It was a rough weekend here at the ol' Bosche stead.
I earned every bit of it, every whine, every tear, every fit whether mine or that of one or the other of my offspring. Because my last post was just too life-is-grand to sustain itself.
It was brutally hot, both inside and out, and we never did get the rain I'd been counting on. I worked too much and drank too little. Alex regressed to the age of three, crying over everything that went even microscopically askew for no explicable reason.
Katherine, dear, sweet baby Katherine ... well, she just about did me in with her refusal to sleep and the resulting caustic crankiness. She wouldn't eat and five minutes later would scream for food like she was being torn limb from limb by a hungry mountain lion. She spat up so much we ran through most of the clean clothes in her drawer. And that's a LOT of clothes (thanks be to LJ!). No matter how we held her, swaddled, unswaddled, tummy to tummy, back to tummy, up high, down low, at an angle ... she squirmed and "ernnnngh"ed until you put her down. Whereupon she would scream.
White noise, fail.
Car rides, fail.
Alex making funny faces, double fail, as the failure hurt HIS suddenly extraordinarily delicate feelings and sent him into a funk from which he didn't emerge for hours.
Gas drops, Zantac, burping, bouncing, swinging, swaying, rocking, being still.
NOTHING WOULD WORK.
Thank GOD she slept through the night last night or I think I might have gone off the deep end. Which isn't saying much, as I usually tread water in that space in the pool that's right next to the rope line with the little buoys.
I got out of the house all of three times, and one was to get the mail and find no lottery checks awaiting me. Just a birthday invitation for some kid who called Alex a loser. (It was in the frame of preferred football teams, which really means this kid's DAD is to blame, so I won't hold it against him too hard. Though we are going to the state fair next weekend instead of to his party.)
One of my on-the-side articles got flagged for plagiarism, which set off every single defense mechanism I own all at once, at full blast. I would NEVER. It was cleared quickly, and it helped some that it was flagged by a computerized plagiarism checker, not a person, and only because I used a tiny phrase from a governmental document because I was scared to change the wording too much for fear of making it wrong and getting carted off to jail.
I don't know, I'm tired!
My birthday present to myself didn't work so we had to take it back.
My throat was and is on fire, and I'm hoping it's ragweed because if I'm getting sick I'll take a cue from Katherine and scream my displeasure to the stars.
...Otherwise, life is grand!
Small potatoes, I realize, and a minute price to pay for all that I do have and all that goes right more often than I have any right to expect.
But still. Next time I go off on a Pollyanna tangent, muzzle me.
***
Upon re-reading, I realize I used "defense mechanism" wrong. But it's really less of an error on my part than a compliment to anyone who's reading. My friends and family are smart. Y'all know what I meant.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Well, THIS is new.
I’m new to this work-at-home thing.
Eyes on my computer monitor, I reach over for my coffee and my hand comes back holding a bottle, a pacifier, a bottle of Mylicon.
That almost never happened at the office.
Alex started kindergarten last week, and now it’s just me and my little turkey, 9-week-old Katherine. She’s still sleeping a lot, as newborns are wont to do, and I usually set her up to nap next to me on the couch while I tap away at my laptop and listen to her gentle coos and rhythmic sucking sleep sounds.
One thing hasn’t changed from the days when she was in me instead of beside me: She still kicks me while I’m working.
I expected to feel a little shaken up at first, a little chicken-with-its-head-cut-off, and I do. I’ve never had a job under the same roof as my bed, my refrigerator … my underwear drawer. At first I worked feverishly to make up for the feeling that I was doing something wrong.
I felt, quite sincerely, like I was playing hooky. I was in pajamas and sock feet in the middle of the day; how could I not feel that way?!
To outrun the guilt I threw myself into work. I wrote, I edited, I revised, I read, I repeated. I cleaned the house. I did the laundry. One day, I kid you not, I scrubbed the baseboards. I came back to write some more. Oh yes, and there was a tiny baby and a bored 5-year-old who both needed attention in diametrically opposed ways. People, I did it all.
But my work suffered; I noticed the quality slipping, and even though I’m one of my toughest critics, I maintain that when I’m mixing up “there,” “their,” and “they’re” and failing to make even a hint of a point in 500 words, there’s a problem.
And my mothering suffered, too. “Go outside and play,” I said to Alex one day when he was pestering me with his ballooning and absolutely valid boredom. “Mommy’s working.”
“It’s too hot,” he argued.
“Go get a snack, then,” I said, irritably. And as he ran off to the kitchen to get a brownie (I hadn’t specified, in my horrific display of lazy parenting, what kind of snack he should choose to relieve his boredom) I realized what I’d just said.
“Wait a minute, we don’t eat just because we’re bored!” I called after him. That child looked me straight in the eye and then, pointedly, at the open bag of potato chips on the table next to me.
Katherine woke to eat every three hours like a hungry little clock with a bloodcurdling wail to chime the hour, and I found myself rushing impatiently through whatever I was doing before tending to her.
I would type with one hand and feed with the other.
Even my dogs were being neglected. One of them adopted a stuffed animal "baby" of her own and the other developed an Eeyore complex and moped around the house sighing … wait, he’s always done that.
Slowing down wasn’t an option; I had to prove to the world that I wasn’t sitting on my couch eating potato chips and watching Oprah.
Or, because I was sitting on my couch eating potato chips and watching Oprah, I had to prove that wasn’t all I was doing.
I’d just taken on twenty times more work than I ever tackled at the office and I wanted everyone to know it.
“How was your day?” from my husband translated to, “Did you manage to drag yourself out of bed today while I was out in the real world breaking my back to keep our kids from starving?”
No, he doesn’t talk like that.
But because it’s what I feared, it’s what I heard, and my answer, a rattled-off list of every single solitary thing I had done since opening my eyes (very, very early) that morning, reflected that fear.
I’m getting over that fear slowly, coming to realize that working from home can truly be the best of both worlds. I can wipe noses and elicit toothless grins and not miss a beat writing daily posts for Corporate Wellness Advisor (shameless plug) or one of my other regular clients.
I’m learning that it’s all about time management and priorities. When the baby is spitting up and gargling on it, I am going to suction her out before I finish the sentence I was writing. Even if I’d had the perfect conclusion in mind and those few moments of oh-my-God-she’s-drowning panic blew it right out of my head.
If I don’t get enough done during the day because she won’t abide not being held (with both arms, the demanding little thing), I toss dinner duty my husband’s way and stomp on the little voice that tries to tell me he’s been working all day because so have I.
I can work while he does the parenting sometimes, and when that doesn’t cut it, well, that’s what wee hours and weekends are for.
I’ve realized it helps to get dressed … besides making me feel like less of a slob, I can’t very well walk Alex to and from school in my torn 15-year-old Victoria’s Secret nightgown. Even though it is the softest thing I've ever known.
Which reminds me that it’s almost time to get Katherine fed and Zantac’ed up (moms are all nurses, too; add that to the list) so we can walk down the street to meet him without her doing her “errngh, errrngh, errrrngh” thing the whole way. (It’s a sound of distress or annoyance, sometimes both, and I blame many a typo on it because it gets right down in the middle of your middle ear and vibrates your whole head until you want to jam a pencil into your eardrum.)
So here we go.
Keep the work coming, I say. I got the balancing act down.
Eyes on my computer monitor, I reach over for my coffee and my hand comes back holding a bottle, a pacifier, a bottle of Mylicon.
That almost never happened at the office.
Alex started kindergarten last week, and now it’s just me and my little turkey, 9-week-old Katherine. She’s still sleeping a lot, as newborns are wont to do, and I usually set her up to nap next to me on the couch while I tap away at my laptop and listen to her gentle coos and rhythmic sucking sleep sounds.
One thing hasn’t changed from the days when she was in me instead of beside me: She still kicks me while I’m working.
I expected to feel a little shaken up at first, a little chicken-with-its-head-cut-off, and I do. I’ve never had a job under the same roof as my bed, my refrigerator … my underwear drawer. At first I worked feverishly to make up for the feeling that I was doing something wrong.
I felt, quite sincerely, like I was playing hooky. I was in pajamas and sock feet in the middle of the day; how could I not feel that way?!
To outrun the guilt I threw myself into work. I wrote, I edited, I revised, I read, I repeated. I cleaned the house. I did the laundry. One day, I kid you not, I scrubbed the baseboards. I came back to write some more. Oh yes, and there was a tiny baby and a bored 5-year-old who both needed attention in diametrically opposed ways. People, I did it all.
But my work suffered; I noticed the quality slipping, and even though I’m one of my toughest critics, I maintain that when I’m mixing up “there,” “their,” and “they’re” and failing to make even a hint of a point in 500 words, there’s a problem.
And my mothering suffered, too. “Go outside and play,” I said to Alex one day when he was pestering me with his ballooning and absolutely valid boredom. “Mommy’s working.”
“It’s too hot,” he argued.
“Go get a snack, then,” I said, irritably. And as he ran off to the kitchen to get a brownie (I hadn’t specified, in my horrific display of lazy parenting, what kind of snack he should choose to relieve his boredom) I realized what I’d just said.
“Wait a minute, we don’t eat just because we’re bored!” I called after him. That child looked me straight in the eye and then, pointedly, at the open bag of potato chips on the table next to me.
Katherine woke to eat every three hours like a hungry little clock with a bloodcurdling wail to chime the hour, and I found myself rushing impatiently through whatever I was doing before tending to her.
I would type with one hand and feed with the other.
Even my dogs were being neglected. One of them adopted a stuffed animal "baby" of her own and the other developed an Eeyore complex and moped around the house sighing … wait, he’s always done that.
Slowing down wasn’t an option; I had to prove to the world that I wasn’t sitting on my couch eating potato chips and watching Oprah.
Or, because I was sitting on my couch eating potato chips and watching Oprah, I had to prove that wasn’t all I was doing.
I’d just taken on twenty times more work than I ever tackled at the office and I wanted everyone to know it.
“How was your day?” from my husband translated to, “Did you manage to drag yourself out of bed today while I was out in the real world breaking my back to keep our kids from starving?”
No, he doesn’t talk like that.
But because it’s what I feared, it’s what I heard, and my answer, a rattled-off list of every single solitary thing I had done since opening my eyes (very, very early) that morning, reflected that fear.
I’m getting over that fear slowly, coming to realize that working from home can truly be the best of both worlds. I can wipe noses and elicit toothless grins and not miss a beat writing daily posts for Corporate Wellness Advisor (shameless plug) or one of my other regular clients.
I’m learning that it’s all about time management and priorities. When the baby is spitting up and gargling on it, I am going to suction her out before I finish the sentence I was writing. Even if I’d had the perfect conclusion in mind and those few moments of oh-my-God-she’s-drowning panic blew it right out of my head.
If I don’t get enough done during the day because she won’t abide not being held (with both arms, the demanding little thing), I toss dinner duty my husband’s way and stomp on the little voice that tries to tell me he’s been working all day because so have I.
I can work while he does the parenting sometimes, and when that doesn’t cut it, well, that’s what wee hours and weekends are for.
I’ve realized it helps to get dressed … besides making me feel like less of a slob, I can’t very well walk Alex to and from school in my torn 15-year-old Victoria’s Secret nightgown. Even though it is the softest thing I've ever known.
Which reminds me that it’s almost time to get Katherine fed and Zantac’ed up (moms are all nurses, too; add that to the list) so we can walk down the street to meet him without her doing her “errngh, errrngh, errrrngh” thing the whole way. (It’s a sound of distress or annoyance, sometimes both, and I blame many a typo on it because it gets right down in the middle of your middle ear and vibrates your whole head until you want to jam a pencil into your eardrum.)
So here we go.
Keep the work coming, I say. I got the balancing act down.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
All That and More.
Katherine hates Publix with a passion.
This is the fifth time she's been there, and the fifth time she has (loudly) expressed her displeasure about it.
Halfway down the bread aisle, I pulled over to try the pacifier rotation. This includes the Comfort Paci, the Frustration Paci (which Alex calls the Mad Paci), and the Hunger Paci, the latter to be used only temporarily while somebody gets a bottle ready, or to test the "she's hungry" theory when, according to the clock and all those books that don't know what they're talking about, she shouldn't be, yet.
When she spat all of them out with a look of contempt and opened that adorable little Cupid's bow mouth to yell at me, I stuck the emergency bottle into it. She shook her head at me. Yes, she did.
So then my little helper jumped in, as he does whenever he thinks he knows better how to handle any given situation than I do, which is pretty much all the time.
"Why don't you just pick her up?"
Fine.
So I got her out of the car seat, which was hooked onto the front of the almost-full shopping cart, and she instantly passed out on my shoulder just like she did after the birth experience, as if we had both not just been through something pretty noteworthy.
Pushing the cart, which OF COURSE had a bum wheel and wanted to pull stubbornly to the left, proved more difficult than my adviser or I had anticipated. We ended up walking in front of it, each on one side so that we took up the whole breadth of the aisle (the breadth of the bread aisle, heh), me barking navigational orders. "Turn right. No, your other right. Watch out, we're about to hit that guy!"
And I did almost take out an elderly lady who responded to my harassed-sounding, "I am so sorry," with "Oh no, baby, you've got your hands full, bless your heart!" Which made me extra glad I hadn't run over her because I'm a sucker for well-intended terms of endearment. Go on, call me sweetheart or honey, make me believe it, and see if I don't agree to lend you a hundred bucks.
But I got my grocery shopping done, and Katherine's mini-meltdown didn't faze me much. Alex and I even laughed about it as I was unloading our stuff onto the check-out belt one-handed and trying to get Alex to conform to my unloading method: frozen with frozen, cold with cold, boxes with boxes, cans with cans, etc. NO, I AM NOT ANAL RETENTIVE.
And I just realized I've written all of this about a fairly run-of-the-mill grocery store experience, so no wonder my uber-nice sister-in-law is usually my only commenter! I'm sure you've lived through a bazillion of these scenarios, C.
Bigger and better: Alexander started kindergarten.
He likes his teacher (whew, because she seemed a little less kid-gloved than I would have liked) and made three friends ("at the same time!!") because they all sit at his table. He doesn't remember their names but promises to tell us when he learns them. They're very tight.
Liddy, the girl next door who is very much in love with him, is not in his class but they did meet up at recess. I guarantee there was hugging. This girl hugged him so hard his feet left the floor (and she is a little girl) when we ran into them on Meet the Teacher day. Ever since he gave her a hydrangea blossom she's been his biggest fan. I figure if he's going to be a ladies' man, one day he can help us protect Katherine from the jerks Steven seems bitterly certain she's going to want to go out with.
I had a good birthday, spent Friday sitting around a metal table in a thunderstorm talking and laughing with awesome friends who sang Happy Birthday to me at midnight; enjoyed the gift of an extra two hours of sleep when Katherine went back down after her first bottle of the morning; went clothes shopping for comfortable things to wear in my "home office" that aren't pajamas but which I can wear out of the house and not be mortified when Liddy's mom drops by unexpectedly in the middle of an unsuspecting Tuesday morning. (When we ran into them at the school, she hugged me like we're BFFs and said she will be coming by to meet the baby soon. Scary, as sometimes I don't wear the requisite undergarments while I'm working on my couch, or I have on a threadbare T-shirt with chicken wing and wine stains on it. Classy.)
I wish there weren't windows in our front door.
My parents graciously offered to come over and watch the kiddos while Steven and I went out to dinner last night. I felt prettyish for the first time since this second birthin', and granted it took some WORK, but I think it was my new wine-colored lip gloss. I'm a fan of colorful lips. I ate chicken and lobster and drank Chardonnay and met someone with four kids and a passion for her church and a burning desire to share that passion with any and everyone. She happened to have graduated with my sister and was nice as nice could be and had lovely, well-behaved children but wouldn't stop talking to us. (Ironically, when we got there she said to her kids, "Leave these people alone; they're on a date night!")
I got awesome new knives (and boy does it take a brave man to buy his often-moody wife knives) and a lopsided chocolate cake with bumpy icing that was delicious and as cute as a baked good can be.
I also scored the infamous green mop that Alex saw on a commercial months ago and has been telling me he wants to get for me ever since ("It even has a powerful vacuum!" ... which it doesn't, but that's because I told Steven to find a cheap green mop that would satisfy Alex without costing too much), gift cards for !!!CLOTHES!!!, a salad spinner, and a necklace that lets me wear my kids where they belong ... no, not around my neck (though on a bad day it often feels like they're hanging there). Near my heart.
I also got lots of much-appreciated birthday wishes on Facebook and that special birthday feeling that lasted all day long.
I love my peeps.
This is the fifth time she's been there, and the fifth time she has (loudly) expressed her displeasure about it.
Halfway down the bread aisle, I pulled over to try the pacifier rotation. This includes the Comfort Paci, the Frustration Paci (which Alex calls the Mad Paci), and the Hunger Paci, the latter to be used only temporarily while somebody gets a bottle ready, or to test the "she's hungry" theory when, according to the clock and all those books that don't know what they're talking about, she shouldn't be, yet.
When she spat all of them out with a look of contempt and opened that adorable little Cupid's bow mouth to yell at me, I stuck the emergency bottle into it. She shook her head at me. Yes, she did.
So then my little helper jumped in, as he does whenever he thinks he knows better how to handle any given situation than I do, which is pretty much all the time.
"Why don't you just pick her up?"
Fine.
So I got her out of the car seat, which was hooked onto the front of the almost-full shopping cart, and she instantly passed out on my shoulder just like she did after the birth experience, as if we had both not just been through something pretty noteworthy.
Pushing the cart, which OF COURSE had a bum wheel and wanted to pull stubbornly to the left, proved more difficult than my adviser or I had anticipated. We ended up walking in front of it, each on one side so that we took up the whole breadth of the aisle (the breadth of the bread aisle, heh), me barking navigational orders. "Turn right. No, your other right. Watch out, we're about to hit that guy!"
And I did almost take out an elderly lady who responded to my harassed-sounding, "I am so sorry," with "Oh no, baby, you've got your hands full, bless your heart!" Which made me extra glad I hadn't run over her because I'm a sucker for well-intended terms of endearment. Go on, call me sweetheart or honey, make me believe it, and see if I don't agree to lend you a hundred bucks.
But I got my grocery shopping done, and Katherine's mini-meltdown didn't faze me much. Alex and I even laughed about it as I was unloading our stuff onto the check-out belt one-handed and trying to get Alex to conform to my unloading method: frozen with frozen, cold with cold, boxes with boxes, cans with cans, etc. NO, I AM NOT ANAL RETENTIVE.
And I just realized I've written all of this about a fairly run-of-the-mill grocery store experience, so no wonder my uber-nice sister-in-law is usually my only commenter! I'm sure you've lived through a bazillion of these scenarios, C.
Bigger and better: Alexander started kindergarten.
He likes his teacher (whew, because she seemed a little less kid-gloved than I would have liked) and made three friends ("at the same time!!") because they all sit at his table. He doesn't remember their names but promises to tell us when he learns them. They're very tight.
Liddy, the girl next door who is very much in love with him, is not in his class but they did meet up at recess. I guarantee there was hugging. This girl hugged him so hard his feet left the floor (and she is a little girl) when we ran into them on Meet the Teacher day. Ever since he gave her a hydrangea blossom she's been his biggest fan. I figure if he's going to be a ladies' man, one day he can help us protect Katherine from the jerks Steven seems bitterly certain she's going to want to go out with.
I had a good birthday, spent Friday sitting around a metal table in a thunderstorm talking and laughing with awesome friends who sang Happy Birthday to me at midnight; enjoyed the gift of an extra two hours of sleep when Katherine went back down after her first bottle of the morning; went clothes shopping for comfortable things to wear in my "home office" that aren't pajamas but which I can wear out of the house and not be mortified when Liddy's mom drops by unexpectedly in the middle of an unsuspecting Tuesday morning. (When we ran into them at the school, she hugged me like we're BFFs and said she will be coming by to meet the baby soon. Scary, as sometimes I don't wear the requisite undergarments while I'm working on my couch, or I have on a threadbare T-shirt with chicken wing and wine stains on it. Classy.)
I wish there weren't windows in our front door.
My parents graciously offered to come over and watch the kiddos while Steven and I went out to dinner last night. I felt prettyish for the first time since this second birthin', and granted it took some WORK, but I think it was my new wine-colored lip gloss. I'm a fan of colorful lips. I ate chicken and lobster and drank Chardonnay and met someone with four kids and a passion for her church and a burning desire to share that passion with any and everyone. She happened to have graduated with my sister and was nice as nice could be and had lovely, well-behaved children but wouldn't stop talking to us. (Ironically, when we got there she said to her kids, "Leave these people alone; they're on a date night!")
I got awesome new knives (and boy does it take a brave man to buy his often-moody wife knives) and a lopsided chocolate cake with bumpy icing that was delicious and as cute as a baked good can be.
I also scored the infamous green mop that Alex saw on a commercial months ago and has been telling me he wants to get for me ever since ("It even has a powerful vacuum!" ... which it doesn't, but that's because I told Steven to find a cheap green mop that would satisfy Alex without costing too much), gift cards for !!!CLOTHES!!!, a salad spinner, and a necklace that lets me wear my kids where they belong ... no, not around my neck (though on a bad day it often feels like they're hanging there). Near my heart.
I also got lots of much-appreciated birthday wishes on Facebook and that special birthday feeling that lasted all day long.
I love my peeps.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Changes ... (y)uck.
Go download the song "Everywhere I Go," by Lissie. It's beautiful. I love it. I'm listening to it now.
I would also recommend anything at all by Matthew Ryan, but as I went back to insert this sentence his lovely "Some Streets Lead Nowhere" came on my playlist, so that's a good one to start with. It takes about 20 minutes to really get going, but it features pretty and evocative lines like "What I'm trying to say is I was afraid that you'd leave, so I slept with my failures and I started to grieve" ... so I'll forgive it.
Which is maybe why I find myself in this nostalgic place that usually leads nowhere but to a restless night's sleep and/or morning-after regret and toe-scuffing apologies.
Or it could be that Steven and I were watching the movie The Road, which, if you haven't seen it, don't. (Wow, this is a bossy post.)
We're only halfway through and I'm abjectly terrified that the kid's going to die. Even though the post-Apocalyptic world he and his dad are traveling is hardly a place I'd want to live. Bottom line, there's a little boy in the movie, and Steven made the comment that after you have kids it's harder to stomach movies in which kids are sick or hurting or in danger and whatnot.
It led to a conversation about our awesome Alexander Kirk, and how sweet he is, and how proud we are, and how he's starting freaking school next week. He's going to be fine, I know he is, but ... he's my baby. And it's a scary thing, this place in time when they have to let go of our hands and go it alone.
We all did it, though, right? And we're fine, most of us. And if anyone can do it, Alex can. That boy's got it all, and I have no idea where he got it, no offense to my wonderful husband or myself, but I thank God every day for blessing him so completely.
I guess I'll just miss that hand in mine.
Other reasons I'm indulging in my Playlist o' Melodrama?
Well, I quit my job on Friday. It's been something we've talked about and talked about until I almost broke my own staggering record for indecisiveness, but in the end it just made the most sense. Financially, logistically ... child-o-centrically.
I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing, essentially, which has been anything but sitting on my you-know-what in my pajamas all day long enjoying my UNPAID maternity leave. (Well, pajamas, so what?) I've been freelancing, and God willing the well won't run dry but if it does, I am secure in the knowledge that we will work it out.
The day I lost my job with perhaps the best group of people who've ever been thrown together to produce a magazine, I thought my heart would break and be swiftly followed by our bank account. Didn't happen that way. I dealt with it. I worked, I networked, I found work. And that taught me something about myself: that I can do it if I have to.
For this.
And for this.
And, at the end of the day, for me, too.
Now I'm closing out iTunes and going to bed. Night, all.
I would also recommend anything at all by Matthew Ryan, but as I went back to insert this sentence his lovely "Some Streets Lead Nowhere" came on my playlist, so that's a good one to start with. It takes about 20 minutes to really get going, but it features pretty and evocative lines like "What I'm trying to say is I was afraid that you'd leave, so I slept with my failures and I started to grieve" ... so I'll forgive it.
Which is maybe why I find myself in this nostalgic place that usually leads nowhere but to a restless night's sleep and/or morning-after regret and toe-scuffing apologies.
Or it could be that Steven and I were watching the movie The Road, which, if you haven't seen it, don't. (Wow, this is a bossy post.)
We're only halfway through and I'm abjectly terrified that the kid's going to die. Even though the post-Apocalyptic world he and his dad are traveling is hardly a place I'd want to live. Bottom line, there's a little boy in the movie, and Steven made the comment that after you have kids it's harder to stomach movies in which kids are sick or hurting or in danger and whatnot.
It led to a conversation about our awesome Alexander Kirk, and how sweet he is, and how proud we are, and how he's starting freaking school next week. He's going to be fine, I know he is, but ... he's my baby. And it's a scary thing, this place in time when they have to let go of our hands and go it alone.
We all did it, though, right? And we're fine, most of us. And if anyone can do it, Alex can. That boy's got it all, and I have no idea where he got it, no offense to my wonderful husband or myself, but I thank God every day for blessing him so completely.
I guess I'll just miss that hand in mine.
Other reasons I'm indulging in my Playlist o' Melodrama?
Well, I quit my job on Friday. It's been something we've talked about and talked about until I almost broke my own staggering record for indecisiveness, but in the end it just made the most sense. Financially, logistically ... child-o-centrically.
I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing, essentially, which has been anything but sitting on my you-know-what in my pajamas all day long enjoying my UNPAID maternity leave. (Well, pajamas, so what?) I've been freelancing, and God willing the well won't run dry but if it does, I am secure in the knowledge that we will work it out.
The day I lost my job with perhaps the best group of people who've ever been thrown together to produce a magazine, I thought my heart would break and be swiftly followed by our bank account. Didn't happen that way. I dealt with it. I worked, I networked, I found work. And that taught me something about myself: that I can do it if I have to.
For this.
And for this.
And, at the end of the day, for me, too.
Now I'm closing out iTunes and going to bed. Night, all.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Keepin' On
I’ve devoted much of my last few posts to Katherine.
She’s new, she’s mysterious, she’s … loud. Quite, quite loud. And I’m not just saying she cries a lot (which she does) but the child, to be so tiny, makes A LOT of noise. All the time. She grunts, pretty much constantly, and the grunts have different meanings. There’s the “I’m hungry” grunt, which quickly turns to the “Feed me now or I’m going to shatter glass” screech.
There’s the “I’m kind of interested in what you’re doing” grunt, which makes you keep doing what you’re doing until she tires of it and her grunt changes to the “Stop it now or I’ll make you wish you had never started” one.
She grunts when she eats, she grunts when she sleeps, she grunts when she’s in any one of those states of being the book tells me small infants have: quiet alert, active alert, asleep, and the ones I don’t remember because Katherine only does those three.
Plus the crying. Did I mention the crying? She had her first public meltdown today in the (oh-so-quiet and oh-so-crowded, of course) waiting room of my doctor’s office. I, being someone who is not particularly keen on attracting undue attention, could quite literally have melted into the carpet in a puddle of blush-red goo.
And have you ever tried to change a seriously dirty diaper in a bathroom without a changing table? So that you’re doing all the maneuvering with the baby inside her car seat inside her stroller? It’s not fun, I tell you. Thank God for Alex, who stood nearby with helpful bits of insight like, “Maybe we can wait and change her when we get home,” and “Shouldn't you have brought more wipes?”
And he’s the one I wanted to talk about in this post. My baby boy, whose hands are now shockingly huge, and I have no idea if he’s recently had a growth spurt or if I’m just used to the comparatively itsy-bitsy baby ones. Either way, those biggish hands make me sad sometimes. He’s growing up so fast. Starts kindergarten in mere days.
We had a heart-to-heart on the swings at the park yesterday. He told me that the boy he met at orientation, the one whose name he didn’t know and who, according to the original version of the story, didn’t talk to him much if at all, is sure to be in his class. Furthermore, the boy’s name has since become Andrew, as in, “I hope my best bud Andrew is in my class, too.”
On my way down the hall toward bed tonight, I stepped over two paper airplanes (but don’t let him hear you call them that; they’re JETS) and a plastic Nintendo DS game case filled with pennies and a slip of paper on which is printed ALEX. It’s his wallet, and the paper is, of course, his ID. He’s been taping it to his shirt with masking tape every day, and offering to pay for groceries or whatever I happen to be purchasing at the time.
He wants a beagle. Apropos of nothing he decided this. Just got on the computer, did a Google search for “dog,” and found and fell in love with the picture that popped up first: a beagle puppy that’s up for adoption at a rescue organization in Harlem. “What button do I push to order him?” he wanted to know.
Tonight I got two good-night hugs (“You forgot something,” he told me the second time) and a promise that he will have a really cool dream so he can tell me about it in the morning.
Some days are hard. Some days Alex doesn’t stop talking and Katherine refuses to be appeased by any any anything. Some days I miss grown-up people and feeling like part of the world. Some days I get damn tired of my couch and my never-ending freelance work and my house that’s never quite clean enough for my liking.
But then.
Then I get a good night’s sleep. And then, in the light of day, I look at him with his untamable hair and his unfathomably huge eyes that seem able to read souls, and I look at her with her mouth wide open and her face beet red, ready to unleash howls from the bowels of hell (but also with her unimaginably soft hands that grip my fingers and the glimpses of that dimple that likes to hide beneath the pudge of her cheeks), and I wonder how I got so lucky.
She’s new, she’s mysterious, she’s … loud. Quite, quite loud. And I’m not just saying she cries a lot (which she does) but the child, to be so tiny, makes A LOT of noise. All the time. She grunts, pretty much constantly, and the grunts have different meanings. There’s the “I’m hungry” grunt, which quickly turns to the “Feed me now or I’m going to shatter glass” screech.
There’s the “I’m kind of interested in what you’re doing” grunt, which makes you keep doing what you’re doing until she tires of it and her grunt changes to the “Stop it now or I’ll make you wish you had never started” one.
She grunts when she eats, she grunts when she sleeps, she grunts when she’s in any one of those states of being the book tells me small infants have: quiet alert, active alert, asleep, and the ones I don’t remember because Katherine only does those three.
Plus the crying. Did I mention the crying? She had her first public meltdown today in the (oh-so-quiet and oh-so-crowded, of course) waiting room of my doctor’s office. I, being someone who is not particularly keen on attracting undue attention, could quite literally have melted into the carpet in a puddle of blush-red goo.
And have you ever tried to change a seriously dirty diaper in a bathroom without a changing table? So that you’re doing all the maneuvering with the baby inside her car seat inside her stroller? It’s not fun, I tell you. Thank God for Alex, who stood nearby with helpful bits of insight like, “Maybe we can wait and change her when we get home,” and “Shouldn't you have brought more wipes?”
And he’s the one I wanted to talk about in this post. My baby boy, whose hands are now shockingly huge, and I have no idea if he’s recently had a growth spurt or if I’m just used to the comparatively itsy-bitsy baby ones. Either way, those biggish hands make me sad sometimes. He’s growing up so fast. Starts kindergarten in mere days.
We had a heart-to-heart on the swings at the park yesterday. He told me that the boy he met at orientation, the one whose name he didn’t know and who, according to the original version of the story, didn’t talk to him much if at all, is sure to be in his class. Furthermore, the boy’s name has since become Andrew, as in, “I hope my best bud Andrew is in my class, too.”
On my way down the hall toward bed tonight, I stepped over two paper airplanes (but don’t let him hear you call them that; they’re JETS) and a plastic Nintendo DS game case filled with pennies and a slip of paper on which is printed ALEX. It’s his wallet, and the paper is, of course, his ID. He’s been taping it to his shirt with masking tape every day, and offering to pay for groceries or whatever I happen to be purchasing at the time.
He wants a beagle. Apropos of nothing he decided this. Just got on the computer, did a Google search for “dog,” and found and fell in love with the picture that popped up first: a beagle puppy that’s up for adoption at a rescue organization in Harlem. “What button do I push to order him?” he wanted to know.
Tonight I got two good-night hugs (“You forgot something,” he told me the second time) and a promise that he will have a really cool dream so he can tell me about it in the morning.
Some days are hard. Some days Alex doesn’t stop talking and Katherine refuses to be appeased by any any anything. Some days I miss grown-up people and feeling like part of the world. Some days I get damn tired of my couch and my never-ending freelance work and my house that’s never quite clean enough for my liking.
But then.
Then I get a good night’s sleep. And then, in the light of day, I look at him with his untamable hair and his unfathomably huge eyes that seem able to read souls, and I look at her with her mouth wide open and her face beet red, ready to unleash howls from the bowels of hell (but also with her unimaginably soft hands that grip my fingers and the glimpses of that dimple that likes to hide beneath the pudge of her cheeks), and I wonder how I got so lucky.
Monday, July 26, 2010
She's Portable!
The first time we took Alex on a plane, he was three months old. I brought along the Boppy and a bag full of things fit to entertain a three-month-old to the extent they're capable of being entertained. At this point someone told me about the sugar-on-the-paci trick that was to be used ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, and while we didn't need to resort to it on that trip, I shamefully admit that there were others, down the line.
Now Alex is five, and self-reliant, and not quite but almost to that point where he wants nothing to do with us (mainly me) in public. I'm mostly okay with that; an independent streak and a healthy dose of confidence in his own capabilities must mean we've done something right ... and/or, and probably or, he's just an awesomely mature kid in his own right.
So he sat in the one-seat aisle across from us, and we crammed into our two-seater with Katherine and I spent the whole flight shoving Steven's arm off the communal armrest because I am prone to heat and was cradling a little ball of fire. PLUS a blanket, because even when it's 101 in the shade, she won't abide not being wrapped in something. I don't know if she's modest or ashamed of her scrawny little legs and disproportionately gigantic feet or what. (And I can say that without being labeled cruel because I wouldn't trade either of those traits for all the world.)
The trip there (there being Houston, to introduce baby K to the paternal side of her family) went off without a hitch. We heard not a peep from her except when I leaned over to get a snack for Alex out of the diaper bag under the seat in front of me and squished her just a lil' bit. Then she gave off a little "gunnnh" and went right back to sleep over my profuse apologies.
It ain't so easy, though, once the plane lands and you get to where you're going and your angel-baby decides to prove you a big fat liar by crying and fussing and refusing to be held by anyone INCLUDING we who conceived her. She slept a lot, thank God, but was otherwise just about as cranky as cranky can be. (I might have had her beat, a little.)
And it makes you feel, even when people say shut up, that's stupid, that you're standing in a spotlight with one of those trick floors like they have in fake game shows, and if you can't soothe the baby within a given amount of time (say, ten seconds), the false floor will give out beneath you and you'll be funneled down into wherever it is they send mothers who can't calm their babies fast enough.
I realize that sounds ridiculous. I realize that IS ridiculous. NOW I do.
But now I'm home, and now baby K is asleep (cried all the heck out, she is) and my not-a-baby-anymore Xandermander is asleep and I've had my post-travel shower and am splayed out on clean sheets typing away about all this, and I KNOW no one thought I was a screw-up or that I failed some nonexistent test of motherhood. I know that Katherine was fussier than usual because she's been around for less than six weeks and for the first five nothing changed except for her formula a couple of times when I thought I could fix her reflux without a pediatrician's assistance.
And now we can look forward to December, when we'll be traveling with a much more active baby, one who might not be appeased by the five "S"s (and yes, we did 'em all) and who might be going through a clingy phase that will inevitably bother me if she won't show off her bound-to-be-goofy grin and sweet open-mouthed kisses like her brother used to give.
Bottom line: Julie is neurotic no matter what the circumstance.
Other bottom line: My kids (and I still love that plural) are, to borrow from Carrie and from Katie, my insides.
We had a great trip, Texas family! See you soon.
Now Alex is five, and self-reliant, and not quite but almost to that point where he wants nothing to do with us (mainly me) in public. I'm mostly okay with that; an independent streak and a healthy dose of confidence in his own capabilities must mean we've done something right ... and/or, and probably or, he's just an awesomely mature kid in his own right.
So he sat in the one-seat aisle across from us, and we crammed into our two-seater with Katherine and I spent the whole flight shoving Steven's arm off the communal armrest because I am prone to heat and was cradling a little ball of fire. PLUS a blanket, because even when it's 101 in the shade, she won't abide not being wrapped in something. I don't know if she's modest or ashamed of her scrawny little legs and disproportionately gigantic feet or what. (And I can say that without being labeled cruel because I wouldn't trade either of those traits for all the world.)
The trip there (there being Houston, to introduce baby K to the paternal side of her family) went off without a hitch. We heard not a peep from her except when I leaned over to get a snack for Alex out of the diaper bag under the seat in front of me and squished her just a lil' bit. Then she gave off a little "gunnnh" and went right back to sleep over my profuse apologies.
It ain't so easy, though, once the plane lands and you get to where you're going and your angel-baby decides to prove you a big fat liar by crying and fussing and refusing to be held by anyone INCLUDING we who conceived her. She slept a lot, thank God, but was otherwise just about as cranky as cranky can be. (I might have had her beat, a little.)
And it makes you feel, even when people say shut up, that's stupid, that you're standing in a spotlight with one of those trick floors like they have in fake game shows, and if you can't soothe the baby within a given amount of time (say, ten seconds), the false floor will give out beneath you and you'll be funneled down into wherever it is they send mothers who can't calm their babies fast enough.
I realize that sounds ridiculous. I realize that IS ridiculous. NOW I do.
But now I'm home, and now baby K is asleep (cried all the heck out, she is) and my not-a-baby-anymore Xandermander is asleep and I've had my post-travel shower and am splayed out on clean sheets typing away about all this, and I KNOW no one thought I was a screw-up or that I failed some nonexistent test of motherhood. I know that Katherine was fussier than usual because she's been around for less than six weeks and for the first five nothing changed except for her formula a couple of times when I thought I could fix her reflux without a pediatrician's assistance.
And now we can look forward to December, when we'll be traveling with a much more active baby, one who might not be appeased by the five "S"s (and yes, we did 'em all) and who might be going through a clingy phase that will inevitably bother me if she won't show off her bound-to-be-goofy grin and sweet open-mouthed kisses like her brother used to give.
Bottom line: Julie is neurotic no matter what the circumstance.
Other bottom line: My kids (and I still love that plural) are, to borrow from Carrie and from Katie, my insides.
We had a great trip, Texas family! See you soon.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Week 2 A.K.
The helium "It's a Girl!" balloon that came with a friend's Edible Arrangement gift when I was in the hospital is still afloat. That's how new Katherine is.
It's kind of mind-boggling, that she's only been touchably, smellably, kissably here with us for two weeks and two days now. Or at least it was mind-boggling when I was struck by the improbability of that still-floating balloon while trying to rock her back to sleep at 2:30 this morning.
(In my defense, lots of things boggle my mind at that hour.)
The shake-up we experienced when Alex was born, the one I was fully expecting this time around, just never happened. It was like the buildup to Y2K ... and then when the nothing hit, you either felt silly for expecting something to happen or embarrassed for the world full of people who did. Of course, that was a nonevent, whereas this was not, by any means. It's just eventful in a wonderful way that I never expected, and that's hard for a pragmatist to admit.
She clicked right into place, like we'd had this little Katherine-shaped cutout in the middle of our family all this time and just didn't know it until she took her rightful spot there.
We've fallen into a comfortable daytime pattern wherein I freelance while she sleeps next to me, wrapped in a blanket, nestled in a Boppy, smiling and whimpering and startling the heck out of herself every now and then. She's distracting in the most awesome ways.
I don't turn the TV on until I've done my writing for the day, and I always shower and get dressed in real clothes so I don't feel like I'm a box of bon-bons and an episode of Days of Our Lives away from becoming an outdated and wildly off-base stereotype. For what it's worth, Days of Our Lives is way better now than it was when I was on leave five years ago, even if that's not saying much.
After lunch we'll lie down in my bed and she'll continue her several-hours-long nap and I'll take one that's much shorter and more refreshing than the dead-asleep kind I got into the habit of when I was pregnant with her. Then we'll get up and go pick up Alex at his school's summer camp program.
I don't miss adult conversation like I once did because there's always Facebook, text, and, when I'm breaking my own rules, DVR-ed gems like Toddlers and Tiaras and People's Court to catch up on (yes, I do). Plus, Steven usually comes home at lunch, gazes adoringly at Katherine for a few minutes, and makes a sandwich before heading back to work.
It's not a bad setup, all things considered.
Right now Katherine is telling me she's about to wake up and demand to eat, so that's it for now. Happy Friday Before a Long Weekend!
It's kind of mind-boggling, that she's only been touchably, smellably, kissably here with us for two weeks and two days now. Or at least it was mind-boggling when I was struck by the improbability of that still-floating balloon while trying to rock her back to sleep at 2:30 this morning.
(In my defense, lots of things boggle my mind at that hour.)
The shake-up we experienced when Alex was born, the one I was fully expecting this time around, just never happened. It was like the buildup to Y2K ... and then when the nothing hit, you either felt silly for expecting something to happen or embarrassed for the world full of people who did. Of course, that was a nonevent, whereas this was not, by any means. It's just eventful in a wonderful way that I never expected, and that's hard for a pragmatist to admit.
She clicked right into place, like we'd had this little Katherine-shaped cutout in the middle of our family all this time and just didn't know it until she took her rightful spot there.
We've fallen into a comfortable daytime pattern wherein I freelance while she sleeps next to me, wrapped in a blanket, nestled in a Boppy, smiling and whimpering and startling the heck out of herself every now and then. She's distracting in the most awesome ways.
I don't turn the TV on until I've done my writing for the day, and I always shower and get dressed in real clothes so I don't feel like I'm a box of bon-bons and an episode of Days of Our Lives away from becoming an outdated and wildly off-base stereotype. For what it's worth, Days of Our Lives is way better now than it was when I was on leave five years ago, even if that's not saying much.
After lunch we'll lie down in my bed and she'll continue her several-hours-long nap and I'll take one that's much shorter and more refreshing than the dead-asleep kind I got into the habit of when I was pregnant with her. Then we'll get up and go pick up Alex at his school's summer camp program.
I don't miss adult conversation like I once did because there's always Facebook, text, and, when I'm breaking my own rules, DVR-ed gems like Toddlers and Tiaras and People's Court to catch up on (yes, I do). Plus, Steven usually comes home at lunch, gazes adoringly at Katherine for a few minutes, and makes a sandwich before heading back to work.
It's not a bad setup, all things considered.
Right now Katherine is telling me she's about to wake up and demand to eat, so that's it for now. Happy Friday Before a Long Weekend!
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