The Puzzle of Parenting

t its most outcome-oriented, parenting very tiny children can feel like a game. Our one month old baby, for example, is kind of a Tamagotchi at the moment: all she needs to meet her milestones are breastmilk, burps, clean diapers and the occasional wipe-down with a damp cloth. When she fusses in the evening, we apply all of the above with increasing urgency until everyone passes out from exhaustion. The baby has no care for the finer things in life. Songs, numbers, letters, nursery rhymes: she really doesn't give a s***.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the major development between babies #1 and #2. We have realized that shit-giving won't start for weeks. And until then, I'm living it up in the secure knowledge that the Sugar Puff will forget all of this, probably within minutes! 

For a few precious weeks my whole job is to keep Puff Pea warm and full and feel her soft, squishy little cheeks and make her stop crying hysterically between the hours of 8pm and midnight. But as I go about it, I freely watch Nigella Lawson on the TV while answering emails on my phone, reading about the American elections on the tablet and loudly commenting about what a f***ing f***wit Ben Carson is and how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. 

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not ignoring her. I love her, I love her, I love her. it's just that she won't remember any of this! Which is why she should know that I am alarmed by the bags of the g***d**** clown shoes hoping to my home country. President "Bleeding Out of Her Whatever" is going to sit next to the big red button? Gof preserve us all.

My first born, of course, is two years and three months old and is thus much more advanced. Parenting her is more like doing one of those 3D logic puzzles that you get in science museum gift shops or, in the case of Vienna, at Christmas markets. 

You know the ones: they are usually wood or metal, have an appealing weight in the hand, and are often said to come from Ancient China or some other neverland where children, all of whom grew up to be philosopher generals, spent their days honing their strategic minds not by playing Minecraft, but rather by contemplating knots and pebbles in the leafy shade of the emperor's palace. Smells like jasmine and myrrh. There's elephants. You know the ones. These puzzles require you to take apart three rings that are seemingly impossibly interlocked, or move a big shape through a smaller one, or make seven triangles fit into a space that seems too small.

Getting the Noodle to do what we want (e.g. at least taste the damn broccoli; stop screeching when very happy; put on her shoes no not those shoes the proper shoes, etc.) similarly requires cunning and strategy. It requires forethought. If you act too quickly, you might tie yourself in further knots, move yourself even further from the goal. The thing to do is sit and observe the puzzle, understand its nature, and then imagine what simple, counterintuitive gesture or word might cause it to unlock, to untangle, to cheerfully bend to your will. 

Failing that, just go "aaargh" and flail about doing things at random until the puzzle solves itself.  It always does in the end. 

Remember Those Tadpoles?

Remember how we saved a bunch of tadpoles and took them home? Well, weeks and weeks later, we finally have at least one teeny weeny frog. Yesterday we also had one, which I picked up and put down a couple of times, only to learn that wittle bitty fwoggies do not like that. It died minutes later. This morning, yet another wee polliwog became a frog--apparently ingesting his tail overnight. I feel terrible about the one I man-handled and have decided it's definitely time to release all of them--I don't have the skills or equipment to care for these incy wincy amphibians any longer. 

TA-DAAPOOOLE!

Of the original flock cloud, only around eight remain*. All the rest went in one of two major die-offs. I don't know what happened the first time, which was about two weeks after we'd first installed the tadpoles in our home. Suddenly the water was a murky mess and half the critters were floating around looking grey and hollow. The second massive die-off was entirely my fault: I had run out of boiled lettuce and cheated by dropping in just a tiny bit of, um, bread. Fail.

Almost frogs (or toads?)

For anyone who cares to know, here are my major tips and tricks for the successful raising of tadpoles. Assuming you consider eight almost-frogs out of 30 tadpoles a "success": 

1. Change their water every few days. The new water should be de-chlorinated. I put tap water in a big glass jar in the sunshine for a few days, which seemed to work. Sometimes I also added a little fresh tap water, but I guess in Vienna the chlorine levels are so low it didn't hurt anybody. I reckon in many other cities tap water would basically be an amphibian death sentence. 

Also, not changing the water is very bad--I'm pretty sure that's what was behind mass extinction one. The water should not get even a little bit cloudy - not at ALL. You'd think that was fine, since tadpoles live in filthy puddles, but it is not. I'm sorry, duders. I drowned you in your own goop. 

How do you go about changing tadpole water? What you do not do is try to individually spoon the tadpoles out, because you have better things to do, like change your actual human tadpole and make lunch or whatever. What you do is take out all your decorative rocks, pour the whole mess of water and tadpoles through a fine sieve (poop<"fine"<tadpoles), and dump the tadpoles into a bowl of clean, de-chlorinated water. Tap tap tap your sieve! Those suckers can be sticky. Put your rocks and your tadpoles back in their aquarium, i.e. their big glass tupperware with no lid, which is what we used. Add water as necessary. 

How the Noodle looks to a tadpole.

2. Direct sunshine murders frogspawn. We put our container on a table next to a big plant whose (non-toxic) leaves sort of gave it some shade, and anyway it was not in direct sunlight. Also, somewhere on the internet it says that mint and some other herbs and plants are toxic for fwoggy woggies, so beware. I'd be more specific but I can't really remember and also there is Google. 

3. Boiled lettuce. Feed them lettuce boiled down into nothingness, which you then chop. You can freeze little chunks in an ice-cube tray (a whole ice-cube would be, like, five times too much for one feeding of 20 tadpoles, though) and drop them in every two or three days. Do not feed them bread. I'm sorry, little guys. I didn't know. 

4. Don't touch them. They die. I'M SO SORRY, little frog from yesterday. 

Have fun growing froglets! 

----

*A flock? A pride? A murder? A group? According to the internet, the author of one book about clusters of animals says it's cloud, but scientists use school or shoal. Let's go with cloud. 

No But Really. Ten Things I Actually Wish I Had Known Before I Had a Baby.

There are a lot of lists on the interwebs of things new mommies wish they had known before they had a baby, and I have read and liked (and "liked") many of them. They are all full of truths, practical advice, encouragement, and hilarious observations. However, I do feel a little bit like these are all actually things I did know about having a baby before I had a baby because before I had a baby I read a lot of lists about things one wishes one would have known before one had a baby. You dig? 

Back when I read a lot of books about babies.

Unless your pre-birth reading is confined to a certain well-loved tome that rhymes with Schmut to Schmexschmect When You're Schmexschmecting (which I read cover-to-cover, obviously), you'll already have been told to just effing relax and schmexschmect the unexschmected. 

Therefore, here is my contribution to the genre. Behold. Ten things I actually wish I had known before I had baby. 

1. Relax. Babies are ignorant as s***. Your average newborn has the face of yoda, the unfocused middle-distance gaze of a sage, and the eye motions of an ancient land tortoise. This may give the false impression that your young hatchling is yet imbued with supernatural wisdom, a residue of a past existence that dissipates as we grow into clunking, hormone-driven adults. 

Actually, babies don't know anything about anything. That gaze is a result of their terrible vision, and the strange stillness is because their wimpy limbs are no match for gravity. I'm not saying they're dumb. They're as smart as any of us. But their ignorance is an oceanic thing, guys. In fact, it is astonishing how quickly they actually manage to learn, you know, absolutely everything. "This is a red cup," I say, holding up a red cup. Think about all of things they have to learn before they can even understand that sentence, and that's assuming their color vision has already kicked in. 

So much wisdom.

What does this ignorance mean for you in practical terms? Well, first and foremost, it means you should be impressed as hell when your kid stands up ten months later, picks up a tiny piece of crud off the coffee table, holds it up to you, and says, "Ba ba dis dis?" and then gives it to you. And then makes the baby sign for milk. I mean, for gof's sake, it's amazing. But secondly, it also means that if you occasionally stub your toe and let loose a string of sailor-like invective in front of your two month-old, it really doesn't matter. And it also doesn't matter if, in those first three wonderful and lonely and awe-inspiring and sad months, you sometimes need to start crying and then while away the long long hours by watching Judge Judy with your snoozing child on your chest. 

Seriously, it doesn't matter at all. You don't need to read her The Economist out loud every night, even though you totally can, because she does not care. Well, not yet. Later it gets tricky. 


2. Be prepared with some baby stuff, but rein it in, Imelda. Look, you are obviously going to buy some baby stuff before the kid arrives. For one thing, you will actually need some things immediately. Moreover, that late pregnancy urge to nest and feel prepared is totally overwhelming and must be sated. But for gof's sake, if at all possible, don't overdo it. Get the baby furniture, get a buggy and a car seat, buy some cute room decorations if you must, get one (1!) package of diapers and a set of bottles, have a couple outfits and a ton of cloth diapers for wiping up drool, and then, if you can, buy nothing. Nothing, I say. There are two major reasons: 

Noodle and her daddy, surrounded by some of our
many many many baby-related possessions

One: You will need stuff that is not the stuff you think you need. Par example, I bought about a month's worth of perversely expensive, organic, argan-oil soaked baby butt wipes in a fit of lunacy during my last trimester. And then lo and behold I was told that newborns should have their buns wiped with warm water-soaked cotton pads. I purchased a fancy baby-wearing cloth, which I used precisely three times before realizing I am not nearly devoted enough for this crap and vastly preferred the convenience of a Baby Björn. As it turns out, I was just as lazy as a new mom as I was before (see next point). Plus, until I actually had the baby in hand, as it were, I didn't really know what features to look for when baby shopping. (Pro tips: Too many buttons suck. Buttons down the baby's back suck. Materials other than cotton or wool suck. Baby clothes that require hand-washing, no matter how cute, should be banned.) 

Our generous relatives gave us so many baby clothes. 

Two: Having baby stuff to shop for will give you something to do. Don't ruin the fun beforehand! When you are quietly losing your mind in the first couple months after the child is born, and desperately trying to think of reasons to leave the house (newborns are pretty useless at the playground, ski slope, swimming pool or local bar), shopping for baby stuff presents a magical opportunity for an excursion. It checks so many boxes. You get to indulge in a little shopping therapy even though your own body still looks like one of those deep sea creatures after it's been dredged to the surface. Plus, if you haven't already purchased every damn thing your kid could possibly need for the next three years, it's necessary! You need these little outfits and crib liners and baby-wearing devices! Trust me, it's way more satisfying to stroll around the fun stores with your slumbering wiener than it is to stroll to the grocery store (again) for yet another package of diapers and Q-tips. 

3. You are still going to be you. All your wonderful and terrible qualities will remain with you. You'll try to exert more control over them, you will work on being more patient, you will try to be less messy and more organized, but ultimately you're still just YOU. Your existential fears and doubts, your penchant for gin and cake, your desire to be pretty. So will your sense of humour, your smile, your intelligence and your ambition. I found that my baby gives me a lot more motivation to be a better version of myself, but she certainly doesn't make it any easier to get there. 

4. Your areolas will return to their previous shape and scope. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Give it a few months.

4. In fact, ALL your bits will return to their previous shape and scope. Well, my belly still hasn't. But you know what I'm really talking about here. Give it more time than you'd hoped. 

5. Your baby politics may change, and that's fine. If you were previously against public breastfeeding, for instance, feel totally free to change your mind. My attitude prior to breastfeeding was that women should be able to breastfeed in most public places, if they do it discreetly and bear in mind that there are some spaces where it is simply not appropriate. My attitude once I was actually breastfeeding was that everyone can kiss my butt, this baby's hungry now and I'm not going to make her eat her dinner in the toilet. What, you've never seen a boob before? 

Another example: I used to think that the reason I would want to go back to work was because I would be bored at home. God, I was a snob. It can be boring sometimes (a lot?), but mostly it is a freaking slog. Hello? Coming up with stimulating things to do with your baby(ies) all day long while creating nutritious meals and handling the unreasonable expectation that you'll do all the household shopping and chores because you have "nothing else to do?" Yeah. No. Super drag. I'm stoked to go back to work soon because any environment where you can tune out for five minutes, earn money by speaking to adults, and have a regular sense of achievement sounds like a little bit of a relief. Obviously, working can also be a patience-testing slog, but at least if you're having a bit of a bad morning you don't have to feel so guilty about it. I now believe that women who work and women who stay home have it rough, because we so often get saddled (no matter what we do) with more than our fair share of shopping, cooking and cleaning--and this seems to happen even when the intention is to split that stuff fifty-fifty. Feminism hasn't won yet. 

6. Time flies, but also it doesn't. Everyone tells you that the first year goes so fast, so take a lot of pictures, keep a diary, and cherish every moment. Etc. Predictably, that is true. Actually, I found myself thinking a lot about time in general after the Noodle was born. And by time, I mean life, by which I actually mean death--my own, my husband's, everyone's. Including my daughter's. The impossibility and total certainty of it. You know. The beauty and horror of everything. Rainbow of the salt sand-wave and all that. That type of thought. Does that sound morbid? But it's true. I thought about those things a lot in the first few weeks, in particular. As a friend recently told me on his birthday, "Ah, the inexorable march toward death. I'm with the Buddhists on this one. Don't get too attached to life, because boom." Life is short--take a lot of pictures; post them on Facebook; maintain a sense of dark humour about the castles we build in the sand. 

This seems SO long ago.

On the other hand. Be prepared for some days to draaaaag on. I mean, wow. It's an almost nutritious kind of boredom, the kind that spurs creativity and insanity, dog-days-of-childhood-summer-boredom, the kind you rarely enjoy after the age of, like, twelve. One second plodding after the other. As your baby breastfeeds you sing yourself a song of sixpence, run through your mental grocery list, daydream about something or another, come back, and only three minutes have passed. It's insane. Just to clarify, though: you're still going to accomplish mighty few of those DIY and crafting projects you planned. 

7. You should start believing in vibes. Because your baby can feel them, and will react accordingly. Not just the vibes you think you're sending just by acting calm and breathing deeply, but the ones you are really sending. Unlike adults, they cannot be fooled, so it's time to get esoteric with your inner self, man. That sounds stupid, and certainly I used to think it was, but I swear. Emotional energy, vibes, all that nonsense. When it comes to baby-whispering, it's so real. 



8. Louis C.K. gets funnier. Maybe this is just me, but I used to think he was kind of gross, and I didn't much like that he called his kids assholes just to get a few laughs. Now I think he's hilarious. I mean, he's still a jerk. But while his kids are probably not going to appreciate any of it, they should know that their daddy is super funny.

9. You may give in to electronics and noisy toys. I don't care if you live in a hut under a rock in Siberia and ply her with a steady diet of hand-crafted wooden blocks and fabric books. Show that kid a cell phone one time and she will be hooked for life. And you will love it. Writing emails and the tyke is underfoot? Pass that baby a cell phone and buy yourself fifteen solid minutes. Also, do yourself a favor and buy some of those blinking, beeping, totally obnoxious toys. On a long car ride, you can tune out the circus sounds. A screaming baby is so much worse. 

10. The only desire that having a baby fulfils is the desire to have a baby. A professor at Boston University told me this (or something like it), and of course it is something I knew before I had the baby--but now I have one I feel the full force of this truth. Being a mother is something I have always wanted. It is an ambition I always had. And now that I get to be this perfect baby's mom, I am filled with new purpose, my life feels layered with new meaning, and there is nothing that brings me greater joy. 

However. It has not supplanted to any degree any of my other ambitions or interests. I still want to see my professional life go further. I still love to read and write and craft and cook and drink beer with my friends and talk about politics. I still want to learn how to keep plants without killing them. I would like to travel more. I want to understand many branches of science better. I want to stay on top of technological innovations. I want to write this blog. I want to be healthy; I want to be pretty. I want to be able to dress well when the situation demands it. And so on.  

Having a baby just makes it harder to do all of these things. Obviously there is less time and money for each of them. If we have more kids, it'll be even harder. Alex and I just don't have space or time any more to do some of the things we used to like, like nerding out on weekends with kilos of pottery clay or working on soapstone carvings. But being parents, I think, makes it more important to try to do what we can. I want to show my daughter that you can be a mom and have a job but also have good friends and pursue your interests and be fabulous all at the same time. Okay, that makes it sound like I'm accomplishing the above, which would be a lie. I'm sitting here in boxer shorts in an apartment that looks like Dresden in 1945. But the point is to strive for all those things, right? 

Before I had a baby, I thought it would be noble of me to relinquish some of my hobbies for the kiddo. Now I feel exactly the opposite. No one (dads or moms) should let anyone tell them that being a parent means it would be selfish to maintain their other interests. I don't want to pursue my own interests to the detriment of being a good parent, but it's hardly a zero sum decision. And I think giving up my other interests entirely would make me a pretty terrible role model. Right?

At one point I would have found everything happening
in this photo alarming. Not anymore!

11. You will eventually stop googling striking baby behaviours all the time. And stop worrying about whether you are going to break your child. Eventually. Or am I just more neurotic than most people? I read so many books while I was pregnant, and for the first few months after her birth I was constantly on the interwebs doing searches like: "3 wk baby punches self in face ok?" or "2 mo baby burping normal range day" or "4 mo baby fed cake frosting likelihood death adult obesity". Also I'd go check on her milestones. Like, I wasn't concerned if she hadn't achieved them, but I needed to know. 

Now I don't even look unless it really does seem like an emergency. For instance, the internets would probably say that the Noodle's lack of teeth at her age is totally weird, but I am now calm in the knowledge that she probably has milk teeth and that they will eventually emerge. Well, let's hope so, anyway. 

For any parents out there, what do you wish you'd known before having a baby? 

UPDATE: And by ten, apparently I meant eleven. My ability to count has also failed to improve with motherhood, more's the pity. 

Jingle Bells Backpost: A Christmas Cookie How-To for Average People

In the Hunt family, the tradition of Christmas cookie baking follows an established pattern. We do nothing until the 23rd of December. Then we dither over which recipes to make, and choose at least six, of which three are stupidly complicated and involve caramelising pecans or using a pastry bag or baking separate layers or some such nonsense. Then we head off the shops, which were emptied of all their premium baking supplies days ago - we just take whatever's left.

A contemporary family of gingerbears; also an example
of inefficient and self-indulgent cookie making

The problem is that we repeatedly forget how much we suck at this. I tend to get carried away by the spirit of season and delude myself that it will be easy. That it will be FUN. We always have to do those classic Christmas sugar cookies, and of course we'll mix our own icing - we all went to college, for God's sake, surely we can make a little icing.

The other problem is that we have terrible taste in cookie decoration. What do you mean, do we need sprinkles? Of course we need sprinkles. Coloured sugar? Yes, please. Edible confetti shaped like Christmas trees? So cute!  

And since we've got all this stuff, we reason, we should just go ahead and double this recipe. And that one. Oh, and that one too. Who doesn't need four hundred thousand Christmas cookies? If we have too many left over after the party, we'll just give them away! Who doesn't want to be gifted with cookies that look like they were sneezed on by one of Santa's little glitter-snorting elves. 

Our best cookies ever.

But this year, despite our innate tendency to be pretty bad at this, we actually produced a reasonable number and variety of mostly appetizing cookies. As usual we had about 300 left over, but that's what makes it Christmas in 'Merica. 

Look to Pinterest for links to Type-A foodie websites that'll have you beating meringue and your head against your cloth-and-flour-wrapped chopping board. But if you have just average skills and average interest, look no further, for I bring you: 

The Definitive How-To Guide to Producing Okay Christmas Cookies 

Rule 1: Ambition is your enemy
The laziest and most conservative member of the recipe selection committee must always be allowed to win. For instance:
A: "Oooh, this recipe looks fun." 
B: "I'm not sure, Pippin, it says you need to make the banana-ginger ale chutney and the toasted coconut-lime glaze 72 hours in advance." 
A: "You're right, Bill, what the f*** was I thinking. Let's just have peanut butter like we always do."

Disaster averted! Pick your battles and do not overreach. 

Rule 2: Simplify! Suppress any inclination you have to do something special or "round out" your cookie menu. 
A: "Don't you think it's weird to not have shortbread?"
B: "NO." 

Rule 3: Buy pre-made icing. 

Pre-mixed icing in handy bags. Worth every red cent.

Get the kind where you just snip off the tip and are good to go. No more runny, undisciplined, hallucinogenic hues! Smart cookies use available technology and know when to outsource. It's the American way.  

Rule 4: Just say no to sprinkles of every kind. 
A: "But-"
B: "NO." 

Rule 5: Vet your assistants before they start "helping."
C: "Oh, fun! Are we making cookies?"
B: "NO."
A: "Oh hi, C! Thank Gof you're here. Can you run to the store and go buy us some more pre-packaged icing? Thanks a million." 

Promote imbeciles out of harm's way. 

Rule 6: Less is more. 
Individualistic whimsical flourishes are selfish, undisciplined and make the whole battalion look weak. Stick to outlines; straight ones if possible. Any fool can do a squiggle; it takes an expert to make hundreds of icing dots that don't look like little comets. 

Rule 7: Stick to the plan
A: "I just had another idea for these snowman-shaped cookies."
B: "Too late, we're doing them all in white outlines with blue eyes and yellow buttons."
A: "But wouldn't it be cute if they had little pink scarves?"
B: "Okay, who am I? Nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh wittle pink scawves... NO." 

And don't forget to have fun and a very Merry Christmas! 

It's good you're getting these tips in January, so you can have them good and memorized by the time it's Christmas cookie season again, am I right?