Elmo in the White House

Snookums and I are big fans of that Sesame Street episode where the First Lady plants a vegetable garden with Elmo and some racially balanced toddlers. So the other day when I was trying to convince Snookums to eat her salad, I said, "Eat it all up so you can grow up big and strong like Mrs. Obama."

"Where's Mrs. Obama?" Snookums asked.

"She's in the White House," I answered.

"What's she doing?"

"She's having dinner with the President," I said.

Snookums shouted, "She's having dinner with Elmo!"

I Am A Man

Recent conversation with Snookums, now 2:

Snookums: You a little baby.

Joan: No, honey, I'm all grown up. I'm a woman.

Snookums: You a man.

Joan: No, I'm not a man, honey. I'm a woman.

Snookums: YOU A MAN!!!!

Snookums' Subpeona

My daughter is lovely. She is also litigious.

Shortly after I uploaded this photo to my Facebook page, a process server appeared at the door and shoved a document at me. Snookums was suing me for . . . you guessed it, invasion of privacy.

I went over to Snookums, who was very busy screwing and unscrewing the lid of a jar. "Snookums!" I said. "This is my house, my computer, you're my daughter. You have no right to privacy!"

Snookums gestured out the window at the sound of a dog barking. "Woof woof! Woof woof!" she shouted.

The atmosphere at home has grown tense. I have left the pictures up. Meanwhile, Snookums has updated her Facebook status to "It's Complicated."

So Glamorous!

So tonight I was walking home from the subway, down a small side street. There was no one else on the street except for an unexceptional-looking older fellow who resembled R. Crumb.

As he walked by me, he said, "Oh gee, you're sooooooo glamorous."

I'd say his voice was dripping with sarcasm, but it was more like soaked. More like flooding with sarcasm. Like, my-living-room-ceiling-has-caved-in-and-my-upstairs-neighbor's-bathtub-is-falling-through sarcasm.

I said, "What?"

"You're just so glamorous I can't believe it," he sneered. "I guess you think I should be asking for your autograph or something. You're soooooooo glamorous."

Thanks for bringing me back to Earth, crazy man. 'Cause you know, I was feeling pretty glamorous there for a minute, in my stained trenchcoat, Payless shoes and Goodwill handbag.

Thanks for keepin' it real.

Electronic Babysitter, My Ass

When I was pregnant, my feelings about kids and TV were just like every other overeducated upper-middle-class mom's: "My child isn't going to watch TV! No sirree!"

Since having Snookums, of course, I've done a total 180. Now I'm like, "Let's turn on the TV and see what's on! Then I can have five minutes to myself."

Only problem is, IT DOESN'T WORK.

Snookums will look at the screen for 30 seconds max, then she runs back into the kitchen shrieking, "Mami! Mami!" and clinging to my leg like a barnacle. Meanwhile, I'm either a) pouring a boiling pot of spaghetti into the strainer, or b) holding an electric drill in my hand as I try to childproof another knife drawer.

I've tried Sesame Street, Curious George, even those dumb Baby Einstein videos with the hand puppets. She's indifferent to all of them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends NO TV at all for the first two years of a child's life. I remember reading that right after Snookums was born and thinking, "Oh, no! Guess I'll have to stop watching Charlie Rose while Snookums is nursing!"

Nowadays, of course, I'll watch back-to-back episodes of Boston Legal or Criminal Intent while I try to get her to go to sleep. Bring on the inappropriate language, bloody corpses, guns . . . none of it makes any difference.

Maybe full-frontal nudity? Except that would probably just make her hungry.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today's my birthday. I'm . . . fortyish.

How did I "celebrate"? With 90 minutes of conference calls, a visit to the pediatrician to determine that Snookums did not have swine flu, a greasy gyro purchased on the street, and a couple of glasses of cheap red wine.

I'm not in much of a celebratory mood, seeing as I found out yesterday I'm not pregnant, despite having transferred five fertilized embryos into my aging womb 12 days ago.

Indeed, I'm downright bummed. Not to mention broke. But I'll get over it.

And until I do, I'll keep drinking this cheap wine.

Beam Knock Me Up, Scotty

So I'm doing IVF now and yadda yadda yadda. (Just for the record: We did not have any help when I got pregnant with Snookums, even though I was 41 and hadn't been trying for that long. But that was two years ago, so there you go.)

This morning I had my egg retrieval, otherwise known as "Now, just get all woozy and cozy and go to sleep for a few minutes while we stick a needle up your hoo-ha and suck all your eggs out of you! Oh, and by the way, that'll be an extra $500 for the anesthesiologist on top of the $4,500 you already paid."

I'd been a little freaked out by the idea of this whole thing -- and not just the money, which was bad enough. But I kept picturing either salmon roe sushi and those deliciously salty little red circles exploding, or a spaceship with aliens with big cat-shaped eyes probing me and using my embryos to colonize Jupiter.

Anyway, they got 23 eggs. My doctor was practically clicking his heels together, so I guess that's an unusually high amount. Now I have to look forward to Zany Dad giving me painful progesterone injections in the ass for the next couple of weeks, possibly longer. And we'll do the "transfer" -- otherwise known as, "Now we'll just shoot the fertilized embryos back inside you! And by the way, the doctor's fee is $4,500, cash only!" -- on either Thursday or Saturday, depending on how busy the sperm and egg have gotten in the meantime.

I told my doctor to leave the test tube in a darkened room with some R.Kelly playing. He thought that was funny. But he didn't seem to like the joke about aliens.

Just Call Me "Octomom 2" -- Or Not

As I may have mentioned, the third round of intrauterine insemination (IUI, otherwise known as Ai Yi Yi!) failed. So now we're embarking on IVF, otherwise known as creating a sister or brother for Snookums in a test tube.

My sister, who's a labor and delivery nurse, asked me how many embryos my doctor was going to "transfer" (this is a euphemism for how many fertilized eggs are they going to stick inside me).

"Oh, I don't know . . . Seven?" I said, uncertainly.

A few days later, she called me back in a panic.

"I'm really concerned about the fact that you're having seven embryos transferred," she said. "A lot of obstetricians I work with think this is totally unethical! Have you thought about the fact that you'll probably have to have a reduction?" (That's a euphemism for aborting the extra embryos so that you don't end up like Octomom.)

So the next time I saw my doctor, I asked, "How many embryos did you say you were going to transfer?"

"There's no upper limit," he said. "It depends on how well they do in the lab. For someone your age I usually transfer three or four. The most I've transferred is six, and that was for a friend of mine who's now pregnant with a singleton."

So that was a relief. But in the course of all this, I made the mistake of Googling my doctor, Mitchell Essig. Should I be upset about this clipping I found?

Enough With the Pretentious Names Already

One of the most vile cultural trends I've noticed recently -- besides the use of cell phones as walkie-talkies -- is parents giving their kids Irish last names as first names.

Over the weekend, I was at a children's party thrown by the mothers' group I belong to, when I heard a father say to his son, "Hey, bro."

Now, that's casual, I thought. Then I realized he meant it literally. Not that his son was also his brother -- that would be gross -- but that his son's name was Brody, as it said on his little nametag.

Boys named Brody, Brady, Riley and Murphy. Girls named Wiley and Addison (isn't that the disease JFK had?). At the same party where I met Brody, I met a baby boy named Beckett. I have yet to meet a boy named Joyce -- but I did meet one named Killian the other day.

I say, if you're going to give your kid one of these Irish names, why not go all out? Name him or her McGillicuddy. Or O'Shaughnessy. Or Bumstead, for fook's sake!

Tax Day: Brought to You By Satan

Remember how the other day I felt like this?



That changed quickly yesterday. After talking to my accountant, I felt like this:



She called to say I owed OVER TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to the IRS.

And I was even paying taxes quarterly! It turns out the handy worksheet my previous accountant -- or should I say "accountant" -- used to calculate how much tax to pay only accounted for Social Security. No federal taxes, no New Jersey taxes, no New York taxes. Boy, did he screw me.

Thank God I had the money to cover the bill in my savings account. Of course, I was hoping to use that money for other stuff -- like IVF treatments, since it's looking increasingly like the only way Snookums is going to get a sister or brother is from a test tube.

I don't know why I didn't Google the "accountant" like I do everyone else. Because if I had, I would have found this website. Dead giveaway the guy's a charlatan...

International House of Paper

This is how I feel right now:



I just finished filing our taxes sending our paperwork to the accountant, which meant I not only had to go through a year's worth of my own paperwork, but I had to organize Zany Dad's office, which looked like it was designed by a hamster (paper piles everywhere).

In the course of doing so, I found a sweepstakes form Zany Dad had filled out to win a "handy chore tractor." ("Can you ever have too many tractors?" the form asks. "Yes, you can," I reply.) Thank God Zany Dad is so disorganized he forgot to mail in the form, because I don't think our neighbors would have appreciated a 4,000-pound tractor sitting in our tiny backyard.

The other irony is that the sweepstakes entry was made out under MY name, not his. This is because Zany Dad is a Privacy Freak. So not only did he want a tractor he'd have no use or room for in our urban neighborhood, he didn't want anyone to know it was his.

First DYHV Celebrity Sighting!

I was walking up Sixth Avenue from my office today during lunch, when who did I spot sitting at an outdoor table at the Belgian restaurant on the corner? Richard Belzer, from that Law & Order spinoff, SVU or SUV or whatever it's called.

I realized as I was writing this post that the only celebrities I've seen in New York are from Law & Order: Chris Noth (whom, most remember as Mr. Big from Sex and the City, but who'll always be Det. Logan to me) and (before he died, obviously) Jerry Orbach -- also, strangely enough, at Markt, when it was in a different location.

Before Snookums was born I saw Anderson Cooper at 23rd St. and 7th Avenue. He is very, very short.

Richard Belzer was very, very tall. He's also better looking in person than on TV. Not that that's saying much.

5 Fun Activities When You're Pregnant

1. Sauna. That intense heat is just soooooo relaxing for you and your unborn babe. Helps relieve those pregnancy aches and pains, too!

2. Blue cheese sampling. What mother-to-be doesn't crave dairy? And no wonder -- all that calcium helps build strong bones in the li'l fetus.

3. Dodgeball. Not just for fifth graders anymore. The jumping, running and throwing are a great stress reliever, and an excellent cardio workout to boot.

4. Whisky tasting. Haven't you always wondered what the difference is between Irish and Scottish, single malt and blend? Indulge your curiosity and find out now, before the baby comes along and you can't go out anymore.

5. Build-your-own meth lab. A fun weekend project that doesn't even take a whole weekend -- you can set up a lab in a coffee pot, even! It's that simple.

A Stroll with Snookums

Joan and Snookums take a walk around their neighborhood in Jersey City. They pass a Sikh man in a turban.

Snookums (pointing at turban): Hat! Hat!

Joan: Yes, yes, sweetie, that's a hat.

They pass a gangbanger.

Snookums (pointing at gangbanger's enormous, half-laced Timberland boots): Shoe! Shoe!

Joan: Yes, that's right, that's a shoe.

Snookums (pointing at gangbanger's snarling pit bull): WOOF WOOF WOOF! WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF!

Dog goes berserk, barking its head off and straining at its leash. Joan tries to get Snookums past the dog without it managing to sink its fangs in her tender flesh. Snookums continues to bark like a maniac.

Joan (trying to distract Snookums): Look, honey, look at the bird!

Snookums (looks up): Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet!

They pass a soccer field.

Snookums: Ball! Ball! Ball! Points at passing Arab woman in headscarf pushing a stroller. Hat! Hat! HAT! HAAAAT!!!!

Joan (points to woman's baby in stroller): Look, honey, look! What's that?

Snookums (quietly): Baby. Points at baby's nose. No?

Joan: Yes, that's right, that's the baby's nose.

Snookums (points at baby's eye): Ah! Ah!

Joan: Yes, that's the baby's eye, very good.

Snookums passes gas, makes farting noise with her mouth, laughs uproariously.

The Ideal Job for Snookums

When you have sex in the United States -- or anywhere, for that matter -- you might wind up having a baby. But if you're really lucky, you wind up having an elf. Which is what Snookums is, as you can clearly see from this photo.

(I always used to tell Zany Dad he reminded me of an elf -- specifically, of that elf who wanted to be a dentist, from The Year Without a Santa Claus. Little did I know that I carried the recessive gene for elfishness.)

Apparently, the entire nation of Iceland believes in elves, according to an article I just read in Vanity Fair. The Icelanders haven't been reading this blog or anything, it's just part of their cultural tradition. In fact, when Alcoa tried to open an aluminum-smelting plant there a few years ago, it had to hire an official government inspector to certify the construction site as elf-free.

I kid you not. There is a civil servant in Iceland who actually gets paid to check whether there are any elves (or "hidden people," the politically correct term) on construction sites.

This would be the perfect job for Snookums. Who better to spot an elf than a fellow elf? When she spotted one, she could point at him with her tiny, elfin finger and speak to him in Elvish, asking him to please leave so the nice Americans can smelt their aluminum.

Lose Weight by Blogging about Great Sex in New York with Celebrities!

I asked my friend Lennart, who has a popular blog (at least that's what he tells me, but it's in Swedish so he could be lying), how I can get more than, say, 6 people to visit this blog. His advice?

"Write really long headlines full of buzzwords. Every time I write a post with the words 'sex in the United States' in it, I get tons of hits from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They find my blog through Google."

He also suggested I avoid topics like babies shitting in bathtubs. He would probably hate the post on farting I wrote yesterday.

In other words, Lennart thinks I should ditch my mommy-blogger demographic for the repressed-teenage-Muslim demographic. But I ask you, which has more purchasing power that will appeal to advertisers?

Okay, so I don't have any advertisers, but I hope to have at least one someday.

Tomorrow's post: Find a job by blogging about great sex in New York with celebrities!

Only 15 Months Old, and Already Making Fart Jokes

I may have created a monster -- or a comedic genius.

A while back, I started a joke with Snookums where I'd make farting noises with my mouth when she passed gas. Then the other day, Snookums was perusing a baby magazine and came upon an ad for Desitin, featuring a baby's bare bum. She immediately started making farting noises with her mouth.

At first I thought she was just making the noise randomly. But a few pages later, there was another photo of a baby's behind -- and she pointed at it and started making those farting noises again.

I still can't believe she can make the connection between a noise she makes with her mouth and an image of a butt. That's a lot of abstraction.

So is it brilliance or precocious immaturity when a preverbal toddler acts like a 12-year-old, or the former President of the United States?

St. Patrick: Patron Saint of Bodily Fluids

Here's a recap of my weekend:

• Took Snookums yesterday to a lab where they drew blood to test her for lead exposure. (This is a routine screening.) After they were finished, her Band-Aid came off and she dripped blood all over her onesie and my (formerly) white coat.
  
• Last night, Snookums took a huge dump in the tub while I was bathing her. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever taken a huge dump in the tub while you were bathing, or has my daughter ever come over to your house and taken a dump in your tub?
  
• Tonight when I was getting ready for bed, I accidentally let the hem of my nightgown dangle into the toilet -- and ended up peeing all over my own nightie. Gah. So now, instead of the sexy Donna Karan nightie that zips open for easy access, I have to wear the granny gown that buttons all the way up to the neck. I look like Ma Ingalls. Zany Dad is not pleased.
• Did I mention I have my period?
  

Finger-Lickin' Good!

Mmm.... with curry dip.

And they're patriotic!

Top 5 Gifts for Pregnant Women

1. Native American Spirits. Nothing steadies those preggo jitters like a puff on a cigarette, and these are made from 100% organic tobacco.

2. Sushi. It's a little-known fact that gestating women don't get nearly enough mercury. And raw fish is way more nutritious -- cooking destroys vitamins!

3. Blue cheese. Moms-to-be need calcium for two! Best to buy fromage bleu from France or some other country where they don't pasteurize it -- again, heat destroys vitamins!

4. Bourbon. Face it, pregnancy is stressful. After a long, hard day struggling up flights of stairs and standing on the subway, what expectant woman doesn't appreciate a few shots of Maker's Mark?

5. Crack. Sure, the rest of the population has moved on to meth, but knocked-up ladies appreciate the classic pick-me-up. Now available with a special pipe for women only: "LadyCrack."