Luck o' the Valentines.

I consider myself pretty lucky. Like, stupidly, ridiculously, blissfully lucky. My husband is fun, hardworking and easy on the eyes. My baby is insanely adorable and my family & friends are healthy, happy and always there when you need them. I have a good job, a great marraige and a kickass metabolism (Yay carbs!).

It's easy to forget our blessings from day to day, but in the midst of a week that is being heavy handed with loss, it's important to step back, squeeze my baby tight and remind myself that if my worst problem in life is needing an extra latte to make it through the day, then I am a pretty lucky gal.

As St. Patty's day approaches, I'm thinking less about green beer, pinches and leprachauns and more about appreciating the incredible luck that has graced my 30 years so far. Hope y'all do the same.

But do drink some green beer. It is St. Patty's after all.

XOXO,

The wonder of 4 AM.

I'm a working mom. I'm a working mom for many reasons: financial, emotional, professional and personal. I've never had an interest in being a stay at home mom; I enjoy my work and the satisfaction of helping provide for my family. That said, as the date of my return to work fast approaches, I'm incredibly sad. I am beside myself that I'll be missing out on the mid-morning snuggles of our first nap of the day. I'm sad that instead of staring into my sweet girl's eyes while we nurse, I'll be pumping in the empty office down the hall. I'm sad that it will (until Spring) be dark when I leave and come home. But this is our reality, our life and while I know it will be fine, I'm allowing myself to wallow a little bit right now.

I'm actually somewhat excited too. Part of me is looking forward to the mental stimulation, the chance to get out of the house and the reality of 8 spit-up free hours a day! And therein lies the weird dilemma of working motherhood: the somewhat schizophrenic reality of wanting to be the sole caretaker of your child but also wanting to have a life outside of the domestic realm.

In the interest of full disclosure, my darling husband has said (and would) support me if I wanted to stop working. But the reality is that our quality of life and our desire to create the world that I want for Sadie requires me to work for now. Mr. Val accelerated his graduate school plans so that he can afford us the opportunity to choose a different situation but that is still 2 years away. In the meantime, our priorities dictate that we both need to work outside the home to give our daughter all that she deserves in this world.

I feel guilty complaining because our situation is so much better than so many people right now. Mr. Val and I both have great jobs within understanding and flexible environments. On top of that, my daughter will be in the best hands possible as her wonderful Grandma will be watching her. I will never have the words to thank my wonderful Mother in law for that. If I can't watch my daughter all day, there is no better choice than family and we are so incredibly blessed to have family that want to provide that for our darling girl.

I also have to remind myself that it is temporary. My husband works his adorable butt off all day every day to bring us closer to the next phase of our life where I can have the option to work, work part time or not work at all. Every day that I wake up next to this amazing man I pinch myself. Since the day I met Mr. Val my life has gotten better and better; I know that the years to come will be no exception.

Today we started Sadie's college fund. Mr. Val and I take a lot of pride in our ability to provide not just the basics for our daughter but the extras as well. It is these things that wake us up early in the morning to ride our respective trains to work and keep us up studying into the wee hours of the morning. And it is her smiling face that has made 4:00 AM a wonderful hour to be awake. 4 AM is the hour of the day that is just hers and mine. It's the hour where we stare at each other while I nurse her and say that we love each other with our eyes. It's the hour where we pad quietly around the house until she drifts back to sleep. It's the hour where Mr. Val sleepily rolls over and tells us he loves us. It's the hour that would have never seen me awake a year ago...but now I love 4 AM because it is the hour that each new day begins for my family, full of love.

And that's what working motherhood will be for me. Stealing the moments that matter, since love isn't dictated by the quantity of time you spend together but the quality. It will be sad to leave her each day but so wonderful to see her smiling face at the end of each one. I will miss snuggling her at noon but will look forward to 4 AM...because that is our moment each day to make it count and no one can take it from us.



XOXO,

A Moveable Feast

I'm in cardboard box hell.

No, we're not homeless, but we are moving which at times seems like it might suck more than actually being a hobo.

At this point I'm an excellent mover, since I've been moving almost every year since I left home for college. I'm not really sure why...I just never found a place I wanted to spend more than 12-24 months and figured I didn't have that much stuff so why not? Up until this point we've lived in Chicago or just north of the city in the Northwestern University town of Evanston, enjoying our urban existence as childless newlyweds, fully capable of seeing the "charm" in the local crackhead or prostitute. However, once Mr. Val knocked me up we grudgingly decided it was time to plunge into suburbia (cue funeral dirge) so that we don't have to jump our sweet baby girl into one of our friendly neighborhood gangs.

Since we first started living in sin almost six years ago, Mr. Val and I have moved FOUR times. This move will be our fifth and FINAL time as we both agree that unless this particular rental burns to the ground or is picked up in a tornado and spirited away to the wonderful land of Oz, we are staying put until the Mister graduates from his Masters program and we finally buy a house. Since this is (knock on wood) the last lease we will ever sign, I'd like to take a moment to look back on some of the humble abodes we have called home:

1. The Studio - Mr. Val and I truly believe that we are capable of surviving anything and everything only because we lived together in a studio apartment for a year. At the time, Mr. Val was finishing his Bachelors degree and waiting tables and I was a bartender at 2 local bars. We were on a SUPREMELY tight budget which blinded us to the fact that we were living in a Frank McCourt novel. I mean this place was bad. Tiny, poorly laid out, old, you name it, it sucked. The only bright spot was that it was located on an awesome little street with cafes & coffee shops, which was good since we wanted to spend as little time as possible in the actual apartment. It was the kind of place where you met the slumlord landlord the day you signed your lease and then never again. If there wasn't a body stinking up the joint there was no point in calling because they simply didn't care. Knowing this, we decided to violate the pet policy and buy a puppy named Beans who lived/loved/peed there quite happily for 3 months. At the end of our lease we moved up and out to the...

2. One bedroom - at the time the one bedroom seemed downright luxurious. Walls separating my bed from my kitchen? I felt like Imelda Marcos. If I went back now I'd laugh...the "kitchen" was a stove & fridge apparently made by and for the wee people of Munchkinland, there was roughly 9 inches of total counter space and the elevator walls were covered in pink shag carpet. But it had nice windows and was in a killer neighborhood and we could walk to the train/bars/restaurants which made it perfect. It also allowed dogs so we didn't have to sneak Beans under cover of darkness to go to the bathroom. I have incredibly fond memories of this place, as it was the site of the following triumphs:

• Boyfriend Valentine became Fiance Valentine
  
• Mr. Val graduate college
  
• Mr. Val and I both finally got jobs that didn't involve the phrase, "Would you like to try some boneless Buffalo Wings?"
  
• I finally got couches that hadn't been handed down through four generations of frat houses
  

We were doing well, in fact we were SO super cool and bad ass that we decided we needed to move into what will always be known as...

3. Our Super Sweet City Loft - the super sweet city loft was just that: a killer loft in an old industrial building that had been converted into condos. We were lured there by the Craigslist add that billed it as the "West Loop". Technically, it wasn't a lie as I think we made the West Loop cut by a few centimeters. Realistically, it was also a few centimeters shy of Malcolm X College, blue light Cameras and a Salvation Army Rehab Center. At this point though, we understood the bargain of city living which is, to put it simply, nicer place in a sketchy hood vs. rat infested tenement in the nice part of town. We opted for the former, since we had garage parking, a scary doorman and at this point a second dog (Jake) that Mr. Val thought we should get for "protection".

A side note about Jake. We rescued Jake from the same shelter as Beans, who to this point had literally been the perfect dog, save for her penchant for licking the walls. We still aren't completely sure what Jake is, but from what we can tell he is part Rottweiler/Pit Bull/Shar Pei/Wildebeest. He actually does serve some protective purposes since he scares the shit out of most people with his little muscly legs and giant head, but in reality, his idea of protecting me is following me from room to room and sitting on my feet. Excellent.

We spent two awesome years here, living it up in the city, getting married and hanging out with our awesome neighbors on the balcony. Unfortunately, we quickly outgrew the place due to my overzealous use of the scanner thingy when registering for our wedding gifts so we moved to...

4. The Hood - no joke, we moved to the hood. Make no mistake, it's a nice place: 2 beds, 2 baths, newly remodeled, basement with laundry, the works. It seemed so lovely a place to put all my fabulous Pottery Barn dishes that I didn't even notice that the realtor would only show it to us in the middle of the day on a weekday or that he had the lease ready for us to sign in less time than it takes Usain Bolt to get to the mailbox. I still don't think the neighborhood is unsafe, it's just full of random happenings and people. Like the neighbor who I'm pretty sure is running a foster care scam out of her house. Or the old man who feeds the squirrels peanuts in his underwear. Or the guy who asked us one day if we had any interest in fighting Jake, you know, in a dogfight. Needless to say, it's probably not the best place to start a family, so this Saturday we move to...

5. The Burbs - It's finally happened. We sold out. We'll be moving to a 3 bedroom townhouse so that we can give our sweet baby a safe cozy place to call home for her first couple of years. It's totally boring, it's totally cookie cutter but it's totally the right choice. It may have some paint spots to clean up, and some ugly light fixtures to change, and one of those awful mailboxes that you have share with your neighbors, but it's the first place my baby girl will call home, which makes me love it already.

So I remain in carboard hell, packing up the last of our child free years and moving to Mom-land, which, to be perfectly honest, sounds a lot like heaven to me.

XOXO,

The unbearable weirdness of being knocked up.

Here is the honest to god truth about being pregnant for the first time:

It's super weird.

It's weird that all the sudden I want pineapple, like, NONSTOP. It's weird that one day I look skinnier than before I peed on that fateful stick and that the next day I wake up with Lou Piniella's body. It's weird that I vacillate between sex sounding AWESOME and threatening to punch my husband should he so much as LOOK at me lasciviously in the SAME DAMN DAY. Basically, in the words of the immortal Dwight Schrute: "A three-ounce fetus is calling the shots. It's so bad ass."

And here's the other honest to god truth about being pregnant for the first time:

It's really scary.

All of the sudden I'm tasked with a waterfall of major decisions. Do I keep working or stay home? If I stay home do I REALLY want to eat top ramen and use single ply toilet paper until my husband is done with grad school? Do I cloth diaper or not? If I let my baby cry will he/she turn into a serial killer? If I don't let my baby cry will he/she turn into a serial killer?

There is no reason for me to be so panicked. Mr. Valentine and I are ready for this baby. We have good jobs, good educations, a stable loving marriage and a supportive family. But even when you find yourself in the incredibly blessed position that we Valentines are, it's hard to not be flummoxed by the sheer magnitude of what you are about to do. Truthfully, 15 short weeks ago Mr. Valentine and I had a trough of Margaritas and decided to throw caution to the wind and now it's (holy shit) baby time. You can see how I am a little suspicious of our judgment.

But then I see the little terry cloth robe I bought babyVal. It's the only thing I've bought so far, but I couldn't resist. I run my hands over it and imagine the little miracle whose arms will soon fill out those sleeves, whose tiny feet will poke out the bottom and whose bright little face, no doubt topped with curly dark hair will stare at this brave new world and all its wonders. And I know that without question I can do this and how much I want to. And I know that all the decisions will get made, in due time, hopefully more right than wrong. And every time my husband kisses my stomach and whispers goodnight to this baby, I am reminded that I've already made the most important choice of all, which was choosing him. The rest of the pieces will fall as they may, but the only thing we really need is each other.

Well, that and the occasional Margarita ;)

XOXO,

I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't a procrastinator.

But here I am, on the eve of Ash Wednesday with no idea of what to give up for Lent. I took a totally unscientific poll this week (Mr. Valentine the scientist would be so displeased) and found that most people give up the usual suspects: smoking, drinking, swearing, chocolate, midget porn, etc. I don't smoke anymore, so that's out. I couldn't care less about chocolate so that would be cheating. I suppose if I really wanted to liken my Lenten experience to Jesus' 40 fast in the wilderness I could give up cheese but come on, we all know that ain't happenin'. (I have a segment called Fromage Fridays people. I am very serious about cheese.)

I think I'm going to take a two pronged approach to Lent this year. I've decided to give up a tangible thing - drinking of any kind. This will most certainly make St. Patty's Day suck but that seems a tad bit whiny when you are trying to channel the sacrifice of a man who wandered in the wilderness for 40 days before ultimately dying a supremely unpleasant death for all humanity.

I think that is a good start, however I'm not sure that me giving up lemon drops & prosecco really is the point of the Lent exercise, so the second "sin" I am giving up is a behavior. For the next 40 days, I am going to attempt to stop stop complaining/criticizing others. I don't think of myself as a mean person, but I am an OCD, type A, only child with a dash of Irish depression thrown in. I can be hypercritical, both of myself and others. So my real challenge for the next 40 days is to stop sweating the small stuff I guess. Stop complaining about my job and do something about it. Stop criticizing my husband for not cleaning enough and start thanking him for working so hard for us. Stop whining about the relationships in my life that hurt and try to find some peace in them.

It is easy to get bogged down by what tires us in life: bills, sickness, stress & pain. I'm hoping the next forty days reaffirm what I already know, that I am an intensely lucky woman with a lifetime of good still to come. St. Athanasius described Lent as "becoming by grace what God is by nature." That's a pretty tall order, but I think with forty Cosmo-free days and a renewed positivity I can find a little of that grace in my life.