Childcare Diary

Morning! I’m offering an early bird sale on all the prints on my website – 15% off till 11:59 PM December 1^st. Just use the code THEWORM at checkout (get it?) for a discount on prints like this one:

I am an avid (OK, sporadic but enthusiastic) reader of New York Magazine’s Grubstreet Diet. I started reading Molly Baz’s—she’s a food personality who deals in pregnancy/early motherhood nourishment. She mentions having to drink her coffee fast before her baby wakes up and needs her and the coffee gets cold, and then went on to discuss everything she ate during the day. I️ realized I️ was far more interested in hearing what childcare arrangements she’d made throughout the week and why we never heard about the baby again (full disclosure: I never finish reading a Grubstreet Diet, even though I love reading them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the baby did reappear). So anyway, I present to you: my Childcare Diary. I’m planning to keep it for a week.

Childcare diary

Wednesday 11/20

A morning like any other. Gabe’s Apple Watch vibrates at five, then again five minutes later, and five minutes after that. Much better than the pre-watch days when he used various alarms. He leaves the bed before me. Jamie is already singing and talking to himself outside our door. Thankfully, I️ smell coffee. The dog jumps into bed. I’d sleep with her all night but Gabe puts his foot down on that, so she sleeps in a dog bed next to my side of the bed. Sometimes I️ reach my arm down in the night to pet her. If I️ don’t feel her she’s either on the couch (traitor!) or in Jamie’s bed with him (angel!). I️ get out of bed before the TV goes on. That’s always the aim—to stay in bed as long as I️ can before Gabe turns on the TV. I️ don’t like for Jamie to watch too much, I️ feel like we’re molding him into a real TV guy, and like that isn’t meant to be his fate. On the other hand, I’m not a TV person, and where did that get me? I️ know nothing about pop culture and I️ relax only by eating. Now that the TV is on, I️ decide to take advantage of it while I get ready. I️ pull on my compression stockings (pregnancy) and get dressed and use the bathroom and brush my teeth and put in my eye drops and contacts and take my vitamins, feeling a bit self-serving re: the TV. But it doesn’t work anyway. Jamie likes me better than the TV and he comes into the bathroom and says “I️ took the hair out myself.” I️ ask if he means out of his mouth and he says yes. Alrighty then.

Before ducking behind a paywall, a reminder that you can preorder my kids book, Mixed Feelings, here. It will be out January 20^th, and your generous preorder, if you feel so moved, will train the algorithm to treat this book (and its author) kindly. Thank you –

And - I’ll be speaking at the Montclair Public Library on Saturday Dec. 6^th at four – in conversation with Leah Wolchok, whom I know because she directed Very Semi Serious, the most beautiful documentary about New Yorker cartoonists. If I turned out to be a fictional character in anyone’s work of art, it would be Leah’s. You can show up at three for a wine tasting at Amanti Vino on Church Street if you’d like.

And now, back to my very long Childcare Diary.