One of the highlights of our week last week was the CityDance performance at the Backyard Theater for Children at Strathmore.

What a lively performance! It makes me feel good that my son got to see the beauty and athleticism of dance as expressed by children and adults, including male dancers. And who doesn’t love the beats of Bollywood!

Below is the write-up I did for my column at the Washington Times Communities Family Today: “Reading Ingredients: Tales of a Health-Conscious Mom.”

Speaking of health, Crunchy-Chewy Mama has been dealing with her own health issues of late (hello, thyroid disorder: welcome back!), so I’m late in posting this, but Strathmore is generously giving away a family pack of up to four tickets for the last in its July Thursday series. This week is Barynya of Russia. Here is the promo info:

“If your kids haven’t shouted yet in glee over their first Cossack sighting, you are in store for a special treat. Barynya has plenty of dancing Cossacks – plus Gypsies and other Eastern European folk icons with authentic, colorful music, dance, costumes and plenty of high flying … and low, low kicking!”

To enter to win tickets for the 9:30 or 11:30 show on Thursday, July 28, just post a comment below by 11 p.m. Tuesday, July 26. Tell me why you’d like to attend or just share what you love about live dance. Winner will be chosen at random and notified Wednesday morning.

Good luck!

Here’s my post from last week: “Parents avoid outdoors amid air quality warnings”

NORTH BETHESDA, Maryland, July 21, 2011 – On a day like today, just breathing is a potentially toxic experience. Here in the D.C. area, our air quality status rivals that of homeland security: Code Orange means no little person with young lungs should be out playing in air that is decidedly not fresh.

In this heat, I was worried about us melting under a tent at an outdoor dance performance, even though I was looking forward to the act. When my son started coughing yesterday and the news reports warned that persons with respiratory issues should stay inside on this scorcher, it looked like we’d have to scrap the dance and move to plan B.

But then the Backyard Theater for Children at Strathmore announced on its Facebook page that it would move its performance inside because of the heat. So we plugged back into our destination for the morning.

And what a destination it was! We were transported to India thanks to CityDance’s performance of The Warrior Princess of Manipur. Both my boy and my baby grooved to the beats of Bollywood; they were in good company amid a packed and pleased crowd.

Although Strathmore staff said they moved today’s event only out of concern for the dancers and that they prefer to keep performances outside, my family thoroughly enjoyed the indoor venue. And the air conditioning!

The high ceilings of the many-windowed Music Center at Strathmore provided a feeling of being outdoors without having to suffer the consequences of the heat and humidity.

Today is an impossible day to keep cool, and a tough day to feel healthy. Not only was my baby’s head sticky with sweat when we got out of our air conditioned car, but the time I’ve had the babysitter run my son around outside on these hot, smoggy days has clearly compromised his lungs. They sound sick. Even though we live near a woods, the D.C. area is just too full of too many people and their cars to keep pollution under control.  Break out the cough drops; it’s Christmas in July!

Tomorrow has an even scarier forecast: Code Red air.

This column tends to focus on what goes into our bodies through our mouths – as in, by eating. And while many respiratory issues can be linked to food allergies, what we breathe and what we put on our skin are just as important. These substances become part of our bodies, too. Call me crazy, but I don’t consider carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide part of a nutritious breakfast.

So if you want your kids to be healthy, keep them inside on air quality alert days when crud in the atmosphere is at a high. Just try not to stick them under a moldy air conditioning unit like the one we need to get rid of. Or at least to clean.

And, if it cools down and clears out enough for Strathmore to hold its July 28 Russian Dance performance outside and they offer you a free snow cone, remember this column on artificial colors and flavors. Be prepared and bring your own organic and natural syrup, or some fruit juice, or better yet, just go for the ice!

In air and in water, clear is the healthiest color of all.

The Washington, D.C. area was treated to some glorious weather this past weekend, and audience members for the final SteveSongs performance of the week at Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts soaked it up! The Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods was the perfect place to be Saturday morning to listen to stories with storyteller Baba Jamal Koram and to sing along with SteveSongs.

Earlier this year I shared an interview with songwriter — and father of two! — Steve Roslonek. Check it out here to learn more about the man behind (or, rather, inside) the red shirt!

If you’ve never been to Wolf Trap’s Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods, see how cool it is on this video on YouTube. This year, theatre has introduced day pass tickets that are good for both the 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. shows. They are a true bargain at just $8.

To enter to win a four-ticket pass, post a comment below by 5 p.m. Friday, July 22. Tickets are good for performances July 26-30 with the Maryland Youth Ballet and the Monumental Brass Quintet or for August 2-6 to see Secret Agent 23 Skidoo and the Wolf Trap Opera Company. Let me know in your comment which week you’d like tickets for and why. I will use a winner at random.

As for SteveSongs, he continues to be just about the nicest guy you might ever see on stage … or after the show. The man seems to have undying patience for signing CDs and DVDs, not to mention the fact that his on-stage jokes engage the parents as much as the kiddos. During a song about grumpy boys, girls, dads and moms, he joked that it was impossible to imagine that any dads might possibly want to be anywhere else on a Saturday than at a kids’ music show.

But honestly, though I was worried that going to the concert would cause our trip to look at kitchen counter options to be truncated in such a way as to draw the ire of my spouse, it truly was a lovely way to spend the morning. Last year I was 8.5 months pregnant and it was about 20 degrees hotter with no breeze. This year, we enjoyed a picnic in the shade and throwing the Frisbee in the field while waiting to talk to Steve, who always has a smile for everyone.

Steve was traveling this time without his family, which welcomed a baby daughter about six months ago. He said being away was both easy and hard. It feels good to be happy for the success of a fellow parent who is so entertaining and talented. Thanks to Wolf Trap for putting on such a great show and for letting us come back this year, our third in a row!

One week after I had my baby girl this past August, I padded groggily out of the bedroom late in the morning and found my son looking out our bay window and listening to a SteveSongs CD. With his knees tucked underneath him in the chair that sat where the birth tub had been, my son’s hair glowed orange in the summer sun. He turned to smile at us, and my heart melted. With his sister tucked in the crook of my arm, I sat down next to my little boy, age four, and sang along with him: “Everyone has their own they can sing, with their own special stories and favorite things. Something within us makes each voice unique and it sings la la la la la.”

It’s a moment I’ll always treasure, when we could honor our new reality as a family with two individual children with their own special needs, and when we could take pleasure in listening to and making music together.

Just a few weeks earlier, my hugely pregnant body had taken my son to see Steve Roslonek, the perennially red-shirted performer known to PBS Kids watchers and children’s music aficionados as SteveSongs. Thank you to the good people at Wolf Trap’s Children’s Theatre- in-the-Woods for providing tickets to me and other “mommy bloggers” at a blogger event last June and to PBS Kids for giving this normally media-shy mama Steve’s fun music video at a blogger event in 2009.

Each time we’ve seen Steve, he’s been just about the most personable guy you could imagine. The show is always funny and entertaining for children and adults alike, and he’s very generous with his time to chat and sign CDs afterward.

If you don’t already have tickets for his performance tomorrow, Saturday, February 12 at Jammin’ Java in Vienna, Virginia, the venue’s site is showing room for the 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. shows, but 10 a.m. is sold out.

According to Steve’s tour schedule, he’ll be back at Wolf  Trap July 12-16, and perhaps he’ll return this September to the National Book Festival (though with his own new baby girl who arrived last month, perhaps he’ll scale back on the travel. Congratulations, and welcome to Nadia Rose!)

Steve was kind enough to share with me some insights on his career, parenting, and all things kid. If you or your little ones have been SteveSongs fans, read on to get to know the man behind the shirt. Enjoy!

Jessica Claire: Where/how did you form your ideas about what kids respond to? I read that your first song was written for your brother (a teacher), and I’ve heard you describe on your DVD how you discovered your ideal audience walking past a preschool. But how did you go from the world of consulting to develop a sense of what would appeal to kids?

Steve: When I started writing my first kids songs I immediately felt as if I was connecting with the kid in me. I’ve always been a fairly cheerful optimistic kind of guy, one might even say child-like (while one other might even say childish).  Anyway, the process of getting back in touch with that side of me through music was exhilarating.  I still feel that today when I write a song that makes me laugh or connects with some other childhood emotion.  Shortly after I wrote and recorded the songs for my first album back in 1998, I left my corporate job, and started to visit preschools as the music and movement specialist.
It was trial by fire, and this fire was 25 hyped-up 4-year-olds. I used to play for almost 20 different classes spread across multiple schools every week.  And that is where I really learned how to manage and tap into the energy of many kids at once and to identify which kinds of songs and interactive activities were effective and which kinds weren’t.

Jessica Claire: When did you start to consider yourself a musician? To what extent were you serious about performing in high school, in college, and before you began your consulting career? To what extent did you have to brush up or to buckle down and study technique and/or theory in order to make your career switch?

Steve: I’ve always liked singing – in fact I still have some recordings of me with my parents at 2 years old that supports that statement.  I sang in school chorus from 3rd grade all the way to college.  I was quite shy in general though, and I had serious and consistent stage fright every time I stepped forward to sing a solo until college when I started to perform with a professional a capella group called the Vineyard Sound out on Martha’s Vineyard.

One night, we sang for almost 4 hours at a bar and I kept on stepping out for a solo here and there, nervous each time until I got to the point of being literally too tired to get nervous anymore. And from that day, I never had a problem stepping forward for a solo.  Looking back, it’s amazing that I stuck with it for so long.

I started playing guitar in college and, from the start I enjoyed using it to write songs.  I “taught” myself how to play guitar using tablature from some Guitar magazines and played as a hobby right up until the time that I left my corporate job to pursue music full time.  Just before I started playing guitar live for audiences, I realized that I had to practice differently, because for years, I was used to playing part of a song, making a mistake and starting over. I think that people are generally more satisfied if you instead play full songs from start to finish (especially if they paid admission to see your show).

Jessica Claire: How do you feel about children experiencing and learning about music at a young age, either through play-based exploration, in participatory classes, or through structured lessons? How have those ideas changed since you became a parent?

Steve: Kids have the capacity to be interested in so many different things, whether new or familiar.  As a teacher, and now as a parent, I feel that it’s my job to introduce kids to what I think they might find interesting and then try and ride their enthusiasm in whichever direction it happens to flow.  I believe that inspiration is king and if a child is not interested in what you’re sharing or teaching, it’s going to be an uphill battle for both of you. I used to point out to my son that different materials and surfaces made different sounds when you tapped them or banged them together. Now he’ll regularly clang the objects from the recycling bin together and say “Listen to this different sound, Daddy”.

The older I get the more aware I am of the importance of balance.  I think kids crave both structure and the freedom to explore on their own.  Play-based exploration, participatory classes and structured lessons can all have an important place in the development of the young musician.  Too much structured teaching can have the unfortunate effect of taking the fun out of the music learning experience, while play-based exploration without a set of rules, guidelines or limits (such as “no hitting anyone else with the xylophone mallet” or “no screaming into the microphone”) can create other obvious problems. Even during free play, parameters and rules help create an environment of safety and groundedness for the child.

My aim is to find a healthy, fun and instructive balance.  Some of my most popular participatory songs have elements of specific instruction and expectation (“Sing this part” or “Dance like this” as well as a free movement part “How will we get across the river?” or “Move like something that flies”).

Jessica Claire: Did you always envision yourself becoming a parent? What was it like to enter the parenthood world ten (or so?) years after you’d been creating music for kids?

Steve: I did always think of myself as a potential parent, and when we started recording kids’ songs, I remember one of the major goals for the band was to create music that we would want our kids to listen to, learn from, and enjoy someday.  And I must say that it is totally awesome to hear my son in the backseat of the car enthusiastically singing one of my songs.  Occasionally, though, we’ll be singing along together and he’ll call out “No, stop singing Daddy!”

One other interesting revelation now that we have our own child is my perspective toward audience parents.  I’ve always considered my best shows to be those where parents and kids are all involved and getting something out of the event.  I also always noticed and liked when grownups would laugh at jokes or dance along to the movements and have fun with the songs or the performance.

But it’s only now as a parent, that I feel more keenly aware of how parents react to their kids’ experience in the show, because I know firsthand the kind of joy that parents can feel when they see their child really connecting with something.  It’s a little bit of extra magic that I never had the perspective to see before.

Jessica Claire: What is it like to be a touring/performing parent? How do you and your partner balance/manage parenting roles when you’re at home, when you’re on the road solo, and when you’re all on the road together? Is there any (online or otherwise) community of performers with young kids where you all swap stories or support one another?

Steve: That’s a great idea: The Traveling Performers with Families Support Group.  It is one of the largest challenges that we have.  We travel all together quite often, but there was a stretch of shows last year where it wasn’t working out that well.  About halfway through each show, my son would make his way to the stage and yell out for me to pick him up.  It would break my heart, but it was obviously difficult for me to oblige in the middle of a concert.

But then one day at a show this past summer for our local library, he walked up to the stage area with his little guitar and stood next to me for a song.  After that song, I grabbed the microphone and asked if he wanted to tell any of his jokes.  He did and the audience reaction was very positive and since then he has joined me on stage at the end of most every show that he’s attended.

He’s only 3, so the “entertainment value” of his participation can be a little unpredictable, but usually if he decides he wants to go up on stage, he delivers – and in all seriousness, there have been a couple of events where his jokes and/or dancing have been by far the best part of the show.

Jessica Claire: Who do you consider your audience, and how do you feel about your audience?

Steve: Kids.  They’re shrimps.

I’m giving away four tickets to one of the July 29 performances at the Backyard Theater for Children at Strathmore. Performances are at 9:30 and 11:30 a.m.

On July 29, the show will be “Banjo to Beatbox with Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer and Christylez Bacon.”

The description of this act is: “Family folk meets hip hop when longtime childrens’ music favorites Fink and Marxer join forces with beat box original and multi-instrumentalist Christylez Bacon in this concert featuring songs from their 2009 Grammy-nominated CD.” Sounds great!

See the description at Strathmore.org for more info. Strathmore is in North Bethesda, MD, and, unless it rains, the performance will be outside under a tent, so you’ll need blankets or low beach chairs. Tickets are normally $7 for age three and up.

To throw your hat in the ring for this giveaway, post a comment below (by 8 a.m. Saturday morning 7/24) that tells me something interesting about one of your other three guests.

I’ll contact the lucky winner Saturday morning to get your mailing address to send the voucher. You’ll have to take it directly to the performance, so plan to get there early. This voucher cannot be redeemed over the phone, fax or online.

Good luck!

How bad does it sound to say that because she is a mom, I’m glad Crystal Bowersox didn’t win American Idol? That’s not completely true. I just wondered how bad it would sound to say it.

Make no mistake, I was and am a Crystal fan. I think she’s amazingly talented, so damn centered, and really someone I would love to have a beer with (metaphorically anyway. My best drinking days days were winding down when she was still a preschooler). But I’m kind of relieved for her that she didn’t win, the same way I was relieved for Adam Lambert. As Lisa deMoraes of the Washington Post put it this article, Crystal “escapes the whole ‘American Idol’ beauty pageant syndrome — shilling for Ford, etc.” She will still go out on the summer concert and have the backing of the AI machine, but there’s a bunch of stuff she won’t have to do since she’s not the winner. For someone as clear about who she is as Crystal (same goes for Adam Lambert), I think it sounds like a relief to have a lighter load of product endorsements and the like, especially since she’s got a young son.

I don’t think her career or her ego needed for her to win, and it sounds like she agrees from the “don’t cry for me” comments she made after Lee Dewyze won the competition.

Read the rest of this entry at DC Metro Moms Blog.

This post originally appeared on DC Metro Moms on May 16, 2009

Whose kid will be the next Adam Lambert in 20 years? (Or Susan Boyle in 40?)

I mean, what if my desire to stay under the mainstream radar keeps my little boy from his true calling? Susan Boyle just stayed in her hometown until Britain’s Got Talent gave her a shot at the stage at age 47? Yes, I know my son is only three. Listen, I’m not talking about putting a child in lipstick and dresses on a stage to prance around in some kind of pageant (which some parents somewhere must do, or there wouldn’t be tot pageants). I don’t maintain he’s any better looking than anyone else’s child. I just think that the way he retells stories — including doing himself crying – and the way he accurately mimics all the voices on They Might Be Giants’ No! album point to a real possibility for youngest-ever Oscar winner. That’s all.

I mean, somebody’s got to play children’s roles in poignant, searching art house movies, right?

And to do voices that adults just can’t do in other kind of media? Kindly PBS must have known I’d have a tough week coming up when they sent me home from the blogger event with that Steve Songs DVD, which features the “Sillies,” four girls (aged maybe 8-13?) singing backup. Someone must have given those girls some lessons, have encouraged them to audition, right? They don’t look so messed up yet. They’re even pretty dorky-looking in glasses (I wear glasses too) and doing goofy hand motions (come to think of it, that’s like me, too). Other than the fact that this music video is apparently addictive within 24 hours, this stuff is wholesome, right?

One must be careful not to get sucked in by the vicarious living thing, I realize. I wanted my mom to be a stage mom so that I could become a famous actress. I couldn’t play a pushy role any more than she could, and I wouldn’t want to, but I would like to support whatever gives my son joy and keeps him healthy and happy. I certainly don’t want him to be carted off to Hollywood to dress in black before he even hits puberty (to say nothing of taking the Drew Barrymore road of Pee Wee drug abuse), or to prematurely overvalue — or hell, even know about — the entertainment industry.

When I saw on Facebook that a college friend said she was “proud” of her daughter for getting a role in touring company of a musical, I saw how clearly this is not about me and “pride.” I just really think my son would have a blast in the limelight, even if his wannabe hippie mama has been to the movies all of three times since he was born (and that’s including The Business of Being Born and LunaFest). He might not be the natural talent I imagine, but I would be surprised if he’d didn’t get a huge kick out of performing. So where do you draw the line at taking way too much initiative to seek stuff out and just not getting in your child’s way?

Hilary Meyerson makes a great case for mediocrity in her essay “Endgame” in the current Brain,Child Magazine. Not everyone can be great at any one thing, she notes, so why don’t we all just have fun being average? I don’t plan to put my son in any organized sports before elementary school, and even though I’d like his love of music encouraged by something beyond Music Together classes and CDs, I doubt I’ll put him in any early lessons until he seems obviously ready or until he’s asking for it. Preferably both. But is he going to tell me, “Mommy, I’d like to be on stage?”

Mostly I want him to play outside when it’s nice out and cook and do some crafts and artsy stuff when it’s not. If he doesn’t read for a long time, that’s fine. I’m not pushing ABCs or 123s, but when I hear someone as talented as Adam Lambert credit his early experience in community theater as an important stepping stone to where he is today, I wonder if it might be okay to give some kind of little nudge to at least open a door my son might enjoy walking through.

Leave it to the French to spoil a quiet moment.

No, really it was my toddler, just choosing to blast a track from Putumayo’s French Playground in the middle of a rare couple connection.

The three of us had just gone out for a nice dinner together — lovely walk in cool September air down to our local restaurant strip, good food, happy in high chair the entire time (sitting outside helps), and a nice walk home in the dark, serenaded by crickets.

The plan was to give the boy the last nursing of the day and then a little more food before taking him up to bed. After he scrambled off the couch, my husband aimed the remote control at the Squeeze Box and programmed Johnny Hartmann and John Coltrane’s “My One and Only Love,” ostensibly “our song” for the last decade and a half. Usually preoccupied with getting something done every minute, I was unusually happy and grateful for my family, but more importantly, appreciative of my husband for who he is and all he and I have been through together.

The saxophone lifted sweetly and then slid low and heavy. I took off my glasses and crawled to the other side of the couch to wrap my arms around LJ and bury my head in his shoulder. It was one of those moments when we knew we were still the kids who fell in love with each other.

And then the trombone blasted. Our son was playing with the CD player on the floor again, and he’d chosen track 12 of French Playground, a super hyper song called “La P’tite Monnaie” by a guy named Benabar. It couldn’t have been more out of character with the moment. Brash, frenetic, stimulant from the hardwood meets nostalgic, languid, loving on the couch.

I laughed so hard I cried, and we were still laughing when the boy crawled up and joined our group hug. “It’s loud,” E said of the music. I agreed and eventually got up and turned it down gradually before hitting the off button.

I’d never been able to figure out the message of the song — only caught words here and there. The title, I read tonight, means “small change,” as in the simple moments, like Sunday l/brunch. The liner note intro for this song reads: “Many people in France cherish the idea that the best things in life are the simplest: being with our families, good food, good friends, and good times.”

Indeed.

On Saturday mornings when I was a child, I spent hours watching cartoons before my parents came downstairs. It always startled me when one of our Siamese cats darted into my field of vision. After inhabiting a two-dimensional light-box world, seeing the muscular real-live animal removed my fantasy goggles.

A similarly surreal experience was enjoying the solitude of my first solo road trip with my 28-month-old son. It felt like a guilty pleasure to enjoy time to myself while he was in the back seat.

I don’t know what I expected exactly. I thought he’d nap on the way down to the beach to meet my sister and her kids, and that we’d spend the last hour or so listening to music. I planned to leave after dinner on the way home so that he might play a little while before falling asleep for the night, for the rest of the way. I got some details right.

What surprised me was how different it felt to be on a long voyage with him and just him. No couples therapy time with my husband while he slept, no keeping my husband hydrated and fed as he did (usually) most of the driving (his choice). It was just this mama behind the wheel and just my boy in the back.

When he didn’t nap in the first hour on the way down, we made a bathroom gas station stop. For the next 90 miles or so, he amused himself transferring ice from a paper cup into his Snack Trap. Without laundry or clutter or email to deal with, my mind enjoyed its unfettered unraveling as we headed south. After a while, I gave up on the Music Together CDs he’d seemed to tune out by that point and put in an Eckert Tolle audiobook about finding the stillness that resides within all of us. E continued to play, awake. “You’re listening to your CD, Mom?” he checked in. When the talk of stillness seemed to soporific to the one in the driver’s seat, I agreed to the boy’s request for Dreamland (the original from Putumayo). In stop-and-go rush-hour Tidewater traffic, he finally fell asleep at 5:30 p.m., three and half hours after we’d left (with another hour and half to go).

Soon I’d found All Things Considered and Marketplace, and I felt like an adult — a decent one who could handle being a single mom if she had to. I’d flown alone with my son, but driving solo was new territory, and I felt pretty spiffy that it was going so smoothly and I got to learn about things happening in the world (which I promptly forgot while at the beach and watching my nephews play Webkinz in the hotel room. Talk about splitting realities.).

On the way home a few days later, I almost lost my cool before we left. I wanted E to stay awake until we’d made it back to my sister’s hotel room after dinner so that I could change his diaper and clothes, nurse him, and finish packing up the car. It was only an 8-mile drive, and I even stopped halfway to buy a double Americano, but still, having skipped his nap, he fell asleep despite windows down and my blaring “How Ya Like Me Now” on the radio.

I worried about a wet bum and about a later mid-drive waking and demand to nurse, but when he didn’t budge as I packed up the car (ground-level, parking right outside the door), I decided to go for it and head home.

He slept the whole way, and I shaved almost an hour off the driving time. I checked in with the hubby for the first 20 minutes, then caught the end of Prairie Home Companion which was followed by a folk /bluegrass show. Then I scooted around the dial and sung out loud to Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down.”

After some retro rockin’ out, I was ready for fiction. It’s been months since I’ve read a novel. When my son was little, I’d read for hours while he nursed and slept (repeat, repeat). Like seeing the cat break the spell of the cartoons, it was always a little odd to feel his warm mouth start working again while I was immersed in some other world. Now I was driving in the dark, unable to see my son in back or ask a co-pilot to check on him, and I was suddenly thrust into a Haitian world of love, violence and political turmoil as described in Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak! On one hand, I felt independent and unmotherly, like I was back to being a grad student (when I should have read the novel in the first place) driving home to my folks’ house or, even in my early twenties, a semi-single woman driving to spend the weekend with my boyfriend years before he became my husband. On the other hand, the intense stories and their parent-child dynamics pulled at the string that ran from my heart into the middle of the backseat. I felt incredibly lucky to experience being a mother and also fearful of how I would face the future when he’ll be out of the confines of a carseat and I won’t be able to know where he is at all times.

Just as we pulled into our neighborhood a little before midnight, I noticed some blinking. Upon pulling up behind his father’s car, E shouted “Daddy’s home!” and then, as I unbuckled him, asked where our neighbor and his age-mate son were. Then he told me he was peeing in his diaper. It was nice to be able to hand the boy over to his dad, who changed him and got him back to sleep before I’d even put away the food from the cooler. Still highly caffeinated, I stayed up like a college student writing for myself while I uploaded photos of my son for his relatives to see on his blog. Maybe I can have it all.

My husband was really trying to do something nice. In fact, he was trying to do exactly what I said I wanted: take initiative to get us out together as a couple. And he was thoughtful about it, purchasing Indigo Girls tickets after a drive in a borrowed car to the beach in Maine had me moved to tears. The music was bone-humming nostalgia for the early days of our relationship, for my youth, for the time I spent on the coast of Maine as a college sophomore. It felt good to emote. Visiting Maine some 15 years later (can that be true? fifteen?), carting our almost-two-year-old son in a caravan behind my brother-in-law’s other car with his wife and two kids under two, the music took me back to longhaird unshaven non-mommy days, even pre-professional and pre-grad school days.

So it was super sweet that my husband noted when the Girls would be performing in our neck of the woods and got online to get pavilion tickets just 13 minutes after they went on sale. So why did I have such a hard time accepting this lovely gift? It was to come the night before we were leaving on a morning flight for a week-long trip — again, to see his brother’s family in Maine. Leaving my son to be put to bed by a sitter for the first time didn’t sound appealing if we needed him to be in decent shape the following day for travel. I wasn’t exactly gracious in my expressed disappointment, and he was a little sad. But he got my point.

We were going to sell the tickets but never got around to it. I asked the teacher’s aide at my son’s school if she could do it, thinking that she might have a chance at getting him to sleep. But she’d need us to pick her up and take her home, and it just sounded like a lot of hassle.

Then a friend from playgroup said she was looking for folks to go see Ani DiFranco with her as a last hurrah before baby #2 came. My relationship to Ani and to the Indigo Girls was similar — the music of both had been intensely powerful for me at one time in my life, but I hadn’t followed the musicians’ careers after the late 1990s. “You wanted to go to Ani. You should go,” said my husband, who remembered my knife-twisting comment in non-acceptance of his gift.

So I said I was in and coordinated to transfer cars and baby to get to the concert in time without making my husband leave work super early. I then piled in the car with three other mama friends — two of them pregnant — and one just-graduated-college youngster who had been listening to Ani since she was 12, essentially never knowing a world without the righteous babe. We recounted our experiences with the music of Ani and also of the Indigo Girls, whom one friend said she had a problem calling “girls,” especially after the last time she saw them up close. I recalled how I used to bristle at the sexist, belittling use of the term “girl” but that, now that I feel so old, it seems like a compliment.

It was a great night and a powerful coming-together of past and present. Sitting with a picnic on the lawn on a lovely evening, it seemed silly to sell the Indigo Girls tickets. “Maybe we should just go; what’s one night that E goes to bed late? The flight is only a little over an hour and it’s not super early.” My friends cheered me on, encouraging me to rally and go ahead with our night out, which would be just a few days after our sixth (six years? can that be right?) wedding anniversary.

So we did. The short version:
It was fun.
The “girls” did look like they’d seen better days and better bodies, but their music still moved me and their harmonies still sounded great.
The place was packed. Lots of people like these women. It’s not just me.
My husband and I held hands and I remembered for a few moments what it was like to do things together back in the day.
We listened for 65 minutes and then left before the encore or even before the “you’ve been great” announcement to avoid post-concert traffic and to get back to our boy. I said I was hopeful that if this worked out, maybe we could go out more often and leave him with a sitter to go to bed.
Our son was still awake when we returned home at 10:45 p.m. I nursed him to sleep while my husband drove the sitter home, then I stayed up until 1 a.m. getting things ready for the trip.
Our flight was on time and we were in Portland by noon the next day. E did fine on the flight, was a little manic having lunch at a park, and then fell asleep in the car in the middle of a thunderstorm.
I’m glad we went. And I’m glad we’re here.

I think the only time I really played with my son today was in the basement while the house was being cleaned upstairs. It felt different than any other five minutes. I had to be in a position of no other choice in order to fully be with my child.

What was I doing the rest of the day, real mothers might want to ask? I wish I knew. Elliott kept redirecting me. (I know, it’s supposed to go the other way around). Shortly after we all got up, I carried him outside to get the newspaper. As I started to walk back inside, he pitched a fit, pointing outside and saying “hat.” So we went for a walk. He waved his hand and said something like “sheesish” to ask for music, so I sang until I forgot and he didn’t care anymore. He took off his hat and stuck his hand out of the stroller, waiting for me to take it from him. Occasionally he looked up at me and said “hi.” It was a nice time, but I don’t think it qualifies as “play.”

When we got home, he wasn’t thrilled with my plan to set him down so I could make us some breakfast. I held him a while and put on some music, eventually able to put him down without his face turning into an evil jack-o-lantern. I think he crawled into his high chair (which is on the ground because he always stands up in it), and I gave him some random snacks while I cooked eggs, veggies and sausage. Before either of us could eat anything, he asked to nurse. He’s taken to saying in an angelic voice and signing “please” (“peez?” and rubbing his hand on his chest). If he does this rather than simply reach down my shirt, I oblige. Once he started walking, his interest in nursing soared. For the first of two or three or four times that day, I sat on the couch with the latest issue of Brain,Child magazine while he reconnected and got some nourishment. While the food was still getting cold and uneaten in the kitchen, I realized he’d pooped, so we headed upstairs for a change.

This time I put him in some real clothes in case we headed outside again. I’d been a little embarrassed when the mom of a girl I tutor had run into us on our walk. She saw Elliott in his “pajamas” – a formerly white short-sleeve onesie (was it the one my husband cut the long sleeves short?) stained with all sorts of food from several meals, most notoriously sunflower seed butter. On bottom were his striped Circo pants size nine months (he’s now 17 months old); they are light and stretchy in the waist and perfect for a night that starts out in cool air conditioning but, because of our toddler-minded thermostat, ends with the ceiling fan circulating warm air while the downstairs stays crisp.

At some point in the morning I checked my email and then called Becky, a friend I hadn’t spoken to for months. We both decided our weeks had been too busy to meet up, so we caught up over the phone. Elliott was playing well then, and I was cleaning up from breakfast. I also fed him some berries and coconut milk while I was talking to her. After that is when I caught the other poop – when he started to go upstairs and I realized I hadn’t closed the gate and ran to spot him.

I thought perhaps we should go to the playground before lunch. But the cleaning woman had called after getting back from vacation and said that she could fit us in today so we wouldn’t wait another two weeks. I knew I needed to hide the newspaper to spare it from the recycle bin and to stuff various papers into the storage cube so I could find them later. The kitchen and bathroom counters were beyond cluttered, which meant she would take even longer to do the house and I wouldn’t be able to start dinner until late. So I straightened up as much as I could between breakfast and lunch, between nursing and more nursing, between the tantrum-inspired walk and other tantrums, between diaper changes. I ate lunch with Elliott sitting on the floor, him eating some food and playing with my fork and then the second fork, too.

At1:30, Elliott still didn’t seem ready to nap. He was asking for his shoes, so we went outside. This first foray into the unintentional wilderness that is our backyard, I was fairly engaged. I tossed the ball to him on the slide; he rolled it down. I narrated his play with little plastic balls in one of those things where you put them in at the top and they roll down through a few switchbacks. That was fun. But it seemed late and I wanted to start the nap. We’ve successfully napped in the basement a few times during housecleanings, and I hoped with the bathroom fan on we could manage. I took him to the kitchen to get some water and show him to Sonia so he’d know who was making the noise above him and returned to the futon in the basement hoping for some shut-eye. But the boy was too peppy.

After a few minutes lying down with me and nursing, he smiled and bit my neck and grabbed my cheek. I got the message. It seemed too hot just to go driving in the car, so I thought I might try getting him to sleep in the stroller. He arched his back and gave me a firm “Mnooo” – that’s a soft-sounding “no,” not a “Mom’s Night Out On Opium” or some kind of gooey West African vegetable dish. And “Mnooo!” as a negative interjection is not to be confused with “Mo?” the request for “more.” So instead of taking another walk, we hit the back yard again.

But it was hot, and I was tired and thirsty. I called a few friends to see if they happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to come over to play. While I talked to K’s voicemail and to KM about her visit with her mom, Elliott scooted down the short, steep slope to the flat part of our yard. He was enjoying the grass under his feet, the twigs to touch. At some point after I hung up the phone, we came upon a beach ball, which I threw uphill, and he laughed as it rolled down toward him. This happened enough times that I expected him to start reaching for it, but he just giggled. I suppose that might count as play on some scoreboards.

Eventually Elliott reached for my hand and headed up toward the door. For our transition to quiet activity, I brought out a construction-themed wooden puzzle. Honestly, all the machines looked the same to me the first time I saw it. Pictured in the carved out space underneath the spot for each item – backhoe, bulldozer, barricade – there is a smaller version of the puzzle piece (and the word, thankfully). I finally paid attention and tried to describe the pieces. “Where does this one go? Where do you see wheels and a green arm holding grey cement?” I pointed at individual spots and asked which piece fit, attempting to wedge in all the ones that didn’t fit and then showing my profound excitement over the last one when it did. “Mo?” Elliott said, tapping his little fingers together. He liked this! And it didn’t involve music, or breasts, or outside. He especially thought it was fun when I pinched his fingers around the small red handle and let him feel the piece going into the spot. He was used to chunky knobs, and you could tell he felt like he had just graduated to the full-size lockers in middle school. This is what you’re supposed to do with your child, I thought.

After a while, I rose and sat on the futon. Elliott buried his face in my knees and whined, and I knew it was time for sleep. We laid down and both drifted off while he nursed. I woke when Sonia’s helper was about to bring the dirty linens downstairs; I successfully delatched Elliott and got up. For about an hour I typed quietly on the computer until he woke and immediately stood on the futon like a drunk waking in the middle of the night, thinking he’s still the life of the party. I laid down to see if Elliott was still tired. He pulled up my shirt and he promptly passed back attached to me. It was sweet to watch him sleep and cozy and all, but I was hungry and not tired, and it was almost 5:00. I kept trying to pop Elliott off in the hope that he would either go back to sleep or decide he was ready to wake up. After about the sixth time, he looked at me and babbled in a way that seemed to indicate he was good to go for the next few hours.

As soon as I tried to lead us to our newly pristine upstairs, however, he whined and assumed cling-on mode. He’s learned to wrap his legs around mine so tight that he hardly even needs to hold on with his hands, and I simply cannot put him down. I got out the Ergo carrier hoping to put him on my back. “Mnooo!” he swatted it out of my hands. I stepped with him onto the porch to get the mail, and when I tried to come inside, he started crying. I ran us back to the basement to put back on my now smelly sport tank and shorts after napping in a blackberry-stained t-shirt and boxers. But I couldn’t find the black tank and instead put on a yoga tank I had gotten out in the hopes of resuming my practice. Unfortunately, this top clashed pretty bad with the shorts, which in themselves were embarrassing for showing my eczema-scaly knees, and the tank barely covered my midriff since the pregnancy somehow lengthened my torso without my petite self actually growing any taller. I was hungry and thirsty, but I had the feeling we would be in for a long night if I didn’t get us out to the playground pronto.

Back outside, I was hoping I could hide behind the stroller, but again I met resistance. Elliott insisted on walking, and when he stepped into the street, he pitched a fit and swatted at my attempt to hold his hand. He wriggled when I picked him up, but once we got across the street, I couldn’t put him down. His legs were clamped tighter than a stabilizing grip in shop class. At the playground, he spotted another little boy happily toddled over. The boy – almost three months younger but bigger and with a full head of hair – smiled, and I chatted casually with his mom and dad while inwardly cringing at my outfit and scratched raw knees. The five of us wandered the play structure for a while. When I asked Elliott if it was time to say “bye-bye” and I did not get a “Mnooo!” in reply, I promptly took off, carrying Elliott the whole way home.

My husband drove up just then, and the rest of the evening was spent with me making dinner while John played with Elliott or tried to distract him from screaming at me behind the gate to the kitchen. After changing a diaper as a distraction tactic, John said he entertained Elliott by jumping on the bed and, when he stopped out of fatigue, got an unprompted first two-word sentence: “Mo, peez.”

But back downstairs, it was all we could do to get any food into Elliott besides beets and watermelon. We let him play for a bit in the hopes that he would eat or nurse some more and not wake up early in the night. He brought us a bottle of bubbles, put his finger to his lips to show blowing and said “Mo?” We explained that bubbles were for daytime, for tomorrow, and the world ended. Elliott wailed and wailed all the way upstairs.

The sound of bathwater didn’t calm him, so I headed upstairs to find some pajamas to put on after a shower and to try to get the boy into a better place for sleep. We sat in the rocking chair to read a story, but the CD player we usually keep on the floor had been placed on a bookshelf. Elliott was mesmerized by the blinking wrong time, right at eye level. He pointed to the cheap piece of electronica, waved his hand and made his unintelligible attempt to say something that means “music.” When I did not comply, we lost ground and then some and returned to tantrum mode. John clicked to track 16, a quiet tune called “Arco Iris” (“Rainbow,”). We got out the large version of the board book we’ve been reading Elliott since he was in utero – Time for Bed – my husband and I reading the pages Elliott chose to flip to. When the song ended, we said “All done, music. Bye-bye.” Elliott said “Bye-bye,” and, from his father’s arms, blew me a kiss.

I came down to the basement with a basket full of laundry and looked wistfully at the construction puzzle, remembering those lovely five minutes and wishing I didn’t need to be restricted by space in order to feel free with my time to simply play with my child.