Abundance

Christmas has come and gone, as have the in-laws, the gifts (many of which were returned/exchanged), and now the year itself is coming to a close. I've put away all the holiday decorations, even the tree which stayed up through Grandma and Grandpa's post-Christmas visit despite its dry and drooping branches. The only thing I've left up to ring in the new year is the string of multi-colored Christmas lights on our balcony. I think it will be festive to sit out there with our champagne tonight.

My largest task was sorting, organizing and putting away the Christmas presents - in fact, I have not completed that task, thanks to the second load of presents from Grams and Gramps. I can't bring myself to tackle that pile, so it is shoved in a corner behind the couch. I've found that my anxiety level corresponds exactly to the amount of loot amassed and this year there was a lot.

Last year, instead of getting gifts for each other, my husband and I opted for a single joint gift in the form of a digital camera. It was pleasant. Neither of us missed the gifts and we both appreciated having a camera. We still filled each others stockings and that little element of surprise sufficed.

This year we had no big gift on our wish list, so gifts were back - in abundance. My husband got me everything I asked for, from the locket at Banana Republic, to the water bottle I asked for to help me in my attempt to drink 64 ounces a day. My husband was not so fortunate with his loot. I got him a nice coat, but I also got him a toaster oven. Yes, a shiny red toaster oven from Target with a GO RED FOR WOMEN heart health awareness sticker on it. Needless to say, he promptly returned the offending appliance to Target (did I mention he despises Target). I think we will probably go back to the joint gift + stockings next year for my husbands sake.

Speaking of stockings, my daughter had gift opening burn-out by the time she got to the orange Santa puts at the bottom of her stocking to "keep her healfy." It took serious coaxing to get her through the dozen other presents stashed under the tree for her. The amount of presents we got her was a happy medium for my husband and I. It was more than I ever got, but less that he got at Christmas. Still, my Little Beauty seemed genuinely overwhelmed. By the time she got to the number one thing on her list, what she called the "Big Ariel Thing," actually the Little Mermaid Shimmering Lights Dolphin Chariot, LB could barely manage a smile.

My idea for next year: My husband and I will do the joint gift + stockings. For the kids, one gift from Santa and one from each family member (mom/dad/brother or mom/dad/sister) + stockings. I'm hoping this will alleviate bad gift guilt (toaster oven), spending too much money (everything on my list), and gift opening burn-out (LB's experience). We shall see....

Kid Person Post-Kids???

Having a second baby has given me all kinds of false confidence as a parent. Being two deep (as my husband likes to say) has me in the "If I can do this, I can do anything," mentality. Wrong. This past weekend I babysat for the first time in my life. I offered to help out a friend with a new baby by taking her daughter off her hands for a few hours - and she took me up on my offer.

At first I wasn't worried. Our daughters were good friends and they would keep each other amused, right? My confidence began to crack the night before B-day (babysitting day) with one long, continuous nightmare - the kind you attempt to stop by waking up, but are sucked right back into when you drift off to sleep, no matter how hard you try to think of something else. Highlights of the dream: I didn't know when they were going to pick her up and it was getting later and later... I gave her a bath and they were upset and offended... they came to pick her up but they were lecturing and criticizing me and wouldn't leave. All in all it was a long, tedious, stressful dream - just like I imagined watching someone else's kid would be.

I had forgotten (seems to be the theme of my blog) that pre-kids I was not a kid person, and it seems that post-kids I am still not a kid person. The ugly nasty truth is that I am a kid person only for my own kids! Sure, I can appreciate a cute kid, even laugh over silly kid quotes and stories, but to actually take care of someone else's kid - to feed them, correct them, tease them, tickle them... I'm not sure I have it in me. This is probably the reason I've never put Little Beauty in daycare. She has been with me her entire three and half years of existence. Somewhere in the back of my mind I imagine that whoever would be taking care of her would only be tolerating her, and that's not good enough.

Still, I would hate for my friend to think I was only tolerating her daughter. We all enjoyed her visit. She and my daughter made a fort in the living room and unstuffed one of the throw pillows that had a hole in it. Then they cooked the stuffing up as fish inside their fort and my husband happily crawled into the fort and ate the pillow stuffing, I mean fish, that they served him. Little Handsome was a bit more skeptical because of the insane noise level created by the girls. He's a quiet soul, like his mama. I'll admit I did run and hide in my bedroom a few times. My husband would tease, "Don't forget that you're in charge out there." But then the teacher in him would kick in and he'd go take over for me.

Hopefully, other people's kids are like an acquired taste, and it time, with more adventures in babysitting, I'll grow to love babysitting them.

The Post-Apocalyptic Playground

There is something post-apocalyptic about an abandoned playground. It is the movie scene with the mushroom cloud in the distance, while the foreground is a landscape of sharply defined shadows, nobody and nothing left to push the swings except deadly atomic wind...

The first couple years of my daughters life, our routine was to run our errands, then stop at a park before heading home for lunch. So often the parks were completely, eerily empty. Sometimes we'd even drive from park to park hoping to find people - people like us. I met a plethora of nannies and grandmas, but no young stay-at-home moms like myself. I did meet older moms able to stay home after putting twenty years into their career, but it was difficult to relate. The trend, at least in Southern California, is to have children later in life. I suppose there is just too much fun to be had here. But was twenty-five a ridiculously young age to have had a child... I didn't think so.

It began to feel as though the birth of my daughter was the A-bomb that decimated my life, leaving my daughter, my husband and myself as the sole survivors. A habitual prayer of mine became a prayer for friends. God began to answer my prayer just in time, just before I became pregnant with my now four month old son, because secretly I was sick with dread at the prospect of going through the baby years alone again.

Although I am thouroughly thankful for this burguning network of support created by my new friends, I am realizing that there is a fundamental aspect of lonliness to being a mother of small children. The other day, preschool, runny noses, and conflicting naptimes conspired to land my kids and me back in the post-apocalyptic landscape of an empty playground. I sat in one swing with my son on my lap while my daugher played tinkerbell on the swing next to me, swinging on her belly and waving her plastic wand which lit up and chimed.

We were alone most of the hour we spend there, the exception being the point when homeless man came through the park, stopping at each trash can and methodically sorting the contents into black trashbags attached to some kind of wheeled cart. He was shirtless in the chilly autumn breeze, and his bent back was bronzed. A sweatshirt tied around his waist indicated that he had aclimated to a life outdoors.

Watching him I discovered that I too had aclimated - to motherhood. It was enough to feel my little son's warm body leaning back against my belly as we swung, and to see my daughter's radiant face as she acted out her fairy fantasy. My new friends were like that sweatshirt, not always necessary, but a good thing to have for when the weather turned on you.

The Moment...

I've discovered that living in the moment is terrifying. It amounts to a concession that the past is utterly gone, and the future simply doesn't exist. All we have then, the only tangible, is the present - and the present is but a moment.

Yesterday I held my friend's week old son in my arms. He was wearing a hand me down outfit of my son's. I was filled with wonder and amazement that only four months ago my son was that small, that sleepy, that fragile... I'd already forgotten.

Another thing I had forgotten...

My daughter, Little Beauty (3 1/2), was looking at this picture from Halloween (obviously) and she said she liked it because Little Handsome's eyes were open (my son, obviously). When LH was a sleepy newborn LB would get the biggest thrill out of him opening his eyes to look at her. It was a rare occasion. She would torment him with a chorus of "open your eyes little buddy, don't you want to see your sister," until he struggled to produce the little blinks that had us both enchanted with him. Now his eyes are always open, following LB around the room as she meows like a kitty, squinting away from her when she comes up to smother him with kisses, or licks, if she is still playing kitty. I'd forgotten the first thrill of my son's eyes.

Living in the moment means knowing I will forget. It is just too painful. My only solace is this, writing. Not just living in the moment but capturing it - however flawed and clumsy.

A Formal(ist) Introduction...

Motherhood, for me, has been like conducting a deconstructionist reading of myself. The state of motherhood, and even pre-motherhood - from the moment of conception - has exposed the raw inconsistencies and contradictions of my character, soul, spirit. But from these black holes of logic essential truths have emerged, or in some cases, exploded in my face. As a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two, I finally feel ready and somewhat capable of exploring these truths, even the ones that exist in the darker places.... and so I begin this blog.