What it Looks Like

So all week, I've been super tired in the morning when I get up and drag the kids, kicking and sometimes screaming, out of bed to get Sean to school by 8. He's done with that now for three weeks, which will be tough ones.

This morning, when I could have slept in myself, I'm not so tired. I guess it's because I can leave the kids in bed & do things on my own without them on top of me for a little while. This is a rare break for a mom of young kiddos. Often, they want to be on my lap while I type (difficult to do when you have kids as wiggly as mine.) Or they just want me to be sitting there, watching Thomas the Train with them, or outside playing in the yard with them. I do that most of the time, too, with very brief minutes stolen away to check FB (it keeps me feeling connected to an adult world.)

But Andrew works pretty damn hard nowadays (and here in a minute is where the title will come in.) He gets up most mornings at about 5:30, 6:00 and heads to work, where he is all day until at least 4. Then he works sporadically (his phone tends to go off every five minutes) on our various rental property issues. Especially right now with two of them vacant & needing tenants.

Earlier, I'm sitting at the computer with a cup of latte he very nicely made me, checking my FB while he finishes his morning routine. He's leaving and I'm asking him what his schedule will be like. I can tell he plans a pretty busy day as he contemplates his lunch, and when he might make it home.

I think of what it looks like I'll be doing today, all day. Sitting here, mucking around on the computer. Easy easy. But what dads don't see are the countless moments of chasing after a kid. Andrew's a GOOD one, helps out a ton, even does it himself now & then. And it's not like I'm Martha Stewart. Sometimes, when he comes home, the house is a bit of a wreck. But he doesn't see how much worse it COULD have been had I not caught the kid in the fridge after the eggs, or spilling green kool aid all over the house, or whatever interventions in 4 year old universe I will have to make today.

It looks easy, being me, from his waking up early, running all day perspective. I get a little more sleep, I get to sit here for a little while on the computer checking up on my friends. I can imagine how it seems. But I've also been the one at a workplace all day, too, and I know how different that is, what that feels like for a grown up, and how some days I really, really would trade with him. Let him stay home and be "dad" and me go to work all day.

Moms are never off work. Maybe when they're fourteen I'll have some time off. Maybe then I'll get an employee of the month plaque and my picture on a wall somewhere and a cool parking place. :) Something to look forward to, I'll bet. But I'll also bet some other suckup employee will sneak in there and get the plaque instead of me because that always happens to me.

Mud Dance

Weekends alone are different.
We dance more complicated single moves.
It's a troupe of three and music we alone hear.

We make the patterns up as we go along.
Break the rules often.
Make new rules, break them too.

There is so much joy in their faces when they
kick water or splash in the tub
cleaning off spring's bountiful mudliness.

My daughter squeals at an outside picnic.
My son runs faster than you can imagine
through the yard, chases invisible monsters.

I'm sure there are dramatic places I could be--
standing beneath the Eiffel tower, exploring the shops of New York--
But here, in my tiny back yard, happiness is this squish between the toes
this nap after sun, this soaking hug.

Have You Seen Junior's Grades?

In which your plucky heroine turns 13 and a grandmother....

Yesterday at the Doctor's office for Sean's ear checkup, an old guy asked me if my babies were my grandkids. Wow. I'm 39, so it is POSSible that I could have grandkids. If I started young and my kids therefore started young too. But it's a stretch. And that's one of those questions that you JUST DON'T ASK A WOMAN ever. Like how much she weighs and also if she's pregnant when it's not obvious. I don't look THAT old, people. But it was a moment of ick.

And then, during the visit, I also turned 13, figuratively speaking. I got the urge to Text Message a friend of mine. And we've been sending silly juvenile Texts back and forth all day since then. Silly, but hey. I gotta join the younger generation, don't I?

Anyway. I've been avoiding the computer cause on Monday I pulled my neck muscle again and it just hurt to sit here. So that's why no real comments here. I mostly just lay on the couch and read. Which was, in itself, kind of awesome.

13 and a grandmother. You know, it happens.

Being Mom

So I'm thinking about mothers. On the Wom-Po listserv, there's been a discussion about the "mother-daughter wars" inspired, in part, by Rebecca Walker & Alice Walker, and the book Rebecca has written which apparently is not so positive about Alice. I want to read the book; it's on my list of things to get next trip to B&N. I've been a fan of Rebecca since I learned what Third Wave feminism is, and I think I get what she's been saying pretty well, minus having actually READ the book yet.

I am also reading a Joyce Carol Oates' book called Missing Mom-- just started it, but it's good so far. (And sidenote-- I think Oates has one of the best author photos out there... she looks all dreamy and wide eyed...pretty, in a kind of brainy girl way). It promises to have been written around the time Oates' mother died, and is about the inevitable final separation we all face.

So moms: I try to be a good mom. We always have these things we promise ourselves we will never do, things we catch ourselves doing anyway. The other day I told my daughter I'd "give her something to cry about." To my credit, I was joking. She was whiney and crabby all day and I really felt frustrated with her, and wanted her to stop. And it popped into my head and I thought, "hey, it's a classic." I know the ridiculousness of whacking a crying kid to stop them from crying, though. And just saying it made the urge to do so go away, and me to laugh, and get a grip on it and then distract her, instead, with a visit to her Curious George poster.

Andrew & I are what is called Attachment parents, in most ways. We try very hard to not over discipline, but to encourage the babies with love. Yes, discipline is needed. But we spend a lot of time with our kids. We don't drop them at the babysitter's house after they've been a daycare all day (although I can understand when there is a need for that, too-- people have to earn a living.) We feed them as best as we can, we try to be educated about childhood illness, we cheer when they do something well, we read to them, sometimes as much as 30 minutes a night. And yet, we miss things. We missed Sean's hearing issue. We sometimes let Maia get away with being a prissy whiney thing, and give her what she wants just so she'll stop whining.

But, we apparently do the unpardonable sins of letting them watch TV. Of letting them eat junk food for dinner sometimes. Of letting them run loose a bit when we're at the store (I get scowls from the patrons of one of the stores, the one closest to home, for this one).

As they get older, I know we'll miss a few catches. And those are the things, inevitably, that my children will probably remember best. Not the hours of snuggling, waking with tickles, etc. But the one thing we do that we regret instantly. The day we did X when Maia or Sean wanted to do Y.

I think of this and hope that my children will have the perspective to recognize that as a mom, I'm not perfect, but I'm always trying. It's the best I can do, even when I am not doing anything else well, I am pretty proud of my mommy-skills. At least now, before they are teens.