Tiny Feet

O went up three shoe sizes in less than one year. Last year's shiny purple Saltwaters were size 8 and this year's red ones are size 11. Nothing puts the progress of time in a clearer perspective than those tiny feet: the ones that jabbed at me from the inside, the ones I held in my palm while she nursed, the ones I pretended to gobble after bath time, the ones I used to put tiny shoes on. She can manage those size 11s all on her own these days.

It's too fast and it's too soon, and yet it is right on time. Early this morning I was woken up by a smaller pair of feet. P found her way to our bed, wedged herself upside down between us, and was trying to pick my nose with her tiny toes. Tonight, as I type, an even smaller pair of feet are distracting me. Our son, due in November, has the tiniest feet of them all. For now. 

Motherhood: the Sisterhood

I've had a whirlwind month. Sitting in the quiet this evening and reflecting on the past few months, it struck me.  I currently have the deepest and most meaningful friendships with women that I have ever had in my life.

 Being a mother has made me a part of a sisterhood that runs deeper than I could have ever imagined. They come from different backgrounds. We have found each other through different avenues. We have different aged kids. We are parenting alone or in partnerships. We are parenting our biological children, our adopted children, our step children, the children that life has brought us, but we are all mothers. There is a rhythm to the conversations I have with my sisters, an easy back and forth. Sometimes we are solving problems, sharing answers. Sometimes we are just hearing each other, hearing the joy or the pain or the rage, just loving each other and saying, with our love, you are enough. Your presences, and your flaws and your mistakes, and your love are enough. Advice about carseats, bags of hand-me-down maternity clothes, a shoulder to cry on,  a name to put on the emergency contact line of school paperwork, a cup of coffee at the park on the day you needed it most, these women shape my day-to-day life in a way I never expected.

Thank you is insufficient, but for now it will have to do. 

Sunday Guest Blog: The Woman Behind the Mug

Kate's birthday is this Tuesday. She's the woman behind the mug.

A typical Sunday morning out

She's an actor, a producer, a director, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a mom, a wife, and the most amazing person I have ever known. The first birthday that I celebrated with her was nine years ago. At the time, I thought I loved her, and I did, but nine years later, I love her more deeply and more fully than I could ever have known all those years ago. From tropical vacations that included nothing but the two of us and an empty beach, to sleepless nights with sick kiddos, we have been together. The good times and the bad times have brought us closer. We get tired, we get frustrated, and we turn to each other for support. I still get caught breathless when I look at her and realize she chose to spend her life with me, and I wonder how I got so lucky.

I could ramble on, but I won't here. However, if you ever want to know more, just ask me, and if you have a few days, I will tell you more about how amazing she is.

Happy Birthday, Kate!

Love,
Jim

Right Sizing, or What I've Learned About Getting Rid of Everything

I'm getting rid of everything. Well, actually, I'm getting rid of 2015 things. Get it? 2015 in 2015. Thanks Nourishing Minimalism, for the idea and the chart. Gosh, I really love charts.

So far, I have gotten rid of a little over 400 things. I'll often ask Jim to come audit a pile, just to keep me honest. It has been a combination of donations, consignment shops, and just outright trash. We've tried really hard to be mindful about how we donate. We've been taking business or interview clothes to the LGBTQ center in WeHo, books to our local library, and when we have something that might be immediately useful to someone, like an old rain coat or a pair of shoes, we've been placing them strategically on SMB.

This is super new-agey and not at all like me, but I try to hold each thing in my hands and ask myself if it brings me joy. The answer is almost always no. An object bringing you joy is a pretty high bar to clear.

The big changes are easiest to see. The limited toy selection has changed the way the kids play. Instead of the "dumping game" where the bins and toy chests are emptied with wild abandon and no one object is actually cherished, or frankly, even enjoyed, O and P are engaging in elaborate imaginative play with the limited selection of toys available to them, and when I ask them to help me clean up, they are more likely to assist, my best guess being that the mess isn't so overwhelming. 

The dishes don't seem to pile up the way that they had been. I think it is because once we cleared out the flatware drawer, we run out of forks much faster. 

The house feels bigger and more put together, not just because we've gotten rid of things, but also because we have focused on acquiring the right things. For every 100 things I de-own, I have acquired one new thing: a cool map for the huge blank wall over the sofa, a large pot for the maiden hair fern that reminds me of my grandma, and a ladder style bookcase that actually fits the space it occupies. 

We have a long way to go, but so far the results have been tremendous. I'm sure the last 400 items will be harder than the first 400, but I feel pretty confident that we will know when we are done. I don't know how to explain how much lighter I feel, how there is not only more room in my house, but also more room in my mind. 

A Parent's Love Letter to LA

Dear Los Angeles,

I'm sorry. I have spent the past four years lying about our relationship. I have spent the past four years threatening to leave you, rolling my eyes and bemoaning how hard it is to raise children in a place like this. I have spent the past four years dreaming of small towns and big back yards, but there is a reason we haven't pulled the trigger. 

I'm tired of pretending. I'm done complaining about the problems and the downside. I will never again claim to wish I lived in a small town, or on a farm.  I don't. I don't even want to live in the suburbs. I want to live right where we are, in LA. I want to live in this big, beautiful, bustling, sprawling city, with its pollution and crime and traffic, because the flip side, the diversity and the culture and the vibrancy, is so clearly worth it. My children won't have a bucolic childhood. We've chosen something different for our family. We have chosen Los Angeles and all of what comes with it. 

But now that I have confessed my undying devotion, can we talk about the traffic?

Love Always,

K 

Mama

She was not the kind of mom who wore an apron and baked cookies. She didn't sign up to run the classroom fundraiser or volunteer to head up the PTA. She didn't meet other moms for coffee, arrange playdates, or gossip at the school pick-up line. She was different. She worked, full-time, maybe more, when you consider that she was a business owner, and she was usually doing the bulk of the parenting alone. She always appeared happiest by herself with a book. 

When there was a potluck in my classroom, I would always raise my hand first, and as I had been coached, say, "My mom will bring the plates and napkins."

And she always did. 

But when there were five first graders on the Girl Scout Troop "wait list" she stepped up and became a troop leader. When my little sister's soccer team was about to be dropped off the roster, she stepped up, and coached the team. When it mattered, she always stepped up and she stepped out of her comfort zone, for us. 

I was a weird kid, a strange and awkward little person who didn't read social cues well. My mom convinced me that weird was beautiful, that the acceptance of my peers was no great prize, and that my uniqueness was something to cherish.  She made me her partner in crime, and we laughed our way through my childhood, on the same team, howling at the moon, us against the world. 

My mom is a fiercely independent, dancing-to-her-own-drummer, lone-wolf kind of woman. She knows me better than I care to admit and I know her too, in a way that no one else does. I know that when she loves, she loves fiercely and without reservation. I know that she wears her beauty like a shield, clinging to it for protection. I know that she has made tough choices and tremendous sacrifices, and that she bears those weights everyday. 

She has taught me lessons that she might not have intended to teach, about independence and self-sufficiency, about being a woman, about being a mother, and about stepping up. We appear to be very different, and I don't know if she realizes how much she has shaped who I am today, how so much of my desire to move through the world with compassion has grown out of things I have learned from her. I am a wacky, wide-eyed optimist about humanity because of her, even if she isn't anymore. 

I began this months ago, to wish her a happy birthday, but found I couldn't write it then. Something kept getting stuck. I'm glad it got unstuck. Thank you mom. Thank you for always stepping up. 

2014: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Resolutions are tricky. They seem mostly to be another layer of promises we make to ourselves that we can't manage to keep. I resolve nothing this year. The last chunk of 2014 was a whirlwind for us and I was feeling out-of-sorts going into it, and I'm feeling a little windblown coming out of it, certainly not the climate for making resolutions. Instead, I have selected three goals for 2015, based on the wisdom of a friend and our goals for last summer.

1. Something for me: Read more. I have spent the past five years reading one book. Yes, I read other things in between and yes, this was a dense, epic, detail-laden, challenging book, but seriously. I set aside some time in December to be sure I would finish it before 2015, and I'd like to keep setting aside that time, and fill it with more books. I used to read voraciously, everything I could get my hands on. For obvious reasons, my reading has become more Goodnight, Moon and less Gone Girl, but enough. I miss reading. I miss it more than I miss sleep, or eating a container of yogurt without sharing.  Enough. More books. Ready for recommendations, or if anyone wants to talk about Infinite Jest, a book that I have been consumed with for the past five years. After finishing it on 12.31.14, I can't stop turning large parts of it over in my sleep-deprived brain.

May she never realize how lucky she is

2. Something for O & P: Spend more time outside. Children are essentially wild animals, if you let them be. We live in a city, so we have to manufacture opportunities for them to be outside, to see nature, to see how they are a part of it. As long as we seek out fresh air and wide open spaces, be it the beach, a camping trip,  or a wooded hiking trail, O and P are our best guides to relearning how to enjoy the outdoors. Deep breaths. Find a way to be in the moment. Release desire (more on this later). 

Big truths for tiny people

3. Something for our family: We started a family dinner project in the last half of the year that was a tremendous success, but with the holidays and Jim's hectic end of year work schedule, we fell off the bandwagon a bit. Making time to sit down together will only be more important as 2015 amps up, so recommitting ourselves to making time for family dinners, even if the fare is a simple omlette, is more important than ever.

GD bubble pictures. If you only knew...

I learned a lot in 2014, about myself, about parenting, about being a friend and being a partner. I managed to sneak a few things in under the wire that made me feel accomplished: cleaning out my horror show of a garage, finishing that damn book, two shows, a new theatre company, a directing project booked for 2015, being part of the team producing an exciting new show, and managing to keep writing, even when it feels hard, and even when it feels ugly. So that's a thing I did. 

I have nothing but love for 2014. With all of its bumps and bruises, I know I will someday look back on it as one of the special times in my life, a time when I had the opportunity to be creatively fulfilled, a time when my babies were still mostly babies, a time when things felt full of possibility. 

I am loved. I am grateful. I am enough. 

A Little Less Bah Humbug

Christmas has always been a hard time of year for me. My childhood memories are less Ho Ho Ho and more Bah Humbug. Some of my favorite Christmases pre-kids were when I just pretended none of it was happening, a strategy my Christmas-loving partner has roundly rejected.  So over the years, Jim has been slowly chipping away at my Scroogey exterior. Every year, after the holiday is over, we debrief, sorting events and outings into categories of what worked and what didn't: piles of presents out, Christmas day open house in. It has been a process of trial and error, of three steps forward and two steps back. 

Matching Christmas PJs IN!

We've been working really hard at creating our own family traditions, finding all of the things that feel right, and surrounding ourselves with the people who make sense to us. And you know what? It might be working. As Christmas is right around the corner, I have found myself, for the first time I can recall, looking back over the past twenty-four days and feeling, I don't know, happy about the holiday, about the people we spent time with and the things we did. I might even be feeling a little bit of sadness that it is almost over and, dare I say it, excitement about next year. I don't feel empty and used up, bogged down in sadness and disappointment. Instead, I feel content. 

The specifics of this year are irrelevant. The broad strokes are simple. Say no more often, but say it with love in your heart and a smile. Prioritize the things that bring you uncomplicated joy. Doing is greater than having, giving is greater than receiving, and you can never have enough egg nog. And with that, the Kate's small heart grew three sizes that day. 

Merry Everything! Happy Something! And to all a good winter solstice! 

Sunday Guest Blog: Expectations (Part Deux)

O: I’m going to bring my beautiful art to the store and give it to people.

O grabbed a stack of her school paintings and made this announcement one Sunday afternoon as we headed to the grocery store to stock up for the week.

Two things immediately ran through my head:

1. S#!t, my preschooler is going to assault, poor, unsuspecting shoppers and foist her artwork on them.

2. Double S#it, it is going to break my heart to see her face rejection when someone doesn’t want her art.

Let’s face it, children are nothing if not prolific painters, and each painting is a masterpiece to our little Frida Kahlo. Parents who have forgotten to take out the trash after a late night art purge know the deep sadness and hurt of their little artist when he or she finds artwork that has been tossed away.

As we drove to the store, I just kept hoping she would forget about it and leave her art in the car because: 

1. I wanted to get in and out of the store as fast as possible, and stopping to hand out artwork was not going to make things go any faster,

2. I didn't want to make any other Sunday afternoon shopper's life more difficult by having to deal with an art peddler, and

3. I am not an overly social creature, unlike O, and the thought of potentially talking to everyone we met in the store produced more social anxiety than I wanted to admit.

And it was this third item that made me reexamine my position. I was letting my anxiety dictate how I want O to interact with the world. So, I reevaluated the options and realized that, if I set the right expectations, this could be a learning experience for both of us.

Before we went into the store, I explained to O that she could ask people if they wanted her artwork, and if they said, yes, she could hand them a painting; if they said, no, she needed to accept that they didn't want it and that it was OK to just move on.

In the end, I was surprised that of the four people she approached, three actually took the artwork and seemed genuinely engaged in conversation with this four-year-old art vendor. One declined politely and O just moved on to the next person.

That day, I hope O learned how to approach people with her precious talents in a way that will allow her to share graciously with those who are interested and easily walk away from those who are not.

I learned that examining my parental motivations is even more crucial than I thought. By setting expectations for both of us, it ended up being a delightful trip to the grocery store.

Opting Out: Christmas Edition

People generally look at me like I'm crazy, and I probably am, but O and P get one gift for Christmas.  If it is a large, shareable item, like last year's doll house, they get one shared gift. Otherwise, they get one each. Santa fills their stocking with art supplies and other practical items. We ask family to give experiences, like lessons or museum memberships, and that is it. Seriously. 

I have a long list of reasons, but I think the main one is pretty obvious. We are opting out of the Christmas chaos, of the conspicuous consumption, of the excess, of the piles of stuff.  It makes the whole holiday feel lighter, and easier. At least, it does for me. 

I do worry how they will feel as they start to compare their holiday with their peers. I guess I hope that our Christmases will be so filled with love and fun that they won't even notice that they aren't filled with presents. As they get older, we might transition to the rule of four: something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read, but for now, the one present seems to be working out just fine.

I'm very aware of how some of our parenting choices are going to set O and P apart from their peer group. This is just one small example of that. I wish I could tell you that I am 100% confident that I am doing the right thing. I can't. As with all of these choices, I'm just making my best guess, doing what feels right for our family, and trying to make conscious choices rather than just following blindly. I'll get back to you in thirty years, but for now, at least I don't have to figure out where to store all those new toys.