An Admission

Admission: I'm almost as bad a blogger as I am email-returner and voicemail-listener.  The upside is that I can now add that to the list of career options that are definitely off the table: swimsuit model, anything to do with the hard sciences, and professional blogger.

That said, one of my New Year's Resolutions was to write more regularly, mostly so I can have a lasting record of this time in my life.  It's almost March, so yes, I'm technically behind--but I've also been living in the arctic tundra for two months. (Boston is where shoes come to die.) I'll start writing regularly when the T starts running regularly.  

Bah.

So here's my quick "snapshot in time"...

Owen thinks he's a man.  No, correction: he knows he's a man and he hates being called a boy. We left the doctor's office recently and the unsuspecting doc innocently told Owen to "be a good boy." Meltdown. Owen to doctor:  "I am NOT a boy! I am a MAN! I am a big strong MAN!"  Okay, medical records updated accordingly.  

Luckily, he's backing up his outlandish claim with some behaviors to prove it. He woke up from a nap last week and went directly into the kitchen, opened the freezer, got out a frozen waffle, pulled a stool over to the toaster, and cooked himself a snack. When I commented that I was impressed with his self-sufficience, he nonchalantly responded: "That's what mans do for their selves."  So be it.

Eliza is [still] obsessed with clothes.  My last post was about her love of shoes; now it's poured out into all areas of wearables. It's actually nothing short of terrifying. When a 20-month-old refuses 4 pairs of pants, complete with adolescent angst ("Uhh...not pretty!!"), you know that it's going to be a long road from here to 18.

The silver-lining is that describing anything as "pretty" instantly changes her trajectory.  "Eliza, do you want to come put on a new diaper?"  "NO!"  "Eliza, do you want to come put on a new pretty diaper?" "Yes!!!!"  At some point, we'll have to stop encouraging this (hey, she started it), but for now "pretty" is the easiest trick in our box.

Nature or Nurture?

Pre-kids, I totally questioned the gender roles we force kids into.  C'mon, boys can't really love trucks and trains that much, right? And I was mildly offended by the notion that girls are inherently drawn to princesses and accessories and pink glittery nonsense.  

Then we had Owen. His first word was "truck" and his favorite pastime was going on excavator-locating trips around the neighborhood to watch 'struction workers dig dirt.

And then came Eliza. Literally nothing on this earth gives the child more delight than wearing other people's shoes and rummaging through my makeup basket.

So okay, Universe, I stand humbly corrected.

Role Confusion

From time to time, I have an unfortunate tendency to forget that I'm a mom and not a big sister.  In those regrettable moments, I teach my kids things that maybe a mom shouldn't.  Like this one time, not too long ago, when I thought it appropriate to teach Owen a classic childhood rhyme while he ate a bowl of beans...

Fast forward two weeks, sitting in a stuffy cafe among lunching ladies, already embarrassed by the chaos ensuing at our table, and Owen loudly and proudly recalls the punchline for all to hear:

"THE MORE YOU EAT, THE MORE YOU FART!!!!"

Oh dear.

Married with Children

So maybe I'm revealing a little too much about myself here--or maybe I'm just stating the obvious--but early parenthood can really do a number on your marriage.

You spend nine months in this blissful state of pre-parental naiveté, whimsically poring over paint chips in 50 shades of blue and nesting and baby-mooning and co-creating a fanciful vision of what your new family will inevitably be like. You're happy. You're a team. You can't wait to become parents together. And, of course, this all puts you on as high a note as high notes get, maritally speaking. You feel like nothing, no nothing, can break this enchanted streak of wedded glee.

And then the baby arrives. And you become parents. And holy shit you never sleep. And your husband seems maddeningly incapable of wiping the baby's butt exactly as you're sure butts ought to be wiped. And someone (but definitely not you) used the last of the baby formula and now it's nearly midnight and you're stuck in a state of half-dress making an emergency run to Walgreens and vowing that someone (but definitely not you) will pay for this. And you catch yourself wondering if you'll ever find time to shave your legs again but you can't see how that's at all relevant since you're decidedly over trying to impress anyone; you're just trying to survive.

And so it goes, that period of early parenthood. At times you question how couples-with-children ever come out on the other side, and you come to understand the real Christmas miracle behind those holiday cards with cheery, smiling families exuding togetherness, because it seems incomprehensible that The Crazy will ever end. What could ever bridge the vast marital trench dug by early parenthood?

And then you find out the answer: Toddlers.

Not because everything suddenly becomes easier, though of course it does; you get [more] sleep and you've long ago given up caring about butt-wiping techniques. It's because you have a common enemy, a new shared source of ridiculous parental angst that is best experienced together: Irrational Little People. And suddenly get to see what a funny sense of humor Life really has.

For all the early days when babies were a marital wedge, toddlers reunite parents with blessed little moments of forced togetherness--shared eye-rolls that say "omigod-this-tantrum-over-crayon-colors-at-the-restaurant-table-is-really-happening" or mischievous "watch this" looks as we use reverse psychology to manipulate Owen into eating broccoli by offering it to Eliza.  Tricking two little kids into doing what you want ("If you give Eliza that toy back, I'll let you take a bath and go to bed!") isn't any fun without a sympathetic co-conspirator audience to show off for.

Toddlers are an on-going inside joke that only you and your spouse can understand, and that in and of itself creates a bond like no other. Now my favorite marital moments involve high-fives ("Oooh, good one, Daddy!") after a particularly impressive parental feat, as the kids stare at us blankly, wondering what the hell we're celebrating. And one day, I hope, they'll have kids of their own and they'll understand: it's a shared sense of victory, a deep appreciation for how simultaneously ridiculous and wonderful this time in life really is, and the knowledge that there is no togetherness quite like being married with children.

Deep Thoughts by Owen

"Daddy, why do I fart all the time?"

"Mommy, do you have big hair?"

Owen: "Yaya, why does the sun go down?"
Yaya: "Maybe because it's tired."
Owen:  "Or maybe because the earth moves."

Me:  "O, what do you think of these boots?"
Owen:  "Uhh...fabulous."

Owen: "Eliza, you are beautiful. You are a beautiful flower."

On this day, ten years ago...

October 14, 2004: I woke up exhausted and bleary-eyed after sleepless and boozy 21st birthday.

October 14, 2014: I woke up exhausted and bleary-eyed after a sleepless and wheezy 31st birthday.

Cheers to life's little ironies.

#happybirthdaytome

A Tale of Two Trips

September 2014 was bookended by two Barasz family trips. We kicked off the month with a 10-day adventure in Barcelona, dragging two kids and six checked bags 16 hours and 3600 miles across the Atlantic; we ended the month with a quick overnighter up the coast to explore Portland, Maine. Guess which one was a bigger disaster: Spain or Maine?

The hands-down, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt, no-contest answer...Maine.  

I should've known we were in trouble when we started off on our roadtrip and Aaron casually remarked, "I've been looking forward to this all week."  Oh no he didn't.  We should've turned the car around and headed home right then.  I thought he'd left Them at home, but here They were, the unwanted, hijacking passengers in our car: Great Expectations. He was expecting something good...and that's when you know it's gonna be bad. 

It was a hot Saturday afternoon and--expecting Fall to actually feel like Fall--we were all overdressed and overheated. The hotel room wasn't ready on time. Eliza lost her mind when we dared to put her down for a nap in the hotel crib. Owen refused his nap altogether, and crashed the entirety of Adult Hangout Time. The 10-minute wait for dinner turned into 45-minutes, which felt more like 450-minutes with two grumpy, hungry, and sleep-deprived children. And the kicker: Owen decided he should start his Sunday at 3:55AM, which meant we all got to watch a beautiful sunrise...two and a half hours after waking up. It was not, by any stretch, our best showing.

Now, compare that to our European adventure. 

The kids were shockingly well-behaved on the flight. They stuck to their Eastern Standard Time schedules, allowing us to frolic around the Mediterranean beaches until midnight and sleep in till 10:00. We drank Rioja and read books on a sunny terrace while they slept for 3 hours in the afternoons. We didn't bring toys, so they played together and loved each other and didn't fight over who was holding the truck first. We savored and relaxed and enjoyed every moment of our time together.  We felt victorious.   

But really, even if all the silly and trivial hiccups of Maine had happened in Spain, I don't think we would've even noticed.  Because the big difference was: we had zero negative expectations. We'd already envisioned a case in which both kids went bonkers on the redeye flight, or we all got Norovirus and were quarantined for a week in our rented apartment; we'd accepted the fact that we might end up cursing the very moment we ever thought that trip was a sane idea.  But because that stuff didn't happen--because we far exceeded the completely hellish scenarios we'd braced for--it felt like pure magic. 

So this Tale of Two Trips served as stark reaffirmation of parenthood's Golden Rule: expect nothing.  Never rest on your laurels or stupidly let yourself think, "oh, we've got this."  Because children have a freaking insane ability to remind you that no, you actually don't got this; don't be cocky. The likelihood of parental victory in any given moment is an independent probability--success in one instance most certainly does not predict success in another. But the good news is that the inverse is also true--that utter meltdowns don't necessarily have to be repeated--and I guess that's what keeps this whole thing interesting.