Only recently have I begun to lie about my age.  I’m perfectly willing to concede that I’m 35.  But when I reach the end of a Boden product review entry and am asked to categorize my age I just can’t bring myself to check the 35-44 box.  I always check the 25-34 box.  Thirty-five is one thing.  But I’m not yet ready to reconcile myself to the fact that I’m part of an age category that includes 44-year-olds.  I’m pretty sure that it’s okay for me to avoid unpleasantries about my age, though, because I am not the House Minority Leader.

Yesterday, as she announced that she intends to keep her current post as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi grew offended when NBC reporter Luke Russert asked her about whether that decision damaged the Democratic party by preventing younger leadership from taking the reins.  As soon as the question was out of his mouth the congregation of women standing behind Pelosi cried foul.  ”Age discrimination!” they shouted.  Russert (bully for him) held his ground, though, repeating the question and pressing for an answer.  Pelosi then remarked. “Let’s for a moment honor it as a legitimate question, although it’s quite offensive. You don’t realize that, I guess.”

Now I know the old saying goes that a lady never reveals her age,* but I’m here to say that I think that women (at least women in public service) shouldn’t get a pass on this issue any more.  Once upon a time there was a much thicker glass ceiling than there is today.  Women didn’t serve in houses of Congress, on boards of directors, or on the United States Supreme Court.  Slowly, though, we’ve chipped away at that glass and today women fill all sorts of leadership roles.  This progress is both wonderful and warranted.  But just as women’s merits should be held in as much esteem as men’s, so should our accountability be challenged as persistently.

By asserting that Russert’s question was offensive Pelosi tried to give herself a pass, to move on without answering it.  It sort of pains me to say it, but no man would have done that.  The ages of Reagan and McCain were widely discussed during their presidential administrations and campaigns.  I wasn’t following politics very closely in the early ’80s, but I followed the 2008 presidential race energetically and never once did I see McCain avoid a question about his age.  He consistently responded that he was in excellent physical and mental health, and that his age had provided him a full set of life experiences that would guide his leadership of the country.  These are fair questions in the political arena, and if women want to go toe-to-toe with men in elected office we can’t ask for special treatment on certain topics.  Part of shedding the sexist limitations of our nation’s past is also shedding some of the chivalrous protections that went along with it.  Russert’s question was a legitimate one, even if women of Pelosi’s generation don’t like to think so.

In retrospect what surprised me most about Pelosi’s initial “How dare you!” response was that once she got past it and gave a real answer, it was a good one.  She talked about not having entered Congress until much later in life than her male counterparts and her resulting awareness of the need to elect young women to the House.  She talked about her efforts to shepherd younger representatives into positions of leadership.  She made it clear that her maintenance of her current role is in no way detrimental to the grooming of younger leadership.  (Whether or not you agree with that is a different question altogether.  My point here is that she had an eloquent answer.)

In a way I think Mrs. Pelosi weakened herself with her knee-jerk rejection of Russert’s question.  She should have embraced it.  In doing so she would have conveyed confidence in her tenure and her experience.  Her eventual answer about working to facilitate younger leadership would have rung true.  And the headlines following the press conference would have focused more on her leadership and less on her age.

No elder statesman has ever apologized for his age.  No elder stateswoman should either.

————-

*To this day the age of cosmetics legend Mary Kay Ash is only an estimate.

Today is IEP’s last day of freedom.

I make it sound so foreboding, don’t I?  I don’t mean to.  Honestly, I shouldn’t.  The thing that awaits him tomorrow?  It’s his first day of school, which, when you get right down to it is one of the most wonderful things that will ever happen to him.  It will open the doors to learning and friendships and adventures of all stripes.  Truly, I am excited for him.  He is excited.  We are all excited.

With each rite of passage, though, we leave something behind.  In this case it’s the very last vestige of his babyhood, and that (at least for me) is not without some sadness.  No longer will he play in his pajamas while I get ready for work.  No longer will he get to look at Nanny when she arrives and proclaim, “I want to go to the Science Center today,” (as he did just yesterday).  And most of all, no longer will each day be his blank slate to fill with nearly anything of his choosing.  It is the end of something.

It is also the beginning of something.  Starting school is a happy occasion.  It is also a privilege.  But there will likely come a day when it will be a chore; when IEP will long to stay home in his pajamas doing the 7th grade equivalent of spending the morning playing with his toy trains.  When that day does come I will think back on this time in his life, on how unencumbered it was by responsibility or obligation.  And perhaps there will be a day here and there when I indulge him.  Perhaps there will be a day here and there when I try to recreate for him the joys and freedoms of being three years old.

This morning was like most others.  There was breakfast in the sunroom.  There was a long walk with the boys in the double jogger and the dogs on either side.  There was the instruction that it is IEP’s “very important job” to make sure that his bed is made and that he is dressed before Nanny gets here.  It’s a routine we’ve been practicing for weeks in preparation for this very moment.  We are ready.  But even though we’re ready – or more adroitly, even though he is ready – I am not entirely ready.  That, though, is the tricky, slippery, unwieldy thing about raising kids.  They continue growing up whether we’re ready or not.  I’m still a relatively green parent, but I’d be willing to wager that I’ll never be entirely ready, and that each new phase will come accompanied by a silent internal chorus of, “But I’m not ready yet!”  I will sing the chorus to myself over and over and over, and it won’t change a thing.

IEP hasn’t been a baby for some time now.  Starting tomorrow I won’t be able to fool even myself anymore.

“Please tell me about I am a little baby.”

Translation, “Please can we talk about when I was a baby.”

It’s one of IEP’s favorite requests these days.  Now that he has a baby brother and a sense of how different babies are from kids, he finds it really interesting to hear about all the things he did when he was a baby.  Partly because I enjoy the trip down memory lane, and partly because I think it’s good for his library of memories, I indulge him.  Also, I was the same way as a kid.  I loved hearing about myself as a tiny tot.

The other thing I loved being told about?  The olden days.  ”Mom, tell us about the olden days!” my sister and I would plead.  This meant, essentially, “Tell us about growing up in a small town in the 1950s so that we can marvel at how arcane life was back then.”  And, probably for the same reasons, she also indulged us.

She told us how her family’s home phone number was only four digits long, and her grandmother’s was only two digits.  She told us that when her mother was pregnant with her and ready to deliver she just got up and walked across the street to the hospital.  She told us about writing counter checks at the Tastee Freeze after school and dragging Main Street on weekend nights in high school.  And she told us about when she worked as a teller at the family’s bank one summer in college a bird got into the building and she was the only one able to shoot it down. …  No answering machines.  No microwaves.  No VCRs.  No cassettes or CDs.  No car phones.

I remember thinking, “Whew.  I’m glad that I’m growing up in the 80s when things are so advanced.  This way my kids won’t think I grew up in the dark ages.”  Clearly 13-year-old Gale had no idea what was coming.

It amazes me to think about this sometimes – how vastly different life is today with the technological advances of the past 20 years.  My children will never know life without cell phones.  Further, they will never no life without iPhones.  They will never know life without the internet and all that entails – e-mail, social networking, instant answers to random questions, etc.  They will never replace a scratched CD.  They will never go to Blockbuster to rent a movie.  They will never know what it is to rewind a tape.

One of these days my kids will be old enough to realize that things were not like this when I was a kid.  They’re going to ask me to tell them about the olden days.  They may not call it that, but that’s what they will mean.  I imagine that probably within the next five years, and certainly within the next 10, I will have to answer some collection of the following questions.

1. How did you look up movie times? (In the newspaper.  You only threw them out once a week.)
2. How did you record a show?  (You scrambled to find a blank VHS tape, or something you didn’t care about taping over.)
3. You didn’t have Tivo?  (No.)
4. What did you do if you missed something on TV?  (You just missed it.)
5. What did you do during commercials?  (We watched them.)
6. How did you make plans with your friends?  (You called their house.)
7. What did you do if they weren’t home?  (You left a message with someone else at the house.)
8. How did you do research for school papers?  (Went to the library or used an encyclopedia.)
9. What’s an encyclopedia?  (It’s what Wikipedia would be if it were printed out into about 30 books.)
10. How did you listen to music?  (We made mix tapes.)
11. How did you order things?  (You called a catalog.)

It’s amusing to think about, but I also puzzle over the significance of my life having bridged the gap between the pre- and post-internet worlds.  I think it must be akin to being born in 1890 and Ford Motor Company launching the Model T when you were 18 years old.  I think the change is that seismic.

My kids are absolutely going to think I grew up in the dark ages.  And by today’s standards, they will be right.  But in some ways, I look  forward to their jaws dropping when I tell them that you used to have to look up directions before you left the house, and car phones were mounted to your dashboard.  I think it will be good for them to understand a different way of life, if only academically.

But also, I think I will enjoy the trip down memory lane.  It’s not that I think the older ways were better.  (Life with the internet is far superior to life without it in many ways.)  But I like thinking back on the simplicity of childhood.  Yes, the simplicity of childhood is amplified by the simplicity of less technology.  But life for a child is usually simpler than life for an adult in any era.  As adults we tend to complicate things unnecessarily.  Stopping to remember that things can almost always be simpler is a good exercise for all of us.

I’m here to level with you.

As I’ve mentioned recently, my lovely, smiling, cooing, and altogether adorable second son SSP has one fault.  (I’m sure there will be many more in the future, but for the moment it’s just the one.)  He isn’t sleeping through the night.  That alone isn’t such a big deal.  He’s only four months old and lots of babies don’t sleep through the night at his age.  However, he has taken it a step further.  Lately he has been waking up to eat twice most nights.  Sometimes he wakes three times.  If we get through a night with only one feeding I count it a huge victory.  And since maternity leave is a dim and distant memory (sigh), I am no longer able to get my head back above water with an afternoon nap.

This means that I am a wee bit exhausted lately.  (My mother lovingly told me over the weekend, “I’ve never seen you so tired, my dear.”  Ummm, thanks, Mom…)  So, in the interest of my own sanity and that of my family, I’m going to dial it back around here to two posts a week for a while.  You will find my fresh, witty, and insightful thoughts (I’ve decided that anyone who is this tired is entitled to a bit of self-flatttery) here on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next couple of months.  And when SSP starts sleeping through the night and I start feeling like a normal human again, I will return to my standard MWF posting.

So, check back tomorrow for a new post.  Until then, have a wonderful Monday and a wonderful week.

I have a friend who has the kind of hair that every girl envies.  It is fine, but thick.  It is the perfect shade of blonde.  It is well-behaved and straight.  It falls with conviction down to the middle of her back.  It swings when she walks and bounces when she runs.  If she weren’t one of the nicest people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, I might hate her for it.

I do not have that kind of hair.  My hair is not especially thick; perhaps a bit thinner than average.  It is naturally a bit wavy, depending on the humidity, but I can’t really rely on it ever to do the same thing twice.  My hair and I get along the best when I keep it trimmed just above my shoulders, and I pull it back into a low, parted ponytail quite often.

My friend – the nice one, with the killer hair – isn’t just nice.  She’s better than that.  She is good, and kind, and generous.  Every few years she goes into a salon, sweeps her hair back into an elastic, and instructs the stylist to cut 10 or 12 inches of perfect hair off of her head.  She places it in a plastic baggy and donates it.  Every time she does it I’m inspired.

Because my hair isn’t particularly suited to the half-way-down-your-back look, I’ve never let it get long enough to donate.  (I am a big fan of charity, but also a big fan of personal grooming.)  But with this most recent pregnancy, I had a game plan in place.

When I was pregnant with IEP I discovered that something about pregnancy hormones causes my hair to roughly double in thickness over the course of nine months.  Instead of shedding dozens and dozens of hairs every time I shampoo I lose only four or five individual hairs.  By the end of a pregnancy I have hair that is legitimately enviable.  The flip side to this coin, though, is that a few weeks after delivery karmic justice rears its ugly head and all of the hair that didn’t shed out during the pregnancy exits stage left over the course of about 10 days.  It breaks my heart.

So this time around I decided to trade my heartbreak in for something a little happier.

More than a year ago, before SSP was even in the works, I started growing my shoulder-length locks out.  By the time SSP was born I had enough hair to follow my super nice and super generous friend’s incredible example.  (That photo up top was taken when SSP was two weeks old.)

And last week I walked into my salon looking like this:

Cold feet struck me when I sat down in the chair at the salon.  My stylist gave me a much needed pep talk (“Gale, you have hair and some kid out there doesn’t.”), and then when I gave her the final go-ahead she started snipping.  About an hour later, she stopped.

I walked out looking like this:

Most of my charitable acts are financial donations to good causes, casseroles made for the church food pantry, and time spent volunteering at the local children’s hospital.  But something about this felt different – both bigger and smaller.  I gave, quite literally, a piece of myself.  It wasn’t a ton of hair and will certainly have to be combined with other donations to make a single wig, but, like the widow’s mite, I gave all of what I had, and it was a fundamentally different experience.   It feels quite different to give all that you can, rather than to make a token offering that only represents further generosity that wasn’t extended.

I am amazed by the people like my friend who give this incredible gift over and over.  I wish I had the kind of hair that I could grow out and donate repeatedly, but am thankful that I had the opportunity to do it this once.  It feels good to lay all that you have out on the table.  I should do it more often.

I’m adding a new set of initials to the lexicon around here.

SSP was born on Friday morning weighing exactly seven pounds and measuring exactly 20 inches.  He looks just like his brother did as a newborn, and is every bit as sweet.  Delivery was smooth and largely uneventful.  The only drama of the whole affair was the Cardinals’ stunning Game 6 victory as I labored Thursday night.  We came home yesterday, all happy and healthy, and are enjoying the adjustment to a family of four.

I’m not quite sure what my presence in this space will be like in the coming few months.  I will certainly be taking a hiatus from thrice-weekly posting, and from my usual menu of thought-provoking topics.  I’m considering just posting photos – “Scenes from Maternity Leave” or similar – but haven’t really settled on any one approach yet.  Stay tuned and I will let you know once I’ve figured it out.

Thanks for all of your support and good wishes over these past many months of pregnancy.  It is such a blessing to finally have SSP in our family.

I was intrigued by Gretchen Rubin’s most recent tip for improving her level of happiness.  She advocates for getting up earlier.  She finds that waking up before the rest of her family provides her with quiet productive time that would otherwise escape her daily routine.  She comments, “I spend the hour from 6:00 to 7:00 working at my desk, and I love the light, and the quiet, and the sense of focus and freedom from interruption that I have during that hour. I wish I could go for a walk, too, but so far the desire to spend the time at my desk has triumphed.”

As a morning person myself I can relate to her approach, but I was disappointed she didn’t explore the roots of why this tactic is so beneficial to her.  She explains what she finds valuable about it, but stops short of further exploration.

If I were to explore this topic more thoroughly I would encourage people to determine what is missing from their lives.  For a busy mother of two young children an hour of peace and quiet at the start of the day may be priceless.  But for a single person who works from home more hours of quiet alone time may be the last thing they need.  Perhaps this person would be better served by a standing coffee or lunch date with a friend.  We all have different shortcomings in our lives, different holes that need filling.  Rubin has successfully identified her own hole – a quiet time of freedom and productivity – but I think she does her readers a disservice to assume that their holes are comparable.  The point here is to add back to your life something that is missing and find a way to incorporate it.

What is missing from my life?  Lately, sleep, but that’s not going to change any time soon.  As I stare down my upcoming maternity leave I anticipate that adult social interaction will be a shortcoming for the next few months, and that is a gap I’ll need to mindfully fill.  Perhaps for you it’s the opportunity to actually sit down to a meal.  Perhaps it’s time to read.  Perhaps it’s a break in the middle of your work day to clear your head and refresh yourself.  No two of us are exactly alike.  We have to make room for our differences and improve our happiness accordingly.

Little by little it’s all becoming quite real.  IEP has moved out of the nursery and into his good-boy room.  My FMLA paperwork has been filled out and will be submitted to HR this week.  Last week Nanny laundered all of our newborn and 0-3 month baby clothes.  And over the weekend I took IEP’s vast collection of 2T polo shirts out of the nursery closet and hung his former collection of newborn footed sleepers on tiny hangers.  Tiny hats, socks, and onesies fill the dresser.  Newborn diapers will be ordered this week.

This baby is coming.

People ask me if I’m ready.  The nice thing about having a second boy, and a second November baby is that from a logistical perspective, I’ve been ready for three years.  We have all the gear, all the clothes, and all kinds of knowledge we didn’t have the first time around.  This should be a piece of cake, right? …  I’m not so sure.

I have no experience in parenting two children.  I have never tried to care for a newborn while also caring for a toddler.  We have never been a family of four.  And this adventure, much like the first one, will be a case study in lessons learned the hard way.  For that is the only way to figure these things out.

And so I look at the logistical end of things.  I am pre-registered at the hospital.  IEP’s birthday party is planned and booked.  Christmas shopping is about 85% complete.  We have made arrangements for Nanny to be on call for IEP should I go into labor in the middle of the night.  I still need to stock my freezer with my preferred post-partum menu of homemade soups, and stock up on batteries for all of the bouncy seats, swings, white noise machines and other baby paraphernalia.  But beyond that, I’m ready.

And beyond that, I’m ready.  I’m ready to meet this little guy.  I’m ready to see what IEP is like as a big brother.  I’m ready for the ligament pain in my spine to dissipate.  I’m ready to roll over in bed without having to wake up and adjust multiple pillows each time.  I’m ready walk away from my job for a few months and indulge my mind in the mental vacation its been craving for weeks now.  And I’m ready to burp and swaddle and snuggle the newest love of my life; to smell that new baby smell; to hear the sweet little grunts that are only made by a nursing baby; and to watch my life fill up again beyond anything I ever could have imagined.

This baby is coming whether I’m ready or not.  Lucky for both of us, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

Several weeks ago, in an effort to begin preparing IEP for big brotherhood and to keep him excited about being a little boy after the baby arrives on the scene, I started talking to him periodically about all the things that ”big boys” get to do that babies can’t do.  (Think: go down slides, eat ice cream, play with trains, tickle Daddy, go to gymnastics class, etc.).  However, after months and months of telling him after various outings and adventures that he behaved well and was a good boy, when I started regaling him with the glories of being a big boy he corrected me.  “No, no, Mommy.  No big boy.  IEP good boy!”  (Note: he doesn’t actually refer to himself by his initials…)  And so it was in that vein that this past weekend’s major project was not moving IEP into his Big Boy Room, but rather into his Good Boy Room.

The process was bigger than GAP and I anticipated at the outset and ended up absorbing the entire holiday weekend.  Tasks included:  Select and purchase furniture.  Select and purchase bedding.  Select and purchase family meal from KFC.  Move all adult office furniture out of heretofore home office and into heretofore guest bedroom.  Reroute all computer, phone, and internet cables.  Realize cell phone is missing.  Vacuum many dust bunnies.  Select and purchase wall paint.  Paint bedroom walls.  Go out to breakfast because the house is completely devoid of any basic provisions.  Unsuccessfully shop for draperies.  Successfully shop for drapery hardware.  Select and purchase two file cabinets.  Drive to two different warehouses to collect said file cabinets.  Realize cell phone was left at first furniture store two days prior.  And on, and on, and on.  It was an incredible drain.

Nevertheless, the weekend contained some significant bright spots.  I always enjoy weekends at home with my boys, but weekends like this one remind me of how much I appreciate them.  I appreciate that even in exhausting and stressful circumstances GAP and I navigate life together without snapping or fighting.  I appreciate that IEP is a trooper, happy to tag along on errands and (for the most part) keep himself occupied and out of trouble.  And somehow, it is during trying times as often as happy ones that I recognize how truly thankful I am for the life that I have.

As for the Good Boy Room project itself, we got it all done.  The office was successfully relocated.  The new bedroom furniture will be delivered tomorrow.  The walls are painted.  The bedding is washed.  And IEP has slept on his Good Boy Bed every night since Saturday (we were able to bring the mattress home without the rest of the set).  Drapes have been ordered.  I’m still looking for a rug, but other than that we’re very close.  I’ve been amazed and impressed with how easily my baby has handled this big change, and I find myself quite proud of the little boy he’s become.  Each night when I tuck him in he goes down with a smile and I’m sometimes taken aback at how much he simply isn’t a baby anymore.

As for babies, IEP’s move into the Good Boy Room means that the nursery is once again vacant.  And somehow – as if being seven months pregnant weren’t tangible enough – seeing that room sit empty has made it quite real to me that we have another baby on the way.  I am easily transported to the weeks leading up to IEP’s birth, when the nursery was complete but the pregnancy wasn’t.  Many evenings I would walk in, sit in the glider, and stare at the space that had been so carefully filled with the stuff of a baby, but was yet so empty for lack of an actual tiny person.  I thought to myself, “There’s going to be a baby living in here soon.”  But no matter how many times I tried to envision it I really had precious little conception of what it would be like when that statement came true.  Now, with our second go around, I make the same statement in my head with much more knowledge of what the future holds.  What I don’t know, though, is who this baby is.  Is he a good sleeper and a good eater?  Will he nurse quickly like his brother or slowly?  Does he like to be swaddled?  Are the hours from 5:00pm to 7:00pm hard for him?  Much like meeting any new person for the first time I know both much and little of what to expect.

What I know for now, though, is that IEP is a Good Boy, with a Good Boy Bed, in a Good Boy Room.  For the past nearly-three years he has been as good a boy as I could ever have dreamt of.  I can’t imagine loving anything else as I much as I love him.  But then again, before he was born I never could have imagined loving him this much either.

My life is stuffed with blessings.

30 weeks down.  10 to go.

75% there.

Glass three-quarters full.

Six months and three weeks along.

Two and a half months left.

All of those things are true about my pregnancy today.  But only one of them makes me feel like I’m really getting closer to my due date.  I’ve been pregnant for 30 weeks.  I have only ten weeks left.  That feels like an accomplishment.  Every other version of the same math leaves me feeling as though the end is still not in sight.  So I’m focusing on the first countdown method, because I find myself needing a little pick-me-up in the attitude department.

I should be honest here.  Pregnancy is pretty easy on me.  Other than third trimester heartburn (which mercifully hasn’t set in yet), I get virtually none of the miserable side effects that often come with pregnancy.  I am keeping up with my usual routine, and while I’ve had to dial back the intensity level of a few things, for the most part I feel pretty normal.  So I feel a bit selfish admitting that I’m counting down the weeks to delivery, because I know I could have it a lot worse.  Nevertheless, I miss feeling like my old self.

Wishing these last few weeks away could be dangerous, though.  These are IEP’s last weeks of being an only child.  They are my last weeks of having only one little boy who needs me.  My last weeks of being able to devote myself entirely to him.  GAP’s and my last weeks of outnumbering our children.  Whether or not we are ready, big changes are coming and I would be remiss not to stop and cherish the life that we have had and loved for the past nearly-three years.

I’ve remarked to GAP many times recently that I never imagined that parenthood would be this much fun.  I thought I would enjoy it, but I have been surprised and delighted at how truly fun it is.  I believe that adding to our family will only add to that level of fun.  I will find joy in watching IEP take up the mantle of brotherhood.  I will get to be tickled all over again with the many milestones of the first couple of years.  And I will be able to look around at my life, never having envisioned myself as the mother of two boys, and recognize how much I love it and how well it suits me.

However, there is much about my life as it is that I love.  Aspects of that life are going to end, and I’m struggling with that.  From this vantage point I can easily see what I will lose when our second son is born this fall.  But I can’t yet see all that I will gain.  So I am left to take it on faith, to trust, and to believe, that what I give up will be outweighed by what I gain.  After all, it was because we are so head over heels in love with IEP that we wanted to have another child.  I know it will be hard for a while.  I know we will be in over our heads.  I know that there will be stress and hormones and tears.  But I also know that the moment my second little boy is born I won’t ever again be able to imagine my life without him.