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We get by with a little help

While riding the gallbladder rollercoaster, I had a "come to Jesus" moment about how much people need each other during times of crisis and how difficult it can be to offer and accept help.

When I first saw the OB on the last Monday of November, it was after six hours of intense pain that had me crying harder than Sally Field after Shelby's funeral in Steel Magnolias. And yet? I drove myself to the appointment. Later that night, after five hours of lying on a gurney half-asleep from narcotic medication in the E.R., I proceeded to drive myself home. The painkillers were out of my system by then, so it's not like I was driving under the influence, but I was struggling to concentrate on the road. On the expressway. In the rain. The minute I reached my driveway, I sent fervent prayers of thanks to God that I made it home in one piece.

It did not have to be this way.

First of all, I was surrounded by coworkers who are kind and caring and would have been more than willing to take me to the hospital. Second, once I was at the E.R., I was in constant contact with Luke and my boss the whole time, and both of them would have dropped everything to be with me and make sure I was okay. But in typical oldest-child people-pleaser fashion, I didn't want to bother anyone. In the moment, I couldn't justify asking Luke to pack up three children under the age of four at two hours before midnight and subject them to a ninety-minute screamfest "just" to bring me home. I should've gone with Plan B - crashing at my boss's house the next town over, just fifteen minutes from the hospital - but I didn't want to impose or come off as a drama queen, even though I knew her offer was genuine. I could walk, yes? I wasn't seeing double? So long as I was able to do those two things, I figured I should take care of myself.

I can see now this was wrong of me, especially since it wasn't true. I didn't have to take care of myself. When someone reaches out to lighten your burden, let them. Don't make the decision for them or overshadow their kindness with your own trivial hang-ups. Isabel wrote a great post about this last year that has stayed with me ever since. Even Jesus had help carrying the Cross.

As it turned out, there would be another opportunity to accept help graciously, sooner than I expected. Not twenty-four hours later, I could barely sit up in bed, let alone drive a car. Luke and I had to admit that our family couldn't handle this alone.

The grandest gesture came from Luke's parents, who stayed at our house three to four days at a time two weeks in a row to lend a hand with the kids. Words cannot express how grateful we are for their willingness to put their own lives on hold and place our needs first, without any advance notice, and for spinning it in such a way that you could almost trick yourself into thinking they had the better end of the deal. ("We enjoy spending so much time with our grandchildren!") We received an outpouring of love and concern from other friends and family through phone calls, texts, e-mails, and Facebook, but it was Grandma and Grandpa D who proactively came to the rescue in the area we needed it most, even when it couldn't have been convenient for them.

Their act of selflessness has reminded me that I've not been nearly as generous with my own time. It's easy to make abstract statements when life is all sunshine and rainbows; it's much harder to follow through when hard times present themselves and a loved one calls your bluff. When you learn on a random Monday that your mother's favorite aunt, your late grandmother's sister, has passed away and the viewing is on Thursday, for example.

My mother didn't ask me to attend the service; I think she told me NOT to come, actually, since I was in my second trimester with Liam, and sick all the time, and Luke had a cold himself, and the funeral home was four hours away, and we didn't have the money for gas. She knew all that and didn't want us over extending ourselves. But I felt drawn to be there for her just the same and told her on Tuesday we would make every effort to come.

After a lot - A LOT - of discussion, though, and proposing a million different scenarios, Luke and I decided that we just couldn't do it. We were too sick. We were too broke.

I remember calling my mom to tell her about the change in plans and feeling like an absolute tool for letting her down, even though she couldn't have been more understanding. I felt terrible for not making her pain more of a priority. I asked myself again and again if my short-term issues trumped the long-term gravity of the situation, and what I would think of my response five years down the road.

I don't hold this up as an example of a time where I should have made a different choice - right now I don't regret the decision we made - but it paints a very real picture of the factors people take into account when responding to requests for support (direct or perceived), and how easy it can be to fall short. I acknowledge this was a perfect storm of circumstances where I happened to be physically,mentally, and financially tapped out, and that in the last few years I have busted ass to be present for some life-changing events for family and friends. Births. Deaths. Miscarriages. Missing siblings. Weddings. Baptisms. Birthdays. 

But there are also plenty of instances where I wish I would've stopped fretting over some perceived obstacle that seemed monumental at the time but in reality was more of a discomfort and just been there.

I hope to be there a lot more in 2012.

I'm so glad we had this time together

Indianapolis started school almost a month ago, but for the Frema-Useless Clutter household, we are just now closing our chapter on the season that is summer.

Nathan started his parents' day out program yesterday. He was so excited about it that he ran into the classroom ("Terrific Twos!") before Luke and I could hug him good-bye. As it should be, even if it did stab my heart a little.

Kara would have started along with him in the Thriving Threes and Fours group as was planned earlier in the spring except that Luke and I decided to mix things up at the last minute in light of my recent pay increase and upgraded her registration to preschool. Compared to others, her classroom time seems relatively light at just two afternoons a week, but for us it is the perfect amount of exposure to new concepts and reinforcement of what she's already mastered at home. She's even completed her first homework assignment, doled out at last Thursday's open house, if you call cutting up magazines for an "All About Me" poster homework, which I totally do, because hello, the girl's only three. Her first session was today.

Meanwhile, the newest addition to our family turned 10 weeks old this morning. He continues to delight everyone in the house with his smiles, coos, and poops. He isn't sleeping through the night yet, but he does pull some seriously long stretches from mid-evening to early morning. Now if only his stupid parents would use this time to sleep instead of watching Friends reruns and loading the dishwasher.

As for me? Well, today was my last day of maternity leave.

What to say about these last ten weeks? It's been amazing, relishing in newbornhood one more time, and spending days upon days clocking hours of snuggle time in our glider, building robots out of Legos, playing catch up with Pixar, and overall just enjoying my babies. They are all such funny little people, so smart and charming, and Kara and Nathan were so patient with me during my pregnancy with Liam. They deserved this time to bond with me, too, to get caught in the rain with me at the zoo, to have me drive them to and from tumbling class, to share a blueberry muffin with me at Starbucks after a random trip to Target. I was introduced to Mater and Ladybug Girl and Yo Gabba Gabba!, and they were reminded that their mother is capable of doing more than visiting the doctor and sleeping on the couch. It's hard for them sometimes, watching me with Liam when they'd rather have me for themselves, but these growing pains will become easier to handle as he gets older, and they pale in comparison to how much fun we have when we're all together.

I think everything is ready for tomorrow: outfit ironed, lunch packed, professional shots of Liam ready to be added to my desk. I've got a fresh hair cut, new purse, and filed nails. I'll certainly look ready to be back at work, even if the pit in my stomach indicates otherwise. 

Having pushed through this hurdle twice now, I know in the end it'll be okay. I work with wonderful people who will help me transition back to office life, and the kids couldn't be in better hands with Luke. Good things are ahead of us. I just wish time could've stopped a little bit longer.

This is what four weeks postpartum looks like

Four weeks ago yesterday, at 9:48 a.m., the last child I will ever carry (that is, unless Luke is fatally injured, I meet Joshua Jackson, and he requires biological offspring in lieu of a marriage prenup) was strategically evicted from my uterus. Only it doesn't feel like four weeks ago, more like an eternity, because it's already that difficult to imagine what life was like without Liam.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the biggest hurdle to overcome thus far has been my own physical recovery. There's some persistent fluid build-up causing tenderness in my abdominal area, tenderness that until a few days ago inspired mild nausea whenever anyone came into contact with my stomach, and my tire gut contributed to bacterial and fungal infections around my incision that interfered with the normal healing process. Apparently, all that extra skin (sexy!) worked against me when it came to keeping the scar dry, turning the whole area into a red, blotchy mess. I've been to my ob/gyn's office twice since coming home from the hospital, with another follow-up slated for today. 

Luckily, an elaborate ritual involving cotton balls, hydrogen peroxide, MY FRIGGING BLOW DRYER, anti-fungal powder, and hospital-grade gauze applied twice a day for the last week has resulted in me finally feeling like myself again, my personal best, even, since before the onset of my first trimester morning sickness. I'm feeling so good, in fact, that I also have two full days of meds-free living under my belt, with not so much as an over-the-counter pill in my system. Hooray for me, and also, IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME.

It's only because I'm doing so well I can admit that in those first few weeks, all that unresolved pain paired with the traditional complications from this type of surgery seriously impacted my ability to function. What I said about mornings being a cherished part of my routine in my last post was true, but it's also true that they were the hardest part of my day. I posted a lot of jokes on Facebook about my A.M. coffee intake, but truly, I was no good to anyone until half-way to lunch, even though Luke and I shared night duty for Liam, and even though Luke continued to get up with Kara and Nathan just as he does when I'm working so that I could go back to bed for another couple of hours while Liam dozed after his first morning bottle.

For so long I was embarrassed about this, would apologize to my husband for having to pick up my slack, and felt like less of a mother because I couldn't push through my own issues to be fully present for ALL the members of my family. It wasn't like I was completely detached from daily living, but oftentimes even simple tasks such as giving a bath or unloading the dishwasher put too much strain on my body, so that I couldn't do more than a couple of things like that in a 24-hour time span. Now that my infections are just about healed and my overall pain has been downgraded to annoying at best, all I can do is recognize that I'm not Wonder Woman, acknowledge that I needed help - a lot of help - to get back on my feet, and thank my lucky stars Luke was around to give it to me. His being the at-home parent in our relationship allowed Kara and Nathan to get the care and attention they needed and enabled me to focus on bonding with Liam and getting better. I'm not proud of how often I fell short, but I can forgive myself for it and move on.

And yet, even in those early weeks when I would cry over not being the wife and mother I wanted to be, I was still in much better shape mentally then I was after having Kara, as I learned how to integrate the role of mother into my life, and after Nathan, born not fourteen months after his sister, who was still just a baby herself. This time around, there was no veil of self-doubt, no wavering in making decisions that were best for my family. I was still able to embrace each day for the gift it was, laugh through the building of Lego towers with my toddlers, and appreciate every hour of snuggle time with my new baby.

I keep comparing this maternity leave to Kara's and Nathan's, and each time, I realize how far I've come since then. This is the first time I've been able to bring home a child and hold onto the best, most confident parts of myself. I am so grateful for that. This focus and sense of peace I've discovered since Liam was born, it's such a blessing.

Speaking of Liam, he continues to knock our socks off. He's finally "woken up," so to speak, and joined the world of the living in that he isn't sleeping twenty hours a day anymore; he has fussy periods in the morning and evening hours, but they are not unbearable or even a surprise, given his age. At last Friday's weight check, he clocked in at a whopping 10 pounds and 3 ounces. Two days later, he rolled over for the first time. He enchants us all with gassy smiles, wide eyes, and pursed lips. Poor thing still has traces of Kara's and Nathan's cold, and it appears that we are dealing with a clogged tear duct in his right eye, but again, nothing unbearable. I can't believe how lucky we are to have him, or that I owe his existence to a bottle of red from Walmart. Miracles, though, aren't picky.

As for me, I am good, so very, very good, if not a little stir-crazy from mostly hanging out indoors, partly due to the above-mentioned ailments and partly from the Midwest's record-breaking humidity. I've generated a few unexpected bills since my leave began (damn crown, breaking off two days after coming home from the hospital!), and since we had to deplete a lot of our savings before Liam's birth for a variety of reasons, I have decided to return to work two weeks early so we can avoid financial strain. This puts me back in the office the week of Labor Day instead of late September. 

In the past, the very thought of this scenario would have reduced me to a weepy puddle of WAAAH, but I'm okay with this decision, too. I'm not wishing my time away with my family by any means, but there is a piece of me that's eager to embrace our new normal, and that new normal includes me going back to work. Plus, there is so much for us to do now that Liam is here; prepare to put our house on the market, for one. Pay off our credit card debt (and new array of medical bills) once and for all. Start tending to my professional network again. In other words, make our dreams come true. 

I am so ready.

The big 3-0 and musings on the working mother balance

Folks, we have officially entered single-digit territory - no more than nine weeks until we bring Baby Brother home. My word.

 

I will shoot daggers at anyone who might dare utter this to me, but at 30 weeks, even I have to admit that I'm looking large and in charge (and also in need of a haircut; THAT I hope to remedy next week). Sitting both children on my lap for storytime is damn near impossible, and several items of maternity clothing are no longer fit for public display, especially button-up shirts, which mistakenly give the impression that this child is going to burst through my uterus Incredible Hulk style. Thankfully, I have some things to tide me over courtesy of my book club friends until my sister delivers an entire bin of looser-fitting summer clothes late next month, because the goal is still to spend as little money in this area as possible. (To Katy: I get compliments on this top everytime I wear it, and your patterned black skirt, too.)

Despite the iron supplement I'm taking to address my anemia, I wear out so easily these days, and if there is ever an opportunity to nap on the weekends, I jump on it immediately. Unfortunately, now that we're inching into the final weeks, those opportunities are few and far between. Last weekend was all about The Great Bedroom Merge, and the weekend before that I FINALLY started on Nathan's baby book. Our current goals are to focus on preparing Baby Brother's room and addressing minor touch-ups and eyesores throughout the rest of the house. I've also been busy at work, training my coworkers to handle various projects and to-dos while I'm on maternity leave for 12 weeks.

The closer we get to the big day, the more apprehensive I feel about making it through those early months with a new baby. As a mother of toddlers, I have no doubts about their attachment to me or their understanding of my love for them. This knowledge has allowed me to grant myself permission to strike a manageable balance between my roles as mother, wife, working professional, and individual who continues to exist alongside (and sometimes independently of) all of those identities. In my day-to-day, that balance looks something like this:

I do not bring work home. I will arrive at the office early, or I will stay late, but aside from regularly checking e-mail on my smartphone, work stuff stays at work. It is much easier to stay put until the job is done than it is to stop my train of thought, pack up my laptop, get through dinner, clean-up, and bedtime, and THEN try to pick up where I left off. Not only am I easily distracted at home and get little accomplished whether the kids are awake or not, I also feel cheated out of quality time with Luke. So if coming home late for dinner once in a while helps me to be a more attentive wife (and really, a better employee), than that is what I will do.

Dinner clean-up is done after dinner, not after bedtime. I fought this for such a long time in the beginning, because I felt like those precious minutes before the bedtime routine begins should be spent on the living room floor playing with my kids, not at the kitchen sink washing dishes. So I used to let everything sit until after they were asleep; however, Kara and Nathan were not made from the early-to-bed cloth, so often I wouldn't be arriving downstairs until well after nine o'clock, which meant it could get as late as ten before my "real" evening officially began. This made for a crabby Frema and, once again, a neglected husband, who by this point was in dire need of adult interaction. Finally, I realized that it wasn't the end of the world to listen to the kids laugh and rough around with their father while I puttered around in the kitchen. There are some exceptions to this; on those days where I do come home late, for example, Luke is usually quick to shoo me into the living room while he takes on kitchen detail, and lately he's been making things even easier by wiping out the pre-dinner dishes before he starts cooking. Especially because of this last thing, I am often able to do both.

(Have I told you lately how wonderful my husband is? Because truly, he is so wonderful.)

I do not miss bedtime. This isn't an absolute, of course; sometimes there are evening work functions (though none during this pregnancy so far), Luke and I have splurged on date nights if we are in the vicinity of grandparents or can afford to hire our sitter, and for a few months in the fall I attended a monthly book club gathering on the other side of the city, but overall my general rule is to be present for Kara and Nathan's bedtime. Sometimes it's frustrating if the kids are acting up, and sometimes it's inconvenient, like last summer when I was constantly late for my weekly run with Jenn, but overall it's worth it to consistently be there for bathtime, lights out, and everything in between. I revel in holding them close and sniffing their freshly shampooed heads while reading them stories. It means a lot to me to be able to kiss their cheeks and tuck them in. So I make it a priority.

I do not volunteer. This one I'm not proud of, and it's another reality I fought for a long time, but in the end, it is what it is. I was a member of my college's alumni association for about five years, and I loved doing it, but the distance between Indianapolis and Rensselaer made traveling for quarterly meetings and participating in campus events highly undesirable, especially when I already spend enough time away from home. So in 2009, I sadly turned in my resignation. My employer is great about allowing time off during the work week to participate in volunteer activities, and on and off for a couple of years I was involved in a grade-school reading program for an hour a week, but once I had kids, even that one hour away from my desk was enough to throw off my entire day, so at the end of the 2010 school year, I told the program director that I wouldn't be signing up again. Last fall, my desire to reach beyond myself grew again, and I looked into donating my time at a local women's and children's shelter, possibly on the weekends. Then I got pregnant again, and then I got sick, and now the recommendation letters I solicited are collecting dust in my mail basket, and I'm at the point where I have to admit that now is not the time to throw myself into extracurricular activities that take me away from my family, no matter how worthy the cause. That said, Luke and I recently began going to church again, a church right here in town, and we sometimes talk about looking into their soup kitchen or Bible study classes or something to that effect. So it's not like I'm swearing off do-gooding or charitable works completely, but I have realized my limits, and I have to respect them.

All of that to say - almost three and a half years into this parenthood thing, and I have finally figured out what works for me and my family. And we're about to turn all of that on its head.

Because for me, as a working mother, when I have a baby and then reach the point where I have to go back to work, I'm NOT as secure in our attachment like I am when they're older, so everything feels like it's up for grabs. You can talk to a toddler about things like having to miss dinner and they understand. That is not the case with a baby. So my big-picture focus changes from maintaining balance to simply being there as much as I can.

What this translates into on a micro level: It's hard enough being away for an average work day when they're so little that the last thing I want to do is sit at my desk even one minute after five, even if the alternative is nodding off at my laptop at ten. And when I'm dividing my attention among three children, why would I concern myself with dishes when I could be doling out hugs and kisses? On top of all that, Luke and I have not wavered on our plans to put the house on the market next year, and whether it takes a month or a year to sell, preparing for the next stage of our lives will require me to start using and building on my professional network, and part of that will entail opening myself up to extracurricular programs and events, whether it's the right time or not.

I think about all of this, toss in a few random worries about nursing (yes, I have decided to try again), and my brain threatens to explode.

Then I remind myself to breathe and not get so caught up in the future. I remember that fortunately, another reality is that Luke and I are not brand spanking new parents anymore, and we HAVE figured out a system that works for us; and while there will be an initial period of deviation from that, eventually the dust will settle, and we'll embrace a familiar version of normal once again, even if it's not identical to what we had before. Until then, I will have to grant myself permission to take it one day at a time.

So, to sum up: I am 30 weeks pregnant. I am a tad worried about managing life with a third baby. But I'm also more seasoned now than I was with the first two. Plus, my husband rocks. It will be okay.

Working on my business

Turns out we won't be able to pay off our credit card debt before Baby Brother 2.0's arrival.

I discovered this on Valentine's Day after Luke filed our taxes and I created budgets for every paycheck through June. We were so close, dammit--just a few hundred dollars away--but alas, Visa is not the only entity that needs our money. We are furiously pumping dollars into our HSA for my ob/gyn and hospital bills and into short-term savings to cover unexpected expenses during my maternity leave and transition back to work. Our goal to get out of credit card debt is going to take longer than we planned--probably into the beginning of the New Year, unfortunately--but at least the end is in sight.

All of this got me thinking about ways to bring in more money.

I've mentioned several times here my eagerness to explore launching a freelance business I could manage in my "spare time," but right now, it's not going to happen. For one thing, building a client base will be more difficult than I first thought. My original plan was to reach out to some of the advertising, design, and printing vendors I know through work, but I recently learned this type of relationship is regarded as a "conflict of interest" by my employer, so good-bye to that idea. Now, I could still go after like-minded companies to land similar types of projects, but when in my day am I supposed to network, set up introductions, attend client meetings, and just plain be available for questions or immediate needs? My work is flexible, but not THAT flexible, you know? Also, I doubt one lunch hour per week day would be enough to manage those things, and most people are not up for conducting business face-to-face after 5 p.m.

I'm sure some more efficient ways to iron out these details details would present themselves with a litle bit of pre-planning, but at this point in my life, I'm not willing to explore them. It would be easier to apply for a nights-and-weekends job at the Gap and be done with it, but right now the whole point is to increase our income while maximizing our time together as a family.

So I've got a different plan. As the great Monica Gellar once proclaimed in the second season of Friends when she invested her last few unemployment dollars into MGE stock, "I'm going to bet on me!"

In my particular scenario, "me" equals this blog.

Before I had kids, I was able to pay a lot more attention to this here little site, and the unintended (but very welcome) result was a two-year stint at Parents.com. What a wonderful opportunity as a writer to be paid for sharing my thoughts and experiences with pregnancy and motherhood. It's also how I came to know some pretty awesome people.

On the flip side, Mom-101 spends a lot of time talking about appreciating your value as a blogger and not underestimating your worth, and I think that was my biggest failure with Parents.com. Not in the sense that any additional efforts on my part would have kept the community from shutting down, but in hindsight I see that my fear of being labeled a "sell-out" for taking that gig kept me from publicizing my content and making it more accessible to long-time readers. I didn't Tweet links or start a Facebook page because Some People don't like that. But you know what? Some People do, and that includes me. I think it's helpful when the bloggers I follow on Twitter share their newest post, I'm among the first to "like" a Facebook fan page for a blog I love, and I don't think twice when somebody decides to implement advertising on their site. I have preferences on how those things are done, but I don't object to the acts themselves. So why have I always been so much harder on myself than the Internet trailblazers I so admire? Hell, I couldn't bring myself to keep a list of Parents entries in my own damn sidebar. God forbid I give the impression that I believe my writing is actually worth READING.

What it comes down to, I think, at least for me, is that for the longest time the majority of online content was published purely for recreation, without any thought given to financial gain or career opportunities. You blogged because it was fun and didn't assign any value to it beyond random shits and giggles. These days you can host ads, write sponsored posts, receive corporate sponsorship to attend a conference, freelance for other sites, and optimize your posts for keywords that apply to your "desired market." You can manage your personal brand just like the big wigs do over at Best Buy, Amazon, and Apple.

I work in marketing and communications, so I'm pretty familiar with the concept of branding. I've just never really done it for myself.

Thankfully, marketing can be done tastefully and with respect for the end user, but compared to established creative industries like music and book publishing, blogging is relatively new to the concept of for-profit strategy, and the community is still mulling over that proverbial line in the sand when it comes to deciding how far is too far. And opinions vary drastically. To some, blog links on Twitter are tacky. For others, partial feeds to increase site click-throughs are grounds for cancelling a newsfeed subscription. Then there are those who simply ignore any bells and whistles that don't appeal to them and keep on doing their blog-reading thang.

My problem is I've been operating all these years on two potentially faulty assumptions:

• That any reader in the history of the universe who encounters my blog is against any form of self-promotion, and
• That that those opinions should heavily influence how I manage my blog.

Obviously, neither has to be true.

As is the case with so many areas in my life, I need to stop worrying about what other people think and start trusting my own gut when it comes to making decisions, whether they pertain to my boobs or my blog or whatever.

A long time ago, Molly and I talked about trying to launch a mom-centric website of sorts, but neither of us had a concrete idea to pursue, and currently I don't have the mindset to commit to starting something brand-new from scratch. However, this blog has always been important to me, and I never regret the time I spend updating. I certainly don't need another reason to spend more time here, but if there is even a small chance I can take something so personally fulfilling and turn it into a financial opportunity, well, why not at least try?

I have no idea where this will go. I am open to incorporating ads, though I have no idea which network to use, and I could earn twenty bucks a month or nothing at all. I'd love to land another freelance gig but have no idea how to go after that, as Parents was handed to me on a silver platter. I don't feel comfortable writing sponsored posts at this time, and there aren't any resources available in the Frema-Useless Clutter household for blogging conferences or other networking events.

I can...start a Facebook fan page, though, right? That's easy. That's free.

So, all of THAT to say this: I'm going to start a Facebook fan page!  You're trembling in your boots with excitement, aren't you? I can totally tell.

15 weeks and personal finance mumbo jumbo

Today I welcomed my fifteenth week of pregnancy by vomiting for the first time since I peed on that fateful stick back in October. For future reference, prenatal vitamin + leftover Raisin Bran milk = blaaaaaaaaah.

In other, less disgusting news, I had my monthly ob appointment yesterday, and Number Three is doing well; very active, according to the doctor, and the heartbeat sounded strong at 150 bpm. There are a few aches and pains going on that are typical of this stage - the acting of up my sciatic nerve, for one, and a tenderness in my abdomen that was diagnosed by the doctor as being diastasis recti. I also found my first pregnancy-related skin tag ever near my collarbone, a couple of nights ago. Way to go, baby, for keeping things interesting!

Here I am in all my gestational glory:

 

Why do I look whiter than the Pillsbury Doughboy? And is it just me, or is that picture frame crooked? Oh, well, at least I can still fit into my regular-sized dress slacks. So long as they are cotton and sport elastic waistbands.

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At the start of the New Year I outlined our household budget through the remaining winter months, and I know these issues are only temporary, but things feel bleak, friends. Luke and I are working hard to pay off our credit card balance before the baby comes in June, which means almost every bit of cash from now until March is needed to cover our car insurance premiums, homeowner's association fees, and necessary grocery and household items as well as pay down our Visa bill. Luke and I did not exchange Christmas presents, only token stocking stuffers, and there are no travel plans slated for anytime soon, save my niece's baptism in Chicago next month.

Sometimes I feel like a complete and utter failure for not being able to manage our finances more efficiently, and then I remind myself that some things were simply out of our control: a $164 increase in our mortgage last fall thanks to a negative balance in our escrow account was the most jarring, and the random but major car repairs totaling almost two grand in September were definitely not on our radar. Luckily, there is light at the end of the tunnel: tax refunds in February and my annual raise in April should put us on more secure footing, though we have decided there is no way in hell we have any business taking on a car payment to buy a vehicle that can accommodate three car seats anytime soon. This means we'll be hauling two cars if we need to go anywhere local as a family and renting a van if we find ourselves needing/wanting to travel north. But hey, at least we have two cars that we own outright, and we can still pay our bills and put food on the table, and we don't have to talk about Luke going back to work (as if we could afford three kids in daycare, anyway), and really, this money glitch is so temporary in the grand scheme of things. Nothing on our plate is unmanageable, just really hard to get through sometimes on a day-to-day basis.

How's that for keeping it real?

This is just one more reason I have been considering launching a part-time freelancing business sometime this year. I'm not looking to replace my full-time income, just supplement it with some meaty writing projects from time to time.

Have any of you had any luck starting your own business? How did you get started? Are there any books you would recommend?

First trimester progress

Now that I've broken my two-week posting hiatus, consequently relieving myself of the pressure to come back with an entry of Shakespearean-like proportions, I can give you a real update.

I am still sick. I am still scared. I am still spending the majority of my waking, non-working hours curled up in a ball on the couch in sweatpants.

But also, some progress has been made.

For starters, I have already ironed out the logistics of my maternity leave. I will take 12 weeks off just like I did with Kara and sorely wished I could have done with Nathan. The first six will be paid by my employer, and the second will be partially covered under short-term disability. I will also have almost a month's worth of vacation time at my disposal, and originally I asked about tacking on a week or two of PTO to my leave, but two members of my department's senior strategy team are also expecting, and their leave will overlap with mine, and I was told it was too much time to be out of the office. For a while I was a little frustrated about this, not to mention the U.S.'s overall attitude on maternity leave in general, but there are many women in this country who could never take advantage of even the 12 weeks protected by law, so I am just grateful that my company provides paid time off to begin with and that I can be out the full three months without completely wrecking our finances.

On another work-related note, I have already spoken to my boss about travel arrangements for next year, and she has assured me that my trips should be few and far between. Not that I ever traveled a whole lot, anyway, but the mere possibility of being asked to hop on a plane and leave behind a baby for multiple days at a time was enough to bring me to tears. I had to evaluate an industry conference in Chicago a couple of months ago and I was gone for three nights, and it wasn't terrible, but for me, it was still too long. I couldn't imagine doing that with an infant at home. Luckily, I was told that if I have to go to another conference, it can be scheduled for while I'm still pregnant. Thank goodness my boss is so understanding.

Luke and I have also worked out childcare for my hospital stay. Luke's parents, who graciously watched Kara for us when I had Nathan, will actually be site-seeing in Wales when I deliver in June, so good ole Molly has offered to step up to the plate - VOLUNTARILY, without being asked or anything. How she will handle five children ranging in age from eight to two for three days is...not something I want to spend too much time thinking about. Hopefully, she won't, either.

(Thanks again, friend!)

Lastly, I've started doing a little research on lactation consultants and have information for two different resources near my area, so I'm starting to feel a tiny bit more confident that I will have adequate support for nursing this time around. (There is an entire post brewing inside of me on this very subject, don't you worry.)

Other than that, I've been trying to focus on life after Number Three's arrival: incorporating the baby into our family routines, moving forward with plans to sell the house, and getting through the difficulty of yet another First Year with my sanity still intact. I have visions of baby-wearing and jogger-strollering and baby-sittering and various other ways to keep life moving. With Kara and even Nathan, Luke and I kind of allowed our lives to stop, because with Kara everything was so shell-shockingly new and with Nathan they were both so damn young - both in cribs, both in diapers, both demanding so much attention that all we could do was manage day by day. We also didn't have a clear picture of where we were headed or how to get there, so being at a standstill didn't affect our big-picture timeline one way or the other. This time, we will have two rambunctious toddlers who like to do things like go to school and play trains at the library and dig sand at the beach, and I don't want them to lose their summer just because we add another person into the mix. Also, we DO have goals now, and a long-term vision for our future, and we are the only ones who can make that vision happen. So we'll have to start doing that, too, even in the face of constant feedings, night wakings, and growth spurts.

So, to sum up: things kind of suck right now. But come next June, it will be all good, just mark my words.

On using, not finding, the time

On Tuesday, I went running for the first time since August. Of course, it was amazing - not once have I ever regretted a run. And while I know that 12-minute miles aren't anything to write home about, it felt so good to hit the pavement again, and to readopt a posture that for a while came so naturally: arms at my sides, feet skidaddling over the ground a la Fred Flinstone and his caveman wheels. Why do I let myself fall out of sync with activities that make such a positive impact on me?

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On Wednesday, I left a "meaty" comment on a blog entry for the first time in - oh, I don't know, years? (Discussion of religion will do that to you; best of luck, Christy!) After having Kara and returning to work, I had to cut back on the timesuck somewhere, and that somewhere, unfortunately, was not only my presence on this here website but also in the comments sections of my most favorite internet people. So many of you consistently respond to my brain dumps with kind and thoughtful words, and I'm disappointed in myself for not returning the favor. I gain so much value from the blog community, personally and professionally, but in the day-to-day hustle I consistently overlook the importance of giving back. Sometimes it can be as easy as tweeting a piece of content that impressed or resonated with me. Othertimes, a little more uncomfortable, like going against the grain when my belief system isn't popular, or finding the right words to disagree.

Part of my growth as a writer and as a person in 2011, I think, will be to identify which of my causes need the most attention and how I can use my voice to raise awareness and call others to action. I don't consider myself a "safe" blogger, necessarily, but I'm not picketing on Election Day or writing letters to my senator, either, content-wise. There's got to be a happy medium.

Without morphing into a judgemental asshat, of course. 

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I'm already thinking about goals and aspirations for the New Year, and instead of hammering out the usual list of resolutions, I'm thinking of focusing on a couple phrases that cover more ground. "Escape velocity" has been a huge one for 2010 and will most likely carry over as I work on executing short-term projects falling under that umbrella; also, "moving the Titanic" (is that an insensitive reference? I sure hope not), since right now it feels like I'm aboard a massive ship that can't be steered with one quick motion, but instead requires tiny corrections and adjustments to slowly change course. My iceberg is in clear sight, and if I don't start redirecting soon, I fear I will soon be trapped into a life of what-ifs as a result of my own inaction.

But it won't be easy. "Moving my Titanic" will require maintaining my current level of responsibility (parenting, working, budgeting, wife-ing) while also making room for new endeavors that will help me change my path and generally just make me happier. For example, if I want to formally launch a part-time freelance business next year (which, newsflash! I want to launch a part-time freelance business next year!), I can't grab extra hours by cutting back on my day job; if anything, my current workload dictates ramping things up to help the company through a critical time of year. Likewise, if I want to run more or increase my blog presence or pick up crocheting again or FINALLY get some ink onto the pages of Nathan's baby book, I can't score the time by staying up any later than I already do, especially since another priority is to get better sleep. And I can't incorporate everything I want to do into every single day.

At times it's discouraging, this survival-of-the-fittest approach to time management - pitting your functions and interests against each other and balancing which ones should come out on top at a particular moment in time. But then I remember that everyone is faced with the same conundrums and challenges, all of us given the same number of hours in a day to live our lives, and it is plenty time enough to accomplish some pretty fantastic things. Myself included, even, with the right mixture of commitment and energy. The time is there. I just need to use it more effectively.

I have more thoughts and ideas to touch on (including the answer to Eva's "Why are you selling your house?" question posted to my last entry), but until then, I leave you with Nathan's latest words of wisdom:

"Dammit.... Don't say dammit."

My son, the sage.

On living honestly

This morning, Luke and I registered Kara for preschool.

Well, technically, not preschool. It's categorized as a children's ministry program, offered through a nearby church. Four hours a day, one day a week. The program isn't accredited with fancy acronyms, and the staff members don't have teaching licenses, but there will be free play and music and snack time and show-and-tell and take-home bulletins once a month. Plus, we'll have to get her a backpack and lunchbox. So for a two-year-old girl who's been hanging out at home with her dad and her baby brother almost her entire life, it's close enough.

It's plenty close for her parents, too.

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In an effort to get a better handle on our finances, Luke and I are trying something new at home. Suze Orman calls it the back-to-cash movement. I like to think of it as our new reality.

The new reality is this: Gone are the days where we put everything on the credit card and pay for it at the end of thirty days (which, near the end, wasn't working out so well, anyway). Good-bye to Excel spreadsheets that were intended to help us budget on a monthly basis rather than per-paycheck. From now on, if we want to buy something, we are going to the bank, making a withdrawal from the ATM, and paying for it in cash. There will be occasional exceptions, of course, like purchases online or the occasional Redbox rental, but ninety-five percent of the time, them's the rules.

We started on October 1. Six days in so far, and doing well.

 

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Luke and I have been talking a lot about what we want to accomplish in the short term--realistic goals we can achieve in the next six to twelve months. In the short term, we want more social networking opportunities for Kara and Nathan (not the Facebook and Twitter kind), to give them a chance to explore interests outside the confines of our living room, interacting with adults who are not us. We want to enjoy financial freedom and not have to itemize every single penny of a paycheck two months in advance in order to afford concert tickets or Christmas presents or a random date night. We want to formally close the baby chapter of our lives by New Year's and put our house on the market come spring. And I want to volunteer.

However, we're also in agreement on what we don't want. For example, we are not quite ready to enroll Nathan in any sort of program that takes him out of our care. He can have a few more months of home time with Luke and Kara, and enjoy the precious one-on-one time he's about to score with his dad, and at least blow out the candles on his second birthday cake before we re-evaluate our position. Also, we are not ready for Luke to go back to work, even if we could put another salary to good use ($1,600 worth of car repairs on the Outlander, I'm looking at you). We appreciate and depend on the benefits of being a one-income family: the extra bonding time for Luke and the kids, the flexibility of managing only one work schedule, the ability for me to concentrate on my corporate to-dos as needed instead of tossing my laptop into a bag the minute the clock turns five. We wouldn't be any worse for the wear for having those issues, but they would most definitely complicate things, and we have all the uncertainty we can handle right now, thankyouverymuch.

We've talked about me picking up some freelance work or Luke taking a part-time job with night and weekend hours to bring more money through the door, but honestly, right now we are content to just buckle down and do the best we can with what we have today. There is enough to pay the bills and buy the organic yogurt we like and travel north and even score dinner out once and a while. We are beefing up our short-term savings and still making regular deposits into our health savings account for medical expenses. We don't need a second mortgage, and we aren't defaulting on Sallie Mae. In every area that counts, we are fine. And believe me, we are thankful.

But still, we are making hard choices, like back in August when we discontinued satellite. This month, we stopped all contributions to my 401(k), an account that's been funded every two weeks rain or shine for the last five years AND saw generous matches from my employer, to make room in the budget for Kara's tutition. I am disappointed over this and understand there may be long-term ramifications come our golden years, but I do not regret it. Luke and I have been preparing for the future since before we even married. We're proud of the money we've accrued for retirement already. But right now, it is time to plan for now.

 

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In a conversation with Molly earlier this fall, she used the phrase "living honestly," and it has stuck with me ever since. Because that's what it feels like we're doing now: living a life that reflects our priorities and our resources, and sorting out the white noise that only gets in the way. For the first time in a long time, we're putting our money where our mouth is. What's that worth to you? I ask about almost everything now, from wedding RSVPs to a bag of Gummi Bears to preschool. What are you willing to sacrifice to make this happen?

Our short term is paving the way for the long term, a reality in which we are mortgage-free and in a position to entertain housing options that bring us closer to our loved ones, who I am missing more than ever these days. A reality that has both of us in careers that we love and best align with our strengths and passions. A reality that includes another child, obtained in a non-traditional way. It will take baby steps, but we will get there. I know it in my bones.

 

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As Kara and Nathan grow older, I become more aware of all the ways we can screw them up. I know, I know, they're only babies, all they need is love, blah blah blah, but even at this young age, we are setting the bar for how they will realize their potential. Take Kara's "school," for example. She'll be three in December, and is intellectually capable, I think, of handling a (slightly) more rigorous curriculum than the one we are placing her in; kids younger than her do this all the time in daycare, yes? But that benefit of school is not important to Luke and me right now, and as a result, her experience will be missing that formalized educational component. We'll revisit our feelings next year, obviously, but for now that's where we stand. 

We are also setting the bar for ourselves, I suppose, in regards to what Kara and Nathan can expect from us as parents. We did what we felt was necessary to get Kara into school, but we didn't even consider placing her more than one day a week (baby steps, remember?) or research more expensive options like the Goddard School or Montessori. We already know that retirement savings will always trump a 529. Many parents have different opinions on this, and that's okay. But as much as Luke and I want to give the kids the very best of ourselves, we are going to make ourselves a priority, too, and not apologize for that to anyone.

 

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I have come to learn that as a mother, I enjoy the toddler years far more than the infant ones. Kara's humor and sass are shining through these days, the product of two wise-cracking parents, to be sure, and builds upon both by relying on her razor-sharp memory. One day while we were eating dinner, she thought it a good idea to let milk dribble out of her mouth. She laughed as the milk traveled down her chin, and I hid a smile as I said, "Kara Leigh, please don't do that, that's not funny," and she replied, "Well, maybe a little funny," a phrase Luke uttered in passing the day before. (Thank you, dear.)

Meanwhile, Nathan speaks in full sentences and punctuates the majority of them with a question mark. "What's that noise, Mommy?  Want to build Mrs. Potato? Where's the moon, Mommy? Is that a oak leaf, Mommy? Want to read Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out? Should Momma hooold you?" And so on with the inquisitiveness. He is so curious, so observant, so willing to sit back and watch the action unfold. That is, when he's not bouncing off the couch, roaring like Michael Jackson circa "Scream," or body slamming his torso into the nearest gate.

They both have insatiable appetites for reading, which has been further enhanced by the recent discovery of our local library. At first I was worried they wouldn't get the concept of borrowing books, afraid they would pout and fuss when it came time to return them, but they totally get it, and now live for the next chance to play with the trains and scramble through the catepillar tunnel featured in the kids' room.

Our new reality is that our toddlers are becoming full-blown children. And man, do we just want to do right by them, and ourselves, too.

 

Picture me holding up my fingers and whispering "Seven" just like Monica in that one Friends episode

Technically seven and a half, but the title was already clunky enough.

I ended up solving last week's problem of balancing a second short run with my first long run in a month by skipping the shorter one completely, allowing me to stay on track with Saturday's six-to-eight miler while also maintaining my delicate balance of training, work, and motherhood. The morning and early afternoon were pretty hectic--the fam and I did the one-mile family walk for the local Race for the Cure and then went on to spend a couple of hours at the zoo--so my legs were already aching as I changed into running clothes, taped my knees, and updated my iPod. But hey, you take the time when you have the time, and it was a beautiful day, and I was itching to see how much distance I could cover after being out of practice for so long.

That distance was seven and a half miles. But at this point you probably know that.

Anyway, it was a great run. Difficult sometimes, in that I experienced a few sharp pains on the outside of my right knee (the more troublesome of the two), but slowing from a jog to a walk gave me the relief I needed to push on. I took several walking breaks overall but still managed to finish in an hour and thirty-five minutes--an average pace of twelve and a half minutes per mile. Not record-breaking, by any means, but a respectable pace for a first-timer, according to my PT.

Speaking of physical therapy, yesterday was my last session. Keith (what, you aren't on a first-name basis with your PT?) had me run a mile on the treadmill to confirm my progress, and I finished in just under twelve minutes with a few short twinges in my knee and calves but no real pain. I should be fine for the Mini, he said, so long as I continue to listen to my body and walk/rest as needed. Katy and I are scheduled to attempt a ten-miler this Saturday, my first and only double-digit run before race day. Keith has instructed me to prepare for this long run the same way I would for the Mini, probably because when he asked me what I planned to eat before and during the race, I raised my eyebrows at him and tilted my head as if he had just spoken French. There's plenty of time to figure all that out! I said. We are weeks away!

That's when he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. Apparently, the time is now.

(I figured it wasn't worth mentioning that I don't have my race outfit yet. Didn't want to give the poor guy a heart attack.)

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It feels so good to finally be on track again, and except for the loss in mileage, the break doesn't seem to have done any major damage to my training. It feels so good, in fact, that last night I registered for the Rock 'n Roll Chicago Half Marathon taking place on August 1. I almost wet my pants a little bit when turning over my credit card information (races sure are expensive when they aren't comped by work!), but it seems like a logical next step for after the Mini. Having one half under my belt will allow me to prepare for Chicago with more concrete knowledge of what I am capable of, timing-wise, and maintain a more reasonable approach to training. Plus, that whole series looks like so much fun, and it's in my hometown, and the course runs along part of Lake Michigan. Why the hell not, right?

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Let's see, what else can I tell you? I'm feeling especially wordy today, as at the time of this writing my coworkers are off to lunch and I'm parked at my desk with a turkey sandwich and absolutely no motivation to eat it.

Those of you not reading this entry through a feed reader will notice I updated my blog banner. It only took two years? Aren't you proud of me? It's not the most eye-catching design in the world, and when I first published it, it took me two hours before I realized I had forgotten to include my blog name, but it features the people most important to me and a cool running quote from one of the most famous ultramarathoners in the world, and I cleaned up the awkard contractions in my title, and overall it just seems like a better representation of who I am right now. Luke has been charged with designing a banner that's a little more creative (see the fun-looking pirate ship featured on HIS blog? All Luke, baby), but he's had no time, and suddenly I just couldn't wait a second longer. You are welcome.

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Two days ago I did something insane and requested information from a nearby university about graduate school. School! Again! WTF? The whole rationale for getting my master's degree right out of college was so that I could focus on the demands of school without the distractions of a family. Now I have an M.A. from a reputable institution, along with a good job working for a great company in a fast-moving field. Mission accomplished, right? Plus there are two itty-bitty children who can't get enough of me as it is and a husband who has dreams and goals of his own he would like to pursue someday, thank you very much, and a running hobby that will have me going after my first marathon before I turn 35, a hobby with the potential to be just as time-consuming as school. Hell, with all the time I would spend researching and studying, I could be learning how to cook something for my family that doesn't involve bread or a microwave.

But...I don't know. For Christmas last year my brother's family gifted me a year-long subscription to Runner's World, and after my first issue I was already salivating at the mouth over the idea of writing for such a neat publication. Reading Kara Goucher's profile in the March issue only added fuel to the fire, so that by April I was asking myself some pretty serious career questions. If I really am going to be the primary breadwinner for my family, the last thing I want to model for my kids is that you can't find joy in your work. Not that I don't like what I do now. It's interesting, challenging, the company I work for couldn't be more family-friendly if they tried, and the people I work with are phenomenal. It's hard to imagine ever wanting to be in a different place. Then again, I'm only 30, and while my education and experience are pretty well matched with my current responsibilities, in order for me to advance to the next level professionally, I need more training. MBA, communications degree, accreditation in public relations, something a little more business-driven than what I took from my creative writing and grammar classes. Which would be fine, if any of those options appealed to me at all.

So, what do I want to do?

My dream job is writing beautiful stories about interesting people, trends, and events; stories that take months of research and investigative reporting and careful editing to convey something important about the human condition. The Kara Goucher profile is a good example of that. I believe I am certainly capable of that. But I haven't achieved it just yet.

Enter more school, in a program specifically grounded in the nitty-gritty aspects of journalistic, magazine-style writing. Like, say, an M.A. in journalism. And the best time to enroll would be when you work for an employer that would fit the majority of the bill.

Like, say, mine.

No decisions have been made yet; all I did was drop an e-mail to the graduate school office asking for information. But the wheels in my brain are definitely turning.

(Luke is thrilled, I'm sure.)

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I'm traveling to Long Beach, New York for a two-day sales meeting this week. My blog will turn six next week. My sister Ryan will be visiting from Germany in May, I've got two work trips in June, and Luke and I will see U2 in Chi-town in July. Samantha is having a baby, her second, in September, the same month I will walk down the aisle as a bridesmaid in my friend Gina's wedding and spend four days in Minneapolis for a conference. The kids are getting older and more easily transportable, as evidenced by our recent weekend activities and travel plans for summer--water parks, state parks, beaches, and museums. Our house is slowly starting to come together with a replaced kitchen faucet here, a dining room curtain rod there, and goals to repaint our kitchen. We're getting ready to celebrate four years of marriage in between potty-training Kara (half-heartedly) and weaning Nathan off his morning bottle, the last of the bottles to go. We are discussing family size and coming to an arrangement I think I can live with.

In other words, we are throwing ourselves into life. And it's pretty damn nice.

LockedIn

Before I begin, first let me say that I am not a fan of the word "playdate." Are you hearing that? Playdate. Sounds so preppy, doesn't it? Very la-dee-dah and let me don some pleated khakis and pristine Keds so my perfectly groomed offspring can delicately sip tea in your living room. As a girl who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and whose neighborhood wasn't immume to the occasional drive-by, it just sounds pretentious to me. But there isn't another word that better describes coming to somebody else's house for a couple hours of hands-on toddler fun, so there you go.

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It was a cold, snowy day in February, and I had just pulled into Katy's driveway for a playdate. And not just any old playdate: my very first one. Katy, my racing partner in crime, is the first non-work friend I've made since moving to Indianapolis and also becoming a mom, and we are still very much in the courtship phase of getting to know each other. Add to that the fact that family and work obligations have prevented us from meeting up outside of the occasional race, and you're left with a mother who is equal parts nervous about unleashing her kids on unfamiliar turf and hopeful that everyone would hit it off famously, laying important groundwork for future merriment to come. It was perfect timing, too, as Luke was supposed to be out of town visiting his BFF, so I wasn't even cutting into our family time.

The first crack in our plan was the cancellation of Luke's trip due to poor weather; Indianapolis had been hit with a few inches of snow, making a lengthy road trip on I-65 not such a smart idea, so he decided to reschedule for the following weekend when conditions were predicted to improve. The second was Nathan's accidental ingestion and prompt regurgitation of a pretzel stick that became lodged in his throat, resulting in a clothing change two minutes before we were supposed to leave the house. As I buckled the children into their car seats, pulled out of my garage, and began the 45-minute trek to Katy's neighboring town, I quietly wondered if God was trying to tell me via snow and vomit that maybe we'd all be better off if I just stayed home.

But, but.... Friendship for me! Social interaction for the children! (Think of the children!) As Gollum would say, "We wants it, we needs it!" And so I trudged on.

We arrived at Katy's house about twenty minutes later than planned, so I was already feeling the pressure to get the kids out of the car and onto her door step as soon as possible. Not helping matters was Kara's entrance into Dreamland minutes before pulling into Katy's subdivision. The minute I killed the engine and grabbed my purse I was faced with an issue I hadn't previously given much thought to: When you have a wide-awake, rambunctious one-year-old who can't be trusted to follow directions near a residential street and a two-year-old who COULD be trusted but is snoring louder than any adult you've ever heard in your whole entire life, what are you supposed to do? Which child do you grab first?

In hindsight, I know what I should have done: I should have called Katy on my cell phone to ask if she could take Nathan while I handled Kara. But what can I say? I'm not a stay-at-home mom, and this was the first time I had ever traveled alone with both of my kids, and I was afraid of playing into the stereotype often ascribed to working dads--being too far removed from the trenches of day-to-day parenting to do anything more than run around like a decapitated chicken when presented with the simplest of tasks, like, I don't know, GETTING MY KIDS OUT OF THE DAMN CAR. I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

This is what laid the groundwork for my fatal error.

I grabbed Nathan first.

With the boy perched securely on my hip, I checked to see that my purse was still hanging from my shoulder (it was) and made my way to the other side of the car, where Kara continued to snore. I opened the door, lay my purse down at her feet (DANGER DANGER), hit the automatic locks (OMG WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS), and with my free hand shook her lightly by the shoulders. "Kaaara, Kara, honey, we're here now. It's time to play with our friends!" I chirped loudly into her ear. Silence. I grabbed her hand and kissed her cheek and ruffled her hair, but nothing.  I unstrapped her car seat buckles and even tried to tickle her, hoping all that jostling would wake her up enough to, at the very least, crabbily push me away. Fughettaboutit. "Kara-Kara-Kara-Kara-KAAARA," I shouted, Nathan wriggling like an earthworm, struggling to break free of my grip which was fast losing hold. And it was all in vain. 

Well, shit.

That's when I heard the turn of a doorknob, and Katy stepped outside.

"Is everything OK?" she asked. "Do you need any help?" At least, I think that's what she said. It's hard to recall exact wording at this point, but I trust it was something similarly hospitable and kind and caring.

"Oh, yeah," I called back, trying to sound casual when the whole time I was dying inside, DYING, "my daughter went and fell asleep on me, that's all!" I swiveled to get a better look at my hostess, and before I could process what was happening, my hand instictively pushed on the car door, and the car door snapped shut.

Internally, my slow-motion battle cry was so loud it was deafening (NOOOOOOO), and my eyes grew bigger than Pamela Anderson's double endorsements because holy hell, I done locked mah baybee in the car. In twentyish-degree weather. Almost an hour away from home.

The tears, they were threatening to surface any second, and if this had happened in front of one of my sisters I definitely would have pulled a Sally Field (I WANNA KNOW WHYYYY) but I pushed them away because crying in front of a woman who doesn't even know if you have a middle name is perhaps not the most inviting way to get better acquainted.

I would have stood there maintaining my deer-in-headlights expression a la Uncle Jesse from Full House except Nathan was still in my arms and I needed to call somebody to free my toddler from her hatchback prison. Plus, the car was parked in Katy's driveway in a town with a reputation as one of the safest and friendliest in the Indianapolis area, and the engine was off, and Kara was plenty warm in her winter coat, and besides that she was STILL snoring away, so I pried myself away from her long enough to carry Nathan inside. Katy called a local locksmith, but there was either a communication gap or a sense-of-urgency gap on his end because while the guy promised to call back with an estimated time of arrival, he never did, mother-effing bastard, doesn't he care about the children?!

So I called Luke. The husband who should have been in Kentucky some three and a half hours away with our only spare key but due to a random stroke of luck just happened to be at home.

That was a pleasant phone call. Especially since we'd had a slight disagreement earlier that morning.

Again with the forgetting of specific details, but the phrases "OH MY GOD!" and "I'm so sorry!" were involved. I'll leave you to guess who said what.

He had to dig the Cobalt out of a mountain-high pile of snow, Luke said, but he was on his way.

So, every three minutes for the next hour, I ran outside to check on my girl and make sure that a Wizard of Oz-like tornado hadn't suddenly carried the Outlander away. I imagined her waking up, realizing her predicament, and throwing herself against the window sobbing for Momma to get her out. I feared she would slither onto the floor and hit her head against the base of her car seat. I worried Luke would get lost or stuck in traffic and that I'd have to beg the fire department to pull the door off its hinges. Not that I'm even sure they do that sort of thing, mind you. But you know. I was scared.

I also felt very much like an idiot in front of my new friend, my new friend's husband, and my new friend's children.

After what seemed like an eternity but in reality was just a little more than sixy minutes from the time we called the locksmith, Luke was parking behind the Outlander and unlocking the passenger-side car door. I pushed past him to gather Kara in my arms--my baby, my baby--and brought her into Katy's house, and let me tell you, Sleeping Beauty never even stirred until I started removing her coat. She yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes and seemed generally refreshed from her leisurely mid-afternoon nap. She didn't even notice that her mother was curled into a fetal position on the floor, cheeks burning in humiliation, giving silent thanks to God, already drafting the inevitable blog entry.

Mom in training

Here at work, March 1 kicks off a month-long spotlight on the annual performance review. Instead of being evaluated around the anniversary of your hire date, The Powers That Be decided to make it more efficient by subscribing to a more collective approach, setting company-wide deadlines for completing your self-evaluation and meeting with your manager to discuss what you're doing well, where you'd like to improve, and how the company can help. Last Monday was the cut-off for turning in self-evaluations, and it got me thinking: if there were performance appraisals for parents, what would they look like? Who determines if we're doing a good job? How do we know if we're getting better?

Before I had kids, I had pretty specific (if not slightly traditional) ideas of what it meant to be a good mother. I would stay home with my babies, for one, and spend oodles of time with them every day. I would learn to cook and bake so I could fill their tummies with mouth-watering, nutritious, interesting foods. We would visit the park and check books from the library and go swimming and biking just like the Von Trapps and hang out with friends and family and "talk out" our problems and always, always have naptime.

By those standards, Donald Trump would have kicked me out of the mommy board room at the end of my first maternity leave.

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The most glaring disconnect between the mother I thought I would be and the mother I am is the working. For better or worse, I am and probably always will be the primary breadwinner for my family. Full time, outside the home, Monday through Friday, with occasional travel and evening conference calls and the need to be accessible 24/7. I can count on one hand how many hours I spend with Kara and Nathan on a typical work day; usually I'm home long enough to eat dinner and rough around for an hour before we jump into Nathan's bedtime routine, followed by Kara's, followed by Nathan's sporadic cries and Kara's pleas of "Mommy and Daddy sit with you?" followed by oh, yeah, my husband, there you are, hello, now who gets to wash the dishes? Though really, since Luke cooks, it should always be me washing the dishes. It takes all my reserves just to complete fundamental tasks to get through the day; forget luxuries like updating a baby book or posting to my blog (a fact that doesn't escape my readers, for sure).

My most upsetting fail as a parent, though, is my struggle to stay patient in times of stress: Kara's random tantrums when asked to pick up her toys or brush her teeth; Nathan's restlessness in the middle of the night when bouts of cradling, rocking, and sitting beside his crib all fall short in their attempts to comfort. To me, THOSE are the instances where you demonstrate true growth in parenting, putting your "training" to good use and pushing beyond your natural instincts to achieve new results. I know hissing at Nathan to "just be quiet!" won't help him fall back to sleep; I know threatening to skip stories at bedtime won't encourage Kara to clean her pearly whites. Yet so often I'm the hamster on the wheel, repeating old behaviors, hissing and threatening in the hopes that this time it will resonate, but it never does. Instead, they get upset, and then I get upset, and then I feel guilty because shouldn't I know better by now? Is this really the example I want to be setting for them, that these are the only tools at my disposal?

But then Kara will shout "Oh, Mommy! There she is!" and clamour for a piggy-back ride, and Nathan will clench his arms around my neck before plopping into my lap for a story, and I feel so damn good about my relationship with them and how connected we are, and I vow to hold fast to the "quality versus quantity" mindset and stop measuring myself against other women. Even wonderful women whom I love and admire. When it comes to mothering, somebody will always outperform me in one way or another, but I have my own strengths, and my kids seem to like me just fine.

(For now.)

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When it comes to assessing future growth opportunities, I think that for as long as there are children under my roof, I will have to constantly re-grant myself permission to be anything more than "just" a mother--to also invest in my marriage, extended family, community, friends; my faith, work, education, health. How to get it all done? You can't. At least, I can't. So I'm trying to focus my attention on two or three tactical objectives for any given day and appropriately prioritizing the rest, all the while knowing that if my kids don't rank first from that perspective (their safety and well-being is always top priority on a grand scale), they sure as hell are going to come second. I stole the basic idea from our chief operating officer, who says he spends his hour-long commute to the office reviewing what's on his plate and determining where his presence will make the biggest impact. "Some days that means all eyes on human capital and not touching sales and marketing. It's all about making the best use of my time for the people that need me most for that moment in time."

As a mother and not a c-level executive, this translates into leaving my laptop at work to make a deposit in the "mommy bank" even if there's an end-of-quarter presentation looming over my head. Other times it's dragging my ass out of bed and working on my fitness when I want to cuddle with Luke instead. On the days I travel, my primary goal is to make the trip worthwhile for my company, and my roles as wife, mother, and fledgling athlete fall into place where they can. And so it goes, trading long runs for blog time, bedtime for work time, bedtime for date night, and understanding I will never do them all in the same 24-hour period. Some dreams will collect dust for years, dreams like earning a second master's degree or changing career paths or running my first marathon. I am slowly learning that the key to preserving my sanity is treading water when I know I could swim, being just good enough when I'd rather be great.

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When I was a junior in college, on the day a term paper was due, students were commiserating with each other over the hellish writing experience when somebody warned the professor to expect flaws in her draft, explaining her difficulty in managing coursework with on-going family issues and a part-time job to boot. She wasn't making excuses, exactly, more just disappointed for not meeting her own expectations. "If only I'd had one more night," she said wistfully. "Just one more night and I could have really given it my all."

My professor just shook her head.

"You can't look at it that way," she said. "We faculty don't expect our students to live in a bubble. We know you have other responsibilities and that school can't always be your focus. All we ask is that you do your best in your current set of circumstances. If that turns out to be A-level, great. But if not? That's okay, too. Just do what you can with whatever you've got, and show us that you're trying."

Hopefully our children will be at least that understanding when grading our performances as parents--if not now, then at least when they're grown and in the same boat. And if merit increases are involved, may they all be prorated.

Fireside chat, Internet-style

I think my children are trying to kill me.

For the entire month of October, it seemed, Luke and I were staring into the pit of hell. We slept in couple-hour patches as Kara and Nathan found various reasons to cry their bloody heads off in the middle of the night. Kara was sick three times, the most recent ailment rearing its ugly head over Halloween weekend in the middle of hosting Nathan's baptism. It was especially scary because her highest temperature clocked in over 105 degrees, and she felt so hot I swear I could have fried an egg on her forehead. We debated taking her to an urgent care center or ER but decided the drawbacks of being stuck in a waiting room with the possibility of receiving zero guidance in terms of treatment outweighed any possible benefit. Instead, we made an appointment with our pediatrician for Monday afternoon, where I was privy to the joyous experience of observing my toddler daughter's catheterization to make sure her recurring fever wasn't a symptom of a raging bladder infection. Her culture came back negative for a UTI, so apparently it was just another virus doing a number on her immume system.

So that's (mostly) why I've been MIA 'round these parts, what with the crying from all four of us and no sleep and taking off work to keep a cold washcloth on her face while ingesting hours of Max and Ruby episodes with the occasional Little Bear. As a result, there's a week and a half of unwatched All My Children episodes on the DVR and two layers of dust on this here blog. The hodge podge of images in this entry were uploaded and saved in draft form more than two weeks ago, with the intention of publishing them shortly after my last post. This means you're getting up-to-date content married with outdated photography, which was slightly outdated to begin with. But you're a go-with-the-flow type bunch. You can handle it.

 

Kara, Nathan, and me in the dolphin dome at the Indianapolis Zoo in September. Ah, memories of healthier days.

Let's transition from talk of sick children to my biggest piece of news, an idea that has consumed the majority of my non-parenting-related thoughts almost the entire time I've been away. You know that whole "half-marathon next fall" plan I came up with after my first 5K? Deliberately shelving it until next October so I would have plenty of time to train without overexerting myself? Yeah, well, I've since decided that moderation is for the birds. Not only have I upgraded my registration in the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon from a 5K to the real deal, I also signed up for all three training races that take place beforehand--a 5K in February, 10K in March, and 15K in April--as tangible motivators along the path to race day, set for Saturday, May 8, 2010. According to the Web site, "The Mini-Marathon is the largest half-marathon in the U.S., and overall, the fifth largest running event in America. The 2009 event sold out on December 26, 2008."

And I'm going to be part of it.

When I first learned about the Mini through work (God bless my employer for covering registration fees to such things), I was perfectly happy with running the 5K and absolutely terrified of committing to anything more strenuous than that. I'm new to running and swamped with responsibilities at home and still spotty when it comes to hitting the pavement on a regular basis. Of course I needed more time, right? Surely there were more appropriate endeavors to consider before taking on a lofty pipe dream. Not to mention that it's already November and the race is in the spring and how in the world am I going to train when the sun sets by five and there's snow and ice beneath my feet? It's not like I have a treadmill at home or free time to hit the gym.

So I went for the 5K, and encouraged Luke to do it, too, and that was that. End of story.

Luke and the kids in front of the elephants, Kara doing her best imitation of a stageshow diva.

Except that it wasn't the end. Suddenly I couldn't go a day without learning about somebody finishing their first half-marathon or training for that half-marathon or taking on a half-marathon in New Orleans four months from now or an entire group training for the race together. Marry that with the knowledge that a local blogger was willing to run the race with me, and my coffin was sealed. Suddenly I went from "Oh, HELL, no," to "Why the hell not?"

I've got some programs to review and some races to run before the end of the year, and in January I'll start training hardcore. I have no goals in regards to performance or rank or how much to run and how much to walk, and I still don't know where I'm going to find all this time to train. All I know is that I want to do this. So I will.

These years with young children and modest earnings are full of joy but also limitations. Luke and I won't be tackling an overseas trip anytime soon. We have at least five years before we can think about moving into a nicer house or investing in a better family car, and I don't have the intellectual gumption to focus on learning another language or picking up another degree, despite their attractiveness on my dream list. But completing a half-marathon? That's attainable now. I can run on the trail in my neighborhood or on the streets within my subdivision. I can take advantage of the free gym membership I'm offered at work and come up with a schedule to get myself there. I can train in ratty old tee-shirts and pants or I can pick up some gear from Target. I can change my eating habits. I can cross-train at home with The 30 Day Shred and other videos. I may not win this race, but I can definitely finish it. Is there a better way to celebrate your thirtieth year on Earth?

 

Nathan and I at the White River Gardens, adjacent to the zoo. He's excited about the race, too.

Last week, for the first time since before Kara was born, I clocked in below 140 pounds on the scale. This monumental achievement happened mostly by accident--when Kara got sick this last time I was too busy freaking out to remember to eat three meals a day--so when I weighed myself last Monday and the second number held steady at three, I was like, "Huh. Whadda know," and didn't think much of it. I figured it wouldn't last. Eating and running well enough to stay below 143 pounds is easy; it's pushing myself over the hump to shed another eight to ten pounds that seems impossible. But as of this morning I weighed in at 139.2, so maybe it's not a fluke. My current pair of jeans--size-fourteen, Old Navy jeans that were originally purchased after Kara was born, post-partum transitional jeans that I couldn't button without gasping out loud yet still had to wear to have lunch with my boss the week before I went back to work in March--are distastefully too big. I can put them on and take them off without undoing the button while the butt cheeks sag and reveal the waistband of my underwear when I bend over, so maybe it's not a fluke. There is still Halloween candy in my house a full week after Halloween.

So maybe, just maybe, it's not a fluke after all.

 

Luke and Kara at White River Gardens, admiring some lily pads.

One of my big projects for work last week was to itemize my budget for 2010, and one of the most notable changes from last year is the increased focus on travel. The second half of 2009 has me reaching into different sales territories for field visits and presentations, and that will continue next year, in addition to attending some conferences for my industry and for professional development purposes. Ninety-nine percent of them will be short overnights not requiring even a full day away from home, and I actually enjoy getting out into the field and learning more about what we do, not to mention being able to indulge in a book for hours at a time while I'm waiting at the airport/in flight/passing time at my hotel. Still, though, the thought of missing bedtime even one night a month (roughly) makes me a little sad. I went to Chicago this weekend with Nathan to visit with my sister Ryan, who was in from Germany, while Luke stayed home with Kara since she was so recently sick and also not sleeping well. And even though I had a blast with my family and enjoyed the extra one-on-one with my son, who turned out to be quite the easy travel companion, part of me felt so off because Luke and Kara weren't with us. I never realized how dependent my own personal balance is upon simply having the four of us together.

Kara and I looking for airplanes during one of our after-dinner walks.

That said, I think a key component of 2010 will be placing a stronger emphasis on Luke and I spending more time together as a couple outside of being Mom and Dad. A lack of family nearby and a very tight budget means we haven't solicited baby-sitters unless there's an evening work function I need to attend (awards dinner) or the occasional non-work-related event that doesn't allow for children (Billy Joel/Elton John concert in May, Tori Amos concert in August). And frankly, I am starting to feel the effects. I miss my husband. I want us to spend time together outside of watching Man vs. Food while we fold a load of towels in our pajamas. I want to go out with him wearing boot-cut jeans that fit my ass properly and a little eye shadow and talk over a nice steak and see a movie. Hell, at this point, I'll take sporty sneakers and soup and sandwiches at Panera. I just want us to have the occasional luxury of just paying attention to each other.

Of course, to make this happen, we need a baby-sitter we trust completely who won't charge us an arm and a leg to watch our children, and I still get weirded out at the idea of bringing a stranger into my house. However, the longer we go without spending any real quality time together, the closer I get to believing even that option isn't unthinkable. There are coworkers I know and trust who are willing to do this for us, but they live on the other side of town and, well, they're ADULTS, not twenty-year-olds looking to score extra money for gas or the junior prom. It's hard to muster up the courage to take them up on their generosity, as if they have nothing better to do than keep an eye on kids they aren't even related to. If only we had family nearby to hit up once and a while. If only we lived closer to where they are. But right now, we are here, and we need to embrace it, and I need to stop being afraid of what other people think and start doing whatever is necessity for my family to live a life full of color. And right now? That means finding a baby-sitter.

We have been making an effort to attend church more regularly, and my hope is to find someone there who takes to my kids instantly and is looking to sit at least one night a month. That's not so much to ask, is it? My marriage is worth at least that, right? (God, I'm looking at you. Hook a daughter up.)

Luke and the kids on the way to our walking trail.

There are so many posts brewing inside of me--a nine-month update for Nathan, Christmas shopping, ramblings about my house, more reflections on family planning and life with two children--but on my lunch hour I'm more inclined to click through my blogroll than hammer out a substantial thought track, and when I get home my top priority is to throw on my running clothes, stretch, and get out the door as soon as possible (and it still only happens twice a week!). Then it's bedtime and dishes and tallying receipts and comforting a child who is sick/teething/wet/poopy/determined to see that Luke and I sleep no more than five or six hours a night. I know it'll get easier, but I find myself growing impatient with the timeframe. Will I ever again blog with any sort of consistency, or will it always be feast or famine? Will the puzzle pieces ever just fall into place, or will I always have to work this hard to score any time with myself/my husband/my friends/hobbies, etc. etc.?

 

Don't ask this guy. He's one of them. 

But I haven't given in to Starbucks

So! I had this brilliant idea yesterday. Seeing as I'm on the cusp of attending a three-day blogging conference where I'll be passing out business cards with my URL on it, I thought it might make sense to--wait for it--BLOG. I know! Am genius. Tell all your friends.

Wonderful things have been happening these last few weeks, many of them related to my job, so that's what I'm going to start with first. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that my employer dropped two happy bombs on us in less than one week: the half-year profit-sharing bonus we received in June and the CEO's decision to transfer ownership of the company to his workers through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). You can learn more about ESOPs from our trusty friend, Wikipedia, but basically it means that the founder has given his baby, the business he started almost twenty years ago with his personal life savings, to those of us on the payroll. It translates into additional retirement savings for every one of us and voting rights on major decisions involving the company's future, not to mention a more tangible motivation to continue our current level of success. It was an emotional day when he broke the news, and as I learn more about the specifics, I am blown away by how lucky I am for not only having a stable job in a shaky economy, but a rewarding job with a company that only projects good things on the horizon, not to mention the opportunities I have to advance my skills and challenge myself professionally. As a result, for the first time in my life, I'm taking a proactive approach to my career, assuming new leadership roles and working alongside my boss and other team members to develop strategies for our department that will enable us to work more effectively. I've also been involved with some pretty exciting writing projects that jazz me up like nothing else, even when those projects are equal parts frustrating.

So many women who work outside the home are miserable in their jobs because they are unfulfilled by what they do, making it even harder to be away from their babies. And it IS hard to be away from my babies; I never look forward to Monday even after the most hectic of weekends, I'm always craving more time at home. But I can say with absolute certainty that my time away from them is well spent. Finding myself professionally has inspired me to take a long, hard look at my priorities outside the office and how I want to spend my time (contributing to this is the fact that I'm still reading Eat Pray Love and feeling very connected to the idea of nourishing my personal core). I'm also reflecting on the lessons I want my children to learn from me about finding their passion and also turning raw lemons into lemonade. It's been an energizing process, to say the least, and enlightening, to form a relationship with my company that mirrors a long-term partnership, a marriage of sorts where each side is committed to giving as much as it takes and overcoming obstacles in a way that leaves everyone's dignity intact.

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Things have come to a bit of a standstill on the fitness front, and I can't believe I don't feel guilt about it, but I don't. Even with sporadic exercise and frequent surrenders to peanut butter cup blizzards, I've maintained an average loss of eight pounds, so I can't feel too bad when it's clear I must be doing something right. Unfortunately, an eight-pound loss post-baby isn't the same victory as an eight-pound loss before your body carries a child--my mid-section still looks three months pregnant--but hey, I'll take what I can get. I knew that the more time I allowed to lapse between workouts the harder it would be to get back into a routine, but life is still so topsy-turvy for us right now, and I hate to keep using that as an excuse, but it's also the truth. My girl crush on Jillian Michaels remains as strong as ever, but I'm at peace with sometimes (OK, a lot of times) choosing other ways to spend my time, knowing that life will settle down little by little and a night of rocking my son back to sleep won't always kill my desire to Shred the next day. I did buy some new gym shoes, though; that counts for something, right?

 

Nathan and me at Indy's "Unite to Fight: Race Against Prostate Cancer" family walk a couple of weeks ago. I carried Nathan while Luke pushed Kara in her stroller.

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The continued anticipation of my Tori Amos concert next month along with the recent death of Michael Jackson (and I'll admit it, I am still so sad about that) combined have restored my interest in music. Not that I ever stopped being interested, but most of Luke's and my CDs have been living in a beat-up Tupperware bin in the back of our closet since we moved into this house, and I've been too lazy to dig out stuff as it appeals to my mood. Yesterday I got to thinking about all the songs I've been out of touch with simply because I haven't been able to find them, and it kind of pissed me off to the point that I finally said ENOUGH and organized the CD rack we bought well before Nathan was born. Alphabetized and everything, though I do wish I'd been able to categorize discs for each singer/group in the order they were released. Baby steps, people.

I also made a mixed CD of what I consider to be Tori Amos essentials so I don't have to switch discs to hear all my favorite songs. One of the reasons I'm still attracted to her music after all these years is its ability to become relevant as I gain more life experience. For example, Boys for Pele freaked me the hell out as a God-fearing high schooler, but as a married woman with two kids and a more sophisticated religious and world view, I'm more comfortable with the appeal they hold for me. When From the Choirgirl Hotel came out my senior year, I couldn't get past her new band sound to appreciate the lyrics, but in just the last week or so I found new meaning in a song I had completely written off. The biggest surprise has been my fascination with The Beekeeper. Those who only like Tori when she's angsty have no use for this one, and I understand; I didn't like it, either, not until well after I had Nathan and the softness of those songs found a place in my head. Anyway, all of that to say that the Tori I became enchanted with at 17 is not the same Tori I relate to today. It's pretty awesome when music grows with you.

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I'm drinking coffee now. Me, the woman who swore she would never succumb to the drama that is depending on a caffinated beverage for survival, typically enjoys a thermosful doused with skim milk and sugar on the drive to work. With all the late nights I've had in the last month or two, I've been so tired in the mornings that one day when Luke asked if I would possibly benefit from a liquid pick-me-up I said HELL YES, WHERE DO I SIGN UP. And I said it again and again until Luke was grinding coffee beans as part of his morning ritual while I finished getting dressed. There's something to be said for sitting in my car with one hand on the steering wheel and the other balancing a drink, an act that wakes me up and transitions me from home to work in a way that my sans-coffee routine didn't. Maybe I feel more adult. Maybe the beans are that strong. Either way, I like it.

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Luke spent this past Saturday at a theme park with a friend, so Molly and I took the opportunity to co-host Baby Day 2.0, and the kids had a blast together. They are all at such different stages now that it's hard to believe there's barely a full year between any of them. The Baby Day sequel marked the third weekend in a row that we had company, and it's been so nice to invite people over and watch their kids play with ours. Kara's now getting regular exposure to her peers through the daycare/nursery at church on Sundays, but other than that, not so much. So it was great to have my sister Samantha and her family with us for the Fourth of July and my friend Maia and her two girls the weekend after that. With upcoming BlogHer taking place in the trenches of my hometown, we'll have a straight month of Saturday-Sunday fun.

Here, the photographic evidence:

 

Kara and baby Danny, who will celebrate his first birthday next month. I say this every time I mention him, but I swear he is the spit and image of my sister.

 

Auntie Samantha and Uncle Dan entertaining their first and only nephew, with Nathan loving every minute of the attention.

 

Baby Day 2.0. Kara's all, "Girlfriend, where did you get that awesome striped shirt-dress? Don't hold out on a sista," And Marin's like, "A fashionista never reveals her secrets."

 

Meanwhile, Nathan and Marin decided to pose as if they were attending their first Baby Prom. Nathan may have even tried to grab her hand.

 

Molly loving on her godson. (At least, he will be her godson, once Luke and I can secure the fall baptism date with our pastor.)

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And that's all, folks! I hate that my writing is so sparse here and that the entries I do post have to cover such a large span of time, but that's another aspect of life I'm slowly making peace with. Despite my fallen-to-the-wayside personal blogging, I'm super excited about BlogHer this year and learning new ways to feed my addiction increase my overall knowledge of social media. I'm probably one of the few attendees whose primary reason for going is to actually take part in the sessions. This year is weird, though, in the sense that I'm not part of any big blogger meet-up like I was two years ago, and since Luke and the kids will be with me, I doubt I'll make any of the parties. I'm OK with that, but I really hope to meet at least a few of the bloggers I read and/or who read me so I don't totally miss out on the networking aspect of the conference. I'm also debating whether I should bring my work laptop and try to liveblog any of the events. I've never been good with crafting blog posts on the fly (aka the reason this site so frequently collects dust), so I'm not sure how solid my entries would even be, but I'm definitely thinking about it.

Will any of you be in Chicago? If so, I'd love to say hi. And if you're doing the BlogHer 5K on Friday morning, you'll get to meet Mr. Nathan in person. If that's not reason enough to walk three miles before breakfast, I don't know what is.

What’s your story?

When it comes to the blogosphere, I tend to stay out of controversial threads, mainly because I'm afraid of failing to articulate my points very well and instead pissing somebody off. In the five (!) years I've been doing this, it's never been my style. But for some reason, I can't keep quiet about this one.

Here's the gist of it: A video was recently made that addresses the struggles of the working mother, but it didn't touch on the specific stresses of those who work outside the home. One mother wrote about how upset she was that the work-outside-the-home mom demographic was completely ignored (one of my new favorite posts, by the way, because of Kim's ability to be brutally honest and respectful at the same time); another took it one step further to say that moms who work at home have it easier than those with traditional office jobs. One work-at-home mom (one of our very own Parents bloggers) wrote a post in response to that one defending her livelihood, which is the post that I came across first, and I took issue with the phrase "full-time mom" being applied only to stay-at-home moms. After all, a mom is a mom, you know? If you have a child, you're on call twenty-four days a week, 365 days a year, no matter how you spend your eight-to-five hours. I posted a comment to that effect and originally thought I would publish a longer dialogue here.

(Note: I chose not to watch the video because I didn't think any good would come of it.)

But after giving it more thought, I realized that's not really what I wanted to say. Instead, I want to give every mom out there a big, fat hug because damn, this job that we have is hard. Wonderful, yes, and life-changing and miraculous and beautiful, and parenthood is absolutely one of the best things to ever happen to me, and I wouldn't trade this experience for all the money in the world, but still. It's hard. And in analyzing my reaction to Lindsay's post, I discovered that I didn't want to pick apart her words when deep down I knew she meant no harm. I just wanted to take a minute to tell my story as a mother.

In the end, I think we all just want our stories to be heard.

So here's my story.

I am a mother who works outside the home to financially support her husband and two small children. Frankly, it wasn't my first choice—I desperately wanted to be the one home with my kids—but I have an amazing job in my field of choice with a competitive paycheck and fabulous benefits and a flexible schedule and an employer who strives to promote a reasonable work/life balance for his employees, and my husband didn't, and neither of us wanted to forgo having savings accounts or paying the bills on time or living in a shady part of town where we would fear for our own safety, let alone our children's, so there you go. Yes, it makes me sad sometimes, not being there every day, but the pride I take in doing my part to make a happy home for my family is well worth the sacrifice.

My life is a constant juggling act, trying to manage my day job, my freelancing job, spending time with my family, and working to improve my physical health. Sometimes I can take time off for doctor's appointments, and sometimes I can't. Sometimes I come home from work so late that I go a whole day without giving my son a bottle. Sometimes I miss bedtime completely. Sometimes I comfort a baby at two in the morning and get up for work at five. Sometimes (OK, most times) I leave the dinner dishes for Luke even though he’s done them the last three nights, even though he's been on his feet all day and deserves a break, too, because my day job has to continue into the night, because I never want anyone at work to say that Bree used her home life as an excuse to drop the ball.

And yet, despite the hard times and frustrations, I truly love my life. I know that everyone has stresses to deal with, and I don't think mine are harder than anyone else's. I feel blessed to have a husband who is right there in the trenches with me, fulfilling his own role as a stay-at-home dad and dealing with the sacrifices that go along with that. I thank God every day for the children we have, and I am glad to do whatever I can to see that they are happy and healthy. And when I feel guilty for making what I perceive to be a less than perfect choice, when I feel like I'm being judged for those choices, I'm learning to take comfort in the knowledge that the only people I have to answer to are Luke, Kara, and Nathan, and as long as they know I'm doing my best, that's all that matters. I am more than an adjective used to describe how I spend forty-plus hours every week. I am a mother. Period. And oh, what a gift it is, to own that noun.

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Excerpted from Parental Discretion Advised, originally published on Parents.com. Copyright 2009 by Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

The stars at night, are big and bright (clap clap clap clap)...

I'm typing this from a hotel business center in downtown Houston, where I'll be for the next couple of nights to engage with sales folks in the region to get a better feel for how they interact with clients and what my department can do to assist their efforts. When I first joined this company four years ago (officially celebrated this past Saturday, holla!), travel was something I rarely did, if ever, but in the last eighteen months or so we've been growing at an exponential rate, so now keeping tabs on activity "in the field" is going to be a regular part of my job. I've never considered myself to be a particularly savvy traveler, and in the spirit of my first solo round-trip extravaganza, I've tried to keep things as simple as possible, which for me means nonstop flights instead of connecting ones and cab rides instead of rental cars. Luckily, my bosses subscribe to the simple camp, as well.

Things have been OK so far. Saying good-bye to Luke and the kids this morning brought on my Angela Chase-inspired chin wobble and crocodile tears, but no major snags or snafus. I found my local Park, Ride and Fly with little trouble and passed quickly through security, giving me a two-hour window to check e-mail on my new fancy Blackberryjackphone thingamabob and shoot the breeze with my sister and Hoosier shredhead companion while waiting to board the plane. The plane itself was claustraphobically small, and my seat had an odd curve to it that prevented me from reclining in a completely comfortable position. Also contributing to my jumble of nerves was my tendency to relive the pilot episode of Lost, questioning my ability to properly attach the oxygen mask to my face and detach the bottom cushion so I could use it as a flotation device, just in case the plane crashed near a magical tropical island with the power to change time.

Once I landed in Houston, I hailed a cab to my hotel, and it wasn't until we were on the expressway that I thought about how vulnerable I was; this guy could have shot me in the face or driven me to some remote location to do God knows what. In case you couldn't tell, that didn't happen, so I booked him to take me back to the airport at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning.

Why yes, I am paranoid, thank you for asking!

If I were a single person with zero baby weight to lose and loads of dispensable cash on my hands, I'd probably be having the time of my life. I'm just a couple of blocks away from the Galleria Mall, where I found a place to eat dinner, and it would be easy to kill a couple of hours shopping for clothes and pigging out on treats. But instead I steared clear of NY&C entirely and enjoyed a whole-wheat turkey sandwich with a side of fruit while digging into a back issue of Working Mother magazine, a publication I like far better than any of the other parenting bibles on the stands these days. The sandwich had the potential to be just as damaging as a Big Mac, what with the zillion layers of meat and cheese, until I removed more than half of the guts, much to my server's chagrin. Jillian Michaels would have been proud.

Oh, and I miss my family like crazy.

I'm totally boring myself with this entry, but I figured my temporary kid-free status owed the Internet an update. Maybe I'll be wittier tomorrow. *Crosses fingers*

Closer to fine

I am seriously in awe of newish moms who are able to blog more than once every few weeks. Good Lord, where do you find the time? My intentions are good, but between changing diapers and doling out snacks and paying the bills and remembering to shower, this Web site always gets the short end of the stick until I can't take the dust anymore; then I pound out seventy million paragraphs that probably would have worked better as several concise entries but, well, this boot-camp phase of my life doesn't allow for such strategic blog posting. That said, just one day shy of Nathan's nine-week birthday, I feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel.

A lot's happened since I last wrote. For starters, thanks to a switch in formula and bottle type, we have a much happier boy on our hands. Nathan is still high maintenance in the sense that being held is not always enough to calm him, and he still spits up a lot more than Kara ever did, but he's no longer screaming for hours every day; in fact, he's finally starting to enjoy life, smiling at us, cooing at my over-the-top baby antics ("Hi there, handsome boy!"), showing interest in rattles and toys, even paying attention to some of Kara's books during our various marathon reading sessions. He's still not even close to sleeping through the night, though, and because Kara was clocking eight-hour stretches the night she turned six weeks old, this kind of sleep deprivation so far into the newborn phase is majorly kicking our asses. Luke and I are both well aware that hers was not typical baby behavior, and I don't want to be all about the comparisons, but dude. THIS FAMILY NEEDS SLEEP. GET WITH THE PROGRAM, SON.

The change in Nathan's temperament combined with the slow return of spring has encouraged us to get out with the kids more often. We bit the bullet and purchased a double stroller, a Graco Quattro Tour Duo to be exact, a stroller that sold me on the color scheme alone, but so far we've only used it a couple of times because damn, that thing is hard to navigate, and when Luke and I are both around, it makes more sense to pair one child with each adult rather than burden one of us with roughly thirty-eight pounds of baby weight.

But look! So pretty!

 

There's a short walking trail behind our subdivision that leads into an even fancier one, and now it's one of my favorite things about where we live, because no longer are we confined to loop in circles like we were at our apartment complex, and gone are the days of having to pack up and drive to another part of the city to stretch our legs. I think this will be key to me getting back into shape, as I'm too busy playing catch-up after work to commit to a gym and I'm just not motivated enough to join Weight Watchers again. Instead, I'm trying to maintain perspective, reminding myself that birthing two babies in two years is hard work, and my body needs longer than six weeks to heal.

You like how I casually slipped in that whole "Oh, yeah, I'm back at work" reference? Because yes. I am back at work. And if you think leaving one baby at home is hard, just try it with two.

I'm lucky, though, that the transition has been much smoother. I had an infinitely easier time finding transitional clothes to wear while I'm (half-heartedly) working on my fitness, and that's been a huge boost to my self-esteem. Last time I was trying to squeeze myself into tens and twelves and failing miserably, resulting in an Ugly Cry in one of Eddie Bauer's dressing rooms last year. This time around, I had a Reality sandwich and just got the size fourteens I needed to keep my muffin top squarely at bay. And do you know that even though I was smaller last year, I look much better now because I'm actually wearing clothes that fit, that are a smidge too big even, and when that happens, there is no muffin top? There are no unflattering bulges! Who knew? Once again, I wonder if I've been in denial about my true size all along. We'll see what happens as I start shedding these extra layers of skin.

Anyway, work. I went back on Tuesday, and while the days leading up to it were pretty stressful, it felt kind of nice to get back into the swing of things and start concentrating on my family's new version of normal. On the flip side, I never knew what to say when people asked if I was happy to be back, because no, actually, I wasn't happy, I was flipping out over how Luke would manage the needs of two babies without losing his damn mind, and I was missing my children something fierce, and I'm sure that was evident by the look on my face. When I pulled into our driveway a little after four (still doing the seven to three-thirty with only a half-hour for lunch), Luke and Kara were staring at me from her bedroom on the second floor, Kara waving her sweet little fingers off, and I ran in as fast as I could, scooped her in my arms, and promptly burst into tears. I did it again at seven-thirty, uttering a strangled, "It's bedtime already?" as Luke went to bring her upstairs. The other thing that's been hard is dividing my time between both Kara and Nathan, trying to give them each my undivided attention, but I fail almost every time because when I'm reading to Kara, Nathan's crying to be held and when I'm holding Nathan, Kara is running after me with a book in her hand. To combat this, I've decided to take back ownership of Kara's night-time routine, since Nathan goes to bed so much later and there's still plenty of time to hang out with him one-on-one before I hit the sack around midnight or later, depending on the timing of his bottle. I've been pestering Luke with talk of two-versus-three almost every day since we brought him home, and now that I'm back in the corporate grind, I'm imagining what it would feel like to timeshare with yet another child, wondering if that will be the proverbial nail in my reproductive coffin.

ANYWAY, now that we're finally living our new version of normal, I'm continuing to challenge myself to let go of the small stuff and focus on important things like spending time with Luke and the kids, improving my health, stealing some quality time with my pillow, and picking up the house during an episode of Lost. On hold are things like mopping floors, cleaning out closets, updating baby books, making out a will and trust (for all my bitching and moaning about this before Kara's birth, I still don't have this done), and repopulating our new phone book until Nathan has a more predictable sleep schedule and we all have a better handle on our routine. Until then, I'm just putting one foot in front of the other and doing the best I can with the precious time I do have. I'm also holding on to this new feeling of peace, because even though life is hella crazy right now, I really do have it all. A wonderful husband, beautiful children, well-paying job, a place to lay my head, food to put on my table. When I think about how blessed I am, it truly blows my mind.

 

Nathan: How did you people ever get along without me?

Frema: I don't know, son, but at least we were well rested.

I've said before that 2009 will be about finding a new balance for my family and maximizing our time together, and getting a better handle on our priorities also means we'll probably see a little less of our extended families; at the very least, we'll be mostly staying put and they'll be coming to us. While it was a lot of fun to see everyone so much last year, it also took a huge toll on us, and now that we're farther south than we were in the apartment, it takes three hours to get to Luke's parents' house and four to get to Chicago, and that's without even one bathroom break, which, HELLO, two babies, ain't no way THAT'S gonna happen. I refuse to piss away my remaining PTO with half days here and there so we can run around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to cram a weekend's worth of diapers and clothes and toys into a gazillion duffel bags and listening to the kids whine in their car seats and attempting to time our breaks so that we can get everyone fed and changed in as few stops as possible and then come home on Sunday minutes before bedtime with no time to recharge before the upcoming week. Next year will be a different story, when both kids are off the bottle and sleeping through the night, but right now, it's just too hard. That said, this past weekend we did make the trip north to see everyone, seeing as I had added two weeks of vacation on top of the six weeks of paid leave generously granted by my employer, and I wanted to make them count. Plus, I was dying to introduce Nathan to my side of the family, as Dan, Samantha, and baby Danny were the only ones to meet him until then.

 

Here's Kara having a jolly good time in Luke's old backyard.

 

Daddy D, Kara, and Grandma before our drive to Chicago.

 

The majority of mi familia loca. Look at all those babies! If two of them weren't mine, I would totally be spiking a temperature. You know, because of the baby fever.

 

Me lovin' on my nephew Danny. The last couple of times Samantha and I have gotten our families together, our time was cut short by one medical emergency or another (remember Kara's party?), so this was the first time in a long time I was free to snuggle her baby. He looks so much like Samantha did when she was his age it's scary. So I was a little emotional.

 

One day they'll be knee-deep in snips of snails and puppy-dog tails, but for right now, Nathan and Danny are still working on forming their magical bond.

 

My nine-week-old family of four. I think we're gonna make it after all.

Admitting defeat

All week I've been thinking about the return of Tragic Love Friday, mainly because I've been trying to find time to write it.

On Monday, I went back to work after bawling my eyes out on Sunday night, sobbing, "I hate this, I hate this," "this" being having to go to the office all day just as Kara's starting to do more than lay on a blanket and mesmerize her father and I with her adorable, fleshy gums. Samantha was still in town, so we all had dinner together, only I could barely sit still, wanting to finish up as fast as I could so I could have the baby in my arms again but also wishing I could have another cry and wondering why my heart still hurts so much when I've been doing this for a week and a half already. I put on a happy face for Luke and my sister and spent my free time wiping down countertops and picking up toys so there wouldn't be as much mess for Luke to worry about the next day. I was already leaving him with a sinkful of dirty dishes, and as we all know, the cook should never have to clean, but by the time I finished my Parents entry, it was past ten, and I had to get into bed soon or my eyeballs would explode the next day from the lack of sleep. Thus, no TLF writing on Monday.

Tuesday wasn't any better. I had to go to the dentist because last week I bit on a raisin and felt a shooting pain in my mouth that stayed with me for a good five minutes. Only after forty-five minutes of sitting in the waiting room, flipping through the latest issue of People and staring at my cell phone, wanting to call home but not wanting the waiting room patrons to think I was one of Those Moms who couldn't even go to the damn doctor without checking in on her kid, the dentist couldn't find the source of the problem and actually asked me why I didn't bring in any raisins to demonstrate what was wrong. Another half-hour in traffic, and by then I was really charged up and barely said ten words to Luke the entire evening, in my lame-brained attempt to shield him from my bad attitude, but when I told him I wanted to pick up some more work clothes because I'm tired of trying to squeeze into tops that don't fit my belly, he asked where, and I told him, "The store," I'm pretty sure he was able to see I wasn't sunshine and roses. Was major bitch. I'm surprised I wasn't directed to the couch. No TLF.

Last night I thought about it. I'd apologized for my behavior and come home at a decent hour. I scored plenty of play time with Kara and posted a quick entry on Parents, leaving me with plenty of time to draft a chapter or two. But then Kara decided to take a nine o'clock nap before her last feeding, and she took that last nap in my arms, and all I could do was snuggle her close and sniff her head, which smelled wonderfully of Johnson's shampoo. By the time we started her bedtime routine, it was almost ten, and Luke told me I'd better get ready myself, since it appeared I'd actually have a chance to slip under the covers before eleven. I did, and I did. STILL no TLF.

This morning, before I got into the office, I set aside twenty minutes to get some writing done, with the assumption that I could continue my train of thought at lunchtime. Only it was then I remembered that I needed to find updated headshots of the actors and actresses playing each character, and it had to be done NOW because how could I post the beginning of part three without a character introduction, so I got caught up in doing that, and instead of stopping at 6:20 like I planned I stopped at 6:26, leaving me only nine minutes to pack a lunch, brush my teeth, throw on some make-up, and get out the door. I walked out the door at 6:40, just as Kara started to stir, so I hurried out as quick as I could because it's so much harder to leave when I have to say good-bye. Only when I got to my car, the windows were covered with frost. FUCK. So I let the car run and hurried back inside, where Luke was getting ready for Kara's first feed, so I changed Kara's diaper, smothering her face with kisses the whole time. Then I cursed myself out for even picking her up in the first place because of course there were tears in my eyes as I left, and then I felt bad even for that because who would pass up a chance to spend a few minutes with their baby before a long work day?

As delusional as it sounds, I contemplated doing some TLF stuff on my lunch hour, but fooling around on the computer this morning and having to let my car warm up meant I was twenty minutes late for work, and that's when I started thinking, Maybe trying to post TLF tomorrow isn't such a great idea.

Yes, it really took that long, partly because I was so excited to sink my teeth into a project that had nothing to do with work or parenting, but mostly because I've been going on about it for weeks, and I didn't want to let anyone down. I didn't want anyone to miss their TLF fix because I was "too busy" to write it, like I was this big important person with far more sophisticated ways to spend my time then work on the sequel to a story I started when I was fourteen.

But really? I am too busy to write it. To be honest, I'm barely holding it together.

I'm fully aware I put this pressure on myself. On the surface, I feel like nobody expects me to dust and vacuum every week or send baby gifts out on time, but underneath, I constantly think people are judging me, wondering why I can't shape up or get into the rhythm of things. I can't stand it when people appear to be pitying me because I have to go to work and my husband stays home. Samantha called me "noble" and I cringed, because there are so many people in harder situations, so many people with more difficult problems then going back to a job where my work is valued and well compensated. The last thing I want to do is martyr myself. On the other hand, I can't deny that my plate is too full. I'm feeling pulled in all directions. I can't keep up with the pace I've set for myself.

Something's got to give. And right now, that "thing" is this blog.

I won't be gone forever, or probably even as long as I think. I love posting and talking with all of you. This Web site has (sadly?) become a huge part of who I am. But I don't have room for it right now. My plate is too full. I want to spend time with family without scrambling to the computer every ten minutes. I want to write TLF part three without feeling like there's a gun to my head. I want to learn how to be a working mother without trying to spin every single moment into some literary masterpiece. I'm already doing that for Parents. I can't do it here.

I want to read books again. I want to comment on your blogs again. I want to join the gym and talk on the phone and refocus on my job again.

In a nutshell, I want to figure out how to enjoy my life and my new role as a working mom. I've got a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter who both amaze me every single day, and yet, somehow I've allowed the Internet to cast a shadow over both of them because I'm afraid of losing readers. I look back at Amalah's archives during her period back at work and honestly can't believe she posted as often as she did. Even during her maternity leave when she was breastfeeding all the time. I gave in to formula before we even left the hospital and I could barely manage once a week. I've re-read her entries countless times, banged my head against the proverbial wall, thinking, What the hell is my problem?!

Now I get it. My problem is not knowing when to say When. So, just for a little while, I'm finally going to say it.

See you back here soon.

Moods, swinging of, even moreso than Jenna's

At the time of the start of this entry it's 2:08 in the morning. I should be catching some zzzz's, but instead I've chosen to burden the Internet with my tormented, sort-of-depressing thoughts. Lucky you.

The time has come for Luke and I to put our one-income-family plan into action. His last day of work has already been acknowledged by his department with a farewell lunch at Rock Bottom. I've been in contact with my supervisor and made plans for us to share a meal of our own before heading back to the office, to get up to speed on what I've missed and mentally prepare for what things will be like upon my return. It's no longer numbers typed into an Excel spreadsheet; it's our reality. Luke is a stay-at-home dad. I'm a working mom.

And even though there are still almost three weeks until I have to swipe my security badge at the lab's employee entrance, I feel like my maternity leave is already ending, because come five o'clock tomorrow, Kara and I will say good-bye to this special time we've had getting to know each other. I'm happy for my husband, but so bummed for me.

After Friday, things will be different. No longer will I be the primary parent with whom Kara spends most of her time. Gone will be the days of Luke walking through the door after a long day at the office and me greeting him from the living room couch, spewing happy words about the funny sounds the baby made that morning, cradling her sleeping body in my arms. No more singing "Peppermint Twist" while dancing around the apartment at eleven a.m.

It's not mommy guilt I'm suffering from; it's sadness.

I'm trying to be strong. I'm trying to get excited about shopping for work clothes and grabbing a shower before noon every day and talking to other adults again. I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I don't want Luke to feel bad (happy birthday, honey!). I know that somebody's got to work and my bond with Kara will continue to grow and eventually it'll all get easier.

But IT EFFING SUCKS, just the same.

To keep myself from drowning in a pint of Ben and Jerry's, I'm hereby announcing the official return of Tragic Love Friday, if only to have something awesomely trivial to focus on in my spare (ha!) time. It won't run every week, or even every other week right now, probably just once a month until a solid plot's been established, but no worries, because you'll have Brain Fest Friday to hold you over between installments. We'll have our first official BFF session tomorrow, so be sure to tune in. In the meantime, I'm going out on a limb and setting a TLF season premiere for...(flips through Norman Rockwell calendar) March 28. Those of you interested in being part of the writing team, please e-mail me so I can add you to my newly created Gmail group, which should allow us to swap ideas in an orderly fashion. If you don't have a Gmail account, let me know and I'll send you an invite. Also, don't stress about your literary skills or lacking soap opera background; I'll be controlling the main direction of the story and do eighty percent of the writing, anyway, but from time to time I'm sure I'll need pinch-hitters, and who better than a TLF fan?

Whew. Just thinking about the tragic possibilities makes me smile.

Edited to add: Of COURSE Kara choose this particular morning to wake up at five o'clock making the cutest sounds imaginable. But how can I be mad at this sweet little face? Does she not kill with the adorableness?

Edited to add AGAIN: Luke's V-Day present to me? A TWO-DISC collection of love songs by Phil Collins. It doesn't get any better than this, folks. (Seriously. I'm beyond giddy.)