NYC Moms

Pack, Pack, Pack!

Packing. Ugh!

It's a big job, even if and maybe especially if one is not planning to take very much.

My husband, daughter and I are going to meet my family in Hawaii for a multi-family multi-generational vacation in honor of my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary.

It should be easy for us to pack our tiny bathing suits, flip-flops and sun-dresses into rolling carry-on suitcases, except that we are taking a side trip to Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park and the website says we need sturdy soled-shoes and long pants. We might visit the snow covered mountain, Mauna Kea, and on the way home we will spend several days in Seattle, which is famous for rain.  I think we need coats! How can we prepare for all that in carry-on luggage?

Another complication for us, since we are planning on carry-on luggage, and we're not allowed more than 3 oz of anything liquid-ish is this; how can I possibly get enough of our favorite brands of sunscreen to Hawaii. Do I buy it there? What if I can't find our favorite brands. We can't use just any sunscreen. I tried that once and My Kid had an allergic reaction that led her to the conclusion that she didn't like to swim in the ocean because the combination of sunscreen and salt water burned her skin.

The First Step on the Road to Vegetarianism

The waitress had just set down my food, the vegetarian combination, and my husband’s Doro Wat when she looked at my daughter and told her, “I’ll be right back with your lamb.”  My child’s eyes grew large and filled with tears.

“I told you I don’t eat anything cute!”

It’s true.  My daughter does not consume the flesh of any creature that might appear as a plush friend in an Easter basket.

My husband had been so happy to find something on the menu mild enough for our daughter, so that we could come as a family to this neighborhood Ethiopian restaurant where she does not like the way the vegetables are prepared.

Childhood On Hold For Standardized Tests

I just got an e-mail from my daughter’s soccer coach.  He’s canceling Thursday’s practice because of the all important 4th grade math tests this week. God knows the kids don’t need to be wasting their time playing ball in the park in the perfect weather of early May.

They need to be home resting up for shading bubbles on Scantron sheets so they will get the good scores that will get them accepted into a good public middle school so they will have a chance to get into a good high school so they can get good scores on their SAT tests so they can go to a good college and get a good job and life will be perfect.

We all know it’s more complicated than that.  We know, now that our knees are getting tweaky and we go to the gym to maintain our weight rather than to play ball, that those days of playing outside for the fun of it are limited and it seems a terrible waste of the wealth of childhood to cut them short so that our children can focus on the test.

There will be so many tests in the years to come.  Why do we have to put our kids through this high stakes testing sham?   This test they are taking is designed as a diagnostic tool for the schools to assess the efficacy of the curriculum, not a test of an individual child’s achievement.  It’s a joke that the test is being used this way.  It should be a joke, but it’s not, because it is being used this way.

Why Wasn't My Kid Invited?

 For a few moments, as I sip my morning coffee and check e-mail, a wave of paranoia and adolescent insecurity washes over me when I learn, through the listing of conflicts while organizing a Girl Scout event, that two of my daughter’s best friends have been invited to a birthday party and she has not. My child is perfect and so I wonder; Is it me?”   Do I not host enough playdates?  When I talk to the other parents at after school pick up, do I say the wrong things?  Are we a weird family?

Our weekend is already full.  Between soccer and piano and Girl Scouts,  (Not to mention Sakura Matsui at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that I was hoping to drag my family through in the time between the soccer game and the piano lesson)  it would be a major complication if we had to squeeze a birthday party into the Saturday schedule.  Besides, my daughter is already going to a birthday party on Sunday.  

Watching Obama Sign the Healthcare Bill with Tears in My Eyes

And yet...

I have made decisions in my life because I wanted to be the kind of person who could work quietly, efficiently and productively in a large business office even though it was a poor match for my skill set.  I wanted to be the kind of person who deserved to be covered by health care insurance more than I wanted to generate creative work.

And...

There is that whole not trying for a second kid in part because of my fear of giving birth in a hospital while between jobs and therefore without insurance because I knew how much it cost.

Shortly after we moved to New York we got a bill in the mail for the entire birth of our daughter and two day hospital stay in Seattle.  It was a bill for many thousands of dollars.  I was completely freaked out, terrified, near to fainting.  We had had insurance.  Insurance had paid.   I called the hospital.  The friendly voice on the phone said "Oh sorry, we're switching over computer systems.  Nevermind."  I wanted to cry.  But, I couldn't because I was the only adult home with my little walking baby and so I took her to the park. 

Tiana the White Princess

 Photo Credit: Ana Garza of Thing Family

While watching the new Disney animated movie, The Princess and the Frog at the Ziegfeld Theatre, and then photographing my daughter next to various Disney Princesses, all of whom were at the Roseland Ballroom afterwards, as part of The Princess and the Frog Ultimate Disney Experience, it occurred to me that the "finally a Black Disney Princess" princess might become known to the preschool set as "The White Princess".  I hope it happens in our "finally a Black President" Obama in the White House America.

Princess Tiana does spend much of the movie as a frog, which might entice some more little boys into theaters.  However, she has 3 -count them three- iconic ball gowns in addition to a pretty great 1920's fantasy sequence beaded number.  I know one dress is kind of blue and the finale dress has some green layers, but the dresses are white. White like a wedding dress, white like a debutante dress, white like she is the white princess because her dress is white.

Maybe she'll become known as the green princess or the frog princess, or the cooking princess, or the princess with the strapless dress with a blue sash, but the dress she wore at the Ultimate Disney Experience was white.  A Southern Belle Princess, she's a gift to the city of New Orleans.  Also the music and story seem structured for an easy transition to the stage and I expect that soon I'll see banner on a bus announcing the stars of Disney's The Princess and the Frog on Broadway.

They're filming on our street again

They're filming on our street again.  It happens all the time.  

We live in a part of Brooklyn that looks and feels like Sesame Street, or the opening shot of The Cosby Show. My Kid won't even bother to cross the street to check out a film shoot.  In our part of the world, signs taped to lamp posts with arrows that point to "EXTRAS HOLDING" or  "TO SET" are as ordinary as fliers about lost cats and dogs. 

I remember when she was still in a stroller she was attracted to the tent over the craft services table set up a couple blocks from our apartment.  She wanted to go towards it because she thought it was a party.  It was a music video shoot. 

Another time, Dan Zanes was filming in the park next to our regular playground while my daughter and her friends watched and at least one parent had to sign a release contract because his 3-year-old wouldn't get out of the shot and the producers let him stay there listening on camera with the children who had been brought in by a casting agency. 

At the Bleecker Street Playground in Greenwich Village, I watched with amusement as some photographers were setting up a shot of a Bugaboo.  Toddlers kept coming over to play with the ball and sand bucket the stylists were artfully arranging around the wheels of the stroller. 

One Perfect Child

We were at the playground, with our daughter, who at nine, looks like one of those improbably proportioned tween dolls--all hair, eyes and legs.  She was dressed like one of those dolls too; in a pink shirt, pink pants and pink sneakers with a pink helmet and pink elbow, wrist and knee pads.  As she glided around the pavement on her pink Ripstick with the grace of an Olympic figure skater, she attracted notice.

The father of a two-year-old came over and asked us if we were happy with just one child.  He told us he and his wife were in the process of deciding whether or not to have another baby.  He had accompanied his golden-curled two-year-old to the playground, ferrying her equipment like a sherpa.  She had a little pink scooter and not one but two balls, a soccer ball AND a basket ball.  The father switched balls for the toddler depending upon her desire to kick or dribble.