Praguenosis Negative

After months of nagging and a tumultuous couple of weeks, Gabe finally conceded that it was time for a trip. So last weekend the Kerr family skipped town for the Czech Republic. Destination Prague. The plan was fairly simple, aimed towards relaxation, new sights, and some much-needed time away. We would rent a car in Vienna, drive 4 hours to Prague where we had rented an apartment, and spend a couple of days taking in the old world architecture of the Golden City. I am not sure where in the planning of said trip we forgot that we a.) had a child, b.) had a child who doesn't like the car, and c.) had a child who likes to run around and isn't all that interested in looking at buildings, no matter how magnificently well-preserved.

It wasn't that we didn't have a good time or stand back in wonder at the beauty of it all. It's just that after all was said and done, the sheer uphill battle of making what are normal day-to-day operations happen under weird circumstances wasn't worth the nominal enjoyment we got out of the couple of hours we looked at buildings in the rain. Brutal, yes, but then so was watching Jude eat nothing but crackers (once even dipped in ketchup) for three days straight. The car ride histrionics alone were enough to make us never want to vacation again.

However, what we did get out of the trip was a walloping heap of learning and some good laughs. Here are some of the highlights...

Not This "Mother's Choice"

I haven't gotten a huge safety vibe from my experience living in Vienna. We've seen playground equipment that appears engineered for kids to hurt themselves. I've been in two Strassenbahn accidents in 3 months. Each time I came home and told Gabe that I had a sneaking suspicion that people/cars must get hit by these things everyday. Most recently Jude has been invited to go for a spin on several carnival rides at a seasonal festival that are clearly intended for much older children. There was never the requisite sign off to the side posting the minimum height for all ridegoers. All sizes welcome, I guess. "Jude, wanna ride Santa's Train of Death?" However, it was the Mother's Choice child seat experience that truly confirmed my fears when it comes to safety precautions. There are none. Thank goodness there is a social safety net here for the battered and bruised of Vienna because apparently there has been no Austrian equivalent of Ralph Nadar.

We arrived to pick up our car rental, baby in tow, and were expecting to drive out of there without incident. We had filled out the request for an age/weight appropriate car seat when we reserved the car online and assumed that the facility was prepared to fulfill this request. Sitting in the smoke-filled room, after we had signed for the car, we inquired about the seat for Jude. The women helping us stared at me with an implied eye-roll. I later described it to Gabe as the, "You're really going to press this car seat thing, lady?" look. She fully intended on letting us drive off with the baby in my lap! When her piercing glare didn't work, she snapped something in German and a second women reluctantly walked over to a drawer, unlocked a set of keys, and went to the back to fetch our car seat. She returned and laid it on the floor at our feet.

I muttered something about checking for the weight limit and as I bent down to do so, I noticed that all the straps had been removed. Really? Come on. 30 Euro for a seat with no straps? But there was that look again. It said, "We've already locked those keys up. You're going to make us go back there and look for a different seat?" But the protectionist in me and the cheap skate in Gabe agreed, go look for another seat. The dance repeated itself, and this time the women returned with a large booster seat, brand name, "Mother's Choice." I did some quick cost benefit analysis in my head. Would making a greater fuss produce a substantially more safe car seat? Would the time spent on such an endeavor be worth the additional time out of our brief vacation?

I quickly converted Jude's lbs. to kgs. and we took the "Mother's Choice."

Just to clearly explain how problematic this seat was for us, I have to note that Gabe and I are kind of car seat fanatics. We actually carried a study exposing the vulnerabilities of infant carriers to the birth of our child, prepared to fully defend our choice of using a convertible seat at birth in the instance anyone gave us trouble when we tried to leave. We were crusaders for getting the thing professionally installed, making call after call to Chicago Fire and Police stations. Stubbornly, we refused to move it someone else's car for the many trips back and forth to Michigan. Usually, this meant having to suffer driving in the Jeep sans AC during the summer humidity. Forgive me if I am making a huge deal out of nothing as I itemize the scary features of the M'sC... the seat was medieval as far as I was concerned.

The only way to secure it to the car was to run the shoulder strap behind our child, leaving the lap belt as the only device holding Jude in and "protecting" him from injury. Whenever the car would make a turn, the seat would shift from its prefered location on the middle seat to halfway over onto the seat next to him. Of course, this was after we moved it from its original position behind the passenger seat because there were no child locks on the doors and Jude made several moves to open the door while the car was in motion on the brief drive to our apartment. However, to be fair, I have to award this feature of potential traumatic injury to the Fiat and not the Mother's Choice. For the duration of his naps both to and from our destination, I got to make up for the M'sC lack of a chest harness and hold Jude into the seat to prevent his head from flopping over into his lap. At least when things got dicey navigating our way through the outskirts of Prague, I didn't feel too awful taking our agitated toddler out of his illusion of restraint to hold him on my lap for a short period of time. Conclusion, Jude was possibly if not probably in greater danger affixed to the M'sC than if we were to allow him to crawl about the car as the women from the car rental had intended.

All Maps Are Not Created Equal

Those who know me would kindly say that I am a bit of a control freak. I often think to myself that it's probably a good thing kids need structure and routine because if it were bad for them, Jude would be pretty screwed up. Schedules and lists are the very mortar that hold this family together. Yet, try as I might to let down my guard and play the role of the laid back mom, I am constantly (re)learning the lesson that it is best to do things yourself.

Enter lovely, adored husband.

Yes, it is the ultimate payback for this checklist loving, uber-clean, hyper-organized woman... I married the absent-minded professor. In an attempt to "fill the gaps" of Gabe's regular oversight of the details, I encourage the making of lists, try with follow-up phone calls, and in the end just wistfully hope that everything will get done. In some cases, ok, most cases, I have learned that it is probably best if I just take the helm. The map for how to get to Prague was one of those cases.

I made my case for an in-car navigational system- the convenience, the precision, the English, but Gabe refused to spring for a Garmin. So I delegated the responsiblity of either buying a map of both Austria and the Czech Republic or printing some clear directions from Google. I should have known that he would opt for the later. When he came home from work and handed me a small booklet of printouts, confirmation for our apartment/ car and a series of maps, I shouldn't have ignored the part of me that wanted to make sure we had adequate info to get us though not one, but two foreign cities.

The next day we managed to return to our apartment to pick up our bags and make our way out of the city through a combination of signs and familiar landmarks. We were on a roll. Maybe it was dumb luck, but driving abroad wasn't as foreign as we had expected. Once we were out of the city, the signage was still pretty good. At times Gabe would ask me to consult "the maps", but it was fairly clear we were headed in the right direction. Part of me dreaded looking at that mess of papers tucked neatly in with passports. About 30 minutes outside of Prague, I got nervous enough that I finally "consulted the maps."

First off, they were in German. Even more disturbing, they appeared to be the directions from Vienna to Prague if you were looking down on Earth from the moon. To add insult to my meager attempts to read these cryptic directions, the line that was intended to illuminate our path actually obscured any ability I had to make out numbers of highways/ exits. As navigator, the only answer that I could be completely confident in giving was that yes, we were somewhere between these two cities.

As is to be expected, Jude is wide awake at this point and clearly perturbed by both his mom and his Mother's Choice. We were running a tread back and forth on a 10 kilometer stretch of highway, unclear where to get off. The intensity level was clearly coming to a head in the Fiat. Gabe continues to ask me questions like, "What is up ahead?" and "Where does it say I should get off?" To which I reply, in a combination of perfect German,Czech,and smart-ass, "Leicht rechts auf Karlovo nám?!"

It was madness.

I took Jude out of the car seat to let him nurse and demanded we stop at the next gas station to purchase a detailed map and pinpoint our current locale, muttering "Garmin" under my breath. As if we needed any assistance in assigning blame for this debacle. Fortunately for us an angel appeared. At this moment it took the form of a short, bald man exiting a gas station bathroom with the ability to speak fluent English. In under 6 hours we concluded the first leg of our journey.

Sitting back in our Vienna apartment Monday evening, I popped open one of the Czech beers I smuggled back with me from our trip. Exhausted and throughly unrejuvenated, Gabe and I decided this was the bottom line for Prague (and all future vacations.) We laughed, Jude cried, and we'd totally see it again. However next time, we bring Grandparents.

I Heart Playhosen

Upon arrival in Vienna, Gabe, Jude and I set out to explore the local park circuit and acclimate ourselves to the general lay of the land. During one of these early walks, I was confused and slightly disturbed to see a little boy in what appeared to be rubber overalls in the late August heat. Now the Viennese take the cold seriously and it is not uncommon to see babies fully bundled in a hat and warm jacket on a 55 degree day, but this was a little much even by local standards. Did this small child have a part-time gig as a Lobsterman? Maybe his parents had confused the forecast and were simply awaiting an impending thunderstorm despite an abundance of sunshine. I whispered to Gabe... "Check out that kid over there. The one with the crazy plastic pants." Fascinated, I filed the experience under "Weird Austria Stuff" along with the coffee shop that sells espresso machines, lacy underwear, and Lederhosen.

However, the more time I spent at the park, I noticed this was not a one-off; a silly, overprotective parent using make shift rain gear as playground covering. I watched as mammas and nannies, entire daycare centers in fact, dressed the toddling boys and girls in these plastic playground condoms upon entrance to the park. "Doesn't this go against everything be a kid is about?" I thought to myself. "Kids get dirty. It is what they do." You could hermetically seal Jude in a plastic bubble and he would still manage to come out with a mixture of slobber, food, and grass stains all over his clothing.

But the tightly wound, ultra-type A side of me, the one that knew she was headed to therapy after watching her crawling son slowly draw his arms and legs across filthy public surface after filthy public surface for several months, was secretly coveting this magnificent invention of anal retentive playgear.

I scoured the internet to no avail, Nothing but rainwear. Amazon.de turned up blank when I searched for "kids rubber overalls." I was on the hunt, still afraid to simply ask another parkgoer where her child got those lovely playground pants. I wanted to blend in with the local flora and fauna. I was hip to the ins and outs of parenting in Vienna. I knew that if every kid at the park was wearing them, they had to turn up sooner or later.

So.... they did. Jude has playhose...I admit it. And I love them. I remarked to Gabe the other day that they may just be the best thing we bring back to the States with us when we return. Forget handcrafted wooded toys. These rock! While I feel like a traitor to all that is wonderful about being a baby at the park, I rationalize that Jude can still can get dirty with his playhose on. In fact he can get even dirtier. No need to brush off his pants when he is wearing playhose.

Wallow away my little love, you will be the envy of all the excessive, hovering mothers of the U.S.A.

Weaning in Wien

I played it cool for the last 14 months. Now it is time to come clean. There was a part of me that had given up. Sleep would forever be limited to a series of 2-4 hour chunks. I listened, trying to suppress my envy, when other mothers enumerated the hours their babies slept in one sitting with double digits. It was galactically different from our experience... As I've said before, night for us was not for sleeping. No, night was all about eating.

I was living, 24 hour, breastraunt.

Today, I am in nursing mother's Valhalla. I've waited a long time to say it but, Jude finally sleeps through the night. 11 beautiful hours. Time to sleep or watch a movie uninterrupted by a little boy who has decided that he wants a snack, or three. Gone are the days where I would literally rush through my evening projects, an intended source of relaxation in the day, unsure whether I had 4 hours to work or 2. It was a long 14 months. Before I get into the details of how we did it and, gasp, what life was like before we made this sweeping transition, I have to add that we all continue to sleep together in the same bed. This was biggest doubt/question/ fear when it came to night weaning. How in the world would this translate for Jude when he sleeps so close to the source? But after only 6 nights in a 10 part plan, we were surprised at how effortlessly we made the move from the all night diner to a more modest 12 hour establishment.

Here it is in 3 acts.

Act 1: Zombie Stories

I have been working on this post for a while, like a month or so. I'll just chalk up its lack of completion to me being so darn well rested. Anyhow, I guess it is appropriate that I find the time to recall these chapters in my life so close to Halloween because I was a living Zombie for almost a year. Recently a friend was remarking about how crazy it is that people are so concerned about a mother having a cocktail and holding her baby. She had recently given birth and noted that she was by far a bigger danger to her son sleep deprived than she would ever be after a glass of wine or two. It's the absolute truth. As any mother can probably relate, I was a fraction of human being for most of the early months. It's a good thing Jude took so long to nurse during the day, because that is where he was safest, with me in a chair, sitting down.

But for most folks, life incrementally improves. At around 6 months, maybe they are getting up a couple of times at night to nurse/ feed the baby. Ohh no00. Not us. Prior to moving to Vienna, Jude was rivaling his cousin, more than half his age, for the number of times waking at night. It just didn't make sense.

I was beginning to tire.

With Gabe already abroad, I knew that it wasn't going to be practical for me to attempt to modify the situation with night nursing alone. I figured it was going to be difficult, tantamount to taking away Jude's most coveted possession. However, with the recent success of a friend in a similar co-sleeping, frequent night waking predicament, I began to formulate a plan. Travel Wien. Settle. Wean.

Act 2: The Good Doctor

I was pretty surprised how quickly Jude adapted to the time change once we arrived in Vienna. Two days in, I was lump well into the afternoon, but the baby was rearing to go explore the diverse and expansive parks in his new city and busying himself by emptying the contents of his new kitchen cabinets. This was my first cue that maybe I had underestimated his ability to adjust. It wouldn't be the first time where Jude was miles ahead of me, wanting to progress, while I held him back by my limiting understanding of where he was at developmentally. All I ever had to do was simply read his signals more clearly to put us in synch, and he would, often within days, make his leap to the next age appropriate level.

So I did what I always do before we prepare to make some big babymove... I googled. It wasn't just night weaning that I was curious about though. I needed to see if what I had begun to construct in my mind, a nighttime world where mom, dad, and baby all sleep soundly, side by side, for say, 7-9 hours, existed out there on the interweb....

and it did.

Welcome Dr Jay Gordon, Pediatrician, Co-sleeping advocate, and as we have so fondly dubbed him "Nighttime Weaning Man with the Plan." I'll bet Dr. Gordon gets a lot of hits from moms like me, ladies who have fought the good fight for a year, maybe more, and are looking for more than just a few chunks of sleep. Well, he had me at hello. I promptly bookmarked the page and began to make my case for "the plan" that evening. Gabe listened and agreed that Jude was most likely ready for such a plan and was willing to give it a shot. He recognized that this might truncate his sleep for the next week or so, but if we were able to pull it off, the net result would benefit the entire family i.e. happy mama, happy family.

I have to pause here and add some much-needed information about the plan, because it isn't really much more than helping a baby do something very natural- fall asleep on their own. Upon becoming parents, neither Gabe nor I were big fans of sleep training. We agreed that this was not something we were keen on doing when faced with the prospect of letting Jude cry as a means of getting him to sleep for longer stretches. We sucked it up and figured he would eventually sleep or go to college. However, Dr. G's approach was something we could handle. It consisted of 3-4 nights of nursing, but not allowing your child to fall asleep while nursing, 3-4 night of gentle patting, rocking etc. without nursing, and 3-4 nights without assistance falling back asleep. The entire premise of his plan was a.) to wait until the baby was old enough to sleep through the night (which for him was 7-8 hours) and b.) construct a warm environment to support this transition. He acknowledged that there might be tears, but they would most likely be tears of frustration at the change versus tears of fear/ abandonment.

And it worked.

Of the 6 nights we actively worked towards night weaning, there were about 10 minutes of oh-my-goodness, we are going to get kicked out of this apartment tears. After that there were a couple of stretches where Jude would wake up and play around in bed, trying to engage us, and eventually fall back asleep. By the end of the week, he was sleeping 10-11 hours stretches. Can I get an Amen?

Act 3: Life After

What can I say? It's pretty amazing. If I could get myself to bed before midnight, I would be a fully functioning adult. I now get some much-needed time to myself in the evening and that has made me a mildly saner human being. And contrary to the last couple of sentences, I am not the sole recipient of positive gains from this transition. Jude has benefited as well. He is a (slightly) mellower version of himself with less frequent ups and downs.

So why the heck didn't we do this sooner?

In truth, I don't think it would have worked. I must say, I think 90% of our success can be attributed to the fact that we waited. He was 14 months old. He could go 9 hours without food (even if that isn't his preference.) There is a part of me that believes he was even old enough to see some of the logic in what we were saying when we would whisper, Jude go night-night, repeatedly until he conked out.

Either way, it's a pretty great thing, win-win all around. First and foremost, I get some sleep, we've maintained our co-sleeping arrangement, Jude continues his prefered lifestyle of unchecked nursing during the day, and Gabe and I maintained the integrity of our parenting philosophy in the process. Good story all around. I definitely feel like I have arrived, until child #2 comes along of course.

Distance

When I awoke Saturday morning to 30 some odd missed calls on Skype, I knew something was wrong. I placed some early morning phone calls back to the States to find that my Grandpa had passed away unexpectedly that afternoon. Under normal circumstances this loss would be devastating. However, this news was compounded by the fact that my parents had just arrived in Austria less than 24 hours before.

My heart sank. The ramifications of this news began to unfold in my head. I had to find my mom and put her in touch with her siblings. My parents would be leaving. I would be staying here... blows, every one.

When we signed up to come to Vienna, I often thought about how we would handle a family emergency, either here or back home. Unfortunately any "plan" we had discussed was always in the hypothetical and never given more than a peripheral thought. We would go there or they would come here. How naive we were to the logistics and expenses of making such a thing happen. Distance being the largest factor working against us, followed by babies and jobs.

My heart goes out to my poor parents. They spent more time in airports and on planes than they did enjoying the beauty of Europe (or their coveted time with their grandbaby.) This arrangement might be fine with some seasoned business traveler, jetting off for a day long meeting abroad, but this was their first time overseas. They were anxious and unsure leaving home. Now they had to turn around and endure the worst part about international travel over again. As of this evening, they are safely back in the U.S. However, the pain and awfulness of this whole ordeal is not over. Now the real work begins. My mom must make sense of this loss all while tackling the huge logistical issue of how to best care for her mother.

But right now I can't help but feel selfish. I want to be home. I want to share in the going over of stories and memories. I wish that I could cry and laugh in their company. I find myself unable to comprehend how to process all of this so far for those who share my common history.

This morning I woke up sad and angry at our living situation, but the rational part of me knew that staying indoors, under the covers, was not a constructive method to combat grief. We rode the train to the outskirts of the city and took bus up into the hills. It was a warm fall evening, crisp and filled with the smells of the season. Gabe, Jude, and I wandered through the vineyards as the sun began to set. With dusk, Vienna became illuminated below us in all directions, a stark contrast to the quite darkness of our path. We talked about my Grandfather.

He had called us less than a week ago to say hello and send along birthday wishes. Gabe and he had talked about how his people had come from the region. He closed the conversation with wishes of love for me and my family. While I will not be able to commune with my family over this loss, I feel that I have something very special in this phone call that I hold dearly as my means of moving forward during this time- a last connection, despite our distance.

3 Things

I've been in a bit of a funk for the last week or so. Nothing more than devoting too much of my headspace to the wrong things, but a low point nonetheless.

I wasn't until I uploaded my pictures for the last 10 days that I realized there are always "gem" moments to be found amidst all the gloom and doom of a rotten week.

Here are mine...

Discovering the abundance of "nut roll", a childhood delicacy from my Slovak Great Aunt.

Art Nouveau vignettes discovered as I explored the Secession Building

An impromptu reading stop on our way through the Museum Quarter

The sun is back out. We have resumed our daily park schedule. Jude and I have made some new friends in the form of a like-minded mama and son, the wife of a math colleague. Gabe and I are busy planning for my parents arrival in late October and a trip to Greece in November. There are many, many things now to keep one's spirits high. However, it is comforting to know that during those weeks when you struggle, happiness never really goes away. It just hides from time to time, on your digital camera.

Always Saving For Tomorrow

I find myself, momentarily, trying to explain my general happiness... maybe it is the quasi-vacation status of this whole adventure. I have no car, television, or cell phone to distract me from the moment. It might just be because I am getting a solid 7-8 hours of sleep now that Judah is no longer nursing at night (!!!!, but that will be for another post.) Whatever the reason, life just seems really, well, beautiful here in Vienna. That is not to say that this time isn't difficult. It has its momentary lows. My vocabulary is basically generated from and limited to Jude's toddler German books. On most of my travels, the conversation is focused on one of three central themes: trucks/things that go, foods/bananas, or barnyard animals. Meeting people is more difficult and connecting with those I love back home is harder as well.

But...

Did you know they put chocolate in their cereal here? And they don't make you feel bad by calling it "Choc-o-what have you". They give it the air of health and nutrition by calling it "Schoko Musli," which I think is completely acceptable for a grown woman to eat for breakfast (or dinner.) I joke, but it's more than the wealth of my three favorite food groups, chocolate, gummi, and booze that makes me love it here. I find so much of what Austrian society appears to value very appealing. The Viennese really know how to enjoy themselves. From sitting outside people watching, to making use of the common spaces and connecting with friends and family at cafes, it is a culture of action and interaction.

I find it all too easy at this point to segue into a critique of all that I think is backwards about the way we do things in the U.S. (and from my vantage point, there is a lot there), but it is so much more interesting to share the little nugget of insight I gleaned from the last month and the thoughts above. I remember reading an essay a few months back that somehow stayed with me. Basically, this author had been given an expensive bottle of perfume as a gift and beyond any sentimental attachment, she absolutely loved the way it smelled. She never wore it except on very special occasions, the logic being that if she used it on a daily basis, she would use it up and find herself unable to replace it. She went on to reflect on this attitude towards consumption and joy. The perfume was not rare or excessively difficult to obtain. In the age of the internet, she easily could have located and afforded to buy a new bottle once the first one had been used. However, she didn't. There was something that kept her from allowing herself to truly take in the thing that made her happy. The gist, we portion out our enjoyment of life into small, calculated doses, all too often sucking out the very happiness we are trying to preserve.

Maybe it is out Puritan roots, but I can't for the life of me figure out what we Americans are so afraid of when it comes to loving the living of life. Its crazy, but since I have been here, I have not seen a single drunk person, yet everywhere you go people are drinking beer and wine at cafes throughout the day. I have yet to see an obese person, but I have not seen a single gym and all they offer with their coffees is whole milk and real sugar. Its balance... its moderation... BUT most importantly (and this, I think is where so many of us get it wrong) it is the primacy of enjoyment. So, I pledged to myself to live the life of those around me for the short time we have here. Maybe we are on to something. We don't have tons of resources, but we can certainly squeeze in some nice yarn and a croissant and coffee for the park. Baby happy? Check. Mama happy? Check.

In truth, I know all of this will end. Our family will return to the States, to "real" life without palaces and century old churches towering over us as we lay in the grass. I assume that we will reclaim our car and connect up those cell phones...but does life need to be any less about the enjoyment of living? How does one replicate the "Vienna factor" in a less dramatic locale, say Miami, Florida or Anywhere, USA? Well, don't mete out fun like it is a life sentence. Life is too difficult and too short to restrict the pure joy that can be found by simply allowing yourself to take in the things that you want and crave in the world around you.

So, open that bottle of wine you've been saving, make pancakes for breakfast everyday for a week, take the walk to the place you enjoy most in your city... It's your day! Save the whales, save your money, but don't save the things that make you happiest in life for tomorrow.

The Post I've Been Wanting to Write For Weeks

Moves of any sort are rough. There are the three distinct phases, the build up, the move, and the wind down, and each phase carries with it its own indigenous stress.

Well the dust has settled and we have re-established the delicate, vital order that holds our little family together. Now it is time to give thanks.

About a month ago, my mom and I put together an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner. My brother completed his coursework for his B.A. and his favorite meal is, well, Thanksgiving. The act of eating Thanksgiving got me thinking about first, how happy I was to get a turkey dinner, even if it came with air conditioning and shorts in July. However, before the sedating effects of the tryptophan could set in, I began to think about how none of this great leap across the world could have been possible without the undying support and efforts of our loved ones.

It was a bewildering summer of what ifs and what nexts? But when I think about all the moments and experiences we were able to cram into the couple of months we had in Michigan, I have to say that Summer of 2010 is one of the best I can remember.

Sure we did a lot. We stood post to watch the S.S. Badger come into dock in the evening evening, we ate "our" first ice cream cone, we saw Elk, and deer, and beavers. I learned how to crochet, and play Mahjong, and bake bread. Jude learned how to moo, baa, and neigh. We parked it and beached it...

But by far, the best moments of our summer, were the ones spent with family and friends. I am taken aback by how many good people made the trek all the way up to Ludington to visit with us and show us how much we mean to them. For this I am thankful.

This summer will keep me warm well into the new year.

Medals and Badges

Before I knew it, I was in the game. Weeks into being a mom I found myself shoulder to shoulder in the toughest competition of my life-competitive parenting, mothers division. Who would have thought that with each report on the daily habits of this little 8 pound being, I would be judged for both my knowledge of mothering and my performance, form and execution...

Sometimes I wonder if this hyper-observation/ meta-analysis of my life tends to blow everything wildly out of proportion but I think that this depiction of mothering as ultra-competitive is kind. I mean my sister is reading a book called "Mommy Wars." Geeze. From what I've observed, mamaing is the new child-rearing. It's serious business, like playgroups for ladies in their first trimester serious or wait on the phone for 2 hours at 4am to sign up for swimming lessons for your 6 month old serious. Yet from right out of the gate, I was playing to medal.

I had never really merited recognition for the many starring roles I had played prior to landing the walk on part of, Jessica Kerr, mother of one. I deserved an honorable mention, at best, for my decade spanning performance as daughter/sister. I have to think that Gabe wished he had an understudy for the years I fell short in my role as the perfect wife. Jude didn't even know it yet, but this was my chance, his mom was destined to motherhood greatness.

fast-forward 1 year

Press-release: I have come to my senses and left competition in order to spend time with my family.

Instead of enumerating my many low points in this sham competition which offer little more than a few good laughs, I think it is much more interesting (and flattering) to meet me in my state of reform. I have realized that there are two catastrophic side effects to competition in motherhood. First, what is done in the name of spending time with and for their children, actually pulls mothers away from this amazing opportunity to participate in their lives. But most interesting to me is the pervasive anti-woman atmosphere that appears to be generated by the rivalry between unsure and defensive mothers struggling to make sense of this time of mind-blowing change and serious isolation.

It wasn't until my sister had her baby that I realized that I had taken up residence with the "sanctimommies" (my step-mother-in-law's brilliant term for the holier than thou mommy who lords her momcomplishments over her insecure sisters.) My baby was always held, my baby doesn't take a pacifier, we don't use an infant carrier...

I have to pause here, because there is nothing necessarily self-righteous about any of these choices in child-rearing. I stand by most of the choices we have made as sound parenting. However, the difference between a mother who, say exclusively breastfed her child and a nursing sanctimommy, is that the latter judges anyone who does not/ can not nurse as a fundamentally inferior mother.

Then my sister gave birth to her son at 33 weeks and I got a first row seat to a whole new world of pain and fear that is ever-present for parents trying to navigate how to make the best decisions for a fragile, pre-term infant. The entire mothering world-view I had constructed began to break down. It struck me that judgements I had passed just months before were now down right callous given these new circumstances. I sat with her as she was torn apart day and night for 3 weeks, waiting, unable to snuggle up close, let alone hold, her precious baby. She and her husband were on a rollercoaster involving foreign things like bradycardias and feeding tubes. While they knew that they were amazingly fortunate to have escaped many of the problems that plague premies, they were still faced with enduring a birth/ first weeks that so far from the norm.

I began to soften. And think.

Sitting around one afternoon a few weeks later, nursing our children, my sister remarked that life at our house now felt like a 70's commune. Naked babies, half-naked moms performing mundane tasks like eating breakfast while feeding the baby. She and I made up this goofy song about our shared time off work. We called it "Sister/ Sister Maternity Leave." The spirit of the song was meant to reassure our respective husbands that the idea of Kate and I on maternity leave together wouldn't be a toxic formula concocted with the net result of draining our families' bank accounts. Sure the verses about "laughing and nursing" and "lunching and learning" were created as a caricature of what women at home, raising children look like. But when I think about what something like this song might accomplish in the world, juxtaposed against the antagonism I was part and parcel in breeding, it doesn't appear so cliché.

Maybe what all of us mammas need is a metaphorical sister/sister maternity leave; the time to come together without fear of judgement. Perhaps then there would be more nursing mothers, more women confident to push through the struggles that this role certainly provides. Today, I think that being a mom just might be the case where most women deserve a ribbon for playing, especially if it comes in the form of support and encouragement from someone who has run the race before.

I Can Make It All By Myself

Gabe and I started out this summer with a mass effort to reduce our number of belongings. Our new reality was this, either unload much of our unused stuff or pay a hefty fee for cozy junk storage while we're abroad. Two things had to happen. We needed a frank discussion about our need to retain items of little value and to further combat the mounting piles, I had to come to terms with my need to buy and Gabe had to face his need to retain.

By the end of the packing effort we found that both of us had moved from a deeply sentimental, keep everything relationship with our things, to the cold and unfeeling sell/ donate/ trash it end of the spectrum. I joke, but I imagine that everyone who has ever helped us move is not laughing about having carried all those books to multiple three-story walk-up apartments. One Salvation Army van and several car loads later and we were looking quite svelte as far as stuff was concerned.

Initially it was hard to part with our possessions. Now that I have been able to rationalize the value of having less, I have come to appreciate only having the things that you absolutely need with and around you. If you had to be able to fit said things into 4 bags like we do, this doesn't amount to a whole lot. There is still room for sentimentality in this equation. I packed away years of saved letters and pictures, journals, drawings and other projects. We kept all of our art and [higher] quality furniture. Mostly though, we just have boring, day-to-day necessities.

In this transformation from stuff hoarding Jessica to stuff shedding Jessica, I became angry with myself for buying, literally, into this racket of material things. I am not anti-stuff by any means. I think it is fabulous to search out beautiful things, functional or otherwise, to have around you in your world. What makes me so frustrated is the "big sell" that urges individuals, such as myself, into thinking we actually need all this junk.

Case in point, baby stuff. When I first found out I was pregnant I remember this feeling of panic when I "realized" how much we needed. How were Gabe and I going to be able to provide for this kid? Would he be forever destined to a life of crime or worse, second tier universities, if we weren't able to get him a diaper wipes warmer? Each look at one of those "needs" checklist from the baby books left me overwhelmed and anxious. I never felt completely at peace or grounded when it came to filtering out necessity from nonsense.

As is everything with our family and raising a baby, we tend to butt up against the status quo, be utterly repelled by it, and figure out our own way of proceeding. This was no different. We were able to say no to many of the useless products, such as the aforementioned wipe warmer, and borrowed many of the items that had limited lifespans. Unfortunately, we still ended up with a lot more that was ever needed. Beautiful, much researched, unused stuff.

Alas, we are wiser now...

Maybe. I admitted to the real problem in the first paragraph. I just said it and moved right onto placing responsibility for the ills of materialism squarely on society. The thing about baby stuff, any stuff really, is that a lot of it is pretty dang cute. Sure I can say no to diaper pails and ugly utilitarian crap, but adorable wooden toys that click and clack... What about a sweet, sweater vest or knitted finger puppets? It doesn't ever stop. Babies with needs grow into toddlers with needs. And my baby, well, he needed a hat that looked like a little bear. I got that we could raise a happy baby without 3/4 of the things on commercial registries, but I still loved the search for the most aesthetically pleasing baby items I could find.

Then came the job offer and the move. Ah, Austria. It has been transformative, freeing really. Like when you die, we literally cannot take it with us. What was I to do with all this new-found time?

You make it, mama!

It started with a basic tomato sauce. I was just curious what it would taste like from scratch. Since then I have had a whole slew of projects. A birthday crown, a week of home-baked bread, embroidered onesies, a pin cushion, a killer cornhole game for our friends' wedding, gnome baby hats for Jude and his cousin, a blog... What a fantastic, satisfying way to live a life.

Mama's Little Baby Loves...

nursing all day and night. He especially loves snacking at night in a comfy, queen sized bed next to his mama. The little baby loves being carried; all 24 pounds of him tucked in close. Basically Jude loves all the things that elicit gasps, words of warning, and blank stares from inquisitive strangers. Now don't get me wrong, I am a confident mama who feels a hundred percent assured that we are growing a healthy, active, and inquisitive baby boy. However, I am feeling the implications of these comments more and more. As we say good-bye to infancy and welcome the wild land of toddlerdome, I feel like I am leaving a world where I had cover for our practices and entering one of even greater judgement.

The rest of the universe is with me on the extended nursing, co-sleeping, baby-wearing trifecta. While they may be standard elsewhere, somehow these three things seem to be the parenting kiss of death in the U.S. I feel like I parent in a world where if you don't have a child who sleeps 12 hours a night in a crib, drinks cow's milk, and sits content in the stroller by a year, then it is assumed that something has gone awry.

I had an attachment parenting epiphany the other evening. (Isn't it wild that we have a special descriptor for the way other intuitively parent?) Gabe was in Chicago packing up the remainder of our apartment and I was a couple of days into a stint of single parenthood. For the 12 months that I've known the little guy, Jude has been fairly predictable, never easy, but predictable in his own little way. Sure enough, the week that I was flying solo, our meager attempts at structure were falling apart. One evening, two hours into a marathon bedtime routine, I was nearing my capacity for patience. I knew my child wasn't feeling well, but after being on for the last 15 some odd hours, I was finished. Lying in bed, I thought to myself, "Why won't this baby just go to sleep on his own like other kids? I am in serious need of some "me" time." With each passing minute I grew more and more frustrated. Finally, the rational adult in me took over. I relaxed and closed my eyes. As our breaths synchronized, Jude began to drift off to sleep.

As I settled in to my book for what was left of the evening, my "me" time, I thought about what had just transpired in our bedtime test of wills. I laughed to myself, "Now I realize why people let their babies cry. I couldn't do this on a regular basis." But this isexactly what Gabe and I do as parents. Our days/ evenings are not this intense because we have the support of each other to take the edge off when we encounter a more trying moment. However, we have chosen the path that puts parenting at the forefront of what we do. I realized something in this moment of conflict- what Americans are seeking when they say they want to cultivate independent children is really independence from their children. In this moment I needed time to be sans child, not the other way around.

Sure, it is a given that everyone needs some time to decompress. No one can be on all the time. Yet, I think it is the American way of life (moms returning to work a mere 6 weeks after they give birth!) that forces parents to put their babies on the fast track to doing it by themselves. It is a world where babies must adapt to the fast paced life of the family versus the family slowing down to acclimate this new being into their world.

It has taken me a full year of my child's life to make peace with this alternative way of living. I have had my moments, much like the one in the bed that evening, where I resisted the need to temporarily give up my independence. The greatest sum of the past 12 months has been spent calculating ways to free myself from commitments that pull me mentally and physically from Jude. I am a lucky mom! While the parenting path may not always be clear, I am afforded the greatest luxury in the world- time to think and be.

A Simple(r) Summer

The Kerr family has landed (albeit briefly) for the summer at my family's summer home in Ludington, MI. It was a whirlwind of packing, applying and re-applying for our visa paperwork, and tying up the many loose ends we had in Chicago. Now is a time for family, regrouping, and readying ourselves for the vast adventure that sits just a few short months in front of us.

It is a bittersweet time for me as I try to wrap my head around all of this change. My baby is no longer an infant (as I am reminded of daily as this gregarious toddler rambles from room to room before my very eyes.) I am not a maternity leave momma any longer either. While there was no mistaking this past year that my full physical and emotional efforts were directed squarely on one little boy, the quadrant of my identity focused on professional Jessica has been put on indefinite hold. And most difficult for me, we had to say good-bye to Chicago, our home for the last decade. It is here that Gabe and I became the people we are today. The loss of having our closest friends at arms reach all the time will be hard to cope with as we travel further and further from the nest.

But... we have this summer. Unfettered. I cannot say what the next year will bring. There are so many questions, all huge, all unanswered. Yet, it is because of this unknown and my inability to control what happens next that I am able to be present in the moments. So with that, we have a simple summer.