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. 

Dear Will - Eight Months Old

Will,

Eight months old, my little man. 

I took the first of these pictures of you when you were just one month old. You were too little to even be propped up on the couch, so I had to lay you down on the blanket while you looked around, wondering what in the world was happening. Yesterday afternoon, when I took your eight month pictures, I could barely get you to stay still for more than three second at a time. You knew exactly what was going on, and you were far more interested in sitting up and leaning over the front of the couch to try and find something to play with then you were in smiling for any sort of picture.

That's you, at eight months. You are busy and curious and a bundle of energy. You still love your toys, and as soon as you sit down, you always search out your favorites. I realized the other day that I don't have to put things right in front of you anymore. You can reach for what you want, and when you get it, you look up at me with a big smile as if to say, "hey, look what I did!" And when you smile at me, you flash your two brand new bottom teeth, and it's so cute I can't even stand it. Just this morning you were reaching for something and you toppled right over. For a second I thought you would cry, but you didn't. Instead, you just rolled to your stomach and pushed yourself up, kicking your legs and babbling away, as if that's what you meant to do the whole time.

You are, I think, about two minutes away from crawling. You can get up on all fours and rock back and forth, but then you always fall flat on your tummy, waving your arms and legs, trying so hard to move, and getting frustrated when you just stay put. I can practically see the wheels turning in your head, trying to figure it out. I'm waiting for the day when you finally put it all together though, because as soon as you do, I think you are going to be unstoppable.

More than ever, you are clear in the things that you like and don't like, and never hesitate to let us know. You love bananas and you hate peas. You love being in the car but could do without that pesky car-seat, thank you very much. You were enthusiastic about puffs, but threw those scrambled eggs right onto the floor. Seeing your tiny mouth trying to figure out whether to scream or grin when you try something new never doesn't make me laugh. 

As you get bigger, I sometimes look at you and I feel like I can see the person you are going to be in the baby that you are and it's just fascinating to me. As a mom, I sometimes just think of you as an extension of me. And that's normal, I think. Because after all, you came from me - literally - and because somewhere in the middle of bottles and diapers, of baths and bedtimes, of pick-ups and drop-offs and schedules, it's easy to forget that these days don't last forever, no matter how much it sometimes feels like they will. But when I sit on the couch with my book and my coffee and watch you play on the carpet, I remember that you are a person all your own, more every day, and how amazing is that?

It's hard to believe that two-thirds of a year has gone by since the hot, hazy day that we brought you home from the hospital. That in four months we'll be singing you happy birthday. I know that I've written this to you before, but I can't help but think once again that time is a strange and funny thing. Your first few weeks seemed to drag on and on in a blur of doctors and bottles, sleepless nights and exhausted days. But the bigger you get, the faster they go, and I think that's why I like to write to you here. I like to think that I'll always remember every detail about this time when you were little and we were figuring out this whole life thing, but I know I won't. And I want to be able to tell you how it was. How I sometimes made mistakes and didn't always know what to do, but that I tried my very best, and loved you in every way I knew how. 

How you, my sweet Will, were, and are, my very best thing.

With love as big as the sky,

Mom

Previous Letters:

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Five Months

Six Months

Seven Months

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.

Dear Will - Six Months Old

Dear Will,

You're six months old today. I feel like one gigantic parenting cliche when I say that I have no idea how this even happened. How has time flown by so fast that you are already halfway to a year old?

But time is a funny thing. I've always known this, the way time tends to stretch out and contract depending on the circumstances, but never more so since you came blazing into my life. When you were about nine days old, I was sitting on the couch with your grandma and I was holding you while you slept and I was exhausted, half-asleep. I mentioned to her that I felt like I had lived a lifetime in the less than two weeks since you were born. She smiled. Maybe even laughed a little. "That's parenthood," she said to me. "It's a lifetime and it's also five minutes."

I have realized over and over in the past six months just how exactly right she was. Because even though it seems like just days ago that we locked eyes for the first time, I also sometimes feel like I can't remember a time when you weren't here, growing and changing and becoming a person with opinions and preferences and a personality that gets bigger every day.

At six months old you are the happiest baby around. My favorite moment of the day is when I walk into the house after work and you see me in the doorway and you give me that open-mouth grin that is absolutely my favorite. You know me, I always think. You know that I'm your mom. And that's just magic.

You love to smile and talk to yourself and to us. Sometimes, when you wake up in the morning, you are perfectly content to lay in your crib and babble away to yourself and it makes me wonder about what's going on in your head, and about all the things that you'll be saying once you learn the words. You are more judicious with your giggles, holding them back until you find something really, really funny. I'm the best at getting you to laugh though, and that fact makes me exceptionally, unreasonably happy.

This past month, you were sick for the first time. You had a cold and a high fever and for two days you barely cracked a smile. On the second night it was hard for you to sleep. You were hot and restless and weepy and every time I heard you cry I came in and picked you up from your crib and sat with you in our big grey chair. I covered you with a blanket and we rocked until you fell back to sleep. And there, in the darkness of 3am, with your head heavy on my shoulder, I wanted with everything I had to make you feel better, and I thought that I had never felt more like a mom than I did in that moment.

It's funny how it happens. I became a parent in the big moments of your life - the day you were born, the day you came home from the hospital. But it's in the quiet moments - feeding you in the middle of the night when you were a new baby, packing your little backpack every night for daycare, walking with you in your stroller down a sunny, summer street, rocking you to sleep  - that I became a mom.

I want what's best for you with a fierceness that I sometimes don't recognize. I want you to be healthy and happy and to know how much we love you and that we will always, always be on your side. I want the world to be kind to you. I want to protect you from disappointment and sadness and mean kids and high school even though I know that I can't and that I wouldn't even if I could because those are the things that build character and make you interesting. The truth is, all that wishing and wanting and hoping can sometimes be overwhelming. But then, you look up at me with your big, blue, curious eyes that seem to see everything and I realize that I am trying my very best and you are exactly where you need to be and we are doing just fine.

You are getting so big, and it seems like every day some shirt or pair of pants that fit you yesterday is too small all of a sudden. And while putting clothes that you have outgrown into separate bins labeled by size appeals to my great love of organization, it also makes me a little bit sad. I sometimes miss the tiny baby you once were, even though watching you grow and change over the past six months has been my great pleasure. This is the paradox of motherhood, I think. Nostalgia for the months and years behind you and excitement for what lies ahead, all tied together with the visceral understanding that one day, if I do my job right, you are going to grow tall and strong and independent and take your first steps away from me and I am going to have to let you go.

But not yet, ok?

Happy six months, my sweet Will. I am so proud to be your mom, and I am so lucky that you are mine.

With love as big as the sky,

Mom

Previous Letters:

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Five Months

Dear Will - Five Months Old

Dear Will,

You are five months old today. And what a month it has been. 

Last month around this time I was rocking you to sleep, my tears dropping on your head as I thought about leaving you at daycare when I went back to work. It seemed impossible that I could leave such a tiny baby with strangers while I went to the city for the day. That I would only see you for an hour in the morning when you woke up and an hour or two at night before you went to sleep and that would be it for the entire day. And while, admittedly, the first few days were pretty rough, like most things that have happened in the five months since you blazed into my life, we have done just fine.

It's still weird to me, walking into my office every day where everything is exactly the same as it always was, while my life - our lives - are so completely different. I think of you a lot during the day, and I structure my whole day so I can be sure to be home in time to feed you and put you to sleep. You are a piece of me now, and I suspect that this is the way it is supposed to feel. I didn't think about it much while I was on maternity leave and home with you every day, but now that I am away from you for big chunks of time I understand. We are bound together, you and me. Inextricably and always.

The funny thing is, it turns out I am happy to be back at work. I think it's made me a better person, and certainly a better mom to you. I was worried about this a lot. Whether I would be able to pick up where I left off, and whether I could be a lawyer again after spending so much time learning how to be a mom. But it turns out that I did, and I can, and I really can be both. I hope that you'll understand this one day. I think you will, becuase I hope I can raise you to do the things that feel good to you, to find your passion, and to understand that there can, and should, be different parts of you that exist together to make you into who you are. I'm still not sure if being a lawyer is my passion - I suspect somehow that I'm still searching for what is - but I know now that I can do my very best as your mom, and do other things too. I think this makes us all better people, for ourselves and to each other.

None of this would be as easy as it has been if you hadn't taken so well to daycare. You transitioned really easily, and you are having such a good time. Whenever I go there to pick you up your teachers always tell me how happy and smiley you are, and this just fills me right up. I am so happy that you are in a place during the day with good people who care about you, and who fill your days with fun. And I am happy to share you with them during the week, because they are as thrilled to watch you grow up as I am.

And grow up you are. You are really starting to play with your toys, and you can already sit up for a little bit if you balance with your hands. You love bouncing in your Exersaucer, and you get so excited when we put you in the Bumbo we just got for you, so you can sit up for real and see the world from a whole new vantage point. You get bigger and sturdier every single day, and sometimes I look at you and it seems like you are literally growing up right in front of me. 

Last week was Thanksgiving. I've always loved this holiday for the family and the fun, and for the second to stop and be thankful for the greatness in our lives. And my goodness, there is a lot of it. But this year, what I am most thankful for, is you. One day when you're older I'll tell you about your first Thanksgiving. How we went to your Sabba and Savta's house and you wore a big sticker that said "My First Thanksgiving." How you sat in a highchair pulled up close to the dining room table and played with toys while the rest of us ate dinner. How you banged on the tray and laughed and tried to grab everyone's forks and how we let you. How my gratitude that you are here and healthy and happy and safe was so huge that it stole my breath.

I still sometimes can't believe it, my sweet Will, but you are so very much mine. 

Always, ok?

With love as big as the sky,

Mom

Previous Letters:

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Dear Will - Two Months Old

 

Dear Will,

What a difference a month makes, right?

Just four week ago when I wrote to you, I was staring at my computer screen through the tears of a new mother. The ones born of fear, worry, exhaustion, and the constant feeling that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Because I really didn't. You had just barreled into my life, and I found myself a little stunned by the speed at which everything changed. One second my life was one thing, and the next it was something else and I thought that maybe I was an entirely different person. I certainly didn't feel like the person I was on the day before you were born. And maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. I think it probably is. Because on the day you were born, I was born too, as a mother.

I think you spent an entire month with the top of your head wet with my tears. I'm really sorry about that. But a couple of weeks ago, something changed. I felt the undeniable shift deep within me. From fear to enjoyment. From anxiety to something resembling calm.

I think we're getting used to each other, you and I.

It started, I think, when you smiled for the first time a couple of weeks ago. You were laying on your changing table and I was talking to you and you looked at me and all of sudden your mouth curved up in a real and true smile. You are, I hope, going to smile millions of times during your life, but the first one was the most special of them all. And it unlocked something inside of me. Something that made me feel, maybe for the first time, that I'm doing this mothering thing right. That we are doing just fine.

Last week we took you to the Jersey Shore to Aunt Sara and Uncle James' beach house. On our first day there we took you to the beach in your stroller and the blue hat that I couldn't resist buying, and I dipped your feet in the ocean and in the sand. And the next morning while everyone was sleeping I took you back to the beach and we watched the sun rise over the water and it felt like we were the only two people in the world, you and me, in that moment when night became day.

And you won't remember that morning, but I will, and one day I'll tell you. I'll tell you about how you woke up at 5am and didn't want to go back to sleep after you ate. I'll tell you about how I wished that you would because I wanted to go back to sleep too. I'll tell you about how I laid you in your stroller and how we walked the one block to the beach under a sky that was just starting the lighten. I'll tell you about how I walk up the pathway leading to the beach and lifted you out of your stroller so we could watch the sun come up together. And I'll tell you about how glad I was that you didn't fall back to sleep after your bottle because I got to have that moment with you, in one of my favorite places, at the most magical time of day.

There is so much magic in the world, my sweet Will. And if I can teach you to embrace that magic, to find the things and the moments that give you joy, to return to them over and over again, I think I will have done my job right.

With love as big as the sky,

Mom

Previous Letter:

One Month

First Smiles

A couple of weeks before Will was born I read an article in The Huffington Post called The Moment I Tell New Moms to Hang On For. It was written by my blogger friend Allison Slater Tate recalling the first six weeks of her first baby's life. She writes about all the change, and about the mixture of terror, exhaustion, excitement and confusion that the first weeks with a newborn bring. But, she tells new moms, wait for it. Because sometime in those first few bleary weeks your baby will smile at you for the very first time and it will cut through all the hard and the struggle and that will be the moment where you know that you are in love with this tiny creature.

I thought about that article a lot over the first six weeks of my baby's life. While I learned how to be a mother. While I wondered what it feels like when you really love your baby and whether maybe I was feeling it already and I didn't even realize it because it was all mixed in with exhaustion, diapers, bottles, baths, bedtime routines and tears, more mine than his.

But then it happened, just like Allison said it would. We were doing our regular 9am diaper change/getting dressed routine and he was wide awake. As I snapped up his clothes I noticed that he was looking at me. Not above me or somewhere beside or behind me, but right at me. So I looked back and there it was. His first real smile.

And in that moment, my world righted itself.

I have lived lifetimes in these past seven weeks. I still feel sometimes like I barely know anything at all, but what I do know for sure is this: being a mother is tough stuff. I am a different person than I was just a few weeks ago. Equal parts stronger and more fragile. Both more patient and less. More anxious. More tired. But what I also know now is that there is joy running underneath all of this complexity that seeps up and fills my cracks just exactly when I need it. Like when my baby smiles at me on an otherwise utterly ordinary morning.

Because that's not ordinary at all. That's magic.

Dear Will - One Month Old

Will,

A few nights ago I was sitting in bed feeding you. It was very late at night, or very early in the morning, depending on how you you feel about 3am, and I was tired. I was so tired that as you ate I kept nodding off and even though we were perfectly safe in the middle of my big bed, I was terrified that if I fell asleep I would drop you and you would somehow end up on the floor. So I grabbed my phone and with my free hand I scrolled through my beloved Entertainment Weekly blogs to keep myself awake until you were done and I could put you safely back into your bassinet.

Motherhood, I'm learning, comes with a lot of unknown and a healthy dose of fear. Some of it rational and a lot of it far less so, but all of it of a kind that keeps me wide awake in the late night or early morning hours when I should be asleep, and falling asleep when I should be awake. My nights and days are flipped around now, as your are, and I can't shake the feeling that as you are learning how to do this whole life thing, I am learning it too, all over again.

I can barely summon the words to describe the past four weeks. As a writer, it is disconcerting to not be quite able to explain what has been the most transformative time period of my life, but as a human, this makes perfect sense to me.

A month ago you barreled into my life. One second you were an unknown, and the next, it was 4:17 am on a Tuesday and you were in my arms and very much real. There were some dicey moments that night, and it got scary and you had to be born really, really fast. But we did it and everything was fine and you were tiny and gorgeous and perfectly healthy, and suddenly everything was different.

I would be lying, though, if I said that this month has been all sunshine and rainbows. It hasn't. It has been hard and exhausting and overwhelming and I have spent a lot of it in tears. I think I have cried more than you have at this point, over everything and nothing at all. This is the part that no one talks about; the part that they don't show in the movies.

This is all wildly normal of course, and I sometimes can't even believe that they just let parents leave the hospital with a baby and without an instruction manual or something that tells us what to know and what to do and how to raise you up. Despite that, I think, one month in, that we are doing ok. You just went to the doctor and you have gained a lot of weight and are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing, and your daddy and I have started to feel the ground firm beneath our feet. Forgive us for all of the things that we get wrong as we learn our way. We are still learning, and we are trying our very, very best.

Know this, my sweet Will. We are so happy that you are here and that we are a family. It was just your daddy and me for a long while and now, with gratitude, we are three, and it is our joy to watch as you grow. We have been waiting for you.

With love as big as the sky,

Mom

Three Weeks In

For three weeks, we've been a family of three. In a way it seems like forever, and also two minutes that this tiny creature has been in our lives. The past three weeks have been a blur of feedings, diaper changes, snatches of sleep, tears (mine more than the baby's), and complex emotions. 

The day I got home from the hospital I was a soggy mess of hormones, anxiety, and utter terror that I had no idea how to be a parent to this brand new baby. I walked into my house to a kitchen table covered in baby clothes, cases of diapers and wipes in the middle of my living room, and a baby bath tub on the counter next to the kitchen sink. As my wild and exhausted eyes took in the chaos that had replaced my formerly organized house, it occurred to me that barely anyone talks about this part of becoming a mother.

They talk about the euphoria and the happiness and the oh my god you've never felt a love like this. And maybe some new mothers feel like that. But not everyone. So it hit me hard that first day home from the hospital that no one talks about the other side of becoming a mother. The fear and the confusion, the tears for every reason and no reason at all, the feeling that a torpedo just exploded in the center of your life, and the guilt that you are not positively over the moon about this baby that you wished for for such a long time and that sometimes, in your lowest moments, you wish just a tiny bit that you could reverse course and go back to the way things were. No one talks about these things. We should.

Honestly, I'm still sort of sorting through it all.

Thankfully, for me, all of this complexity has been interspersed with moments where I am in awe of what we have created, and grateful that this baby is here and that he is mine. And as we settle in and form some semblance of a routine and figure out how to be parents, every day I feel a little more like myself. A little happier. A little more normal even if that normal isn't the same as it used to be.

Since this blog is a time capsule of sorts, I feel strongly about documenting both sides of the story, especially now, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here is a little snapshot of our first three weeks as parents, a terribly cute baby, and our brand new life that we are slowly learning to navigate.

Ten Years

Ten years ago. It was a Sunday, and it was cold and rainy in Waltham, Massachusetts, the small town nine miles outside of Boston that is home to the old Waltham Watch Company factory, Lizzy's Ice Cream, a really good Mexican restaurant, and two universities, one of which is my beloved Brandeis University.

The light drizzle fell outside the window as we gathered in our suite's common room that was filled with the boxes and suitcases that we had spent the last couple of days packing for our final trips home, and the other detritus that accumulates in a college dorm over the course of a year that no one really knew what to do with. We mostly avoided looking at it all as we struggled with the blue and white hoods that were part of our costumes for the day and tried to decide whether it would be stupid to wear heels, considering the yards and yards of grass that most of us would have to walk through to get to our individual department ceremonies, and whether trying to use a hair iron was futile, considering the rain. Inconsequential decisions, maybe, but ones that had taken on mythic proportions since our alarms woke us up early that morning.

It was graduation day, and for the most part, no one wanted it to be. So instead of focusing on the fact that we had less than a day left on the campus that had been home for four years, we fixated on the details. Curly or straight. Heels or flats. Did I remember to pay those parking tickets that they threatened to withhold my diploma over?

We put on caps and gowns and the impossible hoods, marched in and got diplomas, and listened to a speaker none of us have more than a hazy recollection of, And just like that we were college graduates. We found our families and smiled for pictures while on the inside we were begging for just one more year. Two at the most.

We were Brandeis University class of 2005. 

It seems almost impossible that it has been ten years since that day, and yet when I look at everything that has happened since then, it seems like ten years isn't nearly enough time for us to have packed it all in. 

Law school. Graduate school. More graduations. First jobs. New jobs. New apartments. Buying houses. Moves. Engagements. Weddings. Births. Deaths. We've been happy and scared, we've succeeded and struggled in equal measure. We've started real lives and are living those lives the very best way we know how. We are really and truly adults, which just floors me because for the most part I still feel like I'm 22 and waiting for a grown-up to come in and take charge. Except I'm the grown-up now.

Despite the bargaining I did in those last days before graduation for just a little more time on that campus - one more class, just a few more late night snacks in my suite, even one more round of finals - ten years out I wouldn't want to go back now and do it all over again. But I like to look back every now and then to who I was in those dizzy and wild and wonderful college days. Because there is a magic in looking back and going back and remembering the moments on that campus where I lived and learned and studied and grew up.

And there is also a joy in being here and now, and knowing that in a major way, those days and that place helped make me who I am. Someone who is lucky in her life and her work and her friends. Someone who can appreciate the nostalgia of looking back and understanding that the person I was then still lives in the person I am now.

One cold and rainy day in May I stood with my friends in the giant gym as blue and white balloons rained down on us and we took our first tentative steps beyond the campus gates.

Ten years. A lifetime ago. And also just yesterday.

Moments

I was greeted with this sky when I left my house this morning. It was early and after a night where I couldn't fall asleep to save my life, I was tired, my only thought was putting one foot in front of the other long enough to get into my car and stop for coffee before I got on the train. 

But the sky just stopped me in my tracks. After a few cloudy, muggy mornings in a row that felt more like August than May, today was clear, cool, and exactly the way that mid-May is supposed to feel.

So I took a minute, and snapped this picture even though I was running late and still had to take the cardboard boxes that have been cluttering up my entryway for the better part of a week out to the curb.

Because two minutes ago it was December and we were getting ready for a new year and shoveling snow and wondering if we would ever be warm again. But now all of a sudden it's May and I put away all of our jackets last weekend in a cleaning frenzy and our outdoor furniture is all set up and our lawn needs mowing and everything is coming back to life.

It's a funny thing, time. It just keeps on moving and there is nothing I can do to stop it or slow it down. It's a wild privilege to be living this life that I have worked for and built and nurtured. This life I am proud of and that I am excited to have unfold in front of me. But sometimes it seems like it's flying by. So I think what I can do is notice. Notice the moments - small and big - and to maybe take a minute to document them every now and then

Like a beautiful blue sky on a cool spring morning.

Radio Silence

I took a little bit of time off from this place. Not from writing, mostly, but from publishing the things that I wrote. I thought about posting every single day that I didn't because I've been writing and posting here for more than three years, and to ignore it for awhile was strange for me. Foreign. Because for three years I have documented my life on these pages. For better or worse, big things and small things, these pages tell the story of my life for the past three years.

Or, rather, most of that story.

Because a big part of that story over the past year is one that I haven't told yet. I've written bits and pieces of it but I haven't published it because it's not quite time yet. I've mentioned it from time to time but I haven't told it all from start to finish because I wasn't ready. I will be though. Soon, I think. Because for better or worse, I document my life here. Partly because I like to, and partly because, after three years, I need to. Because writing here about myself has become a way for me to puzzle through a life that is good and rich and also complex. To process Really Big Things and to document things that are less big, but no less important.

The thousands and thousands of words that I have written here are deeply important to me. And I am proud of them, even, maybe especially, of the hard ones. The ones I had to reach down deep to find and yank out to put on the page.

There will be more words. Lots of them.

But the problem with having so many words written and not sharing them yet is that I found myself unable to share anything else. There has been so much happening but all the words to explain it all get lost somewhere between my brain and my hands and well, radio silence. But the thing about this blog is that it has become a time capsule of sorts. A place where I write not just things that I want to puzzle over, but things that I want to make sure not to forget. 

In about nine weeks, we're having a baby. It's still a little surreal to say those words out loud. The first twenty weeks dragged by in a haze of all-day sickness, tests and a constant, low-level anxiety that something would go wrong, could possibly go wrong, or was wrong already. Then when the tests assured us that everything was fine I graduated to angst over my slowly dwindling wardrobe and the train-wreck that was getting dressed for work every morning, my concern that I would grow out of all of my coats before the longest winter in history finally came to an end, and vigilance over the constant necessity to always be within five minutes of a bathroom. Pregnancy is not for the weak.

But lately, over the past two weeks or so, something else has happened. It's not just that the weather is finally nice enough for the coats that I can't zip or button anymore to no longer be necessary, and it's not because I finally have a maternity wardrobe that makes me feel like a human being when I get dressed in the morning. Those things certainly don't hurt, but it's more than that. Much more.

It's that for the first time since I saw two lines on a test back in October - and then a plus, a pink line, an unequivocal "pregnant" and a simple "yes" after taking one of every test on the shelf at Target - I can think about life after these months without qualifying it. I can say "we're having a baby" without silently adding in my head "unless something bad happens." I can make detailed lists of things we need - my specialty - without worrying that those lists will be somehow unnecessary.

It's not that I don't worry. When you've been where we've been and walked where we've walked I think there is always worry. It's that the worry is almost all crowded out by a sense of the wonder of it all. Not the wonder of pregnancy, exactly, because that part is just rough. But of the knowledge that we were able to do this thing that we thought we wouldn't be able to do and that in a little more than two months there will be a whole new person in the world that we created that is part of each of us. And the understanding that this whole thing is just one big leap of faith and that even though that should terrify me, somehow, at this point, it just doesn't.

And for the first time, I feel wildly grateful, instead of afraid. For the first time. I want to write about it. To document it in words so that one day I can go back and read them and remember how it was. Because this is the beginning of a brand new part of my life and of our lives.

And now, I don't want to miss any part of it.

Maybe Some Point is Going to be Today

Every time my doctor hands me a strip of the blurry black and white pictures I stuff them into the side pocket of my bag with the hair ties, ear buds, clear nail polish, travel bottle of Tylenol, and other random things that live there indefinitely. Then I forget about them until I need to tie my hair back, watch Netflix on the train, repair a nail or stop a run in my tights, or cure a headache. I rummage around in that side pocket for whatever I need, and instead come up with a handful of ultrasound images.

For a second I think that I should really do something with the pictures, if for no other reason than to get them out of my bag that already houses more stuff than I ever actually need. But then I put them right back in the pocket.

I can practically track the baby's progress just by reaching for a lipgloss. 

7 weeks, just a blob on the screen. 10 weeks, arms and legs and a heartbeat of 153. 13 weeks, fingers and toes. 16 weeks, a mouth and a nose. 20 weeks, all the important parts right where they are supposed to be. 25 weeks, a wave from a tiny hand. 29 weeks, a stretch and a perfect profile shot.

And I can track other things too.

Walking to the doctor's office wondering if maybe those two lines on the test were somehow mistaken and there was no baby after all. White knuckling the chair in the waiting room and wondering if there would still be a beating heart. The ultrasound technician who almost gave me a heart attack with her silence and her stern face. The other ultrasound technician with her smile and kind eyes and her promise to show me the heartbeat first thing so I didn't have to be afraid. The time I ended up in the hospital for blood pressure that is completely normal except when a nurse tries to take it at the beginning of an appointment.

Because one time about a year ago I was expecting my second strip of pictures, the 10 week ones, but instead I got no pictures because there was silence where there should have been two beating hearts. And my plan, already in effect, to stick the pictures from every appointment into the chapter for the corresponding week in my brand new copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting came to a sudden and jarring halt.

So this time around I had exactly zero plans for the pictures and that still brand new book has stayed on my shelf, unread and out of sight, because I didn't want this time to be anything like last time.

And it hasn't been.

So maybe I'll take all the pictures out of my bag and find a drawer where they can live because when you've been where I've been I don't think that you ever really stop worrying, it's just that at some point you decide to be brave, and to start saying "when" instead of "if," and to consider the idea that this time there will be a happy ending to the story, as improbable as that once seemed.

Maybe I'll do it tonight.

Maybe that some point is going to be today.

Throwback Thursday

 

Eight years ago.

When I was still in law school.

When argyle sweaters were a thing that people still wore.

When Saturday night meant drinking and playing poker in someone's Upper West Side apartment living room

When I didn't know how to do curly hair the right way and ended up with whatever this unfortunate mess is.

When we didn't know anything but thought we knew everything.

When we were just babies ourselves.

And the Ride Didn't Seem So Long After All

It was after six at night by the time we left the house. With a six hour drive ahead of us, I knew we wouldn't get where we were going until almost one in the morning. When we made plans to go visit family for the weekend I booked Thursday night flights that would get us there late, but at least they would get us there quickly. But circumstances intervened, so it was to the roads for us.

For the first hour or so, the miles crept by. Every time I checked the GPS thinking we had made some headway it told me a completely different story. I thought we would never get there. It felt like we would be driving forever, destined to live out the rest of our lives on this stretch of I-78.

But then. In the distance, the sun started to set over the long expanse of highway. And the sky turned a riot of colors and then before long it was us and the darkness and a Spotify playlist. And we talked and sang along to songs that reminded us of our high school and college days and there was no TV and no phones were ringing and nothing much to distract us from each other and from this moment.

And I remembered something. I remembered that these days where it is just the two of us, doing as we please, are numbered, and that the little things might just be the most important things. Like sitting next to each other in a darkened car, hurtling through the mountains of Pennsylvania with a Spotify playlist blaring from the car speakers.

And just like that, the ride didn't really seem so very long after all.

A Winter to Remember

Last night, we took a walk outside. It had been snowing pretty seriously since early afternoon, and while what we really wanted to do was stay on the couch and finish our House of Cards season 3 marathon, I'm co-chair of a project at my synagogue and had to be there for a couple of hours last night. With six inches and counting of snow on the streets and no plows in sight, driving there was out of the question and it was just around the corner, so I had to walk. After blasting a path out of our house with the snow-blower, David decided to make the trek with me.

My street was completely snow-covered and utterly deserted. It's not a busy street to begin with, but with the thickly-falling snow, it was like a fluffy white blanket had been thrown over my neighborhood, and we were living in the silence beneath it.

We picked our way down the street hand-in-hand, sliding a little bit here and there and laughing while the fat flakes coated our eyelashes, slapped our cheeks, and swirled around us.

I guess I could say that I'm sick of winter. That I'm tired of cleaning off my car in the morning and of wiping up my salt-stained entry-way floors and of being so cold all the time and of snow in general. But last night when we were walking through our quiet, snowy neighborhood it occurred to me that I'm not really all that sick of it at all. In actuality, I'm kind of grateful for it.

Because this year, winter is an interesting time in our lives. In October, I found out I was pregnant, which was the beginning of a flurry of morning-sickness filled days and nights, anxiety filled doctors appointments where we sat in silence and hoped that we would still see a beating heart on the fuzzy ultrasound screen, and with each passing week a fascinating brand of hope and anticipation that this was, in fact, the baby that would be ours.

And then it got colder and the snow started to fall and we started sharing our news - first with family and then with everyone. And we started to feel more confident too. But the first half of pregnancy is a funny thing. Because even though the news was out and I was finally - mercifully - feeling better, there were still all the tests to contend with. The ones that every woman gets, that are completely routine, but that seek to unearth every single thing that could possibly be wrong with the baby you've been growing for months. And well, who can relax completely with all of that uncertainty going on?

But then the test results came back and everything is exactly the way it should be and now we find ourselves in what I have come to think of as the middle place. There are hard things behind us, and serious, life-altering change ahead, but right now, it is just us and the snow, and cold nights under blankets in front of a fireplace, and dinner together on the couch in front of the TV, and winter walks through our quiet neighborhood with red cheeks and frosty eyelashes.

Spring will be here before we know it, and then summer will come roaring in on its heels, and I'm looking forward to all of that, and everything that comes with it. But I know that, years from now, when I look back on this time, it's going to be the winter that I remember. Those days when anxiety was replaced by anticipation, and when we were still just two, living in this amazing now and dreaming and planning for the days to come, with the snow-blower growling in the background.

And I'm thinking about the days behind us and wondering how the ones to come will look, but more than anything, I am living here, right now. Because even in the face of the monster change coming in just a few months, these moments right now are still the ones that matter. And this is exactly where I want to be.

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.