The Year in Review

Every New Year I take the chance to look back over the past year and all that has transpired. This year I have a lot of material.

In summary: last New Year's I bought a new place. Weeks later Vanessa and I had an embryo transfer with our last two embryos. At the beginning of February, I closed on my new home, Vanessa had a positive pregnancy test and I began major rennovations on the new property. My parents began to reconcile. We saw a heartbeat on ultrasound and learned I was having a baby girl. I turned 40 in April and had a Happy 40th/New Home/Surprise, I'm Having a Baby!!! party for my closest friends. In early June I moved. Over the summer my parents officially got back together. In September my daughter arrived 4 weeks early. The next three months were a blur of sleepless nights, diaper changes, and more joy than I'd ever imagined.

That is a lot to pack in to 2009. I can't imagine what I'll be writing one year from now, but I'll be thrilled if I experience 1/10 the blessings of 2009.

The Mile High Club

For some, membership in the Mile High Club is attained by having hot sex in an airplane.

For me, it meant changing a poopy diaper kneeling down in front of the restroom in the back of an airplane at 20,000 feet.

Our plane was old school - no family bathrooms, no changing tables, no bulkheads large enough for a lie down. So the flight attendants waited until the lavatory was empty and then had me lay down my changing mat in front of the door, adjacent to the emergency exit.

We had a turbulent flight. This meant that while I was wiping up poop my baby was rolling to and fro, off of the mat. Luckily, she thought this was a cool game and I went along with that theory.

I must admit that entry into the original Mile High Club would probably have been racier and sexier. But this Mile High entry was another reminder that we can get through almost anything together.

The High Cost of Hope

A friend of mine was approached by a friend of a friend on Facebook. They became friends. They e-mailed back and forth. They graduated to phone conversations. She flew out to see him. It was exciting. They dated long distance for a few months. He came to visit her. She realized he didn't blow her skirt up. It's over. The hope is over. She is disappointed.

I understand the post-relationship letdown. It's the same feeling you get when you return to work after a really great vacation. Suddenly, going to work really sucks. It didn't suck this much before vacation, but after getting a small taste of the good life, work sucks. It makes you wonder if you should stop taking vacations.

But then you read an article in the NYTimes about a great vacation destination. You google it and find a ticket on sale. Suddenly, your trepidation about post-vacation letdown flies out the window. You buy a ticket, pack your bags, and high tail it to the airport.

Or you agree to meet him for coffee ...

Clean Up in Aisle 7

Since having a baby I've tried to tell myself that I can still do anything. Everything. Okay, almost everything. My view on this theory changed somewhat last week.

My friend Debbie was in town to meet my daughter. Debbie has a child of her own and never gets to go to the movies. I thought to myself, 'Won't this be fun? A matinee on a Monday afternoon. I'm sure we'll be the only people in the theater. I can bring my baby and she'll sleep through the whole thing - perfect!"

Well, not exactly.

We arrived at the theater to find that about 15 other people had the same idea. I carried the stroller half-way up the stadium seating and we settled in for the show. After 20 minute of previews, the movie finally began. At just this moment I glanced down at my daughter's face to see the Poop Expression. I hoped it was just gas, and I ignored it.

Twenty minutes later when nothing else had happened, I assumed I was out of the woods. I got the brilliant idea to quickly change her diaper in the aisle of the stadium seating (???? I know !!!). I laid out my mat and arranged the wipes and a new diaper. Wasn't I surprised when I took off her pants and found poop all over her legs, her onesie, and her little pink pants. Meanwhile, my vision was obstructed by the dark scenes in the movie and I could only assess the damage intermittently. At this point, my daughter started crying. I picked her up and grabbed the diaper bag, leaving my entire little set up, the stroller and my friend Debbie in Aisle 7, and booking it to the bathroom. Picture me laying my daughter down on the side of the sink of the ladies room in the movies, cleaning her up with paper towels and trying to get a poopy onesie over her head without getting poop in her hair. Does this picture qualify for the cover of Time magazine's mother of the year publication? I think not.

I'm not saying that I'll never go to a movie again. I'm not saying that now that I have a daughter I plan to barricade myself in my house and stop socializing. But I am saying that that was the last diaper change for us in Aisle 7.

M.I.L.F.

I've learned an interesting thing about dating in the single parents network .... if you're relatively young, in decent shape, and aren't leaking breast milk through your shirt or wearing jeans with an elastic waistband, you may be a M.I.L.F.

This is the one thing I may not mind having in common with Sarah Palin. That and the fact that we both hunt innocent animals from a helicopter with semi-automatic weapons ... oh right, just one thing.

I've found myself in a different solar system. In my past dating life, a 35-something single Jewish woman who wanted children was a ticking time bomb. Every such woman's profile on jdate is accompanied by the soundtrack to Mission Impossible, with a burning fuse leading to a petri dish of her last viable eggs.

But now that I have a baby, the background music to my profile has changed. Roll, "Whoomp, there it is!" with visuals of Teri Hatcher wearing a Cougar t-shirt and pushing a Bob's Revolution Stroller. Who knew?

I've received 153 messages on the single parents site in one month. That is an approximately 30:1 ratio of messages received in my prior dating life. Granted, most of these fathers are not F.I.L.F. In fact, few are even sitter-worthy (the post-baby comparison to sponge-worthy). And at $13/hour for a babysitter, I'm gonna need a little convincing before I answer, "Whose your Daddy?"