On The Move

Landon's first birthday is two weeks away, a fact that pretty much blows my mind. We have modest plans, thanks to the Bar Exam (luckily he's too young to know that his birthday is already being impacted by mommy's career), but we are going to have a mini party with my parents when they bring over some of our furniture on July 12. JP's grandmother wanted to get Landon a present and asked us to pick out something for about $75. I knew exactly what I wanted to order: The Radio Flyer Classic Walker Wagon. Landon has been power cruising for weeks now, even using blank walls for that little bit of support he still needs to be vertical. I knew he'd love the chance to "walk" across the middle of the room. When it arrived last week, we put it together and gave it to him right away. I figure he has no idea when his birthday is, so why make him wait- and we were so excited to see him get excited! And as you can see, it was a big hit:

Holy geeze I can move!

Great for chasing my cat!

Perfect for making loud noises when I plow into the cabinets!

I can ride in it too!

We've been really impressed with how solid, heavy, and well made it is, and it doesn't let him push too fast because the wheels have a bit of resistance to them. Landon adores it and I know that even after he can walk on his own he'll use it to push his treasures around the house and yard.

Here's a video of him on the move yesterday. The outfit is his father's doing, and even though I have an adverse physical reaction to things that don't match, I find it impossibly adorable.

On the Bar front, I feel really good after the MBE workshop that ended yesterday. It was infinitely more helpful than I expected and I'm very glad I went. I've decided to forgo the Procedure and Evidence workshop- thanks for your advice. I think I just need to trust in my exam taking talent and my determination to study enough on my own. I'm on track to finish the lectures before the people taking the class will and then I'll take off a day or two for the holiday and commence official studying after the 4th (or maybe after the 5th, we have a neighborhood party that day). Now if you'll excuse me, it's my turn to go protect our walls and cabinets from Landon's repeated crashing into them until someone turns him around.

96 out of 200

That was my score on the MBE yesterday - a 48%. And I'm actually pretty pleased with it. I didn't get to listen to the con law lectures in time and I never took it in law school, so there went 34 of 200 questions. And I haven't read over anything in the outlines I've filled in between pauses and while doing household chores (I have a snazzy little clipboard I carry with me all over the house - JP makes fun of it, and my even snazzier pen, but it keeps me from going crazy couped up in the study). The average test taker at this point last year got a 109 so I'm not far off. It's just low enough to scare me into studying but not low enough to make me freak out. I feel like I'm in a good place and I'm ready to take on the month of July, which is exactly what I hoped to get out of this workshop.

Another benefit of sitting on a hard metal chair for 8 hours the past two days is it has made me immensely grateful for the iPod self study option. It is SO much better than sitting in that class room (or really warehouse, our classes were canceled last weekend for the Gun Show. Yeah, I'm in Texas now!). It's in a crappy part of town, 45 minutes away, and I'd have to pay for the gas and a lunch each day. I also definitely like being separated from all the crazy people who have all their flash cards made, color coded, and memorized and who have finished a whole book of practice exams. I'm just not in their league right now and given how much fun I had at the pool the other day with Landon, I'm okay with that. Also, I really don't think you gain anything from hearing the lectures live. For one, the instructor is just reading off their notes and isn't using visuals or even many hand motions. This is fine because you're bent down over your handouts frantically filling in the blanks, generally two or three blanks behind, and not looking up until the instructor calls for a 10 minute break. I don't think video, life, or audio would make the slightest bit of difference - everyone is just hunched over their paper. And the ability to pause and rewind a lecture on the iPod is invaluable. I know I won't have the time or inclination to listen to these lectures a second time so when we've gone through a tricky section, I often rewind and replay, just listening and not writing, and I think that's helped me learn a few things without actually studying yet. Plus you don't miss anything- there were so many times today that I wanted to pause or press rewind, it was driving me crazy!

The MBE workshop has been really helpful though. A lot of people skipped today because the instructor was just going over answers that were already explained in detail in the exam book. But this guy went way beyond the answers and gave us summarized tests and approaches, as well as the frequency certain questions have been asked over the years. I left with 19 pages of hand-written notes, my hand felt like it was going to fall off. And I feel like I've already learned enough to do substantially better on another exam. I also think I may have been talked into registering for the Texas Procedure and Evidence workshop (we have a separate Texas civil procedure and evidence short answer exam that is 10% of our overall score - if anyone has thoughts or knowledge of that workshop, let me know- should I do it? I may be too late to sign up, but it seems like barbri deadlines don't really exist even when they pretend they do).

What's freaking me out right now is the essays. Damn, that's going to be a TON of information that needs to be on total recall. It's not like the multiple choice where you can narrow down and guess, this is staring at a blank document. I have a lot of work to do. But I feel ready to do it.

It's now pouring rain outside (rain we desperately needed) and because I did Bar stuff all day I gave myself the night off, guilt free. We already watched the swimming Olympic Trials. Based on the first night alone the U.S. is going to have an unbelievable team this year - 2 world records broken already! The current world record holder in the men's 100 Fly is one of our best friends and my roommate last summer; I think we'll end up knowing about half the Olympic team again, which makes it so much fun to cheer them on. It's on every night through Sun. from 7-8 CT on NBC or USA. Now I'm going to drink too much wine, cuddle on the couch with JP, and maybe even be crazy and watch a movie! I'm savoring my last bits of June.

Joining Barbri Society

Tomorrow I join the masses of barbri students for a 3-day practice MBE workshop. I am not excited. I know it will be good for me to see the practice questions (for the first time) and get properly freaked out about how little I know and how much there is to learn. Fear and looming deadlines have always been my big study motivators.

But I don't want to get scared yet. I'm enjoying my frequent pauses of the recorded lectures to play with Landon and JP. I am reveling in all our fun family giggle time. I am not ready to get serious about studying. The Firm has given me office space and I've promised myself I will start going there during the day in July to study the way I'm supposed to. It's only a few miles from the house and I'm not putting in 15 hour days or anything, but I think that impending "hunker down date" is leading to my loss of focus here at the end of June. I know July is going to suck and I want to squeeze as much fun out of June as possible. Right now the Bar (July 29-31) feels far away and I can pretend that I have plenty of time to learn all 10 million exceptions and caveats to every law in Texas. Today I even afforded myself the luxury of an unplanned 2.5 hour nap. I never take naps. Apparently I was really tired (Landon cried from 1:50-3:50 AM; I hate teeth) as I fell asleep on the couch, in daylight, while listening to a lecture. Even when I had a severe case of mono naps never came that easily, maybe I should have tried listening to constitutional law.

I don't start work until September 2nd, so I'll have the month of August to relax and enjoy my boys. And like I said, I'm not planning to go nuts and study every waking moment for four weeks. I just like where I am right now - nearly caught up, not feeling pressure, and safely before my July 1 deadline for actually learning the material. I don't want to have to face the reality of how much I need to do. But of course I will and I have a feeling staring at that practice exam tomorrow is going to give me a surge of panic-induced motivation. That panic, and a possibly undeserved talent for test taking, has gotten me through every other major exam in my life. Just one more...

Happy Mail Call

I love getting the mail. Despite receiving nothing but advertisements, letters to tenants long gone, and credit card offers for the first several years I had my own mailbox, I still get excited to check it. I'm not sure where this love comes from, maybe some long lost love for my cubby in Kindergarten? In college I remember telling JP that I never got any mail in my dorm mailbox, despite checking it religiously, so he wrote me a letter. This was after our third date and you can see where he scratched out a sentence because he was worried it would come on too strong. Little did he know I had already decided to marry him, though if I hadn't yet, his letter would have sealed the deal. I still have it and reread it whenever he says something particularly Republican.

I was very excited about owning a house with its own mailbox out front, but unfortunately our little neighborhood has community mailboxes. I suppose these are more secure and convenient for the mailman, but I have many fond memories of playing on our solid brick mailbox growing up and I'm not to have one. Luckily it's just around the corner and I take Landon with me to check it every afternoon (he's my weight workout for the day). He's usually just wearing a diaper because it's 110 degrees out and gets a big kick out of holding (and chewing on) a magazine on the way back (though not his daddy's Economist or mommy's Newsweek because those are sacred). Someday I might be able to afford what's in Pottery Barn or Frontgate, but for now, it's teething material.

Today was an excellent mail day - we had a package! It was a bottle of wine and very sweet note from Colleen over at Wine, Please in celebration of graduating, the new house, and getting Landon to sleep at night. It says to be used as needed for Bar Exam prep. It was incredibly thoughtful, especially given that I have never actually met her. Our boys are 3 days apart and I love how the internet can create friends from 1,000 miles away. If you have a second, check out her jewelry silent auction for the Midwestern Flood Victims.

And the other happy item in the mail: our reimbursement from The Firm for our mileage, hotel, and other moving expenses! It couldn't have come at a better time. I just checked our final credit card bill from the last month and holy hell is it a large amount of money. We expected it to be and we've been carefully monitoring it, but wow, seeing the number was a bit shocking. It was crazy to see expenses from our grocery store in Chicago- hard to believe we were still living there during this statement period. It's been a loooong 30 days. Somewhere in there was the drive (and gas bills) for two SUV's from Chicago to Texas, our appliance purchases, the initial buying out of Lowe's and Wal-Mart upon moving in to our house, flying back to Chicago for graduation, JP's business school deposit (I keep forgetting he's doing that soon), 6-months of Texas car insurance, and a lot of other "we just moved" type expenses. Ouch. I also just wrote a check for $350 to switch our car titles and registration over from Illinois. JP considered the amount well worth it for the "honor" of having Texas plates on his car - he was practically giddy on the drive home. When he lived here for college he still had Maryland plates (because that's where he's from, though he gets mad when I tell people that) so this finalized his adoption of the state. He even asked the person at the county tax assessor's office if you had to show proof to get the "Native Texan" specialty plates. Oh yes, there was eye rolling (by me, the clerk was very nice and no, you do not have to show proof).

I'm now halfway through the Federal Income Tax lecture and thinking about breaking into Colleen's wine already. It's from "Miracle Valley Vineyards" and it's going to take a miracle for me to understand anything this women is saying. Perhaps I should have taken some sort of tax or accounting class in law school... I'm hearing words I didn't know existed and I'm pretty sure I'm spelling them wrong.

Oh Yeah, the Bar Exam

I feel like I should be talking more about the Bar, but it's not dominating my days like I thought it would and like I think it's supposed to. I'm still playing catch up in the lectures. I do about 2.5 a day and on Friday will be fully caught up, just in time for the 3-day, ALL day, MBE practice exam and analysis. I am not excited about giving up my Sat, Sun, and Mon to this Bar stuff but maybe it will be a good dose of reality.

The iPod self study option is a good one- especially if you graduate law school three weeks after the Bar classes begin. For those who don't know how it works, you (or really your law firm) pay a bunch of extra money for an iPod to arrive pre-recorded with the previous Bar review session's lectures. You can listen to them on different speeds, pause, fast forward, rewind, replay, etc as you fill in your lecture handouts. They also include a little sheet of any changes that happened between the Feb. '08 exam and the one I'll take in July. The law is slow to change, thank goodness, and my sheet only had two bullet points on it. The program requires discipline which I'm afraid I lost in law school, but I've already found fear to be an excellent motivating factor.

I think what I enjoy most is not knowing how freaked out other people are about the Bar. I really don't want to know that someone has taken 25 practice exams, read the long outlines, is summarizing the notes, and making flash cards. I find that knowledge stressful and I'm currently unstressed. On the other hand, I suppose I should know some of what other people are doing because I'm certain I should be more stressed than I am. It's an enormous amount of information tested over three days (Texas is the only state besides California that gets the joys of a 3-day Bar -- I stand corrected and should do my own research and not just repeat what I've been told, there are several other states with 3-day exams) and it's going to take a lot of work to learn enough to pass. My goal in the beginning was just to catch up in the lectures, and now that I'm almost there I want to stop just so I don't have to face the next steps- like doing practice questions and actually learning the law.

The real problem is this could be such an awesome summer and I'm finding it's frighteningly easy to ignore the Bar for long stretches of time. Landon is a blast right now. After he chased after a bigger boy's ball at the pool the other day JP took him to Wal-Mart and bought him his very own Spiderman bouncy ball. As you can see, he's pretty excited about it:

I sit in the study across from the dining room (which is acting as a play room right now, which you can see in the video) and just watch him play and squawk (we've moved beyond squeaking) and it's all I can do not to pause the iPod yet again and join in. We're looking for a bedroom set and I just want to go to furniture store after furniture store finding the right one. There's a million clothing store sales right now and given that my body really has decided to stay at this smaller size, I need to rebuy my entire work wardrobe and I don't want to wait until Fall when everything is full price again. There's also cook outs to be hosted, movies to be watched, and sitting on the back porch to be done. I also want to soak up the fact that JP is home all day. It's a unique situation we won't have again until retirement and I'm loving all our quality family time.

I don't resent the Bar or the time I need to put into it, I'm just having a hard time making it real right now. When I was really behind I felt all this pressure to catch up and now that I'm there the pressure has lessened and I need to ratchet it back up. Landon and I went to my office last Friday to say hi to everyone. They hadn't seen me since I was 8 months pregnant and had never met the Landon. He flirted mightily with all the lady lawyers and crawled full speed into several partners offices. Luckily the corporate section is used to having babies underfoot and he was a big hit. It was great to be back. I remain just as excited about working there as I was when I finished up my clerkship.

I'm staring at all these big books, which you can see in my blog header, and wondering where to begin. The barbri self paced program frightens me and there's no way I could start it now. For those who know, how did you spend those weeks up to the Exam? Should I bother with the long outlines or just review the handouts and work on practice questions. Back when I was a pre-med major I was really good at memorizing and I'm hoping those skills will come back quickly. There's also something called a Conviser mini review and an MPT workbook. I'm pretty sure it's bad that I don't even know what those are. And flashcards. I could see how they would be really helpful, but also time consuming to make. Maybe I could add them to JP's list of projects...

Oh, and this has nothing to do with the Bar (though it may be instrumental in my beign able to study for it), but Landon has fallen asleep with less than 30 seconds of protest for all his naps and at night. It's like he knows what he's supposed to do in the crib now and he just curls up and follows through. It's magical.

Almost Too Easy

Tonight JP gave Landon his bottle, brushed his teeth, read him his book, sang their song on the walk to his bedroom, and laid him down in the crib. There was one little protest cry as JP closed the door.

And then silence.

I started to worry he wasn't breathing or something else terrible had happened so I sent JP back in to check and he found Landon was curled up in a little Landon-sized ball, fast asleep with a peaceful expression on his face. This was actually a little bit before his usual bedtime and he had been perky and very much awake throughout the nighttime routine. We were prepared to withstand some crying. Both of his naps today involved less than 30 seconds of protest so we knew we were making progress but were used to nighttime being a much bigger struggle.

I know enough after 11 months not to throw a big "my child goes to sleep" party yet, but I now join the leagues of parents who have told me, "it takes three nights". Today may have also been one of his best days ever temperamentally- he was so happy and giggly and playful. I kept pausing my lectures to go play with him, I just couldn't help it. Maybe he's finally realized that sleep makes life so much better. Tomorrow for the first time in a long time, I won't be dreading bedtime. Yay!

A Community of Moms

First of all, thank you all for such detailed, informative thoughts and anecdotes. This is exactly why I enjoy blogging so much. I wrote the last post not out of desperation, but out of a need to know other stories. If my friends were all at this same point in their lives, I'd be hearing these things over coffee (or if I was hostessing the play group, diet coke and brownies). Every one of your comments had value to me, so thank you. Here are a few of my thoughts on my own questions and your responses.

First, the crying it out. We've adopted something of a "CIO light." We have a nighttime routine, we know Landon is tired, we know he wants to get to sleep- but because we never let him fall asleep on his own, he now has a really hard time getting over that hurdle. When you're under investigation for child abuse and you have someone "supervising" you at all times, letting your child cry for more than 5 seconds just isn't possible. So we rocked and fed and bounced until he was a dead weight in our arms, right at the time (I believe) we should have been letting him at least try to fall asleep on his own. Our pediatrician told me at our last appointment to just let him cry - the first night would be hell, but (these are her words) just put a towel under the door if you have to so you can sleep and won't go in. He will be fine and things will be better. My own thoughts are that crying it out is fine and good - as long as it's just crying. Sometimes he gets to a point where he sounds hysterical, then we go in, pick him up, calm him down, and then lay him back down. He'll still cry, but it's just normal "you're not doing what I want" crying. If he escalates again, we immediately calm him down. It's not rocking to sleep, it's just keeping him in normal crying mode. This happened twice Saturday night. Last night he just did normal crying and it was only twenty minutes. JP went in twice to give him a little pat and let him know we were still there- both times Landon calmed immediately when he opened the door and then cried harder when he left, but we could tell it was just anger and not fear or hurt. Today he woke up at 6:15 super smiley and had a great morning. We just laid him down for his morning nap and he made two cries of protest and fell asleep. The napping is going really well - for the past three days he's fallen asleep within 3 minutes of being laid down. Nighttime is tougher, but I'm hoping it's on the path to getting easier for him (and us!). He hasn't had night awakenings for a while so I know things could be worse. One of the big motivators for us in finally working on his sleep is that JP was starting to have back problems from swaying and singing to him for so long, and I couldn't do it at all. I just knew we couldn't hold and rock a 2-year-old like that, something had to change!

I was surprised by how many people still co-sleep. Again I think this is something I'd know if more of my friends had kids. I'm glad that Landon seems okay sleeping in his crib (once he's asleep anyway) because I don't think co-sleeping would work for us. (And I say this as someone who tried on many, many 4 AM wake up calls to get him to fall asleep in bed with us, but mom and dad's presence meant it was party time and why would you sleep when you can try to stick your mom's nose in your mouth?) But I'm glad it never took. Our bed is our place- our sanctuary to talk and cuddle and reconnect in a way that we don't (can't) during the day when things are crazy. Our relationship was founded on late night, talking until 4 AM type conversations, and I would really, really miss that. And even though JP sometimes falls asleep while I'm talking, I know he would miss them too. We brought Landon into a happy marriage and if we've done one thing right so far as parents it's keeping that marriage just as happy and loving and affectionate as it was before he arrived. (Btw, I'm not saying a couple couldn't have that and co-sleep, just that we couldn't still have that and co-sleep. Blogs have definitely shown me that different things work for different people.)

As far as the bottle, I'm quite happy to know that most people don't give it up cold turkey at a year. I think as long as the sleeping is going well and we have some calm, we won't press that issue for a little while. Landon loves his sippy cup of water - loves it. So the other day I thought we'd try to put his formula in a cup at lunch time because what's the difference, really, and maybe he'd like it. But wow was he horrified at our little idea - he threw the cup on the ground in disgust, gave his dad the most offended look I've ever seen, and then refused to be held by him for the next five hours. I've never seen him hold a grudge like that. So yeah, we'll just wait on that a bit. I loved how someone quoted their pediatrician as saying no child has ever starved himself. He does eat something at every meal time and has snacks of fruit puffs and cheerios so I'm sure that's enough. I just think that if I was constantly in motion like he is I would need more than that, but then again I outweigh him by over 100 lbs.

I'll close with something my mom wrote in response to my post. I didn't know she still read my blog, but she always has something good to say:

"As far as figuring it all out, that NEVER happens. Parenting is all about second-guessing and feeling inadequate, but once you accept that, it does not seem as overwhelming! I always found that the people that were quickest to give advice were not the parents I admired most . . . any parent who acts superior is either putting up a front, or completely ignorant. That's why programs like MOPS, play groups, etc are so important . . . it's always nice to have the moral support of friends struggling through parenthood along with you and I know your blog helps with that too.

Hope tonight goes well . . . Grandpa always said the best thing about parenting babies is they don't know how it's supposed to be done, so you really can't do it wrong. :) Of course, the opposite is true with teenagers. :)"

This blog is my parenting forum and support group and these last 11 months would have been significantly harder without it. Thanks for that and I'll keep you posted as to our particular baby's response to our particular plan. Oh and there will be house pictures soon. Until then, here is a video of my little man at the pool yesterday when I took an irresponsibly wonderful study break:

The Post in Which I Admit My Total Lack of Parental Knowledge and Confidence

I thought that by the time Landon was this age (11 months, 1 week) I would feel like I had him somewhat figured out. At 6 months when he still didn't sleep, I told myself that surely by the summer this would all be a distant memory and he'd sleep and eat like he was supposed to. Yesterday I almost wrote a desperate post asking for help as to why it is still so difficult for him to fall asleep, why does he not want to eat more than three bites of anything, why does he absolutely despise it when you put milk in his cup when he loves drinking water from it, how are we going to switch off the bottle at 12 months, and again why is sleeping such a battle?

But then I put him down for his afternoon nap with little fuss- no rocking or singing, just put him down and closed the door. He cried for maybe 10 minutes and then fell asleep, just like he's supposed to. Last night we had some friends over for a cookout. We were sitting outside on the patio when we put him down and purposefully didn't bring out the monitor. I knew we needed to let him cry for a little bit and even though I believe in the theory I've been very surprised to find I just can't do it in practice. So we sat outside and ate delicious grilled peaches for dessert and talked and laughed with our friends. About every 10 minutes one of us would go up to reassure Landon he hadn't been abandoned but didn't pick him up and pretty much just let him cry. 90 minutes later he fell asleep and woke up happy at 6:51 (that's sleeping in). I could not have handled that hour and a half in the apartment or even downstairs in our house, but outside on a beautiful night I could ignore him. I feel terrible writing that, but I also know he needs to learn to fall asleep on his own. With the investigation, ear infections, surgeries, teething, moving, and everything else we've just never been able to teach him to do that. I can't send him to daycare or have people babysit when his bedtime relaxation routine is still so long and involved. I know this, but thinking about him sobbing up in his room makes my insides twist up. I hope tonight goes better, but given his age and general stubbornness I don't really think one night is going to do the trick. And I keep worrying that his teeth are hurting him (I think he's getting his 1 year molars) and can we just let him cry when he's actually hurting? We're trying not to give him any pain medicine because we realized we'd been doing that almost nightly forever (teething was really awful for him) and that doesn't seem good.

So I have questions for all you moms out there. How do your babies/toddlers go to sleep at night? Is there really hope that one day we can do bath time, read a book, and just lay him down? When did your toddler switch to 1 nap a day? Part of me wonders if he's getting too much sleep during the day and just isn't as tired at night. And what does your 11 or 12 month old eat? We give him pieces of food at our meal time (he won't eat the baby food or cereal anymore and only wants pieces he can pick up himself) but even if he really likes something he seems to have an internal 3 bite limit. I think he's eating less now than he did 2 months ago and he's so much more active. He still loves his bottle and I'm worried when we switch off of it he won't get enough calories.

In general things are good and I know there's no such thing as a textbook baby. He doesn't get up in the middle of the night anymore and he likes to pick up pieces of food and eat them, it just seems like they're more of a little bonus than anything resembling a meal. He's so close to walking and is crawling like a little speed demon- how can he not be hungry and tired? I get tired just watching him. Most of me believes that if he was really hungry, he'd eat and we're all just figuring this out together. But I also believe that parental nudges are important and I want to know if we should be nudging more with the sleep and the food. I mean the kid would crawl head first off the deck and stick his tongue in electrical sockets if we'd let him, so I'm not sure he should be completely in charge of anything regarding his care.

I'm going to start the first of four lectures I'm supposed to listen to today (our party yesterday got me more behind, but it was worth it). I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences!

One Project of Many

JP and Landon have been working very hard to complete our home projects. JP has assembled patio furniture, a charcoal grill, and a snazzy cooler he bought with his Father's Day money (he goes outside just to open his beer bottles with it- he's like a little boy on Christmas morning). He has installed pretty new towel rods because I disapproved of the standard ones put in place by the builder. He has switched out all the toilet seats because the originals were plastic and dented in when I sat on the lid during Landon's bath. There will soon be a new ceiling fan in the living room because the current one clashes with all the other light fixtures downstairs (the old one goes perfectly in the fan-less upstairs guest room, so that justifies the purchase). And I really want to change out the white wood posts in our stairs with wrought iron ones because it would look so beautiful, but after price checking everything at Home Depot I accept that it will have to wait. Landon is the supervisor and takes his job very seriously. Here he is keeping JP on task while he put together our patio furniture:

I should note that JP is in heaven with all these projects. He got a power drill when we got married and spent three years walking around our Chicago apartments just dying to drill into something. His patience finally paid off and tonight he completed a very drill-heavy task: adding 29 knobs and 11 drawer pulls to our kitchen cabinets. Here is the kitchen when we bought it:

Here is the kitchen now:

I think the camera flash alters some of the color, but the handles I painstakingly picked out among hundreds in the Home Depot aisle match the granite perfectly and bring out some of the bronze that was hiding in it. You can also see the tray of thick fudgey brownies sitting on the stove. Two are missing, both recently eaten by me while listening to criminal procedure. They greatly enhanced my absorption of the material.

And since I've already detoured this post about home improvement into one about brownies, I'll add this gratuitous picture of Landon thoroughly enjoying his swing.

He'd be even happier if he knew the power drill was going to stick around while his daddy adds different knobs to all the bathroom cabinets as well!

Idyll

I had a whole post written in my head about how I'm so behind in barbri that doing 2-3 lectures a day isn't going to get me caught up until next Friday. And I still haven't opened a single other book that came in that huge box and it sounds like other people are reading things and writing practice essays and doing practice questions and I am doing NONE of these things and I'm freaking out about how much other people who are doing SO MUCH more than me are freaking out. I was also going to mention how much I want to do to the house and how many things are just calling out to be organized but I have to lock myself in the study and not put my clothes in rainbow order and it's slowly killing me. Then I would have mentioned how much I wish I could go to the pool with JP and Landon or just sit on our gorgeous new couches and watch something on our hundreds of channels, but I can't because I am so behind that if I'm not studying I want to be spending time with Landon or doing something with the house. There's also the small matter of neither of us getting paid right now so we must exercise great restraint in our trips to Lowe's and Wal-Mart and that's hard too.

But I just sat outside on our new patio furniture, on our beautiful deck, and ate a relaxing meal with JP. He grilled some chicken, I made a simple field green and pear salad, and we ate a whole loaf of "from scratch" bread from our nearby Central Market. There was an almost cool breeze and the sound of crickets chirping. The backdrop was a full moon with big fluffy clouds barely visible against the darkening sky. We sat in companionable silence and just enjoyed each other's presence. I actually felt my heart rate slow.

I think being married and a parent makes aspects of being a law student, lawyer, or future bar exam taker more difficult. I can't just shut myself away and do all of the studying I should do because there are two other people in this house who love and need me. Sometimes, like now, when I'm really behind and stressed, I wish for the ability to go away somewhere alone and just immerse myself in my work so I can get caught up and feel in control again. I envy those with complete ownership of their time. But then I have a night like tonight and I'm so thankful that I have a husband and son to remind me to get outside my own head and relax (NOT that JP is allowed to say that word). The Bar is still 6 weeks away and even though those big books (and the fact I haven't opened them) scare the hell out of me, I'm going to be okay. Our house looks fantastic and no one but me cares that the my spices aren't in alphabetical order (ok, actually they are, but there is a stack of stuff in the game room that isn't put away yet). Tonight, while I sipped my Shiner Bock and held JP's hand and watched the clouds move, I thought about how my little family may increase my stress, but they also take it away. Or at least they put it in perspective. And then I thought about how I'm so much happier here than I ever thought I would be. The house feels much more "right" than I thought it would. We've already had several friends over for dinner and we're having more over Saturday. The community I dreaded leaving in Chicago has started anew here in Austin.

I'm frantically stressed and utterly, blissfully happy at the same time. It's an odd state of being, but I think, a very good one. I don't think I have any chance of eliminating the former until after the Bar is over on July 31, but I do hope to keep a bit of the latter with me to the end too. And as long as I keep taking time to enjoy an idyllic evening, or Landon's cuddly post-nap self (JP always brings him in to me when he wakes up), or any other happy "the Bar isn't everything" moments my family presents me with, I think I'll be okay.