Stalking Rachel

This one is for my friends.

So I had a baby in November of 2005 and I've stayed in touch with every woman who came to my baby shower. Some of those women have children, some don't but I'm happy to say I've kept up with both groups.

Except I feel like I never actually see any of them. We email, we text message, occasionally we get together for dinner or a drink. But it seems like I go out about once a month. For the most part, I don't mind. I love spending time with my girl and this is what happens as life gets more complicated. Friends go on to new, more demanding jobs or move to other states, other friends have kids and also choose to spend the majority of their time with their kids.

Once I had a child, spending time with my parents, grandparents and cousins became more important. I want my daughter to know her family so suddenly people that I saw maybe once a year moved into a front/center kind of position. I think this is normal, Grandma, Uncle even great Aunt Beaulah are jockeying for some time with the new addition. This sudden swerve in family importance is probably a big reason why people who have children don't see their friends as often.

Kids take up a lot of time. I find when I'm not with Eliza, I'm talking about her. Not everyone is so into my undending monologue of devotion.

I'm happy to be where I am but I miss my friends. I miss the long dinners and the walks afterwards, drinks until 2am and lunches on the spur of the moment. I miss trips to Belmont Park without a stroller and shopping excursions that turn into lunch, then drinks in a nearby bar, then dinner. I miss sleeping until 11am, waking up and calling my friend from the night before to see if she ever found her purse.

Lately, I've been hanging out a new playground. One day, I noticed a young woman who looked startlingly like my friend Rachel. She was very pretty, dressed well and seemed to smile at me like she knew me. But it wasn't Rachel, for one thing, though my friend looks like she's in her 20s, this woman is clearly in her early 20s. She's a nanny in charge of three children. One day, the little girl she watches threw a fit and Eliza, ever the empethetic child, gave the girl a red shovel to cheer her up. The shovel didn't work but the nanny took a liking to me. Though I still don't know her name, we say hello when we see each other and I find myself gravitating towards her, I think in an attempt to be closer to Rachel.

On a recent trip to the playground, I saw the girl this nanny watches and smiled, figuring my "friend" couldn't be too far behind. Instead, a woman who was clearly this girl's mother appeared and my stomach sank with disappointment.

Last weekend, while at the same playround, I happened upon none other than Brooke Shields. She played with her daughter and chatted with everyone, unbothered by the fact that people stared. I've worked with many celebrities and I'm usually nonplussed when I run into them but there was something about Brooke's openess with her child that day that drew my attention to her. I watched as she accompanied her daughter up the steps, down the slide, by the big steering wheels. I watched Brooke walk across the playground and greet another woman who, though her face was blocked by big sunglasses looked exactly like my friend Rachel.

I didn't know Rachel knew Brooke Shields. Rachel has a two year old son and could be at a playground but common sense told me there was no way my friend would be in this playground. I stared at Brooke and the Rachelike, and the more I looked at her the more I became convinced it really was my friend. I grabbed my daughter and moved towards them. A man appeared and from the back he really looked like Rachel's husband. I moved faster to the women, so excited, my friend was really here, in the flesh. It was Rachel, I'd get a chance to speak to her in person, without the clack of the keypad, we could sit together and watch our children play and talk like it was old times.

And then I got closer and heard the woman's voice and realized this wasn't my friend. It was probably nothing more than a deep desire to connect or wishful thinking that convinced me Rachel could actually be in a park so far from her home.

I put Eliza down and let her run to the other end of the playground.

I know my daughter will only be this age once and I want to drink it all in, relish her, devour her perfect little body like it's my lifeline. Part of my limited time with my friends has been my choice, my desire. I know in time Eliza will have her own life and I'll move more back into mine, back into longer nights out and weekends away that don't include children.

But until then, I guess for now, I will always be stalking Rachel.

Playing for the Other Team

After 14 years behind the scenes on various TV shows, I was asked to appear on camera right here for Real Savvy Moms. If you haven't watched some of the segments here at Real Savvy Moms you should, they're pretty good and I'm not saying that because I write for the site. I'm saying that as some one who comes from a television background and has the ability to recognize good, informative writing when I see it.

I arrived on set four hours after the crew, a first for me. I sat in the chair and had my hair and makeup done by a professional. I got to wear a pantsuit that wasn't stained with avocado or toddler yak yak and I got to meet a lot of interesting women and talk about something other than our babies.

When I sat on the couch and realized two cameras were pointed in my general direction, I felt intensely intimidated, nauseous and shot through with adrenaline. There's something about taking on a new challenge that brings on a high like I've never known. Though I worried about the whole deer-in-the-headlights thing happening, for the most part once the cameras rolled I felt pretty okay.

Our segment taped in less than an hour and will be cut down to 5-7 minutes. I know with any television work, the primary goal is to make people look good and their show sound smart so I'm not too worried about sounding like an idiot. That's not to say I didn't, I simply know that if I did, the public will probably not see it.

I was out the door by 3pm, had I worked on the crew I probably wouldn't leave until after 7p. It felt good to be on set in any capacity but I have to say, it was wonderful to experience my former job from a completely different angle. I felt recharged, reborn and ready to move on to another chapter in my life. If only I could find some one to hire me to do so!

Undervalued, Part Deux

Thanks to everyone who responded to my last posting about the undervalued women. I apologize for not responding sooner but moving from one apartment to another can take on an awful life of its own.

First of all, as my daughter gets older, I actually feel the urge to return to work in some capacity. She's intensely social and will start pre-school sooner than I thought because she needs the interaction with the other kids. Naturally, I'm going to need some kind of life that doesn't revolve around her.

I've also worked a bit since her birth and I know full-well the joy of turning the key in the lock, opening the door and getting greeted by a running, laughing child who's so happy to see me. I know a woman can work and enjoy her child.

But I'm greedy. I worked a long day right around the time Eliza was getting ready to take her first steps. I spoke about it so much at work, my coworkers quickly grew bored with me. As one woman said, "when she takes her first steps in front of you, you'll be just as thrilled." I knew this to be true, but I was obsessed. I wanted her first steps to be with Mama.

I didn't work for a while after that, probably because people realized I wasn't quite ready. Eliza was eleven months old at the time.

As I said before, I think women that work are great and women that choose to stay at home are great. I think most women make the choice not only based on what they want but on what's best for their family. I only feel that women who choose to stay at home should not be penalized. The book I mentioned in my last posting urged women to continue to work because divorce cases often only reward women with temporary or "transitional" alimony. Child support payments barely cover the cost of socks.

This is an area that needs to be improved. Show me a full-time Mom and I'll show you a women who tried to do what's best for her family. Perhaps she wasn't so happy in her prior job but for some women, taking care of a child is like a calling to the ministry. For her, it might be the right job. If her husband/partner can afford for her to stay at home when they're together, he can continue to financially support his child in a way that's best for everyone. This book pointed out that in divorce, often the standard of living goes way up for men while it declines for the woman and her child. If I was the breadwinner and for some reason my daughter didn't live with me, I'd much rather live in a studio apartment while she retained her current home. In other words, I'd gladly pay for my child to have a good life if I had it.

In other words, don't penalize the woman and the child in divorce cases by offering only a temporary solution.

In my former life as a script supervisor, I worked on a top 20 television show. The executive producer of that show, who did nothing but create the show many years ago, has more money than he can ever spend in a lifetime. The only reason he doesn't buy another trailor and establish it as a day-care facility is because he doesn't have to, isn't encouraged to do so, would probably never think of it. I'd pay for the hourly child care so the only real cost would be the cost of the trailor and the added stress of having one more vehicle to park everyday. But it would keep mothers of very young children happy while they worked 15 hour days.

While many work places are adopting a more family-friendly work environment, we still have a long way to go. Maternity leave can be only six weeks. Part-time employment is too often not an option or comes with such paltry benefits it's not worth it. It's one thing if a company is really struggling but if you work for an employer who can afford you some flexibility, why is it offered so rarely?

So again, instead of concluding that all women should work to avoid financial dependence, I vote that we respect women's choices as best for her family, and ask for changes that reflect that.

Lastly, this women says that various, extensive studies have shown there's no difference in the success rates of children of working mothers versus children of a non-working caregiver. Studies can't look at things on a case by case basis. Eliza's father works 70 hour work weeks and my hours were even worse. I couldn't justify a life where my daughter hardly saw either one of her parents. I gave up a job that's not easy to segue into something that involves fewer hours so I'm kind of starting over. I don't think I should be penalized for sacrificing a career in order to raise a child I was desperate, absolutely desperate, to love.

I am a good mother, perhaps better at it than anything I've ever done. It's my calling and while I realize I can't get a "salary" for it, I think my daughter should be protected.

Undervalued

Carol Shields, the late, great, award winning novelist said in a published interview that her last novel "Unless" was "filled with rage at they way in which women were undervalued." (from an interview at the back of the Harper Perennial paperback version of "Unless")

What an amazing, succinct way to put it.

Recently, I came across a book written by a Vanity Fair editor that passionately encouraged women not to become stay-at-home Moms, but to work and have children.

I think women who have children and want to work are great and I think women who choose to stay home and take care of their children are great. I don't think either category should be judged or penalized. After flipping through this book, it seemed this writer's primary reason to suggest women stay at work was financial. She thinks women who give up their careers, even temporarily, put themselves and their children at a huge financial risk. Women who give up their financial livelihood place themselves in the hands of their husbands/partners and in doing so also jeopardize the future of their children. If said husband/partner took off, this women would suddenly be a single mother, struggling in poverty with her child.

Again, I don't want to blast this woman for writing a book persuading women to pursue careers and motherhood simultaneously. This is her opinion and I can't entirely disagree with her. Staying at home with Eliza has rendered me codependent on C, at least when it comes to money. I can't afford a place to live, food, even clothing for my daughter without his help. I'd rather have my own money, a job, so I can show my daughter that a woman can be self-sufficient.

But I can't go back to my former job. On the last TV series I did while pregnant with Eliza, every Monday I'd leave my apartment at 6am to meet a van at 6:30. This van took me to some location in New Jersey where we broke for lunch when they told us we could and got in the van to take us back into Manhattan when they decided it was time to go home. A typical Monday ended around 8:45pm. If I was lucky, I'd make the first van back into Manhattan and be home around 9:30. If the first van was full of extras(those people who walk around behind the principal actors), I'd have to wait for the next. Maybe I'd get home at 10pm, only to do the same thing again the next day.

You see why I have no desire to return. I've applied to grad school and plan to start a new career, one that doesn't involve those kind of hours but I will miss being home with Eliza.

I wish that a "woman's work" wasn't undervalued, that the choice a woman makes to stay home with her child could come with some monetary benefits. Child support is based on income and has absolutely nothing to do with what it costs to raise a child. It doesn't factor in if the mother works or not. Perhaps, child support laws need to come around to protect women who choose to stay at home a little bit better. Maternity leave policies in this country also need to change.

Women are tremendously undervalued.

The other day a great song came on the radio and I stopped whatever I was doing (probably cleaning the apartment), grabbed Eliza's shakers and jumped around the living room. Eliza laughed with glee and shook her booty right alongside me. As she laughed and the music soared and my ears felt like they were bleeding from the loud tap-tap of the shakers, I realized this was the best five minutes of my day. This moment would not have existed if I worked outside the home. As a working Mama, my time with Eliza would be limited to meal/bath/bedtimes with weekends and holidays for real fun. I don't have oodles of free time as a stay-at-home Mom but there's 15 minutes here, a half hour there.

If I'd chosen to go back to work a few months after I had Eliza, I'd be depriving myself of the greatest joy I've ever known. I'm entitled to that happiness, I deserve it. I value the work I do with her, I value it tremendously.

Lacy Pink Thong

Eliza managed to wiggle her tiny hands into my lingerie drawer as she watched me put her clean clothes away today. Like the island of misfit toys, my long abadoned drawer offered a plethora of irresistable wonderbras and satiny tap pants to the curious fingertips of my adorable daughter.

Like a triumphant fisherman, Eliza happily pulled out her hands and grinned as displayed a dusky-rose colored thong. Not quite sure what to make of it, she looped it over her arm, and when she realized it wasn't quite a shirt she slid it off and wrapped it around her neck. When that didn't do the trick she tried to yank the scrap of lace over her head.

Trumped by this soft pink curiosity, Eliza turned her attention towards me. As I folded her little pink and purple striped pants and a thick, plush sweatjacket, Eliza mimicked my movements by folding the thong into a tiny square, no larger than a post-it. She trotted over to her little cabinet and stuffed the thong alongside a stack of 18-month sweatsuits and jeans. Then she closed the cabinet and slapped her palms together like she rid her hands of dirt.

C and I took childbirth classes together when I was around 35 weeks pregnant. A nurse who taught the class told us that she'd gone into labor seven weeks early. Because her water broke earlier than expected, she hadn't packed her hospital bag. When the woman sent her husband home after their son was born, she instructed him to bring back underwear and sanitary napkins. When her husband returned with a bag full of panty shields and thongs, in her exhaustion she nearly dumped the scant contents onto the hospital floor.

"I can put the panty shields in my bra in case my boobs leak and wear the thong on my head," she offered her husband.

She instructed us all to go home and pack our hospital bags that night. C said he felt a kinship with that husband. "He probably thought 'here honey, you've been pregnant for a while. Now let's go back to the way things were' and that's why he brought the thong." I laughed at the idea that a thong could immediately transport a mother back into some kind a sexy vixen who prefers striptease and belly dance lessons to lactation support groups (as though most women were ever really like that before they had a baby).

I'll have to put the thong back to where it belongs eventually (perhaps in the trash) but for now I'm going to leave it where Eliza placed it, like a symbol of my womanly past alongside the wonderful innocence of my future.

The Tough Choice to Move On

Now that I've mentally moved on from my life with C, Eliza gets a horrific stomach flu that makes me second guess my choice. C and I worked like a team for the first time in months and I found myself often smiling when I saw the closeness between him and my daughter. It looks like she's finally turned the corner and is on the mend but the past few days have been very stressful and a little terrifying.

To make matters worse, he's now looking at apartments since we'll have to move April 1st. He asks my opinion like everything's fine between us. I was too focused on Eliza's health to give him any straight answers but the truth is, we don't work together. As much as we both love our daughter, he cannot give me what I want in a relationship. I've tried to be happy with him as he is, tried to tell myself I'm too needy, too judgemental (both true) but in the end he and I don't work together.

We come from what looks like very similar background but our families are dramatically different. Although my parents are divorced, there's more respect and caring between the two of them than I've seen between C's parents who are still together. His parents seem incapable of doing anything apart and they have a very nice life but she talks to his father like he's the village idiot and he snorts with superiority whenever she says something that showcases her lack of education. They're happy but that's not the life I want.

Aside from my parents, there are my maternal grandparents who reside over the family they created with their three children like a great King and Queen. Though they bicker constantly, there is a great love and respect between the two of them. Their home was second home to me and all eight of my cousins. Eliza is now one of 15 great-grandchildren who still gather at the feet of my grandparents and share in the joy of what it means to be a very involved, caring, extensive family.

I want that for me and maybe I want too much and maybe I'll never get it but that's what I want. C regards my family as vermin that must be endured until the exterminator arrives. He's perfectly pleasant around them but he doesn't enjoy, respect or want to hear about them. Spending time with my family is akin to cleaning up doggie diarrhea for him. While I understand that no one else can love my family as much as I do, I want some one who will at least open their heart to getting to know them and try to enjoy them. C would rather spend time by himself reading the newspaper. His idea of family is going out to dinner with his parents footing the bill or sitting on the couch for hours with his kids spooned against him, ignoring anyone else (including me) who might interrupt or try to join this cuddly tableau.

I want an adult relationship, a family, love and respect for my role as Eliza's mother/primary caregiver with all the challenges that job entails. Maybe I'll never find that with anyone but I'm certainly not going to get it with C.

Estrangement Guilt

Rockstar Mom recenty posted here about the numbing guilt she feels due to her separation from her husband, the father of her two children. As I prepare to embark on my solo journey with my daughter, I completely, whole-heartedly understand what Rockstar Mom is going through. I was gone for a week visiting relatives and felt a huge sense of relief being away from C and surrounded by people who love me. I have not felt loved by C for a long, long time and after a week with my people who really do care for me I can say no one should have to feel unloved on a regular basis.

I felt like I could stand up straighter, like an anvil that pressed against my shoulders was gone. And still I felt enormously guilty that as my daughter added new words to her repertoire ("water" and "good girl") C and his son weren't around to see it. C's older daughter, Katie, is 14 and about as interested in Eliza as your average 14 year old is in cleaning out the leaky cabinet under the sink. I'm not saying that makes her a bad person, she's perfectly pleasant around Eliza but she's not interested in playing or interacting with a one-year-old. C's son, Harry who is 10, is a different. He's a boy with a quickly moving attention span but in the 15 minutes or so he holds Eliza, I see a lot of love. And apparently so does she, she's crazy about him.

So even though I felt reborn being away from the burden of my bad relationship with C, I felt so guilty my daughter was stuck with me instead of all of us. There are a great many things I could have done differently with C but ultimately we lacked the ability to communicate. Anytime I brought up counseling, he refused, blaming all of our problems on me. Even if I am a horror to be around, if he really wanted things to work with me, he'd go, at least once. I went to therapy alone for a while and found it helpful. My therapist recognized how much trouble C and I had and suggested I come with C.

I want so much for my daughter to have a family but I can't be the only one willing to correct the problems. I was willing to blame myself for everything, to try to do things the way he wanted to give my daughter a family. But I can't live in a home without love and respect.

Rockstar Mom wrote about shouldering many of the parenting responsibilites alone and I don't think people realize how hard that is. I've had the luxury of being a full-time Mom for the past year. I don't know how I'll juggle my Mom responsibilities with work as I make the split from C. Sometimes I find it so frustrating that people seem to think parenthood isn't nearly as important or taxing or stress-inducing as a job. While I know C needs some time to relax after a tough day at work, I shouldn't have to apologize for feeling overwhelmed if I've cared for Eliza for 12 hours straight, four days in a row with no relief. I've done this many times and I'm proud of the stamina I have. But C never thought much of this, instead accused me of whining if I simply asked what time he'd be home.

All the counseling in the world can't fix my problems with C. And yet I feel such a profound sadness that I can't provide my daughter with the happy little family even I can tell she wants. She was so happy to see her father and her brother when they came in tonight.

I tell myself I can't stay here and be a good mother to her. I need to be loved, I want to be loved. And I want my daughter to see me as worthy of it.

We Are Awesome

I took my first solo trip to the airport with Eliza and it went extremely well. She is such an amazing baby/toddler she makes it all seem so easy.

I woke up early with stomach cramps so intense I nearly doubled over whenever they hit. I had some general "episodes" involving the bathroom and some moaning but the less said there the better. C left early to play tennis and wished me a good trip. Noticing my general distress, he said "I hope you feel better."

C and I have called it quits but even if we hadn't decided recently to split, the morning's scenario would have been exactly the same. Nothing holds him back from his tennis, nothing will keep him hanging around the apartment to help out the sick Mama of his baby when there's a court waiting.

My "problems" continued after Eliza woke up and I fixed her breakfast. I was frightened that I'd picked up a stomach virus but I was determined to make this trip to Pittsburgh to say goodbye to my grandparents house. At 100 years of age, my grandfather sold the house he's lived in since the 1940s to move into the assisted living facility with my grandmother. I wasn't in good shape but I told myself I could live with what I was dealing with as long as it didn't get any worse.

And it didn't. Though I had nauseau and cramps in the car on the way to the airport, I did okay. Though I felt like I'd double over a couple of times waiting to go through security, I made it. LaGuardia airpot was empty and the flight left close to on schedule. I'd purchased a seat for Eliza which I know was a ridiculous splurge but the fare was so low, I figured why not. I found out why not on my nearly empty flight. Eliza napped for most of it, only struggled during the landing when I held her on my lap and she wanted to run around the airplane.

Greater Pittsburgh Airport was a zoo and I'm dreading the security line on the trip out but my luggage was there when we arrived and I managed to find us a decent lunch. I chose chicken soup for myself and realized as I ate my appetite was back and my cramps were gone. We'd made it! The shuttle from the airport to the hotel took an hour and a half and the driver drove like a maniac but that was the only negative of our trip.

My grandmother was thrilled to see Eliza yesterday and hopefully we'll see my grandfather and walk through the house for the last time today. It's an emotional trip but I'm so happy to be here. Every thing I do on my own with Eliza feels like an accomplishment. With each step I take, I feel more confident about my ability to mother her into adulthood.

Valentine's Day Split

So C and I called it quits over the weekend after our latest knock-down-drag-out hatefest. These fights that usually dissolve into hurled insults and vigorous shouting have become a weekly occurrance here. I'd hoped to stick it out, to see if perhaps moving to a bigger apartment would change things. It's tense, sleeping on a lumpy futon in the living room while the baby sleeps in the bedroom. Throw into the mix his other two kids who come over two nights a week for dinner, plus every other weekend. Five people in a two room apartment is bound to create tension and we can't take it out on the kids, so we find fault with each other.

But it's not just the space, the strain of stepparenting or the enormous guilt he feels living in one home with one child while the other two children live most nights a week in another home. We don't work as a couple. I don't give him what he wants and he can't give me what I need. The two nights a week his kids come over are typically the only two nights he comes home from the office before 10pm. He's also obsessed with playing tennis well and plays 2-3 nights a week most weeks.

I have been the lowest priority on C's list since Eliza was three months old. He lived at work and never missed a tennis match in the first three months but he knew I had a tough transition and we went out on one date a month for each of the first three months. And we had a great time and congratulated ourselves for having such a wonderful baby. Then after three months, things shifted. His ex-wife decided to move to New York (they lived in Boston at the time) but I'm not sure if the idea of this caused the shift or not. Though I loved being a full-time mother, being home all day with a baby and limited contact with adults was lonelier than I anticipated. I know he didn't want to be at work as much as he was but I felt like I couldn't even ask him for help, ever. I was frightened of my new life as a "dependent" woman. I knew his kids living in the same city would mean he didn't have to travel to see them every Sunday, but I didn't know what to expect.

I'm sure I became very difficult to live with. He'd disappear at work or tennis and we'd sometimes go days without saying more than a few words to each other. When we were together, we'd fight, often about stupid stuff. Then the kids moved here and things seemed okay, for a bit. And then as they came over more often, things quickly disintegrated to this awful finale.

I really think we're not right for each other. But the splitting up part is so hard! We've agreed to go our separate ways when the apartment sale is final. So around April 1st I'll be living with my mother, jobless, middle-aged and terrified. I can't return to my old job, even if I wanted to because it requires me to live in New York City and I can't afford that as a single parent. How did I somehow go from the independent, self-sufficient woman to some kind of 1950's throwback with no job prospects?

How do people get through this?

Sick Baby Man

Okay, I don't mean to pick on men here. When I open up with a line like that, naturally it means that's exactly what I plan to do. As I write this, C is watching channel 35, supposedly for a good laugh. Channel 35 is a public access cable channel that posts ads that feature bevies of naked, bouncey women frolicking in oversized bathtubs. Oh now he's changed the channel to watch "Busty Cops, Bigger..." I'm trying to write here and he's begging me to check out two chicks perfecting their ability to lather each other into zestfully clean bliss. He claims he's watching this stuff for the funny. Ha ha, usually I find it amusing. But I digress.

Long story short, I spent a good part of tonight partaking in some light-hearted male bashing. I did the girl's night thing with another friend who also has a 14 month old child and we laughed about men's inability to put on pants while simultaneously administering a bottle. Don't pick on me here, studies (I don't know what studies but I've read it somewhere) have proven men can't multitask. Although I've taken care of Eliza through several sinus infections, if C has so much as a hangover he's supine for at least half the day. While my friend and I enjoyed complimentary cockatails, another friend bailed on our outing due to a sick spouse. We were saddened by her inability to join us, but of course we understand.

We know that many men aren't as good as we are at functioning when they're not feeling well. Men must have the physical stuff to bathe a child with a backache, I mean half the men who fought in the civil war suffered from terrible dysentery. If men can trudge through mud and swamps while carrying heavy guns when they're intestines are on fire, surely they can feed a toddler when they're afflicted with heartburn, right?

Another friend called later to tell me her three month old son was suffering from pneumonia. He was okay but it had been a rough week and her little boy was still miserable. She's exhausted from his illness and the nursing and the fact that she's flying solo on this one because her husband has the flu. She's done her best to care for her husband. She's brought him soup and toast, administered decongestents and allowed him the freedom to rest. Unfortunately, after two days of this, he complained she wasn't taking good enough care of him.

"I don't sit with him for very long because I can't get sick. I have to take care of the baby," she said. "The baby has pneumonia. I don't mean to shrug off the flu but I can't do crossword puzzles with an adult when I've got a crying baby with pneumonia."

She mentioned this to her husband who pouted and said he needed TLC too. When she told me this, I laughed which I know is probably a completely inappropriate response. I couldn't help it (this is real humor folks! Much funnier than sudsy boobs and oohy soundtrack). Who's the baby in that house anyway?