Happy Easter (The Trap)

The family and I just returned from a really nice Easter dinner hosted by some family friends who live about an hour and a half away. They're house is gorgeous and pristine, their children adorable, the food was delicious and, here's the kicker, the hostess was as serene as ... I don't know, something that's super serene.

I should say that I don't know the hostess all that well. Our real connection to her is through her mother, who was also present. This was my first time at the daughter's home, which is in a tony town in our already tony state, and my family of hicks was pretty awe-struck by the area in general.

Needless to say, my whole drive home was spent thinking the following thoughts:

1. The has three children. How is her house so clean?
2. How was she so put together while carving that ham, with the children running around?
3. No but seriously, how was her house so clean?! And how was she so put together?!

There are a variety of possible answers to these questions, but before I delve into them, let's take a step back in time to my house exactly a week ago. It was Sunday night, and there was a guest set to arrive for the following day, Monday, lunchtime.

The house was in shambles. Literally. As in, there was actual broken glass on the floor in the kitchen, but don't worry you couldn't see it anyway because of all the dog hair and toys. (NB: getting felt food for the play kitchen is a BAD IDEA when you have a German Shepherd. There's not a day that I don't spend at least five minutes de-furring a felt donut or snap pea before putting it back in the play refrigerator.)

I was exhausted.The children were in bed, but barely, and nine-month-old K was still complaining about it. She hasn't slept through the night yet, and we were coming off of a week of attempted sleep training which was a complete failure because we didn't realize the reason she wasn't sleeping on this particular week was not just to exert her disproportionate-to-her-size power over us adults for the fun of it, but because she was teething. Take that, timing!

I had just gotten terrible feedback about the house we're trying to sell, and so I was trying to decide whether I should go over to the house and try to remedy the situation on Monday morning before lunch, or go work out. I'm supposed to be working out twice a week but in the past month I'm barely hitting 50% of that. Either way, house or gym, I wasn't going to have time to make any kind of lunch since the weekend had gone the way of the housing market and grocery shopping was the most significant casualty.

On top of all that, I had only just realized in a formal sense (despite ample notice on her part) that Mary Poppins wasn't coming in on Monday which is her usual routine.

And yet, when the guest arrived, the house was clean(ish), the children were peaceful, the lunch was good and generous, and I was not in my pajamas.

How did I do it? Magic. Slight of hand.

Whatever you want to call it, what my guest saw was not real life.

"You make it look so easy." She said. "I was expecting you to have rollers in your hair, a baby on each hip and chaos in tow."

Oh girl, you have no idea.

The closest I came to admitting the truth was to say that a lot of fires get staved off while guests are visiting. And what I meant by "staved off" was "gagged, bound and stuffed into hidden closets."

Of course I'm aware of all this while I think of our pleasant Easter afternoon, but I can't help but come away either reproaching myself or resenting my hostess.

Am I not good enough?
What should I do differently?
Why do none of the systems I try to integrate, work?
Do I over commit?
Do I under perform?
It's probably because she has so much money.
It's probably because her standards are lower on other things.
It's probably because...

This is the trap.

It doesn't matter what I conclude. Either way, I'm the loser because life is for enjoying, not nit-picking, even if the one I'm picking on is myself.

In all likelihood, none of the above is true anyway, and she was just utilizing the same slight of hand that I did for my guest.

Yeah, let's go with that.

Pondering Modern Womanhood

I'm not sure it has ever in history been more paradoxical to be a woman than it is right here, right now, in western modernity. There are so many conflicting messages, so much misinformation, so much pressure. The mid-century joy at the prospect of "having it all" has been replaced with a post-millennial dread at the expectation of being required to do it all, and for very little in return.

Let me be clear: I have been incredibly blessed with a husband who is a very active father, a very loving companion and a very tolerant boss (yes, I work for him). I feel no particular pressure from him to do anything but that which pleases me most. But as an intelligent, hard working woman, I'm often overwhelmed not by possibilities, but by the expectations those possibilities have secured in the minds of others.

I am expected to do it all. Cook (I love cooking), clean (not my forte, but I can manage it), procreate (hate the pregnancy, love the outcome), educate, love and support my four children and my husband, meet everyone's domestic demands...

AND ALSO

...look presentable, have a paying job, read the news, read to educate myself, carry on intelligent conversation about topics other than child-rearing, experience culture, get a good night's sleep and occasionally indulge myself.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of reuniting with my closest friends for a "girls' weekend" in NYC. My friends and I represent the whole spectrum of modern adult womanhood: one of us is single in a high-pressure job, one of us is married and straddling the gap between remodeling her home and considering a family while also persuing academe and careerism, one of us is a divorcee picking up the pieces of a neglected career now that the coward she neglected it for showed his true colors, and then there is me, happily married three children at home, with a part time (but growing) job.

I came away from our time together with the feeling that all four of us women are at a crossroads.
Settle down? If yes, how?
Have children? If yes, how?
Pick up the pieces? Of course, but how?
Manage chaos? Yes, but...how?

The more I think about it though, the more I realize all the women I know are at a crossroads.

Is it possible that women are at a crossroads?

I haven't read Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, but I've read a lot of commentary on it. It is just one of the many many...many things to do on my list and frankly, the more I read about it the lower it sinks in my pile.

The facts as I see them are these:

1. The biological clock exists for women. Ask a doctor.

2. It doesn't exist in the same way for men. Men continue having healthy children for decades after women have no possibility of natural pregnancy.

3. Many modern careers do not allow the flexibility required of a mother to meet the needs of her children.  Children need love and  crave parental attention. Farming them out to professionals (baby nurse to nanny to preschool to elementary school to summer camp to high school...) does not answer to the dignity inherent in their little lives.


Where does this leave us?

Full-time-motherhood is no longer adequate in the eyes of the general public. Once a paragon of honor and love, stay at home moms (let alone supportive housewives!) are now condescended to and tolerated, but certainly not celebrated in powerful circles. I have never felt criticism from my family over this issue -- although my friends are not so lucky -- but I do feel the color rise to my cheeks every time someone says "so, what is it you do?," knowing that the questioner may ask a few polite questions about my children after I answer honestly that I stay at home, but will soon turn away in search of someone more interesting to talk to.

One story I heard recently provides some insight into another aspect of this. My friend lives in a very liberal town in California and knew another married woman in her town who was a sure-fire feminist all the way. Down with the patriarchy, equal pay for women, you get the idea. She had a nice job (a lawyer, if  I remember correctly) and took the train in to work everyday until...she had a baby.

Every day, the reality of separating from her baby and leaving it with a caretaker to go to work was so hard that she took to driving herself in her own car so as to spare herself the embarrassment of having everyone on the train watch her sob uncontrollably for the entire commute.

This is one way in which her husband misses out. He will never be pregnant. He will never feel that baby move inside of him, or even be offered the possibility of providing nourishment for that baby from his own body.

And I don't care how active and emotionally available a father he is, he's not sobbing on his way to work every morning, I can tell you that right now.

In other words, no one can have everything.

So why are women pressured to try?

I have a few theories, but I don't feel quite ready to spell them out here. Anyway, I'm way behind on some work and the baby is crying.

Maybe next time.

Preschool Visit Number 1

Last Saturday I attended an open house for the preschool down the road from here as a possibility for F in the fall.

While I was there, I didn't like it.

On the way home, I really didn't like it.

The more I think about it, the more I really, really don't like it and there's no way that she will be attending.

First of all, my daughter is very quick. She's adorable and precocious and she learns everything very quickly and with little effort. I'm sure that at some point she will hit a rough patch with some subject that is a challenge, but right now, it's all go. I have little doubt that she will know how to read a year from now, and it isn't because I'm pushing her. She begs to learn.

And normally, she's quite social as well.

Something about the preschool classroom, though, made her uncomfortable. It wasn't that she wasn't interested -- she was fascinated -- but it was almost like it was too much for her to take in at one. So many things on the walls, so many activities to choose from, so many toys, so many...so many....

It would have been great if one of the several teachers came over, got down at her level and engaged with her. She was shy. She was hiding behind my legs and squeezing my fingers so tight there was a circulation issue, but she was smiling.

Instead, all the attention went to the bright, adorable little girl who jumped right in the midst of it, sitting in the laps of her prospective teachers and making silly faces at her father from across the room.

It was understandable that this other little girl got lots of attention -- she deserved it! But so did F.

Also, F already knows, at the age of 2 1/2, everything they are teaching these 3 & 4 year olds.

• They learn a letter a week; she knows all her letters, upper and lower case.

• They practice shapes and colors; she's known those since she could talk, which was early.

• They learn how to wash hands and be polite, she already (mostly) does those things on her own, and is ever now learning to say "excuse me" if she needs to interrupt.

None of these things are bad, of course, and I'm sure she would have a blast just playing with these other kids in their igloo made of empty milk jugs and child-sized hair salon. The toys were awesome! But why should I pay money for her to spend many hours a week at a place that is going to be well below her level?

There were other issues too which I won't discuss here, But when I came home, my helper Miss Julie, was less than surprised.

In fact, she may have said "I told you so."

I still plan to visit the public preschool to see if it is any more exciting, but I'm not optimistic. I continue to go back and forth about whether to send her off to school.

I'm beginning to wonder though, if I should stop worrying about whether I should homeschool F. Maybe I already am homeschooling her and I just need to embrace it.

Resolved.

Well, it's that time of year again. Resolution time.

Last year I had some pretty serious resolutions. First, I was going to give couponing a try. After spending Christmas break watching a few episodes of Extreme Couponing, I just couldn't resist. Here I am a year later and I must say, it's pretty neat.

Not only did I stick with it, but I think I've actually been fairly successful. On a normal shopping trip (granted, my shopping trips are very much longer than they used to be) I can expect to save about 1/3 of what I would otherwise spend. I am aware of a couple of lingering issues that someone with a more Type A personality would probably have figure out by now, such as how to remember what the lowest expected price is likely to be on a given item (sure, it's a good price, but is it the BEST price?) and when should I ignore the sales and go full-on generic. With practice I can identify the best price of milk, different breads and a handful of produce items, but here in the modern world there are way to many grocery choices to keep all in my head. Similarly, I've experimented with a few generics and drawn conclusions, but I can count them on two fingers.

Alka-Selzer can be bought store-brand for less than half the price, with no obvious quality issues (and is an excellent treatment for alcoholic overindulgence). Also, cold cereal is better generic (although it's tough to find generic organics).

I keep waiting for a smart-phone app that will help with this kind of tracking but I've yet to find one that is as simple as I imagine it should be (is that how I will make my first million?!).

My other resolution was more complex. Between the in-home office with employees coming and going, my part-part-time job, two babies, a large house in need of cleaning and upkeep, a decidedly UNhandy husband and the possibility of moving to Texas in the next couple years, my life is pretty complicated, logistically. My second resolution was to streamline as much as possible and become more self reliant as a household. Organize, routinize and simplify was my mantra.

Honestly, I'm not sure how far I've come on that one. Part of the problem was that my goal was for the household, but I was the only one working toward it. It well nigh impossible to organize, routinize and simplify other people, and in most cases, it is quixotic to set goals on behalf of someone else. On the one hand, I don't feel any less dependent on other people (hired people, that is) than I did previously, but on the other hand I have a deeper understanding of how the conflicting dynamics of my life work together and occasionally clash.

Can that be counted as a success? Probably not, but I did manage to clean out two closets, so there.

So. Onward and upward, eh?

This year's resolution is incredibly boring, so brace yourself. I want to be a better housekeeper. I want a clean-ish house that I have done myself.

P will likely hate this resolution. He thinks that it is a waste of my time to clean and he would much prefer I just hire someone to come do it, freeing up my time to do more work for our family business, take the kids to the park, or lie on the couch eating bon-bons.

Seriously, that man would be delighted to see me eat bon-bons. I'm blessed, what can I say?

As penny-pincher supreme, I can't let myself do that. (Plus, I have a nagging voice inside saying self reliance, Self Reliance, SELF RELIANCE!!!).

In 2012 I tried subscribing to Fly Lady's house cleaning system but it made me absolutely nutty and I had to quit. In my short time as a mini-fly-lady, though, I learned some valuable tricks:

1. If you notice something that can be done in less than 30 seconds, do it RIGHT NOW. No excuses. No regrets. Yolo?

2.  Be on a schedule. This makes it less important for major tasks to get completely finished. Obviously, the goal is to finish tasks completely, but perfectionism is not a good thing and it is better to chip away at a problem than to put it off until the end of time because you can't finish it in one sitting. If you can't finish it this week, no big, this time next week you'll be able to pick it right back up again.

Here's my schedule. I've divided the house into 6 sections, leaving one day a week open for things that got missed or other big projects.


Sunday: Laundry Room, Hallway, Stairs. Take out the trash.
Monday: Dining Room, Drycleaning.
Tuesday: Spare Rooms, Spare Bathroom, Office Hallway and Mudroom.
Wednesday: Wash Stone Floors.
Thursday: Nursery, Nursery Bathroom, Drycleaning.
Friday: Catch Up, Big Projects.
Saturday: Master Bedroom and Bathroom.

So far, I've had this system in place for about a month and it's going ok. I'm optimistic.

Will 2013 be the Year of the Clean House?

Only time with tell.

You're Singing It Wrong.

With the visit of my mom and sister last week, the usually female dominated household that P and Ulrich von Dog must tolerate became even more so. We did lots of hanging around, wedding planning (WOOT LITTLE SISTER!!), baby snuggling and nail painting. Seriously, that's pretty much all we did, other than cook, clean and do laundry.

Very liberated, my binder of women.

And it was great.

One of the rare outings ventured was a trip to our adorable local cinema (two screens, home made cookie and hot tea refreshments) to view Les Miserables.

Ever since I emerged from that hushed cinema with the vestiges of Anne Hathaway's performance lingering in my mind like the mascara that tears smudged down my face...I can't get it of my head.

That was last week, and still it's there. Why does it linger? Is it my inner tragic revolutionary? Is it my irrational fears of not providing adequately for my children and being left alone with nowhere to go? And haircuts?

Is it my habit of belting out my emotions in song, while the world provides a seamless chorus? Probably.

Whatever the reason, a fly on the wall in my house today would have seen the following scene:

Me: barefoot, pants cuffed, up the the elbows in rubber gloves and toilet cleaner, trying to ignore the complaining infant in the playpen who is living up to her own "LES MISERABLES" by teething painfully.

Toddler: blond hair half fallen out of a french braid her older sister attempted, following me with her own scrub brush "helping" me clean, narrowly avoiding the ingestion of said toilet cleaner.

Both of us belting,  "THE STREETS ARE BARE AND EVERYWHERE THE TREES ARE FULL OF STRANGERRRRRRRRRS*...."





*The streets are supposed to be full of strangers, not the trees. Trees full of strangers would be alarming indeed.

Bananas

Last week around this time I was waiting anxiously sitting around the house waiting for P to come home with a car full of my Mom and sister. Dinner was all cooked (tamale pie, etc) and the babies were fed and clean. We were just...waiting.

Bored, I turned on the Food Channel.

Over the course of the next hour I watched, among other things, my first ever episode of Paula Deen.

My impression?

BORING.

The only reason I kept watching it was that I was fascinated by how little content there actually was in the shows.

Paula Deen, I guess because of her diabetes situation, claimed to be cooking healthy food. Of the three dishes she served, one was one was loaded with hidden sugar, one was loaded with fat and sugar and one was a plate of carbs.

At one point, she held up a slice of rich banana bread slathered with cream cheese, sliced bananas and topped with honey, and said "Now, wouldn't you feel good about giving this as a snack to your children, with all that fresh banana in it?"

The answer, Mrs. Deen, is yes, I would give that as a snack. But not because it is anything close to healthy. I would give it because it is delicious and my kids deserve a treat every once in a while.

If I want to give them fresh bananas I give them fresh bananas.

She's Not a Bully, She's Just...

She's just...an enthusiastic defender of private property. She defends her private property from you, and she defends your private property from you, too. Specific ownership is not a distinction that she acknowledges.

I assume this enthusiasm with fade with time, and if it doesn't, I'm she'll grow into quite an asset to Team IRS.

On the one hand, yes, there may have been a stroller incident recently that took us all by surprise, but really she didn't intend to hurt the kid. She was just wrestling the stroller out of his grasp and his head happened to be in the way. No harm, no...oh wait.

Some harm, some foul?

And on the other hand, I have some darling photos of baby K virtually buried under the piles of toy offerings F left around her in the baby swing. Just today, when F spotted the baby nomming on a corner of a precious Pooh stuffed animal, she gently removed it from K's tiny hand and said to me "She doesn't want to play with this. She wants to play with that ball." Dutifully, F presented the ball to her baby sister, who didn't even notice the swap.

Obviously, both of these situations must change: F has to learn to share and be gentle, and K will start to NOTICE and CARE when her toys are moved around (at which point I suppose the whole process starts again).

In the mean time, I think F needs some new friends. Bigger ones.