DC Metro Moms

My Low Tech Kids

I am definitely a wired mommy. Between my blackberry, my laptop, my DVR, my digital camera, my iPad, my Flip Cam, and my hope-to-soon-have netbook, I am always using something that beeps, flashes, and requires a charger. I love being (somewhat) technically proficient, and I couldn't live without these various gadgets that record, brighten, and basically facilitate my life.

My kids, on the other hand, lead relatively simple lives, technology-wise. They know how to use the DVR (better than my husband does) and can write notes on my blackberry, and one daughter asked for (and received) a digital camera from my father for her 6th birthday a few weeks ago. Her pictures are pretty good, too. But when it comes down to it, they don't spend that much of their time using technology. We almost never go to kids' sites on the internet. We have a Wii, but have played it together about 5 times total. The girls don't have PlayStations or Gameboys or whatever's popular now for kids - other than some handheld Leapfrog devices I got them a few years ago, their toys are mostly of the non-electronic type.

Just Call Me the B-Word Of The Morning

Every morning, I wake up hopeful. I think to myself, this morning will go smoothly. I will have enough time to make lunches, and walk the dog, and get the girls dressed, and get ready for work, and get the girls to kindergarten before morning announcements start. I feel calm, in charge, positive, and nothing but affection for the two sleeping, tousled redheads in the bedroom on the other side of the wall.

And then, something happens, and that hope starts to fade. It's a gradual process, but an inevitable one. It might start with the rejection of the carefully chosen outfit from the night before. Or it might be the stubborn refusal to get dressed at all. Or it's the immediate escalation of a minor infraction between my daughters into tears and recriminations. Or it might be a combination of all three. Looking back on the last month or so, I have a hard time remembering a morning when one of them wasn't close to (or in) tears at some point before we left the house.

Friendship, Redefined

I've always taken friendships very seriously. I have been blessed with wonderful friends over the years - from high school, from college, from jobs I've had - and I have spent a lot of time investing in those friendships, with very rich payback. However, I'm finding it pretty difficult, in my early 40s, to keep up with my friends like I used to. Between work and family, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

Case in point - six years ago, one of my very best friends moved to DC from Miami. Her husband - an academic - had received offers from schools in a couple of cities, and when they made the decision to move to DC, I was beyond thrilled. Many of my close friends live far away, and I was so excited knowing that she'd be close by. When they bought a house 3 blocks away, I was over the moon.

But... the sad reality is that I just don't see her all that often. We can go a month without even laying eyes on each other.  Our kids go to different schools, so I don't see her at drop-off, at the auction or spring play, or at birthday parties of classmates. I work full-time, and she's a SAHM, so I can't get together with her for coffee or a walk when our kids are in school. Our families tend to be on different vacation schedules. I don't see her at the temple (which I admittedly don't go to all that often), or at my daughters' ballet class on Saturday morning, or any of the other kid-related activities I go to. We can go a week playing phone tag, if one of us has plans at night or is simply too tired to pick up the phone at 9 PM, which happens to me more often than I'd like to admit.

Must. Stop. Multitasking.

So. I am here at the Mom 2.0 Summit here in Houston (along with lots of other DC Metro Moms writers -sorry if I left you out!), hearing all kinds of wise and witty words from bloggers that I've long read and admired. It has been a great two days of learning and talking about all aspects of blogging - marketing to bloggers, branding and designing our blogs, the future of blogging, etc.

It has also been two days of answering email, keeping up with work, writing my own two blogs, and, of course, monitoring the two time sucks known as Facebook and Twitter.

And those were the same two days.

It has come to a point in my life where I am literally incapable of doing only one thing at a time. If I am watching TV, I am also online. If I am cooking dinner, I am also answering email. If I am running, I am listening to a podcast. I keep wondering why, as a book blogger, I get so few books read... it's because reading is pretty much the only thing I do that requires singular focus.

I read some advice today on Mashable - try to resist multitasking. Because "the more people multi-task, the worse they become at it." I believe it - I definitely get less out of life when I am living two of them at once. I miss the funny moments that everyone else laughed at during the conference because I was reading an email about a meeting I just missed at the office. I can tell you that a bunch of ice dancers performed to the tango last night at the Olympics, but I really can't tell you who won, because I think I was making a to-do list during the medal ceremony.

Why I Don't Do New Year's Resolutions

A few days ago, my twins came home from kindergarten each with a drawing that they had done, accompanied by a message at the bottom written in adorable kindergarten print. They had been asked to write down their New Year's resolution, and each had dutifully fulfilled the request. One wrote, "My New Year's resolution is to go up to the Washington Monument" (spelling corrected by Mommy). The other wrote, "My New Year's resolution is to learn how to swim."

Each of them had chosen a goal that was relatively attainable. Over the holiday, we had planned to go to top of the Washington Monument - had even bought reserved tickets - but the day we went down to the Mall was bitterly cold and windy, and the monument was closed. It won't be hard for us to go back on a warmer weekend and finally take that long elevator to the top. As for learning to swim, well, the girls are more than halfway there after six weeks of lessons this summer and countless trips to the pool with their very patient father as an instructor.

The Life Cycle of a Blizzard

I don't know when I have ever been so excited for trash day.

It all started over a week ago - Friday the 18th, to be exact. I started hearing rumblings in the morning about a snowstorm. Now, as a DC resident, I tend to ignore these rumblings, because they are usually false. We hear a lot of hype about incoming snowstorms, about "four to six inches" and "potential school closings," and usually end up with a dusting, at best. I can't remember the last time (before last week), that we had an actual snowstorm here.

Well, this time, it was for real. We got a lot of snow. And here's a rough timeline of how I felt about the snow.

Daytime before the snowfall started: Wow, is it really going to happen this time? If so, is our kitchen stocked? We have milk (I think), we have bread, we have trash bags and toilet paper... are we going to be ok? I eat dinner at my mom's house that night and grab a pound of butter on the way out, just in case we decided to do some baking. We don't go to the store, which ends up being a mistake because we did run out of milk and, it turned out, we were very low on eggs. (Our efforts would probably have been in vain, though, as my friends posted many pictures on Facebook of empty shelves at Giant as people made pre-storm runs for the exact same things I would have been shopping for.)

I'm Thankful For Our Public School. (Aren't I?)

Today, my girls were in their first Thanksgiving performance at school. It was adorable, of course - 110 kindergarteners singing in unison, smiling, as their proud parents stood immobile with a smattering of videocameras and smartphones. As I always do at these events, I teared up, caught up in the mix of pride and nostalgia I felt watching my five year-olds participate in this rite of childhood.

I also felt, as I usually do at these events, very lucky that our kids can go to this school. It's a DC public school, but it's considered one of the "crown jewels" of DCPS. Even the mayor opted to endure public indignation when he enrolled his kids there this year, out of boundary. The fact that we get to send our daughters there for the cost of our DC property taxes, which are pretty low, makes me very grateful.

But there is something that nags at me and makes me wonder if the girls are getting shortchanged in a way that they wouldn't at a private school. It's not the academics - it's the other classes that make up a well-rounded education. They have music, art, and P.E. each once a week. That's it - once a week. I guess I always pictured kindergarten as a time of creative intensity and a high level of physical activity. The fact that they only have these classes once a week - all of which are taught by the same teacher - gives me pause. Is this solely a budget issue, or is this typical for a kindergarten curriculum? Would it be any better at one of DC's fancy private schools? Am I capable of picking up the slack - of doing enough craft activities at home and playground outings on the weekends - to help make up for what they aren't getting at school?

The Day My Dog Became A Dog

About a year and a half ago, a very sweet young couple moved into the house next door to ours. They were newlyweds, full of enthusiasm and excitement over the purchase of their first house. A few months later, they added an adorable yellow lab puppy - Bella - to the mix, to the delight of my twin girls (and the consternation of my aging basenji, Allie). Like many new dog owners, especially those without kids, Bella became the focus of their lives. They bought a station wagon, took him on nice long walks in the neighborhood, and generally turned into Dog People.

Until she got pregnant.

Last night, I noticed that their house was completely dark, and that only one car was out front. Knowing that the wife was due to be induced on Thursday, I figured that their baby was finally on its way. Turns out I was right - I saw the husband this morning as he returned from the hospital "to take a shower and let the dog out".

Ah, I remember that day - the day my dog took a significant drop down my priority list. I had gotten Allie back when I was single. At the time, she was the total focus of my life. She was my emotional support, the outlet for all my maternal urges, the one who made my apartment less lonely. Even after I got married, my dog was still an extremely high priority for me. Whenever we went out of town, I would spend much of the time worrying about her, wondering how she was and whether she was sad. When I got pregnant with twins, people would tell me that my feelings about her would change after the girls were born. "No way," I thought. "They don't understand - Allie is different. She's a dog, yes, but she's a very special dog, and will always be my first child." I was admitted briefly to the hospital with pre-term labor at week 34, and all I could think about was Allie and how sad and lost she would be when I didn't return home from the hospital that afternoon.

And then my daughters were born.

Someone took care of Allie for me when I was in the hospital having the girls, and I remember well the day when she was dropped back off. It was pure chaos in the house - one newborn at home, one still in the NICU - and when she got home, my first reaction was to be annoyed. (Annoyed!) I felt guilty inside, but in my exhaustion, I couldn't help being irritated that there was now yet another helpless creature that needed my attention. Fitting in her walks, her vet visits, and, frankly, her emotional needs, was definitely a challenge that first year.

Over time, Allie's position in the house has stabilized. She's not the alpha girl anymore. She's not always - or even usually - top of mind for me. And when we go away, I don't obsess anymore about whether she misses me. As a similarly dog-obsessed friend put it when she had her son Luca, "Oh, Peanut turned into a dog the day Luca was born."

I wanted to say something to my neighbor this morning about Bella, something that might assuage the guilt that I am sure he felt as he crossed the threshold of his house this morning after being up all night with his new son. Something that would let him know that it's ok for Bella to revert back into a dog.

Nah, he'll figure it out.

Original D.C. Metro Moms post. Photo courtesy of Clownfish.

Gayle blogs about books and reading at Everyday I Write The Book.

What To Wear On In Between Days?

I call these the "in between days". (Thanks to The Cure for the inspiration).

It's not summer anymore, even though today, it certainly feels like it. It's not winter yet, either. It's fall - that time of year when the mornings are chilly, the days are warm, and the nights are anything from balmy to cold.

These days wreak havoc on my ability to stay organized. Do I leave out the open-toed shoes, or pull down the boots from my shelf? I can't fit two seasons' worth of shoes on the floor of my closet. Sweaters - stick with the lightweight summer cottons, or yield to wool turtlenecks? RIght now the cool sweaters are hanging in my closet, while the winter ones sit folded upstairs in a cedar chest. It seems that I never have the right ones at my fingertips when I need them - what made sense in the morning is too hot by the afternoon.

When Are Kids Old Enough For Bad News?

Last night, my daughter picked a previously unread book from the bookshelf and added it to the pile of pre-bedtime reading. We've inherited a lot of books from her older cousins, and I pick up lots of kids books at used book sales, so I am not sure where this book came from. But it turned out to be a very moving book. It's called The Man Who Walked Between The Towers, by Modicai Gerstein, and it's about Philippe Petit, the daredevil who walked on a tightrope between the Twin Towers on August 7, 1974.

"Is this a true story?", my daughter asked me, when we looked at drawings of Petit lying - yes, lying - on the tightrope, a quarter mile up from the ground. I told her that yes, it is a true story, that Petit is still alive, and that there was even a movie made about him last year. The drawings are breathtaking and powerfully convey the danger that Petit was in, as well as the feeling of exhilaration he must have felt as he performed on that tightrope while America held its breath.

Soon after my daughter asked me if the story was true, I turned to the second to last page, which simply said, "Now the towers are gone."