Posts filed under 'Life with 2 kids'
The Bermuda Triangle
Where good clothes go to die.
Feel me here people?
I know many people have this problem with one kid – especially baby socks – where do they go after you put them in the washing machine? But that never really bothered me. It’s been the addition of a second child, more laundry, and matching girl clothes that is slowly becoming the death of me. Where do these clothes go? And why does buying matching hot pink leggings seem like such a good idea in the store? Because when they are washed and folded, they look the same, so then they inevitably end up going in the wrong drawer in the wrong room…and then when it’s the only thing you want to put them in that day, you can only find them in the size you don’t need.
This keeps happening to me….specifically with DD2s clothes…specifically with items that are particularly cute. The vortex that sucks in laundry doesn’t have a taste for stupid socks or random underwear. No, it wants that cute sweatshirt with a cupcake on the front…..or those hot pink leggings that go with that super cute dress. It’s a snobby black hole, it seems.
So how is it that I end up spending what little free time I have, tearing apart the house, looking for these random pieces of clothes? Cause I’m doing it….and I know I’m not alone….and my mom, the woman who raised four children, is an excellent resource in ideas on random places these clothes end up, cause this laundry vortex is most definitely not just my cross to bear in life.
“Have you checked the linen closet? I bet the leggings attached to a fitted sheet and they’re folded in there, fitted sheets are the worst”
Brilliant.
So first thing this morning, before I even have coffee, I am tearing apart the linen closet. I am even looking inside the christmas duvet cover that I recently washed in case they got tangled up in there. It is now about more than just finding pink leggings. It is an obsession. I will not rest until I find them.
Cause I found the cupcake sweatshirt – like 4 months after I started looking for it - tangled up in a corner of DD1s closet….even though it’s DD2’s sweatshirt.
But no, no sign of the leggings in the linen closet.
“Have you looked on the side of the dryer against the wall in the laundry room?” says my mom today, as she’s getting an update on my hunt for the pink leggings.
AH HA!
Another brilliant idea. Except the part where there could be spiders down there and that calls into question my obsession. But I will go look for I will not rest until they are found.
Though I’ll likely end up buying a few extra pairs of pink leggings until the day they are found…and then the missing pair will show up after I buy the new ones. Mark my words.
Add comment March 4, 2010
Overhyped
Last night, we hosted a dinner party chez moi. Adults only. Lots of champagne and cheese. And you know it’s a good night when your discussions range from Furries (not for kids) to stink bombs during pep rallies. But one topic really struck both DH and me…..that of bringing home the second baby.
The reason we were all getting together was to celebrate the pending birth of two BFF’s second babies later in March. The two expectant dads raised the issue of bringing home the second baby and the idea of taking the older child out for special time with just dad on the weekend and how they felt the older child would really need this special time with them.
Ahh yes…….the fear of how the older child will react and being sensitive to them with the arrival of a new child. I don’t know about you, but this was actually the only thing that really worried me as the arrival of our second grew closer. There is so much hype and advice around bringing home baby, introducing new baby, helping older child adjust. It seemed like all the drama around sleeping and schedules and breastfeeding that comes with the arrival of the first is overshadowed by all the drama around helping the older child adjust to life with a sibling.
And frankly, DH and me, we ended up realizing it was all for naught. Tell me if you disagree. Please. I love a good sparring. But in the end, what we discovered was we needed daddy to take DD1 out of the house in those first few weeks because MOMMY needed the break. As it turned out, we’d forgotten that newborns well – they don’t really do anything – so in actuality, after a day or two of not liking “that baby” because she was getting some attention because she was new and small and cute, DD1 realized “that baby” was totally fine and acceptable because she didn’t do anything – so she really didn’t change her life in any meaningful way……yet (mobility is a whole different story).
Don’t get me wrong, of course special outings with daddy are important – but I’d say no more important when a new baby comes home than any other time of year – important just cause it means so much to both parties involved. Beyond that – I don’t think DD1 ever made the connection that she was going on this outing because we were carving out special alone time with her and a parent. I don’t think it made an ounce of difference to her. Am I saying – don’t be sensitive to how things are changing, don’t do special things like read stories to the older child or talk to them about their new sister and how they are still important and special – of course not.
All I’m saying is, in the end, those outings to us were critical because moi – the one who had delivered this new baby and who had just come off 10 months of pregnancy – needed some quiet time. As it turned out, I found that being home with the newborn was the break – and taking the energy-filled curious toddler out – was the work.
If you are expecting a second child, maybe this will help quell any anxiety you have about this transition. Or affirm your suspicions that dad needs to be prepared to step up and plan some fun activities out for the older child for mommy’s sake. Or maybe you totally disagree with me and if so I’d love to hear it.
2 comments February 28, 2010
Parenthood in the Workplace
Sunday’s NYT style section ran a really important piece on President Obama and how he doesn’t miss his daughter’s recitals, parent teacher conferences or any important events. As someone who spent my full-time working-motherhood career essentially doing my best to hide the fact that I was a parent, I loved reading this article.
My initial reaction to the piece was totally bratty – I thought – well shit, if the leader of the free world can make time to attend band recitals (is it me or has “American Pie” forever made band a dirty thing?) or parent-teacher conferences, then no parent can honestly be too busy or too important to miss these things. But it’s way more complicated than that – and the story did touch on that. Being that he is the President, Obama can do whatever the hell he wants – and the rest of us – well, we probably don’t have that kind of authority. The majority of working parents answer to someone and that someone might not be thrilled with an 11am band recital (ha ha – band camp).
Though I am home full-time now, I’m still pretty scarred from my experience working full-time and being a mom. Granted I know much of the experience has to do with where you work and who you work for – and it’s safe to say having been the only working mom in a senior level position – I was not in a family friendly environment. My experience was – everyone knew I had a baby and that was fine – it was nice to have pictures of her in my office – but beyond that – don’t mention it. Get to work, do your job, but if there’s a drama with the nanny or a sick kid or an unexpected anything – as well, life seems to be when you have kids, it’s certainly not a reason to miss a meeting. And please…..don’t tell us about it.
The thing is – do I necessarily think this is a bad thing? Not necessarily. You don’t need to have kids to have shit happen to you outside the office and I know this is a common complaint among people who don’t have children – they don’t get special exceptions, why should I? And I worked for someone who didn’t have children and wasn’t ever going to have children.
Would I have remained in the workforce if I’d been in a warmer environment? One that was more flexible and accommodating – probably.
So then should employers be more flexible towards working parents? Do parents deserve special exceptions because they do have greater responsibilities beyond the office?
And is the President paving the way? Unlike me, who used to try to sneak in side doors to hide just how late I was, Obama is completely out of the closet regarding his parenthood responsibilities. Will his priorities help force more changes in American business culture towards families?
The other important part of this article, in my all-important view, was the discussion of fatherhood and working. Apparently the President’s priorities are representative of a generational shift in how fathers view their role. I, for one, don’t see it. My dad worked like a crazy person but the man was at every painful band recital, he coached girls basketball (and yes, we usually were shooting for the wrong basket in 6th grade…he was most likely thinking “I left work for this shit?”), and I’m sure I hoped he would miss most parent-teacher conferences. So – I’m not sure whether my dad was an anomaly but I recall seeing my friends dads out there right along with him. So is this a convenient generational shift for the media or is it real? Cause I wouldn’t have married a man who doesn’t consider these things just as important as I do. Would you? I’m thinking there are probably some fathers who are still very involved and others who are less-so – just like in generations past.
Moving on, the piece cites a survey conducted by the Families and Work Institute. The survey reveals that men, more than women, feel caught between parenthood and working, revealing that 59% of men feel a work-life conflict.
WHAAAA
Ummm…….was this survey conducted in renown family friendly France where all the women were off on a year-long maternity leave when they participated?
Cause there’s no way this survey was conducted here in the States. I’m not challenging that 60% of fathers feel a work-life pull. What I’m actually LAUGHING about is that working fathers feel this pull more so than working moms.
Am I alone here people?
1 comment February 18, 2010
Sanity Spared
I have three sisters. We all are roughly three years apart. This age separation between us worked – it worked for us as sisters (as if we had a choice) and it worked for my parents. According to my mom, it made raising four children as manageable as one might think it could ever be – to have us spaced out from 0 to 9 years old when my youngest sister was born. I think this line of thinking just sort of seeped into me over time, I grew to understand this age spacing as the ideal way to have subsequent children.
Now that I have two children, instead of think about having them and rationalize why timing them a certain number of years apart is ideal, I could spend all day ticking off pros and cons to closer together or more spread apart. But what good is that – they are what they are – which is 4 years old and 14 months. My children are exactly 3 years and 10 days apart in age.
What I’ve discovered is one is physically demanding and the other is mentally demanding. Currently I am finding the physically demanding one to be the more high maintenace. I don’t love this phase of constant roaming, getting into everything, having no understanding of consequences or danger. And DD2 is particularly curious and adventurous -100 fold more so than DD1 ever has been. Either that or I just don’t remember DD1 when she was 14 months because it feels like 100 years ago already.
So who would have thought that one simple plastic contraption would be my sanity saver? C’est vrai. A gate has come to change my life. Because I birthed the next adventurer to hike Mt. Everest, we obviously had a gate up at the stairs months ago. But maybe sleep deprivation and general foggy thinking got in the way from DH and I realizing that we needed to add a gate to the playroom door. How ingeniuos! Trap the children into one room – where they are safe – I can see and hear them – but they can’t get out. A veritable prison in my own home!!!
Now don’t think adding the gate transformed into the miracle play time with both children happily packing off to the playroom. Making it work evolved into an art form with missteps along the way.
As we all know, introducing change to a preschooler is not accepted with welcoming open arms. So we got off to a rocky start, DD1 disdainfully glaring at me as I begged her and promised infinite wealth and opportunities for treats, if she would just go into playroom with her sister and stay in there for a few minutes and not open the gate and let her sister out. I hope I never said, way back when I was naïve and clueless, that I wouldn’t bribe my children. Cause that’s my MO around these parts. DD1 eventually acquiesed once she secured the volume of spicy chips and popsicles she deemed acceptable for playing along with this new rule.
A few days passed and the arguing and bribery started to wane…..a few times a day (read: when I am struggling to get breakfast or dinner on the table without DD2 climbing into something and ending up in the ER) I was able to coax the 2 of them into the playroom and keep the gate closed.
It’s an art form really.
Sure, there’s a specific room dedicated to all their toys but DD2 won’t stay in there alone and DD1 prefers to empty out her toys de jour from the playroom into the living room. Just coercing them to go into the room and stay there was a feat in and of itself.
And then it finally happened. A few days ago I asked DD1 if she would go play in the playroom with her sister while I made dinner. No arguing. No bribery, off they went. I was stunned.
Then they stayed in there for about 20 minutes.
TWENTY MINUTES.
I think we all know that is a gift. You can make a meal, do laundry, pee in peace and quiet, hell, flip through a gossip magazine – all in 20 minutes. Give me a few more minutes and I might be solving world peace.
But see – there’s more to it than that. I have learned that to make it last that long, I have to exercise total discipline. DD2 will come to the gate, stand there, shake it and laugh – attempting in her cutest way to get my attention.
I must avert my eyes.
And forget talking.
If I dare make eye contact with either of them or they hear my voice…..it’s all over….out they will want to come.
So then I have to be stealth and cat-like when things get quiet. Typically I can hear DD1 playing and talking away…but it’s when DD2 is quiet that I worry she has discovered some new way to climb out, something elicit to eat and choke on, or has broken free and is climbing the stairs. But remember the rules – if they make eye contact with me or hear my voice, it’s over.
Then you add in our creaky old hardwood floors and creeping up on anyone is next to impossible.
I’ve actually figured out the quietest route to peer into the playroom and go unnoticed…..and then slip back into the kitchen and finish whatever it is I am making.
It is a true miracle over here. This gift of time, delivered via an agreeable older child along with a plastic gate. Somehow getting these extra few minutes to just get stuff done makes the day seem that much more manageable. Here’s hoping it lasts…..and praise the person who invented the gate.
1 comment January 26, 2010
DUCK!
That ought to be my MO when feeding DD2. Every day I am surprised with just how different my two children are. It’s remarkable how they can look the same but different. How they can have the same habit of doing exactly what they know they shouldn’t be doing and look at me and then take off and do it. And it is remarkable how different they are in so many ways. Shall I list them?
No. I think we’ve all had enough of lists.
But if what happened this morning isn’t the ultimate in blog material then I don’t know why I have a blog. Is it a tale that I’ll mention off-hand as she’s on her way out the door with some punk with a daddy complex? Probably. But is there any way to casually drop “Hey honey, try not to toss your half-chewed sausage down Johnny’s shirt during dinner?”
I didn’t think so.
Let me paint the picture.
I am dragging this morning. I had one of those totally off-why did I bother to drag my ass out of bed in the sleet to get to the gym for this -workouts. The coffee wasn’t hitting the spot. My head was kinda half hurting but not quite enough to get Tylenol. I wanted breakfast but I just wasn’t sure what I wanted.
Until it landed in my bra.
You got it. DD2 is scrappy. She’s thin, she’s always on the go, she never stops climbing but she loves to eat. She’d already eaten more breakfast than our neighborhood football captain but as she was cruising past the breakfast table, she reached up to grab some food off her sister’s plate. I squatted down to intercept her as she moved along, to be sure she wasn’t eating anything she shouldn’t be, when suddenly I felt the lukewarm soggy mess of it on my bare skin.
You got it.
DD2, as she is prone to doing, removed the half-chewed sausage from her mouth and chucked it – only this time her aim was so solid – she managed to toss it right above the zipper on my hoodie and with enough force for it to fall down against my chest and into my bra and fall into little pieces.
I got out of bed why today?
You can’t make this shit up.
So fast foward to the year 2025….DD2 all dolled up in her appropriate fashion forward, I’m stylish but too cool to dress like I was excited for this date outfit…..with apathetic or overly eager teen slobbering boy awaiting her in our foyer (by then I will have a foyer. mark my words)….I’ll be sure to ask where they’re going for dinner and remind her not to toss her chewed sausage at him. I don’t think boys like that.
Add comment January 20, 2010
Got a minute?
Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine cover story was all about moms and time. This is a tired story. Yet I’m gonna go there because I can’t resist.
Time and tracking time is one of those things that has hogged my thoughts and dictated my life since I had our first babe over four years ago. For the purposes of self-disclosure, I am pretty anal and organized, I run my house by schedule and have policed my children’s sleeping and feeding schedules from the minute they came home from the hospital. It’s the only way I know how to bring order to chaos. In fact, in that foggy daze of adjusting to life with a child, my first fight with DH was triggered by his comment “I lost track of time.”
I completely lost it. Sure, sleep deprivation and hormones had a lot to do with it. But we’ve never had a fight like that in our 8 years of marriage. The idea of losing track of time seemed like such a luxury to me, though I was only 6 weeks into this whole parenthood gig, that I both resented him for having that chance and was furious that he wasn’t consumed with time, schedules, feedings and sleep patterns as I was. And still am. Four years later.
So I read Sunday’s piece with great interest and frankly, was largely disappointed in the end. I felt the writer, Brigid Schulte, came off as a martyr in a way she probably didn’t mean but I think that is one of the great challenges facing moms when discussing the absence of free time in our lives. In the piece, Schulte ended up attempting to track her time for a professor who specializes in time-use, to analyze her time spent and help her find 30 hours of leisure time each week. Of course the whole idea that this is possible is a total joke but the point was that it depends partly on how you define leisure time. It was never clear to me how Schulte defines leisure time.
For me it’s easy – am I without children?
LEISURE.
Am I out with just one child – half-leisure.
It’s really that easy. So while Schulte questioned if gym time is leisure time – to me that is the panacea of leisure time. My morning gym visit has practically turned me into a gym rat and without that precious quiet time, I can’t face the day. Schulte challenged how waiting 2-hours for a tow truck was leisure time. She was without child so the prof deemed it leisure.
Again, expectations. To me – two hours anywhere without the kids equals leisure time.
Am I saying I don’t like my children? Of course not. Am I saying that I don’t love spending time with them? Again, of course not. But any time that I am not responsible for fetching something for someone, shuttling someone to preschool while another one is screaming for her nap in the back seat or chasing down a toddler clueless to danger in one direction while trying to make sure the 4- year -old on the opposite side of the park isn’t being kidnapped, is leisure time. It’s really pretty black and white to me.
So back to the premise – moms and time. There is so much about moms and time. How much is written about dads and time? And Schulte barely skimmed over this in her piece. She once referenced her husband out back smoking a cigar while she was doing dishes or something. I’m thinking – what the hell is he doing having leisure time while she is working.
And here’s where I think moms fall victim to being martyrs. So many of us, me included, are control freaks – and so with an inability to let go and pass off responsibilities to husbands who in all actuality, are capable functioning members of the human race (hence why we married them and then went on to have children with them) – and so we end up in this reality where we are frazzled and exhausted and have bad hair and need a moment. Why is this? And what are we doing to change that. I’d like to see more written about this issue in how we divide our time than the “woe is me the mom without a minute to spare” ballad.
Again, I’m picking on Schulte because she put herself out there. She writes about making cupcakes at 3am, kids homework at ungodly hours of the night, etc. So again, where is her husband? What’s he doing? At what point does a gal need to learn to let go so that she can have a minute? And what does it take for her to figure that out?
I guess we all have our breaking points. And I am sure there are couples out there where the dad is the one consumed by time and the mom loses track. It’s not me, but I’m sure they’re out there. That being said, I’d enjoy seeing more about how families constructively divide time and moms do find time to themselves instead of the raggedy old mom icing Valentine’s cupcakes at 4am for school when she has a board meeting with the CEO 4 hours later. I also think learning to say “no” is part of this. Are our children completely overscheduled? Do we accept every invitation and spend weekends driving from one birthday party to the next? Is this fun for everyone?
So again, maybe I’m tired and cranky but I think too many women take on everything and lack the confidence to say “no.”
There you have it. I am picking on women this time instead of men.
3 comments January 18, 2010
Email: Friend or Foe
As my loyal fans and followers know, I stepped out of the workforce last April, shortly after returning to work after having my second child. I have a few rules of thumb with parenting and one of them is – do not make major life decisions while on maternity leave because it is like an emotional vacuum. So I returned to work, quit a week later, and haven’t looked back.
Everyone waxes on about how it’s such an adjustment to stay home full-time after being a full-time working parent. And there are definitely lots of adjustments. But 10 months in, I have only one thing I am still struggling with – email.
Here’s the thing – I hate social things like playdates. You would never catch me dead at some randomly organized playdate with people I don’t know. I like to pretend I am a misanthrope. I just hate BS small talk. Let’s cut to the chase – what spring fashions are you looking for this year, what insane things are your kids doing lately, what’s the latest celebrity gossip, and what are you having for dinner and will there be cheese in the meal and chocolate to follow.
These are the things I care about and sometimes it takes time to cut through the layers with people to get there. I’m really over that.
Yet I am also a very social person.
So I think part of the reason I don’t struggle with feeling “lonely” as a SAHM is because I have my posse of friends who are equally as addicted to email as moi. But the thing is, most of them are at work, so they are just being distracted from their dumb jobs or boring meetings – not emailing with their kids hanging around.
When I worked, I had this clear line – I walk in the door – I am all yours kid, no email, no phone calls – you get all of me because I’ve been gone all day. Well, now I am here all day and I need an outlet too. I do try to keep email responses to when they are napping and well, lots of time I don’t have time to do anything but that, but sometimes reading an email from a friend while all hell is breaking loose at home, gives me the laugh and rejuvenation I need to once again reprimand DD1 for assaulting DD2 for going too close to her favorite toy of the minute.
I do best with clear lines. Go to work, get stuff done, come home, focus on kids, they go to bed, do whatever you want. SAHM-hood doesn’t give you these clear lines. So while I don’t ever get wrapped up in guilt, I believe I am a good mom and give my children plenty of attention, I still struggle with this one. It’s that foggy line between needing some moments to myself but the paranoia of being “that parent.”
Add comment January 13, 2010
Hoppin’ on the Tiger Train
A true first happened in my house this morning. And no, I’m not talking about my 4-year-old waking up at 3:45am when she realized the power was out and it was dark and remained up for the day, I’m talking about something else entirely.
Nestled into the couch with my warm cup of coffee, I opened the paper and didn’t go straight for the Style section. I didn’t even go for the A section. Nope. Today – I went for the SPORTS section. Like I said, stranger things have probably never happened chez moi.
Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why – like most other women in America, I am completely obsessed with the Tiger story. Following that obsession, I am obsessed with the slime who are the WH party crashers. Anyhoo – until a few days ago, I couldn’t have cared less about baby face Tiger. I don’t care about or even like golf. I really couldn’t care less about professional sports. And whatever products he promotes, I either don’t care about or don’t buy because he said I should.
But now, I am all aboard the Tiger trashing train.
Being a PR person by profession, I am fascinated with how poorly he managed the initial news break and allowed the rumors to fester for days. I’m sure he’s any crisis communications manager’s worst nightmare because I guarantee he wasn’t listening to their counsel for days…his ego too big for their advice.
Being a wife, I am fascinated because well, it’s any wife’s nightmare.
Being a mom, I am fascinated because if he truly did carry on an affair with one of these women for over 30 months, it seems he was cheating through two pregnancies and deliveries. Nightmare. Not to mention the message he’s just sent his children for them to digest as they get older.
Being a woman, I can’t help but think about these other women that cheated. Why do they disrespect another woman (Tiger’s gorgeous wife) so much, and why are they so self-centered – that they would participate in an affair with a married man. No, scratch that. A married FATHER. Why do women do this to each other?
Being not just a stylish and pretty woman, but also a smart one, I also can’t help but feel disgust towards Tiger – cocktail waitresses. Come the f on Tiger. You couldn’t have cheated at least with someone intelligent and equally as successful – you had to just make it about them being easy and gross and dumb? Takin a page out of the Bill Clinton playbook, apparently.
So clearly there are lots of reasons why I am obsessed – but let’s get to the heart of the real reason – I look at his unbelievably beautiful wife, who is also incredibly sexy, and has given him two gorgeous children – and I think to myself – jesus – if she can’t be enough for him – what the hell kind of chance do me and my two children later muffin top – have?
Now let’s be real. I’m not an insecure person. And I’m definitely not insecure in my marriage. But still – this kind of story surely secretly rattles all of us.
If Tiger were a politician, we’d expect him to stand behind a podium during a press conference and confess his sins and beg for forgiveness. Though Tiger has a higher profile than most of the cheating scum bag politicians who have stood up there, he is allowed to escape this ordeal – so we don’t have to sit around and wonder if his wife will or will not stand up there next to him. Instead, we are left wondering what she’ll do next. The angry side of us just hopes she kicks him to the curb and takes him for all his billions.
That same angry side of us also secretly hopes she was chasing him with a golf club that night and smashed in a window. Is that a double standard? Oh definitely. He’s not allowed to do that to her, cheating or not, but still – you read moi because I just say the truth. And I never said I was above a good solid double standard.
So these are all the reasons I opened up the sports section today and just might do it again tomorrow. Why are you obsessed?
2 comments December 3, 2009
If the shoe fits……..
Buy it.
Reads a coin purse a good friend gave to me. It is a motto that I take seriously. Until I realized, DD2 turns 1 later this month, DD1 turns 4 in about a week, and I haven’t purchased a new pair of shoes in ONE YEAR.
GASP.
Is this a national emergency? A fashion crisis of epic proportions?
I think it most certainly is. Or was, as the case may be.
Not only is it criminal how long it’s been since I purchased a new pair of shoes, it is even more critical because during this past year, I’ve transitioned from working full-time to staying home. Of course this dramatic change in wardrobe comes with a dramatic style shift. And the problem is that I’ve built up a fabulous work wardrobe over the past 12+ years but invested really nothing in casual wear.
And while I didn’t notice it along the way, it turns out that I have a flair for heels. I have a closet chock full of fabulous heels for every season, in all kinds of colors, patterns, heel styles. Plaid? Got them. Mules? Plenty. Open toes with platform? Which color you want? Leopard print heels? How many you need?
But practical flats? Apparently they never really fell on my radar screen as a working gal. What does it say about you when you notice you are a heels or a flats gal? And what do you do when your lifestyle forces a change from being a heels gal to a flats gal?
So while my fabulous heels are collecting dust and quietly call out to me – begging me to grace my feet with them – they just aren’t practical for me anymore. I need quick on, quick off. I thought lathering up two squirmy kids with sunblock was a pain all summer long. It’s nothing on bundling up two kids in coats, hats, socks and shoes while they protest and scream and throw fits the whole time. It usually takes me at least 20 mins, and ends with me red faced, sweaty, and supremely annoyed. But I am determined to get outside with them as much as possible.
So once I’ve accomplished this enormous and nobel peace prize winning feat- properly dressing two kids for cold weather – there is no time for shoes that take time (laces, zippers, forget it). And of course, I also need shoes that are practical for long walks pushing 2 kids in stroller (you’re looking at about 70 combined pounds), stomping through leaves, random rain showers, etc.
So the question of practicality and comfort comes into play and complicates everything.
Yet I refuse to dress frumpy and lacking in style every day. It’s true. I LOVE seeing ambush makeovers on the Today Show – but I just don’t understand how anyone has an excuse to let themselves go and not get a haircut in 10 years. There’s no excuse. So, being one year behind in purchasing shoes and having no appropriately stylish stay-at-home mom shoes, I peeled into the Nordstrom half-yearly sale as fast as my tires could burn rubber turning the corner.
My list of requirements was long but I was determined and committed to the goal: stylish and practical shoes.
First, I considered Uggs. I have never been drawn to them and always felt they were over priced but figured, if I’ll be wearing them every day, maybe they are the perfect shoe for me – easy on and off, no heel, not sneakers, but still stylish. Or at least popular.
So I tried them on.
And immediately started sweating. Before I tried to properly dress two squirming insane red heads.
The Uggs were then immediately ruled out. Perhaps if I lived in a colder climate but it doesn’t get that cold here and there is no way I can walk around sweating my ass off. It’s bad enough my hair is butt and I am red faced and sweaty all summer long – I don’t need my shoes doing that to me all winter. We’ll leave that to my kids doing that to me.
So I moved on.
I tore through the sale wracks at Nordstrom and I didn’t even really clean up after myself. I was a gal on a mission.
And it was truly love at first sight. Drumroll please……..
For the cooler fall and winter days, I came away with these practical yet still stylish boots. They come on and off easily, there is no zipper, and I can easily wear them under or over pants.
For the not as cool days, I came away with these fabulous and super comfortable flats. They hug my feet so perfectly, I honestly feel like I am walking in slippers.
And the bottom line is this – add a scarf or a piece of jewelry and with the right shoes, any outfit can go from lame and boring, to stylish and cute. It’s all about the accessories.
There you go, if the shoe fits, buy it.
Add comment November 10, 2009
The Nuance of Language
As anyone knows who has a talking child, as they learn language and speak more clearly and concisely, the nuances of the meaning of words can go right over their head. Realizing they don’t understand what you mean or are taking you way too literally – is usually pretty funny.
What’s tricky is when it’s funny when they are supposed to be in trouble. Like two days ago.
DD2 is walking all over the place and seems to fancy herself a mountain goat – climbing everything and anything – constantly.
The fast development of DD2s gross motor skills is a profound and deep annoyance to DD1. And having 2 younger sisters of my own, I get that. I understand DD1. I get why she’s pissed when her pesky little sister comes tearing through her tea party, walking like a drunk surrendering to the cops, with both her hands straight up in the air and wobbly, uncertain, overly large and wide steps. I get it.
But I’m not the big sister in this scenario and so I can’t totally let on that I get it.
And the thing is, DD1 gets her back by pummeling her the second I leave the room. Poor DD2 is usually bleeding out of her mouth and her nose from a fall, just about every other day, and 80% of the time, her older sister has a role in it.
So two days ago, I leave the room for one second, only to hear screaming. I know exactly what’s happened but of course I can’t come screaming into the room, yelling at DD1, in case it was just an innocent fall. I ask, DD1 claims her sister was climbing on the seat (coincidentally the seat that DD1 was sitting in), and she fell. She assures me she had no part in it.
What can you do. I know she did. Of course she did, which is why DD2 is bleeding out her mouth and it’s gushing out her nose, but without having seen it, I can’t punish DD1.
Once DD2 settles, I am certain DD1 was to blame because she was unusually attentive, giving her hugs and kisses, offering her favorite toys to cuddle with….the sure signs of a guilty 4-year-old conscious. Yet when asked, she continues to deny her role in the fall.
A few minutes later, she confesses she did push her, she gets in trouble, blah blah.
So here’s when the language part comes in. Later that day, I asked her if she felt bad for pushing her sister and making her bleed.
She looks at me, gives it a quick thought, and says very matter of factly “No, I don’t feel bad.”
I say “really? you pushed your sister, she was bleeding everywhere and cried for a long time. you don’t feel bad about that?”
“No” she says without a second thought, “I feel fine.”
AH HA!
She is thinking does she physically feel bad? Well no – she physically feels fine. She’s probably thinking “Idiot, my sister is the one that was bleeding, I’m sure SHE felt bad.”
Yet you can see how this is confusing to a little one. Feeling bad physically is different from feeling bad – guilty – so really, what I should have asked her is if she felt “sorry” for pushing her sister. Right? But the nuances of words and their meanings, is something we take for granted, being 20 (c’est vrai, i’m only in my 20s) years into speaking the language.
This realization also assured me and quelled any fleeting fears I might have had that I was raising a sociopath. Until I later asked her if she felt sorry for hurting her sister.
“No, I don’t feel sorry.”
Was the response.
Ok then. Can I find a second meaning for feeling sorry?
Add comment November 5, 2009
