The Fallen Fairy Tale: Scorned Political Wives

Soliciting men in bathroom stalls , moving hookers over state lines (seriously, why aren’t ours here in DC good enough for Spitzer?), trysts in a TGI Fridays (really, McGreevey, really?), hiking the Appalachian trail - or was it lounging seaside in Argentina ( )- these are tales for an epic Hollywood blockbuster. The serious political leader caught with his pants down in outrageous scenarios is a constant thread in our media commentary. Arnold, we knew you had it in you, we just thought your story would be more exotic than a housekeeper. So let’s be honest with ourselves. We don’t devour every salacious detail of these affairs because of what the husband did, though, do we? We devour them because we are watching the scorned political wife.

And among those political wives, Ms. Edwards was the first to not stand by her man’s side in the mea culpa media interview . We applauded her for it. Then Ms. Sanford set the bar a little higher by dropping off the scene, leaking that she hadn’t spoken to her husband for weeks and demanded his repentance . Was the tide turning? Were we seeing a movement away from steadfast support of the husband because of his career? And why did these earlier political wives stand next to their husbands in those moments of humiliation and disgrace? Were they just in shock and willing to believe what they wanted to believe, or did they also believe in their husband-as-candidate so profoundly that they were willing to forgo their own humiliation?  

Julianna Margulies’ ill-titled show The Good Wife handled the perspective of the shamed wife with delicacy and respect through its first season. We watched as she rediscovered her independence, cultivated her career and built a life that wasn’t centered around her husband. But we watched her keep her husband at arm’s length, for the sake of her kids and presumably because you can’t stop loving the father of your children overnight.

So now we have Maria Shriver to watch. Possibly due to her own blue-blooded political savvy, in combination with her experience working for the media, she managed the message from the time it leaked out. It certainly can’t be a mistake that this news leaked months after the Governator left office. His political career was able to reach the apex he desired without his own indiscretions toppling it, like all these other idiots, but Maria managed to avoid the requisite press conference and already announced that she is separated from the dirty rotten scoundrel. She doesn’t look like a victim, she looks like she’s in charge.

So what does it leave us to think? What do we relay to our kids who are old enough to hear the incessant media chatter and ask us questions about it? How do we not shine the spotlight on our husbands and issue a few threats addressing precisely what we’ll do to them if they take up with the housekeeper or nanny or kindergarten teacher or school psychologist? Why do marriages fall apart after 25 years and four children? What does it say to the cheaters (and our kids) if we stick with them and what does it say to our kids if we ditch them?

Any one of these questions is enough to whip up a tornado of doubt and introspection to the point of neurotic.  So I choose to focus on the positive. My instinct is that we tell our kids the truth: many adult decisions are leaps of faith but we leap because we genuinely love someone; the inertia of the fear of what ifs is more paralyzing than the leap could be damaging. We stand by a spouse or we walk away based on what is right for us and what is right for our kids. We can’t ever really know what compels some political wives to stick around and others to walk away. But we have to believe that it takes two people to make a marriage work and two people to allow it to break.

And about that fairy tale, as a women’s studies minor and feminist protestor outside strip clubs in college (seriously), I enjoy watching my girls get lost into the world of a Disney fairy tale. Why can’t I let them believe there is a Prince for them? Why shouldn’t they think their daddy is my modern-day Prince? Weren’t 3 billion people worldwide glued to the marriage of Kate to William because we love fairy tales?  Maybe Maria tolerated Arnold’s behavior for as long as she felt her children needed her to and then she broke. Maybe the Terminator was Maria’s Prince for as long as she wanted one.

Maybe the real fairy tale is that the story isn’t linear and the Princess gets a few bruises along the way. But she brushes herself off and gets back up. Maybe that’s the real lesson for the kids.

Looking for weekend plans?

Check out  my latest activities post on Washingtonian

Washingtonian’s New Parenting Blogger

Friends, Fans, Loyal Followers…..

I am the new parenting blogger for Washingtonian magazine….the site just launched today…..so I will blog more there than here from this point forward. I’ll be posting twice weekly…once on Thursdays with ideas on what to do with the kids over the weekend and once on Tuesdays – a general parenting post. Please follow, comment, say what you think……and spread the word!

Get over it, Antivaccinationists

You might love being home full-time. You  might judge stay-at-home moms. You might have a family bed, you might think family beds and co-sleeping is a disastrous and idiotic idea. You might be pro-Tiger parenting. You might be anti-Tiger parenting. Hell, you might be pro-swinging, you might be anti-swinging. I will take all of you. Let’s debate.

But if you are anti-vaccinations for kids, then I think you are uneducated, unwilling to listen to reason and totally willing to needlessly put your kid in harm’s way.  Certainly there was a loud thank-you ricocheting across the country when the news finally came out a few weeks ago that all that talk about vaccinations leading to autism proved to be a wasted research investment and not a statistically significant study. Let alone:  True.  Was anyone else wondering why, once again, the media were just sad lemmings, feeding the story, feeding the fear, feeding the hype and never bothering to actively participate in thorough investigative journalism and actually learn the flaws in the research that one with basic statistical understanding would realize?

It was never an issue in our house whether or not we would vaccinate our kids. It was a no brainer. Then when our eldest was almost two, she fell seriously ill, she was hospitalized, and it took the docs many days to determine the cause. As it turned out, she had a bacterial infection in her bloodstream. After the horrible rollercoaster ride of being told her white blood cell count was “not quite leukemia high but go to the ER immediately,” watching them probe her, watching her misery, and listening to the doctors try to determine what to do next, we were so relieved to have her recover. And then the doctor said “Without vaccines, this might have taken her life.”

Since then, I’ve wanted to actually punch in the face anyone who mouths off against childhood vaccinations.

Imagine my pure pleasure when a friend posted the link to the reputable, science-based New England Journal of Medicine piece basically trashing the anti-vaccinationists out there and the fear they spew.

Way to go NEJM:

“We believe that antivaccinationists have done significant harm to the public health. Ultimately, society must recognize that science is not a democracy in which the side with the most votes or the loudest voices gets to decide what is right.”

Celebrity Mom Rant

My kids keep sabotaging my efforts to blog…..so bear with me friends. Seeing as how every celebrity under the sun seems to be pregnant or delivering a baby, it’s time for a little rant.  My friend started it today when she emailed this in:

Did Miranda kerr and Orlando have to release a first photo of their newborn as he is nursing?  I’m so over people making statements like that. And I’m oddly annoyed that nicolle kidman used a surrogate. She carried a child to term 2 years ago. Or did she really?  She trying to save her rail thin figure?  Or did she really have trouble and therefor absolutely had to use a surrogate?  And kelly preston used her own eggs at 48?  Hmmm mmm. That’s my rant for the day

So – friends – what’s your reaction to my BFF’s rant? I, for one, pretty much am in full-agreement with her. Come the f on Miranda Kerr…..that picture was about you and how beautiful you are and your lovely postpartum breast. It really wasn’t about the baby, who we’d all like to actually see. And if you want to make a statement about the beauty and importance of breastfeeding, then do something productive, like use your celebrity platform to discuss the importance of women having private spaces to nurse in the workplace so they can keep nursing after maternity leave (if they get maternity leave).

And Nicole, sure, is it really our business to know whether or not you could get pregnant or whether or not you just didn’t want to ruin your body? Probably not. But well, you want us to watch your movies and buy your husband’s albums (if you do that, probably stop reading my blog), so we’re going to judge you.

And Kelly Preston. I heard her very briefly on the Today Show today discussing how she wasn’t at all nervous about having a healthy baby given her “advanced maternal age.” Umm…really? REALLY  KELLY?? How in the hell could that be true? And I kept wondering – is it a really great thing that she was pregnant at 47-48 and delivered a very healthy baby into this world and wasn’t worried at all about it. Or is that bullshit and she was scared out of her mind the entire time but didn’t want to share it? I’m a realist. How could you NOT be worried the entire time? Then again, what does that prove? It doesn’t change the outcome.

So then she leaves us with a very productive conversation about advanced maternal age. Do older celebrities birthing healthy babies skew our perspective on this possibility? Do they feed this idea out there that having a baby beyond 40 is simple and beautiful? It might be but it might be a really difficult road (Read the side paragraph in that link about pregnancy in late 40s).  Is it the job of older mom celebs to talk about it? Probably  not but might it help shed some light onto that road, specifically the expense of IVF, freezing eggs, or finding a surrogate?

Today is the day

I almost left my 2-year-old screaming on the street strapped into her stroller and walked away.

And yes, it is only 10am.

I thought about it, I pictured it, I wondered how far I would walk, could I walk far enough to get away from the piercing screaming? Did I dare?

Oh, I dared, because I was thinking it through pretty carefully as she screamed relentlessly in the stroller. Thinking about walking away took me to a happier place. A place of calm.

Namaste.

Keep in mind, we were well past the first 5 minutes of the tantrum, thinking it was going to end any minute. We were in about minute 35. She started screaming about 3 mins into the walk to her older sister’s preschool. DD1 and I just sorta ignored her and carried on our conversation about school, all the while I’m thinking to myself, this horrid 2-year-old phase will end and some day the screamer and I will be having a lovely conversation on our way to school (if her behavior doesn’t kill me first).

Then a few mins later, she composed herself and said “mommy, walk. I walk mommy.”

I fell for it.

SERIOUSLY. Who the f am I? You’d think I’d never lived through the 2s before. Yeah yeah, I know the 3s are worse. So I fell for it. She sounded so reasonable, she seemed so convincing. For a second I knew it was a bad decision but I fell for it, that sweet voice clearly telling me what she wanted to do.

So I said “Ok, but you have to walk, mommy can’t carry you and push the stroller, there is too much traffic.” (my neighborhood is old and lovely but it has no sidewalks, so we really can’t mess around.)

Good thing I explained myself to her, you know, cause 2-year-olds listen and reason and execute what they say they are going to do. They’re definitely known for that.

Again, who the f am I? Apparently on this third day of the new year, I am an idiot. And I let her out of the stroller. We’ve had plenty of lovely walks to and from school, both girls playing games and racing each other.

Not today, friends. Not today. This kid is going to stomp the optimist out of me before she’s through with me.

Within seconds she was climbing up my legs. Just yesterday my mom pointed out that I should just build steps up my body for all the time DD2 spends climbing up my legs in any given day. I tried reason, I tried reminding her that I can’t carry her and push the stroller and navigate both of them through the traffic.

At this point I realize that I sound like Charlie Brown’s mother….”Waaa Waaaa Waaaa Waaaa” is what the 2-year-old hears. It’s like I”m saying it to myself for fun. Sorta like giving instructions to husbands.  Eventually I am trying to get her back into the stroller and I am blocking half the street, DD1 exclaiming “mommy, there are cars coming” and I don’t even look. I’m thinking “I dare those f’ing cars to hit me, let alone honk at me for taking up half the road, I seriously dare them.”

Apparently no one f’s with a woman wrestling a screaming, body straight as a board so you can’t strap her back into the stroller, 2-year-old. Lucky for them. Cause I was ready for a fight with an adult.

I eventually get her back in the stroller and she screams the entire way to school. At school I’m faced with a decision, taking her back out means I have to get her back in, and I don’t have the strength of 5 Olympic body builders, but there is still some optimism left in me, on this third day of the new year. I gamble that she’ll snap out of it on the playground and we’ll have a nice walk home after she plays.

WRONG.

She screams bloody murder as I lift her out and walk her onto the playground. At this point, it’s a good thing DD1 is carrying her own bag and basically signing herself in to school because I’ve all but forgotten about her.

“Just ignore her” I bark at a sympathetic to the screaming kid mother, and I walk away.

DD2 screams and screams and screams. 5-year-olds gather around her, attempt to play with her, she screams. I come back, she screams more.  And then I had to get her back into the stroller. As we’re finally rounding a block from home, I’m wondering how she hasn’t gone horse, I”m wondering if I walked away, what would happen, and I’m wondering why. Why me, why today, why the hell is she so fired up? Why not is probably the answer.

How is it that they can be so sweet and so adorable and then just so awful a second later? It’s a dumb question because we all wonder the same thing but I am certain those moments are taking years off my life. There was an article in some parenting magazine the school passed out to us about discipline. It talked about the importance of remaining calm, of behaving how you want your kids to behave, it suggested you visualize yourself and how you want to be seen acting in those moments before you unleash on a kid.

I couldn’t tell if I liked this article or if I wanted to set it on fire, if the author had ever birthed and then raised a kid. But instead, in my moment today, I instead visualized myself just walking away and having a quiet cup of coffee.

Is abandonment the visualization they had in mind when writing that piece?

Nursing Moms & The President

Due to the apt description my friend used, the “holidaze”, I don’t have much time to blog lately but I would be remiss to not applaud the President’s directive to federal workers – to draft “appropriate workplace accommodations for nursing mothers.”

I’ll spare you all my comments on how it’s almost 2011 and yet we have to uproariously cheer for such a measure, but well, we already know this country is slow and antiquated with policies geared towards helping working mothers from pregnancy and beyond. So please, go forth and read how yet another example of his health care bill is set to help women.

With that, happy holidays.  I hope the kiddos are healthy and your celebrations are drama free……

Of Lice and Ladies

This is a disturbing and cautionary tale….a tale about how nasty things happen to clean (though not necessarily organized) people. A tale so traumatizing that it’s taken me  months to work up the energy to re-live it and want to share it…..

All those die-hard fans of mine know that one of my core parenting beliefs is this – if you think it won’t happen to you – think again, cause it will and probably worse than you imagined.

When it comes to today’s topic, lice, I orbited that happy planet where if I put DD1s coat in the dryer and changed her clothes and kept her hair dirty (some say lice don’t like dirty hair), then it wouldn’t happen to us. I didn’t need to check her head, I just needed to follow a few steps during the school year.

Ahh…to be young and naive again……

We survived three years of preschool where lice infested classmates, the classroom, the school, but somehow we came away unscathed. I should have known our number was up. So fast forward to the careless summer, a time where mornings are relaxing, schedules are flexible and Pepco struggles to keep our electricity on every time it rains. Ain’t life grand?

DD1 finished a week of summer camp and three days later, she started itching her head. See, in preschool, there are warnings…notes come home, moms whisper in hushed tones about who has lice, you stare at those kids for evidence that they are dirty, their homes are dirty, their parents slobs, you toss your kid’s coat in the dryer at the end of the day, and all is well. But in random summer camps, there is no warning, there are no notes, no hushed tones in the playground, it’s just you against beast. A nasty, horrible fight.

So DD1 starts itching her head like a madwoman and I tell her to put some baby powder on her neck, it must be prickly heat.

Solid parenting 101 over here, right?

We head off to the beach, spend a week at my mom’s house (whoops….sorry mom) and DD1 keeps on itching. My mom was a school nurse for years, she begins to suspect “he who shall not be named”, so we “check” and just see what clearly MUST BE specs of sand. My kid doesn’t have lice! WE aren’t dirty, she’s cute, she’s clean, she’s well taken care of, she doesn’t live in squalor, she’s vacationing on the beach – she must be HOT. It is the hottest summer on record, right?

Another week goes by. I start getting frustrated,  yes, with a four-year-old, and I bark at her to stop itching because she’s making her “prickly heat” worse.

Oh yes, yes I did that. My mom checked, I figured, she’d know what to look for, and besides, no one sent an email around from camp alerting us about any lice infestations. Denial is the first sign, friends.

Some more time goes by…..isn’t that wonderful? We are a veritable breeding ground at this point…..memos are being sent to other louse…come one, come all, these people are IDIOTS and this head of hair is thick and warm and cozy……and this poor kid keeps getting barked at by her good-for-nothing mother about  her prickly heat! Hot headed and idiots…these lice are thinking…….just the kind of place we like to nest….

Then one evening, I decide that the itching has seriously gone on too long, is it time to see a dermatologist, I wonder, and what do I see, but bugs, HOPPING, through her hair, practically doing a jig.

Apparently it’s not time to see a doctor but instead time to buy some RID.

The rest of this tale is not funny or really even that interesting….it just involves an absurd amount of washing, washing and more washing, hair combing through, a hefty bill to the lice lady (yes, there are people out there whose livelihoods it is to remove all lice and louse and nits from heads), more washing and more hair combing through. My kid will now wear her hair up in pig tails, something she’d never agreed to before, all I have to do is make the threat “Do you want those bugs to come back?”

And for anyone paying attention and living in fear, yes, we all had it, me, my husband, the baby, and DD1 – all four of us. When you give lice a few weeks, turns out they know how to spread.

The moral in this classic tale – denial is a bad bad thing and just creates more work. I now orbit reality, not that happy planet of denial. I operate defensively, I assume at least one kid in her class has lice at all times, I don’t let her put her coat on a hook (never in a million years), she’s not allowed to play dress-up at school (sure, mock me, but you can come do my laundry next time it happens – we have plenty of dress up at home), she’s never allowed to get on another kid’s bed at playdates, I comb her hair through 2x a day with the licemeister comb and keep her hair up or tied back every day at school.

The thing about lice is this, it doesn’t cause illness, it is almost impossible to see (until you are a complete idiot like me and have bugs hopping happily around), and you can live in your house thinking things are peachy keen for quite a while – so it’s just a hassle. It’s a gross, nasty hassle and lice are definitely not pro-environment given the volume of laundry they create and trash bags of bagged stuffed animals they waste.

Speaking off, stuffed animals could be an entirely different entry, take a look around your house…see all those friendly soft critters, every single one of them is a lice breeding ground….and you don’t realize how many you have until your kid has lice.

So in the end, what did I learn? No matter how clean you are, how nice your house is, lice is an equal opportunity offender and never harbor feelings of ill will towards parents of kids who bring lice to school or your house….cause you never know when you’re going to be walking in those miserable shoes………oh….and comb through the kids hair 2x a day.

Feeling itchy yet?

Short-Cut Mom

A friend came over for dinner last night with her two boys. When she came in, DD1 and myself had christmas cookies made and ready to be decorated by the kids. It seemed like an activity that would create an enormous mess but would be fun for them and allow us to have at least one uninterrupted conversation and take a few sips of wine. Her reaction upon seeing the cookies was this: “You are SUCH a good mom!”

Umm….not such much, I thought. Now, maybe the bar is set low, maybe I give-off more of an Oscar the Grouch style of parenting vibe, or maybe she mistakenly assumed this was a start-from-scratch kind of Betty Crocker project made with love and patience.

Think again friends.

On the motherhood style continuum, I’m probably somewhere between Oscar (though lately I’m thinking I look more like Rudolph’s nemesis, the Abominal Snowman) and the parents in Home Alone….where they looked organized and superb on the surface with all their planning and fabulous vacation, but still forgot the kid at home.

In truth, the cookies came from a box kit from Trader Joes – all we had to do was add butter and eggs, mix, then bake. The kit even included icing, sprinkles and the cookie cutters.  Upon further reflection, I should’ve bought  four more of those kits, who cares that the end product really isn’t that good. Further, we’d made the cookies days ago but hadn’t yet had the time to finish the project – the icing and decorating part- so it all just worked out for our playdate.

Nothing screams amazing mom like 3 day old cookies from a box kit with pre-made icing, right?

Her comment really struck me because people are so quick to exclaim “You’re such a good mom!” when they perceive you’ve done a work intensive project with your kids. I don’t do those. Who has the time? Especially when you have more than one kid, if the younger one is still baby-ish – who has time to measure flour, sugar, make sure you have vanilla and any other ingredients, let alone find the right cookie cutters, make sure your sprinkle supply is well stocked – it just doesn’t happen. Not chez moi anyway. First of all, I’m pretty sure I’m one trip to Target away from being completely banned from entering. DD2 refuses to sit in the cart and tends to prefer to use her arm as a destructive device, that would be pulling all items off  low shelves as we scramble through the store, my list lost somewhere between the parking lot and front door.

Which means, I’m a half-stocked kinda gal – in my head I have everything I need for a recipe – and in reality I’m texting neighbors desperately at 6pm to see if they have lemons and bell peppers, promising to replenish their supplies days later (if I don’t forget it when I’m in the store and just think I’ve picked it up for them in my head. Again,  common problem).

This is when it dawned on me – I am a short-cut mom. I love doing projects with my kids but the start from scratch to finish process just isn’t realistic for me. I don’t feel bad about it – it is what it is. You will never find me icing cupcakes at 2am. I’d rather buy the pre-made icing if I know I won’t have time to make it from scratch. A gal needs her beauty rest, especially this delicate flower.  I love doing arts and crafts projects with my girls but mainly when it comes from Michaels in a package with all the supplies you need and a simple picture of  instructions to follow-along for the 5-year-old in the house. I don’t read instructions. I follow pictures though.

So – I am a short-cut mom. Find me a box kit, I don’t really care how much more it costs than ingredients from scratch, and I’m all over it. I ain’t afraid to admit it. And in case you were paying attention, my friend and I did not have one uninterrupted conversation last night. In fact, we didn’t have one full conversation about anything.  I’m thinking short-cut motherhood enables half-conversations..which is still better than no conversations.

The “Good” Baby

There’s a belief out there that has bothered me for years, and reading a friend’s blog today, reminded me again how much it bothers me. This idea of the “good” baby. If you’ve had a baby (and – whimper – today is my baby’s second birthday. how is that possible???), then you probably have heard: “She is such a good baby.”

WTF does that mean?!?!?!! Have you ever found yourself wondering this? Are there bad, evil babies that pour battery acid into other babies bottles, laughing maniacally? My sisters like to joke that my babies used to sit there and judge them….but that doesn’t count as a bad baby. That’s just hilarious-expression on her face baby. So where is this bad baby that makes my baby seem so good?

Are babies “good” when they are quiet and cute and “bad” when they scream and are stinky? Is that what it is? Seriously – who has a bad baby? And is it all just about how much they cry? Cause I’m of the belief that babies who cry a bunch aren’t getting their needs met by their parents, not that they are “bad.”

So wait – I am getting a stroke of sheer brilliance here – what people should really say is “Wow, this baby is so quiet, you are such GREAT PARENTS.”

I mean – isn’t that what this idea is all about? This baby isn’t bothering me, so this baby is good. This baby is bothering me, so this baby is bad, these parents must have such hard work at home because of this “bad” baby. I move to strike this whole idea of good and bad babies from our heads. 

And speaking of babies, why is mine 2 already? Why?