Magic Cookie: Pitch Perfect

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Tuesday, 26 June 2012

16 months / 64 months snapshot

Posted on 11:14 by Unknown
X walked nearly all the way to school yesterday, pushing the stroller the entire third of a mile, including all the way up the big hill. He was furious when I picked him up and tried to put him in the stroller, and indignant as I carried him across the busy street. He fell about five times and raised his palms up to me so I could brush off the dirt and leaves, and then kept going. Today I tried going stroller-less and ended up carrying him the whole way. Whenever I put him down to walk, he plopped down on the sidewalk and picked up sticks, alternately handing them to me and K and eating them.

K scraped his knee a week ago and gives me a scab update every day. He's a bit of a drama queen when it comes to cuts and scrapes.

K still has rock star aspirations. He likes any kind of music with electric guitar. At the moment he's into the Pixies. Once in a while when he's in a good mood, he'll play air guitar and belt out a song that is composed of half nonsense words and half original lyrics that are actually pretty good.

X is saying "hi" and "bye-bye" but doesn't have any real words yet. He says "Uh-oh!" when anything falls on the floor and a dog-like "WUH WUH" for any kind of animal sound. (What does a dog say? WUH WUH. What does a cow say? WUH WUH. What does a fish say? WUH WUH. Et cetera.)

K still can't say his "r"s.

K rolls his eyes a lot. I can pretty much guarantee that around bedtime, he's going to say, "Not yet!" at least twice and roll his eyes at least three times. I get him to brush his teeth for a sufficient amount of time by telling him that he has to brush for eleven eye-rolls. He also says "Hello" as in "I already went to the potty, HELLO."

X loves taking baths, as he always has. He still takes baths in the baby tub.

For a glorious three weeks, K started taking showers! First day: "I love this! Can I take a shower every day?" It was great for me. Showers are quicker and he could do everything by himself. I'd hand him the soap, draw the curtain, and listen to him singing and dancing around in there while I read my magazine. Now he's back to baths.

K still wears a diaper at night.

X is transitioning to one nap.

K claims that he never sleeps.

Over the past few months, K's obsessions have been, in this order: Transformers; Bakugan (after buying two of those little ball things at a yard sale); Lego Ninjago (which he doesn't have, but has seen at a friend's house); and currently, the Avengers. Our main source of conflict is that he's always trying to get me to play games involving bad guy battles, and I don't want to play. K has also gone on a drawing and coloring binge lately. Given his total lack of interest before, this surprises me. But it is wonderful to have him immersed in a calm and quiet activity that he doesn't need me to be actively involved in.

X throws food. Like pretty much every baby his age.

X continues to be somewhat violent. We all flinch a little when he runs up to us. He pinches K. Two days in a row, he bit other kids in his class. :( We are trying to train him out of this, but I don't know how well it's working.

X gives kisses by opening his mouth as wide as possible, making a roaring noise, and mashing his face into your cheek. It is a wet and slimy, but sweet, experience.

K was apprehensive about kindergarten, but now that we've been there twice for his screening and orientation, he seems mostly excited about it. I think I'm more excited than he is, though. Two of his school friends are going to the same school, but they'll all be in different classes.

K is constantly making up stories about robots. When we walk anywhere, I hear a constant stream of chatter from him: "The black guy is the most powerful. He has a gun mounted right into his shoulder, and it shoots ice. The pink guy is the coolest. His name is Iron Zoomer. He can make lightning. One time, he went into a cave, and then, and then the leader of the skulletons, do you know what his name was? Uh... Robert. Robert said, "GET OUT OF MY CAVE!" and Iron Zoomer SHOCKED him with electricity and then the rest of the skulletons RAN AWAY." He always says he saw it all in a movie, even though he is terrified of watching actual movies of any kind.

X looks delighted and claps whenever a song is over, whether it's on the radio or someone is singing. He also claps if anyone says, "Yay!" or "Good job!" even if it's not directed at him. He dances whenever he hears music, shifting from side to side and grinning.

X climbs up and down the stairs. He has always refused to go down the stairs backwards or scoot down on his bottom like a normal baby. He hangs on to the railing and walks down. I don't think K could do that until he was two. At the playground, X has no fear. He climbs on everything.

According to JW, X actually jumped and got off the ground once a few days ago. I haven't seen him do it. But he does like to practice jumping.

K never wants to wear underpants, jackets, or shoes.

K is an amazing reader and can read just about anything. If he comes to an unfamiliar word, he usually doesn't ask what it means, he just says whatever he thinks it is and keeps going. The exception is words on the cereal box. We spend a lot of time at breakfast discussing the words on the cereal box.

X loves to read, too. He will hand me book after book and then, no matter what position I'm in, will find a way to climb on top of me while I read to him. He can sit there for half an hour reading. But I have to limit him to board books that don't have any rippable pieces. He destroyed Pat the Puppy the other day.

K is a good big brother. He's nice to X and will try to help if he sees him struggling with something. He gets understandably frustrated when X gets in his face and tries to take whatever K is playing with.

X, of course, wants to do whatever K is doing. If K is coloring, he will grab the crayons and color too. But after a minute he'll stop coloring and will bite off the pointy part off the crayon. Then he'll come find me and open his mouth so I can scrape the wax off his teeth.

X thinks sneezing is funny. He likes it when I say, "Bless you!" After he sneezes, he'll always do a couple of fake sneezes to get me to say "Bless you!" again.
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Monday, 25 June 2012

Women Still Can't Have It All

Posted on 07:59 by Unknown
If you've been living under a rock for the past week, here's the Atlantic article by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Everyone I know has emailed this to me, and I have emailed this to everyone I know if I didn't get it from them first. Clearly it resonates with all of us.

I just finished the article yesterday, reading a page here and there while the kids played. I haven't read a lot of the commentary out there yet, so I'm sure that many of my thoughts about the article have already been said. But here's one: I was so glad that she responded to Sheryl Sandberg's talk about "leaning back."

Sandberg sort of skirted the issue by saying that women who don't already have kids are "leaning back" from their careers and turning down opportunities. And I think seizing the day and taking on opportunities is great career advice. The thing is, after hearing her talk, my reaction was to shrug and say, "I guess I can't have a high-powered career like her, because I do lean back. I don't seize every professional opportunity. And I still sometimes feel like I don't have enough energy for my family, so I will continue to lean back and watch my childless colleagues pass me by because this is what I feel like I need to do. Maybe when I'm fifty and the kids are out of the house I'll seize those professional opportunities again, and maybe then it will be too late and I'll never ascend to the career heights of some of my peers, but I can't worry about that now because I have two little boys at home who need me." 

It was such a relief to hear a well-respected woman in an established career acknowledge the reality that if both of you have some ambition and want to devote time and energy to your careers, you need to balance that with your family life and sometimes your family life should win. That when you're faced with a professional opportunity that conflicts with your family life, you should weigh your options and that when your kids still live at home, it may often make sense to turn down or scale down that professional opportunity. And that we should all, men and women, reimagine our careers as a series of positions and responsibilities that we fit in with the rest of our lives, rather than as a steady upward trajectory where we fail if we stop going up. I think the massive response to her article is all of us going, "Finally, someone is telling the truth!" Not the truth that, duh, it's hard to juggle work and kids, but the truth that right now there are two alternatives. You can have career success and power at the expense of your family, or we need to make changes so that career success and power can be compatible with family obligations.

Update: Here's an excerpt from LL's comment (read in full). Amen, sister!

Working parents in general can't have it all. . . . I think it's limiting to always frame it as a "women's issue" and it ignores a whole lot of men who also make the choice of family over career. . . . I think all of her points apply to working parents generally and should be framed as such. Until my husband's employer sees his role of father as as important as they see (or at least pretend to see) their female workers' role as mother, it is never going to be as balanced or easy at it should be for me, the working wife of the working man, to make the choices I might want to make.
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Friday, 22 June 2012

Wardrobe malfunction

Posted on 09:42 by Unknown
When I get dressed for work in the morning, my goals are usually to be comfortable and look professional and pulled-together. I'm usually not aiming to look pretty or stylish. I just don't care that much and I'm not there to look cute.

However, even with my low bar, today I am a fashion disaster. The neckline of my new blouse keeps dipping below the neckline of the camisole that's supposed to be hidden under it. After a two-hour board meeting, I discovered that a long sticker displaying the size was still stuck to the front. My new skirt shrank in the wash so that the outer layer is now shorter than the lining, and I indulged in some magical thinking that maybe it would stretch out with wear and that this time, it wouldn't turn into a giant mass of wrinkles as soon as I sat down. Also, it was so hot and humid in our house this morning that I couldn't stand the thought of wearing makeup.

At least my shoes match, and I don't have any more meetings today.
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Wednesday, 20 June 2012

Out of whack

Posted on 08:21 by Unknown
I was up until 2:30 working on a deal, then I woke up at 4:45 to finish drafting.

At 1 a.m. a different client emailed the general counsel for a company we've been negotiating with to ask when their draft would be ready.

At 2 a.m. the partner on the deal emailed me to say he'd check my work at 5:30 a.m.

At 2:15 a.m. the general counsel emailed back with a draft.

I wanted to cry. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALL OF US? WAKE UP SHEEPLE.
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Monday, 18 June 2012

Two-minute family update

Posted on 11:52 by Unknown
Me: Busy at work. Doing more software-related stuff, which I really enjoy. Realizing that I am so much happier doing technology transactions and commercial agreements than anything related to (1) securities, (2) mergers and acquisitions, and (3) corporate finance. Or really, (4) anything primarily involving money. Figuring out how I can tailor my practice that way.

X: After a visit to the allergist, we learned that he is allergic to all nuts and egg whites, and stocked up on Epi-Pens. Two molars are growing in. Also, he has started nodding for "yes" and shaking his head for "no," which makes our lives easier, and he gets the biggest smile on his face when we do what he says.

K: Preparing to say goodbye to his two best friends, one of whom is moving across the country and the other (our current next-door neighbor, who he's always running around with) is moving about twenty minutes away. Has been getting good at drawing and coloring, which he had zero interest in for years.

JW: The return to work has been good for him so far. Father's Day included a walk in the woods, burritos, and pie.


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Tuesday, 5 June 2012

I sing a little song for you

Posted on 17:49 by Unknown
K asked for some gummy bears. Naturally, I couldn't hand him some gummy bears without breaking into the "Gummi Bears" theme song. "What's that song?" asked K. "It's the Gummi Bears song!" "No, not the song you made up. The real song."

I didn't realize it had become a habit, but apparently I break out into little songs about whatever we happen to be doing at the moment so routinely that he assumes anything I sing is made-up words to an actual song.

The good news is that I'm not becoming my mother. I'm developing my own personal kinds of crazy.
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Monday, 4 June 2012

I think we're done here

Posted on 09:08 by Unknown
Lunchtime. We hadn't planned what to make in advance, so we had to scramble to get lunch on the table. The result: X is yelling and throwing food on the floor. K is systematically dismantling the corndog that he specifically requested, dropping crumbs everywhere, while groaning, "Do I have to eat this?" I look at JW and announce, "We are not having any more children." He grins. "That's it? That's all it takes?" "Life is too short to spend any more years doing this," I reply.

Fast forward a few hours. We met friends who also have two kids, 2 and 4, for bowling followed by dinner out. Way too ambitious. The kids behaved, but after several hours of chasing them around, trying to stop them from climbing on us and everything else, and listening to them yell, we realize that we voluntarily submitted to birthday party levels of chaos. On the drive home, half an hour after X's bedtime, we were both a little shell-shocked. "You'd think that with one kid per parent, it would be fine," said JW, "but it doesn't matter. With each additional kid, there is exponentially more chaos." He then suggested we stop by the hospital because he was ready for an operation.

We decided to delay the operation for a few years, just in case, but I think we're on the same page.
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Friday, 1 June 2012

Setting a bad example

Posted on 08:47 by Unknown
K: Do robots have butts?
Me: Of course they do.
K: No, they don't.
Me: Then why are you asking me? Hey, what do you call a robot's butt? A RO-BUTT.
K: Butt is a bad word.
Me: Why?
K: That's what they said at school.
Me: What's bad about it? It's part of your body.
K: You shouldn't say it.
Me: BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT.
K: If you say it again, I'll fart at you.
Me: BUTT BUTT BUTT
K: Stop saying it!
Me: Okay, I'll stop. But I don't think it's a bad word.
K: YOU SAID IT AGAIN!
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