Resolutions

I've become a pretty big fan of Ju-Ju-Be recently. I got my first diaper bag from them around the time Ava was born (thanks, Mom!), but it wasn't until June or July of this year that I started spending time online in JJB's Pink Room, an online discussion forum for JJB enthusiasts, who are known as Pink Ladies. I've been more of a lurker there than I have in other online forums, but I've gotten sucked in to both the forums and the bags in subsequent months, much to Matt's chagrin.

Ju-Ju-Be is an amazing company. Their bags are phenomenal - highly organized diapers bags, but with lots of style. Their customer service has been nothing short of spectacular (and sadly, I've had lots of experience with customer service lately, so I can tell the difference!). And the community of women in the Pink Room is unbelievably supportive. The drama that I've seen in other similar communities...just doesn't seem to be there.

One of the things that JJB has done is to give away a bag every couple of weeks. Amazing, I know. They call it the "Real Mom Giveaway," and there is a new topic every two weeks. Real moms post their answers, and a couple of winners are selected based on their entries.

The contest posted for the end of 2010 read as follows:

"NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS!!!! This contest will be a few days longer than normal due to the holidays...so it will end 3 days after NY's Eve. I thought it would be fitting to share any or all resolutions we might have. They can be serious or light-hearted. I'm horrible at resolutions but i still like to set new goals each year. I guess it is a tradition (i guess it is also a tradition to break my New Year's Resolutions!! HAHAHAHA!!)"

This was also going to be the last of the Real Mom Giveaways. I had to come up with something good. Hee hee! Really, though, I searched my soul for what I needed to do in 2011, and this is what I came up with:

Honor my mother(s)

I have had stormy relationships

with both my mom and my mother-in-law, but I want to change that in the new year.

My mom and I mostly get along, but sometimes I totally lose my patience with her and lash out. She is retiring next month and will be spending 3.5 months living at my aunt's while my aunt is in FL for the winter. She'll be 45 minutes away instead of 7-8 hours! It's a great opportunity for my kids to have more Nana time, and for DH and I to have some backup. My mom is totally awesome with the kids, and loves to spend time with them (including doing early morning wakeup duty with DS, who gets up at 6 AM most days!), and I am truly lucky to have her.

My MIL and I got along fairly well until I had kids, and we continued to do okay until my second was born. We had a pretty major falling out when DD was 2 months old, and while we've managed to mend things a bit, visits with her can be pretty tense. She and I butt heads a lot - I'm not a huge believer in astrology, but we are both pretty stereotypical Aries! She hasn't been willing to take the time to learn how to do things my way, and I haven't been willing to roll with it during her visits.

My dad died 8 years ago, and DH's dad died 5 years ago, so these are the only grandparents my kids have. I need to nurture my relationships with them, because otherwise I will damage the kids' relationships with them.

So...I hereby resolve to work on my patience, to let things slide and laugh them off, and if necessary, to be the bigger person. They won't be around forever, and I'll regret it every day if I don't cherish them now!

And believe it or not...I won. My entry was one of the three entries selected to win this last of the Real Mom Giveaways. But better yet...thanks to this great and supportive community, I was able to open up about something that has been really hard for me over the past several years.

So now I'm opening up to all of you, many of whom are my "real life" friends and family. I wanted you all to know what I said online, so I can be held accountable for this resolution in my real life. Because that is where it matters the most.

And now, if you'll excuse me...I have a new bag to pick out.

A little girl named Cora

I'm a little late to this, as Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) Awareness Week (February 7-14) is long past. (I'll use the excuse of being caught up in writing my first academic paper in nearly ten years….) However, I didn't want to let that stop me from writing this post.

I've recently come to learn about congenital heart defects. CHDs are the most common birth defect. Nearly 40,000 babies each year are born with a CHD, or nearly 1 in 100 newborns, and nearly 1,800 newborns die from a CHD each year. Congenital means "present at birth." While a CHD may be genetic, more often there is no obvious cause or way the defect could have been prevented.

However, there is a test that can catch some CHDs. While there are no tests that are 100% effective in screening for CHDs, pulse oximetry, a quick, painless, and inexpensive test, can catch those that are associated with low blood oxygen levels. I won't go into the details of the test here, but more information can be found at the website of 1in100, an organization that works to raise awareness of CHDs.

I'm sure you're wondering why this post came about. Back in early December, someone I follow on Twitter mentioned something about wearing pink for someone named Cora. At first I ignored it, but after seeing it from a few more people, I followed some links, and I read Cora’s Story. The long version can be found here, but the short version is that Cora was five days old when she died in her mother's arms while breastfeeding. Cora had an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. I immediately started to follow Cora's mother, Kristine, on Twitter. It was the day before Cora’s memorial service, and Kristine and her family were asking people to wear pink (and post pictures) the next day, in Cora's memory. I read Kristine's tweets backwards. I found the tweet from the day Cora died, the tears streaming down my face. The next day, Ava and I both wore pink (I know, I know, I should have made Jonah and Matt wear pink, too!).

Over the nearly three months since I learned about Cora, I've been amazed by Kristine's strength and passion. She is working hard to make sure that no family has to go through what she went through. She has good days and bad, but she is channeling her grief into building a movement. She has also inspired and motivated me. And on the days when the kids are driving me nuts (and lately, there have been a lot of them), all I have to do is think of her and her sweet Cora, and at least for a moment, the craziness melts away.

I'm writing this blog post because I pledged to Kristine that I would share information about congenital heart defects, as well as Cora's story, with the pregnant women I know, and their families. I want to encourage anyone who is reading this post to pass it along. If you are pregnant, ask for a pulse ox test to be performed on your newborn before you leave the hospital. You can even add it to your birth plan!

For more information:

Cora's Story

1in100

March of Dimes

You're going back to school for what now?

Masters of Science in Accounting.

Lots of people have been asking about it, so I thought I'd write a bit about it. Yes, I'm going back to school to get a degree in accounting. Yes, I already have a graduate degree in social work, perhaps the 180 degree opposite of accounting. Sometimes I think I'm a bit nuts. Sometimes, when I say it, I feel like I have to hang my head in shame, like I'm some sort of traitor or defector. My favorite grad school professor wrote me a recommendation, and when I first asked him to do it, he told me he'd be happy to write a rec for a job in social work, but that he didn't think he was the right person to write this. (I talked him into writing it, since they ask for my aptitude for graduate study in general and not accounting or business specifically.)

It started in April, when I was working on our taxes. Now granted, I was just entering numbers into TurboTax, not really doing any real accounting. But two things occurred to me while I was doing it. First, I really liked working with those numbers. My jobs since getting my MSW have been all about working with people. (Well, duh.) I think I'm a little burned out on people. I realize that there will be people involved in an accounting career, but I like the idea of focusing on those numbers. In addition, I've done some accounting and financial management for the EMA Fund, so I have a little bit of an idea of what I might be in for. And I'm not a clinical social worker. I concentrated in management and community practice. So I've never been interested in being a therapist.

The second thing that occurred to me while I was working on our taxes was that I really need to earn more money. Don't get me wrong - I'm eight years past my masters degree, and I earn plenty of money. For someone who lives, well, pretty much anywhere other than Boston. But childcare for two kids is eating up my entire salary (and it would even if I were working full-time – remember, full-time work requires full-time childcare). Once Jonah starts preschool in the fall, it will eat up more than my entire salary. We can swing it, but it would be nice to minimize that financial hit by creating opportunities for higher earnings in the future.

I don't want to be a CPA, so don't start signing up to have me do your taxes. Instead, I'd like to be a private accountant, keeping track of some company's money. Down the road, if the day comes that we can manage with me making a lower salary, I'd love to work for a nonprofit again. In the meantime, though, perhaps I can do some pro bono accounting work to fill my need to repair the world. (EMA is first on my list, of course!)

To write this blog post, I did a google search on "What is accounting?" The first definition I found read:

Quite simply, accounting is a language: a language that provides information about the financial position of an organization. When you study accounting you are essentially learning this specialized language. By learning this language you can communicate and understand the financial operations of any and all types of organizations.

(Source: http://www.moneyinstructor.com/lesson/accountingintro.asp)

I've always been good at languages. And also math. I almost majored in math. So you can see why this field might be appealing to me. I like how accounting is so...concrete.

So, assuming I get in, I'll be enrolling at UMass Boston in January 2010. (Here's a bonus - since I used to teach GMAT courses for The Princeton Review, I've already taken--and aced--the GMAT.) UMB has a fabulous program. They're really geared toward working students, so I'll be able to continue to work part-time while taking classes at night. I think I can swing two courses per semester (and two in the summer), so I'll be done in about 2 1/2 years. Just in time to stop paying for childcare for two kids.

Dr. George Tiller

I can remember almost the exact moment I went from being sort of wishy-washy, noncommittal pro-choice to knowing without question what choice I would make in that situation. It was my senior year in high school, I had had sex (for the first time!) without using birth control, and my period was late. My first thought was, "How much does an abortion cost, and where will I get the money for it?"

As it turned out, I was not pregnant, and I have never had to make that choice. G-d willing, I will never have to. But I have since counseled numerous women about their choices and helped scores of women who chose abortion to come up with the money they needed to pay for the procedure (through my paid work at PPLM and my volunteer work with the EMA Fund), and I've witnessed the range of emotions that women have expressed at that time in their lives.

When I learned yesterday of Dr. George Tiller’s murder, I was holding Ava in my arms, surfing the web while rocking her to sleep. As the tears welled up in my eyes and I cried out, "Oh my G-d, no, no, no!" she woke up. I quickly shushed her back to sleep and put her down, sick with grief for this man I had never met, but who was a hero to me and, I daresay, thousands of women across the country.

A staff member from Dr. Tiller's clinic came to speak to us at PPLM while I worked there. She told us about the protocols they used with their late-term patients. I remember being overwhelmed by the care and compassion they had for their patients. The women they served were often in the worst of circumstances. I always knew that when I referred a patient to Dr. Tiller, she would be receiving wonderful care, both physically and emotionally. And now that he's gone, I wonder what will happen to these most desperate of women. Who will they turn to?

Ava and I will be attending a vigil for Dr. Tiller tonight. It's important to me that she be there. I want to be able to tell her that she was a part of this fight from the beginning. And if we’re still fighting it in 20 years, I want to be able to show her why it's such a crucial, vital, essential fight. If any of us felt that we could become complacent now that a pro-choice president is in office, Dr. Tiller's murder has shown us just how wrong we are.

God bless you, Dr. Tiller. You will be missed.

Please consider a donation to the EMA Fund in Dr. Tiller's memory.

Milestones

Today is our third wedding anniversary. While I'm saddened by the results of Proposition 8 in California, and recognize the irony in celebrating my marriage on a day when so many others are losing hope that they will ever be able to celebrate their own marriages, I'm thrilled and elated and [insert litany of very positive emotions here] by Barack Obama's decisive victory.

Last night, as Charlie Gibson silently counted down the seconds to the closing of California and other West Coast states, I knew what the result was going to be. Somehow, I wasn't prepared for the overwhelming flood of emotion that would wash over me. As ABC called the presidency for Obama, I burst into tears and silently wept for at least ten minutes, trying not to wake up my Mom, who had long since fallen asleep on the couch. I finally realized that I needed to go tell Matt that it was over, and so I waddled into our room where he was working to let him know. "He won, honey," I somehow croaked out. We gave each other a big hug, then walked back out to the living room to watch the aftermath together.

And as the clock ticked over to midnight and November 4 became November 5, we watched Obama's acceptance speech, perhaps the best anniversary gift we'll ever get.

Things that make me feel old

Watching football this weekend, I was reminded by one of the commentators that it's been 10 years since the Packers were in the Super Bowl. I remember that game. I had already been out on my own for a few years at that point. Is it really possible I've been a full-fledged adult for over 10 years?

Go Sox!

It's a very exciting night in the Levine-Fried household.

My apologies to those who thought there would be Monkey pictures in this post. Nope, Game 1 of the World Series is about to get underway, and I just wanted to take a moment to muse about baseball for a bit.

I feel like the World Series is an even bigger deal this year than it was in 2004. Maybe it's because that year, the really big thing was coming back from being down 3-0 to beat the Yankees. Even though coming back from being down 3-1 was a big deal, and the series against Cleveland was spectacular, it's just not quite the same as doing something no one has ever done before. The World Series in 2004 was almost an anti-climax after the emotionally draining ALCS against the Evil Empire.

It may also be because I walk past Fenway Park nearly every day. My new office is literally down the street a few blocks. The atmosphere has been so exciting on game days during the playoffs, with people milling about, excited and nervous, all decked out in Red Sox garb. It's so fun to see them all, and to wish I was one of them. I especially enjoy watching the little kids going in with their parents. I passed by a father and his son, who looked to be no older than five or six. He seemed awfully excited, but I wondered if he truly grasped how monumental an occasion it was. All I could think was that 20, 30, or more years from now, that kid is going to have an unbelievable memory.

I know this for sure: I'm going to be a tired Jen for at least the next five days!