Growing

They say you start showing sooner with your second kid. I'm about three and a half months along, and already two people have actually asked me if I was pregnant. Well, they didn't come right out and ask. One looked surprised when she saw me, then pointed to her stomach and grinned. The other asked me pointedly if I had any NEWS I would like to SHARE. (I suppose I could have told her, "Yes, I just won the town pie-eating contest!")

I hope it's just an earlier start, and it doesn't mean I'm going to get bigger than last time. I am short and have a small frame. With K, six months in I got comments like, "You look like you're about to pop" and "Are you sure you're not having twins?"

One good thing about getting bigger is that I'm out of the awkward in-between stage for clothing. No more holding my jeans together with rubber bands and elastic belts! I started wearing maternity pants to work this week. Ah, elastic waistbands, I've missed you so. I don't know why regular pants don't all have elastic waistbands. It's like I'm secretly wearing sweatpants to work.

Read More

Preschool

K has been at the same daycare since he was two. They take care of infants through preschool-aged kids, and have a preschool class for the older kids. K just started the preschool class. They typically have circle time in the morning with singing, reading and talking, then take a trip to the playground. After lunch they have naptime, then usually some sort of art or pre-writing activity followed by free play. A few times a week they have special programs, like Tumble Bus on Tuesdays (an old school bus retrofitted with mats, swings, and tunnels!), yoga on Wednesdays, a singer on Fridays, and on occasion "Binky Bear" -- I've never quite figured out what this is, but apparently some woman who dresses up and entertains the kids.

Once in a while I question whether he should be going somewhere else that might be, I don't know, more stimulating or challenging, or a place where there's more of a parent community and the kids tend to graduate and go to kindergarten together. But this place is very close to home, it's affordable, K likes it, and we like his current teacher and the people who run the program.

Reading back on what I just wrote, it doesn't seem like much of a dilemma. I just saw some openings in the Harvard-affiliated daycares on a parents' list that I'm on, and thought back to the expensive Montessori preschools that we toured, and wondered if we were somehow affecting K's future by not sending him to one of those places. I even googled "how much does daycare matter" (answer, according to first page results: a lot, and you should do extensive research before selecting one). But at this age, I think running around and playing, learning how to socialize with other kids, and occasionally gluing something to something else is really all he needs. We'll probably stick with the current place until he goes to kindergarten.

Read More

Six minutes

I should have gone to bed a long time ago. It's been a very long week and I'm exhausted. Even conking out at K's bedtime last night wasn't enough to overcome the sleep deficit. But I'm giving myself six minutes for a catch-up post.

Work: I compose lots of blog posts in my head about work. They never make it up here because on the nights that I'm not actually working after K's bedtime, I don't want to sit in front of the computer and risk getting sucked in. Work is busy, except when it's not and I sit around all day but still need to be next to my phone in case somebody calls. I'm nowhere near making my hours for the year, but I think most people are in the same boat. Reviews are coming up and in the back of my head, I'm always worried about being fired. I enjoy my job. Substantively, my favorite part is a very small percentage of what I do, technology transactions and IP licensing. I also enjoy working with startups -- you get access at the highest levels of the company (often because the company consists of three guys at first) and you can really help them progress with their vision. Plus, different companies often have variations on the same problem, so you can develop some expertise quickly. The largest percentage of what I do is helping startups raise money. Frankly, this is not my passion, and neither is M&A, which is also a fairly large chunk of my work. But it's been interesting and educational to see how these deals work and what people negotiate over. Qualitatively, I like most of the people I work with and think it's a friendly, interesting, and smart group, and I like the flexibility. I hate billable hours. I know this is nothing new, but really, I would be so much more productive if I weren't constantly trying to keep track of every six minutes of my time and if I weren't always worried about my numbers.

Pregnancy: Going smoothly so far, thank goodness, because between work, K, a town commitment that I'm involved in (and have been making waves in a very polite but somewhat controversial way), the move, the refinance, and all the negotiations involved in selling our old place, I have more than enough on my mind. Will give it more thought once everything else calms down. K has been getting more excited about the idea of having a new baby -- he was never interested in babies before, but he exclaimed over the cuteness of his newborn cousin and said, while we watched a little girl toddle by, "Look at her shiny shoes! We should get a baby like that."

Oh, I finally told at work. As somebody (LL?) said to me when I asked about what this was like: "We work at a law firm. Nobody is going to say anything but 'congratulations.'" Yup. Not a big deal.

K: Is awesome. I am so impressed at his ability to regulate and talk about his emotions. Tonight he was having a bit of a meltdown right before bed, which I was more or less ignoring, and he just pulled himself together and said matter-of-factly, "Wipe my tears. I have a lot of them tonight," and then we continued with our bedtime routine. Maybe I'd prefer if I didn't hear "Mommy?" every thirty seconds, especially when I am trying to focus on anything else but him, but I know I'll miss that one day.

House: Getting there. In another two weeks or so maybe I'll be ready to have people over. Would love to have one K-less day to get house stuff done, but it's not going to happen.

Baking experiments: Profiteroles were excellent (a little deflated, I never cook my choux paste for long enough), and I loved having a cup full of chocolate ganache in the fridge, even though I developed a hot fudge sundae habit. Bouchons au thon smelled and looked repulsive to me and I have to admit I didn't even try one. I brought them to a party where they were all eaten, so apparently they were edible. I overcooked the Nutella brownies because I got distracted by a potty situation, so I can't really judge them fairly, but I think that unless company's coming and I have ten minutes to get something in the oven, I'd rather just eat Nutella out of the jar.

The end! More when I get some of that elusive free time.

Read More

Transitions

We're settling into the new house. We've put the furniture in place, unpacked most of the boxes, made the obligatory Ikea trip, and I baked my first muffins in the new kitchen. This weekend's goal is to organize and make it feel more like a home -- pictures on the walls, clothes in drawers (I got out the fall/winter clothes last weekend but had nowhere to put them. "Mommy, you should pick up your clothes so no one steps on them," noted K helpfully while standing on the pile of clothes),  rugs on the floors.

We can finally retrieve our rugs and wall art from the old house because as of very late Thursday night, we are officially under contract after weeks of contentious negotiations. I'll spare you the excruciating details of all the crap the buyers pulled except to say that (1) we learned not to trust any verbal agreement they made until it was in a signed writing and (2) our agent said that in her 26 years in real estate, they were tied for the worst buyers she's ever dealt with (tied with people who kept trying to take advantage of an old lady). Oh, also? After everything was signed, they wanted us to give them some of our furniture, our grill, and our lawnmower. They didn't even offer to buy these things. Say it with me: WTF? Anyway, I'm about 75% certain that we will close before Thanksgiving as planned, and I'm still a little stressed because the final P&S we negotiated had some last-minute provisions added that make me uncomfortable. I'm crossing my fingers that they get the mortgage quickly. If it doesn't work out we're sort of screwed. But with the constant barrage of bad economic news and the housing market in apparent free fall, we felt like we didn't have much of a choice.

Through all this, K has been a dream. So sweet and loving, so funny and playful, so smart and curious, and so beautiful that sometimes I marvel that he came out of me. Totally smooth adjustment to the new house, his new class at school, and the idea that he's going to be a big brother in the spring, with nary a hitch in the potty training. Sabbatical Mom's recent posts about P's tantrums, and how they've been clearing up lately, have reminded me of how our kids go through these phases that seem like they'll last forever, and then one day we look around and realize things have changed. I remember a period right around K's third birthday when he was driving me crazy and spending an entire day with him took concerted effort. I hope his current angelic phase lasts a good long time.

Read More

K progress

K is potty-trained! He still needs diapers for naps and bedtime, but other than that, it's all underpants, all the time. Hooray! The other day I caught myself sighing because I had to clean the potty, and then I realized, what am I thinking? What would I rather be wiping, a piece of plastic or somebody's butt? Next step: get him to go on the big potty.

I've been trying to teach K to stand up for himself more. Yesterday a boy at the playground kept running at him and screaming. At first K responded by laughing and running away, so I thought he was okay. But after the sixth or seventh time, when the boy ran at him and screamed, K burst into tears. Once he calmed down, I said, "Did it scare you when that boy screamed?" He nodded, sniffling. "Is there anything you could do that might help?" "Cry?" "Crying won't help you. But what if you tell him to stop screaming?" K wasn't feeling brave enough to do this himself, so we marched up to the boy together and said, "Please don't scream."  (It didn't really matter. The boy's mom screamed at him just as loudly and told him he was like a wild animal and couldn't behave and was scaring all the kids, and then dragged him off the playground. Suddenly it all made sense.)

Today at the playground, a big kid got on the seesaw opposite K and started bouncing up and down really hard. I could see K starting to look scared, but I didn't do anything (well, until one of the boys started hitting another boy, but that had nothing to do with K, that was just me interfering). The kid on the seesaw eventually got distracted by his friends and left. I talked to K again about speaking up and telling people if something was wrong. I reminded him that they didn't know if he was feeling scared or upset, and they wouldn't stop unless he told them to.

I hope it sinks in. I love how caring and polite K is, but I think we need to toughen him up a little. Right now, if he falls down, he gets right back up. But if someone pushes him down, he cries. It's hard for him to imagine that someone would be mean to him on purpose. Which is nice in a way, but won't get him very far on the playground.

Read More

The past week

It's been kind of crazy around here lately.

Just before the move, I got food poisoning. The only thing I had eaten all day except for my daily bowl of cereal at home was some meat with a very suspect texture from the cafeteria (which I ate part of and threw out the rest), but someone called and assured me that she had investigated and the meat was cooked to the proper temperature. Somehow I doubt that they take and record the internal temperature of every item as it comes off the grill, so I don't know how she could be so confident about this particular piece of meat. Anyway, that was unpleasant. I was really disappointed that I had to skip our anniversary dinner. (8 years!)

Then there was the move itself. You've probably done it before, so I don't have to tell you what it was like. I freaked out when the movers showed us the estimate (which, it later turned out, included our earlier move into storage that we had already paid for) and spent most of the day trying not to hyperventilate about how we were voluntarily bankrupting ourselves and no one would ever buy our old house.

JW's parents came for the weekend to help us out. We spent the weekend unpacking and fixing little things around the house. JW and I got to go on a date after all -- K decided to stay home with Grandma and Grandpa, so we spent the morning wandering the aisles of Ikea by ourselves.

We couldn't get completely settled for a few days because the electricians were still working. We had to replace all the wiring to make the house insurable. The down payment left us with a little money in our bank account, but the electrician bill is going to drain us. I'm not looking forward to receiving it.

Tuesday we got an offer on our old house -- for thirty thousand less than the reduced asking price. We tried to negotiate, but the buyers wouldn't budge and frankly, we have zero leverage and need to just cut our losses and walk away at this point. Offer was signed Thursday, inspection was this morning, and if all goes well we'll sign the P&S in a little over a week.

Today we got the documentation in for our refinance, which should close in about a month.

This weekend we have no plans, other than a toddler birthday party and lots of work for JW. I wanted to get lots of house stuff done, but I'm feeling beyond exhausted. My hair has been falling out and I feel like my knees are going to buckle. I have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday and I'm hoping the bloodwork will tell me that it's something easy to fix. Meanwhile, I'll try to fit in whatever unpacking I can in between naps.

Read More