It's weird how priorities change. I used to be a big makeup person, like, I wouldn't leave the house without it. I refused to even wear regular T-shirts with the round, high necklines because I thought they were baggy and unflattering. And I never wore a regular old ponytail, even on my casual hair days.
Well. How the mighty are fallen. Here I am, two years later, in my big 'ole T-shirt and baggy sweats, with my rain plastered hair in a tight ponytail, my face pale and colorless, and my prim schoolmarm glasses resting on my unpowdered nose. I don't have on so much as mascara. And here's the kicker: lots people saw me like this, and I only felt the tiniest bit self conscious!
Let me explain. Jim and I went to the Michigan game today- my first time at the Big House- and literally about ten minutes into the first quarter, it began pouring rain, the kind with big fat drops that startle you with their heaviness. I was not looking super anyways, since my contacts have been driving me crazy lately and I was already wearing the schoolmarm glasses. Plus my hair was in the ponytail, because after the baby, my number one priority is sleep, not getting up in time to style my hair. But I had on cute jeans, and was wearing some makeup. I was not wholly disgusting yet.
Then came the rain, splattering my glasses and sending my mascara in rivulets down my cheeks, which were already splotchy with the remains of my blush and concealer. My glasses got so soaked I had to take them off, so I got to climb the bleachers, blind as a bat, behind thousands of people as we made our way oh so slowly out of the stadium.
You will recall that I was wearing jeans. Well, now I was wearing wet jeans. Not just damp- my clothes were so soaked you would have thought I had been the volunteer at one of those dunking booths. Jim was in a similiar situation. So after the half hour it took to emerge from the stadium, we had to stand in line another half hour to get into the M Den and purchase entirely new outfits for each of us (because there was no way I was riding home with soaked denim plastered to my chubby thighs.) Nothing like enjoying only an eighth of the game, then getting to purchase lots of overpriced team logo apparrel that you don't really want!
Then came the treat of making the seemingly endless trek back to our car, still in our soaked clothes since the line for the restrooms at the stadium was miles long. I can sum up that walk in one word: chafing. Oh wait, three more words: wet tennis shoes.
Finally, about a hundred yards from our car, we found a private area behind a building, shrouded in tall shrubbery, where we could wriggle free of our disgusting drenched clothes and change into our fresh Michigan sweatpants and T-shirts. That was another fun experience, standing guard for each other as we stripped down in the middle of Ann Arbor. It felt like it took about five minutes to peel off those stupid jeans.
Anyways. It was not the fun outing I had anticipated. And I just felt so gross, you know? I probably looked like a drowned rat wearing spectacles. But I didn't really think about it that much. I just wanted to be dry and comfortable again- who cared about reapplying makeup or fixing my hopeless hair?
That may have been the first time in my life since I was sixteen years old that I was thinking about comfort over beauty while in public. A real milestone, in a way. Perhaps I have finally become an adult! Who knows, I may even venture to the grocery store without lipstick one of these days.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Facing Fears
"I think of the times I've felt — let's face the facts — superior because I was doing well. Because I adjusted so quickly when I had Anna two years ago. "This is easy! I don't know what people are complaining about," I remember gloating to a friend. I think of the times when I've judged other parents, or used their problems to make myself feel better. I am ashamed."
This I am quoting from an online journal, Anna, Clara, and Me, at parentcenter.com. (I hope I'm allowed to do that!) This quote is taken from the last entry, in which the author, Evonne, is discussing her slow descent into depression after the birth of her second daughter. She talks about how it took her by surprise, how it took a concerned call from her ob-gyn after her six-week post-partum checkup for her to even face the fact that her daily crying jags and reluctance to get out of bed in the morning might mean something wasn't quite right.
As I read her bravely honest confessional, I felt my worst and usually unspoken fear being yanked out into the harsh light of day. So, here it is: Sometimes I am really, really afraid of having another baby. I am afraid that I, too, will come undone when we take the plunge and go from being a young couple with a baby to being... a family. Sometimes I wonder if one more child will be what tips the scales and turns my dreamy, playing-house-come-to-life experience of motherhood into a full-blown nightmare. I worry that all my smug self-congratulating- "Yes, she's been sleeping through the night for months now!," "Oh, yes, she's always this easy!"-is going to come back and bite me the second time around. And sometimes, as I am happily contemplating visions of growing our family and watching Adelay with a younger sibling and all that... well, sometimes this creapy shadow of doubt begins to darken those visions, and I have to put them away.
What the shadow does, is it erases the happy visions of four shining faces around the dinner table and replaces it with two screaming, messy faces, two strained, exhausted faces, and spaghettios thrown all over the table. Or the shadow will smudge out my little image of the four of us singing songs in the car on our way to the park, and it will show instead me, by myself with two hot, cranky kids on our way to the grocery store. And when we arrive there, I am steering two carts, one with a twisting toddler in the front and a baby in the carseat in the back, and the other one filled with diapers and formula and the Ramaan noodles Jim and I will be eating in order to afford the diapers and formula.
Reading that aforementioned journal entry this morning... well, it brought to the front of my mind this demon of fear that tells me I am tempting fate to desire another child. I am facing it now, forcing myself to imagine (and not turn away from) the worst possible scenarios involving a nearly two-year-old and a small infant- the fifteen diaper changes a day, the toys and fingerprints and Cheerios all over the house that I won't have time to clean up because I'll be attached at the breast to a hungry newborn. The conflicting nap schedules and midnight feedings which will ensure that I never sleep more than three hours at a stretch. The ordeal of two carseats, two coats and hats, two bottles to pack before we can leave the house, which will pretty much guarantee that I never do leave the house except for some sort of out-of-diapers emergency. The way that the eager offers to babysit always seem to thin out more and more with each child you add to the equation.
So there it is, out in the open, my big ugly secret. I long for a large, happy family, but I in equal measure fear messiness and exhaustion and that constant, needy chorus of "Mom, mom, mom." Most of all, most particularly, I fear that expression of hollow, blank joylessness I so often see on the faces of those women in the grocery pushing their two carts. The way you can see in an instant how the million daily demands put on their time have slowly chipped away at their ability to take pleasure in their children. Where I, the mother of one, might see the delight in my child's face as she eats ice cream, these women, three kids later, would probably just be seeing one more mess to clean.
Maybe my "visions" are wildly exaggerated, but there they are, cruelly taunting me whenever I start feeling excited about maybe having another baby pretty soon. It's because I'm a control freak, of course, or maybe because I'm superstitious and think that by having had an easy go of it the first time around, I'm doomed to give birth to a demon seed the next. Or something like that.
But even as I say all this, baring to you the shameful part of me which puts high value on things like quiet and tidiness and and time to myself, I am well aware that these fears will not keep me from delving deeper into parenthood. We will have another child, I am sure, and then another, and another, God-willing. Because the only thing I fear more than a house full of Cheerio crumbs and chatter and toys underfoot is a house without those things, a house filled with only the loud silence of all that time to myself.
This I am quoting from an online journal, Anna, Clara, and Me, at parentcenter.com. (I hope I'm allowed to do that!) This quote is taken from the last entry, in which the author, Evonne, is discussing her slow descent into depression after the birth of her second daughter. She talks about how it took her by surprise, how it took a concerned call from her ob-gyn after her six-week post-partum checkup for her to even face the fact that her daily crying jags and reluctance to get out of bed in the morning might mean something wasn't quite right.
As I read her bravely honest confessional, I felt my worst and usually unspoken fear being yanked out into the harsh light of day. So, here it is: Sometimes I am really, really afraid of having another baby. I am afraid that I, too, will come undone when we take the plunge and go from being a young couple with a baby to being... a family. Sometimes I wonder if one more child will be what tips the scales and turns my dreamy, playing-house-come-to-life experience of motherhood into a full-blown nightmare. I worry that all my smug self-congratulating- "Yes, she's been sleeping through the night for months now!," "Oh, yes, she's always this easy!"-is going to come back and bite me the second time around. And sometimes, as I am happily contemplating visions of growing our family and watching Adelay with a younger sibling and all that... well, sometimes this creapy shadow of doubt begins to darken those visions, and I have to put them away.
What the shadow does, is it erases the happy visions of four shining faces around the dinner table and replaces it with two screaming, messy faces, two strained, exhausted faces, and spaghettios thrown all over the table. Or the shadow will smudge out my little image of the four of us singing songs in the car on our way to the park, and it will show instead me, by myself with two hot, cranky kids on our way to the grocery store. And when we arrive there, I am steering two carts, one with a twisting toddler in the front and a baby in the carseat in the back, and the other one filled with diapers and formula and the Ramaan noodles Jim and I will be eating in order to afford the diapers and formula.
Reading that aforementioned journal entry this morning... well, it brought to the front of my mind this demon of fear that tells me I am tempting fate to desire another child. I am facing it now, forcing myself to imagine (and not turn away from) the worst possible scenarios involving a nearly two-year-old and a small infant- the fifteen diaper changes a day, the toys and fingerprints and Cheerios all over the house that I won't have time to clean up because I'll be attached at the breast to a hungry newborn. The conflicting nap schedules and midnight feedings which will ensure that I never sleep more than three hours at a stretch. The ordeal of two carseats, two coats and hats, two bottles to pack before we can leave the house, which will pretty much guarantee that I never do leave the house except for some sort of out-of-diapers emergency. The way that the eager offers to babysit always seem to thin out more and more with each child you add to the equation.
So there it is, out in the open, my big ugly secret. I long for a large, happy family, but I in equal measure fear messiness and exhaustion and that constant, needy chorus of "Mom, mom, mom." Most of all, most particularly, I fear that expression of hollow, blank joylessness I so often see on the faces of those women in the grocery pushing their two carts. The way you can see in an instant how the million daily demands put on their time have slowly chipped away at their ability to take pleasure in their children. Where I, the mother of one, might see the delight in my child's face as she eats ice cream, these women, three kids later, would probably just be seeing one more mess to clean.
Maybe my "visions" are wildly exaggerated, but there they are, cruelly taunting me whenever I start feeling excited about maybe having another baby pretty soon. It's because I'm a control freak, of course, or maybe because I'm superstitious and think that by having had an easy go of it the first time around, I'm doomed to give birth to a demon seed the next. Or something like that.
But even as I say all this, baring to you the shameful part of me which puts high value on things like quiet and tidiness and and time to myself, I am well aware that these fears will not keep me from delving deeper into parenthood. We will have another child, I am sure, and then another, and another, God-willing. Because the only thing I fear more than a house full of Cheerio crumbs and chatter and toys underfoot is a house without those things, a house filled with only the loud silence of all that time to myself.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Mrs. Happy Housewife
Okay, I don't really have time for a blog today, but here it is anyways, because I had to tell you guys the crazy thing I found out there in bloggerville! There's a blog called Mrs. Happy Housewife (which I accidentally found when trying to get to my own more smart-alecky blog)!!! Yeah, that's right, her blog name is not sarcastic!!! You seriously have to check this blog out. It's way more elaborate than my pathetic offering, with tons of links, which I haven't figured out how to do, and she's a homeschooler, and she follows this cleaning/organizing/micromanaging every detail of her life system which is way more complicated than anything I have ever seen, and she plans her dinner menus a week in advance, and.... Whew, I had to take a drink of water and relax there just thinking about it!
I spent probably an hour checking all her stuff out and also going to a few of her links. One link in particular, called FLY lady, is good for a nice overwhelming guilt trip, if nothing else. The "Fly lady" recommends organizing your entire life, particularly your cleaning schedules and such, in something called a "control journal," which, dare I say it, sounds a lot like something a.... control freak might have? And in the next breath let me shamefacedly say that I considered making one of my own, in which to schedule every minute of my day and organize my house into cleaning zones and prepare an elaborate evactuation plan for my family and valuables (yes, you read right,) as was recommended. They also suggested having an "errand day" in which one accomplishes all grocery shopping, etc. But then I thought better of it- as in, I thought, "What's next, crazy lady, you're gonna be wearing aprons around the house and making brownies from scratch for no good reason other than to prove a point?"
What I mean to say, with no offense intended toward the obviously intelligent and meticulous Mrs. Happy Housewife, is that while I am a "housewife," and keep a pretty darn clean and organized house, in fact, I in no way wish to be that scheduled and methodical. Ok, well, except for the way in which my inner, obsessive compulsive self (the one that used to cry as a child when I couldn't get those sheets on my bed perfectly flat and smooth) always feels drawn to stuff suggesting order and cleanliness and discipline.
But the fact is, I am home all day with a baby and a dog. I don't want to be so organized that I have an "errand day" in which I get it all taken care of in one fell swoop- I want an errand every day! I sometimes invent errands in order to get out of the house more! And how am I supposed to follow a cleaning schedule when I'm taking care of a baby who has about a three minute attention span?
The answer is, I'm not. I've tried many daily schedules and cleaning schedules of my own (none that involved "control journals," but...) and it always ends up being frustrating, and I just get OCD about it and then overly upset when everything doesn't go perfectly as I planned. So, I have abandoned them and found that I'm much happier just seeing where the day takes me. Everything still gets done pretty regularly, and this way I don't have to stress about what I'm "supposed" to be doing at any given time. Maybe this wouldn't work for everyone, but it's the only thing that does work for me.
Now, we'll see how long this lasts- maybe when I have three kids running around and a million things on my mind, I will need a control journal to keep from losing track of all that needs done.
Until that dreaded day, though, I think I'll stick with what works for me.
I spent probably an hour checking all her stuff out and also going to a few of her links. One link in particular, called FLY lady, is good for a nice overwhelming guilt trip, if nothing else. The "Fly lady" recommends organizing your entire life, particularly your cleaning schedules and such, in something called a "control journal," which, dare I say it, sounds a lot like something a.... control freak might have? And in the next breath let me shamefacedly say that I considered making one of my own, in which to schedule every minute of my day and organize my house into cleaning zones and prepare an elaborate evactuation plan for my family and valuables (yes, you read right,) as was recommended. They also suggested having an "errand day" in which one accomplishes all grocery shopping, etc. But then I thought better of it- as in, I thought, "What's next, crazy lady, you're gonna be wearing aprons around the house and making brownies from scratch for no good reason other than to prove a point?"
What I mean to say, with no offense intended toward the obviously intelligent and meticulous Mrs. Happy Housewife, is that while I am a "housewife," and keep a pretty darn clean and organized house, in fact, I in no way wish to be that scheduled and methodical. Ok, well, except for the way in which my inner, obsessive compulsive self (the one that used to cry as a child when I couldn't get those sheets on my bed perfectly flat and smooth) always feels drawn to stuff suggesting order and cleanliness and discipline.
But the fact is, I am home all day with a baby and a dog. I don't want to be so organized that I have an "errand day" in which I get it all taken care of in one fell swoop- I want an errand every day! I sometimes invent errands in order to get out of the house more! And how am I supposed to follow a cleaning schedule when I'm taking care of a baby who has about a three minute attention span?
The answer is, I'm not. I've tried many daily schedules and cleaning schedules of my own (none that involved "control journals," but...) and it always ends up being frustrating, and I just get OCD about it and then overly upset when everything doesn't go perfectly as I planned. So, I have abandoned them and found that I'm much happier just seeing where the day takes me. Everything still gets done pretty regularly, and this way I don't have to stress about what I'm "supposed" to be doing at any given time. Maybe this wouldn't work for everyone, but it's the only thing that does work for me.
Now, we'll see how long this lasts- maybe when I have three kids running around and a million things on my mind, I will need a control journal to keep from losing track of all that needs done.
Until that dreaded day, though, I think I'll stick with what works for me.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Confessions, Part Two
Hiya, it's me again, still slacking away! Now, before I launch into my newest story of bad parenting, I want to point that I created a lovely playroom for my daughter today- yay me! It is blissfully free of sharp objects and glass cabinets and remote controls and computer cords; it is a little safe haven in which I can hopefully crash out on the bed (okay, it's also still the spare bedroom) and watch Addy play to her little heart's content without hovering every second to prevent some new form of head trauma and/or damage to "mommy's pretties." So I feel pretty good about myself. And I also finally put outlet covers throughout the house. I realize this may seem extremely late in the game to be doing that, but our kid was a late crawler, ok? It didn't really seem urgent until now.
So. Those are my triumphs of the week. Also the fact that Addy is better now, her new tooth is nearly in, and she has been sleeping through the night again! These seemingly small things have made the difference between a happy, perky mama, and a mama who was getting weepy driving around the rural outskirts of town, listening to the same cd play for the third time in a row, just so that her stuffy, congested baby back in the carseat would stay asleep a little bit longer.
Now for the confession part. I was getting clothes out of the dryer the other day and sat Adelay down on the rug next to me. She was playing with some toy and was pretty quiet and content, so I kind of forgot she was there after a minute, and when I finished the laundry, I continued on into the kitchen to unload the dishwasher. Then, couple of minutes later, it dawns on me how quiet Adelay has been, and I turn around to look into the laundry room. There, next to the dog's dish, sat my happy, drooling baby, chewing on an ant trap. With dead ants dangling off of it.
My heart was racing so fast, seriously, and I'm running in there and grabbing her up and snatching away the poison chew toy, and I'm actually saying to myself out loud, "Now, don't panic, it's probably fine, these kinds of things are almost always fine, kids eat all kinds of awful things and survive..." But still my heart is racing, racing, racing, and I'm watching my daughter, waiting for her lips to turn blue or for her to start coughing weakly or something. I didn't even know what to look for!
So I scrambled for my phone and called the local hospital's hotline, and they referred me to Poison Control Center (and yes, I know, I should have that number posted on my refrigerator, along with the number of the local police and my child's pediatrician and our local pharmacy and also a list of every known sex offender in a 100-mile radius. I know!) And then my phone started it's insistent beeping- low battery!- and in order to stay on the phone with the Poison Control lady, I had to hook my phone to its charger. So, I was essentially attached to the wall, waiting for her to look up the exact ingredients of my particular brand of ant trap to see if I had allowed my baby to ingest toxic poisons or not, and as I'm waiting, Adelay crawls over to the kitchen cupboard and starts pulling out more great toys like dish detergent and Lysol antibacterial spray! And then helpful poison center lady returns to the phone to assure me that my daughter will live and I don't need to induce vomiting or anything, but that I "really need to watch her every minute, you know- they can get into trouble as soon as you turn your back!"
Is there a lower feeling than being scolded by a complete stranger? Not in my catalogue of emotions. I am one of those shallow people to whom other people's opinions actually matter a lot, even though I am loathe to admit it, and I felt like total parent scum for a few minutes. My husband arrived right at that moment, though, so I got to quickly relay the story, hand off the baby, and escape to the bathroom for a quick cry before dinner. That was nice. Small favors...
So, yeah. That was a bad day. The dog threw up twice that morning, also. Just so you know. But hey, we're all still alive, so what's a bad day?
So. Those are my triumphs of the week. Also the fact that Addy is better now, her new tooth is nearly in, and she has been sleeping through the night again! These seemingly small things have made the difference between a happy, perky mama, and a mama who was getting weepy driving around the rural outskirts of town, listening to the same cd play for the third time in a row, just so that her stuffy, congested baby back in the carseat would stay asleep a little bit longer.
Now for the confession part. I was getting clothes out of the dryer the other day and sat Adelay down on the rug next to me. She was playing with some toy and was pretty quiet and content, so I kind of forgot she was there after a minute, and when I finished the laundry, I continued on into the kitchen to unload the dishwasher. Then, couple of minutes later, it dawns on me how quiet Adelay has been, and I turn around to look into the laundry room. There, next to the dog's dish, sat my happy, drooling baby, chewing on an ant trap. With dead ants dangling off of it.
My heart was racing so fast, seriously, and I'm running in there and grabbing her up and snatching away the poison chew toy, and I'm actually saying to myself out loud, "Now, don't panic, it's probably fine, these kinds of things are almost always fine, kids eat all kinds of awful things and survive..." But still my heart is racing, racing, racing, and I'm watching my daughter, waiting for her lips to turn blue or for her to start coughing weakly or something. I didn't even know what to look for!
So I scrambled for my phone and called the local hospital's hotline, and they referred me to Poison Control Center (and yes, I know, I should have that number posted on my refrigerator, along with the number of the local police and my child's pediatrician and our local pharmacy and also a list of every known sex offender in a 100-mile radius. I know!) And then my phone started it's insistent beeping- low battery!- and in order to stay on the phone with the Poison Control lady, I had to hook my phone to its charger. So, I was essentially attached to the wall, waiting for her to look up the exact ingredients of my particular brand of ant trap to see if I had allowed my baby to ingest toxic poisons or not, and as I'm waiting, Adelay crawls over to the kitchen cupboard and starts pulling out more great toys like dish detergent and Lysol antibacterial spray! And then helpful poison center lady returns to the phone to assure me that my daughter will live and I don't need to induce vomiting or anything, but that I "really need to watch her every minute, you know- they can get into trouble as soon as you turn your back!"
Is there a lower feeling than being scolded by a complete stranger? Not in my catalogue of emotions. I am one of those shallow people to whom other people's opinions actually matter a lot, even though I am loathe to admit it, and I felt like total parent scum for a few minutes. My husband arrived right at that moment, though, so I got to quickly relay the story, hand off the baby, and escape to the bathroom for a quick cry before dinner. That was nice. Small favors...
So, yeah. That was a bad day. The dog threw up twice that morning, also. Just so you know. But hey, we're all still alive, so what's a bad day?
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Sick and Tired
Well, Addy's had a cold for almost a week now, plus she picked this convenient time to also begin cutting her first tooth (not one of the usual bottom center first teeth, either- no, an upper incisor for my girl, a much more painful tooth to cut!) It's been a bit of a culture shock, in a way, because Addy had never really been sick before, and she has always been a pretty good sleeper. It was literally as though, last Saturday, a baby snatcher removed our happy child and left in her place a screaming, miserable little bundle of drool and snot who refuses to eat or sleep, and who cries to be held, yet, when picked up, twists and squirms to be put down. There was one night this weekend when it literally took three hours of Jim and I taking turns rocking and walking her to put her to sleep.
Not to sound spoiled- I want to say that I know lots of people go through routines like this on a daily basis, and believe me, you have my sympathy. But it's just been a long couple of days and nights. Oh, and did I mention that for three days she went without taking a nap? Seriously, the child did not sleep at all unless we put her in the car and drove around- probably because with the angle of the car seat she could actually breathe. If you guys have been around nap-deprived babies for any time, you know how insane they get- Adelay would literally look delirious by the end of the day, eyelids drooping, crawling around in a crazy weave resembling a drunk person's stagger, but she would just be more determined than ever that sleep was not on the agenda.
Anyways... she's better now, mostly, just has a runny nose and is a little cranky and clingy still, but at least she's sleeping. It feels like we're emerging from a dark tunnel of awfulness, blinking into the sunlight, amazed that there still is such a thing. I have never before wished that I was not the one at home all day with the baby, but I have to admit to having a strong desire for exactly that a couple of times this weeks. That makes me feel terrible and unloving and unsympathetic- when my baby is sick, I should be feeling bad for her, not myself! And I did, I promise, and I still do. As I watched her fight sleep so desperately when it was what she needed most, believe me, I felt great compassion and tenderness for my poor baby. She sometimes seems like such a big girl already, but in those moments, she was as helpless and hysterical as a newborn, and I wanted nothing more than to make her feel comfortable and relaxed. Yet, what I needed desperately was also sleep. And I too longed to feel relaxed, but that's not in the cards for the mom of a sick cranky baby.
Sometimes, as adults, don't we just wish there was someone to take care of us? And there is, of course, our spouses and friends and support systems and all that. But I mean, literally, physically, take care, like, hold you and rock you and carry you around and tuck you into bed and fetch you drinks in the middle of the night? 'Cause, see, I myself was not feeling so hot last weekend either, for various reasons, and I found myself wishing to be little again, to have a caretaker, rather than be the caretaker.
But. Such is not the case. And this is what I signed on for when we decided to have a baby- the long, insane nights and the tired, hung-over feeling days. But there is also the feeling of being needed, and the knowledge that you are capable of giving comfort- these are not small things. And also there is the chance to feel gratitude towards my own mother!
Not to sound spoiled- I want to say that I know lots of people go through routines like this on a daily basis, and believe me, you have my sympathy. But it's just been a long couple of days and nights. Oh, and did I mention that for three days she went without taking a nap? Seriously, the child did not sleep at all unless we put her in the car and drove around- probably because with the angle of the car seat she could actually breathe. If you guys have been around nap-deprived babies for any time, you know how insane they get- Adelay would literally look delirious by the end of the day, eyelids drooping, crawling around in a crazy weave resembling a drunk person's stagger, but she would just be more determined than ever that sleep was not on the agenda.
Anyways... she's better now, mostly, just has a runny nose and is a little cranky and clingy still, but at least she's sleeping. It feels like we're emerging from a dark tunnel of awfulness, blinking into the sunlight, amazed that there still is such a thing. I have never before wished that I was not the one at home all day with the baby, but I have to admit to having a strong desire for exactly that a couple of times this weeks. That makes me feel terrible and unloving and unsympathetic- when my baby is sick, I should be feeling bad for her, not myself! And I did, I promise, and I still do. As I watched her fight sleep so desperately when it was what she needed most, believe me, I felt great compassion and tenderness for my poor baby. She sometimes seems like such a big girl already, but in those moments, she was as helpless and hysterical as a newborn, and I wanted nothing more than to make her feel comfortable and relaxed. Yet, what I needed desperately was also sleep. And I too longed to feel relaxed, but that's not in the cards for the mom of a sick cranky baby.
Sometimes, as adults, don't we just wish there was someone to take care of us? And there is, of course, our spouses and friends and support systems and all that. But I mean, literally, physically, take care, like, hold you and rock you and carry you around and tuck you into bed and fetch you drinks in the middle of the night? 'Cause, see, I myself was not feeling so hot last weekend either, for various reasons, and I found myself wishing to be little again, to have a caretaker, rather than be the caretaker.
But. Such is not the case. And this is what I signed on for when we decided to have a baby- the long, insane nights and the tired, hung-over feeling days. But there is also the feeling of being needed, and the knowledge that you are capable of giving comfort- these are not small things. And also there is the chance to feel gratitude towards my own mother!
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Confessions of a Slacker Mom
Ok, well, promise you won't turn me in to the authorities- I just let my daughter entertain herself with the plastic sleeve of the Oreos package for, like, fifteen minutes straight. And then I went to put some laundry away, and when I turned around to tell Addy I'd be back in a minute, I suddenly saw what any normal personal would have seen a while ago, which was, essentially, an infant amusing herself by putting her head in a plastic bag. Good wholesome fun! (Just in case any of you are actually picking up the phone right now, please be assured I was right beside her the whole time she was playing. I feel fairly sure I would have noticed if death was imminent. But still.)
And this isn't the first time, either, with the shiny plastic packaging. It is currently Adelay's first love, and she responds to its crunchy, crinkly sound like a siren song. Newspaper is also a big favorite. Oh, and those whisper-thin sanitary covers that they put over the exam tables at the doctor's office, so easily and noisily shredded? Oh, we love that stuff, yes we do! We whip ourselves into a little frenzy kicking and tearing at it for the sheer joy of those rustling, ripping sounds! (I was genuinely embarassed the last time I was at our doctor's. We had to wait a while, and by the time the doctor got into the exam room, it looked like a giant, rabid mouse had gotten at the paper. Not to mention the noise, both from the crinkling paper and the gleeful, shrieking child.)
So, all you relatives who will be buying gifts in the future, please know that you could throw, say, a McDonalds Happy Meal toy into a large crate, swath it in about a hundred layers of tissue paper, and you would undoubtedly be the bearer of the most beloved birthday present ever.
Remote controls and cell phones are also consistently tempting, despite the fact that Adelay has a toy version of both those items. But these she casts off in disdain in favor of the real thing. And cords are wonderful, and Daddy's DVD collection, and Mommy's hot cup of coffee, and the keyboard and the mouse, and the dog's germy tongue, and random dirty shoes slipped off in the front hall... All of these are fantastic toys, and clearly make all that plastic Baby Weisenstein crap we try to give her pale in comparison!
So, with her first birthday coming up, I don't know what I should ask for from her doting grandparents- plastic grocery sacks? Filled with more sacks? Because yes, these too are absolutely irresistable, apparently. On the way home from the grocery store, Adelay's discontented moans are always my companion. She seranades me with a little song called, "Why Are You So Mean, Keeping All the Grocery Bags Away From Me So I Cannot Bury My Little Nose and Mouth in Their Enticing Plastic Embrace?"
And here's another guilty little secret for you: by the end of my shopping trips, I have usually given in and allowed Addy to occupy herself by chewing on my shopping list until it is nothing but a wet, inky pulp. It's really disgusting. But after about a half hour of shopping, watching me consult that beautiful piece of paper over and over, she is driven insane with jealousy and will stop at nothing to snatch it from my hands. And if I try to thwart her in her thievery, she will kick and cry and twist around and I will get The Eye from all the old ladies with their carts full of cottage cheese. So, letting her get some paper in her diet- which is, after all, good hearty fiber, right?- often seems the lesser of two evils.
So there you have it. My confession for the week. Someone, please, tell me what eyebrow-raising things you let your little kids do to keep the peace, please! It'll make me feel better.
And this isn't the first time, either, with the shiny plastic packaging. It is currently Adelay's first love, and she responds to its crunchy, crinkly sound like a siren song. Newspaper is also a big favorite. Oh, and those whisper-thin sanitary covers that they put over the exam tables at the doctor's office, so easily and noisily shredded? Oh, we love that stuff, yes we do! We whip ourselves into a little frenzy kicking and tearing at it for the sheer joy of those rustling, ripping sounds! (I was genuinely embarassed the last time I was at our doctor's. We had to wait a while, and by the time the doctor got into the exam room, it looked like a giant, rabid mouse had gotten at the paper. Not to mention the noise, both from the crinkling paper and the gleeful, shrieking child.)
So, all you relatives who will be buying gifts in the future, please know that you could throw, say, a McDonalds Happy Meal toy into a large crate, swath it in about a hundred layers of tissue paper, and you would undoubtedly be the bearer of the most beloved birthday present ever.
Remote controls and cell phones are also consistently tempting, despite the fact that Adelay has a toy version of both those items. But these she casts off in disdain in favor of the real thing. And cords are wonderful, and Daddy's DVD collection, and Mommy's hot cup of coffee, and the keyboard and the mouse, and the dog's germy tongue, and random dirty shoes slipped off in the front hall... All of these are fantastic toys, and clearly make all that plastic Baby Weisenstein crap we try to give her pale in comparison!
So, with her first birthday coming up, I don't know what I should ask for from her doting grandparents- plastic grocery sacks? Filled with more sacks? Because yes, these too are absolutely irresistable, apparently. On the way home from the grocery store, Adelay's discontented moans are always my companion. She seranades me with a little song called, "Why Are You So Mean, Keeping All the Grocery Bags Away From Me So I Cannot Bury My Little Nose and Mouth in Their Enticing Plastic Embrace?"
And here's another guilty little secret for you: by the end of my shopping trips, I have usually given in and allowed Addy to occupy herself by chewing on my shopping list until it is nothing but a wet, inky pulp. It's really disgusting. But after about a half hour of shopping, watching me consult that beautiful piece of paper over and over, she is driven insane with jealousy and will stop at nothing to snatch it from my hands. And if I try to thwart her in her thievery, she will kick and cry and twist around and I will get The Eye from all the old ladies with their carts full of cottage cheese. So, letting her get some paper in her diet- which is, after all, good hearty fiber, right?- often seems the lesser of two evils.
So there you have it. My confession for the week. Someone, please, tell me what eyebrow-raising things you let your little kids do to keep the peace, please! It'll make me feel better.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Babies 'R'nt' Us
I just want to say to any parents of twins, triplets, or, Lord help you, quads or quints or whatever else there is, my hat is off to you. And to your pharmacist, who probably really has to hustle to keep up with your Prozac refills. I worked in the church nursery on Sunday, and let me just tell you, there is nothing like hauling around fat, screaming babies to make an hour seem interminable. And for a real ego boost, nothing beats doing everything in your power to calm a hysterical child only to have them stiffen and writhe away from you in outrage as though you were, say, poking them with a cattle prod rather than desperately trying to get a bottle into their wailing, drooling mouth.
There were two nursery workers to seven babies, one of which was mine, so I felt she really didn't count. My kid's cool; she just does her thing, plays with the toys, flops around. But then, she had her mommy in plain view. Those other babies, boy, as soon as that door closes and Mama disappears from sight, the waterworks are on. Cue also the sad, pitiful, heartbroken weeping that makes you so happy not to be a kid anymore, forced to endure epic tragedies every hour or so. I mean, I really feel terrible for them. I imagine that they truly think they have been abandoned and will forevermore be cared for by the strange lady enthusiastically trying to engage them with some crappy, broken plastic toy that's been slimed by three other babies. I would cry too, you know?
For a while, all was going well. The three little girls were all sitting in a circle playing together (read: all silently absorbed in their own toys, and casting occasional, vaguely envious glances at the other babies' toys.) One boy was in the exersaucer, the other sleeping, the other suckling contentedly from his bottle. Boy number four was dangling in the jumperoo. Peace reigned.
And then we heard it, a small, discontented noise from inside the napping room. We glanced at each other in alarm, for anyone who's ever been around more than one baby at a time knows what crying begets: more crying. It's more contagious than the freaking stomach flu, and once it leaked out of the nap room, it was all over for us.
Those kids cried their poor little heads off, one after another, your classic domino effect. Even my child's contented little face began to crumple as she watched me holding one baby after another while she sat alone on the floor, and then she was yelling too. I felt like we were in a silly cartoon or something, two women surrounded by crying babies, hopping from one to another like chickens with our heads cut off. I usually think I do well under pressure, but apparently not so much, because when the mom of the most inconsolable baby finally arrived, she informed me that I had mixed his water with baby cereal instead of formula. She passed along this information very nicely, of course, but I still felt like a total idiot. I have a child who is actually older than hers; you'd think I'd know the difference between cereal and formula!
Oh well. Se la vie. But I was never so happy to grab my kid and leave, let me tell you. Seeing what happens when you put seven babies in one room is enough to make you swear off infertility treatments forever! So to all you brave parents who made that choice and now have your very own nursery school/insane assylum, I wish you all the best, and also many helpful relatives. And to anyone struggling with your own houseful of properly spaced kids, I just wanted to tell you, it could be worse. You could have had to potty train them all at the same time.
There were two nursery workers to seven babies, one of which was mine, so I felt she really didn't count. My kid's cool; she just does her thing, plays with the toys, flops around. But then, she had her mommy in plain view. Those other babies, boy, as soon as that door closes and Mama disappears from sight, the waterworks are on. Cue also the sad, pitiful, heartbroken weeping that makes you so happy not to be a kid anymore, forced to endure epic tragedies every hour or so. I mean, I really feel terrible for them. I imagine that they truly think they have been abandoned and will forevermore be cared for by the strange lady enthusiastically trying to engage them with some crappy, broken plastic toy that's been slimed by three other babies. I would cry too, you know?
For a while, all was going well. The three little girls were all sitting in a circle playing together (read: all silently absorbed in their own toys, and casting occasional, vaguely envious glances at the other babies' toys.) One boy was in the exersaucer, the other sleeping, the other suckling contentedly from his bottle. Boy number four was dangling in the jumperoo. Peace reigned.
And then we heard it, a small, discontented noise from inside the napping room. We glanced at each other in alarm, for anyone who's ever been around more than one baby at a time knows what crying begets: more crying. It's more contagious than the freaking stomach flu, and once it leaked out of the nap room, it was all over for us.
Those kids cried their poor little heads off, one after another, your classic domino effect. Even my child's contented little face began to crumple as she watched me holding one baby after another while she sat alone on the floor, and then she was yelling too. I felt like we were in a silly cartoon or something, two women surrounded by crying babies, hopping from one to another like chickens with our heads cut off. I usually think I do well under pressure, but apparently not so much, because when the mom of the most inconsolable baby finally arrived, she informed me that I had mixed his water with baby cereal instead of formula. She passed along this information very nicely, of course, but I still felt like a total idiot. I have a child who is actually older than hers; you'd think I'd know the difference between cereal and formula!
Oh well. Se la vie. But I was never so happy to grab my kid and leave, let me tell you. Seeing what happens when you put seven babies in one room is enough to make you swear off infertility treatments forever! So to all you brave parents who made that choice and now have your very own nursery school/insane assylum, I wish you all the best, and also many helpful relatives. And to anyone struggling with your own houseful of properly spaced kids, I just wanted to tell you, it could be worse. You could have had to potty train them all at the same time.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Are We Having Fun Yet?
This evening my extended family and I were trying to have a nice dinner, and then a nice game of cards, but then this one little thing kept interfering- the fact that we have offspring. First my sister-in-law had to come late because of her daughter's friend's birthday party, then her husband had to come late because of a bit of a rough afternoon with their son, so we ended up eating dinner in shifts. Then my own daughter hit her head on her high chair halfway through the meal and had to be comforted and plied with a bottle. Soon after, my brother-in-law arrived, son in tow, and headed off to the kitchen to prepare their dinners. His aforementioned child sat at the table, looking tragic and forlorn, and repeated over and over, mantra-like, "I want Mom.... I want Mom..."
Later, we tried card playing, but my little one was busy trying to take down my wine glass and steal her cousin's blanky and such, and, having reached her limit, decided to remove everything in her immediate vicinity from the table with one grand sweep of her arm. She proceeded to wiggle and moan and nothing, nothing would do, not Mommy's lap or Grandma's lap or a bottle or the glorious toys which had moments earlier been so engrossing.
The game was cut a bit short. No one quite seemed up for it, after diaper changes and the handing out of numerous graham crackers and the head counts to make sure everyone was present and accounted for and not, say, playing a rousing round of spill the juice on Grandma's sofa or whatever. My husband said wryly, as we were packing up to leave, "Everything's so much more fun with kids!"
And so I got to thinking: No it's not. This was honestly kind of disillusioning for me, despite having been in the company of children quite a lot and having some familiarity with their ways. It hadn't really occurred to me before, though, I guess because I was so accustomed to having the kids around during these family events that I wouldn't have thought to question whether their presence there was really very fun. It just was.
But you know what? It would be more fun if they weren't there. Or at least it would be more fun in the sense of "playing a game out to its conclusion without everybody having to jump up seventy-five freaking times to attend to the needs of other people in other rooms."
And then when we got home- it is Saturday night, mind you- I was so tired I went to bed before eleven. Exciting stuff, huh?
But this is the life we chose, all of us who have children. If you go somewhere with your kids, you can't be surprised when there are a few hiccups in the smooth socializing flow that you used to enjoy pre-baby. So maybe I just need to redefine fun, stop demanding it on my own terms. Old fun was lingering conversations and uninterrupted meals and staying up late. New fun is seeing my relatives interact with my daughter and watching her learn new skills like self-feeding and banging her toys together. New fun is taking one last peak at my baby, sleeping like an angel, before I tuck my own tired self in.
So I take it back. It would not have been more fun to have dinner without the kids. It would have been a different kind of fun, yes, and a kind of fun that I occassionally miss. But we have a new fun now, a fun I know I will most definitely miss when it has left us.
Later, we tried card playing, but my little one was busy trying to take down my wine glass and steal her cousin's blanky and such, and, having reached her limit, decided to remove everything in her immediate vicinity from the table with one grand sweep of her arm. She proceeded to wiggle and moan and nothing, nothing would do, not Mommy's lap or Grandma's lap or a bottle or the glorious toys which had moments earlier been so engrossing.
The game was cut a bit short. No one quite seemed up for it, after diaper changes and the handing out of numerous graham crackers and the head counts to make sure everyone was present and accounted for and not, say, playing a rousing round of spill the juice on Grandma's sofa or whatever. My husband said wryly, as we were packing up to leave, "Everything's so much more fun with kids!"
And so I got to thinking: No it's not. This was honestly kind of disillusioning for me, despite having been in the company of children quite a lot and having some familiarity with their ways. It hadn't really occurred to me before, though, I guess because I was so accustomed to having the kids around during these family events that I wouldn't have thought to question whether their presence there was really very fun. It just was.
But you know what? It would be more fun if they weren't there. Or at least it would be more fun in the sense of "playing a game out to its conclusion without everybody having to jump up seventy-five freaking times to attend to the needs of other people in other rooms."
And then when we got home- it is Saturday night, mind you- I was so tired I went to bed before eleven. Exciting stuff, huh?
But this is the life we chose, all of us who have children. If you go somewhere with your kids, you can't be surprised when there are a few hiccups in the smooth socializing flow that you used to enjoy pre-baby. So maybe I just need to redefine fun, stop demanding it on my own terms. Old fun was lingering conversations and uninterrupted meals and staying up late. New fun is seeing my relatives interact with my daughter and watching her learn new skills like self-feeding and banging her toys together. New fun is taking one last peak at my baby, sleeping like an angel, before I tuck my own tired self in.
So I take it back. It would not have been more fun to have dinner without the kids. It would have been a different kind of fun, yes, and a kind of fun that I occassionally miss. But we have a new fun now, a fun I know I will most definitely miss when it has left us.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
The Taming of the Shrew
Why am I being so evil?? Here is a list, just off the top of my head, of the random things I have decided to harp at my husband about today: the fact that his shirt, in the glaring sunlight of the church parking lot, was not black but in fact navy blue, and clashed JUST SO UNFORGIVABLY with his black shoes; the fact that he has not recently given me a compliment (to my memory) that specifically had to do with how I looked (referring to my actual face, hair, and/or body, as compliments about clothes no longer count;) the fact that when he clears the dishes from the dinner table and rinses them off, he does not also wipe down the countertops; the fact that he wanted to go play video games with his friend but should not be allowed to because he already did that once this weekend and that is just too darn much fun for a family man to be having in one weekend; the fact that he did not fasten his seat belt for the quarter-of-a-mile drive to church; and last but not least (prepare yourselves for the horror of this offense,) the fact that when he was giving our daughter her bath, he didn't see the towel and washcloth I had so thoughtfully laid out for him and reached around the corner of the bathtub, potentially taking his eyes off of Addy for one nanosecond, to get one himself.
I know, I know what you're thinking: "How does she live with this man? How did he manage to commit so many unspeakable acts in just one day?"
I don't have the answers to these questions, folks. Nor do I have the answer to the question, "Can a person be permanently stuck in premenstrual syndrome for the rest of her life? If so, is that an excuse for her to make shrill, shrewish comments whenever they form themselves in her head?"
I say again, oy vey. Maybe I should start washing down leftover Vicodin with a nip of white wine whenever I feel this meanspirited mood coming over me. No, you say? Chemical dependancy is not the answer? Then what? Self-restraint? Good Lord, I thought it would never come to that, I really did. I was sure marriage would only increase our mutual affection and that I, unlike every other wife on the face of the planet, would never ever feel the urge to offer petty, peevish little criticisms about the manner in which my husband chose to, say, brush his teeth.
Ah, how the mighty are fallen! What is that saying about the sins of the fathers? Perhaps that is true for womankind as well, and the sins of every wife since Adam and Eve are just trickling on down to me, the next in line for her obligatory dose of nagging and kvetching and obsessing!
But no. I jest. That is no excuse. I'm going to try to pull myself together here, I promise. I will not make my husband's life one of quiet desperation, nor will I drive him away to the garage or the bathroom, which I understand to be the traditional retreats of harassed husbands everywhere. That is my goal this week. May the force be with me!
I know, I know what you're thinking: "How does she live with this man? How did he manage to commit so many unspeakable acts in just one day?"
I don't have the answers to these questions, folks. Nor do I have the answer to the question, "Can a person be permanently stuck in premenstrual syndrome for the rest of her life? If so, is that an excuse for her to make shrill, shrewish comments whenever they form themselves in her head?"
I say again, oy vey. Maybe I should start washing down leftover Vicodin with a nip of white wine whenever I feel this meanspirited mood coming over me. No, you say? Chemical dependancy is not the answer? Then what? Self-restraint? Good Lord, I thought it would never come to that, I really did. I was sure marriage would only increase our mutual affection and that I, unlike every other wife on the face of the planet, would never ever feel the urge to offer petty, peevish little criticisms about the manner in which my husband chose to, say, brush his teeth.
Ah, how the mighty are fallen! What is that saying about the sins of the fathers? Perhaps that is true for womankind as well, and the sins of every wife since Adam and Eve are just trickling on down to me, the next in line for her obligatory dose of nagging and kvetching and obsessing!
But no. I jest. That is no excuse. I'm going to try to pull myself together here, I promise. I will not make my husband's life one of quiet desperation, nor will I drive him away to the garage or the bathroom, which I understand to be the traditional retreats of harassed husbands everywhere. That is my goal this week. May the force be with me!
Saturday, July 08, 2006
A Semi-Life?
I'm a little depressed lately... I don't know why, either, which always makes it worse, right? For instance, when our kitchen was all torn up for repairs, I was in a bad mood because the kitchen was all torn up and I wanted things back to normal. And then when they were, I was happy again. But right now I'm just grumpy, in a PMS-y sort of way, but I don't have PMS right now (unless one can argue that PMS could in fact extend to the entire three weeks which are, technically, premenstrual.)
So, I guess I'm just being...um, witchy right now. I feel like all I want to do is sleep, even though I have been getting plenty of sleep. I feel no motivation or excitement to get out of bed in the morning. I just want to pull the covers over my head and pretend it's still nighttime.
Okay, I just reread that, and I think I know what it is, why I don't get that motivated in the mornings : it's that- surprise, surprise- I spend a great deal of my day alone! And oneself is not always the most stimulating of company! I just wish that there was an actual reason for me to shower before three in the afternoon, or somebody sitting down eating meals with me to shame me out of eating cookies for breakfast. I wish somebody was my boss, actually. Sadly, I thrive under supervision. I want someone checking up on my work and praising me for a job well done and giving me to do lists and noticing my cute work clothes and styled hair. (It has been an entire month since I have blown my hair dry, much less curled it.)
When there is only me, a big horsey dog, and my daughter, who would be perfectly happy to roll around on the floor all day and who communicates by shrieking, it's hard to keep myself from feeling as though I am the sole warden of a small zoo.
And here I am alone again. It is Saturday morning, and my husband is golfing, and here I am still tending the zoo. I do not begrudge him golfing, I really don't. He should have fun and time with his friends, that is right and good. It's just... it's just this feeling I have, as though I'm always being left behind, baby on my hip, waving from the door while he pulls out of the driveway.
I see the unfairness in the mental picture I have just drawn, though. I know that my husband has cheerfully stayed with the baby many times while I went out with my friends. So I would like to point out that this moodiness isn't entirely about him. I guess it's about the friends too, and how I just feel out of touch with some of them- the non-mom ones. I listen to their stories and as much as I do not miss being single, I sort of miss how every other day there was some new crisis and some new piece of information to get either outraged or thrilled or devestated about. Life was... happening, there were things happening all the time. There were things to think about other than, "When was the last time I cleaned out the fridge?"
I was talking to one of my friends the other day about how furious she was at her ex over something she had just found out, and I asked her, "Does it feel like your heart is going to pound out of your chest, it's beating so hard?" And she said, "Yes, exactly like that." It was kind of surreal, remembering what it physically felt like to experience such an intense emotion, even a negative one. And I realized that I just haven't felt much of anything for a while beyond baby-love feelings. So maybe that's why I'm out of touch with my friends- they sense that I can't really relate anymore to the every day highs and lows of their emotions. I'm just here, at the sink, or loading the dryer, or pushing my grocery cart full of baby food and toilet paper.
But I'll get over it. It's just immaturity, probably, to always need something new going on. What I feel to be boredom I should try to cultivate into contentment. It could be much, much worse, my life, and for those moments when everything is just steady, I should be grateful that everyone is safe and well and fine.
To think, I was just preaching to my husband and sister-in-law the other day about how the best way to parent is to just be all Zen-like and find inner peace and radiate it around your house and then your kids will pick up on it and, I don't know, start mediating whenever they feel a tantrum coming on or something. Gosh, was I on crack? What was I talking about? I can't even find inner peace when there's nothing wrong, much less when I'm around a bunch of fighting kids!
So anyways... forgive my ramblings. I am fine. And to those certain people who were subjected to my insane diatribe on theoretical parenting techniques, ignore me! I am clearly no expert on modeling inner peace!
So, I guess I'm just being...um, witchy right now. I feel like all I want to do is sleep, even though I have been getting plenty of sleep. I feel no motivation or excitement to get out of bed in the morning. I just want to pull the covers over my head and pretend it's still nighttime.
Okay, I just reread that, and I think I know what it is, why I don't get that motivated in the mornings : it's that- surprise, surprise- I spend a great deal of my day alone! And oneself is not always the most stimulating of company! I just wish that there was an actual reason for me to shower before three in the afternoon, or somebody sitting down eating meals with me to shame me out of eating cookies for breakfast. I wish somebody was my boss, actually. Sadly, I thrive under supervision. I want someone checking up on my work and praising me for a job well done and giving me to do lists and noticing my cute work clothes and styled hair. (It has been an entire month since I have blown my hair dry, much less curled it.)
When there is only me, a big horsey dog, and my daughter, who would be perfectly happy to roll around on the floor all day and who communicates by shrieking, it's hard to keep myself from feeling as though I am the sole warden of a small zoo.
And here I am alone again. It is Saturday morning, and my husband is golfing, and here I am still tending the zoo. I do not begrudge him golfing, I really don't. He should have fun and time with his friends, that is right and good. It's just... it's just this feeling I have, as though I'm always being left behind, baby on my hip, waving from the door while he pulls out of the driveway.
I see the unfairness in the mental picture I have just drawn, though. I know that my husband has cheerfully stayed with the baby many times while I went out with my friends. So I would like to point out that this moodiness isn't entirely about him. I guess it's about the friends too, and how I just feel out of touch with some of them- the non-mom ones. I listen to their stories and as much as I do not miss being single, I sort of miss how every other day there was some new crisis and some new piece of information to get either outraged or thrilled or devestated about. Life was... happening, there were things happening all the time. There were things to think about other than, "When was the last time I cleaned out the fridge?"
I was talking to one of my friends the other day about how furious she was at her ex over something she had just found out, and I asked her, "Does it feel like your heart is going to pound out of your chest, it's beating so hard?" And she said, "Yes, exactly like that." It was kind of surreal, remembering what it physically felt like to experience such an intense emotion, even a negative one. And I realized that I just haven't felt much of anything for a while beyond baby-love feelings. So maybe that's why I'm out of touch with my friends- they sense that I can't really relate anymore to the every day highs and lows of their emotions. I'm just here, at the sink, or loading the dryer, or pushing my grocery cart full of baby food and toilet paper.
But I'll get over it. It's just immaturity, probably, to always need something new going on. What I feel to be boredom I should try to cultivate into contentment. It could be much, much worse, my life, and for those moments when everything is just steady, I should be grateful that everyone is safe and well and fine.
To think, I was just preaching to my husband and sister-in-law the other day about how the best way to parent is to just be all Zen-like and find inner peace and radiate it around your house and then your kids will pick up on it and, I don't know, start mediating whenever they feel a tantrum coming on or something. Gosh, was I on crack? What was I talking about? I can't even find inner peace when there's nothing wrong, much less when I'm around a bunch of fighting kids!
So anyways... forgive my ramblings. I am fine. And to those certain people who were subjected to my insane diatribe on theoretical parenting techniques, ignore me! I am clearly no expert on modeling inner peace!
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
What Is Happening to Me?
Yes, it has finally happened: I am now capable of walking through my kitchen, feeling that my bare feet are picking up little pieces of crumb and debris, and- gasp!- keep right on walking into the computer room and plop myself down to websurf instead of scrambling to fetch the broom and mop like some kind of deranged maid.
Maybe this is a bad thing, but some of my stay-at-home mom guilt must finally be slipping away, allowing me to sit idly at the computer for hours on end, oblivious to the pile of dirty dishes and granola bar wrappers surrounding me. (After rereading this sentence, it seems that yes, indeed, no "maybe" about it, this IS a bad thing.) For the past nine months, I have always had this nagging fear in the back of my mind that someone is going to catch on to the fact that my job is actually not that hard! That, especially in the early months of Addy's life, I had hours on end to do with whatever I pleased. I just had this vision of my husband, returning home from work one day to tap me on the shoulder and say ever so gently, "Um, hon? The gig it up."
And so, acutely aware of my husband and most of the other moms I knew who were out there somewhere in the land of working people, slurping coffee and multitasking, I resisted the urge to watch daytime television (okay, I resisted the urge to watch it while sitting- I left it on, but simultaneously bustled around with cleaning supplies and laundry baskets.) And I admittedly got a little OCD about it (how many times a week does the living room need to be dusted? As many times as you see a lone strand of dog hair lying on the coffee table, that's how many!) I was high on the scent of orange oil Pledge and Lysol antibacterial wipes.
But now, in these days when Addy's naps and fewer and shorter, and I spend a great deal of my time spooning food into her open, bird-like mouth and then wiping it off of every surface in a five foot radius, I find that my instinct is to use those precious naptimes not to scrub the kitchen, but to drink tea and read parenting journals on BabyCenter. And I hardly even feel a flicker of guilt about it.
But I suspect that I may be trading one obsessive-compulsive tendency for another: so in love am I with my favorite online journal (Bringing Up Ben and Birdy, which can be found at aforementioned BabyCenter) that I would prefer to sit and read endlessly about this family that I do not know or care about than to actually talk on the phone to someone in my own circle of family and friends. That's a little weird too, right?
I think my problem is that I am not capable of managing my own time in a reasonable, balanced way without someone standing over my shoulder. I am either working myself into a sweaty, self-righteous cleaning frenzy or I am lying around in my pajamas all day, moving away from the computer only to change diapers and dole out fruit puffs. (I am exaggerating, but not as much as I wish.) And I know, I know, the solution is a detailed schedule to which I, the mama, am devoted, with regular mealtimes and bedtimes and bathtimes and play/mental stimulation times. But I am just such an unscheduled, follow the spirit kind of person that I find this directly in opposition of my nature.
Surely, though, there is a happy medium. I will never be the woman with the day planner, true. But that doesn't mean I have to be the unshowered, ratty-haired trailer trash sorting through the sink full of dirty dishes for the "cleanest" bottle, does it?
Oy vey. I'll let you know how it goes. Right now I'm going to go do the dishes- by which I mean, unload the dishwasher just in time to load it back up with the dirty dishes that have been accumulating in the sink while the clean ones sat, pristine and untouched, still in the dishwasher. How sad am I?!
Maybe this is a bad thing, but some of my stay-at-home mom guilt must finally be slipping away, allowing me to sit idly at the computer for hours on end, oblivious to the pile of dirty dishes and granola bar wrappers surrounding me. (After rereading this sentence, it seems that yes, indeed, no "maybe" about it, this IS a bad thing.) For the past nine months, I have always had this nagging fear in the back of my mind that someone is going to catch on to the fact that my job is actually not that hard! That, especially in the early months of Addy's life, I had hours on end to do with whatever I pleased. I just had this vision of my husband, returning home from work one day to tap me on the shoulder and say ever so gently, "Um, hon? The gig it up."
And so, acutely aware of my husband and most of the other moms I knew who were out there somewhere in the land of working people, slurping coffee and multitasking, I resisted the urge to watch daytime television (okay, I resisted the urge to watch it while sitting- I left it on, but simultaneously bustled around with cleaning supplies and laundry baskets.) And I admittedly got a little OCD about it (how many times a week does the living room need to be dusted? As many times as you see a lone strand of dog hair lying on the coffee table, that's how many!) I was high on the scent of orange oil Pledge and Lysol antibacterial wipes.
But now, in these days when Addy's naps and fewer and shorter, and I spend a great deal of my time spooning food into her open, bird-like mouth and then wiping it off of every surface in a five foot radius, I find that my instinct is to use those precious naptimes not to scrub the kitchen, but to drink tea and read parenting journals on BabyCenter. And I hardly even feel a flicker of guilt about it.
But I suspect that I may be trading one obsessive-compulsive tendency for another: so in love am I with my favorite online journal (Bringing Up Ben and Birdy, which can be found at aforementioned BabyCenter) that I would prefer to sit and read endlessly about this family that I do not know or care about than to actually talk on the phone to someone in my own circle of family and friends. That's a little weird too, right?
I think my problem is that I am not capable of managing my own time in a reasonable, balanced way without someone standing over my shoulder. I am either working myself into a sweaty, self-righteous cleaning frenzy or I am lying around in my pajamas all day, moving away from the computer only to change diapers and dole out fruit puffs. (I am exaggerating, but not as much as I wish.) And I know, I know, the solution is a detailed schedule to which I, the mama, am devoted, with regular mealtimes and bedtimes and bathtimes and play/mental stimulation times. But I am just such an unscheduled, follow the spirit kind of person that I find this directly in opposition of my nature.
Surely, though, there is a happy medium. I will never be the woman with the day planner, true. But that doesn't mean I have to be the unshowered, ratty-haired trailer trash sorting through the sink full of dirty dishes for the "cleanest" bottle, does it?
Oy vey. I'll let you know how it goes. Right now I'm going to go do the dishes- by which I mean, unload the dishwasher just in time to load it back up with the dirty dishes that have been accumulating in the sink while the clean ones sat, pristine and untouched, still in the dishwasher. How sad am I?!
Thursday, June 29, 2006
A Blow to the Head
Well, I injured myself yet again! As you may have already perceived, I am not the most graceful of persons. I was lying on our bed talking to my husband as he changed out of his work clothes, and in a moment of exasperation (and melodrama) over something he had said, I flopped back against what I anticipated to be the pillow, but was in fact the headboard. So I am now typing with one hand while clutching a bag of frozen corn to my head with the other. I am the coolest person ever...
My hubby always says (jokingly, but not really, you know?) that he hopes our children inherit most of his genes in the physical coordination department. And I have to agree. Manual dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and so forth have never really been my strong suit. Growing up, the hallway in my parent's house was always covered with the grimy prints of my hands from where I had passed by, groping at the walls for support. This went on probably until about age ten. Ah, well. I was a good reader, though! Great reading comprehension. This did not exactly win me cool points when teams were being chosen for kickball, but most of the time my nose was too buried in my book to notice that the crowd around me was thinning out.
Another painful childhood memory was tennis lessons, which were free at the local tennis court, with the catch being that the instructors were advanced students from the local tennis club. They are not the most sensitive of God's creatures, high school kids, and my instructor had nicknamed me "Ballerina" by the end of my stint with the racket, in an obviously tongue in cheek reference which did not exactly bolster my ambition to give the whole tennis thing another go the next summer.
Speaking of ballet, I also took lessons in dance, of the tap, ballet, and baton twirling variety. This is a somewhat tender spot, as I actually did like dance (as opposed to tennis) and cherished delusions of one day perhaps joining a dance troupe in Paris. So, imagine, if you will, ten little girls, aged eight to eleven, all dressed in airy tutus and opaque pink tights, executing tight little pirouettes across the dance floor. Now imagine, following in their wake, an eleven year old girl already with her full heighth and... womanly shape, if you will, including thighs which resemble plump sausages stuffed into pink casing, careening across the room, aim wildly off, her twirls ending abruptly when she spins herself into the wall. I am in no way exaggerating.
So I guess that's it for today. If you happen to know me and are ever curious about my various bumps and bruises, rest assured that they are self-inflicted, and maybe, if you think about, say a little prayer that the klutz gene ends with me!
My hubby always says (jokingly, but not really, you know?) that he hopes our children inherit most of his genes in the physical coordination department. And I have to agree. Manual dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and so forth have never really been my strong suit. Growing up, the hallway in my parent's house was always covered with the grimy prints of my hands from where I had passed by, groping at the walls for support. This went on probably until about age ten. Ah, well. I was a good reader, though! Great reading comprehension. This did not exactly win me cool points when teams were being chosen for kickball, but most of the time my nose was too buried in my book to notice that the crowd around me was thinning out.
Another painful childhood memory was tennis lessons, which were free at the local tennis court, with the catch being that the instructors were advanced students from the local tennis club. They are not the most sensitive of God's creatures, high school kids, and my instructor had nicknamed me "Ballerina" by the end of my stint with the racket, in an obviously tongue in cheek reference which did not exactly bolster my ambition to give the whole tennis thing another go the next summer.
Speaking of ballet, I also took lessons in dance, of the tap, ballet, and baton twirling variety. This is a somewhat tender spot, as I actually did like dance (as opposed to tennis) and cherished delusions of one day perhaps joining a dance troupe in Paris. So, imagine, if you will, ten little girls, aged eight to eleven, all dressed in airy tutus and opaque pink tights, executing tight little pirouettes across the dance floor. Now imagine, following in their wake, an eleven year old girl already with her full heighth and... womanly shape, if you will, including thighs which resemble plump sausages stuffed into pink casing, careening across the room, aim wildly off, her twirls ending abruptly when she spins herself into the wall. I am in no way exaggerating.
So I guess that's it for today. If you happen to know me and are ever curious about my various bumps and bruises, rest assured that they are self-inflicted, and maybe, if you think about, say a little prayer that the klutz gene ends with me!
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Women's Work
So, today I was trying to be all helpful and productive (plus I was actually out of bed and had my coffee before 8AM!) so I went outside to mulch and pick up the roughly a zillion sticks that last week's storm had blown around our yard. I'm supposed to go out to dinner with my mom tonight, while my poor husband has to mow the lawn, so I thought, maybe I'll be a nice person and make his job a little easier by clearing the yard for him. Nice, right? No! Terrible idea. No good deed goes unpunished, that is my lesson of the day. To explain, here is a blow by blow account of the inner workings of my mind for this tragic episode of attempted helpfulness:
Hmm, Addy is awake, so she'll have to go outside with me while I mulch. But wait, the bags of mulch are still in the garage, and I can't just leave her sitting in her stroller alone outside while I drag them all to the backyard. She might get stung by a bee or something, who knows! I'll just put her in her exersaucer while I take the bags out to the back.
(Sarah puts on sandals, brightly assures daughter that she will return momentarily, and heads to garage.)
Oh, wait- these bags are big. And there are a lot. It's going to take me forever to get them all back there. If I can even lift them, which is doubtful. Better get the wheelbarrow.
(Sarah takes look around garage.)
Oh wait, no wheelbarrow. Where is wheelbarrow?
(Sarah takes second look around as if expecting wheelbarrow to sheepishly emerge from its hiding place.)
Oh wait, wheelbarrow is in the backyard. Husband was using it.
(Sarah walks around the house to fenced in garden, which at the moment is more of a weed garden.)
Aha! Wheelbarrow. Oh dear. Upon closer inspection, wheelbarrow is filled with.... packed in dirt. Why, why is wheelbarrow filled with dirt?! Oh well. What to do? I need to break up the dirt and get it out of the wheelbarrow in order to fill it with bags of mulch, that's what I need to do. Obviously. I'll just go get the shovel.
(Still unperturbed, Sarah heads back to the garage to find shovel. Finds shovel, returns to backyard.)
All righty then, now to break up the dirt. Oh good, this is working. Now to dump it out...
(Sarah attempts to tip wheelbarrow, but instead it wobbles and falls on its side, nearly pinning Sarah's leg and spilling its contents into the one part of the garden that actually is a garden and should not have mounds of dirt randomly tossed into it.)
What... No, no stop that! Why....
(Sarah rights the wheelbarrow, fumbles around for a bit, and then manages to overturn it on its other side.)
That's better. All right, an empty wheelbarrow. Mission accomplished. Oh wait, the mission was to haul mulch to the backyard. Well, one step closer anyways. Off to the garage to get the bags!
(Sarah heads off triumphantly towards the garage, but her triumph is short lived as she is immediately opposed by the rogue wheelbarrow, which is attempting to flop to either side with every step.)
Oh, come on... What the heck. All right, let me just see what the trouble is here...
(Exasperated, Sarah bends over to inspect useless wheelbarrow, forgets that all wheelbarrows have portruding handles, and slams left eye directly into one of said handles. Sarah puts hand to her face and wonders how she will explain black eye to concerned acquaintances. She then looks down with her good eye and realizes that tire of demon-possessed wheelbarrow is completely flat. Sarah returns to house, defeated, to find her poor neglected child yawning pitifully, her sad, tired little head lying on the tray of her exersaucer.)
So, there you have it, folks. Don't attempt helpfulness! You will only get hurt! A woman's place is in the house, that is another moral to my story. Also, if you have a baby, you shouldn't try to get yardwork done. You will end up feeling like a negligent mother who should be hauled off to jail. And those are my words of wisdom for today.
Hmm, Addy is awake, so she'll have to go outside with me while I mulch. But wait, the bags of mulch are still in the garage, and I can't just leave her sitting in her stroller alone outside while I drag them all to the backyard. She might get stung by a bee or something, who knows! I'll just put her in her exersaucer while I take the bags out to the back.
(Sarah puts on sandals, brightly assures daughter that she will return momentarily, and heads to garage.)
Oh, wait- these bags are big. And there are a lot. It's going to take me forever to get them all back there. If I can even lift them, which is doubtful. Better get the wheelbarrow.
(Sarah takes look around garage.)
Oh wait, no wheelbarrow. Where is wheelbarrow?
(Sarah takes second look around as if expecting wheelbarrow to sheepishly emerge from its hiding place.)
Oh wait, wheelbarrow is in the backyard. Husband was using it.
(Sarah walks around the house to fenced in garden, which at the moment is more of a weed garden.)
Aha! Wheelbarrow. Oh dear. Upon closer inspection, wheelbarrow is filled with.... packed in dirt. Why, why is wheelbarrow filled with dirt?! Oh well. What to do? I need to break up the dirt and get it out of the wheelbarrow in order to fill it with bags of mulch, that's what I need to do. Obviously. I'll just go get the shovel.
(Still unperturbed, Sarah heads back to the garage to find shovel. Finds shovel, returns to backyard.)
All righty then, now to break up the dirt. Oh good, this is working. Now to dump it out...
(Sarah attempts to tip wheelbarrow, but instead it wobbles and falls on its side, nearly pinning Sarah's leg and spilling its contents into the one part of the garden that actually is a garden and should not have mounds of dirt randomly tossed into it.)
What... No, no stop that! Why....
(Sarah rights the wheelbarrow, fumbles around for a bit, and then manages to overturn it on its other side.)
That's better. All right, an empty wheelbarrow. Mission accomplished. Oh wait, the mission was to haul mulch to the backyard. Well, one step closer anyways. Off to the garage to get the bags!
(Sarah heads off triumphantly towards the garage, but her triumph is short lived as she is immediately opposed by the rogue wheelbarrow, which is attempting to flop to either side with every step.)
Oh, come on... What the heck. All right, let me just see what the trouble is here...
(Exasperated, Sarah bends over to inspect useless wheelbarrow, forgets that all wheelbarrows have portruding handles, and slams left eye directly into one of said handles. Sarah puts hand to her face and wonders how she will explain black eye to concerned acquaintances. She then looks down with her good eye and realizes that tire of demon-possessed wheelbarrow is completely flat. Sarah returns to house, defeated, to find her poor neglected child yawning pitifully, her sad, tired little head lying on the tray of her exersaucer.)
So, there you have it, folks. Don't attempt helpfulness! You will only get hurt! A woman's place is in the house, that is another moral to my story. Also, if you have a baby, you shouldn't try to get yardwork done. You will end up feeling like a negligent mother who should be hauled off to jail. And those are my words of wisdom for today.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
It's a Small, Small, Small, Small World
Everything I have dealt with today, literally and figuratively, has been small. For instance, this afternoon I spent a good hour folding, sorting, putting away, and reorganizing my daughter's bitty little clothes (her wardrobe could clothe an entire neighborhood of underprivileged children, but that's another story, and has mainly to do with my mom's addiction to ebay.) I have turned over and then refilled the same basket of little bitty toys approximately four times already, rinsed off of tiny bowls and spoons the remains of several tiny little meals, and shortly thereafter changed several tiny but potent little diapers. My vocabulary consists mainly of tiny little words, many of which are not even, technically speaking, words at all.
So you get the idea. Sometimes it's just hard to feel that my day is really worthwhile. Are the waking hours in which I spend my time with a dog and an infant really counting for anything in the grand scheme of things, or are they just disappearing, one after another, and with them small fragments of my brain, my personality, and my sense of humor (to say nothing of my sense of style, which lately seems to consist of whatever covers the lovehandle/stretchmark portion of my midriff)?
I know the answer to this, of course. I just wanted to sort of send this question out into the universe, so I could hear it and then know that of course it's rhetorical.
So you get the idea. Sometimes it's just hard to feel that my day is really worthwhile. Are the waking hours in which I spend my time with a dog and an infant really counting for anything in the grand scheme of things, or are they just disappearing, one after another, and with them small fragments of my brain, my personality, and my sense of humor (to say nothing of my sense of style, which lately seems to consist of whatever covers the lovehandle/stretchmark portion of my midriff)?
I know the answer to this, of course. I just wanted to sort of send this question out into the universe, so I could hear it and then know that of course it's rhetorical.
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