Mendolonium

I do not understand how the time change works.

Of course, I understand that at the appointed hour we all set our clocks one hour forward and for the next seven months of our lives donate an hour to the gods of daylight savings time only to get that hour back this fall.  I think such shenaniganas are rather antiquated, but whatever; there are lots of things that still exist that should be banished to the history books (checks, phone books).  I will deal.

It is my children that are incapable of dealing and I do not understand how a one hour change can work to wreak such havoc with their sleep.  Logic dictates that if my children are usually asleep by 8:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time), then given the recent “spring forward” in time they should be asleep by 9:00 pm (Pacific Daylight Time).  Well, my children are nothing if not illogical.  Annie was utterly incapable of falling asleep last night without heroic measures.  Then after waking up three or four times she decided she was AWAKE from 12:00 am to 2:00 am nattering on in her baby speak and randomly signing “cookie” and “dog”.  She was happy; looking quite pleased with herself actually, as I lay next to her doing the tired math of “When do I have to get up in the morning minus what time is it now?”  She finally acquiesced to sleep only by sleeping on my neck.  As you might suspect I did not exactly find such sleep restful.  Then Theodore was up with the sun and decided not to take a nap today.   Thomas didn’t fall asleep until after 10:00 pm last night, was up and cranky this morning for school.  I expected him to fall into bed like a log tonight but no such luck.  It is currently 11:02 pm and I can hear him singing in his room.  He is going to be most unpleasant in the morning.   The worst part of it this whole affair is that Thomas’ wakefullness is making me postpone my nightly ice cream sundae.  Thomas keeps getting out of bed to inform me that he “is having a hard time falling asleep” and I can only imagine how indignant (and awake) it would make Thomas to see me chowing down on a giant bowl of ice cream.  It would totally ruin my lie to him that all we do after he goes to bed is clean up the house.  Little does he know that we eat dessert, order takeout, watch movies, read books, and once I even built a space shuttle out of his Legos after he was in bed.  (Of course, I also do dishes, study, fold laundry, prep meals, clean up, and pack lunches).

Of course, Jeff has no such issues with daylight savings time – he is currently curled up on half of the couch with me – sound asleep.

I’ve always liked birthdays.  My mom used to throw the best, homemade birthday parties and I love doing the same for my own children.  Sure, I feel a twinge of bittersweet, happy-sadness on the kid’s birthdays, but mostly I am just content to see how happy they are at being the center of attention for the day.  Birthdays are great; it’s the milestones that make me cry.

Thomas turned six this past summer and following in my mother’s footsteps we threw him what has become the typical Mendolo-style party at home.  I cupcakes fashioned into a snake, complete with forked licorice tongue.  Homemade paper chains festooned the doorways.  Little eyes and legs were hot glued onto individually wrapped chocolates to create “chocolate lizards”.  And much fun was had playing “pin the tail on the rattlesnake” and going on a “reptile hunt” (scavenger hunt).  It was a low-key birthday and I somehow didn’t expect Thomas’ sixth year to be all that big of a deal.

I should have known that a major developmental leap was brewing a few weeks ago when on one night Thomas devoured half an order of mozzarella cheese sticks, about a third of a large pizza, and then complaining of hunger pains before bedtime went on to polish off two apples.  As an aside, I can only imagine the massive amounts of food we are going to be going though in about a decade with two teenaged boys and one nearly teenaged girl in our house.  I mostly look forward to kids eating me out of house and home.  Finally, I will have an excuse to bake the couple dozen cookies and half a dozen loaves of bread each day that I want to!  Returning to the present, I should have known that the cheese sticks were merely the appetizers for the growth spurt that was to come.

The weekend after Thomas started eating like a teenager, Jeff decided it was time to teach Thomas how to ride a two-wheeled bicycle without training wheels.  Perhaps recalling that I had been seven years old before I had learned to ride such a bike, I expected that it would take Thomas weeks to learn; days at the very least.  Less than two hours after Jeff set out to teach Thomas how to ride I moseyed outside to say “Hi” only to see Thomas zoom, with only a slight wobble, down the sidewalk on nothing but two little wheels.  Thomas’ body was not to be satisfied by merely riding a bike, however.  The next weekend he lost his first tooth.  The weekend after that; another tooth and an announcement that he thought he was now ready for chapter books.  With that proclamation I handed Thomas a set of “Magic Treehouse” books I had snagged at the library sale and he proceeded to sit down and read.

It’s impossible not to be happy for him.; he is so proud of his new skills.  He zooms towards us on his bike in camera phone movies proclaiming “I am a super-good peddler!”  He gleefully whispers to me that he knows I am the tooth fairy (actually, Jeff has been the one on fairy duty).  He asks for more chapter books and asks if he can read “Harry Potter” yet.  I just wish life could slow down a little; I miss those days of sitting on the couch and simply nursing through growth spurts.  Maybe we could put the training wheels back on?  I am still a bit wobbly at parenting a big kid; I am pretty sure I am going to crash a few times and I don’t have a helmet.

That doesn’t seem possible though.  Thomas’ new ability to ride a bike earned him a new, bigger and faster bike.  This past weekend we took it out and he rode loops around our little street with me trailing behind him.  I couldn’t keep up with him.  He’s simply too fast.  All I can do is walk behind him, cheer, and help him up if he falls.

I didn’t think I would enjoy motherhood as much as I have.  I had no idea how much I would love it.

When I was pregnant for the first time I read voraciously about motherhood.  I am nothing if not prepared.  According to nearly everyone I talked to or everything I read motherhood would “change me forever”, “shake me to my core”, “be the hardest and the best thing I have ever done.”  I didn’t expect motherhood to be easy.  I steeled myself for breastfeeding battles, years of shitty sleep, and toddler tantrums.

I was so prepared for the worst that it took me months to finally realize that despite Thomas having colic, food allergies, and being the worst sleeper I had ever heard of that this motherhood gig was actually pretty fantastic.  It was, in fact, not the hardest thing I had ever done (those honors go to Physics 106 at Caltech and no I am not joking – that class almost broke me and surviving post-postpartum depression after Theodore’s birth).  I loved maternity leave and found myself perfectly content taking long walks with the baby, cooking phenomenal dinners, and hanging out at home.   Working part-time I have loved most my days that I spend at home with the children.  Overall, I have felt quite happy and confident in my role as a mother.

But over the past year something has been increasingly nagging at me; a feeling that I am no longer enjoying or doing a good job at part of motherhood.  Last night I finally admitted out loud that I feel like I am floundering at being the mother of a school-aged child.   I sat down to talk it out with Jeff to try to understand why after six years of feeling competent and content as a mother I felt so lost now.  There is the obvious; I spend far less time with Thomas now than I ever have.  Thomas is clearly happy and thriving in school and although I know I could do a good job at it I don’t have any desire to home school him.  Yet, most of his waking hours, nearly 40 hours a week, are spent at school – a wonderful school to be sure – but a place that feels quite far removed from home.

Then there are the more subtle things.  One in particular which escaped me until just now.  I absolutely despise, being forced to be on someone else’s schedule.  I am not in a mood to rehash my own childhood, but suffice it to say I grew up without much stability in terms of home and school.  One of my coping methods (I now realize it was a coping method at the time I just thought of it as ambition) was to throw myself into a constant schedule of activities.  I did not allow myself time to think.  In high school I was rarely home; there was the science fair, speech team, mock trial, ballet lessons, theater, singing, flying lessons (fun Gina fact:  I learned to fly a plane before I learned to drive a car), and I took college classes in addition to my high school ones.  I then went to Caltech which was beyond challenging and basically had no life outside of school and Jeff for four years straight.  I worked for two years and then went back to grad school for a masters degree in engineering while continuing to work full-time, with a demanding travel schedule to boot.

And then a couple of years later I had a baby and much to my surprise, despite popular wisdom that having a baby “ties you down”, I finally felt free.  While on maternity leave, for the first time in my life, I had nothing really to do.  Nurse and play with the baby, yes.   Change diapers, certainly.  I absolutely relished the freedom of being on no-one’s schedule but mine and my little baby.  I had never had such a lack of structure and it was shockingly glorious.  While other moms were signing up for weekly music classes and organizing regular playgroups I refrained from committing to anything on a regular basis.  Now, six years later, with the addition of two more children my life is certainly more constrained but also remarkably (to me) free.  On the days I am home with the children we sometimes stay in our jammies all day, we sometimes head out to a museum.  We eat breakfast for dinner and pizza for breakfast if we feel like it.  On the rare occasions that both of the little ones nap at the same time I sometimes sneak in a blissful nap too.  Even though a significant part of the world takes a siesta every day and naps have been shown to have great health benefits, sleeping in the middle of the day still feels delightfully sinful to me.

Now with Thomas in kindergarten he, of course, has to be to school at 8:25 sharp every day.  He has to be picked up at 3:15.  I am very much a minimalist when it comes to scheduling young children and limit our kids to one activity at a time but there are now weekly piano lessons for Thomas and weekly ballet lessons for Theo.  And the boys are asking for more; gymnastics and T-ball.  So far I am holding out because those are simply too expensive for us, but if we had the means I would probably say yes.  It seems that unless I want to home school so much of parenting school age children in our society involves shuttling children from one place to another.  And I just hate it.  I hate driving.  I hate having to wake up two sleepy cranky children to pile them in the car to go pick up their brother.  We have been fortunate in that Thomas’ school follows a very traditional approach to kindergarten and that there is almost no homework for him but good lord I am not going to like fitting homework into our day as the years progress.  And how does one actually fit that in after work or with younger children around?   It seems impossible with my current job, I don’t usually get home until 7:00 pm on the nights that I work and having Jeff supervise three kids, one of them doing homework (knowing Thomas’ personality probably resisting homework), while he tries to make dinner seems like a bit much.

One of the oft proposed solutions to parenting school age children seems to be to “get involved” at your child’s school.  Quite frankly I am as involved as I want to be.  I am happy to talk with Thomas’ teacher regularly, bake cookies for parties (we bake cookies a couple of times a week at our house anyway and this way I get to control the ingredients and the amount of sugar), and do very occasional volunteering such as the talk I recently gave to Thomas class on the solar system (that was fun).  But I don’t have a particular passion for education – I respect teachers greatly but it is not a job I would want.  I am never going to volunteer to be room mother or on the fundraising committee.  I don’t particularly enjoy attending holiday concerts, etc.  I would rather go to the dentist than a PTA meeting.

I think that what scares me most is the day when all of my children are in school.  I don’t feel like I am doing a great job being a parent of a school-aged child right now and I am not sure how I am going to feel about parenting when my little ones have all gone off to school.  How will I spend enough meaningful time with them?  How will we stay connected?  What is mothering a school age child beyond chauffeuring them around, attending to the tasks of daily life (cooking meals, packing lunches, doing laundry), and being “involved” at their school?  How is there time left for anything else and what else is there when they are too old to want to go to the park or sing songs together or sit on my lap and read a story?

I fear that I sound like an ungrateful whiner.  I know that this is a very first world problem.  I am just really struggling with how to be parent of an older child.  This floundering must be how many new parents feel – completely out of their element.  Apparently I am a bit of an oddball in that it took me six years to get to feeling.

I am hoping to reconnect with Thomas over the winter break.  But I need to find my footing as the mother of a school aged child – I am going to have kids in school for the next eighteen years of my life!

I don’t work on Fridays; I spend the day at with Theodore and Anna; baking, doing housework, and reading stories – generally enjoying the life of a part-time stay at home mom.  This past Friday afternoon I had made plans to go to Thomas’ school to give a long-planned talk on the solar system to his kindergarten class.  I had a power point presentation, solar system objects for each child to hold in a interactive activity, and planet coloring sheets all ready to go.  I was excited when Jeff came home early to take over the care of the little ones.  Before I left Jeff asked whether or not I had heard any news that day.  We don’t ever watch the news in our house and I rarely get a chance to read the happenings of the world on the internet until the children are asleep so I hadn’t heard anything.   Jeff briefly told me what had happened in Connecticut and I walked out of the house to Thomas’ school in a daze.  I didn’t really know how to even process the news of what Jeff had told me but I felt tears springing to my eyes at the thought of such horror and pain.  I could logically think about the issues of gun control and mental illness; but I could not emotionally understand how such a thing was possible.  I took a deep breath before I walked into the school and tried to focus on the excitement of outer space.

As I was walking to Thomas’ classroom I found my pace quicken.  I was taken by the sudden urge to hurry and I practically ran into the room to gather him up in a big hug and plant a kiss on his cheek – right in front of all his classmates.  Thomas’ face broke into a big grin.  I smiled back with the appreciation that he is still at an age where it is cool for your mom to give you a hug and a kiss for all to see.  We talked about the solar system for 40 minutes; the kids were excited and asked all sorts of (mostly) intelligent questions.  The presentation was at the end of the school day so after we were done I simply took Thomas by the hand and headed home.  These days, I don’t often hold his hand when we walk together but I took it and didn’t let go until we got to the car.

We had a good weekend together as a family; the carousel at the mall was ridden, Christmas presents were made, and cookies were baked.  But late at night as I nursed Annie to sleep I read the news of the massacre on my iphone.  I read the names and birthdays of the children, all of them with birthdays within days or months of Thomas’.  I just felt so sad and so vulnerable.  Deeply sad for the families who lost their loved ones and for the survivors who must deal with the aftermath.  Vulnerable for my children and all children really.  I am not worried about my kids at school per se; not really concerned that we any of us will be the victim of random violence.  But as a parent, you want to believe that you can protect your children; that if you are vigilant enough somehow they will be immune to anything bad happening.  I think we can, and should, enact greater controls over weapons of mass murder such as assault weapons.  I think we can and should do more to treat mental illness.  But I also know that all the gun control and psychiatric care and car seats and vaccines and fire drills and talks about stranger danger and hand holding will not necessarily keep my kids safe.  And I when I think about that I feel physically ill.  Thomas, Theodore, Anna, and all those perfect, beautiful children in Connecticut; children who sound just like Thomas and the kids in his kindergarten class – right down to many of the same first names – are all innocent and we must do better to protect them.

Thomas asks a lot of questions – we’ve discussed religion, war, alcoholism, politics, and where babies come from.  I usually enjoy his questions; pleased at how inquisitive and forthright he his.  This time, though it is my deep hope that Thomas does not hear about the school shooting; if he does he will ask and there will be no sugarcoating the issue with him, he will want details.  If he asks I have no answers to give him, only sadness and my promise that I will keep him as a safe as possible.  That doesn’t feel like enough.  I need to go give him and his brother and sister another hug and kiss now.