Chelsea Kaplan’s Musings About Life... After Birth

My kid will be wearing this bib tomorrow, as I take my part in calling for some much-needed change.

Cindy from Colorado writes:
“I loved your post ‘How You DoinҒ on how meeting other moms is like dating – it’s so true! Have you ever had a Mom ‘breakup’? I just did, and it was pretty uglyŔ

Oh, Cindy, I’m feelin’ you, girl.

As previously written, when you’re a new mom, you’ll soon realize that the process of meeting other moms is much like dating. You want to meet others in your situation because it’s nice to be around others sharing your “What the hell just happened to my life?” experience, not to mention others who are cool with your needing to schedule plans around napping and feeding times. Just like when you date, meeting other moms is often arranged through friends. However, as it was in my case, it happens through Mommy and Me groups and even in the Nordstrom bathroom. Oh yes, the Nordstrom bathroom.

The dark underbelly of the meeting other moms/dating correlation is that much like the ritual courting members of the opposite sex, when things go awry, there’s got to be a breakup.

The simplest Mom breakups are much like those between two people who thought the other one was nice, but they didn’t meet at the right time. It’s like meeting a great guy just before you move to a new city; you like him, but the timing isn’t conducive to making a relationship work. I once met another Mom who was a perfectly nice person, but soon after we met, she went back to work full-time. I didn’t, and as a result, our schedules didn’t match up. I liked her fine, but not enough to devote precious weekend time seeing her. We never really talked about it; it just sort of died a natural death when we slowly stopped seeing each other. I knew she’d go on to find other Mom friends who wanted the same thing she did; for us, the timing just wasn’t right.  Had we met at another time in our lives, it may have worked. I wish her all the best; she’s a great lady. One day, she’ll make another Mom friend very happy. Truly. Sigh.

Other Mom breakups are not so mutual. Sometimes, one party is into it, but the other, not so much. This also once happened to me. The other Mom was a perfectly nice person, but not my “type”. It’s a situation much like, say, when your Mom’s best friend sets you up with a guy who is totally sweet, yet is way too into Dungeons and Dragons for a 28 year-old (and let’s be honest, that wasn’t even that cool when we were 8). Check, please. Because you we only went out on a few dates, there isn’t a full-scale breakup or “I need multiple pints of Ben and Jerry’s” evening(s?) of healing. Instead, it petty much ends when one party says, “Yeah, let’s definitely do this again,” but doesn’t follow-up. With both Moms and men, the process is nearly identical.

I’ve also had a Mom breakup that occurred because after multiple “dates”, I realized the other Mom was a complete and total nutcase. A totally nice person, but an utter nutcase. This Mom breakup was the equivalent to ending things with the guy who you really think is cool, but despite being out of college for nearly 10 years, he still gets shitfaced every weekend. Like, dude, I actually like you, but seriously, can you get it together? Not surprisingly, much like Mr. Drunky McDrunkenstein, I am not sure this mom even realizes the breakup happened.

All of those breakups, of course, are relatively innocent and involve minimal - if any - hurt feelings.  On other occasions, however, Mom breakups can involve more drama than an episode of “Lost”. Akin to cheating on your boyfriend or girlfriend, sometimes a Mom commits an act worthy of a Grand Canyon-esque schism. Perhaps it’s because both parties are women. I mean, it’s usually the woman in the relationship who is responsible for most of the emotional theatrics, right? Regardless, when a mom friendship goes wrong, the fallout can be nuclear.

So happened a few months ago with one (now former) member of the Momtourage. Despite many of us recalling that our initial impression of this Mom wasn’t entirely favorable, we became all became friends. It was much like a situation where you’re in a new city, you’re lonely, and you get introduced to a guy. He may not totally be your type, but you go out, and actually kinda enjoy yourself because he’s not that bad, and it’s certainly better than sitting home and watching 90210 because it totally sucks now that there are all these lame new characters, not to mention the fact that the plot centers around Steve, Brandon and that Asian woman running some dumb-ass newspaper together. Bottom line: he may not be your dream guy, but he’s fine – nice, even, so why not keep hanging out with him? So was the case with her.

Prior to the big breakup, a series of events had proven her to be a less-than-flexible and understanding person (tough traits to display when seeing to maintain Mom friendships – seriously, name me one mom who’s never had to bag plans because her kid’s nap schedule got messed up?). This irked many, yet not yet to the point of a breakup. Anyway, one afternoon, she completely freaked out when, because our kids were sick with colds, 2 members of the Momtourage and I bowed out of a playgroup she was hosting. Now, honestly, if you’re a Mom, you know that when your mom friends think to spare your child from getting sick, you should bow down and thank them, because taking care of a sick baby is worse than listening to K-Fed’s new album on repeat (don’t quit your day job, Mr. Spears – what is that, anyway?). While her being unfathomably upset over such an incident shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, considering her nature, it was really her crazy actions that did. Mom friend lost it to the point of treating one member of the Momtourage (me) so cruelly that it - no kidding – elicited tears. With friends like theseŅyou get the picture.

To make a long story short, a series of equally odd, rude and unfairly accusatory behaviors involving her and different members of the Momtourage followed, all of which she refused to apologize for. As you can imagine, these situations lead most of us to wonder why, at ages 30+ and with very little free time on our hands, we were continuing a friendship with someone who was not only unreasonably inflexible, but had also proven herself to be a person who wasn’t exceptionally kind. I won’t speak for the rest of the Momtourage, but I am 100% cool with this Mom breakup, just as I am with ending things with my sucky former boyfriend. I knew nearly from the beginning that he was not the one for me, yet it took him treating me like crap for months before I realized that I was wasting my time – not to mention sacrificing a bit of my dignity - by putting up with his jerk behavior.

Apparently, such nasty Mom breakups aren’t rare. Recently, I’ve heard similar Mama-drama from friends who are not in my Momtourage. Over coffee the other day with a friend, she told me a few similar stories or fallouts within her Momtourage, one of which was oddly similar to mine. In trying to analyze the origin of these situations, we hypothesized that perhaps mom breakups – regardless of their scale – occur because, much like when dating guys, it takes a while to know another’s true colors. Initially, both moms and singles are brought together because of a common issue - in the case of moms, it’s the kids, and in the case of singles, it’s looking for a mate. It’s enough to maintain a relationship for a bit, but eventually, you have to discover if there are enough positives to sustain the relationship. In time, sometimes you learn that the answer is no.

I’ve realized that finding true Mom friends – just like finding your husband, life partner or whatever, is a process that usually takes time. Of course, love at first sight/an instant connection between Mom friends can happen (like when someone grabs your enormous diamond ring and says, “Damn, your husband did a good job with that one!” and you just know you’ll love her). Most of the time, though, it takes a while to get to know another Mom and figure out if you’re truly compatible. More than anything, though, I’ve learned that the most significant similarity between dating guys and “dating” other Moms is that with both types of relationships, nothing’s worth sacrificing the way you know you deserve to be treated.

A lot of you have been emailing me and asking what the little guy was for Halloween, wanting to see pictures, etc. The answer isn’t so simple. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that as it takes me trying on nearly 3 different outfits to find the perfect one to wear, picking out my child’s Halloween costume wouldn’t come much easier.

My husband and I originally chose a costume for him when we were at Party City picking out favors for his 1st birthday party. We selected a devil costume because from the looks of the kid wearing it on the package, it looked like the cutest one. It was red, had little black wings and a hat with horns. Very cute. So yesterday, I’m all set to get him ready to put it on (we were heading over to my friend Melissa’s house, as she was having a Momtourage and kids Halloween get-together at her house), I take the costume out of the package and discover - to my horror - that the costume is made of stretchy, tight, crushed red velvet. Unless I was hoping for the disco devil look, I knew immediately that this costume wasn’t going to cut it. I was running late, so there was no time to purchase a new costume. I dressed him in the devil outfit, and he morphed into Brian Boitano in the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games, a Siegfried without his Roy. At best, he looked like a drag queen baby dressed as a devil for Halloween.

Despite his Chippendale-esque costume, I enjoyed the afternoon taking pictures of him and his friends in their cool (read: normal and non-Vegas cabaret act) costumes, but the minute we left, I headed for the mall, disco devil child in tow. I loaded him in his stroller, covering him with a blanket (despite the fact that it was nearly 75 degrees outside) to hide his red velvet ensemble. Gymboree had been cleared out. Old Navy had one very lonely Pocahontas dress left, yet as my goal was to move away from the drag show look, I headed to Pottery Barn Kids. As if the universe was cutting me a break, there on the wall hung one adorable green dragon costume, in just the right size. Even better, because it was Halloween day, it was 50 percent off. Hello cashier lady, here’s my AmEx.

We left, and I rushed home to meet my husband, who had left work early. When I took our son out of the car, my husband goes, “Woah, that costume is terrible!” “Yep – taken care of it,” I said, nodding to the PBK bag. Prior to making the neighborhood trick-or-treating rounds, my husband and I suited him up in the dragon gear, and he looked adorable, not to mention unquestionably testosterone-y.

So, to answer your questions, my son was both a devil and a dragon for Halloween this year. Though I’ve been known to tease that I may be the only Jewish mother on the planet who is actually hoping for a gay son (I figure if he is, he’ll be that much more likely want to go shopping with me, take vacations with me even when he’s 30, you get the picture), I just couldn’t bring myself to send him out with his Dad trick-or treating in crushed red velvet. If one day he grows up to be heterosexual, I’ll only have myself to blame.

Last Wednesday, the momtourage and I got together for lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen (kid-friendly, yet a rare exception to my “I love chain restaurants” feeling. I think the pizza there is usually soggy and fairly gross). We were there to celebrate the 1st birthday of Lily, daughter of momtourage member Linda. As we all greeted each other outside the restaurant, wishing Lily all sorts of birthday salutations, Linda said that someone had commented that it was really she who should get well wishes - and perhaps even a gift - on Lily’s birthday because after all, wasn’t it she who had done all the work that day? Interesting....

While I loved this idea, it wasn’t the first time I had heard it. Similarly, when my son turned one, my mother suggested the same thing to me. You know, I think I did deserve one. With my son, I went into labor at midnight, but didn’t deliver the critter until 11:56 p.m. the following day. Granted, I got an epidural around 1:30 p.m., and after that it was all smiles (well, until it wore off and I was so mad at myself for putting off the Cesarean, but they eventually hooked me up with more feel-good juice). Still, though, it was a long, excruciating day, not to mention recovery. My mother - and many others feeling the whole 70s au-naturel vibe - did it without any drugs, and these were the days before they induced you once your baby was getting too big. Hell, my mother-in-law pushed out three boys - all without pain-relieving drugs, mind you - the smallest of whom was my husband, who weighed a whopping 8 pounds, 11 ounces. Holy ouch.

Why do we not recognize these efforts?

When I brought this up to my husband, he said, “Are you mad at me for not getting you a gift (when our son had his birthday)?” “No,” I said, somewhat truthfully. “So, does this mean we do away with Mother’s Day?” he asked. Uh, no dear, that day is for all of the other stuff we moms do all freaking year.

These conversations have inspired me to begin a movement to include gift-giving to mothers on their child’s birthday. To set an example, even though I only weighed 5 pounds, 5 1/2 ounces when I was born, I’m sending my Mom something when I turn 31 later on this month - even if it’s something small, just to show my appreciation now that I know what my birthday involved on her end. My mother-in-law, she should receive diamonds. Big ones, just like her babies.

So, believe it or not, my husband and I are using a babysitter for the first time tonight. Before you think I’m one of those freak show moms who fears leaving her kid in the hands of another person, allow me to explain: My husband and I have actually gone out numerous times - it’s just always worked out that my parents or our nanny could stay with our son while we went out and enjoyed food at a dining establishment that didn’t have a kid’s menu.

Tonight, however, neither option was available, so we had to bring someone in off the bench. Enter William, the uber-responsible (perhaps more so than myself) 14-year old kid from across the street. He’s got two younger siblings and has babysat before, so we figured, why not? We planned the night so that we’d go out after our kid went to bed, and William could just hang out and watch t.v., raid the fridge and then call his pals like all babysitters do. If God forbid something goes wrong with the baby, we figured his Mom will be right across the street.

So, last night William comes over to get the lay of our house, see where everything is, etc. As I’m showing him around and telling him he can help himself to anything in the fridge, I paused. At that moment, I experienced the frightening realization that I am now the “Mom” and no longer the “babysitter”. Cue Joey on “Blossom” voice: Woah. Completely and utterly bizarre

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that I was eating the Teddy Grahams out of the family I used to babysit for’s cabinets and calling my 8th grade boyfriend Russ Allen from their phone. I’d watch HBO, a luxury we never had at my house, when I should have been doing homework. I can so easily remember quickly waking up just as the parents came home, the Dad paying me and then the inevitable awkward car ride back to my house with the Dad, us making small talk about school and his kids. Of course, I also remember how much I could buy back then for the $20 I’d have earned after a night of babysitting. When on Earth did I flip to the other side of the babysitting coin? Who knows, but it’s happened.

Therefore, tonight, I’ll be out enjoying truly good food, while a teenager sits in my house, eating my Teddy Grahams and watching my HBO. It’s the circle of life, apparently.

I am sitting here watching the latest installation of “The Bachelor” and nearly puking all over myself. This is why:

a) The new Bachelor is fugly. And full of crap. The whole “I so don’t want anyone to know I’m a prince. I mean, whenever a girl finds that out, it’s like the end of the night for me.” Uh, yeah, dude that’s why you chose to be on a dating reality show in which the host reminds the audience every 2.8 seconds that you’re a freaking prince.

b) The bachelorettes are complete cheese. They all also average a size 2, while I am still about 20 lbs overweight, despite the fact that my son will have been born 1 year ago Wednesday.

c) Every girl they feature on this show who hails from the South is a total hayseed. Seriously, can the producers please casta woman from the South who isn’t from a farm or who doesn’t sound like a complete redneck?

Regardless, I will be glued to this season, as I have been every other one. Frequent commentary to follow.

Thoughts? Come on, you know you watched it......

I know, I know.....I am a bad blogger. This moving into a new house crap really takes away from your writing time.

Anyway, I’d be remiss as a celebrity gossip whore/Mom if I didn’t comment on all of this (somewhat) recent Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes/Suri stuff. All of this hype surrounding the Vanity Fair photos and the related article has made me arrive at the following opinion: I feel badly for Katie Holmes.

Now, allow me to clarify: I think Tom and Katie are nuts. Total fricking weirdos. Clearly, the driving force behind the insanity is Tom. The man who instilled the belief into the hearts and minds of every young girl of my generation (and a few others, I’m certain) that Naval aviators are the sexiest humans alive has somehow morphed into a nonsense-spewing, freak show cult member. All of his scientology BS is so totally bizarre – I mean, this guy believes that illness – mental or otherwise - can be caused by aliens (literally, y’all, ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE) invading the body. Homeboy’s clearly gone cuckoo for cocoa puffs; I can’t do much but feel sorry for him. Granted, the whole Brooke Shields/no-such-thing-as postpartum-depression-just-exercise-and-eat-vitamins thing actually did piss me off (OK Tom, when you sprout a vagina, squeeze a human through it, get 2 hours of sleep a week, and then experience the estrogen tidal wave that follows, you can offer your opinion on the topic, but until then, understand that no elliptical machine or a few Centrums will accomplish shit), but it really only confirmed my suspicion that this guy is a complete whack job. I mean, does anyone take him seriously anymore?

When it comes to Katie, I feel like poor Joey Potter somehow got sucked into his lair of insanity. She’s not without blame for being sponge-like - I mean, as my mom says, “Squirrels marry squirrels”, so perhaps she’s just as whacked in the head as he is. Either way, as a Mom, I can’t help but feel for her. In the most recent Vanity Fair Magazine, Katie said about the recent “Where’s Suri?” media frenzy: “Some of the crap that’s out there, the stuff that’s said about my parents and my siblings (reports that her family did not hit it off with Cruise), it’s really frustrating the amount of shit that’s out there. And the stuff they say about Suri? You shouldn’t say that about us, and you can’t say that about my child.”

The first stuff - about Tom, her family, etc. - wah wah wah, cry me a river - you’re a celebrity, this is what you get when you marry and mate with a very famous closeted movie star, sister. The stuff concerning her baby, however, makes me want to give her a hug. I feel genuinely sad - for her and for her kid - when I read that. It’s one thing to dog on Tom and Katie - they wholly deserve it - but to go anywhere near dissing the kid - or even doubting her existence - is low. I can understand her mother lioness reaction to the feeling that someone is acting cruelly toward her child. Heck, I go apeshit when a stranger simply tries to touch mine. I get pissed when people second-guess my choices regarding what I feed my kid or how I dress him - I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if the nation and the media was second-guessed my choice to delay exposing him to an onslaught of media hype. Being a new Mom is hard - no matter who you are. Lay off Katie, but more importantly, lay off an innocent baby - regardless of who her parents are.

Bottom line: I feel you, Katie (when it comes to wanting to protect your kid - not the whole being with a freak show stuff).

Two of our friends came to visit us from New York City this past holiday weekend.

My husband and I have known this couple for roughly six years; our friendship with them predates our engagement, their graduations from college and, of course, our metamorphosis from chic Manhattanites into suburban, homeowning, SUV-driving folk who sniff their kid’s butt every 15 minutes to determine whether or not his diaper is a poopy one. In our pre-parent former lives, my husband and I would roll out of bed at noon on a Sunday to meet these friends at our favorite Upper West Side brunch haunts. We’d discuss things like politics, the Knicks and why we found Mario Batali’s most recent restaurant a bit overrated. We took a trip to Aspen together to ski, staying in the town’s schmanciest hotel with the Starwood points she accumulated thanks to a travel-heavy consulting job.  We’d get regularly together for sporting events, dinners and countless evenings playing the board game version of the newlywed game (my husband I routinely kicked their asses – probably because were actually married and at the time, they weren’t) at our apartment, and we had a tradition of spending New Year’s Eve together, each December 31st butchering some way-over-our-heads meal because we were too inebriated to cook worth a damn. All in all, they are some of our dearest friends, a rare example of couple friends where you and your husband actually, genuinely like both the husband and wife.

This couple, on account of their late twenties New Yorker status, not to mention two Harvard Business School (dumbasses, huh?) tuition debts, see childbearing in their future, yet no time soon. They live in a West Village apartment that certainly isn’t baby-friendly, have big-time jobs and eat dinner at 9:00 p.m… They jet to Paris on a whim, and recently visited Israel and Australia. They were much like us then, but are so not us now. 

I was mortified all weekend that they would be incredibly annoyed by our new, child-centered lifestyle. Compared to the lifestyle we used to know together, our current one, to me, seems so incredibly dull. Despite this, they arrived with a willingness to join us in spending the afternoon in a park that was not Central, but was chock-full of swings, squealing kids and Moms who knew nothing about the pre-natal massages at Bliss. They happily joined us for brunch at - gasp - a chain restaurant, and didn’t bat an eyelash when we suggested grabbing sushi for old time’s sake, yet doing it at the very new - and early - time of 6:15 p.m. Despite the obvious differences in our current lifestyles, we still spent our time together doing mostly the same things we used to. As always, we loved every minute with them. 

Perhaps it wasn’t all of those five-star dinners in New York and the ritzy trips that made our times together memorable. I’m thinking now that chic living involves just being with friends you love and who love you back, regardless of where you are – in location, or in life.

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I am not gone, only in moving hell.

We moved into our new house last Tuesday and are still surrounded by boxes, which is good because we have entire rooms that are devoid of furniture. Unless the cardboard box look will be championed by Domino magazine (if you have not yet read it, run, don’t walk, to your nearest newsstand to buy it - it’s awesome) this fall, we need to make a trip to some furniture stores ASAP. I am so hesitant to buy anything from the ubiquitous Pottery Barn, as their customer service blows and their furniture can realistically be expected to arrive 3 months past their projected delivery date (all kidding aside, I once got a Charleston sleeper sofa from them FOR FREE because it arrived - no joke – an obscene six months past the due date). However, their stuff is so damn cute and relatively reasonably priced, that I think I may just be a sucker and place another order. I liken them to Christina Aguilera and her “Ain’t No Other Man” song: I loathe her for her skankiness and undeserved diva complex, yet I can’t help but want to groove to that tune because the beat is damn infectious. Though it makes me feel dirty (not dirrrty, mind you), when it comes on my radio, I don’t change the channel, I crank it.

Anyway, there is now an enormous DirecTV dish mounted on my deck where a trellis of flowering vines should be, and it irks me insanely. My husband is pissed that I chose to paint our bedroom a dusky shade of grey/lavender (I believe the exact reaction was “I am going to have to check my balls each time I enter this room"), so we are now even.

Thankfully, my son seems to have handled the transition into our new place seamlessly. He pretty much didn’t skip a beat when we moved, which has been most helpful. As long as he has his primary-colored Leap Frog Learning Piano, he’s all good.

Me, I need a new king size mattress, bed frame, dresser, sectional sofa, sofa slipcover, a pair of upholstered chairs for the living room, a chandelier for the dining room, a rug for the sunroom, a desk for my office......

Sorry I’ve been so MIA recently, y’all. My husband and I closed on our first-ever HOUSE (how adult are we?), and then we jetted off (well, packed the SUV to the brim and drove off, really....) to Cape Cod for a two-week, much-needed vacation. What’s a bit odd, however, is that a “vacation” with a baby isn’t really a vacation. This little guy requires three times as much crap as we do. Between the pack & play portable crib, the mini high chair, the bottles, the bibs, the books, the toys, the food and the God knows what else, we could barely see out the back of our car en route to the Baked Bean State. How can a little critter like that require so much?

Going to the beach yesterday was quite a hysterical effort. Again, we had to schlep so much crap out there. In the days of old, I brought a beach bag loaded with magazines, sunscreen and a towel. Now, I carry two beach bags - 1.5 of which are loaded with diapers, toys, SPF# 856 for the kid, bottles, cheerios, toys, a change of clothes and a bunch of other who-knows-what - all of which we truly needed. Luckily, he did fall asleep on a towel under an umbrella, but woke up after a loud-mouthed seagull came by and tried to steal our stray cheez-its. Damn bird! I finally had a moment of serenity and was almost done with my People magazine article featuring Lance Bass of ‘N Sync coming out before the baby was rudely awaken. While we’re on that topic, aren’t all boy bands gay-alicious? I mean, should any of us really be all that surprised by Lance’s revelation? Closets are for clothes, boy banders! Be out and proud! The gay boys buy your CDs just much as the teenage gals! Anyway, back to the beach scene....it was, needless to say, not the world’s most relaxing day, and to top it all off, I think my kid still has sand in his butt crack.

Anyway...I must run. Little guy’s waking up from his nap, so this gives me another 4-hour window to enjoy “vacation” before another sleep session. Long days on the beach, I loved you when.

I need a vacation after this vacation.