LA Moms Blog

I do...

I did. I took the plunge. Tied the knot. Got hitched. I am married.

Everyone asks "how does it feel?", "does it feel different?", "are you happy?" Well after two weeks and two days of wedded bliss my answer is I am happy and it does feel different.

How does it feel different? Let me count the ways...

• I get to say "my husband!" I feel like a little schoolgirl when I do.

• My husband and I were watching a painful date scene during a movie the other day and we looked at each other and said "thank god we're done with that!" I'm sure that I have been on more dates in one lifetime than anyone should be. And too many that left me feeling...do I have to? We had a good laugh over our worst date stories. Mine was years ago. It was my mother's friends, friend’s son or something like that. He took me to one of those "buffet" restaurants and we split the bill. Need I say more...

• I got to dress up like a princess and have the most beautiful photos of myself... I never like my pictures and I melt with these. My photographer, Lisa Franchot, (check out more of my amazing photos including some with my son that slays me) is a genius!

Defying Statistics... babies, marriage... what's next?

June 2, 1986, NEWSWEEK, "The Marriage Crunch," read the cover headline. Below it was a line graph sloping steeply downward, above an ominous subhead: "If You're a Single Woman, Here Are Your Chances of Getting Married." The story reported that "white, college-educated women born in the mid-1950s who are still single at 30 have only a 20 percent chance of marrying. By the age of 35 the odds drop to 5 percent." Much of the article focused on a single, now infamous line: that a single 40-year-old woman is "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to ever marry, the odds of which the researchers put at 2.6 percent.

Thankfully, they were wrong. Advances in fertility and ways for people to meet have changed. The stigma of being married later has changed and life goes on.

For me, I have unintentionally missed out on convention. I expected to marry much younger and was engaged at 27. That didn't happen. I spent 4 years with the man I thought I would marry between the ages of 36 to 40 and then he panicked. So at 40 years old, I was single, childless and not happy about it. I had a great career going but personally was so far from where I thought I would be.

Like Every Good Jewish Girl...I'm going on an Easter Egg Hunt!

From as early as I can remember, as a nice Jewish girl growing up in New Jersey, Easter was a holiday we celebrated and embraced. Most years we would put on our Easter outfits and head into NYC for the parade and then a big Easter dinner with my Mom's oldest friend. I remember it was the first time I ate duck. I was always open to whatever my Mom would eat... good enough for Mom... good enough for me. (which also included escargot!) My son, who just turned 8, also expects a good Easter egg hunt and enough candy to get his fill. Why not?

Although I grew up with two Jewish parents in a reformed Jewish house, had a Bat Mitvah and did everything else fitting, I was also what I consider to be lucky enough to have the experience of many other holidays. We didn't celebrate them in our own home but we shared in the celebration with friends and our "adopted" family all the time. And so I happily continue to do these things.

Pity Party

Today, I'm feeling blue. Feeling sorry for myself. Woe is me.

Top of my list. I had hernia surgery this past Friday and I've been in pain. I missed the LA Moms Blog party, a family birthday party, a weekend with my son. I'm getting married in exactly 3 months and my fiance is more stressed than happy. I'm financially upside down. And apparently, my son fell out of his bunk bed last night at his Dad's last night and went head first onto the floor. Thankfully, he is fine minus cuts, bruises and a headache. And I feel bad I am not there to give him TLC. So, I told him when we got home we could have a "pity party!" After explaining it to him, he laughed and said "okay." Why not? Any excuse for any kind of party right.

Maybe it's just 3 days of Vicodin. I can't imagine how anyone would make it their drug of choice. I have yet to finish a bottle when prescribed because by day 3 my psychic pain is far greater than any physical pain. I'm weepy, paranoid and dull.

Marrying the Whole Family

First I must preface what I'm about to write about by saying I am thrilled that I have a growing family in Los Angeles. I've been here with my son as my only family for too long.

That being said, having an automatic 20 plus people invited to everything is an adjustment.  Having something to do almost every weekend... birthdays, Halloween parties, babies born, somewhat without the choice to say "no thank you" is an adjustment... and sometimes a conflict. And sometimes wants to make me scream... and now sometimes I seem to do just that. I'm glad my fiance has a family he is close with. But they are all still relatively new to me and seeing them every week for some blessed event and then also for breakfast, dinner, you name it is just too much. So I feel like a bad fiance... a bitch (am I allowed to say that here!) This little voice inside of me says just be grateful and be quite. Yet out of my mouth comes "again," "you want to do something with them again on a Saturday night. Can't we call some friends." And right back at me comes, "I knew you would say that!" "Well, if you knew I would say that, then why ask!"

Hello my name is Jeannine, I'm a Mom & I'm a hypocrite!

I am a hypocrite. I have to fess up. I loved having friends that were the "cool" kids. A little bit of trouble, walk the beat to a different drummer... you know the type. I'm a creative person, a bit of a free bird, but I'm not a trouble maker. Most of my sons friends are great, adorable, fun, smart ... no major problems - typical 7 and 8 year old boys and girls. But there's one kid that he loves that I don't want him to love. He's a "cool" kid. Not mean spirited but a trouble maker and has an older brother who is a big trouble maker. A fighter, curser, bad ass. And as would be expected, he both idolizes and resents his brother and alternately acts accordingly.

2000 started on stormy waters/ 2010 on a quiet home front...

To bring in the new millennium in 2000, my friend and I decided to sail the Caribbean with a friend of hers and that friend's friends, etc. ... basically 1 person I knew well, 4 people I had never met and a crazy Cuban captain. But I was up for an adventure, needed a change... had the final straw with the man I had dated for 4 years just a few weeks before... so, why not?

We flew to Puerto Rico to start the journey. Paco, the crazy captain, picked us up in a stripped out VW van where we sat on the floor rattling our way to the side of Puerto Rico where there are no resorts or tourists. It was where the boat was docked and our departure location. It became our home for 3 days. We were supposed to set sail the same day but the engine "needed some work." So we made the best of it and slept on the boat.

The second day the engine still seemed to "need some work." Stuck in the middle of nowhere we decided to go dance and drink with the locals. Men half our size welcomed us with open arms and tequila flowed. We meandered back to the boat ready to sail in the morning with the now repaired engine. It was now December 31, 1999. We were supposed to be long gone from Puerto Rico headed to an island called Jost Van Dyke which was supposed to host one of The Millennium Parties! We headed out in the early afternoon, later than we hoped, but optimistic we would still make it. That was until we ran into a storm and muscled through huge swells. One of the scariest experiences I've ever had. Waves going over our ship as we were hanging on for dear life. The crazy captain kept us afloat, the storms passed but the evening fog rolled in and he declared there was no possible way we could or would make it. We barely made it by midnight to St. Thomas... once again on the WRONG side of the island in the middle of nowhere. We quickly changed clothes, hailed a taxi and said take us anywhere there is a party! It was 11pm! We were taken to an island bar with the local islanders, they were drunk and crazy and the bar crowd poured out into the parking lot. Not the night we planned for but an adventure for sure. The rest of our trip was less eventful. However, the events of my life in the last decade can't help me think that this stormy start was a preclude.

Blob Blog (a mommy blunder!)

Admittedly, I am a bit liberal with my son about what he watches in terms of movies, TV, live shows, etc. Liberal in that some may seem a bit scary to other parents considering his age (7 1/2 years). Don't get me wrong, it's not that he's watching R rated movies with extreme violence, sex, nudity and bad language. But I'm that parent who has taken him to "Iron Man," lets him watch "Spongebob," etc, you get the picture. (I can feel some of you giving a nod of me too and others squirming in horror!)

His father, who I haven't lived with since he was a year old, started letting him watch movies, etc. that I considered inappropriate probably at age 4. Things like "Spiderman" which I freaked out about, and other things that I considered too violent. But at this point I've relaxed realizing that each kid is different in their tolerance, reactions and interest and that my son is a happy, sensitive boy who has a high tolerance to a little scary.

Mother’s Day … Once Again, Unconventional and a Little Bittersweet

My first Mother’s Day I spent with my son and his father. My son was about two months old and there was stress in my relationship with his father even while I was pregnant that continued with our newborn baby. We went for a little brunch at a café on Main Street in Santa Monica. It was somewhat unceremonious considering it was my first Mother’s Day, my first child, and a bit of a miracle that I was able to have my son. His father never gave a lot of thought to holidays, birthdays, etc so I didn’t expect too much and my family is all on the east coast but being a new mother was something I truly wanted to make a bigger deal about. Not that most every day wasn’t and isn’t a celebration of that but I think one of the joys in life are traditions and celebrations.

My second Mother’s Day I spent with my son, a friend and her daughter while my son’s father and his daughter moved out of our house! My friend’s husband happened to be out of town and I was grateful to have someone to go out with. We indulged ourselves with brunch at The Ivy despite the fact that our kids were very young and it wasn’t thrilling some of the other patrons there. I went home to a bouquet of flowers from my son’s dad and he and his daughter gone. It was a very bittersweet day. I adored my son but was heartbroken that he would be part of a divided family and that this short chapter of being an intact family was over so quickly.

A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a nice, Jewish girl from the Garden State who moved to the Land of LA where her life ran amuck.

After burying a parent, breaking up with the man she thought would be her knight in shining armor and being offered a great new opportunity in the Land of LA... she reluctantly packed her chariot and moved west.

She had high hopes but a heavy heart. After two years in the land of LA, her hard work led to a little bungalow in the hills. She hoped a new knight would find her there. She kissed many frogs but none seemed to be the one to transform into her dream. Alas, she met a knight who charmed her with all he had. Together they had a son and started a new chapter of life. But beneath the charming exterior was a much darker side to the man she thought she would grow old with and together they did not stay. Her son was her heart but his father made her life a misery. For many years she struggled alone, buried another parent, saw much hardship in her own life and those around her.