Sometimes I Can't Figure Out How I Got Here

This week has been one of those weeks. After the high drama of Sadie learning to swim last week, this week had a more normal schedule. Sadie's been in a wonderful ballet camp every day from 9-12 so our mornings are more like they were when she was in preschool, and we get motivated and get going earlier.  We are back in our normal routine.  Well, that assumes that anything is "normal" these days.

Yesterday I was talking to a woman who works at my old firm. While there, I was on the recruiting committee and this woman came through as a summer associate sometime back when I was a senior associate and then a new partner. She was clearly a top recruit. She had passion for an area of the law, and she was an extremely hard worker and a great team player. She also had a great personality, very social, loved animals, loved running and all sports. I felt like I was looking in the mirror to my slightly younger (and blonder) version.  Sometime after I had Sadie, she had her first child, a son. And since then, she has also had a second son.  Before we had children, we had a lot of fun cocktail party chats, or talks about our mutual passion for animals or sports.

But yesterday, in our short catch up call, we both were echoing the same sentiment. How did our life get to where it is?  And didn't we think it was going to be easier?

Both of us have dear husbands who are hugely committed to large tasks right now that take them outside of our nuclear families.  Hers is running for political office. And mine is deeply entrenched in a combined care giving and estate advisor role for his parents, balancing multiple, conflicting and highly emotional views every night it seems.  Both my friend and I were saying that as the wife, mom, primary caregiver of young children, and employee -- we can't seem to get our own bearings straight.  And yet, we aren't allowed to fail.  We barely are allowed to rest, let alone fail. 

No one in their right mind wouldn't support our husbands in the external roles that they have. Public service is admirable. And my husband's care for his parents -- I would want to do the same for my own, and hope that Sadie will do it for us one day. But there is someone in the background holding the daily life together. And that job is exhausting.

Mark and I are getting ready to celebrate our 7th anniversary this weekend. My wonderful Aunt Claudia sent us a anniversary card a few weeks ago that has been propped up on our island since it arrived. She wrote something like "Lucky 7, what a year it will be!" inside.

Humph, I tend to think when I see the card every day.  I adore my husband, don't get me wrong. Someone asked me the other day if, knowing what I know now, I would do it all over again, and without hesitation, yes!  I loved getting married to Mark, I can still feel the excitement of that day. And without hesitation, I love the experience of motherhood to the daughter that my husband gave me. All the sleepless nights and all the daily drama has been worth it.  My husband is a character, and I knew his personality for nine years before we married.  I love the person that he is, without hesitation.  With less, I would be bored.

But it is hard. It is far more difficult balancing roles than I thought it would be. I watched women "balance" working and motherhood for my early career and my conclusion now is that they did a superb job of hiding the anxiety that seems to overcome a lot of my days. At my early stages of motherhood, I wondered if they had some secret remedy that they would share with me that would make this any easier. Even last year, I thought that part-time work was the answer... balance would come easier when I had more time with Sadie and less time at work.  But it is funny -- this year it is not the job that has created the stress, it is all the other stuff. And less time at work means more time at all the other stuff.

Everything has consequences now, and nothing has easy answers. Mark's parent's situation is so very difficult, but far from black and white. And in the meantime, Sadie is the most skilled observer, asking the hard questions. Reacting to the stress. Wanting reassurance, and yet wanting to fly herself.  Next Fall we will be making decisions about which school will be best for her from K-12th grade. While Mark deals with so many external issues right now, the school research has become my focus. No decision is easy, or clear.

Those women who I used to think made motherhood look easy, do they write notes on their hands daily, pay their estimated taxes a day late, determine that they could pass another day without a shower without seriously offending someone, and decide that indeed, eating bag of goldfish while cleaning up the kitchen at night does make you feel better?  Because that is my life. Part time or not, the stresses of each of the roles just do not get easier.

Weeks, months, and now years have gone by since Mark and I got married and started this journey together.  I didn't see how difficult and conflicting this role would be. How I can be the mom that my daughter tells with blind determination that she hates my outfit in the morning, and also calls at 3 pm tearfully telling me that she loves me so much and begging me to come home early. How I am the wife that tells my husband I love him and then watches him on the phone every night and wants to take a frying pan to his head and say "WHO CARES!! This is your daughter, here and now, relish in her and get off the phone!"  How I get to be the mother than goes to Martin's at 9:45 at night to return two containers of milk that was dated July 8th but was clearly sour when we opened it yesterday, then wonder what would happen if I just turned right instead of left out of the parking lot, and drove away, far away, instead of returning home. Would they miss me? Would she brush her teeth instead of me chasing her as she slithers down the hall like a snake every night? Would my husband grab me in an embrace and kiss me like he did before we were married and promise to get off the phone, get off the computer, put away the crossword, and just talk to me?

Sometimes I get tired, very tired, of holding all the pieces together. The roles exhaust me. I hate hearing my own voice count 1-2-3 over and over and over again in the bedtime routine, or asking Mark the same question over and over again while he focuses on the episode of  Criminal Intent. Sure TV is an escape. But I am not allowed an escape, I want to plead. I just read the Parent's Magazine article about the young child who had her lower intestine pulled out by the drain of a baby pool -- isn't this issue more important right now? Don't you want to talk about it, don't you want to call our pool, don't you want to inspect the drains? Aren't you scared, so very scared, that this could be us.  Aren't you terrified like I am that we won't be able to protect her every minute of every day for the rest of her life?  How come you are not scared?  Maybe because you know that I am? That I will monitor things. Because I always do.

I got ready to go to bed, but before I did, I went out to get the recycling container and looked up at the moon. It was huge, like a big ripe honeydew melon just perched atop the trees at the end of our street. For a moment as I was watching it, I wondered if I should wake Sadie up to see it. She would think it was neat, it was so big and bright. She would want to fly there. She would want me to promise that we could, and we would be safe in doing so. We are a team these days, and it would be an adventure, Mommy and Sadie flying to the moon.

But instead I went inside to get Mark and brought him out to see it. And we looked at it together and marveled in it. No easy answers came to us as we were there. The problems and tasks before us, insurmountable as they appear, are still there. But for a few moments we were the team of Mark and Jill again. It doesn't happen often. But it happens enough to remind me of something remarkable.

She Learned to Swim, and I Learned to Parent

Today I went the watch Sadie on her second to last swim lesson.

The last two days of lessons were dramatic for her, and for me. Tuesday she sobbed the whole lesson, begging Coach Lauren not to make her put her head all the way under, not to make her swim to the wall in a place where she couldn't touch the bottom. She begged me to come closer to where she was, then for a new coach, to let her stop, to let her go home. Tyler, Mark and I mostly sat under an umbrella and watched. This was her second week of lessons and she had mastered the kickboard and kicking, and arm strokes in week one, but this was the week to sink or swim, as the saying goes.  Tyler was openly emotional watching, and worrying. Sadie is her care every day, she lives with the fear of going under, and probably better than me, she lives with watching Sadie want to swim like her best friend and preserve her own sense of value when she was too scared to. Mark was the most stiff lipped; he is the most dedicated to swimming for exercise even now so he values it the most, and yet he was also completely confident that she would learn. I was constantly going back and forth, worrying that we were pushing too hard, and yet not hard enough. Wanting to believe that she could do it, and yet worrying that we had emotionally scarred her with our own confidence in her.  Tuesday was a horrible day for me even after the lesson, I read every article I could find on building confidence in swimming as I worried the whole rest of the day.

And then came Wednesday. Sadie surged forward. There is no more descriptive phrase. She powered through it. She crossed her hurdle and came out the other side with grace and strength and confidence. I watched in disbelief as she tried to swim to the wall over and over again, through a few tears, but insistence that she keep doing it. When I left 45 minutes later, she was supremely confident. And when her best friend's nanny sent me a video four hours later, she was an underwater swimmer, confidently sticking one arm up and waving it toward the camera. The movie playing mechanism that we have on our work computers don't play sound, but I could read everyone's lips. It was like an old Wonder Years episode, I could see the nannies shouting how proud they were of her, I could see Sadie mouthing "Hi Mama... Watch me!" as she dunked herself down to swim over and over again. I watched the video 20 times I bet, over and over again. Tears of pride running down my face. I forwarded it to good friends and relatives and relished in their reply emails of praise.

So today I arrived at the pool to watch the second to last lesson and just tell Sadie again how proud I was of her. Tyler pulled me aside immediately and said that Sadie had been really quiet, and upset this morning. She then came running to me and started sobbing. Fear, I wondered, that she couldn't do it again? Too much pressure? Did we make too big of a deal? Too much praise?

What she told me, and she had told this to Tyler too, was that she was sad that this was the second to last lesson with Coach Lauren. The child was an emotional basket case that this journey was almost over.  Tyler and I were immediately overcome as well. Watching Sadie just sob at this prospect was too much.

I never really understood how hard parenting would be. While I am not minimizing the sleep deprivation and times of dealing with a sick baby, both of which we experienced and lamented during, I find the parenting of the last three days harder in many ways. The instinct to want so badly to not have your child emotionally hurt. To want them to succeed, and yet to not want to push them too hard. When Sadie mastered going under repeatedly yesterday and not crying, there wasn't a person in the pool area who didn't know it. Because I was screaming, I was jumping, I was hugging her, I was crying.

Can you praise too much? Some parents probably think so, and they might think that I am over the top. But I personally don't think so. I ran two marathons several years ago, and what got me through each accomplishment was the cheers from the crowd every step along the way. This week was Sadie's marathon, and I have no doubt that seeing her mother sweating in her work clothes in the 95 degree heat at the pool showing her two thumbs up and clapping every time she came out of the water helped her feel confidence. Will I be there ever step of the way? Is that helicopter parenting? I don't think so. Sadie and I are social creatures. There are people that succeed based on their own inner drive, and more power to them. We are not them though. We succeed based on the feedback from friends and loved ones. We get our energy and drive from others. That's the E in Extrovert I think, and that's who we are.

My parents were a lot like this.  Someone was always at our sporting events. My mother was always active in our schools. I didn't appreciate then their praise, but I see now that just being there is a form of support that a lot of kids don't have. On days like today, it would have been easier for me to stay at work, kill down-time on facebook, it is 100 degrees outside, is there any doubt that climate control is the way to go? But these events, I try not to miss them. I took this job so I could be there. I had a child so I could be there. Sure I need my breaks and my downtime, but I wouldn't trade the moments of watching her this week for anything.

As much as Sadie learned to swim this week, I became more confident in my parenting style. And as she left the pool to go to Chick Fil A for a big chocolate milkshake and some downtime before going to her friend Bella's pool later today, I got in my car to come back to work.

A Whole New (Wednes)Day

I am never hesitant to say how much I love Wednesdays. Wednesdays are one of my two part-time days, and for the past year, I have taken the morning off. I wake up knowing that it doesn't matter what I put on or how my hair looks. I don't rush to make my coffee or hurry myself into the shower. I have more patience with Sadie and with Daisy. After dropping Sadie off at preschool at 9, I go for my long run of the week and usually run 70-80 minutes. Then I come home and take Daisy for some ball throwing or a walk. I play around on the internet a little bit. I dilly dally while taking my shower and getting ready. Sure I look at the piles of projects that need to be done, but I don't think I have spent a Wednesday morning yet accomplishing anything major. It is just a nice slow time. It is time for me.

Tomorrow my Wednesdays will change for the summer, and I am excited. Sadie's school has finished for the summer and while she has 6 weeks of camp starting later this summer, she is largely living the summer of freedom that I still relish in my memories. Swim lessons for this week and for next week. Ballet camp for a week taught by her best friend's nanny. Maybe an art class. And our beach trip. But generally, nothing stressful. And our nanny, who is was nothing short of an answer to our prayers last Fall, has her own life, her own marriage, her own long to-do lists, her own sanity to preserve too. I am thankful that she is motivated by so much more than larger paychecks for more babysitting hours. And so, I am taking Wednesday mornings and Friday afternoons and devoting them solely to Sadie this summer.

I am excited about this honestly. While I need my own time,  I have seen more and more in the past few weeks how Sadie will react to the moods that Mark and I project. She has watched the rocky rides that have pulled Mark out of town on trips twice or three times a week to visit his mom or dad and manage their heathcare issues. She has seen me worry about Daisy, worry about work, worry about the house, worry about her own ears. I have heard her say things about herself being "stressed out" or equating my stress with being super strict like my own mother was.

And I have learned that I can create my own time in windows with Sadie, and windows alone. That's the beauty of being 4. She doesn't ne

You asked, I answered.

On my morning off today, I woke up to Sadie in bed next to me, crying that Mark was not there to play with her in the morning. Daisy wanted to go out right away, and Sadie did not. I sent Sadie next door to Gran Fran's, and Daisy and I walked the alley for 10 minutes while Sadie colored at Gran Fran's house. We talked to Daddy on the speaker phone to learn that Granddaddy, who was released from the hospital yesterday after a week there and moved to the nursing home in their assisted living community, was taken back to the ER at the hospital last night for his heart.  Got Sadie out the door to preschool, and went for a 7 mile run. The sun was shining and my run was strong and fast, both rare occurrences for this 3 day a week jogger now. Home to shower and change, took Daisy out for a short walk, threw some tennis balls to her in the alley all the while checking my blackberry. Hit Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which is my Wednesday lunch spot, on my way into work, and met a man who described himself as wearing a blue and white striped shirt at 11:45, at our appointed spot.

My meeting with said man was set up by a call from him to me last week. One of our former neighbors who lived next door to us for a year or so, 3 or 4 years ago, was applying for a Top Secret Security Clearance with the U.S. State Department, and he listed me as a character reference.

This would be fun, I thought. I used to have a Top Secret Clearance when I worked at the State Department back for the summers in college. My brother, my sister in law, and my brother in law also all worked for the Government and all had Top Secret clearances for their jobs. I know what goes into these labels, and I thought it would be neat to be on the other side of the questions.

I met the man at our appointed spot and he shook my hand, promising that our conversation would take between 10 and 15 minutes. He started with his questions -- they were not simple yes or no questions, and I had to think back hard to remember things like what year did I meet our neighbor, what was his job then, etc. I made sure that the interrogator knew that my meeting our neighbor came at the same time as the birth of my child, so I was sleep deprived. I can't remember if I ever knew what he did for a living. He had a dog, we had a dog, he had a child, we had a child, neither child was sleeping so we often talked a lot when we were both drew the lucky straws to walk the dog.

At the end of the interview, the interrogator leaned closer to me and said "Mrs. Webb, I am going to be honest with you here. You seem to be hiding something from me... I have asked you numerous questions and many times, you diverted your eyes from mine and answered by looking away. Is something on your mind? Because this is a matter of national security."  OK, he didn't say that last part, but he clearly insinuated it.

"Is something on my mind?" I answered him, looking straight into his eyes. "Yes, I have a great deal on my mind. But none of it has to do with my old neighbor Albert." 

- My daughter has parent observation at ballet today and her other parent is not going to be there to observe. We did not warn said daughter about this occurrence, which might very well mean that said daughter will refuse to perform or storm out of the room. Neither will look pretty.

- My father in law is in the hospital again, and my husband is very torn between being the son that takes care of his elders and the parent that needs to care for his young one, especially when his wife is tied up at work. I am torn with guilt and resentment. And I am scared, because if it hurts this much to go through it with someone else's parents, how will I survive going through it with my own.

- And I am hungry, because I haven't eaten my smoothie yet. Because I thought it would be impolite to have the smoothie in front of you while you had nothing. But there it is, tucked in my tote bag, melting away, and this makes me very sad.

- And I have to get to work, because I have a memo due that I haven't started on. And while this time last year I was a partner and had people working for me, this time this year I seem only to work for someone else, and no one ever wants to do work for me, and at almost 42 years old, I am not very good at working for someone else and I was actually pretty good at managing people, and this sucks.

- And it is Wednesday, again, which means that the cleaning lady comes tomorrow and I really dislike Wednesday nights cleaning up for the cleaning lady and why oh why oh why cannot I not for the life of me keep our house picked up so I don't have to go through this every freaking Wednesday night. How can I both love Wednesday mornings and hate Wednesday nights. I feel like it is a bipolar day.
- And my sister is probably going to get married, to a guy who she loves, but who lives in Denver and has 2 young children who live in Denver which means we will not see her for Christmas like we always have and she won't travel as much like she always did and will this be our last year at the beach together, and if so, a professional photographer would be nice,  and while I can understand this and be happy for Sadie, I hurt for Sadie, who I really wanted to grow up seeing my sister a lot.

- And speaking of getting a photographer at the beach, I need to price bike rentals down there because we are so loving the bike right now. And why didn't I write that down on a list, that has been something just in my head for the last couple of weeks. And where is my list anyway? Mark's birthday is this weekend and I have done nothing for him. Actually, I did do something, come to think of it, and ordered two batches of things from the internet and they haven't arrived yet. Which means I need to call and follow up on shipping date. What a pain. Why can't anything be easy. And the cake, I need to make a cake. Come to think of it, I really just want to eat cake.

So this is what goes through my mind during this interview. So I divert my eyes to his questions? Yes, I guess I do. I so crave order, and I have relatively none.

Ordinary time.

I love holidays. We decorate for Christmas to the absolute excess, and I listened to Christmas carols from Halloween through the start of March this year (exclusively). I love hosting Thanksgiving dinners for 15, and all the planning and cooking that goes into them. I love the 4th of July decorating traditions that we had growing up in the Misage household. And, we celebrate every birthday we can in our house... even Daisy is never without a cake and numerous cards and presents on her birthday. Now that Sadie is old enough to paint words for banners, we are rarely without one (the banner she made for me for Mother's Day is still draped the length of the dining room table).  If we can have a party, we will have one. We are celebrators. Mark, Sadie and I... we are all extroverted, all loud (well I am the loudest, followed pretty closely by Sadie), and all very happy to be in a hectic social setting.  We are energized from activity.

But recently, I have really craved Ordinary Time. Time to just be. And that time just doesn't seem to come around. It has been one thing after another for the last year or more. We had a nice "respite" for Christmas where everyone was healthy and happy and Sadie slept until 8:45 a lot of mornings, making us wonder what she might have been resting up for. And then, life just took off this Spring.  One ear infection after another for her. Upsetting drama as we saw Mark's parent's health take very real turns for the worse. Even our wonderful vacation to Disney seemed to have no restful moments.  Then we did a Garden Club home tour, and we were worn out.  And really, in the past two weeks, I have wondered when we will have some time to just be still.

But I looked at the calendar today, and saw that we are upon Sadie's last week of school. She will be in Pre-K next Fall, and we will start the process of testing for entrance into private schools. Next Fall we will know where Sadie will go to school from K-12th grade. How scary is that!  And before that, we have swim lessons to schedule, new camps to get prepared for. A trip to the beach which will be fantastic, I am sure. But restful? No way!  My sister Carolyn is bringing her new beau to the beach and all predictions are that they will be engaged and married very soon. More celebrating, more moments to savor. Not moments to sleep through.

Mark was leaving after dinner tonight to head to Williamsburg to see his parents and then to a meeting in Virginia Beach tomorrow. He makes the trek down to Williamsburg 2-3 times a week these days. I am thankful that my own parents are currently in excellent shape health-wise... I am not sure how we would survive dealing with more ailing parents at this stage. But my mother is turning 70 this October. My brother called on Saturday suggesting that we plan a party. Perhaps that will coincide with Carolyn's wedding - wishful thinking - so two gatherings with the Misage family are likely. How fun! How exciting. When to rest? Or rather, what to wear? Can I find a dress like Pippa's by then? Can I find a body like Pippa's by then?

So after dinner, Sadie wanted to finish up some coloring that she was doing on the island. I no longer need to help her with her art... she decides what to do and does it, often with scissors, a glue stick, and a lot of markers and papers. Today she was cutting and decorating a surfboard for a female character that appears to be on Jake and the Neverland Pirates (thank you Disneyworld!). Deep in concentration, she was cutting out a head, a neck, a body, legs, and then finally toes, all to glue on paper where she had glued the surfboard (which was decorated with flower petals). I have never seen this female character (though the theme song for Jake and the Neverland Pirates has been in my head all week), but if she is half the girl my daughter made her to be, she is one lucky surfer!  Bedtime routine is supposed to start at 7:30, and here it was 8:05.

I stopped myself before launching into my "We need to be on-time people, Sadie!" which I seem to say every morning and every night.  Instead, I grabbed the camera from the opposite counter to capture my four year old daughter. This is ordinary time. Lanky legs. A cheerleading costume. The hat I wore to go running last weekend (where was that hat?). A glue stick and some scissors. And her mind going a million miles a minute. She's so independent in her art now, it is hard to believe that she is only 4. She picks out her own clothes, she dresses herself exclusively now. She is her own person. She is no longer mine. She is her own.

Ordinary time. You have to look for it. And it passes too quickly.

Moms and Daughters

I can still remember the exact moment I had at about 16 weeks pregnant when I was swimming laps in the indoor pool at our Downtown YMCA and I had this overwhelming feeling that I was having a boy. Overwhelming, as in THIS IS A SIGN, I had no doubt that this child was a boy. Mark and I had tossed around both boy and girl names (Max for a boy, and Sadie for a girl) and I loved them both. Admittedly actually, I was more in love with the name Sadie than Max, however, because Mark was insistent that Max's formal name be Maximus, which I was not so crazy about. But I was sure, mid-lap that day in the pool in fact, that that baby was a boy baby Max and that was the end of any doubt in my mind.

So I was surprised when our wonderful doctor told me a few weeks later that he was pretty sure that the baby was a girl. Mark and I laughed when the doctor said "Its either a girl, or it better be a boy with a really good sense of humor."  And in hindsight, I wasn't really surprised, given what we knew about "boy swimmers" and "girl swimmers" and the timing of when I actually ovulated that month.
I wasn't disappointed in finding out that she was a girl exactly, but I was worried. While it is laughable now that I thought then that I had any clue about what raising a child of any gender would be like, I was worried about the mother-daughter relationship. 

My mother gave 100% of her own life to raise three daughters and one son, and today, I have tremendous respect for that. But our dynamic has never been ideal, and perhaps that is saying it nicely. I never remember a time of not fighting with my mother, not back talking to her, not having my feelings hurt by her. Not wanting her love and approval, and not feeling like I was ever getting it. I was obstinate, strong willed, "horrid" she would later tell me laughingly, like in the nursery rhyme about a girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead "...when she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid."  Even as adults, it is still my father who I turn to for affirmation and a listening ear. If I want a fast lecture, my mother is always ready to give it though.

I was worried that this girl baby would have the same relationship with me that I have (or lack) with my mother, and would prefer instead her father. What if I screw her up, I often thought.

Yet, one thousand times since the day she was born, I have thanked God for giving me just the daughter I deserved. I have no doubt that it is her love of me that has made me a great mother.

Just this morning I noticed something that something that has been developing over the last few weeks - and that is a true team mentality of "Girls Rule" in our house. You can see it in the picture above where Sadie is just over-the-top to have both Tyler and I there together. She adores her father, and she is the first one out the door for the promised Daddy Daughter Daisy Donut Dates that seem to happen about every other week at Krispy Kreme.  But just in the last few weeks, she has started this funny way of seeking affirmation that she and I have a bond because we are mother and daughter. This morning she went to go to the bathroom before we were leaving for preschool and saw that Mark had left the toilet seat up. She came to the kitchen and this is what transpired:

          Sadie [with head cocked to the side and eyes a little bit squeezed, as if we were gossiping]: Mommy, Daddy left the toilet seat up again today!

          Me: Well did you just put it down and go tinkle?

          Sadie: Yes, but Mommy, we really need to do something about this. He has done it a few times now. We need to send him an email and tell him that there are more girls in our house than boys, so we get to make the rules, right? OK Mommy?

I am getting a lot of "Right Mommy?" these days, at the end of what she is saying (which, by the way, what she is saying doesn't appear to ever end really... it is a series of long diatribes but interspersed throughout I, she will redirect me with a "Right Mommy? or "OK Mommy?" and I nod, and she can move on with her story). Last night Mark joked with Sadie that he had eaten the rest of her Easter Candy and she turned to me and said "He's just joking, right Mommy?"  Again the side head tilt, the eyes squeezed together, as if to suggest that she and I are on the Side of Truth, and Daddy is stuck in the Land of Silly.

I admit that I love this. I love it with all of my heart and soul and mind. I have no doubt that boys have a wonderful bond with their mothers, or that daughters are also very bonded to their dads, but I just feel like ours is so incredibly wonderful right now. My daughter pretty much had ear infections consistently from March 17 through May 1 and, even with the magic of a multi-thousand dollar trip to Walt Disneyworld thrown in there, had her share of horrid moments over our difficult spring. But the last couple weeks have been so full of sunshine and love and laughter and bonding with us.  In the midst of getting seven shots at her four year check up the other day, when the doctor gave her two purple lollipops to cheer her up, she held the other one in her hand and said "this one is for Tyler." What kind of kid thinks charitably like that?

I still lay down on Sadie's bed every night when I put her to sleep. When she was an baby and in her toddler years, I feel like we tried every sleep training method under the sun. But ever since she has moved to her big girl bed at about two and a half, I have given in to the reading books together in bed and then laying together as we say our prayers and share our reflections on the day, in the dark, and she eventually drifts off to sleep. Sometimes it takes 2 minutes, other times it might take 15, but never more than that.

She's my only child, and I have 15 minutes to give her. The only thing waiting for me is generally housework, or television, or work emails. All of the other tasks eventually get done, though I complain about them all a lot and I never feel organized or on top of all the things I am supposed to be handling at work or at home. But I love our nighttime routine, and I kind of hope that we do it for a long long time. I love laying there and feeling like my daughter thinks that she and I are a wonderful team. As I said before, she makes me a wonderful mother.

Genetics

I love hearing my longtime friends see something in Sadie and say that it reminds them of me from way back when.  For instance, the picture to the left made a college friend comment "I recognize those moves!" remembering me dancing around one sorority party or another. I hope it is not an ego thing (I love to dance, but it is clear that I am not talented in that area).

Over the last two weeks, both Sadie and Mark have come down with wicked colds. Mark's promptly turned into a sinus infection, as it has the last 5 years according to his doctor's records, in the very same week.  He started his second round of antibiotics yesterday. Sadie's drained into hear ear and her eye, and today she started her second round of antibiotics. While I love that the four year old has learned the skill of blowing her nose (instead of letting it drip out, which is what happened for the first three years). But Sadie loves blowing her nose, so much that she mostly does it without a Kleenex in hand and then runs to me and yells "tissue!" for me to wipe it. More than once I have thought (or probably uttered) "why did you have to get your father's sinuses??"

I have had very few sinus infections/colds over the years.  But Sadie and Mark... they both seem to catch every cold and it always escalates.  She clearly has his genetics here.

But I have been exhausted from it all. Because generally, I am the one that gets up with her at night, feels the forehead, and gives her Tylenol.  And then after she falls asleep in our bed, I am the one that lays awake on a 9 inch wide place in our bed worrying about why she is getting sick again. Or worrying about how I can schedule a doctors appointment and fit it in with everything else going on the next day. Or wondering how we will survive the plane flight to Disney on Sunday if she still has ears full of fluid. It isn't that Mark is not inattentive to these issues (so he tells me). But what sense is it to have both of us fretting away?

This is one trait that I honestly hope I don't pass down to Sadie. I have no comfort at all with living in uncertainty. None. Zilch. Nada (those who know Veggie Tales will know that I sound like A Pirate Who Doesn't Do Anything).

I believe this is different than being a worry wart -- I have come to realize the distinction just recently.  Because I don't fear bad news, really, at all.  I am actually much more comfortable with the receipt of bad news than I am in the grey zone of waiting for the good or the bad. Once the bad news comes, I don't fear the consequences of it... not really. I make my plan accordingly and then act. I am honestly very comfortable once the unknown is... well... known!  Good or bad. Remove the uncertainty, and I can get moving in the necessary direction. But in the land of grey between black and white, the nighttime when I lay awake obsessing about the signs of viral versus bacterial infection and debating which it could be, when it started, how she seemed fine when we were reading a story but didn't eat anything for dinner... the area of wondering is where I find myself in full blown obsession.

I simply hate the lack of certainty.

Once we got to the pediatrician again this morning (I say again because we were there two weeks ago tomorrow at 6 pm for an ear infection, and then at 9 am the next morning for pink eye), all of my angst disappeared. This was now in the hands of someone else. A medical professional. I would soon know what to do. The grey phase was gone, and this was to become black or white. And it was -- another ear infection. Another prescription, a stronger medicine, the recommendation for a pro biotic and also a script for a nasal steroid spray. We had a plan. I was relieved, in the best mood I had been in a week (as this new cold had been slowly taking over). Sadie sensed my feeling of control and was also happy and lighthearted, notwithstanding that she has very little hearing out of her blocked ear and is blowing yellow gook every few minutes.

Living in the grey zone... that is something that I wouldn't mind she inherit from her father. He does it far better than I do. He doesn't dwell or worry like I do. And he can take the time to live in the grey to let the black or white outcome slowly... come out!  Not me. I will hurry along the answer just so it will be an answer.  Doesn't really matter if it is right or wrong, as long as it is resolved, I rarely look back. I have accepted jobs like this, bought cars like this, even bought houses and moved away (and back) like this. My positive spin is that I am perfectly comfortable with spontaneity.  Mark's not so positive spin is that I can't live with uncertainty and act rashly sometimes.  So far I haven't gotten burned.  He delays and thinks everything through for a long time (note that we got engaged after we dated off and on for many years).  Maybe we provide a nice balance to each other.

I do hope that Sadie learns something from Mark's way of action (or rather, inaction), and doesn't fear the grey stage between black and white as much as I do. But if there was anyway to change what has already happened... I would give her my sinuses in a heartbeat.