Baby Joy!

I meant to post again this weekend, but then... I had a baby.

Meet the little man:

Put up your dukes.

He is completely amazing. He has instantly changed our lives.

I made something with my vagina that's not gross to look at! Unprecedented!

They have the same little bitchface.

He was born Saturday, 9/24 at 1:09 pm, and I'm happy to report that none of my fears were realized. I did not poop, nor did my butt fall out, even though at many times that felt like the point of the whole exercise. I did not burst all of the blood vessels in my eyeballs. I had a beautiful natural birth in my own home with my mother and my sister by my side. And I know that's not funny, or even particularly sassy, but right now I'm just too in love to care.

Of course, I also let my son pee in his own face on his first day of life, I'm unable to move somewhere discreet when I need to fart, I can't go to a pizzeria because someone might try to knead and toss my belly and cover it with sauce, and my nipples might break off sometime this week. So don't worry, there's lots of fodder for whenever I emerge from this totally surreal, sleep-deprived, sappy, weepy stupidly happy stupor.

I've decided not to use his name on the blog just because I don't want him to be Google-able before he's a week old, and will refer to him by S., which is his first initial. But you guys have followed me for a long time and so I want to tell you his name without typing it. The photo below--an art project I worked on in the weeks before his birth--should do the trick.

I'll be back soon. I have to go... mother, I guess?

Baby Joy!

Three One-Sentence Emmy Rants

After years spent not actually watching awards shows so much as attempting to frantically transcribe them via live-blog (a feat made no less difficult by my hunt-and-peck typing skills*), it was a relief to be able to sit back and watch the Emmys last night like a normal person. However, I feel the need to go on record with a few things:

1. Julianna Margulies Is Gorgeous, So Why Is She Dressed Like A Decorative Floor Lamp Inspired By Crystal Barbie? 

On the upside, the bodice really makes me want to play Mancala.

2. The Death-O-Meter Montage of Fallen Stars Requires Neither An 80s Space Graphic Background Nor A Bunch of Canadians Dressed Up Like 98 Degrees Doing A Bad Jeff Buckley Cover At A Hot Topic-Sponsored Funeral In Front of a Fog Machine

Dude on the left: TAKE OFF YOUR FEDORA. You are indoors, and you are not Wyclef.

3. Paz de la Huerta's Makeup Artist Needs To Stop Drinking

Paz also needs to cut her hair before it gets to third base.

As you were.

*I blame this on the fact that not long after he broke up with me, my first real boyfriend gave me "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" for my birthday, and therefore I now equate nimble typing with heartbreak. That, or I am just really lazy.

Three One-Sentence Emmy Rants

The Mother's Prayer For Its Son

With thanks and apologies to Tina Fey, who did this first, and better.

First Lord, grant him enough athletic talent so that he does not weep openly during gym class, but not so much that he joins a team necessitating jockstraps that I must wash.

May he know peroxide only as a salve for scrapes, and not as a way to look more like Guy Fieri, for he hath not the coloring for it, oh Lord.

Unless he spies a cut of meat from the thigh of a pig’s hind leg and wishes to alert his brother, please Lord, let him never utter the word, “Broham.”

I know I do not have to ask for an awkward phase, for it is his genetic destiny, but I beseech You, make it just long enough for him to develop a good personality and not so long that he arrives at college having never touched a breast that did not belong to me (unless he is gay, Lord, in which case sub in “ass” for “breast,” and ignore the second part of that sentence). And while we are on the subject, make him deft at hiding porn, condoms, and tube socks used for masturbatory purposes, because I do not want to see that shit while putting away laundry.

Let him discover marijuana and alcohol in the company of friends who prefer to watch Comedy Central and eat too many Oreos rather than set fire to trash cans, shoplift from CVS, and pierce each other’s septums.

Guide and protect him, Lord, if and when he decides to get a motorcycle license, rent a speedboat, join an a cappella group, or go to Burning Man.

May he be handsome but not douchey, for it is the douchebaggery that attracts the damaged romantic partners and reality television casting directors, not the handsomeness.

And see that he loves and respects me enough to wait for my death to publish his memoirs.

Amen.

The Mother's Prayer For Its Son

Transformations

More substantive post to come later this week, promise (although I did write a post about Sesame Street and other nostalgic pleasures that will probably warp my child for Aiming Low).

Also, I promise I'm getting a haircut tomorrow, so that my son doesn't confuse me with Rousseau from Lost.

Transformations

Telling The Neighbors

Back in May, I told you I was planning to give birth at home, and, being the neurotic New Yorker I am, rather than voicing any concerns about the logistics of labor in a brownstone that hasn't been renovated since Kennedy was still alive, I worried about how to break the news to my neighbors.

Well, I decided. Along with a bottle of wine and some earplugs, Jeff and I left these notes at each door:

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day to give birth in the apartment above you, would you be mine? Could you be mine?

Click to enlarge, read, and marvel at my even handwriting.

Now the only question is, how do I tell my dry cleaner?

Telling The Neighbors

Deep Thoughts

Deep Thoughts

The Notorious M.O.M.?

Yesterday I had a post up on Aiming Low about how I judge other people's drugstore purchases, and then I got home to find a box containing nipple cream, a baby rectal thermometer, and giant maxi pads. I wish I could say that this was just a fantastic coincidence--another amusing story of swag gone awry--but I totally ordered them. Because I'm going to be a mom soon, and moms have sore nipples, and brand-new baby butts that need occasional temperature-taking, and private parts that leak.

I know that a lot of women identify as moms the minute they conceive, but as much as I've always wanted children, I don't feel that way. My mom's a mom. Your mom's a mom. Michelle Duggar is a mom (and her vagina is probably like one of those wind socks you see waving outside of car washes). I'm not a mom.

Or am I?

My friend Beth made me this needlepoint. So I guess it's official.

I already wrote the existential mommy-blogging crisis post, and this is not that. You know I'm going to write about this baby, and you're going to love it, or tolerate it, or stop reading altogether and make my eyes--and my heart!--leak as much as my sore, sore nipples (guilt-tripping is the only mom thing I have down cold.) No, the existential crisis I'm having now has nothing to do with blogging. It has to do with mothering.

I no longer pull my pants up when I go to the bathroom before bed (my logic being that I'm about to take my pants off anyway, so why waste the energy?) When I see a brown smear on my clothing, or the couch, my first instinct is to lick it. I have read Rick Springfield's autobiography but I sometimes recycle the Sunday New York Times without reading it. I can't sew or type or properly fold a shirt or make hospital corners. How am I allowed to be someone's mom?

"Not mother?"

To paraphrase Keanu Reeves in Parenthood, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car--hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole* be a mother. Where is my instruction manual?

*Hey, wait, doesn't "butt-reaming" mean anal sex? I think it would be hard for a literal asshole to butt-ream, don't you?**

**I am nothing if not a critical thinker. Maybe I am cut out for this.

P.S. I'm sorry if the title of this post made you think I was going to rap. But that would have been unpleasant for everyone involved.

The Notorious M.O.M.?