June 28, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 99: Smol slept through the night! But chose to end the night at 5 am. Win some, lose some. I didn’t get to sleep until midnight because of my leg pain, PiC didn’t get to sleep until 2 am because of work, so we were both in rough shape. But they had a good first nap, which freed us to get work done and feed everyone breakfast and settle into a bit of a rhythm for the rest of the morning.
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Sera’s got a dry hacking cough that started last week. It was only once a day before and sounded like she was just trying to clear her throat but today it’s acting up more frequently so we’ll need to get to the vet. I wasn’t ready to go back yet. The last time we were there tore my heart to pieces. I’m not ready.
The vet’s booking routine appointments well into July, their first available is in ten days. That’s not great but I’ll take it.
This keeps turning my mind to my second dog. He developed a heart murmur which turned into congestive heart failure and it was awful. I’m hoping so much that this won’t be anything close to that.
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JB woke up very late and was a rumpled mess in mind and body. They brushed their hair and their teeth but boy was their mood terrible. We clashed a few times. We managed to pull it out of the dumpster once in the morning, and then by mid afternoon, they were wound up again over losing one of their little art kit doodads. There’s only so many crises I can manage and work on a Monday.
Year 2, Day 100: Is today Tuesday? Friday? Wednesday? Monday? I don’t know. This is how most days start: What day is it? Weekday or weekend?
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June 21, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 92: Some mornings, you have your shit together. Some mornings, you don’t even notice that you and the kids are still in your pajamas when lessons start. Guesses which today was? I can’t even entirely blame the pandemic or the kids. Pre-kids, PiC DEFINITELY had to yell “PANTS!” at me more than once when I started to wander out of the house without actual pants on.
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People are traveling again for the summer, including my teams, which means that I’ve got a massive workload with very little time to manage it. It’s got me wistfully wishing for retirement money now because I really don’t want to go to work today, tomorrow, or the next day. Maybe this is burnout talking. Maybe I just need to schedule some of my own time off even though we aren’t traveling. I don’t yet because I’m worried that it’ll make it even harder to go back.
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Mondays stink in the normal course of things but they are worse now that PiC’s Mondays and Tuesdays are so jam-packed. I’ve started taking over the bulk of childcare on Mondays so he can deal with his particularly difficult Tuesdays. Making that an expected part of my Mondays actually eases my stress factor a bit but boy it sure it still tiring.
Of course it being a terrible nap day made things extra hard on all of us.
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We spent $80 at Sprouts on the weekend to get a lot of produce and fish. I got way too much sockeye salmon (almost 2 lbs) and that’ll probably make three dinners for us.
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I had such brain fog today that I had to choose to run an errand mid-afternoon to try and clear it. It did work, thankfully. It’s such a hard thing when every single decision is so zero-sum. 20 or 30 minutes to clear my head has such a tangible impact on what I can get done, but at the same time, the less obvious impact where I can regain some breathing space and my patience also has an impact on my workday and my day.
Year 2, Day 93: Oh my aching knees. I’ve been playing and sitting on the ground with Smol too much. My knees are both swollen and hyperextending today. What a combination. I was on the overnight last night. They were squirming around 130 am but settled back on their own, and howling at 330 am and needed a feed. We’re working on weaning off night feeds to try and get uninterrupted sleep overnight and are down from 4 ounces to 2 ounces per night waking. It’s not that they’re always up for prolonged painful periods, it’s that the wake ups are always disruptive and we aren’t getting enough consecutive hours strung together. My fingers are crossed that we can get to 10-12 consecutive hours overnight without needing parental intervention.
My circles are starting to dip their toes back into circulating more. We had a masked playdate with friends we haven’t seen in person for more than a year. One friend got a haircut. Another one will schedule one soon. Yet others traveled for vacation recently.
I wonder when we’ll be out of pandemic times here. I’ve gotten in the habit of these weekly logs, I wonder when I’ll close these out.
I see there’s cause for concern about the Delta variants and I wonder how that’ll affect us here with family who are vaccine hesitant. It doesn’t feel like this is over yet but it also feels like many are putting a cap on it like it is. Our kids are still unprotected so we remain in a strange limbo. (more…)
June 14, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 85: Alice recommended a math app, Math Tango, but when I went on the hunt for it, I realized that w are totally outclassed. My iPad can only be updated to Version 9. Math Tango requires Version 13. And they don’t have a desktop version. Drat. I can’t justify buying an iPad for a kid’s use, much less in addition to the family laptop that I was needing to replace.
JB starts their summer schedule today. It’s a bit spotty. I didn’t get information early enough to schedule a full set of Spanish lessons for two weeks but we’ll see how it goes.
I function so much better when I have a structure to work with. Even if things have to change, even if they change last minute, I feel better having a framework. This goes for work, for handling JB’s days, for Smol’s day to day. Now that we have an idea of how long Smol can optimally function (about 1 hour and 20 minutes up to 2 hours of awake time right now), that gives us a firmer footing on when to do what to support his sleep training.
I was thinking over at Nicole and Maggie’s about which of us would be suited to being a House Spouse and realized that since we can’t do without both our incomes, the next best (also highly unlikely) thing would be both of us working part time and still getting half time for everything else. We both have a lot of household stuff we take care of in our separate realms of expertise and we’re always badly juggling the four areas of work / home / parenting / personal. The personal gets the shortest shrift under the current circumstances but if we both had half time, what glorious self care would result? It’s nice to dream anyway.
It was a long frustrating day at work, I felt myself completely tensed up as I struggled to cross things off my to do list. I very pointedly limited that list for today because I knew there was more work than even I could do on a good day but still I kept getting derailed by one problem after another. I got through but I was really irritable at several points and had to make an effort to rehydrate and refuel. Pacing myself was never my strong suit. I’m a sprinter through and through and you can see that in my work style.
On the bright side I did manage to call the medical equipment people to clear up this nonsense about them billing me when I don’t owe them a dime and got our eye exams scheduled. That bit feels good. (more…)
June 7, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 78: Every single time I think we have a grip on our schedule for the summer …. nope! Something big shifts or changes. So now I’m back to the drawing board. I had to take one weekly remote class off the board entirely, one weekly remote class can’t be weekly any more, and their 4 days a week tutor is now down to 3 days a week. We did add a new weekly exercise class for June so that helps.
I realize that this is just practice for the shifting we’ll have to do forever and ever amen. With adults, you can fall into a rut (or deliberately stick to a routine which is my favorite), but with kids, things are constantly changing for one reason or another.
I’ll figure it out.
I have one weekly exercise class on the calendar, then we set the new schedule with the tutor this week. Once that’s done, I can add the Spanish classes in. Then I’ll see if we can add some virtual and maybe outdoor playdates. Thank goodness for aunties and uncles who generously offer their time for the virtual playdates.
Year 2, Day 79: PiC and I had a hilarious fight all the way to the baby’s crib over whose turn it was to take the first post-nap wake up period. I won because he was laughing so hard and I’m used to fighting through laughter but I conceded the baby anyway and went to work instead. I still don’t know why he didn’t want to take the kids in the afternoon instead of splitting the morning and splitting the afternoon.
It was a gloriously (and rare) sunny day today and PiC and the kids got some good backyard time in. JB worked really hard to make Smol Acrobat laugh, way harder than was strictly necessary considering they are Smol’s favorite person and almost anything they do gets a laugh. They chortle themselves into exhaustion. I tried to get some sun too but I missed the narrow window of time where conditions were good. Our blustery windows started howling through the yard, trying to blow me and my computer away. Ah well. At least the kids had their fun.
I was feeling pretty good about Smol’s napping today. They have been falling asleep on their own with less and less fighting, with better stretches of sleep more regularly. I don’t panic up half as much as I used to when I see them moving on the baby monitor because movement is normal now and doesn’t always mean they’re going to wake up. And even if they do, sometimes they just need some time to cry and protest and go back to sleep. And even if they wake up after a short nap which used to feel like daggers in the heart, I can reasonably hope that the next one will be better instead of despairing. We had so many days with just 30 minute naps, all day, before sleep training and the pain of it still lingers. So I’m deeply appreciating this right now.
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May 31, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 71: I overheard kindergarten students talking about their experiences at Disneyland and other amusement parks with frequent flier style attitudes. They might have been exaggerating but if not, and this is the Bay Area so it’s totally plausible, the idea that young kids might have gone to Disney multiple times already was jarring. I grew up a mere hour away from there and we went to Disneyland once only because my school arranged a field trip when we were older. We couldn’t afford to go to Disneyland for fun. And it’s so much more expensive now than it was back in the 80s. Heck, with the money we have now, it still seems prohibitively expensive.
We go to Comic Con every year but we stay with family, we economize on food expenses, and kids attend free. Even with travel, we make it an affordable trip in a way I can’t imagine making Disney because just getting into the door is exorbitant.
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Civilizing small humans while still giving them the tools to thrive is hard work.
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We’re on Day 3 of terrible second and third naps for Smol. They were doing so WELL for a few days last week; they’d get two really solid naps. In this series, we are getting one semi-decent morning nap and then we’re lucky to get 40 minutes at a time after that.
Sigh.
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I missed this Ask the Grumpies when it first came around: How are you dealing with returning to post-vaccination life? I’m not anywhere near returning to post-vaccination life myself. I’m not yet fully vaccinated so it’s not a relevant question yet. Even when I am, the kids still aren’t close to vaccines yet. We still assume that we won’t be traveling this year for a lot of reasons. So their question of what do we want to keep from pandemic life is more relevant to me. A lot more stuff became accessible for me this year with the shift to remote only and curbside services. Though we never used grocery delivery, curbside pickups for retail and restaurants was so so so helpful in preserving my limited energy.
Year 2, Day 72: Here’s a sad discovery. Those little packs of powdered donuts that were such a treat when I was growing up? They taste terrible (now)! Of course JB still likes them. I too enjoyed terrible tasting desserts as a kid. And a teen. And in my 20s.
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May 24, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 64: I had an imperfect weekend. I didn’t check off half the things I needed done, I didn’t get nearly enough rest or food or water. But we did get five and a half major things done, we did get Smol to have three really decent naps across two days, we each did get some sleep on alternating nights. Not bad. So when Monday came back around the corner bearing the expectations of work again, I was zero percent excited.
It’s not you, Monday, it’s me and work. I’m not in love anymore.
What would I do if I didn’t need to work today? I’d still need to finalize our taxes, our CPA has been MIA for a week and it’s our last day. I better get that done.
I’d turn those four boiled eggs into a small batch of deviled eggs. (We’ll see if I have time.) We’d still need to figure out lunch and dinner. I ordered a Monday delivery of Indian vegetarian side dishes and they tend to deliver earlier in the day so we could have that for lunch or dinner along with some salmon and rice. Maybe I’d prep some tofu to add to Indian, or cut up that paneer that was hiding in back of the fridge. I need a new recipe for cooking small frozen scallops. The last batch was not to my satisfaction.
I’d check in with JB’s tutor to confirm they’re still on for lessons this week, and get a start on crafting some envelopes for the magnets I ordered to send to family and friends.
All this would be fit in around Smol’s nap times. Who has time for a job amidst all that???
What actually happened: not that. I got some work done. I did pay our taxes and filed our return. I cooked a little bit to prep for dinner. I made it outside for a bit of a walk after JB’s lesson because they were furious that PiC and Smol were walking Sera without them.
Year 2, Day 65: I was up at 5:30 am, thinking that Smol Acrobat was up for the day, because they couldn’t soothe themselves back to sleep. I took them out for a quick feed and to play but they passed out after eating instead. Well ok then. I won’t argue with that! I dropped them back in their crib for what turned out to be a good 2 hour sleep. I put those two hours to good use, mostly: walked the dog, cut up fruit, made deviled eggs for everyone else for breakfast. I had a bit of breakfast for myself while I powered through some really complex work problems. Sadly, before I could put all of them to bed, I heard a CRASH come from the kitchen. JB had dropped my precious Pyrex and it shattered. *cries* My Pyrex! My time and energy cleaning all of that up! *cries* I was nearly wrecked by the time I swept and vacuumed.
The next two hours were spent with Smol Acrobat since they, of course, woke up right when I finished clearing up that mess and PiC had two hours of meetings. My arms were jelly by the time Smol’s nap time came back around and I’d gotten them squared away. Naturally, the moment that JB finished class, they showed up in my office demanding their baby. Whoops. The baby, they are napping. Sorry! (Again, furious. Notice a pattern?)
Then it was time to plow through a pile of work and bills to pay. So many bills to pay! I don’t know how they all came to be clustered at the end of the month.
Our utility bill has been steadily rising the past three months and I’m baffled as to why but this has to stop. That mystery has to wait though, today turned into TAX RESEARCH day. UGH. I had to dig through 11 years of returns and forms to figure out my problem with my missing 8606 forms. I went down that rabbithole because we both missed filing the 8606 this year. 🤦🏻♀️ Ugh. It needed to be done, but I’m a little worried my accountant is going to hate me. This has been the year of discovering years of mistakes. Hopefully they won’t hate me too much… some were mostly their errors originally that I’m catching. I just wish I’d caught them before.
Smol’s sleep training results are all over the map. We had increasingly large blocks of sleep and then a reversion back to multiple wakings a night. We get great naps for a day or two and then a reversion to fighting and fussing. It gives me a pit in my stomach, listening to the crying some days, even though most days I’m ok with the process. I need to compile our notes for the sleep consultant to figure out what to tweak to get to full night sleep. With no time in the day to even finish a full day of work, adding data collation sounds like a barrel of laughs. Gotta be done.
Year 2, Day 66: The day really got away from us. We managed to get through last night with just one feeding but Smol was up again at 6 am. Ghastly.
We were playing on the floor just before naptime. Sera came in to see what the chirp-shrieking was about. Smol, laying on the floor, stopped and stared at her. She looked at them, then at me, then wandered off. My throat closed up with grief anew. Seamus would have come and laid down nearby, offering his side or his tail for the baby’s inspection. He would have let the baby wiggle and lurch their way over to him and grab his tail like a lollipop. Once I’d put the baby into the crib for a nap and they started hollering, he would have stayed in the room until they fell asleep. During sleep training, he never once let the baby cry it out alone. He’d lay nearby, we’d leave and shut the door behind us. He’d prod the door to be let out only after the snoring started. He was always there. And now he’s gone. And I miss him so so so much.
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I unearthed some lamb and beef curry from the freezer for lunch, still good five months later.
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My work day was completely derailed with a series of (work) problems. I finally just gave up on getting my usual work done and shut down to go deal with dinner. Everyone was out of sorts for various reasons. PiC’s stressed by the lack of time. He can’t get his work done, or his exercise in, or a million other things. I’m frustrated by the mountains of work and my lack of patience with JB this morning. I oversaw their reading assessment for school and was a complete jerk about their inability to follow directions. I was doing my best to guide them only on navigating the platform and not commenting on their answers at all but I had to walk away to compose myself when they went back to check their answers and changed them to the wrong ones. It was right, why are you doing that?? I forced myself by sheer force of will not to affect their answers. I physically put my hand over my mouth to stop myself at times. JB was frustrated that they keep biting their cheek when eating. It’s happened twice at every meal for the past three days and they are furious. Smol didn’t want their micro nap at the end of the day and they were furious about the whole business. Sera was pretty happy though.
Year 2, Day 67: I’m still trying to knock out the more complex problems at work one at a time and it feels hopeless. The sheer volume is overwhelming right now, and nothing is helped by the constant interruptions and lack of dedicated work time. PiC and I continue to trade off work time blocks so that helps a little.
I’m struggling with feelings today. Mostly the failure related feelings: guilt, sadness, frustration.
I’m on a mission to get Smol to settle down at night better which means a combination of getting them to eat well and sleep during the day and timing the naps so that they aren’t awake for 3+ hours before bedtime. It’s a tricky dance. We spend short 10-20 minute blocks out in the ultra windy yard with JB and Sera to give Smol plenty of fresh air and natural light in between each nap.
Observing JB’s Spanish lessons has been frustrating. They don’t seem to be absorbing anything, and I can’t tell if it’s because they truly don’t remember anything or if the teacher’s soft approach lets them off the hook. It makes me bananas when they’re asked “do you remember this phrase” and without taking even half a beat, they immediately say “no”. But the tutor doesn’t press them to try, they just move the lesson along, and I’m not sure that’s always the right approach. I feel this frustration when we verbally review math and money concepts and they just wildly guess answers, mentally flailing like they don’t have any foundation to start from even though we’ve been talking about money and the value of coins for years. It feels like I’m banging my head on a wall: I’ve got a headache, I’m annoyed and absolutely nothing changes. I’m trying to prioritize – teaching them how to be a good human is probably more important than specific skills but it’s hard to let go of the desire to educate them in everything useful. We started revisiting a daily earnings chart but we’ve absolutely sucked at recording earnings and demerits regularly there too so that feels like a bust. Another bust among too many.
My dear friend’s spouse is dying and I’ve offered support in all the ways I am currently able to. They are not very responsive, understandably, but I thought that was their desired level of engagement. I just got some feedback from a mutual close friend that it’s not good enough and that sucks. There simply aren’t enough minutes in any day to rest, eat, drink, work, parent, and support and I hate that I’m coming up short.
Year 2, Day 68: I’m embarrassed to admit that for the past four years I thought our dryer was a little bit broken because at a certain point, the heat would turn off but the drum would keep rotating periodically. There’s a little rectangle on the screen, and the load isn’t always dry, so I was convinced that was an error. But it worked otherwise so I shrugged it off as a low priority problem. I just did some Googling and discovered that it’s not an error state, it’s the wrinkle prevention setting! ALL THE FACEPALMS.
It doesn’t explain why the load is still damp at times, though.
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Left to their own devices, JB likes to decide we’re having sandwiches for lunch. That’s fine if they’re making them. If they were always in charge of lunch, we’d eat an endless cycle of tuna salad and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We have really got to teach them to make something else.
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Yay I nabbed a sale on Poshmark! I don’t use the app often but I’m glad it still works on occasion.
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I really need to get my eyes checked again. I’m noticing some eye strain when working.
May 17, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 57: I’m thinking about how people are here for a minute, in the grand scheme of the universe, and how I hope to matter in the lives of the people who know me but that in the end, my life will be over and forgotten in a blink. Just .. a thought.
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We’ve scheduled a free initial call with a sleep consultant for this week.
We’re also battling a reverse cycling situation where Smol Acrobat is waking to eat twice a night. We’re trying to shift those calories into the daytime and it’s been tough because they have no interest in eating during the day. On another angle, PiC wanted to replace the hand me down nipples that we were using. They finally came in stock and it turns out that might be one of the reasons Smol has been disinterested in eating. We picked up medium flow and they were much more interested, though we struggled with the nipples collapsing. We’re still figuring this out.
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I want to be helpful to JB when they say something doesn’t feel good but I really don’t know what to do with “My tongue feels funny.”
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We live, work, school, and play at home. We have no commutes right now. Yet we still can’t get done with dinner, bath, and bedtime by 730 pm every night. Why?? Related: Why am I not in bed by 8 every night? That would be the dream.
An hour later I realize the answer to this question tonight is: because we have no childcare and they chose to play in the backyard for an hour in afternoon while I worked on the patio outside. Oh right. Any changes to our routine means the schedule slips by an hour or so very quickly. (more…)