Reality-based play

So, my Bird. She is a born caretaker.
If she's not taking someone's temperature, she's putting someone down for a nap, or feeding them, or disciplining the dog, or-- as is most likely the case-- she is changing her baby's diaper.

Bird is also the oldest kid in her daycare class (thanks, October Birthday, for ensuring that we pay for daycare for as much time as mathematically possible before the free public school days begin), and one of the only ones completely potty trained. Sometimes, she pretends to change some of her classmates' diapers.

Do I have to tell you where this is going?

This week, we had a little pow-wow about how we don't take our friends' pants off at school.

Bird needs a haircut and other bits of information

So, after another trip to Urgent Care and many, many hours waiting to see a bona-fide opthamologist and a series of three waiting rooms full of elderly people with cataracts, my husband is fine, his sight has been restored, and the eye patch has been retired until the next ocular tragedy or costumed holiday, whichever comes first.

I'm still looking for the camera cable so I can share a photo or two. Our little catch-all office area is still a shambles but a more, uh, planned shambles, as we now have some actual piles of things that might really go together after we build the shelves we've promised ourselves. A. has separated all of "his" stuff from "my" stuff... editing and video and random cables and hard drives and nerds-only equipment over here, teeming piles of shit to be shredded, shit to be reviewed, shit to be paid, and general miscellaneous shit-- oh, and the massive collection of daily finger paint masterpieces on thick construction paper--over there. Seeing as "my" computer doesn't have internet, or electricity at the moment, I'm typing this on some kind of bozo keyboard that has editing symbols and colored keys instead of letters, and I must say I'm faring remarkably well. Mrs. Gibbs (high school typing teacher-- we actually used typewriters. And corrective tape) would be proud of my mad blind typing skeels.

Anywho, just thought I'd share that I didn't make bread this week and didn't buy any either, and yet we have miraculously survived. I received my political bumper sticker of choice and continue to race home to check for my t-shirt daily, but alas, it does not arrive. I made a delicious thing from the October VT tonight that I didn't expect to be quite so delicious, but hey, we were pleasantly surprised (served it over cous cous). Birdy has declared a tolerance for cous cous, and the new kid in her class at school seems to cause her mild stress by simply existing to this point without a working knowledge of the rules and culture of her beloved Red Building. I just spent an outrageous amount of money on 2 new dog beds and the big guy still insists on sleeping in his stinky old chair, which I have a desire to un-stink and about which he has a fierce re-stinking agenda. He is more underfoot than usual tonight, like the worst version of a needy, underfoot cat, if that cat weighed seventy pounds.

And another thing: I'm pregnant. You may know that already, because you know me outside of this blog or because I've not exactly been NOT hinting about it. We're excited, we're terrified, we're freaking out about the cost of dueling childcare. We're savoring the tail end of our three-pack days and preparing for a new life-- both the literal human one that will keep us up all night and smell like a heavenly human biscuit, and the new life we'll be navigating and fumbling with as everything changes in all six of the lives that are currently being lived under our little roof. I'm due April 28, almost ten weeks along at present. I'll keep you posted.

Awful Mama

This morning, first thing, Bird started removing ornaments from the tree. Dragging all of my shoes out of the closet. Losing my comb. Screeching. Opening cabinets. Throwing forks. Using about 10 perfectly good diapers on her baby doll. Coloring on the floor. Putting stickers on the dog. Climbing the stairs in secret. Emptying the recycling one cracker box and water bottle at a time. Taking items one-by-one from the "Get Out The Door" pile and putting them "away," checkbook in the toy basket, sun glasses under the couch, phone God only knows where.

So I say, as I'm trying for the third time to get mascara on BOTH eyes before dealing with another Bird-related issue:

"Hey Bird, would you like to watch some TELEVISION?"

She immediately dropped my day planner into the dog food. Yes. Yes she would.

I finally got my lunch together, Bird's lunch together, daycare check written, dogs fed, clothes on, etc. I came back into the living room to find her on the couch watching a brain-melting show, looking completely medicated. Awful mama can't be bothered with being a mama, must put child out of commission.

And from there, we moved on to going completely boneless and floppy in a tantrum over her hat, another over her shoes, another over carrying her own bag, and still another over the zipping of the coat, ending in the mother of all tantrums about walking down the front steps ALL BY MYSELF. There was a point where she arched and kicked and twisted in the car seat so that I couldn't buckle it. There was a point where she laid face-down in the yard and I just stood there and stared at her while my eyes welled up. There was a point where I physically wrestled this child into her car seat, with the screaming and kicking and arching.

There was screaming all the way to daycare with a brief period of discussion about having a lovely snack when she got there, what do you think it will be? French toast? Great! and then more horrible, heart-wrenching, snotty, tearful wailing and grabbing at my jacket as Louise the Daycare Lady had to physically remove this little person from my body and I melted right out of the building.

Awful, awful.

And for what? So I can get to my job on time? So I can sit at this desk at a certain mark on the clock and check my effing email?

I'd like to say I handled all of this gracefully, but I'm unimpressed by my performance, starting with the television doping all the way up to the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands and total loss of all patience and reason.

And now, at my desk, I just feel like a bad mama, like I should run as fast as I can to my Bird and make it up to her.

Again, three solid days of living my real life makes the work-week life seem so cruel.

Ronnie James Deodorant

The organization I work for just hosted its first Big Golf Event, complete with country music celebrity and catered lunch that gave me hideous (and hilarious) gas, volunteers with bling worth more than my car, and lots of lazing around in a rocker on the clubhouse porch. And once again I find myself in the Great Summer Deodorant Crisis, also known as the Summer of B.O. So don't be offended, because I'm not hugging ANYONE past eleven in the morning for at least the next four months. This is Tennessee, folks. It's already been in the upper eighties and it's not going to slow down.

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Bird has pee-peed in the potty twice in two days. The first time, she stood up in the bath and said "pee pee", so A. yanked her swiftly out of the tub and onto the potty, where she peed. And then we made a big joyful ruckus about the whole thing while she slipped and slid around in the puddle of bath water around the potty. She looked panicked at best. Maybe we should have toned it down a little bit-- two adults and one child is far over capacity in our tiny 1930s bathroom, where you can turn on the tub faucet, close the door, and wash your hands without ever leaving the toilet.

The second time was today, and it included some Easter-candy bribes and less fanfair. It happened while I was running the bath, and I let her run around naked while the tub finished filling. This event also included a poop in the laundry basket in the kitchen, somehow, in the few seconds between the joyous peeing and Bird hitting the bathwater. This is the second box-poop for our little housecat of a toddler, if you're keeping score.

Also, Bird got bit by another kid at daycare yesterday-- an anonymous kid, as the staff are not permitted to share the biter's identity with the bit-kid's mama, for fear that she would call up the biter's mama and give her an earful. At dinner, I was running through my usual battery of questions about Bird's day: Did you play with Jack? Did you play with Julian? Did you color with crayons? etc. (the answer is always "yes!") I asked, "What happened to your arm today?" and she said, "Abby. Bite. No bite, Abby."

So it was Abby, the kid new on the Toddler scene fresh from the nursery. Abby the biter. Birdy the snitch.

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My office has become a baby factory lately, with two of four employees pregnant. Which means less working and more talking about babies, which makes me want to dash to my car and go swoop Bird up from daycare, and also makes me want to be pregnant again. Just a little bit.

One of the people I work with has started keeping a blog detailing her pregnancy, and has shared this with the others in the office. And it was announced last week that "we should all get blogs!" and how blogger is free and easy, and all of that. It's like I'm the last person hiding behind the closet door in a grown-up game of hide-and-seek. My cover may be blown very soon. Not that I would especially care if any of these people were readers, but I do enjoy the separation of church and state as it is at present.

I'm off again to Chattanooga in the morning to visit patients, and charging the camera batteries as we speak. You know, just in case.

Feverino

So, where have I been?

Nursing a feverish Bird.

Daycare called on Monday to report that her fever was 103. Tuesday she was off to the doctor with A, and Wednesday she hovered around 100 all day and slept and snuggled, and Thursday started to look like she was on the mend, until I discovered a pinpoint-y rash all over her little tummy and neck.

Turns out it's probably a reaction to the MMR vaccine, or a virus she picked up when we went in to get it last Friday. At least it wasn't the chickenpox. And at least she's feeling better. High fevers scare the shit out of me, because I start thinking about Little House on the Prairie, and how somebody always had some kind of dramatically high fever and had to get in an ice bath and they always died or almost died.

Or lost their hearing. Or was it her sight? It was her sight. Mary was blind.* Because of a fever, I think. I used to have a patient who went deaf as a child as a result of a high fever. She was wild and crazy, and I once spend a solid six hours with her in the emergency room waiting area after she'd downed a bottle of calamine lotion because her face was itchy.

(The hospital I speak of is a part of Prestigious Private University, and offered 18 different language translation options in the ER, but NO American Sign Language. Which wouldn't have mattered anyway because this person's signs were for the most part all her own made-up gestures, and when we finally made it to the desk to sign forms, she drew huge hearts all over the pages and refused to write anything except "I Love Lucy." But still. No ASL. Screw you, Deaf people! And especially you, deaf and crazy people! But bring on the Turkish interpreters!)

Anyway, so Mary Ingalls was blind, not deaf. And the high fevers on the Prairie are one of the many reasons I do not care for "pioneer"-type stories. There you have it.

In any case, I've hardly been in my office at all this week. How do people do it? How do moms without ridiculously flexible work situations (like mine, fortunately) do this? I feel guilty for neglecting my job when I stay home with Bird (though she is my most important job, make no mistake), and then guilty when I come to work and leave my still-clingy Bird at daycare. With all this guilt, I might as well just suck it up and convert to Catholicism. At least my father-in-law would be happy.

This schedule suits me, though-- one and a half days in the office, about four hours of freelance work during naptimes and after bedtime. I could get used to this. I mean, I wish I could get used to this. For this short week, I felt like my time was allotted in line with my priorities.

I remember last year at this time, working at my strangely rigid non-job (where I did literally absolutely nothing and my suspicion is that I was not the only one by a long shot, but everyone took it all very seriously), when Bird first started daycare and got sick and then sicker, mended and then sicker, after being thrown into the cesspool Baby Warehouse. We lost so much sleep, and I missed so much work. I remember being called into one of the partners' offices to be told that "You have used all of your personal days, and any time you take to care for Bird from this point forward will be unpaid." And I remember feeling so fucking DOOMED by the whole thing, because I sure as shit wasn't going to let such a meaningless job make me less of a mother than it already had, but at the same time, I felt like I had crossed some kind of line, was pushing my luck with my bosses. Doomed and Damned. I cried over that.

PANICPANICPANIC
Today our city essentially shut down, due to about an inch (you heard me) of snow. But I am a Hoosier! I'm used to this shit, you wussy middle Tennesseans! SUCK IT UP! BWAH!!

Stinky Drink
Oh, and it's finally happened... someone brought flavored coffee into the office. It stinks like charred Kahlua, and I won't be drinking any. In fact, I wish I didn't have to breathe it. Like my grandpa once said, "Tastes like coffee with perfume in it."

He washes darks with lights, but he's still the Greatest
This morning, A. went out to scrape off the cars while Bird and I ate cheerios and watched Teletubbies (which is so bizarre, but I know you know that) in our jammies. Snow day, remember? I looked out the front window to find him gloveless, having a snowball fight with our neighbor kid who was out of school with no kids around to play with. He may be an Alfani man, but that husband of mine has a heart of gold. And really, really cold hands.

*Edited to Add: Mary did not go blind due to fever.

Itchiness and Mark Twain

I am, as I usually am in the twilight of the old year and the whirring gear-up of the new year, feeling itchy and restless.

I had a nice little window into stay-at-home-momming this past week, having a day off to meet up with the visiting S. and her kiddos to run errands and play* in the kids' section at Barnes and Noble. It's all I want in this world, my friendly internetties, and I rack my brain regularly for a way to make it happen, but the numbers don't ever add up. They don't add up by a long shot. I want to stay home with my Bird and have adventures, go to MAU playgroup, library story time. Make her my focus. After having consecutive days off and spending those days with my girl, I felt like we understood each other so much better. Like I knew her better. I loved our little time for what it was, but it made me notice what I'm missing. If you are a SAHM out there, I know it is not all a walk in the park, but please, count your lucky stars that you HAVE all those walks in the park. I would do anything to be in your shoes right now.**

* The kids's section at Barnes and Noble is full of germs. I know this because my kid was a generous contributor to the population of germies. Not that she's deathly ill, but come on-- in the winter, everybody's snotty. So be warned: don't touch the hedgehog puppet. Or 90% of the stuff on the train table.

**I know, whiny whiny me. I'm not saying daycare doesn't have its merits, because it really does have some incredible benefits for parents and children, PROVIDING YOU FIND THE RIGHT ONE, and I cannot make that clear enough. I try to remind myself of the Mark Twain quote that I am about to bungle: "Happiness is not having what you want, it's wanting what you have." I have alluded and proclaimed several times that I want to be a SAHM, but there are many things I enjoy about our current setup, one of which is the two nickels I earn here at the jobby that keeps a roof over our hairy little heads. I have much, I am thankful.

But I really wish I could be a stay at home mom and do art projects on the coffee table vs. sitting at this desk talking to you all. And I will have the last word, Mark Twain, because this is my blog.