With One Push of an Elbow.

It's amazing to think how much of your life is wrapped up in your computer. This thing--a thing bought in a store, no less--holds so many of your memories, your work, evidence of how you've spent your time, the data of your life. And then with one little push of an elbow, it's suddenly all hanging in the balance.

First off, I know I am an idiot. It doesn't matter that my dad scolded me 20,000 times growing up to keep liquids away from the computer. It doesn't matter that I am now the adult, the parent, I was (am) still silly enough to keep a cup of water on my computer desk, and then subsequently freak out at the prospect that I just lost everything on that powerful little MacBook Pro. (A huge purchase Jason and I made only one year ago, the fruit of my first real, big-girl job.)

I thought I was so smooth, lifting the computer nearly instantaneously in the air when the cup of water tilted over. I wasn't fast enough. A small puddle landed on the keyboard. Then my MacBook shut off. And then it wouldn't come back on.

Now, by the the Grace of the Computer Gods, I'm typing this on an old Apple keyboard, hooked up to my MacBook, which I have successfully gotten to turn back on. (A tip given to me by my good friend Candice's husband. Thanks so much, Rob, for knowing what you're talking about.) The laptop's keyboard doesn't seem to be working, but after some Command + Alt + P + R reboots, the computer seems to have turned back on fine (albeit slowly). Each one of my precious photos, each one of my thousands of documents, designs, purchased music and movies, has been carefully transfered to a backup hard-drive.

We're not really in the position to buy a brand, spanking new computer right now (we're trying to buy a house, and a new MacBook just isn't in the cards), but I will happily keep using this machine, hooked up to an old Apple keyboard or not, until the Computer Gods take her away for good.

All I can say is this: thank God for external hard-drives. Ninety-percent of my job is done on this computer, and the thought of working (and, um, functioning) without it makes me feel a little lost. And I promise, Dad, this time I really, really, will never have liquids near the computer again.

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Two + One

Adelyn is the only one I need. As naive as it may sound at 24 years old, I think I'm set.

This of course doesn't take into account the fact that, you know, shit happens. Been there, know that firsthand. And this doesn't take into account the fact that people are ever evolving, and that you can't pick and choose your life story at 24 years old.

But. BUT. I have this feeling, deep down in my gut, that me plus Jason plus Adelyn is exactly what my life needed and is exactly the plan God or Yahweh or fate or whatever master designer designed.

This could be completely different if I had married the guy who wanted five kids. Jason, though, feels the same way I do.

After two plus decades of battling a chronic illness, I never thought I'd have a picture perfect pregnancy. I pretty much did. As someone who never spent much time envisioning herself as a mother, I never thought that, one day, I'd have this amazing, always-life-inspiring joy to whom I gave life. And as someone who always tried to envision her future with the utmost precision, planning and plotting and dreaming crazy dreams for herself and her career, I never imagined the sort of upheaval that a new life brings along with it.

It's been almost a year since Adelyn was born. Almost two (!!) since I first found out about her existence. And now that our lives have really started to take shape and I'm starting to be able to see the big picture, I just can't imagine starting again. The pregnancy, the health worries, the waiting, the anxiety, the newborn phase, the figuring out how to adapt your career, the everything.

Why does this make me feel like a bad mother? It does. I can't shake it. Popular opinion always says that babies need siblings. Only children are spoiled, unadjusted, look at the world with a self-centric view. I don't want that for Adelyn. But is that reason enough to do it all again for her sake, even though her selfish mother doesn't really feel like it?

Now, just writing this, I'm starting to second guess myself. I'm feeling the urge to fill this post with disclaimers (unless I change my mind; don't hold me accountable for my opinion at 24; this could all change; never say never). Only those disclaimers aren't coming from my gut, my core, they're coming from the part of me that wants to sound good, selfless, motherly.

And then, of course, there's always this, this same sentiment that I'm sure crosses the mind of every first-time parent. How, oh how, could I ever love something else like I do Adelyn? It's inconceivable.

But just like it did two Junes ago when my life turned upside down--you cannot foresee whatever it is that is supposed to happen. You are powerless against it, no matter how carefully planned your life.

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Starting Somewhere.

There are so many things that you take simply at face value growing up. Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes. And then, Christmas trees. Ornaments, lights, garland. Presents and wrapping paper and toothbrushes tucked away in your stocking. These things are wonderful, and you cherish these things, and you love your mom and dad for orchestrating this wonderful time of year. But you don't really stop and think about the work behind it all.

I've lived on my own for a few years now. First in the dorms at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Then in an apartment with Jason. Then in an apartment with my friend Elise. Then in my friend Alex's house. Then back in with Jason. But in all of these places it was a given that I'd go home at Christmas. Before that I would help my mom decorate our tree. There was a tree and ornaments and stockings all waiting for us there.

And now we have our own place, and we are our own family. It might sound like common sense, but it didn't really hit me until a few months ago that we were about to start this thing from scratch. Hanukkah, Christmas--the whole shebang. That tree and those ornaments waiting at my parents house had been cultivated over several years. The traditions had been brewing and settling in for mine and my sister's lifetimes.

This is the first year that Jason and I will be in our own place on Christmas Eve. Because both Jason and I are still children at heart, I think, even though we've been together for seven years--we've lived together before this family--we still always went to our parents' houses to stay the night on December 24.

Yesterday we took Adelyn to brave the crowds shopping. We bought a Christmas tree, dozens of ornaments. We ordered embroidered stockings. We bought peppermint-scented candles and a copy of 'Twas the Night before Christmas. When we were little my dad read this to me and my sister every Christmas Eve. Now it's Addy's turn.

(Just a side note: I am the most Christmas-loving Jew you will ever come across. I have a beautiful hand-made menorah that my friend Alex got me years ago, and it will be lit each night for Hanukkah this year. But I'll be damned if I'm going to forsake the gorgeous glow of a Christmas tree and the excitement of giving and getting presents on Christmas morning.)

And then we came home, put Adelyn down for a nap, poured some Eggnog we'd just bought at the liquor store, turned on our newly-purchased Christmas music (The Hotel Cafe Presents Winter Songs--best holiday album ever--even featuring Fiona Apple singing Frosty the Snowman) and decorated our tree.

The traditions have to start somewhere. And for our first year, I think we're doing pretty well.

A staple of this household.

Of course in the best picture I snap of her she would be grabbing onto the beer ornament.

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Something to Miss.

Over the weekend I went to New York to meet one of my best friend's brand new baby. I realize I'm lucky, writing sentences like that. I am not Dooce, nor do I harbor any illusions that I might someday be, and yet I've been to New York twice in Adelyn's 10-month-long life. I've also been to Florida, and to Atlanta, and spent more nights out with my friends and alone with my husband than, I think, most new moms get. Sometimes I feel guilty about this, but it's more due to an abundance of eager babysitters than a desire to be away from my baby. You know, I am 24 years old, and although I sowed my wild oats back in the day and no longer feel a desire to go crazy, there is still a part of me that needs to live separately from my life as a mother to feel sane and like myself. (I don't think this has a lot to do with age. I imagine it would be true in any decade of life, whether or not it's acted upon.)

I live so close to both sets of amazing grandparents partly because I love them and also because I really wanted that for Adelyn, to be able to have these other people in her life to offer perspective, and a break from me and her dad, and the kind of things that only family can offer. And it is because of this that I get to go places. It is also mostly thanks to Jason, who is sometimes so awesome that I don't really understand it. I keep reading on Babycenter the same cliche story of a woman about to go out of her mind because she hasn't had a minute to herself, to bathe or to grocery shop in peace, while her husband spends every free second playing Call of Duty (I've read some version of that post so many times it would be impossible to count.)

Anyway. I went to New York and had fun and missed Adelyn like crazy. Jason called me on my third day there, as I was walking literally hand-in-hand with my group of best friends down a street in Brooklyn, to tell me that Adelyn had said "Adelyn" to him and his parents. This nearly brought me to tears that, of course!, I had missed this, because as soon as you go away for a few days they always seem to do something miraculous. But it's nice to miss them sometimes, like really miss them. It makes you realize how special your life is, to have things to miss that badly.

I got to hold little five-week-old Dominic and watch my gorgeous, formerly-crazy best friend Elise living, almost in video-playback-mode-quality, my life eight and a half months ago. I've texted her the words "Hun, I so remember those days" all too often. But Dominic was amazing and so cuddly. And although I do not miss those days one tiny bit I did feel, for a fleeting second, that I wanted another one. It's hard to not feel that while holding a tiny, sleeping body in your arms.

I do miss when Addy had no choice but to cuddle with me. I don't, though, think I want to go back there anytime soon. If ever. I will happily settle for the sensation of holding a niece or nephew or honorary niece or nephew, and coming home to my babbling, Adelyn-saying, incessantly moving, only temporarily cuddly Adelyn.

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Working.

For the first few months that I blogged I did so as a stay at home mom, I guess. Not really a SAHM--as all the internet folk call it--by definitive choice, just by circumstance. I quit a job where I worked full-time overnight when I was eight months pregnant, telling everyone I wasn't sure if I would come back but knowing good and well that I wouldn't. How can you work a job like that with a baby? With children at all? There was only one other woman with a child who worked there, and she worked a lot more than I did, and her husband was a stay-at-home-dad. Problem solved.

This crux of working, being a mother, being yourself, being both--it's hard stuff. There's no better way to put it. When I graduated and had all of these grandiose plans floating around in my head--Pulitzer prize, immediate job at a daily paper--factoring in a baby was nowhere on my radar. It didn't even have a fleeting spot in my universe. And even back then the decision felt complicated. (Ha!)

I've been at the job I have now since July. So, five months. Almost six. I like it. Love it, actually. It's rewarding, and fun. It's flexible. It allows me to remain a mother most of the time, a family literacy program coordinator for a non-profit second. I work from home two days a week, in an office the other three with extremely flexible hours. Addy goes to a babysitter who is also a family friend that genuinely loves her.

It's great. And I have a contract to do this job for a year (I'm an AmeriCorps Vista--essentially the domestic version of the Peace Corps that aims to fight poverty). The thing is--this job pays next to nothing. And that's ok, right now, because the trade off of still being the one who is with Adelyn the most is worth the monetary sacrifice. I can't imagine another job--minimum wage or six figures--that would be so flexible, that would have a boss and co-workers who don't blink an eye when I leave an hour early to go pick up Addy and work from home. (Because, honestly, I often get more work done at home during Addy's naps than I do any other time.)

I never liked staying at home. I'm not miss Worker Bee, I never have been, but I have always been obsessed with feeling accomplished. Being a stay at home mom involves plenty of accomplishment, I know, but I was always aching to put some makeup and clothes on and go somewhere. Even now when I'm dreading finding a way to get myself ready and to keep Adelyn entertained, wishing out loud that I could just work from home all week, I secretly know I want to struggle to put together an outfit, to put myself together and walk out the door. There's just something rewarding in it, in getting yourself together, that I need. Working from home two days a week is the perfect balance.

For now. But what about next year? These kinds of questions drive you up a wall as a mother. I know it's not just me--it's at the center of nearly every conversation I have with other mom friends.

It's a tricky subject, working versus staying at home. What's best for the baby? For the mother? The family? It's a question that divides women, sends them grabbing for their battle gear and arming themselves for a fight. We all think we know what's best for us, our babies, our families--and a lot of us think we know what's best for the rest, as well.

I'm just going to say right here and now that I do not. I don't know. I don't know that I ever will. I know that after this year is up I desperately want to find a job that pays, preferably one that pays me to be a writer or a journalist--what I've always intended to do--but nearly all of those jobs will require a commute and putting Adelyn in full-time daycare. And that's a costly endeavor--both emotionally, for me, and economically. Most daycares cost more than I make right now. I know that when Adelyn starts school, I want to have been doing something for the past four years. I can't always show off the articles I wrote for my college newspaper as credentials.

The thing is, most employers just aren't cool with a mother being a mother first.

I'm working from home today. Adelyn has been napping for about an hour. In that hour, I've confirmed, paid for, and organized the volunteer delivery for four meals to be served at family literacy programming. I've researched half a dozen grants. I've written a press release. I've started my laundry, done the dishes and written this blog. Working from home some of the time works for me--and this job--right now. Wouldn't it be nice if they all allowed us this flexibility?

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The Ruthie Feeling.

When I was a toddler and my mom went back to work full-time, I stayed with a woman named Ruthie. She was old, your typical grandmotherly nanny, and so sweet. I don't remember a lot from back then, since I was barely conscious of myself or my thoughts and I was you know, like, two-years-old. But I do remember flashes, like the feeling of sitting on her cold, tiled-kitchen floor, waiting for a snack. And the joy of having my mom's face reappear after a day of work.

Ever since then I've experienced this thing called "The Ruthie Feeling." I don't know when it started or I how I came up with the term, but there it always was. It's hard to explain. It is, though, definite. I can feel it coming on and I can feel it sinking in and then, eventually, floating away. It's a sort of emptiness, like I'm a little lost. Like I don't know how I got to be doing what I'm doing in that moment.

Like I miss my mom.

I've always found it odd that I called this thing The Ruthie Feeling, because I don't know how or why or when I dubbed it as that. It could've started at two years old, and it could've just permeated my memory enough to make a two-decade-long impression. Or I could've subconsciously started calling it that later, when suddenly I was reminded of the feeling I had there, sitting on her cold, tiled floor, aching for a snack, waiting for my mom to reappear.

I haven't had this feeling much about Adelyn. And that surprises me, because when I was pregnant I had it a lot. I had it when I moved somewhere new, or found myself in an unfamiliar situation. And what's more disconcerting than growing a life inside of you? What else could bring on feelings of what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here? more than becoming a parent, especially when it was in no way expected or planned for?

But then there she was, Adelyn, and there I was, her mother, and it still didn't come. It has, however, come on when I think hard about my career, my new job, when I graduated college and when I sit hard and think about what I'm going to do with my life. When I'm looking at her, though, I've never, ever felt it. (It's neither a good or bad thing, I think. The Ruthie Feeling has never been bad, really. Just a little weird, a little off.)

The feeling hit me hard this morning after I got Adelyn down for her nap and started doing some work from home to prepare for going to work after she wakes up. I knew it was there; I suddenly felt not-like-myself, not at home in my surroundings.

And then Adelyn woke up from her nap and it went away. (And now we're off to the babysitter's so she can learn a Feeling all her own.)

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The Stressful Weekend That Wasn't.

Adelyn sat in her dad's lap, looking out of the window at a world she'd never seen before, and she watched the ground disappear beneath her as the plane took off. Her eyes got wide at the sound of the roaring engine. We were sitting in the back thanks to Southwest's free-for-all, no-perks-for-parents boarding rules, and it was inevitably noisy, the sound of the plane trumping all others. Except for Adelyn's babbling. That I could still hear.

I don't think I could properly express how nervous I was about this weekend. As a parent I have a tendency to do that, get all worked up over the scheduling and logistics of everything. And I knew going into this weekend that I'd have to let go of it; there was nothing I could do but go with the flow and hope Adelyn wanted to go along with it.

I hate flying. Hate it. I used to love it, back when I lived in New York and flew about a dozen times in a six-month period. Back then flying meant I was going to see Jason. It was exciting, not scary. I'm not sure when this hatred of flying really sunk in, but it's been there for a few years now. I have to steady myself during take-off, work really hard to keep my thoughts from delving into the what-ifs and what-was-that-bump-obsessions. (Having a bouncing baby on your lap is a good distraction.)

The only thing I used to worry about when I traveled was Crohn's. Getting sick during a trip, finding the closest bathrooms, avoiding embarrassment and awkwardness sharing a room with someone else. Getting stuck in an airport for hours with a perpetual line for every toilet. These are the things people with Crohn's and Colitis worry about. That didn't even cross my mind during this trip, not because it's no longer a concern but because my worries are only occupied by Adelyn, her comfort and routine.

And somehow, even with a mother who takes every possible thing that could go wrong into consideration, Adelyn managed to defy every single one of my worries. She took every scenario I was stressing over and turned it into a sure-to-be memory, those moments where you know, while you're living them, that they'll stick with you forever. Watching Adelyn fall asleep on her dad's chest mid-flight, drool dripping down his shirt, his hand on her back while he drifted off, too--these are the things you always remember. (Adelyn has not fallen asleep like this, on our chests, since she was a newborn. Something about the closeness to us, or the white noise of the flight, brought the newborn out of her.)

This weekend worked out better than I ever could have imagined. That's not to say it was all easy--our flight got delayed nearly four hours on the way home. Two of those hours were spent speed-walking around the airport with Adelyn in the stroller, desperately hoping she would fall asleep, evil-eyeing every single child who screamed or squealed anywhere near her the second she drifted off. But once we got on the plane everything was fine. She fell asleep once again on her dad's chest, after gaggles of strangers remarked on her calmness.

The rehearsal and rehearsal dinner went off without a hitch. Adelyn slept in her stroller while we all ate and celebrated my big sister's impending wedding. The next day she babbled all throughout the ceremony, and when she started getting fussy ten minutes in Jason walked her over to the side, where she promptly fell asleep in his arms while her aunt and new uncle said their "I do's."

In a span of two days Adelyn slept through the night in a beautiful hotel; she played her part perfectly in her second family wedding; she saw Delaware and rode through its beautiful hills and napped while her family and some of her new family ate and drank at a local brewery; she watched her aunt change into her wedding dress and then her sari for the reception; she made new friends, adult and her-size; she strolled around the airport with her grandpa, hysterically laughing at his Donald Duck impressions; she sat beside her mom, dad and grandpa in Philedalphia while they scarfed down Philly Cheese Steaks.

She had an amazing time, and her mom learned a valuable lesson. This weekend wasn't about me or my life as a mother, it was about my sister, Rachel, and her new husband, Neel. But I still walked away with a newfound attitude on parenting. Jason, Adelyn and I can do whatever is thrown our way. And Adelyn will happily oblige.

After our first flight landed in Philadelphia, the woman sitting in front of us leaned over her seat to meet Adelyn. She was a mother, too, on her way to drop off her daughter at college. She told me Adelyn was gorgeous and the most well-behaved baby she'd ever seen on a flight. I told her that I'd been happily surprised that it had gone so well, that she'd giggled and napped the whole time.

"What do you expect?" she said. "She had two hours of undivided time with her parents."

That, right there, was the beauty of this weekend. The TV wasn't on while we fed her her bottle, as it usually is. I wasn't working while she napped, or desperately trying to load the dishwasher while she jumped in her Jumperoo. We just were. Dad, mom, and baby.

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Questions of selfishness, selflessness, and growing a baby inside of you.

Since I learned how to walk, talk, get dressed and form an actual thought, my life has been consumed with a push-and-pull of deciding what I wanted to do versus what the world thought I should do.

Even this baby, who wasn't conceived with a pre-fabricated notion of what the world would think, is already riddled with my own self-consciousness (sorry, kid).

I am young. Not so young that I should be a candidate for 16 and Pregnant, but young enough that I feel as if I'm under scrutinity from peers who've managed to continue along a path that elicits nothing but praise.

This ^ is my home. Nashville. I think it's downright pretty. No, it's not New York, and I've lived there, too, but it's a city, one full of opportunity and diversity and loud noises and drunkards throwing bottles outside my window at night.

And this, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is where I grew up. You've probably never heard of Murfreesboro, Internet. Spell check hasn't even heard of it.

And it's become a little mini-city, but without a lot of opportunity for someone who doesn't want to work in real estate or the construction industry and with about as much diversity as an episode of 7th Heaven--although it still does house its fair share of drunkards (mostly frat boys and veterans).

Murfreesboro is only about 30 minutes outside of Nashville, and it's home to my family, my fiance's family, and quite a few of my remaining friends (the ones who didn't run off to New York and Los Angeles to make more of their small-town upbringings).

With a baby on the way, our one bedroom, one bathroom, upstairs Nashville apartment will obviously have to go. We moved here six months ago so that I could find a job, and I did, working as an associate producer (a.k.a script writer and pun-creater) for a local news station.

The thing is, I hate my job. I can't wait to quit my job when my belly starts looking like it was hijacked by aliens, and affording a house in an area of Nashville without bars on the windows isn't such an easy feat.

After I told my fiance that, no, we weren't moving back to Murfreesboro, he went and found our dream house. And guess where it is. Three streets down from the house I grew up in.

I can't deny it. My hormonal but-I-don't-wanna tears don't change the fact that we can afford it, that it's beautiful, that it has a fenced in yard and three bedrooms and two bathrooms and wood floors and innumerable windows and a location 5 minutes away from all the babysitters we could ever ask for.

I wasn't ready to give up my selfish ways. I already gave up smoking. Drinking. Wearing high-waisted skirts. Not throwing up.

But I can't ignore the fact that this is what's best for a baby. Damnit.

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