Archive for January, 2010
Sanity Spared
I have three sisters. We all are roughly three years apart. This age separation between us worked – it worked for us as sisters (as if we had a choice) and it worked for my parents. According to my mom, it made raising four children as manageable as one might think it could ever be – to have us spaced out from 0 to 9 years old when my youngest sister was born. I think this line of thinking just sort of seeped into me over time, I grew to understand this age spacing as the ideal way to have subsequent children.
Now that I have two children, instead of think about having them and rationalize why timing them a certain number of years apart is ideal, I could spend all day ticking off pros and cons to closer together or more spread apart. But what good is that – they are what they are – which is 4 years old and 14 months. My children are exactly 3 years and 10 days apart in age.
What I’ve discovered is one is physically demanding and the other is mentally demanding. Currently I am finding the physically demanding one to be the more high maintenace. I don’t love this phase of constant roaming, getting into everything, having no understanding of consequences or danger. And DD2 is particularly curious and adventurous -100 fold more so than DD1 ever has been. Either that or I just don’t remember DD1 when she was 14 months because it feels like 100 years ago already.
So who would have thought that one simple plastic contraption would be my sanity saver? C’est vrai. A gate has come to change my life. Because I birthed the next adventurer to hike Mt. Everest, we obviously had a gate up at the stairs months ago. But maybe sleep deprivation and general foggy thinking got in the way from DH and I realizing that we needed to add a gate to the playroom door. How ingeniuos! Trap the children into one room – where they are safe – I can see and hear them – but they can’t get out. A veritable prison in my own home!!!
Now don’t think adding the gate transformed into the miracle play time with both children happily packing off to the playroom. Making it work evolved into an art form with missteps along the way.
As we all know, introducing change to a preschooler is not accepted with welcoming open arms. So we got off to a rocky start, DD1 disdainfully glaring at me as I begged her and promised infinite wealth and opportunities for treats, if she would just go into playroom with her sister and stay in there for a few minutes and not open the gate and let her sister out. I hope I never said, way back when I was naïve and clueless, that I wouldn’t bribe my children. Cause that’s my MO around these parts. DD1 eventually acquiesed once she secured the volume of spicy chips and popsicles she deemed acceptable for playing along with this new rule.
A few days passed and the arguing and bribery started to wane…..a few times a day (read: when I am struggling to get breakfast or dinner on the table without DD2 climbing into something and ending up in the ER) I was able to coax the 2 of them into the playroom and keep the gate closed.
It’s an art form really.
Sure, there’s a specific room dedicated to all their toys but DD2 won’t stay in there alone and DD1 prefers to empty out her toys de jour from the playroom into the living room. Just coercing them to go into the room and stay there was a feat in and of itself.
And then it finally happened. A few days ago I asked DD1 if she would go play in the playroom with her sister while I made dinner. No arguing. No bribery, off they went. I was stunned.
Then they stayed in there for about 20 minutes.
TWENTY MINUTES.
I think we all know that is a gift. You can make a meal, do laundry, pee in peace and quiet, hell, flip through a gossip magazine – all in 20 minutes. Give me a few more minutes and I might be solving world peace.
But see – there’s more to it than that. I have learned that to make it last that long, I have to exercise total discipline. DD2 will come to the gate, stand there, shake it and laugh – attempting in her cutest way to get my attention.
I must avert my eyes.
And forget talking.
If I dare make eye contact with either of them or they hear my voice…..it’s all over….out they will want to come.
So then I have to be stealth and cat-like when things get quiet. Typically I can hear DD1 playing and talking away…but it’s when DD2 is quiet that I worry she has discovered some new way to climb out, something elicit to eat and choke on, or has broken free and is climbing the stairs. But remember the rules – if they make eye contact with me or hear my voice, it’s over.
Then you add in our creaky old hardwood floors and creeping up on anyone is next to impossible.
I’ve actually figured out the quietest route to peer into the playroom and go unnoticed…..and then slip back into the kitchen and finish whatever it is I am making.
It is a true miracle over here. This gift of time, delivered via an agreeable older child along with a plastic gate. Somehow getting these extra few minutes to just get stuff done makes the day seem that much more manageable. Here’s hoping it lasts…..and praise the person who invented the gate.
1 comment January 26, 2010
Motherhood…..Is there an App for that?
Check out my blog piece published today on Mampedia!
1 comment January 25, 2010
DUCK!
That ought to be my MO when feeding DD2. Every day I am surprised with just how different my two children are. It’s remarkable how they can look the same but different. How they can have the same habit of doing exactly what they know they shouldn’t be doing and look at me and then take off and do it. And it is remarkable how different they are in so many ways. Shall I list them?
No. I think we’ve all had enough of lists.
But if what happened this morning isn’t the ultimate in blog material then I don’t know why I have a blog. Is it a tale that I’ll mention off-hand as she’s on her way out the door with some punk with a daddy complex? Probably. But is there any way to casually drop “Hey honey, try not to toss your half-chewed sausage down Johnny’s shirt during dinner?”
I didn’t think so.
Let me paint the picture.
I am dragging this morning. I had one of those totally off-why did I bother to drag my ass out of bed in the sleet to get to the gym for this -workouts. The coffee wasn’t hitting the spot. My head was kinda half hurting but not quite enough to get Tylenol. I wanted breakfast but I just wasn’t sure what I wanted.
Until it landed in my bra.
You got it. DD2 is scrappy. She’s thin, she’s always on the go, she never stops climbing but she loves to eat. She’d already eaten more breakfast than our neighborhood football captain but as she was cruising past the breakfast table, she reached up to grab some food off her sister’s plate. I squatted down to intercept her as she moved along, to be sure she wasn’t eating anything she shouldn’t be, when suddenly I felt the lukewarm soggy mess of it on my bare skin.
You got it.
DD2, as she is prone to doing, removed the half-chewed sausage from her mouth and chucked it – only this time her aim was so solid – she managed to toss it right above the zipper on my hoodie and with enough force for it to fall down against my chest and into my bra and fall into little pieces.
I got out of bed why today?
You can’t make this shit up.
So fast foward to the year 2025….DD2 all dolled up in her appropriate fashion forward, I’m stylish but too cool to dress like I was excited for this date outfit…..with apathetic or overly eager teen slobbering boy awaiting her in our foyer (by then I will have a foyer. mark my words)….I’ll be sure to ask where they’re going for dinner and remind her not to toss her chewed sausage at him. I don’t think boys like that.
Add comment January 20, 2010
Got a minute?
Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine cover story was all about moms and time. This is a tired story. Yet I’m gonna go there because I can’t resist.
Time and tracking time is one of those things that has hogged my thoughts and dictated my life since I had our first babe over four years ago. For the purposes of self-disclosure, I am pretty anal and organized, I run my house by schedule and have policed my children’s sleeping and feeding schedules from the minute they came home from the hospital. It’s the only way I know how to bring order to chaos. In fact, in that foggy daze of adjusting to life with a child, my first fight with DH was triggered by his comment “I lost track of time.”
I completely lost it. Sure, sleep deprivation and hormones had a lot to do with it. But we’ve never had a fight like that in our 8 years of marriage. The idea of losing track of time seemed like such a luxury to me, though I was only 6 weeks into this whole parenthood gig, that I both resented him for having that chance and was furious that he wasn’t consumed with time, schedules, feedings and sleep patterns as I was. And still am. Four years later.
So I read Sunday’s piece with great interest and frankly, was largely disappointed in the end. I felt the writer, Brigid Schulte, came off as a martyr in a way she probably didn’t mean but I think that is one of the great challenges facing moms when discussing the absence of free time in our lives. In the piece, Schulte ended up attempting to track her time for a professor who specializes in time-use, to analyze her time spent and help her find 30 hours of leisure time each week. Of course the whole idea that this is possible is a total joke but the point was that it depends partly on how you define leisure time. It was never clear to me how Schulte defines leisure time.
For me it’s easy – am I without children?
LEISURE.
Am I out with just one child – half-leisure.
It’s really that easy. So while Schulte questioned if gym time is leisure time – to me that is the panacea of leisure time. My morning gym visit has practically turned me into a gym rat and without that precious quiet time, I can’t face the day. Schulte challenged how waiting 2-hours for a tow truck was leisure time. She was without child so the prof deemed it leisure.
Again, expectations. To me – two hours anywhere without the kids equals leisure time.
Am I saying I don’t like my children? Of course not. Am I saying that I don’t love spending time with them? Again, of course not. But any time that I am not responsible for fetching something for someone, shuttling someone to preschool while another one is screaming for her nap in the back seat or chasing down a toddler clueless to danger in one direction while trying to make sure the 4- year -old on the opposite side of the park isn’t being kidnapped, is leisure time. It’s really pretty black and white to me.
So back to the premise – moms and time. There is so much about moms and time. How much is written about dads and time? And Schulte barely skimmed over this in her piece. She once referenced her husband out back smoking a cigar while she was doing dishes or something. I’m thinking – what the hell is he doing having leisure time while she is working.
And here’s where I think moms fall victim to being martyrs. So many of us, me included, are control freaks – and so with an inability to let go and pass off responsibilities to husbands who in all actuality, are capable functioning members of the human race (hence why we married them and then went on to have children with them) – and so we end up in this reality where we are frazzled and exhausted and have bad hair and need a moment. Why is this? And what are we doing to change that. I’d like to see more written about this issue in how we divide our time than the “woe is me the mom without a minute to spare” ballad.
Again, I’m picking on Schulte because she put herself out there. She writes about making cupcakes at 3am, kids homework at ungodly hours of the night, etc. So again, where is her husband? What’s he doing? At what point does a gal need to learn to let go so that she can have a minute? And what does it take for her to figure that out?
I guess we all have our breaking points. And I am sure there are couples out there where the dad is the one consumed by time and the mom loses track. It’s not me, but I’m sure they’re out there. That being said, I’d enjoy seeing more about how families constructively divide time and moms do find time to themselves instead of the raggedy old mom icing Valentine’s cupcakes at 4am for school when she has a board meeting with the CEO 4 hours later. I also think learning to say “no” is part of this. Are our children completely overscheduled? Do we accept every invitation and spend weekends driving from one birthday party to the next? Is this fun for everyone?
So again, maybe I’m tired and cranky but I think too many women take on everything and lack the confidence to say “no.”
There you have it. I am picking on women this time instead of men.
3 comments January 18, 2010
Email: Friend or Foe
As my loyal fans and followers know, I stepped out of the workforce last April, shortly after returning to work after having my second child. I have a few rules of thumb with parenting and one of them is – do not make major life decisions while on maternity leave because it is like an emotional vacuum. So I returned to work, quit a week later, and haven’t looked back.
Everyone waxes on about how it’s such an adjustment to stay home full-time after being a full-time working parent. And there are definitely lots of adjustments. But 10 months in, I have only one thing I am still struggling with – email.
Here’s the thing – I hate social things like playdates. You would never catch me dead at some randomly organized playdate with people I don’t know. I like to pretend I am a misanthrope. I just hate BS small talk. Let’s cut to the chase – what spring fashions are you looking for this year, what insane things are your kids doing lately, what’s the latest celebrity gossip, and what are you having for dinner and will there be cheese in the meal and chocolate to follow.
These are the things I care about and sometimes it takes time to cut through the layers with people to get there. I’m really over that.
Yet I am also a very social person.
So I think part of the reason I don’t struggle with feeling “lonely” as a SAHM is because I have my posse of friends who are equally as addicted to email as moi. But the thing is, most of them are at work, so they are just being distracted from their dumb jobs or boring meetings – not emailing with their kids hanging around.
When I worked, I had this clear line – I walk in the door – I am all yours kid, no email, no phone calls – you get all of me because I’ve been gone all day. Well, now I am here all day and I need an outlet too. I do try to keep email responses to when they are napping and well, lots of time I don’t have time to do anything but that, but sometimes reading an email from a friend while all hell is breaking loose at home, gives me the laugh and rejuvenation I need to once again reprimand DD1 for assaulting DD2 for going too close to her favorite toy of the minute.
I do best with clear lines. Go to work, get stuff done, come home, focus on kids, they go to bed, do whatever you want. SAHM-hood doesn’t give you these clear lines. So while I don’t ever get wrapped up in guilt, I believe I am a good mom and give my children plenty of attention, I still struggle with this one. It’s that foggy line between needing some moments to myself but the paranoia of being “that parent.”
Add comment January 13, 2010
Double Standards Apply Here
New Year, New Decade, same story. The media loves a good double standard story. And frankly, so do I. So let’s review some double standards that eeked into our gossip at the end of 2009 and some that are starting this new decade off on the right tone. Cause let’s be honest, I am all for a good double standard.
First one that comes to mind is the Elin-Tiger Woods – spousal abuse one. Imagine how we all are DYING to know that she totally went after him with a golf club and smashed the shit out of his car. It’ll just make us all love her more. He totally deserves it and we understand her rage. But we’re supposed to then talk about how Tiger couldn’t go after Elin like this and he’d land in jail and we’d all be burning sticks outside his jail cell chanting for his death. And well, it seems fair to me. I am ok with that particular double standard and I hope she really scared the shit out of him that night in her rage.
But let’s use this same couple for another double standard example. I know I am not alone in wondering why Tiger got married. Oh right, he got married because it was a crucial part of his brilliantly crafted image as the perfect man. And the perfect man has a hot blond swedish wife, of course. And adorable kids. But see, he’s a man. So he could have also made a billion off being a playboy, like Derek Jeter. We all expect male athletes to be players, we know women are throwing themselves at them, they have millions, so I just look at really any male athlete and assume he has a bunch of STDs. But this doesn’t impact his endorsements or his professional success. But name me one female athlete or actress who could get away with such antics? We accept men whores. We do not accept whores. Double standard. Like it or not.
And the latest double standard today is the gossip of former fit Scottish celeb Gerard Butler surfacing as chub-tastic on his warm vacation versus how he looked while shooting the 300 movie. And does anyone care? Yet even the President made a comment about the buzz surrounding Jessica Simpson’s “weight gain” last year. I, for one, will admit that I am disturbed when I see chubby Luke Wilson in those cell phone commercials – I do wonder why he let himself go – but again – he’s working. Would a fat female celeb get hired as a spokesperson? I think they only do when it’s related to weight loss, think Queen Lateefah, Marie Osmond (is she a celeb), the chick from Cheers (too lazy to remember her name).
So there you have it, new year, new decade, same double standards.
1 comment January 7, 2010
