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Oh, right! Happy New Year!

January 1, 2011

My husband does not have your regular nine-to-five job. He doesn’t even have an eight-to-six job. When you work in Logic Man’s field, you can’t really count on regular hours, uh, regularly. I got very used to that before having kids, and then had to do some serious adjustments after Ethan was born. When the little ones came, I was petrified of being alone with all three kids. I grew envious of Jack’s time away at work. He could ESCAPE. I would ask friends to come over and help me out at bedtime when Jack was working late. It wasn’t until he got caught working late on a project and couldn’t pull away — when Henry and Miranda were around maybe two or three month’s old, that I had to manage bedtime for all three kids solo.

And I did it. I got through that evening, and I’ve been through countless others. When work pulled Jack out of town for two and a half weeks last winter, I managed (with the weekday help of my very own supernanny) the first week on my own before my dad, and then my mom, came to visit and help out.

I can do it. We can’t do much, due to napping and the not-always-easy-to-get-up-and-go-ness of having multiples plus a five-year-old. Today would be the perfect example of feeling home-bound. Oh, yeah, right! It’s New Year’s Day! We should go out and celebrate… but where? Not too many friends’ houses can accommodate two very inquisitive toddlers, and I’m not quite up yet to the challenge of throwing a party on New Year’s Day. Plus there’s that added bit that Jack is gone all day for work. Every New Year’s Day he has to get up at the crack of dawn, and he doesn’t come home until well past the kids’ bedtime. While we can’t count on regular work hours or whether or not he will be with us on weekends, we at least always know we don’t have him on New Year’s and July Fourth. And two and a half weeks at the end of January/beginning of February.

Usually on non-holiday homebound days like this I’ll pull it together enough to take the kids to the grocery store. I know, so glamorous, but… baby steps, right? Occasionally Christine and I will rearrange her hours so she can come in on a weekend day and watch the little ones so Ethan and I can go out. Once I actually packed the kids up in the car and drove down to Manhattan Beach for the Pumpkin Race. That was exhausting, but I was glad I did it. That was was definitely more like a toddler step!

Thankfully, I don’t get sick much. Who has the time? When Ethan walked downstairs this morning declaring that he has a coughy throat and would require soup and medicine today, I immediately mixed myself a packet of Emergen-C, because getting sick — especially this time of year — would suck… royally. I remember this past June, on a Sunday morning during a particularly busy time of the summer for work for Jack, I woke up in the throes of what I later determined must have been a migraine. I hadn’t had one for three years. I didn’t put two and two together to take a migraine pill. I woke up with a raging headache, nausea, a five-year-old trying to pry my eyes open because he could hear his little brother crying and wanted to go cheer him up, and a husband who had left at dawn for the second day in a row, not to return until well after dark. There was no way I’d be able to pull him back home to help me, so I tried to power through it.

Twenty minutes later, after I had painfully carried Miranda and Henry down the stairs, changed their diapers, and gotten them in their high chairs with breakfast, I realized that it was not going to be a good day. I hastily whipped the high chairs around to face the laptop on the kitchen counter, slapped on a Baby Signing Time video, and rushed to the bathroom.

“Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? Mommmmmayyy? What are you doing, Mommy?”

You’d think when a five-year-old is pestering you to see if you are okay WHILE you are tossing your cookies you could see the humor in the situation, but instead I snapped, “ETHAN! I am TRYING to throw up, here! PLEASE give me a minute.”

“Okay, Mommy.” He shrunk away, and of course, I felt that much crappier.

I hauled myself to the couch in the playroom, after glancing over to make sure the little ones were fine, and collapsed. Waves of nausea crashed over the pain in my head and all I kept thinking was, how am I going to make it through this day with these kids? I spent the next ten minutes convincing myself I could do it, and then realized that I am not superhuman.

I texted Christine. You know, my supernanny. I’ll be there in thirty minutes, she texted back. We are, I remind myself almost daily, so lucky to have her in our lives.

I often wonder how it is that other Moms do it. How do they juggle all the lessons, the playdates, the nap schedules. What am I lacking that they have? Do I just not have it together enough? Ethan’s piano lessons are, luckily, held at home. I want to sign him up for a sport soon — how do I work that out around his siblings’ nap schedules and such? When I am not guaranteed a second parent at home at any given time, scheduling activities can be tough, and when Christine is here, I feel obligated to be working. I suspect that once Henry and Miranda start preschool in the fall things will be a little easier, but the weekends will still be tough.

I don’t like New Year’s resolutions. They feel so contrived, and I always end up disappointing myself. Instead, I need to make a life resolution. A Mommy resolution to be a bit braver about taking the three kids out by myself more often. And a Mommy resolution to not beat myself up when I do not.

Comments (3) / General Chaos, Perils of Parenthood

AWOL

December 29, 2010

The last three months have been quite trying. Family hurdles to try to overcome, personal challenges to try to not let get me down. And then, oh yeah, trying to manage a house full of little tyrants.

I look at the piles of stuff around the house and think I really must do something about them. I must go through that massive folder (multiple folders, actually) of Ethan’s schoolwork and weed out what we don’t need to keep. I really must go through that bin of toys to see what Henry and Miranda can do without. My office, or rather, that place in the house where things get shoved when we have company, is the aftermath of a cyclone. My bedroom is piles of laundry, waiting to be put away. The dining room is boxes of baby clothes and toys and accessories to sort.

When the children are all asleep at night, I think about the myriad tasks I have to do, and more often than not, I give up before I start. It’s too much to take on all at once — too much to consider as a whole. So I fritter my time away, because to start a project would mean failure to finish, for surely I wouldn’t be able to complete a task in one sitting.

That has always been one of my biggest weaknesses — the paralyzing fear of failure. So why bother starting a project if I’m only going to feel like a failure when I don’t finish it. If I don’t even start then I haven’t failed, right?

But then I look around my house, at the things that need to be organized, the projects I keep wanting to do, and I know I am failing myself by not trying. I am experiencing an internal battle of which possibility of failure could be worse? Failure to start or failure to finish?

Failure to start has been overwhelmingly paralyzing lately — more than usual.

I think I’d better start aiming for failure to finish.

Comments Off on AWOL / General Chaos, Musings

Do you miss it?

October 14, 2010

Do you remember what life used to be like? Do you remember how you could go out whenever you pleased? How the only thing that delayed you from getting out of the house and into the car was you taking your time to put on makeup and do your hair?

No matter that you had that extra padding in the tummy, your skin was still elastic, and you could suck it in enough to make it look flat. Do you remember when you cared enough to suck it in all the time? And your boobs – weren’t they fantastic? Do you remember them before they got all… floppy?

Do you remember when the only food you had to cut was your own? When the only nose you had to wipe was yours? When 8pm meant the night was still young, instead of the time you yearn to get to so you can collapse in a tired, raggedy heap? When the weekend was something to look forward to, rather than dread because you have to figure out how to keep a bunch of tyrants occupied and happy the whole time?

Do you remember all this? Yes? Do you miss it?

I do, sometimes. I love my kids. I LOVE my kids, but sometimes I am overwhelmed by the constant requirements of parenthood. I cannot imagine I am alone in this feeling.

I wouldn’t change things. I wouldn’t trade my life now for the life I had then. But that doesn’t mean I can’t miss that life sometimes. That I can’t sometimes be a little envious of friends who can go out whenever they please.

Comments (8) / Perils of Parenthood

Goodbye, Mozart

October 5, 2010

Mozart, in his last days.

A little after two o’clock today, my sweet, loving cat of thirteen years drifted into a deep sleep in my arms. The last thing he did before succumbing to the chemical slumber was to tuck his head into the crook of my arm. I sat there, on the couch in the quiet room reserved for this purpose, with tears streaming down my face. Jack was beside me, the both of us stroking Mozart’s head and thanking him for giving us so much love and companionship.

Thank you for being such a good kitty. I’m so sorry.

Just over thirteen years ago I walked into the Alexandria Animal Shelter in Virginia thinking I might want to walk out of there with a kitten. I wasn’t completely sure that I was ready, but then I picked up this tiny black ball of fur and held it in the crook of my neck. This little kitten started purring as if his life depended on it, nuzzling my cheek and my ear, and I knew I had to take him home.

I’d come home from work and he would jump up on my shoulders and meow for ten minutes, as if to tell me about his day and where was I this whole time? He would burrow himself under the covers and try to discover Jack’s toes in the middle of the night. He enjoyed sleeping on my pillow, on top of my head if I would let him.

When I started getting migraines, he would jump up on the bed carefully, and curl himself next to me, offering me the slow and steady comfort of his purr.

When I brought home another cat, he was welcoming and became his brother. When Gustav disappeared, Mozart was lost for a while.

When I brought home a small, screaming human, he appointed himself watch-kitty. Wherever we were, he would be within ten feet, making sure we were all okay.

When I brought him home from the vet several years ago, along with a vial of insulin and the commitment to administer it twice a day for the rest of his life, he took it in stride.

He was very tolerant. I used to gently pull his tail and roll him over and rub his belly. I would do the things I would imagine small children would try, because I knew he would meet mine someday. He allowed my babies to crawl all over him, making no attempt at escape. He would sit on the stairs, watching over them, keeping track of them. He loved curling up at the end of Ethan’s bed during bedtime, and would often stay in there long after the light was turned off.

And then he started to get sicker. Chronic urinary tract infections were added to the diabetes, and all of the sudden I was finding myself becoming an expert on cleaning up cat urine and sometimes, worse. Irritable bowel disease brought about occasionally alarming amounts of blood in the litter box. Treating the IBD would intensify the diabetes and UTIs. Not treating the IBD would guarantee more cramping and pain and blood and going where he shouldn’t go.

The vet — the wonderful, thoughtful, and insightful vet — discussed all the options, and it was ultimately decided that Mozart would be given a peaceful end of life, instead of putting him through tests and surgeries and procedures and medication with no guarantee of a positive outcome. What made the decision so wrenching and guilt-ridden is that on the outside, Mozart looked just fine. He seemed to be just fine. But I knew he wasn’t. I knew it when I would come downstairs in the morning and had to immediately sequester my little ones to clean up a mess. I knew it when he would go for most of the day some days without coming out from under my bed. I knew all this, but it didn’t make it any easier.

And so we were led to today, when my ever-faithful watch-kitty fell asleep in my arms, and then very peacefully died. We left with an impression of his paw, a clipping of his fur, and very red eyes.

It’s going to take me a while to get through this one.

Comments (6) / General Chaos

Two brains in a pod

August 26, 2010

Ethan’s brain has always amazed me, but lately, it seems it has been exploding with a kind of curiosity and wonder that is surprising in a five-year-old. Every day, he asks me and Jack questions about life, nature, science, people. A couple of times a week, however, a question pops up that seriously stops us in our tracks.

Last week: “When the car turns one way, why do our bodies turn the other way?”

This week: “When I roll my carrots on my plate, why does the first carrot roll the same way as the third carrot, but the second carrot rolls the other direction?”

I think I do a fair job of giving him an immediate explanation, but I usually end it with, “Let’s remember that question and call Pobba tonight!”

Pobba is my father. His fervent love of science is matched only by his dedication to creativity. My dad is, in short, a talented and brilliant man, and his relationship with Ethan is very special. Dad thinks Ethan is very much like he was when he was a kid: incredibly energetic, and incredibly curious about nature, science, how things work. Smart and charismatic. Maybe a little too smart and charismatic.

Yesterday, while finishing up his homework, Ethan declared he wanted to be a Boy Scout. I told him I didn’t know if Daddy had ever been one (he was), but that I was pretty sure Pobba had been one. Ethan’s face lit up. “Let’s call him and ask him about it!” He sat on the couch for a good ten minutes, still and silent, while listening to whatever my dad was saying. We were then reminded of the carrot question, which resulted in another ten minutes of silent listening, ending with Ethan saying, “I have to go tell this to my Mom!”

He ran up to me and exclaimed, “You won’t believe this, Mommy. Pobba says kids don’t even think of asking that question until the FOURTH GRADE! Here, he wants to talk to you.”

“It’s amazing that he even noticed the carrots,” he told me,  “but even more amazing that he recognized that there is something to notice at all.” Hearing that from my dad, and knowing that discussing these types of questions only strengthens their relationship, makes me so incredibly proud of both of them.

It isn’t just interesting questions about nature and science that bonds these two. Storytelling plays a huge role. “Mommy? Instead of reading a story tonight can we call Pobba so he can tell me a story over the phone?” I get this kind of request at least once a week, usually when Jack is working late, and Dad is more than willing to comply. Frankly, it is nice for me on days when I’m flat-out tired: I lie down next to Ethan in his bed with the phone on speaker and zonk out. Good parenting, huh?

Requests such as, “Pobba, tell me a story about dinosaurs and booby traps and miniature golf, please,” are always met with an enthusiastic, “Sure!” My dad is never one to back down from a story challenge. Sometimes it is in the form of, “Pobba? Mommy says we have twelve minutes for a story,” and and in seconds I am listening to “Deep in a dark, dark forest, in the midst of a small clearing, a single golf ball lay in the bright green weeds…”.

I can’t wait until Ethan is old enough for Dad’s Cheesie Mack novels. I’m hoping Dad will be up to reading them to him over the phone.  In the meantime, I’m sure their conversations will be full of physics and chemistry, dinosaurs and pirates, Rube Goldberg machines and miniature golf, and who knows what else?

How lucky for them both!

Comments Off on Two brains in a pod / Musings, The Mouths of Babes