DARN TEUTON!

M has weaned himself. He was already down to two nursings a day, with the one at night a barely noticeable nip. Then, he refused the night time booby. And a few day after that, he refused the breakfast booby for two days in a row.

Even though I hated nursing in the beginning, I started to enjoy it in the last few months when it didn’t hurt anymore and it was a pleasure rather than a punishment. I especially liked those nights when he would “slurse” — fall asleep while nursing. But he’s a big boy now — almost 9 months, pulling himself up and just today, putting himself in a sitting position for the first time.

Why can’t he just stay this age (minus a week or so when he was still nursing) forever?

We moved to New York about one month before our wedding, and, like most women, I had lost a bunch of weight and was the thinnest I have ever been in my adult life. I hadn’t had any time (or much money) to purchase a wardrobe for my new body, and my “midwestern comfortable” clothes were not exactly fashion forward. What a perfect time to go shopping in SoHo. It was like the scene in Pretty Woman when the snooty sales woman tells Julia Robert’s character that she probably can’t afford anything in the boutique because it’s “very, very expensive.” I immediately took my schlumpy self shopping. (Yes, I know I should have stood up to that woman making $7 an hour to talk about the dignity of all mankind, but, eh, she was right. I looked dowdy and ill-fitting.)

Since then, I’ve always tried to look as fashionable as I can for the situation, which is generally not that difficult in Munich, where the northern climate and bloodlines combine to form a hardy, but not particularly fashionable, people. There’s always lots of hiking jackets everywhere.

But, after gaining and losing 10 kilos of baby weight in 18 months, the clothes I bought for pregnancy and nursing are too big, and I’m back to looking schlumpy and ill-fitting. What a perfect time to go shopping to one of the most expensive department stores in Munich. It was like a flashback to that SoHo trip (“Alles sind sehr sehr teuer.”) And they’re right — being a new mom doesn’t mean you have to look like one. There were plenty of women in that store with young kids who looked like they could pilate you into a pretzel. True, they were probably wealthy with personal trainers and such, but it doesn’t mean that us mere mortals can’t, at least, just buy clothes that fit.

So I put away everything I purchased in the last year, put on my not-super-comfortable-but-fashionable shoes, tied on a jaunty scarf, and went about my day. It’s easy to get into a rut, especially if you’re home all day, but I feel a lot better when I look better. Even if the only person who sees me eats his own feet.

I had some free time yesterday and starting reading my “What to Expect” book. I should have expected that I would just start to fret about M’s development. He’s almost 9 months old now and still has no teeth, scoots around on his belly but doesn’t crawl, can’t play pattycake, doesn’t speak in baby sign language, can’t play the violin or recite sonnets, and sleeps most of the day away.

And the other day, I read some article about child genii who started to read at 10 months and got their Ph.Ds while in diapers. When I read to M, he just tries to eat the book. I like to think that he’s revolutionizing reading the way the iPad will revolutionize publishing. Both are changing the way we “consume” media.

…. squeeze other people’s babies. I had always heard that the Italians LOVE children, but never having had an available child when I backpacked through in my early twenties, I was not able to experience it first hand. Let me tell you. It’s true.

We brought the shitty weather with us when we arrived on Thursday. So we napped all afternoon, and when it was still thunderstorming into the evening, we decided to eat dinner at the hotel. Unlike Gran Canaria, where the the 6:30 p.m. dinner seating was full, there was only one other couple in the dining room. (Remember when eating that early was So. Lame.?)

We siddled up the stroller to the table. We ordered our appetizer and glass of wine. We took turns eating while the other held M. All of the waitstaff come by to give M a little foot tickle and tell us about their kids. Halfway through our stuffed artichoke blossoms, our waiter asks if he could take M into the kitchen so that we could eat. I’m not sure he waited for us to respond before scooping him away. As more diners arrived, he greeted them with M as his “assistant.”

It was like that everywhere. I had to change his diaper in a public bathroom, and the toilette lady grabbed him out of my hands before halfway to the diaper station. I took M with me into the hotel spa’s changing room while I changed out of my wet bathing suit, and out of nowhere, four Italian ladies swoop in on M and take him off of my hands.

That would never happen in the U.S. or Germany or, presumably, any non-Mediterranean country. But why not? Wouldn’t you like to squeeze that little baby on the train, or give some parents 20 minutes to eat dinner in peace? But could you imagine asking a parent on the New York subway if you could hold their child? They would simultaneously mace you and call the police. Those New Yorkers — always multi-tasking.