shouting hallelujah

Day in the Life of a Semi-SAHM at 6 months

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:04 -0400

I thought it would be worth sharing what an average day looks like for me currently, as I really don’t know how days play out for other stay-at-home-parents, and certainly wasn’t prepared for the experience when I started out.

Now that Pip is six months old, I have comparative freedom, with almost guaranteed two naps (though often both are only 30 minutes each), and the ability, occasionally, to have the use of my arms when he’s awake. I am still figuring out how to juggle it all, but I think I’m making progress.

Every day:

In the morning, J and I take turn getting ready and negotiate use of the car. J alternately drives, works from home, takes the bus or rides his bike in, since he has the flexibility of a grad student.
Laundry is king. Usually Pip swats at the dryer door and I load and unload. I do two loads a day, pretty much, to keep up with Pippin puke and cloth diapers.
We Skype Pip’s grandpa almost every weekday. He’s the only retired grandparent, and lives back home in Florida. Talking to him gives me a chance to have a grownup conversation and builds the relationship between the two of them. I usually put the laptop on the floor so they can see each other, and it’s usually the time when Pip is most interested in floor time, since I’m sitting beside him and he can practice lunging toward the keyboard (!).
Pip takes two naps every day, one around 9 and one two hours later, though if he’s really wretched and both were short, I might try for a third. To get him down, I sit in a rocking chair in his dark bedroom and read on the Kindle while he nursing. This is not ideal, but it’s at least reliable.
I try to prep whatever of dinner I can in advance, especially during naptime. This can involve the slow cooker, grating cheese, organizing recipes, and other little tasks. We’re trying to eat dinner while Pip eats his purees most nights now, to foster family togetherness and teach him about eating, and that means a pretty tight turnaround if we’re to all eat, get Pip bathed, and go through the bedtime routine by 6:30. Some nights, though, if things are too crazy or we’ve got something we don’t want to rush, we eat after Pip goes to bed, with the baby monitor beside us, usually on the back patio. It’s almost like a date.
I try to get an hour of work in T-F. I don’t bill the time I spend thinking about my next hour of work while I push Pip in the stroller or fold laundry, but it helps me to be extra efficient when I grab a few minutes to queue facebook posts, plan summer reading, or catch up on work email. Sometimes these oases of paid work are at naptime, or sometimes in the evening after Pip’s gone to bed.
We usually go out in the stroller for at least three laps around our tiny neighborhood. There’s not much of anywhere to go since I can’t take him on the trails yet, but the sunshine is good for both of us. Sometimes I call friends then for more adult interaction. We didn’t yesterday because of bad weather and general busy-ness.

Yesterday:

In making granola, something I do weekly during the spring and summer, the best part is taking a shot of the maple syrup left in the measuring cup. Yesterday, I got to do this during the Super Nap.
At the grocery store (an errand I’ve only gotten good at doing solo in the last month) in the afternoon, I ran into one of the lactation consultants from our midwifery practice. I immediately started worrying about everything I was doing — that Pip was too floppy for the cart, that she thought I’d started purees too soon, etc. And then, I realized there was a big chunk of my shopping list missing, and became convinced Pip had eaten it.
Pip’s usually half-hour morning nap turned out to be 1.5 hours. I wish he’d tell me ahead of time so I could tackle a work project. Instead, I tidied, did dishes, made the aforesaid granola, caught up on some email correspondence.

"None of it was ideal. None of it was how I planned it, but I realized that sometimes what’s right..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:41:00 -0400

“None of it was ideal. None of it was how I planned it, but I realized that sometimes what’s right for your family, what makes you the best mother you can be, isn’t a rigid adherence to a certain method of parenting, it’s simply doing your best for your unique baby in your current situation.”

- Haley of Carrots for Michaelmas, “How I Almost Became the Smug Mom”

Let’s all repeat this over and over to ourselves, OK? I’ve been lucky to receive very little (obvious, explicit) mom-hate, and I’ve tried so hard not to be disapproving of what other people find works. It’s a lesson in compassion, for sure.

on sleep, his

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:32:46 -0400

I hate, hate, HATE when people ask if Pippin’s a good baby, and by that they mean a good sleeper.

He is the best baby, and we are working on helping him to be a good sleeper, and any shortcomings on that front are almost certainly ours.

It’s a little like owning a dog. If you have a bad dog, it’s almost certainly a failure on your part in how you treat and teach the dog.

My baby is becoming a good sleeper, just about as fast as I am becoming a competent parent.

"We live in an articulate society, continually questioning ourselves and each other. It is not fair..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:16:36 -0400

“We live in an articulate society, continually questioning ourselves and each other. It is not fair to leave a new mother with a horrific collection of words to condemn her—and almost nothing in the way of praise for when she is doing something well. A whole vocabulary is missing to balance all the negative words and phrases.”

- Naomi Stadlen, What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing

I’m going to quote your ear off from this one in the next few days, guys.

"I kept going. Slogging it out. Showing up. Standing, sitting, kneeling. Thinking about anything..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:25:54 -0400

“I kept going. Slogging it out. Showing up. Standing, sitting, kneeling. Thinking about anything else. But there came a point, I’m not sure exactly when, when I was no longer slogging or just showing up. I began to desire it. Not because it felt familiar, like home. That was certainly part of it, but it wasn’t the whole story. The Mass was steady and unchanging and familiar, but at some point I decided that it was also true. And I think, now, that it was precisely because the Mass didn’t depend on me to feel anything at all.”

- Love & Salt: A Spiritual Friendship Shared in Letters, Jessica Griffith Mesman and Amy Andrews

(a book I loved, and highlighted way too much, recommended to me by my always wonderful undergrad advisor, Anya Silver)

Spring in Quincy, or, A Tale of Two Thomases, or, Mother’s...

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:55:16 -0400

Spring in Quincy, or, A Tale of Two Thomases, or, Mother’s Day Weekend 2013: Lots of Ice Cream, Plenty of Cider

PS — One of those Thomases is wearing a diaper, even though it doesn’t look like it.

I feel like these last months, or year maybe, I’ve been...

Sun, 12 May 2013 08:38:37 -0400

I feel like these last months, or year maybe, I’ve been getting to know my mom in such a different way as I learn to mother by her example. I’ve woken belatedly from some teenagery trance to want her stories, to go deeper, to understand what it was like being her as she went about the business of raising me and my sister.

She’s a wonderful mother, and shaping up to be a terrific grandmother, and as I muddle along at this mothering thing myself, I am just floored to realize the love and sacrifice she gave me — so often without me even noticing.

Humbling and inspiring both.

Happy Mother’s Day to Pip’s Mumsey.

six word six month poetry

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:25:21 -0400

Barf in my hair. When? How??
Kisses are your favorite, and mine.
You look on purees as betrayal.

Do you mean with it that Pip eats 2/3 of a banana every time? Or do you mean he eats a third and you eat the rest?

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:06:58 -0400

He mauls a third and I eat the remainder. Selflessly.

So this feed bag thing for fresh fruits is working better than...

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:03:17 -0400

So this feed bag thing for fresh fruits is working better than the spoon-and-puree route, but there’s still some skepticism.

Also, it is very messy and kind of upsetting. But the bonus is I get 2/3 of a banana every time.

Bananas, 5/1/13

You can hardly see the adorable 6 onesie Pip’s Mumsey made...

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:58:47 -0400

You can hardly see the adorable 6 onesie Pip’s Mumsey made for his six month birthday, but you can definitely see how curious and active he’s getting. Teething! Almost crawling! Attempting to eat leaf litter and camera straps! What a loon.

Springtime helps (almost) everything.

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:32:02 -0400

Springtime helps (almost) everything.

babytoofs

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:31:30 -0400

Pippin is getting his first tooth (front, bottom, for those who care) and its name is Elmer and we are giddy with parental excitement.

"In the culture we live in, children are an abstract idea. So we have a culture that is becoming..."

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:06:36 -0400

“In the culture we live in, children are an abstract idea. So we have a culture that is becoming increasingly sterile and monotonous as each person retreats further into him or herself, becoming consumed with the self and its desires. Catholicism’s call to embrace life is a radical one. I’m bringing life after life into a world that doesn’t want them here. Sometimes I even doubt if I want them here. And yet, they continue doing what they do best…pulling me out of myself. Pulling me out of my own family. Showing me Christ and myself “in the transformative and redeeming grace of relationships.” They don’t always manage to bring that same grace to everyone they meet, but they do with some. The ones who are open to it. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve heard those words repeated back to me, words that I’ve said so often myself: “I don’t really like children, but yours…””

- “Other People’s Kids,” [via]

Someone linked to this awhile ago, and it’s been hanging out in a tab of mine ever since. I was hard pressed to find a quotable chunk from this, because it’s all good.

Kids are hard, but it’s amazing to see your hard work and lack of sleep become such a blessing not just in your life (plump toes, kissable belly, pterodactyl giggle) but in all those around you. It took my sister pointing out, on a recent walk at a nearby college campus, how many smiles our little stroller leaves in its wake.

This week was a first: first time (deliberately) leaving Pip...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:01:31 -0400

This week was a first: first time (deliberately) leaving Pip with a (non-family) babysitter.

Sure, we’d had a smattering of outings in which my parents or J’s brother and sister-in-law watched the little guy, and there was our dark St. Patrick’s Day, when various true friends took shifts watching Pip while we writhed and moaned from a stomach bug, but I’d never, you know, written out a list of emergency numbers and set out a bottle and kissed my baby and handed him over.

It took almost six months for me to do it! This is mostly because my net pay does not much exceed the cost of a babysitter and more importantly, but whatever.

At the beginning, I would have given anything to have someone watch him. Why isn’t day care socially acceptable in those bewildering first days? (Don’t answer that.) Back then, I had no belief that I, despite being his mother, had a better idea than anyone else how to care for him. Sometimes I even felt guilty that he got a beginner like me — though I’d remind myself that J and I were both first babies, too, and we managed to survive.

It used to scare me to think that I was the world’s authority on this little person, but I realized, leaving him with a friend on Monday afternoon, that it doesn’t scare me anymore. I may not know everything about the care of baby Pippin that I may someday know about his siblings when I’m a more seasoned parent, but I know a lot — maybe even more than a general baby expert — about this one little person.

So I left with a mix of pride and trepidation, glad to see how far I’d come, terribly nervous for Pippin and his babysitter both. And then, at work, just before dinner, I got this video in my email.

I am raising a functional, happy baby, with the help of loving family and friends. Sometimes I’m still scared, but it’s a lot better.

This week was Art Week at the library. I led my first program...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 08:31:00 -0400

This week was Art Week at the library. I led my first program (actually, four) and while sparsely attended, the kids had fun, I think. But on the other hand, in my four extra little shifts at the library, I got a taste of the real life of a working mama, and the vending machine lunch in particular makes me think I wouldn’t much care for it.

This week we started to get Pippin on a nap schedule and put him down at 6:30 for bedtime, thanks to the good Dr. Karp and the advice of my baby-sleep-junkie cousin (holla!). And when we could keep that schedule, all was happiness and rest. One night we had two four-hour chunks and another pretty good long stretch and no tears. I came to rely on two-hour morning naps. The world became light and warm, and daffodils bloomed in the front yard. (This last might be unrelated.) But on the other hand, when we couldn’t keep that schedule perfectly — a class at night, those Art Week workshops in late afternoon — we also couldn’t count on those lovely long stretches of peace, either.

And then, oh, and then, I (wo)manned up and took Bonnie to the vet (finally) and they did not tell me I was an awful dog owner, despite her tough winter, but the visit did cost all the stipend I had just made doing Art Week. For good measure, on the way home, I came upon a cloud of dust on the highway, and, distractedly barreling ahead, rear-ended a street sweeper. A very expensive morning indeed.

But, it is a week to focus on the good, when there has been so much pain and uncertainty, and really not so very far off, either. From Boston came my brother-in-law and his wife, safe and sound and ready to snuggle our sometimes-fractious baby. We put the baby down (for an hour, at least) and retreated to the furthest reach of the baby monitor for hotdogs and chips and visiting with our landlord-friend, and the first bonfire of what I hope will be many this season.

And now Pippin is down for his first nap of the morning (after waking at 6) and it’s time to wake up the sweet husband who got up with him.

Good morning.

"So, this spring and summer, how about it? Forget the backyard - play out front with your kids. Be..."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:22:42 -0400

“So, this spring and summer, how about it? Forget the backyard - play out front with your kids. Be the next family that everyone knows, or who helps new families move in. All it takes is your presence, followed by a wave, a smile, and a hello. If that’s where people want to leave it, then that’s okay. But, if after a few times of seeing you out there (and it may take a few times), they want to come hang out, have a chat, then that’s great! Imagine what we could build this year, if all of us took a little extra time out front, and if we put ourselves “out there” literally. A community that we can belong to? That sounds wonderful to me.”

- Alison Gerber, The #1 Reason for Hanging Out, Out Front (apartmenttherapy)

(in keeping with my Solemn Vow for Summer)

asweetlittlebaby: intermodal: In America, this would have...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:18:54 -0400

asweetlittlebaby:

intermodal:

In America, this would have earned her a horrible reputation, probably cost her her career with the police force, and would have been a controversy that would have somehow “shocked” the media and therefore the public. Instead, she was declared a hero, and now holds a high position in her field. Well done, China!

From Police Officer Breastfed Quake Babies on I Am Not the Babysitter:

Twenty-nine year old police officer, Jiang Xiaojuan, left her six month old baby with her mother to take part in disaster relief efforts, after the 2008 earthquake.

Xiaojaun breastfed nine babies during her relief work and was nicknamed “The police mom”.

Since then she was appointed to the Communist Party of China Committee of the Jiangyou Public Security Bureau and is now the bureau’s vice commissar. This was after she was awarded the titles of “hero and model police officer” and “excellent member of the communist party” – all for her breastfeeding efforts in the field.

What did Jiang Xiaojuan have to say about it? Well, according to the CNN article,

“I think what I did was normal,” she said. “In a quake zone, many people do things for others. This was a small thing, not worth mentioning.”

Also:

“I feel about these kids I fed just like my own. I have a special feeling for them. They are babies in a disaster.”

THE FEEEEEEEEEEEEELZZZZZZZZ

Kristin Lavransdatter: Or, the Best Book to Read While Breastfeeding

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:11:55 -0400

It won the Nobel Prize! And yet I only heard about it through Haley, though once I was looking, I found a copy in our church library and encountered a coworker at the library who’d read (and loved) the book as a teenager.

It was funny to read this just after the Anne books — a wholly unfamiliar book coming after a nearly memorized one, Catholic following Protestant, unflinching and melancholy after “light, and bright, and sparkling,” although both focused on motherhood (after all, my honors thesis carried the title, “Motherhood and Nurturing in Anne of Green Gables”). I’m not sure I’d say I liked Kristin Lavransdatter exactly —or at least that I liked Kristin herself — but I was totally absorbed and I’m still thinking about it. Medieval Norway is so unfamiliar it might as well be fantasy, yet Kristin’s deeply held Catholicism — even when she’s violating those beliefs — means Kristin and I have more in common than I share with many latter-day protagonists. And the book’s sometimes uncomfortable meditations about marriage and motherhood, as Kristin learns again and again that she cannot find perfect peace and redemption in those she loves, come at just the right time for me.

In the dim light of the Kindle, I found myself highlighting passages, like, “His little mouth at her breast warmed her heart so well that it was like soft wax, easy for the heavenly love to shape.” The line is particularly poignant because in recent months I’ve done 90% of my reading — and most of my praying — while breastfeeding. I’ve been reading a lot and widely in the last couple of months, and nothing’s spoken as closely to my current experience.

In her First Things piece, “Under Her Heart: Motherhood in Kristin Lavransdatter,” Carrie Frederick Frost observes, “Kristin’s motherhood is so vivid because even though she is ferociously devoted to mothering, she is an imperfect mother. Undset has crafted a real mother who loves intensely, fails spectacularly, and reads completely convincingly.” This definitely makes for less fun and encouragement than my recent reread of Anne’s House of Dreams, which left me itching to get the garden started and wistful that I don’t have life as together as Anne Shirley Blythe. Kristin’s actions toward her husband and sons are often difficult to read, but then, on (I hope) a smaller scale, my grumblings to my husband and son during a recent particularly sleep-deprived stretch would probably make for some rocky reading, too.

The novel’s end is not a cheerful one — I’m reminded of what a date said to me when I protested the sad ending of Fiddler of the Roof in high school — “It’s Russian Jews before World War I. Of course it’s not a happy ending.” But neither is it an ending without hope. Kristin Lavransdatter closes with Europe on the brink of the Black Plague, so yeah, it’s going to be a bit of a downer. But as Anna Mathie concludes in her piece for Crisis Magazine, “If she has become a saint, she is a saintly housewife, not a saintly nun. God does not erase Kristin’s life, but turns it to his purpose.” It’s the kind of inspiration I need in this chapter of my life.

Kristin’s life as a mother — her life as a whole — is refreshingly bereft of romanticizing, pointing toward that greater love and causing Frost to conclude, “Of the many wonderful qualities of Kristin Lavransdatter, one is that it can be read as a thousand-some page answer to the question, what is motherhood for? The answer is salvation.”

All of us mothers would do well to be reminded now and again,

“Never had she seen it so clearly as on this evening—what destiny had demanded of her and what it had given her in return with her seven sons. Over and over again joy had quickened the beat of her heart; fear on their behalf had rent it in two. They were her children, these big sons with their lean, bony, boy’s bodies, just as they had been when they were small and so plump they barely hurt themselves when they tumbled down on their way between the bench and her knee. They were hers, just as they had been back when she lifted them out of the cradle to her milk-filled breast and had to support their herds, which wobbled on their frail necks the way a bluebell nods on its stalk. Wherever they ended up in the world, wherever they journeyed, forgetting their mother—she thought that for her, their lives would be like a current in her own life; they would be one with her, just as they had been when she alone on this earth knew about the new life hidden inside.”

"How much richer and stronger and braver she had become with each child was something that she first..."

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:49:54 -0400

“How much richer and stronger and braver she had become with each child was something that she first realized tonight.”

- Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

I’ve been thinking about how to write about what Kristin Lavransdatter has meant to me as a mother and a wife and a Catholic. This passage is a starting point for that meditation.