Division of Labor

During the entire time Tom was working on selling the old house and LIVING there while the girls and I were in the new house, it never occured to me that our division of labor might change when he finally moved home.

I do the inside stuff and probably ninety percent of the parenting and he does the outside stuff and works most of the time he's not doing outside stuff.

It's been this way since forever and so why would it change?

Except...he works from home and I have this fantasy of walking into the house every afternoon with the girls and finding dinner on the table.

It's never going to happen, which is why it's a fantasy. But...how lovely that would be. Heck, I'd settle for one night a week. Just one.

But honestly, this isn't that big a deal. I may not actually enjoy cooking but I can do it. It's just kind of tedious after working all day and getting home around 6pm to have to figure out what everyone's going to eat. But parents all over the country deal with this daily so whatever, I'll get over myself.

On a completely unrelated topic, Tom has new email now that he's at home with us full-time. It's really dorky of me that I get such a kick out of the fact that my maiden name is part of his new email address. It's as if he took my name over seven years into our marriage.

I know, a silly thing to find so amusing, but...okay, I'm silly.

I will give credit where credit is due. Yesterday, Alyssa's first day back at gymnastics after a month off, Tom brought the girls to town for me. Typically, I would have driven the 14 miles to my mom's, picked them up and driven the 14 miles back into town with them for the gymnastics class. This time? I drove two blocks to McD's to meet them and then about six blocks with the girls to the class. It was lovely.

Of course, he told me not to get used to the luxury. But what the heck? I'll take those little moments of kindness when I can get them.

In the end, I think we're both okay with our division of labor. And if we get to the point where we're not okay? We'll talk. We'll compromise and we'll work it out. I like that I know we can do that. It makes the monotony of laundry a little more bearable.

But...what the heck am I going to make for dinner tonight?

Adjustments

Huh...

This living together full-time thing is tough.

I don't know how all the married couples out there have done it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

I kid. Sort of.

In the over seven years that Tom and I have been married, we have never actually been together in the same house every single night of the week.

At first, Alyssa and I stayed at my mom's house just one night a week, starting when A was about 6 months old. The trauma of putting her in the car and driving 65 miles every single day was too much to take.

That one night turned into two and then three by the time Olivia was born.

If the weather was going to be bad, we might have spend four or even five nights away from home.

So this past weekend was the first that Tom was home with us, truly home, with nowhere else to go.

And to be honest, there were some rough moments.

The girls have forgotten what it's like to have him around when he's not just visiting. They aren't used to him being there day to day and actually parenting them.

He's not used to the mess that living causes.

On Sunday, I gathered up protesting girls and left him alone in the house for several hours just because we all needed the space.

When we got home from the grocery store he was outside shoveling snow and putting up a snow fence. The girls joined him while I put the groceries away.

They all came in rosy cheeked and happy. The alone time had done him good.

He mentioned that the house hadn't seemed so messy when he'd 'visit.' I reminded him that when he moved in, he brought 'stuff' with him and hadn't yet put it away.

He gave me a sheepish grin and realized that the stuff that was annoying him the most was his own.

We're going to be okay. But we all have to be a little patient with each other. We all have some adjusting to do. But we're a family and adjusting is what families do. Because we love each other and in the end, we all want the same thing, to be happy, healthy and together. And boy have we got some togetherness going right now.

That's where the adjustments come in. Finally.

Conversations with Livie

For a child who is supposed to have a significant speech delay, Olivia talks a lot.

The other day, I received via email all of her school records from the special ed co-op which helped write her IEP for her first year of preschool.

She was two year and ten months old when the evaluations were done to help the professionals determine which preschool class she would benefit most from.

As I read those reports, I was amazed at how far my girl has come in just over a year. One evaluator wrote, "She says one word at a time, but most often, points to make her wishes known."

Another wrote, "Her mother claims to be able to understand most of what she said, but this child speaks so quietly, it's hard to tell if her words have meaning."

These days, strangers in the store can hear and understand the sentences that come out of Olivia's mouth.

On Saturday, she didn't feel good so after Alyssa's skating party, I spent most of three hours on the couch, holding Olivia, rubbing her hair and back.

At one point, I was pulling he hair away from her ears and she ordered me, "Don't pick at my ear."

Tom heard that one from across the room.

For the past four years, whenever O's been sick, we've had to guess what was wrong. She couldn't tell us what hurt.

Yesterday, she told me several times, "My tummy hurts."

Amazing.

I know that parents of typical four years old would think, "Duh, my kid's been doing that for several years."

Yes, but mine hasn't. And some doctors would have told me she never would.

Yet here she is, scheduling her day as we get ready in the mornings. This morning she told me, "Later, I'm going to take a warm bath. And after that, I'm going to go outside with Daddy and Lyssie."

She understands time and sequence. She's aware of the things around her and how those things affect her.

I can tell her, "Just give me a few minutes and I'll get you a snack." And she knows that the snack is coming, but it won't happen right that second.

How freeing! To be able to communicate with my child and have her communicate back is such a gift.

I feel lucky to be understand the importance of it all. I'll never take for granted how blessed we've been with Olivia. I know she's amazing.

Of course, I'm a mother, so I think both my girls are amazing and I'm so blessed to be able to talk to both of them and sure, even blessed that they can talk back.

Let's Get Rolling

When I was six years old, my parents took me to a roller skating rink for the first time. It was awesome. I was enthralled by all the big people who could spin around the floor like circus performers. There were people who could go backward, forward, in circles and I wanted to be just like them.

A friend of my parents was there that night and took me on the floor, holding my hands and leading me around the floor. He skated backwards and let me get used to the feel of the wheels on my feet and how to keep my legs straight and stay off my butt.

By the end of the night, I swore this guy had taught me to skate.

I got a pair of skates for my next birthday and skated from one corner of the kitchen to the other, over and over again. It should be noted that my mom's kitchen was maybe 8'x 8'.

I thought I was one of the best skaters EVER.

Alyssa's been roller skating three times in her life. She loves it as much as I did when I was her age.


We had a roller skating party for her this weekend to celebrate her eighth birthday. We invited several friends from her school and it was a blast.

Even after only two previous visits to roller rinks, Alyssa was a natural. Sure, she fell a lot, but she kept getting up and skating on.

She's a chip off the old roller skate, I guess.

Her perserverence amazes me. She's so quick to laugh at her own falls, so fast to hop right back up and skate away, giggling at her own graceful falls.

The skating rink was quiet today during her party. It wasn't a private party but there were really only a few other people there other than the party invitees.

Most of the kids there were first or second timers and it was exhausting keeping track of which kid had just fallen, which one was tired of skating after only a half hour and which one was tired.

But I'd do it all over against next year just to see Alyssa's flushed, smiling fast after three hours of rolling around and around and around that floor.

She had a blast and I'm so grateful that life has led us to a point where we can do things like this for and with her.

And Now She is Eight

Eight years of giggles, of shiny blond curls, of big blue eyes, of soulful gazes shared across inches, feet and sometimes, across a room.

Eight years of kissing boo boos and soothing hurt feelings, of watching her grow and learn and become.

Become what? Who knows? But I can't wait for the coming year, the coming decade with my girl.

At eight, Alyssa still loves horses and dogs. She dotes on her little sister and is a faithful friends to kids she met way back in kindergarten.

She's very physical, running or cartwheeling from room to room. She's got a wacky sense of humor, finding joy in the smallest toys won from those silly 'grabby' games at the entrance to most stores. Her imagination is limitless.

Second grade has been good to her, brought her even farther out of her shell. She's made good friends and learned to trust her own sense of self more and more.

I couldn't be prouder of this girl, this eight year old, this girl who made me a mother eight whole years ago. She changed my life, made it so very much better than I ever imagined it could be. I'm so grateful to whatever fates let me be a part of her life, for letting me watch her, learn from her, teach her, be loved by her and most of to love her. I'm so very, very blessed to be able to shower this child with all the love in my heart, today and every other day of the past eight years and I pray that we get countless more years to laugh and love and grow together.

Footie PJs

One of the things I wanted to get Alyssa for her birthday was a new pair of footie pajamas. She loves this kind of pajamas. We call them sleepers around here and she has two of them right now that are a year old and worn out. She prefers this type of jammies to any others and so wears them whenever they're available.

I will give her that her reasons for preferring sleepers to two-piece pajamas are practical. The sleepers are warmer. It's always right there, not in two pieces which often happen to be in different places when you want them.

My reason for wanting to get her the footie pajamas are more sentimental. I love that she still looks little when she wears them. I love that she's confident enough in her own maturity to pull on these pajamas and stay warm without a thought.

Of course, not only are the sleepers getting worn out, she's also outgrowing them. She's put holes in the toes of both sleepers. It's time to move on to the next size.

But I looked everywhere and it's really hard to find footie pjs in a child size 10. Of course the size 10 is going to be a little big, but let's remember that they don't even make a size 9.

But size issues aside, I was having trouble finding any footie pajamas at all other than infant sized.

Finally, today, the day before her birthday, I found one size 10 sleeper at Kohl's. It's awesome and she's going to love it. And!!! It's not a 'character' sleeper. It doesn't have Dora or Tinker Bell, or even one of the princesses. Which, in my mind, makes it that much better.

Oh yes, turning eight is a big deal, but I'm so glad she's still my little girl in the footed pajamas.

Sorry

This morning during at meeting at work, I found myself saying to a co-worker who was complaining that a sandwich he'd had the previous week during a meeting, "Dude, not my fault."

I hadn't made the sandwich. Sure, I'd picked it up from a local Subway, but I didn't make it. And wow, how freeing were those words?

I can't even tell you.

See, I have this compulsion to apologize for everything. It doesn't matter if whatever I'm apologizing for isn't my fault. I still want to apologize.

When I was about six years old, I remember my dad apologizing for something that was totally not his fault and I wondered at the time why he was apologizing.

And now I do the same thing.

So, today, almost two weeks into the new year, I'm making another resolution.

I'm going to stop apolozing for things that aren't my fault. Perhaps this is an extention of my resolution to be kinder to myself.

Of course, in an effort to be kinder to others, I'll have to find new phrases to replace my ever-ready, "I'm sorry."

So maybe..."Ohh, that's too bad."

I suppose that "Sucks to be you." isn't so kind and shouldn't be considered a viable replacement for "I'm sorry."

Too bad, I sort of like that one.

But in all seriousness, it's time for me to stop taking the blame/responsibility for everything that goes wrong. It's not my fault and I'm done saying I'm sorry for it.

So yeah, sucks to be whomever isn't happy at the moment if whatever make them unhappy isn't my fault. I may try to help fix the situation but I'm not longer apologizing for the creation of the situation.

And it feels good to give myself permission to stop saying I'm sorry. Because it's not always my fault. And I need to remember that.

Here's to continued kindness and taking responsibility only for those things that I control. The rest will have to take care of itself.