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Kids in Orbit

June 13, 2006

This diary feels a bit long a good friend I haven't seen in awhile. We were once close, but it is a little bit hard to find the rhythm of our former closeness. I don't have any doubt that it will return, but we've been out of the habit of talking on a regular basis. Where do we start to pick up again? I guess by just diving right in.

I'm having a rough go of the stepparenting thing right now. I suppose it wouldn't be so far off to say that stepparenting is rarely smooth sailing. Quite honestly, my role as a step mother is far and away the hardest role I've ever undertaken. When you are doing it right, you can't tell, but man when are doing it wrong is it ever obvious. Meghan is home for the summer from college. At first I would have told you (and I may have even said in my introduction) that her transition to college seemed pretty smooth. It is becoming more and more apparent that is not the case. And her transition to living at home has been, basically, an ever-loving nightmare. In both an attempt to be mindful of her privacy and really not wanting to preserve the situation for future reference I'll refrain from detailing the particulars.

The thing is, with Ava I feel like I know what to do. When she's upset, hurt, hungry, tired, sad, bored... I sense it. And almost all the time I know what to do about it. I know how to cheer her up, how to communicate with her, what soothes her, what pushes her buttons. With my step children I have the same intuition about picking up on things when they are sad, angry, depressed etc... but I have none of the same instincts to know what to do about it. Does that make any sense? I have the same desire to soothe them, to ease their hurts, to lift their spirits, but I frequently feel almost powerless or hopeless to do so. And for the past several months, for some reason, it has been especially difficult. John describes it like an orbit... The other night he said that he hoped Meghan was on the far side of her orbit and would begin making her way back. I hope so too.

Our weekend was really pretty uneventful. The weather here took an unexpectedly chilly turn making kind of an October weekend in June. Friday John and I both took the day off work to tackle our basement storage area. This winter we had a series of really bad karma events that flooded our basement – the first was a malfunctioning hot water heater, the second was a water softener connection. We had a lot of things that were ruined in the flood, but we also had a lot of things that were left in the storage area that were crying out to be sorted, tossed, donated... John and I spent a good part of the day down there Friday and made great progress, but we're still several hours of work away from calling it done. What I learned from this experience is that we need to think twice, three times and then again before we put anything down there! How did we manage to accumulate so much stuff we'll never use again? I hope to grab a few hours here and there in the coming weekend to really finish it off. It will feel good to check that off my master to do list!

Just a week or so ago Ava moved up a room at her child care center. She's now a Starfish, or as she says, a 'big kid.' She seems to have sailed through that transition with minimal trouble. The teachers in the room are great and a number of her friends had already moved up, so that had to help. This transition has again produced a change in Ava's vocabulary. Seemingly overnight her sentence structure is becoming more complex and her ideas more sophisticated. Our girl has always been quite verbal, so I'm not sure why this is any kind of a surprise, but it is fun to see. Her move to the Starfish room also officially begins her pre-school program. The center she attends really has done a fine job in their programming. I think our sweet girl will be so well prepared to begin school.

Ava's transition to the big kid room at daycare has also brought about a change in her sleep habits, although I don't know that the two are related. She is still taking a decent sized afternoon nap most days. And man is she a cranky pants when she doesn't take a nap. We still put Ava down for the evening between 8-8:30pm, but for the past couple of weeks she has been lying in bed, signing, talking, looking at her books for an hour or hour and a half before she falls asleep. But then she is waking up later and later in the morning. I am not terribly interested in pushing back her bedtime for somewhat selfish reasons. I really treasure that hour or two John and I have together before we go to bed. I suspect she's beginning to show us the signs of readiness to drop her nap. The horror!

We have a kind of mid-week delight coming up this week. My good friend Sandra and her daughter Sophia have invited Ava and I to join them at the pool on Thursday. It feels so decadent to take a random Thursday off to lounge by the pool, but I can't wait. Ava absolutely loves being in the water. We are starting swimming lessons in July, which I think she'll really enjoy. After a recent, self-conscious session or two in the pool in my bikini I ordered a new tank-ini from J Crew. It is past time to replace and update my suit, which is a couple of years old. Despite working out 4-5 times per week I still feel very self-conscious of my stomach. While the numbers on the scale retuned to their pre-Ava status, the stomach can't quite mount the same kind of comeback. I honestly feel pretty content with my body, I feel fit and strong, but I decided that, rather than feeling self-conscious about how I'm sitting, standing and generally looking I would just get a pretty suit that covered my 'trouble' area and call it good.

I wanted to try to write about something that is hard to capture and I'm not sure I'll be able to put my experience into writing. As part of Ava's blossoming I mentioned in my last entry, she has become a much more affectionate child. I would imagine some of that is developmental, some of it is just her Ava-ness. Ava now reaches for my hand when we walk. She will spontaneously hug and kiss me, unprompted. She takes great care in sharing her treasures with John and I. The other night her friends had gathered in the backyard and Ava came rushing in to get them all juice boxes and granola bars. She is very social, but is quite content to play by herself. I see such a goodness in her, an empathy and a sweetness. I just marvel as I watch this emerge. She tells me all the time 'I lub yoouuuu' and I just feel like there couldn't be a luckier mom in the world.

Last night Ava was really wound up. I was rowing and didn't get home until a few minutes before it was time for her bath. She was crying at the mere mention of coming indoors, so I picked her up and was cuddling with her. John came out to the deck to collect Ava for bathtime and I said 'why don't you give me a couple of minutes to see if I can get her settled down?" And Ava says, in a completely calm voice, 'yeah Daddy, I need to settle down.' She is a stinker.

Thanks for reading— --Kate

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