In an ambitious effort to be Organized Mom and actually be prepared for a holiday sooner than the night before, I bought the Halloween candy. I know, I know – wrong time to decide to get organized and most certainly the wrong task. Because now I know that there are oversized bags of candy in the house and it takes every ounce of my self-control (which I don’t have much of to begin with) to keep from raiding it like a high school kid home alone with the key to the liquor cabinet.

Not helping matters is that I’m 4 ½ months pregnant. So cravings are stronger than usual for chocolate and my will is as weakened as my immune system. But, I wanted to get a jumpstart on preparing treat bags for my son’s friends up our street, his classmates, and cousins, so I thought it wasn’t such a bad idea at the time.

And to tell you the truth, it hasn’t been the chocolate-consuming massacre that it could’ve been. Of course, I’ve dipped into the bags already, and unfortunately if you eat one Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, you’re bound to eat three or four (those things are as addictive as Doritos!). But what stops me at a few pieces, is the memory of how difficult it was to lose the baby weight after my son was born.

So I’ve been trying to stick to a healthful eating regimen. Three meals a day with as much whole grains, veggies, and fruit as I can muster and a snack in the morning and afternoon if I need it. I’ve been following guidelines from the book, Nutrition for a Healthy Pregnancy by Elizabeth Somer, and while I’m far from a stickler or a health nut, I found the information that she provides to be helpful and not completely impossible to follow.

The book is divided into sections based on where you are in your pregnancy – from Preparing for Pregnancy to the Post-Pregnancy Diet to all the stages in between. Although chocolate doesn’t make an appearance under Somer’s list of healthy snacks, I’ve taken it upon myself to include it sometimes when I really need it. (Aren’t they always touting the anti-oxidant properties of chocolate?)

I justify this and other “junk” foods by adding up all of the good stuff that I put into my body on a daily basis. Obviously, preparing meals has gotten a whole lot more challenging since my son came along, but I’ve learned a few helpful tricks to make it more possible. Like on Mondays, I often make a big batch of vegetable soup – or what I also like to call “leftover” soup – and then I have a healthy, vitamin-packed lunch (and sometimes dinner) ready for me all week long. I simply throw into the soup anything that’s in the fridge or pantry. Sometimes that includes leftover roasted potatoes and steamed green beans from dinner some night before; sometimes I throw in a can of cannelini beans and noodles; but it always starts with a base of onion, carrots, and celery, which I always try to keep in the house. I try to set myself up for success by stocking up my veggie drawer and pantry shelves.

Lately, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find my husband enjoying my soup on a Monday night, maybe accompanied by a salad. My son, well, he’s a different story. What’s the magic number of times that a toddler needs to be exposed to new foods before they like it? 15? We’re not there yet. (I could go on forever on the topic of his eating habits and my tricks – and I will – but that will occupy future blog posts.) For now, I’m pleased that I can jam a healthy dose of veggies into my husband at least once a week. It’s taken 12 years of knowing my husband before I’ve achieved such a victory, so how can I really fault my son after just a measly three years?

The fact that my husband is making a small change is something that Somer advocates in her book for expecting Moms. Even though her suggested diets and servings seem a bit excessive and unattainable – how on earth can I eat six servings of veggies and four servings of fruit in just one day?! – she does make an important point that I cling to: “even small, sometimes even tiny, changes or additions to your diet can make a difference in your health, energy level, and pregnancy”. One on the list of her “Simple Changes” is to eat nuts, a good source of protein, magnesium, vitamin E, and B vitamins. Ah-ha! Snickers bars have lots of nuts!

My husband and I had been trying for a second pregnancy for over two years when I finally decided to go to the doctor. She ran a blood test and informed me that my sagging 41-year-old body is no longer ovulating.

“What!” I exclaim. “I’m not ovulating AT ALL?”

“Well, not this month,” she replied calmly.

You have got to be kidding me, I think. One thing I can count on is that monthly egg drop, accompanied by slippery discharge and vivid sex dreams (at one point featuring weatherman Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz).

“So I can’t have any more children?” I ask. I’m strangely not upset about this.

“We can put you on some medicine that will trick your body into ovulating.”

Hmm. I’m not sure I like the use of the word “tricking” here. My body and I have been pretty honest with each other over the years. I don’t want us to start deceiving each other now. Then I think of a cute little girl baby dressed in beautiful pink clothing who is googooing happily at me and waving her fists. She never cries and rarely needs her diaper changed.

“Okay,” I say.

We talk about the details and she calls in a prescription for me. The medicine is called Clomid and I’m to take it on the 5th through 9th days of my cycle.

The first month nothing happens. I’m instructed to buy an ovulation kit from the drug store to determine which day I’m ovulating and then to schedule intercourse. Intercourse is a term the doctors use to mean “have lots of sex.” I’m not thrilled about that directive, either. Sex was great when we were single and had no responsibilities and no mortgage. Now we barely have energy to crash on the couch after making and cleaning up dinner and putting our son to bed. But again I think of my sweet little girl baby who never spits up, sleeps all night, and only needs to nurse about 5 minutes a day.

“Let’s get it on.” I say to my husband.

But another month passes with no pregnancy. The only thing that happens is that my face breaks out with a rash of pimples. I count 9 of them, all clustered around my chin and jaw. I tell myself to be grateful they aren’t on my cheeks and forehead. This helps for about 1 minute. Because the zits are HUGE! They aren’t just little blackhead pepper grains, they are the size of lima beans with the angry color of a red pepper. I add “zit medicine” and “zit coverup” to my list of items to pick up from the drug store. And then I add “chocolate” because if I have to look bad, I might as well blow my diet, too.

The third month my dosage is doubled and my zits are tripled. One gets infected and fills up with pus. It sticks out from my face about half an inch. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m kind of fascinated by it and spend large chunks of time in the bathroom squeezing out the pus. I complain to the doctor but all she’s concerned about is whether I feel dizzy or nauseous. Yes, I tell her, every time I look in the mirror.

When my pee sticks tell me I’m ovulating, I’m really not in the mood to have sex, I mean, intercourse. I start thinking about how happy I am with only one child. Especially a five-year-old who can dress, feed, and entertain himself. I decide I’ll get a kitten instead of a baby; after all, pets are just as good as children, even better in many ways. You can’t leave your kids in the house alone for a few days while you take a long weekend at the beach. Or at least you shouldn’t. When my husband asks me if tonight is the night, I lie and say no.

The next day I change my mind and email my husband to come home early. He is alarmed by this unusual request.

“Is everything okay?” he writes back.

“I’m fine, I just don’t want these zits to be for nothing.” I reply romantically.

“I’ll be right home,” he responds immediately, never being one to turn down sex, even with a pimply partner.

A few minutes later he sends me a text message from his cell phone: “So what r u wearing?”

“Acne medicine,” I type back, annoyed that he’s trying to flirt with me while I am clearly so ugly and undesirable.

Later he leaves the light on in the bedroom when we start to snuggle–I mean, have sex–I mean, schedule intercourse. I guess that’s his way of telling me that my spotty face doesn’t bother him. Or maybe he was in such a hurry to get down to business he forgot to turn off the light. Either way, it seems that he still finds me attractive, zits and all.

I should find this comforting but I’m too busy running to the bathroom to apply more concealer to my angry red spots.

Today I played badminton with my son. I didn’t really want to, but his little face was so cute when he asked me that I just couldn’t say no. I put away my loppers and dragged my poke weed shrubs out of the flower bed I was working in. I took off my gloves and picked up the blue racket I had been assigned.

“Here’s the cock!” my son yelled, holding up the birdie.

“Shuttlecock,” I corrected, wondering why I had ever taught him that word.

“Maybe we should just call it a birdie,” I add.

We swatted the birdie/shuttlecock back and forth for a while and I found myself relaxing and even having fun, my earlier reluctance melting away. It was a beautiful fall day, crisp and cool with a blazing azur sky. The leaves were beginning their fall performance, transforming themselves from their everyday green to gold, auburn, and sable.

The birdie made a satisfying thwack when hit squarely and my son kept up a running commentary on every stroke. The neighbors came home from their weekly tennis match and gave us a big thumbs up for solidarity in racket sports. My son tossed and swung wildly, laughing when he missed and exclaiming when he connected.

Life was good.

Then my son batted the birdie up onto the roof. There it stayed, white feathers gleaming in the late afternoon sun.

Game over.

As a settled, confident, happy 41-year-old, I rarely cry. I get angry, I feel sad, I get depressed, I feel stressed and life gets me down, but I don’t often expel emotion by crying. That’s why I completely surprised myself by bursting into tears after dropping off my son at preschool on the day that he was to take his first field trip. The horror of the field trip had been growing since I found out about it the week before.

“He’s too young for a field trip!” I exclaimed to my husband.

“He’ll be fine,” my husband replied dismissively.

I raise my voice. “He only just turned 5!”

“He’ll be okay,” my husband said, giving me a sideways look like I’m a freak of nature.

“Whoever heard of field trips for preschoolers!?!” I declare, not ready to give up.

“What do you think is going to happen?” My husband asked.

Um…abuse, molestation, kidnapping, maybe even murder and dismemberment. I don’t say this out loud because to verbalize it means it could really happen. “He’s too young to go on a field trip.” I return to my original argument. (Did I mention some people think I’m stubborn?)

“He’s just going to a Pumpkin Patch. It’s only a few miles from school,” my husband said, in his calmest and most rational voice. “Nothing bad could happen to him there.” I detect a note of condescension. This annoys me. I pride myself on being RationalMom, who doesn’t freak out when her son splits his lip open on the sliding board or rush to his rescue if he skins a knee. But playground accidents are totally different because I’m there to assess the damage and act accordingly. A field trip on a school bus to a faraway farm and a crowd of kids with a small chaperone-student ratio is something else.

“Why don’t you just go with him?” My husband asks, reasonably. And there is another reason I am annoyed. I can’t go with him because I didn’t know that was an option. I didn’t see the sign-up sheet on the bulletin board until it was too late and all the chaperone spots were taken. I tell this to my husband. “You could just drive over there and meet them.” He smirks.

“I thought of that,” I say. “But that would make me DesperateMom and I don’t want to be DesperateMom.”

“You are DesperateMom.” He outright laughs at me now. I wrinkle up my face at him and sort of smile because I know I’m being ClingyMom, who is just a field trip or two away from being DesperateMom.

Fast forward to Field Trip Day. I see some other moms in the parking lot and ask them if they are okay with the whole field trip thing. “Oh sure,” says one. “They’ll be fine.” I look at her as if she has two heads and find another target. “Oh sure,” says this one. “They’ll have fun.” She busies herself pulling her kid’s sweater off and so misses the dagger look I send her.

I pull my son close and tell him to stay with the group and stay with the teacher. “Don’t go off by yourself,” I whisper. I know he won’t because he’s not a Runner like some other kids we know. He heads off into his classroom without a backwards glance and I make it to the car and out onto the main road before the whimpers and tears start. I cry all the way home but miraculously avoid collisions. I even call my husband at work while driving home and leave a sobbing message.

He doesn’t get back to me until his lunch hour by which time I have already called the school to determine that my son has returned safely. So I act breezy and confident on the phone and totally dismiss my morning neurosis. He hangs up uncertainly and I go to the calendar to circle the next day a field trip is scheduled. The bus leaves promptly at 9 and I intend to be on it.

Lately, mornings with my (almost) 3-year old son have been dreadfully similar to the presidential debates. Both parties saying the same things over and over again…forcing smiles between gritted teeth to try and maintain some sense of decorum (ok, so that one is just on my side)…and in the end, no one coming out a winner.

My husband is the moderator, stepping in to remind us that we both agreed to the (unspoken) terms of the mother/son relationship and we really need to stick to them.

It’s the quintessential war of wills – one that every parent has experienced at some point during the course of toddler-hood. However, considered alongside this election, the similarities have brought me much hilarity.

Obviously, his newfound independence – evidenced by his daily opinions on what shirt he wears, whether or not he brushes his teeth and uses the potty – can be attributed to his age. No one ever knows when this behavior may rear its ugly head, and surely no one knows when it will end.

But then, just when you think you’ll never make it to the breakfast table, a morning like yesterday happens. I very hesitantly – but swiftly – began placing a shirt over his head and he said the magic words I’ve been longing to hear at the tender hour of 7am, “Mommy, I like this shirt.”

What is up with these women who use their husbands’ email addresses? Like johndoe@verizon.net. How hard is it to get your own email address? Or, if your husband never uses the email, why not just get it in your name?

I’m not quite sure why this bugs me so much. I mean really, what difference does it make to me what email they use? But there’s something about the way women have fought so hard to be recognized as individuals, apart from their husbands and children, that makes it necessary for women to get their own email addresses. It’s a symbol of independence and self. It says that you are not just Mrs. John Doe, but you are your own person, despite the many demands put on you by family, friends, and coworkers.

And speaking of work, you don’t use your husband’s email at work, do you? So why use it at home?!!

It’s not like it costs tons of money. Once you pay your Internet Service Provider its monthly fee, it generally permits a number of emails to be used on one account. Or you could always go the really free route and get a Yahoo or Gmail account. Plus the benefit of this is that you can check it anywhere, on any computer, and if you change ISP’s you don’t have to change your email.

Also, you’d be doing me a personal favor by using your own email. I could get into serious trouble corresponding with your husbands. What if my husband looked over my shoulder to see that I was carrying on a conversation with John Doe? He might accuse me of infidelity and divorce me. Do you really want that on your conscience? Of course not. So, please, do the right thing.

Ladies, you owe it to yourselves (and to me) to GET YOUR OWN EMAIL ADDRESS!

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