Happy Birthday, Nora Claire.

Happy Birthday, Nora! from Cara McDonough on Vimeo.

Man, there is a lot of stuff you can worry about when you have a baby. You can delve into though processes you never thought yourself capable of. Like maybe she wakes up in the middle of the night for no reason when she is seven months old. And she hasn’t woken up in the middle of the night in, like, forever, and you all of a sudden find yourself wondering what in the name of God you did wrong the night before. Was the bedtime routine not thorough enough? Is she too hot in those pajamas? Too cold? What the hell are you going to do if it happens again? Leave her to cry? Pick her up? But then, if you pick her up, will she expect the same thing the next night? If you leave her to cry will she develop an attachment disorder?

The thing is that the baby, most likely, woke up because of a random sound, or an upset tummy, or for no reason at all and all the worrying in the world will have absolutely zero impact on the incident. The baby is healthy and happy and taken care of. Because, of course, you’re a good parent.

This first year of being a parent, I’ve had plenty of those moments. Sometimes they last all day. While I’ve felt much more confident as a mother each and every month, it’s really taken me the entire year to realize just how wrapped up you can get in all the concerns and questions. Wrapped up in the minor details, when you could be doing something a lot more fun.

My mother told me this one story that really exemplifies the kind of behavior I’m talking about. When I was little I went to a preschool that was a co-op, as in the parents had to contribute snacks and go to meetings and whatnot. According to my Mom, one of these parent meetings consisted largely of discussing the fact that someone had brought in Jiffy peanut butter for a recent snack. Jiffy peanut butter, people. Jiffy fucking peanut butter.

My Mom, whose sense of pragmatism is above and beyond, said she sat there in disbelief, wondering how in the world this group of mothers could possibly spend 30 or 40 minutes discussing the evil inherent that is Jiffy peanut butter, in all it’s non-organic, non-local, sugar-added glory. How could it possibly be so important, especially in the grand scheme of these families’ lives and all the positive aspects thereof? How could such a little thing matter so much?

I’m not making fun of anyone. As a matter a fact, I get it. It makes so much sense that those moms got all riled up about the peanut butter, and they totally had a right to their opinions. But I’m reflecting on my own experience here and I have learned a few lessons. Honestly, the first time I gave Nora something with added sugar, I was like, “Well, there goes the purity of her palate.” Really. Now I recognize that line of thought as, well, crazy. It’s crazy!

Everybody knows that a little caution never hurts and, in fact, when dealing with an infant, is beneficial. They’re fragile and they don’t know that, for instance, crawling off a bed and falling onto the floor would result in serious pain. And it’s important to feed your child healthy food that you believe in. And to make sure they learn the manners that you think it’s important for them to learn.

But the more time I spend worrying about the minor details - the ones that I know really don’t matter - the less time we are doing something else. Whatever else. And there is so much to do! And so many places to go!

Also, I don’t want to lose myself in all this. I’m Nora’s Mom, totally, but I’m also, you know, me. The me that I was before all this. I will tell you right now that my mother is the best mother a person has ever had, no question. But you know what? She is also the most successful woman I know. She’s a funny story teller. She’s got awesome style. She makes the world a better place.

I want to be a Mom like my Mom. There’s no time to worry about the peanut butter, there is fun to be had! After all, the good times are the ones we’ll remember.

You are good people who want to promote independent, creative projects. If you weren’t that kind of people, I wouldn’t adore you the way I do.

My best friend Jennifer (do you guys want me to post a picture of us in our first communion gowns when we were six, to prove to you the history and depth of our friendship? Because I will) is currently producing a film in New York City, but the project NEEDS YOUR HELP. Come on, everybody, let’s help the brilliant and talented women behind “Maria My Love.” Here’s a paragraph about the film (that I stole directly from their Web site and I hope it doesn’t get me into copyright trouble), which is based on a true story:

MARIA MY LOVE is about a 22 year-old woman who, in an effort to recover from the death of her mother to cancer, sets out on a quest to help people but winds up encountering situations more emotionally and morally complicated than she had expected to find.

You guys are totally intrigued. I can tell. So learn more on the project’s Kickstarter site by watching a video and reading a synopsis of the film. The minimum donation is $10. T-E-N bucks! Give ‘em 10! Give ‘em a thousand! Or, you know, do what you can.

This is the first ever blog post I’m writing from my Blackberry. Now that is what I call dedication. I’m doing it despite the fact that reading or writing while driving makes me feel pretty queasy. Hey, I stick to my guns.

I’m attempting this because we are on our way to a birthday celebration (happy 60th Jimmy!) and I know if I don’t do this now, I will decide it’s not worth it later on when I’m in bed with my latest mystery.

And it is worth it, both to give a birthday shout out and to keep you all from accusing me of not living up to my challenge. Also, it’s been worth it to test the limits of my car sickness (current status: badly in need of a ginger ale and some fresh air).

After almost a full year of parenting this child, I’ve learned a few things, and perhaps one of the most important aspects of this learning process has been figuring out how much I can get done when Nora is awake. Sure, I should be spending those hours interacting fully with her. I know. But you want the real deal? Ok. FORGET IT.

If I played with Nora every single second that she was awake, I wouldn’t ever eat! Or sneak glances at The Superficial!

But in all seriousness, at this stage Nora takes some serious looking after, because, nowadays, all it takes her is a split second to make her way to the stairs, where she rapidly starts climbing. Or to the toilet, and do you know what she likes to do when she gets to the toilet? Put her hands in. Did you hear that, Dad? Your granddaughter likes to put her hands in the toilet water. Just something to keep in mind when the two of you are hanging out next.

So I have this casual set of rules about what I can and cannot do when I’m watching her by myself and, over time, the set of rules has changed, because I’ve realized I can actually do a lot when Nora’s awake, as long as I deal with the situation the right way. Like, if I want her to hang out in her bouncy seat in the bathroom while I’m taking a shower, she needs two toys to play with. Not just one. If I give her the ladle and a big salad bowl, she’ll play on the kitchen floor for a pretty long time while I do the dishes.

Lately I’ve been finding myself doing this or that while Nora’s napping and thinking, “Wait a sec, could I do this when she’s awake? Damn straight I could!” Because when you really get down to it, the non-baby hours are best utilized by doing stuff you absolutely, one hundred percent cannot do while the baby is on the go. And yes, that includes getting a pedicure, but it also includes writing a novel and launching a brilliant career. Which I may or may not be doing. Ok, whatever, I’m not.

Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:

Things I Can Do While Nora Is Awake

take a shower
drink a cup of coffee (in a semi-relaxed state)
watch the news
laundry
do the dishes
take the dogs for a walk
run errands
have a phone conversation
go out to eat
go to the bathroom
start making dinner

Things I Can Only Do When Nora Is Asleep or Elsewhere, or J Is Home

get a pedicure
drink a cup of coffee (in a totally relaxed state)
watch a movie
read a book or the newspaper
have an important phone conversation
finish making dinner
read emails and write back
write a blog post

Dear Mike,

Hi! How’s it going? How’s Chapel Hill? We miss it there. And we miss you and Jess.

Mike, you know what? I’ve always appreciated that we tend to have the same taste in certain things. In fact, we often hate the same things, which is kinda neat. Like non-useful hippies. And music! There is so much music that we both hate! The Decemberists. The Goddamn Fleet Foxes.

I trust your judgment. I mean, The Twilight Singers show at Cat’s Cradle? That was seriously incredible, and I’d never even listened to them before. One of the most memorable concerts I ever attended in North Carolina, Mike.

And remember when we went to see LCD Soundsystem? That was radical.

So when I was filling up my iPod for a recent road trip, looking at the albums J had most recently uploaded onto our desktop, I saw this artist called SND, and I was like, “Hey J, what’s SND?” and he went on to describe it as something like “minimal blip hop” or “blip bop” or “blip rock” or something - I don’t really remember if you want to know the truth - and then he said, “It’s Mike Swimm’s favorite album of the year!” and I thought, “Ok, could be promising.”

We don’t agree on everything, Mike, like I think I remember you once saying that New Order would have been a better band if there hadn’t been any singing, and I don’t agree with you there, but like I said, I trust your judgment. Therefore, I thought maybe SND’s album, which is called “Atavism” would be full of subtle, wordless songs that I could at least appreciate, meanwhile expanding my musical purview. Score!

I was pumped for this road trip. For the first time in a long time I was getting into new music and it was exciting. I put my iPod on “shuffle songs” and just let it go. Everything sounded so incredible and new.

That is, until this one song came on. Or maybe “song” is the wrong word. Maybe “piece” would be a better way to describe what SND (what the hell does SND stand for anyway?) is trying to do.

Mike, I know you like minimal blip blop or whatever, but come on.

MIKE.

COME.

ON!

Those SND tracks, that are, by the way, creatively titled “1,” “2,” “3″ and so on, they sound like, well, like someone gently tapping a metal hanger against the hood of a car. But more boring. I’m going to admit something here, and that is that I didn’t listen to any entire SND songs. The most I listened to was one full minute of one song and I had to force myself. You know why I had to force myself? Because SND makes music that sounds like this: duh duh duh duh duh dum dum duh duh duh duh duh dum dum dahdum, real quiet. And then the song’s over.

Ok, fine, maybe I’m not the right target audience or something. For instance, I’m the kind of person who likes Van Morrison, and I think, by law, that people who like musicians such as Van Morrison can’t like music devoid of all emotion. That was probably made by a guy dressed in black, sitting in front of a sound board, smoking a cigarette, reading “The Stranger.”

It’s ok, though. I don’t get it, but it’s ok. We’re still friends and we can agree to disagree on this one point. Different strokes for different folks, huh? That’s what makes the world an interesting place. I mean, you’re crazy. But life is awesome!

I hope everything is going well and we should plan a get together.

See you soon!

Cara

PS - I tried the Penne a la Vodka recipe from The Silver Spoon cookbook and, you’re right, it’s amazing.

Hi friends.

Yeah, I know.

I KNOW!

Write every day for three weeks? Me? Who has gone days and days without writing a single word, instead choosing to watch “The Golden Girls” or way too much MSNBC during precious nap time? I totally know.

But here’s the thing. My friend, Karla, one of my favorite people in the world, recently set up a little challenge on her blog, which was to write every day for one and a half weeks. And she has triplets. If you need a definition, that’s three babies. One. Two. Three.

I have considerably less babies, but also, lately, I’ve been complaining about not feeling busy enough on a day to day basis, which is a tricky claim, when, in fact, I feel way busier than I ever did as a working person. But as you with children know, it’s a different kind of busy. I miss writing and I miss talking to adults on a daily basis, and while I don’t think the Internet totally solves that problem, it helps.

So to kickstart what will inevitably be a season of great productivity (do you like that? do you like the positive attitude?) I’m going to blog every day for three weeks. So maybe the blog post will be a photo one day and a short novel the next, that’s ok. It’s a project. It’s a goal. Yeah, yeah, no one’s going to pay me for doing it, but I will reap the rewards of self-improvement.

Look who’s already beyond cocky (it’s me). Watch out for my next post “Reflections From the Living Room Couch: A Survivor’s Tale.”

I don’t know if J and I have the maturity level of 12-year-olds or what, but we cannot get through page 22 of “The Tale Of Mr. Jeremy Fisher” without erupting into hysterics:

Mr. Jeremy stuck his pole into the mud and fastened his boat to it. Then he settled himself cross-legged and arranged his fishing tackle. He had the dearest little red float. His rod was a tough stalk of grass, his line was a fine white horse-hair, and he tied a little wriggling worm at the end.

This morning I took Mina to the vet for an EKG. That’s right. A dog EKG. A procedure necessitated by the fact that during her yearly visit last week they detected a heart murmur, something that appeared inexplicably and suddenly, they said. But I knew. I knew that the moment our child burst forth from my womb, that tiny dog’s heart began beating abnormally because she felt her world alter ever so slightly. She understood, undeniably, that things would never be the same.

Anyway, I figured dropping her off this morning would be a simple task, despite the fact that Mina hates the vet. Yeah, yeah, I know, your dog hates the vet, too! No, you don’t understand. Mina wants to KILL the vet. Then she wants to pee on the vet’s dead body and go out for a celebratory meal of tacos and tequila shots. Okay?

But I faced more than the normal dog jitters this morning. Upon checking in, I was asked to fill out some paperwork. Sure, standard, I thought. Until I got to the section that explained that “should your pet’s heart stop beating” blah blah blah, the doctors could perform CPR which is “a sometimes very complicated procedure” that involves “considerable financial commitment” and so forth. And I didn’t think much about it. I was like, “Alright, this is a dog that once ate a hot dog that was attached to a lit sparkler. This is a 10-pound dog that used to round up all the pit bulls at the dog park like a star rodeo cowboy and then sit in the sun and bask in the glory of her ultimate power. She’s not going to die during an EKG.”

And so I checked “No.”

And I felt fine about it until the tech came out to retrieve Mina. As she dug her claws into the concrete floor and resisted his advances with all her might, I noticed a sticker on her chart. A large, bright orange sticker that read “DNR” in bold letters. Do. Not. Resuscitate.

I felt like the worst person ever. I mean, the worst. Who the HELL checks the “no” box? It was a decision I’d made based on probability and on my firm belief that the vet will nickel and dime you shamelessly, all the while making you feel guilty as hell for not brushing your dog’s teeth regularly, and that you shouldn’t fall prey to their evil tricks. Because, sure enough, like 4 million dollars later, you realize that, you know what? Maybe my dog didn’t need her toenails professionally clipped.

DNR. Jesus.

So, when I checked my phone a few minutes ago and realized I had two missed calls, I knew that was it. Mina had somehow died during her visit this morning and they’d let her languish because I’m the asshole owner who said, “It’s fine! If she’s gonna die, let her die!” and then skipped off to get a cappuccino.

Of course, this was not the case. Mina’s doing just fine, and according to J, who talked to the vet, she has some kind of “enlargement” resulting in “aortic widening” and “reverse blood flow,” or something like that and needs daily medication, which, let me tell you, is going to be quite an adventure, but whatever. My Mina is fine. My little dog is alive and well. And yeah, the vets sometimes take you for all you are worth, and I hate that, but I will never check the “no” box again.