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April 26, 2005
There’s been an interesting, somewhat subtle, somewhat seismic shift in our house. Backing up a bit, I’ve been fairly certain from, oh, say the moment I found out I was pregnant with Ava that she would be my only child. John has been fairly clear that he is done having children. This fact is not based on his love of his children, he is a phenomenal father. Instead, I think it is several other things. He is 42, he already has two children, who we share custody with their mother. Meghan and Lane are a mere 13 months apart, so their baby/toddler days were pretty stressful for John and his former wife. Their relationship was pretty strained to begin with, he was in school, they had little money and two very young children. John also says (and I mostly agree) that there are things you can do with one child that you just can’t do with two. When you have a second you have to immerse yourself 100% into parenting. I accepted this as part of living a life with a man I love very much – one baby was probably it. Certainly there are no guarantees in life, I love being Ava’s mom and that is probably more of a blessing than I could ever have pretended to deserve. But there is this little voice in the back of my head. The one that loves being a mom, the one that wouldn’t mind Ava having a sibling closer to her own age, the one that doesn’t think that two would make that much of a difference in terms of how we live our life. At times that voice is practically a whisper, others it thumps me on the head.
I’ve been charting a course to change jobs, as I have written about in the past. My current job is just too crazy to be consistent with the kind of life I want to have. Right now I am the primary breadwinner in our house, although it won’t be that way for long. John has accepted a job with a law firm in town where his earning potential will quickly eclipse mine. I’ve worked these great, high stress jobs ever since I finished graduate school in 1995. I’ve made pretty good money, had some phenomenal experiences. But I don’t know what I want to do. I know that not working is not an option, both from a psychological standpoint (for me) and a budgetary standpoint (Meghan starts college in the fall, Lane is a mere two years behind her). What I do know is that sometime in the next five months I hope to find a job that would allow me to have consistent, predictable hours, a salary approximating what I make now. I want this because right now what I want to be able to do is provide for my family, but I want to be able to be there for them – anytime Ava is sick or has a school activity. I want to sign her up for gymnastics and Music Together and not have that seem like a stressor. I want to be able to keep our house in some semblance of order, eat decent meals and exercise more consistently. I suppose all of this kind of makes me sound like a housewife in the 1950’s, but that’s where I am at this point. I believe that would bring me a great deal of satisfaction.
Last week a colleague of mine brought her four month old son to the Capitol for a visit. I held him and the old, familiar biological urge for a baby gonged me between the eyes. He was smushy. So alert. So cuddly. Making squeaky baby noises. Sigh. An hour or so later John and I went to lunch together. We were sitting in the restaurant eating these most fabulous Hawaiian pannini’s and he asks me what’s wrong. Nothing, I say. He asks what I did that morning. And I tell him I held a baby. It all came out in a whoosh, the smushy, the cuddly, the squeaking. He says “Do you want another baby?” (Somewhat incredulously) And so I tell him all the things I’ve been thinking about, with this job transition that weighs heavy, how much I love being a mom, how I can see a path, with a sane job and more time that includes another child. But I know he’s not there. He says he loves me, he wants me to be happy, he wants me to wake up everyday feeling lucky, not like I’ve had to make a sacrifice to be in this marriage. I say I want him to be happy, I don’t want to push our luck, I don’t want to jeopardize our relationship if he really isn’t supportive of another child. And we park the discussion with pretty minimal tension, both wanting to please each other.
The next night Ava and John are engaging in their most favorite game of late – chasing each other around and around the ‘circle’ from the kitchen, down the hall, into the living room and back. They play hide and seek, Ava belly laughs, they make these odd SURPRISE noises. John says ‘Ava is Daddy’s girl.’ Ava says ‘Mama’s Girl!’ and launches herself into my arms. John looks at me and says ‘just how many more kids do you want?’ I say ‘One. Maybe. Are you ready to talk about this?’ He says, ‘not now, but maybe.’ In a show of remarkable restraint (especially for me) I chose to leave it there for the time being. I just gave him a hug. This has both quieted the noise in the back of my head and made it louder. There’s nothing to do now. This discussion is 100% moot (in my mind) until my job situation is resolved. Stay tuned. Who else could I possibly talk to about this except this dairy?
We had kind of a gross weekend. Lane has developed affection for a new hobby of sorts that I just hate. I’m sorry, but I do. Lane is doing this AirSoft rifle thing – kind of like paint ball. It will come as no great shock that as a confirmed liberal I really don’t like guns. I don’t even want a pretend gun in my house. I can move a millimeter and live with water guns, but that’s it. This whole thing where men (and boys) go to a field and play some sort of capture the flag game while carrying guns doesn’t feel good to me at all. I admire John for being supportive of Lane’s interests and generally being a more accepting person than I am. Saturday morning he drove Lane a little over an hour (one way) to this AirSoft tournament thing. It was a chilly, damp day. Lane was with a friend and they had planned to camp overnight. John spends Saturday morning driving Lane, gets back and Meghan is asking for a ride to meet her boyfriend, half an hour away. So off they go. Finally by 2:00pm John is done running everyone around I am trying not to be peeved that more than half of one of our only days together is shot.
After Ava’s nap we head out once again on the great swing set quest. This time we went to Toys R Us. That place was engineered for a toddler meltdown. We walk in the door and Ava sees a Nemo lawn chair. She proceeds to attach herself quite firmly to the chair, playing with a ball she found near by. John and I are looking at the swing sets, again with great disappointment. Why has this become the hardest project ever? It would appear we have three swing set choices. The first is the metal shop of horrors, inexpensive, flimsy and cheap looking. The second is some large molded plastic, ridiculously expensive and looks like Ava would grow out of it in about ten minutes. The third, even more expensive option is a wooden swing set. The most attractive looking, the most sturdy looking, the option that appears to have the greatest lifespan for our girl. The cheapest one at TRU was $800. We fuss and stew while Ava lounges in her lawn chair and decide to leave without purchasing anything. Ava has a HUGE meltdown because we are not taking the Nemo chair with us. Gross commercialism at its best. (BTW, the Nemo chair was $14 and I have every intention of buying her one for her birthday.) At home later that day we look online a little more and it seems that Lowes has kits that are more palatable from a price range perspective, but requires quite a bit of do it yourself construction. So the great swing set quest is likely to continue into NEXT weekend with a visit to Lowes. For people who are not terribly handy we seem to be taking on a lot of projects right now. In the meantime, Ava has practically taken up residence in our neighbor’s back yard enjoying their very nice swing set.
So here we are, Saturday night, kind of tired, kind of disconnected, slightly annoyed with each other on the swing set thing. A whole weekend day generally down the tubes. We make dinner, watch some Netflix (‘The Hunting of the President’ – only ok) and go to bed. The phone rings at 3:30am. What do you think when the phone rings at 3:30am? Heart in my throat, I realize John is talking to Lane. Lane is cold (its 29 degrees) and he wants to be picked up in the middle of the AirSoft field. Grr. The commotion wakes Ava up, who is ready for her breakfast and get going on the day. Reminder, it’s 3:30am. John drives another 2 hours to get Lane, who hasn’t bothered to take down his tent or pack his gear and I try to settle Ava down for a few more hours of sleep. Grr. John gets home, sacks out until 9am. He gets up, we start working on all our various projects. At 11:30am we feed Ava her lunch, start the naptime routine and I announced I was leaving, I was going to go shopping and get a pedicure. Two hours, one pedicure, a new pair of shoes and a pretty sweater later I am in a much better mood. Here’s my great irony. I was out of the house maybe 30 minutes before I was missing John and Ava. I’m a huge dork. But I still really enjoyed my little bit of alone time. So that was our weekend. With any luck, next weekend will be better.
In case there was any doubt whatsoever left about what a huge dork I can be, I have more information to confirm it. Ava’s vocabulary is huge. She probably knows and uses 200 words. Names, colors, animals, objects…. But she only minimally puts words together. She’ll say things like ‘more juice’ or ‘Daddy’s girl’ or ‘Round. Round. Bus.’ I’ve always thought she was waaaay ahead of the curve on vocabulary and didn’t give it much thought. I’m picking Ava up at daycare and ‘Taylor’ (old entry, not her real name, annoying, perfect, Bree-like mom) who is several months younger than Ava says, when I walk in the door, ‘That’s Ava’s mommie.” A whole sentence. Ava doesn’t do that. Is something wrong? I go on babycenter.com and realize that she is, indeed, way ahead on her vocabulary, there’s nothing wrong with Ava except she has a lunatic for a mother. I tell John this story, he gives me a great big laugh and tells me ‘Taylor’ probably gets grilled and drilled all the time. Of course, within a matter of days, Ava starts mimicking simple sentences and joining words more and more. Why do I worry so much?
I’m going to wrap this one up for now. I updated Ava’s website with just a few more pictures and put the link on my TTM board. Stop by and take a peek if you’re interested.
Thanks for reading—
--Kate
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