There are these moments you have as a parent where you think to yourself: "This is exactly what the childless think parenting is like, and they are right." This usually happens while changing a shitty diaper in a train station bathroom without a change table and while you're searching in your bag for a clean diaper your kid puts her hand in poop, and the train whistle blows, and oh: you just used your last wipe to clean up chocolate milk, so now you're scrubbing your baby's butt with the cheap toilet paper Metro North stocks in their restrooms and experimenting with varying degrees of wetness by holding her steady with one hand while you run the tap with the other, dunking the weak single-ply in the cold stream. Of course she's crying and of course there's someone knocking on the door, and if you miss this train there's an hour wait for the next one — and you're already out of snacks. It can be cruel and lonely being a parent. And people, strange people who could show you some kindness in situations like this — but don't because they are jerkoff New Yorkers — are just so awful sometimes.
But then there are the other times. Like sweet Lucy here, drawing clothes on my drafting table. I was working on a pattern tonight when she pushed a chair over and asked for some paper to draw "tothes." (Last night she told my husband I was going to school to learn how to make clothes, but he misheard her mispronunciation as "toast." Mommy is going to school to learn how to make toast. For three hours every Monday. I do love toast.)
It's all so very sweet (especially shirtless; NYC is still so very warm) though totally lacking in the Three Men and a Baby-esque comedy of the bathroom scene described above (true story, naturally).
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