Giving Up

Can I get just a wee bit religous with you for a second? Don't worry I'm not going to try to save you and my atheist husband will have a heart attack when he reads this but I feel like I have to write about it.

Background information: born and raised Catholic. Currently a practicing Catholic and by practicing I mean I have lots of guilt and go to mass during Lent.

I have had my fair share of the drama lately. I still cannot go into details but that is not really the point of this post. I have been feeling lost, helpless, confused. I lie awake at night wondering, questioning.

This morning I went to mass. I don't think I have been since Leo's baptism in September. The drama is not what spurred me to go. I simply went because I have been meaning to go to mass and the timing just seemed to work out this morning.



While I was there the drama hit me full force. As I was holding my sleeping son in my lap, my eyes stung with the tears I was struggling to keep in. I started to pray.



I never understood when people said give up your problems to God. I always thought, "shouldn't you do something about your problems instead of relying on someone else?" But today, for some reason, I did just that.



And He answered me. He inspired me to tackle the drama. He gave me hope. He showed me a path. It is going to be a long, painful, twisty path. But where I had been staring at a wall, I am now looking down a path.

I now understand when people say give up your problems to God. That is what I did today and I am so grateful.

Don't worry Captain America, I'm not going to turn into a Bible thumper. We don't even own a bible upon which to thump.

In unrelated news, we took Leo to a park for the first time today. He loved it despite falling out of my arms and getting a huge bruise on his cheek. I'm going to have to delay his one year pictures again!

Drunken Frosting

I had a very serious, introspective blog post all planned out in my head that I wanted to write tonight. But life got in the way (ok fine, I've been playing with my new google phone all night) and I'm too tired to deal with anything heavy.

Instead I shall leave you with photographic evidence of why one should not drink wine and try to bake/frost a cake at the same time.

I give you Exhibit A - the organic chocolate cake and organic vanilla frosting that I prepared for Leo's first birthday:



Yes, I made him an organic cake (it was still a mix from a box) and then royally screwed up the frosting. Needless to say, this cake did not make it to the party and I ended up just giving him a slice of the adult cake instead which he refused to smash.

Fluff

It's August.

Blah. Blerg. Meh.

I do not like August. It is without a doubt my least favorite month. It is sticky and disgustingly hot. There are no holidays. It is really long. And because I represent schools, work is mind numbingly slow since every one is on vacation. Really I might poke my eyes out at work from boredom. My big projects this month are preparing a presentation and working on a brief that is due in October. I usually just struggle through the month at work but it is making it even harder to be away from my son since I feel like I am doing nothing productive at work. Well, I have gotten in some good blog reading and it appears that all my favorite bloggers will be at Blogher this week and they have better set up some guest posts or something to keep me from taking a two hour lunch at Target.

Speaking of Target, it is one of those magical times of year where random stuff is on sale. Like this totally awesome, very sophisticated toddler chair.

It is very important looking. Leo is going to sit in it and read many leather-bound books in it.

In reality, he's been climbing it and trying to launch himself over the back.

And there is my blog post o' fluff because the stuff I really want to write about I can't. I want to, I want to pour my little heart out for the internet to see but it's just too personal and I fear the repercussions. Rest assured that I am fine and my little family is fine. I am just dealing with some family drama that refuses to end and it is driving me just a little crazy.

A Full Weekend.

This past weekend we took a trip to Palm Desert (La Quinta to be exact) for a little vacay.



We have taken Leo (I'm sick of calling him the beast, his name is Leo) on a lot of trips. His first vacation was to San Diego at 7 weeks. He's been on a plane, train, and automobile. Despite his well traveled status, each trip we take with him I feel like I'm learning something totally new.





Traveling with an infant is definitely a lot different than traveling with a toddler. This was the first time traveling with Leo where he was not dependent on breastfeeding/bottles for eating. He's just about 13 months, he eats real food, three times a day with a snack or two. I didn't think this would be a big deal. I packed some snacks and figured we would just get food in restaurants.




The problem is Captain America and I eat huge, gigantic, oh my gawd you are a fat American, meals on vacation. But we only eat once or twice a day. We started the morning with a typical vacay sized breakfast and were uncomfortably full. After swimming and an epic nap, Leo was hungry again so we headed out to lunch and ate another gigantic meal at a Mexican restaurant. Let's just say there were 5 items between two combo plates and leave it at that.





We go back to the hotel after scoring some new books and a puzzle at a Borders sale. Captain America took a nap and I entertained a crazy toddler. Then a few short hours later I say to my husband, "It's six o'clock, Leo needs to eat, we need to get dinner." He looked at me with pitiful eyes. We were still so full from breakfast and lunch but Leo was starting to flip his toddler shit so we headed out to a restaurant.

By the time we were seated and ordered, Leo was not having it at all. He alternated between a whine/cry and a staring us down with eyes that said "hey dumbasses, you have to feed me regularly or I will flip my toddler shit." Finally our food arrived, a meatball sandwich for me and a pizza for Captain America. The only reason I ordered a meatball sandwich was because it would be easy to share the meatballs with Leo. He's still too little for a kid's meal, he just doesn't eat that much food, so I usually share mine with him. The sight of the meatballs made me want to hurl but Leo was happy he finally got to eat. And since Captain America and I are like dogs, if you put food in front of us we will eat it no matter how sick we feel, we ate our food.





We ended up spending Saturday night in our hotel bed, whining and complaining about seriously uncomfortably full stomachs. Next trip I will definitely plan our eating better and more according to Leo's schedule. Captain America and I are on serious orders to slow down the eating. Eating three meals a day is fine if you don't completely pig out at each one. Ugh, my stomach still hurts. I'm looking forward to a week of grilled chicken breast and steamed veggies. Right after I finish my wine.

Who Knew?

This week I am really rocking the mothering gig. First, for two nights in a row, the Beast ate nothing but cheesy poofs for dinner.



But they were organic cheesy poofs, so that is clearly excellent parenting.

Second was the incident with the spoon. The Beast is cutting molars (which is as fun as it sounds) and has been all over the place with eating (see above cheesy poof reference). Yesterday I was talking to his daycare teacher about what he ate for lunch. They had served rice and turkey. She was telling me that he wasn't excited about eating it and she had to help him eat it. I said, "so you finger fed it to him?" She responded that she helped him with the spoon. I said, "oh he doesn't use a spoon." She looked at me kinda strange and said, "he uses a spoon all the time." And then another teacher piped up, "he's really good with a spoon."

What. The. Hell. How did I not know my 13 month old uses a spoon? I have never even attempted giving him a spoon. I was just about to launch into full on research on when and how to introduce utensils. But he's already freaking using one? What else is he doing during the day I don't know about? Algebra? Is he driving? It is such a bizarre feeling to realize that my child does something during the day that I didn't know about it. But I'm proud of the little guy for being such a big boy with a spoon. Now if daycare wants to go ahead and potty train him and just hand him over one day with, "oh he uses the potty now," I'll be just fine with that.

I guess it really does take a village.

Categories

I have decided there are three types of people who will give you crap about being a working mom. For the most part, people don't really care or they don't really make a comment. But these three types will drive you crazy. Let's take a look at them:

Old People:

I come from a long line of working women. My mom, both grandmas, and at least one great-grandma worked outside of the home. But, obviously, many women raising children in decades past stayed home. So old men and women don't really get the working mom gig and give disapproving looks to the working moms and tell you the only reason your kid is sick is because you put them in that "institution" aka daycare. Because no child with a stay at home mom has ever been sick.

Unfortunately, there is not much to be done with these people. They are old and set in their ways and it's not worth the time or energy to explain your situation to them. It's kinda like when your grandma calls Asian people "Orientals" and you want to explain to her that Oriental is a rug and Asian is a person but it will take 20 minutes of you repeating yourself only for her to keep saying Oriental and then start complaining that she can't open her AOL email to read a forward about puppies that love Jesus. So you just drop it.

Insecure People:

We all have our insecurities but some people let these insecurities take hold of their very being and affect they way they interact with the general population in a negative way. The only thing these people are good at is finding the one thing that you are the most vulnerable about and exploiting it to make themselves feel better.

I was recently asked by a male friend, "so when is your husband going to let you quit your job and stay home?" Um, excuse me? I didn't get my husband's permission to become an attorney, to continue being an attorney, and if I ever decide to explore another career I sure as hell won't need his permission. I was so shocked at this question I couldn't even respond. But I quickly realized that question stemmed from his own insecurity about his career and lot in life so I did not fire back with the "I make double what you make" that I so desperately wanted to say. Or the "I am much more educated than you." Or the "why don't you go f*ck yourself."

The best way to deal with the insecure people is to smile and nod, silently pity them for being so insecure, and restrain all desire to retaliate with negative comments. One cannot stoop to their level.

Uneducated People:

When I say uneducated people I don't necessarily mean those with a lack of formal education. I have met many people with college and/or law degrees who are complete morons. When I say uneducated I mean people are are close-minded or not very worldly. Those who cannot imagine any situation other than their own. People who think that anything different than them must be wrong. These people typically cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be educated. The uneducated is often combined with the insecure for a double whammy of "oh my gawd I can't believe you let someone else raise your kid" bullshit. I choose to just ignore these people.

The common theme running through my three descriptions is that there is not much that you can do about changing their opinions or condescending attitude towards working mothers. Even if there were something that could be done, I would not do it because I choose to focus my time and energy on my family and career, not trying to change the mind set of someone who disagrees with my choices. Identifying these categories has helped me to take less offense when I do get a rude comment about being a working mother. I simply tell myself that their bad attitude is their problem, not mine.