Oh hi May 18, 2010

She made me feel guilty.

It’s true. I’ve been neglecting my blog, in part because I’m busy and in part because I like getting to say the random stuff I have to say on Twitter and Facebook. It’s effortless, compared with blogging, but I’m really not telling stories. There was a time that this place, and those who visited it, were an integral part of my life. But I’ve gotten out of the habit and find it hard to get back in. Do you mind if I start with a bit of a generic update, then see if I can move on to interesting stories and maybe get my blogging mojo back?

Gatito is doing so incredibly awesome. He had another viola recital last weekend and just got up there and played. I’m sure he was a little nervous, but there was no drama about it. He’s doing great in soccer, too, running with the kids, kicking the ball. The one time I went, I saw other kids cowering on the sides with their parents, and that was him last year, but no more! He has a big song and dance performance at school tomorrow. My dad got a little preview of it during a special guest day a few weeks ago and said the teacher is using him as the leader. I know we have been singing a lot of Grand Old Flag and Happy Trails around here, so I’m excited to see the whole thing! Hard to believe there are only two more weeks of school after this one. I’m happy he’ll be there for the summer, but sad this awesome school year is coming to an end. He’s obsessed with Star Wars and we have to play SW all the time around here. I am frequently Leah, while he is Han, and I try not to get uncomfortable when he looks in my eyes and tells me he loves me, then gives me a kiss!

What can I tell you about Ella at 8.5 months? She is amazing. She remains the happiest baby you ever saw. My god. She is smiling in practically every picture. She’s got six teeth (four on top and two on bottom), none of which seem to have bothered her much growing in. Her eyes are still a deep blue and what little hair she has just might be strawberry blond. She’s been doing crunches trying to sit up since she was two months old, and as a result she has this super strong core and abs of steel. She doesn’t crawl because she prefers to sit up and she has incredibly long reach. Every morning, while we get ready, we give her a basket of toys and she sits quietly, pulling out and examining each item, one by one. I have started to take her swimming while A takes Gatito to soccer, and she’s totally comfortable in the water. While her easy-going temperament is different from her brother’s, she shares his focus, long attention span, and powers of observation. I can see the wheels turning in there.

Work has been busy, but successful lately. I have a much better idea of the path forward for the second half of the year than I did for the first half, and that clarity of direction eases my mind a lot. I still have to do all the work, but I know what to do, so that’s good.

My little side business is plugging along. Just as I was about to begin production, I couldn’t get my hands on the materials I needed and had to find an alternative. The good news is that I think my alternative may turn out to be better than the original. Materials have arrived at the manufacturer. I just need to order packaging and inserts, do photography once the first units are produced, and set up the web site and distribution center. Oh god. Sometimes I really do wonder what I am getting myself into. It’s a lot of work and I wonder why I had to add this to my burdens. There’s no turning back now, though. I will be launching in August or September for a trial season and see what happens. Stay tuned and I will let you in on all the gory details when it gets closer.

Tata’s last day of work is next Wednesday. A and I are taking the couple of days before Memorial Day weekend off and then our new nanny starts on June 1. Gatito told me that he didn’t know how it was going to feel when she goes back to Mexico. I told her that he would probably miss her a lot at first, but that he would get used to having his new nanny (who needs a blog pseudonym). I think, probably, three months’ notice was a little too much for a four-year-old. A couple of weeks might have been better for him, but we none of us are great at keeping secrets around here. I am sad for him.

And… the last thing (not) going on is our house. It’s been on about 2.5 months and we just lowered the price for the second time yesterday. The cleaning every morning is killing us. (Really, A, as somehow I got baby duty and he got clean-up duty.) I can’t really go any lower than this and still be able to afford something livable in the town we want to live in. So, I guess we give it till the end of June or maybe mid-July. We’d need to be in contract and be closing within 90 days in order to start Gatito in school in that town. Soooo, I’m not sure what Plan B is. We could happily send Gatito to another year at his current school, but it costs a fortune and then we just have to do this all over again next year. It’s all a giant pain in the ass and I wish we could just win the lottery. Sigh.

Not much of a story, but that about catches you up. I shall try to return soon. Thanks for sticking with me.

Siblings April 25, 2010

If you scan through photos of Gatito over the years, it’s rare to find one where he’s smiling. It’s not that he’s unhappy or that he isn’t having fun, he’s just not a natural smiler. As a baby, people always commented on how serious he was. And even though he is plenty silly now, he’s still kind of serious.

If you scan through photos of Ella, it’s rare to find one where she’s *not* smiling. Especically in iPhone pics, thanks to my Paul Frank case, I think. Everyone who meets her comments on how happy she is, and she truly is unflappable.

Eight months on, Gatito still thinks she’s kind of gross. And it’s hard to deny that. Her diapers leak almost every single time she poops. (HELLLLP! MEEEEE! I have a closet full of every single brand! I’ve gone up a size! Down a size! What do I do?!) She drools constantly (as did he). She spits up frequently (though a lot less often the last month). He thinks her pureed food is disgusting. Everything she gets her hands on go straight into her mouth.

I can count the number of times he has physically touched her. I’m pretty sure I have pictures of both times. I mean, that’s only a slight exaggeration. She turns the full force of her brilliant smile on him frequently, and is met with him hiding or scowling or turning away.

And yet. He is certainly never aggressive with her. A few times, when I’ve been alone with both of them lately, he’s been willing to play with her. I asked if he wanted to get in the bath with her and was shocked when he said yes, then ran around grabbing toys for her and hopped right in. And did it again the next night. And I’ve “caught” him playing with her in the back seat of the car, or when I’ve stepped out of the room. I have this one picture where she’s totally out of focus, but he’s looking adoringly at her.

So I know it’s in there somewhere, that brotherly affection for his baby sister. And I know it might grow over time, as she gets big enough to play. (Today I convinced him what a super fun game it is to pick up her toys every time she drops them. Woot!) But I wonder what she’ll think, what he’ll think, when they’re a little older and there’s no pictures of him holding her in the hospital, of feeding her a bottle, etc., etc. And I wonder how indicative it really is of their future relationship. I just feel like the fact that he’s a boy and nearly four years older and the fact that he’s so much like his dad is going to make him into a stern older brother as they grow up. I certainly know that I can’t force it, but I think it’s kind of sad.

Full and happy April 10, 2010

You know how, when you have kids, you look back longingly to all the free time you had on the weekends before you had kids? I do that sometimes, on rainy days, when I wish I could sit around and read for a few hours. But I also remember that drifting feeling of purposelessness, and looking forward to someday having kids whose activities could fill the weekends.

We had a perfect day today.

First I took Gatito to his group and private viola classes, while A took Ella to a book fair. Then we met at the music school and traded off. I took Ella to my favorite clothing store, where she contentedly sat in her stroller and drank her bottle while I tried on clothes. She napped in the car and then we went grocery shopping. A, meanwhile, took Gatito to yet another book fair and to buy materials to make a mold to make Playmobil figures. This was something Gatito has been saying he wanted to do, and I am amazed that A figured out how to help him do it! We traded off kids again in late afternoon and I took Gatito to How to Train Your Dragon and for s’mores. Normally we spend most of Saturday all four of us together, but I have to say this was quite pleasant, too, and we’ll spend tomorrow together.

There was never a dull moment, but both kids were incredibly well behaved and it was just one of those full, happy days that makes me feel lucky.

Incidentally, is it possible that a baby could say its first word at seven months? Several times now, Ella (reminder that that is her blog pseudonym) has said “Ella,” seemingly in context, to her stuffed elephant, who we call by that name. I thought nine months was the absolute earliest– Gatito didn’t have his first words till around 15 months.

The Help April 8, 2010

I recently finished reading The Help. Not, alas, in time for book club, so I’m turning to you guys.

(Spoiler ahead.)

I totally cried at the end, when Adelaide had to leave Mae Mobley.

First, I cried because I was identifying with Adelaide, and I felt the pain of the separation from the child she loved, and the pain Mae Mobley clearly felt at being separated from the woman who had cared for her and loved her from the time she was born.

Then suddenly, I realized.

Gatito is about to be separated from Tata, the woman who has cared for him and loved him for the past three and a half years, since he was 15 months old. And she from him. Ella and Tata have bonded with each other as well, and Tata may miss her, but Ella will soon forget. But Gatito, UGH. What a devastatingly sad thing to have happen.

And yet, this is how it works, this hiring people to help take care of your kids– and 3.5 years with the same person is actually a pretty long run. This is one of the many, many reasons that having a nanny take care of our kids while we work is not having someone else raise them. We are the ones that will always be here, showering them with love and affection, every day, forever and ever.

That fact should ease things for Gatito, but I can’t forget that he is still losing someone he loves. Someone who has been there every day with him, who helped him through severe anxiety, who helped teach him to walk and talk and use the potty. Who played with him and taught him and just plain loved him. We were lucky to have her for as long as we did.

(Tata’s friend did accept the job. We are grateful to have someone taking over who already has a relationship with the kids, especially with Gatito. She starts June 1.)

Lordy, where has the time gone? March 24, 2010

Um, let’s see…

Had this crazy storm a couple of weeks ago. At one point we were trapped in between downed trees in three directions, so we pulled over to wait for something, anything to happen. Then we spilled the last bottle. It was totally awesome. Then we were without power for a couple of days, and it was coldish, and since baby can’t have a blanket, we spent the night at a really awful hotel in a room with no exterior windows. Still, I was super aware the whole time of how minor this all was in comparison with other recent natural disasters.

Right before that, we put our house on the market. And then had to put a new layer on the roof. Our neighbors sold their house in six days last month (and it’s the same format as ours) so now I’m all annoyed that ours has been on for twelve whole days and has not sold. Silly, I know. I just could not make peace with our local public schools. We applied to the magnets and did not get good lottery numbers, so, here we are.

And right before that, Tata had some difficulties with immigration, and while she’s not exactly being deported, she is returning to her country at the end of May. I have mixed feelings about that. She takes awesome care of the kids (as repeatedly reported over the years by friends who see them out together– even those she wouldn’t know) and really loves Gatito, but our relationship, to be totally honest, is not great. So I am kind of looking forward to starting afresh. We have made an offer to her good friend, who has also known Gatito for years. She was supposed to let us know, um, today, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that.

Work has been super stressful. I have never carried tension in my jaw before, but that is where I am carrying it now. It looks like I will, indeed, be sent to Budapest in a couple of months, but at least this trip should only be for a few days. And there is still a chance that no one will want to spend the money to send me, so I can always hope for that.

Basically, I am keeping my head above water, but only just barely. I no longer look forward to things settling down and life getting back to normal. There is no such thing as normal. It’s just life.

One year on… March 2, 2010

This time last year, I was frantic with worry about Gatito’s anxiety.

One year later, he’s like a different person. I wish you guys could see him. He is amazing. He has come right out of his shell.

Last summer, when A took him to little soccer classes, he would cry and cling to A on the sidelines. They’d have pep talks in advance that helped, but that was our biggest concern for those classes. He just started in an indoor soccer league and is the youngest and least experienced on his team of 4-6 year-olds, and it is no problem. Once he cried when someone else took his ball during the drills, but no other anxiety. He runs with the pack (which is how 2-4 year-olds plays soccer) and what we’re working on now is getting him to kick the ball when it comes near him. He actually did kick it twice last weekend.

When he started his new school in September, they used to struggle to get him out on the playground. When I’d go to pick him up, he’d be on his own, with a teacher, on a bench. Now he’s right in the thick of things. I moved him from half days to two full days, to three full days/week, and then he asked to go full day every day. It was a little more money, but not easy to tell a 4-year-old they can’t go to school more!

They are studying instruments, and in string week, they asked Gatito to bring his viola in to show the class. He did and played for his class. That went well, so the teacher brought in the other pre-K class. And that went well, so she brought in the K-1-2 class. Not only was he not nervous, but apparently all the kids responded extremely well to him. His teacher said that every year she has one or two moments, and that was one of them. He’ll have his first recital this weekend and I haven’t seen a trace of anxiety, though obviously that could happen last-minute when he sees the audience.

After watching the Olympics, Gatito got really excited about speed skating. I’d have just taken him to the rink on a Saturday, but since I haven’t skated in a decade and probably only ten times my whole life, I didn’t feel like I could teach him. I signed him up for eight weeks of lessons and figure I can take him independently after that. I left work a little early to see how his first lesson went. The place is chaotic: a recipe for sensory overload and confusion even for me. On the ice, there were about eight kids in his little group, but about 100 on the rink all together. He had a lesson for 25 minutes and supervised practice for another 25. I brought him to the door, handed him off to a teacher, and off he went. It was amazing! No crying, no anxiety. He fell down, he got himself up again. He moved around, sometimes holding onto an orange cone, sometimes independently.

It is hard to say how much of it is simply growing up, but I do attribute a lot of the change to being in a supportive school environment and even to karate. Whatever it is, I am so grateful, and so proud. Go, Gatito, go!

Six months! February 26, 2010

Ella had her half birthday on Wednesday.

She is the happiest baby you ever did meet. She smiles all the time and laughs easily. She thinks her brother is hilarious, she particularly likes looking at herself in the mirror, and she thinks fart noises are funny. She is a charmer, smiling at everyone she meets. Walking around with her in the carrier at the grocery store, she was 90% asleep but still managed a smile for the man who couldn’t help me find cannelloni beans. She even, on occasion, manages to charm the toughest audience of all: her brother. When she turns that bright smile on him, she can make him cross the room to interact with her. Even the cat seems to like her!

She cries only when she’s hungry or sleepy. She has two crooked teeth on the bottom and they didn’t seem to cause her any trouble at all. She’ll get pretty noisy if you’re not paying attention to her for too long, but she’s happy to chill out and watch for a while. She’s a great, calm observer, but there’s a little gleam in her eye that makes me suspect there’s some scheming going on in there.

She sits up for short periods– a skill she’s been working on since three months. She rolled over front to back a bunch of times around four months, but I haven’t seen her do that in a while. (Does that matter?) She rolled over back to front and cried around 3:00 a.m. one night last week, but apparently she learned her lesson, because she hasn’t done that again!

She sleeps easily at night. We put her down around 7:00 and she cries for a minute or two and then goes to sleep. (No sleep training was required, thank goodness, because I couldn’t have handled it!) Occasionally she still gets up for a few ounces in the night, but mostly she’ll sleep till 5:00 or, the past week or so, past 6:00 (and yesterday until 7:30!) She only takes naplets during the day– two to three half hour deals, though not infrequently she wakes fully refreshed after three to five minutes, which is basically fine.

Her eyes are blue blue blue and what little hair she has is light. In certain lights, it looks positively golden, which is a shock for her brown-eyed brunette parents. She’s got adorable, huge, apple red cheeks. Her checkup is next week and I’m eager to see if she remains above the 97th percentile for height, which is what I’ve come to expect from my children!

She’s our miracle baby in every way, and I just can’t believe how lucky we are.

Daily February 18, 2010

So, I went to Moscow and London for work last week or the one before. It totally sucked leaving the kids. It was almost a physical pain being away from the baby for seven days. I’d never before been away from Gatito for more than two nights. In fact, I can remember only one time in the nearly thirteen years I’ve known him when I was away from A for more than a couple of nights.

I’ve been thinking lately that striking a balance between work and family life is not (only) one big decision, like deciding not to advance your career further, but a series of almost daily smaller decisions. On my trip, I wondered whether it was really necessary, whether I could have avoided the trip either by outright refusing to go or by some more subtle way. And probably the answer is yes, but then I wouldn’t have been able to do my job as well.

There are one or two more potential trips to Europe coming up in the Spring/Summer– that I know of so far. In both cases, without too much trouble, I think I could get the head of my group to go in my place. But these meetings are such cool opportunities to showcase my work within my company and to our customers, to really make a name for myself, and I hate to let someone else get the glory for all my toil.

And yet, which is more important? Do I not want to have to leave my family occasionally* or do I want to get recognition for my work? And will getting recognition for my work only increase the requests to travel and present in the future? And what about things like being available for occasional phone calls with Europe at 7:00 a.m., right in the heat of the morning rush? Or staying a half hour later to finish something essential?

I’m hyper aware these days that it’s these small decisions we are forced to make on a daily basis that have more of an impact than the occasional big decisions on defining or blurring the line between work and personal.  And I’m struggling. It used to be easier, somehow, but it’s a lot harder going from one kid to two at home and from covereing one continent to two at work. (In the end, it’s really the blog that suffers! Ha!)

*It is possible that the family could join me on one of the trips and we could make a vacation out of it, but in general, no.

My day so far February 12, 2010

4:00am Wake up stressed about stuff I need to do for work and business

4:45am Check bberry. stressed abt email from Germany.

5:00am Ella wakes. Feed and change (her) shower and dress (me)

5:45am Call Germany, straighten stuff out

6:00am Hang out with kids while A gets ready

7:00am Con call with Europe

8:00am Rush out door to meeting with Gatito’s teacher. Arrive and find 1) Forgot to bring Valentine’s 2) Teacher stuck in traffic due to accident 3) Text from Tata that she’ll be late due to same accident. Call A.

8:40am Teacher arrives. Begin super speedy conference.

8:50am A arrives at school with valentines cards and Ella and rushes off

9:00am Drive home, pass Ella to Tata, begin insane work from home day.

HELP MEEEEE!!!!

Over! January 22, 2010

Surgery was a breeze. We did the tour last week, and I think it really helped. Gatito was a little quiet then, but when we saw the same nurse again today, he opened up an asked tons of questions, which is exactly what we wanted.

The difference between this experience at a top children’s hospital with pediatric anesthesiologists and the one with his teeth at a more local hospital with a children’s wing and regular anesthesiologists with pediatric experience was night and day. Should your child ever require surgery, no matter how minor, I cannot stress the importance of a children’s hospital enough.

The entire staff was so sensitive to the way a child deals with anesthesia. He was so calm that he did not even require the happy drug they would have given him prior to the mask.  He did not fight the mask and went down easily. We were allowed to be in recovery before he woke up, so that we were there the moment he opened his eyes and he did not have time to become hysterical. When he started to be bothered by the IV line, they took it out. None of this happened the last time.

Before the anesthesia, the nurse told him gently, “Close your eyes. Now open your eyes. That’s how long it’s going to seem to you.” So Gatito asked, “But how long is it going to seem to you?”

When we got home, he and A were playing a game of Hospital. Gatito was the doctor and A the patient. A, exhausted from our early morning wake-up, was eagerly awaiting the play anesthesia, when Gatito kicked A out of bed and said, “Excuse me, but I just had surgery today, and even though I’m the doctor, I need to lie down.”

The kid just floors me. I love him so damn much. Watching him and waiting for him to wake up, I stared at his long neck and noticed that his nose is turning from its baby non-nose into a real person’s nose, and I was struck by the realization that he’s in the final transition from baby to kid. It’s bittersweet, of course. I’m so proud of him and so excited for what lies ahead, but I would still like to freeze time. I’m aware it’s a feeling that is familiar to many.

Most importantly, the surgery was a success and it’s over and I’m so ridiculously grateful that we weren’t there for anything more serious.