Gosh, I don’t even know where to begin with this one.  I got a call today from our neighbor’s mother.  She began the conversation by saying that they feel we haven’t shown her daughter the proper respect.  I took this moment to bask in my speechlessness, while she continued on to say that 1) we cannot control our baby, 2) Rob slammed the door in her daughter’s face the other day when she came up to complain about said “out-of-control” baby, 3) we constantly move our furniture around at night and play loud music, 4) we neglect our son and let him cry for hours without attending to him.  Let’s just allow these accusations to sink in a moment.  The last one especially.  She is accusing us of neglecting our son.  These are dangerous allegations to make, and if you think I resented hearing them, and felt sick at the stomach that someone would even say such a thing, you are right.

I finally caught my breath and asked this woman calmly what she suggest we do about the “crying,” “laughing,” “squealing,” and “loud crawling.”  She said that she wasn’t sure because it wasn’t her child.  I replied “Exactly, he’s not your child.  He’s ours.  And we are doing the best that we possibly can with him.  I understand that it is inconvenient to wake up to a crying baby, but we are doing the best we can.  We have our house on the market.  We will be moving soon.  We are doing everything we can.”  On the inside I wanted to tell her she was a horrible pushover who was allowing her spoiled 34-year-old daughter to lie to her and be a complete pain in the ass to everyone around her.  But I restrained myself.  It was very, very hard.  Her end of the conversation started out very defensively, but I was able to slowly disarm her by saying I understood the disadvantages of living beneath a baby, and from there, I was slowly able to introduce her to the idea that living above her daughter hasn’t been a pleasant experience either.  When I conceded that leaving beneath a baby could be disruptive, I told her I knew this because I could hear them mocking Holden through the floor.  She laughed nervously at this.  When she brought up the fact that her daughter felt like we were “tattling” on her to her parents instead of directly addressing these issues with her, I raised the point that going directly to her with a problem is pointless when the music is so loud that she doesn’t hear us knocking at the door.  Again, nervous laughter.  

I said to her mother, “Let me illustrate a scenario for you.  This morning Holden woke up at 5:45 AM.  Your daughter was angry and frustrated at also being woken up at this hour, and understandably so.  She retaliated by blasting music for an hour.”  Her mother responds “That’s exactly what happened.  She needs to handle this situation with more maturity.”  Aha.  So what started out as a defensive tone where Rob and I are these horrible furniture-moving, baby-neglecting monsters, has somehow morphed into a more reasonable stance where her daughter needs to accept some responsibility and start acting like a grown-up.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  I told her I would go downstairs to speak with her daughter, because I don’t want stress or bad blood.  But I also said that I cannot control my baby.  It’s not possible, and it’s not fair.  It’s already not fair that I wince whenever he vocalizes because I am afraid of what repercussions we may face as a result.  At any rate, I asked her mother whether she thought her daughter would be receptive to a sit-down.  She said, “I don’t know, she’s pretty angry….”  Sheesh.  

One of the questions that her mother asked me was whether we would treat her daughter with more respect if she was the owner of that unit, rather than a renter.  I told her that was irrelevant, but what I really wanted to ask her in response was whether her daughter  would exhibit less of a sense of entitlement if her parents weren’t the owners.  

In the end, the conversation concluded amicably, although it accomplished nothing.  It made me realize that our downstairs neighbor is who she is, in large part, because her parents have supported her emotionally and financially through all of her bullshit.  Her mother seemed to be half supporting her daughter and half embarrassed at even having the conversation in the first place; she kept saying, “I do know and remember what it was like to have babies…”  almost as a disclaimer for the outrageous things she was asking of us.  I keep thinking to myself that she is a woman in her 50s, whose legacy is a daughter who cannot interface reasonably with the world around her.  Her legacy is a daughter who concocts hurtful things about those around her solely so she can get her way.  I think about this legacy and I am glad I kept my cool, because this woman deserves my pity more than my hate.

I hate to be so negative, but there it is.  This weekend we had EIGHT parties come through our condo.  On Saturday we had three private showings, and on Sunday we had our second Open House.  Needless to say, I do quite a bit of cleaning to have the house ready for our showings.  This task has been complicated by H’s messy eating habits as he drops about a third of his food on the floor at any given meal.  In addition to the relentless cleaning, H is back to hardcore teething and is not sleeping well at all.  Because of the crying, our neighbors are retaliating by slamming doors and absolutely BLASTING music through the walls.  It’s to the point where you can hear it outside in the parking lot with all of the windows closed.  You can hear it in every room of our condo.  And if you videotape H, the music can be heard on the video as if it were actually being played in our unit.  I’ve been stewing pretty much all day today about this, and it’s taking a good deal of self-control to not a) go downstairs and verbally bitch slap them, b) call the cops, and/or 3) call her parents and tell them they’ve raised a spoiled, insolent brat.  

Let’s see if I can end this post positively.  I started back to work this week.  I felt very welcomed back to work and I am excited to have some other things to concentrate on.  I have a lot of enthusiasm for the projects I will be working on and I am eager for them to really get under way.  At the moment I don’t have an office at work, so my reading and writing has to be done from home, which has been challenging given reasons cited in the previous paragraph, in addition to the fact that I don’t have a dedicated work space and have to work on the couch.  

OK…..Holden still can’t sleep b/c of the noise.  And I am about to lose my shit.  So I think I need to contact this girl’s folks….enough is enough….

We just wrapped up a really perfect weekend.  Saturday morning commenced with cornmeal waffles and coffee.  After breakfast, napping, and chores, we finally made it out of the house for a walk around town to enjoy the glorious spring weather we’ve been having.  Saturday was Green Up Day, as evidenced by the periodic bright green bags of detritus that we’d pass along the roadside.  During our walk through town, we randomly ran into the governor of Vermont, who was participating in some sort of bizarre parade that involved college girls throwing beaded necklaces at unsuspecting onlookers.  Holden was lucky enough to have a college girl give him his very own beads:

We missed the Storm Troopers, much to Rob’s disappointment, so we left the downtown area and headed to the park where we enjoyed some swinging and sliding:

Holden absolutely loves going to the park because he is fascinated by the older kids.  Eventually we tired him out enough to go home so I could get ready for a bike ride with my friend Sue.  I realized yesterday with embarrassment that I had not been on a bike in about two years.  Rob graciously agreed to watch H for a couple hours while Sue and I hopped on the bike path and rode alongside the lake, chatting and giggling the whole way.  We stopped and sat on the beach for a while, taking in the lake and mountains.  The air was absolutely intoxicating.  And I felt so free to not have a squirming, flailing, groping, little guy clinging to my ankles.  It was just a fabulous time.  We rode back into town, cleaned ourselves up, collected Rob and H, and then went to a friend’s house for cocktails and appetizers.  

Sunday morning was a cleaning frenzy in anticipation of showing our house to some prospective buyers.  Once we got the cleaning out of the way, we took another walk.  Our first stop was the local library.  The library has an amazing youth area with couches, toys, stuffed animals, etc.  Any time I have ever taken H there, it’s usually pretty crowded with young kids, ranging from 2-5 years of age.  I took H to the library earlier this week, and he was so excited to see the older kids.  He kept crawling over to them, interrupting their games and unknowingly disrupting the fragile sense of order that these youngsters had worked so hard to achieve with their playmates.  I kept grabbing H and reeling him in so that he wouldn’t interfere with the bigger kids too much, but every time I would try to get him to give the kids some space, he would throw a tantrum.  And today was the same thing all over again.  He wants to play with the big kids but doesn’t quite know how.  And when it was time to leave he would arch his back and cry and squirm.  Earlier this week at a children’s store, it was the same drill.  Holden was playing with a two-year-old girl, allowing her to feed him Legos and kiss him on the nose.  And when it was time to go, he protested, flailed, and squirmed.  I guess it’s good that he’s not shy around other people, but I have a feeling he’s going to be the kid who will complain about not wanting to leave his friend’s house when he is older.

After the library debacle, we enjoyed more swinging:

followed by H’s first cookout in our yard parking lot:

Holden just loved eating outside!  He has been a pretty happy camper lately.  I don’t know whether the nice weather and fresh air has lifted his spirits or whether he is getting past a rough patch with the teething (for now).  I do know that he has been a lot of fun to spend time with over these past couple of weeks.  He’s really starting to acquire quite the vocabulary.  He knows “bath” and “wagon,” and is actually capable of walking behind his wagon, which means that unassisted walking is probably right around the corner.  I have more to say, but it’s past my bedtime.  I’m working on planning his first birthday party and I return to work in 3 short days.  It will be time to go strawberry picking soon, and I can’t wait for Holden to sit in the grass, savoring a sweet strawberry, complete with sticky hands and face.