A morning at Lucy-speed

So, for various reasons, we skipped church this morning — mostly due to my concerns regarding Lucy’s ability to sit quietly for 90 minutes, given her 2-ness the past couple of days. I’m not calling it bad behavior, because it’s not, it’s age appropriate behavior, as she learns to differentiate between what she wants and what she doesn’t want. She’s much like both of her parents, and has passionate feelings on the subject. What she wants, she wants, and she wants it now, thankyouverymuch, and what she doesn’t want is poison, anathema, disaster…and her only way to express her displeasure is to scream “Yellow yo-yo!” as loud as she can.

It helps somewhat to hold her and explain the WHY of my No. “I know love, you want the yellow yogurt, but we don’t have any more, we can have orange yogurt or green yogurt, but until Mama goes to the store, there is no more yellow yogurt.” The colors refer to the containers, just so you don’t think I’m trying to poison my kid.

The point here is that she’s discovered that she can refuse things, and she is in love with this ability, the amazing chance to communicate her desires and have them honored. The way her face lights up when she communicates successfully — it’s great, and makes me happy for every time I blabbed to my kid about things that everyone said she was far too young to understand. Her verbal abilities are a big old haHA to so many people right now.

So anyway, none of this goes along with a good, mellow morning in church; Grandpa Frank (i.e. BioDad) wasn’t going to be there this morning, and I was completely overtired after the past few days, so we came to a decision to bag it for a day. And then, later on, Lucy and I decided to give Dada a little bit of space and go on a bookstore run, as all three of us needed new books to read.

So we wandered around the bookstore, chatting with my old coworkers, those few who are left in retail after two years, and walking “up an down da sta-irs” a couple of times. Lucy seems to share my utter detesting of elevators. And when we were done there, we needed to go to this awesome local store to get an adaptor for the little Kleen Kanteen we were gifted for Lucy, so she can use it as a sippy cup, plus a thermos for me, to attempt to reduce the amount of money I’m paying for coffee.

Lucy was militantly opposed to being carried, or being in a stroller, “Mama, Lucy walkin,” and I thought about overruling her for a minute, but I like to foster her independence when possible, and while downtown was busy, it wasn’t dangerous…so I let her walk. I didn’t hold her hand. She was never more than a couple of steps from me, and I just let her go at her own pace. It took probably eight minutes to walk half a block. And it was an incredibly enjoyable eight minutes.

I expected people to be annoyed, frustrated that we were taking up so much sidewalk. Instead, I got peaceful smiles, and compliments on how pretty she was, how happy she seemed, how nice it was to see her. We wandered into the store, our easy pace continuing. No one minded. My girl brought a smile to those who stopped and watched her for a moment.

A good reminder. It’s okay to slow down, to take things at her speed. Sometimes we have to rush, move quickly, but more often, it doesn’t matter. More often, we can relax, and just move forward and the speed that is comfortable.

And now, writing this, I want to thank God for catching up with me and providing that reminder. I guess I had my morning at church after all.

Because someone will ask: Lucy chose Mo Willems’ Elephants Cannot Dance, Robb wanted Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis’ Dragons of the Hourglass Mage, and I got Laura Kasische’s In a Perfect World and one of Kathy Reichs’ Bones books, I forget which one. Yes, I got two books, I was the one who had to do all the driving. Stop looking at me like that.

Falling down

I think feminism fucked me over.

I understand that I’m saying this from a place of total privilege. I’m white, I’m almost 30, I’ve never lived in a pre-feminist world.

But I still think that feminism fucked me over.

Lucy had a rough evening yesterday. She fell asleep on her way home from my mom’s, (5pm) and since she sleeps like the dead, there was no waking her until she woke — screaming hysterically because she’s her father’s daughter and she wakes up hungry, and at that point she hadn’t eaten in about six hours — around 8pm. Which of course means that I was lucky to get her back to sleep at about 10:30.

My alarm goes off at 5:30, she sleeps through it. No worries. I heard her mumbling a bit while I was WiiFit-ing, but I heard her stop, and figured she’d either fallen back asleep, or crawled up into bed with Robb, and was fine. She was asleep when I went into the bedroom to get dressed before work…and then she woke up. And all hell broke loose.

She’s fine if she wakes up when I first get up, and I have time to soothe her back to sleep with a boob. She’s fine if she wakes up after I leave for work, even two minutes after. When she wakes up right as I’m leaving, she’s completely inconsolable. Utterly. It’s a disaster. Robb finally kicked me out of the house, on the verge of tears myself, while Lucy screamed “Mama, no work! No, Mama! Cuddle, Mama!”

Good times.

I try to be articulate about this, but it’s very difficult. Whenever I try to talk to other moms about my frustrations with being a working mom, I get either a distainful, “Well, my kids are far too important for me to work, I couldn’t possibly stand to miss one millisecond of their diaper-filled lives,” or a longing “God, I wish Iworked, I’m so sick of diapers and playdates and all of it, I’d kill to be back in the workforce.”

It’s like the vaccination debate. No one ever says “I don’t know, what does your doctor recommend?” Nope, it’s fire-and-brimstone, no matter which way you turn.

Maybe I’ll be more appreciative that I’m expected to do more than clean a house and cook a turkey when Lucy’s in school, and I would just be home alone and erranding, anyway. And if Robb and I have anything like the troubles we’re dreading when Lucy is old enough for school, I may get my wish, because I will live poor and homeschool before I let the public school system turn my brilliant, beautiful daughter into chum for the pretty, popular girls. Maybe, by then, it will be a welcome relief, maybe I will have a sense of contribution to my family. Hell, maybe Ms Agent will send me a letter, tell me what a genius I am (muh-wahhaha) and that she already had an editor lined up, and I just need to sign on the dotted line — they’re my dreams, darn it, I can be as irrational as I’d like, thankyouverymuch — and I’ll get to live a charmed life, homeschooling in the morning, writing in the afternoon, and having a quick chat with a domestic helper before creating a healthy, nutritious, and tasty meal which my family will compliment, and then we’ll all share what happened in our days, and laugh and love together like the daydream of American family that our government keeps breaking and breaking and breaking.

Maybe then I’ll feel like I’m supporting my family, instead of just failing them.