Baby Number 3

No, no, no-- I am sooooo not pregnant. That was one of our New Year's resolutions--no making or having babies in 2009. Also, I just got a fabulous job, and I really think if I had ANOTHER kid, my coworkers would be all, "WTF ever, Octomom." And we are seriously out of room in this house. Not to mention, I am on a diet, and I have lost 9 pounds!

But other than that, we might actually maybe someday want to have baby number 3. This is a shocking development in or lives because Ben has been adamantly no-baby for a long time, and when Jack was zitty, colicky, mess, I thought he was probably going to be baby number last. And he still might be. Lest we forget this ridiculousness. But, he might be the neglected middle child someday instead of the adored baby.

The thing is, Jack is an absolute delight. 23 pounds of solid toddling, drooling, smiling, kissing delight with the fattest little foot slabs you've ever seen (so fat that his Keens were 2 sizes too small, something we discovered when they kept pooping off his feet, and we had to make an emergency Des Moines mall stop for some flipper-like Nikes). It's hard to imagine that this will be our last encounter with a toddler, you now? Also, Ben, Harry, and Jack all like rides, and I don't. We need another person for Disney World ride purposes (4 to a car and all), and I can stand there holding everybody's crap and taking pictures.

These are not good reasons for or against, huh?

But babies are so cute!

When they drink beer!


When Harry was Jack's age-ish, we conceived Jack because the bay fever! It was eating me up. I NEEDED more baby. This time, I'd LIKE more baby, but I am resisting. It makes me wonder, is this a biological imperative to reproduce or just hegemonic notions of family, motherhood, and the American dream intruding on my consciousness? Intruding is the wrong word. Hegemonic notions ARE my consciousness, right? I mean, that's what makes hegemony so, uh, hegemonic. To separate the biological and the social is impossible because we must speak of the biological, and language robs the body of its, um, I don't know, objectivity? (Whatev. Read Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex-- he explains it better than I do).

All I know is this: I went to the car dealership to get a new tire today and ended up checking out vehicles that can fit 3 car seats.

Have you ever gone to visit family and not taken any pictures of them?

Because that is what I did over the 4th of July.

We went to Des Moines to see my grandparents and my Aunt Leslie and cousin Molly-- my mom came and my brother Ben, too, and I only took pictures of my kids and anyone who happened to be standing close enough to my kids to get in the picture.

Sorry guys-- no photographic evidence of a really fun weekend!

I planned to post these pictures (of me, Ben and our kids-- no one else because we're jerks) sooner, but Michael Jackson! The memorial! The constant talking about the memorial! All the documentaries that are always on MSNBC! I could not look away.

One cool thing I learned from the MJ memorial (please don't roll your eyes at me if this sounds both selfish and naive)-- I have got to stop passing time from one milestone to the next and just realize that this? Is it. My whole life. It's loooong afternoons and rushed mornings and sleepy bedtimes and potty accidents and diaper rash and date nights and loving my first cup of coffee of the day and finally reading some Jodi Picoult novels. I waited and wished and hoped for my dissertation to be done, and my life has not been magically transformed by the experience the way I thought it might be. Same life, less research. I imagine this will be true for other things I've been waiting for, and if I'm not careful, these days will be over, and I'll be older and still have the same life and possibly some regrets.

(so funny/ironic/stupid that I have been typing this sitting at the breakfast table with my back to Harry and Jack who are playing with action figures on the living room rug. Can't enjoy my life when I'm being all meta, you know?)

Jack likes to be held upside down. We get weird looks in pubic, but it changes his little attitude

Luckily, he usually has a pretty good attitude-- unless, you know, I have somewhere to go or something to do

Harry called this ball a bubble, and he and Leslie washed it in the bathtub, which he thought was hilarious. He spent the whole afternoon at my aunt's house all by himself, and he had so much fun playing with Molly's old toys and eating watermelon. She asked if he would want to come over and play, and I had him and his car seat on her driveway in like 42 seconds. In the movie version, she would still be hanging up the phone when the tires would screech outside, signaling his arrival. Molly, Leslie, her partner Jerry, and his son Nathan took Harry to see Ice Age 3, which he has been wanting to see ever since McDonalds started giving Ice Age toys in their Happy Meals and this MOTY started swinging by the golden arches after soccer practice (oh my lord, could I BE more of a stereotype-- I actually told Ben that I'd like to trade my Camry for a Sienna, and the other day, I tied a white cardigan around my shoulders). Harry is usually a fantastic movie-goer, but he fell asleep as soon as he saw a preview for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. After the movie, he still had most of his ginormous slushie and bag of of popcorn. When Ben asked him what his favorite part was, Harry looked confused and said "There was no movie, Dada."

We had so much fun playing outside-- Ben and I played some ultra competitive badminton, and we played with a bunch of cool toys.

Then the Bens took Harry and Jack back to the hotel to swim and go to bed, and I stayed at Bomma and Jacks for some brats and wine-- and look! A picture of the fam!!

Eff-- yesterday's post was a big fat FAIL, huh?

Okay then.

Here we are at an amusement park where we spent 5 hours because we were having so much sweaty, gravely fun.

We were so stupid, by the way (shock!) because we thought the kiddie rides said 54 inches and up, but OF COURSE they said 54 inches and shorter. So we took Harry on all the scary grown up rides (well, Ben did-- I am a ride wimp), and he LOVED them-- even the really roigh ones like the hot air balloon tippy swings and the octopus-like casino ride. When we realized our error and put him on the kiddie rides, he was really, really bored by them-- far too sophisticated for fire trucks on a track, that's for sure. He did like this, the kiddie version of those scary rides that usually kill people when their hydraulics fail and everyone plunges to the ground in a wave of soon-to-be-severed legs and blood-curdling screams.




We though this place would be such a fun summer job for high schoolers and college kids (let's play carnie! now with less bearded lady!) but then we looked around and realized it was all retirees. Our economy sucks.)

This place was nasty but really funny in that am-I-in-the-hopsital-- no?-- then-why-am-I-eating-effing-jello- and- mashed-potatoes-sort-of-way.


Ben being strong man. And it's not that the 12 year old girl who went after him hit the bell harder, it's that there are different standards for women and girls, so that's why the "winner! winner! winner!" lights lashed for her and not Ben.

That sounds snarky, but really. It's true.

Instead of buying the kids toys, we decided to play all those silly fair games and WIN them some. Because we suck at math.

The teacups scared the pee out of Jack, but he was a good sport.

Jack LOVED sitting on this ride. And then he tried to climb out, and the ride was OVAH. Harry was bored. Hes so cool.

Eff word Friday: What kind of feminist are you?

I ask because I'm still not sure myself.

When I was an earnest doctoral student (not even a candidate yet-- just a course-work slogging wannabe who wore too much make up for the women's studies folks to like me), I really liked the wave metaphor for eras of feminist activism in the United States. I fancied myself a 2nd-waver living in the midst of the 3rd wave, a kind of throwback who embraced grrl culture and the "liberating choice" to dress kind of slutty and spend all my expendable income on grooming products but who still wanted to spell woman with a "y" and kick men out of women's studies classes and tell people who wanted to rename those classes "gender studies" to shove it. I kept my push-up bra on but torched the Beauty Myth, you know?

Back when I saw everything through an unquestioned, unmentioned lens of white middle-class, childless privilege (but before I started writing just awful sentences in my scholarly work about exploring theoretical underpinnings-- blech-- and I am a critic who has only a passing interest in theory, so really, I don't even have any business using the t-word in my work), this is how I saw the tidy waves of feminist activism:

First Wave: Women's suffragists. Rah-rah for the right to vote!
Second Wave: The Feminine Mystique, career moms, abortion rights, the Pill, politicalization of the personal, and sex outside marriage!
Third Wave: Really radical defense of abortion as a natural part of women's reproductive lives, Manifesta, overuse of the consumerist slogan "choice," simultaneous commodification and de-politicalization of the personal, a sustained interest (finally) in transnational activism.

But what about the progressive maternalists who acted out of first wave feminism and in trying to make the country better for women and children, helped to build the paternalist welfare state?

What about essentialism that started in the first wave, and continued into the second with Carol Gilligan and Nancy Chodorow, and washed into the third with Eve Ensler?

What about the unquestioned acceptance of the liberal subject as disembodied, of the ideal worker as childless and masculine, of the notion that women's participation in the public sphere is all that's necessary for equality, that we do not need to remake the public or force it to be concerned with private matters, that women can simply act as men in the public world, and all will be right?

Privileging white women's struggles as all women's struggles? Pitting mom against mom? Vilifying feminism itself?

Because I study reproductive rights, it makes sense that my thoughts about feminism all come down to the problem of "choice." On the one hand, it is a really horrible slogan for a movement-- pro-choice. Really? What the hell does that mean? Choice connotes the kind of marketplace discrimination that assumes we all have a seat at the table, that we all come to this choice with equal access to all available options. And certainly, it obscures important questions of life-- whose life? which life? value of a life?-- ceding the power to define life and answer all moral charges to the other side of the debate.

Beyond questions of abortion rights, however, I think the choice slogan hurts human rights in this country. Childcare, for example, is so much more than a choice. To say that when you have a baby, you either *choose* to stay home or *choose* to work outside the home boils so many lives down to an either-or fallacy and obscures the decisions real people make using their available resources-- and of course, we all reason from different places, with different values, and with access to very different material and spiritual conditions. A glib word like "choice" that assumes so much agency and glosses over so much inequality makes us have cultural conversations about the wrong things. About mommy wars instead of federal dollars for daycare, for example.

I still don't know how to label my kind of feminism. The day Harry was born, it all sort of fell apart for me, all the neat boxes, the carefully delineated waves, the sureness that I'd WOHM without regret, that I knew exactly how to handle an unplanned pregnancy.

Please tell me because I really want to know: what is feminism for you? what is the most important feminist issue facing our generation? where do you see the movement (if we can still call it a movement) going from here?

Most importantly, how has your view of feminism changed since you had kids?

Because for me, these guys (pictured dancing to EELS' Prizefighter) changed everything

Weigh-In Wednesday! Woo-hoo!

Since I started my totally awesome weight loss adventure three weeks ago, I have lost 8 pounds, and I would be more excited about it if I hadn't lost 5 the first week, 1.5 the second week, and 1.5 the third week. I just wanted to pull a bigger number these past 2 weeks (to borrow a turn of phrase from the Biggest Loser).

BUT, I am 2 pounds away from my pre-Jack weight, which is cause for celebration. Only 14-and-a-half months post partum, which means my celebration will be limited to sugar-free fudgesicles because damn! It took me a long time to shed these pounds, and I am not going to screw it up. This week.

In wardrobe casualty news, the shorts I wore to Harry's birthday party are way too big. Can't wait to buy smaller ones, except that the smaller one are too small. Gaucho pants, where are you when I need you?

I am still finding it really hard to resist pigging out while I clean up dinner. Those half-eaten Milano cookies coated with catsup are just too tempting. Anybody have any tips for stopping the post-dinner scavenge? So far the 40-calorie fudgesicle is my best weapon, but it's hard to eat while wiping trays and sponging floors. Maybe I should start smoking again.
Harry and Jack were like totally excited about my shrinking thighs, so they engaged in a celebratory wrestling match:

Okay, so look at this:

and then remember this from last year:

Check out the hair pulling-- yikes

He's young, but he's scrappy

Then Jack bit Harry, and I had to put down the camera and, you know, parent. Such a drag.

Do you ever get bored by the eleventy billion repetitive acts of child maintenance you perform everyday?

I do. Ben does. We do.

I think Harry and Jack get bored with their routines, too. Because routines are nothing if not, well, routine. Boy, they don't give those Ph.D.s to just anyone, huh?

By bath time, we've really all just had it, you know? Especially since Harry rarely naps, and Jack's fat legs keep getting stuck between the bars of his crib and hindering his naps, and I am dieting and very cranky by the time my calorie budget has run out and am preoccupied doing math in my head to see if I can still maybe have a glass of wine, and Ben is tired and ready for the kids to be asleep so he can watch Entourage reruns and manage his fantasy baseball teams.

It used to be that Ben did bath every night because I was home with the kids all darn day and preferred to vacuum and get everybody's milk together and prep toothbrushes and the like. But now that I have been working more and more (why yes, I am paying for childcare right now, what's it to you? I am working on MY BRAND), Ben has lobbied to split bath duties. I have graciously agreed to do 1 or 2 baths a week (I know-- you all want to be married to me, don't you?), and I am determined to make them the FUNNEST BATHS EVER (which is actually a pretty stupid idea, now that I think about it, and one that could make me Chief Bath Officer, if I am not careful).

On my bath nights, I will not spend the whole time sitting on the toilet lid hunched over my BlackBerry (because ha! I have an iPhone!) and complaining about getting splashed. I will not threaten to take away Harry's before-bed TV time because that particular punishment only hurts the wine-and-internet-starved parents when their widdle anglepants stays up until 10 whining about that ridiculous, anachronistic, naked Little Bear (also, I rarely follow through my on threats because I am awesome like that and threaten really unrealistic things like throwing away ALL THE TOYS)! I will not nag the other parent to vacuum faster because my bath-time-is-not-fun-time stance has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, I will encourage hijinks and hilarity until someone falls down and nearly drowns/hits his head or face or until I have arbitrarily had enough and decide bath is over, prompting giant temper tantrums from all parties that last until our nightly EELS dance party ensues.

Last night, I broke out the big guns: KITCHEN UTENSILS and BLUE FOOD COLORING.
(also, see how red jack's cheeks are? they're also hot and scaly)

Harry was slow to warm up to the whole thing, mainly because he wanted even more blue in the water, but I decided the amount of blue food coloring to use in the bath was the perfect thing to engage in a power struggle with my 3 year old about. God, I'm good.

Jack, though, could not stop stirring the bath-- it was like the funnest thing he's ever done

Sarah, you're thinking, who was watching the kids while you snapped this picture of your toilet-lid sitting husband (who likes to demonstrate that he is a better person than I am by joining bath already in progress after he vacuums, unlike me, who has to be guilted away from the internet when my cleaning time is through)? That's a good question. No one actually. Jack fell down hard enough to break a melamine measuring cup, and bath was over.

Note: It's usually a good idea to supervise your kids

We should have remembered this helpful tidbit tonight while making dinner. But Ben was too busy grilling 3 kinds of fish (we could not make up or minds), and I was too busy washing strawberries so perfect they must be genetically modified and cooking corn and 2 kinds of green veggies (again, indecisiveness) to really watch Harry or Jack. Ben ran upstairs a few times to grab a platter and some utensils with which to prod and turn the fish, and he said hi to the boys, who were busy destroying the living room. I interacted with them anytime they were directly underfoot, playing with the childproof caps on the stove, or reaching on their tippy toes for pot handles, but other than that I stuck my head over the counter a few times to tell them to play nice and share. That was the extent of our supervision.

Still, everything seemed fine. Pleasant even.

Just as I was putting lovely bowls of brilliantly colored produce on the table and Ben was rounding the corner with a plate piled high with salmon, halibut, and tuna, both of us noticed a wet, white, sort of glittery substance all over the floor. Harry told us it was the rug, and in his defense, it did sort of look like our shaggy white rug. But it was so WET, which worried us because we assumed that one or both of them ate it, and we didn't know what it was.

We sat them in their chairs, but neither of them ate very much (as is their custom when something other than total crap is on the menu), and Jack was sort of coughing a little, so of course (because we are, as is well documented here) so good under pressure, we FREAKED OUT and assumed that they were in mortal danger.

Ben tasted the stuff, and so did I, but we couldn't place it. We checked Harry's chair, the sofa pillows, all the toys, under the rug, in the trash cans, in the hall closets-- no sign of anything wet and white with chunks of glittery gel crystals.

The urgent care nurse told us to go to the ER, and she called ahead to the children's hospital ER to tell them we were coming, a detail that of course made us freak out and act even more ridiculous. Harry, for example, left the house with his shoes on the wrong feet. Jack was barefoot.

In the car, we called poison control, and the lovely woman on the phone told us it sounded like a diaper or one of those "do not eat" packets in purses and shoe boxes, both nontoxic choking hazards. She advised us NOT to go to the hospital, telling us to give Jack some water and something soft to eat to make sure he didn't have an obstruction. We weren't convinced and kept driving toward the hospital, especially after the urgent care nurse called back to say that if Jack started choking, we should pull over and call 911.

About 2 miles from our destination, I whipped a spare Pull Up out of my bag, doused it with water, and then Ben and I pried up the outer layer and pulled out some of the diaper's wet insides-- white, damp, full of glittery chunks of gel crystals. Yes! Jack may or may not have eaten a wet diaper from the bathroom trash (we know he strew it about the room-- we don't actually know if he swallowed it)! Which means, yes, Ben and I both tasted wet diaper from the bathroom trash. Neat.

Instead of the ER, we went to Dairy Queen (what? the nurse said he should eat something soft-- hello, soft serve?), where Jack was about to happily devour a chocolate shake when Harry piped up from the corner where he was perusing the book of ice cream cake decorations, "I peed my leg, Mama." We looked up to find him standing in a dripping puddle. Ben wiped him and the floor up with a stack of napkins, and we grabbed Harry's blizzard and Jack's shake and walked to the car as fast as we could . Harry, with his Crocs full of urine and on the wrong feet, slowed us down a bit and made an awkward splishy sound with each shuffle.