mourning my lack of dink-dom

I've been pondering off and on lately, for some reason, a life stage that I didn't experience.
The fact that I missed it is my own fault (obviously, for those of you who have known me for years), and so I'm not blaming anyone. More just wondering what I missed, I suppose.
Because it seems like there's a lot of value in knowing one's spouse for years before having children. I know some people do things "the right way" -- marriage before kids -- and still a kid comes along almost instantly for them, as well. But I rather envy the folks who had a few years between wedding and firstborn.

I recall as a singleton thinking that certain tasks -- a classic example would be, bringing a nice home-cooked dish to a potluck -- should be more the area of the married couple. I'm the single person. I can get away with providing the bag of chips or bakery cookies or easy salad or something. What makes me laugh now is, I give myself the same excuses as a married parent. Hey -- I have no time, right? So someone else will still have to provide the really good stuff. (this example probably speaks more to my general laziness regarding food preparation than anything.) Fortunately for my hypothetical fellow potlucking friends, my husband doesn't subscribe to this theory, and will usually go overboard to provide something fitting.

That's obviously a silly example. More important is the one-on-one time with my spouse. Getting to know him, building common memories, doing a few grown-up things before the decades of kid things descended. Even just one grown-up vacation together, perhaps? A bit of money spent on ourselves, not kids or kid care?

The time spent just feathering the nest would've been nice, too. And planning things slowly, one step at a time ... There are so many projects I would love to dive into -- wedding photo album, say -- that languishes undone in favor of laundry or some child-related need.

I don't really wish I could go back and do many things over again. I truly acknowledge the wisdom that says that I learned from my mistakes. I do feel that I have. But the one thing I wish I could give my spouse that I never really fully will be able to prove to his satisfaction is the gift of knowing that I really, truly 100 percent choose to be with him because ... well, because I want to be with him. And again, thinking back on how things went down, who could blame him for always doubting that? He would have to be stupid to NOT doubt that. Though, by the time we got married (and still), I would not have been with anyone else for all the world.

Marriage just by necessity takes a back seat to the children's concerns. And we've got a loooong road to walk before we're done chasing after children's concerns. Sometimes I wish we'd had a little 'us' time first.

And then my more cynical, sensible self says, perhaps if I hadn't gotten pregnant, I never would have gotten married at all. I know myself. I know the levels of perfection and idealism I put on certain things. Would I ever have actually chosen to marry someone? I'm betting I wouldn't have.
When I think about it that way -- not to mention what a sweet, cool, fun, talented, deeply interesting and conversational guy I ended up with -- how things went down isn't so bad.

I wouldn't for one second say that, in general, a life lived without husband and/or children is a life not fully lived. But I would say for me, I would've felt a deep lack. And regret.
I often truly believe my deepest motivator is the avoidance of regret. I don't know how sound that sort of logic is, but it seems to be the way I operate.

All that said ... I'll be happy with what I have, and try to ignore the little what-ifs that occasionally creep in.

random shots

Here are some photos, taken within the past three weeks. Just for funsies.


The girls! (on Valentine's Day)



Matt and his (little) girls.



Lizzy and her nearly head-sized meatball from one of our favorite restaurants, Buca di Beppo (where we ate a family Valentine's Day dinner)



Matt and his favorite dessert ("without a doubt!" he says.) (and, yes, he shared.)



Maddie, being her cute and happy self.



A hip -n- hilarious food pattern (prunes, of all things!) that I couldn't resist snapping a photo of.


The view out our front door, last Monday.



A picturesque fire Matt made that day. (note snow still on logs!)

what a great day!

I just have to blab a bit about what a great day we had.
To start with, I got on the new bike we bought for me a few weeks ago FOUR TIMES. Four times! Matt wasn't even home for a good chunk of today, yet I took four (okay, of varying distances, but still) bike rides!!
The 70-degree weather didn't hurt a bit. I told a couple of people that, to me, this would probably be remembered as the best weekend of the year, weather-wise. Still too early for almost all of the bugs (but they're comin'), nice and warm, but NOT TOO HOT. Really, that's all it takes.
I meant to rave about how great it feels to have a bike again back when we bought it -- three weeks ago now -- but just haven't gotten the chance. I last had a bike five years ago. It was a yellow mountain bike with front shocks that I thought were spiffy. I bought it in Germany, at one of the military bases there. As my dad pointed out, it was probably a bit too big for me. My neck got sore sometimes from riding it -- I had to lean over too far, and tilted my head too much. But I rode it a lot in Germany. There was a back route through spargel fields to the next wee town. Then I'd ride back along a bike path next to the street. How I love Germany for its bike paths. And spargel fields! Sometimes, I could hear a cuckoo who must've lived in a nearby tree when I'd pedal past. A cuckoo! How cool is that.
Anyway, I put a lot of miles on that bike, and liked it quite a lot, whether or not it fit quite right. And then, someone stole it. From my apartment building in Rosslyn. Shortly after I'd decided that, now that I had a baby (and a bunch of baby stuff), it would no longer fit in the smallish one-bedroom apartment I had there. So I put it in the basement, but unfortunately all of the good spots to lash it to were taken by other bikers. (railings, etc.) So I just wound a chain through the frame and wheels, and took the seat off. But that wasn't enough of a deterrent, turns out.
Matt believes he even saw the guy who took it. That's a funny story in and of itself, but it's a bit too un-PC to tell here. Ask me sometime.
Anyway ... I've been mourning that bike ever since. Not the bike, actually; but I've been bummed, and rather bitter (as it was stolen -- stealing is one thing that REALLY CHAPS MY HIDE), not to have a bike for this amount of time. I do invest in a certain amount of self-pity since I've been a mom. Hello -- not much is mine anymore. My body still isn't yet all mine from this last go-round. I don't have much money, even less time, etc. etc. ... okay, enough about that. But I certainly didn't have a bike. And exercise opportunities are painfully hard to come by.
So this tax season, Matt decided that the one splurge we would make would be bicycles, and enough kiddo stuff to make them usable. This took the form of a decent bike from a bike shop for me, and a lesser, but (we hope) still serviceable bike from Target for him. We gave Craigslist a shot for a bike trailer (Maddie) and one of those copilot thingies where it makes the grown-up's bike a tandem of sorts, with a kid seat on the back (Lizzy), but we kept getting beaten out, so we said, you know, okay. We'll just buy them. Ugh. So, we did.

This is the first weekend that we've had all the pieces in place. Out we went! Since Matt had a music practice to get to, Lizzy opted to squeeze into the bike trailer with Maddie, and amazingly enough, it worked. First time out, we went a fair distance, and when we forgot to bring a pacifier and Maddie started squawking (she was tired), Lizzy sang her to sleep. Sweet big sister!
The downside to biking today was, we've still had so much snow on the ground until yesterday (or, in some cases, today) that the ground was still quite wet and squishy and, in some places, muddy. I don't have a mudflap on my back tire, so at one point, I looked back into the trailer to see a big mud splotch on Maddie's cheek. Whoops!
Mighty fine day, I tell you. Tomorrow looks fairly promising, too!

girls and self-esteem

Man, this stuff starts early.
Lizzy recently got a writing board from IKEA -- it's a nice little addition to the living room, and she finds fun things to do with it. Write messages for visitors, draw pictures and have us guess what they are, etc.
The most recent thing on the board is a line down the middle, and two categories: "Likes Lizzy" on the left side, and "Dosent like Lizzy" on the other side.
When I first saw the sign, the score was 1 to 1. Maddie and I have since voted, making the score 3 to 1. (Maddie told me how she wanted me to vote on her behalf.)
"Who said 'doesn't like Lizzy'?" Matt asked when he saw the board. "She did, of course," I said.
She wouldn't tell Matt why she voted that way. I tried later that night, at bedtime.
"I don't want to tell you," she said. "I won't tell anyone. Some things, I don't want anyone to know."
Also recently, she's been really insistent that we respect the privacy of her bedroom. Which is fine with me, though I do reserve the right to peek in there occasionally for such purposes as to see if she's still taking a (rare) nap, etc. But I try to respect her privacy, for the most part. She can really get mad if I barge in without announcing myself.
I mean, really. She's not even six and a half yet! Where does she GET this stuff??
I've been struggling lately with the balance between correcting my child and boosting her self-esteem. And trying (far too often, unsuccessfully) to model respect for her. But she's been doing a lot of shouting at us lately, and attempting to order us around, and lots and LOTS of interrupting.
What on earth? Is it a stage? Have we already gone horribly wrong as parents? Have we applied too much discipline? Not enough? Sometimes I think one, sometimes the other. Did we wait too long to have child No. 2?
This parenting gig is not for the faint of heart.

note to self

I never realized how good spicy food feels on a scratchy throat. Seriously! Kind of like a fancy treatment of some kind.
Thank you, tofu curry from the food court!

other notes

Lizzy has come through a really bad flu the past few days. She stayed home Thursday and Friday, and Saturday we spent seven hours at the after-hours doctor clinic with her hooked up to an IV for most of it. She had been throwing up for most of two days, and was complaining about her stomach hurting, and I got worried. (also, there was a story in the newspaper earlier that week about two local pre-teens who DIED of the flu. Holy cow.) That was, naturally, not the most fun way to spend a Saturday, but I do think it helped Lizzy get better, and I don't know how it would've gone otherwise. So I guess the crazy inconvenience, etc., was worth it.
Work has turned into a giant nightmare lately. I know it's somewhat suicidal to complain about work on the great blogosphere, so I will leave it at, we suddenly have a lot more to do in my department these days. And since my department is small, that's a problem. It means that I'm mostly okay if I work like crazy and try not to worry about being as careful as I'd like to be, if I'm there five days a week. But if I miss a day -- and, these days, SOMETHING comes up most weeks (doc appt., child illness, snow), I am done for. I don't even know what we'll do when someone goes on vacation. (I should note that I'm quite grateful I'm employed, that doesn't seem to be in danger, I still like what I do, etc., so I really have nothing to complain about. I know.) Unfortunately, there's what's being touted as a huge (for the D.C. area) snowstorm bearing down on us -- I see it starting to fall outside -- and that portends absolute catastrophe for work this week. I hate being freaked out by snow. I'd love to be one of those people who enjoys it, but given the current work situation, I do not have that luxury. And I'm rather bitter about it all.
It feels like a real no-win situation, and, you know, I have enough stress right now. But we'll get through the week somehow, and my stock at work will slide a little further, and ... it stinks, but again, I suppose I'm still employed.
And there's always the hope of getting sleep in more than two-hour chunks someday. (which relates to nothing except the resulting addled condition of my brain.) I have faith it will happen. Someday.
Maybe the up side to the snow is that I'll have a concrete situation to point to when (as I've heard will be soon) we're capable of setting up a work-from-home situation. (I said CAPABLE. I didn't say PERMITTED.) And as much as I'd love to work from home a couple days a week, I don't expect that. But how grand it would be to be able to put in, say, a half-day if we're all home because we're socked in by snow.
Ahhh, one can dream.
So, enjoy the snow, those of you who enjoy snow. I'll take some small measure of happiness knowing that it pays off for someone.
But, c'mon. It's MARCH. In VIRGINIA ... Bah.

twister and shouter

Our little Maddie is a very different baby than she was even two weeks ago. With the babies, it feels like they hit a plateau of sorts now and then, and you think "Huh? Why aren't you (fill in the blank -- eating solid foods yet, crawling yet, sleeping better yet, etc.)" And then, all of a sudden, practically out of nowhere, they start doing something new!
Maddie is now sitting up super well by herself, and figuring out how to get places by sort of falling forward or sideways, then rolling one way or the other or stretching herself out or any non-crawling way to get whatever it is that catches her eye. I'll leave the room for a minute (usually, Lizzy's in there with her, so it's not like Maddie's alone), and I'll come back, amazed at how far she's gotten -- usually stuck in a corner of some sort, but often not unhappy about it. Again, she's not even crawling yet! Though she has started to do a backwards scootch sort of thing. I had to start making sure she was wearing a solid (snap-crotch) top as part of her outfit, because she would get a rug burn on her tummy when the backwards scootch made her top slide up. What a turkey.
She started eating solid foods all of a sudden, too. One day, I tried feeding her chicken, and that was a spectacular success. Today, she ate an entire container of baby food (applesauce/cherries), plus some of a peaches container, from me at home! Unprecedented. She's been reserving that trick for the ladies at day care. And she's been a Cheerios fiend for a couple of weeks now. She LOVES her Cheerios! I've heard it said before, and I'll repeat it: Whoever invented Cheerios, it's as if they did it with babies in mind. Those little pincher fingers learn so well on Cheerios.
All of this new movement has its downsides, of course -- Maddie's now rolling around on the bed, so the fact that we don't have her in a crib is suddenly a real problem. We got out the crib months ago, and Matt has it mostly set up, but naturally there's one piece missing, and naturally it's not something you get get online ... ugh. Lizzy practically skipped the crib stage in favor of a high-sided bed from Ikea. I'm tempted to try the same with Maddie, but this probably breaks all kinds of vital baby-survival rules, so I imagine we'll have to fix or get a crib that actually functions. Drat.
Also -- Maddie has gotten stellar, pretty much as of this weekend, at twisting herself onto her tummy almost immediately upon being placed on the changing table. I have yet to master changing a diaper when the kid is face-down, so I'm at a disadvantage. I think it's suddenly a two-person job, this diaper-changing -- one person to distract one end, and the other to take care of business at the other end.
One last Maddie note. I've decided that if Maddie were a superhero (bear with me on this one), her super power would be a supersonic screech. I believe those of you acquainted with my daughter in person have probably heard what I'm talking about. The difference these days is that she's hitting that high note (or frequency?) FOR FUN. She'll be sitting on the floor, playing, and shrieking her head off. The screech has never bothered me overly, but it makes Matt's head just about explode. I've not seen a baby as screechy as ours. Good thing she's mostly good-natured. But when she shrieks (with happiness) these days, I picture superbabies all over the area (and perhaps dolphins and dogs, as well), pricking up their ears and preparing to lend a super-hand. She's got the communique part down, plus, she can pierce the eardrums of any bad guys! Pretty sweet.
I'd post a photo of the increasingly chubby child, but my computer has decided that it doesn't want to be terribly user-friendly about downloading photos from my camera. Which is a real shame, since that's much of the reason I purchased the piece of crud. I'm still pretty unhappy with the computer situation, but I don't have enough free time these days to mess with it to have it occupy much of my mental capacity for outrage.