NYC Moms

Running For The Hills

There are a million reasons why I have not seen the inside of a gym in eons.  The MRSA virus.  My inability to locate a sports bra that can contain my size 34H lactating breasts.  The fact that I have only downloaded 12 songs on my ipod, one of which is Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth (which may have actually been a top 40 hit the last time I was at the gym).  My deluded belief that a steady diet of peanut butter crusts and goldfish crackers would not be fattening (it is), or that breastfeeding and pushing 60 pounds worth of babies and double stroller would keep me fit (it doesn't).

So I used that familiar motherhood refrain: I just don't have any time.  When the truth was, on the race to complete my swirling list of to-dos, my fitness and overall health was coming in last.  That is, until, reality hit me like a ton of bricks.  Or actually, I hit the floor like a ton of bricks, when a small stumble sent me crashing to the ground, leaving me with bruises so severe they can only be found at the morgue on a corpse during an episode of Law and Order.  I was in bad shape.  And with more months officially behind me than were spent pregnant, I was running out of reasons for being this sedentary.

The truth is, the gym represents a time in my life where I was able to focus on things as indulgent as the shape of my thighs.  Where once my body was a temple to worship, now it was a restaurant to feed (open

Living Commitment - Free in NYC

In college, when meeting a new friend was as heady and intoxicating as finding new romance, I "fell" for a girl named Denise.  Like all great love stories, I knew we were destined for forever.  After all, we wore the same size shoes, had the same affinity for boys who resembled Baldwin brothers and she had jeans that I wanted to borrow.  We immediately clicked, but there was just one catch.  She was geographically undesirable, a.k.a., she lived across campus which would make the clothes swapping, drinking games and late night gossiping more challenging.  Thankfully, a spot opened in the room next to mine, and for four years we were never farther from each other than a dorm door adorned with a dry erase board.  After college, she, along with the other four friends who comprised our college clique, headed for Manhattan.  The City became an extension of our college experience, just with more men, better bars and an intense desire to hold on to one another in the city that never sleeps.  Of course, over the next 10 years, life sometimes created distance.  We became busy with work, or love, or eventually -- marriage and kids.  And yet, there was still an incredible comfort to know that Denise was still right outside my door, even if it was across Central Park.  If we wanted to, we could still rewind time and be back at our liberal arts college in Boston, even if our good time and gossip was now happening while pushing swings on the Great Lawn instead of a dim and dank fraternity basement.

And then it happened.  In an email with the subject line, "The Time Has Come", Denise announced the inevitable.  She was moving to the suburbs.

Too Much Information

On the whole, motherhood has given me much more than I could have imagined.  And I mean this mostly in a very good way.  But among the infinite gifts, a few sinister additions have arrived.  A belly that refuses to lie neatly in a button fly waist, undereye bags that won't wipe away with Clinique eye makeup remover.  And a pretty ever present fear that something terrible could happen at ANY MOMENT.

This ever present latent feeling of paranoia and more often than not lead me to study parenting like the eager-achiever high school student that I never was back then.  I consume parenting resources with endless appetite for education.  I am informed to the point of insufferable - should a friend dare ask me for mundane parenting advice, I can produce a thesis on the topic. 

While I have always remained comforted by a comprehensive study of the world of children and the accompanying experts whose wisdom I cling to -- lately I find myself wondering, perhaps its ignorance that is really bliss.

It's Not You, It's Me

It is dress up day at school, and I am late. I hate my costume, and as the door opens, I hate it even more. Three pretty princesses are spinning around in puffy sleeves and glittery shoes. Ring around the Rosie. They look at me, and they look away, spinning in splendor. My heart breaks with the desire to belong, the longing for inclusion.

But it's not my class, it is my daughter, Chloe's.

Guilt and the Go-To-Gal

I used to be the go-to gal. Need something? You can count on me. I relished being a good friend and loyal family member. Being devoted to others in a meaningful way is not easy, but I took it on as a full time job. And I enjoyed the fruits of my labors. For example, my college friend Jill had an internship in Boston which ended around midnight. I would drive to meet her from my toasty bed on campus in a suburb 30 minutes away, even on the chilliest of evenings. We would have a late dinner at an upscale 24 hour sushi restaurant, and unpack our days as we dipped our sashimi. Also in college, I spent a combined 12 hellish hours on a bus from Boston to New Jersey, all to spend a laughter filled weekend with my friend Tamar in a dank dorm room. When my mother needed an MRI ten years ago, I appeared on her doorstep at the crack of dawn to take her to the hospital, even though I lived in a different city. When my mommy-mentor Candice had her children and I had not yet taken the leap, I would take several trains after work to reach her downtown home and the $20 cabride back, just to stare at their perfect little faces for inspiration. Back then, it was easy to stretch myself to the point of snapping to be there for someone else, and to get back just as much.

That was BKE: Before Kids Era.

The J Word

When my sister and I were growing up, my mother would always tell us (and anyone who would listen), "I am so happy that my two daughters are so different.  There is no jealousy between them!"

And she was right.  My sister Leah*, younger by me than two and half years, had olive skin that loved the sun and dark, poker straight hair.  She was a shy tomboy who held a few friends close and enjoyed running over reading.  She was laid back and easy going, your typical middle child.  By contrast, I had a head of thick blonde curls, skin as pale as a sheet and an outgoing personality that always bordered on hyper-sensitive and bossy.  I had gaggles of girlfriends and spun stories in my notebooks beneath a frilly canopy bed. 

We were so different and so happy to be that way that we never felt jealous of the others gifts and strengths.   And despite the times that our differences seemed too great to overcome, we are now both mothers and also best friends.  Thankfully, there is still no jealousy between us, but now a different J word has entered our relationship - perhaps an even more insidious one. JUDGEMENT.

If I only knew then

It's a familiar refrain - "If I only knew then, what I know now..." and it applies most especially to parenthood the second time around.

My two year old just spent the week at her grandparents house, leaving my husband and I with our seven month old.  It was the first time that we had been alone with him for any extended period of time, and we quite literally did not know what to do with ourselves.

The first surprise was how much time we had to talk to one another.  We had not realized that usually we are chattering around each other, both of us directed to one or both of our children. WIth a two and a half year old out of the way, even my son started babbling more, seeking to fill the empty air space with some noise.  Dinner was civilized, without being peppered by pleadings and threats if someone did not stop using her spoon as a slingshot or refusing anything that was not plain pasta.  We dared to go to a new restaurant without worrying that they did not serve anything in a nugget form, or did not have room for our hulking double stroller.  Probably the biggest surprise is that we went out at all...at night...and left SOMEONE ELSE to put our BABY to BED!

Great Sex-pectations

I'll admit it. When the ultrasound tech found that teeny tiny you-know-what, and declared "It's a boy!" I was a little disappointed. I believed people when they told me how lucky I was, one of each, how complete this made me, that I could "stop right now."

But in truth, I wanted what I knew. I wanted more hair ribbons and doll strollers and playing in mommy's makeup bag. I wanted the three of us girls to have lunch at NYC Bloomingdale's famed 40 Carrots restaurant and pretend that the frozen yogurt was really fat free. I wanted long talks on the phone, making each other promise not to tell the other one that we said anything. I was not ready to be done with pink.  I was not ready to be done at all.

Late at night, I would confess on an anonymous mommy message board, "I am afraid to have a son." What did I know about boys, anyway? Just as I was getting good at reading them, I married one. And he does not even follow sports. I have a brother, but he seemed to develop into his own brand of nerd-jock without any help from me. What would I teach a boy, other than to treat his women well and to put the seat down?

When to zip your lip

Before I became pregnant, I wondered aloud about what my child would be like. Would she have my curls, my poor arithmatic skills, my sunburn prone skin? Would I stay at home, or work outside? Would we live in the city? The 'burbs? And what about names, which sounded good with my last one? There was endless opportunity to opine.  But the person I would yammer to for hours about this, was not my husband, but my friend Emily, who would yammer right back without breaking to breathe.  Both of us newly married, not pregnant, not even close.  But since the moment we met, we have not stopped talking, and motherhood was our favorite topic of all.

So after I gave birth to my daughter Chloe, Emily was the first friend to hold her, right there in the hospital where she had all but broken down the door with excitement.  She did not know then that she was just barely pregnant with her own daughter Rowan, who would enter the world nine months later, a spitting image of her handsome dad.  Emily and I were overjoyed -- finally, the daughters we had dreamed of many years ago, whose lives we planned over Chinese noodle soups at our office lunch hour.

Two weeks after Rowan was born, a pink flush appeared over one of her eyes.  "It's nothing," I said, as did her pediatrian, who after some coaxing referred her to a dermatologist.  I was sure Emily would call to tell me that it was a particularly bad case of baby acne.  "This is more than we thought," Emily left in a message for me.  "We need to see a neurologist."

Pillow Talk

I have a confession to make.

There is something happening in my bed that I have been too embarassed to tell anyone about, until now.

I don't know exactly how it started, but I know that my husband and I agreed, "just this once."  In the depths of darkness, it was easy to overlook the forbidden line we were about to cross.  And in the morning, we looked at each other, ashamed to admit just how good it was.

So "just one time" has turned into every night.  People who know me would never believe that I could get into this.  Even my closest friends don't know -- I am worried about what they would think of me, of us.  We know others who have tried this, and it has only lead to trouble.  And yet we keep doing it, and we don't know how to stop.

Here it is: