lawmummy

My kids have been sick quite a bit this winter/spring. It seems like every illness that could come their way did, no surprise since my oldest is enrolled in daycare. Of course, eventually it gets back to us.

What is different is how quickly each of them snaps back to their old selves and how the illnesses linger on for my husband and I.

Today is a good example of why that probably happens.

I got a phone call today from Katie’s school that said she was sick, could I please come and pick her up. Apparently, she had a fever and was complaining that her ears hurt. I immediately rushed to pick her up and took her home where her father eventually got her to take a nap (hear the angels singing?).

Compare that to me. I got sick Friday night, didn’t know what it was, complained to my hubby but largely ignored it - stayed up too late. Saturday, we had a full day capped off with dinner at the inlaws. I came home and promptly threw up. Sunday, I got up and went to the plant nursery to buy mulch. I came home and mulched, weeded and watered away to the wee hours, all while doing laundry, dishes, etc. Monday, I was beat, but still got up to plan a trip to the park with the girls. By the time we got home late on Monday, I was exhausted and yes, nauseous again.

Today, I had a court appearance. I was rushed all day. I didn’t have time to eat, hadn’t slept enough and went a million miles an hour. Now, as I sit down to catch my breath, I am not surprised that I don’t feel better. While Katie is sleeping, I am still contemplating work that needs to be done.

We American parents are bizarre in this respect. We work too hard at the office and at the home, we don’t take care of ourselves and we don’t slow down when we need to most. No wonder we often collectively resemble the walking dead.

My daughter on the other hand will likely be bouncing off the walls tomorrow, feeling much better following some good food (lots of fruit) and a nice long rest.

You’d think I’d learn from this.

I am trying. Really. I came home after 4pm from my court date and opted not to head to the 5pm meeting that I just found out about. I decided that I needed a few moments to recoup and I really should eat some dinner. Something nutritious that resembles its former self, optimally.

So, next time I am feeling a little peaked, maybe I should learn from the example my daughter has set for me: eat some fruit and go to bed. Maybe, just maybe, it’s that simple.

It’s Memorial Day.

I think it’s important, regardless of your political beliefs, to take a moment and reflect about those who have lost their lives while serving in the armed forces. Every person who has died has been somebody’s brother, sister, father, mother or child.

I can’t even begin to imagine what that feels like for those families.

So, a big thank you to everyone who has served or is serving in the armed forces - that includes my own two brothers. We appreciate you.

And to the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and children of those folks, thank you, too! We understand your sacrifices, too.

I love flowers. I always have. I love that they mean spring is on the way. I love that the smell of flowers can lift an entire room. I love the color that they can bring to an otherwise dreary day.

For a number of years, I have been so busy that I have neglected my garden in the yard, only planting the occasional daffodil. All of my dahlias refused to make an appearance, I gave up on my peonies and my pansies died a slow, terrible death because I forgot to water them. In short, it has been a pathetic effort.

I can’t remember the moment when I decided I wanted to change that. Maybe I saw someone else’s garden? Maybe it was one too many episodes of “Landscaper’s Challenge”? Whatever it was, I finally decided to pick up a shovel and try again. I started small. Last summer, I put in a butterfly bush and a hibiscus plants among the tomatoes and peppers. The result was stunning. Loads of fabulous purple color. So, come fall, I planted some mixed tulips - early and late bloomers in all colors. I even cut back the old hibiscus.

This spring, I got started early. I was so inspired by the tulips which were amazing - yellows and pinks and bursts of orange. Lovely. I added some asters, azaleas and bee balm in an effort to attract some butterflies and planted a nice shade garden towards the back of the yard.

It’s been great fun. I love playing with the colors. I had forgotten how much fun it was to get dirty - have my fingers in the soil and just get muddy without caring what anybody thought.

My daughter has enjoyed it, too. She has been a great “help” planting new flowers (yes, sometimes she even takes them out of the pots - and leaves them on the ground for me - how very helpful!) and digging. She really likes to dig. She also likes to water the plants with the hose, which has actually been fun for me. She tries so hard to get every plant exactly - leaf by leaf - with the hose.

She loves the flowers, too. She picks them (we’re working on how to distinguish those that she’s allowed to pick versus which ones we keep) and gives them to me, to her daddy, to complete strangers.

“Mommy, a flower!” she’ll scream and run up to it to give it a hug. Her favorite seems to be buttercups - they’re “Katie’s flowers”.

So lately, I’ve tried to stop and smell the roses - and other flowers - a little more. We’ve been to a lot of arboretums (arboreta? Sorry, I skipped Latin!), state parks and gardens to get ideas and enjoy their efforts. A few weeks ago, we tried Morris Arboretum, very pretty.

Today we went to Winterthur outside of Wilmington, Delaware. It is Henry duPont’s estate. It is sooo beautiful. The peonies were in full bloom, the azaleas were still out and about and the trees were stunning. Katie was in her element. She ran around until she could run no more. She climbed trees, played in playhouses (in the “Enchanted Woods”), smelled flowers, hid under giant ferns… It was great.

I didn’t climb any trees, but I did play in the playhouse, smell the flowers and chase Katie under the giant ferns… Kids know what adults have forgotten: that sometimes, you really do need to stop and smell the roses. It changes everything.

I was reading through some other blogs recently and saw a number of them, all written by women, decrying the rise of the “mommy blog.” And I have to say, I’m not quite sure what the fuss is all about.

People blog about everything - travel, their cats, the new Star Wars movie… You write about what you know, what you care about. Why should moms be any different?

Women tend to beat up on each other more than men do. We are constantly apologetic for who we are and what we do - and I think moms are the worst. You’re evil if you talk about your children too much. You’re a bad mom if you don’t talk about your children enough. You’re self-centered and selfish if you work and have children. You’re lazy if you stay at home. And so it goes.

I guess I don’t understand. When did our choices about motherhood come to define who we are?

I am a mom. It’s who I am. But it isn’t all that I am.

For 30 years before I became a mom, I was Kelly. I was the daughter of my parents, I was the sister to my brothers. I talked too much. I was the girl who would do what folks didn’t expect. I was smart. I liked school. I was ambitious. I liked to travel. When I got older, I enjoyed the occasional martini. I liked to read the newspaper. I liked going to concerts.

And then I had a baby.

You know what? I’m still my parents’ daughter. I still have two brothers. I still talk too much. I still do what folks don’t expect. I’m still smart. I still like school (I teach now). I am still ambitious. I still like to travel. I still like my occasional martini. I still like to read the newspaper (mostly because the evening news stinks). I still like going to concerts.

I won’t say I haven’t changed. I have. Having a baby changes you more than you ever think it could.

But I am not “all about” being a mommy. But even if I were, would that be such a bad thing?

When did “mommy” become a bad word?

It’s Memorial Day weekend. I left work a little early today to swing by our local garden shop to get some plants for the yard. We have a hideous patch of weeds in the front. I’m trying to “de-lawn” it and plant some lovely flowers for color instead. So, Katie and I head down and pick up some plants.

Hubby had other obligations in the afternoon so I took the girls outside to work on the garden. From the start, Amy ate dirt and Katie pulled all of the plants out of the pots. It was quite an afternoon.

Katie decided that she would go inside and get something to drink after pouring all of my water out onto the lawn.

“Helping Mommy!”

Indeed.

Anyhow, she wandered through the front door into the living room. A few moments go by and she doesn’t come out. Hmmm.

I decide to go check. I walk to the front door, open the screen and surprise! Katie has locked me outside. Fortunately, the back door is open. I leave Amy with a neighbor and run around to the backyard and through the back door. I see Katie with her loot. She had managed to lock me out, crawl up to the basket on top of the table and remove the chocolates from the basket. They were in a package, which she opened neatly and took out two. Not cheap chocolates, mind you. Ferrero Rocher chocolates, courtesy of a client.

She looked guilty. Any fleeting thoughts that I might have entertained about the locked door being an accident were put aside as she took off running when she saw me, chocolates in hand.

Little devil. I’ve got to watch this one. She’s clever, that Katie. What happens when she becomes smarter than me?

Tonight marked the fifth anniversary of our law firm.  Yes, I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished (check out www.erblaw.com if you want to know the gory details).  To celebrate, we had a cocktail reception at the Union League of Philadelphia - a martini bar with hors d’oeuvres, the whole bit. It was really lovely.

Hubby stayed behind to chat with clients.  I had to race back to the house to pick up the girlies.

On the way home, in the car with four other girl friends, a car full of boys slowed beside us.  They were trying to chat us up.  In another life, maybe.  But I needed to get home.

My friends dropped me off.  They were on their way to a club for drinks.  For about half a second, I really wanted to go with them.

I walked into our friends’ house to pick up the girls.  Amy was sleeping peacefully.  Katie got up immediately and gave me a big hug.  She wouldn’t let go.

And suddenly, I realized that my friends might being have a good night but me?  I had a good life.

Yech. Bugs.

Yesterday started out like any other day. I dropped Kate off at daycare. Her teacher met at the door with a note. She said she wanted to let me know that there had been an outbreak of lice (YIKES!) at the center. They thought that they had it under control but she wanted to tell me about it.

I had one of those feelings.

“How many?” I asked.

“Three.”

“How many in your class?”

“Two of the three.”

Super.

I never had lice as a child, nor do I remember anyone I know having lice. In rural North Carolina, they would line us up in the hallway ever so often and go through our hair with special lice combs, checking… just in case. Fortunately, I never got it, nor did my brothers. That was quite a relief because it always seemed so… dirty. Yeah, I know that anyone can get it, blah, blah, blah. But my perception was that lice was just a shameful thing to contract and my associations with it were not pleasant.

Skip ahead to me standing at the door holding Kate’s hand.

I had visions of her coming home all scratchy. I didn’t even know where to buy lice shampoo. What if she gave it to Amy? Can dogs get lice? It was all too much. I thought about taking her hand and walking out of the center but what would that have accomplished? It would have made me one of those super crazy overprotective moms that people whisper about.

So, deep breath.

“Okay, well, thanks for letting me know.”

And I let her go inside. I didn’t feel good about it. I walked outside, my mind spinning. I was not going to obsess about this.

Later that day, when I picked her up, I watched her pretty closely. No scratching, no itching. Maybe she won’t get it after all.

It’s just so weird trying to protect your kids. I know you can’t protect them from everything. But I feel like I ought to be able to.

The battle lines were drawn tonight over a Swedish meatball.

It started out innocently enough: I asked Katie what she wanted for dinner, she wanted “loo-loos”. In English, that’s noodles.

I decided to make Swedish meatballs and noodles instead of the regular spaghetti and meatballs, for a change. Truth be told, I don’t remember ever having a Swedish meatball myself, but I know they serve them at Ikea (how our generation even knows Sweden exists…). So that was the plan.

Katie appeared fairly excited about the noodles and meatballs but decided, for some reason, that she was only going to eat butter. She kept licking the butter off of her bread and asking for more. She could stand to gain a few pounds and has no troubles with cholesterol (I had her tested, against her father’s better judgment - “What toddler needs their cholesterol checked?” - because my pediatrician recommended it based on family history) so I pretty much let her eat as much of things like butter and yogurt as she wants. At some point, though, it was getting silly, so we tried to persuade her to eat some broccoli (she did) and some meatballs. She ate one tiny one. We made a deal that she needed to eat one more in order to go to the park after dinner.

The meatball went in her mouth. And then she got off of her chair and sat under the table - not acceptable dinner behavior. We told her to get back in her chair.

The meatball came out of her mouth. We told her to finish the meatball or she couldn’t go to the park.

The meatball went back into her mouth. She chewed a little and started playing with the meatball mush.

At this point, her dad gave her a warning.

She got up from the table, continuing to play, open-mouthed with meatball mush.

Her dad told her that he wanted her to sit in the chair and finish eating her dinner.

I was having shades of the 70s as my mother’s own voice flashed through my head. “Sit down and finish your dinner!” I could hear the shrieking.

Suddenly, it wasn’t about the meatball. It became a battle of wills. Chris put Katie back into the chair. “Eat the meatball!” his voice boomed. Katie stared at him defiantly, opening her mouth even wider. “I am going to count to five and then you’re going to bed. No park!”

Katie stared at her dad. You could see the little wheels turning. She was trying to figure out what the chances were that he’d actually send her to bed…

“1….2….3….4….”

Mouth continues open.

“5″

Katie spit the chewed up meatball onto the chair.

With that, Chris picked her up and took her to bed. Lots of screaming ensued.

Chris came downstairs a few moments later, looking agitated.

Funny thing is, we ALL knew it wasn’t about the meatball. For Katie, it was about establishing her independence and pushing her boundaries; she had won the battle but lost the war (for today). For her dad, it was about maintaining control and order on the surface and following through on discipline. I could tell that it tore him up that she didn’t finish the meatball. He’s all mushy, really, when it comes to his girls.

In the end, Chris put Katie to bed. She was appropriately sorry that she didn’t eat the meatball and Chris got some quality calm Katie time in order to read her a story. All was well in the house. Until dinner tomorrow…

When I was little, my mom had a huge Ford Grenada - it looked like a boat. I remember sitting in the back seat - one of those bench seats made out of vinyl - and sulking about not being able to ride in the front seat (ah, the traumas of a middle child). Back then, that was my biggest car concern - where I was going to sit. I used to love the car.

Now, I hate the car. I hate driving. I hate putting my kids in jeopardy every time I get in the car.

Drivers nowadays are insane. No one uses turn signals. No one stops at stop signs. Traffic signals are meaningless. Speed limits are routinely ignored. And the anger…?

In the past few weeks, I have become acutely aware that (1) people are bad drivers and (2) they will not hesitate to kill you.

Two weeks ago, in the Dunkin Donuts drive through (please, no hate mail, it’s on the way back from daycare), I tried to get coffee. Some crazy woman was “waiting” in the parking lot rather than getting in line at the drive through window. I assumed she was waiting for a store to open… Until she nearly rammed into me, screaming obscenities about how she was “in line” to get coffee. My one year old was in the back seat of my car. I got out of line; I didn’t need coffee enough to risk getting my car scraped for it.

That same week, a Philadelphia school bus driver (bus #742) got out of her vehicle (you read that right, she got out of the actual bus!) to scream at me after I yelled at her for cutting me off. Yes, I was wrong. I should not have screamed. I did not curse. But she was the one to get out of her vehicle to scream at me. My two girls were in the back seat of my car. The driver was out of control. When she was finished yelling, she got back into her bus, and made an illegal right turn on red without a signal.

Cut to yesterday. Hubby and I were in the car. Driver veered over into our lane from his lane. I honked my horn. Driver looked astonished. We kept going, no big deal - until the driver came up alongside up screaming obscenities out of the window. We kept going. He got behind us, then veered around to the right again, still screaming obscenities. He then started making “gun” motions with his fingers and pointing at us. Hubby called the police, they told us to go to the nearest station. We started out, driver is still following us. When we get to the turn, he turns in the opposite direction.

I’d like to think that these are completely isolated incidents but they’re not.

The amazing part is that we don’t even drive all that much. Together, hubby and I drive less than 15,000 miles/year. I walk and take the bus as often as possible. And yet, we are still confronted with crazy drivers.

And it’s not just us. And it’s not just the City. Or just up north. My father had a gun pulled on him in the car in North Carolina. My brothers have had all sorts of run ins with disturbing road rage drivers in South Carolina, Virginia and Florida. We’ve become a nation of unpleasant drivers.

The way I see it, it can only get worse. As we rely more and more on cars, we are stuck in a pattern of aggressive drivers frustrating those of us who weren’t aggressive to begin with. And what’s the message that this sends to our kids? My kids rarely hear me raise my voice (I don’t in front of them anyway) but they do hear it in the car. My kids also hear other people yelling in their cars. It’s a vicious cycle.

And it’s driving me crazy.

As we get older, we seem to need more personal space, and disproportionately so to how much “bigger” we get. I’ve noticed this phenomenon in about a million different ways of late, though it was especially obvious yesterday at our neighborhood street fair. My daughter decided that she wanted to get in one of those moon bounces/death traps (yes, I am a little nervous about those things). So, we let her get in with one of our neighbors. She LOVED it. Shrieked and laughed her whole way through it.

The thing was, kids were bouncing all over the place, on top of each other, sideways, stepping on kids that they have never even met before… It was utter chaos. And nobody complained.

The most comparable activity I can think of for grown ups is dancing in a nightclub. There, nobody cares so much about personal space and you find yourself dancing with people you’ve never met before. A Moonbounce for adults.

But out in the real world, for the most part, we’re oddly concerned with our personal space. I, for one, have yelled at people in elevators for backing into me, I get annoyed when people walk too close to me, I don’t understand why you have to be practically in my face to have a conversation… And I wonder when that started to happen. Was it a slow process whereby I just started moving away? Or did I just get up one morning and decide I needed more space?

I’ve noticed that this seems to be a distinctly American trait, too. Italians, Spanish, Germans - almost all of the Europeans - still lock arms with chums when they walk. They sit next to each other in cafes, bars and restaurants rather than across from each other. They look like they enjoy each other’s company.

Which brings me back to the Moonbounce. It was exciting to watch Katie have so much fun with other kids. She’s at that age where she’s beginning to play with children rather than simply alongside them. I hope she holds onto that feeling of a greater community for a really long time. Somehow, as adults, we seem to have lost it.