Play-Learn-Grow-Repeat

From Wednesday Mom – Janelle:
After 12+ years of military service, my husband and I made the decision to get out of the Navy and off of active duty. He landed a job as a pilot with a major airline and starts his training this week. The boys and I are very happy for him and looking forward to this new way of life.

Although he has resigned from active duty, he will still be attached to the Navy Reserve Unit with his old squadron here in Mississippi. He can still fly for the Navy, part time, and enjoy the nice military benefits.

Once our friends learned my husband has new job, they immediately asked when and where we would be moving. I would love to move right away, but it looks like we’ll stay put for a while, making our transition to this new life a little easier. We like our school district and we want to minimize the impact on our children. We want to do as much research as possible before we relocate because it will possibly be the last move we do until the boys are in college. We are trying to avoid rushing and risk having to move again.

My husband has done several deployments away from us before, but not in recent years. Now he will be traveling extensively again with his new job. The adjustment with him being away is going to be tough – along with the demands of being a single parent for weeks at a time, but I’m up for the challenge. Face time will be our best friend. The boys and I look forward to boarding our first flight with, “First Officer Daddy.” The world is our playground.

From Friday Mom – Erin:
The end of summer has brought the return of my more chaotic work schedule. Vacations have ended and my phone is ringing non-stop. That is a very good thing from an overall perspective for my law firm and the legal industry, generally. It is a bad thing, however, for achieving balance on the home front. Throw in a growing belly and the fatigue that comes with pregnancy, and things can be downright disheartening.

I’ve been fairly fortunate in that, since returning to work when Rory was just shy of five months old, my workload has not required me to put in quite the same ridiculous hours I was working prior to his birth. It meant that I got to see him nearly every evening and even got to spend most of my weekends at home (rather than the office). The only problem with that good fortune is that I got used to that flexibility and freedom.

Now, as my phone keeps ringing and the workload keeps piling up, I am consistently turning back to work for two to three hours a night after Rory goes to bed. Some days I am able to muster my focus without too much effort. Other days, my eyelids get saggy before I’m anywhere close to being done. If I’m lucky, I manage to work in a few additional chores, like cooking extra food for Rory’s lunches and dinners, or running a load of laundry.

So far, I’ve only had to make minimal sacrifices. Even if there are days where I have to stay 30-40 minutes later than I might like, I still do my darndest to make it home at least to tuck Rory into bed before getting right back to it. As this pregnancy progresses and work continues to pick up, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to keep that up. Fingers crossed.

From Friday Mom – Erin:
Since returning to work after Rory was born, I have found myself needing to take many more deep breaths than I used to so as to avoid losing my temper at the various goings-on of professional life that can grate on a person. When I first started back at the office, I let the little things get under my skin a bit too much. For example, a weekend email I wasn’t expecting would throw me for a loop. Likewise, a call scheduled for 8 am that required me to swap schedules with my husband would make me irate.

Time has made me a bit more adaptable. Work (and life) are impossible to control in any meaningful fashion. I am learning to take it as a given that the days I am actually ahead of the game on my to-do list will be the ones in which four to five new tasks will land in my in-box, voicemail, or meeting request list.

But accepting the inevitable still doesn’t make days like I had on Wednesday night any more palatable. I had a very productive final forty-five minutes before leaving the office, only to find that the document I had been working on froze and the edits I had so painstakingly made were lost. Then, to top it off, I spent a solid twenty minutes fighting with my computer before I could leave, making me late for the few precious moments I get with Rory each evening. Finally, after putting Rory to bed, despite all my efforts to get my computer issues resolved before leaving the office, I was still unable to connect to our remote server to finish up the work I had left to do until late evening.

I took a great many deep breaths that night. And I am doing the same now as I recount the tale. And I am hoping that sometime soon I will learn that ruminating over such incidents is a waste of time. Until then, I will take comfort in knowing that my deep, visceral reaction is a good sign of how much I love and treasure this little guy.

From Friday Mom – Erin:
I have been back at work for a month now. Although Rory’s developmental progress has not missed a beat, my own adjustment to life as a working mom has been much slower going. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, from a purely logistical standpoint, my husband and I have slipped into a workable routine in the mornings and evenings. We are managing our time reasonably well, which is half the battle.

But the bigger battles are elsewhere. Namely, I am at war with the lingering fog of mommy brain. This battle manifests itself in multiple ways. First, it takes much more energy to stay focused than it once did. This is a new struggle for me; I have always been very intense and able to focus for hours on end. Now, I find myself taking breaks and losing my train of thought. That’s not to say I can’t gut it out when necessary. But it just isn’t as natural for me as it once was.

Second, I am finding myself less attentive to details. I have turned in assignments with typos–a transgression I never used to make. I have sent e-mails without the allegedly included attachments. And I have on more than one occasion hung up the phone for an important call without asking a necessary question.

Finally, and perhaps as a result of each of these transgressions, I am battling self-doubt. It is not as intense as a “I don’t know the answer” kind of doubt. Instead, it is more like the wobbly knees of getting back on a bike for the first time after a multiple year hiatus. Regardless, it is a struggle.

I keep reminding myself that all of this will improve with time. Perhaps once Rory stops waking in the early morning to nurse, the fog will clear once and for all. However, in the interim, I am building in plenty of time for breaks and making certain to proofread my work at least two to three times.

From Friday Mom – Erin:
Rory decided that the day I returned to work was a good time to stop sleeping. The night before my first day back, my husband and I got no more than two consecutive hours of sleep at a time. Rory would roll from his back to his stomach and then scream in frustration because he could not roll back to his back. This continued the next night. Getting up and out the door in the morning is hard enough when you’ve got an almost five-month old. Add a lack of sleep to the mix, and the struggle becomes borderline unbearable.

We thought we had overcome Rory’s sleep issues over the weekend. I started adding in a “dream-feed” before I went to bed. By topping Rory off later in the evening, we were able to steal five hours of uninterrupted sleep before he started rolling onto his stomach and screaming. But, on Sunday night, the dream feed backfired. I accidentally woke him up entirely. Then, when I tried putting him to bed again, he cried for a solid hour and a half. We eventually gave him a pacifier, but when he spit it out a few hours later he began to cry again. And again.

Monday night was nearly identical, if not worse. He wasn’t hungry for the dream feed, and my attempts woke him up again. The rest of the night was broken up into 45 to 90 minute periods of sleep followed by 30-45 minutes of awake time. My husband and I awoke bleary eyed. And Rory decided to wake up an hour earlier than usual, too.

We dropped the dream feed on Tuesday night, but Rory continued rolling onto his stomach throughout the night. The longest span of sleep either of us had was about two and a half hours.

We are still working out precisely how we plan to address this recent bout of sleepless nights. In the meantime, I am thankful that my return to the office has been a bit lower-key than I had originally anticipated. As a result, I have had a little more time to ease into this new reality. And I am even more thankful for the freshly brewed coffee in the office kitchen.

From Friday Mom – Erin:
I return to work next week. I informed my colleagues of my official return date a few weeks ago. Since that time, I have been ticking items off my to-do list. I have finally opened Rory’s college savings account, begun preparing our wills, planted some flowers, hung some picture frames, and fit in a few visits with friends and family. Before next Thursday, I hope to finish writing up instructions for his summer nanny, make some initial childproofing changes around the house, and fit in a few quiet hours of one-on-one time with the little guy.

I had been hoping to have a few days of down time when I returned to the office. Unfortunately, I have already been asked to assist on two different matters that will require my immediate attention. While it is nice to know what I will be working on, it is also a little unnerving to know that I will be expected to be “on” so soon after my return. I am curious to see how long it will take for me to feel as though my brain is firing on all cylinders. After all, I have been focused on feeding, changing, and entertaining an infant for the past four and a half months. Legal analysis has been the last thing on my mind.

I am sure there will be good days and bad upon my return. I am already taking deep breaths and taking comfort in the fact that others’ desire to give me work means that my colleagues value my skill and experience. I am also rehearsing my new schedule and working on shoring up my confidence to leave the office earlier than I used to. I hope that using this opportunity to make a fresh start will help me achieve the work-life balance that I often lacked before Rory was born.

I know that my return to work will be an adjustment for everyone in our little family. My husband and I have talked a lot about how we plan to juggle mornings and evenings, including how we may need to trade off watching the monitor when we both go back to work after Rory’s bedtime. I take comfort in knowing that I have the strong support of not just my husband, but of friends and family who have returned to work after the birth of their children and made it through. And I also know that it will be much harder on me than it will on Rory.

As my husband is fond of saying, children have been growing up in spite of their parents for centuries—and I know that Rory will be just fine in this new phase of our lives.

From Friday Mom – Erin:
Shortly after I last addressed the subject of childcare, we learned that we were actually much higher on the wait list at one of the other daycare locations we had been considering. Just last week, Rory was offered a spot in the infant class at a childcare center four blocks from our house. We have heard only good things about the place, and have been impressed during our visits, so we accepted the spot. We’re very excited. We may end up shifting him to another school when he gets to be two or three years old. For now, it is a great fit for his current needs.

But, there is a slight catch. Rory does not have a spot until September. As a result, I am now starting the search for a summer nanny. Because we are only going to need a nanny for three months, we opted to get our own nanny for the summer (rather than a nanny share). We liked the other couple we had met, but once our needs changed we figured it was easier on all parties to part ways.

I started my search process this week by crafting a summer nanny job announcement and posting it on a range of websites. I also contacted the career services directors at local nursing and education graduate schools in hopes of possibly finding a student who might be interested in summer employment. I have also contacted a placement agency in the event that my own search comes up short. I have already received some positive responses, so I am encouraged at the moment. Our plan is to bring at least three different candidates in for an interview before making our decision.

Finding a qualified caregiver is a lot of work, but that is not what has struck me the most about the process. The more striking realization is that I have found the process to be a lot more emotionally daunting than I had originally anticipated. As I had mentioned before, our plan has always been for me to return to my job as an attorney once my maternity leave was over. But now reality has set in—I only have a month and a half of this precious full-time mommy time left. Luckily, Rory keeps me busy enough that I can’t really dwell on that realization for long. However, I am savoring each and every moment a bit more than I had before.

From Monday Mom – Neetika:
Fatherhood seems to have changed as a concept over the last few generations. Dads are involved in their children’s life in a much more hands-on, intensive way. When I’m on the playground with Haley, I see lots of fathers — stay-at-home-dads or those lucky enough to have flexible work schedules — running around with their little ones. They play with the kids actively, give them their snacks, and instruct and admonish their behavior as appropriate. At home, I’m lucky to have a partner who is incredibly involved and invested in our child’s life.

The mentality that once existed in our society held that men had responsibility for earning money for the family, so domestic affairs should be left to “the wife.” Some people in this country may still live this way, but for many this concept is one of the past. Yet opinions are mixed. For example, when Haley is up a lot at night, I tend to her, not Joe. Since he has to go to work in the morning and be “on” in a way that I don’t, we feel the arrangement makes sense. Also, after a particularly bad night, I can always nap when Haley does. So I take on more than Joe does for that task. There are some people who think that’s ridiculous– that I have a full, difficult day just as much as Joe does, so we should split nighttime responsibilities. To each his own.

I can count on Joe to spend almost all of his time away from work caring for Haley and giving me a break. But he’s more than a babysitter. He’s really a parent who takes ownership of her care. At the same time, we can’t escape that I am her primary caregiver. I’m the one who knows how to adjust Haley’s dining and sleep schedule, her latest tendencies and how to cope with them, and ultimately make the big daily decisions.  It’s stressful to always be worrying about those things, even when I’m “off-duty”, but it would be too complicated to cooperatively make every single parenting decision. I put an enormous about of pressure squarely on myself, but I am happy to do it. It’s what makes sense for us.

Depending on the day and time, one of Haley’s parents may take on more responsibility than the other. But we love her exactly the same.

From Monday Mom – Neetika:
Today’s post marks my 100^th blog entry for GrowUpLearning! I can’t believe I have been chronicling my journey for so long. Or that I’ve been a parent for almost that long. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed being a part of this website, and how much I appreciate everyone who reads it. Parenting is such a monumental challenge, and in sharing my stories here, I have felt less alone and more confident.

The other night I was lucky enough to have a break from the hard work of parenting with dinner and drinks with my cousin, who lives close by. We sat at the bar where the big screen television was showing a professional hockey game. We started chatting with the guy sitting beside us, an avid Rangers fan. As we exchanged pleasantries, we each mentioned our occupations. When he asked what I did, I said “Oh, I stay at home with my daughter”. Then he said, “Oh that’s nice, I’d like to stay home!” I think he realized how ridiculous he sounded because he quickly qualified himself, saying, “Actually I bet it’s really hard! My sister watches her boys and it’s, like, no joke.” I know he was trying to make it better, but I felt patronized.

It is really hard to explain why being a stay-at-home parent is so incredibly difficult. I always tell my non-parent friends that more than anything, parenting is relentless. You are charged with keeping your little ones clean, dry, well-fed and rested. You need to keep them out of danger, something that toddlers seem to court constantly. You have to be aware of anything that could possibly trigger a tantrum and be ahead of it. You have to keep your cool. You have to accept that you cannot use the bathroom, make a phone call, pour yourself a cup of coffee, or check your e-mail when you really, really want or even need to. It’s physically exhausting, often with drama happening through the night. But the physical exhaustion is nothing compared with the emotional exhaustion. You think you love your mom, your husband, your sister? Worry about them? Just wait. You’d never know your heart could be this full of feeling. Of course—this is true of all parents, not just non-working ones.

There will always be people who look down on stay-at-home-parents for their own reasons. That’s life. Plenty of people have unfair notions about working parents, too. Even I did before I became a parent myself and got a clue. It’s actually pretty amusing to be around childless folks who think they have it all figured out. But when they join the club, they’ll learn.

Last night I got to attend game 3 of the playoffs. It was awesome. Though it’s a different experience when you have kids. You need to coordinate who is going to watch those kids. You plan when you’re going to get up for food around when you’re going to call home at bed time. And you miss an entire evening with someone who, while they understand you’re at the ballgame, also knows (very well) you chose that over being with them.

I was supposed to be there tonight too. Yes. I said supposed to be. Andrew and I are having a night to ourselves while daddy is at the game tonight.

We got ice cream. We read. Drew pictures. We had dinner. He colored all over the notes that I made for my oral argument tomorrow while he was eating. To his credit, he did ask, “Mommy? Will the judge like if I draw smiley faces all over your notepad?” (while he was coloring over my meticulous notes, but at least he thought to ask…)

Now he’s practicing writing.

He has a massive coloring book that Grammy and Papa got him with 1 line stories about Cars characters above each of the pictures. He colored, then we read the story and then he picked out which words he wanted to write (again, all over my notepad for tomorrow). The letters he can’t figure out how to do on his own, we do together with each of us holding the pen. It’s a little hard for me since he’s a lefty and I’m not. He keeps trying to write with the wrong hand and I keep trying to angle the paper the wrong way for him.

But it’s been a fun night. I don’t get to spend enough time with Andrew during the week. And the weekends have been so full of soccer, I feel like we don’t get to do anything else. I guess I have to get used to that, but it makes me wonder how parents are able to find time for their kids to do a sport and music lessons and still find some semblance of time for themselves…

Balance…

I’m still striving to find it.