She’d just started working at the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and I had just started editing the Globe‘s women’s magazine, Lola. Now, Brooke’s  living in suburban New York City as a stay-at-home mom (check out her blog here), but we both have sons almost the same age and have stayed in touch. In fact, I was there when she was first pregnant with Harper — we’d taken a weekend trip to Cape Cod with a couple of other writer friends, and, while out to dinner, Brooke insisted that the wine tasted weird. Turned out she was pregnant. Because, really, in what other state of mind or body does wine taste awful? (Harper is now a very cute toddler.)

So: She tagged me for a meme, and I’m going to do my best to answer here, but I might cheat a little bit and talk about articles I’ve written, too. Forgive me, Brooke–but thanks for tagging me!

– Your most beautiful post

This is tough, because I don’t consider myself a “beautiful” writer. Once I wrote a kind of mushy piece for the Globe‘s Coupling column and sent it to my brother, Matt, as per usual, for an honest critique. “This doesn’t sound like you,” he said. I got what he meant: I was trying too hard to be flowery, sentimental. It took me awhile to realize that writing can be beautiful without being ornate; I’m more Bette Midler than Gwyneth Paltrow. As long as it’s authentic, that’s all that matters. Anyway, a couple of months ago, my whole family–parents, Andy, Brian, my brother–went to a Lowell Spinners game. I always cry when I go to Lowell. Just do. I drive straight to my grandparents’ three-story tenement house at 75 Andrews Street, park in front at the weedy sign that says “parking reserved for resident of dwelling,” stare at the front porch where a little girl’s swing now hangs in the doorway, and  I smell my Nana’s Shalimar, and I hear her police scanner, and I see D sweeping a proud little patch of driveway…. and I bawl.

It’s where my grandparents lived and died and didn’t want anything more than to live or die; it’s where they’re buried. My grandfather played baseball in Lowell, my parents met in Lowell, and then … here we were, back in Lowell. Watching baseball, with my son, who’s named after my grandfather. Not sure if this post was “beautiful,” but it was heartfelt, and, yes, I cried when I wrote it.

A young rebel.

Well, hello there. So I swore I’d never be one of those people who started a blog, posted a few entries, and then proceeded to neglect it like a lonesome Friendster profile. Yet here I am. Last you saw me, Andy and I had just recovered from his massive birthday party, and things have changed since then. For one thing, as you can see, he now has a tattoo. Kids grow up so fast, don’t they? (Thanks, Island Creek Oyster Festival!)

However: I can assure you that there’s going to be plenty more blog excitement in the near future–more on that later–and that everyone here is just dandy. I’ve been incredibly busy with work, I’m putting the final touches on my book proposal at last, and I’m nursing a head cold that makes me sound like Kathy Bates. Andy, meanwhile, is practicing saying “hiiiiii” like an ancient Gypsy psychic. It’s cute ‘n creepy, especially when he pairs his crackly “hiiiiiii” with a curly wave of his beefy lil’ paw. Also, my house is so dirty that I could probably make a souffle with the contents of my kitchen floor…So, basically, it’s business as usual around here.

Stay tuned for more. And…um…when do infant tattoos wash off?

Andy pauses for a post-fete photo with his Auntie Diane and cousin Julia.

It could’ve been a frat party: Beer bottles everywhere. Stained clothes on the floor. Chips ground into the rug. People napping on the carpet. Oh, and a dirty diaper beneath my bed. (OK, maybe a nursing-home kegger.)

In fact, this was the scene at Andy’s totally fantastic first birthday party. When I told older people (my co-worker, my mom) about Andy’s party plans, they were sort of … shocked. “Don’t you know the rule?” my colleague laughed. “The number of guests should correspond to the baby’s age!” Which means I should have invited one person to Andy’s party. Instead I invited 50.

Brian and I love having big parties. Well, I do, once I get past the hives-inducing anxiety induced by frantic Swiffering and dusting. And Brian secretly does, too — he cooked for about 60 people at his grad school graduation party, hunched over his prized fryer and producing his miraculously deliciously disgusting deep-fried chicken wings.

So we thought nothing of inviting 50 of Andy’s nearest and dearest to our abode for a Saturday afternoon soiree. We’re lucky that most of our family lives nearby, and a lot of our friends do, too. Unluckily, our house isn’t exactly designed for sweeping fetes. Nonetheless, I adorned our porch with a massive Pooh Bear balloon and procured all manner of Pooh Bear decorations from Party Needs in Waltham, which has the distinction of housing bachelorette party leatherwear and Thomas the Tank Engine paper plates in the same aisle.

When the party first got underway, I was panicked because nobody had arrived. I felt exceedingly pathetic and tried to assure the few stragglers who had arrived that things would get exciting really soon, all while foisting upon them platters of haphazardly cut cheese. Andy, happily oblivious, was munching on his hand.

Then, suddenly, it seemed everyone crowded the door at once. With children. Sticky, unwieldy, cute, energetically mobile children. I immediately retreated to my bedroom with a large glass of wine, cursing my ineptitude. Where was I going to put them all? I guess I figured that people would spill onto the porch, but instead everyone wanted to congregrate–naturally–around the dining room table, near Brian’s artfully arranged platter of deli meat. What if people were too hot? What if there wasn’t enough beer? What if an overzealous two-year-old disrobed on my Oriental rug? Crap.

Then something amazing happened. People began to fend for themselves! Parents took their babies into Andy’s room to play. A few older people made their way to the quiet of the porch. The older kids discovered the pleasures of our garden hose and began dousing one another in the backyard. Others chatted vivaciously on the sofa.

Most importantly, Andy was having a ball. (Andy! Right! The reason I’d spent $200 on obscenely ugly Eeyore paper plates!) Every time I peeked at him, a different friend or relative was toting him around, cooing. At one point he was bouncing up and down in the center of a circle of babies, stroking their faces and squealing. He loved every minute — until it was time for cake. I began to bellow like a gym teacher and got everyone to crowd around the dining room table. I hauled Andy’s high chair into the doorway and strapped him in. Brian ceremoniously cut the birthday cake, which his Aunt Joy had made specially for him. We handed Andy a plate and began to sing.

And he began to shriek, flinging his dessert to and fro. His hair was more frosted than Debbie Gibson’s circa 1988. And so, like any confident host, he waved goodbye and retreated to the calm of his bedroom, settling down for a nice long nap while the party carried on without him.

Got it all over his face. He’s really Sari.

Because Brian and I absolutely love to eat –  we’ve been lucky to shove delicacies down our gullets at some truly fantastic restaurants over the years, partially through my work and partially because we forgo countless other hobbies to spend money dining out. And we really love to eat adventurously.

For us, Sunday morning dim sum is a religion. We plan our vacations based around food; Barcelona was pretty and all, but I was mainly interested in the razor clams at Cal Pep. New Mexico skiing? Screw it. In Taos, I went straight for a simmering vat of red chile at the Old Blinking Light. I’ve fought seagulls for fried clams and stood in line for three hours just for a snappy gobble of Flo’s relish-smeared hot dogs in Maine. On a recent trip to Montreal, I performed all sorts of mental calisthenics just to recall my college French and pleaded with no fewer than five hapless pedestrians for directions to Chinatown.

Yet we’ve been uncharacteristically cautious with Andy’s diet. Both of us have an irrational fear that he’ll choke on anything that isn’t a nursing home-ish puree. So he’s been eating vegetables designed for denture-wearers, with the occasional yogurt drop or Puff snack thrown in for variety. I suppose this is a bit hypocritical, as I also let him munch on my laptop cord with wild abandon … sadly, Gerber doesn’t make pureed wires.

Last night Brian and I stopped at our favorite Indian restaurant, Guru, to pick up takeout. I got my usual: goat curry and saag paneer. Brian opted for tikka masala and peas in tomato sauce. Dinner in our house is usually an exercise in indigestion: We spread our bounty atop the coffee table while Andy plays on the living room floor for a few precious moments. Eventually, he’ll began to bang on the coffee table, then begin chewing on wires, and then — fearing he’ll plug himself directly into an electric socket — one of us abandons our meal and plops him into his high chair for his evening puree.

Last night, I got a brilliant idea. Maybe my budding Wilfred Brimley should join us for dinner! I worried that he felt excluded. Brian dutifully hauled his portable high chair into the living room (we’re far too uncivilized to actually eat like normal people, at a dining room table … how else would we watch “Jeopardy”?) and sprinkled some YoBaby drops on his tray. But no. Andy craned his neck and bayed at Brian. He was clearly interested in his carton of tikka masala. We paused for a moment and then figured, why not? Why the hell not? What’s the worst that could happen — indigestion? Doesn’t Padma Lakshmi feed her kid exclusively Indian food? If her child can handle it, well, so could innocent young Andy.

We spoon-fed him a tiny dollop of curry. After the initial shock of the spice–his eyes widened and his face turned pink–he loved it. He began smacking his lips and begging for more, which we obligingly fed him. He was delighted.

Tonight, Brian was working late so I was on kitchen duty. Leftovers! I fished some curry remnants from the fridge and mixed it with peas in tomato sauce. He gulped several bites until I began to get selfish (these were my leftovers, too!) and switched him to a Gerber puree. No luck. He promptly smeared it like a face-mask and craned his neck toward my food once again.

I’m psyched. If Andy can stomach Indian food, I’m guessing a dim sum outing (chicken feet? shrimp noodles?) is just a matter of time.

What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever fed your kid?

Mom made me wear this hat.

Andy’s spending the weekend sunning himself in Kennebunkport with his Nana and Zeyde, Uncle Matt, and of course Brian and me. He’s had his first dip in the ocean, his first dip in a pool, and he’s behaved with aplomb in plenty of restaurants. Cuisine of choice: Sand. Happy Fourth of July!

I’ll make 2M next year…easy.

Andy was mesmerized as pie by his first baseball game. Brian got the whole family season tickets from a coworker for the Lowell Spinners — which afforded everyone a primo view of the game and also meant that we were sitting on top of mascots like the Canaligator (Lowell was built on a canal) and Bob the Toothbrush (also, residents suffer from gingivitis!). My parents bought Andy special Red Sox overalls for the occasion–humbly pictured here.

He was captivated throughout–with a few gentlemanly pauses for purees and Puffs. He made fast friends with a preschooler named Conor and bucked each time a new mascot trotted onto the field. Behind me, a harried mother bemoaned the lines at Market Basket. A scrubbed older gent named Bob, decked out in a yellow collared shirt and pressed khakis, whipped the crowd into a frenzy with “Who Let the Dogs Out”and joked with little kids. He could’ve been D.

My grandfather, D to everyone (but to me first), was christened Paul. He’s the reason my son is named Paul Andrew. He played baseball in Lowell in the 1930s, when he lived with six brothers and one sister in a house on West London Street, not knowing then — but probably knowing then — that they’d never move more than a few blocks from home.

He had albums upon meticulous albums, now mine, with Lowell Sun clippings chronicling his exploits. “Little Paulie Durkin”‘s special talent was pitching. If not for World War Two, he could’ve probably played out here, too.

LeLacheur Park isn’t Fenway. It’s next to the Aiken Bridge, which connects nowhere to a slightly more hilly nowhere. There are burned-out factories, refurbished lofts, and a downtown that’s been “gentrifying” for 20 years. Tickets cost $15 a pop. Whatever crap I was trying to digest from a heart-attack-inducing dinner in Cambridge the night before could never measure up to whatever was for dinner down the street at the Owl Diner … and it was probably twice as good and half as expensive, sucker that I am.

This was never my home. But it is home.

My parents grew up in Lowell. My mother has approximately 3980o958 cousins, all of whom are from here, and most of ‘em still live here. At LeLacheur Park--named after one of my grandfather’s good friends and baseball teammates–an advertisement for our cousin’s car dealership hangs on a banner; meanwhile my ex-boyfriend, whose dad grew up next to my dad, announces the game. The field was dedicated by the city manager, Brian Martin, another of D’s close friends from a block down Andrews Street. D said they used to shoot hoops in his paved backyard, overlooking the Prince Spaghetti Factory.

We parked in the Notini’s parking Lot. Notini’s is where my grandfather worked as a wholesale tobacco salesman for more than 40 years, before retiring to help my mom take care of my brother and me. D was such a graceful athlete and a gifted baseball player.  He loved Spinners games, following them as excitedly as any Red Sox game.  These fields were the same ones where D played, with different names and in different times, decades ago. His friend and teammate Ed LeLacheur died last year. My grandfather died in 2008. But Notini’s is still here. The pink sun that illuminated the Aiken Bridge is the same pink sun that saw my grandfather home after so many baseball practices so many years ago.

As I flip-flopped to my seat, sweaty beer in one hand, Andy’s diaper bag slapping against my ribs, nachos in a free paw–I smiled because I knew that I hadn’t inherited any of his grace.

But I hope he saw us.

Seeing my sixty-two-year-old parents waiting for us in the seats that their son-in-law procured, blocks from the high school where they met as 16-year-olds, looking for their grandson Paul Andrew…I knew he saw us. D was there.

Short-lived.

I confess: By night, I’m not the most devoted mother. I consider bedtime my sanctuary. I slip between the covers with my iPhone (Words With Friends screenname: Paddington79) and my Murder, She Wrote for Netflix (AARP card: lost in the mail) and I shut out the world. I’m in bed by 9, up at 6. I keep the hours of a grandfather.

And there’s a reason grandparents don’t have infants.

Usually, my nocturnal habits work out just fine. Andy’s always been an awesome sleeper — in his crib by 8:30, up at about 6:30. But lately, about once a week, he’ll mutter to himself at around 4 am. Eventually, this muttering escalates to a steady whimper, then a cry, then a series of wails. Do I move from the comfort of my bed? Not always. After all, if he’s wailing, it means he’s breathing.

I’m sort of a bad person, aren’t I?

For the first several months of Andy’s life, I’d jolt awake at every sleepy whimper, every raspy inhale, every stir. Now I sometimes pretend not to hear him–knowing full well that my husband will bolt upright and stagger into Andy’s room to assess the situation. This from a man who rarely utters more than one syllable before noon. And I happily take advantage of his vigilance, splayed half-awake in my empty bed like Courtney Love posing for Vanity Fair. Yup, I’m pretty sure Brian should write the sequel to Go the F**k to Sleep and dedicate it to me: Get the F**k Up.

I even have a list of excuses that I sometimes make to avoid getting up.

1. I took a Tylenol PM.

2. I have a migraine.

3. I have a deadline early in the morning.

4. I have cramps.

5. I have absolutely no soul.

Yes, dear reader, I admit it: At 4 am, I want to hug my pillow more than I want to hug my child. I can’t be the only mom out there who feigns sleep in the hopes that her partner will rise to the occasion. Am I?

P.S. Benadryl works better than Tylenol.

Ready for the electric chair?

As with most things in our family, it all began at a restaurant. Every time we took Andy out to dinner, a kindly server would stop, smile, and inquire as to the age of our beautiful little girl. This would be thoughtful and sweet … if we had a girl. But we have a 10-month-old son with eyebrows like Eugene Levy’s. It culminated in a particularly confusing evening at Qingdao Garden in Cambridge, where in the course of an hour three waitresses offered “her” a fortune cookie. By the third cookie offering, I was ready to rename the kid Andrea, buy some frilly jumpers, and call it a night. Kinda made me wonder about those people in Canada so concerned about letting their kid choose its own gender. Why let your child choose, when complete strangers will do it for you?

But deep down Brian and I both knew: It was time for Andy to go under the knife. Or the scissors, as it were.

Oh,  I’d given him a mini-haircut once, when he was about six months old, in preparation for a vacation. Basically I snipped his 1980s-style rat tail in the bathtub while he sucked on a rubber duckie. Poor kid didn’t know what hit him. A friend asked if I’d saved the hair, and I looked at her like she was nuts. Save the hair? The thing looked like the remnants of a dirty raccoon.

But this time was different. I would take Andy to Snip-Its in Burlington, recommended to me by another friend, who told me it was like a Disney-fied salon for babies. Name aside (I envisioned chatty hair stylists performing circumcisions while Moms flipped through Us Weekly), the place was wonderful. Andy was promptly guided to a mini-salon chair and handed a medley of toys — bubble soap! Rattles! A cajoling stylist spritzed him with water and began delicately combing his hair. It was at this point that Andy had a major meltdown, flung his rattle to the ground, stiffened, and began shrieking. At which point another toddler in a neighboring chair began shrieking. At which point a little girl, waiting for her brother to be snipped, also began shrieking. At which point I wondered if the kind, hospitable folks at Snip-Its stocked a mini-bar.

After it was determined that no amount of extrasensory stimulation would soothe him, the stylist eased me–carrying a camera, Sophie the Giraffe, an unwieldy diaper bag, and a sweaty McDonald’s sweet iced tea–into an adult salon chair and settled Andy atop my lap. She moved fast. She had to. One deft snip across the top. A few clips to the sideburns. And a little razor-trim at the neckline.

Andy looked great. He also looked old. In the course of 20 minutes, my adorable (if slightly feminine) little baby had morphed into a rough-tough toddler. No doubt about it, Andy’s now a boy. And this time, I saved his hair.

It's a boy!