The paper earplug is the new nose paci.

Lily spent just about three years with her pacifier and another "nose paci" on cords around her neck.  The paci was meant to soothe and she took it whenever she felt it necessary, nothing too remarkable about that.  But the nose paci, basically a broken pacifier that Lily would balance on her pacifier between it and her mouth, was something else.  Pretty strange and completely hilarious.  Had never seen anything like it or since.  Until...

The paper ear plugs and mustache were introduced by Virginie.  These people are totally bizarre. 

(c)  Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.

40 the new 20?

Turning forty really wasn't such a big deal. I felt young, looked cute, was surrounded by people who'd made my life sweet, except, of course, for my husband who had to stay in Barbados to work.  Story of my life, the wife of a chef.  I felt like I could do anything and that 40 really was the new 20. But it's not the new 20, not for me.  Maybe 40 is the new 20 for people who had their kids right out of college, in their early 20s, and now find themselves empty-nesters while still hot, active and energetic.  I could use some of that energy right now.  I am bone tired and too old to be chasing after these people.  My kids are four and 17 months and are not considering, for one second, giving me a break.  More like breaking my back. 

I am sitting here in Barbados where the toads and creepy crawlies at night are chirping and burping and doing whatever their mad as a hatter conductor's got them doing and I am wondering how the heck I think I am going to make it on so little sleep again!  That is not a 20, that is so a 40 going on 60.  When I was twenty I could sleep three hours after a night of hellish partying or studying (mmm hmmm), open my eyes, brush the teeth, get on some clothes and stroll into the next day looking camera ready.  With five hours pasted together from all the stops and starts -- "I need a drink of water,"  nursing, checking diapers and beds for wetness, toads, toads, and more toads, a bit of snoring from the French nez next to me, and my oversaturated, never to have a kidney stone again bladder urging me out for one more go, I now wake up looking like I'd rubbed Vaseline all over my face, blinked in some sand, and gone to sleep with that white elementary school paste in my mouth.  It takes until about 11:30 am for that look to start wearing off. 

In my twenties I said funny things like, "I sometimes forget to eat.  I am just so busy," or "I just keep losing weight, I don't really know how."  I slept in, went to the movies on a whim, got funny looking haircuts that kind of looked cool, made love whenever, even wherever I wanted to (gasp!).  Now that is definitely not 40 over here.  (Imagining the look on Lily's face were we to allow ourselves that adventure.)  At twenty years old I lived for myself. Didn't have enough self-love or connection to anything really to love as I do now, to live as I do now. We have come to terms with the fact that we are older parents and that there will be some level of sacrifice to raising decent human beings.  We are none the worse for it. 

Maybe if we were back in New York with the lure of a nightlife worth committing to, museum exhibitions, gallery showings, concerts, lectures, adventures fun for the kids and parents alike, we might try to maintain a level of hipness, of cool.  Maybe in the youth culture perpetuated by the creativity, raw energy, and tension of the Big A, we would be working out, updating our looks, be able to show our children a little of the world's cultures all funneling into and surrounding the island.  But that would still, for me at least, have come with the wisdom of age.

Forty definitely feels like a beginning, but not a "just starting out in life" beginning, but the culmination of all those stops and starts, successes and failures, hideously beautiful moments that brought me to the place where I know one thing to be true. I love these people. I was meant for these people. I want to grow as a human being for these people and share the rest of my life with them. Even as they send me hurtling towards insanity or something close.  Sometimes the day to day is a real pain in the ass. We are tired and irritable and short-tempered. But the truth is, when I look at Didier, when Lily and Virginie wrap their arms around me and hug and kiss me, when I hear each of them breathing at night over the sound of those damned tree frogs, I don't want to be doing it with anyone else. There is a lot of life in my life right now and it is my experiences, getting to 40 that have given me the grace to appreciate it in spite of it all.   That's a good start.

(c)  Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Under the weather

Last week I left the bedroom to check on the girls after hearing one of them on the monitor and returned to Didier shivering, wrapped in a sweater and all the blankets on the bed pulled up to his neck.  He was burning with fever and asked for even more cover from the chill.  He had pain in the lymph nodes in his neck and seemed a bit crazy, like insane, to me.  Dengue fever.  After watching him take some Tylenol and drink lots of water, I took my pillow from the bed and told him I would sleep with the girls.   I checked on him twice that night to make sure he was OK, well, alive actually.  I had never thought of losing him, but the way he looked and the way he was acting, I felt a tear in my heart.  I just wasn't sure.


I slept very little that night as I worried about him and was kicked and nuzzled, first by Virginie and then Lily, each in her little bed calling or crying for me, sensing my presence in the room.  Even though the weaning had begun the previous evening, I couldn't bear to drop off the screaming puppy in the bed with a boiling cuckoo nut, even if it was her father.  So Virginie nursed heartily and snuggled on me while I was with her, and then I moved over to Lily's bed when she asked me to be with her.  A lot of back and forth.  And checking.

Two days later, Didier felt better and Lily came down with a vicious cold most likely caught by one of her classmates.  She stayed home with us for two days playing like it wasn't just her job, but that she was on the Amazing Race or something and could score some points for some of the reckless craziness. Then she would pass out at night and snore, hack up a lung, sneeze, basically convince me that she was surely not ready to return to her formal education.  I sat up with her too, listening to her breath, adjusting her position, carrying her to the bathroom since I thought the medication might prevent her from getting up on her own to go.  On the first night when Lily coughed out loud and nearly shook the girls' room, Virginie woke up and said, "Mimmy no night night.  Hi."  I feared that our morning was about to begin at 3:30 am, but she was just acknowledging her sick big sister.  Sending her the purest love by thinking of her, considering her.

Now the sick torch has been passed to Virginie.  The poor boo boo is coughing and has mucus caking her little nostrils, but she still refuses to take medicine or be aspirated without an unfair wrestling match of Mommy and Papa versus la Petite.  How she manages to evade two grown adults for so long is something to behold.  She shakes her head and writhes around on the floor once caught.  I feel awful waiting for Didier to finally pin her down, arms and legs finally still under his weight so I can give her the medicine or free her nasal passages.  You'd think we were going to torture the poor thing.

Ever since the kidney stone put me on the floor of our bathroom in a pain reminiscent of unmedicate, immediate childbirth, something I had experienced already, thank you very much, I have thought more and more about my life and how I live it.  I always hated being sick and often felt like I had done something bad or wrong to be felled by whatever ailed me.  But I can see that sometimes we get sick because we need to slow it all down.  Regroup.  Recuperate.  Check in with ourselves and take stock.  Now the girls, well they get sick because they are with little germ generators all day long.  It would take daily Hazmat wear to prevent them from bringing the stuff home.  But Didier and I, we know better.  It was time to slow down.  So we are.  All together.  Medication time is at 6:30.


(c) Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Vanity kills

I know it does.  I haven't had a healthy relationship with vanity, but I did pretty much give her whatever she wanted.  Since I was twelve years old, I have been lying on my side on the floor doing leg lifts while watching TV, talking on the phone, having a family meeting about the next vacation or why no one is talking to each other, whatever.  I have done sit ups my entire life and have slathered my face with pimple creams and potions every single night, even at the end of baccanalian celebration of the arrival of Friday or Thursday or hell, Monday.  I have done squats at my desk, squeezed my glutes while riding on the subway, and hauled six bags of groceries ten blocks rather than pull them in a wagon or cart.  What I am saying is that, if there was something I could do to control the way I looked, I was doing it and a lot of it.


Even after having Lily, when a whopping 25 pounds remained committed to my frame, I would get up at 5:30 am before Didier or the wee one roused and sneak out for 45 minutes to one hour in the gym.  I felt great even though I was bone tired and rewarded myself with an aloe and pete moss smoothie or something like that, I cannot remember.  You get the picture.  I took care of myself . There was a tiny bit of punishment involved, but the results were worth it.  Detoxes and cleanses two to three times per year.  Walking all over the city pushing the stroller rather than taking the subway or shut-your-mouth, a cab!  I ate sushi and seaweed, lots of salads, lean meat.  I believed I looked better naked than with clothes on.  Now who even thinks that who is not vying for a position in a magazine with a staple going through her goodies or some other zone?!  Really.


Well, not me anymore.  I am really tired.  And it is too damned hot!  After Virginie and my 55 pound weight gain, I had little time to even think of taking care of me, let alone getting into fighting shape.  We moved pretty quickly from the apartment to my parents' house where my main source of exercise was walking across the spacious foyer to a comfortable couch to nurse the baby.  I might get in some real lifting picking up Lily who at that time weighed in at a whopping 25 pounds.  When we got to Barbados, the sheer intensity of the heat and humidity stunned me into my best freeze tag position and I am just now beginning to snap out of it. 


Don't get me wrong.  I know it could be worse.  My general shape is still there.  But I am softer, as I think is kinder to say, in some areas than I'd previously been.  My darling husband said something along the lines of, "You might, perhaps, have a coating or something and not even know it."  Hmmmm.  So, what should I take from that?  It's not just about the cellulite or the jiggly tummy when I brush my teeth, I am surprisingly over those.  It's the mommyness of my whole look right now.  I don't wear mom jeans bc it is too damned hot here but I have started to see a look on my face that looks a lot like my mother circa 1979.  Cute inside of there but unable to set that lady free. 


Ponytail or bun.  T-shirt with shorts.  Flip flops.  No jewelry (other than the wedding ring as a buffer to the freaks who hit on everyone with boobs and to prevent losing my earlobe to a hard tug by Virginie).  Soft, mushy spots where, as they say, the shit was once tight!  There are no leglifts here.  No sit ups except for the just  finished watching a makeover show I can do this reps followed by weeks of Twix cookie bars in bed and the leftover chicken hotdog chunks from Virginie's snack tray.  Sigh.


I promised myself I would try a little harder.  Get on the elliptical more.  Stop using it as a playground for the girls or a clothing rack.  Snack less.  But mostly I just visualize.  And then go to sleep.  I can't do it all.  Lily and Virginie definitely think I am pretty.  That's what I am going for right now.  So I am totally hot in an alternate universe kind of way.


(c) Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.