Crowded Tub

And then......

Last night MB went to bed at 8:00.  He then woke up at 1:30.  He was awake until 4:30.  He then woke up for the day at 6:00.  In case your math skills are slow, that’s a grand total of 7 hours.   The baby has not arrived yet – we still have 5 more weeks before we add that bag of fun into the mix.  And for those who either don’t know or don’t remember – 7 hours of cumulative sleep is NOT enough for a 3 year old.  Or his 34 week pregnant Mommy.  I’m trying not to feel like this is a giant f-you from my first-born but…..the title of the Ames and Ilg book “Your Three Year Old – Friend or Enemy” is sounding about right.  Or, if we want to be more contemporary, we could re-title it “Frenemies”.

My friend Roberta has two sons – one is 22 and the other is 25.  That sounds really lovely to me right now.  Did you know there aren’t any books about how to handle your 20-something sons?  They’re on holiday in New York.  And I’m guessing she didn’t waste a minute worrying about how they would do on the plane, how they would sleep in the hotel room, or whether they would be able to find any restaurants that would  serve chicken nuggets.

Hard Times

So we have a slight problem.  The big boy bed is great, MB loves it…..but we have fallen onto Hard Times.  While MM was gone, I got in the habit of “helping” MB go to sleep by laying down with him – hey!  It’s a queen bed!  Plenty of room, and it sure beats sleeping in the white chair in his old room.  Except I only ever did that when he was sick.  Now it seems we are doing it for every nap and every bedtime.  The laying down part.  Which at first was kind of sweet, watching his eyes flutter and close, feeling his body relax into sleep….what a little angel.  Right?  Wrong.  MM is in charge of bedtime, and a new game has emerged.  MB calls it BONK.  As in “I like to wait for Daddy to fall asleep and then I BONK him on the head.  Hahahahaha!”  See what I mean?  Hard Times.  Naptime is not much better.  Except it’s ME who has the Hard Time.  The past two days it seems that I have been stuck in there for anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour saying things like “Hold still!”  and “Close your eyes!”  and even once the other night after a particularly hurtful game of BONK, “SANTA IS NOT GOING TO COME IF YOU DON’T GO TO SLEEP RIGHT NOW.”

The sad thing is….we were the family who used to be able to put our child down in his crib no problem, awake, and he would put himself to sleep.  Consistently for 3+ years we did this successfully.  And now, we’ve morphed into my sister and her husband, whom we have judged terribly in the past on many car rides home….disappearing for up to an hour at a time, often falling asleep ourselves while our clever little boy BONKS us on the head for sport.  It is shameful, this situation we now find ourselves in…truly shameful.

So what to do?  I have one week left of vacation.  My goal was to work on this napping/sleeping thing over the 2 weeks I was off.  I’m 34 weeks pregnant.  I HAVE to get this kid to fall asleep by himself before I birth this baby.  I fear the only path is to simply go cold turkey and gear up for a few days/nights (a week or longer most likely) of having to put him down again and again and again and again and again until we are yelling at him, at each other, and the dog……perhaps you can see why I am reluctant to start.

I know that by the time he’s 4 or 5 or 6 or 16 he will no longer want or need one of us to lay with him at night and for naps.  Worst case scenario is that we just deal with it until he grows out of it on his own and treasure the time with him.  And I swear I only thought “Now there’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back again” once.  I reprimanded myself sternly afterwards over a bowl of ice cream.

The Move

 

Well, we survived.  I survived.  Monkey Boy seems to be surviving.  We moved out of the old house and into this fairly nice – though far flung – rental house that costs half of what our mortgage was at the old place.  And we still own the old place, which makes me feel relieved in many ways, despite still needing to pay property taxes and insurance on it.

It takes me 45-50 minutes to get home though, if I can’t get out of town by 5:00 PM.  Which is impossible on the days MB is with his grandparents after school.   That’s what I mean by “far flung”. We’re only 6 miles east of our old location, but it might as well be in the Inland Empire for how far away it feels when you’re sitting in traffic and MB is shouting for water, juice, snacks, or the Wall Street Journal.  I think I’m going to have to pack a cooler every day just to have emergency supplies on hand – anything and everything a 3 year old MIGHT desire needs to be at my fingertips because the other night I seriously thought I was going to lose my shit while we sat in stopped traffic.

Yesterday I was depressed though.  I had gone over to the old house to pick up our plants and whatnot, and the renter came over to pick up some boxes I had leftover, and she just looked so excited to be moving into my house.  MY HOUSE.  I cried all the way to the new house.  I tried to call my two wives – you know, your girlfriends who often do much better in these situations than a husband can do - but they were not available.  So I talked myself down off the ledge.  We still own the house.  We can still move back there someday.  There were things about the house that drove me CRAZY – like the fact that I thought it was a good idea to put the cook-top right under a window.  It is, in fact, NOT a good idea to do this.  Your food splatters all over the blinds, and if you open the window it takes water an hour to boil.  The hardwood floors sounded like buckshot when you walked across them in the mornings….CRACK!  POP!  CREAK!  And would invariably wake MB before he was ready to get up.  And as nice as the appliances were……they were mostly pieces of shit.  Our refrigerator, dishwasher and microwave did not work they way we had hoped they would when we plopped 10K down for them.  Here's a hint:  High-end name brands do not guarantee quality.  The best appliances we had were the oven and cook-top.  Both Kitchenaid.  Our fancy dishwasher (Jenn-Air), which looked so tough and cool in the store smelled like a garbage dump inside and made all our dishes taste like soap.   Also, the living room had a fucked up layout.  Kind of hard to arrange furniture in there because it was long and narrow.  As a result, we never sat in there.  And it was dark, even with the blinds open.  And let’s not get started on the neighbors.  Good lord. We were surrounded on all sides by idiots who do not understand basic street parking etiquette, Fred Sanford's white nephew, and Mrs. Kravetz's nosy daugher-in-law.

So I listed all of these things in my head, reminding myself that it wasn’t the perfect house, that it was JUST a house, and as I pulled up to a red light on Venice Blvd., I looked over and saw a young girl – maybe late 20’s – about as pregnant as I currently am (29 weeks), sitting on a bus stop looking exhausted, a little chilly, and just wishing the bus would come so she could be home already.  And it kind of smacked me in the face.  Yes, I’m sad I don’t live in my fancy Santa Monica house anymore…..but let’s face it.  The house we are in now is far from a shit hole.  We have four bedrooms.  We have a nice kitchen with all the appliances.  We have a huge garage attached with a washer and dryer.  We have forced heat AND air conditioning.  We have 2.5 bathrooms.  And we both have cars.  No one is taking the bus to get to and from work everyday, and I need to just shut the fuck up about being sad.  We OWN a house in Santa Monica.  Someday we will either live there again or sell it and buy something more modest that we can better afford.  But in the meantime, we are very lucky.

And I am also very lucky the transition to Big Boy Bed has gone relatively smoothly.  I dare not write more about that though, for fear of tempting the Parenting Fates to strike me a nasty blow.

October 22

So today I was grateful for a late start day at school - one that happened to be a "professional prep" day.  Which means that a few years ago a few of our union representatives negotiated that one of the late-start meeting days should be devoted to teachers being about to do work in their classrooms rather than sit through 2 hour meetings every week about this that and the other.  I'm not a huge union zealot, but according to the bumper stickers, they ARE the folks who brought us weekends.  And for that, I am glad.  And now I'm also glad that they have given us professional prep days.  Because today, I really needed it.

So I sat in my classroom with the job of sorting through my thoughts and filtering out what I am feeling from what I want, from what I need, and from all that mess a plan began to develop.  The way I used to do this (pre-marriage, pre-baby) was to sit in bed in the morning with a big steaming cup of coffee and write.  I would write about whatever I was thinking, feeling, sorting through.  I have boxes of old journals in our garage I am absolutely unwilling to part with.  How will the people of the 22nd century know how we lived, if not from my old journals?  Sadly, most of my journals have to do with noodling out troubles with men instead of interesting current events and trends.  But hey.  Whatever.  I'm not the one that has to read through them.

So I sat at my desk and just started writing.  What is the problem?  A few pages on that.  What do I need to do?  Another few pages.  If I decide that X is what I want to do, what do I need to do to get there?  And this was the big one:  If I know what I need to do, then what is holding me back?  And I discovered it was three things:

Fear.  

Lack of information.  

Lack of a plan. 

Once I identified the three things holding me back, it was easy to deal with them.  Fear I can live with.  I'm actually NOT afraid to take steps I might need to take.  The fear comes from not having enough information to make an informed decision. I then picked up a phone and made an appointment to get the information I needed that I did not have.  After that, it was easy to make a plan.  After I have my informational meeting to answer some questions about my options, I can revise my plan.  But I also figured out steps I could take today that would get my plan started.

One of my big ah-has was that I have not been present in many of our latest decisions.  Why this is so is rather complicated.  But it boils down to thinking that I trust my partner, he is a smart person, he has our best interests at heart.....and I really wanted him to know what he was doing.  Again, I really WANTED him to know what he was doing.  The result - I ignored some of my gut feelings about decisions and let him lead.  Not that anything was a huge mistake, but I do fault myself for rolling over so often in the past four years and not pushing back more.  So here we are.  Without going into details I can tell you that I am taking steps to fix our current financial position while at the same time taking steps to protect and educate myself.  And all I have to say is "HELLO SELF!  Feels so good to see you again!!!"  It's been a while.  I have a plan A and a plan B.  And I am feeling back in control.  Sort of.  The money stuff is still there, but the good news is we have an influx of money coming in from 4 commission checks in a few weeks, so many of our immediate cash problems can be solved.

So we'll see how this plays out over the next year or so.  We found a rental yesterday we liked a lot.  We are meeting with renters on Friday night who want our house, and we really like THEM a lot.  So hopefully everything will fall into place and get us out from under this beast in the next few weeks.  We'd like to scramble and be moving by November 16th.  It could happen.......

Yesterday

My list for yesterday is a little short - it was a hard day, so I'm trying really hard to look beyond this financial mess and just see the little things that were good.  It's looking like we are going to have to rent out our house (and still pay $2000 a month to own it) and rent somewhere, which looks difficult because our living expenses will not be too much smaller than they are right now.  We have to seriously reign in our spending.  Which is fine for me b/c I spend nothing (usually).  But MM has a vaguer sense of what goes out every day/week/month on incidentals, so that will be a tough battle.  BTW I've heard great things about mint.com so I'm going to be trying it out.  Soon.

Anyhow, here is my list of things I was grateful for yesterday:

a tuna sandwich on sourdough roll with onions and pickles

my parents, who, while they cannot bail us out financially, are there for me and they are not saying anything like "told you so" or "What were you thinking".  I know I could spring pretty much anything on them and they would roll with it and say "how can we help".

And apparently MM has found some renters who would really be great for our house, (though we need to negotiate on the price just a little bit), and they're willing to wait until December/January to get in.

Today will be a better day.  I'm already thankful that it's a late-start day at school (kids come at 10) and the morning hours are devoted today to being able to just work in my classroom.  Alone.  As in, by myself.  I might just indulge and allow myself an extra coffee and pastry and watch the Today Show on tv.  Today I want to be kind to myself.

Today's List

Okay, I already mentioned that I was grateful that my body was able and willing to wake up at 4:45 this morning and that MB slept until nearly 7, giving me precious time in the morning when I actually feel productive and alert (as opposed to comatose and exhausted).

I am grateful that MM came to school today at 2:45 and sat in my class for the last 15 minutes of the day to chauffer me to my doctor's appointment at 3:30.

I am grateful that when I asked MM "What do you want for dinner tonight" he answered correctly, "How about I go pick up burritos?"   Which was exactly what I was hoping he would say.

I am grateful for MB's teacher, who emails me with little stories of his day.  Today he asked her as she came back from lunch "How was your lunch today?" and she said "It was great thanks for asking!  How was yours?" and he said "It was great.  My clementines were so juicy".

I'm grateful that MB is sick and will probably be going to bed early, which means I will be going to bed early too (see how I turned that one around???)

See you all tomorrow!

Gratitude

Things here are stressful.  We've been trying to sell our house since the beginning of July.  We simply cannot afford to live here anymore. MM's business is slow, and my teaching salary doesn't even come close to covering it.  We both thought it would sell quickly, since it is an amazing house in a highly desirable area.  Not so much.  This economy is killing us from the back-end and the front end.  We thought that we were doing The Right Thing:  Coming to the realization we could not afford to be here, so we were going to simplify and live a more modest life.  Oh the satisfied looks of Being Noble that passed between us whenever we talked about it.  It felt good.  It felt right.  We were ready to make the sacrifice, scale way back, move into a smaller house, get rid of all our STUFF....possibly even move into a house with ONLY ONE BATHROOOM.  Yes it's true.  We considered it.  Except......we can't sell this fucking house.  We've reduced for the second (and last time), and put it up as a lease as well (which means we will have to rent since we can't afford to buy anything without the sale).  It's very easy for me to wake up in the middle of the night and wonder in terror how are we going to do this?  We have a new baby coming in February.  Where are we going to be?  How will be be able to afford rent plus the ridiculous property taxes that come along with owning this house??  Will we ever be in a place where we can just stay home on the weekends, watch football and eat pulled pork sandwiches (thank you cheesefairy for the recipe) without having to scramble around cleaning the house to make it look nice for a Sunday open house?

Except......except.....I can't stop thinking that we are still very lucky.  Yes, our bank account is dwindling, we are living off credit until some commissions come in next month, we have a house we need to unload and can't.  But we HAVE a bank account where we can get credit, we have some commissions coming in next month, I have a steady salary with benefits, we have family close by who can help in the short term, we OWN a home in a highly desirable area that (geesh) we might have to keep and figure out how to pay for, but at the end of the day we would still OWN it.  We are healthy (well MB has had a cold for the past 3 weeks but is in overall good spirits except when he wants a popscicle and then will remind me how very sick he is using his most feeble and weak voice), we both are not afraid to work hard, things between us, while not hot and passionate, have been amiable and friendly for quite a few months allowing me to see just how healthy that is for MB who is constantly requesting we do things "as a family" - Family hug, family sandwich, family trip to the market, family reading of stories.....gee, I get the hint.  Got it.

Yesterday as I loafed at my parents house and MB napped for our 1,003rd Open House Sunday at our own home, I was reading through Real Simple magazine the November issue.  The whole thing was about gratitude.  Their point:  Think good thoughts, be grateful for the little things, and suddenly the list of things you feel grateful for will seem endless.  So that is what I'm going to try to do.  Yes, having open houses every Sunday is a huge hassle.  But we are lucky we have a safe, quiet, comfortable space where we can go every weekend so I can rest my pregnant body and MB can sleep.  And there are free issues of Real Simple Magazine just waiting for me!

In my classroom, I'm teaching my kids to look for the thick ideas when they read.  The ideas they have that will generate great conversations, generate disagreement, difference of opinion, or deeper wonderings about characters and plots.  I'm also teaching them to stay away from questions that will be answered with further reading.  Will Sam learn how to make fire?  Either yes he will, or no he won't.  Read on to find out.  No conversation there.  I am going to try to turn some of these big questions in my life into those thin questions:   Will we sell our house or have to rent it out?  Read on to find out.  Let's not spend hours talking about it because it's going to either go one way or the other, and the story is already written.

Instead, let's focus on the characters, the details, the setting.  Listing the small things in my life that are wonderful seems a much better way to spend my time these days - mostly because they are free, but also because they are the things that add color to my days.  So my goal is to list them every day for a month- the small things I'm grateful for that happened that day so I can shift my focus toward the good and hopefully bring more good into my life.

So stay tuned for my list today.  Already on the list: Having an hour+ to myself this morning to drink my coffeen and write while both MB and MM sleep.  It's 6 AM and counting!!!

Back to School

I'm back in the classroom, in front of a group of thirty 10 year olds for the first time in nearly 5 years.  That may lead you to think that I've been staying at home with MB this entire time.  You would be wrong.  I am not cut out for the SAHM gig.  And I am never more sure of this than I am in early September when it's time for me to head back to work again.  HUZZAH!  Conversations about things other than toothbrushes, smarmy British trains who talk, and trying not to hate too much those smarmy British marketing people* who put an insert into every train package with a CHECKLIST of all the trains and their names so that my child is constantly referring to his "yist" to see which one he wants RIGHT NOW....yippee!!!!!

I do not want you to think I don't enjoy playing with my son.  I do, very much.  But to fill 7 days a week, every week with no end in sight.... I think near the middle of it I was quite possibly heading toward clinically depressed.  I like working.  I enjoy the break I get from the responisbility of parenting.

You may be wondering why, then, would I choose to subject myself to a job where I am the stand-in parent for other people's children.  The difference is two-fold.  First, they are not my kids, so the stakes are different.  Though I have to admit, after having one of my own my entire lens through which I view my students has changed completely.  I think I might be more compassionate now where before I might have been just a touch impatient.  Crying because you missed ONE on a facts test?  Come on brother.....grow some skin.  That was then.  Now, said student just got a big hug and some time in the bathroom.

The other difference is that these kids are ten.  TEN years old.  In a world where most of my conversations are held with a 2 year old, talking to ten year olds feels like talking to someone from the United Nations.  They are smart, insightful, witty, socially aware (sometimes too much so, thus the UN analogy), sarcastic, empathetic.....I could go on and on.  It's exciting to get a glimpse into my child's future self.

It's exhausting, but fun.

On another note....MB starts preschool Monday.  MM will be the one transitioning him - mostly because he does so much better if I'm NOT there.  I'm excited and anxious and sad.  Excited because this is an amazing school that will open his horizons in ways we could not do for him at home.  Anxious because he is not at all thrilled with the idea of going to school, and has been abundantly clear with me on that point.  Sad because I will not be there to take him to his first day of school and sad because I know how unsure and anxious he is about this transition and that I will not be there for him......even though intellectualy I know he will most likely have an easier time of it if I'm NOT there.

We met his teacher yesterday and he said at the end, "Teacher is soooooo nice."  So I'm cautiously hopeful.  I will keep you posted.

*I am fully aware that said marketing people may very well be smarmy Americans.....I have no idea where these trains are produced and marketed.  I do know, however, that it wasn't until we began our hot and heavy love affair with these trains, has my child used the word "splendid"  when referring to doing a good job.

Star Power

I don't know about you, but I think it must be pretty exciting for John McCain to be sharing his ticket with Tina Fey........

Can't We Just Watch TV Like a Normal Family???

This past week Monkeyboy’s wake up time in the morning has ranged anywhere from 5:13 to 5:45.  I don’t need to remind you that I am pregnant.  I also probably don’t need to tell you that I am unbelievably resentful toward someone who USUALLY sleeps until 6:30 insisting that it’s perfectly reasonable to wake up at 5:13 to go play.

 

And that’s what he wants to do.  Our normal routine is for him to come into our room, into our bed, where we turn on the tv and let him watch as much as he wants while we try to snatch a few extra winks of sleep.  But lately we’ve been getting requests like, “Let’s go see what the TOOTHBRUSHES are doing!!!!”  Um, WTF?  Fast forward to one of us (usually me) leaning blearily against the bathroom wall while he happily puts electric toothbrushes in and out of their charging bases, has them talk to me, talk to each other, go down for naps (oh lordy, if only….) and miss each other if one is put across the sink basin from the others.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

I don’t know about your dad, by my dad gets a lot of stuff in the mail.  A lot of mail order stuff from places like Staples – even though there is a store less than a mile from his house.  A result of all these packages are all the little boxes.  Last week my dad turned one of the little boxes into a “pretend electrical outlet” so MB could plug in his coffee maker, cell phone charger, and vacuum (yes, he has real appliances that he frequently plays with, because it’s easier to buy him his own so he will leave MINE alone).

 

I suspect the early wakings this week have something to do with his excitement to GET TO WORK with his electrical outlet.  There is coffee to make, things to blend (yes, he has a blender too), a vacuum and cell phone that both need frequent charging.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love his imagination and the way he is so creative in his play.  I am just wishing right now (5:24) that he wanted to watch back-to-back episodes of Sesame Street or something so I could get a little more sleep.  Is that so wrong?