I was terrified that I was going to end up on Mystery Diagnosis, wearing a sensible cardigan and saying, "At that point, we thought she was going to weigh 20 pounds for the rest of her natural life."

We're still figuring out her diet (seriously, gluten sneaks into every. damn. thing.), but she's gaining weight, and she has enough energy to power my neighborhood. Which means I can let go of some of the mental energy I've been devoting to her digestive tract and go back to telling stories about things like trying to make mom-friends when I'm naturally anti-social, my latest crafting disaster, and random shit I find at the thrift shop. Watch this space!

I Need A Nanny. For Myself.

I locked myself out today, which wouldn't be all that notable had I not also locked the baby in.

Background: Baby Razor has been getting up between 5:30 and 6 a.m. for a week (instead of her usual 7:30ish). In theory I should be adjusted to this by now, but I'm still a tired wreck. But after a weekend of doing nothing, I was determined to get my ass in gear today.

So as soon as Baby Razor went down for her nap, I dragged our new patio set out onto the porch and set about assembling it. I figured I'd take a shower after I finished, so I left my PJs on. It was hot and the sun was right on top of me, so after putting the table together I decided to take a break before putting the umbrella up.

That, of course, was when I realized the door was locked. Okay, I thought, I have the tool kit. It can't be that hard to break into a house when you've got a shit-ton of tools, can it? YES. IT CAN. I tried unscrewing the storm window. Turns out it's also screwed in on the inside and painted to the side of the house. I tried picking the lock. Yeah, the producers of Supernatural will be getting a stern letter from me, because that shit is WAY harder than they make it look. I tried to bite the bullet and break the glass on the back door with a hammer. No go--it's apparently shatterproof. Which is good from a homeowner standpoint, but bad from a crazy, locked-out mother standpoint.

I psyched myself up to go next door and ask to use the phone. In my pajamas. Barefoot. Braless. It's okay! I know my neighbors! They're a really nice older couple. They were not home. All right. The family across the street? Nope. My friends down the block? Nobody there.

By this time I'd been outside for nearly an hour. I was starting to panic, covered in sweat, still barefoot and braless, and knocking on strangers' doors. I finally got an answer four doors down from my house, from a woman I'd smiled at a few times but never talked to. She let me use her phone to call Mr. Razor, who pretty much lost his shit, not that I blame him. In fact, while trying to find his mother's work number, he accidentally disconnected me.

As I was redialing, my neighbor was like, "So, I have some things to do? Errands to run?" Yeah, she clearly wanted the sweaty, frantic, half-dressed stranger out of her kitchen as soon as possible. I told the mister to get ahold of his mother, who has a key and works five minutes from our house, and I'd be on the back porch.

Then I waited. It was only about fifteen minutes, but I kept imagining I could hear the baby crying for me, which was pretty much the worst feeling in the world. I have never been so happy to see my mother in law. She opened the door, observed that our plants looked good and the baby didn't seem to be crying, promised to buy us one of those fake rocks for our extra key, and left.

I don't even remember closing the door and going upstairs to the baby's room. Baby Razor was standing there with her arms hanging over the edge of the crib, dry-eyed and singing to herself. When I walked in she looked at me like, What the crap, Mama. I've got a poopy diaper here. I managed to get her to the changing table before bursting into tears and dripping all over her.

Then, of course, I told twitter what a dipshit I am. And thank god I did, because my friends were like, pssh, that's nothing. My mother forgot me at home/left me in the car/accidentally knocked me down the stairs and I turned out fine! They really did. None of them have meth labs in their basement or anything.

So I guess the moral of the story is that no matter how good or careful a mother you are, you will occasionally do something horrendously stupid.

That's not reassuring, is it? How about this one instead: Try to limit your major parental fuck-ups to the kid's toddlerhood, which she won't remember anyway. That's useful advice, anyway.

Someday She'll Say She Doesn't Have The Patience For Me Either

Yesterday morning, I heard myself saying, "I do not have the patience for this, Baby Razor!" as she shrieked at me for no apparent reason. I started laughing before I even got to the end of the sentence. I can't be sure, but it knowing myself and my mother, it definitely sounds like one of those things I heard a lot during my early childhood, along with "Come back here!" and "Don't touch anything!"

It made me laugh because, really, what kind of a ridiculous threat is "I don't have the patience for this?" What was I going to do? Leave? "All right kid, you're on your own. Have fun figuring out how to open the fridge!"

So I sang a "Grumpy" song to drown out her whining and got her some ham & cheese.

But it got me thinking about other phrases I heard from my parents as a kid. "Sugar!" was a favorite. I think I was in college before I realized that it was their swear-substitute. Thank goodness they had one, because it got used all the time.

"This is not a democracy!" was my father's favorite, sometimes followed by "It's a benevolent dictatorship," a point teenage me liked to argue with sarcasm, which always led to "Quit being facetious, you!" I still hear that one, usually when I'm visiting them and arguing with Fox News.

These days, I hear myself repeating the phrases Baby Razor will remember. "This is not a democracy" has morphed into, "Do you have a vote here? No." And I gave my girl a first and middle name combo that's seven syllables long partially in an attempt to avoid yelling her full name when I'm annoyed at her. But I totally use what came after the full-name treatment, the most spine-chilling phrase of my youth: "I'm only going to say this once."

Of course I realize now that my parents were, for the most part, totally blowing smoke. They were never actually going to lock me in the basement if I got caught underage drinking. But they'd spent enough years putting down whatever they were doing and taking us home, or turning off the tv and sending us to our rooms that we had no idea they were bluffing on the bigger stuff. Or, as my sister put it when her son was a toddler, "The key is to be really badass when they're little, before they figure out you have no idea what you're doing."

Mother's Day 2011, Featuring Morris Dancing!

All right, I admit it: I barely know what morris dancing is. But for some reason once I read that it was to be featured at the Arnold Arboretum's Lilac Sunday festivities today, I was all excited for it. Possibly because I love archaic British things (I was a Medieval Lit major, after all), and possibly because an anonymous commenter on my favorite cranky townie website, Universal Hub, claimed that "we fought a couple of wars to be rid of" it. Yes, that's right: the British burned down the White House in 1814 because Americans no longer wanted to dance around with hankies and sticks.

We ran into the morris dancers almost as soon as we entered the Arboretum. Baby Razor loved them, so we watched for awhile and I took pictures:

Morris musician!

Leaping!

Twirling!

These are the Ladies of the Rolling Pin

I liked their costumes

My geeky heart also enjoyed their Green Man.

I loved seeing all the families out enjoying themselves.

And I might be a little biased, but...

I'm pretty sure this was the cutest kid there.

"It's Your Fault!" Friday

The first unofficial thing new mothers learn is that, no matter what happens, It's Your Fault. Can't nurse? Your fault. Colicky kid? Your fault. Dingo stole your baby? Your fault.

In what I would love to be a one-off, but will surely become a reoccurring feature, I present this week's societal F You's to moms everywhere. To get yourself in the proper frame of mind, go read these unsolicited comments to parents and know that every mother I know has heard a variation of at least two of them.

1) Hey, remember how your doctor told you to eat lots of fruit when you were pregnant? Well, I hope you had access to 100% organic, free-range, picked-by-virgins fruit, because otherwise your kid is doomed to be a moron. What's that? You're a migrant worker? Sorry, you're fucked.

2) Okay, you've cut out pesticide-treated fruit. You're all set, right? Nope! Put down those Cheetos or your kid will be fat and it will be All Your Fault. The headline of that article is actually "Your Mom Is Why You're Fat."

Okay, I realize these are scientific studies controlling for a very specific set of circumstances and testing one small part of the zillions of things that affect intelligence and weight, but the way they're reported and the way they filter into the culture is as DON'T EAT THAT APPLE OR YOUR KID WILL BE DUMB and DON'T EAT THOSE MCNUGGETS OR YOUR KID WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE HIS FEET.

Finally, 3) kind of breaks my heart. I adore Neko Case and, in fact, sang her songs to my infant to stay awake during late night feedings when I was so tired I was afraid I was going to pass out, keel over, and smother Baby Razor with my boobs. Then she went and tweeted this:

Parents of SF; your child walks AND talks, get it out of the fucking stroller!!! Ick!

It was a joke. I get that it was a joke. But as the parent of a walking, talking child who enjoys nothing more than darting out into busy intersections, it didn't make me laugh so much as it made me grind my teeth. And when I let her roam free? People ask me why she isn't in a stroller. So, Neko, I love you beyond all reason, but kindly STFU.

Odds & Ends

Big-ass china cabinet at West Roxbury Boomerangs, just $100! It needs to be painted, but it's in great shape. The velvet couch must've found a home, because it's been gone for a couple of weeks.


The chair whose cushion led to the destruction of my lamp. I got up the courage to go back to the project, but I think my father-in-law's staple gun is from 1974 and the kickback was so bad I was afraid I'd destroy something else, so it's on hold again.


Finished cork boards from remedial home ec. It was easy to pull the fabric off of the upside down one and reglue it. The glue gun has also come in handy in fixing Baby Razor's environmentally-friendly, made-with-love wooden toys, which are falling apart. I guess love is a crap adhesive.

In case you're keeping track: glue gun=success. Staples/staple gun=mayhem.

A song I love from my Baby Razor's favorite kids' show:



And finally, Baby Razor is all set for Red Sox Opening Day:

(Mostly) Successful Adulthood

Since we moved into our first house six months ago, my husband and I have generally kicked ass at taking care of the stupid vagaries of home ownership. We replaced the hot water heater, weatherproofed, bought furniture, decorated, and planned our long-term renovation projects.

Then there's the shower. We only have one, and the water gets lukewarm at best. It's not bad when the weather is fine, but when it's ten degrees out, you feel like you've volunteered to become a human popsicle. Weirdly enough, the water from the bath tap is fine--it runs cold, warm and hot. But who, besides Baby Razor, has time for a bath? Since I'm at home with an 18-month-old, I barely have time for a shower at all, which may explain why I'm still flapping my arms and squealing as I dance as far away as I can from the shower spray and try to wash the soap out of my hair at the same time. It's not like I have more than three minutes anyway, so I might as well not enjoy it. And Mr. Razor is chronically late, so the speed showering has actually helped him make the bus.

Other plusses? I don't have dry skin like I usually do in the middle of the winter, our water bill was all of $26 this month, and we're definitely doing our tiny part to conserve water.

But. I would shank someone for a baby-neglecting, dry-skin-causing, money-wasting, planet-destroying, twenty-minute-long HOT shower.

We need to get it fixed, but it's become the task that keeps getting pushed aside by all the other little money-suckers of adulthood. Christmas presents, a new car seat, curtains to keep out the draft, a guest bed. That last one made us realize that it's kind of awful to have guests over just to turn them into human popsicles, so really, for real, the shower is the next thing we're spending money on.

As long as that scratching in the walls I heard last night didn't belong to anything living.