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No Toddlers and Tiaras Here

So I have a confession.

I took Elie Mae to a modeling agency. In New York. While wearing black.

You see, I had this notion that just because I was entering an agency, they would look at me before judging Eliot. So I wore all black and tried to suck in my cheeks. I kind of puckered my lips when they called her name and gave them my best pouty eyes. I wanted this bad. The other girls are good, but they don’t deserve it as much as I—

Wait a minute. We were there for Eliot. Still, I couldn’t help thinking all those “Top Model” TV marathons would come in handy. I had to make Miss J proud.

Eliot wore black stretchy pants and an overpriced halter from Carter’s. And a splattering of baby oil on her head in a (failed) attempt to tame her burgeoning fro-hawk.

Did I mention my husband was there? He did the whole casual polo look, like, “Oh, hey? I’m in a modeling agency? I was looking for Chipotle. Sorry to bother you.”

Anyway, after giving Eliot’s small college fund to the man who claimed he owned a parking garage, we walked to the New Yorker Hotel. As we stepped off the elevator, I saw a line of women and their babies. Then I did what no mother should ever do. Or at least admit to doing on a blog that IS READ BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE EVERYWHERE:

I judged the babies. Yes, punish me. Make me do what no black person has done before: order a rare steak.

I assigned them numbers in my head. (Was it in my head?) It was like, “You over there, yes, you. Multiethnic girl with a dimple and cute shoes. 8.5.” And I moved on without guilt. Like, “African-American-slash-Black boy with small fro at 9 o’clock. You have swagger. 9.” Then it was, “Androgynous baby in overalls. 5 and ¾.” And so on.

Don’t get it twisted. The other moms were doing it, too. “Oh, she’s so cute!” they said about Eliot. But then one bent down and a guy standing behind her shot tranquilizer darts at us from his mouth.

Finally it was our moment. A skinny girl wearing these boot-slash-sandals that I’m sure are trendy and, therefore, not sold in Ohio, called Eliot’s name.

She said, “Hello,” as in, “Just because you’re breathing doesn’t mean I have to care.”

We walked into half of a room. Literally. I kept waiting for the two ladies “interviewing” Eliot to say, “Just kidding! We wouldn’t conduct an appointment in this shoebox! Come with us.”

And there were other doors. It’s not that they were struggling for cash and could only rent a coat closet. My theory is that behind those doors are mechanical babies bred solely for Huggies campaigns. They don’t even poop in color like real babies.

Maybe I’m saying that because the agency didn’t pick Eliot. They didn’t even ask her any questions. They looked at our information sheet and said, “Well, you live in Virginia, and we don’t like to take babies out of the tri-state area.”

[Cricket. Why are we here, then? Cricket. Why did you accept her pictures and ask us to come?]

Instead, I did the whole over-eager parent thing. “Oh, yes, I know. But you should see how fast an Amtrak train goes these days. And she just loves the train. Right, Elie? What sound does the train make?”

But they weren’t impressed by Eliot’s train whistle because their mechanical babies lying in cribs behind the trap door can speak 3 languages and know some Mandarin Chinese.

I sensed defeat. I grabbed Eliot and turned my back on that skinny girl wearing Jesus’ winter sandals. Who takes a job where you have to stare down smiling babies until they whimper like a tasered cat in need of a root canal, anyway?

In the end, we won. We got our car back. Not one of those minivans with the strange chalk outlines of our family on the window. Just a regular old Honda. And we headed back to the ‘burbs, a place that has something NYC will never have: Crocs.

An Open Letter to Wegmans Supermarket

Dear Glorious Food Parthenon and Symbol of Excessive Suburban Sprawl:

Elie Mae and I love you like The Donald loves "the blacks." For my five-month-old daughter, you are the future. I roll her by your fancy patisserie, and, suddenly, the pain of her teething gums seems all worthwhile. She fantasizes about her first birthday, when she will sink her teeny chiclets into a rich chocolate dome or Italian rum cake. (There is evidence somewhere that rum encourages healthy gross motor development in babies.) I know this because my husband has his Ph.D. There is evidence for everything. Including that Popeye’s is not owned by that bubbly black lady from Louisiana on TV. And that its popcorn shrimp is actually a breaded void.

And there is evidence, Wegmans, that you have allowed wackness to creep into your ranks. Exhibit A: Your Eating Area Regulations.

One day, I am carrying Elie Mae in her Baby Björn through your aisles, when we both decide we are hungry. We are also diaperless. So I grab a box of Pampers and pick up a quesadilla in the food court. I have to pay for these items before I can go upstairs to your eating area.

I head toward the elevator—Elie Mae in the carrier, my diaper-bag-formally-known-as-Purse on my shoulder, my quesadilla in hand, and her Pampers in the cart. As I push the “up” button, I am interrupted by one of your kind enough employees.

“Oh, you can’t take that shopping cart upstairs with you,” she says.

I stare. I look at my full hands, my baby, and those pricey diapers. Then I calmly contort my face to express, “Whaaaaaa…?”

She totally gets me. “You can put your diapers under those stairs,” she offers. “They’ll probably be fine.”

NO, she doesn’t get me. She either doesn’t see my baby or doesn’t think she pees a lot or doesn’t think anyone in Ashburn under the crunch of the recession might pick up some diapers for the road that they didn’t necessarily purchase with their own funds.

My thought: Play dumb. Easy enough. (There’s evidence that all women lose half their brain cells during pregnancy and that the human term “mother” is just a euphemism for the scientific term “host.”) So I play—or am—dumb. “Put the diapers I just paid for under the stairs? What happens if they aren’t there when I get back?”

She reassures me that others have left their carts before and they have seemed to be fine. 

I look at my diapers, then at the space under the stairs, and I am Daria’s scary history teacher. If I can just find an enlarged, bloodshot eye.

No luck. So I take my Pampers out of the cart. I will carry it all. “What is that rule for, anyway?” I ask.

“Oh, it’s part of the fire code.”

I respect that. I get that. But as if that’s not enough, she adds: “If you think about it as a restaurant, you wouldn’t bring a shopping cart into a restaurant.”

At this, Elie Mae’s head explodes, and I have to catch it. “Mama,” she says, “but Wegmans is a grocery st—“

“Now, now, Elie Mae,” I interrupt. I pop her pacifier into her mouth like she’s any other nonverbal five month old, even though I know MY baby is a genius thanks to Your Baby Can Read. (There is evidence that teaching babies to memorize words actually teaches them to memorize words, which is almost like reading. Or playing Memory.) 

But this skill your employee has taught me is actually useful. Since then, Elie Mae and I have pictured life's lemons more like sour, yellow balls of fruit. 

Take the mortgage. "Mama," Elie Mae will remind me, "Think of those numbers as what the house wants to pay you back in happiness." 

Or cellulite. "Mama," Elie Mae reminds me, "just think of dimples as one pocket of fat smiling at another pocket of fat."

And to you, Wegmans, Elie Mae says, "Think of Mommy and me not shopping in your aisles as us making more room for other hungry customers to shop without their babies at a family-friendly grocery store."

There is only one thing left to say at the bottom of a letter, Wegmans: Please advise. 

Sincerely,

Taylor and E.M. Harris

No Confusion Here

My cockapoo, Tuxedo, suffers from many shortcomings, including a satanically-driven affinity for athletic socks. When the doggy angel and satan appear on his shoulders, Tux always listens to the pitch-fork wielding, bug-eyed pug. It's not until he gets caught mid-chomp at the back of his cage that he shows remorse. But, as we say in the church, nobody said walking this Christian path with four legs would be easy.

I know what you are thinking. What does this have to do with Elie Mae? Give me Elie Mae or I'm not following this blog anymore. 

Touché, Dear Reader. I will explain the link, but do not tease me. Are you truly among the Talented Ten who follow SweetMilks?

I digress (digression being my strength as a writer). 

If you know anything about sweet Eliot, you know she does not miss meals. My baby is in the 40th percentile for length and 70th for weight. Her legs could sell Cinnabons.

She will latch onto anything (latching being her strength as a baby). Breast, bottle, Cuban cigar--it doesn't matter. The nurses in the hospital marveled that Eliot didn't suffer from even a hint of nipple confusion after birth. I worried that one day we'd find her hanging outside her bassinet from her lips.

Because of Eliot's sensitive stomach, we had to feed her special formula through a special nipple for the first few months of her life. Enter: that demonic pug.

To prove that he, too, needed special attention, Tuxedo began to lick up any bit of hypoallergenic Similiac that fell on the kitchen floor. Okay, I thought. Fair enough. No cockapoo deserves to have colic. 

But it didn't stop there. I made the mistake of leaving a bottle on the couch after feeding Eliot. The Bible says God always provides a way out of temptation, but Tuxedo missed his chance to flee. He ate Eliot's slow-flow nipple.

I sighed. It was my fault. I vowed never to leave bottles on the couch again.

But I tell you, when that pug starts speaking lies in Tuxedo's head...

Another day I ran upstairs with Eliot. I heard rustling downstairs and thought little of it. Tux was probably sniffing the trash.

Yeah, OR he was grabbing a plastic bag out of Eliot's diaper bag, ripping a hole through it, pulling out her bottles, devouring the attached nipples, and eating the powder formula from a dispenser.

Okay, so Tuxedo preferred bottles and Similac to bowls and Kibbles. But breastmilk?! Really?

Close your eyes while you read this portion, my friends.

It just so happened that as I opened the fridge on a certain un-ominous-seeming day, a bottle of breast milk fell and splattered on kitchen floor. After sobbing over my hard-pumped spilt milk, I began to smile. This was amazing! Tuxedo was doubling as a Swiffer Sweeper, lapping up my milk until the floor glistened.

It was too late for him to benefit from my colostrum, but perhaps he could still use the "liquid gold's" nutrients to strengthen his immune system.

So what? you ask. Elie Mae latched onto anything. Tuxedo is a one-trick pony!

Ah, Dear Reader, you speak too soon. I urge you, read on. It won't take as many years off your life as you may think:

It was a dark and stormy night, and I was pumping (which is why it was dark and stormy). And guess who waltzes up, executes a perfect crossover, then goes for my breast shield? NO, Elie Mae isn't even crawling yet, though she does like Derrick Rose.

It's Tuxedo. And I swear, he catches my attention, winks, and then runs to his cage. Inside his cage he uncovers all the treats he's hoarded under his blanket and lays them out on the living room carpet to spell:
 
Any Nuk Nipple or Sheeled Will Do.

I tell him he has misspelled "shield," and he sulks, because he has wasted three milk bones.

But I am horrified, in an impressed way, like when someone eats 10 White Castle burgers and five orders of onion chips with no bathroom in sight.

I've learned that as it goes with Elie Mae, so it goes with Tuxedo. To help control her reflux, we feed Eliot oatmeal cereal with milk. Guess who waits for the oatmeal flakes to drop? In order for Eliot to drink the cereal, we have bought her several "Y-shaped" nipples. Apparently, a certain dog with a white stripe down his middle has also graduated from the "slow-flow" hole.

Just the other day, my husband found a "Y-shaped" nipple in his poop. (NO, in Tuxedo's poop, my friend.)

I am proud to say our dog has reached a new milestone. He is officially a Gerber "Supported Sitter." He pushes up with his front paws while on his tummy, bats at colorful objects, and should be eating pureed peas any day now.

Um, Thank You But No

“You got to be kidding me.”

These are the words of my father, a brave man. A man with a high-pitched voice that sounds like a rooster stroking its own throat mid-crow. A man who took me to liquor drive-thrus when I was a kid. Not for beer or wine, but for barbecue-flavored Grippo’s chips and 2-liters of Tahitian Treat. Turn to your neighbor and say, “It’s a Midwest thang.”

Anyhow, Dad would use this phrase as a response to any bit of incredible news. As in:

“Dad, I got all A’s this semester.”

--“You GOT to be kidding me.”

Or

“Dad, my foot is on fire again.

--"You GOT to be kidding me."

And

“Dad, our neighbor neuters squirrels for a living.”

--"You GOT to be kidding me."

I don’t usually like to steal people’s mojo, but I recently encountered an article that left me with only one thing to say.

“Would You Eat Breast Milk Ice Cream?” the headline read. The post featured a mother of four proudly displaying her breast shields and milk-filled bottles next to an ice cream maker. (And she’s wearing an apron, which leads me to believe there’s a poor wet nurse locked in the pantry who is missing her five minutes of shine thanks to this hungry milk nabber.)

It took all the milk in me not to finish a bag of Red Hot Grippo’s before taking even one sip of Dr. Pepper to calm the tongue-sting. Turn to your neighbor and say, “Ohio is for [junk food] lovers.”

This mother with her mysteriously aproned chest comments that she had never thought to put her own milk in smoothies or mac n cheese for her whole family to enjoy. That is, until she found out a store in London sells ice cream made from the bosom of someone’s very milky lady friend.

I know what you’re thinking, Dear Reader. That lady friend is not me. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not above it. I would sell my milk for rand or whatever London’s currency is, but I already have a Medela hands-free pump. So I have no need for savings.

But if my thoughtful husband hadn’t upgraded me from a single electric pump to one I can hang glide with, I would certainly take on the job of London’s premier lady cow.

That is, of course, if I could get offers like Ted Williams. I would be pasted on the sides of buses, or whatever they drive in London, and I would be videotaped while I hugged my mother, waved my contract, and said, “Look, Mommy! Look! I’m the new voice of Kraft.”

And she would smile then warn, “Don’t mess this one up, Taylor. Last time you got a breast milk contract, you cracked under the pressure and your milk dried up.”

“Oh, Mommy,” I’d say. “They wanna give me a house. With freezers in every room. I can even pump and store my milk in the rooftop Jacuzzi. The Washington Wizards want to serve my milk in those orange Gatorade coolers during every home game.”

So it’s not the pumping I take issue with, my friend. It’s the eating of the pumped. That’s where I muster up my best impression of Dad’s voice, something like a baby seal sucking in helium—or maybe a sick hamster on a Ferris wheel—and say:

You GOT to be kidding me.

Now, you might be wondering where I get the paunches to judge. I’ll tell you where—I get it from the gluten-free aisle. You see, Elie Mae loves my milks. Her cheeks were made to accept and store my milks until proper swallowing has transpired. However, my milks were making her sick.

So now, even on my birthday (Happy Birfdey to me!), I am on a “no” diet. As in:

-no wheat

-no eggs

-no nuts

-no soy

-no DAIRY.

And even in this desperate state, in which Elie and I are starved of brownies containing real goo and cookies that don’t taste like water and fig paste, we have agreed that I will not drink my own milk. Like that old Weight Watchers commercial, I don’t want my daughter’s first words to be:

“Mommy, dat Elie’s milks.” 

The Running of the Moms

On Monday and Wednesday mornings, outside a little brick building off a two-lane road that shall rename nameless but is spelled "Hay," something happens that would make your eyelids pop inside out--the way that crazy kid used to do in third grade. His name was "Junior." And he smelled like peanut butter and socks.

On Monday and Wednesday mornings, in a little town in northern Virginia,

The Moms Line Up.

Oh, I'm not talking about a nice single-file type. You won't just roll up and find women with nice bob haircuts, leggings, and Uggs from Nordstrom reading their Kindles. I'm talking fierce moms. Moms who drive twin strollers with mufflers. Moms whose sunglasses double as night vision goggles. These moms are in it to win it.

They don't want your money. They don't want your sympathy. They don't even want your breast milk (as far as I know).

They just want a spot in the library's Story Time.

Inside those locked automatic doors and to the left, sit 26 small alphabet squares that are a reminder to lose your postpartum weight. A sixth of my left back pocket fits onto the letter "P." I once tried grabbing another square to sit on, in addition to the "P," and this guy, this sort of Judge Judy library bailiff dressed in a sweater vest and tie, he came over like, "Ma'am, extra squares cost extra." His inside voice--and the way his lips closed back together without making a sound--unleashed the toy poodle in me, and I was all "extra squares cost extra..." mimicking him. But then I realized I was setting a poor example for Elie Mae, so I quickly pulled the BundleMe over her head before re-mimicking him.

I'm getting ahead of myself. So before those golden doors open at 10 a.m., a line of Eric Carle-hungry, Mother Goose-groupies has formed.

And don't think they won't camp out with their snack balls and goldfish. Or that they won't let their babies have tummy time on the cold concrete sidewalk while they wait. This isn't a game.

The first time I took Elie Mae to Story Time, I arrived five to ten minutes early (a Christmas miracle) and thought there must have been a fire drill. Then I got a closer look and nearly ran over a lactating squirrel in my surprise. Other BLACK people were there early, too. Whaaaaa....?

There was only one person I wanted to call on for help: the gibberish-speaking Farmer Fran from The Waterboy. I wondered what he'd have to say about this. Instead, I grabbed Elie Mae and checked things out for myself. What I found next nearly put a crack in my hands-free pump:

I was one of THEM.

As I crossed the parking lot and neared the crowd, I found myself sneaking in front of the less eager lurkers, eyeing a mom off to my right. She obviously had experience on her side. The engine of her stroller looked rebuilt. She had spikes on the bottom of her shoes, and, if I'm not mistaken, her eyes doubled as laser beam shooters. Her grasp of the stroller bar said, "I'm getting an alphabet square for Johnny whether you like it or not."

And then something happened inside me. I felt it. I guess if I had to describe the feeling, I would say it was like these intense, nutty little leprechauns were racing around my milk ducts, making me crazy. These leprechauns, like some of the mothers waiting, were Irish Blacks. I know this because they were sprinters. These leprechauns were fast. If they had been White Irish leprechauns, I would have felt them hiking in Patagonia fleeces.

The race was on.

Call me crazy, but I began to breathe the alphabet out of my nose in little smoke letters. I strapped Elie Mae in extra tight and put an infant swimming cap on her just in case. "Baby, the leprechauns are making Mommy do this," I whispered. "All my life, I had to fight..."

I never actually saw anyone open the doors. My only proof that the doors ever opened is that I went through them.

Everything from that point is a blur, like a bad dream. I remember being angry that the audiovisual department came before the children's--seriously, who is still renting Top Gun? I remember stuffing my hand into a puppet and using it to put Johnny in a headlock, saying something like, "Mr. Frog doesn't like greedy boys." And I remember Johnny never looked at amphibians the same way again.

My dear reader, you've been warned. At the start of next week, when you arise from your cubicle for your third coffee break of the morning, you will hear these words ringing in your ears:

It's 10 a.m. Monday. Do you know where your favorite soccer mom is?

What's In Her Name?

We call her Elie Mae. Well, wait. Let's back up. Her full name, the one we put on the birth certificate, is Eliot Mae Harris.

You have it in your mind that the whole birth certificate thing is a really big deal. Like there'll be an ancient scribe with a long beard sitting to the left of your stirruped legs, and as soon as the baby slides out, he'll jump to his feet, hold out his long scroll and quill, and ask,

"And what shall the babe be called, my lady?"

That's when you'll look longingly at your husband as a sweaty double rainbow appears on your glistening forehead. The baby has magically hopped into your bosom and is suckling in between gentle coos. You say,

"We shall call her...Eliot. Eliot Mae Harris. The Harris after her father, of course. The Mae, my lord, was the middle name of two great-grandmothers. And the Eliot, well, that's from a syndicated TV show called Scrubs."

Then the rainbow fades, the scribe frowning at the reference to Scrubs in this very serious situation.

It's true, you know, about the name. Several months before my pregnancy began, my husband Paul and I  started watching reruns of Scrubs after work. I'd never seen the show in primetime, so it was news to me when the blond female doctor was called "Elliot."

Eliot, for a girl. Hmm...Like a double rainbow of a name. Oh my god, what does this mean?! It's so beautiful.


So I added it to my list of possible baby names, which I've been keeping since I can remember. You know, I was three years old when I first got scared that I was with child. I thought that any person of the female persuasion could pop up pregnant as long as she was alive. I asked my mom while she was folding sheets,

"But what if I get pregnant?"

"Oh, you're not going to get pregnant, Taylor."

"But how do you know?"

"I'll get you a book on that."

Well if I couldn't get pregnant, the least I could do was keep a list of names handy. You know, just in case my mother was wrong about this whole immaculate Kindergarten conception thing.

Side note: My mom never got me that book. I'm still not sure how I ended up pregnant.

Speaking of my mother, she is totally the Midwestern Naming Czar. Names were so important to us growing up. My sisters and I all knew that we had two middle names, one of which was Swahili. We are not from Africa--I mean we are, but we aren't. We are like from Ohio.

So my oldest sister's Swahili name was "Panya." Countless times I heard the story growing up:

"Panya means 'tiny as a mouse.' So that's how we named your sister."

I swallowed that story. I believed it. I breathed that stuff.

Then I met a Kenyan.

"Jackson," I told him, "my oldest sister's middle name is Panya." I couldn't get any further.

"Panya?!" He practically spit. "Panya?! No one would name their child that. Panya means rat!"

Afrocentric naming from a book sold in a Midwest grocery store: FAIL.

Still, though, with a name like Taylor--which, I will remind you, was uncommon for a girl back in 1983--I had to give my daughter a unisex, edgy name. OR a southern belle sort of throw back name like Adelaide.

If it was a boy, Paul wanted a junior. I used a line on him I'd heard on the gospel radio station to shoot that down. "Junior? Juniors are so 90s. Plus, look in the Bible. Was there an Abraham junior? An Isaac junior? No, they had their own names."

I digress. We had a girl. We named her Eliot. The only thing literary about it is the spelling. And it's totally faux-literary because I can't tell you a squirrel's nut about T.S. or George. I think it's sort of like selling a fake Louis Vuitton, you know, naming your daughter like that while being clueless and all. I'll just stand out on my corner, holding Eliot under a long coat, and shout "WATCHES, GOLD WATCHES" to neighbors passing by. I'm a fraud.

But back to the whole birth certificate shindig. Sorry to pop your whoopee cushion, but there is no scribe. It's an ordinary woman. With brown hair. And she simultaneously knocks and walks into your hospital room while you are trying to figure out if that plastic cone is a nipple shield or water gun. And she's all,

"Can you fill this out right now and give it back to me? For your baby. A birth certificate. Get it later in the mail."

And she's totally drunk.

No, wait. I added that last part. She's sober for the most part. But she wears one of those beer helmets with the plastic straws in her mouth.

And that's all there is to it.

That doesn't answer the question about Eliot's nickname, though.

Elie Mae. I'm not in seminary, but I'm pretty sure it's a derivative of the Hebrew name, Jehoshaphat, which is properly translated "girl with cheeks who eats biscuits." Because that's Eliot. She has chubby cheeks and looks to be the type who will gobble shortcake.

It all started with my sister Sienna. She started calling her "Elie Mae" in this great, Gone With the Wind accent. And you know how it builds. Then it became, "Elie Mae, get back here with those biscuits! It ain't dinnertime yet!" Or, "Elie Mae, you eat those string beans before that pound cake!" And so on...

Anyway, call her Eliot. Or call her Elie Mae. But don't call her just Elie. And if you're going to say Elie Mae, the least you can do is say it with conviction. It helps to have a visual. If you picture the antebellum South in a split screen with the Pillsbury doughboy, you should get it. It should come out just right, like "EL-Lee Maaaaay. EL-Lee Maaaaay wOnt a Bis-kit?" That's the proper pronunciation. Or close to it.