North Carolina Driver's License!

I have been remiss in my blogging this week - I think it's just too darn hot here. Brain has melted down. Nina and I showed up for a playgroup at someone's house, but we were a day late! The husband answered the door & looked at us like we were nuts.

Anyway, I forgot to report that I successfully got a NC Drivers License - I guess I officially live here. (Steve still apparently lives in New York, since he hasn't gone to the NCDMV yet, AND he has gotten repeated Manhattan jury duty notices, even after he sent them documentation that we have moved!) I have to say that it was a surprisingly pleasant DMV experience - I am still not used to people being polite here (not to mention calling me "honey" or "ma'am"). There was a big line, and many nervous teens with their equally queasy parents, but we were entertained by a news scroller that updated us on the Paris Hilton situation - crucial info. The whole thing took about 90 minutes start to finish. You need a LOT of documentation to get a license here - two forms of ID, proof of SSN, proof of address, proof of insurance (even if you don't own a car), probably something else that I am forgetting. They turned a lot of folks away who didn't have their stuff in order.

They tried to convince me that I'd need to take a road test, but that was because the dude thought my current license was expired (it has a renewal sticker on the back). Apparently he thought I'd been driving on an expired license for TWO YEARS. Hello - I am not Paris! I should add that I was still driving on my Illinois license, despite having lived in two other states in the interim. Initially I kept the IL license when I moved away for college, as part of maintaining IL residency in case I wanted to go to state grad school there. Then when I moved again to NY, it just didn't seem worth the bother (doesn't a New York City DMV sound like your worst nightmare??). And since I never owned a car (ever in my life up until 2 months ago), it wasn't an issue.

But I digress. Fortunately I did not have to take the road test, just the written test, which I'll have you know I actually studied for, and I did pass. Then at the crucial license-obtaining moment, they make you choose your own background for the license! Oh, the pressure! Here are the choices: a lighthouse, the Wright brothers' plane, an outline of the state of NC, or the official state seal. I chose the plane, probably b/c we had just been to Kittyhawk. I asked the DMV dude what people usually picked. In his words: almost without exception, the "girls" pick the lighthouse, the "boys" pick the plane, and the "foreigners" pick the state seal. He assured me that it probably didn't mean anything bad that I picked the plane. Looks cool to me.

So now I'm all official, and the photo is even a decent one.

You know you're in the suburbs when...

• You borrow salt from a neighbor
• You notice when someone on the block puts in a new flowerbed
• You know the names of all the neighborhood dogs
• You have a teenage babysitter next door
• You know the strip malls by name
• You know what time the Target closes
• You eat lunch at Costco
• You drive an extra mile to save $.04 a gallon on gas
• You spy on folks through your window (no, wait, we did that all the time in Stuy Town)
• You know the mail came because the little flag on the box is lowered
• You shop for lawn ornaments, and hang those little garden flags
• You call 6 cars an hour passing by "a lot of traffic"
• You get pissed when people let their dogs crap on your lawn
• You take nature walks
• You hit the yard sales before 8am
• You wish you could find the Scrabble set
• You sit around watching Starter Wife on a Saturday night*
• You sit around watching Sunset Tan on a Saturday night**

* Disclaimer: Diana only
** Disclaimer: Steve likes it too

Control - or lack thereof

So Nina has decided to eat again, at least for the last few days. I really try not to hound her about it (am fearful of creating some wacky food issue), but it's very hard to keep myself from constantly waving spoonfuls (spoonsful?) of food in front of her face. I think I do it too much, and she refuses food just because I'm trying to get her to eat. So I made a resolution to quit the nagging, but it's very hard. Amy's pediatrician told her that her only job is to put nutritious food in front of the baby, not to make her actually eat it. Good advice, but easier said than done, especially if you have a kid who hovers in the 5th percentile for weight!

Nina is getting into a phase where she wants to be in control of everything - what she does, what everyone else does or doesn't do. It's hard to know what battles to pick. As endearing as she truly is, I am tired of having her demand things of me every moment - More noodles! More bubbles! More doggies! More! More! More! So we implemented a plan to at least get her to say please when she demands something. To me she sounds so rude with all the MORE MORE MORE, although when I stop to think about it, of course she has no concept of rudeness. So for a day or two we battled over the saying Please, and now she says it all the time, especially when her gratification is delayed. As in:

Nina: More cookie!

Mama: You can have a cookie in just a second, after I finish putting the dishes in the sink.

Nina: PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!

As if the Please will magically cause the cookie to appear. I'm hearing her say it to other kids who refuse to share, also. Peeeeeeeeeeeees!

I have also instituted a No Standing Up in the Tub rule, which only makes sense, but she of course wants to test that one out as well (over and over). She knows that if she won't stay seated, the bath is over and she comes out. Tonight she stood up about 50 times to test this out, each time saying, "All done taking bath." And when I said, "Okay, I see you standing up, and that means the bath is over," and I'd reach for the towel, of course back down goes the tushie - "More bath Nina!!" Sigh.

The sitting in the tub rule is about as strict as I find myself getting. So far I have wimped out on issues such as No Spilling of Drinks, and No Throwing Food on the Floor. The score is something like Nina 75, Mama 2. I've been observing parents on both ends of this spectrum - folks who appear to be overly harsh and rigid with their rules and punishments, and then parents who to my eyes don't provide reaction, reinforcement or redirection when it seems clearly called for. Hard to find that balance.

And in the end, sometimes an 18 month old in control isn't such a bad thing, after all. Tonight as I was trying to clean up from dinner, Nina insisted that I dance and spin with her - "More spinning Mama! More spinning Nina!"

She won that one, hands down. Spinning beats doing dishes every time.

I have a cold - not much to say

However, I cannot stop laughing at this

Uh oh - Nina crying - why why why? Been asleep for over an hour. "MORE NURSING MAMA WAHHHHHHHHH!"

Okay BYE

Nina loves music

Or should I say "myoo-kik?" (Pronounced with great precision, btw. She has very careful enunciation.) First of all, she is obsessed with singing Happy Birthday, to anyone and everyone. We have to get out the video camera & get it on tape. She doesn't know what it means, but she loves the song b/c you can insert anyone's name into it. The most popular version goes: Happy Birthday to you, Dadd-eee, Dadd-eee, Dadd-ee! Or sometimes just, "Happy to YOU, Daddy." She sits at her toy piano and accompanies herself. In addition to singing to all the usual human suspects, we also sing to: dogs, raisins, grapes, and have been known to send birthday salutations to hockey and to my breasts. Nuff said.

In the car, we have a regular rotation of CD's. You would think that since my car has a 6-CD changer (awesome), we wouldn't get bored. However, if you are 18 months old, you have about 6 favorite songs, and need to hear each one on repeat about 1000 times before you can move on. Note to self: Laurie Berkner makes lovely music, but after about 100 repetitions of The Pretzel Store, or worse, The More We Get Together (running time: a mere 62 seconds, aka the Happy Be song), I qualify for a music induced lobotomy.

Today Nina discovered Laurie's track I'm a Mess, which is a fun song - more of a chant:

I'm a mess!
I'm a mess!
I'm a big old messy mess!

However, my belief is that Nina is convinced it is actually about Elmo, as in:

Elmo mess!
Elmo mess!
Elmo big old messy mess!

Awesome.

Plus, Nina has discovered that we have a song that is ABOUT HER! That song would be Snow Day, by the band Bleu. A relevant excerpt:

On my knees and pray
For a snowy day
'Cause I need a break
and I wanna sled the day away
I need a snow day!


What Nina hears:

On my knees and pray
For a snowy day
'Cause I NINA break
and I wanna sled the day away
NINA snow day!

She calls it the Nina Snowy Song.

Pigs in Mud

A very quick entry because Steve is waiting for me to watch Entourage & eat chocolate cake (!) downstairs. We just went out to eat, but because of Steve's blog, we are having trouble finding places to go. Let's just say that I would rather have gone to Cheesecake Factory than the joint we ended up at, but what can you do - still nice to have a night out. We started out at Quail Ridge Books, which is a great place to peruse and get your indy book spirit on. Shockingly, they are open til 9pm on Sundays - most retails here are either closed on Sundays, or open only from 1-5pm.

Hog Day yesterday was much fun, although not as wild & quirky as we were led to expect. Nina danced to bluegrass music ("More myoo-kik!"), and ecstatically rode a carousel ("More up and down Nina!"). We ate very good barbecue and highly sinful freshly sliced cheese fries. The crowd was a mix of the Keen-wearing intellectual types from Chapel Hill, and the mullet sporting, gunrack toting folks from the more rural (and may I add dental-care deprived) surrounding areas, so it made for good people watching. We did get Hog Day t-shirts, no worries, and then we drove around for a while and got coffee at what is allegedly the best coffee house in the Triangle (and only has ONE location, definitely not a chain).

Anyway, I hear the natives getting restless downstairs, rustling our $5 Sunday NYT loudly, so I'd better go before he eats all the cake! More on our very fun Father's Day to come.

Bodily functions

Nina and I went potty shopping this afternoon - very exciting for her. She sat (clothed, don't worry) on the potty in the store, yelling, "Nina pee-pee potty! Nina big girl!" I'm not sure she understands what it all means, but that's ok. The idea is just to have a potty for her to play around with, not any actual plan of attack for potty training. She likes to throw toilet paper in the toilet and then flush - "Bye bye wa-wa." And then announce to everyone what I've been doing - "Mama potty." We're so proud.

While in the baby store, she also had to test out all their cribs. "Nina sleeping!" I put her in, and covered her with a blanket, and pretended to put her to bed. Then I would walk away, at which point she would pop up and shout, "NO SLEEPING NINA." Then we would move on to the next crib and do it all again. There were a lot of cribs on display. I was sure they were watching us on the security cameras and coming to boot us from the store before we destroyed all their merchandise.

A small bird has nested in a flowerbox that hangs over our driveway! I discovered this when I took something off the box that was covering it, and the agitated bird came flying out. I thought at first it was a bat (eek - yet another weird bit of nature to torture us), but then I saw the nest. At that point the mama bird was up in a tree shrieking at me. I replaced the cover and backed away. Later I peeked in and to my relief she had come back - I was only worried I had scared her off for good, or left my scent, and then we'd be responsible for yet another baby animal tragedy. Ugh. But now we have to monitor these birds and hope they don't decide to take a tumble onto the driveway - yikes.

Here's what we're doing tomorrow!!

Teaching fiscal responsibility

Today Steve & Nina spent a long time throwing pennies into a fountain, and she kept insisting "More throw money! More throw pennies!" We had to get extra change. What a great life lesson - toss your cash in the water!

She's very sassy - this morning we were all talking about the giant fish tank in the lobby of Steve's office (which Nina likes to watch), until she looked at us solemnly and announced "All done fish talk." She basically told us to shut up. She is really getting bossy, I have to say - I was glancing at a magazine while she pretended to eat dinner, and she pushed it out of my hand, saying "No read book, Mama." Feisty!

Here is what I offered her for dinner:
mac & cheese
grapes
mandarin oranges
broccoli
peas
corn niblets
cheese toast
mini pizza bagel

Here is what she actually ate:
6 raisins
2 pretzels

How long can a human survive on such a diet? Please advise.

I promised news about other topics - Steve is enjoying his job. He is a copywriter at a small agency here, and since they have only a few writers, he gets to work on a diversity of projects (including lizard food!), and write for various media (print, radio, online, reptiles, etc). Seems like it's a nice change for him from doing solely interactive stuff for one or two clients.

Just this week, I finally sent off my North Carolina medical license application, so hopefully sometime this decade I'll be able to seek some work here. Of course the medical board website is plastered with warnings not to expect the approval procedure to take less than 4-6 months! So I may have a spell of enforced unemployment coming up, which I don't mind so much. Nina and I are having a good time running around town.

I'm pretty tired, and the house is pretty messy, so I'd better go. AND I have an episode of Sunset Tan to catch up on.

PS Congratulations to my friend Alexa - mother of two, as of yesterday, when her son Ben was born! Yay!!

Better late than never - update from Raleigh

Well, obviously I didn't get too impressively far in chronicling our move, but I figured I would pick it up here. Many folks have asked for updates on how things are going, how Nina is, etc., so I am just going to pick up in the middle of things and start posting little entries.

We like it here quite a bit so far. Our house (a small rental, but a palace compared to our 1BR in NYC), is comfy, although we have had some encounters with insects both big and small, as well as a Baby Bunny Tragedy, which I will not detail here. But suffice to say that the bug encounters have involved Steve smacking large flying insects with shoes, magazines and other implements, while I cower in the background yelling "GET IT" and cracking up, and trying not to wake the baby.

Raleigh is a friendly, comfortable town (I find it so hard to call it a city), with lots and lots of kid friendly accoutrements. We have hit the Children's Museum (many times), the various pizza joints, many cool playgrounds (or scorchingly hot ones, depending on the time of day), the malls (Raleigh loves its malls!), not to mention lunch dates at Costco. We are slowly meeting some neighbors - on both sides of our house are families with small children, so that has provided nice spontaneous playdates. The yard next door also houses a friendly dog named Zoe, who likes to play fetch and lick Nina and eat her Cheerios. Nina desperately wants Zoe to talk to her - "Zoe, Hi Nina! Hi Nina!" but so far hasn't met with success.

Nina is changing in leaps and bounds, even in the 6 or so weeks since our move. She is talking up a storm - has many more words than we can count. She speaks in little sentences: "Change Nina poopy diaper," being a favorite. "Bye bye red car daddy work," as we send Steve off on his day, and "No pick up Nina Mama!" if I have to grab her up to avert some mishap.

This evening we went for a walk with our neighbors (a family with three little boys), and one had his shirt off, and so Nina insisted on being entirely naked for part of the walk - she wanted her diaper off, which I didn't let her do in the middle of the street. So she walked down the road in her diaper & shoes yelling "Nina naked!!" A special sight for the neighbors.

Ok, more updates to come, e.g. on Steve's job, other Raleigh adventures (Gun show!! Hog festival!!), etc. Betcha can't wait!