Category Archives: Kids

Nuts

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Oh I love this story. And not just because the way the parents handle the potentially awkward situation is so thoughtful (it really is), but because of the image at the end — with the kids’ beloved obsessions laying discarded on the floor while they move on to the next thing. It makes me think of parents (myself included) who are all, “My kid is CRAZY about pirates!!!” Like the kid went to the store and paid for the pirate comforter and pirate Legos and t-shirt and shoes and eyepatch all by himself. Arghh, matey, who’s really the pirate crazy one? So many times when my kids are going through a phase I don’t really understand, I obsess about it, and then when I get it figured out, they’re on to the next thing. The next thing that I don’t understand. So I try to tell myself that it’s not worth investing too much. But how do I know that for sure? How do I know what’s going to be a discarded Buzz Lightyear toy and what’s going to have an actual impact on their lives? And I guess you just don’t. You don’t really know if your baby banging on a plastic keyboard means they have musical talent, or if your toddler’s knack for a fart joke means they have a gift for comedy.

Which is kind of terrifying, and liberating.

A few years ago, after I’d had my son, I went to lunch with a senior partner at my (old!) firm. He had three grown kids and was a devoted dad. And his sage parenting advice to me? I quote, “Raising kids is a total crapshoot and all you can do is keep them safe and hope you get lucky.” Um. Here was a guy who’d made a career out of manipulating juries and controlling legal battles, telling me that raising kids was out of my hands and mainly about getting lucky.

At the time it sounded totally fatalistic to me, but now I think it’s kind of a beautiful (and liberating) idea: that it’s not up to you to determine who your kids are, what they like, how they feel about something. That you just keep them safe and cross your fingers.

Which reminds me of the best parenting advice I’ve ever gotten. Not from my mom or my best friend or a neighbor, but from a total stranger (who may have been wearing a lime green sweatshirt with a large gray scotty dog made out of fuzzy yarn jumping across her boobs). She sat down next to me at Costco and stared at my son while I was giving him some pizza, and right before I was about to get up and move because she was skeeving me out, she said with this faraway look in her eye, “I wish I’d sat with my kids more and just watched them, instead of trying to get them to do what I wanted to so much.”

I think about that lime green fuzzy dog sweatshirt woman all the time, and not just because I have nightmares about her shirt. Or because she was buying a whole flatbed cart of cashews in bulk. (Seriously. What do you DO with that many cashews? Where does she store them? Does she have a cashew closet in her house? Does she make cashew butter? Does she work at a zoo?) Some of my favorite memories of my kids are from watching them when they don’t know I’m there – like hearing my son console his sister when she can’t find her favorite doll, or hearing my daughter tell her big brother that she loves him “so so so much” after he tells her a ridiculous joke (about poop, of course). If I’d been shuffling them out the door to their next activity, or up in their grills trying to entertain them, I might have missed that altogether.

And that poop joke was too good to miss.

Guilt shmilt

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My husband travels for work, and he was gone all week last week. After a week of dinners, baths, and putting the kids to bed by myself, I couldn’t wait for the hubs to get home and give me the night off. So he comes home, I kiss the kids good night and shuffle them upstairs with their dad – and instead of relaxing, I immediately felt SO SAD. Like the kids were going to miss me or have trouble getting to sleep without me there. I thought, “WHAT IS THAT?!!!” I will tell you: guilt. Soul sucking GUILT.

It’s apparently everywhere. I read this article about the regrets of a stay-at-home mom last week, and it’s been bugging me since I read it. Instead of some thoughtful advice for new moms, this feels like yet another example of a mom feeling guilty for her seemingly reasonable decisions. Some women’s decisions to stay at home are fairly cut and dry: if you make about the same amount as it costs for child care, and you want to stay home, then stay home; if you can’t survive without your paycheck, then get to work. But the author of this article had what seems to be one of those legitimately close calls. She admits she had little to no work life balance, she was emotionally strung out after the death of her father, she missed her babies, and she was able to do some freelance work while hanging with her kids. All of those seem like totally legit reasons to stay home. And 14 years later, she’s in a tough financial position and telling the world not to stay home with your kids?! Come on! (Also, it seems to me like the advice here should be “do some long term financial planning,” but nobody asked me.)

And then I see this “study” and think two things: one, how long till that kid scribbles with that sharpie on the computer?, and two, goddammit! When does it end?! I am over it, just so done with wasting time thinking that I should be doing something different or better or more thoughtfully or with more shamrock sprinkles (yes, I may have felt guilty earlier today for not making green cake pops with shamrock sprinkles for my son’s preschool party – again, WHAT IS THAT?!). So I’m not going to think about the laundry or the workout I should be doing, or the intellectual activity I should be pursuing (OH I just giggled typing that).

Instead, I will watch The Bachelor, and make snarky comments in my head about the women’s outfits and the ridiculous things Brad says. Wheee!

Rocketman

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How on earth does something like this happen?!

Back in December I flew from DC to SF with my two kids by myself, so I fully get that things can get crazy when you’re flying with preschoolers. For example, you might give your sweet two-year-old Benadryl on doctor’s orders before a flight, which causes her to act like an angry chimpanzee for 6 solid hours while the woman across the aisle from you asks every 20 minutes, “Do you know when she is going to be DONE.” Not that that happened to me. But the series of events that leads up to a flight attendant shutting a 17-month-old kid in an overhead storage bin?! I have so many questions. First, what flight has that much overhead storage room? The last time I flew I got dirty looks for carrying a big purse and laptop bag. Second, what kind of crazy peek-a-boo game were these guys playing? A skilled peek-a-booer can use only his or her hands and totally get the job done. And I can think of so many other games that would work for kids on a plane — for example, on the flight in December, I played tic-tac-toe with my kids, did puzzles with them, and then, after my son fell asleep and my daughter entered hour four of her medicated hyperactive freak out, I played “how quickly can mommy order drinks from the nice flight attendant.” Third, I know this is touchy, but I am saying it — this really does nothing for all the dads out there who complain that they don’t get the credit they deserve. So many of my women friends are married to really smart, educated, successful guys, and we routinely have conversations that begin with, “You won’t believe what my husband let the kids do.” I can totally imagine this woman getting off the plane, calling her sister and being like, “You won’t believe what he just did. HE LET A FLIGHT ATTENDANT STUFF OUR KID IN THE OVERHEAD STORAGE BIN.” And her sister being all, “Yeah, well, John let the kids go for a ride in the dryer.”

Anyways, what a terrible situation, and it sounds like a total lack of judgment from people who should have known better. But as someone who may have actively encouraged her four year old to watch Hannah Montana while she flagged down the flight attendant for another drink, I really shouldn’t be talking.

I am not an abandoned knitting blog

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DAMMIT, it is hard to keep up with a blog! Seriously, I was hoping I could just write a few posts, get discovered, and then go on Oprah to tell her about my inspirations in life and my favorite kitchen tool (my stainless steel handled rubber spatula, obvs). But due to the high demand of my readers (i.e., a random woman asking me the other day, “Hey, didn’t you have a blog or something?”), I have returned. There is so much to discuss. In the last few months, I have transitioned the kids to a new preschool, gotten a new job that I’m excited about, traveled cross country with both kids by myself, and have peed in a sippy cup on the side of a major road.

I’ll start with that last one first.

So as background: something seriously disturbing happened in my house about six months ago, and I think enough time has finally passed that I can share it in any sort of lighthearted way. I hope you are sitting down, mainly because it’s just weird to read a blog standing up, right? SO one Sunday back in July, a crazy storm came out of nowhere and ruined our plans to go to the pool. It also knocked out our power. OK, it’s happened a couple times since we’ve moved in, no big deal. 12 hours later as my husband is getting ready to fly across the country for work for a week, though, it’s becoming a bigger deal. Well, long story short: we had no power for six days. SIX DAYS. Six days of waiting in long lines at gas stations to buy overpriced bags of ice so my kids had milk for breakfast. Six days of wearing a freaking headlamp while I did dishes and changed my daughter’s diapers. Six days of wondering if preschool was open, or if my big meetings at work were still on, or if my phone was going to run out of batteries, or if some nutjob was going to break in my house in the woods and no one would even know. Totally awful.

So the drive to the kids’ preschool is a long one, and is pretty much a straight shot down a major road. The road has lots of stoplights that were all knocked out during the storm. Our usually 40 minute drive to preschool turned into a TWO HOUR odyssey on the second morning after the power went out. The kids were actually pretty psyched to watch two hours of cartoons in the car. I, on the other hand, was freaking out. Cops were directing traffic at every intersection. People were honking, cursing, driving aggressively, and I had not used a blow dryer in a good 48 hours at this point. Well, about halfway into our journey, I realized I had to pee. Really bad. But I was so close to the kids’ preschool that I wasn’t too concerned. Twenty minutes and about quarter of a mile later, though, I’m wigging out and looking around for a gas station, grocery store, anywhere I can stop. Nothing. I’m literally on a stretch of road by nothing but neighborhoods, jam-packed with traffic, and I realize I am about to pee my pants. At which point, I start crying. So I do the only thing I know to do: I pull over, throw on my hazards, tell my daughter to finish her milk, scramble to the backseat of the car, yell at the kids to KEEP THEIR EYES ON THE TV SCREEN, and I pee in my daughter’s sippy cup.

I’m not sure the point of sharing this with you, except to totally embarrass my mom. And to say that life is completely ridiculous, and for all the hard work I (and every mom I know) put in to planning and preparing and anticipating, you still might end up on the side of a road pissing in your kid’s sippy cup.

But I really hope not. That is my wish for you. Which is totally what I will say, straight-faced, on Oprah when she asks me my one wish for the world: “To never have to pee in your kid’s sippy cup.” And Oprah will give me a knowing nod and lean in for a hug. And she will smell so good. She just has to, right?

I said good day.

Halfsies

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OK, what? I know that this is a closely held issue for many parents, especially moms. A friend of mine told me years ago that you should never tell a woman that her baby looks just like the dad because no mom wants to hear that. But I feel like I’m missing something here.

My kids are half Chinese, and despite the well-meaning comments from people who say they look just like me, they really, truly don’t. They have dark almond shaped eyes, dark hair, and olive-y colored skin. I am pasty white with light brown hair and eyes. Their appearance seems to change by the minute, so some days I’ll see myself in an expression they make or in the way they walk or gesture, but for the most part, they look exactly like their dad. Which is fine, because, well, I like how their dad looks. A lot. Rowr!

I’ve only had a few questions about my son being adopted or my being his nanny, but have had lots more people ask if my daughter is adopted, presumably because more girls are adopted from China than boys (although I wonder how much people really think through random comments they make to strangers). But I think the moments are just comical. For example: I may have told a couple people who asked where my kids were adopted from that they came from the country of Myuterus. (It is lovely this time of year.) And I will always remember the insane look of pride in my Chinese father-in-law’s eyes as he held my son for the first time and announced to everyone in the room, “He looks VERY Oriental. Not even half half!” It’s like he was openly celebrating his Asian genes’ victory over my wimpy white genes. But my favorite moment — when my daughter was about a year old, I was at the drug store getting a prescription for her. She was totally transfixed by an Asian woman sitting next to us. As we were leaving, I said to the woman, “Wow, she really can’t take her eyes off you!” The woman didn’t miss a beat, and with all seriousness said, “Probably because I look like her mother.”

Should I care about this more than I do? I don’t think so. While Nicole Blade’s emotional statement on Motherlode about why these comments hurt her feelings is understandable, I guess I’d rather have the “teachable moment” in these situations to be that it’s silly to get too worked up over a stranger’s passing comment. Particularly when it’s often preceded by, “Oh, your baby is so cute!”

Maybe I’ll start feeling differently when my kids realize that strangers don’t think I’m their mom at first glance. But I doubt it. I know that anyone who actually knew us would have no doubt that I am their mama. My son’s affinity for fart jokes and my daughter’s completely irrational behavior is a dead giveaway.