Ringing Up Baby
Last March, my husband, Duke, and I flew to Siberia on short notice to adopt a 7-month-old boy. Because international adoption is a strenuous endeavor, with no guarantee of success, I didn’t think about material considerations until the babe was safely in arms. We were sitting in a Moscow hotel room, playing with our new son, when reality struck in the form of a long-distance call from my mother.
“What pattern do you want for the Pack n Play?” she asked. I didn’t have a clue. Mother explained that this collapsible playpen came in different designs. She had to know my color scheme because her friends were dying to send gifts.
I was ashamed to admit that the nursery, formerly known as the laundry room, is white. No hand-painted murals, no faux finishes, no stencils, though my friend Susan did hang a beautiful antique quilt on the wall. “Anything but pastels,” I said.
“Do you want an umbrella stroller or a Baby Jogger, or a car seat that turns into a stroller?” Mother pressed.
“Can this wait?” I begged.
In a week, we had flown from Los Angeles to Moscow to Siberia and back to Moscow--over 20 time zones of air travel--and we still had to get our son’s visa at the American Embassy and make the long flight home. I couldn’t imagine feeling more stressed, but then I returned to Los Angeles and discovered the staggering array of goods and services targeted at infants. Mother sent me to register at a baby store and I nearly headed back to the airport. Perhaps if I had had nine months of pregnancy to work up to this, it would not have come as such a shock. I could understand a crib, a changing table, a stroller, a car seat, even a Diaper Genie. But mobiles with black-and-white cards for maximum visual stimulation, gadgets to warm up diaper wipes, high chairs treated with antibacterial agents? Even Baby’s first Jaguar. (Only $7,000.) Coming from a generation that reveres natural fibers, I thought it odd that most baby products were made of garish sherbet-colored plastic. Within a month our once-tasteful living room looked like Candy Land.
It was alarming that the paraphernalia sold to promote my child’s safety also came with warnings about how the product could kill him. (Who in her right mind would put an Exersaucer, an immobilizing play station, near stairs?) I imagined adult products with similar cautions. “Warning: Do not remove legs of grand piano while lying underneath.” But the hallmark of the baby biz is fear-inspiring marketing tactics.
Mother dispatched Family First, a Mar Vista baby-proofing service and store, to the house for a free estimate. Harvey, the estimator, regarded our tiny house as if it were the Everglades and suggested that I crawl around to get an idea of the evils that lurked within. Evils such as the plastic plugs I put in the electrical outlets--plugs that neither my husband nor I can remove without pliers. “Those plugs are a false sense of security,” Harvey said, showing me a superior outlet plate. “That’s how kids get zapped.”
The bottom line? Five hundred dollars, not including the complete re-landscaping of our backyard, which, he said, included every plant on his poisonous plant list. He left a list of recommendations, and gradually I bought what seemed necessary. Knock wood, Baby is still intact. (The toilet, however, was clogged for two weeks because half the toilet lock fell in, a condition only repaired by completely removing the toilet and retrieving the safety object.)
If I only got a C-plus in baby proofing, I flunked extracurricular activities. Total strangers expressed dismay that Baby wasn’t enrolled in Gymboree, swimming lessons, Mommy and Me, or infant massage. Baby seemed happy at home and I wanted time to write.
As fate would have it, a former neighbor teaches kindergarten at a local preschool. She invited me and Baby to their mommy and toddler program. It was a charming school, in a storybook cottage. Baby crawled around the yard chasing a rubber ball and eating sand. Did he interact with his peers? He did not. I asked the teacher about the best time to enroll him. “Now,” she said. “You can’t start socializing too young.” Baby was only 10 months old. I asked the forbidden question, the one that proves you’re a bad mother: “How much?”
It cost $190 a month for Baby to eat sand once a week for two hours. Maybe I was missing something. I could take him to the playground at the beach and he could eat sand for free.
“Here you get a chance to talk to other mothers,” said the Toddler Monitor.
I barely had time to talk to my own friends.
I consulted our pediatrician, Dr. Vicky. She told me I could safely postpone Baby’s education for a couple years. “You can spend a fortune and get really neurotic,” she said. “Parents believe if they don’t go to the right preschool, then their child won’t get into the right college. That somehow it’s all linked. The American system takes advantage of parents and makes them feel inadequate and guilty.”
No kidding. Recently, we had dinner with friends--let’s call them Ozzie and Harriet--who have a son the same age as Baby. Ozzie asked if our son was enrolled in music school.
“He’s 11 months old,” I spluttered.
Their son, Ricky, was signed up for “Tunes for Tots,” a toddler program run by Music Rhapsody, a South Bay music school that is based on the teaching philosophy of composer Carl Orff. (Only $90 for nine classes.) Ozzie said, “You know classical music at an early age is supposed to help raise children’s IQs.”
We play classical music at home. Baby prefers to listen to his insanely irritating electronic toys that bark, meow. “I really admired the mother for bringing her all that time,” Kleiner said.
I am not that admirable.
When Baby started walking, I took him to Gymboree, against the advice of Dr. Vicky, who warned that baby gyms were a breeding ground for germs. “If you want to spend every other day in my office, then by all means sign him up,” she said.
My son enjoyed clambering up the ramps, crawling through tunnels and chasing bubbles. I liked the fact that it is clean, well padded and I didn’t have to constantly wrench cigarette butts from Baby’s hands, the way I do at the playground on the beach. I could have done without the endless choruses of “The Wheels on the Bus” (who knew this was the anthem of motherhood?) but I considered it an hour well spent, especially since Baby came home so exhausted he took a two-hour nap.
Three weeks ago, we sprang for a six-month membership. Baby has learned to clap, climb on the kitchen counter and say something that sounds like “bubble.” He has also contracted two colds, an ear infection and a virus, which he’s passed along to me.
“Ricky’s come down with a lot more colds since Gymboree,” Ozzie conceded, “but we figure he’s building up his immunity.”
As much as I like Dr. Vicky, I was tired of shuttling back and forth to her office. So my husband and I came up with a creative solution to expand Baby’s horizons, provide him with physical and intellectual stimulation and put his collapsible stroller, playpen and backpack to use. We decided to take him on vacation.
“Where are you taking him?” Dr. Vicky asked suspiciously.
I wanted to lie and say, “Orlando.” Or “Hawaii.” Anything but the truth.
“Istanbul,” I stammered. I asked what we needed to take along.
“Me,” said Dr. Vicky.
