long days

I just got back from picking Lucy up from school. After unloading Tessa, I chatted with a few of the other moms in her classroom, and the stay-at-home-dad who drives a silver Range Rover (I do not judge, I only report what I see.) I had a nice extended conversation with the head teacher, about some of our shared concerns about which program might be the best fit for Lucy, and how she's been doing in the first few weeks of school. I nodded hello to the two other teachers, and then helped Lucy clean up her lunch and say goodbye to the ladies in the office (as she does everyday.) Then I loaded her and Tessa up in the car and came home and went to the bathroom.

Where I discovered chocolate smeared all over my mouth and chin. From this morning's Breakfast Cookies. Or perhaps the dessert of cookies that followed breakfast. It took less than a week to expose myself as a total ass to the ladies (and Range Roving stay at home dad) of Lucy's class.

I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing here. On this blog, not on the planet earth or in this life or anything like that. I don't get out enough or do enough shoe shopping to regularly fill this space with random Seinfeld-esque anecdotes or riffs on the happenings of my day. I don't have a very strong political view point, or at least not about anything I'm interested in writing about. I could blog daily about Lucy's tantrum du jour or the other amusing foibles of my children. But an archive of her tantrums seems wrong, and I have another place (for the extended family) where the cute stories are supposed to go. Plus, I'm not entirely sure (especially lately) my children have enough entertainment value to populate and justify two blogs. I have a lot to say about Angelina Jolie and Lindsay Lohan, but I think Perez Hilton has the market cornered on that topic. And I'm not ready to start calling myself Stephezzle. At least not in public.

I initially said that I was doing this just to get back in the habit of writing again, to keep alive the part of my brain that used to help me hold down a job. But my end goal certainly isn't to get my old job back. I never had all that much interest in writing about corporate earnings and network routers and click-throughs and I certainly have none now. I recently read that they had created a computer program which efficiently and accurately writes earnings stories, bypassing reporters completely, and I thought, "That sounds about right." So with my old job now taken over by robots, I have to figure out what kind of writing I want to make my way to, and that's not as easy as I thought it would be.

So I find myself going about my day, and every so often wondering which of the little tidbits that make up my life would be good to blog about and which are too mundane to make the cut. And I think a lot about how or if or when I want to tackle the stuff that is -- right now, at least -- too personal and too painful to write about coherently, and possibly not for the consumption of others. At least, not yet. And I haven't figured any of this out yet.

But the fall TV season is just around the corner, so if all else fails, I know I could keep myself quite busy writing about McDreamy and Logan Echolls.

I took Tessa with me to Nordstrom's on Friday, to continue my ongoing quest for cute comfortable shoes that aren't flip-flops. I keep coming close to buying a pair of Keen's that my mother has, but I can't quite do it. Mostly because everyone who has seen them has commented on how really ugly they are. And they don't even really fit me, so they probably wouldn't even be that comfortable. Just comfortable-looking. And, my mother owns them.

The shoe guy who helped me was about 23, and clearly still on summer break from frat life. He called me ma'am. He brought me my fugly shoes to try on for the third time, and then looked at Tessa, asleep in the stroller in her striped footy pj's. "I was thinking..." says frat shoe guy. "Isn't it so awesome how babies dress? Wouldn't it be so awesome if you could just keep dressing that way your whole life? Like how awesome would it be to just cruise to work in your full-body adult pajamas?"

It seemed wrong to point out that even babies have real clothes, and I'm just too lazy to go to the trouble of finding a pair of baby socks and shoes for my child. Why deprive him of his fantasy of a world where he can cruise to work in full body adult pajamas?

I can't really complain. At least I wasn't the one who had to give Tessa the suppository. Four poopy diapers in one day. Yuck.

It's amazing how much better your day can be when it's a preschool day. Keeping this in mind, I made arrangements today for Lucy to go to preschool every day. It will probably backfire.

Today a lady at the park I didn't know remarked to another woman, "...potty training was SO much easier than I thought it would be. She just did it herself!" They weren't even talking to me, but I still said, "I don't think I can be at the same park as you right now." Luckily, Lucy went running off across a field at the same moment so I was able to take off after her without having to explain myself.

My kids are driving me nuts. Not in a euphemistic way, either. Literally insane.

The one who needs to nap, spent the afternoon decorating her rug, rocking chair, and floor with dry-erase marker she was hiding in her bookshelf. I probably need to start strip-searching her before her naps. This was after a playdate where she repeatedly told her friend to "leave me alone" even though he was minding his own business on his bed, while she stood across the room playing with his toys.

The one who is supposed to be "the good baby" who is in the "nice phase" of babyhood, according to everyone, is fussy and won't let me put her down. In her defense, she does have a cold, and there is nothing more pathetic than a baby gurgling with a Demi-esque rasp because she has phlegm in her throat.

The one who needs to poop, hasn't in three days. The one who is supposed to be having naked potty-training week, won't stop pooping and thus I can't take the diaper off. And honestly, I don't have the energy or stick to it-iveness to potty train her this way anyway. You know how they always tell you not to stress over potty training, because no kid will start college in diapers? I don't believe it. I know we'll be unpacking her Pampers Cruisers Size 25 when we drop her off at her dorm.

She is pushing all my buttons, and I am rising to the bait every. single. time. I try to employ super nanny techniques, and they fail miserably. I tell her to stop kicking me or she will get a time out on the naughty stool. She races to the bathroom, plops her ass on the stool, and grins at me triumphantly. today she tried to use the bouncy chair as a catapult, pulling it back in an attempt to launch her sister across the room. Then she did what I think is called pile-driving in WWF, landing on me on the couch. I need the actual Super Nanny, and then when she shows up I'm heading to Cabo for 2 weeks.

Oh wait, the other one's screaming. Please hold.

Ok, pacifier re-inserted for the 2000th time today. Anyway, I know what the answers are. I know we need more structure in the day and less hanging around the house while Tessa naps. I know I need to be more consistent and less cranky. I know Lucy needs more one on one attention from me, that she is acting out to get my attention, but I can't help myself -- I'm not mature enough to rise above right now. I know the answer is not more preschool time, but that's what it's probably going to be. Or a nanny. Or both. What do you do when the solution to your kid's issues is that they be around you less? Am I going to be this irritable and shrill -- and even worse, ineffectual -- for the rest of their childhood? Will things really get better when we all start sleeping more, or is that just something I tell myself so I don't have to think about the fact that today is one of the days when I don't like my kid, and I'm starting to wonder why it never dawned on me before getting pregnant to figure out if I like kids at all.

My dad used to sing that to me on every birthday. When I was little, I didn't know it was a Beatles song, and just thought it was one of his more egregiously nonsensical made-up songs. Every year, without fail, I would hear it either over the phone or in person. Except last year, when for some reason he forgot to call me on my birthday. And this year, he's gone. He died last September. Every holiday since then, it's impossible to keep myself from thinking, "This is the first Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter/Arbor Day/Whatever without him here." Funny but out of all those holidays, the day I missed his presence the most was Lucy's third birthday and my niece's first birthday. My birthday is the last one of these "firsts", and in some ways its a relief.

I'm writing this while pumping -- the miracle of the spandex double pumping bra -- to leave enough milk for Tessa while I spend several hours at the spa, courtesy of my sweet husband. Other than being slightly concerned that my breasts are going to explode on the massage table, I'm so looking forward to a few hours to myself to relax. I may curl up on one of the changing room benches and take a nap if the spirit moves me.

I'm 32 today. I thought for most of the week that I was turning 33 this year, but it turns out I was wrong. 32, 33, there's not a lot to get worked up about there either way. I was up about 10 times last night with Tessa, who has a cold, so I kind of have the hungover look and feel of a just turned 21 year old. If that isn't putting a positive spin on sleep deprivation, I don't know what is.

Lucy made me a Miffy card and picked out flowers ("Roses just like Belle has") and joined me in a rousing rendition of "Lucy Bear and Tessie Bear Have Red Hair" (sample lyric: They have blue eyes/They have red hair/They are sisters/You see.) And after pancakes and chicken apple sausage, I will have my pores professionally squeezed. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday.

Don't assume she's sleeping just because her room is quiet.






I sure have learned a lot today.

Make sure you're not low on diapers before dosing a constipated baby up with an ounce of prune juice.

Lucy left a small wooden hammer on Tessa's gymini today, which Tessa promptly grabbed and shoved in her mouth. At which point, Lucy became outraged -- MY TOY MY TOY!!! -- simultaneously whining and yanking the toy out of Tessa's hand. I stopped her, and sternly lectured her: she left the toy there, and she could not just take it away from her sister. Now, if she wanted to offer Tessa a replacement toy from her room, she could trade toys. But it's not okay to just steal things out of Tessa's hands.

Lucy thought for a second, and then ran off full speed down the hall to Tessa's room. She returned a second later, with Tessa's swim diaper in her hand. She shoved it in Tessa's face, and said, "Eat it, Tessie." And then she grabbed the hammer and walked away.

I thought about starting a blog for a long time, but I got stuck whenever I thought about what to name it. It's hard to sum yourself or your life up in a pithy or witty phrase. So I put it off, and thought about it from time to time, but never did come up with anything fabulous for a title.

Eventually I decided that it might be a good thing for me to start writing -- anything -- again, and that I could benefit from the teensiest bit of introspection. But I still couldn't think of anything to name it. And then I remembered, when I write (wrote?) articles and I'm (was?) stuck on the lede or the first graf, it was always helpful to just start throwing random quotes up on the page and then statistics and numbers and kind of just let the story write itself. Then I would come back to the top once the whole thing was written. Once the article was 99% done, only then could I ever come up with anything resembling an adequate lede.

So I decided the same theory should apply here. I'll just start writing, and then maybe magically in a week or month a better name will appear to me. In the meantime, I'll stick with Long Days, because that's what my life is like right now. Looooong days. But at the same time, Tessa is already four months old and where did all the time go?

So. Tessa is four months, and almost obscenely huge (I mean really, have you ever heard of a baby being 97th percentile anything?) and just beautiful and adorable and already meeting milestones of older babies (I don't like to brag, but she does eat her feet on at least a five month old level.) But this baby is not what you would call a "good sleeper." (Imagine me doing Chris Farley air quotes.) Will and I have both gotten somewhat acclimated to living in the fugue state of no-sleep, but every so often I'll look in the mirror and be taken aback by my haggardness. Even on days when I've showered and put on makeup and am not covered in spitup and/or poop.

Lucy and I were looking at her baby pictures on the computer the other day, and we got to the ones of the day she was born. There's a picture of Will and I right after she was born, and we both just look so... young. Our eyes were bright, we were tan, dazed but still alert. And it was only 3 years ago, but it looks like another lifetime. And then a few photos later there's a shot of us after three or four days in the hospital, and even after 48 hours with a newborn, the picture looks like the us I know now: glazed eyes, vacant expressions, grumpiness right under the surface.

And I tell myself that Tessa will start sleeping through the night, and these days will be just hazy memories. But I don't really think I will ever look that young again.

Crazy1 and Crazy2 are both sleeping. During daytime hours. I can count on one hand the number of times this has ever happened. Of course, the cleaning lady is here, so it's probably coming to an end soon, but it sure was sweet while it lasted.

I've been mulling the idea of a blog for a while now. In high school and college, I used to write in a journal. I mostly kept a running tally of how much beer I had been drinking and how many boys I had kissed, but it was still technically a journal. And it kind of helped, I think. Or maybe that's just the beer-fuzzy memories.

But now that I'm a grown up, with grown up feelings and issues and problems, I have no outlet of my own to work through these things. And I like the Internet a whole lot, so this seems like a pretty good solution to the situation. We'll see how it goes.

Right now I'm extremely sleep deprived. Which is pretty much par for the course when you live with a 4 month old and a 3 year old. So my blog entries will probably be either few and far between, or rambling musings late at night when I should be sleeping. We'll see how it goes.