CherylKatz.org

And back in the saddle, though I’m re-adjusting to Pacific time very slowly and poorly.

Only by sleeping in other beds for a few weeks do you really appreciate your own, that’s all I can say.  On my visit to my parents’ place and Michelle and Andy, I slept in some mighty comfy beds, but the understated familiarity of my own is frankly insurmountable.

It’s great to be home, Sami in school during the day, eating my own food, cooking in my own kitchen, driving my own car, working in my office, sleeping in my own bed.

I spent a weekend with my parents, showing off all Sami’s new abilities and recuperating from the long day of travel from San Diego to New York.  My father met Sami and I at the airport and helped get us and our checked luggage from the terminal, over AirTrain, on the rental car shuttle and all the way into our rental car.  And I don’t know how I would have done it without him, so let’s not think of that just now.

Sami got to play outside in the same yard I played in at her age, took a walk in the old neighborhood, and spent an afternoon with my friend Jenn’s kids, Ryan (7) and Cynthia (5).  She met her cousing Madeline, age 13 months.  (Sami was NOT excited about a baby close enough in age to want to share her toys, and was thus most decidedly not charming.)

Then we drove up to Ithaca, NY to visit Andy, Michelle and new arrival, 5-weeks-and-counting Milo!  He is sweet and wonderful in the way that only babies who can’t roll over and run away can be, but still young enough and demanding enough a taskmaster to keep his momma ready to pull her own hair out - in only the way a needy infant can be.  Sami was half fascinated, half jealous of the baby - especially when I’d take him to give A&M a break here and there.

Sami was not the poster child for reproduction - but I’ve come to wonder what toddler is.  Having a toddler in the house with a new baby, when said house has not been toddler-proofed and said baby’s parents are similarly unprepared for the unrelenting persistence of said toddler… was challenging for me, the seasoned, toddler-proofed toddler-mom.  I’m sure A&M have made a list of things that Sami got into that will need to be solved before Milo is mobile.

Ithaca is just a lovely city.  This visit, I didn’t get near the college areas, so I got a real look at what the residential life is like in Ithaca.  And I like it.  I’ve spent a little time trying to sell Ben on Ithaca as a place to live, and he’s game to explore it, but I’m partly waiting for the recent-visit afterglow to wear off.  It’s SO GREEN there, it nearly blew my mind.  The supermarket, Wegmans, did blow my mind - it was as if someone rolled Henry’s, Whole Foods and our local Vons into one humongous super-super-market, but the organic and holistic offerings were exponentially larger than anything I’ve seen in any single market here in SoCal.  But mostly what blew my mind about Ithaca was the people, the upstate hippie vibe, the open space and the plethora of local chains.  It feels very alive there.

This concludes my whirlwind overview of the trek to New York.  I feel like I have tons more to write but I need to hold off lest I fritter the entire day away with posting.  More to come.  I swear.

Having spent the larger portion of two weeks sick, I have not surprisingly stepped up my facial-tissue consumption considerably.

I wish I hadn’t.  Every time I blow my nose or cough into a disposable tissue, I spend the next several minutes feeling as though I’ve inhaled a blizzard of particulate paper matter.

Ben uses handkerchiefs on a daily basis, though even he, when sick, uses tissues or paper towels to avoid the probable daily laundry onslaught that handkerchief use would require in times of ailment.  I wish that it were a viable alternative, because frankly I’m tired of the chalky choking feeling.

But seriously.  How DID people cope with the wonders of snot and mucus before disposable solutions came about?  The last thing I want is to run a fraction of a load of laundry once or twice every day so that I have something clean to blow my nose in, especially when I’m feeling feverish and weak.  All hail the nuclear family, because when times got tough, I bet my great grandmother was washing my grandma’s handkerchiefs for her in a boiling laundry pot over the pot belly stove.  I can’t imagine I’d be able to convince even the dearest people in my lives to do that much laundry for me today.

Anyway, I’m babbling.  You can see what all this sickness has done to my brains.  Must get better soon.

This was my first year celebrating Chanukah as a former Catholic with an eye toward conversion to Judaism.

This year, also, our family joined a local synagogue, and Sami will be attending preschool there beginning in March.

Chanukah is a beautiful holiday, even if it suffers elevated visibility because of its general proximity to Christmas. Any celebration that puts candles and frying at the forefront is A+ in my book. We celebrated with my husband’s family, and our one year old is just old enough to understand what it means to get presents. (In fact, she understands it so well that she broke into the gifts out of turn, opening her gift at 10 AM instead of around sunset when she would otherwise have received it.) And yet presents aren’t the ultimate goal of the holiday, and I appreciate that, too. I am never one to turn down an opportunity for gifting, but when this season’s major holiday is better described as Giftmas, it’s easy to be attracted to less materialistic holidays.

My Catholic parents sent Sami one gift, which is perfect. I want to allow her to explore religious traditions and to feel free to celebrate the more cultural (rather than religious) implications of The Holidays. But I don’t want her to become a Spoiled Brat, which appears to be so easy these days, if you look around at kids in toy stores.

This post isn’t really about what holidays Sami will grow up celebrating, though. We’re an odd family and have our share of odd little traditions, and I’m sure Sami will learn to withstand or appreciate them as she sees fit. This post is really a short elegy for Christmas as I knew it, because I know Sami won’t know it the same way.

I should start by mentioning that I went to Catholic school, and so it was inevitable that at school, Christmas was regarded as the Birthday of Jesus. However this wasn’t carried over at home. At home, Christmas was really Familymas - a time to eat special foods and celebrate each other with thoughtful gifts.

The most memorable detail I have is that Christmas morning was so exciting for me as a kid that I was literally unable to fall asleep on Christmas Eve. I’d go down to bed around 8:30, I guess, allowed to stay up a little later because of the Christmas specials on TV, and then lie awake for hours just imagining what kind of surprises lay under the tree. I’d wake up at 5 am and run into my brother’s room, where he was also awake, and we’d run around, shake packages, peek in on my parents to see if they were up yet. We’d climb into their bed, lift their eyelids, do our level best to not wake them up (which, of course, always woke them up) until finally they dragged themselves out of bed, grabbed the camera, and let us go to town.

There was never anything particularly expensive under the tree. But it was all so very exciting nonetheless. I think the biggest fight my brother and I ever had over a present was a cardboard space rocket my brother got. I can’t imagine how much the thing cost, but I bet it was pennies compared to the Hot Toys of the Day today. A glorified cardboard box, and it was hours, days… MONTHS of entertainment for us.

There doesn’t seem to be quite the same magic around Giftmas. Maybe it’s because it’s become Giftmas and has moved away from the kernel of Christmas that put the thoughtfulness and love into the gift-giving. Maybe it’s because I’m actually a grownup now and the artifice is gone; I know my parents stayed up late after I went to bed, wrapping presents and doing last minute prep stuff so that we would really believe that Santa had come down our chimney. I know that for Sami to believe these things would require a stiff serving of story-telling on our parts with a side dish of time I don’t really have. All for a mystery that would be handily dispelled when she starts kindergarten (believing in Santa is SO preschool….) Maybe it’s because I’m looking at the tradition of Christmas that I grew up with and am only seeing materialism, artifice and work.

I know despite my lack of investment in Christmas, Sami is going to grow up with a healthy sense of tradition and wonder, even if it will be distinctly different from the traditions I knew as a kid. Maybe she’ll be a little less materialistic than I turned out to be, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. I just hope that without the magic MY parents gave me for the holidays, she will still find the magic somewhere, some other way.

Being back at work has been great for me, and I think being at day care has been great for Sami so far, but I don’t consider this to be completely hammered out just yet.

I need to improve my health and fitness. I’ve been working on eating habits for a while, because those have been fairly easy to control. I’ve regulated my sleeping habits by necessity, as I get the longest stretch of sleep by going to bed not too long after I put Sami down. So far so good.

The last stand is exercise: I’m racking my brains trying to figure out where I can carve a half hour here and there to work out.

Here is my typical weekday:

5:30 - 6 AM - Day starts.

Wake up, get washed up, dressed and do Sami damage control. Last nursing, get Sami diapered and dressed, have coffee if I remembered to make it. Gather up necessary items for me and for Sami for the day, and get out the door. Hopefully Ben has moved his car.

6:45 - 7:30 - driving Sami to day care, dropping her off, driving to work. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later depending on traffic, but I am usually at the office around 7:30.

7:30 - 9 AM - most productive hour and a half of every day. Hands down. (Except now that Ben has started getting here earlier, a little bit less so.)

9 AM - 4 PM - work, work and work some more. Since I can’t stay late to finish things, I really just bust my butt all day to make sure things are being done according to schedule.

4 - 4:30 - administrative work crap; filing, uploading reports, assessing what is left to do for the next day

4:30 - 5:30 - going to get Sami and driving us both home. Blah traffic.

5:30 - 8 PM - hang out with Sami, make dinner, give Sami a bath and read books, playtime, bedtime.

By 8:30 she is usually out cold, without exception. She will probably wake up around 12 or 1, and if I’m lucky go back down until shortly after I get up at 5:30-ish. Sometimes I’m not that lucky.

I don’t want to break into the evening time with Sami, because that is essentially all of our time together during the week. By the time Sami is asleep, I am completely wiped. The thought of putting on a yoga video even for 15 minutes is incomprehensible. Given the choppy nature of my nights of sleep, I don’t see waking up earlier as an option.

So is it possible for me to squeeze out more time? (Especially moms who have made this time, tell me how you do it!)

Perhaps this is not a solvable problem at the moment; just a question of getting Sami through teething so that she sleeps more soundly, and then being less exhausted myself, and then taking that half hour or hour after she’s gone to bed.

I really need this fitness kick, for the energy boost and because I want to fit back in more of my clothes. Weekends are easy, just trying to keep my house clean and indulging my cooking/baking frenzy are a workout enough, but I also have time to play at the park with Sami and go for walks. Two out of seven days isn’t nearly enough, but something is better than nothing, eh?

I’ve been keeping my head down and working on some domestic and personal problems since early July. But I’ve regained my stride and I’m ready to peek above the surface again.

When I decided to stay home full time to take care of my daughter, I was met with many raised eyebrows. I met those eyebrows and raised them some self-sustaining arguments about how thrilling motherhood is, and how I could barely imagine working ever again.

This was the truth, right up until it wasn’t, but somewhere along the way I lost track of how I really felt about it. While I was “basking” in the “glow” of being a new mom, and coming to terms with the depth and enormity that is truly loving my child, I wasn’t owning up that every minute at home was not uncontrollable bliss. It was uncontrollable, yes. But it wasn’t always bliss.

Looking back on it now, having been back at work since early July, I can honestly say that being a professional mom destroyed me a little bit. This has nothing to do with Sami, and everything to do with the critical eye I always have trained on myself. I’m torn over my feelings on the subject, because I know that the year I spent with her full time was immeasurably good for her, and we are incredibly bonded and in tune. On the other hand, I completely discounted everything that I was able to accomplish with her, and began to think of myself as lazy, unaccomplished and worthless.

This is what all those raised eyebrows were seeing, months before I saw it for myself. It is hard to come to grips with giving up a life full of quantified goals and tasks and leaping into motherhood, where problems and solutions aren’t always very clearly defined or easily solved.

I really admire women who can stay home with their children; this is not to say that stay-at-home-motherhood is for suckers. Actually, I believe precisely the opposite: staying home is a challenge that ultimately bested me. But for my own sanity and the future of my family, I need to be back at work.

I don’t claim my own destruction lightly. The damage I did to myself had an enormous impact on my family: at a rough estimate, $20,000 of debt we didn’t have before Samantha was born. I took all my exhaustion, frustration and feelings of powerlessness and expressed them through the power of my credit cards. I spent to feel better, but ended up feeling worse as I struggled to hide purchases from my husband. The hole kept getting bigger, and I kept shoveling deeper with every attempt to fill it in.

Eventually my husband found out, and the cycle ground to a halt. At first I struggled with the shopping addiction alone, feeling even more trapped by the limitations of recognizing what I had done. With time, I sought therapy, and the treatment has allowed me to learn to control my kneejerk reaction to purchase things when I am feeling unsettled.

Working - having a sense of responsibility that has tangible requirements and results - has been immeasurable. I feel that I’m contributing to the household (while in reality as a professional mom, I *was* contributing, but I wasn’t able to recognize that in my own personal case.)

For the first two months back at work, I had Samantha with me. (Our family business afforded me that temporary convenience.) I babyproofed a play area for her in my office, and when she became cranky I’d tie her to my back in a baby carrier so that she could be soothed to sleep while I still got work done. The past month, Sami has spent with her grandmother, having a blast every day at the park, and we have found a preschool that will take her in the near future

Sami is almost 13 months old now. She’s been walking since 11 months, she babbles happily, and she is a sweet, bright and loving child. She shares her binky with new and old friends alike. She’s blowing milestones away, and is healthy as a tiny horse. As far as motherhood goes, I couldn’t ask for better results. I’m grateful for the flexibility I’ve had, and the precious time I’ve been able to spend with her. (Working makes me appreciate every second a hundredfold more.)

But it’s time for me to get back to a place where I feel like I am a fully functioning member of my family and of society, and not just the devoted slave responsible for the care of my child. In the long run, Sami will benefit from a mom who can identify and meet her own emotional needs along with the material and emotional needs of the rest of the family.

I had the very long beginning of a very bad post written and saved in drafts; an objective list of the awful ways in which moms eat each other alive for their choices.

Posting such a post is really deflecting attention from what I really want to say, which is that I’m tired of being told what I should be doing, how much my husband should be doing, and how much time I should take off.

No one walks in my shoes. No one else is part of my family dynamic. And no one else is responsible for my daughter’s health and happiness.

I’ve tried scheduling, and I’ve tried being flexible with her schedule. What I’ve discovered is that she may follow a general pattern, but it isn’t tied to precise times that are identical from day to day. So if she is tired at 8:30, I let her sleep then. And if she is clearly not tired until 11 pm, then that’s when she’ll go to bed. I’m tired of fighting to implement and maintain a regular schedule, when it results in more stress and less sleep for my husband and for me.

Sami is not a fan of eating yet. I offer her food at least once a day, but I’m not willing to turn meals into stressful occasions for her. So if after 5 bites, she remains uninterested, I give her some safe baby finger foods or a mesh feeder to play with, and call it a day. She’s still gaining steadily through nursing, and showing small signs of interest in food. I don’t need her to eat just because everyone else’s kids do. She’s crawling, practically walking, and I trust her to start eating when she’s ready. (I also suspect that she’s not terribly interested in food because her teeth are going to come up soon - the lumps on her gums must be very painful - but that’s another story entirely.)

My daughter sleeps with me, nurses on demand at 9 months, and is not rigidly scheduled. She gets a bath every day, is well nourished, blowing away her developmental milestones, and is a happy, well adjusted, caring, sharing, gentle and friendly baby. She spends tons of quality time with me and with my husband every day. He may not always be the one to give the bath or take her to bed, but that’s really for our family to decide and not for anyone else to criticize.

Ultimately, I’m your all around crunchy hippie of a momma. I won’t say that I agree with everyone’s parenting choices, but I will tell you that what others choose for their children is their choice, barring abuse. I don’t expect the majority of other parents to understand why I make the choices I do. But I do expect them to be respectful and keep their unsolicited advice to themselves, if it is going to be unfriendly and derisive.

Edit: I’m recognizing that it’s not reasonable for me to expect others to keep their thoughts to themselves. This is a reminder to me that I don’t have to feel pressured by advice of others; having a different view doesn’t make me wrong or uncertain. I just need to let things roll off my shoulders.