Well, I’ve been forty one for a week!
Although my birthday fell on Labor Day weekend (as per usual), which usually means Fun! Fun! Fun!, the whole long weekend was somewhat marred by my sinus infection and the fact that I felt Not Great the entire time (finally went to an urgent care Tuesday for a Z pack). Nevertheless, the boys feted me per our usual traditions. The Prof took the boys to Wal Mart the night before my birthday to allow them to pick gifts for me. Their gift selections were cute, and also illustrated how thoroughly we have failed at our attempts to smash the patriarchy with this generation of boys – Craig got me fluffy slippers and a Minnie Mouse doll because “she’s pink and girls like pink,” Jack got me a purple sparkly lip gloss, and Liam got me a loofah for the shower. I give them an A+ for trying to get me something I like rather than something they like.
They kicked me out of the house in the afternoon, so I took the new book my parents bought for me (Louise Penny’s latest) and went to get a mani pedi. Upon my return, I rang the bell, and then stepped in the front door to a shower of balloons pouring on me from above. The Prof tells me the balloon waterfall was the boys’ idea, and I’m most impressed with their festive innovation. They also had strung a few streamers around, and had wrapped and set out my presents and a small chocolate cake. In addition to my Wal Mart treats, the Prof’s present was wrapped in a Tiffany box – a beautiful turquoise necklace.
I opened my treats, and blew out my candles, and then we went to a place called the Velvet Cactus for margaritas and Tex Mex food for my birthday dinner. I had two margaritas and was tucked in bed by 9:30 pm. Age appropriate, I’d say.
So far so good – I can highly recommend the forties. Any readers who are moms of very small children – pay attention. You have ballooned and deflated with pregnancy, perhaps more than once (perhaps never but instead suffered the anxiety and uncertainty of adoption – its own form of grueling physical labor). You have spent so many days in a seemingly endless, Sisyphean cycle of filling and emptying the diaper pail, filling and emptying Baby’s belly, and diaper bags, and nursing breasts, and bottles, clothing drawers, washing machines. You spend nights up and down, responding to Baby’s cries, or maybe Baby sleeps through but you still wake up, and regular sleep is laughably unattainable. Then Baby is a toddler and you chase him sun up to sun down, snatching forks out of light sockets and live roaches or jagged glass out of tiny mouths, again and again in the nick of time until your jangled nerves are utterly shot. You make meals and scrape them into the trash, three or more times a day, and stock up on go-gurt right when Toddler goes off the go-gurt streak and decides he will only eat string cheese. Then Toddler is three, four, five, and an emotional and unpredictable tyrant, furious, bossy, picky, and never convenient. Your body is slack and soft and achy, your back hurts, your hair perhaps falls out (as mine has done), you wear your exhaustion on your face. You gain weight or lose it, and feel like you never, never have time to be lost in thought, and suddenly you are desperate for the mental space for a daydream.
Whether these things have happened to you, I cannot be sure, but they happened to me. And I’m out of those years now, and I’m not really sad about it, except for the odd pale ghost of a thought of “that happened fast” and “hoo boy they’re getting tall, aren’t they?” Of course I loved and enjoyed my Babies and Toddlers and Threenagers and delighted in watching them develop, but I am a much happier, more content forty-something mom of Older Kids. These days Flag Football Uniforms and Piano Books have replaced Diaper Bags and Baby Wipes, and it is my jam. Although I’m still absolutely overworked, like every working parent in an America that still demands us to parent as if we don’t have work and work as if we don’t have kids, I have more time for me. I get my hair done with some regularity, exercise 3+ times a week, sleep most nights straight through, wash my face and slather on moisturizer and age defying creams and they probably don’t work but I *feel* like they work. I am still frazzled and busy, but less ragged. I have a little more capacity to take care of me, even as I still take care of them – and heck, they even take care of me sometimes. They help with dishes and laundry and trash and grocery shopping, they pour their own breakfast cereal and orange juice and Craig just the other day proudly made his own lunch. Yes, forty one suits me just absolutely fine – I feel like it’s a Renaissance period.
Having gotten that little happy diatribe off my chest, now I plan to launch into complaints about the beginning of the school year and how much of an ass-ache it is. I believe I have complained about this to you once already, but lo, there is more complaining to be had. We continue to receive emails at the pace of perhaps five per day, which sounds like not too many except that most of them contain at least five or six different bullet pointed bites of information that must be processed (and usually are tasks that we have to perform), so that adds up to anywhere from 25-30 new tasks per day, added on top of the usual work and kids. Flag football is running late today, and can Jack come to a youth group planning meeting, and can you take Aaron and John in carpool to the first flag football game, and Liam lost his writing notebook, and Craig needs to bring snack for the whole class and it has to be 26 individually wrapped nut free parcels plus a gallon jug of water and 26 cups, and new parent coffee for kindergarteners is tomorrow and new parent coffee for fourth graders is the next day and sixth grade Cool Zoo night and youth group kickoff pool party and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. My children need a concierge, but all they have is the two of us, so we fumble through. I’ve been working til 11 most nights because the workday is chock full of interruptions. The funny thing about this Old Kid Age, though, is I feel like the interruptions must absolutely now be handled by ME or their father. When they were babies, as long as their butts were clean and bellies full, it didn’t really matter who did it. But at this time, I am keenly feeling that at these Big Kid Events, it needs to be me. I need to be there. I need to be showing up. (Or the Prof – but I mean, it needs to be a parent). It’s spurred some Deep Thoughts.
Awkward segue ahoy – over the snuffly, sinus infected long weekend, we also decorated the house for fall. We have some Halloween decorations that will make their appearance later – for now, I pulled out the generic fall decorations. Turns out they’re all pumpkins! Pumpkins everywhere. I had fun finding places for all the pumpkins.
After the long weekend, I headed into work on Tuesday and finally wandered across the street to the urgent care in the basement of a nearby office building. I got a steroid shot, a Z pack, and a cold syrup prescription, and it made all the difference.
On Thursday, I took one of my younger colleagues to lunch, since it was her birthday too. A law school friend and another colleague joined us, and we had an amazing lunch at Justine. Highly recommend the pork belly appetizer. My law school friend and I took a quick pic next to the tiger in the lobby. 7 years out of law school – how did that happen?
On Friday night, Jack attended a school event (AAAAAAAAAAA), which the Prof took him to. So I took the little boys to see the Lion King. Very dim, terrible pictures below – but they loved this movie. It was odd to watch a live action remake, almost shot for shot, of the cartoon I probably saw a hundred times as a kid. But it was beautifully done, and the boys were cute as buttons.
This morning (Saturday), Jack and I got up early and I took him to a youth group service day, mopping and cleaning up a homeless shelter. After that, we got haircuts (he looks like a stud), then came home and watched hours and hours of college football. I made a dinner of spoiled salmon which had to be summarily slid into the trash (the sides of potatoes and broccoli had to suffice), and then spent some birthday money on some fun earrings. Tomorrow, we will go to church, I will plan and prepare the week’s meals, and hopefully go for a run.
It’s mundane, it’s quite, it’s unexciting, but it’s life at 41 and it’s mine. The boys are good, we are good. All is gooooood