I am an Encouraging Idealist

How law school has(n't) changed me

For my ethics of the legal profession class I had to write a reflection essay about how the legal profession has changed me. Seriously, it's an ungraded essay, and I know what she wants to hear (and just in case anyone didn't, she included a note she wrote ten years ago in our course materials so we could figure that out). But I really wanted to hear what I had to say. So I just started writing.

And it turns out I think I've done pretty well at keeping law school from changing me. This place tried to take over my life, and I came in knowing I would not let that happen; I didn't. I got middling grades, and that's OK, because I have a job, and I have great friends here, and law school didn't kill my marriage like it did to so many others. Somehow, by the grace of God, I managed to keep my priorities relatively straight (most of the time).

This place tried to make me feel bad about my ambitions. Law firms are evil places - we should all be working in public service or in public interest law or doing something that frees our minds. (Are you kidding me?). I know that for some people that's valid, but for me this is what I wanted coming in. I knew coming in that I wanted to deal with contracts and carefully crafted language, and not litigation and constant arguing, and people's emotional baggage. And forget policy! I am glad people do those things - they're necessary - but I knew I didn't want to do them!! And I am not going to. And I don't feel bad about it either.

The one thing I noted that law school did do was to make me more detached. In some ways that's good. I tend to be too emotional and involved most of the time, so a little detachment probably won't hurt. I will have to represent people whose values differ from mine, and they deserve my best representation. But at the same time I do mourn the fact that when I'm talking about law, I at times forget to include emotion, or even morality. It's something I'm going to have to fight for my entire career. But at least I recognize it!

Anyway, this is basically the short of it: law school didn't change who I am. But in some ways it did change how I am, or when I am. It allowed me to keep all of myself, but it splintered me a bit.

I'm sure that it changed me in many more ways than this, but it was a 2-3 page double-spaced ungraded paper, so I didn't want to dwell on it. If I have more thoughts later I'll just post them here. :)

Save the date

April 11, evening. Shower time. :) Exact time and location TBA. Thanks to Kel and Meg for planning it. I think they're having way too much fun. :)

Update: date change!

Praise God!!

I just heard from the firm. I love them. They're letting me defer the bar exam until February! And they're giving me two weeks off to study just before the exam (which I hadn't - yet - asked for)!

(Relief washes over me.)

I'm not going to have to deal with a wrecked body, a new baby, lack of sleep, and studying for (and taking) the bar exam all in one summer! Yay!! And this means that I can stay home with Eden this summer and Bryan can work so we can afford to eat! :)

Next step: get a job for hubby. Suggestions?

Productivity is AWESOME!

I had the most productive weekend I've had in a long time. And it was mostly stuff that I had time to finish - it wasn't procrastinated. AND I had time to have fun too! Just a list, because I am so proud of myself. This weekend I:

• Helped some friends get a decent mattress (memory foam like ours - the Costco version. AHHHH! Love that store!), load it into their third-floor apartment, settle it onto their bed (those things are ridiculously heavy), and move their old mattress downstairs. (Bryan technically did all the help lifting. I just watched.)
  
• Celebrated J&K signing a lease on a new apartment by eating some great food and playing a really fun game on Friday night.
  
• Went to an MPRE review session on Saturday - hopefully this will help me pass the darn thing.
• Finished editing another journal article (my last one!!) and got it sent off to my co-executive editor to get to the author. We have a full SIX DAYS to get it back from him and up the chain for final editing!! :) (That's NEVER happened to me before!)
• Had an impromptu (and very delish) no-reason-at-all dinner and another fun game (which my team won, BTW) on Saturday night.
• Went to church on Sunday morning - the early service - even though neither of us had to be there early, and we both were sleepy from our late night.
• Came home on Sunday and started - and finished(!) - a 9-page paper (plus 12 pages of appendices) for my Negotiation Workshop, which isn't even due until March 7!!
• Had a Starbucks date with my husband! :)

Now we're cooking dinner, and then I'm going to try to maintain this level of productivity by whipping out a few other short papers for my Negotiation class. Oh, it feels so good. :)

This week's milestones...

OK... So. Monday was the first day I ever felt little Eden get the hiccups. Bryan felt it too (even though, again, it was early in the morning...). And then she was moving around like crazy - it felt like I had an octopus baby in my belly! So I grabbed our digital camera and snapped a quick video. A few days (and some quick playing in Movie Maker) later, and here you go. Forgive my cheesiness. I just love seeing (and especially feeling) this little one move around. I don't want to forget it! And I want you to share it too! Consider this virtual-feeling-the-baby-kick. (Warning: there's naked belly. But you couldn't see kicks with my shirt down. All you see here is belly button, I promise. I wouldn't put it on the internet otherwise!)



Also, Tuesday was the first time I had someone approach me who didn't know I was pregnant and ask about it. I was in the bathroom and I said hello, and she said, "Are you..." and I said "yes, I won't make you ask the awkward question!" It was someone I know... so that was good... and I hadn't really talked to her in a while, so it was nice to catch up a bit.

Today we had our "100 days to graduation" lunch (which was a little frightening - because it means we're only about 104 days away from baby!) and I was congratulated by a total stranger at the Westlaw information table. Which was also fun.

Also there I was talking to a former section mate of mine. I didn't know it but apparently his wife had a baby 14 months ago - at the end of our 2L fall semester. (Right before finals, actually). His baby was really premature... she was born at 26 weeks. I can't imagine what he went through. Finals, winter term, and part of the spring, his little girl was in the NICU and some other special unit for really sick babies. She was under two pounds when she was born. Apparently now she's in the 50th percentile for size for her chronological age, which is amazing - praise God - but apparently she's also a little behind developmentally. The prognosis is great, long-term, though. She'll be caught up soon enough and you'd never know. But I still can't imagine how hard that was, and probably still is in some ways. It's also insane to think that I am now sitting at 24 weeks. And if Eden were born now she could make it. It would be a tough row to hoe (apparently this man's baby didn't come home until just before her due date) but she could make it. But let's hope she stays put for awhile! Kick away in there, little one!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Bryan and I had our Valentine's Day date last night - we wanted to avoid the crowds, and Bryan teaches an Excel class at a local low-income apartment complex on Thursday nights so today was going to be tough for us anyway. But here are some photos. Aren't we cute?

Before we left for the restaurant:
On the way to the restaurant (driving up Mass. Ave... forever). Look at my cutie pie!!
After dinner we stopped at a staple date spot for us - Starbucks! (Yes, we're cheap. Leave us alone!):
And when we got home we decided I needed a picture in my hottie black dress from Gracie J's (it's not a maternity dress - just a cute dress with some room in the belly! This boutique is owned by our great friend Emma):
And then I was sick of being all prim and proper, so I went back to my normal self...

On pregnancy

I've had this post sort of writing itself in the back of my head for some time now, but I just haven't gotten around to writing it. I thought it would be nice to express some of my thoughts on pregnancy up to this point (mostly so I don't forget... my brain doesn't work so well these days).

First of all, getting pregnant was much more difficult than I expected. I think we both naively thought, "oh, we're young, we're in love, we're ready for a baby - how hard can it be?" And we had a window of opportunity! But it took us a while anyway. I went off the pill in November, and we got pregnant in September. Ten months of disappointment was hard; negative tests every month were really painful. Especially since it seemed like people were getting pregnant all over the place around us. I had two close friends get pregnant in the time we were trying, and one of them got pregnant right away. I was happy for them, of course, but it was still hard to look at them and know that they were where I wanted to be. And we were trying to trust God in all of this for His timing, but we were getting frustrated at the same time. Eventually we decided to take a more proactive step. I highly recommend this book. It was great to learn about what was going on with my body. Following the steps in the book also allowed me to channel my energy into taking my temperature in the morning, and then I could better keep focused on other things throughout the day. And we got pregnant the first month on that method, which puts little Eden coming right at the end of our "window." The timing really is perfect - which I guess just shows that God really knows what he's doing.

Second, I was not really a fan of pregnancy in the first trimester. At the very beginning it was a little scary. I kept thinking, "What if it was a mistake and I'm really not pregnant?" But of course I was. And then a few weeks later (I think I was about 7-8 weeks pregnant) the nausea set in and it was undeniable. I was sick all the time. I mean 24 hours a day. Thank goodness I didn't throw up at all, but I couldn't eat anything except Wheat Thins (and now the sight of the box turns my stomach). I was in Portland for the second time during that period, interviewing for jobs no less, and I was a horrible guest to KF! I was totally exhausted and couldn't really eat great food. Anything sweet, including chocolate (!), turned my stomach. It was so frustrating!

But eventually the nausea started to go away, and my energy level rose moderately, at about 12-13 weeks or so, and I felt better. I just eagerly anticipated the day I'd feel that little one move, and the day I'd start to see a bump! That all happened over Christmas break, and now I love being pregnant. I love feeling our little girl kick! I love the way my body looks right now! I could do without the heartburn (it kept me up last night, in fact) but I am so excited to be right where I am! (And to be able to eat chocolate again!) And it's exciting to start getting ready for baby. We've already received our first items off of our registry (thanks!) and have started collecting big stuff; we got a crib for free from our pastor (which Meg and Bryan will be stripping and re-staining), we got a dresser from Craigslist (which we're also planning to use as a changing table), we bought (practically stole at $25) a glider rocking chair from Craigslist too (which I will be sanding, repainting, and reupholstering this semester - yay!). And because we could not agree on a stroller for a long time and for some reason it was a major point of contention, we bought the only one we both liked (on Amazon); it was delivered on Monday - here's a picture of Charlie testing out the toddler seat (he approves) and Daddy testing the wheels (it pushes like a dream - really).


Anyway, that's where we are now. I'm really enjoying this ride. The one hard thing is that creating a family of our own really deepens the sorrow we feel about being so far from our families back home. We've always been pretty independent, and that's great in some sense, but at the same time it's sort of hard to not have other people around us who are really emotionally invested in this baby (and us!) as flesh and blood. It's hard to walk through all this up-and-down, and even just the pure excitement, without those people invested in the walk with us, right beside us. It's also true that becoming a mother makes me think more often about my own mother (who I haven't seen in something like six years), and to lament the fact that that relationship will never be what it could have been. I do sometimes wish I had her (or maybe not her, but more like the idea of her) here (or accessible) to say things like, "When I was pregnant with you I craved tacos all the time" or "just like little Eden, you used to kick the mattress at night, just as I was drifting off to sleep" or something like that. I know that's not possible, and even not really healthy for me and the baby given the level of anxiety she brings with her, but it doesn't change the fact that I wish it was different. I am experiencing all of these amazing (and sometimes confusing) things, and I just wish I had someone to share it with who had been through it. Or someone who cared deeply about this situation beyond just being our friend. Our friends here are great - don't get me wrong - but they're just not family. And despite all the ups and downs and craziness and stress that families can bring, times like this really do make me wish I wasn't 1700 miles away from mine. OK now the hormones are seriously kicking in. Sorry about that.

I suppose the short story is getting pregnant was hard, early pregnancy was hard, but this second trimester is where it's at, even though it's still not perfect. But I've never really been one for the short story, have I? :)

Why I'm so lucky

This man is amazing. I woke up this morning to the smell of eggs and bacon, and he gently called me into the kitchen for a yummy breakfast of eggs over medium, turkey bacon, whole wheat toast with grape jam, and juice! He takes such great care of me!! I spent all day today thinking about what a lucky woman I am. And not just for the breakfast, but because of who he is! I thank God for him every day. He makes me laugh (see, e.g., picture above); he puts up with my baggage; he cares for me; he keeps me accountable and helps me grow in so many ways; he's an amazing partner and an amazing friend; and he's going to be a great dad (anyone who's seen him with Nino knows that!). Just a few reasons why I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Super Bowl XLII

We watched with some friends (none of whom were huge fans of either team) after our church's evening service - starting at the second half. My husband was so anxious he couldn't sit still, and he was occasionally covering his eyes. Here's why he was screaming like a little girl at the end, and hugging everyone in the room:

• He actually roots for the Giants all year long, though he didn't think they could necessarily beat the Patriots machine.
• He almost always roots for the underdog (one recent exception was the World Series, of course).
• He hates the Patriots. He never really liked them before we came up here, and it's sooo much worse now. I don't know why the Pats had that effect and the Sox/Celtics didn't, but he can't stand the Pats.
• There's a guy in one of his classes today who has been giving him a hard time about this game for quite some time now (this guy is a huge Pats fan). Bryan actually called him after the game and joyfully rubbed it in.
  

So, needless to say, he was happy Eli and the boys pulled off the upset. What a great game!