Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
You know what was great? I got the phone call from Brett re., lay-offs while I was at my sister's and I asked her to call my mom while I went to pick Brett up since he was getting off early (I knew she'd tell mom anyway and wanted her to know that was fine with me). My mom said, "You tell her that they will be ok because her family won't let anything bad happen. Tell her that we'll help cushion the fall and that they don't need to panic. They'll be ok; we'll make sure of it."
That's my mom for you -- she'll always be mama-bear for her kids. And she thinks we're awesome. There is nothing like calling your mom feeling blue and having her buck you up by angrily declaring your awesomeness and making it clear that she will kick the ass of anyone (including you) who puts you down. This is why I have high self-esteem in spite of myself; I lay it all at the feet of my mother.
I guess I'm not worried so much as I'm anxious to see how this all turns out. Either I'll be at work for the first time in ten years or Brett will be back at work at (god willing) a job he actually likes or we'll find a way to do a part-time/freelance patchwork. I mean, we're resourceful people and we have mad skills.
(Happily Brett fixed the elliptical trainer because I couldn't get through this without copious exercise endorphins. And also I've discovered pandora.com, which has made my home a more pleasant and more tuneful place to dwell.)
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
In Madison's rec center classes, most of the parents have kids that are younger than Noah (not all but most) and for many of them, the toddler tumbling around is their oldest and so they are fairly new parents. Listening to them really brings it all back to me -- the worry, the fretting, the rigidity, the belief that there's one way to get it right. I remember. But in ten years of parenting Noah and watching my friends parent their kids, I realize that all the things that used to get us worked up just aren't as important as we thought they were. I hear them discussing the things we discussed with the same earnest conviction and it makes me ... tired. I don't want to live those debates again and I also no longer care whether or not people I like are doing things the way that I think they ought to be done. (In other words, when a woman leans across the child in her lap to speak urgently about the dangers of television I neither feel defensive nor passionate in agreement. I simply don't care about anyone else's television choices and I don't care what they think about mine.)
I also have found (horrors!) that I am very much one of those women who smiles condescendingly and tries not to say, "Wait and see" when someone is telling me that their child will never play computer games/eat fast food/own a Barbie. I try not to be but I can't help it. (Never say never should be the theme song to parenthood.) I can't help but raise an eyebrow when a passionate new parent swears s/he will never send their child to school or let them eat refined sugar. Or when they lecture another parent (as I was so happy to lecture) about the proper way to get a child to sleep through the night or learn to pick up his toys.
I hate to say it, but parenting the baby/toddler/preschooler? It's easy. Well, easier. Why? Because their domain is so totally in your control. Yes, it's exhausting and physically tedious and certainly a huge challenge but they get bigger and not only do they become more themselves (and less amenable) but also the rest of the world intervenes and suddenly you're not dealing just with your inlaws, who totally don't get this whole no refined sugar thing you've got going on, but with the birthday parties of friends or the Bratz fad that's infiltrating the neighborhood. I mean, when they're preschoolers, you can keep them ignorant or else you can just come down hard and fast. Preschoolers mostly listen because what do they know? But bigger kids? They've got opinions and sometimes their opinions are absolutely at odds with yours.
Then there's this other thing -- people with a good kid think they've got the key to good parenting. I know this because I thought it myself. Noah's a pretty good listening kid, a kid who wants to please his parents and who craves structure and I thought that was our superior parenting but the truth is, it's Noah. He had and has his challenges -- not sleeping through the night for the first 3.5 years, an inability to process change well or easily, a tendency to the dramatics -- but he's a pretty easy kid. We've parented Madison exactly the same (mostly) and she's a fireball of loophole seeking and arguments (but also slept through the night much earlier -- go figure). We never had to childproof with Noah because one stern shake of the head and he'd immediately back off from whatever it was that held potential danger but Madison has gone out of her way to find the most deadly things in our house and try 'em on for size. A "no" to her is simply a sign to wait until her parent's back is turned and then try harder.
I love new parents. I love their shell-shocked pride and out-sized concern. I love their myopic devotion. But it's exhausting to hang out with them too long; I can't go back to that. Me and my friends, we were such intense devotees of motherhood. Oh the debates about flaxseed oil! About kindergarten curriculum! About toothbrushing and fluoride and non-punitive discipline! Oh the discussions about the right way to give compliments and the proper way to put a child to bed! And as it turns out? The choices are less important than the values that drive them. When they're ten, no one can know that you used sun-bleached organic diapers or disposable. You can't even tell the breastfed babies from the ones who got (in the immortal words of the hard-core online APers) SIN (synthetic infant nutrition). The homebirthed babies who ate nothing but organic for their first years are standing by the soda machine jingling their change. The daughters of feminists are putting on lipgloss; the baby boys who nursed their trucks are wrestling on the gym mat. It's not that our choices have no impact, it's just that the impact isn't always what we expect.
I say this not to be discouraging but to be reassuring. It's ok to let go of some rigidity -- your good kids will be good kids even if you "slip" and let them eat jarred baby food instead of painstakingly steaming that organic potato before you run it through the food grinder. It's the big picture stuff that matters, not so much the tiny decisions that we fret about. I'm just not all that convinced that baby signs or Ferberizing or infant toilet training are going to matter all that much by the time our kids hit their twenties. It's more about why we do those things.
So I guess I'd say that in ten years of parenting I've learned that you do the things you need to do to get through the day with love and hopefully some laughter, you trust your kids (and yourself), and you let yourself have fun along the way.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
In Madison's rec center classes, most of the parents have kids that are younger than Noah (not all but most) and for many of them, the toddler tumbling around is their oldest and so they are fairly new parents. Listening to them really brings it all back to me -- the worry, the fretting, the rigidity, the belief that there's one way to get it right. I remember. But in ten years of parenting Noah and watching my friends parent their kids, I realize that all the stuff that used to get us worked up just aren't as important as we thought they were. I hear them discussing the things we discussed with the same earnest conviction and it makes me ... tired. I don't want to live those debates again and I also no longer care whether or not people I like are doing things the way that I think they ought to be done. (In other words, when a woman leans across the child in her lap to speak urgently about the dangers of television I neither feel defensive nor passionate in agreement. I simply don't care about anyone else's television choices and I don't care what they think about mine.)
I also have found (horrors!) that I am very much one of those women who smiles condescendingly and tries not to say, "Wait and see" when someone is telling me that their child will never play computer games/eat fast food/own a Barbie. I try not to be but I can't help it. (Never say never should be the theme song to parenthood.) I can't help but raise an eyebrow when a passionate new parent swears s/he will never send their child to school or let them eat refined sugar. Or when they lecture another parent (as I was so happy to lecture) about the proper way to get a child to sleep through the night or learn to pick up his toys.
I hate to say it, but parenting the baby/toddler/preschooler? It's easy. Well, easier. Why? Because their domain is so totally in your control. Yes, it's exhausting and physically tedious and certainly a huge challenge but they get bigger and not only do they become more themselves (and less amenable) but also the rest of the world intervenes and suddenly you're not dealing just with your inlaws, who totally don't get this whole no refined sugar thing you've got going on, but with the birthday parties of friends or the Bratz fad that's infiltrating the neighborhood. I mean, when they're preschoolers, you can keep them ignorant or else you can just come down hard and fast. Preschoolers mostly listen because what do they know? But bigger kids? They've got opinions and sometimes their opinions are absolutely at odds with yours.
Then there's this other thing -- people with a good kid think they've got the key to good parenting. I know this because I thought it myself. Noah's a pretty good listening kid, a kid who wants to please his parents and who craves structure and I thought that was our superior parenting but the truth is, it's Noah. He had and has his challenges -- not sleeping through the night for the first 3.5 years, an inability to process change well or easily, a tendency to the dramatics -- but he's a pretty easy kid. We've parented Madison exactly the same (mostly) and she's a fireball of loophole seeking and arguments (but also slept through the night much earlier -- go figure). We never had to childproof with Noah because one stern shake of the head and he'd immediately back off from whatever it was that held potential danger but Madison has gone out of her way to find the most deadly things in our house and try 'em on for size. A "no" to her is simply a sign to wait until her parent's back is turned and then try harder.
I love new parents. I love their shell-shocked pride and out-sized concern. I love their myopic devotion. But it's exhausting to hang out with them too long; I can't go back to that. Me and my friends, we were such intense devotees of motherhood. Oh the debates about flaxseed oil! About kindergarten curriculum! About toothbrushing and fluoride and non-punitive discipline! Oh the discussions about the right way to give compliments and the proper way to put a child to bed! And as it turns out? The choices are less important than the values that drive them. When they're ten, no one can know that you used sun-bleached organic diapers or disposable. You can't even tell the breastfed babies from the ones who got (in the immortal words of the hard-core online APers) SIN (synthetic infant nutrition). The homebirthed babies who ate nothing but organic for their first years are standing by the soda machine jingling their change. The daughters of feminists are putting on lipgloss; the baby boys who nursed their trucks are wrestling on the gym mat. It's not that our choices have no impact, it's just that the impact isn't always what we expect.
I say this not to be discouraging but to be reassuring. It's ok to let go of some rigidity -- your good kids will be good kids even if you "slip" and let them eat jarred baby food instead of painstakingly steaming that organic potato before you run it through the food grinder. It's the big picture stuff that matters, not so much the tiny decisions that we fret about. I'm just not all that convinced that baby signs or Ferberizing or infant toilet training are going to matter all that much by the time our kids hit their twenties. It's more about why we do those things.
So I guess I'd say that in ten years of parenting I've learned that you do the things you need to do to get through the day with love and hopefully some laughter, you trust your kids (and yourself), and you let yourself have fun along the way.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
We're both looking for jobs and whoever gets the best job first wins!
If you know anyone looking to hire a dazzling writer/editor in the Columbus area with tons and tons of experience AND lots of computer skills, why, let me know!
I'm not worried at this point because I don't feel like we'll be scrambling the way we might have been when the kids were younger (i.e, my going to work doesn't seem like the disaster it might have been a few years back) so don't worry about offering sympathy -- we'll be fine. But I'm serious about looking for work so heads up!
You must have been a fashion victim at least once in your life. What hideous blunder did you commit?
Submitted by Tina.
Well it depends on who you ask. The one my mom talks about all the time is the crinoline I used to wear over capris leggings (it was 1987, after all). It was a short crinoline, all fluffy white net with pastel edging hitting just above my knee. I wore it with the aforementioned black capris leggings and a vintage (40s) fitted black jacket on top. My mom hated that outfit.
To me the biggest blunder was when I asked my hairdresser to shave a pencil-thin line between my short-short hair around the bottom half of my head and the longer (two inches spiked up) hair on my crown. I'd had this done before and it gave a very clean line between the two different lengths but this hairdresser misunderstood me and shaved a line about an inch -- an inch! -- wide all the way around. It was hideous. And she did it two days before prom. Happily I was able to pull some hair down over the bald parts and in my prom pictures, I look pretty normal. Except for the hideous pouf skirt in my dress (1986), which perhaps is the biggest blunder of that event now that I think about it.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
So ... I got good feedback on my sample chapter and part of the feedback was that it'd make a great intro to my proposal -- better than it would make a sample chapter, as a matter of fact. This turned out to be absolutely great news because:
- I knew I was going to have to have to write another chapter anyway because this one was too short by a lot;
- I was dreading rewriting the proposal because it seemed like an insurmountable challenge. And now I've discovered it's already started! And that big problem (how to intro the proposal) is solved! Hooray!
I was hoping to have the first draft of the next chapter (now really the only chapter) done on Monday but I've changed my goal to having an outline done. I have another article due Friday and wrote a book review during work-time yesterday so I'm not sure how realistic it is to have the whole draft done.
By the way I'm finding having an accountability partner is huge (and at writing group last night, we set up a group accountability calendar). I highly recommend it.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
There are a lot of reasons why I'm pro-choice:
- As a woman, I believe every other woman has an inalienable right to do what she can to control her reproductive destiny;
- As a mother, I feel strongly that only a woman knows herself well enough to know whether or not she's prepared for and welcoming to motherhood;
- As a daughter, I am proud of my mother's decision to exercise her right to make decisions about her own body and her own life and want every mother to have access to make the same choices.
- As a former infertile, I know how difficult it is to have no control over my family building plans and want other women to retain some measure of control whenever possible;
- As an adoptive mother, I know that adoption isn't always the best choice for a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy and know that my daughter's first mother's choice is more valid because it wasn't her only alternative to parenting;
- As a feminist, I am proud to be strongly, unequivocally pro-woman and pro-child and pro-choice.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
- Finished the second draft of my first sample chapter;
- Began notes for my second sample chapter;
- Wrote first draft of short assignment;
- Began outline of long assignment;
- Responded to outstanding LitMama Op-Ed submissions.
My motto this year is "slow and steady wins the race." I'm trying to keep my head down and focused on whatever is in front of me. My interest in projects leaps around and it panics me when I realize I've been doing one thing and neglecting another. I'm learning that I don't need to keep consistent attention on everything I want to do and instead I should put my energy at whatever has captured my interest and then do the bare minimum I need to do to keep other things viable. I'm not effective when I don't follow my own leads. I was doing a lot of work around corporate stuff last month and now I'm working on the proposal. It'll swing around again and the corporate stuff will be there. Besides I've noticed that when I let things lie dormant for awhile, when I come back I'm more ready to catch the opportunities; I can't force these things.
We got our first snowstorm of the winter (sad to see it happened after the bulbs put out a few inches of green) and the kids were sledding around the backyard. They came in for hot chocolate and Madison fell asleep on my lap. Now Noah is off for a birthday party and I'm here updating my blog.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
I don't have time to do more than link so if you have had anything to do with adoption, please go read her entry!
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