I’ve started to think seriously about J’s 5th birthday party. I only have 6 weeks to figure it all out, including where to have it, and get completely organized.

Two years ago I planned a small princess themed party in our house. I had crafts and games planned, but then the party almost got cancelled altogether because my morning sickness was so bad I could barely get out of bed. It moved forward, but turned into a glorified play date with some cake and princess crowns if you felt like making them.

Last year, I knew that we were going to have to invite over 20 kids and our house couldn’t handle it. Being that J’s birthday is in February, we simply don’t have a ton of options here in terms of where to hold a party, so I went the easy route and held it at the local gymnastics place and other than an amazing cake my friend made, there was no theme to speak of. Easy peasy, no thought required.

So this year, I have no idea where to hold the party. I don’t want to do gymnastics again and J stopped going to her classes in the fall, so I’m over that. We could go bowling, but I’m sort of ho-hum over the whole idea. Then there is the fact that she is OBSESSED with the Wizard of Oz at the moment. I would love to throw a themed party, but we are probably going to still have nearly 20 kids and that doesn’t sound like a fun day in the house.

Anyway, where am I going with this? I started to look at some websites to see what ideas people had for a Wizard of Oz party. There are some amazing things out there. But more than anything else, there are some moms out there who really just love to party plan and decorate and bake and seem to have a whole lot more free time than I do. Actually, I have a local friend (ahem, she who made last year’s cake) who excels at this sort of thing. Me? Nope. I’m looking at these websites thinking that over-achieving moms just make the rest of us look bad. And then on the flip side, do the kids really care? A lot of this stuff is to show off your mad skills and because you enjoy doing it. Now, I’m not saying it isn’t a wonderful thing to do if you have the energy and ability, but where did nice simple birthday parties go? And how in the world do I manage to throw a cool themed birthday party for approximately 20 kids in February? There are so many great games we can play, I just have to figure out some major logistics and pray for good weather.

My daughter loves books. I love this fact. She is reading above her level so I’m having to find books for her that aren’t to far above her understanding. Picture books are always good, but she has a thing for chapter books. We love the Magic Treehouse series and the Magic School Bus books. I’ve been encouraged to have her read the Rainbow Magic books, which we now have a few of, but we haven’t actually read them yet.

One series that I had heard a lot of people talk about for kindergarten and first grade girls is the Junie B. Jones series. My mom bought J a few of these for a quarter each at a library book sale, and I’m sorry to say that they are going in the trash. If your girls read these books, I’m sorry, but this is going to be a rant.

So what is wrong with these books? I’ve only read 2 chapters tonight and here are my big issues.

• Word choice – There are some terms that I’d rather my 4 year old didn’t use, especially the word “stupid.” It’s in the title of the first book in the series and just thrown out by “dad” in the book I read tonight. I struggle to not use the word myself around J, I don’t need it thrown around carelessly by a book.
• Grammar – Children learn grammar from listening to adults and from the books the read or listen to. These books make me cringe! Many words are shortened – goin’, ’cause, ‘rolled (for enrolled), etc. Also, because they are supposed to be in Junie B.’s voice there are lines like “‘Cause I never rides on a bus before.”
• Behavior – As with grammar, there are behaviors that we learn by watching others. Kids these days often don’t treat adults with the respect that they should, but that doesn’t mean that it is acceptable. Junie B. has a bit of an attitude problem and her mother doesn’t reprimand her for her behavior. For example, when meeting her teacher for the first time, she hollers at her to include the “B” in her name. Her mom “rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling” but never admonishes Junie B. for her attitude. Also, since these are in Junie B.’s voice, she thinks things like “I can beat that boy up, I think.”

Apparently, there has been a long history of people either loving or hating this series. In 2007, when J was 5 months old, there was an article in the NY Times that highlighted the problems many people had with the book.

“The spunky kindergartener (first grader in more recent volumes) is prone to troublemaking, often calls people names and isn’t averse to talking back to her teachers. And though she is the narrator of the stories, she struggles with grammar. Her adverbs lack the suffix “ly”; subject and object pronouns give her problems, as do possessives; she usually isn’t able to conjugate irregular past tense verbs; and words like funnest and beautifuller are the mainstays of her vocabulary.”

I don’t believe in talking down to children. I don’t think the behavior shown by Junie B. is funny. I know that I will not be reading J these books again.

Lately I have been fascinated with books that fall into the category of young adult dystopian novels. What are these books, you make ask? According to the wonderful world of wikipedia,

Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, various forms of active and passive coercion. Ideas and works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and humans individually and collectively coping, or not being able to properly cope with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than humanity’s spiritual evolution. Dystopian societies are often imagined as police states, with unlimited power over the citizens.

As for the novels themselves, they are often futuristic in scope. The classics from dystopian fiction are books we all recognize – 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451. These are titles that most people my age were required to read sometime in school and to write many papers on them. I remember reading 1984 for a second time in one of my early Mass Comm classes and being fascinated by double speak and the power that government had over us.

Recent books that fall into this category are The Hunger Games, Divergent, Matched, Uglies, etc. My first draw into this genre was The Hunger Games. I had heard about this book, but shied away from it, thinking it was for teenagers and not worth my time. I knew only that it was a young adult book, not that it fell into the dystopia category – which I wouldn’t have even been able to describe at the time.  Little did I know that while it was originally aimed at the young adult audience, it also covered subject matter that would get the grown-up mind thinking, and isn’t that part of what books should do? I mean, I love a good escape read and a lush story, but there is something alluring about books that challenge the way that you think about the world around you. It doesn’t hurt when those books are written in a style that encourages you to devour them in as few sittings as possible.

The classic dystopian novels had adult protagonists “who questions the society, often feeling intuitively that something is terribly wrong.” The difference about this new batch of novels is that is it a younger generation who starts to question society. These teenagers have to take power into their own hands to try to find a way to make society more accepting of a variety of issues and, in the case of The Hunger Games, to save their own lives.

So where am I going with this? Well, I just finished the latest in a string of books that I truly enjoyed – Awaken.  Awaken is the story of Maddie, a girl in 2060 who experiences life as everyone else does, from behind a computer screen. She goes to Digital School (DS) and even has virtual dates. When she “goes” to the movies with friends, they watch them from the comfort of their own individual homes on a wall screen and somehow manage to share the experience. The overabundance of digital life, especially on the school level, was brought about due to the increased violence that truly is occurring in our schools today. The final straw had been a shoot out where Maddie’s father, the creator of the digital school, had to kill a student who had gone on a shooting spree in his brick and mortar school. Then one day, Maddie meets Justin in an honest to goodness face to face meeting and everything changes. The love story is cliche, but her new-found understanding of the importance of actually talking to people, touching, experiencing things together, is not.

I think that the writer, Katie Kacvinsky, managed to write a number of truly quotable lines.

Computers have turned life into a digital world and people are so wrapped up by the convenience of it all that they don’t care they’re as plugged in as machines.

People are becoming spectators of their own lives instead of living them. But the best part is getting in the game. That’s when it’s all worth it.

It’s not that I’m anti computers. They have their advantages. But technology can be like a drug if you don’t keep it in check. After a while it gets in your system and you’re addicted…We’ve become so dependent on computers we can’t cut ourselves off.

What really stands out to me is that this is often how I feel about computers right now. We are addicted. We are so used to Facebook and quick updates that sometimes we don’t get out and make sure that we socialize. Even picking up the phone and having an honest to goodness conversation. I know that I make a big effort to make sure and socialize, but there are questions in my head about what all of these social media sites are doing to our children and future generations. Our communities are so scattered that there is a need for technology to keep us together, but do we rely on it too much? I think that this book brings up a lot of interesting conversation topics (hint hint book clubbers). The ending left me a little flat, but that’s probably because the author was just leaving you hanging for the next installment (another big trend right now) due out in 2012. Until then, I will just have to read one of the other books on my ever-growing list.

Happy Reading!

Two posts in the same week? What has gotten into me? Well, this blog is about my random musings and this is what has been on my mind lately.

As Hanukkah draws near, I am trying to make it truly special for the girls without going overboard in a commercial sense. I think the thoughts started invading my mind when I had a conversation with my brother-in-law about gifts. I knew that my husband’s family hadn’t given gifts, but hearing it again from a different source and hearing how he dealt with being different in the south truly brought it to the forefront of my mind. I had such a completely different experience growing up.

I grew up in Los Angeles, in the valley, where Jews were everywhere. I had a bus that I rode to elementary school that was basically empty during the high holy days – and it was one of the big buses that probably held 40 kids. We knew that we were not the majority, but we didn’t feel like Christmas overwhelmed us. Teachers in our schools covered both holidays with knowledge.

Here in the south, that’s less of a reality. A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook about how her daughter’s class was drawing Christmas pictures and when her daughter asked if she could draw a Hanukkah picture, she was told no. J was at the library the other day and asked why there weren’t any Hanukkah decorations. She is also oddly bothered this year by the amount of Christmas stuff up. I think she’s just starting to feel different. We are talking about it a ton. We are bringing out all of our Hanukkah books. We keep talking about the fact that Hanukkah is celebrating our fight to be Jews, that many years ago there were people who didn’t want us to be Jewish and tried to make the Jews stop believing but that the Jews fought back.

But Hanukkah isn’t about gifts. I get that. However, it is about education and interest and little gifts help that matter. I don’t want my child to go back to school after the holidays feeling even more different because she didn’t get any gifts. My brother-in-law apparently had that experience. A few days ago, I read this really interesting article about gift giving. Some great points are

It is possible, however, to highlight the meaning of Chanukah throughgift-giving. For example, giving your kids books or tapes or videos about the story of Chanukah so they understand what it is we’re celebrating.

It’s okay to give gifts on Chanukah, as long as they are given with the purpose of drawing a child close to his/her roots, and that the act of giving speaks louder than the gift itself.

It got me looking around and so I also found this article which shows more of the history of gift giving for Hanukkah.

Though gifts might make Hanukkah seem like a “Jewish Christmas,” there can be value in taking time to select a thoughtful and tasteful gift for a child you love. And there is undeniable pleasure in seeing children excited to play with new toys–especially when those toys are helping them learn and develop new skills.

When I do Hanukkah gifts, I try to make some of them about Judaism. This is the time of year that we get most of our “Jewish” toys and books. When you don’t have a strong Jewish community filled with kids who see each other a lot, and when shabbat services are only once a month (and we are missing November and December), you have to find ways to bring a strong sense of Judaism into the home.

A lot of people talk about having your children give a toy away for each gift that they receive. Maybe one year I will start that concept. I don’t know that we are ready for that yet. For now, I have come up with my own way to reconcile that I want my kids to get gifts for Hanukkah – this year we are going to do a craft a day and start our own collection of home-made Hanukkah decorations to help make our home full of the Hanukkah spirit and to work as a time to talk about the holiday on various levels.  I’ve started to collect my ideas over on Pinterest. J has started to enjoy doing crafts more and she likes the idea of keeping one box of decorations and adding to it. Now, I am NOT a crafty person, so this is a huge step for me, but one that I think we will all benefit from. I am also checking with a local friend about those in our Jewish community who might benefit from the joy of a young child (or two) bringing Hanukkah cookies and smiles to them. We live in a retirement community and not everyone gets to experience Hanukkah through the eyes of a young child. That could help J see that the holiday is about cherishing our heritage and doing mitzvot. Finally, I am going to make a bigger effort to have people over during the holiday to celebrate with us, not by opening gifts, but by enjoying a good meal, playing dreidel and enjoying the people around us.

Religion is a hard thing to teach your children. Making sure that my girls have strong Jewish identities even though we are very much a minority here is doubly important. I can’t take anything for granted and know that if I want them to truly embrace their own Jewishness, I must work at it. Now that J is old enough, that is exactly what I’m going to do.

I’m desperately trying to decorate the house (finally!). Today I made a bunch of purchases of wall decals for the girls’ rooms and the playroom. Here is what I’m looking at…

For J…

These wall decals are the inspiration for her room. The large castle will stand in for a head board, I’m not sure where the rest will go.

I have also commissioned three pieces by a local artist to go along with these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For E….

This set of decals is pretty tall and will fill a wall. However, to fill out the rest of her room, I am also adding some small flower decals to spread around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the playroom I’ve bought two sets of these flowers and am going to put up some butterflies. I also plan on stringing up some of J’s artwork on fishwire.

I am also jonesing to add to the melted crayon art craze going on on Pinterest.

 The colors in this one would actually go fabulously with our new couches. I don’t think I can make anything as artistic as this one – they made an actual silhouette photo of themselves. Not going to happen for me. But I can figure something out to make it more me.

I realize, I’m not sure when I’m going to manage to do this, but at some point, I need to bring more art into my life.

I like to listen to NPR in the car when the munchkin isn’t with me, the older one that is. A few days ago they started running pieces to remember 9/11. I turned the radio to a different station. This morning, as I left J off at school I turned to NPR and they were finishing up a political piece. After that, they went on to a piece paying tribute to Father Michael Judge, the first official death of that horrible day. I forced myself to listen. And then I cried.

Most of us can remember exactly where we were when we first learned of the planes hitting the twin towers, that’s the reality of that day. I have tried for the last 10 years to forget that day and the days that followed. Somehow I think forcing myself to think about it and write about it here might actually be a healing process.

I lived in NY 10 years ago. I worked downtown in the meat packing district and lived on the upper east side. I also had a bum knee which would be operated on in 2002 so I often chose to take a cross town bus and then hop on the 1/9 instead of having to deal with the stairs at 14th street. I was on the bus when the first plane hit. We heard about it, but reality didn’t sink in and everyone thought it was a fluke. I got on the subway and started my ride downtown. They started making announcements that the train wouldn’t go further south then 14th street, but I didn’t care since that was my stop anyway. When I started walking to work, reality started to sink in. I saw the first tower actually fall. I saw people falling and/or jumping out of the buildings – they were small since I was a number of blocks away, but it was an unmistakable sight. I got to my office and everyone that was there was watching CNN. We sat there in a state of shock. We kept trying to find out about everyone else we worked with and to make phone calls out to let people know that we were okay. After an hour or so, we all started on our journeys home. A group of us walked together heading north, breaking off as we got closer to our own neighborhoods. I don’t know where I wound up walking by myself, but I know that by the time I was close to Bryant park, I was alone in a sea of people making the long journey home. As I passed the park,  I remember seeing people covered in dust. It was fashion week, and it took a moment for my brain to process that these were people who worked closer to the towers who were covered in dust instead of people who had been involved in the fashion shows. It’s funny how your brain doesn’t want to acknowledge reality. A few blocks later, people started running west and saying that there was a bomb or something at Grand Central. There was no such thing, but we were already freaked out. I got back to going north. When I hit Central Park, it was like the whole thing disappeared. There were two different worlds. I finally made my way to 90th. I don’t remember the rest of that day. I know it was passed by watching the news and having moments of complete freak outs.

The next day, the upper east side was awash with people acting like it was just another weekend. Lots of outside brunching and socializing. Me? I felt completely alone and isolated. My closest friend had recently moved to Texas. My other truly good friends lived in New Jersey and Westchester. My close LA friend who had also moved to the area when I did had stopped speaking to me a year earlier. I had recently broken up with a guy. For someone who needs to have people around her, I was lost. I had panic attacks. I cried. A lot. When I got a phone call that our offices were going to stay closed for a number of days, I actually called my boss up and asked if I could come over to her place since she didn’t live that far away from me and I couldn’t be alone anymore. My brother wanted me to find a car and drive home to LA. I was truly grateful to my Jersey friends who let me stay there for a few days. I remember driving up to Woodstock and sitting in on a recording session since that was already on their schedule. I listened to one song for 8 hours and it was nice to just be completely removed from reality. Then I was driven back towards the city and I saw the sky still smoldering and had to face up to it again.

When my office opened back up, I was grateful. I have always been a workaholic and now, more than ever, I needed to be surrounded by people, even if it was just the superficial relationships between coworkers. I needed to be doing something. I needed to be useful.

That year for Christmas, my bosses gave us photo books commemorating the day (I did work for a photo agency after all). They were tied in brown paper wrapping. Mine stayed closed up in that brown paper until just a few months ago because the paper was starting to open up on it’s own. I never went to see ground zero. It was something that I couldn’t face.

In my own way, I have glossed over the date each year. The first anniversary hit me hard and I was glad that NY businesses closed down. Each year after that, it managed to get a bit more distant. This year I can’t ignore it. Now that we are marking 10 years, there is no way of escaping. Perhaps it is good to remember. I am fortunate that I did not actually lose anyone that day. So many people suffered tremendous loss, I just suffered emotional turmoil. But I still get sick thinking about it. Writing this was incredibly painful and has put my stomach into knots, but one day, maybe the memories will truly get dimmer and perhaps I will actually  want to recall my story.

They say never forget. For me, it has been something more of an allow yourself to remember. We all move on. My life has changed in so many ways. I will never be as alone as I was that day and the days that followed. But we need to live each day to the fullest and always tell the people around us how much they mean, for we never know what tomorrow might bring.

To anyone who has read this, thank you. Thank you for allowing me to get this out and thank you for caring enough about me to read the whole thing. Much love.

I just finished reading a very thought provoking book entitled “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.” Here are my thoughts on the book.

I first heard about this book by catching a few minutes of an interview with Peggy Orenstein on the Diane Rehm show. I was fascinated so I downloaded the episode so that I could hear the whole thing and quickly put myself on the waiting list for the book at my local library (amazed they actually had it).

The book deals with a lot of concerns that many parents of young girls face these days – namely, how to raise your daughters to be strong, independent young women in a world where they are inundated with marketing that encourages them to focus on their appearances and be avid consumers. It also discusses how girls are encouraged to grow up so much quicker these days.

I found the book to be a very interesting read, but as one of my local friends complained, it was annoying that there really was no resolution, no thoughts about what we should do.The book used a somewhat research oriented process to look at the struggles that we face as parents these days, but gave no attempt to give guidance on how to deal with it. This is, of course, partially due to the fact that every mom (and dad) has to deal with the situation in their own way. Peggy Orenstein has gone a hard-core route and pretty much outlawed anything related to princesses, especially those of the Disney variety. So decisions that she makes in dealing with the messages that the media sends to our daughters is going to be different then the ones that I make, since J is quite enamored with princesses.

The other issue that I had was that most of the book was summarized in the radio interview and I wanted more.

All that said, here are some of the interesting tid-bits and some thoughts of my own…

• All of this over the top princess craziness seemed like something that wasn’t around when I was a kid and that’s because it wasn’t. Some marketing exec realized in 2000 or 2001 that there was a ton of money to be had in selling dresses, make-up and other tie-ins. Kind of sad since “dress up” used to mean raiding mom’s closet.
• The whole segmentation of teen, tween, pre-teen, even toddler are marketing tools. I have always understood that tween was, but the fact that toddler itself was a marketing gimmick from the 1930s.
• Items get marketed to one age group and then the girls below take it over before it is meant for them, thereby making the older girls no longer like it. Take for instance Barbie dolls. They were, for a long time, aimed at the 6-12 age group. These days, however, they seem to be geared more towards the 3-6 age group. I personally don’t think that my 4 year old is ready to play with Barbie and quite honestly, she isn’t interested. But some of her friends already are.
• All of the fairy tales and stories that these princesses come from were originally stories that taught young girls and boys moral lessons. I think Ms. Orenstein has a point about going back to the original Brothers’ Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson versions of many of these tales. The protagonists in their stories didn’t just need to be saved by the prince. However, they were also apparently a bit more gruesome with things like Snow White’s step-mother being forced to attend her wedding to the prince wearing red-hot iron shoes and made to dance until she dies. Have to try to find a happy medium with that one.
• A big part of what she talks about is how all of this consumerism and focus on appearance impacts our girls as they grow older. What might seem harmless at age 4 gets less so at age 14. Girls get sucked into the Disney machine at a young age and then their “role models” like Hannah Montana or Lindsey Lohan grow up and rebel by using their sex as a marketing tool

Orenstein makes all of this sound incredibly pervasive and unavoidable unless you boycott princesses altogether. I have to think that parenting does actually come into play and that we can allow our girls to experience princesses without losing them to it. The one thing that makes me sad is that all of this media and marketing aimed at young kids is hard to avoid.

In the end, her book makes me miss the “good ole days” when I was growing up. In know that I enjoyed Cinderella, but it didn’t get in the way of also loving sports. I’m hopeful that I am also managing to raise my daughters that way. I remember when I was pregnant with J, I didn’t want anyone to buy her anything pink. Not for the princess aspect, but because I honestly don’t like the color and think it is ridiculous for us to push it on our girls. 4 years later, I know that it is unavoidable, and quite honestly, both my girls look great in pink. But when I get asked what my favorite color is, I always say blue. I fear that television and the internet and social media (an interesting chapter in the book) are hurting our children. I wish that we could find a way to keep them away from it for longer, but I am guilty myself about allowing television in as a necessity. On the flip side though, there are quality programs out there that show girls doing other things so that we can manage to do this fine balancing act. J’s current favorite (changes frequently) is Jake and the Neverland Pirates on Disney. She only recently got into actually watching the longer princess movies. But the good news is that she seems equally fascinated with Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. This mothering thing is hard.

I’m reading this book my mom got me, The Mother Trip: Hip Mama’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood, and I got to a page the other night that really rang true:

“Children need interesting mothers and mothers need interesting lives…we need time to ourselves, moments of awareness, connection, meaningful work…we need good coffee, hearty meals, lush gardens and time to relax and enjoy our lives without worrying so much about whether we are good enough mothers or skinny enough girlfriends or wives. We need to take care of ourselves so that we can mother our children soulfully and lead lives worth living.”

She got that spot on. There are a lot of times that I feel like I get into a rut, I miss just going out and doing things for myself and not for my family. Heck, I miss finding time to sit and blog without feeling guilty. This is why I do book club and why moving to an actual neighborhood is so important to me. It’s why I encourage the munchkin to be friends with kids who have parents that I enjoy spending time with.

Being happy as an individual is a fundamental key to being happy as a collective unit. I used to get a lot of personal satisfaction from working, but that was back when we were in KC and I had a job that was truly fulfilling. It’s much harder for me to do things that are specifically for me in a smaller town, knowing that I need to get a babysitter most times in order to do that. But I do keep looking for opportunities. I find a lot of pleasure in books and talking about them. I’ve found that I really enjoy listening to NPR and am trying to make sure that I get in music of my own liking, not just the munchkin’s. I’m trying to find a way to knit or crochet again. I take great pleasure in spending hours in the park with friends. I’m trying to utilize the morning hour when J is at school to also just be social instead of feeling like I have chore after chore to accomplish.

I spent a lot of J’s early months in a depressed haze. I know that its better for everyone if I like myself and find myself interesting enough for the girls to look up to so that is what I intend to do. Now back to my chores.

I can’t believe I’m posting this on a night where J is up reading an hour and a half after we actually put her down, but I’ve folded the laundry and actually have a few moments to type something up. I guess in some ways it makes what I’m writing all the more true.

So here’s the thing, one of the biggest struggles with babies is their sleep patterns. It amazes me how many books are available on the subject of how to get your kid to sleep through the night. People swear by them. Here is what I think…

When your baby is ready to sleep through the night, he/she will.

Radical, I know. Now I’m not saying that you shouldn’t encourage things like letting your child put themselves to sleep sans breast or bottle, but I’m into following their clues with some helpful encouragement.

J didn’t sleep through the night until she was 15 months old. I couldn’t figure out what we were doing wrong, but there I was, already beating myself up during the throws of PPD and my baby wouldn’t sleep. All of the books expected that you read them prior to the birth of your baby, not once you actually are having a problem; I don’t read computer manuals and I didn’t read baby books before my baby was born. Looking back, I now understand that some of our sleep issues stemmed from the fact that J wasn’t getting enough food in the first few weeks. All of the other reasons that kept her from sleeping through the night? I simply can’t tell you.

E started sleeping through the night at 2 months. First it was the miracle of a 5 hour stretch, then 6 and wham! She is also able to put herself to sleep. She doesn’t always like it, but usually her bedtime isn’t overly painful.

J’s routine has continued to be more difficult. Actually, my facebook status this evening was “love my baby for putting herself to sleep. now if only her older sister would get the memo.”

Am I doing something different? Everything is different with baby #2, including my stress levels, but I’m not “doing” anything. I’m letting E do her thing and miraculously it’s working.

Feel the zen.

A few weeks ago a close friend asked how life was post paid employment and I realized that I never addressed that here, so here goes….

I am not the stay at home kind of mom. I’ve always taken a lot of pride from the jobs I’ve held and I enjoy working. That being said, not working anymore was the best decision that I’ve made for myself in a very long time. It is better for me and better for my kids.

There were 2 major drawbacks to my job…

• Number 1, was that it was a part-time position, but they were used to having it filled by someone who was full-time and could better accommodate last minute rush requests. The nature of the beast was that things always ran late and when I tried to work a true part-time 9-1 schedule, it failed. I knew that when fall hit there would be a ton of after-school activities that I wanted J to be allowed to go to so having my afternoons free was pretty important to me.
• Number 2 was that socially it was a mistake for me to be working from my home. None of the women in my social circle work 5 days a week and very few people want to get together on the weekends – weekends are sacred for family time. The thing is, I’ve come to realize that even though I have initial discomfort in social situations, I am an extroverted person (an introverted extrovert) and being around other people makes me a happier person. J is an extrovert in a major way, I can only wonder where she gets it. I missed the day to day social interaction of working in an office environment. Working from home and then taking care of J in the evening just wasn’t cutting it for me, especially with my husband’s irregular working hours.

So now that I don’t work (per se, because being a full-time mom is one of the hardest jobs out there), I have a stronger set of friends, J’s social circle is stronger, and while we are slightly over-scheduled, she’s thriving. Also, I thought about how I would make it work with a newborn and realized that it wouldn’t unless I hired help.

What’s wonderful is that this time around I’m not suffering from PPD. I still have my moments of blues and frustration, but I’m not in the same haze that I was before. Getting to fully experience E at this age is amazing as I wasn’t able to with J.

Someday I would like to find a way to work again, but for now this is the way to go.