Wasted Youth

As I was walking to the car yesterday, I caught my reflection in a window.  I had one of those moments when you catch a glimpse of your reflection by surprise, sigh and think "wow, I had hoped it wasn't THAT bad..."  And then I thought "yup, youth really IS wasted on the young."

I continued to mull this phrase over as I trudged up the steps in the parking garage.  "Stupid young people, having all of that youth and wasting it," I thought.  "I wish I had appreciated MY youth before it was gone.  Young people suck.  Young ME sucked!"

Then I started thinking about all of the other things that are wasted on those stupid, sucky young people, and I became annoyed.  I realized that young people get LOTS of great stuff that they just don't appreciate, like:

1. Good hair.  My hair was never particularly cooperative, but boy has it gone downhill as I've gotten older, and looking back, it really was nicer (though not necessarily easily managed) than I gave it credit for.  Plus, for the last couple of months, I've been shedding like a frightened cat in a windstorm, so it's even more disastrous that I have less of my uncooperative hair than ever before.  Darn you,  young people, and your glorious manes! [Shakes fist]
2. Alcohol.  Many young people use alcohol simply as a way to get drunk and kiss strangers in a bar (or was that just me?).  As it turns out, there are a lot of really fine liquors, wines and beers out there that are meant to be sipped and appreciated, not chugged and barfed up.  Unfortunately, having spent so much time chugging and passing out on pool tables in my own reckless youth, I never really learned how to drink "correctly", so I tend to avoid drinking much at all unless I'm properly supervised.
3. Confidence.  Young people are full of ego, bravado, and I-rule-you-drool-ish swagger, and yet most of them have nothing but their youthful good looks to back it up.  Yet, because they are young, it's somehow okay!  I am 37 years old now, have an awesome job, look pretty good (if I do say so myself), and a great family but I also have enough sense to know that brazen over-confidence is obnoxious and off-putting.  I missed my chance to tell the world to go fuck itself and shout my own praises from the mountain-top, and this makes me sad.
4. Preschool.  Let's face it.  Preschool - long days filled with Play Doh, finger paints, recess, running through the sprinklers and generally making mayhem - was awesome.  Did you appreciate it?  Did you realize just how fleeting those brilliant moments of joy would be?  Did it ever occur to you that when you grew up, you would NOT be able to dress up like a kitty cat pirate robot and parade down the street singing the "SpongeBob SquarePants" theme song at the top of your lungs?  No?  Case closed.
5. Dance clubs.  Dancing is one of the best ways you can relieve stress, especially if you're tipsy enough not to care whether you dance well (see #2 above).  Can someone please explain to me what "stress" 20 year olds have?  Please?  Anyone?
6. Dexterity.  Every young person I know can type an email or text message using only their thumbs in a matter of nanoseconds.  Very few of those emails or texts need to be sent with such urgency.  By contrast, I occasionally need to type an email response from my iPhone in the two minutes it takes to walk from my office to the cafeteria, yet I lack the dexterity to do it without significant typos, and apparently, using texting shorthand is "unprofessional".  NTTAWWT, but AFAICT, their texts are NWR so this really kind of has me ROTFLMFAO while simultaneously feeling FINE.  I mean, WTF?
7. Summer.  Young people get their summers free to frolic in the sunshine, run in slow motion on beaches, hang out at cafes and travel.  They don't spend the whole day staring at a computer, answering the same question for the twenty-seventh time, and waiting for the world's most interminable conference call to end.   They don't spend their days pining to go outside... they just go outside!  They don't wonder if they can make it to Starbucks and back in the eight minutes they have before their next meeting (AND have time to go to the bathroom?)... they just go to Starbucks!  They don't wonder if there will be time on the weekend - in between the laundry and the dusting and the dishes and answering emails and getting the child where he needs to be and trying to cook dinner - to go to the pool and relax.  They just go to the pool!  And worse yet, they look good in their swimsuits!  Gaaaah!

I'm sure there are many other pleasures and privileges in life that are wasted on the young, but since I am a grown-up and have this pesky job, I don't have much more time to think of them.  But thanks to the googles, I discovered that George Bernard Shaw actually expanded this famous quote about the foolishness of young people, saying "[t]hey're brainless, and don't know what they have; they squander every opportunity of being young on being young."

That they do, George.  That they do.  If only we could all be so lucky.

That's just biology

Dropping my son off for school this morning, I got myself into an interesting exchange with some of the boys in his class over whether one of them would ever get married.  It roughly went as follows:

Child #1 (largely apropos of nothing):  I'm never getting married!

Me:  Okay.

Child #1:  No, really!  I'm NOT getting married!

Me:  Okay - you don't have to.  But you might change your mind someday.  Or you might not.  Maybe it's best not to decide when you're six.

Child #1:  No.  I've already decided.  I'm NEVER getting married!

Child #2:  But you have to get married SOMEDAY, Child #1!

Child #1:  No.  No, I don't.  I'm NOT getting married!

Child #3:  But if you don't get married, you can never have a baby.

Me:  No, that's not true.  You don't have to be married to have a baby.  That's just biology.

As the debate continued behind me, I looked down at my son, who was crunching Ritz crackers and watching keenly, then over to my son's teacher, who was snickering.  Then it hit me: it is entirely possible that Child #3's parents had told him that you have to be married to have a baby - and it was even more than just "possible" that if they did tell him that, it was because it is a core value or ideal to them that you should be married before you have children.

Yikes.  I am SO going to get a phone call.

Now, in my own defense (because this is MY blog and I can do what I want here), what I said was technically accurate.  It is not a biological requirement to be married before a child can be produced.  My guess is that if it WAS a biological requirement, we would not be having so many other debates in this country about the availability of contraception, access to abortion, gay rights, etc. etc. etc., and there would not be nearly as many single mothers (and fathers, natch) out there. So, at least as far as the "structural integrity" of my statement goes, I feel pretty good.

Plus, it was, is and will always be important for me to ensure that my adopted son understands that there was nothing that his birth mother (who was not married when she had him) did that was wrong.  I also do not want him thinking that he has to get married when he is older; if he meets someone and falls in love and they want to get married... great!  More power to him.  If not, I am perfectly fine with that as well.  If he wants to have a baby but he isn't married (for whatever reason!), I want him to know - intellectually as well as deep down inside - that this is OKAY.  I won't judge him, and I will defend his choice to my dying day as vigorously as he will allow me.

And, well, let's face it... the reality is that I sometimes speak before I think things through.  There were probably other more subtle ways of accomplishing my goals, and perhaps I should have availed myself of those methods.  Alas, I am human, therefore I occasionally (RARELY) err.  Get used to it.  Or, you know... forgive.  Isn't that the divine thing to do?

But...

Thanks to the benefit of hindsight https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=55+Case+W.+Res.+633&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=51bb52d52fa56821384344a7c7b23a44 (darn you, hindsight and your associated bias!), I also understand that my response MAY have UNINTENTIONALLY flown directly in the face of the values of others, and I probably shouldn't have responded so flippantly without knowing whether my statement would have the relative weight of "Santa Claus doesn't exist" or "The sun is hot and really far away".  And it wouldn't be COMPLETELY ridiculous for those other people to pick up the phone and ask me to be a bit more careful in the future.

I mean, after all, that's just biology.

Dear Nanny

Happy birthday!  

Yes, I know I'm a day early, but I wanted to be sure you got the message in time and I wasn't sure how fast your internet connection is up there.  I'd like to think it's faster than it is down here, but I understand Time Warner has quite a lock on the market so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you have intermittent outages there as well.

As you probably know, Nate, Byron and I miss you and talk about you often; I'm sure your ears have been burning!  (Do ears burn where you are?  Or does something more pleasant happen when someone talks about you, like a super-fluffy kitten licks your face?  Just curious.)  Nate misses you profoundly.  I don't say this to make you feel bad - after all, it is the circle of life! - but rather to let you know how deeply he loves you and how important you still are in his life.  True to his MO, he asks lots of questions: "Where did Nanny go when she died?"  "Does Nanny know we miss her?"  "Is Nanny a fossil now?"  My assumption is that you are not a fossil, though I could be wrong there.  Are you?  Hmm.  Might be too early to ask that one.  I'll check back in a few million years.

In any event, I thought of you the other day as I was driving to pick Nate up from school in the middle of a storm.  In the half hour it took me to get there, the EMS system interrupted regular radio programming four or five times; as you know, there were tornadoes touching down all over Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.  But at that moment, the weather was just beginning to roll into Cincinnati.  As I was sitting in traffic, I saw what looked like a piece of paper floating along, drifting downward, being blown by the increasingly belligerent wind.  It shimmered silver and then became dark like a shadow and then it was gone - but only for a moment, as it reappeared just a second later, silver and magical once more.  I watched it for several minutes (inching forward in traffic), and at some point it dawned on me that it wasn't just a piece of paper... it was much too far away to be something so small.  It must have been something extraordinary in size yet light enough to be carried by the wind.  No matter what it was, it was a wonderful little piece of grace in the midst of impending chaos, and apropos of nothing, I thought of you.  Or maybe it wasn't apropos of nothing.  Was it?  Was that graceful ghost of debris you?  Were you flitting around on the wind in that otherwordly, ethereal way that only you and your heavenly cohort can do?  Were you taking the opportunity to say 'hi' via a piece of scrap metal in a storm?  In a childish way I kind of hope so, because whatever it was, it made me feel comforted, safe and warm, as I hope you are now.

Anyway, tomorrow we plan to have a toast of Bailey's Irish Cream (swimsuit diet be damned!) in your honour.  We hope you will join us, even if only in spirit.  (Yes, that pun was intentional.  No, I haven't gotten any funnier since you left.)

With love,

Kimberly

Am I Pretty?

It's a question I've asked myself a thousand - nay, a million, at least - times.  It is a question that I ask every time I look in the mirror.  I ask myself every time I read a fashion magazine.  Sometimes it's paired with "Am I fat?"  Sometimes it goes along with "Why didn't these scars fade more?"  I can honestly say that it or some form of it has crossed my mind just about every single day since I was about ten years old.

But while I've asked myself this question a million times, it would never have crossed my mind to record myself asking the question out loud and then post it to the internet, inviting people to comment and respond.

Never.

Yet this is what girls all over the country are doing.  They are taking to the internet to publicly proclaim their insecurities and ask for a vote (of sorts) on whether they are pretty.  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=am+i+pretty&oq=am+i+pretty&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=1202l2165l0l3212l11l8l0l1l1l1l206l1151l0.5.2l7l0  Some have specific features which they worry make them unattractive  - a high hairline, frizzy hair, what have you - and some think they might be pretty but don't have the boyfriend to show for it, so they question their own confidence.

Yes, you read that right.  Because they don't have a boyfriend, or because they can identify something flawed about their outward appearance (or sometimes, because they have asshole "friends" goading them on in the background), they think they are not pretty, and are looking to the internet to make them feel better.  The INTERNET.  The very same internet that brings us breading cats http://www.breadedcats.com/, shit someone else says, and Bronies http://bronies.wikia.com/wiki/Wiki_Home.

Now, by my math (which admittedly sucks), I have spent the better part of my life questioning whether I am pretty... or on days when I've decided I am pretty, whether I am pretty enough.  But what I have come to realize is whether I am pretty on a given day - or overall - is dependent on myriad factors, only some of which have to do with how I actually look.  Yes, it matters if my hair is doing the right thing, if I've lost or maintained the right weight and body proportion, if I did a decent job on my makeup, and if I've gotten my outfit right.  But it ALSO matters if I got enough sleep.  Or if I'm in a good mood.  Or if I am feeling confident (which, I've discovered, doesn't always come from how I look!).  Or if I'm feeling sassy.  Or if I'm feeling personable and outgoing.  Or if I'm feeling particularly smart that day.  Or if I'm just feeling pretty.

NONE of these factors can ever be adequately captured in a 30 second YouTube video made with a webcam or an iPhone, especially when that YouTube video is dripping with inadequacy, insecurities and sadness.  What I see in each of these videos is a girl who doubts herself, who wants attention (and who maybe hasn't figured out that mocking isn't exactly good attention) and who has yet to realize that pretty comes just as much from within as it does from without.  I don't blame them; although I can claim to know this here on my blog, I don't always believe it, either.  But I really wish they understood that nothing anybody out there on the internet says will help them answer the question... especially not the idiots on YouTube.

I feel sad for these girls.  Just sad.

And one thing I know for certain: when I'm sad, I'm not pretty.

Bs from the BS

I'm not an avid fan of RuPaul (or even a half-assed fan, for that matter), but I am an avid reader of Jezebel.com.  And Jezebel has a regular feature which shares notable tweets.  Some are profound - or as profound as one can get in 140 characters - and some are clearly just intended to get something out there to the followers... to keep them engaged and reading.

But a recent tweet from RuPaul on the site caught my eye.  It said:  Very easy to find participants in a pity party. But can U rock it with the bitches from the bright side?  http://jezebel.com/5884200/khloe-kardashian-takes-a-ride-in-the-kotex-mobile/gallery/20

Oh, RuPaul, how right you are...  And it was a much-needed and timely reminder that it's easy to grouse, it's easy to let yourself wallow, but it can be much more difficult to chin up and find a way through the darkness.

Turn to the left


Sometimes, a pity party is just what you need.  Some major life events demand not just a pity party, but a pity cotillion.  Smaller traumas require a more intimate get together.  And if you have friends, you will always find people to attend your pity party, regardless of the size or duration.  But the reality is that some pity party guests have better "manners" than others.

For example, are you having a pity party to celebrate a recent break up?  Beware the pity party animal who will remind you - ad nauseum - that your now-ex-boyfriend was an asshole to begin with, and of course, had you realized that earlier on in your relationship (which was impossible, given your terrible history with men and your patent, constitutional and obviously pathetic inability to see past the fact that all signs indicated he was a decent guy and this came completely out of the blue), this never would have happened!  Or maybe if you had just listened to her a year ago when she said that she heard from someone else, who heard from someone else that he was not your type, that he had different interests, and that she said way back then that it wouldn't work, well... you know...

In other words, there are some people who seem to thrive on keeping your pity party going.  Willing participants, the pity party animal will bring hats, noisemakers, streamers, and copious quantities of libations to the party.  Even when you're ready for it to end and have turned off the music (or put on the best party-ending music ever, New Kids on the Block), they're in the middle of the room dancing by themselves, screaming "Oh my GOD... we should do SHOTS!"

Turn to the right


On the flip side of the pity party animals are what RuPaul has brilliantly named "bitches from the bright side".  They may attend the party for a while, but they're also the ones trying to get you to move on to a better party across the street.  They won't drag you there, of course - some pity parties have to naturally run their course - but they won't beg you to stay at the pity party, either.

Back to the break up example, the BftBS will be the one with the ice cream and a shoulder to cry on.  The BftBS will nod quietly, listen to your tale of woe, ask how she can help, and point out that if he is as big of a jerk as you say he is, perhaps this is a smart decision (no matter who made it), and an opportunity to find a better match.  She'll give you hugs.  She won't judge.  She won't minimize your pain.  She'll try to understand what you are going through, and if possible, help you to find a positive path forward.

You'd better work


At the end of the day, you are the host of your pity party, and you control its outcome.  Only you can decide whether you want to move on to the party across the street with the BftBS, or hang out with the pity party animal to do mind eraser shots and make bad decisions.  It can sometimes be difficult when you're in the throes of a pity party to figure out who is who.  You have to pay attention, and for each guest in attendance, ask yourself:  Is this person making me feel worse about myself, my situation, or my decision?  Or is this person helping me acknowledge what has happened, assimilate the information, interpret its meaning (if there is any) and find a positive path forward?  If it's the former, politely suggest that they might be better served hitting the bar down the street.  If it's the latter, hold on to those friends, because BftBS are worth their weight in gold.

Of course, once the party has ended and you are firmly back in the fold of the BftBS, there is only one thing to say:

Sashay, Shante!

A Belated Happy New Year

To all two of my loyal fans out there, happy new year!  To everyone else who has perhaps randomly stumbled upon this little on-again-off-again blog, welcome and happy new year!  And to the haters out there, well, click here (and happy new year):   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ5TajZYW6Y

Every new year brings about some level of reflection on my part.  Last year, my first two days were spent reflecting on why it seemed like a good idea to get into a drinking contest with my much taller and much MUCH younger nephew on New Year's Eve.  After many hours praying to the porcelain god for clarity, several doses of Tylenol and hours and hours of fitful sleep, I concluded that it was not, in fact, a good idea, and resolved not to do so again... ever.  That was about as far as I got in 2011.

By contrast, I started this year off with a bit more clarity and way fewer doses of Tylenol, and as a result have had more reflective reflections.  I call them super-reflecty reflections, and call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure they (easily) meet or beat the (obviously) high standard set by 2011's main learning:

• I recognize that I really need to take time off from work, and that going an entire year before taking multiple days off at once is a fast train to Snarky Town.  After two weeks off for the holidays, I'm confident that my clients and husband have noticed the difference.  We're three weeks into the new year, and I still feel much less like running out of the building and screaming when I am called upon to answer the same question for the thirtieth time ("No... you still can't do that.  No.  No.  NO.  Aaaaaaarrrggghhh!!!!!").  I therefore resolve to go on vacation in March.  Lucky for me, the flights are booked already!  Done and DONE!
• This year will mark the 20th anniversary of my car accident.  As many of you know (since there are only two of you out there, I'm pretty sure you all know, but anyway...), the accident changed the trajectory of my life in ways that even today I have yet to discover.  I expect that this will be a difficult anniversary, and it is entirely possible that despite my best efforts, I may never be able to talk about it without feeling like someone is sitting on my chest and slowly closing my throat.  I resolve to try my best to confront these emotions, and to rewrite the narrative in a way that will allow for more personal growth in the future.
• I need to read more books that aren't about dinosaurs.  I mean, dinosaurs are awesome and everything, but I miss reading big words that don't end in "-saurus."  I resolve to read more grown-up books, and maybe even some magazines.  But have no fear... my boycott on women's magazines will remain firmly in place...
• Our cat is thirteen years old this year, which it seems to me is pretty old for a cat.  I resolve to pet her as often as I can without giving myself an allergic fit.
• When we lived in Cleveland, we had a hammock.  I like hammocks.  I did not use the hammock in Cleveland often enough, and I regret that.  I would like to get a hammock again.  I resolve to look into this, and if we can make it happen, to use it at least once a week during the summer.
• My child is awesome.  This isn't really new, but I recognize that he really is awesome... and in so many ways. Is he perfect?  No.  Is that okay?  Yes.  I resolve to make sure he knows - every single day - how much I love him for the little person he is and the bigger person he will eventually become.

And finally...

• It is a bad idea to get into a drinking contest with my much taller and much MUCH younger nephew on New Year's Eve.  I (still) resolve never to do this again.

Happy new year!

Unsolicited Advice

This past week, my niece gave birth to her first child - the first among my nieces and nephew in Canada who, truth be told, I still kind of think of as little kids themselves.  Babies having babies!  What has this world come to?  Wasn't it just a day or two ago that they were all sitting together at my wedding, eating icing out of a plastic container?  When did they grow up?   Forget that... when did I get so OLD...?

But I digress.

Anyway, I happen to love being a mom - partly because my son is obviously the coolest kid in the whole wide world - and I think it is one of the most fun things you can really do as a grown-up human.  But I am finally ready to admit that it is almost nothing like what I expected.  The awesome stuff is ever so much more awesome than I thought it would be. The crappy stuff is ever so much more crappy than I thought it would be.  Then there's the stuff that I thought would be easy which is totally not at all easy, and the stuff I thought would be incredibly difficult which is actually quite simple, especially after I've just thrown in the towel and said "fuck it" and decided that this particular difficult thing is really not worth all of the goddamn screaming.

As a mom, I am basically learning lessons all day, every day, and some are more painful than others.  For example, I learned that cream-coloured shirts are horrible, while plain white t-shirts are actually a great idea because you can bleach them to remove stains without leaving weird white spots!  (Note: I have no idea whether you would want to bleach a little tiny baby's clothes, but I suspect not since their skin may be more sensitive than a toddler's, so take that bit with a grain of salt).  Also, it might be super cute for your child to learn how to throw a football, but a nice, tight spiral across the Christmas dinner table into a glass of chocolate milk isn't always well-regarded by one's guests.  So other than the learn-as-you-go lessons, which my dear niece will learn through her own trial and error, what sage and completely unsolicited advice do I bestow upon her as she embarks on her mommyhood journey?

• Get sleep whenever you can, wherever you can.  Nate doesn't nap.  He has never napped.  He napped while he was in Guatemala (so we were told), but once we brought him home, he was like "hell no, I'm not napping, and if I do, it most certainly isn't going to be in that horrible and degrading crib!"  I realized this very early in my maternity leave, so I developed a system.  I would curl up in a ball on the floor inside the play-yard with him, using one of his stuffed animals as a pillow, while he played with his toys.  I also found that if I was going somewhere in the afternoon, he would fall asleep in the car and stay asleep.  So... I ran short errands in the afternoon and would carry him up to bed when I was done so I could lie down and snooze as well.  If the errand was totally contrived, this wouldn't work; it had to be legitimate, and preferably involve me trying to juggle multiple large objects while pushing a stroller or carrying a sleeping child.  When my mat leave was over and he was in day care, it was someone else's problem.
• Speaking of someone else's problem, don't micro-manage your day care team.  If you have done your homework and selected a good, reputable, clean and established day care with well-trained staff, you should not need to micro-manage them or nitpick every little tiny thing they do.  They have dealt with many more children in their tenure than you ever will, and most of the time, they have a pretty good idea how to handle things (especially potty-training... follow their lead on this one!).  Be involved, be engaged, but don't be that parent.
• Find people to work with who won't make you feel like a failure or a slacker if you leave before they do to pick up your child from day care.  Since joining my current company, I have never once had anyone crack wise about me "taking a half day" as I walked to the elevator with my bag at 6 pm.  My boss has actually cut sentences short when he realized the time and reminded me that it's time for me to leave.  While you wouldn't necessarily think this type of support or understanding is a big deal, it really kind of is.  Lots of employers (and employees) pay lip service to it, but few follow through to actually help you find some semblance of work-life balance.  Just take my word for it: if your current employer in any way makes you or any other working mom feel badly for trying to get home at a reasonable time, cut bait now and find a new employer, and take the other working moms with you.
• Accept that "work-life balance" will probably not mean a perfect balance.  I work for a company that does a pretty good job encouraging work-life balance.  I have reasonable hours, and am finally starting to overcome my Pavlovian response to my Blackberry's flashing red light.  Is it perfect?  No.  Do I wish I had more time at home?  Yes.  Is it better than my previous employer?  Hell yes.  If you go into the workforce as a working mom expecting a perfect balance, you will be sorely disappointed.  The trick is to end each day feeling like you did the best you could with the hand that was dealt to you that day, but to realize there are going to be a lot of days when even that is too high of a bar.  On those days, you just need to resolve to try harder tomorrow and leave it at that.
• Set high expectations but be willing to adjust them.  I would LOVE to have a super-clean house with everything in place at all times, but with an active 5 1/2 year old and a husband who leaves piles of laundry, snibbles of paper, mail, dishes, and anything else that can be piled all over the house like some sort of pile-leaving wild animal, it just ain't gonna happen.  Do I like this?  No.  Does it occasionally piss me off to the point where I become a screeching, semi-coherent banshee?  Yes.  Do I (somewhat) accept this reality and endeavour only to be a screeching, semi-coherent banshee when it really matters, such as when company is coming?  Yes.  Mostly.  Ish.
• Divide the labour however you want, but recognize that no matter how enlightened your darling other-half is, you will probably still do most of the work.  This one is a really bitter and jagged little pill for me to swallow.  But I do realize that my husband does a fair amount of work around the house that goes unseen.  By anyone.  Including him.  Ha!  I'm just kidding (?).  Seriously, though, I think this is something that gnaws at a lot of (especially working) moms.  Before the baby comes, we all think "I'm in a wonderful 50/50 relationship and I'm confident that my man, who respects my value as a working woman and a human being who sometimes actually enjoys walking around without a toddler wrapped around her leg, will step up and help out and it will always be 50/50 in every respect."  And then the baby comes, the fog lifts and, poof!  There's your enlightened husband and father of your child, sitting on the sofa watching fourteen episodes of Cool Tools in a row "to clean out the DVR" while you, ya know, clean the kitchen sink so it isn't a festering pool of rotting, half-eaten dinners and simultaneously try to keep your increasingly-mobile bundle of joy from tumbling down the stairs headfirst while carrying the fireplace poker and a handful of crackers (aaarrgghh... crumbs!).  
• Ignore the nosy-binosies.  I can't possibly emphasize just how important it is to ignore all of the crazy-ass, busybody nosy-binosies you will encounter, who want to make sure you rear your children exactly how they think you should and no other way at all.  For example, when we brought Nate home, he was 13 months old.  He still took a bottle in the morning and before bedtime, and in theory, before his non-existent nap.  It was, hands down, one of the most awesome bonding times we had each day, and I credit much of our attachment success to those quiet times in his rocking chair.  Generally, many people in the US - including doctors - will advise parents to yank the bottle as soon as the child is one year old.  Of course, this didn't work for us, since we couldn't go back in time (and if we could, we wouldn't waste it on the bottle thing).  Plus, our doctor (who, incidentally, understood the limitations on time-travel and was aware of our adoption situation) told us it was fine to keep him on the bottle for as long as we needed or wanted.  But boy, oh boy, you would have thought we were locking him naked in a dog crate in a cold, damp basement with the criticism I got from nosy-binosies who knew better than my physician and I did!  "You know, when my daughter had her baby, her doctor had her take the bottle away on little angel's first birthday, and of course, I, my daughter, and little angel are the most well-adjusted people in the universe, so you would be a fool not to do what we did and you are clearly a failure as a parent for not having figured that out yourself."   You will need to develop a politically-acceptable response (something like "thank you very much, I'll consider it and take your idea up with my husband/boyfriend/physician/therapist") that you can calmly deliver while mentally giving the nosy-binosy the finger and screaming "fuck off" at the top of your lungs.  Mentally screaming, that is.
• Trust your instincts.  The day before I went on my maternity leave, one of the partners I worked with wrote these words on a piece of paper for me as his advice.  You know what?  He was right.  The sooner you learn to trust your instincts, the better off you will be.  This can be hard for those of us who want to know that what we are doing is objectively right, want to know someone with a degree behind their name said it is okay - those of us who've been trained to look at the facts and determine the best course of action, as though there is always one right course of action.  But sometimes, you just have to go with your gut.  In the event of a tie between two rational options, pick the one your gut tells you to pick... unless your gut is telling you something really weird or potentially illegal, in which case you should seek help immediately.

At the end of the day, no amount of solicited or unsolicited advice will completely smooth the road ahead.  Hold on during the curves, slow down and proceed with caution over the bumps, and enjoy the downtime of the straightaways.  Bring your camera, and remember that parenthood is a journey, not a destination.

Enjoy the trip, Brittany.  And William... welcome to the world, little man!  You're in good hands!