I woke up this morning
Dec 12, 2005 The Story of My Life
and my job started sucking right away! Part of my job is managing people. I am a terrible people manager because I have bad boundaries. Back at my old job (the one pre-kids) I had a work-study student and a few volunteers. They would come in between classes and say, “What can I do to help?”
And I’d say, “You just sit right there and get nice and comfy in that chair and I’ll crawl around on the floor here and pick up the toys.”
“Can I help you organize your files?” they’d ask.
“Oh no!” I’d say. “I’ll get to that later!”
They got no work experience and I got no help but they liked me even if they probably pitied me.
Now I let people do the things that they’re meant to do but I feel guilty about it. I am also (in no particular order):
–Bad at sticking to my decisions;
–Easily swayed by emotional arguments;
–Full of angst whenever I do manage to take a stand;
–Woefully disorganized.
(Gee, I hope no potential future employers read this blog.)
So anyway, I went to bed very late last night (I work nights! And weekends! And mornings! And afternoons!) after dealing with a situation that had begun sometime early Saturday. I was having regrets, I was having concerns. I felt like I’d moved forward too quickly (which has convinced me to never act decisively and with confidence again) and so I was up ’til midnight picking up the scattered, jagged little pieces of the situation. Only to wake up this morning to two emails — one kindly mostly but trust me when I say that the kindness means nothing and one full of rightful righteous indignation.
It’s a beautiful snow-glittery sunshine day out there. I will feel guilty if I take the kids out in it since I’ll be sure emails continue to pile up and isn’t this why I get the big bucks working at home? But I will feel guilty if they don’t go and instead stay cooped up indoors where there is no fresh air, no beautiful landscape and very little chance of wearing them out for a good night’s sleep. Feeling guilt no matter what and thinking about how I probably should have made a different decision every time I make one is called multi-tasking.
I envy Brett two things: his ability to sleep no matter which kid is coughing, crying or kicking and his ability to think about only one thing at a time. I never have the luxury of having only one thought in my head. With work, this is worse because I am both always working and always neglecting work. So it goes.
Maybe the rest of the week will improve.
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I love memes
Dec 11, 2005 The Story of My Life
They make my life so much easier! I’m putting it below the cut! Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Broadway, homeschool, Madison, meme, Noah
Sibling spacing
Dec 10, 2005 Parenting
In my homeschool post below, Shannon said:
I keep thinking if I get more organized I’ll feel less strung out. Hmmm… perhaps not. And the idea that rather than a toddler and an eight year-old, I’m likely to have a toddler and a baby? Okay, that is making me want to cry after reading how you manage things and how much help Noah can be.
I don’t know where I could find what the most likely spacing between siblings is but anecdotally, it seems like most people with some control over their family size have kids somewhere around two or three years apart, give or take. I’m 32 months younger than my sister and 27 months older than my brother and we seemed pretty typical. Brett and his next brother are 19 months apart and that also seems fairly common. It looks like people in the US without fertility issues tend to — on purpose and by accident — get pregnant sometime between their first child’s first and second birthday. (Among people who are less well-nourished and who breastfeed exclusively for a longer time, the age span seems larger. But here in the US it looks like even women who breastfeed exclusively find their fertility returns sooner likely because we’re so chock-full of vitamins, fortified or not.)
If you talk to people about sibling spacing, everyone has an opinion. And if you talk to enough people, you’ll find a lot of different opinions. I think this age span between my two kids has worked out really well. Noah hasn’t had much trouble adjusting (and I know he would have had my original plan to deliver a baby when he was around four) and he’s a big help. Madison enjoys being the treasured baby of the family and Noah — content to be the important eldest — likes to treasure her. The downside is that my baby-care muscles were totally rusty and unlike the first time where I found every new thing Noah did absolutely remarkable, I expect Madison to move along quite nicely and so I’m not applauding all she does. In fact, I feel so anxious for her to be three (that’s probably why she’s leaping ahead with all of her gross motor ability — she senses my impatience) because three is going to be so much easier. (I love 3-year olds and I especially love having a 3-year old in my house!)
I can see how having them just 2-3 years apart would be a lot easier this way. It would more demanding physically but then you’re in the mode. It’s not like you got all used to having control over your own days so what’s adding another to the mix? I forgot what it’s like to not be able to read a book on the couch and so I’m very whiny about it. Had I gotten Madison when Noah was three, I never would have picked that book up in the first place. And then their interests are so different. Manging teensy legos and Madison the Queen of Ingesting Inappropriate Things is no fun.
The other thing about having them close together (and this is what I told my sister-in-law whose daughter turned one in November and is expecting another baby next August) is that if you have a career to think about, you’re able to consolidate the time when you’re less focused on it or taking a break entirely. I’ve had to pretty much resign myself to not doing any of the writing I want to do until Madison is bigger (Three three three — I’m hanging in there for three!) and that’s really hard. It pains me and I miss it and I periodically try to do it and then remember why I decided I couldn’t. If I’d had them closer together, I’d just have a chunk of intense parenting instead of two chunks that don’t overlap at all.
As far as how kids get along, I don’t think you can predict it. So much depends on personality. I know that a close-in-age sibling would have really sucked for Noah (who was a very very intense infant and toddler and preschooler) but I can see how Madison would bounce back although I’m sure her throwing of the toys would step up. (My god, this child throws things.) And I bet she’d hit the baby, too, but I also think she would smooch on him/her a lot.
If I had it to do over again and had been able to control the timing of my kids’ arrivals, I would keep it this way, I think. Well, yeah, sure I would — I’m very happy with my family. That said, I used to think that people who had their babies less than two years apart were CRAZY (especially tandem nursing — it was the number one reason we didn’t start trying ’til Noah was three — there was no way I could have survived tandem nursing) but now I think it looks pretty good.
What do you guys think? If you have more than one kid, how has the age range worked for you and how has it not worked?
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Tags: homeschool, Justin, Madison, Noah, preschool
A typical day
Dec 9, 2005 Homeschooling
Someone asked me to give a rough idea of how a typical homeschooling day looks for us so I thought I’d give it a try. I’ve got to preface this effort, however, by noting that there is no typical day really and rather than a schedule we have a rhythm we follow.
Generally Noah pays attention to whatever has captured his fancy that week for a couple of hours every morning. Sometimes that’s reading, sometimes that’s a computer game, sometimes that’s a construction project, sometimes that’s a comic book he’s writing. Today it’s been playing in the snow. But I do notice that when he’s into something, he wants to get to it first thing. It can be hard to get him to eat breakfast when he’s anxious to start working on a project so most days he wants to eat something he can have in hand instead of sitting down and eating. So he grabs a banana, a muffin — for awhile I had him on smoothies but the novelty paled.
Throughout the morning, he’ll take breaks from whatever he’s doing. He’ll come talk to me about what I’m doing or he’ll watch Madison for me or he’ll want to play with her.
The day after his Hebrew class, he usually wants to get his homework done although not always. (He always does his Hebrew homework without any reminders from me.) When we first moved here he always wanted to be outside first thing and would do tricks on his scooter/skateboard the whole morning.
While he’s doing his thing I’m trying to get chores out of the way. Clearing breakfast, starting the bread machine, laundry, what-have-you. I try to sit down and do some focused playing with Madison every morning but truth be told, it depends on what I’ve got on my to-do list. Sometimes the best I can do is set her up with playdough or let her bang on pots and pans while I step over her on my way to do something.
I answer email in the morning while I eat breakfast and if there’s work that’s piled up overnight, I’ll be anxious to get to it. I hate hate hate having to leave a work-related thing to sit since they pay me to work at home and I want to get things done in a timely manner. Also the way my job is, issues get bigger when left alone.
Ok, so eventually it’s lunch. Most times Noah is the one who reminds me, which makes sense since he usually has the least for breakfast. Sometimes I fix lunch, sometimes Noah does. The kids eat sitting at the table most of the time (rarely Noah will eat it while continuing whatever he’s doing but if he’s pretty fixated on something I try to be accomodating). I eat standing up while I catch up on chores way too often but I do try to sit with them. Also this is when we all talk about what we still need to get done and how we’ll do it.
That takes us to the afternoon. Madison takes a nap fairly soon after lunch and when she naps it’s my chance to really focus on whatever I have to get done and can’t do with her around. Sometimes Noah helps, sometimes he just keeps me company, sometimes he’s off doing whatever it is he’s doing. When Madison wakes up it’s generally around the time Noah is allowed to watch his shows (PBS). He gets two hours a day, which is more than I’d like but less than he’d like. While they eat a snack, I start thinking about dinner.
When I write it down it makes even less sense than it does in real life and it sounds like we spend less face-to-face time than we do in real life. We’re actually pretty involved with each other. Madison is at the age where she needs constant supervision. Both Noah and I really live our days around her and try to give room to each other to get done whatever we need to get done. He’s good about coming out of his room to watch her so I can run downstairs to switch out the laundry. We do argue about it somedays but mostly we try to be nice to each other because we recognize that having a toddler in the house is time consuming and that this is nobody’s fault.
Ok, so that’s the day-to-day kind of thing but then there’s our week-to-week schedule.
Noah has gym one morning a week, Hebrew classes one evening a week, and self-defense one afternoon a week. He also has other classes that come and go but those are the three we can count on throughout the “school year.” There’s also grocery shopping, at least one playdate for him (sometimes one for Madison but really for me) and we make sure to get to the library every week. (Oh and he has religious school on Sundays.) Then we have broader projects to get done. Right now we’re working on presents for the relatives and Noah can only work on those when Madison is asleep or otherwise occupied. He and Brett do formal math lessons on Monday nights (soon to happen on an additonal night as well). Brett gives him assignments to do throughout the week but Noah is responsible for figuring out when to get this done. That’s about to ramp up as well (Brett’s wanting to see him do more focused work that way) and hopefully Noah won’t be too grouchy about it. Also we’ve been talking about his continued interest in learning Spanish and likely we’ll start scheduling time for him to work on that with his Rosetta Stone program.
How we’re thinking of handling the new lesson responsibilities is that I’m going to make him a weekly schedule that I’ll put up so he can access it easily. It’ll have all of our plans for the week — the activities he has scheduled — and also the “to-do” list we’re asking of him like the math and the 20-minutes of Spanish. He’ll have sole responsible for getting it done. If he needs help, we’ll help him. I was telling him this today and I told him I wouldn’t nag but I’d likely ask where he is on what he’s doing. He’s better with interference if he’s given fair warning.
Yesterday someone asked me what we’d do if he doesn’t do the things on the list — just flat out refuses. I don’t know for sure. The math thing is something Brett feels strongly about and I’ll back him up on this although I don’t share his concern (heck, it can’t hurt Noah and Brett might be right besides which I think it’s good for Noah to have parents who have different ways of doing things as long as they’re complementary and not contradictory). If Noah really feels put-upon about doing it, I guess I’ll try to help him come up with a way to make it not suck for himself. Although the thing is with Noah, if he’s given a lot of control over a task he’s much more likely to do it even if he chooses to complain along the way.
Noah being Noah, his school experience has thus far been very independent. He’s always been a private person and I’ve found the best way for him to learn is to respect that and respect his need for space. At the same time, the nature of homeschooling demands that our lives be very integrated. Even before Madison arrived, I relied on Noah quite a bit to help me keep our domestic life moving. He helps grocery shop and clean (although as I am, frankly, a lousy housekeeper, he doesn’t do as much of this as he might if he lived in another family). He’s a big help getting laundry sorted and put away. He’s also responsible for the dog’s care. I would like to see him do more cooking with me but the truth is at this point I see my time in the kitchen before dinner as an oasis in a sea of caregiving. I just don’t really have the energy to bring him into it more. Pre-Madison he helped bake every week but he doesn’t do that now either since he’s likely keeping Madison out of my hair when I bake.
I don’t think this was a very good answer to the original request. Can I answer any specific questions?
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Tags: homeschool, Homeschooling, Madison, Noah
Letting go and letting God
Dec 8, 2005 Adoption
I got to talk to Sster today (I feel very very lucky for that — she’s wonderful) and we were talking about how on a journey to a child it can sometimes be hard to know, is that God talking? And if so, what the heck is he saying?
When we were talking about what to do next as far as infertility treatment, the line in the sand was very clear for us. IUI was as far as we would go, period. I had no doubts that it was time to stop. But what I didn’t know was whether I was going to stop and get a baby some other way or stop and have no baby at all. And I didn’t really know how to listen or how to untangle my wants/hopes from my needs.
Looking back, it all makes sense. Each epiphany comes through clear and shining. The time I watched Noah swing in perfect contentment while a nearby family romped with their son and daughter.
“That’s enough,” I thought. I knew it was all right for Noah to be an only child. I can remember that moment and conveniently forget when I revisited my ambivalence and worry for him not a week after that playdate.
When someone asked us if we shouldn’t be more proactive when we were waiting to adopt, I wondered if this was God talking. I started looking at waiting child photos. I wondered if our stipulations about health issues were reasonable. Did God want us to adopt a child with greater health concerns than we originally thought? Did God want us to take additional steps? Or we were supposed to continue waiting?
In hindsight I can see the perfect, gleaming path that led us to Madison. Everything that happened is illuminated by her presence now. But then it was so much harder to see.
Now I think that the way to hear that still, small voice is to take the path of proactive least resistance.
See, adoption isn’t easy and it’s not supposed to be. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the hard parts may be hard but when you’re confronted with them, you pray about it, you close your eyes, you take a deep breath and you know that this way would be easier than this other way. It’s like if you come to a fork in the road and this way lies an abyss and this way lies thick bracken. You know that the bracken will be easier to hack your way through. You feel it give way as you struggle; you have a sense that what lies ahead will be worth the endeavor. You proactively move forward but you take the path of least resistance — bracken is easier to overcome than an abyss.
Likely it will all make sense afterwards and if you can trust that, it will be so much less painful to go through it now.
Hang in there, all of you waiting parents-to-be. One day you will look back and see the hidden radiance that is present in every step you’re taking. Have faith.
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Tags: Infertility, Madison, Noah