<

I did some reading - after making the pot roast, of course - and it all appears to be normal. Clara Jane's 17 months old; too old for two naps a day, not old enough for one nap a day. Having had only one nap that day, she was overtired and couldn't sleep, which doesn't make any damn since at all. That's like saying, "I was starving so I ate that entire pot roast and all the tender little potatoes and succulent carrots, but I succumbed to malnutrition nonetheless." Whatever. All I know is this might possibly be a preview of the next year of our lives. If that's the case, we're going to be eating a lot of goddamn pot roast.

Another problem we're having seems to involve my child being a tad lonley. On Sunday we spent the day with Kara, Sara, Cyn, her 7-month old son Connor (who is so delictable that I'm going to eat him and then use his gorgeous, super-long eyelashes for floss when I'm finished), Stacey and her gorgeous four-year-old daughter, who is a memeber of the Claire and Clara Jane Mutual Admiration Society. Between the pure bliss of hollering, "It's a baby! It's a baby! It's a baby!" everytime she glanced at Connor, and having Claire showering her with affection and bunny attacks, Clara Jane got a little spoiled. On Monday, she talked about babies all day. She would cry to see the baby on my computer (meaning the photo of her I have on my desktop). She'd gaze into the mirror wistfully and murmur, "*sigh* It's a baby." Such longing! Such despair! Such middle-of-the-night shrieking!

So yesterday afternoon, sleep-starved and shaky as I was, we ventured to Hartford in search of caffiene for me and babies for Clara Jane. Just another day of keeping up with our joneses.

As luck would have it, there was a 22-month-old boy and his mom in the play area when we arrived, and Clara Jane was raring to go. She wiggled away from me while I was waiting for my latte and went to make his acquaintance. I followed, took a seat on the couch, and nodded to this boy's mom, who sat on the window seat across from me. "How old is he?" I asked, which is momspeak for, "Oh sweet Jesus, I need some grown-up interaction. I see that you have a small one, too, and therefore you probably needed grown-up interaction, too. Let's save ourselves from these tiny sleepless wonders!"

She curtly answered and, as almost an afterthought, asked for Clara Jane's age.

Well, that was refreshing. After that exchange I can probably go another week without stimulating adult conversation, for I am an adult conversation camel, able to take teensy tiny little bits of conversation, which store then in my hump to be divvied out during the long, long days where my conversations revolve around sippy cups, poop and how the kitty-cat says meow.

Soon, the mom was joined by two men, also bearing girl-children, ages 13 and 18 months. This information, I gleened via eavesdropping, since my presence wasn't acknowledged at all, even though I was sitting five feet from them and my child was informing their children that kitty-cats say meow, horsies say neigh and guckies say GACK GACK GACK GACK GACK GACK GACK!!!!!!! At least one member of my family was having a meaningful conversation.

So I eavesdropped while I drank my coffee and watched the kids. The other parents were co-workers, teachers at the same high school. Upon learning this I didn't begrudge them much. Had they just been a playgroup giving me the snub, I would have been thoroughly pissed. Instead, I just felt a little dumb, listening to them talk about when they got their masters degrees, whether or not they were going to pursue PhDs, and what advanced degrees their spouses held.

Their talk eventually turned to work, and their attention away from their children. I managed to pay attention to both, and I was struck by how the parents' personalities blended with those of their kids. The boy turned out to be The Hitter, and his mother The Pushover. "Now G., we didn't hit." No, actually Mom, we do hit. A lot. The youngest girl's dad blended quietly into the group as he daughter silently unloaded the bookcase. He slipped back to retrieve her, leaving the mountain of books on the floor, as if they had escaped from the shelves without a sound and certainly without a 13-month-old's assistance.

But the real kicker was the 18-month-old's father. Loud and brash, he chortled when he announced, "In my world history class, I can teach Rome in a day! GUH GUH GUH GUH GUH!!!!". He loudly proclaimed that he and his South American wife were teaching their daughter to be bilingual. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that's awesome. What I didn't find so awesome was how, when he spoke to her in English, he used a somewhat normal volume, but when he spoke in Spanish, he did so loudly, while looking around to see if anyone noticed that, hey! He's speaking Spanish! When that didn't garner much attention, he took hold of the coffeehouse's battered guitar and loudly began strumming, blaming the guitar's one broken string for its lack of musicality. Yeah. Just keep thinking that, you balding, braying jackass attention whore.

Likewise, his daughter dominated the other children, shrieking and squawking, but never uttering a word in English or Spanish. It appeared that her primary language was something from "Lord of the Flies", as were her play tactics. She was a toy thief, a screamer, and a hitter. She's aspiring to be a biter, I'm guessing.

And then there was Clara Jane, playing somewhat outside the group and quietly moving on to another toy when the one she was playing with was stolen by the other kids. She didn't push into their group, didn't assert herself, but relished in whatever attention they tossed her way. And I wondered, as I sat on the couch, eavesdropping and a bit lonely, if someday Clara Jane would find herself doing the same thing while the others fought and brayed.