A thing of beauty.

Sometimes I look at Esther and I just cannot believe how lovely she is. I could just look at her all day long. I love to lay down with her at naptime and just hold her, watching her sleep in my arms. But then she wakes up, and is even more beautiful and full of life - happy, healthy, and constantly in motion.

Thank you, God.

Oh my...

Esther has been telling us on a daily basis that she wants a new baby, a boy. That she wants me to grow him in my tummy, and feed him with my boobies, but that she will help Daddy change all his diapers. Essentially, what she wants is for me to grow the baby and then bring him home and give him to her, so he will be HER baby. And she insists it has to be a boy.

Oh god, please, NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

I haven't blogged for a long time because I've had so much going on, much of which was too big and traumatic for me to want to face up to again by telling the story. The Cliffs' Notes version would go something like this:

-Work: Busy! Busy busy busy! But good.

-Best/oldest friend: (Mostly) divorced, moved to California. Good-bye, best/oldest friend.

-Marriage: Been to hell and back. HUUUUGE fight over stupidness, police were called multiple times, I took Esther and stayed at best/oldest friend's house for 2 weeks (before the move), my stuff was "thrown out," I was unable to afford to move out and get my own place and pay for day care so I moved back in, we started counseling (finally!), my stuff turned out not to have actually been thrown out but only hidden away from me and was brought back. Then, things got better. Hubby admitted that it was all his fault & that he had been an asshole (thank you! I needed to hear you say that!) and has been making a real effort to treat me more kindly and to make me feel loved and appreciated. He also admitted that he's got anger management problems - our counselor gave us some techniques to use when we feel a storm approaching. Fortunately, that hasn't happened so far, but we're not 100% sure how well the techniques will work as they tend to hit without warning and within seconds. We shall see... or perhaps not, if we are truly lucky.

-Esther: Simply astounding! The worst of the fighting is that it all happened in front of her. She was pretty traumatized for a couple of weeks but seems to be over it now. She is incredibly happy that we are all back together as a family now. (Hubby and I have promised each other never to argue or physically fight in front of her again.) Her development has been astounding. She's 29 months old now, and speaks better than some adults I know. She just suddenly exploded size-wise, and I had to run out and buy her size 3T clothes, size 6 shoes, and size 5 diapers. She's got a real head of hair now, long enough for a wispy little ponytail, but it's constantly messy no matter what we do except for the golden hour after her bath but before her bedtime. My mind is blown every time I look down at her, curled up in my arms, and see a child solemnly returning my gaze. She is so full of love - she tells me "I really, really love you, mama!" and then covers me with kisses. And she's so happy! She starts her day with smiles and happy chatter, and really only goes haywire when it's time for her nap or bedtime. She's learning to ride her tricycle, and to hit wiffleballs off a tee, and to turn tumblesaults on my yoga mat. She eats like a champ, and is unafraid of new tastes and textures, even my favorite food sushi, but her very favorite is Jell-O fat-free sugar-free instant pudding, because we can make it together and she gets to lick the bowl and the whisk. Esther is, quite simply, the joy in my life.

-Diet: Start, then stop, then start again. Hubby and I started the South Beach Diet on 1/9. He's been very motivated to get under 200 lbs. before the start of his softball season, starting from 245. He's done amazingly well, practically inspirational. I think he's dropped about 30 lbs. already. Me, not so much. South Beach is low on fiber, which immediately caused me some, err, elimination problems. So I had to add some whole grains back into my diet before they were called for, which slowed down my initial progress. Of course, then I lost 5 lbs. during our separation. But I never really got back on the wagon once I came back home. But a week ago I realized my 20-year high school reunion will be next year! I was fat in high school. I managed to get skinny in time for my 10-year reunion, and boy was that a triumph. And it's important to me that I be skinny again in time for my 20-year reunion too. So, reluctantly, I got back on the wagon, and back on the accursed treadmill, and hopefully will be back into my size 8's before too much longer.

Well, that's been my life to date. That, and fighting with Blogger over the stupid switch-to-Beta thing which I put off for as long as possible. But I finally worked it all out. Grrr...

Happy New Year!

So much has passed since I last found a minute to blog, both good and bad... Chanukah ("It's candle time, mama!") and Christmas... an uneventful New Year's... my friend's behavior as to her impending divorce leading to my hubby's complete rejection of her as any kind of a worthwhile human being... the possibility of getting my dream job (c'mon phone, ring, dammit!!)... receiving a generous cash award which immediately went to pay for holiday credit card spending (net gain = $0)... And even now, I don't have much time but I did want to drop a quick line. So, I will leave you with this one quick thought...

The world's cutest thing is my 27-month-old daughter singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," complete with accompanying hand movements. I don't have a video camera, so I can't catch it to share here, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

New Year's Resolution: treat my body with respect - feed it well, use soap and antibacterial hand cleaners generously, refrain from insulting it with toxins (no matter how pleasantly intoxicating), give it enough sleep, and get it up on that treadmill at least four times a week. It's the only body I've got, and we two are in it for the long haul together.

May your year 2007 be filled with security, health, and joyous events. Salud!

More drama, but this time it's not mine... yay?

Once again, I've let my blog go for far too long. Bad blogger! Bad!!

My work gets a little nutty from time to time. I was handling a labor arbitration which just went crazy for nearly a month. I wound up negotiating a settlement, not just for this arbitration but for three more that were still in the pipeline involving the same grievant. Good stuff - makes me feel all lawyerly an' shit. But now that it's over, my phone's stopped ringing and I've got nothing on my calendar til the end of the month. Seriously, it's either feast or famine in this place.

Fortunately, everything on the homestead has been blissfully peaceful and calm. Esther's vocabulary grows daily. She is full of energy and joy. She keeps getting longer, if not necessarily thicker, so her pants fall down while she's reaching onto tabletops and into drawers that she couldn't reach just a month ago. She eats like a champ - not necessarily huge quantities, but she'll take a few bites of just about anything. That's my adventurous little eater! Hubby, too, has been very kind to me. No sex issues, no pressure on me to do things I don't want to do. I'm trying to be mindful of his needs, but I have allowed myself to fall asleep on the couch rather than initiate things far too often lately. I owe him some serious lovin' at this point, and tonight I intend to deliver. He's getting on the treadmill and exercising every day and I recognize that if I supply positive reinforcement, he's more likely to continue. I do love to love my man when he trims down, as he does from time to time!

And now - the drama. My best friend, my oldest friend, the one who I've known since we were little kids, the one who people ask if she's my sister when we go out together, is getting divorced. She was the very first of my friends to get married, just a little over nine years ago, which surprised me at the time because she was also the most politically active and outwardly feminist of my friends. But I thought her hubby was a perfect match for her. They both had masters' degrees in anthropology and wanted to live the majority of their lives living in the middle of exotic foreign cultures. For reasons too long to get into here, that never really happened. Only after the wake of the Indonesian tsunami did her hubby manage to get himself overseas - in a variety of short- to mid-term positions providing disaster assistance and recovery in Indonesia and later also in Pakistan. The thing about all of these positions was that they were just for him, no room for my friend to come along. So he went, each time, without her. She was left behind to hold down the fort, work a steady job that provided health insurance for both of them but utterly failed to meet her emotional and professional needs.

Her hubby went on, I think, four of these solo jaunts. He just came back from the last of these about 2 weeks ago. He had a job offer in hand from the Red Cross for a long-term, maybe permanent placement in Aceh, the epicenter of the tsunami in Indonesia. The catch? ONLY he could come. They didn't say "oh, we don't have a job for your wife but she can come along and try to find something for herself." No, the deal was that ONLY he could come, and they wouldn't give him the job if my friend coming along was part of the deal. Long story made short - he wants the job more than he wants the marriage.

My friend has always been rock-steady in her commitment to her marriage. She told me for years that she didn't believe in divorce and would do whatever it took to make it happen. But now that her hubby has initiated things, she is off like a shot and never looking back. The day after the decision was made, she had taken off her wedding ring and all the jewelry he had given her, changed her email addresses to drop his name/initial, changed the household utility bills into her name alone, packed up all his belongings in boxes, removed all obvious evidence of the marriage from her life. She seriously considered hooking up a date for the following Saturday. All she can think about is how quickly the divorce can get pushed through so that she can get started on "slutting around" (her words) and moving out of town to someplace more exciting like D.C. or San Francisco.

Honestly, it's wigging me out. No period of mourning, no sadness, no gradual transition. Don't get me wrong - I don't think she should be trying to make it work even now, given that he's utterly unwilling to do the same. But what she's doing is showing me how easy it can be to just give up, to just let it go, to just throw a nearly decade-long partnership to the wind and embrace divorce with open arms and a joyful heart. Yes, I know it would not be so easy for my hubby and I given that we have a child together, but my friend is showing me that it would be do-able, that I would survive, that I would probably even be happy - maybe even right away. That's a scary thought for me.

I'm not there yet. I'm not even close. My hubby and I don't have anywhere near the problems that it turned out my friend and her hubby have. And I am still willing to do whatever it takes to make our marriage work - including laying some lovin' on my sweet hubby (who, by the way, cleaned the house top-to-bottom while I was at work yesterday). But I don't think I really needed to see first-hand how very easy it would be to walk away if eventually things get broken beyond repair.

Oh yeah - and the kicker is that my friend's hubby, having been the one to propose divorce - apparently repeatedly, after each one of his overseas stints, I only just now am finding out - is now a total wreck. He's begged my friend to slow things down, tell her divorce lawyer to back down, because he needs some more time to think about things. He seems utterly incapable of running his own life now that she's not doing it for him - she keeps getting calls from people like his dentist, saying that he's late for or has missed an appointment. I think it's pretty funny that he had the nerve to propose divorce for years, and once my friend finally took him up on his offer, he just completely fell apart. Oh well. In two more weeks, he'll be back in Banda Aceh, doing what he does so well - taking care of other people while his own life goes to shit.

I liked him, but only for so long as he made my friend happy. As far as I'm concerned, he made this bed and now he can lie in it. No sympathy here! Anyway, that's the drama of the day. I'm glad it's not my drama, but boy is it still close enough to home to make me squirm...

Why are guys so damned skeevy?!

So, here's what happened to me yesterday. I was out for a walk, with Esther on my back in her backpack and our 115-lb. black lab/Great Dane Shadow on his leash. We're about halfway through our walk, walking down a largish main street in broad daylight, when I hear a car honk at me. As it drives by, it slows down so I can see that the driver, a man, has his pants down past his butt and is jacking off, driving down the road, in the middle of the day! As soon as he sees that I've seen him, he speeds up and drives off. I caught the license plate number and the make of the car as he drove away. I whipped out my cell phone and called the police to report the event. The officer who came out to meet me kept asking if I was sure that I had the plate number right, even though it was registered to exactly the make, model and color of car I saw. Turns out that the car is registered to a city police officer. He was on duty at the time, but believed that his teenage son had the car. I did go ahead and file the complaint, even though the officer clearly didn't want me to. I'm really hoping I don't see any retaliation for this. I don't want to get anybody sent to the pokey, or even cost anybody a big fine - I just want to send the message that this isn't acceptable behavior. I had a two-year-old on my back, for heaven's sake, and I'd rather she not see that kind of thing. Basically, I'm just hoping that a certain 16-year-old caught a can of whoop-ass when his police-officer dad got home from work.

Moving right along

No word back from Karen yet re:my letter. I have no idea if I will ever even hear from her again. That's her choice, and I'm OK with it either way.

Esther is just amazing. She's fully verbal now. I don't always understand every word that comes out of her mouth, but she speaks in full sentences now and after awhile I can almost always figure out what she's trying to say.

And the biggest news? She's weaned! I had her down to just her night-night nursing already. Then last weekend we left her with my friend G. and her hubby J. and their kids L. and JJ. while we went to NY for my cousin's daughter's wedding. Our first time apart since she was born - she had a great time but we missed her terribly. But that was two nights without boobies, and when we got back I told her that we were all done with boobies and that Mama didn't have any milk left. She asked for a sippy of water at bedtime, and drank it while we cuddled in bed. Two more nights since then, and each evening she asked once for boobies, but was OK with being told no and settled for water and cuddles instead.

I was so ready to wean her. For the last six months or so, nursing was really unrewarding for me. She wouldn't let me put my arm around her or sing to her. She would nurse while pushing my arm away, kicking me repeatedly, whipping her head around, and trying to talk with my nipple in her mouth (ouch!) But still, it was bittersweet nursing her on Thursday evening, knowing it was the last time it would ever happen.

She's such a very big girl now. Only one last milestone to go before she leaves babyhood behind for ever - potty training! Speaking of which, she says she has "poopies again." Boy, I just can't wait to leave poopy diapers behind.

Moving right along

No word back from Karen yet re:my letter. I have no idea if I will ever even hear from her again. That's her choice, and I'm OK with it either way.

Esther is just amazing. She's fully verbal now. I don't always understand every word that comes out of her mouth, but she speaks in full sentences now and after awhile I can almost always figure out what she's trying to say.

And the biggest news? She's weaned! I had her down to just her night-night nursing already. Then last weekend we left her with my friend G. and her hubby J. and their kids L. and JJ. while we went to NY for my cousin's daughter's wedding. Our first time apart since she was born - she had a great time but we missed her terribly. But that was two nights without boobies, and when we got back I told her that we were all done with boobies and that Mama didn't have any milk left. She asked for a sippy of water at bedtime, and drank it while we cuddled in bed. Two more nights since then, and each evening she asked once for boobies, but was OK with being told no and settled for water and cuddles instead.

I was so ready to wean her. For the last six months or so, nursing was really unrewarding for me. She wouldn't let me put my arm around her or sing to her. She would nurse while pushing my arm away, kicking me repeatedly, whipping her head around, and trying to talk with my nipple in her mouth (ouch!) But still, it was bittersweet nursing her on Thursday evening, knowing it was the last time it would ever happen.

She's such a very big girl now. Only one last milestone to go before she leaves babyhood behind for ever - potty training! Speaking of which, she says she has "poopies again." Boy, I just can't wait to leave poopy diapers behind.