Bickering

To the extent we ever "make it work" with our two full-time careers and two kids, it's because PJO and I have different types of jobs which carry different kinds of demands on our time. PJO's job tends to be pretty regular, even if ridiculously strict on face-time. His group has received several emails from the boss saying you must be at work by 8am. If you show up at 8:01, please turn around and take a personal day. (I realize that there are probably lots of jobs out there where you have to punch a clock, but it still seems absurd to me). It's a rare day where he cannot leave work at 5:30pm. He doesn't really have flexibility to leave during the day or just work from home, but he also avoids work on the nights and weekends for the most part.

My job is obviously more "flexible" if I need it to be. No one knows or cares when I get in to the office, whether I leave in the middle of the day for a doctor's appointment, whether I'm working from home or whether I leave early. Unless I have a deal closing or some other assignment that really requires me to be in my office, the only thing that matters is that I put the hours in, and if that is at night, that's usually ok. So our "normal" routine (which seems to happen almost never), is that we wake up when Timmy storms into our room at 5:45 or 6. PJO is always ready first so he goes downstairs with Timmy to get breakfast. I head downstairs by 6:45 or so and get Ellie some breakfast. PJO leaves the house around 7:30 and I try my best to gather everything we need to get to daycare and wrangle the kids into the car by 7:45. They can be difficult in the morning. If I leave the house at 7:45, I'll drop them off at daycare and get to the office by 8:45. PJO usually leaves to pick up the kids and I usually try to meet them when they get home around 6 so that we can eat dinner together and do bath and bedtime. Both kids have been fed, bathed, and put to bed by 7:15 or 7:30. Then the goal is that we clean up from dinner, clean out lunch boxes and pack up lunches for the next day.

Lately, PJO's job has required MUCH MORE of his time than 8-5:30. He has been getting in early, staying late, working from home and working weekends. In the beginning of October, this was ostensibly for a huge project that would basically determine his year-end bonus and was supposed to be finished by October 19th. Then it got pushed and now won't be done until November 9th. Meanwhile, I've been really busy at work and, because I've had to increase my share of pick-ups and drop-offs, have had to stay up really late at home to finish my work. I am really sleep deprived and cranky. Last weekend, PJO had to go to NYC for a bachelor party. He was only gone Friday night through Sunday afternoon, but I couldn't get any work done during this time. I had expected to be able to head in to the office early Monday and really hunker down and get stuff done. Until PJO got a text from his boss Sunday night telling him to be in by 7am Monday. "Can't you just say no?" I demanded. "I need to go do work. Why does your job automatically trump mine?" I stormed upstairs to quiet down the baby who PJO didn't seem to hear.

I just want to cry and scream "it's not fair!" PJO gets annoyed when he is the only one making lunches for the next day, and I'm annoyed if he watches TV and waits for me to be done with work until he starts. I feel like he should be doing more of the drop-offs and pick-ups because school is much more out of the way for me than him. When I complain about not being able to get something done, he tells me to wake up earlier. Getting 5 hours or less of sleep on a regular basis is not an option that I want to seriously consider.

I hate that we are bickering with each other when we should be acting like a team. It also doesn't help that our kids are often the first ones dropped off and the last ones picked up at their school. Even though Timmy really likes his school and seems genuinely happy there, he asks me all the time if he can please stay home today. We clearly need to make some sort of change. This is not the busiest I have ever been at work by a long shot and we can definitely get by day to day. But there is a constant level of stress that seems much higher than ever before. It's more like a dull, painful headache that just makes everything more difficult but doesn't stop you in your tracks. Maybe I just notice it more now that I'm fed up with this lifestyle and am determined to change it. Either way, I am slightly terrified at how busy our department is predicting work will be for year-end. Some quality time with my family over the holidays is just what I need. I really hope I get that.

The Second Child

Yesterday was October 19th, which means it's been one month since Ellie turned one. In a classic case of "poor second child" syndrome, I haven't written a post (aka updated her baby book) in many, many months. I did manage to throw her a birthday party and schedule one year pictures to be taken though, so at least something will mark her transition from babyhood to toddlerhood. She really is the happiest, funniest, easiest baby I've ever encountered so I want to make sure to create a good record of how she is now lest she become a difficult toddler or preschooler. Ellie has been a dream pretty much since she came home. She slept for long stretches right away and since 5 months, I can count on one hand the number of times she's woken up in the middle of the night. She sleeps much longer than Timmy does every night, usually 12 or 13 hours. She eats pretty much whatever we give her, she is content to be held, on the floor, in a stroller or in the car. She doesn't have a strict schedule (or any schedule really). She is used to just going with the flow and it takes a lot to make her cranky. She flirts with everyone, EVERYONE, everywhere we go. A coy smile, a cheesy grin, a belly laugh. She stops at nothing to get strangers to pay attention. People constantly come up to us and tell me that she is a beautiful baby and the happiest they've ever seen. She is a social butterfly and especially loves her brother. The pecking order in our house is usually #1 Timmy, #2 Me and #3 Daddy. Occasionally she switches it up. But I think in her eyes, Timmy can do no wrong. She laughs at everything he does, tolerates (and even seems to like) his overly-enthusiastic love squeezes. She goes wherever he may be in the house and wants to play with him. She usually wants his toys, so he started putting them out of reach on counters and tabletops. She quickly learned that she could get them by standing on her tippy toes or climbing on things. She makes us laugh all the time. Peek-a-boo and funny faces/noises are her go-tos to make us laugh. She also will put random things on her head or turn a pencil into a mustache and then show off until we crack up laughing. She is different from Timmy in so many ways. All he ever wanted to do was read books and she wants very little to do with them at all. And it wasn't until he was well over three that I could convince him to try putting on his own clothes/shoes. For the past four or five months, Ellie has sat on the floor trying with all the baby concentration and coordination she can muster to put on shoes and hats and hair clips. It's adorable...someday I'll post a video of it. She is even more stubborn than Timmy, which I didn't know was possible. Feisty too. I can think of at least three times already where Timmy (who by the way, is almost FOUR) has complained about Ellie hurting him (usually biting or tearing something away from him and scratching in the process). Meanwhile, the pediatrician asked us at her check up actually asked us if she seems to feel pain. Because by all appearances, she doesn't 95% of the time. We took away the bottle after we had weaned her off of formula and even though she drinks water from anything, she refuses to drink milk now that it's in a sippy cup. I dread taking away her pacifier at bedtime. She is a snuggle-fiend. Whenever we pick her up, she immediately puts her head in the crook of your neck and starts patting your back. It melts me every time. She is more cautious than I originally gave her credit for. After months of cruising, she started taking lots of steps right around a year. She would look like a little baby Frankenstein, walking across the room but she did it without falling. A month later, she still prefers to crawl although she is walking more and more. She always picks the "boy" toys to play with while Timmy is always stealing her "girl" toys. I love that. Down with gender stereotypes! She dances and "sings." She is really aggressive in trying to pet the cats. She signs the hell out of the "more" but I don't think she's learned any others yet. She says Mama and Dadda and a few other fake words but not much else. She has two little bottom teeth (that came in at 11 months) and two top teeth with a little gap in between that cut through on her birthday. She still has blondish hair and blueish eyes. I think she still looks like a female version of Timmy. She is tall and fairly chunky. Both PJO and I were nervous about having a daughter. He was terrified of having a teenage daughter and I was terrified of having a spoiled, drama-loving, princess-obsessed little girl. She has converted us and I love having a little girl. She makes me feel like the best mom in the world even on my worst days and I can't imagine a more perfect daughter for me. Happy Birthday to our sweet girl!

Professional Identity Crisis

I've been absent for a long time. I've felt too busy to write, but I know that's not the real cause of my silence. I guess I've also just been uninspired. There are days where I really enjoy what I do, but on the whole, I'm not happy with my job. My kids are both great these days, near perfect even, but no one really wants to hear me talk about how great my kids are. The truth is, most days are the same...wake up early, rush out the door, drop off kids, go to work and try to bill as much as I can before leaving to either pick up the kids or meet PJO at home to help rush through dinner and bathtime/bedtime. Once kids are asleep, try to motivate to clean up, unpack and re-pack lunches and then do more work, but usually fail at one or all three of those things. Weekends have mostly been reserved for catching up on all of the stuff I should have been accomplishing during the week but didn't get around to doing, plus one or two fun things. I have been reading blogs through google reader, but for some reason, logging in to comment always seems like a herculean task. Every once in a while, the stars will align and I will find both a really compelling post AND the motivation to comment, but mostly I'm just really lazy. Today is my two year anniversary of starting at the Firm. Looking back at where I was two years ago and where I am now makes me really miss the regular interaction I used to have with people who understood me here in this online community. When everyone in law school thought I was insane for having a baby during my third year, I turned to this blog and had support from people all over who had done or were doing the same thing. When I started in the real world as a junior lawyer / mom, I had the benefit of the experience of everyone that had gone before me and blogged about it to help guide me. Now, as a mom of two young kids working at a job that completely overwhelms me most days, it helps to see that I'm not the only one. Reading about other moms struggling to find balance at least makes me feel like maybe the problem is the situation and not my lack of parenting or lawyering skills. But at the same time, saying "me too" to everything I read without a plan to make any changes also sends me into this downward spiral of seeing only the the negative aspects of this job and not being willing to try to make it work. I'm nervous to talk too honestly about the job or my plans to change or leave it because I have no idea when any of that could happen and the only thing worse than the status quo would be getting fired and having no plan of action. But this is the time when I would really love to hear what other people think. When I need to hear people say that I'm justified in thinking the demands are unreasonable or even that the grass is always greener and nothing else will actually be better. Maybe I just need ideas for where to go next or what to do. And when I think about the conversations I want to have, I am sad that I have let this blog become an empty shell with links to stories of my life back when I thought I knew what I wanted and who I wanted to be. So, maybe I can get myself back into the habit of writing more often and posting the comments I have in my head when I read other blogs. Even if no one ever reads this blog again, at least I may get some clarity on the thousands of contradictory thoughts crashing into one another in my head. I'll start with the obvious subject ... my job. I loved law school. Loved every second of it. But so far, I haven't really loved being a lawyer. Most days, I feel like a glorified secretary. Even when I'm drafting contracts or agreements, it's usually just changing certain facts and names in a form. Being at a big firm, there just aren't that many opportunities to take charge of the matters I am working on and be involved in the big picture decision making. I would describe my role as implementing the strategy that the partners decide on for the deal. I have really enjoyed some of the pro bono matters I've been involved with, such as helping a non-profit form a corporation and apply for tax-exempt status. Working on that, I get to research the statutes, figure out what will be the best strategy for these people and then draft the documents to make it happen. But drafting my 1,000th secretary certificate or collecting signature pages, even on a major $2 billion deal, just isn't thrilling. In the latter half of this year, I've been promoted to working on the ancillary documents for these deals. And what I've found is that "negotiating" an environmental indemnity or security agreement often is just conforming those documents to what the partner decided to do in the credit agreement. At some point, if I stick around long enough, I would be the one deciding with the client (or the tax experts most likely) how to structure the deal. But I'm not sure that seems exciting enough to devote an entire career to it. If I ever made equity partner here, it would mean a starting salary of just under $2 million a year. But that would be after 10-12 years of making work my #1 priority and it would require a perfect storm of having a decent book of business, a practice area that the firm sees a future in but where no one else ahead or below me will make partner and the other intangible qualities that make you "partner material." There are no female transactional partners in my office. I am a second year with two kids. I think the odds of me making partner (even if I wanted to) are about 1 in 1000. And the important point is that I don't want to. I have no idea what I will want in 5, 10 or 15 years. But right now, I want balance. I want to be able to work out without having to wake up before 5:00 am to do it. I want to be able to cook something that takes more than 20 minutes and still have time to sit down as a family and eat it before having to start bath time. I want to sit with my husband at night and just talk or watch tv without staring guiltily at my work computer that I haven't turned on. I want to sleep 7 hours a night. I want to never hear my son say something like "I was crying at school today because I was waiting for you to pick me up" again. And I want to be able to stay home with my daughter when she feels miserable instead of sticking her in daycare for 9 hours. It may be that I have just talked myself out of the possibility of liking this job. It may be that there is no other job out there that will afford me the kind of balance I want. Honestly, at this point in my life, even a 9-5 job wouldn't really do that (even though it would be a million times better than what I have). But I am ok with leaving and foreclosing any potential return to Big Law. I can't say that for sure about being a lawyer. I think what I really need is a break. I've thought about just quitting altogether and being a stay-at-home mom for a while. I've been a stay-at-home mom before and I didn't love it. Most days were fairly mundane and the schedule totally dictated by nap schedule. Figuring out how to keep myself and a 1 year old entertained was surprisingly difficult, especially when we couldn't afford to go to music classes or the zoo or lunch dates. Beyond the parenting, I was in charge of cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, making trips to the post office and dry cleaner, etc... To be honest, I really enjoy being able to farm a lot of that stuff out. And I recall wanting, and needing, my husband to take over bath time during the week and parenting duties for a few hours on weekends so I could just have a break. Even then, it felt like there was always more I could be doing too, like organizing pictures and videos or deep cleaning the bathroom or taking him to a new park that was further away. I'll save the more detailed post about my fears of becoming a stay-at-home mom for another day. Suffice it to say that my (very strong) preference is to work part-time. I am officially on the look-out for the next thing.