BAMBINOS

And the first championship winners!

More to come on how we decided to let them play elite club basketball and travel all around for the tournaments, but for now we are just reveling in the win!

I’m not going to sugar-coat it: we are knee-deep in a March mess. It is what it is. Meera has been home from school this whole week, unnervingly sick. After 2 trips to the doctor, attempts with 3 different antibiotics, and a string of sleepless nights, we finally seem to have it under control. But the whole ordeal has wreaked havoc on our fragile semi-semblance-of-order life. Chaos reigns now.

Much school make-up work will somehow need to get done. And Braydon and I look squarely at the question that is staring us in the face: how to recover from the boatloads of meetings, appointments, and classes missed and the projects and deadlines that fell through the cracks as we dropped many balls this week to take care of Meera. Always back to the same old story: the back-breaking-bind of the dual-career-couple with no extended family to rely upon. It is a topic I deeply hope that some brilliant PhD student somewhere is working on right now– the dissertation should be titled:  Dual Career Couples: Extended Family Support and Lack Thereof. If you are working on this, please be in touch– I want to help you in any and every way possible. If nobody out there is working on this– God help us all.We are so over Winter 2015. It’s been a rough one and spring can’t come quick enough. As if to tease us with a cold cruel joke, it is snowing like crazy today, on the First Day of Spring. Lehigh’s campus should be bursting with blossoms very soon. But today we’re getting covered in a blanket of snow. We’ve had barely a week this whole winter that hasn’t involved at least one school cancellation. And just because today’s the First Day of Spring 2015, it seems only right that this hellacious week is no different. School closed early because of snow. Of course, that impacted only one of our bambinos, since 2 out of 3 were home from school sick today. Yup, Kyle’s down for the count– joining Meera on the couch in the Sick House.Poor baby. Poor babies. So instead of anything that I’d typically cook on the First Day of Spring (I’m dreaming of steamed artichokes and fresh linguine with grated parmesan and a perfectly chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc on the picnic table outside), today I found myself making chicken noodle soup for the sick ones (which, incidentally, unfortunately, as of last night, includes me). Ugh.Between the time I started making the soup, and when it was done, the campus went from looking like the slightly snowy photo above, to looking like the ridiculously snowy photo below (taken just now from our apartment’s back window).Outside it is snowing hard. Inside we are trying hard to distract ourselves with this new game I bought to help us usher in Easter– Don’t Topple The Bunnies. You build this very fragile tower with these odd looking rabbits, then you carefully try to keep it all standing while certain key pieces holding the tower in place are removed from position. See?! It’s a metaphor for our life!!! Happy First Day of Spring!P.S. I just finished watching a movie with the kids on this snowy sick afternoon– Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It was awesome and perfect for the moment we’re in — I highly recommend it if you’re in the market for a feel-good-laugh-cry family movie!!!



Before heading to school on a Tuesday.

Basketball is an increasingly important part of their lives.

Notice the hands; that’s the most important part.

Last month I wrote about feeding Owen on snow days (Snow Days and Food Production).

Well, today is a sick day for Owen. He’s home from school with a bad head cold. Owen HATES missing school, so he fights hard when we tell him he has to stay home. He rarely gets sick, but when he does, it hits him hard. So, today he lost the battle, and home he is. Sitting on the couch all energy-less and miserable. And I’m home with him.

Despite being sick (just the looks and sounds of him today are enough to make me lose my own appetite, so the fact that he even wants to eat is pretty unbelievable to me), here is what he ate this morning for “breakfast”:

• 2 scrambled eggs with cheese
• 2 english muffins with butter and cinnamon-sugar (2 whole english muffins; as in 4 halves)
• 2 Nutri-Grain cereal bars
• the fruit pictured above
• large smoothie, which contained 1 banana, 1 cup raspberries, 1/2 cup greek yogurt, orange juice
• 1 glass of whole milk
• 2 glasses of OJ

He’s now having a late-morning snack… Pirate’s Booty. I’m sure he’ll eat the entire large bag. In fact, in the time it has taken me to write this post, he probably already has. Oh, and a 3rd glass of OJ.

Just now, when I was responding to his “I’M SOOOOOO HUNGRY!” by giving him the OJ and the bag of Pirate’s Booty, he said to me, “Mom, I feel bad that you had to cancel all your meetings for today because of me.” I said, “Oh, don’t worry about that sweetie.” He responded with, “I know you’re missing your work work, but just think of this as home work.” Oh, don’t worry buddy, I do, I definitely do.

Pics from today — as we were leaving the movie theater after seeing Cinderella. “Courageous and kind” (cite: Cinderella). That’s my girl.

For me, this picture is a great symbolic representation of why our “First Fridays” (<–click for backstory) are so awesome and important.  In the bathroom of the restaurant last night, Meera discovered her “most favorite sink in the whole entire wide world.” It was, for sure, a very cool sink. We’d never seen anything like it. She could have played in that sink for hours. In normal circumstances (out with our whole family, out with friends or extended family, out with anyone), we’d have been rushed to get back to the table and join the group. But on a ‘First Friday’ the point is to be fully present in the moment of indulging in time with just one kids. To be able to go with what that one –and only that one– is interested in, to be able to talk about what that one –and only that one– wants to talk about, to be able to do what that one –and only that one– would want to do. Braydon and I plan the agenda for the First Fridays, but we plan them with what the one –and only the one– in mind. And last night, I stood in that bathroom for a solid ten minutes letting her admire that sink and play in that water.

We started First Fridays in the spring of 2011 and did them religiously for 3 years. But in the past year we had taken a break of about 12 months from our First Fridays. We had sort of come to not appreciate them as much as we had been, and the kids had come to expect them (almost feel entitled to them; getting in the way of truly appreciating them and losing the main point of them). But lately we’ve been all missing them a lot, thinking about them a lot, and talking about them a lot. We decided to pick back up. And we started last night with a Mommy-and-Meera ‘First Friday.’

We went to one of Meera’s favorite restaurants — a Thai restaurant that she loves. She loves the lettuce wraps there, the sticky rice, and the chicken satay. We had it all and she “ooohed” and “aaahhed” over every bite. Then we went to a paint-your-own-pottery place. Meeera had been there before a few times, but I had never been. She was so thrilled to introduce me to it, and to have me there painting our chosen pieces together. Classic Meera, she chose a sweet heart box (“to hold my most special necklaces in!”), and painted it with her quintessential colors of pink and purple. She thought I was crazy, choosing an Easter item– a spring chick, but she approved of my choice of colors for it– various shades of yellow with some pink and purple detail. We painted for over two hours– something that amazed and delighted Meera (the ability to just sit for that long, painting, with no rush, and with nobody critiquing the extensive amount of detail we were both putting into our masterpieces). As for me, I was happily surprised to discover how relaxing the whole paint-your-own-pottery-place thing was for me. I had thought I’d think that place was a rip-off and hokey… but my daughter proved me wrong… yet again (this girl is always proving me wrong; one of the things I love and appreciate most about my girl).

I never lose sight of how grateful I am for Meera, how much I adore her essence, and how much I can — and do — learn from her. I think about those things everyday. But there’s something special about what happens when I get her all to myself. Last night was probably my favorite First Friday ever, and a reminder of how important it is for us to continue these, even as our days get more and more crazed, and the years go faster and faster, and our bambinos get older and older. One-on-one time is absolutely key… especially in light of those realities.

Another Aspect of Work Trips for Mommy

These are Called “Work Trip Gifts” — The Morning After Mommy’s Return From a Work Trip to Boston



Hello Goodbye Boston! Whirlwind-less-than-24-hour trip to give a talk. (Sorry to my Boston-area peeps; *literally* no time to get to see you in the itinerary I was working with.)

Here’s an example of something that is two contrasting things rolled into one: work trips for mommy. Work trips totally stress me out and totally rejuvenate me at the exact same time. It isn’t more one than the other. It is depletion and fuel up. It is not either-or. It is equally both at once.

Here, as always, I speak only for myself. I know, from talking with other working mothers, how different our experiences of work trips can be. And it’s important to remember that I am someone who purposely limits (and because of my particular occupation, am able to self-determine my own limitations) the number of — and length of — the work trips I take each year. I need to attend a couple of conferences each year, and I will do a few other events or speaking engagements each year. But all in all, I travel for work maybe a half dozen times each calendar year (give or take, depending on the goings on of the given year). And when I travel for work, I am traveling alone.

This Boston trip was to give a specific talk (I have a sort of niche lecture circuit I’m on, where I speak to elite independent school communities about social class inequality), and I will only say yes to 2-3 (max) of these invitations per year — regardless of if or how that self-prescribed limitation puts caps on my own career trajectory. I could do a lot more of these, but I don’t. For better and for worse. And I’m so fortunate to be able to make that decision for myself.

Anyone who’s ever been a mom can imagine (or knows firsthand) what a stressor work trips are. Making sure everything is set up and all set on the home front– before departure– is enough, alone, to make a mom feel like the entire endeavor of travel-for-work is just plain not worth it. Then there is the actual leaving, and what I’ll miss being gone. Leaving my bambinos gives me the lump-in-the-throat every single time, and I truly miss what I miss. Then there comes the re-entry… Which, sometimes, is the hardest of all — it’s sometimes crazy-hard to come back in to the diaper-changing (man, how I remember those hard work-trip-re-entry days), the food-cooking, the bathroom-cleaning, the dog-walking, the grocery-list-making, the weekend-planning, the homework-doing… After having been so free of all of the ‘second-shift’ Home Work.

It is exhilarating to be away from that Work of Home, to be unbound from the second shift, to be able to indulge in the focusing-on-only-one-job. Being a mom, and having a career, are two full time jobs. Having either of these jobs is hard work, but on a work trip having only one job (the career job) is an easy-breezy-beautiful thing when you’ve been grinding the dual-work-life. There is nothing more luxurious than a hotel room, alone, to make you remember just how completely insane your ‘real life’ really is. It is relaxing, rejuvenating, reinvigorating to be traveling alone, living for a little bit completely independent of the demands of raising children and managing a household and making a family life. It is so nice to get a break from cooking dinner and folding laundry and running the kids-and-home show.

Marriott Hotel Room, Occupancy: 1

Let’s not forget: what I’m talking about here is work trips — not to be confused with actual vacations. I am not drinking piña coladas under a beach umbrella on these trips. I’m actually working (and, just to be clear: it isn’t easy for me to walk alone into an unknown place and speak in front of an audience of complete strangers who may, or may not, receive my lecture favorably– I’m not that much of an extrovert! this is hard work for me!). And, I’m working while traveling too. I’m not packing my choice of pleasure-reading for these trips, I’m revising my talk and keeping up with email and grading papers on these trips.

Grading Papers In Flight

But there is something really unique, at least for me, about the Working Mother Work Trip. Because I’m not on vacation, I am unconstrained from even the hidden burdens that are often tied to pleasure-travel. I don’t have my kids with me (which I almost always do while on vacation), or even my husband; I’m packing for one, choosing where and when and what to eat for solely me, going to bed and getting up according only to my own schedule, and I’m free from being “in charge” of anyone but myself.

Legal Sea Foods, Terminal B, Boston Logan Airport, Lunch for 1

I also don’t have the pressure of making sure the trip is awesome… I better give a dang good lecture (to warrant the trip and the honorarium), but if nothing else is great, that’s just fine. Because it’s just me, not our precious family time, not the ‘chance to make memories for our children,’ not a ‘trip of a lifetime!’ It’s just a work trip. And that’s a great relief. 

Most of all, it is a joy and a pleasure to sit, alone, guilt-free, to drink a cup of coffee in peace — despite how bustling and crowded and stale-aired the airport (or hotel lobby, or coffee shop) may be. For this working mama, an unrushed cup of coffee (on someone else’s tab, no less), is enough to fuel me for the next few steps of this crazy-chaotic-completely-insanely-fast-paced journey that I’m on. 



Coffee and Phone Charging, Philadelphia Airport

Signing off now. I’ve gotta catch a flight.

Tonight as we sat down to eat dinner, Meera just had to run to get her (old, inherited, early model) iphone to take a picture of her plate again. This is becoming a thing for her. It was one of her favorite dinners (we call it “Gwyny’s Chicken”; I have posted about this dinner before here and here). It drives her brothers crazy when she holds up our whole dinner so she can capture her plate photographically (sorta like how it drives her papi crazy when her mommy does the same thing in restaurants). As she was taking photos she was enthusiastically proclaiming, “It is just beautiful! Look at the colors!” The whole entire thing just cracks me up. After she had finished her “so delicious!” dinner (she’s always the first to finish), while the rest of us were still eating and talking around the table, she cleared her place, hurriedly got out paper and oil pastels, brought them to the table… and proceeded to draw it out — now capturing/expressing the dinner experience artistically (the drawing is of her at the table, with her meal in front of her). Too, too funny!



March has begun. It is spring break at Lehigh; a little change of pace, a tiny break in our rhythm. It has been a long winter and today — for the first time in months — I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I took the photo above with my phone as I walked to my car in the parking lot of a coffee shop. I stopped for a minute just to feel that sun on my face.

The Lehigh students are away on spring break. They are in Cancun, and Miami, and some are at home with their families, and some are doing things that I can only dream of right now (one told me she was going to spend the week with some of her friends on her family’s boat in the British Virgin Islands; oh how I’d love to be spending a week that way right now!). I’m not jealous though; I’d never want to be twenty again. I’m happy for them all, and I worry about those for whom I know going home is hard. As for me, I’m truly glad this week to be in sunny Pennsylvania where today it was registering 53 degrees and it felt like the most beautiful day that there ever was.

I am External Member for a dissertation committee of an old student of mine from Lehigh. She graduated years ago and today she was defending her dissertation prospectus in criminal justice at Rutgers University. It was gratifying to hear her speak so eloquently about her work, with such sophistication. It is incredible now, more than a decade into teaching, to be able to look at these amazing people and say, “I knew them when.” I feel proud of, and grateful for, the work I’m doing. It is hard work, but it is good work.

At home too. It is so hard, but so good. The work I’m doing at home I am proud of, and grateful for. Meera’s homework today was another reminder that March is here.
The boys’ pants too are another reminder that March is here. In the laundry room tonight I sprayed these suckers with at least a quarter of a bottle of ‘Spray ‘N Wash’ and threw them in the washing machine and hoped for the best. This is what it is all about people— if your pants don’t look like this at the end of a beautiful early March day, then something is wrong! I hate laundry, and I’m happy to do this laundry tonight. Finally! Some muddied up pants to wash!
The start of March also means swimming lessons. The boys have no more levels to reach. They’ve swam their way right out of lessons. But Miss Meera is right back in the pool once a week this spring semester, and loving it. While Braydon took her to swimming lessons tonight, the boys and I wrapped up a 2-day-long game of Monopoly. Kids vs. Parents. These guys are so freaking competitive! How did this happen? Tonight I was able to be fully present and sit back and see them for who they are– all the crazy good and crazy bad– and I am proud and grateful for who they are and who they are becoming.

We are, as usual, going at full tilt. There is too much each day to blog about. I’m proud and grateful for that. Our life is like a lion roaring. It is too much to try to track it, almost too loud to take in. I can’t do it justice as I try to capture it. So, I’m just jotting down what I can in fits and starts these days. It’s the best I can do for right now. And I’m learning that sometimes, the best I can do, just has to be good enough.

There are no lambs around here right now. It is all lion. And it is all good. Even the bad is good enough.

Meera continues to be prolific in her production of artwork. Everyday she produces mass amounts of it. Most of them are drawings and paintings, but lately she’s been doing a lot of cutting and taping. Today, after school, she was at work, as usual, with her tape and scissors and markers. This was one of the (many) things she made. It was different than anything I’d seen her do before, so I asked her what the title of it was. She said, “University.” She explained that she cut out the paper in the “look of university buildings” (the top edge), and then drew the “campus” on it. The clock is “like a bell tower,” there is “a tree and flower and path,” and “a student on the path,” with some clouds in the sky. University. This is a little glimpse into a slice of her world.