“Ask what you can do for your country.”

Last year, around Lorenz0’s first birthday, a mom I’d met at the park and I set up a playroom area at the local library.

In winter or in bad weather it can be a bummer to have to stay inside the house the whole afternoon, or the whole day if you are an SAHM. It’s nice to invite other mom’s and kids over to your place but that means cleaning up before and after and it’s not always practical, particularly if you don’t know them very well.

We thought it would be nice to have a “neutral” place where the kids could play together and the moms could hang out. I’m sure moms out there in blogland agree on this one, having someone to talk to that you can relate to it’s very comforting.

The mom I met at the park is a teacher, but she didn’t know how to go about it. I told her I knew the Mayor and I could ask if he could give us a room. He sent me to talk to the librarian and she came up with the idea to have the playroom right above the library in a sort of loft.

At the beginning it was just a few moms, a couple times it was only me and Lorenzo, but little by little other moms with kids started joining and now we a have a big group that gets together every Monday afternoon to hang out, play together and have tea and snack.

It’s funny how things just kind of grow by themselves, it takes a small initial effort but once it’s rolling it just keeps going.

It’s the initial effort that makes the difference, I wonder how many moms in this town before us sat at the park and thought

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place we could go to where the kids could play together and the moms could chill and talk…”

It was the right time and the right place of course, still I think that if we want some things to happen we have to make them happen.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” J.F.K

How are you making a difference in your community?

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Everything Has Changed

Yes! Everything has changed since becoming a mom. I have almost no free time, can other mothers relate?

Lorenzo is doing great, he’s a funny, curious, quiet little boy. He’s loves books, coloring (that includes the wall), music, tractors and sticks.

He’s independent and likes to do whatever mommy and daddy are doing, so if mommy is sweeping the floor he wants to sweep too, if mommy is hanging the laundry he wants to help, if daddy is fixing something Lorenzo will want to participate.

He says a few words, mostly in English, some in Italian and a few in Spanish. He loves both sets of grandparents and he never cries when I have to go to work and I leave him with his grandmother (either one).

He loves pasta, pizza, cheese, potatoes, tuna, apples, tangerines and peanuts.

He likes playing outside but it’s been hard to get him to wear a jacket and a hat. He likes dogs, cats and likes to feed the chickens.

Here are a few photos:

As you can see, everything has changed…for the better!

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I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing

Lorenzo is a month old and it seems only yesterday he was born. He grows so fast; some of his clothes don’t fit him anymore. He stays awake longer now and he stares at the window, at the light bulbs and sometimes at people’s faces. He recognizes my voice if we are in a crowd and I’m not the one holding him. He holds his head up and it doesn’t bob like a poppy like it used to.

Some people have mentioned how having a baby changes your whole life. And it does, but I was lucky to have lots of brothers and sisters to take care of and it prepared me for having my own baby. I was born to be a mother, it comes very natural to me.

But it’s true that some things change. It takes forever for me to get out the door, I have two bags to carry and then I have to make sure I feed Lorenzo before we leave if the trip will be longer than half an hour. I also fret if it’s too hot, too cold, if there’s a bee, if it rains, if there’s wind and if we are driving too fast.

Some days Lorenzo just wants to be held and I don’t have time to do anything. When he sleeps I don’t sleep with him (like they say you should in order to get all your sleeping hours), instead I try to get the most done: the laundry, clean the bathroom, wash the dishes, start preparing lunch (even if it’s 9 o’clock and we eat at noon)…
If somehow I can’t get anything done by 11 o’clock it’s time to pick up the phone and call one of my sisters to come help hold Lorenzo so I can have lunch ready for when Loris comes home.

Time for wahing my hair, cut my nails, check my mail or blog is out of the question. My FB page faithfully reminds me “you haven’t posted in 18 days” “you haven’t posted in 19 days”… making me feel guilty for neglecting my blog. But with such little time on my hands I have to focus on the priorities.

I make it a priority to water the garden but lately it happens around 10 pm when Loris can hold Lorenzo for 15 minutes and I can run out and tie the tomato plants, weed the strawberry patch, harvest the zucchini and water the veggies and flower pots. The good things is that I’m getting really good at getting things done using only one hand. I even went back to typing with only one finger and I’m still pretty good at it.

One day Loris came home and said “My mom’s neighbor ladies told me you shouldn’t hold Lorenzo all the time otherwise he’s going to get spoiled”. I fell like a bull in full charge as the red flag was being waved in front of me. I told him “Tell the neighbor ladies that I only have one child and I’ve waited 35 years to have him, so with all due respect I will hold him whenever I please.” I told my mom about it and she said children don’t get spoiled if you hold them. And if you think about it in a couple of years Lorenzo might not want to be held at all, so while he’s little I will hold him, thank you very much!

There we go, that’s as far as I go being a lioness with my little cub. A friend of mine told me that once Lorenzo was born I was going to be very protective over him, I might not like people holding him or touching him. Actually that’s not a problem, I don’t mind if he goes with other people. But I mind if some random ladies whom I don’t even know, tell me how to bring up my son. My mom is wonderful, you would expect her to be telling you what to do 24/7, after all she’s had 10 babies and knows something about raising children, but she doesn’t. She’s very respectful and makes little useful suggestions every now and then or only when I ask her.

I’m a very happy mother even though the challenges are great. I ran across an article on Lucy Scott, the mother who doodled a diary of the first year of motherhood and some of her doodles are so right on that it had me laughing out loud. The doodles are quite funny, because they are true, but being a new mother is not a traumatic event, actually it’s a wonderful new world you get to discover day by day. I love each moment I get to spend with Lorenzo and I don’t want to miss a thing.

My favorite Lucy Scott doodle. This is definitely us 🙂 Me at 2 am “Honey, can you move a little so I don’t fall off the bed?” He moves, I move Lorenzo and I have my space back. At 2.30 I wake up again because I’m falling off the bed…here we go again “Honey? honey?”…

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