Two hands, one brain

I have two things to get done this afternoon and I kind of need to do them at the same time.

I thought to myself, I just need to grow two more hands and an extra brain.

Then I realized, I already did! Two sets! But where did it get me? They are off having fun without me.

People used to think clones were a good idea. They thought their clone could go to work while they would go have fun. But clones present the same problem.

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Family vacation

Day 0 (at home): X walks halfway across the room. His previous record was eight steps.

Day 1: Cab ride, plane ride, shuttle ride, rental car ride. We all survive and eight hours later we arrive in Florida. K has nightmares ("Number one. A monster eating me. Number two. Me dying. Number three. A frog jumping at my head.") and wakes up about twelve times between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.

Day 2: Lounge around the house, go shopping for kid supplies. K adopts the lanai as his "office." My first experience with aqua aerobics, twenty retired ladies and me. K plays Angry Birds all day on my mom's iPad and announces that she told him we could go to Disney World tomorrow. Okay then. In the evening we watch the sunset from the fishing pier and K is fascinated when someone catches a fish.

Day 3: Long ride to Disney World. We leave X at home with my parents. K cries on about half the rides (I'm talking Winnie the Pooh, not Space Mountain). Why does EVERY Disney ride have to have some scary component? Even the innocuous-seeming Jungle Cruise features shrunken skulls.

Disney story #1: When we arrive, JW and I keep pointing. "Look, K, it's Cinderella's castle! Look at that giant spaceship! Look, there's the motorway with real cars that you can drive!" K replies, "Uh huh." Finally, his eyes light up, he grabs my arm and says, "Mommy! Look!" It's a kid wearing an Angry Birds T-shirt.

Disney story #2: We're going to get a hot dog on the way out, when we pass a show going on in front of the castle. Dancing, singing about how dreams come true, finally something K can relax and enjoy, until what the hell, the evil witch comes out, accompanied by loud explosions and fire, and screeches, "I will make NIGHTMARES COME TRUE!" "Nightmares come true???!!!" screams K, so loudly that everyone around us turns around and starts laughing. Mickey comes out and says, "Help me, friends! Say it with me: Dreams come true!" "DREAMS COME TRUE! DREAMS COME TRUE!" shrieks K frantically. He doesn't stop sobbing for at least half an hour.

Disney story #3: At the end of the day: "K, did you have a good time?" "...Yeah." "Should we come back again one day?" "NO."

Day 4: My niece and in-laws arrive. The neighbors come over for dinner. More aqua aerobics. X has fun kicking his feet in the pool.

Day 5: Beach day! K is reluctant to get in the water, but once he does he dances around and laughs like crazy and wants to be in the ocean up to his neck. I also attend a yoga class taught by my mom. She's pretty good! At night we meet up with my brother and sister-in-law and we have a six-course dinner at a darkened restaurant, after which we critique the abundance of vinegary sauces and acknowledge that we are city snobs.

Day 6: Beach day #2, but this time we end up driving forever and not being able to stay long because we have a playdate/"Princess and the Frog" movie night with the little girl next door. The neighbors go all out with little bags of popcorn and boxes of candy. K flees as soon as they put on the movie. At home, X toddles around the entire house.

Day 7: Date day! JW and I eat our weight in raw onions at Mr. Souvlaki and then go see "Hunger Games," which is AWESOME. When we return, the kids proudly show us that they have drawn Angry Birds and pigs all over the concrete floor of the lanai with crayons.

Day 8: Up at 4:30 a.m., car, shuttle, plane, taxi, back home. Immediately back to fixing meals, laundry, and real life. It was fun while it lasted.

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MILP Roundup #245

The Reluctant Grownup rocks her debut.
Roundup is back here next week! I still need to catch up on everyone's posts from last week.

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My weekend with K

After nearly a week of stomach problems for K, I became increasingly worried about appendicitis. Friday in the middle of the night, when he woke up screaming and inconsolable AGAIN, I packed him off to Children's. (K's first trip to the ER! And he's 5. Not bad.) He calmed down by the time we arrived and was surprisingly happy and cooperative (and awake) most of the time we were at the hospital. He had an x-ray and an ultrasound, and in between we played bad guys and... I don't even know what we did to occupy ourselves in that little room, but we arrived around 1 a.m. and left around 6 and it was actually kind of nice spending all that time together, just the two of us. No appendicitis. They said he was severely constipated after getting over a stomach virus and not eating much for a week.

On Sunday he asked to go to the ice cream store. I was happy to oblige, since it was the first food he had actually requested since getting sick. We stopped by the consignment store down the street on our way to the car. I planned to take a quick peek, but when I noticed that K was interested in looking around, I slowed down and took my time. I picked out a few things and brought K into the dressing room with me. Every time I tried something on, he said, "You look pretty, Mommy! You should buy that." As I was paying for the dress he convinced me to buy, he noticed the stairs leading down. "What's down there? Can we go look?" So we went downstairs, where they had a room full of shoes and the clearance section. K picked up EVERY SHOE. "This one is so shiny! Look at this one. It's so tall! I bet it would be hard to walk in that one. This one is purple, isn't it pretty?" He brought me shoes to try on and actually put them on my feet like a little salesperson at a high-end store. We stayed down there for an hour! Finally, I had to drag him out. Check out the shoes he tried on:


Sunday night, after waking up screaming at 3 a.m. again, K came into our room at 4:30 saying he had a bad dream. I didn't have the energy to deal with it, so I just grabbed him and stuck him in the middle of our bed, pulled up the covers, and went back to sleep. I can't count how many times I woke up in the next hour and a half. Each time, K's hand was in my face, or he was elbowing me in the chest, or his foot was sticking into my side. JW said at one point he woke up and he and I were on the very edges of the bed while K sprawled diagonally in the middle. Just after 6, K sat up and started wiggling around, trying to figure out how to get out of bed without waking either one of us up. He did not succeed. Yet another failed experiment in co-sleeping.

Meanwhile, X continues on his parallel quests to contract every strain of the common cold before age 2, and to eat garbage and paper. He dismembered a pop-up frog from the counting book before I confiscated it. I am ready for this eating-everything phase to be over, and I'm packing a pacifier for our beach vacation next week.

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MILP roundup #243

Attorney Work Product has it. Next week at Today & Tomorrow.

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Choosing our career directions

I keep thinking about this eloquent post by Pseudostoops about how she left a prestigious, high-paying job for a more family-friendly job:

And now…well, my life is smaller, but in a really good way. 

But I no longer have a place at the “whose career is more demanding/intense/upwardly mobile” table- because my work life isn’t demanding/intense/upwardly mobile at all. And that’s a good thing, it is, I wouldn’t trade it, but – it’s strange to no longer be a part of that conversation. I meet my law school friends for lunch and they’re all killing themselves and I don’t want to be them, exactly, but I feel a little bit like I’ve sold out the sisterhood by stepping off that path. My whole life my self-worth has been largely defined by working hard, striving, achieving – and it’s a little disorienting to suddenly no longer have that laid out before me.

The post itself is well-written and thought-provoking and you should go read it. What really gets me about it, though, is the comments. Over 20 comments, and EVERY ONE of them is a woman saying, "I agree, trading off a demanding job to have more time for your personal life is totally worth it," or "I'm so happy I made this choice," or "I hope to make this choice too."

I am not knocking the commenters. I am one of the commenters. But... is something wrong here? I know the statistics. About 15% of big firm partners are women, despite a few decades of having plenty of talented women in the pipeline. I know about all the hand-wringing about why women leave. And even though you can't say that women CHOOSE to leave without making people angry, well... all of the intelligent and accomplished women who responded to that post, and the intelligent and accomplished woman who wrote that post, support exactly that choice.

I was lucky enough to hear Judge Nancy Gertner speak recently at the National Association of Women Judges conference. She said that the revolution she was a part of wasn't about giving women the choice to work or stay home. It was about transforming both home life and work life to give everyone a viable choice, and that hasn't happened. At least, the work part hasn't happened -- I'd argue that men are more involved than ever at home. But it's still true that most men don't even consider all the "work-life balance" options that are crucial to work satisfaction for many women (flexible schedules, part-time, telecommuting), let alone choosing a job that pays less and is less prestigious.

I've argued before that if work-life balance remains a women's issue, we're doomed. But trying to enlist men and say, Hey, give up some of your power, you'll be happier, results in sort of a prisoner's dilemma. So now I'm thinking that institutional change -- acceptance of "balance" as an issue for everyone, not just women -- probably needs to happen before men can realistically make it a priority.

Meanwhile, it seems like women have a choice beyond working and not working. We can work and be less powerful, but be more satisfied with non-career aspects of our lives, or we can work and be more powerful, but not be available for our families. It's a step in the right direction, but it's still not a great choice either way. And it's easy to shrug and say you can't have everything, but I bet we could do better.

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Women Do Ask

We've had discussions about negotiating, and specifically negotiating for salary, before. I've enthusiastically recommended the book Women Don't Ask by Linda Babcock and Sarah Laschever, which encourages women to negotiate and to ask for things more frequently, large and small. While I still think this is good advice, a recent Catalyst study says that women do ask, but it doesn't help them.

From their blog post:

[B]y looking at the career paths of over 4000 MBA grads from around the world, Catalyst found that women were more likely than men to ask for a variety of skill-building experiences and to proactively seek training opportunities. And we also found that women and men negotiated for a higher level position or greater compensation during the hiring process for their current job at equal rates.

Women do ask—but get little in return. Equally skilled men advance farther and more quickly than their female peers. In fact, we found that the $4600 pay gap that starts from day one grew to more than $31,000 several years down the track—even when women asked.

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Persuasion Skills for Women Attorneys

I went to an ALI-ABA session recently on "Persuasion Skills for Women Attorneys." It contained some good public speaking tips, but left me depressed. Don't be shrill. Don't be whiny. Don't be bitchy. Don't be bossy. Only be emotional in certain ways. Be professional and formal, but just warm enough that you're still considered feminine.

I cannot imagine a room full of male attorneys sitting there taking notes on how to be just masculine enough, but not too masculine. I can't imagine men being told to do voice exercises to pitch their voice differently.

The presenter kept saying things like, "I know this may seem sexist, but that's life." Sad, but true. Instead of sessions like this, we should have "Women Are Attorneys: Deal With It" for senior partners.

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Birthday boys

My boys are 1 and 5 today!

The day got off to an inauspicious start. I had put a birthday card and some gummy candies next to K's bed so he'd find them when he woke up. While getting X dressed, I noticed K's light turn on and went in his room to wish him a happy birthday. After a birthday hug, I turned around to see a trail of red goo dripping out of X's mouth, down his shirt, and all over the floor. I rescued two half-eaten candies from his mouth, but he swallowed one. Luckily he didn't choke. He also ate part of the card.

I dropped off a large tray of cupcake cones in K's classroom, and a plate of cookies for X's teachers, and headed to work. I had kind of a crazy day, but slipped out early so we could all go out to dinner. After dinner, X went to bed and K and I did experiments with his new science kit. My favorite one: putting raisins in a cup of clear soda. Try it! They float and sink, float and sink.

One-year old X is learning to walk and will sometimes take a few steps on his own. He doesn't talk or sign, but he has no problem making his wishes known. He is constantly covered in snot and/or drool. He loves to read books, especially ones that have flaps or textures -- this morning for the first time, he crawled into my lap with a book and sat there for a while. He is very interested in the TV, and annoyed when we take him away from it. (I was hoping the days of ignoring TV would last a while longer, since we usually let K watch TV on weekends when we're home.) He doesn't mind hugs and kisses, but he really likes it when you chase people and use him as a battering ram. He can climb all the way up the stairs by himself, but does not want to go down backwards.

Five-year old K enjoys hanging out with his friends at school, never wants to go to bed, loves doing projects, is scared of watching movies, and is obsessed with whatever the latest show is on the Disney channel. (Currently "Jake and the Neverland Pirates," on which they use the word "team" in every other sentence and say things like "Yay hay!" and "Hee ho!" because plain old "yo ho ho" isn't enough for them. I'm not thrilled about the image of pirates as cute and funny, but this is not a battle I'm willing to fight.) Recently he colored voluntarily at home for the first time ever, and he came home from school with a picture he drew himself! According to him, it was of two angry babies, and one baby was trying to steal the other baby's powers. (I said, "Hey, I know a song about that!" and put on "Drain You" off Nevermind, which JW helpfully pointed out was twenty years old.) Usually he brings home pictures that girls in his class draw for him. Once there was a picture of our family with each person labeled. I was really impressed until I realized his friend had drawn it for him. "Why did she draw this for you?" "Because she loves me." "Do you do nice things for her too?" "Of course." "Like what?" "Hmmm..." K can read like crazy. If you are sad, he'll try to make you feel better. He still wants me physically near him as much as possible.

One and five. I am a very lucky mom.

(Is it weird that on each birthday, I look back on my pregnancies and give thanks that these boys are no longer growing inside me? It seems normal with X since he's still a baby, but I can't help looking at 5-year old K and imagining how awful it would be if I were still carrying him. Never mind, I don't have to ask. It's weird. But every year on his birthday, I find myself thinking that.)

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