On (not) getting ahead in two parts
Two areas in which I am unspeakably frustrated. Enough that I am posting despite it being a little bit of a ‘dark moment I may regret’ post.
Career
Professionally, I’ve made some mistakes over the last decade. The most notable is that I threw a lot of my writing/creative energy into the whole multiplicity thing which was… probably essential for my overall well being. I don’t think I regret it. But if I had, say, put 80% into that and 20% into building a better portfolio outside my current job, that wasn’t like “wow, talented CRAZY PERSON” I would be in a much better place. So I am getting to work on that now. But I feel a bit old for it.
Second I think I am now making the same mistake over in that I am obsessed with being a good mother. I read about parenting all the time and I think about parenting all the time and I go about blogs and sites all the time… all of which for my dream job I will get might be a good thing, but otherwise it may be repeating the same. damn. mistake. I need to back off on this, or at least turn it into professional credit. Canada only needs so many Ann Douglases, but… anyway. We’ll see.
Marriage
I am breaking my rule here about not posting before talking, but it has to be said: lately my marriage just sucks ass. I don’t mean the love part; that part is secure.
But the actual relating? Sucks. ass. In my grouchy way I think that this is because I have to deal with two crazinesses all the time: one is the Varying Moods, Eating, and Sleeping Patterns, and Daily Life of the toddler, which burns me out.
But the second is Carl’s work. For those of you keeping score: after getting off at 2:45 pm on Sat, Carl slept until 5, spent an hour and a half with us, and then worked until 2 am. Sunday he slept until noon, went and got a hair cut, was back around 3 and then worked 7 pm - midnight. Yesterday he worked 9 am - 9 pm and then slept. This was a particularly bad weekend but it is not completely atypical.
And a normal workday for Carl is 9 am - 11 pm. If Noah and I are lucky, there is a break for dinner… maybe 2 workdays a week. A third workday maybe he gets the break after Noah goes down, if I don’t eat with Noah. (Conundrum: eat with Noah? With Carl? Eating both times has not been good despite attempts at portion control.)
He keeps saying that it will change… this time, maybe after August… but it’s been a long long time and I don’t know. I’m at a loss. It seems like when it was just him and me, it didn’t cost me as much to be flexible and have cosy time at odd hours or go out to dinner as restaurants were closing. (Or move to Ottawa… hrumph.)
But now with a toddler my waking hours are mostly not my own, and once Noah’s asleep, I am drained EVEN IF Carl is not working which is almost never. If I *knew* there was some time coming, I could reserve energy, if that makes sense? But I never do.
And that’s the thing, really, the not knowing. I never, ever know if Carl is going to be able to make dinner… come to bed… watch Noah…. It may not be as irregular as I feel it is emotionally, but where I am emotionally is that I have a complete barrier to believing that he can do anything. Like, I want to take a class, but I don’t because I can’t depend on his being there to take care of Noah. Or I think I should make a fancy dinner, but I don’t, because the chances are that he won’t be there to eat it.
Also… and this is only as far as I’ll go with this point I think, but it does come into play - someone who is working/sleep deprived like that just doesn’t really have a zest for life. So I have to do all the heavy lifting in enthusiasm.
And also I can’t count on a break, because the pager may always take it away. Sat morning I was supposed to get to go to the garage sale without toddler for fun and speed. Sunday morning I spent at my mother’s ORDINATION as a church elder (!!!!!!) which was completely triggering, and to which I had said yes only because I thought I would have, you know, a partner there.
And forget plans with friends. I just feel like I can’t make them, ’cause they will get pissed off if I break them. I can make plans with Noah in tow, of course, and am doing that. But even that gets weird because if I want to make a plan on the weekend, I never know if Carl will be available, and if he is I feel like I *have* to leave that time for him and Noah, since their time together is precious. Probably I am overthinking all of this, but I do.
But it’s also just that I sort of don’t feel like I have a partner I can depend on. To be there. Unless it is a huge emergency. I feel like I have a partner I can depend on… when and if he’s not working (which includes sleeping after the crazy overnight work is finished).
And the thing is… it’s not that he doesn’t try. He will go without sleep to spend time with Noah, and on Sunday when it was becoming clear that I had made a very big mistake in taking Noah, Lynn, Lyria, and myself to my mother’s church to hear how holy she is, he not only took Noah while I took a nap, but he and Noah washed down the front porch. Which is - highly unusual and wow, in that normally Carl does not have time/energy/thought to do those things, but also highly usual in that when things are reaching the breaking point, Carl always comes through in the crisis.
(Which is what he does at work too, hence the insane overnight crisis fixes.)
(Which does not net us any more money but that’s a whole other, if related, thing.)
I really don’t know if this is me being overly demanding, as I’m in a period of general malaise lately. But it feels really horrible lately. Maybe because I don’t have a calm workplace to go to, or because toddler life is sort of the same kind of ‘putting own needs on back burner to cope with latest child thing’ but I just am starting to feel like I cannot live this way any more.
Not sure what to do about it either. Any thoughts are good to hear as long as they are relatively kind and do not involve divorce lawyers, which for various reasons, is not an option. Mostly though this is a vent.
Mini bits
WTF is this half birthday business? I have no issue with families celebrating their kid’s anniversary of getting toe hair, if that’s what they want to, but do I really need to drag my not yet two year old to TWO birthday parties per child per year? So far explanations have been “in January you can’t do anything fun” (huh? I have a January birthday and we had tons of fun!) and “it’s just an excuse for cake” (can’t we have cake without the gifts/hats/etc. stuff?)
Maybe I’m just getting old and grumpy but you know? I’d rather just have a plain old barbeque or something and not tie in the birthday ritual stuff. I really wonder if it is a good idea to hype one’s child up for two birthday parties a year. And basically I just feel snarky about it.
~~~
I took Noah on the GO Train yesterday, for the first time that he can actually remember. He’s super into trains right now, and I sort of have this goal to provide him with one groovy Toronto experience per week or so, so I thought: hey! trains!
He was a bit scared to get on the GO Train when it arrived and sadly I had folded up the Mac, so I kind of had to drag/lift him on. He would have been fine if the train would only have waited, say, 5-10 minutes at the station. :) But once he got over the indignity of it all he sat wide eyed, and after we got off (in the Beaches; I wasn’t quite up to going all the way downtown) he waved bye-bye with great enthusiasm and then talked about the train for the next two hours or so. So it was a success.
~~~
I hired my nanny for a few extra hours today, which she has at the moment, so I can attack the “workshop” in the basement, which has turned into a pit of dust, junk, and I’m pretty sure a cat threw up under the workbench.
If it goes well I might do it again now and then (her time permitting) and not just for housework/work purposes. The reason for doing that room right now is that there are tools in there lying around unsafely, which worries me, and because Carl and I have been fighting about it since a month after we moved in, and I’m tired of it, and this way at least he takes a financial hit, because I am like that about this one. So today first I work and then I clear that room out.
All of which leads to my next post, which I will do as a break in a bit.
Garage Sale!
Well it was a very successful event, mostly thanks to my mom who hit her neighbourhood early.
My plan was to go down there myself early, but Carl ended up working all night (that is, he has just, at 2:45 pm, finished working… since 9 am yesterday morning, with one 40 min nap in between during all those hours, no joke. At all. People think I am exaggerating when I say he is probably literally going to work himself to death or into short term disability, but I’m really not. Yes, doctors, etc., do that too, but… anyway, discussion for another time. He will of course have more work tonight and tomorrow, and be in a meeting at 8 am Mon. ‘Cause this is our life, except every third weekend is lighter in the “things might go wrong” department (no new development, etc.))
Sooooo I had to breakfast Noah and get him dressed and bring him along, so I opted to keep the first part of the morning in our neighbourhood where I was comfortable with him walking alongside me. My neighbourhood was heavy on the sale, but light on the fancy schmancy stuff.
He picked out some things from the piles of minor toys - a Little People schoolbus, some Thomas the Tank Engine books (he is already enamoured of Thomas and recognizes the logo everywhere, argh!), and a toy camera. I also bought along with the bus the Little People Amusement Park or something like that; it has a groovy ramp to push the LP car down and a whirly thing to spin the LP people around in. Later on we bought the LP airplane, so we are really full of LP stuff these days… and I’m still ambivalent about them! But Noah loves them; he loves the way they fit into their things and the way things hook together and the details on the LP, so that sort of trumps things. Plus people keep getting us sets.
The airplane is part of my plan to talk a LOT about planes before we get on one for a four-hr trip. Grand total for all those small toys & about a dozen books: $12
My mother, meanwhile, got all the things I was hoping to get, thanks to cell phones: a sandbox with lid ($2), yes, the turtle one, a ride-on tractor ($2) and a climbing/sliding apparatus of the plastic Little Tykes variety (not exactly that one, but close - it has a top roof on it), which had never been used outdoors ($40). So for $56 we will have outfitted my backyard as well as these other toys, plus sand, although my friend already gave me two bags. So we’re good.
If I had time, particularly with power-tool friendly spouse, I would fashion these things more naturally (I originally had visions of a little zen garden area-cum-sandbox). But this is one of the things I am letting slide in the name of FUN NOW.
I didn’t get some things I wanted to, that I suspect would have been around had we gotten there earlier or gotten to the heart of the Beaches: a wagon, clothes, more books esp. french ones*, and some other stuff. But we did really well all things considered. One thing we couldn’t really do, I found, though, was look for the kind of stuff Lyr wants - little things for the garden, etc. We would have to be without Noah for that I think, ’cause we end up supervising him around the toys, plus it’s just hard to look for everything at once.
I realized that probably as soon as next year, he will be shopping for himself even more than just pointing and saying “Noda (the latest variation on his own name) peas (please).” That was a little mindbending.
I also noticed that the for-sale toys get more broken and lousy the older you get (with some exceptions), until you get into real sports equipment, so it may be that by next year it’s not hugely useful to go around for toy items.
* I have some around and read them to him now and then, mostly when he chooses them. It was still rather shocking the other day when he picked up a fire truck and said “pohmpay” which is Noah-ese for “pompier,” which is fireman (camion de pompier is fire truck). Apparently this language acquisition thing actually works! Who knew!
The long slow glide
Things at work are… interesting. I’m so torn. On the surface, and maybe if I weren’t such a… whatever I am, let’s say a veneer of responsible worker over the ego and manic behaviour of a tempermental creative type, my job is perfect. I get to write, I get to bounce around on different subjects, and I get to work from home. AND I get a paycheque regularly. So let’s cheer for my job and be totally grateful for it, which I am.
And on the other hand it’s like a black hole where I toss words in once a week and never. hear. again. about them, unless I go read reader comments which as any professional writer knows is a mixed bag. I never get evaluated. My CEO said straight out at the seasonal holiday party that soon it will be “all free content” and implied that I am basically on the dole. And any standards I meet are purely my own, which I do not always personally find inspiring… I do at times, but right now with demands of toddler and home and garden, it is a constant inner battle.
As someone on some blog said, too, part time work sometimes is the best of both worlds, and sometimes the worst of both worlds. This month I’ve mostly felt blah about it.
So yesterday I did what many people do when they feel frustrated about having to make money at a job they don’t love: I went and spent money! Yes, welcome to the consumer treadmill. I hit the Mastermind toys warehouse sale. Last year I went towards the end and it was a calm experience. This year I went the first morning and I assumed it would be a little busier.
It took 20 min to get into the parking lot. At this point perhaps I should have just turned around, but I was already invested in my place in line, so to speak, so onwards we forged. It was insane. INSANE. This is a toystore that sort of specializes in that intersection of yuppie cash and hippie desire to have fewer battery-operated things (although they, of course, carry some of those things too). That is, the kind of store that is targetted to me, particularly on sale.
And I have to admit watching the cash was a bit scary. I saw a woman with her son and they picked out one of everything Thomas the Tank Engine. Now I admit, we too are on the Thomas plan (I bought a used Brio set and we are adding in Thomas bits thanks to granparent generosity). I think the wooden train set is a quality toy worth paying for. But seriously, we are talking about a thousand dollars’ worth of toys here, even at the sale prices. And they weren’t done.
I saw two grown adults fighting over a Melissa and Doug locks set.
And the line to check out - at ten cash registers - was over an hour’s wait. (My mother was with me so we alternated standing in line and shopping/amusing Noah.) I seriously would have left had I - well, Noah found it actually - not found the next toy of our dreams, at 70 per cent off retail.
It’s this Plan dollhouse, but with furniture included, and they had one set up, and it is really nice. Noah will be getting it for Christmas I think, so boom, everything is done for him except the stocking stuffers… and if he’s aware enough to ask for something specific, I guess. (Eeek! He’s getting into those years!) And yes, the Chapters site says it’s for girls: well tough. I realize that he will probably play with it, then get the gender thing, abandon it for a while, and then maaaaybe go back to it. But, you know - boys live in houses too.
(Besides, my evil plan is to call it “the Manor” and perhaps build a Batcave onto the back at some point… heh heh.)
The consumer contagion was fierce though. I also was picking up a baby gift and I got an inflatable toddler bed for our trip out west this summer, so I had three items. And the clerk said “you only have THREE things?” like I had sprouted two heads.
This Saturday is my next consumer frenzy: it’s the community garage sale here, and the Sale for the Cure in the Beaches, and I am planning to go and get at the very least a pile of books at garage sale prices (yes, I know, the library would be better, but we do like owning them too), hopefully some outdoor toys for Noah, and other toys that catch my fancy as I see them (uh oh….) Oh and if I see some nice china for cheap I’m getting that ’cause we are going to start having “fancy meals” with proper linen serviettes, etc., but we want them to be on china that is break-ok just in case.
I have no idea where I am going to end up putting all this stuff. And I am still suffering from next-baby-itis, that is the “save things for the next child” disease. Should I a) decide I can handle it and b) be able to conceive, etc. I have to admit that the older Noah gets the easier some things get and I can start to imagine maybe dealing with two.
Then I went and bought some plants too, for the garden: herbs and veggies and things. We’ll be planting them in the late afternoon today, when the sun’s a little less fierce. Planting is one of the things I can do with Noah and I hope it’s a lot of fun - it should be.
What I would like to do (after Saturday! Because I really do believe in buying used; keeps things out of landfill, etc.) instead of all this distracting stuff is slow down. I was talking to S. last week and she was saying that I should get a night off/out/etc. And I was thinking about it and right now it’s sort of true that I am either a) taking care of Noah, b) working, c) taking care of the house/chores, d) ministering to some relationship (in a good way! but not totally down time!), or e) sleeping/eating/showering. Maybe I do need some honest downtime. Not sure how to get there yet but… that’s a post for another day.
Minor life balance whinge
I do not like working until 2:30 am simply because I didn’t get any work done over the holiday weekend (and no nanny time, boo hoo). On the plus side, after a quick edit tomorrow morning, I’m done!
Back to the future
I forgot to post that we were off to Ottawa this weekend.
But we were. It was mostly a bonding-function trip; taking Noah to meet family, stay with his grandmother, and for Carl and I to see our niece & nephews & cousins as well. It’s a 4.5 hr car ride, so en toddler that means 5.5 hrs, pretty much.
Noah was great in the car all things considered; he only slept 40 min on the way up which made for tired cranky guy, but coming back he had a 2 hr nap and was really great. I did have to spend the last half of the trip in the backseat reading and playing, but that was okay.
I know that Noah’s social nature and security is 90% personality. But I have to say that this weekend I kind of felt proud of the remaining 10%, because he basically hooked up with the kidpack and ran with it - as the baby of the group the other kids were pretty careful with him, and he just beamed and enjoyed and played and was just - fun. I’d thought he would get overwhelmed or throw toys or tantrums or get nervous or something, but he didn’t. I don’t know if he remembered the kids from the cottage last summer or if it’s just comforting to be around people that look like him, but it was like he saw them every day. He just… walked in and started playing.
And the sense of family was intense, esp. at the family dinner on Sunday. My extended family is quite different from Carl’s and Carl’s family gathers in large numbers for rowdy events. It’s kind of started to grow on me and I don’t spend hours in recovery after the chaos anymore. And this time I felt this kind of warm glow that this is Noah’s clan, [this post is very italics heavy] and that he is really lucky to have that, and it’s worth all the driving to maintain that. (And flying. This summer. Eek.)
Carl couldn’t make the family dinner though (work), so driving back as Noah was almost-but-not-quite passing out in the car and it was the gloaming time of the evening, there on the expressway that Carl and I drove so many, many times in the middle of the night during those three months after Emily died, I was suddenly pierced by just a shaft of fresh grief, and it was grief that this is her clan too, and she never ever got any of that. It was so bad I really couldn’t breathe, and it kind of shocked me, because mostly her absence is more throbbing.
Balancing that, though, was a little bit of minor history rewriting. While living mostly in Ottawa and pregnant with Noah we spent some time enjoying Ottawa (about ten percent as much as we would have normally, but man that was a rough pregnancy/time in our lives). But the whole time there was kind of like this massive block which sort of went like: go to nice toystore but don’t buy any baby toys; go to very nice park but don’t imagine having a baby there; go have breakfast at Bramasole but don’t picture bringing a child here. Etc.
So this weekend, given that we were really only in Ottawa about 48 hrs, we crammed a lot in: two fav restaurants; toystore; park. With Noah. Joyfully with Noah. And it was goooood stuff. I don’t know how to describe it really except that I think it is like learning or rediscovering a skill. Like we had chopped off tiny bits of ourselves to not think those things and we were collecting them up again.
There is nothing that could address the loss of Emily, but the small traumas in the wake of the larger, that is healable, and we did a lot of healing that way this weekend. I am tired and going to have a very difficult week due to work and scheduling and things, but I also feel just a tad better than I have in a long time.
I also got kind of nostalgic for Ottawa. It is a nice city, especially in spring. I chose not to live there and so for a while I sort of was villifying it in my head, but no. It really is nice. It just wasn’t the right time for a move, plus, I do love Toronto more. But now I can give Ottawa its proper space as truly enjoyable.
So all in all it was a very full weekend.
Consistency
So we’re just starting to get into the money-where-your-mouth-is toddler/preschool years. I realized we were hitting them this week when Noah came out with two things.
1. I dropped a milk bag on the weekend and it burst, sending milk into every corner of my newly-de-crumbled kitchen and I said with some emphasis, “crap!” Noah, delighted, said “cwap!” and I said to him, “That’s right, crap!” Then on Tues at DL’s place I dropped Noah’s shoe and he said “cwap!”*
2. Yesterday I put Noah’s sock on and said “there we go!” and he said “drweego!” and then proceeded to “drweego!” every accomplished moment of the day.
In other words, his modelling is getting more sophisticated now and I can see that he’s absorbing a hell of a lot of what I do, every day, and putting it into practice.
So I have been musing a lot on the whole area of discipline, both in its roots (to teach) and in its modern North American practice (to punish/enforce consequences/make rules). And I’ve decided that at this stage, where we don’t have any issues that aren’t directly related to developmental age (that is, Noah throws tantrums now and then, which is wildly appropriate for a toddler), my approach boils down to the idea of consistency.
Now consistency is much-touted in philosophies that I consider kind of punitive. For example, if a child does x bad thing y punishment will happen. Or, for example, that at bedtime you never ever pick them up. Or whatever. That’s fine, if that’s what you want to be consistent about.
But for me consistency is much much broader.
On the one hand there is the consistency of routine, which I am largely a fan of. I think kids operate better if they know that they will be served meals and snacks at regular intervals, and I’ve seen the miracle of not only routine sleep but actually reasonably firm scheduled sleep. Also yes, that if they get out of control they will be consistently corrected, however that is. (This week’s example: Noah started throwing toys at the cats, so I started taking the toys away when he did.)
On the other hand there is the consistency of good things. And this is what I think the hardcore discipline books lack, probably because they are focused on problem-solving. But for me I am finding that this is really important right now. Not just that Noah has consistent opportunities for fun and learning, but that I consistently ask him to help me, that when he asks for help it is consistently given, that his concerns are consistently addressed, and so on. Also, since his verbal and logic skills are expanding, that he is consistently told what’s happening and in some cases why.
Yesterday was a really good example of that for me: in the morning, after getting my work in, I was totally plugged in (just having a good day; it’s not always like that) and could answer his every query (”tat? tat? tat?”) and we were just - in tune. In the afternoon I dragged him through a series of errands that was definitely meltdown area and he did just. fine.
In the way that Noah had to drop toys one million times to learn that gravity works, his next few years will be (among other things) testing me and Carl and everyone else to see how this “relating” thing works. And increasingly I feel that it’s my job to show him that relating is not so much rules-based as it is caring-based.
I think the watershed on this for me as a basic philosophy really has come out of Emily’s death. Not only did that teach me a lot about control and lack thereof, and the difference between an issue with a kid (”he whines and is rude”) and a problem with a kid (”he is paralysed from the waist down ’cause of this fall”).
But also it really made me re-examine my relationship with the universe, as if all the multiplicity and abuse stuff hadn’t already. It is that guy in When Bad Things Happen To Good People who articulated it best for me. He said that after his son died, he could not believe that God was both all-powerful and all-loving. So he chose to believe in an all-loving God who was not all-powerful.
As a parent I guess I have decided that although it is also my job to exercise power - to create rules and reinforce them - that in moments large and small when to be compassionate conflicts with being perceived as the power in the relationship (which admittedly, is not all that often), I would rather come down on the side of love.
So at the very most basic, what I am aiming for is to be consistently caring, compassionate, kind, and present.
Well gee no wonder I feel tired!
* I have no issue with swearing, as evidenced in this blog. I realize this will mean some embarassing moments as Noah learns when and where to swear and when and where not to, and how to exercise self-control, and how to remind me of when I don’t, etc. But I don’t see swearing as any kind of moral issue and I actually think with my writer-brain that profanity has its place in human culture, not just in writing, but in relating. Although many people will disagree with me, I always picture many models of spirituality/holiness/prophets/etc. coming down from the mountain/out of the temple/away from the tree and saying “fuck! what is wrong with everyone???!!!”
Swim & suit
The schizophrenic nature of my thinking right now continued today.
This morning I got my articles in before 9:30 - it would have been earlier but our ISP was having issues due to a storm. Then I took Noah and met my friend JY and her two babes (2.5 and 10 mos) at the Agincourt pool for mom & tot. I hadn’t been up there before and it is really spectacular as far as tot pools go - two full pools Noah could walk in, tons of toys, and an excellent family changeroom set up. Noah and I both had a total blast. He was fearless, trying to blow bubbles (sometimes inhaling underwater first… oops. He can blame that asthma on me, later), running around, trying to climb up the waterslide with water coming down on him. Then we had lunch in the hangout area of the centre with the kids watching other kids in the pool. Then he had a long and deep nap which was exactly what he needed.
I can’t imagine giving up days like that.
But then after he woke up I had errands to run and I was right next to a Winners so I went in and lo! they had clearance clothing in my size, and I got a suit and spring jacket and another pair of dress slacks for crazy cheap. More or less a starter professional wardrobe and all mix and match. For the job I will get. And the more I see myself doing it, the more I want it.
When we get back from the long weekend I’m going to tour Montessoris. I’ll probably hate them all.
Spring clean
In anticipation of the dream job I will be offered I have started in on some of the house stuff I will be glad to have done when whirling around being all editor-y. Today I tackled bedroom: my half.
And I jettisoned a lot of my/our wardrobe. Normally this takes weeks of negotiation with people in the system, but this time it was pretty easy because I got rid of:
- anything too big (maternity clothes are already stowed away ’cause those are frigging expensive)
- anything that might bare a small amount of tummy. Funny how after Emily’s pregnancy that didn’t really bother me but now there is no way I am baring my stomach again.
- anything small unless it was merely the chest area
- anything really dated like my mid-thigh red & black blazer that screams… something from another decade.
- most things my mother has gotten me, although I may pull the Cinderella (yes… official Disney Cinderella print) shirt out to keep just because I must have proof.
I kept all of Lyr’s flowy dresses because it’s mostly chest area that doesn’t fit and that should change post-breastfeeding, right?
Some thoughts on my wardrobe:
- What do you do with the outfit you wore to your daughter’s funeral? (rhetorical question) I can’t see wearing it anywhere else; certainly not out. Maybe to another funeral, although it’s probably a bit big. Can’t see throwing it out though, either.
- I kept the skort. Tough shit. I think I like it regardless. Mostly because of the whole sandbox thing this year.
- My red leather jacket is a bit big and I do not care.
- I definitely have to go get a suit for the interview I will be having, because I really no longer have anything resembling a professional wardrobe anywhere near my current size or indeed, any other size. Maybe I will take Noah downtown and hang outside the building I will be working in to see what people going in there are wearing. Although I would still have to dress suit-y for an interview, but you know, funky cool suit.
- My budget is going to be challenged to get the suit.
Noah had a blast helping, and we danced to Aimee Mann and just generally had a good time at home. I got a bit more gardening done too: half the lily of the valley dug up. Noah’s new playhouse is going to come in handy for doing a half hour of work here and there out back which is cool.
Now I just have to figure out what to do with the retaining “wall” - all brick and no mortar. WHO lays a brick wall without sticking the bricks together? And we are talking basic basic bricks, not stuff designed for it. Noah’s already discovered he can take bricks down. But our budget is totally blown (not just due to suit!) as we’re going out west this summer, plus putting benches (the kind that double as rails) on the deck and a few other things. Big landscaping is not on the horizon this year.
And I worked this morning. Ha it was a busy day. :)
Weekend / McCann kidnapping
Thanks for the vinegar tip, and the chalk. I’m trying both, plus the house is de-crumbed, even if this means washing the floor every. single. night due to Toddler. :) I also took the opportunity to finally get rid of a category of foods I will call “Noah’s starter foods no one who gets better food and has a choice would eat,” like brown rice crackers with no additional salt or flavour, and the two boxes of baby biscuits someone kindly gave us that basically are like pre-twinkies with no actual food in them. I also have 8 jars of baby food for the food bank. Not sure why I was hanging on to those.
We had a busy weekend, esp. due to the anti-ant project. I also planted a Rose of Sharon (thanks to one of Lynn’s JW friends, who has a prolific garden and gives cuttings away like mad), purchased mulch although I have yet to dig up all the @#$&*^@ lily of the valley in our yard (i.e. toddler poison) and put it down, and did other household chores. I also discovered the most wonderful trail near my house, thanks to my weekend playgroup; I’ll write about it more after we go back and I get pics.
Yesterday afternoon we had our big mother’s day celebration, that is, with my mother. We picked a lakeside pub with a patio where Noah could get down and run around on the grass with someone (sadly in view of the playground, but he held it together with many promises that we were going there Next), and I had my first full draft of beer (16 oz) since I got pregnant with Noah. I was sure with all the distractions and the gradual self-weaning he’s been doing that I was good for at least three hours so I went for it.
20 minutes after drinking it I was sure it was the best! Mother’s! Day! ever! One thing about not drinking; your capacity drops so fast that one beer is a total buzz. It was both hillarious and a little sad in that I had one of those responsibility moments… not that I think drinking around your kids is terrible; in fact I think modelling having a beer now and then is a good thing. But really, you do need to exercise some caution and restraint and planning and in a way that’s too bad. ‘Cause I sort of wanted to sit on that patio and prolong the buzz for several hours and then stumble home. And instead it was time to go play in the playground.
(The playground was still fun.)
I got a cake at home for our own special mother’s day gift and also I took Noah’s nap on Saturday pretty much off chores (except for the mowing) to read. A book. A whole one. It was total brain candy; Citizen Girl which was passed on to me because “it’s like your company!” and… not really (no porn… well, okay there was that porn incident a few years ago…) but close enough that I did laugh. I later felt sort of shameful that I spent quality reading time with chick lit but… I laughed. :)
My nanny V. is leaving her other job, so I’m a bit nervous she’ll only be able to find something full-time and will leave us. But the good thing is that if she can find something part-time, I can flex my hours around. Still it’s a bit of a stress. I should probably start touring Montessoris, just in case. I think Noah and Montessori would be a good-enough match (if it were a warm, caring, perfect one) that we could move him to that. I really really do like and more importantly trust V. and it has been a very healing experience to be able to do that… but now that Noah’s older, I think I would revert to my view that more staff = less chance of abuse, etc.
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The McCann kidnapping is so tragic. I really hate how people have been blaming the parents for leaving their kids in a “hotel room” - which brings to mind the American Ramada Inn thing and not so much the inn-like setting where my reading of the story places it (I haven’t seen anything on TV, not having broadcast TV).
It reminds me so much of the person who asked me if I thought my aquafit classes were what wrapped the cord around Emily’s neck twice. Of course that was a stupid question and the question of how much supervision is enough is not a stupid question, but still, the “blame the parents” game never really stops.
I do hold parents accountable for a lot of things - my dad was in the room sometimes when my grandfather’s hand was down our pants and I do assign him responsibility for not paying attention to that. But the more I parent the more I realize it is such a grey area; a dance between me and Noah and the evils of the world. I am so scared to lose him and yet I let him walk 5 feet ahead of me at the beach because he seems to need that.
And yes, leaving your kids in a room on the grounds while you have dinner is a slightly selfish decision. But if I had three kids under 4, I might well desperately need a quiet dinner now and then. It wasn’t a great call, but it was not illogical or even that stupid.
Having said all that, the whole pedophile “kidnapped to order” thing scares me, not quite so much within Canada, but in some other countries. I see with a mother’s eyes but I do have a blonde, blue-eyed, social extrovert of a kid. And we do hope to travel with him. So this is a good thing to be aware of, even as I know the odds are small.