Author Archives: alexis

by Alexis Novak

It wasn’t until week six of my doctor-ordered no-sugar, no-carb diet that I dreamt I was licking buttercream frosting off Ryan Gosling’s scruffy-sexy-Notebook-beard. What do you mean you’ve never had that delicious dream before?

Many days I wander my vast collection of Baking Porn, calculating how much a Cake Pop would put me back after days and days of being on. Though I’ve caved a few times to my inner pizza eater, overall I’ve exercised my will of steel. Because my body is actually starting to feel super-sluggish post carb indulgence, cheating isn’t even all that fun anymore. I stare a delish cookie in its eye, tell it how crappy it’s going to make me feel like later and walk away. Okay, okay, sometimes I take a teeny nibble first.

All of this strictness led me to the realization that carbs must’ve given me way too much pleasure because I’m now experiencing South Beach Diet Depression.  Carbs are pure joy for an Italian girl. Conversely, I don’t think I can bear one more boneless, skinless grilled chicken breast atop spinach greens. Between that and nuts, I consume the same amount of calories that birds and squirrels do in my yard.

While this seems extreme, it was actually necessary. My post-partum weight’s been stubborn as F#@K and not letting go after my second child who turns TWO in a few weeks.  That’s right, I said two.  The private battle I’ve fought has been soul-crushing. The words brutal and humiliating also come to mind.

And I’ve tried everything else.

And Sugar Abstinence works.  All the hot moms are doing it.

The stubborn weight and my very low energy among other symptoms led me on my own Mystery Diagnosis episode where I’ve acted as doctor /researcher/frustrated patient. I explored bio-identical hormones, hypothyroidism, hypnotherapy, a trainer, nutritionist, blood work like crazy, endocrinology, pre-diabetic hypoglycemia, autoimmune disorders, and these are only the ones that pop into my head.  I’m saving acupuncture, veganism, crystals, Reiki, and appearing on Dr. Oz for when I’m really desperate.

But wait.

I should really take my sad story from the top- my neck.

Like Nora Ephron, I feel bad about my neck too.

On my living room wall is a black and white montage of wedding shots where my hubs and I are shoving cake in each other’s happy mouths.  Every time I pass it, I think- “Damn, my neck was sexy” and then- “Sure do miss her”.

In my pre-mom life I had a neck that would have made Queen Nefertiti jealous.  It was skinny and graceful, long and elegant, the Rolls Royce of all necks. People thought I was a dancer. Or from another country. Or very chic. I used my neck to the fullest. Hair bobbed. Long dangling chandelier earrings. Sashaying around the room at a party, you wouldn’t have been able to take your eyes off me. Well, her.

Then six years ago, she went soft, smushy. And while pregnancies changed my body, I never could have predicted that my formerly beautiful neck would be the part I mourned most.

I thought that this was what happened as you approached thirty, like a car accident that occurs right in front of you and leaves you no reaction time to swerve.

Turns out I was wrong. When I finally made my way to an endocrinologist to ultrasound my neck, he said I have a goiter, the thing only old ladies and Oprah grow. I cried. I told the doctor about my formerly swan-like neck. He said that if my husband is a regular guy then he probably doesn’t care about my neck. But the endocrinologist didn’t understand that this wasn’t about my husband, it’s about me.

As I left his office, I promised him I would renounce sugar. Even wine. I vowed to South Beach it right on through the entire holiday season. Sigh.

This was after screwing around with my hormones bio-identically for months, and before I found out about my adrenal fatigue and the hyper cortisol production that is poisoning me. This is near the time of three misdiagnoses and faulty treatment plans. Bigger sigh.

Partial diagnosis: Auto-immune issues ain’t sexy and producing too much cortisol makes your neck (along with other parts) fat.

I wish I could jump off this Medical Roller Cluster. I’ve hated all these doctor’s appointments for the last year and a half. I’ve hated focusing so much on my annoying body while my sitter watches my kids. I’ve hated paying the sticker price to just feel like myself again. But the ride is almost over so I’m getting excited to return back to the day to day of a healthy mom. The routine and humdrum looks much sexier to me now; boring, please come back to me soon!

Next stop, new specialist and saliva testing.

To be continued…

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by Alexis Novak

If I believed the daily catalogues in my mailbox from Target, American Girl and One Step Ahead, I’d think that delivering a magical Christmas morning to my children simply involves spending a shit-ton of cash.  I would get caught up in every Parents magazine toy recommendation and run out and buy all the award-winning crap in my kids’ age groups that will barely squeeze into my house.

But I would never be seduced by shiny and soul-less mass consumerism, right?

Well.

My daughters are first-grandkids-on-all-sides-kids which means gifts accompany almost all grandma visits.  And then there’s birthday loot. And trip souvenirs. And potty-training bribe toys. And holiday tutus. So I begin Christmas shopping every October with the best of intentions, shopping with strict rules to avoid raising bratty material girls.

My main rule every Christmas is that each child receives four-ish gifts from us/Santa and small stocking stuffers.  This is the ideal size; enough for a little kid to get jazzed about, but not enough to set the bar too high for future Christmas morning let downs.

But this year, my three year old slapped me with the spirit.  She’s been so Christmas frenzied I let my guard down and overindulged in the retailyness of it all, riding her innocent Winter Wonderment. It took me a few weeks to realize I went too far.  My UPS man stops by every day now and as I knife open each package I can hardly remember what the eff I ordered on sale from zulily.com five weeks ago and for whom. This mounting cardboard excess is giving me bad chi.  No kid needs this much shit.*

I was a child surrounded by beautiful stuff and things but was missing other important needs. In an effort to give my girls the idyllic childhood my Super Mom self envisions in my head, I occasionally cave to the tempting fallacy that Stuff Is Love. Even though their world is happy as is- safe, loving, full, I sometimes think that matching purple suede slouchy shooties could only make their lives better, right? You see how this goes in my brain…

Those of us with shopaholic tendencies though need to have a sobering retail question we ask ourselves before we mindlessly hand over the credit card to check out.  I always ask myself “Do they really need this, and is it going to make their childhood better?”  Inevitably, the answer is no and then I think of a simple and cheap activity that might. My three year old was so enthralled by decorating the tree this week she bounced all over the house, begging to hang every last homespun ornament, many I made in Brownies. We played carols and baked and her Daddy held her up on his shoulders to place the angel on the “tippy top”. These are the moments that make a childhood and are not brought to you by Target.

Since the deed hadn’t been done yet, I knew what I had to do. This Santa had to reel herself back in. Way back.

Now for the fun task of sending some back, storing some for their upcoming birthdays, and re-gifting a few others. Though I had a momentary retail binge and judgment lapse, I have to remind myself that the best things I can give my kids aren’t plastic talking Vtech toys after all.  When we listen closely to our children’s joy, it reveals the same exact thing.

* If you are interested in the nitty-gritty numbers, I actually didn’t go that insano as much as I bought a stupid-silly amount of cheap small items.  Zulily loot really is well-priced and an addictive shopping phenomena.  If you didn’t know about it until right now, do not go on the site. Ever.

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by Alexis Novak

Like me, you probably have two to call your own. Or two to call your husband’s when they are little beasties. Two kids was the American status quo, but lately I see different patterns emerging. I am not a sociologist, but it appears to me that Gen-Xers and Millenials are having families of one and three children at higher rates than the reliable two.

Here is my humble stab at each family-size choice shaped by no real research whatsoever but tons of anecdotal evidence sprinkled with a little Us Weekly:

One bundle of joy- If you read the article in Time magazine this summer, it debunked many “lonely only” myths. The one-child household is a booming trend which can easily be linked to, (and please may we never speak this aggravating phrase again), “these economic times”.  According to the article, families feel like they can give one child a better, fuller life and that two would be spreading resources too thin. But thinking that onesies are just about saving money is short-sighted. Only families want to travel and maintain a certain lifestyle too. Probably their strongest argument is that one child can be the sole vessel for their time and energy and love.  Makes logical sense, right? The concept is sound and the higher test scores from only children back up this newly popular choice.

However, the issue comes later in life. I am married to an only who is bummed about his lack of sibs even today. He jokes he would have settled for even a crappy sibling and no traveling over zero. Also, the pressure to care for older parents falls on his solo shoulders. I remember my former roommate, also a singlet, telling me that when she went home on the weekend from college, she was “the family coming home”.  Can you be honest when the pressure is so high?  An only is the only product of the parenting and therefore performs to make their parents feel like they did a decent job.

Two children- The white picket fence standard. There is something comforting about being able to divide and conquer the kids with your partner. When I first brought Peachy home, I thought people dramatized the workload of two. Then I hit month 3 when she slept less and demanded more and agreed- it is more than double the work when they are this small. But the blessings are plenty. With two, you give your children a friend across the hall to fight with every day. My mom always told my brother and me that we would be best friends when we grew up.  We scoffed at her since she usually said this when we were assaulting each other and screaming repeatedly, “I hate you!” in high-pitched teenaged voices.  Decades after all the bloodshed, of course my mom was right. My day isn’t complete until I have heard from my brother.

Now I watch 8 month old Peachy glow when her sister walks into a room, her gaze not letting go. Before Peachy has even acquired language she communicates she is obsessed with her big sister. She plants sloppy baby kisses on her then laughs. And big sis Punky races to Peachy’s side when she is crying to appease her with a toy.  She calls her sister “my baby”. I love it.

The other gift of two has been a shift in my parenting viewpoint. Now I can differentiate between what was the child’s issue and what was my parenting issue. I actually feel calmer with two because of this paradigm shift.  I’m more confident Round 2.  Ding, ding, ding! But…

Three is the magic number- Three’s the new two, you know. Christmas cards on the wall at my very popular pediatrician’s office do not lie- many families in my area have three shiny happy children. Is it a status symbol to afford a large family in “these economic times”? (Sorry).  Is it a badass way of saying, “Well, any family can have two but we can handle THREE!”?  In an IVF world, is fertility itself a status symbol?

I poled a few three-kiddo moms I know. G, mom of a 9, 6 and 4 year old said that that after life-threatening pregnancy complications her second pregnancy she never thought she would have another. She and her husband were thrilled then to have a happy and healthy third, which was the family size they had dreamt of. The threesie moms also said that once the kids get to a certain age they tend to entertain each other, giving mom a rest. Three of the moms with three’s say they could go for a fourth but probably won’t.

My husband and I would love three-ish, and have joked about three-to-four since we were first dating 12 years ago. We envisioned a loud house full of funny people we were related to, all of them gesticulating wildly to make a point. But now that I have two real children (opposed to the Platonic sweet peas I imagined) I am starting to rethink the “plan”. Truly, I am torn between 2 and 3. If I could somehow work out the 2.5 kid thing, it would be a perfect fit.

Four boogers- I only know one brave family, J and L, that are tough enough to do parenting this hard core.  And, I must add that their kids are kind people and awesomely behaved and sit still through Sunday mass. This size isn’t for the faint of heart. L said the large family wasn’t a plan and that though it is expensive and exhausting they would have it no other way. They happily embrace the chaos.

If you have more than four, write in and tell me how you decided on that size and which anti-depressant is your fave.

There is also a dark side of family planning. Women with insatiable baby lust are called Bumpaholics.  Addicted to the attention and excitement that pregnancy and babies brings them they don’t know when to say birth control. Psychologists claim they are trying to right the wrongs of their own childhoods. Think Angelina Jolie, Octomom Nadya Suleman and the “19-Kids-and-Counting” Duggars.  Goose bumps cover my body when I think of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and that poor woman’s tired, old uterus. The uterus is not an organ intended to be exercised as vigorously as she works her out.  Every. Single. Year.

How did you decide to make your family small, medium or super-sized?

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by Alexis Novak

I lied. Last week I blogged that I would research and tell you why homeschooling is 2-million-children-strong and border-line mainstream. I planned to report out why parents in our generation are deciding to homeschool en masse but I can’t do it. I can’t get past the total lack of logic. I can’t help but be freaked out by Facebook groups and blogs touting their homeschooling methods and group field trips. Homeschooling Co-ops are popping up everywhere encouraging the average parent that they can become both teacher and school to their brood. Sounds problematic, right? Because it is.

I’m fired up and this is me Just. Getting. Started.

Don’t believe the current political rhetoric, teachers are experts who know more than you.

Schools are failing and it’s because of the terrible, stupid, evil teachers. That is mostly what we’ve been hearing in our state for the last year from politicians. Just like politicians, teachers cannot be expected to fix all of our society’s ills that are simply mirrored in our school systems.

Teaching is an art and a science. Teachers are experts in their field based on experience and education.  How could parents (Education backgrounds or non) become experts in the curriculum each school year? It takes years for a teacher to hone their craft and their curriculum for one specific grade level. No one could ever prepare and master all standards and content K-12.  How could anyone effectively teach their varied-aged children every single year just by trading lesson plans with other homeschooling moms? BA-NA-NAS.  No one’s that awesome. I can rock a ninth grade English class teaching them poetry but I am certain my sad math skills won’t help me with my kids’ homework past the fifth grade.

Are homeschooling parents egotistical enough to think they can know and teach Everything? Classics? Calculus? Chemistry? PE? Please.

Character Education

More important than the actual material was that my best teachers illustrated for me how they think. What they valued. How they chose to live and how I could choose to as well when I graduated to adulthood.  My favorite teachers like Mr. Condon, my sophomore English teacher, taught me to see the world differently by making themselves vulnerable enough to reveal to students who they were. These teachers expanded my worldview, past the boundaries and norms of my own family, where I was able to start defining who I wanted to be.

Conversely, I also had one abusive high school teacher who belittled me every day in front of the class to the point that I wouldn’t speak anymore in her room. To anyone.  One time she snarled, “Alexis, stop brushing your hair- that’s the way bugs are spread!” She bullied me until students I didn’t know asked me what I did to her for her to hate me so much. I had no idea. I was new at that school. I was shy and 17. After months of her cruelty, I asked her what I did to deserve her hatefulness and she backed down because she was and is a coward.  In her ugliness she taught me about my strength.

The teachers your children will encounter will be excellent examples of character sprinkled with a few non-examples but we need all of those perspectives to question our beliefs, confuse, irritate, inspire, uplift, and finally create ourselves. One parent teaching at home can’t do that.

Parents are the main teachers of their children but remember that thing about the village.

Homeschooling parents are reading books like “The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World As Your Child’s Classroom” by Mary Griffith, which she summarizes, “Unschooling is a homeschooling method based on the belief that kids learn best when allowed to pursue their natural curiosities and interests.”

Good parents do this naturally, not as some excuse to shield their kids from the scary world of other people and school.

See just like “unschooling” parents, I take my kids to the aquarium and teach them about what sharks eat and the symbiotic relationship between sea anemones and clown fish and how Winter the dolphin’s prosthetic tail works over her peduncle. I have play dates to socialize. We finger paint self-portraits. But that alone does not an education make. Those are the fun activities that serve to supplement. After the artsy-fartsy pursuits there are plenty of other skills necessary for a well-rounded child. Can I get into all of those topics? No! Because my knowledge is limited. And I am smart enough to know that I don’t know what she needs to know. I am smart enough to trust that my daughter’s teacher, who is certified in Pre-K knows what the standards are that Punky needs to know! Punky needs many many teachers. We as her parents will always be the lead ones, but for the sake of balance and well-roundedness, we all need the whole village. Thank you, schools!

These are only a few of my millions of concerns about children being “taught” by non-certified parents in their homes. What a disservice to keep kids in a bubble and not allow them to experience other students’ and teachers’ ideas. It’s the ultimate control freak and fear-driven parenting behavior. Whose Kool-Aid did these families drink to decide to “unschool”?

You know that one saying, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”. Here is my revision: Those who can teach, do. Those who can’t, homeschool.

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