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Me, Your Mother

There are barely any pictures of me.  I'm always the one taking the pictures, and in all honesty, I don't want my picture taken - I'm fleshy from two pregnancies and rarely take the time to put on makeup or fix my hair.  My outfits are a haphazard combination of whatever I was wearing the day before and whatever I've left in the dryer.  The kids are much more photogenic.

But maybe, someday, when I'm old, my kids will be curious about what I looked like, who was this person that raised them?  So Jay took some photos of me out in the yard.  Ilan steals my thunder, but here I am.

It is clear in this photo that I have an absurdly large, bumpy, and crooked nose which will continue to grow as I age.  I really hope you boys don't inherit this.

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It really bothered me this year, how ugly our Sukkah is.  These last two years I've proven that I can design and build a functional Sukkah, but that's no longer enough.  This unrest is part of a general trend - I've been oddly compelled to clean stuff, like the dishes, and put away toys, and unclutter clutter, and all in all, it's pretty annoying, to be spending so much of my free time tidying up, but I guess I'm on the path to becoming a Real Domestic Woman, who cleans up after everyone.  It's like a switch got flipped inside of me - it never used to bother me that our apartment looks like a preschool, now it does.  I even moved all our bikes out into hallway, because something inside me finally recognized that they weren't the avant-garde / steampunk decor I once thought they were.

In line with this transformation, I'm ready to graduate to a wooden Sukkah, but just didn't have the energy this year.  Instead, for beautification, we painted the Sukkah.  We put it together up-side-down and invited some friends over for a painting party.  It is still ugly, but now it's ugly in a colorful way.

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At Prospect Park, with the Portnoy boys.  Fall afternoons are the best.  I'm relieved to say that I've finally figured out how to prepare dinner with two kids underfoot, and still have time to spend the pre-dinner-time hours playing at the park.  The old me wouldn't have cared about coming home late and popping a frozen pizza in the oven or making PB&J, but the Real Domestic Woman I am turning into is all about meal planning, everyone eating the same thing at the same time, no food left behind. I spent years confusing feminism with a disdain for cooking and cleaning, which left me with an amazing tolerance for rice and beans and dirty stove tops, but lacking in some practical skills when it comes to running a family.  I'm finally figuring it all out.

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By the end of summer I had to admit that I could no longer keep up with Roan on his bike.  Jogging alongside him was no longer viable.  He constantly wanted to race, and could ride for several miles without stopping. Me, not so much.  The time had come for me to ride my own bike.  It was the only way I could keep up!

This is the part of parenting I've always looked forward to - me and my kids, playing outside together, tiring ourselves out.  Every weekend Ro and I take rides on the green road, up to the farmers market and Grand Army Plaza, and rides through Prospect Park.  The other day we rode about 6 miles, through puddles, on the wide bike path where cyclists train for centuries, on gravel roads, on the horse path, over bridges, under tunnels, we stopped to watch a band play, bought lemonade at a street fair, laid in the grass and ate snacks.  This part of being a mom is every bit as wonderful as I'd hoped.

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Maybe you noticed, we cut Ilan's hair.  I hated to do it, because he has fabulous hair, just thick enough to stick up all over.  But we had to give him a buzz cut, to get a good look at the dent in his head, and see how noticeable it would be.  We thought it would help us make our decision.  We think it's very noticeable, but nobody else seems to.  Either that or we are surrounded by polite people.  Hmm... polite people in New York City?  That's probably not it.

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I don't understand why Roan and Ilan are making these grossed out faces, I was just signing them a song, but this picture made me laugh because they look so much alike.

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