Dan and Em's Blog

Things can get crazy here pretty quickly.  This afternoon, I had just made Benjamin lunch and set it on the coffee table when he asked me to identify something in a new book of his.  I turned my back on the coffee table for all of (literally) about 30 seconds when I heard a crash and turned around to see Liam, covered in tomato sauce and Benjamin’s lunch (pizza) face down on the floor.  The pizza wasn’t that hot (thankfully) so no harm was done, just a big mess and a need to reinvent lunch for B.

I picked Liam up, picked the pizza up, put Liam back down (he was covered in sauce, and I didn’t feel like smelling like pizza the rest of the afternoon) and turned around to get a napkin (again, maybe 20 seconds of walking from one side of the living room to the other to pick up a napkin) and turned around to see my very fast youngest child assaulting my computer (which, very foolishly, had been left on, unlocked and within reach of my kids).  By the time I got to him (about 4 seconds later) my computer was covered in pizza sauce, he had completely changed the way my Outlook interface looks and started to compose a message to a listserv at MITRE.  (I still haven’t figured out how to change the interface back, because babies have special computer ninja powers that allow them to access otherwise unknown features of applications and the operating system.)

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My wonderful, sweet little boy.  I am so happy to see you turn three years old.  I’m sure I will say this every year, but I can’t believe that so much time has passed since the magical day that you came in to this world and I became a mommy.  I remember every moment of that day as though it happened yesterday — it was the most important day I’d ever had.  I am simply overjoyed to have you in my life, and to watch you grow and flourish and become even more fantastic all the time.  I love you so very much.

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We had some friends of ours (a co-worker of Dan’s, his wife and their two boys, aged 8 and almost 1) over to our place for the first time yesterday.  Shortly after they arrived, Paula looked at me and said, “I’m so relieved to see that it looks like you live in your house”, by which, she meant, that my house looks like it always does:  it looks like people who have two children, a dog, and not a lot of time live here.  I sincerely do my best to keep my house in reasonable shape, which mostly means keeping up with the mountains of laundry our family produces and cleaning up a ton of dog hair every day.  Benjamin pitches in by helping with “clean up time” in the evening whenever the level of toy carnage starts to look like Santa’s sleigh had a tragic accident in our living room.  But, for sure, my house looks lived in.

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Pain is an effective teacher.  No matter how many times you are warned that something will hurt, nothing will drive that message home like experiencing it for yourself.

Benjamin got one of those lessons this evening.  He reached out a touched a light bulb at the restaurant where we were having dinner.  I didn’t see it in time to warn him about this particular one (he climbed up onto the bench seat in the restaurant and the very first thing he did was reach out and touch the light in the shelf behind his seat) but I’ve warned him many, many times about that kind of thing before.  (The light bulb was easily within his reach — it is a setup you would probably not see in the States particularly due to the litigation potential in exactly this kind of situation.)

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11 years ago today, Dan & I got married.  It really does not feel like it’s been that long, in that I don’t feel like the time Dan & I have been married encompasses nearly 1/3 of my life so far.  If I look at what we’ve done in that time, though, I guess it does seem like 11 years.

Many things have changed in that time.  Dan & I have each changed (I think, mostly, for the better and more mature), our jobs have changed (at least twice, each), our continent of residence has changed and we’ve had two children (not at all in that order).  When we got married, we didn’t even know if we wanted to have kids — neither of us could imagine a time where we would feel like we were grown up, responsible enough or “ready” to have kids.  We didn’t think there would ever be a time where we’d want to put our needs, desires and ambitions on the back burner for the sake of being the kind of parents we wanted to be if we ever had kids.

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In the morning, I usually wake up to hugs and “Good morning, Mommy — how was your sleep?” from a groggy eyed Benjamin, or to cooing and a snuggle from Liam.  As the day goes on, I feed my boys, I change diapers, I enforce nap time.  I build roads from blocks for cars to drive on and I play ball in my living room.  I try to juggle playing, being in charge, taking care of errands and trying to keep the house at least a little clean (Benjamin helps — really).  I run races, put puzzles together, play games on the computer, answer lots of questions, share ice cream and wash sticky faces and fingers.  I try to get my kids out so that we can see some of this fantastic city (because I know that all too soon this opportunity will have passed).  I give baths, I cuddle, I read stories.  The other day, I filled a wading pool using a 32 ounce plastic cup and countless trips back and forth from my kitchen to the terrace.  Tonight, Benjamin fell asleep during story time — I looked over, halfway through our second book, and he was out.

This is the best job ever.

It is hard, the hours are endless, I am often exhausted and sometimes pushed past the limits of my strength (mental, physical and emotional), there are no sick days and a break is really hard to come by.  But this is exactly the job I want to have.  I am so grateful that I get to spend this time with my wonderful kids.  I complain about it sometimes, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  If I had millions of dollars in the bank, this is exactly what I’d do (although I’d hire someone to make sure the house stays clean).  What a great feeling:  I get to wake up every morning and do exactly what I would do if money were no object.  I love it.

Dads are important — and not just for the evident biological purpose – they teach you things you won’t learn from anyone else.  Dads teach you how to whistle, how to tie your shoes, how to ride your bike (with and without training wheels), how to camp, build a kite, use a hammer, pack a car, read a map, float on your back in the pool, pick a perfect Halloween pumpkin or Christmas tree (and how to tie the latter to your car), change your oil, change a tire, drive, make barbecue, build a fire, build a paper airplane, sail (kind of), throw a frisbee, spin a yo-yo, shoot a bow and arrow, debate philosophy or politics, blow a bubble with gum, spell “encyclopedia”, sing the “rubber ducky song”, appreciate A. A. Milne, Shel Silverstein, Isaac Asimov and Star Trek, and dozens of other things I’m not thinking of at the moment.

Or maybe that’s just my Dad.

Thanks, Dad.  I love you.

What a day.  Woke up this morning to discover that Liam had apparently scratched his eye — his left eye was red and had a semi-visible scratch on it — on the eye ball.  (And yes, this is a remarkably similar injury, down to being in the same eye, as my horse was discovered to have yesterday.)

So, we proceeded (as parents do) to discuss taking him to the doctor, versus seeing if he improved on his own, and the logistics of each plan.  Dan went to work, and called from the office to talk to our new pediatrician, who, it turns out, doesn’t have office hours on Thursdays, so he called her cell and left a message.  Hours passed, and I stared at his eye all morning (he seemed to really enjoy all the “face” time with mommy) and tried to figure out whether I should leave him alone, take him to the emergency room or call another doctor.

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When you stay at home with your kids, lots of things are different than if you work outside the home.  There’s the obvious stuff:  your job follows you 24/7 (including on vacation), you rarely get to use the bathroom by yourself, the concept of a coffee break is foreign to you, and you get to work in your pajamas.  Also, you truly become the CEO of your household.  You can manage your kids, your home, the errands, and the dog, all at the same time, and all by yourself for 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day.  So, when someone shows up and offers to “help”, however well meaning, it often doesn’t work.  It’s not because you’re controlling or because you’re overly particular.  It’s because you can juggle everything by yourself, so having a novice step in and try to help you just doesn’t:  it messes up your regular rhythm and requires extra accommodation on your part (showing them what to do, explaining why, working around what they’re doing).

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Liam is working his way up the baby-food-chain . . . from rice cereal to oatmeal to wheat to veggies.  He is a human version of a baby velociraptor — this kid will eat anything that doesn’t move faster than he does.  Most babies are relatively slow to take to “solid” food (if oatmeal and pureed carrots can be counted as solid) but not Liam.  He doesn’t spit food out, he doesn’t make faces — it goes in, he swallows it and he looks for the next bite, even the first time he tries something.  We have to cut him off, at some point, so he doesn’t make himself sick, and he cries when we put the food away.  (Don’t worry, he’s still nursing — he won’t starve.)  He has yet to meet a food he didn’t like.

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