Yesterday, I took Ava and Bridget to the library for their toddler storytime. And because these storytimes get as packed as Kiss concerts for the three-and-under set, I showed up a little early with the girls in tow, ready and waiting in the eaves for the entertainment to begin. As Ava spastically ran circles around a terrified little boy who eyed her like she was the second-coming of Satan, I gazed around the mostly empty room at the other moms, bouncing children on knees and/or yelling at little Liam to stop trying to use the children's books as a potty.
And that's when I overhead a conversation between two moms near me, comparing storytimes.
". . . So that's why I like this storytime SO much better than the other one. Plus, we only live a half-mile away from this one," said Mom #1, playing with a cherubic bald baby girl wearing a hot pink hairbow the size of a basketball.
"Oh, that's great," said Mom #2, cradling her (also) bald baby boy, this one wearing a blue t-shirt with some clever daddy's-favorite sports-related saying. "Where do you live?"
Mom #1 had clearly been waiting for this moment, probably ever since she finished unpacking her last box after her move into said house. "We live in Chappaqua Canyon*, but we're right on the border of Chappaqua Canyon and San Anselmo." She punctuated this last bit of importance with a quick flip of her perky ponytail and an air of rectitude, like she'd just won a Pulitzer.
(* - All names of locations have been fictionalized to protect the innocent.)
Mom #2 smiled bleakly and nodded, because she (as I and every other mom in that library) knew that being a resident of San Anselmo means something. Living there means that you've made it. Though Chappaqua Canyon is a perfectly safe, tight-knit community of mostly suburban families where one or both parents works in San Francisco, house prices are much higher in San Anselmo, which is literally butted up against Chappaqua Canyon and is one train train stop closer to the city. J and I often can't even understand why they are two-separate towns since they are both so tiny and practically combine to make one.
But none of that mattered yesterday. Sitting there in that library, waiting for the goddamn librarian to just start singing to these two-year-olds already, Mom #2 tried in vain to change the subject. But to no avail. The follow-up question was already coming, and there was nothing anyone -- including her -- could do to stop it.
"Where do you live?" Mom #1 asked innocently. The tension was suddenly palpable, and the words resonated in slow-motion.
Mom #2 averted her gaze from her friend to the puddle of spit-up that had just landed on her leg thanks to her daddy's-favorite-rookie-of-the-year son.
"Oh we live on Oak Boulevard . . ." Mom #2 said quietly, hoping there was no followup. But of course there would be. Oak Boulevard is a pretty long thoroughfare, spanning three different cities. Saying you live on Oak Boulevard is like saying you live on Route 66.
"Ok, then you're closer to the San Anselmo library than we are!" Mom #1 said eagerly. "You must be right on the border too."
"No, not really," Mom #2 said vacantly.
"What do you live near then?" Mom #1 asked.
"We're near Eastwood High School," Mom #2 replied, knowing perfectly well what this meant. But Mom #1 had to just come out and say it for her.
"Ohhh. You're on the border of Chappaqua Canyon and Jepson . . ." Mom #1 tried to say something nice, something uplifting, but nothing could be said after she threw around that border-of-San-Anselmo bit earlier, since border proximity mattered to her. Jepson is a high-crime, poverty stricken side of town where you lock your doors at night and avoid sending your kids to school, if you can help it. Which you can if you're Mom #2, since living on the border of Jepson doesn't really mean anything . . . you are only a mile or two away from the San freaking Anselmo border and you still technically live in Chappaqua Canyon, so who cares?
Apparently, everyone cares.
The longer I'm living in this bizarre trifecta of neighboring towns, the more I'm learning about "what it means" to live closer to this border or that border. What it means to use this library over that library. What type of moms you meet in these kind of places, and what type of kids they raise.
I know that very few would openly admit it, but I've run into more than my fair share of parents who avoid Jepson and its public facilities (like the library storytimes) because of the predominant hispanic population that reside there and frequent those venues, as if "those people" are going to somehow rub off on their children and destroy their futures as doctors and politicians. It's a bigoted, sad fact that racism still exists in this country, much less California, where everyone prides themselves on being hippy-dippy and accepting. But even in the 'burbs of what I'd consider a pretty progressive area, it's still there. Lingering within the confines of spring fling picnics and hushed mom-to-mom conversations over coffee and storytimes.
What blows my mind is that being affiliated with Jepson, even just living a stone's throw away from the "border" if you can even call it that since on any given day your normal errands take you across both communities, tags you as somehow lesser. (And let's be honest, the reasoning behind that is because Jepson's people are seen as lesser, mostly due to their ethnic and financial status.) Yet when hispanic nannies from Jepson show up at San Anselmo storytimes, toting blond-haired, blue-eyed tots, local moms don't seem to mind, since they're there in an official working capacity. Sometimes, this can even be overhead as a joke: "I was the only mom there that day, surrounded by a bunch of nannies." (Nannies sometimes perjoratively referenced as the Mexican variety.) These nannies clearly aren't good enough to mingle with in Jepson, but are good enough to raise your children. Yeah. That makes sense.
But this grossness extends past just the parents in this area. In the strip mall of a nearby affluent town, city leaders recently wanted to stop a Dollar Tree store from taking up residence in what had long been a vacant spot in the mall. Why? It was only said by a few brave commenters, but it was obvious: Allowing Dollar Tree to set up shop would bring Mexicans into the area, which is like 98% white, the remaining 2% being Asian. (One year later, the only customers that seem to frequent that Dollar Tree, which got the greenlight after a long dispute, are prehistorically old, retired white men looking for a cheap deal on shaving cream.)
But I digress.
Going back to those two moms in the Chappaqua Canyon library yesterday, I had to just roll my eyes. If you live in Chappaqua Canyon, you live in Chappaqua Canyon. It doesn't matter how close you live to Beverly Hills . . .
I'm sorry Mom #1, but living near the San Anselmo border means NOTHING. It does not make you "one of those them" (them being those affluent housewives in Escalades and pearls) no matter how many times you repeat you live on the border. If you really need that kind of reassurance, then move to San Anselmo. (Oh wait, you can't afford it.) And can you and every other person who references Jepson as though it's the plague just stop already? It's embarrassing and offensive, and all you're doing is perpetuating this superiority complex in your poor basketball-sized-hairbow-wearing baby girl that's probably heard you say far worse with a smirk to your husband after your friends part ways for naptime.
What is this, a sequel to "The Help"? Well guess what: 1963 just called. They want their Hilly Holbrook back.
Showing posts with label baby talk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baby talk. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2015
Thursday, March 28, 2013
If life gives you limes, make margaritas
Over the last few years I've been told by several doctors that I have the blood pressure of Lance Armstrong.
I suppose this is a good thing since I don't currently, nor have I ever, taken steroids recreationally or otherwise. Perhaps it also means that I, too, can win the Tour de France, which would be amazing since being athletic has always been low on my list of priorities, somewhere between dusting my window blinds and putting new batteries in my dying remote.
What confuses me is that if I've got the blood pressure to theoretically win the Tour de France, then why can't I cope well whenever J messes up with household chores? You'd think I'd have the steely nerves of a two-time gold-medal winner when J forgets to clean the cat litter box (his job, not mine), take out the trash, put out the recycling or wash Ava's bottles. And regarding the latter, I get that my "job" (since I no longer hold a traditional one) is to take care of Ava, but there is an unsaid rule in our house that when we're both at home, it's all hands on deck when it comes to the baby.
But lately, I have been completely wigging out when something he's responsible for doing hasn't been done. I'm talking veins-pulsating-out-of-neck, eyes-seeing-red, practically-breathing-fire wigging out. He gets upset, which makes me more upset, we argue, and I go to bed pissed and misunderstood. And for what? Because he left a few empty water bottles on the kitchen counter before he called it a night? I really need to get a grip.
Keeping our house (or previously, our apartments) clean has never been our strong suit. We were both busy with other things, and while we didn't live in squalor, we were fine with the cluttered coffeetable, chaotic dining table, clothing on our bedroom floor and kitchen sink always half full of dirty dishes. It was just the way it was. We'd try and pick up as much as possible (i.e., once every couple weeks), but found we'd rather spend time doing other things together when we had free time, like grabbing a coffee and strolling around downtown, catching a movie, or curling up on the couch together to talk about our hopes and dreams. Also, it was disheartening when we could actually clean and two days later the place was right back to what it looked like before. Two Oscar Madisons do not a Felix Unger make.
With Ava's arrival, though, clutter suddenly seems to bother me. A lot. And as much as I want to blame J for our disorderly house, I know that I'm just as much at fault. I thought keeping an organized, clean house was hard before, but now with Ava it's like trying to keep our heads above water during a monsoon storm in Phuket.
We don't have the money to hire a housekeeper the way that my other mom friends do (mostly because we're trying to make 2013 the Year We Pay Off All Our Credit Card Debt), so it's up to us to stop being lazy and start picking up after ourselves. If not for us, then for Ava (and if not for Ava, then for our mental sanity). The problem is we're still that couple that thinks it's okay to leave a crumpled receipt here or a dirty dish there. After a few days of this, it gets out of control and we wonder how it happened.
When I'm not out running around or home writing slash playing with Ava, I've made an honest effort lately to make sure our dishes are washed, our dark hardwood floors are free of white cat hair (and white cat hair tumbleweeds) from Moneypenny, and that our laundry is kept in a somewhat manageable state and not spilling out the hamper like the Exxon Valdez oil spill spreading across our bedroom floor. While I may not be perfect about keeping organized, I feel that at least I'm trying.
So it really, really bothered me the other day when J left a dirty diaper on Ava's changing table instead of throwing it in the trash bag I'd placed just beneath the changing area. He does this often, and chalks it up to "forgetting" to throw it out. Ava had been crying all that morning, so when I walked into her nursery to get something and was greeted with the dirty pee-filled diaper wrapped up in a ball and left like a little Christmas present in plain sight on her table, I lost it. Went completely non-linear.
I was seething, and unfortunately, he was 20 minutes away in his high-rise office in San Francisco to fully feel my fury. So I whipped out my cell phone and texted with:
"THANK YOU for washing all the bottles this morning like you said you would, along with leaving a bag of dirty diapers near the front door and leaving your routine lone dirty diaper on her changing table even though the plastic bag was hanging RIGHT infront of you."
and then a followup text:
"You need to start taking care of your half of the bargain with her. I'm serious. You half-ass everything related to Ava."
I don't know what I meant by saying "I'm serious" as though making some sort of Dirty Harry-esque threat. But I sent the followup text because I truly feel like he does need to make more of a concerted effort to follow through with things. Lately it seems difficult for him to fully carry out simple tasks related to her, such as making sure all changing stuff is put away, tossing her dirty clothes in a hamper instead of leaving them in a pile on the floor, or storing away her bath stuff after we bathe her.
When he got home I'd (luckily) calmed down some, and it helped that he apologized and agrees that he needs to start pulling his weight more around the house.
"I didn't marry you to be your maid," I told him. And he agreed.
But at the same time, how angry can I really be at him since this is the way we used to be pre-baby? Both of us were and are guilty of letting things slide. I think that deep down (especially when I'm stressed out), it feels good to take it out on him by berating his lack of awareness when it comes to keeping house. But Ava doesn't change the fact that only seven months ago, this is the way we lived. How can he be expected to change so suddenly over night? I don't expect that of myself, so I shouldn't expect that of him, no matter how annoyed I am. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
Part of the reason I say this is because I'm a proponent of picking your battles. Most things are not worth bickering about. Cleaning is one of them. I like to save bickering for important things like where should we stay the next time we go to Cabo, whether we should drive or take Bart to a baseball game, and why can't I buy that used Prada bag I saw at the consignment store even though it's still an obscene $800.
To me, bickering and nit-picking is the death knell of any relationship, and I don't want to spend the next 50 years of my life arguing about why J left a dirty diaper on the changing table. In his defense, he said he honestly forgot to throw it away (a reason -- note: I didn't use the word "excuse" -- that I find annoying, but okay, I get it, people forget things so I forgive and forget). Also, we will not be changing diapers 50 years from now (unless our marriage follows the plot line of Father of the Bride 2, which I hope it does not), so does it matter in the grand scheme of things? The answer is a big, baby-urine-filled, Pamper-Size 3-covered "no." In the words of Jimmy Buffett, "If life gives you limes, make margaritas."
When I feel myself getting non-linear over some trivial thing, I just remind myself of an uptight British mom in one of my playgroups. Let's call her Eleanor Rigby.
Eleanor has made it clear to all us moms from the very beginning that she hates her husband, loathes her two children, and swears that her marriage would have failed 10-fold after her first baby if she hadn't sought marriage counseling -- for her husband, not for her. Naturally. Eleanor is a self-professed nag who likes things the way she likes them, and is the type to regularly update her Facebook wall with statuses like how she wishes she could continue reading her magazine in the car outside her house because she can't bear to go inside and face her family. I should include that Eleanor has a full-time nanny, housekeeper and has one of her two children enrolled in pre-school, which allows her ample child-free-time to lunch, go shop and work out. Even with all this padding, Eleanor finds things to nag her husband about and subsequently "hate" (her words, not mine).
This, in my view, is the worst life ever. I feel sorry for her, I feel sorry for her kids and I sure as hell feel sorry for her poor husband. I never, ever want to be like Eleanor, and I honestly think that not choosing your battles is probably what kickstarts her kind of relationship. I am by no means a glass-is-half-full type of girl, no matter how much I want to ride a unicorn off into the sunset, but I'm not an extreme pessimist (a la Eleanor) either.
Perspective is key, especially when a baby is added to the mix and you find you and your husband's roles changing as your life together changes. These changes can be beautiful, or they can leave you reading magazines in your car and loathing the moment you walk through your door and greet your life as you know it. I want to believe they are the former.
So the forgotten diaper or empty water bottle might get the quiet, occasional eyeroll from me now, but I tell myself it's not worth inciting World War III over. I'll still gently remind J that he needs to do this or that, but in the end he's not perfect, just as I am not. I guess true love is about giving each other leeway to grow, no matter how long your garbage cans sit near the curb after trash day has come and gone.
I suppose this is a good thing since I don't currently, nor have I ever, taken steroids recreationally or otherwise. Perhaps it also means that I, too, can win the Tour de France, which would be amazing since being athletic has always been low on my list of priorities, somewhere between dusting my window blinds and putting new batteries in my dying remote.
What confuses me is that if I've got the blood pressure to theoretically win the Tour de France, then why can't I cope well whenever J messes up with household chores? You'd think I'd have the steely nerves of a two-time gold-medal winner when J forgets to clean the cat litter box (his job, not mine), take out the trash, put out the recycling or wash Ava's bottles. And regarding the latter, I get that my "job" (since I no longer hold a traditional one) is to take care of Ava, but there is an unsaid rule in our house that when we're both at home, it's all hands on deck when it comes to the baby.
But lately, I have been completely wigging out when something he's responsible for doing hasn't been done. I'm talking veins-pulsating-out-of-neck, eyes-seeing-red, practically-breathing-fire wigging out. He gets upset, which makes me more upset, we argue, and I go to bed pissed and misunderstood. And for what? Because he left a few empty water bottles on the kitchen counter before he called it a night? I really need to get a grip.
Keeping our house (or previously, our apartments) clean has never been our strong suit. We were both busy with other things, and while we didn't live in squalor, we were fine with the cluttered coffeetable, chaotic dining table, clothing on our bedroom floor and kitchen sink always half full of dirty dishes. It was just the way it was. We'd try and pick up as much as possible (i.e., once every couple weeks), but found we'd rather spend time doing other things together when we had free time, like grabbing a coffee and strolling around downtown, catching a movie, or curling up on the couch together to talk about our hopes and dreams. Also, it was disheartening when we could actually clean and two days later the place was right back to what it looked like before. Two Oscar Madisons do not a Felix Unger make.
With Ava's arrival, though, clutter suddenly seems to bother me. A lot. And as much as I want to blame J for our disorderly house, I know that I'm just as much at fault. I thought keeping an organized, clean house was hard before, but now with Ava it's like trying to keep our heads above water during a monsoon storm in Phuket.
We don't have the money to hire a housekeeper the way that my other mom friends do (mostly because we're trying to make 2013 the Year We Pay Off All Our Credit Card Debt), so it's up to us to stop being lazy and start picking up after ourselves. If not for us, then for Ava (and if not for Ava, then for our mental sanity). The problem is we're still that couple that thinks it's okay to leave a crumpled receipt here or a dirty dish there. After a few days of this, it gets out of control and we wonder how it happened.
When I'm not out running around or home writing slash playing with Ava, I've made an honest effort lately to make sure our dishes are washed, our dark hardwood floors are free of white cat hair (and white cat hair tumbleweeds) from Moneypenny, and that our laundry is kept in a somewhat manageable state and not spilling out the hamper like the Exxon Valdez oil spill spreading across our bedroom floor. While I may not be perfect about keeping organized, I feel that at least I'm trying.
So it really, really bothered me the other day when J left a dirty diaper on Ava's changing table instead of throwing it in the trash bag I'd placed just beneath the changing area. He does this often, and chalks it up to "forgetting" to throw it out. Ava had been crying all that morning, so when I walked into her nursery to get something and was greeted with the dirty pee-filled diaper wrapped up in a ball and left like a little Christmas present in plain sight on her table, I lost it. Went completely non-linear.
I was seething, and unfortunately, he was 20 minutes away in his high-rise office in San Francisco to fully feel my fury. So I whipped out my cell phone and texted with:
"THANK YOU for washing all the bottles this morning like you said you would, along with leaving a bag of dirty diapers near the front door and leaving your routine lone dirty diaper on her changing table even though the plastic bag was hanging RIGHT infront of you."
and then a followup text:
"You need to start taking care of your half of the bargain with her. I'm serious. You half-ass everything related to Ava."
I don't know what I meant by saying "I'm serious" as though making some sort of Dirty Harry-esque threat. But I sent the followup text because I truly feel like he does need to make more of a concerted effort to follow through with things. Lately it seems difficult for him to fully carry out simple tasks related to her, such as making sure all changing stuff is put away, tossing her dirty clothes in a hamper instead of leaving them in a pile on the floor, or storing away her bath stuff after we bathe her.
When he got home I'd (luckily) calmed down some, and it helped that he apologized and agrees that he needs to start pulling his weight more around the house.
"I didn't marry you to be your maid," I told him. And he agreed.
But at the same time, how angry can I really be at him since this is the way we used to be pre-baby? Both of us were and are guilty of letting things slide. I think that deep down (especially when I'm stressed out), it feels good to take it out on him by berating his lack of awareness when it comes to keeping house. But Ava doesn't change the fact that only seven months ago, this is the way we lived. How can he be expected to change so suddenly over night? I don't expect that of myself, so I shouldn't expect that of him, no matter how annoyed I am. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
Part of the reason I say this is because I'm a proponent of picking your battles. Most things are not worth bickering about. Cleaning is one of them. I like to save bickering for important things like where should we stay the next time we go to Cabo, whether we should drive or take Bart to a baseball game, and why can't I buy that used Prada bag I saw at the consignment store even though it's still an obscene $800.
To me, bickering and nit-picking is the death knell of any relationship, and I don't want to spend the next 50 years of my life arguing about why J left a dirty diaper on the changing table. In his defense, he said he honestly forgot to throw it away (a reason -- note: I didn't use the word "excuse" -- that I find annoying, but okay, I get it, people forget things so I forgive and forget). Also, we will not be changing diapers 50 years from now (unless our marriage follows the plot line of Father of the Bride 2, which I hope it does not), so does it matter in the grand scheme of things? The answer is a big, baby-urine-filled, Pamper-Size 3-covered "no." In the words of Jimmy Buffett, "If life gives you limes, make margaritas."
When I feel myself getting non-linear over some trivial thing, I just remind myself of an uptight British mom in one of my playgroups. Let's call her Eleanor Rigby.
Eleanor has made it clear to all us moms from the very beginning that she hates her husband, loathes her two children, and swears that her marriage would have failed 10-fold after her first baby if she hadn't sought marriage counseling -- for her husband, not for her. Naturally. Eleanor is a self-professed nag who likes things the way she likes them, and is the type to regularly update her Facebook wall with statuses like how she wishes she could continue reading her magazine in the car outside her house because she can't bear to go inside and face her family. I should include that Eleanor has a full-time nanny, housekeeper and has one of her two children enrolled in pre-school, which allows her ample child-free-time to lunch, go shop and work out. Even with all this padding, Eleanor finds things to nag her husband about and subsequently "hate" (her words, not mine).
This, in my view, is the worst life ever. I feel sorry for her, I feel sorry for her kids and I sure as hell feel sorry for her poor husband. I never, ever want to be like Eleanor, and I honestly think that not choosing your battles is probably what kickstarts her kind of relationship. I am by no means a glass-is-half-full type of girl, no matter how much I want to ride a unicorn off into the sunset, but I'm not an extreme pessimist (a la Eleanor) either.
Perspective is key, especially when a baby is added to the mix and you find you and your husband's roles changing as your life together changes. These changes can be beautiful, or they can leave you reading magazines in your car and loathing the moment you walk through your door and greet your life as you know it. I want to believe they are the former.
So the forgotten diaper or empty water bottle might get the quiet, occasional eyeroll from me now, but I tell myself it's not worth inciting World War III over. I'll still gently remind J that he needs to do this or that, but in the end he's not perfect, just as I am not. I guess true love is about giving each other leeway to grow, no matter how long your garbage cans sit near the curb after trash day has come and gone.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Finding my balance
Well, the dust has finally settled on this whole baby thing. And I mean that in the best possible way. I think.
Ava's going to be seven months old this week, and I think I've finally gotten a grasp on how to be a mom. Or at least pretend to be one (because in all honesty, I look in the mirror and wonder who that 30-year-old is looking back at me. It's not me, I reason, since I'll forever feel 23). And I have to say I "think" I've gotten a grasp because I'm still not sure, seven months later, if I'm doing everything right. Perhaps there is no "right" in this parenting chapter of anyone's life. After all, what's right when your baby has poop blowouts out the backs of her diapers? Or you speak baby gibberish in public, sometimes even accidentally to other adults, or find yourself picking your baby's nose and not thinking twice about it. In the worlds of Bob Dylan, "It ain't me babe." Or is it?
I might not be doing everything right, but I've learned as I go, and I think I've edged into a rhythm with Ava that is not only manageable now, but fun. I'm not sure when the erratic chaos of being abruptly thrust into a new phase of life morphed into a gentle and manageable hum, but it happened. Kind of like going to sleep one night after weeks of stress and suffering, and waking up one morning as not only wholly embracing of that which you fought against, but actually loving it. That happened to me, and since then everything's gotten easier. Like I said, the dust has settled and now I feel like this baby thing has become an easy, steady whir.
Of course it's not easy 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but compared to how it was in the beginning, I would say Ava's become a walk in the park. Her sleeping patterns still aren't perfect, and she still has her little crying temper tantrums every time she's put down for a nap (I've decided she looks like a cartoon baby turtle when she cries), but with every hardship she throws at me, I dig deep for patience I never knew I had, and I deal with it. Through this last seven months I've learned that I actually have more patience than I ever thought I was capable of -- a fact that not only impresses me, but frightens me as well.
Now that things have died down to a whir, I find myself getting more time to write and my book is slowly and steadily coming along. I plan to have it finished by this summer, and hopefully edited and out to literary agents by the end of the year. I'm having a lot of fun writing it, so I relish in the moments I do get to work on it. J's read pieces of it and suggested I post excerpts of it on this blog, which I may just do. I have faith in it, more than the other two books I wrote, so I'm hoping readers will like it as well.
Anyway, in this process of caring for Ava, I've chosen to also care for myself. I don't want to let myself go, or lose myself in her. She may be my full-time job now, but that doesn't mean that I don't count or that I come second. I love Ava more than anything, but I love myself just as much. I'm sure some moms would shoot me cold, hard looks for saying such a blasphemous thing, but that's how I feel and I don't understand why I should feel guilty for feeling that way. After all, I existed for 30 years before she was born. I'm just as important, even if I can't wear cute little ballerina slippers the way she does.
So I do my makeup every morning, pick out our cute outfits for the day, and always try to leave the house looking polished and put together. Not only do I do this for my happiness and emotional well-being, I also do it to serve as an example to Ava. She might be too young to understand these things now, but as she grows up I want her to see that there is an importance in taking care of yourself and your appearance. I don't want to be one of those moms that is "so devoted" to their babies they use it as an excuse to schlep around in pajamas and let themselves fall apart. There are so many articles online talking about a woman's looks versus her intellect, but why do we have to choose to nurture one or the other? Why can't we nurture both? I want Ava to see that her mother can be smart and beautiful, and I want her to understand that she can be both. It's not an either/or.
Oh and the weight thing I complained about earlier? I think I've gotten a pretty good handle on it (no thanks to that hula hoop, which has sadly joined the ranks of the ankle weights, dumbbells and myriad other home gym equipment currently collecting dust in our guest room/room of good fitness intentions). Just after New Year's I began religiously counting calories -- 1,200 a day -- and the pounds started to drop away. Not an easy feat when all I want is to eat three gallons of ice cream every weekend, but lately I've started dropping down to familiar sizes and even managed to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans the other night! Though they were still a bit tight, I did get them buttoned and zipped up, so I count this as "fitting me." This small victory will surely be a high of my year. So far I've lost 10 pounds, and I have about five more left to lose. These last five are being extra stubborn and don't seem to care that I imagine I'm eating cheesecake every time I drink my sparkling water, but hopefully they'll be gone by summer.
Ava's going to be seven months old this week, and I think I've finally gotten a grasp on how to be a mom. Or at least pretend to be one (because in all honesty, I look in the mirror and wonder who that 30-year-old is looking back at me. It's not me, I reason, since I'll forever feel 23). And I have to say I "think" I've gotten a grasp because I'm still not sure, seven months later, if I'm doing everything right. Perhaps there is no "right" in this parenting chapter of anyone's life. After all, what's right when your baby has poop blowouts out the backs of her diapers? Or you speak baby gibberish in public, sometimes even accidentally to other adults, or find yourself picking your baby's nose and not thinking twice about it. In the worlds of Bob Dylan, "It ain't me babe." Or is it?
I might not be doing everything right, but I've learned as I go, and I think I've edged into a rhythm with Ava that is not only manageable now, but fun. I'm not sure when the erratic chaos of being abruptly thrust into a new phase of life morphed into a gentle and manageable hum, but it happened. Kind of like going to sleep one night after weeks of stress and suffering, and waking up one morning as not only wholly embracing of that which you fought against, but actually loving it. That happened to me, and since then everything's gotten easier. Like I said, the dust has settled and now I feel like this baby thing has become an easy, steady whir.
Of course it's not easy 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but compared to how it was in the beginning, I would say Ava's become a walk in the park. Her sleeping patterns still aren't perfect, and she still has her little crying temper tantrums every time she's put down for a nap (I've decided she looks like a cartoon baby turtle when she cries), but with every hardship she throws at me, I dig deep for patience I never knew I had, and I deal with it. Through this last seven months I've learned that I actually have more patience than I ever thought I was capable of -- a fact that not only impresses me, but frightens me as well.
Now that things have died down to a whir, I find myself getting more time to write and my book is slowly and steadily coming along. I plan to have it finished by this summer, and hopefully edited and out to literary agents by the end of the year. I'm having a lot of fun writing it, so I relish in the moments I do get to work on it. J's read pieces of it and suggested I post excerpts of it on this blog, which I may just do. I have faith in it, more than the other two books I wrote, so I'm hoping readers will like it as well.
Anyway, in this process of caring for Ava, I've chosen to also care for myself. I don't want to let myself go, or lose myself in her. She may be my full-time job now, but that doesn't mean that I don't count or that I come second. I love Ava more than anything, but I love myself just as much. I'm sure some moms would shoot me cold, hard looks for saying such a blasphemous thing, but that's how I feel and I don't understand why I should feel guilty for feeling that way. After all, I existed for 30 years before she was born. I'm just as important, even if I can't wear cute little ballerina slippers the way she does.
So I do my makeup every morning, pick out our cute outfits for the day, and always try to leave the house looking polished and put together. Not only do I do this for my happiness and emotional well-being, I also do it to serve as an example to Ava. She might be too young to understand these things now, but as she grows up I want her to see that there is an importance in taking care of yourself and your appearance. I don't want to be one of those moms that is "so devoted" to their babies they use it as an excuse to schlep around in pajamas and let themselves fall apart. There are so many articles online talking about a woman's looks versus her intellect, but why do we have to choose to nurture one or the other? Why can't we nurture both? I want Ava to see that her mother can be smart and beautiful, and I want her to understand that she can be both. It's not an either/or.
Oh and the weight thing I complained about earlier? I think I've gotten a pretty good handle on it (no thanks to that hula hoop, which has sadly joined the ranks of the ankle weights, dumbbells and myriad other home gym equipment currently collecting dust in our guest room/room of good fitness intentions). Just after New Year's I began religiously counting calories -- 1,200 a day -- and the pounds started to drop away. Not an easy feat when all I want is to eat three gallons of ice cream every weekend, but lately I've started dropping down to familiar sizes and even managed to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans the other night! Though they were still a bit tight, I did get them buttoned and zipped up, so I count this as "fitting me." This small victory will surely be a high of my year. So far I've lost 10 pounds, and I have about five more left to lose. These last five are being extra stubborn and don't seem to care that I imagine I'm eating cheesecake every time I drink my sparkling water, but hopefully they'll be gone by summer.
 |
| Ava and I in Napa. |
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Finding friends as an adult
Every day of the last three weeks has been above par for me. I've had
fun, met new people, got to spend some quality time with J over each
weekend and have generally been so busy every weekday that I felt my
life with Ava was finally finding a balance where she and I were both
satisfied. Her, with the stimulation of being on the go and around
sights, sounds, colors and people; me, with building friendships,
(finally) finding some time to write, and getting things done in and
outside of the home.
Then yesterday happened.
If we're going black and white here, it wasn't the most terrible day of my life, but it was definitely a lighter shade of gray. For someone who's tried to paint every day white, it was a downer to say the least.
It started off fine. I woke up before Ava and got myself makeup-ed and ready, excited to meet up with some moms from a mother's group I attend once a week. A few of us planned to meet earlier than the group to have coffee and hang out. Caffeine? Prospective friends I can commiserate with about this whole baby thing? Count me in. I looked forward to getting to know these girls a little better since our meetup group was so big that it was hard to get to know anyone on an individual basis.
So Ava and I went, and it wasn't bad per se, but it wasn't that great either. Maybe I just have high expectations for forging close friendships relatively fast with people, I don't know. But sitting there at the Starbucks in Target with our pow-wow of strollers, I tried in vain to jump into the conversation whenever I could, being my perky self and asking questions with a genuine interest because I do want to get to know these women. But part of the way through I started to realize that no one was really including me in their conversations and no one was asking me any questions -- were they not interested in getting to know me? -- so I watched as they spoke with one other and suddenly I felt excluded and very alone. The last time I felt this way was during my freshman year of high school, when I was one of the last picked for phys. ed. dodgeball (the stereotype exists for a reason). Since that fateful day in Mr. Warmerdam's sixth period P.E. class, I've grown prettier, more confident and a hell of a lot more cool. Or so I thought. But then at Target yesterday that familiar feeling resurfaced.
That feeling, then, made me painfully aware that I was sitting at a Target Starbucks. I always wondered what type of person would ever spend time at a Target Starbucks, usually seen looking dejected and alone with a a coffee and personal pan pizza from the adjoining food counter, and now I knew -- that person was me. The one who doesn't really fit in to her surroundings, but still tries like mad to because having a baby is isolating enough and she just wants to find some like-minded friends, God damn it.
And maybe that's the problem. Maybe I'm trying too hard to force all of this. I so want to have best friends going through what I'm going through that the process isn't happening as organically as a Candace Bushnell novel.
I belong to two mom groups, both of which herald mommy members that couldn't be more different. Let's call these Mommy Group A and Mommy Group B.
Mommy Group A is all career-driven, first-time moms who are eager to return to the professional lives they had before baby. They love their new babies but are happy to complain about breastfeeding, the lack of adult conversation in their new lives, and how they can't wait to go back to work so that baby rearing is no longer their sole function. They unanimously hate cooking, cleaning and anything domestic that has to do with being June Cleaver 2.0. I have this in common with them, but within the group I'm the only stay-at-home mom -- a fact that makes me look like an outsider.
Mommy Group B, on the other hand, is made up of all stay-at-home moms, so of course there's not much talk in this group of "going back to work," nor is there any desire to work ever again. Mommy Group B heralds Martha Stewart-type living, and members keep recipe books, enjoy cooking and crafting, and like playing house. In this group, one mom's idea of living on the edge is wearing a lavender cardigan. I can say for certain that I'm no Martha Stewart, nor do I have any desire to be. Still, the moms in both groups are pleasant and nice, there's no competition (at least I don't feel any) between women. That usual cattiness that comes from female groups (a la Real Housewives) doesn't exist in either.
So these are my two groups and while I may have some things in common with members of both (I hate cooking and cleaning, but I am a stay-at-home mom), I don't quite fit in with either. I feel like I'm somewhere in between, which makes some days better than others.
One day I'll think that I've made headway with a mom or two and the next day I'll feel like I'm right back at square one. What gives? The worst thing of all is that I feel like I'm back in grade school trying to find my group of friends, and all the same rules of the play yard still apply. It's like that scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Toula, as a young girl, sits alone at the next table over from the popular girls. She happily opens her lunchbox and before she can take a bite of her mousaka, which she tells the popular girls it is, they shriek "Moose Caca!!!" and laugh at how weird she is. All right, so maybe my situation isn't this dire, but to a degree the exclusion I feel sometimes feels like this.
I'm sure the moms I hung out with yesterday have no idea I'm feeling any of this. I smile and nod and politely enter the conversation here and there, but on the inside I'm thinking "Why can't I just find my people?" I don't want to always be politically correct or bond over breastfeeding stories. I just want to click with a few first-time moms around my age that don't feel the need to discuss babies (or baby-related things) 24/7. Maybe this is just my attempt to feel normal again, back before I had Ava. I did have an identity and life before her, and while she's a great addition, I don't want to pretend that part of me before her never existed.
But, to find mom friends, I feel myself pretending to be someone else. I'm suppressing that perky, hyper part of me to come off as more subdued and collected. I normally have an unusual giddiness about certain things, but lately I've felt like I've tamped down my outward enthusiasm so as not to come off as overbearing and "too much."
And I hate it. It's like I've become some boring, monotonous version of myself just to try and get in good with some of these moms. It's not me and I'm sick of it. I don't want to pretend anymore that I enjoy receiving copies of Good Housekeeping and Parenting Magazine from other moms. I live with a baby; I don't need to read about what it's like. And I hate Good Housekeeping -- do I really look like the type of girl that reads Good Housekeeping? I loathe how ugly some baby essentials are, like vibrating chairs, swings and "play mats" and I hate how these things make my house look. I abhor breastfeeding, and yes, maybe I like having a bottle of wine or two with my husband after we put Ava to bed. Shoot me.
Why should I feel like any of this is weird or irresponsible to admit just because other moms have sworn off wine and caffeine entirely because of breastfeeding? No, I don't want your copy of Good Housekeeping, but I'll take your copy of Vogue if you have one. Oh wait, you don't. Because you're busy reading about how to properly bake your own croutons while I just want to live vicariously through Kate Moss in Paris.
That's what I need to find: Non-PC moms who see the humor in all this stuff we're supposed to "love" about motherhood. Moms who are honest about everything we're all going through. I dropped the "D" word (depression) a few days ago, and my entire group got quiet and said that none of them experienced any of that after having their bundles of joy. I call bullshit. Maybe they aren't ready to be honest with themselves, let alone me, but I find it highly unlikely that in a group of five moms, only one (me) has experienced any postpartum depression.
I've found that finding new mom friends is a lot like blind dating -- so why should I treat this any differently? Not every man is a perfect fit and neither is every mom. This isn't commentary on me or the choices I've made as a woman, it's simply an issue of compatibility. At 30, if I was thrust back into the dating scene, I wouldn't waste my time with every man, trying desperately to find someone who I'd work with. So why am I doing that now with these new friend candidates? I like some more than others, so instead of trying to make it work with all of them, I'm going to spend time getting to know the good ones while keeping an eye out for new, outside prospects.
Then yesterday happened.
If we're going black and white here, it wasn't the most terrible day of my life, but it was definitely a lighter shade of gray. For someone who's tried to paint every day white, it was a downer to say the least.
It started off fine. I woke up before Ava and got myself makeup-ed and ready, excited to meet up with some moms from a mother's group I attend once a week. A few of us planned to meet earlier than the group to have coffee and hang out. Caffeine? Prospective friends I can commiserate with about this whole baby thing? Count me in. I looked forward to getting to know these girls a little better since our meetup group was so big that it was hard to get to know anyone on an individual basis.
So Ava and I went, and it wasn't bad per se, but it wasn't that great either. Maybe I just have high expectations for forging close friendships relatively fast with people, I don't know. But sitting there at the Starbucks in Target with our pow-wow of strollers, I tried in vain to jump into the conversation whenever I could, being my perky self and asking questions with a genuine interest because I do want to get to know these women. But part of the way through I started to realize that no one was really including me in their conversations and no one was asking me any questions -- were they not interested in getting to know me? -- so I watched as they spoke with one other and suddenly I felt excluded and very alone. The last time I felt this way was during my freshman year of high school, when I was one of the last picked for phys. ed. dodgeball (the stereotype exists for a reason). Since that fateful day in Mr. Warmerdam's sixth period P.E. class, I've grown prettier, more confident and a hell of a lot more cool. Or so I thought. But then at Target yesterday that familiar feeling resurfaced.
That feeling, then, made me painfully aware that I was sitting at a Target Starbucks. I always wondered what type of person would ever spend time at a Target Starbucks, usually seen looking dejected and alone with a a coffee and personal pan pizza from the adjoining food counter, and now I knew -- that person was me. The one who doesn't really fit in to her surroundings, but still tries like mad to because having a baby is isolating enough and she just wants to find some like-minded friends, God damn it.
And maybe that's the problem. Maybe I'm trying too hard to force all of this. I so want to have best friends going through what I'm going through that the process isn't happening as organically as a Candace Bushnell novel.
I belong to two mom groups, both of which herald mommy members that couldn't be more different. Let's call these Mommy Group A and Mommy Group B.
Mommy Group A is all career-driven, first-time moms who are eager to return to the professional lives they had before baby. They love their new babies but are happy to complain about breastfeeding, the lack of adult conversation in their new lives, and how they can't wait to go back to work so that baby rearing is no longer their sole function. They unanimously hate cooking, cleaning and anything domestic that has to do with being June Cleaver 2.0. I have this in common with them, but within the group I'm the only stay-at-home mom -- a fact that makes me look like an outsider.
Mommy Group B, on the other hand, is made up of all stay-at-home moms, so of course there's not much talk in this group of "going back to work," nor is there any desire to work ever again. Mommy Group B heralds Martha Stewart-type living, and members keep recipe books, enjoy cooking and crafting, and like playing house. In this group, one mom's idea of living on the edge is wearing a lavender cardigan. I can say for certain that I'm no Martha Stewart, nor do I have any desire to be. Still, the moms in both groups are pleasant and nice, there's no competition (at least I don't feel any) between women. That usual cattiness that comes from female groups (a la Real Housewives) doesn't exist in either.
So these are my two groups and while I may have some things in common with members of both (I hate cooking and cleaning, but I am a stay-at-home mom), I don't quite fit in with either. I feel like I'm somewhere in between, which makes some days better than others.
One day I'll think that I've made headway with a mom or two and the next day I'll feel like I'm right back at square one. What gives? The worst thing of all is that I feel like I'm back in grade school trying to find my group of friends, and all the same rules of the play yard still apply. It's like that scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Toula, as a young girl, sits alone at the next table over from the popular girls. She happily opens her lunchbox and before she can take a bite of her mousaka, which she tells the popular girls it is, they shriek "Moose Caca!!!" and laugh at how weird she is. All right, so maybe my situation isn't this dire, but to a degree the exclusion I feel sometimes feels like this.
I'm sure the moms I hung out with yesterday have no idea I'm feeling any of this. I smile and nod and politely enter the conversation here and there, but on the inside I'm thinking "Why can't I just find my people?" I don't want to always be politically correct or bond over breastfeeding stories. I just want to click with a few first-time moms around my age that don't feel the need to discuss babies (or baby-related things) 24/7. Maybe this is just my attempt to feel normal again, back before I had Ava. I did have an identity and life before her, and while she's a great addition, I don't want to pretend that part of me before her never existed.
But, to find mom friends, I feel myself pretending to be someone else. I'm suppressing that perky, hyper part of me to come off as more subdued and collected. I normally have an unusual giddiness about certain things, but lately I've felt like I've tamped down my outward enthusiasm so as not to come off as overbearing and "too much."
And I hate it. It's like I've become some boring, monotonous version of myself just to try and get in good with some of these moms. It's not me and I'm sick of it. I don't want to pretend anymore that I enjoy receiving copies of Good Housekeeping and Parenting Magazine from other moms. I live with a baby; I don't need to read about what it's like. And I hate Good Housekeeping -- do I really look like the type of girl that reads Good Housekeeping? I loathe how ugly some baby essentials are, like vibrating chairs, swings and "play mats" and I hate how these things make my house look. I abhor breastfeeding, and yes, maybe I like having a bottle of wine or two with my husband after we put Ava to bed. Shoot me.
Why should I feel like any of this is weird or irresponsible to admit just because other moms have sworn off wine and caffeine entirely because of breastfeeding? No, I don't want your copy of Good Housekeeping, but I'll take your copy of Vogue if you have one. Oh wait, you don't. Because you're busy reading about how to properly bake your own croutons while I just want to live vicariously through Kate Moss in Paris.
That's what I need to find: Non-PC moms who see the humor in all this stuff we're supposed to "love" about motherhood. Moms who are honest about everything we're all going through. I dropped the "D" word (depression) a few days ago, and my entire group got quiet and said that none of them experienced any of that after having their bundles of joy. I call bullshit. Maybe they aren't ready to be honest with themselves, let alone me, but I find it highly unlikely that in a group of five moms, only one (me) has experienced any postpartum depression.
I've found that finding new mom friends is a lot like blind dating -- so why should I treat this any differently? Not every man is a perfect fit and neither is every mom. This isn't commentary on me or the choices I've made as a woman, it's simply an issue of compatibility. At 30, if I was thrust back into the dating scene, I wouldn't waste my time with every man, trying desperately to find someone who I'd work with. So why am I doing that now with these new friend candidates? I like some more than others, so instead of trying to make it work with all of them, I'm going to spend time getting to know the good ones while keeping an eye out for new, outside prospects.
Friday, November 2, 2012
My body after baby
Confession: Today I bought a dress that totally didn't fit me. Unfortunately, it's not that it was too big (an easy fix with a cinched belt); it was too small. And I knew this, but it didn't stop me from bypassing the dressing rooms, taking said dress up to the front register and purchasing it. That's right, I bought it. All in the name of cute minimalist color-blocking and an exposed zipper down the back.
Like an idiot I was all happy to get home and try on the damn dress so I could brag to everyone I knew about how at two months postpartum, I already fit into “those” kind of dresses – the kind with cinched waists, slim shoulders and tailored butts. You know, the skinny girl kind. Of course somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew full well I wouldn't fit into the thing. I still have 14 el bees of baby weight to lose (although I hide it very, very well) and once in a while I'll look at myself naked in the mirror and swear my ass has exploded to Kim Kardashian proportions. J insists this isn't the case but husbands can't always be trusted when their wife's weight is at issue. Anyway, irrational Crystal assured me that somehow it would fit, or at least I'd force it to fit. Well let's just say that if the dress were Cinderella's glass slipper it would be less like this:
And more like this:
It was much worse than a little snug. I felt like a sausage stuffed in to size zero casing. Curtains of armpit fat spilled out the arm holes. My thighs made the fabric across them pucker in a most unappealing fashion. And the waist. . .well, it looked like I'd slipped a small rubberband over my torso to use as some makeshift belt. This time last year this dress would have looked stunning on me, in fact it probably would have been loose on and I would have pretended I didn't love all the compliments I'd get for how great I looked in it. Now I looked like Jeana Keough from Real Housewives of Orange County, albeit with no Playboy Magazine past to attest to my former hotness.
Dejected, I tore the dress off and flung it over my shoulder into the baby's empty crib (I currently use Ava's nursery as my second closet). So, aside from collecting dust on its hanger, I guess this dress could serve one of two purposes:
I'm not asking to look like a Victoria's Secret Angel, but I also don't want to keep going this way and wind up padding around my house in a leopard-print muumuu like Kirstie Alley with a bag of Cheetos. I want to feel good about my body again and not automatically hold a shirt or towel up over my midsection if J happens to walk in on me while I'm changing. I never used to be that girl who was insecure about her body. Before I was Samantha Jones about my body; now I'm Bridget Jones. Maybe it's karma for sunbathing topless once in my entire life because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about (turns out not much, other than sunburned boobs).
For a girl who hates working out I don't quite know what I'm going to do aside from count calories and starve myself back to skinny-ness...but that seems a bit unreasonable at the moment since I need every last ounce of my energy to make it through these days. Plus, the last time I counted calories -- 1,100 calories per day – I always felt like I was one step away from fainting like some character in a Jane Austen novel. Definitely not conducive to raising a baby.
I plan to keep walking and maybe I'll gradually cut my calories here and there. I suppose the occasional crunch wouldn't hurt either. I've been a good little witch and cut out my brownie batter habit a few weeks ago, so there's that. The next step is cutting out most of the junk food I eat (humongous sigh). I guess I'll have to say goodbye to Taco Bell, Panda Express, Red Vines licorice and basically anything else that comes packaged in a box, bag or jar. This is the best rule of thumb for a diet since anything packaged in one of these is generally high in sodium, preservatives and, well, all that stuff that tastes good. I once heard that the most healthy way to shop the grocery store was to cruise the perimeter, which makes sense. That's where all the produce, meats, dairy and freshly baked goods are. Everything else in the store's middle is just junk (no matter how good it tastes). So if it means I can get back into that dress and back into a better frame of mind about my body, I'll make the sacrifice and shop the perimeter more.
After all, not only are there clothes in my closet waiting to hang out with me again, the holidays are just around the corner and that means. . . holiday dress season!!! (I type those exclamation points with heartfelt sarcasm.) Normally this time of year elicits quiet squeals from me since holiday dress shopping and wearing are some of my favorite things. This year, though, I'm meeting it with equal parts skepticism and remorse. No matter how much I cut calories there's no way in a healthy hell I'd ever be able to drop 14 pounds by Christmas. It's a crap situation all around. Nevertheless, I've got three events in December already lined up that I need to at least try and look good at:
1.) A white elephant Christmas party one of my new mom friends is throwing for a group of us mothers. Obviously a cocktail dress would be too dressy for this occasion, but I still need to be the hottest mother there. Naturally.
2.) J's office holiday party. It's being held at a steakhouse in downtown SF (fancy, fancy) and is a great excuse to rock a stunning cocktail dress. Lucky me? Again, I need to be the hottest wife there. It's a gold standard I constantly strive for.
3.) My cousin's wedding. It's going to be a black-tie, evening shindig, so a TKO dress is in order. I'm thinking something in a jewel tone that doesn't highlight the thin layer of fat I now carry around on my back. Not a big deal if I'm not the hottest person at this party since half my extended family are Persian Kardashian-lookalikes that make me look super vanilla in comparison.
Like an idiot I was all happy to get home and try on the damn dress so I could brag to everyone I knew about how at two months postpartum, I already fit into “those” kind of dresses – the kind with cinched waists, slim shoulders and tailored butts. You know, the skinny girl kind. Of course somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew full well I wouldn't fit into the thing. I still have 14 el bees of baby weight to lose (although I hide it very, very well) and once in a while I'll look at myself naked in the mirror and swear my ass has exploded to Kim Kardashian proportions. J insists this isn't the case but husbands can't always be trusted when their wife's weight is at issue. Anyway, irrational Crystal assured me that somehow it would fit, or at least I'd force it to fit. Well let's just say that if the dress were Cinderella's glass slipper it would be less like this:
And more like this:
It was much worse than a little snug. I felt like a sausage stuffed in to size zero casing. Curtains of armpit fat spilled out the arm holes. My thighs made the fabric across them pucker in a most unappealing fashion. And the waist. . .well, it looked like I'd slipped a small rubberband over my torso to use as some makeshift belt. This time last year this dress would have looked stunning on me, in fact it probably would have been loose on and I would have pretended I didn't love all the compliments I'd get for how great I looked in it. Now I looked like Jeana Keough from Real Housewives of Orange County, albeit with no Playboy Magazine past to attest to my former hotness.
Dejected, I tore the dress off and flung it over my shoulder into the baby's empty crib (I currently use Ava's nursery as my second closet). So, aside from collecting dust on its hanger, I guess this dress could serve one of two purposes:
- It can serve as a reminder that I'm a fat cow now that I've had a baby. This can further remind me that not only has the baby sucked me dry of all energy (along with parts of my soul), she's also ruined my body in her wake.
- It can serve as a reminder that though I may be of fat cow status now, if I work hard at losing the weight I can one day fit into some version of this dress again.
I'm not asking to look like a Victoria's Secret Angel, but I also don't want to keep going this way and wind up padding around my house in a leopard-print muumuu like Kirstie Alley with a bag of Cheetos. I want to feel good about my body again and not automatically hold a shirt or towel up over my midsection if J happens to walk in on me while I'm changing. I never used to be that girl who was insecure about her body. Before I was Samantha Jones about my body; now I'm Bridget Jones. Maybe it's karma for sunbathing topless once in my entire life because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about (turns out not much, other than sunburned boobs).
For a girl who hates working out I don't quite know what I'm going to do aside from count calories and starve myself back to skinny-ness...but that seems a bit unreasonable at the moment since I need every last ounce of my energy to make it through these days. Plus, the last time I counted calories -- 1,100 calories per day – I always felt like I was one step away from fainting like some character in a Jane Austen novel. Definitely not conducive to raising a baby.
I plan to keep walking and maybe I'll gradually cut my calories here and there. I suppose the occasional crunch wouldn't hurt either. I've been a good little witch and cut out my brownie batter habit a few weeks ago, so there's that. The next step is cutting out most of the junk food I eat (humongous sigh). I guess I'll have to say goodbye to Taco Bell, Panda Express, Red Vines licorice and basically anything else that comes packaged in a box, bag or jar. This is the best rule of thumb for a diet since anything packaged in one of these is generally high in sodium, preservatives and, well, all that stuff that tastes good. I once heard that the most healthy way to shop the grocery store was to cruise the perimeter, which makes sense. That's where all the produce, meats, dairy and freshly baked goods are. Everything else in the store's middle is just junk (no matter how good it tastes). So if it means I can get back into that dress and back into a better frame of mind about my body, I'll make the sacrifice and shop the perimeter more.
After all, not only are there clothes in my closet waiting to hang out with me again, the holidays are just around the corner and that means. . . holiday dress season!!! (I type those exclamation points with heartfelt sarcasm.) Normally this time of year elicits quiet squeals from me since holiday dress shopping and wearing are some of my favorite things. This year, though, I'm meeting it with equal parts skepticism and remorse. No matter how much I cut calories there's no way in a healthy hell I'd ever be able to drop 14 pounds by Christmas. It's a crap situation all around. Nevertheless, I've got three events in December already lined up that I need to at least try and look good at:
1.) A white elephant Christmas party one of my new mom friends is throwing for a group of us mothers. Obviously a cocktail dress would be too dressy for this occasion, but I still need to be the hottest mother there. Naturally.
2.) J's office holiday party. It's being held at a steakhouse in downtown SF (fancy, fancy) and is a great excuse to rock a stunning cocktail dress. Lucky me? Again, I need to be the hottest wife there. It's a gold standard I constantly strive for.
3.) My cousin's wedding. It's going to be a black-tie, evening shindig, so a TKO dress is in order. I'm thinking something in a jewel tone that doesn't highlight the thin layer of fat I now carry around on my back. Not a big deal if I'm not the hottest person at this party since half my extended family are Persian Kardashian-lookalikes that make me look super vanilla in comparison.
Friday, October 26, 2012
The baby blues
Tuesday officially marked my baby's two-month birthday. By the way, her name is Ava.
Ava celebrated this momentous occasion by sleeping through most of the day, only opening her eyes and squeaking or crying when she wanted to be fed (right now she doesn't ask for much). For the first time in eight weeks, I finally -- finally! -- have time to sit down and write something, which I really should have been doing from Day 1, but all other excuses aside, I've been so busy with Ava that I often can't remember what day it is, much less how to even begin recording my thoughts on this whole process online or getting back to writing the book. While time, or the lack thereof, was a factor keeping me from blogging, I have to be honest and say that I was also scared to start writing about it all. Especially that first month of having her. Why? Because it wasn't the idyllic situation that I always envisioned having a baby would be like.
I felt that if I admitted this through words it would make me a bad person (and an equally bad mother). Something like Joan Crawford's character in Mommy Dearest, minus all that wire hanger business. By week 4 or 5, I literally felt like I was going insane. Of course I love Ava to death, but those first few weeks were so foreign to me. It felt like I was tossed into a maelstrom of transition that I wasn't prepared for, what with the sleepless nights, uncomfortable healing "down there," and the stress of hearing a tiny baby emit hours of bloodcurdling cries and an inability to understand what it is they actually want after diapers are changed and tummies are fed.
The frosting on the cake for me was my detachment from the situation. I felt like I wanted to turn in on myself and disappear. Sometimes I felt like she was a stranger when I'd hold her. Other times I felt like she didn't love me because she didn't recognize me as her mother (which is stupid, really, since at that age she couldn't recognize a zucchini, much less her own mother). Often I'd resent her -- for needing so much of me that I had nothing left over for myself. Terrible to say, right? And I feel guilty for even writing it now, although I've since come to grips with most of this. I'd cry for no reason, missing my "old" life even though I was happy to say goodbye to it up until the day we brought her home. I'd be so pissed at J, sometimes even resentful of him, for giving me this new life and being able to leave every day for work while I had to suffer through it alone. I hated how my post-baby body looked and missed the old times where I could actually feel my core and use it for good posture.
Every day was an up/down confluence of emotions, going from extremely sad to (once in a while) very happy. I felt like I was stuck in someone else's life, taking care of this baby that I had no connection with. I was scared that I felt any of this, even though I'd read about it in popular baby books and heard from endless television doctors that this was "normal." Well, it might be considered normal but it didn't feel normal to me. Normal moms were put together and organized, loved their new lives as mothers and got pure satisfaction from their babies. I felt sad and resentful, terribly absent-minded and mentally scattered, like my brain was in a fog. The worst part was that I didn't want to talk to anyone about it. J was the only one who knew what I was going through. I felt guilty for feeling the way I did and that I'd somehow be a failure if I admitted any of it out loud to close friends or family, which made me feel more isolated because I didn't feel I could be honest with anyone, sometimes not even myself. This would just feed into my sadness, which would make me feel even more isolated and...well, you get the cyclical point.
So at my six-week postpartum checkup with my doctor (you know, that awkward office visit where doctors pretend everyone alludes to sex as "intercourse" and they let you know whether you can or can't have it yet), they made me take a written postpartum test. On this test I had to circle answers in multiple choice form and apparently I couldn't hide my sadness enough because my doctor told me I had borderline postpartum depression.
My first thought was: "Great, I'm officially a statistic," because though I'd read about postpartum depression I didn't think I'd actually ever get it. It was one of those scary things you hear about and hope to never experience, like foreclosures or herpes. Other people might get those things, but those type of people serve as cautionary tales. My second thought was "Jesus, if I'm borderline, I cringe to think what full-blown postpartum depression is." After all, I was always a happy-go-lucky girl, easily finding humor in even the worst situations. That girl is still in me, but now I just need to work at maintaining her. My third thought was: "How the hell do I get better?" I didn't like feeling blue all the time.
My doctor's answer was simple. "Prozac," she said, suggesting it like taking Prozac was as common as chewing gum.
"I'd really rather not," I said. After all, she had just said I was borderline, not full-blown, and I refused to believe that medication was the only way to happiness again. At least not in my circumstance.
"It would only be for a month or two. Three tops. Then you can stop taking it," she said.
I think the look on my face, a look made of two-parts confusion and one-part fear with just a dash of skepticism, said it all. "Okay, but is there anything else I could do besides take pills?" I asked. Visions of me losing my mind and moving to L.A. to be a failed actress with my anti-depressants instantly surfaced, because clearly -- to me, at least -- anything related to pills has to be lifted from the pages of a Jacqueline Susann novel. Yes, my limited knowledge of prescription drugs pretty much centers around Valley of the Dolls.
She asked if I used to work out, and through my haze I did actually find this funny since there's nothing I loathe more than working out, except maybe men who wear athletic sneakers. I told her I used to walk a lot, but this wasn't so much for working out as it was a good excuse to get out of the house and listen to my iShuffle. Nevertheless, it was still some form of physical activity that didn't include getting off and on the couch according to Bravo's TV show lineup.
"You could try walking again," she said, and then went on to tell me how endorphins play a part in us humans being happy. "...But when I see you at our next appointment, let me know how it's going and whether you want to start Prozac," she added (endorphins aside). Jesus, I thought, this lady was really pushing the meds. I thanked her and said I'd think it over between now and our next appointment, but the truth was I wanted no part in Prozac.
So I started walking. Even when Ava cried or acted fussy for hours on end and it probably would have been easier to stay at home in my PJs with her and zone out on some Real Housewives episode, I'd get dressed, pack her up in her stroller and we'd stroll the neighborhood together. She'd fall asleep while I (quietly) rocked out to Lady Gaga and miraculously I started to feel better. Just a little. At about week 6, I decided it was time for her and I to get out into the world more, past the confines of our neighborhood. I know this doesn't seem like much, especially since the old Crystal went out into the world every day, but with a baby, the world kind of feels like a new place. Taking your baby out into it for the first time is terrifying. What if she cries while I'm shopping? I'd think. How or where will I change her diaper if she needs to be changed? What if I can't get the carseat properly put in the car? What if I run of out of bottled milk while we're out and she has a fit? (I'm not one to whip out the boob in public. I just. Can't.)
Slowly we'd go out more, running an errand here and there. I got the hang of snapping her carseat in and out of its base in my car. I grew more sure of myself unpacking and packing her stroller into our trunk. If she'd start to cry in a store, I became more adept at understanding what she'd want. Pretty soon us going out became like second nature to me and the blues I had slowly began to fade.
Then one day she decided to smile for the first time and it was like sunshine peeking through my gray cloudy haze. All of a sudden something connected between us, with that smile of hers, and I couldn't help but smile back. That smile told me that she finally recognized who I was, that all this hard work was paying off. I smiled back at her and it was all over. Since then she smiles almost every time she sees me and in the last week or so she's started babbling and trying her hardest to mimic sounds I make. They're all nonsensical sounds, but it makes me so much happier to feel like we're somewhat communicating with one another. If you had told me this the first couple weeks of her being home I wouldn't have believed it -- how would a smile or babbling make me happy? But it just does. Maybe it's this instinctual thing hardwired into my mother gene. Who knows.
As much as I love the babbles, I also knew I needed to make friends with other moms in my area, which would motivate me to get out even more. So I did. Right now I'm part of two mom groups in my town and while I still routinely have out-of-body experiences when four or five of us walk down a street with our strollers (I never thought I'd be one of those women), it's nice spending time with people who are going through the same thing as me. I don't connect with all of them equally but unlike clubs for books or movies, babies seem like a true commonality you can bond over.
So in the end I am doing better (thank God) and this whole "being a mother" thing seems to get slightly easier every day. I still don't always have the time to eat breakfast or lunch, and there are days I want to bang my head a few times against my brick fireplace because I've been holding her for 4+ hours and I'm tired and hungry and my arm feels like it's going to fall off, yet I can't put her down or else she'll start wailing. But then there are days where I can see what people mean when they say it's "all worth it." Those are usually the days where she'll look up at me with those baby blues and give me a big toothless grin. Just a simple, silent grin. And on those days it feels like my heart smiles.
Ava celebrated this momentous occasion by sleeping through most of the day, only opening her eyes and squeaking or crying when she wanted to be fed (right now she doesn't ask for much). For the first time in eight weeks, I finally -- finally! -- have time to sit down and write something, which I really should have been doing from Day 1, but all other excuses aside, I've been so busy with Ava that I often can't remember what day it is, much less how to even begin recording my thoughts on this whole process online or getting back to writing the book. While time, or the lack thereof, was a factor keeping me from blogging, I have to be honest and say that I was also scared to start writing about it all. Especially that first month of having her. Why? Because it wasn't the idyllic situation that I always envisioned having a baby would be like.
I felt that if I admitted this through words it would make me a bad person (and an equally bad mother). Something like Joan Crawford's character in Mommy Dearest, minus all that wire hanger business. By week 4 or 5, I literally felt like I was going insane. Of course I love Ava to death, but those first few weeks were so foreign to me. It felt like I was tossed into a maelstrom of transition that I wasn't prepared for, what with the sleepless nights, uncomfortable healing "down there," and the stress of hearing a tiny baby emit hours of bloodcurdling cries and an inability to understand what it is they actually want after diapers are changed and tummies are fed.
The frosting on the cake for me was my detachment from the situation. I felt like I wanted to turn in on myself and disappear. Sometimes I felt like she was a stranger when I'd hold her. Other times I felt like she didn't love me because she didn't recognize me as her mother (which is stupid, really, since at that age she couldn't recognize a zucchini, much less her own mother). Often I'd resent her -- for needing so much of me that I had nothing left over for myself. Terrible to say, right? And I feel guilty for even writing it now, although I've since come to grips with most of this. I'd cry for no reason, missing my "old" life even though I was happy to say goodbye to it up until the day we brought her home. I'd be so pissed at J, sometimes even resentful of him, for giving me this new life and being able to leave every day for work while I had to suffer through it alone. I hated how my post-baby body looked and missed the old times where I could actually feel my core and use it for good posture.
Every day was an up/down confluence of emotions, going from extremely sad to (once in a while) very happy. I felt like I was stuck in someone else's life, taking care of this baby that I had no connection with. I was scared that I felt any of this, even though I'd read about it in popular baby books and heard from endless television doctors that this was "normal." Well, it might be considered normal but it didn't feel normal to me. Normal moms were put together and organized, loved their new lives as mothers and got pure satisfaction from their babies. I felt sad and resentful, terribly absent-minded and mentally scattered, like my brain was in a fog. The worst part was that I didn't want to talk to anyone about it. J was the only one who knew what I was going through. I felt guilty for feeling the way I did and that I'd somehow be a failure if I admitted any of it out loud to close friends or family, which made me feel more isolated because I didn't feel I could be honest with anyone, sometimes not even myself. This would just feed into my sadness, which would make me feel even more isolated and...well, you get the cyclical point.
So at my six-week postpartum checkup with my doctor (you know, that awkward office visit where doctors pretend everyone alludes to sex as "intercourse" and they let you know whether you can or can't have it yet), they made me take a written postpartum test. On this test I had to circle answers in multiple choice form and apparently I couldn't hide my sadness enough because my doctor told me I had borderline postpartum depression.
My first thought was: "Great, I'm officially a statistic," because though I'd read about postpartum depression I didn't think I'd actually ever get it. It was one of those scary things you hear about and hope to never experience, like foreclosures or herpes. Other people might get those things, but those type of people serve as cautionary tales. My second thought was "Jesus, if I'm borderline, I cringe to think what full-blown postpartum depression is." After all, I was always a happy-go-lucky girl, easily finding humor in even the worst situations. That girl is still in me, but now I just need to work at maintaining her. My third thought was: "How the hell do I get better?" I didn't like feeling blue all the time.
My doctor's answer was simple. "Prozac," she said, suggesting it like taking Prozac was as common as chewing gum.
"I'd really rather not," I said. After all, she had just said I was borderline, not full-blown, and I refused to believe that medication was the only way to happiness again. At least not in my circumstance.
"It would only be for a month or two. Three tops. Then you can stop taking it," she said.
I think the look on my face, a look made of two-parts confusion and one-part fear with just a dash of skepticism, said it all. "Okay, but is there anything else I could do besides take pills?" I asked. Visions of me losing my mind and moving to L.A. to be a failed actress with my anti-depressants instantly surfaced, because clearly -- to me, at least -- anything related to pills has to be lifted from the pages of a Jacqueline Susann novel. Yes, my limited knowledge of prescription drugs pretty much centers around Valley of the Dolls.
She asked if I used to work out, and through my haze I did actually find this funny since there's nothing I loathe more than working out, except maybe men who wear athletic sneakers. I told her I used to walk a lot, but this wasn't so much for working out as it was a good excuse to get out of the house and listen to my iShuffle. Nevertheless, it was still some form of physical activity that didn't include getting off and on the couch according to Bravo's TV show lineup.
"You could try walking again," she said, and then went on to tell me how endorphins play a part in us humans being happy. "...But when I see you at our next appointment, let me know how it's going and whether you want to start Prozac," she added (endorphins aside). Jesus, I thought, this lady was really pushing the meds. I thanked her and said I'd think it over between now and our next appointment, but the truth was I wanted no part in Prozac.
So I started walking. Even when Ava cried or acted fussy for hours on end and it probably would have been easier to stay at home in my PJs with her and zone out on some Real Housewives episode, I'd get dressed, pack her up in her stroller and we'd stroll the neighborhood together. She'd fall asleep while I (quietly) rocked out to Lady Gaga and miraculously I started to feel better. Just a little. At about week 6, I decided it was time for her and I to get out into the world more, past the confines of our neighborhood. I know this doesn't seem like much, especially since the old Crystal went out into the world every day, but with a baby, the world kind of feels like a new place. Taking your baby out into it for the first time is terrifying. What if she cries while I'm shopping? I'd think. How or where will I change her diaper if she needs to be changed? What if I can't get the carseat properly put in the car? What if I run of out of bottled milk while we're out and she has a fit? (I'm not one to whip out the boob in public. I just. Can't.)
Slowly we'd go out more, running an errand here and there. I got the hang of snapping her carseat in and out of its base in my car. I grew more sure of myself unpacking and packing her stroller into our trunk. If she'd start to cry in a store, I became more adept at understanding what she'd want. Pretty soon us going out became like second nature to me and the blues I had slowly began to fade.
Then one day she decided to smile for the first time and it was like sunshine peeking through my gray cloudy haze. All of a sudden something connected between us, with that smile of hers, and I couldn't help but smile back. That smile told me that she finally recognized who I was, that all this hard work was paying off. I smiled back at her and it was all over. Since then she smiles almost every time she sees me and in the last week or so she's started babbling and trying her hardest to mimic sounds I make. They're all nonsensical sounds, but it makes me so much happier to feel like we're somewhat communicating with one another. If you had told me this the first couple weeks of her being home I wouldn't have believed it -- how would a smile or babbling make me happy? But it just does. Maybe it's this instinctual thing hardwired into my mother gene. Who knows.
As much as I love the babbles, I also knew I needed to make friends with other moms in my area, which would motivate me to get out even more. So I did. Right now I'm part of two mom groups in my town and while I still routinely have out-of-body experiences when four or five of us walk down a street with our strollers (I never thought I'd be one of those women), it's nice spending time with people who are going through the same thing as me. I don't connect with all of them equally but unlike clubs for books or movies, babies seem like a true commonality you can bond over.
So in the end I am doing better (thank God) and this whole "being a mother" thing seems to get slightly easier every day. I still don't always have the time to eat breakfast or lunch, and there are days I want to bang my head a few times against my brick fireplace because I've been holding her for 4+ hours and I'm tired and hungry and my arm feels like it's going to fall off, yet I can't put her down or else she'll start wailing. But then there are days where I can see what people mean when they say it's "all worth it." Those are usually the days where she'll look up at me with those baby blues and give me a big toothless grin. Just a simple, silent grin. And on those days it feels like my heart smiles.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Peanut has arrived
My little bundle is finally here! My doctor induced me a week after my due date (on a Wednesday night). By Thursday morning my body was responding so well with contractions that I got to forgo the second round of induction drugs and by the early afternoon I was already pushing. Despite my worst fears, labor and delivery was actually a breeze. So much so that I won't be scared at all when we're ready to have Baby #2. The epidural was a Godsend and I was in such a good place during pushing that I laughed the whole time and made jokes with the doctor and nurse. J was amazed and relieved, since he kind of didn't know what to expect either, but according to him I didn't even break a sweat. And, after bébé made her grand entrance into the world, the doctor said I'd escaped my first pregnancy without one stretch mark. Victory was mine! Guess it paid to indulge in all those bottles of cocoa butter.
Anyway, my biggest victory was holding her for the first time in my arms. Yes, she was covered in slime and crying, but when you've got that little body laying across your chest for the first time all that blood and slime just seem to be insignificant. I cried; J cried. After we got her home and family and friend visitors started to dwindle after the first few days, we finally had our first moments of being alone with her. Everything about her is amazing. The way she opens her dark blue eyes and tries so hard to focus on things like the front door or a tree or some framed art we have up. The way she stubbornly keeps trying to hold her head up even though it's still much too heavy for her tiny neck. Even the way she throws up on my shoulder when I burp her -- always masterfully missing the burp rag and aiming it right on my clothing. It's all amazing. I can't imagine how fascinating it's going to be watching her consciousness form over the next few years and rediscovering the world through her untainted eyes.
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| Bébé at one week old. |
Friday, August 17, 2012
Baby update
So yesterday was my official due date. . .and it came and went with no baby in sight. :(
I had an appointment with my doctor yesterday morning and she stripped my membranes, which I'll spare you the details of since it was equal parts uncomfortable and strange. Stripping membranes (sidenote: how cool of a band name is that?) is supposed to be a last-ditch effort to kick-start labor, but so far I've felt nothing since I've had it done. Which depresses me on two levels:
1.) I was really, really looking forward to meeting our baby girl already! I know it's pretty unrealistic to expect she'd come on her due date (especially since only 5% of babies make their grand entrance on the actual day), but still, I hoped she'd be in that 5%. Or even better, I had hoped we would have her early, like around J's 30th birthday on August 10th. That would have been the ULTIMATE birthday present. Unfortunately, I had no baby to give him. . . just a barbecue I picked up at Home Depot. While it's nice he finally has a grill, it's really no substitute for a baby.
2.) If labor doesn't start on its own, I'll have to be induced next week. It's a fairly routine procedure, but for some reason the prospect of being induced still scares the living crap out of me. Not like regular labor and delivery doesn't (you want me to push what out of where?!), but this is like icing on the cake. If, in the off-chance, induction doesn't work then they may need to do a C-section since I'll be in the hospital already and all hooked up to everything.
So for now I'm just sitting here, hoping (praying?) that labor starts on its own. Of course, now I've probably jinxed it and I'll have to wait till Wednesday for the induction, but the longer this whole process drags out, the more scared I get. I really want to avoid a c-section unless absolutely medically necessary. I have no idea how my body will react to the Pitocin drip they'll hook me up on to get my contractions started. I have no idea how the Pitocin may affect the baby. Thinking about these things and more just gets me doubly anxious, which I know isn't good for baby. I'm trying to keep myself preoccupied and calm -- I read, I write, I shop -- but now that I'm past the 11th hour it's so hard to focus on anything since my mind keeps wandering back to all this.
I had an appointment with my doctor yesterday morning and she stripped my membranes, which I'll spare you the details of since it was equal parts uncomfortable and strange. Stripping membranes (sidenote: how cool of a band name is that?) is supposed to be a last-ditch effort to kick-start labor, but so far I've felt nothing since I've had it done. Which depresses me on two levels:
1.) I was really, really looking forward to meeting our baby girl already! I know it's pretty unrealistic to expect she'd come on her due date (especially since only 5% of babies make their grand entrance on the actual day), but still, I hoped she'd be in that 5%. Or even better, I had hoped we would have her early, like around J's 30th birthday on August 10th. That would have been the ULTIMATE birthday present. Unfortunately, I had no baby to give him. . . just a barbecue I picked up at Home Depot. While it's nice he finally has a grill, it's really no substitute for a baby.
2.) If labor doesn't start on its own, I'll have to be induced next week. It's a fairly routine procedure, but for some reason the prospect of being induced still scares the living crap out of me. Not like regular labor and delivery doesn't (you want me to push what out of where?!), but this is like icing on the cake. If, in the off-chance, induction doesn't work then they may need to do a C-section since I'll be in the hospital already and all hooked up to everything.
So for now I'm just sitting here, hoping (praying?) that labor starts on its own. Of course, now I've probably jinxed it and I'll have to wait till Wednesday for the induction, but the longer this whole process drags out, the more scared I get. I really want to avoid a c-section unless absolutely medically necessary. I have no idea how my body will react to the Pitocin drip they'll hook me up on to get my contractions started. I have no idea how the Pitocin may affect the baby. Thinking about these things and more just gets me doubly anxious, which I know isn't good for baby. I'm trying to keep myself preoccupied and calm -- I read, I write, I shop -- but now that I'm past the 11th hour it's so hard to focus on anything since my mind keeps wandering back to all this.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Always late but worth the wait
Wow. Has it really been three months since I last blogged? This is both highly unacceptable and highly unbelievable. Where has the time gone? The last three months have gone by so fast, and so much has happened since my last post. . .
First off, I turned 30 in April (insert giddy exclamation marks here). Overall the experience was a little underwhelming. I guess I assumed that turning 30 meant undergoing some giant epiphany about life and the future and all those "adult" things you see in movies. But let's be honest, I pretty much have life figured out so there were no new lessons learned. All I found out is that Swiss fondue really is my favorite dinner food (nom nom) and I can't get enough of fresh fruit tarts (another double nom). My parents surprised me with a nice Canon Rebel camera as a birthday present since I've been wanting one to take more professional-quality pics once the bébé arrives, and J bought me a little gold feather "freebird" necklace from Nordstroms that I've wanted. I was a little worried (read: ready to punch him in the face) that J wouldn't be spending my birthday with me since he had a trial set that week and had been staying up late every night leading up to April preparing his case, but luckily the case settled the week before my 30th so all was copacetic in our household. Thirtieth birthdays, after all, only come once in a lifetime.
Know what else comes once in a lifetime? (Well, once if you're lucky?) Five-year wedding anniversaries. . . which is what J and I will be celebrating on July 20th!! I can't believe it's already been five years since we tied the knot, but I guess you know you're in love when five years feels like five days. We don't have anything planned at the moment (although let's face it, a trip to Italy would be divine -- and also completely unrealistic), but we'll probably spend it picnicking in Napa for the day, maybe eat at a nice restaurant that night. I really have no clue and for the first time that I can remember, it doesn't bother me. Who am I? It's funny: The older I get, all I care about is just spending quality time with him. We don't need to do anything extravagant for me to be happy. Some of my favorite times with J are holding hands in the car on our way somewhere, or lying on a blanket together in a park. Sometimes it all feels too perfect, like I'll wake up one day without him and find out it never happened. But then I wonder why can't some love stories be nearly perfect? For right now it is and it has been and I hope it stays that way till we're into our 90s. For now just looking over at him reading before we fall asleep is all it takes to make me smile:
Aside from home remodeling, the past few months I've been busy writing and am happy to report that I've just hit about 100 pages into my newest book idea. I don't know whether it's all these extra hormones flying off me or maybe bébé is my new muse, but I feel a rush of creativity and I suddenly have the daily motivation to do something about it. Strange, right? When I'm not writing I want to be drawing or painting or doing something creative. It's a wonderful feeling, and I'm so appreciative that I have the freedom to do as much or as little as I want of all of this on an everyday basis. No excuses.
In other news, bébé is set to arrive in five and a half weeks! My hunt for Peter Rabbit-themed decor has petered out like a deflated fart over the last few months, so I decided to go with a French Garden theme for the nursery and it's coming along well. We put her crib together a couple weeks ago and bought her a little bassinet to sleep in by our bed after she's born. J also hung a crystal chandelier for me in the center of the nursery, giving the room a very French feel, and he was hard at work yesterday stripping a cute little French cabinet I found at a consignment store recently. The cabinet is an ugly walnut color now (think Grandma furniture on steroids), but we plan to antique it and give it a very Restoration Hardware feel. It'll go perfectly next to her crib. :D Once I'm done with the nursery I'll post pics.
And finally, (in case you're wondering what I look now) here's my burgeoning bump:
So far this pregnancy has been beyond smooth in the sailing department. I've had no sickness, I'm not that exhausted, I have yet to waddle and so far I've gained just under 20 pounds. Pregnancy, it seems, really agrees with me.
First off, I turned 30 in April (insert giddy exclamation marks here). Overall the experience was a little underwhelming. I guess I assumed that turning 30 meant undergoing some giant epiphany about life and the future and all those "adult" things you see in movies. But let's be honest, I pretty much have life figured out so there were no new lessons learned. All I found out is that Swiss fondue really is my favorite dinner food (nom nom) and I can't get enough of fresh fruit tarts (another double nom). My parents surprised me with a nice Canon Rebel camera as a birthday present since I've been wanting one to take more professional-quality pics once the bébé arrives, and J bought me a little gold feather "freebird" necklace from Nordstroms that I've wanted. I was a little worried (read: ready to punch him in the face) that J wouldn't be spending my birthday with me since he had a trial set that week and had been staying up late every night leading up to April preparing his case, but luckily the case settled the week before my 30th so all was copacetic in our household. Thirtieth birthdays, after all, only come once in a lifetime.
Know what else comes once in a lifetime? (Well, once if you're lucky?) Five-year wedding anniversaries. . . which is what J and I will be celebrating on July 20th!! I can't believe it's already been five years since we tied the knot, but I guess you know you're in love when five years feels like five days. We don't have anything planned at the moment (although let's face it, a trip to Italy would be divine -- and also completely unrealistic), but we'll probably spend it picnicking in Napa for the day, maybe eat at a nice restaurant that night. I really have no clue and for the first time that I can remember, it doesn't bother me. Who am I? It's funny: The older I get, all I care about is just spending quality time with him. We don't need to do anything extravagant for me to be happy. Some of my favorite times with J are holding hands in the car on our way somewhere, or lying on a blanket together in a park. Sometimes it all feels too perfect, like I'll wake up one day without him and find out it never happened. But then I wonder why can't some love stories be nearly perfect? For right now it is and it has been and I hope it stays that way till we're into our 90s. For now just looking over at him reading before we fall asleep is all it takes to make me smile:
Aside from home remodeling, the past few months I've been busy writing and am happy to report that I've just hit about 100 pages into my newest book idea. I don't know whether it's all these extra hormones flying off me or maybe bébé is my new muse, but I feel a rush of creativity and I suddenly have the daily motivation to do something about it. Strange, right? When I'm not writing I want to be drawing or painting or doing something creative. It's a wonderful feeling, and I'm so appreciative that I have the freedom to do as much or as little as I want of all of this on an everyday basis. No excuses.
In other news, bébé is set to arrive in five and a half weeks! My hunt for Peter Rabbit-themed decor has petered out like a deflated fart over the last few months, so I decided to go with a French Garden theme for the nursery and it's coming along well. We put her crib together a couple weeks ago and bought her a little bassinet to sleep in by our bed after she's born. J also hung a crystal chandelier for me in the center of the nursery, giving the room a very French feel, and he was hard at work yesterday stripping a cute little French cabinet I found at a consignment store recently. The cabinet is an ugly walnut color now (think Grandma furniture on steroids), but we plan to antique it and give it a very Restoration Hardware feel. It'll go perfectly next to her crib. :D Once I'm done with the nursery I'll post pics.
And finally, (in case you're wondering what I look now) here's my burgeoning bump:
So far this pregnancy has been beyond smooth in the sailing department. I've had no sickness, I'm not that exhausted, I have yet to waddle and so far I've gained just under 20 pounds. Pregnancy, it seems, really agrees with me.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Please stop saying "labia"
Last month I had my first "official" doctor's visit for Peanut. This visit also happened to coincide with the first time I've ever met my doctor. Usually I meet with her head assistant for my annual check-ups, as the doctor is obvi too busy to perform routine pelvic exams.
I invited J to come along to this first visit so that we could both meet the woman who was going to be delivering our baby and to get a feel for whether we felt comfortable with her. When she walked in to our room, I grew a little worried. Not because I got a bad vibe from her or that she was unprofessional or that I felt slightly embarrassed sitting on a table in a partially open Pepto Bismol pink hospital gown. No, it was just that she seemed so...old. Like on-the-cusp-of-retirement old. Which is fine, I mean the woman went to Yale and has delivered 6,000 babies during her career, so she knows what she's doing. But when she hobbled around looking for a wastebasket for her tissue and almost tripped over her little wheeled doctor's chair, or when she had five minutes worth of awkward problems with my speculum (don't worry, I won't go into all the gory details), I wondered if maybe her place in the world in 2012 wasn't sitting in this office prodding me with a speculum, but instead poolside in some Palm Springs resort waiting for her tee time.
The worst part (or the most humorous part, if you're sick and twisted like me), is that she had no warmth or empathy about her. In fact, I don't know if she was even capable of smiling. She very much reminded me of one of those cold, technical German doctors from a black-and-white film. Because of this, from here on out she shall be known as Fraulein Margaret. She'd clearly been through the whole having-a-baby drill a billion times, was good at it, and purely cared about the medical aspect of the whole procedure. Her inspecting my nether-regions was like a mechanic examining an old Volkswagen engine. Been there, done that.
So the last half of my appointment was getting my first ultrasound. For that Fraulein Margaret asked J to stand over by my right shoulder as she took a front-seat to my hoo-hoo and used her probe to get a good look at Peanut. But no, she didn't just do that quietly. She had to announce every. single. thing. she was doing down there.
"I'm examining your labia right now," she declared.
I don't know what it is, but just the word "labia" makes me laugh hysterically. It's such an ugly little word for a weird part of the human body. And if you think about it, the term rarely ever gets used in passing, making it even funnier when it is said aloud.
I tried not to look at J since I knew we'd both burst out laughing if we locked eyes after her little announcement. Out of my periphery, I saw him standing near my shoulder, his hands in his suit pant pockets, looking away at the ceiling as though there was something phenomenally interesting up near the fluorescent lighting. Meanwhile, the silence in the room was deafening. But then, it happened again....
"I am still working around your labia," she said.
This time I couldn't handle it. I tried scrunching my mouth closed like an angry muppet, successfully muting any giggle trying to escape, but then I made the mistake of looking up and locking eyes with J. The look on his face was priceless, one of helpless amusement desperately hidden under a semi-straight face. I tried, I really did, to not laugh, because really, we're almost 30 years old and it's SO immature to laugh at a stupid little clinical term like labia, but I couldn't help myself. I ended up trying to muffle my laugh, which came out sounding like a giant repressed sneeze cutting the silence in the room. Luckily. Fraulein Margaret, seated on her wheely chair below my line of vision, didn't seem to notice the sound or that at this point J was basically almost entirely turned around with his back to her, hands still in pockets. She just kept on keeping on, examining my Volkswagen engine.
The rest of the exam went splendidly, and we got to see Peanut for the very first time on the ultrasound monitor. His/her little heart was beating like a tiny hummingbird's, and we could just barely make out where his/her little face was starting to form. I admit, I did get teary-eyed when I saw it on the screen because all of a sudden, it was a reality that I was pregnant. I'm not currently showing at all, so sometimes it's hard to imagine that there's something growing inside of me and that my life is going to change from here on out. But that day the blurred image on that medical screen was all the proof we needed that we were actually going to be parents. It was one of the best reality checks of my life.
I invited J to come along to this first visit so that we could both meet the woman who was going to be delivering our baby and to get a feel for whether we felt comfortable with her. When she walked in to our room, I grew a little worried. Not because I got a bad vibe from her or that she was unprofessional or that I felt slightly embarrassed sitting on a table in a partially open Pepto Bismol pink hospital gown. No, it was just that she seemed so...old. Like on-the-cusp-of-retirement old. Which is fine, I mean the woman went to Yale and has delivered 6,000 babies during her career, so she knows what she's doing. But when she hobbled around looking for a wastebasket for her tissue and almost tripped over her little wheeled doctor's chair, or when she had five minutes worth of awkward problems with my speculum (don't worry, I won't go into all the gory details), I wondered if maybe her place in the world in 2012 wasn't sitting in this office prodding me with a speculum, but instead poolside in some Palm Springs resort waiting for her tee time.
The worst part (or the most humorous part, if you're sick and twisted like me), is that she had no warmth or empathy about her. In fact, I don't know if she was even capable of smiling. She very much reminded me of one of those cold, technical German doctors from a black-and-white film. Because of this, from here on out she shall be known as Fraulein Margaret. She'd clearly been through the whole having-a-baby drill a billion times, was good at it, and purely cared about the medical aspect of the whole procedure. Her inspecting my nether-regions was like a mechanic examining an old Volkswagen engine. Been there, done that.
So the last half of my appointment was getting my first ultrasound. For that Fraulein Margaret asked J to stand over by my right shoulder as she took a front-seat to my hoo-hoo and used her probe to get a good look at Peanut. But no, she didn't just do that quietly. She had to announce every. single. thing. she was doing down there.
"I'm examining your labia right now," she declared.
I don't know what it is, but just the word "labia" makes me laugh hysterically. It's such an ugly little word for a weird part of the human body. And if you think about it, the term rarely ever gets used in passing, making it even funnier when it is said aloud.
I tried not to look at J since I knew we'd both burst out laughing if we locked eyes after her little announcement. Out of my periphery, I saw him standing near my shoulder, his hands in his suit pant pockets, looking away at the ceiling as though there was something phenomenally interesting up near the fluorescent lighting. Meanwhile, the silence in the room was deafening. But then, it happened again....
"I am still working around your labia," she said.
This time I couldn't handle it. I tried scrunching my mouth closed like an angry muppet, successfully muting any giggle trying to escape, but then I made the mistake of looking up and locking eyes with J. The look on his face was priceless, one of helpless amusement desperately hidden under a semi-straight face. I tried, I really did, to not laugh, because really, we're almost 30 years old and it's SO immature to laugh at a stupid little clinical term like labia, but I couldn't help myself. I ended up trying to muffle my laugh, which came out sounding like a giant repressed sneeze cutting the silence in the room. Luckily. Fraulein Margaret, seated on her wheely chair below my line of vision, didn't seem to notice the sound or that at this point J was basically almost entirely turned around with his back to her, hands still in pockets. She just kept on keeping on, examining my Volkswagen engine.
The rest of the exam went splendidly, and we got to see Peanut for the very first time on the ultrasound monitor. His/her little heart was beating like a tiny hummingbird's, and we could just barely make out where his/her little face was starting to form. I admit, I did get teary-eyed when I saw it on the screen because all of a sudden, it was a reality that I was pregnant. I'm not currently showing at all, so sometimes it's hard to imagine that there's something growing inside of me and that my life is going to change from here on out. But that day the blurred image on that medical screen was all the proof we needed that we were actually going to be parents. It was one of the best reality checks of my life.
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