Random Acts of Christmas Kindness: 2016

hello, friends! 

welcome back to my 'actual' blog. i hope that you'll bookmark this page and visit it often—starting with every day between December 1st and the 25th, when i'll be writing about our Random Acts of Christmas Kindness project this year.

last December was the first time we spent our holiday season focused on acts of kindness, and—though it did get a little hectic at times the closer we got to Christmas Day—it was a truly awesome experience. Matthew especially enjoyed it, looked forward to our daily 'act' and even started recognizing other things we did (such as helping an elderly gentleman who was lost on the street) as acts of kindness. 

last year we followed a calendar posted online by a friend. this year i decided to create our own, incorporating some acts that we loved doing last year as well as our own ideas and suggestions from friends and family. i'm sharing it here and now in case anyone would like to join us next month (which, incidentally, starts next Thursday!). 

in the upcoming days, i will post links to various charities and organizations and other information that might be helpful in completing some of the acts of kindness. i'll also share memories from last year and ideas and notes for this year. 

but for now: thanks so much for reading, and please come back soon!


mbm

second letter to my daughter

left: 43 weeks ago. right: yesterday.

dear Molly,

watching you in your high chair this morning, with yogurt and Cheerios and raspberry smeared on your face, i felt the tiniest stab of sadness in my heart. "she's almost one," i thought, more wistfully than i wanted. now that you're eleven months old, the countdown to your first birthday is officially on. and though i feel joyful about all of it, i have to admit (grudgingly) to feeling mournful, too.

the other day i was changing your diaper and as i gazed down at you on the changing table, i had this weird realization that i don't remember what it was like to change you when you were a tiny baby. obviously i changed a lot of your diapers and onesies over the last eleven months, but it's just gone so darn fast. each month was five minutes, and the girl you are today seems like the girl you've been since the beginning.

the funny thing is, i've spent more time with you in your first year of life than i did with either of your brothers. we haven't been apart for a single day. i couldn't ask for a better gift, especially with you, because i was so convinced i wouldn't be a good mama to a baby girl—but it hasn't made time go any slower.

i say often that i never want to be the kind of mother who feels sad about watching her children grow, but i'm starting to realize it's a little inevitable. motherhood by definition is bittersweet. still, i'm going to try my hardest to shrug off the bitter and soak up the sweet moments of these last few weeks of your first year. 

you'll always be my precious little bean, but there really is absolutely nothing mournful at all about watching you sprout (i had to!) into a beautiful, sassy, smart and super-strong little girl. even with Cheerios and raspberries and yogurt on your face. 

i love you forever & always,

mama

this is a test, a standardized test

at the end of the day, i just want to be a good, solid example for this girl.

so, here's a funny story: i almost took the SAT last week.

yep, that SAT.

i bailed.

let me back up a bit: it has recently become unavoidably apparent that living on one income is not for us. we can survive, technically. but Michael and i enjoy living. we don't like to have things, but we like to do things. with the kids, without the kids. day trips, getaways, little adventures, spontaneous exploring. (we also occasionally love food that we don't have to prepare, and drinks someone else pours.)

i really, really wish i could get paid for being at home with the kids, because if the job did pay, either hourly or on some kind of scale that rewarded maximum effort, i'd be rich. i am a lapsed Catholic with a Protestant work ethic at home. i don't think i've ever worked so hard in my life—in fact i know i haven't. i take it very seriously, because i decided about a year ago that if i'm not contributing to our family financially, i better well contribute in every other way possible. which is not to say my house is spotless and an elaborate dinner is on the table every night at 6 o'clock on the dot. (please. i'm not a robot.) i just mean i never sit down. if the kids are napping, i'm folding laundry or sweeping up messes or trimming shrubs or filling the dishwasher or organizing the playroom (or, on rare occasions like today, writing my blog). if the kids are awake, i'm changing a diaper, wiping a face, mediating a toy-fight, pushing a stroller, buckling a car seat, making a bottle, unwrapping a cheese stick. you get the idea.

i think, deep down, i haven't ever wanted it to seem like i'm not working, if that makes any sense. i don't take for granted that i'm not stuck in an office anymore, relegated to breakfast and bedtime with my kids. i don't take for granted that i've been able to be with Molly so much for this amazing first year of her life. i never, ever take an ounce of any of it for granted.

the problem is, although the kisses and hugs and giggles and cuddles i get from my wee ones are worth more than gold, they can't be deposited in a bank and withdrawn from the ATM or used to pay a few bills.

my original plan—the one i envisioned before we ever moved—was to freelance full-time as a writer and editor. i haven't given up on that dream by any stretch, but the last several months have shown me that it's not nearly as easy as i thought it would be to get regular clients or to steal blocks of time in which to actually write. i decided to put that plan on the backburner just for now and instead look for part-time work that would give us a little financial padding but not disrupt our lives completely.

last week i found a listing online for a tutor at one of those places that help kids prepare for the SAT. it said the job was perfect for a writer/editor. i immediately applied. helping kids with vocab and essay writing? sign me up! an hour later, i was on the phone with the director of the place, a nice enough guy who seemed slightly wary of my interest and abilities, but nevertheless explained the gig to me and gave me all the details.

then he told me the next part of the screening process was having me sit for the verbal part of the SAT.

of course it makes sense—how could i help anyone prepare for something i couldn't handle myself?—but my stomach knotted up instantly. i am not a test-taker. never have been. i can write a term paper that will knock your socks off, an essay that will bring tears to your eyes, but pleasepleaseplease don't ask me to do multiple choice while the clock is ticking. i can't handle it. i get overwhelmed. i second guess myself. i third guess myself. and then i just give up. (this happened about 10 years ago when i sat for the GRE; after a while, i just started filling in letter "C" for everything.)

anyway. i scheduled a day and time for my SAT redux and hung up the phone. and then i started thinking.

to land this gig, i'd have to take the SAT. assuming i did okay, then i'd have to train for a month. and then i'd start to work with students and get paid—twelve dollars an hour. (which is not nothing, i know. to many it's everything, and i understand and respect that. but for me, to leave my children, to miss dinners and bedtimes, it's not enough.)

before i was home with the kids full-time, i was always at the mercy of one supervisor or another, most of whom were jerks. i was almost always operating from a place of insecurity and uncertainty. even though money's been tight for the last year, one of the more beautiful things about not being in an office has been finding my self-worth again, that deep-down confidence that comes from doing hard work, knowing in my bones i'm doing the best that i can, and believing in what i'm doing.

i'm going to be thirty-nine years old in two months. the last thing i want to do now is take a step backward and sell myself short. SO: i settled on something entirely different, a venture i'd contemplated for a while but i needed to figure out a way to make it my own. i'm still not sure it will work, but i'm committed to giving it a try.

and i didn't have to take a standardized test to get started.

stay tuned for more details...!

mbm

home (maintenance) is where the heart is

just a typical weekend for dad.

i realized, embarrassingly recently, just how much work it is to really take care of a house. 

when we moved in a little more than a year ago, we sort of coasted on all that had been done by the previous owners in preparation for the market, as well as the projects ticked off after the inspection. but, you know, a year of sheltering five people takes its toll and the projects have started piling up. there are furnace filters to replace, a lawn to aerate and reseed, wall cracks to repair, faulty faucets to fix, insect invasions to resolve, and on and on and on.

it's pretty daunting. 

when i was growing up, my mom was the chef and the parent volunteer and the carpool driver and the back-to-school shopper and the birthday-party-planner. my dad was responsible for all home maintenance. he wore flannel shirts on the weekends and usually had sawdust in his hair or paint on his jeans and he had to clean his hands real good before dinner. 

because i was an only child, and my dad worked full-time during the week, i could usually be found on Saturdays and Sundays wherever he was. i accompanied him on runs to the hardware store. i wore goggles when he used the radial saw in the basement. i sat in the flower beds while he did weeding and mulching. i ran my Matchbox cars through his big sand pile every time (which was every summer) he rearranged the bricks in the patio. 

as i grew older, i observed less and participated more. suddenly i was the one doing the mulching, wielding the chainsaw (much to my mother's horror), painting the moulding, removing the screens and cleaning the windows in preparation for winter. i'm sure i complained about some of it—especially the Saturday mornings my dad woke me up at an ungodly hour, claiming "we're losing light!"—but you know what? i think he knew what he was doing. 

at age thirty-eight and with only limited experience as an actual house-owner, i am still learning how to properly care for it. but i have to admit: i have a pretty solid foundation (no pun intended), thanks solely to all the years i spent as my dad's tireless apprentice. 

i was thinking about all of this on Monday afternoon. i had showed up at my parents' the day before with a fresh-baked apple crisp and a plea for my dad to come over and help me with a few projects that required guidance and more than one person. he gladly agreed (and he would have even if i hadn't made him an apple crisp, but it never hurts to sweeten the deal). 

he showed up right on time, at one o'clock on Monday, just as i got all the kids down for naps. and as we checked things off my to-do list, i thought about how hard my dad has always worked. when i was growing up, he worked like a dog at the office all week. on the weekends, he worked like a dog around the house, from just after breakfast until dinnertime. and though i was happy he let me join him in his chores, i remember never quite understanding why he couldn't just relax when he was home.

now, of course, i get it.

and what i also get, and what i'm so thankful for, is that we bonded during all those chores and projects. that was our time to connect, to learn from each other, to just be together. not only was i learning how to properly pull a weed or patch a hole in drywall or use a tape measure, i was acquiring confidence, self-sufficiency. and i was learning a lot about unconditional love. 

when Michael and i first moved into our house, my parents came over with two big books—Reader's Digest guides to pretty much everything you need to know about fixing anything around your home. my dad says occasionally says, when i come to him with a house question, "you know, this is probably in those books we got you..." 

what i realized on Monday, as we worked together to restring a faulty window blind and clean up the front lawn with an edger, it always has been—and always will be—so much better learning it from my dad. 

mbm

first letter to my daughter

dear Molly,

you are almost six months old.

i really can't wrap my head around that, but it's true.

your brothers had their own websites on which i wrote to them. Matthew's has about six times as many entries as Gavin's. you, my dear, will be lucky to have half as many as Gavin. welcome to being the youngest of three. but you have something neither of them had until recently—all of me, all day, every day. which i hope will prove a lot more meaningful than posts on a website.

still, i want to remember this time in your life, and i want you to know what you were like, how i felt,  and why. in particular...

— it's true that when i first learned i was pregnant with you, i was very, very nervous. i was worried for you, worried for your brothers, worried for your daddy and for myself. but not a day goes by now that i don't think she was meant to be. you are a gift, Molly Claire. the best kind of surprise in the world, and in fact i spend a large part of every day feeling gratitude for your very existence.

— you are sunshine personified. you smiled your first smile before you were a month old, and you haven't stopped smiling since, and anyone who catches a glimpse of your smile turns into sunshine themselves. it's amazing. you exude joy and happiness (and, yes, drool and a few other things), and if there's one thing i wish for you right now it's that you always do, that you grow into one of those people who can find the joy and happiness where no one else can. because the world needs more of those kinds of people.

— you are growing so very quickly, and it makes me both ecstatic and melancholy. it's thrilling to watch you discover new things—like what you can do with your hands, or that you can pretty much stand up holding onto something for several seconds at a time already—but jeez, it's all happening so fast, there's no time for me to soak it all in. i remind myself constantly what a privilege and adventure it is, being here to see you grow, that you are, indeed, growing. there's no room for melancholy! i just wouldn't mind it slowing down a little teeny bit.

— you are adored by many, many people, but it's hard to find bigger fans than your brothers and your daddy. (and judging by the look on your face when any of them is near, the feeling is mutual.) you have three fearless protectors built right in to your family. god help them the first time you experience any kind of pain—they will take it far harder than you do! you are a very lucky little girl to have such a circle of strength and head-over-heels gaga love around you. so please forgive them when they act like boys, stink up the room or pull your hair or (accidentally) hit you in the head with a ball or a truck. just do what i do—roll your eyes and let it go. 

— you're my best friend forever. i told you that the other day when we were shopping together. i said to you, as you sat in your car seat tucked in the cart, chewing contentedly on your thumb, "you don't have a choice: i'm your best friend and you're mine, the end." some people don't believe parents and children can or should be best friends, but i'm not one of them. i am all for it. you may, someday, find much cooler, hipper, more exciting friends to hang out with, but i'm pretty sure you'll never find one who loves you as much as i do.

— but that doesn't mean i'm never going to make you mad, or annoyed, or that i will always understand you perfectly. and vice versa. we are both going to mess up so much, Mollybean. confession: before you came along i had convinced myself that i was meant to be the mama of only boys, as i've never been very good at being a girl. (it's taken me 38 years to realize and accept that it's plenty good just to be me. i hope i can pass that along to you—by example more than anything else—long before you find your first gray hair.) anyway, i want you to know that while i am here to guide and teach you, for as long as you need me to, you've already been teaching me. i know i will be learning just as much from you in our time together as you do from me. probably even more. and i think that's pretty fantastic. 

you have changed my life, little Bean, utterly and completely and absolutely perfectly. thank you so much. 

i love you forever & always,

mama

mbm

Molly Claire: a fashionably late (and all-around pleasant) arrival

Molly is now five months old and i think it's time i share her birth story. i shared her brothers' and i am so glad i have those tales recorded. it's only fair she gets her turn. especially because it was so wonderfully pleasant.

yes, i said it: pleasant.

which is funny, because i was dreading it. the closer my due date grew, the more fearful and anxious i became. i'd only done the whole pushing-a-baby-out-of-my-body thing 15 months earlier. (and Gavin came out face up, completely thwarting the whole second-baby-is-easier theory. i think we're both still traumatized from the ordeal.) fifteen months was not enough time to forget what an awful business it all is.

deep down, i was really, really scared.

because i couldn't control how my Mollybean would enter the world (or when), i used my last days of pregnancy to plow through a mile-long to-do list. i anticipated having no time for anything at all once i was officially a mama of three, so i wanted to work as far ahead as possible. which explains why approximately 48 hours before i gave birth, i was out front trimming our hedges with the giant clippers my dad had gifted me when we moved. i am sure i looked ridiculous, but i felt a hell of a lot better when it was done.

welcome to my neuroses.

anyway. perhaps sensing her mama's need for inner peace (or maybe trying to mentally prepare for her two big brothers) Molly stayed put on her due date. she stayed put for another almost-three days, in fact. on November 11th, Michael was scheduled to work from four to midnight. i told him a million times to go into work, i'd be fine, don't worry, he was only 90 minutes away, et cetera et cetera et cetera. well, i think he'd been at work for less than a half-hour when i called him and told him to come home. nothing was imminent, but i was feeling contractions stronger than the good ol' Braxton Hicks and though my parents were only a few towns over, i really wanted my husband with me. good chap that he is, he got right back in his car without complaint and came home.

i woke up the morning of Wednesday, November 12th feeling pretty sure i'd be going to the hospital soon. and i was right. i think it was around three o'clock in the afternoon when we headed over (a five-minute ride with no tunnels or midtown traffic to deal with—joy!). it was a gorgeous day, sunny and unseasonably warm for almost-winter. i left without a coat and remember thinking, as i walked (gingerly—the contractions were gathering speed and intensity) from the car into the hospital, "i better enjoy this now." (smart girl: the next day it snowed.) 

this seems like a good time to tell you that when we moved in August and i was forced to find a new OB, i took it hard. i loved Dr. M and everyone in her Spring Street office in New York. i'd gone there for years and though Dr. M hadn't delivered my boys, i had hoped she'd deliver my girl. alas, having a long-distance OB is not very wise or practical (or so Dr. M insisted when i asked if i could stay on as her patient. dear god). as i started the search for an OB closer to our new home, i was dismayed to find that every single practice had at least one male doctor. Dr. M's office was all-female. i'd never had a male gyno or OB and the thought of it weirded me out. but everyone i spoke to (including Dr. M) told me i would be in great hands (oh, eek—no pun intended, i swear) with a male doctor, and that i should basically grow the hell up already.

maybe a month and a half before Molly's birth, i met Dr. D, one of two OBs at my new practice and the one who happened to be a man. i brought Michael with me to the appointment—because one should always introduce her husband to any man who might have occasion to become intimate with her lady parts. pretty much instantly i loved him. Dr. D was easygoing, low-key but personable, and exuded a confident calmness that i found incredibly reassuring. he had grown up in New York and had delivered something like 15,000 babies in his career. he answered my questions with ease and humor. there was no exam during that appointment, just a heartbeat check, but i felt fairly comfortable with the possibility that he might someday have to, you know, eventually go there.

between that appointment and November 12th, i'd grown a little fearful of the other doctor in the practice. her name was Dr. W and though she was nice enough (and, obviously, a woman), she started talking to me about induction two weeks before my due date. her type A intensity did not jive with my whatever-happens-happens philosophy. i imagined her yelling me in the delivery room, and i wanted none of it.

as luck would have it, Dr. D was on-call when i was in labor and i will forever thank my lucky stars for that. he was amazing. the entire experience was—as i said—so very pleasant, from arriving at the hospital and getting checked in (easy, quiet, peaceful) to receiving the epidural (timely, drama-free), to the moment Dr. D padded in wearing his blue scrubs and a kind smile. he asked me if i had any questions or concerns and i blurted that i was worried about pushing. that's where things had gone wrong with both Matthew and Gavin (fetal heart monitors, oxygen masks, a lot of anxiety and barked instructions), and i just did not want to do it again.

"so why don't you labor down, then?" he said.

"labor what?" i said

"labor down. when you get to 10 centimeters, if you don't feel like pushing, we'll wait. let your body bring the baby down on its own."

wait? WAIT? that was an option? why had no one told me that before? "okay," i said, still not entirely sure what it entailed but liking the sound of it. "i will labor down."

i got to 10 centimeters pretty quickly after getting settled in my L&D room. and when i got there, i did not feel like pushing, so i waited. Michael and i watched back to back to back episodes of "Friends" on TBS (utterly comforting to both of us) and i just let my body do its thing. at the risk of sounding crunchy, it all felt so very natural. i had mostly positive birth experiences at NYU with the boys, but man, the second i hit 10, it was "okay, let's PUSH." they're on a tight schedule there, not enough rooms for too many mamas. and what did i know? so i pushed before i was ready. and it was awful (see aforementioned fetal heart monitors and oxygen masks).

but this time, this experience—now i know why some people say childbirth is beautiful. of course it hurt like hell, but it was a different kind of pain. the contractions i felt after i was fully dilated were intense but—i don't know. i was able to breathe through them, calmly. i really just trusted my body. and my baby.

at one point—i guess probably around quarter to six—Dr. D came in to check on me. he took one look, saw the baby's head and said, "oh! we better get going here." he (calmly and efficiently) called the nurses in, got his tools ready, turned on the light, got me into position and—

TWO PUSHES LATER MOLLY WAS HERE.

two measly pushes! i couldn't believe it. i watched her come out of me—at five fifty-one—and i burst into tears and said, "you're my favorite!" Dr. D placed her on my chest and i laughed-cried forever, blathering to both him and my daughter about how awesome it all was.

it really, really was. i couldn't have asked for a more wonderful finale to my childbirth experiences.

if any of you reading this are pregnant or are planning to be at some point in your life, i strongly encourage you to talk to your OB about laboring down. i really, really wish someone had told me about it when i was pregnant with Matthew.

i am not sure if there's a true correlation between birth experience and the personality of a baby, but poor Gavin had a very rough first few months of life while Molly has been an extremely relaxed, easygoing and happy little bean since the moment she came into the world.

just a thought...!

mbm

savoring

almost time to meet our newest pumpkin.

four weeks.

as of today that's it, that's all i've got left to be pregnant in this life.

i'm one of those women who's overjoyed to get the baby out (though aren't we all, ladies?)—and then two weeks later sighs when she sees pregnant women, feeling wistful already for the experience. when i was pregnant with Gavin, i was often so preoccupied with Matthew that i felt like i didn't savor it enough. (whereas when Matthew was in my belly, i was playing music for him and reading to him nightly, dutifully filling out my "Belly Book," memorizing the Baby Center app and following all the "rules" to the letter. oh to have all that time to waste!) once Gavin was born, i knew that if we decided to have a third, i would absolutely savor that pregnancy.

ha!

not sure how i thought i'd be any less preoccupied by a toddler and a (rather mischievous) infant in the house. 

i spent perhaps the entire first trimester in disbelief, unable to wrap my head around the fact that only six months after giving birth i had signed myself up to do it all over again before i've had enough time to forget how much it hurts. the second trimester was all about shifting into high gear in terms of deciding where to live and selling our apartment and buying our home and all the chaos of moving.

and now here i am. nearing the end of the third trimester of my absolute last pregnancy, and what do i have to show for it? a few haphazard belly pictures, some ultrasound images tucked somewhere, and a rather disturbing collection of varicose veins. this little girl in my belly does not have a set-up nursery yet, she barely has anything to wear and—oh dear—she doesn't even a name.

but i keep trying to remind myself of what she does have: a mama who knows what she's doing (well, 30 percent of the time). she has a daddy who'll be forever wrapped around her littlest finger and lost in a love stupor the likes of which he's never known for the rest of his life. she's got two big brothers—built-in defenders, pals (and, let's be honest, pains in the ass) she'll be stuck with forever, lucky her.

it's not the prime-for-Pinterest room, the collection of organic teethers or the overpriced burping cloths that matter. it's not the closet full of sleep-and-plays (most of which she'll outgrow before the tags come off) or the homemade baby food or multiple pieces of equipment that vibrate.

it's love. messy and unorganized and disheveled love. and it's the one thing she's had from day one. because yeah, i may have had stretches of time when i forgot i was actually pregnant and i may have just remembered i should stock up on some smaller-size diapers soon, because her brother's size fours just aren't going to cut it. but i've done a lot of thinking in the last 30 weeks or so about what it will mean to have a daughter: everything i want to teach her, share with her, experience with her, learn from her. 

i may not be savoring this pregnancy as much as i thought i would, but i do know that i will be savoring my little girl as much as humanly possible. (and hopefully she'll forgive me for not reading to her in utero.)

mbm