time with Sweet Baby Jane

Swim­ming! The South­bury Munic­i­pal Swim­ming Pool is the place to be. Espe­cial­ly if you’re 17 and a half months old with a dot­ing aunt to devote her­self to your amuse­ment for hours on end. And ten­nis, you can be a ball girl! Actu­al­ly this pho­to is cheat­ing because John was­n’t able to be at home dur­ing our babysit­ting for Jane, stuck in Times Square as he was.

Here’s the sto­ry: Jill and Joel need­ed a lit­tle down time just the two of them. And noth­ing could please me more than hav­ing Jane all to myself, so they took them­selves off to Lake Mohonk, a classy and beau­ti­ful resort with spas, restau­rants, hik­ing trails, and the like, to spend a cou­ple of days, while Avery and I played with Baby Jane.

Suf­fice to say I had no idea how much ener­gy she has!

Now, Avery was a placid, qui­et baby. If I sat her down with a pile of books and a cou­ple of squashy toys, I could go take a show­er, check email, make beds, what­ev­er, and when I got back, there she was, right where I left her. There was the time she crawled to the kit­ty dish­es and sam­pled their pel­lets, but that was the excep­tion. Now Jane is anoth­er sto­ry. She reminds me com­plete­ly of Baby Jill. We have a home movie of Jill run­ning from one end of the liv­ing room to the oth­er, tak­ing knobs off the tele­vi­sion, unscrew­ing the lid of a jar of Vase­line, unfold­ing blan­kets, knock­ing over piles of books. Jane is just the same! She wants to know if she can lift up a cof­fee cup, take all the box­es off a shelf, start the rock­ing chair rock­ing, unfold laun­dry. All this is accom­plished with a max­i­mum of laugh­ter, squeal­ing, run­ning to you for hugs, tak­ing her pony­tails out. She is, as you will have gath­ered, com­plete­ly per­fect in every way. So Avery and I took her down to the tram­po­line, but that was too nerve-wrack­ing with just the two of us to keep her from careen­ing off the edges. Eas­i­er to kick a ball back and forth. She and John, before he left, played for­ev­er in the hose water. She had her first pop­si­cle, cov­er­ing her­self from head to toe in rasp­ber­ry lemon­ade. We went to the pool and she dashed about in the baby-lev­el water, and scrubbed down a util­i­ty door with a wet paintbrush.

Final­ly Uncle John had to be dri­ven to the bus stop to go back to New York, sob, and after that I saw what life with two chil­dren is like, and it was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly pret­ty! I just don’t have the knack of talk­ing on a nine-year-old lev­el with one per­son while cut­ting food up into tod­dler-appro­pri­ate bites and mak­ing din­ner for myself and fold­ing laun­dry! But all too soon it was bed­time for Jane, and then we were back to bor­ing old us.

Next day we took Jane to the library, this being the eas­i­est place to enter­tain her, I thought, on a bru­tal­ly hot day. Well, it was an eye open­er! She has a way of say­ing “Groo bee [some­thing],” which means “Great big what­ev­er,” and she found LOTS of “Great big books” to whip out of the shelves, peruse with a light­ning-quick glance, toss to the side, and move on to the next. Avery and I ran after her at first replac­ing them on the shelves and then final­ly just leav­ing them on tables for the lack­lus­ter spot­ty shelf girl to attend to. Jane kept wav­ing her plump lit­tle hand at this paragon of library labor, say­ing, “I” [for “hi”] over and over. The girl just did­n’t tum­ble. Final­ly I said, “Please say hi back to her,” and the girl mut­tered some­thing that Jane inter­pret­ed as an endear­ment and we were able to leave.

We decid­ed that an ice cream cone was the order of the day and end­ed up at Den­mo’s, where Jane reached for her ice cream cone by the dip, not the cone! The lady at the counter was ready with a dish instead. Not hav­ing a sweet tooth, I had some shrimp instead, and Jane alter­nat­ed dip­ping her spoon into her ice cream and into my tar­tar sauce! An equal-oppor­tu­ni­ty dip­per. We reached home just as Avery’s Lon­don friend Sophia and her moth­er Susan arrived for an overnight stay, and then we all played with Jane, until her mam­moth after­noon nap. I for­got what that was like. For about an hour you’re hap­py to accom­plish things, then you start look­ing at your watch and miss­ing the baby, then after two hours you’re pre­tend­ing to hear her every five min­utes until final­ly she gives in and gets up! Jill and Joel turned up, to Jane’s delight, and we all went to the pool. It’s fun to be there with the cutest baby among all the babies.

Susan made the best ever, most authen­tic risot­to I have ever had. Joel kind­ly hon­ored my request for fresh thyme from his pri­vate crop, and the leaves and stems were so ten­der that they could be snipped right in, no pick­ing over required. Here’s Susan’s method:

Susan’s Sim­ple Risotto
(serves four)

3 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps butter
1 cup risot­to (arbo­rio) rice
2 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly minced
1/2 white onion, fine­ly minced
1/2 orange pep­per, chopped
6 but­ton mush­rooms, chopped
3‑ish cups chick­en stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup parme­san or pecori­no cheese, grated
salt to taste
3 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dry)

Melt the but­ter with the oil in a saucepan and saute the gar­lic and onions till slight­ly soft­ened, then toss rice until all is coat­ed in oil. Saute pep­pers and mush­rooms slight­ly, then begin adding chick­en stock, stir­ring over low heat and absorb­ing the stock grad­u­al­ly. It will take about 30 min­utes to get the rice to a slight­ly chewy stage, with a nice thick liq­uidy con­sis­ten­cy to the whole dish. Do not wor­ry if you don’t add all the stock. When the risot­to seems ready to eat, stir in the cream, and 1/2 cup cheese, and snip the thyme over the dish. Serve with the addi­tion­al cheese on the side. The key is to stir near­ly con­stant­ly, adding the stock slowly.

Then, sad­ly, the baby was tak­en home, and we were left just adults and old kids, with no one to rush around gig­gling or say­ing crazy things, or push­ing her fin­ger into the palm of her hand in her baby sign lan­guage for “help,” when she heard an ambu­lance siren. Jane is sim­ply divine.