Life in the hutch

In the last week or so I started noticing some chatter on Twitter about being a “zombie mom”. I have been there and remember it well, that haze that surrounds a new parent, where sleep is a luxery that most can’t afford. It was a time when I did some really silly things, like left the water running for long periods of time, pouring hot coffee in a mug with a tea bag, then serving it to Willy as just a normal cup of tea, leaving the laundry wet in the washer for days… It was worse with Goose, as I had Woo to keep up to in the daylight, and never got to nap. Woo gave up napping three days after Goose came home from the hospital. The days were looooong.

As I read some of these tweets from these new moms, I felt sorry for them, but was secretly smug.  Smug because I am so far past that stage.  My lils, for the most part, are great overnight sleepers. If they wake in the night, they are quick to settle and we barely notice.  Willy is always the first to get to them anyway, so I get the shut-eye that I need. If I don’t it is my fault for going to bed too late. Then Willy went away and Goose got croup.  I hate croup.  It not only sounds horrible, but it destroys the sleep of whichever little is currently afflicted.  Who could sleep through that awful cough?  I can’t, and I am not the one making all that racket.  We have become pros at taking all the precautions we can and managing it at home so that we don’t have to go to the doctor or hospital, but every now and again they get a bad case.  Goose has a bad case.

The first night was not too bad as she only woke twice so my tired was a manageable tired. The second night was way worse, and she woke at least once per hour.  Then the thunderstorm hit and I was finished sleeping for the night.  I lay in bed and started thinking of my day. Worried that I would fall back to sleep and wake late, I started jotting down important things that I was worried I’d forget.  Things like get file from office, pack a lunch, get dressed, bring camera… … get dressed.  I had to remind myself to GET DRESSED for work. It took two short days, and I am a Zombie Mom again.  I am afraid of what will happen next.

I like to joke around about my mother-in-law as much as the next person, but for the most part, she’s pretty awesome. Take this week for example… Willy’s away, so she dropped everything and hopped on the train to come and help out and talk care of the lils while I go to work. The fact that the monkeys are sick has not deterred her, even though it has meant that she is now exposed to their little germs and at risk of getting sick, despite the fact that she is hosting a party when she returns home at the end of the week. It has also meant she has not been able to meet with friends here, as the lils won’t be going to daycare tomorrow. That earns her a BUNCH of gold stars in my book!

This visit is starting to be a bit of a problem for me, as she is starting to make me look bad. At first I didn’t see it for the clearly calculated plot that it must be. Seems innocent enough that she planned her train arrival at a time that was most convenient for the lils and I to pick her up on friday, right? I mean, she didn’t intentionally take the perfect train that allowed her grandchildren to stand on the platform and be awed by the arrival of the train, then be greeted by her running down the platform with open arms to them? They were thrilled. I didn’t see it when we got home and she suggested to them that they all paint together. In the house. Every day of her visit. I started to get suspicious when I caught her reading them book after book after book, including the same books over and over without complaint.

I came home from work today to tales of a game of “doctor” that somehow involved the lils piling every blanket and chair cushion in the play room onto Gramma and then jumping up and down on her repeatedly. Then I heard that they had hot crossed buns at both morning and afternoon snack today, complete with hot chocolate this aft. I knew what was up when she let Goose climb into her lap this evening and happily much on her dinner cuddled in her Gramma’s arms. How on earth are am I supposed to live up to this??

Now she has done it. She is making me look bad to myself. This weekend, she raked our lawns and cleaned up my flower gardens. Today I came home to reports of happy children, with nary a whine or cry in sight. One night, she offered to make supper, and when I shoed her out of the kitchen, she started to fold and sort the laundry, on the same day that it was washed. As each load finished!! Each night after supper, she has sent me out of the kitchen to play with the lils while she washes the dishes. On the same day that they were used!! Then, right before bed, she cleans up the play room, sorting all of the toys, and getting the lils to actually help.

It has gotten to the point where I now have to privately make things up that she has done wrong so that I can live with these standards. Sure, she folds the laundry, but the underwear is folded wrong. Yes, she sweeps the floors, but she walked by that pile of clothes at the top of the stairs twice, and everybody knows that things left at the top of the stairs are supposed to go down. It’s wrong to just walk by. After the dishes, she leaves the water in the bottom of the sink, claiming that she is looking for more dishes to wash, but that is just wrong. Thank goodness I have these to “faults” to hold on to.

I have never been the type of parent who lamented the fact that my children were growing and changing. I was never sad to see them move into the next size of clothing, didn’t wish that they would stay dependent for a little bit longer, and was actually quite relieved when they started walking. Each stage was great while it happened, (except maybe teething and the “I don’t need to nap” stages, I could not wait to move past them) but the end just meant that a new adventure was beginning, and I’ve loved each one.

This has changed recently. All of a sudden I am aware that time is passing at an alarming rate, and in five short months, Woo will be starting school and everything will change. We won’t have our days together with Goose, he won’t have his most awesome daycare provider three days a week, we won’t be able to go on so many adventures, and he’ll be separated from us… This makes me a little sad. There is nothing I want more than to make time stand still now, so that we can live every second together to the fullest. As much as I am excited about this school thing that he will be doing, I wish it wasn’t so soon.

The neat thing is, in trying to hold on to this time, I find that we are doing all sorts of fun things together that I am not sure we would have if before. Goose, Woo and I are more relaxed, do more together and have a tonne of laughs and good times. It’s easy to think that you can do something or play somewhere another day when those days are limitless. For the first time in either of their lives, there is a hard date when something is going to change. That has put a little bit of pressure on us, on me. The results have been great for us.  Maybe there is something to be said for holding on.

There are few things that Willy and I consistently have disagreements over.  One of these things is the dishwasher.  The fights are generally not over the same thing, but you can bet that there is always something we are disagreeing over.  The squabbles usually centre around what can and can’t be put in the machine, where to but things so they actually get clean, and how you need to rinse for the super efficient cycle, unless you are running it right away… We have each won our share of these little disagreements, and there is always a clearly established best way in the end.

The latest is the wine glasses.  We have some of the stemless Riedel glasses, and for the most part, love them.  They aren’t tippy, they don’t have pesky stems to snap, and the wine doesn’t actually get warmer faster from being held in your hand.  This last fact might be because the wine is never in the glass for long…  They are also dishwasher friendly, which means that we don’t have several wineglasses precariously balanced in the drying rack most days.

I recently started noticing that the glasses weren’t coming clean and mentioned it to Willy. He started to move them around in the machine, but they never got clean.  We “talked” and decided they just weren’t coming clean in the dishwasher, and Willy agreed that the best way was to hand wash them, yet the next morning they were in the machine.  So we “talked” again and reached the same conclusion.  The next morning one had been hand washed, and one was in the dishwasher.  More talking and more agreement that they needed to be hand washed.

This morning I found the same dirty wine glass in the dishwasher. Maybe I need to start cursing about this!

“Just go work out, you’ll have more energy and feel better.  Trust me”

If I had a nickel for every time that Willy told me that…  He says it if I am down or stressed and always when I am just feeling like a lump.  My usual response it to curse at him and go on with what I am doing, claiming that I am just fine, thank you very much. Here’s the thing.  He’s right.

I have recently made a bunch of changes to improve my overall health.  I shut down at 11:00pm now (most nights), and curl up with a book until I fall asleep.  I am eating better, and tracking what I eat in an effort to achieve a healthier weight and more balanced diet.   My hours were cut at work, in an effort to save my agency some money, but added benefit is that it gives me more me time, and more family time.  I also resigned from a volunteer position that I have held for the last three years for the same personal reasons.

The biggest difference, however, is that I have fallen in love with my elliptical again.  Willy is right, I feel better when I exercise. Like race home from work so I can fit a work out in before I make dinner, skip lounging around the house or having a soak in the tub so I can work out good.  It’s crazy how quickly you can fall back into a routine, and need to keep up with it.  I see this as the start of some good balance in my life.  Even if it means admitting when I am wrong.  Even if it means admitting that I am wrong.

My 365 has been chugging along very slowly of late. I still take daily of pictures, but I am missing something.   I thought it was the early nights, and cold weather, but it would appear that is not the case. Days are getting warmer, time has changed, and I still don’t take pictures that I am happy with, and that gets me down.

It used to be that I would sit at the computer every couple of days and try to narrow down the picture that I would use for each day.  It wasn’t an easy task, and I often called upon Willy to help me decide on “the one” for each day. I don’t remember the last time that happened.  It seems that I now look at the pictures again and again, to try to decide if any of them are for posting, or forcing one to be worthy.

I’ve tried to ignore my camera, but I truly love to take pictures, so that is not working.  Staging shots hasn’t been working, neither have my tried and true tips that I save for inspiration.  Looking at the work of other photographers that I love just discourages me a little bit more, so I don’t linger on their stuff these days.  In the end I keep going and won’t give up, but I need to figure out how to get back on track.  This shouldn’t be a chore.

I am a list maker, always have been. If I don’t write a thought down on a piece of paper, the thought flies away never to be found. For years I have kept a list book, a spiral bound book that has all my lists in it. There are reno ideas, books to read, appointments, recipes to try, gifts to buy, things I want to buy or receive, and places to go. There are also several to-do lists in it, sorted by project, or date, or work involved in the task. It’s always been my space to braindump, and I have relied on it to keep me on track.

In the last year or so I’ve noticed that I am not as “on top” of things as I once was. I stopped using the list book, and started to try and track my lists electronically, on either my laptop or iPhone. It’s been a failure, as things weren’t getting entered into the appropriate list or calendar, or there was never one program or app that answered my varied needs. Recently I’ve started to really lose track of things, and last week was the final straw.

I got an email from on of our teenaged babysitters, confirming that she was available to babysit the following Wednesday. It was clearly in response to a request that I had made, but I had no idea why we booked her, and neither did Willy. This distressed me greatly, and it took a couple of days and an extensive sort through my emails for it to come back to me. I was lost and knew it was time to reinstitute the list book. I am much happier now, pen to paper, populating it with all sorts of little lists. The first one in the book is the list of lists, of course.