NaBloPoMo Day 23

Post removed.


[I did post today - in fact, I had a rather scathing, profanity-laced tirade up about my son's sudden refusal to sleep. But upon cooling off and reflecting, I decided that I don't want that post living on in infamy on the internet. Obviously, all parents get frustrated sometimes... I'm not trying to "erase the past" and pretend that my frustration never happened, but I also don't want either of my children to ever read something I've written at a bad moment and wonder if they were ever anything less than 100% loved. No matter how exhausted and tired and upset I am, I always love them, and I never want them to doubt that. So, out of respect for Isaac, I've removed the post I wrote earlier today. Thanks for understanding].

NaBloPoMo Day 16

I would love to write a post today, but it is now three hours past Isaac's bedtime and he is still awake, so I can't. P spent the first hour rubbing his back, I spent the next hour and a half silently and patiently returning him to bed over and over, and now he's just... crying and calling me. And I'm taking five minutes to post this before going back because I am completely freaking spent.


And did I mention that Nora's sick? Good times all around.

NaBloPoMo Day 13

No prompt again? I guess they don't post prompts on weekends? Bah.

Today's great realization: I need a break. I have been on-duty with the kids nearly all week because of P dealing with his aunt's death. While I understand that and I'm happy to do his share while he does what needs doing with his family, I'm going to need to recover some of that time. I'm not functioning well at all right now.

As I posted yesterday, the kids have been in a HORRID mood this week. On top of that, Isaac is flat-out refusing to nap or go to bed at night without someone staying with him until he falls asleep... and I just.can't.do.that. I can't spend 30-45 minutes, twice a day, staring at the wall waiting for him to conk out. So I leave, and he screams, and I check him, and I leave, and he screams... it took an hour and a half to get him to bed tonight. Friday night took two hours. When I've already spent all day dealing with a surly, cranky toddler who tells me how much he doesn't want to be with me and slams doors in my face... well, I just don't have the patience for a 2-hour-long bedtime battle. My patience is fried.

I'm tired. I'm so tired. Last night I was so tired that I didn't even stir when Isaac left his room, opened the gate, and went downstairs at 2 AM. P was catching up on schoolwork in the basement and heard stomping coming from the first floor hallway. He thought someone had broken into the house, but it was just Isaac, banging around on the floor. And I hadn't noticed! If you had any idea how light of a sleeper I normally am, you would understand how astonishing that is. The heat kicking on usually wakes me up, but last night I slept through my toddler escaping his room and going to another floor of the house. That terrifies me. What if P hadn't been awake?! He could have unlocked the front door and left and I never would have noticed.

So... a break. I need one. I have a meeting tomorrow night, which means that I'll miss bedtime. Hopefully it won't still be going on when I get back. I have a networking event Tuesday night, which I can't even imagine going well at this point, but I need to go. So... Wednesday. I'm supposed to do something with my friend S on Wednesday, and we need to make it something good. I'm craving that adult time so badly right about now.

And for what it's worth, I feel like the world's crappiest mom for not being able to roll with these punches. I love my kids, but I still find the hard weeks to be really hard. And then I judge myself for not being able to be Supermom. My kids deserve a Supermom.

Sigh.

NaBloPoMo Day 12

There's no prompt for today, so I'm going to complain about my wonderful, awesome, impossible children.

My kids have been wild animals this week. I don't know if it's the time change, the full moon, the fact that they were up late a few nights in a row, or what, but they have not been pleasant the past couple of days. Nora has been cranky and whiny and full of attitude. Isaac has been disobedient and screamy and mimicking Nora's bad attitude. Holy hell, let me tell you how fast that makes my blood pressure rise. Have you ever had a 21-month-old scream, "It's no fair! I don't like it!" and then slam a door in your face? It is completely freaking infuriating.

When Nora gets sassy, she can be disciplined. Logical consequences generally work; when they don't, a time-out will almost always do the trick. Isaac, however? Logical consequences mean nothing to him at this age. So we introduced time-outs for him this week, even though he's not two years old yet (which is, as I understand it, the generally accepted "correct age" for beginning time-outs). We've only been using them for the worst offenses (hitting, throwing toys across the room during a tantrum, etc.), and only after other forms of discipline fail to stop the behavior. He'll willingly sit in time-out and he'll apologize when it's over... but then he goes right back to what he was doing. It's maddening. And my patience is waning.

They're usually such sweet, well-behaved kids, so when they go through phases like this, it always catches me off-guard and makes me wonder where we've gone wrong. Nothing else is working, so tomorrow I'm resolving to do what I always do when other forms of discipline fail - love-bomb the heck out of them. P has been away several times this week due to a death in the family and I think it's possible that they're acting up because they miss Daddy and haven't been getting enough focused attention. So I'll give them lots of extra cuddles, do my best to stay as patient as possible, focus on engaging them in kid-centric activities rather than dragging them along on errands, etc. Hopefully that will do the trick because otherwise, I just might lose my mind.

NaBloPoMo Day 10

Prompt: "What is your secret (or not-so-secret) passion?"

There are so many ways that I could answer this prompt. I'm passionate about my kids, obviously. I don't think I've worked harder at anything in my life than I have at trying to be a good mom for them. I love them wholeheartedly and devote most of my time, energy, and headspace to them.

But I'm also passionate about women's rights issues, especially relating to reproductive rights, pregnancy, and childbirth. I find it hard to see eye-to-eye with anti-choice people and I've given great amounts of time and effort towards working on issues of reproductive choice. As for pregnancy and childbirth, I never had much interest in either until I got pregnant with Nora, but I'd now define myself as a fierce advocate for the midwifery model of care and for natural childbirth. (Note: I do not mean that I think midwifery-based prenatal care and natural childbirth are the One True Way, but I do believe in empowering women to believe that their bodies are equipped to handle pregnancy and birth and that they don't need to buy into fear-based models of care. I also believe that women should be permitted to decide how they want to labor and birth and that hospitals too often restrict the rights of laboring women to do the things that will help them manage labor and birth pains without medical intervention). I would love to be a midwife in theory, but in practice I'm skeeved out by blood and don't want to do shift work - so I'm just here, advocating from the sidelines.

I have lots of other passions too, but those are the big ones.

NaBloPoMo Day 7

Prompt: "Making family time is important to me. How do you balance your children, relationship, and work life?" - guest prompt by Ricki Lake

First of all, I heart Ricki Lake. If you haven't seen her documentary, The Business of Being Born, go watch it. Now. Seriously.

Now that that's out of the way...

I don't actually feel like I have a great balance. I have lots and lots of time with my kids, which is awesome. But that time definitely comes at the expense of a vibrant professional life. I work by myself - during naps, after bedtime, and on random mornings or afternoons in the office when P can take time away from his job to cover the childcare. I'm lucky that his job is flexible (for now, anyway), so this arrangement mostly works in terms of allowing me to finish what needs to get done. But it doesn't allow much time at all for networking events, doing the legwork that would be necessary to really grow my practice, or just meeting casually for lunch with other professionals. My business phone goes straight to voicemail most hours of the day - by necessity, because I can't really answer a call that might be from a client or a court with a toddler shouting in the background. Being at home with the kids inhibits my professional life in a lot of ways.

This doesn't mean that I'm complaining, exactly, because this is far better than when I worked for a big firm and my work obligations came at the expense of my family. I will never, ever forget the time that I spent all night in the ER with a 3-month-old Nora, very sick with RSV, and then stayed up the rest of the night writing a memo for a partner at my firm while I watched her breathe laboriously next to me. I will never forget how horrible it felt to leave my tiny, helpless, extremely ill infant with just her dad, unable to nurse her (obviously) to make her feel better, so that I could haul my exhausted butt into the office to hand-deliver the memo and print off copies of the cases I'd cited for the partner in question. And I resent, to this very day, that when I told the partner what the situation was, he made me stay at the office anyway. I wasn't participating in the call, I had done the work he needed, and my baby needed me - but I had to sit there, just in case he had a question about any of the cases while he was on the call. And of course the call got pushed back later and later, so I ended up spending most of the day there, practically falling over from fatigue and worry. I have never, ever had such a wrenching feeling in my gut that something was wrong.

So yeah, all things considered, if things must be out of balance, I prefer the balance to favor too much time with my kids over too much time at work. I miss the money from that job every single day, but I have never - not for a single second - missed the job itself or the stress that it put on my family.

But then there's my relationship. Things are way, way out of balance there. I can count on one hand the number of times that P and I have been out without the kids in the last year: (1) for a day trip to DC last October for a friend's wedding; (2) out to a comedy club with friends for P's 30th birthday; (3) out to lunch and coffee for an hour and a half on our anniversary in August; and (4) out to dinner and a movie while my mom was visiting this October. Hey, look - that's one hand, with a finger left over. Ouch.

To be blunt, we can't afford to spend $15/hour on a sitter, so we only get to go out when my mom is available to babysit. My mom lives 5 hours away, so that's not often. We did have P's parents babysit for that hour and a half anniversary lunch, but it went so poorly that I will never leave my children alone with them again. Also, P has since told me some things about his parents' actions when he was a child that make me hesitant to even let the kids out of my sight when they're around, much less leave them alone together for any period of time. So.

To be brutally honest and blunt, the lack of couple time has been really hard on us. This has been, by far, the worst year of our relationship. P would agree with that, I know, and I don't think he'll mind me sharing it. We've been under a lot of financial stress, we don't get any time together, and staying connected and remembering that things won't always be this tough has been really, really difficult.

This is not the fault of the kids in any way - they certainly aren't the reason we don't go out (i.e., they're well-behaved for sitters, don't freak out about us leaving, etc.). It's a money thing - related to the lack of work-home balance for me, sure, but mainly a money thing. It's a problem that I'm trying to find a way around, but so far I haven't really found a solution. I've suggested a babysitting swap with a friend a few times, and she always says that she's interested, but I don't think she really wants to do it (and they have lots of local family help and don't really need us to babysit for them, so I don't want to force the issue too much).

It's tough, this balance problem. Everything impacts everything else and I often feel slightly helpless to do much about it. I'm mostly trying to be proactive with the work stuff - carving out space to work on my business, applying to grad school, etc. - and hoping that with that will come more income, and thus more disposable income that can be used to fund couple time. It's hard, though. Tough, tough stuff.

Teaching myself to eat well so that I can teach my kids to do the same

Last night at dinner, Nora ate a lot more than she usually does. We were having stuffed shells - one of her favorite foods - and she probably had 5 or 6 shells, along with a piece or two of garlic bread. Towards the end of the meal, she started complaining that her tummy hurt because she was too full. I reminded her that it's her job to fill up her belly when she's hungry, but also to stop eating when her hunger is all gone. She was still chomping on a piece of garlic bread as she complained about her stomachache, so I suggested that she save the rest of the garlic bread for another time. "But I want to eat it!" she exclaimed. I told her that we'd put it in a bag in the fridge with her name on it, so that everyone would know it was hers and nobody else would eat it. Reluctantly, she agreed to save it for later. Less than an hour later, she claimed that she was hungry again and asked to eat it. Not wanting to make it a Thing, I let her have it as her before-bed snack.

I'll admit it: I was pretty freaked out by this series of events. Nora is generally pretty good about self-regulating her food intake, but lately I've noticed her eating more than she really needs of certain favorite foods - mostly cheesy pasta (stuffed shells, tortellini, etc.), breads, and waffles. I know that it's more than she needs because if I tell her that she needs to eat something else (such as a vegetable or piece of fruit) before I heat up more of the food she's asking for, she'll announce that she's not hungry after all and wander off to play, and will not mention being hungry again until close to the next scheduled snack or meal time. And I worry about her because I'm overweight, I struggle with binge eating (especially on carb-heavy foods, just like the ones she's overeating), I have trouble self-regulating my eating, and I don't want her to grow up to struggle with her body and her relationship with food in the same ways that I do.

In sum, I worry that she's learning to overeat by watching me do it. And I'm worried that I'm primarily responsible for messing up her ability to self-regulate her intake of these types of foods.

A few months ago, I read a very enlightening book called Like Mother, Like Daughter: How Women Are Influenced By Their Mothers' Relationship with Food - And How to Break the Pattern. As I was reading it, I was really struck by the author's message on the dangers of yo-yo dieting - both to our own bodies and to our daughters' perceptions of their own and their mothers' bodies. I put the book down and resolved to eat when I was hungry and "trust my body" from that point forward. Sure enough, within a few days, I'd started binge eating again and become convinced that I wasn't strong enough or smart enough to interpret my bodies' signals. I gained several pounds and immediately went on a diet - a diet which went straight to hell after a few days because I got stressed and ate more than I was supposed to and then couldn't get back on track. And so the cycle continued.

I think there was some part of me that thought that as long as Nora didn't know exactly what I was doing to my body, and as long as I continued feeding her well and giving her the "right" messages about eating when hungry and stopping when full, that she would be okay. "Do as I say, not as I do," or something like that. I was careful to weigh myself when she was out of the room, not to enter calories into my tracker in front of her, etc. I don't know why I thought that would work. She's a bright kid! Even if I wasn't announcing my intentions, she could still observe on her own that I was eating only a little bit of food for several days in a row, then eating a whole lot of food for several days after that. She could certainly see which foods I was overeating. And she was apparently learning from all of that, even when I thought I was hiding my own body issues oh-so-well.

So basically, the authors of that book were right.

I really, really, really don't want to pass on my messed-up relationship with food to my children. Until last night, I actually thought that I could teach them regulation, self-control, balance, moderation, and a love of eating without figuring out any of those things for myself. That was naive, and Nora's actions last night have made abundantly clear the necessity of confronting my own demons if I'm ever going to be able to teach her and her brother how to eat well and respect their own bodies.

I've been trying to do that today. Breakfast was a bowl of cereal (plain Cheerios), a small glass of skim milk, and 2/3 of a banana (Nora ate the other 1/3). My morning snack was a handful of blueberries, a couple small wedges of melon, and a glass of water. Lunch was three soy chicken nuggets, a large serving of peas, and half of a baked potato seasoned with black pepper and sea salt. My first afternoon snack (I'm sure there will be another at some point because we eat a very early lunch over here) was a glass of chocolate milk and a package of peanut butter crackers. I've been trying to cut back on soda and add in more water - the rule I made for myself is that I have to have a glass of water between each can of diet coke. I'm on diet coke #3 right now - which for almost 2 PM, is actually really good for me (I'm generally on #4 or #5 by this point). I haven't tracked any calories and I don't intend to. I'm trying really hard to just listen to what my body is telling me, feed it when it's hungry, and make good nutritional choices without sacrificing flavor and the joy of eating.

It's hard! I'm coming off of a few days of overeating, so I'm actually still pretty hungry right now, even though I've eaten what I consider to be a reasonable amount of food so far today. The temptation to (a) ignore the hunger or (b) overfeed the hunger is really strong. I'm realizing that I'm afraid of being hungry - it's not a sensation that I generally respond to in an appropriate manner. I'm planning to go and eat an apple when I'm done writing this - that seems like a good middle ground between starving myself and downing three bowls of cereal, which are my more natural inclinations when encountering hunger at a time that I don't want to be eating. But it's really hard. It's a big, big struggle for me.

The other struggle is with giving myself permission to not be perfect at this. I've been yo-yo dieting for decades at this point. Expecting to immediately be able to turn off those ingrained habits and just start eating "normally" is unrealistic. But I'm a perfectionist and it's so easy to say, "well, crap, I suck at this... might as well just do what I want, then." Especially when what I want is to forget about all of this "treating my body with respect" business and eat a whole bag of Oreos.

But at this point, it's not just about me. It's about Nora, who's emulating me. It's about Isaac, who won't be far behind if I don't get a grip. I'm hoping that I can do for them what I've never been able to do for myself. And yes, I recognize that the self-worth issues tied up in that statement warrant their own soul-searching... but one thing at a time. Baby steps.

And Isaac is waking up from his nap now, so I guess I'd better go get him and eat that apple.