This is Thirty-Four

This morning, when my alarm went off at 6, I felt like I had just gone to sleep. I got out of bed into a quiet house, and went downstairs to finish packing bags for work and daycare, then I got into the shower and by the time I got out, my 18 month old was wide awake and yelling "mommy" from his crib, and my house was quiet no more. He drank some milk while I got dressed, then I got him dressed, got him his beloved morning Kix, and we were out the door. He insisted on listening to ABCs on repeat in the car all the way to daycare, and threw a serious tantrum when it was time for me to leave. I got some coffee, and made it just in time to catch my train. In the quiet car I started a new book, and read my way into Manhattan.

This, I think, is thirty-four. Being a mom. Having a full-time job. In the thick of family life with an opinionated and fiercely independent toddler, always just a little bit tired, addicted to schedules, and grabbing moments of quiet whenever and wherever I can find them.

Thirty-four is eighteen months into this parenting gig. It is being more confident, and less afraid. It is not being freaked out by fevers anymore, and not running to the phone to call the pediatrician for every little rash or runny nose. It is looking at my toddler with something like disbelief that he could possibly have grown so much and learned so many things in such a short time. It is getting a little thrill every time he says "mommy" because it took him so damn long to learn how to say it. It is toddler babbles turning into actual words and dancing to ring around the rosy in the kitchen and reading Llama, Llama Red Pajama six times in a row.

Thirty-four is trying hard to remember that sometimes the best thing I can do for my little guy is to step back and trust him to be who he is. To stop worrying about whether he is eating or drinking or playing enough, or if he is watching too much TV. To stop comparing him to other kids and counting the hours he sleeps in a day and obsessing over whether he's hitting his milestones on time. It's understanding that for the most part, my job is to give him confidence and love and fun and room to grow, and meals and snacks when he's supposed to have them, and the rest will just take care of itself. It is knowing that this stepping back and letting go happens more often and more dramatically as the years pass, and trying to be here now as much as I can in this brief moment in time when he is small and needs me more than he ever will.

Thirty-four is no longer being shocked at how much a baby changes everything. My friendships, my family, my career, my house, my entire life - all of these things look different when they are covered in a layer of toys, sippy cups, diapers, schedules, and a toddler who suddenly has opinions about everything. It is realizing that trying to act like nothing has changed is exhausting, and that it is absurdly freeing to let go and accept the fact that I'm different than I used to be, that I'll never be exactly the person I was, and that's ok.

Thirty-four is leaning more heavily on my friends - both in person and online - who are also moms for their experience, and for the solidarity, and for feeling less alone on this parenting road. Because what I know that I didn't know before is that even though every kid is different, some parts of being a mom are universal, and no matter how much you think you can do it all, it really does take a village.

But thirty-four is also clinging to my old friends - the ones who knew me when my house was clean for longer than eleven seconds at a time and when I didn't have to schedule nights out around bedtimes and early morning wake-ups. Because for as much as I have changed over the past year and a half, I'm still the same french fry eating, pop-culture junkie, obsessive TV watcher, lover and collector of romance novels that I used to be, and sometimes I need a reminder of that part of me too.

Thirty-four is making a major career change I didn't even know I needed. It is realizing that at this time in my life, I don't need or even really want a high powered job in a fancy office that requires suits and heels and an utterly inflexible schedule. What I need is to do good and fulfilling work with good people, and then go home hug my baby. And I feel so lucky that the right opportunity found me at just the right time, and I am happier in my career than I have ever been. I've been in this long enough to know that the elusive "having it all" doesn't actually exist in real life, but I feel like, at thirty-four, I am as close to it as anyone ever gets to be.

Thirty-four is a lot of wondering. Wondering if I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to be doing. Wondering if I'll ever start feeling like an adult or if maybe this is what an adult feels like. Wondering if I'm being a good enough parent, a good enough partner, a good enough employee, a good enough friend, sister, daughter, woman. Wondering if I'll ever be able to fit properly into my pre-pregnancy jeans or whether I even really care about that. Wondering if there will ever be a time when I have all the laundry simultaneously clean, folded, and put away. Wondering if maybe it's time to start figuring out things like eye cream and anti-aging whatevers and the proper way to apply under-eye concealer. And it's a lot, all of this wondering,

But thirty-four is realizing every night when I put my thriving, happy baby to sleep and sit on the couch with my man in the quiet of my house after a day filled with noise, that I am doing as good a job as I know how to do with all of it, and really, that's the most that any of us can ask of ourselves. And after a difficult year in this country and for the world, and with an uncertain future looming, I understand now more than ever that I have a life that's good. I think that for all of the messiness and the exhaustion and the worry and the details that come with motherhood and with life, thirty-four is kind of a miracle. Because I get to be here with the people I love and who love me and because thirty-four is old enough to know that none of this is a given. None of us know how much time we'll have or how much time the ones we love will have, so I take what I've been given and use it the best way I can. By spending it doing the things I love most, surrounded by my people, with little boy giggles in the background. 

This Is Thirty-Three

Sunday morning, on the day of my 33rd birthday, David got up with the baby and I slept until 10am; undoubtedly and by far the latest I have slept in more than six months. I woke up alone in my room to the light streaming in from the window. It was quiet. It was glorious.

Saturday morning, on the day before my 33rd birthday, I woke up at 7am to my baby talking to himself in his crib. When I went to get him he smiled his biggest morning smile, and we went downstairs for our Saturday morning routine. Diaper change, bottle, an hour of reading books and playing with toys, and a morning nap. While he slept I drank coffee and read my book for an hour until he woke up, and we started all over again. A little different from my pre-baby Saturdays where I woke up late, drank coffee practically as soon as my eyes opened, and read my own books all day.

This, I think, is thirty-three. I just went back and read what I wrote last year when I turned 32, and I laughed because I really thought my life would just keep trucking on in the face of such enormous, life-altering change, but, well, nothing about having a baby and becoming a mother has been anything like I expected it to be. 

Thirty-three is knowing the names of ten different kinds of bottles, understanding baby clothes sizes, knowing when it's time to switch to the next size diaper, understanding the difference between a cry because something is really wrong and a "I don't want to go to sleep, I want attention" cry and knowing that there is a difference between a crib sheet and a bassinet sheet and a portacrib sheet and why in god's name does every bed my baby sleeps on have a different sized mattress? It is realizing that you can, in fact, survive on just a few hours of interrupted sleep at night, but that when everyone told you that the sleep-deprivation that comes with a newborn is akin to the seventh layer of hell, they were absolutely, positively right.

Thirty-three is being frustrated by all the roaring opinions everyone seems to have about how to do absolutely everything associated with your baby, and even with yourself once you have a baby. It is realizing that motherhood is hard no matter how you slice it, and as long as your baby is fed, diapered, and reasonably well rested, and you manage to eat semi-regular meals and fit in a shower every now and then, you are doing just fine.

Thirty-three is realizing that no matter how much becoming a mother has changed me, the core of me has stayed the same. I still watch an unreasonable amount of TV, sing along to country music in my car, hoard romance novels, and love french fries. I still prefer staying in to going out, I still devour Entertainment Weekly, I still can't get into Mad Men no matter how many times I try, and if it doesn't have a happy ending, I still won't read it or watch it. And all of this makes me happy. Because even though I am now a person who has a minor panic attack when I see a mid-day email from the daycare director, barely bats an eye (or even changes my clothes) when my baby throws up all over me, celebrates when he manages to get food in his mouth and swallow without spitting it, and thinks that the Nose Frida is the most genius invention of all time, those details have managed to wedge themselves in between the parts of me that were already there.

I wanted to say that all of those things have fit like puzzle pieces, but aside from being horribly cliche, the change just hasn't been as seamless as that. Because thirty-three is also knowing that, however inevitable most of this change is, it is still impossibly difficult. It is feeling utterly unprepared for all of the newness and sometimes a little baffled that the hardest and most unexpected parts of new-motherhood are hardly discussed at all except in whispers, as if admitting that the new parent experience is rarely filled with sunshine and rainbows and the singing of the angels is somehow disloyal to this new person that we have brought into the world. But thirty-three also comes with considerable relief that, six months into this parenting gig, I think that I have started to find the new normal that works for me and I seem to be, finally, hitting my stride.

Thirty-three is trying to hold my friends and family closer than I ever have before. It is remembering how deeply my growing up years were informed by the extended family that raised me as much as my parents did, and how it continues to shape me as an adult. Thirty-three is wanting my own children to have exactly what I did - to grow up knowing that there is a village of people surrounding them and loving them as they make their way, and giving them a soft landing and a place they can always call home.

Thirty-three is being blessed with this kind of family - the one I was born into and the one that I have made. The kind that has opened their arms and their hearts, showered my baby with fun, and who have loved him like he is their own, because he is. I understand that now.

Thirty-three is constantly being a little startled by the fact that I'm the adult now because most days I still feel like I'm in college and should be sleeping in a dorm room and snacking on Cheez-Its and orange soda while my roommate and I listen to Eminem on repeat. It blows my mind sometimes that I have a baby, a career, six nieces and nephews, and a mortgage. It seems like that should be for other people, people who are older than I am.

But it's not. Thirty-three is starting to understand that this is my life and it's the only one I get, so I am making an effort to open my eyes, to really see what's going on around me and to make the best decisions I can for my family and for myself. I'm not quite sure yet exactly what I want out of this whole life thing, except that I know I want to be a good friend and a good partner, daughter and sister. I want to be a good and interesting mother and to raise silly, happy, imperfect kids.

Thirty-three feels like the beginning of something, somehow; like I have my toes on the line and I am just waiting for the starting gun to go off. And I think I'm ready now to grab whatever lies ahead, even if I can't quite make out exactly what it is. But whatever it is, it feels like a privilege to be here now - to love and be loved, to have family and friends that are mine, to have a baby who is happy and healthy and bright. It took me some time to get here, and I feel like I want to honor where I am now and, especially, the journey to this place. More than ever, I understand that this is what's important. That, at thirty-three, these are the things that matter.

This is Thirty-Two

My birthday was eleven days ago. I turned thirty-two.

It was a Saturday. I woke up to flowers at the bottom of the stairs and walked through a surprise snowfall to a friend's house for lunch. I celebrated at night with my oldest and closest friends with dessert at one of my favorite Upper West Side locales and then with french fries and nachos at a Manhattan Steelers bar, cheering for a Steelers playoff win that, sadly, never happened.

I talked to my parents and to my sisters and my niece and nephew sang to me over Facetime. I got text messages from my cousins, a singing card from my grandma, and a glove/mitten hybrid situation from my best friend that made me wonder why I haven't been wearing mittens instead of gloves this whole time.

It was an ordinary kind of day - and a quiet one - full of friends, family and fun. Just the way I like it. It was also the beginning of a brand new year - a year that will be anything but ordinary. A year that promises change of the most enormous kind. The kind of change that will divide my life forever into before and after. The kind of change that we've been keeping a secret for more than three months. The kind of change it's finally time to share.

This is going to be a really big year.

This is thirty-two.

Thirty-two is going through fourteen months of fertility treatments - of hope and heartbreak and grief that brought me to my knees and almost broke me into pieces - and then finding out I'm pregnant on a random and rainy Thursday night this past October after absolutely zero fertility treatments at all. 

It is knowing without any doubt that things happen when they are meant to happen. That I can try my hardest to control every little thing, but in the end, there's some higher power out there that may have a different idea about the way it's all supposed to go. Thirty-two is a brand new appreciation for the ways that life can surprise. It is witnessing a miracle in my very own life, and knowing in the deepest part of me that this really was the way it was meant to be.

Thirty-two is laying in a darkened room holding David's hand and staring at a monitor while my doctor shows us a real live person that we created all by ourselves and understanding that this is a moment that will be etched in my memory for as long as I live. It is standing just on the brink of enormous and humbling change and feeling a gratitude so huge that it seems almost tangible in its presence. It is trying hard to soak up these days in the "before" when it is still just us, just two people who met and fell in love and got married and somehow made something brand new that is a little bit of each of us, and knowing that there is something extraordinary waiting for us in the "after".

Thirty-two is realizing that the rocky road that got us to this place is a part of my story now. It is an experience I can't forget or wish away and I'm not so sure that I would even if I could. It seems so cliche to say that - like it's what people always say when they go through something terrible and come out the other side - but for better or worse these months have changed me and have taught me what it means to hold on and to let go and to stop planning so hard for what may or may not be. When I told my friend Alisa the news she said to me, "some things can't be planned when they are already written in the stars," and I know now that she is just exactly right.

Thirty-two understands now more than ever the importance of telling our stories. Even - maybe especially - the hard ones. Because the truth is we all have rough paths to walk and by telling our stories, we allow people who have been there before to walk that path with us, and show us the way through. And if thirty-one was about putting my head down and plowing through the tough stuff, thirty-two feels a deep and abiding responsibility to tell the story of the last year; to turn around and hold out my hand and my heart to the women who might be walking this path behind me. To tell them that I've been there now, and that I can show them the way to the other side.

Thirty-two is tough because the past year has toughened me, but I also know that that's not such a bad thing. Because being tough means making sure I get exactly what's important to me, even if what's important is just to skip the laundry for an extra hour outside in the summer, or to have a really good dessert. Because thirty-two understands that life is short and this is the only one we get and you really don't want to be the one looking back on all the times you should have sat in the sun or just eaten the damn cupcake.

Thirty-two is different than all the years that came before it, and not just because of the big changes ahead.

Thirty-two is taking my health seriously. It is having regular check-ups, actually getting myself to the dentist twice a year, never going to bed at night without washing my face, and finally deciding to make strength training a part of my regular routine because everyone says I'll thank myself later, even if I'm a little skeptical. It is also understanding myself enough to know that no matter how healthy my eating habits are, I will never give up french fries, and I will never learn to like kale because it's disgusting, no matter how many people tell me it's the most super of all the superfoods. Whatever that means.

Thirty-two is making my friends and my family a priority. It is tending to those relationships and feeling lucky in the people who populate my life - people who hold my stories and know me all the way through. It is being old enough to understand that the friends I have now are the kind that last lifetimes and knowing how important it is to have people who knew me then and know me now and will know me when. Thirty-two is remembering the friends my parents had when I was growing up and still have today, the ones who raised me just as much as my own parents did, and being a little stunned to realize that we are that age now and we are the ones watching each other's children grow.

Thirty-two is celebrating a lot of babies, but very few weddings. It is having a house and a mortgage and a community with a synagogue where we pay dues and where I might even chair a committee, mostly because they asked and I couldn't say no. Thirty-two is real grown-up stuff. But it is also having a neighborhood full of people who take care of each other and knowing that we were lucky to end up in this place.

Thirty-two is looking back and knowing that there is a lot of life behind me and that some choices really are irrevocable. But it is also realizing that the choices I have made were more right than wrong, understanding that, hopefully, most of my life lies ahead, and believing, as I stand at the beginning of a brand new chapter, that the best is still yet to come.

So, really, thirty-two is a giant privilege. Because just to be here, to live, to be making a family, to have purpose and people to love who love me back? This is what it's all about. These are the things that matter.

This is thirty-two.

Birthday Weekend

This past Saturday, I turned thirty-two. 

Every year on my birthday, it has become a bit of a tradition to post some thoughts about the day. Some random, some less so. You can see the posts from the last two years here and here. I can promise you that a post about thirty-two is on its way. Not today, but soon.

Thirty-two arrived on a quiet and snowy day. It brought with it a lunch with friends in my neighborhood, calls from my family during which various sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews sang happy birthday, an Upper West Side dessert with my oldest and dearest friends that included ice cream and Nutella crepes, followed closely by incredible french fries at a sports bar with scores of Pittsburghers for the Steelers-Ravens playoff game.

It was, in short, the perfect kind of birthday.

Since my birthday was on a Saturday I couldn't take pictures of the flower-petal trail that led me down the stairs of my house in the morning towards more flowers and a person-sized balloon, or the cake that my friends got for me that followed lunch in the afternoon, but here is a little snippet of Saturday night.

If each year begins as it means to go on, thirty-two is looking great.

Today Is Somebody's Birthday...

Once upon a time, a little more than seven years ago ago, my younger sister set me up on a blind date. I was in law school, it was finals time, but I went anyway.

We met at a cute little cafe on Broadway and sat at a table outside under the heat lamps that had been set up to ward off the early April chill. He was blond, blue-eyed and incredibly good looking, he told me a story about seeing a man get hit by a bus that made me laugh until I cried, and we shared a 10 block stroll back to my apartment building and a good-bye befitting a really good first date.

Well, a couple years later I married that blond-haired, blue-eyed man. We've been together for seven years - married for almost four - and it's been a lot of things, but mostly? It's been fun. Really fun. 

And today is his birthday.

So, in honor of the auspicious occasion of his birth, and in celebration of the day that this world went from being a place without David Merel to a place with David Merel, I present to you a pictorial history of seven years of fun.

It was spring when we met, summer when we
knew this was something serious. Something big.

We spent that first summer and fall exploring NYC
and eating Friday morning bagels
in the gazebo by the Central Park lake.

We got engaged...

Got married

Took some trips

\

Bought a house

Remodeled a kitchen

Built some robots

Played with some technology 

Built a deck

That once looked like this...

And now looks like this.

Learned to grill

Played dress-up. Superheros, natch.

Watched lots and lots of TV

Turned our house into Star Wars for Halloween

Survived a Polar Vortex

And the snowiest winter of all time

Made a living room outside for summer

Where we sit, even in the pouring rain.

Discovered suburban outdoor, river-side dining

Took some convertible rides, because we're just that cool

Turns out, we're the lucky ones.

But we've always known that.

Happy, happy birthday David, my hilarious, unique and most interesting man. 

Here's to a lifetime more.

Happy Birthday Mom

Dear Mom,

This past Tuesday I was on the phone with the Squirrel Hill Flower Shop ordering flowers for your birthday. After I picked what we wanted and gave the saleswoman your address for delivery she asked me to tell her what I wanted to write on the card. Since the flowers were from all of us, I warned her that there would be a lot of names and I started listing them. Sam & David, Katie, Ari, Avi & Koby, Lou & Rick. Eight of us in all where there used to be three, and we just keep growing.

Everyone tells me all the time how lucky I am that my family is so close. That I have sisters who are my best friends, that the boys we married get along so well, and that we all like and enjoy each other. That we make an effort to get together as often as we can. That there are near daily phone calls, emails, presents sent, Facetimes and Gchats. That we not only know what is going on in each other's lives, but care deeply. That even though we don't all live in the same city, we do whatever we can to bridge the geographical distance, and do it well.

And when they tell me that, I always agree that yes, I am - we are - lucky, but I know it's not really luck, or not only.

It's you.

Since we were little, you have shown us what it means to live, and live well. To be caring and giving and loving. To be a good sister and a good friend and a good person. We learned from you that sometimes things won't be rosy, but to smile anyway, put our heads down, forge straight ahead, and trust that better things lay ahead. And you taught us that when in doubt, call a sister, because when something happens to one of us, it's happening to all of us and we get through it by sticking together. That's just the way it is with family, and with sisters. Over the past few months I have put that advice to use over and over again and the hardest things seem easier, and I feel lighter, because of it.

You taught us that home is not synonymous with perfection. It's a place where there might be dirty dishes in the sink and maybe last week's newspapers on the living room floor, but also a place where there are stacks of books, delicious snacks in the kitchen, and where family and friends feel comfortable to gather and to stay as long as they want. And anyway, perfection is overrated. Because from you we learned that it's far better to leave the dishes for awhile and eat some popcorn in front of the TV, even if you accidentally drop a kernel or two on the floor. And we are better off because of it.

You showed us how to build lives and families of our own, and how to love in a way that makes those lives and families interesting, happy, and strong. You taught us what to look for in a partner, and fortunately for all of us, we followed that advice and found the ones we were meant to build those lives with. You gave us the freedom to be ourselves and to become the people who we were always supposed to be, and because of you, all three of us are leading lives and becoming people that we can be proud of.

We are, in short, nothing without you. All of us.

Maya Angelou passed away earlier this week, and in the deluge of her quotes that have surfaced all over the internet, one of them struck me:

"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor and some style."

Thank you for passing along to us your passion, compassion, humor and style, and thank you for teaching us - and allowing us - to thrive.

Happy, happy birthday.

Love,

Sam

Happy Birthday Rach!

How is it possible that these girls:

Became these girls:

31 years later?

Happy 31st birthday Rach!

One Weekend: A Blizzard, A Birthday And A Snow Day

Sometimes the universe conspires to bring you exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.

This past weekend was proof of that.

All day on New Years Day I watched news of a big snowstorm that was headed for the Northeast and supposed to hit sometime between Thursday and Friday morning. No one was quite sure yet how much snow we would get; forecasters were predicting anywhere from nothing to over a foot. But by the time I went to sleep on Wednesday night, it was clear that we would be on the high end of that prediction. 

Since moving to the suburbs where I rely on a car to get around and park that car in a driveway, getting around in the snow is a little trickier than it was when I was living in the city. And I knew that if we got a foot of snow I wouldn't be able to move the car, the trains would be running on a weird schedule, if at all, and I would probably have to stay home on Friday instead of making the trek to Manhattan for work.

And I was kind of hoping that would happen. Because I love snow days as much as I did when I was ten years old and school closed down, and also because Friday was my birthday. And a birthday snow day would be the best present of all.

It was 7:00 Thursday night when the snow started to fall. And it fell, without stopping, for thirteen hours straight. And I was the person running around outside in boots and a sweatshirt capturing the scene as the snow piled up in my neighborhood.

8:00 pm: The Snow Begins

8:00 pm

8:00 pm

8:00 pm

Good thing we turned totally suburban and got ourselves a snow blower
before the storm hit

11:45 pm: Wind Kicks Up, Snow Still Falls

11:45 pm

11:45 pm

I set my alarm for 6:00 Friday morning, because if it turned out that the snow hadn't been as bad as they forecasted, and it turned out that I had to go into work, I figured I would need some time to clear off my car and get myself to the train station.

But that wasn't at all necessary. Because when I opened my front and back doors, this is what I found:

6:15am: A Foot Of Snow, It's Still Falling, And I'm Outside
Documenting It In My Pajamas

6:15am: A Sea Of White. Not a Plow In Sight. I'm As Excited As
I Was When I was 10 And School Was Cancelled

We were snowed in. And all of a sudden, I was a little kid again.

While I waited for David to wake up I did a little work, made snow day chicken soup, and answered my phone as birthday calls came in from all over the place.

Chicken Soup On The Stove For A Snowy Birthday

And when David finally woke up, we went outside to play.

The Best Homeowner In The World: Super Excited To Use
His New Toy

And To Toss Me Into The Snow As A Birthday Present

Snowy Selfie

 It was the best birthday ever.

Birthday Flowers From Great Friends

A little more snow clearing on Saturday night, and then we were off to the city for a birthday dinner and dessert at some of my favorite places.

Saturday Night: Handling The Rest Of The Driveway
Note The Glowing Red Light Of His Heated Jacket

Manhattan Birthday Dinner

And Dessert

My Nearest And Dearest

Cutest Dessert Restaurant Ever

College Girls

The snow stuck around all weekend, and I spent Sunday morning running through it as freezing rain fell from the sky.

Sunday Morning: A Snow Covered Running Path

Post Sunday Run: Rain and Sleet Edition

A blizzard, a birthday and a snow day.

A great, great weekend.