Family update

X started signing! Right now he only does that baby sign workhorse, "more." He also started saying "Mama" and "Dada!" In the past week or two, two molars have poked through his top gums and he began transitioning from one nap to two, both of which have no doubt contributed to his rocky mood of late.

K, I think, felt a little neglected this weekend. When he's running around shouting about superheroes, and meanwhile X toddles off and I hear a crash, I have no choice but to attend to the baby. I proposed some just-the-two-of-us time and asked what he wanted to do. I was prepared to go all out, but he just wanted to go get ice cream.

K has also been requesting "reading time" at night lately, which on one hand is a nice chance for him to relax in his room on his own, and on the other hand is at least partly a bedtime-delaying tactic. Anyway, I have such fond memories of reading myself to sleep that I can never bring myself to deny reading time, even if it's late.

JW complied with my demanding birthday request by stripping away the wallpaper I despised and painting the kitchen. It's so much better!

I have been trying to plan our 10th anniversary trip this summer. My parents said they would come babysit the kids for a few days! So I'm thinking we'll go away for 3-4 nights, our longest trip away from the kids ever. Since K was born, we've spent a night away from him once or twice a year. Our previous record for time away was a two-night trip to Montreal, also for an anniversary. I don't want to waste this opportunity. One option is Europe, maybe Barcelona or Amsterdam. It would be fun to explore a city we've never visited, and it would be a pain to drag the kids to these places. The problem is, the plane tickets alone will eat up our budget. (We don't have a strict limit, but spending $3,000 on plane tickets for a 4-day trip seems excessive.) I'm leaning toward driving up to Acadia National Park in Maine. We've never been and it's a little too far to go with the kids until they're older. It'll be relaxing and I love hiking. And the planning will be easy -- we just need to rent a room.

Where would you go if you were starting from Boston and had a few days to yourself?

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Destructo-baby

Dear X,

At almost-14 months old, you are cute, but you can be a terror.

You will sweetly hold up your arms to be picked up, and you'll smile and babble as we walk around the house, and then you will yell and smack me hard in the face. And you'll do it again, before I can manage to put you down.

You open your mouth wide and approach with an intense look in your eyes, like you are going to eat my face. Usually I back away fast enough. Once you got my entire nose and upper lip in your mouth.

You do a WWF-worthy move where you use both hands to grab the hair on either side of my head, and then you yank my head down while smashing your skull into the bridge of my nose.

Whenever your brother tries to play with you, you end up scratching or pulling or hitting him. I scooped you up after a vicious scratch and admonished you, "If you keep hurting K, he might stop loving you." (I wouldn't have said this if I thought you would understand.) But K looked up, surprised, and replied, "I'll always love him, even if he scratches me." You're lucky to have such an understanding big brother.

You don't spend all your time trying to injure us. You also spend a fair amount of time trying to injure yourself. On a recent trip to your great-grandmother's tchotchke-filled house, you tried to eat some candles and potpourri, and threw a glass picture frame on the floor as hard as you could.

Even though you're going through a difficult phase, you have your moments. Yesterday morning you crawled into my lap and we read "Pat the Puppy" together. As your pudgy little hand rested on my arm and I kissed your soft head, I knew it would be the happiest moment of my day.

And then you tore off the puppy's tail and ate it.

Love,
Mommy

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Bizarre conversation with my mother #1,738

Her: Is K excited about starting kindergarten in the fall?

Me: Actually, he's a little anxious because he won't know anybody. This summer I'm going to try to meet --

Her: You should put him in a summer camp for kids with high IQs, like a Harvard summer program.

Me: What?? Why? And I don't think Harvard has --

Her: We sent you to a gifted school for kindergarten and you loved it, but then we took you out because it was too much money.

Me: Yes, I know. But K is anxious about not knowing anyone. Why would I pull him out of his school where he has lots of friends and send him somewhere new where he doesn't know anyone, and THEN send him to kindergarten?

Her: K doesn't have any friends right now because he's smarter than all the other kids, but at a program for kids with high IQs, he would have friends because he would be able to relate to the other kids.

Me: ... ??? K has plenty of friends. He's just worried that in his new school --

Her: Oh, so all the kids in his class are so smart?

Me: Sure, they seem smart. I don't know, they're 5. I don't think it really matters to them who --

Her: I don't think they're as smart as K. The reason K is not social is that he can't relate to the other kids. That's why he doesn't have any friends.

Me: Why do you keep saying he's not social and doesn't have any friends?? He has plenty of friends!

Her: No, I don't think so.

Me: Come visit some time and drop him off at school, and watch every kid in his class yell his name and run over. I promise you, he is happy and social. He is fine.

Her: Really? Okay, if you say so... But think about sending him to a program for kids with high IQs.

I get that grandparents think their grandkids can do no wrong, but I'm not sure where this idea came from that K is an anti-social super-genius whose every word soars above the heads of his dimwitted classmates. K is a bright kid, but he spends half the day with his finger up his nose and the other half running around making shooting noises. I don't think he has a problem relating to other kids his age.

My mom makes up the weirdest stories and convinces herself that they're true. Like, before X was born a couple of people said to me, "I know how disappointed you were that you're not having a girl. Your mom told me you cried!" Eh? I remember when my brother and I first compared notes and realized our mother had basically been telling us completely made-up stories about each other that we each assumed were true. Now whenever my mom tells me something about what someone else is thinking or why they did something, I assume it's maybe 20% true.

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Raising kids with two religions

To continue the conversation about how to talk to our children about faith, I want to repost a comment that a friend recently made to my original post on the subject, that you may have missed. Here is her perspective:

My story is a little different, and I may take a different approach when I am asked similar things. I grew up in a dual-religion household. My mother is Anglican and my father is Muslim. I grew up being taken to mosque and church, seeing two sides and two stories (with some commonalities, of course, as these religions are siblings to a degree). In any event, the older I got, the more traumatic it got. In parochial school, I learned my father would not go to heaven. I forget the ins and outs now, but I recall my Muslim grandfather telling me sadly that my mother would not go to heaven. Did I have to CHOOSE? Which was right? How could they be incompatible systems? Would I only get one parent in the afterlife? Were there NO contingencies for people who were good and faithful, but followed a different faith? Could there be separate heavens altogether? Which one would I go to?

I descended into moral crisis. My parents – and their well-intentioned plan to raise me with an open mind – had landed me in an unsolvable quandary. To deny Islam was to deny my father. To deny Christianity was to deny my mother. And having grown up with both for so long, I could not choose one. I had come to see them both as valid faiths. But I myself did not have "capital F" Faith. I understood academically that Christ redeemed and that Allah would save [and that technically, both of those were in tension]. But I did not grow up thinking of one of those things as TRUE, as in gospel truth. And once that window closed, it felt like it closed forever.

My goal has been to spare my children the drama. As much as I roll my eyes at the contraception, abortion, and premarital sex doctrines [among others], I intend to raise my kids Catholic. I guess I just don't want them to look back on his life and feel like I undermined their opportunity to BELIEVE in something.

Whenever I go to church, I so desperately want to FEEL something. That same something my husband feels when he goes to church. But my heart knows that there are people down Mass Ave. worshipping at the national mosque, and I cannot at this point choose one value system. The way I see it, my children can reject Christ later if they want. But if they are like their mother, it may be hard for them to accept Christ later if I don't build the foundation.

I also don't like the idea that religion should be taken literally. All the rapes and pillaging and sodomy and incest and wretched wars and slavery. I think many would agree those are colorful tales intended to convey moral points. Heck, they may be historically accurate to some degree, as the world is a dreadful place. But they are not supposed to be sanctioned merely by virtue of inclusion in a holy book.

I don't know if I am doing the right thing. There is no right thing. But I am doing the best I know how. And my very Catholic husband is content. And I get to keep the vow I made to the Roman Catholic church in 2007 when they married me. I did not convert, but I promised to raise my children in the faith. Promises to God are hard to break if you think He's watching ;)

CM again: I know so many dual-faith families and I've always assumed that if the parents encouraged the kids to participate in and explore both religions, the kids would grow up believing in one or both or would make an educated choice to reject them. It never occurred to me that the choice itself could produce so much conflict for a child.

As for undermining their opportunity to believe in something, I feel the same way. But I need to find a different solution. (Unless I don't? I mean, I don't believe in NOTHING. I believe in lots of things. I have figured out my beliefs over many years, and I continue to examine them. Maybe it's not so bad if my kids find their own way too? At the same time, what you said resonates, about sitting there and wanting to feel something.)

I rolled my eyes when my husband needed a dispensation from the Catholic Church to marry me. We went to a very liberal church, the one right in Harvard Square that has a large university-affiliated population. The priest there, in our pre-marriage counseling, asked if we planned to raise the kids Catholic. I felt like this was finally a question I could answer right, and we replied in the affirmative. He nodded, and then said, "Sometimes, when the children actually come along, no matter what your intentions, they end up changing. Always remember, the most important thing is --" (and here I expected him to say something like, "Your devotion to your church") "-- your marriage."

(P.S. - I think I'm done with this subject for a while, but this has been a great conversation and I hope it continues elsewhere.)

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Atheist mom talks about God, part 2

I appreciate all the positive responses to my post about a conversation with K about God. I'm not sure if someone who is very religious would approve, but I think it's the best I can do.

It's tricky, talking to kids about God when you are a nonbeliever. I went with the "Some people believe..." approach. But already, that implies that I am not one of those people.

One aspect of religion that I dislike is that so many people are presented with their family's religion as The Truth from such a young age that they grow up not being able to imagine that anything different could be true. Before we had kids, JW and I talked about their future religious upbringing. He grew up Catholic and wanted to raise the kids Catholic too. He felt it gave him a moral grounding. I disagree that you need religion for a moral grounding, but I agreed that we could do whatever he felt comfortable with as long as the kids learned about different religions and learned to respect different kinds of beliefs.

The thing is, I don't think you can truly respect someone else's beliefs unless you can admit that their beliefs may be true. Otherwise you're down to "tolerance" -- I respect you, and your right to believe that, but I think you're misguided.*

If you are a true believer, if you really have faith, if you really think your truth is The Truth, doesn't that mean you can't accept other people's beliefs as possibly true?
Then again, I guess there are plenty of people who reconcile faith with doubt.**

I envisioned my kids learning about different religions and, when they were old enough to really think for themselves, figuring out what they believed. Now I think I was naive to expect that my beliefs wouldn't rub off on them. By not talking about God except in the context of "what some people believe," I'm basically telling them that God is a nice idea for some people, but not for us. I also didn't realize how hard it would be to explain the whole idea of "God" to someone who is wholly unfamiliar with it. Since I essentially view God as an invented concept, I can't in good conscience say, "God made the world. God is great!" without using the "Some people believe..." qualifier. I guess I could talk about God in the context of love: the love in your heart, the feeling you have of being connected to other living things and to the world we live in, the good you try to do in the world, the way you try to help others, all of that is what some people call God, and we believe in that too but everyone has a different word for it and a different way of showing it. I may try that next time.

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* Honestly, though, while I respect religious people in general and share many beliefs in common with them, I view certain parts of religion as kind of crazy. In particular, it's hard for me to accept that there are people who REALLY, LITERALLY believe in EVERY WORD of their religious texts. I mean, just for one example among many, that Bible story about how Lot shoved his virgin daughters out the door to get raped by the villagers, to avoid the villagers raping the angels who were visiting him? WTF. Not to mention the follow-up to that story, where Lot's daughters get him drunk and seduce him. Or to give equal time to the Hinduism I grew up with, in the Bhagavad Gita one of the characters (Arjun?)  realizes he's plunging his family and his country into war. He thinks of all the people who will die and reconsiders whether it's worth it. Krishna tells him he needs to stop thinking about that because God wants him to have this war, so it's his duty and he has to do it and it doesn't matter why or what consequences will result because the only important thing is to do God's will. And you know "God's will"... how? "You just do" does not count. And don't get me started on all the passages in books of every religion that promote hating or killing people, including members of your own family, who have different beliefs. So I don't truly respect everyone's beliefs either. I guess there's a line between respecting beliefs that you think are good or reasonable or at least harmless, whether you agree with them or not, and not respecting beliefs that you think are just wrong and/or batshit insane. But I will refrain from discussing this aspect of my feelings about religion with my kids until they are much older.

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* Tangent: I found this article on faith and doubt that quotes Joseph Ratzinger, in his pre-Pope days, as writing:

"[T]he believer is always threatened with an uncertainty that in moments of temptation can suddenly and unexpectedly cast a piercing light on the fragility of the whole that usually seems so self-evident to him."

So he accepts uncertainty as a fact of life, but it seems like he's saying that you only acknowledge your uncertainty in a moment of weakness.

He also says:

If, on the one hand, the believer can perfect his faith only on the ocean of nihilism, temptation, and doubt, if he has been assigned the ocean of uncertainty as the only possible one for his faith, on the other, the unbeliever is not to be understood undialectically as a mere man without faith. Just as we have already recognized that the believer does not live immune to doubt but is always threatened by the plunge into the void, so now we can discern the entangled nature of human destinies and say that the nonbeliever does not lead a sealed-off, self-sufficient life either. . . . Just as the believer is choked by the salt water of doubt constantly washed into his mouth by the ocean of uncertainty, so the nonbeliever is troubled by doubts about his unbelief, about the real totality of the world he has made up his mind to explain as a self-contained whole . . . [He too] remains threatened by the question of whether belief is not after all the reality it claims to be. . . . Anyone who makes up his mind to evade the uncertainty of belief will have to experience the uncertainty of unbelief, which can never finally eliminate for certain the possibility that belief may after all be the truth. It is not until belief is rejected that its unrejectability becomes evident.

This is a little believer-centric if you ask me (not that anyone has) because the only reason I would be uncertain is that everyone around is a believer. It's not the uncertainty of "wait, but if I don't believe in God then what's the meaning of life?" It's the uncertainty of "Everyone else seems to believe something different than me, should I re-examine my beliefs?" Which I think is a healthy kind of doubt. Doubt does not have to be troubling. It does not have to be nihilistic. Doubt can be good. Examining your beliefs is a positive thing. If you come out more certain, great. If you come out less certain, aren't you glad that you are no longer blindly following beliefs that you don't actually hold?

I could go on, but I am going to stop before I end up writing some sort of Atheist Manifesto.

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Women and career ambition

WSJ article on women and ambition, discussing a Pew Research Center poll on age, gender, and self-reported level of career ambition.

According to the Pew Research report, in the 18-34 age group:

Two-thirds (66%) of young women ages 18 to 34 rate career high on their list of life priorities, compared with 59% of young men. In 1997, 56% of young women and 58% of young men felt the same way.

In the 35-64 age group:

Today about the same share of women (42%) and men (43%) ages 35 to 64 say [that being successful in a high-paying career or profession is "one of the most important things" or "very important" in their lives]. In 1997, more middle-aged and older men than women felt this way (41% vs. 26%).

So women today are more ambitious than we were 15 years ago. (Although the 56-58% of ambitious young 'uns, men and women, in 1997 has now decreased to 42-43% now that we've hit middle age. Maybe we're letting go of some illusions about our likely level of success.)

And, at least from this data:

• One generation ago, men were significantly more ambitious than women.
• In my generation, women and men have roughly the same levels of ambition.
• Among young people today, women are more ambitious than men.

Another data point: among middle-aged people today, roughly 90% say that being a good parent is very important to them, 84% say that having a successful marriage is very important to them, and about 50% say that being successful in a high-paying career or profession is very important to them.

I wish they had left "high-paying" out of the equation. I think it skews the numbers down. I'm sure there were respondents who care about being successful in their careers, but not necessarily about being highly paid.

The WSJ Juggle blog follows up on the article with anecdata about how women who have an economic choice tend to be powerful full-time-plus professionals or stay-at-home moms, but there's not much in between. The author guesses that women who can afford it generally decide to go big or go home -- if work isn't going to be successful, challenging, and fulfilling, then they're not going to sacrifice the time they could be spending with their families. I'm not convinced, but it's an interesting point.

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A different kind of God talk

GoogieBaba's post about discussing Jesus and shepherds reminded me of this conversation I had with K in Florida. We were playing in the ocean, way out with the water up to his chest. Out of nowhere, K asked, "Mommy, people have babies, but where did the first person come from?"

"That's an interesting question," I replied. "Nobody really knows, but people have lots of ideas. There are two ideas that are the most popular. One is called the Big Bang Theory." (I gave him a three-sentence summary including evolution, which I won't repeat here because it was probably wildly inaccurate.) "The other is that God made the world and all the people and everything."

"What's God?"

"A lot of people believe that God is someone who made everything and is watching over us and loves us."

"Is God real?"

"People who believe in God think that God is real. They like knowing that somebody is out there looking out for them."

He thought for about five seconds. "I don't think God is real."

"Why not?"

"I just don't think so. Do you?"

"Well, no. But don't go around telling everyone that God isn't real, okay? It will make some people very upset."

"Why?"

"Well, you know how much I love you, right? How would you feel if someone told you, Your Mommy doesn't love you?"

"Bad. Mad. And they would be lying."

"Yes. And people who believe in God really believe that God loves them, and they would be upset and feel like you were lying if you said God wasn't real. So you can believe whatever you think is right, but don't start telling your friends that God isn't real, okay?"

"Okay."

And he went back to splashing.

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Birthday

Over a week ago, I wrote a post about Easter that I have so far failed to insert pictures into. Instead I'll write about my birthday, which was also a week ago.

K drew a picture for me. If I am honest, it's sort of a half-assed picture. I can tell JW made him draw it. When K draws voluntarily he usually covers the page with all sorts of scribbles representing various weapons. But it's up on the wall. JW gave me chocolate from Burdick's and has spent the last two weeks stripping the wallpaper I hate out of the kitchen. Today he's going to bring home paint samples.

My birthday coincided with another reason for rejoicing, pajama day at school. As I walked out the door in the morning, JW and K were having the following argument:
JW: Did you remember to wear underpants?
K: It's pajama day.
JW: Yes, but you still have to wear underpants.
K: It's pajama day.
JW: Yes. It's pajama day. Put on your underpants.
K: DADDY. IT IS PAJAMA DAY.

JW took me out to lunch, and at night we got a babysitter and went out for Korean food and bowling. Turns out bowling is less fun without K around, because I'm not good at being so bad at something on my own. But we still had a good time.

Normally birthdays don't bother me, and this one didn't either, but I did have my first realization that I am creeping ever closer to 40. And 40 seems like a big deal. I was excited to turn 20 (or rather, 21) and finally be an adult. I was happy to turn 30 and feel like a REAL adult. But 40 just seems like a whole other life stage. I guess I still identify with being young. 40 is definitely middle-aged. I still have plenty of time to deal with it, though. My big brother is turning 40 this fall, and he still seems like a regular person. And JW will turn 40 before I will.

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Pro bono network for stay-at-home attorneys

Check out this article by Susan Smith Blakely about starting a pro bono legal network aimed at providing free legal services to nonprofits and people in need while accommodating the schedules of the lawyers involved, many of whom had left the profession to be home with their families.

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MILP roundup #247

It's over at Attorney at Large.

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Weirdest thing a client has ever said to me

"We have a love affair going on by mistake" -- after I accidentally called him yesterday (a different client left me a garbled voicemail and I thought it was him), and he accidentally called me today.

Actually, there's one weirder, and much more inappropriate, thing a client has said to me, but I need to wait a few years before I can write about that.

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MILP Roundup #246

The Weekly MILP (Moms In the Legal Profession) Roundup is hosted on a rotating basis at the Butterflyfish, Ptlawmom, Attorney Work Product, Attorney at Large, Today & Tomorrow, Magic Cookie, and Reluctant Grownup blogs and is usually posted no later than Monday.

This week, the theme is laziness. Meaning that I still have about four hours to bill today and didn't even bother to do proper links. But go read everyone else's awesomeness, and next time the roundup is here… WATCH OUT.

In alphabetical order by blog:

Momttorney from The Adventures of Sammie B has a little girl who is dancing and jumping in her new walker. http://mysammieb.blogspot.com/2012/03/oh-games-she-plays.html

And You Know What Else is 2 legit 2 quit. http://andyouknow.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/its-hammer-time/

Attorney at Large deals with past trauma and stays sane in the present. http://www.attorneyatlarge.us/2012/04/01/the-two-years-i-didnt-go-crazy/

Attorney Work Product celebrates the first week of daycare. http://attyworkproduct.blogspot.com/2012/03/first-week-of-school.html

Butterflyfish is dealing with in-laws and multiple wardrobes. http://butterflyfish1.blogspot.com/2012/04/more-disjointed-thoughts.html

Cristy at Happily a Law Mama deals with being the spouse of a surgery resident. http://happilyalawmama.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-our-life-is-really-like.html

Suzie of In a Minute… is enjoying her girls' closeness and being home to see it, instead of being stuck at the firm on an artificial deadline. http://suziejd.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/kids-legal-mumbo-jumbo/

K Marks the Spot is done with maternity leave and heading back to work. http://devinemissk.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/the-days-just-slipped-away/

Lag Liv is adjusting to her new home, new job, new routine, and new pants size. http://lagliv.blogspot.com/2012/03/few-completely-unrelated-thoughts.html

Legally Certifiable is a soccer coach. http://legallycertifiable.blogspot.com/2012/04/adventures-in-soccer-coaching.html

I subjected my kid to an evil queen. http://magiccookie.blogspot.com/2012/03/family-vacation.html

Mommy and the Sin City is having sleep issues. http://mommyandsincity.blogspot.com/2012/03/two-nights-sleep-forward-one-night-back.html

Dinei of Nonsense and Frippery is gearing up for a month of vacations, visits, and getting acclimated to her new caseload. http://nonsenseandfrippery.blogspot.com/2012/03/its-all-happening-so-fast.html

Izzie of Only 3 Years won a prize! http://only3years.blogspot.com/2012/03/kickass-day.html

The Reluctant Grownup wanted her two babies, but just two. http://www.reluctantgrownupblog.com/2012/03/27/wanted/

Kate of Today and Tomorrow lost her sweet dog Luke. http://allthistomorrow.blogspot.com/2012/04/luke.html

Wild Northwest Litigator second chaired an entire trial at 38 weeks pregnant. http://wildnorthwestlitigator.blogspot.com/2012/03/verdict.html

If you would like to have your blog added to the MILP blogroll for weekly review or would like them to consider a specific post, leave a comment. Next week, Attorney at Large has it.

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