My Boss Sucks ... On Me

It’s almost the first anniversary of the day I quit my job. I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to quit. I had asked my boss, the CEO of the publishing company for which I worked as the general counsel, to breakfast. Just to talk. And see if maybe I could work part-time. Or full time from home while holding my baby.

I brought Henry with me because he was just a few weeks old, still small enough to evaporate if I left him out of my sight for more than a few seconds.

My boss was already there, sitting in a corner, drinking coffee. My stomach dropped. She was the first boss who ever intimidated me. And that’s saying something.

I have worked for a brilliant federal judge and half the white shoe law firms in this town, for some amazing lawyers and for more than a few who seemed to have escaped from the Reptile House at the Bronx Zoo. And none of them scared me because I knew that under their Brooks Brothers suits (or Armani, in the case of a particular downtown firm), they were the same little boys who once peed their pants in the lunch room and fainted during the fetal pig dissection.

But this CEO, she was different. A non-lawyer, formerly in sales, she had an off-with-their-heads style of management that kept the most senior executives cowed. She sometimes had a salad for lunch, sometimes a vice president. I respected her, and on this particular morning, yes, I feared her.

Still, she had a soft side for babies, and was bouncing Henry gently on her knee, cooing to him.

“Oooh,” she said. “We could set up a little nursery in the office, couldn’t we?”

Henry was a warm little bobble head then with a new gummy smile that could melt tungsten. Even his poop smelled like fresh grass and coconuts.

She was charmed.

Then we had a long conversation about the current demands of the business, an upcoming senior executives’ meeting in Vegas, and the energy we needed to start the Second Quarter with a bang.

I realized that I couldn’t fly to Vegas and leave Henry in New York. Let’s face it -- I hadn’t gone south of 72nd Street since Henry was born. And I had no energy. I wasn’t a lawyer, I was a husk. I saw myself in the office draped across my desk like an empty suit while my CEO spun through the executive suite like a tornado in black pumps.

I had to tell her I wasn’t coming back, but how? She was drawing a pie chart on a napkin, speaking animatedly about a new sales initiative. I had a trick I used when she gave me my monthly reviews. She had a strong British accent, so I just closed my eyes a little, until everything was slightly blurred, and pretended I was in a Monty Python skit. Then whatever she said was funny: “You still haven’t finished that vendor contracts template, have you? The one you promised me last month?” Ha ha!

So I squinted a little and blurted out: “I am either going to be spending all my time with you or Henry. And I can’t help it. I pick Henry!”
She was crestfallen, but understanding. Her reaction was perfect and I didn’t even have to pretend we were talking about a parrot or a cheeseburger to get through the rest of the conversation.

I rolled Henry home in his stroller and spent the rest of the day marveling that I would now be a full-time-mother. A SAHM, as we stay-at-home-mothers like to say. And for months, I doted on my little baby while he gazed at me lovingly.

Then one day, out of the blue, he said, “Get that!” He was pointing to a book. I got it for him and he threw it on the ground in disgust, probably because it had no pictures.

“Up!” he said later, and I picked him up.

“More,” he signed, putting his fingertips together, and I gave him another helping of pureed sweet potatoes. At his next meal, he spit out his macaroni, so I made him cheese toast instead.

“Uh oh,” he said the following day at breakfast, then tossed his sippee cup on the floor. I picked it up. “Uh oh,” he said again, this time throwing a handful of Cheerios at me.

“That!” said Henry, pointing at a ball. I brought him the ball. “Neh, neh, that!” he said, shaking his head at me.

“What?” I asked.

“That!” he shouted.

I brought him his dinosaur puzzle. He shook his head. “Neh, that!” I brought him his stuffed chameleon. His face was turning purple. He threw himself backwards, like an armless gymnast attempting a back handspring.

“That! That!” he cried, writhing on the carpet.

“What? The ducky? The pirate ship? The snorkel?”

He stood and strode to his miniature batting tee and picked up the plastic bat. He walked back to me and whacked me on top of the head. “That,” he said, smiling.

And that’s when it occurred to me. I have a new boss. A supervisor in size 3 Pampers, and he makes my former CEO look like a Twinkie milkshake in comparison.

I do say “No,” to Henry. I say it often and with gusto. But he just says it right back.

“Henry, no, you can’t play with that. That’s Windex.”

“Neh.”

“No.”

“Neh.”

“No!”

“Neh!”

“NO!”

“NEH!”

“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”

“NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH, NEH!”

Okay, so he’s not the first boss to bite me on the nipple.

That’s a joke. Yes he is. But he literally won’t allow me to stop breastfeeding him.

He’s relentless. “Up,” he says, and I pick him up, lest he dive backwards on to the hardwood floor. He walks perfectly well, but he likes me to carry him around the apartment like he’s Emperor Shah Jahan and I’m an elephant. He even gives a dictatorial salute as we parade around the living room – it’s the beauty queen wave without the wrist motion.

Then he says, “Vite!” which is “fast” in French and means that he wants me to run as fast as I can while carrying him, until the wind catches his corn silk cowlick. He smiles a small, satisfied smile. Until I stop.

Tubby time is the worst.

“Henry, time to get out of the tubby.”

“Neh.”

“Yes.”

“Neh.” He kicks his legs violently.

“Yes, Henry, now.”

“Neh!” He bows his head forward and comes up with a bubble beard.

“You can’t fool me,” I tell him. “I know it’s still you, Henry, and it’s time to get out of the tubby!”

And that’s when I lunge to catch his head as he tries to slam it against the side of the tub in protest.

I have had my share of bosses who were full of s*&%, but at least I used the phrase figuratively. Although I had to carry my share of other people’s litigation bags, their underthings were not my problem. Now that Henry eats like a real person, he poops like a manbaby and his diapers smell like a truck stop toilet. And he hates to be changed, so midway through cleaning what should be designated a Superfund site, Henry arches his back and tries to fling himself on to his stomach despite the fact I am holding his legs in a vice-like grip.

Sometimes he is successful.

That’s when I cry a little. Then I hug him ferociously. And then we both laugh hysterically, me because I am now literally, not figuratively, in crap up to my elbows, and Henry because he has a baby sense of humor and thinks poop is hilarious.

And I wonder, what would have happened if I had been given massive doses of oxytocin while working as an associate in a law firm?

Mama Auditions for the Role of "Mom"

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Puttin' on the Ritz

Wild horses couldn't drag me away from Henry. But the promise of a New Year's Eve soiree at the Ritz in Paris with Kate and her husband Jeff had me packing my Louboutins and waving "Ta ta!" to my baby boy faster than you can say foie gras.

With Henry entrusted to his uber-competent babysitter Perri, who would be tag-teaming with my parents for the next five days, Scott and I struck out for Newark Airport. He had convinced me to pack light. No electric breast pump, no framed photographs of the children. Just a few dresses, six pairs of shoes, and my skinny jeans.

Kate and I had made the compelling argument that we had to fly Business First since we were only going for a long weekend and wouldn't have time to recover from jet lag. Kate is wise in many ways and has taught me many things. Like this little chestnut from the ad world: If you want your man to spend a lot of money on something he doesn't necessarily want himself, suggest a manly slogan to justify it and allow him to adopt the slogan as his own. This second part is critical.

Thus, to Scott, she said of the Business First ticket: "You're protecting your investment." To her husband, she added: "Go big or go home!"

Using our slogans, we also convinced our men that our only real option for New Year's Eve was the four-figure party at the Ritz. That way we wouldn't have to walk outside and potentially ruin our shoes and the expensive hairdos for which Kate had made us appointments at the hotel's salon -- once again, protecting investments! And hey, go big or go home!

His special slogan now firmly entrenched in his subconscious, Scott gamely convinced himself that not waiting in line to check in at the airport was worth the price of the ticket. Since thousands of flights had just been cancelled because of a blizzard days earlier and the lines were epic, this was almost true. In the lounge, we were served free red wine, rail drinks and all the potato chips we could eat. "This is the life," Scott said, sipping a Popov Vodka and tonic. "Go big or go home," agreed Jeff, toasting us with a plastic glass of Chateau Continental.

Once on the plane, we settled into our double-wide seats. We were torn between trying to get a full 7-hours' sleep and consuming everything our business class seats afforded us. We split the difference, eating the four-course dinner - warm nuts, a salad of mozzarella balls and limp greens, something that tasted like chicken and an ice cream sundae with all available toppings - but forgoing the onflight entertainment to catch a few hours of shut-eye.

We landed in Paris. I had taken an Ambien, and when I stood up to deplane, I felt like I was on a moon walk. But as soon as the four of us piled into a taxi and shouted "Au Ritz!" I was rejuvenated.

"Your rooms are ready," announced the desk clerk, which, at 10:30 a.m. at the Ritz, was a miracle. Kate and I had stayed there before and were always forced to wait for check-in at 3:30 p.m. sharp. We were taken to a hallway I had never seen before, up an elevator that appeared out of the shadows to what may have been a "special unit" of the Ritz, like the locked ward in a hospital. Our room was sparse. White. There was none of the Louis XIV furniture I had come to expect from my favorite hotel in the world.

"Not to be an ingrate," I began, "but this really isn't what we were looking for in a room."

Jeff had already unpacked, but Scott knew from the look on my face we weren't staying. Kate and I arranged with the concierge to have us moved to adjacent rooms done in the more traditional style of the Ritz.

Everything was going perfectly. I went inside our new marble bathroom with the plastic travel breast pump I had brought in lieu of the 10-pound electric version I used at home. I didn't have the instructions with me, so I revved up my new iPad. An Internet connection cost 25 euros, but no matter, I had to pump to avoid the rock-hard leaking disasters that my boobs would become without it. Thus, I was really just protecting our investment in the weekend.

There were 12 steps to putting the pump together, like AA for the lactating. It took me about a half hour to assemble the pump, then another hour of frantic hand pumping to get the job done. I was frustrated, but kept up a positive attitude, thinking about how Scott and I would soon be strolling down the Rue St. Honore.

The next day was New Years Eve. The Ritz soiree started at 8 p.m. Kate and I began our preparations at 4 o'clock with hair appointments while Scott and Jeff had cocktails by the indoor pool.

We were blow-dried and brushed to perfection while champagne and chocolates were passed. Heaven. Then Fred, the Ritz's in-house make-up artist, offered his services. Kate went first. Kate is a knock-out on her worst day, and in Fred's hands, she became a super model. I was so excited for my turn, I was bouncing up and down in my seat and clapping my hands like a trained seal.

But something seemed off about my look. Fred swooped black make-up around my eyes, then decorated the corners with false eyelashes. The base color of my face went from white to a cheddar cheese tone. "Don't worry," said Kate. "This is going to look fabulous in pictures." And wasn't that what really mattered?

Time was ticking - less than two hours before the big party. But I didn't feel rushed. All I had to do was pump and put on my dress. I dallied in the salon, sipping champagne and chatting with other revelers.

"We should get going," said Kate.

Back in the room, Scott was getting dressed. He tried not to look surprised by my appearance. With my hair and make-up done, but still in a t-shirt which was now showing two wet bulls-eyes because my boobs were leaking, I looked off, like a transvestite in full make-up wearing a hairnet and no wig.

I opened my iPad to find the directions for my travel pump and started putting it together. Something was wrong. "The lid doesn't fit anymore!" I complained to Scott.

"That's impossible," he said.

"Look!" I demonstrated, trying to force the top down. Then there was a sickening sound, like a bone breaking. The plastic catch that helped vacuum seal the pump broke off.

There was a moment of total silence.

Then my tears.

"Why did I listen to you when you said not to pack my electric pump?" I yelled at Scott, who had started backing towards the door.

"I'll fix it," he said.

He called the concierge and spoke in hushed tones, then put down the receiver, looking satisfied.

"Someone is coming upstairs to discuss this with you," he said.

"What? I don't need a conversation, I need an electric pump. Now! And it's 7 p.m.! On New Year's Eve! In France!"

I picked up the phone and dialed the concierge, speaking rapid-fire French.

"Hello? Yes, listen, I am a mother. Who feeds her baby. With her breast. But the baby is in New York and so I must discharge the milk. Understand? So I need an apparatus to do that for me."

"Yes, madam. I believe we may have something here in the hotel. A moment, please."

The concierge came back on the line.

"We will send something up to you now."

I had a bad feeling. "Are you talking about a cell phone charger?" I asked.

"Yes, madam."

"Did you understand anything I just said?" I asked.

There was a cough.

"J'ai envie d'un breast pump," I repeated.

"Ah, a breast pump. We can try to rent one for you at the emergency chemists."

"Okay, great, now we're getting somewhere."

"Spend any amount of money you need to get the pump," said Scott. "I'm just protecting my investment."

"Out!" I ordered.

"I'll be in the bar," he said, closing the door behind him.

And within 15 minutes, a bellhop appeared holding a discreet brown valise and a paper sack.

"Will there be anything else?" he asked.

"No, merci. Merci beaucoup!" I handed him a fistful of euros.

Then I opened the valise. I was expecting a pump, but instead, there was what appeared to be a small red toaster oven. In the paper sack was a funnel, a vial and several pieces of tubing. None of which fit on the toaster oven. I looked at the clock. 7:20 p.m. It was like trying to solve a Rubik's cube at gun point.

"Kate!" I went running to her room, pounding on the door. "Help!"

Kate came into the room. "None of this fits!" I wailed. "I'm leaking. I can't go to the party!"

7:25.

"Don't cry!" commanded Kate. "Your eyelashes will fall off. Are there instructions?"

"Yes," I said. "But I don't speak breast pump French. None of these words have any meaning to me."

I called the concierge. "I need a French person. Any French person. To translate some directions for me."

Within a minute, the bellhop was back at the door. He looked sixteen, tops.

"They gave me a demonstration on how to use this," he said, blushing a deep red.

He took off his white gloves and fiddled with the tubing until he had secured it over the "on" switch.

"That's the on switch!" I screamed frantically. "It can't go on there!"

He fumbled while I paced. Then Kate took control. She connected the tubes to the vial and attached the vial to the toaster oven.

"Voila!" said Kate.

The bellhop turned to go.

"Don't let him leave until I try this," I said.

I went into the bathroom while Kate blocked the door to the room.

I put the funnel to my breast and turned on the machine. The machine made a sound, like "grrrrrmmmmmmmmm" and sucked my nipple into the funnel all the way. I didn't know a nipple could stretch like that. The pain was other-worldly, like dropping a frozen turkey on your toe. And the machine wouldn't let go. It was like a pit bull with a new chew toy. I tried using both hands to pry off the funnel, but it wouldn't budge.

I started screaming. Kate ran into the bathroom and turned off the machine. My nipple retracted and was hanging off my chest at an odd angle, like a broken arm.

"I can't do it," I sobbed. "It hurts."

Kate fiddled with the tubing and removed a stopper. "Here," she said. "Put your thumb over this, then remove it." I tried the pump again. With my thumb on the tube, my nipple extended until I screamed, then I released it for a second and took a breath. I did this over and over again for twenty minutes on each side until my boobs had deflated from weather balloons back to A-cups.

Kate went downstairs where the party had started forty minutes earlier.

I looked at the toaster oven. "Methode Francaise," it said on the side.

But of course. Other than their cheeses and scarves, the French made everything harder and more miserable than it had to be.

I knew this because I had spent a semester studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. Instead of normal, written final exams, they had oral exams where you would appear in front of a proctor, other students lined up right behind you. And they would ask just one question.

In my case, the proctor said, "Le Canel de Suez. Expliquez."

I had spent the entire semester in a garret with a musician named Olivier. I was like, "Ummmmm. It's in Egypt? It was nationalized in the 50s? There was a ... crisis?"

I failed the exam to the snickering of the students behind me. But because everyone here knows that the French education system is too hard for Americans, my college "translated" my F into a B. And everyone was happy. Because that's how we do it in the United State of America.

Meanwhile, my eye makeup had run and I looked just like a raccoon. I repaired it as best I could with Q-tips from the medicine cabinet and pulled my dress over my head. The lesser gods of zippers were with me and I was able to zip my dress on my own, which cheered me up considerably.

The bellhop had left his white gloves behind. They were surprisingly small, like something Cinderella might have worn.

Within five minutes, I was in the Ritz Club pouring champagne down my throat. It was an excellent night.

The next day, Scott and Jeff were bedridden with a horrible stomach virus. Kate went to the concierge to get some extra supplies. "I need some extra tissue," she said.

"Tissue, yes, for the nose," said the concierge.

"For the nose and the ..." Kate pointed to her bottom. He didn't blink.

"But of course, madam."

Later, we went back to the concierge to arrange taxis to the airport for the next morning. The bellhop was there.

"Oh," I said. "You left your gloves in my room!"

The bellhop bowed slightly. The concierge was impassive.

Just as our flight took off from Charles de Gaulle, the stomach virus hit me. And then somewhere over Iceland, the pilot announced that due to a drain malfunction, there would be only one toilet operational on the plane. I refused all foods and liquids and hunkered in my seat, occasionally hyperventilating into an airsick bag.

When we landed, a police officer was at the door of our plane looking for a passenger. "No one can exit until Passenger Rutabaga presents herself to me," he said.

I flashed him my passport. "I'm not her," I said, running past him.

I almost fainted going through passport control. My stomach had never hurt so badly. Once outside in the taxi line, I found a large garbage can and threw up until I peed my pants. Kate held my hair, then handed me a tissue. It was a Ritz tissue.

At a dinner party at Kate's house the next weekend, her friends asked about our trip. Kate told them the story of the breast pump.

"I don't understand," said Andre, a Norwegian. "Why didn't you just nurse the bellhop?"

"Because we were in France, not Norway," I retorted. Sicko.

Down, Boy!

The children wanted a dog. I was seven months pregnant and hyper-vulnerable to anything precious. Smelling my weakness as only children who want something can, they took me to a pocket-sized pet store on Lexington Avenue "just to show me" the baby bulldog. It was kismet. The bulldog seemed to recognize me immediately, as if maybe she had been my faithful sidekick in a prior life. Or even a favorite niece. She danced in her cage, yipped playfully, winked. I was melting.

Like a steamship in a cloth coat, I made my way to the end of a narrow aisle where a saleswoman had been watching us.

"Does she shed?" I asked, pointing to the dog, who was making googly eyes at Scott.

"Like a mother you-know-what," said the saleswoman shaking her head.

She wedged herself between me and a row of dog food on my starboard side and leaned into my ear.

"Don't do it," she whispered. "She's cute now, but that's not the right dog for you. Those bulldogs, they slobber like crazy. And I don't know how she'll be with a baby. You got your hands full as it is," she said, looking pointedly at Scott, who at that moment was pretending to be a dog sniffing the children's pockets for treats.

"This isn't the first time you talked a pregnant woman out of a dog, is it," I said knowingly. "Thank you."

"I've had four kids myself," she said, then disappeared behind the fish tanks.

I ushered the children out. Emma began her negotiations: "If we don't get a dog this year, then maybe for my birthday," she began.

"Look, I love dogs. But we are about to have a baby. Can we just wait and see how much fun your baby brother is? If he's not that great and you still feel like you need a dog, we'll re-evaluate."

"Okay," said Emma. "Let's pencil in a discussion for next Halloween."

Henry thankfully has proven highly entertaining to his brother and sister. Not only can he fetch, but he licks their noses, rolls over on command and loves them with abandon. Halloween passed without discussion of a dog, although I was prepared to put Henry in a puppy costume if necessary.

I thought I had dodged the doggie bullet.

And then Scott and I attended a silent auction and cocktail party to benefit Quinny's tony nursery school.

The crowd was glittery, women in double-digit-carat diamond rings sporting a rainbow array of the season's It bags and men in bespoke suits. I was wearing a Betsy Johnson dress several seasons too tight, Aerosole boots and a handbag I got for free with a subscription to W ten years ago. Scott's suit was rumpled from playing with the kids and his tie was cocked at a funny angle because, according to another class father, his knot was too small.

On empty stomachs, we had three quick glasses of wine and perused the auction items. We dutifully bid on Quinny's class project and ribbed the parents of one of Quinny's classmates who were tipsily bidding on a Donnie and Marie Osmond Broadway Christmas show package.

I love a silent auction and I admit that I have had problems in the past with drinking and bidding. I've had good luck - a lovely party at a gym for Quinny and all his classmates, and bad - a portrait of a woman sprouting green wings and standing on Saturn that no one gets but me, which is now in Scott's mother's basement and a giant oil painting hanging in our living room that my mother says looks like snakes crawling through a pillory. (I see a circus.)

Scott was keeping a close eye on me when I saw it: the grand prize of the auction, a Jeff Koons puppy vase donated by the artist himself. The opening bid was a couple thousand dollars under market and no one had bid yet.

Not only do I have a problem with drunk bidding, but I am convinced that one of these days I will strike it rich. Easily. Like, by purchasing some great piece of art that googles in value. Although my mother would disagree, I fancy myself as having an eye for art.

Thus, the Koons Puppy Vase.

"Let's bid," I urged Scott. "Please!"

"You are nuts," he said. "No one else bid on it. What do you know that they don't?"

"I know that the market value is 50 percent higher than the opening bid," I said sagely. (A class mother had told me this.)

We had another glass of wine.

"I can't believe I'm even considering this," Scott said. But he has his own weakness. He has never said No to me. And so in his spidery scrawl, he wrote down our names on the clipboard next to the Puppy Vase.

I danced in place happily. Suddenly, the glittery parents grew silent. The school's crown jewels of parents had arrived, Donald and Melania Trump. They air kissed their way around the auction items until they came to my dog.

The Donald picked up the clip board.

"Don't you dare bid on my dog," I hissed into his cotton candy hair, somewhere where I thought an ear would be.

"Or maybe you're too smart to bid?" I added, suddenly doubting myself. He smiled at me the way you smile at small children or really old people and replaced the clipboard.

"Walk away," I said to Scott. Maybe the dog wasn't such a good idea. It was incredibly expensive. And The Donald didn't seem to think it was such a hot investment.

A young father with a beautiful blond wife walked over to the dog.

I could read her lips. She was either saying, "I want it for Sophie's room," or "This weather is doom and gloom."

He picked up the pen next to the clipboard.

I tugged on Scott's arm. "Look at that guy! He's taking our dog!"

They were probably ten years younger than us. The man was at least a foot taller than Scott and the woman was so thin she seemed vaporish. And they were looking at our dog with what I can only describe as entitlement.

Scott strode purposefully over to the clipboard and outbid him.

The man picked up the pen and outbid Scott.

Scott outbid him.

They went back and forth like this until the lined page was almost full. Finally Scott strode up to him and said in the gravelly tough-guy voice I fell in love with: "I'm not gonna stop."

The tall man scribbled his name again, looking defiant. Scott immediately wrote our names under his.

The man walked up to me. "Enjoy your dog in good health," he sneered.

"You betcha we will!" I answered.

"You beat him!" I said to Scott. "We won the dog!"

"Elise, how are we going to pay for this?" Scott asked, looking suddenly serious. "You do understand that we are easily the poorest people in the room and we bid on one of the most expensive items."

"We'll pay for it out of my retirement account," I answered brightly. After all, I had quit my job so I actually am retired, at least for now. And what better investment than a one-in-3000 dog vase?

"This is what happens when our pathologies collide," Scott said fondly, tousling my hair.

Up until that moment, I had thought about the combination of our pathologies in bleak terms - the dark spells we had, how we could lose one another, or worse, sometimes hate what we saw.

But this puppy vase, excessive and ridiculous as it was for a couple of pikers like us, is evidence that even our pathologies might be able to play nicely together.

It will also be a reminder of what I love in Scott, that scrappy Staten Island kid whose not afraid to play in anyone's sandbox. And who can't say no to me.

"We have a new dog," we told the children when we got home. "And whoever breaks it is going to public school," Scott added.

Reality Bites

There was a day not so long ago when I was holding a gallon of milk in the middle of my kitchen, unsure what to do with it.

I didn't recognize it as milk qua milk. I just knew that it something that went somewhere, usually in the morning. I touched it. It was cold. I looked at the refrigerator. I may have said aloud: "Aha, cold things are kept there," and that's how the milk wound up in the fridge instead of Scott's sock drawer.

The State Department regularly includes sleep deprivation among methods of torture in its reports on human rights abuses. Ninety-six hours straight is pretty much the standard minimum for torture, although lots of people start hallucinating after forty-eight. It had been about ten months since the last time I had more than three straight hours of sleep when I forgot what milk was.

I knew I needed help. Henry woke every two to three hours to nurse long after friends with babies the same age were starting to enjoy twelve baby-free hours at night. Getting Henry to nap required at least an hour of cycling through rocking, singing, jiggling him, holding my breath while he at last fell asleep in my arms, placing him in his crib, having his eyes flutter open the minute his back hit the mattress, and back to rocking, etc., until he finally passed out. Then he would nap for twenty minutes and wake screaming and exhausted. I would pour him into the stroller and stagger around the neighborhood hoping he'd close his eyes for even a few minutes.

That's when the Baby Whisperer magically entered my life.

Imagine mixing former Texas Governor Ann Richards with a baby nurse and a liberal shot of hot sauce and wrapping it all up in petit four pastels and you'll get Linda.

Linda caught the eye of some clever television executives after working her magic on one of their own babies. They decided to make a presentation tape to shop around the networks. I met Linda after a casting agent determined that I looked the part of a desperate housewife in need of some serious baby whispering.

Linda doesn't walk into a room, she blows in like a strong gust of wind. We got down to business right away. I was jiggling Henry on my hip and apologizing as he climbed up my shoulder on to my head like a little monkey and started tearing out my hair from the roots.

"He's tired," I explained.

"Honey, it's like he's been on a hamster wheel all night," Linda answered. "Put him down," she ordered gently.

"Down? On the floor?"

"Let me him play. Let him crawl, wear himself out. You've got your house baby-proofed. Give him some space."

I put Henry on the ground gingerly. He crawled over to the coffee table, which I had ringed with thick plastic foam, and pulled himself up to stand, smiling his wide, gummy grin.

"He's not gonna get hurt on that. There's more padding in here than a mental hospital. Let him go," Linda said.

That was my first revelation - that Henry needed more time knocking himself out physically before I tried to put him to bed. I spent hours upon hours playing with Henry, rocking him, cuddling him, reading to him -- but what I didn't do enough of was just leaving him alone (but supervised) and allowing him to explore.

"You have a dysfunctional relationship with your baby," Linda said frankly. "You are co-dependent."

I couldn't argue. Henry and I were literally joined at the hip and I had been unable to stomach allowing him to cry himself to sleep. But I was keeping him from learning how to soothe himself.

Linda was firm, but reassuring -- I was sure she made the sharpest hospital corners and the softest biscuits in Texas. With her by my side, we put Henry down for a nap and let him cry and wail for almost three hours before he finally fell asleep.

That night, he slept through the night with barely a whimper before bed. Linda arrived the next day for more "baby boot camp." Henry gave her a hard look. His eyes seemed to say, "You are so damn lucky I can't talk yet."

Naps were to be our greatest challenge. No nursing Henry before bed, no rocking him to sleep. I could develop a sleep-time routine, and then he was to be put down awake and allowed to cry himself to sleep -- or, as was the case with Henry, to stand rigid against the bars of his crib shouting "Mama" at the top of his lungs for two hours until it was time for his next feeding.

Linda returned to Texas, but stayed in touch by phone. She left reassuring messages for me when I was afraid I might crack. I had to put Henry down, then go into my shower, the only place in the apartment where I couldn't hear his screams.

I'm not sure who cried more during sleep-training, me or Henry. Leaving him to cry in his crib took every ounce of strength I had. I couldn't sleep at night because I was waking up every couple hours to listen for him. When I did finally sleep, I had nightmares.

Eventually I resurrected Henry's pacifier and allowed him to have it when I put him to bed. And I rocked him while I read and sang to him. But our entire routine was down to about 15 minutes and I always put him down in his crib awake.

For two weeks, I stood by my routine and Henry stood by his. I put him to bed, he stood at his crib railing and screamed. But each day, he screamed a little less. Then there came a day when Henry flatly refused to nap. He howled like an animal. All day. That night, he was still up at 11 p.m.

I was an emotional shipwreck a mile from safe harbor. We were so close, and now everything was lost. Mother overboard. I searched the house frantically for Linda's number and couldn't find it. I sent manic texts to her business manager.

In desperation, I called my mother. "It's always darkest before the dawn," she said.

That day in the Post, there was a story about David Tarloff, a man who is claiming insanity after he brutally stabbed a psychologist to death. He was carrying adult diapers at the time, and later said he was planning to free his sick mother from her nursing home and take her to Hawaii. Turns out David and his mother slept in the same bed in Queens until he was about 40.

I didn't want to raise a David Tarloff. I wanted an Olympic champion, a future president, or at least a man who could sleep through the night without his mother.

The next day Henry and I were up with the sun.

After his breakfast, I took him into his nursery, rocked him for a few minutes, read him a story, and forced myself to say brightly "Nap time!" in the same voice I usually reserve for "Cocktails!"

I closed the door and waited for the verbal assault. Nothing. Not a peep.

He woke two hours later, calm and smiling. I fell on him like I was Michael Phelps' mother. "I am so proud of you!" I gushed. We did a victory lap around the apartment.

Four hours later, I did the same thing - a little rocking, a story and some singing. I laid him down in his crib with his "softie," a cross between a stuffed animal and a plush handkerchief.

He blinked a few times after I announced "Nap time!" I shut the door. Silence.

Since then, Henry usually goes to bed without a fight. Henry sleeping is a wondrous thing. He is less agitated, more cuddly. He has been eating almost twice as much and his time between naps is filled with happy play.

Sometimes a dose of harsh reality is exactly what we need.

Togetherness

We took the children to Atlantis, a Caribbean children's paradise with miles of swimming pools and umpteen water slides.

As most families do when they relocate, we quickly settled into a routine:

In the mornings, we had a big family buffet breakfast. Every day we coaxed eggs into Quinny with promises of a chocolate munchkin. Emma discovered the joys of chocolate syrup on chocolate chip pancakes, served up with a side of bacon. Henry enjoyed the local homemade yogurt after almost choking on a piece of egg white. I drank a pot of the good, strong coffee and Scott presided over the table with a big smile, waving away offers of more food - "You have it" - just happy to be there with his brood.

After breakfast, Scott took the children swimming in the sea while I put Henry to sleep in a nest I made him, encircling him, once he was safely unconscious, with oversized pillows that I prayed were bed bug-free. He staunchly refused the hotel crib, and I couldn't blame him. It looked like a baby jail cell on wheels with plastic sheets and a bumper that smelled of wet diapers.

While Henry slept, I tidied our room and then sat on our balcony watching Scott with Emma and Quinny. Like a familiar constellation in the night sky, I could always spot them immediately: Three brown heads close together near the shoreline, Scott holding Quinny close, Emma circling them, swimming out a few feet to look at a fish, then quickly coming back.

Scott loves nothing more than having all of us within arm's reach. But I need time alone as much as I need oxygen. I felt claustrophobic with the five of us packed into a single hotel room. The complete lack of privacy set my teeth on edge and made my bones ache, like an arthritic before a storm.

Yet on my perch above the sea, with Henry gently snoring on the other side of the open door, I buzzed with love for all of them. How happy I knew Scott to be in that moment, his shoulder blades turning boiled-lobster-red, Quinny balanced on his knee, Emma bringing shells like small offerings to her beloved Papa.

It was so easy to love them from that distance. Depending on where they were below me, I calculated how long it would take me to reach them if I were to see a dorsal fin or if one brown head suddenly disappeared underwater. My love shone down on them like the sun.

But by noon, Henry would be awake and the children and Scott would be ambling back into the room, shedding wet bathing suits on beds, tracking sand across the carpet.

On the day the maid failed to clean while we were out at lunch and I walked into a hotel room that looked like the scene of a playdate gone wild, I announced that I had to leave. Imemdiately.

"Can I come?" asked Emma hopefully.

"No," I said. "I just need to be alone."

I ran to the adults only swimming pool like an escapee being tracked by dogs and dove in as if to hide my scent. I stayed underwater for a long time, hearing nothing, being nothing. I walked to the beach and into the warm, clear water. I floated on my back.

I must have beeen gone 20 minutes before I urgently wanted to see Emma. The disappointment in her eyes was haunting me. I walked, dripping, back to our room. There was a neat stack of towels in the bathroom and the beds were made, but Scott and the children were gone. A thunderstorm struck suddenly and I sat on the balcony scanning the resort for a sign of them. I was just starting to get frantic - thinking about the metal in Henry's stroller, wondering if the children had drank enough water - when Scott called.

They had gone to the aquarium, then stopped in a lounge for a drink. Scott sounded pleased with himself. They were all dry, and each child had a new stuffed dolphin. I pined for them ... Until they blew back into the room like a tropical storm, needing showers and teeth brushed, rifling through drawers to find the exact outfit they had to wear to dinner, jumping exuberantly on the freshly-made beds.

On the chartered bus back to the airport, Scott let out a sigh. "That was so relaxing," he said. I stared at him, dumbfounded. I hadn't slept more than a few hours each night and my arms were aching from holding Henry and throwing the big kids around in the pool. We were about to take an international flight with three kids and an obscene amount of luggage, made all the heavier because most of the contents were wet. The unpacking! The laundry! My head was spinning while Scott started gently snoring beside me, a small, contented smile on his face.

Back in New York the next day, we took the kids to the playground. I tweaked my wrist taking Henry out of the baby swing. It started throbbing.

"You have to go to the hospital," Scott said. "I think you broke your wrist."

"I don't think so," I said. But it hurt. A lot.

My mother called, her momdar sensing that there was an injury.

"Go to the hospital," she said.

"I can't leave the kids," I answered.

"Of course you can. Scott can handle them."

She was right, of course. I put Henry and Quinny down for a nap. Scott and Emma were embroiled in a tense game of Star Wars Lego Wii.

"I'm going to the E.R.," I called out.

"Good," said Scott. "We're fine."

On the way to the hospital, I got an ice cream cone. I signed myself in and sat in the waiting room, licking my cone. A Jets game was playing in the corner. The only only other person in the room was a homeless man who had procured a cheesburger for himself and was rapaciously eating it.

"Bon Appetit," I said, cheering him with my cone. For the first time in a week, I felt my shoulders drop from where they were hunched next to my ears. I smiled. He smiled. For different reasons, we were both just happy to be there.

You Can Go Home Again

Ah, the family vacation - a rite of summer. Memories that become as much a part of us as our tissue, blood and bones.

Our summer vacations always entailed the family station wagon breaking down on the way to see our grandparents and our father trying to fix the car with whatever was at hand. When our windshield wiper inexplicably broke during a thunderstorm, my father stopped at a farm stand to buy a potato. He bit the potato in half and smeared the windshield with the potato on the theory that potatoes were somehow water-repellent.

When that didn't work, and with the windshield now completely obscured by rain and potato, he tied one of my brother's shoelaces to the end of the wiper, rolled down the window, and drove with his left hand outside, manually operating the wiper using the shoelace. Where was my mother in all of this? She was reaching around behind her, swatting her hairbrush in the general direction of the backseat to quiet the chorus of protests by my brothers and me.

Given this, you may wonder why I chose to visit these people this summer, and to subject my own children to them.

It was Henry's first trip to Cumberland, my hometown. We stayed at Rocky Gap, a lovely lakeside resort that I have been visiting for more than 30 years, the kind of place where kids under 10 still eat for free and the service is slower than an upside-down box turtle.

Several of my best friends from elementary and middle school still live in Cumberland and almost all of them have daughters. Sherri brought 5-year-old Elle and her toddler brother Ben Ben down from New York. Julie was visiting from Florida with Cameron. Kerry came with 7-year-old Ila. Samantha brought Grace. And Emma and the girls, who last saw each other a year ago at Rocky Gap, immediately reconnected and formed a girl gang. Shawn, who is an adoring auntie, and Heather, who had the sense to let her kids stay on their bedtime schedule, joined the rest of us for drinks lakeside while Scott and Samantha's husband watched the girls swim and my parents stayed with the boys in our room.

We got caught up on each other's lives over shots and homemade birthday cake. I love these women. They oxygenate my blood. Heather has her mother's hilarious sense of humor and could win a prize for sexiest preacher's wife. Julie, who still loves a good time, just like high school, was the prettiest homecoming queen in our history and is still clueless about how gorgeous she is. Kerry is one of the most passionate people I've ever met, especially after a few beers. Samantha is mother to everyone, loving our children as if they were her own and raising Grace to be a little lady worthy of her name. Shawn is a glamour girl on the outside, but on the inside, she's a country girl more loyal than a St. Bernard. And Sherri is the closest thing I have to a sister, and I'm not convinced an actual sister could be better.

We have been there for each other through the deaths of parents, the births of children, the ends of marriages, the beginnings of new relationships. I don't think I could live without them. And to see our daughters playing together, bonding, having an impromptu sleep-over in Sherri's room and sneaking potato chips in bed, almost blew my heart out of my chest.

It was worth the fifteen hours spent in the car with a crying six-month-old, Emma throwing up into a grocery bag and Quinny having to go potty during a traffic jam on I-95. It was even worth the fight Scott and I had over a headrest that was obscuring the back windshield, which ended in me giving him the finger in front of the children. (In my defense, I gave him the finger so that I wouldn't curse him out loud.)

Close on the heels of this trip to Cumberland was Scott's family reunion in Westchester. The Balber reunions were started 40 years ago by ten Balber cousins who grew up in the same building in Brooklyn. There is a dysfunctional structure to these reunions, with a regular family meeting presided over by Balber Board Chairman Cousin Michael. Cousin Petey, whose real name is Stuart, is the family CFO, who reported a zero balance in the family's coffers. (Not surprising, since the sole family asset is a forty-year-old hard salami.) Cousin Marty gave a stirring presentation on Balber family origins, discovered by him at a genealogy booth at a Renaissance Fair: "You thought we were Russian, but we're Swiss, you dummies," he said, unveiling a computer-generated Balber family crest. In the center was a large palm tree, possibly foretelling the ultimate migration of an important contingent of Balbers to Miami.

Along with being chairman, Cousin Michael is also the only Balber who can discern whether a new Balber has the Balber Thumb. Cheers erupted during the Friday night buffet when he declared that Henry does, indeed, have the Balber thumb. And with that, Henry was pressed, literally and figuratively, into the bosom of the Balber family, in the form of the ample cleavage of Cousin Irene.

As Henry exulted in being passed from Balber to Balber, falling asleep in Cousin Dara's arms, snuggling into Cousin Dossie's neck, it dawned on me that my boy is part of this tribe. He belongs to them every bit as much as he belongs to me, a fact made starkly clear when the family's matriarch, Great Aunt Joy, wept when she saw that Henry had the same birthmark as her beloved brother Genie, Henry's grandfather, now dead more than twenty years.

When we arrived home on Sunday, I picked up the Sunday Times and read an article in the Business section about happiness. The one thing the happiness experts agree upon is that stuff doesn't make you happy, strong relationships do.

And I thought about Scott and me, imperfect parents, sometimes struggling partners, who accidentally gave our children the one thing this summer that may truly make them happy: membership in a clan. And then I thought about how we knew to do this. For me, it began with a station wagon and a potato.

This entry is dedicated to Chaney Dakota Spring, who gave 16 years of faithful service as Zealand Family Dog. She is catching sticks for the angels now. Rest in peace. Good girl.