Dance first!

Every day, my son's teachers write a few lines about how his day was. Here's his report from yesterday:

"Loved to dance with his friend. Went [sic] I said "Snack time" he answered "Dance first"*

Indeed. One should always dance first.

* (Note that my son loves music more than anything, except maybe trains or books or his grandmothers. )

Unnecessary play, and an a-ha moment.

About a week or so ago, I attended Web 2.0 Expo. Lots to talk about there, but that's not what's important right now. What is important is something that happened after the conference one day. Something that had nothing to do with the conference, and yet it did.

On Thursday of the conference, I left early to go to a meeting at my son's school for the parents of kids in "junior preschool." The director of the school, Rachel, has these meetings about once every three months to give us a chance to vent about what little monsters our children are. Ha ha. Not really. The meetings are to talk about child development, and anything else we have on our minds. On this day, the topic was "The Necessity of the Unnecessary in Play," based on a newsletter article Rachel had sent us recently.

So Rachel, a very cool woman who has cropped white hair and great African jewelry, started out the meeting, as per usual, by showing about eight of us "junior preschool" parents video of our kids. And there, right off the bat, was my son, building a Lego tower. We all watched as my son's tower kept breaking apart, pieces flying off out of camera range. He continued to rebuild it, unperturbed, while I waited for him to scream in frustration, which is what he would do if either of his parents were in earshot.

But no, he just kept working on it, even though it broke again and again. I couldn't believe it. "He's so focused," said one of the other parents.

Then Rachel pointed pointed out that my son wasn't building a tower. He was just building. Just building, for the sake of building.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had just come from a conference that was all about social networking, and blogging, and Twittering--all for a purpose, whether that purpose was to get recognition, or sell something, or make a fortune, or whatever. And I had been drinking the Kool-Aid. But now I thought, When was the last time I did something just for the sake of doing it? When was the last time I wrote something just to be writing, and not to meet a deadline, or sell books, or get people to link to what I had to say?

When was the last time I watched a movie without thinking about the review I was going to write? Went for a walk without calculating how many calories I was burning? Helped someone without hoping to be thanked? Or, most poignantly for anyone dealing with infertility, when was the last time I made love without trying to get pregnant? When everything you do has a goal, your whole life is living in the future, and you don't ever get to play, and you very rarely have much fun.

"Children aren't busy," I once heard someone say. Yes. And I'm jealous. I want more Legos, and fewer deliverables, in my life. I want more fun.

Evacuation over. All is well.

Well, I feel kind of dumb. I arrived at daycare and hurried into the office. Everyone was working calmly. "Is everything OK?" I asked. "Yes," they said. I couldn't even tell if they knew what I was talking about.

As it turned out, everything was OK. The kids were OK, the teachers were OK, the staff was OK. No one cried or anything, not even the adults. In fact, they were all back in their rooms within an hour.

Now, I would have known this if I had been receiving my email, but my ISP's email servers chose today to crash. Here is the email I should have received, if my soon-to-be-ex ISP didn't suck:

We got the all clear. The suspicious backpack has been removed. We're back in our classrooms safe and sound.

So we had our toddler parent meeting as scheduled. We talked about tantrums, and watched videos of our kids playing. And that was that.

Another milestone reached (Silicon Valley edition).

The scene: The curb outside my son's daycare. I was about to start my ignition when my son piped up from the back seat. "Apple! Apple!" he said. I looked in the direction he was pointing. No apple. Only car.

And then I saw it.

The white Apple Computer sticker in the rear window of the car in front of us.

Toddler developmental milestone reached: Logo Recognition.

I didn't know whether to be proud ("My son can recognize corporate logos. Can yours? No? Oh, I'm soorrrrryyyy..."), or deeply frightened. Because other than a single iPod, we don't own a single Apple product.

Salt on the wound.

When I went to pick up Cami from daycare today, I noticed that one of the other moms was obviously pregnant. Cami's teacher then rattled off the names of all the other moms in his class who are pregnant with #2.

Shoot me. Just shoot me now, I wanted to scream. I have failed as a woman. Instead, I just stood there and smiled, hoping that she didn't notice my moist eyes.

I suppose this kind of thing is inevitable, but did I have to confront it today?

In other news, here's a great article from the New York Times about the discrimination workers face when they have to take care of a sick child or other family member. A subject I'll address more, when I'm not so tired.

How to make a working mom feel like crap.

My son knows exactly how to buy me a ticket to a Guilt Trip, First Class.

Until recently, we had no problem with the morning day-care drop-off. (OK, that's not exactly true: the first month was HELL, but that was back in September. ) We based this delusion on the fact that Cami would run to the toys and books, and begin playing. He'd even sometimes point to the door and wave "bye-bye" to us.

Well, the first rule of parenting is "Never get too comfortable." Our Golden Age of daycare drop-offs ended about 3 weeks ago. Now, as soon as we make a move toward the door, Cami begins screaming bloody murder.

My husband, who has been doing the drop-offs, told me about this new phenomenon, but I didn't quite grasp the implications. (I was choosing to forget those days in September, when I would walk to the car in tears, and Nima, off on a business trip, didn't "get it.")

This morning, I took Cami to daycare. All was fine--despite his insistence on having his binky and lovies, and on my reading him the same book three times--until I told him I had to go to work. He began crying and hurled himself across my lap. As I disengaged him and slunk out of the room, telling them that I loved him and would see him at 5, he began shrieking.

All I could think of is the email Nima sent me after his first day care drop off, back in September:

Let me just say, that regardless whether you're a mom or a dad, until you drop your child off in a foreign place and watch his eyes swell up with tears and the piercing shriek of his discontent fill the hallways out to the roadside, you do not know misery.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. I suck.

What worries me today.

My son's favorite teacher is in the hospital. We don't know what's wrong, other than that she has very high blood pressure.

Yesterday morning, Cami hit me for the first time. Apparently I wasn't getting him his breakfast fast enough. He didn't hit me very hard--a light tap, really. But still. All sorts of things went through my mind, most of them culminating in his eventual incarceration at the age of oh, 5.

I got down on my knees, took his hands in mind and tried to make him look at me.

"No, Cami," I said. "We don't hit. Mommy doesn't like that." All the things you're supposed to say when confronted with a discipline issue.

Last night, after his bath, as Nima was trying to give him a hug, Cami kind of slapped him on the head. And then looked at his father to check his reaction. Again, "No, Cami. We don't do that." Very serious tone. Very serious face.

Is he testing us because that's what a 19-month-old does? Or because he misses his teacher, and when you're 19 months old, you don't understand why someone you love suddenly disappears?

Why my mind reels this week.

My son Cami is only 19 months old, so it awhile before he heads off to college. But whether I’m dropping him off at daycare or helping him someday unload boxes into his freshman dorm (if he’ll let me) the only way I can wave goodbye to him without completely losing my shit is by trusting that school will be a place of learning for him. Of safety. Not of violence.

Last Monday was every parents’ worst nightmare. It was certainly mine. In the days that followed, I found myself drawn to articles about the shooting, but I couldn’t finish them. I especially couldn’t read the personal details of the victims. Because every time I did, my next thought was “What if that were…” and then I was in one of those classrooms and seeing the face of my son. And I couldn’t read any further.

My husband and I “pulled the goalkeeper”—that is, I went off birth control—in March 2003, when I turned 40. This was before we were even married, before he had even proposed. We turned to fertility treatments in January 2004. They worked, sort of: I got pregnant. And then I miscarried at 8 weeks, after seeing the heartbeat of the fetus we had taken to calling “Peanut.” One month later, I found out I was pregnant again, and then miscarried a few days later. We went through nine more months of infertility treatments before conceiving Cami on New Year’s Day of 2005.

It’s not clear that we’ll have any more children. We’ve been trying to conceive a brother or sister for Cami since he was six months old. On April 5, we learned that our second round of IVF had failed: none of four embryos had kept developing. I know how I felt about those little groupings of cells. I know how I feel about my son. I can’t imagine how the parents of the Virginia Tech victims feel. I can’t imagine how the parents of Cho Seung-Hui feel. I can’t go there. I can’t afford to go there.

I don’t want to be a “helicopter mom,” hovering over Cami for the rest of his life. Intellectually, I know that I can’t protect him from totally random events. (In the area where we live, some people consider getting into the right preschool an act of God.) But if I could drive him to school in an armored vehicle and stand behind him with an Uzi, I would.

The first week I dropped Cami off at daycare, I could hear him crying as I walked to the car. I felt like the world's worst mother. My husband, who was on a business trip at the time, didn't get why I was calling him in tears. Then he came back, and he got drop-off duty. He got it. But things got better. Now when we drop him off, my son waves and points to the door, dismissing us.