September 12th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

Oh how life changes and what fills your time on a Saturday night.

Flash back to when I was 16.  It was a weekend night, and I went to the skating rink, a common occurrence, with my friends and a mix of cute guys I kind of knew from surrounding congregations.  On the way home at a stoplight just a little ways before the drive through a canyon, one guy in his huge monster truck with his 2 or 3 friends dared me to drag race him.  Um…..yeah because you’re totally going to lose!  After all I was in a six cylinder burgundy-red Acura Legend with only one passenger, and being known to have lead foot like my own father as teenager I had no problem flooring it.  It was probably at least 10:30 at night, pitch black, and no other cars were around at all so I didn’t see any danger in it.  I gunned it at the light and had fun as I at some point got ahead of him and headed down the now one lane through the canyon.  Well that was exhilarating!  The next day sometime my dad came up to me and said rather sternly, “so-and-so is bragging to everyone how he drag raced you last night.  Were you drag racing him last night?”  Uh-oh.  My jaw felt agape even if my mouth was closed.  Why in the world would he brag about the drag race incident when I beat him?  Wasn’t he embarrassed to get outdone by a girl in a non-hot-rod, non-monster-truck?  Wow, I had no idea he would be passing that around….looking back now of course I realize he was probably bragging because I was pretty cute and tiny in my day (long hair, size 2- man why didn’t I appreciate it then?), so of course having anything to do with me was something to brag about.  Lol.  Believe me- I can say that now without fear of being condemned as hothead or braggart because I’m not the hot little chick I once was.  You remember this story right dad?  Who told you anyway?  I guess there must have been not a neighborhood watch program but a parenthood watch program back then.  Amendment: My husband just told me this guy always talked about his drag-racing exploits….sigh, I guess maybe it wasn’t my cuteness afterall….

Flash forward, oh about 13 years.  I am x pounds heavier these days, which I will flatter myself by saying “full-figured”, and driving a four cylinder Mazda mini-suv with a plastic bumper dented on both sides and a carseat, broken pretzels, possibly a rolled up dirty diaper or two, and inumerable distractive toys inside.  Oh yes, and a quilt magazine.  Yes, I quilt now.  Now, I’m not 70 yet, but I quilt.

It’s Saturday night at 9pm. I am in my almost 11-month old son’s room with all the lights off, sitting on a little stool by his crib, waiting patiently for him to fall asleep.  Usually he nurses to sleep, but the last three nights he has been wide awake and wanting to crawl and play until 10:30 at night.  Enough is enough- this is bad habit we’re getting into.  So I went in with him to his room at 8:15.  It’s been about 45 minutes now.  I keep the crib side down while I’m there next to him because he doesn’t feel “trapped” that way and is pretty content- except that he’s still awake!!  At first I try reading to him with a flashlight while he moves around in his crib, saying “tha” and pointing, which sounds a lot like he’s saying “that.”  I think he is.  All I’m waiting for now is the “what’s” that comes before it, then I’ll be naming every pot, pan, and toilet seat in creation for him.  Then he’ll lay down for, oh, 30 seconds, then pop back up and butt his head into the crib railing like he’s some kind of tiny ram.  Lay back down for 30 more seconds, pop back and start clapping.  Lay down and shift around, lay on tummy, lay on side, lay on back.  Get up, “tha! tha!” pointing to the blinds.  Lay down.  I can’t help smiling to myself when I see him clapping.  He’s obviously practicing all the different things he knows how to do now, and I start wondering to myself if this is what he does when he wakes up in the middle of the night before he starts crying and I come to get him settled back under his blankets.  Finally I just don’t know what to do- after 45 minutes I just decide to leave him in there alone and hope he just falls asleep.  Thankfully, there’s only a few minor complaints from his room before there’s silence.  I go back in to check on him, and he’s asleep on his back with one hand near his head, a sleeping posture I myself often assume because it’s comfortable to me.  I fix the blankets on him and that is that.  The I finish my evening by capturing the special moment on this blog.  And that’s about it on this Saturday night (oh yeah, and a little dish-washing and meat-marinating-for-tomorrow too).  But honestly- it was pretty peaceful and satisfying.

September 8th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

September 8th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

I’ll be honest and admit it.  Our first family vacation was…well it was fun, but it was also tiring and required a bit of mental adjustment.  I so enjoyed watching Nolan in a new environment.  He loved the frigid stream water!  What gives?  Well, Ben and I liked it too, so I guess that’s why.  He came from us didn’t he?  Nolan was literally sitting in the freezing water without a stitch on, playing with, I mean, trying to eat, rocks.

There was a set of stairs on this trip and he got extremely good at climbing them.  Then he figured out how to climb back down.  Then he climbed up and down, up and down, up and down.  He climbs stairs with gusto by the way.  None of this weak plodding upwards.  It was hearty.  Hands smacking the dusty carpet of the stairs as he plowed upwards, excited to be climbing.  It never seemed to get less interesting.

You’re probably still wondering, what does she mean mental adjustments?

Concerning my husband: I am married to a man I call my John Muir.  To quote something mentioned in Wikipedia about him, “In September 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Indiana to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the “wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find.”“  Further appropriate reference is this: “Experiencing Yosemite: Arriving in San Francisco in March 1868, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Marquis notes that “he was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower.”^[7] “We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us,” Muir later wrote. . . . “No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite… The grandest of all special temples of Nature.”^[14] He later returned to Yosemite and worked as a shepherd for a season. He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana and hiked the old Indian trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake.”

(yes that’s a baby on his back- my baby)

Those phrases I bolded are very much my husband.  So when we go to the mountains, Ben yearns to do the types of stuff John Muir did.  He loves to study topo maps and books on Hiking and Backpacking in Yosemite before bed at night and pick out the best hikes and routes he wants to try.  Just one he had chosen (out of 4) for this vacation involved driving 2 hours one way from our cabin, hiking about 18 miles, at 9,000 feet elevation (read: no oxygen).

I love to hike.  You know that from all the blog posts I’ve done about my hikes with Nolan. But I am not in shape like my husband, my Hashimoto’s Thyroid garbage has been acting up, and hiking at sea level is COMPLETELY different than hiking at higher elevations, especially when you haven’t acclimated.  So we did 2 family hikes the first two days.  One short but steep where my legs literally felt like anvils the whole time (and we were only at 3,500 feet elevation), and one 4.5 mile hike along a river that was quite beautiful with huge pools of water at various points that people were swimming in.  It felt great, but by the end I definitely felt like I had gotten a really good workout.  The 4.5 miles was just right for Nolan in the pack- after that he was ready to crawl around, play, and explore.

By Saturday night Ben was talking about this advanced hike mentioned above and I had a sinking feeling- there was no way that either I or Nolan could handle such an excursion.  Nolan wasn’t capable of sitting in a backpack that long, and I wasn’t capable of being on my feet hiking that long at such an elevation.  Also I don’t like to be in the car, and neither does Nolan- so 2 hours each way was a definite turn off.  Ben wanted to go so badly that he was probably a little blind to these facts at first.  As he realized them, he felt pretty bummed.  I felt bummed for him, and for myself.  I really would love to go do that hike, if I could manage it in a way that was refreshing to me.

So there we were, at this really cool Cabin in Oakhurst with a nifty loft for a bedroom, a deck, bbq, and stream right outside, feeling bummed.  Nolan went to sleep.  I told Ben he should take the day Sunday and just go do it- get up early, do the hike, and be back to enjoy the evening as family.  He said maybe.  Morning comes and we all sleep in.  Sort of.  Nolan gets up at the crack of dawn almost remember? (Oh yes, and on vacation, 2-4 times each night as well- that’s the tiring part I described.)  Ben is doing his best to do what he thinks is “best” and be that “family man” he thinks he supposed to be, which somehow involves giving up everything you ever liked to do.  He doesn’t feel right about leaving me with Nolan alone all day without a car at the cabin.  It’s a sweet thought for sure, but he is still really bummed and sad.  This day isn’t going to be fun if you stay here feeling sad right?  I basically force him to leave by my good convincing skills.  In the end, every person needs to feed their soul with something they need.  He needed to go do this so he didn’t feel trapped, then he could come back and be happy with his family and have something to give back.  So off he went.  Yes, staying in the cabin all day with my 10 month old son and no where to go wasn’t the funnest day we’ve ever had- but it was a lot funner than with a sad husband around too! lol.  He came back content, which was the goal.  Now for me……

Quilt shops of course!!!  So on Monday Ben spent the day playing with Nolan and entertaining him, while I hit a couple of quilt shops on our drive back to home.

Concerning Nolan: The other thing we got a little freaked out about was how likely it was that Nolan could get Giardia from playing in the stream.  He tried to eat rocks from the stream a few times and we weren’t sure if he being a little guy could get giardia just from that, even though he wasn’t drinking the water or anything.  We had no idea but Ben got uneasy about it so then we couldn’t freely have fun with him in the stream until we did more research.  Nolan’s just fine by the way!  I figure I made it through my whole life playing in streams such as those and people were probably not as “green” minded in the 80’s and I never had a bout myself, so I felt Nolan would probably be ok too.

Concerning me: I was a little disappointed in myself that I couldn’t do as much as I wanted to physically, felt guilty that I even had to think about balancing what I wanted to do with what was best for Nolan and what he wants (just live for my son and my son only right?), and guilt that I didn’t play with and engage Nolan every single second of the trip (ahhhh- eating pretzels and reading a novel in a lounge chair on the deck with a soft breeze and the sound of it in the trees while Nolan napped was wonderful), but I’m trying to learn not to make my expectations too high.    Mommies are great but they aren’t perfect, and they have needs too.

So- that’s all really.  We had fun, we felt bummed part of it, Nolan had a great time in general, and all three of us got to do something we really enjoyed that wasn’t difficult for us (for Nolan I’d have to say it was the stairs.)

But after this trip what we parents are really looking forward to is….the extended family vacation!  We want grandma, grammy, grandpa, papou, uncle, bibi, and paman there to play with Nolan so this daddy and mommy can get a little respite folks!