Just Powers

This post is part of the Monday Link up with Just.Be.Enough. a site empowering us all to focus on what we are proud of in our lives instead of being discouraged by what we aren’t quite doing right. This Monday Link up is the last one in the Be Enough 4 Me Cancer Campaign, a collaboration between Just.Be.Enough. and Bellflower Books that will provide memory books to women diagnosed with breast cancer.

I went back to work full-time this past February.

After being a work-from-home-mom for two years after Emma was born, and then a stay-at-home-mom for two more years after William was born, I left my children in the capable and loving hands of our new au pair Claire, and marched off into the world to earn my keep as an Administrative Secretary for two academic departments at Gallaudet University.

The first month or so was much better than I thought. There were some tears in the mornings when I left, from the kids and from me, but it was reported to me that they recovered quickly and once I hit the office I recovered too. Dressing up in office clothes was exciting after four years of the jeans-and-a-t-shirt uniform of a stay-at-home-mom and being actively appreciated by my new employer made me feel great. I thought “wow, this isn’t as hard as I thought - we’re gonna be ok!”

As we settled into our routine the tears stopped but in their place Emma would ask me earnestly at bedtime “Mommy are you staying home tomorrow?” When I explained that I needed to go to work to help the people in my office she replied “but what about your kids?” and my heart broke. Then one day a couple of months after I started, she said “Mommy when are you going to STOP working and stay home with us again? Like not go to work anymore at all.” Ironically I was having the same realization around the same time - that this new arrangement is permanent. There is no time in the foreseeable future when I will be home with my children for a large chunk of time. I had no answer for Emma when she asked me that, except to say “I don’t think that is going to happen sweetie…but we are going to the beach in a couple of weeks!” Lame.

The truth is that I don’t think I was a very good stay-at-home-mom. I was impatient, I tried to do too much, I lost my temper, I lacked creativity. Claire is much better at it than I was - she is patient and kind with the kids, she has boundless energy, she has new, fun and creative activities for them every week. She is a rock star.

Admittedly things are different for Claire than they were for me. Her ONLY job is care for the kids - we don’t ask her to clean or do laundry or go grocery shopping - so she has the energy to play with them and the ability to focus all her energy on them all of time, something most multi-tasking SAHM’s don’t have the luxury to do. She also gets off at 5:00 or very soon thereafter. She works 9-10 hours a day as opposed to 24. Knowing there is a break coming up in your future helps fuel the patience required to deal with little ones I think and the lack of a break can be soul-crushing.

Which brings me to the heartbreaking reality of the situation - maybe my kids are better off now.

I go back and forth with myself about this - if I didn’t have to work, would I still choose to? Most days I say no, I would not. I would gladly give up the appreciation and fulfillment I feel from going to work every day if I could only be with my children while they are little. I am painfully aware of how fast they are growing and it hurts my heart to know I am missing large 10 hour chunks of their life every day. And Emma still asks me, seven months later, when will I stop working and come home. All of that causes me to spend large amounts of time plotting how we can lower our expenses enough for me to be able to stay home.

But occasionally - usually on a weekend day when we are having a particularly rough time, they ARE two and four after all - I will think to myself “I could never go back to being with them full time, we would kill each other.” And I realize that maybe missing each other desperately is ok. They have fun adventure-filled days with Claire. We snuggle and kiss when I get home from work and get to reconnect on the weekends. People always say that the most important thing is that your children know they are loved - maybe my kids are feeling more love from the three stable-ish adults in their life than if there were only two less stable ones? Or maybe I am just justifying it because the alternative - that my kids would rather have me home regardless of my less than stellar care-taking abilities - is too painful to bear.

Many moms I know love going to work - they miss their kids but are very clear for themselves that staying home would never be an option for their family. And other moms I know have gone to great lengths to make sure they can stay home with their kids. I fall somewhere in the middle - I sit at work feeling great that I am a contributing member of my team but with a huge pit in my stomach from missing my kids so much. Most days I cry either to work or on the way home, sometimes both. I miss going to the park and to Brookside Gardens, I miss the Zoo in the Fall, I miss snuggling with them on a rainy afternoon, I miss cooking with them and eating lunch with them. I especially miss macaroni and cheese - a guilty pleasure that is mostly absent from my work place.

So I don’t know the answer to the work vs. stay home conundrum that so many millions of families struggle with, but I will continue to try and figure it out. Our situation at the moment may not be “perfect” but I am coming to believe that it is “enough” - for all of us - and in the end that is all I can ask for.

But I still really miss macaroni and cheese.

Emma and Will shared an ice cream cone recently. It was rough going for a minute or two but they worked it out.

Being a mom has brought me some of the happiest moments I have ever known in my life, which has surprised me a little I think. I guess that’s the thing about being a parent, you have no idea what you are missing until you have a child and your entire world is rocked.

And yet, despite the joy being a mom brings me, there are moments when I weep.

It usually happens in the middle of the night, in the dark, and I am usually holding one of the kids as they sleep, or struggle to sleep or refuse to sleep.

I weep because in the quiet of those moments, I realize how tiny my kids are. And in the same breath I realize how big they are, and how fast they are getting bigger. I flash forward to a time when they are in elementary school and refuse to let me kiss them goodbye when I drop them off; then to high school when I am lying awake at night waiting for them to come home from a night out; then to the day when they leave for college and finally I end with the time in the future when Mike and I have time to go on dates again, are able to sleep for eight hours uninterrupted and can clean up a room once a week instead of every hour.

And as I sit there in the dark, fast-forwarding through my life, I try desperately to memorize the feel of the little body in my arms, the look of the sweet face sleeping and the smell of a freshly bathed baby. I know I will forget, as the days move on and get fuller and more hectic, I will forget the quietest moments in the dark of the night. And the knowledge that I will forget makes me cry even harder.

My babies are slipping away from me, which is what is supposed to happen of course, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. Really, they started slipping away from me the moment they were born, and I am just fortunate enough to be along for the ride.

I know there is more weeping in my future, because time will only move faster as the years go on. It’s ok really, because those moments in the dark help me remember to try my best to cherish every moment with my kids, try not to get upset about the little things, and make sure they know how much I love them.

We went to the Boston Children’s Museum today and had a great time, except it meant William missed his morning nap. So he got in a few extra zzz’s at lunch.

AFSCME Convention 2010, originally uploaded by Justpowers.

Our family is in Boston this week for the 2010 AFSCME Convention. Well, Mike is in Boston for it, we are just along for the ride, enjoying the adventure of a new city, seeing old friends and hanging out with Grammy and Grampy.

Traveling is always a mix of fun and stress, especially when kids are involved. So far we have had far more fun than stress. This picture was taken in our first few minutes in our hotel room that has an amazing view of Boston Harbor. It is incredibly similar to the photo I took of Emma in our hotel room at the 2008 AFSCME Convention in San Francisco.

We have already seen the Swan Boats and the Make Way for Duckling statues, hung out in Boston Common and had lunch at Faneuil Hall. We are here till Friday, with big plans to storm the museums - Children’s, Science, and the Aquarium - with a boat ride and trip to the Harbor Islands somewhere in there. Oh and a little train named Thomas happens to be visiting the Boston suburbs this week too, so we will also be making a trip out there to visit with him.

We are going to be wrecked when we finally get home. Wrecked but happy and with lots of stories to tell.

We bought a minivan a few weeks ago. I have to admit that I was not prepared for the level of emotion I experienced after the purchase.

I was never one of those people who vowed I would never own a minivan. In high school my family had a white Dodge Grand Caravan with wood paneling, and I loved it - the size, the myriad of places to stash things, the fact that I could sit in the third row far from my siblings. I always kind of assumed that I would own a minivan someday. When we bought the Mazda 5, classified as a “microvan” by some, it was a tiny step in that direction, what with the sliding doors and third row of seats. The Mazda was different enough though that I felt special in it - it had sliding doors sure, but it also had Zoom-Zoom and a sunroof. People stopped us to ask us about it and we loved to tell them. I was a rock star in my cute little red Mazda and no one could tell me any different.

When the Mazda got totaled, however, we had to replace it with something and it seemed to make sense to replace with something that was newer, more reliable, had more space and ended up being substantially cheaper for us each month, so we decided on a silver 2009 Toyota Sienna.

For a week after we bought it, I will not lie to you, we thought we had made a terrible terrible mistake. I will go so far as to say I was downright depressed about our purchase. I was no longer a rock star, I didn’t have any zoom-zoom, and no one stopped me to ask about my cute little car. Emma started saying “I just saw another silver mini-van! Mommy, why are there so many silver mini-vans?” and I wanted to cry.

When you are a stay-at-home mom who lives in the suburbs and cares for small children all day, it turns out your car plays a pretty vital part in shaping the identity you create for yourself. I hadn’t realized this when we had the Mazda, but once we had the same car everyone else has, it became clear that the car had become my identity. And I didn’t really like who I had become. In the Mazda I was cute, different, agile and downright sexy. In the Toyota I was big and cumbersome, not to mention boring, practically invisible, and definitely NOT sexy.

I am feeling better about the purchase now. The Sienna is comfortable, it gets us from point A to point B safely and it seats eight with room left over for the stroller, the bikes, stadium chairs, a kitchenette and a porta-potty (ok, a kitchenette doesn’t really fit, but if we put the back seats down it almost might.) It isn’t sexy but in the end I know we made the right choice for all the reasons we decided on it in the first place. Someday, all too soon, I won’t need all this space and then I will buy something tiny and zippy that decries my age. But as I drive it off the lot I will probably be jealous of all the young families in their generic mini-vans driving on the road with me.

Today is my grandmother’s 90th birthday. It’s kind of ironic that her 90th birthday falls on Memorial Day this year, since she spent her life as an Army wife. This is a letter I wrote in celebration of her birthday, as part of a family book of memories that was put together for the occasion. She is an amazing woman.

Mommy-Dee, you have been my grandmother for almost 40 years and a great-grandmother to my children for almost four. So much of who you are and what you have done for me has helped me be the mother I am and the grandmother I hope to become.

Here are some of the things I have learned from you -

• Save empty pot pie tins, grandchildren love to play with them at the beach.
• For the optimal happiness of their grandchildren, grandparents really should own a boat. This boat should be named after the aforementioned grandchildren, and should be used regularly for cocktail hour where cheese and crackers and ginger ale are served.
• Scrambled eggs are best when made with Crazy Jane’s Mixed Up Salt and when served on Fiesta Ware.
• The best grandmothers have chalk boards hanging in their kitchens so that they can play tic tac toe with their grandchildren. Of course they will also need a really cool folding step stool so their grandchildren can REACH the chalk board.
• Cuckoo clocks provide hours of entertainment for grandchildren who are obsessed with watching the cuckoo pop out to say hello.
• Silver tinsel icicles make Christmas trees seem magical to grandchildren.
• Oreos are best when stored in the freezer.
• Hummingbird feeders provide a similar level of entertainment for grandchildren as cuckoo clocks. Being able to sit six feet away while a hummingbird eats the red nectar from a feeder is just about the coolest thing a child will experience. Ever.
• Good grandparents are always prepared for their children and grandchildren to need a place to stay. Having pink satin blankets on the beds makes female grandchildren feel like princesses.
• Taking grandchildren out for some special one-on-one time to celebrate their birthday is always a great way to show your love. Movies like “Watership Down” are always a big hit and may also influence a grandchild’s future taste in books and movies.
• Bringing your grandchildren to watch fireworks over Washington DC from the rooftop of the Museum of American History is one of the best experiences they will have (right up there with the hummingbirds.)
• Grandchildren love to hear their friends and co-workers tell them how beautiful and full of class their grandmother is. Especially when it is so true.
• Always be available to be interviewed for class projects by your grandchildren. Be sure to tell them what it was like to live though the Great Depression. It will amaze them.
• When your adult granddaughter is on bed rest during pregnancy, bring her meals every couple of weeks. It will nourish her in ways you can’t imagine.
• Make it a point to be there for your grandchildren in whatever way they might need.
• Give. Give, give, give to your grandchildren. They will love you for it.
• Always treat your grandchildren with the love and respect they deserve, they will never forget it.

On your 90th birthday I would like to take the opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart, Mommy-Dee, for all that you have done and continue to do for your entire family - your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren.

I love you very very much.

xoxo
jen

What a week THAT was.

Last Tuesday we put Moose, our sweet Jack Russell Terrier, to sleep. He was diagnosed with cancer a while ago and had long outlived the 2-4 months predicted by the doctors. We knew he wouldn’t last forever though, and last week he went downhill very quickly and we had to make the heartbreaking decision to end his pain.

We told Emma on Tuesday morning that he would probably die soon, thinking it would be a few days and wanting to give her some time to sit with it. By lunch it became clear that it would have to be that day, so I explained to Emma that we would be taking Moose to the doctor to see if she could make him feel better, but that she might not be able to and he might die. I encouraged her to give him lots of gentle hugs and kisses and to say goodbye to him. I found her later, sitting on the floor next to Moose with a hand on his head, singing softly to him.

Mike and I took the kids to a friend’s house and took Moose to the vet. Just on general principal he hated going to the vet, and fought the sedative the entire time, like any self-respecting Jack Russell would, but we were right there with him till the end, kissing and hugging him through our tears.

We struggled through the next couple of days, trying to give Emma the information she asked for in ways she could understand (which, you know, ugh. How do you explain something you barely understand yourself? Death is so weird - one minute you are here, the next you are gone. Blech. When I was searching online for ways to talk to Emma about the whole thing, I came across a discussion where someone wrote “Just be sure to tell your child the truth. That the dog went to doggie heaven and…” Sorry, WHAT? Doggie HEAVEN is the truth?? I mean, I don’t really know what the truth IS - except that his body stopped working - but I am pretty darn sure what the truth ISN’T. If romping in the clouds and eating bonbons is what you really think happens after your heart stops, rock on with your bad self. Last I checked though, heaven sure as heck wasn’t a scientifically proven theory thereby making it THE TRUTH about what happens after we die. We haven’t entirely ruled out a discussion about heaven as one option about what might happen after something or someone dies, but we sure won’t be presenting it as THE TRUTH. Hmph. But I digress. /rant)

Then, in the middle of processing the loss of Moose and where and why he had gone, we got into a car accident. It was on Thursday, on our way home from the grocery store, but before going to Emma’s school. It wasn’t a little rear-end-the-person-in-front-of-you-while-waiting-at-the-light type of accident, nor was it a multiple-ambulance-and-fire-engine type of accident (thankfully) but it was really really scary and it did do a lot of damage to our car. We were all fine, but the woman who hit us - as she was turning left across our lanes of traffic, apparently not SEEING us in the middle of the road (perhaps she was pondering the truthiness of heaven?) - hit us on the driver’s side. I, as you probably guessed, was sitting on the driver’s side of the car, and so was Emma. I don’t know if she was more freaked out by the large green (blue?) vehicle hurtling toward her or the incoherent screams coming from her mother, but whatever the reason, she was not happy.

We relied on lots of kindness from lots of non-strangers and were able to not only get our groceries home and put away before the ice cream melted, but were able to get Emma to school (the power of routine is not to be underestimated in a preschooler’s life) and all of us to the rental car place later that day. We found out the next day that the estimate for the repairs on the car is $12,000 - yes THOUSAND - making me feel incredibly lucky that we walked away unharmed. (But feeling a bit sad for my little Mazda 5 that so gallantly protected us. I love that car.)

It turns out that one way to help a three year old stop thinking about the death of her dog is to get into a car accident with her in the car. Instead of hearing “Moose died” over and over, I now hear “Mama, drive slowly ok? We don’t want to get into another accident.” Instead of asking “where is Moose?” she now asks “why did that lady break our car?”

We are all dealing with the stress of last week in our own way. Emma has shown some classic regression in response to it all - talking in baby talk, asking us to carry her because she is a baby and can’t walk, getting weepy and sad for what seems like no reason, being super clingy - all pretty textbook really. We have tried to give her extra patience and love to help her through it.

I have spent the last few days marveling at how quickly Moose was gone and how quickly the accident happened, leading me to realize how quickly life can change with no notice whatsoever. I have also spent the last few days driving below the speed limit and watching every car for any sign it is changing course. The accident scared me, and I don’t like being scared.

Eventually Emma will move back in the direction of full independence and I will become more zen about life and its fluidity (and will hopefully be able to drive without freaking out about it.) In the meantime, we are all trying to be extra gentle with each other and are trying not to spend too much time on Jack Russell Terrier rescue sites.

Back when I was single and child free, I was pretty organized and relatively neat. Now? Well, let’s just say, I am not. I live in a constant state of panic over the clutter and mess that is my home, wondering when I will ever have enough time to get on top of it, or stay on top of it.

Despite this, there are a few organizing tricks I have put into place in our life that provide me with tiny little moments of peace and a sense that I may one day get on top of this mess:

1. Make coffee the night before. The only thing worse that dealing with a hungry, weepy three year old first thing in the morning is doing so without the immediate assistance of coffee. When our old coffee maker broke about six months ago I got one that allowed us to schedule the coffee to start brewing at whatever time we want each morning. It has changed our life.
2. Have a bin for junk mail right next to the front door. I stand right next to ours as I go through the mail, and every envelope that I drop into it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
3. Have a special place for your cameras to live so that you can grab them at a moments notice. Whenever a photo op or great video would present itself we used to scramble around the house looking for the cameras. Now we have a basket in the book shelf in our living room - they go right back in the basket when we are finished with them and are almost always right where we expect them to be when the cuteness happens. We keep our camera card reader and other related accessories in the basket too, for consistency sake.
4. Put hooks at the kids level for their coats. We just put ours up last week and we immediately saw an end to Emma dropping her coat on the floor when she walked in the door. She is thrilled to have her own hook, plus she is in the “I want to do it myself!” phase, so it works perfectly.
5. Use bags or boxes for clothes as they don’t fit. I have one of those XXL Ziploc storage bags right next to Will’s changing table and drop clothes into it as he outgrows them. Once he is out of a particular size completely I zip the bag up and store it to be donated or handed-down later.
6. Have a dry erase board in your kitchen. I love love love my dry erase board. I make lists on it, notes, reminders, or even just silly pictures. I put another one at Emma’s height and she loves to doodle on hers too. I highly recommend it.
7. Don’t have pets. It’s too late for us, but I figured I would pass along this little nugget of wisdom in case there are those among you considering getting a pet and starting a family in the next few years. Pick one, doing both is nearly impossible.
8. Don’t blog. Think of all the things I could be doing right now…
9. Figure out what calendar system works for you and use it. I have one calendar that I hand write all of my dates onto, plus I use Google calendar AND iCal. It gets a little confusing at times, but since Google and iCal can sync, it is nice to be able to put things in when I am reading email (Google calendar) or when I am out somewhere (iCal on my iPhone). I am also really visual and like to have it in written form in my kitchen (right next to the dry erase board). FWIW I also just downloaded Intuition - a free organizing app for moms with iPhones (includes grocery lists, to do lists and syncs with Google calendar) and so far it’s a winner.
10. Let go of the angst about getting organized. In the end, having kids (and pets, GAH!) is chaotic, especially when they are young (right? this gets a little easier right?). My biggest tool in finding some happiness in my day to day life is to let go of my angst over the chaos and disorder. A friend once told me that the only thing she regrets when she looks back at the period of time when her kids were little (they are in high school and college now) is that she spent so much time worrying about and making sure her house was clean. Cause no one cared except her really, and it took away from precious moments with her little ones. Obviously we all have our own comfort level with the chaos (no doubt most of you would be horrified at the level of my comfort…) but don’t forget the reason the chaos is there in the first place. Someday my house will be spotless and completely organized, and I will be devastated about it.

So what are your organizing secrets?

Disclosure
This post is part of a blogging contest from the TwitterMoms community. There is a chance this post could be randomly selected to win a $50 Target GiftCard, so wish me luck! For more details, you can view the contest page here (http://icomp.ly/IconApps).