Law School Auction

Tonight is the Law School's CLF Auction. It is by far my favorite law school event, and this year Landon and JP are coming to join the fun. It's organized by the Chicago Law Foundation, a student group dedicated to raising money for classmates who take public interest positions after graduation. Professors, alumni, law firms, and fellow students donate items to be purchased in a live and silent auction. The event always includes an open bar and lots of yummy donated food. Our beloved contracts professor is the auctioneer and the whole night is a lot of fun.

A few of the highlights for this year's live auction include:

1. A private swim session for 3 with the beluga whales at Chicago's Shedd aquarium
2. $1000 and a personal shoper at Neiman Marcus
3. Custom designed diamond ring
4. Four Bulls VIP courtside passes with tickets to the pre-game shootaround (one of you gets to be the ball returner), picture at center court, and autographed picture of your favorite player
5. Weekend for 4 at a professor's fancy lake house
6. Dinner for 4 at Gibson's, Bulls game, and drinks afterward
7. Spa day at the Peninsula Hotel for 4 and dinner afterward at Alinea
8. Private cruise on a law firm partner's 65-foot yacht for 20 students
9. $2500 Neiman Marcus shopping spree and lunch with the CEO and General Counsel
10. Two tickets to the NBA draft in NYC, backstage tour, visit to the Green Room, and a meeting with the Commissioner and current/past players
11. Week-long stay at a Tuscan wine estate (owned by an alum) for four, with a private tour, tasting of all their wines, and round-trip airfare to Italy and four extra nights lodging in Rome
12. Pick your vacation for two: cruise through the Mediterranean, South American Adventure, or Asian Exploration
13. Various wine tastings, scotch tastings, poker nights, theatre nights, and very expensive dinners with famous professors at their homes and out in the city. Plus trips to famous alumni judges' chambers or homes for meals and discussion (including Judge Richard Posner and more)

Pretty incredible, right?! Makes me kind of sad we're going to deplete our savings on a down payment for a house in Austin because I would REALLY like a cruise, Italian vacation, and/or shopping spree. Three friends and I have agreed to bid up to a certain amount for the spa day and dinner at Alinea prize. I have a birthday coming up, so I'm pre-spending the anticipated birthday funds. The silent auction also has some fantastic prizes like iPods, restaurant gift certificates, etc.

And the great thing is that while you watch the Bulls from your courtside seats, you know 100% of your money went to helping fellow students pay for the bar and accept unpaid summer positions. Let the bidding begin!

"Can A Working Mom Be A Good Mom?"

That was the subject line of an email waiting in my inbox this morning. It was immediately deleted and Landon and I continued our morning routine. The reactions it provoked weren't outrage and anger (although there was some eye-rolling), but instead, a realization that since having Landon, lines like that don't really bother me anymore.

Before I became pregnant, I obsessed over the mommy wars. JP was forced to spend many hours listening to me rant about the fact that working moms are held to such a higher standard than working dads (ever seen the title: "Can A Working Dad Be a Good Dad?" No? Exactly.) and how I feel judged for wanting to work when it's assumed he'll do so. His response was always some variation of, "Why do you care? It's our family, not theirs." And while he was right, it was all the more frustrating because I did care how people viewed me and my mothering- I cared a lot. I've always done things the right way- been the good example- and it drove me insane to think that people I knew and loved could disagree with or look down on my decision. I craved approval and worried that for the first time in my life, I wasn't going to get it.

All of that slowly faded while I was pregnant with Landon. Beginning with my family's less than enthusiastic reaction to my pregnancy, I learned pretty quickly that approval in the world of parenting is hard to come by. More importantly, I found that I didn't really care. JP and I were making the right decisions for our family and opinions from outsiders (even very close outsiders) just weren't the ones that mattered. Reading it now that seems like such an obvious statement, but it was a bumpy road for me to get there. The final step was Landon's birth. At that moment, I was the mom, and I knew that no one else could tell me what was best for me or my baby. And soon I was too busy living the life I had chosen to be concerned about what other people might think of it.

I used to wonder where the working moms were on the message boards- after all there must be some working women who are happy with their life and can stand up to the "shame on you for continuing to pursue your dreams after birthing a child" nonsense. And now I know- they're just busy making it work. I'm sure there will be some sacrifices and trade-offs in my future, and child care options, where we work, and how much we work will all be up for discussion as needed. But taking ownership of my choices, and being happy with them, has been the best therapy for getting over my fear of judgment. I've also found that all the criticism and mommy-warring I used to read about in magazines and message boards are largely products of those enivrons- the people I actually interract with haven't made any indication they think I should be home all day.

So the "can a working mom be a good mom" debate can rage on somewhere else- I spent this evening quacking at Landon, splashing with him in the tub, and rocking his cuddly little self to sleep. He's a happy, secure, and beloved little boy, and I'm a happy, busy, and fulfilled mother- and we're both too busy with the quacking, splashing, and cuddling to read an article about whether or not I can be a good mom.

4,000 Words

I have a half-written post that I really want to finish, but I'm so behind in my reading that it's not going to happen today. Luckily, we finally got our new camera in the mail (JP dropped and broke ours on New Year's- and he was the sober one!). So I'll leave you with a few pictures:

The Jumperoo

We finally gave in and bought Landon a new plastic monstrosity to play in. He outgrew his swing in early December and we needed something to keep him entertained when I do non-Landon-centric things like make dinner and go to bathroom. He's loved standing up on our laps since he was 3 months old, so we hoped this would keep him happy for longer than his bouncer. And I have to say that he loves it. It was $80 (cheap compared to some of the exersaucers), isn't too big, and keeps him very busy. He just figured out the bouncing aspect of it yesterday and I've got to get him on video, it's hysterical.

Your Move

Lilly has been surprisingly tolerant of Landon, and Landon has been surprisingly gentle with Lilly. He gets so excited every time he sees her and she often goes out of her way just to walk in front of him (see, cats can be people pleasers!). She even curls up next to him on the floor and lets him touch her fur. What amazes me is that he doesn't grab her fur the way he grabs everything else; instead, he keeps his hand flat or his fingers soft and just touches her. He's obviously an animal lover.

Nightly Tricycle Ride

Landon got this UT trike as a gift in December and JP takes him on a ride every evening. Obviously, his legs need to grow just a little more before he can use it by himself, but he seems to get a lot of fun out of it anyway. And so does his daddy.

Thumbs Up for Chuy's

This is the gift I mentioned here. We received it from a very nice attorney in Washington, DC who took a business trip to Houston and wanted to send me something to remind me of home. When she couldn't properly package and ship my mom or a margarita, she picked up Landon this "i wanna rock-n-roll all nite and potty everyday" t-shirt from Chuy's, the fabulous Tex-Mex restaurant. Landon felt quite snazzy wearing it and I didn't even notice the "thumb's up" he was giving until after I transferred the picture to my computer. He must have picked it up from one of the cool older babies at daycare. Next thing you know he'll be wearing a leather bomber jacket and gelling his hair.

A Top-Down Kind of Day

Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry has free admission through the end of January, so JP and I decided it was a good day for a family outing. Landon doesn't get much out of the exhibits yet (although he seemed to like the giant airplanes hanging from the ceiling), so the free price tag meant we didn't have to care if he decided it was time to leave after only 15 minutes. We tried out his umbrella stroller for the first time and he was definitely much more comfortable than in his infant car seat* (which makes me very sad because I love the convenience of that seat and it's stroller frame). The new stroller made it possible for him to sit up and really look around, and we ended up spending a very enjoyable hour and a half wandering amongst the colors, lights, and sounds of the museum.

Driving back home along Lake Shore Drive, we passed a guy in a red convertible with the top down. At first I didn't think anything of it, but then I remembered that we were driving along a partially frozen Lake Michigan, in January, in Chicago. Now I'll admit that the 30 degree temperature felt balmy compared to the below zero weather of the past two weeks, but it's not quite top-down weather. Only in Chicago.

*This means it's time to buy a convertible car seat, and I need recommendations. They all look the same to me- huge, expensive, and far more plush than any chair I'll ever get to sit in.

Home Buying

Today is my day to get caught up in school, and maybe even get a little ahead, but it's already 11:25 and I haven't opened a book. I have, however, spoken with our loan officer, learned several new home-buying terms, emailed our real estate agent, identified our "must have" home characteristics, and perused far too many online listings. Long distance first-time home buying is going to be crazy.

The permanence of home buying freaks me out a little. With an apartment I could walk around, see things I didn't love, and think "oh well, we'll be out in a year." So while I'm thrilled to finally move into something I won't have to leave in a year, it makes the selection process quite a bit more important. I would love to find a place that we could stay in forever. Sure, we can say we'll move up, buy bigger, or build our dream house, but we could stay at that address until retirement. This is why I really don't want a three-bedroom, even though financially, that makes more sense right now. We want three or four kids and I feel like a three-bedroom house has an expiration date for us- and that expiration date is something I want to avoid. Luckily, we're moving to Texas, where a four-bedroom house is not out-of-the question for a young couple with only one person working (and a baby whose daycare costs more per year than my college degree).

Both our loan officer and realtor came very highly recommended and we know Austin pretty well, so I'm optimistic about this first foray into home-buying from 1000 miles away. We already have our plane tickets for a Spring Break trip down to Texas. My parents will get some quality Landon time in Houston while JP and I head up to Austin to find the house. It's amazing to think that this is where we will bring home our future children from the hospital, where our future dog will run around in the yard, where my clothes will live in walk-in closets rather than under-bed containers, and where JP will finally get to arrange his tool collection in a proper garage. I can't wait to find it!

Hooray JP!

JP got his acceptance phone call from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business yesterday! He's officially a member of the MBA class of 2010. Hook 'em!!

We had already decided to move to Austin and just assumed he'd get in; and while it was a well-founded assumption, he was getting very nervous while waiting to hear the decision (I wasn't worried). After a difficult past few months, I am so, so happy he got this good news. He'll be a Longhorn again (or, as he corrected me last night, "you're always a Longhorn, I'll just be a student Longhorn again), pursuing his life-long dream of getting an MBA and hopefully one day starting his own business. Within thirty minutes of hearing the news, we had Landon on the waitlist for UT's fantastic and heavily subsidized daycare. It's 18-months long, but luckily he's on two other waitlists for Austin daycares that he should get into before I start work in September. A post on the ridiculousness of infant care and waitlists is probably forthcoming.

We celebrated last night with his favorite beer (love is stopping on the way home from school, in the freezing cold, with a cranky baby, to buy him some as a surprise) and pasties we had ordered from Joe's Pasty Shop in Ironwood, Michigan. (A "pasty," pronounced "pass-tee," is a delicious combination of meat and potatoes, and sometimes other vegetables, placed inside a flaky pie crust which is folded over and sealed around the edges.) Citations makes an unbelievably tasty pasty. They are so delicious that I'd like to hire her as a personal pasty-maker, but she apparently plans to pursue a career in BigLaw and will be billing out at far higher rates than I can afford. Luckily, there's Joe's. My family has been ordering frozen pasties from them for years- they have to be shipped overnight, so when you're buying from Texas the shipping costs are far more than the pasties themselves, but they are so good, and so nice to throw in the oven on a cold night, that they're completely worth it. JP and I only ordered a dozen, so it's a big deal to take one out of the freezer, but I suppose acceptance to business school warranted breaking into our stash. A friend and her husband are babysitting Saturday night so we can go out on the town for a proper celebration. This friend is hoping to nudge her husband in the direction of baby-making, so I'm going to give Landon a pep talk about being especially adorable, with no fussiness or big poops.

Wow, you know you're a parent when you start out talking about graduate school and end up talking about poop! Anyway, we're all very happy for JP; the acceptance was a much-needed boost and he's delayed his desire to attend graduate school for two years because someone in this marriage needed to bring home the bacon (and provide the bacon-eaters with health insurance). Now I get to pay his tuition and he gets to complain about homework and exams- we're both looking forward to the switch!

Caught Up, But More Behind

I spend most of my time feeling like I'm treading water and barely keeping my head above it. I enjoy swimming and am very skilled at water treading, so I'm usually pretty happy in this state. But someimtes the to-do lists get overwhelming, and losing my child care on Monday has crippled me for the week. I don't have class on Mondays and use it to read ahead for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. (I also don't have class on Fridays and use it to catch-up in the classes I didn't read far enough ahead for on Monday.) Hanging out with Landon was fun, but I'm drowning now.

Today I used my 1-hour break between con law and sex law to catch-up in my "real life" to-do list. I have a dental appointment made for February, a hair cut set for Saturday, my bar exam application is in the mail, my bar/bri account has been switched from Illinois to Texas, my FedEx package has been rerouted, and we have initiated the mortgage process with our loan officer in Austin. All that sounds great, but now my school to-do list is getting out of hand. So I'm further ahead in life, farther behind in school, and my arms are getting tired.

Sleep, Finally!

Last night Landon slept from 8:00 PM to 6:00 AM. That is through the night people. Landon's wake up time is not my top choice, but it's a whole lot better than multiple wakings between 2 and 5 AM, so I'll take it.

After six months of night feedings, night cuddling, and night crying (not just Landon), we finally decided to follow Ferber and our pediatrician's advice and let him cry it out. He is 6 months old, weighs 17.5 lbs, and has a belly that could sustain him for days in the desert. For the past two months when we fed him during the night, he'd only drink about half an ounce and then want to play, so he obviously didn't really need to eat. And the few nights that he did sleep more than 7 hours, he was much more cheerful in the morning (and so were his parents) and napped better during the day. He needs sleep, we need sleep, and that mantra is what got me through the past two nights where he cried for 1-3 hours without us picking him up (as Ferber suggests, we periodically went in and checked on him, patted his back, and left- the visits made him more mad, but kept us from imagining all sorts of terrible things happening to him in his crib). Our pediatrician promised it would work quickly, and it did! The first night he cried, off and on, for 3 hours. The second night it was about 1 hour. Last night, he didn't wake up at all. It was glorious. I forgot what this felt like- to not hear a baby cry at 4:30 am, argue with your husband about who should get up with him (JP actually did more night feedings than me, one of the many reasons why I love him), and then get back in bed just in time for a short nap before your alarm goes off.

Landon was so chipper this morning when I went in to get him, he babbled all the way to Maya's, and had lots of smiles when I handed him over. If I wasn't so behind in my reading and paper writing, I'd have lots of smiles too. But well-rested stress is infinitely better than sleep-deprived stress, so my world is looking pretty bright.

Frickin Freezing

Yesterday my little weatherbug notifier never registered above 0. This morning when I forced myself out to the library to write two papers, my car said it was -6 (and it was NOT happy about it). Now I love winter: the cold, the snow, the beautiful starkness, the big sweaters, scarves, and coats, but below 0 is just ridiculous. Yesterday, Landon and I stayed inside all day and tried to keep warm. Even though our thermostat was set on 75, it was still chilly inside, so I dressed him in his reindeer snow suit and that kept him nice and toasty. I really wanted one in my size.

So THAT'S How She Does It

Marriage law is quickly becoming one of my favorite classes. The readings are fascinating and the discussion is much better than I anticipated. I was fearing the class would be composed purely of feminists, and while I agree with much of feminism, it would make the class significantly less interesting if everyone just nodded along with one other. Instead there's a complete diversity of sex, marital status, sexual orientation, and political persuasion. Our professor is a well-known feminist, but with with a Chicago "law and economics" twist, which results in some unique reasoning behind her generally predictable conclusions. All in all, it's an excellent class full of the type of discussions I feel like I should be having in law school.

Last week's topic was polygamy (really polygyny- multiple wives) and what it contributes to marriage law and opinion. I fully expected the assigned readings to condemn polygyny, and while most did, there was one offering it up as a solution to modern women trying to "have it all." In the article, Elizabeth Joseph, a lawyer living in Utah with her husband and his eight other wives, praises polygamy for "enabling women, in a society full of obstacles, to fully meet their career, mothering, and marriage obligations." According to her, "monogamous women must make compromises to have it all... the kids need to learn to fix their own breakfast, your husband needs to get used to occasional microwave dinners, and you need to divert more of your income to insure that your pre-schooler is in a good daycare environment." (Brief interjection: my kids making their own breakfasts and my husband getting used to microwave dinners, or gasp- cooking his own, are not the compromises I'm worried about.) Elizabeth lives with one of the other wives and both their children, and that wife is who watches her daughter during the day. At night the two women, now very close friends, share a simple dinner and relax. On Mondays their husband eats with them; Elizabeth says it's a "special day" with the kids "excited and on their best behavior." Sex, because you know you were wondering, is "by appointment." Elizabeth explains that "most evenings, with the demands of a career and chasing after the needs of a toddler, all I want to do is collapse into bed and sleep. But there is also the longing for intimacy and comfort that only he can provide, and when those feelings surface, I ask to be with him." She recalls "with a shudder" the taste of monogamy she got on a two-week trip with her husband- "little things began to grate on my nerves. We ran out of things to talk about . . . monogamy is monotony." The article ends with: "all nine wives are equally convinced that polygamy is God's gift to the modern woman."

This particular argument for polygamy had never occurred to me, and while I rejected it out of hand, it kept me thinking long after the class was over. Why is my "singular" marriage so fulfilling (and so far from monotonous), and why is Elizabeth Joseph's lifestyle so repugnant to me? And I think it comes down to the deep friendship- the bond between soulmates- that JP and I share. Marriage goes so far beyond the sharing of children and a bed, it's about sharing a life and a future. For me, marriage is cuddling on the couch, talking about whatever comes to mind: our day, the news, politics, Landon, our retirement, whatever. Marriage is feeling him next to me at night and knowing that when I have a nightmare he'll be there to hold me. Marriage is knowing what the other person means without explanation. Marriage is laughing, flirting, and arguing. Marriage is placing your future in the hands of another and trusting in the life you're building together. Sex and sexual attraction are critical, but the idea of sharing JP's bed with another wife isn't as offensive as the thought of sharing our daily interractions and random intimate moments. Don't get me wrong, if JP ever cheated on me, I'd leave him, but a thoughtless one-night-stand wouldn't be nearly as devastating as another woman taking my place as his confidante, best friend, and first phone call.

Reading the article made me sad for Elizabeth Joseph. She may think she's having it all, and she may honestly not mind sharing her husband, but she has no idea what compromises she's making.