It’s my job to protect my child, not your feelings.

A friend of mine has a tough decision to make, and I would not want to be in her shoes. She’s a new mom, and there’s an important family event planned that she is expected to attend… in India. So she has to decide whether to bring her baby girl, who will be just a year old by then. If she decides not to bring the baby, she has to choose between going without her daughter and staying home.

If my friend goes without the baby, she has to leave her with her grandparents for at least ten days while she travels to the other side of the planet. (Not exactly a short flight away if anything happens.) Plus, she will miss her daughters’s first birthday and first Christmas. If she chooses to stay home, it’s been made clear to her that her family will be deeply hurt and disappointed.

My first inclination is say her family members are adults and they will get over it, but it’s not that black and white. We all can attest to how difficult it is to disappoint your family, especially if you’re a bit of a co-dependent like me who has gone her whole life trying to make these people happy. How do you just turn that off as soon as you have child?

I’m glad I don’t have to make this decision. I know what I would want to do – stay home with my baby and celebrate her first birthday and Christmas. But I honestly don’t know what I would actually do.

When a baby is born – especially your first one – the mama bear instincts kick in fast. For example, you probably required everyone to wash their hands before they could hold your tiny, perfect baby. Most people did it without even being asked, and others quickly agreed to do so without protest. But what do you do when your Great Aunt Lucy says, “Oh, my hands are clean,” and reaches for the baby?

Since you were a child, others told you, “Oh, just do like she asked,” whenever Great Aunt Lucy made a demand. You learned early on that it was easier to accommodate her than to confront her.

But now you’re a mom, and the needs of your helpless baby weigh heavier than anything Great Aunt Lucy wants... right? It’s easy to say, “Of course! You tell her to wash her damn hands!” But almost everyone has a Great Aunt Lucy in their lives, and it’s not always easy to suddenly stand up to someone with whom you have always backed down.

I’ve found myself not speaking up many times since Quinn was born. I didn’t speak up to friends and family who refused to wash their hands before holding him. I didn’t stand up to the pediatrician when she told me to start giving Q rice cereal at four-months-old even though I strongly disagreed. As a new mom, I didn’t trust my own instincts. I didn’t want to be that mom everyone rolls their eyes about. And every time I stayed silent, I became more and more furious with myself.

But this time around, I’m older and wiser. I will not give Baby Dragon rice cereal until he’s at least six-months-old, no matter what Dr. L. says. Anyone who wants to touch him will wash their hands in my presence. Anyone who is covered in dirt and sweat after being outside will not rest my baby on their filth-covered shoulder. If anyone shows any sign of illness around my baby, we will leave. I will not have that shit. Not anymore.

Two years into motherhood, it’s getting easier for me to speak up. I trust myself more. It’s my job as a mom to protect my children and be their voice when they don’t have one They depend on me for to put their needs first,and I owe more loyalty to them than anyone else. As hard as it is to stand up to other adults, they are adults and they will get over it, and they can roll their eyes about me being that mom all they want.

I know I cannot protect my children forever. So I will let them fall and get hurt and work out disagreements with other kids on their own, and it will build their character. But when I feel I need to jump in, oh, yes, I will do it.

It won’t be easy to speak up to all the Great Aunt Lucys in the world, and I will sometimes fail and let myself and my children down. But I vow to start choosing the hard thing, to start speaking up. I will choose to protect my children’s health, physical safety and emotional security before I will choose to protect some grown person’s feelings.

As moms, I hope we can give each other encouragement and support when we're faced with these difficult situations and that we help each other find our courage and our voice. 

The Lizard {Not-so-wordy Wednesday}

Right now, I can hear Quinn on the baby monitor telling his Lovey Dog a story about the two of them driving a dump truck as he tries not to fall asleep. I hear Hubs hammering away in the garage as he assembles the nightstand for Q’s new Big Boy Bedroom. I’m surrounded by boy-ness, and that’s not likely to change. But these sounds bring a smile to my face and my heart. This Boy Mom stuff is pretty fun.

It’s already shaping up to be a fun summer with Q, my two-year-old who is all boy. We run and get dirty and jump off of things and swim and play in the sand. We fall and skin our knees and cover our wounds in kisses and Lightning McQueen Band-Aids. We examine bugs of all kinds (and levels of creepiness), and Q squats low behind them to get a closer look, being careful not to touch or squish.

Chasing lizards in the back yard might be Q’s new favorite thing. He lights up whenever he spots one sunning itself on a rock in our fire pit or scurrying across the fence. The lizards are quicker than Q is, though, and they dive into hiding when they see him coming. But Q has a surprising amount of patience for a toddler (but only when it comes to lizard stalking), and he’ll try hard to wait them out.

Now if only he could wait quietly, he just might have a chance of catching one. 

The Transition: From career woman to SAHM to WAHM to total insanity

When I started consulting part-time, I was ecstatic. My old identity started to creep back into my bloodstream. My brain began to fill with creative ideas and business knowledge instead of just nap schedules and grocery lists. I felt smart again. I had really started to miss being something other than “just a mom.” I wanted to be a mom AND… something… anything…

One of the first (and only) books I read after Q was born was When Did I Get Like This?, by Amy Wilson. It’s hysterical. At one point, Wilson discusses how hard it is to talk to people once you’ve transitioned into SAHM-hood. Someone will ask you what you do for a living, and as soon as you say you stay home with the kids, you see their eyes glaze over as they tune you out and you’re “immediately rendered uninteresting.” So you find yourself hurriedly following up with what you used to do back when you had a Big Girl Job so people know that you’re smart and educated and you hope they will once again see you as a contributor to society. They have no idea how smart you have to be to out-smart a toddler!

I think many career women who become SAHMs have the same idea. We’re going to stop working for a little while, spend some great quality time with the kiddos when they’re little, and at some point we’ll go back to work. Maybe full-time, maybe part-time. Maybe we’ll wait until the youngest starts school. Maybe we’ll give just a year or two.

Whatever we decide, we know the best of both worlds is within our reach. We’re intelligent women! It’s 2013! And this America, for cryin’ out loud! We now have the freedom to choose whatever we want. We can make this work, and everything will be perfect!

That’s what I thought when I went back to work part-time. I would still be a full-time SAHM and spend lots of quality time with Quinn. I would also get to be the old me just a few hours a week. It would tough, but manageable.

I thought a little separation would be good for both Quinn and me. I would learn to let go a little instead of being so particular. Quinn would learn some independence and not be quite so attached to me. I would actually enjoy my rush hour commute because I would listen my music for a change. Instead of listening to Elmo and Choo-Choo Soul, I could blast “90’s on 9” and “Backspin” and listen to hip-hop without worrying about cuss words.

But in reality, I’m really struggling with letting go, Quinn cries every Wednesday morning when I leave for the office, and I cry all the way there and rarely even turn the radio on.

I realized that working and mommy-ing is a whole lot tougher than I thought. I feel like having the opportunity to do everything just gives me the opportunity to suck at everything because I’ve convinced myself that I’m expected to do and be everything. Of course, no one actually expects that but me. That’s what happens when you’re a perfectionist who’s fueled by accomplishment. You take on too much and become an anxiety-ridden stress case who doesn’t sleep. (Someone please send my husband a trophy of some kind. He deserves one.)

When I’m with Quinn, I’m worrying about work, and then I feel guilty for not focusing on Quinn. When I’m working, I’m worrying about Quinn, and then I feel guilty for not concentrating on work. I know most working moms can relate to that! (Can I get an amen?!)

And now that I’m pregnant again, I feel like I’m being extra selfish by starting this job. I think I should be spending the next few months savoring my last alone time with Quinn and ensuring he feels loved. But instead, I’m trying to squeeze in as much work time as I can so I don’t have a four-year gap in my resume and become completely irrelevant.

*Sigh* The problem with never settling for less is that you Never. Settle. For less.

That’s the tough thing about choices – you always wonder if you made the right one. So I keep going back to my 2013 theme word, CHOOSE. If I make the choice that makes me happiest and the one I think is best for my family, it will be the right choice. And right now, that means I should keep my part-time gig. And if at any point that changes, I can make a different choice. I don’t have to do or be everything. I don’t even have to do it right. I just have to do my best.

Besides, perfection is really boring anyway... right? 

Adventures in Babysitting (or “Wading though the crazies to find a nanny’)

The whole part-time consulting thing happened really fast, so I was in a pinch to find a babysitter STAT! I asked around for referrals and posted inquiries in my mommy Yahoo! Group, but didn’t have any luck. So I resorted to Care.com.

Finding a babysitter is kind of like online dating, or so I presume since I only know about it from my few single friends who have given it a whirl. You try to meet potential suitors babysitters the old fashioned way, like going to bars parks and cooking classes mommy groups. Then you tell your friends you’re ready to get set up, and they tell you about this great guy nanny they know. You arrange a blind date meeting, and they seem great at first, but you quickly figure out it’s never going anywhere.

So you resort to dating child care websites like E-Harmony Care.com. You post a description of what you’re looking for, you read through a couple hundred profiles only to find yourself seriously underwhelmed, and then you wade through a bazillion messages from dudes nannies who claim they’re the perfect match for you. You find a small few who sound good on paper and write them back and arrange a time to talk on the phone. If all goes well, you arrange an in-person encounter. You go through this process a couple dozen times while your standards get lower and lower.

It pretty much sucks, people. Here’s how my nanny hunt went down.

Ninety percent of the responses I received from Care.com nannies were so poorly written, I could hardly read them. I could tell most of them didn’t speak English very well, if at all. (Not that I’m opposed to hiring someone from another country, but if you can’t speak English, you definitely won’t be able to speak Quinn-ese). Others I could tell were just not very bright. (Hi, let me introduce you to this thing called “punctuation” because you’re 50-line, stream of consciousness email with no periods, commas or capital letters is KILLING ME!)

Three of the girls with whom I arranged phone interviews didn’t answer my call at the scheduled time, nor did they bother to return my call when I left a voicemail. (Nice. Thanks ladies. Very professional.)

One lady, Mercedes, said her husband wanted to come with her while she watched my son. (Um… no. That’s just creepy, so… no.)

Theresa never showed up for our in person meeting. When I called her, she said she forgot because she lost her calendar. (Yeah, it’s 2013. Your calendar should be on your phone by now.) She said she would call me back when she got home and could look at her calendar so we could reschedule. (Wait. I thought you lost your calendar…) Then she didn’t show up for the second meeting, and I didn’t bother calling her to find out why.

Susan told me she quit her last job because the three-year-old she cared for had an “attitude problem.” (What? Did you really just say that?) Then she freaked me out and said there were a couple things I should know about her before we met in person. (Huh? Um, okay…) 

First, she said she was Muslim and wore a head scarf, so I should be prepared for that. (Uh, yeah, I think I can deal. I really don’t care that you’re Muslim, and should I be insulted right now?) Second, she said she was “really fat” (her words), and some people are surprised when they see her. (Yeah, again, I don’t care how much you weigh, and again, I’m sorta insulted.) 

After we hung up, Susan texted me and said she mapped out my address and it would be a twenty-minute drive from her house and that was too far. (Really? REALLY? You live in Silicon-f**kin- Valley, and you’re turning your nose up at a twenty-minute commute? Well, I wasn’t going to call you back anyway because you’re f**king crazy, so there.)

After many frustrated – and maybe slightly hormonal – tears, Lisa entered our lives. I saw her email in response to my post, and I didn’t even write her back. I just picked up the phone and called her out of the blue, and we arranged a meeting for that same afternoon. She was sweet and seemed like she might be a good fit, so she watched Q for a couple hours the very next day. She and Q became instant friends, and now she watches him twice a week while I work. Phew!  

Moral of the story, online dating nanny-searching is not for the anxious or impatient.* It takes diligence, perseverance, and determination to stick to your standards and demand the best. And a very tolerant girlfriend husband who will listen to you vent about every single crazy you come across.

* I.e, not for me.

So tell me about your adventures in babysitting. How many crazies did you wade through before you found someone you trusted with your child? I know you’ve got some stories!

That is SO a penis.

We didn’t find out the baby’s gender when we were pregnant with Quinn. We just let the anticipation and suspense build until he was born. It drove other people crazy that we weren’t finding out, but we loved the not knowing. I mean, really loved it. Er, at least I did.

“How can you not want to know?!” people would demand and look at me like I was nuts.  And then I would say, “Um. Like this. Watch. This is me. Not knowing. And still functioning like a non-crazy person. So stop looking at me like that.”

Okay, I didn’t really say that, but I wanted to. I mean, seriously, are pink and blue the only paint color options for nurseries? What year is it?

“I’m a planner,” people would tell me. “I would have to know.” Yeah, well, I’m a huge planner, too, but whether it’s a boy or a girl, the baby’s still coming, so how much does the gender really affect the planning? You still need a shit ton of baby stuff. You just get it in any color that isn’t pink. Easy. I mean, are gender-neutral baby clothes, blankets and nurseries really that atrocious? ‘Cause I think Q’s gender-neutral giraffe nursery is darling.

Here’s another reason why not knowing the gender is awesome. Instead of buying you a bunch of baby clothes that your child will only wear once or not at all, you get stuff you actually need. From your registry. Instead of being sucked in by the racks of irresistibly cute baby clothing, your family and friends stick to the list that you spent weeks agonizing over conveniently preparing for them. They buy you diapers and wipes and bottles and changing pads and crib sheets and Diaper Genies and Pack-N-Plays and bouncy seats and swings and strollers and bath tubs and car seats and gift cards burp cloths and and and and….

All that stuff gets ridiculously expensive when you have to buy it all yourself, so it’s nice when other people buy it for you. The baby clothes are cheap and fun to shop for, so I would rather buy them myself anyway. So we ended up with a few white, yellow and green baby clothes and almost everything we registered for. Then the week after Q was born, Hubs went out and bought a bunch of blue clothes and blankets. Babies spend their first few weeks in onesies and swaddles anyway.

But… as much as I love anticipation, we’re going to find out Baby Dragon’s gender. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with finding out. I just said there’s nothing wrong with not finding out. Really what I want to know is whether or not we can get rid of the numerous giant bins of boy's clothes in the garage and free up a ton of storage space that we so desperately need or if we keep the boys clothes and save some money. We officially find out the gender at our eighteen-week ultrasound in three more weeks.

But… we think we may already know… (See, this is where I would normally start building the anticipation… except that I sort of already gave it away in the title of this post… because I really wanted a blog post with the word “penis” in the title… because some things are even more fun than anticipation…. Anyway….)

A couple weeks ago, we went for our nuchal translucency ultrasound. The technician asked if we were going to find out the gender of the baby, and we said yes. Hubs half-jokingly asked her if she could tell us that day, not expecting it to be a possibility. Surprisingly, the technician said she could try. “It’s not always possible to tell this early,” she said, “but when I can tell, I’m almost always right.”

She made a few quick swipes of her magic wand across the cold jelly on my belly, and then she said, “Ah, do you see what I see?”

And there on the monitor was this:

“IT"S A BOY!” Hubs and I shouted. Then I said, “But it’s too soon to know for sure, right? So that could just be the umbilical cord, right?”

“There’s a 55% chance that I’m right,” said the technician. Then she paused for dramatic effect and said with a smile, “But that’s not the umbilical cord.”

She was very careful not to come right out and say it was a boy or confirm the existence of a penis, but…

… that is SO a penis.

Oh yeah, and THIS is happening.

Boredom is my mortal enemy. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I don’t sit still very well. Even when I’m sitting, I’m usually plugging away on my laptop. My need to accomplish often supersedes my needs for food, water and sleep. Hence, my shameful dependency on Red Bull during the day and my fondness for a tall glass of wine at night.

Just in the last month, I started working part-time, interviewed several nannies before finding one I liked (that’s a post all by itself!), launched “Operation Big Boy Bedroom” for Quinn (another future post – it’s going to be so cute when it’s done!), began the process of researching preschools for Q and toured five of them, took on a small writing project, AND somewhere in there I try to find time to write this little ol’ blog.

As if that wasn’t enough, Hubs and I decided to sell our house. We talked to a couple realtors, looked at a bunch of houses … and then decided not to sell our house. So we’re staying put for a while. Whew!

And as I type this, I am on a red-eye flight to Boston to visit two of my college friends who recently had their first babies, and a fourth member of our circle is flying in from Michigan. It’s not going to be wildest girls’ weekend of all time with two new mamas and a preggo, but I’m so excited to see my girls, I can’t stand it!

Wait. Preggo? Oh yeah. I’m pregnant. Minor detail. That means I’m way more exhausted than usual and cannot rely on my usual liquid diet of Red Bull and wine. That also means getting dressed every morning is quite the undertaking because nothing fits me right now. (It took me two hours to pack my tiny suitcase for this four-day trip!) I’m in that super awkward stage of pregnancy where you can’t tell if I have a baby bump or a beer gut. So maternity clothes are still too big, but my usual clothes are way too tight. Thank goodness it’s getting warm out and I can start wearing loose and comfy summer skirts.

Now that I’m in the second trimester and I’m starting to get a little energy back, it’s so tempting to stay up late glued to my laptop and snacking to get all this stuff done. But I know I need to slow down. Five hours of sleep a night is not enough for any human, especially when said human is growing another human in her belly and has to take care of another tiny-yet-active human the next day. Damn, I miss my Red Bull. (Oooooh, sweet nectar….)

There’s so much going on, I haven’t really had time to focus on being pregnant, which is vastly different from my first pregnancy. But now that I’m starting to show, it’s becoming more real. I’m now carving out a little time for myself and the new baby by going to prenatal yoga once a week, so that has really helped. I don’t miss my glass of wine so much on yoga nights.

Another thing that has helped is that we didn’t keep the pregnancy a super secret this time, like we did when I was in my first trimester with Quinn. Since I’m not working full-time, I didn’t have to worry about my manager or co-workers finding out. So this time we told close friends and family, especially those that we see frequently, and just asked that they not mention it on Facebook.

I like it better when it’s not a secret. I mean, I totally get why people choose not to tell right away, but it’s such a pain the ass. Anyone who knows me also knows that I like my wine, my Red Bull, and my Diet Pepsi, so constantly coming up with lies for why I’m drinking water gets really old. At some point, you’re just insulting people’s intelligence. So as soon as I got the blood test results, I didn’t bother lying to anyone. It’s been much easier this way.

I made a promise to myself this week to slow down, get some more sleep and take good care of this little baby. (We have reason to believe it’s A BOY, but more on that in future post, too!) However, this promise directly conflicts with my other promise to get my jiggle preggo ass to the gym in the mornings. Now that I’m over the continuous barfy feeling that plagued me the entire first trimester, I have no excuse not to go. But that means I have to cut back in other areas, and sleep cannot be one of them! It’s all about choices, right? 

Meet Baby Dragon

Remember how I said this whole new job thing has really cut into my blogging time? Yeah, well, there’s another reason I’ve been a little M.I.A. lately.

I’m preggers again!

Yep. I’m fourteen weeks along and officially in my second trimester. Here’s a little picture of our LBK² from our ultrasound last week. (Notice, that instead of “LBK2,” I went with the superscript number two. That’s because two kids are exponentially more work than one kid, not just double. Well, that’s just a theory at this point, but I’d be willing to bet Q’s college fund on it.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re doing the math and going, “Uh, fourteen weeks, you say? Um, wasn’t your husband traveling all over for the world for, like, months?”

Yeah. We’re sort of surprised, too. Not surprised as in “Whoops! We didn’t mean to get knocked up!” kind of surprised. We’re surprised as in, “Wow, how that work after only two months of trying?” Hubs traveled for business a little December, half of January and all of February, but he did come home on most weekends.

What can I say? The man’s efficient.

Anyhoot, we’re due in October, and we couldn’t be more excited! 

I found out I was pregnant while Hubs was traveling, so I taught Quinn to say “I’m a big brother,” and he got to tell Daddy the news on the phone. Hubs' reaction quickly went from stunned to thrilled. 

Last week, we went public with the news, which, of course, means we announced it on Facebook. Hubs and I updated our cover photos with this image and waited to see who noticed. We bought a pair of Converse All Stars for the new baby, and took the photo at the elementary school playground down the street. Adorable, right? I know!

Our first ultrasound image, taken at seven weeks preggo, has been hanging on our fridge. Quinn is convinced it’s a picture of a dragon. I have no idea where he gets that. I’ve looked and looked at this thing, and I don’t see a dragon, but then again, Quinn sees things that I don’t see all the time. 

Can you see the dragon?

So LBK² is also known as Baby Dragon. Yes, I promise, we will not actually name our child Dragon.

Unless it’s a girl, then of course, we’re naming her Dragon.