Spiders and their PR spin

We’ve all been there. You see a spider in your house and you go to grab a tissue to, well, send the spider to a better place.

But then you remember. Spiders eat all of the other bugs in your house! Spiders eat mosquitoes! Spiders have an Important. Job. To. Do. And if you kill them, your house will become a sequel to Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life.” So if you see that spider, wave hello, tip your hat, and each of you can go about your day living under the same roof in peace and harmony.

When did the spider union get such great PR?

I can picture it. Maybe fifty years ago, spiders were getting squashed inside comfy air-conditioned homes day after day. The spider union, obviously presided by Spider-Man and his trusty vice president Charlotte, needed a plan to stay alive. So they hired a public relations firm, who came up with the plan. The world hates spiders, but they hate mosquitoes even more. Tell the world that we eat mosquitoes. You can’t get rid of us. You need us. We are all on the same mosquito-hating team.

And it worked, of course. Many humans probably think twice before saying bye-bye to these uninvited guests.

But have any of you actually seen a spider eating a mosquito with your own eyes? Or are we just all reading the same brochures put out by the spider lobby?

Don’t get me started on the ladybug lobby.

Comparing babies, comparing adults

In the past year or so, my friend group has skewed a bit, well, younger.

Yep. Most of my new favorite people are movers and shakers (crawling and shaking egg shakers, that is!). They’re not much in the way of conversationalists and they’re fairly naive. What they lack in sophistication they make up for in thigh chunkiness.

And these new friends — they can’t travel anywhere by themselves, can you believe it? Their amazing caregivers — moms, dads, and babysitters — have become part of my scene too.

But here’s the thing about getting together with babies around the same age. You can’t help but compare…

Is your baby crawling yet? Oh, my son was crawling at two weeks old. Does she eat rice cereal? I read a book saying that babies should get 90% of their nutrition from Cocoa Krispies until the age of 15. That’s so cute that your baby waves “bye-bye.” My baby can play the entire score of “Pirates of Penzance” on the viola and the English horn.

She only has two teeth? I don’t want to scare you but you should probably check with your dentist, because I read in a mom’s group on Facebook that when a baby is 10 months, they stop growing teeth altogether, and then she’ll never sleep through the night, and it will really affect her chances of getting into law school. And eating celery.

Because babies don’t do a whole lot, you don’t have much to go on for discussions. You can chat — compare? contrast? commiserate? — about the following topics:

• Sleep
• Input and output
• Growth and development
• Mobility
• Noises that sound like dinosaurs

And that’s the whole list! By the time you’ve exhausted these conversation topics, your baby has already outgrown the 6-month clothing size (at Carter’s, of course; Gap has a whole different sizing chart). It’s a tiny list and everyone leaves a conversation feeling bad: Well, my baby is behind on walking and on my dreams of being an Olympic figure skating mom; should we find a different playgroup that’s geared more towards babies who are in the 50th percentile for head circumference?

I am just comforted by the idea that the comparisons eventually do stop. There are enough things in the future in which we have or lack skills.

Do you know Lia? She is really bad at maps! She’s probably in the 2nd percentile for directional aptitude. But, she is decent at making scrambled eggs with spinach. At least the 63rd percentile for scrambled egg making. Oh, but she is developmentally behind at knowing the proper way to open sealed plastic packages without calling in for help. We probably should set her up with a special tutor to help her remember the difference between a cold needing an antihistamine and a cold needing a decongestant. But, she is off the charts when it comes to booking social engagements weeks in advance …

So, if your baby is walking or not walking, or eating vegetables or only drinking Starbucks triple venti soy no foam lattes, or saying “da-da” at everything or rapping the Hamilton soundtrack, let’s just share in our common experience that EVERY. BABY. SOUNDS. LIKE. A. DINOSAUR.

Rawwrrrr, baby friends!

Checking out “The Three Bears” would be just right

As part of my pledge to support local businesses, I’ve decided to also support our local library. As Finn in beloved TV show “Glee” once said, “I got this [book] from the library. Did you know you can just borrow books from there?”

These were the books I picked up today: Three baby books for Serena and one book for Adam, and then me — who doesn’t love a good Robert Langdon thriller??

But I had picked up a fourth baby book, too. I had grabbed “The Three Bears” by Byron Barton in an interest to give Serena a head start on the classics.

But the lady at the circulation desk told me that this book could not be taken from the library because it was a “reference book.”

I joked to the lady, “Ah, yes, in case someone is writing a book report on The Three Bears.” She replied, humorlessly, that yes, if someone was writing a report on The Three Bears, they’d have access to the book in the library only but could not check it out.

It made me think … why would this book be available for reference only? It’s obviously a reference book for the following people:

• People researching bears
• People researching portion control
• People researching the number three
• People researching family relationships among bears
• People researching porridge recipes and uses in popular culture
• People researching porridge temperatures and varying comfort levels in porridge eaters
• People researching rocking chairs and bed mattresses
• Would-be burglars researching how to break into bears’ homes and get away with it
• Anthropologists wondering about bears’ natural habitats
• Goldilocks, trying to review her past mistakes and do better in the future

If now, like me, you’re disappointed that you can’t borrow this very book to read over and over again with your baby human, you can watch a video of it here.

I’ll be back in a few days, local library — to return the books I borrowed (by next week we’ll surely all be experts on our feelings!), and to begin working on my dissertation about The Three Little Pigs.

The mommies on the bus say …

“Row, row, row your boat …”

“The itsy bitsy spider …”

“Hello, hello, hello and how are you …”

I’ve become a bit of a children’s song expert over the last eight months, if you could believe it. Serena and I have been attending music classes all over the city and suburbs and loving every minute of them. I get to see other moms, Serena gets to lick shakers, and everyone has a great time.

A popular song, of course, is “The Wheels on the Bus.” Each teacher has a slightly different set of lyrics to this classic favorite. The wheels always go round and round, the horn always beeps, the wipers always swish, and that darn driver is always so terse with his “Move on back.”

What do the members of the family do?

In one version of the song — I won’t name any teachers’ names — okay, it was at the library — the song went as follows:

“The mommies on the bus say ‘shh shh shh, shh shh shh, shh shh shh,’ the mommies on the bus say ‘shh shh shh,’ all through the town. The daddies on the bus say ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ the daddies on the bus say ‘I love you,’ all through the town.”

Okay, which PR firm is doing the mommies’ PR and which firm is doing the daddies’ PR, and why are we getting the raw end of the deal?

It must be fun to be a daddy. While your kid is going ‘wah wah wah’ all through the town, the mommy comforted and scolded the baby. Now that the baby is calm and quiet, the daddy gets to be the one to say “I love you.” Must be nice, Daddy.

Of course, in other classes I’ve heard many other versions of this scenario. Well, not very many. There are basically three phrases I’ve heard the mommies/daddies say: “Shh shh shh,” “I love you,” and “Peekaboo.” So maybe we can try to use the latter two so no one has to be the evil disciplinarian while the other parent gets to be the “fun” parent?

Here are some alternative things that the mommies and daddies can say on the bus all through the town:

“Water is blue.” (it’s educational!)

“Look how you grew.” (it’s complimentary!)

“So what’s new?” (maybe parents can make conversation with each other)

“Four three two.” (math lessons!)

And who says we need to rhyme? These are what REAL parents would say.

“The parents on the bus say, ‘I need a nap.'”

“The parents on the bus say, ‘Why is this wet?'”

“The parents on the bus say, ‘What do you want for dinner, I’d eat anything, no, not in the mood for Chinese, nah, had Mexican last week, I’m too full for pizza, but really, anything is fine with me, I’m not picky.”

“The parents on the bus say, ‘Why did we think taking the bus would be a good idea with all this baggage we needed to take for the baby? Why does she need so much stuff anyway? Is this the lightest stroller we could have bought? I think the City Mini stroller folds up better. We should have hired a caddie…’ all through the town.”

See you on the bus all through the town, friends!

My resolution … trying to shop local

They say that when you make a resolution public, it’s easier to follow it, with friends, family, and internet bots helping your cause if they know about it.

So, here goes. My 2018 new year’s resolution (a few weeks late) is to try as much as possible to shop local.

What an AMAZING time it is to be alive right now, isn’t it? If I want paper towels, I can click one button and they can arrive in my apartment within days. Within an hour, actually, if I so choose. You know, for those paper-towel-emergency kinds of moments. Amazon, and specifically Amazon Prime, have revolutionized the way we shop and have made our lives so much easier. How did people ever have babies before two-day shipping?

But. There’s always a but.

I love cute shops. Cute shops that sell baby clothes, cute shops that sell basil-flavored pappardelle noodles, cute bookshops that have a special shelf called “Books Recommended by Assistant Manager Margaret.” I love the little stores that are called “pharmacies” that aren’t Walgreen’s or CVS stores — really, how do these stores survive?

I love living in a world where it’s fun to go from shop to shop because they sell birthday cards with a jeweled peacock feather (for that one friend who you know loves peacocks),  fancy snickerdoodle cookies, and adorable-but-unnecessary baby shoes.

Sadly, these stores keep closing before our eyes. I didn’t think I was old enough to nostalgically reminisce about the stores that used to be in our neighborhood, what it used to look like before the internet happened.

It is sooooo much easier to shop online. And usually cheaper. And stuff comes directly to my building’s package room and then I get an e-mail saying my package arrived. I can buy something as soon as I think of it. I can compare products based on users’ reviews and be sure I’m picking the absolute best brand of pacifier clips for my baby.

But then we live in a world of empty storefronts, suffering malls, once-cutesy shopping districts that are now all ATM vestibules and Massage Envy stores.

It won’t be easy and I’m definitely still going to shop on Amazon. After all, I have a baby, I’m busy, life is hard, diapers are heavy, blah blah blah. But I am going to try, whenever possible, to shop local as much as I can. Won’t you join me?

Assistant Manager Margaret, do you have any new Mo Willems books you think my baby might like? I’m coming for you!

Life hack: Slippers!

As I’ve previously discussed, I am now embarking on a new lifestyle — the life of hygge, coziness, warm blankets on a cold night, hot chocolate with good friends, embracing winter.

At the same time, lately, I’ve been experiencing one of the absolute worst feelings winter has to offer: When you arrive at a friend’s house, politely take off your shoes because you are an upstanding citizen and your shoes couldn’t bear to part with the outdoor extravaganza, and then, to reward your good behavior, you step in a puddle anyway. In your socks. The only pair you brought. That you have to sit in all night long and reminisce about dry socks, oh those warm, cozy, dry socks that made your footsies do a literal happy dance. But not tonight. Tonight, you get wet socks and despair.

This has happened to me one too many times that I decided to take a stand against puddly socks. The solution: Bringing my own slippers to other people’s houses.

It’s one of those genius ideas that actually makes me feel a little bit stupid because it’s taken me 31 years to figure this out.

But ah, the cozy heaven I’ve walked into now! I arrive at the house and pull out my favorite pair of comfy cozy slippers (that, I’m proud to say, I bought for $3 at Marshall’s — best $3 ever?). They are small enough that they actually fit in my purse so I didn’t have to awkwardly shlep a separate slipper bag. I have them ready to go so when I take off my snowy, yucky boots I can immediately slip on the slippers and enjoy a happy remainder of the evening.

Actually, I’m inspiring myself. Ideas are happening as we speak! I am going to purchase a few pairs of slippers (in different sizes? your ideas are welcome) so that my guests can have the same experience when they come over to my house. And my white carpets can stay white … ish. (Special shoutout to my friend Virginia, who already does this in her home.)

Wishing everyone many nights — and mornings and days, too, if possible! — of cozy, warm feet.

Let it go — a parental parody

I hope you’ll enjoy my parody of Frozen’s “Let It Go,” about a parenting issue close to my heart — and my head.

 

“Let It Go”: A Parental Parody
Sung to the tune of Frozen’s “Let It Go”
Lyrics by Lia Goldfarb

The toys spread wide on our living room floor
Not a clear space to be seen
A household of desolation
And as mother, I’m the queen
The toys are piling all around us, far and wide
Cannot keep it clean
Heaven knows I’ve tried

This little child has so much stuff
She’s a good girl but when is it enough?
Despite it all, though it’s not fair
She grabs my hair

Let it go, let it go
Stop grabbing my every strand
Let it go, let it go
It’s time I take a stand

You’ve got books, balls, and teddy bears
So please tell me why
You only like my hairs.

They tell you when you’re pregnant
Your hair grows long and thick
But when you have your baby
It falls out nice and quick
It’s frustrating, makes me feel blue
She tests the limits of my ‘do
Can’t leave hair down, just in a bun
She won ….

Let it go, let it go
Oww, stop, please, why oh why
Let it go, let it go
Babe, you’re gonna make me cry
You’ve got rings, dolls, and rocking chairs
So please tell me why …

The bathtub drains are clogged with all my luscious locks
This makes me want to pack my vacuum back into its box
And one thought fills my head with overwhelming pain
I’m never going back, to my once-perfect mane

Let it go, let it go
Babe, you’re small but you’ve got strength
Let it go, let it go
My hair longs for its old length
But I’m glad I’m with you all day
And though I like to whine
I sure do love you anyway.

A Stanley’s birthday party

A friend of mine mentioned that he recently attended a birthday party at Stanley’s. While he actually meant a restaurant called Stanley’s, my mind immediately jumped to Stanley’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetables, a well-loved Chicago institution for inexpensive fruit and vegetables.

In the few seconds of my mind jumping before my friend’s clarification, I had a funny vision. A birthday party at Stanley’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetables? What a great idea!

As 20- and 30-somethings, we still want to acknowledge our birthdays, but the parties of our youth with a magician or at a pottery painting studio or playing laser tag followed by birthday cake might not be what we’re into these days. But a party at a grocery store? How very adult!

I envision the following activities at this healthful foods-themed party:

• Taste tests of uncommon fruits — the ones so weird that I don’t even know what they’re called (I know there’s an “ugly fruit” but is there also a “stinky fruit” and a “prickly fruit”?)
• Orange juggling lessons and contests
• Blind taste tests — you have one lick to identify which long green vegetable you are given
• Knife skills lessons (taught by an employee named Julienne, of course)
• “Supermarket Sweep”: Chicago edition
• Everyone is given a fruit or vegetable at random and then has to describe how that food relates to his or her personality

Okay, okay. Most of us will probably celebrate our birthdays at a normal place like a restaurant. But hey, the idea is out there, for my fruit fanatic friends …

A blog post dripping with shower stall complaints

For most of my lifetime, one issue in particular has always left me utterly baffled. What is the appeal of shower stalls in homes?

In a gym locker room, a shower stall makes complete sense. I understand it at summer camp. Seems legit at a European hostel.

But in homes when there is often a separate bathtub, it twists my brain trying to figure these out. To me, the ideal situation is a bathtub with a showerhead over it. You can choose to take a relaxing bath or a quick shower, or even a quick bath or a relaxing shower, but either way you have plenty of space to do it. In these little shower stalls barely (no pun intended) bigger than me, there’s no room to stretch, shave your legs, or even wash your body while letting conditioner sink in. While using these stalls, I feel tight and confined.

In the most modern homes and hotel rooms, this seems to be the trend. And better yet, the doors are glass. Maybe I’m one of a few people who still travels with friends, but with these glass doors, now the entire bathroom is off-limits to a tooth-brushing or hair-drying friend, whereas an opaque curtain would allow for more efficient use of bathroom time.

And another thing! The nozzle and temperature control for these showers are always positioned in the exact place where in order for you to turn on the water and let it heat up, you will inevitably be blasted in the face with freezing cold water while simultaneously flooding up the bathroom with water sneaking out of the shower door. Who invented these?

If it was a space issue, okay, I get it. I’ve been in European bathrooms where there is no stall at all, just a showerhead dangling from the ceiling over a floor drain tightly nestled between the toilet and the sink. But many of these bathrooms also have separate bathtubs that would make spa patrons jealous. I sincerely wonder how often these bathtubs really get used — who has time for relaxation today when people are SAYING things on the INTERNET?!?! — compared to the many cumulative hours spent in a cramped shower.

I really do want to understand this, so please help me out by leaving a comment on my Facebook post about this blog entry.

Until I can figure it out, I guess I’ll just keep contemplating this and life’s other perplexities in my normal-sized, perfect shower.

Hygge: Embracing coziness to make it through the winter

Picture this: It’s snowing outside, but you’re in your living room, surrounded by close friends all snuggling under knit blankets. Everyone is wearing oversized sweaters and fuzzy slippers, and the aroma of chicken stew fills the room. The TV is on and you’re re-watching “Back to the Future” for the hundredth time. And of course, there are candles flickering, turning what could have been a cold and unpleasant night outdoors into a cozy, comfy wonderland.

I bet you just let out an audible sigh there.

We all know this feeling. But did you know it actually has a name? It’s “hygge” and it’s my new obsession.

I don’t know where I first came across this term. It’s possible that my Amazon account knows me so well that after I finished reading “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” it knew that I needed a little something more. A concept for, when after everything in my home sparked joy, there was something to fill the space with warmth. So I read “The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living” by Meik Wiking and became hooked.

A Danish word pronounced “hoo-ga,” “hue-ga,” or “huh-ga” (I’ve heard and seen it all of those ways — can someone settle this for me?), it’s supposedly one of the reasons people in Scandinavia are always among the happiest in the world despite their cold weather and lack of sunlight. People there seek hygge all year long, and because everyone knows and lives this concept, it’s part of their culture, their way of life.

Living in Chicago — or really probably anywhere — I want to embody this concept to make it through our dreary winters. Instead of dreading the cold, I will aim to look for the coziness and even create it myself. As my first steps, I bought some candles and fuzzy slippers to make a normal weekday evening just a little more magical.

Last weekend, Adam and I went to Minnesota to visit his family. I was so excited to check out a special coffee shop that embodies this concept — Hygga Lowertown in St. Paul. Filled with comfortable couches and blankets, candles and dim lights, coffee and pastries, and even a screen displaying a fireplace channel, this coffee shop does a great job bringing hygge (they spell it “hygga”) to our side of the ocean.

Hats, mittens, chilly temperatures, and seeing our breath will be here before we know it. Other than moving to the Caribbean, we have little choice but to live through it. But embracing hygge in our lives might just be the way we can all make it to May without losing our sanity. It just takes soft blankets, candles, good food, and good friends. Won’t you join me?