Magic Cookie

Who owns the data

2012-01-23T15:43:00.001-05:00

Struggling with some issues about data ownership at work today.

Several of my clients sell SaaS (Software as a Service) products. Access to their software is entirely web-based. They process information provided by their customers. In the course of processing this information, they generate metadata and usage data. In some cases, for clients whose business is providing analytics, the metadata or usage data is the whole point of their service.

The question is, who owns that data, and what does ownership of that data mean? I think a reasonable way to look at it would be:

Customer owns any data they provide
Customer "owns" metadata in the sense that SaaS provider can only use it in the context of providing services to Customer; however:

Customer has no right to actually get the data, except in a format that SaaS provider has agreed to provide. If Customer is paying for analytics, Customer and SaaS provider should work out in advance whether Customer can export the metadata after their access to the software is terminated; in the absence of any agreement, Customer has no right to access the metadata.
SaaS provider can transform the data by anonymizing it and aggregating it with other data; Saas provider should have full ownership over this, including the right to sell it to third parties

If anyone bothered to read this, feel free to weigh in on whether you think this makes sense and conforms with what you would expect as an Internet user (of, say, Facebook). Just needed a space to think out loud. Now back to my regularly scheduled "cute thing my kid said today" / "blathering about biglaw" posts.

Kid art

2012-01-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

I have to confess something.

When K brings home an art project from school, I talk with him about it. I keep it on the table. Then after he goes to bed I throw it away (or recycle it, if it's not covered with glitter or cereal or something).

Maybe I would feel differently if he expressed himself more through arts and crafts, but he's never been the least bit interested and doesn't even like drawing with crayons like a normal kid. So the stuff he brings home is generally part of a school activity and is indistinguishable from art any child this age would do, except sometimes it has his finger or hand prints.

I've kept a few things I like. I also kept a writing assignment where, after months of resisting writing at all, it was obvious he had worked hard and made real progress. That one is on the fridge. Sometimes I send it to the grandparents and great-grandparents. But mostly, it goes in the trash.

Do you think I'll regret it later? What do you do with little kid art?

Why I went to law school, and what happened next

2012-01-20T20:57:00.000-05:00

Proto Attorney and Dinei both wrote these "should I go to law school / why I went to law school" posts, and suggested that others do it so applicants can see a range of experiences, so, okay.

First, this is what I tell aspiring law school applicants.
1. Do you really want to be a lawyer? How do you know? Have you talked to practicing lawyers? If the answer to any of these questions is "No" or "I don't know," stop there.
2. Is there anything else you want to be that doesn't require this much specialized education? Do that first.
3. What do you think you'll do after law school, realistically, given what you know about yourself, where you live, the level of law school you're likely to attend, and the job market?
4. Can you afford to go to law school? What will be your return on investment? If you don't know what that is, go Google it now.

I have written about this in bits and pieces, but here was my decision process about law school. I had worked for six years as a software engineer, and had known for a while that it wasn't for me. I spent a long time, over a year, figuring out what I liked and didn't like about my past jobs, and what I wanted out of a job. Some of the things I was looking for were:
- Working with words. Reading and writing as an essential part of my job.
- Being an expert in something. Specifically, something that was a little difficult to become an expert in, something that not everybody knew, and something that many people would find useful and want to know about.
- Advising people.
- Financial security.
- Subject matter that I found interesting.
- Smart colleagues who I liked.
- Independent, respectful, flexible work environment.
- Feeling that my work served a worthwhile purpose.

I found myself reading Supreme Court decisions and volunteering to work with our IP lawyers on some DRM issues, and I started to consider law school. I wondered whether it was worth it to give up a stable, well-paid, intellectually challenging job for three years of very expensive graduate school followed by an uncertain job future. At the time I was applying to law school, I was married, owned a house, and was hoping to start a family soon. I decided that, for the sake of my future career and our family finances, I would only apply to top 30 schools, and if I didn't get in I would try to think about other career directions. I applied to five schools and got into all of them without any scholarship money, so the choice was easy -- I went to Harvard Law, right down the street.

One of the most valuable things I did during law school was talk to lawyers, attend lots of career seminars, and in general give lots of thought to my career options. I didn't even know my current practice area -- advising technology startup companies -- existed. I didn't know any lawyers growing up, and before I started exploring law as a career I was only familiar with lawyers on TV.

I'm happy with how things turned out. Legal work suits my personality. I love finding a precise way to express a client's intentions, puzzling over which word is appropriate and how the different provisions of a contract interact with each other, parsing a statute to see exactly what it means. It's a lot like programming. I love it when clients call me for advice. I love learning about new technologies and helping my clients get their ideas out into the world. I also feel more secure being in a profession with a clear career path and possibilities. Frankly, I'm not that entrepreneurial. Since the role of a lawyer is well-defined, I have an idea of the range of things I can do and the places where I belong. If I were more entrepreneurial, I think I'd have been better off developing expertise in some field on my own, and then consulting or finding a position with someone who needed that expertise.

At the same time, the job market scares me. I'm at a large law firm and I have seen friends get laid off. I hope I would land on my feet, but I'm relatively new to the field and despite my talk about exploring career options, I'm not sure where I would end up next or whether I'd be able to find a job that suits me. While I'm grateful to have my current job, and like the work and the people (and the money and the office), I find the schedule, requirement of constant availability, and billable hours onerous and anxiety-inducing. As a field, law is also much more sexist than engineering, and large law firms in particular assume you will have a stay-at-home spouse so you can devote most of your energy to work.

I still have it in the back of my head that I gave up 3 years of salary, plus spent about $45K a year for 3 years, to go to law school, and I calculate when I'm going to break even. If I stay at my current job, it'll be in about a year. I've paid down most of my student loans, and may be able to pay them all off by the end of this year. We bought a new house (and our current outstanding principal on our mortgage is more than the entire value of our old house, which is a little terrifying). We replaced both our ancient cars. We had another baby. My husband was able to leave his job and pursue some less lucrative goals. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Most people don't get this kind of job out of law school.

Creature Report

2012-01-18T21:22:00.004-05:00

Hello.

Here are some things I have been thinking about lately.

Octonauts. K has been watching this show on Disney. It's about a bunch of animals (plus some "vegimals," including a talking turnip, radish, and eggplant) who explore the sea and learn about different sea creatures in their octopus-shaped submarine. At the end of each segment there is a "creature report" with an infernally catchy song that has been stuck in my head for days now.

The Republican presidential candidates. Mitt Romney is smug and out of touch. Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Rick Santorum's name is synonymous in my mind with "animal sex." Ron Paul thinks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day should be renamed "Hate Whitey Day." Rick Perry... it's hard to believe that this ad is even real. (Recap: What kind of country do we live in where gays can serve openly in the military, but our children don't pray in public school because Barack Obama hates Christmas? I am not even exaggerating.) These people are running for PRESIDENT. Can't they find anybody remotely suitable?

The Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster. Mainly because this is all over the news, but also because I keep thinking about the recording of the phone call where the Italian Coast Guard keeps yelling at the captain to get back on board and see who needs to be rescued, and the captain just stammers and sounds confused. Then the captain said he diverted his route and went closer to shore to salute a retired admiral who he had been talking to on the phone at the time of the crash, and then he changed his story and said that it was because one of his waiters had grown up on that island. And then today he claimed he didn't abandon the ship, he FELL out of it. Much like the Republican presidential candidates, it keeps getting crazier.

Jorts. I lamented the ever-widening hole in the knee of my favorite jeans. JW suggested I turn them into cut-offs. "Do people still wear cut-offs?" I asked. "Sure," he said. "I think so. Yeah, people must still wear jean shorts. Jorts." "Jorts? That's not a real thing." "It is!" So we googled it (because that is how you settle a modern argument) and found an entire website, jorts.com, dedicated to making fun of people who wear jean shorts. Also, the Urban Dictionary's definition of "jorts" includes the following: "Jean shorts. Worn mostly by children and douchebags. Jorts are perhaps the easiest way to recognize people you will not like." So I will not be cutting off my jeans.

My Kindle (and the books I have been reading on it). It is amazing how much I've been reading since getting the Kindle. Recently I've also been emailing long-form articles to my Kindle so I can read them when I have time. I read the Democracy 21 report on Super PACs and how the existing ones are basically illegal. I read a This American Life transcript about how homosexuality was redefined in the DSM in the 1970s so it was no longer classified as a pathology. I've been buying way more books than usual, too. I used to buy a book maybe once every few months. I'm a library person. But now books seem so bulky. I have to lug them around with me and remember what page I was on and put something on top of them to keep them open when I'm trying to read and do something else at the same time. I wasn't sure I would like an e-reader, but I'm a reluctant convert. (Reluctant because I'm not crazy about being tied to Amazon, and I dislike the DRM restrictions on the books I buy.)

The end.

Mom of the future

2012-01-14T13:07:00.001-05:00

I waited a little while before changing X this morning, due to his new habit that requires two diaper changes within the first half hour of waking. After seeing him make the face and freeze for a moment before returning to crawling around, I checked his diaper. Sure enough, it was time for a change. I unzipped him and broke out into a little song of "Poop, There It Is." X gave me his trademarked scowly face. "You're right, I'm dating myself," I said. "You'll hear this song on the oldies sta..."

Then it hit me that nearly all my cultural references will be incomprehensible to my kids. What's a tape? What's a station? What's a dial?

This must be payback from all those times I made fun of my mom for not being able to program the VCR. (The what?)

Working moms group

2012-01-13T14:33:00.000-05:00

I started a working moms group in my town. I thought it would be a good way to get to know other working moms in town and share advice. So far we've met twice and have had 6-8 people each time. I have about 20 people on my list.

Most of the women work full time. The ones with part-time or flexible schedules negotiated them up front when they started their job, and said their companies were fine with it. Only one woman said that she negotiated a flexible arrangement after being on the job for a while, and she worked from home one day a week. The consensus was that it's best to raise this once you're fairly certain you've got the job, or after you've established yourself (meaning the worst time to ask is within the first two years or so after you start). One person told a story about how her boss didn't hire a woman everyone else loved because her request that she work from home made her seem less committed, but she thought he actually didn't like the applicant and was using her request as an excuse.

Most of the women have babies. So far I've only met two with school-age kids, and have pumped them for information about the public schools.

ALL of the women outsource house-cleaning. And we all agreed that it preserves our sanity that the two days a week we have to spend entirely with our kids aren't taken up by vacuuming and scrubbing toilets. (Besides, we're stimulating the economy.)

I'm hoping that as we continue meeting and people get to know each other, we can develop a real network where people feel comfortable reaching out to the group with questions. Meanwhile, I feel like it's my responsibility to keep it from fizzling out. Do any of you have a group like this, formally or informally? So far it's been free-form, with everyone discussing whatever topic comes up, but I'd love to hear ideas about how and whether to focus meetings or have certain activities or discussion topics.

Part-time

2012-01-10T16:45:00.001-05:00

Recently I talked to some women at The Firm who work part-time, 4 days a week. My biggest concern about working part-time is that you'd end up working the same hours but getting paid less. But they all said that they have been having a much easier time setting boundaries -- not only because they feel they entitled to do so, but also because other people expect it. In contrast, a full-time associate is expected to have zero boundaries. A more experienced attorney who worked part-time pointed out that in her experience, if you're part-time and the people looking at your hours notice you're working closer to full-time, they'll view it as a problem and will work with you on strategies for reducing your hours. But if you're full-time and exceeding the billable target by several hundred hours, they just give you a bonus.

My other big concern is that in my department, there are very few female partners and I have heard several of the male partners express negativity toward scheduling flexibility for family obligations. One woman who has always been very gung-ho about her work recently went part-time, and she said so far it's been going well, she's happy, and she hasn't gotten the sense that people are less willing to work with her. (I have heard from others that some partners have been less willing to work with them. I think it depends a lot on who you usually work with.)

It all sounds tempting, leaving aside my feelings about part-time as a female ghetto. In law school I remember thinking it seemed like a no-brainer to buy back some of your time each week. Now it seems more complicated.

Work anxiety

2012-01-07T10:09:00.000-05:00

This week was an unusually slow week at work.

I didn't raise my hand to get more work. I decided to try to clean off my desk and deal with some nagging assignments. But a not-so-unexpected thing happened. I was totally unproductive. When I thought about doing that lingering work, I would panic and start surfing the web. And then I thought, crap, I wasted all that time, and I'm getting later and later at doing this work, and then I would feel even more anxious and still wouldn't do the work. That night I had trouble sleeping. Finally, at the end of the week, I managed to tackle the work, only to realize that I didn't have time to finish and if I had used all that time I wasted it would be done by now, and this will reflect badly on me and affect my reputation, all of which makes me feel even more anxious. Like pit in my stomach, heart beating faster anxious. And of course, I feel terrible that I'm taking time away from my family when I'm not even accomplishing the work I'm supposed to be doing.

It sounds ridiculous, but it feels paralyzing.

I've tried various productivity tweaks, including uninstalling my web browser of choice (because that's usually how I procrastinate), installing LeechBlock, which stops me from browsing, making to-do lists before I leave, restructuring my work day, etc... nothing seems to help.

What say you, Internet friends? Is this normal and I should just get over it? Is this an extreme version of normal unproductivity and procrastination? Is the solution just to be more busy? Is there some magical productivity hack I should be doing to change my habits? Do I need therapy?

My Year of No

2012-01-06T09:47:00.001-05:00

I was offered an awesome job that would have started at the end of January. For personal reasons, I wasn't able to take it.

Then I was encouraged to fill a vacancy for the elected position I ran for a few years ago. A small part of me likes the idea, but I feel like I already have a full slate of commitments and the timing is wrong for me to take on another one. I'm already on the board of a local foundation and I hope to be involved in the PTO once school starts in the fall.

I also decided not to continue with a pro bono program that I felt was taking up too much time and wasn't helping me become a better lawyer.

Mostly I feel okay about turning down these opportunities. My job is demanding, I have two small kids at home, and even though there are lots of projects I'd like to take on, I feel like now is not the time. At the same time, I sense a pattern of consciously pulling back, and I feel a little disappointed in myself for not being willing to try -- maybe if I did, I would discover I had the capacity. I wonder, is 2012 going to be my year of saying no?

10 months

2012-01-05T12:10:00.000-05:00

Dear X,

At ten months old, you are an adorable, roly-poly baby with almost four teeth on the bottom and two on top. You drool constantly, still spit up with some regularity (but nothing like the fountain you used to be), and since starting daycare there is pretty much always snot coming out of your nose. You laugh with delight when you see someone in your family, and you think pretty much everything your big brother does is the best and funniest thing ever.

When I come home, you immediately crawl over to me, grab my pant legs, pull yourself up and lift your hands up for me to grab and walk you around. If I leave the room after you first see me, you get upset, which is why I prefer to immediately sneak upstairs, change, and then come back down so you don't get spit, snot, and food crust all over my work clothes. The other day when I dropped you off at school, you cried. Then you crawled over to me and wanted to be picked up and were happy again. Then when the teacher took you again, you cried again. Are you suddenly developing separation anxiety? At least I know you like me.

You say "da" and "ga" but I have never heard you utter any kind of "m" sound, which makes me think it will be a very long time until I hear "mommy" from you. We are trying to teach you some basic signs (more, all done, milk, eat, drink, water, please, thank you, diaper, bath, play, up), but we haven't been terribly consistent and I think the only ones you recognize are "all done" and "milk". I may be imagining it, but I think you are starting to say "a-da" (all done) at the end of a meal.

You are still eating some jar food, but you prefer finger food and will happily eat anything and everything we're eating. Your digestive system can't always handle it, but your mouth is ready! Stay with that. No more picky eaters in our house, please!

You can move around easily and are getting more steady on your feet, but you can only stand by yourself for a second or two. I predict that you'll walk some time around your first birthday. You crawl if nobody is around to hold your hands while you walk around. You can pick up the teeny-tiniest objects (like a single round sprinkle) from the floor and shove them into your mouth, and you get annoyed when we prevent you from eating your objects of choice. Especially shoes, wires and cables.

You hate falling down. Even if you're not hurt at all, you get angry and cry. It surprises me because you're usually resilient. But then again, you never did like to be thwarted. You also do not like lying down. Luckily you're strong enough now for standing-up diaper changes.

You love being held up in the air, turned upside down, and spun around; watching ceiling fans; and clapping, snapping, and other body-movement sounds. You are ticklish, especially on your feet and on your sides around your belly. You laugh when I blow on your head, making your hair fly up.

You get tired really early. Around 6 p.m., your eyes start to get red. At 6:30 you enter a fun manic phase where you laugh hysterically at everything for no reason. By 6:45, if we have not started bedtime preparations, you become miserable. If you are not asleep by 7 p.m., we are all miserable. A bath can keep you happy even if it's getting late, but once you get out of it, you move quickly past fun-manic into upset-manic.

I can't believe you will be a whole year old soon. I'm excited to make your first birthday cake. The other day I gave you a little piece of an Italian cookie that a neighbor made and you tried to eat my face, looking for more. I think you may have a sweet tooth like Mommy.

You are an awesome baby and you make me so happy every day.

Love,
Mommy

K's birthday party

2012-01-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

The boys' birthdays are coming up! Happily, X won't need a birthday to-do this year or next year. But K is excited for a party with his friends.

Last year we did his birthday at the indoor playspace near our house. It was a little pricey, but super-easy -- I had pizza delivered and picked up an ice cream cake, snacks, and candles at the supermarket, stopped by Target for some goody bag stuff, and we were done. I went into labor two days later, so the ease more than justified the price.

This year, I'm tempted to do another out-of-the-house party. Since it's March, it has to be indoors. K generally doesn't like any kind of structured activity or art, so that rules out most party venues. He likes to run around and play video games. There's a nicer indoor playspace we could go to that charges the same amount, so that's an option. He loves Lanes and Games, a bowling alley with an arcade, but I feel like it would be repeating the party we just went to for another little girl in his class. The logical, and less expensive, choice would be a party at home, I guess. But the thought of having all those little kids in our house...

I guess we could make it work. K has asked for a "Megaman, Mario, Robot and Donkey Kong party," which may be challenging for decoration, but we can have some fun with it. We can have the kids decorate their own cupcakes, or maybe even have them decorate a "Mario castle" (essentially a gingerbread house -- I may still be able to pick up a kit on sale, and save it until the party). We can set up toy stations, and a craft station where kids could make robot heads out of cardboard boxes, tinfoil, and pipe cleaners. Maybe we could even have an obstacle course in the living room. We can still keep the refreshments simple -- pizza, snacks, cupcakes. We can give out fake mustaches and antennae as party favors. This could work. I'll need to set a ground rule in advance of no actual video games at the party, though -- I can see all the kids fighting over who gets to play, or staring at the TV instead of playing with each other, and other parents may be more screentime-averse than we are. (We do have some fun Wii games for kids, though -- how funny would it be to see a bunch of 4 and 5-year olds playing Rock Band?)

We're going to a party at one of K's friend's houses this weekend. I will monitor the situation and make a decision.

New Year's Weekend

2012-01-03T11:29:00.001-05:00

We had a low-key weekend at home, with an unexpected bonus: daycare was open on Monday, but I had the day off! And it was balmy weather for January. I got in a fun dance workout, dragged JW out hiking, took a nice long leisurely shower, had a delicious Indian lunch at Dosa Temple, and cleaned out my closet before picking up the kids early and walking them home.

Over the weekend, K and I made and decorated New Year's cookies and delivered them to all the neighbors. I am lazy about rolling out dough and cutting out cookies, so I just shaped the dough into logs, sliced, and baked. I made some lemon icing (using a lemon that CT sent from her balcony tree in California) and K dumped so much colored sugar and sprinkles on top that we'll be picking it out from between the floorboards for weeks. We wrote "2012" with icing to make them New Year's cookies. They were not that pretty, but nobody minded. It was a perfect time to be out delivering cookies because most of the neighbors were hanging out at home, having their own low-key weekends and recovering from the holidays, and were happy to have company. It took a while because everyone invited us in. I think this should be an annual tradition. Next year we'll make more cookie plates, and spread them out over a few days.

Happy New Year 2012!

2012-01-01T09:50:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, all!

This year my kids will be 1 and 5. K will start kindergarten! JW will find a new career direction. X will learn how to walk and talk. I will practice yoga every day and attain enlightenment, all the while astounding clients with my corporate law wizardry. Or something. I think I'm the only one who doesn't have a big transition planned for this year.

My motto for this year is: LESS THINKING, MORE DOING. Too much thinking gets me in trouble.

I also resolve to take better care of myself this year: try to get to sleep by 10 p.m. every night, get more exercise, find clothes that fit my post-baby body. The baby is ten months old now (as of today!) and has been sleeping through the night for a while. It's been nearly two months since I last nursed him. Things are back to normal enough that I feel like I can pay more attention to my own needs.

Looking back on my goals for 2011, I'm about 50-50. Here they are:
Get in better shape than I was in pre-baby. NOPE.
Revamp my wardrobe so I have decent, fitting clothes that I actually like to wear both in and out of the house (and other appearance-related goals). NOPE.
Get out of the house daily during maternity leave. CHECK. Sigh... maternity leave. I loved it so.
Start learning piano. CHECK.
Plan a summer vacation. NOPE. JW wouldn't cooperate.
Get professional photos taken. CHECK.
Figure out daycare. CHECK.
Get the house in better shape. A little yes, a little no.
Budget and use financial software. We tried this; it didn't stick; it's not that much of a priority but is something we may go back to.
Do something town-related. CHECK. Joined the board of our local foundation.
Be able to talk about sports. NOPE. Forgot about this one. I guess it wasn't a priority after all.
Possibly try meditation. Sort of. Would still like to do more of this.
Join a book club and/or reading website; keep track of books read. Sort of. Tried it, didn't stick, but now that I have a Kindle it's keeping track of books read for me.

Because it's been way too long since I posted pictures

2011-12-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

These are from September, when we FINALLY did our first-ever professional family photo shoot.

Corporate law practice lesson: Call the client for context

2011-12-29T15:13:00.001-05:00

During my first year at The Firm, I would occasionally write about a lesson I had learned about practicing law. For instance, read and pay attention to every word (and don't skip over the appendix, the bottom of the email that you think only contains a signature, or the sections of the statute that probably don't apply); point out things you think are confusing or wrong (and don't assume that there must be some reason you don't understand, or that if it were important somebody more experienced would have already fixed it); and one I still repeat to myself: if you screw up, admit it and try to fix it immediately. The coverup is worse than the crime! (Not that I've covered anything up. But somehow the first thought that runs through my head after I get that pit in my stomach, realizing I've made a mistake, is that if I'm lucky nobody will ever find out. And then I have to be stern with myself and deal with it like a grown-up.) Another one I didn't write about, but that I think counts, is: Don't be afraid of recycling paper. Print, print, print. My eyes would fall out if I stared at a screen even more than I do now, I'm a more accurate reviewer when I'm looking at paper, and having an almost-correct version of a document is not good enough when I need the correct version in front of me.

Now that I'm experienced enough that clients often contact me directly, or partners ask me to handle matters for unfamiliar clients without giving me context first, I've learned a new lesson: to be more proactive about calling clients and getting context from them before tackling an assignment. Before I can draft an agreement, for instance, I need to understand who the client is, including their business and their corporate structure; who the other party is and the client's relationship with them; what the course of negotiations has been like; what the business deal is; what open issues exist; what the client's concerns and goals are; and what they anticipate may happen in the future. Sometimes I'm reluctant to call the client for context, for a variety of reasons. I assume that the client or the partner would have given me the context I need when making the request. I don't want to waste time and money by calling the client, especially if it's a simple contract or they want it back very quickly. If my contact at the client is the CEO or other high-level executive, I feel like an unscheduled phone call is intrusive unless I know it's a key deal for them, and scheduling a call may take a while. If I don't know the client very well, I don't want them to feel like they have to start from scratch with me when someone else from my firm should already know this stuff about them.

What I've realized is that none of those reasons matter. It doesn't even matter whether they're valid or silly. I need that context to do my job. Preparing a draft first and then talking to the client about it does not save time or money. It results in unnecessary back and forth with the client, as I inevitably learn something important during the conversation that needs to be folded into the agreement. Clients typically don't think about how much context is necessary. It's my job to follow up with them as needed, and part of that may mean resetting their expectations about how quickly I can get them the agreement.

Chaotic Christmas

2011-12-27T10:14:00.002-05:00

We're down south at my sister-in-law's for Christmas. She has two babies, an almost-2-year old aptly nicknamed "The Hurricane" and a 1-year old who lets out an ear-splitting shriek whenever she is happy, sad, excited, angry, wants attention, or feels like shrieking. Neither sleeps through the night. The TV is constantly blaring (or at night, lullabies are blaring from the babies' room on infinite repeat). The kids have all taken turns being sick. X developed a hacking cough, K threw up last night before passing out. So, while it's been nice spending time with the family, it hasn't been a relaxing vacation.

Yesterday K and I were out for a walk, looking at the Christmas decorations in the neighborhood. I pointed out a Nativity scene. He asked what it was, and I explained that it showed baby Jesus being born. "Who's Jesus?" he asked. (This time I had an answer prepared, unlike the last time he asked me this and I passed the buck to Grandma.) "Jesus lived a long time ago," I said. "He taught everyone to love each other and to treat other people the way you would want them to treat you. People thought what he said was so important that they wrote it down and still remember it and talk about it. Christmas is Jesus's birthday, so people put up pictures of baby Jesus at Christmastime." "If baby Jesus comes," declared K, "I'm running away." "What?? What are you talking about?" "If baby Jesus comes I'm RUNNING AWAY," insisted K. "Why?" "Because then we'll have FOUR BABIES." I explained that baby Jesus wasn't going to come live with us and be his new little brother, he was born a long time ago and this was just his birthday. But K was still suspicious.

We had K christened in the Catholic church, in accordance with our pre-marriage agreement that we'd raise the kids Catholic. I told JW I'd cooperate, but he was in charge of the kids' religious upbringing. My only stipulation was that they be taught to respect other people's beliefs, and my un-Catholic hope was that they would also question the idea that what they heard in church was the capital-T Truth. (Partly because I think it's dangerous to blindly believe what you're told, and partly because I don't think you can honestly respect other people's beliefs if you're not willing to allow that they might be true.) But with one lapsed Catholic parent and one atheist parent, K has so far grown up in a religious vacuum. I tried dragging him to the local UU church a few times, but gave up because he was so resistant (and JW wouldn't come, so I spent the whole time running after K trying to coax him to cooperate), and I can count on one hand the number of times he's attended church (all holidays, plus his own christening). When he comes across a reference to prayer in a book, or God, he has no idea what it means. He asked me what "pray" means once and I told him it meant being grateful for what you have and wishing for good things to happen, especially for other people. But we haven't had a real conversation about God yet. I feel like telling him "some people believe this, other people don't" diminishes genuine faith, and I don't want to sow the seeds of disbelief so early. At the same time, I don't want to be a hypocrite. I don't believe in God and dislike many things about established religions. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and hopefully he won't be proselytized as much as I was as a kid. There are a lot more dark-skinned people around where we live than where I grew up.

So. Back to Christmas. We woke up and snuggled in bed together. K kept mentioning that as one of his favorite parts of the day, and JW and I were happy that he would rather snuggle with us than run downstairs and tear open his presents. K got a remote-controlled car, a remote-controlled helicopter, and ten little Matchbox cars. I gave him a bunch of new books, which he has declined to read. Santa gave him a toy Mater (from the Cars movie, which he refuses to watch because it's too scary, and yet asks for the toys by name) and a Batman book. Santa also left him a little scavenger hunt around the living room and kitchen. After initially being annoyed that he had to read on Christmas, he loved it and said he hoped Santa would do that every year. (The scavenger hunt literally took me five minutes to put together. For that effort-to-delight ratio, I'll definitely do it again next year.) X got a new toy to chew on and a gift card to Carter's for some non-hand-me-down clothes. I made sweet potato cinnamon rolls, but as usual I didn't put enough goo in them or enough glaze on top. Next year I swear I will follow the recipe. K and I played outside by the creek.

JW repeatedly tried and failed to get K to watch "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas," to the point where it moved beyond just K annoying Daddy and became a running joke. Earlier today K turned to me and said, "You know what I like?" "What?" "You," he replied, giving me a kiss. "You know what I don't like?" he continued. I grinned and we both said at once, "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas!" "Seriously, though," I told him, "how do you know you don't like it if you won't even try watching it? Why won't you watch it? It would make Daddy so happy." "If I see Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas," he replied, "I will DELETE IT." Seems to me that the logical next step is to repeatedly tell him that baby Jesus wants him to watch Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas.

The trip down here went amazingly smoothly. So smoothly that we're bracing for disaster on our return home tomorrow. I will be a little surprised if we don't stagger in the door soaked in our children's bodily fluids. Maybe it'll be a Christmas miracle.

Next year I'm pushing for a family holiday cruise. No cleaning, no cooking, we'll hand the kids off and drink margaritas by the pool. Now that sounds like a vacation.

X and K update

2011-12-20T16:22:00.001-05:00

X had a doctor's appointment last week. He weighs 21 pounds! He shot up from 15th percentile in height and 30th in weight at his last appointment, three months ago, to 50th in height and 70th in weight. No wonder he outgrew his 9 month clothes so quickly.

X is now honest-to-goodness crawling, belly up off the floor. True to form, though, he does not crawl unless he has to. Instead, he wants to walk, walk, walk (holding my hands). Yesterday as we walked around and around the house, we kicked a red ball in front of us and he laughed every time it went rolling away.

K is enjoying the pre-holiday festivities (especially his chocolate Advent calendar). We went to a friend's cookie-decorating party over the weekend and he created Technicolor cookies drowned in so much frosting you couldn't pick them up without getting covered in it.

I proudly reported to my parents that K is reading everything in sight, from signs to cereal boxes. K overheard and said, with a perfect Yogi Bear inflection, "You are totally right, Mommy. I read everything I see!" He never liked to flip through books on his own for fun, and he never pretended he was reading when he had actually memorized the book. I thought all little kids did that. But now he sits there and reads on his own, and since he whispers the words to himself I can tell he's actually understanding what he reads. Often, after sounding out the words, he'll go back and read the sentence again ("Happy... birthday... shout... shouted... Pooh. 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY,' shouted Pooh!") I love that.

Recently I was part of a conversation with two older women who were talking about how things are so much harder when your kids are teenagers. They both agreed that their kids went through a phase where they seemed like they hated the parents and were so difficult to be around. One woman whose kids are grown now reassured the other, whose kids are currently teens, that it's all worth it when they come back in their twenties and thank you. The whole conversation made me grateful for my two cute little guys. Once in a while I tell K I have to get lots of hugs in now, because in ten years he won't want me to hug him so much. He always says, "Don't worry, Mommy. I'll still want lots of hugs!" I would put it in writing, but we all know that 4-year olds don't have the capacity to enter into a contract. Because in ten years he'll be a different person.

Brass ring around your neck

2011-12-14T17:15:00.001-05:00

Last night I emailed a partner around midnight with a document he had asked me to review. He wrote back five minutes later. This morning he responded to the usual hi-how-are-you with his usual grin, as he replied, "Exhausted! I feel terrible." Not that midnight is an atypical time for us to be working. I'm guessing it wasn't his first late night this week and it won't be his last.

This is an impolitic thing to say, but with the exception of one person who doesn't have kids, all the junior partners I know often seem like they're about to snap from stress or keel over from exhaustion. I have a hard time seeing how I'm supposed to aspire to be them.

Playdate

2011-12-12T17:42:00.000-05:00

At K's playdate yesterday, he emerged from the closet where he had been hiding and wailed, "Kaden scratched my ear!" His friend's response was to run away to the corner, yelling, "I didn't! I didn't do anything!" K came to me, crying, and I led him out of the room while Kaden's mom talked to him in the closet.

K's ear was fine. He was mostly upset because of his friend's reaction. "What if you were playing and your friend suddenly said you hurt them? How would you feel?" He considered this. "Bad," he replied. Ordinarily I would go farther with this and ask him why. But I know what K would say. He would feel bad that he hurt his friend. Instead I replied, "Maybe that's how Kaden feels. Sometimes when we do something wrong by accident, we feel bad about what we did, and we also feel scared that people will be mad at us." He understood, stopped crying, and started playing by himself, occasionally trying to get his friend to join in. His friend took a long time to calm down, but K was patient and eventually the two boys were running around laughing again.

Later, K's grandmother told me that she had been pretending to cry about something silly, and K laughed at first but then got worried and said, "Grandma, you're joking, right? Are you really sad?"

Sometimes I wish K weren't so sensitive. I see so much of myself in him and that was not a trait that served me well during my childhood. But I also love how caring he is. He'll need that emotional maturity when his friends are making fun of him for refusing to watch the terrifying Cars movie.

Baby on the move

2011-11-26T21:05:00.001-05:00

Remember that baby who never bothered to roll over and was content to sit in one place for ten minutes at a time? That baby has been replaced. The new version yells "RAAAAAA!" which is my signal to come over and hold his hands, enabling him to toddle over to his destination. He generally makes a beeline for the next toy. If we don't get there fast enough, he lets out a mighty roar of protest. X is not that steady on his feet yet -- although he did stand for a few seconds unsupported today -- but it doesn't stop him. Unlike K, who seemed surprised and a little tentative with his first attempts at walking, X motors ahead, his lower lip jutting out and his eyes on the prize.

He army-crawls too, but this is clearly not his preferred mode of mobility. He will only do it with a specific purpose that cannot be met as quickly by walking. We were at my parents' house over the weekend (also present: my in-laws, who promised to come every year; JW's grandmother, whose presence was a welcome surprise since she's increasingly housebound; my aunt and cousin; a friend of the family who we haven't seen in a long time, and who my mom once upon a time tried to "introduce" me to; my sister-in-law's parents; family friends who come every year, and are like family; and of course my parents, brother, sister-in-law and niece). Whenever the big kids were playing with a toy together, X would crawl over as fast as his little arms would pull him. The big kids would move away, annoyed, and he would pursue them.

We've been procrastinating, but it's time to babyproof.

Inner grammar nerd versus the SEC

2011-11-21T21:36:00.001-05:00

Filing a Form D online. The form is asking me for "Issuer's Identified in the Filing."

REALLY, SEC?

Good to be a woman

2011-11-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I tell K, "You're lucky you're a boy."

For instance, I have told him this in response to:
"How did you get the baby out?"
"Did you just stick something in your underwear?"
"You're joking, right? You're NOT JOKING? You PAID someone to RIP HOT WAX OFF YOUR FACE? WHY???"

Yesterday my brother told me about a lecture he was planning for his medical residents. He's going to open with a long example about urinals and the various heuristics for choosing the right one. I've never given urinals much thought, not having to use them. But today, when I walked into a bathroom stall at work, I thought, Women don't have hangups about choosing the right stall. And then I thought, But if I had to be right next to somebody, and we could see each other pee, then I'd care a lot more. So, I may pay someone to rip hot wax off my face, but least I don't have to see anybody (aside from my offspring) pee.

Bowling party

2011-11-13T15:22:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, K and I headed over to Lanes and Games to attend one of the three Stars Wars bowling parties simultaneously happening there. I only recently discovered the joys of candlepin bowling, which, if you're not a New Englander, involves cylindrical pins and a small, light ball. Perfect for little hands and people with chronic wrist problems.

We're all familiar with little-kid soccer. A swarm of kids chase the ball, all trying to kick it at once, and occasionally tripping over each other and falling down. (Except my kid. He's the one malingering at the other end of the field, inspecting an ant.) As it turns out, little-kid bowling is similar. At any given time, there were at least three children hovering over the ball return. When a ball came out, a kid, any kid, grabbed it and immediately ran over to the lane and heaved it in the general direction of the pins. After five seconds of monitoring the ball's slow progress down the lane, they would run back to the ball return. About one in ten balls bounced off the metal bar that was clearing the pins and returned to the children, often hitting some of the other balls on its way. It was more like large-scale billiards than anything you would think of as bowling. The kids did manage to rack up some impressive scores. Ten pins are no match for twenty balls.

After a few frames, if you could call it that, K announced, "I'm done with Lanes. I'm ready for Games!" He grabbed my hand and we ran to the arcade room. We played an unsuccessful game of pinball, with each of us controlling a flipper. Then I introduced K to air hockey. I tried to let him win, but he wouldn't cooperate. He didn't care, though. He laughed with glee every time he hit the puck. After our game, he played one of his friends. While the friend's dad was watching them and nudging the puck when it got stuck in the middle, I snuck off to play pinball by myself.

IT WAS THE LONGEST AND MOST AWESOME GAME OF PINBALL EVER. Lights were flashing! Multiple balls were shooting out and ricocheting around! I even triggered a mini-pinball game a few times. PINBALL WITHIN PINBALL. I got so into it that I ended up neglecting K for nearly ten minutes after the boys went back to the Lanes. I can't remember the last time I've had that much fun. And I realized, how sad is that? There are many things in my life that I enjoy and that make me happy. But I honestly can't remember when I last had fun, extended, laughing, excited fun. The kind of fun K was having while playing air hockey. I have fun moments with K, but they're quickly ruined when he either demands something or wants to reenact the moment fifty times.* (Today we had the following conversation: "Say that and then tickle me again. Why aren't you laughing?" "Because it's not funny anymore." "Why?" "Because after a while, when you do them over and over, things stop being funny." "Why?")

Another thing that happened yesterday: Around 6:30, I was giving X a bath. I called JW in and said, "Can you take over? I feel like I'm going to pass out." I proceeded to do just that. I thought I was just lying down for a minute until I felt better, but at 9:30 I woke up just long enough to take off my jeans (pockets still full of tokens, as I discovered when I did laundry today) and didn't wake up again until a quarter to six the next morning. I thought I'd be refreshed, but I just felt worse. Late nights working, early mornings with the kids, a perpetually sick baby who has passed on his colds -- I've only been back to work for two months and I already need a vacation.

* Edited later to add: On further thought, it's not at all fair to say K ruins every fun moment we have, or to say that I never have fun at all. I've been missing out on a specific type of fun, the playing air hockey, riding a roller coaster, WHEE! kind of fun. So maybe I'll just go back and use all those tokens that I fished out of the dryer.

Please sir, may I have another

2011-11-07T23:16:00.000-05:00

I just got a call from a partner saying that I need to make some final edits to a document when the partner is done looking at it, in about an hour.

X was sent home sick today. We're taking him to the doctor tomorrow morning. He has not been healthy in about two months. Which, probably not coincidentally, is about the length of time I've been working since my maternity leave.

I woke up with a raw throat yesterday and today. Even after stopping nursing, I just don't have the physical stamina I used to. With a baby at home, even with JW taking care of a lot of the childcare duties, I find it much harder to stay up all night working and still be able to concentrate the next day than in my pre-baby days. I get almost no work done over the weekend since I'm running after the kids and doing the chores that didn't get done during the week.

I wish I had a job that did not require constant availability, and did not come with the expectation that I would work nights and weekends. I wish I could come home and just be home. Does a job like that exist, that also pays enough that we can afford daycare? I've been applying for the odd in-house job here and there, but I don't think I have the experience yet.

I know there are worse problems to have. Still, I need to start developing an exit strategy.

X at 8 months, and Halloween

2011-11-04T12:10:00.000-04:00

X has a new cold, but this is a normal baby cold and not the wheezing RSV thing, so we can deal with it. I am feeling much more human these days now that I'm officially done with nursing (the last time was about 6 days ago) AND X is sleeping through the night most of the time. Hooray for getting older! X is also making his first crawling preparations, getting almost-but-not-quite up on all fours, and transitioning between that position and sitting. And he has taught himself how to clap.

K has been candy-obsessed all week. "Can you guess what my favorite is?" he said. "It starts with an S." I know he likes fruity, chewy things. "Skittles?" I guessed. "Starburst? SweetTarts?" No, no, no. "Snickers?" No. Finally I thought back to trick-or-treating and remembered what he was most excited about. "SpongeBob Gummy Mini-Sandwiches!" "That's right!"

I rushed home and made it for about half of the trick-or-treating. I was so excited to see X in his tiger costume, the same one K wore when he was a baby. K and his friend from next door laughed and ran in front of us, racing to each door, while we trailed behind, calling, "Not that house, the lights are off! Don't forget to say thank you!"

K has let me eat one piece of his candy each day. Lucky for me he doesn't like peanut butter.

Oatmeal

2011-10-26T16:10:00.001-04:00

I keep packets of instant oatmeal in my desk. I skipped lunch and I'm hungry.

But I don't FEEL like eating oatmeal.

But if I'm that hungry, then I'm hungry enough to eat oatmeal.

I hate it when things I repeat to K in my mommy voice come back to bite me.

Drying up

2011-10-19T10:19:00.000-04:00

My milk supply has plummeted lately. I've never been an efficient pumper -- in twenty minutes I typically produce under four ounces. Lately it's more like two.

I've been using the weekends to nurse X frequently and get my supply back up. But since he's been sick and congested for a few weeks now, he hasn't had that much of an appetite and it's been hard for him to breathe and nurse at the same time. For the past few days he's refused nursing altogether. If I offer him the breast, he either looks away or bites me. (With his tooth!)

I could try to pump even more, but I don't think I'm up for it. I'm so tired all the time as it is, and swamped at work. (And I'll be honest, I hate pumping.) He's already on formula -- we were doing about 2/3 milk and 1/3 formula when I started working, then we slipped to half and half, and we're now approaching 1/3 milk and 2/3 formula. I think I'm going to throw in the towel.

One reason I wanted to stay home with X for so long was that I was committed to nursing him, and was hoping to go past the 8 months that K lasted before he self-weaned. I thought my supply would stay up for longer after I got back to work, since for six months I breastfed almost exclusively (the last few weeks, he started eating solids and getting one bottle of formula a day so we could introduce it before daycare). But just like last time, as soon as I stopped nursing throughout the day, my milk production started to shut down.

I feel like I should be happy to be free from the pump, but I'm a little sad that this part of my relationship with X is ending.

It looks nice but it is itchy

2011-10-18T09:44:00.000-04:00

Staying at the office all night is no fun.

You know what's worse? Staying so late you have to pump in your office in the middle of the night.

You know what's worse than that? Staying at the office all night and having to pump at midnight while wearing an itchy sweater.

It wouldn't have been so bad except for the itchy sweater. I didn't anticipate wearing it for so long.

The good news is, X's breathing has improved, and all the itchy sweaters and midnight office pumping sessions are no big deal compared to my baby getting better.

A partial list of emotions

2011-10-17T09:06:00.002-04:00

(I didn't remember writing this, but found it in my Drafts folder from over a year ago, when I was recruited for another job that I was considering taking. I didn't publish it at the time for obvious reasons. But I was feeling very conflicted for the reasons below, plus a big one I didn't include in this list: Wanted to get pregnant soon.)

Flattered that someone wanted me

Unwilling to start over somewhere new, when I'm finally getting my feet under me

Disloyal to The Firm, especially my mentor who I feel has invested in me

Worried about what people in The Firm would think

Intrigued by the idea of experiencing a new place, especially one that seems more aligned with my interests

Excited once I found out about the type of work they want me to do

Ecstatic at the thought of not having to do any more routine administrative corporate work

Annoyed and resentful that the thought of a new opportunity made me start acknowledging any dissatisfaction with my current job

Unmotivated to make any long- or even medium-term commitment at work

Worried that I'm passing up valuable opportunities at work because I'm anticipating something that might not happen

Questioning whether a new job would be taking a step in the right direction, and what that direction even is

Inaugural trip to the ER

2011-10-16T21:18:00.001-04:00

X started coughing nearly two weeks ago. At first we thought it was a little cold. K had a runny nose and was coughing a little too. But X didn't get better.

This week he started wheezing. The pediatrician said he had a bronchial infection and prescribed antibiotics. But after several days, X still didn't get better.

This weekend he was upset and didn't want to be put down. His wheezing and coughing got worse. He rejected my efforts to nurse him and bit me several times when I tried. (By the way, he got his first tooth!) After I wrote yesterday's post about how he is so independent and doesn't want to be held or picked up at night, he spent the entire night sleeping on top of me and periodically waking up screaming. We haven't done that since he was a newborn.

I called our pediatrician again and he told me to take X to Children's Hospital. He said X would need an inhalation treatment. I tried not to panic, but I've never been to the ER for any reason, or set foot in Children's Hospital. To me, going to the ER means you're dying, and going to Children's means your kid is dying. It's the best pediatric hospital in the country and people whose children are seriously ill fly to Boston to take their kids there. I called my brother, the ER doctor (or, to be medically correct, the ED physician). He reassured me that my pediatrician had said to go to Children's because they would have the necessary expertise and equipment to deal with babies, and said that since X's illness hadn't responded to antibiotics it was probably viral and would have to run its course. He said X would probably benefit from an albuterol nebulizer to loosen up his airways (similar to an asthma inhaler) and if that didn't work, they might be able to try a steroid injection.

Our experience at Children's was surprisingly pleasant. It's obvious they put a lot of thought into making the experience as clear, smooth, and comfortable as possible. I expected to be waiting for hours in a room full of crying children, but we were shown to our own exam room right away. We did wait a while and stayed a total of about five hours, but people kept coming in and out to look at X and talk to us, and I felt they were moving his treatment along. In the end, what my brother said was spot on -- they concluded it was viral bronchiolitis and they couldn't treat it, but did the nebulizer and sent us home with an inhaler. They also did a chest X-ray and confirmed that it looked fine.

I talked to my brother again in the evening. When I mentioned the X-ray, he said that he almost advised me against it in advance, because it was unlikely X had bacterial pneumonia and if the X-ray had looked bad they would have admitted him and pumped him full of antibiotics just in case. He asked why I sounded worried and I said it was because X seemed to be getting worse and worse. "He'll get better, right?" I asked. "Of course," he replied, sounding surprised. "Bronchiolitis is not permanent. It'll clear up eventually." That made me feel better. We all just have to get through this.

Brothers

2011-10-15T09:07:00.002-04:00

People always ask me whether X and K have different personalities. For whatever reason, they like hearing that the answer is yes. X has a personality to match his executive look. K is more sensitive and more active.

K wants to hold my hand while we eat dinner, and often comes over mid-meal for a hug. Before I got pregnant, he was constantly asking to be picked up and carried, and he still likes to be carried when he can get away with it. He says "I love you" every five minutes. X doesn't mind snuggles, but mostly he likes being carried around for mobility purposes. The second I sit down, he's outta there. Probably more as a function of his age that his personality, while he likes us, he doesn't seem to care that much whether we're around.

When K was a baby, I would spend long nights holding him and pacing up and down with him to calm him down. X does not like to be picked up when he's sleepy. It actually makes him cry more.

When K was a baby, it took him a very long time to realize that he wouldn't starve if I did not feed him the second he got hungry. He'd start crying while I was fumbling with my nursing clothes, and I'd have to calm him down before feeding him. If X sees that I'm taking some steps toward feeding him, like walking upstairs, he waits and only complains if it seems like I've forgotten about him. In general, X gives ample warning before he gets really upset.

K does not like to play by himself, and if you suggest it, he protests, "But then I will be LONELY." X can play independently for long stretches.

K likes me to do things for him, like put on his shoes or feed him the last few spoonfuls of soup. When K used to lose his pacifier at night, he would yell, "PAFA" or later, "PACIFIO!" until JW or I eventually got annoyed enough to come give it back to him. At 7 months, X likes to hold his own bottle and can recover his own pacifier and get it back in his mouth. I anticipate a lot of "Do it myself!" as he gets older.

K asks for help. X perseveres on his own. He will keep reaching for something until he falls flat on his face.

K was always wiggly. As a baby he was always practicing his next motor skill, and as a little kid he's always running around and climbing on everything. X is not nearly as active. He is content to sit in one place for long periods. When he does make a leap in motor skills, it seems very intentional, even though this may be unlikely given his age. For instance, K would roll over and over until he rolled out the door. X can roll, but rarely does, preferring to be upright. K would try over and over to stand up and to pull himself up until he was eventually able to do it on his own. X is now starting to get interested in standing up. But he doesn't make the same efforts K did. He just refuses to bend his legs when I try to put him down.

K is cautious. I never had to worry about him getting into dangerous situations that he wouldn't be able to get out of, and I can give him free rein when we're outside. I don't know yet what X will be like on this front, but I suspect he may be a little more reckless than his big brother. I can see him being so focused on doing something that he doesn't stop to consider whether it will get him in trouble. But we'll have to wait and see about that.

I love K for his sweetness, silliness, and energy, and I love X for his independence, calmness, and patience. And I hope that the words "Why can't you be more like your brother?" will never escape my lips.

Fall

2011-10-14T11:10:00.001-04:00

(A poem by K)

Leaves fall from the trees,
Rabies is a disease.

Columbus Day 2011

2011-10-11T14:10:00.000-04:00

My third Columbus Day holiday ever. The last two were serene, golden days spent walking hand in hand with K, kicking leaves, and listening to street musicians play. This one was... not.

X is still sick and is sprouting his first tooth. He was in a good mood about half the time and spent the other half yelling and hitting me.

K has been extra-demanding lately, and to add insult to injury, after I spent the entire day running after him and playing with him until I literally passed out, his account of his day when Daddy came home was, ""Watched a video, then ate breakfast... played with my friend... and that's it."

I got an hour of respite when K went next door to play. X napped for part of the time, and then I had a little alone time with him. A friend called for parenting advice the second I put X down for his nap. (I love giving any kind of advice, but I'm not sure why she thinks my advice will be any good. Hopefully she has other advisers too.)

We had some nice moments, like when we played hide and seek. I started making noises to help K find us, and X laughed and gave us away. Then K and I kept trying to make him laugh with funny noises. The magic of baby laughter works even on 4-year olds. We had fun at the playground together in the morning, and went out for ice cream in the afternoon. But there were also plenty of times when I caught myself thinking, "Is it Tuesday yet? When do I get to go back to work?" Thank goodness I'm not a stay-at-home mom.

Sometimes I think K needs more one-on-one attention. But then when I try to give it to him, he can never get enough. He sucks up all my energy. I feel so annoyed when I just spent an hour playing with him and the second I go to do something else, he starts in with, "MOMMY. HEY. MOMMY. PLAY with me." I don't know if it's him or me, or both. Maybe I am just grumpier than usual. I'm tired all the time. Maybe he's just going through a phase. Maybe it's X. He never complains when I need to go care for X, but maybe he feels like when he does have my attention, he needs to latch on to me and never let go.

In the past few weeks

2011-10-07T21:54:00.001-04:00

Work has gotten crazy. I closed a deal for one of our largest clients today, and started diligence for their next deal. And the circle of billing continues. I'm still enjoying it, except for the late nights. I don't have the physical stamina that I used to, since I'm still nursing and X is not consistently sleeping through the night (and the nights he does, K gets up).

The boys have both developed colds, plus conjunctivitis for K. Luckily they both managed to stay in school all week, thanks to a well-timed prescription from my doctor brother.

We traveled to NY for X's mukhebhat. This is a Bengali ceremony that is supposed to be the first time the baby eats solid food. (In practice, not really.) "Mukh" means "mouth" and "bhat" means "rice". A tray of different types of food is set in front of the baby, and the uncle feeds the baby rice. Then the baby gets to choose from another tray an item that is supposed to represent his future calling. Traditionally this tray holds a pen (representing learning), a book (religion), dirt (agriculture), and money (money), plus whatever else the family wants to add. We had a magnifying glass, a calculator, and my mom took off her gold necklace and tossed it on the tray at the last minute. X immediately grabbed the gold coins and necklace, and was startled at the resounding cheer. Now we know which one we should be nice to, so he'll take care of us in our old age. K picked the dirt and the pen, so he'll be of no use to us.

JW has begun campaign season. Politics is his passion, and every year from September through November he has nonstop strategy meetings and campaign events. He's been plotting a way to try to do it full-time.

My parents came for the weekend and took care of the kids while JW and I went on our annual getaway. We had planned to go the weekend of our actual anniversary in August, but we got hurricaned out. It was supposed to rain all weekend on Cape Cod, but we got lucky with just a few drizzles. We walked on the beach out to the lighthouse, hiked in the beech forest, visited art galleries and bought a painting for K's room, had a cocktail in a window-walled bar at sunset, and ate delicious South African food while slightly drunk. (And returned to our room at the B&B in between these activities to pump.) It was lovely to be together without the kids for 24 hours.

The kids got their school pictures taken. Most are similar to all the other pictures of the two of them: photogenic K looks like he could be a child model, while X looks skeptical and a little confused. But there is one picture where X is actually smiling! We are getting so many copies of that one.

K started soccer. It's going well. He likes the drills more than the scrimmage. Two of the kids are much bigger and more experienced than the others, and they each score six goals while all the other four-year olds are hopelessly chasing after the ball and running off the field for hugs and snacks.

(I would provide illustrations for each of these anecdotes, except our photos are all on JW's computer. Don't you think in this day and age, it should be brainless to access our pictures from anywhere?)

We have had so many plumbing issues over the past few months that I joined our plumber's "Gold Club." They came out today to look at a leak, and they're coming back next week to put in a new faucet. I knew the clawfoot tub would be trouble.

Partly because of the plumbing issues, I ended up working from home for a few days this week. It was kind of awesome. We're not really supposed to work from home during normal working hours, but I forwarded my phone and nobody even noticed. I got to skip the commute, wear sweats, and watch TV while I pumped, and I still billed plenty of hours. I'm more efficient at home. I think it's because I'm so conscious of all the other things I could be doing that I want to finish my work as quickly as possible. At work I feel like I'm stuck in my office no matter what, so it doesn't matter as much whether I'm being industrious or procrastinating. It's not like if I finish early I can go home.

And now we're preparing for the three-day weekend. For the past couple of years, Columbus Day has been a beautiful respite from work and a chance to bond with K. We'll see what it's like this year with both kids.

Robotic spy baby

2011-09-21T14:30:00.003-04:00

Recently I read an article somewhere that reminisced about a classic home ec assignment: caring for an egg as a baby stand-in. The author confessed that their egg cracked well before the week was up, but added (paraphrase), "Don't worry, your eggs are safe these days. Most high schools now use robotic baby dolls that provide instant feedback if, for instance, their 'parent' holds the bottle at the wrong angle, and transmits the information to a central server. Students' grades reflect the collected information."

I can't be alone in finding this horrifying. First of all, I doubt that MOST high schools use this system, but the ones that do should focus on teaching their kids sex ed and reading skills so they can wait until an appropriate age to have babies and can read "What to Expect" their own selves. Those high schools should then take the money they saved and give it to the neighboring school district, where the school committee spends its time figuring out how to afford new textbooks instead of pondering whether robotic babies are superior to eggs in teen parenting simulations.

School resource issues aside, can you imagine if that kind of data was collected about your interactions with your real baby? If every time you screwed up, a computer somewhere was keeping track? Forget holding the bottle at the wrong angle. Today, while taking the baby out of his carseat and juggling bags on the way into daycare, I bumped his little head right into the doorknob. X wailed for a minute or two while I hugged him and apologized, and then he calmed down and went about his business. He'll never remember that. Thank goodness nobody is recording it in a long list of mommy transgressions and grading my parenting skills.

Our daily routine

2011-09-20T17:31:00.004-04:00

Our pre-baby daily routine:
5:30 If I'm good, get out of bed and exercise. If not,
6:30 Open my eyes to see K standing next to the bed, staring at me.
6:45-7:15 K watches a TV show while I make his lunch, pack his bag, and get dressed.
7:15-8:30 Breakfast. He takes forever.
8:30-9 Get dressed, play.
9-9:30 Walk to school, drop-off.
9:45-7 p.m. Work.
7:30 Arrive home, wolf down whatever dinner I can grab on the way upstairs, give K a bath and put him to bed.
8:30 Eat a little more, get back to work on my laptop.
11 If I'm lucky, go to bed. First email the partner I'm working with to make sure I'm done for the night.

Our post-baby daily routine, so far:
6:00 Wake up, feed baby.
6:30 K gets up, watches a TV show while I hang out with X and prepare breakfast. JW gets ready and goes to work.
7-7:45 Breakfast. X gets finger food, which he manages to get into his mouth about 2% of the time. K gets told over and over, "Please sit in your seat and eat your breakfast."
7:45-8 Get everybody dressed and ready, head out to school.
8-8:30 Drop-off.
9-5:30 Work.
5-6 JW picks up the kids and fixes dinner.
6-8:30 Have dinner and put both kids to bed. X needs to be actually asleep by 7. K should be asleep by 8, but usually that's when we start reading.
8:30-9:15 Wash the bottles and pump parts, prepare lunches, pack up everything for the next day.
9:15-10:30 Free time. Do work, clean up, go grocery shopping, make phone calls, pay bills, watch TV, read, hang out with JW.
10:30 Collapse. JW feeds X a bottle.

This works great, except for one thing: I've only been back at work for a week and my workload is unusually light. I haven't been staffed on any deals yet and haven't had to bring much work home. If I could always be at work from 9-5:30, life would be easy(ish).

The adjustment has been harder on JW than on me, I think. He went from basically no mandatory childcare or house responsibilities to handling the most difficult time of day with both kids on his own. I keep getting frantic calls from him asking what he should make for dinner. (He also has this thing about actually cooking every night. I don't care if we eat clean-out-the-fridge salad, leftovers, or spaghetti and frozen meatballs for dinner, but he feels like he hasn't done his job.) I've had to be more regimented in the morning and spend time preparing at night, but other than that, returning to work hasn't been as much of an adjustment for me as I expected, thanks to my currently light work schedule. I'm dreading that call assigning me to some huge acquisition.

My baby only wears Prada

2011-09-19T14:30:00.001-04:00

I got a 35% off coupon code for Gap.com. (If you go to their website, they are having a "surprise sale" with a random amount off each time you visit.) But 35% off a $20 onesie is still way too much money for something my kid is going to poop on in a week. I am always shocked at these designer baby clothes that cost $20 and up for a single item. Then again, both of my kids were champion spitter-uppers, and maybe if you have a sweet little girl who sits quietly and isn't constantly emitting bodily fluids and trying to shove her dress in her mouth, it makes more sense to buy nice clothes.

I went to the consignment store last week to buy X some pants. (Consignment store and yard sales: $3 and under per item of clothing. If a $1 onesie gets hopelessly stained, I throw it out.) I was surprised that a basic pair of printed cotton pants cost the same as a pair of nice khakis, but the owner informed me, "They're ZUTANO." The store only had two pairs of pants in his size, so X is now the proud owner of designer baby pants. Which he will poop on.

A Bargain for Frances

2011-09-18T22:45:00.001-04:00

We stopped at Food Books on the way home from my parents' house. (Apparently it's really called Traveler Restaurant, but we always refer to it as Food Books because they have a huge sign visible from the highway that says:

Traveler
FOOD
and
BOOKS

) This is our regular stop on the way home, and we all look forward to it. While waiting for our food, we go around and look at their selection of books, and K usually chooses a few to bring home. You get three free with your meal.

Today we scored a book called "Be Polite" with Grover on the cover, and "A Bargain for Frances" by Russell Hoban. I am not that crazy about the Frances books, at least not for this age. I like "Bread and Jam for Frances", but I think many of the books have somewhat negative messages that K is not quite ready to process. For instance, I got "A Baby Sister for Frances" before X was born, but we didn't end up reading it because half of it was about how Frances hated her baby sister. The idea that K should hate the new baby or feel jealous never occurred to him, and I didn't want to put the thought in his head. In "A Best Friend for Frances", Frances and her friend Albert and her sister Gloria are all pretty mean to each other, even though it works out at the end. In "Bedtime for Frances", Frances eventually goes to bed to avoid being spanked.

So I wasn't sure about "A Bargain for Frances." As soon as we started reading it, though, I realized that even though I didn't recall reading any of the Frances books as a kid, I definitely read this one. I didn't remember what happened, but I remembered so many details about the story that I must have read it dozens of times. It's about how Frances' friend tricks her into buying a tea set, and then Frances tricks the friend into buying it back. Like most of the Frances books, all the meanness is resolved in the last few pages. This wasn't enough for K, who dislikes reading about or watching any kind of real-life conflict. He only likes conflict in terms of "bad guys", and hates it on the rare occasion when I try to talk to him about how in real life, there are no "bad guys" and if you shoot someone you can hurt or even kill them. So we will probably pass on "A Bargain for Frances" to someone else.

Second week back

2011-09-17T22:47:00.000-04:00

Still ramping back up. Right now my workload is approximately one-third of what it usually is. Which is good because on the two nights I've brought work home, I have not been able to concentrate on it for longer than an hour. After an hour my brain turns off and I collapse into bed, praying that my children will both let me sleep until morning.

People keep asking me how I'm adjusting to being back. I have given up trying to have an answer for this. Work will change, home will change. I'll get put on a giant deal and never come home for two weeks. The baby will get sick. I'll think there's no way I can continue doing this. Then the baby will get better and my schedule will lighten up. I'll make it home for dinner every night for a week and think everything is fine and why would I ever give up my awesome job (except, of course, for the billable hours).

For now, I'm trying to stop thinking about what our schedule should be like and what I need to do with my career. When X turns one, I'll reevaluate. Near the end my maternity leave, I became convinced that coming back would be a disaster and I signed up for some legal job search sites. I even sent in applications for a couple of in-house positions. But I think I'm going to focus on my current job for a while and try to make it work. Next year I'll have more perspective on my current situation, and more experience in case I do need a change.

Pants problem

2011-09-16T11:13:00.000-04:00

I am finally at peace with my post-baby body. Probably because I don't have a lot of time to spend contemplating it. I read some bogus study recently about how the amount of time you spend grooming is inversely correlated with your salary. Well, I have literally gotten my morning grooming/dressing routine down to two minutes. That's right, two minutes from spitup-covered pajamas to makeup, office-appropriate clothes, and jewelry. Watch out, Warren Buffett.

Unfortunately, my wardrobe is not cooperating with my newfound self-acceptance. I'm a size larger than I was pre-baby. I have exactly two pairs of pants that fit me right now. I can get by with skirts until the weather gets cooler, but then I'm probably going to have to suck it up and lose the weight. Or buy and hem new pants. I'm not sure which would be more painful.

First week back

2011-09-09T20:47:00.000-04:00

Back to reality. One (short) week of work done.

The good news is that I remembered why I like my job. Interesting work, great people, always something new. Plus my fabulous office and salary, both of which make the late nights and stress a lot more palatable.

The bad news is that with two kids at home, I'm just not sure how much longer I can do this. I know that I'll be less exhausted once X starts sleeping through the night and once I stop pumping, both of which should happen within the next six months. Even so, my hours are completely unpredictable and largely beyond my control. We managed before, but now that we have a baby at home, it seems unfair to make JW handle the double-kid chaos at dinnertime and bedtime every day. And missing bedtime most days, like I was doing pre-baby, means the only time I have with the kids is when I'm hustling them through their morning routines and out the door.

I know we all like to be cheery and optimistic about handling our careers and our families. But I'll be frank. I don't think my practice, where I'm at the beck and call of clients and partners and every day brings a new fire drill, is compatible with having a family. I'm not planning to jump ship immediately, but maybe sooner than I had planned. I'll see how it goes over the coming months.

Trial separation

2011-09-02T22:50:00.000-04:00

X's first two days of daycare went fairly smoothly. They reported that the first day he was happy, the second day he was fussy. Both days, he basically ignored me during both dropoff and pickup. Being reunited with his brother, however, elicited eager stares, huge smiles, and belly laughs.

I missed him. I was always a little annoyed when people used to ask me if I missed K after I went back to work. I'd just smile and say, "No, he's happy and I'm happy," but I'd be thinking, look, I love my kid and I love my husband, but that doesn't mean I want to be attached to either one of them 24-7. But when X was gone, I missed his soft head and cute smile and kicky legs. Maybe because I got to spend longer at home with X. When I went back to work after having K, he was just coming out of the newborn stage and frankly I was glad to get out of the house.

Anyway, I wasn't lonely because K was home with me both days. He missed his first two days of pre-K after being sent home with a fever. Luckily, he responded well to ibuprofen and was in a good mood both days. Today he even played by himself while I got a haircut. (He wasn't really sick today, but wanted to stay home. I warned him that he had to cooperate for all sorts of errands and entertain himself during my haircut, and he lived up to his end of the bargain much better than I expected.)

I was hoping to get a day to take care of work preparation stuff (get through my inbox, get my phone fixed, iron my clothes, do all the outstanding home errands, stock the fridge, etc.) and then a day to relax, but it looks like Tuesday is going to be my get-stuff-done day. And then... back to real life.

And the summer ends

2011-08-31T14:59:00.001-04:00

I've had about a dozen blog posts in my head over the last week and a half, but none of them made it through my fingers. So, highlights:

- Today is my last day with X! He starts daycare TOMORROW. I return to work next week. Feeling sad about this, but it had to happen some time.

- X has learned to turn over both ways, and can sit up unassisted for up to a few minutes.

- X is sick for the first time ever. It's just a little cold, but the congestion is bothering him.

- I've been sleep training him, and have been making progress. The key seems to be giving him a big dream feed around 10 or 11 p.m. He's slept through until 6 a.m. a few times!

- K is moving into the pre-K class at school, WITHOUT his two best friends. He loves his teacher and is a little upset about moving. He'll also start soccer in the fall, with one of the two missing friends.

- We bought a new (to us) car! A Volvo wagon. We're donating our ancient Nissan Maxima.

- Last week was our ninth anniversary. Our weekend getaway to Cape Cod didn't happen, thanks to Hurricane Irene. ("Mommy, we didn't have a hurricane. It was a tropical storm." Got it, K.) But we did have a lunch out with X on our actual anniversary, and a date night the next day involving live music and beer.

- Assorted stories:
1. When deciding what to put in K's teacher's thank-you package, I suggested a bottle of wine. K chuckled and said, "I don't think she'll be wanting that."
2. K closed the closet door on his finger. I asked what he was looking for in the closet and he sobbed, "I wanted to look in the mirror to see if I was handsome."
3. I attended the Harvard Mediation Program's annual potluck, where I had a long conversation with an older attorney who declared biglaw inhumane. As I left, I said, "Nice talking to you," and he replied, "Get out as soon as you can!"

The sumo wrestler

2011-08-20T10:19:00.000-04:00

JW's mom has a wallet with four spaces for pictures, just enough for her four grandkids. For a long time there were four pictures of K in there, until the other three arrived in the space of 13 months. When she shows off the pictures, she points to each child in turn and says, "My grandchildren: the Sumo Wrestler, the Brainiac, the Tornado, and Miss Priss."

The Brainiac is K, despite his assertion this morning that "when you recycle boxes, they get crushed up, and then they go to Santa, and Santa gives them to the elves, and the elves make stuff out of them." (Like what? "Like milk bottles and milk pumps." So my instrument of torture comes from Santa and cardboard boxes.)

The Sumo Wrestler is X. X is only in the 35th percentile for height and weight (although considering he hasn't pooped in six days, his weight percentile has probably increased) but his chunky thighs are something to behold. We had to stop using the Bumbo seat because he would get stuck in it. I had to push his thighs down to fit into the little holes, and when I tried to pick him up the entire seat would come with him.

X seems so much bigger and more solid lately. I feel like one day I'll turn around and he'll be a little boy.

Friday cuteness

2011-08-19T11:14:00.001-04:00

First time eating solids

Visit to the Bronx with cousin M

In the Exersaucer while Mommy cooks

The best picture I will ever take of my boys. (Using my phone!)

It is what it is

2011-08-18T10:03:00.007-04:00

A neighbor told me she was about to have some time off because her work contract was up. She asked when I was going back to work. When she saw my face, she immediately said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to make you think about it!" "Three more weeks," I replied. "I guess it couldn't last forever. I can't complain about a six-month leave, right?" She shrugged. "Work... it is what it is."

As meaningless as that phrase usually is, somehow it made me feel better. It is what it is. We need the paycheck. It's good for me to build up my skills. The baby will be fine. I won't get to see my kids as much. I'll be stuck in an office all day. Work is something that grown-ups do.

I confessed to my mother that I was dreading going back. She said, "You can't stay at home all day. You don't learn anything. You don't do anything. You don't get out into the world. You just cook and clean and run after your kids." I countered that you can have a full life if you're a stay-at-home mom -- you can volunteer, you can get involved in your community. She replied that if you don't work, you're limited to doing the types of things that don't require specialized knowledge or skills. Things that anyone can do if they put in the time and energy. And it's not everyone who's willing to put in the time or energy, so I wouldn't discount those activities, but she's right. The volunteer activities that I've filled my time with this summer -- joining the board of a local foundation, mentoring student entrepreneurs -- are activities that I can do because of my legal skills and experience. And that's sort of how I'm looking at my work right now. As I learn more and get more experience, I'm becoming more valuable as a resource to others. I'm training myself for the future. I love advising people and being involved in my community, but no one wants your advice if you don't know anything special. When I imagine myself twenty years from now, I want to be an expert on something and to be able to contribute that expertise in some useful way. As cute as the baby is and as much as I love spending time with my kids, that alone won't get me there.

People always say how on your deathbed, you won't wish you did more work, you'll wish you spent more time with your family. But does that really mean that your non-family accomplishments ultimately have no value? Don't tell me if you were a Supreme Court justice but you never had kids, you're going to look back with regret. Or if you devoted lots of time when your kids were young to charity work, even if it often took you away from home. Or if you created a successful business with happy employees. Or if you invented something really useful. Obviously, the people you love have to be a key priority in your life. But I don't believe that in the end, nothing else matters. If everybody just tended to their own families, where would we be?

Challenges of the week

2011-08-17T10:00:00.003-04:00

1. Exercising every day. I'm not demanding too much of myself here -- twenty minutes or more, just to get back into the habit.

2. Learning how to play "The Entertainer" on the keyboard. I've been at it for days and I still suck. X doesn't seem to mind.

3. Eliminating X's 3 a.m. feeding. This is the big one.

For a long time X didn't have very consistent sleep patterns -- he'd wake up once, twice, or three times, and not always at the same times. It seemed like he was moving toward waking up once a night, around 3 a.m. But for the past couple of weeks, it's been 11 and 3 every night, meaning he's feeding every four hours around the clock. I know he's big enough now that he should be able to miss a feeding with no problem, so my goal is to give him a dream feed and not feed him again until the next morning.

The first two nights I managed to delay him for an hour or so, but ended up feeding him. The first night I unlatched him the second he stopped actively eating, and the second night I only nursed him from one side and then put him back to bed. Last night I was in his room from 3:30 until 6, but when the sun came up I declared victory. He went from 11 to 7:15 without eating! And unlike the first two nights, I didn't have to take him out of the crib to soothe him (which is counterproductive because then his face is right next to the food source), even though I lost track of the number of times I gave him his pacifier, swaddled him back up, and patted and shushed him back to sleep.

I'm hoping he'll catch on and stop waking up for that feeding. Meanwhile, I'm probably in for a few more sleepless nights.

A partial list of places I have nursed X

2011-08-11T13:34:00.002-04:00

A bowling alley

Ikea

The Museum of Fine Arts

Langdell Library at Harvard Law School, 4th floor reading room

The library

In the car
McDonald's at a highway rest stop

The steps leading to our garage

Restaurants

Various parks and outdoor festivals

On a bench in the bus station

The most rarefied place, I'd say, was Langdell. The reading room is one of my favorite places in the world and you need a Harvard ID to get in, so neither JW nor K has been there with me before (except K in utero). I wheedled my way up there on a hot day when I was hoping to work on an article during X's nap. Of course, he woke up five minutes later. He was calm, but the library was so quiet that his goos echoed around the room. After feeding him, I walked him around the Caspersen Room, which houses a rotating display of legal exhibits. He was very impressed by Roscoe Pound's desk.

The worst place was easily the bus tunnel. Flying solo, I took both kids on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Boston. That was a little too ambitious. This nursing adventure ended up with me pulling X off, grabbing the stroller and K's hand, and running for the bus.

Five months (for real)

2011-08-05T15:15:00.000-04:00

Dear X,

At five months, you are my calm and mellow baby. You gurgle and goo and look around with interest, but we rarely hear you cry unless you need something. You love bright colors and are happy in an art gallery or flower shop. You are solid on your feet and can sit upright for a few minutes at a time if you're propped up, but you seem to have no interest in turning or rolling. When you're on your back, you just lie there unless something catches your eye, and when you're on your stomach you lick the floor and cry. You like meeting people and dole out one big smile per new person, but when your brother is around you laugh and laugh. I can make you laugh, but it requires a lot more effort and the only foolproof way is to kiss you from your toes all the way up to your head.

You started solid foods this week, and you took to them right away. By the second day, you were already finishing up your oatmeal and wolfing down an entire jar of sweet potatoes. (That's right, I said jar. I tried the homemade baby food thing last time and I'm not going back.) I'm trying to break you of your habit of sticking your fingers in your mouth and then into your eye while eating. (Why into your eye? You never do that when you're not eating.)

People keep asking who in the family you resemble, and whether your personality is like your big brother's. You know, when I see you I don't see anyone else. And none of what I wrote above describes K as a baby. You are definitely your own little person and we look forward to getting to know you better.

Lots of love,
Mommy

5 months (almost)

2011-07-26T21:37:00.000-04:00

Doctor's appointment today: X is 15 pounds, 11 ounces. He's up three pounds and three inches from his 3-month appointment. The redness on his face is eczema, not just a drool rash like we thought, which explains why he claws at his face whenever he gets the chance. (Poor X inherited that from me. In hot weather, it takes all my self-control not to scrape the skin off my arms.)

The boys have been getting along very well. X's favorite person in the world is his big brother. When K is around, the baby just watches him and smiles and laughs. K enjoys playing with him and chanting, "What a cuuuuute baaaaby." K has also appropriated most of the baby toys and has endowed them with various superpowers. Unfortunately, K's favorite person is still me, so I can't fully exploit him to entertain the baby while I get chores done. I would love it if the baby's worship of his brother were mutual, Lag Liv style.

Last week I became a trial member of a local gym that has childcare. I've been going almost every day. I like the idea of being a gym-goer, and this place has a pretty serious clientele. Watching others at the gym, for the first time I'm beginning to understand what people mean when they say they "work out" (as opposed to running on the treadmill for a while and doing some stretching and situps). But I'm not sure if I'll manage to keep up this habit after my maternity leave ends, and the gym is pretty expensive. I probably won't continue after the one-month trial.

I also became a member of the MFA, and spent a rainy morning there wandering around with X. I hope we'll go back at least once more before my leave ends. We left a lot of the museum unexplored.

We spent the weekend at the in-laws' house. K splashed in the lake the entire weekend. This is the same boy who cried because his face got wet at his swimming lesson. I'm glad he got over that quickly.

Best news of this week: X can start daycare at the beginning of September! So we don't have to cobble something together (yay!) and I can start work on time (ambivalent).

Solo weekend

2011-07-17T22:04:00.005-04:00

I spent the first few days of the week hanging out with X at home, napping, practicing the keyboard, taking walks around the neighborhood, and recovering from our week out of town.

By Thursday I needed to get out of the house, and went to a playgroup run by our town's Family Network. It was good to get out and see people. Even though X screamed the second I put him in the car and didn't stop until I released him from the seat in both directions, as usual, at least the ride was only four minutes long. X was the youngest one there. I struck up a conversation with the two other moms of babies, but then they started competing about whose kids drank the least juice and I wandered away. I sat under a tree with a few moms and little kids until X started to squawk.

On Friday I was a little bolder and hopped a bus to Harvard Square. I didn't have a clear aim in mind, but when we got there I decided to take X to the Sackler Museum. (The Fogg, which displays modern art, would have been my preference but all the Harvard art museums are being renovated and they only have a small portion of their combined collections on display at the Sackler.) To my surprise, he LOVED it. I have never heard him babble so enthusiastically as when we were walking around those galleries. And as soon as we stepped into the stairwell, he would stop.

JW had to spend the entire weekend working, so it was me and the kids. Yesterday, we stuck around because X was having digestive problems and spent most of the day screaming. We played Hose Sprayer Man in the driveway, took a walk to count satellite dishes in the neighborhood (K hates taking walks unless there is some purpose, like collecting leaves or counting snails or dishes), and tried to help a neighbor find a lost dog.

Today I thought we could go to the MFA, where they have this Chihuly glass exhibit I thought K would love. (Also, they have air conditioning, which I would love!) But by the time we got it together, it was already 3 p.m. and the museum closes at 4:45. So we decided to have an adventure instead. We took the T into Boston and went to the playground at Boston Common. That part was great. The next part, not so much. It was such a hot day and there's a movie theater close by. I suggested we go see the Pooh movie. I told K that if X started to fuss we'd have to leave, but I hoped X would sleep through it. We ended up leaving with a crying child, but not the one I expected. The previews and commercials terrified K, especially a Sprite commercial where a guy's face breaks apart and turns into robotic parts. (Hello, theater manager! This is a movie for three-year olds about a bear who walks around the woods with his friends in search of honey!) At least we got a refund. X screamed all the way home and I ended up nursing him on a bench in the bus station, then pulling him off and running for the bus. Two separate kind women helped me get the stroller on and off the bus.

Other weekend activities: playing and playing and playing with K (who likes to give directions like, "You come down the stairs and say, 'Where's K?' Then you go in the living room. When you hear me laughing, say, 'Who is making that laughing noise?' Then come sit on the couch and pretend you don't notice me and I'm a pillow." K complains that his grandparents, who tend to go off-script, "don't play right"). De-scaling X's head. De-spidering K's playroom. Having the neighbors over for dinner and grilling something all by myself for the first time ever! (More or less. JW took the meat off the grill when I got distracted by K's potty emergency.)

And now it's Sunday night and as usual I'm wiped out and looking forward to Monday. When I'm back to work, what will I look forward to? I have a feeling life will be unremitting exhaustion.

Someone sent a message to one of my parent mailing lists advertising a room in a sunny Cambridge three-bedroom apartment to share with two other female grad students for $600 a month. I keep thinking about that for some reason. It just sounded so nice and simple. I know this is what we wanted, the kids, the big house in the nice neighborhood, the fancy jobs. I wouldn't give up the kids, of course (although it would be awfully nice to have grandparents nearby), and I know the rest is optional. But sometimes our lives seem so needlessly complicated.

Seven qualities we want for our kids

2011-07-12T22:46:00.003-04:00

I'm reading the excellent book Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids, which applies the principles of nonviolent communication to raising children. The central idea is that both parents and children have the same basic needs, including autonomy, respect, love, play, and health, and that parents and children should mutually respect each other, listen for the basic needs behind the requests and statements we make, and work together to meet each other's needs. We should avoid blaming, calling names, making demands, and issuing ultimatums -- even though these are accepted parenting techniques, when we use them we set a bad example and make our kids less likely to cooperate in the long term.

The book discusses the "Seven Keys to Cooperation" in detail. The first is "parenting with purpose", meaning that you should clarify your purpose in raising your children before figuring out what actions to take. At first I thought, doesn't everyone have the same purpose in raising their kids? But one of the exercises challenges you to list seven qualities that you most want to see in your children when they become adults. Thinking about this, I realized that most parents would have at least slightly different lists. Here is mine:

1. Compassion, for themselves and for others.

2. Integrity: an internal drive to do what they feel is good, right, and just.

3. Open-mindedness: willingness and desire to consider all points of view, to learn from unfamiliar people, places, and ideas, and to change their minds.

4. Critical thinking: thinking deeply, questioning, and analyzing issues.

5. Confidence: feeling secure that they are loved, worthy, and can work to accomplish their goals.

6. Generosity: willingness to give of themselves, to friends, family, strangers, and causes, within appropriate boundaries.

7. Silliness: not taking themselves too seriously and making room for a little whimsy in their lives.

What's your list?

Update:

Here's a list from The Reluctant Grownup.

On the next page, the book asks you how you can demonstrate these qualities to set an example for your kids. As I reflected on this, it struck me that these are all qualities that I have and value about myself. Many that I considered but that didn't quite make the list of seven -- including creativity, humor, and a sense of adventure -- are qualities that I wish I had more of and would love my kids to have, but that I guess I don't consider essential. (After all, how can they be essential if I don't have them?) So this is really a list of the best of me that I'd like to pass on to my kids, and I would guess that's true for most people.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

2011-07-11T14:29:00.001-04:00

TGIM! K is at school, X is napping in his crib, and all is right with this little corner of the world. Our 10-day trip was fun, but it's good to be home. A quick recap:

Friday: Drove to Grandma and Grandpa's house, stopping on the way for lunch. K stayed awake the whole way, a first. X did not, thank goodness. (We have to time our trips around X's naps. If he is awake in the car, he screams and screams. I had several conversations with members of JW's family in which I revealed this fact and they kept repeating, "But babies love the car!" Throughout the 10-day trip, this refrain kept echoing in my head as X screamed so hard that he made himself sputter and cough. Babies love the car.)

Saturday: 4th of July parade in town, K's favorite event of the summer because the passengers on antique cars, floats, and fire engines throw candy to the kids. Our last time having prime seats on the porch, since the house on the corner is being sold after 100 years with the same family.

Sunday: Big family dinner. I can't imagine not having these one day, even though JW's parents keep making noises about retiring somewhere warmer.

Monday: JW returns to Boston, I stay on with the kids. Before he leaves, we hang around JW's grandmother's house for a while, and then go to a cousin's beach where K forgets he hates being wet and has fun splashing around.

Tuesday: With much protest, K goes with me, X, and Grandma to Adirondack Animal Land, where he feeds goats and deer. (K is such a pain in the ass about going anywhere, even though he has a good time once he gets there.) I cook dinner and Grandpa actually likes it, instead of just politely eating it and declaring it "interesting". Yay!

Wednesday: I ditch K and take X to town for a trip to the antique store with JW's aunt. (My first time driving by myself up at the in-laws'!) We all get soaked in a sudden thunderstorm. JW returns at night, after the kids are in bed.

Thursday: Drive to Dida and Dadu's house (my parents), stopping to visit JW's grandmother on the way. When we get there, we find a family of rabbits in the backyard (once we saw a fox!). K rides his scooter around, helps water the flowers and fill the bird feeder, and tracks ants.

Friday: JW and I get to have a date night! We do our usual: dinner, bookstore, bar (coffee place was closed). I observe many perfectly gym-toned women who have nevertheless squeezed themselves into short dresses a size too small for them, along with five-inch heels, and men who use "fuckin'" several times in each sentence. It's Long Island all over.

Saturday: Into the city for my niece's third birthday party! In preparation, my mother obtains about forty pounds of fruit from Costco and spends the party pushing fruit salad to everyone who walks in.

Sunday: Four destinations before we finally leave for home: two friend and new-baby visits in Brooklyn (one with my HLS buddy PBB, and one with an old friend whose baby is one week younger than X but has about three inches and three pounds on him); a trip to the Central Park Zoo with my brother's family and a high school friend (who just set his wedding date for next spring!), where K is terrified by the 3D Dora and Diego video; and one more visit with Nonna in the Bronx. K is a trouper through all of this, and X doesn't do too badly either.

The kids got some quality time with both sets of grandparents and other family members. And I'm glad we got in multiple visits to both great-grandmothers, who are having some health problems. JW's paternal grandmother had unwittingly been taking a double dose of her medication, resulting in nausea and disorientation. She was feeling better by the time we left, but everyone was concerned about her mental state and what dose she should be taking, if any. JW's maternal grandmother is recovering from a major heart attack. When we rushed to see her a few weeks ago, we all thought we'd be attending her funeral. The doctors said it was a miracle that she survived after her heart stopped for twelve minutes. But each time we see her, she seems markedly improved both mentally and physically, and now there's even talk of her going home this weekend.

And now it's the middle of the afternoon on Monday and I've been grocery shopping and playing with X and catching up on my blogs. Less than two months of maternity leave left. For now, life is good.

Four months' perspective on work

2011-07-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

The first few months after X was born, I was so relieved and happy to be home. I was filled with anxiety over my eventual return to work. All the late nights, the billable hours, the stress. I have no idea how I'm going to make it work with two little kids at home, especially as I get more senior and the expectations ramp up.

Two things have recently made me realize my perspective on work has changed after being out for a while. First, we learned that we didn't have daycare lined up until mid-October. I asked the daycare to let us know if a spot opened up earlier and added, "Even if it's sooner than we wanted, let us know -- I'll just go back to work earlier." I feel more ready to go back now. I'm comfortable leaving X with someone else at this age, and I feel like I should be contributing to the household budget again.

Second, I pulled out my lawyering skills at a meeting of the foundation I joined recently. The day before, I spent a few hours going through all the documents I had, putting together a brief memo of my thoughts, and emailing it out to the committee. At the meeting, everyone had a copy of my email in front of them and referred to it throughout to frame the discussion. Even though I was new to the group and to the issue, I felt prepared and was able to contribute to the discussion, make some points I thought were important, and clarify our action items. I wouldn't have been able to do this a few years ago. I feel I've developed into a good lawyer. I can pick up a new issue, study it, analyze it, and make a reasoned recommendation. Posts like leo's and But I do have a law degree's summarize some of the things I hate about biglaw and confirm that it's unlikely to be a long-term career choice for me. But I've gotten excellent training, done interesting work, and worked with really smart and good people over the last few years. I've never dreaded going to work in the morning. I genuinely like my job, and if it weren't for the billable hours I might never want to leave.

I'm still loving maternity leave, and I still think going back will be difficult, but I'm getting closer to being ready each day. I hope I can return to work without losing this perspective -- that I can enjoy the good parts, do my best, and let the stress and anxiety go a little.

Routine

2011-07-01T08:02:00.000-04:00

After a horrible night during which X woke up every two hours, and needed so much calming that I'd end up spending about an hour in his room each time, I decided it was time to have a set routine for X. He is four months old now and according to my baby bible of choice, The Baby Whisperer, he should be eating every four hours and taking two 1.5-2 hour naps each day. Instead of eating every two hours and being up for an hour and down for 45 minutes throughout the day, and then waking up at all hours during the night.

I haven't entirely succeeded yet, but I have gotten him to consistently (except at the end of the day, when he gets really hungry) wait about 3.5 to 4 hours between feedings and consolidate some of those short naps. And I've been writing down when he eats, sleeps, and poops, which has made things easier, despite JW's efforts to thwart me.

We're now approaching a week that involves three 4-hour car trips and probably three different sleeping locations, none of which are home. We shall see how the routine fares.

Bottle feeding

2011-06-30T10:49:00.000-04:00

Getting K to take a bottle was a priority because I had to get back to work at 12 weeks. When he was just a few weeks old, we'd make sure to give him a pumped bottle every day. He never had a problem with it.

With X, I had such unpleasant memories of pumping that for a while I hoped I could just be there for every single feeding, or give him formula on the rare occasion that I couldn't, and then wean him at 6 months when I went back to work. I guess we could still do that, but I've become more reluctant to give him formula -- the one time we did, I was up half the night with him helping him work out some digestive issues. So I'm back to pumping.

We tried giving him a bottle every day starting when he was about six weeks old. No problem. So we'd let a few days slip here and there, when I didn't feel like pumping. But then days turned into weeks, and eventually we realized he hadn't had a bottle in over a month. It turns out four-month olds are not quite as adaptable as six-week olds, so we battled over that for a few days.

A few days ago, JW proposed taking over a night feeding so I could get some sleep. I've resisted that suggestion before because I feel like his sleep is more important, since he's working. Besides, I was worried that I would become so engorged that I'd need to wake up and pump anyway. But my milk supply is more stable now and I was dead tired, so I agreed. I pumped a bottle and, after a fight, he got the baby to take it. And you know what? After that bottle at 12:30, X slept until 6:15 the next morning! The next night I took JW up on his offer again. This time, X cooperated with the bottle at midnight, and didn't wake up until 5 a.m. (Of course, K woke up both nights around 2 or 3 a.m. Our children are conspiring against us.)

I knew better than to assume X's long sleeps would be a pattern, but it definitely seemed like a good thing. I decided to keep giving him a nighttime bottle, thinking that I could control the amount he ate to make sure he'd get enough to sleep for a long while, and that not getting the breast might discourage him from waking up so much at night. So last night, I gave him a 5 ounce bottle at 1 in the morning and happily went to bed, hoping to not wake up until the next morning. (I had reminded, reassured, and threatened K before bed to discourage him from wandering into our room at 3 a.m. again.) But X woke up at 3:30 crying, and then at 4:30 screaming, and then at 5 I had to feed him. JW had given him 4-ounce bottles, so I thought 5 would be plenty. But maybe it wasn't enough, or maybe it was the fact that I, the food source, was the one attending to him at night again.

Tonight I'll try again with a bigger bottle. No rest for the weary.

Daycare for X

2011-06-23T12:47:00.000-04:00

X has been on the waiting list at K's daycare. I haven't really looked around for other options, assuming we'd get in because they give priority to families who already have kids there. Today they called and said they have a spot open... in mid-October. About five weeks after I'm scheduled to start work.

It's possible that something will open up earlier, and they said they'd call me if that happened. But we need to think about how to cover those five weeks.

We could do temporary care at the Bright Horizons near work, if they have capacity in September. I'd have to commute with X, but the nice part is that he'd be right downstairs.

We could try to get a short-term nanny, or see if the family next door with a nanny would be willing to let us drop off X at their house.

My mom might be able to come. She stayed with us and took care of K when he was a baby, and I know that she was looking forward to doing the same with X. (I know this because shortly before X was born, my sister-in-law called and said, "If you don't want your mom to live with you all summer, you might want to give her a heads up.") She's still working, but she is sometimes able to take long leaves. On one hand, it would be kind of tough having her here -- we have a good relationship, but it's always hard having long-term guests. On the other hand, it could be kind of awesome. My whole first month back at work, I wouldn't have to worry about drop-offs and pick-ups and getting the kids ready in the morning.

These things are always so complicated.

Business trip, New York trip, and home again

2011-06-21T22:14:00.002-04:00

Wednesday morning was my first board meeting for the community foundation. I'm excited to get involved, even though it's already turning out to be more of a commitment that I anticipated. Every day I get at least a few emails requiring my attention, and next week there's a committee meeting to discuss a complicated legal issue.

JW left for OmaHAAAA on Wednesday afternoon and returned Friday night. Wednesday night we went to the neighbors' house for dinner, Thursday I had friends over for dinner (and abandoned them for about forty minutes while putting the kids to bed), and Friday we recovered. X became uncharacteristically fussy while JW was gone -- do you think he's old enough to actually miss his Daddy? I think he's old enough that he's starting to prefer his parents to other people, or maybe he's just more used to us.

Saturday we attended an outdoor birthday party for one of K's classmates, immediately followed by an outdoor town party sponsored by the foundation, immediately followed by us loading the kids into the car and driving to New York. JW's grandmother is in the hospital and the family converged on the Bronx to visit her. We spent most of Sunday and Monday at her house, taking turns going to the hospital (the kids were too little to come). Which reminds me, I need to learn about assisted living facilities and other end of life and elder care issues, partly because I want to be able to help or at least understand what's going on, and partly because I know I'll have to face this one day with our own parents. Anybody know of any good resources?

All day Sunday I felt even more like a zombie than usual, after driving half the night on Saturday and then staying up the other half of the night with X in my brother's Manhattan apartment with glaring lights, sirens, and horns going all night. Sunday night we stayed at my parents' place on Long Island and I got to sleep in until 9 a.m. Then I took an hour and a half nap with X in the afternoon while JW was at the hospital. I had another Flowers for Algernon moment -- for the rest of the day, I actually felt human again. I even drove back home without my eyelids drooping once. But then we went to bed around 11 after arriving late, and I woke up at 11:30 to feed X, 1:15 because K's radio alarm had gone off for some reason and a sports radio guy was shouting at him about Albert Pujols, 3:30 to feed X again, briefly at 5:30 to give JW a shove and ask him to check on the baby, and then up for the morning at 7. At least I didn't have to get up for good at 5:30 like I did when JW was gone. But that awake feeling went away so quickly. This morning JW told me to put cream on the rash on X's left cheek, and I just stood there staring at the baby trying to figure out which side of his face was the left. X is around 15 weeks old. Most women are back at work already after taking their maternity leave. How do they do it? Hardly any babies sleep through the night at this age. I haven't recovered my short-term memory and my brain is functioning at maybe 80%.

Games K likes to play

2011-06-15T10:13:00.003-04:00

Car Superheroes (with his toy cars from the "Cars" movie, which he only saw the first two minutes of before deeming it "too scary"). The red car is Lightning the Queen, with lightning power; blue is Ice Car, with the power to encase other cars in ice; yellow is Color-Changing Car, with the power to change the color of other cars, making them confused; and green is Pear Car, with the power to shoot pears for people to eat. Pear Car originally shot fireballs, but I asked K to make it something less violent. Pear Car can team up with Ice Car to make pear popsicles.

Superhero Family. K's powers vary, although he is always fond of the power to shoot blocks of ice. Daddy is No Pants Man, with the power to make people wear shorts. Mommy is Dessert Girl. X is Super Baby, with the power to nap. I am always tasked with thinking up scenarios requiring the entire Super Family. For instance, someone was bringing cake and ice cream to a party, but he fell and the cake and ice cream smashed all over his pants. No Pants Man can give him some clean shorts, while Dessert Girl and Ice Man work together to recreate the cake and ice cream. Super Baby cooperates by napping through all of this. Or a simpler scenario: someone's pants are on fire and he's really hungry.

The "I'll Eat My Hat" Game. We take turns saying something ridiculous, and the other one says, "If [something ridiculous], I'll eat my hat." For instance, "I'm going to take X back to the baby store and trade him for a monkey." "If you trade X for a monkey, I'll eat my hat."

Rock Band (not the video game -- he likes that too, but our drum set has been broken for a while). When someone points at you, you have to be the singer.

Pirates. Follow the pretend map and dig up the hidden treasure. The map must require you to walk on a tightrope at some point, and to jump in a hole or into a pipe.

Scary Goats. I chase him around making goat noises. (This game originated when K ran away from me and jumped on to the couch with Daddy, yelling, "A scary ghost is chasing me!" Daddy replied, "What's so scary about goats?")

And finally, not exactly a game, but he loves telling knock knock jokes, some standards and some he makes up himself. One day, a long time ago, he came home with one from school: "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Mr. Yama." "Mr. Yama who?" "Mr. YamaHAAAAA!" We had no idea why this was a joke, but the delivery was hilarious and it became a standard in our house, along with variations ("ObamaHAAA!"). It turned out the guy who plays music at their school on Fridays has a Yamaha amp and he tells this "joke" when it's time to pull out the amp. Today when JW left for his business trip, K asked where he was going. "Omaha," I replied. Then K and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, "Knock knock."

The Intelligent Entrepreneur

2011-06-13T12:25:00.001-04:00

I just finished The Intelligent Entrepreneur by Bill Murphy, Jr., which tells the stories of three Harvard Business School grads who started successful businesses. The book breaks down the stories into ten rules of entrepreneurship, including "manage risk" and "learn to sell". The stories were engaging, even though the rules sounded like the standard advice for entrepreneurs.

One thing I found interesting was that two of the profiled founders identified coming risks well before they happened and took drastic measures to mitigate those risks. In one case, the founder noticed some volatility in the sales data in her stores and predicted that this would increase in the next year because of a bad economy. She immediately curtailed her expansion strategy, angering her investors and having to cancel existing contracts in the process. In the other case, the founder of a subscription-based business noticed that the number of declined credit card payments had tripled, even though it was still in the single digits. He had been in the middle of hiring and the company was making record profits, but he instituted deep cuts and a major round of layoffs. Both turned out to be good decisions, even though they were extremely unpopular and came at a time when the companies appeared to be doing very well. And both came about because the founders were carefully monitoring and analyzing all sorts of information about their companies and their markets.

Another interesting point was a quote from Marc Cenedella, CEO and founder of TheLadders.com, who said that he considered himself a volunteer because he chose to stay with his company instead of cashing out. He said that if most his employees left the company, they would get a job somewhere else, but if he left he could spend his life lying on a beach somewhere. He stayed with the company purely because of his passionate commitment.

I've been reading a lot of articles and books lately that suggest that everyone should aspire to be an entrepreneur. Manage your own schedule, create your own environment, pursue your passion, choose to be committed every day. But I just don't think I have that drive and that passionate commitment, and I'm not sure that most people do. I enjoy advising startups on legal matters because even though I don't see myself as the visionary type, I love being in a position to help the person with the passion and the vision. The idea of working for myself is appealing in theory, though. Maybe one day I'll find the right cause. Meanwhile, I'm happier on someone else's bandwagon.

Remembering what I used to know

2011-06-11T22:05:00.005-04:00

I am not a pack rat. I'm generally in favor of getting rid of anything that we don't anticipate wanting in the next few years, or that can be easily reacquired. But I do keep my old notebooks from high school and college. Once in a while I pull them out and marvel at all the things I used to know. Is that really my handwriting on all those pages of calculus equations and that exam on computational theory? Was that really me who took the train to Boston to read Charles Darwin's original letters for my fifty-page paper on women's science education in the nineteenth century? Did I seriously read all that Shakespeare when I was sixteen, and write pages upon pages analyzing it? And how come I can't remember any of that stuff now?

I volunteered to informally mentor some student entrepreneurs from my alma mater. This week I had my first phone call with the team that won this year's pitch competition. They said they wanted to talk about an initial investment and what their term sheet should look like. The night before, I did a little reading to refresh my memory. At first I couldn't believe how much I had forgotten in only three months, but after a while it started coming back to me. On the call, I was relieved that my experience kicked back in and I was able to flag and explain a bunch of issues they hadn't thought of. Which is as it should be, since I've worked with dozens of companies in the past few years and they're undergrads thinking about their first venture. Still, I feel like I have some catching up to do before returning to work.

This morning I had to do some more quick reading. The nonprofit board I joined had some questions about a large gift they had received, and after ten minutes of skimming through some emails and trust documents, I found myself on the phone with another longtime board member and attorney debating about variance powers. Thank goodness I spent those long nights last summer getting a local private foundation up and running, so I actually knew, more or less, what I was talking about.

It was good to use my brain again and to remember what I've been learning for the past few years. But remind me not to take on any other obligations over the next few months. I had to decline two farm outings with friends because I had conflicting meetings. Isn't that sort of missing the point of maternity leave?

In other news:

Twice this week, X only woke up once during the night. Hooray! And most of the other nights he woke up twice around 1 and 4. He has been pushing up and twisting. Any day now he's going to turn over. X has learned to bat the hanging objects in his play gym and has become acquainted with Iggy the Baby-Nibbling Iguana. He continues to be easy-going and happy, and a good eater and napper, making my maternity leave very pleasant.

K has a band-aid on his knee and has been telling everyone the sad story of how he fell. K can now read simple sentences on his own. He is back to counting snails every day, now that they're out of hibernation, and distinguishes between regular snails and "snail friends" (the ones at our house). This week he has been obsessed with the song "That's What Friends Are For". After watching the video on YouTube over and over, he first pretended he was Elton John (because Elton John is "super fancy") and now he likes to pretend he is Stevie Wonder.

JW is heading out of town for a few days on business this week, leaving me alone with the two kids for three nights in a row. I'm sure it will be fine. I envy him a little for being able to take off like that.

This week I went to the gym for the first time in a year. Today was my third day straight of working out. It may not sound like much, but I tend to get into ruts of not exercising and eating poorly, and then I have to snap out of them and resolve to get into good habits again. So three days is a good start. I don't know why it's so hard to maintain an exercise habit. I always feel good when I exercise regularly -- I have more energy, I feel happier and more optimistic, I feel proud of myself, I feel stronger and more flexible, I fit into my clothes better and feel better about my appearance. So why do I have to struggle to get myself to exercise, and why do I get out of the habit so easily? And why is it so hard to resist eating sugary foods, which make me feel crappy in just the opposite way that exercise makes me feel good? I never had a problem with retail therapy or being attracted to the wrong people, but this is my personal brand of self-destructiveness. I'm always hoping that one of these days I can make the good habits stick. At least I always keep trying again.

Sunday

2011-06-06T10:52:00.001-04:00

Morning: Made popovers, played on the porch with K, took a nap with X.

Afternoon: K's first lesson did not go swimmingly. He spent most of the time sitting by the side of the pool.

The highlight of my day was going out to pick up the pizzas we ordered. BY MYSELF! I realized it was the first time I'd been out of the house without the kids in a week. I could go out by myself after the boys are in bed at night, but by then I'm tired and it's the only time I get to talk to JW. I met someone in the neighborhood who is between jobs and said she was interested in babysitting. Maybe I'll call and see if she can come once in a while during the day so I can get out on my own.

My other weekend activity was organizing my clothes. Pregnancy turned my usually organized closet into a mess, since my size kept changing. Now that I'm nursing and in the process of losing the baby weight while the weather is getting warmer, my closet is even more of a jumble. So I took everything out, along with the boxes in the attic, and sorted it all into piles. I ended up with a huge pile of clothes that are old and pilly and I never liked much anyway, and about eight pieces that I really liked and was glad to see again. Once I get back to my normal size, I need to go shopping more often to buy clothes that I actually feel good about wearing, instead of buying whatever fits and is work-appropriate. No more navy blue cardigans.

Neighborly weekend

2011-06-04T22:08:00.002-04:00

Yesterday lunch with the next-door neighbor didn't happen. Her kids were sick and she asked to postpone until next week. Instead, when I went out with X to bring in the trash can, I ran into another neighbor out with her kids and we stayed outside chatting for a while. Then a third neighbor who was on her way home pulled up in her car to exclaim over the babies and remind us both that she had offered to babysit. She also made my favorite X comment to date: "He's quite a buster!" I love our neighborhood. I'm so glad we moved.

This morning every kid on our street was out to investigate the loud trucks that appeared at the end of the street, so we had a few more encounters. After spending most of the morning playing on the porch or wandering around the block with the kids, I headed out to the bus stop with both boys in tow. Boston recently had a controversy over whether the MBTA should require strollers to be folded up on the bus, and many self-righteous people complained about moms blocking the aisle. To those people I say: suck it. If I'm blocking the aisle, it's because nobody will let me through and there's nowhere else I can put my kid. It's definitely not because I think it's fun to keep a death grip on the stroller, trying to stop it from sliding when the bus lurches, while I simultaneously try to soothe my crying baby, wrangle my 4-year old, and not fall down.

Oops, little sidetrack there. Anyway. We went to the Cambridge River Festival, where we somehow stayed for four hours and did very little. It took a while to get there because K got distracted by rocks. Since he was old enough to throw rocks into the river, it has been his favorite activity. Once at the festival, we listened to jazz for a while and I nursed and changed X. Then we ran into some friends I hadn't seen since they had their 8-week old baby. We swapped birth stories while K whined about wanting a snack. (Her, with horrified look on her face: "It was excruciating!" First kid.) Then we sat there for about forty minutes while K tackled a Hawaiian shave ice larger than his head. And finally, we took the bus home, which as you can tell was the best part of the day. I guess the whole thing was more fun than stressful, but it was close.

Tomorrow: family togetherness and K's first swimming lesson!

Memorial Day week

2011-06-03T15:00:00.003-04:00

Friday night we were supposed to leave, but we got a call from Grandma saying her power was out. We delayed until the following morning, and I was glad because I hadn't quite finished laundry and packing and the baking I had promised to do.

Saturday morning was our first long car trip with X. We had to stop a few times, but it wasn't too bad. K was amazingly patient -- even when X was screaming, he just looked sympathetic instead of getting upset. He loves visiting Grandma and Grandpa, and he's been so good with X lately. He stared out the window for a while, slept a while, and we played games to get us through the final stretch.

Saturday afternoon the family arrived for the traditional birthday dinner (JW and two other family members all have birthdays around then). My contributions were the apricot almond tart from Joanne Chang's Flour bakery cookbook, which I've been baking my way through for a while now, and this strawberry cake. I was surprised that the cake was not that great, but discovered after the fact that I messed up by putting the berries on the bottom and batter on top instead of the other way around. The tart, which I made without the top crust or the slivered almonds that are supposed to be sprinkled on top, was a huge hit and I promised to make it again for the 4th of July. Even though everyone protested any changes, next time I'd use more frangipane, less jam, and I'll add the almonds and the top crust.

Sunday, JW and I drove down to a barbecue with some of his high school friends. We brought X, who obliged by either napping or grinning at everyone, delighting the wives. (This party consisted of lots of orthopedic surgeons, their wives, and the three of us. I asked one guy, "Aren't there any female orthopedic surgeons?" He shrugged and said it had always been a male-dominated field.) K stayed behind and had a great time splashing in the lake with JW's cousins and their four kids. It was lovely being relatively kid-free adults for a day, hanging out on a friend's deck, drinking a beer and laughing. The wives, who were all young and cute and wearing little sundresses, were reassuring the one pregnant one among them that even though everyone says that your life is over when you have kids, that's ridiculous. And then they all looked at me and frowned, because I wasn't joining in. "Having kids is rewarding, but you do give up a lot of freedom," I said, since they were all expecting me to say something and I couldn't bring myself to be even more of a downer to a new mom-to-be. "But you can still get out, right? I mean, you're here." I refrained from telling them how rare it is that we have a day like that and how much coordination it takes since we live nowhere near our family. Instead I said, "Your kids get more independent over time, so it doesn't last forever." They still didn't like it, but we moved on.

Monday we took a trip into town, where K acquired a magic wand (actually a Girl's Cheer Baton from Rite-Aid, but he hasn't noticed the label yet) and I bought a mirror and a casserole dish from the Red Barn, a country store and antique shop. I know I'm getting older because I was very excited to find just the right casserole dish. JW's grandmother came for dinner.

Tuesday I unpacked some and got the guest room ready for my brother, who arrived that night for a conference in Boston.

Wednesday I went to the conference to see my brother do his presentation. He's always speaking at these things, and since I was on leave, I was excited to get the chance to see him in action. I had a little bit of a meltdown that morning, because I was exhausted after a rough night and after our trip, but JW encouraged me to go and volunteered to drop off K at school so I could make it on time. Once X and I were out the door, it felt so good to be out of the house in the morning, dressed and going somewhere, like a normal person. We took the bus to Boston, caught the presentation (which I thought was very impressive even though I didn't understand all the words he used), and had breakfast with my brother. He said he'd be free for lunch, so I stuck around for a while. I rarely go to the Prudential Center, and it turns out it's a great place to spend a day with a baby. We spent some time in the courtyard, took a walk with a friend who works at a law firm attached to the mall, and I read about a third of Tina Fey's "Bossypants" at a bookstore while X napped. Then we met up with my brother again and went to Mike and Patty's, a sandwich place that's been on my to-try list for a long time, and headed back on the T. I grabbed K from daycare and we arrived at home just as the rain started up again. I had been in a rut at home, and this turned out to be a successful day out.

Thursday flew by. I decided not to worry about getting anything done and just do whatever I felt like. After dropping K off, I took a long walk to the local Carter's outlet and bought K's entire summer wardrobe. I napped during X's afternoon nap, and picked up K early from school and played superheroes with him. I ended up accomplishing about as much as I do on a to-do list day, so my plan is to continue resisting my impulse to have a list of chores for each day.

Today I'm supposed to have lunch with my next-door neighbor, who I've been hoping to become friends with for a while now and who just had a baby herself. She has a three-year old girl and I thought she and K could be playmates, but they've barely met for some reason. Hopefully there will be playdates in our future. It's also crossed my mind that we could do a nanny share when I go back to work, if they're willing -- in fact, their nanny just told me unprompted that she's used to taking care of three or four kids at a time, and just two seemed like a light load for her. Anyway, we finally exchanged phone numbers this week, so progress has been made.

And over the weekend, JW will be away at a meeting and it'll be me and the boys. K asked to stay home today and I said no -- I don't think I can deal with a three-day weekend with both kids. I don't know how real stay-at-home moms do it.

Re-education

2011-06-02T15:13:00.000-04:00

K adores his preschool teacher. He sincerely believes everything she says, including that she is a hundred years old. So it's especially hard to correct any misinformation she passes on. Last night we were drilling him on the following questions:

1. How many states are there? (50, not 52!)

2. Can a boy marry a boy? (Yes, any grown-up can marry any grown-up. We live in Massachusetts.)

3. Who is allowed to like pink and purple? (Anybody! Colors are for everyone.)

My boys

2011-05-31T14:38:00.001-04:00

This is K's "smile for the camera" smile that I always try to get him not to do:

And look, X learned how to smile too!

Back and gone again

2011-05-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

Thursday we packed up the car and headed for the airport. Nine hours later, we arrived at our destination, exhausted and covered in bodily fluids ejected from our children. K spent most of the flight clutching the barf bag for dear life and then fell asleep on top of JW. X was a little volcano, at one point spitting up directly down my sleeve and at another down my shirt, prompting the woman across the aisle to reminisce about how her baby once pooped in her husband's pocket. Normally a great napper, X was so excited that he refused to close his eyes. Every few minutes, he would realize how tired he was and start yelling and yelling. The upside to this was that while walking up and down the aisle with him, I got to chat with some of the New England Revolution guys. The entire team was on our plane, on their way to a game with the San Jose Sharks. They seem like fine upstanding gentlemen and we look forward to attending their games when the boys are older.

The rest of the trip went either uphill or downhill from there, depending on whether you consider "up" and "down" to be measures of quality or difficulty. Friday we met CT for lunch, went for a walk on a local trail, and had dinner with my cousin. Saturday morning we met up with a college friend and her baby for a park outing and lunch. Saturday evening was the wedding. CT and her husband, Mr. Trousers, came over to babysit. This turned out perfectly -- K was excited to hang out with them, they enjoyed quality time with the boys, and JW and I got our first alone time out since before X was born. The place we were staying was literally five minutes away from the wedding, so I came back to feed X instead of lugging my pump out to California. We only knew a few people at the wedding and I wasn't feeling up to doing much dancing, so we came home early and hung out with CT and Mr. Trousers after the boys were in bed. (Other high points of the wedding: a close friend was the best man and gave a great toast, and the groom's father gave a speech about how his son was born in the car on the way to the hospital, which none of us knew about despite the groom being a legendary storyteller!) Sunday we met up with another cousin and her family for a nursery school carnival, where K patted bunnies and overcame his fear of the obstacle course. Then we had a bigger family get-together for dinner and returned home to pack. The flight home on Monday went surprisingly smoothly -- X was his usual mellow self, we drugged K up with ibuprofen and Dramamine and he was fine, and both kids slept for a while.

This week has felt a little crazy even though I'm not working. We returned Monday, Wednesday night we went to a party, and tonight we're supposed to leave for my in-laws' place for Memorial Day weekend. Today is JW's birthday (happy birthday to my lovely husband!). I feel like I've spent the week recovering from our CA trip, doing laundry and grocery shopping and cleaning up, but we still have a few lingering items to unpack and we're still so tired. So, so tired. So tired that I keep hurting myself accidentally -- in the space of 24 hours, I burned my arm, bruised my other arm, hit my head on the bathroom shelving twice, and closed a metal door on my heel. So tired that while K was getting ready for bed, I went into the bathroom and stared into space for so long that he had to come find me. So tired that I have forgotten how to do math. I'm hoping to get some naps in this weekend.

In little boy news, X is nearly three months old and is becoming a delightful little baby instead of a cuddly ball of a newborn. He goos and gahs and smiles a lot. His eyes are wide open and he's lost that look of someone who's just taken off their glasses. He still has the spastic arms, so he needs to be swaddled when he sleeps -- I'm hoping he grows out of that soon, because it's been hot lately and also he can break out of anything but the tightest swaddle. He gets terrible neck rashes from spitting up, no matter how much we try to keep him clean. I don't remember that happening to K. And he also has severe cradle cap, so I've been oiling up his head. He doesn't seem to mind.

K got a haircut yesterday and screamed just as loudly as ever. I thought he was getting over that. K loves to play superheroes (or "supers", as he calls it) and is always talking about what powers he has. He is also back to counting snails now that they're out of hibernation. K has never had a dominant hand, and we thought he might be a lefty but would settle on a hand once he started writing. My theory was that he never liked to write or draw or color because he didn't have a dominant hand. Well, thanks to his preschool teacher, he now knows how to write all the letters on his own and was happy to write in Daddy's birthday card. "What hand did he use?" asked JW. "Both of them," I replied. He'd make one line of the X, or the down stroke of the D, with his left hand, then switch to his right hand for the rest of the letter. I doubt it's occurred to him that none of the other kids do this.

I have done a few interesting things so far on my maternity leave. I reviewed a manuscript of Laura Vanderkam's latest book about money, which contains lots of thought-provoking ideas about how people can allocate their money to make themselves happier. I joined the board of a community foundation that does great work in my town. I attended an alumni entrepreneurship event, and it looks like I'll be mentoring some Brown entrepreneurs this summer. I'm trying to take some time to do things that I would ordinarily love to do, but would never have time for while I'm working full-time.

I've also realized that somehow, I have become an incurable Type A. I'm not sure whether this was an effect of law school, whether it's snuck up on me over time, or whether I've always been like this and never realized it. Even on maternity leave, I have a daily to-do list and fret about getting things done. I need to remember this when I go back to work -- it's not necessarily the job, it's also me.

Okay, back to packing and laundry and I said I'd bake a cake for tomorrow night and X is napping fitfully and it's almost time to pick up K and I haven't started dinner.

Departing

2011-05-18T21:32:00.001-04:00

We're leaving on a possibly ill-advised trip to California tomorrow. I have sublimated my anxiety about traveling with the kids into preparing elaborate Plane Fun Kits for K, one for each direction. They contain Highlights magazines, puzzles, workbooks, toy cars and dinosaurs, candy, magnets, stickers, Mr. Men books, and -- the piece de resistance -- a Buzz Lightyear electronic toy.

I realized that in six hours, we can expect X to poop at least twice. The last time I changed a diaper in an airplane toilet was an adventure. I guess I can look forward to DOUBLE the adventure this time. Probably more than double. Last time we flew, when I was about 8 months pregnant and had no lap, K kept saying he was sick and insisted on sitting on top of me. He fell asleep and I spent the entire flight trying to hold on to him so he wouldn't slide off my giant belly on to the floor.

Wish us luck!

P.S. - JW points out that at least we don't have to worry about the return flight, because the Rapture will happen before we're scheduled to get back.

Rude awakening

2011-05-12T21:21:00.001-04:00

My post-baby body hasn't bothered me too much. Sure, I knew I had some extra padding, and the number on the scale was about 15 pounds above my pre-baby weight. But I thought I looked fine, and meanwhile was making slow progress toward losing the weight.

Today I made the mistake of trying on one of my pre-baby dresses while looking for an outfit to wear to a friend's wedding. I couldn't zip it up more than halfway. Then I compounded that mistake by going to Marshall's. Not only did I have to face the dressing room mirror, but I tried on jeans three sizes larger than usual because I was dying to wear some non-maternity pants that wouldn't slip down when I walked. They were a little snug.

In the midst of my dressing room trauma, I heard the most passive-aggressive conversation ever between two girls who I will call Annoying Girl and Friend. Annoying Girl kept telling Friend, over and over, that the jeans she was trying on made her look short. She alternated these statements with variations of "I'm just being honest." Friend began responding with monosyllables, then grunts, and then silence. When her honesty was no longer eliciting comment, Annoying Girl switched to, "Now you're mad at me, aren't you? You're mad! I'll just shut up and keep my opinions to myself." Friend: "No. I'm not mad. It's just a pair of jeans." This went on for another few minutes. Then Annoying Girl said, "Don't be mad, it's just that those jeans make you look as short as me." Well done, Annoying Girl! Friend was goaded into replying, "Come on. That's impossible. You're 5'2". I'm 5'9"." Annoying Girl then launched BACK into the "You look short" conversation. This did not end until an older woman interjected herself into the conversation and joked that this is why she always shops alone.

Panade and babies

2011-05-11T21:30:00.000-04:00

Today X took a two and a half hour nap. I spent the entire time making this chard and onion panade. It was tasty (and a new eating experience, since we'd never had panade before), but I'm not sure if it was worth all the time it took. I might try a less labor-intensive version some time. Actually, JW asked me why it took so long and I couldn't quite tell him. There are a few components, but the only one that takes a while is the onions and most of that time is spent occasionally stirring them while they soften on the stove. So maybe it would feel less labor-intensive next time, since I'd know what I was doing.

When I picked K up from school today, all the kids in his class clustered around to look at X. That's normal. Then one of them said, "Where did the baby come from?" "The baby store," I joked. "No," they said. "Where did you get him from?" "I grew him in my tummy," I replied. "But how did he get out?" asked one little boy. "I went to the hospital and got him out," I said. "Was it hard?" he asked. "Yes, it was hard!" "But HOW did he get out?" he asked. Another boy chimed in. "Did the doctor cut open your tummy?" "Uh, no, not this time," I replied. A little girl asked, "But WHERE did he come out?" Two other kids repeated, "WHERE did he come out?" I pretended I didn't hear, grabbed K's hand, and said, "Bye, everyone! Say goodbye to the baby!"

After X was born, K asked how the baby got out. I told him, "I pushed him out." "Where?" "Through the hole where I pee." (Creative license.) "But Mommy, that's a very small hole." "I KNOW."

I wasn't quite prepared to have this conversation with eight four-year olds. I don't want to get in trouble with the other parents.

Rainy day

2011-05-10T20:38:00.001-04:00

K has realized that I'm not going to work anymore (although I've vaguely implied that I sometimes "work at home") and has been asking to stay home with me and X. For the past few weeks, he's been home with me once or twice a week. Today I decided to give him a daycare vacation so we could go to a fun event in Boston's Public Garden. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and we ended up at home most of the day. He made me sing "We Go Together" from "Grease" about forty times in a row and we learned some new knock knock jokes. We played pirates and danced to songs on the iPod. Our big outing was to the shoe store, where I was a little concerned to learn that K's shoe size hasn't changed in well over six months. He made a friend and ran around with her while I looked for shoes and chased him down once in a while to try on a new pair. At dinnertime he refused to eat the mushroom pizza and we got in an argument about dessert. Finally I set a timer and told him that when it went off, we were going to leave the table and get ready for bed. Once he realized this was not a punishment, somehow this reset his bad mood. Before bed he sang an impromptu and very long song about the joys of nudity featuring a litany of nude activities, including "Eat dinner nude, go to space nude, swim underwater nude, go to school nude, do all the things that you can do nude!" I got a neck-up video of the tail end of this. He watched it and laughed and laughed. I laughed too, but I was thinking, "One day I'll show this to your future spouse!"

Return from babyland

2011-05-07T09:16:00.000-04:00

It's incredible how many fun events are happening today. I think we'll end up at the arts festival in our town and at Rocket Day at Danehy Park. Tomorrow is the annual Mother's Day Duckling Parade. Hooray for spring!

I didn't mean to disappear into babyland for so long. Before X wakes up, a few things that have happened lately:

X is now two months old. He had his doctor's appointment yesterday and is 50th percentile for weight (12.5 pounds) and 25th for height. He got two shots and an oral vaccine, and spent the entire afternoon screaming while I frantically ran around town in search of infant Tylenol. Today he seems fine. Yesterday made me grateful that X is usually such a calm baby.

X can track objects, has become interested in mobiles, and smiles at us. Also, if his brother was the Spitup King, X is Master of the Poop Explosion. All those milk-stained onesies of K's that I debated throwing away are now in daily use because X somehow manages to poop out of his diaper and up his back at least once a day.

Speaking of poop (and aren't you glad we are?) K has learned to use the regular toilet. No more cleaning out the plastic potty for me! At least not for another two or three years.

Our niece M came to visit for Easter. Oh yeah, her parents came too. The kids had a blast playing together. In the past, they've had turf wars when visiting each other. This time they happily chased each other around and jumped on the mattress and threw toys at each other. They loved the Easter egg hunt around the house, and we all had fun (probably the adults more than the kids) decorating egg- and bunny-shaped cookies. Despite his newfound fondness for his cousin, K kept saying, "M is so whiny, isn't she?" After she left, K announced, "I'm not going to whine and fuss anymore. That's for little kids. I'm four now." I thought that was cute. But he's been surprisingly cooperative and pleasant ever since. Never underestimate a four-year old.

I've been spending more time at home with the two kids. This week K insisted he was sick and couldn't go to school. I was extremely skeptical, but decided I'd believe him and keep him at home. Unfortunately, I couldn't get over my skepticism and ended up being grumpy all day and trying to get him to admit he was lying. (He never did.) Bad Mommy. At dinnertime I apologized and told him I'd be nice to him for the rest of the day. Before he went to sleep, he said, "Mommy? Try to be nicer to me tomorrow." Anyway, I told him that if he wants to stay home he should just tell me, and we may not always be able to but I'll try.

We have had a huge number of doctor's appointments. K went to the eye doctor and was apprehensive, but ended up loving it and asking to go back. (Not for four years.) K got strep again. X had an eye infection. I had my postpartum checkup and then went back to get Mirena. Next week it's the dentist for K, and in the coming weeks I'll have a followup appointment with my OB and X will have another well baby appointment. We have a high-deductible insurance plan, so we have paid out thousands in health care costs already this year. Hopefully nearly all of that is behind us now.

I read "A Reason to Believe" by Deval Patrick, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid, the Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart, and "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" by Marshall Rosenberg. I enjoyed all of them, and have more to say about some of them, but not right now.

We're preparing for a trip to California for a friend's wedding. Our first big trip with the two kids. My plan is to not worry about it, and to get an electronic toy to occupy K on the plane.

I hear a crying baby. More later.

396 months

2011-04-11T15:03:00.000-04:00

It's my birthday!

So far, there have been fewer tears than on my last birthday with a newborn. But the sleep deprivation has definitely caught up with me. This morning I had a small meltdown (alone) after K yelled at me. Can you imagine if I cried every time he got mad at me? There wouldn't be enough tissues in all the Costcos in the world. And I actually cried in the car when that song that goes, "It just takes some time, everything will be all right" came on. I felt a little ridiculous.

Anyway, I managed to get X in the car and meet my lovely husband for lunch. It's a sunny, warm day, the first in a long time. And look at this cute baby:

So, overall, maybe not my most relaxing birthday, but I can't complain. Besides, I'm on maternity leave. All the time-to-myself things I usually like to do on my birthday, like visit a bookstore, get some ice cream, take a long afternoon walk? For the next four and half months, I can do that stuff ANY DAY. Maternity leave is like one long birthday present.

Five weeks

2011-04-08T09:43:00.000-04:00

Dear X,

At five weeks old, you are still very much a newborn. You are a little ball of cuddliness, most of your sounds are still squeaks and grunts, and you still throw your arms open when you're the least bit startled.

Up until now, you have been a textbook baby. You eat approximately every three hours, then have an alert period during which you observe your surroundings with interest, followed by a long nap. I put you down as soon as you start yawning and closing your eyes, and you often go right to sleep with no singing, swaying, or any other intervention required. I can usually tell why you're crying, and you stop once the offending circumstance is corrected. Aside from the around-the-clock feedings, you've made the first month of my maternity leave very easy.

You are starting to show the first signs of growing up and having your own personality. You have added some human noises to your repertoire. Once in a while you even say "Goo" like a real baby! You hate being swaddled or confined in any way, including, alas, in a sling or carrier. You are fascinated by the ceiling fan. Yesterday I folded an entire load of laundry and sewed a button on Daddy's shirt while you lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling. I used to put your brother on the dining room table and hang toys from the chandelier so I could have five minutes to eat lunch, but all I have to do with you is turn the fan on and you raise your eyebrows and grunt and fling your arms around like it's the most amazing thing you've ever seen. (Actually, it probably is. On your trips out of the house, you're usually asleep.)

We're looking forward to getting to know you over the coming weeks and months. Meanwhile, we're enjoying your cuddly ball-ness. We know it won't last very long.

Love,
Mommy

Accurate impressions

2011-04-04T12:17:00.004-04:00

On my to-do list: All manner of household chores, exercise, make various phone calls, write thank you notes, pay bills, shower. (I have a newborn. Showering is on my to-do list, and it doesn't always get done.)

What I'm doing instead while the baby naps: Reading some of my old blog posts from 1L year. I came across a roundup of some OCS presentations I had attended recently, including one on corporate law. I summed up my impression of corporate law thusly:

"Late nights doing boring stuff."

So now I know those OCS presentations were worth attending.

Here's another 1L impression, also based on an OCS presentation:

Tonight I went to a panel about large firms. The takeaway message for me was that I probably can't work at one. I don't want to wait until I'm in my late thirties to have kids, and the part time option doesn't seem like it works. As much as I dislike most of David Brooks's ideas, maybe he's right about one thing: you can't raise a family and work full time, at least not without some serious help. And I hate the idea of paying someone else to raise my kids. Maybe in my thirties, I should focus on my family, and in my forties I can start devoting serious time to my career.

My parents made it work, with lots of help from their friends and my grandmother. But they had regular, predictable schedules. Tonight I kept hearing how you're expected to check your Blackberry constantly, and how you have to cancel your plans at the last minute because a partner has just dropped something on your desk. If you have a three-year old waiting for you, you can't just announce that you're not coming home. I don't want to be that type of parent.

I'm not sure how to respond to this. Maybe the reality of having a family and working at a large firm is different than I thought it would be. Or maybe I don't want to acknowledge that I was right, and I chose differently than I expected to five years ago.

Giant baby

2011-04-03T22:16:00.000-04:00

X snuck in an extra feeding last night in between his usual 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. sessions. This morning he suddenly didn't fit into any of his newborn clothes, resulting in about 20 minutes of baby torture while I kept dressing and undressing him, looking for an outfit that would allow him to fully extend his legs. He weighed in at 12 pounds this morning (I think our scale is a little more generous than the pediatrician's, though -- he has an appointment later this week, so I'll have to weigh him at home first to compare).

Giant baby!

Giant baby, viewed from above

Please stop yelling, giant baby! We submit to your will.

A month of maternity leave

2011-03-28T13:19:00.005-04:00

I'm still loving maternity leave. I feel so relaxed. I love being able to spend so much time with the kids, and cook dinner every night and putter around the house, and in theory take walks and be out and about during the day (in reality, it's been freezing and I haven't wanted to take the baby out except to walk K back and forth from school).

But after a particularly rough night last week, JW decided to work from home the next day. I overheard him on a call, telling whoever it was about the data that he had assembled, and how fifty metric tons of blah blah blah flowed through something or other, and how he felt that additional data on x, y, and z should inform their analysis but shouldn't be an integral part. He sounded so authoritative. And I started to miss work a little. After all, the whole reason I became a lawyer was that I love being an expert on something and giving people advice. My favorite part of the job is explaining to clients all about legal blah blah blah and x, y, and z, and how we can help them with that. I love being able to guide clients through the legal matters so they can focus on running their businesses. These days, I'm all about nursing and burping and cleaning and cooking. Except for the occasional work email, nobody seeks my advice about anything.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not planning to lose our bet. But maybe I won't be that upset when it's time to go back to work.

The second kid

2011-03-26T08:02:00.001-04:00

I was just reading some of my old blog posts from when K was born. I haven't been posting that much about X because he's a newborn, and all healthy newborns are more or less the same. We haven't seen much evidence of his personality yet, and he doesn't do much. So it's been funny reading all the tiny little details I recorded about K as a newborn. He feeds! He sleeps, poorly! He poops! It's all so new and noteworthy with the first kid.

I understand now why there are always fewer pictures of the second kid. It's not that having a kid is old hat and you don't care as much. It's that you realize you had way too many pictures of the first kid. Here he is at six days old! And here at six days, two hours! And here again at six days, two hours, but from a different angle. Here are twelve more pictures of him that we took twenty minutes later because we changed his outfit after he spat up all over the other one.

I also recorded in detail my experience as a new mom. Again, the details aren't unique, but they are a lot different than this time around. I had a much harder time with K, which looking back, I blame in large part on my difficult C section recovery. At this point last time around, I posted that I still needed pain medication occasionally, wasn't really close to my normal level of activity, and had just managed to take a slower than usual walk around the neighborhood. I also had a lot more anxiety as a first-time mom that I don't have with X. With K, I was always worried that I wasn't doing the right thing. With X, I figure that even though I probably screwed up a lot with K, he turned out just fine, so I should just do whatever I think is best.

Mom of two milestone

2011-03-25T11:56:00.000-04:00

Today was my first car trip with both boys. K and X were due to visit the pediatrician and I managed to load them into the car, get them each examined, get K to pee in a cup, drop K off at school, and get X safely home. All by myself, and on only three hours of sleep! I declare victory. (Even though both destinations were within a one-mile radius of our house. If I had realized in time that it wasn't as freezing cold as I thought, we could have walked instead.)

The combined pediatrician appointment was one unanticipated benefit of having two kids with the same birthday. They'll both be on exactly the same schedules for doctor's appointments and any other age-related requirements.

X was a big hit at school. All K's classmates crowded around to see him. "I like your baby!" said one of the kids to K. Usually X is asleep, so I leave his stroller in the hallway where I can keep an eye on it while I go in to collect K.

K is starting to interact with X a little more, but is still very cautious about touching him. That is totally fine with me. It means I can leave both boys alone for a minute without worrying that K will unintentionally hurt his baby brother. K rarely gets closer than he does in the pictures below, but he does watch over X to make sure he's okay. A couple of times, I've had to run back into the house to grab K's backpack or an extra blanket for X when we're on our way out in the morning. K announces that he will stay outside to protect his baby brother.

X's birth story

2011-03-20T23:00:00.011-04:00

Sunday, February 27th, around 6 p.m., JW came upstairs to see if I could come down for dinner. He found me kneeling on the floor with one leg balanced on top of the bed, typing away furiously. "This job is literally killing me," I sobbed. "My leg keeps cramping up, and I'm supposed to finish this merger agreement ASAP, and I haven't even started the work I'm supposed to have done by tomorrow. I'm 38 weeks pregnant. I've been working nonstop. What is wrong with these people? Can't they have some compassion?" I had a brief fantasy that the leg cramps turned out to be deep vein thrombosis and that the partners who assigned me all that work showed up at my funeral, stricken and vowing to be more humane in the future.

JW, seasoned husband that he is, let me finish my meltdown and asked, "What can I do to help?"

I calmed down a little. "You already are. You've been taking care of K all afternoon and you made dinner. I just have to get through this."

We talked about how I should start pushing back at work. I agreed, but pointed out that I had no way of knowing K would be sick all week when I accepted the assignments I had been working on all weekend. Then JW made a rookie mistake. "We know you'll probably be overdue, so --" I glared at him. "You don't know that!" "But your OB said --" "She doesn't know either!" He apologized and retreated back downstairs.

At around eleven that night, I closed my laptop. I still hadn't started my major assignment that was supposed to be done the next day and had spent about ten minutes preparing for my Monday lunch presentation instead of the 3-4 hours I had planned, but I couldn't stay awake much longer. During my pre-bedtime shower, I made a decision. Instead of working right up until my water broke, I'd start my maternity leave the day before my due date and relax, get the baby's room done, finally get that prenatal massage I had been wanting all through my pregnancy, maybe persuade JW to meet me in Boston for a lunch date. That meant I'd only have a week and a half of work left! I could handle that. We'd schedule the C section for March 14th, Pi Day, like we had talked about. Feeling much more cheerful, I went to tell JW my plan. "Okay," he replied, "but it sounds like you're assuming you'll be overdue? When I said that, you seemed... um... upset." "I know. I didn't want to hear that," I said. "But you're right, realistically it looks like I'll be overdue again since the baby is still so high up and I'm only a centimeter dilated."

At 4 a.m., I woke up. I just have to pee, I thought to myself. My water didn't break. With K I had a flood. This is just a trickle. I just have to go to the bathroom.

Usually in the middle of the night, I go to the bathroom without turning the lights on. This time, just before cleaning up, I turned on the lights. There was blood in the toilet and in my underwear. Not just "bloody show." More like a period.

I called my OB and apologized for waking her in the middle of the night. "I'm wide awake," she said. "I just delivered three babies in three hours." She told me to come in to the hospital.

I woke up JW and told him that I was bleeding but not in pain, and that I needed to go to the hospital. But unlike last time, we had a sleeping toddler in the next room. I wasn't having contractions yet and knew they would spend a while monitoring me before anything else happened, so I decided that JW should stay home with K and I would drive myself. My husband elected not to argue with me. He went outside and brushed snow off the car while I threw some clothes in an overnight bag and emailed work to let them know I wouldn't be in. Then he came in to help me out to the car. When I started slipping on the ice, it occurred to me that this was a bad idea. We called a cab instead. The cab driver (the second one, after the first cab arrived, honked once, and immediately drove away) made no comment on the hugely pregnant woman in his car being rushed to the hospital, and instead chatted about the weather. When I arrived, the lobby was completely empty and I wandered around for a while before remembering how to get to the labor and delivery wing.

I spent the next hour or so strapped to a fetal monitor in the exam room. I sat around, read my book, and texted reassuring messages to JW. My OB said the baby seemed perfectly fine and I didn't appear to be in active labor yet but was still bleeding a little, so she wanted me to be admitted for additional monitoring. I got moved to a delivery room and settled in, first giving JW a call to let him know that everything was fine and that he could take his time dropping off K at school before meeting me at the hospital.

Once in the delivery room, I started feeling happy. I changed into my robe and slippers. Then I sat on the bed and did nothing for a few minutes. Just enjoyed being by myself in a quiet room with nobody demanding my attention and nothing to do but sit there. "I am on maternity leave!" I said to myself.

Then the phone rang. I'm not sure why I picked it up. It was a client who has a habit of calling me on my cell. "I tried your office," he said. "Where are you?" "I'm in the hospital." "Are you delivering?" he asked. "Not right this minute. Is there something you need?" "I'm in the hospital, too!" he replied. He explained that he had been injured in an accident. Delaware annual reports and franchise taxes were due the next day. "If YOU'RE in the hospital, and I'M in the hospital, who's going to do my filing?" he complained. A nurse walked in just in time to hear me say, "Our paralegal should be able to file that for you." She raised an eyebrow. "Are you still working?" she asked. "Not anymore," I said, hanging up.

JW arrived after dropping K off at school. "This is happening today, huh?" he asked. "Looks like it," I replied. "So what's this kid's name?" JW thought for a minute. "X?" "Okay. X."

A few minutes later, my OB came in and explained our options. The baby still had a strong heartbeat, but since I was leaking blood and amniotic fluid she said my choices were either to be induced or to have a C section. A friend had recently told me a horror story about attempting a VBAC and having to be induced, and I remembered getting induced last time and how horrible it felt. But I hated the idea of choosing to get my abs sliced open. My OB explained that while a C section would always remain an option up until the end, getting induced was routine in this situation. I remembered that part of the reason I had such a bad experience last time was that I refused pain medication for so long. So I agreed and got hooked up to an IV.

The first few hours, my contractions became more regular and intense, but I could handle them. By afternoon, I asked for the epidural. Ah, sweet pain relief. Still, by the middle of the night I was exhausted and kept having to turn up the epidural. Early in the morning, my OB asked if I was ready to push. She said I was about eight and a half centimeters dilated and that the baby was still fairly high up, but had moved down enough that I should be able to push him out. She gave me a pep talk about how up until now, I had to endure what was happening to me, but now it was up to me to work hard and push this baby out. It was actually a relief to be doing something active instead of lying there waiting for a contraction. I discussed pushing in detail here, but after about two and a half hours of intense work, including twenty minutes of screaming in agony while pushing out the baby's head and shoulders, our baby was born!

I didn't get to see him immediately, except in the mirrors. Our OB said that the umbilical cord had been wrapped twice around his neck and that he was "more stunned than she expected". In retrospect, I should have realized this was a very bad thing, considering how measured my OB is with her words. Later we learned that he had been blue and unresponsive, and had an Apgar score of 2 a minute after birth. You get a 1 for having a pulse. I was so relieved when after a few minutes, we heard him cry. Thank goodness, five minutes after birth, his Apgar score went up to 8. He was taken away to the nursery for initial tests and for warming before we got to see him again.

The nurses kept congratulating me on having a successful VBAC. "You were amazing. You made it look easy," said the nurse who was with me through the pushing phase. "Most people are so worried about not having a C section that they tense up and can't go through with it." I didn't realize it was an accomplishment. My OB made it sound like it wasn't uncommon and that even though a C section would remain a possibility at any point, there was no reason I couldn't have a successful VBAC as long as the baby and my body cooperated.

Over the next few days, X got poked, prodded, and snipped in various ways. X's body temperature was low and he needed additional warming time. He was born tongue-tied, with his tongue attached to the bottom of his mouth by tissue that a doctor snipped on his second day alive. He had a heart murmur that the doctors decided wasn't a problem after additional testing and an EKG. He was also jaundiced and the pediatrician wanted to keep him in the hospital for light treatment, but said we could take him home and try to flush out his system with lots of fluids before coming back the next day for another test. After a day of nonstop feeding and an anxious lab test at the hospital, we got to keep him.

I was having my own problems recovering, which I've already mentioned. I won't go into them again here. As awful as it was to have my bladder stop working for over a week, three weeks after giving birth I feel about 90% back to normal and have lost about 20 pounds. Can't complain about that.

And now we're home and I feel so lucky that we are both healthy and all this is behind us. After X was born, I think my first words were, "Our baby!" and then "I am never doing this again."

(Compare and contrast: K's birth story.)

Maternity leave

2011-03-18T21:09:00.002-04:00

Oh maternity leave, I love you so. I want to wrap you up and give you a big kiss.

I think I'm having a better time with X than I did with K for two reasons. First, I have learned to put the baby down. I used to hold K and let him sleep on top of me all the time. He'd be understandably cranky when I tried to move him and got really hard to put down on his own. I take the occasional nap with X, but he's mostly swaddled and sleeping by himself, leaving me free to do things like shower and cook.

The second reason is that being on leave has made me realize how incredibly stressful my job is. Whether I'm busy or not, I'm constantly on call. I have literally had days where I sat around all day with nothing to do and billed zero hours from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., ended up staying late and missing K's bedtime because of an emergency assignment that came in at 6, checked my email before going to bed at 11 and found additional work that needed to be completed "before the end of the night", and then checked again at 6 a.m. only to find an urgent assignment waiting for me that needed to be completed ASAP. All of that melted away the moment I headed to the hospital. I was so happy waiting in the hospital room that morning even though I knew I was headed for either induction or a C section, neither of which I had wanted. I was happy because I knew I was done. No more worrying about being hit with a sudden demand out of nowhere. No more waking up at 4 a.m. making a mental checklist of what needed to be done and wondering if I should be checking my email.

When I realized that X's early arrival meant that a six-month leave would have me back at work for all of September, my very favorite month, I asked JW if he would mind if I stretched out my leave for one more month. He snorted. "Sure, whatever you want." "Why did you say it like that?" "I know you," he said. "You're not going to last all six months. You'll be begging to go back to work early." We made a bet. If JW wins, our family gets a couple of extra months of my salary. If I win, I get extra time off. Either way, not bad.

Free association and vitamins

2011-03-17T12:29:00.001-04:00

Walking back home after dropping K off at daycare, I thought how nice it was to be outside on a warm, sunny day, the first one in many months. Finally, I'd be able to coax K outside more often. He could use some Vitamin D. Which reminded me that I'd forgotten about his vitamins for the past two days. He loves to take them because they're gummy vitamins. I used to hate taking my vitamins. My parents used to put them right in my mouth to make sure I ate them. When they decided to rearrange our bedroom much later, they were not happy to find a year's worth of sticky vitamins in the space between the bed and the wall.

When I'm losing my patience with K, I should remember that vitamin-spitting little girl who always frowned for pictures and hid when company came to visit.

The other baby

2011-03-14T11:47:00.000-04:00

What we lack in originality, we make up for in cuteness.

The executive type

2011-03-13T23:49:00.000-04:00

My parents drove up from New York on the boys' birthday to see the baby and to bring K some birthday presents. They stayed for less than a day. This weekend they got a closer look at X. My father declared that he had an executive look about him. "What do you mean?" I asked. "K had a sweet look when he was a baby, but X is the executive type." "Why, because he frowns all the time, like me?" My father just shrugged and repeated that X was the executive type.

Later, during a diaper change, X started peeing everywhere. "This is the fourth time he's done this to me!" I exclaimed, trying in vain to contain the fountain. "It took K two months to get me!" Then X started POOPING everywhere, still with his diaper off. Bright orange poop, all over his clothes, all over the changing table, all over his blanket. "See," said my father, nodding wisely. "The executive type."

K and his little brother

2011-03-12T10:22:00.000-05:00

K is still adjusting to the baby. He is mostly indifferent to X, although he does go look at him once in a while, and to please us he'll occasionally volunteer, "I like the baby." He hasn't done or said anything negative toward X, other than complaining about how loudly X yells during diaper changes.

Mostly, I think K sees his little brother as competition for Mommy attention. He was always a Mama's boy but he has been extra-clingy lately. I wish we had started much earlier having JW be equally responsible for certain parts of K's daily routine, like giving him a bath and putting him to bed. K makes a huge fuss if I'm not available to do those things, and also wants me to pick him up from school and hold his hand while he eats dinner. (Pickup and dinner used to be JW's domain.) But the baby still needs to be fed on demand and I'm so exhausted. Anyway, I'll give K the extra attention he needs and hope he gets over it, and in a few weeks X should be on more of a predictable schedule so I can plan a little better.

At least K's initial reaction seems to have passed. He started lying all the time, and not in a cute way. After getting the parental smackdown four or five times in a row (it's unusual for him to take that long to get the message and correct his behavior) he seems to have stopped the sneakiness. He was also trying a little too hard to make sure we still like him. Like if we laughed at one of his jokes, he'd tell it over and over, and by the end when we'd given up even pretending we thought it was still funny, he'd still be fake-laughing with an anxious look on his face. The grandparents have been here for the past few days and having them to play with him and pay attention to him has helped a lot.

X is becoming more alert and has his eyes open more lately. As he becomes more interactive, I'm hoping K will come around.

Childbirth and recovery: C section versus vaginal birth

2011-03-09T14:42:00.002-05:00

My bladder is slowly starting to function again. Hallelujah!

I was catheterized for a week following X's birth. Do you know how it feels to have plastic tubes sticking out of your nether regions for a week, when said nether regions already feel raw and swollen? It is not fun. I went to the doctor earlier this week to have the catheter removed. I was terrified that I would need it reinserted, and spent most of the day yesterday sitting on the toilet and praying for something to come out. I think I'm in the clear now, but I'm still not all the way back to normal.

Other side effects from X's birth:
- 2nd degree tear that needed to be stitched up. Surprisingly, not such a big deal.
- Itchy rash from the neck down. The OB says it is PUPP and prescribed a strong hyrdocortisone cream, which somehow seemed to make it worse, and allergy medicine which she advised not to start taking until my pee problems are resolved.
- Horrible feeling on my left side that the OB says is likely muscle strain from pushing. Mostly gone now, but flares up when I'm really tired.
- General feeling every time I stand up that my insides are swollen and/or about to fall out.

All that aside, I really can't complain too much. Recovery hasn't been easy, but it's been far less painful and inconvenient than my C section recovery. I'm getting around pretty well only eight days after giving birth, while with the C section I was still sleeping on the couch because I was physically unable to get in and out of bed. And I'm well enough to take care of K and to handle his daily routine, which was the point of this whole exercise. (That's right, K, I pushed this enormous baby out of a tiny hole for your benefit. Happy birthday, here is your vaginally delivered brother.)

My conclusion is that vaginal birth is a grab bag -- the side effects and the amount of time they linger is totally unpredictable, with some women winning the lottery and returning to normal within days, others having persistent and painful conditions resulting from childbirth, and most women in between but probably closer to the former. With a C section, you get a predictable, but severe, injury that takes a lot of time, pain, and effort for recovery. I also had permanent changes to my body that I don't think happen with a vaginal birth (stomach pouch). All in all, I would say that with respect to recovery, vaginal birth wins. Compared to K's newborn days, when I remember being kind of miserable, X's newborn days seem so peaceful. I think a big part of that is the difficulty of recovering from major surgery while adjusting to a new baby in the house.

For actual childbirth, though, C sections have it all over vaginal birth. You lie there, doctors remove the baby. No pain (until after, then watch out), no trauma for baby (except the inevitable trauma of leaving the womb). After having done both, I really do not understand why some women prize vaginal birth so highly that feel they "failed" if they ended up with a cesarean. Hours and hours of labor, followed by the extreme physical exertion of pushing, and then the above-mentioned unpredictable side effects plus lots of stress on baby. Honestly? While I did feel proud of myself at the end, and glad that I wouldn't have to go through the weeks of painful C section recovery, my VBAC was not a pleasant experience. Physically, it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

On pushing: In all my reading about labor and delivery, I never came across a good description of pushing. When it came time, my only real reference point was sitcom births where the doctor says, "It's time to push," and the mom gives three loud shrieks and less than a minute later, out comes the baby. So I was terrified when my OB said that as a first-time mom (vaginally speaking), I could expect to push for one to three hours. Three hours of screaming in agony? It turned that the first two hours of pushing the baby down the birth canal were physically demanding, but not painful. The last twenty minutes or so of actually pushing the baby out were when I screamed in agony, just as loudly as any sitcom mom. The actual process of pushing is this: you wait for a contraction, and then you hook your hands under your thighs and pull your legs up and apart while taking a deep breath. While holding the breath, you push as hard and as long as you can, as if you're trying to expel a bowel movement the size of your head. You want a strong and sustained push, at least ten seconds. Then you let go and do it again. You can get three or four pushes out of each contraction. When the baby finally comes out, I cannot describe to you the bizarre sensation of feeling a human person sliding out of your body. That is definitely something you will never experience with a C section.

The Bosom Buddy

2011-03-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

X still has his eyes closed most of the time. Without being close enough to hear and smell us, he couldn't pick his family members out of a lineup. He's not alert enough yet to notice or care when we come near (except when he's hungry). But there is one part of the family that he loves. Actually, two. They are each about the size of his head and when they come near, he reaches out his arms and opens his mouth to greet them. And he nestles his head into them for a warm nap after a meal.

Which gives me an idea for a new baby product. People are always giving babies stuffed bears. But what newborn has ever seen a bear? My idea is for a stuffed toy shaped like something most newborns know and love. Unfortunately, the "My Breast Friend" name is taken, but the manufacturer could acquire the rights to the name "Bosom Buddy". I predict that after being made fun of on talk shows, the product would fly off the shelves, thanks to its two target demographics: attachment parents conflicted about their full-time work schedules, and alpha moms buying the product as gifts for their formula-feeding frenemies. But it would disappear just as quickly a few months later, following public furor over the poorly conceived "Bosom Buddy Deluxe", which at the touch of a button would dispense formula out of the nipple.

Food source

2011-03-07T12:31:00.000-05:00

Like most babies, X loves to be held. It soothes him. Unless I'm the one holding him. I doubt he recognizes my face yet, but as soon as he catches a whiff of me he wakes up and starts smacking his lips and rooting around madly, making "feed me" noises with increasing urgency, even if he's just eaten.

Last night I woke up around 1:30 a.m., expecting him to awake any minute for a feeding. When he was still asleep at 2, I unswaddled him and got him ready for nursing. He roused a little bit and took a few half-hearted pulls, then settled his head on my breast and started to snore.

I took advantage of his deep sleep to get some snuggles in, since I can't during the day. I gathered him into a bundle and placed him on my chest so I could kiss the top of his silky head. We stayed like that for a few minutes.

Then I felt a tiny lick on my chest.

Our new baby

2011-03-06T15:37:00.003-05:00

Introducing Baby X, born March 1st, 2011 at 8:45 a.m.

X had a slightly rocky start, but is doing just fine now. At five days old, X is still like a baby bird. He is nearly always either sleeping, nursing, or rotating his head from side to side with his mouth open and eyes closed, making soft squawking noises to indicate that he is hungry.

X, due March 11, was about two weeks early. His big brother, due February 15, was two weeks late. They both ended up surprising us and arriving on March 1st, exactly four years apart. Here are all the presents K got for his birthday.

I have been hiding from the world during my recovery and have had my laptop and phone turned off, so this is all I can muster for now. I'll be back with details.

One week of strep, brought to you by flex time

2011-02-25T07:50:00.001-05:00

TV didn't happen last night. Neither did waking up at 4 a.m. to tackle the work project that should have been done by yesterday. I worked past midnight, staggered up to bed, and was woken up at exactly 6:06 a.m. by K who announced he's feeling "better, but not all the way better." We proceeded to nap on the couch for the next twenty minutes while holding hands. Since he's still sick, I don't have to pack his bag or make lunch or get him dressed and out to school. And it's my turn to go to work today, which means in an hour or so, I'll be able to shower (!), get dressed, grab my stuff and walk out the door. Meanwhile, JW gets to sleep in for an extra hour. Easiest morning ever.

Looking back at our schedule over the past week, I realize that even though I feel exhausted, none of this would have been possible without both me and JW taking advantage of our jobs' flex time policies. I spent two entire days working from home. Both of those days, I arrived in the office at 5 p.m. (no one asked me to, but I was dealing with large volumes of documents that I couldn't deal with from home). Once I stayed all night, once I picked up some files and left an hour later. The night I spent at work was the only bedtime I've missed this week. I've taken two entire afternoons off for doctor's appointments. I've had my work number forwarded to my cell phone, enabling me to take a call from a client while K was napping in the car. I have worked at literally every hour of the day and night, but K has also been constantly attended to by either me or JW (even though, okay, he has logged quite a few video game hours this week). No one I worked with has seemed to notice or care that I'm not physically around half the time. I've actually been more responsive because I'm constantly checking in and trying to take care of things immediately so that work doesn't keep piling up.

I've told this story before, but I'll never forget it because it's so emblematic of stereotypical attitudes toward women in this business. A headhunter came to my law school 2L fall to talk about Boston firms. I raised my hand and said, "The firm I worked at last summer didn't care about face time. Most of the attorneys would leave at a reasonable hour and work more from home at night, and it was common for people to spend the day working from home. What other firms in the Boston area offer that kind of flexibility?" She said, "Oh, sweetie, don't think about part-time now. No matter where you go, you will have to work hard and establish yourself. After a few years, maybe you'll get married and think about having kids, and then you can work part-time." I was speechless. (Also, pregnant with K.) I did manage to follow up and say, "I wasn't asking about part-time. I was asking about what firms care less about face time and offer some flexibility in where and when you get your work done." She said that all firms would require me to put in lots of hours and I should be prepared to work hard. I should have written down the name of her company so that I would remember to hang up on them whenever they call. Clearly I picked the right place without her expert guidance.

Sick kid update

2011-02-24T21:20:00.005-05:00

I laughed at Mama's comment that missing work while K was sick wouldn't be a problem if the baby would just come out already. But as it turns out, it's good that kid #2 is safe and insulated in his sac because K has strep and (new as of today) conjunctivitis. ("The two most contagious illnesses!" said the doctor cheerfully.) If you're keeping score at home, that's two cases of strep -- different strains, apparently -- in two months. The doctor said that if we pump him full of enough medicine, he should make it just under the wire to be non-contagious for his birthday party on Saturday. But if his eyes are still pink and gooey, I can't in good conscience let him be around other kids. Plan B is to call the other parents on Saturday and tell them they can still send their kid to the indoor playground on me, maybe even have a pizza or two delivered for them, but the party is off. I didn't take him to work today after all -- I let him sit on the couch all day and play Super Mario Bros. while I worked on my laptop, pausing occasionally to dole out snacks or take a Chutes and Ladders break. K was very patient with his distracted mommy, and enjoyed his Wii-filled day.

Distracted mommy stopped at work at the end of the day and brought home an armful of files, which I should be dealing with right now. It feels like so long since I had a minute to think about something besides work, K, and the huge weight I'm carrying, even though K has been sick for less than a week. It's amazing how quickly we lose perspective, and our sanity, when our schedule goes awry. Okay, I'll get back to my merger agreement and then I get to watch one TV show and go to bed. I'll wake up super early and try to get some work done. I have so much to catch up on, but I need sleep. I can tell I'm too sleep-deprived today because I keep bursting into tears at the slightest provocation. Work. Steal some leisure time. Sleep. More work. Figure out what to do with K tomorrow. Try to do some work. Make a plan for K's party. More work. Cake? Stuff goody bags. Then the weekend: hopefully have the party. Catch up on work. Pray for maternity leave.

Plea of a working mom

2011-02-24T05:48:00.005-05:00

Please, let him not be sick again today.

K has been sick with a fever and a mild cold since Monday. Tuesday I stayed home with him, and then when JW came back at 5, I went to the office and worked until 4 in the morning. Wednesday I got to go to work, but rushed home for K's bedtime and then logged back in from home at night. Today I woke up before 5 and started working, but K will be up soon. JW and I are both swamped at work and we have no one to call.

If he's still sick today, I'm packing up the potty, the Tylenol, a bunch of toy trucks, and my laptop with streaming Netflix and DVDs and having him sit in my office. I'll hand over my iPhone. I'll get him every color of Post-It flags and let him decorate my office.

But please, let him be healthy today so he can go to school.

Way too much detail about my OB appointment

2011-02-22T21:32:00.001-05:00

Had my first weekly OB appointment today. I brought slightly sick K with me. I was worried when he seemed suddenly exhausted just before we left and dozed off in the car on the 10-minute ride over, but he did great -- he was polite to everyone, played with toys while the doctor examined me, and got a sticker at the end. The nurse thought it was very weird that he was going to be in the room during my pelvic exam and offered to play with him in the waiting room. I assured her he wouldn't even notice. He did ask why I had the paper robe covering me, but once I explained that the doctor was going to check on the baby, he turned his attention back to the toys. It helped that for once, there was no waiting and we were in and out in under an hour -- in fact, it would have been more like half an hour if K hadn't protested, "We didn't get to play!" and insisted on hanging out in the waiting room and reading books after my appointment. (Usually I have to wait at least half an hour, so I had told him we'd play and do puzzles in the waiting room.)

OB said I was one centimeter dilated and my cervix was starting to soften. She also said the baby was still high up and that given the baby's position and the fact that K had to be dragged out when I was two weeks overdue (because he wouldn't descend), I may end up being overdue again. She asked if I wanted to be induced if I went past my due date, but I told her I'd rather not risk it and would schedule a C section instead when it got closer to my due date.

So, it looks like I'm in for a few more weeks of this. I wasn't really surprised -- the baby's still moving around a lot, and I feel like he'll slow down when he's getting closer to coming out. JW was happy to hear that I'm not going into labor anytime soon because he's been worrying about having to handle K's birthday party by himself while I was in the hospital. I'm glad that K will have one last birthday all to himself. (He'll be four in a week!) We still have plenty to do around the house. As of right now, I'm okay with carrying around this tiny load and its enormous support system a little while longer.

Me at 37 weeks

2011-02-20T18:33:00.000-05:00

I am 59 inches tall and 44 inches around.

I have gained 42 pounds.

I normally don't do belly shots, but I wanted to show you why everyone is so alarmed when they see me that they feel compelled to comment.

Full term

2011-02-18T22:36:00.001-05:00

The baby is officially full term as of today.

Yesterday I was in the office until nearly 2 a.m. I needed to stay late, but I actually could have left at a more reasonable hour, like 11 or 12. Instead I whipped myself into an organizing frenzy and cleared off my desk and sorted through all my files. I finished all the little nagging tasks that were sitting on my desk. I felt satisfied when I left that if necessary, I could walk away without too many loose ends dangling. The crib still has packaged-up sheets sitting on top of the bare mattress, the nursery is still curtainless, and our supply of newborn clothes is entirely inadequate, so I guess that was my version of nesting.

As every pregnant woman knows, if you're lucky enough to make it to the last few weeks, you get to a point where you are DONE being pregnant. My body weight has increased by nearly 40%, my feet and ankles are so swollen that not a single pair of my shoes fits anymore, and the skin on my belly feels like it will split open, but I haven't gotten to that "get this baby out" stage yet. I'm enjoying the last few weeks of our peaceful lives together before chaos hits.

P.S. - I just googled "swollen feet pregnancy" and now I am paranoid that I have preeclampsia. Nausea, check, excessive swelling that lasts for days, check. Anyway, doctor's appointment on Tuesday -- I'm probably fine, and if not then it's goodbye peace, hello OR.

Pregnancy comment of the day

2011-02-16T15:00:00.001-05:00

Every day at work, I literally get at least half a dozen comments of the "you are enormous"/"look like you're going to pop"/"any day now" variety. My favorite recent one was from a partner who usually nods at me in the hall. This time he stopped short and said, "You look SO PREGNANT."

Today somebody asked when I was due and said, "Congratulations! I wish you many more." "Babies?" I asked. "Yes, babies!" he said cheerily. "I think I'm done after this one, but thanks," I replied. (By the way, this person is not a lawyer. Despite the fact that my colleagues feel free to comment on my size and shape, none of them have non-jokingly encouraged me to have lots more babies.)

Once in a while somebody asks, "How's the baby?" The first time, a few months ago, I was totally confused and said, "He's 3 now, not really a baby anymore, but he's doing great, thanks! Oh, you mean this baby [pointing at my belly]? The one inside me? Um, I don't know, he's still in there!" Now that a few more people have asked I've come up with a slightly less awkward answer, some variant of, "Seems like he's doing well, thanks." I just don't understand this question, though. The answer is either that you have no idea how the baby is doing, or you know that something is wrong and you probably don't want to discuss it with the random person asking you. Or maybe they want to hear that you've been feeling the baby kick or something.

More sugar

2011-02-15T17:52:00.001-05:00

My post from yesterday reminded me of K's candy-hiding behavior at a recent family party, where his older cousins each had a Pez dispenser and a few packets of Pez:
"K, come upstairs for dinner, please."
"Come back down in five minutes and then I'll come upstairs with you."
"Uh... okay. But no fussing when I come back. You'll come right up and eat your dinner, okay?"
"Deal."
(Five minutes later.)
"K, dinner time... hey, where are your cousins?"
"They went upstairs."
"What are you doing down here by yourself?"
"Eating Laura's Pez."
"Did Laura say that was okay?"
"Welll... no. But here is my plan. While everyone else is upstairs, I will eat all the Pez."
(He got in trouble for that one. And he had to apologize, and we got Laura some new Pez.)

I also found this in my draft folder with the title "morning popsicle negotiation":
"Can I have a popsicle?"
"Yes, after school."
"I have a plan. After breakfast I can get a popsicle. I'll take one lick and put it away."
"Hmm. Let me think about that."
"Are you done thinking?"
"Are you really just going to take one lick and then put the rest back in the freezer?"
"No. I'm going to EAT IT ALL UP!"
"After school."

Valentine's sugar rush

2011-02-14T12:46:00.001-05:00

Last night K woke us up at 2 a.m. AGAIN for no good reason. I can never get back to bed when he does that. This time I gave up and got out of bed around 3:30. I did some work and fell asleep on the couch later, around 5 a.m.

I woke up to K handing me a Valentine's Day card. He had written his name in it, all by himself! (With lots of encouragement and possibly bribery from Daddy, I'm sure.)

I gave him a hug and said, "I made a card for you, and I got you some little Valentine's presents, but you have to find them." Then I looked at the clock and noticed it was after 7 a.m. K must have been up for a while before he came downstairs. Usually he comes straight to our room at our permitted wakeup time of 6 a.m. and demands that one of us play with him. "Wait, did you already find them?"

"Well," he said, "I found some things. I found a wind-up heart with feet, and a picture of a tiger."

"That's right," I said. "And there was a heart-shaped card and a little box. Didn't you see those?"

"Wellll... I found a box of cookies. But I wasn't sure they were for me."

"Yes, there was a little box of candy for you. I wrote your name on it."

"Oh! For me? Thank you, Mommy! I wasn't sure they were for me, so I hid them under my blanket."

"You weren't sure they were for you... so why did you hide them under your blanket?"

"Wellll.... I ate some. In bed. They had a sour taste so I drank some water and the sour taste went away." (They were SweeTarts.)

"You weren't sure they were for you, but you ate some and hid the rest in your bed. And I guess you didn't like the taste."

"No! I love them!" And off he went to retrieve his former contraband.

JW came downstairs a minute later and said, "You let me sleep in."

"I was napping on the couch," I replied. "K didn't wake you up?"

"No," he said. "When I woke up he was just sitting in bed with the lights on, drinking some water. I was surprised because it was past 7."

I should probably be mad about the candy-hiding and eating in bed, but as a fellow sugar fiend I find it hard to blame the kid. I just have to resist the temptation to start leaving candy where he can find it on weekend nights so we can get extra sleep in the morning.

Money matters

2011-02-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

I've been reading with interest this Slate series by Jessica Grose about how couples manage their finances. She describes three different types of couples, whom she dubs "Common Potters" (completely merged finances), "Sometimes Sharers" (some joint money, some separate), and "Independent Operators" (completely separate).

JW and I are dedicated Common Potters. We got married young enough that neither of us had any significant assets individually, but even if we did I'm pretty sure we would have merged finances without a second thought. The way we see it, once you're married, there's no more "mine" and "yours". Everything is ours, and every financial decision we make affects our entire family whether it's buying a new house together or one of us spending $3 on a cup of coffee instead of putting it into savings. This means that neither of us cares about disparities in our incomes -- since everything is family money, every bit helps no matter who's earning it. The shared approach works well for us because we have similar, fairly conservative, spending habits, and can trust each other to spend and save appropriately. Right now we have plenty of money. We've had times when we've barely scraped by. But we each adjust our discretionary spending accordingly and make saving a priority. We're also each more likely to scrutinize our own spending habits than each other's, and cut back if we feel it's needed. As a result, we don't spend lots of time talking about money. We check in with each other occasionally about our long-term goals and strategy, and each month when our main credit card bill arrives we briefly discuss our spending for the month and whether we should be doing anything different.

I can understand why others choose different approaches, particularly if they have different spending habits, conflicting priorities, or some history that makes them want to maintain more independence. What surprised me when reading Grose's series was how complicated the other methods seem to be. I always thought that the alternative to shared finances would be to either have a joint account for joint purchases and individual accounts with some agreed-upon amount of money deposited each month, or to have separate accounts and agree on some fair method of splitting shared costs. As it turns out, there are myriad ways of arranging your finances as a couple.

The most surprising part, for me, was the complexity of deciding which are shared costs and which are individual costs. I always thought it would be obvious that things like housing and utilities would be shared, and everything else would be pretty much separate. According to the series, though, couples with separate or semi-separate finances go through regular negotiations about whether things like haircuts and maternity clothes should come out of the shared budget or the individual budgets. It would drive me crazy to constantly be negotiating about our finances in that level of detail. I feel like I'd have less independence, when the point is to have more. (Of course, you could make it simpler by skipping the negotiating and deciding in advance that by default, most expenses will be individual and only certain predefined expenses will be shared, or most expenses will be shared and only truly discretionary expenses will be individual.)

I also, for some reason, assumed that in a "Sometimes Sharer" situation, each person would get an equal amount for their "allowance", but it seems most people contribute a fixed percentage of their income to the shared pot and keep the rest for their individual account. It seems weird to me to build an income disparity into your relationship. But I can see how it would work for couples who want to maintain their financial independence, especially if they're older and more established in their spending and saving habits.

There were some unsurprising conclusions in the series -- for instance, the longer couples have been together, the more likely they are to share some finances (the author points out that few senior citizens would insist that their life partner repay them for money contributed to the partner's angioplasty bill), and couples with kids are more likely to both share some finances and to be more successful long-term if they share finances.

Caffeine

2011-02-11T21:38:00.002-05:00

I rarely drink soda, whether pregnant or not. Once every couple of months, if there's a can of Fresca among the beverage choices at a firm lunch, I'll grab it. Otherwise, I'm generally not into carbonation.

This afternoon I suddenly felt the need to drink soda. The store in the lobby didn't have many choices and I ended up with a 20 ounce bottle of Cherry Coke Zero. I drank the whole thing. When I got home I told JW this and he said, "You know that has caffeine, right?"

Oops. It's been so long that I actually forgot most soda contains caffeine. Sorry, baby!

I was exhausted by 8 p.m. as usual, so I'm hoping it didn't have any effect on either of us.

(P.S. - I looked it up and 20 ounces of Coke has less caffeine than half a cup of coffee. No big deal. I'm just surprised that I forgot about this. What else have I forgotten?)