Daddy vs Mama
I’m not really back to blogging, this is just too long-winded for a Facebook post…
Sleepless one year old is crying in the wee hours. I go in and nurse her, comfort her, tell her it’s still time for sleeping. Leave, she cries. And continues crying.
I go back in, lay her down, cover her up, tell her it’s still sleepy time. Leave, she cries. And continues crying.
Repeat.
Repeat.
I send in the big guns.
Mark goes in, tells her to go to sleep. Leaves. She goes to sleep.
Is my authority already undermined? She already knows Daddy means business while Mama does not? Or does she just want Mama that much but gives up when she figures out she’s not going to get it?
Where I’m at (Work)*
I have vowed against hesitated writing much about mamas who work** versus full-time mothering. Not necessarily so much to avoid controversy, though there is that, but because so much has already been said. I once picked up a book of essays on Motherhood and was bored to tears by how many of them focused on why they choose to work, or not. A justification of their choice. As if this was the most important parenting choice. It absolutely isn’t.
Family is first shaped by the parents’ attitude toward parenting, the way they teach and guide their children, and what they choose to do together.
However, I’m now going to do exactly what I thought was boring, and discuss our decision to have two parents work, because it’s what I’ve been pondering and wondering and mulling for months, and well, it’s my blog.
Parents come up with endless varieties of childcare solutions while they work. We have tried three- Mark at home while Heather worked, vice versa, and both parents working.***
SAHD:
Dad staying at home is certainly the least common of these. What I loved about it: As a mama, I’m always going to be deeply involved in my children whether I work or not. Generally fathers may or may not be. Mark built a solid foundation in his relationships with his children by taking care of them so many hours when I wasn’t there to help/direct/judge/interfere. He did “guy things” I’d never have done- standing in front of a recycling facility so long they came out and gave them free T-shirts, endless playground visits, experiments with dry ice, building projects. Mark and I have Plenty of Issues with our different parenting styles, but he sure loves his children and can conjure up enthusiasm in fun learning projects like none other.
For me the biggest downside of working while he was at home was the lack of control over those hours. Choose your paid childcare well, and you can say “please make sure he gets two naps” or “please don’t feed him junk food” or “it’s been working to get Auden not to hit Parker by responding to it with X”. You can tell your stay-at-home-dad husband that, and he may listen… or he may not. Second downside in our Mark-at-home arrangement- a pretty much continually trashed house.
For Mark the downside was lack of interaction with adults. He’s not the type to go seek out other dads at home, and there aren’t many.
During the periods Mark was at home, I felt really stuck. I can earn more, and we together wanted the boys’ care in the immediate family. We were first time parents. We didn’t think anybody could care for them the way we would. To him the daytime care fell. He went to work when the boys got older, but then we had Greta, and childcare costs for three meant it again made sense for him to stay home. But oh how I longed for it to be me. How I ached for them some days.
SAHM:
When my company laid off the whole facility, I was overjoyed. I wasn’t sure what I’d do longterm, but a severance payment meant I could stay home comfortably for at least a year. I could earn a little cash taking care of a son of friends. I was very optimistic about what I would accomplish, the difference I would make in my children’s lives. Let’s be perfect and blog about it too.
Reality set in slowly. I remember the rest of that summer as fun. School started, and we just felt rushed all the time. Somehow there wasn’t enough time while they were gone for half-day kindergarten to actually accomplish anything. And then I got pregnant. I could’ve napped every day. I started to. I let Greta watch more TV than I ever would’ve let Mark let her without totally bitching at him. I just felt behind behind behind, all the time. So behind and so bad at the housework/paying bills/all the other American life maintenance crap that I felt I couldn’t just stop and play with the kids. All the concentrating on kids I wanted to do just didn’t happen like I wanted it to.
Some days were fine, some days were great. A very few came close to the idyllic days like I imagined. Days that were like the days when we’re on vacation, and all we do is play together and cook meals and clean them up. Somehow I thought staying at home would be like when we go stay in a little three room cabin. It just… wasn’t. Of course not. We have activities (though I try to curtail them) and school and a big house and yard to maintain. As I worked on dishes, or picked up, or put Willa to bed, I constantly wondered why I was so slow at all this, how I never had time to just relax with the kids. Or relax period. I even did a study to find out. Over the years I’ve decided, yes, I’m probably slightly slower at some housework. Yes, I probably like to sleep more than moms with perfect houses. Yes, I have more children than the average. But I’m not the only one who can’t keep it all up. Many families live in squalor like us and just handle it better. They get over it.
I know that’s the advice everybody gives new moms. “Leave the laundry. Hold your baby.” That’s all well and good, and believe me I held those babies A LOT. But eventually you run out of clean underwear and spend extra time running around finding pairs for six different people out of the dryer and random piles of unfolded laundry. You can leave the dishes and read the kids an extra long bedtime story, and then go to bed because you want to be rested and not snappy at them the next day. But then in the morning you have a disgusting mess on the dining room table that you need for breakfast. And the kids are whining “I’m hungry” and you have to leave in 10 minutes, and “Damn it why didn’t I do this last night?”
Every single day, I’d tell myself a variation on “I’m going to catch up today and do x and y and z and then really spend some time playing with Greta because she’s been having a rough time”. And then I’d actually only do x and maaaybe y and end up scolding Greta because she’d peed her pants for the 5th time even though I don’t even believe in scolding a child for peeing their pants but Goodness Gracious Child, you were a foot from the toilet. The daily let down wore me down. I was Burnt Out.
Bottom line- I just never ever ever felt good at being a stay-at-home mom. And in life, it’s important to have something one is good at.
Two working parents:
I don’t mean I think I’m a bad mama. I’m choosing to accept that it’s part of who I am to need time away from my children most days. And to have the structure of leaving the house. I’m not good at instilling that structure into my days myself.
I was dreading going back to work. Even though I wasn’t so happy at home. I worried about Willa and especially Greta. I knew it needed to be done financially. Mark pushed, but gently, for me to look for work.
But here’s what I’ve discovered after six weeks back at work. Everybody’s happier. Not just our checkbook.
For the males in the house, not too much has changed. Still school and work. They don’t see me after school, but they don’t seem to care. Except for that Dad generally doesn’t let them watch one TV show after school like I did. So, fine.
For Greta, I’ve seen a blossoming. She’s more confident and speaks more clearly even to strangers. She comes home and tells me all about the butterfly life cycle, and how she and ”my best friend Romy” played. She’s (finally!) not peeing her pants every day. Only once has she seemed anything less than enthusiastic about going. I think she and I had gotten stuck in a rut at home together every day. And it makes a big difference that we found a preschool we really like.
For Willa, it’s harder to tell. She seems to enjoy it just fine at her daycare. But she did have a nursing strike. Does she love it all day every day? Probably not. But I’m confident she’s getting attention and loving care. Before there were honestly days I was so stressed she didn’t get the attention she needed from me.
And me, I’m happier. Yes, it’s crazy tiring to get up at 5:30am to get four children and me ready and out to four different places by 9am and finally return home by 6:30pm. I don’t like being New at work and the learning curve of procedures and figuring out who does what and all. But I don’t feel like a failure at the end of every day. Sometimes I feel smart again. Sometimes it’s even fun. Three times at work in the last weeks I’ve embarassed myself by laughing so hard I had streams of tears running down my face. I can’t say that’s a burden.
Here’s the thing, and I wish I could’ve done this when I wasn’t working but I really just couldn’t seem to, never matter how hard I tried:
When I’m working, I don’t feel the same constant guilt about what needs to be done for our family, at home or errands or whathaveyou. Even when I’m not actually working. When I come home, I don’t automatically switch to the get-stuff-done-mode that I couldn’t switch out of as a non-working mom (or its alternative, not-getting-stuff-done-mode-but-feeling-extremely-guilty-so-can’t-feel-good mode). I switch from Worker to just plain Mama.
I’m not going to really try to sell you the whole it’s not the quantity of time, it’s the quality line. I do wholeheartedly believe children need LOTS of time with their parents. They need one-on-one time and doing parallel projects at the kitchen table time and family dinner discussion time and just plain I’m here at the house if you need me time. But do they need me 24/7? No. My time before and after work is pretty much concentrated solely on them. It wasn’t before. (Um, when do we do housework you ask? Well, we do just barely enough. Don’t surprise us with a visit. Or actually, DO. Just don’t judge us!)
I don’t regret ANY of the choices we’ve made about the times I and Mark have been at home, or now while we’re not. They’ve rounded out our relationships as parents and children. And now I know, as I didn’t at my last job, that for the most part working is good for me and our family.
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*Not now of course. I wouldn’t blog at work. I have Fridays off. Skippity yay!!
**Disclaimer: By work, I mean employed work. I’m not implying if you don’t have employment you don’t work. I used to find it so tiring that people I talked to while “staying home” (except that one doesn’t actually end up staying at home) was quick to qualify “so you don’t work?” with “I mean, I know you work… of course taking care of four kids is work… I mean work outside the home… I mean you don’t work for pay…” fumble fumble with words. I’d try to cut them off usually. “I get it. You’re not trying to belittle me here. We all know kids are work. Moving on…”
See the problem? So for ease of use and to cut all this out, here:
- work = earning an income, even if you happen to complete this work at home
- at home = unemployed though I’m well aware you may not spend any more time at home than an employed person, and I certainly know IT’S WORK.
Enough jibberish?
***As brief a history as possible, just for the record:
- Twin boys 0 to 4 months- Heather at home on maternity leave with lots of sisterly support
- Boys 4 months to 2 1/2 years- Mark at home
- Boys 2 1/2 to 3 1/4 years- In-home childcare
- Boys 3 1/4 to 3 1/2 years, Greta 0 to 4 months- Heather at home on maternity leave
- Boys 3 1/2 to 5 years, Greta 4 months to 22 months- Mark at home
- Boys 5 to 7 years (when not at elementary school), Greta 22 months to 3 3/4 years, Willa 0 to 10 months- Heather at home
- Boys 7 years- School (no actual change from last above), Greta 3 3/4 years- Full-time preschool, Willa 10 months- In-home childcare
Mother’s Day
My fam really did up Mother’s Day this year. My first as a mama of four. I knew it was going to be good when Greta started saying, about last Tuesday, “I just can’t wait until Mother’s Day!” Either that, or the girl just loves a holiday.
By Friday she really couldn’t wait, and gave me her handmade creation from preschool. Then she fretted that she didn’t have anything to give me on actual Mother’s Day. Parker and Auden followed suit with their school creations, and I opened my two homemade bird magnets.
Today, I received two sweet cards, brunch, a shell necklace thoughtfully imagined and made by Auden, a certificate from Parker for making my bed, a toot, a puppet show, and a pair of pants. Yes, toot means fart. Greta knows just what I like.
Not to imply that Mother’s Day is just about gifts. I also got to take a walk with Greta while she peddled her trike (I’m a big girl!) and do some gardening with A&P.
I love my life. No, really, it might not always look it, but I do.
8:30
I’ve come to grips lately with the fact I’m not cut out to be a blogger. I’m not dedicated to writing daily (or even monthly), I haven’t bothered to cover a certain niche, and I’m not good at making bunches of friends, really, internet or otherwise. So anyway, this is actually a complete aside to this post, but this blog will continue as a place to write, when I feel like writing. Maybe a few real-life friends and family members will read it. Maybe the occasional stranger. That’s who currently reads, just now I won’t try to think it ever might be more.
On a related note, I’m not particularly well-suited to stay-at-home-motherhood either. It’s a damn hard job. I won’t even pretend that I have anything eloquent to say on the subject. Some people are great at it, happy. I am okay at some of it, happy when faced with some of it. I hold high, probably unattainable standards for motherhood and taking care of a household, and I didn’t hit them. Not even close, ever. I’m hoping my next boss is a little easier to please.
I also won’t pretend that our reasons for my working aren’t mostly financial. All the other stuff is just what I’ve been reflecting on in light of this reality.
People keep asking me about my new job. I shrug. It’s the same job I left almost two years ago. Not literally, but basically. I know I’m good at it, something I didn’t always know about stay-at-home-motherhood. I used to enjoy (parts of) it. I don’t care about talking about the job, though, because I don’t (yet) care about the job. They want to pay me, they’re located close to my home, they’re willing for me to start every day after I drop the boys off at school, I know old co-workers there- ok, sign me up.
I’m still a mother first. The last three weeks since I’ve accepted the job, all I’ve worried about, planned for, is where my four wonderful kiddos will be each and every minute of my workday. I haven’t spent any time thinking up all the new ideas I can bring to my new job. I won’t bore you with the details of why the childcare worked out how it did; let’s just say- it’s complicated. Four children, how could it not be? I was assured by my new boss, I can start at 9am. I don’t think they’d had a candidate before that was so worried about start time (hopefully not the first strike against me). A lot of childcare starts at 6 or 7am. But 9am for me means only paying for daycare for two kids, not four. My boys can be dropped off straight to school.
So at 8am every day, I will drive in a figure eight. First dropping Willa (10 months) at an in-home daycare, then fifteen minutes down to drop Greta (3 years) at a daycare/preschool, then another fifteen minutes to the boys’ (7 years) school, and ten more minutes to work, a mile from my house. My husband will drive the same figure eight at 3pm. I even drove it for practice (to time it).
I am SO worried about them, people. What if Willa won’t drink her bottles (she won’t now, though she did a month ago), what if Greta starts throwing the tantrums she throws with me at her new school, what if she repeatedly pees her pants, what if Mark has a nervous breakdown under the pressure of all those pick-ups and making dinner with four hungry grouches? It feels sometimes like the needs of our family are being met like a house of cards.
I’m hoping they will flourish. I’m hoping Greta makes some leaps in independence, that Willa continues to be the happy bug she is, that the girls learn to let their dad meet certain needs, that the boys’ lives are pretty much unchanged, that Mark and I’s relationship doesn’t collapse under the stress. But, oh, the scenarios for something getting out of whack.
I emailed HR at my new company yesterday to get confirmation I’m starting Monday at 9am. And she replied. “Please arrive at 8:30am.” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK. aka Fuck Me!
I know she has NO idea what a difference that half hour makes. And I can probably make it work. But I wanted to scream yesterday. When you have four kids, finding childcare for just a half hour can involve endless juggling. And I feel like all I’ve done for weeks is set up the juggle. I wanted to take the next three days and enjoy my days with my children. Say good-bye to the (part-time co-op) preschool we’ve loved.
Now this person tosses in an extra ball. And I maybe could question it. After all, I was told I could start at 9am. But I don’t want to set myself up to be THAT employee. aka Not A Team Player. Especially when this company seems to pride itself on people who work hard (aka long). It’s probably not great to start out with “excuses” about my FOUR children.
So I will call the school today, and see what options are for their before-school care I was hoping to avoid. And probably spend $40 plus a $100 registration fee- $140! for ONE half hour of care. (I’m not even joking- it’s a daily flat fee, x 2.) GRRRRRR. (I knew I’d probably have to do it sometime, for meetings or such. Just NOT THE FIRST DAY.)
This 8:30am issue symbolizes where my heart is. With my kids, worrying about their schedules and activities and homework and swimming lessons and whether their emotional and physical needs are met. I am not ready to let any of that go to anyone else and concentrate on contributing to a company I hold no vested interest in yet. All this time, I’ve been worrying about how my kids will do with this transition. Who I probably should have been worrying about is me.
Why I often look delirious
I am not a sleeper. I’m not sure how I slept as a baby, but I’ve had trouble sleeping off-and-on since I was a kid. You hear people give advice about young children learning to put themselves back to sleep in the night. I tend to think that’s shit. Either you’re a sleeper, perhaps with occasional trouble sleeping, or you’re not a sleeper, but occasionally get good sleep. My husband is the former; I am the infuriatingly the latter. If we have some petty disagreement at bedtime, he can still be asleep in five minutes while I stew for hours. Thankfully that’s not my “usual” reason for insomnia.
Pregnancy and having babies that wake in the night just exacerbate this. When I was pregnant with Willa, I’d lie awake just wishing somebody would soothe me back to sleep. I’m not alone, I know, from the number of pregnant friends I know posting on FB at 3 in the morning. And something about winter seems to keep me up late also. Maybe I need more exercise. Actually, there’s no maybe about needing exercise, just a maybe concerning its helpfulness to my sleep. At any rate, if you are reading this sleep-deprived, I wish you Sweet Dreams tonight!
As an example of the ridiculousness of my evenings, here’s a rundown of last night, unfortunately not an atypical night:
9-10:30pm: Watch Friday Night Lights on DVD with husband. Feel guilty because slept horribly the night before and should be sleeping, but don’t feel tired yet.
10:30-11pm: Go upstairs, wake up Willa (in our bed) crawling in. Feed her, listen to her and husband fall asleep.
11pm: Decide should read until tired.
11:30pm: Decide am not tired enough, need a little snack. Have snack watching reruns of Friends. My criteria for “fall asleep TV” is it can’t be creepy (i.e. CSI, etc.) and I must have seen it before, so plenty of stupid TV not worthy of my time gets watched.
11:35-11:55: Toss and turn on the couch, feeling guilty I won’t be at my level-headed best Mamaness tomorrow. Feel annoyed because tomorrow has plenty of important to-dos. Worry about money.
12am: Fall asleep.
12:20am: Wake up. Drag self off couch, dreading waking up Willa in my bed. I refuse to sleep all night on the couch. Sleeping on the couch is for people in their twenties who have had too much to drink at a friend’s house. We are in the process of transitioning Willa to Greta (and now also Willa’s) room, but it’s taking longer than planned. First Mark built a lofted bed for Greta, completed a couple days ago. (Please ignore the cobwebs which I am too lazy to crop out.)
Now I need to get Willa’s spot in that room ready. Heading up the stairs, I remember Parker’s a good cuddler and go wedge myself between him and the wall in his twin bed, half on the siderail. Hours of wonderful sleep… that kid IS a good cuddler.
4am: Hear Willa grunting, go feed her.
4:14am: Mark’s alarm goes off.
4:30am: Go downstairs to say good-bye to Mark, hoping Willa will stop talking and go back to sleep.
4:45-5:20am: Toss and turn while Willa jabbers next to me and plays with her feet.
5:20am- Feed her again in hopes of her sleepiness.
5:30am- Decide to give her the bed to see if she if the lack of my distraction will get her to sleep. (It often does; I am REALLY looking forward to having another choice of place for her to sleep soon.) Shower.
5:40am- Out of the shower to a sleeping baby. Good. Climb back in bed to see if the hot water has worked its magic.
6am- No, it has not. And…. up for the day.
Ready or not, here it comes
About six weeks pregnant for the first time, I walked into a baby store. A mistake. I wasn’t ready. Twenty feet in I freaked out, turned on my heels, and hightailed it out of there. Five months later, I reentered, happily. Ready to think about the purchases motherhood entails.
How I feel about Christmas on November 21st is like how I felt about pregnancy at six weeks.
Give me another Christmas trimester. The holiday season seems to last about six weeks these days. Can I have two weeks more before I have to think about buying anything?
A Fall Day
A wonderful day all around, here at the JaRuud household. It’s been a while since I had the four kids around while Mark worked.
It didn’t start out the greatest. I had this idyllic morning planned in my head, with French Toast and planning out our day and maybe some cuddles and reading. Then, I’d get going on packing for our trip to Oregon tomorrow. Food and bedding and clothes for six people. Mostly, my males can pack for themselves, but they need checking after. Instead, we got off on the wrong foot. There was fighting over LEGOs (Auden and Parker) and fighting over the state puzzle (Auden and Greta) and fighting about how fast breakfast was ready (me and all) and just whining and screaming all over the place.
So, a few PBS shows.
And then, raking leaves. It sounds like a chore, but it’s not. Raking leaves is some of my favorite outdoor work. It’s hard to get tired of a task that comes once a year. I so wish I had found the camera to snap of few of us. Parker was the designated pile-picker-upper, I raked with Willa on my back, Officer Auden James issued me tickets for various conjured-up infractions, and Greta ran around all over the place.
That time spent with the kiddos paid for itself the rest of the day. I so often realize the kids need a little time from me, but still persist in my agenda. I was stressed, getting ready to leave with four children on a six-hour drive. The choice to make a change to my plans was worth it.
I couldn’t really tell you how we spent the remainder of the day. There was reading and a quiet time after lunch, directions to remain quietly playing in their rooms were (mostly) followed, there was a flurry of construction paper cutting resulting in bits all over the kitchen and a hallway with a new decor, there was a screening of How to Train Your Dragon, there was my first attempt at cooking Brussel sprouts. Parker asked right as they were done, “Can I try one?” God Bless that boy.
What didn’t get done? Well, any packing. So, my alarm will be set to 5am to accommodate prep for our 8am departure. Because I just don’t do anything except maybe move laundry after the kiddos go to bed. There’s a glass or two of red wine and Friday Night Lights calling my name.
Push and Pull
One might have predicted this.
Back in my partying days, I had a friend who smoked (and drank) way too much. His girlfriend, also my friend, took the tactic of forbidding it. It’s the Camels or me, an ultimatum. My approach was different. Forbidding them just seemed so… well, harsh. (Or perhaps I knew that since I wasn’t having sex with him, threatening to withhold it wasn’t going to get me anywhere.) I would try to coddle him along with less smoking, hiding his cigarettes so that his next one would be delayed. But if he really looked pissed, like he needed one, I’d give in. Trying to explain it one day, I told my friend, “I don’t do Tough Love.” That oft-repeated quote, it explains a lot about my parenting style.
I don’t mean I’m permissive. Though my husband might disagree. I make them clean their room and do their chores and homework. I get my fair share of “you’re so mean”s. (Recently I found a piece of paper that Auden wrote on: “I hat my mom”. Good writing for him, but I won’t pretend it didn’t make me sad. When I asked him about it, he didn’t even remember writing it and claimed it was Parker. I know it wasn’t, as Parker still only writes lower-case a’s if forced.)
I mean that I don’t see the point in being forceful and demanding when trying to get the children to do something. Recently it’s come up with reading. The boys are just on the cusp of reading. They can sound out words if they’re short and use short vowels. I find it incredibly exciting, because I remember the way the world opened when I learned to read. Mark tries to get the boys to sound out parts of their bedtime reading. My feeling is bedtime reading is for relaxation, and learning to love reading at bedtime. Not for frustration. I don’t want to push them so hard they start to hate books. I’d rather “pull” them along by encouraging sounding out at other times, and by reading books at bedtime that demonstrate how great books are. Books that capture their interests, and that I enjoy also: If You Find a Rock, Henry and Ribsy, Y is for Yowl. Thursday night the boys and their dad had a giant blow-up over bedtime reading. He made them read “baby books”, with short words, and practice reading. They’ve all gotten over it, but I still think it was a set back in reading and parental relations. His way might get them reading faster, or it might not. Not if they learn that reading is a hateful chore.
Reading came up again last night. I found Junior Pictionary for $2.99 at Goodwill (score!) and we played it, the boys and Mark and I, after Greta went to bed. Loads of fun, it was. I enjoyed both seeing how they guess and watching what they’d draw. It was the most fun I’ve had in quite a while. No, really, it was.
It took them a while to get the concept of drawing objects around the object you are having somebody guess. Auden’s “tooth” looked like a plain ol’ rectangle, for instance, until I suggested he draw a few more and the mouth around it. It didn’t take long though- Auden drew our specific fridge complete with crap cartoons from the Economist and magnets from places my MIL has visited and artwork from 2008 and notices for museums events last summer stuck on the doors (OK, not quite that detailed) and an arrow to the ice machine for “ice”.
The pushing them to read came up again, though. I’d have them look at the word to draw and see if they knew it. But if they couldn’t sound it out pretty quickly, I read it to them. I didn’t want to hear any whining about not wanting to try, spoiling the fun. Mark, however, did his thing, spending a while each time working with either kid on “banana” or “vacuum” or whatever it was. They did balk a little bit and I was starting to get a little annoyed (without saying so). But after a few turns they just expected it. This night the pushing was effective, looking back on it, because they were so excited to play the game. It worked because of the fun, not spoiling it.
[Sidenote story: Auden misheard/read "sand" as "send" and tried to draw that. How would you draw "send"? I think a lot of people born before, say 1990, would draw somebody sending a letter. Auden made a valiant attempt to depict sending an email, but I never got to send.]
Are you a pusher or a puller with your children (if you have them)? We probably have to accept that we can change some, but our natural tendencies are going to come out in this aspect of parenting. Our kids are lucky enough to have both.
When I Had Two
We can all look back upon the days when we had our first child(ren) and see how our ideals/methods/activities have changed. As expectant parents, we develop fairy tale stories of parenting. As we have more children we grow the family and our parenting skills. We choose some fairy tale scenarios to concentrate on and abandon others. Some tales we still long for, when they don’t come true despite our best efforts. Our lives change profoundly in the process.
I never had just one child, but changes have certainly occurred since I had two.
When I had (just!) two children:
- bathing a child was not a noteworthy event.
- pictures of each child hung on the walls.
- children left the house fully dressed and matching.
- I had no gray hairs.
- I worked full time.
- I weighed as much as 55 pounds less.
- toys were regularly picked up and shelved in bins labeled with pictures of the contents. (Now toys are picked up to vacuum occasionally, by throwing any and all into whatever giant tub I can find.)
- the children ate apple carrot cakes made without sugar on their first birthday.
- I sang each child to sleep each night.
- I never ever let a child cry without picking him up, even for five seconds.
- laundry was washed, dried, folded, and put away all on the same day.
As one has more children, parenting is distilled into what one decides are the most important facets.
Now I have four children, and still:
- every child is greeted each morning and goes to bed each night with a giant hug. As many as possible are squeezed into the time in between.
- many many books are read to each child (and I’ve just begun to be read to!).
- I usually cook nutritious meals at home, and bake healthy(er) yummies often.
- I do my very best to attend to each child’s needs, whether it be play or problem-solving or cuddles or a snack; they just might have to wait until I finish putting the laundry into the washer. I no longer think I have to drop everything the moment a child peeps up.
- playing and art messes are encouraged. Helping clean up the messes is also strongly encouraged.
- each child’s individual interests are fostered in the conversations we have, the books we read, the events we attend, the home activities we choose. Hence, I’ve gone to Dinosaur Night at the Burke, outings involve seeking grasshoppers for Harry the Tarantula (I know, yuck), regularly mix together food coloring, baking soda and vinegar (“chemistry”), and read more monkey books than I’d care to. I wonder what we’ll be doing in a few years with Willa!
- all four children are respected and loved for their differences in making up this family of ours.
- I haven’t learned to sit down to nurse a baby with a rag to catch the inevitable spit-up.
Unrelated
A few unrelated notes from our weekend:
On Mrs. G’s suggestion that Sun Chips are good for keeping a marriage alive, Friday night I came home with a bag. I showed him the post, too.
“Look, we can see if our [compost] worms will eat the [100% compostable!] bag”, I said.
“Our compost worms? They don’t even know who you are,” replied Mark. This being a thinly veiled dig (ha) at me for not helping once in the garden this year.
“True, I don’t bury our compost,” I admitted. “Perhaps I was too busy paying the bills”. Zing! The last time Mark paid a bill was a few months before he moved in together with me. Meaning his finances were one of the first of his messes I cleaned up. (Don’t misunderstand, he’s cleaned up plenty of mine.) Not his strong suit, money management.
“Friendly” banter ensued about who does what around here. An interesting consideration, really, how much we should leave as only one party’s responsibility. In the corporate world I worked in, we had a back-up for every task. Mark and I probably overlap more on what we’re capable of than many couples. I do more around the house now, but Mark is quite capable of all things domestic, and chips in when he notices something piling up. Our biggest exclusive jobs are all things outside (him) and all things money-related (me). These have held true whichever one of us held an outside job, or when both of us did. I maintain that if I died he would be more screwed than I would be if he died. Beyond the obvious emotional upset, of course. It would be a long time before lack of pruning caused serious ills to the family, but lack of paying the water bill is a different story.
On one level it seems like having a few chores that are exclusively one partner or the other’s would work out. A hundred years ago most chores were assigned by sex. But it seems that in this marriage, we both could use a little help. (Or perhaps we are both just oh so slightly overwhelmed at times by the work that four children and a house entails.) My husband’s solution: ”If we could just get the worms to pay the bills…”
~
Watching Parker make it up a long (0.6 mile) steep hill on his bike filled me with pride. At his perseverance and at his athleticism. Watching Parker go down the same hill filled me with fear. At one point, going at a tremendous speed, he caught serious air, as the kids used to say, from the dip of a driveway. He has always been good at knowing the limits of his body, and he was fine, but whew! There is no doubt he is a big kid now.
~
Friday morning I took one look in the fridge and realized something needed to be done. Mark had brought in from the garden-I-never-visit a cup containing tiny tomatoes and tiny green peppers on many successive days. Having also quite the crop of corn in which only half the kernels matured, I decided chili was in order. Out came a few varieties of dried beans to soak. Greta and I spent a good while chopping, her taking off stems and taking the role of QC (Quality Control) by selecting those to donate to the worms. Saturday morning I began boiling the beans. A little behind schedule, sometime late Saturday afternoon I added the vegetables. Said good-bye to Mark who was off to perform the good duties of library book returner and baseball game watcher. Added some spice, tinkered around the house. Told the older three kids they could make forts with not one, but two couches worth of cushions. I was feeling generous. Apparently we are a lazing family because I’ve just counted them up to 19 cushions! 19! Enough for three children, yes? “But you need to work out any troubles with sharing the cushions yourselves. If things end up with screaming or hitting you’re done with them. Do you understand?” Happiness ensued for a time. Another piece of background here is that I have a cold, and a baby with a cold and a growth spurt, and I really hadn’t slept well in a number of days.
A small disagreement over the footprint for each child’s house broke out. I swooped in and went through the drill that always goes something like this: “Greta’s screaming because she wants a place, right? Can you find her a place?” “That’s your place? OK, Greta, how about if I help you make a nice little spot here?” “Oh, Parker, you like this spot I made better? Well, I made it for Greta. Greta, you still want your brother’s old spot? OK, problem solved.” You will notice, I did not enforce my initial condition for playing with cushions. Mistake. As there was not too much screaming, I let it slide. Then five minutes later, I played referee and let it slide again. Really, it’s hard do anything sometimes without making Greta scream. Make her breakfast, for instance.
I smelled burning. To get the veggies cooking, I’d turned up the chili just a smidge higher than I usually would’ve. Two days worth of work and all the remaining bounty from the garden, all inflicted with the taste of the beans that were seriously scorched at the bottom. I was mad. I wanted to cry. I was hungry. My four children started screaming, some about unfair couch cushion portions, some in need for milk. I wanted to scream myself. What to do, what to do? Have to make this better…?
Cookies, I thought! (I am nothing if not an emotional eater.) There’s cookies in the car! I grabbed the car keys, the smallest child, and headed out past the Cushion Wars unnoticed. Plunked in the passenger seat with my sleeve of cookies, whatever hormone that is that comes with nursing (Oxytocin, maybe?), a cuddable baby, and the commiseration that is Facebook, things got better. About halfway through my sleeve of cookies and five minutes into this break, I spied my three children, dressed for outside play, exit the front door and head around through the backyard gate, looking like they were on a mission. Nice, I thought. They decided to get some fresh air. They aren’t fighting anymore. No hurry to get inside. Though they aren’t supposed to go into the front without a parent knowing, they did go straight to the backyard.
Another five minutes, the remaining half sleeve of cookies, a few more deep breaths for me, a burp for the baby, and I headed back in.
“Mooooom, where WERE you?” Auden cried. Oh no, they were worried about me. Crap! “We looked all over for you, even outside!” Oh, that’s what their mission was. Much assurance that Mama would never leave them followed. And hugs. Have I mentioned that I love my Auden boy? Mr. Responsiblity and Mr. Sensitive. (Not that I’d label my children, right?) He had the phone, and a scrap of paper that he’d written my sister’s phone number on that he keeps in his wallet. He also keeps his dad’s business card with all his numbers in his safe. Yes, he’s six, and he requested a safe (it’s his own padlocked drawer in a file cabinet). To my knowledge, he’s never actually dialed the phone without parental help though. But good thinking. Appropriate to call your (local) aunt and say, “Auntie Al-Gal, I can’t find my mom!” We had a good talk about different emergencies and what to do. When you’d call your aunt, when you’d call 911. I don’t think I caused any lasting worries. But I won’t be leaving them, even just to hide in the car, without telling them, again. And Mark came home with pizza.
