The bus is a place where you can talk about death.

The scene: Dutch, Skipper, and I are riding home on the bus. Skipper is nursing and thus quiet.

Dutch: I told Teacher C and Teacher J that I'm going to get a short haircut.*
Me: Yeah? What'd they say?
D: They were excited.
M: Hm.
D: I don't think I look like a (Dutch) with long hair. I want to look more like a (Dutch.)
M: Oh.
D: I want to look more like I did when I was a tiny baby.
Me: You want to be bald? Or do you want a mullet?
D: No. I just... I'll never be a tiny baby again.
M: No.
D: And soon I'll be...
M: ...a grownup?
D: ... some dirt.
M: Um. Yes. After a long while. But you'll be very special dirt.
D: Mom! You only think I'll be special dirt because I'm YOURS.
M: Maybe.
D: Mom! Anna has beads that she says are magic! Tomorrow I will ask her if they can make you live forever, and if they do, I will give one to each of you!
M: Great, thanks!

*Dutch and I have back-to-back PROFESSIONAL haircut appointments scheduled for next weekend. I'm holding my breath that she'll actually go through with a short haircut...

It's complicated

The half-mile walk from the bus stop to the daycare was a slog for me yesterday morning, with Skipper in the frontpack (all pissed off, because she wanted to walk) and Dutch dawdling along behind, nattering incessantly on tedious topics. I was exhausted, anxious, greasy, sweaty, and generally feeling crappy. I had been unpleasant and impatient with both kids the whole commute, and was feeling bad about that and also irritated with both of them. Also, it was raining. As we stood at an intersection waiting for the green light, I was staring off into space, ignoring Dutch while she prattled, and I heard somebody say "Good job, mom!" I turned and saw a man who had paused on his way into the grocery store, looking straight at me. "Good job, mom!" he repeated, looking very earnest.

I don't celebrate Mother's Day, being of the opinion that it's become a condescending and almost insulting holiday. If society actually values mothering, it would be nice to show it in some way other than one day of guilting people into spending money on cards and flowers. Who cares about daffodils - how about some paid parental leave, or universal childcare? Or hey, world peace?

However, if I'm going to get a day where people celebrate me for doing the kind of caregiving that the whole society should be doing for our children, I'm not sure what would be appropriate. For my Mother's Day present, Dutch has offered (spontaneously, I swear) to "not freak out ALL DAY!" Which sounds pretty good to me. But what I'd really like for a special day for me is just to be alone. I don't need flowers, or a spa, or a vacation destination, or anyThing. I just want to be on my own for a little while, with nobody asking anything of me. A former boss of mine, Lady Catherine de Bourgh,* once told me smugly that she didn't understand why so many people celebrated Mother's Day by doing stuff without their children. SHE wanted to spend time WITH her children on Mother's Day. (The subtext in everything she ever said about parenting, or actually anything, was that everybody else was doing it wrong.) Whatever. Apparently I'm one of those bad selfish mommies.

After I dropped off the kids yesterday, I went swimming. I haven't been going very often lately, because I haven't had time. I still don't have time, but I really needed the swim. It was fantastic. The adjective that sprang into my mind as I kicked off was "free" - I was free!

When I visited the daycare later on in the day, Skipper was delighted to see me, and gave me a hug. Then she pointed at one of her classmates, looked at me and explained something in fluent Ewok, and wobbled off to do some sort of important activity involving a purple plastic ball. When I left, she casually waved good-bye and went back to her business in her community.

I'd like to see the celebration of Mother's Day in my life as a day to remember the importance of caregiving for all of us, and, on the personal level, a day to recognize the richness, the mundanity, and in the end, the limitations of the mother-child relationship. I am on my own, and so are Skipper and Dutch. So is my own mom, an openhearted mother and a woman with a gift for building community. It's up to us to work out how to be ourselves and also be with eachother.

So that's this year's cranky, wandering Mother's Day diatribe.

I also wish to give my congratulations and blessings, in honest joy and celebration, to A, and to J, and to L, who are launching this year into the brave and ordinary work of mothering. Let's get cracking on the world peace thing, everybody, before those babies grow up.



*Famous in our household for having told me that she could have been a professional dancer if she had pursued dance more seriously, and that she could have gotten an advanced degree in mathematics, had she chosen to pursue it.

My town

Here's a seasick-making video that will be terribly boring to almost all of you. In case you're interested, it's somebody else's bike ride in downtown Portland. Bike lanes! Sunshine! Leaves! Light rail! Aw. I love Portland.

I'm the one whining.

*Warning: self-pity wallow ahead!*

I'm having a pretty glass half-empty period right now, as Dutch could tell you, despairing about my job prospects, and Cook's. I am wobbling around in a chronic state of exhaustion and anxiety. I would say that I really need a vacation, except that what I REALLY need is a job, and the gaping holes in my schedule after June 14 are a cause for dread, not for anticipation.

I've talked to Dutch a lot lately about borrowing trouble. She tends to immediately leap to the worst-case scenario for the future when she's under stress. We've talked about how it can be a good idea to prepare for and act to prevent the worst-case scenario, but that there's a line between doing that and just freaking out needlessly and making yourself miserable over something that may or may not happen.

At the moment, I'm trying to walk that line. There are so few job postings that I need to be aggressively networking and sniffing out any and all possibilities. But I don't have TIME! And I'm exhausted! I'm doing some of the preventing-and-preparing work,* but I don't have the capacity to do enough. So I worry, instead, because I can do that while I walk and cook and wash dishes and lie fruitlessly awake at night. I worry a LOT.

I want to buffer the girls from this overwhelming anxiety, but I'm really not succeeding. Dutch knows the facts about our situation (temp jobs, no idea where we'll be in six months, etc.). I've told her that I feel stressed about it. But I would prefer for her to remain ignorant about how deeply terrible it's making us feel.

Instability: not great for family life. Go figure.

*Okay, I'm done. Now, I will remind myself that, in fact, nobody is dumping crap on me, and my life is actually pretty awesome. Unstable, yes, but awesome.*


*I check job postings at all the places I can think of. I check listservs. You know, the bare minimum.

A positive home environment

Yesterday I had one of those alarming parenting moments in which my bad habits are revealed to me. I was telling Cook about my day at work - my boss is about to leave for a vacation, and is giving me some last-minute extra work, which is not overwhelming or actually even unreasonable (my boss is pretty good about that), but still slightly annoying.* Apparently, I was sounding some familiar themes, because Dutch came over, put her hand on my shoulder, looked sympathetically into my eyes, and said "Mom, people ALWAYS dump crap on you, don't they?"

That's the story I tell my daughter about my life, apparently. I had to explain to her that no, people do not always dump crap on me, and that if it sounds like that, I've clearly been using way too many negative words and having too many negative thoughts.

I've got a little work to do on my own mental habits. And I've GOT to stop saying "crap" in front of Dutch.



*Mostly just in the light that hey, she GETS a paid vacation, and I don't.

News Roundup

I'm at home with Skipper. This is the fifth out of the last sixteen workdays that Cook or I have had to stay home with her (and sometimes Dutch). This is a big problem with being a working parent that nobody tells you about before you have kids. They get sick a lot.

Skipper has Hand, foot, mouth disease, of course. And of course she has it so mildly that she seems to feel totally normal, and is currently tearing the room apart while I type, instead of taking lots of naps while I DO MY HOMEWORK, which is what I had planned to do this afternoon.

She was diagnosed at a "well-child" checkup this morning at which we also learned that she's not gaining weight satisfactorily. It's not a big problem at the moment, but we do have to change some things. No more nursing on demand (she demands nursing frequently, but then just snacks for a few moments before getting distracted and dashing off to her next project), mainly.

Then she and Dutch both got a bunch of shots, which bummed them both out. Dutch clenched up her whole body, and said "I hate shots I hate shots I hate shots!!!!" until the nurse said "Well, honey, I hate giving shots."

That's the news from here. In other news, I really, really love Ray LaHood and the younger Swedish princess is having a crappy day.

walking

Criminal mind

This morning, as I was lying in bed trying to delay getting up, Skipper indicated that she wanted to get down off the bed. It was pretty clear that what she actually wanted was to get my glasses from their bedside perch, because she loves to play with glasses. I put her down on the floor, and moved my glasses out of reach, on the bed between me and Cook. She stood on the floor for a moment, then looked at me, signed that she wanted to nurse, and pointed to the bed, clearly intending that I should put her back up on the bed, between me and Cook. I picked her up and scooted over so that she could lie next to me and nurse, keeping my body between her and my glasses. She immediately tried to climb over me to get at them, not even bothering to pretend she was interested in nursing.

It's the first time I've ever really seen her conniving. She lied in order to get up on the bed! My one-year-old daughter LIED to me! I'm kind of proud. I think this one's going far.

0 to 60 (pictures from March)

Me and Gail Collins, hanging on the #9.

I'm really enjoying this book. (I read it on my bus commute to work, in case you're wondering. It's so nice being driven by somebody else so I can get some pleasure reading done! Way better than driving a car...) I'm learning a lot, and I look forward to making Skipper and Dutch read it in the future. It's just a little sad that I know how it's going to end, and it's not going to be a totally happy ending.

My relationship with sleep. It is not good.

I should go to bed. I've been so tired that I can't get through the day without caffeine, and I'm having a hard time finishing sentences. But I don't want to go to bed. I want some precious time to myself, and I also dread going to bed because I know my night will not be restful.

We desperately need to sleep-train Skipper. She currently starts the night in her crib and then comes in with us when she wakes up after we're in bed. We did this with Dutch, who woke up about as often in the night, and it worked fine, but there was a much bigger bed involved, and Dutch wasn't so acrobatic in her sleeping habits. Also, Dutch never tried to bite my nipples off, which Skipper has attempted several times.*

However, sleep-training** means getting even less sleep for at least a few nights in a row, which we can't face right now. It also means that Dutch, who sleeps right next door, and Emma and Brendan, who sleep right downstairs, will have their sleep disturbed, too. So it'll take some planning. Maybe in June.



*Skipper seems to be, as best we can tell based on our foggy memories, a more intense and active kid than Dutch. She doesn't walk, she RUNS. She doesn't lean on furniture, she CLIMBS on it. She doesn't nurse, she MAULS

***In our lazy-parenting household, "sleep training" means, more or less, "do whatever it takes to get the kid to sleep EXCEPT putting her in our bed." Holding and singing and walking around and telling jokes for hours? Sure! Morphine and whisky for everyone? Sure!