DC Metro Moms

Summer Movies I Can't Wait to See

As a movie critic, I'm one of the rare mothers who *does* get to see movies more than half-a-dozen times a year. I usually attend about two screenings a week, and I often take along my movie-starved mom friends as my plus-one. Almost every week, someone I know asks me for movie recommendations, but recently someone I know asked me what movies I personally can't wait to see, so in response, I thought about 10 movies I'm looking forward to this summer (in no particular order).

1. The Kids Are All Right: I love the idea of Annette Bening & Julianne Moore playing lesbian mamas, and the two kid actors (Mia Wasikowska a.k.a. Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Josh Hutcherson of Bridge to Terabithia) are fabulous up-and-comers.

2. Eat, Pray, Love: Not only is this based on Elizabeth Gilbert's soul-searching memoir, but I am a huge fan of Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup, James Franco and America's Sweetheart herself, Julia Roberts.

Taking the Preschool Twos Plunge One Last Time

 I know some parents keep their children home until they're three, or for that matter, until kindergarten, but that has not been an option for me until my third-and-final child, Baby J. When my first two kids were two, I worked full-time out of the home, so my oldest son went full-time to a preschool with after-care, and my daughter split the week between a two-day preschool and a nanny share. I'm a freelance journalist now, and I don't necessarily need to send my son off to school, but I want to, as much for him as for him.

This fall, my youngest will start school. He's going to be two-and-a-half in a two-day twos program at the same wonderful cooperative preschool where his older sister is currently in pre-K. I could easily cry at the thought of my Baby being old enough for preschool (not to mention my middle-child beginning kindergarten!), but I'm completely at peace with our decision to enroll him, even though the application process started even before his second birthday. 

Strong Friendships Equal Strong Roots

I should've known better than to doubt my friend Jen, who presciently told me that it take three years to fully acclimate yourself to a new place, especially if you loved the place you used to live. Ask anyone who's met me since moving down to the DC area -- be it a fellow blogger, a mom at the playground or the cashier at the local Safeway -- and they can tell you 1. I'm a woman 2. I have kids 3. I miss Brooklyn.

But as my husband and I celebrated acknowledged our third anniversary here earlier this month, I realized that while we may always miss Brooklyn, for the first time since April 2007, I'm not 100% certain we'd move back. Why? One simple answer: Friends. Oh, we had two sets of very close friends here before we moved (in fact, they're the reason we live in Silver Spring instead of somewhere closer to my husband's office in Reston), but we finally, finally feel like we have established a new little tribe of friends.

Things You Just Don't Want to Hear

Every now and then someone tells you something you just don't need to hear, or you overhear something out of context (or in context, for that matter) that you wish you could physically remove from your memory (if only obliviation existed outside the Potterverse). This seems to be a recurring issue lately, and I can't figure out why. Here are 10 telling examples from the past couple of weeks.

1. "You look really tired," said by an overly put-together mom on the preschool playground. Why not just tell me I look like wrinkly old hag and leave it at that? OK, so I was tired, and had slept only four hours the night before, but that's besides the point.

2. "Can I have my hand back?" said by my amused midwife during my annual exam. Yes, you read that correctly. I guess I shouldn't have waited more than two years to have one since my last pregnancy. She continued, once I, um,  unclenched my thighs: "That would make for a hilarious story: Midwife loses hand conducting pap smear. More at 11."

When Playgroup Talk Goes 'Sex and the City'

I belong to a weekly playgroup of moms with toddlers. All but one of us has two or three children, with toddlers (all two by this summer) who just recently learned to play with each other. While the kiddos are running around our respective playrooms and basements, sneaking snacks and shoving one another out of the way to get said snacks, we moms sit around and chat. Sure, we keep an eye on the kids, mostly to make sure none of them ends up in harm's way, but let me be clear that playgroup is just as much for us as it is the kids. So we drink our cuppas and jabber on about schools, husbands, jobs old and new, and on the very rare occasion, more, um, intimate issues like fertility, birth control, and sex.

We're a modest bunch that could never be described as wannabe Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlottes, but we somehow stumbled upon an R-rated topic of conversation anyhow. See, I squashed any speculation that my husband and I were sure to conceive baby #4 after admitting what is well known to any one who knows us -- that last fall, at the age of 34, my husband got the big V. Not only that, but unlike many husbands, mine actually went in for his post-procedure follow-up to ensure our family of five stays that way.

How I Learned to Embrace My Curls

When I was in third grade, my mother had her hairstylist cut off my long hair into what I can only describe as a miniature afro. I was mortified. I wept -- big, fat tears soaking my face -- while I was still in the salon chair. No one understood why my mom had done it. I thought I was getting a trim. Mami always replied with the same lame excuse: "Ay, her thick hair was getting hard to braid every day."

Thanks to that one awful haircut, I had to endure about seven years of bad hair. Yes, that haircut was the bad-luck equivalent of shattering a mirror. As a young teenage girl, you can only imagine how I felt about having thick, un-tamable curly hair. If only Hermione Granger had existed when I was growing up, perhaps I could have had a bushy-haired fictional role model to commiserate with, but no, all I had were a bunch of white-girl friends with their lustrous, straight hair. Good times.

How DC Cured My Driving Phobia

I'm sure most of my friends are sick of hearing about this, but moving from Brooklyn to the DC 'burbs has been a difficult transition for me, even as I near my three-year-anniversary here in April. One of the undisputed benefits of living down here, however, has been that suburban life, and the big, bad Beltway in particular, forced me to face my moderately severe highway phobia.

Let me provide some background. When I was 15, I, like every other teenager, received my learner's permit, but because of my ridiculous IB-high school schedule, I was too busy to fit in driver's ed, which wasn't compulsory at the time. The next year, as most of my friends turned 16 and started driving their own cars, I figured it didn't much matter whether I got my actual license, since my mom was never going to afford buying me a car, and I could just bum rides off of my friends.

Not a Creature Was Stirring, Not Even a Louse

Last year around this time, an outbreak of lice swept through my daughter Delia's preschool, particularly the pre-K classes. At the time, I lived in a state of constant vigilance and fear that she would get the dreaded little buggers. My mother had just died, and she was the only one who could've helped me deal with a lice infestation, so I just held my breath and prepared for the worst. We were, however, spared.

This year, we were not so lucky. A couple of weeks ago, newly five-year-old Delia began scratching like a swarm of mosquitoes had swarmed around her head. "I'm itchy," she complained while at dinner at a close friend's house. My friend Jen took a quick look and said Delia looked fine, so we went ahead with spontaneous plans to allow Delia and her big brother to spend the night at her place.

Swine Flu Survival Guide

My October has been cursed, I tell you. In addition to dealing with my mother's first death anniversary, an unexpected hit-and-run accident (gotta love immoral gits who crash into stationary cars in parking lots), paying for a ridiculous amount of unrelated car repairs, acting a single parent while my husband works until midnight every night, and tending to two Swine Flu-infected kids, I naturally came down with the blasted flu myself -- the exact week the vaccine was being given out approximately 2 miles away from my house. As awful as caring for kids who are sick is, it's a carnival ride compared to parenting while sick. Although I'm still achy (and whiny, as you can tell), I've decided in the spirit of motherly generosity, to provide some unsolicited tips for how to deal with the flu if/when it hits your family, and more importantly, you.

1. Enlist Help, Stat: If you're blessed enough to live within a 50-mile radius of flu-vaccinated parents, siblings and/or in-laws, for the love of all that's sane and holy, call them and ask for help. Unfortunately, I had already enlisted my in-laws for a long-weekend of babysitting earlier this month, and seeing as mine are elderly and live two hours away, it just wasn't feasible to drag them into my germ pit home again so soon. But you are probably luckier than I (having no local family members to harass or beg), and should therefore press the speed-dial on your mobile and round up support troops.

My First Orphaned Birthday

September will be the cruelest month this year, and possibly for years to come. For the second time in my life, I dread what this month brings. It's not only the first year my mother won't be alive for her own birthday on the 22nd (she would have been 68), but my oldest brother and I take our turns facing our first birthdays as orphans.

I will be 33 on Sept. 18th. It's not a particularly "special" birthday, but it's a momentous one in my grief journey. I can't bear the thought of going through the day without a phone call from Mami, who like all mothers, I suppose, made sure to shower me with birthday blessings, tales of my birth, and sweet compliments.

Last year, as it turned out, she was exactly two weeks away from succumbing to her metastatic cancer, but she still mustered the strength necessary to call my cell and leave a surprisingly animated message. I remember leaving the amazing dinner my husband treated me to at CityZen and listening to it, tears streaming steadily down my face. I told my husband that I knew, no matter how much my heart protested, that it was the final time I'd receive Mami's birthday call.

The very next day, I packed up my then-six-month-old baby, kissed my husband and older two children goodbye, and headed to Florida to celebrate Mami's 67th birthday. My brother's entire family was also flying down, so Mami could see all of her children together. It was an emotional weekend. Mami looked emaciated and withdrawn. She could barely keep her eyes open and had to be carried up and down the stairs by my brothers.

But there was joy too. As the American Cancer Society's More Birthdays campaign proclaims, every birthday is a victory. Mami had made it to 67, although we all knew she wasn't going to see 68. We sang happy birthday. She blew out her candles (with help from the grandkids). She gushed about her present, a special photo blanket made up of the faces of her eight grandchildren. We ate takeout from a Colombian restaurant, so she could have her motherland's comfort food again.

Later that night, Mami told me what, looking back, was her "final gift." She said, in Spanish: "It's such a beautiful blanket. I only wish I had more time to enjoy it." I didn't want to hear her acknowledge what had previously gone unspoken, but now, 11 months later, I'm so grateful she made that comment.

Mami was right. She died 10 days later in a Hospice bed, while my sister read quietly by her side. 

I face September with the grief only someone who has lost their mother and father can understand. I put her birthday on the family calendar, wishing she could have lived to have another birthday, another victory against that hateful, merciless killer that is cancer.

An original DC Metro Moms post.

Sandie blogs about grief and motherless motherhood at Urban Mama.