Fish Dad

I was just reading Lu "Mister Seahorse," which is about a bunch of progressive underwater dads. Mr. Seahorse carries the seahorse babies in his belly, Mr. Tilapia hatches the tilapia eggs in his mouth, and Mr. Catfish swims around tending his little catfish brood. Maybe the moms are at the undersea spa. But wherever they are, they're lucky fish wives (who, I bet, never sound like fishwives because of the parenting contributions of their husbands).

Jason has always been a fish dad. He was the one who taught Lu how to sleep on her own. He is still the one who can calm her nuclear reactions. He's a generous partner and a gifted parent. I don't appreciate him as much as I should, but I did this weekend when he was in hanging out with Bill Clinton, and I was a single parent. I don't know how people do it by themselves — or without a partner like Jason. I am lucky I don't have to find out.

Add to the List of Things I Swore I'd Never Do/Be/Tolerate

My whole life, I have been disgusted by lost stickers. You know, the kind that stray from their proud places on notebooks and hands and lunchboxes and wind up on floors of restrooms or subway walls. Ignoble dehorned unicorns, who could be mere horses except no one ever made a sparkly purple horse sticker. Happy faces whose smiles have dimmed. Stars fallen from their galaxies of praise. All gummy and desperate. Ew.

I know that is a lot of prose to describe something so pedestrian, but this sticker thing grosses me out. And now I have them ALL OVER MY HOUSE, thanks to the sticker/praise system of potty training, which is iffy. So far, all we have to show for it is a series of soiled Elmo panties and lots of orphaned "Good Jo" and "ood Job" stickers in places I don't even want to think about, places I don't clean or look. Places you will most certainly consider after you have been at my house, when you find a strange "Kate Donaho, 5813 Highland Hills Drive, etc." sticker on the bottom of your shoe (did I mention Lu is satisfied with any kind of sticker and I have been tempted to put a postage stamp on her after a successful potty?). May you be as grossed out as I am next time you find one.

Point/Counterpoint

Today, before dropping Lu off at school:

BIG PERSON: "Let me wipe your nose. You have green boogers."
SMALL PERSON: "Nooo."
BP: "Dude, let me wipe your nose. Boogers are yucky."
SP: "No, Mom, boogers are yummy."
BP: "Um, boogers are yucky."
SP [shaking head earnestly]: "Boogers are yummy."
BP: "Yucky."
SP: "Yummy."
BP: "Yucky."
SP: "YUMMY!"
BP: "Okay, I give. Boogers are yummy."
SP [smug]: "Yep."

This Is Lucy's House

Lucy has been on vacation. We sent her and her little pink rolling suitcase off to El Paso (with Nini), where she spent four thrilling days with people who think she is a charming genius child, which she is when she is with them. According to Nini, when the plane took off and the houses and people got smaller and smaller, she likened it to Mr. Rogers' neighborhood and became convinced that Mr. Rogers lives in El Paso. "Mr. Rogers" even called her a few times while she was in El Paso, which gave Uncle Adam a chance to practice saying the phrase "Hi neighbor." We expect him to wear a cardigan from now on.

While Lucy was on vacation, we were on vacation. We ate lots of nice dinners in restaurants, splurging because we were saving the babysitting money. We slept until lazy hours like 8:30 and 9. We went to five different Target stores (don't ask) with only one almost tantrum. We were a little...bored. The expanse of free time yawned before us. The absence of chatter and bossing and PBS was deafening. Even the dogs, whose lives she ruined, seemed to sniff around looking for her.

We missed her and our house missed her. Granny has taught Lucy to play this game: as soon as we turn onto our street, Lucy starts asking, "Is this Lucy's house? Noooo. Is this Lucy's house?" And when she spies our house, she exclaims "THAT'S LUCY'S HOUSE!" as though she has snuck up on it. On the way home today, she was more excited than ever to see our house. "Here we are," she said, "we're home." I remember who were we before Lucy came into our lives, but this house feels like it was hers before she even got here. It's nice to have her home.

Why We Are Not Rich

I am concerned that Jason is lost at Target. I sent him there about an hour ago with a list of three things:

• Kandoos. These are flushable, transition wipes for potty-trainers and maybe people with hemmorhoids. The most insipid and unnecessary product ever, and yes, we are buying it. These dumb things and her reward stickers (unicorns, happy faces, the usual) are the only things worth pottying for.

• Beach towels. One for Lu, a couple for us. She will be having "splash days" at school, which I think is just a nice way of saying they turn a hose on the kids. But she will need some paraphanelia with her name on it for that, and if it has her name on it, it can't be some ratty mauve towel. Her teachers might think we are ratty, or that I like mauve. So she is going to have a 60-inch Hello Kitty towel. Which will maybe make up for that the fact that she had to take her lunch in a portable wine cooler for a few weeks before we found her a proper lunchbox. And she still tries to steal some kid's Dora or SpongeBob lunchbox everyday.

• A swimsuit. Size 3T, but only if it's really cute. Related to above item on the list. If they are going to have hose-time once a week, we need to have a decent suit rotation. Plus, she has been doing lots of swimming lately, and her seventies-leotard swimsuit (with horizontal pink and gold stripes that make her look like a fat little aerobics instructor) and green and white eyelet bikini (think round, demure Brigitte Bardot) will get old. A girl has to keep it fresh by the pool/lake/beach/hose.

As I have written this post, another half hour has passed. The man has been at Target for 1.5 hours and probably spent $100 on a bunch of things that weren't on the list, which is exactly what I would have done, which is why I sent him and not me. He hates to shop, but he likes to buy stuff for Lu. Especially stuff that is nicely packaged and cheap enough not to give you pause.

Evil marketing geniuses. Target: a giant red bullseye on your wallet.

P.S. He is home now. Shopping results:
• "Look at how cool these beach towels are!" $10x2, $8 for Hello Kitty (ON SALE)
• Admittedly DARLING white smocked top and hot pink skirt. $12
• Totally cute terry cloth cover-up sarong, which she doesn't need because she doesn't have a butt you would want to cover up. $5.99
• Callaway golfballs, "most of which will end up in the lake with my sand wedge." $40
• Kandoos. $3.79/100. Which doesn't sound that bad but is like 100 times the cost of regular TP. Even fancy, soft TP.

Tasks

For weeks I have been immersed in a Web site redesign for one of our clients. We developed three prototype designs that users would evaluate after performing five specific tasks: Try to buy X using this site. Now buy Y using this site. Now tell us, in Freudian detail, how these sites made you click/feel. We were ruled by these tasks and our test users' success in achieving them. We watched from another room as people navigated our sites and commented on them. It was useful and brutal. Like watching people eat a meal you've prepared of your own organs. Did I mention we'd all had about 8 hours of sleep over 3.5 days?

So I have seen little of Lu this week, after a work-filled Memorial Day weekend and three days in Dallas. Jason, the saint, has been a single dad, handling all the tasks that move our lives forward...

Good morning. Elmo, yogurt, put the Os right there. Find Duck, more yogurt. Change diaper, try to sit on the potty, only flush once. Don't eat that. Make lunch, brush teeth, let Dad brush your teeth. Yes, you have to wear a shirt to school. Turn off the TV, grab your lunch box. Give me five kisses and have a great day, [INSERT CLIENTS/JOB/ADULT LIFE] Pick up. How was your day? Do you need a time out? Signing Time. NOOOO — 'nother Signing Time! Dinner. Bath? Okay, you don't smell unless you get really close. Only three books, night-night music, say prayers, night-night crib. [INSERT MORE WORK/ADULT LIFE. FEEL RELIEVED THE BABY IS IN BED, BUT THEN MISS HER BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME WITH HER. ]

Too often, I hurry through the tasks, craving the mental checkmark at the end. Breakfast: check! Clean clothes: check! And that is what I saw this week as we remotely observed people while they hurriedly clicked through our Web sites without taking note of the loving detail in each one. I wanted them to slow down. IF YOU SLOW DOWN YOU WILL LIKE IT BETTER! I was sleep-addled and oversensitive. I hated all of them, except the ones I loved and would have happily leapt through the two-way mirror to hug.

I really, really wanted to go home to my husband and my baby. My untidy house and undone laundry. I realized the tasks are not things to click through in a rush so that life can proceed. The tasks are life.

[I know how serious and sentimental these blogs have sounded lately. I will be snarky again when I have more sleep. Wit is only for the well-rested.]

Some Things She Has Said Since 5 p.m. Today

While wearing a cowboy hat, Elmo panties and sunglasses: "I'm going running, Mom."

Same outfit, posing by the couch, no camera in sight: "I'm so cute. Cheeeeese."

As she lay down next to the dog, petting him: "Go to bed, Clifford. You tired."

With a very stern look on her face: "STAY RIGHT HERE. I be right back, okay?"

Wearing a stethoscope: "I'm a doctor. I need to take your tempachure."

To Jason: "Hey Dad, I have a question — can I have some money?" After she got the money she took her dolls shopping.

Pushing a stroller, carrying a set of spoons (the kind you'd play in a jugband), when asked what she was doing: "This."

Somebody's Baby

Since Mother's Day, I have been wanting to write some meaningful bit about motherhood: the weight of it, the change it brings in you as a person, all that stuff. But for the life of me, I can't so much see what change motherhood has made in me, as what is has done to everyone else.

At the risk of sounding dumb, it only recently occurred to me that every single person is BORN. Born eventfully (or not) to some parent(s) who look(s) on him/her as a personal miracle. Excepting tragic circumstances, everybody arrives with love. Even Britney Spears' unplanned second baby will arrive with love...if not proper infant safety and parents with good taste. And those who don't have love, well, those are the people who do the bad stuff in this world.

But, naively, I believe that most of us arrive here in love. Motherlove and Fatherlove, the kind of feeling that forgives almost any trangression, will do almost anything to ensure the happiness and safety of a child. Hopeless and tireless and, yes, stupid love. Most of us in the world have someone who feels that way about us. Shortly after we'd had our babies, my no-nonsense friend Christie and I were talking about the Iraq war and she said, "We didn't push these babies out of us so they could go kill each other." Which is not a statement about the Iraq War, but about war in general. Every person who dies is somebody's baby. Can't we, as mothers and fathers, agree that it is a bad idea?

And every person who lives is somebody's baby. Even you, the wicked, wicked person who cut me off in traffic and then FLIPPED ME OFF yesterday. Someone feels about you the way I do about Lu. I am not sure who, but someone must love you. And the homeless people who live under the bridge near our house: sad, polite people whose bad luck and worse choices have let them wander away. Do their mothers know? When I think of Lu living under a bridge, I wonder what will have happened to me. How could she have gotten so far away from us that she doesn't have somewhere safe to be? I want to call the mothers of these people, commend them on their children's good manners and demand that they rescue their babies.

I know it's not that simple. But motherhood has changed the world for me. Even in the worst traffic, motherhood casts a tender light on humanity. If I imagine that someone loves you like I love Lu, then I am less inclined to give you the bird.