And then the next thing you know, WOOSH. They’re graduating from college and you’re out your retirement fund.
I should really be calling this post a placeholder. It’s holding the place for a lot of things I need to tell you about. Like, the fact that the boys turned 9 months old. And then, about 15 minutes after we ordered their 9 month old commemorative plates and matching cup set, they turned 10 months old. And then they had their first Thanksgiving and their first bath in the big bath tub together. And then I cried because they are too adorable and too sweet to believe and I’m still not home with them every day like I should be and I know, and you know, kindergarten is right around the corner and what then? What THEN?
I know there are women out there who are okay with being working mothers. I salute them. I’m just not one of them. Meaning, I am a working mother. In fact, I am the sole provider working mother right now. But I’m not okay with it, other than the fact that it is what is and I have to be okay, in the most general of terms.
I also have to tell you about the band. Oh lord, the band. That’d be my band, whose name shall not be mentioned here because I’m having interweb crossover identity issues. I went back into private practice a few months ago (I’m an LCSW therapist type for kids, yo) and I just do not want people I work with finding this blog. We’re playing in 26 days (crap pants here) and this is the first time we’ve played in 8 years, almost to the day.
Before I became a mom, and before I became a therapist, I was a musician. I was very serious about it. I never had the kind of financial or commercial success I’d hoped for, but I did make all kinds of music with all sorts of fantastic people and it made my life better. And now I’m doing it again and it feels so strange and familiar and like I’m traveling back in time but yet not. Like straddling two decades when your straddler is a little out of alignment.
And that’s just the good stuff, but that’s what I’m trying to fill my head with these days. And yours too.
My boys are 9 months and 3 weeks old today. They are in a magic phase where every mundane little thing sparkles, boo boos can be healed in seconds with a kiss and a hug, and little arms start to reach for me when I come into the room in that heart exploding “I want Mommy” way. I know every developmental phase has its perks, but this one I think is really special and will stay with me in a way that the newborn phase or the six month old phase probably won’t.
And all that is to tell you, I just don’t want to work. I want to be home with them so badly it just hurts. That’s what we planned on, it’s what I said I was going to do months ago and it’s what I always intended, but it is not what is.
I’ve been thinking a whole lot about my career in the past few months. I’ve been beating myself senseless over my lack of direction, focus and commitment. I’ve hit a professional ceiling, not because I’m at the limit of my skills or abilities. I’m stuck because I’m doing something I just don’t want to do right now. But I have to.
It’s a strange problem, you know? Pick a career path you think you’ll love. End up not loving it. Have babies in the middle of an economic melt down. s/s Be grateful you can go back to it so you can keep the family afloat. Resent it. | (D.S. al coda to the be grateful part through the resent it part. Repeat daily forever and ever.)
I don’t feel well. I have a cold. And I am upset right now about all of this.
I want to be home with my kids. My husband wants me to be home with my kids. But I just can’t be right now.
Let me just start by saying I’m not in a good mood today. That right there would make not writing this post a good thing, but who was I to ever heed my own good advice, abide by my own excellent council? I wasn’t.
Lately I’ve been doing two things compulsively that make no sense, occupying valuable real estate in my brain: obsessively playing frakkking Farmville on Facebook and looking at real estate in Hunterdon County. As to the first thing, please know I’m sufficiently humiliated and hoping that sharing this time wasting behavior publicly will shame me into stopping. But oh, the ribbons! The cute little veggies and flowers and fruits that you can watch grow! The horses! Hey look, if I didn’t have a gazillion and one unfinished projects and lofty goals for my life, that’d be just fine. The truth is I HAVE NO TIME for things like Farmville. I am a working mother of 9+ month old twins, and any time not spent A) working or B) mothering would be better spent on any of the below:
bathing
sleeping
cleaning my ears, or maybe my toes
re-organizing my underwear
buying something
arranging my books by page length
researching bizarre medical procedures
tending to any of the 5821 things in my Things program
writing, anything!
[insert anything here except hard drugs and sugar bingeing, and it will be better than spending time on Farmville]
Incumbent Governor Corzine is right now, as I type this, losing the Governor’s race in NJ. Asshole. No, I’m not happy about it. But he is an asshole. Only an asshole would lose to that dumbshit Chris Christie.
I’ve been looking at real estate in Hunterdon County because it’s beautiful and there’s some unstoppable part of me that wants to raise my boys in the country. Yes, New Jersey has countryside. It’s in Hunterdon County, where I lived as a little girl. The problem is that it’s nearly all white and Republican. They actually like and voted for that dumbshit Chris Christie there. Oh, the property taxes are high too, but they’re high where I am now. And it’s far from everything. And looking is a waste of time anyway because, to be honest, financially we are still digging our way out of the disability/gradschool/holy f*ck we have two twins $$$$$$$$uck hole. So why do I keep looking?
So I don’t have to think about shit I don’t want to think about. I have a bit much of that these days.
I haven’t been here, but then I keep telling you that and so you must know it by now, if you’ve been here and I’ve not been. The reason I haven’t been here is because at work, they now want me to work. Can you believe this shit? And at home, well, there are kids and a dog and a man and two cats, wait. Forget the cats, they suck.
The boys just started sleeping through the night a few weeks ago, but oh my god heavenly bliss! They sleep from around 8pm until anywhere between 6 and 7am, and compared to the living hell of getting up three to four times a night, we are getting sleep. We’re averaging about 6 or 7 hours a night – IN THE SAME BED – even. That’s huge.
But what else is that I’ve gotten to be sleep greedy, so right now it’s 10pm and I have to get up at 5:30am for work tomorrow (not a typical day, but sheesh, that’s early) and I should already be in bed, but I’m not, though I will be soon. As soon as I finish typing this. By the way, I was pumping for most of that paragraph. I got good, yo.
Blogging takes a backseat to sleeping. I know that’s effed up, I do know it. But that’s the way it is.
But on to the good part of this post: Doot and Bing, in heady discourse regarding the merits of breakfast and its ranking among the things we eat. Around the 1:15 mark Doot makes a startling discovery: he has a hand. It’s right there, on the end of his arm.
Doot (on the right) said “Da da” tonight, while lovingly combing Alex’s face with his little eight month old fingers. Yes, there were tears aplenty.
Meanwhile, Bing was hurling himself backwards on hands and knees on the same futon where we all lay and tell stories and sing songs every night before bed. He’s about to launch. Real crawling, the kind that involves purposeful movement, is nigh.
And yes, finally, they are starting to sleep all night. Doot has slept from 8pm – 6:30 am three nights in a row. Bing is only waking up once a night, around 12:30am, for a small bottle, then sleeping the rest of the way. This is HUGE folks. But then, you know that.
My mom says they look like they’re ready to take on the world here. If I do my part, here’s hoping they will be.
It all started several weeks ago when I got into a hardcore SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET fixation over at Facebook regarding health care reform.
I started to go daffy, for real. I obsessed over arguments I was having in comments on my profile, as though it was somehow going to make a fucking difference. I posted video, articles, statistics, you name it, supporting the dire need for a public option in health care. I recounted personal stories of people in my own family, myself, being screwed by the private health insurance industry. I made an impeccable case, I felt.
Then I remembered, maybe too late, that if your mind is cemented shut because your ideology demands it, then no amount of facts will alter your reality.
But the entire ordeal really left me bitter. And with all of the shit I have to deal with in my life right now, being bitter over politics is not where I want to be.
At the same time, I realized I was spending entirely too much time online, upset, fretting over health care reform. This is something I care deeply about and have grave concerns regarding, to be sure. But fretting over it, arguing over the internet? It doesn’t make health care reform happen. All it does is make my life worse.
So I got off the internet for awhile. The timing was good, as I got incredibly busy at work. We’ve been having a lot of financial strain these days, what with recovering from my maternity leave. So I had to reopen my private practice, which is something I did not want to do.
But I had to do it, and I did do it, and I’m glad I did it. Not because we may begin to breathe a little more easily around here, but because though I’ve been a therapist (for teens and their families) for 11 years or so, there are some things I couldn’t see before I had my own kids. So taking clients again has led me to realize a lot of new things about parenting. Some of these things I’m filing for future reference, and one thing I’ll share with you right now.
When your baby gets to be around 15 years old, things are most likely going to suck. No matter what conventional wisdom has taught you, don’t let go. Pull that kid closer to you than ever. Hold them close like you did when they first popped out of you.
More on this later.
I hope you’re all well and that I can make a catch-up tour of blogs soon.
Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been here. A few things have been going on and I just haven’t been on the internet much at all these days. Mostly I’ve been doing what needs to be done so we can continue to enjoy luxuries like electricity around here. So until I can conjure up a proper blog post, get a load of these babies:
You’ve been on the outside for seven whole months now, which is nearly as long as you were on the inside. So if you think of it, from zygote to now you’ve probably gagoopled your size several times, not to mention your cute factor. To be honest, I’d really love to credit myself with your good looks, but I don’t know how anyone could buy it. I think I’ll attribute some to your father, some to the innate bias inherent in parenting, and some to science.
Your excellent dispositions, however? All me.
Okay, maybe not ALL me. But a lot me. Or so I like to tell your family, friends and assorted admirers.
As of this week I’ve started to work a little more often, a little harder, outside of the house making some money to keep us all in diapers and dog biscuits. I won’t kid around, it’s been a strange thing to spend fewer hours a day with you. The strangest thing being that I leave you in the morning, am gone for many hours, come home for dinner and baths and you are both different. You are more here. More you. Less mommy appendage.
In some ways this breaks me. In most ways, this is simply the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.
People who see pictures of you ask me, “Are they total opposites in their personalities?” I don’t know why they’d ask such a thing.
To that I unilaterally answer No. What you are is individuals, close in temperament to myself and your father. I am hoping that since he and I have been compatible for oh, the last 22 years or so, that the two of you will get on similarly well, and perhaps with less bickering over guitar gear, but probably not.
Which brings me to some news. Your father and I have been asked to put the band back together for a special show celebrating the mid-90s music scene in New Brunswick. We, of course, jumped at the opportunity. Why? Because we are totally f*cking INSANE. Insane for sound, insanely eager for any opportunity to have our asses kicked (as your simultaneous appearance into our lives proves) and insanely committed to raising you both to never, ever forsake your dreams or those things that make you who you are.
Mom and Dad bring the rock, 10 years ago
I have done a little too much of that lately, but it’s about to change.
Unfortunately, that means you’ll be having more babysitting. The good news? It’ll probably be your grandparents who will likely let you stay up late and eat ice cream behind our backs. Good for them.
At this point, I feel inclined to include some kind of poignant hand wringing about how fast it’s all going, how much I already miss those tiny helpless newborns you used to be, how precious every second with you is and has been, how my love for you seems to outpace the expansion of the universe and can hardly be contained by human physiology or explained in human language.
Sure, I can go there.
But my darlings, it’s 5pm Friday and instead, I think I’d like to rush home for dinner and bath time, where I can be in it instead of just describing it.
May we spend the rest of our days together more inside the good feeling than outside, remembering how good it was.
| (D.S. al coda to the be grateful part through the resent it part. Repeat daily forever and ever.)
