NYC Moms

First Comes Marriage

I can’t believe that my husband and I will be celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary next week-don’t worry mom and dad, that’s the Hebrew date-the English calendar is still the same.

Whether I celebrate the Hebrew, English, or both dates of my wedding anniversary, it is amazing how much I have grown in a person, wife, and mother since that day I stood under the Chuppah and got married. I had only known my husband for six months when we were married-you can close your mouth now-my parents had the same reaction. We only dated three months when I got engaged. Why would I feel like I knew who I was marrying after three short months of dating? What if it didn’t work out? I left those answers to a higher authority, and the rest was up to me and my husband. Let me explain.

I found myself at somewhat of a quest for my purpose in life when I was in my middle thirties. Little did I know that I would find the answer right in my very own backyard, so to speak. I was born Jewish, but did I really know what that meant? After all, I didn’t keep kosher, I didn’t go to Synagogue on Shabbos, and I certainly did not date Jewish men. However, when it came time to think about marriage, I never thought that my heritage would be the deal breaker. It took a very nice non-Jewish boyfriend and a visit to Israel to “bring home” how important Judaism was to me. When I mentioned this to my non-Jewish boyfriend he replied that it was just as equally important for him to have his religion-Catholicism-in his home. I learned so much from this person and realized that religion-Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Agnostic-should be agreed upon before marriage. And that is when we agreed to go on our own separate paths. It was very painful, but as they say, no pain, no gain. It was at that juncture that I took on finding my Jewish Orthodox husband.

Are You Jewish?

My four year old daughter is very curious. She will come right out and ask people on the subway, riding in elevators, physicians waiting rooms, and public bathrooms if they are Jewish. She has even gone up to a man in the grocery store and asked him why he wasn't wearing a Kippah (a thin, slightly-rounded skullcap traditionally worn at all times by observant Jewish men) on his head. Oy, vey!

She is very curious about this because she attends a Jewish preschool and learns about Jewish Holidays, Torah, and Halakah (Jewish religious law). This past week she learned about Thanksgiving and is still very curious as to why the Indians weren't Jewish.  

 

I Don't Want To Go Home

There are few things that I have noticed about my four year old and I'm just not ready for them yet. She has been expressing her feelings a lot and I am not sure how to respond.  It all stared when we came home from a visit to our family out of town. All of a sudden, my daughter used phrases like, "I don't like our house, it's yucky" or "I don't want to go home, I hate our house". The first thing I wanted to do was agree with her 100%. I held back for obvious reasons.

The truth is that we are renting a house that has white walls with cracked and peeling paint. Our floors squeak when we walk on them and our kitchen cabinets are outdated and worn. Our kitchen floor is white and stays clean for only about five minutes after it has been mopped. The light fixtures are generic and our basement has the ugliest water heater I've ever seen in full view. It's ugly. Will she always remember how ugly the basement was and will it affect her later in life?

These thoughts have been swirling in my mind over and over again. Is a four year old supposed to notice these things? I think that I have to realize that she may be just four years old, but she has a very sensitive and perceptive soul. She must have heard me make those same remarks every so often. I thought my husband was the only one that could hear the conversation. Wrong. My four year old going on fourteen got an ear full of my rantings. My daughter has a very sensitive side to here, just like me.  She is an extension of me and she feels what I feel.

Is This Seat Taken?

Last week I attended BlogHer in Chicago along with 1,500 women and a few men. Needless to say, I was surrounded by a few people that I did know and a lot of people I had never met before in my life. Sure, I had been following them on twitter for this reason and that, but when I met some of them in person, it was an entirely different party.

I think that BlogHer had sensed this issue of "I know you but I don't know you" at prior conferences and decided it would eliminate those uncomfortable moments of silence in us all. So, we all formed a gigantic circle and started a "speed dating" or what I'd like to call a "speed schmoozing" exercise. I had to introduce myself to a new person on my left side each time a voice called out "switch". I actually liked this exercise because I had to get out o f my comfort zone and give over my spiel in a little under 3 minutes. I had become an expert at handing out my business card and going from there.  As I was having a very topical conversation with a woman I had never met before, I got extremely insecure. What? Moms get insecure? Yes and yes. This is when I experienced emotions from the archives of my life. From nursery school circle time to BlogHer "speed schmoozing", my social anxiety was as fresh as baked cookies on a snowy day. 

The Michael Jackson Icon I Knew

When I heard the news of Michael Jackson's death, via twitter, I was completely shocked. I hadn't thought about Michael Jackson in years (at least 26 years) and I then I remembered how much I spent thinking about him as a teen in the 1980s. There I was, a nice, Jewish girl growing up in a suburb of Chicago. My room was not your typical pink and yellow girlie theme, but a sanctuary full of magazines, posters, records, tapes, and biographies about Michael Jackson.

Keep Your Summer Road Trip Out Of A Road Trap?

I've officially entered summer "breakation" with my 4, 2, and 1 year old and I'm already exhausted. I understand that this comes with being a mom of very young children so close in age, which I am most thankful, however, I've never been so tired in my life. I think it is totally true, youth is wasted on the young. Now, at 41, I'm feeling like a young kid trapped in an old body. This doesn't help the fact that I want to run with the wolves, but I feel as slow as a turtle. It also doesn't help that I am the Julie McCoy, captain, chef, and cleaning staff of our summer cruise. So, I've decided to take our summer cruise out of the water and onto the road for some summer road trips.

Will I survive being in a car for four hours on the way to visit my in-laws in Massachusetts? How about the flight to Chicago to see my cousins? I want our summer to be fun, but I'm so worried that our road trips will feel more like a road trap this summer.

Staying Up Is Hard To Do

For the first year of my daughter's life, my husband and I rarely went out in the evenings. We were just exhausted. Then, 23 months later, we were blessed with a second child and were even more exhausted. Just the thought of the two of us actually going out on a date never got off the couch. I'm not kidding. I've lost count of the number of evenings when I had been speaking with my husband, turned to him for an answer, and found that he was fast asleep. So, is that all there is? Is this how my life would be spent every evening forever. The good news is, we had another baby 15 months after our second baby.