Absence Makes The Toddler Grow Grouchier

We're on Day 5 of my husband's long (9-12 hour) days every day. That's right, no holiday weekend for us. He gets up and goes to work every morning at the same time, and on one day (Sunday) came home at the usual time. The rest of the time he's been working well into the evening. He has a big project at work and we knew this was coming, but there is no question that it is hard.

It is definitely hardest on S., though. In fact, for this post, let's just call her "Surly." Surly has a lot of complaints lately, but her biggest one is "Whhhheeerree'ssss Daaaadddddddddyyyyy!" Typing does not do justice to her plantive tone. I told my husband he really needed to make it back for bedtime, because I think his absence is part of what is upsetting her.

Surly spent today irate about going outside, irate about coming inside, irate about not wanting a snack, and irate about wanting a snack. I let her play watercolors; she painted herself and complained when I washed them off her face and arms. I let her have a bowl of spaghetti sauce for snack (in lieu of the requested "catsup") and she painted herself again and complained when I washed that off. She didn't like it when she found a duck from the tub in her play area and wanted me to immediately return it the tub.

I'm sure some of this is being 2 1/2, but it is definitely more than usual.

Nothing makes you appreciate a spouse like his absence.

Cat Discipline

Almost 10 years ago, as my brother was about to have his first child, I decided to go to the pound and get mine. My sister had a one-year-old. I am the oldest child and I knew it was going to be quite some time before I had any human children of my own. So I went to the humane society and inspected all the cats and asked if they were mine.

One cat talked quite a lot, and made a strong argument that she was mine. No one had named her. She was called "Little Kitty." She was about a year old, and the reason listed for turning her in was "new baby." I took her home and called her Diva. For many years, it was just me and her.

I traveled a lot with my old job, and Diva had her little ways of expressing her dismay when I was gone too long. She'd sometimes take a nip at me. It was clearly an expression of displeasure and discipline, and was not intended to hurt. Once after I'd been gone quite a while, she actually leapt up as I was getting ready to shower and nipped my bare backside. That made me laugh, though I know her intention was not to make me laugh.

Diva always hated kids, and hid when they came into the house, so I was surprised when she adjusted well to the babies. The dog was actually more traumatized by the baby. Diva was more upset when she had to move in with the dog when I got married. She has always been opportunistic about asking for affection, so she'd just wait for us to put down the baby and then jump up.



When S. was young, Diva stayed well away from her and S. quickly learned to pet the cat gently. But now we have a new problem. Diva does not differentiate between L. and S. and will toss herself down in front of either of them for some petting. S. pets gently. L. delightedly grabs a fist full of fur. And Diva is surprisingly tolerant.

But L. did a little too much hand waving in front of Diva one morning last week just as Diva was due to be fed, and Diva went for the disciplinary nip. At first I thought she hadn't broken skin, but on diaper change I found the merest scratch. As a precaution I called my sister, a pediatrician who said "antibiotics." So I called my pediatrician, who also said "antibiotics." Did you know that cats have bad mean bacteria in their mouths? Everyone I've asked has said "oh yes," so I feel like the only one who didn't know this. I can now report that giving a 10-month-old antibiotics is actually worse than giving medicine to a cat. Thank goodness that week is over.

I'm also curious: why did I not learn about the mean bacteria years ago when my cat bit me on the a$$? No one mentioned antibiotics then. Too busy laughing to think about bacteria, were you?

These Are Not The Same Baby

My babies at 10 and 11 weeks, respectively.













When L. was born we were shocked at how much she looked like S. They even had the same birthmark over their right eye; a red "stork-bite." They were close in weight, 8 lbs. 9 oz. vs. 8 lbs. 2 oz. explainable by the fact that S. was 10 days past term and L. was a scheduled c-section at 40 weeks. "We had twins 19 months apart," I said.

Because they looked alike, I think I had an irrational expectation that they would act alike. My sister and I are 14 1/2 months apart and we don't act alike, but we don't look alike either.

And maybe it is the "10 month" age, but lately it is very very noticeable that these babies are not the same. S. was a little more demanding as an infant, and L. was a little more mellow, but their positions have reversed. L., I've learned, is a very determined little girl. Techniques that worked flawlessly with S., like distracting her from the carbon monoxide detector with a toy, are futile with L. And when L. doesn't get what she wants, she gets mad. She cries. She gets frustrated. She stays angry.

There are little things. S., from the moment she could roll, rolled back and forth in the bed all night (bringing co-sleeping to an end for us at 15 months). We made a small investment in bed rails with S. We've never used them with L. She stays in one spot unless she's actually looking to nurse. S. also had major feeding problems and went to eating therapy to learn to eat solids. With L. I'm learning what it was we were trying to achieve with S., as she's a poster-child for "age appropriate" eating behavior. The hidden upside of S.'s eating issues was that she almost never put foreign objects in her mouth. L. never stops putting random objects in her mouth.

S. liked to roll around and crawl just for the sheer joy of it. If L. is on the move, she is going to investigate something and you better check what it is.

They still look a lot alike. They both are fascinated by books. They both adore Daddy. They want to be together, and they don't want to be together. They both want what the other one has.

I'm trying to resist the impulse to label them too much. I don't want to say one is the "smart one" or the "nurturing one" or the "one who is good at music" or any of those other categorizations my own mother was a little too fond of. But it is fascinating to see their differences. I look forward to seeing what is next.

This Has To Be Said

Thinking about divorce? Have older children? Grown children?

Here is something you must know:

Your child will never be old enough to listen to you vent about your spouse.

Tolstoy said that happy families are all the same, and that unhappy families are all different. I'm paraphrasing. But after personal experience and lots of observation, I've decided that there are a lot of similarities between divorcing families, or at least between divorcing families with adult children.

A quick Google search will find you evidence that divorce is on the rise for older couples, and it will find you evidence that it isn't. But my personal experience is with a lot of friends and relatives who have survived their parents' divorce as adults. When I was a kid I knew one kid with divorced parents; now it seems like every time I catch up with an old friend one of the first things she says is "well, my parents got divorced." My own parents spent most of my 20s in a prolonged vicious emotional divorce battle. My in-laws divorced two years ago after almost 40 years of marriage. My college apartment mate's parents were divorcing our senior year and I'd come home to find her dad morosely smoking in our living room every day for weeks. Another relative is now going through parental marital difficulties. I could go on.

For the adult children of the marriage, I've noticed certain common threads.

• We've all gone through a process of re-writing our memories of childhood and trying to determine if what we remember was actually what was going on. The process is sad and poignant.
• We've all questioned our own relationships (if we're in one) or our ability to have a relationship. Our parents were our first model of how to have a relationship. I remember asking both my parents how they met and how they knew it was love. Now it seems it wasn't; how does that affect my basis for evaluating relationships?
• We've all questioned our own existence. Many of us were the "reason" our parents got married in the 60s and 70s. Were we actually the source of the trouble? Even if we're in our 30s and know this is an irrational thought, the thought is still there.
• We've all been asked to be our parents' support people emotionally. Many of us have also been asked to be our parents' advisors on finances and/or financial settlement decisions.
  
• Everything about the divorce takes a lot of mental energy to even discuss casually, and it can be very challenging since we have full lives with jobs and children and can't always afford the time to process our parents' divorce. We particularly can't process it on their timeline.
  

I've read that in a "healthy" divorce with younger children the children should be assured that they are still loved and valued by both parents and that life will go on, just with both parents in separate houses. I'm sure that doesn't happen a lot, but with adult children it happens even less. Instead, we are asked to play a role and take a side. If we don't want to discuss it we're accused of disloyalty or of being emotionally closed off. We fantasize about being under 18, and how much easier this would have been then.

If you are a person with adult children going through a divorce, could I ask that you do a few things?

• Don't question your childrens' love for you. Your children love you, even if they don't want to discuss this.
• Remember you are still their parent. They want to make you happy. If you make outrageous demands of them, they will try to do them. It doesn't mean the demand wasn't outrageous. It is very hard for them to say no to you. Don't abuse that.
  
• Don't look to your children for validation of your decision. Even if it is the best decision for you, it will always be a little heartbreaking for them.
• As your child goes through the process of re-writing their history, don't make it be the same as their history. I once read a great book about the Tokyo subway gassings called Underground. People who were at the same scene told different stories and both stories were true to them. Let your child figure out what is true to him or her; it doesn't have to match what is true for you. Neither one of you has exact photographic memory of things that happened 20 years ago.
• Reassure your child that his or her childhood was still an important and valued time in your life.
  
• Don't ask your children for financial advice. Even if they have MBAs or are CPAs or just have ability with numbers, this isn't something they want to take on. The emotional strain and the conflict of interest is too large.
• If there is another person involved, don't assume that their reaction has anything to do with that person. No, they aren't happy about the other person, but they aren't naive enough to think that that is the whole issue. They do, however, have an issue with your constant discussion of the other person.
• Ask your child about his or her life. Does every discussion have to be about your life?

OK, I'm asking more than one or two things. But this is a very sad time for your children, even if they are adults. Their family as they knew it is over. Every holiday from now on feels like a test. Something has broken and they feel like it is their fault and they don't know how to fix it.

They love you. They want you to be happy.

Family Meeting

This was the idea: Have a weekly family meeting. When your kids have friction or complaints, write the issue down and save it for discussion at the family meeting.

It sounds so civilized, doesn't it?

"That could work," thought my sister, when she heard the idea. So she started a list. She's been reading it to me as it grows, and I keep saying "you have to type it in and send it to me." But she hasn't, so today when babysitting my niece (10) and nephew (7) I copied the list down for myself. Here, without further ado, is the agenda for my sister's family meeting.

• Game is stupid
• When I go with John to do do something he leaves and doesn't wait for me
• John says "shut up" too much
• No waffles Monday morning
• Catherine reads my books
• Squirrels [this is a reference to their problem with squirrels eating the birdseed]
• John burps too much
• John is ANNOYING [annoying is underlined three times]
  
• John won't let me talk on the phone
• No more chores
• John disagrees too much and looks for ways to fight with me
• John called me a baby and Mrs. Writer
• Catherine tells too much
• John won't let me have hacky sack
• Catherine gets the music she wants
• John won't let me watch what I like
• John farts on me

Strangely, my sister has not yet scheduled the family meeting.

85 Things About Me

1. I have two daughters. I feel very lucky to have them.
2. My OB didn't tell me to stop having children, but after two postpartum hemorrhages she did say "it would be unusual for your uterus to rupture in that location." We took the hint.
3. I am the oldest child.
4. I have one sister and one brother. Their children are considerably older than mine.
5. When I was single, I loved being an aunt.
6. I still love being an aunt.
7. My siblings thought I'd never have kids.
8. My sister once bought me a book on single motherhood for my birthday.
9. I grew up in the middle of the woods. We had 30 acres.
10. Originally we had 52 acres, but my parents sold 22 to a reservoir project as they were required to do through eminent domain.
11. We had an orchard, a huge garden, and for a couple of years we had goats.
12. My sister and brother and I loved the goats. One goat would only tolerate my dad milking her, so he had to do it twice a day every day and he didn't love the goats as much.
13. We still miss the goats.
14. Whenever my mother didn't know what to do with us she would make us weed the strawberries.
15. I'm just now starting to like strawberries again.
16. I still don't eat some of the foods we grew too much of in the garden, particularly squash and tomatoes.
17. But I think that may be a texture thing; I'm picky about food textures. I don't eat bananas either.
18. I will bake bananas or zuchinni squash into bread though, and I'll eat cooked tomatoes.
19. Cooking is a form of relaxation for me.
20. However, I'm not an expert on it.
21. I live about 15 miles from where I grew up.
22. I moved away twice.
23. I moved to Arlington, VA, for two years when I graduated from college.
24. I moved to London in 1992.
25. I did an M.Sc. in Operational Research at the London School of Economics.
26. I have an M.B.A. too. I don't know why. I'm not really an M.B.A. type. It was an evening program and it just seemed like an interesting class at the time.
    
27. In 1993 I moved to Minnesota.
    
28. I was there 9 1/2 years.
29. I worked in the airline industry.
30. When I started in the airline industry I loved it.
31. I traveled many places, but most of all I traveled to get to know all of my extended family, who lived everywhere from Singapore to California to Minnesota to the U.A.E.
    
32. I traveled a lot for work, especially to Asia.
33. I went to Japan more than 20 times.
34. I found my work intellectually interesting, but I don't think I was very good at corporate politics.
    
35. When I left the airline industry I was very stressed out.
36. I had a lot of physical symptoms of stress. They are almost all gone now.
37. Sometimes I have bad dreams about having to return to work. They are like dreams I have about still having one more high school exam to take.
38. When I left work I had no plan, except to move to Boise and marry my long-distance boyfriend.
39. I had been commuting to Boise almost every weekend for a year.
    
40. I told people I planned to do some writing.
41. I wish I hadn't said that.
42. I don't know why I thought I had to say anything.
    
43. I haven't done a whole lot of writing.
44. I am constantly amazed by the amount of time two children take.
45. Oh, and two animals too.
46. I have had my cat for almost 10 years.
47. Last year she was diagnosed as a diabetic. We give her insulin twice a day.
48. I married into having a dog.
49. Our dog is an Australian Shepherd. She is 6 but she thinks she is a puppy.
50. The cat-dog household merger took place before I moved in with my husband.
51. Co-workers told me that they suspected I was leaving when the cat moved.
52. I moved to Boise for my husband, but I'm glad I didn't have to stay there long.
53. I didn't like the desert much.
    
54. I missed trees.
55. And Democrats.
56. My husband was kind enough to hunt down a job in North Carolina. It was sheer luck, really, since companies in his industry are only in a few locations.
    
57. We moved back just a few weeks before my oldest daughter was born.
    
58. I feel very lucky to have my husband.
59. Sometimes I worry about whether I am appreciative enough.
60. I can be kind of picky.
61. I was married once before in my early 20s, but it didn't last a year and I think my record has been expunged.
    
62. I once went for three years without dating at all.
63. It took me a long time to learn to tell people (men) what I want.
64. I'm still learning. Just yesterday I was grouchy for my husband for not somehow having intuited my planned schedule for the morning.
65. I wish I was as understanding of human foibles as my husband is.
    
66. My husband and I both like to read trashy gossip magazines.
67. But my cousin gave us Star and we find it a little too trashy. What is up with the long stories which end "and their rep denied the story"?
68. I used to bike a lot.
69. I once biked from Minneapolis to Chicago in an AIDS fundraiser.
    
70. I was not ever athletic, so it was a big personal achievement.
71. I miss biking, but NC is not very bike friendly and the kids are still too little for a trailer.
    
72. My husband and I walk a lot now. We are big fans of putting the kids in Kelty backpacks.
73. I like to sew, but I have a hard time doing it since the kids try to grab the needle.
74. I like to make costumes. I made my daughter a tiger, my niece two clown costumes, and my nephew a cow costume.
75. In ninth grade I was president of the Home Ec club.
76. I never took Home Ec. The teacher who ran the club had been my science teacher, and I liked her.
77. I'm not really that domestic, except for the cooking and the sewing. I'm very bad at cleaning.
78. I'm also not very good at decorating.
79. I used to read every night before I went to sleep.
    
80. I don't do that so much now that I have kids, but I still read a lot.
81. I surf the internet while I nurse.
82. I keep hoping my next career move will become clear to me at some point.
83. I'm not very good at doing things by halves. When I had a career, I was all career. Now it seems I am all mom.
84. I worry about how I will balance things when I start trying to find a new career.
85. I've stayed up waaaay too late making this list.
    

This Was Fun

create your own visited country map

I have visited 10% of the countries on earth.
I miss travel. Have I mentioned that?

How Do Bloggers Do It?

I thought if I created this space I'd write more. I created the space, and I have a lot of ideas, but the time just has not appeared. In fact, I have a lot of things I'm not getting done. My current list of junk I've been meaning to do for more than a month includes:

• Getting estimates on getting the house painted and the deck stained.
  
• Finishing my sewing project, which is to create a little book for S. to practice zippers/buttons/snaps/etc.
• Answering my backlog of e-mail, which is embedded among the 1256 random items in my inbox.
• Figuring out what to get my mother and mother-in-law for Mother's Day (gotta get on that one).
• Cleaning my closet, which has been in disrepair since I had a fit of "I can't find anything" and threw a bunch of things on the floor.
• Getting my hair cut and my eyebrows waxed. Since it has been more than a month since I first started thinking "I need to do this" I really need to do this.
• Getting our car serviced, which I swear I'm going to do every time I ride in the passenger seat and find the seatbelt won't release just as I'm trying to lean back to a screaming kid.

I know there is more. This week's add is "getting the lawnmower repaired" because after our lawn grew beautifully for a few spring weeks and was overdue for a cutting my husband said "oh, I forgot. The lawnmower broke at the end of last season. I used the neighbor's."

On the plus side, I did get the pantry cleaned. I was inspired by the post office collection of food items this Saturday. I identified a few items for them, and a lot of out-of-date food for the trash can.

But you could say I have a few other things going on. The process of writing this post has been interrupted by:

• L. screaming with teething pain, as she seems to be getting at least three teeth at once
• S. yelling "draw a kangaroo Mommy. Draw a kangaroo" because she wants me to help color the kangaroo picture in her Curious George coloring book.
• Giving L. Tylenol.
• S. yelling "where is the red crayon? where is the red crayon" while I show her every red crayon in the crayon box. Finally she said "there it is" and plucked a wraperless red crayon from the floor.
• My sister calling to tell me how much she is enjoying watching squirrels go flying from her new spinning squirrel-proof bird feeder.
• Trying to call my brother to find out if he has created our Race for the Cure team yet.
• Nursing L.
• Searching Amazon for squirrel spinner to try to find the product my sister described (no luck, or else there would be a link).
• Checking to see what L. is doing and finding she is chewing on a shoe.
• Checking S. and finding she has emptied the entire crayon box and is systematically throwing crayons at the chairs.

I don't know why I don't have more time to blog.

Yummy Yummy

My mother-in-law is visiting. Usually her visits stress my husband more than me; she doesn't have that "mom" effect on me.

But this visit is already causing me a little stress, and I know what it is. It is her diet. She brought all her own food. Well, not all her own food. I also purchased three- quarters of the Harris-Teeter fruit section for her, as well as Splenda and chocolate sugarless pudding mix. She eats what looks like pablum mixed with fruit for every meal.

I like to cook for my guests. I like to cook, and I like to try to give my guests something they'll enjoy. So being unable to cook makes me feel awkward and unsure how to be a hostess.

I also treat my kitchen as my personal turf. My husband doesn't cook much but he does know where everything is and only enters to prepare kid meals. I am never keen on "here let me help" type guests because I have my own efficient methods and another person in the kitchen interrupts my groove.

But she won't get out of my kitchen. She is always underfoot, chopping up fruit or mixing pablum or cleaning a random dish. I can't prepare food in my usual sequence, which slows me down and ruins the zen-like meditative quality that cooking has for me. It is my stress release, and my stress is now not released.

She also keeps grazing, picking bits of fruit of the kids trays or sticking her fingers in the tacos I prepared for me and my husband.

The thing is, she's lost a lot of weight on the diet and she looks good. There isn't any way I can say "your diet freaks me out, eat a normal meal, and could you get out of my kitchen? Thanks."

So I'm saying it here.

Today Is My Anniversary

I met my husband almost six years ago at a picnic for Single Volunteers of the Twin Cities. He sat down from me and smiled at me almost constantly, then followed me around as I helped pick up trash and asked for my phone number. He also offered to teach me to swing dance, and I like to tease him that I still haven't really learned. (We do go swing dancing, but I lack my husband's natural rhythm).

It took us a while to realize we wanted to spend our lives together, and the first time we dated it lasted only a few months. Then we stayed friends, and regularly updated each other on our dating. We agreed that internet dating was a horror. He moved to Boise for work; I stayed in the Twin Cities. He called and told me there was no culture in Boise; I said "come visit."

So he came to visit and we had a wonderful time. We went to the theater and to a jazz club. I started to commute to see him in Boise. Since I worked for an airline I could do this. Each time I left it seemed harder and harder to go. Work was stressful and didn't bring me a lot of joy.

I moved to Boise. We got married in North Carolina at a wonderful goat farm / bed & breakfast. We had a swing band and wonderful caterers. We spent the day with family and friends and had our nieces and nephews walk us down the aisle. A goat apparently dropped in just before the ceremony, but we didn't see that. It was a perfect day.

We wanted children and I was 37 1/2, so we thought "let's try, it will take six months to actually conceive." It didn't.

A friend of mine said "when you have kids you really find out what your relationship is." Having kids has made me realize how truly lucky I am to have found such a wonderful man. We have to put a lot of work in to communicating and letting each other know what to expect. Some days we do better than others. But we have such trust in each other; trust I didn't know you could have with another person.

I wish I had the words to say how I feel. I just know it is much more than I felt three years ago, and it is so nice to have a relationship that grows and evolves. Happy anniversary honey. I'd marry you again in a heartbeat.

Random Items

• On Friday we went strawberry picking with our playgroup. Strawberry picking actually goes really fast, even with two kids in tow, so we went on to the playground. All the kids started climbing on a picnic table, sat around it, and "chatted" like the adults. Suddenly I heard another mom say "no that's too hard" as a kid grabbed S. in a bear hug. The next thing I know she'd face planted on the concrete below the table. Since it was concrete it frightened me, but she recovered pretty fast and just had a big bruise on her forehead. When I told my mom about it she said "yes, that's parenthood. Long stretches of the same old thing interrupted by moments of total panic."

• In a frenzy of domesticity, I made strawberry ice cream, strawberry sorbet, strawberry freezer jam, and chocolate dipped strawberries.

• We caught a mouse the day we set a Havahart trap. Was it the only mouse? Signs say no. Fortunately the signs are in the garage, not the house. Another trap has been set. And for the record: the Tomcat Live Catch trap doesn't work. For reasons that escape me they say not to bait it. In the end we set two Havahart traps, baiting one with cheese and one with peanut butter. We had a classic mouse who preferred cheese.