April Fools: Will The True Story Please Step Forward?

(Updated on 4/2 - scroll down to find out if you were right!)

As part of an April Fool's contest on the Blog Exchange, one of the following stories is true; the other, of course, is false.  Can you tell which is which?  Place your vote today!

Story # 1:  The Epidural

“What?!  Why didn’t you have an epidural?  You should definitely get one next time.  They’re great.  When I was in labor, we played cards the whole time.” 

“Wow,” I thought, “cards.  I definitely was not playing cards during labor.”

After I had my first child, I heard variations on this theme from every single friend I have.  In others words, “What were you thinking, girlfriend?  Join our pain-free club.”

So when baby #2 came along, I really considered it.  “Let’s see how it goes,” I thought. “I’ll try it without, but never say never.”  But once again, I missed out on the card playing, and—courtesy of a little Nubain—I made it through a second birth without an epidural.  This time I really heard it.  “Uuuuuh, what are you, slow?” was my friends’ basic response. 

So the third time around (how does this keep happening?), I decided to brush up on my research.  Everything I read convinced me, yet again, to try to go without the epidural.  But my guard was down, my friends’ gloriously pain-free descriptions were echoing in my head, and the female OB-GYN on call proclaimed, “I had one and it was great.  You should get it now, before it’s too late.”  And so I did.

But ten, fifteen, twenty minutes later, there was no change.  My pain was increasing by the second. 

“Hasn’t it started working yet?” the nurse asked, a bit perplexed.

“Not unless I’m giving birth out of my right leg,” came my terse reply. 

And friends, this did not change.  For the duration of my labor I was totally free of feeling in my right leg and the much-hailed epidural did nothing for the rest of me, which was desperate for relief.

I never even got to play cards.

Story # 2: Vanity Gone Awry

It always started with a compliment.  “New glasses?  They’re so cute,” said my friends.  Then came the quick follow up.  “Have you ever thought about LASIK.  I had it, and it was great.  I love not having to clean my contacts or find my glasses.  You should think about it.” 

And I did.  I loved the idea of looking out the window and actually seeing leaves, rather than just a blur of green that I knew would turn to leaves if I put my glasses on.  I dreamed of coming home from a late night out with the girls, and dropping my tired self into bed without having to peel the contacts off of my corneas first.  I asked and asked and everyone loved their LASIK. 

And so I went.  Yes, I signed the waiver, yes I knew about the “potential” drawbacks, but everyone loves LASIK, and the doctor assured me that any difficulties were fairly rare, so I knew it would be fine.

But it isn’t.  And now that it isn’t, all of the other stories have come trickling out, and I have discovered that not everyone loves LASIK after all.  When my surgery was finished, my sight was blurry and I was assured that it would return to normal.  It hasn’t, not exactly.  I now have the privilege of sore, dry eyes and occasional random blurriness.  I see an odd, glowing ring around streetlights and the moon that I’m certain isn’t a heavenly sign. 

And suddenly, peeling those contacts out at 1 AM doesn’t seem like such a chore.  

I really miss my glasses.

-Kirsetin

Read the other April Fool's contest participants stories at The Mummy Chronicles,  Mayberry Mom, &  my life as it is.

* Updated April 2:  If you voted for the LASIK story, you were very close.  Although I have considered LASIK for years, I have not taken the plunge, mostly because if you look long enough, you, too will find that these kinds of stories abound.  In fact, Abby Ellin recently published LASIK, When the Fine Print Applies to You in the NYTimes, in which she spells out the downside pretty clearly.  But if you voted for the botched epidural, you nailed it!  If you can believe it, they add insult to injury by not even giving you a discount when this happens - you pay full price for the epidural, effective or not.  Thanks for voting!

I Wish I Would Have Known...

Before I had kids, I read every book about birth and parenting I could get my hands on.  I knew that I would be tired, that life would never be the same, and that having a baby would change our family dynamic in an unalterable way. 

I knew these things, but I didn’t really know them.

I knew, for example, that I’d be tired but I didn’t know how hard being utterly exhausted would be.  When my first baby was new, I remember desperately wanting a little more sleep, and feeling incredibly, unforgivably selfish because of it.  I wish that someone had told me I might feel this way, and that it was okay.

I also knew that life would never be the same, but I had no idea what “not really the same” meant.  I didn’t understand that my world would shift so completely from a self-centered focus to a what’s-best-for-my-child focus.  I wish that someone would have shared that at times that shift would seem completely logical, and at others, it would be incredible difficult.

I knew that babies cry and toddlers throw tantrums and five-year olds test independence.  But I didn’t know that I’d be really good at handling some of these, and not so good at others.  I wish someone had told me that every phase is only that: a phase that will pass before you know it.

I knew that there would be more laundry.  And there is.

Everyone did tell me, of course, that time would fly.  But in the midst of diapers and baby food, I couldn’t really comprehend it.  Now there are no more diapers and no more high chairs.  Those cute overalls have been replaced by Hollister t-shirts and ripped up jeans.  I feel like the film is on fast-forward, and sometimes I can’t find the pause button.  I hope someone will help me figure out where it is.

-Kirsetin

Kirsetin wrote this post to participate in the Blog Blast on the Blog Exchange, which is sponsored this week by Discovery Health and their new series "Deliver Me."  

Brave New World

So…..Facebook.  The thing we all know about the Internet, as parents, is that anybody can post anything and just about anybody else can read it.  This is the part our kids don’t always get:  what part of world wide web is it that don’t they understand?  Partly because they’ve grown up being supremely comfortable with technology, it’s easy for our kids to look at Facebook as their own private online corner of the world.  But it’s not.  Private should never even be uttered in the same breath as Facebook.  And even if you don’t want your kids out there, please realize that even the most sheltered kids can usually get access, whether it’s at the library or their friends’ homes.  The Scouts and the Coast Guard have it right:  Be Prepared and Always Ready.

In an effort to be both prepared and ready for my children’s eventual enrollment on Facebook, I talked to moms whose kids are already out there.  Here’s what they had to say:

• Consider setting your child’s account up using their middle name as their last name.  Their friends will know how to find them (trust me!), but it will be harder for a stranger to track them down. 

• Use the privacy settings to ensure that only their approved “friends” can see beyond a brief bio.

• Use the privacy settings, but don’t stop there.  Be aware of what your child is writing, to whom, and vice versa.

• Get your own account and have your child accept you as a “friend.”  Bummer for them, yes.  Will they resist?  Probably.  Do they want to be on Facebook?  Play the parent card:  you need to know what’s going on.

• Kids want to collect friends, which is one of the reasons you have to know what’s happening.  Who are all these friends?  (They’re really friends of friends, which can mean total strangers.)  I have 10 friends on Facebook, which is completely unacceptable for anyone under the age of 30.  (Please note: I’m no longer in that unique group.)  When I checked the Facebook accounts of two of my high school babysitters (and yes, you can do this!), they both had about 500 friends.  They are mocking me and my 10, I’m sure.

• Watch out for random photos.  Two of my friends have high-school aged kids, whose older cousins are in college.  The fun-loving cousins frequently post photos of their fun-loving college escapades to their Facebook accounts.  The cousins are, of course, Facebook friends with the high-school girls.  Enough said?  What kind of photos would you have posted in college?

• Know your kids’ passwords.  Another bummer, I know, but don’t abuse it and it doesn’t have to be.  There's no need to comment when your son gets four messages on his wall from four different girls.  But if there’s something more going on, then it’s a bummer for everyone and you need to know about it.

• Check your kids’ Facebook e-mails.  Many older kids don’t even use regular e-mail anymore.  Once they get connected with all of their friends on Facebook, they just communicate there.  Also, be aware that it’s possible to check your kids’ e-mails and then mark them as unread.  It’s sneaky, I know.  Again, you don’t want abuse it, but it’s good to check in from time to time.  If it’s all minor, no harm, no foul.  If it’s major, looking at their e-mail won’t really matter.  They’ll have much bigger issues to worry about.

• Talk to your child about whether they really want to use the “Top Friends” feature.  It’s extremely popular, but there's a bit of a mean streak in it.  Think back to the cliques and pain of middle school and high school.  Think back to just trying to fit in.  Now think about what it would be like if everyone you know is out there on Facebook, and all of the “cool” kids are listed on GQ Athlete’s Facebook “Top Friends,” except for you.  Ouch.  I’m also told that kids use this feature as a sort of bribe, as in, “Well, if you don’t do x, I’m going to take you off of my ‘Top Friends’.”  Nice, isn’t it? 

It’s a Brave New World out there, moms. 

Hip Mom Interview, with Cathy Holecko

Isn't this a great photo of Cathy & her kids at the Georgia Aquarium?

How long have you been married? I've been married to Jeff for seven years

How many children do you have? We have two: Josie is almost 6 and Owen is almost 3.

How do you enjoy spending time with your family? Anything that involves listening to the kids talk. They crack me up. Plus bike rides – but I can’t hear them when they’re way behind me in the bike trailer.

What do you and your husband enjoy doing together?  (Please, don’t share too much!) Together, like, without kids?! Eating out at kid-unfriendly restaurants.

What is your favorite vacation spot?  Wherever my extended family is—since we don’t get to see them often (plus I love a vacation with an improved adult/kid ratio).

What are three to five books that you’ll always keep on your shelf?  Can you share why? I loved A Prayer for Owen Meany so much that my son’s name is Owen! Other books I love I tend to give away because I want to share the fun.

Which three books would you add to any child’s library? The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Grumpy Bird (a newish one by Jeremy Tankard), and anything by Kevin Henkes.

How do you spend your days?  Hanging out with my kids, writing about my kids and kids in general, and reading about other people’s kids (on their blogs).

What’s a job you think you might have enjoyed doing, if you had pursued a different path?  Why? My mom, sister and I once discovered that we’d all had secret fantasies about being florists. I also wish I’d studied anthropology or tried a profession that would have allowed me to live in another country for long enough to really get to know it.

PC or Mac lover?  I feel so stodgy when I say … PC. But those iPhones are awfully tempting.

Cathy Helecko is a writer and an editor for Scholastic.com's parents channel. Check out her Scholastic blog for parents here. 

The Writing Is On the Wall

So now I have a Facebook account.  This seems strange, odd, really odd, like it’s something I would have done in high school, but is just beyond me now. Yet two of my friends – one a slight bit older and one a slight bit younger – have assured me that this is a thing I need to do. “The day is coming,” they both warned, “that you will need an account.  Your kids will be out there.  You want to be out there and you have to be ready.”

This, too, I struggle with.  Not that my kids will be “out there,” necessarily, but what being out there means.  Another step.   Another step towards peers.  Another step away from family.  Let me just confess right now–if your incredible intuitive skills haven’t already pegged it–that this whole kid-growing up, mom-letting-go thing is not going well for me.  It is far harder than I imagined and happening far sooner than I expected. But here we are, with time moving swiftly and me treading water, wondering how we got here so fast.  I am intensely aware that I sound like a tired cliché, but I could swear that we were just reading The Magic Tree House series.  Okay, sure, we moved on to Harry and Ron and Hermoine, but Facebook? How can it be?  No matter; time keeps moving and so here we are.  But, I digress.

Here’s what’s even stranger than the fact that I have joined the thousands in this weirdly-intimate-at-arms-length online community:  there’s a good chance that many of you, my friends, are among those thousands.  You are poking and writing on people’s walls and all sorts of other things none of us ever heard of back when fraternities still had taps in the basement.  You’ve just never mentioned it, and why would you?  What on earth am I going to write on your wall?

As surprised as I am to find that Facebook is not only for tween and teens and young bucks who think they’re all grown-up but really aren’t (otherwise why would they post that completely inebriated photo?), I’m not at all surprised that we are all drawn to this new type of communication.  We’re at an interesting juncture in history, I think, where it’s becoming easier and easier to communicate:  in an instant we can shoot someone a message, send them a text, or collect “top friends” by the dozens.  At the same time, it’s getting harder and harder to forge real relationships, based on depth and trust and shared actual (vs. virtual) experiences.  It will be interesting to see where this takes us, and our kids, don’t you think?

-Kirsetin

The Power of Lust

Last April, at a writers’ conference in NYC, I met Ruth Houston, author of this book. She wore a button with the title, which made me laugh. “Creative”, I thought, “What a catchy, clever title.” A little later while we were chatting during a break, I asked the author how she came up with the idea. You guessed it: personal experience.

I didn’t envy her creativity so much then, although I certainly admired her gumption. Her ability to turn such a personal tragedy into meaningful work for herself and counsel for others kept me thinking. “What must it be like,” I wondered, “to end everything you’ve known to be true?” It must be absolutely horrible. I’d never even met her ex-husband, but already I didn’t like him.

More recently, a girlfriend and I were having one of those lovely heart-to-heart discussions, and the topic turned to extra-marital affairs. We got started down this conversational path because of a talk our pastor gave at church about self-control. He made the very real point that behavior prior to marriage matters–in part–because saying “I do” doesn’t flip some magical behavior-modification switch. In other words, if you practiced “free-love” before marriage, you may be in for a bit of a rough marital road the next time that particular carrot is dangled. At any rate, we both agreed that, for us–and I am not suggesting this feeling is universal–a switch did, indeed, flip when we married. Not that either of us were out there promoting free love beforehand, but let’s just say we certainly weren’t Amish. However, neither of us has ever even considered anything nearly as sleazy as the soon-to-be former Governor of NY.

As a wife, I can’t help but empathize with his. As a daughter I am horrified for the Spitzer girls. I look at Silda Wall Spitzer and wonder, “Eliot, what were you thinking?” All the perks of privilege were his: a swanky apartment in NYC, private school for his girls, a talented, beautiful wife and a boatload of money. It’s never enough, is it guys?

On some level, he must have known it would come to this. How could he do it, I wonder, and I am not alone in my wondering. Wives across the country, and probably the world, are peering into this egregious betrayal and asking themselves, “How could he so completely disregard and disrespect this woman he’s called wife for 21 years?”

And what about us? What about the rest of the wives out here, doing our best to make marriage work, to parent well, and to fulfill our purpose in life? When we peek into the life of this privileged couple, we’re often prompted to reflect back on our own—and sometimes we sheepishly wonder if this could ever happen to us. I want to say, “No, of course not. This will never happen to you or to me.” But it does. In almost sixteen years of marriage I’ve watched it happen to friend after friend after friend and it breaks my heart every time.

When I met Ruth Houston at that writers’ conference last year, I laughed at the title of her book. But I’m not really laughing now. I’m sad, I’m incredibly, sorrowfully sad, that women across the world look at Silda Wall Spitzer – as we looked at Hillary Rodham Clinton only a few years ago – and wonder if our marriage will be next.

-Kirsetin

Hip Mom Interview, with Kara Corridan

How long have you been married? Kerry and I will celebrate our 5th anniversary in April.

How many children do you have? We have one daughter, Julia, who’s 2 ½.

How do you enjoy spending time with your family? The usual—dinners out (after a brief spell of not-great behavior, Julia’s back to being a charmer in restaurants), taking walks, playing outside when the weather’s nice. During the summers, we spend our weekends at the Jersey shore (which is where my husband and I met) or at our town pool. Lately, my favorite moments are weekend mornings (albeit starting earlier than I would like) when we all watch one of my daughter’s shows in bed before starting the day.

What do you and your husband enjoy doing together? (Please, don’t share too much!) These days, our social life is based around TV. We bond over watching DVDs of shows that everyone else caught on to ages ago. We just got through seasons 1-3 of The Office (I resisted because I loved the British version so much) and now we’re almost finished with season 1 of Friday Night Lights.

What is your favorite vacation spot? My all-time favorite vacation ever was our honeymoon to Maui and Kauai. But for a vacation we can regularly replicate, it’s Cape May, a gorgeous seaside town at the southernmost tip of New Jersey. We rent a condo there each summer, and occasionally treat ourselves to a child-free getaway at a B&B.

Who’s your favorite movie or TV star? I had a crush on Matt Dillon when I was in 6th grade and I think I picked pretty well—he’s still hot. I also think Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano is the best actress of all time.

How about your favorite movie?
   Nostalgia picks: Sixteen Candles, She’s Having a Baby
   Dramas: You Can Count On Me, Before Sunrise
   Classic comedies: Ace Ventura, The Money Pit

What are three to five books that you’ll always keep on your shelf? Can you share why?

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (my all-time favorite book)
  
• My dog-eared, scribbled-all-over copies of 1993 Let’s Go: Britain & Ireland and Let’s Go Europe (I never want to forget the hilarious little details of my post-college backpacking trip, and those books almost serve as journals)
  
• Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson (on a related note, this is an hysterical account of Bryson’s post-college backpacking trip)
  
• Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care (it tells you just about everything you need to know)

Which three books would you add to any child’s library?

• Rabbit Pie by Penny Ives (sooo sweet)
  
• Little Pea by Amy Rosenthal (great illustrations and funny message)
  
• Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina (I have a thing for monkeys, and my daughter loves imitating the “Tsz, tsz, tsz” sounds they make in the story)
  

How do you spend your days? I’m the executive editor of two magazines in New York City. I leave the house by 7:15am and try to get home by 6:30pm. I love my job—and it took me years to find one I could say that about—but I have spent many an hour cursing my commute and wishing for a magic carpet to transport me to and from NJ.

Why do you do what you do? I love words, l love writing, I love magazines, I love editing, I love working with writers, I love helping to shape ideas, and I love the personalities of my colleagues and the friends I’ve made in my industry.

What’s a job you think you might have enjoyed doing, if you had pursued a different path? Why?  If there were a practical way to pull it off, I would love to write for a sitcom. I have an image of me and a bunch of funny writers sitting around a table, laughing as we bang out scripts. I know comedy writing is a really hard job, but I would love to have given it a try. Pretty sure it’s not in the cards for me, though.

What do you feel truly passionate about in life?  I have an uncle and a cousin with disabilities, and I feel passionate that they, and everyone like them, are treated with dignity. I feel passionate that our country should offer better maternity and paternity leave policies (but I need to figure out a way to actually do something about this).

PC or Mac lover? I really don’t care. I’ll work on anything that comes with an IT guy.

Old-Fashioned Fun

When I was a girl, I used to spend a couple of weeks each summer with my grandparents. Most mornings, after making me breakfast, my grandmother sent me outside to play while she began her daily chores. It seemed like she was forever folding laundry and vacuuming her living room floor. There weren’t many other children in the village where she lived, so I spent long hours figuring out how to amuse myself. One of my favorite activities, on a hot summer afternoon, was to gather my books from the library and read in the shade beneath the giant oak tree at the entrance to her neighborhood. I loved to watch the cars go by; I remember wondering who all of those people were and where they were all going. Did they wonder about me, too? Thirty years later those memories are strong: I can still feel the cool grass under my bare little legs and see the sun peeking through the thick leaves above.

By the time my children came along, kids’ summers were filled with camps of every sort. Basketball camp, swim club camp, any-activity-you-can-name camp. What startled me about all of these choices wasn’t really that they existed, but how many children were enrolled in them from the youngest of ages. At first I resisted the peer pressure, partly because in addition to my three-year old, I also had an infant; partly because these camps cost a lot of money; and partly because it just didn’t seem right to book my three-year old son’s summer chock full of organized activities. Didn’t he get enough of that during the pre-school year?

But slowly, and surely, I started down the slippery slope of enrollment. “Oh, what’s one little camp,” I thought. “His friends are all doing it; he’ll love it.” And he did. But one camp turned to two, then two kids turned to three, and before I knew what hit me I found myself living out of a mini-van and shuttling three boys from ocean camp to soccer camp to crime-science investigation camp. A mini-van was most definitely not where I wanted to spend my summer.

And so I decided: our summers will be different. They will be slow. My children will be bored. They will have to learn to play b-o-r-e-d games with one another, even though the youngest can’t add yet and the oldest insists on proper rules. And I will have to practice patience, again and again, while explaining once more why they aren’t enrolled in the Greatest Camps on Earth. But the trade-off is that they get to enjoy summers like I did: figuring out fun for themselves. They get to take long walks in the woods, check out hundreds of books from the library, and gorge themselves on s’mores roasted over the firepit during our summertime outside movie extravaganza.

And I, most thankfully, do not have to spend my summer in a mini-van.

-Kirsetin

Kirsetin wrote this post to participate in the Blog Blast on the Blog Exchange. Highlights Magazine, which was also around when she was a kid (and is a magazine her kids love), is coming out with a new publication for kids from ages 2 - 6, High Five: check it out here.

The Good Old Days

When my children were younger and I was knee deep in laundry (all those baby clothes!), I envied the mothers of older children whose days and nights weren’t filled with Cheerios and puzzles and Barney (oh yes, this was a few years back). When these mothers of older children said, “Oh, it gets harder, just you wait and see,” I thought they were full of it, or had had really easy babies, or were just lame. Harder? How can it possibly be harder than pretending to have endless patience while changing eight diapers every couple of hours in a sleep-deprived stupor. No way.

Well, way. Yep, sorry to say, those mothers were right. Oh, sure, I get a little more sleep now – lots more, actually. But I know that it’s a temporary luxury, which will come to a screeching halt in a few years when my boys hit high school. And, it’s also true that I don’t have to feed anyone from a spoon or help anyone in the bathroom anymore. There are also several hours in a day when my kids are at school, when, theoretically, I should have time to myself. But because I must be an “involved” parent, instead of relaxing at home with a great book, you will usually find me at a PTO meeting, or in computer class, or even running the class Valentine’s Day party, which is definitely not my forte.

But what those mothers knew, that I was simply in denial about, was this: when your kids get bigger, so do their problems. When my boys were three, “bully” was just some word in a book, an idea to talk about, not some actual kid on the playground who I want to string up by his toes and interrogate. When my boys were three, the pre-puberty hormones hadn’t kicked in, which – as far as I can tell – is the boy equivalent of that time of the month, except it lasts for about a year. Big fun, let me tell you. And when my boys were three, I didn’t worry at all whether we were making the right choices for his future. I mean, at three, they just want you to be with them. Isn’t that great?

I mean, I really miss those toddler years, even the baby laundry.

-Kirsetin