I was told that with a baby and a toddler and a full-time job I would be in "survival-mode" for the first year, at least. I shouldn't expect to get much accomplished at work, or at home for that matter.
The Happiest Baby on the Block author Dr. Karp says that babies are increasingly fussy from age two weeks to six weeks, and then the crying spells go away by three months. Today is Baby Girl's 6 week birthday. Ever heard sharp nails on a chalkboard, a cat mating, an emergency alert system over the T.V? A wailing baby is like all those in one sound. It's like someone has a screwdriver and is tightening my nerves with each cry, tighter, tighter, until every muscle is clenched.
I'm generally a positive person. I must admit I want to slip into survival mode around 7:00 pm, when I'm trying to calm my three year old to get him to bed at the peak of the baby wailing hours.
The thing about survival mode is that it's all about defense, about cutting everything else out - all joy, laughter, hobbies, thoughts - and lowering my head and plowing through. It's about doing the bare minimum just to make it to the end. That's not my style. I'm an overachiever. Plus, I have The Old Man. It's two against two now, but we're bigger than they are. We go on the offense. For everything.
For a crying baby, we do the five "S's" from Dr. Karp: Swaddling, Shushing, Stomach, Sucking, Swinging. Roll that baby up tight, swing her up and down on her stomach, pop a pacifier in there. She's out like a light. Bring it.
Warfare with a three year old is trickier. He could be a great lawyer. He's great with the questions and stories, also known as procrastination, right around bedtime. Even more powerful now that The Old Man and I can't tag-team him. It's verbal sparring.
Brush your teeth. My favorite color is blue. Brush your teeth. Oh really, you saw a red-kneed tarantula at school yesterday? Fascinating. Brush your teeth. Thank you for saying my shirt is pretty. That's nice of you. Brush your teeth.
We haven't lost a battle yet, though right before bed it often feels hopeless. The Old Man and I even played poker and made out a little - with tongue - the other night. We managed to stay awake until eleven o'clock.
In the words of the Captain of the Axiom from Wall-E, "I don't want to survive. I want to live."
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Cum On Feel The Noize
Girls rock your boys
We'll get wild, wild, wild...
Lord help me when I get to go out for the first time again. There's nothing worse than a mom with a night away from her kids...
Anyway, I've been a little M.I.A. lately because of Baby Girl. But it's a good kind of M.I.A., since I get to stare into baby eyes and stuff.
We'll get wild, wild, wild...
Lord help me when I get to go out for the first time again. There's nothing worse than a mom with a night away from her kids...
Anyway, I've been a little M.I.A. lately because of Baby Girl. But it's a good kind of M.I.A., since I get to stare into baby eyes and stuff.
Friday, May 14, 2010
My Story on The Rose City Sisters Flash Fiction Blog
http://rosecitysisters.blogspot.com/2010/05/43-conclusion.html
Check out my short fiction piece on The Rose City Sisters Flash Fiction Blog.
This is a short piece from a much longer story that just won't get out of my head. It's been fifty pages, it's been five. I come back to it again and again (kind of like an old boyfriend). Submitting this 700+ word piece was my way of saying goodbye to it for a while.
I'm sure it'll be back though.
Check out my short fiction piece on The Rose City Sisters Flash Fiction Blog.
This is a short piece from a much longer story that just won't get out of my head. It's been fifty pages, it's been five. I come back to it again and again (kind of like an old boyfriend). Submitting this 700+ word piece was my way of saying goodbye to it for a while.
I'm sure it'll be back though.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
My Mama
She once worked as a gift-wrapper and included a note in one of the boxes: "Help me! I'm being held prisoner in a gift-wrapping factory!" Her boss was not happy.
She can make a face like a cat. And a lizard.
She does a wicked Cartman impression.
She writes poetry. About egg salad sandwiches.
She told me to relax and drink a beer when I was freaking out about my grades in college.
She can row a canoe and rig a fishing pole at the same time.
She takes seven minutes to tell a two minute story.
She's the Scrabble queen. A shit talker and a poor loser.
She feeds her grandKid ice cream and brownies at nine o'clock in the morning.
She is constant laughter and optimism. I don't call her enough, but when I do, she is genuine encouragement.
She is me in 30 years. I could do worse.
She can make a face like a cat. And a lizard.
She does a wicked Cartman impression.
She writes poetry. About egg salad sandwiches.
She told me to relax and drink a beer when I was freaking out about my grades in college.
She can row a canoe and rig a fishing pole at the same time.
She takes seven minutes to tell a two minute story.
She's the Scrabble queen. A shit talker and a poor loser.
She feeds her grandKid ice cream and brownies at nine o'clock in the morning.
She is constant laughter and optimism. I don't call her enough, but when I do, she is genuine encouragement.
She is me in 30 years. I could do worse.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
It's My Pleasure
Hey Neighbor Lady,
Thanks for taking your pint-sized pup for a walk. I walked behind you with my two-week old curled against my chest in a baby carrier and Paris the pit bull heeling on my left. Your perky tits and plump ass - your perfect posture - reminded me to pull my shoulders back and tuck in my patootskies. You walk like you're on a runway. Your ponytail snaps to the right every time your left foot hits the pavement. You are pure postpartum slimtastic exercise inspiration.
Thanks for taking your pint-sized pup for a walk. I walked behind you with my two-week old curled against my chest in a baby carrier and Paris the pit bull heeling on my left. Your perky tits and plump ass - your perfect posture - reminded me to pull my shoulders back and tuck in my patootskies. You walk like you're on a runway. Your ponytail snaps to the right every time your left foot hits the pavement. You are pure postpartum slimtastic exercise inspiration.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Folklore and Fish Tales Friday: New Mexico Cabin
My grandfather was a one-handed insurance salesman. He left his family in Texas one winter to buy a cabin in New Mexico, a vacation spot for his wife and children. When he was away he wrote letters to his family, telling them about the blizzards he drove through and his negotiations to purchase the land and the building. The letters are over fifty years old, as is the cabin. The letters end with "kisses and hugs to my girls." I know this because I've held the old letters and felt their paper, like cloth, while sitting at the cabin's small dinner table. My grandfather died when my mom was still young, and I never met him.
It's one of those places linked to its surroundings. It wouldn't be the cabin without the trees sloping down the hill, or the rocky earth, so many round rocks that beg for countless hands to line them along paths, to pick them up and place them again on trails after they've rolled down the hill. The dirt roads snaking to all the little vacation homes lead to green views and to the small town of Eagle Nest and further, to the lake and the river, where my mom learned to fish.
The card-playing is done with one eye on the cards and one out the window, waiting for the birds to find the gluttony of seed laid out for them. There's a fireplace, and a kitchen, and two bedrooms. The furniture is decades old, and the books are too. The food on the pantry shelves often expires before anyone can cook it - there are cans of beans from the 1980s and popcorn with a plastic smell. There's a three-ring binder filled with "Cabin Notes," in which each visitor attempts to recount their trip and ends up writing about the people they came with: "We went fishing at the lake today and Papa couldn't figure out how to steer the boat" and "It rained hard today and Gram beat everyone at hearts again; Mom made soup and we laughed and laughed" and "Our last day, but we don't want to leave - work awaits."
There's the cabin folklore:
Have I told you about the time the bear tried to take our fish on the river? Your Papa stood between the bear and the stringer.
Remember when we found the baby magpie and tried to save it? It's buried at the cabin on the path to the outhouse.
That's where the wasp nest was, the one we all stepped in. Good thing Uncle Prunie was there when I was stung right on my eyelid.
And older stories:
Daddy put us on the horses and I thought my mother was going to die - she was so afraid for us!
I couldn't see ten feet in front of me in the blizzard - it took us eight hours just to get to the cabin from the state line.
Fifty years ago, my mother and her family spent their cabin time fishing and riding horses and running through the tall thick pines. In my office, I have a black and white photograph of Mom when she was ten years old. She's got her nose up and is stretched out, pointing one toe and holding up a fishing pole with a four inch trout on its string. She's quite the angler, so much so that when I became a game warden I had to break it to her that she could no longer catch my dad's fish for him (that's called party fishing, ma, and it's illegal).
It's the cabin, this space my grandfather carved for his family so many years ago, that gave my mother her love of the outdoors. It's why she dreamed of living in the country, and why my sister and I grew up where we did, twenty miles from the nearest town, with horses and chickens and a cabin-like home of our own. It's my mother who gave me the idea that problems can be solved as long as you get a good night's sleep and have the time to take a walk in the woods.
Because of the cabin, I have a tangible connection to a man I've never met.
It's one of those places linked to its surroundings. It wouldn't be the cabin without the trees sloping down the hill, or the rocky earth, so many round rocks that beg for countless hands to line them along paths, to pick them up and place them again on trails after they've rolled down the hill. The dirt roads snaking to all the little vacation homes lead to green views and to the small town of Eagle Nest and further, to the lake and the river, where my mom learned to fish.
The card-playing is done with one eye on the cards and one out the window, waiting for the birds to find the gluttony of seed laid out for them. There's a fireplace, and a kitchen, and two bedrooms. The furniture is decades old, and the books are too. The food on the pantry shelves often expires before anyone can cook it - there are cans of beans from the 1980s and popcorn with a plastic smell. There's a three-ring binder filled with "Cabin Notes," in which each visitor attempts to recount their trip and ends up writing about the people they came with: "We went fishing at the lake today and Papa couldn't figure out how to steer the boat" and "It rained hard today and Gram beat everyone at hearts again; Mom made soup and we laughed and laughed" and "Our last day, but we don't want to leave - work awaits."
There's the cabin folklore:
Have I told you about the time the bear tried to take our fish on the river? Your Papa stood between the bear and the stringer.
Remember when we found the baby magpie and tried to save it? It's buried at the cabin on the path to the outhouse.
That's where the wasp nest was, the one we all stepped in. Good thing Uncle Prunie was there when I was stung right on my eyelid.
And older stories:
Daddy put us on the horses and I thought my mother was going to die - she was so afraid for us!
I couldn't see ten feet in front of me in the blizzard - it took us eight hours just to get to the cabin from the state line.
Fifty years ago, my mother and her family spent their cabin time fishing and riding horses and running through the tall thick pines. In my office, I have a black and white photograph of Mom when she was ten years old. She's got her nose up and is stretched out, pointing one toe and holding up a fishing pole with a four inch trout on its string. She's quite the angler, so much so that when I became a game warden I had to break it to her that she could no longer catch my dad's fish for him (that's called party fishing, ma, and it's illegal).
It's the cabin, this space my grandfather carved for his family so many years ago, that gave my mother her love of the outdoors. It's why she dreamed of living in the country, and why my sister and I grew up where we did, twenty miles from the nearest town, with horses and chickens and a cabin-like home of our own. It's my mother who gave me the idea that problems can be solved as long as you get a good night's sleep and have the time to take a walk in the woods.
Because of the cabin, I have a tangible connection to a man I've never met.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Time
When I wasn't on a horse, I spent my teenage years on my twin daybed, gazing through white lace curtains, clutching my flowered blanket and reading books. Time was a long painful thing; I craved events to punctuate the days.
I spend my days now ensuring that my children have uninterrupted time to play and dream and sleep. There are so many small events - so much to do - and I miss those stretches of time I had when I was young.
If only I had five hours. I could finish that short story. If only I had a day to myself. Creativity would pour in, and I'd have something real to write about. I'd tear myself away from HGTV episodes and get down to important work. Really I would.
And I think at 4:00 AM, if only Baby Girl would sleep, then I could sleep. I promise myself the next time she naps, I'll nap. But then The Kid wakes up, and I'd rather be with him than catch up on sleep. In the evening, when Baby Girl conks out at 6:00 PM, I'd rather tuck in The Kid, tell him the exact same three stories we both know by heart, than go to bed.
There's this strange sense of two different times. I look at my three year old, and time has gone by so quickly, and before I know it, he'll be fifteen and sleeping in until noon and would rather take a rusty fork to his eye than give his mom a hug. I look at my two week old, and time passes so slowly, feeding, burping, changing, walking, rocking her. Like her brother, she is happiest when she is being held, so we only put her down to sleep and shower.
And yeah, duh, we all know raising kids goes by in the blink of an eye, and it's the most important work we can do. But I also know that a mother's emotions during the raising of said kids aren't as simple. I know, I KNOW, that I better pay attention now, while they're young, because soon I will crave the affection I'm allowed to give them. At the same exact time, there is a part of me who is detached from motherhood, who wants to work and write and exist independently of the people who need me the most.
I spend my days now ensuring that my children have uninterrupted time to play and dream and sleep. There are so many small events - so much to do - and I miss those stretches of time I had when I was young.
If only I had five hours. I could finish that short story. If only I had a day to myself. Creativity would pour in, and I'd have something real to write about. I'd tear myself away from HGTV episodes and get down to important work. Really I would.
And I think at 4:00 AM, if only Baby Girl would sleep, then I could sleep. I promise myself the next time she naps, I'll nap. But then The Kid wakes up, and I'd rather be with him than catch up on sleep. In the evening, when Baby Girl conks out at 6:00 PM, I'd rather tuck in The Kid, tell him the exact same three stories we both know by heart, than go to bed.
There's this strange sense of two different times. I look at my three year old, and time has gone by so quickly, and before I know it, he'll be fifteen and sleeping in until noon and would rather take a rusty fork to his eye than give his mom a hug. I look at my two week old, and time passes so slowly, feeding, burping, changing, walking, rocking her. Like her brother, she is happiest when she is being held, so we only put her down to sleep and shower.
And yeah, duh, we all know raising kids goes by in the blink of an eye, and it's the most important work we can do. But I also know that a mother's emotions during the raising of said kids aren't as simple. I know, I KNOW, that I better pay attention now, while they're young, because soon I will crave the affection I'm allowed to give them. At the same exact time, there is a part of me who is detached from motherhood, who wants to work and write and exist independently of the people who need me the most.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)