Category Archives: Kids

Snowly crap

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I haven’t blogged in over a month – ridiculous.  But there is so much going on, I’m not sure where to start.  One:  we are moving.  To the ‘burbs.  Near a swim club and a playground and a good school and the woods and a creek.  I’m kind of freaking out about it, and not only because we still haven’t sold our house and might have to pay two mortgages until we’re living in a cardboard box.  But it just seems like such a huge CHANGE.  Moving from our place in the city that’s 10 minutes from everything, where all our neighbors are liberal and diverse and a lot like us, to a different state (OK, it’s 20 minutes away from where we are now, but still) where I really have no idea what our neighbors are like.  I think it’ll be great for my kids, so I’m doing it.  Which means I’ll probably be at this job a little longer than expected, and that also freaks me out.  I thought when we made the move to the ‘burbs I’d give up the working thing for a while.  I totally had visions of me wearing sporty casual clothes, clipping coupons, doing artsy educational projects with my kids, and destroying my blackberry in some extremely violent way (I think I had settled on driving over it).  But now I’m just going to have an even longer commute to the same job.  Now that I put that in writing, um, wtf.

And two:  snowmageddon.  Perhaps you heard a thing or two about it on the news?  There were two actual back-to-back blizzards in DC in the past 10 days.  I was housebound with my family for a solid week.  Which was extremely fun for the first, oh, three days, and then after that, we all were a little bored.  And I was REALLY sick of the freaking Wiggles, particularly the yellow shirt guy.  My son has some pretty sophisticated musical tastes — he loves Jack Johnson and Pearl Jam and that “Fallin'” song that is in the car commercials, you know? — but for whatever reason, he loves him some Wiggles.  They’re harmless, but I can only take so many songs about kangaroos and dressing robes.

Being housebound with two toddlers and a work-from-home husband while you’re trying to get any sort of billable work done is not a lot of fun.   As the kids were giving me my 14th pretend haircut of the week, my son was trying to let my hair down and said to me, “Mommy, are you going to pull your hair out now?”  Oh, honey, you have no idea.  But we really did make the most of our time together.  My son got to go sledding down an insanely high hill with his pops, we made an awesome (smaller) sledding course in a neighbor’s backyard, played with the neighbor kids, drank lots of hot chocolate, the whole deal.  I was so sad to kiss the kids good-bye this morning.  Even more than normal.

So today our realtors are taking pictures of our house to sell it.  It’s the only house my kids have ever known, the house my husband and I poured our hearts (and bank accounts) into renovating, the house where I learned to be a mom.  I know that moving is the right thing to do, but I’m really going to miss that house.

But I think my new WALK IN CLOSET will ease the pain.

Scary

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So I went to the cah-razy synagogue book signing last night (unfortch, no drunken table dancing), which was really lovely.  The author was inspirational and funny and smart.  While she was reading the introduction to her book, I realized that I kept shoving my work bag around with my feet, and kind of pinned it between my legs for a little while, you know, so some crazy non-fiction chick-lit book lover didn’t gank my work bag (which is filled with about 40 highlighters, an old pacifier, and a wallet with four pounds worth of change in it) and then make her way up the balcony stairs and down through the crowded synagogue, laughing maniacally and leaving a trail of post-it flags and old receipts behind her.

And then I remembered my own mom’s obsession with someone stealing her purse.  As far as I know, no one ever actually stole her purse (maybe because of her vigilance), but for as long as I can remember, she always had a death grip on it when we were out in public.  And now here I am, straddling my work bag at a book reading.

Totally random, but it just got me thinking about fears and how we pass them down to our kids.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because both of my kids are fairly cautious — both were very timid walkers, they aren’t crazy about strangers or new things, and my preschooler still “scooches” on his butt down the stairs (so he doesn’t “bite it,” in his words).  And then I think about my own life, and how I’ve taken a very safe path to get to my boring, I mean, very important lawyer job.  Where my job is to tell people how to minimize their risk.

So I want to encourage my kids to be bold, to do things that challenge them, that surprise them.  And I figure the best way to do that is to do it myself.  Which really goes against just about everything in my nature, but actually feels pretty good.  Writing like this is a risk for me, and I like it.

But I’m still not getting over my fear of opossums.  They can suck it.

Someone call the wahhhmbulance

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So for the past 6 nights, my daughter has decided to wake up hollering and shaking the rails of her crib in the middle of the night and will not stop screaming until my husband or I go in and rock her.  As cute as she is, I would really prefer not to see her at 3 am, particularly when she is yelling for no apparent reason.  I took her to the doctor to follow up on her most recent ear infection (sigh) and she’s healthy, so I think she’s yelling just because she can.  And maybe because she’s finally getting her top two teeth.

Anywho, I don’t think I can fully explain how freaking mean and grumpy and generally psychotic lack of sleep makes me.  For example, I could not find a matching sock for my son this morning (laundry tends to reproduce like the Duggars in my house when mama’s tired), and I seriously considered punching the laundry basket.  Because it really had it coming.

Functioning at work while sleep deprived is always a bit of a performance.  It requires a little extra make-up, a lot more working with the door closed, and massive amounts of coffee, combined with telling a few select blabbermouths about my lack of sleep so the word slowly makes its way to the people who need to know that, really, don’t mess with Sarah today.  On a conference call yesterday, someone I’ve never met actually said, “Oh, did you finally get some sleep last night?”  Well done, my co-blabbermouths.

And tonight is my first Girls Night Out in, oh, like a year and a half.  Although it probably doesn’t qualify as a real girls night out because (1) I am wearing frumpy flats and my hair is a wreck; (2) there will be no drunken dancing unless something goes terribly wrong; and (3) we are going to a book signing.  At a synagogue.  Somewhere in the middle of pregnancy #2 I officially became lame.  Whatevs.  The point is that I’m exhausted, feeling sad that I won’t be putting my kids to bed tonight, and not able to appreciate the good things I have going on today.

Some day I’ll make a Costanza-style napping nest under my desk.  If only I had the energy.

Nice to meet you

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My three-year-old son told me this morning that now that he is big, he is a karate expert.  And then he punched the air “REALLY HARD” twice and then gave me a look like, “See, I am a bad ass.”  Oh, the confidence!  I have no idea what I’m going to say on this blog, or why or to whom, but here I am.  Inspired by my preschooler karate expert to just go ahead and do something already.  So hi.

I’m a working mom, which means a million different things to different people.  But for me, it means I’m a lawyer at a big DC law firm (which shall remain nameless) and have a three-year-old miniature black belt son (who, for the record, has never actually taken karate) and a very opinionated 15-month-old daughter whose hobbies include poking people (mainly me) in the face, doing the exact opposite of what I want her to do, and generally being squishy and adorable.  And my husband, oh my husband.  I don’t know how I got so lucky.  Some days I feel like I’m juggling it all well, some days I feel like I’m half-assing everything I do.  But most days I’m just getting along and trying to enjoy every second with my kids (even the poking in the face part) while not completely screwing something up at my job.

I started this blog because my friends tell me that I’m funny over email (they’re always quick to add the “over email” part, so as not to imply that I’m actually funny IN PERSON).  Also, because I feel like I’ve got some big decisions to make in the future (commit to my career?  move to the burbs?  get invested in “Conveyor Belt of Love”?) that could prove highly entertaining.  And I know these decisions are not unique — everyone I know seems to still be struggling to decide what they want to be when they grow up, and how to balance the crazy love you feel for your kids with functioning in the world — so I’m hoping to get perspectives from other people.  Who I don’t know and who may be completely loony.  Because, despite what my husband may say, I don’t really have enough of the loony point of view on things.

I have no idea how to end a blog post.  So good day.