Rooful.

Eight months.

Hey, yourself.

So, do you want to show everyone those teeth you've sprouted? They're pretty great! In fact, some kid somewhere wrote a song about how those two teeth in particular were all he wanted for Xmas one year.

What do you say?

Not so much, huh. Rough night last night?

You're not alone, buddy.

That's all right. Want to show off your mad rugrat skillz instead?

I have a feeling it might be increasingly difficult to get non-blurry pictures of you, little man.

That's okay. We'll manage. Maybe blurry pictures will become our new style.

Or maybe we'll embrace the moody darkness of a dying battery.

Look at you. So much to do!

I'm so proud of you.

Food for thought.

 

Sorry! It was all in good fun, I swear!

Yesterday I was waiting for the subway elevator with Sprog.

The car arrived, but I saw an elderly woman headed towards me, so I stood in the doorway to hold it. She was a few steps away, and a few other people were coming, so I stepped in. The doors were really fast, though-- a serious-looking young man wearing a yarmulke kept the doors from closing, gestured her in. A pretty young woman stepped in and moved to the back. The doors closed, and the young man pressed the button...

"Aren't we going?" said the old lady.

"I don't think it's working."

We stood for a moment and looked at the closed doors. Then he hit the open door button, and we all filed into the staffed elevator two doors down.

When we finally got to street level, the young man held the door for the old lady, and me. As I walked down the hill, I could hear him talking to the pretty young woman.

"So... are you Jewish?"

[awkward pause.]

"Yes. I'm Jewish."

"Well... that's good, because... you look Jewish. But sometimes these days you see people who look Jewish, but they aren't."

"Hm."

There was some silence, and I figured he'd split off at that point. I saw the girl coming up past me, and smiled at her.
"I think what he was really asking is Are you single?"

She gave a slightly mortified, conspiratorial grimace and said, "I hope not!"

I grinned at her, and turned to cross the street. Which is when I saw the young man, pointedly not looking at me, doing one of those straight-armed run/walks to get across the street and away as fast as he could.

Ah, well...

Fitness.

I nearly collided with a woman walking her dog when we reached the intersection at the same time.

She glanced down at the stroller, smiled at Sprog. Then she shot me a wide-eyed look, and said, "Wow! Good on you for pushing that baby in a stroller up the hill while jogging!"

I smiled, panted, nodded, panted, and considered some responses:

Oh, believe me, he was wayyy harder to push the first time.

Yeah, the old crib doesn't need all this upholstery anymore!

Trying to see if I can finally birth his little brother, Lardbaby.

Instead, I just grinned at her. "Have a nice evening!"

"You, too."

The light changed, and I finished my run.

Blossoms.

Come see our tour of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
this past Saturday.

This tree won our prestigious "Tree of the Day" award!

It was very pleased.

(And so was I.)

Do you remember the first time you caught the scent of lilacs?

I'm glad I'll remember his.

Early attempts.

Sprog is on the cusp of crawling. I'm trying to enjoy these last moments before the chaos of baby mobility changes our lives forever.

He has an idea that's really cute. He rolls onto his stomach, and arches his back so he's balanced on his tummy like a sea lion, with his chin up and his arms and legs in the air. Then he paddles them really fast, kicking his little feet and waving his arms in a modified sort of breaststroke.

He really thinks it should work. He paddles furiously, then looks around, and you can see the shock on his face that he hasn't gone anywhere.

I've tried to help out, tucking his knees under him and lifting him on to his palms. He holds the pose. Then he launches himself forward. But then he gets excited by the successful forward motion, arches up on his tum and starts paddling.

Wah waaaaahhhhhh.

Well, today he managed somehow to scootch backwards. I didn't actually see how he did it-- just that it was the only explanation for his position on the rug relative to where he'd been before I looked away to do computer stuff.

I think he might need to work on his arm strength a little bit before he can do the classic crawl-- though maybe not, given how strong he seems when he's gotten a good hold on my hair.

But I can see he's figuring it out. He's not going to be the little warm package I can tuck into a cozy corner for much longer.

My chest hurts. It could be the farewell to his youngest babyhood. Or it could be that these early attempts are killing me with cuteness.

I'll keep you posted.

Beforeskin.

A history of my early thoughts about foreskins (!),
continued from here.

I grew up in a sex-positive family-- back before that was a thing to be. There was nothing shameful or dirty about nakedness at home. I shared bath-time with friends that were girls and friends that were boys. I enjoyed skinny-dipping (still do.)

By the time I reached puberty, I'd developed, among other things, a sense of personal modesty that meant I was less likely to want to be naked around people of the opposite sex. Still, even when I was quite young I had a good idea what penises looked like, and had seen a number of them.

But they were all circumcised.

I remember looking at Roman statuary, and coming to the conclusion that the Church must have forbidden carving penises in all their naughty detail, since none of them had visible glans. I figured it was the Roman version of a Ken doll's amorphous plastic junk.

I had no idea what a foreskin was, or what it looked like. I remember my family, sitting in the car in the driveway, listening to Dad trying to explain circumcision. All three of us females (my mom, my sister, and I) were rapt-- fascinated and confused, and full of questions.

"But what does it look like?"

"It's a hood, that protects the end of the penis."

"A hood?!"

"Yes. And it can trap dirt, and be hard to keep clean. So it's trimmed away."

"But it's a hood? Like a monk?"

"No. It comes up over the head of the penis from below."

"But how do you... how do you have sex with something like that?"

"It retracts."

"But how?"

Dad kept talking, to little effect. I decided an uncircumcised penis must look like a jack-in-the-pulpit, or a calla lily.

Well, that's just ridiculous. Of course they cut that off. How could you fit it in your pants?

I couldn't picture how men managed before they figured out circumcision. I couldn't imagine anyone not being circumcised, unless they they lived in some benighted land and had no choice.

If the internet had been around back then, I'm sure I could have set myself straight much earlier. As it was, I was in college, and had a handful of notches on my proverbial lipstick case, before I encountered an uncircumcised penis in the flesh-- a nice guy from Dublin that I used to work with. Actually, I've only personally encountered two uncircumcised penises, and the other was attached to a guy from Dublin as well (no, not at the same time.)

I was a little taken aback, at first. Sort of a "Huh, so that's what that looks like. Should I do anything different?"

But no, it worked pretty much the same. And it wasn't gross, or smelly, or any of the awful things I'd heard about uncircumcised penises my whole life. Honestly, beyond the appearance I didn't really notice any difference at all.

I'm reminded of an encounter with an English girl who worked at a crafts studio with me, here in the city, one summer about ten years ago. She was only in the States for a few months, so she was trying to squeeze every drop from her New York experience by going out to the clubs every night after work. She'd met this nice guy, and they'd gone dancing a few nights running before she agreed to go to his place.

He was circumcised. "I had no idea what to do," she said the next day. "All my tricks for foreplay involve playing with the foreskin. Are all American guys circumcised?"

The rest of my coworkers agreed: "Most of them."

That's when I started to realize that people from other parts of the world, certainly those that hail from the British Isles, have a very different attitude about foreskins than Americans do.

Still, it didn't seem to me to be much of a big deal either way. I figured it was like the differences between British and American tailoring-- do you like a snugger sleeve? A roomier crotch? It's all just a matter of taste.

Isn't it?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for some words from my day.

I got a jogging stroller!

When I got the go-ahead for my mask project, I decided I would set a little bit of my earnings aside as a present for myself-- and I've been wanting a jogging stroller for months.

Like most exercise equipment, jogging strollers are the sort of thing a lot of people buy but then rarely use. Plus, there's a relatively narrow window that they're useful (since kids don't stay little for long.) So I went online to look for a good second-hand.

I found a contender on Craigslist. The seller lives on the East Side, in Midtown-- which was great, because it meant I could see the stroller before deciding to buy it, and I wouldn't have to pay shipping. He texted me his address for the meeting.

"Apartment PHB?"

"That means Penthouse B."

"Oh, he lives in the penthouse, blah blah blah."

"Well, that doesn't necessarily mean what you think-- New York realtors are famous for calling the top floor of anything the penthouse."

"So the sixth floor of a six-floor walk-up would be the penthouse."

"Yeah. And sometimes, they'll even call the top floor Penthouse A, and then the second-top floor would be Penthouse B..."

"So you're saying it's not necessarily schmancy."

"Yeah. I mean, it's in the Fifties. It's not like it's the Upper East Side."

The three of us were damp around the edges from some unexpected Sunday-afternoon rain, when we arrived at the address. A bevy of doormen ushered us in. The security guard was more like a concierge-- gave us a genteel glance across his expansive desk, announced our arrival in quiet tones, and gestured towards the bank of elevators. We passed through an understated but chic lobby, paneled in honey-toned wood, with low-slung modern settees upholstered in cream leather.

We waited as our elevator made its silent approach. "So-- not schmancy at all."

"Hmph."

The seller seemed like a regular guy-- fit, about our age. He explained that the stroller was a little damp because it had just been outside.

Because they have an outside. A penthouse with a terrace.

I shot J a look. He pretended not to notice. Sprog didn't care.

Anyway, the stroller looked good. Despite my class-oriented self-consciousness, I made him an offer about ten percent off what he'd been asking, and he accepted. Yay!

Well, getting it folded up and on to the subway was a bit of a trick.

"You know, it's bigger than our regular stroller, but still, this just confirms for me that wearing him is so much easier all around."

"Yeah, I don't know how the two of you would have managed if you hadn't asked me to come along."

"Well, that's one of the reasons I asked you."

"Oh, I see."

Anyway, we all got home, and spent the money I'd saved on some tasty take-out. I considered it carbo-loading for the run I was going on the next day.

Monday morning, I settled Sprog in his bouncy seat and answered my phone.

It was Mom. "Hi!"

"Hi, Mom! How are you?"

"Well, we're on the Jersey Turnpike, so I'd say we'll be there in about an hour."

"You, wait. What? You're visiting?"

"Yes! We told you."

"Well, no..."

"You don't want us to come?"

"No, Mom, of course we want to see you. I just... I didn't know you were coming today."

"We told you we were coming."

"Well, I knew you were planning to visit at some point, but you never set a day."

"Yes I did. I left a message...your phone is... I told you."

"It's okay. It's just, I had plans for today. But I'll change them."

[quiet sob.]

"Mom, don't. It's fine. I'll see you guys in an hour. Sprog's going to be thrilled. I love you."

So I spent the next hour getting us presentable and trying to hide the mess and getting some ice cubes made and...

It was a nice visit.

That evening, after we got Sprog down for some much-needed sleep, J turned to me and asked, "Do you ever think your Mom is just... from some other planet, where she's never had to interact with actual humans?"

"Well, yes. Yes I do. But I'm not sure what particular circumstance is prompting this question."

"She took Sprog in her lap, and then hunched down, frowned, furrowed her brows, and started clucking at him. And then she was surprised when he started to cry. So she furrowed her brows and clucked some more. And he cried more. So she decided he must not like her."

"I didn't see that. I knew Sprog was crying, and you took him. I thought he was just tired."

"He was. But I don't know what your mom was thinking."

"I can picture the face you're describing. My sister makes that face, too. Do I make that face?"

"No, you're like most normal people. You smile at babies."

"Well, that's good. Funny, it never occurred to me... I guess I'm the last person who's going to think the face my mom makes at babies is weird. She probably made that face at me."

"True."

...

Today I took the stroller out for its inaugural run. I fiddled with straps and stowed a diaper bag and got Sprog bundled up and we headed out for my customary tour of the park.

I say customary, because I used to run that course three times a week. But I haven't been out since... just before Xmas.

Holy crap am I out of shape! I barely made it to three-quarters of a mile before I had to drop back to a walk. Then it was little bursts of running interspersed with walking the whole way home. My lungs felt worse than when I'd just quit smoking.

But Sprog seemed to enjoy the ride. The stroller seat swings a little, like a hammock, and the shocks are good-- he slept until we got home.

It was fun. We're going out again tomorrow. Hee!

Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

A conversation when I went home for my baby shower:

"So are you circumcising Tweedle?"

"I told J that since it's a boy it's up to him. If it were a girl I'd decide. And as for female circumcisions, well, I'm foursquare against."

"Heh. That's what we did, too."

"Did you hear they're trying to make circumcisions illegal in San Francisco?"

"Except if you're Jewish, right?"

"No, that's part of the hubbub-- no religious exemptions."

"That's ridiculous."

"I'm not sure I'd go so far as to make them illegal."

"No religious exceptions?"

"No. The thinking is that that'd be like allowing clitoridectomies to be performed for traditional Muslims or whatever."

"People say that all the time. But it's not like a clitoridectomy. Clitoridectomies are like removing the whole penis."

"Yeah. It's not the same. Men who've had circumcisions can still enjoy sex."

"We sure can!"

"I'll second that."

"Actually, I've been doing a lot of research on this... to help out J... anyway, I actually had a chance to talk to a few men who'd had circumcisions as adults, who were willing to talk about it. And they said that sex felt just as good after. Well, one guy said masturbating wasn't the same..."

"Why did they have it done?"

"Phimosis. Both of them had it."

"That's what [my nephew] had! Wait. I think that's it..."

"Phimosis is like if you were wearing a turtleneck and it was too tight to pull down over your head."

"Yes! That's it."

"I wasn't sure-- Mom said something about adhesions. And I wasn't sure... I read that you can cause those if you try to retract a foreskin on a baby..."

"We never did that!"

"...because that's like the worst thing you can do..."

"We know!"

"...but sometimes doctors tell patients to do that because they're ignorant."

[mildly offended silence.]

"You know, back when we had [my nephew], in Berkeley, they were already on the anti-circumcision crusade there, and he'd already been through so much, and I just didn't want to put him through anything painful. I'm so glad we waited until he was old enough to remember the surgery, and can point to the hospital and say that's were he got his penis chopped."

"Oh. Poor kid. He's fine, now, though, right?"

"Yeah!"

"You know, back when you were having him I was going to say something but I thought It's none of my business, I should keep my mouth shut. But I was going to recommend you have it done. It's healthier. Given how things turned out, I wish I had. But now I'm telling you, get your son circumcised."

...

I didn't.

I flew right in the face of my father's explicit advice and my family culture, not to mention my husband's initial feelings on the matter.

Why?

Perhaps more to the point, why bother writing about my why, when the Internet is well-nigh glutted with accounts scientific and personal and somewhere in-between, arguing that people who circumcise their children are ignorant butchers, or that people who don't circumcise are intolerant wingnuts who have no respect for religious or cultural precedent or the possibility of medical benefits associated with the procedure...

And there you have it-- I'm writing about my decision-making process because I think supplying some points between the two poles of a deeply divided discourse could be a worthwhile endeavor.

We'll see.

continued...

Unbiased.

I'm in love with my baby. Besotted. I just composed a long list of ways he's wonderful, and realized that, well, it's unlikely anyone else will be enraptured by my enumeration of all his charming behaviors, his beautiful eyes and lashes and fingers and...

I'll spare you.

But J knows where I'm coming from.

"Thanks for making such an awesome baby."

"He really is an awesome baby."

"Yeah. He's the best baby ever. I think I can say that objectively."

"Well. I can say he's the better than any baby I've ever met. Or any baby that ever was or will be. So I guess you're right. He's the best baby ever."

"He is the best baby."

Go ahead and disagree. But I don't know how you could refute such a conclusive argument.