The Kitchen Table

All You Had to Do Was Ask

Mister and I had been using instagram regularly (me, maybe too much) until Facebook announced its $1B buy-out. Mister deactivated his account, but I continue(d) to use Facebook and instagram.

Instagram has been one of the best and most fun ways to share pictures with our friends. I can post to instagram, which works faster than camera+ or flickr and a is more satisfying because I know more people on it. I can copy the photos to flickr for longevity and easier searching or to facebook for those friends to see, and I can tweet them. My nieces and one of my nephews recently joined instagram. I'd been doing an alphabet photo project with a friend, checking out photos of friends' kids and food, following strangers who post incredible shots of the bay area, dublin, ireland, and other places.

I have this blog. I have a facebook account. I'm on ravelry, pinterest, quora. Intellectually, I know that our content is not ours because terms of service for most social networks (barring flickr, as far as I can tell) gives those services digital rights. I'm not sure when we all became okay with this, but we did, the collective we of people who post photos, snippets of life, lesson plans, stories, poems, paintings to the internet. We said, sure, you can have access to all my creative personal work so that I can Like my friend's photo of her pug. 

A couple of nights ago, with dramatic flair, Mister showed me instagram's home page and the series of screen shots that included this one: 

There's our girl. One of his coworkers pointed it out to him. He was shocked, and I was furious. We were caught with our pants down. If you haven't had a photo of yours pop up somewhere unexpectedly, especially one of your child, this is largely theoretical. Of course we know it happens, but it left me sputtering. 

Mister and I are not on the same page about privacy, but the differences are complex. It's not as simple as Mister believes in privacy and I don't. He's more conservative about his privacy than I am. My father would have loved him for many reasons, especially this. My dad wouldn't give out his SSN to his doctor wihtout a fight. He resented being asked for his phone number or driver's license. I don't disagree with Mister's position. He was the CEO of a company that dealt with extremely personal informaiton and did everything he could to build a system that would protect that information. He didn't take shortcuts. It may have cost him the business when faced with competition that didn't have the same standards, but he wasn't going to break trust with his customers or himself.

I tear up credit card offers, but do I shred as a I should? I would tell my students and my nieces and nephews that photos they take on a cell phone and send to a friend are no longer private. A photo on facebook isn't private. They can be copied and redistributed. 

A couple of days after my major freak out and fury, I realize that I didn't expect a company to pick up and use our photos. I've worried about identity theft and security breaches, not my daughter's image being used for marketing a company. 

But, my daughter is 3 1/2. While I appreciate seeing who "likes" pictures of her and Rabbit and think it's kind of cool that a guy at instagram followed mister and liked a few of his photos, including this one, couldn't they have asked before using it? When does the Terms of Service ownership crap preclude doing the right thing and asking if it's okay, really okay, to take a photo that's seen mainly by friends and occasionally by others and largely flies under the radar, and using it on the front page of a company whose billion dollar acquisition was headline news for two weeks (we were in California at the time, and it was the only news people were discussing). 

To be fair, when we talked about it again last night, Mister said, "I could have done the same thing inadvertently, used a photo from someone's profile on the home page [user photos scrolled the top of his company's website for a while to demonstrate the community of users], and not asked." Most companies could do this based on Terms of Service including Google, Facebook, (we think not Flickr) and many others because users post avatars and projects and the list goes on. If you're excited to share, you might just share without considering ramifications. 

When I initially bitched about it on twitter and facebook, a couple of people unhelpfully reminded me of terms of service agreements (typepad has rights to this content, too). Wouldn't it have been amazing if Kodak and Polaroid said we own your photos, too! Who would have stood for that?

One of the trade-offs that comes with the digital socialization of our lives is the dissolution of common courtesies. Salutations in emails. Proper greetings via cell phone. Actual birthday cards. Actual thank you notes. Actual acknowledgement that while your company claims rights to all content that passes its transoms, asking or at least notifying people you're going to use their pictures is a nice thing to do. In truth, I would have been thrilled to have a sneaky little peek at my girl on instagram's home page. 

But no one asked so in a snit, I cancelled my instagram account and deleted all my facebook photos (except for profile shots which I can't figure out how to delete, stupid facebook, and NO please don't leave me directions on how to do this, thanks). I sent instagram angry emails. I considered dumping facebook.

Immediately I felt lonelier way out here in New York. I was out with Bama and Rabbit the next afternoon, playing in our amazing garden, and thought, why bother taking a photo? I won't mail it to anyone. No one looks at my flickr pictures. My connections to faraway felt tenuous. And there's the rub. I'm willing, like we all are, to give away rights so that I can like a photo of my friend's pug and they can give thumbs up a photo of Rabbit eating broccoli. And I need to be okay with that. 

I cracked and went back, creating a new instagram account. 

Clearing the Air

I had coffee the other morning with the mother of a boy in Bama's class. It was an unusual outing because parents tend to scatter to the corners after drop-off, each with errands to run, work to do, quiet time to enjoy.

We had delicious coffee at a place she frequents, tucked in from the morning's bitter cold. We talked aobut babies and blood tests; a friend of hers had a child with Down's Syndrome. We marveled at how much can be seen, and how much is still unknown, in ultrasounds. I described the differences in our CVS and ultrasound findings in the two years between Bama and Rabbit. When Bama was born, she had a small hole in her heart (undetected in utero), so they looked carefully at Rabbit's heart in utero. There was a possibility of something they couldn't see, but not likely. His heart was and is solid. She was born, I added, with velamentous cord insertion -- her umbilical cord's veins and artery were incorporated into the placenta. To me, the placenta looked like a sea fan, with three thick cords parsing the delicate web of the placenta. Kind of like this: 

(image from http://www.globalrums.com/diving.htm)

I joked about what our doctors said when Bama was born -- that we made a good choice (as if we had one) about the C-section because her head was so big.

"That's not true," she snapped.

And thus, the conversation took the inevitable course that most talks between women who have had C-sections and women who had vaginal births, especially those who went natural or birthed at home. It went to pursed lips on her part and irritation on mine.

I will concede at this moment and not again that my reaction may seem defensive, and maybe it is but I no longer see it that way. Here's how I see it.

Women who were lucky enough to get pregnant (because it's luck, sisters, not a skill) and have a vaginal birth (see my first parenthetical) shouldn't crap all over those of us who didn't. I wanted a vaginal birth, I did. Mister and I suffered through a 10-week Bradley class with an insufferable teacher whose primary instructions were to lie to our doctors about anything labor-related. I'd seen the effects of pitocin and heard horror stories of the contraction-inducing drug. I didn't want it. I wanted to do it with Mister by my side but no drugs. I wanted to sweat and scream and spread my legs and have all the juicy goop that goes with delivery. I wanted my babies to climb up my belly like joeys looking for a warm pocket and some milk. 

It didn't work out that way for me. I did what I was supposed to do. I walked, I stopped drinking alcohol, no black tea, no sushi, I swam, I went to prenatal yoga classes. My hands cramped up, I was Violet Beauregard after she eats Willy Wonka's gum except that I was filled with water. So full that my doctor was sure Bama at 32 weeks was already weighing 9.5 pounds (she wasn't). When my water broke, we stayed home until evening, per my doctor's suggestion. We checked in with our doula. I napped on the couch. I read.

And nothing happened. Laps around the hospital floors and garden did nothing. My cervix shrugged at the two nights of cervidil. I was tired from the pitocin, but I never had contractions. None. Our incredible nurse, who set up my room with a rocking chair and chucks everywhere and snagged one of two telemetry units (a walkable monitor) said it was likely, at hour 54, that one of three things would happen: a different cervix softener (we rejected this); break my bag of waters again (my cervix was solid, the doctor wasn't getting in there); C-section. We took option three.

My girl was comfy at the top of my womb and wasn't coming down. They had to pull her, big head and all, out. 

 

 

(Bama, being turned. Mister took all our birth photos; all copyrighted.)

None of this mattered to my listener. When I described the placenta, and its unusual markings, the doctors sent it to pathology because it was the most intricate either had seen, the woman's lips continued their pursed judgement. And I wondered, what the fuck is wrong with you?

 

(The nursing crew. Alta Bates. Our doula on the left in blue, the charge nurse on the right in black,
Bama latching on. We are in recovery, waiting for my legs to move.
You can't leave recovery until you can lift yourself from the bed.)

When it came to Rabbit, she said, "Oh, well, NY is C-section only. No one does VBACs." And I disagreed. I found several VBAC-friendly doctors, including my doctor. He wasn't thrilled, but he went along with my VBAC plan. Other women I know through my various mama lists have had VBACs (vaginal birth after Caesarean). Her lips went white as though I was lying, to myself or to her I'm not sure which she thought or which would be worse.

"Women who have second C-sections are twice as likely to hemorrhage as women who have a VBAC," she declared. "No, they're not," I responded. "Yes, they are!" she said. "No, they aren't," I replied, feeling petty and smug. "I have the articles to prove it!" Everyone has articles, I responded. She began packing her things up immediately after.

Look, I don't know who's right in the percentages, and I didn't care. What I was done with was having someone who wasn't there be obnoxious about my deliveries and declare them invalid.

Because that's what women like her do. They purse their lips and think to themselves, "Oh, you didn't try hard enough."

Right. 

 

(Rabbit, being lifted from my belly.)

 When I told Mister about this conversation, he said, sadly, "Women aren't very good to each other." And we aren't. It's fucking hard to get pregnant and a miracle, yes a miracle, to stay pregnant. Miscarriages, stillborns, inability to conceive, whatever. Those things plague us, even in  2012 and even in the medical first world West. Why would you look down your nose at someone else's delivery as though it wasn't a proper one? 

I told this story to Tia B who had, like me, had a first delivery that didn't go as planned and turned into a C-section. Her second was a planned C-section, given the complications of the first she and D decided to skip the 15 hours of useless, exhausting pushing and go straight to delivery and healing.

She was telling me about the upcoming C-section for one of the mamas in our group. I love these women and their babies (now todders becoming little girls and boys), but even within the safety of our group, there was still the notion that those who had vaginal deliveries had triumphed in a way those of us who hadn't would never understand.

In our mom's group of 11 women, who still write and get together and support each other, three of us had C-sections (I think three). Three of us had fertility issues (not the same three). Many of us used doulas. A couple were adamant they would not have C-sections. This sentiment is echoed across Babycenter and mama support groups and at La Leche League meetings. Before I had Bama and was swimming at a public pool in Oakland, a woman literally stalked me around the locker room until my friend cut her off, telling me to stay away from Alta Bates because they would force me to monitor the baby. They would force me to have a C-section! Ask any woman you know who has had a C-section and she will say that more than one other mother has declared, "I was going to push that baby out. No way was I going to have a C-section!" 

 There are women who have C-sections because they don't want to go into labor, they have a party planned and don't want labor to muck up the schedule, they'd like a tummy tuck after because they are already cut open. Caesareans are seen as the result of lazy doctors and lazy mothers. We must not have tried hard enough. We must not have had our priorities in line. 

I'm pissed, my feelings are hurt. An uncountable number of friends and strangers have said, "I would NEVER have a C-section!" or "I'm going to have my second and it might be a C-section but I don't want to!" What the fuck. We're willing to stand on our heads to get pregnant. Take drugs. Use turkey basters. Have sex after taking our temperatures. Do whatever it takes to get pregnant, but delivering the baby only counts if it comes out the door?

Mister and I had a birth plan we gave to anyone who passed by. It is laughable to think about how much work went into a document no one read (which is part of Bradley thought -- the hospital doesn't care about your natural birth wishes, I get that). My doula and my doctor bickered over the right way to have a baby. I kicked them both out and told Mister I didn't want to see either of them.

When we agreed we needed to have a C-section, 60 hours after my water had broken, Mister and I had 15 minutes alone at my request (a suggestion from a friend who'd had to have a C-section after doing everything right, she thought). I wept for the loss of my legitimate birth, my change in plans, my failure as a woman to deliver my baby. How fucked up is that? A C-section has become synonymous with not being a real woman and mother and we've all bought into that bullshit. 

We tried and it didn't work, for whatever reason. You're right, Bama and Rabbit didn't shoot out of my vagina into Mister's arms in the warm water bath in our own apartment. They didn't slip down in a sluice of vaginal muck into my doctor's arms at the hospital. Both were pulled from my belly and then handed to me wrapped like swaddled apple dolls. They are beautiful and healthy and alive. That was and is what was paramount.

But, none of this matters to those who purse their lips and sit in judgement because you will see conspiracy in all of this and you can't reason with a conspiracy theorist. So, fuck you and your pursed lips. I don't have to reason with you because you don't want to hear anything but what you already believe.

(Note: The unlucky person in this post is not the sole object of my post. She happened to be the last straw for me on this topic before I burst.)

B's, Baking, Blueberries

Mister's college (high school?) friend, Nora, came to visit last year, leaving behind a Mr. Potato Head who's since been joined by the Missus (thanks, Uncle Nellie!). She blogs over at Nonlinear Girl but is, of late, on an instagr.am kick. 

Nora started a #365 #alphabet project at the beginning of the year. A photo a day following hte alphabet. Which means 14 photos of A, B, C items until the year is over. I jumped on the train immediately. Some photos have been better received than others, which isn't surprising.

Some are better planned, like the blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History. 

And while I've been talking about baking scones for a week or so, because I'm baking more regularly overall, this was more of a happy accident. 

B/4: baking (she helped mix the flours and pat the dough out into shape, then cut the scones from the dough)

 

B/5: blueberry scones

[The recipe is from Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of the Rose Bakery. The bakery is in Paris. I like the sipmlicity of many of the recipes, including the scones. I modified this one, which asks for 3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour plus a handful of another flour -- whole wheat or cornmeal. I used 1/2 cup of buckwheat, 1/2 cup of barley flours, 2 1/2 cup AP, and handfuls (really, about 1/2 cup) of oat flour. We don't have any fresh blueberries on hand, so I used frozen. We bathed them in flour to help with sticking. The scones are fabulous.]

Where We Went: Vermont

For Thanksgiving, we boarded the Amtrak Vermonter and headed to Norwich to see one of our favorite families. 

We left a pretty cold New York for a very cold Vermont. Snow started falling about an hour after we arrived. By morning, we had enough for sledding. But no clothes for Bama as I'd planned to get her snow gear up there as I had last year.

Luckily, the Ms are dialed into the town. Friends offered to let us use a suit, a jacket, and boots (ours wouldn't arrive from Lands' End until after we returned to New York). Wow! Bama wore the pants every day, even as the snow began to melt and drip in the warming air. There was enough on the playground to make snowpants feasible. I think, though, that it could have been 90 degrees and she would have insisted on wearing the suit she was so excited. (The friends, it turned out, didn't just loan the suit, they gave it to us. BaMa says there's a great tradition of handing down in town. The kindness of strangers.)

 

The village green is about a block from the house, next to the school, adjacent to the park, and all things good.

At Monshire Museum of Science, Bama explored airplay. This is one of several tables with tubes and airflow thrusting balls about. There's also a very cool table that does something similar, but with a maze inside. By opening or closing windows on the edge of the table, The child's choices affect the path the balls take. It's pretty cool, even if she doesn't get what is happening right now.

Rabbit explores one of the bubble tables. 

And here, he spins the wheel to make the caldera flame up or cool down. 

Baby snapping turtles, part of the rotating water exhibits on the first floor.

Insane and amazing leafcutter ants. Did you know there are multiple sizes and jobs? Soldiers are freaky big, with powerful heads and bodies that tower over the workers.

Montshire is one of those local spots that make you feel lucky to have it. In the bay area, the Exploratorium, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and even Habibot are similar (the latter are not quite the same, as they are more strictly play spaces)

Montshire is worth a visit if you're in the area. For girls, it's an especially important destination. Dr. Ladyfriend, with a PhD from MIT, a postdoc with the NSF, and now a position at Carnegie Mellon, said she was on a diversity outreach board listening to presentations about potential fund allocations. The problem, we agreed, is that college is too late. Girls need to be encouraged early to pursue math and science (even if they don't choose those areas for a career) because they continue to track out of it by high school. By the time they get to college, many of them lack the math or science background to continue -- unless they are serious about science and doing additional coursework as some friends have done. 

 

Happy Hack Hack Cough

This about sums up our past week. Bama went down with a massive fever and some vomiting, followed by broken voice that she whispered through, into an ear infection. Mister took her to see our pediatrician, along with a dozen other kids, on Christmas Eve. 

In the meantime, Rabbit and I tried to stay on teh side of the healthy while Bama and Mister struggled through the week. He has, so far, not succombed to his usual winter bronchitis (or, if we're really lucky, pneumonia). I'm not a very good co-pilot when he's sick because I am up every few hours in teh night, and less sympathetic in the day. I'm working on it. But, Mister says he loves me anyway. :)

The ham I picked up from Dickson's Farmstand is still uncooked, adn we never picked up the crab from Whole Foods. It took me a few minutes, okay, a couple of hours, to adjust ot our new Christmas plan: we're all sick and we're not eating anything but soup. By Christmas Eve, I was down, too, with a sinus infection that kept me up (I've taken three or four hot showers a day just to clean out my nose). And Rabbit was heading south fast.

By Christmas Day, Bama was on the mend, thanks to antibiotics, but the rest of us ... last night, I headed to NYU ER because of my own ear infection. So painful I couldn't sleep. In and out of NYU in about 15 minutes and then I took a long, ridiculous walk a mile in the cold to an all-night pharmacy. I thought my ear would split open. 

It's been a rough week with no end in sight. The sitter came today so that Mister and I could loll about in our cave of a room. Me, with my ear to the pillow hoping for more draining and less painful hiccups, and Mister resting his lungs. Upstairs, Bama and Rabbit are, despite feeling crummy, playing with each other, playing with their Christmas presents, and eating broccoli for dinner. 

Here's hoping for a healthy New Year! 

 

Rainy Day Indoor Play

The Children's Museum of Art moved from the east side to the west side at the end of September. We'd never made it last fall, or winter, or summer, to try out the drop-in art classes. But now that it's a little closer, so close we spent two hours in line waiting for Bama to become a Baby Tiger, we've made it, GASP!, twice. 

The first time we went was nearly our last. The place was crammed in spite of its three floors of art areas well-maintained by an incredibly patient staff. Art for 45 minutes or so followed by frenetic but fun music featuring Tom, CMA's early childhood program manager, and Annie, one of the teaching artists. They have great chemistry and fabulous rubbery faces. Drop-in ends with a story. It's all a bit fast-paced for me, but it's also close and Bama loves art so ...

We went again yesterday.

It was busy, but not mayhem, and we saw friends from Bama's school, which made it more fun. They both got to have a drum, even though Rabbit opted to bang and lick his.

Bama can't get enough music. She loves her birthday guitar, she loves these drums. She made it clear that we are lacking a drum, a tall drum, in this house and that must be remedied. She put it on her Christmas list to Santa.

 

Ferry Fun Sunday

I have a list of things to do before we leave NYC that last year, when we were to be here for a year, seemed necessary but unwieldy. On it, sledding in a park. (Last year, I tried to take Bama when I was 38 weeks pregnant after the first blizzard. It didn't happen.)

On the list: Staten Island Ferry. Like all good local "things to do," in New York or elsewhere (I still have not been to Alcatraz except to work a catering event at it; Coit Tower when I was 18), most of our New York friends have never done the ferry. 

But, with kids especially, it's genius. For starters, it's free. Then, you get an excellent view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (still free). And, you get to see Roosevelt Island, cruise through the water, and you can have a cup of coffee while you're on board.

 

Bama and friend O saying good-bye to Manhattan.

Rabbit: I like this bench. I like this boat. I like you!

The gaggle on our return. O and M, Bama and Rabbit. 

Post ferry, post Shake Shack, 1 Train Uptown return. 

Here's the last bit of genius regarding the ferry. You never need get wet or snowed upon. Take the subway, dash 15 yards to the ferry building door, board. Done. 

At the other end, get off (indoors), walk 100 yards, make a right, pass the fish tanks (fish tanks!), and get back on. Still indoors. Still free. Still so awesomesauce I'm giddy.

Aunt Nancy's Pajamas

Our Aunt Nancy lives in Paradise. It's an aptly named place. She's named the local deer. It snows buckets. It's away from everything but not too far. Perfect.

She came to visit when Bama was born, braving the East Bay freeways and streets she preferred to avoid so that she could play pat-a-cake with her.

So, Aunty Nancy has a frog problem. Maybe problem isn't the right word. She's got a frog thing. Imagine her thrill to find frog flannel in pink and green! She made pajamas for all of her grandchildren, the neighbors' kids, and Bama and Carver.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to get them into their jammies at the same time for photos. But! We did it!

Too much love!

Legos.

Funny.

Pumpkin 101

This year was the 32nd annual pumpkin carving hosted by my stepmother. For years, she and my father had people over to show off their Halloween costumes and carve up pumpkins into some pretty amazing jack-o-lanterns. My dad did a UPC bar code once, my grandfather used a salad bowl of veggies to embellish his. Grandpa Hans' were almost always the most amazing. He had an incredible gift for creating with his hands.

Because we're in New York, we last year and now this year's party. To keep us in the loop, Nana sent us a care package of Halloween awesomeness that included carving tools, a pumpkin candle, and some embarrassingly funny Halloween visors that Bama resolutely wants to keep forever. I've been doling out glow sticks, but I put the chocolate foil ghosts and ghouls into our fall window. (She didn't know they were candy but the neighbor's daughter did.)

We needed to get crack-a-lacking on our pumpkin, so after Cici and I met for coffee, she came back to visit and chronicle our pumpkin carving extravaganza. 

Bama's class had cut open pumpkins, lemons, avocados, and some other foods to see what colors and seeds were inside. Once is not enough. We pulled the top off our first, and immediate oohs and aahs!

What kind of eyes do we want? I asked. I drew samples on the paper and she chose.

The visors! 

Seeds, pumpkins, silly jack-o-lantern.

We also cut open a pie pumpkin. The inside isn't really scoopable. After a few minutes tug of war with the top, we got inside and looked ...

Hmmm. Mama, what could you be doing?  

Cici and Bama took some photos of me lounging ...

 ... and coming in for a smooch.

Ha! I see you!

Preparing the Monster

By now, you might have seen Bama practicing her scary. She learned how to Aarh like a monster from The Backyardigans (what, don't judge).

She wanted to be a monster, furry, blue. I lucked out and found the costume. But it needed tweaking. She needed bell peppers, for one thing.

Because she was a monster who eats bell peppers, after all.

She needed a tail, she said. She suggested stuffing tights, I offered to attach pom poms. In  the end, I watched a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones and whipped up a dozen pom poms and an i-cord.

 The monster has a sidekick. The garden gnome who grows bell peppers. I used a tutorial from here to whip up a hat the night before. (She used this tutorial to create her pattern. The sizing, to be clear, is for a toddler. It fits Bama perfectly. I can wear it, but would probably make it an inch bigger all around if I did.)

The gnome doesn't have eyebrows or a beard. Maybe next year when he's walking around. He did score a belt (felt) and gardening tools -- the turquoise is a trowel and rake. They are  stitched together and velcroed to the belt, which is also velcroed. The belt buckle is another piece of felt I cut into a square, then cut two smaller rectangles out of and slid onto the belt.

The gnome takes a break. I sewed his pieces up in the morning. A more ambitious and organized mama would have been on it earlier, and would have used this velvet to make a snail shell. Planning for next year!