Lena has never been more than a room away.
When she was born she slept in a basket on my bed in my parents house. Then I found a partner and I started to move Lena into a crib in my old room, while I stayed in the guest room.
Sleep training was hard. It was hard because all comfort had always been an arm reach away but all of the sudden I needed my bed back, for me, and Lena needed to sleep on her own, for her, and I got in these stupid arguments with my parents that were all along the lines of, ‘why do you need to change what is working, you’re just being selfish, why are you letting her cry.” And I had to say “Because it’s clearly not working, and I’m not being selfish, and she needs to learn to sleep on her own."
The thing I hadn’t realized then, and maybe am just even learning now was that I was being selfish, but most importantly I was allowed to be selfish, it was in fact important for me to be selfish. 21 year old me was not able to articulate all of this. I hadn’t figured out how to be a parent, I hadn’t figured out how to advocate for Lena, or myself. But we made it through, all of us. I can’t dwell on it too much without it still hurting—how hard it is to be both a parent and a child in the same house and the same time.
And then we moved out. And we shared an apartment with a roommate; a three-bedroom ground floor apartment where my roommate had the master bedroom, and Lena and I had the two bedrooms at the other end. Still at the end of the hall, still right next to each other. I heard her fall asleep, when it thundered at night I listened for her movements, waited for her to come to me.
And then we moved again, to A House of Our Own, a teeny house, where our bedrooms touch, where the light from her nightlight spills into the hallway and into my room. And when she’s sick I hear her cough and when she’s sad I hear her cry and when I’m sad she hears me cry and when I am happy she hears me joyful and we are right next to each other, as we have always been. As we have always been.
But we are both growing and changing. I want to go running in the evening and I ask Lena if she would be comfortable staying at home by herself for a little bit, no more than an episode of Pokemon, and she says, “I don’t know, I think I would get a little scared.” So I don’t leave her yet, I don’t go running when she is home, even though I want to so badly, even though we can go hours without talking in our little house, even when we are right next to each other.
I ask her if she likes it just the two of us and she says yes. And I say would she like it if there was another person around and she knows the answer I want to hear so she says “I don’t care.” She pauses, then, “But I like that it’s just us.” And I try to explain and I say, “You know how your other friends have a mom and a dad, and it’s nice because they have each other and I know we have each other but sometimes adults need other adults.” And Lena says, “Are you getting married?"
It’s daunting. To imagine adding someone into our lives. To change the life that we’ve put together. But we need it. I need it. I need my bed back again. It’s time for me to be selfish.
I feel like I did seven years ago and I’m justifying my decisions as an adult, as a parent. And I am saying in vain that other people’s kids sleep in cribs and other people let their kids cry it out, and other people have lives and relationships and do things for themselves and I can only hear my parents wondering why I need to change things when “everything is working out so well, you’re doing so great."
and I want to say no, I’m not.
I’m not.
I’m not.
I’m not.
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Monday, October 6, 2014
"wish you would step back from that ledge my friend"
L had a new play date this weekend with a girl down the street from us. I would like to take a moment to give myself a pat on the back for overcoming my social anxiety and setting up this play date yes I did that all by myself thankyouverymuch we are very proud of how much we are growing up.
The mom is great, when we were making small talk at the bus stop I asked if she was from this area and she said, no, but she feels like it anyway since she's been here since she came for college in 1986.
*long pause*
Well I was born here and she's still been here longer than I have.
I did some "back of the envelope calculations" (the best phrase ever) and figured out that she had to be at least 18 years older than me. C'est la vie. (Pronounced "cess la vi".) At the park I find out we're twenty years apart, and we laugh at this, but we then find we have so many shared experiences. Wanting to force our kids into Sunday school, crying in the bathroom after we found out we were pregnant. Loving to share the most intimate details about our life. We're not so different.
We walked our kids to the park together, chatting the whole time, and after two hours outside L went over to their house to play for another two hours, while I made all the meals for this week (10 black bean and sweet potato burritos which after making them I never want to eat) and a lasagna. I walked over to their house to pick L up, and there is Christmas music playing. Fred (that's the mom, who is also Jewish) said, "I was trying to find some innocuous music. They didn't like Nat King Cole so we settled on this." She says to me then, when her daughter was a baby she listened to the Clash and the Kinks but now she's older so she worries more about the lyrics.
That's the only time I feel conscious about an age difference. L and I listen to a lot of Third Eye Blind and Rilo Kiley.
90s kid!
The mom is great, when we were making small talk at the bus stop I asked if she was from this area and she said, no, but she feels like it anyway since she's been here since she came for college in 1986.
*long pause*
Well I was born here and she's still been here longer than I have.
I did some "back of the envelope calculations" (the best phrase ever) and figured out that she had to be at least 18 years older than me. C'est la vie. (Pronounced "cess la vi".) At the park I find out we're twenty years apart, and we laugh at this, but we then find we have so many shared experiences. Wanting to force our kids into Sunday school, crying in the bathroom after we found out we were pregnant. Loving to share the most intimate details about our life. We're not so different.
We walked our kids to the park together, chatting the whole time, and after two hours outside L went over to their house to play for another two hours, while I made all the meals for this week (10 black bean and sweet potato burritos which after making them I never want to eat) and a lasagna. I walked over to their house to pick L up, and there is Christmas music playing. Fred (that's the mom, who is also Jewish) said, "I was trying to find some innocuous music. They didn't like Nat King Cole so we settled on this." She says to me then, when her daughter was a baby she listened to the Clash and the Kinks but now she's older so she worries more about the lyrics.
That's the only time I feel conscious about an age difference. L and I listen to a lot of Third Eye Blind and Rilo Kiley.
90s kid!
Monday, June 10, 2013
that thing we do
Grad school.
Let me set the stage for you: It's the first day of my second week, and I'm already crying in the car on the way home. This is going to be so much fun.
Here's the conversation I heard that caused me to have an emotional breakdown:
postdoc: Hey what time are you going to be here until?
undergrad: Probably 7:30.
**a side note, this is somewhat exaggerated for comic relief, because I did not actually have an emotional breakdown in lab, and I'm not this emotionally unstable most of the time, but here you have it.
me on the other side of the lab bench: ...
There were about 800 thoughts running through my head after this. Because *I* can't stay until 7:30. I have no idea what you would do in lab at 7:30. I assume the same things you do from the hours of 9 to 5? Is there something special that happens after 5 in lab? Do elves come out and whisper sweet nothings at the PCR machines? Do the techs turn into pumpkins? Whatever happens...I will never know.
And here comes this recurring theme that apparently is the story of my life: giving myself a hard time for things beyond my control. Do they have graduate program for that because if they do I would totally win.
As much as I would love to put my head down, do my work, be so secure with myself that I don't give a shit what anyone says/thinks about me...the reality is that's not me. And that's also something I need to stop fighting. I can't give myself a hard time for giving myself a hard time. I can't beat myself up for caring what other people think about me. The only think I can do is to try to remind myself that it doesn't matter as much as I think it does.
I started out not knowing whether or not to bring up that I have a kid. It didn't come up in interviews, because in the question of "why do you want to go to graduate school" the fact that I have a kid has absolutely zero relevance. But who I am as a person, and who I am as a scientist? Having a kid has 100 percent abso-fucking-lutely relevance on who I am. Why do I keep fighting that? I'm going to stop fighting that. So much so that I am going to start walking around with a sign on my head that says 'emotionally unstable single parent' because that's who I am, dammit, and it might help people deal with me.
It leads me to this funny thing that I never imagined I'd have to deal with, which is 'coming out' as a single parent. When you meet a twenty-five year old that's still wearing a uniform of chacos, skirts with elastic waists and t-shirts, your first thought is not immediately, "this person had a child". and then upon finding out that said person does have a child, your subsequent thought is not "this person is a single parent." Our society is many things, hetero-normative, democratic, fairly misogynistic, to say a few, and in academia, if you are a woman who has a kid, you are over 30 and married. (If this is not the majority, feel free to correct me. I just took an informal tally in my head to get those demographics.) I'm not out to "subvert the dominant paradigm" or anything, much to the chagrin of my high school self, but here I am. (Also high school self would never have picked this particular dominant paradigm to subvert.)
You know what I do between the hours of 5 and 7:30? I drive home, I pick up Lena, I talk to her teachers, and I talk to other parents. I make dinner, I do the dishes, I get Lena in the bath, I wash Lena, I tell Lena to floss her teeth, I help Lena brush her teeth because mommy-cannot-afford-any-more-cavities, I get Lena into bed, and I read to her for about twenty minutes before it's time for bed. Here's the million dollar question. Why do I not count this as doing something productive? Why do I not give myself credit for this? Why can I not cut myself one iota of slack, because this is work too? This is not trivial. This deserves just as much credit as setting up a PCR reaction at seven in the evening.
I'm reading this book, sort of, it's called The Price of Motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued, and I sit there and nod my head and hmm and haww at the world and how society devalues mothers/parenting, and this is bad that other people do this how can we change that, and then I realize that I am doing this to myself. I am devaluing arguably the most important part of my life---for what, one more experiment squeezed into the day?
REVELATION.
I emailed my dad right after the 7:30 conversation was overheard, saying, holyshit I'm out of my league I should have gone to a 'soft' school like UNC ha! I can't be here until 7:30 omgi'mgoingtodie. (I think I literally ended this email with the really mature phrase of 'not ok. i'm not ok.') and my dad emails back this, because he figured all this out a while ago, that it's really all about doing the best with what you have, and the things that you tend to think are important aren't necessarily the things that are most important in the long run:
I hate to break the news, but News Flash, you will get a Ph.D. and it's pretty unlikely it will be nobel laureate work. I'm not knocking you, I'm just looking at the statistics. So work hard, focus on the science, because it is cool, and try to remember that you and Lena trump the world because you're two of the three most awesome girls I know.
Pops
omg my dad doesn't think I can win the Nobel Prize. What's up with that?? Supportive parents. I can't imagine what it's like to have some of those.
Let me set the stage for you: It's the first day of my second week, and I'm already crying in the car on the way home. This is going to be so much fun.
Here's the conversation I heard that caused me to have an emotional breakdown:
postdoc: Hey what time are you going to be here until?
undergrad: Probably 7:30.
**a side note, this is somewhat exaggerated for comic relief, because I did not actually have an emotional breakdown in lab, and I'm not this emotionally unstable most of the time, but here you have it.
me on the other side of the lab bench: ...
There were about 800 thoughts running through my head after this. Because *I* can't stay until 7:30. I have no idea what you would do in lab at 7:30. I assume the same things you do from the hours of 9 to 5? Is there something special that happens after 5 in lab? Do elves come out and whisper sweet nothings at the PCR machines? Do the techs turn into pumpkins? Whatever happens...I will never know.
And here comes this recurring theme that apparently is the story of my life: giving myself a hard time for things beyond my control. Do they have graduate program for that because if they do I would totally win.
As much as I would love to put my head down, do my work, be so secure with myself that I don't give a shit what anyone says/thinks about me...the reality is that's not me. And that's also something I need to stop fighting. I can't give myself a hard time for giving myself a hard time. I can't beat myself up for caring what other people think about me. The only think I can do is to try to remind myself that it doesn't matter as much as I think it does.
I started out not knowing whether or not to bring up that I have a kid. It didn't come up in interviews, because in the question of "why do you want to go to graduate school" the fact that I have a kid has absolutely zero relevance. But who I am as a person, and who I am as a scientist? Having a kid has 100 percent abso-fucking-lutely relevance on who I am. Why do I keep fighting that? I'm going to stop fighting that. So much so that I am going to start walking around with a sign on my head that says 'emotionally unstable single parent' because that's who I am, dammit, and it might help people deal with me.
It leads me to this funny thing that I never imagined I'd have to deal with, which is 'coming out' as a single parent. When you meet a twenty-five year old that's still wearing a uniform of chacos, skirts with elastic waists and t-shirts, your first thought is not immediately, "this person had a child". and then upon finding out that said person does have a child, your subsequent thought is not "this person is a single parent." Our society is many things, hetero-normative, democratic, fairly misogynistic, to say a few, and in academia, if you are a woman who has a kid, you are over 30 and married. (If this is not the majority, feel free to correct me. I just took an informal tally in my head to get those demographics.) I'm not out to "subvert the dominant paradigm" or anything, much to the chagrin of my high school self, but here I am. (Also high school self would never have picked this particular dominant paradigm to subvert.)
You know what I do between the hours of 5 and 7:30? I drive home, I pick up Lena, I talk to her teachers, and I talk to other parents. I make dinner, I do the dishes, I get Lena in the bath, I wash Lena, I tell Lena to floss her teeth, I help Lena brush her teeth because mommy-cannot-afford-any-more-cavities, I get Lena into bed, and I read to her for about twenty minutes before it's time for bed. Here's the million dollar question. Why do I not count this as doing something productive? Why do I not give myself credit for this? Why can I not cut myself one iota of slack, because this is work too? This is not trivial. This deserves just as much credit as setting up a PCR reaction at seven in the evening.
I'm reading this book, sort of, it's called The Price of Motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued, and I sit there and nod my head and hmm and haww at the world and how society devalues mothers/parenting, and this is bad that other people do this how can we change that, and then I realize that I am doing this to myself. I am devaluing arguably the most important part of my life---for what, one more experiment squeezed into the day?
REVELATION.
I emailed my dad right after the 7:30 conversation was overheard, saying, holyshit I'm out of my league I should have gone to a 'soft' school like UNC ha! I can't be here until 7:30 omgi'mgoingtodie. (I think I literally ended this email with the really mature phrase of 'not ok. i'm not ok.') and my dad emails back this, because he figured all this out a while ago, that it's really all about doing the best with what you have, and the things that you tend to think are important aren't necessarily the things that are most important in the long run:
I hate to break the news, but News Flash, you will get a Ph.D. and it's pretty unlikely it will be nobel laureate work. I'm not knocking you, I'm just looking at the statistics. So work hard, focus on the science, because it is cool, and try to remember that you and Lena trump the world because you're two of the three most awesome girls I know.
Pops
omg my dad doesn't think I can win the Nobel Prize. What's up with that?? Supportive parents. I can't imagine what it's like to have some of those.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Worst parenting moment ever.
I tend to overuse hyperbole. Favorite phrases of mine are, "This is the best ___ ever." "I'm having the worst ____ ever." "You never do _____." So implications in relationships aside, I'm working on it. I'm now allowing myself one hyperbole a day. For instance, if you follow me on twitter, I was putting on skinny jeans right after I lotioned my legs. And that was the worse thing ever.
Exaggerations aside, I just had the biggest "Oh shit!" moment of my entire parenting career. And I thought about keeping it to myself because it is incredibly embarrassing and horrible, but then I thought, you know what, for the greater good, I will share my misfortune with the world. My only hope is that you, dear reader, never make the same mistake.
So Lena and I have been having bedtime issues. I say both of us, because she's the one that has trouble going to sleep, but then I'm the one that is struggling to stay awake as she's struggling to fall asleep. Not a good combination. We sort of figured out that it was somewhat related to nap time, she doesn't nap on the weekends anymore, and tends to get worn out and go to bed earlier on the weekends, and then during weekdays when she naps at school she goes to bed later. I had sort of resigned myself to deal with this until elementary school when they don't nap.
Then, two things happened. About two weeks ago, Lena had an awesome Saturday. We went to the park and the museum and we ran around like maniacs for about 8 hours. And then we had people over for dinner. And I gave her a few cookies for dessert, and she was wired, and didn't go to bed until 11. And I was like, damn, I guess she was over excited by having dinner guests. Then the Monday after that, we had an awesome dinner, and she forgot about dessert because we were playing with something or whatever, and by the time she remembered she hadn't had dessert she was already in the bath, and I was just like, "It's too late, we'll have dessert tomorrow." And that night Lena was asleep by 8:30.
At this point, I use my now-questionable-though-I-previously-thought-were-fine powers of deduction and say to myself, "Why on Saturday after a long day she went to bed at 11, and on a Monday when she napped at school did she go to bed at 8:30?"
And I thought and I thought. And then this light slowly turns on in my head. She didn't have dessert on Monday. And you know what we usually have for dessert? Chocolate. A small piece of chocolate. Or chocolate covered raisins. Or a cookie with some sort of chocolate in it. Do you see where this is going?
I'd like to add, I was out the other night telling this story to a friend of mine, and I literally had said one sentence, "So I've been giving Lena chocolate for dessert--" and he interjected with, "But what about the caffeine?" I mean some people are naturally smart I guess.
APPARENTLY THERE IS CAFFEINE IN CHOCOLATE.
Especially in dark chocolate. I mean it's in the cocoa part, so white chocolate has no caffeine, and dark chocolate has the most. Which is not enough to affect anyone who probably weighs over 100 pounds, but holy shit. To a 34 pound bean, a piece of dark chocolate is like 10 cups of coffee. (Exaggeration. I did not do any sort of calculation to come up with that number.) I have been caffeinating my daughter. And she is having trouble sleeping after that. BEST MOTHER EVER. RIGHT HERE.
Gosh, so I figured this out, and we don't have chocolate for dessert anymore, and Lena is asleep every night by 9:30 at the latest, usually earlier, and she almost always falls asleep while I am reading to her. No more up and down and in and out of bed, and me threatening her to stay in her room and her just saying she can't sleep. Because of course she can sleep. If no one gives her caffeine.
Needless to say, I feel just a little bit silly.
But Lena sleeps great now! And so do I. I think in parenting more than anything the phrase "All's well that ends well" is extremely applicable.
I am such an idiot.
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Lena, you'll be pleased to know, is no worse for the wear.
Exaggerations aside, I just had the biggest "Oh shit!" moment of my entire parenting career. And I thought about keeping it to myself because it is incredibly embarrassing and horrible, but then I thought, you know what, for the greater good, I will share my misfortune with the world. My only hope is that you, dear reader, never make the same mistake.
So Lena and I have been having bedtime issues. I say both of us, because she's the one that has trouble going to sleep, but then I'm the one that is struggling to stay awake as she's struggling to fall asleep. Not a good combination. We sort of figured out that it was somewhat related to nap time, she doesn't nap on the weekends anymore, and tends to get worn out and go to bed earlier on the weekends, and then during weekdays when she naps at school she goes to bed later. I had sort of resigned myself to deal with this until elementary school when they don't nap.
Then, two things happened. About two weeks ago, Lena had an awesome Saturday. We went to the park and the museum and we ran around like maniacs for about 8 hours. And then we had people over for dinner. And I gave her a few cookies for dessert, and she was wired, and didn't go to bed until 11. And I was like, damn, I guess she was over excited by having dinner guests. Then the Monday after that, we had an awesome dinner, and she forgot about dessert because we were playing with something or whatever, and by the time she remembered she hadn't had dessert she was already in the bath, and I was just like, "It's too late, we'll have dessert tomorrow." And that night Lena was asleep by 8:30.
At this point, I use my now-questionable-though-I-previously-thought-were-fine powers of deduction and say to myself, "Why on Saturday after a long day she went to bed at 11, and on a Monday when she napped at school did she go to bed at 8:30?"
And I thought and I thought. And then this light slowly turns on in my head. She didn't have dessert on Monday. And you know what we usually have for dessert? Chocolate. A small piece of chocolate. Or chocolate covered raisins. Or a cookie with some sort of chocolate in it. Do you see where this is going?
I'd like to add, I was out the other night telling this story to a friend of mine, and I literally had said one sentence, "So I've been giving Lena chocolate for dessert--" and he interjected with, "But what about the caffeine?" I mean some people are naturally smart I guess.
APPARENTLY THERE IS CAFFEINE IN CHOCOLATE.
Especially in dark chocolate. I mean it's in the cocoa part, so white chocolate has no caffeine, and dark chocolate has the most. Which is not enough to affect anyone who probably weighs over 100 pounds, but holy shit. To a 34 pound bean, a piece of dark chocolate is like 10 cups of coffee. (Exaggeration. I did not do any sort of calculation to come up with that number.) I have been caffeinating my daughter. And she is having trouble sleeping after that. BEST MOTHER EVER. RIGHT HERE.
Gosh, so I figured this out, and we don't have chocolate for dessert anymore, and Lena is asleep every night by 9:30 at the latest, usually earlier, and she almost always falls asleep while I am reading to her. No more up and down and in and out of bed, and me threatening her to stay in her room and her just saying she can't sleep. Because of course she can sleep. If no one gives her caffeine.
Needless to say, I feel just a little bit silly.
But Lena sleeps great now! And so do I. I think in parenting more than anything the phrase "All's well that ends well" is extremely applicable.
I am such an idiot.
.JPG)
Lena, you'll be pleased to know, is no worse for the wear.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
To the Parents of:
 |
| Credit |
It's easy to put "a mom" at the top of the list of things that define me, and it's harder to recall life before this. I wrote poetry. I traveled. I worked in a restaurant, and I just about lived at Open Eye Cafe. I did a lot of things that I'm really proud of, but I sort of forgot about them when Lena came along.
I haven't talked to a lot of parents about this phenomenon, so sometimes I still wonder whether it is just me, or whether it doesn't apply to people who are starting families a little older than I am, who are actively choosing this identity change. When I think this, I then immediately think, I can't be the only one. I can't at all. But that's the thing--I as a parent, and a young single parent to start out with, I got stuck in the trap that everyone else has their shit together but me. And the thing I'm learning now, every day, is that gloriously, this isn't true.
I'm learning a lot by talking to other daycare parents. I'm branching out, I'm getting better at small talk, (Does anyone else do this thing where they're talking to a person and then all of the sudden realize that they have not asked the other person a single thing about themselves? That's me completely.) and I'm discovering that everyone has their own issues.
For instance, I used to think that I'm such a "bad parent" because on Sundays my parents let me sleep in and they take Lena. What other parents do this! I'm a horrible person! But bit by bit I'm learning that, this is ok. I'm ok. One of Lena's friend's mom's told me that her and her husband drop their kids off at their parents house for one night a weekend, so they get a whole night and morning off. How luxurious! And hey, we as parents are allowed this luxury.
There are so many types of families, so many different circumstances. There's no one right way to be a parent, and whatever works for you as a parent, allowing you to give your kid enough love and allowing yourself the time to grow as a person, whatever allows for that is the magic way to parent.
I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize this, to become more confident in the parent and the person that I am. (And then I start beating myself up again for being insecure--such a great cycle of second guessing oneself!) But I'm starting to get it, I think I'm finally starting to get it.
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