Glibbertysmidgeon

I haven’t had a haircut since April- unless you count the bang trim I gave myself in my aunt’s bathroom in Oregon last month. To say it was a hack job would be an understatement; I used nosehair trimmers. This is only one example of how desperate I’ve become.

Since moving to Seattle I feel like I have been in a steep decline- devolving into that poor, ignorant, grilled-cheese-flipping housedress-wearing mother of my nightmares. My fear of becoming this woman was the reason I very nearly skipped parenthood altogether. Partly, it’s this staying-at-home business. Spending all my time in the company of a 2-year-old means I hear too much Dora the Explorer, and very little NPR. It means I don’t have time for shoe shopping or haircuts, and many of my conversations involve monster boogers or stinkadoo poopies. Part of the problem is the move itself. The house we’ve rented is much larger than our Brooklyn apartment, but much dirtier, and there are lots of things falling off, molding, or infested with spiders. Almost four months in the house, we’re pretty much unpacked, but there is still a pile of set-up work to be done- getting the nursery ready for the new addition, wiring the computer, sorting the files the movers dumped. My life feels far from civilized.

Oh, and there’s that whole pregnancy thing. There’s nothing like wearing hand-me-down maternity clothes and floundering around like a paraplegic harp seal to make a woman feel unattractive.

On Friday I dropped my iPhone into Scarlett’s kiddie pool. Such a dull and predictable end to this, the last vestige of my New York cool.

Drifting off to sleep last night, it occurred to me that we could move back to New York if we wanted to. Kris has more than one former coworker eager to hire him, and I think I could have my old job back if I left soon. I even think we could hire our beloved nanny back with a little advance notice. These thoughts comforted me, but I realized almost as soon as I thought them that I wouldn’t really want to do that.

It’s easy to forget how desperate those last months in New York were. Although we love the city, and were surrounded by friends, we were lonely. We were exhausted, and we felt lost. We both longed for the comfort of our families. As new parents, many of the pleasures of the city were out of our reach. Try pushing a stroller down the crowded sidewalks of SoHo, or getting up at 7:00 with your rowdy toddler after staying out until 3:00 eating at Veselka after a movie or a night of dancing. Nothing turns a would-be hipster into a pumpkin quicker than parenthood.

Though we both miss so much about life in New York, we were missing most of it while we still lived there.

I had thought that moving back to the family would give us unlimited babysitting and freedom of movement I was missing in New York. I should have realized that nothing comes for free- we must give free babysitting in order to recieve. I’ve become so large and slow that the babysitting is near impossible. That works out fine, though, because they don’t let pregnant women on the water slides, and I can’t sit through a movie without a potty break, so I don’t really know what I’d do with free time anyway. Maybe I’d catch up on the news or read a book…

In the end, we were boring lonely parents in New York, and we’re boring parents- maybe a little less lonely- here in Seattle.

I am trying to accept that there’s no way around the difficulties of parenthood. Wherever we go, these kids will be there, ruining our lives. All we can do is muddle through, and dream of sending them off to school, to sleep over with friends, and eventually to college.

Either that, or put them into baskets and leave them on some poor sucker’s doorstep.