School Days

For a so-called stay-at-home-mom ("SAHM"), it seems that I am hardly ever home these days. I thought that what with August ending and our weekends no longer being PACKED with activities, I would have some time to just chill with my girl. But no. Now we have preschool, and OB appointments, and study appointments, and YMCA for mama's exercise and daycare. And at night, I have meetings for the preschool, and book club meetings, and neighborhood association meetings. Etc., etc., etc. The weekends are now about the only time we have at home, together, but of course those get swallowed up often by time spent with extended family and/or friends we haven't spent time with in too long. Time is at a premium, and while I want my little one to be able to taste all of what is out there for her, I also don't want her life to actually become stressful at 21 months. She is a little bitty person with a short time here so far. She moves slowly through the world, taking her time to notice each thing (often for the first time!), to remember its name, to take in its presence with all of her senses. Today we went to Subway for lunch after I went to the lab at the hospital to have my blood drawn, and she sat right down at our table and started staring at the ladies at the table across from us. "Hi, ladies!" she said, and she kept on saying it ("Hi! Hi!") and swinging her legs in her chair and smashing her chip with her fingers on the table. She was right there with a big grin on her face, soaking up life, and I can honestly say I do believe she's had a big day today. She got to press the buttons on the elevator, she got to look at the pictures in the lobby, and she got to sit in Mama's lap while the lady took Mama's blood with a needle (and she's the one who got the lollipop afterward!). I suppose this is all to say that I need to be mindful of the fact that I do not need to structure every moment of her days in order for her days to be well-spent. I think we as mothers - as parents - can get too caught up in all of the "activities" that are out there, and feeling like we need to sign our children up for each and every one. My daughter's favorite thing to do right now is to sit at the dining room table with some play-doh and plastic cookie cutters and just make snakes and noodles and stars for a little while. She wants to put the play-doh right up to her nose and take a giant whiff and say "Yucky!" and break it all apart, only to stick it all back together again in a big hunk. This does not require me to change her clothes, put on shoes and socks, get into the car or out again. She requires only a hand to get up into the seat of the chair, and someone to get the play-doh and toys out for her. And she's in heaven.

We go to the co-op preschool through South Seattle Community College once a week. My daughter thinks this is the best place in the whole wide world. When we go to "school" there are stations of fun activities set up for her to play with, and she can just run around like a crazy person checking each one out. Her favorites are the play-doh table (of course), the sensory table (changing each week from water to rice to silky scarves), and the larger play area where there are things like slides and tunnels set up for all the kids. Then we have snack time, which is a little more challenging, as my daughter has to sit in a chair at a table and eat her snack, which is different from all the other kids' snacks, so she usually thinks she would rather have what some other child is having instead of her own thing, and also she wants to get down and go roll around on the mats some more with her orange slice instead of sitting in her seat, because she is just so gosh-darned excited to be there. Then we have music time, which involves all of the kids shaking little maracas and bells to songs like "Shake My Sillies Out" and sitting in their mamas' laps to sing more interactive songs. And then comes the most magical moment of the whole week for my daughter, in which she can hardly contain herself and literally squeals with delight: we sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" with all of the lights turned out, laying on our backs and looking at twinkling Christmas lights on the ceiling. For my daughter, this is IT. She grows quiet and still as a snail, and you can almost see her whole little body trembling with anticipation for the special song. She cannot stop talking about it all week long, and will positively tell anyone she meets about this experience.

I honestly wasn't sure if I wanted to do co-op preschool with my daughter (it does cost about $50 a month, plus some other small fees throughout the year - plus I have to do a "job" for the co-op, which requires more of my time, and we have to attend a once-a-month parents' meeting/training), but this visceral excitement my daughter shows over going to her "school" has sealed it for me, and I now feel bad if we are even a minute late. It also gives me confidence that my daughter will be okay leaving me eventually to go to "real" school, as her experience with the whole idea has been so positive thus far.

I wanted to also talk today about "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style," which I have been watching on Bravo each week (gosh it's been a long time). Here's my review so far: honestly I find it a little bit disappointing and lame. I was so excited for Tim to have his own show, but it quickly became evident to me that this is not at all Tim's own show; Tim is pretty much just the name, and the bitch for Bravo and Macy's hyper-advertising. I mean, every time the fashion-challenged woman goes shopping for her wardrobe, she has to go to Macy's. I honestly cannot think of a worse place to shop for an entire wardrobe, particularly if you're not sure of what you're doing. Macy's is a very scary place to me; it just seems to go on and on and on and no one ever seems to be able to help me with what I need. I went shopping there last spring for a new foundation, and I swear to God, the saleslady was like, "Well, here are all the shades - go ahead and try them on and see what you like best." Um, hello! I can do that at Bartell's! If you're charging me $50 for foundation, you'd better be sitting me down in a comfortable chair, giving me a hand massage, and applying that shit from a new bottle with special sponge applicator, followed by a full makeover. Anyway, that's my rant about Macy's. The other issue I have with this show is that Tim and Veronica Webb (certainly a fierce 80's supermodel but not a very likeable co-host and handholder to these women - I mean, would you want to go underwear shopping with a 6-foot tall ice queen? Okay, I guess I would, too, if she was taking me to La Perla and buying me whatever I wanted.) are just not hard enough on these women. My favorite makeover show ever was the BBC's "What Not to Wear" with Trinnie and Susannah, both fashion editors at Vogue. Those ladies were hard-CORE! They never held back, and hounded the women through their shopping experiences until they were breaking down, sobbing in the dressing room, but they actually did get them to get it right in the end. Plus, they were on British television, so they could say wonderful things like "That jumper makes your tits look like absolute rubbish!" AND, when they showed video of the women weeks later on that show, the women still had it together, for the most part. Tim's show is disappointing because the women all seem to go back to their old hairstyle and never seem to get the makeup on the right way again. I wish they didn't just recruit all of their women on that show from New Jersey, because I totally want to be on it. And I would be Tim's star student, except that I would be a little bit demanding, I'm afraid. I would be like, "And when you open the magic armoire, Tim and Veronica, I'd like there to be a Ferragamo Python Flap-Top bag and some matching pumps. That will be just what I need to inspire me for my day of shopping. What's that? Oh no, darling - of course you can't get those at Macy's! And I won't be doing any of my other shopping at Macy's either. We all know that Macy's sucks. I know you two would never shop there, and I want to be just like you."

In other news, the new ANNIE LENNOX album has come out!!! HOORAY!!! "Songs of Mass Destruction" looks like a winner - now I've just got to get my ears on it, girl. Lord knows I need something in the car besides the "Curious George" soundtrack and the compilation of random annoying children's music my daughter loves.

What else is new? Oh, well - fall is here. Boy, is it. It's raining and pouring here in Seattle and the leaves have turned overnight. Because of the chill in the air, I was inspired to make beef bourguignon and zucchini gratin (ooh la la!) for a great big family dinner, and it ROCKED. Thank you, Julia Child and Barefoot Contessa. More on Ina Garten later, as she is one of my all-time idols and I just want to go to her house in the Hamptons and sit by the fire, sipping whiskey sours, and having all my flowers arranged by a bunch of super-friendly, preppy gays. What a life.

Enjoy the new chill, and enjoy all of your fall and back-to-school memories.

Showing

I just got off the phone with my educational loans people, asking for a forbearance. Finally. I've been nervous about starting this, because I'm not sure that I want to let go of my 3-year grace period just yet. I'm a big hoarder - you should see my basement. I've got enough canned tomatoes, soup, pasta and tonic water to survive if the big one hits and we somehow manage to live through it. We might be unable to use electricity or plumbing, but if we've got a can opener and maybe some gin, we're in great shape.

Anyway, the payments are getting to be too much for our single-income family, so it's the right thing to do now. I also cancelled our New York Times subscription today, because it's very expensive and generally serves only as extra weight in our recycle bin at the end of the week. I loved the idea of getting the NY Times every weekend - curling up with a cup of coffee and the Magazine or the Book Review, hours and hours of blissful quiet and peace stretched before me, but come on. Are you kidding me? That was in another life, and hopefully in a life somewhere far in the future, when there are no children running around here on a Sunday morning trying to stick their fingers in light sockets and screaming, "Cinderella, on! Cinderella, on!" Good-bye, highbrow intellectual me. Hello, Survival Mama. Stained, tattered Mama who now showers every other OTHER day and uses moisturizer and deodorant as an afterthought.

I realized the other day, fighting the crowds at an outlet mall to buy my daughter some new fall clothes at Carter's, that I am far more concerned with what she is wearing and the state of HER clothes than with my own. Before I had kids, when I would dream about life with kids, I would always picture myself as one of those very together mommies, with nary a wrinkle or a stain on my tailored wool pants and silk blouse, and though it would be a challenge sometimes, I would always wear at least just a little bit of makeup to brighten up my face. Fast-forward to reality: most days I hang around in my bathrobe, mascara smudged under my eyes from last night, until an hour in the day I prefer not to mention, hoping for a window of opportunity in which to bathe myself before putting on a new pair of underwear. My other issue with getting dressed these days is my in-between waistline. My regular pants don't quite fit me anymore, but maternity pants look ridiculous - like I'm trying to "look" pregnant. I almost forgot about this schleppy-sloppy time of pregnancy, where mostly you just look like you haven't been taking care of yourself. It doesn't help that I reach for the same old black yoga pants almost every single day, just as soon as I step out of my bathrobe.

What's been a trip is that my tummy is really sticking out much sooner this time. I had convinced myself that I was really just behind on my situps, and I really needed to start drinking my coffee without two heaping teaspoons of sugar and a hefty pour of half and half each morning, but some good friends plus a random old woman in my workout class at the Y pointed out to me that indeed, I was "showing" (the old lady said it was either that or I was just really putting on the pounds. I told her she was very lucky that I was pregnant, or I would have had to strangle her with a resistance band). Note to reader: Just because you are old and/or have been around the block a time or two, that does not give you the right to approach random people and ask, "Are you pregnant?" What the hell is wrong with you! I swear it seems sometimes like people never had a mother - at least a mother that taught them anything about how to act.

The other thing that people have said to me so far this time that has been annoying is, "Another one? Already?" As if I have not waited the requisite time of _____ (insert random time period here) and have, most irresponsibly, disrupted some code of child-spacing. My daughter is almost 20 months now. That means that when this baby is born, she will be almost 27 months old. It's not like I got pregnant right away, and the second one will be born before the first one can even walk! Good Lord. It's hard not to get freaked out by what people say, though, especially since there are no certainties around the whole child-bearing/child-rearing thing. Surely if I lived in another community, people would be saying, "Well, what took you so long?" I have to remember that what my husband and I are doing is right for us, and stake my confidence on that.

That brings me to something that is constantly on my mind; the whole thing about staying at home and not being out there working, using my law degree to the greatest extent possible. I used to really worry about it, most of all because when our daughter was born, the amount of time I was going to take "off" kept changing the older she got - my husband and I hadn't really hammered it out as much as we should have. And money kept getting tighter and tighter (it still is). But the more I stayed home with her, the more I knew that this was what I should be doing - what made me the happiest. I also knew that going to work and being away from her was going to make me very, very sad. I do not know a single other woman who was an attorney and had a baby and now stays home full-time. That is a bit disconcerting - it makes me feel sometimes as if I am not following the "right" track for a female attorney, and that somehow I will never find my way back on again. But I have faith that this experience, while taking me out of legal practice for a while, will make me an even better attorney - more well-rounded, perhaps - and one who is not bitter for having "missed out" on these formative years. My hope is that I will be more than ready to go back to work when the time comes. Fresh and optimistic. Certainly, I want my children to see me take my education and use it to make a difference out there in the world, and contribute to the household income to boot. I also want them to see that I am committed to them, and that nothing is more important than the time I got to spend with them when they were small.

Life is much less complicated these days for me. It is also much less glamorous, a little softer around the edges, a lot more raw. I talk about poop now with all kinds of people and don't even give it a second thought. I sing "B-I-N-G-O" right out loud with my daughter and show her my bellybutton when she shows me hers - I don't care who's around. It is very rare that I get flustered or embarrassed around other people now, or that I fail to say what I really think, without my voice shaking so much. I don't get bogged down, stressed out by what I think people are thinking of me or what they actually mean by what they say. I live rich in the knowledge that nothing else really matters, when it comes right down to it. Nothing but my family. I will work hard to support and promote that, and the rest is just bullshit. I would want to hire someone like me.