(So I am surrounded by piles and have a mental list of things to do that makes me panic, but the kids are napping at the same time. This usually only lasts for ten minutes, so I have to be fast. They don't let me get on the computer when they are awake, so I am ignoring everything else to write. I am determined to get myself blogging regularly, so my creativity doesn't atrophy. It was bad enough when eighth graders were rotting it away. With toddlers and Elmo, I practically feel my writing ability pouring out my ear.)

We joined the Y as a family. John's swimming to train for an Iron Man, and we're taking the kids for parent/child swimming lessons. So there are lots of benefits to a membership. One of them is childcare while I workout. No longer do I have to get up hours before the sun to run. There are people, usually other moms, who care for my children while I workout. Huzzah!
I have been to the Y twice and discovered that I like water workouts. Somehow I think they have gotten a cheesy reputation, maybe because the average age of participants seems to be 70 (Good for them, I say.). But I have found both of my classes to be full body conditioning and cardio. I am sore in the right muscles afterward, and my heart rate was up. And no sweat! Well, yes, sweat, but hey, I'm wet anyway. It is totally less gross.
The side benefit is what really has me hooked. In some of the exercises, my ears go underwater while my face stays out. Suddenly the world is muffled, not just the physical one around me, but the one in my head as well. Somehow it seems to be connected to my auditory sense just like physical hearing is. For those moments, I can think about what I want to think about and not what I need to think about. I think we can all agree that this is platinum. It's not something we get to do a lot in the world of adult responsibility. And it's not about shutting my brain off and not thinking. That's something else, and something I am not good at and really don't need. Part of me stays focused on my body, making my muscles optimize every movement, feeling my heart pump to help them. Then the other part stops worrying about how fussy the kids are in the childcare room and what chores I have on my list, and just thinks about stuff. Writing this blog, working on some fiction I will get to again someday, movies, tv, books, anything I want. Superficial is OK. Deep is OK. But need goes away. Want stays.
Then my thirty seconds are up, and we are on to the next thing which might not be as cocooning, and that's fine. I find I don't need a lot of these moments. As much as adult responsibility can be heavy and wearing, I chose it because it is absolutely the most fulfilling. There is nothing I will do in my life that will make me as joyful and content as being a wife and mother and dog and cat owner and daughter and big sister. These roles fulfill these needs because of how important and meaningful they are. They are the big moments that need me as much as I need them. But I like my little moments of want too. They make me want the need.

Declarations of Love

My kids are 17-months and 9-months. I am going to pause while you do the math if you are new to my story....

Yep, 7 months apart. Short version I was 8 weeks prego when we adopted our son at his birth.

And before you say it, yes, I have my hands full like any other mother.

They don't talk. I hate that. I think babies should learn language while in the womb and come out communicating. I've spent the better part of 2 years playing charades with someone who is really no more intelligent at this point than my dog. For a solid year at least, I am pretty sure the dog is more intelligent.

Of course you learn the signals and the subtle differences between the Woman-I-Am-Hungry-Why-Aren't-You-Feeding-Me and the I-Am-Tired-But-Am-Too-Stupid-To-Figure-Out-Sleeping-Will-Make-It-Better and finally I-Crapped-A-Lot cries.

Now if you are a parent chances are that at this moment, you are chuckling or at least nodding your head if you think I am too cleaver for my own good. If you aren't a parent you are shaking your head thinking why would anyone do this to themselves.

Here's why. Because the one thing these kids really know how to communicate, despite not knowing how to stop themselves from drooling, is how much they love you. The first time they reach their arms up and wrap them around your neck, you are done for. You will put up with so much more than explosive diarrehia when they do that. Then they learn to drool all over your cheek as a form of a kiss. If I have been away, my daughter grins, claps and does this intake breath kind of an exclaimation when she sees me. My son runs pell mell into my legs and locks his arms around my knees, grinning up at me, dimples ablaze. I can't imagine what I will do when they actually learn to say, "I love you." I may just buy them a pony.

Maybes

Maybe I should let the kids cry it out. Maybe I should nap. Maybe I'm too busy to go back to school. Maybe I worry too much about what I say and not enough about what I do. Maybe the laundry can wait another day. Maybe I'm not at creative as I think I am. Maybe I am a great big joke. Maybe I am the funniest person ever. Maybe my kids aren't as cute as I think they are. Maybe they are even cuter than I think they are. Maybe I am not good enough. Maybe I am perfect. Maybe I really wish I could make this blog into something people would read. Maybe that is a pile of shit, and I suck and no one cares. Maybe I really do have the time. Maybe I have less time than I think. Maybe that shouldn't matter. Maybe I need more sleep. I know I need more sleep. I know I want to blog more. I don't know if anyone cares or should. I know I need to stop now.

Little Obsessions

I am not by nature an obsessive person, at least on the compulsive level. I like my house tidy, but I don't think about what you don't see. If dust bunnies under the bed don't bother me, I don't bother them. I don't need to have pens lined up or my kids' toys stored exactly the right way. My time is better spent playing with my kids than worrying about the carpet fringe.
I have found some odd habits forming since becoming a mother. First, I started counting bottles. There are eight. At all times I must know where each bottle is, and nothing makes me happier than having all eight clean at the same time. I actually get a little annoyed with my kids if they decide not to finish one, and I have to store it in the fridge instead of washing it.
And now this has transfered to my daughter's binkies. Our son used Soothies, all rubber pacifiers. These things seemed to disappear on a daily basis or show up in bits if the dogs found one. I would just buy another pack. And then he stopped really being interested in them around four months.
My daughter is different. She didn't like the Soothies. She likes the Mams. Mams have these plastic knobs on which the company often places cute pictures such as a baby angel, a heart, or a seahorse. Also they can be pretty colors like pink. We have seven of them. We have always had seven of them. I am obsessed with not losing one. I have made myself late looking under the sofa and crib trying to find one that is missing even though I don't need it to go somewhere. I have the other six, you see. I will mentally go over where each one is at least twice a day. Pink and white in the crib. Angel and heart in the diaper bag. She's sucking away on the all pink one right now.
I know it is a relatively easy issue to psychoanalyze. The bottles and pacifiers are something easy to control, and in a life with two children just seven months apart, there isn't much I can control.
Someday, one of these binkies is going to go missing for real, hidden under a rack of baby clothes at Target, or will experience death as a chew toy.
I hope my sanity will survive.

Sex is My Prozac

I, like many people, am a worrier. Now, my worrying is not the what if kind of worry. What if the car crashes? What is my cough is really cancer? What if I get fired? These are not the questions that keep me up at night. My worry is more guilt based. I have been known to drive from one end of the guilt turnpike to the other because someone didn't like the movie or book I recommended. I wasted his/her time, you see.
I will often leave social settings and spend the drive home over-analyzing minor comments I made or someone else made thinking that it wasn't as successful a fun time as I thought at the time. I have taken this one so far as to really think that my closest friends only tolerate me because they don't know how to break up with me.
My family isn't even safe from this crazy. I make myself responsible for my family members' moods, especially my husband. Now since he came into my life, my guilt issues are not nearly as debilitating. My husband has a very logical side that enables him to end my guilt trip with one mild statement of common sense. It has been one of the most wonderful gifts he has given me. However, sometimes it can still sneak up on me. Somehow I become responsible if he has a bad day. If he is still carrying a bad mood from the day, it is now my duty to fix it. At this point I start to watch him for every little potential change in mood status. Better mood, yay me. Same or worse, all my fault. Poor guy.
But once the kids are in bed, and it is just us, in the dark, skin to skin, the layers of guilt fall off my shoulders along with my clothes. We know each other so well when the eyes are closed and the lips are open, I can not question anything. When there are no words, my mind stops yammering and just feels. It's quiet. And finally when I lay there, thanks to my husband, yet again, I realize how pointless guilt is.
And it's been almost ten years that we have been together. The guilt has reached such a low simmer that mostly, I can ignore it. And what I can't, I have awfully good help dealing with it.

Jon Stewart Saves My Sanity

I am an NPR junkie. More years ago than I am comfortable sharing, I completely gave up on popular music radio. This was in the dark ages when your only alternative to radio was a cassette tape. As someone trying to become an adult type member of society, I gravitated to NPR on my commute. Sometimes this is a bad thing. During the 2008 elections, starting in 2006, I often ended up at school in an irate, Americans-Are-Too-Stupid-And-Idiocracy-Is-Happening-Now mood. My eighth graders did nothing to dispel this mood.
But one thing did.
The Daily Show.
It is the Prozac that tips my scales back into a slightly optimistic balance. It makes me realize that there are millions of like minded people out there laughing at the nuts in the world. Laughing at them is much better than being scared to death of them.
If I stay up for the first airing of a Daily Show episode, I usually end up listening to just a part of it from the bathroom. We all have our schedules. So this entry is just to give you a little idea of where I stand on politics.
I am one of those left leaning centrists that always has shit to do that Jon Stewart is always talking about. Hence, I will be watching the Rally to Restore Sanity on TV instead of being there.
I think the way I see the heath care issues in our country is a good example of where I usually fall.
I have no problem paying more taxes for an institute that will be a trade off for another bill like health insurance, especially if it means that there is health care coverage for everyone. This is how most of the first an second world countries do things. However, I do not feel that the partisan bureaucracy that is our current federal government is capable of running such a system efficiently. Though I know that the insurance companies and medical conglomerates are doing a terrible job, so I'm willing to give someone new a chance.
And I think when the only way you can turn people off of an idea is to make them afraid of it instead of using legitimate arguments, it's a better-than-average idea.

Technology Woes

Social networking is one of those things that most of us use but about which we all make fun. Because the home button on my iPhone died, I have learned that Facebook and Twitter are rather more important to me than I at one time thought.
See without a working home button, I have to shut the phone on and off to go between apps. This now makes me think really hard about what I need to do on my phone. Is it really worth going through the shutdown and startup cycle? So I really just leave it on the phone or text messaging because after all those are suppose to be its main functions, you know necessary communication with family and friends and doctor's offices. And because if I sit down with my laptop my son decides he needs to not only push the buttons but also to pull them off and eat them, I am not on Facebook and Twitter as much as I was. (They were my main bathroom distraction. After all, I can hold my phone out of my son's reach and still use it.) And I miss them. I always thought that it wouldn't be a big deal to give them up if I wanted. They were frivolous distractions.
I was wrong.
I did not realize how much I depended on them for a connection to the outside world. Don't get me wrong, I am pretty proud of how much I manage to get out of the house with two kids under a year, but still I am home with two people who can't talk a lot. I try not to have the TV on too much. Facebook and Twitter are a good way to keep the need for adult conversation at bay without going back to work and paying for daycare. Plus, I can have conversations online that are not about my kids. When I go out of the house in the real world, most of my time and talk are still devoted my kids. Not online. I can talk about them if I want, but there are lots of other topics floating around out there. Like boobs.
So I miss you guys out there.
Anyone want to send me an iPhone 4?