Category: Work

Laughing with Conan

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I needed a good laugh today. I didn’t get a good workout in this morning because Mario begged me for the second day in a row to take him with me before I left for the gym. I tried so hard to quietly tip-toe down the steps at 6:45 am but somehow those ears of his picked me up and I heard the pitter-patter of feet coming down the steps towards me. He tapped my leg and softly said “can I come with you mom? Please.”

How do I say no to that request? Jon tells me it’s easy but it ain’t for me. No siree. So there I found myself picking him up and grabbing my iPad and heading out to the stroller. There goes another day of lifting weights at the gym but I guess he’s worth it….

Then I had to sit in hours of negotiations waiting to hear from the other side and yawning in mental fatigue. Luckily, I found Conan O’Brien’s commencement speech. It had me laughing within the first paragraph. Nothing like a good laugh to bring you back to life. Now, I am ready for a wrestling match with those little munchos after work.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

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I came home from work last night needing some serious big hugs from Maria and Mario.  Work has been kickin’ my a– lately.  But it is nice to jump on my bike for a ride in the open air after work rather than getting into a hot car.  And to my surprise, the kids were waiting near the back door when I walked out of the garage.  They got smothered with kisses. Over and over.

I laid with them later in the evening and watched them drift off to sleep.  I love how their eyes are wide open when I head over to sit next to them, and they swear that they will stay awake until midnight because they are Not Tired!  And then after a back rub or foot massage, I see their eyelids begin to droop and their cheeks begin to turn toward the soft pillow.  And then they are out.  And how beautiful they both are so quiet and still.  As I laid with them, I thought about how fortunate I was to have them in my life – day in and day out.  Sure, there were moments that I wished I had two minutes to be alone but those moments were overshadowed by their character and lightness.

After sitting with them for a bit, I walked into the kitchen for a late-night ice cream bar, and a review of the latest news.  I found a nugget of a piece by Ann Bauer in Salon that struck me, and made me even more cognizant of the fleeting moments we have with our kids.  As they say “time flies when you are having fun” – even when you don’t feel like you are having fun (i.e., changing a diaper at 2 am or quieting a screaming kid in the grocery store).  Bauer succeeded in making me take a step back last night from all of the chaos going on in my head with work and camps and deadlines, and breathe.  Breathe and stare at my unbelievably gorgeous, darling kids.  Because one day I will be standing in the bleachers, too, just like Bauer, and I want to be able to testify that I lived to my fullest with them, and consciously tried to limit the number of regrets that I would experience as a mom raising two kids and juggling work and being a strong partner to Jon and taking care of family and friends, and being a community advocate. 

Bauer’s piece provided a welcome reminder to enjoy the small stuff of life and not get weighed down by the other.

A+ Confident

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Mario has been hearing us get on Maria about having to do her homework for the last eight months.  He usually sits in the other room playing his Ben Ten game or watching a show or jumping off the couch onto the chair and vice versa.  I have tried on numerous occasions to try to get him to read a book or draw while Maria is working on her homework.  He has always had no desire. 

He sees Maria get frustrated at times.  She is now at the stage of reading chapter books.  Some of the books are so incredibly boring that she brings home that I can totally understand why she detests having to read them.  Mix that with the fact that they have harder words in them so she can’t just fly through them like she used to do, and it is even more frustrating.  The other night I was making dinner and she was reading one of the chapter books.  She had to read eight pages and she had cried about that fact for an entire ten minutes before she finally plunged into it.  She wanted to read to herself so I let her.  Within a minute, I looked behind her and saw that she had flipped through to the sixth page already.  Each page was filled with words.  There was no way she had read all of them in a minute.  I looked at her.  She looked at me.  I crinkled my face at her.  She crinkled hers back at me.  I asked her if she read all six pages.  She said yes. I asked her if she read every word in those six pages.  She said yes but a little softer this time.  She glanced up at me after saying “yes” and then said “Ok, I didn’t read them all.”  At least she told the truth.  Mario watched the entire exchange, and threw in his comments at the end.  

“Maria, you have to do all of your homework.”

Maria rightfully flicked his arm. 

Mario working awayI think Mario used to enjoy watching Maria get flustered and enjoy the fact that he did not have to engage in this nightly exercise of homework.  But last night, he embraced the idea of homework.  Maria was taking a shower and something hit me to tell him that his school sent homework home for him to do just like Maria’s school does for her.  He totally bought into it.  I brought over one of Maria’s old kindergarten workbooks.  We started with an area that he is really good at – sequencing.  He looked at three pictures of a boy and he had to determine which action went first, second and third.  He got them all right.  I gave him a high-five and wrote “A+” on the top of the page.  From there, it was all over.  His head was the size of Jupiter.  I flipped over another page and had him work on the next exercise.  He got it right.  He wrote his own “A+” on the top of the page.  When he got to a page where you had to circle the objects that had a certain vowel in them (e.g., find the “a” words in ball, cow, and ape), he had no clue.  But when I tried to explain it to him, and point him in the right direction, he got so angry. 

“I know how to do it, Mom!” 

When he circled all of them, I let it go and moved onto the next page.  However, Maria was not so generous.  She had to take the opportunity to point out to Mario that he did not get the answers right. 

“Mario, you circled them all and that is not right. You have to try again.”

Mario’s response: flick her in the ear. 

He ended up finishing the entire workbook because he refused to stop until all of the pages were completed – right or wrong.  Maria left the room after the flicking, and cuddled with her dad on the couch.  I remained at the table with Mario watching him proudly circle the answers he believed correct and then watching him mark an “A+” a top every page of the book.  He certainly does not lack confidence.

Purposeful girlfriend

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I called my girlfriend tonight as I walked out of work.  I usually never get a hold of her – we keep up with each other by leaving long-winded messages on voicemail.  Buy tonight she answered.  And we laughed. I needed that.

K is my soul-mate girlfriend.  We have known each other since first grade.  We are both highly opinionated and strong-willed.  We both believe in ourselves and stand up for our principles. We both are attorneys who have experienced all of the stress and politics of law firms.  We both believe in supporting organizations that care for the underprivileged.  We both hate the suburbs.  The only difference I can think of is the one we had a while back over who should be the 2008 candidate for President (she was for Hillary and I was for Obama; I should have listened to Kath).

K became a mama a little over a year ago when she adopted her precious baby girl. Now, in addition to talking about the woes of practicing law or the aches and pains of turning 40, we talk about raising kids.  Tonight, we discussed our never-ending search for our purpose in life.  K found herself running to the mall to buy something and then walking around for an hour looking at books promising to provide the meaning of life.  I told her I searched the internet last night for an hour googling “meaning of life” and “life’s purpose.”  Searching, searching, searching.  I don’t think it’s a bad activity but I also think that I could probably realize just as much if I allowed myself to take time to meditate and have some quiet time.  Then again, I would probably be like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love when she goes to the meditation school, sits down to meditate, and can only think about the twenty things she has to do and how she is being bad because she is not “meditating.”

M&M experiencing the joys of sliding!

We got on the conversation of kids.  Aren’t we supposed to feel happy and fulfilled because we have kids?  We are raising these helpless little creatures and showing them an exciting world where they can experience adventure and wonder.  What more can we ask for in life?  Obviously, lots.  Our conversation took me back to an article in 2008 in the Daily Beast.  The article reported studies that found that parents are less happy than non-parents.  More stressed, more depressed. Makes you want to take some birth control ASAP, heh?!  The article opines that maybe it’s because we are having kids at a later age and we look back to our 20s and even 30s and think “I loved having that martini with my girlfriends after work” or “How great was it to wake up on Saturday morning at 10 am, go for a run, and spend the day watching old movies.” None of those activities will see the light of day when babes arrive in the house.  Hell, I’m lucky to be ten minutes into a movie without some form of interruption whether it’s a kid crying or a toddler peeing the bed.

But the article did end with an interesting tidbit.   Although parents reported being less happy, they did find greater purpose in life when having children.  K and I agree that having our babes does push the purpose bar of our life up quite a bit.  There is no doubt that raising kids and experiencing the joys and depth of emotion that kids bring to you is purposeful. But it is not our only purpose.  And there we stand.  Still trying to search for that additional purpose for why we are here.  What more we can do in the second half of our lives to feel that we made the most out of this one, precious life?  It drives us nuts on many a day – we call one another and question “why can’t we just be content in our jobs and with our babies and our husbands and our homes?”  Don’t we “have it all?”  Obviously not.  In the end, as much as we joke that we wish we could just be unaware and unquestioning. I think it is yet another strength that we both carry.  Our ability to always search for more, to always push ourselves to grow, to always ask questions.  To have a girlfriend that I know is questioning right along side of me even if she is 100 miles away, provides a comfort to me that cannot be provided by any other soul.

Lighten Up!

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Doing an alright job with these darlings

I had coffee with my girlfriend last week and spent a majority of the get-together lamenting about how I feel like I am not doing enough with my life.  She felt the same way.  We both tore off chunks of our chocolate chip muffin and shoved them in our mouths as if those morsels would satiate us and cease our thinking on this topic any further.  It didn’t work.

It doesn’t work for a lot of women, it seems.  I am around professional women all day (typically attorneys) and I can’t think of one that has felt she is doing everything she should be doing.  One feels like she should stay home more with her kids; another feels that she should express her artistic side more by joining a band; another feels like she should get more involved in her local community; another feels like she should be a first grade room mother for her son.  I always feel like I should be doing more to help the under-privileged. 

Here I am: a woman who worked throughout college and obtained a bachelor’s degree; worked as a Fitness Director; went to law school and obtained a JD; married a wonderful man and had two adorable children; beat out others for a great job with lots of flexibility; is blessed with good lungs for running; lives in an awesome neighborhood; has the most loving and accepting family; sits on the boards of two non-profit organizations; and can still eat a pint of ice cream a night!  What more could I ask for from life?

Obviously, with the way I think, LOTS!

I am part of a large crowd of women.  Should that make me feel better? It doesn’t.  It’s not that I want to stop pursuing ideals and goals that I set for myself, I just want to stop feeling like they should all be completed by 5 pm.  I want to stop beating myself up about not taking Maria to lunch when my colleague tells me about her lunch with her daughter.  I want to pat myself on the back when I take Maria and Mario to a board meeting to let them hear how people who are less privileged than us have to live.  I want to want a lot out of this life; I just want to do it keeping a smile on my face.  As writer Elizabeth Gilbert says “Lighten Up!” 

Let’s just anticipate that we (all of us) will disappoint ourselves somehow in the decade to come. Go ahead and let it happen. Let somebody else be a better mother than you for one afternoon. Let somebody else go to art school. Let somebody else have a happy marriage, while you foolishly pick the wrong guy. (Hell, I’ve done it; it’s survivable.) While you’re at it, take the wrong job. Move to the wrong city. Lose your temper in front of the boss, quit training for that marathon, wolf down a truckload of cupcakes the day after you start your diet. Blow it all catastrophically, in fact, and then start over with good cheer. This is what we all must learn to do, for this is how maps get charted—by taking wrong turns that lead to surprising passageways that open into spectacularly unexpected new worlds. So just march on. Future generations will thank you—trust me—for showing the way, for beating brave new footpaths out of wonky old mistakes.

Fall flat on your face if you must, but please, for the sake of us all, do not stop.

Map your own life.

Recognizing the working mom AND the stay-at-home mom

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I read an article in Time magazine this morning (Working Moms = Healthier and Happier) as I sat on one of the most boring conference calls of my career.  I had my venti miso and a slice of banana nut bread, however, which I enjoyed thoroughly in my quiet office free of screaming kids.

My initial reaction to the article was one of relief.  After all of these years of battling the guilty mother syndrome, studies vindicated that my decision to work was a smart one.  I would be healthier and happier than my friends who decided to stay at home with their children.  I wanted to call all of my mommy friends and announce the news; throw a party at the office for my mama colleagues.  But after 10 minutes of jubilation, I thought back to an article years ago that reported that studies showed working moms produced less attentive, more needy kids.  I thought about my reaction to that article – how I could not fall asleep that night because I questioned whether I was doing the right thing for M&M.  I doubted my love for M&M if I would choose to work everyday and not be home with them.  I scoured the internet to find articles that affirmed my decision to be a working mom.  And then I took a deep breath.  Turned off the computer. And took M&M out for a bike ride. 

M&M enjoying their bikes

I tune out these articles anymore because in the end, don’t they all say the same thing? The more love and support and encouragement that you provide to your children, the better off they will be in this world.  If I stayed at home all week with M&M, I do not think I would feel as fulfilled and as balanced as I do as a working mom.  I can’t say that for sure, and maybe in another life I will find that being a stay-at-home mom is the most incredible experience ever, but in my current life, this is how I feel.  I have worked hard to get to where I am professionally, and I enjoy the work that I do and the people I meet.  I want to be able to retain my connections and continue to work because I know that I will want that when M&M are older and in their own lives.  When they go off on their own in high school and college, I want to have my career and colleagues intact.  And I don’t feel like because I have my career now that I am forever scarring them. 

Happy Ri

did have my doubts when they were younger, and I still think that in a perfect world moms should be able to stay home for the first year of a newborn’s life (maybe the US will adopt Germany’s approach), but that was not a possibility for me at the time.  I had Maria when I was in the prime time of my career – six years out of law school and gaining expertise in the employment law area.  Again, who knows?  Staying at home at that time may have been better in some ways for Ri or even for me, but decisions have to be made with the facts at hand in the moment, and at that moment, I thought that I should stay in my profession and be a mom, too. 

I don’t like that the articles about stay-at-home moms versus working moms seem to pit one group against the other.  I don’t want to be one of those corporate moms that looks at a stay-at-home mom eating lunch with her kids and chides “Must be nice to stay home all day…huh?”   And I also don’t want to be the stay-at-home mom who shoots a condescending look to the working mom who just divulged that her kids go to day care because she works during the week.  I want to be the mom who sits around with other moms and appreciates that we are all different in our wishes and desires and hopes and dreams – for ourselves and our children.  What is right for me will not be right for everyone and that is OK.  M&M are pretty happy kids (albeit ornery at times, but happy!) and I don’t think that came out of the blue.  Jon and I worked our butts off loving them and holding them (all night long on many a night) and recognizing them and believing in them.  Let’s get some studies that recognize moms for those simple yet indispensable tasks.

Happy Mario

Left Neglected

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My fam!

I finished the book, Left Neglected by Lisa Genova tonight.  I am not a voracious reader of books, and if I do like them, they are usually biographies or non-fiction (I stick with New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly magazine articles).  But this book hit home for me.  Hmmm, I don’t know why?  It couldn’t be because the main character reminds me so much of me? Sarah Nickerson is a working mom with three kids trying to juggle an 80 hour workweek with kids’ activities and a hubby all while keeping joy and spontaneity in her life.  When that life crashes at her knees and she cannot continue to go ten miles a minute, she is forced to face her relationship with her mom, her addiction to her blackberry and email, and her manic, crazed life.  

Genova’s writing flows so easily and I felt instantly connected with Sarah and her fears, anxieties, and dreams.  I loved her description of Sarah helping her ADHD son do his homework and the thrill she got in taking the time to think of a productive solution to his problem as well as the thrill her son got in getting his homework completed and correct.  Those precious moments carry throughout your life.  I also thought that Genova did a great job at portraying Sarah’s anger towards her mother who failed to pay attention to her as a child due to the death of Sarah’s brother at a young age.  When Sarah has a scare with her own son who could have been struck by a car, she is able to appreciate the pain her mom must have felt all those years after her brother’s death; she gains empathy towards her mom’s situation and in the end, the ability to forgive.  Forgiveness is such a gift.  

The book made me again address what matters most to me.  I need these reminders interspersed throughout my crazed day, week, and month in order to keep me focused on the people and parts of my life that I most enjoy and cherish.  My life is not as crazed as Sarah’s – I have found a job that brings me much flexibility and also stretches my mind to new limits.  But I do have those days when I still think “what am I doing?! Shouldn’t I be working somewhere I could make a real difference?! ”  I will continue to struggle with that question but in the meantime, the bottom line for me is that I am genuinely happy.  I love Maria and Mario to absolute pieces, and cannot imagine a world without their sweet, cherub faces.  I love my husband for being my champion in all that I do, and I love my family and friends for the support and laughs and joy they bring me.  I have it good, and books like Genova make me recognize that over and over again.

Maria’s Doomsday

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Maria's attitude face (scary, heh?!)

We asked Maria to clean her room this morning.  You would have thought we told her to clean the entire house and more with the reaction that we got from her.  She produced intermittent whines and screams of “I don’t want to clean my room!” Then she went into a huge tirade about not wanting to have a room – she just wishes that we would let her live outside.  We are such horrible parents for providing her shelter.  Next she pulled out the “too tired” card but within three minutes of using that one she begged to go to the zoo and walk around the animals.  Hmmmm.  Finally, she got her dad to help her out and after ten minutes complained that she needed to lay down due to the intense work.  

Ready for a game

Maria Grace.  Meanwhile, her crazy brother was in his room shoving clothes in his drawers, pushing games in his dresser, putting animals back in the bins.  He jumped into our bedroom and pronounced “Mom and Dad, my room is clean!”  he pulled us in and rejoiced “Look at my floor – all clean!”  Anything he can do to look better than his sis, he will do.  It drives him in a worrisome fashion.  He is so competitive.   This is the kid that tells me I cannot root for him when we are playing basketball because we are on separate teams. 

Maria, on the other hand, does not have such a strong competitive side to her.  She is more inclined to want to play a game where everyone is on the same team.  However, what she lacks in competitiveness, she gains in bossiness.  She wants to be the boss in all that she does – be it with friends, Mario, or her cousin.  She wants to give the directions and lead the activity and if anyone gets in her way, she makes it clear that she is not happy with them. 

I remember going to Cincinnati for my grandmother’s surprise party and my dad taking Maria to another room to play with her while I got my grandma’s party together.  He came back cracking up.  He told me about his time with Maria, which was hysterical.  I can’t remember all of the funny things she did, but the one that sticks out still is that when my dad asked her why he could not do something she responded quickly and firmly with “Because I am the boss.”  God help the corporate world in 20 years – she will have some intern coming over to clean her New York apartment because she is the boss.

Summer Teenage Control Program

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Mario copping his attitude while at Five Guys eating his fries!

Tonight, I turned into my father (AHHHHHH!).  I instituted the Toddler and Kindergartner Dinner Control Program.  Jon and I have done a horrid job at sitting down to dinner with the kids.  Both of us grew up having dinner with our parents, and want to carry that tradition down to Maria and Mario.  However, for numerous reasons (some lame and some legitimate), we have failed.  We both work and have used that as an excuse to order in food most of the days of the week or simply skip dinner and eat some random foods through the night.  Now, before we have Child Welfare knocking at our door, we do feed the children decent meals.  They just usually eat them at their little Dora table as Jon or I (sometimes both) watch them gobble up their food and begin play again.  If they are not eating at their little table, they are out with me at one of the parks eating a picnic dinner or at Panera or Cowtown Pizza.  During the Spring, Summer, and Fall, we live outside.  Therefore, we carry our dinner with us.  So, here comes Winter and darkness at 5 pm.  We need to make the change. 

Maria wanted a “feast” for this dinner so she decided on turkey dogs, peas, leftover pasta and meatballs, grapes, and bread.  We cooked the meal while Mario and Jon played in the dining room. 

Maria doing her model pose (as always) while eating her fry!

After fifteen whole minutes, we had our meal.  Maria and Jon cleared the dining room table, Maria placed a vase of flowers on it, and we served the dinner plates.  We all sat down.  Maria and Mario fought for five minutes about who got to say a meal prayer (Grandma Ionno instituted this ritual in them!).  Finally, Maria caved and Mario went first and Maria second.  We then began our next soon-to-be ritual: telling each other our favorite part of our day.  Mario again got to go first (yes, Maria is a saint and so patient).  Mario’s favorite part of the day was learning about manners at school (always say “please” and put a napkin in your shirt when you eat sloppy foods).  Maria’s favorite part was sitting next to her friends, Zach and Trent, at lunch and laughing about “silly things.”  Unfortunately, Jon was stopped cold in his story because at this point, Mario was standing up in his chair and dancing.  We scolded him to sit down and eat warning him that Spiderman only gets bigger if he eats his food (the only thing, if anything, that works on him to get him to eat).  Maria, by that time, was begging for some of my spaghetti since she had eaten her food.  Maria skirted all around her chair and managed to get cottage cheese and spaghetti sauce in her hair, on her forehead and on her shirt.  We were asking her to scoot around to the table when Mario stated he was finished (although he had only ate half of his hot dog and nothing else).  He lifted those tiny arms up with his palms facing upward pleading “But, mom, I am not hungry. My tummy will hurt.”

He knows exactly what to say.  Maria, meanwhile, was set on finishing the rest of my spaghetti.  She is a girl who knows how to eat well.  Unfortunately, I do not think Mario will rise to her level anytime soon.  Right in the midst of all of this, guess  who calls?  My Father!  The Architect of the Teenage Summer Control Program that I morphed into the Toddler and Kindergartner Dinner Control Program!  Little did he know what influence he had on his daughter. 

Maria and Mario ready for our Fall picnic at the park!

As soon as I got on the phone with him, the kids were out of their chairs and wrestling on the floor.  It had been 16 minutes since we began eating our dinner – not bad for the Programs’s first night.  Tomorrow we will explain the Program in more detail to the kids and try for 18 minutes.  I may also have to give them a carrot like my dad did for me and tell them if they sit in their seats for 18 minutes, they will get a yummy treat for dessert.  I better stack up on vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and skittles!

Hope

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Maria enjoying dress up at school

I drove downtown today to head to an appointment to tour the YWCA in hopes of volunteering there in the future.  I got thrown back in time as I drove down Spring Street towards the heart of downtown.  I had taken that route for eight years – four of them with my daughter to and from daycare at Bright Horizon’s at Grant Hospital and two of them with my daughter and son.  

I had placed my daughter in the Grant daycare because it was directly across the street from my law firm.  I still remember those first few months of dropping her off at daycare, age three months old.  It devastated me to drop her off in the morning because she always cried – always.  The daycare providers tried to console her but unfortunately they had lots of other screaming babies to console (although I would always unreasonably expect that my sweet baby should get all of the attention – not those other babies).  What made it worse, too, was that I would go over in the mid-morning or early afternoon to see her, and she would be crying when I walked in the room.  

This pissed me off beyond belief.  I would remain calm and pick her up and try to talk to the girls about different ways to calm her down.  They would listen in between feeding other babies, burping them, changing their diapers.  I was yet another neurotic parent telling them how to do their job in their eyes, I am sure.  Heck, they were only making $8.00 an hour to take care of my child for eight hours – what could I expect?  I always felt bad for not speaking up more about the hourly wage that these gals were making; it is such a travesty that the women and men who watch over our children and care for them while we are off at work make the same or less money per hour than a valet or grocery store bagger. 

I never have come to terms with leaving them at daycare while I go off and work.  I still feel conflicted when I think about my choice to retain a career.  There are nights when I watch a certain scene of a movie or read a story on-line, and a flood of emotions come over me and I feel like I am the worst mom ever and I think my children will grow up to feel abandoned and lonely and despondent.  I don’t think that will ever go away – subside, yes, but never vanish forever. 

Maria grew into her own at the daycare, and of course, was the little munchball that everyone wanted to hold and play with through the day.  So, it got easier to some extent.  She still was never the type to jump up and down for school (and still isn’t) but at least she was not crying hysterically everyday when I left.  Now, I take her to her new school closer to our house (she started there in September 2009) and she begs to return to that old school because it was so much fun and she misses her teachers.  So, I guess it wasn’t the dungeon that I always made myself feel it was when I left her in the morning.  

It is funny how the same routine consumes you day in and day out, and you feel like there is no way that you will ever forget the monotony of it all.  How you will never forget the devastation and loneliness and sorrow that encompassed your entire self as you tip-toed out of the infant room trying to calm your little one as she sobbed for you to stay.   How you sank deep in your chair at work bombarded with thoughts about whether you were doing the right thing, how your child would be affected by your decision, what you could do to make it better. 

But then they get older and they are less fragile, and they enjoy interaction with friends, and you see them developing, and they say something that is so heartfelt and so enlightening that you think “they are coming along just fine….” 

My darling, happy daughter in her Mexican dress

And those moments from the past, that heartbreak from the past, that confusion from the past, does subside greatly and you feel hope rising up.     

My goofy, muffin-loving son