The Real Motherhood of Bibb County
Posted on | January 27, 2012 | 7 Comments
Motherhood is not always about showing up with perfectly iced cupcakes with sprinkles for a classroom birthday party, or handmade Valentines. Sometimes it’s not about a bath every night and perfectly matching clothes pressed and ready for school. It’s not the everyday serenity smile and kiss on the cheek or the cover tuck at night after a sweet bedtime story.
Sometimes? Sometimes motherhood is just about staying one teeny, tiny step ahead of your ever-running child.
And we’re not talking about an average, well meaning jaunt of a step, no. This isn’t a “Take one giant step forward, mother may I?” kind of a deal. This is more of a tiptoe past while your child is glancing at a squirrel in the backyard and breathing a sigh of relief that finally you are ahead of something.
Motherhood, for me, has been a constant struggle to be ahead at anything… ahead in paying for daycare, ahead in laundry, ahead by making my lunch the night before. I can’t do it all and I can’t even pretend like I can do more than the minimum on most days. If my child is well-fed and he arrives at daycare without something stuck in his hair or to his face, then I feel like I’ve won for the morning. If I remember to grab a cereal bar for myself on the way out the door? I’m a rockstar.
Because motherhood isn’t about perfection… it’s about breathing. It’s about plastering on a smile as you read “Goodnight Construction Site” for the fifth time in a row. It’s about standing firm on some rules and caving in on others. It’s about learning how to craft a sentence into such a way that argument is futile.
It is survival of the fittest.
And it is with that in mind that I bring you my latest mothering success.
This morning, my son wanted desperately to stay home and watch Little Bear. He cried. He begged. He refused to stand up and make his way out to the car, no matter what I offered as incentive. And then, in a stroke of pure, unadulterated genius, I struck a bargain.
“J, if you will go to school today, I promise, promise, promise that you and Mommy will both stay home tomorrow. We’ll stay in our pajamas and watch TV all morning.”
And he grinned and nodded, totally placated. Totally thinking he’d won the game.
Point, match, set to me, little one… Today is Friday.
Love, TWOO love…
Posted on | January 25, 2012 | 4 Comments
This morning I woke while J was still sleeping. He woke up soon after me and snuggled up next to me. With his right hand, he patted the side of my head and tilted his head to meet mine.
“Hey mommy,” he whispered, “I missed you.”
A full day of school followed by dinner/bath with Mommy and the first words out of my son’s mouth were that he missed me after his eleven-ish hours of sleep.
And THAT’S love.
Help me Punch Cancer in the Face
Posted on | January 24, 2012 | Comments Off
I want to scream and punch and hit things. I want to cry until my eyes beg for mercy. I want to grab a tool box and fix this mess that cancer has created.
I want desperately to make something hurt worse than my friend is hurting, worse than I am hurting on her behalf, and worse than cancer hurts everyone it touches.
But I can’t.
I can’t make anything hurt more than this for her. Or for her husband. Or her sweet two year old daughter. Or her parents. Or for all of us who have grown to love and admire her strength and fortitude and bright, bright spirit. I love her. She is my kindred spirit, my voice on the other end of the phone when I’m down or tired or happy. She is beautiful and strong and amazing and she has touched my life more than she will ever, ever know… more than I could ever tell her. Saying that I love her seems so very small… she is my savior. She is who carried me through the roughest parts of my divorce, even as she battled her own disease. She is who lifted me up when I felt like I couldn’t stand. She is and will always be, my sweet soul sister, born of the same heart and soul and spirit that birthed me.
I can’t make anything hurt more than this.
But I can punch something that might make a difference, some day.
Will you punch it with me? Punch it for my dear friend, Jennifer, and her daughter and her family. Punch it for my grandmother and her mother, and her sister. Punch it for my grandfather and maybe your grandfathers or parents or siblings. It’s time to punch cancer in the face… hard.
Moving Forward
Posted on | January 23, 2012 | 11 Comments
Last night, my ex-husband wanted to Skype with J. We called but J wasn’t really interested. Finally, ex told J he loved him and I told J to say the same. Instead, J said “No, you tell daddy you love him!”
And in one quick moment… in one quick smile… I realized that I no longer did.
I realized, as I smiled at J and told him I couldn’t do that, that I wasn’t even remotely near tears about it. I realized that the words “I love you” would never be thought, or uttered, or felt in his father’s direction… ever again.
Someone told me, back when all this mess started, that it took the length of your relationship to get over your relationship. And I admit, I thought that meant I was going to be mourning this loss for almost five years… a thought that made me want to curl into a ball and disappear. Certainly, I’m not saying that there won’t be times in the future that I will feel hurt or angry over something my ex does… and maybe that portion will take the whole five years we were together. But I think that maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t take the length of the relationship.
I think it just takes long enough to let yourself become the person you are meant to be.
In April, I couldn’t function on my own. I was small and scared and so very alone. For three months, I gasped for air, relying on the strength of family and friends and this Internet community. Slowly, but surely, I started to create a life for myself… gardening and painting and working overtime to feel like I was making something worth while. I was improving my surroundings… I was improving myself.
By October, I was almost functioning on my own… far past the fear and concern of the first 24 weeks, but still a long way to go before I could draw my first, real breath. I was getting stronger, getting wiser, getting ready to move into the world I had busily created.
And then… and now… forty weeks later… a full term, single momma was born.
In a moment.
In a smile.
In a quick realization that “love” no longer meant “him”.
I have a long way to go. I still have to learn to to take my first real steps in the dating world. I still have to learn to feed myself through the times when my ex is in a relationship and introducing other women to our son. I still have to learn so much.
But in this moment of awakening, I feel pretty good about my future.
In this moment of rebirth, I feel like maybe… just maybe… this new me is the me I was supposed to be all along. Maybe, just maybe, some people need nine months of stillness to remember how to swim.
I’ve been treading water for nine months, strengthening my lungs, readying my feet, resting my head.
But now?
Now it’s time to stretch my arms, lengthen my legs… and start swimming again.
I Don’t Believe in Spanking
Posted on | January 20, 2012 | 15 Comments
Last night, I got frustrated with my son. He wouldn’t go to sleep, wouldn’t stop talking, wouldn’t stop asking for “just one more hug, Momma.” And there was basketball to be watched, and dishes to wash and floors to clean and a mound of laundry that needed sorting and washing and well, you get the picture. I had things to do. I had things I’d rather be doing than lying next to my very sleepy son and telling him for the fiftieth time that no, it was not time to get up.
But I laid there until he fell asleep, listening as his breathing slowed to a soft inhale and exhale of dreams… because that’s what I do. I’m his mother. He’s my world.
This morning, I woke up when a small, two year old leg kicked me in the face. He was still asleep, just trying to get closer to me, trying to worm his way just a tiny bit closer to the warmth on my side of the bed. Because that’s what he does… he’s two. I’m his world.
And not for the first time, I wondered what kind of person intentionally hurts a child. I wondered, as I lifted his leg and tucked it back on his side of the bed, what it takes to believe that hitting your child is the right answer, the right solution, the right punishment. I’m not a spanker. I was never spanked when I was a child and I have a hard time believing that spanking is ever the proper solution to any problem.
If you remember, I popped J on the leg last summer. I wrote about it once. I did it several times. But you know what? I popped him because I was stressed and sad and tired. I popped him because that was the easiest thing I could think of to do. I popped his little leg because I didn’t have the energy to explain to him, again, that what he was doing was wrong. And I think that’s what spanking boils down to. I think that spanking is the easy way out, the quick solution, the “mute” button of parenting.
It’s easy to lash out.
It’s easy to spank and pop and move on.
And you know what? Parenting is not supposed to be easy.
I do not believe it is possible to teach my child how to handle the problems that life will throw at him with dignity and grace if I resort to the easy way out when I am faced with a problem. I do not believe that I can pop and spank and threaten violence towards my child and hope to raise anything other than a son who believes that when all else fails, resort to swinging punches.
It’s easy to pop him on his leg when he kicks me. It’s hard to explain to him why kicking is wrong.
It’s easy to pop his hand when he takes a toy or hits a friend. It’s hard to walk him through the right way to deal with his frustration and anger.
I don’t want to take the easy way out when it comes to parenting. I don’t want my hands to do anything other than soothe and love and care for my son… I don’t want my hands to ever be a source of fear or a threat of punishment.
So as I lay there and moved J’s little leg again and again from my face or neck or the space between my arm and the bed, I reminded myself that this is what I do. This is my most important job. This is the person I never want to let down. I cuddled him close and whispered to him that I love him, kissing the tip top of his curly head and praying, as I so often do, for more patience with him. Because I don’t want to take the easy way out.
This is the kind of parent I am to my child. You can be whatever kind of parent you choose to be. But as for me? I’m J’s mother.
And he’s too important to me to take the easy way out.
Giveaway: AirInstinct from Oreck!!!!
Posted on | January 19, 2012 | 136 Comments
*** THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED *** Thanks to everyone who entered and congrats to “Oddvision,” the Random.org proclaimed winner!!
If you’re a regular reader, you know that I don’t do a lot of giveaways. Part of that is because I write a blog to write and believe you read a blog to read… not to win stuff… and part is because I’m really picky about what I will review and giveaway. If I don’t need it or I don’t think that someone who reads this blog might need it, then there’s no point in me even getting involved with the company.
Enter Oreck.
When I first got an email from the company they were offering me a review product/giveaway product that was amazing. But when I researched the item, it couldn’t be used on the type of floors I have so I politely declined. And then they emailed back and asked if I’d be interested in reviewing their AirInstinct Air Purifier instead. And voyeurs? I swooned.
If you remember, J has reactive airway disease and we live in a house built in the 50s with a dog who sheds like his life depends on it. And throw in that I’m a single working mom? Yeah… there’s a lot of dust. I wish I could say there wasn’t, but come on. Something has to give. So Oreck shipped me out their AirInstinct Air Purifier and it arrived and set up shop in my bedroom… where J also sleeps.
For the first few days, I was a little confused as to what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t all that quiet and it didn’t seem to be doing much. So I pulled out the instruction book and proceeded to laugh… a lot. See when the AirInstinct arrived, it had a big wrapper around it that said “PLEASE REMOVE PLASTIC BEFORE USING.” And in a moment of sheer brilliance, I thought it meant the plastic wrapper that SAID ”Please remove.” So that’s all I did. Turns out, there’s a plastic wrap around the filter inside the purifier. So yeah. There’s that. Don’t be like me, folks.
Once I followed the directions, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Let me preface by saying that these are my opinions on the AirInstinct… I’m not a doctor so I can’t tell you that there’s any medical benefit to having an air purifier. I can only tell you what seems to be the case for me. I used to wake up every morning with a stuffy nose… it was just par for the course for me. But now? Oh my gosh, y’all… I can breathe in the mornings. And better yet? J can breathe! We haven’t had to use his nebulizer since we got the AirInstinct. Honest to God. And that? That’s a freaking miracle. Sure, that could be because the air is cooler these days and there is less pollen… certainly I’m not saying that the AirInstinct is a medical device… it’s not. This is just MY opinion on things… that’s all. 
It might not be a medical marvel, but it does have a silent mode which makes it great for sleeping, and this sweet “mood lighting” that changes colors depending on what it’s taking in. J loves to watch the colors change.
One of the best perks of having the purifier is that my mom, who is allergic to dogs, felt like she was able to come and stay at my house. Before, she’d stay a few days and then get sick… but when I herniated the disc in my back, she came for a full week and we moved the purifer into her room. She was much more comfortable staying with us with the air purifier in her room. And call it what you will and attribute it to whatever you like, but she didn’t get sick. So pretty much this little amazing device has actually and really changed my life. (Don’t laugh, I’m serious.)
The best part? I have a second AirInstinct to giveaway to one of you…. and honestly, that makes me so happy! There are very few products I’ve fallen in love with the way I love my AirInstinct, so I’m THRILLED to be able to share it with you. If you think this is a product you’d love, here’s how to enter:
Visit Oreck.com and tell me one thing you learned about the AirInstinct
And that’s it!! That’s the only mandatory entry. Of course, if you want a few extra chances at this, you can comment for each of the following that you choose to do:
1. Follow @oreck on twitter
2. Like Oreck on Facebook
3. Sign up for Oreck’s email list
4. Tweet about the giveaway mentioning @oreck and @lawmomma77 as well as linking back to this post.
As excited as I am about this product and giveaway, there are a few rules… namely this: the giveaway winner has to live in the 48 contiguous states. Sorry Canada, Hawaii, Europe and Alaska. I also want you to understand that although I received the AirInstinct for free from Oreck, the opinions are all mine and all honest. I am the official sponsor of this giveaway, not Oreck… Oreck Corporation provided the prize for the sweepstakes but is not the sponsor of the sweepstakes.
Go forth and explore… Oreck has some amazing products, not the least of which is this Godsend I now have plugged in my bedroom. Good luck!!
Sick Days
Posted on | January 17, 2012 | 7 Comments
For me, the hardest part of being a working mom are the week days when J is coughing and sneezing and generally miserable. Because the “mom” part of me wants to be home to care for him. The “mom” part of me wants to stay in our jammies and make soup and hot chocolate and snuggle together watching movies all day.
But when you work outside the home, the “mom” part often has to come second to the other half of you… in my case, the “lawyer” half.
And I don’t like it.
At all.
I realize that my life, as it stands, requires me to be in the office and working. I realize that I am the sole breadwinner for our family and that I have a job that you just can’t take time off from. But when my son lays his head against my shoulder and says “I not feel good, Mommy. I stay with you today?” When that happens, every ounce of me wants to scoop him up and reassure him that yes, he can spend all day with Momma.
Lately, I’ve been trying to find a medium between where I want to be and where I need to be. Lately, I’ve been trying to split into halves the parts of my soul, staying home until lunchtime and then working a bit later in the evenings. It’s not perfect… it’s not me being home all day like I’d like… but I don’t live a perfect life.
I guess that’s what it all boils down to as any type of mom, though, right? No matter what you do during the day, perfection is absolutely, 100% unattainable. If I stayed home all day with J, I’d feel like I was letting down my clients, pissing off my boss, and stacking up work to do upon my return. If I went to work all day, I’d feel like I was letting down my son and also spending twice the money to pay for a babysitter and daycare.
One of my bosses once told me that I couldn’t be a successful attorney if I kept putting my son before my work and at the time they said that, I wanted to punch them in the face. Because in my heart, my son will always ALWAYS come first. But I think what they meant wasn’t that I needed to put work ahead of family. I think what they meant was that sometimes, making the decision to be at work when you’d rather be home is necessary… even if it’s not where you want to be. I think what they meant was that sometimes you have to believe that someone else will be able to care for your child for a few hours while you do what you need to do to pay your bills and satisfy your career. I still don’t like it. I still don’t enjoy relying on someone else when my son is sick. I still don’t want to put on my big girl pants and kiss his forehead on my way out the door while he begs me to stay and watch TV with him. But sometimes, being an adult is about doing what you don’t like… simply because it’s what has to be done.
Being a mom is all about middle ground… it’s all about finding a way to sigh, smile, and plow forward the best you can. Being a mom is about knowing you can’t make everyone happy all the time, especially not yourself and almost never your children. Being a mom is about finding the mid-point between what you want, what you need, what you have to do, and where you have to be…
And that’s true every day… even on a sick day.
Two Crazy Weeks…
Posted on | January 13, 2012 | 4 Comments
Over the course of the past two weeks, I have been in the office for approximately two full days. The rest of my time has been spent in the car, in Atlanta, conducting hearings, attending mediations, meeting with clients or sitting through countless depositions.
As a result of my veritable absence from the office, the stacks of paper on my desk have reached dangerous levels and I’ve had to unfortunately finally set up my iPhone to receive all of my office email. I’ve resorted to working, GASP, at home in the mornings and evenings and have even… DOUBLE GASP… gone in to work early. I am also QUADRUPLE GASP FOLLOWED BY CORONARY going in to the office tomorrow (yes, Saturday) to write a few briefs and respond to some motions.
I hate working long hours.
I am an attorney who likes to get my work done between 7:30 and 5:30, Monday through Friday. I do not mind the occasional emergency Saturday brief session or late night review of a document or two. I do, however, mind when I am struggling to find the time to spend with my son because my brain is so wrapped up in whether I sufficiently answered Client A’s questions or remembered to file Client B’s hearing request.
I’m worn out.
I’m frazzled.
I’m ready to spend a long, lazy day in my pjs, watching television, sipping wine and pretending that I have nothing more pressing to do than to press the buttons on my remote control, or text with my friends. I’ve been ready for that since Wednesday. Instead, though, I had today. Friday the 13th.
This morning, I had my first hearing for my current firm… my first on this side of the law. I also had my first trip to the Bibb County jail.
Although these sound related, I promise they are not. I was not shipped off to jail for contempt of court, though I wish I’d been allowed to bitch slap my opposing counsel with the back end of a porcupine. Instead, I made the trek out to visit a client who has been “locked up” for allegedly defrauding the workers’ compensation system.
Let me tell you something about the jail here… it’s a scary place to visit.
I go in, produce my bar card and drivers’ license and tell them who I want to see. They casually tell me to take the elevator up to the second floor and walk down the hall until I see the F-wing visitation room.
What they failed to mention was that when the elevator opened on the second floor, I would be facing a totally empty, concrete slab of a hallway where every footstep echoed like I was a dead girl walking. I finally found the visitation room, with no assistance because… there was no one anywhere on the hall. It occurred to me, as I stood there waiting for them to bring in my client, that with the exception of the surveillance cameras that seemed to be everywhere (and hopefully were on?), I was totally alone in a facility that housed alleged criminals. It felt surreal and a little terrifying. My brain started jumping into crazy scenarios where the place went on lock down and people rushed down the halls and I got stuck in a room with a bunch of people who hadn’t seen a woman in weeks and OMIGOD GET ME OUT OF HERE.
But then my client came in and I fumbled the phone and tried to talk before my turn and had to hang up and wait for a light to come on before he could hear me and I could hear him. In short, I became me again. All mumbles and fumbles and crazy lawyer mumbo jumbo.
It was a disaster that only a trip to a local cupcake place made right. Half a tiramisu cupcake later from the delicious Amanda’s Cakery, and 11 other various flavors of cupcakes for my co-workers and all was right with the world.
For now.
But honestly? I hope I never have to go to jail again, I hope I never have a series of weeks like this again.
And mostly? I hope, hope, hope that I never spend so much time away from my blog… ever again.
What Boys Like
Posted on | January 10, 2012 | 16 Comments
When people ask me to describe my son, I usually laugh and say “he’s all boy!”
And I expect that the people I’m saying that to will understand exactly what I mean… and they traditionally do. Because we all know what we expect boys to be like. They are rough and tumble. They are energetic and rambunctious and … you know, boyish. But lately, every time I say things like that, I cringe. Because I worry that I am inadvertantly setting my son up to believe there is only one way for a boy to be … and nothing could be further from the truth.
Ultimately, I’m not as worried about the effect that television and advertising will have on my son as I am about my own ingrained stereotypes. I am worried that I am inadvertently color-coding his world into blue and pink… appropriate and inappropriate. I know that I love my son no matter what… but am I showing him that when I steer him away from the Hello Kitty rain boots and hype up the green ones decorated with monsters? Am I making it clear that he can be anything and anyone he wants to be when I take him to buy his first baseball glove instead of his first tea set? I mean, let’s face it… he didn’t ask for either.
I want more than anything to raise a son who believes that all men and women are created equal. I want him to believe that he can be anything, love anyone, and do amazing things with his life… but I also want him to believe that the same is true for everyone else. And I know that ultimately, he is going to look to me as an example because I’m the parent who is here… the one present and available to him. So when I make the decision to let him stay up late to watch a basketball game, am I teaching him that basketball is more important than the Dora special he wanted to watch?
My son loves his Christmas toys. He got a train, and a zoo, and dinosaurs, and books about monsters and construction sites. He didn’t get tea sets or baby dolls or dress up clothes. When we go outside, we work on catching and throwing baseballs and footballs and basketballs. We kick soccer balls and build forts and yeah, we imagine that an elephant lives in the tall grass beside the mailbox. But we don’t pretend we’re princesses or set up tea parties… and I’m starting to wonder if that’s because I have never encouraged that part of J’s imagination. I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing my son a disservice.
I don’t want to be the parent who forces her son to wear pink because I want him to know it’s okay, but I also don’t want to be the parent who refuses to buy any pink because I think it’s not okay (which I don’t). And I don’t know where the line is… I don’t know if a baby doll is something he should ask for or something I should provide, if pink boots are something to let him buy because he likes the color, or something I should steer him away from because… well, we live in the South.
I don’t want my son to grow up thinking boys like certain things and act a certain way. But I also don’t want to be someone who forces him to like things or play with things simply because they’re not traditionally “boy-ish.” At the end of the day, I just want J to be happy with who he is … and whatever makes him happy is perfectly okay with me. I guess if I can make sure he knows that, all the rest will fall into place.
Bedtime in the Law Momma House…
Posted on | January 5, 2012 | 9 Comments
Last night at 8:00, I climbed in bed with J to go to sleep. He immediately sat up and thus began our nightly routine.
J: HI MOMMY!
J: Hi Mommy, you’re here!
J: Hi Mommy, look at me. Here I am!
J: Moooooommmy. Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. Hi. Hi. Hi.
Me: J. It’s time for sleeping. No more talking.
J: Lord we thank you for our food. And our many blessings. Amen. Amen. Aaaaaaaaaaaamen. Don’t worry, Mommy. Your food is coming. (Long pause) HERE it is! It’s a hamburger! You be careful it’s hot. Mmmmmmm. It’s a good hamburger mommy. You like your hamburger? It has ketchup. It is soooooo good. Mmmmmm. I like it. I like my hamburger. You like hamburgers, mommy? I need to say my prayers. You say your prayers, Mommy? You say your prayers with me, okay? Dear God, thank you for Mommy. And for Chuggington. I said thank you for Chuggington, Mommy. I so silly. I silly, right? Right, mommy?
Me: J. If you can’t be quiet, Mommy is going to go sleep somewhere else.
J: Gabby sleep in my room. Uncle E sleep in his room. Where you sleep, Mommy? Huh? Where you sleep? On the sofa? You sleep in the bathroom? Noooo, you sleep right here. You not sleep in the bathtub, that silly.
Round one to J. With an asterisk. And a mommy trying really hard not to laugh as her son totally calls her bluff.
And THAT is what I have to deal with on a nightly basis, folks.
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