What do you want to be when you grow up?

"Old Economy Steve" sums up a lot of life's troubles for Gen Y.

When I was a kid, there was a question I heard constantly. Every year, at least, our teachers made a production out of asking us. Our grandparents asked every visit. Our parents, our uncles and aunts, babysitters... everyone.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

When I was small, I had an answer. I wanted to be a mommy. But that wasn't good enough for my Baby Boomer teachers and parents, my Gen X babysitters. They were modern people, who refused to accept a little girl's limited understanding of gender roles. I could be anything. I could be anything I wanted to be.

When I got older, I read "Sedako and the Thousand Paper Cranes," and decided that when I grew up I wanted to cure leukemia. I wanted to put on a white coat and spend all day in a lab, looking through microscopes and testing drugs on monkeys. Then I learned more about monkeys, and I wasn't so sure I wanted to do that anymore.

So I decided I wanted to be president. I was going to go to law school, to become an organizer, to make changes in my community and country that would benefit everyone.

When I was a teenager, having the time of my life, politics and law school sounded like too much work. When people asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I told them if worst came to worst I could wait tables to pay for art supplies.

It wasn't really an answer. It was the most practical answer I could give. And now, I'm a stay at home parent.

I'm a Gen Y mom. A Millennial mom.

We're an odd bunch, us Gen Y mothers. As the oldest of the Generation Y crowd hit thirty, we find ourselves confronted by expectations of adulthood that don't seem to fit. We've watched Gen X grow up and cope with changing social standards, and we've hesitated.

They didn't make adulthood look very promising.

They made movies like "Reality Bites," about the illusion of adulthood and redefining personal success. They changed the standards regarding marriage and cohabitation and hyphenated last names. They embraced birth control, becoming "one and done" parents and heading back to work.

And then there's us.

Plenty of stories have been written about the Millennial's unwillingness, or inability, to grow up. About how long we live at home. About how many of us don't bother to get driver's licenses. About how apathetic we seem to be.

It's as though when everyone asked us, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" we all glibly retorted that we had a crappy job back-up plan. And we all just went ahead and focused on those.

As always, reality is more complicated.

Yes, we came of age in an economy where we had little hope of ever earning at our parents' potential.
Yes, we came of age in a society that requires us to get accredited four year degrees to qualify for jobs waiting tables and answering phones.
Yes, we go into the world loaded with debt in a time when our grandparents are still in the workforce, still occupying jobs we want, still working to save for retirement when their entire life's saving may have been lost.
And yes, we all have friends we've sent to war, friends who've never come back.

Most Gen Yers are waiting to have kids. We go to college, work, get our Master's degrees or even Ph.Ds, work, establish a career, then get married. And then start considering if it's time to have kids. And by then, we're hitting thirty- our healthiest child-bearing years already behind us.

Nobody asked us, "When you grow up, how do you want to support yourself until you finally manage to find a job that utilizes your degrees, personal skill sets, and passions?" They asked us what we wanted to be. And most of us, in the secret dark holes in our hearts, we know we're not what we wanted to be. We're baristas working through grad school. We're nannies, waiting for that teaching job to open up. We're waiting tables, using our degrees in history to strike up conversations with patrons. We're car salesmen with degrees in gender studies.

It's not what we expected. We're not what we expected.

And more importantly, our sense of stability. It's not there.

That's because stability, as we know it, doesn't exist. People don't go to school, major in something, and then start a career in that same thing, working in the same field until they retire. That isn't the way it works.

When the Baby Boomers came of age, they could get a job, advance in their career, and retire without having to learn a new trade for fifty years.

They could say, "When I grow up, I want to be an inventor." Lo and behold, they grew up and became inventors, building machines that eliminated half the industrial age jobs still lingering in post-computer America. And when they tired of that, they retired. Or suddenly lost their retirements when the banks failed and found themselves plowed under the wave of technology, fighting their kids and grandkids for jobs that could pay their bills.

Fifteen years ago, the Gen Xers turned career longevity on its head, with an average career length of seven years. Not job, career.

They could say, "When I grow up, I want to be a musician." And they couldn't really become professional musicians, most of them, but they got jobs in music. Teaching music. Writing about music. Producing music. And after a decade, they decided they wanted more stability, and they took comfortable desk jobs that somebody with a decade of work experience could do, and when they started to tire of that they started a non profit providing musical instruments to kids in Uganda.

And us Millennials, we're still asking ourselves, "What do I want to be when I grow up?"

I look at my children, kids already familiar with technologies that didn't even exist when I was a kid, and I wonder what on earth I can teach them that will apply to their own lives. Their own personal economy.

And I refuse to ask them that question.

The jobs my friends are taking now are split. Some work in whole fields that didn't exist when we were born. When our parents asked us, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" nobody could have anticipated the response, "I want to design iOS aps!" or "I want to run a GMO free vegan cupcake truck!"

And even more of my friends work jobs that we were led to believe were somehow "below us," considering our degrees. Twenty seven year olds with degrees in non profit management, waiting tables at mid to high end restaurants. Grocery store baggers with degrees in Russian Literature. Wedding photographers with degrees in World War II history. Bartenders with degrees in fine art.

And the third group, the smallest group, are those who did it. Who decided when they were barely old enough to plan ahead that they wanted to be engineers or biomedical researchers, who worked as hard as they could through high school, made it into good colleges, and then got themselves advanced degrees in their field, and eked out a job in that field. And those Gen Yers are few and far between. Those are also pretty much the only Gen Yers with job related benefits- 401Ks, health insurance, vacation time.

Most of us are wandering around, looking at our lives and asking ourselves, "Is this is? Are we adults now?"

There is no, "What do you want to be?" There is only, "What are you doing now?"

And so I'm not going to ask my kids. I'm not going to imply that there's an end result- that there's a final destination at which you have arrived, when you have grown up and are what you thought you wanted to be.

I'm going to ask my kids what they like. What they're interested in.

I'm not going to tell them that it matters what they get their degrees in. I'm going to tell them that opportunity is what you make of it, that your life is defined by your actions, and that whatever you're prepared for will be another door that can open for you.

I'm going to encourage them to study everything. Science, math, humanities, fine arts, business, languages. I'm going to encourage them to be Renaissance women, because there is no assurance that any jobs I know today, any careers, will still exist.

By the time they're ready for college, there will no doubt be online-only schools with as much academic prestige as the Big Ten.

By the time they're ready to take their first job, there will no doubt be position titles like "Interstate OS interface manager," or "Insulin chip system administrator."

I have no idea what the length of those careers will be. I have no idea how lucrative they'll be, how much stability they'll have.

I have no idea if when my kids are my age, it makes any sense for them to start families. Or if, like me, they will chose to have children when they're younger, to gamble on insecurity.

But I do know that this question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" didn't do me any favors. It didn't do any favors for my friends who became sommeliers, who started up cooking magazines, or who bake cakes from rented kitchen-shares.

This is a new economy, filled with temporary jobs and service jobs and thirty year olds who play video games instead board games with their friends.

"What do you want to be?"

We want to be happy. We want to be secure. We want to be confident that there will be food on our tables and a roof over our heads and service on our phones.

Everything else needs a new set of questions.

Ridiculously Awesome

I know we haven't, but I like to imagine that we've all been at that same special point in our lives.

You know, the one where your old fat jeans became your regular jeans, and you didn't really mind because they were your fat jeans when you were 22 and you hade made two babies with your body since then...

And then your new fat jeans became your regular jeans, and that wasn't such a big deal, because you were kind of busy making another baby anyway, so you could deal with that.

...and then one day, your latest fat jeans are so tight that as you sit in the driver's seat you can feel the horrific sensation of your back fat being squeezed up behind your shoulder blades and smooshed into the seat.

We also all know that moment when
you realize that some days  "lunch"
is five twizzlers, a third of a  banana,
and twelve blueberries... right?

And then, you cry. Oh, how you cry. And you go out and get a new HIGH IMPACT SPORTS BRA OF DOOM and you relegate an hour every morning to getting yourself in shape.

But, it's easier said than done when you have three very very little people leaving half eaten bowls of goldfish crackers all over your house, and any attempt at a workout routine becomes "jump on mommy or howl in misery" time.

And then, you come up with the brilliant idea to DANCE!

So, you dance and dance and dance with your kids, hoping that this will magically whittle your waistline and you can give those fat jeans that made you cry the finger.

But it doesn't work so well, because while dancing with mommy starts out as being a good hour of cardio a day, it becomes mommy dead lifting thirty five pounds and then spinning in circles with a weight on her shoulder for half an hour, followed by another half hour of vaguely nauseated tottering to a beat.

Yes, we've all been there.

And so I began wondering, what do we do now? When we're still angry at our not-fat-day-but-regular-day jeans, when our workout routine has fizzled, and when we have just as little freedom to leave our homes and go to gyms or zumba classes as ever before?

That's right, folks, workout videos.

I began my hunt for the perfect workout video. It had to be dance based, to fool the kids. They would think we were still having dance parties, but we would just be having them with the movie.

I picked out the one I wanted. It was the P90X guy, so I figured it would work.

But I kept not buying it.

I kept going to the website, and hovering my cursor over the "checkout" button, and just not clicking, and I couldn't figure out why.

I asked M, "Do you think this is a good idea?" and he said, "I dunno... looks kind of sleazy..."

No. Just... no.

And that was it. He had hit the nail on the head. I couldn't bring myself to buy a video to watch with my kids with the goal being "sexiness," filled with testimonies of girls who finally felt "hot" in bikinis, with the never-ending rhetoric around looking like... well... the the people on the video.

I didn't want to send that message to my daughters. I didn't want to let them think that I was losing weight to look sexy, to look like somebody else's ideal. I didn't want them to think that there was a right way to look, and that was it.

Let's face it, they're my kids. They're going to have hips, and breasts, cuves everywhere. And if they're lucky and they've got some of Mike's shape to them as well, they'll also have AWESOME butts and maybe broad shoulders.

They certainly won't look like Jillian Michaels.

I wanted to lose some weight so I could feel good. So I could feel happy in my clothes, in my skin. So I could take a walk without feeling the telltale jiggle of having made three children in the lumps over my butt.

Gross, right? Exactly.

I wanted to feel good, and I know if I feel good about myself, I feel pretty much perfectly happy with the way I look. No matter what number is on the scale.

So, none of those "hot body" workout videos.

A few friends suggested specific dance workouts. Belly dancing, for example. I decided that we had to stick with something that my kids would recognize as dance- and keep in mind, they have learned from me that "dance" means "pseudo-rhythmic flailing, the occasionally hopping or kicking, and the intermittent jazz hands."

You know, this:



So no, it couldn't be African Dance for Beginners.

No, I needed a workout video that just kind of looked like dancing, with music that the kids could just distract themselves with and dance to without paying attention. Something with people who aren't all gussied up in greasepaint makeup and exposed, rock hard tummies. Something a little bit ridiculous.

And then... it hit me. Like a bolt of lightning. The perfect workout routine.

That's right... we're Sweatin' to the Oldies.

It took me ten seconds to find a GREAT deal on a box set of DVDs, and less than two days to have it in my hands. (Thanks, Amazon Prime!) But it took me more than a month of staring at it to put it on. Why?

Because it was utterly humiliating. I mean, Richard Simmons? REALLY? Could I look at myself in the mirror without shame? I mean, the man is the biggest running joke in... almost anything.

Really.

And then I told myself to suck it up and go sweat to some oldies with Richard Simmons, because if I just laughed through feeling ridiculous and dated and weird, then the kids would laugh too, and they would think that exercise was something fun and goofy that we all did together.

And really, that was the whole point.

And so, lovely readers, the kids and I have been doin' the pony with Richard Simmons for several weeks now.

And you know what?

It's kind of awesome.

First of all, the music is totally perfect. I mean, perfect.

Second of all, by the end of it the sweat is pouring off of me. Which feels pretty awesome.

I'm sore all the time. I also shower more regularly.

But the best part is, I have no choice but to keep going. Because now every morning begins with SI putting her nose in my face and saying, "Wake up, mommy! It's time for exercise!"

She doesn't care if I was up until after midnight watching roving hordes of Chicagoans take to the streets to celebrate winning the Stanley Cup.

She doesn't care if I was up until two in the morning reading all of "Bossypants" in one sitting and had idiotically started after she went to bed.

She doesn't care if I just ache all over and don't want to do it just this one morning please please please?

Photo from Nina Falcone

Best personal trainer ever. Instead of shouting at me that I'm fat and lazy and that I need to PUSH or
STRETCH or COMMIT- she just cries that she wants to do exercises with me. Please oh please oh please.

And so yeah, I drag myself out of bed, put on my HIGH IMPACT SPORTS BRA OF DOOM (of which there are now two), and do a million freakin' knee lifts.

And after about five minutes, the girls lose interest in exercising and instead sit on the couch, watch me, and quiz me on the weight lost by the rainbow of people, in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes, sweating along with Richard Simmons.

They squeal in delight whenever the fattest fat lady is standing next to him. "She has a plump tummy! She has a plump tummy!" they yell, and I say, "Yes! And she's exercising to be healthy!"

And they list all the people they know with plump tummies. The list always includes Poppa. "When we see Poppa in Greenbush, we will tell him he needs to exercise to make his tummy smaller!"

"Good idea! We can bring our movie, and you and me and Poppa can all exercise TOGETHER!"

"Yeah! And SI!" contributes DD.

"And SI," I huff through my unceasing kicks and the tune of "Mr. Personality."

Thanks, guy.

"And Grandmommy!" she adds again.

"Yeah," I wheeze out, remembering to breathe slowly despite my impulses to gasp for every particle of oxygen in the room, marveling at how hard it can be to balance on one foot with your arms straight out to the sides, despite being in motion.

DD always jumps in when it's "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To." SI always does the cool down. We always smile and laugh and they constantly show me "new exercises" they've invented. Usually, it's some sort of bridge.

The hour that we're exercising together flies by. Every morning.

But the best part, the absolute icing on the cake, is this...

We've recently acquired a teenager. She's staying with us for a chunk of the summer, a friend of a friend of sorts.

Anyway, she's started joining me in Sweatin' to the Oldies.

And that kid? She can't keep up.

Every day I am outclassing a fifteen year old in my workout routine.

And that feels more amazing than looking at my reflection and not being grossed out by it.

Lunch: cherries, toast with goat cheese and a fried egg,
and cucumber/cantaloupe/parsley juice. That's better.

I also pulled my old juicer out, and began replacing meals (or those seven hour windows where I skipped meals) with fresh juice. My go-to breakfast these days is a beet, three carrots, and two grapefruit. In liquid form. I cut out most of the sugar, carbs, and cow-dairy in my diet. I switched to almond milk and goat cheese, and spent a few weeks taking pictures of every single thing I ate, that shamed me into making way better choices, and the habit of looking at something and thinking, "Do I REALLY want a picture of me eating this?" made a pretty big difference.

That said, I still took the kids out to Kilwin's for ice cream cones yesterday, and totally had a scoop of toasted coconut in a waffle cone. The whole point is to enjoy life, right?

In less than a month, I've lost about ten pounds, and I feel great. I'm trying to lose another twenty (I keep upping my goal) before I move forward on a breast reduction. I am definitely looking to go down to something in the first half of the alphabet in the cup size.

And the kids know it's not about how I look. To them, I'll always look the same. Like mommy.

It's about how I feel.

And I feel pretty damn great.

"Hey everybody! Come see how good I look!"

The Best Teacher I Ever Had

Tom Dodd, educator. (Photo from his facebook page.)

I learned of the passing of Tom Dodd pretty much first thing this morning, and it's been on my mind ever since. I've felt waves of profound sadness and loss, rushes of memories I'd almost forgotten I ever had, the occasional fit of laughter.

In order to best assess my feelings at the passing of the greatest teacher I ever had, I think it best to do what Tom Dodd would have had me do back in 1998.

He would have started by having me make a chart.

Along one side of the chart, I would list all the ways in which Tom impacted my life. How he taught me about the power of titles and the mere idea of authority, how he taught me to subvert an inherently flawed system, how he taught me to access creative processes I never knew I had.

Along the other side, I would list all the memories I have of him that stay with me every day.

Where they intersect, I would, can, and will find joy and humor in knowing that I genuinely wouldn't be who I am today without his influence.

CHS Yearbook, 2000

Tom taught a variety of classes at Community High School, where I was a student last millennium. He taught the high school newspaper, and along with that the occasional journalism or satire class. He had his own forum (CHS's version of a home room), and he taught whatever else interested, from architecture to something called "Earthworks," which is hard to describe on the best of days. It was essentially a how-to of community activism. Before that, it was it's own alternative school.

But the class I learned the most from was Creative Problem solving. I loved that class so much I took it twice, regardless of the fact that I really didn't need the credits the second time around. I considered myself unfathomably lucky to take it twice- although when Tom saw me sitting in the class the second time around, he made it clear he thought I was wasting my time. I knew I wasn't. What I didn't know what that it was also the last time he would ever teach it at Community High School.

It was a class that during some semesters was a Lit credit. Some semesters it was a History credit. Occasionally, it was a Math credit. The coursework was never changed to meet the credit, and it was never quite the same twice.

It was nothing more and nothing less than a class on how to think.

I don't mean that in the Dead Poet Society, everybody-on-the-desk, Oh Captain, my Captain, sense of the
word. Except I really actually do.

In that class, we learned how to take control of our unconscious process to use a lucid dream to come to new solutions to a problem. Students were encouraged to nap in class, so long as they shared the contents of their dreams afterwords. It was a testament to how engaging and entertaining the class was that hardly anyone took Tom up on that offer.

We learned a variety of methods of dream interpretation, including a whole class session dedicated to Freud where nobody was permitted in the room without wearing a beard. (I wore a costume beard, most girls who wanted to be allowed into the class taped paper to their chins. The gentlemen who were able grew their beards out for weeks in anticipation. I can still remember the gleams in their eyes as they stroked their beards thoughtfully, listing phallus after phallus.)

It was Tom's goal, I think, not to teach us a damn thing. We all learned.

In one class, we subverted his call for Parliamentary Procedure to remove him from control of the curriculum. We passed measures to ban certain students from directing us in productive directions, and instead pushed through a measure that on the last day of class we would bar the doors and smoke cigars out the classroom window.

I know, it was incredibly illegal. And irresponsible. But who cares? We were teenagers, learning that we had in our lives the opportunity to be in control of our destinies, to make choices and follow through on them and learn about their consequences in a real-world environment.

I'm a Cowgirl, get it? Tom Dodd approved.

Creative Problem Solving was as much a class about navigating your position in life on earth as it was about the way people navigate life on earth.

After taking CPS for my second time, I managed to take it a possibly record breaking third time as a Community Resource class, me and a few other students scrambled together a "CPS II" proposal and took it as essentially an independent study. Of course Tom agreed to act as our supervisor. For that class we went on camp outs and watched movies and generally had an awesome time. We watched "Animal House" and ate popcorn. One of our group got hypothermia playing in the waters of Lake Huron in March. Another spent an entire evening reenacting all of "The Monster at the End of This Book" from memory while under a blanket. I learned about sharing responsibilities and fostering ideas as a group in a profound way- and of course our goal was to get credit for doing absolutely nothing.

Tom as a teacher and adviser was perplexing. He supported his student's efforts to avoid learning, while simultaneously helping them to learn the benefits of learning in the first place. He was a big believer in work smarter, not harder. He liked bad jokes, offending people unnecessarily, and grilled cheese.

Tom was a vile, perverse, offensive old man. He was also an activist for civil rights and for equality, and for the preservation of history and nature. He dropped life advice out of nowhere, and it would actually stick with you. He seemed to be able to see into the kids in his classes, right into them, and find value and worth and even brilliance inside.

He didn't care if you skipped class. He didn't care if you went into his class instead of wherever you were supposed to be. He cared more about the cultivation of your mind as an instrument for wonder and knowledge and creativity than he did whether you could pass any sort of standardized test.

He once advised me to marry somebody rich. I had said I was going to be an artist or a writer or something like that, and he told me, "You're going to be poor, so marry somebody rich. You don't need any help being poor."

It was a joke, but it was also at once a warning that I might want to reconsider my decision making process, and a tacit approval of the decisions I'd already made.

I use the tools he gave me daily. It was eight years after taking his classes that I finally threw away my old notes. I still regret that decision weekly.

I don't know what I would have done without the influence of Tom Dodd.

I might have actually majored in something practical when I moved on to college, finishing my degree in a reasonable amount of time. I might have taken his advice and married somebody rich. I might have stayed in Ann Arbor and worked at the deli next door to the high school for the rest of my salad days.

Tom Dodd

I owe Tom a great deal.

I know I'm far from alone in this. His facebook page is a seemingly endless list of remembrances, of students-turned-teachers crediting him with inspiring to teach, of former students thanking him for believing in them when nobody else did, of tales of absolutely unfathomable obscenity  in a school setting, or of days shared in Tom's classroom off the stairwell. I know that there are practically generations of Tom's former students, all of whom are sharing in their sadness in this time, and still finding joy and embarrassment in the intensely meaningful time they spent with him, learning at his side. I know that, as for me, for an amazing number of people who took his classes, Tom Dodd WAS Community High School.

I am grateful to have had him in my life. To have had anyone like Tom in my life. But I can't imagine that there has ever been or will ever be another person to compare to Tom Dodd, so I must count myself among the unfathomably lucky few to have learned at his odd, stuttering side.

The world is less absurd place today than it was a few days ago. A more solemn, less wondrous place.

I will miss him more than I can say, so instead I will say what I wanted to say to him last summer, when I missed my high school reunion to have a baby...

Thank you, Tom, for everything.
Thank you for helping me shape my world view, and discover whole new possibilities of thought and reason and perspective and possibility.
Thank you for my education.

Thank you, Tom Dodd.
You were truly the best teacher I could have ever dreamed to know.

Dear Less-Than-Perfect Mom

Dear Mom,

I've seen you around. I've seen you screaming at your kids in public, I've seen you ignoring them at the playground, I've seen you unshowered and wearing last night's pajama pants at preschool drop-off. I've seen you begging your children, bribing them, threatening them. I've seen you shouting back and forth with your husband, with your mom, with the police officer at the crosswalk.

I've seen you running around with your kids, getting dirty and occasionally swearing audibly when you bang a knee. I've seen you sharing a milkshake with a manic four year old. I've seen you wiping your kids' boogers with your bare palm, and then smearing them on the back of your jeans. I've seen you carry your toddler flopped over the crook of your arm while chasing a runaway ball.

I've also seen you gritting your teeth while your kid screamed at you for making him practice piano, or soccer, or basket weaving, or whatever it was. I've seen you close your eyes and breathe slowly after finding a gallon of milk dumped into your trunk. I've seen you crying into the sink while you desperately scrub crayon off your best designer purse. I've seen you pacing in front of the house.

I've seen you at the hospital waiting room. I've seen you at the pharmacy counter. I've seen you looking tired, and frightened.

I've seen a lot of you, actually.

I see you every single day.

I don't know if you planned to be a parent or not. If you always knew from your earliest years that you wanted to bring children into the world, to tend to them, or if motherhood was thrust upon you unexpectedly. I don't know if it meets your expectations, or if you spent your first days as a mom terrified that you would never feel what you imagined "motherly love" would feel like for your child. I don't know if you struggled with infertility, or with pregnancy loss, or with a traumatic birth. I don't know if you created your child with your body, or created your family by welcoming your child into it.

But I know a lot about you.

I know that you didn't get everything that you wanted. I know that you got a wealth of things you never knew you wanted until they were there in front of you. I know that you don't believe that you're doing your best, that you think you can do better. I know you are doing better than you think.

I know that when you look at your child, your children, you see yourself. And I know that you don't, that you see a stranger who can't understand why the small details of childhood that were so important to you are a bother to this small person who resembles you.

I know that you want to throw a lamp at your teenager's head sometimes. I know you want to toss your three year old out the window once in a while.

I know that some nights, once it's finally quiet, you curl up in bed and cry. I know that sometimes, you don't, even though you wanted to.

I know that some days are so hard that all you want is for them to end, and then at bedtime your children hug you and kiss you and tell you how much they love you and want to be like you, and you wish the day could last forever.

But it never does. The day always ends, and the next day brings new challenges. Fevers, heartbreak, art projects, new friends, new pets, new fights. And every day you do what you need to do.

You take care of things, because that's your job. You go to work, or you fill up the crock pot, or you climb into the garden, or strap the baby to your back and pull out the vacuum cleaner.

You drop everything you're doing to moderate an argument over who's turn it is to use a specifically colored marker, or to kiss a boo-boo, or to have a conversation about what kind of lipstick Pinocchio's mommy wears.

I know that you have tickle fights in blanket forts, and that you have the words to at least eight different picture books memorized. I've heard that you dance like a wildwoman when it's just you and them. That you have no shame about farting or belching in their presence, that you make up goofy songs about peas and potatoes and cheese.

I know that an hour past bedtime, you drop what you're doing and trim the fingernail that your three year old insists is keeping her up. I know that you stop cleaning dishes because your kids insist you need to join their tea party. I know you fed your kids PBandJ for four days straight when you had the flu. I know that you eat leftover crusts over the sink while your kids watch Super Why.

I know you didn't expect most of this. I know you didn't anticipate loving somebody so intensely, or loathing your post-baby body so much, or being so tired, or being the mom you've turned out to be.

You thought you had it figured out. Or you were blind and terrified. You hired the perfect nanny. Or you quit your job and learned to assemble flat packed baby furniture. You get confused by the conflict of feeling like nothing has changed since you were free and unfettered by children, and looking back on the choices you made as though an impostor was wearing your skin.

You're not a perfect mom. No matter how you try, no matter what you do. You will never be a perfect mom.

And maybe that haunts you. Or maybe you've made peace with it. Or maybe it was never a problem to begin with.

No matter how much you do, there is always more. No matter how little you do, when the day is over your children are still loved. They still smile at you, believing you have magical powers to fix almost anything. No matter what happened at work, or at school, or in play group, you have still done everything in your power to ensure that the next morning will dawn and your children will be as happy, healthy, and wise as could possibly be hoped.

There's an old Yiddish saying, "There is one perfect child in the world, and every mother has it."

Unfortunately, there are no perfect parents. Your kids will grow up determined to be different than you. They will grow up certain that they won't make their kids take piano lessons, or they'll be more lenient, or more strict, or have more kids, or have fewer, or have none at all.

No matter how far from perfect you are, you are better than you think.

Someday your kids will be running around like crazy people at synagogue and concuss themselves on a hand rail, and somebody will still walk up to you and tell you what a beautiful family you have. You'll be at the park and your kids will be covered in mud and jam up to the elbows, smearing your car with that sugary cement, and a pregnant lady will stop and smile at you wistfully.


No matter how many doubts you might have, you never need doubt this one thing:
You are not perfect.

And that's good. Because really, neither is your child. And that means nobody can care for them the way you can, with the wealth of your understanding and your experience. Nobody knows what your child's squall means, or what their jokes mean, or why they are crying, better than you do.

And since no mother is perfect, chances are you are caught in a two billion way tie for Best Mom in the World.

Congratulations, Best Mom in the World. You're not perfect.

You're as good as anybody can get.

With love,
Lea

Katie Couric, You're Not Helping

Yesterday, a woman that I admire and respect was on Katie Couric's talk show. It was kind of surreal to see a real person in the place that the green, black, and white button I usually picture in my head, but Honest Mom was... well... honest. She really impressed me.

Not so Katie Couric.

You see, the conversation was about moms who use drugs or alcohol to be better parents.

And that's where I started getting upset.

Yes, it's important to be a good mom. To be a great mom. But as I've always said, the most important thing that you can do to be a good parent is to be a happy and healthy human being.

Over and over and over again, Katie squeezed in occasional remarks about how "weird" it was that moms drink together, or how hazardous antidepressants can be to natural brain chemistry. Not once did she discuss what it is like to be a human being under constant pressure.

You see, our culture has utterly fetishized motherhood. I've written about it before, here, but it's much deeper than that. In the last decade or so, motherhood has been elevated to heights in our social consciousness that are frankly unreasonable.

Seventy five years ago, child abuse (as we know it today) was incredibly common. It was standard practice- if you were bad, your parents would hit you. And slowly, that has changed.

But when child abuse (as we know it today) was so mundane, the expectations on mothers were entirely different. The mother was part of the economic unit- and that meant work. It meant laundry and dishes and food preparation in a way that we simply don't understand it now, culturally. It meant actually knowing what to do with lye, it meant knowing how to can produce, it meant putting the laundry on the line and taking it down every day, no matter how much snow was on the ground. It meant walking to the market and carrying your food home without a fancy stroller with baskets or cupholders.

And when you have to do all of that, and one of your many children is hampering your progress, stopping you from doing what you need to do, you react as you would if anyone was threatening your domestic peace. Sometimes that meant yelling. Sometimes hitting. But things still needed to be done.

Now, we live in a very different world. It's full of electric dishwashers and clothes dryers and bread machines and two cars in every garage.

And now, we're "enlightened" about child rearing. And we've idealized our grandmothers- fetishized their accomplishments.

And here's the thing, they weren't bad parents. They sometimes hit their children, they left their children home alone- seven year olds in charge of infants- because they had to if they needed to leave the house. They didn't put babies in car seats. Their cars didn't have seat belts at all. they sometimes drank. They sometimes yelled. And they were not bad parents because of this.

There have always been drunks who have kids. There have always been mentally ill people who have kids. And that made them what they'd always been- people. Perhaps flawed, but still. People.

Now, we as mothers have these expectations. We're expected to look like we've never popped out a baby. We're expected to be full time moms- even if we work outside the home, we're expected to be constantly thinking about our kids. We're expected to have jobs- even unpaid, volunteer or temporary jobs- if we ARE full-time stay-at-home moms. We're expected to have Etsy shops, or make all our holiday cards by hand, or constantly be baking, or sewing, or something. We're expected to ensure that our kids are always well groomed, always well behaved. And we're expected to be super-wives as well. Always with dinner ready for our husbands, or to be super-cool about guys-weekend. We're supposed to have our homes decorated appropriately, with different shams for our throw pillows so that they can rotated seasonally to match the shifting and carefully arranged holiday or season specific decorations.

AND we're supposed to have hobbies. Like running, or salsa dancing, or scrap-booking. Hobbies that take time and energy, and give us something to show for it when we're all done.

And then, after all of those expectations, we're told that if we need to relax, we have to do it on our time. That if we're going to have a drink or two, it has to be out of the house, at a restaurant or something, with our friends.

Which means that if we want to relax with a drink, we need to a) pay three times what the alcohol is worth, and b) get a sitter.

In short, we are expected to treat our homes as though we are merely guests in them, as though they are places where we are not entitled to relax and enjoy ourselves. If we need to relax for ten minutes in our own homes, we're supposed to grab a book and read a chapter and a half, and laugh about how long it's been since we took a nice long bath by ourselves.

Because the worst part of the whole thing might be that it's a running joke that moms just want to sit down for five minutes once in a while.

The truth is that having kids isn't like any other endeavor on this planet. The fact is, when you are home with kids you cannot do anything without having your kids around. And you know what? It's exhausting. And it's frustrating.

And sometimes, although we are NEVER supposed to admit it, we just don't feel like we like our kids very much. Love, always, but like?

It's okay for a married person to have a day where they're just sort of pissed off at their spouse. It's expected. Cohabitation is hard. But cohabitation with children is harder.

They need you to do everything for them. Put their cereal in their bowls, clean all their spills, explain to them over and over again why you wear a bra, let them "help" with every chore that interests them.

You spend every waking second interacting with them at their pace. And kids? They set a manic pace. It's constant running from A to B to W and there's no stopping.

Seventy five years ago, if your kids bugged you incessantly while you were trying to make sure that the family was taken care of, you'd probably hit or yell at your kid. It's what people did. Now, when your kids won't let you fulfill all of your constant, varied, and unreasonable expectations, you don't hit them. You don't yell. Instead, you refer to your child-rearing technique of choice, have a conversation about it, breathe deep and remember to communicate with them on their level because they're just children who don't understand the world.

And so, instead of brushing them off and going going going, you slow down and you have yet another emotionally taxing conversation with no logic to it and no sense of direction. And yes, it's amazing. And it keeps you young. And it keeps you laughing because you can't imagine a world where the most logical explanation about why something like a fork isn't scary is, "It doesn't have legs." And so yes, being a mom (or a dad) is incredible.

But it is hard. It is frustrating. And sometimes, you need to do something to change the way you're looking at things.

Sometimes, you need to have a drink. And you know why? Because you've been working 24/7 since the moment your kid was born, and you will never get to stop, and you need to do something that reminds you that you are still in possession of your own being. That you're not a slave, that this is your home. YOUR HOME. That you can do the things that help you relax, AND be a parent at the same time.

Katie talked to women who used Adderall, meth, Prozac, and alcohol. And she very carefully divided them into two categories. Women who legitimately have some sort of problem that permits them some tools, and women who are at risk of having a problem.

If a woman had a job caring for a house full of somebody else's kids, and then went home to their own home, and had a few drinks with some other nannies? No big deal. Because they're not the mom. We, as a society, have elevated the importance of motherhood so high that as soon as you're a mom, you don't get to do the things that help you relax anymore. (There's some great discussion about it in this TED talk.)

Is it so traumatic to a child if a mommy waits until dinner time, when all that's left is bath and bed, and has a drink? Is it so horrible if that mom took a few puffs of marijuana? Is it so bad if she pops a Xanax? No. Because what she's doing is finding a way to let her stress go. To remain a happy, healthy person.

The fact that she's a mom is irrelevant. There have been moms since the dawn of humanity  And none of them have ever been perfect, because all of them are human. But now, now that we've put motherhood on this outrageous pedestal, we all believe we have to be perfect. And we judge each other. And we shame ourselves.

And that is a hell of a lot worse than getting a bit silly when you've been up to your elbows in somebody else's feces all day. Being a little silly can even help you relate to them when you're too wrapped up in your adult responsibilities to remember what is really important in the mind of a child. And they appreciate it. They enjoy playing with you. And sometimes, relaxing involves a little help.

And that's okay, for other people. It's okay if a guy needs a little "liquid courage" when he's introducing himself to people at a company party. It's okay if an adult woman has a beer or two when their friends are celebrating a birthday. It's okay when old friends on vacation sit by the pool drinking margaritas all day for a week.

So long as they don't have kids. So long as their kids aren't there. The minute a child is in sight, somebody must have a problem. Somebody must be making bad choices.

Is it a good thing when the only responsible adults in a child's life are so drunk, or so high, or so sedated, that they can't usher their family to safety if the house burned down? No. That's bad. That's not what most of Katie's guests were doing, though. Even the "drunk" mommy, she realized she'd had too much to drink before driving her kids home, and never drank again.

Is that the lesson to give our kids? That if you make a mistake, and you realize that you've made a mistake, you never get a second chance?  Or do you teach your kids that they can relax, they can socialize with friends, and they can still make good choices?

I remember my parents' parties from when I was a kid. I remember a kiddie pool in the back yard, filled with ice and turned into a cooler for bottles of beer. I remember a dozen Passover seders, my parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents getting sillier as their drank their fourth glasses of wine. I remember my mother, at a backyard party of some friends, having a drink and then breaking her wrist on a pogo stick.

These aren't bad memories. These are memories of responsible adults who behaved responsibly with liquor. My mom wasn't a drunk who went pogoing into traffic. My dad's friend in the gorilla costume wasn't some pedaphile, leering at kids while chugging beer from a kiddie pool. My grandmother wasn't suddenly angry or abusive. They were all adults, acting like adults. Not like they were suddenly the wardens of my innocence, keeping all exposure to the potential hazards of foreign substances at bay.

I don't want to teach my children that their lives have to end when they have kids. That the things they used to do to relax will be forever off limits. Because there are always choices that you can make.

Me? I choose to get a little loose at the end of the day, instead of running a bath and putting myself in a position where I can't see or hear what's going on in the house. Available mommy with a martini shaker is a lot more useful than other-end-of-the-house underwater mommy.

Happy mommy who maybe got a bit silly and LOVES watching Care Bears is a lot more involved and engaged than the mom who just doesn't have the energy to explain for the tenth time in a day why the dirty silverware doesn't get put into the clean drawers.

And is it really so bad if, even once or twice a week, a parent wants to just sit down and not do all that stuff- the cooking and cleaning and crafting and working and phone-tree-ing and school-play-costuming and piano-practice enforcement and yoga and laundry and baking and tweezing and PINNING and just have a freakin' drink?

Why on earth should somebody have to justify themselves to anybody for that?

And Katie Couric, who undoubtedly means well, all she did was point out how very, very, very careful us mommies have to be. Because if we're not careful, we'll be terrible mommies. If we're not legitimately in need of antidepressants or what-have-you, we're walking a slippery slope.

Katie Couric, like so many other talking heads these days, is telling us that now that we're mothers, we have to abandon all our flaws as people. All our pre-parenthood coping mechanisms. From now on, it's not our home. It's their home. We're just maids and cooks inside of these houses, and any freedom must be bought.

Katie, let's have a conversation about motherhood. Let's have a conversation about why women are only referred to as "wives, daughters, and mothers," instead of as "hardworking Americans" or "brave citizens." Let's talk about how mothers are just people, like any other person, and how conversations like this- conversations that make the standard use of anti-depressants or the occasional drink a big freakin' deal because the person in question is a mom- let's talk about how those conversations are hurting us as a culture.

Katie, let's have a conversation about how failing to teach children what responsible use looks like might be the cause of American problems like binge drinking in college, of cataclysmic declines into drug use in teenagers. We might talk about how those sorts of problems only exist in the periphery in countries where alcohol and drugs aren't put on a pedestal until kids don't even know how to comprehend them.

Let's have that conversation. That would be something new.

This? This is just more fuel to the fire.

Thus Ends this Upwards Success Spiral

Evenings with my ladies

My name is Lea, and I am totally friggin' bipolar.

I don't have an official diagnosis. I don't need one. I've seen myself in the mirror at least dozens of times.

Sometimes, I get depressed. I feel sad for no reason, and then I make it worse. Sometimes, on purpose. I binge on junk food, become less than friendly to my loved ones, neglect showers. Then I'm sad that I feel and look like crap, and the cycle repeats.

But fortunately for me, I get both sides of that particular spectrum. Once in a while, I jump out of my downward sadness spiral, and find myself spinning through my upward success spiral.

RH and Becoming SuperMommy

I don't know why this is, precisely, but I know that when something good happens, I immediately have the impulse to run with whatever streak I might have hit.

Had a good dream? I guess I'll eat a healthy breakfast. Got a job interview? Skip the Walking Dead, I'll catch up on the office while putting away my laundry.

And so on.

Next thing you know, I've actually exercised and bathed and started dinner.

And then the next day, and so on, and so on...

Until that one day... and suddenly, I'm skipping breakfast and crawling back into bed. The downward spiral of misery begins again.

I'm happy to say that right now I'm working on the positive side of the spiral. But it can't last forever.

Sometimes I worry about how my ups and downs effect my kids. What kind of lessons I'm teaching them by giving them two different versions of myself. Happy, involved, positive mommy... and angry, sad, tired mommy. Do they gage me for which side of my spirals I'm on before coming in to give me a hug? Will they learn to wait to introduce boyfriends, to ask for favors, until they know which side of spiral is going to serve them best?

Me and SI lighting the Channukah candles

Will downward spiral mommy be less cautious about letting them to to parties with strangers? Will upwards spiral mommy be nicer about new boyfriends? Are these the things that they'll need to know as they grow up to cope with me as their mother?

I want to be consistent. I want to know that my children can trust me, that they're not afraid of downward mommy when they need upwards mommy... that upwards mommy is there when they need her.

Or better yet, a mommy who isn't on her way up or down.

I want to be that mommy.

Oh Monsters, Why Did I Create You?

The monsters attacking Daddy

My children are monsters.

I don't mean that they're horrible, nasty, mean little children. No, I mean that they run around the house roaring and pretending to eat me. My children sometimes take turns being the monster and being the "Princess Knight on a horse with a sword." One lays on the floor, "asleep," while the other uses their "sword" to kill the monster (usually RH's playpen), and then kiss the "sleeping" princess and wake her up. And then it repeats, with the roles switched. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Sometimes, Daddy is the monster, and he chases them across the house. But like a roomba, when they reach a solid object (like the back door) they shift directions. The children become the monsters, and they chase Daddy until another object blocks their path.

They've been monsters for a pretty long time.

When I was still pregnant with RH, and honestly, not very pregnant at all, I started considering ways to make the transition to big sisterhood a little easier. The thing I read time and time again was that the new baby should give its new big sisters a present.

Easy enough. But I thought that it should be something big. But something fun, and distracting. Something that would keep them preoccupied.

And then I ran across this Kickstarter campaign...



It's an animal hat- but it's a monster! And it's a big, cuddly, Mr. Potato Head. I thought it was absolutely ingenious. I thought that my kids would love to play with that sort of thing. I thought that I would love to play with one. I thought about how much fun my sisters and I would have had, making puppet shows to perform ad nauseum for the adults in our lives.

That's right, a year ago, I invested in this business.

It's been a wide variety of exciting and frustrating. On the one hand, seeing all the changes, learning about all the challenges that go into producing a new product... it's a fascinating thing to have a view of. I learned all about the challenges they had finding a mass producer, how they decided to license their invention to a much bigger toy company... then it was totally weird to see the commercial on television for the final product.

...a final product that I still hadn't received. And still hadn't received. And still hadn't received.

Fun, right?

Over and over again, delay after delay. First, RH was born. The girls got dinosaurs instead. Then Channukah- no Hugalopes. Then Christmas- no Hugalopes.

And now?

Now it looks like they're coming. But I'm not going to be handing them out just yet.

Those Hugalopes are going to be fourth birthday presents.

...in October.

The thing is, as frustrating as it's been to sit around waiting, I was always a little bit nervous that they wouldn't be quite old enough. That they'd need too much help with the toggles, or they wouldn't be ready for the sort of creative play that comes with puppets.

Now I'm positive they're ready for everything but the toggles.

By their birthday, they'll be the perfect age for this sort of thing.

And so, with my Hugalopes FINALLY on the way, with a few toys stored away that were too complicated for them last year, and that didn't come in the mail before Christmas, I am almost completely done getting my twins presents for their birthday.

You know, that event more than SEVEN MONTHS AWAY.

I've even got the party favors for their Care Bears themed birthday party. Yeah, I'm that prepared.

Be jealous.

Oh, Holy Festival of Lights

Away in a manger/ no pillow for his head, the little lord Moses played dreidel before bed

Hello, lovely readers!

I hope you haven't missed me as much as I've missed you.  Because, I confess, I've been missing you a lot.

So where was I?

Well...

That's right.  I wrote the first draft of a novel.

Oh right, that.

But what else was I doing?

You may recall from previous years, I am not a fan of Black Friday.  I find it borderline offensive that we make such a big deal out of buying at a perceived discount that we set aside an entire day that could have been actually spent with family.  A vacation day.  It boggles the mind.

Beyond that, I get agoraphobic, big box stores disorient me, and I would much much MUCH prefer to make an annual shopping event out of something like Small Business Saturday.  Which, I can happily say I did this year.  (Who has an awesome dress for an outdoor December-in-Minnesota wedding?  I do!)

But beyond that, one has additional gift giving concerns when one is Jewish.  Namely, that one can never be entirely certain that they have the dates of Channukah correct on their calendar, and so they'd better get their shopping done EXTRA early, just in case.

And this year, Channukah starts on Saturday.  Yes, THIS Saturday.

Two weeks after Thanksgiving, and two weeks before Christmas.

...and it's a week long holiday.

Now, you might also be aware that I am not a fan of Christmas in November.  I believe that each holiday deserves its due, and that Christmas doesn't eclipse Thanksgiving, Channukah, and New Year's Eve.  It's its OWN holiday.

But what to do about holiday decorating when one celebrates both Channukah and Christmas?  When they don't overlap, but are in the same month?  Do I forego the Christmas tree until after Channukah, putting it up only once the menorahs and dreidels are carefully stored once more?

In this house, that would mean four days between the end of Channukah and the beginning of our trip to M's parents for Christmas.  No, I don't think so.

And so, one does the best that one can to create an environment where Christmas and Channukah can coexist peacefully.  Not just side by side, but muddled together in one warm, happy family.

So what does that look like this year?

Behold- our holiday hoopla commences.

This is our mantle.  My grandmother's electric menorah, Channukah lights, new (and newly embroidered) Christmas stockings, our toy nativity scene, and our wooden toy menorah.

There's also a stack of books there that includes the Sesame Street Christmas Treasury, Hershel and the Hannukah Goblins, and a heap of other holiday themed books.

Our not-exclusively Christmas Tree

Then there's our Christmas tree.  It's the same four footer M and I have had since we moved in together, but it's covered in all sorts of multi-denominational ornaments.

Yes, that's a Christmas Angel and a happy Channukah Gelt.

Now, one thing that people have been asking us since before we got married was how we were going to handle a two religion household.  Wouldn't that be confusing?

I always said, no.  This will not be confusing.  It will simply be a fact of life.

I am beginning to learn I was wrong.

You see, there are a lot of patterns in the religious stories we tell, in pretty much all faiths.  Patterns help you learn, but they can also be confusing in of themselves.

Which is why my children are fairly certain that the baby in the manger in their nativity scene is actually baby Moses.

Oh- and all the animals around him?  They include a few unicorns and a dinosaur.

So what are my kids learning about the holidays?  That all their grandparents love them and are going to see them and play with them.

For three year olds, that's pretty much enough.

As for me?  I am ready to wrap, baby!  I have eight days worth of Channukah presents for three kids and more for all the grownups in the family, Christmas presents for children and family alike, stocking stuffers for not one but two sets of stockings, and even all my wrapping materials.

You know when that was done?

Before December.  And barely over budget.  Because I am a holiday rock star.

Now?  I'm just waiting for my cards to arrive from the printer, and preparing to bake my cookies.

And who doesn't want a meal of latkes, roast beef, sufganiot, Christmas cookies, and Channukah gelt?

The two holidays are lovely together.  Warm, merry, bright, friendly, and festive.

And I'm happy to be done with my insane November so I can be back here, blogging with you.

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Oogie Boogie-ing

I know, I said I'd post these every Monday.  Yesterday was an interesting day though, so I'm posting it now.

I figure, it's October.  And there's still plenty of time for me to keep the music thematic.  After all, come December I think all of you want to see us dance to the Maccabeats or Joan Jett's "Little Drummer Boy," don't you?

So for the rest of October- we're doing Halloween!

Enjoy!

 


So what made yesterday so interesting?

Shots.  Freakin' shots.

As you probably recall, I am pro-vaccination.

I believe that it is part of the social contract that we vaccinate, in addition to doing what I believe is best for my children's personal health.

So yesterday, poor little RH got four shots, as the producers have run low on combo vaccines.  It put her out of sorts all morning.

DD and SI each got a flu shot, that they took like CHAMPS.  For real, I wish *I* was as good at taking shots as those kids.  SI was a little surprised- "The doctor POKED me!" she exclaimed, over and over.  And I explained that while it is not okay to poke in general, her doctor needed to poke her to get the medicine inside of her body.  She seemed fascinated by that, and accepted it well.

Neither big girls cried a single tear.  Neither screamed.  Nobody fought.  It was almost eerie.

...and then I had my first day of therapy in about six years.

So yes, for all of you who have been concerned about me and my PPD, I have sought help.  I am seeking help.  And I'm pretty happy with my therapist so far, so that seems like a very good thing.

Hopefully, come spring, I'll be a whole new person.

Months of dancing will have made me happier with my body.
Months of therapy will have made me happier with myself.

And maybe by then, months of experience will have made me happier with my movie editing.

I feel like I'm going to finish off 2012 strong.  Now all I have to do is make/plan holiday gifts and find an out-of-the-home job, and I am golden.

The Second Rule of Parenting Is...

I feel like this a lot

Did you know that there's an entry in the indexes of What to Expect The First Year on "Coping with motherhood?"


I am halfway through week two of the rest of my life.

That is to say, I'm figuring out how to make my life work all over again now that I've essentially jumped back into the SAHM gig after a year of nearly full time studenthood/only one parent at a time/pregnancy/lots and lots of awesome people helping me.

It's been an educational week and a half.

I've learned that my big girls are capable of so much more than I knew.  For example, today during RH's post-breakfast nap, I took a shower while the big girls drank strawberry milk and watched Sleeping Beauty.  It was a short shower that didn't include shaving my legs, but it was my first in six days.

For real.

Why haven't I showered in six days?

Two kids and a baby is fucking HARD.

I keep messing with their schedules to try to improve my quality of life.

RH started sleeping for six hour long stretches at night.  So I started trying to keep her up until midnight- so that she slept until M's alarm went off for work in the morning.

As I'm sure you can guess, that was an unmitigated disaster.  Sleeping from 10p to 4a and then again for another agonizingly short hour is better than not sleeping at all, as I can definitely attest.  So I decided to stop messing with the baby and start screwing around with the big girls instead.

Big girls

Do you remember all of our naptime drama?  Well, I eliminated naptime.  I ended it.  I was keeping it up to make my life easier, and it had stopped working.  Without naptime, bedtime comes two and a half hours sooner.  And if my kids are DEAD ASLEEP at 8pm?  I can actually sort of eat, bathe the baby, and get HER to sleep by 10pm.

Which is sort of great, except that it still doesn't give me enough rest to function.  If the baby is asleep at 10, then I'm not asleep until 11:30, and from 11:30 until 6 just doesn't give me enough energy to keep my eyes open.

Oh, how I long for the days when I could drink endless cups of coffee without being hospitalized.

I'll spare you all the permutations of our schedule that I experimented with.  Suffice to say, the girls are waking up just as M leaves for work at 7:15, RH is sleeping for eight hour stretches that start at 10, and I am still exhausted.

So what does a mommy who can't keep up do?

She reinstates naptime.

Today, I am experimenting with naptime again, for the first time in two weeks.  Because I still NEED my kids to take a nap.

For the first time, and possibly for the last, all three of my children are sleeping in the middle of the day.  Not so that I can sleep, but so that I can pay attention to something else.  To the laundry, to the dishes, to food, to blogging...

SI helping push RH's stroller

I'm starting with blogging today.  If it works, tomorrow I'll update my resume.  And maybe start dinner.

The thing is, when my big girls go to bed at six, we don't get to do a lot of things.  I don't have the time to give them a bath, I don't have the time to sit down and have dinner as a family, and if RH isn't going to nurse herself to sleep until 9pm, why should I put the kids down so early?  Because they're effing exhausted, that's why.

So today, I'm trying to make our schedule a little better again.  Today, I've made my big girls lie down for an hour at least- and SI passed out in less than ninety seconds.

After naptime, we'll go to the yard to play as usual.  But this time, when we come upstairs, we won't just run through baths/snacks/bedtime/feeding the baby until I'm literally weak and delirious from hunger and thirst, and ready to pass out with RH still awake at 8pm.  No, tonight, we'll head upstairs, make dinner, eat it as a family, and then my girls will get baths while I feed RH.  And then I'll read them their bedtime story and sing them lullabyes while I nurse RH .  And then, RH will have her bath, nurse to sleep, and M and I will go to sleep.

If all goes well, my big girls will be in bed at eight instead of six thirty, asleep by ten instead of by eight, and at ten o'clock- when RH passes out and M and I can go to bed- I won't feel like the parenting train has once again plastered me all over the tracks.

I love my kids, but I will never be that parent that lives to spend all my time with them.  I need time away.  I need time to be selfish and self involved and to just enjoy the quiet.  I need a few moments to myself, every day, where I don't have to actually be involved.

I don't think it makes me a bad parent.  I think it goes back to my second rule of parenting: "Whatever makes you a happier, saner person IS good parenting."

(Oh, how naive I was when I wrote that old post...)

I am happier when I have a few minutes a day to miss my kids.  To feel bad about snapping, or to clean up after breakfast.

I love them, but I am so grateful they're asleep right now

I am saner when I can turn my brain off in the relative quiet and not answer a million questions about why we don't want to wake up the baby.

I'm not a bad mom.  I just need to have an hour or so during the day to put my house in order and a few minutes in the shower so that I don't feel like a bad mom.

I have not been happy and sane.  I have been exhausted, filthy, undernourished, and depressed.

Here's to the return of naptime.

Please, please let this make my life work again.