Lauren B. Lentini

I wonder how many blogs begin on January 1. Mine would, except that it seemed better to start with a 2018 recap instead of jumping headlong into 2019. Call it a year-end resolution instead of a new year’s resolution.

Backing up. Hi, friends. Welcome to Learning at Life, the latest iteration in my recurrent attempts to be a blogger. This blog is subject to being renamed when I come up with a better one. (Add your suggestions in the comments!)

If you haven’t come here from Facebook or you don’t already know me, my name is Lauren. Here are a few facts about me that might be relevant to your enjoyment of this blog:

• I live in Connecticut, but I’m a native southerner.
• I’m married to my high school sweetheart, but we didn’t tie the knot until after college.
• We have a dog, a cat, and (as of August 2018) a kid.
• I’m occasionally crafty, but mostly I like to collect and organize craft supplies.
• I’m a theater geek, and I’ve been known to perform in operettas and sew costumes.
• I have other geeky hobbies like board games, video games, and bullet journaling.
• I’m a vegetarian, but I prefer trying new restaurants to trying new recipes.
• I have a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in Interactive Media.
• I work for a website company doing training, documentation, and support.
• I live with anxiety. #endthestigma

If there’s anything else you want to know — within reason — ask in the comments! (I’m fishing for comments here, guys. Make my day.)

2018 is a year worth recapping because in August I gave birth to my son, Jordan. He was 12 days early. I had an urgent C-section that was a lot scarier for those around me than it was for me. I didn’t realize the pain I was in wasn’t the normal kind of pain. I was super worried that the spinal block wouldn’t work and they would have to put me under, but it felt like no time at all between the injection and the baby being delivered. After that, the only thing I worried about was the exact second I’d get to see my son for the first time.

Everything they tell you about parenthood is somehow exactly right and all wrong at the same time. I’m supposed to be a writer, here, but I can’t describe it. I can sum up the year to that point in a few sentences. (I was in a play. I went to Bermuda. I was very, very pregnant.) But I’d need pages and pages to do justice to just the few days after they finally laid him on my chest.

A few days after the happiest day of my life came one of the saddest. Our beloved Abby, pitbull extraordinaire, suddenly became much sicker and had to be put down. We don’t know exactly what was wrong with her, which makes it harder to cope with, but we accepted that whatever the diagnosis, any treatment would only make her life worse. She had a good life. We loved her dearly. And so I left my 10-day-old son with my mother so we could take Abby to the vet one last time and leave without her. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

First comes baby, then comes maternity leave. And I have to say that, as someone who has been either working or looking for work her entire adult life, I found the concept extremely disorienting. Not getting up and going to work or hitting the job boards felt wrong. Other than that, and the occasional bouts of extreme boredom, it was beautiful. I’m so grateful for the time that I had to just be a mom and get to know my son. I wish that our country treated that time with the respect it deserves.

Flash-forward to Thanksgiving, after which I dove back into the working world and the frenetic festive frenzy known as December. My mom was in town for Thanksgiving and Jordan stayed with her for the first week, but now he’s going to daycare. Fortunately, he loves it. And so far, it hasn’t been a disaster (despite my worries that I’ll leave him there one night).

And if that wasn’t enough, at the end of November we got a new dog. We found Molly on Petfinder, and we met her at the PetSmart after she was transported up from Arkansas. Another transplanted southerner, just like the rest of the family (except Jordan). There are plenty of reasons to hesitate about introducing a new dog to a newborn, and I thought of them all twice. But I also thought it might be nice to introduce them while one was less mobile. (Originally I thought we could introduce them while I was still home, but we had to wait on Molly. She was worth it.)

That’s enough backstory. Let’s join the action already in progress. There’s something about December. Whatever you’re celebrating, or whether you celebrate just because everyone else is, the month of December is somehow always manic. More on that later.