1. Successful baby doctor’s appointments
2. New clients firing up, new projects starting
3. Holiday thank you cards in the mail
4. Fleece gloves for early morning dog walks
5. Steel cut oats with dried cherries and heavy cream
Thrilled to attempt Schmutzie’s gratitude journal.
1. Pad Thai leftovers for lunch
2. A running dishwasher
3. Clean Sheet Sundays (TM)
4. Baby face covered with sweet potatoes
5. Bathroom cupboards newly organized
I love this time of year. Like Spring, a fresh school year and my birthday, there’s that feeling of new beginnings.
There’s the feeling that your life can change toward perfection
if only you change it.
Last year was a biggie.
Without drugs, I gave birth to a baby.
A totally chill baby.
I mean I worked too. I launched roughly 20 new web sites.
I completed a series of posters.
I paid off my credit cards.
I suffered a miserable sleep-deprived breakdown.
We threw many, many parties.
We brought our bocce team to the playoffs.
We also mastered breastfeeding, sleep scheduling and making falafel.
During our fifth (FIFTH) year of marriage, James and I grew even closer.
Upon my sister’s moving back from Australia, she and I became even closer.
My mom and I couldn’t be any closer without it being a little strange.
I met new friends in town and new cool clients.
I’m hoping to do a few things during 2009:
Make new friends.
Make more time for existing friends.
Yeah, that’s about it.
I have so many projects ahead of me, so much opportunity, I get a little overwhelmed.
Two thousand nine is going to be great, I can feel it.
Nora Lea, I’ve wanted to write you monthly, heck, weekly.
I wanted to craft loving letters about how much you’re changing and how much I love you and post them here, in this public record.
I wanted to do it more often.
But as happens, life got in the way.
First?
Welcome to the family.
Since it had just been James and Pinot and me for so long, we were eager for your arrival.
You are simply amazing and we’re so happy you’re here.
No, that’s not big enough.
You are better than all expectations.
You are healthy and bright and beautiful.
Those are three blessings we weren’t quite prepared to receive.
Thank you.
I want to apologize as well, I’ve been really stressed out these six months.
See, I want to do right by you.
No, that’s not strong enough.
I want to exceed expectations for you.
No, that’s not right either.
I want to be the best damn mother in the whole damn world for you.
I want to do more than right by our family.
My responsibilities have been to take care of you while bringing in my share of the income. I have been so stressed because I have been certain I failed on both ends.
You can probably tell that if you read the last six months of this web site.
Being a full time mom and working full time does not work.
So I chose mom.
My clients left. And it’s my fault.
But I’m fixing it. I will fix it.
Nora Lea, your job is to be the baby.
Your job is to grow, and grow and grow.
Guess that’s still my job too.
During the day when we hang out, we have lots of fun.
We have routines.
It doesn’t hurt that you’re so easy.
Your smiles are frequent.
Wide grins, more frequent.
You are so loved.
We love you so much.
We have so much fun with you.
So far, your tears are only the result of hunger.
There have been some hollers when we take away something that’s dangerously fun, but other than that, you are filled with sweetness.
When you become overly tired?
You giggle maniacally.
When I become overly tired?
I sit in the middle of the living room and sob.
See?
You’re already way ahead of me in maturity and general awesomeness.
I’m not quite sure I deserve you.
I mentioned that — I didn’t quite think I deserved you — to your Grandmama after taking you home from the hospital. I told her that I didn’t realize how deep-seated my belief that I didn’t deserve nice things was.
I was confused that you weren’t broken,
that you were healthy,
that you were perfect.
Who am I to get a perfect baby? I don’t deserve such blessings.
Doesn’t that sound ridiculous?
Guess there’s a bigger lesson in there.
You were perfect just the way you were.
You are perfect just the way you are.
And if you ask your Grandmama, my mother, you’ll hear that bigger lesson too.
We are perfect just the way we are.
Mothers are funny like that,
they are a wellspring of love, hope and support.
I hope I can provide that love, hope and support for you the way your Grandmama has done for me.
Your Papa can’t wait to come home to see you, he can’t wait to wake up to see you.
We just came off of a week’s vacation.
Your Papa was at home with us.
He loves you so much.
During the week, you sometimes took a long nap.
I found him pacing back and forth in front of your door awaiting the minute you’d wake up.
It’s so much fun to see you play with his nose, tousle his hair, hug his shoulder.
You have his eyes,
you have his investigative nature,
you are laid back just like him.
There is no mistake, you are his daughter.
I love to see you love each other.
You love Pinot. You chuckle when ever you see her enter a room. You try to touch her face, her head, just like we do. She’s extraordinarily gentle with you. We’re still working on the gentleness with you, grin.
I love to see your love for our Pinot.
They say that this time goes so fast.
I have to argue with that.
This time is definitely filled with more activity.
There are more task-oriented projects going on at any time — diapers, feedings, dishes, laundry — and they can make the time appear to be going faster.
But time has slowed down for me.
Taking the time to look in your eyes, to see what you see, to delight in what makes you squeal, these are the things that give me extra time in the day.
This slows time down for me.
And I thank you for that gift.
Happy six months Nora Lea.
Had a bad, bad, bad, bad cold over the past five days.
So bad, there was
the mouth-breathing,
the crushing fatigue,
the late night tears.
But since I still can’t take cold medicine, I was reduced to lots of eucalyptus and rosemary-scented baths.
And tears.
And more mouth-breathing.
I’m through it now, James may have just gotten it.
He’s on the couch, I’m bringing him juice.
“The Office,” downloaded.
Tomorrow, we might take the girl to the ocean.
Tomorrow, we may be on the couch.
Tomorrow, James is over it.
Over being sick.
I hope.
Not just me, it’s been hard to write lately.
See, I’ve been looking out so long, looking at these other bloggers working their angles, and I’m tired of them.
I’m tired of this web where everything’s about monetization, ad payments and networking.
I’m sad to see the web writing these eminently Googleable top ten lists.
I miss the web where we laid it out bare, shared our experiences and hobbled together a community.
I don’t want to be part of this new web.
This is silly, right?
This is progress, right?
Our weird little web hobby has made the big time. News organizations turn to bloggers, turn to the little guy to make their stories. It’s about political opinion, marketing and direct sales. It’s all about making the big money, getting that book deal, getting that movie made.
For Chrissakes, what’s my lament?
I help companies install blogs for my job.
But I’m helping companies have a more authentic story to share with the folks otherwise coming to their web site — that through stories and posts, visitors can see there are real people behind the organization.
This complaint I have is about this new web is that it’s all about your personal brand, your Google rank and your smarmy electronic handshake.
Most of the bloggers — no — online essayists. I think I now need to refer to my web logging friends as online essayists or humorists or journal writers. Blogger means something different now. It means sweaty introductions, PR pitches and giant skyscraper ads.
It means getting traffic at any means.
Blogger is not a word I really want to be involved with any more.
I appreciate all the folks who can carve out a living with their web sites and ads — I appreciate that they’re making a living and they’re telling their story. I just miss the old days.
The old days where your published thoughts weren’t reduced to mere traffic-garnering keywords.
Is it the same feeling where your little band makes the big time?
Not quite.
The closest I can get to describing my relationship with the new blogosphere is that feeling when my best friend from elementary school hits puberty and is suddenly about name brand clothes and boys.
And I still want to play tag.
I still want to play tag.
My parents were here for a whirlwind weekend visit. They are awesome. When they were here, they babysat (for free dollars!) and James and I snuck out to see Quantum of Solace.
I become giddy, imagining the freedom we’d have if we lived in Wisconsin.
But then, Wisconsin is not for us right now.
Whew, our annual holiday cocktail party is on Friday already.
(I can’t quite believe it myself.)
The theme is “Natty Hat.”
You’ll wear yours, won’t you?
If you had asked me, before I had Nora Lea, whether my daughter would ever wear hot pink pants with the word Cutie stitched across the rump, I would have laughed in your face.
I would have derided the gender-role and strange description of an infant through her butt.
I would have told you (rather boldly) that I’d rather dress her in bathroom towels.
I would have shook my fist in the air and cried, NO CUTIE NO!
But, there you have it.
They were in a generous bag of clothes from a generous neighbor whose generosity has been so generous… well, let’s just leave it that 92% of Nora Lea’s toys and clothes and play things are from their generosity.
So cutie butt.
Have I given up my ideals?
Have I doomed my daughter to grow up as a servant to men, caring only about her looks?
I guess it’s this:
I used to have lots of time to develop an opinion. Opinions came out of every hole on me. Everywhere, every day I was off judging and deriding and scoffing. Since this whole motherhood thing came about, I’ve noticed my days are more like this:
My opinion-making time has been pushed to the periphery. I now have time for things like work and baby and meal-making. Broad sweeps of opinions have been deemed, “Meh, I don’t really care” and left at that.
I have plenty of time to make opinions in the future.
For now, those cutie butt pants are well, sort of cute.
I’m so thankful for James that
I could just explode with gratitude.
Then we’d have gratitude blobs and
gobs on the floor
and the wall.
But you know what’s awesome about James?
He’d clean them up without a word.
Oh well, life got in the way.
Like yesterday, after having 5 blissful hours in a row to work, I remembered two more projects still to do.
So here’s a photo of our one night getaway to Muir Woods.
We stayed at the Mountain Home Inn for a night. It is a nice place, but I think I screwed up. By merely scanning the reviews on Yelp and their web site, I assumed it was more of a spot for tired hikers to crash. When we got there, the arched eyebrows of the staff showed us it was a romantic getaway spot, definitely NOT the kind of place for a 4 month old.
They were nice enough to give us an upgraded room away from the other guests — so I’m over it. Motherhood and age does that to a lady.
(Previously I would have felt horrible about my misunderstanding for months.)
But you and my mom want to see the baby, don’t you?
Also, I keep accidentally spamming comments and then there’s no way to retrieve them. Apologies, I’m super bummed that I lost them forever. I loved the stories of the “sneak back and forths.”
(And if you know of a way to retrieve them in Wordpress, do tell!)
Back in 1998, I worked at a web development company in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(Yes, that sentence you just read was correct.)
I had a joke with a friend, where we would attach this graphic to an email and send it back and forth to each other as an important attachment under a different name. Sometimes we’d turn the image into a pdf, a Word doc, whatever. We just sent the image back and forth week on week.
And ten [TEN] years later, this joke is still not old.
I had a similar joke with an old roommate.
I had this bottle opener — it looked like a fish carved out of mother of pearl. We would hide it in each other’s stuff. She’d find it in her purse one day, I’d find it under my pillow the next. We never spoke of the joke, but it was always comedy of the sneakiest order.
Whenever I mention these stories, I’m fascinated that everyone has their own version — I even heard one about an eight year old bag of sour cream and onion chips.
What is your sneak back and forth?
I met some people for lunch about a web site.
And then I drove back.
Whew.
And then I made dinner with Rapini.
Right?
Tomorrow, the babysitter comes.
Whew.
I met up with a lady friend today. She told me about calling her Mom recently to complain about some motherhood difficulties.
Her mom’s response was, “Buck up.”
I said that I thought motherhood was a long chain of Buck Up moments.
(But I think I may have said, “Buck the Fuck Up moments.”)
That might be what people mean when they say your life changes. It’s not the love or the responsibilities, it’s that all of these new moments of tears and agony and insanity-inducing sleeplessness, all of these moments pale in the face of my pre-parenthood challenges.
And all that you get in response is “Buck Up.”
There are no commiserations over happy hour dirty martinis.
There are spousal trash-taking-out negotiations.
There are short tempers and loaded sighs.
And all of these moments pale in the face of my pre-parenthood snuggles.
Truly, no snuggles snuggle like a parenthood snuggle.
Buck up moments indeed.
So, I’ve goofed on the Nablopomo but I’m filling in the days I’ve missed.
This takes me out of the running for prizes, but this blog has done nothing but keep me honest.
(So there’s that.)
This was an amazing weekend.
James and I got dressed up and attended the Red Cross fundraiser at the Castle.
We even had a babysitter.
Up here we call it “The Castle” but it’s better known to non-locals as Castle di Amaroso. Yes, it’s easy to be jaded about such a building but my GAWD. The frescoes, the bricks, the rooms, the courtyards, the torture chamber.
It was a gorgeous event.
(Thanks to Tony for the pictures.)
It’s been a big day here, what with the voting and the running and the babysitter and the work.
I slept in,
voted early and
celebrated a new day.
I worry now, about Prop 8.
Come on California.
Vote for Love.
I want you and you and you to get married.
And if you tell me that your God doesn’t love Love,
That will make me sad.
Still stumped as to what to write about, so I’ll just let you know the now.
Leftover dinner makes me proud of my resourcefulness.
Baby sleeping, pacifier in mouth, hand to the back of the pacifier.
Husband writing music.
Dog, guarding door of office.
Lady date to vote, tomorrow
Babysitter coming tomorrow.
Pinot’s birthday is tomorrow.
She turns five.
She officially scoots past me in age, and is now the dog I’ll be asking for advice.
Every year, on her birthday, I let her sniff for as long as she wants, where she wants. She tells me what street she wants to go down next and she’ll have a fried egg and piece of bacon with her dog food.
I love that dog.
Went to Leah’s baby shower today and met some marvelous internet people in person.
Slept while James managed night time baby during the weekend.
Slept enough to feel tired.
That’s good, because I was only sleeping enough to feel insane.
Got some work done this evening.
Getting ready to join the handsome man on the couch downstairs.
Getting ready to join the living this week.
(Instead of the crazy.)
Still looking for a theme.
I like Jen’s idea.
But I’ll let you know tomorrow.
I prefer a theme for Nablopomo.
Last April it was alphabet letters to the cells that became Nora Lea, last November, it was home keeping tips.
But I’m still a little stuck when it comes to this month.
I have that extra hour tomorrow to devise a doozy.
Instead, an update.
Re: My sleep deprivation
I went quite insane yesterday.
All my screws were rattled loose and I started to lose my parts.
James took over night time for the weekend.
I’m catching up.
It’s going much better.
Re: Halloween
The kids came,
we ran out of candy early and
only filled one wine glass.
What’s up parents in my neighborhood?
Two years ago, we went through two bottles of wine on you lushes!
Re: Today
We’re doing a budget/finance/planning meeting and then heading out for lunch.
“Well what if we discover we can’t afford to eat out?” James asked.
“I’ll charge it, damnit,” replied his fiscally savvy wife.
No, I don’t have a costume for Nora Lea.
I may have told you I do, but I don’t.
I can’t think long enough to do it.
I haven’t slept more than three hours in a row for half a year.
Sitter troubles conspire as well.
Trying to work full time in-between her increasingly shorter naps means I run and run and run and then sit at a computer with the hot burning panic in my neck. Falling asleep is a bust as I review all that was left undone all day long.
No time for the things I love, no time to move ahead.
The think that’s killing me the most is that it’s my clients that are losing — they’re losing because what I used to pride myself on was going the extra mile, coming up with new ideas, presenting solutions to delight and inspire them and since this?
This lack of child care by me or anyone?
Since this came about I’m barely scraping by, barely finishing work I promised just after the deadline.
I feel terrible, horrible and no good.
I stink at sleeping.
Who stinks at sleeping?
Stinking at sleeping makes me stink at everything else.
Especially motherhood.
The only time I’m not rushing anywhere is the one minute the conditioner sits on my hair in the shower. That’s it. Everything else is rushing.
Rushing to pick up a hollering baby, rushing to send that email, rushing to make dinner, rushing to get the laundry folded before the screams get louder, more email, rushing to get to bed so I can rush to feed her.
Rushing awake to her next nap and you should see my desk.
Piles and piles of piles sitting there waiting until “I can get to it.”
Contractors go unpaid, insurance crap from a year ago goes untended.
Dark times right now.
I know they’ll get better. I know I’ll feel differently after a few hours sleep (see last post) but right now it’s dark. And on this, my favorite holiday of the year the only thing I can think about is how the nonstop ringing of the doorbell is going to irritate me and the dog.
Yes I love her, yes, I know what I signed up for.
Yes, that’s what I get for breeding.
Yes, I deserve every bit of it.
I’m just overwhelmed.
Again.
And can’t seem to get out of it.
Happy that the sleep situation has improved.
Gretchen from The Happiness Project sums it up best. She reminds me that sleep is very important. And lately, I’ve come to find it’s the most important.
Sleep makes it all better.
I’ve discovered that without enough sleep, I hate myself.
It’s biological.
It’s that simple.
Truly, when I’m caught up on sleep, my brain’s running commentary stays positive, stays forward focused.
“Hey, HJ, way to go.
You’re doing all right.
You’re making things happen.”
When I’m tired, the running commentary goes more like,
“You will never catch up.
You are a loser.
Who in the hell do you think you are?”
Simple, sleep.
So I look forward to naps and naps and napping and more naps. I look forward to starting the wee Nora Lea (as we now call her) on rice cereal and sleep increasing. I look forward to having James here this weekend, so I can nap some more. I look forward to naps.
I look forward to positive self-talk,
instead of that mean lady stuff.
Every sentence begins with, “I’m sorry…”
I hate that, I hate being sorry.
Sorry I’m late.
Sorry, the babysitter didn’t make it
(THREE TIMES - three different sitters.)
Sorry, I’m late.
I weep at everything.
There is no time for rest.
Sorry, I’m late.
I try to meet all the obligations
the expectations
the things I said I’d do
I said that last year,
last month,
last week
but I am late.
Sorry, I’m late.
I am so tired.
Three times a night, like I’ve done for months.
I am falling behind.
I am so tired.
This makes me late.
Sorry, I’m late.
I have a talented husband.
He writes music.
You can listen to it if you want.
Do you need music?
Because he’d like to write some for you.
He can also do this:
I think you could get yourself over to
http://www.oopswines.com/contest.cfm
to win yourself some stuff.
Yes, I think you could do that quite well.
My beef is not with Oovoo, the video chat and conferencing tool that’s been running this commercial for the past few weeks.
My beef is that if the executive running the meeting was a woman, this whole commercial would have a different feel.
And that’s irritating.
Instead of the meeting attendees giggling at that impish little girl, there would have been “Why can’t she control her brat?”
She would have been perceived as neglectful to her children, not raising them properly, a high strung fast-track career woman who should be home with them.
Oh, the snide remarks I’ve heard from conference call attendees when one work at home mom has been interrupted.
In the commercial, the child whispers to her dad, “Make some money.”
Just imagine the implications if she whispered that to her mom!
My beef is not with Oovoo, it’s with the way working mothers are perceived.
And that’s irritating.
She’s three months, that adorably giggly and roly-poly time of life.
Immobile, yet charming.
I’m back working.
Interviewing people to take care of the lass while I work.
(I’m not as picky as I thought I would be.)
Four long hour stretches, three days a week.
Feels right. But strange.
Has my life changed since I had Nora Lea?
Yes.
Has it been the most mind-blowingly-knock-me-to-my-knees experience?
No.
But I really like it.
Folks told me about how much I would change.
And I couldn’t wait.
I looked forward to being replaced with a new person,
Mother Helen Jane.
Mother would be filled with selfless thoughts and actions.
Mother’s time would magically expand to include
hours of gazing into her eyes,
hours of playing on the floor,
hours of nothing but love.
Mother would be different than before,
better.
But, nope, good old selfish, competitive, Regular Helen Jane still exists.
Trying, all right.
But still me.
Fitting in Mother moments here and there, but reality pulls us back to What Must Be Done.
Right now, she’s sleeping in with her dad,
seeing that, my heart stretches bigger.
But I’m still me.
Balancing work and house and friends and responsibilities and family and a baby.
I prefer the baby
but I’m still me.
This past weekend, my sister told me about the best baby shower game she ever played.
Each attendee waved a magic wand over the pregnant lady.
Each attendee wished that the baby would have one of the great attributes she herself had.
So every party goer had to say something nice about themselves
AND
wish it on the baby.
If you ask me, that’s way better than that poopy diaper game with the melty chocolate bars in them.
Man, I’m sensitive lately.
I assume it’s because of the sleep deprivation.
Up at one, three and six am.
I need to take more naps.
If you ask me a question, I might cry.
If you look at me with a raised eyebrow, I might cry.
I need to take more naps.
It’s the work thing too.
Not remembering that I’m the mother to a two month old and not the other lady.
The lady that browsed aimlessly for hours.
The lady that Googled herself.
The lady that didn’t know about diapers that change color when the baby pees.
Now it’s all for someone else.
Some of the things this mother of a two month old is doing:
Second Annual Bocce Chili and Cornbread Cookoff tomorrow.
Cookbook Club meets about the Elephant Walk cookbook - Cambodian food wins it all.
Planning Cheesewhizzes Wisconsin.
Facebook makes me grin each and every day.
(Friend me, yo)
The first of many annual family portraits by a photographer that makes me swoon.
Halloween costume planning. My. First. With. A. Baby. (!!!)
Also, is teething nigh?
No, couldn’t be.
Been getting into a routine.
There are feedings, naps and parties.
There is crying, poop and snuffling.
This is motherhood.
Went to San Francisco yesterday for some time with my sister.
I am so proud of her, making decisions based on what she wants, rather than what she should do.
Apartment, job and look at her go!
She built a brand new life in two short weeks.
And I’m so happy for her.
I’m proud of her too.
(Did I mention that?)
I can’t wait for Nora Lea to have a relationship with her Auntie. I hope Clare will be someone Nora Lea can learn from and confide in, the friend Clare is to me.
Stressed about driving, nap time and engorgement, I didn’t enjoy my time as much as I should have.
I keep thinking about that.
Remembering my twenties, I remember worrying about money, not enjoying my friends and my freedom as I could have.
Remembering my teens, I worried about dating, about school, about perception. I could have worried less and enjoyed that perfect waist a little more.
Eighty year old Helen Jane shakes her head at Helen Jane in her thirties when she worries so much.
She says to me,
“You must sit in the backyard sun with your dog.
You must sniff your daughter’s head.
You must go on that date with your husband.
You must take more photos.”
She is right.
Eighty year old Helen Jane is always right.
