Sunday, February 26, 2006

"Balance balance, use your balance." (JoJo's Circus)

So I need to apologize for my last post. I came across as demeaning the music classes and everything we SAHMs do. In reality, I love our music class; I think the babies adore it and that is what counts. Additionally, I know I am the luckiest bitch in the world. I get to stay home in my pajamas if I so choose and play toys all day with 2 of my more favorite people in the world.

I have no deadlines and set my own schedule. I report to no one other than demanding toddlers and I get paid in hugs, kisses and giggles. I get plenty of grown-up company- thats what playdates are for. I have time to watch my Tivoed shows, read the newspaper (never anything about children getting hurt), and experiment with new recipes. And if sometimes, if my brain feels like I have cobwebs in it from lack of use, a game of Sudoku helps.

I will admit to feeling a bit lackluster at parties with little to contribute to parties other than poop stories. I barely remember, what did I talk about before becoming a mother? It also feels like an apology sometimes when I answer the ubiquitous DC question, "what do you do?" In DC in particular, this is a major hot button. What do you do defines who you are. I guess that is the case all over the world, but profession really speaks volumes inside the Beltway. Answering "homemaker," always a little defiantly, daring someone to denigrate me, makes me question my choices a little.

I would like to find a bit more balance professionally. I have been meeting with the same playgroup for 3 years now. There are 3 other women with their children in it. One day in the first weeks of meeting, after a particularly scintilating discussion about spit-up, I asked the other women their professional histories. We were amazed to discover among us 1 Kellogg MBA, 1 PH.D. in psychology, and two masters degrees. "What a lot of education going to waste," we laughed. But then we questioned whether it was wasteful. We were, after all, raising the next generation. Who better qualified to raise our children then ourselves?

Despite my firm belief in that theory, I, and I think my playgroup cohort, would like to find more balance to put our educations and work experience to good use. What a shame for the American work force to have all of that brain power deactivated for years. Two of my playgroup partners have gone back to work part-time and I see how they struggle with the balance. There are sick nannies and sick children and laundry and grocery shopping and sudden urgent work meetings. As a comic strip my former boss, who did seem to have a strong work balance act, had hanging on her cubicle announced, "Part-time Pay, Full-time Work.- The life of the working mommy."

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Snow Daze

Like many NW moms, I drag my babies to music classes (www.musikids.com) where we overstimulate them with shakers, scarves and bubbles. At first I took my older son, because it was a great place to meet other moms. (See previous post about mommy dating) I took the classes very seriously and clapped along and sang out of tune enthusiastically, because it was expected, and I took perverse pleasure in the cleverly disguised as cooing for other babies, but in reality are comparisons that highlight your own child's superiority in some ridiculous acomplishment.

"Look how Ainsley reached out to catch a bubble! Oh Ashton are you trying to help Mommy blow bubbles?"

"Oh my, I'm sorry Nate crawled in front of Taylor during the ball game. He is such a fast crawler, it is so hard to keep up."


My darling son stacked up well in these comparisons as he was an early and fast crawler and talker.

Now I am doing round two of musikids with Jacob, and it is a whole new ball game. I show up as the class is starting. I exhange murmered greetings with the other mothers and make no overtures beyond that, and I barely look at the other children. After all, I am there to focus on Jacob as he rarely gets to be the sole object of my attention. Luckily, the other moms in the class are like-minded as these children are all second or third siblings and the mother objective is to get in, sing the songs and get out in time to pick up the older sibs from preschool.

In some ways, I enjoy it more, because Jacob so obviously loves getting to sit on Mommy's lap for a whole hour and sing songs. On the other hand, I was hard pressed the other day to stop a fit of giggles in class. I looked around at the other Moms singing a ridiculous song about a wise old owl and the absurdity of the situation struck me. There we were, 10 highly educated and intelligent women crouched on a dirty carpet flapping our wings and yelling "hoo hoo!"

Have other mothers in history endured such levels of ridiculousness to possibly give their children a slight edge in the intelligence game? We are so anxious about our children's school and career futures that we are dragging them to all sorts of classes and extracurricular activities in the hope to give them a competitive edge. Lest my comments deserve a backlash, I will admit the children do enjoy the classes. But as I rush now to get dressed before heading out to class, I wonder if our time could be better spent?

Tuesday, February 21, 2006


Me & the Boys

Mommy dates

Yesterday I introduced my fellow DC Urban Mom crew in sweeping generalizations but neglected to detail myself. For the most part- I fit the description of Upper NW Mom pushing my 2 boys, 27 months apart, in their Peg-Perego to local story times at Politics and Prose.

But, I don't always fit the mold. For one, I am one of the younger moms in DC. I did not have a wildly successful career before entering motherhood. I had both my boys under the age of 30 (ok, Jacob got pulled out 3 weeks before I turned 30, but still...) For DC, this is an anomaly. My OB would have me pee in a cup then dismiss me. I was so low risk compared to the pushing 40-something, IVF, career-women sitting next to me in the waiting room at the doctor's.

I am 31 now, have a 3 1/2 year old boy and a 14 month old boy. I am married and have been since I was 22! (Again, another DC anomaly). I went to college in DC and stayed for my masters in education, but I hated being a classroom teacher. However the experience helps me tremendously as a SAHM. Nothing was as hard as being a first-grade teacher. It hardened me for all future jobs. Years later, whenever I had a stressful day writing press releases or dealing with CEOS, I would remind myself that it was still easier than dealing with 25 seven-year olds & their demanding parents.

For the last 4 years, I have been home with the kids. The first year was incredibly hard, mainly cause it was SO boring. By 4:00 each day, I was ready to tear my hair out. I had no friends in the area, as we had recently moved back to DC from California, and all my college friends were still unmarried and existing on different planes. There seemed to be mostly nannys at the park and for a while, I hung out with them, but they always seemed suspicious of me, for reasons I wll go into in later posts.

I resorted to college techniques of picking up men, but applying it to other moms. I would head for story times or music classes and make eye contact and shamelessly flirt with other moms who seemed to share my style in parenting and usually found the stroller to be the best indicator of commonality. I always seemed to click with other Peg-Perego Venezia moms. Anything higher-end trended toward more neurotic nervous moms, and anthing lower-end, well, I didn't see a lot of Even-flo in my hood. My pick-up lines ran the course of, "What a cute onesie. Where did you get it?" "How old is your baby?" "Would you like to meet for a playdate next week?" I made some of my closest friends this way and still have playdates with them with our younger children while the older sibs are in pre- school.

I was always pleasantly surprised by how thrown the other women were in their new role as mom. I thought I was the only one suffering from serious doubts about my competence, but I met women who outshone me in the doubting department, and I found myself sharing advice and feeling like a parenting expert. As my boys have grown, my confidence level has too. I think I am dong a heck-of-a-job parenting. I wish I had a boss who could review me and give me my annual bonus, but I know the only reward I will have are the ones my boys give me.

Like this morning, when Jacob the 1 year old crawled over to Nate & threw his arms around him & gave him a giant hug & they stayed snuggled like that for several minutes. I burned a memory of that in my mind to carry over for future days where there are hits instead of hugs and tears instead of giggles.

Monday, February 20, 2006

An introduction..

So I had a date with my husband last night- the first in a while. Over Aloo Gobi and naan, I waxed poetic (ok, I whined) about my dissatisfaction with my career life. We rehashed my illustrious and ephemeral career path thus far.
  • Teaching first grade- bad choice
  • Project manager- I never figured out MS project and my ADD caused projects to spin in multiple directions at once
  • PR guru and marketing gal was fun, but mainly because it was the middle of the dot-com boom and it was a wild ride for all involved.
  • Stay-at-home-Mommy- so far this career choice has lasted the longest and been the most enjoyable, albeit loony at times. But, lately I'm looking for more. I feel a bit antsy when the highlight of my brain activity for the day is putting together Thomas train track.

My husband tolerated the whinging for a while, then pushed me (metaphorically, though he did yoink the last naan) to carve out my own path. "Write about it," he urged. "You keep bragging about some writing contest you won in high school. Become the DC mommy expert. Write a book."

I was intrigued, but hesitant. Where does one start? I have made motherhood a full-time job and obsession, and I love offering unsolicited advice to my playgroup pals, nannys at the park, and newbie mom friends. Could I make it a career too?

I stated my self-doubt. Again my husband rolled his eyes, "blogging.."he handed up as though the word had been spelled out in tikka masala sauce, but I had some how missed it. So here I am today, entering the world of mommy blogging. I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of us out there, but I believe there is room for all of us. Plus, I offer the perspective of upper-northwest mom with a little Jewish on the side.

For those not in the know, Washington, D.C. is broken into four quadrants, each housing a unique population and flavor. Upper-Northwest is generally where the affluent, educated and often (but not always) caucasion folk reside. This is not to say there is not affluence, education and white in SW, SE, and NE- There is! But, Upper Northwest, in general and sterotypically, can be classified as where the money and higher degrees are. I am the only non-lawyer on my street (I only have a lowly masters degree- in education, horror of horrors!).

Upper Northwest is the antithesis of a Red-state. During the most recent presidential election, a young democrat volunteer with his grassroots zeal burning a trail behind him, came a-knockin on doors on our street, soliciting votes for the Dems. I commended his effort, but tried to gently break it to him that his time would be better spent calling red-states, as one neighbor was a Clinton advisor and another is a senior democratic pollster & lunches regularly with the CA senators. But I digress, I just want to give a sense of the neighbors I rub elbows with while on line for our daily Starbucks fix.

We are the Peg-Perego pushing (bugaboos are too decadent), Seven-wearing, NPR listening Moms. We drive our Volvo XC-90s, shop at Whole Foods and pay taxes and health care for our legal nannys. We live in older homes (never gasp! McMansions) and do a lot of online shopping since Walmart & K-Mart are not in the city. We have 2 or 3 children all spaced under 3 years apart, since most started families in our 30s. We read a lot about parenting and have very definite ideas and neuroses about parenting that we air publicly on www.dcurbanmom.com. For most of us, this is the most serious and stressful job we've had to date.

We all have college degrees; some have post-graduate degrees and most were successful in a chosen career path before motherhood. Yet. giving birth unleashed a flood of insecurities about ourselves and our ability to be the best mother and raise the brightest, most empathetic, well-adjusted children.

Now you have a glimpse into the glossy surface that is the live of the Upper NW DC Mom. Join me as I examine who we really are and share stories from the trenches of mommyhood.

Cheers!

Linda