We’re Drawn to Interaction

It seems like pretty often my personal and professional lives blur- which I love. There are times in my work that I can take away a lesson that applies to family and vice versa. For instance…

If you have ever spent time around a two year old, you know that they love repetition (they love repetition, they love repetition). Matteo asks me to read him books all day long, and usually brings the same selection to me again and again. Lately he has been obsessed with a book my girlfriend bought him called “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” (great book to  introduce small children to the alphabet, by the way).

Tonight he brought “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” to me for the umpteeth time and I wanted to jump out of a window… but I didn’t. I invited him up into my lap and dutifully, cheerfully read it like it was the first time. Each verse of the book ends with the title and we read it like this:

Mommy: CHICKA CHICKA!!   Matteo: BOOM BOOM!!

After wondering to myself why on earth he would want to hear the same book so many times, it dawned on me that it was because this is the only book he is active in “reading” with me. The key was  the interaction, and isn’t that human nature to crave interaction with others (for those of you who are interested, that’s the driver for Social Media)?

I’ll be sure to find new ways to incorporate his interaction in other books- maybe I’ll get some variety!!

Family Day Out

Wow, things have been moving at warp speed lately. There have been baby showers, birthday parties, runny noses, lost lovies, wonderful clients, nutty clients, looming deadlines, dust bunnies to dustbust, grocery shopping, bills to pay, a dog to walk… and no babysitter to help at the moment. AAACCCKKK! And in the meantime, poor little Teo has been spending a lot of time cooped up in the house while we are doing it all.

By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, I knew there was just no way I could handle listening to another episode of Blue’s Clues or Go Diego Go.  I suggested to Joe that we all take a drive up to Sedona this past Sunday. It wasn’t a romantic fairytale day.  The 2 hour drive required a lot of patience while constantly entertaining Teo with music, movies, books and matchbox cars. Also, as it turns out, Weather.com isn’t always 100% accurate, which I completely took for granted. Rather than party cloudy and 60 degrees, it was windy, 45 degrees and there were a few showers.

I am happy to say though, that the unpleasant parts of our day didn’t stop us from getting what we needed out of the experience- a complete and total change of  scenery. We brought our picnic lunch to Slide Rock Park, just north of town in Sedona. While we froze our tushies off, it was still great to be outside, surrounded by the tall walls of red rock and green pines. Teo got the opportunity to run around in a big open field  - a real luxury in Arizona – and we walked a short distance along the rushing river. We even got some  hot apple cider from the general store in the park. How wonderful to feel like it was still winter!! another luxury in Arizona

Even though it was fun, the windy cold air was pretty intolerable so we left after less than an hour.  Not wanting to head back just yet, we took the short drive back into downtown Sedona and stopped off at the Canyon Breeze restaurant for hot coffee and tea… until Teo had a little meltdown and we left…

The good part of the day was the 2 hour drive home. Teo was exhausted and passed out in his car seat, and Joe and I had plenty of time to look at the beautiful desert outside our windows and. just. talk. Such a rare treat. So, it was a far from perfect day, but I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes we just need to make the opportunity to break our routine, get stressful things off our minds, have a change of scenery and get some time together without distractions. Days like this, depsite terrible weather and a whiney baby, are great for the soul and can be absolute paradise

My Beautiful Boy

Tonight I was looking around online for info on custom blog designs. I can’t seem to stop working after weeks like these. I came across a beautiful blog from a photographer who blogs a lot about her family and children. Among all the lovely images of her lovely children, the story came together, her heartbreak became evident. She’d lost one of  her daughters when she was just 3. The story was hard to read, sprinkled with beautiful photos of Ava in the sunshine, all smiles and big eyes and long lashes. I couldn’t say why exactly, but it broke my heart to pieces. I suppose when you see an especially beautiful baby of about the same age who reminds you of yours, you just get it- Loss. These things actually happen sometimes.

Tomorrow, will be Teo’s day. I will take Teo out to breakfast and then the park. I will hold his hand up the slide, push him on the swings, look at bugs, get dirty and lay in the grass looking at the sky with him (if he’ll let me ) I will kiss his dad on the cheek and hold his hand so he can see how much I love his daddy. I will acknowledge that despite not accomplishing everything on my To Do list this past week, I have been too busy. I have been impatient. I will give him me, undivided, until he feels in his heart how I love him with my whole heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teo’s 2nd Birthday

I can’t believe it.  Matteo is 2 years old. I feel so conflicted- I miss the little snuggly baby he was, but I am proud of the boy he is growing into.

This morning I got up early and went into the office before he woke up. I looked out the window at the rising sun and thought about the morning he was born. It had been a roller coaster week. My blood pressure was spiking the week before at the dr.’s office and they weren’t sure why. In conjunction with a complete and total meltdown from all the stresses of Nino’s chemotherapy and poor sleep, we were given the option to be scheduled for a C-section. 2 days before, we had to put our beloved dog, Nino, down due to a losing battle with Lymphoma. It was a Wednesday morning and we had to leave in the cold and dark to be at the hospital by 4:45am. Both my mom and Joe’s mom had flown in the day before and came with us to the hospital. The 4 of us hung out in the pre-op room while Joe danced around like Disco Fever in his scrubs and hair net

At about 7:45, the nurses wheeled me into the Operating Room, with Joe by my side. The epidural was freaky- I sat forward on the bed and the needle went in my back. Soon, I was laying down and my feet felt strongly of pins and needles but I couldn’t move them anymore. One of the nurses used a wet wipe down my neck and chest to test for where the epidural had kicked in. That was it- I was numb and in a matter of minutes we heard Matteo’s first cry and I cried my eyes out. It had taken us more than a year to  get pregnant, I’d waited so long for this perfect little baby and here he was. The anesthesiologist took our first photo together, Joe and I in hairnets, him holding Teo, while I was oblivious to them sewing me up.

The next couple days were bliss despite some mishaps. The IV in my hand blew and it swelled up like a big puffy Mickey Mouse hand. I couldn’t eat for 2 days and watched helplessly as my huge Italian family passed hoagies and glasses of scotch and wine to one another over my bed.  The nurses came in every 3 or 4 hours throughout the night, sometimes waking us up, but most of the time we were watching late-night TV or I was feeding Teo. I couldn’t wait for the day we got to bring him- an unusally cold, grey day. I was completely freaked out to see his tiny body in the carseat and suddenly, I was a parent, pissed off at every moron on the road.

Now he is more than 30lbs, running and talking, counting and playing. He is gorgeous and is at the center of everything I do. We drive each other crazy once in a while but I love him dearly and I soak up every minute… because its going fast.

A Monster or Child of Technology?

So, last summer my almost 2 year old, Teo, really started getting into those shows on Noggin- His favorites are Oswald, Blues Clues, Go Diego Go, and Yo Gabba Gabba (ok, well that last one is MY favorite). Anyway, we started to record a couple episodes of his favorite “movies” as he calls them on DVR on our living room HD TV so he could watch them whenever he wanted. Shortly thereafter, in preparation for running the gauntlet on a 5 hour flight to Florida, I downloaded some of these shows on my iPod for him to watch (worked like a charm by the way- plus you don’t have to lug around a bulky DVD player and movies. Sony makes a great set of headphones for kids- cheap, durable and a limited volume so they don’t hurt their little ears. Plug ‘em right into the iPod, click the little lock button and you’re ready to go).

Anyway, this past few months, in addition to watching his programs at will on DVR, I’ve been propping the iPod up in the cupholder of the center console in my car so he can watch his programs while we’re driving around. So, this has all added up to him thinking that he should be able to watch whatever he wants whenever he wants, and that when  we tell him it isn’t possible to watch something at that given moment we are just being  jerks… which results in a huge tantrum. I want so badly to have my own tantrum and tell him “when I was your age we only had cheesy stuff like 3-2-1 Contact and Mr. Wizard! And it came on only once a day! And Sesame Street still told kids that when they’re lost they should go home with Gordon, even though he was a stranger! We didn’t have Noggin or Blues Clues or Oswald! There was no iPod or DVR you shit!”. But then I realize that 1) he wouldn’t understand me and 2) I would start to sound like my mother telling me that I didn’t know what it was like to grow up walking to school uphill in the snow and 3) it’s not cool to call him a shit to his face.

When I stop to think about it, I realize that Teo is really the uber technology user. Everything we use today from iPods to DVRs to the Internet is created for us to enjoy what we want at will. He has just taken it to a new level, and that will be the tech story of his time- everything will be built around our interests, our schedule and our need for instant gratification. Have I created a monster or am I just raising a child of technology?

My First Post

It’s always weird writing a first post on a new blog. It kind of feels like writer’s block- you think you have lots and lots of ideas but that big white sheet of paper (or blank screen) can be daunting. Well, let’s start at the beginning…

My name is Jenn. I often go by the handle Jenn_Ex online (note that this blog is jennex with no underscore, WordPress says this is  a no no). This is a play on the term Gen X or Generation X. In regards to the many things that may define me, my generation, experiences and outlook on life define me most. I am a 30-something who wants it all- pursuing work that makes me feel fulfilled, the freedom of working the hours I choose in the location of my choice, and making it all fit around spending time with Hubby and raising my son, Matteo (Teo for short)  is the top priority. I worry about the world and the problems we’ve inherited, but I am also sarcastic and love to laugh. I love people, too, which is what makes me a great consultant, promoter and Social Media fan… but more about that to come.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to manage the balance between my business and my family, how best to meet the ever-changing needs of both my clients and my child. So, that’s what this blog is for- to chronicle the challenges, the failures, how-to’s and the occassional successes. I hope along the way that some of you other parents out there strattling the line between sanity and hysteria while managing this balancing act will read this, share, commiserate and celebrate with me.

I’m going to go upstairs and figure out what all the banging is coming from that kid’s room now… Night all.