Working Mommy, Part I

I named this entry "part I" because I know it will be topic I return to repeatedly throughout the life of this blog. A well-known urban legend suggests that men think about sex on average every 7 seconds. I am confident that moms who work outside of the home think about their decision to put their child in daycare at least as often as that.

Let me say at the outset that I love my job. It never occurred to me or to Keith that one of us would stay home once we had a child - that is, until after Owen arrived. Then the thought of returning to work, to my dream job, scared the crap out of me. At this point, I can happily say that Owen is absolutely thriving at his school/daycare, and that I am glad we made the decision that we did. Even still, it's hard to find a perfect balance where I feel everything and everyone is getting enough of my attention. I miss my kiddo most of the day. I often leave work feeling like I've gotten nothing done. I imagine both frustrations will always be present.

Owen had a fever yesterday morning, so I stayed home with him. In the late morning, Owen and I went to the park where it was positively swarming with Moms and their kids. The Moms all knew each other, were all relaxing and chatting together on benches while their kids played. It was clear this was their 11-1pm routine every day. I felt so out of place, feeling like I was somehow playing hookey, and I imagined I looked bewildered too - I was half expecting one of them to come up and show me how to use the infant swing with Owen. It felt so foreign to be at the park in the middle of the day on a Tuesday.

Later in the day my boss called me to check in from a conference in the Cayman Islands (rough, isn't it?) not knowing that I was at home. When I told him where I was, he said "Owen is sick again?" I know he didn't mean it like that. My boss is one of the coolest people I know, and has not once insinuated that my work-life balance is out of whack. Although he is patently incapable of turning off his science brain, he is often the first person to suggest that I relax about balancing work and Mommyhood.

But however innocently his comment was intended, it brought up a whole cascade of feelings that I struggle with. Guilt, sadness, defensiveness, exhaustion. Owen has gotten sick regularly - natural for a kid in daycare during the winter. I do register that I've missed at least one day a month of work since coming back from maternity leave. I wonder if I will ever feel that each part of my life is getting enough of my attention. I used to know that I was great at at least one thing - work. Now I question whether I'm doing anything better than 50%, ever.

I am sure it will get easier over time, as Owen becomes more independent, and begins school. We hope that we teach Owen that it is not important that he follow in our footsteps to science, but that he choose to do something he really loves, where he feels that he is contributing something to the world. If I did not genuinely believe that my job is important, and that I am still able to show my child that he is loved - treasured - I wouldn't be a working Mommy. Regardless, I know that it will always be a decision I reassess and redefend - probably only to myself.

Seriously?

I think this might be the most racist playset I've ever seen! Can you see that the white guy (who came with the car) is holding a cell phone and credit cards? And the darker fellow is holding an oil can and rag (oh, and he came with a tow truck - not pictured).

Owen loves it though - vroom vroom!

If you click on the picture it opens larger.

My husband rocks

More on our awesome Saturday soon - maybe tomorrow if I have time. It included a fantastic day at the Wild Animal park with Auntie and Unc, and then a fabulous evening at Stone Brewery with my two boys, where we tasted the best beer EVER (um. it wasn't a Stone, but their beer is awesome too).

For now, an exerpt from the drive home tonight:

Me: ZZZzzzzzz [in the backseat]
Keith: This sounds like it was originally a Neil Young song.
Me: Huh? Oh...mmmyeah. It does.
Keith: It's a cool song.
Me: Yeah, originally Gary something. Mad world?
Keith: Yeah, Mad world. It was that song in that creepy Jake Gyllenhall movie. [he says it like "gil-en-hall"]
Me: I think it's pronounced "Jill-en-hall".
Keith: [ignores this] Is he related to Maggie Gil-en-hall?
Me: Yeah, it's his sister.
Keith: She kind of reminds me of you.
Me: Yeah?
Keith: Yeah. She's got that scrappy hotness.
Me: Awesome.
Keith: Yeah, like, she's cute, but I wouldn't want to go up against her in a fight.
Me: I'll take that.

So we're supposed to feed them?

Tonight I would normally be hanging out with Jenn (but she totally abandoned me; something about "wonderful family she never gets to see" and "once-a-year trip to Disneyland with the kids" and "blah blah blah selfish") but instead invited myself along on Daddy/Son night. Their routine is to go the park and do all the things Owen loves to do that make Mommy nervous for no good reason.

We got home and Owen cruised straight over to the patio door, stared longingly at his new trike and started banging the door to get to it. We offered him some food but NO, he wanted the BIKE. So, we decided to head to the park, maybe grabbing food on the way there. It appears we should have tried harder and that it's best to feed the kid BEFORE he gets cranky and unsatisfiable (yes, it's a word - check it out on Dictionary.com you doubters!).

The rest of the evening consisted of a frantic trip to El Pollo Loco to get him some food he didn't want to eat at the restaurant, and to the park where he wanted to eat but NOT chicken, and NOT beans, and NOT mac n' cheese, and NOT tortilla, he wanted something else, and then after a pathetic 15 minutes of offering up any possible selection of FOOD and FUN and SNUGGLES we were heading back home with us pushing the trike and carrying him because now he didn't want to RIDE the trike he wanted to WALK and interact with all the very nice people passing us in the park...but he can't walk on his own yet so it would have taken 15.3346 years to get home.

He decided about 1/2 way home that AT THAT VERY MOMENT he wanted some nursies and wanted them NOW (flash backs to a 5 week old baby) so we stopped to nurse on some random steps to someone's house and that sort of worked for about two minutes while I'm trying to shield my boobs from the kids walking down the street, and then we're back to carrying a big bag of dinner, pushing a trike, holding a 23-pound back-arching hungry child and...yeah, we feel like stupid assholes. As soon as we get home I put some yogurt and applesauce in a bowl for him and he gobbles it down, giggles, smiles, hugs, delivers slobbery kisses, then crashes. Poor kiddo! Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, we don't always get it right. Sometimes we realize that it would all be much easier if we were mind-readers, and that teaching Owen to sign "more" "dog" "milk" "shoe" "hat" and "ball" barely bridges the communication gulf between 30something parents and a 13-month old.

At least I think he knows is that we're always trying and he is loved.

And, at least we got it right for ourselves tonight after he fell asleep: we easily polished off a delicious bottle of Preston. Thank all that is holy for Wine Clubs.

Off to the races!

For anyone who loves Owen's unique crawl, enjoy it while it's here. He's almost walking now. We've been warned that this accomplishment comes with a twinge of sadness, a farewell to something that is uniquely a baby behavior. This is true for us, and perhaps moreso because Owen has always had his own way of getting around. Farewell, sweet crawl.

From now on: no covert ice cream ops

I was never a big fan of ice cream when I was younger. I actually was totally abnormal in my relative dislike for ice cream and pizza (For example, in high school I dated a guy who worked at an ice cream parlor and never once asked him for free ice cream. And when we would go to Round Table Pizza after a softball game I'd get a ham sandwich). But those pregnant women + ice cream love affairs are no joke, and pretty much as soon as I saw the extra line on the pregnancy test, I was craving ice cream constantly. Keith and I joke that Owen is 50% tangerine and 50% ice cream - my two favorite pregnancy foods.



Ever since then, going for a little stroll after dinner to get ice cream has become a lovely once or twice a week excursion. And for better or for worse, Owen loves ice cream. The Baskin Robbins taster spoons are perfectly Owen-sized, and I will share bits of my treat with him (I'd like to take this opportunity to register my complaint that Keith only ever gets pralines n' cream, and because of the nuts he never has to share any of his treat). So I'll give Owen a bite and a few seconds later my little bird is cheeping at me with his mouth wide-open waiting for more goodies. This is all well and good if we go earlier in the day on a weekend. But during the week we like to take a walk after dinner, and because we're hoping Owen goes to bed sometime oh, before midnight, we don't want to give him sugar. (For us this is not a problem - I mean, please. We have a 13-month old. We are still so ridiculously sleep deprived. Even after eating ice cream chased with an espresso I could probably fall asleep holding a jackhammer with a monkey on my head).


So last night around 7:15, we go to BR for some tasty treats and we register that we're going to have to make this a covert op somehow. Keith, thankfully, decides that he is full from dinner and doesn't want any ice cream. So the entire way home, I'm hunched over my ice cream like Golem with the ring, trying to gobble it down slyly while Keith is distracting Owen like "What? There's nothing to see here HEY LOOK! Birds! A tree! Nope, no one is eating ice cream in our vicinity." It kind of took the joy out of the evening walk+ice cream routine. I guess it's ice cream trips on weekends or not at all.

Musicology

In the car earlier today, Owen let me know with a screech or two that NPR was not doing it for him, entertainment-wise. I switched over to XM Kids. After a few songs, Hannah Montana came on and, along with her synth robot band, reminded us that “nobody’s perfect”. My finger hovered above the tuner knob. I looked back and realized that Owen was just as relaxed and happy with this song as he had been with Three Little Birds and Stray Cat Strut. I sighed. At these moments, we parents realize that we can play Pixies and Bob Marley and Beatles and Peter Gabriel and Sam Cooke for our kids all we like, but at some point it’s out of our hands. His journey to good music will be fraught with wrong turns and – if karma has a say in it – he may at some point beg me to buy him the latest album by the 2017 version of New Kids on the Block or Whitesnake. So, I relaxed my expectations for the first of many, many times to come, and let the wise sage, Hannah Montana, continue her life-lesson-in-song.