DADWAGON

I suppose introducing a new child into the life of a first kid is always difficult. I’ve gotten a lot of advice on how best to do it with JP these last months, most of it fairly obvious, and I won’t bother writing it all down. So far JP has taken the news well, and even seems excited about the prospect of having a sibling.

He’s been curious about any number of issues regarding his soon-to-be sister, but perhaps his most interesting question for me was when he asked if Ellie (that’s the name) would go with him to his mother’s house during the days he is there. He was a little upset when I told him no and tried to explain that his mother is his mother and Ellie’s mother is my girlfriend.

“But why can’t we share Ellie?” he wanted to know. I’m not going to turn this post into an explanation of how good I am at seizing teachable moments, but suffice to say that I offered an explanation and it seemed sufficient at the time. We haven’t talked about it since.

My great hope is that JP and Ellie will view each other as full siblings, and that this notion of half-whatever won’t be something that anyone insists on. We’ll see, though. Much of that depends on how they see each other as they grow older, as well as factors that we can’t really control: people at school, other friends, and the like.

Anyway, today JP is going to get his first opportunity to meet young (really young) Ellie, as we’re taking him with us to the last sonogram of the pregnancy. Now, they won’t be able to shake hands or anything like that, but he will see her, and hear her heartbeat, which is always a thrill for me as a parent.

I don’t know what he thinks about it, but I’m excited.

Our broken-off trip last week meant that we had several days of staycation in our apartment, which in turn meant that we did some cycling of baby clothes and other gear. The change of seasons, plus passing the eighteen-month mark, has meant that we’ve turned over a lot of clothes and bedding, and it’s being sorted for handing-down, thrift-store donations, and the rag bin. We find ourselves being picky about what we offer to other people: nothing stained or chewed or otherwise well-thumbed. Most of our friends were similarly considerate when they gave stuff to us. The (very few) less-than-appealing items that showed up on our doorstep were either scrubbed or quietly disposed of, and that was that.

But there’s one awkward object that we cannot figure out: the breast pump. Used daily for nine months, from my wife’s first day back at work to the day she weaned our son* at one year. It was expensive when new; it looks fine; it works perfectly; she kept it spotless. And all the books and Websites tell you not to sell it or give it away, because the internal parts cannot be sterilized. It’s supposed to be used by just one mother.

There appear to be donate-your-pump-to-a-needy-mom sites that flout the rules and, I guess, take a calculated risk: that the potential benefits of breast milk mysteriously outweigh the potential risks of the lightly sourced hand-me-down pump. I also wonder just how infectious a pump could really be after it’s been sitting, bone-dry and unused, for months.

Anyone got any better ideas? We could use the closet space.

*Addendum, 4 p.m.: My wife asks that I tell the DadWagon audience that our son was not weaned immediately after she stopped pumping, and that she wants full credit for 15.5 months of hardcore nursing. Gladly given.

Pavement Patty struck my procrastinatory interest in the incidences of fatal pedestrian and bike accidents in New York. Yes, it’s been only a few weeks since we reported on car-meets-person maulings in NYC. But there’s a new development. If you’ve been (safely) riding the subway lately, you may have seen some advertisements for it: Elle’s Law.

They are fairly arresting posters–one with a cute little blonde girl and the other with a kid’s bike under the wheels of a car. They have taglines like “She almost died for a parking space.”

This struck my wife and I as odd. What could Elle’s Law be? Something that makes it illegal to crush little girls while parking? Isn’t it already, you know, illegal?

Not necessarily. Turns out that Elle was a girl struck on the Upper East Side last year by some dude who was zooming in reverse to catch a parking space. Because he was sober and didn’t flee the scene, he wasn’t charged with anything. He was just given a traffic ticket and sent on his way, while Elle went into a coma and nearly died.

She recovered, but her case isn’t isolated. I should know: the woman who was distracted and killed my uncle last year in central New Jersey was given a $150 fine for reckless driving. No criminal charges, no suspended or revoked license. She probably drove herself home from the courthouse. Before his death, my uncle had been fined more than that for having dogs tied up outside in violation of township codes.

It turns out here in Gotham, the NYPD has been particularly bad about getting justice for people struck and killed by negligent drivers. Streetsblog.org has been doing a great job of covering the many injustices. In a piece about the July death of  Brooklyn mother of three (she was hit by an SUV that witnesses said sped through a red light; the driver faced no charges), Ben Fried wrote:

Nearly 300 New Yorkers are killed and more than 70,000 are injured by car collisions every year. Traffic is the number one risk of injury-related death for city children. And yet, we are served by a police force that, through its enforcement of traffic laws, operation of its own motor vehicles, and investigations into automobile crashes, displays a habitual disregard for the lethal consequences of reckless and negligent driving.

It turns out laws like Elle’s Law (or the ever more tragically-inspired Diego and Hayley’s Law) is as much about reforming the cops as it is about reforming drivers. By allowing prosecutors to criminally charge sober drivers who are speeding or texting or shouting or otherwise reckless when they injure or kill people, those laws could save lives or at least bring some justice for the dead. So despite my otherwise libertarian aversion to lots of safety laws, I’ll say it: good for Elle’s Law.

Let’s be clear: I am not one to make fun of people who are go a little too far to find good food. I overpay for heirloom tomatoes and triple crème, like all annoying urban elitists do. But we all have the line we will not cross, and at this year’s Fancy Food Show, someone found mine.

For-kids-only olive oil! Yes, it’s a real product. It is, apparently, an extra-virgin Spanish olive oil chosen for its smoothness and lack of peppery overtones.

As it happens, we Greeks know a thing or two about olive oil (and olives), particularly Greeks who have become annoying urban elitists, and here’s the dirty secret: You know which olive oils have those qualities? Cheaper ones. Hats off to that oil importer, who’s passing off the second-rate stuff as kid-appropriate. I await his repackaging of stale bread as “teething-friendly.”