My cohort is rapidly rounding the bases to the Big 40. One dear friend expressed his feelings about that rather succinctly: “gross!” which made me laugh but also made me think.
I haven’t pinned down how I feel about it, but it made me think about what would mark this past decade as a success for me personally. It’s getting a little late in the day to do something about it if I’m not aligned with my values, but it could set me up for a great decade in my 40s. I take a look back before I look forward.
My late teens and 20s were almost entirely about survival.
I graduated from college (21), started this blog (23) while working full time at my first job out of college, paid off my parents’ debts, dated PiC for a long time with lots of life ups and downs, got engaged (28, long after I was “supposed” to be married – 25 according to family expectations), squeaked our marriage in under the wire to land that in this decade, and buried my mom who had been chronically ill.
That period was about laying a strong foundation.
My early 30s were building on that foundation.
I took a huge career risk several years ago and so far it has been worth it. We decided to try for a child and had JB before I became considered a “geriatric” mother. We set up our estate plan and trust, I accepted some incredibly hard truths about my family, and then went through the necessary steps of cutting off my dad. I’m so grateful for the friends and chosen family who have loved us in his place. My health had just been the worst for years and last year’s dietary changes brought improvements I never thought were possible. It’s not a cure and doesn’t fix everything but it helped. I started therapy last year and that wrought serious improvements to the fatigue I was struggling with, and helped me survive the first several months of the pandemic PLUS a pregnancy.
I’ve got a couple more years left in my 30s. What do I want to wring out of those years?
Year 2, Day 22: The good thing about today was PiC was free of any meetings and I was able to give him the morning to work kid-free.
The bad thing was it felt like three days had elapsed by the time I collapsed in bed at 9 pm. It can’t be the same day, can it??
JB had three lessons. Smol Acrobat had two disastrously short naps and one almost not terrible nap by 4 pm. I covered the kids until 12:30 pm. Half the time I was entertaining Smol, the other half was overseeing JB who likes really hands on playtime with Smol. Smol Acrobat is highly amused / tolerant of JB manhandling them from one activity to the next and genuinely enjoys being plopped like a sack of potatoes next to their older sibling. This freed my hands so I could pack a box of hand me downs to share with a friend.
Then traded off with PiC so I could buckle down to work furiously for a few hours.
Year 2, Day 23: A thing I’ve been practicing is being ok with good enough. Good enough parenting, partnering, working, etc. It doesn’t come naturally or easily, hence practice. Today was a challenging day in that respect. We got two better than terrible nights of sleep with Smol, and then it went to hell again. So of course my body has no reserves of energy left and of course my mind takes me to task for being not good enough.
I wonder what kind of parent I’ll be on the other side of this pandemic. Will I ever get my patience back? Will I ever find my school age child fun and entertaining again? Will I ever enjoy anything again???
I do everything and anything for them but completely fall short on emotionally connecting. I plan and schedule and pay for all kinds of educational and interesting activities for them. We care for Smol day in and day out. I’m pumping milk twice a day and nursing 3 times a night. Everyone gets fed and clean and has clean clothes. Everyone but me gets some kind of outdoor time most days a week. Sera gets walked or outside time 3-4 times a day. But I can’t, just can’t, muster an iota of enthusiasm for being playful or patience for their foibles. I don’t want to be hugged. I don’t want to be talked at. I just want to be left alone. And lacking that last bit feels like falling down on the job. That’s the part they’ll remember. Not the practical stuff. You don’t notice that you always went to bed on a full stomach, had clean clothes, bathed daily if you’re being well provided for. You notice the lack of it. Like you’d notice how your mom is an angry zombie instead of the smiling hugging person they were before the pandemic. Wouldn’t you?
I hope this is all because it’s all too damn much and when we have some help again, I’ll be more of a human. I miss having the good emotions and not just the gritting my teeth to make it through one more day, one day at a time. (more…)
JB was a big grump about having me trim part of their hair. It’s no fun for me, either. They won’t stay still, they won’t look up, they keep whining. Finally I warned them that they had better stay still and look up for a full minute, but since they didn’t, I just chopped large chunks out of their hair and let them go inside. It was 2 minute cut and it showed.
They burst inside: Dad look! It wasn’t even that long, I’m all done!
PiC: Great! Looks great!
They ran out of the room. He turns to me and mouthed: WHAT HAPPENED???
It was really that bad. But too bad! If they didn’t want a hack job, they should try standing still for more than 0.2 seconds.
From our perspective
We’ve had some good talks about parenting lately. Of course these stem from frustration and conflict, which doesn’t feel good, but from conflict comes understanding and growth for all of us. We’re trying to do our best to parent in a non authoritarian way and that’s completely uncharted territory in both our experiences. We tend to repeat what we know because that’s easiest and familiar. Going away from that deliberately means we’re writing new to us paths and feeling our way sometimes. The good thing is we talk through our conflicts as much as we can and try our best to create new patterns. Sometimes it feels like the stakes are lower for me because JB cares so much more about what PiC thinks, says, and does than me. It lowers the pressure when I screw up. They don’t have a problem having a rough time with me and saying it’s a rough time or acknowledging later that they know it was a frustrating time.
Year 2, Day 8: My sleep debt is starting to resemble our mortgage. It feels impossible to overstate how tired I am and have been. I’ve been exhausted and undersleeping for a year now between the pregnancy and whatever the heck is waking Smol up 2-3 times at night.
That, plus the Monday meetings and weekend work pile ups, equals a despair the likes of which I clearly remember at this exact stage of JB’s life. Why didn’t I learn my lesson then??
We dragged ourselves across the finish line of dinner, bath, and bed, though PiC had to stay up late to work while I had to try and sleep a little before Smol woke me three or four times overnight. Our lives. So glamorous.
Year 2, Day 9: I hit the wall today. I kept feeling this buzz of “shutdown imminent” in my muscles so every no-baby moment I had to rest. I’d gotten to the point of being so overtired I couldn’t sleep given the opportunity. Oh. Babies can’t either. We are not in a good boat here!
PiC gently but adamantly steered me to take some long rest periods. I wanted to fight it but with absolutely nothing left in the tank, couldn’t even put up a token resistance. Thankfully I was able to clear a good swath of work on autopilot and then fall over in bed. (more…)
Year 2, Day 1: Hell of a day, I tell ya. A terrible confluence of events meant that PiC had to sleep from 3-8:30 am and then go into meetings most of the day. His meetings overlapped with Smol’s awake times so I ended up covering from 8 pm Sunday through 8 pm Monday, just in time for me to start the next night shift. I got absolutely no work done.
Luckily for him I was able to but this is a once in a long while kind of thing. I can’t sustain that physically or mentally or professionally.
Year 2, Day 2: Smol took a bit of pity on me and managed one 5 hour stretch of sleep which granted me about 3 hours. Blessed three hours. But then they woke up again at 430, hungry and squalling, and so much hungrier than usual that I had to nurse them intermittently for the next two hours. Sigh. By the time we woke up again, PiC was running late for his super early morning meeting and I had to shake him awake. That set a bit of the tone for the day.
I rested during Smol’s nap, which I usually don’t do but it was sorely needed after that 430-630 stretch. Unfortunately JB didn’t have their Zoom Fitness class after kindergarten today but they had a post class craft in mind so I left them to it after I unloaded the dryer. They’re responsible for putting away the laundry later after crafting.
I resigned myself to getting nothing done for the first half of the day because the tardiness spawned another meeting for PiC and I was just too mush-brained to do much during their admittedly decent nap (THANK YOU SNOO). I made lunch for the kids but stopped short of making lunch for adults because Smol Acrobat demanded to be picked up again. They are going through some serious clinginess and doesn’t like to play alone for more than 5 minutes before squawking up a storm. They used to play alone happily for 15-20 minutes, what happened?? Do we have to train them to enjoy solo time now that we finally get a decent nap more than not? I’m not enjoying this, whatever it is. There also seems to be some cluster feeding going on which I also don’t appreciate.
In any case, we survive til mid afternoon when PiC emerges from his den of stress and takes Sera out before taking the kids out. I sit like a lump of dough on the recliner for a while, just resting, while JB does some art. Eventually I finally drag myself up and out to join them for a walk but annoyingly my steps weren’t counted in my MapMyWalk app. That feeds data to the Achievement app.
By the by, if any of you use the Achievement app and haven’t maxed out your referrals, you’re welcome to give me your referral code and I’ll share it on the blog so you can get some referral points. Just email me! (more…)
JB is constitutionally incapable of eating a banana without saying after their first bite, “You’re NO ONE’s hero.”
PiC does it too.
Missing Seamus
JB has known about loss at a little bit of a distance for a long time. They know my mom died a long while ago, they know their great grandparents have died in the past few years. They know our friends’ dogs have died. They’ve been to three funerals. That was all academic.
Nothing comes close to the tearing emptiness of losing Seamus. Not even a little.
“Thinking about him doesn’t fill my bucket,” they sobbed.
No. Thinking of his memories still makes me cry a lot too. The memories are just too fresh.
I still reflexively look for him when I go from one room to the next. I still reflexively reach for his head when I pass by his bed.
They cry for him most nights of the week and we talk about him a lot.
Week 52, Day 359: After a 4.5 hour sleep, Smol is up at midnight, then again at 320 am for changes and feedings. My painsomnia is back full force these past few days so I get mere minutes of sleep between those wakings. They start squeaking a bit at 530 am so I push Snoo’s soothing levels to Level 3 and that bought us another hour. PiC takes them at 630 and I pass out for a bit longer. A little after 8 am, I manage to pry myself out of bed and join the family in the kitchen. PiC is holding Smol while JB has their breakfast, so I leash up Sera and take her out for a quick walk. She’s pulling like a sled dog though, so after she takes care of business, I take her to the backyard and have her run laps until she’s panting heavily, then she enjoys breakfast.
All this only takes us up to 8:30 am. Gotta take the day one hour at a time.
PiC covers baby time until 10, I take over and play with Smol until they’re ready for bed at 11. My next hour is yelling at my old work computer that JB uses for school because things aren’t working. I fix it and grouchily go fix lunch. After that I yell at my new work computer for an hour because THAT isn’t working.
It took me a while to get over my grouchiness but it finally faded after I got some work done and then had a brainstorm for dinner: chicken and veggie soup from scratch.
*****
I got curious about rents in this area because of our discussion on Twitter of this Atlantic article. Lo and behold, 4 bedroom family homes here are still renting for $4500-6000 a month. Welp.
Our mortgage was hovering near the low end of that scale before tax and insurance and I did a lot of shuffling of money (large payments to principle and recasting multiple times and then refinancing last fall) to halve it.
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.