now bring us some figgy pudding

Remember before you grew up, when Christmas used to feel like this?




The good news is, when you have a kid, Christmas starts to feel a little bit like that again.

Happy holidays, everyone! Full rundown to follow, including tiresome pictures of gifts that were gifted to Cal but that Joe and I are playing with ourselves.

Currently reading: "Heat," a cooking memoir. A gift from my sister last night.

thanks for the mammeries

Yesterday we got a shipment of Christmas cookies from Joe's parents. Every year, they go into some sort of baking fugue state and whip up something like one million Christmas cookies (plus or minus several thousand) to give to everyone they know. Because they are nice and homey like that. This year we got off easy--only five boxes. Upon last inspection, there was marble loaf, fruitcake, pizzelles, rugelach, chocolate covered pretzels, and macaroons. However:




I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt here that they didn't realize how much these sugar cookies look like boobs.

Currently realizing: That I haven't done any Christmas shopping at all yet, and that Christmas is next week. That settles it, McDonald's gift certificates for everyone.

the art of the combover

Oh yeah, so we did end up decorating the tree last weekend.





It's a bit smaller than our old tree(s), so we had to do some picking and choosing with respect to ornaments, but in the end we decided to go with the Chinese zodiac set that Joe's sister gave us last year. I also got two strings of battery-operated Christmas lights from Walgreens, in the interest of not having anything tempting plugged into the DANGEROUS! NO TOUCHING! electrical outlets. They're LED lights, so they're not supposed to get very hot either, which is nice. I chose what were labeled as "white" lights, for which I would have accepted any lights that were either 1.) white, or 2.) yellowish white, as Christmas lights often are. However, upon inserting the requisite 4 AA batteries and flipping the switch, I found that "white" actually means "bluish grey," which certainly lends a certain spooky spectral look to the whole affair.



The rooster ornament we saved for the top of the tree, since Cal was born in the Year of the Rooster. (Or, as some Chinese restaurant placemats will helpfully indicate, "The Year of the COCK." Ah so.)



And this horse ornament is a little strange. I don't get what the picture of the guy on it is supposed to represent. Why are his legs broken? And why are his arms tied with strings? Most probably he is being drawn and quartered. Merry Christmas!


* * *


I get very worried about choking risks. I know that probably all parents worry about choking risks to some degree, but I think that I am sort of abnormally attuned to the issue. What is abnormal, you ask? Contemplating not buckling your child into the highchair because it will only delay the speed with which you can extricate him in order to do back blows--that's abnormal. Eyeing your child's neck in a restaurant trying to figure out the exact spot to do an emergency cricothyrotomy--that's abnormal. I KNOW THAT.

Probably I am just extra concerned because I'm an anesthesiologist, and all I think about all day long is THE AIRWAY. That's how we say it too, all in caps, THE AIRWAY, the most important thing ever, in the history of EVER. Airway airway airway!

But the other day, Joe was looking at this little toy stroller that Cal has, and fingering a piece of the frame that had become uncovered.


JOE
Isn't this toy kind of dangerous?

MICHELLE
What, this sticking-out part? The fabric seat thing just fits over it like this.
(Readjusts fabric to cover the frame)

JOE
But it slips off again so easily.

MICHELLE
Yeah, but that's OK. It's just a blunt metal rod. It's not pointy or anything.

JOE
(Darkly)
It's exactly the right size to plunge into his orbit.


So maybe it's not just me.


* * *


With respect to my previous entry, I think that many of the commenters hit the nail on the head. While most of me wants to be the Primary Parent for Cal when I'm home for work, part of me resents it when it is assumed that I will take almost all childcare responsibilities to the exclusion of all else. Would I rather take care of Cal instead of reading journal articles and textbooks? Almost always. Playing with baby = fun and easy. Cracking open Barash at 9:00pm after working a full day = boring and hard. However, would I appreciate being offered the chance to choose studying over childcare more often? Of course. Would I enjoy the chance to have even half an hour to myself once in a while, as opposed to being at the constant beck and call of my patients/attendings/nurses/offspring/pharmacy overlords? Well...yeah.

Not to say that Joe is a sexist pig, because he will certainly do anything child-related that you ask him to...but implicit in that statement is that I do have to ASK him to do it much of the time. And hell, I'm feminist and all that. I went to Wellesley, for chrissake. Votes for women, step in time! I don't know if it's sexist or retro or what, but part of me does think it's different for the mom. I have male classmates with children, and I have female classmates with children, and overwhelmingly the women are the ones that feel strapped and guilty and overwhelmed...or at least we talk about it more.

It is a myth, by the way, that you can have it all. Sorry! But true! Don't get me wrong--if you work hard, you can have a lot, but it's impossible to devote as much time to parenting, work, and enriching yourself as you could if you had one or two fewer things on your plate.



So I guess it's like the art of the combover. There's not enough of you to go around, but there's a way to arrange yourself such that the bald patches are less noticeable. You just have to judiciously decide which spots are going to get covered, and which spots can afford to look a bit thin. And making those decisions is hard.

No good answers, just the simplistic observation that I'm CONFLICTED and it's all very COMPLICATED. But good thing it is. Otherwise, what else would women have to argue about with each other online?






Just kidding.

(Not really.)


* * *


Finally, some pictures of Cal from the park this morning.








Shockingly, going to the playground was MUCH more fun than being holed up in front of a ream of study material! However, Cal is down for his nap now, and the ream beckons.

Currently reading: Unless you're an anesthesia resident, you're probably not going to be interested. (OK, it's "Big Blue.")

all of the above

The inner lining of my winter jacket is all shredded and torn. I was just ruminating how the jacket lining got to such a sorry state (Wolverine fight? Freddy Krueger? Spontaneous degradation of fabric?) when I realized that I originally bought that jacket for my med school interviews. EIGHT YEARS AGO. Man, am I old.

While post-call days in the days before parenthood used to be all about napping and treats (lunch out, shopping, maybe a movie, bad daytime television until your eyes cross), I now have to plan all Cal-related errands around my call schedule. Unfortunately, Joe as an ophtho resident doesn't get post-call days off because he doesn't take in-house call, so most daytime errands and appointments fall to me. Today we went to the Pediatrician's' office, or as I like to call it, The Giant Fomite.

Most of my post-call days with Cal fall into a pretty predictable pattern. I usually get home between 8:30 and 9:30am, shower quickly (preferably before he sees that I've actually arrived home, or else he's quite tricky to disentagle from my legs), get dressed, and feed him his breakfast. Our nanny comes in the morning since Joe leaves for work before I get home, and sticks around for a little while straightening up Cal's miscellany from the night before and being available in case I had a bad night on call and need to take a nap--but usually I send her home by 10:00am or so. After breakfast, Cal and I strike out, usually to the playground or some sort of playground proxy if the weather is uncooperative, and get home in time for lunch. After lunch, we play in the house for a bit, he goes down for his nap, and I check the OR schedule for the next day's cases and do my pre-ops. Then Cal wakes up at some point, we play some more, I get his dinner ready, and then it's the whole bathtime-pajamas-book-bedtime routine.

Joe usually gets home somewhere in the middle of all this, and while he'll occasionally do some portion of the nighttime routine if I ask him to, probably 90% of the time it's all me. I mean, obviously if I'm on call, he does it all, but if we're both home, it almost invariably falls to me to get Cal squared away. I don't quite know why this is.

Certainly part of it is Cal. If both Joe and I are home, Cal will latch onto me and screech and carry on if Joe tries to give him his bath or change his diaper or whatever. It's not like I'm a better parent than Joe, or more fun or anything like that, I just think it's a biological thing, that babies at this age are very attached to their terry cloth mothers. Also, part of it is me. When you spend many hours away at work away from your child, you kind of want to be involved in all the minutiae when you actually are home, even the boring or malodorous parts. Certainly there are times when Joe has offered to give Cal his bath and I've turned him down, because I know I'm going to be on call the next day, or home late or whatever, and I just want the extra time with Cal before that.

But I think that another part of it is that I'm sort of expected to be Primary Parent. You know, I'm THE MOM. I'm feeding Cal and cleaning up his high chair and filling the bathtub and reading the bedtime stories, and Joe is calling his patients and reading for his surgeries the next day and doing paperwork. There's something so 1950's Eisenhower America about it all, only with fewer Jell-o mold salads. The only problem is, I work too, and I probably should be bringing a lot more of my work home than I am currently, in the form of reading or studying or what have you. I've groused about this to Joe somewhat, who is quasi-understanding, but replies that while he knows I have work too, he has MORE work. Which is sort of true. He does have to deal with a lot more paperwork, in that he has to book all his own patients for surgery and call them at home and get all their preauthorization info together on his own time. And certainly being Chief adds to his workload, as well as the number of annoying e-mails he has to return about WHY AM I ON CALL THIS WEEKEND, I JUST WORKED LAST WEEKEND AND I'M ON CALL FOR PRESIDENT'S DAY TOO!! But I also think that he perceives that I have less work than I actually do, because I've made some conscious decisions about trying to leave work stuff at work, and being as available for Cal as I can for the few hours a night that I'm at home.

Look, no judgments, because different people do different things and in the end what's right for one family is not what's right for another--but if I spend 12 hours a day away from Cal living and breathing medicine, I don't really feel like it's fair to come home to him and push him aside so that I can spend another hour or two hunched over a book living and breathing medicine. Maybe if we didn't have a baby, it would be different. Or maybe it wouldn't, I don't know. Look, I want to be a good doctor, and when I'm at the hospital, I think I try to be, and I try to have my priorities straight. Work time is for work. But I have to try and have the rest of my priorities straight too. Home time is for my family. This is the choice that I've made. It's OK if Joe needs to do his work when I'm home with Cal, because I know he loves Cal and he'll be elbow deep in Cheerios and red Tickle Me Elmo lint the next time I'm on call, but we can't both be working at home with Cal around. We have to take turns. And usually, it's my turn to take care of Cal.

I just bring this up because I have an exam this Monday that I really haven't done enough studying for. And yet, looking back on the past few months, I really don't know where I would have carved out any more time for the books than I did. Maybe if I had made some different choices with time allocation, brought more work home, extended our nanny's hours or what have you. But sweet baby Jesus, I have a kid, I need to be with him too. So I've come to terms with the fact that I probably won't score as high as I should on this test. It's just difficult when two of your top priorities are diametrically opposed.

Multiple choice questions aren't always easy.

Currently: Cramming for the exam. I feel like a med student.

Michelle at 7:02 PM