Carleen and Mike

A few mornings ago, while I was staying overnight at my parents house, Liam woke me up by giving me a sloppy messy kiss on the lips. Putting Liam to bed at my parents is always tricky and more often than not, he ends up in bed with me, usually caddy-corner with both feet tucked tightly between my ribs. In any case, there was something special about this good morning kiss, something different. It occurred to me later what it was. My son was learning to show affection without encouragement, all on his own, without being goaded by some annoying adult.

Oddly enough, however, that same weekend there was another change in my son. Being displaced at my parents for a weekend is both enjoyable and stressful. Enjoyable because I get pampered and fed but stressful because Liam and I have to live out of duffle bags. Food has to be meticulously chosen and packed. A little of this in case he doesn’t like that, a little of that in case he isn’t in the mood for this…you get the picture. On this particular weekend I had to pack stuff twice. By Sunday I was in one of my “when will my life stop sucking so much” moods so I decided to lighten my spirits by taking my little one to the pond in his Rider wagon to feed the ducks. He loves his Rider wagon, calls it his “vroom vroom”. His grandpa decided to come with so off the three of us go to the pond. On the way Liam is pointing at the cars driving by, at the trees and the mailboxes, making his little ewok sounds, smiling, happy.

Unfortunately, during the trip back, Liam decided he didn’t want to ride in his wagon but wanted to walk. So we walked. Understandable. I mean, he’s just acquired the motor skills to be able to walk and run after spending the first year of his life sitting in contraptions with wheels so who can blame him for wanting to walk through a park. On the way, while getting a little over excited about something he saw, he accidently threw his sippy cup on the concrete pathway, popping it open so all the water spilled out. He had hardly drunk a drop of water from the sippy cup since leaving the house that day so I didn’t think this was a big deal but apparently, once he saw that the water from the cup was indeed gone, he decided he was thirsty. So thirsty in fact, that he started to cry and stomp away from the path in the opposite direction we needed to go. My father and I stared at him as he went, a little perplexed by his reaction, since Liam has usually been a pretty calm child, only throwing mild tantrums that were easily dealt with by simple diversion (look Liam, look at the birdies!). However, in this instance it seemed clear that it was going to take more than a makeshift noise maker to convince my child to walk the two mile hike back towards his grandparents house so my dad tried the ever reliable trusty pick child up, console child, place child on shoulders and say “Look! Liam is taller than everyone”.

Liam’s reaction to this was to vigorously shake his head and scream louder so we tried the wagon again. All of a sudden, out of nowhere my child started to grow additional limbs, possibly two heads, I’m not sure, all of them kicking, swinging and punching the air. It was around this time that a runner passed us by. I looked up and smiled trying my best “Happens all the time, just a spirited child, got it totally under control, completely know what I’m doing here. Really” look.

Then a thought crossed my mind, all this tantrum throwing must be making him hot so I took off his jacket and stood him up to see if he would walk again. Instead, he fell back on his butt and continued to cry so my dad picked him up and tried to hold on to him the best he could as we walked back to the house.

I breathed a sigh of relief when we finally made it back into the neighborhood and Liam was again walking, a crooked path, but walking and not crying anymore thankfully. We passed by a couple working in their yard and had a neighborly chat, got the usual coos and awes when Liam flashed his smile at them. We got to the corner of that street and things started to go down hill again. I don’ t recall exactly what got him started but it had something to do with not being able to go in the direction he wanted to, so, again with the extra limbs and heads flipping back and forth. My dad suggested I run back to the nice couple in the yard and ask them to fill up his sippy cup with water. So I sprint back and ask, trying not to sound like a desperate panicked mother, however, any attempt at this point seemed fruitless since I noticed my shirt was on inside out (navy shirt, white tag in the back…nice) and I think, not entirely sure, but I think my eye was starting to twitch. The nice couple quickly filled the sippy cup to the top and even include ice to make it nice and cool. I walked back towards Liam and Dad feeling proud. I felt like a hero. I had water. Things would be fine now. He drank a couple of sips but then something else upset him. Dad and I just kind of looked at each other, took a deep breath, picked him up and carried him the rest of the way home. A walk that normally would take about forty minutes tops ended up taking us nearly two hours.

And that’s kind of how it’s been for the past few weeks. Liam has entered a new phase. Mike and I have struggled a little with the adjustment, lost our tempers a little more than we would wish, however we’re taking it with stride. We’re delighted that he’s enjoying ball games and has gained the necessary motor skills to throw and kick balls, however, we’re not so delighted that he throws everything else he gets his hands on like, food, toys, phones and shoes. It’s complicated to explain to a eighteen month old that you can throw this but not that. He obviously finds throwing to be some kind of stress reliever because he also does it whenever he’s mad and is told he can’t do something. When my cousin, Jill, came to visit this morning with her two sons I took the opportunity to ask her advice on the throwing situation but the best she could give me was “duck”. She recalled that her son had gone through a similar stage but that, luckily, it was short-lived, so we’ll cross our fingers to that.

Unless somebody dear to me decides to die in the near future, this month is going down as the worst month of 2008 (and we’re only two months in). In addition to the local corruption and headbanging going on, our city is also currently experiencing a full blown flu epidemic. I would find you the article that supports these claims but our newspapers’ online archive sucks (I distinctly remember flu or maybe health epidemic in the article title…I’ve tried both and neither pick of squat).

Although I’m fully recovered from my flu (for now), everyone around me is sick. I mean real sick. Co-workers, friends and family. Mike has been down with the full blown stuff, chest, cough, fever since Wednesday night. I’m here at my parents again trying to keep Liam and myself quarantined since I currently have no sick days left and don’t want to catch anything that will force me to have to go to work sick or stay at home with unpaid leave. I was supposed to go to Tulsa today for a workshop but my poor mom, who has already had the tummy flu twice, has now caught the other kind of flu or something of its kind we don’t really know yet, all we know is that she’s not well. We spent a frantic fifteen minutes this morning right before I was supposed to leave trying to figure out whether I should use my last family sick leave to stay at home since I really hated the thought of her taking care of Liam all day feeling the way she did. I felt guilty no matter what decision I came close to choosing. Staying home might make me look bad at work. Going would leave my mom under strain. Me staying would then make my mom feel guilty for being in a condition that would warrant me missing work. So then she would back out insisting she’d be fine. One look at her expression would tell me the exact opposite. Round and round we go. My dad, bless him, insisted that he could handle it, which I’m sure he could, but I know my mom and I know that if I wasn’t around and dad was left alone with Liam she wouldn’t rest like a good patient, she would be up and about helping.

So, I stayed at home, which turned out to be the right choice in the end since I just put Liam to bed with a 101 degree fever. He’s been out of sorts ever since he woke up this morning and went through several crying fits throughout the day. I’m hoping his symptoms are of the simple teething pain/bubbles in the tummy sort of stuff because Mike and I have worked very hard to try and keep him away from all the flu people so he doesn’t have to go through that kind of discomfort. I don’t know. We should probably just give up and hope that as one family member begins to feel bad, another will begin to feel better and somewhere out there they’ll be somebody to take care of our son in the meantime.

It never occurred to me until today how lost I’d be without my parents. It really got me thinking. For one thing, I’m not aware of my dad ever staying home from work to take care of Mitch and I when my mom got sick. She didn’t get “sick leave” from being a stay-at-home mom. So, as the working person in the house, imagining myself in a situation where I didn’t have my parents close by like this, do I get to say “Eeek, Mike, fever of 102. Man. That must suck. And that cough sounds horrible, hope you don’t end up with bronchitis again. Well. I’m off to work.”

Yeah, right. I mean, this is precisely the reason I did stay at home today. Parenting is changing for the better in someways at least. I’d be willing to bet if the tables were turned, Mike would stay home for me. I was faced with a situation where I could either leave my son at home with sick people, making things hard on them and risking the health of my child or stay at home and take responsibility for my child (no stranger or non-family member will be babysitting Liam until he’s able to talk…so alternative childcare is not an option…you should hear some of the horror stories I’ve heard). Yes, it was my last family sick. Oh well. We’ll just have to hope that March will bring with it a fresh breeze that will wipe away all the sickness in this town. As for all the headbanging at city hall? Who knows how long that will go on.

SPLAT!

Despite all its glory, pregnancy and child bearing can really do a number on a womans body. Since having Liam, I often feel as though my body just isn’t as tough as it used to be. Like it can’t endure as much as it used to. I often have unexplained random pains in places. The skin on my face just looks so tired and patchy all the time. I go through these strange dizzy spells a lot. My eyesight is worse, I sit wearing my glasses on the couch and the subtitles of a movie still look blurry. Last week, many of these symptoms were really starting to annoy me so I decided to look some stuff up on the internet. Now, one of the most important rules you learn in library school is that you should always discourage a patron from trying to self-diagnose themselves according to what they read online. Unfortunately, I self-diagnose all the time and for a short period last week I was convinced I was dying from either a) Addison’s disease or b) a very rare form of cancer known as Adrenal cancer. In fact, the latter is so rare it only makes up 2% of cancer diagnoses each year. Rare or not, I was dying of it.

I was actually in hysterics for about a day over this. Dying before Liam was born wasn’t such a major big deal. We all die sometime. But the thought of dieing before I had seen my son grow into a adulthood was really getting to me. I managed to get into the doctor the next morning. I’ve switched doctors to a lady my dad often goes scuba diving with. She’s a character, sorta of looks like the sort that should be on a ranch in Wyoming ropin’ horses. As I started riddling off all my symptoms she stopped me half way and told me to slow down because she couldn’t write that fast. At that point, I realized what a hypochondriac I sounded like. She was very thorough, something which my dad had already indicated, and I appreciated that. She asked a bunch of questions back and eventually we got around to exercise. “Yes, I run.” “Outside?” “Yes.” “Hello, there it is. With the heat and all, you’re sweatin’ out potassium. Just eat a banana every morning.” So, I’m eating bananas and feeling much better.

However, I am still having some foot problems. There’s something going on with my heel. I called to make an appointment with the podiatrist yesterday but the secretary said that the earliest opening was October 23rd. That’s like a month away. I’m having problems walking here. I can’t wait a month. Can you believe in a town with an estimated forty thousand people, most of them over the age of fifty, we only have one podiatrist?

I’ve been rather giddy the last few days, not sure why. They came to install our new windows on Monday. They look amazing! Mike took pictures, he just hasn’t uploaded them yet. We’ve both been kind of lazy lately. It’s really hard to get things done around the house when you’re in temporary possession of The Office season three DVD set and Willy Wonka’s secret stash is stocked in your kitchen pantry. Priorities folks. Some things are just more important. I’ve had chocolate everyday since last Wednesday and I’m not aiming to stop soon. It’s amazing what an insane amount of high quality chocolate can do to a womans personality.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately anticipating Fall. I don’t know why I’m so excited about the holiday seasons coming up but I think it has something to do with having a kid. I can’t wait to dress Liam up in Halloween costumes and take him to the pumpkin patch to choose a pumpkin, or put up a xmas tree and see what his reaction is when we have it all decorated and the lights are turned on. As adults, we’re so bad about letting these activities loose their appeal and excitement. Decorating trees and such actually become more of a house chore than anything else. Having Liam around is making me feel like a kid again, I really can’t wait. The weather outside yesterday was much cooler than usual. It rained most of the day and it really felt like Fall weather. I had a very twisted urge to play hookie from work so I could stay at home and watch Anne of Green Gables. There’s just something about that story and that red headed chick that just screams Autumn time.

I think I’m going to designate Mondays as my official blogging day. I never blog anymore, I just can’t seem to find the time. It doesn’t help that I spend eight hours a day staring at a computer screen. The last thing I want to do when I get home is stare at one some more. On a similar note, I think to help with the whole techno stress thing, I’m gonna designate Sunday’s No Technology Day. That is, no computer, no t.v. and no car. If I need something at the store, I’ll walk to Wal-Mart. Chances are I’ll be too lazy to do that so whatever I need will have to wait. I may, however, make an exception with the t.v. thing in case Mike wants to watch a movie. I’ll claim that as me and Mike time.

Now that I’ve gotten myself all organized I guess I should blog about something interesting for once, and what could possibly be more interesting then my son. I’ve had some time to reflect on this past year, which has been full of changes both personal and professional. So far, I think Mike and I have it pretty good when it comes to finding the balance between work and home life. We’ve been doing the mom work full time, dad stay at home thing for about two months now. We’ve worked out a flexible schedule (note the emphasis on flexible). Liam still wakes up at night. I have a feeling this probably won’t change until he’s finally got all of his teeth. There are dozens of different schools of thought on this. Most people say he’s supposed to be sleeping through the night by now and that we shouldn’t respond to his crying/whines because this will help teach him to self-soothe and put himself back to sleep. Although there are times when Liam will wake-up and fuss himself back to sleep without any assistance, there are other nights when he simply won’t and needs help. Sometimes he just needs some rocking and a sip of water. Other times he needs a full bottle, especially here lately since he hasn’t been eating to well (probably a combination of teething and growth spurt). When nothing else works, we bring him into bed and co-sleep with him. Those nights are cozy, sometimes too cozy…for some reason he likes to sleep sideways so I usually end up with a foot in my ribs by morning. To help each other out, we rotate the night time responsibilities every two nights. That way we can ensure a few nights a week where one of us can sleep through the night without interruption.

I always come home for my lunches. Depending on how Liam’s nap schedule is, I’ll get at least forty minutes to see him before heading back to work. Mike will often email me throughout the day with short little updates. This helps since it makes me feel like I’m still participating in his daily routine even if I am at work. Most nights I get off at 5:30, drop my stuff at the door, change clothes and eat dinner. I have about three hours with Liam before his bed time routine starts. Most people might consider this a tiring task after eight hours on the job but it is honest to God the best way to unwind from work for me. I love it. I miss him so much throughout the day, I can hardly wait to get home and see him.

I think, maybe, the only time I have difficulty is on the weekends. Because I work all week, I feel a little guilty about taking time to do things for myself. I feel like I should be spending every waking moment I have with Liam. Not only that, but Mike has Liam all week. He needs his breaks too. Then of course, Mike and I need time together. There’s only two days in a weekend, it’s hard to fit all of that in. But all in all, I think we’re doing pretty darn good. If we could just keep our house from falling apart, we’d be in really good shape. I’m still trying to work on Mike with the whole yurt idea. I have a feeling I can swing him when he finds out that plumbing is completely optional.

The last few days have been a little brutal for Mike and I. Yesterday was our five year anniversary. After paying for our car insurance ($300), paying to fix our car ($500), our plane ticket to New York in October ($500) and various other medical bills ($150, give or take), we have practically no money other than what we need for food right now so we weren’t able to celebrate in the way we had planned. This will likely be the last anniversary we have in Oklahoma so we had planned to spend the night at Jarret Farm, the same ranch hotel we we stayed at the night of our wedding. No way we could afford that now. Instead we were just going to do a casual dinner and a movie thing. I took Liam over to my parents house while Mike worked on installing our new tub in the guest bathroom (a topic which requires a entire post for itself). We were to meet up around dinner and finish watching Rome series 2, only nothing seemed to be going right for either one of us yesterday. Liam seems to be teething all of his teeth at once and has some sort of strange allergy/cold thing, probably cold since it would appear that I’m coming down with it too. His moods alternate from wild and happy to cranky, hold me/don’t hold me go away wait don’t move, I don’t know what the hell I want. Mike had his own issues with the bathroom. We ended up being too exhausted by the end of the day to even care that we had made it to our fifth year of marriage. With a cold coming on I decided to sleep in a seperate bed last night. I downed some Benedryl and Tylenol and fell into a coma like sleep only to be startled by Mike at around 4am in the morning. “@*#%! We’re flooding!” We were in the middle of a major thunder/rain storm and water had seeped in through the bathroom wall into Liams’ room, down the hall into our bedroom, soaking the carpet (not a big deal) and our new laminate floors (very bid deal). Our sunroom roof was also leaking, which it does persistantly no matter how often we try to fix it.

I think Mike is about fed up with house stuff and I don’t blame him. If you’re on his Facebook you’ll note his status has been updated to “Mike is cursing his house to Hades”. When I was home for lunch he expressed the hope our house would catch on fire and burn down so we could collect on the insurance and be done with it, but then he realized how bloated the house was and that it would likely not even stay lit. So goes his luck.

This would be my husband at his wits end. If you know and care about my darling Mike, please send him some positive karma in the comments below or give him a sympathetic smile when you see him. My efforts are appreciated but I think he could do with a couple of more “hang in there’s” from friends. Meanwhile, I’m going to fantasize about living in a yurt and cross my fingers that my cold is gone by Monday.

Mike did away with my perky template because it was lacking in a admin link and search box. I’ve lost faith in my ability to choose proper templates so I’ve stolen the one he’s used for his campaign blog. I figure since he’s already used it then it must have his seal of approval :-). Sorry about the avatar. I have no idea who that dude is. I’ll have Mike replace it with a lovely snuggle picture of me and him once he wakes up.

I found out last Friday that the city has pre-approved a salary increase for me. It’s always been a goal to make my position full time professional whether I was in it or not but since Mike and I have been looking for a one person work one person stay at home schedule they were kind enough to include it in this years budget request. I was supposed to keep this secret until the final public approval was made but apparently it’s already leaked so there you go. Unless something drastic happens, begginning in July, I will be a full time professional librarian with salary.

It’s rather ironic that I should find this out now. I was supposed to have an interview for a youth services position at the Tulsa City County Library this morning. I called early to cancel it but no one answered so I had to leave a message. It was really hard to explain the situation on a voicemail and i hung up feeling really awkward about the whole thing. Career goals put aside, Mike and I are exhuasted from our schedule, despite what the city decided I was bound and determined to have a full time position somewhere by the end of summer. When I got to work, I emailed the HR guy to make sure he got my message. It was supposed to be a telephone interview. He returned my email just before lunch to say that he had got it, congratulations on my new position and that out of 25 applicants I was in the top five so they were a little disappointed but they understood. I nearly cried.

The truth is, I would prefer the youth services position. That is my goal here, to work with kids, with teenagers specifically and I’m pushing thirty now and rather anxious to actually start a career, something that gives me a clear sense of purpose. Who knows if I had gotten it. I still would have had to oust four other people and that’s certainly not an easy thing to do. But I’ve applied for several positions at the Tulsa library since graduating and this was the first time I got a call back. When I recieved that email and realized that there really was a chance at this job, I really started to second guess my decision to back out. The library I work at now has done a lot for me and has provided me with a lot of opportunities but I am more then ready to move on at this point. Although the position I have is giving me a lot of valuable experiences, I’m simply burned out on it. I’ve worked at this library on and off since I was nineteen and I’ve shared many wondeful memories with the people I work with, been mentored by some great people, but the office politics and drama that goes on there now seems to be hindering any real progress at this point. I tend to leave work feeling more frustrated then fullfilled these days which was another reason why I applied for the youth services position in Tulsa. I am simply not happy at my current job and that enivitably is making an impact on my personal and family life. I have to take that into consideration. But leaving may not be the best thing for my family. The job in Tulsa paid about four thousand more than the one here. If we stayed here in Bartlesville, that means commuting two hours a day. A lot of gas money and less time with Liam. Moving to Tulsa would mean higher cost of living. The extra four thousand would mean little at this point and Mike may even have to take a second job which defeats the whole one parent stay at home thing. But the plus side would be that I would have my first career job thereby paving the way for when we move back upsate and I need a job up there. However, there’s always the possibility that the job in Tulsa is an absolutely horrible job, so then I’m stuck with a horrible job, a two hour commute, less time with my son and possibly even more unhappy then I am at my current job here in Bartlesville. In the end, I was pretty much hugging my knees in a fit of frustration trying to make a decision. I chose to stay here, to do what I can with the position I have…and keep looking.

I used to be part of this social networking site for moms called Mayasmom, really neat but…I don’t know, there was just so much “you go girl” talk and exasperated moms talking about their chaotic lives, I sort of felt like I was stuck in a Oprah Winfrey show. No offense, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, I’m just too introverted for that kind of thing. Anyway, I did discover a lot of wonderful mommy bloggers while I was there. This lady is one of my favorites. She’s currently heading a project to design a baby bottle shaped like a female breast…novel idea. Anyway, she’s been helping to promote a site called MomsRising which is actually based on a book and documentary by the same name (see preview here) which I’m really liking. They’re a grassroots movement trying to improve the rights of parents (moms especially but I think their intention is to improve things for families in general). Compared to most parents in the country, Mike and I are in a pretty good situation. I have my complaints about the maternity/paternity leave thing (or lack there of), but at least I got some paid leave. However, some parents get nothing and some mothers are severely discriminated against. I can remember a lady at work who’s daughter was having a baby around the same time I was. She works as a nurse. When her employer found out that she was pregnant, she was fired because she was the second pregnant person on that shift and he didn’t want to have to deal with two nurses gone on maternity leave at the same time. Crazy…yup! But when I looked things up, I was shocked to discover that there aren’t any laws that could have protected her or prevented her from getting fired.

They’re also trying to help encourage moms to stop bickering over what’s better, being a stay at home mom or a working mom. In the past few years there’s been literally dozens of books published on this subject. It’s as if there’s supposed to be a particular formula for parents to follow, everyone has an opinion and pretty soon you start questioning your own methods and lifestyle, feeling damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I just caught an interesting study off of DotMoms by the Pew Research Center:

A national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Feb.16-March 14 among 2,020 Americans, finds a widespread belief that today’s parents are not measuring up to the standard that parents set a generation ago. Mothers are seen as having the more difficult job, but they are also judged more harshly than are fathers. More than half of Americans (56%) say that mothers are doing a worse job today than mothers did 20 or 30 years ago. By comparison, somewhat fewer people (47%) say fathers are doing a worse job than fathers did 20 or 30 years ago.

It’s hard enough being a parent…why do we have to judge each other so harshly.