C'est-à-dire

Moving Up, On, Out... Sort of

2011-04-01T11:44:00.000-04:00

Well, crickets, the time has come to talk of other things. I am not yet sold on discontinuing things on this my beloved (six-year-old!) blog. But recently, when looking back over my archives, I realized something. Things have changed. Not just my messy real estate portfolio or marital status or career or number of adorable progeny inhabiting my tiny house. Perhaps because of all those changes, I have changed. Thank goodness.

Looking back at some of my words over the years, I have been less than kind, less than thoughtful. Loud and passionate does not often equal gracious. So, in the spirit of embracing change, living intentionally, and...ugh...turning 30, I have started another blog. Like me, it's not really sure what it wants to be yet. But there I will work to be more open and thoughtful while writing through my life. I hope you'll come visit: www.smarterardor.com.

I am very grateful for your patience and persistence over the years!

Tykes on a Plane

2011-03-23T12:44:00.001-04:00

When we took our first (cross-country!) flight with two toddlers last month, I expected the worst. Good thing.

Things I've learned about flying with two little ones:

1. It's not possible to have too many snack options

2. There are seemingly endless uses for a gauzy scarf (blanket, scarf, lovey, burp cloth, nursing cover (I'm no longer nursing, but I can imagine how useful it would be if I were))

3. It's easier than you think to change a baby in an airport bathroom, especially if you have a diaper changing wallet (holds diapers, wipes and has a built in changing pad)

4. The Ergo baby carrier (even though Southwest wouldn't let me fasten it) is a lifesaver on the plane and just in general

5. Three-year-olds think drinkable applesauce is awesome

6. How to pack milk for a (weaned) baby without breaking liquid restrictions: Pre-measure formula in disposable bottle liners, roll the liners up and secure them with tape, then buy bottled water after going through security. Upside: you can carry on many servings without carrying on liquid and while saving space (don't have to pack multiple bottles). Downside: the rolled up bottle liners look like contraband, prompting The Boy to say "You know we have to make it through airport security, right?" Thankfully, though the rolls aroused the suspicion of my parents, my sister-in-law and my husband, the TSA was not curious.

7. Portable DVD players that can hold a charge are well worth the trouble/expense it takes to procure them (we were lucky enough to borrow one) and kid-sized ear buds are worth the expense
8. With the exception of one American Airlines flight attendant, people are more understanding than you might think. An apologetic smile and visible attempts at courtesy seemed to go a long way.
9. Though others are, I am not capable of doing it alone. I could not have done it without The Boy (on the way out), and my parents on the way back.

Other lessons from our trip to California:
1. Disneyland may be one of the happiest places on earth, but we wouldn't know. We spent that day at the UC Irvine ER, as Mirabella had a 104-degree fever I couldn't get down.
2. If you're going to take a jet-lagged baby for walk around the lobby at 6AM in a convention hotel, don't wear your jammies. No one else is.
3. If your hotel room doesn't have a refrigerator, just ask. I wish we would have known this sooner. An overachieving desk clerk mentioned it to us and provided it at no extra charge.
4. To get a baby to sleep in a hotel room when you're not yet ready to go to sleep, hide on the floor. You heard it here first.

While I am grateful we got to spend those few days with The Boy, joining him on a work trip is not all it's cracked up to be. The most important lesson I learned on our trip: I don't want to do it again any time soon.

West Coast Serendipity

2011-02-17T23:24:00.005-05:00

So far, while the benefits of The Boy's new job have been numerous, the benefits of his traveling for said job have not. Mostly, for the three of us left at home, it has made things much harder. While I have the odd moment of mothering greatness, I hear myself getting impatient with the girls more often than I'm comfortable with. I am tired of working. I am tired of turning down jobs at work while bringing up my personal life again. I am tired of drawing attention to myself. And, really, I'm just tired. I don't sleep well when he's away, staying up way too late (like I am now) for no good reason.

I mention this because this month is particularly bad. This week and next, six days away, one night home, seven more days away. Now, of course I know there are plenty of people who have it much harder than this. I never intend to compare my life to that of actual single mothers or military families-- I know that's a whole other thing. But this is new for me, and it's not what I'd prefer. And even though it's not the hardest thing, it is still hard.

The second leg of three in this trip is four days in Anaheim at a conference where both my parents and my sister will also be. We wondered if we could make it work for the girls and me to tag along. We could pay for half of the airfare with points, and then would really only need incidentals for the girls and me, the things that were not expressly for The Boy. It was a small amount considering it was a cross-country trip, but we are in the midst of planning our anniversary trip and dealing with other financial challenges.

As I drove on the day the trip would need to be booked, I prayed a strange prayer. "Lord, if we're meant to go, please just let me find the money." I don't really know what I meant, but I know I didn't mean "let me find it in our budget." I was not comfortable with the idea of spending the money. I never pray like this, but I meant something along the lines of winning a contest or a corrected bank error-- something I didn't have the creativity to imagine. I really didn't think we were going to go.

Not 20 minutes later, visiting with a dear family friend, I mentioned we were debating the trip. "Why wouldn't you go?" she asked.

"We're just not sure it's the best way to spend the money," I said casually. I don't like talking about money, and this friend and I talk about many things, but that's not one of them. As I gathered our things to go, she told me she wanted me to go to California.

"How much does the ticket cost?" she asked.

"About $300," I said, "so we'll see."

"I want you to go," she repeated, and she handed me $300 in cash. She would not let me refuse, though I tried, dumbfounded, several times.

I called The Boy and told him to book the trip. We had been toying with the idea of taking Mirabella to see Disney Princesses on Ice, so when we asked if she wanted to see the princesses, she thought that's what we meant. "No, Mira," I said, "do you want to see them at their house?" We showed her videos on Disneyland's website.

"Ohmygoodness...." she said lowly-- she could not believe such a place existed. So we are excited to go, if for no other reason, to be somewhere we've never been and to be sleeping in the same place. I am far less excited about a six-hour flight with a squirmy and screechy one-year-old who is inconveniently getting her canines. I'm thinking of wearing a shirt that reads "I'm sorry."

We are grateful for unexpected time together. I feel so loved-- because of our friend's generosity, for sure-- but also because God heard my ridiculous prayer and chose to bless us in this way. I'm grateful for the trip and the accompanying peace I have about it. Now I just hope some of that peace rubs off on Emerie.

She Uses Vaseline

2011-02-16T21:34:00.010-05:00

On the same day Mirabella emerged from her nap sporting full hand and foot tattoos,

I struggled to zip up the dress I had bought for my brother's wedding last summer while Mirabella watched. It still had the tags on it-- it hadn't fit when I needed it. Now, facing a Valentine's dinner The Boy had cooked several days early, since he would be away the entire week of the actual made-up holiday, I thought I'd try to make it special. I felt a little like ten pounds of sugar in a five pound bag, but I went for it.

"Oh, you look beautiful, Mommy," Mirabella gushed, "Daddy gonna love it." I finally got her to bed and descended to china and candles and my favorite Spanish wine. I was proud of us-- we weren't just finding time for romance, I thought, we were forcing it. As we finished eating, we heard noises from upstairs. The Boy ran up to check, then right back down.

"Okay, you choose-- dishes or your daughter." And, back to our reality.

"Which daughter and what's wrong with her?" I asked.

"Mirabella, and I can't even-- you just have to see it. She put Vaseline all over herself. She is shiny."

"Whatever, it can't be that bad," I said. I made it within two stairs of her room before I collapsed in laughter.
"Mirabella! What happened?" I said.

She would not meet my eyes. "Well, I had to get up to go potty, then I had to go potty a-gain."

"That's not what I'm talking about. What happened to your hair?"

"Oh, that?" She said, nonchalantly, "That's just my hair lotion."

Her hair lotion was half a tub of Vaseline. It was also all over her body and her dollhouse family. I did not even know where to begin. It took a while to stop laughing, but as soon as I realized just how un-water soluble Vaseline is, it stopped being funny. I tried to wash it out, and the water just beaded up. The tub looked like an oil slick. I knew I needed something to absorb the oil, so I grabbed baking soda, but it didn't work at all. I ran down the stairs where The Boy was washing dishes and still chuckling, "To the cloud," I said, and Googled "Vaseline remove from hair." There were thousands of results, some as specific as "how to remove Vaseline from a toddler's hair." Based on my findings, I tried corn starch, Dawn dish liquid, and baking powder, but nothing worked.

After 11PM I posted my dilemma on Facebook: "So, let's say your three-year-old used half a jar of Vaseline on her head as "hair lotion" while she was allegedly in bed and you were having a candlelit Valentine's Day dinner with your spouse...what would you use to get it out? Hypothetically?" I had nearly 30 responses, like, "hypothetically, I want pictures." The most serious came from my friend Alex, who earned a Chemical Engineering undergraduate degree. He spoke of emulsifiers and organic solvents and said, "I guess paint thinner or xylene is out of the question?" How to remove the Vaseline without using harsh chemicals on her head?

Some people asked if she was punished. Watching her shiver in the bath that night as I washed her hair more than ten times, hours after her bed time, changing the water so frequently we ran out of hot water, I thought it was probably punishment enough.

"When we make choices, there are consequences, Mirabella," I said, "good ones or bad ones. You have to have your hair washed a bunch of times because that's the consequence of putting Vaseline in your hair. Do you think that was a good choice?"

"No, Mommy. This is NOT a fun bath," she pouted. "But now do you want to talk about how I pee peed in the potty?"

The Boy said, "If she still looks like John Travolta in the morning, I am not taking her to church."

The next day we used the sprayer in the kitchen sink, and her daddy got involved. The baking powder worked better than anything so far, but we were still embarrassed to take her out of the house. She wore pigtails to the store that night where I got plant-based Goo Gone and clarifying shampoo. Alas, greasy pigtails again on Monday.

I read the strangest variety of remedies. People tried Coke, baby oil, and even kerosene. I drew the line at putting gasoline on my kid's head, and was reluctant to try baby oil for fear it would get worse. Also, I didn't have any. My dad thought vegetable oil might be an okay stand in. It was not. Pigtail knots to day care on Tuesday.

I finally broke down and made another trip to the store for Goop. I was hopeful. That night , my sister-in-law came over to help with the kids and offered to wash Mirabella's hair again while I did some work. She lathered the Goop on dry hair and let it sit.

After 5-10 minutes, Mirabella complained it was hurting her head, and we panicked and washed it out. I was already lining up my next moves. Glycerine soap? Or the dreaded baby oil? But then she emerged with dry hair that actually looked dry.

Success! I told Alex, "I'm not sure how much a Chemical Engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon costs, but I submit it was worth every penny. A canister of Goop - $1.67. Getting the Vaseline out of my toddler's hair after 4 days - priceless." Alex, a former Naval Officer and current almost attorney said it's about the only practical application he's found for his degree. I'm glad I could help.

If you found this blog while looking for Vaseline removal remedies, you have my empathy and my advice to RUN to your nearest WalMart or hardware store to buy Goop. Try it first, really! Save yourself the pain and days of excessive hair washing! Be sure to apply it to dry hair, let it sit, then wash it out (we used clarifying shampoo). Happy parenting...

Resolve That

2011-01-24T16:26:00.002-05:00

I'm not typically a resolution kind of girl. I used to be the type that made several resolutions each new year, until I realized that most years they were the same. Variations on a theme.

My journal, always more populated in January, would look something like this:

Work out more (never specific-- harder to fail)
Read Bible more (occasionally, "read through the whole thing in a year")
Write every day (loyal readers, you can guess how that went)

Once I realized this, I resolved not to make resolutions. They didn't work. Why wait until the beginning of the year, I thought. I've never been good at doing things just because I was "supposed to." So, I would periodically attempt self betterment, usually fail, repeat again later.

Last June when my dear co-worker passed away, I made a resolution that actually stuck. I admired Bob because he treated people with respect and found commonality with many diverse individuals. When I heard the way others described him after his death, I was deeply convicted; this was the kind of person I wanted to be. Not just a "witness" or a "light," or a "servant," not that there is anything wrong with any of these adjectives, but I wanted to be a friend. A lover of people-- all people, even the really hard to love. Especially the really hard to love. I started making concerted efforts not just to avoid showing frustration with others, but to avoid being frustrated with others (without avoiding the people themselves). I swore off talking behind people's backs, which I had fallen into because I hung around some wickedly funny people and enjoyed the verbal sparring-- even though it occurred at the expense of others. I selected a couple people I had historically found irritating or difficult to love and worked to get to know them. I invested in them.

And it worked! I was afraid it would be a show, that I'd be nice on the surface and seething on the inside, which is a type of dishonesty I find particularly offensive. But when I got to know the people and to understand the reasons behind the things they did, their quirks didn't bother me as much. I have since put in a preemptive, internal guard against resentment, whereupon meeting new people, (or repeatedly encountering difficult people) I try to find at least one aspect of their lives to identify with or remember-- one connection point. This probably sounds extremely elementary and is automatic to most people. But to me, it was a revelation. People around me, the ones I used to snicker with, didn't understand. One actually asked why I was befriending another, and I stammered while I explained the reasons behind the change. She could not understand.

Life, particularly at work, has gotten easier. Regardless of the project I'm working on, I feel a sense of accomplishment if I've made it through the day having invested in, listened to, and supported the people around me. If you knew me, you'd know this is not the Christina of yore who would actually say, out loud, "Yeah, I'm just not that compassionate. Sorry," like I was proud of it. Ugh. Thank goodness for progress.

With this happy transformation under my belt, I moved toward the new year. 2010 was major for me and my family. We had a second child, that second child had a near-death experience at my hands, and The Boy dove into an exciting new endeavor, leaving me with a more complicated career situation and, in theory, "more time." As a couple, we have struggled to adjust to all the changes. We finally let go of setting a timeline for when we might escape from under our house and our city and fully embraced our life here. Five years after moving here, we established roots, and we were rewarded with a new church family, friends just around the corner that act like family, a place in a vibrant and family-oriented community, and neighbors we love.

So, in 2011, with trepidation, I am going back to making resolutions. It's just one, but it's sweeping. It is not poetic: I resolve to get organized. But what does that mean? It means purging all the rooms of my house, definitely. I have already used my label maker more this month than in all of last year combined. But I am not good at compartmentalizing, and it's hard for me to treat this change as if it applies only to stuff. I am reading the book, Organized Simplicity, that defines living simply as "living holistically with your life's purpose." For me, that means setting systems in place to: a) make my home a haven for my family and others around us, and b) make our life count. If you roll your eyes, I won't judge you. These are principles that would have made me nauseated even just a year ago. It has taken me a long time to get to where I am; to where I want to embrace the life and gifts I've been given with my whole self and without fear. It means a lot of change that will take time and tears. It involves painful decisions I'm not yet ready to share. It means letting go of one dream in favor of another and choosing not to let a past failure dictate our family's future.

In my reading last week (I'm now on a three-year-plan), I came across this passage in Genesis 12: "Get out of your country, from your family and your father's house, to a land I will show you." I do not take this literally. I don't believe we are moving abroad, or anywhere, necessarily. Just that, in our case, right now, not knowing the final outcome or destination is not cause for postponing the change.

Pre-School Mutiny

2011-01-20T22:05:00.005-05:00

Everyone's favorite Irishman, our wonderful neighbor, knocked on the door at 8:30 last night. "I'm here to take your bins out," he said, referring to the recycling. The dog could not contain his excitement, and and my wet-haired kids were decidedly not in bed. We had just finished reading Eloise, quite possibly the least appropriate children's book ever. I thanked him profusely, since taking three large bins of recycling, damp and heavy from melted snow, over the fence and down our dark, narrow alley was more than I felt capable of handling.

"Don't be daft, Christina," he said, "This is a good time to be sexist; this is a man's job."

It was nearly two hours later before the giggling then crying coming from the girls' room finally ceased. After 11:00, while I lay in bed reading my beloved Nook for a precious few minutes, I heard crashing aluminum cans. I nosed through my blinds to see a sweatsuit clad 20-something man up to his waist in my recycle bin. His comrade shouted from the corner, trash bag in hand. And we don't even live in a deposit state.

This morning around 6, as I headed to take a shower, Mirabella screamed.

"MOM-MY!" I raced up the stairs to see if I could address her concern before she woke her sister. No such luck.

"My nose is yucky," she whined. I handed her a tissue and scooped up Emerie, her eyes only half open, already signing for milk.

Welcome to our house, halfway through The Boy's inaugural trip of the new year. He's in frigid Milwaukee and snowy Chicago. It's going to be 1 there tonight. I mean, really.

So after calming Mirabella down and feeding Emerie a bottle, I placed Emerie and some toys in the only safe place in the house for a new walker-- the crib-- so I could finally take my shower. After that I negotiated each step of the dressing process with Mirabella, shamed the dog for eating a Pull Up, finished getting ready for work, listened to a story Mirabella told about Dora and "the doll that has this hair" (said as she pulled up a lock of her own hair), shamed the dog for eating half my English muffin, made another English muffin and loaded everybody in the car. A good 20 minutes later than I should have. I laughed at the glowing gas light. Mirabella wanted to know what was so funny.

Feeling over dramatic and sorry for myself on the bumpy access road to get to the tunnel, I tried to snap out of it and find my perspective. To finish a sentence that started with "at least." As I merged into the EZ Pass lane, a compact car cut me off. The utility van in front of him, realizing he did not have an EZ Pass, abruptly threw his car into reverse, slamming into him. A bad fender bender, but not for us.

A few minutes after I got to work, our daycare provider called to tell me, when she went to unbuckle Emerie from her car seat, she realized she was never buckled in the first place. In my haste, I bundled, but didn't buckle. And she was fine.

Ah, there it is.

Christmas Present

2010-12-23T14:33:00.002-05:00

I am more excited for Christmas than I've been since I was a little kid. As parents of a perceptive three-year-old, we have been conscious of how we present Christmas. We do Santa Claus, but we don't talk about it much. I feel like she will learn about that without us teaching her. But we talk about Jesus and the story of his birth every day. She plays with her Little People nativity scene; she and Emerie stand in front of it and try to elbow each other out of the way. Today, Mary is a single mother-- Joseph is probably under the couch again. She's standing at the manger alone. Other days, there's been a donkey on top of the manger, a princess with a magic wand bearing gifts and once, inexplicably, Noah was at the birth of Jesus. It's important to me that my kids have a happy, exciting childhood; I want Christmas to be important and spiritual, but also magical. It's a tall order.

We've been talking about what it means to be thankful and kind; that not everyone has enough, not everyone gets to live in a warm house or open Christmas presents, and that God wants us to share what we've been given. We adopted a family, a single mother and three children who lost their house in a fire and their father in court. It's been a horrible year. But she's going back to school and working in her field. She emailed me last week to tell me her seven-year-old daughter was student of the week. Things are looking up. I have tried to include Mirabella in the shopping and in the story. I'm proud that she didn't ask to keep the presents-- she is excited to give them away.

Living in the city, we drive past homeless people on a daily basis. One bitter-cold night, as we drove past the arena that is lined with blanket-covered shopping carts, she noticed a man on the street. "Dat man doesn't got shelter, Mommy?" I told her no, not everyone has a home. "But we got a home, Mommy." I asked her what we should do. "He can come live at our home, Mommy. We can share." I almost cried; I was unprepared for her innocent logic.

Often I feel like I'm making it up as I go. I don't have all the answers for her. But I am so thankful for every day with my sweet children. I mentioned to a woman at church how exciting Christmas is now. She is in town from New Zealand for six months to care for her new granddaughter. "It is such an awesome privilege," she said, "to experience all of the wonder of life through their eyes."

Mirabella was sick yesterday, on her birthday. I told her she could take a sparkly princess bath and filled the tub with bubbles and the yellow and pink sprinkles that had been on her birthday cake. This morning, seeing the sprinkles still on the counter, she said, "Mommy, 'ank you for my pink and yellow 'parkly princess bath. 'Ank you for buying dose 'prinkles." I feel like I should thank her for letting me be a part of it.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Here's to finding joy and wonderment in the smallest of miracles.

Flying Solo

2010-11-30T22:08:00.003-05:00

"Mommy, tell me de story of when Emerie was bor-ren," Mirabella says again. Bed time, with Daddy away, is a little different. I sit and feed Emerie in the red chair while Mirabella sits up in her bed. I tell her stories, but these are her favorites.

"So we waited for the bus, but it didn't come, and we had to walk the whole way," I tell her.

"You forgot, Mommy!" Mirabella interrupts me. "De car was COVERED in snow and we had to wait while Daddy cleaned it off." Maybe we need to find new stories.

The Boy has taken a new position-- one we prayed for and are excited about-- and it has brought with it serious changes. In the month of November, we have spent six nights at home together. We've been together, for another week or so, but it was in Connecticut and the Poconos visiting family. He has ventured all over Virginia, to Chicago twice and to Charlotte and I've been trying to manage our normal life alone. I have cut back my hours at work by a day, and am often able to work one day per week from home. I know we will figure it out, but we haven't yet.

There are certainly good things. I feel like I am spending more time with my girls, and though many days are tough, being able to work at home on occasion is fantastic. I have been incredibly blessed with friends in the neighborhood who watch my children and park my car in the rain and offer to cook me dinner even though they have a newborn (seriously-- want to move into my neighborhood?!). But I cannot figure out how to leave the house less than two hours after I get up. I can't manage to get home before it's dark, which matters when you don't have off-street parking and three to five bags to go with the two kids. Oh yeah, and this whole marriage from a distance thing is taking some getting used to.

During the first trip to Chicago, The Boy called to tell me he was headed to the Bulls game-- to sit in the private box. I was painting Emerie's face with sweet potatoes. I could not relate. Tonight, while The Boy was sitting in Chicago's Ritz and we were driving past the airport on the way home, we told him about the first 6 steps Emerie took today, and how Mirabella peed on the potty and is going to have a gymnastics birthday party in a couple weeks. We talk to him every night and count the days. We divide and conquer well, but the coming back together is harder than we thought. We know it won't always be just like this.

"Mommy, I want to hear de story about when God was bor-ren," Mirabella said in the car the other day. I think I need backup.

The Darkest Hours of Parenting and Really Good Cake

2010-08-29T20:37:00.004-04:00

When we arrived at Johns Hopkins Pediatric Emergency Room, we did not have to wait. Once The Boy was able to hold her, Emerie calmed down a bit, breathing in the reverse sighs that follow hard crying.

They gave us a giant bed to sit next to. I still hadn't held her. I think I wondered if they would let me. I wasn't sure I wanted to. Several doctors looked her over and took her vitals, then conferred, deciding what to do next. The kind female attending told me I could finally nurse the baby. Typically modest, I did not care who was around as I pulled Emerie to me. I would not even consider covering her face.

"Some of your extended family is here," our male nurse said, pulling the curtain and averting his eyes. They let my mom back and she hugged me tightly, her eyes full of tears. My mother, father, all three of my siblings and my new sister-in-law waited outside. We were so supported-- so loved.

While I nursed Emerie I gently rubbed her head, out of habit, and noticed the swelling. I pointed out the growing bluish bump on her head. They had not planned to do a CT scan, cognizant of the radiation, but with this new swelling in mind, the doctors changed course. She cried when we held her still under the giant orb, so I sang my made up words to Eidelweiss: "Emerie, Emerie, every morning you greet me. Early light, sometimes night; you seem happy to meet me." She stared at me and stayed still for the test.

New friends of ours from church called, responding to my earlier, SOS text. "I think we're okay," I told Stephanie, "she is acting mostly like herself and it doesn't seem like they are going to do much."

"I think we'd still like to come," she said. She and her husband both work at the hospital and live nearby. Soon she and her husband appeared beside us with a paper bag full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was after 10 (on her husband's birthday), but there they stood with us while we learned the results of the CT Scan: a skull fracture, right parietal, and a small bleed. They decided to admit Emerie to neurosurgery for observation for the night.

Our new friend-- also a doctor-- came with me to relay the news to my parents, who arranged for Mirabella to spend the night at my brother and sister-in-law's, who would take her to day care in the morning. Another contingent brought our car to one of the hospital garages and brought The Boy's sister, who had been working hard to clean everything up at home so we wouldn't return to it, whenever we returned.

Our friends stoody by while the nurses and techs tried, for nearly an hour, to find a tiny vein for an IV and to collect blood. It took seven attempts. She screamed while I held her bruised arms down; I put my head down while I cried.

We spent the night on a ward with children far sicker than ours, with rare chromosomal abnormalities, or in traction, or worse. It kept things in perspective. It was so clinical. Emerie was hooked to several machines and an IV, and I was not allowed to feed her in case something changed and surgery would be needed.

I wasn't sure how Emerie would receive me, after all this. It sounds silly to me now, but I think I wondered if she would trust me-- whether she would forgive me. But that night, and even now, no one else could console her. I nearly fell asleep standing up, nervous that if I sat I would sleep and she would slip from my arms. A sweet nurse offered to take her so I could get a couple hours of sleep.

In the morning, a neurosurgical team determined she would be fine. "It will be, to her, as if it never happened," the neurosurgeon said. A nurse told me, "It will take 3-4 weeks for her to heal, and probably far longer for you."

She was right. The social worker they sent to talk to me said, "I have talked with the doctors and reviewed your case and the only question I have for you is if you are okay." She told me parents-- mothers in particular-- have a tendency to replay the event."

"YES," I said, teary-eyed. "I worry....that I won't ever stop seeing it. It was horrific-- the worst thing I...ever saw," I said, struggling to get the words out.

We brought Emerie home and took a nap-- all three of us. Our neighbor brought over authentic Irish brown bread and potato soup, which we ate for dinner once Mirabella came home from day care. After a trip back to the ER later that night to investigate additional swelling (it was nothing to worry about), we picked Mirabella up from our friends' house. We loaded her into the car-- in her PJs and bare feet, with sleepy eyes.

We got home and savored giant slices of Emerie's birthday cake with lumps in our throats and renewed gratitude for the blessings we've been given. We carried a large slice to our neighbors, wanting to share the celebration.

I held Emerie while I watched The Boy eating cake sitting across from Mirabella, who was overwhelmed by her good fortune. "I love you so much," he told her.

"Why your say that, Daddy? You telled me that al-ready!" She replied.

We have been overwhelmed. By God's protection of our sweet baby, His provision of new friends who acted like family without a second of hesitation, and of family who couldn't have imagined not being there. Friends and strangers prayed, and we really did feel it.

In the end, Emerie is just fine. At her neurosurgical follow-up this week, she got a clean bill of health. I can now tell the story without crying. And the rest of life, as a result, has gotten better.

But that will have to be a story for another day.

Sinking Boat Meets Fateful Day

2010-08-19T21:59:00.006-04:00

That Sunday morning our pastor talked about becoming fishers of men and how the disciples had had to drop their nets immediately if they wanted to follow Jesus. They had to be prepared to leave their livelihood behind. It hit me then that maybe by not drawing any lines, I was making a choice.

It's not fair. I have often complained to The Boy that I do not have the luxury of working late. I have never managed to communicate this to him clearly, but here's what I mean. If his day goes late, it goes late. He has to stay and does. If mine goes late, I either have to draw attention to myself because I cannot stay, or I have to make Herculean efforts in order to line up the rest of my life so that I may stay. Preferably in advance. This is just how our life is ordered.

Up until now, I have not turned down opportunities for more responsibility or to work a little extra on occasion. Part of why is because I know that when women leave the workforce, even only in part, they don't get to pick back up where they left off. I feared that if I took a step back from the role that I worked hard to create and sell that I would never have that chance again. I was hung up on this for a while. But I started to feel that morning like maybe it was time to drop that net. There are more important things.

That said, when I got phone calls and e-mails to help out early that afternoon, I still did, with the caveat that I would be offline for the rest of the day. I knew they were not pleased.

The Boy and I had argued during the week about whether to invite over our lovely Irish neighbors we are starting to befriend. I knew I may yet have work to do, despite my vow, and I was exhausted. But we had been trying to get together for months and they could finally make it, so we planned a small cookout. The Boy grilled the pork chops and potato packets I had made in advance, and I baked Emerie half a birthday cake because it was her half birthday.

We sat outside watching Mirabella splash around in her inflatable pool. At just about 7, in a dress soaked from Mirabella's little shivering, bikini-clad body, after I had set all the food out on the table, I heard Emerie cry. Still in flip-flops from being on the patio, I ran up two flights of stairs to retrieve her from her crib. I snuggled her to my chest and headed back down the stairs when my feet slipped from under me and I fell flat on my lower back. I felt the air rush out of me, and I did not drop Emerie; she flew. Out of my arms and into the air, down onto the landing on her head, where she bounced, then began to roll down the second flight of stairs. I think I screamed. I remember saying "Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod," and screeching at The Boy to catch her. He ran and caught her after a few steps and I found myself in the kitchen clinging to the counter asking my sister-in-law to call 911.

"How many steps did she fall?" Amy asked relayed, phone in hand, and I was immediately irritated. I'm not sure I answered.

Our new friend was a doctor-- this much we knew-- but we did not know until days later that he is a neurologist. He, being a new friend and a very polite Irishman, asked permission to go upstairs to check on the baby.

"OF COURSE," I probably yelled.

All the while I stood, hunched over the counter, heaving. No tears, no breath, no words. I slid to the floor in a pile, hyperventilating. The doctor's wife came to me and I pointed at my elder daughter. She must be scared, I must have thought, and I can't talk to her.

They brought the baby down and she was crying, but it sounded faint. I couldn't look at her. I just couldn't. I felt certain that this was the moment we would always look back on as the turning point-- the event that would define the rest of our daughter's life. I was terrified she would never be the same. I could never imagine forgiving myself. I could not stop seeing the horrific replay of her flying-- terrified-- from her mother's arms. "Mommies protect their babies," I always tell Mirabella. And I didn't. It felt like all I could do was watch.

A police officer arrived and asked me what happened. "How many stairs?" he had asked. Really? He asked to hold the baby. I was crying too hard to object when The Boy handed her over. "Well, she looks pretty good," he said. What do you know? You're just a Baltimore City cop, I thought.

I stood at the front door in my soaked dress, waiting for the ambulance. Our neighbor asked, in her lovely Irish brogue, "Amy, does she have another dress? Or a cardigan?" I stumbled up the stairs and threw on jeans and a tank top. I remember thinking, "Good, I have a clean cardigan," like it was important. The EMTs arrived and strapped our infant daughter-- screaming, at this point-- to a giant backboard. They asked how many stairs. Again. I tried to explain, then brought one of them into the house to show him.

We rode just a mile or so to the best hospital in the country, where, exactly six months prior, Emerie had made her stubborn arrival. The Boy held her tiny hand the whole way while I wept and texted my family to pray for our sweet girl. I was impotent. I couldn't even pray.

Falling Slowly

2010-08-18T21:12:00.004-04:00

I don't ever remember making a choice, work over family. I'm not sure I ever did. Since I returned to work in April, the quotidian has been worse than tedious; it has been hard. Really hard. And though I wasn't crying about it most weekends anymore, as I had in the beginning, it has taken a serious toll.

"I just need to know," I would say. "If I'm supposed to just keep working, head down, I can do that. It's only through September. It will be a terrible couple months, but I can do it."

I don't think I ever knew what I would want. I remember, before kids, sitting at a baseball game with a friend whose husband is a lawyer speculating whether I'd be cut out for stay-at-home-motherhood.

"We're just lucky we get the choice," she said quietly. She has an advanced degree and, at least for now, stays home with her twin nearly two-year-olds full time. I am not sure why I thought I'd have the choice.

So far, it's been a non issue. I am blessed to have much higher earning potential than I would have guessed back then, and we need my income. It's expensive to live where we do, and we are effectively stuck with the real estate choices we made five years ago. And it's not that I'm complaining, more just explaining what brought us here.

But it would be disingenuous to pretend I hate working because I don't. Particularly over the last year, I have enjoyed the growth, the increased responsibility and recognition and the path that appeared to be opening for me. People who mattered stuck their necks out for me. I stuck my neck out for me. And I netted a job that I care about and that people count on, and that means being constantly tethered and sometimes working more than full time. So after reluctantly taking another leadership role this summer, I wrestled with knowing if and when to draw the line. I didn't feel any sort of peace about saying no. I needed something more to go on than general malaise. I mentioned this often to friends, The Boy, and family.

The week before it happened was the worst. My new sister-in-law picked up the kids so I could stay at work a couple extra hours. By the time I got them they were fed, so I spent 3o minutes with them in the car and put them to bed when we got home. Then I worked on my laptop, pumped late into the evening (I am, miraculously, still breastfeeding), and went to bed after The Boy was asleep. I was exhausted; I had nothing left. We fought. There was just no give.

Which brings us to August 1st, and the fall that changed everything.

Good-bye, Unexpected Friend

2010-06-16T21:19:00.006-04:00

Unexpected, as in, "passed away unexpectedly." Saturday evening, in his favorite chair. Peacefully. Not so peaceful for his wife who tried, desperately, to revive him, or for the rest of us. Left.

It's like he just left. I look up when the door opens, thinking he might be coming to see me. Last week he gave me a yellowed, 35-year-old tried-and-true paperback, "Toilet Training in Less than a Day," and was eager to hear the results. His daughter is about my age, and her daughter is my daughter's age. We circled each other but never crossed.

Years ago when I learned I would share an office with him, I cringed. I didn't know what it would be like. Didn't anticipate his openness or patience; the way he never condescended. Wouldn't have guessed his Air Force veteran, engineering Ph.D. to my "knows how to spell" credentials could enjoy sharing time. He even humored me by letting me review his work because it was my job, unlike others not as senior as he.

"I don't think I'll ever get to Paris," I lamented one day when my first baby was small.

"Oh, you have to," he replied, giving me a Top 5 European destinations, in priority order. He gave me a sample itinerary for Paris in a (long) weekend.

I only knew how impressive his career was because I put together his resume. Though he loved sharing stories, it wasn't his style to boast. The nature of the projects we worked on lent itself to friendship, if you were so inclined. He was. He loved barbecue and single malt Scotch; he couldn't handle tomatoes. We joked about being too lazy to plan ahead for lunch, which left us standing together at the community freezer on more than one occasion, eyeing the frozen pot pies. Last week he said, "You know, I think we're the only ones who eat these things. But they're good."

His beloved wife, the doula, was the subject of many of our conversations, especially when I was pregnant with my second daughter. He liked to relate. When I was out on bed rest he and our other teammates called me just to brighten my day. One day I received a package in the mail, unexpectedly. There was no card, but I knew it could only be from one place. In the midst of the Tiger Woods scandal, it was a maternity shirt emblazoned with . . . a suggestion that a certain golfer might be the baby's father. Apparently, when a co-worker pulled the shirt up on a website, Bob, pulled out a $20 bill. "You have to buy it," he said. On conference calls thereafter, he told me I had to take a picture wearing it and send it to the team. The perfect storm over, I was going to give the shirt away. I think I'll keep it now.

When I came back from maternity leave, I spent two hours in his office while he filled me in on what I missed and asked about my babies. "I'm glad I got to hear the story," he said. Our joint project over, he asked me what I was working on now. Of a potential new alliance, he cautioned, "Don't do anything unethical."

I told him about my first boss who, upon being told I wouldn't lie for him said, "Christina, don't let your conscience get in the way of your job." Typically when I tell this story, I do so with a chuckle. Bob was not amused.

"That's when you know it's time to get a new job, Christina. Okay? I'm serious."

I hate when, in death, people only speak the fond memories of the departed. As if the incomplete picture is more appropriate once they're gone. It wasn't all sweetness. He was passionate and opinionated, and we disagreed on many occasions. At times like these he sat quietly, fiddling with his hands, listening longer than anyone else in the room. When he spoke, it was strongly. Sometimes it was loud. Mostly it was fair, except in the case of first impressions. He was prone to snap judgments of people that he would share without hesitation. Once he changed his mind, which he often did, he'd tell you he was wrong.

I have only ever cried at work twice. The first time, I had stayed up most of the night working on our project from home. Because other team members did not follow the proper procedures, when I arrived at work, bleary-eyed for our review Monday morning, Bob was booming. "The version on the wall is not the correct version," he kept repeating. I said I couldn't understand why, and then, frustrated, complained that I had been up working on it all night and we would figure it out. "We were all working the weekend, Christina," he snapped, "Not just at the last minute last night." I was pregnant and exhausted and retreated to the ladies room to fight back tears. I fixed it and it was over.

The second time was Monday, when I learned he was gone.

He believed passionately in his faith and was unapologetic about his politics, even when they weren't popular; even though they weren't mine. He was willing to be proven wrong, or at least to bend when ideology faced reality.

Earlier this year, when he turned 62, he joked that he wasn't coming in the next day. "I'm out of here," he said. Nobody believed him. He worked on Saturdays even when he didn't need to, and especially when he did. He stayed at work for 30 hours straight, with a cold, to make sure our team delivered. He performed tasks miles below his pay grade without ever mentioning it. We knew he wouldn't retire any time soon; we knew he would miss it too much to leave.

On what would be his last day at work, he unexpectedly decided to leave at noon. "I'm going to have lunch with the misses," he told one co-worker. And, "I'm going to put the top down and take a drive." I am so grateful he had this kind of day.

This first week without him has been hard on so many of us, least of all his colleagues, I know. I have been surprised how hard this loss has hit me. If life is short and death is certain, as a friend told me the other day, then why does it feel so shocking when it comes? Why is it so hard? And why does this loss hurt this way? Maybe because ours was an unlikely friendship that, logically, never should have been. To him, I'm sure I was just the young girl in the office. I used to think he was just the sweet older man. Now that he's gone, I see he was so much more than that.

Ingredients for Life

2010-04-22T21:51:00.002-04:00

I left for the gym and my "lilies of the field" moment with my keys, phone, and $37.00 in cash. After my workout with Kelly (my, ahem, trainer), I stopped by Safeway. Rushing because the baby would be awake and hungry in minutes, I cruised through the store that I know better than the back of my hand. I wasn't sure if our new friends would be joining us for dinner, so I wanted to have enough just in case, and spinach artichoke dip was on the menu for a get together the following night. I grabbed sirloin and another red pepper, a pound of green beans, artichokes, a variety of cheeses, baguettes, and some vanilla bean ice cream. But strawberries were $2.99 for 2 lbs and my new favorite Greek yogurt was restocked, so I added a few items that weren't on my list. I attempted to perform mental math as I went, and I knew it would be close to my $37.00 limit.

I chose the line run by my new acquaintance who works the morning shift. He made lame jokes to the girl in front of me, as is his custom, but she was distracted. As she rushed out, he called after her and held up a long string of coupons. "Keep them," she waved him off.

Looking around a little sheepishly, I said, "I'll take them." I noticed one for $1 off my next shopping order. As I watched my items move down the belt I panicked a little. It appeared I was going to be over my budget, which would mean something would have to back. Not a huge deal, but certainly embarrassing. As the last of my things were scanned, I said, "I only have cash today, so we're going to be cutting it close."

My subtotal? $38.05. I handed the kind man my new coupon, bringing my total to $37.05. I offered to run to my car for a nickel, but he told me not to worry about it. "I don't think they'll fire me over that," he smiled.

Now, The Boy maintains that I'm overstating the importance of this experience, but I don't think I am. If any one of my choices had gone another way, my total would have been different. If I had bought 7 yogurts instead of 6, or if I hadn't bought the generic cheese; if I had brought $40 instead of $37 or if I hadn't taken the coupons-- you get the idea.

This matters to me because it reminds me that God knows everything, well in advance of our need, and is able to provide for it. And if he can and is willing to do it with something as insignificant as a trip to the grocery store, where the only thing at stake is a red face, how much more is he able and willing to show up when it really counts? As I prepare to go back to work, begrudgingly and anxiously, I wonder if my situation will ever change for the better. Certainly we are blessed, but there is considerable fear that our circumstances will not change, which might lead to a variety of unpleasant scenarios I have had the time to contemplate lately. I worry that life will never resemble the hopes I have for it. And maybe it won't. But my checkout-line epiphany made me feel like there's a chance there could be things ahead bigger than my ability to plan.

Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

Adventures in Grrridlock

2010-04-18T21:20:00.010-04:00

Realtors beware: We are Open House crashers. We don't go out of our way to look for them or anything, but when homes in our neighborhood are on the market, you better believe we'll be there. In our early crashing days, we used to pretend we were actually interested, but the closer the open houses have gotten to our door, we've decided to fess up. We're just nosy neighbors, upside down, looking for a little reassurance that our house will sell in our lifetime.

So a couple open houses ago, The Boy noticed an open staircase in direct contrast to our dark, tunnel-like one. "I could totally take down the wall and make ours look like this," he said then. Feh, I thought. Then a month ago, he asked if it would be okay if he tackled the project.

"Only if the girls and I are out of the house," I said. So I made plans to head to Richmond and Amber, my best friend from college, and The Boy somehow coerced his father and brother to come down from Connecticut to help with the project. Preparing myself for the worst since, despite his best intentions his well-executed plans are rarely executed on time, I told him I expected to come home to drywall dust and dirty dishes and unfinished work. He smiled and said, "We'll see."

Friday morning I got up early and packed outfits, diapers, and toys for the girls. I thought of everything. I timed it perfectly so that we could leave as soon as Emerie ate and just as Mirabella would be ready for a nap. At 1:30 I was on the road, singing grown-up songs, with both girls conked out. I can do this, I thought, no sweat. But well before the Woodrow Wilson bridge, Mirabella was up and chatty. I had only gotten 40 miles from home when Emerie starting screaming under the Welcome to Virginia sign.

Washington, DC/Northern Virginia is not the easiest place to stop, and it wasn't time for Emerie to eat anyway; she was just unhappy. I barely made it through Springfield when I found myself parked at a Wendy's with Emerie on my lap and Mirabella on the passenger's seat, coloring. After feeding Emerie, I walked the girls into the bathroom where I laid Emerie on the floor on a changing pad while changing a standing Mirabella. No changing table, no problem. At 3:18 I got a text from Amber: "Dinner choices... 1. I cook, 2. Japanese takeout, or 3. You and I go out to dinner nearby and Matt watches the kids." I responded, "I might kiss him. Just warning you now." I had a renewed sense of purpose, but by the time I strapped Emerie in her seat, she was wailing again. I closed the door to pump gas. I couldn't hear the girls. I might have lingered at the gas pump.

I merged off the ramp onto 95 and standstill traffic. I made it 11 miles in an hour and 15 minutes. I tried to ignore my baby's mostly on-again crying. I found myself becoming angry with everyone. I never notice the vast array of non-issues about which to be passionate until I'm in traffic with bumper-sticker people. Two of the most memorable: Owned by Parrots, and Got Tea? I can think of few things less likely to induce passion then tea, but then maybe I need to venture further outside my black/red/Earl Grey comfort zone.

At 5:30, I was still an hour and a half outside of Richmond, under the best circumstances, and it was time to feed the baby. I ventured farther than necessary off the exit and into a McDonald's where I bought a vanilla shake and an iced mocha. The women behind the counter ooed and ahhed over the baby, and I could only imagine how frazzled I looked. Again, we sat in the car and I sighed deeply. Repeatedly. I glared at the clock and felt my dinner with my friend slipping away.

Back on 95 an hour later, nothing had changed. The baby, now fed, still cried, and traffic still moved at 6 miles per hour. We finally arrived in Richmond after 8:00, hungry and annoyed. Mirabella ate mac and cheese and I ate leftover spaghetti. The girls were both down by 9 but not asleep until after 11. I talked with my friend into the wee hours.

After a weekend of time at the park with five children after they all napped at the same time, a forced viewing of Twilight in an attempt to convert me, copious time in the minivan, and the long-awaited Japanese takeout, I almost cried in preparation for the drive home today. Thankfully, as I said in my message to Amber upon arriving home, sometimes God says yes. We didn't stop at all, since Emerie slept the entire way home and we hit minimal traffic. We arrived home to no dirty dishes or drywall dust, an opened stairway but unfinished walls.

"Why Daddy do dat?" Mirabella asked, gesturing to the new hallway. "He need to put a rail-lin."

Then, at dinner, she had this to say:

"Mommy, sometimes dinosaurs say, 'Rahhhhr.'"

"Yes, sometimes they do say that if they're angry," I said.

"Mommy, sometimes you say, 'Grrrrr.'"

"Mommy doesn't really say that much, Mirabella."

"Yes your do," she replied, "When you're angry. You say dat."

"Sometimes I do," I conceded, "When I'm angry. But I don't say it much."

"Yes your do say dat. You say dat in the car all de time. You say, 'Grrr, come on, cars!'"

The Boy just laughed.

Hi, My Name is. . .

2010-04-14T23:07:00.005-04:00

Awkward.

Despite what The Boy will tell you when we're telling Our Story, I hardly ever gave out my number. I can only recall doing it twice-- once that ended in a disastrously bad date to an Orioles game (a story for another post, for sure), and the other ended in the messy and cluttered joy that is my current life. But that was then. Since meeting my love, I give my number out like it's my job.

Remember when making friends was as easy as sitting beside each other in homeroom? Yeah, not so simple now. Several years ago, upon seeing a beautiful, dark-featured couple in my Sunday School class for the first time, my heart stuttered a little. I wonder if we could be friends, I thought. Then I looked down and saw her silver stilettos. We will definitely be friends. I chased Joyce down the hallway and forced my handshake upon her, telling her how my boyfriend and I were in the market for friends. I gave her my number and set up a first date, before which I pleaded with The Boy to behave. He didn't, but it still went well. Since then we have had dinner parties and playdates and even . . . shopping. After college I thought I'd never have a (new) friend I'd be comfortable enough with to go shopping. But with Joyce, I did. With strollers in tow. And baby weight. And it was still fun.

I have been surprisingly fortunate to keep my male friends from my single days because: a) the Boy genuinely likes them regardless of whether I'm there/especially when I'm not, and b) the ones who have taken the plunge all married great women with whom I'm friends apart from my affection for them. I did not see this coming, but I love it.

So I am aware that friendship after marriage is possible, but friendship after kids? Well, that appears to be a whole other thing. Now there are so many more boxes to check. Do I like her spouse? Does she like mine? Do we have kids of similar age? Are we of similar age? Do we have a somewhat similar outlook on parenting? Does it matter? Is she a working mom? Is she a stay-at-home mom who doesn't dislike working moms? Does she live anywhere nearby? Is she willing to put up with my inability to volley communication attempts effectively? So far, with one notable exception of a fellow mom I met online, these combinations haven't quite gelled yet. Not that I haven't tried. I joined the neighborhood parents' listserv and read it regularly. I wrote for a mom's website and friended people there. I signed my then 18-month-old for swim lessons, selfishly, so I might make some mom friends. I take my daughters to the park and tot lot and scour the area like a single guy on the prowl. I am unnecessarily chatty at the grocery store in our neighborhood with mothers who look like my type. But so far, to no avail.

This past Sunday we visited a church that is new to us and the neighborhood. We didn't feel new. We met a couple with a two-year-old and another on the way. We spent the evening in their home later in the week. We were open, they were warm, and it was easy. Easy! After nearly two-and-a-half years!

"Just let me know if you want to swap babysitting-- we're all about that," she said.

Of course I do! I almost cringed at how quickly and enthusiastically I answered the question. Because, really, I just met these people. But friends! For the whole family, and where we live! We see everyone else seem to have such things and wonder how it has thus far eluded us. I think of the couple we saw each week at the pool last summer. The Boy would talk to the little girl's father for a half hour at a time but never introduced himself. How did we get so clumsy and unfriendly?

Today at the tot-lot I sat isolated on the bench in the corner, nursing Emerie. "You need to get into the inner circle," The Boy said, gesturing to the center of the tot lot where four pony-tailed, jeans-clad moms sat chatting. Suddenly, I felt like I was back in high school, except I used to be on the inside. I made a mental note to be more friendly to the ones on the outskirts, that is, if I ever get back in. Until then, I'll try to push myself more, awkwardly extending my hand, and pray for a warm reception.

Yes Sir, That's my Baby

2010-04-02T22:04:00.007-04:00

Driving home from dropping Mirabella off at day care and a disastrous trip to the dollar store for plastic Easter eggs, I decide to take a detour to David's Bridal. My two-month-old, Emerie, snoozes in the backseat of our new-to-us vehicle that The Boy affectionately refers to as "the grocery getter." For obvious reasons, I have been putting off ordering a bridesmaid's dress for my college roommate's May 30th wedding, but for reasons far less apparent, bridesmaids' dresses take months longer to deliver than any other kind of dress, so ordering one on April 1st for a Memorial Day wedding is pushing it.

Of course, as I unfold the stroller, the baby begins to cry. And from a combination of acid reflux, a cold bestowed upon her with the utmost affection by her big sister, and persistent crying over the last week, homegirl is hoarse. This does not bode well for my shopping trip or public perception. I stop just short of the store to remove Emerie from her seat and try to calm her down, then attempt to enter the store whilst pushing the stroller and holding the newborn. A saleswoman-- Donna-- opens the door for me, and I manage to tell her what I need just in time for her to take a lengthy phone call. I start to wander the aisles, frantically trying to find a dress before Emerie loses it, but she never really had it to begin with, so I end up outside to let her cry it out. When I reenter the store, Donna is (still) on the phone, and I manage to find the styles I had seen and liked online. Donna tracks me down with a list of the bridesmaids and asks if the baby is hungry. I cannot understand why this is commonly believed to be the only reason babies cry.

"No, she just ate" I tell her, "She's just a cranky baby," which is mostly true.

She tells me I don't want the dress in my hand because Lindsay, the matron of honor, will be wearing it. She directs me to a one-shouldered number that makes me scrunch my nose. We select three additional dresses-- one I like and two I don't-- and head to the fitting rooms. Emerie fusses loudly as I begin to sweat, knowing that if I were here for any other reason I already would have dumped the dresses without trying them on and walked out (as I have done in Banana Republic, and the Gap Outlet, and JC Penney, and various other fine retailers while cradling a wailing infant and an apologetic smile). I begin to panic knowing she will scream when I set her down in her dreaded seat.

As I open the fitting room door and steer the stroller inside, Donna says, "Here. Give me the baby. I'm a grandma; I'm a pro." And here's the moment I'll reflect on when winning Mother of the Year, 2010: I gave her the baby. Along with a burp cloth. Wouldn't want her to get spit up on her ensemble while kidnapping my child. I could hear her singing to Emerie while I tore my clothes off, all the while thinking, it would be very difficult for her to take the baby. There are lots of people here; there are security cameras; she works here and they know all her information. But really, I can't believe I gave her my baby. A minute later there's a knock on my door and Janice says Donna has sent her to help me.

"Don't worry," she tells me, "Donna is wonderful with babies." She also tells me I look great "for just having had a baby," a modified compliment sure to thrill any new mother. She hems and haws over the dresses, asking me to try on the one I already have and getting me a new size. Donna comes back bouncing my baby.

"I didn't want you to think I had taken her, mom," she says, "We are just fine." Clearly, I am not, as I have handed my infant off to a a stranger.

Janice returns with a larger size and news that my top choice will not be in until the week before the wedding, but I could take said larger size home today, and besides, doesn't it fit better in the bust anyway? So I'm back in my clothes and Donna is walking with me to the cash register, singing nonsense words to my child as onlookers stare.

"Who gave Donna a baby?" an employee asks, but the manager, dressed in black, is all smiles as I stumble an attempt at complimenting Donna, the babyknapping saleswoman of the year.

At the counter, yet another saleswoman explains that I can't get the widely-advertised $20 discount because my bride bought her dress "almost a year ago" in August. I cannot understand the logic behind this policy, but the baby is crying (again) and my self esteem is waning. I fork over the full amount and take the dress. Donna puts Emerie in her seat and pushes the stroller, insisting on walking me to my car. She commiserates with me about a similar experience she had when her kids were young (in which a salesperson did not take her child). As I secure the baby in her seat, Donna asks if I am okay and hugs me. If a stranger is giving you a hug, chances are, you're not okay. I weakly ask her if the woman in black is her manager and tell her I really appreciate her kindness, that I want to ensure her manager is aware of it, and that if it weren't for her I would have left without buying a dress. She graciously waves me off and I proceed to a more remote section of the parking lot where I nurse my child in the driver's seat.

So thankfully, I made it to term and had a healthy baby, Emerie Jane, at 39 weeks via C-section because she was breech and refused to be moved. And she is precious and most days are not as stupid as the one seen here, but heading out unescorted into the world with my daughters reminds me of a feeling that overwhelmed me when Mirabella was born: I've never felt less competent than I have as a mother. I believe I first uttered those words when I locked myself out of the house and a six-week-old Mirabella in. Thank goodness for God's provision and sweet, healthy, forgiving children.

Still Pregnant

2010-01-06T11:36:00.003-05:00

Really? I could have sworn I had written an update before now. I have been on some form of bed rest for 8 weeks now, putting me at 35 weeks. 32 days until D-Day. What has it been like?

Until Christmas, my days were pretty ordered. Up early, get ready (shower, makeup, etc., of course, because that's just the kind of girl I am), breakfast, then plop on the couch. Conference calls for an hour, then work, Rachael Ray at 10, work throughout the day. I have had some more freedom for the last four weeks-- still couldn't return to work, but was told I could "ambulate a little more and see how it goes." So I have been able to help out around the house a little more. I've had a lot of contractions and discomfort, but so far they don't seem to be affecting me or the baby. Girlfriend and I are very cramped for space at this point. She doesn't move as much as she used to, but when she does, I can see her little limbs and joints protruding from my about-to-burst belly. Like an alien would. It's weird.

Mirabella had a series of birthday parties leading up to her actual birthday, often coinciding with other events like an aunt's or a friend's birthday. On her actual birthday, home sick with a virus, she told me, "O-ny my blow out the candles, right Mommy? Not Amy. O-ny it's my birt-day." We gave her a hand-me-down dollhouse with new people that she loves and I made ladybug cupcakes we only ate 2 1/2 of. The Boy bought a nearly four-foot-tall Cinderella balloon (or "Tinkerbelt," depending on who you ask). We decorated the living and dining rooms with streamers and watched the Tinkerbell movie. All of this after Mirabella awoke from a nap as an official two-year-old, irrationally screaming for no apparent reason. This is not typical behavior for her. Or at least, it wasn't before.

"So," The Boy said, "I didn't expect that the Terrible Twos would start at t he exact moment she turned two." Neither did I.

But mostly she's still the very talkative and hilarious sweetheart she's been. She enjoyed a week-long visit with her Nonna (The Boy's mom) that ended Monday. This was a special challenge, as she was basically couch-ridden with a broken foot and I was supposed to be on the couch as well, but Mirabella was home and basic things still needed to get done. We look forward to a more normal visit after the little one arrives.

This morning The Boy called me on his way to work, after dropping Mirabella off at day care. She has taken to making up and singing mashups, like the following she sang to me in the kitchen the other day, "The Bible tell me so, and the Bible never ever get me, 'cause my in my kitchen, and my mommy make me dinner, the Bible tell me so." This morning's song was about "Baby Sitder," about whom she talks a lot these days. The Boy said, "Are you excited about Baby Sister?"

"Yes, my excited. It's my baby sitder, right? Right Daddy? Not yours. O-ny my baby sitder."

"Right, Mirabella," he said, "She is your baby sister, but she is mine and Mommy's baby."

"No, she not your baby. O-ny you can have one baby, not two ones, Daddy. Your can't have two ones, only one. My your baby, Daddy."

Uh-oh.

Bedrested Development

2009-11-30T17:58:00.000-05:00

Today is Day 18 of my latest development, possible pre-term labor and bed rest. Because of cramping (read: contractions), it appears I am progressing in ways I shouldn't be. So I've been living on the couch for going on three weeks. Praise the Lord for the Internet and company-issued BlackBerry, but it's tough on The Boy.

Every day I wake up before 6, when The Boy's alarm goes off. I get Mirabella dressed from bed and give her "piggy tails" when she asks for them. At my daily 8:15 conference calls, they ask me how my jammies feel, but there hasn't been one day I've stayed in pajamas. I shower every morning, put on makeup and do my hair before taking my daily trip down the stairs to the couch. I've been busy with work, which makes me incredibly grateful; my relatively new found ability to work from home has enabled me to avoid taking disability. But, necessarily, I'm out of the loop. My team at work has been wonderful-- concerned about the right things, working with me however they can-- but I'm not nearly as valuable to them as I would be if I were there. And that feeling isn't unlike how I feel at home; I am not useful. I have completed 3/4 of our Christmas shopping, but there's not much more I can do.

Last week at a check up we discussed positive test results from an ultrasound that indicated the baby's birth was not impending, which is great. In the past two weeks, my contractions have gotten better (most days) and I haven't dilated any more. All good signs. So they told me to continue on bed rest for at least two more weeks, "ambulating" a little more to see how it goes. I still cannot lift Mirabella, which means I can't feed her without help, I can't put her to bed; I can't really be alone with her for long. We ambulated to my parents' house for Thanksgiving, which was really nice, but I had contractions most of the day and into the night. Saturday was a lot better and I was able to escape to get my hair done and even have dinner with The Boy, but it was a quick trip, then back to the couch. Last night-- out of nowhere-- the contractions came back, and they've been coming off and on today.

The uncertainty is probably the hardest part. I'm thrilled to know that the baby looks and sounds great. She is growing well-- a week ago she was 2 lbs, 12 oz-- which they tell me is good. My greatest fear, obviously, would be that she come very early and have to spend time in NICU and might not be healthy. Aside from that, and even though I long for the things I used to take for granted, I fear going back to real life. I don't think I can do it. The days I've been up a few hours, for the most part, have not gone well. I can't imagine re-entering work at a point where it's 6-7 days per week, frequent 12-hour days, plus primary care for my sweet little girl and the house stuff. I think part of The Boy fears I won't be able to come back in any capacity-- it's incredibly hard for him to keep up the pace, and it's gotten the best of his temper only a couple of times, which I was afraid of. I never want him to be resentful, but I'm sure it's hard not to.

It's all pretty complicated and, ironically, hardly restful.

I'm Every Woman

2009-11-04T20:51:00.003-05:00

Today a co-worker asked if my daughter understands that a baby is coming soon.

"I'm not really sure that I understand it," I told her, "So, no. Probably not."

Tonight, when I asked Mirabella where her baby sister is, she pulled up her jammies and stuck out her tummy. "In a beddy, Mommy. Baby in MY beddy."

My days have been coming and going so quickly that, most days, I can't remember how far along I am in the incubation of Daughter, 2.0 (oh yeah, it's a girl). I'm also incubating my first project at work, due two days before Christmas, followed closely by my second project at work, due two days before the baby. Deliver a proposal on Friday and a baby on Sunday? Ain't no thang. Should it be disconcerting that I actually know what I'm in for, but I'm still looking forward to childbirth, sleepless nights and breastfeeding as a break?

I'm struggling with the lack of balance in my current life. Though I'm getting better at recognizing that the now is not forever than I used to be, I still have hopes for the relatively near future that look a whole lot different than the reality of my present. I'm not sure how I got to married mother of two-- I don't feel nearly old enough or grown up enough or ready-- yet here I've been. My youngest brother is getting married, my little sister is talking about college, my nearly two-year-old tells me stories from her day, I nonchalantly mention my husband of more than three years, all the while my second child flips and kicks and flails nearly non-stop in my growing belly and I'm the boss at work without ever actually being the boss of anyone.

I happened upon a discussion among coworkers yesterday about why men seem to age better than women, and I think it's because they don't tend to have to juggle quite as much as we do. Not typically as many roles, responsibilities, or hats. It's why I can get up well before 6, make breakfast and lunch, sing pre-school songs on the way to daycare, and deliver homebaked goods to a meeting I'm running in which I have to issue professional admonitions, all before 9 AM. But not without hearing, "You look tired," three times by 10 AM. A bit of wisdom: if you know a woman like this, please don't tell her she looks tired. Just don't.

Snapshot of our Life

2009-09-07T11:06:00.002-04:00

We sat on a bench eating ice cream and listening to a band cover Billy Idol. Mirabella, in her jammies and clutching Hank, her tiny stuffed hamster, stood on the bench and kissed The Boy. "Bye Daddy. See you soon," she said. She kissed me good-bye too and tried to wriggle off the bench.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"I going a work," she announced. Right before she screamed and arched her back and told me "Top it Mommy, top it, I GET DOWN!" because I wouldn't let her walk around the sidewalk in her socks. Welcome to our life these days with an almost 2-year-old and another on the way.

"Where's Mommy's baby?" I ask Mirabella. She pulls up my shirt and points to my "beddy."

"Mommy's baby in a beddy," she says, then points to her belly, "and Lella's baby in a beddy." She doesn't quite get it yet.

I am exhausted most of the time, but I'm not sure who's to blame. Last time I was pregnant, I had a stress-free (if also fulfillment-free) job and all I had to do was make it through the day. A challenge, to be sure, but once I did it, I could crash on the couch. It was okay if I didn't make dinner, even if I felt bad about it. Now, I like what I'm doing much more, but the days are crazy. I certainly don't have time to nap in my car, as I had done last time. When I get home I'm chasing a toddler and making dinner and there's bath and bed and, if I can stay awake long enough, I'll check in with work. If I can't, I mumble an apology to my husband and pass out midsentence. Life is crowded and joyful and we are excited, but if I hear one more person tell me how tired I look, I can't be responsible for what happens.

So in the middle of all the mundane, we look forward to February, even as we try to soak in the now. We took Mirabella to the fair yesterday, amid plenty of double strollers, but we relished this time with just her. She said hello to every animal, attempting to speak to each in their native tongues. She rode the carousel for the first time, and she squealed when her daddy won her a teddy bear in a Ravens letterman's jacket.

"Look at us, doing family things," The Boy said, over a shamefully large cup of cheese fries.

"I think maybe that's what we are."

"Maybe so."

Roadtrip Retrospective

2009-06-14T13:18:00.002-04:00

Since we got married three years ago, I have paid particularly close attention to what families with young children go through on beach vacations. It seemed to require so much stuff. And it has always required stuff for me anyway, because I like to have a variety of sunscreens, towels, blankets, books, beverages, lunch and snacks at the ready-- I don't like to go back inside. Over the last three summers I have motioned to those families and groaned, "One day that's going to be us." I've watched their minivans and SUVs pass our sedan on 95, OBX stickers on the windows, bikes on the back, car top carriers on top, smudged fingerprints on the windows.

Now said sedan has a white leopard print car seat on the backseat and dismembered "fishies" and crumbs strewn everywhere. When my friend Mindy visited last week, she got Mirabella out of her seat and tactfully said, "Wow, it must be hard to keep a car clean when you've got a toddler." I laughed. Because here we are, having accepted that our trunk cannot accommodate suitcases and a Pack and Play, and a stroller, and food for breakfasts and lunches for the duration, and everything else we need, renting an SUV to take our little family of three, plus my sister, on vacation. I have bought shovels, pails, sandcastle molds, sunscreen, a beach umbrella, a sunhat, a tiny tankini and flip flops. We are borrowing a cooler and boogie boards and scrounging up folding chairs. We're going to the beach! When I used to watch those families trudge, loaded down, through the sand, I was not envious. But did you hear me? We're going to the beach! Who cares what we have to bring? This morning we were running late, as usual, but The Boy folded laundry on our bed, "to make it easier for you when you get home," he said. We have piles arranged throughout the house, and lists galore. He stooped to kiss the baby goodbye, and our usually nonchalant little girl didn't want to let go.

"Guess what?" He told her, "After today, we're going to the beach!"

"Beach!" She said, though she doesn't know what it is.

"We're going to get to spend all kinds of time together!" I got a little choked up. I might have grumbled about not being able to take a week off or about having to bring my laptop with me, or about going to Virginia Beach instead of somewhere warmer or more exotic. But we're going to the beach. And I couldn't be happier.

Pomp and Circumstances

2009-06-01T21:28:00.006-04:00

Nearly seven years ago, I sat in an auditorium surrounded, mostly, by strangers. Because I graduated in the summer, a year early, I did not graduate with my friends. We came from all over. The girl beside me had been in college, living there, for 8 years. There were some traditional students, like me, but there were also graduate students and adult students. My whole family had come-- my parents, both sets of grandparents, all of my siblings, and even my boyfriend's family--everyone was there. But to me, it didn't seem like that big of a deal.

When a representative from the program for adult learners spoke, I tried to understand the emotion, but I couldn't. The speakers kept prompting graduates to give their families a round of applause because they were responsible for getting the graduates through. I saw extended families clutching these graduates after the ceremony, bawling. Everyone wanted pictures taken. And I just didn't get it.

But then I married a man who, despite early claims to the contrary, had not finished his Bachelor's degree. He had started college right out of high school while working full time, took a job that moved him to Baltimore and to me, and took classes sporadically. I encouraged him to keep at it, and he did when he could, but with homeownership, marriage, demanding jobs and then parenthood, often it got pushed aside. When he looked to change industries, we began to realize that potential employers probably weren't even getting to his (professionally written, ahem) resume because he didn't have a degree. He vowed to get on it and I vowed to make it possible for him.

He worked through one class every five weeks with only a couple breaks, enabling him to graduate on his birthday last month. I threw a huge party-- parents and siblings and uncles came from up and down the east cost, and we had to borrow space for the extravaganza. But first, I sat with his mother and stepmother and father at the ceremony. I thought about why I felt more nervous and excited for his graduation than I did for my own.

"I never really doubted that I would graduate from college," I told his mom, "It's just what came next." But I watched him face significant fear that he would never finish. And maybe that's why those people at my graduation were so emotional. Because they really believed they might never get there.

So I sat just about as high up as I could at the Meyerhoff and though I'm grateful for my now better-than 20/20 vision, I still couldn't really see. But I listened to the speeches and I got it when the representative from the class thanked his wife for enabling him to be there and spoke of his kids as his inspiration. "How can I speak of the importance of education if I never finished college?" he said. And I understood.

I cried a little when the keynote speaker spoke. I felt energy in the room. The Boy would later say that the students were all friendly to each other. No one was "too cool" to be there. In the lobby I saw a woman in a cap, gown and stilettos with three young children around her feet. I saw grandparents walking across the stage. I saw hope. There was no other place I would have rather been.

We threw the party, despite obstacles of remote location and threatening clouds, and I lit the candles on The Boy's favorite banana dessert as my family clamored for him to give a speech. He deferred, "This was really all Christina. A typical night for us over the past year and a half would be her coming home and cooking dinner and taking care of the baby and cleaning the kitchen and keeping the house running so I could have time to do homework. She edited papers late into the night. I couldn't have done this without her."

But really I couldn't have been prouder, even if he really did have all those degrees he said he had when we met.

Override Me

2009-05-06T21:22:00.006-04:00

It's true. There was a time when I couldn't say the word "budget" without flinching. It wasn't so long ago. Obviously, it's also true that people can change. Dramatically.

Now there is a sloppy chart on a dry erase board in my kitchen that is updated multiple times per week. I've winced at its placement often as I see our guests studying it. "Does the color indicate anything?" My sister-in-law asked one day, gesturing to a board full of red.

"No," I laughed, "Though often that would be accurate." We track gas, personal expenditures (allowances, if you will), dry cleaning and, most notably, groceries.

I subscribe to the Baltimore Sun so that every weekend I can sit at our dining room table and clip coupons, then sort them in my check file. I look up Safeway's weekly specials and build my meal plan and list around them. I put the list and the coupons in an envelope and head to the store. Every week. Our friendly neighborhood Safeway is celebrating their "Re-Grand Opening," as one of the employees kept stating over the PA. In anticipation, they sent out coupon books and new club cards pre-loaded with 10% off May purchases. As Mirabella and I made our way out the door, I said, "I think this is going to be a good trip."

About an hour later I worked to maneuver my cart around turns in the floral department, but it was heavy. I had three pounds of chicken, four pounds of sirloin, four pounds of pork loin chops, four 12-packs of Coke products, 5 boxes of Quaker Oatmeal Squares, and lots of produce and weekly staples. I even got flowers for our upcoming company. Throughout my shopping trip, someone would announce over the PA, "We have an iPod winner on register 9!" or wherever. When selecting a checkout line, I tried to find one that hadn't given an iPod away yet. I watched the screen while the cashier deducted my coupons.

And then he said, "I'm sorry ma'am, but I'm going to have to get a manager to do an override. You saved too much money." Sweeter words I've rarely heard! Needless to say, I did not win an iPod. But I felt like confetti and balloons should have dropped on me anyway. I saved more than $115, and I ended up paying only $183. When I got home I pinned the receipt to the bulletin board in the kitchen and wrote my savings on the board under the heading, "A New State Record." And then I called my mom.

See? People can change.

Certainly Unsure

2009-04-25T23:28:00.005-04:00

There's a line in a Straylight Run song that says, "You take in everything with a certainty I envy; it's somehow all I need," and when The Boy and I were first dating he said it reminded him of me. I was so sure, he said, of so much. I had conviction and definitive answers. This sounds like a compliment, I guess, and I think it was meant as such, but I don't think it's accurate now.

It's not that my conviction is gone. I'm pretty confident those close to me would still label me passionate, and there are still a few things I wholeheartedly know. I'm still animated, I still talk when I should listen, I still embrace opinions with too little information; I still think I know more than I actually do. But not like I did then. Then, there were so many things I just knew. I just knew I had made certain choices that were necessary for me to find my destiny. I knew, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I was going to marry the Other Boy, now referred to as the Marital False Start. I knew there were certain issues that others struggled with-- others I judged, by the way-- that would never plague me. I knew what I would do in just about any situation I had not actually encountered, especially marriage. And parenting. I just knew.

Here's the thing about just knowing: If you're wrong, you're screwed. Let's take the False Start. Turns out I was wrong-- heartshatteringly wrong-- and I had to start over. The logistics were a challenge, though not insurmountable, but the mindset change took much longer. I had built a future on a fantasy, and I had to reframe it all. In fact, I had to throw it all out and learn to wear a wardrobe full of uncertainty. And for a long time, it didn't fit. I had to stare my assumption (previously loudly stated) that there was "one person for everyone" dead in the eye. Because if that were true, I was done. And how could I be comfortable saying I was done for a lifetime at 21?

So when I met The Boy and it started becoming apparent that he was The One, I made the itchy and utterly unromantic statement that I didn't actually believe in The One, or at least I didn't think I did. We still have all the same reminiscent conversations, like, "If I hadn't met Jenn, I'd never have met Erin and I wouldn't have been in that place on that night and I never would have met you," but it's not like I believe that to mean I never would have married or had a family or been happy. I would have, I'm pretty sure, and I would never have thought of what might have been if the door hadn't slid because I wouldn't have known to. "Might have been" doesn't carry much with me because it's so arbitrary. I'm grateful it doesn't.

At our first marriage counseling session, I told our Pastor I was nervous about getting married because so many people get divorced and I have to believe most of them felt like we did at the start. "I just feel like there's nothing that makes us different than them," I said, "and it scares me." I was embarrassed; this was not the kind of thing a blushing bride was supposed to say. He told me he would be worried if we didn't fear divorce; if we thought it was something that couldn't happen to us just because we said we didn't believe in it. It was comforting, in a way, but also disorienting.

I'm much less sure of things than I used to be, which sometimes feels like regression, but probably is progress. I'm working on broadening my view and judging less, or at least later. I think having a child has helped that. I have trouble now looking at someone who is a nuisance or an outcast or a rebel without thinking of the whole of his life. I can't help but think there must have been somebody at some point who really loved him. It may not always be true, but I imagine he probably had a someone who dreamed of his future; who longed for great things for him. There's just so much that I don't see. Maybe it's growth that at least I see that now. I know that I don't know what I don't know.

Mirabella and I went to lunch with my little sister today, and the child threw a fit in front of everyone. More than once. I carried her away from the situation and softly reprimanded her; I put her in time out on a public bench. I didn't actually know what I was doing, but I did what I told her I would. Lately I can see it in people's faces, the internal proclamation that "my child would never behave that way." I'm trying to learn not to care, even while I wince and wish I could apologize to those I've condemned similarly in the past. Being sure was easier.

Are You My Mother?

2009-03-27T14:22:00.004-04:00

I walked into TGI Friday's at 5:30, printed coupon in hand, and saw my daughter light up and yell hi, both arms outstretched. She hugged me with her whole body. The Boy had picked her up from day care so I could go to band rehearsal, and we met for dinner in between because I have become adept at scoring coupons for free meals. Mirabella was restless, lunging from lap to lap. I produced a plastic container of animal crackers.

"How do you have cookies in your purse?" The Boy asked.

"Mommies carry cookies in their purses," I explained. He looked flabbergasted.

I'm not embarrassed to be seen in public with spit up, drool, or cookie stained garments. I'm not fazed at work when I reach for my planner from my tote bag and a Sesame Street play thermometer or block falls out. I'm getting to the point where I'm no longer bothered when my child yells, squeals or shrieks in public. It's a little embarrassing when she says "hi" to passersby at the store, increasing her volume the longer they do not respond, but mostly that's funny. But one of her latest habits is deeply upsetting.

Aunt Nae, her day care provider, is at the top of her list of favorite people. I have mostly come to terms with this, and mostly I am grateful. If I have to be away all day, which I do, at least I'm able to leave her with someone who adores her (and whom she adores). But. Recently, Mirabella has learned to call Aunt Nae. She does this when she has finished her nap, when another child takes a toy from her, when she wants some milk, when she's not getting her way. And now, apparently, when her parents just aren't cutting it. Last Sunday in the church nursery, she had parked herself at the top of the slide, as is her custom, waving and shouting hi to the people below, with no regard for the children waiting to slide behind her. One of the kids pushed her out of the way. She squealed, "Ahh Na-ay! Ahh Na-ay!" I pretended I didn't know what she was saying.

One of the volunteers said, "Who is she calling?"

"Oh, um . . . Aunt Nae. That's her day care provider," I blushed.

Later that day in the grocery store, I had let her have a sip (or 20 gulps) of my chocolate milk. She had taken the straw out and spilled the milk all over her shirt. I pried it from her milky hands and moved it away from her. Again, she shrieked in frustration and yelled, "Ahh Na-ay! Ahh Na-ay!"

Since then? She calls Aunt Nae after she has said "ahh-dow" (all done) and we have not retrieved her from her high chair fast enough. She calls her if she can't reach a toy she wants, if we take something away we don't want her to have, if we force her to sit (not stand and walk across) the couch she has recently learned how to climb on. And last night, the kicker, after I had put her to bed I heard her on the monitor, calling softly, "Ahh Na-ay."

The other night while I worked on the computer in the office, I heard her downstairs calling Aunt Nae, presumably because The Boy hadn't rescued her from her chair fast enough for her liking. I then heard him correct her, "No, not Aunt Nae, Mirabella. Ma-ma, Ma-ma." At least he tried.

Respectfully Challenged

2009-03-06T15:27:00.004-05:00

"Respectfully challenge," the defense attorney said about me and in my general direction, but without meeting my eyes. I would have been the last alternate on a full jury, and I was disappointed. When The Boy was summoned last week and groaned about missed time at work and wasted time in the Quiet Room, I scolded him. "The very foundation of the democratic freedoms we enjoy in this country is the right to due process. How can we say we believe in this, but only if it's someone else who has to serve?" I said variations of this for days leading up to his appointed day in court and was met with rolling eyes. He came home from the first day, naturally having been selected, complaining of "idiots" who tried to elude jury duty. "Isn't that what you wanted to do?" I asked.

"C," he said, "A trial by a jury of your peers is essential to our way of life. It may be inconvenient, but I never tried to get out of it. It's my civic duty." I couldn't believe he had the audacity not only to reinvent history, but then to fail to give me attribution. But it is kind of typical.

The day of his trial everything was closed because of an "in like a lion" March Nor'easter. I got a snow day and his work was delayed. But Baltimore City circuit court was right on time! When he got home from his trial, he said, "I don't want to talk about it. I have lost faith in our legal system." He got into multiple arguments while the jury deliberated, once when a juror said she thought the defendant was guilty but that she, "wasn't there" so she couldn't be sure, and again when another juror alleged that he could not possibly understand the plight of the (white) defendant because he was white. The Boy, incredulous, mentioned a related (and expunged) arrest in his history, but to no avail. I asked lots of questions. "You probably won't get picked, you know, just since you want to do it," he said cynically.

So Thursday I made arrangements for everything to get done at work in case I wasn't there. After 5 I was on the road, so I asked The Boy to check the website to see if would need to report to court. I did. I called a cab last night to make sure I'd get there on time. I waited on the bench outside our house with my laptop bag full of snacks and things to read and work on. I found my way at the courthouse. I changed my name and collected $15. I waited my turn. I found (not free) wifi in the courthouse, thus spending my "expense pay" before I ever went to lunch on cab fare and wifi alone.

I was summoned. I paraded in front of the judge, counselors and defendant with minor confessions I swore would not affect my judgment. I didn't think I'd get called. And when my number came up, I stood in front of the lawyers, one of whom "respectfully challenged" my appointment as alternate #3. I saw other jurors, upon having been placed in the box, then "challenged," actually pump their fists with excitement or thank the "challenging" lawyer. I was disappointed. Rebuffed, I'm back in the Quiet Room with the others who were challenged. Thank goodness for wifi and vpns.

The Minutiae of Fuschia, and Other Observations

2009-01-22T14:01:00.002-05:00

If Barack Obama were my friend on Facebook, our relationship status would be, "it's complicated." I have always shied away from strict partisanship, and much to my family's dismay, I am not a single issue voter. I shudder when I hear "God's people" attempt to speak of God's political affiliation or opinions, and with the exception of my undying love for Brady Anderson, I've really never gotten it about being a celebrity's biggest fan. I don't ever foresee political signs on my lawn or bumper stickers on my car or onesies on my child. I'm just not that kind of girl.

It does not offend my sensibilities or seem contradictory to me to choose the things I believe in from whichever side, then weigh them to see who comes out on top (or least on the bottom), even if that means an R on one ballot column and a D on another. Aside from the irritation I have over not being able to vote in primaries as a voter of undeclared loyalty, this works for me. I believe there is only one man who ever could have saved us and changed everything, and he's already been here once, and he's not the president. Still, I'm not easily sucked into "the sky is falling," overwrought predictions. I think if I say God is in control, then I should act like it, not like the leader of the free world has more power than the one who created it. But still, it's complicated.

Living in proximity to D.C. probably sounds much more exciting than it usually is. In college in North Carolina, the 7-foot Australian I had driven to the grocery store boasted that his home was 30 minutes from members of the then-popular band, Savage Garden. "Really," I said casually, "Well I live about 30 minutes from the President of the United States. You might have heard of him." But everyone here knows that distance rarely has any impact on how long it takes to get somewhere, and that in many ways, Baltimore is a world away from D.C. So I brag about my friend on Capitol Hill, and friends from the south think I'm savvy, but I just pay attention; I don't really know. Even so, the week leading up to the inauguration was interesting. I took for granted the signs above the Baltimore-Washington Parkway I travel every day that said, "Inauguration Jan 20. Expect Heavy Delays." Friends and colleagues were off because they couldn't get to work. Others I knew stayed home to watch TV; others I knew were actually in the thick of it. But not me.

On Tuesday morning I stood in a dark conference room with a man I'd never met staring at the TV in the corner. "I'm glad they have it on somewhere," he said, watching the masses wait on the Mall. "Driving up 95 this morning, I felt really...lonely. During the election, no one here said anything. It's just so bizarre."

We discussed the unique environment where we work, which tends to be a bastion of Republican ideals in the middle of a very blue state. I told him, "Last week I mentioned concern about traffic on inauguration day, and a colleague said to me, 'I don't really think he's that popular around here, is he?'" Which, I guess, just proves you can always find someone to tell you what you want to hear. Later that morning we were joined by others who brought their lunch and sat mostly in silence to watch the ceremony, and it was a little less lonely.

No matter who you voted for, I think it's hard not to feel proud to be part of a country where it's possible to hold elections and execute peaceful transfers of power, to assemble millions of people in one place without a single arrest, and to elect as president a member of a race that was not so long ago in chains. And while I reject the idea that any one person could fix all that ails us, I hold a cautious hope that some change will do us good.

Running like Zacchaeus

2009-01-09T16:13:00.005-05:00

On Christmas night at my parents' house, everyone was hungry. For the first time ever, emulating my Jewish friends from childhood, we ordered Chinese delivery. It was delicious. After we ate, The Boy asked to see my fortune. It said, "Good luck on your journey," and so did his. "Are we going somewhere?" he asked. Oh, the foreshadowing.

The next week, while at Ikea for the second time in three days, I tried to convince myself I did not need a reasonably priced six-pack of cinnamon rolls, a young man in his early twenties handed me a tiny handwritten note. "God bless you," he smiled as I read the words, "I am here to help you with anything you need. Love, Jesus." I didn't think much of it, other than that it was a much more welcome approach to proselytizing than I'd previously seen. No fire and brimstone on a tract. It was nicer.

After we got home, The Boy offered to take me out for…well, just to get OUT. We had enjoyed company in the form of his mother and sister for the last week, but the lack of personal space coupled with my crowded mind was starting to make me lose it. I sat on a bar stool nervously shaking my leg and enumerated the list of things that had me frantic.

"I love your mom, it's not your mom. It's just…work was stressful before I left, then there was the trip to Florida, then there was Christmas and company and the birthday party and now these work changes that may or may not happen and the questions of what's next for us and it's all really good, but it's all back to back to back and I just need time and space to process and I'm never alone and I'm so tired and I can't. I've loved this time at home with Mirabella and she's getting to a different stage where I feel like I'm missing more and it makes me wish I could think about being at home, but I know I can't, so what is the point? But at the same time, I have these ambitions to do more at work, and I'm not sure how to reconcile the two. We talk about growing our family and I want to have faith that God will provide what we need, but I'm not sure where the line is between faith and stupidity. I feel I might be on the verge of a crisis or something."

"Oh, baby," he said, "I'd say you're there. You've given me a lot just now. There's a lot going on in that head of yours, and you can't fix it all, not at once." He reminded me of all the things I already know. But mostly he listened. And this is the way I tell it in retrospect, which is different than the way I accepted it then.

I started to accept that things are harder than they have to be because I've been fighting where I am right now. The roles, responsibilities, challenges, geographical location-- all of it. As if accepting it and learning to be content would relegate me here forever, I rage against it all.

Sunday morning at church a guest speaker, once a missionary in the Philippines, told a story about her beloved dachshund, Zacchaeus, and how he was so anxious to see the whole neighborhood that he pulled at his leash, thereby walking restrained and wheezing for the entirety of his walks. She had a personal epiphany when she told him, "Zacchaeus, if you would just stop running and obey, it would be so much easier!" The words stung me too. Pastor Danny followed, admonishing not to "rue this day or your current position." And I guess that's what I'm doing when I complain about hating where we live because I can never find a parking space and we never have enough room or wanting to be home more or wanting to be in a better financial predicament. There is so much that is good, and there is even more that I just don't know. Sitting, waiting, wishing never got even Jack Johnson anywhere.

As we were leaving church, Nikki asked how I was doing and I wonder if my eyes said it all. "You need to borrow this book," she said, producing a well-read paperback copy of The Shack from her coat pocket. "Take four hours and read it today," she said.

When we got in the car, The Boy said, "Well, was all that loud enough for you?" My head swam with conviction and change. At home, though I didn't have four hours, I did make it about halfway through the book. I stopped at a page where Jesus talks with the protagonist about how humans were made to live in the present, and that when we live in the future, through worrying and speculation, God is not with us there. It painted it so clearly for me, and I saw myself in it.

I have been living in fear about the state of the world, the state of our finances, the possibilities of my job, the fact that my life may never look like I thought it would, that I might never be able to be the mommy I had hoped, at least not in the way I had hoped, that I might never reconcile work with life and dreams, that I might not have another child, or that the walls might crumble if I do, that balance might not actually be something that can ever be achieved. The list goes on. And I say that my favorite Bible verse is Exodus 14:14, "the Lord will fight for you, and you shall keep your peace," and I probably say that because I wish I felt its truth in my heart. What's always felt truer to me, though, is Mark 9:24: "Lord I believe; help my unbelief!"

After this low point and apparent epiphany, things feel different, but not much has changed. I have been without house guests, which helped a little, but we will be welcoming The Boy's father and stepmother tonight for a belated celebration we are looking forward to. I got some news at work that had potential, and I could have let it consume me, but I didn't, which was fortunate because it turned out to be nothing anyway. I have worked hard for four days not to live in fear and to let go. And I guess four days is a start.

(And no, all of this did not overshadow a fantastic time with my girls in Florida or a joyful Christmas with my family and overly-gifted daughter, but I'm trying to live in the present, remember?)

So I don't know how long it's going to take to get to wherever it is we're going, but I know where I am and I'm working on fully living here.

Strangers with Admonitions

2008-12-02T16:13:00.005-05:00

Elliot squawked and laughed his maniacal, hyena laugh into the darkness of our bedroom, and that can only mean one thing: I had hit the snooze too many times. Elliot is the radio personality I reluctantly invite into my half-consciousness each morning, and he begins his day at precisely 5:48. So if he's on, I'm not supposed to be in bed. I hear Elliot most mornings.

"Ow!" I groaned upon receiving a sharp knee to the back.

"What happened to 5:30, man?" The Boy mumbled into my hair.

"12:30 happened to 5:30, back off." I referenced the ungodly hour we got to bed after unpacking from our gloriously long weekend, but he was right. I had a doozy of a day ahead of me that I had dreaded for the entire 10 1/2-hour drive that usually takes 5 hours, so I got up.

As I walked briskly in the cold to my car two blocks away and an hour and a half later, a black dog lunged away from her owner, who was trying to unlock his front door, and right across my path. Her retractable leash stretched in front of me, then encircled me. Attempting to free myself from just such an entanglement on the beach two years ago left me with a scar on the back of my knee, so this time I didn't move.

"I'm so sorry," he said, a face full of freckles under a backwards baseball cap. "Zoe, come on." He called her and she wound around again. I just stood there dumbly until he wrangled her. "I'm really sorry," he said.

"It's okay. Have a good day," I tried to smile.

"You too," he said as I walked away, then, calling after me down the sidewalk, "I hope you have fewer obstacles."

And that's where it all took a turn.

I won't bore you with all the details, but let me sum up.

Me: "Hi, can you please transfer these files from point A to point B so I may send them to the printers?"

They: "Did you fill out the paperwork? Did you get the guy to sign it who is on vacation until past your deadline? Did you talk to the person who is away from her desk all day? Did you wait at your desk for half the day after printing the nearly 500 pages that, previously unbeknownst to you, need to go through a post-review pre-printing review? Did you contact 'finance focals' in three different time zones to ask the same question without getting an answer?" And this is just
a sampling.

I had told the man who sits by me about my strange encounter in the morning, and he witnessed the veritable ropes course I encountered all day.

"Did you get a good look at the guy?" He said, straightfaced. "Are you sure he was even a real person?"

I'm tempted to lurk around his house to see if I run into him again. Or maybe I should hide? Who knows what my ominous, fortune cookie-esque neighbor might say next time.

Out Came the Sun and Dried up All the Rain

2008-11-20T21:46:00.004-05:00

When I got there yesterday, she was on her knees in the middle of the rug, surrounded by dancing toddlers. The Itsy-Bitsy Spider played on a CD and she bounced up and down, throwing her arms over her head and waving them around. She saw me over her shoulder and smiled, then stood up and bounced so ferociously she was almost jumping. She twisted her wrists and threw her head back, laughing. The Itsy-Bitsy Spider is her jam. No matter her mood, if I start with the hand motions and the singing about the spider, she is quietly mesmerized.

Last night when we got home we cranked the music in the living room and bounced around like idiots on the rug, trying to inspire Mirabella to dance for her daddy. We blared Ben Folds and Regina Spektor and Mirabella broke it down. She got low. The Boy captured it all on video, along with her giggly antics and several weeks of other milestones. After dinner and bath and bed I opened the camera to review the footage. I saw nothing but videos from months ago. Everything was gone.

"I'm not mad at you; I'm just mad," The Boy fumed when I sniffled into my pillow and asked why he was blaming me. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, and I knew it didn't really matter. I knew it was a few big weeks, not a life. But still.

She walks now, and it looks about as natural to me as if our puggle, Mosotos, started walking on his hind legs. She's gotten good enough at it now that she can be nonchalant, only rarely pausing to cheer for herself. When I got there today, she stood in her dancing spot in her tiny pink Pumas.

"Did you have a good day?" I asked

"Miss Thing went to timeout today," Aunt Nae reported. "She and Devin couldn't stay away from the stairs."

This is not her first trip to timeout. My mother likes to tell me I've got a "strong-willed child" on my hands.

Tonight while we ate grilled Asian turkey skewers and scallions, she cried in her crib. She's been on a veggie strike, and don't even think about feeding her from a spoon. I brought her a bottle, guessing she was hungry. We sat in her rocker, wrapped in a blanket and in the glow of her ladybug nightlight she leaned back to smile and wave at me, several inches from my face. I sang the Itsy-Bitsy Spider and she stared and wiggled her fingers and hummed. I squeezed her and laid my head on her head, snuggled beneath my chin, squinting my eyes and telling myself there are some things videos can't touch.

Get Your Own Frickin' Coffee

2008-11-13T21:15:00.015-05:00

He was talking about the frustration of having a diverse student body in engineering training classes.

"Some of the students are clerical and they just thought it would be an interesting class. But it's not beneficial to have these discussions with clerks." He patted my back, "No offense Christina."

Because we had company in the form of a high-ranking customer, I tried to minimize my outwardly expressed horror. I'm not sure I succeeded. I turned toward him, the People's Eyebrow aloft, leaning back in repulsion. "Umm," I said.

"Not that you're a clerk," he corrected himself, too late.

"No. No, I'm not," I said with a fake smile.

"Christina's been around this material long enough, she could be an engineer," he overcompensated, once again.

"That's right," a woman who has recently befriended me chimed in, "She certainly could."

I interrupted their stumbling and directed a comment to our audience in reference a point the customer had just made, citing a recent on-the-ground example. I tried to deflect. It makes me tired.

I haven't been a "clerk" since my first job out of college when I was really more like the small Armenian's indentured servant. I drove his cars and he paid for my gas and cell phone; I pretended to enjoy kayaking in his backyard and being spat upon my his spoiled daughter. He asked every inappropriate question in the book and criticized my newspaper-folding abilities. It did not last long.

It's difficult enough to be one of few women in an office or an industry, but I've mostly gotten used to that. It's not unusual for me to be the only woman in a room. But that fact, coupled with my nontechnical title and work, seems to equal in many male minds, an only slightly glorified secretary. There's nothing wrong with that title or job, but it's a far cry from mine.

Working on Mars

2008-11-11T21:09:00.003-05:00

"Those are some crazy jeans there," one of my managers said too early this morning.

I advised him they were corduroy and kept working. I didn't say I didn't care how they looked, just that I was actually able to fit into them again after two years.

"That's a pretty wide belt," he went on.

"Does it remind you of the '70's?" I said, wondering if that could have been construed as a dig and if I could have honestly said I didn't mean it.

"Yes!" He said, "Those are 70's pants. And look at those shoes!" He gestured to my berry-colored, patent leather, platform Mary Janes.

"My mom says she should have just saved her clothes and shoes for me," I said, trying to stay good natured while steering the conversation back toward our impending deadline and my pile of work.

"Okay, maybe I'm being too observant here, but. . . did you stripe your hair?"

I smiled and told him that's not what we call it while silently moaning since my highlighting was always meant to be as natural looking as possible. Evidently, I failed.

"Christina, I can see a distinct stripe right there," he approached me, then pointed to it. "You mean that's not your natural color? It's definitely striped. It's dark right there, Christina." He just kept going on. "Maybe if you just brushed it or combed it or something it would blend in better."

"So I'm wearing 70's pants and crazy shoes and I've got striped hair that it looks like I don't brush. Anything else you'd like to tell me?" He was finally done.

Then, at a LASIK consultation, "Wow. You know the girl who just left here, she would have killed to have corneas the size of yours."

This is what happens when you work on a Federal holiday, I suppose.

Tongue-tied Flagellation

2008-11-09T21:10:00.008-05:00

Call off the hounds; here I am. Thanks for checking back in. Think I can blame it all on the pumpkin pictured below? Think again.

Miles separate me from many of the people I love. Most of them would agree, to my face (and some have), that I'm terrible at keeping in touch. The ones who have stuck with me are the ones who do not take an unreturned phone call or email-- or several-- as an unspoken write-off. I'm not proud of it; I don't like it about myself, but it's true. I could blame it on being a mother and a wife and full-time employee, and I wouldn't be untruthful, except that this fact predates my current predicament. I have never been good at it.

My freshman year of college, I learned that a high-school friend was mad at me. "I thought we were close," she said, when we talked.

"We were," I agreed.

"Well it really hurt me that you didn't think I was important enough to keep in touch with." I was kind of baffled. Then, we lived in a world without the now-disruptive Facebook, Myspace or text messaging. Without any sense of malice or irony, I tried to explain that I figured since I was in North Carolina and she was in Pennsylvania, we were done. I wasn't sad or upset about it, I just figured that's how it went. She, clearly, had not. I wince now at my certainty then, but that happens a lot these days.

Another dear friend, Mindy, lives in Vermont. A couple years ago, I intended to call her on her birthday, which I always remember. Time got away from me. So instead of calling her a few days late, I didn't talk to her for at least several weeks (and if she's reading this, I'm sure she'll correct me that it was much longer than that). When I sheepishly answered the phone I explained to her, again, in all sincerity, that the reason I hadn't called was because I hadn't forgotten her birthday. "Well, I was upset that I didn't manage to call you on your birthday, because I really did remember. But then the more time passed, the worse I felt for not calling, so I just kept not calling." Because she's one of the ones that love me anyway, she laughed at my flawed logic. Still, I wish I could tell you this was an isolated occurrence. It is not.

Unfortunately, it's gotten worse. Whereas I used to think I was really busy, now I know it. And another friend, now in Texas, who has never minced words about my severe inadequacy in this area, reminds me we are all busy-- I'm not the only one. I can't argue with her point, and it's not for lack of feeling guilty or having good intentions that I don't call.

In the not yet 10 years since high school, Alex has been in Pittsburgh, Charleston, San Diego, and Southeast Asia. He called a few weeks ago to tell me he and his lovely bride have recently moved to D.C. Compared to how separated we've been, we are practically neighbors. But his call remains unreturned. He is perhaps the most persistent and patient of them all. He is the only reason we remain friends, and I'm so grateful for his persistence. If I were him, I wouldn't waste my time on me.

I don't know how people like Jennifer in Salisbury can remember not only to call and text on birthdays but also to send homemade gifts and handwritten letters. Instead, I intend to send photos of my baby playing with the gift a far-flung relative sent, but I never get around to taking or printing the photos, so I don't send the thank-you until it's embarrassingly late. I hope I've crystallized it for you.

All of this to say, yeah, I've been busy, but that's not why I haven't been here. It's been more than three months since I've written. The same friend who rightly says, "we're all busy," on one occasion told me, "I can't really believe you haven't had a few minutes alone in the car when you could have called." She was right then, and it applies now. Of course there have been occasions since August that I've been putzing around online, wondering why other people can't find the time to update their blogs. But a lot can happen in a few months.

A few months, in my daughter's case, is the difference between pureed foods and finger foods, crawling and walking, one tooth or four. For me, it's gone from barely making it through the week day to being noticed and weighing opportunities. It's losing touch with many I love and then, shockingly, hearing from a ghost I haven't known in years. So on my first day back to you, with all of that behind me, what do I choose to talk about? What do I say?

I guess I'll echo the ghost, in typical, understated fashion and say, "it's been a while," and go from there.

Wrong Brained

2008-08-01T14:34:00.004-04:00

During the course of our aforementioned, continued and drawn-out
Organizational Extravaganza, we ventured into the kitchen. I was
excited to get rid of the clutter, move out things we never use and
take inventory of what we have. The Boy opened the cabinet that
contained glasses-- one of the few I was pretty sure did not need to
be reorganized-- and looked serious. "Okay, tell me if you agree with
me. I'm thinking the plastic cups should be on the top shelf." This
is when I knew I had just committed to more than I had planned. Five
days later, only the top cabinets have been tackled.

"But why?" I humored him. "That's where they'll have the most chance
of breaking."

"What?" he laughed, "That's what you think? My reason was because
they get the least amount of use. I can't believe the differences in
how two different sides of the brain work."

And sometimes, that's all we are. Two halves of a whole brain,
piecing it all together.

This morning, after he had fed and dressed our daughter, in a pink and
green gingham dress and pink flip flops she'd rather eat and praised
her for saving her poop for the daycare provider, he packed the
bottles up and whisked past me with a kiss and an 'I love you' while I
muttered about all the steps inherent in my getting out the door.

"I have to get cash for Aunt Nae," I said, reminding him that no task,
while with the baby, is a simple one. "I have to go get the car, pack
the car and get her in her car seat only to drive three blocks, get
her out of the car seat to go to the ATM, then put her back in the car
to drop her off at day care, then I'll actually be on my way to work.
And you? You just take your coffee and put your top down and drive to
work without a care in the world," I flung my hand over my head in a
frolicking motion for effect. "As soon as you leave, to anyone who
might pass by, it's as if you don't even have a family."

To which he replied, "That's not true. I think about you the whole time."

Life on a Change

2008-07-28T22:07:00.006-04:00

I'm catching my breath through my stubbornly stuffy nose thanks to my persistently snotty daughter, and we've been everywhere. Fourth of July weekend we ventured to Connecticut with The Boy's sister, our dog and the baby. We rented an SUV. We finally started to understand why people drive them; everyone had plenty of space, and there was a place for everything. I made fun of The Boy for backing into parking spaces, the way SUV drivers the world over seem to do for no apparent reason. He offered excuses, but at least he managed to do it in one take each time. Then, in Connecticut, we had to stop for gas. We had to restart the pump because it maxed out at $75 the first time; we remembered why we prefer sedans. We enjoyed introducing Mirabella around New England. She was sleepy, but she fared well for most of the trip.

Two weeks ago, though it feels much farther in the past than that, we ventured to the Outer Banks with my mom's entire family. We have never traveled together or spent that amount of time together. There was apprehension, as there always is with such inclusive family vacations. But our time off is minimal-- I couldn't afford to take the whole week off-- so we were determined to have a wonderful time, and we did. We laughed that family vacations used to feel a little like a sacrifice because we knew the only time alone we would get would be in bed. Now,the only way for us to get time alone on vacation is if we travel with family. Everyone fought over Mirabella and we got plenty of time with her and to ourselves. We skipped out on a midnight showing of the Dark Knight with all the cousins because we feared we wouldn't be able to stay awake and instead spent the evening in the hot tub with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. "I don't care how good that movie is," The Boy said as we climbed into bed, "I can always see it later and I have no regrets."

Mirabella seemed to enjoy the beach, squealing when the water touched her feet and laughing as she wiggled her toes in the wet sand. Despite lots of time alone there, I did wear her baby in a Baby Bjorn to a wine tasting. I wondered if that was bad form.

The little lady is now seven months old, has sprouted her first tooth, has wild and fuzzy blonde hair, and is crawling like a prehistoric reptile all over the place. We are trying to teach her sign language. So far, she looks thoughtful and grunts when I sign "more" (for food) and laughs when I ask "where's Daddy?" and ignores me, most often, when I sign "no," "don't touch," and "stop."

Last week, over a Boboli pizza and a bottle of North Carolinian red wine, The Boy and I had our very first State of the Union: Financial Edition meeting. I dreaded it. I have always dreaded it. Because of multiple factors including unreliable income and bad decisions, we, as a couple, have never operated under a formal budget. My MO with money has always been to worry about it all the time but, in practice, to act like said worries do not exist. Don't try this at home. So now that the market has tanked and we are housepoor and stuck in it, it occurs to us that it would behoove us to change our ways. We pored over spreadsheets and a calculator and came up with a budget and action items. We now have weekly allowances that are tracked on a white board in the kitchen. I just signed up for a supermarket coupon website. I am struggling with the adjustments.

This past weekend was phase one of the Organizational Extravaganza on the homefront. The survival mode that we have been in since I can remember has got to stop. I was ducking when I opened cabinets, buying things I didn't need because I didn't know what I already had. We've been constantly tripping over Mirabella's increasing number of things. She started crawling on an uncomfortable jute rug that was not nearly as clean as it should be. So we've a long way to go, but at least the living room, with it's repurposed rug and rearranged furniture, is more functional and less cluttered.

We are learning to be better stewards of everything we've been given, the big and the small. It's not easy, but it is welcome change.

My World Strapped Against My Back

2008-06-24T16:08:00.001-04:00

I feel like a turtle, or at least a bag lady. I see, in my near future, becoming the woman who wears sneakers with her work clothes. I vow not to wear pantyhose with slouch socks, with or without cross-trainers. Never.

This morning I toured my alternate work location with one of my managers. She showed me multiple ways to get there, told me when the close parking spots open up, made sure I could find the bathroom and walked me through the cafeteria. I have four work phone numbers, four computers, four monitors, three work e-mail addresses, two desks in two separate buildings, three managers, one me. How will they ever find me? How will I ever remember where I'm supposed to be and when, and how will I actually get there? I figure that most of the time the phone numbers and email addresses will be useless. I'll be in my car, praying for a parking space or worse, I'll be hiking through acres of asphalt trying to get to where I'm already supposed to be. Which, of course, is everywhere, and never soon enough.

Yesterday I might have snapped, just a little, at The Boy. On the phone from work he told me he wasn't sure when he'd be home. "I wish I could just say, 'oh, I'll get there when I get there.'" I complained. Of course I know he is not gallivanting; he's at work. But even if I had to work late, I couldn't. Because a little girl waits for me, and her day ends at 5:00. She is always ready for me to come; when I scoop her up she hugs me tight around the neck, which is her new trick that I hope she never outgrows. By the time I heave her carrier up the stairs and to the car she is usually, against all bumpy odds, asleep. This is what we do. And I recognize that the opportunity to work later would result in less time with my baby every evening, and the time we have is already limited and busy and cranky. I can't imagine having less. But still.

Sunday, after months of agonizing, I decided to start weaning. And maybe what I really mean is that I decided to stop pumping for minimal effect and call this process what it is. I looked up the definition, and there are two. The first, "to accustom (as a young child or animal) to take food otherwise than by nursing" really started happening long ago. Because my supply was low, we have been supplementing with formula for the last three months, which initiated the process. Mirabella has been rejecting me increasingly over that time. The mornings were our last remaining feeding, and though they will be the last to go, they will be gone soon and already involve a bottle anyway. The second definition of weaning seems more appropriate, "to detach from a source of dependence." And this is why I cried myself to sleep on Sunday.

My baby doesn't need me. Sure, she prefers me, for now. But anyone can feed her. Anyone could care for her. So I am wearing a regular (if ill-fitting) bra today, but it doesn't feel as freeing as I thought it would. I don't feel like I'm there when I'm supposed to be; sometimes I feel like I'm missing it all. Nursing was the only thing that was all mine; it was something only I could give my baby. So that's part of it. But maybe more than that, I've never tried so hard at something and failed so miserably at it. Somewhere outside myself, I know this is harsh and not entirely true, but this is how it feels. Not good enough. Not the best for my daughter. I failed.

Sunday night I soaked my pillow and threw fistfulls of tissues on the floor. I told The Boy, "The change in hormones means I'll get my period again and it could lead to depression, so you have to watch out for me."

"So…this crying at night thing…" he said carefully.

"Once is okay," I sniffled, "every day means there's a problem."

Certainly there are things I won't miss, and definitely the "bonding" aspects of nursing are long gone for us. My baby doesn't like to drink from the tap, I have joked, she prefers her brew bottled, but I don't really think it's funny.

When I started work in March, and when we realized Mirabella wasn't gaining weight because I didn't have what she needed, I prayed that I would be able to make it to six months. Sunday was her half-birthday, so I made it, but just barely. I know there are aspects of having my body to myself again that I will enjoy. I will frantically shuttle between these new stations in my life, more places to go, but one less bag to carry.

Tears for New Parents Left Behind

2008-06-20T10:22:00.000-04:00

For some reason, these tragic stories keep making their way to me. Desperately wanted babies are born to deeply faithful parents and live for only a short time. It breaks my heart, not just the deaths but the strength of the lives left behind. I find myself weeping for people I'm sure I'll never meet. What could I possibly do? So I pray and cry and hope that God would allow my mourning to somehow make their burden even the slightest bit lighter.

First, Angie Smith, whose husband Todd is of the Christian band Selah, writes of her recent experience losing their newborn daughter here. Her words are at once genuine, heartbreaking, funny, and absolutely inspirational.

Then, it appears that people have found this blog while searching for Dennis Rainey. I followed their path and learned that he and his family mourn the loss of his 7-day-old granddaughter, and you can read about it here.

I hope you'll join me in thanking God for the incredible gift of the healthy children in our lives and in praying for those suffering the unimaginable.

Help I Don't Need

2008-06-18T16:27:00.008-04:00

There is a dearth of good Christian radio stations where I live. Perhaps I should clarify: there is a dearth of Christian radio stations I enjoy listening to where I live. There are three stations, one of them mostly talk, and the other two mostly Casting Crowns, 4-Him, and Mercy Me, and all three of them mostly Republican. I have never subscribed to the notion that God is partisan-- in either direction-- and I've never felt more strongly about that than I do now. It's not that I am naïve enough to believe that mainstream media is any less biased; it's just that I believe as Christians, we should be held to a higher standard. So, for example, in my thinking, a Christian news organization should deliver the news in as fair and unbiased a manner as possible, as if unto God, the same way the rest of us are supposed to go about our jobs. I've had several of these issues recently that irritated me along my commute. This morning, this: "Two-thirds of Americans support domestic drilling efforts; Democrats disagree." So listeners are supposed to believe that a) two-thirds of Americans are Republicans, and b) all Democrats believe the same way? Because that's what an irresponsibly-worded sentence like that suggests.

But, alas, at this point, I expect my news to be pre-filtered for me, telling me what to think, so I take the time to read, watch and listen to multiple sources across the spectrum of media so that I may sort through the biases and form my own opinions. (Except for Fox News. After my 9-month employment seated in front of a 50-inch plasma screen projecting All Fox News All the Time, I think I've had enough Bill Hemmer and Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto and Head-On, apply directly to the forehead, commercials to last me a lifetime.)

More troubling than all of this, though, are a couple of "uplifting and encouraging" messages I've been subject to recently on these radio stations. The first came from notorious Christian psychologist and radio personality, Dr. James Dobson. I wish I could find a transcript of his message, but I've been unable. I will paraphrase. He spoke of the challenge of being a woman through different phases and roles of life while I nodded:

"First you're somebody's daughter, then you're somebody's wife, then you're somebody's mother, then, perhaps, you're somebody's widow, and the only thing that stays constant through all of this change is Jesus Christ."

Some part of me understood and felt the heart of what he was saying, but still I felt anger in the pit of my stomach. As I drove my baby daughter to day care, I actually yelled aloud, "SO WHEN AM I ACTUALLY SOMEBODY?!" Of course I could not argue that my Jesus stays constant when nothing else does; in that I have always taken great comfort, even when I could find it nowhere else. But I cannot believe that He sees me only through these lenses. What if I had not married? Would I still then just be somebody's daughter, waiting for my next designation? Would I be somebody's future spouse? Why isn't it enough for me just to be me, a child of God and nothing more or less? I am my Heavenly Father's, most definitely, but why, according to Dr. Dobson and so many, am I only defined on this earth as what I am in relation to a man? I have turned this over in my mind in the months since I heard it, and while I know he might not have meant it maliciously, he still meant it, and I have tried to accept it, but I can't.

Since I experienced the complicated joy of becoming a mother nearly six months ago, I have struggled with identity. "What's wrong with being a mom?" One (childless) friend said. My mother, not really understanding what I meant when I shifted uncomfortably as people who are not my child addressed me as "mom," said somewhat defensively, "I always loved my role as a mom." Of course, I am a wife and daughter and sister and mother and friend and employee, and I relish each role independent of the others. But somewhere in all of that, aren't I a woman? An individual, "fearfully and wonderfully made?" Isn't that list made up of the situations in which I am myself? Don't I carry my transcendent identity into and between those locales? I tried to imagine a similar message going out to men, but I couldn't. It never would.

Another personality I have often admired, Dennis Rainey, spoke the other day on grandparents and how, in our culture, they seem to be raising their grandchildren in increasing numbers. I expected him to talk about teenage or ill-equipped parents, too immature or young to handle parenthood by themselves. Although he did credit single parenthood with contributing to this phenomenon, he also cited a rise in working mothers. He went so far as to shame the mothers for allowing their children to be "raised" by their grandparents. Now certainly I'm aware of situations in which this occurs. But I wonder what Mr. Rainey would have to say about my situation.

Aunt Nae is not Mirabella's grandmother. She is not related to us in any way, but she is the precious lady who loves my baby every day. She feeds her three times a day, keeps her warm and dry, plays with her, worries about her diaper rash, comforts her, and meets her needs until I come screeching up the driveway and down the stairs to scoop her up and squeeze her tight at 4:56 every day. I spend my days thinking about my daughter, providing for her, longing for her, and wishing and planning for days when I won't have to because I'll be with her. I spend my nights holding her, bathing her, rocking her, feeding her, playing with her, reading her stories and singing her to sleep. But am I really not the one who is raising my child? Should I be ashamed that we are unable to afford for me to stay home? Or, delving deeper in the guilt and shame department, does it mean I am less of a mother because I am not sure I'm cut out for being a full-time stay-at-home mom?

Nearly three years ago, newly engaged, on the day before I would start classes in the advanced degree program I now feel I may never finish, I proudly talked it over with my extended family. "But why are you going back to school," a relative asked earnestly, "don't you want to have children? What would be the point?" I remember talking lowly and slowly; I remember my face and neck turning red; I remember The Boy meeting me in the kitchen and, in soft tones, telling me we could leave. That's how I felt when I heard the words of Dobson and Rainey: defensive, inadequate, guilty, ashamed. Not remotely uplifted or encouraged, and I wonder if I'm the only one missing the point.

Not Really Not Guilty

2008-06-13T13:55:00.002-04:00

On Wednesday, I was a defendant. Thinking better of the grey pants I had intially chosen, I wore a skirt and uncomfortable heels because that's what I remember Winona Ryder and Paris Hilton doing when they went to court. I was the best dressed person in the court room, but it didn't matter.

It all started a couple months ago, when a Transit Authority officer appeared in the middle of the road and motioned me to the side. I despise this; it is terrifying and not the first time it has happened. I am a reasonably defensive driver, but why would I assume a law enforcement official, or any individual for that matter, would be standing between two lanes of opposing traffic on a busy road? I pulled over and might have sworn, realizing I did not know the speed limit on that road. I prepared this defense, then scrapped it when I saw a speed limit sign (the first posted on that road) directly ahead and mocking me while I waited. The officer was friendly, despite my terse responses. Mirabella wailed.

"She probably wants to be moving," the officer offered, "mine were always that way." I wanted to remind her why I had stopped and that I was not interested in small talk. After taking every bit of ten minutes, she returned at my window with a $90 ticket and apologetic smile. "I had to give you a ticket; 43 in a 25 is a bit fast. But I would fight it." She would repeat that suggestion, making me wonder why we couldn't just skip a step and forget the ticket. It was my first speeding ticket in over 10 years of driving.

I decided to take the officer's advice. I did a dry run of the drive to the court house and promised myself a trip to Starbucks when it was over. I practiced how I would plead and what I would say with The Boy the night before. And in the morning I waited. A lot. Immediately I noticed that "District Court of Maryland," the phrase that encircled the seal above the judge's bench, was not centered. I could not believe how much this bothered me. I kept thinking if they would just scoot it a little to the left all would be well. I turned around every time Court Room 5's door opened to see if my officer would show up. She did not. At least 50% of the defendants failed to appear, but oh the ones that did...

I learned that in the future, should the officer show up and I really am guilty of the charges, pleading not guilty will get me nowhere. I had suspected this. I was hesitant even to go to court, because I do not understand the concept of pleading not guilty when clearly I was doing whatever they said I was doing. Kudos to Maryland for the "guilty with an explanation" plea. This seemed to work better for most of the defendants.

There was the guy who looked vaguely like someone who would have gone to my high school who was charged with driving with expired registration and no tags. He politely explained that he was in the middle of a nasty divorce, and his ex, unbeknownst to him, had removed and returned the tags. " I didn't even believe it when the officer told me why he pulled me over," he explained, "I had to see for myself." The cops seated behind me snickered; "Cut him a break," they said. The sympathetic judge lowered his fine and removed all points from his license.

He was not as forgiving to the diminutive teenage girl who pleaded not guilty of speeding in excess of 20 miles over the limit, and following too closely as she changed lanes. Repeatedly. Her defense didn't make any sense, ("He said he was right behind me, but I didn't see him" and "I was not following that close"), yet she chose to CALL A WITNESS. Really. The blonde girl she called had allegedly been in the car with her for the stop. She angrily disputed the officer's claims.

"Were you the one driving?" the judge asked.

"No, she was texting the driver," one of the cops behind me scoffed.

The judge noted that the offense occurred on the same day the girl in question had been in court for a previous speeding ticket. "How long have you been driving?" he asked.

"Almost a year," she said, dejected.

"Where are her parents?" the cop behind me wondered aloud. I had to second that emotion. The judge upped her fine to more than $500, and I wondered why she hadn't just paid the initial ticket.

The large, smiling woman wearing what appeared to be a modest beach cover up was charged with not displaying her tags properly. Though she acknowledged she was guilty, she pleaded not guilty and mentioned that the officer was very "cordial" during the stop which, she noted, occurred on her way to church. After her sentencing, in which one charge was dropped and her fine was lowered, she asked to approach the bench. "No," the judge said with a straight face.

Finally, when all of the police officers had left, about ten of us remained, and apparently, we all had the same officer, who just happened to be in County court that morning. Hallelujah. I was the last person in the room. "Ma'am, since Officer Miller is not here, you want to plead not guilty, right?" The judge asked. I tried not to smile as I accepted my papers that said there would be no fine. Not even court fees.

And now, lessons learned:

The speed limit on half of South Clinton Street is 25
They really do monitor it
Always, always appear in court for moving violations. Unless you have already paid a fine, which one girl did, causing the judge to add another fine once he noticed that she has had five offenses in just 2 1/2 years of driving. "I'm also going to send you to driver's improvement class," he told the girl, who protested because she'd already been there. "Well, you're going again," he replied, "apparently it didn't work the first time."

I might just start showing up in District Court for the stories.

An Exercise in Abstract Dreams

2008-06-10T15:23:00.002-04:00

It was a weekend of news stories, and not the drive-by shooting or election kind, and best of all, not the kind that has anything to do with me. I am hoping to stay out of the headlines of my own life for a while.

We put The Boy's mother on a plane Saturday night and breathed a collective sigh. Not because we did not thoroughly enjoy and appreciate our time with her and all the ways she helped us, but because our living space is small, and Mirabella's exersaucer is not. At about 9:30, while making banana pudding squares for my little brother's belated birthday celebration, I realized we had eaten Triscuits and salsa and cheese, but no dinner.

"Do you want me to make you something?" I asked The Boy.

"Why? I just had dinner," he said. Ah, the y chromosome. How could I go about getting myself one of those?

Sunday morning, after church, Ansley, the beautiful daughter of friends of ours announced, "My mommy didn't have a baby…yet." I raised an eyebrow at her mother. No news, she confirmed. We giggled, even though we shouldn't have.

The birthday celebration featured barbecued chicken and a cake that prompted The Boy to say, "Wow, this fetti really is fun." My fussy five and a half month old wanted nothing to do with her doting great-grandparents, presumably because they were not me. She is developing something that seems to border on obsession, but then she also seems to be developing teeth. I'm hoping she gets over both soon.

The Boy played with water balloons and college kids and seemed energized despite complaining earlier that he never gets a chance to relax. On the way home, he played a voicemail for me on speaker that made me cry. "Expecting twins," our friend's measured voice said, all too calmly, despite using the word, "pumped" in the delivery. We listened to our daughter moaning herself to sleep and tried to imagine multiplying that by two. But they had longed for parenthood for longer than we knew, and they were ready. I closed my eyes and saw their sprawling, light-filled split-level that backs to the park and will make a gorgeous place to grow up. I thought of their genuine joy and gifts of a toy Moose (Mirabella's favorite so far) and excellent pizza when our sweetheart was born, despite their quiet desire to be on the other end of the exercise. So when we heard the news, we glowed with thoughts of November babies and our children knowing each other as they grow. My heart felt full.

While The Boy checked his messages, I checked my own. Two from one of my favorite people. They were short without content or her typical cheerful intonation, just "call when you can." "She's engaged," I told The Boy, "I just know it." For months every time I saw her name on my phone I answered, "Can't talk, running out the door, but what's going on?" just in case she had news to share. When she actually had it, I missed her call twice, international roaming charges on her end, diaper changes on mine. Finally, I heard the story of the first place on the east coast where you can see the sunrise where the man we've never met asked for her hand. She talked about the vintage carnival theme we all giggle about, but she has always been able to see things we couldn't see. I wondered about the logistics of her December wedding, all the while knowing it won't matter; of course, I will be there.

Marginal

2008-06-05T16:18:00.011-04:00

"You're over the hump; you're on your way!" a man once proclaimed to me, unprovoked, in a freight elevator we weren't supposed to be taking. I had never met him before. It was a Monday. I smiled, befuddled, on the way to my office with the half sandwich and salad that had cost me nearly $7.00. Back in my cube, I asked my neighbors what such a declaration could possibly mean on a Monday.

"It's probably because it was lunch time," a coworker shrugged, leaving it at that. I wrote it down because that's what I do, and it encourages me, accidentally, when I flip backwards in the planner Tara gave me for Christmas that is called A Year of Days Worse than Yours. She had written on the first page, "Thought you could use this…" I keep thinking the book will become a conversation piece, but no one has ever asked. I sit at the ready with examples from the book like The Valentine-less Valentine's Day, Bris, and Going Hunting with Dick Cheney, but I've ever had the opportunity to share. It's becoming a test on which I will evaluate the character of strangers. Like if I, as a friend recently has, began carrying my lunch in a Dunder-Mifflin lunch bag. The moment I saw the Dwight K. Shrute bobblehead on her desk, I knew I'd underestimated her.

In my planner each day is filled with tasks, marked pressing or not by their case. "MAIL MOTHER'S DAY CARDS" contrasts with scribbles like, "send photos to Ritz," "crushed tomatoes," and "grilled chicken and veggies," which is crossed out and replaced by "Noche de Mexicana," which is crossed out but not replaced at all, which probably indicates I gave up on making tacos and we went out to dinner. Tasks completed are checked off; circles remind me of what is yet to be done.

I see fragments of the nonsensical in my daily encounters. On April 21 I find, "What does the customer want? Do they really want to go down to the nuts and bolts?" Which is not notable except that it points out how buzz-word laden and ineffective at communication my work culture is. And how clunky subject-verb agreement is as it relates to the word "they" in our language. If I wrote something down today, it would be "interface," and it would be overused and it would be used incorrectly. April 4 takes me back to the inexplicable conversation about the Double-T diner that contained the quote, "the Greeks don't put a lot of sugar in their cakes;" a phrase I'm sure I wrote in an effort to keep a straight face.

Nearly three years ago, preparing to move from the suburban townhouse I shared for two years with two (and eventually three) other girls to a tiny apartment in the city, I went through notebooks, personal and academic, eager to lighten my load. Always they were marked with lines of tiny cursive; songs that were stuck in my head ("Round Here" by the Counting Crows and "Stories in my Pockets" by Sarah Masen were standbys), ideas for stories I usually didn't follow through on, snippets of conversation, lines of prose. Ideas to keep my eyes open and my mind alert while making it seem to anyone watching that I was being studious. I wonder what I might have taken with me had I not been so focused on filling the margins. I wonder what it will mean if I ever stop.

"The stories in my pockets are the best I've ever lived; so what if they don't sell, sell, sell?"

Ever Mine, Ever Thine, Ever Ours

2008-06-02T15:27:00.007-04:00

We devoured tortilla chips, mini chimis and big margaritas, frozen for one, top shelf for another, sugar-rimmed for me. We talked fast and laughed loud and I gestured wildly enough to jostle my drink, sending the bartender over with a rag and a quizzical gaze. I almost ended up seated beside strangers twice after potty breaks, but eventually we settled in the dark, together, and watched women in impossibly high stilettos live outrageous lives nothing like the three of ours, which are nothing like each other's. Walking to our cars, I looked down at my Naturalizers, which were red, but still Naturalizers, and asked if anyone really wears $500, six-inch tall shoes. "They must have lots of corns," I said.

"Well I went from Easy Spirits to Crocs," Nikki said, gesturing to her flip flops, "and I'm pretty sure these have spit up on them."

I got in my busted up Acura and called my long-suffering husband, who, I would soon learn, had emptied the dishwasher and prepared bottles and cared for our baby and finished his homework, and who didn't for one second make me feel guilty for my ill-timed break. "We're getting ready for bedtime. We were just about to read a story," he reported. I suggested Little Big. "Last night we read There's a Wocket in my Pocket, so maybe we'll take your suggestion."

I rolled down all the windows and opened the sunroof and let the indie rock blare. Even though I was wearing jeans a size bigger than the size bigger I was before I got pregnant, and that coupled with my cropped hair puts me nowhere near the ladies I had just watched on the big screen, I thought of my own group of four. I thought of the women who would drive through the night and run in heels in the rain to be with me if I needed them. And when I have needed them, they have. I thought of so many other drives, with one of them beside me, our hearts screaming through open windows. And though I've never found their equal, I thought of the awe-inspiring women I've met since. The wives who are trudging beside me, the mothers who are teaching me, the girls who sat beside me with my spilled margarita and laughed with me.

I thought of my sweet husband who loves me and our daughter and tells us all the time and shows us even more. And even though I was coming home to a house upended-- my poor mother-in-law on the couch because her broken foot will not allow for stairs, my sister-in-law working a double and then sleeping in our guest room so she could help her mother with our baby since we don't have daycare this week, a bathroom no one can use easily because it lacks a floor and some walls and a sink or counter, a poorly-equipped kitchen because I chose Sex and the City with the girls over grocery shopping by myself-- I couldn't wait to get there. I went about the monotonous litany of tasks I perform every night, chatting away.

"You can tell she had a margarita," The Boy said to his mother.

I advised them that was hours ago.

"Are you just in a good mood because you had a good time? Because maybe you should go out more often."

"I had a wonderful time," I told him, but that was not all.

Our life is more making do than making it big, and I can sometimes get stuck underneath the tedium of the quotidian. But not last night. I felt enveloped by the beautiful in my life that no one is entitled to and that can slip away in a moment. As usual, I felt overwhelmed, but not in the usual way.

I had missed bed time and settled, sadly, for a kiss on the cheek. I was thrilled when my sweet girl awoke crying, just before 1:00 and for the first time in months, apparently because she was cold. She beamed at me while I dressed her in warmer pajamas and rocked with her before
putting her back to bed. I nuzzled my face in her fuzzy hair and whispered her songs and held her tight.

It's not that the movie was great. It wasn't. My city and my world may be much smaller and far grittier and more cluttered than the one I watched last night. But every so often something interrupts my busy day to remind me that it's all the little things I take for granted that constitute a life. It doesn't mean I won't ever complain or forget. But, at least for today, I get it and am unspeakably grateful for it.

Whirlwind Round-up

2008-05-02T21:30:00.006-04:00

In the last ten weeks...

I returned to work. There were countless tears, an anxious countdown, and many fears. I sat at our dinner table with my head in my hands and tears on my cheeks, babbling incoherently. I had made two lists-- things I needed to have the next morning and things the baby needed. The Boy took the list and tore it in half. "Don't worry about these things," he said, and I tried not to. We laid out outfits for all of us, with a back-up for her, diapers, wipes, bottles, blankets, lunches and even coats. I set the coffee timer for 6:30. And when I woke the baby up to feed her AT 5:30 in the morning, I did not cry. I did not cry when I dressed her or myself, and I blinked away only a stray tear when I saw her in the backseat of The Boy's car. At work, my eyes were red, mostly from lack of sleep. I learned how to use the Nursing Mothers' Room, so my breasts did not explode, as I had feared. I met my new supervisor, and she was welcoming and kind. I met with my former supervisor, and received last year's performance evaluation and this year's raise. It wasn't a terrible day. At 4 PM I raced away; I couldn't wait to see my baby girl. Now I try to stay at work a little longer, but no later than 4:30, or I run the risk of being late to day care. I lug a pump to and from work every day and have two sessions in the Nursing Mothers' Room, despite only producing enough to send the baby with one bottle of breastmilk per day.

Which brings me to the topic of Mirabella's unsettling diagnosis in early April. We noticed she did not seem to be gaining weight. I was devastated when the chart at the pediatrician said failure to thrive. So now I do all the work of a nursing mother and all the work of bottles. I'm told I shouldn't feel guilty and I am not alone. I still struggle every weekend, as my child rejects me when I try to feed her. But I'm giving it everything I have, even if that's not enough, and my baby has gained more than 3 pounds in the last month.

I have said, too many times to count, that work is now the easiest part of my day. When I leave at 4:30, I feel like a stopwatch starts. Pick up the baby, fight traffic, squeeze in a powerwalk with the stroller, if the weather is good, feed the baby, cook and eat dinner, clean the kitchen, give the baby a bath, put her to bed by 8ish, wash bottles, make new bottles, pack lunches, make breakfast, do laundry, lay out clothes, pack a diaper bag...and attempt to spend a few minutes alone with my husband. Granted, he takes some of these tasks usually, but the pressure to get it all done and manage to spend some precious time with my infant in the few waking hours I share with her gets to me. I start each week strong, with groceries, meal plans, and schedules, but come Thursday (Wednesday on a rough week), I kind of lose it. There were no breakdowns this week, and I'm pretty sure I didn't yell at The Boy, so maybe we are improving.

We took our first roadtrip since the baby, a long weekend at Deep Creek Lake for Dad's 50th. Lots of Wii bowling, board games, Easter candy, snow and family meals. The baby slept in her travel crib in the walk-in closet, and we enjoyed the king-size bed, even though we weren't really alone. Oh yeah, and on the way home, I pumped in the car. That was awesome.

Meanwhile, at work, my contract is ending at the end of May, and my affiliation with my beloved company is threatened. I am working and hoping hard to stay with them, as they have been good to me, but so far nothing is for certain.

Throw in a couple visits from in-laws, a minor mouse infestation, a toilet that almost fell through a second-story floor, first-floor ceiling, a bathroom that has lacked a floor, intact walls and a sink for the last couple weeks, a sister-in-law who is now a neighbor, and you're pretty much caught up.

It's all alternately exhausting, indescribably joyful, heartbreaking, disappointing, unexpected, frightening and exciting, many times over each day. Always I am overwhelmed. Like everyone says, life has drastically changed. I thought by now I would be used to it, but really all I'm used to is change. As soon as I get comfortable, it all changes again. Because I guess that's the only constant anyway.

Someone to Watch Over Her

2008-02-20T17:34:00.011-05:00

I put off calling Locate for more names of potential childcare providers in the same manner and for the same reason I put off looking for something I'm pretty sure is lost. Take, for example, the mate to my first anniversary diamond stud earrings. One morning, mere weeks after receiving the beauties I had longed for half my life, I realized only the back was affixed to my right ear as I exited the shower. I scoured the path from shower to bed and canvassed the sheets, even checking under my sleeping husband, but I did not move the bed or the things beneath it for days. Because I was pretty sure I'd never see the earring again, but until I checked everywhere I could still hope and pass said hope along to the heartbroken Boy. Needless to say, I have a single diamond stud and two backs sitting uselessly in my jewelery box and a note to myself to claim the earrings on our homeowner's insurance.

So I had no excuse to proffer when The Boy asked why I hadn't called even days after he had helpfully provided the number. I finally called and received every last name in the city we were hoping to get. "If none of those work, call back and we'll try another area," Sarah said, sympathetically. The search that had begun in August of last year netted only fruitless phone calls and disappointing interviews, and we landed in January with a one-month-old baby, the clock ticking on my maternity leave, and no childcare. I called all eleven people in one afternoon and ended up with two appointments for the following Monday. We did not set high expectations.

We arrived at our first appointment on time in a neighborhood where the houses look like trailers. Chain-link fences and above-ground pools abounded. We met the woman in the enormous Mickey Mouse sweatshirt who also had unfortunately severe astigmatism. The Boy later commented he wasn't sure which one of us she was looking at when she talked. Two children snoozed in little sleeping bags on the floor, a fact I wouldn't have minded if an enormous and ancient Irish Setter mut didn't brush up against my leg before roaming over to the children.

"He's a sweetheart, but the only thing is he sheds all over everything," the woman said. I glanced at the children and knew this interview would contain few questions.

"I guess the first thing you should know is that I take care of my mom," the woman added, "and that's a full-time job itself. It's the hardest job I've ever had." While I appreciated and respected that she cared for her ailing mother, I wondered who would watch the children while she performed this full-time job.

I asked about her sick time/personal day policy, a question with a long answer she summarized with: "Usually I just work sick."

"Okay, honey," The Boy said, five minutes after we had arrived, "I think we're all set here."

The woman insisted we see the house, a tour which included "meeting" her unconscious and elderly mother and viewing multiple Coors Light banners prominently displayed among the playpens in a back room. We told her we'd be in touch. When we arrived back at the car where The Boy's mother and our sleeping daughter waited, my mother-in-law asked why we wouldn't be choosing that woman. "I don't have enough time to give you all the reasons," The Boy said.

On the way to the second appointment that day, we surveyed the gorgeous homes around us and waited for the neighborhood to turn older and uglier, as it tends to do. It didn't. We arrived at our destination at the base of a cul-de-sac and a driveway with a Mercedes. We were welcomed into a foyer that belonged in a model home. The slippered woman led us to the expansive finished basement complete with permament playroom displaying children's artwork. They have their own table and chairs, refrigerator, bathroom, and exit to the backyard. The place was immaculate and beautiful.

The woman who is affectionately called Aunt Nae spoke of 25 years of day care. She spoke with love about the children she sees every day, the ones she misses who have moved away, and the ones who have graduated college and gotten married. "I like to be honest with people," she said, "I will not promise you I won't yell at your child. If I'm across the room and your child is standing on that table, I am not going to say, 'Sweetie, please get down from there.' It's not going to happen like that." She told us about her curriculum, her ridiculously reasonable rates, the birthday parties she throws for the kids, and the occasional trips they take upstairs to the main level. "The kids act like I'm taking them to Manhattan," she dead-panned. We laughed with her and before we knew it, an hour had passed. We were sold-- enough to forget we had left grandmother and child in the car in January (with the keys, but still). We gathered paperwork and left quickly, beaming. We had found her. We knew better than to deliberate long. We had already lost two slots to long deliberation (and less than full disclosure on the part of the providers). We booked her two days later.

So my insides flip over whenever I look at a calendar. I'm not ready to go back to work at the beginning of next month, though I know it's necessary and what is best and soon. I hate the idea of being away from my little girl all day every day, as it's only happened twice thus far and for several-hour increments. I anticipate crying at my desk, lingering in the bathroom, trying to force myself not to call to check in. But I know my daughter will be comfortable, safe, cared for and loved. And you can't put a price on that.

Notes from the Underbelly

2008-01-14T20:43:00.000-05:00

Today my dear friend Mindy sent me her thoughts on how everything has changed. I thought about how, four years ago, we stood on her yard crowded with wooden pink flamingos I had sent for her birthday. I handed her a black strapless backup dress and she ran into her house and changed into it in the foyer before our three-hour dinner at the Melting Pot. A month later, she painted her toes purple in the passenger seat of my car on our way to Virginia Beach where we crashed in sleeping bags on her friend's couches, ate tuna salad sandwiches every day for lunch, to save money, and flirted with ill-chosen boys, to kill time. I watched the series finale of Friends in my jogging clothes on her couch because I was locked out of my house. She taught me how to climb indoor walls. We drank Sam Adams Cherry Wheat beer and watched movies and talked about the past and how it might come back in the future. She was one of the first people to meet The Boy. She said his spiky hair made him look "youthful" before we knew he looked youthful because he actually was. She's hundreds of miles north of here now, in her snowy Vermont with the love of her past who turns out to be the love of her life. So yes, everything has changed. Here is my response:

I can't get over how much things have changed either. I've been watching a ton of t.v. since I've been home with the baby and there is this match.com commercial that starts with this couple in the hospital with their newborn and says, "How did it all start?" and goes backwards through the pregnancy and wedding and dating and every single time I see it it makes me cry (and I'm getting choked up now just thinking about it).

Sometimes I remember that I'm still the same girl, but sometimes it's hard because, so far, everything is so freaking different than it was. And that doesn't mean it's bad-- I love this little screaming, pooping person more than I can get my head around-- but everyone always says the first six weeks or so is the hardest and I have to believe that's right. The sleep is so spotty and I'm breastfeeding so I'm kind of chained to her until I get her to take a bottle (hopefully next week) and Dan and I aren't really sleeping together because I'm not really sleeping, and she's crying now and has been for about ten minutes so I can't even call you like I'd really rather do, so this is what you get.

I'm typing with one hand while I hold her with the other because, apparently, it was far too lonely in her bassinet. And having said all of this, my real fear-- aside from that, despite my 22-pound weight loss in 3 weeks, I will never get back into my jeans-- is that I won't live in this moment enough to appreciate it before it's gone. She's already grown so much. As much as I complain about going stir crazy, I know I will miss this time when my whole responsibility is resting and caring for her. Even when I'm deliriously tired at 3 AM, there is nothing in this world that compares to my little daughter falling asleep on my chest. Which is what she's doing now.

And despite all these whiplash changes, or perhaps because of them, I do desperately miss my friends. I feel like I have nothing to share, as my world has at once become quite big and very small. But please don't hesitate to call me. Most of the time I don't know where my phone is and I might not pick up, but I'm finally emerging from a three-week haze and would love to talk. And the monkey will eventually fall asleep, which means I will eventually call you back.

Thank you for checking in with me; your friendship is very important to me, no matter how jealous I am of your vacations and continued ability to type with both hands.

Love,
c

Isn't She Lovely?

2008-01-09T12:31:00.001-05:00

After two visits I preferred to call "early" alarms because they weren't really false, Friday, December 21st we went to my little sister Sarah's JV basketball game. The Boy helped me climb to the top row of bleachers, much to the amusement of onlookers. I got entirely too heated coaching and chiding from up there, and the girls lost a heartbreaker in the last seconds. Sarah was supposed to stay through halftime of the varsity game that was to follow, but she told her coach she had to go. "My sister has to go to the hospital to have her baby." To our knowledge, this was not true. I scolded her for lying, but we were ready to go, so we went to dinner and Sarah got her things to spend the night at our house. "One more time before the baby gets here," I had said.

We couldn't agree on a movie and ended up watching Notting Hill, a movie I have never liked, on the couch before heading up to bed. At 1:30 from the bathroom, I called The Boy. "Yeah?" he answered from our room. Later he admitted it should have occurred to him, under the circumstances, that if I was calling him from inside the bathroom, he should probably come to me.

"My water just broke," I told him calmly, hovering over the toilet.

"Are you sure?" he asked. I enumerated the characteristics that made me sure and asked him to wake Sarah who, minutes later, came into the bathroom and watched as I stacked 4 maxi pads on top of each other, trying to figure out how I'd make it to the hospital without leaving puddles behind me. The Boy wandered in and out of rooms muttering, "Okay," repeatedly and under his breath. But we had done this twice before that week. I had not been to work since the previous Friday-- we were heavy into waiting mode-- logistically, at least, we were ready. He got the car and I brought a beach towel and my suitcase and we were off. I looked around at our quiet house as we left, cognizant even then that when we came home everything would be different.

At the hospital they knew my name before I said it and led me to my room. I knew the protocol at this point. We waited for the contractions to get worse. They did, but I didn't make any progress. I encouraged The Boy and Sarah to sleep while I writhed, the pain intensifying. Against my better judgment and my plans, I asked for pain medicine. I was in the middle of telling The Boy a story when the nurse injected my bum and my IV with the meds. I stopped mid-sentence. "I feel...I really feel...you know, I feel kind of..." I mumbled.

"Drunk?" the nurse offered.

"Yes. I feel kind of drunk," I said.

"Well, it's really good medicine." Still I was disappointed because I had vowed not to take any except for the epidural. I didn't want to be stoned for the birth of my child; I felt responsible for the drop in her heart rate that occurred almost instantly. Still, we waited. They started Pitocin. Everything got worse. The OB who was not my own expressed concern that I would not be able to dilate on my own, thanks to potentially unnecessary surgery I had undergone years before.

"Unless I can do it manually," she said, "you may need a C-section." I teared up. That was not in the plan either. She offered an epidural and said she would try once it kick in.

"Hi," the anesthesiologist said, "I'm Dr. Payne." I am not making this up. He decided I did not need a high dose, despite my admonition not to be fooled by my lack of dilation. The Boy was asked to leave the room, and I threw up on the nurse. I would later view this as a turning point. The OB was able to begin dilation, while I prayed, all nonsense and pleading. We waited. My family sat in the waiting room, wringing their hands.

Three hours later (13 hours into this ordeal), I told the nurse who had just started her shift that I was feeling lots of pressure and would like another dose of the epidural. "Your OB is in surgery and so is Dr. Payne. Let me just check though," she said, as if on a whim. "Well, you're feeling that way because you're fully dilated and ready to push. I'll get your doctor." Needless to say, I did not see Dr. Payne again. I get a little indignant now when someone says, "But you had an epidural, right? So you didn't feel anything?" I thought that's how it would have gone. No such luck. But I did not scream or swear or tell The Boy it was all his fault. I did, however, push for over two hours.

I thought the baby would never come. I turned down offers to look at the progress in mirrors, maintaining that the whole thing was gross. The Boy, regardless of his intentions, did not get that option. The nurse told him to hold my leg and count. He was awesome, and if he was queasy, he didn't show it. I have never felt such pain. But watching my little purple daughter emerge was, so far, the highlight of my life. Tears streamed down my face and I immediately forgave her and loved her like I have never loved anyone. I used to wonder why mothers weren't bothered that their new babies weren't clean when they are placed on their chests. I didn't care.

In the waiting room, my mother nearly lost it. She had visions of an emergency C-section no one had bothered to tell her about. When it was over, she stopped the OB in the hallway. "My job was to deliver the baby," she said when Mom asked for an update, "And I'm done now."

They finally let my family in and everyone cried. It took what felt like ten minutes before anyone even asked her name. Mirabella Bly. 7 lbs, 1 oz; 21 inches, born on December 22nd. And she's crying now, and so I'm off.

A Long December

2007-12-16T21:01:00.001-05:00

At 7AM I gasped, then moaned and rolled to my side. For the first time ever, a contraction had woken me up. I wanted to feel hopeful, but I couldn't find the ability. I went back to sleep and ignored them again when I woke up for real and showered and got ready for church. I thought about how perfect it would be.

Though I'm not due until December 30th (January 4th if you ask my OB), last month I arbitrarily chose December 17th as the desired birthdate of my daughter. And I had just spent two-thirds of a lovely weekend catching up with my husband. We went on a date Friday night, back to the old standby, the location of our first date. As I struggled to find something to wear, I complained to Tara over the phone. "Let me tell you how difficult it is to look cute when you're 9 months pregnant. My main goal now is to keep the belly covered." She laughed sympathetically. A few minutes later I found a low cut top that made use of my pregnancy-enhanced assets. "I stand corrected," I told Tara, "cleavage still works." So I laughed at dinner when The Boy said, "I love that you're 9 months pregnant and I still can't take my eyes off of you." And I loved it too. We'd had company in the form of my mother-in-law for the last week and hadn't been able to catch up. So Friday was sublime.

Days earlier, he had given me a gift certificate for breakfast in bed and three TiVo shows of my choice (also in bed), that he made good on Saturday morning. We spent the whole day and evening together, so I was feeling pretty good about feeling bad this morning. But not good enough to trust it.

In church I wasn't always able to sing some of my favorite Christmas carols; I sat down and breathed deeply. "You need to be tracking them, baby," The Boy whispered, handing me a slip of paper. I discreetly took note of the contractions, still not trusting them. After church we met friends at a sports bar, having changed into Saints jerseys in the car. By halftime, Jenn squealed and my list of contractions spanned nearly four hours and listed times no more than 6 minutes apart. We decided to call the doctor. At home we calmly loaded everything up, divided and conquered last minute issues.

At the hospital, I was disappointed by my lack of progress. Once I was lying down, the contractions felt much less severe. "Early labor," they shrugged. They said it was normal. Did not make me feel stupid. Hours later, as I lay on my couch with more contractions, my OB called to check in.

"It's not unusual for early labor for first babies to take 14-16 hours," she said. I sighed. So I'm drinking lots of water and resting on the couch, contemplating whether I'll work tomorrow, grateful for the last couple days of quiet time together before everything changes-- for the better, for good.

Just Nod if You Can Hear Me

2007-12-13T18:21:00.000-05:00

"Your crickets are talking," The Boy said the other day over the phone. Despite being my biggest cheerleader, he's also one of the biggest slackers among those who have read anything I've written. So if he's complaining, you know it's bad.

How I've missed you! So much to update. Since last I was here, I've been everywhere. I am nearly 38 weeks along in the incubation of my child, whom I have come to believe may actually be doing Pilates in the womb. In layman's terms: She's kicking the crap out of me. I am getting anxious for her birth, the least romantic reason being I'm sick and tired of being pregnant! "How do you feel," is the most common question I'm asked, and I feel bad answering it. Honestly? My back is killing me; I pee several times in the middle of the night; I have contractions all the time, consistently and progressively closer together all day long, and then they just stop. No progress. And don't even ask about my last appointment. After a few rough days and rougher nights, I dragged myself to the OB, hopeful for news that included the word "centimeters." She said, at 37 weeks, there was no need to check.

"Most babies are born between 38 and 41 weeks," she explained. I was unsure why this mattered; I just needed a little something for the effort. Needed to be reminded I would not be pregnant forever-- that progress, however slowly, was being made. But it was not in the cards. I cried and called Amber and told her I'm never having a baby or wearing jeans that have a button on them ever again. I've been a little emotional.

All of this is true, yes, but I'm also working hard to relish the good things about the now. We spent a long weekend in November in Charleston for a friend's gorgeous wedding; spent lots of time with Edes and Tara, which was awesome. One last visit before I'm officially a mother, and one last plane ride and exploratory mini-vacation with The Boy before we add another title to our list. I teared up one night over a giggly pizza dinner for two. "I love that we're buddies and lovers," I told him. "But I'm nervous that once we add parents to the list, we won't be lovers anymore."

"No," he replied, "We will make sure we are all three. But no more. We can't be anymore than three."

A couple weeks later, we ventured to Connecticut for another last-- the last visit without the baby. I worried about raucous nights under the rationalization that it was the "last" time, but was pleasantly surprised with movies on the couch, an extravagant wedding we were all invited to that was a blast, a roasted chicken dinner and Christmas songs and early presents with the siblings. They threw us a lovely shower which netted us so many gifts The Boy could barely fit them (and the dog and me) in the car.

And back to now. The Christmas tree and lights are finally up, and the last of the gifts have been ordered and shipped. All of the baby clothes are washed and folded, organized and put away according to tiny size. The bassinet has taken the place of the dog's bed in our room; there's a Graco "Cherry Blossom" car seat on my black leather back seat. My suitcase has been triple checked and stands at attention, ready to go, whenever the moment arrives. I'm excited and terrified; impatient and acutely aware that it will happen when I least expect it and then we can never go back. I try to relish sleeping, even if it's oft-interrupted. I touch the belly often, reminding myself to treat this miracle with the awe it deserves. I'm attempting to appreciate every day it's still just me and The Boy, alone in our room, and trying not to think about how much it feels like I'll miss that. I'm praying it's really as fulfilling and wonderful as everyone says, even as I know in my heart that it will be.

This City Life is Dragging us Down

2007-10-08T18:55:00.000-04:00

I was getting ready to saute chicken and talking to The Boy about his softball game I didn't stick around for when the doorbell rang. Which it doesn't often do.

"Someone's at the door," I told him.

"Don't answer it," he advised. I looked up at Curtis Stone, the Take Home Chef, who was on TV talking loud enough for me to hear in the kitchen, and down at the dog, who was barking and scratching at the door.

I told him I had to answer it; it was obvious I was home. "Well, look through the mail slot first," The Boy said.

"I'm not doing that; it's ridiculous. Just stay on the phone," I opened the door. "Oh, it's gay Lenny's dad," I said, "I'll call you back." I tossed the phone onto the couch and closed the dog in the house. The man outside, somewhere close to 60 with an ancient and perpetually leashless dog named Lenny, told me he had lost his cat. "She looks like Puss in Boots," he explained, "have you seen her?" By his estimation, his cat had probably leapt from his rooftop deck to ours and may have happened upon a chimney on the way. He seemed to need the conversation, so I indulged him for awhile. "How did you know Lenny was gay?" He asked. I reminded him we had met while I walked my dog one day and that his dog seemed interested in pursuing more than a friendship with mine.

"Well, you're welcome to go down our alley and check for her when it's light out," I offered. He told me he wasn't that worried, that he had rescued her when she was a stray, and that losing a cat wasn't the same as losing a dog.

"If it had been Lenny, I would be looking under every rock. Mostly I'm just curious about what could have happened to her." This story and its implications would change considerably over the next few hours.

When I came back in to call The Boy, I couldn't get through. When he finally called back, he said, "You want to know the reason why you couldn't get me? Because I was on the phone with the Baltimore City Police Department! Why do you have to be so stubborn?" He went on about the mail slot, apparently oblivious to my comment about harmless old gay Lenny's dad.

When he got home, we sat down to steaming plates and a knock at the door. I turned around to see gay Lenny's dad walking through my living room. "I went up on your roof and she's in the chimney," he said, "I can hear her." He followed The Boy into our basement to tap on the chimney that does not end in a fireplace. I sat kind of bemused and irritated that my chicken and apple cider gravy was getting cold.

We finished dinner to another knock at the door and a request from Lenny's dad to allow him to tear apart our chimney. "I'm a mason," he said, "and I'm very good. I'll put it back together better than it was before; it's kind of a mess as it is." I looked at The Boy who agreed that the chimney was a mess but decided to take a trip to the roof with our new acquaintance to make sure that, indeed, ours was the chimney in question.

Turns out, the chimney didn't belong to us but to the house next door, the owner of which has held out on selling it for many years and, in the meantime, it has sat vacant. And spooky. And in desperate need of the kind of rehabbing that can only be accomplished with many sledgehammers and exterminators. "I would think he was even crazier if I didn't see that cat myself," The Boy shrugged. In his next report, I learned that Lenny's dad was breaking into the house next door. I didn't want to know any further details; I could think only of rats and roaches in the walls and no electricity. And the possibility of police involvement. We had interacted with this neighbor on several occasions; he was disgruntled that The Boy had used his alley to store pieces of our rooftop deck in progress. From then on, we tried to stay out of his way, even though several times a summer his weeds took on a Little Shop of Horrors like quality.

"He said he's going to break through the sealed fireplace to save the cat, and then he'll fix it later. Better than it is now, he told me," The Boy said. Helicopters circled the neighborhood, as they often do. The Boy wondered if they were coming for Lenny's dad. "We might have to take Lenny in," he said, "when the law comes for his father. Wouldn't you hope it would seem suspicious that a man is breaking through a chimney on someone's roof?" Yes, one would hope.

Around 11PM we lay in bed laughing as we heard chipping away with a chisel; through our bedroom wall, we heard the distinct movement of bricks. "I'm worried I could be considered an accomplice. But he couldn't let his cat die," The Boy rationalized. I reminded him that breaking and entering and destruction of property are crimes, doesn't matter the intent. "But if it were Mosotos, you know we would do the same." I looked at the puggle snoring in his bed across the room. I couldn't be sure about that.

Around 11:30 the chiseling stopped. We haven't seen Lenny or his dad since, but we've been laying low, in case the authorities come knocking. One thing we were assured of: After this adventure, Puss in Boots would be an indoor cat.

Daylight Fading

2007-09-25T19:53:00.000-04:00

Saturday, while buying three-dollar pink suede boots (with fringe) for my yet-unborn daughter, I got another text message from The Boy. This time, a picture of him in front of a horse monument. Later, a video of a band playing on a corner and man dancing with two brooms. "I love this. Wish you were here," he said. At my insistence, he had traveled to the Big Easy with our friend Ryan to explore and see his beloved Saints play. Not excited at the prospect of being alone at home, I headed to Richmond to hang with Amber and the kids.

The Boy did Bourbon Street and alligator sausages at the Superdome; I did the three-year-old's hair (badly) and shared my granola bar with the grunting one-year-old. I watched penne get thrown on the floor at the Olive Garden. Sunday, Amber said, "Sorry friend. Not the weekend away you were looking for." I always love my time with Amber, regardless of the circumstances. We watched a Hugh Grant movie and ate gigantic ("reduced fat") ice cream sundaes. I'm sure my visit there had something to do with the five pounds I've gained in the last two weeks.

But maybe, given my impending motherhood, it was a tad overwhelming. I called The Boy and said I wasn't sure I was cut out to have kids. He reminded me that we're only having one right now. And coming home, the house empty except for the dog, I remembered that even in an exciting time, it's important to cherish what's here now. Last night: me on the couch, eating reheated rice (and later, ice cream) and watching Tim Gunn on TiVo. I can do that now. No one was yelling for help wiping their tushie; no one needed me to give them a bath. There will be many days and years for that, and I am excited about the whole of it. But even the mundane now is special in that it won't be here forever.

We are into autumn now, and I am coming up on my third trimester. I can't believe how short the days are already, and everything is framed in the impending arrival of the girl who is already changing everything. At a follow-up sonogram last week, we learned that my amniotic fluid is still low, and it appears that the baby's right kidney is dilated. Tomorrow morning I'll see a perinatologist and have another sonogram. No one will tell me anything until there's more to say. I'm not excited to see a doctor with "high risk" in the explanation, but I'm glad we're being cautious. And I'll never complain about seeing my little girl.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

2007-09-16T21:04:00.000-04:00

At twenty-five weeks pregnant, I think I'm probably less ready to be a mother than ever. On Monday, I fell down at work. In the hallway, during the normal course of walking, for no apparent reason. Minor muscle strains and bruises notwithstanding, my daughter and I seemed to be fine. I mentioned it to my OB, who said, "Well try not to do that again!" Oh, okay. Now I'll be more careful, but just because you say so.

We are embarking upon what, at least so far, seems to be our biggest challenge yet: securing childcare. At work, my child is number 212 on the list of "infants and unborns," up from 229 a few weeks ago, but down from 211 a few days ago. It's not a hopeful process. The Boy had a consultation that netted us countless phone numbers and addresses. And, of course, we couldn't just be on the same page about it; because we both feel like complete morons, in way over our heads, we fight about it. Thursday, in tears, I said, "I'm pissed at her because she's already ruining everything and she's not even here yet!" And this is how I know it will all be okay. Because the father of my child held me and said, "It's okay to be pissed at her." When I told my mother about it, she said, "Well that's a terrible way to look at it." Obviously, she is not father-of-my-child material.

The second number in my weight is higher than it has ever been but, in all probability, not higher than it will ever be. I've gained ten pounds, but my blood pressure is great, the kid's heart rate is on target, and just to be sure everything else is as it should be, we get to see her again in another sonogram on Thursday.

I'm reading a book on setting my baby's sleep and feeding schedule; I'm taking a prenatal Pilates class; I've signed up for childbirth education boot camp, and according to my pastor's wife, I'm "blossoming." But today The Boy's stepbrother asked me if it's weird, getting ready for something so unknown. "I don't see how I could ever prepare for it. And then she'll be here and nothing will ever be the same."

I'm not mad at her today, so I guess that's something.

And now, the looking back: I feel sheepish publishing this now, given my current pre-maternal state. It seems disingenuous, if only a little, to write about "surviving a miscarriage" only now that I'm nearly three quarters of the way along with my next pregnancy. But I've written a story and had it published at maryelise.com, a new, start-up women's magazine online. Check it out, if you please.

Goodnight, You Moonlight Ladies

2007-09-03T21:11:00.000-04:00

And so already, my daughter is making herself the center of my life. Once I finally figured out what it felt like when she moved, it felt like she wouldn't stop moving. At home, whenever I felt a particularly strong kick, I'd yell for The Boy. "Baby! Get in here! I saw my hand move!" Slowly, he'd shuffle over, put his hand on my belly and morosely say, "I don't feel anything. You only feel it on the outside because you feel it on the inside." He pouted. I did not necessarily agree with his logic, so I still called him whenever I thought he might be able to feel it.

Then last week at work I realized she hadn't been moving much. At all. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time she moved. I went to The Boy's softball game, and in the car on the way home I blurted out, "She's not moving and I don't know what to do." The Boy convinced me to call the after hours line at my doctor's office.

"Would you classify this as an emergency?" The receptionist said.

"I don't know; that's why I'm calling."

"Well, the only way to get a message through is to call it an emergency. I can also refer you to office hours."

We went through this sequence a few times, before I told her to call it an emergency. It was only 9 PM, but no one ever called me back.

When I laid down to go to bed, the baby gave me a courtesy kick, but just one, and just barely. In the morning, at 8:56, I called the doctor's office. Another receptionist answered the phone. "Should I classify this as an emergency? It's that or else I refer you to office hours. The office doesn't open until 9:00," she said. I figured I could wait the four minutes.

Throughout the morning various receptionists told me to eat sugar or lie down or drink a little soda to get the baby to move. My daughter is way too cool to fall for any of that, though; she could not be manipulated.

Finally my favorite, Jacquetta, called me back. "Would you like to come in, just in case?"

Thank God. The Boy and I raced to the office to wait over an hour to hear the heartbeat, which, of course, we heard immediately. The other doctor, not my usual OB, tried to reassure me, but of course I felt like an idiot. I told her I was feeling something else, like a tightening that seemed too low to be the baby. "Well, pregnancy is uncomfortable," she said. Yeah, I thought, I've been pregnant nearly six months now; I think I've picked up on that. I will try not to freak out again, at least while my child is in utero; it was pretty embarrassing. After the doctor walked out, the kid kicked like she was trying to break free.

"Maybe she was just trying to get some attention," I hypothesized. "She's probably going to be a drama queen."

"Could be," The Boy said, "only once she gets older I doubt she'll try to get attention by sitting quietly."

A couple days later, we decided to play music for the stubborn child. In the absence of headphones, we put the iPod docking station on my belly. We played Counting Crows, and even though I disagree with her, she liked Mr. Jones better than A Murder of One. She liked Jack Johnson okay. But by far, her favorite was James Taylor. We played Sweet Baby James, and she went nuts. "Was that her?" The Boy asked, eyes wide. I nodded. "It wasn't you hiccuping or something?" He couldn't believe it.

"Are you getting verklempt?" I asked him, using our euphemism for being choked up, which we've used frequently since I've been pregnant.

"No," he said, too quickly. "I've probably felt her lots of times before, I just didn't know what I was looking for." He paused and looked down, "Well, maybe a little."

I put my hand on my belly and envisioned rocking our baby in the glider I thought would be much more comfortable and singing, "Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose, won't you let me go down in my dreams, and rockabye sweet baby James." And then I got verklempt, just a little.

Uncharted Territory

2007-08-13T23:06:00.000-04:00

Saturday morning, having returned from our Outer Banks Family Extravaganza a night earlier than planned (more to come later), we found
ourselves with found time. We strolled leisurely through Fells Point waiting for a coveted table at the Blue Moon Cafe for a breakfast that quickly turned into lunch. Once The Boy's sister and friend packed up and headed north, we sat on the couch staring at each other. "There's so much to do but I feel like we beat the system," The Boy said. "You want to go look at baby stuff?" I was surprised at his willingness not only to go, but to suggest such a plan. The weather was unseasonably gorgeous, so his proposal had one caveat: We had to ride in the new convertible.

Windblown, we arrived at The Room Store, where The Boy swore he had once seen baby furniture. Though I knew better (but not enough), I humored him. Somehow, we left having paid cash for a red recliner that will arrive this Friday. "How is it," I asked as we left the register, "that since I've been pregnant you've acquired a convertible and a recliner and all I've gotten is fat?"

"We're going to Babies 'R' Us for you, honey," he lied. "And besides, the recliner is so the baby can sleep on my chest. Everyone will be much happier."

After weeks (months?) of delivering wide-eyed gems like: "I just don't see how a baby could need so much stuff," and "it's okay if I miss a playoff game when the baby is born; I'll just TiVo it for later," and "you're not considering cloth diapers?" The Boy accompanied me to the aforementioned baby superstore. It was a first trip for both of us. We were there to scout out the crib situation and so I could decide if the Ladybug theme suited my daughter (I've decided it's just her style, but with pale, barely green walls, no border, no black crib; you get the idea). Halfway to the cribs, The Boy stopped in his tracks in the middle of the aisle.

"Is everything okay?" I asked him, rolling my eyes at the dramatic response I knew waited for me.

"I'm just, umm, it's just that," he stammered.

"It's overwhelming to see all this stuff at once, huh?" I suggested.

"It's not so much that," he said, a hand to his forehead, "I just can't believe we actually need to be here."

He collected himself and we marched on. Within five minutes he had sketched out the nursery, complete with approximated measurements and had decided on a color and style of crib he preferred: white (for the versatility and ease of matching other pieces), convertible, preferably sleigh. It occurs to me that, by the time our child is old enough to enjoy the toddler or full size benefits these convertible cribs offer, we may have another infant, but I try to think of it as three investments for the price of one.

As we perused the oak section, we encountered a couple who actually kicked several of the cribs. When asked if they needed assistance, they responded they were just testing the merchandise. When we passed them a few minutes later, the husband was lodged under a crib as if it were a hot rod, disassembling it. His wife held the dismembered parts, completely unfazed. And I know we are first time parents and in many ways fit the profile, and I am aware my talk on this little publication has turned to all things baby-- for that I will not apologize-- that's just where I am; but I promise I will never ever contemplate the purchase of a crib as if it were an automobile. And I will never want that wagon wheel coffee table.

*The room pictured is not our nursery. Come on, do you think I'd paint a room pink?

Evidently, I really am Pregnant

2007-08-01T20:31:00.000-04:00

"Oh, he's not here yet!" I cried when they called me back for my sonogram. "I told him to be early; a sonogram is not the same as a doctor's appointment." Vicki smiled.

"We'll just locate the placenta and take some measurements. He won't care if he misses that." A minute or so later, he knocked on the door.

"Come in, come in!" I said. He came in and grabbed my hand. We had been talking about this since we found out I was pregnant. Couldn't wait to see the baby, couldn't wait to learn our first details about our son or daughter. We saw ventricles and heart valves, femurs and a tongue.

Most of all, we sighed relief over what we didn't see. No signs of congenital defects. Things look healthy and normal which, though cliche, is always good news.

"Now," Vicki smiled, "Here's one leg, and here's another leg and . . . there's no third leg, so. . . " She typed "IT'S A GIRL" on the screen, confirming what I was convinced of and what The Boy feared.

"You'll love her anyway, right?" I asked The Boy.

"Yeah," he said, squeezing my hand, "I'll definitely love her."

Tell me how anybody thinks under this condition

2007-07-28T21:44:00.000-04:00

I think I was waiting to write until I had something new to say. Something other than pre-baby hysteria or swearing at strangers under my breath or sometimes maybe not so under my breath. It seems, though, that this is where I live for now. No sense pretending it's otherwise. Every morning frustrates me with its challenge of having nothing to wear. Maternity clothes hang loose off my hips. Pre-pregnancy clothes don't fit. I'm awaiting a confrontation with The Boy over my frequent trips to Old Navy-- but it's not like I've been enjoying them, or like I have a wide variety of clothing options. And still, people don't seem to believe I'm pregnant. At work the other day, a man mistook me for somebody else. "I thought you were Kristen," he said, "but she is pregnant, and you are obviously not." When actually, I am four and a half months along. What to say?

I have always been clumsy; my mother once told me, watching as I practiced plies in the basement, that I had the gracefulness of a frog. I used to fall a lot. Not so much in recent history, thank goodness, but there are always bruises of unknown origin on my shins. Lately, though, it's even worse. Dropping everything, spilling drinks, banging elbows and other appendages into doorjambs-- you name it.

I had The Boy on speaker yesterday while I got ready for a girls' night out. I dropped makeup on my foot and swore loudly. "It's like talking to a sailor!" He remarked. While it's true that I've never been known for my patience, these days I have the shortest fuse I've ever had. I yell at drivers, think awful thoughts about shoppers in the mall, walk out of stores without what I need because it really feels like, if I have to wait in that line, I might explode. Today was not a good day, irritability wise. I made it through Pilates without much trouble, but it seemed to go downhill from there. Of course all of this new found salty talk comes at a time when my incubating child's sense of hearing is maturing. Our journal tells me, though, that the baby "might not understand everything" I say. So that's good to know.

We have argued lately over whether to have a Quad Screen-- an optional and somewhat controversial test used to screen for chromosomal abnormalities like Down Syndrome. A positive test would not result in any type of actionable information, other to than allow for termination of the pregnancy, which we are adamantly against. "So what is the point of the test?" I asked my OB while The Boy listened.

"It's really depends on your personality, whether you think it would help you to know." I told her I'd talk to my husband about it, figuring it would be another non-issues. I wanted to get it done because I figured, if we found out something is wrong, I could begin dealing with my disappointment then and learn as much as possible to prepare. The Boy doesn't see it that way. He's afraid it would just make things worse. We cannot agree on this issue. I am unaccustomed to being so divided on something that feels so serious-- we have a long history of concurrence, or at least compromise. When something is more important to one than the other, one concedes. On the things that have seemed important, we've typically just happened to agree. We were not equipped for this type of fundamental disagreement. We are still undecided.

The big sonogram is Tuesday, the one in which we assumed we would learn the sex of the baby, but I recently realized there's more to it than that. First of all, we may not be able to tell at all. That hadn't even occurred to me until a girl at work (who had never even uttered hello to me before she knew I was pregnant) told me all about the sonogram shenanigans leading up to the birth of her little Evan. They could never tell what he was. I'm really hoping ours child is more cooperative, but it wouldn't shock me if it isn't. And more important than all of that, this sonogram is meant to detect any congenital defects-- it's not all "Hi Mommy" written on a grainy image. So I'm nervous, of course, because that seems to be the pregnancy symptom more widespread than morning sickness: worry. When I found out I had only gained 1 pound through my 16th week of pregnancy, my first thought was "hooray!" Then, without even taking a breath, I asked the nurse, "Oh no, do you think that's okay?"

At Old Navy today, clinging to my sanity when I probably shouldn't have been allowed to be around people, I bought two t-shirts. One says "It's a Boy," and one says, "It's a Girl." I'm trying to be hopeful even though lately it feels like it would be more appropriate for it to say, "It's just too many hamburgers lately" or "It's the worst and longest-running PMS of all time." Take your pick.

Second Trimester Grumblings and Adventures

2007-07-14T15:11:00.000-04:00

As it turns out, sharing the news of a well-concealed pregnancy is rather awkward. I told my boss earlier this week, and she was excited. Mentioned nothing of leaving or returning or any of that. Bringing it up in casual conversation, after 16 weeks, is kind of strange. "Yeah, so I'm pregnant," I found myself saying to a colleague the other day. To them, apparently, I do not appear to be pregnant. People say, "You're not even showing...that much," leaving me wondering if I should say, "You're right; I'm probably not even pregnant." But the top two buttons on my pre-pregnancy capris are unbuttoned right now, and it's not just because I'm in the comfort of my own home. The top is secured with a ponytail holder, doubling as a button expander. It's not pretty. When the aforementioned coworker told me to have a great weekend, I told him it would involve buying bigger pants. That hasn't happened yet, though.

These days seem to be filled with "Really, when's the next time we're going to be able to do this?" rationalizing. The Boy is still working on the rooftop deck; after I convinced him he should take me to IHOP for breakfast, I accompanied him to Lowe's for balusters and railings instead of scouring Target and Motherhood for stretchier pants and flowier tops. He has grand plans of bathrooms and new paint and, of course, the nursery, but also all kinds of things an infant would hamper. We've been to Connecticut (a short trip involving a picnic attended leisurely by The Boy's former love. Yes, she knew we would be there. No, she did not think it would be awkward. Everyone survived.); Houston for a wedding and Galveston for a day; we're spending the rest of July at home, then we head to the Outer Banks for a week with representatives from both families (two houses); The Boy's mother is flying in for Labor Day and somewhere in between there are weekend trips and visits yet to be planned, a nursery to be painted, blue or pink to be determined (though the paint will be neutral; this house has to sell eventually).

I've started a prenatal Pilates class and have been seeing a chiropractor I'm now seriously considering dumping after he mentioned, quite harshly and not for the first time, that I would quickly be developing varicose veins on the backs of my knees. I asked him what he proposed I do about it (I've already stopped crossing my legs almost entirely) and what he thought he was accomplishing by mentioning it to a pregnant woman who has plenty of those types of changes on her mind already. He was unfazed.

"Really, don't you have a daughter?" I asked, incredulous, on my face on the table, and very near tears.

"Yes," he replied.

"And do you talk to her that way?"

"Well, no."

"Then please stop talking to me like that! You're only making me feel worse!" He went on, flustered, to tell me my red toenails looked nice, but really, if you have to reach that far to compliment a girl, no one is doing very well. I cried to Amber as I walked home. The Boy referred to him in choice words and said he doesn't want me going back there. But still.

The time has come that The Boy has finally (hesitantly) acknowledged the belly, but it doesn't always show like it should. Sometimes, because of where the pre-pregnancy clothes hit, it just looks like I'm a little chubby around the middle. Especially when I'm seated which, obviously, doesn't sit well with me. I wouldn't mind looking pregnant-- I'm four months along today-- but that's not what it looks like to me. I've taken to casually resting my hand (usually the left one) on my abdomen when in public. Unfortunately, this has led The Boy on multiple occasions and a flight attendant to ask me if I'm all right. Not quite the desired effect.

Women say that the upside of pregnancy and weight gain is larger breasts, and I wish I could agree with them. I'm finding mine impossible to contain. The Boy frequently (especially last week in Galveston at the pool) and openly stares at them. "I'm sorry baby," he says when I reprimand him, "they're just ginormous." I'm starting to feel like a circus freak, and I'm nervous because they are not even serving their purpose yet. I complained at the pool, in my tankini, that I wasn't used to the presence of the belly yet. "Don't worry," The Boy said, eyes glued to my chest, "I don't think anyone is getting that far." Excellent.

At Meg's wedding in Houston last weekend, I wore a dress that I thought mostly concealed my pregnancy just because I still could. It did not, however, conceal the rapidly growing mammaries. I asked her about a large chested bridesmaid whose dress seemed more modest than the others.

"Is Kristy's dress pinned?"

"No, it's sewn with a button inside. I told her the only boobs I wanted on display at my wedding were my own."

"In that case, I apologize." I said, flushing slightly. "I didn't mean anything by it, but since I'm pregnant they've been really hard to control."

She glanced down at them for what was obviously not the first time and said, "That's okay, you weren't up there with me and you have an excuse." Well.

And now I've got to look through my clothes, so many there, so few that still fit, to go sit with another preggo at a bar where we will drink water (I'm so over O'Doul's and don't even ask me about St. Pauli Girl NA) and compare notes and listen to her husband's band. Another activity the baby would hamper. Really, who brings a baby to a bar?

Steady as She Goes

2007-06-09T15:32:00.000-04:00

"So, any family history of breast cancer? Heart disease?"

"Yes, both," I said. She was plowing through a list of family history questions that, apparently, people do not typically answer in the affirmative.

"Diabetes? Stroke?"

"Yes, both," I said.

"If I had known she had so much baggage," The Boy quipped, "I'm not sure I would have gotten myself into this."

I expected my ob/gyn to look at him askance. Instead, she said, "Well, I certainly hope you're taking care of yourself."

I had my first "ob" appointment Tuesday. We tried to hear the heartbeat, to no avail. "This is the earliest it would be possible with one of these things," she said apologetically. I tried not to look concerned. "You just saw it on the sonogram last week, right?" I nodded. "We'll definitely hear it when you come back in two weeks." Again, I nodded.

"So, any questions?" She asked. And the answer was not really, since I have the Internet and use it rather liberally. "Just one," The Boy offered, "When do we get to have another sonogram?"

"At 18 weeks," she said, "And that's a really fun one. It'll look much more like a human being then, and we'll be able to tell what it is. You won't want to miss that one." And, of course, he won't.

Despite every calendar, online due date predictors and a sonogram she ordered to determine-- ahem-- gestational age, the good doctor insists that my due date is 5 days later than what everyone else says. Now, I realize, in the larger scope of 10 months, 5 days is nothing. Or at least it would be nothing if it didn't mean our baby is due not only a whole month later but in a new calendar year. When I inquired about the reason behind this difference, she said, "Well, all wheels are different. And since I'm the one who's going to be doing it every week, we'll go with mine."

Well. As soon as she would walk out, you can imagine we would not agree with that decision. "By the way," I would say to The Boy as I slipped my shoes back on, "we're sticking with December 30th."

"Oh, definitely," he'd reply, "what the hell was that about?"

So, our first parental act is mutiny against the ob/gyn's due date. Hopefully we're all wrong and it's earlier. Poor little Christmas baby. When the Rock Star Brother called to congratulate us he said, "Christina. Listen to me. Always buy separate presents. And separate birthday wrapping paper. Never give a joint Christmas/birthday party." Poor brother, I thought, born on Christmas Eve and a twin. He never had much of a shot at a day that was all about him. At least I can happily confirm there is only one bun in my oven.

"So far so good," she said as she left the room. Which are my sentiments exactly.

Expecting, but Not What I Expected

2007-06-05T20:53:00.000-04:00

Everyone says if you wait until you're ready you'll never do it. That you're never ready. When it happened before, I wasn't ready because I didn't think I had to be. "It's not like all of the sudden we'll have a kid," I had told The Boy then. "We'll have nine months to prepare." This reasoning seemed to work on him, even if it wasn't completely sound. So, expecting what everyone says to expect, we didn't sweat it. I had heard it could take at least a year to get pregnant coming off the pill. I planned for it to take 6-8 months. It took two weeks. But I'm still convinced that one was over before it actually began. That doesn't doesn't mean it hurt any less, but it's something.

So many things about losing that baby surprised me. I used to think, were I to lose a baby, that I would be too terrified to try again. I thought I'd embrace drinking cocktails and work out until I was finally happy with my body before it happened for real. Instead, I wanted to try immediately. But of course, you can't do that. So instead, embarrassed, married, and longing for a baby, I hid Trojans in the bottom of my cart, face down, at Wal-Mart. I couldn't stand the irony.

Once everything was normal, we tried not to think about it, but I counted days and marked possibilities in cryptic initials in my Day Planner. And then I started taking tests 5 days early. I fought with The Boy because I was afraid he wouldn't be engaged like he was last time-- that he wouldn't allow himself to be attached until . . . I wasn't sure how long. I didn't believe I could be pregnant again, not already. Mostly I was scared. But this time, I got my first positive test two days early. Another one, with a darker line, came the next day, and one more, for good measure, the next. I don't think the blue line on an EPT test can get any darker. But we weren't excited yet.

The first person we told was a work associate of The Boy's we had taken to an O's game. She was 8 months pregnant at the time, and I drank $4 waters in rapid succession. We didn't have to tell, but he was dying to. A week later in Savannah with my girls, I begged off when everyone else ordered draft beer to go with their floppy pizza and finally asked for an O'Doul's. "Yeah, so I'm pregnant." I said. But it was so early. I felt like I might jinx it.

We told our families at 7 weeks, and I feared it would all be over then because that's what happened last time. But it was getting hard to fake that I didn't feel terrible, and news like that doesn't seem real when you keep it to yourself. Once the families knew, it was only a matter of time. News of the long-awaited first grandchild, first great grandchild does not stay quiet or local for long.

I am a little over ten weeks pregnant. At my first sonogram last week, The Boy had tears in his eyes. I strained to see the screen. "So is that the head?" I asked, pointing at the kid's feet. The sonographer was patient and explained everything.

"That black space in his head is where his brain will go!" She said, helpfully. Which is great, except that it means my kid doesn't have a brain.

So I've been waiting to talk about it, but I keep telling myself that waiting wouldn't make it hurt any less if something were to go wrong. We get calmer as days and weeks past. And as I eat fewer Saltines from day to day. I'm pretty sure the sound of crunching crackers on the other side of the bed is not an aphrodisiac.

I'm just not myself when I'm away

2007-05-23T19:59:00.000-04:00

So where have I been since last we spoke?

The Boy took me for a surprise overnight getaway to New York, to a restaurant with a six-month waiting list (he "knew a guy"), a hotel with four stars, and a Broadway show with five Tonys. We went to his favorite bar, McSorley's, in SoHo, where sawdust covers the floors and actual dust covers everything else; where the only beers they serve are "light" and "dark" and they laugh at you if you try to order a bottle.

I walked around midtown wearing $20 Isaac Mizrahi shoes that dug into my heels and The Boy's suit coat because spring hadn't completely sprung in the big apple, and I had to at least appear to be wearing nice shoes. It was New York, after all.

A couple weeks later, I drove to Richmond to meet Amber and got up at 3:30 on a Saturday morning to fly to our other girls in Savannah.

In perfect weather, we browsed all the shops on River Street, ate at Paula Deen's famous restaurant, The Lady and Sons, went to bed earlier than we care to admit and ate and talked and laughed. Not the same as it used to be, but maybe even better. Because now we appreciate how hard easy friendships are to come by, and how they might never come again.

With The Boy's birthday rapidly approaching, we planned a big evening out. A brother and friends crashed on our couch despite the open beds upstairs; the boys played Guitar Hero in the middle of the night and we took a salsa lesson, I in my ill-chosen 4" red patent leather stilettos, they in their socks. The Boy surprised me by mastering a right turn and demonstrating in front of everyone. We ate empanadas at a big table surprisingly placed on the dance floor, but we yelled over the Spanish and it was fun. We rode around in the back of a white limo on somebody's prom night and pretended it made us matter. And for our last stop, at 2 AM, we picked up a large cheese pizza at Nacho Mama's.

And last weekend we stayed at the condo of our gracious friends in Ocean City. We arrived to white roses and a bottle of sparkling cider with a Happy Anniversary sign. That's right, I've been married for more than a year now. When I isolate the marriage part, I can't believe it. It was supposed to be hard, everyone said, and I guess sometimes it was. But in talking to Beth, another almost no longer a newlywed, we decided the hard stuff was mostly circumstantial, not so much marital. Yeah, in the beginning there were adjustment issues. There still are. But we're learning. The Boy stood in front of me nervous and giggling Saturday night before we left for our anniversary dinner. "This has been the best year ever," he smiled. I did a quick review: a layoff, the wedding and ridiculous honeymoon, but then my ailing father, a new job with little security, very tight finances, another new job, a pregnancy and a miscarriage. "If this was a tough year," he wrote in his card, "can you imagine what a good one would be like?" He produced a gold box with beautiful diamond stud earrings (that I have always wanted). It was too cold for the beach, but it was a beautiful anniversary.

And now, here we are, smack in the middle of spring, in the middle of the city for one more summer.

Getting Better All the Time

2007-04-02T17:59:00.000-04:00

March came and went, alternating lions and lambs, and not a word from me. And people who know about it, but not what it's like, ask "how are you feeling?" Since I know (now) what a miscarriage is like, but also that it can be gotten through, if not over, I think they are referring to the cold that took too long to go away or the allergies that are causing me to cringe and roll my eyes at cherry blossoms. Then I remember. "Oh. That. Things are . . . getting back to normal." And I smile, because I don't think they really want to know that, at the sight of what I have sometimes called "the damn spot," I almost cried with joy and relief. I'm not broken, at least not anymore. Now I can move on, on to more waiting and wondering and considerable fear, but for now I don't feel like I'm stationary, casting a rueful eye over my shoulder at another tearful February.

That doesn't mean it's over, but it also doesn't mean that's all there's been. Another new job, another thing that makes me cringe. "So, Christina," my grandfather asked this weekend, rolling the 'r' as always, "how is the job?" He always asks me this, and although he is prone to interject memories of his days working with engineers, he always listens. Sheepishly I told him, and everyone else, that it's new (again) but I don't hate it. I am with a company who seems to want me to stick around for a while, with a supervisor who asked me, in my third week at work, "Is this really what you want to do? Because if it isn't, we can find a way to something else." It occurred to me that maybe, in these nearly five years after college, all I've been looking for is someone who deserved my loyalty. It would be really nice not to update my resume for a while.

The weekend was heavy on family time. My little sister spent the weekend with us, kind of. The Boy and I attended her concert on Friday, along with her boyfriend. (And it took all I had not to type that in quotation marks.) He has the hairstyle, so popular with teenage boys, that causes him to flip his hair out of his eyes constantly. He does this often, somehow while attempting not to move his neck. It would be funny, except at the end of the night this guy hugged my sister. He tells her, she says, that she doesn't need to wear makeup. He sings Rascal Flatts' "Fast Cars and Freedom" to her. At dinner after the concert, when everyone got up from our table to go to the salad bar, The Boy pleaded for me not to leave him alone with the boyfriend. "So, I heard you wrote a poem," I said, alluding to the way she said he asked her to be his girlfriend.

"Yeah."

"I was impressed when I heard that," I faked a smile. He flipped his hair to reveal one surprisingly blue eye. "Don't worry, she didn't read it to me."

"Yeah," he sniffed, "I'm not worried." And then I gave up.

Thinking about it now, I know what I should have said is much different than what I did say. Which is frequently the problem with me, leaving me to wonder why I have so many people who are still willing to love me. Instead of saying "you're not supposed to be dating," or "he has a stupid haircut," I should have said, "what does it mean to have a boyfriend?" or "what is it that you like about him?" Instead of rattling off reasons why too-young girls give blowjobs and the ominous outcomes this behavior, I should have said, "I'm worried about you, because I know how boys can be, but I know this is an exciting time. I want you to be able to come to me about anything." Well, maybe I could have said that in addition to the blowjob thing. Hopefully she'll give me another chance.

Mostly we rode around. Between a lacrosse game and our grandmother's 75th birthday party and an outlet mall and my house, where The Boy was waiting for Appetizer Night. A few months ago, while we rode from and to similar destinations, she told me, "It's one of my favorite things, riding around with you." So maybe I need to worry less and drive more, with a precocious and terrifyingly beautiful passenger who's still just a kid who looks up to her big sister and doesn't care where we're going as long as she gets to pick the music.

Losing What I Never Had

2007-02-27T14:38:00.000-05:00

The days before the news I suspected but still can't always bring myself to say tingled. There was a low buzz, in me and between us, even if we weren't looking at each other, even if we weren't talking, even if he wasn't there. He knew, he said and said it for weeks: when I returned from frequent trips to the bathroom, when I complained that I was hungry again, when I held my breasts steady as I walked down the stairs, when I yelled at him for no good reason, then cried, then said I was sorry in Jamaica. But I was too scared to believe. As if believing ever jinxed anything. Even after my shaking hand, outstretched, showed proof, three times over three days, I still spoke in 'ifs' and 'maybes,' as if everything were hypothetical. As if my uncertain feelings on the subject had anything to do with its veracity.

I cried on the couch about what I was afraid I'd be losing. I vowed to tell our children, and especially daughters, what it really feels like. That it's not only choosing names and a nursery theme and godparents and pediatricians. That, at least in the beginning, it's not all storks and ribbons and cigars and pats on the back. It's also a whole lot of what-if and trembling. And after I cried and sneered at him, drinking my current favorite wine while I had water, I decided the tingling was a very good thing.

When a blood test confirmed what he was already sure of, I started using 'if' a lot less often, and we told my parents. As if it were true. He looked forward and then counted backward, filling in 266 days in a book we read every night. He cleaned the kitchen and made our bed. He worried about me and asked me how I felt. He looked at me, inches from my face when we went to bed, and he smiled that he couldn't believe it. He glowed.

Thursday morning, coming down the stairs, I realized I didn't need to hold my breasts. They didn't hurt anymore. I poked them periodically throughout the morning, willing them to hurt. I worried about the lack of pain. I put it from my mind until later, until I saw a pink streak on white toilet paper. A heartbeat I could feel in my stomach, but it was only mine. My mom called my doctor, who asked to see me immediately. We sat in the waiting room not reading parenting magazines. I tried not to make eye contact with the proud and exhausted owners of severely pregnant bellies around me. He made comments about the weather that didn't distract me. Because I already knew.

The word miscarriage, I've decided, and I've given it a lot of thought, is a terrible word. I recently learned that it's supposed to be the more sensitive term for what is medically called a spontaneous abortion. But maybe I prefer that more. Because if it's a miscarriage, that suggests that I did something wrong. I didn't carry it right; I didn't care enough; I failed. And I've thought that enough on my own over the last week without needing any reminders.

Mostly I've sat on the couch, when I can, or at my desk at work and stared at nothing. Wherever I go I find myself crying in reverse contractions. At first, every three minutes, then every five, and so on. I've only teared up once today, so far. I'm still bleeding and exhausted, surprised by how raw and real it hurts. I hid the book under my bed, aware that all the dates would be wrong but that I wouldn't care as long as we could use it next time. Aware that I was scared of losing the wrong thing, I promised myself that I wouldn't make that mistake again.

Everyone who knows works hard to validate my feelings, as I seem to be the biggest hurdle I'm facing, while everyone who doesn't tries to say things about next time and hope and their acquaintance that lost multiple babies but then became a mother. They are trying to help. But everyone who knows is aware that words never help. I have established rules I do not say that govern my thinking. No one is allowed to utter phrases in my direction that begin with "at least." Such as, "at least you know you can get pregnant," "at least you were only five weeks along," "at least you're very healthy and young." Also, no one can mention God's will. Because if I am expected to run to him for the comfort I have sought desperately anywhere I could get it, I have to believe he is grieving with me; I cannot see him as the source of my grief. Maybe that's bad theology, but it's carrying me through.

Irie, Mon

2007-02-21T12:04:00.001-05:00

"Who goes to Jamaica for the weekend?" I heard a woman ask her friend. I was sprawled on a lounge chair on a little man-made island in the Caribbean sea, so I didn't really care. I sipped Red Stripe out of a tiny plastic cup that reminded me of my college cafeteria.

"Did you hear that?" I asked The Boy.

"Yeah, I'll tell you who goes to Jamaica for the weekend," he said, "people who can't afford to go for a whole week!"

Our Jamaican vacation was fabulous. When we left for the airport on Friday morning at 6:30, the temperature gauge on my car read 9 degrees. When we arrived in Montego Bay, it was 80. We were sweaty on the way to the resort, but figured a 71-degree temperature differential isn't really a bad problem to have. After a buffet dinner on the beach where The Boy said, "I'm eating too much, right? I should stop. I'll stop," before going for a second plate, we bet on hermit crab races and laughed as we competed with the Canadian couple at our table who refused to bet on the "Canadian" crab. We went to bed before 10 that night and watched CourtTV until we fell asleep. The Boy seemed to have reservations about ending a night on vacation this way, but it felt pretty perfect to me.

We spent all of Saturday and Sunday on the beach. Saturday, I laughed as The Boy ran away from something in the water. Thinking it was a fish or crab he had stepped on, I made fun of him. Turns out he had stepped on a sea urchin that had left its mark all over the sole of his foot. I performed surgery on what looked like tiny porcupine quills. That night we listened to a Jamaican band play American covers and we walked on the beach. We sat at the end of a pier kicking our feet over the dark water and talking about Freakonomics, the book that had somehow been compelling enough to make The Boy read it.

Sunday, we swam in a lagoon between the beach and the island. I was floating over some sea grass, when pain blinded me. I started screaming and flailing wildly, "Oh my God it hurts!" I said, then, "Get it off me! Is it still on me? OH MY GOD!" The Boy looked at me and moved mechanically, helpless while I flailed. I couldn't hear anything but my screaming, but I noticed that everyone on the beach was staring at me. No one made any moves toward us. The Boy helped me limp out of the water. We assumed I had been stung by a jellyfish. "I'm sorry for embarrassing you," I said, trembling on my beach chair while tears stung my eyes, "but I can't tell you how much it hurts." My knee turned deep red and strange marks that looked like lacerations sliced across it. We decided to go to the nurse. As we walked down the beach a little boy approached me.

"What stung you?" he asked. I told him I thought it was a jellyfish. He made a face. He was the nicest stranger I had encountered that day.

"I just know all those parents are saying, 'Don't worry, honey, that lady is crazy. The ocean and all of its creatures are our friends,'" I sniffled, "But you know what? They are wrong."

The nurse asked me what had happened. I told her I thought it was a jellyfish, but I wasn't sure. "It really hurts," I added. "Does this look like a jellyfish sting?"

"I don't know what stung you," she snapped, " I didn't see it."

"Well, is this typically what jellyfish stings look like?" I asked, gesturing to my knee that now appeared to read CE in garish, red raised print. The Boy later tried to interpret what God could be so desperate to tell me that He had to write it on my body.

"I've never seen anything that looked like this," she said, "But I don't work here very often." I could not understand how a nurse in Jamaica had never seen a jellyfish sting. We concluded something far more sinister had attacked me, but we couldn't be sure. I wanted to consult Wilbur, the ancient Jamaican who wandered around the island with a paddleboat full of handmade souvenirs. If he had spent 35 years working in the water, surely he had encountered a sting like this. But talking to Wilbur would mean reentering the water, and I wasn't quite ready to do that. "I bet he's never been stung by a jellyfish," The Boy joked. He made a similar joke about no less than fifty people, including many guests we encountered at the resort and Bob Marley.

Despite our injuries and my stubborn skin that was determined to burn despite my frantic reapplication of SPF 15, we had a great time and 4 days/3 nights felt much longer. I finally devoured Zadie Smith's On Beauty (every time I opened the book around The Boy, he began to pontificate pointlessly about the merits of beauty in his best Sean Connery voice ). The only real tragedy befell The Boy when he finished his book. "I'll never read another book again," he said quietly as he finished the epilogue. I looked at him quizzically. "There has never been another book like this, and I'm sure there won't ever be again." He pouted for a couple of days, even once we returned home and I took him to Barnes and Noble to prove him wrong. No luck so far.

I talked to my brother on the phone last night. "You guys must be really rich," he scoffed, "who goes to Jamaica for the weekend?"

I laughed and explained that he had it all wrong.

Mimicking Didion

2007-02-16T15:45:00.001-05:00

In my current class on my tortoise road to an M.A. in Writing, I am studying, analyzing and imitating other, more successful and famous voices in an attempt to eventually pinpoint my own. Several years ago I had begun to feel mostly confident and comfortable in my voice, but taking this class makes me wonder if those feelings were premature and naïve. Regardless, each week we choose one of the voices we've read to imitate in a short piece that can be about anything. This week, I chose to mimick Joan Didion in "Goodbye to All That," an essay I had read before-- it is now underlined in my book in several shades from several moods and times. I ended up sort of liking the outcome, and since I don't yet have pictures from the Jamaican vacation, here it is:

Some days at recess I stood in the shade of the oak tree by the balance beam where Melissa Rose impersonated Madonna. We were six, and I wasn’t yet sure which kind of girl I wanted to be. Melissa sang “Like a Prayer” and jumped into side splits on the gravel. Even now, my groin muscles hurt just thinking about a move like that, but at the time I wished I could be that cool. Melissa wore a permed side ponytail and deliberately torn lace. Sometimes she wore fingerless gloves. I had the side ponytail, but that was about it. My mother told me, in an act I would later see as benevolent and sage, that if I still wanted a perm when I was nine we would talk about it then. I felt left out, with long, straight blonde hair. Fortunately, my tastes matured by the time I turned nine.

Other days I stood with Carrie (whose last name now escapes me) under the same tree, arms crossed in front of my chest. We watched Aaron McKinsey play soccer. Everyone watched Aaron McKinsey. In kindergarten, the year before, my mother had made me blush by pointing him out at the playground. “He’d be a good boy for you to marry,” she said, casually, “but he’s Jewish and his mother isn’t very nice.” I had never met his mother and did not have any understanding of what being Jewish had to do with any of it. Our next-door neighbors were Jewish and, at the time, all that meant to me was that they did not go to Backyard Bible Club with my brother and me or celebrate Christmas, but we got to go over to their house for latkes and to help light the menorah at Hanukkah. My mother bought a roll of blue and white wrapping paper that was just for their presents. To me, none of these seemed like hindrances to a marriage. For one week in kindergarten, I told everyone Aaron was my boyfriend. He sat criss-cross-applesauce beside me at story time every day, and when we played house he asked me to be the mom to his dad. Sometimes he held my hand. My friends told me they were jealous. But by the next week Leah Berenstein was the one who sat beside him at story time, and Aaron ignored me. Leah was the kind of girl who dressed up as a teenager for Halloween every year until she actually was one. I never became friends with Leah, and I convinced my friends that Aaron had betrayed me.

So in first grade, when Carrie and I watched Aaron at recess, it was with mixed feelings we didn’t fully understand—feelings that had little to do with him at all. He tried to play soccer, but Lia kept chasing him. Soon it wasn’t just Leah. Melissa Rose chased Leah, and twenty-one other girls tailed Melissa—we counted. Even at six, I remember thinking this didn’t seem right. Girls chasing boys like that? “No way,” I told Carrie. She agreed. We watched in shock, then disgust, as Leah tackled Aaron and stole his shoe. He got up and ran away with one shoe on. It was a strange mix of jealousy and anger I felt then. Even if some part of me knew Leah was acting crazy, I remember feeling irritated that she was still getting his attention and I was not—after that week in kindergarten, I never did again. It was the beginning of a long process in which I eventually learned that indignation never won a boy’s glance in anyone’s direction.

Compilations and Complications

2007-02-06T10:14:00.001-05:00

We were listening to my latest compilation, another collection of songs too self-conscious to be as dark or indie or bluesy as they might be if they were only for me, but downtrodden enough to be entitled, "C's Moody Winter Mix."

When Citizen Cope's "Back Together Again" began, I started bouncing and nodding and singing along. "I think I may have a thing for songs with 'hoo-hoo's' in them. You know, not that kind of 'hoo-hoo,'" I remarked to The Boy. He laughed.

"You definitely do," he said naming "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," one of my favorites from last year, Sheryl Crow's "Steve McQueen," and, of course, "Take the Money and Run." I nodded as this seemed a quirk funny enough to own.

When "Home," by Marc Broussard started, The Boy sighed. "Here's another one of your songs."

"Why don't you like it?" I asked, defensive. He mimicked Broussard's gravelly voice repeating the word 'home.' The Boy, apparently, dislikes repetition. His complaint about The Damnwells' "Louisville" sounded similar. ("I really like this song until he starts repeating 'Louisville,'" he said, as if the word reminded him of something foul-smelling.) Maybe he just dislikes repeated title lines. Regardless, we disagree, and another song on the new cd, which I've been playing many times in succession, proves it.

Jars of Clay's, "Work," caught my attention with an aggressive, incessant staccato drum beat countered by the slightly off-beat repeated line, "Do you know what I mean when I say I don' t want to be alone?" It might be because the melodic line shifts with the repetition, causing the harmony to cross over it instead of stack on top of it. But I think I like it more for its urgency and for the line I wish I had written: "I have no fear of drowning; it's the breathing that's taking all this work."

Now, I may not be known for my brevity, but that's where I've been. The breathing has been taking the life out of me, not in a bad way, but in a big way.

The mysterious zephyr I once referred to teased me twice but was not to be. We did not so much as flirt with the idea of moving to Texas, it was more like an at-the-expense-of-everything-else whirlwind romance. Alas, we broke up with it. After a nervous lunch to announce our intentions to my parents and three interviews on my part for the job that seemed perfect, apparently, I did not seem perfect. Half of our hearts gave up then. Or rather, maybe just mine did.

A month and a half later, The Boy had three interviews of his own, the third of which took him on an expenses-paid trip to San Antonio. It was warmer here than it was there the day he flew down. He met with 20 people over nearly eight hours. My friend Kelly took him to a Mexican restaurant and gave him a crash-course orientation. He came home the next day and we waited a little over the two weeks they said it would take to learn that he was close, but not close enough. The Boy moped a little, but mostly the ensuing weekend was a series of sighs and plans. The night after we found out, we went out for Mexican here and plotted the future. To sell the house? To start new job(s)? To procreate sooner than the later we planned long ago? To go back to school?

I enrolled in a class on the last day of late registration; we will put our house on the market in the spring, when the windchill is no longer a factor, but we don't expect to sell it for another year or so; my former contract ended last week-- with a party of awkward body language and phrases and really good baked ziti-- and now I'm mulling a new offer it seems I may not be able to refuse, and as for the procreation, well, I feel that will happen when it's supposed to. Most importantly that weekend, The Boy installed his surround sound system and we bought new rugs. We felt comfortable being in our house again. It felt like home, even though it always was. I've stopped being so afraid of calendars, for the most part, and any thoughts of Stetson acquisition have been tabled indefinitely. We can talk freely with family and friends when they inquire about jobs and locales. The Boy joined my gym and we have been working out at least 4 days per week. I could see results for him right away. I'm babystepping and doing the work, but I've yet to become impressed with my progress, or really to notice it at all. Of course, that could have more to do with my aversion to scales than anything else.

Basically, everything is better now. Friday morning we are headed to Jamaica for a long weekend. I can't really believe it, and when people ask the occasion I don't know what to tell them. We're hoping to do all the things we didn't do on our honeymoon. Swim. Lay out in the sun. Snorkel. Not worry that my father is on his deathbed as we return. Breathe deeply and with less work.

Closer Than They Appear

2007-01-03T21:52:00.000-05:00

Back to life, back to reality-- better as an En Vogue hook than it is as a mantra. Despite The Boy's insistence that I would need many coats in New England for Christmas, I did not. It was balmy, for December, and another rainy Christmas. It was also bittersweet. Due to the various home improvement, life reshuffling and Christmas preparations crowding our house and marriage, I realized on the quiet ride up the turnpike that we had been less than connected, or at least less than we'd like. So, that got fixed in Connecticut.

We slept on an aerobed in my brother-in-law's unfurnished condo. When we woke up Christmas morning, he with a hangover and I with severe sleep deprivation that might as well have been a hangover, he laughed. "This is probably how a lot of couples start out on their first Christmas." My allergies and I were glad we do not sleep in such close proximity to the floor in our natural habitat. Christmas felt weird being away from my family and their home. It's also not typical for me to stay up into such wee hours the night before Christmas without carols or wrapping or candles. It made me sad, and we promised it would be different next time, no matter where we were.

We celebrated the twin brothers in laws' 30th birthdays, which was a blast. I wore the KILLER shoes The Boy got me (which, apparently, are now on sale). I spent some time with my sister in law and got to know the boys' girlfriends a little more. We didn't see everyone we wanted to see; we hit more houses than I ever had on a major holiday; and surprisingly, the dog behaved spectacularly for the vast majority of the trip. So it was good, all in all.

New Year's Eve (day) was spent at the Terps game The Boy managed to wrangle tickets to after two years of trying, and he was a very good sport when I insisted he wear a red Maryland shirt. When he complained the borrowed t-shirt was too baggy, I half-heartedly pouted, "Fine. Wear whatever you want." Despite pairing it with dress shoes, he wore the shirt anyway. We returned home for football, homemade fondue, and steak on the couch. Despite condolences from friends and strangers alike and my own silent worries that our first married New Years should be a bit flashier, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

And now, our house has been stripped of its Christmas cheer; gold glitter and green branches sit in boxes in the basement along with faux red berries the dog refuses to believe aren't real. It looks naked and seems vaguely sad, but I'm eager to move on.

Here, in the second official week of January, I am officially unsure what happens next. I anticipate being on the receiving end of an Uncomfortable Conversation at work this week, but I continue to lay low. The Boy and I are awaiting news that would change just about everything, and it's taking longer than we had hoped. I'm working on trusting and waiting, seeking and being still. Admittedly, I'm not much good at ignoring logistics. I'm trying hard to stop offering my services to my God who seems to relish taking longer than I planned. Being here now, that advice I laughed at in college and now dole out to just about anyone who will listen, seems to be getting harder.

Here to Stay is a New Bird

2006-12-20T12:29:00.001-05:00

I never intended to be part of a family that traveled for Christmas. It is a well-known and certifiable fact that very few of my intentions and visions for the way my life would progress have come to pass. Per se.

Perhaps my expectations stem from the way my mother's life panned out differently than mine. Though they had grown up forty miles from each other in Maryland, she met her husband at her small-town college in North Carolina. Thus, as a child, I saw both families at every holiday without ever having to travel. I woke up in my own bed every Christmas morning. I was vaguely aware that others handled it differently, but it never occurred to me that there was any reason for that other than preference. That the people who travel for Christmas would want it to be different had never entered my mind. It's starting to now.

Despite enrolling in a small-town Carolina school and becoming engaged to a small-town Indiana boy, marriage at 21 was not meant to be my happily ever after. Mom married her college athlete and sweetheart and graduated pregnant with me at 22. I graduated a month shy of 21 with a fiance overseas who everyone knew I was never going to marry. Everyone but me.

The following snowy February left me with a roadmap reevaluation and few answers. What now? So finally, four Christmases after the one that broke my heart, I am starting to see where I am going instead. Which is, apparently, to New England. At 25, my mother had two babies. At 25, I am a newlywed on the pill. I have still not reconciled my expectations to my reality, however happy it is. But, after last night, I have learned something about families who travel at Christmas.

Mainly, they probably do not provide their coworkers with a variety of cookies in cute holiday tins. This is the first year I have not baked and wrapped and sprinkled and given the week before Christmas. Instead, last night, I did laundry like a person possessed, picked up dry cleaning, and sent my gracious husband to Petsmart for a travel sedative and to Walmart for tampons. In preparation for the week of impromptu high school reunions that always manages to constitute our trips to Connecticut, I made time to get my hair highlighted. Finally, my new blonder bangs falling in my eyes, I stared at a bed full of clothing with nothing to wear.

"I'm sorry to be throwing all of this at you at once," The Boy said, reading our commitments to me off a crumpled piece of paper, "but I have never been this overwhelmed."

I reminded him that this night paled in comparison to the ones leading up to our wedding, but remembered that he had spent those nights texting me from bars and hotels with his pals while my overworked bridesmaids and I maniacally tried to scrape together some semblance of a proper wedding. I was happy for him in retrospect, jealous of him at the time.

We discussed the best way to handle family conflicts, anticipated awkward confrontations, and I nervously penned a conflicted and carefully worded e-mail to The Boy's former love regarding our inevitable presence at the same functions.

I bathed our confused Puggle at midnight and slumped on the wet tile while drying him with a hairdryer so that he wouldn't go to bed shivering and wet.

The presents are wrapped and ready to go, but they are not decked out with ribbons or bows the way they have been in previous years. No one is receiving cookies. We will be staying at my brother-in-law's new condo that he has not had time to move into. We are bringing toilet paper and hand soap, an air mattress and towels. We are probably forgetting everything.

We gathered the dog's blankets and toys, treats and medicine, food and bowls, wondering how he would fit in the car. We pictured him perched precariously atop blanket-covered luggage on the backseat.

As we finally prepared to go to bed, The Boy asked, "How do people with kids do this?" I had been wondering the same thing all night. Initially, this question left me longing for more years of careful child prevention.

"We better hurry up and have kids," The Boy said thoughtfully, "So we can make sure we are the first and everyone will visit us for the holidays."

We are still not sure if the dog and the pillows can both make the trip to New England. Suddenly guest room preparations and grocery shopping don't seem like such a terrible fate.

Welcome Christmas, Bring Your Light

2006-12-14T22:33:00.000-05:00

The difference between dusk and darkness is only about 15 minutes. I wait for a bus, so I know. What I don't know is the way the sky looks in the Mid Atlantic between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM on weekdays. But I know that if I sneak out early, at 4:45, I can see the pink-orange light behind the skeletal trees. And I know that if I leave at or after 5:00, I won't need my sunglasses, but I'll immediately need my headlights. Regardless of the presence of light while I wait, all the waiting has given me more time to ponder. Circumstances I am far from sure of, and thus not inclined to disclose, have driven me to my knees and, unfortunately, further into my head. While I ponder, I have been weighing, and while weighing, I have made some conclusions.

I am thankful that:

1. My father was around to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family. More than six months ago, lying in a puddle of hiccups and sobs on the softest bed I had ever felt, in the most gorgeous place I had ever dreamed, I realized Bora Bora was the last place I wanted to be. An interrupted honeymoon the least of my worries, my mind wrestled with the biggest fear I had ever felt-- that I had seen my daddy for the last time from the rear window of a borrowed Audi on my wedding night. I had never known terror or helplessness like that. I'm still not sure if I'm relieved; still holding at least part of the breath I sucked in through clenched teeth on that Wednesday in June. But I know that I hug him tighter and longer every time I see him. I know I don't let myself get frustrated as easily when we butt heads because we are different while so much the same. I know that I am grateful every day for the time that we have.

2. I got to marry a man who continues to thrill and surprise me. I never would have believed that the spiky-haired bartender with the killer chocolate martinis and pocket full of pick-up lines ("Why do you look so familiar?) would be my one and only. But however he convinced me, I'm beyond grateful that he did. Marriage is better than I ever knew to hope it could be, and I have never been more excited to come home every night.

3. I get to take a hot shower every morning. This one is relatively new. About six or seven weeks ago, The Boy embarked on what he thought was a minor repair in our only bathroom. "Just need to replace a few tiles," he told the guy at Home Depot. When he returned to take down the tiles, he realized the wall behind the tiles was rotten. It crumbled at his fingertips, and before I knew it, the shower had no walls and the tub was filled with debris. We returned to Home Depot, to the same guy, who taught The Boy how to install cement board and tiles and grout. No one had to teach me how to pick out the tiles, but there was little joy in that. I had to clean the tub each night and wash my hair in the sink each morning, followed by a shivering bath. The first few days, since the tub faucet lacked...well, a faucet, The Boy got up early and turned on the water for me. And stayed to watch. There was nothing erotic about this activity. Fortunately, for the sake of my marriage and everyone's libido, the novelty of my goosebumped and compromised naked body wore off for my husband, but this production continued for 9 days. Even when the functionality of the shower returned, it carried with it admonitions. "The water can't be hot," or, "this corner can't get wet," or, "the door can't be closed." It should go without saying, but here I go: Due to my poor man having to spend every waking moment in the bathroom, there is no longer any mystery or privacy left in our urinary activities.

Our second level has been covered in a layer of white dust, which is finally mostly gone. I have been congested for weeks, unsure if it was due to sickness or the fact that I should be wearing a mask around my home. Note to the novice homebuyer: Never purchase a home with only one bathroom, especially if you are married. You never know when your spouse will feel the need to tear down the walls.

Having said that, the new tile looks smashing. It makes me want to take it with me when we leave, but I haven't worked up the courage to ask about that yet.

4. I am able to give. Continuing the trend that began with the frozen bird, The Boy and I have turned our little house into the North Pole. Using Craigslist as our impetus, and staring with one family, we have initiated an effort that is ending up providing Christmas for three families, who, together, have 11 kids. At least 10 families from our church have contributed piles of generosity, and our adopted families have been blown away and brought to tears. For the last two weeks, my living and dining rooms have looked like a Toys for Tots collection center, and I've driven around with a high chair and a walker in my trunk. We were able to collect everything the first family requested, and then some, to the point where I needed to actively seek families who were in need of the extra items we acquired. I still have surplus, and the family who provided the most has left me multiple voicemails asking if they can contribute more. It has been an incredible outpouring, and it has overwhelmed me. Not only am I grateful to be in a position where I am not the one in need and I am able to give, I am also grateful to have the opportunity just to be part of something so big and full of love and hope and kindness. I got an angry email forwarded to me from a meek friend the other day, asking if I agreed that my decorated tree was a CHRISTmas tree, and that we should not say Happy Holidays when what we mean is Merry CHRISTmas. I guess those things are true. But why shout about Christ's love when you can just give it away? I haven't said this, but then I guess I shouldn't have to.

Conversely, I am not thankful that:

1. My month-long congestion has manifested itself in the form of a nasty and getting nastier cold, prompting a co-worker to ask me, over the wall of the cubicle, if I was chopping onions. My sniffles projected louder than my muffled apologies. No one could be more irritated than I am, except perhaps The Boy. Which leads me to...

1.a. Because of the Meth "crisis," it is very difficult to find decent cold medicine. Did you know that many nighttime medicines have gotten rid of their decongestants? Whaa? Why don't I just take a shot of Bourbon before bed? Instead of doing that last night, though, I chose to take daytime medicine along with nighttime stuff. Which led to a very surreal night of sirens and wide-awake and switching sides so I could alternate breathing out of either side of my nose, leading to the eventual sleeplessness of my also congested husband. Which leads me to...

1.b. I am unthankful for being sick at the same time as my dear husband. Nothing says happily ever after like, "You're not the only one who's sick, you know!"

2. I am, once again, sitting at work each day, looking over my shoulder, waiting for an anvil to fall on my head. Maybe it'll be the end of December, maybe it'll be the end of January; regardless, we're definitely nearing the end.

Though these lists were meant to be only a sampling, clearly 4-2 means I am doing just fine.

And, despite the dense fog that has lately blanketed my hometown and my mind, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Poultry Stuffed with Revelations

2006-11-27T19:57:00.000-05:00

Admittedly, I am a few days late. But what am I if not perpetually later than I intended to be?

It all started with a frozen turkey. Safeway.com was kind enough to provide us with one free of charge, except for the $150 we spent to qualify. All of this, despite the fact that we had no use for a turkey, as Thanksgiving would be held at my aunt's house where another aunt would tackle nearly all of the cooking.

"What do we need a turkey for again?" The Boy furrowed his already wrinkly brow.

I don't think I ever really had an answer. I told my mom about it, and she also looked perplexed. "You mean you won't use it?" she asked me, her daughter, who cooks nearly every night. "I mean, not for Thanksgiving, but for another time? We'll take it."

I didn't want to give a whole turkey to someone who didn't need it, especially when it arrived and weighed in at a shade heavier than 14 lbs. But how to find someone in need of a large frozen bird? I scoured sites for shelters and food banks, none of which were interested in perishable food. As a last attempt to rid our poorly-designed freezer of the turkey with enough time for it to defrost before the big day, I posted an ad on Craigslist-- FREE Turkey, it read.

I took the ad down about an hour later, my inbox overwhelmed with enthusiastic hopeful takers. A woman who had planned to pick it up at 6 read my mind and thought better of it; "It would make me feel better if it went to someone who really needed it," she said.

Attempting tact, with wording help from The Boy (of all people), I screened the prospective poultry owners. Most were kind-hearted with plans to pay it forward to others who needed it more. Finally, a man named Dave began, "well i am out of work with an injurey and don't have much money and now my ex is having trouble with my two boys..." The Boy christened him winner of the turkey, then met him the next day on the rainy corner holding an umbrella and a sweating bird. Dave was so grateful; we felt more blessed.

"I wish we could help more people like that," The Boy said. And so, we posted another ad on Craigslist, offering last-minute help for Thanksgiving. I felt nervous that night after hitting Publish; I wondered how it would go over and if it would help. In the morning, I parsed e-mails from people telling me their stories; "Thanks for listening," one said. Mostly they were single moms, others out-of-work, all just wanting to provide a day of plenty and warmth and turkey for their families. Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, I only needed gingersnaps, cream cheese, yams and light brown sugar. But I left the grocery store with a buckling cart filled with a 17-lb turkey, a roasting pan, 15 lbs of potatoes, and everything else I could think of that red-blooded, blue state Americans might need on the fourth Thursday in November, including three still-warm pumpkin pies and whipped cream. My winter-white wool coat and I got soaked unloading someone else's supplies, but I couldn't stop smiling. Maybe it was because I knew I didn't have to cook any of it, but I didn't think that was all.

I met Felisha at my front door with bags in hand. I don't know where she lives or how old her kids are or if she had ever cooked a turkey. But I know she had enough for a feast last week.

We were hesitant about the traveling artists/activists. They ventured to see us in the rain for a Safeway gift card and an unexpected pumpkin pie. They cried in our living room, and so did I. Who am I to judge which people need what when? When they left, The Boy and I wished we had given them more.

I wanted to assure them all that we had been in their position, and very well may be again. Strangers have given me exactly what I needed without possibly knowing it was what I needed. A $20 here, a free dinner there. Strangers like that used to show up on The Boy's childhood doorstep with everything his mother needed for their Thanksgiving. "I didn't remember it until just now," he said, after we had given out the last of the groceries. I didn't get to tell anyone. But really, I think we wanted to disappear, thinking that would make it easier to be and provide whatever they needed. I'm not sure if that's what we accomplished, but I know we tried.

But then there was the woman who needed vegetables. I got her every vegetable I could fathom eating on Thanksgiving. I checked my e-mail obsessively and begged her to call, but she never called. Still no email. Now I'm the one who could use a turkey to go with all the fixings.

And, since I am perpetually later than I intended to be, next time we'll tackle "the things I'm thankful for." I'm reminding myself now, to keep from focusing on the zephyr that, for now, wasn't meant to be.

Finding Good in the Lost and Found

2006-10-31T16:53:00.000-05:00

When revisiting the past, it seems the elapsed differences do not whisper subtlety like the sameness does.

"That's the swing where Tara and I sat every night after dinner, eating frozen yogurt and watching boys play...the frisbee that's like football. Ultimate frisbee," I pointed for The Boy. The sameness: the swing is still exactly where it was seven years ago when my frizzy hair and skinny legs met Tara's blue dress and husky voice. The differences: I forgot what the game was called that we were "watching" back then; my hair's not so frizzy, and my legs, at least by my standards, would no longer be classified as skinny. Tara still has the husky voice but not, I suspect, the same blue dress.

To reach the swing, I had to pass a difference. "There used to be a bench there where Mike sat to read Rick Reilly's column every Tuesday afternoon when his Sports Illustrated arrived. When I walked by he would say, 'C. Don't go to work,'" I chuckled to The Boy, "and half the time I wouldn't." The Boy smiled at this story, as he had long ago adopted the phrase from stories I'd told. He says it to me often from his pillow, next to mine, with a fake Southern accent, and especially on Mondays.

Of course, these are minor. There are differences that scream, and there are those that don't have to. Starting six years ago on those grounds, I began a process of pining and losing, growing and finding. I have to believe, and I believe I do, that I found much more than I lost there. Saturday I sat in the new football stadium beside Amber, one of the heartbreakingly loyal and fiercely loving friends I had found, lamenting the things we had lost. The Boy watched football on my other side, and I looped my arm through his, basking in how ordinary the moment seemed; how unlikely and beautiful it actually was.

Years earlier in that town I lost years on a Lost Boy who made me, inadvertently, lose myself. But I found myself again soon after and with a vengeance.

I looked at The Boy who followed me to that same one-stoplight town just to see the setting of so many stories. The Boy I, logically, never should have met, let alone married. The unlikely Boy who had become my favorite person and biggest love. We bought coffee at Broad River. We walked through the quad, and somehow it all made him think about what he had lost, or rather, never had the chance to have.

"This just looks like a college, you know?" he said, echoing my seven-year-old sentiment. He said it made him long for an experience he had long ago decided against. He had worked long hours before and after classes he commuted to. He never had a dorm or a roommate or a swing on the quad. I mirrored his wistfulness, realizing that experience had teamed with other hard ones to bring him to me, in his current state. But it still made me sad.

The things I found cannot be separated from the people I found, and differences in them are just as apparent. I met Amber in our first class on the first day of school. We had been paired together to interview each other. She was wearing a sweater even though it was August, and she admitted she had dressed as the mascot at her high school. I knew we would be friends. This weekend I hugged her and her two-year-old and helped bathe her two-month-old. The Boy, though he would not go near him at first, held the baby to his heart before we left.

"So, do you think we can have one of these?" I whispered.

"Not soon or anything," he prefaced, "but definitely."

Edie, on the other hand, had initially descended on my life whether I liked it or not. And at first, I had not. We had been assigned to each other as roommates; I tried to switch rooms before I had even met her. The night before orientation, our unassuming RA interrupted my new roommate's shower to announce my presence. Edie met me, my siblings and both of my parents while wearing a bath robe and a towel turban. She thought I was weird because I hung a poster of a barechested Brady Anderson in close proximity to a photograph of Mother Teresa. I thought she could eat me for breakfast. We remained roommates for the better part of six years. In my wedding program, though I had known her as long as the others who were labeled, "College Friends," she was marked, "College Roommate." And only she understood the distinction. We talked this weekend about her relocation, adjustments and plans, and a gay hairdresser who had become a real friend.

On the way home Sunday, we stopped in Greensboro so I could see my boys. Or rather, the men who used to be my boys. They were joined respectively by Mike's wife, whom we all met in college, and Tripp's new girlfriend-- and I had a hunch she wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. Sameness and differences. I introduced them to The Boy, who loved them as I knew he would. "If for some reason they were ever local," he said later, "I feel like we'd be boys." I was thrilled he felt the way I figured he would; my love of these people justified, despite its defiance of the time/space continuum. When we ordered lunch, Tripp, ever the token thinker and philosopher, ordered his sandwich with green peppers, but not red. The waitress soon returned and informed him that, though she thought it was stupid, he could not order only one kind of pepper. "It's all or nothing," she shrugged.

And this may have been one of the bigger differences I saw. He did not appear to contemplate; he said, "All." Though I may have fabricated the metaphor, I smiled at the pretty blonde beside him, at the irony of progress abundant all weekend, and at the relief that not everything good goes away.

Monotony, Tummy Aches and the Fake Depression

2006-10-23T20:56:00.000-04:00

8:55. Chris Berman and The Boy tell me the game I'm about to not watch is a rivalry. The Giants and the Cowboys just kicked off. Hank Williams, Jr., though he was just standing on the fifty-yard line, does not sing about his rowdy friends. The cheerleaders, though they flanked Hank on the line, do not dance or kick on cue in the song Hank does not sing. Instead, we watch a taped performance in which Little Richard screams and allegedly plays piano, but I just inexplicably called him James Brown.

9:01. Plaxico Burress scores a 50-yard touchdown. I have long been of the opinion that some men were destined to be in the NFL, and their mothers knew it, so they named them accordingly. Lawyer Malloy. Peerless Price. Adalius Thomas. Burress fits with these guys.

9:03. The Boy, dressed in white Adidas pants and a brown t-shirt my dad gave him that reads, "I'm probably lying," shakes his hiney vigorously to the tune of Fall Out Boy's off-key insistence.

The 8 minutes you have just relived is meant to depict how my life has fallen into a predictable pattern. I just plopped on the couch beside The Boy, after preparing dinner and lunch and coffee and halfheartedly cleaning the kitchen. I feel sad that it's already almost tomorrow. It might be the darkness that always falls too soon, but somehow all this monotony still strikes me as unpredictable. I can never believe, whether I slept or not, how quickly "7:00" comes. Of course it isn't really 7:00, hence the quotation marks; The Boy and I take turns sneakily setting the clock forward, all the while trying to forget the difference between now and what we think now is. It still doesn't help. Likewise, I can never believe how quickly 7:00 pm comes and goes. My gym bag lives in the trunk of my car. I haven't worn my Sauconys in far too long.

My doctor informed me that I should do more yoga. "The relaxing kind." I insisted, indignantly, that yoga wouldn't help. I neglected to mention the yoga that I do involves a "butt ball" and a woman who reminds me to tense up those muscles I "sit down on." She also encourages me to check in with my hamstrings. "Notice what they are saying back to you." She does not relax me; she makes me contemplate the most efficient means of committing homicide from the downward dog position.

Minutes before this exchange, I slumped in the plastic chair against a particle board desk, having slipped my olive green pumps back on after being dismally disappointed at the scale.

"We haven't seen you in awhile," The tall Brit with the voice from the outgoing message had remarked, glancing at my chart. He motioned to the scale.

"It's hard to get in here," I mumbled, recalling my conversation with him several months prior, when I attempted to make an appointment for a physical. I was told there was an opening in March. I did the mental math, realizing I could be 7 months pregnant by then. Not that I would be, but I needed a way to visualize how much can change in that time. I did not book the appointment.

"You have to schedule your sickness to be seen here," The Brit chuckled. I did not.

Fortunately, as The Boy had become increasingly concerned with my doubling over multiple times daily, he offered to make the appointment for me. I was curled into a series of punctuation marks on our bed; he was worrying via office telephone. I let him call the doctor, and I'm not sure what he said, but it worked and I had an appointment the same day. I tried to blame my sleepless nights on a steady stream of company. But, given the fact that I lacked sleep due to discomfort regardless of who was sleeping upstairs, I acquiesced.

The Boy insisted on leaving work early to pick me up. I resisted, but he won. I dressed nicely in an attempt to feel better.

To my surprise, my red-haired Russian doctor did not examine me. She did not check my blood pressure, temperature or pulse. She didn't touch my stomach or prescribe medicine or tests. We sat at her desk and she asked me how I felt. She interrupted me to tell me I am more stressed than I realize.

"But how can that be?" I countered. "The most stress I've been through recently is over," I reasoned, approaching the five-month anniversary of my windy wedding and my father's (untimely) brush with (far more untimely) death. She said something about how people never get sick during the war. I didn't hear what came next, because I was too busy thinking, "there's no way that's correct."

As I argued, feeling my face and neck flush with splotches, as they are prone to do when I'm impassioned, I realized I was losing.

"You're coming across very anxious," she said.

I swallowed a lump in my throat, wanting to throttle her. She wanted to prescribe an antidepressant; I wanted not to feel sick every day. I wanted not to worry everywhere I go or every time I make plans. What if I don't feel well? What if I'm no fun? What if I can't leave early? Of course I'm anxious; I always feel miserable! She insisted the cycle went the other way around. I quit arguing and accepted the sample, but I haven't taken the pills and I'm working on a second opinion. I made it to the Saab and cried frustration at The Boy. We visited another pharmacy for another herbal remedy I didn't believe would work. I'm not sure if it's working or not, but I really miss my Diet Coke.

I've bought a new Nalgene bottle and lots of Crystal Light on-the-go. I just finished a dinner of grilled chicken breast, brown rice, asparagus and charcoal capsules. I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to be doing--definitely don't feel better yet. But then, I'm sure it's all in my worried mind.

Daddy, Let Your Mind Roll On

2006-10-09T21:15:00.000-04:00

This weekend marked our third of four consecutive weekends of company. Last weekend we hosted my "actual" mother-in-law and her husband. As my in-laws are both remarried, things get a little complicated. Though the step-mother-in-law insists that having two mothers-in-law would be, for me, like having "three mothers," I maintain that one is more than enough.

On that weekend we visited Our Italian Restaurant; The Boy operated, manned and wrote the rule book for the moonbounce at the Grand Opening of our church building, and for the first time, I had an opportunity to say, "Also, Chinaman is not the proper nomenclature. Asian-American, please." No, really-- at the dinner table in my own house. Welcome to life with visiting step-fathers-in-law.

Conditions are declining at our B&B. This week, we ran out of Pledge. I finally threw out the once fresh flowers, replacing them with silk flowers in the guest room. I'm running out of linen water, and the laundry is piling up. This week, the office didn't get touched. I didn't get the grocery shopping done until Sunday. Fortunately, our friend visiting from Vermont, Mindy, was kind enough to bring buttermilk pancake mix and a killer handthrown batter bowl as a thank you gift. Groceries or not, we had a great breakfast.

Despite Saturday's chilly rain, The Boy joined Mindy and her friends for the festival. I headed to a baby shower where I joined another newlywed shrugging off "Who's next?" questions and lamenting over that dreaded but oft-repeated query, "How's married life?"

"What am I supposed to say?" She rolled her eyes. "That it's an adjustment? That he has trouble remembering to put the seat down?" I laughed and agreed.

I joined my man and his new friends at an Irish pub where everyone had been there long enough to be thrilled to see me. "I'd like you to meet Danielle-- she's very intelligent and seems like a really nice girl. She just relocated here from Boston," The Boy guided me by the shoulder while supplying me with a beer. I noticed he put the emphasis on the third syllable of relocated.

"Danielle, this is my wife." She smiled and lit up as if she had long anticipated our meeting. I squinted at The Boy, wondering what he had told her. "I really think you'd be great friends," he whispered. "You should also meet Jocelyn," he said later. "She doesn't own a car. She seems like a nice girl." I laughed, realizing my husband hasn't stopped picking up girls in bars. It's just that now he's scouting for me.

Sunday morning we dragged before leaving for lunch with friends at PF Changs. Some of us weren't feeling well. "Mindy," The Boy said, "I think you'll be fine once you get a little Mongolian beef in you. Oh wait," he belatedly attempted to self-censor. We joined six others around a large round table. We stared wide-eyed at our friend who, two days prior, had eloped with the smiling blonde beside him. We tried to know her and presented them with a cake from Vaccaro's with a $7 dark-haired bride and groom on top.

"There was a topper with a blonde bride," I explained at this, my second meeting of the girl. "But she was dragging the groom behind her, and I didn't think that was appropriate. And also, it was like thirty dollars." I stopped talking and ate my chocolate cake.

This beautiful afternoon, I sat with Mindy and, over salads in Canton Square, we shared our life dilemmas. I was glad she came, sorry she had to leave. Thankful for an extra day of real life-- good life-- before the weekly depression set in. A day late, but right on time.

Bienvenue, Welcome

2006-09-24T21:15:00.000-04:00

Phase I of the inlaw doubleheader concluded this afternoon. It was opening weekend at our B&B, as it was the first of four consecutive weekends our guest room will be in use. In preparation, we cleaned and wondered if the full size bed tucked into the alcove on the blue-collar colored third floor would be comfortable for a couple. I bought Gerbera daisies, Sunflowers and Black-eyed Susans and placed them in mason jars and bud vases throughout the house. We used pillow mist liberally; we turned down sheets and tucked in corners. We cooked together Friday night in anticipation of the arrival of The Boy's father and stepmother. They were visiting just because.

They are mainstream people who get engaged at Disney World and know people who have had double weddings on Valentine's Day. On their frequent visits to New York City, they are regulars at Central Park, the Phantom of the Opera, and Tavern on the Green. When they visit us in Baltimore, a seemingly magnetic pull attracts them to the Harborplace at the Inner Harbor. The Cheesecake Factory and McCormick & Schmick, Vaccaro's, Starbucks and Camden Yards participate in the periodic parade. And, regardless of where we are living at the time of their visit, we walk to all of these places. Because it was recently my birthday, I was asked to choose a restaurant for our belated celebration. I chose a place in our neighborhood, an upscale mom and pop where the owner greets you at the door. It's got miniature lamps on the tables and original oil paintings on the walls. It's got "character," I'm told. And I was pleased that, given their misgivings, they seemed to enjoy the new experience.

We still walked through the harbor on the way to the baseball game. It couldn't be avoided, although it's about two miles farther this year than it was when they visited last summer. I wore non-athletic sneakers and clear Band-Aids on my heels. We talked without competing with other siblings or events. We sat without looking at the clock before racing to our next commitment. Although probably it wasn't, it felt like our first grown-up visit with the parents, perhaps because it was our first married visit. Not that marriage has made us more adult, but certainly it has necessitated a level of calmness that couldn't coexist with our dating or engagement. We no longer complain about familial conflicts that never involved us until we were challenged with drawing up seating charts. We are no longer preoccupied and apologetically, if inadvertently, self-centered. We lounged with ease, sipping coffee and asking about everyone else's life. And, without unrelenting preoccupation, really listened when they responded. It was a nice way to open the season at the B&B.

Next weekend, The Boy's mother and stepfather will lodge with us on their way home from an extended stay with the other kids. We winced at the awkwardness of the guest room's guest list, but perhaps such run-ins can't be avoided and don't matter anyway. We've banished all the ghosts from our bed; we can only hope that others do the same.

Even at 25, You Gotta Start Sometime

2006-09-12T21:15:00.000-04:00

I stood on my dirty, bare tiptoes on the Pergo in the Banana outlet, twirling brown silk for The Boy. "Are you sure I'm not too hippy in it? And I mean hippy like badonkadunk, not like granola."

"I'm sure you don't look hippy."

"It would really help if I were wearing heels," I shuffled back to my door with the 7 on it, "because I would never wear this skirt without heels." I slipped back into my inappropriate platform wedges. They could at least simulate height. I spun back out in front of The Boy.

"I really like it, baby. I think it's sexy."

I wasn't sure how dark brown silk and cream mohair could be sexy, but considering that the man in linen slouching on the boyfriend bench in the dressing room was the only one I'd be concerned with impressing, I took his opinion under advisement. "Let's put it on hold," I said, ushering him out of Banana. Though I'm usually several steps behind his long legs, as we stretched into our second hour of shopping, he lagged behind.

We darted between stores as I explained over my shoulder that usually when I shop, I plan it out in advance. Where am I going? What am I feeling? I have a thoroughly thought-out plan when I shop. But in this case, shopping had not been on my agenda. The night before, The Boy sat up in bed, peering over me and the duvet until it was "officially" my birthday. At that time, he could share his first surprise with me. "You won't have to worry about parking tomorrow at work."

So in the morning, he chauffeured me to work. I didn't really have the heart to tell him that, due to where he had to drop me off, I walked the same distance anyway. It didn't matter. It was one of those days that was short but felt long. My mom called and sang happy birthday, after initially dialing the wrong number and reaching the mysteriously hostile and suspicious guy across the hall. "I guess I have the wrong number," Mom had said.

"Yeah," suspicious guy said, "I guess you do." Thankfully, she didn't sing on that call.

The Boy picked me up, earlier than expected, with a big Diet Coke sweating in the cupholder. "Did you notice?" He glanced at me from the driver's seat, "It's the crushed ice kind."

He sprung the shopping surprise on the way. I changed from work stilettos to shopping wedges. Little did I know how difficult shopping could be without benefit of prior strategic planning.

By the fourth store I perused for shoes to snazz up the brown, my shoulders slumped. The Boy was dragging. I began leaving him at the front of stores, on benches in hallways. I apologized.

The Boy sighed. "Why can't you just look happy, gosh! I can handle this sacrifice of shopping if at least you're having a good time. How can you not find ONE pair of shoes in this whole mall? What about these?" He pointed at patent leather pointy-toed red stilettos. Yes. But not with brown. I had to hand it to him; he tried diligently to apply his "What not to Wear" knowledge.

Later that night, we arrived at the French restaurant I finally figured it would be. I wore the brown skirt and cream top with borderline over-the-top gold bling from H&M. In lieu of sassy shoes. Our reservation for 8 courses for 8 at 8 landed us in a private room upstairs with aperitifs. They must have known we might get a little loud. I lived like a carnivore, sampling five different animals. Not normally my style. 8 glasses of wine is also not normally my style, as evidenced by the end of my evening. The Boy helped me into the car. I remember adjusting my skirt over my thighs. Then we were home, but I didn't believe him. He parked the car; I fell asleep on top of the covers with the lights on. I recovered in time for the family party on Sunday. Chicken parm and chocolate cake. Twenty-five, if not wines from around the world, went down smooth.

Urban Decay

2006-09-07T22:23:00.000-04:00

I haven't slept well this week. Perhaps it's because short weeks always feel longer. In elementary school, when I knew I was leaving early for a dr.'s appointment, I stared at the clock all day. I willed Mrs. Colby or Mrs. Ford, the office secretaries, to break in. "Mr. Davis?" They'd say, disrupting a lesson on Ulysses S. Grant or opportunity cost, "Will you please send Christina to the office for early dismissal?" I would always try to look apologetic, trying to get my eyes to communicate: "I'm sorry Mr. Davis, I'd really rather stay. But Mrs. Colby is calling, so there's not much I can do." It was exciting once the abbreviated day ended, but it still felt long. That's what this week has felt like. So maybe that's why I can't sleep.

Maybe it's the new hobby that has forced itself upon my household. We like to call it "stretching a dime." And by dime I mean the currency, not the various forms of debauchery you crickets or Snoop or Everlast might be thinking of. A quickening and increasingly frantic game of financial catch-up has descended upon our new marriage, causing my veteran married friends to nod in understanding. I feel confident this desperate resourcefulness has contributed to my restless nights.

But mostly, I can blame my interrupted sleep on my address, not my emotional composition. For the time being, despite my mother's best efforts and most grisly urban legends, we have chosen to live in the city. And on many days and even nights, this decision seems worthwhile. Not so much this week. Monday night, due to what I cursed and dubbed a bizarre case of food poisoning, I was rendered uncomfortable all day and miserable all night. And also, painfully awake.

Tuesday at midnight, as The Boy and I drifted off, I heard several large trucks arriving outside our door. There was much metal clanging and workmens' slang. And then, over the shouting and the thunderous idling of a giant engine, a hammer on a metal pole. Really. Throwing the duvet aside and huffing loudly, I separated the blinds to find what appeared to be BGE trucks blocking the intersection outside our house. Apparently, night time is the right time for making large repairs to traffic lights in residential neighborhoods. The Boy patiently suggested I sleep in the spare room. I apologized as I headed upstairs to the hotter but also darker and quieter room at the back of the house. When I came back to our room in the morning to get dressed, The Boy sat up in the middle of the bed, confused.

"I missed you." He squinted and said it as an accusation. "I thought you would come back."

I had planned on it, I explained, but once I finally found sleep I couldn't seem to let it go.

Last night, my best laid plans for hitting the sack early were accidentally abandoned. Damn Project Runway. I couldn't let The Boy watch it without me. You know. Not that he would.

Regardless, I deeply believed sheer exhaustion would have felled me quickly and for good last night. It was not to be. The dog, Mosotos, has developed a compulsive, paw-licking habit that somehow manages to wake me in the middle of the night. I snap my fingers and tell him to stop, waking The Boy. Nobody wins. At 4 am, I woke myself up yelling, "Oh my God, what is that noise?" It sounded like a saxophone playing random notes at odd intervals. But much louder. This morning, The Boy looked at me as if I had a saxophone coming out of my ears. He didn't remember. I still didn't sleep.

And now, at nearly 11, the ghetto bird has been circling a two-block radius for the last 20 minutes. It does not bode well.

Women I've Met

2006-09-06T18:40:00.000-04:00

There is a woman who favors paisley and olive drab (the color, not some new dull type of tapenade). I run into her in the ladies room. Frankly, let's be honest. I run into most of the women in my wing in the ladies room at some point. I drink a lot of water these days, which means I lose a lot of water. When I leave the office to head to the restroom, I also bring my water bottle to refill it. It takes everything I've got not to say "cause and effect" every time I walk out that door. I don't do it. But I want to.

So the woman in olive drab. It's not her limited color palette that makes her notable to me; it's her love of dental hygiene. How would I know about her passions when I don't even know her name? Well.

Albeit hesitantly, I have accepted there are people who brush their teeth at work. My time-honored appreciation for squeaky teeth is well-documented. Mere days before I face the inevitable 2-5, I maintain a cavity-free grill. However, this maintenance is not accomplished at work. There are more discrete methods. But this woman laughs in the face of discretion. Not only does she brush her chompers at work, she uses mouthwash and floss as well. Since, to my limited understanding, flossing is a once-a-day activity, I just can't comprehend why one would choose to practice said activity in the dimly-lit bathroom occupied by others. I'm just saying.

In more relevant news, the aforementioned birthday is Friday. It's the first one I'm not even remotely excited about. Sunday I met the incredibly gorgeous 19-year-old cousin of one of my beautiful friends. She had just gotten engaged and asked me breathlessly if, as a newlywed, I felt there were any distinctions between engagement and marriage. I looked at my beautiful friend out of the corner of my eye and laughed a little too devilishly. When we got on the topic of age, the pretty young thing said, "Oh my gosh, I KNOW! I'm going to be 20, and it's going to be sooo weird not to be a teenager anymore!" And, as precious as she was, I wasn't proud of the ugly face I made at my friend. I'd rather not inspire that face among any of the crickets ahead of me on our shared candlelit road.

Ain't No Need to Go Outside

2006-09-01T19:47:00.000-04:00

I just expressed brilliance onto this machine, but I made the mistake of doing so while also perusing CNN, which, apparently, has the most vicious and unrelenting pop-ups on the market. I'm seething, and I just swore in frustration at The Boy. Then I rebuffed his attempts at kisses and unnecessary apologies. So, I've got work to do, and it doesn't involve reposting.

The much anticipated rain descended on our charming city today. I'm sitting on the couch in the candlelit living room half listening to Sex & the City while The Boy waits out my wrath upstairs. We have tentative plans to walk a couple of soggy blocks to see an old friend's new band, but I'm doubting our attendance. Ever since I heard Jack Johnson's "Banana Pancakes" on my drive this morning, it's been in my head. "Can't you see that it's just raining, ain't no need to go outside..."

Pilsner Epiphany

2006-08-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

I decided to see if, as I suspect of many traditionally bachelor-related things, it was overrated. After burning several hundred calories at my gym and eating a thrown-together dinner of French onion burgers, herb encrusted oven fries and lemon pepper green beans (which, clearly turned out better than I'd planned), I stood in the living room in my clingy, sweaty workout clothes. "So, the beer in the shower thing," I said to The Boy. "What's that all about?"

"Baby," he said. "Once you try it, you'll never go back."

"Well, I certainly hope that's not true," I twisted off the cap of a Miller Lite, "because I generally shower in the mornings.
And they have a name for that."

I locked the dog out of the bathroom. The Boy had explained how to balance the bottle on the towel rack to avoid slippage or compromising the contents, and I followed his instructions. I turned on the shower radio The Boy had to have to one of the three stations it gets, Mix 106.5. I stood there for a few minutes while Rhianna then Madonna summoned various DJs regarding replays and putting records on. It may have been theme night.

In the rising steam, I gripped the sweaty bottle, careful not to drop it. I was pleasantly surprised. I tried to determine what was so great about this phenomenon of beer in the shower. First of all, I noticed (despite my repeated cries during every Coors Light ad last football season) beer in the shower actually tastes cold. I know, I always thought it was a feeling too. But apparently not.

More than that though, I think I enjoyed the feeling of having time that was mine. I wasn't groggy; I wasn't rushed. I listened to music, albeit overplayed and underwhelming. Occasionally, I sang. I shaved my legs without hurrying or feeling guilty for how long my shower took. When I was done, I used the good body cream. The Bath and Body Works "butter," not the Jergens everyday stuff.

So, in fact, it's not about the beer at all. The same bottle sits un-nursed as I type. Obviously I won't finish it now; it won't taste even remotely cold.

Carolina in My Mind

2006-08-21T17:40:00.000-04:00

My paternal grandfather, the remaining Pop Pop, has picked up an unusual habit.

"Boop-boop-be-doo!" He said in a sing-song voice several octaves higher than usual. "Christina," he said, rolling the 'r' as if the rest of the sentence were also in Greek, "do you know who says that?"

"Betty Boop," I answered, having already heard how his pastor informed him of this fact, which had apparently been a complete revelation.

"I already told you?" He asked. He seems to be ratcheting up the unintentional comedy factor as he racks up the years. Throughout the week of Family Togetherness in the Outer Banks, this conversation happened even more often than his public service announcements that he wanted to be alive to meet his great-grandchildren, and, at nearly 77, he is not getting any younger. We talked procreation planning with my mother and more reluctant father.

"I don't remember planning any of you guys," Dad said.

"Well," The Boy replied too quickly, "if we get pregnant, it'll be a failure of modern medicine." I'm going to have to warn him against making strong statements about that which cannot be controlled. And also that we will not be pushing the kid(s) out together so we will not claim to be pregnant. I digress.

Stuck in traffic on 95 South last Saturday morning (then 64 East, then every road southeast of that), I wore my floppy hat so The Boy could live out his lifelong dream of driving to the beach with the windows down. Personally, I doubt the alleged longevity of this dream, but that's how important he made it sound.

The traffic didn't bother me, but then I wasn't driving. I had to apologize for not wanting to leave at 5 am because, The Boy assured me, we would have beaten the traffic then. As it was, we beat The Fam by a couple of hours. The Boy suggested I thank him for nixing the family caravan idea with which I had previously flirted. Once we crossed the Wright Memorial Bridge and picked up the keys to the house, he smiled sheepishly. "Okay. I'm getting a little excited."

Turns out there was nothing fake about what I had initially dubbed our fake vacation.

"If this is fake, what would you consider a real vacation?" The Boy quizzed me as we unpacked the car.

"Well, you know, I mean, it's not like one we planned. Not like Tahiti."

"I hate to tell you this, baby, but if Tahiti is your only example of a 'real vacation,' you might never see one of those again."

Perhaps so.

Nothing could have been finer than last week's Carolina. I relished guiding The Boy past Jockey's Ridge, through Kitty Hawk and into Nags Head, where a younger version of me took over. I remember bent-knee cartwheels on those beaches, getting wiped out in that part of the ocean. I'm told I described the taste of the ocean as "wet salty popcorn." I remember hunting sandcrabs at night using flashlights and wearing sweatshirts.

Only the wiped out part happened on this trip, but I still remembered.

We had waves for two days, calm for the rest. The Boy grilled chicken and pineapple for my family who sat at a sunny dining room table with 12 chairs. Everyone fit; my mother glowed.

"What do you call this?" Pop asked, spearing a slice of grilled pineapple.

"Grilled pineapple," The Boy said, choking on his own. Pop was rather taken with The Boy already, but his mastery of unusual fruit preparation seemed to have him hooked.

"You know, Christina," he said, again with the rolled 'r,' "Your husband fits in very well with this family. And how wonderful too, because it's important for him to be around family when his isn't always as close." While his quirks have gotten away from him, his perception has certainly not.

Little Sister was beside herself, as she has not grown up on that beach. She giggled as older boys watched her walk by in the parade of bikinis I never would have been allowed to wear.

I giggled because this was the first vacation I'd brought a boy on. Only he was The Boy, and we got to sleep in the same bed without a second thought. We felt a little awkward anyway.

Wednesday, while our suitcases sat on our shared bed, packed and ready to go, The Boy and I stood on the beach. "We don't have to go, you know," he said, though it felt like a foreign concept. We decided to stay another day. We took turns calling offices from his cell phone, while waves crashed in the not so distant background. I mentioned my guilt as I waited for one of my coworkers to pick up. "It's a rubber ball, baby," The Boy reminded me of our metaphor that keeps jobs in perspective. All the other balls we juggle are glass.

We walked back down the beach instead of back to the house. We drove through Brew Thru because The Boy couldn't imagine having driven by one and not going through. He taught Little Sister to play Texas Hold 'Em and Five Card Stud and came to bed shaken after giving an impromptu lecture on abstinence.

"I know you said sometimes you think it's a little too much," Pop said the next day, "But that husband of yours really does fit in. You have to realize what a gift that is." And I do.

Today The Boy called me from work.

"I think I have to stay late, but I'm just not feeling it. I just want to quit working and go to the beach every day with you."

"We could do that," I replied, "but not without building a lean-to and living off the land."

We've tabled that idea, but only for now.

Oh, The Fam!

2006-08-11T18:46:00.000-04:00

We are headed to Costco with a cooler in preparation for the Family Togetherness in the Outer Banks. We're pretty excited, and I managed to say that without dropping an "actually" anywhere in the sentence. We've got a bit of a diverse crowd going, so there will no doubt be stories galore. And also, board games.

I'm burning a cd (legally, of course) for the drive tomorrow, and I'm realizing I'm pretty stoked to (finally) have the opportunity to take The Boy somewhere he's never been . The farthest we've ventured south together (if you don't count the South Pacific) has been Virginia. And, while I've appreciated the time to get acquanited with the Northeast, I'm dying to take over the tour guide duties. We used to spend time on these beaches every year. My hair would be streaked nearly white and french braided; I coordinated my socks and keds to match my shirts. I'd be ridiculously tan and happy, nearly getting lost and always getting shin splints while I walked for miles on the beach. My grandfather, who used to be the king of sandcastles, will be with us. We'll see if he's still got the skill, though I doubt there will be any beach toys. We are at a pause in the family beach trips-- no siblings are young enough and no one has kids. Yet.

There'll be a laptop and wireless internet there, but I'm hoping to stay far away. Earlier this week my little brother called and said, "You know how slowly this week has gone? Wouldn't it be great if our time together at the beach felt the same way?" I couldn't agree more.

Dating Myself

2006-08-10T18:38:00.000-04:00

Ever since that sweaty, solitary summer in Shelby, NC a few years back, I have been a firm believer in dating myself. That summer I lived essentially alone in a ramshackle apartment in a dry, brown rural town. The purpose of my lonely stay was to complete the final class of my undergraduate career and to serve a mandatory internship sentence in order to graduate a year early. It seemed worth it at the beginning, and probably it was.

But my then boyfriend lived about 500 miles away for the summer, at the end of which he planned to move overseas. My family lived another 500 miles away, in a different direction; the three of us formed something of an equidistant triangle. My conflicting class and internship schedule precluded me from having a real job of any kind, so I was faced with too much downtime, not enough channels, living on credit. I commuted twice a week to Asheville, 70 miles away to work at an "independent weekly paper." They chastised me for bringing a styrofoam cup to work every day. I bought a Nalgene bottle, but I still didn't fit in.

At school it was pretty much the same story. Desperate for casual and friendly interaction, multiple times I found myself in cars or apartments with a motley crew of individuals with whom I had rarely associated before. We cooked each other dinner. We went to the movies. We didn't speak after that summer.

I took a graduate class on the American Short Story, Tuesdays from 6-10. Though I loved the professor and didn't mind the subject matter, I hated the class. Those familiar with this publication may know that I have more than once referred to some of the students in the classes I've taken as divorcées. This comment refers not to their marital status, rather it is a reference to the group dynamic many of my (usually mostly female) classmates project when together. Much like Cameron Crowe's mom in Jerry Maguire, they talk about "finally, finally" getting in touch with their anger. They discuss the competitive nature among and between women, the unfair advantage males have in the workplace, their good-for-nothing husbands and ungrateful children. And, in this case, they didn't seem to like 20-year-old undergrads. I tried to keep to myself and hope that the longer I listened the later it would get, but the class was brutal. One divorcée in particular, Star, aggravated me so much that I told Tara I had considered writing a story about the class. I would title it, I snickered, "Shooting Star."

Why do I describe this ennui? Because it has served to set up the concept of dating oneself. Instead of hitting the vending machine in the basement of the English building during our break, I would bolt to my Nissan and zip to The Pantry-- the smoky convenience store around the corner. There I would scrounge up enough change for The Big Chiller (a 64 oz, 69 cent Diet Coke) and a pack of Wild Berry Skittles. On the way to Asheville, I occasionally did the same. I took myself to dinner, rented movies, bought myself shoes.

I find myself reminiscing because I'm back to my old habits. Working in a dark and drab environment with loads of techies, sometimes I need to help myself get through the day. So Tuesday I wore one of my cutest matching lingerie sets (under my clothes, of course). Wednesday I wore my favorite pants and peep-toe stilettos that rank in my top five. Today I took myself out to lunch (at Subway, but still). And evidently, I am not alone.

On the exodus to work this morning, I followed a man wearing a shirt with blue flames. He carried a transparent bag with his rations for the day, which included not one but two bananas. Maybe this morning he needed a little something extra to get him there. Maybe the flames make him feel confident. And, apparently, he could tell even this morning that it would be a two banana day.

I've been carrying a half-full pack of Wild Berry Skittles around in my purse for a week. I have a feeling they are not long for this world.

The Irony of Progress

2006-08-07T16:05:00.000-04:00

On her last night of her second pregnancy, my friend drove me in her Japanese pickup to pick up Japanese takeout she said would remind me of college. It did. But the trip there and back reminded me even more. Talking at the same time about the same things in very different lives. She worried she wouldn't be able to hack it as the mother of two. I knew she would be incredible. She said her husband's joy didn't seem capable of comprehending her fear, even if his title was changing as well. I surprised myself with a tirade on the pressures of wifedom that I never thought I would succumb to. Internal pressures. The kind sleeping on the couch wouldn't chase away, even if I was okay with that kind of thing.

Both of us bled on Friday, my friend and I. Stuffing my purse with tampons in the morning, I did not miss the irony.

I scrambled one egg for the two-year-old who preferred my toast; we brushed her teeth and dressed her in her "I'm the Big Sister" shirt. A ponytail vaguely resembling a palm tree protruded from the top side of her head. This is all "Aunt Cvrissi" is good for. I managed to install the car seat properly, even protecting my leather seats, and we were off to meet Baby Brother.

In the delivery room, I sat beside my friend and tried to make her laugh; I pondered what it would be like if (or when) I were her. Nearly two and a half years ago, when the Big Sister was born, I sat in the same waiting room, more uncomfortably than this time. That time, the rest of our fab four sat with me. After the turbulent birth, we drove North to Maryland. The next day we dressed up, flirted with the new neighbors, and drank mango martinis at Red Maple. I remember falling asleep to lubricated cries from a roommate's friend about lost keys. I fell asleep with my pillow over my head.

This time, I was the only one who could make it, too many hundreds of miles separating our other friends from Richmond. I sat mostly comfortably in the chair beside the bed, and I only left after we feared one of the mothers would have my head for staying too long. We speculated about who would be there if it were me; when it would be me. Based on too many clues, I guessed the baby's name that was supposed to be a surprise. I felt a funny mix when I saw the frustration on the new daddy's face. He called me Rainman-- couldn't believe I had figured it out.

Caden was born, amid the standard screaming from both parties. Perhaps above average pain, but perfectly healthy. We ate cheesesteaks once the digital cameras stopped flashing and the room cleared out. I was pleased that our different stations still seem to connect; I was proud of my friend.

One of the camera phone pictures taken made its way to The Boy. A message not to "get any ideas" made its way back to me. But of course I did. Because of our shared (and sometimes unfortunate) nature to focus on the next big thing, we sometimes miss the present great thing. Or at least rush through it. We are determined not to do this with our current married, childless life. This life is the one we want, at least for now. But lately and only sometimes I get conflicted. Which means at least that I have it in me.

I came home and met The Boy and our friend Ryan in the place where Ryan and I first met The Boy two years ago. We drank microbrews and played the mp3 jukebox, shared and laughed earnestly. I recognized the diversity and complexity of my day, of this place in my life.

So I'm wanting and waiting, but definitely wanting to wait.