New Blog Address

It's official, I've set up shop elsewhere. Continue on this journey with Eliza and myself at http://midlifemama1.blogspot.com As there's already another Midlife Mama in Cyberspace, it's imperative that you type the number1 after my moniker to find me (though I'm sure the other Midlife Mama is worth checking out).

I'm having difficulty setting my archives, which is why it's taken me so long to post this address. Hopefully, by the end of the month, you'll be able to look at my old posts here at clubmom. You can also check out the blog I'd set up in Eliza's early months at my new site.

Hope to see you there! Please take my poll, leave a comment, let me know you're still out there and willing to read about my lovely little girl.

New Year, New Mama

I've decided to keep on blogging in 2008. It's taken me a while to make up my mind but in truth, I realized how much I love how this blog has served as a record of the first two years of Eliza's life.

So much to tell you since I last wrote. I really hope you'll follow me to my new site. I'm in the process of setting up everything now. In a few days, it should be up and running and I'll follow-up here with a new address.

So many changes to make in this new year! In Eliza's world, she's really learned to sing. While visiting my mother a few days after Christmas, we popped in a dvd of the sound of music just to see if Eliza would like it. She now insists on watching it practically every day and sings "Doe, a Dear" to anyone who'll listen. She's picked up many of the songs amazingly well. Tonight she looked at me and said "I am sixteen going on sebenteen."

Just when I thought she couldn't get any cuter. Check back in a few days. Thank you for stopping by.

Too Much to Say

As the December 31st deadline looms, I still haven't decided if I'll continue this blog or not. The task of moving the content to another website feels so overwhelming, it's easier for me to focus on what I'll make for Christmas dinner than be a grown-up and make a decision. I'd kind of decided to hang up my blogging hat--although I love writing about Eliza, it's starting to feel like it's time to get back to writing what I did write before motherhood came along and made me into some one else.

You see, the truth of it all is I've always been a writer. I started writing nursery rhymes and fake biographies in grade school. By third grade, I had written full-scale novellas about orphan pioneer children. They were mostly copies of "Little House on the Prairie Books" but I wrote for enjoyment and loved telling stories nonetheless. I got into working on television to write for TV because my fiction writing career never really took off. Unfortunately, neither did my television or screenwriting career. So many other TV writers have told me "I don't know anyone who persevered who didn't make it eventually." Then I had a baby and it became easy to walk away from all that. I still have mixed feelings about working and what I really want.

This blog satisfied my need to write. And to have feedback on a regular basis, most of it positive, has been one of the most satisfying experiences I've encountered. Suddenly, I wasn't asking people to read my work. People were reading it of their own volition and instead of waiting for weeks to hear back from my readers (usually with a rejection letter), I was called an "inspiration" by some, a "good mother" by others. My work was finally out there reaching an audience of people I truly respected and admired. Because no job is tougher than parenthood. There's people marching through the desert during war and coal miners entering dark caves they know could be dangerous. However, stressful these jobs are, they do end at a certain time while parenthood is forever. So I revere mothers and fathers everywhere.

I've been thinking about the short film I didn't make, the one that almost got me a directing fellowship last year. When I was a finalist but didn't get the fellowship, I decided that was it. I'd forget about this silly film career I'd pursued for years and focus on the wonderful task at hand. However, as Eliza gets older and the reality of Eliza starting school and making friends and getting a life outside the home closes in, what Lisa the person wants becomes more important. I want to make this film. I want to make a living as a writer. I want to be more than simply Eliza's mother.

So I'd made the decision to shut down here when I got another email from a long lost friend. Suddenly, I felt like I didn't want to walk away from the writing world I'd created as Eliza's mother. I want to find a way to do both.

So hopefully, I'll find a way to move my content and continue life as midlife mama. And I'll clue you in on how to follow me when and if that happens. I have to add that while I've been writing this, Eliza's been marching in here to show me how she's now wearing three headbands.

"I so pretty, Mama," she said the last time as she came into my bedroom. There are so many stories and so many wonderful things I can say about my daughter. With the good comes the bad, the moments when I really think I can't do this anymore.

(Ooh, Eliza just marched past my room and said "Mama's busy." How cute. Oh, she's saying "I so pretty" again. There's so many ways to love a child, all of which seem infinite)

The other day, while doing laundry, Eliza perched on the washing machine beside the dryer, I quickly loaded the dryer. The dryer door is hinged that it doesn't stay open, in fact keeps banging into my head as I toss the clothes in. Annoyed by the dryer door, how rushed I felt and by the fact that some one had left a napkin in their pants pocket that now clung to all the clean clothes like a leech, I started to bang the dryer door back like a two-year-old. Eliza's face suddenly took on the shame of a person embarrassed.

"Mama, don't do that," she said, with the tone of some one supremely disappointed in me.

I laughed, the intelligence and sensitivity of what she'd said so funny and so impressive. I've always felt like a big kid myself. I kind of look like one, I act like one and I worked in a business that canonizes youth. Having a little daughter made me want to be a grown-up and as much as that scares me, it's a lovely way to feel.

Christmas Train

As I make plans to attend the spectacular (so I've heard) Holiday Train show at the Bronx Botanical Gardens, I can't help but think about the train my father built under our Christmas tree when I was a child. The week he spent building the thing was a nightmare, with the sawing down the top of the tree so it could fit in the center of the platform, him under the platform for hours on his back connecting all the electrical wiring and the laying down of the fake grass and fake dirt of the roads and lawns on top of the platform.

My father is an electrical engineer and when I recall the train now I realize it was like a work of art. My father built the platform, stapled down draft paper and mapped out a little town. He drew streets and separate lots, drilled holes for the wires and spent entire evenings building model houses, a school, a church and a town hall. After the street lights and trains were wired, he'd open big bags of grass and lay it down by hand, careful not to let the grass bleed into the dirt roads or onto the train tracks.

Then like magic, he flicked a switch and the houses lit up, traffic signals blinked, and the train came to life. We had two trains, a freight train and a small passenger train. We could make the trains switch tracks with the flick of a switch. Paper cut to look like a mountain surrounded the base of the Christmas tree.

Putting the train together was a lot of work and like I said, my father wasn't the happiest camper during this week. Though I loved the train, I quickly grew bored with it, especially when my friends didn't see all that impressed. When my parents split up and the train no longer was a part of our holiday tradition, I don't think I noticed much or cared.

I think about it now though, with great fondness. I admire my father's hard work and wish that I had the talent to create such a magical world for my own little daughter.

Winding Down

Thanks for everyone who commented on my last post. I especially like the person who suggested we burn C's ex-wife at the stake. She's not a bad person honestly, but I'm certainly not going to nominate her for mother of the year. Of course, I'd hardly nominate myself and I really don't want to judge other people's parenting choices. It's hard not too, when you've got a sick ten-year-old on the phone at one in the morning who doesn't know where his mother is.

I applied for a blogging position at another website and if that doesn't happen, I think I might hang up my hat as Midlife Mama. Although I love writing here and I really enjoy all the comments and wonderful "friends" I've made, I'm not sure I have the time to continue. Secretly, I really do hope the other blogging position happens because I really want to continue documenting my daughter's life. Right now, it's still all very much in the air.

So if the end is near, let me add a few little Eliza anecdotes:

We read an Elmo book about school on a regular basis. It mainly discusses what it's like for kids on the first day of school. On one of the pages, a child asks the location of the bathroom. After we'd been reading this book for a while, Eliza would jump out of the chair as soon as we turned to the page, stand outside the nearest bathroom, pointing and say "See bathroom? Here's bathroom."

I have to say, I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. My little daughter, always trying to be helpful and kind. I love how her mind works.

She doesn't do this anymore, when we read this book. I miss it and I didn't want to forget.

The other day I started to sing a song my mother's sang to her since she was a newborn. My mother sang this song to my brother and I as a child. It's called "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane" and starts with the word "Boom."

When I started with the "Boom" recently, Eliza said, "No boom, boom, boom. Grandma."

She hangs her head out of the side of the stroller now. It scares me. I'm afraid some rushed passerby won't see her and walk right into her head. Telling her to stop is pretty ineffective. Going out without the stroller is still not a great option. And I have to admit, it's pretty darn cute. She wants to hang out of the stroller so she can look at me and sing to me.

She fills me with joy.

Feedback pleeeeease!

Okay, hate to dish the dirt but I'd love to know what objective people think here. If you read this regularly, then you know I'm a stepmother; C has two kids from his first marriage. Two nights a week, they come over for dinner. Usually, they go home after dinner but every now and then C's son Harry, aged 10, sleeps over. The kids sleep over every other weekend. Now that Katie's 15, she rarely sleeps over, preferring her own room to a fold-out couch in our living room.

Last night, Harry attended a function with a friend that ended around 8pm so C simply took him home. He hung out there for a bit, then came home around 10pm. He often leaves before his ex-wife comes home and last night was not unusual. I've been pretty sick and I think he was anxious to get home and see how things were here. He feels Katie can handle things until their mother comes home.

However, around 1am this morning, C's phone rang. It was Harry who'd woken up sick, thrown up a few times and went into his mother's room to find her not there. Repeated phones calls were unanswered. C was half asleep and called her, also receiving no answer. He probably should have headed over there but he didn't.

Okay, so the mother got home around 2am. Tuesday night, a single mother who couldn't be reached by phone gets home at 2am. C had not arranged for Harry to sleep over.

Go ahead and blast C all you want but I'm really curious as to the opinions on this issue. Divorced, but your kids still live with you--do you stay out until 2am when you know the kids will be sleeping in your home and their father has a job and his own home to return to? I'd love to say this is not a common occurrance here but unfortunately, I think this is the first time one of the kids got up and noticed Mom was still not home.

Is this ever easy?

I'm sick again but it's still no excuse for the bad Mama moments I've had lately. Suddenly my moods are swinging wildly from okay and happy to blind, smoke-coming-out-of-my-ears rage. I don't know what's going on inside my body but let's say I don't think I'll be getting a mother-of-the-year award anytime soon.

I'm exhausted and burnt out. Eliza is still waking up every other night, sometimes two to three times a night. She usually goes back to sleep fairly easily but I don't. I feel completely unhinged, like my head is scattered in several different directions. And now I'm sick again, having just recovered from a mysterious ailment two weeks ago. I'm annoyed with my body's frailty as I type this, a pile of used tissues strewn all around me.

With thanks and a few questions

I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the people who've taken the time to make Eliza and myself a part of their regular lives. I would have liked to thank you all personally but my lack of technological prowess made it time consuming for me to respond to every comment. I would have though, I'm so appreciative for al l the good will and kind words I've received during this past year and a half at clubmom.

I particularly want to thank the people who responded when I dislosed the details of my miscarriage this past summer. It was an incredibly dark time and the kindness expressed by people I've not even met was so wonderful and so needed, just thinking about it still makes me want to weep with gratitude. At a time when even my closest friends couldn't find the right words to say, there you all were, saying exactly what I needed to hear.

This blog has reconnected me with people who've moved away, a former boyfriend and a friend from high school. My best friend, currently living in Israel, often checks in to see how her dear sweet Eliza is doing. So I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to write here.

What's next for me? I'm really not sure. I want to get through the holidays with C and then try to figure out a way to extract myself from a situation that's not quite working for me. I feel stalled in my career ambitions but I feel confident that I will find a way to work the job situation out.

If I could ask you kind readers for one thing before I sign off, it's if you'd still find time to read this blog in another form at another site. I can note your email addresses and contact you if I do find another writing gig at another parenting website.

For the time being, I'll still be writing here for a few more weeks. But in the meantime, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks again to you, my wonderful readers.

Sad and very, very angry

I know I promised to dedicate this blog to all the great things Eliza does on a seemingly hourly basis but I got some sad news about a former co-worker. Apparently, a makeup artist I'd worked with briefly in 2004 died on Thanksgiving after what sounds like a vicious fight against cancer. She was only 41.

I'm not going to pretend like I knew Kelly well. When I saw her name in the subject line of the email, I saw her face. When I worked with Kelly in the spring of 2004, she had blonde hair, big blew eyes and a very perky demeaner. Although she looked rather cute and bubbly on the surface, she had some bite to her and though I never got to know her well, I definitely saw she was a shrewd, fierce, funny and very tough woman. In other words, she wasn't just the perky little cheerleader I'd mistaken her for. She was that maybe, but also so much more.

I wasn't friends with her but I can see her very clearly in my mind. I can't mourn the loss of her friendship, only the loss of a woman who was only 41 years old! When the first line of the email said she'd passed away on Thanksgiving, I thought I'd confused her with another woman. The perky blond I envisioned was way too young for this fate. It was only as I read on that I came to the realization of the horror this woman had endured. I think of how much she had to live for and I can't help it, I get very, very, very pissed off.

Yes, I'm not supposed to swear here but we're done in a few weeks anyway. I can be pissed off about this. There are times when nice language is not suitable.

Today, as Eliza and I walked towards her tumbling class, we passed through a patch of sidewalk that smells like urine. It happens in New York, suddenly inexplicably one smells the distinct stench of pee. Usually it's near a construction side or secluded corner, not just in the middle of the sidewalk like today. Eliza yelled loudly, "It's stinky! It's stinky!" She then held her tiny nose with her thumb and forefinger and said "che putz." I was so amazed by the fact that she recognized a bad odor and reacted. I could only lok at her little face, hand over her nose and grin like an idiot.

I can say I'm sorry Kelly didn't have a daughter but I don't think that's what she strove for. She was a highly successful, award-winning makeup artist. I think she had the life she wanted. I remember when I worked with her she'd recently purchased a two-family house and was in the process of renovating it. The house was in an expensive neighborhood in New York so I was extremely impressed by this young, single woman with enough capital and moxie to purchase a fixer-upper. She was hands on during the renovation as I understand, right in there with the people who were gutting, sanding, painting. I would have been a basket case in her shoes and yet she sat on set, tranquil as some daisies waving in the breeze.

I am so, so sorry that Kelly didn't get to live longer. She wanted to, she deserved to, again, this is so unfair! I am so angry now, when I feel like I don't know what to do with my anger.

My daughter is so wonderful, so tough, so spirited, so agile, so funny, so loving. I am soooooooo lucky she is in my life. I so want her to have a long and wonderful life.

I am sorry, Kelly. You so deserved better.

Who knew jelly toast could be that exciting

As I wind down this blog, I plan to devote most of my final entries to all the wonderful things Eliza does. Tonight, after a bath with Poppy, Eliza came into her little room area to find a slice of jelly toast and some cut up pear. I heard her say "Oh wow, for Eliza" when she noticed the snack I'd prepared on her tiny red table.
"Mama," she then said and I knew she'd said my name because she knew where her toast came from.

It was just a little thing but it made her so happy. After her poppy wrestled her into her overnight diaper, we both sat at her tiny table and watched her devour her toast. She wiggled and made happy little noises as she chomped on the toast. I love her happy food wiggle--she does this often when she discovers a food she likes. She stands up and wiggles as she eats. Some people feel the need to shake their booty when a certain song comes on the radio; my daughter likes to get down over a plate of pie.

I am far from the best mother in the world. Eliza spent most of the day snacking on potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pie. I didn't even prepare dinner in favor of a trip to a nearby tree-lighting ceremony. I know that jelly toast and pear slices are a pretty sorry dinner indeed. But hearing the joy in her voice when she discovered her mini "meal" made my lax nutritional attitude tolerable for me--at least for tonight.