Taking A Hit For the Home Team

It hurts to get up.

It hurts to sit.

It hurts to lie down.

And don't get me starting on walking.

Late Blooming Mom is recovering from hernia surgery, and planning to make the kids feel guilty about it some day.

It's their fault, it really is, no kidding.

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It Should Be Called "Petrie Dish," Not Preschool

I am on cold #3 since December.

They bring them home and despite all my handwashing, I get them.

But somehow, they get over them faster than I do.

This time, I didn't even have a chance to get rid of cold #2, which was kinda sorta on the wane, when cold #3 took up residence in my sinsuses.

By some miracle, Late Blooming Dad has escaped them all. Maybe it's because I tend to be the one wiping their noses with Kleenex. Or maybe he just has a better immune system. All I know is, I am ready for cold season to be done ... and hoping that the rest of Year 2 of preschool is less of a human lab experiment in just how many things a mom can catch from her kids than it has been so far.

Despite the recession, I clearly should have bought stock in the makers of pediatric Robitussin and Benadryl.

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Mammograms For Mommies

I'm heaving a sigh of relief today.

Had my yearly mammogram.

Passed.

I've had several of these since becoming a Late Blooming Mom, and even a few before that. Now it's become a yearly ritual moms in my age bracket have to endure. It's nerve-wracking each time.

Today went great. So did last year. But about nine months after my kids were born, I had a "suspicious" mammogram, and soon after, underwent surgery to remove the "suspicious" "chunklet" -- that's what my surgeon called it -- of me.

Days went by before the results came in.

The results were just fine.

Waiting for them sucked.

Nobody wants the threat of cancer hanging over their head. Worse, though, is having to actually deal with it -- like family members of mine, and friends and colleagues and colleagues' wives, have done.

The good news about doing yearly mammogram screenings, according to the radiologist who reads my films (actually digital pictures these days), is that when they do catch stuff, they can catch it early. Early screening means early treatment, and that means a lot of women, will survive and thrive.

For late blooming moms, who've already lived long enough to realize the preciousness of our numbered days, early screening can mean being around to enjoy seeing those kids grow up and maybe even have families of their own.

It's the fear of not being around that grips us when we go in for those yearly screenings, the fear we try hard to push to the back of our minds, or to forget about, conveniently cultivating our amnesia about it.

So just at this moment I'm pausing to be grateful for passing my mammogram, and to wish that all my fellow late blooming moms get the same happy verdict this year, and for all their mammogram years to come.

I send good thoughts to all those who are dealing with the consequences of breast cancer, wishing successful treatment and strength while undergoing it. I'm picturing you in the warm embrace of those children who came into your life later than most, and whose love you so richly deserve.

To imagine life without breast cancer -- and how you can help make that happen, visit Susan G. Komen For the Cure.

Why America Is Bad For Working Parents, Part II

I know I should be all patriotic and such on July 4th weekend.

And it's not that I don't love my country.

But sometimes it sucks for working parents, as I've said in this space before (see Why America Is Bad for Working Parents, on this blog a few months back.) The reason I'm revisiting it now is because of an article from July 5's New York Times about how the otherwise employee-friendly company GOOGLE has royally screwed up its corporate daycare (On Daycare, Google Makes A Rare Fumble).

GOOGLE used to offer its employees terrific on-site daycare, contracted out to a company that specialized in such things, for a reasonable though not bargain cost. But the waiting list became too long, and the geniuses at Google who think they do everything better than other companies, including entering businesses they know nothing about, dropped their daycare provider, built their own crazy-expensive facility, then passed on the cost to employees -- and cut that pesky waiting list way down -- by making tuition so pricey, only the richest employees can pay it. It costs more than most colleges' tuition to send a kid to Google's supposedly state-of-the-art daycare.

Now I know company-provided daycare centers are a perk in the U.S., not a right. But I also know American workers work damn hard -- often harder, for longer hours, than their non-U.S. counterparts. We get less vacation. We have less flex time, less comp time, less call-it-what-you-will, time to spend with our families when they need us (which sometimes happens during working day hours). So in my view, Google gets ZERO props for providing a daycare benefit the majority of its working parent employees can't afford and can't get their kids into.

I've endured my own backup childcare center loss at my company due to budget cuts, and been left scrambling many a time when the kids' preschool is closed but I have no vacation time left. It seems like working and having kids is made virtually incompatible by corporate America, and the American government is doing squat about it. Many companies -- and the government -- are sending a message. That message is, if you wanna raise kids, you can't work.

The problem is, raising kids costs money. I'm not necessarily talking private school money -- though the dearth of public preschools has pretty much made some years of private school education a must for most families who live in urban areas with high costs of living. Parents and kids also need access to healthcare plans, which are often only available through their jobs (just try and get decent health insurance on your own, I dare ya).

So this July 4th weekend, I'm mad as hell.

I count my blessings about living here everyday, but I also demand more from my country than the crappy deal working parents like me are getting. Many parents would give up part of their hard-earned salaries for a safe place to leave kids when school is closed -- or for flex time when they get sick, or to have the chance to pick them up from school an hour early occasionally and get quality time. But often, parents don't get that choice. Meanwhile, the heads of the big companies, who can afford nannies and exclusive private schools and the like for their kids, don't ever have to sweat it.

We all deserve better. (Think so too? Check out MomsRising.Org. At least what they're doing -- pushing for mandatory paid sick days and paid family leave in every state -- is a start.)

So happy fourth. Now let's go about the real business of being patriotic: forming a more perfect union, with flex time, more paid sick days, and paid family leave for all.

The Blessing Of A Little "Me" Time

When you're a late blooming mom, as much as you adore your kids and are thankful for having them, you also have moments when you long for those pre-kid days.

I miss those long, leisurely Saturdays, when my husband and I would sleep in, curl up reading the paper in bed (or do other things best done in bed ... you get the idea) ... and then go out for a hot breakfast somebody else had to cook and clean up. Then there were the those days when I'd bid the husband a happy "see ya later" and amble out the door for a bike ride up and down the beach, without worrying about when I'd be back. Saturday night, we could eat at a civilized, grown-up restaurant, and linger over dessert. We didn't have to wolf down our food to get out before the toddler restaurant clock went off because somebody couldn't stand to sit still another second, or leave half the food behind unfinished, let alone leave a hefty tip to clean up the mess we left. We could hit a late movie or hit a bookstore before it closed, go our separate ways inside it and browse to our heart's content, then reunite to drive home and snuggle back into bed.

Of course it's still possible to do some of those things, if we've got an available babysitter.

But the stuff I did all by myself -- like that leisurely bike ride -- has pretty much gone by the wayside. So have the hour-long catch-up phone calls to friends on the other coast; the afternoons spent shopping for clothes or shoes or kitchen equipment; the ambling Sunday morning visits to farmers' markets where I could bum around sampling the produce, and planning that night's dinner based on what looked good. Reading for pleasure has been reduced to ten minutes in bed before turning out the light. And God forbid I need to make time to get a haircut.

I think late blooming moms miss this kind of "me" time more than younger moms, because we had more of it, and we had it for more years. "Me" time is largely a relic of our pre-mom pasts. Damn, damn, damn, damn -- to paraphrase MY FAIR LADY lyricist Alan Jay Lerner -- we'd grown accustomed to its face. Or more precisely, to its place -- in our daily lives, and especially our weekends.

Of course, some late blooming moms manage to squeeze it in. It's easier if they have just one kid, so they can palm off the childcare on dad sometimes, or trade shifts. But when you've got two, this becomes a bit more problematic. And if they're both toddlers, like we have, then it's rare that dad -- or late blooming mom, for that matter -- is willing to take them on solo for more than a very short time or manageable excursion. (With two three year-olds, often even the grocery store is not a manageable excursion.)

But late this afternoon -- bliss! Dad decided, of his own accord, to take Thing 1 AND Thing 2 out for an hour or so, letting Late Blooming Mom do one of the things I do in my now precious slack time: blog. (Mind you, the temptation to do something useful with this time, like sort their books and hide those we can give up to a friend's baby, is great: just because I have slack time doesn't mean I stop being a Virgo. But I'm going to resist.) After blogging, I might just call a friend from college, back east ... take a bath ... read a book ... or luxuriate in the late afternoon sun with the cat on the bed.

Of course I have to keep an ear tuned to the phone, just in case Dad needs a rescue. He's taken the kids to what they refer to as The Pillow Store, known to the rest of us as Bed, Bath And Beyond, to buy new plastic cups for juice, since their old ones cracked ... and to observe the wonder that is the shopping cart escalator, which takes your shopping cart up or down alongside you on the escalator. (They could probably get away with charging parents of toddlers admission just to witness this mesmerizing phenomenon.)

But for the moment, it's oddly, beautifully quiet at home, a Zen-like bubble of peace and tranquility, and a reminder of those days when "me" time wasn't a luxury, but a regular part of the day.

Of course, I recognize that the reason I'm able to appreciate the quiet so much -- in a way I never could before -- is that later, the house is going to be filled with the sometimes happy, sometimes chaotic noise of family life: giggles and whines, cries of protest, bursts of laughter, and later, tiny snores.

But for now, here's to me, doing nothing but hanging out ... with me.

All Hail The 24-Hour Kid-less Vacation

So it was nearly our seventh wedding anniversary, and our fabulous part-time nanny volunteered to do an overnight shift on a weekend, giving us a 1:30 Saturday afternoon to 1:30 Sunday afternoon vacation without the kids.

We jumped at the chance.

What to do for such a small but much-needed respite?

First thing first: we booked a hotel room. With a king-sized bed.

Mostly for sentimental reasons -- but also because we could get a good rate -- we picked the Westin Pasadena (formerly Doubletree) hotel, home of the advertised "heavenly bed," a nice, classy place where we had our wedding reception. (Staying at an even moderately nice hotel in Los Angeles is waaaaay more than staying at a really nice one in Pasadena; as we discovered when we booked our wedding there, everything is more reasonable in the San Gabriel Valley). We also picked Pasadena because it's close -- just 29 miles from where we live -- but distinctly different. It feels more historic and old and atmospheric than most of Los Angeles, it has well-preserved nice buildings and shopping areas, tons of good restaurants, and in the winter, very livable temperatures and clear views of the mountains.

But the main attraction of the weekend was that we wouldn't have to mind the kids for 24 hours. Bliss.

Mind you, no sooner did we get to our destination than we began to talk about them ... and miss them ... and chat about how we'd have to take them to the amazing famous pastrami sandwich stand in which we were chowing down on our first stop (The Hat).

But as much as we missed them, it was heaven to wander around Vroman's Bookstore to our heart's content without having to wrangle them and reconstitute the children's book section after they would undoubtedly destroy it.

We strolled through the gigantic, two-story Whole Foods on South Arroyo, the chain's flagship store west of the rockies, munching on free samples and marveling at its in-store wine/tapas bar, seafood bar, pizza & sandwich & brunch restaurant, freshly baked donuts, etc. We took a late afternoon nap and read the New Yorker in bed. We waited half an hour to be seated at a dim sum temple in Arcadia (Din Tai Fung -- oh, juicy dumplings, I can taste you now), something we could NEVER do with impatient three-year-olds. We had a nightcap later in the hotel bar. With alcohol. And we enjoyed having our bed to ourselves, all night ....

... and into the morning. I'd love to say we slept in, but somehow our body clocks have been set to kid wake-up time. Nevertheless, we DID manage to stay in bed after waking up, for quite some time. Then we leisurely made our way through the entire Sunday New York Times (sooooo much more interesting than the LA Times, which has really sucked lately since they've been bleeding staff and cutting back sections). We window-shopped on Lake Avenue, popped into the Mexican bakery/taqueria Dona Rosa for a breakfast burrito and Mexican hot chocolate, did more window-shopping, and headed home, after a quick swing by the hotel to check out ... and nab the left-over dumplings from the hotel fridge where we'd stashed them the night before.

We came home to reports from aforementioned indispensable nanny that our kids were absolute angels with her. They were already napping.

An hour or so later, they were up and back in their old habits: apparently they'd saved an entire weekend's worth of whining up for our return home. But they were also cute and warm and soft and huggable. Though we had our own tired and cranky moments by the evening's end, it was nevertheless good to be home ... and good to have gone away. The kids did fine sans parents ... and we recharged our batteries as a couple, as parents, as individuals in need of sleep and time to do whatever the hell we wanted -- eat pastrami, drink booze without having to worry about getting up too early, read a newspaper in bed all morning.

After paying for the nanny, the meals out, and whatever else we bought, it wasn't a cheap 24 hours. But it was precious.

I can't wait to do it again.

In Praise Of The Nap: The Late Blooming Mom's Secret Weapon

In the last few weeks of my pregnancy, when I was more or less on bed rest, having ballooned to a size someone 5'2" should never be unless pregnant with twins, people told me to get all the sleep I could. As if I could bank sleep.

They also told me that when the babies came, I'd better learn to sleep when they slept.

I did.

What I didn't expect was to still be doing it three years later. But one of the facts of life when you're a late blooming mom is that you don't have the energy younger moms do. The only way to recharge your internal battery when you've been chasing around a toddler who acts more like the Energizer Bunny -- or in my case, two Energizer Bunnies -- is to get plenty of naps.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 nap for two hours a day, on average. Sometimes even a little more -- mostly because, on the weekend, their nap is the only break their dad and I get until bedtime, and we often hesitate to wake them because it means our rest is over too.

Confession: I napped even before I was a mom. Not so often as I do now, but more than once in a while. I always woke up refreshed mentally as well as physically. A friend of mine refers to his naps as "horizontal thinking." I agree.

And there's something downright civilized, in a European, better-quality-of-life kinda way, about a mid-day Siesta. The sun is still high in the sky, its light streaming across the bed in friendly warm stripes coming through the partly open shutters. The cat is already curled up in the corner of the bed, his very presence an invitation to do the same.

I always considered naps a thoroughly justifiable luxury to indulge in once in a while, a way to perk up on the job instead of a coffee break, or make a weekend feel more relaxing.

But now that I'm a mid-life mom, naps have gone from a nice break when I could squeeze them in to an absolute necessity. I'd be exhausted all the time, instead of most of it, without them.

Perhaps this is why I live in fear of the day my kids decide to give up the nap. I've heard tell of this phenomenon, and other parents have tried to reassure me it's not all bad: they claim their kids go to bed earlier at night once they drop the nap. Somehow I suspect mine will not evolve that way.

Sometime after giving birth, I had to go see a physical therapist to learn some exercises that would help re-strengthen some muscles that had split during the pregnancy, and only recently fused back together. The doctor, a mother of grown twins, told me that for the first four years of her sons' lives, she never exercised. "Your exercise now," she said, "is sleep."

So to all you other late blooming moms out there, you have a doctor's permission. Go, take a nap.