Sunday, July 25, 2010

Clutter

Just finishing a week solo parenting. Some thoughts:

This season is going by faster than any other before. It is a bit easier because the girls are older and entertain each other. It is also harder because there are three kids now and the dog seems to throw up the fourth day David is gone. We took a long trip during David's longest road trip so far and it was really fun so that helped a lot. Only four road trips left of this season, including another really long one. The season is almost 2/3 over.

I want to find more time to write but I am so disorganized that whenever I do have time to do all the things I want to do, I am like a deer in headlights- frozen. I have no normal schedule or to-do list. I am not myself for the past 10 months in this regard. Mostly I think about what I want to write about as I am breastfeeding the baby.

I want to write about how he pinches me with tiny little thumb and forefinger just testing out the different textures of the skin on my hand, my forearm, my bicep. My chest, my neck, my chin. He lulls himself to sleep doing this. He is stronger and pinches harder when he is not nursing, but he does not go to sleep nursing unless he does this light gentle pinching while nursing. I hope I always remember how it feels to be part of his little sleep ritual. Meditation on my skin textures while drifting off. His little pinches.

I also want to write about how he has started pointing. His little index finger extended and his little thumb bent at a 90 degree angle and his other fingers curled. He has a perfect point motion and he points to things multiple times until I name them out loud for him. When I sing the ABC's and get to the Z while rocking him in his rocker, he points to the Z sign with a zebra on it. He loves Z.

He moves my chin to turn my head and puts his little index finger on a mole on my neck. I want to cry it is so sweet. He knows the landscapes of my face and he finds all the landmarks every time he sees me.

I want to write about how he discovered that the feet in his new moose pajamas are moose faces and he stared at one foot for a full minute in still silence. After the minute he took his leg in both hands and rotated his ankle to move the moose face on his foot. He used his brain to figure out how to make the new character on his foot move around. So interesting to see him put it all together.

I want to write about how much the girls are growing up. How they are fighting more now and I am both horrified by their fights and relieved that both of them are standing up for themselves equally instead of one always giving in all the time to the bossy whims of the other who knows her sister will always give in to her. Mixed bag, this fighting.


I want to write about how I just missed a trip to see Jon accept the Ford C. Frick Award at Cooperstown because I am not ready to wean, and then the baby started biting me at every feed making me feel like I need to wean. The thought of weaning could make me burst into tears. I am not ready. I don't understand why, but I just know I am not. Even though breastfeeding hurts really badly right now.

I want to write about how I got to read 4 books in the month of July (so far) and it was so lovely to read again. I missed it.

I want to write about how I finally paid the $10 to download the entire Indigo Girls Rites of Passage album and I listened to it for the first time since my breakup freshman year of college and it was so good to hear it again. Not emotional or heartbreaking like I thought it would be. Freeing.Liberating. Loved it. It only took me fifteen years.

I want to write about how I have really happy days most days. I am in love with my kids and my husband and am not feeling too bad about the death of my career because I feel like I am where I need to be right now and that feels really good. But then some hours or days I am very sad. Lump in my throat, could cry any second, and I feel really lost and like I am being buried alive and can't find my way out. It is such a strange feeling because logically I know my life is great and everything is okay, but I can't shake the sadness. I don't let myself give into it, I keep going and usually I feel better fairly quickly, but it is chilling sometimes.

I want to write about how I do not feel proactive about anything and I HATE that. I feel like life is just happening to me right now and I am taking it as it comes and rolling with it and doing an okay job of floating, but I have no idea where I am going. Then if there is any disruption in the current I am flailing and gasping for air and then exhausted from the tiny swell. I used to be a deliberate, planned, proactive person. I cannot seem to get that back now that it's the baseball season and I have three kids and an infant nap schedule and countless 4 year old activities to drive to and from.

I bought an elliptical machine to try to be more proactive about exercising while I am trapped at home for nap time or after bedtime. The first hurdle was the delivery scheduled for when I was out of town. Got over that one. Second hurdle was that it required two people for assembly. My friend Paige spent 4.5 hours helping me out of that one. My third and current hurdle is that I don't think we assembled one of the steps correctly and because of that it feels like it is going to fly apart when I use it. I am trying not to be bummed, but now I feel like this will delay use of it for a month while I try to resolve it with the company over the phone, order replacement parts, wait for their arrival, try to assemble the new parts, etc. It is under warranty but I dread what that means- do I have to dissassemble the whole thing and mail it back to get a new one that I have to assemble again? Or pay hundreds of dollars for the extended warranty with service calls included? Why can NOTHING you order to be delivered to your house ever be easy? So much for being proactive.

The baby is crawling! He started last Tuesday July 20. It is more like a three legged scoot, but he gets around. I now spend his waking hours following him around and making sure he doesn't put tiny dangerous choking hazards in his mouth. Still, I pull about 5 things out of his mouth every day and shudder when I think of how he could have choked on it. I fear the magnets that the girls insist on playing with- they are magnetic paper doll things and I really need to get rid of all of them. They play with them all day every day currently. Great.

The baby has five teeth now and counting. He grinds his teeth. He puts his teeth together and opens his lips and crinkles his nose and inhales and exhales through his clenched jaw to indicate impatience and that he wants to be picked up. It is a funny face that I cannot seem to capture on camera.

I have about 50 thank you notes to write. Laundry to fold, piles of paper to file, many areas to declutter and organize and clean. My life feels really unruly right now.

I always have this false hope while David is gone that when he gets back I will have time to do so many of the little things I have no hope of doing while he is away. That is never true. When he is home he still has to work so he comes and goes and spends time catching up on his own stuff and getting ready for work. He creates more laundry and dishes and to-dos. He is cranky about what needs doing and his list is different from mine so we both get annoyed. We spend a few days getting back into the groove of working together and then once we are back in the swing he has to leave again.

I guess I just needed a brain dump. I wish I could be more dedicated and organized about posting. Not in the cards right now.