back to school

Last night was meet the teacher night at L's new school. Her teacher let them choose their seats. L chose the seat the farthest away from the front. I don't think it's because she understands the connotations of seat choice, it's only first grade after all; instead, she wanted to be near the fish tank. 

**

My PI has two kids, and one is almost one year old. I ask to hold her all the time, and I always thought people are so dumb when they say "kids they grow up so fast" but I look at Lena and see these legs and arms and thoughts and choices and ideas and how did she grow up so fast?

rainbow over durham

this life.

epic

This was a momentous week. First day of kindergarten, first week of graduate school.

This also happened to be the most traumatic week of my life. 

Let's start with the good.

Nana and pops couldn't stay away on the first day of school. They came to visit us at the bus stop. The bus was 20 minutes late, but, whatever, we're rolling with it.  

L won't take a serious picture with me. 

The good kind of ends there. L had a great first day of school, except at 5 o'clock, as I'm leaving school to go pick her up at afterschool, I get a call from the bus driver, who has reached the last stop on her route, and still has Lena left on the bus.

...

The short of it, Lena is ok, she was always safe (however unaccounted for for two hours), but I put on my mama-bear skin and went to go fuck some shit up at the school. Not really. I was super pissed (obviously), but I decided instead of playing the "How the FUCK did you lose my kid" card, I played the "I'm a single parent, I'm just trying to get by, and oh by the way I am really good at crying" card. That card worked awesomely I am happy to report, and I got to meet the principal of L's school. 

The second day of kindergarten was an operation.

Pops met us at the bus stop. I texted Nana when she got on the bus, and while I headed off to school, Nana headed over to the school to make sure Lena got to her class ok, and to remind the teachers that she goes to afterschool. The texts we went each other all day were hilarious. "Package is on the bus" "package was delivered" we would be an awesome secret service team. When I picked her up today I sent the message "BABY IS IN THE NEST. REPEAT: BABY IS IN THE NEST."

She's not really a baby anymore though, is she. 

OH, so the next thing that happened:

Lena had the most epic of all nosebleeds. It lasted twenty minutes and thank goodness I had a friend to capture this occasion. "Remember when..." Mikey was a rockstar, Lena was a rockstar, but twenty goddamn minutes?? This seemed way too long for a nosebleed. Also apparently you are supposed to pinch the nose that entire time. And keep your head forward. And if you do get any blood in your mouth, spit, don't swallow. (heh.)

This is not to even mention my first week, which was so amazing, humbling and exciting. I love my new lab, I love my classes, I love the opportunities that I'm going to have here. I'm thinking a ton about everything. I want to write a post about computer science and Anna Karenina. How I programmed a turtle to draw a spiral. How I'm reading so many papers and things are just starting to click into place. It is very, very cool. 

It's also really hard. In ways that I didn't actually expect. It's hard because I think, on some level, I do want it all. 

Over the summer, I had to 'sneak out' at 5 every day to get Lena. I dreaded this every single day. I was always the first to leave, and even if I had been there before 9 in the morning, I just felt absolutely horrible about it. Like I wasn't doing enough. And I was embarrassed, so I would sneak around my PI's door like a chump. 

Now, I actually feel the same way. I'm dreading leaving at 5. Because I am having a really, really good time and I don't want to leave. I didn't expect to feel like this. It's really really awesome. But, it's all awesome, really. 

april in pictures

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Smells like teen spirit

The other day I realized that when it comes to choosing shampoo scents for kids it's really all about what smoothie flavor you want them to smell like. Orange crush? Mango tango?

This side of August seems a lot closer to a lot of things. Grad school, L being almost five. Things.

I've been busy and happy and you can find me at the pool almost every weekend. It's been good.

Sorry I haven't been writing here a bunch, but don't worry (I know you were worried) I have been writing.

I've been working on more science writing stuff. I've been guest blogging on Nature.com's Scitable blog, Student Voices. (I talked about principle components! And then a more asinine post on coffee.) I've also been working on things like personal statements. And thinking about short stories.

We've had crazy storms here, and a tree fell on my car: but my car was ok. :)

And Lena and I have been great. In the following picture, only one of us had been crying only minutes before!

Seriously. Ok. Smell you later! (Orange crush for L, I've been in a more savory shampoo mood: rosemary and mint.)

Parenting swagger

There lots of tiny victories that come with parenting. Like say, when you make a dinner that contains a vegetable. Or when your kid goes to someone's house and doesn't act like a deranged monkey.

But there is nothing, nothing, like the feeling of completing a project that your kid has started.

I wish I could tell you the amount of puzzles Lena starts, how many lego models, and then subsequently how many times I've found my dad, late at night or early in the morning, finishing up some 1000 piece puzzle or ages 12+ lego model of a motorcycle.

This weekend it was my turn.

I built that! EFF YEAH.

I literally walked around the house with a bounce in my step for like 10 minutes afterwards because WHAAAT!

So Lena got this set for Christmas, and it's like, recycled cardboard pieces so it's like green and edgy and it's for ages six and up but LET ME TELL YOU, no six year old could finish that. I'm serious. It was hard and the directions were not at all explicit. There was a lot of extrapolating from the picture. And I'm not saying that you need a college degree to complete this but this was not a walk in the park.

(I may or may not have told Lena to try to go find something else to do because Mommy Has to Focus. So, there's that.)

Some Days

Some days are easy. When Lena wakes up early, and walks bleary eyed into my room and crawls into bed, demanding covers. When I make us a fried egg sandwich for breakfast, cut it in two, and bring it to the table, where Lena is sitting and waiting. When I'm a little sad, or lonely, and Lena knows this, and decides to inundate me with stuffed animals and offers up a shared nap, because there is nothing in the world that cannot be cured with snuggling. Snuggling. They way that Lena asks to snuggle. Easy days. The days when Lena exuberantly talks all the way home about Jupiter's moons and how Pluto is the smallest coldest planet. They days when laughter comes easy and often. The tears that fall go away quickly. We pick ourselves up off the ground and we laugh.

Some days are hard. There are moods. Lena is angry or I am angry, and no clothes fit right and Lena doesn't want to get out of the bath and I want to go to bed. Or Lena doesn't listen and I'm impatient. And there are days when I'm a little sad and a little lonely and a stuffed animal just can't quite cut it. 

Some days are easy and some days are hard, and I'm starting to learn how to better remember, in the depths of the hard days, there are always more easy, sweet, wonderful ones to come. 

Mama said there'd be days like this

There'd be days like this, my mama said

Seeing yourself in someone else

The strangest thing is happening.

Lena is starting to remind me of me.

My parents will disagree. They say she's brighter and more outgoing and more fearless, and OK I GET IT you love her better than me, but that's not it.

She's starting to remind me of me in ways that only I would know.

When I was younger, 7 or 8, I know it was 3rd and 4th grade, I had a best friend, Lily, and we would spend hours on weekends or teacher work days or after school playing in the woods behind my house. We have a great creek down there, and there was a set of trails that we would roam around, pretending we were indian princesses, running away from our families. We would scout out hiding places; a fallen tree leaning against a standing one would be our shelter for the night. The exposed roots of trees overhanging the creek would be our secret hide out. We would jump to the rocks in the middle of the creek and we were on deserted islands. We turned over rocks, caught crayfish. We were always on the look out for the perfect walking stick. Small and straight sticks became arrows for bows and arrows. We were armed, we were fearless. Some days we were barefoot.

Lena is like this too. She's mesmerized by running water. She's starting to point out campsites. A small depression in some weeds becomes "a home for a wolf". She sees things in the trees. She points out letters and shapes.

She loves bugs and frogs and snakes.

But I loved bugs and frogs and snakes too.

When does that leave you, you know? Being a carefree kid with nothing to worry about. Sometimes I worry that it's harder for girls than it is for boys. After elementary school girls and boys started to separate. We (as girls) were supposed to be more worried about what we wore and what we looked like. I can't remember who stopped going down to the creek after school first, all I remember is that it stopped.

There were a couple of glorious days when we fell back into our carefree exploring lives. It was a snow day, we were in middle school then, and there was a big development going up in the woods behind our school. (Modern day Southern Village, for those in the area.) Susan and I tramped through bulldozed roads and walked into houses that were being built. We were explorers, runaways, tramping miles through the snow until we found shelter. Now I drive by those houses to and from the park and think to myself, if only you knew who the first occupants were.

Life is really hard, and blah blah blah, and sometimes I just want to know if I'm the only one scared shitless about the future, and if I'm not and I know I can't be, can't we all admit it and lose the facade of having-it-together, and then can we all go out for a drink and talk about it? Because that would be way more productive than me sitting in my parked car outside of daycare and trying to decide which parents are having marital problems, which dads still smoke outside on the porch, which ones are recovering alcoholics. Can't we just admit all of our problems and move forward?

I think my problem is that I'm too attached to being 19.

I still feel like a kid sometimes. I remember going down to the creek. I remember walking back up the hill to my house. It's still my house. I remember what it was like. And I don't know how to explain it. When I see these things in Lena, it's hard to just play along with her and encourage her escapades. It makes me want to runaway and play by myself. I don't of course. It just sends me back.

And I see this in Lena, and I know that this is what she's supposed to be doing. But part of me thinks she's taking my place now. She's the kid. And the kid in me wants to say, what am I supposed to do. But I know the answer. Now I have to be the grown up.

Gosh, there's like a theme here or something.

Insta-weekend

This weekend I crafted.

Lena and I made signs for our room, and Michael's had 50% off fake flowers.

Then I made a Hunger Games t-shirt.

I completely stole the idea from Forever Young Adult, but what can you do. Also I was the original t-shirt maker so it was very high school.

And then I cleaned my room and am still debating whether or not to throw away this doll.

 Lena likes it, and it's clearly Jewish, but for some reason this doll really bothers me. I have no idea why. I really want to toss it. I won't, but I might do something immature and not allow it in my room. It freaks me out!

Wow I am just a picture of maturity.

Also when Lena sleeps in my bed, I always want to do funny things to bother her, but instead I just stay in bed too long watching her sleep. And taking pictures.

Runner