Just In Case You Thought I Was Done Talking about My Uterus

Where to begin?

I have two friends with kindergarteners.  There is nothing essentially profoundly special about kindergarten, though I do have a softspot for the age of five.  Five, as I remember it with LG, is when parenting gets easier (at least until ten, and then it's a different sort of complicated).  It's a milestone, this beginning of elementary school, and it occurs to me every now and then that I could have a kindergartener, too, if only I hadn't had that miscarriage back in June 2009.

I am mostly solidly on the other side of infertility and loss.  One might say healed.  I attribute this partly to my relationship with The Artist and being involved in the infertility community as writer, as advocate, and not as patient.  It's also the publishing of books and having to talk about all this stuff as ancient history, the stuff of books, rather than my present.  And, well, frankly, time.  Tiny Boy is almost four.  This life on the other side stuff?  A nice place to be.

But there's something about this time of year for me that I associate profoundly with infertility. Maybe because I was first pregnant in October and did IVF in October and fretted about IUGR in October.  Or something about the changing of the seasons.*  I'm really not sure.

I'm not sad.  But perhaps wistful.  Thinking about the life I could have had and the one that I do.  And pregnancy loss be damned, if I hadn't lost that baby I surely wouldn't have had a Tiny Boy.  But I would have a kindergartener...

* Tiny Boy told me this morning it wasn't winter yet and it would be winter when his teacher flipped the page on the calendar.  She is THAT powerful.  

Update from the Land of Overwhelm

First off...noting some traffic on the blog circa THE DARK DAYS of 2010-11.  Say hi.  Ask questions. Happy to help out or send you where you should be...my labels aren't always the best.  Leave suggestions in the suggestion box.

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So first LG was really sick, and then Tiny Boy was moderately sick, and now I have a cold, which is just enough to feel meh and keep me in bed today, which is thankfully a day I do not have to get dressed and deal with humans directly, other than getting the tiny one to and from daycare.

This morning he woke up and was asking about pie (what the FUCK?) at 5:30 or so and kept me awake and then fell back to sleep.  Which wasn't great because I had to wake him at 7:40 and stuff him in a carseat so LG was not late for school.  Got him dressed and brush teeth in the daycare bathroom.

I blame the Singulair.  He was also talking about blue spiders in his dreams and crying in his sleep. Anyhoo...

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I continue to have more work than time.  But apparently this is the post-tenure me, vs the pre-tenure me, and mostly I'm not anxious about all this.  I'm just plugging away at it.  But man I did not need those two urgent semi-secret committee meetings.  I have grading to do!  Books to read!  Classes to prep!  Grants to write! And the email and meeting scheduling....argh!

On Thursday I have an administrator type meeting with other administrators, and then I have a coffee meeting with a colleague from another unit who is a good resource for many things, and then I have a coffee meeting with The Artist and a collaborator to figure out a conference thing we're doing next month.  And I'm not really entirely sure how I feel about my infertility life and my professional life hooking up that way, but this seems the direction things are headed, esp. with the publication of the book in Nov (it's been the direction for almost a year...my psychic life is slow to catch up).

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Middle school is turning out to be AWESOME other than the leaving the house at 7:45 thing.  LG is ice skating outside of school, and doing math and STEM clubs in school, and a teen advisory board for the library.  She reads a ton.  She draws anime.  She's mostly happy except when she's glaring at me from under her dark floppy bangs, which I make fun of as often as possible.  I look at her a lot lately and wonder how it's possible my little 6 lb baby is now 80 lbs of PERSON who is so much like me in many ways and entirely her own self in others.

I just looked at the clock and she'll be home in about 90 minutes, so I really should get back to those books...

New Possibilities and Habits

This whole LG-starts-school-at-8:05 thing has the household all topsy-turvy.  We also have the Tiny Boy in a new preschool class situation.  And the Tiny Boy takes melatonin situation.  And LG is 11, which is like a small adult or a toddler, depending on the moment (we read together a large part of The Teenage Brain which is fascinating).  A lot of changes afoot, with the potential to become new habits.  Some things we've tried and will hopefully continue:

• The thing where I leave the kids in the house and take a walk by myself in our neighborhood in the evenings.  I really don't trust LG as a babysitter (11!) but checking in every 5 minutes during a 15-20 minute walk is just awesome.  We tried this once, with the TV on, so Tiny Boy wasn't likely to get into mischief.
• The thing where we make lunches as a family right after dinner (or LG and I do it right after Tiny Boy goes to sleep).  This is in lieu of me making Tiny Boy's lunch in the morning (no time!) and LG doing a half-assed job of doing hers by herself.
• The thing where we use a chore jar!  Oh my goodness, I read about this on twitter.  Basically you put a bunch of jobs in a jar, along with some treats (i.e. watch an educational video) and each kid picks something, you set the timer (we do it for 7 minutes) and they do what the scrap of paper says.  When the timer's done, they're done, even if the job isn't.  We started this earlier in Aug and then LG got really sick and, well, nothing happened.  But we started it again last night.  It gives the illusion of family-bonding-over-chores if nothing else.
• The thing where I read to Tiny Boy at school before dropping him off.  We don't have time to read or really snuggle or do much of anything (I'm setting an alarm for 7:05 and we're out the door by 7:45).  But once LG is dropped off the time crunch is done, and we can read a book before he has breakfast at school.  Dropoffs have been super easy, despite the new class, so I think this is working.
• And the thing where Tiny Boy takes gobwads of melatonin, I sit in the rocking chair, and he generally falls asleep within 5 minutes.  Once it took 50 (and I blame LG, who very clearly tried to rile him up).  The sleep specialists had suggested putting him in bed at 8:30 after reviewing his last sleep charts.  But most days right now he's falling asleep 7:30-8:15 which is right on.  He sleeps most nights 10-11 hrs, so any earlier and he's up to early, but late is too late in the morning, and too late for me to hang with LG at night.

These are things that are working.  And now I have to work.

A Lazy Day

LG is just getting over being sick.  Tiny Boy is coming down with a cold.  I have more to do than hours in which to do it.

We went to home depot this morning to pick up a new lockset (new door, finally, on Tues!!).  Then ate lunch.  I enforced quiet time; LG listened to classical music (she's learning violin) while Tiny Boy and I snuggled and tried to nap.  When that wasn't happening, he went to his room; I did some laundry, dishes, not much.  We made chocolate chip zucchini muffins as a family, then watched a movie.  I'd planned on having them watch a movie while I sat next to them and commented on student writing.  LG informed me it was family movie time, so I watched with them.

Tiny Boy was in asleep by 7:45; LG and I played Scrabble (she beat me by 10 points [frankly because I showed her a final move, but still]!) and now we're both in our own beds.

We all really needed a lazy Saturday.

Busy, Tired, Blah Blah

So this getting out of the house by 7:45 am?  Whoa.  Although it's only 30-35 minutes earlier than we used to leave in the mornings, it turns out to make a big difference.  We're not running late or anything, but I'm losing about 45 minutes of sleep.  I need to go to bed earlier.  But, yeah, too much work, need to chill out, etc.

The upside is that even after dropping off LG, I have time to read Tiny Boy a story in his classroom and still make it home by 8:30ish, so I'm gaining 30 minutes of work time.  I'm sorry Tiny Boy has extra daycare time, but he doesn't seem bothered by it, and maybe once a week we could go grab breakfast together for a treat.  (His school is across the street from her school, so it doesn't make any sense to go home between.)

His sleep, with melatonin, continues to be better on the whole.  I'd say great--and bedtime itself certainly is--except last week involved long stretches of wakefulness (like up to an hour) in the middle of the night.  That seems to be done; he's mostly sleeping 8:00 pm to 7:00 am (give or take 15 minutes), waking only once in the 3-5 window when he comes into my bed, not napping, and not ultra crabby.  I don't like that the kid needs melatonin supplements...but everything in our household is more pleasant.

Work is going to kick my ass this semester.  The real issue is this independent study, which is basically comparable to teaching another class (at least in terms of prep...won't involve much grading).  Note to self:  do not do that again.

I'd say something more profound but it's now 9:40, LG is tucked in for the night, and I need to follow suit...

The Myth of 168 Hours

Because it's the beginning of the semester, I thought I'd start another time tracking exercise on Monday.  Then LG came home early from camp and stayed home for the rest of the week.  Thanks to two friends who live in the neighborhood I was able to go to my first two classes (they came over to check on LG once an hour for the 5 hours I absolutely needed to be on campus) and I managed to get all the rest of the urgent stuff done on Friday morning thanks to a babysitter (Tiny Boy was also home, due to cleaning day at his daycare).  Needless to say, I didn't actually end up tracking my time. What I did do was map out in general terms what my weeks look like.  What became abundantly clear is it's not really useful to think of my week as having 168 hours.

Like most mothers of children in daycare, I have roughly 8:45-4:45 Monday through Friday to use for work.  And after the kid pick up and the feeding and the bedtimes times two, I have approximately an hour each night before I go to bed; I read for about half of that (now it's material I need for work, though I'd prefer not to read with a pen in hand) and then watch a sitcom (22ish minutes!), currently Friends, while I wait for Lunesta to kick in.  If I needed less sleep, or had kids who slept more, I'd have more flexible time in the evenings (indeed, when LG was Tiny Boy's age, she went to bed 6:30-7:00 pm!!!).  I use extra paid childcare for evening events (roughly four times during the semester) and a few hours on alternating weekends.  I anticipate having a bit more time in the mornings soon, as LG will need to be driven to school at 7:45 (I have no idea how that's going to happen...that's about as early as she ever wakes up).  But, still, how will it all get done?

My job responsibilities at the moment include:  teaching two writing intensive courses, directing an undergraduate thesis, directing a graduate independent study (that requries A FUCKLOAD of rereading and some new reading), being on two committees (one is a search committee, save me), acting as program director, which involves weekly/biweekly meetings with other program directors, overseeing a student organization, overseeing an intern (which should make my life easier, but still, MEETINGS!), redoing the undergraduate curriculum.  And then I have six writing projects in various states of disarray, plus two grant proposals that are due this week and then one in mid-October, and I think I forgot about the other graduate students whose committees I am on (three? four? they're hard to keep track of).  I think that's it?

So really I shouldn't be writing this.

The Law of Sick Children

I had new student orientation thing today.  Lots of meetings scheduled.  Classes start tomorrow. Already behind.  And so of course we have a case of THE LAW OF SICK CHILDREN, which is to say when you most need children to be well they are radically unwell.  I do not think LG has been this unwell since roughly 2006.  Sinusitis/cough is now full on pneumonia, complete with albuterol inhaler and a second antibiotic.  The good thing is that sick 11-year-olds are still much easier than sick babies/toddlers.

But still....I have two classes tomorrow and exactly zero syllabi completed or printed, much less learning the new course management system. And I'm still spending approximately 50% of my energy trying to get her to eat and drink.

It's time for triage.  And calling on my village.

This is not an auspicious beginning to the semester.