Lawyerish

The Fixer (Part III): Procrastination Station

I have two remaining questions from you, dear readers, though you are welcome to keep sending them via email or comments.  I was going to address both today, but this turned into a mini-tome, and my post on anxiety is going to take up pretty much the whole Internet, so I need to give each response its due.

(Hot damn, do I love to give advice!)

Life of a Doctor's Wife asked for help with procrastination:  "I tend to get overwhelmed by stupid things - like name change forms for my 401(k). And I get all set up to work on the thing, and get halfway there, and then hit a snag, and then I put it away and never look at it again. It is stupid and drives me crazy, and yet I CANNOT STOP."

The first thing I thought when I read this was:  WORD.  I am a professional procrastinator.  Very few things motivate me other than sheer panic brought on by an impending deadline.  My to-do list has items on it that I've been putting off for months.  Nothing dire, obviously or they would have gotten done, but things that are SO simple to take care of, yet they are either tedious or require multiple, fussy steps that deter me from getting started or finishing the task.  

For example, our tub stopper broke about two months ago.  The metal thingy that covers the drain broke off from the other metal, um, thingy that goes down into the drain and makes the top thingy go up and down.  We're still able to plug up the drain with the top part by itself, so I have not experienced the required level of urgency to make me do anything about it.  Mind you, there is a hardware store less than one block from our building and I pass it at least five times a week.  In fact, one day I did pop into the store and visited the plumbing section, only to discover that there were different sizes of tub stoppers, and of course I'd never thought to measure ours (shouldn't these things be STANDARDIZED?).  So that was a bust and I haven't bothered to deal with it since.

All this is to say that I am not terribly qualified to tell other people how not to procrastinate.  But I'm going to anyway.

Here are some ideas that come to mind:

1.  Instead of making a to-do list that's wishy-washy about when things are going to be done, write specific tasks on specific days on your calendar.  Put 401(k) Name Change Paperwork down for next Monday.  Even assign a TIME to it -- beginning time and end time, giving yourself enough of a window to get it DONE but not enough of a window to say, "Oh, I have so much time in there that I can go grab a haircut before I get started."  No.  Get your butt in the chair and GET STARTED.  Then don't let yourself out of it until it's complete.  Come hell or high water, you WILL do that paperwork on Monday.

2. Put a reminder in your calendar/on your phone and set it to go off, with the most annoying sound you can find, at the designated time and every half-hour thereafter until you finish the assigned task.

3. Find something either desirable or necessary that you can deny yourself until the onerous thing is finished.  You won't have coffee until that paperwork is in the mail, or you can't go to the gym/have a meal/leave the house/shower until it's been filed.  Create an artificial sense of urgency.  Then whatever you are delaying/denying yourself will feel like a sweet reward when you're done.

4. If you have certain tasks that tend to pile up, follow these same steps but take care of a bunch of things at once.  For me, this is usually stuff involving the phone.  I foot-drag about making calls, and the longer I wait, the less likely I am to want to do it.  So every once in a while, I use Felicity's naptime or a short lunch interlude at work to knock out a bunch of calls.  It's a momentum thing -- once you've gotten the first one out of the way, you pick the phone back up and keep right on going.  Same goes for returning long-ignored emails, writing thank you notes, and so on.  You could also designate a certain day or weekend each month to Getting Shit Done, like cleaning out closets or running stuff to Goodwill or whatever periodic items you have that often go un-done.

5. Sometimes certain tasks get put off because they're simply too tedious for us to contemplate, or because they're in some part of our brains that we hardly ever access.  Such tasks, if at all possible, should be delegated to someone else.  Have your husband always be in charge of picking up the dry cleaning or buying topsoil or what have you.  Set up an automatic-refill for prescriptions or regular on-line purchases.  Ask the Internet to help you pick out a pair of shoes.  Make it someone else's problem!

6.  Finally, if there's something that you can't bring yourself to do that's been hanging over you for months -- assuming it's not something you're legally required to do or otherwise MUST do -- let it go.  I've intended to put together a video montage of Felicity's second year since January.  I have done nothing to make it happen.  For her first birthday, I had some random dude from the Internet put together a video for a couple hundred bucks because I couldn't devote the time and technical know-how to such a project.  Now I have a Mac and I feel like I should be able to do it myself, but it hasn't happened.  I think it's time for me to let that go.  Maybe one day the urge will strike me to give it a whirl (or to send it out to someone else to do), but until then it's no longer on my to-do list, where for too long it was just sitting there mocking me.  Sometimes it's okay just to say no.

Next time!:  Anxiety/fretting (especially pregnancy-related, but I'm going to address it generally, since I consider myself something of an expert on The Worrying).

Mother of All Days

After all of my bellyaching in the last post about her mercurial moods, Felicity was a perfect angel all weekend -- which of course only proves that she lets it ALL hang out with me, behaviorally speaking, but when Joe (or anyone else) is around, she's picture-perfect.  Don't get me wrong -- I'll take it and all it means in terms of emotional security and so forth.  I'm just SAYING.

We all would have slept past seven on Mother's Day (ever since the time change -- BLAST IT ALL TO HELL -- we're lucky to get 6:30 as a wake-up time, including weekends), except the bloody cat came right up to the bedroom door and started howling his head off around 6:45.  These PETS, I tell you what.  So we got up and I went for a run while Joe gave Felicity breakfast.  

When I came back, I told Felicity that it was a special day for Mommy called Mother's Day.  She picked out a dress and said, "You wearing a special dress for Mother's Day."  Then when I put a barrette in her hair, she said, "You wearing a nice clippie for Mother's Day."  This continued all day.  I loved it.  

Then off we went to church, and this week she didn't bat an eye when I took her to the nursery; she went straight for a basket of toy animals and pulled it off the shelf and said, "You want to see your farm friends and your jungle friends."  (At home, she likes to sort her animals like that, with the "jungle" being a giraffe-print blanket and the "farm" a shallow rectangular basket.)  She didn't even look up when I left the room.

After church, we went out into the blazing sun (we've gone from too cold to too hot in record time) and headed for the park.  Joe brought Miles out and Felicity explored a giant hill while Miles peed on every single blade of grass in the whole of Central Park.  We also found a tree perfect for portraiture, so I conned Felicity into sitting on it so we could get some pictures of her being still for once. 

By then it was half past lunchtime, and I could only get Felicity into the stroller by promising her bacon, so when we got home I started cooking up some bacon -- for BLTs for Joe and me (is there a more perfect sandwich than that?  I think not), plain strips plus veggies for her -- and managed in my haste to incur a BLT-related injury.  

I was cooking half the package o' pork in a skillet and the other half in the microwave because my pan is small and time was of the essence (Felicity was only going to be satisfied with tomatoes and carrot sticks for so long, and I was growing faint with hunger), and when I went to grab the plate out of the over-range microwave, I somehow managed to whack my forehead into the corner of the microwave door, gashing myself and scaring Felicity with my shout of pain and surprise.  

The thing is, we've had that microwave, and our current kitchen configuration, for five years, and I have known for all five of those years that someday this would happen.  Having a swinging, sharp-edged door above an active cooking zone is just asking for trouble when you have someone as clumsy and dunder-headed as I on the premises.  It was only a matter of time, really, and today my number was up. 

(Likewise, when we decided six years ago to install a cupholder in our master bathroom and said cupholder came with a glass -- as in one made of actual glass -- I KNEW we should have put a plastic cup in there instead, because one day the glass would shatter all over the bathroom and embed itself into our feet -- and indeed, that happened just a few months ago (though that one was Joe's fault).  I can see the future, is what I'm saying.  And it generally involves injury on my part.)

Anyway, Felicity was VERY upset by my (tiny, paper cut-like -- I don't want to oversell it) head wound and Joe had to go into triage mode, wetting a paper towel for me to stanch the (miniscule amount of) bleeding while consoling Felicity.  Meanwhile, I tried to remain upright so I could finish making the BLTs (priorities, people).  All's well that ends well, as Ma would say -- we all got our fill of bacon and I ate a chocolate chip cookie for extra healing power, and then Felicity went down for a nice long nap and I opened presents, had a lovely chat with my mom, and lounged on the couch with a magazine.

When Felicity got up, we read our two post-nap books and got freshened up to go to an early dinner in the neighborhood.  Again, Felicity was in top form, behaving perfectly and eating with gusto (the girl seriously loves pickles) while Joe and I enjoyed burgers, beers, and jalapeno-cheddar tater tots, which are every bit as phenomenal as they sound.  

(I told Felicity to hold up Naked Baby for Daddy, as that was the only way to get her to look in the direction of the camera(phone), and this by-the-hair business is what I got.  She looks like she's holding up the prize carcass from a hunt.  Which is why I am laughing rather maniacally and my eyes have disappeared.)

Our return home was sullied a bit by my discovery that the dog had gone into our bedroom (the door to which I had shut before we left, but sometimes the damn thing doesn't latch completely), peed on our comforter, and defecated on the floor.  THIS DOG.  I SWEAR.  He has peed on the corner of our comforter THREE TIMES NOW in the past month -- twice when we were home but had the bedroom door open, as one SHOULD be able to do when one IS IN ONE'S OWN HOME -- and, setting aside the MANY OTHER TIMES he has done equally gross things on the kitchen and living room floors, this is clearly a TARGETED, HOSTILE attack on his part.  EVERY time it's happened, he had JUST been out for a walk within an hour beforehand, yet he manages to work up enough urine to soak all the way through the down coverelet.  And every time, I of course then have to immediately launder all our bedding, and it is a tremendous pain and UGH.  WIT'S END -- I AM AT IT.  

(Obviously, we are going to start using his crate again -- we had been letting him roam free when we went out, but always shutting him out of the bedrooms; however, now whenever we leave the house he's going to have to be in the crate.  And when we're home, the bedroom doors have to be shut unless we're in the room.  Which is a pain and also blocks the flow of the apartment, making the hallway all dark and giving me a feeling of being closed off or some feng shui-ish thing, and it's just so annoying because he KNOWS better and evidently has some feelings he needs to work through.  Sigh.)

Anyway!  Bath- and bedtime went smoothly and now I'm hanging out on the couch and there's Carvel cake in the freezer, and aside from having to go down and retrieve our freshly washed bedding from the basement, I have some time to read and relax before retiring for the night.

And what I want to end with is this:  all day, happy though I was, I thought about the women I know (and the countless ones I don't personally know) for whom today was a 24-hour slog, a continuous punch in the gut, because either they have lost their own mothers or because they are in a long, horrible, seemingly endless struggle -- for whatever reason, by whatever cruel twists of fate -- to become mothers themselves.  

I don't have any platitudes to offer; I won't pat you on the head and tell you that it will happen for you, too, or it's just not your time yet.  Instead, I'm going to say that dude, IT SUCKS to be in a place like that.  I recognize the suckiness of it, and I am sorry.  I feel you out there, I know your pain is real, I send you good thoughts, and I pray that one day all the hollow places inside you will be filled by something -- whatever it is -- that makes you feel whole.  

Two-and-Two

Tomorrow, Felicity will be two years, two months old.  

My main concern right now is that, if age three is supposed to bring even greater emotional volatility than we are currently experiencing, I may not survive it.  I am sure I've been saying that for months, but it's difficult to believe that we will be having MORE tantrums and MORE absurdly specific requests and MORE sudden changes of mind/mood than we're having now.  

Witness this scene from last Friday at lunchtime:

Felicity (holding out a half-eaten banana to me):  You all done with the banana.

Me:  Are you sure?  You don't want it?

F:  All done!  You don't want it.

I throw the banana away.

F (instantly hysterical):  YOU WANT IT!  YOU WANT THE BANANA!  YOU WANT IIIIIIIIT!

She carried on for a good ten minutes, thrashing around in her booster seat and screaming.  I can only hope that she is advanced for her age and three will be smooth sailing.  Please do not disabuse me of this desperate notion to which I am clinging.  

And, as we've discussed previously, she SAVES this behavior for me.  With her father and her nanny, she is mellow and level-headed and she coolly handles transitions, taking everything in stride (well...MOST of the time).  Then my quality time rolls around on my Fridays off, and the lid blows off.  I'm doing everything one is supposed to do for a strong-willed child of this age and stage -- preparing her for what's coming next, adhering to a predictable routine, giving several time-warnings for the next transition, calmly reacting to her meltdowns (well...MOST of the time) -- but sometimes she just gets into an Upset Mode and it takes a lot of coaxing/distraction to reset her.

I guess this is just two and it, too, shall pass, and most of the time she IS charming and fun -- I just wish that I didn't have to be the receptacle for all of her emotional baggage from the week, you know?  It's like on Friday the littlest things set her off because all week she's been behaving fantastically and having a grand time, and then IT'S MOMMY DAY WOE IS EVERYTHING.

For example, she has begun insisting that she hold the dog's leash when we go out to walk him ("You walking Miles.  He's your friend."), which is fine except sometimes she gets it tangled around her so I reach down to help before she trips herself and she starts yelling, "ALL BY SELFS ALL BY SELFS" and pitches herself to the ground to scream it out for a while.  JEEZ, I was just trying to HELP.  And in her stroller, she likes to have the security bar in front of her, but sometimes I cannot get it to latch properly (the one design flaw in the UppaBaby Vista) so I'll tell her that Mommy can't get it, so we don't need and it OH LAWD, the world is coming to an end.  For ten minutes, "YOU WANT IT YOU WANT IT" and full-on crying and drama.  SIGH.

Enough of that.  She is a delightful child so let's talk about the good parts.

You know that song about bringing home the baby bumblebee?  Well, Felicity doesn't like it, but she does like to pretend she's holding a bumblebee (so long as you don't suggest it might sting her).  She'll say, "I caught a bumblebee!" and she'll hold out her hands.  "Want to see it?"  When I ask her what the bee's name is, she says, "Bumblebee Bumblebee.  That's a nice name!"  Today I told her that there's going to be a party on our block this weekend and she said, "You bring the bumblebee to the party!"  Then usually when she's done playing with the bee, she opens her hands and looks up in the air and says, "You throw him up in the air.  He's flying home to his family!"

Another thing she loves to do is climb into the toy bench in the living room and say, "Are you a toy? That's silly!"  Oh, and one day I got out of the shower and she was in her room, looking warily at her bookcase and she said, "It's just a monster.  It's okay."  I pushed away concerns that she could see things I couldn't, and then a few days later she looked at the bookshelf and got scared again, and I realized that she was seeing the cover of "The Monster at the End of this Book," which evidently now scares her.  I always say, "It's just loveable, furry old Grover!" and she'll repeat it a hundred times, but I can't take that book out or she'll run crying from the room.  And yet, some of her diapers have Grover on them and now she always wants those, so maybe she's trying to put herself through immersion therapy to get over her Groverphobia.

Felicity recently started a pre-ballet class in addition to her more generic dance class, and as anticipated she L-O-V-E-S it.  

"You went to ballet class.  You did chasse!  You did releve and jete!  You saw your friends."

I am trying not to get bowled over with excitement, but obviously I am already planning her meteoric rise through the School of American Ballet and her debut onstage at the Koch Theater (f/k/a the New York State Theater) circa 2028.  Actually, if she doesn't shoot up too fast in height, maybe she could have a shot at being Clara/Mary/Marie in about six years.  Not that I'm getting ahead of myself or anything.

Other funny Felicity-isms of late:

While taking something off the shelf to play with:  "This is a very nice toy!"

In response to something (I don't remember what), "The answer is no."  (Oh DEAR.)

If I lie down while she's playing nearby:  "You want Mommy to get up! You pick Mommy up!" (and she comes over and "lifts" me off the ground.

If I look at my phone:  "You want Mommy to be all done with the phone!"

Ah, two.  You keep us all on our toes.

The Fixer (Part II): Entertaining a Six-Year Old

I'll do a Felicity-centric, photo-heavy post later this week, but today I wanted to address Allison's burning question about how to keep her daughter, Maggie, out of her hair sufficently entertained on the weekends and all summer, without constant parental participation.  

First, I must note that I originally entitled this post "Entertaining a Five-Year Old" and then I realized that, NAY, Maggie is SIX -- she is going to be in FIRST GRADE in a few months -- and this made me want to lie down for a good long while.  

Maggie is a very, very sweet child; she's kind, smart, and polite, and she will sit quietly for very long stretches while her mother and I yammer about everything under the sun, most of which is of absolutely no interest to her.  Even so, Allison has noticed some degree of hesitation, let's call it, on Maggie's part to keep herself entertained, especially during long days at home while everyone else is trying to get things done and/or sit on the couch and stare into space as needed.  Allison usually describes it, in her typically colorful fashion, as Maggie "lurking around the house and sighing heavily" or "breathing all over me while I am trying to look at the Internet."  (LULZ)

I came up with the following ideas for children of roughly Maggie's age (particularly those who don't stick their nose in a book and call it a day, as some of us did once upon a time, and those who don't have siblings or neighbor-children with whom to amuse themselves/bicker all the live-long day) and I hope that y'all will weigh in with your own suggestions.  Admittedly, some of these require parental involvement or at least a little set-up, but many of them are meant to accomplish something productive AND absorb the child's full attention for a while.  

1. Give her jobs to do.  Six is a great age for helping out around the house.  I remember doing chores when I was about Maggie's age and LOVING it.  It sounds a little mean to hand your kid a dust rag and point her toward the etagere, but in fact it can be very enjoyable for her to feel useful.  Plus it's a good life lesson that not everything is SUPER FUN FANTASTIC all the time, and that everyone in a family pitches in, and so on.  Some age-appropriate jobs around the house would be:

Polishing silver
Dusting
Washing windows
Setting the table
Clearing the table
Sweeping/mopping
Organizing toys/clothing
Folding/sorting laundry
Putting away groceries

2. Wash the car.  I have great memories of washing the family cars with my dad when I was growing up.  It was a great summer activity, and he taught me to scrub and shine every inch of our vehicles to military standards.  We also vacuumed out the insides and dusted the dashes and did everything but clean out the tire treads with a toothbrush.

3. Plan and prep meals.  Let her pick out at least one meal per week that she gets to choose what to make, then enlist her help with prep work -- washing and peeling vegetables, measuring ingredients, mixing stuff, shaping hamburger patties; you get the idea.

4. Easy, time-consuming crafts.  Friendship bracelets, friendship pins (remember those?), latch-hook rugs (might I recommend one with a unicorn and a rainbow on it? (OMG, this is the EXACT ONE I made when I was a kid!) (I SO WANT TO BUY IT)), very basic needlepoint for kids (with a plastic needle, of course), those potholder looms, Shrinky-Dinks.  All cheap crafts that you could set her up with and she could (theoretically) do for hours.

5. Scavenger hunt.  Make up a list of things that she has to find -- it could be a HUGE list, including outings and sights, that she has to complete by the end of the summer (like in "Remember Me to Herald Square"), or it could be a smaller list of things she has to find around the house/neighborhood.  She could collect actual objects, or it could be a photo hunt where she takes pictures with her kid-camera of each item.  

6. Arts/crafts with a purpose.  Have her make artwork to send to family or for an upcoming birthday or holiday.  If she's making something for a specific reason, it might help keep her focused.  

7. Audio books. Check out some kids' audio books from the library, preferably the ones that come with a book and a recording ("When you hear the sound [brrrrrinnngggg!], turn the page!").  The narration should keep her engaged longer than just paging through a book.

8. Plant a seed.  Let her choose something to grow in the garden over the summer; let her plant it and tend to it herself.  

9. Choose a theme.  Each week over the summer could have a different theme, and you could go once a week to the library to check out books about the theme; you could do the week's scavenger hunt along those lines; and you could have her make artwork along with it, too.  Yes, it's school-ish, but if she's involved with picking out the theme each time and gets to find things that excite her, maybe she'll be more apt to stick with looking at books on her own for longer stretches of time.

10. Water, water.  If all else fails, haul out the sprinkler, the hose, the water table, some buckets, and let her splash to her heart's content while you sit by with a book and a tall glass of sweet tea.

What say all of you -- how would you get a kid to occupy herself?

The Fixer (Part I): Motivation and Horticulture

I am pleased as punch that some of you submitted questions for me to help with after the last post.  There is nothing I love more than thinking about other people's problems.  They seem so much more surmountable than my own!  And as many of you noted, I keep solving the SAME problems over and over -- my life so far has been a series of brick-over-the-head lessons about THE SAME THINGS, a thousand times.  I am grateful that God keeps on trying; perhaps one day I will cross one of those problems off my list for good.  Wouldn't that be something?

Anyway, I am taking your comments in the order they came, except I'm going to skip ahead to tell you, since two of you asked for help keeping plants alive, that I am HOPELESS in the area of...well, anything plant-related.  My only plant experience was with one of those little money trees that someone gave me as a housewarming gift, and it lasted quite a while, I suspect because it's one of those unkillable plants that you can neglect for weeks and stick in any corner vaguely near a window and it will be fine.  Because that's all I did -- watered it when I remembered to (not often) and threw it in a windowsill that never gets direct sunlight.  It never did die, but I got tired of dealing with it (is there a greater height of laziness than that?) and gave it away.  So that is my horticultural advice: get a money tree.

Next!  

RG asked for help doing yoga at least twice a week and resisting mindless eating.  Since these are two of my own uphill battles, this is right up my alley.  Here are my thoughts:

If you can carve out time first thing in the morning, even by getting up just ten minutes earlier, do your chosen exercise then.  Choose two days per week that are always your yoga days -- wiffling about how maybe you'll do it tomorrow because today's not so good will result in never making the time, but making two SET times a week is completely manageable, and when you get into the habit of EVERY Tues and Sat (or whatever) being your yoga days, then it will be harder to break the habit.  

But how to get into the habit in the first place, of course, is the dilemma.  

Here's what you do.  Set up ALL the accoutrements you need to make it as easy as possible on yourself to get started.  Roll your yoga mat out the night before and put a glass of water next to it.  If you have to have a snack before you can stretch, then put a cereal bar next to your mat, too.  Put your yoga clothes right next to your bed or in the bathroom, so all you have to do is get up, pee, and put them on.  Hell, SLEEP in your exercise attire if you have to (I have done this with running clothes, and it is SO much easier to make yourself get up and move your body when you're already dressed for it).  Once you're out of bed and have peed/brushed your teeth, DO NOT make any other stops -- most of all, DO NOT stop to check your iPhone or scroll through Facebook.   Do not make any detours to the kitchen, either.  Nothing is on fire.  This is YOUR time.  DO IT.  And once it's done?  You're going to feel virtuous the entire day.  Possibly even virtuous enough to do it more than twice a week -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

If mornings absolutely do not work for you, then follow this same type of pattern for the time it DOES work.  I burn through HOURS every evening poking around on Twitter and half-watching TV shows, and then I feel like a useless slug.  Some nights, however, I manage to peel myself off the couch and do the exercises that keep my back from going all crippled on me, and guess which nights I feel better physically and mentally?  Yes.  And yet.  It is SO HARD to make the five-foot transition from watching TV on the couch to watching TV from the floor, where I am productively stretching and taking care of my body.  

So.  Again.  After cleaning up from dinner, don't collapse back onto the couch.  Don't pick up your phone or open your laptop.  Get on your mat and warm up.  Meditate, stretch, move your body.  Whatever it is you need.  There will be time before bed to dicker around with other stuff and prepare for the next day, I promise.  

As for the eating-empty-food-when-you're-not-hungry thing...that's harder, I think, because the brain's habit/reward loop is so comfortably sated by snacky food.  But food, of course, is so often not what our brain is really after.  It's just an easy fix and it's usually THERE.

I read an article a couple of weeks ago about a guy who had gotten into the habit every afternoon of going to his office's cafeteria and having a cookie while chatting with coworkers.  Over time, he realized that the reward he was seeking wasn't the cookie at all, but rather the mental break from work and the connection with other people.  So he started just taking a stroll around the office and stopping in to chat with others, without having a snack, and he found he felt a greater mood boost without having the sugar crash that left him drooling over his desk until quitting time every day.

I didn't go through that same process, exactly, but I have gotten better in recent months about mindlessly having a snack every day from the vending machine just because I'm bored/need a break.  Taking a walk around the office (or, when I'm at home, finding a reasonably satisfying task to immerse myself in, like neatening up my drawers or closet during naptime), calling a friend for a chat, answering some email, or scrolling through blogs/Facebook to give my brain a break keeps me from fixating on the Cheez-Its I think I want.  

Similarly, I find that making little self-rewards part of my routine helps keep me from scavenging for energy/mood boosts via snacking.  A while back, I broke the habit of having a daily diet soda (I'm not making any kind of judgment call about soda here; in my case, I just got kind of sick of the taste of it and realized I was drinking it out of habit rather than enjoyment), but now I like to have one Diet Sunkist or Fresca each workweek.  It sounds like a pathetic indulgence, but it's a little thing that perks me up when I think of it -- like it will be gray and chilly out and I'll be crabby on my commute and then I'll think, hey!  I should get my soda today.  And then I do, and I enjoy it.

Another thing is that I have chocolate every day.  EVERY. DAY.  I put a piece of Dove Dark Chocolate in my lunch -- or if I know I'm buying lunch that day, I put it in my purse to bring to work -- and that tiny thing MAKES my day.  (God, I sound so PITIFUL!  But truly, little things can be SO satisfying and happy-making.)  Sometimes I forget I have my little chocolate in my bag and then zing!  Big mood leap when I remember it's there!  

On Fridays and weekends when I'm home with Felicity, I tend to have two or three pieces, because (a) it's THERE (which is why I don't keep a whole bag in my desk); and (b) let's face it, being with a two year old takes way more verve than sitting at a desk.  And as with the soda, usually once a week I'll have a different type of treat -- some days it's getting a big salad from the cafe near work for lunch; sometimes it's changing up what I put in my lunch; sometimes it's a chai latte from Starbucks.  Just something to look forward to that's outside the routine -- yet it has become part of my routine, so I know I have that treat coming and can anticipate the boost it gives me.  And somehow, that keeps me from shoving snack food into my gaping maw whenever the mood strikes.

Admittedly, I have a tougher time following this advice when I'm at home.  Food is more readily available, and while we don't have much junky food in the house, I will snack ALL THE LIVELONG DAY when stuff is just around and I feel my energy dragging.  So that's a tougher case, but I think the same principles apply.  

If I were home full-time with Felicity, or if I worked from home, I would probably pack a lunch just like I do for work, so that my options were contained -- otherwise, I would eat half of the fridge while prepping Felicity's lunch and then throughout her nap.  I would also try to create a type of schedule for myself so my brain would learn that it's not mealtime yet, so put down the box of crackers and wait an hour.  AND, I would set up habit-reward systems that are unrelated to food (which works for office-dwellers as well) -- for example, I would only text/Tweet/read blogs during naptime or while F is eating, so then I would feel like I had a reward coming during those times.  Or, after I vacuum, I can shop online for the new shoes I want.  That sort of thing.  

Like my kid, I respond well to structure and routine, and I think most people do even if we think otherwise -- so we can set up new habits for ourselves and re-wire our brains and bodies to respond to different types of rewards.  The hardest part is getting started, for sure.  One day, you just have to MAKE yourself get out of bed and practice yoga.  The next day, it will be a  little easier.  And a few weeks on, you'll realize that this is just what you do now, and it's an integral part of your routine.  It's easier said than done, perhaps, but you CAN do it.  Or I'll start sending you calendar reminders that will annoy you until you do, how about that?

The Fixer

Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on that a certain habit or method of mine isn't working, but lately I have been on a bit of a streak in terms of figuring things out.  Do you ever have one of those?  Where suddenly something finally clicks and the light goes on and you are all, I GOT THIS, MAN.  I WIN AT LIFE!? 

For example, having grown weary of Felicity's dawdling crabbypants in the morning, I decided that the way over/under/through would best be achieved by militant scheduling/predictability.  When Felicity woke up this past Monday morning, as always she asked to rock in the chair and read books and then "play a little bit."  As I hefted her out of the crib and pulled her onto my lap, I put on my briskest Mary Poppins demeanor and said, "We will read two books, and then we will change your diaper, and then Daddy will give you breakfast!  And AFTER breakfast, you can play!"  With that, her wiggle room for wheedling about wanting to play just a little bit more was GONE!  No longer an option!  

And it totally worked!  We read two books that I had laid out the night before, she submitted whine-free to her diaper change, and then she cheerfully had breakfast without having to be plied from her toys in a sobbing heap.  The whole week has gone smoothly in this carefully calibrated, yet exceedingly simple, manner.

Problem:  SOLVED!

(You would think that I would have figured that one out sooner, since Felicity is nothing if not a Routine-Driven Child, and it seems like every. time. she has become hard to handle in the last two years, it has in some way related to needing more structure/scheduling/predictability.  It's not that she is inflexible, but she responds VERY WELL to having VERY PRECISE parameters put on what she is permitted to do and in what timeframe she's permitted to do it, and in addition to that, this new routine has prevented her from falling into the Pit of Low Blood Sugar that we had been running into every damn morning, which only made things worse.)

Speaking of the Pit of Low Blood Sugar, I am fully 36 years old (barreling toward 37, come to that) and it has taken me almost all of those years to figure out that (a) I have to eat every couple of hours or I begin to lose all functionality and my mood plummets into a Dark, Dark Place; and (b) much as I cannot put together a coherent thought if I get too hungry, I equally do not respond well to enormous spikes in blood sugar.  

I did not completely notice -- or perhaps, more accurately, I did not CARE to notice -- until the last couple of years that large amounts of sugar, especially on an empty stomach and/or unaccompanied by some protein, makes me feel like a steaming pile of garbage.  I get emotionally wonky -- I can actually FEEL my mood falling apart at the seams -- and then a fatigue sets in that seeps into my very bones and it's all I can do not to curl up under my desk and nap for several days.  

Mind you, I am not a person who has even the slightest desire to give up sugar entirely.  NO!  Life is too short for me to live without cookies.  But I have to be very careful about shoving down a cupcake at someone's conference-room birthday celebration, unless I have had a light, protein-y snack beforehand or there is a hanky and a napping couch nearby.  

I am a delicate flower, and what astounds me is that for so many years (college and law school in particular), I ate almost NOTHING but sugar and carbs (a HUGE muffin and a Gatorade for breakfast; a shovelful of Cheez-Its for lunch; a pile of pasta and a glass of ginger ale for dinner!), and now I look back and am all, NO WONDER I couldn't read more than ten pages of Torts cases without face-planting into my textbook, and no wonder I existed in a limp, glowering state of listlessness the whole time.  Thankfully, though, I have finally gotten my act together, and I know to keep a drawer full of snacks in my office, a stash of Balance or granola bars in my purse, and I always have water nearby (hydration is also key).  I can only imagine what heights of self-awareness I will reach when I hit my 40s!

Problem:  SOLVED!

Another big thing I have tackled recently is small talk.  I have long held onto a cold dread about making small talk that is matched only by my utter loathing of the telephone.  I've never felt like I was any GOOD at small talk, and when faced with a cocktail party or similar house of horrors, I either clung to a friend's side like grim death or hovered on the periphery, wishing for a swift death.  

Lately I've had to get the hell over myself about this -- since Felicity was born, I've found myself in countless situations (playgrounds, parenting groups, preschool admissions functions) where I've been thrown into groups with new people, plus in my work life I have also been mixing and mingling with new people more in recent months, and hey, there's nothing like immersion therapy to make you realize that oh, this ISN'T the end of the world and I DO have plenty to say!  Imagine that!  

Turns out, small talk is not hard.  I KNOW.  At the playground: how old is your child? I love his shoes! Is he going to school this fall?  At a parents-centered event:  do you live in the neighborhood? How long have you been in New York?  How old is your son/daughter?  What do you do (if a job has been alluded to)?  At a professional event:  how long have you worked at X?  Have you been practicing in the city your whole career?  Do you live in the city?  What neighborhood?  

DURR.  Why was I such a NINNY about this for so long?  

Problem: SOLVED.

Of course, I still have a zillion MORE things to work on, such as making it a habit to get up early at least two weekdays per week to run; finding a way to be less hemmed in by routine/habit (i.e., not getting all BOUND UP in logistics/overthinking when invited to do something on a weeknight or even for a weekday lunch, and being better at planning nights out with Joe for the weekends -- I tend to have so much else on my to-do list that making time for my/our own fun comes last; I've gotten better about this recently, such as going to the ballet some Friday evenings with my generous season ticket-holding friend, but I still have this weird knee-jerk reaction to planning unusual things where I get kind of tired when I think about it and we end up just sitting on the couch again); learning not to procrastinate so freaking much (especially things that involve making phone calls); and becoming less suggestible about big-picture life things, like where to live or what to do or whatever (hey, Bob just moved to Mayberry!  Maybe WE should move to Mayberry too!  Hey, that blogger has a whole bunch of kids and loves to craft!  Maybe *I* should have a bunch more kids and become a big crafter, TOO!).

It's a process.  What problems have you solved lately?  Do you have any for me to solve?  I'm on a streak, after all!

And Another Thing

Two more quick Felicity anecdotes that I don't want to forget:

Last weekend, Joe was was cooking some sausages for Felicity's impressive morning repast.  He had given her some cereal to tide her over, but she was apparently starving to the point of incoherence and the sausages were not sauteeing fast enough for her.  She started crying and flailing about in her booster seat, and he said, "What's wrong?  Why are you crying, sweetie?"  She replied, "You're upset about the sausages!"

Naturally, "upset about the sausages" has become the new family catch-phrase.

Also, last weekend when my parents were here, Felicity was getting a bit show-offy one afternoon and she tried to climb onto the coffee table.  She knows this is verboten, and when I said, "Felicity"  in my Warning Voice, she eased back down, looked around at everyone, and said, "This is not a playground."

Thus endeth the precocious two-year-old stories for the day.

Two Years, One Month(ish)

I don't know if I'm going to keep up these monthly reports forever, but since I've been lax in posting and have a lot of ground to cover, it seemed reasonable to pack everything into an update on the State of Felicity.  

First, though, I wanted to thank every one of you for your thoughtful, insightful comments on my last post.  I could write a tome in response to each comment, but instead I will sum up by saying that:

(1) while I feel confident about my feelings, and it is a relief to proceed as though a final decision has been made instead of thinking about it constantly, I realize that my feelings could change at some point -- although for me, it would need to be a complete 180 from where I am now, because I would have to want a second child as much as I wanted Felicity, which is to say with every last fiber of my being; and

(2) because of my age (currently 36), I don't have a limitless number of years to contemplate this, which is one of the reasons I have been mulling the issue so much in the past six months or so -- I have a window of time in which I am willing to be open to the possibility of a sea change, but once I am past a certain age (perhaps arbitrarily chosen, but I imagine we all have our boundaries for this sort of thing) the decision WILL be final and the DONEness will be set in stone, and that age is not terribly far away (and I feel entirely okay with that, which is another sign we're on the right path here).

ONWARD!  

One of the best parts of Felicity Right Now is that she has become more of a hugger.  She's still not a big cuddlebucket, but when I ask her for a hug, she will usually come over and spread her arms wide and squeeze me tightly.  Sometimes if I pick her up and hug her, she leans her head on my shoulder and hugs me back, and she'll say, "Ahhh, that's a good hug."  She has become more affectionate in little ways, too; when she's sitting on my lap to read a story, she will rub my arm or pat my hand, and between that and having my nose buried in her sunshine-smelling hair, I could explode from happiness in those moments.  

Most mornings when I go in to get her out of bed, she hugs me and then she says, "You want to bring Piggy and Bear and the blanket and rock in the chair a little bit."  So I gather her and all her lovies and haul her over to the rocking chair and she leans against me and we rock and talk about what we're going to do that day.  Of course, the reality is not quite as picture-perfect as it sounds, since a lot of the time she is whiny and demanding; she wants a book and then she wants to fiddle with a bottle of Tylenol and then I need to change her diaper but she wants to play.  Plus, in the morning she is usually cranky from hunger, yet she doesn't recognize this and will stall forEVER about breakfast, so after a certain point I have to drag her into the kitchen and start throwing cereal at her or else she becomes a hysterical mess (we're both on a hair-trigger in terms of the blood sugar/mood connection).  

If she is extra hungry or if her teeth are bothering her or she isn't feeling great for some other reason, she will LOSE HER SHIT if anyone but me tries to get near her.  She'll hide her face and cry and cling to me like I'm about to drop her into a pit of fire.  Sometimes, evidently, ONLY Mommy will do, and it's both perversely gratifying (my perma-pooch and Mom Butt won me undying devotion!) and terribly upsetting, and of course it's excruciatingly painful for the person on the receiving end of cries of "NOOOOOOOOOO! YOU WANT MOMMMMYYYYY!", especially if it is her father.    

One of these episodes occurred on Easter.  We had a mostly delightful morning of Easter basket fun (the Easter bunny actually came on Saturday morning so that we could get out of the house on time for church on Sunday), but then she had a somewhat rocky time transitioning to the church nursery so I went down and got her for Communion (so then the pre-Communion prayers were punctuated by her LOUD commentary -- "He's talking! The lights are on!  We're sitting down.  We're standing up!  You want a snack.  You want to go home.  She's wearing a DRESS!  Hello!  How are you doing?  You want the cracker!  [and so on].").  She perked up for the congregation's Easter egg hunt and raced around the fellowship hall with her basket, but then when we went to the playground to blow off some homemade-Peep energy (I go to church with talented people, let me tell you), she lost her mind over some minor thing I can't even recall (and as I was wheeling her tantruming little self home, some woman went to the trouble of stopping me on the sidewalk to tell me that Felicity needed sunglasses -- thank you, kind stranger, for your helpful and well-timed suggestion!).

After her nap, we headed to the Lower East Side via subway to have Easter dinner with a bunch of friends, and this was when the OMG NO ONE BUT MOMMY thing kicked in.  Joe tried to carry her part of the distance from the subway to our friends' apartment (which was a long walk, and my arms were DONE), but she refused in a loud and very kinetic fashion, and he couldn't get more than a block with all her kicking and screaming and reaching for me, so I took her and lugged all 30 pounds of her about ten miles (or so it seemed) in the blazing sun as I sweated through my weather-inappropriate outfit (it had seemed MUCH cooler up in our neighborhood) and then up two flights of stairs.  And then when Felicity's godfather opened the door, she redoubled her hollering and I had to hold her and continue sweating all over her for about ten more minutes before she finally calmed down.  

And then she was fine!  We had a lovely time.

Welcome to Age Two?

Felicity has also become more of a sharer lately.  She no longer screams at the mere suggestion of someone else touching her stuff.  In fact, she brought her doll stroller (one of her most prized possessions) to the playground the other day, and after running around with it for a little while, she looked around and said, "You want to share your stroller!"  There were no takers at that moment, sadly, but later on some other kids toddled up and seized hold of the stroller and she was completely fine with them taking it for a spin.  Knock me over with a feather, I swear.  (Randomly, she was about to go down one of the slides and she said, "It's hot!" when she sat down.  There was another boy coming up behind her and she said to me, "You have to tell him!" and she bustled over her to him and said, "The slide is hot!"  He disregarded her warning and went down it anyway (it really was not that hot).  So if they're looking for a Playground Safety Brigade, she'll be first in line.) 

Oh, and at the Easter party, she went up to my friend's little girl (age 3) and thrust out Naked Baby (again, one of her FAVORITE things) and said, "You want to share your baby."  The other girl had zero interest in Naked Baby (perhaps because Naked Baby looks like she has been in a fire) and I wanted to hiss, "JUST TAKE THE BABY" because Felicity was leaning over so far she could have tipped onto the floor and you could SEE every ounce of effort it was taking for her to make this enormous sacrifice, but oh well.  Naked Baby will live to be shared another day.

In other news, my parents came for a visit for the past five days, and as always having them here made me want to rage at this country for being so STUPIDLY LARGE and putting so many freaking miles between us and them.  Felicity was in a great mood almost the whole time and she warmed up to them in a big hurry.  Within a day of their arrival, she was assigning them specific tasks:  "You want Granddad to give you some grapes"; "You want Grammie to read you a story!"  It was all crazy cute and she clearly adores them, even though she won't sit all the way in their laps yet (she will sit NEXT TO people other than Joe, J and me, but laps?  We're not quite there).  

"You sitting on the couch with Granddad."

Despite her on-and-off bouts of Mommy-only-ness, Felicity is becoming more daring by the day.  She is a crazy climbing monkey at the playground.  And now she wants to imitate everything the bigger kids are doing, however life-threatening it may be.  She wants to "tumble" down slides head-first (NO MA'AM) and swing from high-up monkey bars and hurtle down twisty slides and it's all a heart attack in the making for me.  I had to pull her off a stairway railing yesterday because she wanted to balance on it like the older girls were doing, and when I said, "No, we don't do that; it's dangerous", she responded, "THEY'RE doing it!"  Oh, dear.

While my parents were here, we all went to the zoo and instead of bothering to look at any of the animals, Felicity just sprinted through every exhibit.  She went tearing down a steep hill at one point, and I was running behind her, calling out, "Slow down!" and then of course she wiped out and skidded several feet.  I bent over to help her up, and she said stoically, "That's why you have to slow down."   

Two is life at full tilt -- no filters, brakes or moderation.  And while I try very much to be in the moment when I am with her, I am already sad about how fast it is going, and how much I'll miss this age when it's over.  

Singular Sensation

A few months ago, as you may recall, I snuck into the end of one of my monthly posts about Felicity that I had come to the conclusion that I was in the One and Done camp.  I probably said enough about it then to give you an idea of what I was thinking, but I've never been one to leave a topic alone unless I've beaten it completely into the ground, so I am going to write some more about what my thought process was/is in that subject area.  

(Personally, I am FASCINATED by how people figure out whether and/or when to add to their family -- I really could talk about this sort of thing for days with anyone and everyone.)

As I mentioned before, we had been planning to have a second baby and we kind of...moved in that direction, if you will, beginning around Felicity's first birthday.  In the late summer, I realized that every month I was breathing an enormous sigh of relief when I found that I wasn't pregnant.  Around that time, I also had this crazy sort of waking-dream moment when I felt like an actual VOICE spoke in my ear in the middle of the night and said, "Don't have another baby."  It was that clear.  

As I weighed that thought and sat with it for a while, I realized that when I imagined being pregnant and again and having another baby, the first thing I felt wasn't joy or excitement.  It was sadness.  Sadness over having to divert some of my attention away from Felicity, having to share her with her hypothetical sibling, and losing the easy routine and rhythm we've settled into as a family of three.  Also sadness over my feeling that we would be taking a big step back -- we'd gotten to the point where Felicity was becoming so easy to take places and so enjoyable to play with, and now we're within sight of a time when we can take her on longer flights and to more thrilling destinations without all of the Baby Travel Stress, and resetting our family to Newborn: Day One gave me less pleasure than angst, when I imagined what it would be like.

I also felt terribly anxious about the logistics of another baby, from small issues to large ones -- how we would fit in our two-bedroom apartment (or how we'd afford a bigger place), how I would juggle the schedules of two kids, how I'd navigate a double stroller in our little hallway, how our finances would change with two children and two sets of private school tuition, how we would afford the luxuries that we hardly have to think about now, like great vacations, classes for Felicity, and visits to family and friends who live far away.  I also felt crushingly tired when I imagined the sleepless nights with a newborn combined with caring for an active, strong-minded first child.  

All of these are concerns that I am sure a lot of people have, and the majority of people do just fine with two or more children.  I don't think any of these things would hit us any harder than anyone else.  Plenty of you out there have dealt with newborns -- newborn TWINS, even -- while caring for older children, and you've done it with grace and aplomb.  I just don't have a lot of faith in my OWN ability to handle that without having a nervous breakdown or hugely neglecting some part of my life.

I think I was good at the newborn/infant stage with Felicity in a great many respects.  I connected with her and loved her instantly, to the outer edges of the universe and back, and I settled quickly into a schedule and routine that worked well.  I felt competent and happy much of the time when I was caring for her as a baby.  Thank God, she was a decent sleeper who, in a reasonable amount of time, became an excellent sleeper, and she ate well and has been (knock on wood) very healthy.  

AND YET.  

Those first several months, when I had to wake up every couple of hours to feed her, and then I had to stand over her crib shushing her back to sleep and replacing her pacifier 8,000 times, all the while wishing to God I could just sleep STANDING UP because I thought I would throw up if I didn't rest -- those months pushed me to a Not Good Place.  

I was, I am quite certain, VERY DIFFICULT to live with, because getting less than a solid eight (preferably nine) hours of sleep per night CRUSHES me in very short order, and the cumulative effect of it made me IMPOSSIBLE.  I was cranky and hypercritical and fell to pieces at the drop of a hat.  And of course, none of this was directed at Felicity -- by virtue of proximity it was primarily aimed at my long-suffering husband.  He was a saint about it, but I felt awful that I was being this way, and even though I KNEW I was acting insane, I couldn't stop.  Because, of course, on top of the lack of sleep, I was a roiling mass of post-partum hormones.  They made me A WRECK.  I thought when Joe wore Felicity in a carrier, he would smother her; I hyperventilated all the time over whether she was properly positioned/swaddled/aerated so as to erase the risk of SIDS; I thought everything everyone else did in relation to the baby was WRONG, ALL WRONG, oh just GIVE HER TO ME and let ME DO IT.  Which of course made me martyrous, as the cherry on top of my So Fun To Be Around-ness, because I felt like I had to do EVERYTHING or WE WOULD ALL DIE, but at the same time couldn't someone HELP ME so I could SLEEP?  

It was all quite magical.

Nursing, by the way, was also stressful for me, in part because it added to the feeling that I was the only one who could do anything for Felicity and I could never leave the house or go to the bathroom because I might have to feed the baby, but also because it was just...tiring and painful and chock full of its own special hormones.  Oh, and it prevented me from losing weight (I AM CAVEWOMAN, MUST CONSERVE FOOD FOR BABY), which ALSO made me hate the way my body felt.  Felicity was not a calm, easy nurser so there were times when I would be up at 2am, trying to feed her and she wouldn't latch on and I would be sobbing over her and she'd be screaming and MY GOD WHY DIDN'T I JUST GIVE HER A BOTTLE OF FORMULA AND MOVE ON??  When I weaned her, I went through a second wave of over-the-top anxiety and depression due to THAT hormone carnival funhouse, but after THAT things got SO. MUCH. EASIER.  That was also when I went back to work and we hired J and I no longer had to be the over-the-crib-shusher at naptime, and whew, the worst was behind us.  

The thing is, she WAS an easy baby, for the most part, and I know we got off pretty easily.  (So then the anxious thought is, the second could be a DISASTER -- setting aside that I feel we dodged a lot of bullets by having things go smoothly and having a healthy child, and I worry that we'd be tempting fate by greedily going for another one.)  But I have enjoyed everything since then a million times more, even though she is not always easygoing and can be frustratingly hard-headed.  Yes, it was only about six months of really hard infant-times (well, after nine months of sciatica and several exciting encounters with preterm contractions, but since my pregnancy was also easy in the grand scheme, I feel like that hardly counts), so at times I berate myself for wanting to make a HUGE PERMANENT LIFE-ALTERING decision based on the possibility of things being REALLY DIFFICULT for a mere six months -- realistically, though, it would be much longer than that since toddler time is also hard and stressful in its own way (but of course it's also fun for a million reasons, too).

I guess what occurred to me back in September is that I have loved so much of this experience in a way that I can't put into words.  But I don't feel overwhelmingly compelled to do it all over again.  

Since the ultimate question is not necessarily whether you want a BABY, it's whether you want another CHILD, I guess I realized that I don't really want...either one.  I DO want to be able to go back and visit baby and toddler Felicity at will; I am nostalgic from time to time about doing the butt-pats on her tiny diaper and the feeling of her fuzzy baby-head under my chin, to the point that I almost fly to pieces from wanting to hold that little body again and kiss those tiny lips a million times.  But that's not enough for me to go for it because -- despite everything I just said above -- that time FLEW by, and it would FLY by with a second baby, too.  It's ALL impermanent.  We could have TWELVE babies and they would ALL grow up and move away to college and become insufferable smart-asses the first time they came home for Christmas break.  Having another baby doesn't stop time -- I suspect it actually makes it go FASTER.  And I don't want it to.  

Within reason (don't worry, I'm not going to be one of those "TREASURE EVERY MOMENT" people), I want to be PRESENT for Felicity in the time I have with her outside of work and everything else.  I want her to feel my undivided attention and love all the time.  I want this special, singular bond I feel with her to be...IT for me.  Sort of like my marriage.  I have one husband and one child (let's not even get into the pets), and I feel complete.  I feel at risk of overextending myself if I had more people to love and tend to, even though I know I would get love and fulfillment back from them, too.  

I don't mean to discount the fact that a second child would, inevitably, be as loved as Felicity has been and of course once he/she was here, we would wonder how we survived without that particular child in our family, too.  In fact, that's what gives me a kernel of doubt now and then (imagine if my parents had stopped before having ME, after all) -- but that, too, is a slippery slope because you could say that for an infinite number of children.  

Look, it's not as though the hard times have meant that I loved Felicity or motherhood any less.  All of the joys have outweighed the toughness by an infinite degree.  So maybe I'm being unfair to the hypothetical second child in assuming so much about having another would be subtraction instead of addition.  And, full disclosure, I was reticent about having children AT ALL for fear of not being able to handle this kind of stuff -- yet we did it, and now it's unfathomable to think about my life without Felicity (yes, yes, all those child-proselytizers from back then -- YOU TOLD ME SO, YOU WERE RIGHT).  I am sure that well-meaning strangers who like to comment on family size would cluck at me and say that we should just go for it, it will be fine, and second babies are always SO EASY (ha ha -- I know a number of second babies who have been anything BUT easy, so don't even try that on me).  

And sometimes I berate myself for not just...well, sort of for not just being like everyone else.  For not simply knowing what I want my family to look like and going for it, for not simply taking a leap of faith and adding to our family while we're still presumably able (though sometimes I think of Elaine on Seinfeld saying, "I should have a baby?  Why?  Because I CAN?").  Sometimes I wonder if the more...I don't know, the more generous, open-hearted, faithful thing to do would be to forget all my concerns and welcome in all the children that are meant to be mine.  

Except, maybe that's just it.  Maybe it's that I DO know what I want my family to look like, and it already looks that way.  Maybe it's that I DO feel like I have been open to what God has in store for me, and I have accepted what has come (Felicity!) with love and surrender.  And I feel like if I were meant to have more, I wouldn't HAVE all these thoughts and feelings.  I would be ABLE to just go for it.  But that's not how I feel.  And it's not what that voice TOLD me I should do (not that I think God was speaking to me or anything -- but my intuition or whatever it was REALLY MEANT IT when it woke me up to tell me that, and the more I've thought about it, the more comfortable I've become -- it's when I think about everyone ELSE and what they want/expect/do that I worry that I'm not doing the right thing).  

The fact remains that I love what life with Felicity is like now and what it looks like in the future.  We can do so many things together, our little triumvirate.  We can explore the world, have infinite adventures, have special quiet times together.  We can nurture whatever talents she has without regard to cost or scheduling constraints.  I can savor every minute that I am present with my daughter.  I can spend all my maternal energy on her and still have energy left for ME, for the things I want to do and for the things I have to do.  

Inevitably, people who decide to have a single child will be accused, at some time, by someone, of being selfish.  If it's selfish to have the feelings that I do, and to base a MASSIVE decision on how it will affect me (emotionally, socially, professionally, parentally, maritally, physically), then fine, I am selfish.  And I'm going to take my selfish self and my one perfect, cherished daughter to the playground when she wakes up from her nap.

Rainy Days and Sundays

We had big plans to go to our neighborhood Easter egg hunt this weekend, but when Saturday morning turned out to be freezing and rainy (I really, really miss springtime in the South on days like that), we had to go with our backup plan.  

Since we had no backup plan, that meant impromptu dress-up, Easter-themed "crafts" (i.e., bunny stickers left over from our trip to Georgia in February), and an indoor hunt with the five plastic eggs I saved from last year (I'm not sure where the sixth ended up, but it should be a cat hair-filled surprise if we ever move).  

With that, plus snack time and unloading the groceries, we managed to burn the hours between breakfast and nap.

We did about 150 repetitions of the Easter egg hunt until Felicity's enthusiasm began to wane, but until that 151st time it was quite thrilling.  I told Felicity to wait in the doorway of the living room while I hid the eggs, and then I would say, "GO! GO!" and she'd run in with her basket, squealing with excitement.  The first round, I hid an egg under a pillow on the couch, and after she had found all five, she declared that she would hide the eggs, and then she went and put all of them under that pillow.  

After exhausting the egg-stashing places in the living room, we took the fun to Felicity's room, where she waited out each hiding session in her carseat.  "You sitting in your carseat waiting for Mommy to hide the eggs!" she said gleefully.  Again, when I offered her the chance to play the Easter bunny role, she went around and meticulously placed the eggs in all the exact same places where I'd hid them last.  

Palm Sunday provided us with some churchy activity in the morning, and after picking her up from the nursery, I gave Felicity my palms and took her to the playground, where she dragged the "neaves" around and tried to share them by shoving them at other children who regarded her offering with both confusion and fascination.

 

Naturally, when they tried to take hold of the fronds, she raced away, laughing.  She has become...that kid.  I am looking forward to the day when she is able to embrace sharing so I don't feel like we are the pariahs of the playground, especially since a lot of parents think she is older than two (one woman asked me if she was FOUR, which seemed a bit of a stretch) and I imagine they must figure we are the most clueless, indulgent parents ever to produce such a non-sharer of a child.  (Of course no one has ever said the first thing about this, other than to remark that their kid is exactly the same way, but that's my paranoid brain at work.)

The rest of the day was somewhat trying, as it rained all afternoon, plus Felicity woke up from her nap in a STATE because I wasn't there (I was out running 8 miles to make up for the zero I did during the week), and then after I got back and she seemed settled and fine, she fell to pieces when I went to get in the shower.  Mind you, this is the same child who merrily played BY HERSELF in her room while I showered and dressed for both of the two days prior (best thing ever!), and this time her daddy was RIGHT THERE to keep her company.  

I think Sunday afternoon has officially become a Difficult Transition Time, as she has figured out that the next morning Joe and I will return to work, and while she usually does not bat an eye when it comes time for us to shove off on Mondays she seems to freak out a little in the anticipation of it.  It's nothing she has expressed outright, but I've noticed increasing Sunday clinginess over the past few weeks, so that's the best I can figure.  (On the flip side, on Monday evenings she sometimes flies apart at the seams when I come HOME and our nanny leaves.  Can't win.)

Anyway, setting aside the touchy mood, the little miss also had grown weary of everything we had in the house that could conceivably entertain her by then, and that was even after I pulled out a set of blocks I'd hidden away for just such a moment of desperation/ennui.  I was too worn out to get out of my sweatpants and take her outside (even a rainy walk would have been an improvement on the cabin fever that had set in) (Joe was working, lest you think he was slacking in his parental duties), and it was one of those times when you just want to ring up Mary Poppins and beg her to take over for a couple of hours so I could sit on the couch and do the crossword puzzle.

I was thinking the other day of all the hours I used to have to just do...ANYTHING on the weekends.  ANYTHING AT ALL.  I actually DID sit on the couch and do the Times crossword and read the paper at a leisurely pace (usually after running for a couple of hours in the morning and doing 50 errands, but still), which now seems like an ABSURD and indulgent luxury.  Or we'd venture out to explore some corner of the city, wander in and out of shops, stop into some intriguing place for a slow, quiet lunch.  Or I'd go to Barnes & Noble and peruse the fiction section for as long as I felt like, taking my time to pick out the next book that I would tear through with all my time to read, uninterrupted.  Or we'd go to a cafe and talk and make lists of things we wanted to do or plan our next vacation.  

Right now, we're thinking about planning another vacation for late summer this year, but we've both been too busy at work and too tired at home to even come up with a short list of ideas.  Being too taxed to plan a vacation is a new level of lameness.

It was relaxing, yes, and of course we still do SOME of those things some of the time (one of the up sides to having a single child is that it's so easy to take off, guilt-free, for a few hours, assuming the other person doesn't have their own stuff to do, and also that the child in question does not dissolve into hysteria when one of the parenting team-members is not present, sigh); there is just not a lot of SITTING AROUND anymore.  Which is a good thing, in the grand scheme, of course.  I miss it, though, sometimes, when I am tired and Felicity is getting agitated because she wants THAT THING RIGHT NOW, YOU WANT IT YOU WANNNNNT IIIIIIIIT OMG HERE TAKE IT GAAAAAH.  

But then as soon as she's in bed, I can't wait to see her the next morning and start all over again.