Tuesday, May 21, 2013

First Poop

This is agony.  It's not the pee pee or the poo poo; it's the expectations!  We each read books on the subject.  What does it mean - the age it happens?  Why do boys do it later than girls?  Will he be on par with his peers?  What does this mean about his psycho-social development?  Should we be employing a man with a penis to help him?  Is that even legal? This poor child has been forced to sit on a potty so long his butt must hurt at the mere thought.  He was just 2 when this abstract talk changed from "We're gonna have to start..." to "Let's get started!"  My poor Kody has not two but a team of women discussing and deciding his every direction.  We finally realized that making him sit for hours made him so fed up with his little Elmo potty that I think it hurt his relationship to Elmo!  We ditched that potty for one that played a little music when peed in.  Unfortunately, they learned that touching the two little buttons together did the same thing and pretty soon this potty was singing its own imaginary praises.  But it was getting late.  And we found out the neighbor's kid was doing it.  He's only two months older than Kody, and had apparently been doing it for three weeks.  That gave us exactly 5 weeks to beat him!  This kicked us into "Teacher gear".  I should say it kicked my wife into "Teacher gear".  I am personally not looking forward running to find bathrooms on a moment's notice like we went through with my niece.  Changing diapers leaves me the power of time but I understand my wife is all about the competition.
So, after saying "Bye bye" to diapers the one weekend we were home, buying a few new potties and sitting on them through all sorts of fun activities, we packed a school bag full of extra clothes and gave him only a Pull-Up to ride to and from school in.  
Three days was all it took.  Speculation about the boys' kidneys and habits were all dropped the minute he got up from the couch while watching Curious George, sat on the new Mickey Mouse potty that he'd picked out, and told me "I'm gonna make a poop".  
And he did.  And it was beautiful!  And who was worried?

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Can we invent a child GPS device, please?

There are a few things that having children does to you.  Besides lighting up your life, squeezing you dry of any and all excess energy, and birthing the kind if fear you have to learn to ignore or else risk complete and utter loss of your mind; there's some just plain old thinking more about the future.  
   But it's not just their future; it's your future, or more importantly, your future with them.  This line of thought is what led me to join my fellow lesbian moms group to Riverhead, Long Island for what's called a Survival Race.  Each of us in the group (after starting off 3 years ago a few young couples excited by the prospect of real families) had met, discussed, supported, and befriended each other through an explosion of fertility.  We started off with 4 - 5 couples and 2 children.  Now we are a couple dozen couples and a virtual Little League!
   Like other lesbian moms groups, we're all about activities.  Usually, the activities are centered around the children.  This one particular activity centered more around adults.  Maybe that was part of the problem.  We got a Groupon (Still paying a pretty penny) for the privilege of running (walking - and actually at times hobbling) for 3 miles under wires, over tires and felled trees, up walls, hills and cliffs, over sand, through leaky drain pipes and across large rivers of mud.  We are all looking for incentives to lose varying degrees of baby weight but more importantly, we all want to be as healthy as we can entering those precarious middle age years.  After all, we want to live to love these beautiful gifts from God as long as we possibly can.  
   My wife and I left our youngest home with Grandma but we felt she couldn't handle both boys by herself especially all day long.  So, since one of the lesbian moms was staying back anyway with her 1 year old boy, she'd offered to also watch our 3 year old boy Takoda, or "Kody" as we usually call him.  We woke up early, picked up our friend to join us, and all headed out to run this Survival Race.  We left Kody and tgat mom everything from a lunch box filled with healthy snacks, several water bottles, a stuffed monkey, talking Captain Hook, 2 iPhones and an iPad.  We unloaded every piece of viable information we could imagine her needing before setting off to catch up with our "wave" at the start line.  In a few minutes, we were briskly huffing and puffing our way through this series of military-like obstacles, and laughing ourselves silly in the process.
   By the time we reached the finish line, we were all so filled with the euphoria of flat land, "free" bananas and water, as well as that special relief that the mom we left behind had guarded our precious boy so dutifully and with little trouble.  We took pictures, slapped hands, laughed, wheezed, and limped our way over to the T-Shirt stand where our Survival Race T-Shirt prizes awaited us all folded and laid out in different sizes.
   He'd been so excited to see his Mom and his Ema finally emerge from the woods, climb over one side of the last rope wall and sort of tumble down the other, that he ran to greet us enthusiastically.  His expression changed to apprehension as he got a closer and saw just how dirty we were, but he was happy to follow along behind me and my friend as we walked across the field to the T- Shirts.  I'd arrived at the T- Shirt booth along with my wife, and our whole group.  I glanced back to make sure he'd arrived with me.  I never told him to "Stay put"!
   There were several sizes and although I knew mine right away the folks in front of me seemed apprehensive.  I didn't want to just take my shirt so I hesitated trying to catch the girl behind the table's eye.  This took a little longer then I could have ever guessed and in the end, feeling very anxious, I wound up just leaving my ticket on the table and taking my shirt, but when I turned back around, he was gone.
   Ok now, I have to say I wasn't immediately panicked.  I was with my wife, and our friends, and I sort of knew he wouldn't get far.  But as any parent who has gone through this knows, the fear rolls in like waves.
   Maybe about a minute went by of initial confusion.  We all looked around expecting to find him amongst one of us or under a table, but we all began to kick into "Mom gear" pretty quick once the immediate vicinity was scanned.  A friend and I checked behind this booth taking in an overview back at the start of this 3 mile long 30 acre survival course we'd just run.  I surveyed the large area and didn't see him, but I also didn't think he could have gotten out of my line of sight in that direction.  
   Then somebody found something.  Oh how I prayed for fast relief but no, it turned out to be completely unrelated to our pressing crisis by sonebody totally ynaware we were having one.  You mean people are doing things other than look for my Kody?  The absurdity!  That's when I really began to take in the scope of just how many other people were out here.  It must have been thousands spread out over this field between the start and finish lines that almost looped together.  Thousands of strangers - thousands of people I knew nothing about.  Thousands of unknowns.
   This is where my panic set in.  My wife was managing her fear well but we were exactly zero support for each other under these conditions.  Our friends ran off in different directions which really helped me control myself.  I didn't feel like I had to be everywhere at once so I was trying to focus on knowing Kody, where would he most likely go?  Then I heard the announcement.  
   There must have been music playing because it suddenly felt eerily quiet and the man who had been telling us when to line up and go all morning came on over the loudspeaker in a very different tone than before: "All right we have a situation here.  We are looking for a little boy named Kody who has gotten lost.  Kody is wearing a monkey back pack.  If you could stop and look around to see if you see Kody..."
   There was a hush.  I heard people around me saying my son's name and began to feel sick over how far this had gotten.  That backpack came with a leash tail.  Why wasnt I holding it?  How could I have been so stupid!  All the while every second I'm running, spinning, scanning every face low to the ground.  I could see my wife in glimpses but I couldn't look at her.  This was my fault.  It had been on my "shift".  There are mistakes you can make in this world that you will never be forgiven for.
   Suddenly, I spotted my fast moving best friend who had just ran circles around me for 3 miles back on this obstacle course.  She was leaping over tossed muddy sneakers and clothing as fast as she could.  Between us three were lounging bodies sipping beer and watching the festivities.  There, in her outstretched arms, she had my Kody.  He was being hurled so quickly in my direction that he looked a little scared for the trip but all right.  My wife and I ran to converge on them and all at once we collapsed in dire relief of the physical stress complete fatigue can take.  And there was the mixed complete mental exhaustion.  All that pain churned as we hugged with a pang of embarrassment.  No one is judged more harshly than a mom.  No one could judge me harder than I judge myself.  Never again would I take my eyes off this child.  'Never again' I lied.
   It turns out that no one saw him run off, and that he'd made it all the way back to the port-a-potties and had been happily dancing in the field by himself when one of our moms found him.  He'd been "in custody" since before the announcement but our experience of dread had lasted longer due to precisely how far he'd gotten and some reluctance he had to go with someone he didn't know very well. 
   Later on, we washed off in the ice cold spray without complaint and even lost our cell phone for a little while in all the excitement (also returned) but nothing could bother us again except the memory of those terrible moments that continues to haunt.
   In an effort to make the best of it we gained a little perspective (also a new leash, child locators and search for the perfect GPS devices).  Brick house Security used to make a good one that doubled as a watch, was tamper-proof, and linked with an iPhone, but they discontinued it a year ago due to some wire short.  (Fix it guys!) You hear parents with worse stories saying they took their eyes off their child for "only a second" so I'm humbled, grateful, and humbled over this experience at the same time.  The birth of a child is an incredible gift and an even more an incredible responsibility.  You have to live in the moment, prepare for every possibility, and maybe somehow care for your own longevity at the same time.  But if all that gets to be a little much by all means - by that leash!  Just keep it on them for about 18 years.  But when will technology finally produce an accurate, waterproof, comfortable child GPS device?     Can we get on this folks?  
 
Ali Polizzi