The big suck

I love my Eli. I love that he is goofy and enjoys a good laugh more than anybody else I know. I love that he still vigorously enjoys peekaboo and demands tickles and pretends to read his favorite books to me at bedtime. I love that he loves bagels and "Wheels on the Bus" and vehicles of all kinds.

But I hate his pacifier.

Our family affair with the pacifier is long and storied. Before Eli was born, when I was going to do everything right and establish the perfect breastfeeding relationship, I decided we weren't going to introduce bottles or pacifiers for at least a month. When my mother tentatively inquired as to whether we had any pacifiers in the house, I self-importantly told her that I hadn't purchased any, because we weren't going to be needing any. Just boobs for my kid, thanks!

(She later took it upon herself to buy some pacifiers and thrust them on me "just in case." Thanks Mom!)

As a newborn, Eli was jaundiced (boobs were not enough for my kid, apparently), so he had to go under the bili lights at the hospital. There are few sights sadder for a new mom of an otherwise healthy baby than your tiny infant with a big black mask over his eyes under those scary lights. (Remember when Scully did an alien autopsy on The X-Files? It's like that.) Apparently Lenox Hill is not one of those "baby-friendly" hospitals you hear about, because at some point a nurse gave Eli a pacifier to comfort him. (They also gave him formula, at which point I had a total breakdown.)

When we were packing up to leave the hospital, we strapped Eli into his carseat. He started crying. Phil and I looked at each other. Suddenly Phil disappeared and, in a flash, reappeared with a pacifier he had apparently begged off a nurse in the hospital nursery. And just like that, our obsession with the pacifier was born.

Newborns have a biological need to suck. It's comforting. It's soothing. (That's why the British call pacifiers "soothers.") Some parents take their kid's pacifier away after they've mostly outgrown that need but before it becomes a major addiction, around the time they recognize that they're getting up multiple times a night to reinstall it in their kid's mouth. Not us! We persevered through that stage until Eli could find his mouth with that pacifier blindfolded, and then we bought pacifier clips to ensure that it would never be more than six inches from him anyway. On Eli's first day of daycare at 10 months old, I brought him into the classroom with his pacifier clipped onto his collar. "You're going to need this," I told his teachers.

Once, we brought his school pacifier home for a weekend to wash it and forgot to send it back on Monday. His teachers literally gave him the empty cap to a bottle to suck on at naptime.

Now Eli is 2 years and 4 months old. He's getting to the age, in other words, where we really should think about losing the pacifier. He is theoretically only supposed to have his pacifier for sleeping (which in our laissez-faire parenting attitude also means the first hour after he wakes up and sometimes the last hour of the day before bedtime). He knows he's theoretically only supposed to have his pacifier for sleeping, so when he wants it he pretends he's going to go to sleep and lays down on the floor just so he can take a hit. But he also likes to have it in the car, sometimes in the stroller, and when he's watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on TV -- when he's bored or relaxing, in other words, like his pacifier is a glass of wine or a good Scotch. This often means it feels like I'm battling with him to give up the pacifier: "No pacis during playtime," or "You may have your pacifier back if you want to get into your crib with it."

One of the parenting philosophies I became interested in after Eli was born is something called Resources for Infant Educators, or RIE. RIE is also called "mindful parenting" and it's based on the idea that we should be respectful and authentic in our interactions with children. (Sounds good, right?) There's a lot about RIE that I think is over the top and untenable -- RIE parents, for instance, don't believe in placing their babies in any position they can't get into themselves, so they don't do tummy time, babywear or even put their babies on swings at the playground (since they can't get up there themselves). That's a little much, right?

But one thing that does ring true for me about RIE is the idea that we should respect our children as autonomous beings. And I have to be honest, it feels a little disrespectful for me to poke holes in all Eli's pacifiers and claim they broke, or for me to encourage him to leave his pacis for the paci fairy, or to tell him that pacifiers are for babies and he's not a baby anymore so he doesn't need one.

(Except I know of people who have done these things and guess what? Their kids don't have pacis anymore and they're not pulling their hair out while their kid wails, "I want my paaaaaaci!" for the millionth time, so who am I to judge?)

And also hypocritical, because in the past few weeks Eli's also become enamored of a little blue blanket (which I'm 99% sure happens to be the blanket he was wrapped in at his bris) that he calls "Soft Blankie," and I have zero problem with him taking Soft Blankie places, so why do I have such an issue with the pacifier? I sucked my thumb until I was 6, why should Eli have to give it up now?

And also, if I'm being honest with myself, kind of selfish. Because when Eli is damp from a bath and runs off to find his paci and Soft Blankie and then crawls up into my lap with his pacifier in his mouth, it reminds me that he's such a little boy, that he has the rest of his life to grow up. It's not affecting his speech. He's going to need orthodontia anyway. Why not allow him this comfort? No one ever went to college with a pacifier, right?

Last week we read Leslie Patricelli's Binky, about a boy looking for his lost pacifier. "How would you feel if you didn't have your pacifier anymore?" I asked Eli.

"Crying," he said.

"Why do you love your pacifier so much?"

He sucked thoughtfully. Then he said, "Because I have to go to sleep!"

This weekend we had one battle after another about the pacifier; I must have said the words, "It's not pacifier time now!" a dozen times. In my frustration I thought, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time to take all the pacifiers away.

The truth is, though, I couldn't do it. It's a big, bad world out there. We all need a little something to help us cope.

"How we spend our days is how we spend our lives"

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing....There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet." --Annie Dillard

I have a new Facebook cover photo. It's a picture I took of Eli riding his scooter on the boardwalk at Long Beach (that's Long Beach, Long Island, not Long Beach, California) at sunset, bundled in his red winter jacket against the chilly December wind.

The picture is perfect. In fact, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered the photo opportunity when I spontaneously decided to load Eli in the car that afternoon. (And I had two dastardly ulterior motives: (1) Eli had taken a random 10 a.m. nap that morning and I knew he'd sneak in another one in the car and (2) I knew it would make Phil jealous.)

But what you see on Facebook is of course not the whole story. Earlier that day, we had gone into Manhattan so that Eli could see his 11-year-old cousin, whom he adores. Then we split up so that Phil could go with his family to a football game while I took Eli home. I found myself in the middle of thousands of tourists in Bryant Park, and all of them were behind me trying to squeeze by the line for the carousel, the line for the ice skating rink and the line for the food truck while Eli insisted on trying to push his stroller himself through the crowds. In desperation I snatched him up and took off while he kicked and screamed, alternately crying for his pacifier and telling me that he wanted to go on a "venture" (adventure -- I have no idea where he picked that up). Somehow I shepherded him onto the subway, where his pacifier fell on the floor a few stops from home. There are not enough wipes in the world to clean the subway floor off a pacifier that's going into my child's mouth, so the whole car (and then the whole neighborhood) had to listen to Eli wail for his paci until we got home, at which point he disembarked for his stroller and casually announced, "I'm going to play."

I think I may have actually bellowed, "I THOUGHT YOU WANTED YOUR PACIFIER!" I have been planning to let Eli decide when he's done with his pacifier, but at that point I wanted to throw them all out the window.

So then Eli was happily playing with his extensive play-doh collection, but it was unseasonably warm and I couldn't bear the thought of staying inside. I figured we could sneak in another nap in the jogging stroller, so I told Eli I wanted to take him for a run. To my surprise, he said, "I don't want yellow signs" -- our usual running route through Forest Park is full of yellow signs that Eli takes great delight in pointing out at each turn.

I said, "Well, where do you want to go?" and he said -- I swear to you -- "I wanna go a place magical!" (I have no idea where he picked that up either.) So I thought a minute and said, "Well, what if we go to the beach?" Because what's more magical than the beach in December?

He literally jumped up and down and yelled, "YEAH!"

So I grabbed his scooter out of the closet (at which point a large keyboard fell on my foot, temporarily crippling me) and hustled him to the car. He fell asleep, as I predicted, and just as I was turning onto the street that leads to the beach I heard a sleepy voice say, "Hey! We made it!" I installed him in the jogging stroller with his blanket and pacifier and we took off down the boardwalk, running extra fast to warm up against the cold. After a short run, I yelled, "Anyone who wants to go onto the sand raise your hand and take your pacifier out of your mouth!" and we ran down the ramp to the sand, where Eli giggled and said, "Take my shoes off!"

We tickled and cuddled and rolled around in the sand. We shivered at how cold it felt on our feet and we admired the sunset and the airplanes. Our noses ran and our toes tingled. I felt heart-stoppingly happy.

It was getting cold and dark, so I let Eli scoot on the boardwalk for just a few minutes before it was time to go.

And then, the car ride home. Google Maps informed me the trip would take a long 45 minutes. Eli polished off most of a box of peanut butter crackers and tossed the remainder up in the air, where they rained down on my head like confetti. Then he started requesting that effing pacifier again. I knew, I knew it was somewhere on top of him, because I had handed it to him along with the peanut butter crackers, but he kept yelling that he couldn't find it, and I kept yelling back that I couldn't find it either because I was driving, and then he begged me in a small, sad voice, "Stop driving, Mom, please, Mom," and I kept telling him that there was nothing I could do and I didn't have it, and finally I dug his LeapPad out of my bag and tossed it on top of him, but after a few minutes I heard, "It can't work!" and he handed it back to me at a red light at which point I saw that he had been entering "xksxkkwskkewk2wk2" into the calendar (who knew this thing even had a calendar?), which I quickly exited out of and gave it back to him.

At some point during the maniacal drive it occurred to me that our whole day had actually been a perfect encapsulation of parenthood. A frustrating, embarrassing, exhausting morning followed by an hour or so of shining, heart-exploding joy followed by more teeth-grinding and hair-pulling. When we got home, I opened a bottle of wine while cooking macaroni and cheese and shooing Eli away from the burners while the pasta cooked, but then we sat down at the table together and Eli made polite, mature conversation ("You have macaroni and cheese, Mom? Eat more macaroni and cheese, Mom!") and we smiled at each other over our bowls of bunny pasta. A parenting roller coaster.

It's a complete cliche to say that moments like the one on the beach are what makes all the aggravation worth it. In fact, it might be more accurate to say I'm driven to manufacture moments like those because I need to feel compensated for all that aggravation, like, I had a miserable morning so we are going to do something zany and epic and we are going to enjoy it, damn it! At the end of the day, feeling drained, I found myself trying to analyze what had gone wrong, as though if I had just been a calmer, more patient, less selfish parent in the first place we would have had a more even-keeled day. Sometimes -- and I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- I feel like I respond to toddler behavior by sinking to that level myself: But I don't want to be responsible for convincing you to use the potty this morning! But I don't want to sit here while you demand that I play play-doh a certain way! At least once a day I find myself surprised to be thrust into the position of decision-maker, of responsible adult, of Mom.

So I want to stop trying to quantify these moments, weighing whether they are "worth it." The days are what they are: frustrating and joyful and exasperating and funny and challenging and exhilarating and maddening and meaningful all at the same time.

My lionheart

It's Saturday afternoon at our temple and we're all gathered in pajamas for a Shabbat/Hanukkah (or "Shabbatukah," as Phil likes to call it) celebration. On the rug, a group of one-year-olds is shaking jingly instruments while someone sings Hanukkah songs; a few feet away, the cantor is lighting Hanukkah candles with some older kids. On the other side of the room, everyone else is engaged in various stages of constructing a menorah out of modeling clay and popsicle sticks.

Everyone, that is, except one toddler, who is racing around a large round table, faster and faster, like a tetherball whipping around a pole. He appears, much like a hamster in a wheel will never tire, to have been running around the table since Judah and the Maccabees first defeated the Greeks, and the look in his eyes says he is prepared to keep running around that table until someone procures some jelly donuts; that might entice him to stop.

That one? Is mine. Phil and I sat there watching, half amused and half dismayed, as a tween volunteer tried to entice Eli to sit down and color on some dreidels. Part of me thought I should help her out, but part of me also wanted to see how long Eli could keep running in circles around that table. (The answer: Longer than you would think.)

Maybe it's the looming winter or maybe it's just those terrible 2s, but these days Eli seems to be more of everything than ever: louder, faster, more insistent, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. At 6 a.m. every morning, I hear his voice hollering for me from his room, and when I enter in a sleepy stupor his arms are already reaching for me from his crib. "I wanna go in the bed," he announces, and once installed beneath the covers, I can feel his toes poking insistently into my flabby side, his hands moving restlessly over my chest. Every few minutes he pops up like a groundhog to peer out the window and make some observation ("It's dark out! The cars are moving! A siren!") until finally he's had enough and he declares, with all seriousness, "I have to go play."

Sometimes, while I'm frantically trying to open a container of yogurt or a new package of play-doh before his whines ascend to wails while he sits close to me practically panting like a dog, I can feel him vibrating with energy and I'm overwhelmed by the force of his desire. "I want it. I want it!" he'll repeat doggedly, and I'm left spinning out the same platitudes about patience and waiting just a minute. The other night he shrieked through a public menorah lighting because he was desperate for a jelly donut, which I had said he could not have until the menorah was lit. In these moments it's hard to decide when to dig in and when to let go, what's not worth engaging in a power struggle over and what might be spoiling him for life.

Bedtime is my favorite time of day. Not for obvious reasons (ha, ha), but because Eli and I kick ass at our bedtime routine, which he has succeeded at lengthening in ever-incremental steps over the past year. (We used to read a few books, get into the crib and sing a night-night song. Now I read a few books, say "Last book!" at least twice, then Eli gets a turn reading a book, then we "sit for a minute," then I "rock a baby," then we do crib and night-night song, which Eli interrupts every single night to inform me that he will be playing with "toys and chuggers" tomorrow.)

Usually I'm in sort of a rush to speed things along, because I have this idea that it's like now or never, if he doesn't get into the crib and go to sleep now he'll never let me leave. And usually Eli is popping up off my lap to choose another book from the shelf, or playfully tickling at me with his fingers, or whipping his blanket over his head to hide.

But the night of the Hanukkah celebration I was struck forcefully as we sat there together by how still he finally was. There was no squirming against me or feet sticking my sides or palms gently patting my cheeks. Literally the only sound I could hear besides the classical night-night music was that little squeak-squeak from his pacifier, the same rubbery sound it made when he was a baby and I had to hold it in his mouth so it wouldn't pop out from the force of his sucking.

The first time I ever heard Eli sing along with a song that wasn't a nursery rhyme, we were in the Gap and they were playing a song called "King and Lionheart." "Howling ghosts, they reappear in mountains that are stacked with fear, but you're a king and I'm your lionheart." It was the "lionheart" part that Eli was repeating, and ever since then I've thought of him as my lionheart: strong and brave and intense.

Eli was never all that interested in being held. As a baby, he would arch his back against us, as if to say, "Put me down!" He disliked being carried, snuggled or rocked, any of those things that babies are supposed to crave. Now, it feels like a rare treat when he'll sit in my lap, and even rarer when he'll sit there, still, and let me wrap my arms around him.

So that night we just sat there. I resisted the urge to make conversation, to chat about our day. I just breathed him in, kissing his soft hair, trying not to caress him too much and ruin it. He was heavy against me in a way that felt reassuring and familiar, like: This is the weight of my child. As I always do, I felt a quick flash-forward to the future -- Someday he won't wait to sit in my lap like this and someday it will be weird and creepy even if he did -- and nearly burst into tears. Instead I just burrowed further into the chair and nuzzled him into me like a Russian nesting doll, his head tucked under my chin.

"I love being your mommy," I murmured, and it was true. But I love some moments more than others, and that moment felt like the sweetest of all.

As the world comes to an end
I'll be there to hold your hand
You're a king and I'm your lionheart...

The evolution of mom guilt

It usually begins the same way: I hear coughing over the monitor, mixed in with a little wailing. Then the coughing turns to retching. By the time I sprint through the door of Eli's room, the damage is done: it's a Code V (for vomit, of course) all over the sheets.

The next morning, Eli is warm and flushed and instead of galloping into the living room and insisting we "play chuggers," he crawls pitifully into my lap and lets me stroke his hair. Over his head, Phil and I are giving each other The Eyes. The Working Parent eyes. The "Which one of us is going to stay home with him today?" eyes. The "I have an important meeting today" eyes. The "Whose turn is it?" eyes.

I had never intended to be a stay-at-home mom, so I was relieved and excited to land a new job and go back to work when Eli was 10 months old. But as a stay-at-home mom, I never -- or very rarely -- felt guilty about leaving Eli to go to the gym when Phil came home from work or to go shopping on the weekend. After all, we were with each other all the time.

Even after I started working, I felt zero guilt about bringing him to daycare. He had always been a sociable baby who seemed to crave the company of other kids and adults who weren't Mommy, and as I expected, he thrived in daycare. 

But as he got older, things got trickier. He grew funnier and cuter and more interactive and more human every day. I enjoyed talking to him and hanging out with him. I craved being around him. I started to feel like I was missing out when I wasn't with him.

 For most of my first year back at work, Phil was the default stay-at-home parent whenever Eli was sick or daycare was closed, since I was trying to be a responsible new employee and also save up my days. Now that I've built up a little stockpile, and now that our second winter of daycare illnesses is upon us, we have the awful task of grudgingly canceling meetings, rearranging schedules (Phil arrived at his office one morning at 7 a.m. so we could go halvsies on missing the day) and trying to talk to VIPs on the phone while Eli yells "MOMMMYYYYYY Mommy Mommy Mommy!" from 1.5 inches away.

And now, like any good Jewish mother, I get to feel guilty all the time. I feel guilty FaceTiming Eli from my desk instead of being there in person, but I also feel guilty racing out the door of my office at 6 p.m. sharp while my co-workers -- some of whom are also parents -- stay late. I feel guilty when Phil has to take the day off and take Eli to the doctor, but then I feel guilty when it's my turn to take the day off and my office is shorthanded.

Last week, I had to leave work early to pick up Eli from school. It was naptime when I got there, so his teacher carried him out to me already bundled in his puffy red jacket. His cheeks were streaked with tears. I put him in his stroller and covered him with a blanket and he said in a small voice, "I feel better!" as if all he had wanted was to be with me. When we got home, I tucked him into our bed with his soft blanket and promised him I would sit right next to him while he slept. I had my laptop open and a Styrofoam container of halal chicken beside me. He slept for three hours (an eternity in Eli-time) and I worked. I felt like Supermom, like I had achieved the ultimate in flexible working conditions.

The next day, Eli was home again, only this time he was feeling a lot better -- not well enough to go to school, but well enough to be desperate for my company while he played. I shifted my attention frantically back and forth -- "We only use crayons on paper! If you push the easel like that, it's going to fall over! Hey, maybe it's time to watch another episode of Daniel Tiger" -- culminating with me apologizing to a director on the phone while Eli yelled at the top of his lungs. When Phil came home and it was my turn to head into the office, I had to escape through a crack in the door while Eli stood in the hallway and wailed for me. I could hear him crying as I waited for the elevator, swallowing my own tears, utterly exhausted without having set foot out of the building yet.

I had promised I would be working from home that morning, and I had done as much work as I could. I had been a great employee, I reflected, but I hadn't been a great mom. And that made me want to cry all over again.

Last year there was a blog post that went viral that was written in praise of stay-at-home moms. I saw it shared all over my newsfeed and each time, it made me want to punch my computer. I hated it. There was a small line in it that basically said, in effect, that moms should stay at home so other people wouldn't be raising their children. I am raising my child. I AM!!!!!!!! I would scream in my head. The truth is, I went back to work because I wanted to go back to work. But there are days when I worry that I'm being selfish, that I'm squandering days I'll never get back, even though I know that if I stayed home full-time all I would really be squandering is my sanity. Meanwhile, on the flip side, on the weekends all I want to do is have fun with Phil and Eli, but then when does the laundry and grocery shopping get done?

Most days, Eli runs off to his classroom with barely a glance back. But on Mondays, he cries and clings to me, as if he can't let go of the weekend we've just shared. I always feel part flattered and part guilty, part exasperated and part despairing. I rush to the door so I won't prolong the separation and then I walk slowly to the subway, sweating in my puffy winter coat, my heart heavy. By the time I get to the subway, Eli is probably all perked up, eating breakfast with his buddies or helping his teachers clean up. But all morning long I'll see his face in my mind and feel like something is missing until I get home again and Eli races out into the foyer to see me.

"Mommy!" he often exclaims, as if he is surprised to find me there. "You home!"

Two thoughts on growing up

Me: "How did you get so big and heavy?"
Eli: "Because I grew up!"

At bedtime, Eli always sits in my lap while we read stories.
Eli: "I can't sit in your lap. I'm too big!"

Your American skin

Last week, to keep Eli entertained on the train to Thanksgiving in New Jersey, I bought him a box at Barnes & Noble. Inside were nine miniature board books, all of them about different emergency rescue vehicles.

I was telling my mother, somewhat flippantly, that I didn't wholly enjoy reading him the one about police cars. Because it begins: You call the police when you need help...

And I didn't feel so sure about that anymore.

My mom, who is a 4'10" middle-aged white woman who enjoys (a) Seinfeld, (b) Cathy cartoons and (c) the Off-Broadway show 25 Questions For a Jewish Mother, looked around self-consciously as if she was afraid someone would hear her and then whispered furtively: "I don't trust cops."

Should she? Yesterday at my desk I was transfixed by these powerful photos of protests around New York City following the grand jury decision not to indict the officer who choked Eric Garner. There's one of a black man holding a large sign that says I COULD BE NEXT. There's a young black boy holding a sign that repeats: Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. There's a man with a rag over his mouth whose sign says AFRAID OF THOSE WHO SWORE TO PROTECT ME.

Because I grew up white and middle-class in the northeast, the racial narrative of my childhood hinged on two major historical events: the Civil War and the civil rights movement. Black people used to be enslaved, and that was wrong. One hundred years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks said, "This isn't fair!" and then black people were allowed to sit in the front of the bus. The end. When I was in elementary school, I had a friend who was black. She didn't live in my neighborhood; she rode the bus to school. (They used to call this "being bussed in.") I liked to hold hands with her underneath our desks because I liked the way her skin looked next to mine. Basically I thought we would make a good Gap ad.

More than ten years later I was a student teacher in a 1st-grade classroom in the lily-white suburbs of Boston, where the school librarian showed my class a film about Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to integrate an all-white school in Louisiana in 1960. There was one black girl in the class, and her name was Vanessa. My students kept referring to Ruby Bridges as "the Vanessa in the movie," and the film made them uncomfortable in the way only white people confronted with racism can feel uncomfortable. They felt benevolent, like rescuers: "But we let Vanessa come to our school!" they said generously. Even at 6 and 7 years old, they seemed to know instinctively that they were the ones in power.

For years, I've had the luxury of feeling nothing more than vaguely uneasy when confronted with these stories. But they thought he had a gun, or but he shouldn't have robbed that store. "People really don't get shot and killed by police officers every day for no reason," said someone on my Facebook page. 

 In 1999, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about the shooting death of Amadou Diallo; the lyrics went: Is it a gun? Is it a knife? Is it a wallet? This is your life. It ain't no secret, my friend, you can get killed just for living in your American skin.

The death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old who was shot by police officers in Cleveland two seconds after they arrived on scene, makes me more than just uncomfortable or uneasy. It makes me angry. It makes me sad. It makes me certain that our system has failed, somewhere along the way, to train police officers to respond appropriately.

But I still have the luxury of feeling angry and sad and disappointed without fearing for my life -- because I can still say, with reasonable certainty, that even if I were to rob a store or reach for my waistband at an inopportune moment in front of a police officer, I still wouldn't be shot dead. And that seems like a fundamental inequality, an irrevocable loophole in our society. One that we haven't grappled with because the narrative is supposed to be: We are equal. We are colorblind. We treat everyone the same.

I think there is powerful evidence that this is not the case in America. I'm not sure where we go from here.

Is it a gun? Is it a knife? Is it in your heart? Is it in your eyes?

My metaphorical morning

Sometimes cliches become cliches for a reason.

This morning I was grumpy. I've had a sinus infection for three weeks and my head is still clogged. Just as Eli and I were about to leave for school, Phil texted me in a panic and asked me to find something he thought he had left in a pocket in his jeans. Eli has been making me chase him down and tackle him in order to get his shoes and jacket on, so just getting out the door is an ordeal, and then he refuses to wear his hat and mittens and when I say, "But you're going to be cold," he responds, "I wanna be cold!" which is so irritating. Eli, it's not like you're a kid in Africa who's never gotten to experience the chill in the air, put your dang hat on.

And then Eli paused in the lobby to appreciate our new Christmas tree (Phil swears that when Eli saw it for the first time he exclaimed, "It's wonderful we have a tree!" which I just can't even because it makes him sound like he was written into the script of a Kirk Cameron Christmas movie), which I wouldn't normally mind except (a) we were already running late, (b) its lights change colors so theoretically a 2-year-old could be mesmerized by it all morning and (c) I'm a Grinch.

Anyway, we finally depart and Eli is walking, which he usually only does for a block or so before giving up and clambering into his stroller. But today it's finally sunny out again and Eli is following his shadow down the block. "I'm being tall!" he exults as he watches his legs stretch out on the sidewalk. "Mommy, you see your shadow?" he asks, slightly worried, as if he's concerned that I'll miss out on the shadow-walking experience.

After crossing the street, we hit a snag: It's shady here, and our shadows have disappeared. "Where my shadow go?!" Eli exclaims, outraged, and I think fast: "Your shadow went to school!" I answer. "It will meet us there!" So Eli takes off walking at a good clip: "I'm walking on the line," he informs me importantly as he follows the crack in the sidewalk, and then, "Bricks!" as he steps in and out of the tree bed.

A block or so later, he announces, "I hold your hand," and I am legitimately honored, as we are not normally a PDA mother/son duo. So on we go, holding hands, and he grins the sweetest grin up at me, as if to say, I know I'm giving you a little thrill. Then he says, "Lights!" and I think he's referring to the traffic lights, so I'm all, "Yeah, lights" and then he says insistently, "Lights! They're beautiful!" (hello, Kirk Cameron) and I realize he's gesturing to a small-scale display of Christmas lights in the bushes that I hadn't even noticed.

And then I experience this out-of-body rush of emotion about how seeing the world through the eyes of my 2-year-old has helped me appreciate the small beautiful things in life and how I am so lucky to have the best kid in the world. And that's how my ordinary grumpy morning became one giant cliche.

Eli finds Ellie's dog collar on the floor.
"Oh! Dangerous! I have to put it away so it doesn't get lost!"
Eli brings the collar across the room and puts it back in its drawer. He is now officially more responsible than his parents.

Eli is making 'pancakes' out of play-doh.
Eli: "Here's a pancake, Mom!"
Me: "Oh, yum! Should I eat it now?"
Eli: "No. You can't eat it. It's play-doh."

A tale of two grandmothers

Once, I had a grandma and a nana, and they couldn't have been more different.

My grandma, my dad's mother, was round and soft and called me "bubbeleh." When we played hairdresser, her hair felt fluffy under my fingers. In all things, she was unhurried, unruffled. "It's fine" was her favorite phrase -- no one should go to any trouble; there was rarely any need to get upset. My mom told me recently that she and my dad had visited my grandma's grave and noticed it needed landscaping. I said, "But you know Grandma, she'd say, 'Don't worry about it! It's fine!'"

This summer, Phil and I stopped by the "bungalow colony" in Hopewell Junction, NY, where my grandma spent her summers. She's been gone more than 10 years, but some of the residents still remembered what a nice lady she was.

My nana, my mom's mother, was slim and angular with hair that felt like straw. She had a quick mind and prided herself on her ability to stay current with the times -- once bragging to us that she was a proficient VCR programmer.

When I was a little girl, Nana picked me up from school every Wednesday afternoon. When my teachers asked, "Is that your grandmother?" I was always perplexed. "No," I would say as it if were obvious, "that's not my grandmother, it's my nana."

See, there's a definite difference between a grandmother and a nana, and Nana embodied it. 

She had her own sense of style. She proudly wore the same pink suit to my bat mitzvah, in 1996, and my wedding, in 2009.

She had her own way of cooking and baking. "I used margarine instead of butter, and egg whites instead of eggs, and you can't even tell the difference!" she would say. 

She even had her own way of leaving a voicemail. "Rachel, it's Nana. Everything's fine," she would emphasize, as if I would fear she would only call me if something terrible had happened. Then she would tell me to send everyone her love and give them a kiss from her. 

But most of all, Nana had her own way of making me feel like the smartest, funniest, most special person in the world. 

It was Nana who taught me how to crack an egg, how to "window shop" and how to effectively stockpile frozen leftovers. It was also Nana who taught me about impeccable manners, loyalty and integrity. She was, as they say, a real lady.

Both my grandma and my nana are gone now. But both of them left indelible impressions on who I am.

Whenever Eli spills something and I take a deep breath and say, "It's OK, that's no problem," I think of my grandma.

Every time I say to Phil, "Don't throw it out! We can freeze it!" I think of my nana.

When I taste a Werther's caramel, I think of my grandma. When I bake chocolate chip cookies or hamentashen on Purim, I think of my nana.

In one important way -- my grandma with her insistence that no one should worry about her, my nana with her reassurance that everything was OK -- my grandmothers were alike: They wanted to know their families were happy. They took immense pride in their children and grandchildren, and like true Jewish grandmothers they kevlled with joy when we were all together.

So to them I'd like to say: Nana and Grandma, it's Rachel. Everything's fine. And I'll give everyone a kiss from you.

Some advice about motherhood (and why it's wrong)

One of my best friends in the world became a mommy for the first time yesterday! In honor of her delicious daughter, here is some advice you'll hear from well-meaning moms about new motherhood. And why that advice stinks and what you really need to know instead.

1. "Sleep when the baby sleeps."
This should really be "Worry when the baby sleeps," or "Pump breastmilk when the baby sleeps" or my personal favorite, "Bleakly contemplate the ravages of your postpartum life when the baby sleeps." Everybody trots out this gem of advice like it's the solution to all newborn problems, like if only you and the baby jive on the same whacked-up circadian rhythm you'll be riding the train to easy parenthood. This advice conveniently presumes you can get the baby to sleep at all in the first place and ignores the fact that by the time you ascertain that the baby is, in fact, sleeping and then fall asleep yourself, it will be time to wake up with the baby again. Forget sleeping when the baby sleeps. You'll sleep when the baby's 18.

2. "It goes so fast! Enjoy every minute!"
As the mom of a toddler who is starting to say things like, "Don't talk to me!" (forget about the terrible 2s, he is now a two-nager), I can affirm that it does, in fact, go so fast. However, nothing made me weepier as a new mom than frantically shhhing a screaming infant while wiping smeared spit-up off my shoulder while simultaneously reminding myself that I should be ENJOYING EVERY MINUTE. Or looming over the crib silently willing my child to please, please fall asleep while also being sure to remember to ENJOY THIS VERY MINUTE. New moms are under enough pressure keeping their tiny humans alive. They can't be expected to enjoy every single minute, too.

3. "Trust your instincts."
I'm going to be brutally honest. When Eli was a newborn, I had no maternal instincts. None. The only instincts I had were screaming, "You're doing this wrong!" I vividly remember a moment after Eli's bris when he started crying and I froze, paralyzed. My baby is going to cry with all these people in my house ohmygodwhatdoIdo. My friend Marissa, Eli's godmother, soothingly suggested that maybe he was gassy from all the sugar water he'd inhaled during the bris and needed to be burped; she was right. For weeks I held on to that moment as some sort of talisman that I was completely lacking in maternal competence. Sometimes your instincts will tell you that you haven't heard the baby breathing in a minute and therefore she must be dead. Sometimes your instincts will tell you your baby can't possibly need to nurse for that many minutes at a time (pro tip: your baby can potentially need to nurse forever, if you're cool with that). In other words: sometimes your instincts are wrong. That doesn't make you a bad mom. It just makes you a new one.

Here are four pieces of advice I'd give to new moms instead:

1. Every day you keep the baby alive without dropping her on her head is a good day.
Be gentle with yourself and set the bar low.You don't have to entertain your newborn. At the end of the day, you may have gotten poop on yourself, you may have an infant wearing a misbuttoned onesie, you may have every single dish you own piled precariously in your sink. But is the baby still alive? Then it's been a good day.

2. Now and forever, you are your child's parent.
There is a lot - a lot - of advice for parents out there. I know this because when Eli was a newborn, I Googled it all. (Compulsively, even though I was repeatedly told to stop Googling.) If you can't trust your instincts, trust your husband's, or Dr. Karp's, or your baby's, and put them all in a blender to help you make up your mind. Worse things have happened than starting your baby on rice cereal instead of avocado or inadvertently causing the dreaded "nipple confusion." You -- you -- are your baby's parent. You may not be able to trust your instincts now, but that day will come. And guess what? You got this.

3. You don't just have a baby. You have a human being. 

You are your baby's parent for the rest of both your lives. I find this totally overwhelming but also comforting in a "This too shall pass" kind of way. Like, in 20 years it's not going to matter whether your baby was breastfed or formula-fed (well, unless he turns out intellectually inferior and chronically sick, then we'll know it's because he was formula-fed. Kidding!). It's not going to matter that she screamed in the bath when water got in her eyes or that you once accidentally clipped his finger instead of his nail. Sometimes it helps to focus on the short term and just getting through the day. But sometimes you have to remind yourself that you're playing the long game.

4. Motherhood is a wild ride. You're not going to enjoy every minute - but you should embrace the adventure. 
A week ago or a month ago, this human being didn't exist on Earth, and now she's here. You grew a human being inside your own body. Everything you say she hears for the first time. Every smile and coo from you is like a beacon that guides her toward humanity. Every sweet touch from you is like a welcome mat: You are safe, you are loved, you are home. You've got a lot of living to do, so let's get busy.

How long can you call yourself a new mom?

When Eli was just 4 weeks old, I brought him to a new moms' support group that was meeting at a local library. It was early September, and any other year I would have been commuting to school, shuffling my lesson plans and straightening my classroom for the day ahead. Instead I fretted over Eli's outfit -- what were they supposed to wear when we went outside, again? -- and pushed his stroller down Queens Boulevard, wincing when he cried, leaning over him to push with one hand and use the other to hold the pacifier deeper in his mouth (take it, take it!). At the library, I wrestled with the door, sweating in my nursing top, feeling like I had just run a marathon.

There were gym mats spread out on the floor, and I dug Eli out of his carseat and laid him down in front of me, while the other moms did the same. Then, on my left, another mom strolled in with her baby in a carrier, plucked her out and sat her on the floor. "Sat her," because this baby could sit up. We must have all goggled in amazement, because the mom -- bright-eyed, because she was probably getting more sleep than us moms of newborns -- laughed.

"One day they'll sit up too!" she said, gesturing to our squirmy, wriggling infants. I felt this odd flash of despair. This was supposed to be a support group for new moms, I thought. Not this mom, with her smiling, sitting, teething baby, who had to be at least 6 months old. A mom to a 6-month-old wasn't a new mom. She was a totally experienced, been-there-done-that mom.

Of course, eventually I became a mom to a 6-month-old. By then I had figured some things out -- how to get the pacifier to stay in Eli's mouth -- but not others (2+ years in, I'm still flummoxed by the door/stroller maneuver). And by then I had found my own support group, and we talked about what moms of 6-month-olds talk about: teething, introducing solids, crawling. All of it was new to me -- because even though I was no longer the mom of a newborn, I had never been the mom of a 6-month-old before either.

When Eli was a baby, my Twitter profile said I was a "new mom." Sometime after he turned 1, I amended it to say "new(ish) mom." Now that he's 2, I caught myself wondering: Can I call myself a new mom anymore?

When does the statute of limitations on new motherhood expire?

Recently I was with Eli in a playground when he decided to live large in someone else's personal space. When he was a baby, he'd crawl over into some bigger kid's area and that kid's mom would say, "Be careful of the baby!" Only this time, Eli was the bigger kid, and the baby in question and his mother looked sort of aghast at the antics of my cavorting, stomping toddler. And I was the mom who had to say, "Be careful of the baby!"

And that's when I realized: I'm still a new mom. I've never been the mom to a toddler before. Sure, I can tell you which pacifiers to buy or how to choose between puffs and mum-mums. But by the time I figured all this stuff out, I didn't need to know it anymore. (And from what I gather from friends who are on their second kid, you either (a) forget it or (b) have a kid with such a radically different personality that it doesn't matter what you did with your first. So even on your second, you're still a new mom to that baby.)

Yesterday I was trying to calculate how old Eli would be when I turn 40, and I realized he'd be almost 11 years old. I shivered. Someday I will have a 10-year-old.

And I'll still be a new mom then, too.

Everything they tell you about toddlers is true

I find some Cheerios sitting on the counter in a cup.
Me: "Eli, would you like some Cheerios?"
Eli: "Yeah."
Me: "OK, here's some Cheerios in a cup."
Eli: "In a bowl. Cheerios in a bowl."
Me: "Fine, I'll put them in a bowl." [takes out bowl]
Eli: "In the green bowl."
Me: "Whatever. Here, I'll put them in the green bowl." [dumps Cheerios from cup into green bowl]
Eli [incensed because I merely transferred the Cheerios rather than pouring new ones]: "No, different Cheerios! Different Cheerios!"  
[Looks in bowl] "I don't like raisins!"
Me: "OK, then don't eat them."
[pause]
Eli: "I eat the raisin!"
[Gobbles up raisin triumphantly, then spits it back into the bowl]

We are reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom for the 100th time.

Eli: "What's that?"
Me: "That's a polka dot."
Eli: "No. It's a circle."

My last long run

I'm not a fast runner, but that doesn't mean I'm not a competitive one. I've always run not only to feel healthier but also to feel stronger and faster.

When you're a new runner, setting a PR (a personal record) is easy. All you have to do is run a new distance and voila! Instant PR. Then you might run your second 5K and try to beat the time from your first.

After 10 years of running, though, I've run every distance, from the mile to the marathon, more than once. I can even tell you exactly when I peaked: In 2011 -- right before I got pregnant -- I PR'd in the mile, the 5K, the 4-mile, the 5-mile, the 10K and the half-marathon. BOOM.

I let my competitive drive ebb when I was pregnant. I though it was impressive enough that I was out there running at all, and I got a kick out of runners who would speed up around me in races so they wouldn't get chicked by a pregnant lady. In 2013, I eased back into running, and by 2014, I was ready to rock and roll. I figured I could set "post-pregnancy" PRs and "in my 30s" PRs.

This winter, I was running out in Long Island at the RunNassau race series when two women in my age group surged past me close to the finish, saying to each other, "One pink girl down, one to go." These ladies saw me as competition? I loved it. Bring it on.

At two of the races, a 5K and a 4-mile, I even took home age-group awards. (I know what you're thinking: Well, how many people were in your age group? And the answer is: more than three, and I beat all but two of them, so there.)

It was all part of my strategy to keep running through the winter, kick ass at the Brooklyn half-marathon in May and then have a great base to start marathon training in July.

And it worked: The 2014 Brooklyn half was my second-fastest half ever. (And I've run 16 halfs, so this was not an insubstantial accomplishment.) Certainly a huge post-pregnancy "in my 30s" PR.

BUT. This was a race I did not enjoy. I surged ahead from Phil at mile 4. By the time I ran the final miles on Ocean Parkway, I was miserable. I was running as fast as my lead legs would carry me, which as it turned out was pretty damn fast but not fast enough to make the race go by any quicker. (And as it turned out, I finished a whopping three minutes ahead of Phil, who had trained approximately not at all. Grrrrrr.)

So in some ways it was fortuitous that I broke my toe at the beginning of July and had to miss out on the first stretch of marathon training. I tried to reason that it was a good way to temper me; in the marathon, I'd take it easy and enjoy myself.

Unfortunately, the break in training also ruined my momentum. When I finally started doing long runs in mid-August, I'd lost my motivation. I'd forgotten how much further you have to run when you train for a marathon as opposed to a half. Too soon I was staring down the barrel of long runs of 15, 16, 17 miles when all I really wanted to do was hang out with Eli. Plus I hadn't trained for a marathon by myself since 2008, and I missed doing long runs with Phil. Doing long runs by yourself, without headphones, is like purgatory; I started to get super jealous of everyone I passed who was out doing regular activities like drinking Coke or eating pizza. It was a self-pitying slide into: What is the point?

Then I thought: Maybe in an effort to slow down, I've let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction. Maybe I was running too slow -- taking lots of walk breaks, swigging Gatorade, unable to get a good rhythm going.

So at New York Road Runners' 18-mile marathon tuneup on Sunday, I decided it was time to throw down. I'd aim for 11-minute miles (some perspective: I run my "fastest" short races at 8-8:30-per-mile pace, my "fast" half-marathons at 9:30s, my marathon PR was 10:30s and I'd been doing more like 12- or 13-minute miles on my summer long runs). I wore my lucky long run shirt -- the same shirt I for some reason always wore on my long runs when training for previous marathons -- and my old-school Garmin. And at the start, I felt strangely calm. Let's do this.

First of all, I should never underestimate what running among thousands of others can do for your spirit. And it didn't hurt that the weather, with the temperature in the low 50s and fall simmering in the air, was perfect for running. Also, there were some enthused volunteers and spectators out on the course, which can only mean one amazing thing: more cowbell.

The first few miles were lackadaisical. When you know you're going to go 18 miles, I think you have to pretend you don't know what's ahead of you. The first time I ran up Central Park's Harlem Hill, I had this brief flash of, I'll be back here two more times, hours from now, in the same spot, running up this same hill and I had to banish that thought because it was just too depressing.

But somewhere in the first loop of Central Park, I started to get into a groove. And then I experienced one of those magical movie moments where a little voice inside you says: Stop being afraid to go faster because you think you can't. You already know how to do this. You haven't forgotten. Stop being afraid.

Soon I was having one of those long runs where every song lyric on my iPod spoke to me ("I coulda gave up then but then again I couldn't have 'cause I've traveled all this way for something"), where every fellow runner I saw was inspiring. Lemon-lime Gatorade tasted amazing. My headband and earbuds miraculously stayed in place.

About 17.5 miles in, I came up behind a runner I strongly suspected was a former supervisor of mine. (I say "strongly suspected" because I generally try to avoid making eye contact with potential strangers after 17.5 miles of running.) He's a faster runner than I am and he had passed me much, much earlier in the run. Now here he was, walking, and I felt myself seized (perhaps foolishly) by my old competitive desire. Don't let him beat you!

And that's how I found myself sprinting to the finish of an 18-mile run. I hit the finish line half-laughing and half-crying: delighted and relieved and proud and rejuvenated. For the first time in years, it had felt like a privilege, not a chore, to run those 18 miles. And it felt like a blessing to be a runner.

(And then I went home and, like a stalker, searched the race results, and it was my former boss, and I did finish ahead of him by four minutes. And then I bragged to a colleague who pointed out that he is 50 years old, to which I say: WHATEVER, FOUR MINUTES, NYAH-NYAH-NYAH.)

So now, for the first time this season, I'm excited for November. It's not going to be my fastest marathon, but I have high hopes that it won't be my slowest, either. (That honor goes to NYC 2009, which Phil and I ran together two weeks after we got married with "JUST MARRIED" on the back of our shirts to the congratulatory remarks of all the runners around us -- so just because a marathon isn't speedy doesn't mean it isn't special.) It'll be my first post-baby marathon, my first marathon in my 30s, the 10-year anniversary of my first marathon and -- if all goes well -- the marathon that reminds me to stop being afraid.

Here I come, November!

Things my 2-year-old said while exploring his penis

• "It sticks out!"
• "I'm squeezing it!"
• "It's a blueberry. [chomp!] I eat it!"

We are outside on the deck early in the morning. Eli is yelling loudly.

Me: "Eli, shhh!" 

Eli: "I fun. I laughing!"

Eli dumps a bucket of water on himself at the beach.
Eli: "Ice bucket challenge!" 

We are running through Forest Park.
Me: "See the big trees?"

Eli: "No, I see the little trees."

We return to the entrance of the park.

Eli: "Yay! We came back this way!"

Walking home from school, we see a dog.
Eli: "He's eating!"
Me: "I don't think he's eating, he's just sniffing the ground. Dogs like to smell a lot of things!"
Eli (self-importantly): "I can smell too!"
[bends down and starts sniffing the ground and panting like a dog]

We are waiting for a YouTube video to load.
Me: [groan of frustration]
Eli: "Patience!" 
 

You've got the love I need to see me through

When my son was born, I didn't love him.

I say that bluntly because there's really no other way to say it. No matter how many times I had been warned that bonding takes time, that you're not always hit with an instantaneous wave of love for your child, I still wanted to feel it. I imagined my pregnancy as the dress rehearsal leading up to the opening night, that as soon as I got on stage in the delivery room all the panic of the last nine months would vanish and motherly instinct would finally wash over me.

 It didn't.

Well-meaning friends and colleagues had promised me that motherhood was going to be amazing, that I would "love being a mother!" I didn't. I couldn't. What was to love? I had grown a human being inside me -- a tiny human person who literally needed me in order to stay alive. That wasn't amazing, it was terrifying. It was like being trapped inside a small space with a bomb that only I could disarm, except I didn't know which wires to cut. The day after we came home from the hospital, Phil ran out to Babies R Us to buy a breast pump and I thought, "Someone just left me alone with this baby. How can I be left alone with this baby?" We both cried. How could I love him? I didn't even know him.

I knew it was normal to feel overwhelmed, even sad. The "baby blues." I was prepared to wait. It will happen the first time he drifts off to sleep in my arms, I thought, or the first time he smiles. That thunderbolt of love, it will happen.

But there was a torrent of uncertainty beating deeper in my chest. I want to go back. This was a mistake. 

I never, ever said that out loud. It was shameful. It would have been OK to admit to feeling post-partum depression. But I wasn't depressed. I just didn't love my baby. I didn't love motherhood. I started contemplating returning to work as soon as possible, even though I'd planned to take the year off. I didn't want to spend all my time with this baby. I couldn't.

I didn't hate him, or resent him, or think about hurting him. I took good care of him. We went for walks. I talked to him. I videotaped him rolling over on his playmat and dressed him up in new outfits that our friends and relatives had bought for him. I bathed him even though all I really did was sprinkle water over him with a washcloth and then wrap him up in a hooded towel.

We started going out to the park to meet other moms, and I would watch enviously as they picked up their babies to cuddle and kiss them. If Eli was happy where he was, I tried not to pick him up, to disturb the delicate balance of our ecosystem, because what if he started crying and wouldn't stop? What if I had to nurse him there in the grass, or dropped his pacifier in the dirt, or worst of all what if he cried for no reason at all and I couldn't figure out how to help him? Why did everyone else have this motherhood thing all figured out?

He started to wake up more, to be more alert. He smiled. Still no thunderbolt. Sometimes I thought I felt some fondness stirring and I tried to kindle it into a flame, fanning the embers of my affection. Is this what motherhood feels like? Fake it till you make it.

I called a post-partum depression support hotline. She told me not to be dissuaded from breastfeeding if a psychiatrist wanted to prescribe medication. I told her I wouldn't mind if I was told to stop breastfeeding because breastfeeding was making me incredibly anxious. She told me the idea of not breastfeeding should provoke more anxiety in me because then my baby wouldn't be getting valuable antibodies that would protect him from diseases. I hung up and cried for hours. Thanks, post-partum depression support hotline lady.

Finally I put my foot down. I was going to love my child. I would not live in fear of his cry. I would not panic every time he stirred from a nap. He had soft fuzzy hair and my dad's toes and I was going to love him.

I was brave. I took Eli to mommy and baby yoga and he fell asleep on a yoga mat. When it got cold, our playgroup in the park moved indoors to Barnes & Noble. Sometimes he hated his stroller and I carried him in a Beco, his head nestled under my chin, close enough to kiss. In small ways, he began to seem amazing.

Eli will be 2 this weekend, and I finally feel that thunderbolt of love all the time. When he's sitting on my lap in his miniature armchair at bedtime and I fold his legs over mine. When he carefully deposits an armful of Legos in my lap with a "Here go, Mommy!" and a proud smile. Sometimes I sneak into his room at night, after he's sleeping, just to savor it washing over me, that love I thought I'd never feel: I love you. I do love you. You are mine.

This is not every mother's experience. I always feel a little sting of failure when I see a birth announced on Facebook with a comment like, "So in love." Every mother wants, and expects, to love her child from the moment he is born, or even before.

Sometimes I'd like to do those first few months over again, to cherish them without the cascade of panic in my chest. But then I might not get to treasure how far we've come from there to here.

 

Happy birthday, my Eli. Every day I'm proud that I was brave enough to love you.

Mastering the subtle and complex art of the #humblebrag*

*Disclaimer: Fully aware that this whole post is a humblebrag

Like most new(ish -- now that Eli is nearly 2 I suppose I need to add the "ish") parents, I could easily brag about my kid all day. Unfortunately, bragging about a human being who still requires supervision in the bathtub is somewhat gauche. Also, when you're a new(ish) parent and you brag to a non-parent about your kid's accomplishments, their reaction is generally underwhelming.

Me: "Eli just started saying 'yes' this weekend. It is SO CUTE!"
Non-Parent: "Um, what did he say before?"
Me: "Well, nothing. Like if you asked him if he wanted cheese, he'd say, 'Cheese?' But now, he says, 'Yes,' and it is so cute! I'll say, 'Eli, do you want to help Mommy do the laundry?' and he'll say, 'Yes.' So cute!"
Non-Parent "..."

As a new-new mom, I wasn't really into bragging about Eli's babycomplishments. Partially because (sorry, Eli) there wasn't much to brag about (late sitter, late crawler, average sleeper). I mean, yes, he was the cutest and squishiest baby on the planet with kissable cheeks like two juicy tomatoes (um, ahem). But let's be honest, if you've seen one video of an infant rolling over you've seen them all.

Then Eli hit toddlerhood, and the milestones became more and more interesting to me. My kid can run! Scoot! Sing! The urge to brag was suddenly irresistible.

Unfortunately for me, it's still in poor taste to brag too much. That's why for the past year I have been working on mastering the subtle and complex art of the humblebrag, a totally 21st-century term which Urban Dictionary defines thusly:

Subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or "woe is me" gloss.

(I believe the original humblebragger was Benjamin Franklin, who said, "Hide not your talents, for use they were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade?")

Humblebragging about your toddler can also be hashtagged #momofanawesomekidproblems --  basically the equivalent of #firstworldproblems or #whitepeopleproblems.

Every parent has their own humblebrag expertise. Like this weekend I was talking to a mom who has trouble getting out of the house early because her kid is such a good sleeper that she doesn't get out of bed until almost 9 a.m. (whereas the only reason we are such impressive early birds in my house is because Eli is screaming his head off every. single. morning before 5:30). Or those moms who are like, "Should I be worried that my kid eats an obscene amount of fresh vegetables and turns up his nose at processed foods?" Or my personal favorite, "My daughter is potty trained so early that I can't even seem to find underwear small enough to fit her!"

My humblebragging weakness is Eli's language. My kid is a talker. He wasn't a particularly early talker, and he started off pretty low-key (his first word was "ball"). But being a pretty verbal person myself, hearing him collect more and more words has really jazzed me up as a parent in this last year of toddlerhood.

My descent into humblebragging started innocently enough. "Oh man," I'd say casually when Eli had just a few words, "Eli thinks every single vehicle he sees is a bus! 'Bus, bus, bus,' that's all I hear all day."

Or, "I don't know how we'll ever take Eli's pacifier away now that he knows to ask for it. He doesn't even call it a paci, he enunciates it super clearly: pa-see-fi-er!"

Once he could put words together, the ball really started rolling. "We're definitely in the terrible 2s now," I'd say. "Eli's first full sentence ever was 'Don't touch it, Mommy!'"

"Ugh," I'd moan. "Eli wakes up so early. He comes into our bed and then he'll look out the window and go, 'Oh, it's dark out!' Then as soon as it starts to get light out he'll go, 'The sun is coming up!' And I'm like, Just lay down and go back to sleep!"

Lately, my humblebragging has come to feel a bit desperate. It's basically like, My kid is really awesome, just let me BRAG already. But for some reason, I always feel the need to blunt it with some kind of eyeroll, like, "Ugh, toddlers are so bossy. Eli's latest game is to play with his doctor set by ordering me to cry so he can pretend to give me medicine. He's always running up to me and demanding, 'Mommy, cry more!'"

I think perhaps what we parents need is a sort of reverse Purge, where one day a year we have the freedom to brag about our kids as much as we want without feeling embarrassed. "Eli has started to say 'please' and 'thank you' without prompting! And sometimes he requests that I hold him and rock him like a baby!" (OK, that last thing is not necessarily impressive, it's just really cute.)

So to everyone who's been the victim of a humblebrag attack from me: I apologize. It took me a solid nine months to get the hang of this parenting thing, so when I finally figured out how cool my kid really was, I just wanted to share it with everybody. Humbly.

Now let me tell you about the time we were at the beach and Eli kept pestering other sunbathers by repeatedly informing them, "The ocean is coming! The ocean is coming!"...

Strong, not skinny

I've seen a lot of articles posted lately offering tips to mothers about how to model positive body image for their daughters. My only child is a boy, so my first instinct was to think, "Phew, dodged that bullet!" Frankly, one reason I warmed to the idea of raising a son was the knowledge that it was hard growing up a girl, and it was bound to be hard raising a daughter.

Then I remembered a girl I went to elementary school with who was mercilessly teased by the boys in our class. As I recall, she didn't have a particularly pleasant personality, but that's not why she was bullied. Boys made fun of her because she was "fat."

Even as third graders, boys knew that the worst thing you could say to a girl, the most offensive insult you could fling at her, was that she was fat.

I remember two things about recess in the fifth and sixth grade: playing Chinese jump rope and standing around with a group of other girls complaining about various body parts that we felt were our worst feature. The implication was that in order to be humble, a true girl's girl, you had to feel bad about your body, or at least dissatisfied with it in comparison to someone else's. "But your stomach is so skinny," you might say, grabbing your own love handles for comparison. "Not me, I'm fat."

I'm sure there are a lot of women who bounce right back from childbirth to their pre-baby bodies (Maria Kang, the famous "No Excuses" Mom," for example), but I am not one of them. Nearly two years after Eli was born, I'm still a good 10 pounds over my pre-baby weight (which in turn was a good 10+ pounds over my slender college weight). It's like a second adolescence, where the instinct is to look in the mirror, grab at my love handles, and moan, "Ugh. I'm fat."

A few months ago I got tired of thinking of myself as someone who used to be thinner, or someone who might be thin again someday if she stopped eating so many cookies, or someone who was thin until she had a baby and hypothyroidism. I decided that instead of getting skinny, I was going to get strong. (In fact, if I wanted to continue lifting Eli, particularly in the throes of a toddler tantrum, I needed to get strong.)

I started lifting heavier weights at the gym and doing pushups in my office. I swung kettlebells and I held planks.

As summer approached, I started buying those Spanx-ish bathing suits with generous ruching. I loved this article from the Huffington Post: "Moms, Put On That Swimsuit," in which the author writes:

I refuse to miss my children's giggles because of my insecurities. I refuse to let my self-image influence my children's. I refuse to sacrifice memories with my children because of a soft tummy.

When I push Eli in the jogging stroller, he doesn't say, "Mommy, be skinny." He says, "Mommy, be runner." He doesn't say, "Mommy, thinner." He says, "Mommy, faster."

He knows I can do it. He knows I can run faster, push harder. In fact, besides "Mommy," that's the primary way he identifies me.

I'll never, ever be 110 pounds again. But I'll always be Eli's mommy and, God willing, I'll always be a runner. I'll always be strong -- not skinny. And that's the body image I want to model for my son.

Going the F to sleep: The many stages of bedtime

"Mommy's here," Eli announces.

It's 7:30 p.m. -- hallelujah time, or, as Eli knows it by its kinder, gentler nickname, "night-night time" -- and I've just deposited Eli in his crib after reading Tubby four times in rapid succession. ("Rapid" because the third or fourth read-through seems to become about turning the pages as quickly as possible to reach Eli's favorite pages, which we then rapturize over at great length.)

His hair is still damp from his own tubby and his cheeks have that unmistakable glow that only comes from being freshly scrubbed of tomato sauce and hummus (we like to enjoy eclectic dinners that can be smeared most efficiently across our faces). All that's left to do is recite I'll See You in the Morning -- the same book I've read to Eli every night at bedtime since he was born -- sing the Hashkiveinu and the Sh'ma and say a final good night.

Eli rolls over, yanks his pacifier to the side so I'll be able to hear him more clearly and informs me again, "Mommy's here."

I smile lovingly. "Mommy's here," I agree, and then I pause before barreling onward hopefully: "But Mommy's going to say night-night and then Mommy is going to open the door and go into the living room and Eli is going to go to sleep!"

Eli flashes a duh smile. "Mommy's here," he repeats helpfully.

By the time Eli was just a few weeks old, I was an expert in what everyone advised to do about baby sleep in every corner of the Internet, and I was determined to foster healthy sleeping habits from the get-go.

I bet you think this is where I'm going to tell you that I ate my words and learned an important lesson about the best-laid plans of parenthood, but for the most part, my plan worked. I never rocked or cuddled or nursed Eli to sleep. I did the same bedtime routine in the same order every single night, put him in his crib awake, and then left. (And then obsessively watched the baby monitor for hours, but that's a different story.)

Being such an expert on baby sleep, of course, I was well-informed about the infamous series of sleep regressions that would befall us, and we withstood them all: the one where your kid wakes up screaming every 40 minutes, the one where your kid cries when you try to leave the room at bedtime, the other one where your kid wakes up screaming every 40 minutes.

Compounding the issue of separation anxiety is when your child learns the correct usage of "Mommy" and "Daddy": as a weapon. It's one thing to ignore a crying baby when said baby is virtually a stranger in your house, the kind of crying you can pass off as, "Oh dear, that crying is certainly distressing." It's another thing when there's a little person who manages with his last ounce of strength on Earth to pull himself up to his feet and howl "Mommmmmmmyyyyyyyyy!" It's like being plucked out of a police lineup by a witness: That baby knows exactly who you are and where you live (and where you live is on the couch trying to watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey).

At one point during one of these sleep regressions I remember fervently wishing that I had the power to Apparate (you know, Dumbledore-style) out of Eli's room back into the living room so that the sound of me trying to sneak out of his bedroom at night wouldn't wake him up. (Although now that I think about it, only really advanced wizards can Apparate without causing a loud crack, the sound of which would probably be noisier than the floor creaks I already make. But I digress. For nerdiness.) At another point I came to the realization that possibly our sleep problems would be solved if I had a life-sized cardboard cutout of myself that I could prop up in Eli's room at bedtime, Home Alone-style, to convince him that I was still there.

All of which is to say: This is where I ate my words and learned an important lesson about the best-laid plans of parenthood, and also that the second you pat yourself on the back for something you did as a parent, karma is coming for you in a big way.

Bedtime these days is a total tossup. Some nights I can say good night and leave the room without hearing a whisper of protest. Some nights (the sweetest nights ever) I literally watch him drift off to sleep as I finish my song. Some nights I creep closer to the door, ever so slowly, freedom inches from my grasp, until Eli gets tired of checking to make sure I'm still there. Some nights I sit on the floor or in his armchair until he falls asleep (and then an extra 15 minutes for good measure so I don't wake him up as I leave). Some nights I leave the room and endure a minute or two of wailing before he passes out. And some nights, no matter what we try, we seem destined to get caught in a cycle of sneaking out, waking up and crying.

This is bedtime in a nutshell: You think you will epitomize motherhood and be a warm, comforting presence to soothe your child as he settles into sleep, and then it's 20 minutes later and your ass has fallen asleep and you really, really need to go pee and take your bra off.

On this night, Eli is pretty clear about his wishes. Mommy isn't in the living room, or snacking in the kitchen before dinner. Mommy. Is. Here.

Learning how to talk is a game-changer. It starts with simple labeling ("Car! Truck! Bus!"), progresses to increasingly more complicated demands (it used to be "more"; now it's "I want green lollipop"), and sometimes breaks your heart: When I bring Eli to school in the mornings, he clings to my hand and whimpers a mantra: "Mommy's coming. Daddy pick up-up. Mommy's coming. Mommy's here."

So I know that at bedtime, "Mommy's here" doesn't mean "Mommy, you are physically present in my room right now!" It means "Mommy, your presence is a comfort to me even though throughout the evening I may have been hitting at you and screaming in your face and forcefully denying all your requests for hugs, and I would like to request that you continue to stand there staring at me all night long."

Tonight I decide to go for the sneaking-toward-the-door method. Eli shifts around restlessly, clutching a red wooden car in one hand and a pair of his own shorts in the other. (Yup.) "Mommy's here," I assure him each time I take a tiny step closer to the door. "Mommy's here."

Once I reach the threshold, I literally stand in the doorway for a while. My eyes are facing the living room -- the couch! The DVR! The dinner table! -- but my backside is still hanging out in Eli's room. I take a few tentative steps away from the door, popping my head back in when Eli stirs. "Mommy's here."

At last, all is quiet. I breathe deeply and head for a well-deserved shower. I'm pretty pleased with myself: I have successfully dispatched my toddler to bed at a reasonable hour without any crying. He can sleep peacefully assured of my presence, knowing that I will always be there for him in times of distress, that I am always looking out for him even as he sleeps.

But you remember what happens when you pat yourself on the back for something you did as a parent, right?

I hear the piercing wail the second I step out of the shower. DAMN IT WHAT HAPPENED TO SLEEPING PEACEFULLY ASSURED OF MY -- clearly the shower was a rookie mistake. I grab a towel and hurry through the living room.

Peering into Eli's room, I see him sprawled on his belly in his crib, his eyes closed, his pacifier working busily in his mouth.

Mommy's not here after all. But when you've got a daddy who will lay on the floor for you, who needs her?

The long game

I am the kind of person who likes to be prepared. If I'm going to a new restaurant, I check out the menu ahead of time. If I'm traveling somewhere, I map out the route.

So I treated motherhood like I treated the SATs: I studied ahead of time. I read about the five S's for calming newborns and when to introduce bottles to a breastfed baby. I took classes on newborn care and infant CPR and breastfeeding and childbirth. I watched YouTube videos on how to install a carseat (step 1: smack yourself across the face, because that's what you're going to feel like while you're doing it) and how to swaddle (step 1: just buy those Velcro swaddles, damn it).

And then there was the stuff. If you are middle-class and you live in America, the amount of money you spend on stuff for your newborn baby is probably equivalent to the GDP of a developing country. If we thought it would stop Eli from crying one single second sooner or amuse him one single second longer, we bought it. (Phil's motto for baby purchases was: "Can't we just throw some money at this problem?" And that's how we ended up with pacifiers clipped to every single surface in our house.) We bought rattling, jingling toys to attach to the stroller and different rattling, jiggling toys to attach to the carseat. We bought blankets for swaddling and different blankets for the stroller. Once, when I was pregnant, Phil texted me from his office that his co-worker was insistent that we would need a specific bouncy chair. Phil was concerned because what we had on our registry was not a bouncy chair but a vibrating chair that was also a swing. Our unborn baby's bouncy infancy was at stake!

When Eli was just over three months old, we went to Thanksgiving dinner with my family. We were at my cousin's two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, and at the time her boys were 5 years old and 5 months old. She gestured around to the swing, the playmat, the jumperoo, the Boppy pillow and various other infant products. "You see this?" she said. "After they turn 1, it's allllll gone."

In the year after Eli was born, our apartment looked a lot like that too. We had a Baby Bullet for processing homemade baby food and assorted spoons that could attach to fruit pouches and mesh fruit feeders and various types of teething rings. We had a carseat adapter for our stroller and a Snap 'n Go for the carseat that we got when we didn't like how the carseat adapter was working out (see what I mean about throwing money at the problem?) and a Baby Bjorn that we replaced with a Beco after taking a babywearing class and then replaced with a different Beco because Phil was really extra super cautious about head support. We had a breast pump and Medela bottles and two different nursing pillows. We had a Fisher-Price vibrating swing that we used so vigorously that it broke and had to be replaced with another one.

If you ask 10 different moms what baby products to buy, you will get 10 different opinions. Oh, my baby slept great in the Miracle Blanket but hated the Woombie. Or, my baby spit up using the Playtex drop-ins but did great with the Dr. Brown's. That's because you never really know what your baby will like until you try it (and even then, your baby will change his mind a few times, because babies are indecisive like that). Even so, I felt compelled to do all this research on the best pack 'n play, the best stroller, the best carseat. I didn't understand why Eli sometimes woke up from a nap wailing like I had just stabbed him, or why he sometimes ate avocados and sometimes hated them, or really anything at all about how to take care of him, but at least I could provide him with the most meticulously researched stuff any baby ever had.

Meanwhile, while Eli nursed, I Googled questions about how to tell if your baby was getting enough breastmilk. While he slept, I Googled questions about baby napping schedules. One day he fell asleep in the Boppy on the couch and I worried because there is a big "NO SLEEPING" sign right on the Boppy pillow tag, even though I was sitting right there and ready to rescue him should he accidentally slip against the Boppy and begin to suffocate.

And then, just like my cousin promised, Eli turned 1. And allllll that stuff -- that swing and that Baby Bullet and those SwaddleMes and that jumperoo -- was gone.

If preparing for a baby is like preparing the SATs, I had taken the prep course and arrived with my TI-83 calculator and #2 pencils. But just when you get used to having a baby -- just when you figure out which positions bring out those stubborn burps, or which brand of pureed avocado your baby prefers -- wham! you don't have a baby anymore. My baby -- the one I'd prepared for by doing all that Googling and buying all that baby stuff -- was going to grow into a person. One that I'd have to feed and clothe and discipline and model kindness for and take care of for the rest of our lives.

I think that's one reason toddlerhood comes as such a shock to parents: You finally, finally get used to having a baby, and then that baby is like, "Forget this cuddling-and-rocking-me-in-your-arms shit, I am now going to run away from you and tell you how I really feel about having my damn diaper changed."

This weekend I was at a Fourth of July barbeque with a bunch of toddlers around Eli's age and a 6-week-old baby. The baby was so teeny, sleeping blissfully in his carseat, and then he woke up and started screaming, that unmistakably piercing newborn scream. His parents hurricaned into overdrive: get the bottle, pat his back, bounce, sway, swaddle him up. Next to them, the father of one of the other toddlers started reminiscing: "I don't miss that age," he said. "Back then it was like, don't kill the baby, don't kill the baby!" He gestured to our sons scampering around. "They're so much more fun now!"

I don't miss that age either -- until I do. For every time I think about what an independent soul Eli is, there's a memory of him laying on his playmat, gurgling up at the butterflies. For every time Eli wakes up from a nap, climbs down off the bed himself and runs into the living room shouting, "I play toys!", I remember all the hours I spent sitting next to his swing stroking his forehead to help him get to sleep.

I thought I was prepared to have a baby, but that doesn't mean I was prepared to have a person. This person whose first complete sentence was "Don't touch it, Mommy!", who declares "Eli's turn!" at every opportunity and proclaims "I did it!" whenever he accomplishes something awesome. This person who demands "Big higher!" on the swings and loudly sings "Wheels on the Bus" as I push him. 

This weekend Phil and I watched the premiere of The Leftovers on HBO and there was a scene where a father tried to call his son and his son didn't pick up the phone. Phil looked over at me sadly. "I hope Eli takes my call," he said. (I will not reveal whether or not we both burst into tears approximately 1.2 seconds after that comment. Imagine it for yourselves.)

The truth is, I can't control whether or not Eli takes my calls (although I think, as a Jewish mother, I may develop special powers on this front). I can't mold his whole world by buying special bottles or blankets or strollers anymore. The only way I can try to do that is through my behavior as a person -- how I talk to him and to other people, how I act when he's watching (and when he thinks no one is). We're entering, if you will, the open-ended portion of the SATs, and I'll get back to you in 30 years or so about my score.

Adventure is out there!

As a parent, you experience every summer in a whole new way. Two summers ago, I was hugely pregnant. I was either laying on the beach like an actual whale or walking on the elliptical at the gym for a whole hour at a time because at least the gym was well air-conditioned and I could watch the London Olympics nonstop.

Then Eli was born. While we were in the hospital, thunderstorms came and the city cooled off. The first time I felt cold in the hospital after Eli's birth, I literally wept with relief. I hadn't felt cold for so long, and it felt amazing.

Last summer, Eli turned 1. He was a late crawler, so he was newly mobile. It felt incredibly strange to bring him to playgrounds where I had once plopped him on blankets to lay immobile on his back, occasionally flipping over onto his tummy. Suddenly he was crawling off on his own. There was grass! Dirt to smear over his hands and stick in his mouth!

As this past cold, icy winter crawled toward spring, Phil and I were discussing how potentially awesome the coming summer could be. With Eli running around on his own, we could frolic at Citi Field and at Coney Island; we could hit all the zoos and overdose on playground time. Best of all, I get Fridays off.

I'll be training for the marathon in November, so I was telling Phil about how I was thinking of bringing Eli to daycare on Fridays and doing my long runs then.

"Well," I said, "It makes no sense for me to pick him up before naptime if he's just going to nap, so I figured, why not let him nap there, and I'll just pick him up when naptime is over, around 2, and this way I can do some errands on Friday mornings too, like the laundry and grocery shopping. What do you think?"

I expected Phil to endorse my plan wholeheartedly. After all, it would give us more errand-free time together on the weekends. So I was surprised when he said, "I think it's a terrible idea."

"Rachel," he said earnestly, "you only get this time once. You should be taking him on adventures! Go to the zoo! Park at the aquarium and go to the beach! Live it up! And then," he added, "we'll get a babysitter to come over after Eli goes to sleep, and we'll do your long runs together."

I don't know what that means for the grocery shopping and the laundry, but Friday adventures with my buddy always sound like a good idea.

Everything you ever wanted to know about my fertility but never asked*

(*because it's weird to ask someone about their fertility unless they decide to blog about it, right?)

In the summer of 2011, I saw pregnant women everywhere. They were walking past me down the street, their painted toes in flip-flops; hand-in-hand with their husbands, swaying as they walked.

I saw pregnant women everywhere because I desperately wanted to be among them. I had gone from casual "I'll just stop taking the pill and see what happens" to slightly more focused "I'll just use this Fertility Friend app to track what's going on so far" to all-out deranged "I'm going to pee on this stick every morning to find out if I'm ovulating."

I had reason to suspect that my ovaries were not in prime working order. Still, when you spend the bulk of your 20s diligently trying not to get pregnant, it's a startling shift in thinking to find out you might not be able to. When my OB gave me a referral to a reproductive endocrinologist (that is a fancy term for a fertility doctor), I remember thinking that if this were 100 years ago I'd be doomed to be childless forever.

In theory, trying to get pregnant should be fun (wink wink). In reality, it's draining. (Literally -- I once had 18 -- EIGHTEEN -- vials of blood drawn in a single lab visit.) My RE was trying to prescribe enough Clomid to help me ovulate, but not enough to produce twins. My other RE -- Dr. Google, of course -- suggested that I start "charting," which basically consists of taking your temperature every morning immediately upon waking to help you track incremental changes in body temperature that signal when ovulation has occurred. Charting works best when you take your temperature at the same time every morning before getting out of bed, which is a problem when one wakes up at 4 a.m. needing to pee like a racehorse. Dr. Google's other helpful suggestion was to begin tracking patterns in cervical mucus, which I don't even want to get into right now because it is exactly what it sounds like. I don't know how women charted before smartphones, but fortunately -- like everything else -- there's now an app for that.

So I charted. I took my temperature every morning and then peed on a stick that I scanned into a fertility monitor. Then in the afternoon I peed on a different stick (an OPK, or "ovulation predictor kit," that would display a smiley face if I was allegedly ovulating. (I say "allegedly" because I also got to visit the RE every week or so for a sonogram to see if I had legitimately ovulated or if my pee just made my ovulation sticks artificially happy.) Once, I accidentally dropped a Clomid pill (one in a 5-day cycle) down the sink drain. I was heading to Vermont for the weekend and I had to go to the pharmacy and beg the pharmacist for a replacement. I remember saying, "Would I really come in here and try to scam you out of a single Clomid pill?! Do you think I am selling individual Clomid doses on the black market?"

Every day there was a new Facebook pregnancy announcement, another pregnant teacher at school. One day while I drove to the RE's office on Long Island I cried to the Florence + the Machine song on the radio: "It's hard to dance with the devil on your back..."

Now that I have a child, I have absolutely no problem at all revealing that Eli is a Clomid baby. But when you are "TTC" (trying to conceive, in BabyCenter abbreviation parlance), it's a weird thing to talk about. Like, I can easily say, "I'm going to the dentist," but no one wants to hear, "I'm going to have my hCG levels checked to see if I ovulated!" There was a certain level of resentment and self-pity involves, which feels very ugly and lonely.

When you're charting, Fertility Friend will take note of a big drop in body temperature followed by a spike and helpfully mark it with a huge red crosshairs, meaning: You have ovulated! But the only sure way to determine whether or not you've ovulated -- well, besides getting pregnant -- is a blood test. So I had a lot of those, during which I tried very hard not to faint.

Once you have confirmed ovulation, you are in what BabyCenter message boards refer to as the "TWW" -- the two-week wait before you will either "POAS" (pee on a stick) or "AF" (your period) will arrive. (BabyCenter uses a lot of acronyms). During this period you'll misinterpret every minor bodily malfunction you have as a pregnancy symptom (am I imagining this, or do my boobs hurt?). Fertility Friend will also inform you that "if you conceive this cycle, your due date will be _____," so you start daydreaming of having a winter baby. Or a spring baby. Maybe early summer. Really any kind of baby would be fine.

One day at a sonogram in early November the RE informed me that my ovaries were characteristically empty. "Nothing is going on," he said benevolently. "Come back next week."

But by my next appointment, I had already ovulated. (I knew this because I was such a diligent charter and pee-er on OPKs.) I kept taking my temperature every morning -- during this "luteal phase" of your cycle, you're looking for your temperature to stay high (unless it drops one day and spikes the next, which can be indicative of an "implantation dip," meaning the egg has implanted itself into your uterus, in which case woohoo!). When your temperature plummets, it's baby game over.

At 3 a.m. on the day I expected my temperature to drop, I woke up and I couldn't help it: Instead of going back to sleep like a rational person, I stuck a thermometer in my mouth. Still high. I was no longer keeping pregnancy tests in the house, but do you think I went back to sleep and waited until morning? No. I walked to Duane Reade, and I bought a 5-pack of pregnancy tests because they were on sale and by that point I figured I'd need more of them.

I admire women who have the self-control to surprise their husbands with the news that they are pregnant. This is how Phil found out: At 3:30 a.m. I burst sobbing into the bedroom, flipped on the light and thrust a Clearblue stick in his face.

The sonogram at which we saw Eli for the first time was during Hanukkah. The RE was Jewish, and somehow he knew we were Jewish (we give off a vibe, I guess). I remember thinking about how he must have seen thousands of blurry, black-and-white, blinking blob fetuses by then, but he still managed to be amazed by ours: "Ah, see there?" he said, pointing out the screen. "You can see the heart beating already. Marvelous, marvelous."

On our way out the door, he handed us a tiny snapshot and wished us a happy Hanukkah. Then he winked at us. "Ah, but," he said, his eyes twinkling, "the miracle has already occurred."