NYC Moms

Wardrobe malfunction

My daughter went to school embarrassed today and it's all because I did laundry.

I'm one of those lucky NYC people who actually has a washer and dryer in my house (hell, I'm lucky to have an actual house and not a cramped apartment).  You'd think that would be enough to ensure that we never have much dirty laundry lying around.  I mean, I've lived with every laundry situation from no machines to machines in the basement to lugging it to the laundromat to using a delivery wash-and-fold service.  I thought that once I had my own set-up I would be a laundry viking.  But instead, it's a crutch.  I find myself letting the laundry pile up, and then late at night I go through the piles and pull out only what everyone needs for the next day: underwear, shirts, pants, socks, maybe a Tae Kwon Do uniform. All in one load.

Time to fly solo?

 My dad's 65th birthday party is coming up, and there will be a huge party in Kansas City.  I've already made the travel arrangements for myself and the kids, and thought we were all set.  We'd be getting back to Brooklyn on a Tuesday evening.  Then I was invited to a conference that starts at 8am Wednesday morning, in Oregon.  If at all possible, I very much want to go.

I looked at every possible evening flight from NYC to Portland, in the hope that I could hand the kids over to my husband at the airport, turn around and get right back on a plane.  There's only one flight that looks like a possibility.  It takes off two hours after our flight from Kansas City is scheduled to get in.  Perfect, right?  Only problem is, the kids and I land at La Guardia and the flight to Portland leaves from JFK.  Even if our plane landed on time, even if I rushed the kids off the plane, threw them at my husband and jumped right into a cab with my carry-on, it would still be tight (traffic at rush hour on a Tuesday can turn what is otherwise a 15-minute trip into an hour of stop-and-go hell).

Telling all of this to my husband, he made a suggestion that really surprised me: I could put the kids on the plane in Kansas City by themselves, and fly right to Portland (I had already thought of that but dismissed it, sure that he would never go for it).  He'd get out of work early and pick them up.  It's a three-hour flight.  The kids have flown a lot.  The kids' ages (six and eight) and the flight (non-stop middle-of-the-day) met all of the requirements for Delta's unaccompanied minors program.  It looked possible.

Four blocks

Four blocks, three punishments, two angry people, and one morning shot to hell.  If there's one thing that consistently amazes me about being a mom, it's how quickly a situation can turn from great to crappy.

The details aren't important - they change each time, but what stays the same is the escalation, the face-saving, the insults, the ultimatums.  When my son pushes my buttons, I'm the one with the choice: to be the adult and stay calm, or to let him get to me.  Most of the time I'm able to be the grown-up.  But when I've stayed out late the night before and not slept much, chances are much better that I'll get right down on his level and let things go on to the point of public embarrassment.

Being present is good, but not all the time

I just read an article about how constant checking of email and social media when you're with your kids can harm them.  Or at least that's what the article promised, since it started out like this:

Checking your emails incessantly could be harming your child.  Here's why.

This got my attention.  Being present with my kids at certain times is something I've made a lot of progress on lately.  I don't measure time with my kids by how long we're together, but by how much we're interacting with each other.  If I can hire a babysitter to take my kids to the playground while I get some work done at home, I think that's a good allocation of my money, because when I'm at the playground I want as little interaction with my kids as possible - for their sakes.  They're there to get some exercise, play with friends, learn how to survive in a social setting without my help.  I don't need to be there, and frankly I don't want to be there.  Someone needs to be there in case the kids get hurt or have some other problem they can't handle on their own, but it doesn't need to be me.  It's not my idea of quality time.

It's my spring break too

My kids are on spring break right now from their NYC public school.  This year it's eleven days long, counting the weekends.  I feel like it's longer this year.  Or maybe my memory just sucks. But while you may hear me make a few snarky comments about being trapped with my children, the truth is I like it when they're not in school.  Sure, I can't slip out for an afternoon pedicure or go to PR events (unless I want to pay for a sitter, which I don't).  But a lot of the things that drive me crazy about being a mom don't happen when school doesn't happen.

-We don't have to get out of the house early.  The kids get up whenever and head straight for the TV and computer, with strict instructions not to wake me unless they're starving or the house is on fire. 

-I don't have to wash school uniforms.  Every year I start out with enough white shirts and blue bottoms to make it through the week, but by this time of year between holes and huge stains, I'm lucky if each kid has one half-way presentable school outfit, and it gets washed and re-washed all week.  But we're on spring break, so as long as there's clean underwear, an outfit can be fashioned out of whatever's at the back of the drawer.

Well, since you asked...

I try hard not to give advice in real (offline) life, unless it's really asked for.  I recognize that just because someone's complaining about something, they don't necessarily want my take on it; they may just want to vent.  So whether or not to share my wisdom is often a tough call.  Sometimes I make the wrong choice, but I'm trying.

HOWEVER, when someone asks for my advice or opinion clearly, I take that request at face value: that someone wants my honest opinion and help.  It's a big responsibility, and I take it seriously.  I assume that the person asking actually wants to hear the truth.  Just how stupid am I?  I fall for this over and over again.

In the past two weeks alone I've been asked to read three different pieces of writing.  Out of those three, I'm pretty sure only one of the writers really wanted some constructive criticism.  The other two probably just wanted an ego boost, since one received my critique rather coldly and the other one never even thanked me for taking the time.  The third will be my friend forever because she incorporated some of my advice and thanked me profusely.

We're all to blame for this girl's arrest

A twelve year old girl was arrested recently for doodling on her desk with a marker.  Arrested.  As in handcuffs and a police station.  For doodling on a desk.

The school had a zero tolerance policy.  The article didn’t say what, exactly, the policy had zero tolerance for.  Graffiti would be my guess.  And writing on a desk is wrong, you know I’m not arguing that a student should be allowed to write on a desk.  But what happened to being asked to write “I will not write on my desk” a thousand times, or an essay?  What happened to a trip to the principal’s office?

We happened, that’s what.  Each of us looking out for our own kids, questioning the judgment of teachers and school staff, questioning how they could possibly even think about punishing our children.

A mother's panic is not for public consumption

Over the weekend I flipped on a morning network news show - I honestly don't remember which one - and heard parts of the 911 call that Brittany Murphy's mother, Sharon, made to 911 after her daughter was found unconscious in a bathroom (she later died).  It's absolutely gut-wrenching.  Her mother wails, cries, screams, and tries to relay information as Murphy's husband performs CPR.  It's horrible to listen to, the grief in Sharon's voice raw.

It never should have been released.

I can remember back when 911 calls were only made public when there was a specific reason, usually allegations of misconduct by the 911 operator.  They were the exceptions.  Now it seems that whenever anything notable happens involving a 911 call, the audio appears on the news for everyone to gawk and judge.  These very private calls for help are splashed across the internet and live forever, to be replayed by the curious and bored.  They've become a kind of twisted entertainment, disguised as news.

I don't know the reasoning behind this, why these emergency calls are released so frequently now.  With so much information available, about everything, we've all come to expect the gory details, as if they are our right, our privilege.  We are consumers, and we expect to be able to consume everything.  It's the responsibility of the people in charge of these calls to say no.  And if there's something stopping them, something misguided having to do with freedom of information, we have to figure out a way for people to be able to ask for help without their pleas becoming part of pop culture, part of the endless need to fill 24 hours a day of news time on dozens of channels and thousands of websites. 

Thanksgiving Dinner for Two-and-a-Quarter People

This year I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner for the least number of people ever: two-and-a-quarter.  It still took all day.

I made potatoes (my special baked ones with sour cream and cream cheese that I only make a couple times a year so as not to weigh 300 pounds), stuffing (packaged, but the kind I have to add diced stuff to, so kind-of home-made, right?), a few vegetables (amazingly, all fresh), fluffy white rolls (frozen), and the cranberry sauce that keeps the shape of the can (my husband insists - he doesn't want anything resembling an actual cranberry).  And I reheated a whole deep-fried turkey that I had waited in line almost three hours to buy, which is about as much time as I'd have to spend cleaning and figuring out my own turkey.  For dessert, I made a yummy apple pie from scratch, crust and everything, which I think makes up completely for the packaged, frozen, and purchased stuff (that's my all-in-one peeler/corer/slicer in the picture, best $17 I ever spent).

I need a vacation, not a trip

In the eight years that I've been a mom, I've taken countless trips with my family.  I've flown and driven, had great times and near-disastrous times.  I've cleaned barf off of a near-naked kid in a cold parking lot and pulled a lite-brite peg out of a nose with tweezers at the side of the highway in the rain.  I've laughed at BBQ sauce smeared on a cute toddler face only to realize with horror that it wasn't BBQ sauce. I've celebrated birthdays on the road and hauled Christmas gifts across state lines.

And yet, except for four glorious days at HersheyPark a couple years ago, all of those trips had one thing in common: they were all visits to grandparents.  It's something I never realized I would be dealing with.  I thought that we'd be taking family vacations to Disney World and exotic beaches and fun historical sites.  Sure, they'd have to be kid-friendly, but we'd have fun as a family, relax, connect, and get away from it all for a while.  It just hasn't happened.  The grandparents are scattered all over the country, in Florida, Kansas, and upstate New York.  By the time we visit them all a couple times a year, my husband is out of vacation time and we're out of travel money.