Mommy Blogging

I’ve tried never to make this blog about the trials and tribulations of parenting. There are enough blogs out there dealing with these topics and I think people are getting a bit sick of it all. My facebook feed is all about reasons peoples’ toddlers are crying, links to the youtube video of that admittedly-hilarious comedian talking about life with kids, and videos of kids crying to songs on the radio or discovering rain for the first time.  

But I would be kidding you if I could pretend to write about other stuff right now. I’ve got nothing happening on the home renovation front, work is a bit of a slump despite moving to a brand new building, family life is stable, and I haven’t been to the cottage since September. Meanwhile, Gennyland is busy - Nora is as hilarious as ever, and I am expecting number 2 (a boy) in June. I don’t want to bore people with the mundane specificities of my days, but Nora and I are having a good time enjoying each other’s company, laughing, crying, learning stuff.  I could spend a few paragraphs listing the indignities that my aging body is withstanding through this happy unexpected baby surprise (Namely, a lot of constipation, gas, grey hair and peeing) but I don’t think anyone’s interested in that stuff.

There is one issue that pops up here and there in response to all the mommy-blogging going on: I read an article earlier today saying that it seems like parents do nothing but complain on the internet about how hard their lives are. I would like to chime in on this one, because I do feel it’s relevant in my situation.

Where I work, in my particular field and division only one other person (out of 16) has a young child. Most of the people in equivalent positions (program officers) are either childless or are men with grown children.  In the mornings they come in and tell me about the movies they saw the previous night, the trips they’re taking on the weekends, the hip evening activities they have taken advantage of, all the travel they look forward to doing for work, and the fabulous elaborate meals they cook on Saturdays with friends. I think that’s great. I really do – I remember those days fondly. I keep my lips sealed and nod and pretend that I can relate to their fabulous carefree lifestyles. But when they start asking me “why don’t you ever travel for work?” (I am supposed to*) and “what are your plans for the weekend” and I start to answer honestly, their eyes glaze over.

 I have also recently seen a few colleagues take a day off or a morning off here and there because they’ve “been having trouble sleeping lately,“ and not to seem like a bitter old crone, but by that logic I should NEVER COME TO WORK AT ALL. For real. I haven’t slept a stretch longer than 4 or 5 hours since about November.

I have decided not to share with them what it’s like to work three shifts. I call my day a three-shift day, and the shift in the middle (the one for which I am paid handsomely) is the most relaxing and stress-free of all. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all horrible because it’s not – at the time some of the things that I do seem kind of unreasonable but it has become the new normal in my world. It’s just when it’s thrown up against the lifestyles of others less entangled than I that it becomes a sore spot.

My day usually sort of starts around 3 a.m. though I’m not even sure where one day stops and the next one starts anymore. Nora is a great one for talking/shouting/crying/screaming in her sleep, but never actually waking up and walking into our room, so that I have to get up and go get her to see what’s going on so it doesn’t escalate. One late-night/early-morning screaming session was caused by a dream she’d had wherein I had cracked an egg on top of her head. “YOU CRACKED AN EGG ON MY HEAD!” Me: “no sweetie, shhh shhh, it’s ok, I would never do that to you.” Nora: “YES YOU DID! YOU DID IT JUST NOW!” (How do you explain that conversation to a coworker when they say “you look tired today”?) She is a wonderful, imaginative, interesting and smart child, with a really vivid imagination and a lot of energy, but her one fault in life is that she is not a terrific sleeper. I long ago reconciled myself to the fact that she will never in her life go to bed early and indeed, she goes to bed easily but very very late for someone under 40” tall. There’s no yo-yo-ing back and forth for endless glasses of water, and she is super reliably dry at night. She’s just – active. The brain never shuts off.  She has full conversations in the dark, complaining about some minor indignity she suffered at daycare that day, worrying about lost toys or parents who crack produce over her head. She doesn’t like sleeping in her room because she claims she can hear loud cars and trucks all night (we live in the country – once in a while she hears the admittedly-very-loud snowplow around 6 a.m.) so she tries to spend each night in our bed, which as another very funny viral cartoon has illustrated can be incredibly disruptive. (He has a book. Of course he does. See it here . Nora is a fan of “H is for Hell.”

Anyway, so my day usually starts with one of these such interruptions. Then I’m awake. Then I have to pee. I make my way to the bathroom to do the deed (thank god we renovated and included a bathroom upstairs. Thank.God.), then I go back to bed where hubby is snoring loudly. I roll him over onto his side again, and try to settle in. He keeps snoring on despite the nose strip and double pillows and repeated jabs to the back. Then the dog has a dream and starts running in her sleep at the foot of the bed. “Oh” you say. “You let your very large rambunctious dog sleep in your bed, no wonder you get no sleep.” Yes, yes I do, because if I don’t, she paces all clickety clickety around the bed all night and her nocturnal twitchings are LOUD against the floorboards and surrounding furniture. At least the bedding is quiet. Plus our bedroom is unheated and I like to stick my toes under her when it’s minus 100 outside. After I kick the dog (gently, more like a nudge) to discourage her dream-twitching, I try to settle back in but now that I’ve awoken, so has Squid (the fetus) and he starts booting me in the belly. Not hard, just noticeably because as Babycenter has told me, he’s only the size of a banana. If I can ignore all this and get back to sleep, I usually have three hours max of sleep-time before either my biological clock or my alarm clock wakes me up. 

I haul myself up, shower myself, shuffle to the kitchen, feed the cat, and make Nora’s breakfast to bring to daycare. This is 6:50, I am chopping up fruit while the cat crunches away, which I actually kind of enjoy. I finish this and head upstairs to choose outfits – another tiny pleasure. I dress myself (usually in the dark), then try to gently awaken Nora, dressing her as she sleeps/wakes up. This is easiest because she has no opinions on what she wants to wear when she’s still asleep, except sometimes socks are contentious. I pick her up and bring her downstairs and we snuggle on the couch for 5 minutes while she wakes up. This is my favorite part of my day. Then it’s time to bundle into winter coats, snowsuits, boots, hats, mitts, poured coffee, bags by the door, haul it all up to the car, stuff all the bits into the carseat, start the car, warm it up, drive to daycare, drop her off (unbundle), then until very recently I would have to make two or three separate stops on the way to work to pick up carpoolers. I then drive to work – enjoyable. I listen to the radio and drink coffee. This now represents my only real alone time of the day and this subtle change in my routine makes me feel free as a bird, sadly. Then I park in my new spot and briskly walk the 1km to work. Thus begins my second shift.

After the second shift is over (and it is a quiet shift, full of adult conversations and decent food), I bundle up, walk back to my parking spot, and start shift #3. Sometimes I have to run a quick errand on the way home to pick up something for dinner. I then pick up Nora at daycare at 5 – bundle her up, ask about the day, what was for lunch, did she eat her breakfast, light chat with the other parents, wait while she crawls to the car through the deep snow. Pick up the mail, drive home. We get home, unbundle, and I let the dog outside, feed the pets, get Nora a wee snack (especially if it was soup day at daycare), and try to re-light the fire in the woodstove. I have about 30 minutes of play time before I have to break to make dinner, which is usually a difficult break with Miss Nora. She hates it when I go make dinner. While I am making dinner (usually a full dinner, and I’m not afraid to brag here: my family is LUCKY), hubby gets home and takes over the playing-with. This is a real skill of his; he can dress and undress and redress stuffed animals until the cows come home. Then I call them to dinner and we eat together. Sometimes this is easy and great fun and Nora eats like a horse, and other nights she’s not into it. Sometimes she sits with her back to us and I get tense. We finish dinner and if it’s Monday (or Tuesday if I gave up and fed her Cheerios for breakfast on Tuesday morning), I usually have to bake something for the week’s daycare breakfasts – a loaf of some sort, usually banana bread or blueberry-oatmeal loaf (cut down the sugar, add flax and chia and other sneaky mom stuff). I can now almost do this in my sleep. Hubby cleans the kitchen. I lay on the couch and ‘play’ or just sort of lie nearby like a beached whale while Nora creates scenarios where various toy penguins have blended families and have pet cats and like to eat sparkly pompoms.

We do this, unless it is bath night, where I (or hubby if I can trick him) have to sit in the bathroom and watch Nora pour water over the heads of various toy animals for an hour. It’s tough to sit crunched up on the bathroom floor when you are 5 months pregnant and have just eaten dinner. So that’s why Nora only has two baths a week. Plus our water supply is kind of low and her skin dries out easily. She plays, she plays with me, she plays with daddy, until it’s time to brush teeth and go upstairs, where we put on jammies and she plays a bit more in bed. Sometimes we draw pictures, sometimes we read stories. Then I say “it’s time to turn out the light”, she goes pee one more time, has a little cup of water, and scampers back to bed where she snuggles next to me and falls asleep within 2 minutes. I love this time. Sometimes I am asleep before she is. If it’s before 10 p.m. it’s a good night, but sometimes it’s a bit past 10 p.m. and I’ve learned that that’s ok too. Everyone is different.

Hubby comes to bed at 12:30 or 1:00, and moves Nora to her own bed. Sometimes we have small conversations and I have to try to get to sleep again. And so ends my third shift.

So childless people might think that that all sounds horrible or bland. I remember when I was pregnant the first time, I had no idea how I would fit it all in. But you do. Somehow it works out. Things happen gradually. And you have no way of telling your childless coworkers that you didn’t really do anything of note last night, but man you laughed so hard when your daughter informed you that her baby dolly’s name is “Jeff,” and that you woke up this morning to her looming over you whispering “Mama. Mama. Rosie’s licking her butt.”  You can’t really explain how wonderful it is that the three-and-a-half-year-old ate more salmon at dinner than you did. How you and your 42-year-old husband and your daughter played the recorder, the keyboards, and a broken guitar for 2 hours the other night without going insane. How wonderful and creative and meaningful Pingu is even after seeing them all 48 times. How something as simple as Nora’s new haircut has made me feel like I have fallen in love all over again.

And so I nod and smile and ask about the movie and the dinner and the weekend away. And I know that while I am somewhat freaking out about having two kids, it will also all work out, as it does, and there’s just more adventure ahead, and that I wouldn’t trade places with anyone for anything in the world.

But I am totally taking tomorrow off and blaming it on lack of sleep.

*for the record, the last time I travelled for work, I was away for two nights and because of it, Nora peed the bed for two weeks. I am having a hard time seeing the value in it.