An Open Letter to My Mother

Dear Mom, 

I am craving your rice pudding. I gave you a grandchild. Give me rice pudding!

Love,

Your favorite eldest child

p.s. Please. 

My New Favorite Hobby

Since I was a young child, I have enjoyed the pursuit of new hobbies. I can't help myself! I am a nerd who loves to learn things, and hobbies are a fun way to learn a new skill. 

(I wonder how many loyal readers I just lost as a result of that paragraph.)

(Not to suggest I have hoards of loyal readers.)

(In fact, if you are a Cranky Pumpkin loyal reader, and we are not related by blood or marriage, you should probably have your head examined.)

Over the years, I have learned to knit, crochet, embroider, sew, cross stitch, decoupage, bake, cook and play the piano.  I've gardened, walked, jogged, bicycled, lifted weights and played on a law firm softball team. I've played tennis, quit tennis, played tennis, quit tennis, etc. etc. Man, I have played a lot of tennis! And how could I forget my racquetball phase in college, which was soon squashed by the squash phase. I even owned a squash racquet! And holy shit, I nearly forgot about the ice skating lessons I took as a college freshman. That was fun (mostly because the instructors were hot members of the ice hockey team.)

I could continue, but this is getting tedious. And if I continue, I'll have to talk about skiing, and I need about six or seven years of therapy before I can do that. 

(Excuse me while I take a moment to lie down in the fetal position and return my skiing memories to their emotional vault. There, they are nicely buried again beneath some traumatizing memories from my cotillion lessons.)

Anyway, I enjoyed my time in the dark room and behind the pottery wheel, but after years of searching, I have discovered the best hobby in the world: cuddling and rocking my sleeping baby. I have held many sleeping babies before, but my baby is the best cuddler and my baby makes the sweetest coos on her sleep. So there!

I suppose, technically, cuddling my sleeping baby is more of a pastime than a hobby. But since this activity has supplanted all my other hobbies, lets just call it a hobby and not argue semantics, okay? 

I wonder how long I will get to partake in this, my favorite hobby. Will Pippa still be able to nap on me when she's a toddler? Or will she decide next week that she naps best in her crib? I don't know, so that's why I am sitting here now, with a wedgie, uncomfortably full bladder, and shirt that is damp with spit up, because the baby is napping in my arms and this is therefore the best place to be. It's not like my knitting needles are going to go to college someday. 

Things I have dropped on my baby while feeding her:

• Various crumbs from pop tarts, bagels, chocolate bars, etc.;

• pad thai (which precipitated a minor panic attack because what if she had a peanut allergy? And what if the proximity to the rogue pad thai noodle killed her? OMG I will never again eat Thai food while holding the baby!!!);

• my iPhone (shameful);

• the tv remote control (which actually just slid off the chair's arm and gently nudged the baby, but still, shameful); and most recently - and bizarrely...

• a box of corn muffin mix. 

Babies are amazing, wondrous, magical beings who will make your heart explode with joy.

That is all. 

Note to Self

Keep bags of trail mix strategically strewn about the house. You never know when the baby will fall asleep in your arms. And remember, just as rock beats scissor, a sleeping baby beats mommy's empty stomach. (Sleeping baby also beats bladder - until bladder enters the "possibly causing irrevocable damage to kidneys" zone). 

On the plus side, my stomach's rumblings are probably helping the baby sink into a delightfully deep sleep. 

On the plus-sized side, if I keep forgetting to replenish my trail mix supplies, I will lose the baby weight that much faster. 

New shoe anxiety

I don't know how many pairs of shoes I have tried on in my life time, but the number is easily in the hundreds if not thousands. Well, I hope the number is not in the thousands! That is an awful lot of time to spend trying on different pairs of shoes. 

I am currently living in shoe limbo. Like most pregnant women, my feet got bigger while I was incubating my little darling. By the end of the pregnancy, I was living in flip-flops and my Crocs clogs. I understand that for some women the increase in shoe size is permanent, but other women go back to their old shoe size about six months after delivering their bundle of joy. So right now I am stuck! I need new shoes, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on new shoes if I'm going to be able to wear my old shoes again. Fortunately, the baby and I spend most of our days hibernating at home; I don't think the dirty laundry and dishes are critiquing my footwear. (And Nathan would only notice my shoes if they were on fire). 

But even if I won't be strolling the streets of Manhattan or Paris anytime soon, I still need new shoes! I've started taking baby girl on a walk almost every morning, but my old walking shoes are a bit too snug for my post-pregnancy feet. They make my feet hurt like hell, and that's the last thing a new mother needs.

So I ordered these bad boys from Amazon:

I love them! Green is my favorite color, and the green of these shoes is my absolute favorite shade of green. 

But. 

I can't tell if the shoes fit right. They might be just a smidge too tight for the toes. But I know if I go up a size, they will be way too big. This is where my new shoe anxiety sets in. Will the shoes stretch as I wear them? Maybe the shoes fit perfectly, and a week from now they will be molded perfectly to my feet. Or, maybe the shoes will not stretch enough, and I will have wasted 60 bucks on a pair shoes that do not fit. Oh, the inhumanity!

This really shouldn't be such a dilemma. After all, I have tried on countless pairs of shoes. With my experience, I should know instinctively whether or not the shoes will stretch to fit. But no, like every other pair of shoes I've tried on before, I am going to agonize and fret over whether the shoes work or not for my feet. And if I decide to keep the shoes, I will secretly doubt myself and worry I kept an uncomfortable pair of shoes just because I thought they were cute. In other words, time that could be used productively doing, oh, anything else will be squandered on these pedestrian concerns. Damn my new shoe anxiety!