Our sweet little man turned ONE this week. I find this impossible to wrap my head around and still feel like I am processing it through a fog. But there was a party, he has a one-year check-up scheduled at the pediatrician, everyone else says it's true. It is probably so.
Here are a few things we have learned about Declan in our first amazing year with him:
He lives on Soul Train: the kid will dance to the dishwasher, to his little friend Ashley banging two toys together, to actual music...he assumes that pretty much any two sounds in a row count as a steady beat & moves himself accordingly.
He adores big sis: Duh. Don't all younger siblings adore their elder ones? (I'm looking at you, Toby, Tom, Anna...)
He likes to be near the action: he doesn't necessarily need to be INVOLVED in the action, but he needs to be near it. We noticed this when we were still in the hospital after he was born and in the first days after we brought him home. If everyone left the room, even if he was fast asleep, he began to stir and become disgruntled. As soon as the ambient noise returned, he settled down. Now, he is happy to play with a toy in a room by himself, as long as he can hear everyone nearby. He just seems to be comforted by companionship, which I think is pretty sweet.
He seems to have already developed a sense of humor. He enjoys making people laugh and LOVES to laugh with you. If you think something's funny, then it's funny enough for him. Whether it's honking your nose or banging on his high chair, he has a great time watching you enjoy life.
He gives GREAT hugs. This is one of my favorite things these days. Especially if you enter a room for the first time in awhile--or when Daddy gets home from work--he sort of starts to giggle, reaches out both hands, looks like he's going for your eyes, and then wraps his chubby loving arms around your neck and squeezes. And doesn't let go until it seems like it's time. We have been reveling in this innocent and genuine outpouring of love.
He's fairly adaptable: if he goes down late for nap or bed, or is woken up early, he is usually not a total disaster. He seems to be able to roll with changes in routine fairly easily.
He enjoys the thrill of the chase: there is no squeal like the one Declan lets loose as he 'escapes' the room you are in and takes off down the hallway. He laughs a big belly laugh when you say, "I'm gonna get you Declan!" and giggles all the more when you catch him.
A few other recent Declan facts:
Favorite foods: bananas, avocados, pizza
Favorite books: What Shall We Do with the Boo-Hoo Baby (Cressida Cowell), Moo, Baa, La La La (Sandra Boynton), and Fingers and Toes (Parragon Books).
Favorite toys: singing mailbox, singing/jumping monkey (really, anything that plays music for him is his favorite), and he is just starting to get into things that he can roll around, especially balls and cars.
And here is a link to a video of his first year:
http://youtu.be/zsmMbSWDnS4
Happy birthday, Declan! We love you more than words can express.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Staying Home
So I left off in the last post, talking about why we decided for me to stay home this school year. Here is where I'd like to pick up:
Is staying at home hard? Yes, in some ways:
*I love teaching. I feel like I was meant to teach middle school, and I will miss it while I'm gone.
*It can get lonely. I miss grown-ups--although teaching middle school, you don't get to see that many grown-ups (however, some might argue 8th graders are my true peers).
*It can get boring--the same rooms, same toys, same routine each day.
*It's a lot of responsibility--am I too easy on them? Am I teaching them the 'stuff' about life they're supposed to be learning? But you know what--leaving that responsibility to someone else when they're so young--that was infinitely harder for me.
*I hate doing dishes & laundry. I do them a lot now.
But was working full time with my kids in day care harder? Um, no competition. I don't think anything is harder than being a working parent. For me anyway. Because you still have to do all of the parenting stuff--you still have to try to teach them, spend time with them, keep them clean and healthy, encourage and comfort them--but you have so few hours to do it.
The chores don't go away. There is just less time to do them.
To schedule a doctor's appointment for one of Declan's many ear infections, I also had to notify 5 different people at my school, schedule a substitute teacher (which often required more than 20 phone calls and lots of begging--my school is not the most popular place to sub), write lesson plans, and play catch-up at work upon my return.
The schedule we were doing was not sustainable. Not for us. And I admire and respect all the parents who maintain it consistently.
Every day was hard. And long. I mean, from the time the kids left the house to when they returned was almost 11 hours, 5 days a week.
Every day was heartbreaking. The kids were so tired. So tired. All the time. My heart fell to pieces every time I had to nudge their precious faces awake in the morning or look at their over-tired eyes across the dinner table. And it wasn't fair to them.
And I missed them. I would go to fill out Declan's baby book during those months and realize I didn't know what to write.
And it wasn't fair to my students, who often got a teacher with only half a brain, very little sleep, and poor concentration trying to help them prepare for their high-stakes tests.
Looking back, I think the breaking point for me was when I sat Declan down at day care one morning, let go, and he continued sitting up on the floor. All by himself! I cheered! I clapped! I called his teachers' names to show them what he could do!
And they smiled & nodded.
I began to suspect they had seen it before. I asked, and it was true. We had missed him learning to sit up by himself.
That was when I decided there had to be another way. That the cost was too great for me. Because on top of the exhaustion and heartbreak, we were missing it. Missing him.
We loved their day care and it was hard to leave, but it was harder to leave them there.
And now the back-to-school sales have ended without a visit from me, and I haven't attended a pointless meeting since May, for the first time in 12 years.
In August, I began taking care of the sweet daughter of some long-time friends, and I'm excited about that too. I look forward to getting to know her and to my kids getting to play with her. And most of all, I look forward to being with my children. Pretty much every day. How cool is that?!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Is staying at home hard? Yes, in some ways:
*I love teaching. I feel like I was meant to teach middle school, and I will miss it while I'm gone.
*It can get lonely. I miss grown-ups--although teaching middle school, you don't get to see that many grown-ups (however, some might argue 8th graders are my true peers).
*It can get boring--the same rooms, same toys, same routine each day.
*It's a lot of responsibility--am I too easy on them? Am I teaching them the 'stuff' about life they're supposed to be learning? But you know what--leaving that responsibility to someone else when they're so young--that was infinitely harder for me.
*I hate doing dishes & laundry. I do them a lot now.
But was working full time with my kids in day care harder? Um, no competition. I don't think anything is harder than being a working parent. For me anyway. Because you still have to do all of the parenting stuff--you still have to try to teach them, spend time with them, keep them clean and healthy, encourage and comfort them--but you have so few hours to do it.
The chores don't go away. There is just less time to do them.
To schedule a doctor's appointment for one of Declan's many ear infections, I also had to notify 5 different people at my school, schedule a substitute teacher (which often required more than 20 phone calls and lots of begging--my school is not the most popular place to sub), write lesson plans, and play catch-up at work upon my return.
The schedule we were doing was not sustainable. Not for us. And I admire and respect all the parents who maintain it consistently.
Every day was hard. And long. I mean, from the time the kids left the house to when they returned was almost 11 hours, 5 days a week.
Every day was heartbreaking. The kids were so tired. So tired. All the time. My heart fell to pieces every time I had to nudge their precious faces awake in the morning or look at their over-tired eyes across the dinner table. And it wasn't fair to them.
And I missed them. I would go to fill out Declan's baby book during those months and realize I didn't know what to write.
And it wasn't fair to my students, who often got a teacher with only half a brain, very little sleep, and poor concentration trying to help them prepare for their high-stakes tests.
Looking back, I think the breaking point for me was when I sat Declan down at day care one morning, let go, and he continued sitting up on the floor. All by himself! I cheered! I clapped! I called his teachers' names to show them what he could do!
And they smiled & nodded.
I began to suspect they had seen it before. I asked, and it was true. We had missed him learning to sit up by himself.
That was when I decided there had to be another way. That the cost was too great for me. Because on top of the exhaustion and heartbreak, we were missing it. Missing him.
We loved their day care and it was hard to leave, but it was harder to leave them there.
And now the back-to-school sales have ended without a visit from me, and I haven't attended a pointless meeting since May, for the first time in 12 years.
In August, I began taking care of the sweet daughter of some long-time friends, and I'm excited about that too. I look forward to getting to know her and to my kids getting to play with her. And most of all, I look forward to being with my children. Pretty much every day. How cool is that?!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Back to Work
Going back to work after maternity leave (a long, long time ago at this point...) was hard. It was much harder than I expected it to be. I expected it to be similar to going back to work after Carson, but it was approximately 100 times harder for me.
After Carson was born, I finished out the school year and all of the next one working only part-time, which was an ideal situation. But paying for part-time day care for two kids would have cost us money for me to work.
So...I went back.
Here's how the daily schedule went:
5:00am: wake up, get myself ready for work, eat, pump
6:00am: Brandon woke up Carson, got her dressed & started on breakfast while I finished putting lunches & bottles & bibs & clothes into bags for the day
6:30am: Brandon leaves for work, I wake up Declan. Feed and dress him.
6:50am: begin the tooth-brushing battle with Carson, which always ended with at least one of us in tears (but damnit, her teeth were brushed every day). Do C's hair. Another epic battle.
7:00am: load the car and head out (realistically, this was always more like 7:15)
7:50am: arrive at day care, drop kids off in their classrooms, head to my work
8:15am: arrive at work.
8:15-4:15: work, pump (I only got walked in on 3 times--and only once by a student), attend meetings, etc.
4:20pm: finish bus duty and dash out of school to pick up the kids (if I missed this departure time by even 3 minutes, it would easily add 20 minutes to my total trip time)
4:40: arrive at day care, attempt to quickly get as much information as possible about my children's days, interact with their teachers, classmates & other parents picking up, load car, begin driving home
5:30-5:45pm: arrive home, unload car, begin making dinner, feed Declan
6:30pm: eat dinner
7:00pm: begin bath time and bedtime routine
8:00pm: hopefully both kids are in bed. Brandon does laundry while I do dishes or vice versa. Then he works (my work return coincided perfectly with his busy season starting up) while I prep bottles and lunches for the next day. 10:00: I collapse into bed, hoping for only one or two nighttime feedings with Declan, feeling like I barely saw my kids--except in the rearview mirror--or my husband--except for a quick kiss goodnight.
I do not post this to complain. Many people keep far more difficult schedules than this and do it without the partnership that Brandon and I have. I am not complaining, because we chose for me to go back to work. We chose to have two children, God-willing. To complain about something you consciously choose for yourself makes little sense. The reason I post this is so I can remind myself why we made the next big decision for our family.
I have quit teaching for now.
And that's why I'm posting this. Because I know there will be days as a stay at home mom I'll feel like the day was hard. I'll be frustrated or overwhelmed or just plain tired of my house. I want to be able to look back at that schedule and remember one of the many reasons we made this choice....
And that's what the next post will be about!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
After Carson was born, I finished out the school year and all of the next one working only part-time, which was an ideal situation. But paying for part-time day care for two kids would have cost us money for me to work.
So...I went back.
Here's how the daily schedule went:
5:00am: wake up, get myself ready for work, eat, pump
6:00am: Brandon woke up Carson, got her dressed & started on breakfast while I finished putting lunches & bottles & bibs & clothes into bags for the day
6:30am: Brandon leaves for work, I wake up Declan. Feed and dress him.
6:50am: begin the tooth-brushing battle with Carson, which always ended with at least one of us in tears (but damnit, her teeth were brushed every day). Do C's hair. Another epic battle.
7:00am: load the car and head out (realistically, this was always more like 7:15)
7:50am: arrive at day care, drop kids off in their classrooms, head to my work
8:15am: arrive at work.
8:15-4:15: work, pump (I only got walked in on 3 times--and only once by a student), attend meetings, etc.
4:20pm: finish bus duty and dash out of school to pick up the kids (if I missed this departure time by even 3 minutes, it would easily add 20 minutes to my total trip time)
4:40: arrive at day care, attempt to quickly get as much information as possible about my children's days, interact with their teachers, classmates & other parents picking up, load car, begin driving home
5:30-5:45pm: arrive home, unload car, begin making dinner, feed Declan
6:30pm: eat dinner
7:00pm: begin bath time and bedtime routine
8:00pm: hopefully both kids are in bed. Brandon does laundry while I do dishes or vice versa. Then he works (my work return coincided perfectly with his busy season starting up) while I prep bottles and lunches for the next day. 10:00: I collapse into bed, hoping for only one or two nighttime feedings with Declan, feeling like I barely saw my kids--except in the rearview mirror--or my husband--except for a quick kiss goodnight.
I do not post this to complain. Many people keep far more difficult schedules than this and do it without the partnership that Brandon and I have. I am not complaining, because we chose for me to go back to work. We chose to have two children, God-willing. To complain about something you consciously choose for yourself makes little sense. The reason I post this is so I can remind myself why we made the next big decision for our family.
I have quit teaching for now.
And that's why I'm posting this. Because I know there will be days as a stay at home mom I'll feel like the day was hard. I'll be frustrated or overwhelmed or just plain tired of my house. I want to be able to look back at that schedule and remember one of the many reasons we made this choice....
And that's what the next post will be about!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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