lawmummy

Okay, three weeks into my maternity leave and already I am turning into THAT kind of mom…

Yeah, yesterday I took the girls to the mall.  In my defense, we only hit three stores and I was looking for very specific things.  But the mall?  Katie has only been to the mall once before.  I think she was a little perplexed.  We grabbed lunch at the food court and she kept asking why we couldn’t eat outside…  I didn’t have a very good answer.  The mall culture is somewhat inexplicable.

While in the Gymboree, the salespeople couldn’t have been nicer.  Katie claimed to need to go potty and the sales assistant took her for me (there was no way I was getting a double stroller back there, too).  It was actually quite nice.  They even offered me a job ("we’re hiring!") - that is, until I mumbled that I was a lawyer.  There’s something ultimately depressing about being embarrassed to say what you do for a living.  People hate lawyers.

But back to being THAT kind of mom…  I made application to Pre-K for Katie last week.  I applied to three places, realistically only believing that Katie would be accepted to one of them (the deadline for the other two was January, and thereafter it’s rolling admission).  Imagine my surprise, then, to receive a call from the Admissions Office today from our "favorite" of the three.  They would like for Katie to come in and meet the teacher, plus spend a half day playing with the kids this week.  In other words, she’s being interviewed.

And I swore I wouldn’t be goofy about the interviews.  That’s why we purposefully avoided all of the schools that required formal testing or structured interviews.  I didn’t want Katie to have that kind of pressure as a four year old.  I just don’t think it’s appropriate.

After I hung up the phone with Admissions, however, I did it.  I turned into THAT kind of mom.  I wondered what she would wear.  I thought about how the drop off would go.  And yes, I actually considered pre-interviewing her - you know, asking her what her name is, where she lives, etc., to see what she’d say.

I think my Katie is brilliant.  I also know that she has about ninety different personalities (I know, it’s called being a toddler) and I hope that on the day she goes for her visit, she decides to be the fabulous little girl that I know that she is rather than the girl who spit at Super Nanny or pushed her sister or worse, talks from her hiney.

I know that, despite what people say, this isn’t her only ticket to college.  She’ll be fine (insert deep breathing here).  I just wish it were easier.  She’s only a kid.  I am trying like the dickens to impose no pressure on her at all - it seems that there is enough already from outside sources.  But boy, it’s hard.

I thought this article was fairly timely considering our own national debate about immigration.

I don’t know how you make the decision to put your children at risk for a better life.  I guess you do it when you think there is nothing left to live for in your own country.

I am amazed at how self-righteous we, as a people, can be considering that, no matter how hard you work or how good of a person you think you are, most of us who are US citizens are US citizens by luck.  Yeah, spout all of the platitudes you want…  But I am a US citizen because my parents are.  I didn’t do anything special to get here.  I was born.  And my kids?  I didn’t do anything special to make them citizens.  I just started out as a citizen.  Again, all luck, really.

Ironically, the first of my folks to arrive in the US, hundreds of years ago, was a Welsh boy who was kidnapped off of a pier in Wales and forced to work as a servant in the US.  Technically, he was an "illegal".  He stayed - thank goodness - and all of his subsequent generations were US citizens.

I tend to think about the immigration debate a great deal and not just because it’s in the news.  My husband is a business immigration attorney (he even teaches the course in law school) and works with a number of folks who enter the country for all sorts of reasons.  So, it’s often that I meet people who are hopeful to enter the US, either on a temporary basis on a temporary with "hope" to make it permanent basis.  I wonder what our clients think about all of the noise that the US is making about immigrants…

I’m too tired to write much about this tonight, so maybe I’ll try again later.  This debate has been on my mind a great deal and this article, while not about the US, made me think about it in a different way.  Babies.  You just don’t think about the littlest immigrants very often.

Spent a lot of time this weekend hearing about this.  It’s devastating.  The youngest was my Kate’s age.

Admit it, you thought this was going to be about Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, didn’t you? 

Not so.  It’s about actual strawberry fields (imagine that).

This weekend, we took the girls to pick their own strawberries.  What fun, and such nostalgia for me…  My parents used to take us to a place outside of Burgaw, NC, where we picked our own strawberries, blueberries and tomatoes.  And not a pint or two.  Bushels.  In fact, our parents used to tie the little plastic containers around our necks for faster picking - it freed up our hands - because we were there on a mission.  We had to pick enough for canning and preserves.  For us kids, however, it was just great fun.  Well, great fun and great eats.  The owner used to joke that he should weigh us on the way in and the way out since we ate so many while picking.  Of course, we would stand there, drenched in strawberry juice which had been, after hours in the sun, practically baked into our skin, and swear that we didn’t eat a one…

Those were good days.  And I want to share some of that with the girls.  Even though we are "city folk", we are just about a half hour away in almost any direction from a number of good farms.  It’s important for me that my children understand where their food comes from and that they develop an appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables.  Whenever possible, I like for them to see real farms - we’ve been apple picking and to a working dairy within the past year, as well as to the Pennsylvania farm show.  We also order fresh organic produce every other week (we use Door to Door Organics, which as the name implies brings it right to your door) which Katie helps me unpack while we discuss the different fruits and vegetables.  You get the idea.

At any rate, while I have all kinds of altruistic motives for going strawberry picking, I also have really selfish ones - mostly that I like spending time with the family.  It was a lovely day.  Not only did we get strawberries, we bought some preserves, a shoofly pie and a berry smoothie for each of us.  We then went to Chris’ parents for dinner (steak, yum!).  The girls had an incredibly full and wonderful day.

The night was a little rough.  Ames had night terrors, which I am convinced is somehow linked to her not being terribly comfortable while she is teething (two year molars, I think).  She was up for more than an hour and a half.  For the first half hour, she wasn’t awake (that’s the crazy thing about night terrors, lots of screaming and thrashing - but the kid is still asleep).  She finally went back to sleep around 12:30 a.m. - just in time for Charlie to want to eat.  I’m convinced it was a conspiracy!

But come morning, every one was as cheery as they could be and we had another delightful day.  More on that tomorrow…

As seen at APL…  Particularly interesting because I have been to a number of European cities and not only is Amsterdam not some place I have been, it is also not on my list of cities that I wish to visit.  But perhaps I am wrong - it clearly wouldn’t be the first time!

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you’re the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

The things you learn about yourself from your children…

Katie opted to watch "Reading Rainbow" on TV today.  They were doing a feature on making pottery.  Katie watched for awhile and then turned to me and said, "I don’t like this.  This is ‘Mommy TV’."

For those of you playing along at home, the tally is as follows:

Times today that Charlie has pooped on me, 2
Times today that Charlie has peed on me, 1
Times that I have been forced to change clothes today, 4 (did I mention that it rained heavily today, too?)

And for the record, no matter how many times Madeline utters the phrase, "It’s just baby pee", it will not change the fact that it’s still pee.

(Note:  My blog has officially gone potty-mouthed.)

Chris, who rarely comments on my appearance, good or bad, says to me over coffee and doughnuts, "Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look really exhausted."

One more thing for today.  Further indications that I need sleep…

A boy at the zoo thought I was a monkey on a step (I know that makes no sense, but it’s true). 

And, after viewing the trailer for The Omen, I’ve started looking at my kids funny.  It bothers me that Julia Stiles is in the movie.  She’s not your usual "horror flick chick", she looks very normal, which is why I keep looking at my kids…

As Katie was going to change clothes yesterday, she told Super Nanny, "I’m going to change my pants and shirt.  I’m changing my whole alphabet."

And to think I just put her applications in for preschool.  I did not say that vocabulary was her strong point!