Watching Life Whiz By

As I sit in my office watching it snow - again - I am eagerly looking forward to Spring. And then that gets me thinking about how quickly Spring will actually be here, and then Summer and then...2012!

Think I'm kidding? Just look at how my year is shaping up:

• March - our trip to Disneyworld! The girls first time on a plane!


• April - Start house-hunting in earnest, get our house on the market. Passover.


• May - Weekend trip to DC? LP turns FIVE. Move?


• June - AK turns THREE. The Hoos turns 35! My brother and his family visit from California. LP graduates from pre-school! Move?


• July - Our summer vacation. Or move?


• August - Brother-in-law and his family relocate to the US from overseas! My niece is Bat Mitzvahed.


• September - LP STARTS KINDERGARTEN!!!!!!! I turn 35.

Need I go on?

Funny How Time Just Slips Away

For the last month or so I have been flying blind. My watch died.

At first, it was horrible. I never quite knew what time it was and had to rely on others to help me out. This meant lots of extra time spent on the playground because I meant to live before 6 and time slipped away. I know, extra time on the playground sounds awful doesn't it?

I kept meaning to get the battery replaced, but I never seemed to have the watch on me when I was alone and passing a jewelry store.

Yesterday I finally remembered. And, after taking some time to track down my watch which was misplaced in the house, I lumbered over to a local jeweler. $25 later I have not just one working watch, but TWO working watches.

If the last few weeks have taught me anything, it is that I should take a note from AK and chill out.

Warp Speed

The other day I got the call at work that my replacement laptop has arrived. It seems that the lease on my existing one has expired. "But," I sputtered, "I got this one right after I came back from maternity leave!" With LP! THREE YEARS AGO!

Then, as I was driving in to work this morning listening to NPR, the commentator said something to the effect of, "In the three decades sine 1979..." and I did a double take. Where has the time gone? How is it possible that it has been 15 years since I graduated high school? A decade since the Y2K craziness?

It seems that in my focus on daily milestones - lunch time, quitting, dinner time, bath time, bed time - years have passed by without my noticing.

This year my oldest niece will be bat mitzvahed - I remember the Hoos getting the call from his brother with the news that his wife was pregnant! On Monday, my brother's oldest daughter started kindergarten! How is it possible that more than five years have passed since I awkwardly held her as a newborn?

Besides taking photos and trying to enjoy life as it comes, how is it possible to capture time? Ideas on how to slow down before LP is in kindergarten - or being bat mitzvahed?!

Equity

The Hoos is going away for the weekend. This is unprecedented. The most either of us have been away from our daughters is for a single night - a handful of nights when LP slept at one of our parents' houses and my single, horrible business trip.

That is not to say that we are never alone with our children individually. The Hoos gets the girls up and out of the house without me around three days a week. I spend the afternoons and early evenings with them five days a week. He has occasional week-night work events and I have the occasional event or mom date. This will just be the first time that I am on my own for two consecutive days and nights.

By virtue of being mom, I spend more time with the girls. The Hoos works more and longer hours (and brings home more of the bacon). He does yard work and housework that necessitates not having children underfoot (gardening and kids sometimes mix, but not when your kids pick EVERY green tomato or pull each petal off each flower).

So, most weekends I do take the girls out alone for a bit - to the farmer's market, to the grocery store, the playground, on walks, but in the back of my mind I know that I will get some time to myself later in the day (usually nap time when AK is down and LP is awake but slightly more subdued).

If this was any other weekend, I would likely have packed the girls up and driven down to my parents house on Long Island for the weekend. Alas, my parents are visiting my brother and his family in California.

I am now in programming mode, trying to at least have a few planned activities for each day so the girls don't drive me crazy. In addition, even thought I usually keep AK home with me on Fridays, she is off to day care so I can run errands (and maybe even fit in a pedi) and have a little bit of time for myself.

We will survive (perhaps barely), I will be stronger for the experience. And, as my friend MLH says, I am banking points for a ladies day at the outlets. Then again, why do I need to bank time? Who decides what goes where on the balance sheet? Is it really equal in the first place?

All Knowing

I have reached the point in my personal and professional life where I accept that I don't have all of the answers. Not that this knowledge satisfies any one else's desire for information, but at least I no longer torture myself for not being able to respond to every question or situation immediately.

It has actually taken me a long time to get here. And, I know that some people will never be able to comfortably say, "I'm sorry, I just don't know the answer. I can look into it for you, but there are no promises."

That being said, there are some things that I do know:

1. OxyClean is the mac-daddy. I had an entire Facebook conversation with four other smart, talented, hard-working moms about the merits of the different types of OxyClean. I am a soaker. almost every load of laundry contains at least three items pre-soaked in a bucket of powdered OxyClean and warm water.
2. Bribery is an effective tool. We all hate to do it, but we all know that the way to get a toddler to do anything is by offering or taking away. One of the few things that actually works.
3. Everyone is different. I have two little girls. Born two years and four days apart. Aside from being wonderful and adorable and awesome, I don't think they have much in common. AK's first tooth finally broke through this weekend - the top right; LP got her first at 7.5 months, bottom left. Stupid analogy, but just the tip of the iceberg.
4. There is no going back. I work part-time. Now that I have kids there is no way in the foreseeable future that I could go back to working full-time (of course, I would if I had to). I need the extra 10 hours not in the office to maintain our household - the groceries, the laundry, the everything.

And some things that I admit I do not know:

1. Snot. The origins and what, why and how.
2. Sleep. Why we always want more and never have enough.
3. Time. How to harness it and how it can fly by and crawl at the same time. LP was asking me about the pedals in the car last week and how I make it go and stop. SHE IS THREE and trying to learn how to DRIVE.
4. Tantrums/Moods. Where they came from, why the come and how to control them. LP become another person for a brief period of time and is smiling fifteen minutes later. Meanwhile I want to sell her on eBay.

Proud Mama

Both of my girls did great yesterday at day care.

Despite the fact that LP was (and is) clingy when the Hoos dropped her off, she had an "awesome" day according to Miss Shauna. In fact, SHE PEED ON THE POTTY FOUR TIMES! Seriously, at home she says she wants to go on the potty, removes her diaper, puts it in the trash, sits down, stands up and says, "All done!" and asks for mishies. At school they say the word potty, she pulls down a borrowed pair of pull-ups, pees and wipes herself. Is it common for kids to be potty trained at school but not at home? Oh, and she had a great time during dramatic play, especially when she is wearing the purple high heels.

Dee was a super star too. She slept well - no long naps though; Ate well, 12 ounces or so; and enjoyed the scenery. She was too overwhelmed to turn over in the classroom, but I am sure she will be back to rolling over in no time. She certainly does it at home enough. And last night she slept from 9:30 until 3:30. She might have gone longer, but I figured since I was up to rescue her from the turtle position I might as well nurse her too.

While I am very proud of my daughters, I am hoping that I will be rewarded with more time in the day. I have no idea how I am supposed to pick both of them up, play with them, nurse Dee and prepare dinner all between 5 and 7pm. Last night I prepped a lasagna that only needs to be put in the oven once I get home tonight; beyond that I see lots of take-out in our future.

In Perpetuity

New Years reminds me of time. And how quickly it passes. Did an entire year really just go by in the time it took me to blink?

Thanks to my financial management class I know that perpetuity means forever and ever. This is usually applied to getting dividends or interest (a good thing) for as long as you own the stock or bond. Applied to my real life, there are lots of things that are never-ending, but it doesn't quite come in the form on money.

1. Laundry. No matter how many loads I do, there is always more. I think this phenomenon has only manifested since LP arrived. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that I used to be able to wear jeans or a sweater more than once before having to wash them and now I can't wear anything more than five minutes without having snot, drool, banana or some other substance smeared on to me.
2. Dishes. It seems that no sooner do I empty the dishwasher it is time to put it back up again. On one hand this is a good thing, we are eating home more often, saving money on take-out and eating more healthfully. On the other hand we are probably using more water and energy. Thank goodness we got a new dishwasher a few months ago. The other one fit about four dinner dishes and used way more electricity and water to operate.
3. Housework. Crumbs procreate in my house. I vacuum and no less than 10 seconds later there are crumbs or dustbunnies in the nooks, the crannies, the middle of the floor....
4. Catching up. I feel like there is never enough time or energy to do all of the catching up with friends that I need to do. I always have someone I meant to call or some information I intended to pass on that never gets to the other party. By the time I remember to call at a decent time the moment has passed, the story is no longer funny or there are a million other things that have happened in the interim.

Happy New Year everyone. May you have more time and energy to do the important things in 2008 - more number 4 and less 1-3!

Finding Coverage

As much as I am sure everyone would love to read a post about my take on universal health care coverage, this post is actually about child care coverage.

This week LP's day care is closed. Fortunately, I only have to get people to watch her for two days since I am typically home on Mondays and Fridays and Tuesday was a holiday that everyone gets off. Even more fortunately, LP has two sets of grandparents that look for any opportunity to help out and watch the energetic little munchkin.

LP spent yesterday with my mother-in-law. Apparently she was "an angel". They went shopping and she spent the entire time calmly standing in the main section of the cart, enjoying the view of the toy store. If I was the one pushing the cart I would have to resort to bribing LP to stay in the cart. They also managed to eat lunch out at a local diner. Again, if the Hoos and I were there she would spend the time throwing food, climbing out of the seat, and running around the restaurant. Typical, right?

Today LP is with my parents. I am sure I will have a similar report about how she was wonderful and angelic and the most perfect little child. I am not going to complain, though. If she wants to be good for our babysitters, that is great, because that means they won't mind babysitting again.

On a more serious note, the week without day care really has me thinking about how parents with elementary age kids do it. My parents were teachers, so growing up we pretty much always had the same vacations. The Hoos and I and most other parents do not have this luxury (although there is no way I would trade my job for being a teacher full-time). Summers become a time of juggling different camps, seeking full-time babysitters, and paying lots and lots of $$$ to keep your kids occupied.

But summers only come up once a year, I am also thinking about the five days a week that the kids go to school!

In our neighborhood, the bus pick-up time is 9:00 am. Well, even with his relatively open schedule there is no way the Hoos could get to work at a decent time (9 is considered late at a lot of offices; I get in at 7:45 currently). Of course there is before and after school care (starting at 7 and ending at 6) which I guess isn't much different than day care, but it seems to me that school-age kids start knowing the difference between kids whose parents pick them up and kids who "have" to hang out at school and do their homework. Ugh.

The good news is, LP is in day care for another three years. That should give me enough time to get my head around all of the craziness that will become my schedule in the not-too-distant future. Just in time for carpools and tee-ball practice.