family – Cremona's Kitchen

February 4, 2019 No Comments

I am a working mother. It is something that I am deeply proud of. But it is also something that is deeply painful. Every weekday morning, I wake up earlier than I’d like so I have enough time to put my makeup on, curl my hair, and get dressed–all while making the boys breakfast, convincing the boys to use the potty, and breaking up fights on who gets to sit on the side of the sink that’s closer to mom. Most days, I am not as put together as I’d like. But that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that I leave behind two boys screaming for me to stay with them for just a couple more minutes. To hold them forever. It breaks my heart.

The boys spend their weekdays with our nanny. A wonderful woman who gets to shape and mold my boys. She gets to take them to story times. To the zoo. Museums. The three of them get to have inside jokes that I will never understand. There are entire story lines that I am not a part of. It creates a feeling of emptiness that is unquantifiable.

But I love working. I love being a lawyer. When I was in elementary school, I made the decision that I would be a lawyer someday. Actually, I wanted to be the first female United States President. The fact that a woman has never been elected as president has bothered me since as early as I can remember. So I figured, why not be the person to change it? And modern day presidents go to law school (present president excluded) so that’s what I did.

I get to spend my day working as a lawyer challenging myself–working through litigation strategy, finding pragmatic solutions, and providing advice to those who rely on my expertise. Sure, my days of dreaming for the presidency is behind me, but I still find myself in a male-dominated field where my gender has played a defining role in my career in ways my male colleagues will never understand. So I still get to work on defying gender stereotypes in a small way. And as a mother of two boys, it makes it easier to leave them every day knowing that my work may make a small difference in the future of how women are seen in the workforce, at least in their eyes. Certainly, someday in the future, if a female says she works at a law firm to one of my sons, the first question out of my boy’s mouth won’t be, “oh, are you a paralegal/secretary?”

In a similar vein, I want my boys to have life skills that traditionally wouldn’t be pressed upon little boys. My boys will know how to cook.

I’m not a great cook. I’m not even a good cook. But that really doesn’t matter. Teaching the boys to cook while I learn to cook means we get to spend quality time together. It is our thing. On Saturday or Sunday afternoons, I’ll look up a various recipe for us to experiment with. We’ll go to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients. JR will want to buy everything in the store. Max will want all the food to be touching him in the cart. We’ll head home and unpack the groceries. The boys will eat the entire carton of berries before they make it to the fridge. Then, the boys will pull up a stool to the counter, and we’ll start to cook.

Since the boys are still young, I cut and measure. They pour and stir.

Through our cooking adventures, the boys have s l o w l y learned to be better listeners. That we cannot rush through steps. That even though we want to toss in an extra cup of sugar, we probably shouldn’t. That they can make a meal for their loved ones, not in spite of the fact that they are boys, but because they love to cook.

I may not be there during the weekday to take the boys to story time. But I will be the person who will teach JR and Maxie how to make sugar cookies, pasta sauce, dice veggies, and delegate the duty of making rice to someone else (because I refuse to make rice). And hopefully, I’ll play a small part in teaching the boys that there is no such thing as a boy job or a girl job. There are just jobs. A mom can be a lawyer, and a dad can be in charge of cooking. And both are ok.

We made a baby boy.

And I am completely obsessed with him.

In late 2014, we got a huge surprise–I was pregnant. We weren’t exactly trying to get pregnant, but we also weren’t trying not to, just playing our own version of Russian roulette which turned out to be successful a bit faster than we anticipated. Of course, Matt was over the moon. He had wanted to be a baby daddy since forever and the news that it finally was a reality was the perfect news. I was a little scared of the unknown but excited to have a baby to kiss and cuddle with.

Lucky for me, I had a generally easy pregnancy. I slowly got fatter and fatter around my belly, but no morning sickness, no food aversion, no cravings. Instead, my feet swelled. By 7 months, my shoes no longer could fit and when I wore high-heels for work, I looked like Miss Piggie. Nothing like fat feet to make your whole body look unbelievably more large and prego. Even though my swollen feet looked painful, typically they weren’t too uncomfortable, beyond feeling tight. Plus, Matt massaged them every night 😉

You can’t tell, but my shoe strings are straining from my fat fat feet!

We decided not to find out the sex of the baby until Toastie (our womb name for JR) was born. For us, it was a no brainer. The sex of your baby is one of the most genuine surprises in your life, and we didn’t want to ruin the surprise until Toastie was ready to fall out. The anticipation of finding out what Toastie was wasn’t too difficult….until Toastie decided to be late. 12 days late (with labor starting at 11 days late). Those days were easily the hardest part of my pregnancy.

The due date was July 12th. Sure, it is common knowledge that calculating due dates is not an exact science. And I am certain I said that catch phrase over and over again once the calendar said July 1^st (mostly to my boss, who was starting to come to terms with the reality that I would be out of the office for two months). Still, when July 12^th came and went, we were disappointed. Every day after July 12th, I would wake up a bit disheartened that I was getting ready for work instead of getting ready for labor. (for some reason, I was convinced that I would go into labor in the middle of the night–I didn’t).

We tried everything to induce labor. Sex, walking, running, spicy food, acupuncture (three times). Nothing worked (we didn’t try the castor oil–I just couldn’t bring myself to risk it). Every day I would run 2 miles. But this baby was stubborn. He had his own agenda. But then it was Thursday, July 23rd.

I woke up on Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 6:00 a.m. and it felt like I had peed myself. I was quite certain it was my water breaking, but the entire area wasn’t saturated, so I started to doubt myself and wondered if maybe I just sweated an ungodly amount over the night (pregnancy can be gross).

Sure, this baby was already 11 days past the due date. But after 11 days, and thinking everything was “a sign that labor was around the corner” and then feeling disappointed when I was still pregnant, I was starting to feel like I was going to die pregnant. Plus, weren’t contractions suppose to come with my water breaking? I felt just like I had every other day of pregnancy—completely fine. I needed a second opinion.

I woke Matt up and told him what happened. He smiled, “we are going to have a baby today!” And he was right (ok, well he was born on the 24th but close enough). After only 5 and half hours of labor, I caught my baby as he floated up from the water towards me like a torpedo. We are so blessed. I had the birthing experience I wanted–a non-medicated, water birth–and a beautiful, healthy baby boy.

first family photo taken 5 hours after JR was born.

Since we gave birth at a birth center, we were discharged 5 hours after JR was born. I know, this sounds shocking to most people (and even I was hesitant about it) but it was natural and organic.

Matthew Anthony Jr. (who we lovingly call JR) was born July 24, 2015 at 2:43 a.m. at 7 lbs 6 oz and 20 inches. And our life has become better for it.

Cooking with my Boys

We made a baby boy.