when is this class going to end?

I met a woman last week who went on and on, (and on and on), about how much she loves being a stay at home mom. She has three young kids and, according to her, she spends every waking moment with them. And, also according to her, she loves every waking moment of it. Every. Waking. Moment. And I do not believe. No one can possibly love every waking moment. No one.

When I was a young girl I always pictured myself staying at home, being a good wife and loving mother, supporting my hard working husband by keeping the home fires burning. Maybe I saw my future this way because my mother didn't work outside the home. Although my mother never really worked inside the home either, so I certainly didn't grow up wanting to be like her. Where ever the dream came from, I always thought that was what I wanted. Until I was a stay at home mom, I mean.

I needed to be home. And I wanted to be home. I loved taking care of our new 24 month old. Changing diapers, cooking, cleaning, oh my god, the cleaning. Reading books and cuddling at nap time, hanging out with him on our bed, hiding under a blanket and giggling. Teaching him what he needed to know to catch up to the other toddlers. Yes, I loved it. But every minute of it?  No way!

So many times I felt like I was back in school, being forced to listen to a boring lecture on something I couldn't possibly be interested in, and certainly would never one day need. So many times I would watch the clock. When is this class going to end? When is this day going to end?

And I don't think it was all because it was, to be perfectly honest, very hard work. My tiny toddler was often angry. He cried a lot. He wouldn't let me put him down. He hit me. He was a handful, to say the least. So I every day occasionally, OK, frequently watched the clock. When is this class going to end?

So how does one maintain their sanity when trapped  happily staying home to raise children?  Here are a few of my well used go to moves:

• make the baby wear mismatched socks. say it was "his choice" when older women shower you with disapproving looks in the grocery store.
• give baby numerous baths a day while you lay on the bathroom floor with your head next to the tub and your feet in the hallway. allow baby to toss plush bath toy/finger puppet at your face repeatedly.
• sit on living room floor and teach baby how to throw cheerios into your open mouth.
• allow baby to tear apart older brother's bedroom while you draw mustaches on models in magazines. (this is a trick I learned from my older sister. she was a pro at mustache drawing, although I think she used fingernail polish.)
• pretend both you and baby don't speak English while wandering the aisles of Target.
• wander the aisles of Target. often.
• play fetch  toss a favorite toy into center of room for baby to retrieve. this allows baby to work on motor skills.
• take baby to indoor play place and place on (very safe and secure) trampoline. allow baby to jump to heart's content while wistfully staring at the woman behind the counter and restraining yourself from running over and offering to answer her phones if she would just play with your baby for 10 minutes.
• pretend stairs are a train and "take a ride" every day around the time Daddy comes home from work. Slip off train when you hear Daddy's car pull into the driveway so that Daddy walks into the house and sees baby, first thing. Immediately hide in bathroom with door locked so Daddy and baby will leave you alone  bond. Daddy surely thought Mommy had some horrible intestinal troubles that hit  every day at 6:00pm.
• play hide and seek with baby while reading your kindle.

OK, so mother of the year I clearly will never be. And I am thrilled to have found the perfect stay at home/working mother balance. oh my god am I thrilled. But for a while there, it was touch and go.

Gotta run- Daddy will be home soon and I have to go pick up all those cheerios off the floor...

my adult ADD has kicked in this week

I am either "on" or "off". All the systems are in place for daily success. So I am not sure where the train is going off the rails here, but this has definitely been an "off" week. A huge, big, time sucking, not sure what the hell I am doing OFF week. It all started last week, really. I went back to work last Monday. My supportive husband, who really wants this whole working mother thing to, well, work, was right there by my side, totally pulling it together. He found the zone cleaning list and did some of the tasks. Now, he also did some tasks scheduled for later in the week because he read the lists incorrectly, but, to his credit, we had not yet had the "new and improved household management training in service". So he did good.

This continued for a few days. The house stayed pulled together, dinners were cooked, laundry was done. Life was good. This job, with fewer hours and less responsibility, really makes a huge difference in life here at Bethfork. (That's right, we named our home a few years ago. Bethfork. it was during our "watch reruns of Dallas on TV every night" phase.)

Then my cell phone died and I spent an hour and a half after dinner on Wednesday allowing AT&T to suck the life out of me during my visit to their retail store. Oh my, how I dislike AT&T. When I finally got home one kid was in bed, the other was still up, dinner was on the table and no zone cleaning had been done. By Thursday morning the other kid had gotten into bed, but that was about it. The rest of the chores remained undone. It was all down hill from there.

Thursday evening I had book club. Totally off topic but I love love love the ladies of book club. We came together through adoption but we truly are friends. I look forward to book club like a child looks towards Christmas and I go even if I haven't read the book. And now that I have two small children, I look forward to it even more. I love my boys. Love love love them. But going anywhere with them is far from relaxing. You know how it is. By the time I have picked up the toys thrown on the floor, cleaned up the spilled milk creeping it's way to the sugar packets, and reminded my big four and half year old to use his INSIDE VOICE for the hundredth time, I am done. So hanging with my friends in a kid free zone where I can actually drink a cup of coffee while it is still hot is something I would move mountains to do. So no catching up on life at home on Thursday.

Friday is not a work day for me,  but it is an tiny toddler day. And last Friday my tiny toddler had his six month follow up appointment at the International Adoption Clinic. He is doing great! I had no idea when I left the house at 9:30 in the morning that I wouldn't be home until 9:00 that night. Between wasting time in the car so my tiny toddler could nap to grocery shopping to throwing chicken nuggets at the boys while we raced to find a parking space at the holiday parade in Grove City - it was a busy day. Good news- we weren't home long enough to make additional messes. Bad news- we weren't home long enough to do anything.

Saturday I headed to Cleveland. I had some much needed alone time at my in laws home. (They were out of town so it was quiet, and clean, and ahhhhh.) I went to a surprise birthday party for a friend, which was also a little mini reunion of my Kent State University friends. So. Much. Fun.

When I finally returned home Sunday with the boys, who had been dropped off my my husband so he could have his alone time at the Brown's football game, it was after 6:00. Everyone was cranky, hungry, and tired. And nothing got done.

It is now Thursday. The pattern has continued, so you can imagine what my home looks like. I have been buying Christmas presents without consulting my plan. I have been dressing my kids out of the clean laundry basket. I have been throwing chicken nuggets and frozen corn at them. This morning I couldn't find my cell phone only to find it hiding under the bread bag on the counter. No one had had any bread this morning, so it must have been left out yesterday. Oh. My. God.

So I am not "on" this week. My adult ADD has kicked in. I have a new laptop I have been playing with. I have sparkly Christmas cards to read and then admire again later. (I love Christmas cards!) I have work to do for my job. I lose focus every time one of the boys says mommymommymommymommymommy....I keep stopping what I am doing to break up a fight over a beloved toy or to feed someone. Dear God these boys are always asking for things! And I have found that I am wasting A LOT of time being so disorganized. A huge chunk of my week has been eaten up by digging through laundry baskets looking for underwear for my big four and half year old. I have wasted time with my near daily trips to the grocery store. I am making more work for myself by not emptying the diaper genie because now I have to gather the dirty diapers in a trash bag and still empty the diaper genie. Today is pretty much a loss. But I have got to get it together tomorrow. I have to. My head is this close to exploding. So tomorrow it is. Tomorrow I will be "on" again. Oh wait. Tomorrow is the day my tiny toddler is home with me. And I have to drag him with me to a doctor's appointment. And I have to pack us up for our weekend trip. sigh....

I went back to work yesterday. Even though I worked for about a month after coming home from Russia I didn't travel away from home and my tiny toddler was here with me much of the time, so it really didn't feel like work. For all intents and purposes I really haven't worked since leaving for Russia back in April. Nearly seven months. Wow. I used that time to travel overseas to finalize the adoption of my youngest son. I helped to teach my son his new language. I loved him and fought with him and hugged him and told him no a thousand times. I changed his diapers, gave kisses, emptied the fridge on a daily basis trying to find something he would eat. I picked up the toys he threw, the books he threw, the laundry he threw. I bonded. And now I am back at work. At a job that is now officially permanent, after only one day!

So I packed the lunches and set the timer on the coffee. I laid out clothes for the boys. And the planning paid off because all three of my boys made it out the door on time, with lunches, shoes on, and teeth brushed. Normally after my husband leaves for work I would clean up breakfast and tackle the daily chores. By mid morning the day's zone would be cleaned, the one load of laundry in the dryer and the dishwasher emptied from the day before. By the time I was settling my tiny toddler down in his crib for an afternoon nap the laundry would be folded and ready to be put away. On most days I had it together.

Yesterday I cleaned up breakfast and then instead of heading on to the daily chores I headed upstairs to the office to start my new job. And I didn't look up. I missed working more than I thought I did! So by the time I picked up the boys from daycare/preschool, picked up yet another round of ear drops for my big four and a half year old, took the long way home so the boys could see the digger working in the dark, made dinner and fed everyone and made my near monthly pilgrimage to the AT&T store to replace my phone it was after 8:00pm. But I had planned for going back to work. I had talked and talked and talked about the daily zones with my husband. I had reminded all of my boys that just because I had to run this unexpected after dinner errand our daily zone cleaning still needed done. And I came home to dinner cleaned up- all I had to do was load the dishwasher. (daily chore). The boys had eaten their dessert and their rooms were cleaned up. (daily zone cleaning.) The tiny toddler was in bed. Oh. My. God. Score!

So not all of the zone cleaning got done. We didn't get the sheets on our bed changed and the bedrooms weren't vacuumed. Not all of the dusting was done. But what was left will take no time at all to finish up today. And my husband did ALL of it. All I did was load the dishwasher and pack the lunches. Oh, and I revamped the zone cleaning list. Instead of simply saying "Monday - Zone 1 - upstairs bedrooms", it lists every task needed to complete the daily zone. I gave my family the tools they needed to help me and they did help me. Each daily zone is now taped to the inside of a mirror or closet in the appropriate room, complete with instructions on where to find the cleaning supplies needed.

here is what our Thursday zone looks like. This is taped to the inside of a kitchen cabinet.

So, we begin day two. Breakfast is cleaned up. The dusting from yesterday is done. The laundry is in the washer and I am in the office, working. the house is presentable, dinner is planned. My boys found their Elf on a Shelf this morning and are super excited about decorating for Christmas. All is right with my world. I may just have found the key to this tightrope, the key that was missing my first time around. Organization, a manageable job, and allowing my husband to help by giving him the tools he needs to do it. I don't even need a safety net!

thinking about getting back on the working mom highwire

My husband has been telling me how supportive he will be when I go back to work. It seems as though he truly understands how important it is for mom to be in the home, with the children. Not in the home cooking dinner while the kids watch tv, not in the home scrubbing toilets while the kids play on the computer. But in the home, with the kids.

But my husband, like me, wants a clean, well organized home. He wants clean clothes in the drawers and a good meal to sit down to at the end of the day. He wants to be able to walk from the living room to the kitchen without impaling his foot on a matchbox car. Add to this list of wants the few things I also need and it appears as though I will be very busy when I go back to work. I need to have a semi- calm morning before going in to work. I need to have lunches packed, all four of them, and school and work bags packed. I need to have the beds made before we leave in the morning and I need to have breakfast cleaned up before we hit the road. I need to have at least a few minutes of peace and quiet to enjoy my coffee, whether that time is found at home or at my desk in a new office somewhere. And I need to have my daily devotional time. Clearly what I will truly need  to do is set the alarm clock to the crack of dawn and drag myself out of bed before the family wakes up. Which isn't going to be that easy; the tiny toddler wakes up at the slightest noise, demanding to get out of his crib. My morning quiet time is going to have to include unplugging the baby monitor and creeping around the house like a mouse but I'll do it. It's that important to me...

OK, so I know what I need. I know what my husband needs. I know what my boys need. What I didn't know was how I was going to meet all of these needs. But my husband has repeatedly told me that it will all work out. That he will pitch in. Which got me thinking about my daily zone cleaning. If my helpful husband were to open our Family Control Journal he would see that Monday's zone is the upstairs bedrooms. But that is where the instructions in the journal end. He would have no clue what cleaning those rooms inlcudes. So I am changing my zones. Instead of simple daily zones, I will now have assigned tasks inside each daily zone. Sounds like micro managing, I know. But come on, you all have husbands. You understand.

So stay tuned. A new and updated Family Journal is to come. And hopefully I'll be back at work soon and will be able to report how it is all working out.

parenting after 40 is not for the weak

I became a first time mom at the age of 38. My second child joined the family when I was 41. I'll be 42 in five months, and most of the time I don't feel like a woman in her 40's. Maybe it's the sitting on the floor playing with matchbox cars keeping me young. Maybe it's the endless games of football in the backyard with my big four and a half year old. Maybe it's the constant climbing up and the down the stairs, lugging laundry from the second floor to the basement and back. Maybe it's the hourly chases of the tiny toddler to retrieve whatever he just stole - a pen, a breakable mug, his brother's stuffed dog. Which, actually, is my stuffed dog, but the four year old  fights over it like he brought it home from the war. Yes, I have many reasons to feel young. And I usually do. Until the end of the day when I collapse on the sofa and really feel my age. But it's then that I truly appreciate my age and what it has taught me about parenting.

OK, so being a first time mom in my late thirties means maybe I don't have the energy of a twenty five year old. That's fine with me, because I have the wisdom to survive this thing called parenthood.

While my husband might disagree, I don't sweat the small stuff. Occasionally I do totally freak out when every single toy is on the living room floor or every item of food in our kitchen is out on the counter instead of in the fridge. But the boys dragging grass inside on their shoes after playing in the backyard or shooting toothpaste on the bathroom mirror instead of onto the toothbrush doesn't bother me. I am old enough to have perfected my cleaning and organizing routine so the mess is usually contained and I am confident enough to still welcome a friend into my not always perfect home.

I had my years of living in the perfect home. My Pottery Barn, eclectic and fun styled home was perfect for me. We took our time painting and decorating, keeping to both our style and our budget. I remember the days before the kitchen cabinets were an art gallery and the coffee table was a parking garage. And I like the view so much better now.

I was twenty nine when I met my husband and thirty two when we got married. I knew who I was before we met, and we knew who we were as  couple before we brought a child into our life. That "stuff" that every couple goes through during the early years of marriage had already been dealt with. Our relationship is strong and had already weathered infertility, aging parents, miscarriages, money issues, job crises. Letting go of each other's hands to grab onto a child's didn't mean we took our eyes off each other. I think if we had been in our twenties we would have really struggled with the huge time suck called children.

My age guaranteed that my career was stable. While the working mother always performs a delicate ballet between the office and the babies and while a stable career certainly doesn't mean less demanding, at least I was comfortable enough with my position to be able to focus on the matter at hand; the new baby sitting on my lap being flown halfway around the world to his new home.

Of the small group of friendships I wandered out of college clinging to I was the last to start  family. I watched my friend's with their babies and toddlers. I watch them now with their teenagers. Not only are my friends a wealth of "been there, done that" information, but our relationships are the kind of strong that only comes from years of friendship. Had our boys come along earlier into these friendships I can't say they would be as strong as they are today.

As a 41 year old married woman my "community" is much larger than when I was younger. I am not parenting in a vacuum. I have my above mentioned college friends, who I rely on heavily and love so much. But the years have also collected work friends, church friends, day care friends. Each year the web of community gets a little wider and I find that I have more and more seasoned mommy professionals to help, or at least to commiserate with. Hillary Clinton was right - if you want to do it right, it takes a village to get it done.

I'm old enough to not care about looking silly. I can car dance. I know all the words to The Hairbrush Song. I can stare down the older woman in front of me in the checkout line who so obviously thinks my boys are misbehaving while simultaneously rocking the two year old on my hip, singing a dreadful  wonderfully upbeat song from The Fresh Beat Band, googling monster truck videos on my blackberry, and unloading the groceries. A younger version of me surely couldn't pull all of this off.

And I'm old enough to stand strong in the face of adoption stupidity. 'Nuff said.

I'm stronger at this age. I know what I want. I am comfortable with who I am and don't need to look for recognition or affirmation elsewhere. I've got this.

Which is a good thing, because I am making what feels like more than my fair share of mistakes. At least once a day I catch myself having a one sided conversation about behavior, consequences, nutrition...  Not to mention the adoption related questions and guilt. My near constant "is this adoption related or just growing pains?" questioning would have driven me mad at a younger, less confident age.

So I can play a mean football game against a four year old while running a play that does not involve knocking down the two year old wandering around the field. But only in my own, small backyard.

I can sit on the floor and play monster trucks or build a killer train track. But if we're going to wrestle we have to move the fun to the bed. Maybe I take a few more Tylenols than I used to. I do believe everything happens for a reason, and I was meant to have these boys in my life right now. Not ten years ago, but right now. It's all good. I've got this. And during those moments when I don't have it, it doesn't matter. I'm old. I'm just too tired to care.

no one ever talks about the guilt...

No one ever talks about the guilt. Adoptive parents hear "you are so lucky" so often that maybe we feel we can't occasionally complain about the trials and tribulations of raising children. We all know that sometimes just getting through the day with our little ones is quite a chore, no matter how they joined the family. But if they just happened to have joined through adoption then those trials sometimes get a little harder. Toss in the guilt of being frustrated at this beautiful child that you wanted so badly that you couldn't sleep at night and a little worry that whatever behavior is causing you your current stress might be adoption related and you've got the potential for a major mommy melt down.

My little guy is still so new to us. He is doing so well, especially considering all the changes he has lived through in the past two months alone. The bonding is going well. And I love every minute I spend with him. And when I go back to work I will look back on this time alone with him every day and miss it so much that I will find myself tearing up while on the company's clock. I went through this with my oldest son, the not being able to put him down or walk away without setting off a screaming fit in the baby. I would imagine nearly every adoptive parent goes through this. And, of course, in case you are thinking of sending me a fan letter, I know that biological parents go through the same thing. Of course I know.

But the months of trying to get pregnant. The testing and planning and oh my god, all that money spent on pregnancy tests. The pregnancies that ended much too soon. The invitro fertilizations. The drugs, the shots, the painful egg harvests. The daily blood tests. The waiting. Oh my god, the waiting. The years of wanting to be mommy. And now I am, only to want to hand over this baby to my husband the minute he walks in the door at night. Only I can't, because to do so I would have to also hand over my arm. Or my leg. Or whatever body part he had attached himself to.

And then there is the older son guilt. Am I doing right by my oldest child? Am I spending enough time alone with him? Is he adjusting well to his new brother? Did I do any long term damage by leaving him for a month to finalize his brother's adoption? Why is he so sensitive? Is he worried about something adoption related, like being "given back" or is he just being a typical over dramatic 4 year old?

So we feel we can't mention how hard it sometimes is. My new little guy really learned to survive. This means he will fight for what he wants. And if that means smacking or biting Mommy then so be it. He is getting better with this every day and I know that shortly it will only be a distant memory. The typical response to a 24 month old who hits when upset doesn't really work for my son, not yet. I can't really walk away. He needs to feel safe and to understand that his needs will be met. Eventually we can parent by "typical" means. But not now. And, to be honest, we may never be totally "typical" parents. Because some of that guilt will always be there, lurking behind every decision we make regarding our boys. Welcome to adoptive parenthood, again! Oh guilt, how I have missed you...

always something to feel guilty about...

This morning was a good morning. Matthew slept until we were ready to get him up, which is unusual. Funny though. He cries in the middle of the night, like he often does, just a quiet cry, loud enough to wake us up but then he goes right back to sleep. He does this frequently throughout the night, although not as often as he did when he first came home. When he first came home he would scream these blood curdling screams, wailing, and we would rush to his crib, where he was sound asleep. We are not sure if it is an orphanage thing, or an ear thing... But he cries less now, and not so strongly. Which still wakes us up, or me, at least. I lay in bed and think "Oh, Matthew, honey, it's ok. Go back to sleep." But this morning, he was sleeping so soundly that I hated to wake him up.

When he doesn't cry, I should be happy. I can get ready for work in peace, not rushing around trying to brush my teeth while standing in my closet trying to pull together something to wear. But that is not what happens. Instead, I panic a little. Why is he so quiet? Why can't I hear him breathing? Should I check on him? There is always something to feel guilty about, I think. Always something to panic about...

But I held it together, and finished my morning, and then went to wake up my little angel. And he was so well behaved while getting dressed, also unusual. By the time we made it downstairs we were actually ahead of schedule. We all made it out the door on time this morning, on a Monday!

So panic over, for now. Until lunch time, when I will sit at my desk and think about my son eating his lunch, sitting at the little table, in his little chair. Not in a high chair, all strapped in and safe, like he would be at home. Eating his lunch in a room full of toddlers, not with the one on one attention he gets from Mommy at home. So the panic and the guilt will begin again. Did I cut up his food small enough? Should I have taken the fruit out of the cup, because some of the pieces are kind of big... Will his teachers make sure he doesn't choke?

Then lunch passes, and the panic subsides. Until the next thought crosses my mind.... Will something happen because I am not with him? Then I will arrive at the door to his classroom, peeking in through the little window, and watch as he plays with a truck on the colorful carpet. And the door will open and he will run to me, tossing the truck away, yelling "mama" and jumping into my arms. And we will all have survived another day.