Jennifer
About this author:
Jennifer O’Shaughnessy grew up in a small town in Southern California. She graduated from the University California San Diego and worked as a scientist of molecular biology in San Diego and San Francisco for ten years. During that time, she co-authored 16 papers published in many prominent scientific journals.
She married "the boy next door" (he actually lived there) nine years ago, and is now living with her husband and beautiful bouncy boys in Marin County, California. Currently, she has shifted her scientific goals toward discovering the many mysteries of early male development.
Mom is her title, not her identity.
My Articles:
So Fly
I can remember being four, attending dress rehearsal for my first major recital. I was lying on the floor with my chin in my hand, pink tights sagging at the knees, hair in pigtails on top of my head, and dialing a telephone that was a prop in a dance number. I kept looking in the mirror and I loved what I saw, and even more how I felt.
From a young age I loved to dance.
I danced as a teenager with hopes of getting the hell out of the small town that I grew up in just like my dance teacher had. The biggest problem was that I wasn’t good enough.
Birth Plan
Birth Plan
When I gave birth to my first son six years ago there was a push to create a birthing environment that the mother had control over.
I had no experience giving birth so I read voraciously on the topic to stay educated. In each book I read, the author suggested I have a “birth plan” that detailed what I wanted to take place during the birthing process.
So, being the overly-analytical and organized person that I was prior to having kids — I literally wrote the plan:
Drool
Who knew drool could say so much?
I was born with a clean face and a reasonably shaped head. However, my “Baby’s First Photo” shows a child with one beautiful cheek and one severely blemished by self-toxic drool.
It was my initiation into a society that praises outward appearance. The visitor arrives at the hospital and is barely able to get out the “What a cute baby!” before the corners of her mouth drop, then move back upward, but the eyes show it all.
I was lucky that neither scarred me for life.
The Third Time’s a Charm
I was in the shower trying to wash out the sleep that has been caked in the corner of my eye every morning for six years now having a mildly coherent conversation with my husband when he says, “Well, you always bring up the fact that you had colicky babies.”
It’s a grand thing that I was only half awake or I would have had some snippy remark that would have eliminated constructive marital conversation for days. Instead, he left the room and I thought about what he said.
By golly, he was right. I do that. I can justify it a multitude of ways, but I, in short, I am constantly searching for someone who can relate to raising two colicky babies eighteen months apart; clawing for some human that can justify the insanity that I felt.
Whine
Rule number. 1: No Whining – at all.
Rule number 2: No Wine alone.
In a nutshell, these are the rules that I give most weight in my life.
Rule number 1 is carried over from my own childhood. I don’t know how I failed in asserting its importance in the first four years of motherhood, but it has recently been bumped up to number 1 priority. I cannot tolerate the pitch that my 4-year old achieves in his voice, and it seems to always be about things that I could never dream to have as a kid. Games, television, even food. As a child, I knew this rule and unquestioningly abided by it. There was no argument about it: No whining.
Smooth Satisfaction
Smooth Satisfaction
Yesterday, my day was occupied by the extremely rare all-day date with my husband. We made romantic eyes at one another over the roar of the outside world. We flirted with each other using strength and varying body positions. We were happy to have the other’s sweat land on our bodies.
Yes, romance after seven years of marriage is not dead. Due to a last-minute cancellation by his parents, who were coming to stay with us, my husband was left with the extremely rare pre-scheduled day off of work.
I pictured him saying, “Let’s rent a convertible and cruise up to the wine country, tasting wine and eating delicious food during the cherished four hours that the kids will be in school.” I waited excitedly in anticipation while he took two days to decide what he would do.
Blah
It might be the mind-numbing aspects that often have me despising my 24/7 job.
The pleasant and unpleasant things you have to do over and over every day. It is not like in the corporate world where those brain freeze tasks were not life threatening, and there was always some poor underling who would adopt them when you got promoted and earned the right not to do them anymore.
It is more the lack of choice.
Sometimes I feel like waking up and deciding, “I am not going to touch excrement in any form today.” Which sounds great in principle but when I wander out to the living room, my 2-year old has already made my decision for me by removing his pull-up.
The Upside
Today is just like any other day in the life of a stay-at-home mom, except today I decided to focus on the positive. I am not a follower of “The Secret” that is basically a well-polished update on an age-old philosophy, but I have used my own brand of “wagon-train” gumption, power of positive thinking to rescue me from some dark days.
Today, I was searching for a way out of the monotony of my own mind, so I pictured what it would be like to manifest the methods that I used to feel good about as a stay-at-home mom in the business environment that my husband lives Monday through Friday.
I pictured him stuck in the cubicle maze of gray walls and computer glare, trapped in meetings at work all day. I imagined him stuck inside the invisible wall created by the need for business-appropriate relationships and I wondered what it would look like if he could use the same tools as I did in my job.
One Left Shoe
Driving down the highway has adopted a different meaning to me since the birth of my youngest son.
I spent way more time in the car then I had in the past, and not the productive thought-provoking kind of time, but the brain-numbing post birth kind of time.
The driving had to be smooth, unbroken, preferably at highway speeds and at least 30 minutes in length. It took some time for me to discover the exits and on-ramps without stop signs to slow my rhythmic jaunt, but after I found the perfect north and south turnarounds, I could fly down the highway, gleeful to have found an uninterrupted motion that would sooth my colicky baby to sleep.
We would have to go north as far as Terra Linda and then loop back south as far as Rodeo. This distance would ensure that the ride would be at least 30 minutes of near-constant motion; the necessary time to lull the baby and allow him to be asleep long enough to enter REM so that I could successfully transfer him to the crib when we pulled back into the garage providing the clicks and clunks of the garage door closing wouldn’t disturb that well-earned sleep.
Parenting to Pieces
Pieces: that is how I define much of my life as a parent of two young boys.
When I speak, I find my mind firing thoughts fractured from what they would have been if I had not had children. When I pass a mirror, I find my formerly smooth skin covered in wrinkles and stress lines. I find my once unified brunette hair broken by streaks of gray.
That is why I find LEGOs so addictive. I am an admitted control freak and I am able to take solace in the fact that one thing in my life has a clear instruction manual. I find lame excuses to give my kids a set of LEGOs for reward. “Jack, you woke up in such a great mood today, here is a 537 piece X-wing Fighter.” And “Jacob, thank you for eating that mini-carrot; I have a 210 piece racecar for you.”
There is something clearly selfish about handing my 3- and 5-year olds a toy marked “Recommended Age: 8-12.” I am pretty sure I planned it that way when I gave them their first set after I had convinced myself they were old enough to not eat the small pieces. Even though they are brilliant and gifted, they are obviously too young to put all 537 pieces together. The thought gives me a little thrill.
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