Tales from La La Land

Because I work at a school, I figured the title was appropriate. Plus, I totally picked out my outfit last night, woke up before my alarm went off out of pure excitement, and I totally carry a back pack to work now.

It is so hard to describe all the feelings I have today. Harper has been in day care since Tuesday, but I stayed home her first two days so that no one would see my cry. Also, so I could go to the pool, get a manicure, clean the house, do laundry, and go grocery shopping.

On one hand, I am super excited to see people. Real live people who are taller than 21-inches. People who I can talk to about important things like what in the hell happened to Ali Lohan’s face. Not that I don’t love my conversations with Harper, but one can only assess poop and talk about how the penguin’s wings don’t help him fly because he plays in the water, not the sky.

Honestly, it came down to this: Me getting extremely excited that Harper could start mimicking my fart noises.

It is time to go back to work.

It is time to talk about other things. I often wondered if having a baby is what it feels like to be famous. Laef and I would get stopped a lot when we’d be out on walks with her. People want to ask all kinds of questions or tell you the stories of their baby. Or ask how much sleep you’re getting. Or what is her name. It’s hard to get from point A to point B without lots of baby talk. Which, is fine, until the woman at Bloomingdales told us that Harper was too young to be out in public, and that in her culture they don’t take babies out until they are 3 months old because they don’t want the spirits to get them.

This is a true story.

As is the story of the woman we met at Big 5 in Santa Monica who told us that if we have a boy next time we should seriously consider NOT having him circumsised. “My husband feels like he was amputated. It’s a form of amputation.”

Run. Away.

We also met a woman who stopped us to tell us how much she wanted a baby, but she is 40 and single, and her dog is her baby. She then showed us the “barrette that is for actual little girls” in the dogs hair, and told us that the dog has its own bedroom complete with children’s furniture. We were trying to abort the mission when she told us that she is a psychic and to stand there quiet (on the corner of San Vicente and Montana in Brentwood) so she could “see” if we were going to have a boy with our next baby.

So, there we stood looking at woman with her eyes closed in the middle of a busy intersection trying to tell us the fate of our next baby. We thought about running away and claiming we were just playing hide-n-seek if we got caught, but we figured we didn’t have much else to do so we’d see what she said. “I’m not seeing a boy.”

We met lots and lots of baby people with all kinds of stories. I was able to enjoy an entire summer with Harper. I was able to find out if the moms I see pushing strollers in the morning on my way to work had the life I wanted. I learned that those walks are often out of necessity, and sometimes not by choice. Tammy Taylor walked 5 miles in the blazing Texas heat on an episode of Friday Night Lights and people thought she was crazy. “Gotta keep the baby moving,” she said.

And, it’s true.

We spent so many days and nights walking Harper around just to keep her happy.

She is 12 weeks old today.

And she is a happy, happy baby.

Which makes  me proud and happy.

Now it’s time to work so that we can pay for her daycare, which might as well be called college because it costs almost as much.