My Childhood With Andre

I ask this question during my fourth go-round with the song, “Ghostbusters.” It’s playing in the industrial parking lot of a quaint Pennsylvania suburb where a group of elementary school children are having a Halloween parade. An amplifier is perched on a chair, an orange extension cord leading to a cute schoolhouse, complete with glimmering swing set.

Sure, it’s an industrial complex, but filled with holistic chiropractors and fancy personalized gyms. The children dutifully march in an oval, all being feverishly photographed by their parents. Siblings too young to be in school are clinging to their moms’ legs wearing ladybug costumes or puffy princess dresses.

The principal, dressed in an elaborate penguin suit, addresses the crowd and it starts again, tinny, cheerful: “If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!”

Well, there is something strange in this neighborhood, the fact that there is nothing strange in this neighborhood.

Bucks County, PA, at least from where I sit, is a world of gummy, removable pumpkin stickers for the sliding door to one’s giant manicured lawn. It’s a world of Halloween-themed puffy marshmallow ghost Peeps atop steaming cups of homemade hot chocolate in Number One Dad mugs. This is a Jack-o-lantern expertly carved with stencils world. Who you gonna call? Your neighbor to see if she and her toddler twins want to help decorate your witch cupcakes.

Back to me staring at this parade of children. I realize this town is a world of children, a world built around and for them, softer than a stack of Peeps on a heap of fall leaves. Later in the day, I will attend another parade to see my nephews march, both as Superman. My toddler will step in line with his own matching Superman suit, trailing his suburban cousins. This is my husband’s world, part of his childhood, whereas I grew up on the mean streets of San Francisco.

It’s not a saying, I mean, it is a saying, but the streets were kind of mean.

“If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?” Um, not the Popo, not where I grew up, because they’re busy scraping a body up off the corner in Hunters Point. You know what else was strange in my neighborhood? Child molesters. Yeah, I’m about to bum you out. Instead of the principal putting on a penguin suit, we had several assemblies every year during which we were warned not to follow anyone asking for help “finding lost puppies” or offering candy.

A guy once offered me a ride home from elementary school, leaning out of a rusty sedan, but I was so convinced my mom would never have arranged a ride for me I knew he was “something strange” and ran through an empty lot to my flat on a nearby hill, which I entered with a latch key. Looking back, this didn’t even merit telling my mom.

So, staring at the orange extension cord allowing the citizens of Bucks County to hear Ghostbusters as their adorable children made the rounds as Woody or Spiderman or Rapunzel, I asked myself, what’s so wrong with adults taking the day off, fitting themselves into a world of kids?

For reference, just know that when I was young, my dad took me to see the film, “My Dinner with Andre,” because he wanted to see it. The entire film consists of two guys talking philosophy over dinner, one of them played by Wally Shawn. I felt lucky to be included, because us city kids, we were just trying to fit into a world of grown-ups. Even if the films weren’t animated and we would never get a Wally Shawn action figure, we made due.

How could this type of life not be better? Or, am I just bitter? Maybe a Peep in my cocoa would have made me a happier person.

On the other hand, as I stare at the quiet streets (and duh, I get it, children get hurt here and everywhere, but you know what I mean) I wonder why it bothers me, just a tiny, teeny, weensy bit, that these kids are the center of the world. Striving and longing can’t live in a place like this. If they did, they would have a Beagle named Rascal and a $3,000 swing set.

Striving and longing breed symphonies and novels and vaccines and microprocessors, right? But maybe it’s okay for most of us to just be happy and serene. Maybe that’s my prayer for my own little Superman, to one day have a mid-level management job, a quiet mind, a decent dental plan and in his own worn mug, a slowly melting Peep.

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My name is George and I'm curious: what's the point?

No, you have to reciprocate. Like it or not, there’s a kid pro quo.

Other parents helped you kill a Sunday afternoon with your toddler, throwing a pirate party, a princess party, a bubble party or whatever, and now it’s your turn. Or, I should say, it’s my turn. The first birthday I could get away with skipping, but now I have no choice. Like it or not, unless I feel like violating this unspoken contract with the other parents in my circle and at my day care, I am throwing a party for my son’s second birthday.

Let’s just say things aren’t off to a good start. Cancer is involved. I know. I’ll get to that.

First, my dream was to never throw an elaborate or expensive or exhausting birthday party for a child too young to care or even remember it. That dream was crushed, as I mentioned, by the social contract.

I decided the only course of action was to suck it up and pay one of these indoor playground places to host us. It goes like this: I throw them some cash, they provide plates and forks, a ball pit, air-conditioning, a giant slide, a bucket of juice boxes and the satisfaction of knowing I have not shirked my mom duties. Again, my child won’t care — that dude just made his first poop in the potty; like he cares if he gets a sheet cake from the grocery store or a chocolate ganache likeness of Thomas the Tank Engine from a bakery that sells $7 cupcakes. Like I said, these parties are payback for all the genuine fun and amusement I’ve had at the expense and inconvenience of other parents.

Now, how does cancer make its way into this story?

Two months in advance, I book the Saturday of his birthday. Plans are made, invitations (OK, e-vites, sorry) are sent, and what do you know? This indoor playground lets me know they double-booked my time slot. I’m out, the other family is in, here’s your deposit back, so long and farewell.

Obviously, there was nothing to do at this point but hang up the phone, get insanely upset, be fully aware that this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone and also take a moment to ponder how horribly I’ve failed. All I had to do was throw a stupid party, like all the other moms do without incident. But I have no luck and no social graces, and this proves it. More self-flagellating to frost the teetering, tiered, rising cake of self-doubt.

Hell hath no fury like a toddler mom scorned. Let me tell you, my Yelp review was going to be none too kind. This is the only petty revenge I had for the horrible wrong this playground did me. They would pay. OK, this would be a waste of my time and probably have no effect on their business. And it would never answer the question: Why me? Why me and not the other family who booked the same time?

I fantasized about showing up at my time anyway. That would show them. They would have dueling parties and perhaps a fire hazard. They had my deposit, and I would have my party, on my day, at my time, their mistake.

That’s when the owner called, the mother of a girl a year older than my son. She said she was sorry, that this had never happened before, that she started the party playground to help busy moms, to make things amazing and memorable for the kids, to give herself something meaningful to do after she was diagnosed with cancer. That’s right, and that’s when I cried. And she cried. And she said things had fallen through the cracks since her treatment and her sister had stepped in to help out.

She offered me the 10 a.m. spot. Mimosas would be nice, she said. I could serve bagels. They would throw in some balloons and an extra hour for my trouble.

There are times when the universe goes, “Here’s your gift bag.” And you open it to find something more lasting than a painted face or a Curious George sticker. The theme of my son’s party this year is obvious. Perspective.

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“Desitin in my cuticles” is not the first line of a poignant country song, but I keep thinking it should be.

No. Desitin in my cuticles is what concerns me when I’m asked the question I get at least once a day: “Are you having another one?”

Really, this should not be an annoying question.

It’s a perfectly normal way for you to take an interest in my family and in me, and I don’t mind it. In fact, I mind people who mind it. Moms of babies or toddlers who get twisted when asked if they plan on having another are like the women who wore “Touch the Bump, Get a Thump” t-shirts when they were pregnant. A human growing inside your stomach is compelling, and no t-shirt is going to change that. Similarly, when strangers or relatives see your baby hitting milestones, getting out of the crib and diapers, it is totally normal to ask if you will do this whole thing again.

What they are really asking–and the reason why this is a tough question to answer is, “Does this whole kid thing ruin your life, or did it work for you?” For me, both things are true.

I mean this with tremendous love and no regret; my life, as I knew it, is over. There will always be a part of me worrying about my child, whether he’s at daycare or camp or college or on his honeymoon. So, I feel vulnerable in a way I never was before. It’s terrifying, all this love and these high stakes. But, ruined is too strong a word, especially for something that can be so euphoric.

On that front, having another kid is sort of neutral because I am already in the game. How much harder can it be? Probably a lot. When I look at the infant toys now collecting cobwebs in the garage, a part of me never wants to go back. Just eye-balling that stupid, red baby play mat with cheap plastic mirrors and crinkly fabric birds and recalling “tummy time” or the washing of various breast pump parts makes me want to donate every single baby thing I own to the Salvation Army and say “Night, night” to ever reproducing again.

It’s an inexplicable thrill ride to watch my two year-old suddenly string a sentence together or count to ten (even if he does throw in “three” where it doesn’t belong). At the same time, there’s a part of me that exhales when certain stages are over. When he gave up the pacifier, I thought, “Thank you. Thank you. No more scrambling for fallen pacifiers to wash. No more stuffing them in my glove compartment. No more.” And a whisper in my head added, “Unless you have another one.” Which explains the jar of pacifiers in a cupboard somewhere. I’m in baby purgatory, with a jar of pacifiers in one hand and a birth control pill in the other.

Most couples I see with two young children look pretty miserable. Or maybe I’m just seeing that because I’m scared. A big part of me wants to do it again, this time knowing how to take a temperature rectally and how to swaddle and not being so terrified and just taking in the joyful parts. Part of me wants a do-over, a second chance to live the peak moment of having a new baby, only without all the paranoia, the inexperience.

Each night, when I put on my toddler’s pajamas and diaper, I cover his little bum with Desitin and there it is, the white paste that clings to your cuticles with the adhesive power of ten thousand barnacles. I can attack it with a towel, or go at it with a wet wipe, but that stuff is powerfully sticky. And I wonder if I’ll miss it.

* This piece originally appeared in print via Creator’s Syndicate and online at the Huffington Post.

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Parental shame is a two-way street, and my kid is already pedaling down it — in the pink tricycle he insisted we buy him.

Will I embarrass my son? Sure. That’s a given. But that dude is going to shame me, too.

Enough worrying about all I have done and will do to make him slink down into the front seat of life. It’s time to talk about me, and all parents, and how we sometimes get embarrassed, too.

Of course I’ll show up to soccer games in vintage mini-dresses suitable only if I were opening at Coachella. And 23. There’s no question that as a parent I’ll wear and say and do things that make him wish he lived in a group home in New Mexico sustaining the nightly possibility of being molested by his bunkmate. It’s a given that parents shame their children.

However, it’s a tricky thing to talk about being embarrassed by our kids. Because no matter how illogical it may be, messes they make will always seem a bit like our fault. And they may be.

Look, I don’t care if my son prefers a pink tricycle or wears a tuxedo to day care every day and goes to “Glee” camp. None of that does or would bother me.

However, when I look around with my new perspective as a mom, I see every human creature as someone’s child (I know, duh) and can’t help wondering: When your kid does something — from mildly idiotic to massively criminal — aren’t folks secretly blaming the parent? Even when they understand that a person has free will or some biological predisposition to act out, or is simply a full-fledged grownup who should be responsible for her own actions, don’t most people look a bit askance at mom and dad?

When Michael Douglas has a kid in jail, don’t we think “absentee dad”? If Lindsay Lohan were a shy veterinarian living in a condo with her accountant husband, would her parents seem like pieces of work?

I’m going extreme here for a second, but don’t worry. I’ll come back to the small stuff our kids do. I just need to make this point: Have you ever seen an interview with Jeffrey Dahmer’s father? That guy seems really normal, even caring.

His kid ate people.

Yesterday, my child didn’t want to leave the sidewalk because he was staring at a giant truck removing slabs of metal from the street. We sat there for 20 minutes. I tried everything — getting down on his level, reflecting back his frustration, giving him a countdown. I finally had to pick him up and surfboard him to the car. The lady walking her dog in a chartreuse Juicy Couture sweatshirt? She judged me. The guy selling hot dogs in the parking lot? I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m an incompetent mom. Anyone without significant hearing loss within a mile radius? Well, it’s safe to say they thought I was using enhanced interrogation techniques on a high-value prisoner.

When you see a parent prying their screaming child out of a restaurant booth for a little timeout in the alley, trust me, that parent is acutely aware that his child’s behavior is reflecting on him.

My toddler was just being a toddler, and I was doing my best. Still, I got in the car and we both cried, and that kid, by way of a little garden-variety freak out, made me pretty self-conscious about my parenting and, thus, the very core of my being.

So, yeah, he’s not eating runaways.

There’s a continuum. You get credit when your kid gives the valedictory address or strikes out the side, and you get the blame when he eats people. Or, to work our way toward cannibalism, when your kid fails algebra, bites the teacher, gets busted smoking pot, gets a DUI, ends up at sober living, ends up on the pole, holds up a bank or just plain doesn’t write a thank-you letter to his grandmother, fair or not, that looks bad for you.

Keep Mr. Dahmer in mind. He has it worse than you do. While you’re complaining about your kid’s pink tricycle, you know what he’ll be thinking? Eat me.

* This post was originally published in print by Creator’s Syndicate and online by the Huffington Post.

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A street hooker pauses long enough for me to jack her style

It doesn’t matter if the brick red polish on my fingernails is so chipped I look like Courtney Love coming off a bender. No, I mean, it deeply, truly does not matter.

And I really believed it mattered. The sight of my jacked up hands on the steering wheel made me slightly tempted to veer into a tree.

About a week ago, I began to panic about the nails. When would I have a chance to get a manicure or just take off this god-forsaken polish myself? Were people staring at my hands and extrapolating that my life, like the polish, must be crumbling and chaotic and maybe a bit busted?

Despite having a job and a toddler, I somehow always manage to keep up appearances, right down to the tips of my fingers, even if I’m up half the night administering Tylenol and suctioning mucus out of my child’s nose. This time, though, it got away from me. I’m typing this right now with hands like a woman who might offer you oral sex for three cigarettes and a Twix, and you know what? I’m okay with it.

Turns out, I needed ugly fingernails to scratch the surface of my own distorted thinking.

Now that it’s been three weeks of these half vamp/half meth head nails, it’s become obvious that my lack of manicure did not bring about either a global or personal apocalypse. In fact, it’s highly probable no one has noticed.

This is a very small personal grooming detail, and stupid, I know, but it was real to me that things would disintegrate if I walked around looking like this. A sick baby and a crammed schedule elbowed this out as a priority, and now I know a lot of things I couldn’t see when my nails were lacquered and things were looking prettier all around.

As the world continues to rotate and the sun to rise and set, I have to admit that life goes on not only if I look imperfect, but also if the laundry sits in the washing machine for three days before I get a chance to throw in the soap and start the cycle. If the baby eats a bowl of rice and beans tonight from the fast-food chicken joint, life goes on. If I can’t return a few phone calls or order a new package of special nighttime diapers online or get a picture framed or send someone a thank-you card or get to the gym or pretend to meditate for eight minutes, it doesn’t matter.

After three pediatrician appointments in one week and the dreaded call from day care that sends you rushing over there like your child is having a heart attack when he’s just running a fever, I’ve had a minor come-to-Jesus. (I’m Jewish, but I love that expression, and “come-to-Moses” just doesn’t have that ring.) In the world of a parent, especially of a little one, life feels easier when you choose your battles and distill the checklist to something incredibly simple and manageable: Is my baby healthy and safe? Is my relationship healthy and safe? That’s it. That’s all.

If the task in front of me isn’t essential to either my child or my husband today, it goes on the back burner where it may get a bit crusty before it gets cooked or tossed. So what?

At least for me, it was all getting to be too much. I hope you can relate. If not, I don’t care for your equanimity and time-management skills, and we probably could not be friends.

Once life forced me into accepting all I can’t get done, I was liberated. OK, that’s a bit dramatic. It’s not like I’m Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank. Still, “So What” is a philosophy that gets me through the day right now. If it seems like I’m patting myself on the back for being deep, that’s just so I won’t have to see my nails.

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Not a second guesser. Or maybe he is.

Even after 19 months as a mother, it’s not unusual for me to notice the car seat in my rearview mirror and for just a second think what is that doing there and whose car am I driving?

The gauzy vision of giving birth and instantaneously becoming a heavenly, patient, luminescent creature who instinctively knows what to do with her child? Wipe that from the cosmic Etch A Sketch.

I’ve been a second-guesser since way back. Let me tell you, it’s not one of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” and it most certainly doesn’t make parenting a nonstop joy. Just when I think I have an excellent idea about childrearing, it isn’t long before I send it back to my frontal cortex for a thorough and punishing review.

Gymnastics seemed like a great idea, for example. Build muscle, coordination and social skills, kill a couple of hours and come out with the ability to do a “front roll.” The place even has a coffee machine. I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about my find, until my son’s feet broke out in a rash accompanied by a fever and followed by vomiting.

Rinse, and repeat four times since we began gymnastics. Yeah, I’m like the Dr. House of moms. It took me a mere six months to realize that my child climbing on the same foam mats as 17,000 other toddlers in the greater Los Angeles area wasn’t such a good fit for his immune system.

Bela Karolyi would have been gentler on my child than pediatric drool. That was a landing I did not stick.

Really, I’m not sure how long I can play the new-mom card or when I’ll know exactly what I’m doing.

When choosing my pediatrician, I waited for that this is the one feeling, but settled for, “I like Canadian people.” And I loved her, mostly because she was a young mom with a child about the same age as mine. As it happens, she missed the viral infection and gave me some ineffective skin cream. And let’s face it, anyone with a toddler is hard to reach by phone, my doctor being no exception.

I know I didn’t know, but what do I know? I faltered on the beam big time.

Showing him an Elmo video on my phone seemed a brilliant distraction once when he was sick in the middle of the night. Now, every time he sees my phone, he freaks out and screams for “Elmo’s Song.” Don’t open Pandora’s box, because it’s filled with technology and Sesame Street characters.

Almost every bad idea could have been a great idea. If I hadn’t been up the past three nights tending to a kid with a fever, I could see that better.

That’s the paradox about new parenthood. Much like Navy SEAL training, we are expected to learn fast, under pressure, without sleep, and it’s life or death. Except you can’t ring the bell and bail (at least that’s how they did it in “G.I. Jane”). You can’t give up. So that leaves trying and failing, second-guessing, feeding him apples only to learn they make him choke, choosing a sitter only to find out she likes beer and hates clean dishes, buying generic diaper cream only to realize you never, ever go generic below the waist.

When the baby is well and we’re all rested and rash-free, I can embrace the trial and error nature of the whole endeavor. The rest of the time, I still can’t believe I’m actually behind the wheel. And as has always been true of my non-metaphorical driving, I’m not much for orienteering. I get there, but not without lots of backtracking and some dodgy U-turns. The best I can do is endure the scenic route.

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On Facebook, “ladies night out” never ends with you getting cornered by a former Arizona State sorority girl who is two mojitos past dullard. On Facebook, the valet doesn’t lose your dirty Honda for twenty minutes while you calculate how much sleep you’ll get if there’s no traffic on the way home. On Facebook, it’s all sombreros and private jokes and close-ups of sushi and magnificent, unattainable Bourbon-hued camaraderie.

Your online “friends” have more community, more sisterhood, more fun than you do. Science can now prove it.

When it comes to parenthood, all the children on Facebook do adorable, precocious things with both pets and instruments. These angels wear stain-free sailor suits. They make sand castles, kiss puppies and giggle with rash free cheeks. That’s why every time you sign off, you feel just a little bit depressed by the vividness of their joie. Their brightness dampens you. This is something you’ve always known, but now science has an explanation.

Thanks to researchers at Stanford, we pretty much have proof that social networking is bumming us out.

Okay, I’m extrapolating here, but what they found (in a paper titled “Misery Has More Company Than People Think”) is that as human beings, we tend to overestimate how much fun our peers are having, while underestimating their negative experiences.

After perusing the photo album “Jordan Turns Two,” you will never know the cake wasn’t moist, the pizza made everyone gassy and Jordan had to be carried out like a surfboard when the pony peed on his shoes. You will never know most of the kids left sunburned and at least three viral infections were spread like cheap dip.

Personally, I don’t post much, but I lurk. I watch. I silently compare myself to these gleeful visions, especially to other moms, whose online family portraits have often been shot through a lens of manufactured, carefully produced joy and spiked with a dash of selective storytelling. No matter. It still sends me into a mood.

It’s not that I don’t have moments of transcendent joy, it’s that I don’t know how to share them.

No, not spiritually, I mean I literally can’t figure out how to make photo albums or upload images efficiently. Or, as I’m on the verge of mastering some major misrepresentation of the totality of my life with one kick-ass shot of my toddler’s dimples, he actually needs me to stop him from tumbling down the front stairs. I have neither the time nor the aptitude to fake you out.

I guess I don’t get the spiritual part either.

Last night, when my son got home from daycare, he pointed down the block, so I walked with him. He ran ahead. He ran four straight blocks, his hair flying up, little shoes smacking the pavement, going nowhere, just toward the flat-out euphoria of his body moving through space. I welled up and thought remember this remember this remember this.

Sure, he cried when I washed his face in the bath later, and left most of his rice on the floor, and whined when I put his arms in the sleeves of his pajamas, but I had that moment.

The thing is, that moment is boring. In fact, I’m sorry for boring you with it. If there’s a way of sharing the beauty without sounding braggy or hacky, I haven’t figured it out.

I do know this: I rarely feel happier or more connected after checking FB or Twitter.

There is often documentation of some social function from which I suddenly feel horribly excluded.

Intellectually, I know it’s just an illusion. Stanford proved it. No one is as happy as I think they are, and of course, I understand nobody posts a shot of their positive herpes test with a

Armed with this new information, I can at least adjust for the human condition. I can assume your reunion was 33% less “awesome” than it looks, and that your kid probably crayons the wall after eating a frozen dinner you failed to chronicle for an album titled “Sodium won’t kill him.”

This column originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

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Step aside, infamous Indonesian smoking baby, there’s a new gross-you-out and get-you-incensed Internet sensation in town. It’s the obese Chinese toddler!

Perhaps you have seen photos of Lu Hao, a 132-pound 3-year-old who eats three bowls of rice at a time and refuses to walk to school. It’s compelling stuff, the swollen kid crammed into a raft, floating in a pool, the massive baby gnawing on a chicken bone or being hoisted by his sweating, regular-sized dad as his girth tests the tensile strength of a T-shirt.

If you see the story anywhere online, don’t even bother reading the comments section. This is very predictable, the kind of kid story that causes parents to do one of two things: A) lots of pontificating about how mom and dad need to take charge and are actually abusive in their neglectful/idiotic parenting or B) feel sorry for the child and post about their pity, which causes group A to attack group B. These two groups will go round and round while missing the point: This fat baby is onto something, and I don’t just mean a steel-reinforced Bumbo chair.

I don’t know exactly what Bethenny Frankel does or is, but I know her name, I know she has written a couple of bestselling books, and I know she regularly trends on Twitter and has been featured on five reality shows, two that focus solely on her life.

Forget about the Strasberg Institute or the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Skip Juilliard, practicing your guitar, attending classes at Second City or even going to culinary school.

Just have yourself some brawls like the “Desperate Housewives” or the cast members of “Jersey Shore.” In other words, embrace your total lack of impulse control, and you will be on the road to fame and fortune.

If you find you can’t keep your mouth shut, you might end up getting punched like Snooki and become an overnight sensation. If you can’t restrain yourself — from toppling a table at a party, screaming, conniving, drinking, vicious gossiping, smoking, having inappropriate sex, having a zillion kids or, in the case of little Lu, eating — we are going to be very interested in you. You could be five bowls of rice from your own series.

Discipline gets plenty of lip service, but if you want to “trend” in our culture, don’t call a therapist when you can’t control your impulses. Call CAA. I think they are opening a special “Impulse Control” division because that’s how profitable it is to completely give in to your urges, at least if there’s a camera there to capture it. Only suckers bother with training, practice and long, boring, expensive educations that mainly lead to working mundane jobs while hacking away at manuscripts that will never sell. You know who sells books? The Situation. He sells books, and last I checked, he hadn’t “paid dues” or “even read a book” himself.

If TLC doesn’t get ahold of this obese baby, they are missing out on a chance for a docu-soap that could fit nicely into their lineup, the way Lu’s diaper fits perfectly over a queen-size bed. “Little People, Big Baby” could be the story of two little people struggling to raise a giant child. Look out for “The Littlest Biggest Loser,” in which Lu competes in weight-loss challenges with other chubby babies from around the world.

Lu could move in with the Duggars or be disciplined by Jo Frost or perhaps team up with the smoking baby (who has finally quit smoking, by the way) to live in a house on the Jersey Shore with Bethenny, her new family, a few MTV Teen Moms and an aging Puck from “The Real World.” A swirl of ids could provide new catchphrases, books, spin-off shows and viewing parties.

This fat baby is already learning something important about making his mark. The only thing he really has to worry about? The next 500-pound 4-year-old knocking him off his top spot. Or the smoking baby picking up again. Fame is a hard habit to break.

* This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

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There are two kinds of babies: those who are described as busy, spirited, high-energy, active, sensory-seeking, adventurous, precocious or driven. And then there’s the good kind. I have the former. He’s busy. Busy.

Whoever came up with that one should get one of those MacArthur fellowships.

Welcome to the world of baby euphemisms. The babies you covet, well, we can’t just go ahead and call them “good.” We have to refer to them as “Zen-like,” “old souls,” “mellow,” “taking it all in” or, if you’re a hipster, “chill.” You can’t just admit you got one of the easy ones — that would sound braggy. But we know what’s behind the terminology. We who chase our “high-energy” kids around while they shove pine cones into their gullets and attempt to run down the neighbor’s pit bull, we know what “mellow” really means. It means that baby just sits on your lap at baby music class while my kid rummages through random diaper bags, climbs on a bench, helps himself to anyone’s juice, pulls off his socks, gums the side of a tambourine and attempts to escape out the front door before the wheels on the bus have even gone round and round.

But your “old soul” just “takes it all in” when the teacher sings songs about the earth being our mother. And I hate you for it.

That’s a strong word. I’m jealous and resentful and confused. Why did I step off the curb of Mommy Street and get sideswiped by a busy baby? Is it something I did? My DNA? These are the questions I ask myself as I toggle between enormous, visceral, gigantic love for my busy baby and trace amounts of shame and envy that swirl around and settle at the bottom of a massive vat of physical exhaustion.

Baby classes that involve sitting in a circle? They just enable those of us with spirited kids to have our spirits broken by staring right at the good babies. That’s right, let’s call them what they are.

The only word that really feels right to describe my baby is “spazz,” but at some point between junior high and today that term became completely offensive. So, I apologize. But in the argot of long-ago teenagers playing Atari, listening to Juice Newton and wearing Le Tigre, my 17-month-old Buster is a bit of a spazz. Bless the hearts of today’s baby experts. They tell you that though your kid may be “excitable” and “exuberant,” this is because he is actually “advanced.” Really? I would like him to advance himself toward some building blocks and amuse himself for 37 seconds so mom could blow dry three-quarters of her hair.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it, too. I’m telling myself daily that I have no right to complain. I have a healthy baby. What about parents with real problems? They wish their biggest concern were never getting to sit still. I know. I’m sorry. This is a high-quality problem. Still, thinking about those who have it worse doesn’t change the fact that some have it easy. You know who you are. You go rolling by me as your kid meditates peacefully in the shopping cart, blissed out like the Dalai Lama with a pacifier and a sippy cup of Propofol. In the two seconds I waste in awe over your baby, I’ve missed the fact that mine is now clutching a jar of strawberry jam over his head like a grenade.

Motherhood, while rewarding and life changing, is getting to be like “The Hurt Locker.”

Those of you who insist that busy babies grow up to be curious, dynamic balls of intense intelligence and great empathy, I hope you aren’t lying to make me feel better. However, if you are lying, you’re doing the right thing. Maybe temperament, like jam, stays the same unless something comes along to smash it. No one likes it all over aisle three, but it’s sweet on toast.

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