I Don’t Have Problems

My part-time job is difficuly to explain, but it entails doing data collection for companies in the aerospace industry. Because of the nature of my work, I have been reading just about every article available about the crash of Air France flight 447.

The stories that are coming out of that crash are enough to break your heart. The flight attendant who boarded the doomed flight as the first jaunt back from her maternity leave. The family of four who took two separate flights on their vacation, the husband and daughter waiting at the airport for a mother and son that would never come. A group of businessmen who had won their place on the flight as an incentive from their company.

You try your hardest not to think about it– that we are all anywhere between 80 seconds and 80 years from our own demise. You couldn’t function if you spent too much time contemplating the finality, and the eventual insignificance of our own lives. 100 years from now, will it even matter that I was here? That I folded this laundry? That I loved my family and friends? You tell yourself yes, of course, and in part our legacy lives on through our families and good deeds, but really our time here is such a blip, such a millisecond in the grand fabric of things, it is very easy to feel impossibly small and pointless.

_____________________________________

I’ve spent a lot of time in the car in the last few days with Hubs. One of the things we have discussed is that he thought I was unhappy staying home with the kids. Of course I’m not, not really. The thing is, he’s really the only person I can vent to about my day– the same way that when I was working at my job, I needed to vent at the end of the day. The same way that he bitches about his work issues at the end of the day. It’s no different– even the most rewarding job has some down sides.

The bottom line is that even though I don’t regret my decision to stay home, it is still incredibly difficult, exhausting, and stressful. Two months later, I am still adjusting with how to make the most of this time, how to get through the day, and how to balance tenderness and discipline, their needs with my own. It is going to take time, the same way that starting any new job takes a period of training and a steep on-the-job learning curve. Because though I did not just become a mother two months ago, there is a big difference between the kind of mothering I did as a WOHM and the kind of relentless tedium that fills my days now.

Nevertheless, I do enjoy it, and I am very grateful to be able to do it. I am happy to be with my kids, even if every single minute of it is not unicorns and cotton candy. And wanting to be here, even loving being here, does not negate the fact that there are a lot of whining and senseless tantrums in my day which feel like they will suck my soul out of me through my nose.

_________________________________________________________

All that said, as I think about the families and people whose lives were torn apart last week, possibly by the failure of one little part of a plane, I try to have perspective. Sure, my son refuses to wipe his own ass. I weigh too much and I don’t appreciate my husband enough. I wish I had a second bathroom. My knee always hurts.

But I don’t have problems.

Not real ones.

I have a home, safety, a family I love, good friends, a mostly healthy body and mind, an education, and most importantly, I have my life.

I have the ability to make right now, this moment, count. Even if all of the moments don’t count for much 100 years from now, right now, this exact second– it matters to me.

Promises, Promises

Conditions

It’s time to step on my soapbox. What’s the occasion? The murder of Dr. George Tiller, a doctor here in Kansas who was made nationally famous by irate anti-abortion groups. He was shot today in church. In front of his family.

It would be really easy to rant about how hypocritical I find these fundamentalist groups that rage about the sanctity of life, but have no problem promoting violence to assert their views, or who support the death penalty. It’s tempting to go into the rage I feel about people who use religion as an excuse for hate, violence, and murder.

Trust me, I’m fighting the urge.

Let’s talk instead, however, about Dr. Tiller. Whether or not you believe in a woman’s right to choose, or when you believe human life begins, the courage and dedication that Dr. Tiller showed for what he believed in is nothing short of extraordinary.

Dr. Tiller has been shot before. He’s had his clinic bombed. He has had his life threatened on a daily basis for a very long time.

As tragic as today’s senseless murder is, it can’t come as a shock to his family. It wouldn’t have come to a shock to him.

And yet, he continued in his medical practice. A part of that practice was providing abortions for women who made that choice. Abortion was not even close to the entirety of his practice– but of course that’s the part everyone became fixated on.

He believed in a woman’s right to choose, and he was willing to die for that right.

He was a father, grandfather, husband, and brother. But today he died for a woman’s right to choose.

There’s not much in this world I would be willing to die for. My children.

Whether or not you believe as he did, perhaps today we can mourn the loss of a person whose personal convictions regarding the rights of others was so strong he was willing to lie down his life. Under the most dire of conditions, he did not turn away from his convictions.

And then let’s deal with the shame of living in a country where having that dissenting opinion had to cost him his life.

And Then My Husband Died of Embarassment. The End.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Sometimes the husband and I have been known to engage in a little “adult romping time”– if you catch my drift.

I know it’s shocking, what with us having created three children and all. (I swear mom, that’s the only three times.)

During the course of our ten year relationship, the frequency and interest either of us have had in these romps have waxed and waned, as is natural over the course of time.

When we first started out, it was a little sickening. We spent such long hours making out that I used to go around with an actual sore on the end of my nose– from the skin rubbing against his stubble while we smooched. We lived twenty feet away from each other, and worked with each other, and while I am sure the home fires would have burned just as brightly if that hadn’t been the case, it didn’t help my nose any.

As different life situations have emerged, such as the death of Hubs’ mom, the constant needs of newborns, and my various health issues, interest has drastically declined for one or the other of us. It’s natural, of course, and to be expected. Though there have definitely been times in our relationship where one of us wanted more action than the other, we try to keep a level head about it. There’s nothing less sexy than getting all pouty and whiney about not getting laid.

Now that the seats and tray tables have been somewhat returned to their full (mostly) upright positions as far as my baby factory is concerned, I am finally able to think about adult romping without wanting to cry. In fact, I am thinking about adult romping much more frequently than I probably have for years, with the exception of that period of time right before Squeak was conceived. (Hence, Squeak.)

Concern about shitting yourself tends to limit one’s enthusiasm in this area.

Anywho.

It’s nice to remember that I not only love my husband, but I want him as well. (Poof. That was Hubs exploding with embarrassment. Sorry.)

But we’ve got a new problem, one we have affectionately nicknamed “LCB.”

Little Cock Block.

Every time Hubs so much as leans in to kiss me with anything more than the chastest of intentions, Squeak begins to grunt and complain loudly. He does this even when I’m not holding him– he can be asleep in his crib five feet away, and if Hubs so much as reaches his arm around me, a resounding “UNNNNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” comes from the darkness.

Now, I have had to lower my standards somewhat about what constitutes romance since I became a parent, but this is definitely not helping our mojo.  It would be funny if it weren’t so maddening.

Because life was so hectic around Squeak’s birth, Hubs was already taking more time to really bond with Squeak than he would have liked. However, the fact that this little dude is getting in the way of him getting some action is not helping the situation.

Hopefully when Squeak begins nursing a little less often and we can move him out of our room, we’ll be out of LCB Radar Range. Either that, or I am going to start putting in earplugs as foreplay, so that I don’t have to hear his patented LCB Grunt Alarm.

To Sleep, Perchance to Parent

This just in: parents with newborns don’t sleep very much.

I know. Shocking.

When I was a little kid, my mom worked part-time nights. She did this because she wanted to be home with us, and this was a way that she could do that. She was a nurse, and by working that shift she could put in a few nights a week, make decent money, and still be there for us each day.

Mostly.

I say mostly because I have a lot of memories of my mother “not asleep” on various horizontal surfaces throughout our home. My sister and I would play Barbies, and she’d be “not sleeping” on the bottom bunk of our beds. Playing a board game in the family room? She’s be “not sleeping” on the couch. TV? “Not sleeping” in the chair.

If you believe my mother, she didn’t need sleep. (Just coffee, Diet Coke and popcorn. Which is all I ever saw her eat.)

When we needed anything (now that I have small children I realize that we bothered her for all kind of “needs” that were probably completely asanine,) we’d jiggle her arm and yell, “MOM WAKE UP!” You had to yell, my mom’s “not sleeping” was hard to disturb.

“I’m not sleeping!” she’d promise. “I’m just coasting!“

My mom “coasted” with a snore that could wake Jerry Garcia from the grave.

The only way my mother could keep herself awake was to get up and out of the house. So we’d wander the greater St. Louis area, checking out the art museum, the zoo, the playground– anything to keep us occupied and her vertical.

Thirty years later, I am so there.

I haven’t slept more than three consecutive hours since the baby was born. In addition to his nursing needs, I have to be up at 3:45 in the morning until 6am to do my part-time job. I am not complaining– I can’t tell you what that financial peace of mind has done for me. I go back to bed when I finish working– on a good day the kids sleep until 8 and I get two more hours of sleep.

On a bad day, my total hours of sleep is no more than 4 or 5 hours.

I am a person who needs sleep. I get dizzy and light-headed with less. I cannot physically function without at least six hours, but I am at my best on seven or more. Right now, unless I want to go to bed at 9pm every night, that’s just not an option.

So I’ve started “coasting” a bit. Sometimes that one Olivia episode is just enough to get me up and re-energized. I also make up  activities and errands to get us out of the house, get myself moving so I don’t drift off to sleep. I have begun to appreciate that not only does it help me stay awake and engaged, the kids bicker less when we are running around.

Still, I dream of the day in the not-too-distant future when Squeak is sleeping through the night, and we get some semblance of a pattern to our days. I dream of sleep. Delicious, deep sleep.

Hacklez. I Haz Dem.

This afternoon, the boys had healthy child appointments. Noise had his 5 year physical, and Squeak his ten week.

It could have gone better.

I started out in a pissy mood because I found out that my health insurance refused Squeak’s last two exams, saying that he was not insured. While it’s not that big a deal– we were doubly insured at the time because our new insurance overlapped mine– it still irked me because I looked like my account was delinquent.

Then Noise almost failed his hearing test because he wasn’t paying attention. The nurse had to explain the directions like three times. He was just geeked out to be wearing headphones.

Then we found out that Squeak, who nearly almost looks right with this whole head, has something called torticollis, which is not a huge issue but will require physical therapy. Luckily, we caught it early, before one side of his head became flatter. Like a melon that’s laid too long on one side.

Then my doctor told me that Noise’s BMI was “something to watch.” This seriously raised my hackles, as a kid that was always heavier than my sister, and sometimes called ‘fat’ as a kid. My mind raced straight to his school years, fighting weight issues, being teased on the playground. But then I looked at Noise, doubtful.

He doesn’t look like a kid with a weight issue. (I didn’t have a weight issue either. I was just a solid, healthy, athletic kid.)

I mean, he’s always been on the high end of the weight percentile– until he was about three, he rocked the 99th. He was a fat baby, a roly-poly breastfed porker. He had moobs. But to see him now– my god, he’s nearly lean.

Nevertheless, I asked what that meant. She explained that he would probably always be a kid who needed to be involved in sports, needed to have his intake watched, needed to be careful to be active and eat healthfully. And I felt guilty, and ashamed. I mean, I’m the one feeding the kid, right? If he’s got a weight issue, that’s 100% on me.

Except that my kids eat a lot less crap than most kids. They are active and don’t watch much TV. They run constantly.

I talked to Hubs about it. He was incredulous. I talked to my mother, a nurse, about it. She was shocked as well.

Then I looked over his medical forms. And it turns out they flubbed his height, entering it in as a full inch shorter than he measured today. And on the CDC chart online, that was enough to put him safely back within the “healthy weight” range. And I was intensely frustrated, because the office had closed in the meantime, meaning Noise would have to spend this evening with the word “obese” stamped on his medical chart.

Even though it wasn’t true.

Even though he’s a healthy kid.

Just having that there, that label, that complication, it bothered me so damn much. It’s not what I want for my kids, and I know full well how cruel the world can be when a kid is different. He’s already got glasses, for pete’s sake. He doesn’t need to be the fat kid, too.

After the doctor told me to watch his BMI, the boys got their shots.

Ironically, Noise was given a gift certificate for a free ice cream cone for being brave for his shots.

And it was there, nagging at the back of my mind, the whole time he was enjoying that ice cream– am I harming my child by allowing even this indulgence? Am I screwing this all up? Would I screw it up worse to allow it to become a thing? Already, we discuss at every meal what the “healthiest thing on the plate” is, and they know that when they are hungry, they can have any fruit or vegetable they want. I chose most of their snacks carefully. They have never had soda. They get only one juice a day. Desserts are the exception rather than the rule around here.

I don’t even let them do heroin anymore.

This culture of worry, of making a thing out of every little thing– it’s a bad fit for someone like me, who worries about everything way too much.

I decided not to sweat it. And then I went to the pharmacy to refill my Z010ft. That should help.

Bittersweet Smart

Noise can read.

Let me say that again.

Noise can read.

I mean, he’s nearly 5, and I understand that’s the age these things generally occur. He’s not a child prodigy or anything.

Except that, well, maybe he is. At least in my imagination. Because no one has really taught him to read. Of course we’ve taught him the sounds letters make, and we’ve read to him for hours every day, and he has a natural aptitude for reading. He could identify letters before he could walk, and has always been drawn to the written word.

What I just can’t get over is when he reads something somewhere, turns to me, and says, “Mommy, that says _________.”

But it’s not just that. He’s figuring out math, too. He reasoned out multiplication last night, after Hubs told him that he was nearly 40, ten times as old as Noise. (So that’s one two three four five six seven eight nine ten fours?) He can do some basic addition and subtraction.

He’s figuring out patterns. He can reason out things that I can’t believe a five year old should be able to.

He’s just so damn smart. Too smart for his own good. He spends too much time contemplating things that he shouldn’t be worrying about. Death, for instance. Santa Claus. What he’ll be when he’s grown up. How to outsleuth his doddering parents. (That would be me and Hubs.)

Yesterday, I caught him snooping in my room for the first time. When I asked him what he was going, he got a shit-eating grin and said, “Nothing. Just looking under your bed.”

“For what?”
“Nothing.”

And then it dawned on me that homeboy’s birthday is in a few weeks, and I realized he was snooping around for his present. Then the twenty questions began (more like 100 questions) to try to figure out what we’re planning on giving him.

It’s exhilarating to watch him develop his mind, to learn skills that are going to free him and make him capable in this world. It’s also terrifying, because the more he can read, and figure out, the less I can protect him from the ugliness of this world. Sadly, there is too little time between reading Dr. Seuss and reading about humanity’s atrocities. And with each piece of that knowledge, he will move farther away from being a child.

I will never forget the hours I spent as a child, awake at night because I had come to the realization that someday everyone I knew would die. The inevitability of it, and the awareness that I would have to live through that loss, was tragic to me. I didn’t really contemplate my own death. I just didn’t want to live in a world where my mother was not alive. (Now that I have children, I pray each day that my children experience this loss, because god willing they should far outlive me.)

I know that it is this same whirling worry and smarts that keeps Noise up some nights. And I know the path ahead of him.

So I watch with excitement. And sadness. Worry, and joy.

Let the Son Shine In

So, I know I haven’t been around much, between the crazy and the being home and the adjusting and the not sleeping and all. Sorry about that.

It’s just… there’s this really distracting thing going on over here.

He smiles.

He coos.

He giggles a bit.

Now would you be sitting around blogging?

I think not.

Digging

It seems like I am always digging. Digging out from under breakfast, lunch, dinner, laundry, a craft project, a dirty house. I don’t know why I thought it would be different.

It’s true that I have more time to clean now. But also true that everything gets messier because we are here many more hours of the day.

We’re falling into some semblance of a new routine– one that involves multitudes more whining and bickering than we previously had around here. I don’t know why. I guess they have learned better how to push each other’s buttons.I try not to get involved in it. I tell them I only want to know if someone is hurt.

But they also play more together, and in more complex schemes than they did while they were in school. And they defend each other, and have real conversations that are whispered behind closed doors. They are each other’s best friend, and each other’s worst enemy.

This is how I remember life with my own sister as a child.

I haven’t gotten into the playdate thing yet– not for lack of desire but mainly because our timing seems askew– by the time the kids are ready to leave, the baby needs to eat, or it’s lunch time. Truthfully, most days, I have a grande scheme and they tell me they would just rather play here. I don’t know why– they are driving each other batty.

Some days I force the issue, and venture out. But most days I empty the garage of every outside toy, and sit on a blanket in the shade with the baby, and they play and putter and bicker and run. When it rains they trash the house and we usually bake.

My day is full, of what I can never recollect. It starts at 3:45 when no one is awake, and ends at 9:30 with me in bed, the baby beside me in his crib. Every minute is full of one child or another.

I know that I need to cultivate a life of my own, but it’s difficult and I’m tired and just flowing along with this seems easier somehow. Like if I resist it, I will only make it harder for myself.

This is my life, now.

I don’t feel shrunken, as I feared that I would. At least not often enough to note.

I do often feel very… utilitarian sometimes. Like I am here to fulfill a purpose, that I am a machine in this house, and that I do not really exist outside of others’ needs. That’s a harsh way to put it, but not really untrue. I am the cook, the maid, the laundress, the nanny, the police… All of those things and more in my day.

But sometimes, when we’re all four on the blanket on a breezy afternoon and the baby is cooing at them, and we’re all giggling and talking about birds or weeds or worms– I find my Amanda. And I am grateful for this time, this moment that is flying by faster than I can fathom, and my kids more fully know each other and I’m seeing more of their beauty (along with their foibles)…

Sometimes, of course, I want to start drinking at 10am. And not stop until Hubs walks in the door.

How I Can Tell It’s Working

I can tell my Z010ft is working somewhat, because today in the middle of the Magic House in St. Louis I lost my daughter for, like, three minutes, and I didn’t die. And when I found her, I didn’t flip out, yell, or get angry. And when I told Hubs about it later, I didn’t hyperventilate.

I suppose I have accidentally gone on a bit of a blogging vacation– I came to St. Louis to chill with my family, and I have been too dog-tired from all this kid losing to write.