P.O.W

This is the end. Or maybe the beginning.

2008-08-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not one for Big Announcements, but it seems clear--to me, anyway--that the blog is over.

Yes, things are slowly getting back to normal in the P.O.W. household, and, as such, I just don't have that much to complain about anymore. Once upon a time I used this blog to record my daily life, since my daily life was mostly made up of me and two babies--and babies are not the greatest conversationalists. And I used it to make connections with other people, for the same reason, and also because in Real Life I am not sociable enough to connect with other people unless all the planets are aligned. Then, I used it to work through my shit: my marital problems, my grief, my disappointments and fears.

But now my babies are growing up. Isaac starts kindergarten next Wednesday. 8:03 to 2:30, the longest day he's ever had. He can't wait. He wakes up every morning at 6:30, after studiously setting the alarm the night before, to practice getting ready in time. He makes his bed, he gets dressed, he puts his toast in the toaster. He can practically live on his own! And Vivian is four, full of herself, and ready for her first year at preschool without Isaac holding court above her. Her day is from 7:30 to noon, and honestly, she'd be happy staying longer too. They are turning into little people that need so much less from me, and that allows me to have some freedom I didn't even realize I'd been missing.

I've taken a job at the elementary school as an aide, which starts next Tuesday. The pay is terrible, but the hours are what I need, and I am really looking forward to it. We had the first faculty meeting this morning and it felt really nice to flex my professional muscles, to talk with grown-up colleagues about grown-up things. I mean, yes, I mostly mingled with the kindergarten teachers so there was a fair bit of conversation about kids, but still, it felt nice. There are 5 special ed classes at this school--50 kids out of a student body of 250--and talking to those teachers reminded me how much I enjoyed volunteering in special ed classes when I was in college. It got me thinking about new possibilities: do I want to pursue that? Take some classes, get some kind of a degree so I can teach special ed? I don't know yet, but my brain is excited at the thought of something new.

And, well, the blog is not new. The blog is old, and I'm moving on. On to hopefully bigger and better things. Surely this coming year cannot suck as bad as the last one. Already Lance and I are forging a new relationship, one that feels familiar and new all at the same time. Even though my least favorite time of year (winter) is looming ahead, I can still embrace the Indian Summer that graces Southern California from now until October, and I plan to do just that.

I thank you all for your support, and your compassion, and your wise wise words when I needed them so desperately. I apologize for being such a one sided blogger; I didn't comment on your blogs, or even visit, nearly as much as I should have. I send all my happy good vibes out to the internet, where hopefully they will reach all of you and fill your life with joy and goodness.

Peace, my friends.

Oh, and yes! Please keep in touch via email. And I'll still be reading your blogs from time to time.

Babies, babies everywhere.

2008-08-14T10:49:00.001-07:00

Hugo
Son of my oldest and dearest friend, who unfortunately lives on the other side of the country, he was born February 20th. His mother was the first person I told about my pregnancy last summer. We were due exactly one month apart (me, April 1st; her, March 1st). For a few weeks we were each others' rock, venting daily on the phone: my troubles with Lance, my horrific morning sickness; her toddler's speech issues, her exhaustion. That was an extremely difficult period for me, physically, emotionally and mentally but she made it bearable. We went through it together.

Then I miscarried. The daily phone conversations slowed down. She felt uncomfortable discussing her pregnancy woes with me when I was no longer pregnant, and I felt uncomfortable small- talking with her about other things, with the elephant of her pregnancy taking up all the breathing space. We still talked, frequently, (she is my best friend after all) but it wasn't the same. Every day her pregnancy progressed reminded me that mine had ended. Fortunately, a few months later, I was pregnant again. Our phone conversations began anew in earnest.

Hugo was born in February, a healthy beautiful baby and I was happy for her. I really was. Crushed, too, that my baby would not be born in a month, the way we had hoped, but okay. After all, I was pregnant too, by this point about 12 weeks pregnant, and I knew I'd have my baby come September. (I am due September 1st, 5 months to the day after my first due date)

Then I miscarry again. April 2nd, the day my baby should have been born; instead I had a D&E. After that, the black time, which I finally started to pull myself out of in June. I took the kids home to see family. And to see my best friend, and her three wonderful children, including the 4 month old Hugo.

He is the cutest baby you will ever see. I loved holding him and smelling him. But when I got back to California I cried for hours. I will never have 3 children. I will never have a baby again to smell, to hold, to love.

I am thrilled to get to watch this little boy grow up. But every milestone he reaches, from the first crawl to the first college acceptance letter--will remind me of my own lost boy--lost boys--and the milestones they should be reaching too.

***
Leah
Daughter to Lance's best friends' sister (got that?), she was born in the beginning of February. Her mother lives in Northern California but used to visit frequently, which I loved, because she has two girls similar ages to my two. One night in September she was visiting--we were both pregnant at the time and I went over to a friends' house to see her. We spent the time commiserating about the 3rd pregnancy, how no one seems to care about the 3rd, how people are actually kind of rude about it. Like, 'why would you have a 3rd? That's so irresponsible.' I bitched about my husband, told her what an ass he was being. "Yeah, you know what I told him? It's too late now, babe. What are you going to do? Pray for a miscarriage!" I said, laughing. She laughed too, and we clinked wine glasses. It was my first glass of wine of the pregnancy. I was 13 weeks pregnant, and feeling human for the first time in months. It seemed like a good time to have a glass of wine.

The next morning I discover the dead baby at my monthly OB appointment.

When Leah was born, in February, I was already pregnant again. I had the same pang on her birthday as I did with Hugo, but again, it was okay. I would have my baby, just not exactly when I expected.

A few days later we learned that Leah had Down Syndrome. Her mother had passed the 1st and 2nd trimester screenings with flying colors and so there had been no need to take the diagnostic tests. But an anomaly, and Leah was born with the syndrome.

It's a very difficult diagnoses. We go to visit in May, when I've lost the second baby. Leah is 3 months old now, but still very floppy, more like an infant than a 3 month old. Kendra, her mother, is having a really tough time but she is trying her best, she is muddling through. I ask her how she's doing.
"Bottom line, she's my daughter. And I love her with all of my being. So I have to do everything I can to help her." She says. "But it's hard, " she adds, in a whisper.
Turns to me, asks,"What about you?How are you doing?"
"Oh, you know. I'm okay. I'm pissed off at Angelina Jolie. But I'm okay." I pick up Leah and rub her back, drink in her baby smell. Pause.
"But I would kill to have Leah." I say quietly.
"I know", Kendra responds.

****
Genevieve
October 2007. I am sitting in Vivian's ballet class , smiling at the other mothers but not joining in the conversation, sitting off to the side, pretending to be engrossed in a book. I have just miscarried, I am still bleeding from the d&c. None of these mothers know I was pregnant. I notice some squealing where the other mothers sit, watch as one after another they get up to hug Betsy. "Congratulations!", I hear. "You are due in July?!"

Every week, she comes in with tales of the pregnancy. How she has explained it all to her 4 year old daughter (She is not even out of the 1st trimester yet). How she hopes it's another girl, but if it's a boy she is considering the name Isaac. How her clothes don't fit but she does not feel sick at all (She never gets morning sickness, isn't that odd? (I'm rolling my eyes here, if you can't tell) She just loves being pregnant!)

Then, in January, I am pregnant again. I start engaging in the conversations more. Asking about OBs, asking who will do a VBAC, counting the days until I, too, can tell everyone that I'm pregnant, when I can share in the squeals and the joy and the love. But in March we switch to a ballet class that is more convenient for us. I don't see her anymore, though I get periodic updates from another mom who has also switched.

In May, I have lost the 2nd pregnancy. I sign Isaac up for soccer, which meets every Wednesday at a nearby park. By coincidence Betsy is there, with her now huge belly, watching her daughter. She is thrilled to see me, and again I am regaled with pregnancy tales every week. This time I can't really bear it, so I have the neighbor start taking Isaac to soccer. Before I do, Betsy tells me, excitedly, that her daughter and Isaac will be going to the same kindergarten. I will be seeing her all the time in the fall.

In July, I get an email:

'Genevieve Theda, born June 30th. Healthy and happy, mom and baby doing great!'
***

Daeva
At Vivian's new ballet, there is another pregnant mom, this one very pregnant. We have switched over in March, and to my untrained eye it looks like this woman will have the baby any minute. But week after week, she still shows up, looking bigger than the week before. I am intensely jealous of her large belly. I myself am starting to show, but still gun-shy about telling anyone. Still unsure that I will actually bring home a live baby. I decide I will tell them the next week.

Then I miscarry.

That week, the pregnant lady (I have never gotten her name, though we exchange pleasantries) is not there. The following week she is, this time carrying a teensy infant in a sling. This is Daeva. All the moms ooh and ah over the baby--really, there is nothing sweeter than a helpless newborn--but I can't look. I escape down the hall to get coffee, keenly aware of the bloody pad in my underwear.

She has been there every Monday since, growing rounder and stronger, a peaceful sweet baby who rarely cries. She is just a few weeks younger than my boy would be.

****
Avia
At the kids' Karate class, I sit next to another mom, watching our girls in the "tiger tots" class. It's pretty cute, and I enjoy watching Vivian do something physical. Generally speaking, she is not an active child. I have struck up a friendship with this mother, Collette. She is friendly and funny and our daughters seem to like each other. It is January or February, I am pregnant, but not obviously so. She confides in me that she is pregnant, due August 2nd. "Really?" I exclaim. "I feel like I look more pregnant than you do, and I am not due until September 1st!" This cements our friendship and we spend the next several weeks discussing our pregnancies. How the siblings will handle it, how it's been so long we have to buy all new stuff, whether we want a boy or a girl, and so on. She is one of the only mothers I have told. I love our Friday afternoons together.

Until I miscarry.

The next Friday I have to tell her that I am no longer pregnant. And then every Friday after that I sit next to her and watch her belly grow. She is extremely cognizant of my feelings but I insist that we keep speaking of her pregnancy. I ask how she's feeling, what she's done to get ready. I am not purposely torturing myself, I genuinely like this woman and I do want to hear about it. I am living vicariously through her, I suppose.

I have not seen her since the baby was born, a few weeks ago. But I think she will be at karate this Friday, teeny infant in hand.

***

Kaylana
One of Vivian's best friends at school is a little boy named Dylan. His family moved to LA from London in February. When I first met his mother, I thought she was a little heavyset; however, after a few weeks it became clear that she was pregnant. She is due in May, and in March I try to work up the nerve to tell her that I am pregnant too. That never happens, and I miscarry in April. A month or so later, Kaylana is born. Her dad gleefully comes to pick up Dylan, waving around his iphone with pictures of the beautiful infant.
"That's the way to do it, right, love?", he says to me, watching as I herd my kids into the car. "First the boy, then the girl, then done!"
Smiling, I say, "Oh, right."
"No more, though! Done now!" He grins at me, and waves, and heads off with Dylan.

Every day at pick up, Kaylana and her mother are there. The other children, my own included, are fascinated by her teeny tiny toes, her squawks and, later, her smiles. She looks exactly like her brother.

She is 4 months old now, getting bigger every day.

***

Beatrice
January 1st, 2008. We head over to a friend's house for their annual New Year's Open House. I am just barely pregnant, about 5 weeks. In the kitchen with the host, Michelle, I grab her arm.
"You're pregnant, right?" I ask. (I had been out with her a few weeks earlier and I noticed her drinking water)
"Um . . ."
"I am too!" I say, excitedly. "When are you due?"
"Oh, yay! Congratulations! Wow. I'm due August 3rd. What about you?"
"September 1st! I'm just a month behind you!"
Then we commiserate for awhile, venting about the exhaustion, the morning sickness, the fear.
Our pregnancies progress the way pregnancies do, each of us feeling terrible but still managing. Both of us are desperate for a VBAC, although I am superstitious enough to not want to think that far ahead yet.
When I am about 14 weeks pregnant, we go over to visit their new apartment. They have moved to a larger place, a little bit farther away, and I realize it is very close to the specialist who will do my 20 week scan. I make plans to stop by on my way home from that appointment.

At 17 weeks, I miscarry. Around the time my 20 week appointment should be, I ask her to come by my house and pick up all my baby stuff. The double stroller, the little boy clothes, all of it.

Shamefully, I haven't seen her since then.

On 8/8/8, Beatrice is born. I speak to both parents and congratulate them, make plans to meet the littlest member of their family in a few weeks.

I will watch this baby grow up, too. If Hugo is the doppelganger for my April 1st pregnancy, then Beatrice is the same for my September 1st pregnancy.

***

Yesterday, at preschool a new mother was dropping off her daughter. She is hugely pregnant. I smile at her, ask when she is due.

"August 30th", she says with a smile. "I can't wait to meet this baby!"

Memories

2008-08-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

Today after pre-school drop off, I decided to hit the drive-thru Starbucks, so I picked up a coffee and headed home, following a route I haven't taken in a while, a route that ambles right by Marine Park. When the kids were little--when Vivian was 2 months old and Isaac was a maniacal 18 month old--I used to drive that route every morning. First to Starbucks for my coffee. Then to the park where Vivian would (hopefully) sleep in the carseat while Isaac ran off some of his never-ending steam on the play structure.

I'm not sure why it hit me so hard today--I have driven past that park before, and recently--but as I drove by, chai latte in hand, I felt a physical longing for the little ones. For diapers and squawking infant cries, for unsteady toddles to the slide, for high-pitched voices that can't pronounce the letter S and tantrums over footwear. Maybe it was the weather: August, when the morning sun glints off the tall (by California standards, anyway) trees in the park, when the road by the park is empty, all its regular denizens off grasping one last vacation before summer is over and school starts again. August is when I used to come here with the kids. August is when I had finally just about got a grip on the two kid thing, figured out that I needed to leave the house before nine if I wanted to avoid a full-on Isaac melt down, figured out where the drive-thru coffee store was, and the closest park to it.

You know, those were not particularly wonderful times, I'm realizing now, no matter how bucolic the memory seemed this morning. Isaac the toddler was extremely difficult to keep entertained and always half a second away from terrible injury by running into the street, or sticking his face in the stove, or plunging a fork in his eye or something. I should have wrapped him in yellow caution tape from age 1 to age 2-1/2. Vivian was not a difficult baby, but she wasn't a great sleeper, and that is never fun. I was exhausted, bitter about my c-section, feeling inept as a mother to two children, sure that I was neglecting Vivian too much, convinced I would never be able to control Isaac. We would last at that park about 30 minutes, sometimes a little more, before Vivian would start crying, or Isaac would fall and get hurt or get bored and demand something new. And I would sigh and look at my watch and wonder how in the hell I was going to fill the next 3 hours before naptime. Hmm. Yeah. In truth, it sucked. Hard.

Still, this morning, as I drove by, it hit me like a punch: I want that back. I want to hug those little babies and smell their baby scent. I want to do that again. I want to feel that needed again. I am good at it, no matter what I thought at the time.

Thank you, nostalgia. Thank you, stupid Lady Hormones.

****

I have a whole 'nother part to this post. A litany of all the babies that surround me, as a mother to pre-schoolers. But it is taking an eternity to write. And I'm not sure it's even interesting. So I just give you this, and maybe the rest will come later.

Reason Number 20045 to keep drinking

2008-08-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night a friend was in town so we had an impromptu ladies night out. Not surprisingly, I drank too much. But we had a great time, and it was just what I needed, in more ways than one.

Thursday, Lance came home from work in a pleasant mood and we chatted amicably (!) for a few minutes before he went out to play baseball with Isaac. Just before he went outside, he stuck his head back in the door and asked,
Hey, did you mean what you said last night? Or was that sarcasm?
Me: What? Last night? Did we talk?
Lance: smiling Yeah, babe, we talked.
Me: furiously flipping through the Rolodex in my mind, searching in vain for any such conversation Oh.
Lance:Well, I just wanted to say thank you. It means a lot. I'm glad you understand.
Me: Um. Okay. I--
Lance: laughing Just say 'you're welcome', babe. I'm taking it all as heartfelt, whether you can remember or not.

And you know, things have been so much better since then! I mean, yeah, it's been less than two days, but still. Who knew? Drunken conversation=relationship salve. I gotta try it more often.

Though I do wonder what exactly I said.

Tale of Woe, Part: Present Day

2008-08-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

Friday night, after a long week of pure grumpiness on Lance's part which resulted in a week of avoidance on my part, we finally had a conversation.

Yes, a wine-fueled conversation, but hey, whatever it takes, right?

We talked, and argued, and talked, and I think we even laughed once. I won't say we solved all of our problems--I'm not even sure we solved any of our problems--but it was nice to say the things we'd each been thinking out loud finally.

Discovery:

Truth: Lance is extremely stressed out about his work. The sales are not coming easily anymore, and this is a change he has not handled well.
Truth: I am extremely UN-empathetic to his plight. In my mind, having to work a little harder than you are used to is no reason to pout and throw a tantrum.

Truth: Lance does a really good job, at Cisco, as a salesman; and at home, as a father.
Truth: I don't give him nearly enough credit for that.

Fact: Lance ~~needs~~ deserves strokes from me. When he is feeling down, he doesn't need me to roll my eyes and tell him to suck it up, he needs me to pat his back and tell him he's doing a good job.
Fact:It is almost impossible for me to do that for him. I am just barely holding on to my decision to forgive him, and to not hold any of last year against him. Asking me to go above and beyond that is not fair.

That was Friday. Saturday and Sunday were good days, spent mostly in the company of friends, at the beach, at the neighbors house, lots of summery drinks and barbecues and laughter and friends. Lance and I do great with other people around. It's when it's just the two of us that things get dicey.

Monday night, I am making dinner*, the kids are playing. Lance walks in from work.
Me: Hey babe. How are you?
Lance: grumble mumble mutter Hey
Me: Looking up, watching him open up his computer and glare at his email.
Me: Another great day at the office?
Lance: What? mutter grumble
Me: making dinner
Me:Big sigh. Bad day?
Lance: Yes. Okay? Mondays are just not that great for me these days, okay?
Me: making dinner, not making eye contact

Eventually, the kids come in to eat; Lance and I decide to feed them first instead of sitting down to a family meal. We disagree over the crispiness of the bacon. He makes snide comments about Vivian's leotard (we had suspended her classes this summer since we were traveling so much but she started up again yesterday. Lance thinks it's a waste of money.) I sigh a lot and say to the kids, "Let's hurry up and drink all our milk guys, Daddy's in a bad mood and I don't want to make him madder!"

After dinner, baths & bedtime I escape upstairs while he turns on Sportscenter downstairs.

*dinner being leftover pasta and BLT's, which is all I can rustle from the pantry. We have no money for groceries until the next payday, which is not until Friday.

So yeah. What would you call that: two steps forward, one step back?
Or is that backwards?

I know I need to do better.

This post brought to you by 4 Coronas

2008-07-31T20:06:00.001-07:00

Is it wrong of me to hate Angelina Jolie? I mean, I should probably spend my time thinking about more important things, right? But I just can't bear it. Six kids! WTF?

I don't feel rage personally anymore. I'm actually mostly happy, most of the days. Lance and I still don't talk, but he's only home in the evenings, and the rest of the time it's just me and the kids. And I'm okay. I'm not depressed anymore, I don't cry anymore, everything is slowly getting back to normal.

But Brangelina. God, I hate them. I have transferred all my hurt and pain and anger onto them and I loathe them with every fiber of my being. Also, I want to steal all those babies, especially the twins. And did she really have to steal my name? Vivian? With the fancy snotty French spelling? UGH.

I will NEVER have what they have. I will never have another pregnancy, IVF or not. I will never adopt a baby, even though I would KILL to do that. It is not in the cards for me, SO WHY IS IT FOR THEM? Do they not have enough, what with the gazillions of dollars, the 6 healthy kids, the gallivanting all around the world, the adoring fans? Just where are MY adoring fans, that's what I'd like to know.

5 items

2008-07-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

I have been doing very well on my diet this summer, with the notable exception of alcohol. Still, I've lost 5-7 lbs and gained a bit of muscle and I'm starting to like the way I look again. To celebrate, today I made a pan of brownies with the kids and promptly ate 1/2 of it. I'm pretty sure I gained back 3 lbs just doing that.

Vacationing with friends is lots of fun, especially if you keep it short and sweet--say, a weekend at most. But differing parenting styles are never more apparent than when you are in an enclosed area for an extended period of time. Quick question: if your 5 year old cried like a baby over every. little. thing. and pouted and whined for an entire weekend, would you not be embarrassed? Would you not have something to say about it other than, "oh, honey, what's the matter?" Oy.

San Francisco is a beautiful, vibrant, hip city; I know, I lived there for 8 magical years. But man, there's just something fundamentally wrong with shivering in jeans and a Northface jacket in the middle of July. Seriously, the cold. I can't take it.

My husband is really cranky when he is tired. I completely hate it when he is cranky, which is funny (read: shameful), considering I've been cranky for the past year.

I don't think I'm supposed to admit this, but here it is: being a stay-at-home-mom is BORING. I mean, at first it wasn't. When the kids are little it's exhausting, and I think, a lot harder in many ways than being a working mom. But now that they are older? I have GOT to find something to do with myself. I have some feelers out there--there's a possibility I could be an aide in the kindergarten next year, except the budget cuts are holding that up, and my old job has expressed an interest--but it's really difficult to find a job with the hours I need (i.e. 8:30am to 11:30am) and that pays enough to be worth it. (Although at this point any money would be worth it.)

Want some photos with your blather? Okay:

(It was squinty. This was from our weekend to San Diego with the neighbors--warm but overcast)

From our trip to Colorado with Lance's parents:

(Ain't she cute?)

From our trip to the Outer Banks with my family:

Now that looks like summer, doesn't it?

Guilty

2008-07-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

Upon picking up my daughter from a sleepover at my mother-in-law's house:

MIL: So, I just need to tell you something that Vivian said to me yesterday, out of nowhere."
Me: Oh, what?
MIL:She said, 'Mommy doesn't love Daddy'. And when I asked her why or what she meant, she said, 'Mommy always yells at Daddy'.
Me: Oh! Uh .. . . .
MIL: So I just told her that sometimes people get frustrated with each other and speak sharply to each other but they still love each other, like when Isaac made her mad, she might yell but she still loved him. That seemed to pacify her. But . . .
Me: Oh, that is terrible. That, uh . . .
MIL: So I just thought you should know. They pick up on that stuff. They know what's going on.
Me: Of course. Yes. Um, thank you for telling me. That is terrible.
MIL: And you know, Isaac said the same thing to me, about 6 months ago.
Me: . . .! . .

It makes me want to throw up, just reliving it now. But I need to. I need to put it here, where I can see it, where I can remind myself to grow up already and stop acting like an idiot. So I give it to you to hold and remember, to throw back in my face if I ever start getting high and mighty again.

God. Am such an asshole.

State of the Union, Part Deux

2008-07-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

Where was I? Oh yes, the lovely 13 week miscarriage after months of debilitating morning sickness. Let's skip over the horrific part, the appointment with no heartbeat, the call from the genetic counselor days later cheerfully letting me know that my CVS results came back "perfect, everything looks great!", the D&C at the under-construction hospital that was delayed by 3 hours because my OB had an emergency difficult delivery, the waiting on a cot in a hospital gown and nothing else in what amounted to a hallway, staring at the other knee-replacement patients, the nurse who actually asked me if the surgery was elective--yes, skip all that. It sucked.

What was Lance doing during all this?, you might wonder. Actually, it is at this point that he finally took off the evil selfish passive-aggressive hat he'd been wearing and put on his knight in shining armour suit. He was very apologetic, he was very supportive, he took care of me, he tried to make me laugh, he cried with me, and he insisted that we try again. At first, I welcomed this. I needed someone to lean on, and it felt good to have him on my side again.

Our 9 year anniversary was October 3rd, and I remember our dinner out. We had a fabulous time, talking about everything, the miscarriage and when we might start trying again included. We laughed and drank too much wine and it felt very intimate and right.

But it didn't last, and I suppose that is mostly my fault. I didn't really trust him, and once I started feeling better, once I didn't need his support so much anymore, then the trust issues came up again. Also, resentment, for putting me through hell and for what? So I started pulling away a bit. We stopped talking about babies, we stopped talking about most things. I started gearing up for the holidays and I'd wake up feeling resentful but instead of talking about it I'd just let it smoulder all day. We were having sex, and that was still good, but we weren't talking about it, again. I wasn't paying much attention either, as I felt ambivalent about baby-making sex: I still wanted a baby, desperately, but I was also terrified.

Then, miraculously, December 23rd, I got a positive pregnancy test. I was in complete shock. It hadn't even occurred to me that I might be pregnant that cycle, I was sure we hadn't timed intercourse correctly. But there it was.

I wrapped up the test in Christmas paper and handed it to him that night after the kids were in bed.
"What's this?"
"What do you think?" I ask, smiling, thinking that surely he can guess from the shape of the package.
"I don't know."
"Well, open it."
Slowly, he tears off the paper, then says, "Jesus, you are incredible."He laughs a little, drily, so it sounds almost like a cough.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, Jesus! I can't believe it." That dry laugh again.
"But it's good, right?"
"I guess. . . shit."
"Why are you swearing?"
"I don't know."
"I love you, babe."
"You know you can't drink at Christmas now, right?" He turns to look at me for the first time and he is not frowning, but not smiling either. His face looks tight and I can't decide if he is teasing me or being intentionally cruel.
"I know, don't worry." I decide it is just nervous excitement and kiss him on the cheek, escape up the stairs.

This pregnancy is easier than the last: I am not so sick that I can't sleep, I am able to perform simple tasks like boiling a hot dog without gagging. But I am exhausted, like never before. I nap every afternoon with Vivian, leaving Isaac to roam the house alone, playing hour after hour of video games on the computer that I do not have the strength to supervise and god knows what else. Once again, I escape up to my bed the moment Lance is home from work. I sleep easily 12 hours each night plus an hour or more nap during the day and still I feel tired, groggy, heavy, dull as I shuttle the kids to gymnastics or karate.

(You may notice here that pregnancy and I do not mix well. I freely admit that I fail spectacularly at pregnancy, and not just because I miscarry all the time. Also because I can barely function, I am completely undone physically by pregnancy. Some women breeze through it, glow and look beautiful and happy; I do not. I suffer, mightily, and I do not suffer alone. I make sure to drag everyone else along with me.)

Still, things are better. Lance and I are not talking a lot, but there are smiles, the occasional joke or kiss on the cheek. We still separate to our respective corners every day--me in the bed upstairs, Lance downstairs watching ESPN--but when he crawls into bed later he'll kiss me. When I stumble back into bed after my 5th trip to the bathroom and notice him there I drag my finger over his arm, or pat his back heavily before drifting back into deep slumber.

I actually think if that baby had survived, if I was still pregnant right now, we'd both be happy, we'd be anticipating to his birth equally. But of course he didn't, and so now we are in a different place altogether.

Hmm. I'm getting bored of this story. Aren't you? Good thing there are so many Blogher posts to read instead. I'm almost finished though. We're already up to, say, February, 2008. I'll do the rest later . .

Ugly is as ugly does

2008-07-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Originally I planned to write this from Lance's point of view. Or, at very least, I intended to show his side of the story. Obviously, it hasn't worked out that way so far. But I do want to be honest here, or as honest as I know how to be. I want to admit my own culpability, I want to own my part of the fallout. So here's a few things that may not be clear.

1. I am not a talker. I don't like to talk, especially about myself, especially about important things. My natural default is to claim everything is fine and change the subject. (Remember?) So, in the beginning, when Lance and I were "trying" to get pregnant, it was very easy for me to not discuss the elephant in the room. Yes, it was unfair for him to have repeated unsafe sex with me for months and then punish me when a pregnancy resulted, but also, I'm not an idiot. I knew what we were doing, and I knew he didn't really want a baby, I just decided to ignore that. I wanted the baby and I let the sex be his answer, instead of all the comments he was making about not wanting a third. So then it's not really fair of me to be surprised or hurt when he reacts exactly the way I knew he would.

2. Right about the same time all this was happening, we moved back into our house. We did an extensive remodel in 2006. Our mortgage doubles. Power and water bills go up by about 1/3. Lance works in sales for Cisco, and sometime that summer, they redid his compensation plan. His 'goal' is set much higher than it had been in 2006 and for the first time in a few years he is facing making less money than he did the year before. (As it turns out, he makes about 25% less in 2007. 2008 is worse.). The financial strain is great. I know this (I am the one who manages the money in our household), yet I refuse to consider its implications for our family. I refuse to accept that adding a third child will undoubtedly strain our budget to the extreme.

3. Remember how I said I'm not a talker? Well, after our Big Fight, I stopped talking altogether. I said nothing to him. Not good morning, not how was your day, not thanks for taking the kids, not wow, this morning sickness is kicking my butt. I went about my days, (spent mostly in bed) and absolutely ignored his presence. Some of that was unintentional, some of it was simply a result of feeling so sick that even talking took too much effort. Some of it was because I didn't want to hear anything he had to say. I didn't want to hear the word abortion again. But it was also intentional, it was also me punishing him for not being the husband I wanted him to be. And it got to be a habit. Ignoring him, feeling annoyed by him, wishing he were someone else. Then before I even realized what was happening I forgot how to be nice to him. I have not been nice.

If Lance were writing this story, he'd probably have about 10 more points here to add, times when I acted immaturely, where I shut down or shut him out, when I expected him to read my mind and punished him when he read it wrong. I am not the victim here. I am a fully invested participant and I want to make that clear to you--and to me. Lance may not be the husband I wanted, but I am certainly not the wife he envisioned either.

The one thing that has somehow remained constant: I still love him. He still loves me. Even when I was so busy hating him I couldn't even say his name without rolling my eyes, even then, I still loved him. I want to make this work, and he does too.

And so we keep keeping on.

I'll return to the story tomorrow maybe. I can't believe I'm only up to September 2007.

State of the Union

2008-07-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

So, Lance. I haven't written much about Lance, because it's been so . . . difficult. It's such a long story, and it's complicated, and I don't know where to start. Well, here:

****
Christmas 2006

We are at Lance's best friend's house for dinner when we get the news: the newly married couple (you may remember their wedding), are pregnant, due in August.

Later, Lance turns to me, whispers,"I feel kind of inspired, don't you? Maybe we should do that, too."

"You mean---What? Really? Yes! Totally! Absolutely! We have to!" I am positively giddy, and fresh tears of joy prick the back of my eyelids. Never in a thousand years did I imagine he would agree to try for three.

The next day I make the appointment to have my IUD removed, and by late February, it is done.

****
We are driving to Disneyland, following Lance's best friend and his pregnant wife, plus another couple with two kids whom we all know.

"We'll have to get a new car", I say casually, glancing back at the kids in our Lexus SUV. "I don't think we can fit an infant car seat between their two." I am testing him, waiting to see if he is serious.

"The lease is up in a year I think, plus I need to sell my car. We'll figure it out."

I don't meet his eyes, afraid he will see the excitement in my eyes, afraid to scare him out of it. But I still can't quite believe it, so I add, "Wow, three. I don't know, I always thought two or four was better. Three was tough for me growing up. Should we have four?" Here I giggle, to let him know I am joking, to give him an out.

He doesn't answer, so I press on. "But I'm so old already, I just turned 37. God, I'd be 40 by then!"

And he says, "We could always adopt the fourth". I sneak a glance at him, sure that he is joking, but he is looking straight ahead, he is not smiling, he seems to be serious.

****
May 2007
We have been 'trying' for a few months. I put trying in quotes because it is unlike the trying we did before we conceived Isaac. We don't talk about it. I don't tell him my fertile times or give any indication that I hope the sex we are having might end in a baby. It seems very one-sided; the trying is all on my side. His side is just enjoying the sex. I don't want to rock the boat, I'm still terrified that the wrong move on my part will halt our efforts in their tracks, so I just go along, quietly.

Occasionally he makes comments that puzzle me: We clean out the garage, and he piles the old strollers together saying, "We should give this stuff to Alex." I don't answer, afraid of what he is saying, but that night we make love as usual and he doesn't pull out.

At dinner when my parents are in town I spill the beans that my best friend is recently pregnant with her 3rd. My parents are thrilled for her and my dad asks, "What about you two, would you ever consider a third?"
"No way", Lance says, emphatically. I reach over, rub my hands through his hair and smile, then say, "Well, you never know. Right, babe?" He doesn't answer.

June 2007
Earlier in the day Lance has again commented something to the effect of wanting only two kids. And yet here we are, in the evening, about to make love--about to make a baby. I stop what I'm doing, sit up.
"What are we doing? What is this? I don't understand you."
"What?"
"Why do you say things about not wanting a baby and then come home and have sex with me?"
"What else am I supposed to do?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you are giving me no choice. Either we have this baby or you resent me forever, right?"
"But I thought you wanted a baby."
"I never wanted another baby!"
This quickly degenerates into a shouting match with nothing resolved. A week later, we have sex again. No mention is made of babies or contraceptives.

July 2007
I am in Delaware with the kids, visiting my family. Lance is in California. I have a feeling that I am pregnant, but I have had this feeling for at least 3 months before and I have been wrong. And now I am terrified--if I am pregnant, Lance will freak out. That is a given. I try to avoid alcohol in the off chance that I am, but I'm with my family--we are a family that enjoys cocktail hour--and it is impossible to decline. My period is two days late. Finally I break down and buy a pregnancy test. I have to know, I have to stop drinking if it is true.
Two lines. My heart beats rapidly in my chest, I feel light-headed. I sit on the bathroom floor, holding the test in my hand, not sure what to think. I am ecstatic. I am terrified. I can't breathe. Quietly, quickly I run out to the hall and grab the phone, sneak back to the bathroom. I dial my best friend, the one who is also pregnant with #3.
"Susanna!" I am whispering because I don't want anyone in my parents' house to hear, but also because my voice is not working properly.
"I'm pregnant."
"What? Amy? Are you okay? I can't hear you."
"I'm pregnant"
She screams in joy and laughs, "Oh my god! I'm so glad! Yay! Oh my god! I can't talk I'm so happy!"
I smile for the first time and laugh, too, nervously. But she is so full of hope I can feel the terror subsiding and I start to consider the baby. The baby that I have been wanting so much. A baby! Those teeny tiny toes! And gummy grins! And sweet sweet smelling heads!

I make it through dinner with my family somehow, put the kids to bed, retire to my room. Now I am terrified again because I have to call Lance. I know his reaction will not be what I want. But surely once he gets over the shock he will be alright. He had to know this was going to happen eventually.

"I have some news".
"What?"
"I'm pregnant."
"What?"
"I'm pregnant."
(Long Pause)
"Are you there?"
(Pause)
"Lance? Hello?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm here."
"Um, what do you think?"
"What do I think? Hmm, well, I think this is the biggest mistake of my life."
"Come on, babe, it's not that bad. It will be fun. You love babies, too, remember? And it will be easy this time, we know what to do!"
"I have to go, I have to hang up."
"Lance--
he hangs up the phone.

August 2007
I am sick. So sick I can barely raise my head off my pillow. Food is disgusting, yet it is the only thing that makes me feel better. I stuff chips into my mouth constantly, chips and cookies and processed foods. I carry heated frozen pizzas to my bedroom and eat them while lying down. Every time I get up, I gag. I wake in the night, the nausea so bad I feel like I am on a sailboat. I eat bowls of cereal throughout the night, and I feel slightly better, enough to fall asleep for another hour. In the morning, I cannot look at Lance or the children. Their smell makes me gag. I am green and drawn, I need to eat something but everything sounds foul. There is a metallic taste in my mouth that will not go away. Twice, I forget to feed the kids breakfast before taking them to school. But I don't care. I just need to lie down. I drop them off, stop at McDonald's for french fries, come home to my bed.
It is the worst morning sickness of my life. This is my 6th pregnancy.

Because I am so sick, Lance and I barely talk. We have said maybe 100 words to each other since I announced my pregnancy. But I don't care. I am just trying to survive. Weekends and evenings, he takes the kids, without any prompting from me, to the beach, to the park, to his parents' house. Anywhere, away from the house, where I lie in bed, stuffing my craw with nachos and Popsicles.
"He's okay", I tell my friend Susanna, "he keeps taking the kids for me, I don't even have to ask him, it's actually kind of sweet".
Except it's not sweet, not really. Because he can barely look at me, and I know, on some level, he is taking the kids not to give me a break, not because he knows how terrible I feel, but because he needs to get out of the house too. My illness makes it impossible for him to pretend this isn't happening. He hates me.

Finally, one morning. He is working from home for some reason. The kids are in school. I come down to the kitchen to forage for some chocolate chips or macaroni and cheese. I don't remember how it starts, but it does. The biggest ~~argument~~ fight of our marriage. I am moody and irritable, I feel like shit and I spew: what is the matter with him, why can't he be happy, why is he acting like this is so terrible? He is not the one who feels like shit, he is not the one who can't sleep, what is his fucking excuse?
It is during this argument that the word abortion is thrown around, (though he completely denies it now) and I remember ~~saying~~ shouting "Well you better decide if you want to abort this baby now because I'm not doing it after 10 weeks!" "Thank you", he answers quietly, "thank you for considering that option."
I am 8-1/2 weeks pregnant. I call him all kinds of bad names, stalk back upstairs, cry on the bed for hours. Then stop, because I feel too terrible to concentrate on him and what he is thinking. I can only concentrate on feeling better.
For the next few weeks, again, we hardly speak. I don't care.

September 2007
We are in Canada, vacationing with my family. I am feeling slightly better, though I still have days where the effort of speaking to anyone seems impossible. Nothing tastes good, but at least I do not feel like I have to be in bed all the time. My family is annoyed, slightly, that I am not my usual self--they don't get to see me very often, and they want to have fun with me. But I am not drinking, I go to bed early, I take naps, I don't smile that much. I am annoying to be around. I can't water ski, I can't jump off Whiskey Rock, I can't participate as much as I'd like to, or as much as they'd like me to.
I can't help it. I do my best. I remind myself and everyone else that in April there will be a baby to show for it all. (I am due April Fool's Day, a sign if I ever knew one.) Lance and I don't talk much. I read a lot. The kids have a ball with their cousins, and I am grateful that they at least, are having fun. I am sure things will turn around for Lance and I once I feel better, once the baby comes, once he gets used to the idea. In the meantime, I shut him out, afraid of what he will say if we do talk. I wait until it gets better.

September 20th, 2007
We are back in L.A. I am 13 weeks pregnant, I am feeling much better. I had a CVS the week before and should have the results in a few days. I go in for my monthly OB appt.

No heartbeat.

Okay, I'll tell the rest later. Now you can see why I put off writing this for so long. It takes forever! And it is not a happy story. Actually, I'm not sure if this is making me feel better or worse. But thanks for listening, regardless.

Random thoughts

2008-05-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

Okay. Sometimes I am very dramatic. The truth is that while I can't seem to make myself do all the things that would improve my marriage, I am still doing some of the things, on the good days at least. I do love him, I want to be married to him.

The other day a very wise friend said, "If you still love him and you know you want to be with him, then you have to figure out a way to be happy with him. You don't want to look back at this time in 30 years, when you are not upset anymore, and regret that you didn't make the most of it."

I'm not sure why the dark days are so dark, or why even on good days I am not able to muster up the sort of kindness he deserves, but I'm trying to work on it. I'm considering seeing a counselor. So there's that.

Also I've been meaning to write a post about Lance, about why he feels the way he does, or at least how he got there. It's percolating, and it will probably help me to write it, although sometimes thinking about him just makes me angry. We have a lot of forgiving to do, the two of us.

****

One of the things I've been trying to do, in an effort to accept my new four-person-family reality, is embrace the good things about NOT being pregnant. Embracing the alcohol has been easy, I've been succeeding wildly at that.

Next up, trying to reclaim my body. If I am not going to be pregnant, at least I can work on not being fat. I've got 10-12 lbs of spare tire thanks to the last year of pregnancy and it's really depressing trying to fit into summer clothes.

To that end, I started walking. (I have to start slow, I am embarrassingly out of shape.) So I walked for 30 minutes around the neighborhood and promptly got shin splints. Next I tried yoga, which I Tivo'd off the Oxygen network, and all I can say is, ouch. At least doing it at home means that I am the only witness to my humiliation. May I suggest, if you have a body like mine, that you wear a t-shirt, and not just a sports bra, while doing yoga? Because the sight of your huge, cottage-cheese speckled belly hanging over the band of your yoga pants while you white knuckle through the pyramid pose (or whatever it's called) is not so much motivating as it is horrifying. Trust me on this.

I also ordered Turbo Jam (a Sundry recommendation, just like the yoga) but I have not had a chance to try it, since I threw my back out this morning. Yes, I am extremely pathetic. Now I'm hobbling around like a granny in need of a walker and who knows when I'll be able to exercise again.

Body:1 3 billion; Amy:0.

*****
I am not sure what I'm doing here, blogging again. I don't feel like this is a permanent change for me, which is why I've felt so uncomfortable leaving comments at new-to-me blogs. I hate to forge a relationship with people, just to bail once I'm feeling less screwed up. I have been commenting some at old friends' blogs, but I just haven't yet fully embraced my position as a blogger again. So the new blogs make me feel shy. And I rather liked lurking, not feeling any obligation to comment, the last year or two when I wasn't sharing my life here.

All that as an apology. If you have left me a kind comment over the past few weeks, and I haven't reciprocated, I am sorry. It's not that I don't appreciate it, trust me, I appreciate it more than you know. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your words of wisdom and support.

Short

2008-05-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

His relief is palpable. It enters the room before he does, a balloon that expands, filling up all the livable space, slowly pushing me out. So I slink away, holding my grief around me like armour, sharp edges that I scrape against his soft bubble of happiness. It does not pop, and I head to the bedroom where I can be alone with my pain.

His happiness cuts me like nothing else. Yet hurting him brings me no relief either.

My marriage is crumbling around me and I do nothing to stop it. I sit here and watch the pieces drop to the floor, make no effort to pick them up and patch the hole, and occasionally take my own swing at it, to hurry up the process.

Letters of my 20 year Reunion

2008-05-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Heavyset man sitting next to me on the red-eye,
Did you notice that all the lights on the plane were out? ALL of them? Except yours? And when I put the blanket of a thousand germs over my head to block out the glare of your "reading" light which was burning holes in my cornea, did you consider turning it off?
WHY NOT, asshole?

Just trying to get some sleep,
32D

****
Dear Delta,
I know that someone has to sit in the back row of every flight. Someone has to sit in the seat that doesn't recline, has to smell lovely aroma of the latrine for 5 hours. But did it have to be me on both flights?

Seriously. What up, Delta?

Unhappily,
32D and 33C

****
Dear Amy,
You are too old to take the red-eye.

Sincerely,
Hindsight

****
Dear Men of Connecticut,
Blue blazers. Why? You know those yearbooks that were lying around, the ones from 1948 and thereabouts? Did it seem strange to you that the students in those yearbooks were wearing exactly the same clothes as you are today? Maybe you should consider something slightly different, so you don't match every other alumni in the reunion tent. Maybe a black blazer. Or, if that's too crazy, maybe a blue blazer without gold buttons.

Oh, but mixing it up by wearing pink pants instead of khakis? So very very wrong.

Sincerely,
Every other state in America

P.S. Bermuda shorts with a blue blazer and a tie? Shudder.

****
Dear Universe,
I know you have it out for me lately. I get it. It's okay, you've been good to me before, I realize I have to take the bad stuff too. But making every single conversation with my former classmates go from "do you have kids?" to "I have three kids" to "do you think you'll ever try for a third?" to "isn't it fun to have three" to "I always wanted three, how can you be sure you are done at two?" etc etc ET CETERA THREE KIDS THREE KIDS THREE KIDS was a little bit harsh, don't you think?

And then having me get my period unexpectedly Saturday afternoon? Uncalled for, truly.

You got me, okay? Uncle.

Pissed off,
The one you keep fucking with

****
Dear Brain,
What happened to you? Yeah, yeah, red-eye, twenty years, whatever. How can you not remember so much of what went on in high school? Everyone else there seemed to have a better grasp. Nodding and smiling and pretending to remember didn't fool anyone. Should we be checked for early Alzheimer's?

Worried,
Amy

****
Dear Former Classmate who was my best friend at one time,
Wow. I get that you're nervous. But I googled you, I know how successful you are. And you look hot. So the obscene jokes and crazy behavior just to get a laugh seemed really over the top. I mean, at first it was funny--you were always funny. But when it became clear that that was all you were going to do, when it just escalated and escalated as the night wore on, damn. It got really old.

What happened to you?
Puzzled,
'Tommy'

****
Dear Class of 1988,
I was nervous to see you all. I was. I figured that I would feel lame, that you would all strut in with your fancy jobs and your perfect lives and that I would feel inferior. I thought I would stutter over the "what do you do?" question, that I would feel fat and ugly or worse, invisible.
But it wasn't like that for me, and I hope it wasn't like that for any of you. Yeah, a lot of you have fancy jobs. And a lot of you---most of you, really--look great, look better than high school, even. But none of that seemed to matter and I am so grateful for that.

Maybe I'll even come back again before another twenty years go by.

See you in 2018?,
Amy

****
Dear tiny prep school full of wealthy teenagers where I spent my formative years,
I don't know what to say. For a lot of time I've hated you. What a cesspool of entitlement and snobbery and cluelessness, not to mention the preponderance of blue blazers. But you were pretty this weekend. You showed off all your new buildings, you preened under the cloudless blue sky and easy 70 degree temperature. The green fields, the lacrosse sticks and mouthguards, flying cleats and cheering parents--it all seemed promising instead of elitist somehow.
And yeah, there was a lot of pomp and arrogance too. Many of your students, former and present, do not live in a reality that would be recognizable to 95% of the rest of the world, and they maybe never will. They mostly don't have any desire to. A lot of them are assholes, are small-minded, are selfish and ridiculously out of touch. But not all of them. Some of them are even interesting. Some have broken free of that world. Some of them haven't, and yet are still kind and compassionate and funny.
We had some good times, back then, and I remembered why this weekend. Turns out, you're not all bad.

Cordially,
Me

Though I do have to repost this delicious parody, just so I remember to keep it real:

Celebrity Skin

2008-05-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I've got to stop writing late at night, after too many beers. Here's something to move that last post way, way down.

Ours is a neighborhood of families--plumbers and salesmen, architects and creative directors, grips and roadies, teachers. It is a tract of modest 1200 square foot homes, built in the 1940s as housing for the employees of the airport, right nearby. In recent years older folks have moved away and many of the modest homes have been remodeled, some tastefully, some not. Around the corner from us, a builder bought three homes, leveled them all and rebuilt huge, monstrous modern residences, then sold them for millions. (Well, actually, he's only sold one so far, but he's trying to sell them all for millions, and I'm sure he will eventually.) Each of them is at least 4000 square feet, making them by far the largest homes around.

A month ago, Dylan McDermott bought one of those homes. He's getting divorced, I gather, and I guess he's down-sizing. We've had a few small time actors living here before but this is the first real celebrity. We haven't seen much of him yet, although I once caught a glimpse of him driving by in his black Range Rover.

Occasionally, in our neighborhood, film crews show up. They park their huge white trailers on the street, set up barbecues and tents for gratis lunches, unpack trucks full of lights and speakers and cords. Film a commercial in one of the larger homes, then load up and head on their merry way, back to the studios for editing.

In fact, location scouts routinely come to my house and take pictures, hoping to entice their directors to shoot here. At least ten different scouts, in the year since we lived here. And yet not once has this house been chosen. I assume it's just not big enough--ours is a modern house but it's only 2700 square feet. These commercial shoots generally last one or two days and pay--wait for it--3 to 5 thousand dollars a day for the privilege of shooting in your home.

Have I mentioned how broke we are? How much we could use an extra $5000 just hand the house keys over to a producer for a day?

Yesterday, they were filming a Cool Whip commercial around the corner. At DYLAN MCDERMOTT'S HOUSE.

Does he need that $10,000? Does he? Really? I just don't think so.

*****

In other depressing news, tonight I am headed across the country to my 20 year high school reunion. I am fat, I am old, I have wrinkles and age spots and bring no stunning achievement with me to rub in the faces of my old fellow boarding students. I am a stay-at-home-mom and I am not pregnant, and that is the extent of it.
Truthfully, I don't really care. I am only going because it will allow me to see two of my most favorite people in the world at the same time, women I communicate with only over email, women that I haven't seen in years--one, not since her wedding 12 years ago! They both live in New England, and since I live in California, and don't venture north of Philadelphia when I fly East to visit family, this is a chance I can't pass up.
Wish me luck.

Sport

2008-05-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

People I love, people that love me, offer support. And I nod, and make the appropriate gracious comments, but inside my head a different dialogue rages:

I didn't just have a miscarriage, I had a second trimester miscarriage. I didn't just have a second trimester miscarriage, I had two second trimester miscarriages. I didn't just have two miscarriages, I had four miscarriages. Yeah, I have two living children but one of them has an incurable birth defect.

I have it worse. I have it worse. I have it worse. Don't tell me you understand, you with your single 6 week miscarriage. That is nothing, NOTHING compared to this. You can never understand my pain.

*** ***

In the waiting room at the clinic, I sit for hours. I have sent Lance home to be with the kids, told him I'd call him when it is over and I need a ride home. We got here at 3:30, now it is two hours later, and the receptionist guesses that it will be close to 8pm before I am done.

There is another family waiting, too--the father, I assume, and then two older women. After a few hours I think I have it figured out: father, his mother-in-law, and his mother. His wife is in with the doctors and I can't quite put together if she is here for an elective late term abortion, or if she, like me, just needs a dead baby removed. I don't ask questions of them, and they don't of me--it is awkward, if I am grieving and they are only here for relief--we don't want to make the wrong assumption.

Finally we grouse about the long wait, about how cold it is, why can't the magazines be up to date, jeez, if we have to wait so long it sure would be nice to have a TV in here. The mother-in-law tells me, eventually, that this is their third day here. I understand, from the muted undertones, not from anything explicit, that this is not an abortion. "It's her first pregnancy", she explains, "that's why it takes three days." "This is my seventh" I say ruefully, and her eyes widen as she gasps, "Seven miscarriages?" I try to correct her, "No, no, only my fourth mis . ." but at the same time the nurse has come into the waiting room, is corralling all of them back into the recovery room, and I'm not sure she hears me.

But I get a thrill then, when I see the shock in her eyes. A little glimmer of--what, exactly? I'm not sure, because it is gone as soon as it appears. But I do know that it felt good, and I so badly want to feel good again.

*** ***

As everyone knows, the problem with the Pain Olympics is that when you finally win, when you finally walk up to the podium and accept your trophy, that's when you realize that it's really Freaky Friday Backwards Day, because the true winner of the Pain Olympics is actually the biggest loser of all. And if you've been really playing with skill, then on top of the trophy, you get the enviable prize of alienating all the people that have been trying to help you.

I don't mean to participate, really I don't. But if I agree that your pain equals mine, and you seem to be over yours, then logically I must get over mine, too. And I am not ready to do that, not yet. I want to feel that thrill I felt at the clinic, however sick it may be. I want to shock you with my pain. And part of me feels like if I just scream loud enough, then maybe I can reach the right person, the one who will be able to make this all go away.

I am not finished screaming, I am not ready to give up my spot on the team. I know you are trying to help me but I do not have the words to thank you. All I can do is ask you to try harder.

Grasping

2008-05-04T20:14:00.000-07:00

I click on this blog constantly, searching in vain for comments. Me, who has not blogged in years, who hasn't really missed it, not the way I thought I would--all of a sudden I am back, and I am desperate for company. Tonight I washed dishes and wondered, what am I looking for? What am I hoping to read, every time I click on the POW bookmark?

But I don't really need to wonder. I know, I knew, I admitted it to myself immediately. I am looking for that one comment that will make this go away. I am hoping, inexplicably, for an answer, and I want that answer to be: No, don't worry, your baby didn't really die. Just do this, and you will have a baby September 1st, just like you planned. Better yet, you will have a newborn right now. Your son, born on April Fool's Day. (Should his due date have been a sign? I thought it was so appropriate, but now, now I am the only fool.)

I have been lurking, desperately, on a new blog, Glow in the Woods. A blog for women who have lost babies. But I do not really belong there. These women have lost full term babies, where I have only miscarried. And while I know it is not the same--my loss at 17 weeks is but a drop in the bucket compared to a 38 week still birth--I still find myself there, reading their posts and crying, and raising my hand, eagerly, saying, "Me, too! Me, too!"

**
I sing along to the mom station I listen to on the TV while I'm washing dishes or sweeping up. Love songs, easy songs, slow songs. (It is called "The Blend" and it's embarrassingly corny.) And I am so surprised: all these songs about heartache, and not one about a dead baby. All about the seemingly innocuous problem of lost love. Then, of course, "Tears in Heaven" comes on. I almost laugh--I do laugh--a grotesque cackle that quickly turns to sob.

When do the tears stop? That's what I want to know.

I pull a block of tinfoil out of the freezer, read the notation on the zip lock bag that encircles it. "Lamb, 3-22-08". "He was still alive then," I think, as I thunk it on the counter. Isn't there some saying about April being the cruelest month? It always will be, for me.

But when did he die? I just don't know. Last time, I remember a moment in the grocery store. I felt faint, suddenly, and had to stop, and concentrate, right myself on my wobbling legs. My heart rate sped up inexplicably and there was a long time--30 seconds, maybe--when I considered calling out to other shoppers for help. But it passed, and I chalked it up to random pregnancy oddness. Until two days later at the ultrasound of course. This time, nothing. He was alive, he was kicking, then he wasn't. And I was pretending he was. Maybe he died right after my last OB appointment, at 15-1/2 weeks. But I don't want to believe that. I want to believe he was 17-1/2 weeks, I want to give him as many days as I can. The more days I can give him, the more validation I can give my own grief. It's okay to still be sad, right? He was practically a baby.

Would it make me feel better if he had made it to twenty weeks? Then I would have a death certificate to put in the scrapbook.

I can't decide. Do I wish I had more time with him, or do I wish I had lost him from the start, before I had a chance to get attached? I have had early miscarriages, too, and I know that kind of pain. It is different from this kind, but still painful.

Truly, of course, I don't wish either of those things. I only wish he was still with me, swimming around safe inside me, kicking and sucking his thumb.

Chapter, closed

2008-05-01T18:55:00.001-07:00

Today I went to my OB to have the IUD put back in. I started crying on the way to the appointment, even though I'd been fine all morning, even though I hadn't cried in almost 24 hours. Just the thought of that office, the grey carpet, the dusty rose colored sofas with that weird 80s print in teal and gold. The nurses who are so nice every time they see me, always remembering my name now, being sure to smile big, and being extra careful not to ask me how I'm doing. The ultrasound room, the room where twice I have lain on that table, searching the monitor in vain for a blinking heartbeat, the movement of a leg, anything. I can picture so clearly the clothes I am wearing--the first time a flowered short sleeve top from Old Navy, the second a red turtleneck. I hear the silence in the room, feel my sweat starting, remember how I breathed--"I have to sit up now'--and ripped off the paper gown, swinging my legs down and holding my head in my hands, while my ob holds the wand, useless, in her hand.

No, I don't have nice memories of that office. The anticipation alone is enough to start the waterworks.

But I composed myself. Drove to the appointment, smiled at the receptionist. Listened to the nurse tell me a funny story, one I could tell she had practiced since I spoke to her earlier, confirming the appointment. Nodded when she confirmed which IUD I was getting. Undressed from the waist down--how many times have I done that in this room, and for what end?--grabbed a magazine to read, anything to keep my mind off what is happening, to stop the tears that are there, right there, filling up my eyelids at the slightest provocation. (In the parking garage I almost gasp with the effort of keeping them in, repeat to myself as mantra: it is okay, it is okay, it is okay, it is okay. And the elevator comes, another rider smiles at me, and it works, the tears stay put. At least for the ride up.)

"Are you sure?" my OB asks kindly. "We don't have to do this now." I nod, wiping my eyes, as tears squeeze out, a constant drip that I cannot plug. "Amy?" she asks again, and I realize she needs more from me, a more forceful response, a stronger sense that we are doing the right thing. I breathe in. "Yes", I say, struggling to keep my voice from cracking, but it comes out a whisper. "Is this really what you want?" my OB asks again. Furiously, I wipe away the tears. "No, no it's not what I want at all, it's not what I want. But I have to, I need to. My husband . . . I can't do it again." Pause. Louder. "Yes. Yes. Please."

A few cramps later it is done. Aside from a follow-up appointment in one month, I will have no reason to return to this office for a year.

(A little more than one year ago, that is when I had my old IUD removed. I remember the excitement, the anticipation. "Look", said my OB, pointing to the ultrasound, "you've got some great follicles here." "Oh, I don't know if I can convince my husband to start trying right away", I say with a smile, "so far he's only partially on board for this." "Well, go home, make him a nice dinner, open a bottle of wine--or two--and see what happens." And so I did.)

Conversations

2008-05-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

BAD
6:53 am, the kids have climbed in bed with us.
Vivian: I want breakfast, Mommy, let's get up!
Isaac: I'm hungry!
Vivian: Is your belly hungry? (Poking my noticeably squishy belly) Is the baby hungry?
Me: There's no baby in my belly anymore, remember?
Vivian: But you can get another baby.
Me: No, no more babies for us.
Vivian: Please? I like babies!
Me: No, sweetie, I have enough babies with you and your brother!
Vivian: I'm not a baby! Hey, Mommy can you go to the doctor today? Go to the doctor and get another baby, okay, Mommy?
Isaac: Get up, get up, I'm hungry!
Vivian: I want breakfast!

Slightly Better
At dinner, apropos of nothing:
Isaac: Mommy, I know that sometimes grown-ups cry when they miss their babies. Like if their children was at camp they would miss them and that would make them cry. And when their babies die they cry too. Like when you wanted your baby and your baby died and then you cried. Right?
Mommy: yes, that's right.
Isaac: And sometimes I cry when I miss you, Mommy.

Best
At lunch, apropos of nothing.
Isaac: I know, Mommy, what if you and me were watching the Tarheels, and they were playing Duke, and Duke had zero points and the Tarheels had 199 points!
Me: That would be awesome!
Isaac: Yeah, awesome!

Grief

2008-04-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

I am fine I am fine I am fine. Some days I am even good. But it comes back to me in so many little ways, this sadness, this heavy weight threatening to suffocate me.

I glance back at my children in the rear view mirror of our new Honda Pilot: Isaac in his booster in the third row, Vivian in the car seat in the second row. Next to Vivian, the empty space where the infant seat should go.

A package comes in the mail: two cans of Enfamil infant formula and a letter congratulating me on my newborn. The one that should have been born the day I miscarried the next.

I apply for a teacher's aide position and am directed to a doctor for a TB test. The new patient form I fill out has several sections, among them: Menstruation history--list the date of your last period. '11/25/07' I fill in dutifully, then have to scrawl in margins to explain: "pregnancy lost to miscarriage 4/08".

In the exam room, the doctor explains that TB tests are not covered by insurance and asks what other health issue I might have at the moment, this way she can charge insurance for the office visit instead. "Well, I had a miscarriage two weeks ago", I say, and I don't even cry. But then she says so softly, "I am so sorry to hear that" and the tears spring back in my eyes. Quickly she makes her notations and leaves the room, afraid, I'm sure of a total breakdown. Though that doesn't happen. (Of course.)

Bored, I surf blogs aimlessly, and happen upon one where the blogger has just lost identical twins at 19 weeks. Fascinated and hungry, I read her posts, the ones where it happened, the ones where she is grieving, over and over. I am jealous of the comments she receives and contemplate leaving my own: "Hey, me too! I lost my son, too! At 17 weeks! And also another one at 13 weeks just a few months ago. What about me?" But I don't.

I finally talk to my mother and she is good, she doesn't mention it, we talk breezily for a few moments, carefully avoiding the elephant in the room, laughing joylessly at small talk-- and then she says "How are you doing?" "Oh, I'm fine, I'm great, better than I've ever been" I respond with what I hope is the appropriate amount of ruefulness. But I can feel those tears coming again, and my voice starts to go ragged and I have to get off the phone so I can sob again.

I don't know why I can't talk to her. It is not because of something she has said or something I am afraid she will say. It is because I can't hear her voice without crying. And I tired--so tired--of crying.

"Dr. Platt" reads the notation on my calendar, and in a particularly strong moment I seize the phone to make the call. "I need to cancel an appointment, I tell the receptionist, and she dutifully looks up my date. "Okay" she says finally. "Are you going elsewhere for your twenty week scan?" "No. No. No. I, the baby died." I say, and hang up, and sob.

A week later, the phone rings and I check caller id. "Center for Fetal Medicine" it reads and I look again, surprised. What could they want? Does the doctor have some information for me somehow? I pick up and the receptionist asks "Did you forget your appointment this morning? Your twenty week scan is today." "No, I canceled." I replied. "The baby died, I cancelled last week." Hang up, and sob.

My d&e at the clinic was performed on April 3rd. I was "lucky" because the baby had decomposed enough that it only had to be a one day procedure instead of the usual two days for a 17 week fetus. In fact, while the baby measured 15 weeks on April 2nd at my OB's, the very next day he only measured 14 weeks. "I can't even get a good measurement," the tech said. "The head is already breaking down". "That's my son" I thought, but I said nothing, and let the tears come. "I'll bring in the anesthesiologist" said the tech.

At the "counseling session" before the d&e, the doctor came in after reading my chart. "well, you've got quite the pregnancy history, don't you?" she asked gently. I nodded. "But you have two children" she adds, in a strangely accusatory tone. I nod again. "Any questions?" she asks. And I don't. I have been through this before, I have worked at an abortion clinic before, I know much more than I want to know about any of this. So I say "no", and she leaves.

I bleed parts of him out of my body every day. I have done this before of course, so I am used to it. But it is a special kind of cruelty, these bloody pads I must wad up and throw in the garbage.

A hand-addressed envelope appears in the mail and I wonder, who has had time to send me a handwritten sympathy card already? It's only been a few days. The return address is in Orange County, and I can think of no one I know who lives there. A friend of Lance's? This seems impossible. I open the card, hungrily, to find an invitation to a baby shower. Lance's cousin, having her third baby, due at the end of June.

My children are obsessed with the Junie B. Jones books, since my sister brought a bunch of them out when she visited, right before we got the news. In them, kindergartner Junie welcomes a baby brother to her family. I loved reading this books before, thinking how appropriate, since Isaac will be a kindergartner when we bring this new baby home. Now reading them is not as enjoyable, I will say that right here.

(What was his name? I liked Oscar, though I never said it aloud. I was waiting until I could feel more confident that we would actually bring a baby home. Lance liked Felix, he said, months before we even got pregnant the first time. And I am driving home one day when it hits me: aren't those the names from the Odd Couple? Oscar and Felix?)

Before my appt with the OB on April 2nd, I knew he was gone. Did I ever mention that? For about a week--at least a week--I knew it was over. Not in any place that I was admitting it, but deep in the recesses of my brain and my heart. For a week, I didn't feel him move, never during the day, but every night, every single night I would get into bed and lie there, and minutes later, I kid you not, he would kick. One kick, and I would smile, and say "good boy" and go right to sleep. Can you believe the idiocy? What a fool I was! What baby kicks one kick at the same time every single day? It embarrasses me to admit it, even now.

I walk into the garage, see the double stroller. Feeling strong, I head back to the house, email the friend who is due in August, see if she wants it. Decide to pack up all the baby boy stuff to hand over, as well as the baby girl stuff (she's having a girl). She comes over, brings her 18 month old and I clean out the garage. Hand over all my baby stuff, including prenatal vitamins. It is fine, I am fine I do not feel sad. We are done with this phase of our life, we do not need baby stuff anymore. We will never need it again. It is a relief. It is a weight off my shoulders. She heads off. I return to the house and sob.

Sobbing does not make me feel better. And yet the tears are always there, just underneath, threatening to overflow at the first kind word. Please do not be nice to me, I cannot handle the kindness of friends or strangers. Talk about basketball (goddamn Tarheels) or the weather, but do not ask me how I am doing. And yet: ask about me! help me get through this! You can't. I have to do it alone. I am amazed at the depth of this well of tears, will it ever dry up?

I have imaginary conversations with my friends, with strangers, with my husband. Conversations about the lost baby, the lost babies. These conversations are healing and I am ably to talk freely and openly about all of it. In real life, I clam up. I say nothing except "wow, it sure is hot today".

At night I go to bed early, the way I have every night for the last year, this last year that I have been pregnant and exhausted. But I am not exhausted anymore. So I wake up in the middle of the night, alone with my thoughts and silent tears.

In the kitchen at lunch, I hesitate: 'oh, I shouldn't have tuna fish today', the thought sneaks in. The same one I have thought for a year, a year of policing the amount of fish I eat, the sandwich meat, the cheese, the alcohol. And then I remember. Yes, have the tuna. Have as much tuna as you fucking want, Amy.

How are you doing? my mother in law asks. The same one who didn't want us to have a third child. Did they say why? It's probably because you got pregnant again too soon. "No", I answer calmly, the Corona next to me keeping me numb, "the doctor had given us the okay to try again." Well, then, I guess that's why they say the childbearing years end when they do, she replies. "No," I say again, with no rancor in my voice, "actually since the CVS results came back okay, that means the chromosomes were normal and those are the only things affected by age." Later, I am enraged by this conversation and have wonderful self-affirming arguments with her in my head. But aloud I say nothing. There is nothing to say.

At the kindergarten round up at Isaac's new school I run into a mother I know very loosely. She is carrying her 6 month old in a baby bjorn on her chest. When I saw her last I was pregnant, she had her new baby with her and I was dying to tell her. But I couldn't, I was only in the first trimester then. And of course now there is nothing to say.

I pack up the maternity clothes that mock me, hanging in the closet for a year, close the boxes, carry them downstairs and away. But my regular clothes don't fit me, and I must squeeze into the same pants I wore post-partum with both of my children, almost every day. The pants that bring back memories of sleepless nights, nursing newborns, teeny tiny toes. The empty place in the closet where those clothes once hung mocks me, too. Empty closet, empty uterus. Empty.

Now, there is boredom. Lonely mornings while the kids are at school. I am not tired anymore, I am not sick, I have no excuse or desire to sit quietly watching bad television. So I sit. I read blogs, but I have to unsubscribe from so many. So many written by mothers that are pregnant, or giving birth, things I don't want to read about anymore, although just three weeks ago, I was eating it up.

We are broke. We have been broke, independently of the miscarriages, for a few months, but this month is the worst. I do not have money for groceries, or to pay bills. "Your insurance doesn't cover the facility, since we are a clinic" says the woman on the phone. "Our discounted cash rate for a d&e at that gestation is $2600." My doctor does not want to do it at the hospital, insists that the clinic specializes in this kind of thing, that it is worth the money, trust her. In the end, she is right--a better experience than my hospital d&c, in the same way that falling out of a ten story building is better than falling out of a 12 story building-- but the bill still feels like a slap in the face.

There is nothing to say, I tell well-intentioned friends. And it is true. There is nothing. I have nothing of him except a few ultrasound pictures, the wristband from the clinic where I had the procedure. I paste it in my scrapbook next to the ultrasound from our last lost boy.

But I miss him. I miss him terribly.

Unedited. This is therapy for me and I expect nothing of you, the readers. I am not returning to the blog for any length of time, just for the time, like now, when I need a place for all these thoughts to go. Thank you for listening.

History

2008-02-20T10:43:00.001-08:00

Pregnancy #1: Age 19; terminated

Pregnancy #2: Age 30; miscarried at 5 weeks

Pregnancy #3: Age 31; "missed" miscarriage, baby died at 5 weeks, pregnancy lost naturally at 10 weeks

Pregnancy #4: Age 33; resulted in first live birth (Isaac!) Failed AFP at 16 weeks, given 1 in 11 chance for Down Syndrome. Level 2 ultrasound revealed marker for Down Syndrome on heart; sent immediately for amnio. Results come back normal. Low amniotic fluid at 29 weeks resulting in 10 weeks of bed-rest. Birth long but uneventful. Eventually discover he has rare condition (1 in 20,000) that occured somewhere around 7 month of pregnancy, possibly due to low amniotic fluid, but more probably "just a fluke". No cure, but there is treatment.

Pregnancy #5: Age 34; resulted in second live birth (Vivian!) Failed AFP at 16 weeks, given 1 in 16o chance for Down Syndrome. Level 2 ultrasound showed healthy baby, amnio declined. C-section delivery due to breech position. Currently healthy, unless you count extreme stubborness, brain-piercing whining and innumerable tantrums an illness (which maybe we should).

Pregnancy #6: Age 37; miscarried at 12.5 weeks, 1 week post CVS procedure. CVS results come back: genetically normal, boy. Doctors guess miscarriage caused by CVS but cannot guarantee this. (Aside: CVS was performed by the "pioneer" of CVSes; he has a 99.5% success rate, well above the national average.)

Pregnancy #7: Age 38; uneventful 1st trimester punctuated by biweekly ultrasounds, baby seems to be growing appropriately. Sent for 1st trimester screening at 12 weeks; nuchal fold test results in "gray area", meaning that they cannot say whether baby looks good or not and must wait for the results of the blood test, which we should get in about a week. As I have failed two prior blood tests, chances are extremely good I will fail again, at which point I need to decide whether to have the freaking CVS test again. Meanwhile, good friend gives birth to 3rd child after passing her screening tests and finds out child has Down Syndrome anyway.

UPDATE: Blood test came back positive: 1 in 87 chance for Down's. Not as bad as I thought, but we did the CVS anyway, mostly because Lance is freaked out by the fact that our friend's baby has Down Syndrome even after she had a good screening. CVS performed on Thursday by the same doctor who did Isaac's amnio, preliminary results came back Friday afternoon: everything looks good, boy. Now we just wait and see if the baby survives the procedure. Ultrasound scheduled for Monday morning at OB.

*****

I realize that some people have struggled much more than this but still I am feeling particularly sorry for myself today. And also a little pissed off. Why is this so difficult? Why do some people breeze through the reproductive stuff while others (read: me) face block after block? And perhaps most importantly, why in the hell do I think I should have a 3rd child, knowing what I know about my own reproductive history? Why can't I just be happy with the two beautiful children that I am blessed to have? What is wrong with me?

H and G*

2006-12-28T13:41:00.000-08:00

Hello, my dear wonderful blog friends. You may have noticed that it's been extremely sparse around here since sometime in August. I could blame that on a busy fall--and yes, it has been busy--but that is not the whole truth. The whole truth is that I'm in a bit of a rut with the blog, and I think maybe it has run its course. These last few months, it has felt--dare I say it?--a bit of a relief not to blog every event in my life. Not to experience something and immediately start thinking about how to work it into a post, but instead, just experience it. And I find I am not eager to get back to that place where writing about the experience is almost as important as the experience itself.

Also. I am feeling very uneasy about the things that I have laid out here, in particular the things I have said about Isaac and his intensely sensitive health issues. I need to be more cognizant of him as the person he will become, and I don't want him to find this stuff--or worse, for his friends and enemies to find it--right when we are in the midst of the dreaded teen years. I need to take all those things down. Banish them forever to a locked diary hidden under the mattress, which is where they belonged in the first place.

Lastly. The best, and most unexpected part of blogging has been meeting all of you. I consider many of you friends--good ones!-- and, for a mostly unsociable person, the blog has been a wonderful place for me to meet like-minded people. I will miss that the most, I think. However, you--you wonderful, smart, supportive people--are also part of the problem, albeit through no fault of your own. You see, I can't keep up with it all. I can't read every blog by every person who comments on my site and still take care of my family. There just isn't time. My personality dictates that I visit everyone who leaves a comment here, and also, that I feel guilty whenever I don't have time to leave a comment. This means I have a lot of guilt, a lot of the time, when it comes to the blog. There are just too many of you, writing good stuff.

So. I am not shutting down the blog completely. I will take down the Isaac posts and any others that I think are too raw. But I'll leave the rest up. I'm thinking I'll still post kid stuff over at the family blog, just so I can keep a record of all their cuteness for posterity. Maybe I'll post some of that here, too, but I'm not sure. That's mostly boring stuff for you guys anyway, so what's the point? I do reserve the right to post things here if the mood strikes me--you never know when Lance will start pissing me off again, after all. And maybe in a few months I'll be aching to jump back into blog water. But for the foreseeable future, I'm done.

I thank you, from the bottom of my very humble and faulty heart. You have meant worlds to me these past almost two years.

Oh--I still plan to read your blogs from time to time, so I know how you all are doing. I may lurk more than comment, but I know I'll comment from time to time. And you can always reach me via email.

* From Sleepless in Seattle, remember?

And to all a good night

2006-12-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't been around much these last few months, but I still wanted to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas, Happy last day of Hannakuh and otherwise delightful holiday season. See you all in 2007!

Random Christmas Thoughts, 2006

2006-12-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

Vivian loves the Santa Claus song. Whenever we get to the part that goes: He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake", she chimes in: "HE SEES ME WHEN I'M POOPING!

Both kids loved the claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer show. They call it "the abominable" and Vivian's pronunciation of this is hilarious. They refuse to watch anything else except Frosty, despite the fact that I've Tivo's ALL the other Christmas shows (including the best one, the one with the Heat Miser).

How I know my kids have been spending time with my in-laws: Isaac says, "We're going to church to sing because we are celebrating the baby Jesus".

Way back in November, when we were still in Delaware, I started in with the Santa Claus threat. You know how it goes: "You better be good, or Santa Claus won't bring you any toys". One of the first times I brought it out occurred when Isaac snatched a fairy wand from Vivian and threw it into the fireplace. Ever since then, whenever the subject of naughty or nice comes up, Vivian is sure to chime in with: "Santa doesn't like it because Isaac three my magical wand in the fireplace". Still, a month later, she hasn't forgotten. I just hope Santa has!

Few things

2006-12-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

First of all, let me say this: I am still missing all of you. I haven't had much a chance to get caught up on my blog reading---this being December and all. in fact, I haven't been on the computer at all in days. How does anyone have time to blog in December? I feel especially guilty since I was whining just a little while ago about how some folks stopped commenting and then here I go, not commenting on anyone's blog, in ages. Oops. I hope you are all doing well, and know that I plan to spend all of January blogging, in order to catch up.

Moving on.
Teh cuteness (in the form of school picture):

(Though I do wonder about the background)

AND, this is what our house looks like:

This photo was taken a week or so ago; it actually looks even cooler now. I'm so excited!

Finally, a question, for the stay-at-home-moms among you: How do you react to comments made by others that question what you do all day? You know, when people say things like "well, since the kids are in school I guess you can just take a nap". I find myself incredibly pissed off, but also embarrassed to admit the annoyance.

On the one hand, of course it's annoying: how incredibly condescending for anyone to presume that taking care of children is easy, or that you must be bored since you don't have a "job". Way to de-value the work of childcare, and insult the choice of the mother at the same time! It makes me automatically defensive, and I feel like yanking out a list of my daily chores and waving it around in the air.

On the other hand, now that both kids are in school 4 mornings a week, I do have some nice time to myself. Granted, with all that's been going on this fall, I haven't been able to take full advantage, but in January I expect to be able to go to the gym whenever I want, make a dentist appointment for the first time in a few (cough, four, cough) years and watch Regis and Kelly Lee to my heart's content.

So maybe I should just be grateful and proud that people have to ask me how I spend my time, instead of getting annoyed. What do you think?

And that's it, folks. That is the sum total of what I have to offer you today, and probably for the next several days.

Question

2006-12-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

This is our Christmas card photo.

Thoughts?

UPDATE:
Because this is what my mother-in-law said: "What were you thinking? Vivian's legs are spread all apart for everyone to see! I can't believe that is the picture you chose."

Here comes Santa Claus

2006-12-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

This year, most of our Christmas decorations are in storage. The apartment is too small for a regular size tree. The door is metal, so you can't hang a wreath.

You should know this about me: I'm a sucker for Christmas. I love it--the songs, the smells, the smiles. So it's a little bit of a bummer to have to fore go most of the decorations this year. I did keep a few items out of the POD: we got all the carolers my mother-in-law has given us (6 in total) out, along with the lighted reindeer. Lance brought home a bunch of the small poinsettias. I bought some festive holiday candles and we hung jingle bells on the inside handle of our front door.

Yesterday, I went to home depot and bought a 3 foot, living Christmas tree. Then I bought some mini-lights and ornaments, and last night, we had our tree-trimming event. No, nothing like last year: the fondue pot is in storage, and I think that tradition will be fine to wait one more year. But I set up a crudites platter and put on the Christmas music, dimmed the lights, and helped the kids hang the teeny tiny balls on our teeny tiny tree.

It was fun.

Then, because trimming a 3 foot tree with 15 ornaments takes about 5 minutes, we decided to go see Santa. Remember our cranky Santa? On the purple sofa? Sadly, when we got to the mall, it was apparent that cranky Santa had been put out to pasture. The new Santa is jolly as can be, decked out in red and green stockings and a snowman shirt. Even the purple sofa has been replaced with a more appropriate red one. No curt directions from Santa this year about where the kids should sit. Instead he laughed (Ho! Ho! Ho!), asked what the kids wanted for Christmas, encouraged them to be good, and was just about the best Santa you could ask for. My kids, for some reason, have never been afraid to sit on Santa's lap, and this year they were especially excited to lay their list of needs on the jolly old man.

See?

Still, I kind of miss the old Santa. Fortunately, other L.A. parents are not aware the the cranky Santa has been replaced, so we still had no line. And that's worth a lot, in my book.

After Santa we headed across the street to dinner, and had an inexpensive, enjoyable meal, all four of us. Now, that is a holiday miracle, for sure.

Hey Everybody!

2006-12-06T08:27:00.000-08:00

Heidi got engaged!! Hooray!

About a boy

2006-12-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

While we were home, three different people commented to me about Isaac's good-nature.* I'm not sure how to put words to this without bragging, but it's true, he's a very happy kid. Vivian is, too--but there is something about Isaac--his smile, the light in his eyes, the way he is thrilled by so many simple things ("Look, mom! A truck!!!" "Oh my gosh, I saw a cow!") that just lights up a room.

I love this about him. It's been his nature since the day he was born. As an infant, he never cried. As a baby, he laughed or smiled at everyone. Even as a toddler--and he was such a difficult toddler--he didn't cry that much. He would get frustrated and burst into tears when he couldn't figure something out, yes, but he was still happy most of the time. Actually, what made him so difficult was his joie de vivre. Unbelievably curious while simultaneously confident that nothing bad would ever happen to him, he dove head first into everything he saw: the knife drawer, the speaker wires, the unstable bookshelf, etc. etc.

Now a pre-schooler, he still has that same spark. This is a kid who insists, "I really like Dr. L, Mom. He's a really good doctor," even when the last few times he has seen that particular man, there has been significant pain involved. He routinely says things like "I am soooo happy at you, Mommy. You are the best Mommy in the world. " And all I have to do is mention one of his friends--Tate or Riley; Heidi or Uncle Del--and he squeals with delight. The other day, when we come home from school, there was a pile of laundry on the floor. "Mommy!" he shouted. "Did we get new sheets?? Did you buy me new sheets? I am so lucky!!"

I know that pre-schoolers are a happy bunch (and why wouldn't they be?), but with Isaac it's more than that. You'll have to trust me on that, though here's some photographic proof for you:

There's another side to this exuberance, though. Isaac is so easily excited and thrilled that I think sometimes other children are turned off. He is frequently left out of games at the playground--sometimes by circumstance: the other kids are older, or girls who don't want to play with a boy, or siblings that have their own games. Sometimes I think he is too eager, and this leaves him vulnerable. Other kids can take advantage of him easily--he has no pretence, and assumes no one else does either. So if a friend asks him for his toy, he will give it up happily, and then become bewildered when that friend won't give it back.

Of course I would never change this about him, or coach him to play it cool--after all, his attitude is one of my favorite things about him, and a quality that should be valued and appreciated--but I do still worry. And it breaks my heart just a little bit to hear him say "Those big kids won't play with me, Mommy."

I know that as he gets older, he will lose some of this simple excitement for life. God knows you can't survive the teenage years without a good amount of angst. But I hope that this basic nature of his, this incredible joy to be here, on earth, stays with him to some degree. Speaking as his mother, I can tell you that his smile is infectious, and that this world could surely use a lot more Isaacs.

God, I love that kid.

(Here is what really frightens me: that the health issues he will face as an adolescent will beat him down and change him into an unhappy person.)

*Sometimes it takes an unbiased stranger to point out things you just take for granted, no?

Did you miss me?

2006-11-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, so we're home. Back in L.A. where the sun is shining--although it's been cold this week, in the 60's, just when I was looking forward to some 80 degree weather. Damn. Delaware, per usual, was lots of fun, but it is always nice to come home. Home to my familiar bed, to our usual routine, to the comfort of the predictable.

(Also, very good to come home to this. All hail Tar Heel nation.)

The kids are in school, the laundry is done, the bills are paid and I--I went to the gym today. That's right. I returned to the place of my humiliation and not only ran on the elliptical machine for 21 minutes and 18 seconds but also did a complete round of the weight machines. It helped that I was the only person in there. It felt good. It still feels good, even though my tricep muscles are shaking. (And by muscles, I mean arm fat.)

I am completely out of touch with all of you because--despite the fake blog I set up specifically so I would have an excuse to be on the computer while I was in Delaware, I never seemed inclined to sit there for long. Too many nieces and nephews to laugh with, old friends to visit, dinners to make, parents to tease. Now that I'm home and have nothing much to do but take care of the kids and blog I'll be spending some more time with you. Though I've heard there is some sort of holiday coming up at the end of this month, so I might be a bit busy with that.

This reminds me: do you ever wonder what it's like to be a husband in December? Lance has to plan my birthday, but other than that, it's pretty much a regular month for him. No running around getting gifts, wrapping, cooking, decorating, etc. Fortunately for our marriage, I actually enjoy the bustle of December, so it doesn't bother me that our work loads this month are so lopsided. But if I was like my mother, and hated Christmas and all the activity it entails, December might be the reason Lance and I finally called it quits.

That's all I've got today, folks. It always takes a little while to get back into the swing of blogging after a hiatus. Hope everyone is well!

Who says you can't go home again*

2006-11-13T17:56:00.000-08:00

We have now been in Delaware for almost a week. Actually, we are, at this very moment, less than two hours shy of one full week in the state of my youth, with two weeks to go.

It's fun. No, really. I enjoy coming home, especially for long periods of time, so I don't have to cram seeing everybody into 15 minute intervals while I race across town with the kids from house to house. I like driving around the streets of my childhood and adolescence, reminiscing about lazy Saturday afternoons on the high school football field debating the merits of the Born in the USA with friends back in 1985. I enjoy hearing my sister talk about kids--sons and daughters of people that I went to 8th grade with--that her kids are now playing with. Most of all, of course, I like spending time with my family: sitting around the kitchen table with mom, gossiping about all 5 of her siblings and their extended families, driving around town with my sister and her two kids, discussing the new Carolina football coach with Dad.

My parents' house is extremely comfortable, even with all of us extra folk taking up space. The guestroom I stay in is huge, with a remodeled bathroom, both of which are nicer than what Lance and I are currently building in L.A. The kids have a nice room with twin beds and lots of leftover toys from when my niece and nephew were small. Best of all, the basement: chock full of old toys and games, a partially working television, kid-sized table and chairs leftover from my childhood, and three different boiler-type rooms to hide in. My kids will play down there, happily, for hours, leaving me to make dinner, phone calls, read the newspaper, or watch TiVo in utter peace. I could get used to living here, trust me, especially since my mom stocks the fridge and only lets me pay for beer. There is even a spare car for me to drive around in. Also, I get to spend quality time with my best friend Susanna and her two children, commiserating about girls who turn into brats at age two and husbands who are wonderful in so many ways and yet still drive us crazy. In L.A., I don't have any "good" friends who are also moms, so it's nice to be able to talk to someone who totally gets where I'm coming from for a change.

You'd think I'd have more time to blog, then, but to be honest, I'm enjoying the break. I miss you guys, of course, but it's a little bit of a relief not to have all those November posts to plow through every day. No matter how much you guys make me laugh, or cry, or nod in agreement, sometimes it's nice to just live my life outside of the computer for a little while.

One of the great things about coming East for a few weeks is the opportunity to see old friends. Along with Susanna, I also get to see old friends from middle school, friends from college who trek miles just to see me, and blog friends. Since I'm here for 3 full weeks, it's fairly easy to fit everybody in. I have even found the time to fit in a visit with my Dad's mom--a difficult woman, and a visit I don't generally look forward to. But it's done! Already! My mom's mom can be difficult too, but in a different, much more loving way, so we've already spent several nice afternoons with her. Last weekend, I actually drove with the kids to Virginia (about 4 hours away) to visit Lance's brother Mark and his wife. They live on a neat old farm in the middle of nowhere, between Charlottesville and Richmond. (This is the nice brother, of course. I would never travel any distance to see assboy.) The kids had a blast riding tracters, playing in the barns and feeding the goats, and I had a great time hanging out with Mark and Margaret. My sister's daughter (age 9)came with us which was a huge help for me, especially in the car, especially since the traffic going home had us traveling from 10am until 5:30pm.

I will leave you with a few shots of the gorgeous leaves--we got here just in time to catch the last gasp of them in the neighborhood; now they are mostly gone. For many of you East Coasters, this is nothing, so these pictures are dedicated to my fellow California bloggers (you know who you are):

I hope everyone is having a wonderful November!

*I have a sinking suspicion that the title of this post is a song lyric from someone like John ~~Cougar~~ Mellencamp--and now you will all see me for the top 40 music redneck that I am. I know that you've been pegging me for a Radiohead fan all these years, but alas, I've finally given myself away.

Wondering

2006-11-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

Why pancake batter left too long in the fridge turns blue.

How my feet have shrunk 1 full size since the last time I purchased new shoes (over a year ago).

How to convince Vivian that all girls sit down to pee, so we don't have the "But Isaac gets to stand! I want to stand!" temper-tantrum at every pee break throughout the day.

Similarly, how to explain to Isaac that yes, Vivian is getting rewards in the form of M&Ms whenever she poops in the potty, but he is too old for that, so sitting on the potty and practically popping a blood vessel in the effort to get a poop out is not going to help him.

When the transcontinental flights from L.A. to Philadelphia--me and two kids--will get easier, so I can stop dreading them. (Tomorrow, around 1:30pm Pacific Time? Send some good vibes my way, k?)

Why none of my family members (with the exception of FFB, who as you know already reads this blog) bothered to answer the invitation to the private blog, which I set up just for them.

How long until the poo-poo-head jokes stop being funny.

When Pancake is going to pop the question to Heidi. (Come on already!)

If I will ever go back to the gym, especially now that Lance has taken to going. Now that all the cool kids are doing it, it just doesn't have the same appeal. Yeah, that's it.

If it is a good thing or a bad thing that when we go to pick up my kids from their grandparents house, and they cry because they don't want to come home with us, I don't get my feelings hurt. Shouldn't this bother me more?

Why old habits die so hard.

No more NaBloPoMo

2006-11-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

Okay, people. Far too many of you have jumped on this whole "post every day in November" thing. When I first heard about it, I"ll admit it sounded like a good idea. What a clever way to motivate people to write more. Not to motivate me, mind you: I freeze under that kind of pressure, and god knows I struggle to find something to write about 3 days a week. (See: gratuitous kid photos. Also: meta-blog posts.) (such as this one.)

But. I have since changed my mind. This is not a good idea. This is a terrible idea! I am currently unable to keep up with all the feeds in my bloglines. If I do manage to visit everyone, I certainly don't have time to comment everywhere, and if I attempt to do that, then there goes my time to compose anything to post here, on my actual blog. You know, the reason I started blogging. Actually, I don't think you can call it blogging if all you are doing is reading blogs through bloglines, is it? I end up feeling relieved when a few days go by between posts--that way I can try to catch up with everyone else*. (By the way, Phantom, since you already post at least once a day, are you going to try for NaTwoBloPoMo?) (Oh dear god.)

Do you know how many people that I read regularly have signed up for this insanity? A ton! Tons and tons of you, millions of you! If all of you post every single day, I will absolutely drown under the weight of all those words. Plus, I will be at my parents' house for most of November. I did hand out my "fake" blog to them, so I can spend some time at the computer without suspicion, but certainly not the 40 hours a week it will require to read all your posts. And I don't want to miss anything!

I'm screwed.

*This also gives me a handy excuse for not posting anything in days: I am helping you, oh loyal reader.

Also: NaBloPoMo is really hard to say. And harder to type. Psshaw.

Happy Halloween!

2006-11-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

Also: best threat ever? "If you don't behave I'm throwing all the Halloween candy away!"

Let's talk about Viv, baby.

2006-10-30T19:23:00.000-08:00

At the tender age of not-quite-yet two and a half, Vivian has finally entered the terrible twos, and entered them with a vengeance. I realized, when I was going back and adding "labels" to all my posts, that I haven't posted much about the kids lately, and especially not about Vivian. (Isaac's health issues have a way of ensuring I have lots to say about him; there is no similar issue for Vivian.)

For most of her life, Vivian has been remarkably easy to handle. Oh sure, as an infant, she had trouble nursing, and she didn't sleep enough for my liking. She cried much more frequently than her brother had, but I wouldn't classify her as a screamer. I could usually quiet her down fairly easily. And as time went on, she grew into a very mild-mannered, accepting child. She was not physical at all, refusing to walk until she was 18 months old, never really climbing onto chairs or crawling out doors. She was perfectly happy to sit and read books or play with toys, by herself or with her brother. She was fairly verbal, so I didn't have too many issues communicating with her. As she got older, she started getting slightly more passionate about things, learning to yell NO! when Isaac grabbed a toy, then learning to push back once she had been pushed, and finally graduating to pushing first when she wanted something. Still, those sort of occasions were not frequent, and I could comfort her or distract her easily.

In August, Vivian started school. I haven't written about it at all because, honestly, my life since August 1st has been full-speed ahead, and I haven't had a second to even consider it. Now that things have settled down a bit, let me tell you. The first day of school I took her inside (Isaac too; he goes to the same school) and she ran off immediately to play with some toys. When I told her I was leaving, and she would be staying there with her brother, she barely looked up from her game, mumbling "Have a good day, Mommy!" and offering her cheek for a kiss. That was it. She has never cried at school drop off since.

This surprised me a little bit. I mean sure, I knew school was a comfortable place for her, and I wasn't expecting a huge melt-down. She'd been begging to go to school for months, her brother was there to "protect" her, and new toys are always a big pull. But I thought she might struggle just a little bit more. I thought maybe after an hour when she realized I still wasn't back, she might miss me. But she didn't.

So, school. It's been two months now, if you don't count the two weeks we were in Hawaii. Here's one of the things this particular school teaches kids: stand up for yourself. If one child is playing with a toy and another one comes up and grabs it, they teach the first child to use words and say something like, "I am playing with that toy, it's not your turn". Well. Vivian has taken those instructions to heart. I first noticed this a few months ago, when we had a playdate with an old friend (Hi, Rachel!). Vivian was "playing" with her 14 month old (or so) son Evan when suddenly she leaned in, eye-level with Evan, and shouted, quite loudly*, inches from his face, "DON'T STEP ON MY FOOT, EVAN!!" She has gotten progressively more adamant as school goes on.

I find myself intervening in sibling battles much more frequently than I used to. Vivian is no longer mellow at all, and instead can be found yelling loudly at all times (it seems), "NO! I don't like that! Don't do that, Isaac!! NO THANK YOU!" and a new favorite: "I DON'T LIKE YOU ANYMORE!!" Worse, she has allowed this new defiant attitude to permeate all of her personality. When she doesn't want to do something, she sits down on the floor and screams. And now, she doesn't EVER want to do what I need her to do.

The other day, we were driving around our new neighborhood and passed a playground. Immediately both kids started clamoring for us to stop. When I explained that it was too dark and we'd have to go another time, Isaac whined, "Oh, man! But I wanted to go to that playground! Now I'll never get to go to the playground." Vivian, on the other hand, handled it this way: "STOP! LET ME OUT!! NOW!!! MOMMY!!! NO THANK YOU! I WANT TO GO TO THE PLAYGROUND. MOMMY!! I WANT TO GO TO THE PLAYGROUND! RIGHT NOW. I DON'T LIKE YOU ANYMORE! NO!!" This continued for several ear-piercing minutes (Isaac was long done complaining) and reached a new level of hilarity with this exchange:
Me: "Well, you don't have to like me, Vivian, but I will always love you."
Vivian: NO! YOU DON'T LOVE ME ANYMORE! I WILL NEVER LOVE YOU!"
Me, to Lance: Did she turn 15 while I wasn't looking?

Yeah, she's a little bit out of control, our Viv. Even her pre-school teacher, who up until last week has seemed completely enchanted with her, has started slipping little negatives into the comments she writes every day. ("Wow. Vivian is really started to use her words LOUDLY!" Or, "Vivian was very defiant today, she really knows what she wants these days, doesn't she?") I have to admit that much of this is my fault.

Here's the thing: by the time Isaac was 1 year old, he had been in too many time-outs to count. By the time Vivian was 2 years old, she had been in maybe 5 time-outs total. Therefore, Isaac knows, from experience, that when I start counting, I mean business. He knows that he has to stay in a time-out until I tell him to get out. He knows that when I threaten things, I will more than likely follow through. He still tests me, frequently, but he understands me. Vivian, on the other hand, has had no such experience.

Up to about age two, this was more a measure of their different personalities than any favoritism or birth-order discrimination on my part. Isaac was just into more things than Vivian. Isaac required much more vigilance, Isaac tested me more. In addition, the first few times Vivian did anything that might merit a time-out I was so surprised I only half-heartedly, and with much not-well-concealed laughter, meted out the punishment.

And. I must admit it. For some reason, Vivian has my number a bit better than Isaac. I don't seem to expect the same level of behavior from her as I did from Isaac at the same age. The last several months, as she has gotten progressively more difficult to handle, I haven't reacted the same way I would with Isaac. I suppose it is the second-born syndrome: I still pick my battles, but since there are now two children to pick battles with, I tend to pick them much less frequently. So she gets away with a lot more.

Now that Vivian has shown me how this lax parenting is "helping" her, I realize I've got to adjust my behavior. She needs to recognize that I mean what I say. She needs to watch her tone of voice. I need to be more in control. Sigh.

Isn't this parenting gig supposed to get easier as they grow?

(Please don't anybody mention teenage years now, okay?)

*And by loudly, I mean at decibel levels usually reserved for rock concerts. This astounds me, and makes me secretly proud. I have always been a soft-talker--people often don't hear me, or garble what I say, which just adds to the miscommunications that foster my social anxiety. So, on one hand, I'm really glad that Vivian has found her voice, and that it is so forceful. I mean, yeah, that hand has been plugging my ears for the last month or two, but . . .

Things that Annoy me about Blogging

2006-10-29T07:06:00.000-08:00

1. That the blogger templates are so fricking boring and ugly.
2. That I am too cheap to pay someone to make mine pretty.
3. That I am also too lazy to figure out something pretty on my own.
4. That I can't figure out how to do strike-thru, no matter how many times I google it or use Blogger Help.
5. That strike-thru font really means that much to me.
6. That some of you comment on my posts via blogger commenting, instead of Haloscan, so I miss them, until I notice later when I'm editing, that those comments are there. (How do you do that?)
7. That Bloglines seems to lose feeds of mine capriciously, causing me to miss weeks of posts before realizing what's going on.
8. That I am so dependant on Bloglines that I forget to click on the homepage of new commenters, thereby depriving myself of awesome new blogs to read.
9. When someone I "know" stops coming by or commenting, for no apparent reason. (And by "know" I mean someone who has been commenting here for awhile and on whose blog I regularly comment.)
10. That I don't know what to do when #9 happens. (Should I stop visiting their blog? Should I email them and ask what I did to offend? Should I pretend it doesn't bother me at all because I am just that secure in my own skin?)

Oh, there are more. Infinitely more things that annoy me about blogging. And yet, here I sit, 9:30pm on a Saturday night, blogging. It appears I need an intervention.

Update: What? You mean bloggers have other things going on, besides commenting on my posts? Sacrilege!

Also: if you are leaving a comment here, I guarantee I am not talking about you. The few people I am speaking of haven't left a comment in months.

Confession

2006-10-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Vivian has been ready to be potty-trained for months now. Months. I think I could have easily trained her around her birthday in June, when she was showing all kinds of "ready" signs. But I was lazy, and I didn't feel like dealing with the accidents, so I kept putting it off. I bought her some underwear, and put her in it several times, with minimal accidents, but whenever we left the house I put her back in diapers. I've been half-assedly training her for a long time, putting her in underwear when I remember, but mostly using pull-ups. The other day, Melissa wrote a post about her daughter who basically trained herself, and I realized I just have to do this. Deal with the accidents so she learns. What a pain in the ass (heh).

Also? Last week, I spent two (2!) of my free mornings doing absolutely nothing. I didn't do laundry, go to the store, buy Vivian underwear, check on the status of the remodel, make doctors' appointments, or any of the usual trivial crap I busy my days with. God knows I didn't go to the gym and work out. I laid around on my ass, catching up on TiVo (except at the new apartment it's Time Warner DVR, which I hate) and occasionally surfing blogs. I ate Halloween candy. I rested.

And it felt great. (You see why I love being a stay at home mom? It goes so well with my lazy nature!)

In other news, I have started a new blog. I'm not linking it here, because it's a private blog. I'm going to hand out the URL to my family members, and whenever I post something innocuous here about the kids, I'll post it there, too. That way, I can finally achieve the original purpose of the blog: keep my far-flung family up-to-date on kid happenings. And I can do it without giving up this little corner of self-help I've dug out for myself. Plus, since I'll make it a totally private blog that only family members can see, I won't have to answer a myriad of questions like "but why would you want anyone in the world to be able to see pictures of your kids? What if a child molester finds you?"

Also, and this is most important: now when I go home for extended periods (I'm leaving for Delaware Nov. 6th and not returning until after Thanksgiving) I can still blog, without arousing suspicion. If they think I'm spending an inordinate amount of time at the computer, I'll just play stupid, and say I'm having trouble trying to figure the whole thing out. This will be easy for them to believe.

Whaddyathink?

Love, Actually.

2006-10-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I ever told you, but Dr. Bite Me is out. You guys were right, and I should have listened to you in the first place. Did I ever tell you about Marriage Counseling: Session Three? Dr. Bite Me threw out this nugget of wisdom: "Well, if Lance wants to surf for 5 hours every day of your vacation, I think that is a non-negotiable. You want to let him do that, whether you think it's reasonable or not." Yeah, even Lance agreed that perhaps Dr. Bite Me did not have both of our interests equally at heart, after that. Not to mention, although occasionally Dr Bite Me did offer some good insight, he spent a lot of time talking himself, and I don't feel like paying good money to listen to some 50 year old misogynist pontificate. Know what I mean?

So. You were right. Now I just have to find someone else. (Lazy, lazy . . .)

You know what else? Things are much better, with Lance and I. I've been thinking about us lately, and the truth is, we've been through a lot, these past two and a half years. First, Vivian. I have alluded before to how difficult things were once she was born, and I'll repeat myself here. When Vivian was born, Isaac was a complete and utter maniac. I was totally unprepared to handle him and a newborn, especially a newborn so unlike the only other one I'd ever known (Isaac, who as an infant was a perfect angel). It was at least 3 months of utter hell, as I struggled and failed to be a good mother to both children, only getting slightly better when I gave up trying to be good and settled for at-least-I-didn't-kill-them-today. I did not handle those months with anything resembling grace, and I will say here that Lance didn't either. I felt like a failure all day long and he felt like a failure every evening, but at least he had work to escape to, and escape he did. To work, to ski vacations, to football games, anywhere but here. The resentment started there, I think.

Then, Vivian turned one, and at her birthday party that year, the whole nasty brother-in-law thing exploded. Just when we had gotten a handle on parenting two kids, we had something else to argue about. Something else that upset both of us, in different ways. That upset the people we loved, and we were powerless to stop it. The day after Vivian's birthday was Isaac first surgery, the one we thought would be so simple, the one before we had an accurate diagnoses. That one-two punch has been very difficult to navigate, and I don't think either one of us has shown any exceptional maturity or dignity in doing so.

I have been holding onto that resentment, the I-didn't-sign-up- for-this-parenting-thing-alone, the your-brother-is-an-ass-and-you-don't-do- anything-about-it, the why-the-fuck-is-this-happening-to-our-son-and-why- can't-you-make-it-better, the I-am-doing-everything-and-you-suck feelings-- and holding tight, for years. Clenching my jaw, tasting bile, steeling my eyes--that's how tight I've been holding on. I'm not sure why, except to say that I am a (perhaps deeply) flawed person.

But at least I finally realized what I was doing, and also realized how much it wasn't helping. I think at one point I felt that being angry at Lance was helping me in some way--at least when I was angry with him I didn't have to be sad, or blame myself, or bang my head against the wall. Anger, resentment, jealousy: all these emotions were infinitely better than actually dealing with the problems at hand. Giving up the anger would mean I'd have to let him in, admit how vulnerable and lost I felt, and I couldn't do that.

Now, things are better. The kids are in school 4 mornings a week. We haven't seen nasty boy in almost a year. Isaac's health still sucks, and it will still be an issue for years to come, but we are both trying to talk about it more, trying to accept it. And I have let go of all that crap. It was getting heavy, and my arms were tired.

It's not as if this happened quickly--I didn't wake up one morning and say, "oh! I know what the problem is in my marriage!" In fact, I couldn't pinpoint anything, any one moment or event that made a difference. Lance has adjusted his attitude too somehow, and I'm sure I have nothing to do with that. We just both seem to be swimming back towards each other now, instead of treading water at different ends of the pool, occasionally splashing water in each other's faces.

But I will say this: what a relief, to be able to smile when Lance comes home from work. How nice it is to call him--not with chores or accusations, but a simple question--do you want to go to the beach for dinner tonight?, followed by a quick and heartfelt "I love you".

No, it's not all gravy again, not yet. I am not a strong swimmer after all, and anyway, my arms were already tired from carting all that emotion around. (Fun with metaphors!) But it's getting better, and for that I am grateful. They always say that marriage is hard work, but for a long time I didn't believe that. Oh sure, sometimes Lance annoyed the crap out of me, but hard? Even in the midst of all the shit that went on these last few years, I don't think I would have admitted it was hard. I actually thought I was holding it all together, until a few months ago. But it is hard, and not because living with someone else is hard. It's hard because you have to be completely honest with yourself, you have to push through all your own bullshit, you have to call yourself when you're being a twit, and you have to mean it.

That's hard.

And totally worth it.

(No, not a flattering photo, but it seems apt, somehow.)

Where have I been?

2006-10-23T14:09:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, I left the kids at school and flew home to Delaware. My mother's 60th birthday was Friday, October 20th. My dad surprised her with a weekend trip to Bermuda; the two of them left Thursday morning. The second part of the surprise came when my brother, sister and I showed up at their resort for dinner Friday night.

She was thrilled, and completely shocked. Yes, that means I flew 6 hours Thursday and then another 2 on Friday morning, followed by a 13 hour travel day two days later, but it was totally worth it. You only turn 60 once, after all. Not to mention, Bermuda! Yet another tropical family vacation, and you know I never say no to that. *

I had never been to Bermuda before, and it's always fun to go to a new spot. We were there less than 48 hours so there wasn't much time to explore, but the weather was gorgeous. The resort where we stayed was extremely nice, and my father booked my siblings and I into a large suite so the five of us would have a place to congregate. My impressions of Bermuda are two: beautiful, as you'd expect from a tropical island, and also a little stuffy, in a British/ New England kind of way. (Lots of blue blazers and madras pants, know what I mean?) Oh, also? Horrifyingly expensive. Moreso than Hawaii, and that's saying something. However, as I said, we had very little time to explore, so those impressions could be way off, and might be more indicative of the resort than the whole island.

I would go back in a minute, especially if someone else was paying.

Here is where I would normally post pretty pictures, but I forgot the camera, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I really wish I'd gotten a picture of Mom's face when she walked into the dining room and saw us there, but even without the photo, I'll remember it forever.

Some things to remember:

The "family" that flew with me on the transcontinental flight fro L.A. to Philadelphia. Mom and 3 year old in front row, Dad and 4 year old in second row. Several times during the flight, I thought to myself, "Hmm, that Dad sure doesn't help much (he had passed his kid up to sit with the Mom very early on)" or "I would kill Lance, if he was just sitting there reading the paper while I dealt with all the kids". Then, when we arrived in Philadelphia, the mom said "Well, thanks for playing with us, Megan!" and got off with her daughter, leaving the stranger and his kid to get off on their own. Yeah. He passed his kid off to a complete stranger for the entire 5-1/2 hour flight while he read the paper.

Water. This particular resort does not have mini-bars in the rooms; instead, they send you a list of possible items to choose from before you arrive. My sister filled out the form, and decided that we'd need several bottled waters. Assuming their bottled water was the standard, 8-12 oz kind, she ordered 18-- 3 a day, per person. The bottled water came in liter size, which, if you're not quite sure, is slightly larger than a bottle of wine. 18 liters of water to drink in less than 48 hours. This led to much hilarity, in the form of water-pounding competitions, and jokes along the lines of "Gosh, I just wish I had some clear liquid to drink. You know, that doesn't taste like anything, but is refreshing. Where could I find something like that?" or "Maybe we should take the water with us to dinner--do you think they'd charge a corkage fee?" For the record, my brother and I won the who-can-drink-the-most-water contest, and in fact, we did get through all 18 liters, not to mention 12 beers, a bottle of rum and 1/2 a bottle of champagne. This doesn't include what we drank at dinner.

Family. It hasn't been just the five of us in years--probably 20 years. We had such a great time, and Dad stepped right back into his preferred role of director, getting out the maps and tourist information at dinner Friday night and organizing our whole day Saturday for us. This was much more endearing than it is on longer vacations: there was no sense that he was trying to control our holiday, since this was only a weekend, and we were there just for Mom anyway. Nobody bickered (again, it was only a weekend), and we all left in better spirits than we arrived. I love my family and miss them, and holidays like this just reinforce that lucky feeling--I am truly blessed to have these people in my life.

The one stressful moment occurred when we decided to rent mopeds--two doubles and one single. My dad and Chip drove the doubles, with Mom and I as passengers, and Ann rode the single. Mopeds are big--bigger than you think--and unsteady--and in Bermuda, they drive on the left side of the road. My dad has a bum knee, so it was difficult for him to steady the bike, and I felt pretty unprotected, riding behind Chip. Fortunately, after we spent a good twenty minutes learning how to ride the bikes, with my stress level rising every second (it was scary, y'all) and my dad furiously licking his lips in concentration at every turn, we went to sign the contract and discovered that they only had 24 hour rentals. Since it was already 4:30 pm and we were leaving the next morning, we decided to skip the mopeds and hop in a cab instead. At that point, I don't think anyone was too thrilled about the moped ride (with the possible exception of my brother), but no one wanted to be a kill joy for anyone else. When it became clear that the rental terms would give us a way out, we all sighed in relief.

I'm glad to be home, and, even better, Lance is glad that I'm home. He's a bit tired from a weekend alone with the kids (she says, with just a trace of smugness). Hope everyone else had a nice weekend too!

*I didn't mention it here because it was kind of last minute and also I felt a little sheepish, having just returned from Hawaii a few weeks ago.

Tip #5

2006-10-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

If it is 12:15 and your kids are hungry, do not attempt to make a "quick stop" at Trader Joe's before you take them home for lunch, assuming the free sample of granola or whatever will be enough to stave off the crazies that hunger inevitably causes.

For the love of god, do not attempt.

Also, if you want to feel like a real asshole, huff and puff and mutter loudly about the stoned and stupid check-out clerk, who is taking FOREVER to ring up everybody's purchases, as you wait in line. Then, when you finally get to the front so you can glare at him, have him smile and tell you how cute your kids are and commiserate about how tough it is to grocery shop with kids.

Settling in

2006-10-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

Well, we are finally almost settled in to our new home. Lance got the kids' bookshelves attached to the walls and some pictures hung this weekend, and Isaac went back to school today. He is mostly recovered (though I am still sad), and we are all getting used to life in the new apartment. The barking dog has been notably better and the hot water has been functioning just fine. The kids are still enjoying playing with toys that hadn't seen the light of day in months at our old place and after next week we can take them in the pool/ hot tub again. (Isaac is not allowed in water, except to bathe, for two weeks.)

Best of all, I found the kids their new beds. I am extremely proud of myself because I found the beds, which convert to bunks, on Craig's list for a total of $300--including mattresses. They are in excellent condition, too. Other bunk beds I was looking at ran over $1000, once you bought the mattresses too. Isaac has been sleeping on a pathetic, very old twin mattress and box spring only slightly more comfortable than hardwood since he moved to a big boy bed around age two. That's because, true to my bad mother tendencies, I was too cheap to purchase a new mattress for him, or a bed frame of any kind, not when we had a "perfectly good" twin mattress/box spring in the garage. Note to self: next time, try a little harder to let compassion for your kid overrule your ridiculous Depression-era-type frugality.

But! Depression-era-type frugality won out here, too! Who knew Craig's list could solve my children's sleep needs and assuage my need for cheap at the same time?

Vivian has been sleeping in her crib, happily, with no interest in climbing out, her entire life. I have a feeling that she would continue to do that until she grew taller than the crib sometime in adolescence. She's just not a climber, my Viv. Normally, I'd be happy to let her stay in the crib for as long as she wanted--I am a big proponent of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of parenting-- but I had no interest in dismantling the crib to get it out of her room, moving it here, and re-assembling it. Plus, I thought I could sell the two cribs (hers, and Isaac's old one, that matches) as a pair on Craig's list. Sadly, this is where Craig's list failed me: no one was interested in two un-gently used cribs with broken drawers. Oh well.

So. We moved to the apartment without beds for the kids, and they slept on an air mattress (Isaac) and the Pack n' Play (Vivian) until I found the beds, and Lance set them up, last week.

Yes, I know. The room is quite barren--nothing on the walls. I don't have any plans to put anything up, either. We'll only be here 6 months (hopefully) and I don't want to put holes in the wall if I don't have to. Not to mention, this is earthquake country, and you really shouldn't hang anything on the wall above your bed. Also, I don't have matching sheets yet or comforters/quilts of any kind. Both of my kids refuse to have anything covering them at night, though, so comforters are just for show anyway. I have been looking for sheets though--something I can use here and then use again, in Isaac's room (he'll have his own room!) at the new house. I found it really annoying that everywhere I looked for kids bedding, I had to go to a "boys" or "girls" section. No unisex bedding of any kind. Stupid. Why are surfboards only for boys? And dinosaurs? The only animal a girl is allowed is a butterfly? And what if you have girl/boy twins, or kids, like mine, of different sexes who share a room? Why does everything have to be so relentlessly masculine or feminine? I finally ordered some surfboard sheets with plain blue/light blue quilts. I'm sure my mother-in-law will be horrified that Vivian sleep in something so masculine, but it will have to do for the next 6 months.

We could also talk right now about the missing knobs on the dresser and the hideous, not to mention un-safe plant light which provides the only light in the room, but I'd rather not. Just focus on the cute pink bunny and be glad my children at long last have somewhere comfortable to sleep.

Talky talky

2006-10-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

On the way to drop Vivian off at school today, Isaac and I had the following "conversations":

Why are all the cars stopped, Mom?
Why is there traffic?
Why does everyone go to work?
Why is this a freeway?
Why can't I go to school with Vivi?
Why does red mean stop and green mean go?
What is that smell?
Why don't they like Halloween?
Why is that a ghost?
I don't see Thomas.
I see a Jack O Lantern! I see Halloween!
Why can't I go to school today?
Can I go to Nonie's house?
Can I go to Nonie's house and Vivi can't go to Nonie's house?
Vivi, you can't go to Nonie's house; only I get to go to Nonie's house.
Why isn't that nice?
When does Vivi get to go to the hospital?
When Vivi's balls don't go down then she will go to the hospital where they wear masks and then Vivi won't go to school. Right, Mom?
Why doesn't Dr. L let me go to school?
Why can I not run and jump because of my owies?
Why do we need to get gas?
Why are you running out of gas?
Why does the engine need gas to go?
Is that a gas station?
Can I get out at the gas station?
Why is there gas at a gas station?
Why do you hold the door if your hands are full?
I will hold your door for you, okay Mom?
Let me do it.
Can we go to the old house?
Why can we not get out?
Why is it dangerous at a construction site?
Why are those people there?
Why are they working on our house?
Why are they building our house here?
Why don't we build our new house at the new apartment?
I don't want to live at the new house; I like the hot tub at the apartment.
Why don't we have a hot tub at the new house?
Why did you want a big house and not a hot tub?
Why is that gardener there?
Why is he wearing a mask?
I don't like masks.
Is Riley going to school today?
Ooooh. I want to go to school. I miss him!
Is that Daddy's work?
Why is it a work day?
Where is your work, Mommy?
Why is this your work?
(I'm sure there were more but this is all I can remember now. 30 minutes roundtrip.)

We are finally home and he is mercifully quiet, watching Bob the Builder for the six millionth time in two days.

Non-sequitur

2006-10-11T16:20:00.000-07:00

Isaac: I want to go to Bob's and buy stuff, Mom.
Me: Really. Do you have your money?
Isaac: Yeah. I have money.
Me: Where did you get it?
Isaac: From Vivian's penny bank.
Me: Oh. Why was it in Vivian's penny bank? Why not yours?
Isaac: Because I had money and I put it in Vivi's penny bank.
Me: What's wrong with your penny bank?
Isaac: I have quarters in there and money and decaf lattes.
Me: ??
Isaac: Yeah, decaf lattes. Can we go to Bob's?

Love Letter

2006-10-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

"Happy Anniversary, Amy!

8 years . . .wow! Who'd a thunk? Challenging as it seems at times, I wouldn't change it for the world. I love you. I love our family. I love our scenario and am excited for the future! Let's keep strong and prosper together for another 8 (and then some) years. I love you.

Lance"

(Speaks for itself, no?)

Apartment livin'

2006-10-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

We officially moved into the new apartment Sept. 16th, and have now spent a total of 7 nights here. So far

The hot water heater has been working properly for 1 of those days (today).
The toilet has clogged twice.
The fire alarm has gone off every time I have turned on the oven (twice) and about half the time I've used the stove (approx 5 times)
The large dog that lives downstairs has awoken at 6:15 am and barked nonstop for 30 minutes three times.
Some drunk lady has screamed at the top of her lungs "OPEN UP THIS FUCKING DOOR" for 10 straight minutes at 3:15am once.
The kitchen light has had to be replaced once.
The washing machine has not cleaned ANY dirt off clothes, even after I run them through more than once.

Did I mention that this place was at the top of our price range? It's costing us more to rent here than the mortgage on our house! (But not nearly as much as the new mortgage). It's a new building, so they obviously have some bugs to work out, but Jesus. Oh, and there is no recycling. By law they have to provide it so they've set up this makeshift, stinky spot on the first floor, which only a few people seem to use. I would bet good money that the maintenance people simply take our recyclables and dump them in the trash when no one's around.

However, there are some good things about this place:

The pool and hot tub. Kids LOVE it, which makes for a very convenient playground.
Two bathrooms. I had no idea how nice it would be to get the kids out of my bathroom.
Large closets. We are missing a linen closet and a broom closet, but the two bedroom closets are so big, it makes up for it. Very nice to be able to spread out things out a little bit.
Proximity to new stores. This area is all new, hundreds of apartment buildings all next to each other, so many new grocery stores etc have put in huge new stores. It's very convenient, except to get to pre-school.
Everything is new, and therefore clean. No one has lived in this unit before, so the walls, carpets, appliances, counters--everything--is spic and span.
The best thing about the move so far? All the toys that the kids never played with before are suddenly tons of fun. I'm not sure why, maybe blocks are more fun in a new environment? But it's been great the last few days, as the kids basically entertain themselves.

It's nice to know this is only temporary housing--it makes all the annoyances less annoying. I'd be extremely pissed if we were planning on living here for any extended length of time. The barking dog--that needs to stop soon. But the rest of it I suppose I can live with.

I just keep reminding myself that in less than a year, we'll be back in our new, beautiful house. We are almost doubling the square footage of our old house, to a grand total of 2700. It will feel like a mansion to me, no doubt. They've already started work on it, and I've been stopping by in the mornings after I drop the kids off at pre-school to check out the progress. Here's a few pictures, to give you an idea:

On Tuesday:

Today:

And here's one from the "Draw on the walls party" we had before we left for Hawaii:

Hawaii is Heaven

2006-10-03T15:14:00.000-07:00

First of all, I need to plug our little hotel in Maui. The Mauian is surprisingly affordable (Hawaii is tres, tres* expensive), steps from the beach, and completely clean and comfortable. Each small "studio" holds a queen bed, a daybed, a bathroom, kitchenette and balcony or deck. No TVs or telephones or anything remotely fancy, but it was clean. And did I mention? Steps from the beach. They held a continental Hawaiian breakfast every morning in the great room, which also boasted a bookshelf full of guilty beach reading, and a TV, if you just had to have your Sportscenter fix. Many of the people who were staying there had been coming for twenty-plus years, and some who had brought their children years before were now bringing grandchildren. The vibe of the place is completely down-home and friendly, and I loved it. If you're looking for pampering, this is not the place for you, but for us it was perfect. I would stay there again in a heartbeat.

My in-laws stayed next door, at a fancier resort (though still not ultra-fancy--probably two steps up from The Mauian. It seemed very nice, too.) The truth is, in Hawaii, you tend to spend a lot of time on the beach, or in the ocean--so the rooms don't really matter that much. I'd go with the $200 cheaper place per night everytime, especially as the two hotels share the same (spectacular) beach.

Isaac loved the pool of course, but most of all he loved the kids that were also staying there or next door. Lauren, Kelsey, Matthew, Gavin: he was never happier than when running across the green with anyone of them. He also braved the ocean several times, getting tumbled once or twice yet hopping up with a smile on his face. Vivian, of course, stayed as far from the surf as possible, but she played happily enough in the sand, several yards away.

I won't bore you with a million details of Maui--it was all good, and there's not much more I can say about it. We wore out our mouth muscles smiling, drank Mai Tai after Mai Tai, soaked up the sun and explored a teeny bit. I read several books--nothing worthwhile, but enjoyable all the same. Lance's brother and his wife (the nice ones) were their usual easy-going selves, my in-laws were on their best behavior, and Lance and I didn't even fight that much.

We stayed in Maui four days, and then headed off to Kauai for a week. More on that to come.

*Anyone know how to do those little accent thingys?

In other news, I visited a good friend today (my old roommate, from the San Francisco days) whose wife had a baby while we were in Hawaii. Ah, newborns! I couldn't help tearing up, just touching his teeny tiny toes. And his soft downy head. And the silly mewing noises he made. Is there anything sweeter than a newborn? Both parents are head over heels gaga over their son (1st baby) which is really special to see, too. Remember that? When you just can't stop staring at this baby you've created? When the miracle is so fresh and all your emotions are so ripe and overwhelming? Ah.
Most of all, though, I was struck by how in awe the parents were of each other. At different times during our visit, I was alone with each of them, and they both had nothing but nice things to say about each other. "She is such a good mom, Aim. I just . . . I just can't even believe how well she handles everything . .." "Alex has been so amazing. He does laundry, he cooks, he changes diapers, he is so involved, and he wants to be. I am just so glad that he's the one I married."

Today is my 8 year wedding anniversary to Lance. As I sat there today, holding that perfect infant and listening to my two friends overflow with love, I remembered feeling the same way. Feeling so positively blessed to have him in my life. Feeling like the luckiest person on the planet. How we got from there to here--a place where arguing comes more naturally than loving--I'm not really sure. But I need to do some work to find my way back. And it starts tonight. Hawaii was a good start, and now the real work begins.

Moving is hell

2006-10-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

Why? Oh, I'll tell you.

1. No matter how many boxes you beg, borrow and steal, you always need more. Usually at the very end of the day, when you just can't face going out to forage for more. That means moving into the new swanky apartment building carrying your things in black Hefty bags. Classy.
2. The paper you wrap all your breakables in makes your hands black with newsprint, and leaves smudges on all the dishes you unwrap at the new place.
3. Trying to figure out which items go into deep storage for 6-9 months and which items you will need at the apartment makes your brain implode, and causes you to pack the box of Lance's sweaters into the pod, and bring two sleeping bags with you to the new apartment.
4. Trying to fit all your belongings into a smallish storage container and smallish UHaul truck requires much forethought--much more than you give it, which means you must move things out of the storage container and re-pack, several times.
5. Although the garage sale nets a surprising $600 (!!); haggling with strangers over your crap for 6 hours is no fun ("I won't take less than $5! . . . Alright, just give me a $1. Or, fine!--Jesus! Fifty cents!").
6. Keeping the kids entertained and out of danger while you make trip after ever-fucking-lasting trip to the car, to the apartment, back to the house, is impossible. (Fortunately, the ever-brilliant Heidi helped out for much of the afternoon.)
7. What is one supposed to eat when all the food is packed in boxes?
8. Selling your refridgerator for $130 is a pretty good deal, since it came with the house, but selling it on Friday, 24 hours before you get into the new apartment, is not so smart. Coolers do not make good freezers. Soggy chicken nuggets, anyone?
9. The nice men you pick up from the Home Depot lot will definitely ease much of the pain of moving, but when they break your dining room table in half, there's not much you can do about it. I'm afraid they're not exactly insured.
10. Although the nice day laborers do most of the heavy lifting, there is still much carrying and stretching and pulling, which means your already fragile back will ache well into your Hawaiian vacation. (Vivian's new favorite whine? "My back hurts, Mama!")
11. Why does it always happen that your apartment is the absolute farthest away from the elevator?
12. When your husband leaves at 3:30pm, to go to the football game, the babysitter he hired is a help, but doesn't do a whole lot to alleviate the resentment you feel burning away your stomach lining as you survey the apartment, drowning in boxes.
13. Especially when, the next day, he actually gets annoyed at you, for being resentful.
14. When, at 7:30pm on moving day, the kids are finally asleep (on an air mattress and the pack n' play) and you have unpacked most of the kitchen, so you decide to rest for the evening, you turn on the TV only to find that although cable guy spent 40 minutes there setting it up, there is no reception. The phone is not hooked up, and your cell phone is dead, no charger to be found.
15. So, you decide to take a hot shower instead--but there is no hot water. And no phone with which to call the emergency maintenance number, nor access to the computer to find such a number. As there is no light by which to read a book--a book which you wouldn't be able to locate amongst the boxes anyway, this puts you in bed at 8pm, dirty, sweaty and pissed off.

See? Hell.

(Fortunately, that hell was followed quickly by the Hawaiian vacation from heaven, so it's all good.)

Back(s)

2006-10-02T11:39:00.000-07:00

We're home--well, home to our new apartment, surrounded by boxes, anyway. I think I'm going to do this everytime I go away--post naked butt pictures of my kids when I return. Good for increasing traffic, no?

Hawaii was incredible, the move was hell, and I have lots to tell.

I've missed you all.

More later . . .

Shh! Don't tell anybody.

2006-08-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

I want to let you in on a dirty little secret: I actually enjoy being a stay-at-home-mom.

There, I said it.

I have two beautiful children, who are actually fairly well-behaved, despite my protestations here. I can wake up as slowly as I want and wander around in pajamas all morning if I want to. Granted, the longer we stay in the house, the more likely the children are to poke each others' eyes out with the leftover chopsticks from last night's dinner, but I decide to whether that storm if I want. I don't answer to anyone except myself--oh, and Lance, but he doesn't really count.

I can pack up the car and head down to the beach, 70% of the year. Or go to any of the hundreds of playgrounds within driving distance. Or go for a walk in our quiet, safe neighborhood, where we know many of the children playing outside. I can spend an hour browsing through recipes on the internet, and then make a fantastic (or not) dinner for Lance, something I enjoy immensely, and call it work.

Best of all, I get kisses and hugs and I love yous all day long. I get songs sung off key and wildly imaginative explanations and giggles and tickles. I get to be the one who knows how to comfort, how to discipline, how to settle a fight. The older the kids get, the more satisfying this job is becoming. I actually feel good at it*, and that's a feeling that's been missing lately.

Yes, some days are pure drudgery. Yes, some days the last thing I want to do is figure out dinner, lug the kids to the grocery store and then cook. Some days the kids work my every last nerve and I would happily pay Starbucks if they would let me work the counter.

But most of the time, it's pretty fucking awesome. Now that Vivian is in school 3 mornings a week, I'm feeling even more enamored of my job, but I find that this is making me a little uncomfortable. Why? I guess because I feel like I should hate it more. I feel like it's my job as a feminist to keep working, and yet, here I am, secretly thrilled that I'm not. Also, there's the guilt: not everyone has this option, and part of me worries if I really deserve it. Definitely, if I admit to Lance that I like what I'm doing right now, that would upset the delicate balance of our relationship. ("My job is just as hard as yours" being my current mantra.) Finally, let's not forget just how unfashionable it is to like this kind of work. How many times have you heard someone complain about mothers because they can only talk about poopy diapers? There is far greater value, these days, in saying, "I am too intellectual/unique/ complex/insert your favorite adjective here to get joy solely from my children" than there is in this: "I love being a mom!"

Thing is, I am truly, madly, deeply in love with my children. I feel blessed to the depths of my agnostic soul at least once every single day that I get to share this time with them. I don't want to go back to work. I would happily do this, this mothering of a 3-1/2 year old and a 2 year old, for the rest of my life. It's that good. And I'm tired of keeping the joy to myself.

* Truth: as I'm writing about how good of a mother I am, both my children cry in their beds, refusing to nap. It's all relative, darlin'.

Things are gearing up around here

2006-08-29T09:16:00.001-07:00

I think I've mentioned our remodel before, right? Well, we are moving out of this 1950s Californian bungalow in a few weeks to let the work begin, and hopefully by early next summer we can move back in to a 21st century contemporary--or is it modern?--2 story home. No, I have not found us a place to live in the duration yet, though we do have 3 appointments on Thursday.

Here's the rub: we are going to Hawaii with Lance's parents (I know, I know: we are spoiled, spoiled people) from September 19th to September 30th. Construction will likely start October 1st. That leaves me just about three weeks to find a place to live, divide this house into three piles: garage sale, storage, & temporary rental, and pack it all up. In other bad-timing news, guess who's pre-school is closed this week?

But. I'm not really complaining, though I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised if I did. After all, we're going to Hawaii (and the nasty brother-in-law is not coming, thank you Lord Jesus, praise be to God etc. etc.) and I'm getting a bigger, better house out of the deal. Pretty fucking exciting, no matter how much work it is. Yes, the financial strain is terrifying, but I'm keeping my eyes on the prize, as they say, and hoping for the best.

Here some photos for your viewing pleasure.

Current abode:

What the new house will look like:

(Actually, this rendering was our original plan that turned out to be WAY TOO EXPENSIVE, so imagine this house but smaller, without that "two-story volume" thing. The tower thing, you see what I mean? Oh, and we do keep the tree, evening though it doesn't show up in the picture)

Whaddya think? I know many people have issues with modern (you should hear my mother-in-law's suBtle hints), but to us it's different and elegant and, well, cool.

Best of all, it will have insulation!

Most importantly, thank you for all your kind comments and emails regarding my post at the Basement. It helps, tremendously. And it means a lot to me.

I just would like to know

2006-08-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Where in my job description it says: "remove maggot infestation from trash cans".

Because I really didn't see that one coming. I would have taken a picture so you could appreciate the true horror, but I couldn't aim the camera without hurling.

Also? Clearly, Lance is not the better spouse, since his last merry words to me, as he skipped off to work this morning, were "Have fun with the maggots!" Not to mention, he spent the whole day Saturday (as in 6:30am until naptime) surfing and called this fair trade for the 3 hours I spent out with the girls Friday night.

Post Script: Probably not a good idea to ask your wife, while you are eating a dinner of fried rice, "So, how'd it go with the maggots today?"

True story.

Hair

2006-08-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Isaac hates getting his haircut. Really, really hates it. He screams, he wails, he begs to be anywhere but in that chair. Even the promise of a lollipop, or a showing of Bob the Builder, or a million dollars, doesn't calm him down. We have tried the various kid's places with little success. He screams and whips his head around like he's having a seizure, I try to hold him still and keep his hands out of the way of the scissors, we leave 10 minutes later with an uneven cut and a store full of toddlers staring at us in awe. My mother-in-law has tried, with limited success. (I'm not sure what she does, as I haven't been there for a cutting. But he returns to us with uneven hair, and many tales about the hair cut.) All other hair treatments have been at home, with Lance as the barber and me as the strait jacket, briber, pleader & distracter. Never much success there either.

I should note here that Isaac was born with a full head of hair. His first haircut, at 3 months*, went off without a hitch. But the next one, at 7 months, was a complete nightmare, and they haven't gotten any easier since then.

Consequently, we often let Isaac's hair grow to be fairly shaggy, and then when we do cut it, try to cut off as much as possible, just to prolong time between cuts. We've been talking up the "buzz cut" to him for a few months, hoping that he's getting old enough so that the clippers won't scare him so much and we can actually shave his head. He got a little excited about the idea, too, especially since one of the kids in school (after an unsupervised incident with scissors) arrived with no hair one day.

This weekend, we all trooped off to the barbershop, where Lance gets his hair cut. Oh, the excitement! "What a big boy! Just like Daddy! And your friend Leo! And you will get a lollipop if you can be good!"

No dice. As soon as we got him near the chair he started screaming. But. The barber seemed to know just what to say. Lance was able to sit in the chair, with Isaac on the stool in his lap. The barber calmed him down just enough so that he stopped screaming and hiding his head in Lance's chest. He wasn't able to get the clippers near him, but he got the hair pretty damn short, just using scissors.

I have to say I was much more impressed with Lance's barber, Tel, than I ever have been by those kids places. No TV on or balloons, and yet this guy was able to do a better job than anybody else in the last 3-1/2 years.

What do you think?

Before:

After:

*Also, I have to admit this: when Isaac was about 6 months old we met another mother, who had older boys. She told a story of her youngest son, who, until he was 3 years old, would get so upset about hair cuts that he would actually vomit. At the time, I thought to myself, "how ridiculous. Why would anyone be afraid of a haircut?" Ha ha ha. You see, how the universe makes sure to beat me down for any superior thought, ever?

Further evidence that Lance is the better spouse (not that you needed any)

2006-08-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

Actual text from email conversation.

Friend K to Amy: "Drinks or dinner? Anyone? Impromptu girls night? Shout out if you're in."

Amy to Lance: "Can you watch the kids?"

Lance to Amy: "This Friday? Are you crazy??? You think you can just tell me on a Wednesday you're gonna be out and leaving me with the kids on a Friday night?????
:) Yes, honey, of course. Have fun. Get drunk. Raise your skirt.
Party Hearty."

Brilliant, isn't he? In two paragraphs he manages to expose me for the nagging bitch I am while simaltaneously describing himself as the magnanimous giving partner.

Now you're all nodding your heads, thinking to yourself, "Of course. They are going to therapy for Lance's sake. Poor man. "

But I'm on to him.

(And--yay!--I'm going out tonight with grown-ups!)

Tip #4

2006-08-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

If you are making candied walnuts and have the sugar in the pan over low heat, as the recipe directs, but after what seems like a very long time the sugar is not melting, do not turn up the heat and then pop into the office to check blogs "for a second".

Billowing black smoke all over the house and bubbly black tar in the pan will not taste good in your salad.

The smoke detector at my neighbor's house went off, and while I can't be sure that the blackened sugar was the cause, I have a feeling.

___________________________________________________________________
(Imagine a segue here)

It is possible (and I know this will come as a shock to you) that my last post may have been a wee bit dramatic.

Thing is, therapy is hard. I don't like talking about myself, I don't like hearing all the things that I'm doing wrong, I don't like having to adjust to Lance's "style" of communicating, I don't like feeling judged. So perhaps I am projecting some of my discomfort onto Dr. Bite Me.

Actually, the funny (yeah, it's a laugh riot, Amy) thing is this: Lance and I have actually been getting along much better lately. Some of that has to do with the fact that Vivian is in school and this gives me the freedom to take a shit when I want for the first time in 3-1/2 years. Some of that has to do with the little attitude adjustment* I gave myself a few weeks ago. Some of it (maybe) has to do with therapy.

I'm not entirely sure that Dr. Bite Me is the perfect counselor, but Lance seems to like him, and I am lazy, and also that "make do with what you have and don't complain" upbringing dies hard, so we'll probably stick with him.

*Can't tell, can you?

Marriage Counseling: Session Two

2006-08-22T19:24:00.000-07:00

Annoying: that Lance has been positively gleeful all week, looking forward to our next meeting with Dr. Bite Me .

Annoying: that Dr. Bite Me drones on and on and on past our allotted time, making me late to pick up the kids from pre-school.

More Annoying: that whenever we go see Dr. Bite Me I am so nervous (hate the talking about myself, doncha know) that I am absolutely rank with pit stank by the time we leave.

Most Annoying: that even though this visit went decidedly more in my favor I still left feeling vaguely violated, like someone had given me a pelvic exam in my sleep.

If you're wondering where I am

2006-08-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Just read this.

Vivian has been in pre-school, 3 mornings a week for the last two weeks, and I am still not getting anything done, because I keep getting sucked into the blogging vortex.

Be back soon-ish.

Tragic Fantasies

2006-08-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager, I went to a boarding school in Connecticut. (And yes, most of the students and teachers there dressed and acted exactly like this). For school vacations, I would take the 5 hour train ride from Hartford, CT to Wilmington, DE. Most of the other students lived in the NYC suburbs--Rye, NY; Greenwich, CT; Short Hills, NJ. Some of them also took the train, but their ride was only a few hours, with the vast majority of them alighting in Grand Central Station or Newark's Penn Station. For the last few hours of the ride, it was usually just me and the other business commuters and random grandmotherly travelers.

Left to my own devices, I often made up stories in my head about who I was and where I was going. I look young now, and as a 15 year old I looked no older than 12, so often times I would get looks from the other passengers, wondering why a kid was on the train all alone. I ate this up. I'd put on a sad face and pretend that I was running away from home, sighing loudly and looking dejectedly through an empty wallet, then rooting around in my backpack for some crumbs. Every now and then, a fellow passenger would take pity on me, and offer me a snack, or, and this was what I hoped for every time, ask me where I was going.

Sometimes I told them that I was going to visit a sick and/or dying grandparent. Or that my parents were divorced and I was on my way to see my dad, who I hadn't seen in years. Or that I'd been expelled from school because the school bully had blamed me for the broken stained glass in the Chapel, and the teachers had believed him.

Always, the story I told was a sad one. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure why it gave me such a thrill to imagine myself in such dire circumstances. Even if none of the other passengers asked, I still made up the stories in my head and played them out, so that when I finally got off the train in Wilmington, I'd be dejectedly lugging my bag behind me with the weight of the world on my shoulders. Once while I was waiting there for my parents, a cabbie said to me "What's wrong, little girl? You look like you lost your best friend! Do you need a ride?" How I wished I could have jumped in his cab and told the story of the tragic death of my best friend by freak accident, but at that moment my dad drove up in his Honda, so the jig was up.

Those train rides weren't the first time I imagined myself as the tragic-heroine in a poorly written after school special. When I was seven or eight, my mom would often hand me half her list at the grocery store, trying to shorten the shopping trip. I loved wandering the aisles "alone", reading my grocery list importantly, and I always pretended I was the older sister to 4 or 5 little ones, that my single mother was working two jobs and so I had to buy the groceries and make the dinner. Or I imagined that my widowed father was ill--dying of cancer, most likely--at home in bed, and so I had to walk to the store and buy the chicken noodle soup that would heal him. I even went so far as to visibly add up the prices of the sundries I was buying, so the other shoppers would see how I was struggling, and how I was valiantly fighting the odds. And of course I avoided my mother at all costs.

In 5th grade, my parents were able to move me from the local public school to the private school in our neighborhood. Our house was about 6 blocks away. For awhile, every day after school, instead of walking home, I'd scrounge up 60 cents and walk over to the city bus stop, where I'd put on my sad face again, and imagine myself as a scholarship student who lived in the projects downtown, but rode the bus to the snooty school every day in an effort to "break the cycle" of poverty. Of course, when I got off the bus 3 stops later, still in the leafy suburban neighborhood and nowhere near the projects, the fantasy dissolved, even though I tried a couple times to act like I was getting off there because I had a job cleaning the rich peoples' houses, or babysitting their kids.

I'd forgotten all about this old habit of mine, until Monday, when I had an appointment to look at an apartment not far from here. We are planning a huge remodel on our house, and need to move out for at least 6 months. I've been unsuccessfully searching for our new place in my "free" time now that Vivian is in pre-school 3 mornings a week. I try to see the places when I don't have the kids with me, but Monday I had no choice but to bring them. The apartment ended up being in a part of town that I'm not too familiar with. Okay neighborhood, but not great. The apartment building itself looked fairly run down, and as we drove up I thought, "Hmm, this is probably a little too ghetto for Lance". Still, I parked the car and decided to give it a chance. The apartment manager was a very nice, slight, graying gentleman, pleasant and accommodating as he showed us all around. As we were walking through the complex, looking at the pool and the laundry room, I got the feeling that he was regarding me and the kids with some kind of sympathy. And then, in that place between subconscious and conscious thought, I realized that I was making up a story in my head again. I had become a single-mother, toting my two young children around, trying to make a fresh start after a disastrous first marriage. And when, at the end of the tour, he asked me if I needed one or two applications, explaining that each person over 18 had to fill out their own, I felt a little deflated, having to admit that I needed two.

Cosmic Re-balance

2006-08-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I took the kids to the playground. While we were there, some fighting and screaming and not-sharing occurred, which forced me to separate the kids and institute a no-playing-on-the-tire-swing-if-you-can't- play-nicely-rule. I remained calm during the screaming fest, and meted out punishments swiftly and compassionately, and--miracles of miracles--the fighting ceased. Eventually, we had to abandon the tire-swing, since the fighting resumed and I needed to stick to my rules, but we got over this hump with minimal sniffles and managed to have some fun on the jungle gym instead.

As we were leaving--well, no, actually, this also happened during our stay--I glanced surreptitiously around at the other mothers to see if they noticed how well I was handling my kids. I did. I admit it. I wanted to be sure I had witnesses, I wanted some kudos, I wanted everyone else there to be impressed. And I presumed, in my head, that they were. I imagined them thinking things like, "wow, her kids are really well behaved!, and "she was completely consistent there and didn't back down!" and also "I wish I had her legs".

Kind of makes you cringe, doesn't it? First of all, what a fucking smug condescending bitch, even if it was only in my head! Secondly, and most importantly, did I not know the Mommy law of averages?? It is no secret that for every good moment you have with your kids you will have an opposite and (un)equal number of bad days. But I didn't cringe. I didn't consider the whole pride-cometh-before-the-fall-thing, not even once. (You would think that the newness of this kind of thought (good parenting? me?) would have tipped me off, but, well, it is me, after all. Self-awareness is not my strong suit.)

And so, we left the park, hopping jauntily into our luxury SUV, smiling all the way (I'm barfing here too, don't worry) and . . . headed straight into hell.

You read about the grocery visit, which occurred that same afternoon. But before that happened I decided to take the kids to Starbucks to meet Melissa. I know! Only an idiot takes a 3-1/2 year old and a 2 year old into Starbucks and expects to have a relaxing conversation with another adult! What can I say, I was still flying high on my superior mothering experience from the park.

You know what happened. The kids were good for approximately 3 minutes, long enough for me to order my drink but not long enough for me to get it. By the time Melissa arrived they had alienated all of the customers with their ear-piercing screams (Vivian's new trick: it's awesome) and bossy snatching and refusal to share (one of Isaac's old and numerous tricks: also awesome). Melissa and I stayed and chatted for a quick 15 minutes or so, while the kids yelled at decibel levels only appropriate during air shows and I ineffectually tried to quiet them by threatening to leave about 12 times. I fully expected one of the other patrons to stand up and say, "Lady, you keep threatening to leave but then you never do. Take those kids and get out of here!" It would have been fully within their rights to do so, and it only says good things about those patrons that they didn't. I have a feeling, however, that they headed over to Blogging Baby to vent their frustrations before we had left the building.

Sigh. Melissa was adorable, though. Very forgiving of the two cretins--she even had toys to hand out!--and just exactly like I expected her to be. I know I keep telling you what to read, and god knows you don't want to take advice from me (I can't even keep my kids under control for 15 minutes at Starbucks!), but still. Go read her blog, if you don't already.

Well. The Starbucks visit from hell was followed by the pooping extravaganza, no naps, and the grocery store debacle. Okay, I thought. Universe, you smacked me down good. I have learned my lesson. No more condescending thoughts! I promise!

Today, we went back to the same park (what can I say, I'm a glutton for punishment). Again, the tire swing proved to be a very large point of contention, even though I had made it a point to discuss the tire swing and the behavior required to be allowed to play on the tire swing before we got there. I got down on their level, I was calm and understanding but firm, etc. etc. etc. Minute three into our park stay, a fight ensued over who was going to ride the tire swing. I got up and explained the rules again, calmly. Two minutes later, another fight. I got up and explained again, following the explanation with a warning: one more fight and we were going home. Thirty seconds later, a fight. Then began the real fun: trying to corral a sobbing and hysterical 3-year-old into the car about 100 yards away without leaving the also sobbing 2-year-old by herself for too long. Three trips later (one for the older kid, one for the younger kid, and one for my Chai Tea Latte and two pairs of sandals) I had both kids (still screaming) in the car. You can bet I wasn't looking around today to see which mothers were admiring my skills. In fact, I kept my eyes down at all times, afraid to even make eye-contact, lest one of them be laughing in my face.

I am shamed. I am humble. Please forgive me, O Creative Power of the Universe. Surely, the scales can tip back in my favor soon?

*Update: (shhh!) we did just have a particularly good afternoon, including a quick trip to the grocery store AND a meal at Rubio's. (Where, I need to add, the clerk was obviously a mom since she included two cups and two bowls of rice with the one kids' meal that I bought, and she remembered to skip the toy and the churro. Bless her.)

I thank you, O Creative Power of the Universe. I genuflect in front of you, for as long as you wish.

Quick Public Announcement

2006-08-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

Did you cry last week, when you read the editor's note at the end of Catherine Newman's post at Babycenter? You know, the one that says she won't be writing there anymore? I did.

I have read Bringing Up Ben and Birdy since before Birdy was born. In fact, it's the first "blog" I ever read, and it was through reading it that I found Psycho Kitty, and through her that I found all of you, and thus began my own blog.

When I think about it, without Catherine Newman, my life would be very different. As much as I insist that blogging, for me, is "just an outlet", or "just a community", it is also true that those two things are incredibly important to me and my sanity. While I have no desire to make money from the blog, or become published because of the blog, I still rely on it to lift my spirits every day. It's a really big part of my life.

So thank you, Catherine, for sharing your life in such a beautiful and inspiring way for the last 3 years. Thank you for introducing me to this world of people that would become such wonderful friends.

And thank you for not going away entirely. Her new column can be found here. And look! She has a "real" blog now, too.

It's all good.

2006-08-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

You know when you have to run to the store with the kids to get dinner, and you're already annoyed because 1. neither one took a nap today, and 2. your 3-1/2 year old who has not had an accident in 6 months pooped in his underwear before lunch and then again in his pull-up during his non-existent nap, not to mention the 2 year old for some reason has been pooping 3 times a day for the last forever, and then you go to the store and it's really crowded so there aren't any two-kid carts, which means the 3-1/2 year old has to walk along side you, which really means he runs all over the store pulling shit from the shelves and running into people and NOT LISTENING TO YOU, and when you finally get all the things you need and get in line the person in front of you (elderly, but not old) decides to write a check instead of using her check card and of course she doesn't even bother to get the checkbook out until all of her groceries are rung up and while she is ever-so-fucking-slowly writing out the numbers both kids are pulling the Slim Jims out of the container and whacking each other over the head and also begging for some Altoids and look mom there is a Nemo balloon and I must have a Nemo balloon, and you think you might actually, physically "blow your top" if you don't get out of the line and as you are watching the elderly, but not old, biddy in front of you slowly rip the check out of her book and hand it over to the check-out lady and then root around in her wallet for her id, you imagine for a minute what it would be like to reach over and grab the ball point pen from her hand and shove it deep into your own eye socket in the hopes that you will 1. pass out from the pain. or 2. die right there on the spot?

Do you know?

And then as you are walking out to the car you see a small, blonde, twenty-something breeze over to her convertible with her grocery bag of Honey Nut Cheerios and beer which causes you to actually tear up as you scream at the 3-1/2 year old to HOLD ONTO THE CART WE ARE IN A PARKING LOT AND IF YOU DON'T WATCH OUT A CAR WILL HIT YOU because once upon a time you were that girl and now you feel more sorry for yourself than usual (and this is saying a lot, actually).

But then once you finally get all the damn groceries in the sweltering car and both kids strapped into the carseats and the windows down and the AC on to give you a break from the heat, then the Curious George cd comes on (again), but by some miracle the kids are now quiet in the back and the cd is actually kind of soothing and so by the time you get home you are feeling so much better that when you pull into the driveway and turn off the car and then turn around to look at the hellions who have conspired to put you out of your ever-loving mind all day, all you can see is their blue blue eyes and their sweet sweet smiles, and so instead of marching them immediately to their room so you can have some peace you say, "Hey, beautiful children. I love you".

And they both say, in unison: "I love you too, Mommy."

These are the people that will attend my high school reunion.

2006-08-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not kidding, either.

Via my new best friend, Jen.

Marriage counseling: Session One

2006-08-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's get this out of the way: Lance totally won today.

Lance! Lance won! How is that possible? I was so sure that we'd be leaving our session today with the counselor sympathetically patting my shoulder and commiserating about what a tough road I have to hoe (road to hoe? is that right? what does that even mean?*) with Lance as my husband.

Instead, I got this: "Well, Amy, I'm not saying you shouldn't be annoyed. You can be annoyed. But you should also be aware that in this way, you are actually trying to control what he's saying." ME? Control LANCE? WTF? It is my contention that Lance is the control freak in our relationship!

Fucking quack.

I feel compelled to add this, though: Even while he was ever so (NOT) gently calling me a controlling bitch, he admitted that I was "clinically correct." Ha! As in, "actually, it's true that you are clinically correct, that his way of communicating here is not entirely honest and that we may have to take a bit longer to get to the meat of what he is saying, but that's his style, and that's okay. He's not changing his style, even though you have indicated your annoyance with it three different times in this session."

I'm giving myself a point or two for that, I don't care what anybody says. I was clinically correct! That means I am smart! And that's all I need to know.

*Wait! Now I get it: Row to hoe! You know, like the farmers, hoeing their rows. (it's starting to sound dirty now, isn't it?)

BlogHer, the necessary gushing post

2006-08-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

Note: I would upload my pictures to Flickr or post them here, but my mother-in-law checks out my flickr page, and she has no idea about the blog and so--it ain't gonna happen. Fortunately, I'm too much of a dork to take many pictures anyway, so you're only missing a few.

First of all, if you ever go to BlogHer, you need to room with Yvonne. Period. There is just no other way to experience it. Yvonne is fucking hilarious, (which you know, because you read her blog--right? You NEED to be reading her blog!), but also totally sweet and considerate. She knew I was a "bit" nervous about the whole meeting-700-women-for-the-first-time-in-a-new- environment-thing, so she kept checking in with me, to make sure I wasn't curled up in a fetal ball under a table somewhere. Fortunately, most people were so kind and funny that I actually DID do okay (the fetal ball came later--two bottles of wine in 3 hours later). I never would have attended BlogHer without Yvonne's insistence, and I definitely wouldn't have enjoyed myself as much without her presence. I'm so glad we've gotten to know each other over the past year or so and been able to hang out and talk (on the phone! I know!) and swap stories and be friends. Everyone at BlogHer wanted to meet Yvonne, because she's awesome, and so is her blog, and it felt great that she was the person I knew best at the whole event.

So. Yvonne was awesome, but I already knew that. Guess who else is awesome? (Again, this will come as no surprise.) NANCY! I love her! I've been reading her blog for months now--in fact, I think it is through Nancy that I fell into that whole IzzyMom--Her Bad Mother--Motherhood Uncensored circle, and I'm so glad I did, because my other circles were not there (more on that later). Back to Nancy. Nancy is completely adorable. She completely understood my neuroses (all of them) and was more than willing to sit down and chat with me for hours on end, when everybody else had other places to be. Whenever I felt overwhelmed or lonely or scared, I could search the room for Nancy, and as soon as I found her, I knew it would be okay. I felt totally comfortable going up to her and asking if I could sit with her--she was the most welcoming person there, to me, and I am truly grateful. Best part about it? I didn't feel like she was doing me any favors. I felt like she wanted to sit and talk to me, and that was a very welcome feeling for this nervous introvert. I'm sure all of you are already reading her blog, but if you haven't clicked over yet, please do it now. She is hilarious and smart--a unique combination!--and you won't be disappointed.

I'm not going to go on and on about the other women--you've been reading about them all day elsewhere in the Blogosphere today anyway. Just rest assured that I LOVED meeting Izzy (gorgeous!), Christina (who also took the time to check in with me every now and then--how sweet is that?), HBM, Kristen, Liz, Mommy Off the Record (who only showed up for the last night so we didn't get to talk enough, no fair!), Jennster (even MORE animated in real life than on her blog, and you didn't think that was possible, did you?), Becky, Lena, Tammy (totally beautiful in real life--not to mention, she sat through kid stories with incredible grace), Zoot, Mindy, Dutch, Wood & Juniper (I only shook hands with them, but what an adorable family), and so on and so on and so on. (Seriously, I'm getting carpal tunnel from all the linking, I just can't do it anymore.)

But. The best part about BlogHer? Meeting some new cool peeps! I hadn't anticipated that, for some reason, and was pleasantly surprised by the kindness of strangers, so to speak. First of all, my new best friend is Jen. Maybe you already know her. Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. Then there was Roo: gorgeous and kind and friendly all at once. Elizabeth from Table for Five was incredibly welcoming and fun, and it felt like I'd known her forever. Sue from RedStapler kept quietly cracking me up. We'd just be sitting there, and someone would say something, and then she'd make a joke, completely without ceremony. I loved it. Nancy's friend Amy (lots of Amys, Kristens and Jens at Blogher) was sweet and edgy all at once. I also met Maria from Alembic who was fascinating. You probably know Dawn, but I didn't, and now I wonder why.

In fact, there were TONS of bloggers there I didn't know and had never heard of. Reminded me just how huge the "blogosphere" is, and what a small spec I occupy. The worst thing about blogHer was the fact that my first loves--you awesome ladies who kept me company way back in the beginning and still mean so much to me--were not there. I loved meeting new people and meeting some of the folks on my blogroll, but honestly, I really, really missed the rest of you.

Seriously. The linkage on this post is going to kill me. But I do have to mention one more--and it's a bit of a name drop, though I really wish it wasn't.

Saturday night, both Yvonne and I were feeling faintly puckish (can't imagine why), and the food at the cocktail party did not look exactly welcoming. We loaded up our plates with congealed- cheese-covered-potato skins anyway, but when we ran into Beth, and she suggested we leave the hotel and get some real food, we jumped at the chance. I knew who Beth was--way back when I first started blogging I had stumbled onto her blog from a Dooce link--but I hadn't read her in a while. I am not sure why I stopped, but I think it was just one of those things--I didn't know how to use my blogrolling account very well yet and forgot to link her or maybe I thought that, as a friend of Dooce's, she sure as shit wouldn't need or want any new readers. In any event, Beth and Yvonne know each other through blogging, and so there I was, out to dinner with two "celebrities". (That is the part I hate, and which I'll write about later. Who the fuck cares if you are a blog "celebrity"? Why do I feel like people are going to roll their eyes at me and call me a kiss-ass just because I went out to dinner with them? Hate it.) Beth is completely engaging and totally refreshing. I can't tell you how nice it was to be out to dinner with the two of them, away from all the social politics at BlogHer, away from people running up and gushing over them whilst ignoring me. Nice to feel like both Beth and Yvonne respected me and wanted to hang out with me, and didn't give one rat's ass if my blog gets 10 hits or 10,000 hits a day. (And you all know it's 10,000, right?) Thanks, Beth and Yvonne, for proving to me how easy it is to be genuine and kind, even if you have a "big" blog.

And that is what I did at BlogHer. What I didn't do? Attend ANY of the conference classes, even though Trish was kind enough to sign her pass over into my name since she couldn't come at the last minute. I couldn't find the motivation to attend, and was much happier hanging out at the pool with Nancy, and Jen, and Tammy etc. (Well, okay, also Saturday morning I was puking up foam, so classes seemed less then appealing.)

All you need to know about BlogHer

2006-08-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

This man carded me. HE ASKED FOR MY ID. I fell in love with him immediately, and I blame that for the fact that I somehow found myself puking into the toilet and passing out by 9pm on Friday night. Woo Hoo! I am the life of the party!

Actually, the more I think about it, I'm quite sure that I simply got a bad shrimp, and had a bad case of food poisoning. Maybe I should look into suing the hotel. I mean, sure, nobody else got food poisoning, but maybe none of the other 400 women in attendence Friday night ate the shrimp. Maybe there just happened to be only one bad shrimp, and I was the unlucky one to consume it. I can't imagine the hours of vomiting and moaning had anything to do with the fact that I drank 3 beers and the equivalent of one bottle of wine in 3 hours. (Social anxiety plus free wine = drunk Amy.)

By the way, if Yvonne told you on Saturday morning that she was really worried about me because I was "frothing at the mouth", it wasn't really true. I mean, there was a moment when I thought "well, puking up foam is better than puking up eggrolls" but that's all. You know Y, she's such an exaggerator!

Aftermath

2006-07-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

BlogHer was fun, and weird, and everything I expected in good ways and bad. I have a couple posts brewing in my brain, but in the meantime, I leave you with this photo, and a question:
Does anyone know who these beautiful women are??

I had an awesome conversation with them Friday evening but I (cough, cough) can't seem to recall their names, and definitely not their blog urls. I do know this: they did not have business cards (you know, with all their bloggy info), and neither did I, and we all three of us thought that made us extra special in a very hip, un-BlogHer way. (We don't need no stinkin' cards! We are too cool for that!) Um, except now I may never find them again.

Damn you bloggers and your silly ideas that prove to be practical in the long run.

Oh, here's another photo, so you know what I'm talking about:

Update: Ha ha ha--that IS Chase from Taste the world, and guess what? She totally gave me her card. It's even in the picture I took last night--the picture of all the bloggy businessy cards that I thought we were talking about not having. Apparently that was a conversation with another blogger? Or perhaps I misunderstood when she handed me her card? Maybe I thought she was just giving me her autograph. It is possible, just possible, that I had a wee bit too much to drink Friday night. Maybe.

Gray Matters

2006-07-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

It is crazy busy here in POW-land. I never have a second to sit down at the computer anymore, and when I do, I have to work on a project for my dad (beyond boring, but it pays a teensy amount). I've been trying to catch up on all of your posts but--my god! It's like the black hole of blogging: I start with one post--and even if I don't click through from bloglines--when I look up, it's been an hour, and I'm still only halfway through my feeds. Never mind trying to find time to type out all the pretty pretty posts knocking about in my noggin.

We have a playdate this afternoon. This is big news, as I typically do not attend these types of things. Not because I'm a snob, but because I don't have many mom friends, and I'm too shy to suggest anything like it to the other moms at pre-school. In any event, one of the other moms suggested it to me, and we're going, this afternoon. We'll see how it goes.

I am getting more and more excited about BlogHer. I'm still a little nervous, but not like I was. After all, as Y reminded me: we're not in high school anymore. Of course it would be nice if everyone liked me, but I've lived long enough to know this is not a probability. Despite my winning personality and compassionate heart, some people refuse to jump on the Amy love-wagon. But there will be plenty of good people to keep me company, and if it gets all clique-y and ass-kissy, I can always just hang with Y. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass who is a "popular" blogger and who is not, I just want to drink a few beers and laugh a lot.

There is no food in the house. Do you think it's fair to leave it this way for Lance over the weekend? Or should I go tomorrow and buy the appropriate kid food so he won't have to shop with both kids? I'm tempted to leave it, but that wouldn't be very wifely of me, now would it? Hmm.

Since we have no food in the house, I promised the kids a trip to Taco Bell for lunch, if they behaved at Target. Go ahead, guess what happened. I was looking forward to some Nachos Supreme but instead had to come home to this hotbox of a house and cook up some nuggets for the kids and mac and cheese (from the blue box) for me. Yum. Good for my diet, too! (Yeah, yeah, I know. Nachos Supreme aren't that good for the diet either. Whatever.) My children are a joy. I tell you, an absolute joy.

We have lived in this house for 5 years. In those 5 years, there have been 24 days where I wished we had air-conditioning. 14 of those 24 days? In the last 2 weeks. It's fucking hot. As a result, we try to leave the house even more than usual, leaving me less time at the computer. I wish to God I had an office job where I could sit in nice air-conditioning and surf blogs to my heart's content. But I'd only have to go in when I wanted to. And I wouldn't have any responsibilities, unless it was something fun.

Who needs a 4300 square foot house? I'm just curious, since they built one around the block from me, and now they are trying to sell it for over 2.1 million dollars. Don't forget, we live two football fields away from a municipal airport, in a sub-par school district. And yet: a 2 million dollar mansion. I don't get it. I went to look at it, out of curiosity, and it's pretty enough. But--unless you have 4 kids, why do you need 4 bedrooms, each with their own walk-in closet and bathroom? Just seems odd to me, to spend 2 million dollars to live in my neighborhood. Then again, the little shit houses like mine are still selling for 1 million, and that house should be worth WAY more than double what mine is. So maybe it's a steal.

Guess what? Heidi came through for me again, as usual. Last night, we were out at a birthday party, but she dropped off a pair of jeans. Can I tell you how awesome they are? Mid-rise, so no muffin top! Long leg, so they make me look tall! Free, so . . .Free! Best of all, I didn't have to go to the mall. Lucky brand, but I can't seem to find a style name, just this number: 81LZ061. I may bring them to Blogher, although the thought of wearing jeans in this heat is making me itch.

Have a great weekend everybody!!

BlogHer Manifesto

2006-07-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so that last post was just a tad bit too pathetic, even for me. Here is what I'm going to do:

I am going to BlogHer. I am going to be scared. I am going to feel inadequate and inconsequential and totally out of my league. But I am going to push on through and force myself to have a decent time anyway. I am going to meet tons of women, whose blogs I admire tremendously; I am going to drink large vessels of beer; I am going to laugh nervously and maybe genuinely. I am going to figure out something to say, at some point, that will make sense. I am going to have a weekend away, without the kids, and I am going to do my best to enjoy myself.

Are you with me?

BlogHer: my own personal BlogHell?

2006-07-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, so everyone knows that BlogHer is coming up in, oh, 8 days or something. (!. !!!) You may not know that I am attending. I haven't mentioned it much, mostly because I have been dreading it and trying desperately to think of ways to get out of it. I knew if I admitted here that I'd bought the ticket, you all would make me go.

I actually DO want to go, on some level. But the fear of meeting all of you is freaking me the fuck out. REALLY REALLY FREAKING ME OUT. Do you hear me freaking out? Social situations where I know nobody? My absolute worst nightmare. Unlike some of you lucky folk, who get talky with alcohol or nerves, I just clam up. Completely. To the extent that I have been known to stumble over the pronunciation of my own name. (Reminder: it's Amy. Yeah, a real tough one.)

I would never, in 6 million years, have agreed to attend BlogHer, if not for her. She kept insisting, and if you know Y, *you know how relentless she can be. How could I say no? Plus, I bought those tickets AGES ago, so it seemed somehow safe. It didn't seem like July 28th would ever arrive. (Right, because I have lots of experience with time just stopping. Oh, yeah, happens all the time.)

So the tickets are bought (but here's another thing: I was too cheap/intellectually unmotivated to buy tickets to the actual conference and only bought tickets to the cocktail parties. Which means that all of you are going to get all chummy and happy Friday during the conference and by the time the cocktail party rolls around you'll be best friends and I'll just be the dumbass in the corner not saying anything again. And you will wonder: why is that girl at this cocktail party? She's not a blogger!!) Hmm, where was I, oh yes: the tickets are bought, the flight is arranged, the husband is handling kid duty for the weekend (!!!.!!!!) and there's no way I'm getting out of it now.

So I bit the bullet. That is, I bullied Nancy from MomMa'amMe (who has a fantastic blog, by the way--but everyone knows that already) to interview me for the BlogMe thing, just so some of you people that are going might remember me, and be nice to me, and then maybe I won't shrivel up and die the minute the plane lands in San Jose.

You can go check me out, here. And, looky, here's my handy little button:

Isn't it cute?

If anybody else is going to BlogHer, or even if you're not, I'd love to interview you for the BlogMe thing. Seriously! Email me or leave a note in my comments. I think I'm technically supposed to tag people but I've never been good at following the rules, especially if they fall outside my comfort zone.

Actually, who IS going to BlogHer? Will you be my friend? Please? I promise not to say anything inappropriate (or funny. or anything at all.). But I will laugh at your jokes! Hell, all I'll be able to do is giggle: I'll be the perfect date!

*Here, something else to bring out my insecurities: I am attending BlogHer with a (gasp!) "popular blogger"! People will see me us together and say "Ohmigod, who is that with Y? She thinks she's so cool, just cuz she's with Y!! But she sucks!" And then Y will feel obligated to babysit me, which will make me feel even more like a loser and . . . (can you see why this social anxiety is a bit of a problem for me? Do you think I need help? More than what 3 beers can do? How do you maintain a 3 beer buzz over the course of a weekend without getting to the 4 beer buzz (wastoid) or sobering up (hello, social anxiety!))

Whoa. You people are smart. Really, really smart.

2006-07-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

When I wrote that first post about feeling resentful and angry in my marriage, I got a lot of comments from new people. For whatever reason (solidarity?), that post encouraged lurkers to come out and be seen for a quick minute, and I love that. Not just because I got to "meet" some more of you, but also because you had some awesome things to say. My more regular readers had incredible insight, too, and now it becomes obvious why blogging has become such a big part of my life: you help me make sense of my world. I know, I know--that sounds so fucking hokey, but I don't know what else to say, because it's true.

And it wasn't just that post. No, the revelations and support and insight continued after I wrote the second post. I hardly need counseling anymore, since I have all of you to set me straight. (Don't worry, we're still going to counseling. Lance does not reap the benefit of your brains, after all.)

So, thank you. I am completely impressed. And forever grateful.

P.S. I linked a bunch of your comments above, but I wanted to link to every single one. Seriously, everything you guys had to say helped unbelievably, and I do not mean to qualify the comments by linking some and not others.

Two

2006-07-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Vivian:

Well, it will come as no surprise that this birthday letter is a month late. I don't think I've ever been on time with one, and I'm making no plans to buck that trend. Don't take it personally, monkey, it's just that I don't have a lot of time when I can just sit quietly and think about you.

Part of the reason for that is you, of course. Remember when you were my quiet little easy baby? When you used to sit by the bookshelf and pull out book after book after book, reading them all quietly and never needing me to entertain you? Well, those days are long gone. Now, the minute I sit down at the computer you run over and grab my hand from the mouse: "No, Mommy!"; or climb up onto my lap, demanding to "look at letters"; or pester me relentlessly: "I want to go car, Mommy! Pick up Isaac? Mommy? Mommy!!". Makes it difficult to get my very important blogging done, sweetheart.

Oh, but I don't really care about that.

This is what I care about: the way you grab me about the knees, burrowing your head in, and say "I love ya, Mom," so casually. The sound of your disappointed "Oh---oh" when I've told you no, as if you are 10 years old, and not two. The way that you always, every. single. time. skip four when you are counting to twenty. The way you are, right at this minute, singing "E I E I O!!" at the top of your lungs instead of napping in your crib. The way you are giggling hysterically, when your brother (also not napping) repeats the same "song" back to you, even louder, from his perch in my bed.

Is it nice when you finally drift off?

Yes, of course. I mean, look how cute you are when you're asleep! Truth is, you are just as cute when you're awake. The last six months you have truly blossomed, Vivian. Suddenly, you are definite in your wants and you refuse to be distracted. From easy-going toddler you have morphed into incredibly independent pre-schooler. "I do it!" is your favorite sentence, and I hear it, with varying degrees of intensity, at least 300 times a day. Thing is, Vivian, those car seat buckles are made to be difficult for children under 5 to operate. You actually can't do it yourself, no matter how much you want to.

According to my mother, the independent streak comes from me, though I tend to think it is just you, rushing to keep up with your brother. So far, all of your friends are his, so they are all older than you are. You try as hard as you can to do everything they do, but sometimes it's hard. You will get there, Viv, trust me on that. Don't be in such a hurry to get somewhere else, try to enjoy what's going on right now.

In a few weeks you will be starting school with your brother, 3 mornings a week. Maybe you'll meet some girls there that will be doing things more your speed, and you won't feel like you have to keep measuring up to your brother. Or maybe you'll always feel that way; maybe that's what if feels like to be the second child. (God knows I never measured up to your aunt, but that's a whole different story.) I think school is going to be great for you, and I can't wait to see you make friends of your own.

When you were first born, Vivian, your brother was a very demanding 16 month old. I used to cry when I looked at you, because it felt so unfair to me: all of my time was spent trying to corral Isaac, and I didn't have much time for you at all. The first few months of your life I barely had time to sit down to nurse you. Even when you were awake, I left you alone, not having a second to play with you or read to you or do any of the things I did with Isaac when he was a newborn. However, now I think you've made out pretty well, because when you were 8 months old, Isaac started school. That means that for over a year now, you and I have shared 3 full mornings a week together. Granted, much of that time is spent running errands, but there have also been plenty of hours that you spent climbing all over me, tickling me and being tickled back*, playing "wubba wubba wubba"--the game you invented which involves you sitting on my knees and me "flying" you back and forth until you fall off. I have really, really enjoyed those hours with you, sweetheart, and I hope it makes up for the ones you missed as an infant.

I'm not sure how, exactly, but the fact is you are growing. You are in the 30th percentile for height and weight now, despite the fact that you refuse to eat anything that is not a carb. Or nitrates, you seem to really like those. Oh! And how could I forget the sugar?

I just keep cutting up vegetables for you and then throwing them away, hoping that one of these days you will actually get one into your digestive tract.

Oh, Viv. I just love you so. I love watching you grow up. I love watching you play with your brother. I love watching you learn how to do new things. But I admit to feeling a little bit nostalgic for your baby days, too. Don't grow up too fast, okay? You are, most likely, my last baby, and even though I complain about this mothering gig A LOT, the truth is I love it, and I don't want it to end.

Love,
Mom

*You may just be the most ticklish person on the planet, and NOTHING makes me happy than to hear your belly laugh whenever I so much as get near you with my tickling fingers.

I may act like Mimi Martyr

2006-07-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

but I actually consider myself immeasurably blessed to have these two cretins in my life.

I can't handle the truth

2006-07-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

So you know how I was bitching and moaning the other day because Lance gets to do whatever he wants and I'm just a slave taking care of every last thing? It's not really like that. Sometimes it may feel like that, but it's not actually like that.

Really, whenever Lance goes out with friends, or is gone for whatever reason in the normal "after work" hours, he makes it up to me by giving me a night off. This generally means that the next night he'll handle all the kid duties while I blog to my hearts' content in the other room. The time last week when he went out to see some stupid band for two nights in a row? He arranged for a babysitter one of those nights and called her to make sure I'd have something fun to do (we went out to dinner with Trent, which was fabulous).

As a matter of course, on the weekends and evenings after work, he takes the kids to playgrounds or to the beach or for walks, giving me needed down time. When we go out to dinner, etc, he knows what we need in the diaper bag, and he gets it together much of the time. (No, not most of the time, but still.) Usually, he makes dinner reservations for us and arranges for the babysitter. Every now and then, he comes home from work early and sends me out for a pedicure. He rarely works later than 5:30. He is always in charge of baths, is equal partners in the going to bed routine, cleans up the dishes every night, picks up toys, and so on. It is not as if he is playing video games or watching TV while I'm slaving away. (Except when he's surfing. And honestly? He hardly ever surfs anymore.)

So you see? There is really no reason for me to feel so resentful. He is doing all I can ask of him--he is doing more than many husbands I'm told, so I should feel grateful. Some days I do. But some days I still feel angry.

I emailed with Phantom a little bit after that last post, and in writing to her I think I may have stumbled onto a nugget of truth: my feelings of resentment don't feel valid, because Lance does help out so much. So instead of communicating to him that I need some more help or whatever it is, I just get bitter inside. I sigh passive-aggressively and slam things around and insist that nothing's wrong. I can't admit why I'm upset because part of me doesn't believe I have a right to be upset.

Then, I was e-mailing Mommygoth about the same thing, and I stumbled on this nugget: it is not that I feel alone in my resentment of my husband. I think that many women feel this same way (to a lesser degree, of course--most women do not, presumably, have to resort to marriage counseling, but then again, I could be wrong); I think that feeling this way is a symptom of motherhood. I honestly believe that being a mother is hard, hard work. Harder than any 9 to 5 job. I hear all the other mothers out there singing that song, and I join right in. I feel justified in my resentment. Who cares how much Lance helps, this shit is hard.

Right, the complete opposite of my previous truth. My feelings of resentment are not valid; my feelings of resentment are justified. Which is it?

Finally, I was talking to my good friend Susanna, and she reiterated to me that my feelings ARE valid. "Just look at all the comments you got on that post," she said. "Obviously you struck a chord with other moms out there," said she. She is right, of course. Just as all of you who left such inspiring, reflective comments on that post are right. It is no wonder we are all resentful. But then again, since Lance is such a stellar husband and father (isn't he?), maybe I should be able to harness that resentment a little better.

I'm not sure where all this leaves me. Except in the need of some counseling, immediatement.

Tell me something, though. How much does your partner help out? Is Lance doing more than his share? Is that even relevant to my feelings, and should it be? And if my feelings ARE justified even if Lance is doing all he can, what, exactly, am I supposed to do about them?

It's so easy, so easy

2006-07-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

The next time I am whining about how terrible my life is and woe is me, I can't get my haircut when I want to, wah wah wah--do me a favor and tell me to shut the hell up, k?

Otherwise, I might find myself in a familiar surgeon's exam room, listening to him say things like "well, yes, I think it's better if we go in and try to fix this" and "no, it's not urgent, but I'd like to do it before too long, because it's so easy* to do at this age and by the time he's four or five he'll really be resisting it".

And then I might have to beat myself about the head with the proverbial baseball bat. Your life is so hard, bitch? Take this! And this! Better the baseball bat than another fucking surgery, you see.

Anyway, enough whining from me. A new post about truth in blogging coming up, where you will see quite clearly how much of that last post was pure fucking lameness on my part. Perhaps then the surgery gods will allow this next surgery (October or November, probably) to be the last one for awhile.

*Yes, he actually said "so easy".

Have you seen . . .

2006-07-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

the pigtails??

(Very transparent excuse to move that previous post way way down--but it worked, didn't it?)

Drama

2006-07-12T17:34:00.000-07:00

First things first: the pacifier seems to be a thing of the past. It's taking Vivian a bit longer than usual to fall asleep, but that's it. I can handle an extra 20 minutes of playing around in the crib. And Isaac slept until 7 this morning and no doubt would have slept longer if his sister had not awoken at 6:45 demanding, "Up! I want to get up, Mommy! Mommy!!"

If that's your best shot, Mommy jinx, I'm all over it.

(I realize this is beyond stupid and I will pay the price later but I'm feeling especially reckless right now. )

Another thing I'm feeling right now? Confused. Confused about my relationship with Lance, confused about who I am and what I want and why I seem to be so fucking unhappy all the time, even though I'm also actually thrilled quite often too. See? Confusion.

People have been writing about motherhood, and how it can be lonely and frustrating at times. I feel it, too. And my husband bears the brunt of those feelings. I am bitter and resentful. After all, Lance gets to have his same old life except with two extra little morsels to munch on when he comes home from work. He goes to work, just like he always did, and eats lunch in nice restaurants that use cloth napkins, talks and jokes with his colleagues all day, runs around being useful and accomplishing things and getting strokes from his boss and a paycheck every two weeks. Just like before the kids, except that now he has the added bonus of Isaac and Vivian. Not to mention a slave, I mean wife, who runs all the errands and does a myriad of things that he used to do before.

Yeah, so when he comes home he has to give the kids a bath, or take them for a walk, but is that really so hard? I mean, is it? REALLY?? So hard that he needs to go skiing with his buddies for 10 days? So hard that he needs to go out with friends two nights in a row to see a band that really, really dates him?

Meanwhile, my life is completely, totally, irrevocably changed. I don't do ANYTHING without first considering the kids. And I don't mean in an Uber Mommy oh-let-me-do-that-for-you way; I mean in a two-and-three-year-olds-aren't-even-close-to-being-independent way. I don't ever go anywhere without planning. I can't get my fucking hair cut or go to the doctor without scheduling a time that Isaac is in school, and my mother in law is available to babysit, at a time when traffic won't be an issue, and a day when my doctor or the hair salon is available.

And I know these are old, tired complaints. Most of you are mothers, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know why I sometimes feel bitter or pissy. Why I wish I had some really important, high paying job so I could do that instead of be home with the kids.

The thing is, some days, it's incredible. Some days I look at my kids and they are so fucking beautiful and sweet and charming and edible and I think "I am so lucky to have this time with them." I think, "My god, what would I do without them?" Then my heart explodes into a million tiny, warm bubbles of goodness that dissipate into my bloodstream and turn my whole body into a quivering lump of ecstasy, not unlike an especially luxurious orgasm. Some days, the weather is gorgeous, and we go to the beach and the sand isn't too hot and there are enough light green shovels ("I don't want the blue one, Mommy!!!") for everybody and I get to sit there, in the sun, on a beach chair and watch my children play. I am thrilled in those moments. In all those moments of the day, I am smiling, I am grateful, I am content.

So what, exactly, am I so bitter and resentful about? Why can't I focus on the good stuff and be grateful for these two wonderful beings that have made my life six thousand times better than I ever imagined? Why do I persist in feeling bitter, and resentful, and put upon and OHMYGOD IF I HAVE TO WIPE THE SNOT OFF ONE MORE NOSE TODAY I WILL ABSOLUTELY DIE.

Obviously, as often as I have my moments of bliss with the kids, I also have days where the spilled soy yogurt is followed by the broken lamp and followed by a head-butting 3 year old and a hitting two year old and 6,547 time-outs before nine o'clock in the morning. Days where the frustration level in the house is pushing way into the red zone and my parenting skills are maybe not something I would necessarily be proud of.

Then 5:30 rolls around and Lance waltzes in and says something innocent like "What did you do today?" or "It's hot, why isn't the fan on?" and suddenly I'm in bitch mode, stalking around picking up toys and laundry or slamming open the fridgerator door muttering things like "Oh, god knows I don't have anything to do except eat chocolate and watch Oprah" loud enough for him to hear. Just like that, I'm pissed off for the next whatever--sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes an hour-- depending on when something happens to diffuse my mood, and I can't even tell what that will be until it occurs. And even as this is happening, even as I'm storming around making dinner loudly while insisting to Lance that "nothing's wrong, FORGET IT" , I can see myself doing it--it's as if I'm standing outside of my body watching, and I'm saying to myself "Don't do this, don't be such a bitch. Just let it go, let's have a good evening"--but I can't stop. All the resentments of the day, all the frustrations and the loneliness --all of it bubbles up in me and I hit Lance over the head with it, over and over, trying to make myself feel better.

Of course I love him. Just like I have the great moments with the kids, I have great moments with him, too. I don't fear for our marriage. But lately things that I used to find charming are just annoying. Lately when he offers to watch the kids so I can go out with friends I don't feel grateful. Lately, all the things he does around the house (and I know it doesn't seem like it from this post, but the truth is, he helps out a ton at home) don't endear him to me. Lately even some surprisingly good sex doesn't fix everything, not like it used to.

So, we are going to see a marriage counselor. (Of course, since I can't do anything without planning for the children (see above) we have to wait until August, when Vivian is in school (!). And making the appointment is just one more fucking thing for me to do.) Still, should be interesting, folks, and you'll be the first to hear all about it.

The one where I test the Mommy jinx

2006-07-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Two things:

1. Ever since we returned from Delaware, almost a full month ago, Isaac has been sleeping until anywhere from 7:15 to 8:00 am. You read that right. The boy who for an entire year has been unable to sleep past 5:45am on a good day, is actually sleeping in to a reasonable hour. I'm not sure what has brought about this happy event, except that he has been swimming a lot, and swimming seems to wear him out. Yeehaw.
(I won't mention here that my good sleeper, Vivian, has now decided that 7am is the latest she will sleep. Ever.)

2. At this moment, 2pm on Tuesday July 11th, Vivian is asleep in her crib without the crutch of her pacifier. She cried and whined for a little bit (10 minutes max) then took a bit longer to fall asleep than her usual 5 minute pass out routine, but that was the extent of it. We'll see what happens tonight, but if it was going to be this easy, I would have taken that thing away months ago!

Also, unrelated to the above: I am going out with some old work friends tonight. REAL LIVE FRIENDS WITHOUT BABIES!!! And we went out last night with some friends too. Two nights in a row without baby-duty is unheard of, people. Unheard of.

Conversations about God

2006-07-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

Scene: in the car.

Isaac: Are the puppets in the sky, Mom?

Me: What? Did you see something in the sky?

Isaac: See the puppeteers in the sky?

Me: What did you see, sweetie? Was it a kite?

Isaac: Is Papa T in the sky?

Me (getting it, finally): Oh! Yes, um, Papa T and Geedaddy* are both in heaven, honey. So, uh, yeah, they are in the sky looking down at us.

Vivian: They in the sky?

Me: Well, uh, yes, Vivian. They, um, died, but they are in heaven and they are looking down at us and loving us.

Isaac: They are looking at us from the sky? Are they far far away in the sky?

Me: Well, yes. Yes, they are far away. But you can always feel their presence. (Warming up to it) When someone loves you as much as Geedaddy and Papa T did, you can always feel them watching out for you, even after they die.

Vivian: You can feel der presents?

Me: Yes, you can feel how much they love you and know they will make sure you are taken care of.

Isaac: And you can open them up, too.

Me: Open them? Um . . .

Isaac: You can open up the presents in the sky. And see what they got you.

*Papa T is what Lance called his grandfather, who died a little over two years ago. Geedaddy is my grandfather, who also died two years ago.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

2006-07-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

Bullets, because otherwise I will never get around to writing this post.

1. California is really an entirely different country from Delaware. At least, it should be. Everything is different, and I'm always struck by that whenever I go home. I've been going home now for 15 years, and I'm still struck by it. The smells are different: the flowers, the trees, even the factories produce aromas that you just don't find in L.A. The light is different: in Delaware there are trees--big, leafy trees--that filter much of the sunlight, while California has smaller, thinner trees, trees that don't take up so much space, that don't offer the same kind of shade. The clouds are different, too: Delaware has the big, puffy cumulus clouds, clouds that change over the course of a day or a week. Los Angeles doesn't have clouds to speak of, not really. The enormous uninterrupted expanse of blue sky that you see in L.A. almost every single day does not exist in Delaware. Of course the climate is different--it's humid in Delaware: thick, oppressive, sweaty heat. Wet heat that moisturizes your skin and plumps up dry limp hair like mine. Not the mild, dry heat you get out here. But most of all, the people are different. People look different in Delaware. I've been trying to figure out why for as long as I've been living on the other coast. Is it the haircuts? The clothes? The Phillies caps and the Tevas? The genealogy? Definitely less Mexican, more Puerto Rican. Less Hispanic in general and more African American. More Italian, I think--only maybe it's just that there are more Southern Italians in Delaware and more Northern Italians in L.A. I don't really know how to describe this, but there is a "look" to people that I recognize the minute I get off the plane in Philadelphia, a "look" that feels as familiar to me as my mother's potato salad. Maybe it has nothing to do with genealogy and everything to do with me, and my nostalgia for home; I'm just not sure. But it fascinates me, every time I go home.

2. I love my family, all of them: my five aunts and uncles on my mother's side and their spouses and children, my two living grandmothers, my parents, my siblings, my brother-in-law, my niece and nephew. Even the 3 aunts and uncles on my fathers' side, who we rarely see, I have no issues with them. We have our typical family squabbles, but there is no high drama. However. However, I am very very glad to live 3000 miles away, and not only because I am afforded prodigal daughter status whenever I go home. Also because I have this very strong feeling that if I lived less than a mile from my parents, the way my sister does, I would not love my family nearly the same way. And they would not love me, either. My parents can be prickly; let's just leave it at that.

3. Lance and I do not get along around my parents. After 8 years of marriage and countless visits to my folks, we have not yet figured out how to appreciate each other the same way we do when we are in L.A. I'm sure part of me reverts to adolescent behavior when I'm around family, but Lance is also guilty. He feels threatened by how much I miss home and ends up acting snide and irrational when at home he'd be making jokes. Knowing that he feels threatened somehow does not translate into me toning down my "oh, I wish we had lightning bugs in California" comments but instead ratchets them up a notch. ( I've been known to complain that California doesn't have mosquitos--there's something I need to see a therapist about.) My mother loves to play "pick one child and gang up on them" games (no doubt learned in a childhood shared with 5 siblings) and Lance is thrilled to play along, especially if Amy is the victim. Lastly--and this one deserves a post of its own, but god knows when I'll get to it, since it requires retrospection and thought, something in short supply at the POW household lately--I seem to have married my father. And two controlling guys, used to having their own way, do not always mesh seamlessly. Throw in Lance's passive-aggressive tendencies and my own shrill, defensive and critical behavior and all is not always fun.

4. I'd love to talk about FFB here, but since he occasionally reads this blog (thanks again, Lance!) I guess I can't relay how annoying it is that he refuses to share his every thought and emotion with the rest of the clan. How, duh!, we all just want the best for him and why can't he just tell us what he's thinking so we can all dissect it to bits until we've solved all of his problems for him, without asking his permission. I will say that it's always, always great to have him around, and even if he doesn't feel the same way about the rest of us, we still smile bigger whenever he's in town. (Is this how it always is with the youngest? The youngest, the most loved, the one who doesn't necessarily return the love, he is the one we all want to be with? Is that why he doesn't share things with us? Because our love, our need, our want is too strong? FFB, elaborate.)

5. Isaac learned to swim. He can't lift his head to take a breath on his own yet, but he can easily swim 5 feet or more all by himself. I can't tell you how pleased I am about this, not least of all because we didn't have to attend any classes for this to happen. Vivian, of course, is not about to put her head under water, though she will blow bubbles on demand, and likes to float along the top step of the bubble yelling "Watch me! Watch me, Mommy, I swimming!!"

6. My sister lives less than a mile from my parents. (Did I mention?) Yikes. She is a saint. An occasionally opinionated, rigid, anal saint, but a saint nonetheless*. Though, she makes my niece and nephew do schoolwork during the summer. Isn't there some law against that? Shouldn't there be?

7. We spent a week at the beach in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My parents own a rental property there, and for the last 4 or 5 years, my dad has allowed us to spend time there during the season. This is huge, as for the 15 years he owned the property before that we were only allowed to stay there during the winter, when it's cold and windy and there's nothing to do. We had a great time, and Lance couldn't complain about there feeling "claustrophobic" because he's so far away from the ocean. (God.) My niece, who is 9, loved babysitting, and my kids worshipped their older cousins (my nephew is 10). This made for a sometimes relaxing vacation, which those of you with toddlers know is an oxymoron.

8. Why can't my best friend--you know, one of the ONLY close friends I have with children--live on the West Coast? Why must she persist in staying in Delaware, so that I can't run over to her house with Vivian whenever I need a distraction? Her daughter is Isaac's age, and her son is the cutest two month old you've ever seen, and now I will not see them again until Christmas. Bah.

*If my sister had a blog, I can only imagine the adjectives she might use to describe me. (Clueless? Self-absorbed? Not-very-smart?)

And now, pictures:

Vivian and her cousin Sawyer, in the matching Lilly dresses my mother snuck out and bought, careful to remove the price tag before she presented them. Wasn't I talking about grandmotherly excess just the other day?

My best friends'** kids and my kids--don't they look like they'd all be great friends? If only we lived closer . . .

Isaac, jumping off the diving board. (Hmm, maybe you didn't actually need a description here. Uh, that's my nephew, Kitchel, standing on the side. There.)

. . and swimming:

Three generations (me, my mom, her mom, my sister):

At the beach:

**Don't worry, Heidi, you are also my best friend!

In lieu of an actual post, with words and everything, I give you . . .

2006-07-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

Blisscotti.

Extremely yummy treat. Though I must confess: not good for the diet. Not good at all.

Here's what Daily Candy had to say about them.

P.S. Did I mention? Isaac has no school this week. NO SCHOOL. I'm just a little bit annoyed by that, oh and completely unable to steal a few minutes at the computer. Thank god my in-laws are out of town so we can head over to their house where there is a pool--but no computer access--today. Perhaps I'll have more for you this weekend. I know you're just DYING to hear from me. (Yeah, that vacation post is maybe still coming. I'm starting to forget where we even went for vacation though, it's been so long.)

Dirty

2006-07-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

When I was little, my grandparents lived on a farm about twenty miles from town. We spent hours there, as kids, playing in the barn, exploring the creek, chasing frogs and lightning bugs and squirrels, mucking out the stalls for the horses, and seeding, weeding and picking the numerous vegetables and fruits that grew there.

We got pretty dirty, doing that. We got scratched by thorns, and stung by bees, and bitten by ticks. We bruised our legs and got dirt under our fingernails. Splinters found their way into our arms and legs on a regular basis. Our faces were smeared with blueberry juice, dust and scabbed mosquito bites. But we loved it, every minute of it.

My siblings, my cousins and I would roam the twenty acres, building tree-forts, pretending to be Lewis and Clark, or Laura from Little House in the Prairie, creating elaborate games of hide and seek, fighting and making up and fighting some more. Then Grandma would call us in, to help Geedaddy cut the grass on one of the tractors, or to pick the berries for that night's dessert, or to snap beans by the pool.

I've been thinking about this lately, since it seems that wherever I go, people around me are afraid to get dirty. Afraid of bees, and mosquitos, and ticks. Afraid of germs and bugs and any kind of mess. Don't get me wrong, I'm older now, and it's not as if I'm out there digging in the dirt every day, but I don't have the same kind of visceral reaction to the . . .earth (because that's what it is, isn't it?) that other people seem to.

It started on vacation, when Lance discovered a tic. OH MY GOD, the freak-out that followed. It was as if an alien had latched onto his thigh, and was injecting him with some kind of high-potency cocaine. Turns out, he'd never had a tick bite before. I realize, of course, that ticks are slightly more nefarious these days, what with Lyme's disease and all, but I mean, really. It was a tick, not a skinhead wielding brass knuckles and a Swiss army knife.

Then, a mother complained at school, because when we leave, the kids love to run behind the little hedge and squeak by the Cyprus trees, which sometimes leaves old spider webs or dust on their shirts. "It's filthy back there!" she practically screamed, dragging her startled 3 year old away, while the other kids (including Vivian) giggled and pushed themselves through the "filthy" spot.

And our neighbors asked if we'd been to the carnival, and when I answered yes, seemed incredulous that we had stayed, despite the carneys' lack of teeth and the general dinginess of the rides.

That's not all. Everyday friends or acquaintances comment about dirt, relate stories of horror because they saw an ant near their food, or jump back in fright if nearby child sneezes in their general vicinity.

Childhood is meant to be dirty, that's the way I look at it. Hell, life is dirty; you can't sanitize everything.

Not to mention, who wants to live a sanitized life? You know how you get your heart broken, and you cry every day in the shower, and you don't know how you are going to keep getting up in the morning? How you call your old lover and hang up, just because you want to hear his voice? How you promise all sorts of things if he will just take you back? And then later, oh, you are so ashamed? What a mess you were! What a mess that was! That's my equivalent to the childhood practice of having your mother check your hair for ticks every summer night. It's dirty. It's messy. But it's life. And the dirty stuff--the mosquitos, the sand in your underwear, the drunk-dialing--only comes after some really good livin. (Yes, that's livin, L-I-V-I-N.)

I'm not sure if growing up the way I did has anything to do with my current tolerance for dirt, in many of its forms. It surprises me to think that other kids didn't do this kind of thing. I mean, even if you didn't have a farm to play on, any kind of child play--in a park, in the backyard, in the alley--gets you dirty, right? As kids, did we all just sit on the sidelines, afraid to get our Mary Janes scuffed?

What do you think? Are we, as a culture, just too damn obsessed with cleanliness? Or am I just an unapologetic slob?

Also, if the soles of your kids' feet are black from playing outside barefoot, is it okay to put them to bed without a bath? Just askin'.

Update: I should also add here that I am similarly blase about germs. I hate those anti-bacterial wipes. My kids get sick, and then they get well again. I don't want them growing up afraid of a cold. I don't want them afraid to touch the door knob at a public restroom (well, most public restrooms). I know I'm in the minority here, but so far, Vivian and Isaac have been sick no more or no less than your average germophobic kid. Yes, we wash hands, but that's about the extent of it.

In the spirit of full disclosure, my husband says I should admit that mice and other rodents freak me the fuck out. My tolerance level for the animal kingdom stops around spider size.

What's your thing?

2006-06-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

About a month ago my mother-in-law emailed me to see if it was alright if she bought Vivian a doll for her birthday. I'm not sure why she felt like she had to ask me, except that she knows I'm not much of a girly-girl and maybe she thought I'd be annoyed by a doll or something. I learned long ago not to try and understand where MIL is coming from, though: she can be a wonderful and generous person but her motivations are often beyond comprehension, if not suspect.

Anyway. She sent the email, and I responded. "Of course!" I said, "Buy her whatever you want. Just do me a favor and don't go overboard. She's only two, after all, she doesn't need every possible outfit and accessory for the doll, too." I only added the last bit because my mother-in-law is a complete Ebay addict, a collector, AND she had three sons. Vivian is her first chance to buy dolls, and I knew that she might get a little crazy. (This woman has over 400 of those Carolers, the little singing Christmas dolls. I'm not kidding.) MIL agreed, and that was that.

(Ha. Ha. Ha. Oops, excuse me.)

Before we left for vacation, MIL handed me several new outfits she had purchased for Vivian's birthday. She wanted her to be able to wear them back East, so she presented them early. Great. I thanked her profusely and went on my way. The day before we left, MIL dropped by with a doll and diaper bag she had purchased for the doll. The diaper bag was full--6 outfits for the doll, new shoes, baby lotion, baby powder, a tiny teddy bear for the doll. "Here", she said, "this is so Vivian can play dollies with her cousin. I thought they'd have fun doing that." "Oh. Okay. Well, uh, thanks. Vivian, what do you say?"

So a bit more than I had asked for, but whatever--she's the grandma, I'm not going to rain on her parade. What's a couple of outfits for a doll anyway. Cue our return from the East Coast, when we walk into our house after a long long flight only to see a twin baby stroller, with two more dolls. Attached is a balloon that says "Happy Birthday Vivi!". Oh but we're not done yet. Last weekend, Vivian received 4 more outfits for each doll, 6 new baby blankets, and two doll sleeping bags. Unwrapped, but at my MIL's house, out for Vivian to play with, was a doll pack n' play, another stroller, and several more assorted cribs/blankets/doll teddy bears.

It was like being at the Bitty Baby store. Everywhere I looked was another present or another toy. I know all of this makes my MIL extremely happy. She finally has her girl to buy for! I really don't want to take any of that joy away from her, and especially now, when Vivian doesn't have a clue what's going on. But it makes me grit my teeth. It is so against my main tenet (my only tenet?) of parenting, which is: DO NOT SPOIL YOUR KIDS WITH A BUNCH OF UNNECESSARY CRAP.

You know how everybody has a "thing"? Something that is really important to you, or really gets under your skin, or something that you are acutely aware of? For me, it is elitism and entitlement, and I'm sure the reason I have such a bug up my ass about it is that I went to a prep school, with tons of extremely rich kids, and many of them were complete assholes. I really don't want my kids to be like that, or to be around that. I have an extremely difficult time with people who just expect to be given a free ride, who think that by virtue of their birth they are entitled to everything they want.

In my opinion, buying a lot of "things" for your kids is wrong for a couple reasons. In the first place, if you buy your child everything they could ever want, how are they going to learn to appreciate anything? If they get a Mercedes for their 16th birthday, what's going to top that? Do you really want the peak of your kids' happiness to be at 16? Nevermind that giving them everything they want denies them the opportunity to work hard for something, to earn it, and to feel proud of themselves. I want my kids to be self-sufficient, and if I buy everything for them, how are they going to learn to do anything for themselves? Secondly, I think buying things just for the sake of buying them is a waste. A waste of your money and a waste of the environment. Of course it's nice sometimes to buy nice things, even if you don't need them. But I like to impress on my kids that you can be just as happy with fewer things. Things don't make you happy.

I'm not articulating this very well. But here's another way of saying it: $300 worth of crap from the American Girl store does not equal love. At two, Vivian would have been just as thrilled with one doll and one outfit. At six, maybe she'll want more. But if she gets five bajillion things today, what in the hell are we going to have to get for her at six? Furthermore, isn't there some value in learning delayed gratification? Like, if when she's six she really really wants the double stroller for the twins, she can ask Santa for it, or save her allowance? And then if she gets it, think how thrilled she'll be! Oh wait, we've denied her that joy, because she already has the thing. Which she got for doing approximately nothing, when she was two years old. When she had never even heard of Bitty Baby.

Anyway, I'm probably making too much of this. I know that the whole spending-too-much-on-the kids-thing is my own personal cross to bear and I'm over-sensitive to it. Still, those Bitty babies are making me itch, and not in a good way. (Is there a good way to itch?)

Is there something in particular about parenting that gets to you? Something that react to more strongly than you maybe should? Or am I the only freak out here?

Random bullets to fill time until I get the vacation post done*

2006-06-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Strange weather in L.A. lately. Last night it was humid. Humid, in L.A.! It was still 75 degrees at 8pm (usually the temperature drops to the 60s by then). You will think I'm lying, but I actually like humid weather. I'm praying it keeps up through the 4th.
I have switched to non-fat milk in my lattes and--horror of horrors!--lite beer. I still fear that will not be enough to get me back into my pants. I may have to start (gulp) exercising. Someone kill me now.
I had a long post done entitled "Pasadena, otherwise known as Bum Fuck Egypt" about a cocktail party we went to last weekend, about how it takes forever to get there, and the weather is crappy and the smog is horrific, and how the people are so snotty and the country club set is in full effect there--but then I decided I probably shouldn't trash the entire town based on one experience. Just because everyone I've ever met from Pasadena has been a judgmental snob to the nth degree doesn't mean there aren't some perfectly nice people who live there. Also, truth be told, although the people at the party were indeed country-clubby in their cliqueishness, and though there was a fair bit of snotty behavior going around, some of them were very friendly, and I shouldn't complain. The host, a friend of Lance's from high school, has never been anything but kind to me, and his wife seems nice enough. I am glad I don't live there, though. And very glad that whole social hierarchy thing means nothing to me, or my husband.
Got the BBQ issue of Bon Appetit the other day. I really dislike hamburgers (I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and eating a burger is just way too "meaty" for me). However, I love summer so much, and barbecuing is such the symbol of summer to me, that the cover actually made me salivate. I know some people can't stand the heat, but to me, summer is all the good things at once: fresh, yummy produce. Barbecues with friends. Beer in the lingering afternoon sun. Staying light until after 8 o'clock. No school! Laying out in the sun with a good book and some girlfriends. Shorts and flip-flops. I wish it was summer every day of my life.

* It may be awhile.

My own personal Abbott & Costello*

2006-06-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

Scene: in the car, we drive past a dad with his young daughter.

Isaac: That looks like my friend Nadia.

Vivian: Nania!

Isaac: Nania?

Vivian: Nania!

Isaac: Nadia?

Vivian: Nadia.

Isaac: Do you like Nadia?

Vivian: Yes!

Isaac: Why do you like Nadia?

Vivian: Cuz I like Nania, and . . .

Isaac: Nania?

Vivian: Nania!

Isaac: Nadia? or Nania?

Vivian: Nania! Nadia! Nadia! Nania!

Isaac: Do you like Nonnie**?

Vivian:Nonnie! Nania! Naaaaannnnieeeeaaa!

*Not quite ready for prime time

**They call my mother-in-law Nonnie.

Also, this was funnier in person. I swear!

Sadness, on three fronts

2006-06-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

1. I never have time to blog anymore!

2. Carolina lost the Baseball College World Series last night. Even though I find nothing more boring than baseball, it was still fun to have my alma mater in the race, especially since we are definitely NOT a baseball powerhouse.

3. I can no longer fit into the pants I bought when I was 2 months post-partum. (And not because they are too big.)

Conversation, a few minutes ago.

2006-06-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

Me: Hi Linda, it's Amy.
Mother-in-law: Oh hi there.
Me: What's going on?
MIL: Just the usual.
Me: Do you and Trent have plans tonight?
MIL: We'll be here. Do you need a babysitter?
Me: Actually, yes. Darren just invited us to his housewarming party--the post office sent our invitation back to him for some reason, so we didn't know about it until today.
MIL: That's fine, just bring them over on your way to Pasadena.
Me: Great, thank you so much! Don't wait up for us--we'll just sneak in quietly and get them later.
MIL: Why don't they spend the night?
Me: Are you sure? That would be great!
MIL: In fact, why don't we keep them until Sunday, since you were planning to come over then anyway?
Me: Really? Until Sunday?
MIL: We haven't seen them in so long, we'd love it!
Me:Wow. Okay. THANKS!

Lance and I now have the entire weekend free of children! Yeehaw! What a nice unexpected weekend bonus!

(The only issue is that once again we'll be leaving Isaac, this time for two days. I'm sure this will NOT help the separation anxiety. What does it say about me that when considering these two things: Isaac's fear and my freedom, freedom wins?

Mother of the year nominations, anyone?

UPDATE: Turns out the last minute party is tonight (Saturday), so we didn't get to fob off the kids after all. Not until tonight anyway. Better for Isaac, not as good for me.

Separation Anxiety: what not to do

2006-06-22T15:58:00.000-07:00

For reasons I cannot fathom, neither of my children has ever really suffered from separation anxiety. They've always been happy to go to whoever wants to hold them, happy to be left with a babysitter, or my in-laws, or whoever. There's been the occasional tear, if Lance and I leave too close to naptime, but always the crying has ceased before we even make it to the car. Even when I left Isaac at pre-school for the first time, there was only a millisecond of concern before he was off exploring all the new toys.

I feel fortunate that my kids are like this, but I doubt it has anything to do with my parenting skills. I'm not sure what it says about my parenting skills that my kids are just as happy with anyone else as they are with me.

As I've mentioned, right before we left for the East Coast, we took a trip up to Carmel, to see some old friends. The kids have been there before, but I don't think either one of them remembered. Strange surroundings, strange people, but they both did fine. Immediately afterward, we went to Delaware where again the kids were dumped into a strange home, surrounded by strange people. The time change plus the long napless flight exhausted them, but still they seemed okay. Right after we got to Delaware, my brother-in-law, my dad, and my niece and nephew took the first car down to North Carolina. We sent Isaac and Vivian with them, since I had some training to do at my dad's company and my sister had tickets to see Brooke Shields give a speech* that night. At first, they were thrilled with the idea--riding in a car! With their cousins! And there was a dvd in the car! But once they were all strapped in and reality set in that I would not be joining them, Isaac started to lose it. "But Mommy! I'll miss you", he whined. "I'll be there before you know it", I reassured him. "I need ya, Mom! I miss ya! Don't leave me!"

I gave him a few more kisses through the window, and sent them off, assuming that once they got going he would forget all about missing me. According to my dad, he did fall asleep shortly thereafter, and all seemed well. About 1.5 hours later, he woke up, and immediately started crying. "I want my mommy!" Nothing my dad, brother-in-law, or anyone else did made a difference. He cried/whined for two straight hours. He finally got over it, and managed to have an okay time for the next 24 hours (again, in new surroundings) until I arrived, but the damage was done.

Ever since then (June 7th, 2006), whenever I leave for any amount of time, no matter who I am leaving him with, he has a complete fit. Screaming, crying, refusing to leg go of my legs. "I need ya, Mom! I miss ya! Don't leave me!!" When we left him with my parents so Lance and I could go out to dinner, he cried for 10 minutes. When we left him with a babysitter so all the adults could go out to dinner, he cried for 30 minutes. When we finally got back to L.A. and I took him to school, he screamed for 20 minutes (something he's never done there before). We left him last night with my in-laws, whom he has stayed with hundreds of times, and he cried bloody murder for five minutes. This morning, at school, even after insisting to me that he wouldn't cry, that he was excited to go to school, he screamed. (Though they did call me a few minutes after I left to say he'd stopped right away.)

Update: today I had to carry a screaming Vivian out of preschool ("No go, Mommy! Stay! I want to stay!") while the sweet pre-school teacher held a flailing Isaac ("Don't leave me! Mommy! No!"). Fun times.

I'm really hoping this new phase/ personality quirk is short-lived, as it's agony to leave him when he's that upset. I'm not used to it, and it makes me feel incredibly insecure about my mothering abilities. (Should I leave him? Should I ignore the behavior? Should I explain again how I'm coming back? How could I have done this to him? Is he ruined forever? etc etc)

Vivian, on the other hand, has been totally non-plussed by all the comings and goings. Apparently, for her, I'm still as interchangeable as ever.

*I'd give her a B-.

First things first: traveling with toddlers.

2006-06-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

Because my family lives on the other side of the country, my kids are more seasoned travelers than your average 2 and 3 year olds. They have both survived at least 2 or 3 cross-country flights in each year of their lives. I have flown alone with each of them before--Isaac at 10 months, Vivian at 3 months--but I have never flown alone with both of them together. Until this trip.

I have learned a few things about flying with kids in all our travels: schedule the flight around nap/bedtime; bring a few extra diapers in case the flight is delayed; carseats are a pain in the ass to lug onto the plane, but once you get them on, they are a godsend; and it's never as bad as you anticipate, even if it's really bad. The easiest kids to take on a plane are infants or pre-mobile babies. Once they are mobile, things become progressively more difficult until they are old enough to really understand consequences, around 2.5. At least, that's been my experience. Easily the worst part about flying with children is the logistics of it all: getting all the gear and the babies through all the lines and onto the plane without a meltdown (from the babies, you, or airport personnel).

All that is a really long introduction to the story of our flight a few Mondays ago. In retrospect, I should never have planned a trip to Carmel, which involved a six hour drive up on Friday and a six hour drive back down on Sunday, immediately followed by a six hour flight Monday. Yeah, I think that was a bit much for me, not to mention for the kids.

Our flight left at 1:30pm, naptime. Perfect. The difficulty lay in maneuvering both kids, the diaper bag, and two un-wieldy carseats through the security lines. Fortunately, Lance was able to get a pass to help us to the gate. We ate a quick lunch while waiting (airport food, yum) and got in line (Southwest, which allows families with kids to pre-board), then Lance had to go back to work.

With some difficulty, I managed to get both kids on the plane, in their carseats, and after a 10 minute delay, we were off. The first hour or two of the flight went well enough--no screaming, no fighting, but also no napping. Isaac required 3 separate trips to the bathroom; have you ever tried to fit three people in one of those tiny airport rooms? Even if two of them are well under four feet, it's quite a challenge. Around hour two, the captain turned on the seatbelt sign, as we were experiencing some very minor turbulence. Unfortunately, that sign stayed on for 4 more hours, the remainder of the flight.

For reasons unknown, neither Isaac nor Vivian slept at all during the flight. By the end of hour three, they were both tired of sitting in their seats. By hour four, Vivian was crying "Unbuckle me! Mommy! Get down!" at decibels loud enough to be heard in the cockpit. Isaac joined in, too, hollering to pee, grabbing whatever toy Vivian had in her hand, repeatedly kicking the seat in front of him and generally behaving like a jackass. That continued until we landed in Philadelphia around 9pm east coast time.

Here's what I find odd: I didn't really care. Wait, that's not what I mean. I definitely cared that both kids were so upset. I cared that I had to try and calm down both of them for 3 straight hours. But I didn't care what any of the other passengers thought. I didn't care if Vivian's crying was annoying them. I didn't care if they were tired of Isaac asking for more milk. I had enough to deal with, trying to handle the crises that was both of my children, and that's all that mattered. Further more, the way I figure it, if it was annoying any of the other passengers, imagine what it was doing to me, their mother. Cry me a river, people.

This is not my usual attitude. Generally, I'm very aware of the way other people perceive me, my children, and my parenting abilities, and I do everything in my power to ensure that we leave a good impression. But I don't know, on that flight, I just felt like it was all I could do to deal with the kids and I couldn't waste any brain function worrying about anyone else.

In the end, we made it to Philadelphia unharmed and I suppose that's something.

The flight home was easier for two reasons: one, Lance was with me, and two, the flight was scheduled for 6pm, which meant both kids slept for the majority of the flight. There was the unfortunate problem of the flight being delayed for 3 hours, however. This made for some interesting time in the Philadelphia airport. I must admit that at one point Vivian was running around with another two year old--chasing after him, and being chased, giggling hysterically (by this time it was 8pm, way past her bedtime), often running into other very important adult, annoyed passengers--and I didn't stop her. We'd been sitting there for 3 hours, every flight in the area was delayed due to thunderstorms, and I just didn't feel justified making her sit still any longer. I'm sure the kid-less people in the gate area did not appreciate her behavior, or mine, but I still feel no shame about it.

Right before we boarded the plane, a very nice couple who had been talking a bit with both Isaac and Vivian during the wait told me that both children were "adorable, and very well-behaved". I smiled sweetly and thanked them, not mentioning the chasing game which they had very obviously not witnessed.

Oh, and I should mention here too: at one point, a very kind woman, around 60, I would guess, came over and offered to watch the kids for me while I used the restroom. Lance had gone off foraging snacks or magazines, and she thought I was traveling alone with them. Isn't that nice? I just love when people are good, instead of shitty.

That's it for our plane travels, though we also survived another 6 hour car ride, this one from Delaware to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and back. Here's a recap of our schedule:

Friday June 2nd: 6 hour drive to Carmel
Sunday June 4th: 6 hour drive back to L.A.
Monday June 5th: 6 hour flight to Philadelphia
Wednesday June 7th: 6 hour drive to Duck, NC
Friday June 17th: 6 hour drive back to Delaware
Monday June 19th: 6 hour flight back to L.A.

Yeah, I'm glad to be home.

Back.

2006-06-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

We had a great time, but I'm thrilled to be home. The kids are exhausted after a long flight last night, I've got piles of laundry to do, there's no food in the house, and Vivian is two. (TWO!)

More to come . . .

Stop. Just stop.

2006-06-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

Why does winter drag on and on, endless days of grey skies and uncomfortable sweaters, but the minute summer gets here, the weeks fly by?

I am still running around, not even close to being ready for our trip back east, much less the Carmel weekend we leave for in the morning. I'm jonesing to read all your perfect blogs but can't even find the time to open bloglines. We get home Sunday afternoon from Carmel and leave less than 24 hours later for Delaware. I probably won't get a chance to post at all while I'm home. This makes me even more anxious to get on the computer today--I can't imagine two whole weeks without you people.

We get back June 20th. Vivian will be TWO YEARS OLD by then. How is this happening? My children are not babies anymore. My children are almost done with being toddlers. I need to get off this train, and pronto. I feel like I am going to wake up tomorrow and be sending Isaac off to college.

I was thinking earlier (I know, I know, I shouldn't strain myself), and realized that I have only the smallest bit of time left when Isaac and Vivian will love me as much as I love them. In a few years, they will start seeing my flaws, being embarrassed by my clothes, feeling annoyed when I kiss them. Can you imagine? I can't tell you what a big part of my life it is to walk into Isaac's room at night, give him a kiss, and have him sleepily murmur "I love you, Mom". I don't want that to end!

Well I could write a novel about that topic but then I would be procrastinating all the laundry/cooking/packing I have to do before tomorrow morning, so I guess I'll just sign off.

See you in a few weeks!

Date Night

2006-05-31T13:13:00.000-07:00

My in-laws live a mere 8 miles from us, so they frequently take the kids when we need a break. However, they live in the valley, which means we have to drive 6 miles on the 405 freeway to get to their house. The 405 freeway must be the most congested freeway in the country. During rush hour, it can take 2 hours to drive those 6 miles.

As a result, we have to plan our babysitting adventures in advance. If Lance and I want to go out to dinner, I need to get the kids over to my in-laws' house before 2pm (in time for their naps and before rush hour starts). We generally let them spend the night, and then I pick them up around 9:30 or 10am, after the morning rush has passed. The kids are with their grandparents for almost 24 hours, which is great for me, though it does also mean that we don't ask for this service too often. It probably happens about once every two months, sometimes during the week, sometimes on the weekend. (We do have a babysitter to call in the event that the in-laws can't do it.)

Last night was one of those nights. A friend had emailed me a flyer about a benefit for a pre-schooler who had recently been diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer. A restaurant offered to donate all its profits Tuesday night to the the family. Rare night out for Lance and I plus a good cause--it seemed like a win-win to me, especially when my in-laws agreed to take the kids.

Lance and I so rarely spend quality time together without the kids these days, you'd think that any date night would be fabulous. Somehow, it doesn't always work out that way. We argue, or have trouble connecting. We drink too much or bring up the wrong topics. Somebody orders the wrong entree, the wine is too expensive, I forget my wallet. Or I don't know, the sky is blue and somehow it ruins the evening. I'm not saying that happens every date night, but it does happen, and more frequently than it seems like it should.

Yesterday after I dropped off the kids, I came home to a beautifully clean house thanks to Lucrecia, our life-saving house-keeper. I had the entire afternoon free, and I spent it reading blogs, finishing a novel (good!), laying in the yard, and fixing some chicken salad with the leftovers from the night before. So peaceful and easy, so pleasant. Around 4:30 I took a relaxing shower, then blew my hair dry and put on an outfit I haven't worn in a year or so. On a whim, I put on a pair of heels I haven't worn since the wedding I bought them for 3 years ago. (I have a bad back, and only wear heels at special occasions, maybe once or twice a year).

Lance came home shortly thereafter, and his face lit up when he saw me.

"Why are you so smiley?" I asked him.

"It's not often I come home to a quiet house, my wife all dressed up and looking relaxed and refreshed, with no kids running around."

That's how the whole evening went. We were thrilled to be with each other. We laughed and talked easily, we didn't think about the kids at all. The food was fine--not fantastic, but it didn't even matter. There was a kind of electricity between us that hasn't been there in ages. We were eager to get home for "other activities", but we also wanted to keep talking forever. It felt like an actual date, the kind you have before you get married. It felt incredibly nice.

I wish all our date nights turned out as well. Having the afternoon to myself really helped. Being able to get myself ready without refereeing the kids' arguments, fixing their dinner, & being sure the babysitter had everything she needed helped too. Often by the time we get in the car, I'm already resenting Lance for not helping me in the exact way that I want him to, so it was nice to feel nothing but anticipation for a change. Also, the combination of heels plus the color I got at the beach this weekend made me feel surprisingly sexy and confident. To top it off, it's summer, and summer always makes me happy.

What a perfect evening!

This one's for Jennster

2006-05-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

The sun has finally decided to grace us with its presence, and after 6 weeks of fog and gloom, we had a beautiful sunny weekend that is still holding strong today. I'm not sure what it says about me that I am so affected by the weather, but, again, I thank my lucky stars that I live in Southern California. Hopefully the gray is gone for the season and we'll be enjoying 80 degree temps for the next few months.

Typically, the weather is grey and gloomy in June (hence the nomiker, "June gloom") so there is still the possibility that the sun will disappear again, BUT . . . we are leaving next week for two weeks back East. By the time we get back on the 20th, it should be all sun, all the time. Just like I like it.

We are also leaving this weekend to head up to Carmel and visit some old friends from San Francisco. We have been taking this annual trip to Carmel for 4 or 5 years now, and we always have tons of fun. Carmel is beautiful, and we stay in a gorgeous ranch owned by a friends' dad. The only small blight on the trip is that it reminds me of Tim, since he was one of the original members of the Carmel crew. (If you don't have time to click the link, Tim was a friend who died in a freak accident about 2 years ago) His old fiance has a baby now, although she is not married, and I don't think she'll be there this weekend. I'm sure we'll toast him at least once, and tell funny Tim stories and reflect--all that is good. But it still leaves me with a tiny ache in my heart--he should be there, to tell the stories himself. To make new stories. I have such a hard time with his death, still, even though we weren't particularly close friends.

ANYWAY. We had a lovely weekend, spent a ton of time at the beach, and now I'm running around trying to get ready to leave.

So, since Jennster loves the family photos so much, here are a few to tide you over until I can write an actual post of substance.

Will I ever do a real post again?

2006-05-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

Random bullets, ala Phantom.

1. Last night we took the kids up to the neighbors' house for a bbq. I drank two beers and 3 margaritas. I actually had bed spins as I was trying to fall asleep. I haven't had bed spins in 15 years. I feel like roadkill this morning.

2. Bed spins.

3. I have no memory of getting the kids into pajamas and bed last night. It's a miracle we ended up in the right house. At some point, I also folded the laundry, so I can't complain too much.

4. Hooray for long weekends. We had two days of spectacular weather this week and now it's back to grey. I hope to God it clears up soon. We are attending a pool party tomorrow, where I was hoping both kids would miraculously learn to swim, so that I won't be forced to don a bathing suit for swimming lessons at the local pool.

5. Tonight I'm going with Heidi over to the bride's house for some girl time--wine, snacks, gossip. I've been looking forward to it all week--except, roadkill and all.

6. At every meeting we have with our architect we discuss budget. After 6 months of planning, the architect now believes that the house he has designed will be way beyond our financial scope. There is no way to cut back on the design without losing the aesthetics of the house. So it's back to square one.

7. Because my husband is a saint, he got the kids dressed, put Vivian in front of Nemo, and took Isaac to pre-school this morning so I could nurse my hangover. He left me his car, which is great, except it has no carseat in it. I shouldn't really call him and complain, should I? Do you think Vivian will be okay if I leave her here while I get some coffee? I really, really need coffee.

8. Lance just came home with the car so I decided to run over to Annika's house with the lasagne I made for her yesterday. Except that I live in L.A., you know, so the 12 mile drive took 30 minutes which meant I was running late to pick Isaac up at pre-school. She opened the door, I threw the lasagne at her, yelled "what a cute baby!" and left. Nice. He is a cute baby, though. So tiny! So sweet!

9. Tequila, elixir of Satan.

(10. I just came home after a doctor's appointment to see what you lovely people had to say about my bed spins and--surprise!--nothing is posted. How can that happen? There's this little button called "publish post", see, and you have to click on it. Oh my pretty pretty braincells, I'm miss you already.)

Question

2006-05-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

If you are 3 years old and you don't fall asleep until 9:30pm, and then for some reason you wake up at midnight and cannot get back to sleep until 2am, don't you think you would sleep just a little later than 5:30? Don't you?

I mean, really. WHAT THE FUCK?

In other news, Mieke did the walk for Adelaide last weekend. Thanks to you guys, she made her $5000 goal, and then some. Isn't that fabulous? Go read about it, here. Awesome. Truly awesome.

I got nothin'.

2006-05-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

Because I have nothing to say and it's already Wednesday night: another meme. And, oh yeah, Melissa tagged me. AGAIN. So blame her.

I AM: on my third beer.
I SAID: "Nice knowin' ya."
I WANT: my son to be healthy.
I WISH: my sister was happy.
I HATE: Peas. Winter. Sweaters. Tom Cruise. Shopping. When friends act like assholes.
I MISS: my family.
I FEAR: too many things.
I HEAR: my children squabbling. ALL. THE . TIME.
I WONDER:why my son wakes up before 6am EVERY SINGLE MORNING.
I REGRET: losing touch with Andy Nye, my college boyfriend. (Inside joke, in case he's reading this (which, yeah, of course he's not, but I'm on my third beer, so whatever): "Do what?") {It's an INSIDE joke, okay? Not funny to you, but it's not meant to be. Sheesh.}
I AM NOT: crafty. Nor do I want to be. Keep those scrapbooks FAR AWAY from me.
I DANCE: with my kids. Except they always want me to pick them up and swing them around, and goddammit, I am not their father! Can't you just move your feet or your hips? Must I do EVERYTHING LITTLE THING for you??
I SING: hardly ever. (Be glad. I'm tone deaf.)
I AM NOT ALWAYS: smart. I wish I was.
I MADE: the beds a long time ago. I need to change the sheets again. Crap.
I WRITE: this blog. That's it. Isn't that enough?
I SHOULD: change the sheets more often.
I START: not much. Sadly. No, actually, that's really sad. But it's true. I don't start anything. I mean, I guess I start the car every day when I drive to pre-school. But that's all I can think of.
I FINISH: a tall chai latte way too frequently than is good for our finances.
I BELIEVE: in myself. in my husband. in love. in happiness.
I KNOW:that you probably think I'm full of shit.
I CAN: kick your ass in soccer. And I never played soccer as a kid. I'm much more athletic than you think.
I CANT: carry a tune.
I SEE: lightning bugs. Oh wait, no I don't. I live in California, where they don't have lightning bugs. Can you believe that? A place with no lightning bugs?? It's unfathomable. And yet, here I am. Here my children are, in a world without lightning bugs. I'm not sure they'll ever recover. I know I won't.
I BLOG: when I should be playing with my kids. Do you play with your kids? I mean, really play with them, often? Because, GOD, it bores me to tears to play with them.
I READ: blogs and not much else. It's because of you people that I haven't read a novel in over a year.
I AM AROUSED BY: lazy afternoons, sun spots on the bed.
IT PISSES ME OFF: when people refuse to accept responsibilityy for their actions.
I FIND: my husband's belts all over the house. Is it that hard to hang them up in the closet? Is it? Really?
I LIKE: beets. (So what? At least it's not brussel sprouts!)
I LOVE: 48 Hours Mystery. And Grey's Anatomy.* Oh yeah, and my family.

* Thanks for the reminder, Kate!

Note to self:

2006-05-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

If a recipe calls for julienned carrots, scallions, & apples---actually, if it calls for julienned anything--- do not attempt.

I repeat, do not attempt.

Updated: No missing digits, just lots of swearing and heavy sighing because chopping up all those things into little tiny sticks is a complete waste of time. And really, really annoying.

Confession

2006-05-21T11:59:00.000-07:00

You may not know this about me, but I can be slightly, well, ditzy. And yes, I am blonde (naturally, even!). Apologies to all the intellectual blondes out there, I really don't mean to give us all a bad name.

Thing is, I often forget what day of the week it is, or that Memorial Day is next weekend, as opposed to a few weeks from now. I forget when I tell Heidi to come over for dinner, so she arrives to an empty house, since I've taken the kids out for tacos. I go to the grocery store because we are completely out of trash bags and come home with $40 of groceries, but no bags. I respond to birthday party invitations, put the invitation on the refrigerator, write the date in the calendar, and still forget to attend. I've been known to start the washing machine and then forget to put the clothes in.

One of the more annoying manifestations of this trait occurs, almost daily*, in the shower. I'll be standing there, the warm water running down my body, when I'll notice the bottles of product on the shelf. "Hmm", I'll think, "did I wash my hair already?" Then follows a minutes long conversation in my head, debating whether I washed my hair, or just my face. Or did I mistakenly use the face scrub on my hair? Because I can remember opening that particular bottle, but I don't remember washing my face. Maybe I should just wash my hair again--but my hair is so dry already, if I wash it twice, it will look worse than usual. Then again, if I don't wash it again, it may very well turn out that I didn't wash it at all, and then this whole shower will be wasted. I'll be walking around with the same greasy hair that prompted me to get in in the first place.

It's about this point that my mind generally wanders to something else--whether having my kids so close together makes me as trashy as Britney Spears, for example. A few minutes later, the product bottles will catch my eye again, and I have to start the conversation in my head one more time.

I'm quite sure if I was a brunette, this wouldn't keep happening to me. Think I should dye my hair?

*It would definitely occur daily, if I took a shower daily.

Lazy is as Lazy does

2006-05-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

It all started last night. Lance was gone for the weekend already, so it had been me and kids, alone, all day. One day--no big deal. But once the kids were finally in bed (note, I did not say asleep) and I surveyed the toy-littered floor, the crumb-covered table, the dish-filled sink, it seemed like a bit much for one person to handle. Self, I said. Self, why don't you just leave this mess and clean it up tomorrow? God knows they'll just make another mess in the morning, why clean up twice?

So I left it. Ate my frozen pizza on the floor in the family room, amongst matchbox cars and half-full sippy cups, ignored the giggles from the kids' room, and watched several season finales on TiVo. Eventually, the kids fell asleep, and I moved into the bedroom, where I let my dirty clothes languish on the floor, and when I gulped the last sip of water from the water bottle, I just tossed it across the room towards the trash can, not caring when it missed by several inches.

This morning I awoke, at the lovely hour of 6:03am, to a disaster of a house. Looking around made me crabby, and I barked at the kids to hurry up. Still, when the time came to clean up breakfast, I couldn't manage much more than throwing the dishes in the dishwasher and starting it.

After dropping Isaac off at school, Vivian and I headed to the grocery store. Once there, I decided I didn't feel like cooking, and why would I, since Lance wasn't home? So I just grabbed some cereal and blueberries and soy milk, figuring that would hold us for a couple days. I had an hour or so at home to clean up before I had to pick Isaac up, but again, I couldn't find the motivation. Lance wouldn't be home and no one else would see the house, so who exactly was I cleaning for?

Lather, rinse, repeat. Every opportunity I had to clean up today, I let pass by. As a result, the dishwasher is full of clean dishes, the sink is full of dirty dishes, the floor is littered with crumbs from breakfast, lunch and dinner, you can't walk in the playroom because of all the toys, and there are clothes all over the living room floor (a half-hearted attempt to do laundry, where I just moved the dirty clothes from the hamper to the living room where at some point, I suppose, I will sort them).

You know what? Letting all the dirt and crap pile up did not make me a better mother today. It's not as if I used the time I might otherwise use cleaning to play with my kids. In fact, other than a 10 minute dance party, I'm not sure I played with them at all. Actually, I spent most of the time exasperated that they were bothering me while I tried to blog, or watch more TiVo, or read People. I was the definition of a shitty mom today.

I'm sure it was an attack of the lazies. This used to happen to me at work: if I was busy, I would crank out work, getting a ridiculous amount of things done, and done well. But the days that were slow? Mistakes right and left, not to mention a bunch of stuff simply left undone.

Crap. Guess that means I'm going to have to clean up tonight.

Or maybe tomorrow morning.

(Incidentally, I'm blaming the lazies for the plethora of sub-par posts around here lately, too. Don't tell me otherwise, k?)

Heavy

2006-05-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

Whoa, I just spent some time typing a post, entitled "Fair", and you are very relieved that I re-read it before I hit publish. Talk about depressing!

I'm blaming the weather, as it has been ATROCIOUS here in SoCal lately. I'm talking one hour of sunshine a day for the last 30 days and temperatures in the high sixties. YUCK. If I'm going to live in a place where the property values are this inflated, I should at least get the benefit of sunny beautiful weather, for pete's sake.

Also depressing: Lance is out of town, on his annual father-son fishing trip. He left yesterday morning, and I haven't killed the children yet, so that's something.

(Does it seem like he's always going out of town? No? Huh.)

I'm gaining weight. Maybe my dryer is just really working hard lately, shrinking up all my clothes. Or is it because I went off the pill? I thought I was supposed to LOSE weight when I got off those hormones. On the other hand, I finally have my sex drive back, so I guess I shouldn't complain. (Though, I'm not sure about that trade off--skinny versus sex.)

I make no apologies for the fucked-up-ness of this post (or was that an apology already?). I'm alone with the kids, people, take what you can get.

Carnival

2006-05-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Remember the carnival last year? How Isaac was soooo excited to get on the rides but then once they started going he freaked out?

Well, the carnival came to town again last weekend. This year, the rides didn't scare Isaac away at all. In fact, we couldn't tear him away from them.

At first, even Vivian thought the rides looked kind of fun, and for a minute I thought she was going to surprise me, and ride the bumper boats with no fear.

Sadly, it all proved a bit much for her. Although she did attempt to get on several rides, she never managed to sit down long enough for the ride to start. This frustrated her to no end: I could tell she really really wanted to ride, but her fear held her back.

See how pissed off she is at herself?

We had a nice couple of hours anyway, and even though this traveling carnival is pretty low-rent, I look forward to attending every year. I'm hoping next year, both kids will be brave enough for the rides.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I made Lance ride all the ones that Isaac was too small to ride alone on. Not because I was scared (!) but because I'm such a wimp that even the kiddie rides make me vomit.)

Also, thanks so much for yesterday. I am feeling a bit better--nothing like a cathartic sob-fest to clear your head--and I'm not just saying that!

Exceptional

2006-05-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, I remember thinking, with typical self-absorbed angst, that my life would be so much better if I was REALLY good at something. If only I was the prettiest girl, or the smartest student, or the best athlete, or the coolest kid. Instead, I was just okay, at everything. No, I wasn't the prettiest, but I wasn't ugly. I wasn't the smartest, but I was in the top half of my class. Wasn't the best athlete, but I made all the varsity teams. Far from the coolest, but I wasn't a dork, either. Just so fucking average, in every way. I really envied those kids who had something to define themselves with, who were stand-outs. (Truth is, I was far too lazy to do the kind of work that might have made me a stand out, but my teenage brain just blamed the rotten luck to have been born without some god-given talent.)

Last night, I watched the season finale of Grey's Anatomy that the capricious TiVo gods had generously taped for me after all. I cried and cried and cried some more. I shook with sobs. I could not catch a breath, I was that upset. You know, because a fictional character on a television show died during sweeps. Shocking.

But here's the thing: that's not really why I was crying. And when I finally figured that out, I realized that there IS something that I'm exceptional at. I can be a stand-out, just watch me.

Turns out, I'm really, really good at saying "I'm fine!" "It's okay!" The smiling shrug, the soldiering on, the "don't worry about me"s--these are things I've got down pat. And it's not as if I'm in denial--because I'm also quite adept at platitudes like: "yes, it sucks, but I try to look at the bright side" or "I know it's going to be difficult for him, but it could be so much worse".

What I'm NOT good at? Crying in front of people I love--or, people I don't love! Or people I don't know! Here, take my screaming child and cut him up, he's all yours. I am a rock, I don't cry! Whee, this is fun! Definitely NOT good at saying "Guess what? I'm terrified, and I don't care if it makes you uncomfortable, because this is what I feel like and you are not making me feel better by telling me that everything's going to be alright. In fact, you don't know what THE FUCK you are talking about."

Much better at saying " Thank you so much, I actually feel okay about it now. What's going on with you?"

So last night, when Denny died, I lost. my. shit. I cried because it does suck that Isaac is sick. I cried because handing him over to the surgeon last week while he begged me not to through hot tears killed a part of my soul that I will never get back. I cried because I am terrified of what the future will bring us, terrified that this will not work, terrified that even if everything goes exactly right it is still going to be REALLY, REALLY hard in ten years or so, and I don't know if I have what it takes to get through that. Cried because he is my son, and I want to make things easy for him, and I can't. This is hard, dammit. Hard now, hard later, hard for the rest of his life.

And it doesn't really matter that it could be so much worse. Yes, it could. Yes, Isaac is fine, Isaac is not going to die, I am okay, we are all okay. That is true. But the feelings I have about the whole situation--the whole shitty, un-fair, craptacular situation--those feelings are valid, and real, and they have to go somewhere.

I suppose it's a good a place as any for them to go to the television.

Tomorrow, when I read this, I will be embarrassed at my dramatics, and probably delete the whole ridiculous post.