2004 Christmas Letter

As I was trying to fold that last load of laundry tonight as Mignonne was screaming her head off, I thought to myself, “I know why people stop at two”.  I guess I have met my threshold of tolerating motherhood, and I’m at my brink.  Where do all of the weeks go?  I’ll tell you…they go driving my kids up and down the road, picking up and dropping off from pre-school, and pleading with the boys not to embarrass me and to be on “their best behavior” whenever I’m brave enough to take them out in public.    The most ridiculous punishment our generation has inherited is the “time out!”  Ooohhhh, that’s SOOO scary.  “Yeah mom, make me sit on the staircase for a few minutes while you compose yourself not to beat me senseless.”  It’s supposed to be a minute for each year of their lives, but I just wish that I could get a 33 minute time out and let them figure out how to do laundry, feed themselves, bathe without drowning, change their diapers, wipe their butts, let the dog out, and best of all, pick up all of the little trains that have multiplied like rabbits all over our house.  I know how John and I got ourselves into this, two kids is cake and it seemed a rather good idea that night, besides, our family dreamed of a little girl, and now we have her, and THREE KIDS!  Four, two and a half, and 7 months old.

Mignonne Alexander joined our rowdy clan on May 12th of this year.  Currently seven months old and always wearing the most adorable outfit I’ve ever seen, the Gerber baby weighs 22 pounds and looks bigger than most two year olds.  This is not out of line with her two brothers.  Jack is in Pre-K 4s this year and although he is the youngest in his class, it’s not surprising to mention that he’s taller than some third graders.  Jack is very sweet and sensitive and loves to snuggle and tell stories of trains.  His partner in crime, Mr. Ashton Madison turns three this March and is consistently up to “NO GOOD”.  He has a wicked sense of humor and creativity and a strange addictive love-affair with his best friend, “Baby Dog”.  This security blanket/dog goes everywhere with him, and has a regular appointment with the washer as it gets dragged daily through parking lots, grocery stores, play grounds, restaurants, and sleeps with him.  Like my American Express card, we don’t leave home without it.  Have you ever seen a two year old imitate a dog at the grocery store?  Up and down the aisles he goes, barking, growling, whining, and giggling, ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES!  The meat department is always a treat as I squirm thinking about some leaking chicken or pork that didn’t get cleaned up very well.  It’s my weekly opportunity to evaluate where I’ve gone wrong as a mother.  I would also like to mention here that Baby Dog’s bath time is no picnic.  It usually involves Ashton convulsing on the kitchen floor screeching, “I WANT MY BABY DOG!!!”  Baby Dog has been removed several times prior to the dry cycle completing, as I can only tolerate so much and the wine runs out fast in our household.

John has had a great year.  He continues his career with Turnbull Consulting, and is really now starting to reap the rewards of all the marketing and early morning breakfasts and Rotary meetings.  We fled Tampa for North Carolina for Hurricane Ivan, only to have it slam the Gulf Coast and miss us completely.  George Turnbull has a home on the Outer Banks and the company evacuation plan (Tampa was going to get hit with a predicted “4”) was for everyone to relocate and work from condos they rented for the duration.  As John and I were dealing with our three hellions, we left early Saturday morning to beat the flow of traffic destined to compete with our Mini-van, pee-pee parties, and diaper changes.  Fifteen hours later of pure hell drive time (we spent the night in a random motel) we arrived on Sunday to absolutely splendid weather and the news that the Hurricane wasn’t hitting Tampa and that no one else from the company was coming.  We stayed an entire week, and John worked on the patio while I managed the kids.  Afternoons we spent watching waves crash in the Atlantic while Mignonne slept, Jack played in the sand, and Ashton ate sand.  It was blissful.

So that’s it for the sporadic Montgomery update.  John just informed me that he got the boys down and it’s time to drink some wine.  We’ve had a regular scheduled date on Sunday’s to watch Desperate Housewives, and this week it’s off because we’re supposed to learn about the “Five People you meet in Heaven”…I’m just trying to survive and death is too pessimistic.  But we have wine, the laundry is done and put away, the kitchen is clean, and the baby doesn’t squeal for another two hours.  Gotta get while the getting is good.  Get your mind out of the gutter; we’ve got a Four Year old roommate at the foot of our bed.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and hope to hear from you this year.

Time Outs- Can I just Take Yours?

Have You Ever Seen a Two Year old imitate a dog at the grocery store?  On his hands and knees?

As I was trying to fold that last load of laundry tonight as Mignonne was screaming her head off, I thought to myself, “I know why people stop at two”. I guess I have met my threshold of tolerating motherhood, and I’m at my brink. Where do all of the weeks go? I’ll tell you…they go driving my kids up and down the road, picking up and dropping off from pre-school, and pleading with the boys not to embarrass me and to be on “their best behavior” whenever I’m brave enough to take them out in public.

The most ridiculous punishment our generation has inherited is the “time out!” Ooohhhh, that’s SOOO scary. “Yeah mom, make me sit on the staircase for a few minutes while you compose yourself not to beat me senseless.” It’s supposed to be a minute for each year of their lives, but I just wish that I could get a 33 minute time out and let them figure out how to do laundry, feed themselves, bathe without drowning, change their diapers, wipe their butts, let the dog out, and best of all, pick up all of the little trains that have multiplied like rabbits all over our house. I know how John and I got ourselves into this, two kids is cake and it seemed a rather good idea that night, besides, our family dreamed of a little girl, and now we have her, and THREE KIDS! Four, two and a half, and 7 months old.

Mignonne joined our rowdy clan this year. Currently seven months old and always wearing the most adorable outfit I’ve ever seen, the Gerber baby weighs 22 pounds and looks bigger than most two year olds. This is not out of line with her two brothers. Jack is in Pre-K 4s this year and although he is the youngest in his class, it’s not surprising to mention that he’s taller than some third graders. Jack is very sweet and sensitive and loves to snuggle and tell stories of trains. His partner in crime, Mr. Ashton turns three this March and is consistently up to “NO GOOD”. He has a wicked sense of humor and creativity and a strange addictive love-affair with his best friend, “Baby Dog”. This security blanket/dog goes everywhere with him, and has a regular appointment with the washer as it gets dragged daily through parking lots, grocery stores, play grounds, restaurants, and sleeps with him. Like my American Express card, we don’t leave home without it.

Have you ever seen a two year old imitate a dog at the grocery store? Up and down the aisles he goes, barking, growling, whining, and giggling, ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES! The meat department is always a treat as I squirm thinking about some leaking chicken or pork that didn’t get cleaned up very well. It’s my weekly opportunity to evaluate where I’ve gone wrong as a mother. I would also like to mention here that Baby Dog’s bath time is no picnic. It usually involves Ashton convulsing on the kitchen floor screeching, “I WANT MY BABY DOG!!!” Baby Dog has been removed several times prior to the dry cycle completing, as I can only tolerate so much and the wine runs out fast in our household.

John has had a great year. He continues his career with The Firm, and is really now starting to reap the rewards of all the marketing and early morning breakfasts and Rotary meetings. We fled Tampa for North Carolina for Hurricane Ivan, only to have it slam the Gulf Coast and miss us completely. Mr. Firm has a home on the Outer Banks and the company evacuation plan (Tampa was going to get hit with a predicted “4”) was for everyone to relocate and work from condos they rented for the duration. As John and I were dealing with our three hellions, we left early Saturday morning to beat the flow of traffic destined to compete with our Mini-van, pee-pee parties, and diaper changes. Fifteen hours later of pure hell drive time (we spent the night in a random motel) we arrived on Sunday to absolutely splendid weather and the news that the Hurricane wasn’t hitting Tampa and that no one else from the company was coming. We stayed an entire week, and John worked on the patio while I managed the kids. Afternoons we spent watching waves crash in the Atlantic while Mignonne slept, Jack played in the sand, and Ashton ate sand. It was blissful.

John just informed me that he got the boys down and it’s time to drink some wine. We’ve had a regular scheduled date on Sunday’s to watch Desperate Housewives, and this week it’s off because we’re supposed to learn about the “Five People you meet in Heaven”…I’m just trying to survive and death is too pessimistic. But we have wine, the laundry is done and put away, the kitchen is clean, and the baby doesn’t squeal for another two hours. Gotta get while the getting is good. Get your mind out of the gutter; we’ve got a Four Year old roommate at the foot of our bed.

Giving Birth, I’m just telling you the truth

No One Told Me I’d be shooting a bowling ball out of my ass, but that is exactly what happened.

No one told me I’d be Shooting a bowling ball out of my ass, but that is what happened. Everyone forgets the really bad stuff, like the kind of pushing that is required to push an eight pound melon out of your vagina is the same kind of pushing when you’re constipated, so in addition to having a beautiful baby boy, I also had a lot of poop to eliminate. It’s the impolite truth of the birthing process. After the pushing, hemorrhoids now take up residence in my butt and remind me quite frequently of their existence.

The highly acclaimed c-section

I speak only from experience, but I would much rather sign up for a c-section than the vaginal birth nightmare. Granted, the drugs given are very similar, but the recovery after a c-section is much easier. I’ve had all three of my Children 10 days prior to the due date, due to “Big Baby” syndrome. Ashton was estimated at 11 lbs 4 oz two weeks before this due date, so my Dr. God Morales opted for the C-section and I never looked back. Your coochie doesn’t get imploded and pushing out a bowling ball out of your vagina that has only had a sausage visit hurts more than having your guts put out on an operating table (my opinion of course…I speaketh the truth only).

Eat lots of italian food, spaghetti, lasagna, pizza…I think it’s the tomato sauce and spice combination, but that gets it started…sex too helps, but I’m sure like me that is the farthest thing from your mind. My eyes are crossed, but I’ve just enjoyed watching the first episode of “Desperate Housewives” during feeding Mignonne and getting the boys down for a nap (we have Tivo, which makes ME a better mother). Anyway, we’re hanging tight here.

John and I just celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary last night and we bought a new digital SLR camera so that I can take pictures of our children on a regular basis…(none have been taken since early September!!!)

Mignonne is screaming her head off and the boys are up to no good…It’s a daily dose of 3 screaming kids around here, I knew there was a reason why my hearing was failing me…God IS watching out for me. God willing, Ashton is going to start the official potty training, and Jack started school “4 Pre-K”. Mignonne is a day owl, but she sleeps 13 hours at night, so I guess John can count his blessings. Pray for me, I’m hanging on by a hangnail…

So now three kids into it, Ashton is in the garage trying to hot wire the minivan, he wants to go get Krispy Kreme, Jack is rehearsing movie lines in the playroom, and Mignonne has broken out into the playground and is eating wet sand for breakfast…

Prologue: How This All Started

I can’t remember when my last confession was, but I’m sure it was over 10 years ago.

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I can’t remember when my last confession was, but I’m sure it’s over 10 years ago.” So started this year’s New Year’s resolution of self-preservation and maximizing tax benefits. I needed to secure my place in heaven, should there actually be one when this was all over. But I also needed to maximize savings should I be around for human’s typical life span…80 years or so. I am convinced that living life is purgatory. Some times it’s a good life, other times it’s bad. We’ve already lived one life, and the one that you are live now is penance for what you did in the last one. Life is like groundhog day. The more lives you have, the more time and penance you have to endure before going up or down on the elevator. Life gets easier than the one before; more modern conveniences and liberties, but you pay or get back daily for what you did the life before. Call it good Karma. Call it Hell. I’m was certain from where I was parked in the pre-school drop off line in front of St. Paul’s Catholic Church that rainy January morning, it was either blissful or very hot. It must be the only reason why children die at such a young age. Purgatory ends when you die. Some never have to suffer.

My life’s entire existence is to complete this final penance. I had to endure the odyssey of motherhood.

My resolution this year is to attempt to self-preserve my space in heaven should there actually be one when this was all over. Then my ultimate goal would be achieved. I had been on a religious sabbatical since my second child, Ashton was born. This January morning, I now have three children, 4, almost 3, and six months old. Jack, Ashton, and Mignonne…I also have a very tall husband.  John.

One phase of my life, before I knew what reality really was, or even before I could comprehend what life was really all about, I had this vision of my life. It’s blurry now, kind of like the day after a drinking binge when you don’t really quite remember what happened or how you actually got home. Sometimes I would sit and try to go back to that place that I thought would be perfection and try to see if I was there yet.

If I knew then where I would be now, there are so many things I would have done differently, or taken less seriously at the time. I would have spent less nights worrying about some shit of a boss with an ego trip or my desire to succeed in my career at my social life or love life’s expense.

I certainly would not have wasted my weekends trying to move ahead in my career.

I know now looking at the fine lines on my forehead achieved “BK”, before Kids, that what I did achieve was meeting and keeping the best man that I could have dreamed of, John. How I accomplished this feat is still vague, and that I would never change.

My husband John and I are best friends. We like each other’s company, laugh about the same things, and there is no one I would rather spend my day doing nothing with than him. I love him, trust him, and look forward to the next time he’s with me.

We dated several years before getting married, but I was committed to him the moment I met him. My aspirations were high. If I had been asked what I wanted to achieve, I would have said to be on the cover of a magazine. My private women’s college set me up for those aspirations.  And I believed it.

As I got older, the magazine title changed, but the goal remained. Instead of a fashion or pop-culture title, it moved to Business Week or Entrepreneurial titles. I enjoyed what I did, I became successful doing it, and I could actually see the outcome of my work. I was paid handsomely for my work, and I was proud of myself.

Regardless of what I thought of myself, I always had the nagging of parental approval and control hanging over me, whispering “you need to worry less about your career and start having a family”, or the always present mention of some cousin that had given birth to yet another baby.

My least favorite time became Christmas when I had to stomach my mother purchasing countless presents for children of cousins that I didn’t even know, and then the pricking jab of a comment like, “well, you don’t want to have children, so I’ll just buy for them”. I wasn’t jealous, I was 28.  I really did have my own timetable and I wasn’t going to be forced into doing something for anyone other than me or my husband.

Once we got married, I stopped taking the pill and we bought a dog. We named her Lille, she was a miniature schnauzer. John and I poured all of our parenting skills into this creature. For Christmas that year we got a video camera. We have hours of footage of the dog, and we actually used to watch the movies. Lille became a pest, a “teenager”, and our last animal.

The dog grew to hate me, and my goal in life metamorphosized into ensuring that my children didn’t end up the same way.

John and I were both working on our brilliant careers as well as our bodies. A year into marriage, convinced that my clock was ticking and tired of my mother’s nagging, I decided in my gunner personality to implement the business of having kids, instead of just winging it. I started to entertain the idea of leaving my full-time travel consulting career in order to work somewhere locally and with less travel. I had just quit my job and was in between companies. I bought a BMW 528i to reward myself for my new job title of “Vice President”. The same day, I also purchased three home ovulation kits and began the science project of trying to pee on a stick three to four times a day to determine if “the time was right”.

Day after day the stick never showed that it was the night.

It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. John’s mother, Bea, had come to Tampa to spend Thanksgiving with us. I had invited my parents as well as my grandparents to join us for Thanksgiving Dinner as well. It was not as I had dreamed it would be. Both of our families together during the holidays was like chewing glass.

That one Saturday afternoon, my heart stopped. There it was, the sign that I was ovulating. Bea left to drive back to Baton Rouge and before she was pulling out of our neighborhood, R couldn’t get his clothes off fast enough. It was the most surreal sexual experience of my life. I laid there on the queen size sleigh bed with my ass up on a pillow so that none of his sperm would leave before one had successfully reached the destination. Damnit, we were going to have a baby and I was going to be a mom.

Three days later I started my new “stay in town” job as a Vice President for an Internet Consulting Company from hell and began puking my guts out from the stress of the job. I would literally vomit in the front seat of my new BMW, all over my Ellen Tracy suit that I had just picked up from the cleaners. I thought I was just miserable. I was angry at myself for leaving what was a great job with wonderful security to work for a fad consulting company in a popular high-tech sector so that I wouldn’t have to travel full time and might actually get to spend some quality time with my husband of one year. I thought I could achieve the work life balance of family and career.

There was this girl that was assigned to work for me, and from the moment I walked through the doors of the company, she became a demon from hell. It was a daily battle to get through the day, and I was powerless to fire her. I should have known better, the Wing nuts running the company wore pinstriped double breasted suits and two tones shoes. Immediately I was informed by the company’s public relations director that the most shady of them all, the guy that would disappear quite often and really didn’t have much of a job to do was under watch my the FBI for suspicion of murder of a fellow business partner, and the other two were ex-used car salesmen. So there I was, the pinnacle of my brilliant career and I was on the fast track to a fiery crash…plus I was now pregnant.

So long magazine cover.  So long career ambition.  So long to my Brilliant Career.

Three weeks into the job, I felt like something was missing in my life. Another week passed, and I stopped by the drugstore and purchased my first home pregnancy test. I peed again on the stick, and there it was. We had successfully produced a miracle and my life changed direction. The next day at work, I attempted to secretly find the name of a doctor that would treat me in my state. I called someone on my health insurance plan, “Dr. Angel”. When I spoke to the receptionist, she asked, “Are you high risk?” I didn’t understand. She said, “We’re perinatologists” Not knowing what that meant, I whispered into my phone while drawing my blinds closed and shut the door, “I think I’m pregnant”.

Long Pause.  She said, “Have you taken a pregnancy test?” “Yes”. “Okay ma’am, we see patients that are high risk”, I then went into this garbled explanation of how Dr. Angel was highly recommended and that I was in a highly stressful work environment and that I had moved from New Orleans and I wasn’t familiar with the Tampa physician network, but I really wanted to see a doctor that went to a real medical school and that spoke English, and was close to where I lived on my way to work, and that Dr. Angel fell into that description. She took my information, and then called me a few hours later and said, “we usually don’t take non-high risk patients, but Dr. Angel agreed to see you, so we’ll see you in two weeks.” I was in! I immediately went to the executive restroom and barfed.

Nine months of weigh gain and bizarre battles with the bitch from hell, my stomach stretched and I swear I would lose feeling in my coochie if the baby fell any lower. I gained 45 pounds, but I didn’t care. Always trying to find the bright side to any punishment, I was mistakenly optimistic that the company that I was working for would either be sold or go public, and that I could cash out and never go back again.

I should have known better. The major investors in the company were the Boys from what we’ll call Fastpace Steakhouse. Millions had been invested in the company in hopes of an IPO or cash out. As a vice president in the company, undeniably the top woman in the company and undoubtably one of the top eight key employees, I never met the Boys.  Instead of smelling of steak, it smelled of sushi.

The rumors with the other executives continued to come in. Each time a political or government official would stop by the office, the supposed ex-con would disappear for a few hours. Another former executive with the company was in federal penitentiary for tax evasion. Two of the employees I suspected of being the drug dealers for the used car salesman CEO. They were always flying off or boating off to the Caribbean. The bitch was living with one of the lead developers, both original employees of the company.

There were stories of bringing air conditioners to Cuba by boat. There were ex-strippers designing web sites, answering phones, fake boobs on all of the wives, and there I was now in my Pea in the Pod Maternity wardrobe, a knocked up prisoner of my own now failed aspirations. I might as well have been in handcuffs myself. With a belly the size of an award winning watermelon, there was little way that I would be hired to work for another company or go back to my old company, India Y2K Outsourcing.

I couldn’t hide the fact that I was pregnant; I showed my pregnancy like a show girl shows her plastic surgery.

Betting that a woman will really return to work after birth is like placing a suckers bet on a fight between Paris Hilton and Mike Tyson. You can place a bet, but the odds aren’t in your favor. Not only that, but I couldn’t quit either. Health insurance is a hard thing to get when the “pre-existing condition” is pregnancy. Working at Freeport Media was like being sent to purgatory after death. I was sent there to make up for my sins and to prepare me for the next level of punishment, becoming a Mother.

Had I only known…