decisions, decisions

I'm starting a new job.

I will begin as the Associate for Communications and Grants at Listening Hearts Ministries as soon as I hire a babysitter for the 15 hours a week I will dedicate to this work. The extraordinary people at Listening Hearts have responded to my concerns about balancing work with my desire to be present for my children, and we have come up with an ideal schedule. It is hard to imagine a more family-friendly, flexible and encouraging new employer. It is hard to imagine finding a 15 hr/week job doing meaningful and creative work!

And so I feel very lucky, and very excited to begin. And yet. There is the whole babysitter thing.

By the end of this week I will have spent far too much time on Care.com, reviewing profiles of prospective nannies. I will have emailed scores of young women interested in taking care of my children. I will have interviewed six of them. I will have visited two preschools, with one more to go.

This happens to be a demanding time in the semester when Mike is completely occupied by his school duties, and it won't come to an end until his spring break begins in another week. And so I have been mostly on my own, swimming in possible futures for Frances and Gabriel, feeling very unsteady in all this. We had thought that sending Gabriel to a toddler program in a preschool that offers extended care would be ideal for the fall. Hence all the school visits. But can we find the right school? And afford it? And get into it? And can we find someone excellent to care for him and Frances who won't mind the job ending in August?

And afford a second car this fall, in order to somehow orchestrate the four of us simultaneously working and learning in four different places, busily pursuing our projects in four separate little dots on the sprawling map?

This is what we do in America, right? Everyone heads out the door, each in his or her own direction, each with a cell phone in hand, and hopefully we reconvene back at home at some point, before it gets too dark outside. But not us, right? Of course we are not confronting anything quite like this, but suddenly the slope appears rather slippery.

We value simplicity in everyday life, and things are about to get more complicated. Despite the utterly ideal work situation before me, compromises - sigh! - are inevitable.

Perhaps you have some firsthand experience with some of the things I describe here. Comments, as ever, are welcome. Tell us about it.

i'll be your mirror

Last week I spoke with an excellent clinical social worker about Frances. I seem to be developing a quarterly consultation rhythm with this woman; every 3 or 4 months I call her up, desperate for some guidance, and ask if I can come in and talk about what to do with my complicated, dear little girl. Typically, Frances becomes angelic and (relatively) easy going in the interim between my call and the actual appointment, but nonetheless we always have a very productive, intense conversation in which she reassures me that Frances is only four years old, that I am overthinking things, that I need to recognize and respect her vulnerabilities/strengths (because doesn't it always seem they are one and the same?). This past visit also included some discussion of how Frances needs me to be a 'safe container' for her anger and aggression.

Ah. But what if this container is full of cracks?

That's a post for another day. Dorcas reminded me during out conversation that it is a child's duty to monitor her parents' every move and commit each gesture and phrase to memory. Forever. This was delivered with a rather grim smile. I did laugh. It is true. Lately, both my children have been reflecting parts of me that I had been but dimly aware of.

Three days ago, in the pre-dawn post-nurse dark of our bedroom, Gabriel sat up and beckoned quietly: Downstairs, Mama! Put your glasses on! I rolled over and told him I was too sleepy. Did I think he would give up? There was a couple more requests to go downstairs now. Then he pulled out the big guns. In a perky, bright tone he said: it'll be fun!
(pause)
...at the playgroup.

Mike laughed himself awake. Did Gabriel just tell you it would be fun at the playgroup? A little dose of my own medicine...he didn't want to go to that new playgroup two weeks ago, and I told him it would be fun. And it actually wasn't that fun for him, but he did it anyway. And he knew it wasn't that fun for me to go downstairs at 5:30 in the morning either, but this is apparently what we say to get around that. Smile. It'll be fun!

And Frances has been running around the house carrying a small bottle of hand lotion, applying it whenever she wants to be the mama in a game with Gabriel. She also told me she would like to start carrying one of her dress up purses. That way she could carry her wallet, some chapstick, and "just like a little snack for Gabriel, in case he gets hungry, and maybe I can have a bite too." I guess those are the things I carry around. (Except I carry snacks for both of them).

Or yesterday, when she told me that she would like to eat some peanut butter directly out of the jar, you know like you always do Mama, right off the spoon?

Oh. Yes, like that.

My children pilfer ob tampons from my bathroom and shove them in their pockets, nibble their fingernails, use 'like' and 'okay' excessively, smash chapstick all over their faces when I am not looking (I often find the saddest, stickiest tubes of Burt's Bees stuffed back in my purse), and have acquired an afternoon herbal tea drinking habit.

I don't know why I am only becoming more aware of this now. It does make me feel a little sheepish, seeing bits of myself and my accoutrements, enacted on the stage of early childhood. Who knew hand lotion and lip balm were so central to my being?

Oh, dear children, please carry these little gifts of mine lightly!

baby steps

Frances and Gabriel are getting older, and they are friends. I realized this last week.

I was taking a shower. There were no small people trying to open the curtain or sitting on the toilet, talking to me. It was remarkably quiet and steamy in the bathroom. The children were in Frances's room, playing.

Huh.

It happened again today. After my shower, I got dressed and brushed my teeth. I went downstairs and cleaned up our breakfast dishes. I collected library books to return. I put in a load of laundry. The children played on! What was going on? I became suspicious. Or maybe I was getting a little lonely, and feeling neglected. How is this even possible, having longed for more time and space for myself, and for more independent children? The mysteries of motherhood...

So I poked my head into my bedroom, where I found them on my bed.

What are you guys doing up here? You've been so quiet.

Without looking up from her work on Artie the aardvark, Frances muttered, that's because we've been doing surgery for five whole days.

Gabriel was the nurse/surgeon's assistant, and he was taking the job very seriously. There was a lot of measuring involved.



I asked Frances to tell me what was wrong with Artie, and here is what she said:

There's a serious cold down her throat that pushes her lungs back. The white cells are trying to get in. She could get so sick, and very ill. She could die! So I'm trying to push the white cells out, back into her arms, and let the red cells be in her body. So. I'm going deep down into her throat and helping to get them out. I need her to be still. Perfectly still, for about one and a half days.

Gabriel stared at Frances and nodded in agreement during this explanation. Frances was a little irritated to have to break it all down for me. I suddenly realized I was getting in their way, so I left.

Huh.

(But not before documenting some post-operative snuggling.)

repurposed valentine crafts...and the family snowymoon comes to an end

A housebound week spent under a pile of snow translated into a LOT of crafting, using our already dwindling supplies, and so by Saturday things did not look good for making Valentine's Day treasures. Turns out being driven to the recycling bin can be a very good thing.

Yesterday I cut many cardboard hearts from a cereal box and a box that once held four sticks of butter. I punched holes in them, and spread them all over the table for the children to paint and decorate. I strung them up this morning on red embroidery thread to make a Valentine's Day garland for the dining room. I think they look lovely, and so did Gabriel. The only drawback of the recycling bin approach is that the backs of the twirling hearts say fragments of things like Safeway Select Organic Sweet Cream Butter. (This problem could easily have been solved by gluing two hearts together around the thread, but requires more foresight and dedication than this underslept Mama could muster).

Last night Mike and I returned to the recycling bin, and the various odds and ends in the kitchen, trying to devise some appropriate valentines for the children to wake up to in the morning. Frances was very excited; she made us all Valentine's cards and could barely wait for us to open them. We realized there was a bit of expectation. And so:

Behold her red rose! Mike wrote each kid a sweet 'roses are red' poem, and I made them flowers from egg carton cups and pipe cleaners, with felt greenery to give a bit more weight to the presentation. I found Gabriel's rose cast aside on our grassy green rug - knife to the heart, my boy! - but it did look sort of nice lying there.

And, I feel obligated to report this Valentine's Day evening - with a slightly heavy heart - that our shining family week of crafting, baking, and stories has come to an end. The day after my last post, that oh-aren't-we-happy business, Gabriel woke up crying before 5 am, Frances woke up soon after that, and both children were tired and grouchy for much of the day. I was too. It was gray outside, and the snow suddenly became ominous - icy in patches, holding the threat of floods to come. It felt like our happy winter family bubble had burst. Who do I blame? The four molars that refuse to emerge from Gabriel's tender gums. The four molars that have been tormenting him - and us - for weeks.

Is chewing really worth it? We're basically vegetarians. Who needs those back teeth for tofu?

Today was more of the same. This underslept family hovered on the edge of irritation (in the parents' case) and lunacy (in the children's). Given the circumstances, why oh why did we decide to go to church? Mike took Frances and Gabriel to 'Children's Chapel,' which takes place during the sermon in a room adjacent to the echoing sanctuary. All the children head back during a hymn, so it took me a minute to recognize the screaming child shouting MAMA!! as my very own Gabriel. He had gotten upset at the back of the church, and so Mike ran back and passed me the red-faced boy. I carried him back to Children's Chapel, only to bump into Frances, who was tearing out of the room, red-faced and crying herself, shouting "I WON'T GO IN THERE WITHOUT GABRIEL!!!" And so here I was, holding Gabriel in one arm - who began crying again when he saw the Children's Chapel taking place, saying NO NO NO A DIFFERENT PLACE, MAMA! GO TO A DIFFERENT PLACE! - and holding Frances around the shoulders with my other arm, who was also crying at the prospect of going back in there without her brother. By this time, as you can imagine, the music had stopped and my children's wailing voices were audible in every corner of the church.

Ah, what havoc a poor night of sleep can wreak!

We made it home. Gabriel shouted and yodeled and jumped up and down in his crib during naptime, causing my heart to sink down through my body in despair. Lucky for us, Grammy arrived for a visit this afternoon (perhaps not so lucky for her!) and both children were much much happier as a result.

Thank goodness for grandmothers. And sleep. And the return of preschool, after all, in just a few short days...