Every day is Mothers' Day

It's been a rough couple of weeks for me.

By "rough" I mean nothing-really-that-bad, but flat out exhausting...

You know that saying, you can have something "fast", you can have it "good", you can have it "cheap" or... you can have any combination of TWO of those, but you cannot have all three?

That little riddle has been popping into my mind in the last few weeks as I have considered my lot in life... And this started scrambling around in my head...

The housework has fallen behind a bit. The house is just- well- not.clean. (I guess that is really the best way to put it.)
I've been trying to keep up with exercise, and I have a huge project underway at work that will span about six weeks (we are 3 weeks in).

I've been doing my best to be a good mom and wife and not knowing the "laws" of this particular species of Venn diagram, I am not sure if more than 3 areas can be sufficiently covered at one time. All I know is I can see the teetering- I feel wobbly. On the days/weeks I feel I am keeping up with my duties at work, exercise habits are hard to maintain... the blog (as you know) is long suffering. The highest priority is of course the family, and you'll have to poll my wife, but I'm not sure how well I'm holding up my end. The madness of parenting a rounding-the-corner-towards-2 year old and a rounding-the-corner-toward-4 year old is as pervasive as mold.

Katy and I marvel every day at the paradoxes inherent the chemical reactions that occur in our brains: The degree to which I adore these ruggies and the simultaneous tension I feel as my time with them stretches the seams of the fibers of my being... At some point in every day, i want to melt from the awesomeness that pours out of their minds and mouths. And invariably, at some point in every day, I want to run screaming from their nonsense...



JB, for example, does a lot of TALKING right now. When he has had the perfect amount of sleep (the formula that determines this magical amount of sleep has not been revealed to me) he is funny, sweet, and adorable. But a lot of the time, he thinks he knows what's what and, he doesn't. And he thinks he's in charge of stuff that he can't possibly control. The most amazing thing about a 3 1/2 year old is how they learn the "tone" that accompanies adult conversation, but the tone is usually empty. Knowing the lingo is only half the game... Kids have no understanding of snark, no comprehension of the multitude of ways that humans intentionally and unintentionally mess with each other. They have learned the words and they mimic the tone, but they have no knowledge of the rules of engagement.

Picture this: A cloudy day. I work 8 or 9 hours and race to the day care to get the ruggies. JB, who at times has difficulty with "transition" tells me he's not ready to leave and he stalls so much that he nearly gets a time out. ML bounds towards me, we walk out the door and before we get to the car he has splashed his way into a large puddle. Soaked, I buckle him in and then buckle in JB. The entire way home, there's a lot of loud yapping and screeching. I have not yet been with my beautiful children for 20 minutes, but I'm already not sure how I will make it through the next 3 hours.

We pull into the driveway and JB sighs loudly: "I hate our house."

Srsly?



I am white-knucking the steering wheel. I can't believe the potency of the feelings I am experiencing. I know logically that I can not take this joker at his word, that I need to have more patience, but pure disgust is like a warm, white fire slowly consuming me. If a fully formed human had said this, I would have been all like:
"WTF is wrong with you?!? WHO says that?!? That is rude and you have a lot of nerve!!! If you dont' like this house, you don't have to live in it!!! Do you have any idea how hard we work to provide you with a shelter this amazing?!?"

Mind you the entire time I am mentally speach-ifying, ML is screeching: "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH-OOOOOOOHHHHHHH-ooOOOOOOOOOOOO-AAAAA!

I take a deep breath and ask JB in the most neutral tone I can muster: "Honey, why would you say that?" (inhale, exhale, heart beat, heart beat)

JB: "I don't know, I guess I just wish we could paint the whole thing orange."

[sigh] I'm glad I didn't just go with my first reaction.



ML, on the other hand is an entirely different beast. He is all action for JB's pensiveness. He is determined where JB is unsure. He is reckless and goofy where JB is cautious and serious. ML, for example, understands every mother-humping word we say, he can identify 68 different varieties of truck from a mile away, but he can not will his lips or vocal chords to pronounce the word: TRUCK.





I mean even though I know it is developmental, it really seem like stubbornness.
It's always:
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAA!"
or
"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
or, inexplicably:
"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"

His insistence and persistence is mind-boggling.
"Yes!" I shout back, "I know!!! a TRUCK!!! It IS AWESOME!!! Just like it was 5 seconds ago!!! LOok there!!! Another one!!! AMAZING. THANK YOU FOR POINTING THAT NEW ONE OUT!!!"

ML is the type of kid that the first time he plunged his entire arm into the toilet bowl, it was all about the science of discovery, but now it is a Marks Brothers skit: He knows the specific "toilet bowl look" that he has to produce before he gives chase to the bathroom. And even though he has a healthy head start, he will wait for us- perched, contemplative, like a diver on a block- his arm readied at his ear, until i get within 2 lunges of him. We lock eyes. He waits for me to plead, "NO...." and then submerges to the clavicle, smiling... never breaking eye contact...

That kid tries to climb in the oven, sits in the refrigerator, turns on the dishwasher, surfs down the stairs into the garage, tries to feed peanut butter to the iMac. He smear blueberries in his hair to signal the completion of the meal and if you don't dive to remove the plate from his tray, he flips it like a flapjack at the world's fair. He has a power over me. I forget myself. I have thrown food BACK at him- in a desperate attempt to instill some manners, I act like a sociopath.

Still the boy will look at you and tilt his curly-haired head with a smile that says, "You know you're my girl" and at that point it's a wash.

This year, Mother's day was spent with friends and family and no gifts were exchanged in our house. We just enjoyed the air and the craziness.

Two minute update

I have two minutes to post b/c we are hosting Easter tomorrow and the kids are out of the house for 2 hours so that we can "clean" without having to reprimand ML for sticking his arm straight into the toilet every 3 minutes or so (the hook and eye lock I installed on the door is completely useless, because he has calculated the exact rhythm-pressure-code of wiggle, pulsing, banging, and pausing required to get the hook to magically "jump" out of the eye... the only way it even slowed him down is the one time I left it UNLocked and he spent 90 seconds reaching above the knob toward the lock to try to reach and fiddle with it.)

Life is good. It is cold and rainy today, but tomorrow is supposed to be nicer. We went to a Seder last night- my first... familiar with the stories and some of the words, not familiar at all with the food - so strange that I could be so unfamiliar with an entire meal of "traditional" food. It was yummy, though.

The boys are very sweet and smart and very whiny and needy and actually starting to fight a little - want the same toys, vie for affection. Not too much, but definitely both of them playing various things up for attention and starting to show signs of, "Whatever he has I want"... I'm not sure if it is the Irish/Italian/Catholic genes/ socialization in me that I find myself believing the corrective action for this issue is to add another sibling to the mix... It's as if I want to say, you think you don't get enough attention now, wait until the new baby comes shooting into town; I'll give you something to whine about!!!" Horror at the thought of adding more chaos to this dirty home! But there's so much love in these walls, something inside of me thinks we should divide it up and share it more.

(Katy is somewhere whimpering that I have put this out into the universe- she's just not interested in that "solution".)

Katy and I have been working hard at trying to be healthier. We joined the Y and have a work out strategy that includes going there a few times a week and using the treadmill in our basement more and playing along with a Jillian Michaels tape now and then. It is working. I feel better. I've lost 13 lbs. I can do 20 (full) push-ups. She's been run/walking 4-5 miles at a clip and I've been doing 3-4 (a larger and larger percentage of the time has been running over walking) I have another 25-35lbs that I'd like to lose. I've never been fixated on my weight, but I'm 2 years and 2 months away from my 40th birthday, and I think I'd like to start that decade super fit...

I feel torn about doing all the things I want to do- excel at work, work out, eat right, write more, have fun with these kids- doing them all well... It seems so POSSIBLE every morning and when we are "falling-apart-tired" at night, it seems so implausible. But mostly, I feel lucky and grateful (that's redundant, right?) for my wife and friends and family.

Okay, that was 12 minutes... time to go clean the house!!!

The Tensile Strength of Cheerios

I tried to write this blog post 2 years ago, but couldn't come up with much more than the name.

Two years ago, I first noticed how the floors of the house were littered with a minefield of Cheerios. JB got those things everywhere. And the ones he wasn't tossing, dropping, and sprinkling about, Katy and I were spilling ourselves. No brooms were active enough to sweep the "danger" clear.

After they achieve a functional pincer grasp and their diets advance beyond mush and slush; after they demonstrate successful mastication of the beloved crunchy oat wheel, then you have to spend a few weeks worrying that they will get distracted while chewing and somehow wedge a cheerio into some narrow portion of their trachea...

THEN, when you are convinced they could chew and swallow a Cheerio in their sleep, you start to use those things for everything: snacks, teethers, passifiers, counting exercises, lessons in sharing, a form of distraction, reward for good behavior... They are like baby dog-biscuits!

Thing is...unless you have live-in help (or are the kind of parent that can't sleep if one item is out of place, or unless your living situation requires ruthless attention to packaging up food lest you attract varmint of all kinds) evidence of the parental overuse of Cheerios invariably shows up all over the floors of your house. I could have predicted all of this, but what caught me by surprise two years ago, and what still amuses me now, is the emergence of this superhuman power I possess: Whether bare-foot or wearing shoes, I have highly sensitive, perceptive abilities in my feet. If I skip, walk, hop, or otherwise landed on a single Cheerio, I can instantaneously reverse course. I will hop up off that thing without even causing damage. Maybe I might crack the "O" into 2 or 3 pieces, but I have learned to instinctively spring-load off those things before crushing them into impossible-to-clean-up piles of oat dust.

At first it was like every WW2 movie you've seen with the soldier's foot on the trip wire and the calculated, slow-motion determining how to back up off of that thing without making a big mess. But then it became smooth and seamless like a 007 dancer.
MUST.
NOT.
CRUSH.
CHEERIOS...
KITCHEN.
FILTHY.
ENOUGH!!!

At some point, we all got better about not leaving Cheerios laying around, and many months could go by without one Cheerio narrowly escaping pulverization. BUT...

Now we are back to Cheerio mayhem again; and my toes and soles and ankles are back at it- bouncing off the cereal scattered around the floors of our house. It's a 1 1/2 year old thing. ML has mad self-feeding skilz, but a pile of Cheerios will not stay above ground when he is their commander.

So this is the part of motherhood is tricky.

You've got to stay on your toes... And you've got to be okay with some dust under your feet.

Today begins the reign of the 112th congress of the USA

And here are some other highlights.

It's taken me three full days to believe that I'm back at work after the wonderful couple of weeks we've had:

1. Week before Christmas = STAYcation. Katy and I were off from work together without traveling anywhere for the first time in at least 5 years. During that time, JB got his third set of ear tubes surgically implanted (3rd in 3 years). He did great. We were home by 10 AM. He watched more TV that day than any other day of his life and quite possibly more TV than any other WEEK in his life.

2. Christmas at TT's and Bill's house. We spent the better part of 14 hours there, eating, playing, opening gifts, and eating. Did I say that twice? I meant to...

3. The grannies came for a visit. They were able to avoid wintery weather during the long commute to and from Ohio, but got to enjoy a good ol'fashioned CT blizzard while they were here. JB and ML got to build their first huge snowman and go sledding around the yard with them. (JB's had a few winters, but none where he ever wanted to TOUCH the snow before.)

4. New years weekend was relatively quiet and Katy and I enjoyed some special times alone with our boys.

Today, Katy and I went to our first wake of the year.
Tomorrow, a funeral. Not someone we know, but the dad of someone we love.

-------------

Looking back, as I said above, we had some wonderful times over the holidays.
I feel so lucky and blessed, but I have to say, the holidays beat the shit out of me this year.
I spend a lot of time worrying. Anxiety-ridden might be a more honest analysis of the scene.

It was the first Christmas that "Santa" mattered to JB and the number of times I forgot that I didn't get something at "toys r'us" but "Santa brought it" was too many to count. He's easy to fool right now, but I've gotta get into this game, or the jig will be up by the time ML is 3...

So, I was worried about not being a good enough Santa.
I was worried about not being a good enough wife.
I was worried about money and time and family- not living up to the expectations of everyone. Or rather, not living up to my own expectations and not feeling like everyone judges me as harshly as I judge myself. I was worried about JB's impending surgery on the 21st of December. I was worried about getting the "right" gifts and not just getting gifts for the sake of getting gifts. I was worried about not being able to get done the "special gifts" like photo calendars and cookies that we planned to get done. I was worried about Katy and I not agreeing on all of these things related to gifts and how to celebrate the holidays (after all these years together, it is only now that that are kids are starting to understand a world that does not end at the tips of their fingers that Katy and I have to really start communicating about what we want the holidays to be for us and our boys). I was worried that the ways that Katy and I try to answer these questions and compromise for each other will not make sense to all of our parents - who we desperately want to be with and be respectful of but who we don't always agree with. I was worried about how I can possibly instill a sense of peace and joy and zen about Christmas (and life in general) into my children, if I am on the verge of panic all the time at this time of the year.

I was worried about work and projects that were very time sensitive and I had set a high expectation of success that would be a direct reflection of my work and require me to call in a lot of personal favors. I was worried about the weather and the house in the winter and getting the cars in the garage, and decorating, and keeping the house neat and clean, and warm! And spending enough time with the kids and trying to balance these two desires to 1) expose our kids to a lot of wonderful of people and things, get them out into the world to see lights and celebrations, and have them know family and friends that are family and 2) have quiet times alone at home with them, keep them grounded in a safe and reasonable schedule, and not drag them all over creation for things that they do not really need or understand right now.

It was a lot. And it started for me at the beginning of November. And I tried with some success to stay in the moment and did have some beautiful moments, and did (I think) manage to take care of my wife who was experiencing similar things herself... I think we did a good job with it all, but I feel like some of the (mostly self-imposed) pressure is off now. To be honest this week, I let out a big sigh of relief.

I'm going to work on this. I don't want every year to feel oxygen flushing back into my lungs with the prospect of the holidays ending. Yet, feeling a rush of Oxygen in your lungs is a good feeling, no matter how one comes by it.

So now back to the business of governing the nation...

Just a little tender

I am at work.

I am actually doing things at work. I cannot believe I am even interrupting my "flow" to post this but I want to say that things have been hard. Not in my "actual life" but "inside of me" where you can get lonely sometimes even when you are surrounded by love and amazing things... Maybe it's the winter and I'm seasonally affected or some such thing. Maybe it is the tingles of depression dusted on my genes by some of my ancestors, maybe it's the culmination of what has gone on in our live in the last 12 months- lots of it good, some bad... Most of it stressful...

Yesterday I got a call from a State School BFF whose 6 month old son got a fever. (He's fine.) She called to tell me "I don't know how you did it when ML was sick. I can't imagine how hard that was". Her message was sweet and funny and it made me smile and giggle. And then when I hung up, I started bawling. Crying. Hard. Out of the blue. Baffled and embarrassed for the entire 30 seconds until I pulled myself together in a "What was that?!?" sniffle. It was a wave of emotion that washed over me and disappeared.

I had really no idea that was inside of me.

That... like... scary, wounded, anxiety tears could burst unannounced thru the doors the instant a friend pads the safe room walls with an "I'm sorry you had to go thru that" on my voice-mail 3 months later.

Whoa.

The reasons I'm writing now from work are:

1) I don't want to forget to write what I wrote above because a lot of the times when i post it is when I'm feeling pretty good and parenting AND life is more about ups and downs.

2) Lately, by the time I get the kids to bed I have about 6 minutes before I get hit by a wall of exhaustion.

3) If you are not watching "Modern Family" on TeeVee, please set your DVR and/or go get hooked up with a DVR. Maybe it is my diminished mental capacity, but If this isn't the funniest show on right now, I'll eat one of JB's socks. It hits me right where I live. I love the office and 30 rock, but even in my melancholy, MF made me laugh out loud 6 times in the first 90 seconds of the episode last night. Katy watches it with me b/c she thinks if's funny to watch ME laugh.

4) We are finally restarting housekeeping services. We cannot keep up with the mess. And my sanity and my marriage is more important than my desire to succeed in the category of "be better about cleaning". It feels like I've failed only until about 6 seconds after the call is made. And then (with 100% candor I tell you) I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted... They are coming tomorrow to help with our filth.

5) Acts 3 and 4 (I appreciate all the positive feedback) are not written, but forthcoming. Sorry to keep especially the womb whisperer waiting. I'm sure that any momentum in the "you almost made me want to have kids" category has been lost, but we'll work thru it.

6) There is a lot going on in the health care debate right now. I wish I could get my shit together to comment and write more about it. If you want to know where I am in it and/or the things that interest me, you should keep up with Rachel Maddow. The podcast of her show (there's an iphone app) is as refreshing as water. And my favorite source of news and tidbits is JoeMyGod. His blog is a daily "must read" for me.

-----
sent from my iphone

Our basement flooded. It likely has something to do with not cleaning the gutters for several years. Oh yeah, and from all the rain we've been getting too. What a mess. It gives a whole new meaning to "1/2 finished basement."

Also, today (well, now, yesterday...) my birthday twin had a miscarriage. Will write more about it later, but it is very sad and very, very... well, sad.

In other parts of the world, the Olympics opened in Beijing. Katy is an Olympics addict. She is thrilled and plans to DVR the games day and night. I am amazed by her tenacity and the picayune details she has managed to memorize about the competitions and the athletes.

Where do you find the time?

We watched a DVR'd episode of wipeout yesterday.

I know 99.99% of you have not seen this show, but when I set the DVR I just felt like, "I have got to see this insanity at least once." It is on A.B.C. and is followed by a show called, "I survived a Japanese game show."

Summer tv is a freaking horror show.

I didn't expect wipeout to be anything other than what it was. (Honestly, though, I wasn't expecting the 30,000 times an announcer found a way to work the word "balls" into the commentary.)

So even though, I couldn't look away from the travesty, that's about 33 minutes of my life (ff'ing through commercials and other lame parts) that I'll never get back...

So what. After watching that show, my brain is mushier, my body is flabbier. But it reminds me of one of the reasons I blog. Namely, because I have the time.

My parents are 2 of the people that (though they have always encouraged me to write more) whenever the blog is mentioned say, "I don't know where you find the time..." It's ironic coming from my mother who last week alone, made several homemade bibs out of hand towels, while caring for 2-3 infants and toddlers around the clock.

Then there's my dad who will spend 45 minutes picking dandelion fuzz off the blades of grass on a certain section of his lawn; even after I've driven an adorable grand-baby 30 minutes to see him. Also, he's been known to play the fife for 7 to 22 hours on any given week in the summer. But he's baffled by my ability to find 20 to 60 minutes every few days to write about myself (or about them.)

To be fair, my parents haven't said this in a while, but a lot of people who spend a little time at the GSO are apt to remark: "I don't know where you find the time..."

I'm gonna say this: it doesn't take that much time.
I blog AND I still have time to watch an occasional episode of wipeout. That's just how I roll.

I have friends that do all kinds of things I don't do: exercise, clean house, apply makeup, blow-dry their hair...

I myself have list of items that go un-checked-off:
Returning the phone calls of people i care about and haven't seen, writing thank you notes for gifts given several months ago, getting my car to pass emissions, returning baby clothes that don't fit, laundering piles of underwear stored on the bedroom floor, dusting the treadmill that never gets used, etc.

My sister and i have a pet peeve about people who say, "I'm sorry I didn't XXX, I have just been so busy." I hate this statement b/c frankly it feels like pressure to be more wound up; an invitation into some kind of nauseating contest called, "I'm busier than you..." I think Web hates it because it would be a joke for someone to try to compete with her in this insane contest. She's been known to fly over 10,000 miles a week for work, put in the hours of a DA prosecuting OJ Simpson, host a pampered chef party, take my mother and grandmother out for pedicures, bake a batch of lollipop chocolate chip cookies for an ailing co-worker and still have the time to tease her older sister for showing up late to watch papa pick the dandelion fuzz off his lawn.

It's not that I am not busy. I assure you, we are as over-booked as the next group of lunatics. It is that no matter how "busy" someone is, there are always decisions involved about how an individual will use his/her time. Everyone gets the same number of hours in the day, right? Some people sleep more than others. Some people cope better than others. We all set our priorities, and the blog is a little gift I give myself; my way to produce media and not merely consume some trash that someone else produces. (wipeout.)

This guy, Clay Shirky plucks all the right notes in this tune if you ask me. (hat tip, Adam)

Mama's home

Kt came home last night. JB was very excited to see her. Me too. Being a single mom is exhausting, but being without my boo makes me feel a little lost in the wilderness that is mundane, suburban life. She was only gone 4 days but in that time, I got a little sore throat, 2 sties, my period, and managed to turn the homestead into a flop house...

JB popped his second tooth (Mr Rightie on the bottom next to a rapidly growing Mr Lefty), went swimming in a real pool for the first time, learned how to ooh-waa-ooh-waah (make varied noises with his hand on and off his mouth like a caricature of an Indian), and really started creeping (he will move 3 or 4 feet toward an object he wants like the remote control or our cell phones.) He is becoming such a big boy.

Coxsackie is at the day care. There was a big poster on the door yesterday morning, like a medieval decree. This is a virus that used to be called hoof and mouth disease, then "hand, foot, and mouth disease," Now, as my mother says, "cock-sack-y?!? That seems like a crazy name!?!"

Anyway, JB was a little listless and "not himself this weekend". I put that in quotes because he changes all the time so, it is hard to know if something "new" is the "new normal". Anyway, he was sleeping more and eating less than he usually does, so that could be anything like the heat, or the teeth, or the missing mama, or a boy trying to grow... but now we're waiting to see if a fever and/or spots follow. Cammy felt a little warm last night, but she's the same age as JB and that could be all the above mentioned things too.

Overheard in our kitchen: 7:12am

Mom #1: I can't believe I stepped over that swiffer 3 times before noticing it was in the middle of the floor
Mom #2: (cough, cough, sniffle, sneeze)
Mom #1: It's kind of good, because if a burgler broke in s/he would take a look around and leave, assuming we had already been hit.
Mom #2: That's why I keep my office looking a wreck too.

GOOD MOOOOOORNing SUBERBIA...

IT'S 0700!!! What does the "0" stand for?
OH MY GOD IT'S EARLY!!!

Guess what, it's snowing... on a Saturday... several inches...

I woke up at what I assumed was a decent hour (because of all the snow blowing in the neighborhood...)

When I saw the clock, I kind of crapped a shit fit.
The only reason I was still asleep is b/c my wife decided it was my turn to "sleep in" and took baby duty at 6am.

WE HAVE A BABY, NEIGHBORS!!! Can't you throw us a bone and keep your heavy machinery in the garage until 8 or 9am?!?

Keep in mind, it hasn't stopped snowing, and no one has fired up their car and left the driveway... it's not like they are going anywhere and need to clear a path... they are just going to repeat this process when the snow stops in a few hours.

When I got up, I "fired back" with the only piece of heavy equipment I have at the ready: the breast pump!

By the way, it is still snowing... it's not like they won't have to be out there again in a few hours.

Question: When is it appropriate to start using loud machines to clear snow on a weekend?