Well, it's a burden, but I manage

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I was reading a post by the fab Ms. Single Mama about her Imaginary Husband.

Stuff like this is why I blog and why I enjoy reading blogs - because when you find out someone does something you do, or has experienced something you've experienced, it makes you feel ... good? valid? I'm not sure what the exact word is, but it's something that makes you feel less alone, less weird and more important.

I have a chore list and reasons I miss being married, too. Mine is all about the heavy lifting - both the real and the metaphorical. Things like taking out the trash, carrying heavy stuff, building RTA furniture, tech support ... but also the stuff like sick kids, nighttime parenting, bad days when you just want someone to tell you that you're still a rockstar ... they're all burdens that can be managed alone, but are easier managed with a partner.

Unlike Ms. Single Mama, I wasn't looking to get out, thinking single would be better. In a truly honest assessment, I'll admit that I had wondered about greener pastures. But I had also done more than my fair share of ... grazing ... so I knew that even if they looked green, sometimes they were nothing but chokeweed. Or at best dallisgrass - it may look like real grass, but it's just a clever impostor.

But then, my marriage wasn't awful, either. Maybe it wasn't always a lush Kentucky bluegrass ... more of an annual rye. Something that looked great on the surface, but needed attention to last. So while I'd glance at the other pastures, I figured I was in a pretty good place, as long as we took care of it.

Obviously, we didn't, but that's a whole 'nother post (and one that I've probably done in many different iterations in the past).

Those greener pastures are still there, but, as they always were for me, they're ideas of someone, not actual someones. They're my imaginary future lives, with new significant others, and there are a few versions of them. In the words of Langhorne Slim, there's no road to follow, only stones left unturned.

And while I'm turning them alone right now, I know that one day in the future one of them is going to reveal someone to help shoulder the load.
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What we once were informs all that we have become

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Before I forget: Bean, waiting for a cake walk to begin - "Let's move it people!!"

(I don't know where she gets this stuff.)

So.

My c-section rant yesterday was kind of an all-encompassing rant for both my annoyance at the discussion surrounding the linked article and every other anti-c/s discussion I've seen/heard on that particular board. The discussion that tipped it off wasn't overtly offensive, but the subtext there bugs me. "... it definitely concerns me that by calling it "natural" it's a way to con women out of their right to VBAC." That kind of stuff. And the paternalistic (ironic word choice, no?) tone that 'only .00005% of c/s are truly necessary and therefore everyone else who had one is either conned by the establishment or a selfish person who just wanted the c/s'.

True, I've seen and been a part of much worse over at mothering.com(munism), but I've also seen what the local folks think of c/s in the past. So I extrapolated a little.

Who is anyone else to say what a mother's best choice was at the time? Why not give a mom who had a c/s as many flowery words and as much empowerment as possible? Why nitpick that a c/s isn't a 'natural' birth at all? I mean, duh. Baby comes out via a nice slice in the operating room, no-one really thinks that's truly natural, no matter how much incense ya burn or how soft the lighting is.

If we've reached the truly staggering 40% or greater rate for c/s in this country, then there are a lot of moms who need support, not judgment. Don't like that many c-sections? Target the medical establishment and the surgeon general for change, don't criticize the choices a mother makes. Yes, there are some 'questionable' reasons for c-sections, but who is anyone else to validate what's a "bad" reason versus a "good" one unless it's their womb, baby and heart in the mix?

Making mothers feel bad, deliberately or as a side effect, doesn't change the statistic. I doubt it budges the needle at all. All it does, IMO, is distance one group from another. And pushing people away is never a way to make them feel embraced and welcome within a community.

What's next? Vaginal-American and Caesarean-American?
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Hey, you look troubled. Or is that just your lazy eye?

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An interesting take on c-sections from across the pond - The new "natural" Caesarean.

I think it's way cool that the medical community wants to make a Caesarean birth as fulfilling for the parent(s) as possible. That's huge. My first was not fulfilling, but it was memorable for the overriding belief that if I closed my eyes I was going to die (no food for 24 hours, plus 22 hours of labor, plus 12 hours of epdiural, plus the addition of more anesthetic when they prepped me for the c/s does not equal a lucid brain). Miss O's was more fulfilling, as it was a planned thing that I entered knowing what to expect, and thanks to the wonderful anesthesiologist who gave me a play-by-play for the whole time he was at my side.

Of course, the "more AP than thou" crowd is mounting high horses and deriding the word choice (natural, they scoff, is not appropriate with c-sections) and making sure everyone knows that a c-section still isn't a valid birth experience compared with the home-based, all soft music, no anesthetic, primal scream birth *they* had.

Because, you know, there's nothing more empowering for a woman than demeaning the choices and experiences of another woman.

So yeah, I'm troubled today.

The mommy wars. Love them. They're just great. They do so much to empower and embolden women and to show the other gender just how mature and reasonable we are. Nothing says "anything you can do I can do better" than a bunch of b*tch-slapping at each other for being sub-par mommies.

Don't think the sarcasm is all because I feel defensive about my own choices. Because, for the most part, I don't. I tend to be the kind of person for whom a past choice is in the "it is what it is" category - I don't spend long hours lamenting the two c-sections I had, or how I could have prevented them, or what I could have done differently as I raised my girls. None of that matters to me because I can't un-do any of it.

But I know lots of women who do mourn their birth experiences, their early childhoood choices ... I don't understand the choice to do so, but I accept that they do. And having the holier-than-thou crowd harping on every choice that isn't wrapped in hemp blankets, dressed with herbal tinctures, served on a fair-trade and sustainably harvested plate with a side of placenta, all covered in a mystic special sauce that embodies all that is primal and contains a puree of all non-midwife medical professionals ... well, that's just stupid. And demeaning to mothers and to women. And divisive and unkind. And totally not feminist or woman-centric at all.

So to the holier-than-thou chicas, a few words of advice - get. over. your. selves. And yes, I get the irony of me soapboxing to tell others not to soapbox. But sometimes things just need to be said. As long as you're not whacking your kid with a spoon, or leaving them in a car while you go tie one on at the bar, or berating and deriding them and their choices, you're probably a decent parent. If you need to put yourself and your parenting practices on high and criticize everyone else's choices, you have much bigger things to concern yourself with in your own psyche than you have to worry about in others' choices.

Kisses.
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Some recent kid-isms

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Verbal kidisms from Miss I, physical from Miss O. I swear, I'm going to start panicking about getting early intervention for her if she isn't talking soon ...

Miss O:

Mimics everything. Everything. I was nursing her to sleep the other night and scratched my nose (It was a scratch!). I looked down to see her staring up at me, finger up her nose, grin on her face. I drummed my nails on a table yesterday, she drummed hers. I make kissy-noises at an animal, she does too. Actually, now she makes them at any animal, stuffed or real.

Today in the car, I heard the kissy-noise and she was having two rubber duckies 'kiss' each other, beak to beak. It was beyond sweet.

She blows kisses, sometimes at people, usually at animals.

She understands so much and follows directions really well. She'll throw things away, go to the door to the garage when I say "go get in the car", etc. And she can do the two-step instructions like "go to your room and get your shoes". She just doesn't say anything. Except mom/mama and dada. It's so different from Bean, who had at least 15-20 or so words by age 1, and by two had a huge vocabulary. Like I said, I'm close to being a little freaked out about the "not talking" thing ... at her 18 month check, if she still hasn't added more words, I'm going to ask about early intervention. Since she understands so much, I'm not as worried as I would be if she weren't able to hear and follow instructions, but with Miss Chats-a-lot as a big sister, it's hard not to compare and worry.

Miss I:

Zero is how you get one. You mix them and mix them and mix them together and then you get one. If you don't mix them, you get 10.

(Reading an anatomy book to O) So, here's your lungs and here's your skeleton and here's your heart. This is your brain, Miss O. And everyone has different color skin.

I moved up quickly to Manta Ray.

Arazelli (some made up girl) is big. She's in ... (pauses to think) ... humpback whale class up on the roof!

~~~***~~~

The Arazelli one was awesome, because it showed such a solid logic in the way the classrooms progress at her school, and a good comparison of Bean being her size and in Manta Ray and a much bigger kid being in a much bigger animal class.

But the zero and one thing blew me away.

I locked my keys in the car today at Costco. I was so impressed with myself. For the longest time, I just used the lock button on the keychain and that way I could never lock the keys inside because if a door was open, the lock button wouldn't lock the car. I had to be outside of it, all doors shut, with keys in hand to lock it.

But I recently started hitting the interior lock button after I opened the girls' doors, so I could just drop my keys in my purse and not juggle one or two kids and the keys to lock the doors. As I was shutting Miss O's door today, I had the "I hope I have my keys" thought that you just know means your keys are now locked safely in your car. And mine were.

A half hour and $35 later, O and I resumed our Costco trip, and since my car insurance will reimburse me for the cost, it was really just an annoyance and an ego blow. Miss O was fabulously patient while we shivered outside and shared a slice of pizza waiting for the lock-popper guy. And she had a blast inside Costco, where I let her walk for the whole trip. She was the belle of the warehouse club :)
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For your information, I live a rich and varied social life.

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Thanks so much for the comments on my socializing post ... it's such an ironic kind of post - laying myself bare for the world, yet claiming to be an introvert. But I see that's the way it is for a lot of you. I wonder how many bloggers are actually introverts, parlaying the relative anonymity of the interwebz into an ability to open up and be, for all appearances, extroverted.

I keep 'meaning' to do more social things - attend some single-parent or local singes get togethers, maybe try speed dating ... I just don't really care enough to take the step from 'meaning to' to actually going. Can I blame it on all the other balls I have in the air? Job hunting, trying to network, trying to maintain my sanity ... ???

Bean, talking to the TV: "Yeah, I'm having an easter egg hunt too."

And she is. She'll be hanging with the grandparents today to do the easter egg hunt in their 'hood. It will be her first, and I'm sure she'll have a great time. Since Dave had the girls on Thursday, my folks missed their usual Bean day - and I'm just generous enough to give them a make-up day.

Yesterday both girls were up at 4:30. Fortunately, I chose that night to just make their bedtime my bedtime, and I was asleep before 7 p.m. Still didn't really make 4:30 'okay', merely acceptable, but at least I wasn't seeing the butt-crack of dawn on only a few hours' sleep. It certainly makes for a looonnnggg day, regardless.

It's actually taken me two days to get this far ... I started this Saturday around 4:30, and and just now getting back to it around 6 a.m. Sunday.

Yesterday wasn't awful, even with the butt-crack of dawn wake-up. Everyone was asleep by 7 after some short daytime naps, and, of course, up at 5:00. No matter what time we go to bed, 5:00 seems to be our magic number here ... I checked the "No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers" out at the library, so we'll see if that's any more motivating that the one for babies. I know the baby one she wants you to keep logs for awhile and then take forever to implement, which is so discouraging to me. I want a no-cry solution that transpires over a week at most, not a couple months. Of course, if I'd started the solution when I first started my sleep griping, it'd be done and over with by now.

I'm just not a believer in letting *my* kids cry. Like I said in my comments from the other day - I don't fault anyone else for going that route with their kids (unless they are doing it with young babies - that burns my biscuits) - it's just not something I want to do. Usually.

Miss O is also not a great candidate for it, as she does not ever stop screaming. I've found that out the hard way in the car and on the few occasions I have just had it at night and left her in a crib to cry because the alternative is not pretty. (I'm a big believer in the advice the pros give new parents - if you're at your end point, it's okay to let a baby cry in a safe place for however long you need to regroup your poop.)

But my 'lessons learned' from these experiences is that O does not stop crying until she is picked up. She just doesn't. It's never been longer than maybe 20 minutes or so (in the car - in person when I *can* fix it, I've never needed more than 10 minutes before I can face the music again.), but there's no winding down at any point - it's a continued effort that says to me "however long you can take it, I can go longer". Would I ever "win" and would she ever cry herself to sleep? Possibly. But I will likely never find out how long it takes to reach that point.

Jen, 2.5 is a looonnnggg way away. You have my sympathies. And a ton of empathy.

No, I don't think "Ugh" is the magic word, if one would call it a word and even then certainly not a magic one.

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Someone please explain to me why it's even a little bit fair that my kids are always up before 5:00 ... I wasn't sleepy until around 11:00, then it took me forever to just doze off, when Miss O woke up around midnight. And probably hourly after that. 5 hours of ridiculously interrupted sleep is just not acceptable.

If someone could also remind me that I hate the concept of letting my kid cry themselves to sleep. Remind me a lot. Because at almost 16 months, there is no earthly reason this kid should be waking 5-6 times a night. Last night it was more like 8-9 times, as she woke up 3 times before I went to bed.

If she didn't sleep better (and later - until like 7:00) at Dave's, I wouldn't be quite so annoyed. But karmically speaking, my sleep shouldn't be the one targeted if she was going to be a sucky sleeper at one house and not the other.

And of course, Bean woke up loaded for bear, throwing a whiny-crying-hollering hissy fit when I told her no to chocolate before real food, then ramping it up a few notches when the banana she was eating 'broke' and wasn't all in one piece. Seriously. As if that changes the taste or anything. She screamed "no!" at me a few times when I told her to pick it up off the ground after she threw it there, so I ended up carrying her, kicking and screaming, to her room, tossed her on the bed and made her stay in there until she could mellow the hell out.

Magic word? Harumph. I'll take civil words. Hand to god, if all these books I'm reading don't give me some better coping tools, Bean's going to be a gift with purchase on eBay before she turns four.

I'm tellin' ya, I almost look forward to having to resolve conflict and deal with difficult people at work again. I cannot imagine a single situation I won't be able to handle, as it's unlikely that I'll have to toss a screaming, crying coworker over my shoulder and put them in a time out. Or deal with "no!" screamed at me repeatedly. Or have them spit at me when they don't like what I've said. I'm going to be the Zen Mistress at work, the one who can handle any sort of Joan Collins 'tude without getting ruffled.

It's hard to hold a grudge, tho, when the littlest one toddles in here, turns my chair to face her and beams up at me. And it's especially hard to hold a grudge when the big one is at school for the day ... yay for preschool!!

I took my taxes over to HR Block yesterday for their "Second Look", and I'm just flat-out getting hosed. Ugh. I'm most pissed about not being able to claim student loan interest because the statement has just Dave's social on it. I'm paying it, it was charged to me in the divorce decree, but it's his to deduct. And since he makes more than they allow for the deduction, no one gets a break. My advice to anyone contemplating divorce is to talk to an accountant first. We skipped that part, and we both got hit hard on stuff. So, accountant. Definitely. Especially if you have a bunch of assets to split and a damn student loan that can't be assigned to anyone else.

I watched my expected return get chopped in half because of that flippin' student loan interest ... I'll get over it, but I'm still cranky about it. Grrr ...

On to something less aggravating - validation from the American Association of Pediatrics for me having kept Bean rear-facing until she was 2: http://aapnews.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/30/4/12-a ... Miss O is still rear-facing and I had been loosely considering turning her to the front, but now she'll stay RF until at least two as well. And since she's such a teeny thing, I may leave her that way longer. She's usually got Bean in there with her to give her someone to look at and to keep her entertained, as well as a mirror that she can see me in, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep her RF.

There's also a Stonyfield Farm recall, affecting a few runs of the 32-ounce fat-free yogurt, for a "minute amount of food grade sanitizer" - http://www.stonyfield.com/
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This socializing thing is brutal. I mean, I was young once. I used to go to bars. It was never like this.

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I got a night off last night - woo-hoo!! My little brain and heart just needed some serious decompression. I didn't get to sleep in as late as I would have liked, however. At 5:30 this morning something very close by got hit by lightning. We're talking thunder so loud it seemed to reverberate for a minute or two. Scared the bejeebers out of me ... I think I remember mumbling something to myself about a coronary event, my heart was pounding so hard and so fast ...

I'm doing the ultimate of multi-tasking: blogging, looking at job stuff and listening to a friend's podcast -all while sipping coffee and enjoying the blissful feeling of being able to just do my thang without interruption. Join me for cup #2, because it's that kind of easy, relaxing morning. If you want to hear the podcast, check out:


The podcast I'm listening to is Episode 2, about mom-to-mom relationships. It's really interesting because I had to push myself so hard when I first moved to the area, and I can relate to so much of what they're talking about. When I moved here, I was 6 months pregnant and knew no-one. I can credit Dave for my closest friends, as he ran into Cindy and Jorge at the hospital when Cindy and I had our first babies. Then he followed through and set up the first "all of us" lunch, which is something I probably wouldn't have done on my own, and, knowing Cindy and Jorge like I do, I don't think they would have either. And then they introduced us to another couple, and I've since become very close friends with them, too.

But everything beyond that was on me. I had to join playgroups and step so far out of my comfort zone that I was doing the heart-pounding, palms-sweating, job-interview feeling thing as I attended the first few play dates. It's funny, because maybe about 15-18 years ago, I was the exact opposite - I was a total extrovert. I would walk up to any guy I found attractive and ask him out; I had no self-confidence issues. But I was also full of bravado, a lot thinner and really not that substantial a person.

I've gone through the introvert-extrovert shifts several times, actually. Early in life, I was an extrovert. Probably until about 5th or 6th grade. I ran with the popular kids, I had tons of friends, etc. Then I shifted and my circle of friends shrank, but grew closer. Through the end of high school, I'd say, my circles shifted, but I remained an introvert. Although most of my friends were total extroverts. Ash, remember Chris and Eric? Definitely not introverts, at least not Chris. And Eric was an extrovert in his own, brooding way.

Then I started working full-time and hanging out with different people (I took a pretty circuitous route to college and 'real life'), lost a bunch of weight, and discovered everyone's confidence-builder, booze. I spent maybe 7-10 years as a pretty extroverted person. It was nice, and I was rarely lonely. You can't swing a cat without hitting a grinning picture of me from that time period: I was not camera-shy, and, if I do say so myself, I photographed well. Very different from now, where I look like Pizza the Hut in photographs and my 'smile' is more of a grimace.

As that Golden Age was waning, I got hit with a life-changing experience that smacked me down so many notches. So many. It's something a lot of y'all know about, but it's something I won't blog about in an open forum, so if you want to know what I'm talking about, email me :)

Anyways, with that smack down, came a shift back to introversion. I made brief forays into the extrovert world, but I was definitely not the person I had been. I actually developed a bit of a phobia about new people and events ... I was sooo resistant to attending things that Dave wanted to attend.

Part of that, I think, was rooted in an event early in our relationship, where he took me to a party and disappeared with another girl for like 30 minutes. It was supposedly all on the up-and-up, a friend who needed him, blah-blah-blah. But I was, in essence, abandoned with a bunch of acquaintances while my new boyfriend was off doing god-knows-what with some cute girl. Add some alcohol and I'm pretty sure my brain cooked up a paranoia and phobia that would last throughout our relationship.

I made work friends, maintained my long-distance friendships, and occasionally attended stuff with Dave, but my introverted period lasted another 10-ish years. And then I moved to Texas and had to start everything from scratch. I didn't have a job to start meeting people, I'm not a church-goer and approaching people in a store and introducing myself is so not my bag, baby. Enter online mom groups and, eventually, in-person mom groups.

Fortunately, it's been a slow and steady extroversion conversion this time, added to the confidence and relative freedom from worrying about what others think that comes with age. I like the late 30's because I think that's when we all start to get really comfortable in our own skin. And since I had the catalyst of divorce to push me into new arenas, it's also the time, for me, where I get the tabula rasa to present myself as anything I want to be.

So I've been reconnecting with old friends, meeting new ones and (hopefully) nurturing the friendships I have. Because my close local friends are all busy moms too, 'nurturing friendships' takes a back seat to surviving motherhood for all of us, but we try to stay as connected as possible. I find my mommy friends indispensable - I need that validation and support when I'm feeling like a terrible parent, or that understanding when it's a big deal that my 15-month-old sorted shapes. But I also find myself looking back at older friendships and wanting to know how those folks are doing - people I went to middle school and high school with, guys I dated that still take up a space in my brain (there are a couple who I still wonder "hmm, how's he doing?" Not in a 'maybe we should get back together' way, but in a 'we shared a space in time, you were a decent person, I hope you're doing well' way.), people I worked with ...

How about y'all. Introvert or extrovert? How well do you make new friends? Do you find yourself reaching back (made incredibly easy with social media like Facebook and Classmates) into the vault to see how old friends are doing?
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