Cough, Cough, Gag, Barf., Repeat . . . Otherwise known as Good Morning, Mom!

You know that scene from Jurassic Park where the girl gets sneezed on by the sick dinosaur and gets covered in slime?

That is more or less how my day started.

Daughter is sick.

Her step-brother at Dad's house was sick last week. We thought she had skirted the bug, but that appears to have been an optimistic assessment.

She's been sort of sniffily for a couple days. Then came coughing. Then the barfing started this morning. When I picked her up out of bed. Which means that she puked all over me. It was less than glorious.

She is now camped out on the couch with her soft blanket, soft pillow, special bear, cup of ice water, and second video of the day.

Poor thing.

Although she is particularly snuggly. Which you won't catch me complaining about.

I do, however, need more coffee. So if that could magically appear in my hand right now, that would be super. Thanks.

**UPDATE**
As of 12:55pm, with five fruit juice popcicles, some baby asprin, and gummy bear vitamens in her stomach, Daughter is walking under her own power. Also, sliding on her indoor slide. Thill, twaking dike dith, though.

***UPDATE, Redux***
Daughter continued to improve. Her Dad got out of his meeting early and came over to pick her up. Early. She was worn out, but is looking forward to spending tomorrow with his parents. I hate the hand off. It gets harder, not easier. Espicially when she is sick and small. I have no real responsibilities until Monday at 12:30 when I pick her up from pre-school. I mean, I've already done the laundry and everything.

My Very Own Mcdream Come True...

Last Thursday, after I picked her up from a coffee bar at 8am, Daughter and I went on a road trip. We rocked out to some B-I-N-G-O and a lot of Bruce Springsteen. We ate salad bar and "Neemeneeems*" (!!!) in the car.

We were staying at a lodge in Homer, where my dad had been all week for work. We wound up having the whole beautiful seaside place to ourselves.

We went to the deep water dock and Daughter got a tour of "Papa's Tug Bot", including the buckets of freshly baked cookies in the galley. She decided she needed one for herself and 'Oh! Wait! My Paaaaapa needs a cookie too..."

We had a "fancy dinner" at the "special" restaurant and we sat at a table in the (gasp. hide. shame.) bar, because it was empty, smoke-free, and the tables are elevated which is exponentially easier for my father.

Daughter ran around in the beautiful yard overlooking the ocean for the better part of an hour after we got back to the lodge. She cawed at the ravens that were perched on the roof next door. She flapped her arms and flew around the yard CawCawCAAAAAWing away. She chased off a sea gull. She wanted to go down to the beach, but we put it off until the morning.

We had a bath in the huge tub, red books, curled up in the huge! great! bed! and come eight o'clock she was still wide awake. Huh. Didn't see that one coming. Damn.

She wanted to watch a movie. No movies. She wanted to jump up and down. NO jumping. She wanted to run around exploring the house up and down the stairs, over and over and over again. NO Exploring.

I on the other hand wanted to watch the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy. Like basically everyone else in the world, I have a thing for medical shows. The fake ones, not the Discovery Channel variety. I'm pretty out of touch with ER, but I'm a loyal Grey's fan. I actually watch it on tv on a regular basis, which is saying a lot for me. I've been watching Grey's since before EVERYONE was watching. Since the winter of 2005 when it appeared out of nowhere to make me want to move to Seattle. I was working on an ill-fated campaign that kicked my ass for months on end. I was swimming with a Master's team at 5:30 in the morning on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and it was an 8pm show. My ex-husband was in grad school and pretty consumed upstairs.

I watched it when it premiered for the full season the next fall. When I was pregnant and we were moving and staying at my parents' house while we remodeled the new place and I frantically finished college before the baby was born. And I watched it through the winter while I was home with a new baby. And I watched it the next fall in random places with cable when I was separated and miserable and having my ass kicked daily by life and a awful campaign. Then that winter I would go to the gym and run while it was on and listen on headphones. Last fall I watched on boyfriend's computer on Saturdays because I was in school when it was on in real time. I watch. I'm a fan. Its a train wreck and I like that too.

So. What the hell? She'll probably get bored and fall asleep. She won't be to scared by blood and the guts. I can just turn it on, she won't even pay attention.

But she did. She demanded to snuggle on the other side of the bed, closer to the television so she could see better. "Look! Mommy! Those are his brains and his guts!" She stayed up for an hour and a half. And spent most of the drive home the next day operating on her bears and dinosaurs in the backseat.

There have been a thousand moments (or days and weeks and months) in the past three and a half years when watching Grey's Anatomy in a the most comfortable bed ever curled up with my daughter and her two favorite bears seemed like an impossible fantasy. I am well aware of how ridiculous a thing it is to say, but if I could have frozen that moment in time and just relived it every day from here until forever, I would. It was one of the most hard won and cherished memories I will ever have. So, thank you Meredeth and Derek. Thank you, Christina and stapled ass army guy. Thank you, Bernadette Peters and Kathy Baker. I'll never forget it.

Radio Interference

I am living in the town where I grew up. Well, where I finished elementary school, survived junior high, made it out of high school more or less in one piece, went to college, got married, had a baby, got divorced, fell to pieces.

For the moment, I am staying with my parents. In my high school bedroom. Driving my kid around town in my Dad's giant suburban.

There is a lot that is seriously cracked about this situation. And I think things will ease up a bit after Boyfriend relocates and we get a real house of our own and into a daily routine that does not involve me asking my parents permission to go places.

I'm sure this is the case, however, I still don't know what to do about the radio.

It seems that no one in the radio industry here has discovered that the nineties are over. Every other damn son is some ballad that debuted sometime between 1995 and 1998. I swear.

I think this is adding to my anxiety. It is making me seriously angsty. And, well, more or less pissed off whenever I am in the car. Even music that I LIKE is making me nutty, because it just drives home that this is a place that I don't like filled with memories and people that I am not supposed to have to face everyday as a grown up. As someone's mother.

To make matters even more 'fun', I can't seem to go ANYWHERE without running into people that I know, or recognize, or vaguely dislike. Yesterday, I went to Nordstroms to by some eye creme because there is no humidity here and I'm starting to look old and the girl behind the counter was from my 9th grade French Class. I don't think she recognized me. She kept referring to me as Ma'am. Wha? Seriously? I got "Ma'am-d" by someone MY OWN AGE? That's hawt.

This morning, Daughter and I stopped for coffee on the way to pre-school and the girl behind us in line and I had shared a locker in 9th grade. Ugh. The girl behind the counter is good friends with a good friend of mine and used to date (or who knows is presently dating) the son of the former Lt. Governor who was the first campaign (for Governor) that I ever worked on.

My best friend in the whole world is back in town too. We are spending a significant amount of time watching videos on my parents' couch, driving around in our parents' vehicles, and trying to figure out our next moves.

I am feeling like a teenage mother. An angsty, angry, tired teenage mother who is living with her parents and still has to follow the rules, even as she is enforcing rules (that OH! Do her own parents break) for her own child.

No wonder the sales girl from french class was pushing the anti-aging serums. Ouch.

6am! Oh, how you mock me. . .

We were up early in our house after a late night, go figure. 6 am should not exist on Sundays. New rule. Agreed?

Daughter and I had a fantastic dinner date with our friends F&L and their baby, The Godfather. We ate some awesome, awesome food and watched some Olympics. I could insert my rant about beach volleyball and their quote-un-quote uniforms (cough, cough...brought to you by Victoria's Secret...ahem), but I'm going to let it go. I guess. I get a little to emotionally involved with the swimming for my taste, but its only once every four years. No big thing.

Boyfriend didn't make it to dinner. He came down with something yesterday afternoon. Something nasty. He is still down for the count. Damn tourists and their noroviruses. Yuck.

No big plans for the rest of our weekend. I think we will make and appearance at the pool in a couple of hours. If boyfriend is up for it, I want to go for a run in an hour or so pre-swim.

-----

Daughter is very into her dresses now. She calls them her BEAUTY Dresses (ala Beauty and the Beast). We are spending a lot of time in twirly dresses this week.

I broke down and bought her a baby stroller. Which she L-O-V-E-S with the fire of a thousand suns. It goes everywhere she goes. We walk with it downtown. She takes it to the bathroom. She spins it round and round the apartment. She fills it with her bear or her baby or her stuffed kittens and goes for "adventures". She takes them 'running'. It is a very versatile stroller. Can't figure why that one that cost five bucks is so much more functional than the four frazillion dollars that I have spent on child transport devices that are not nearly so awesome. C'est la vie.

I have this post brewing in my mind about how I'm souring on how my feminism has affected my open mindedness when it comes to raising a girl. Haven't quite worked it all out just yet though.

Damn, we have just had a good summer. Despite the craptastic weather.

We are having very long and drawn out conversations now. Lots of questions. Lots of 'I want Maaaaaaamy!" Which is just about the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life. It seems like I waited an awfully long time to hear it.

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Also, I hate my hair. I have an emergency appointment Tuesday evening to deal with it, but I don't know what I want him to do. Just over it. All the swimming/coloring/growing out has rendered my super think/super fine hair a ratty, snarly, mess that I never do anything with other than pull up in a ponytail or bun or something. Its gross. It looks pretty good if I fill it with product and straighten it out, but that is an hour long process at this point and has happened a grand total of once in the past month and a half. I'm pretty useless when it comes to my hair. I loose upkeep motivation far too quickly.

Annivorcery

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my divorce.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my separation.

Good times!

I didn't get any sleep last night. Not unlike the night before my appearance in divorce court last year. Or the night(s) prior to my moving out of my ex-husband's house two years ago.

There is a post that has been on my mind a lot in the past couple of days. Snickollet wrote a really touching piece about babies and memory and all of the things she wants for her children to remember about their father who died of cancer when they were babies. Her hope is that they keep tangible memories of the time that they had with him, of their infancy, of the time when their family what nuclear and whole. It was very poignant and haunting for me.

I wish just about the polar opposite for my own child. I'm thankful that she has no memories (real or otherwise) of her family the way we intended it to be. Of her mother and father as a couple who lived together and were married. Of a time when her 'Daddy House' was shared by the three of us. When we bought a new car to replace the one that she now refers to as 'Ours'. The days we spent as brand new parents in the hospital. The slow, scary, drive home in the bitter cold going all of 8 miles an hour with an actual PERSON in the car seat. Of the weekends with family visiting. The endless laundry and cloth diapers. The stories we read to her in bed together before she was even a month old.

I'm glad she did not keep those memories because of all the ugly ones she would have brought along with them. Of a fight so loud it woke the baby. Of my being locked out of my own home by my own husband. Of all the alienation. The separation. The sadness. The head games and power plays. Of all the time it took to battle our way back to a place where we can act casually with one another.

Friendly.

Cordial.

Cooperative.

As I write this I am in the midst of a great internal turmoil. I am wanting very much to talk to Daughter's father about amending our custody agreement so that she has more evenly divided time between the two of us.

This would put a lot of balls back in the air. Even broaching the subject is full of uncertainties and I am terrified of testing the waters of our hard won 'friendship'. I am terrified of creating ugly memories for my child that she would carry with her into her adult life. I want what I have always wanted for my baby, a peaceful life. A happy family, whatever that may look like.

I do not want her's to be a life of conflict or sadness or confusion.

I do not want her to be the subject of lawyers and trials and all those terrible things.

She asked me today if I could come live at her 'Daddy House'. She suggested that we get bunk beds and share her room.

I think I actually felt my heart break when I had to tell her that no, that would not be possible and could not promise her anything positive in return.

Happy Annivorcery to me. The first of many to come.

My Motherhood, Myself

I am not an overly emotional kind of girl. I’ve managed to keep it together pretty well over the past three years in particular. Three years that have been filled with pregnancy and the joint arrival of a new baby and a disintegrating marriage. Capital letter events like: Estrangement, Separation, NEW relationships, Divorce, new Babies, Illness, Toddler-dom, finally the beginnings of something resembling Reconciliation, a life separate, but still eternally connected.

And here it is, Mother’s Day again. An impossible time of year to not reflect upon my own motherhood and the unexpected twists and turns that have led to where we are today, my two year old daughter and I, watching Caillou in my parent’s living room.

--

Three years ago, while on an impromptu getaway weekend to visit friends up north, I got myself pregnant over Mother’s Day weekend. I didn’t realize this shocking fact until weeks later while traveling in Europe. The exhaustion and mental fatigue that this realization tossed into the mix made for a bit of a trying trip and a fair amount of resentment over the need for thirty five pound backpacks, camping on the ground, and a lot of barfing on a lot of trains.

The pregnancy went reasonably smoothly, I think that every bump and twist of a first pregnancy seems more dramatic than it probably is in reality. We spent most of the summer traveling through Europe, taking in New York City, visiting family in my hometown, and finally driving up the AlCan Highway in my little sister’s little truck v e r y s l o w l y with a very large trailer filled with all her belongings in tow.

--

In the fall we started back to school. I finished my B.A. in Literature. My husband went back to teaching and finishing his graduate thesis. I took naps on my yoga mat under the desk in his study carol in the library using my messenger bag as a pillow.

We sold our condo, bought, radically renovated, and moved into a bigger house on New Year’s Eve. Three weeks later our daughter was born, one week early, 8.5 pounds and 20 ½ inches long. She had lots of golden brown hair, long fingers, and eyes as sparklingly blue as the heart of a glacier which was fitting as the temperature read -28 as we drove to the hospital the morning she was born.

--

It was a long, cold, sleepless winter and spring. I started working a bit a couple of months after the baby was born because the combination of the giant new mortgage and the graduate teaching stipend scared the tar out of me. In June I was presented with a big, job opportunity that would last only six months. The school year was over and my husband was home most days with the baby who always seemed happier around him than she did me.

We decided to separate by August 1^st. My job required longer hours than my husband thought were reasonable, there was tension and strife in our home and we didn’t want our baby raised in an environment that we both felt pretty helpless to control.

I moved out and into a small apartment owned by a generous friend. Tensions flared as they often do, but everything was amplified by the ‘unusual situation’, the fact that it was the mother who had moved, the father who stayed home. When winter rolled around again and my second job, the one that helped to pay the mortgage on that new house where my child lived, took me to the State Capital for four months of the spring.

We resolved the issues of our separation and formally filed for divorce just after the fourth anniversary of our marriage. I met someone and reluctantly entered into a new relationship. I was diagnosed with Celiac’s Disease which answered a lot of questions, but caused radical shifts in my diet and overall health and demeanor.

My daughter, mother and I traveled for two weeks in June to California. I lived with generous friends at home that summer. Tensions ran high through the time we were divorced, the day before the anniversary of our separation.

By the arrival of fall I was exhausted and emotionally spent. I had some money in the bank and was no and no longer paying any part of a mortgage. I quit my job and enrolled in graduate school. The man I had been involved with since the spring invited me to live with him to save on overhead while attending school and to advance our relationship. It was an enormous leap of faith on both our parts as we each had a failed marriage in our pasts and a lot of predictable fears.

--

In January I packed a carry-on suitcase and returned to my parents’ house for a five day trip to celebrate my daughter’s second birthday. Immediately preceding my return, my father had been hospitalized for a shoulder removal surgery, the final attempt to rid his body of a MRSA infection that had been ravaging his body for over five years. Release from the hospital, we discovered, would require round the clock in home care and i.v. injections administered every eight hours, 24/7 for several months. It was decided that I would stay, in my high school bedroom, in my parents’ house for an indeterminate amount of time to help with his care.

The winter and spring in my parents’ house was not easy. It was exhausting and full of stress and rapid change. There have been positives though. Staying home with my father has meant that I have been able to stay home, full-time with my daughter for the first time since she was an infant. We have eaten meals together everyday and gone to the pool, baked cookies and raked the yard, gone for coffee, and shopped at the bookstore. Taken long bubble baths and big girl showers, braided hair, read stories, taken naps, potty trained, and practiced riding bikes on the sidewalk as the snow melted.

Her dad and I have started talking again, reading books about co-parenting, and eating lunch from time to time to make plans for our daughter for the coming months as she transitions into the role of big sister to two brothers.

Yesterday, my daughter and both her parents went together to visit the playschool she will begin attending in the fall.

Last night, my mostly non-emotional self bawled through the sappiest movie I have seen in recent memory. I am, on a normal day, way to cynical to shed tears over your run of the mill chick flick, but P.S. I Love You floored me. I cried and cried for hours.

I cried because my marriage had died. I cried because my life and my motherhood and my family is so radically different from what I had planned. Because this spring of being a stay at home mom will only last through the fall and then reality will have to set in again. I cried because we’ve all made it through the roller coaster of the past three years and the ride has come to an end. Friendship has started to settle into a relationship that I feared for a long time was poisoned beyond repair with pain, anger, and resentment.

I cried because its is Mother’s Day weekend and for the first time since I became pregnant, I will get to enjoy it fully with my daughter, planting flowers in my parent’s yard. I cried and cried and felt better when I recovered than I had felt in ages.

And then, yesterday morning, when my daughter came bounding in through laundry room of my parents’ house while I was making coffee, I groggily looked up to see her father holding flowers and a card for me, her mother. To say that flowers from my daughter and her father were unexpected is a colossal understatement, but I didn’t burst into tears. I did wrap my arms around my daughter’s father, almost involuntarily. It has been years since we had shared a hug. Our physical contact has been consciously limited to the passing back and forth of a baby or squirmy toddler since she was born.

This weekend we have lazed about and planted flowers and dressed up in party dresses to go out to dinner with my parents. In a few weeks we will pack up and head back to my new home and for the summer and in the fall she will return back to her “Daddy House” and her growing family.

It doesn’t look like I thought it would, but my daughter is a happy, thriving, active, independent little creature. She has a large family of people who love her and who she loves right back. Motherhood isn’t what I expected it to be, but in so many ways it is so much more than I ever anticipated and we all keep on growing every single day.

Jokes and Coffee

After a successful venture to REI for a new sleeping bag and thermarest pad so that we may be properly equipped for a summer of camping in Southeast Alaska, La Chica and I decided to take a coffee break before meeting a friend downtown for lunch. We waited in line, oohed and ahead over the treats in the pastry display, ordered my coffee and an extra short cup for her.

While we waited for my Americano, La Chica chose some seats at the counter that were agreeable and I prepared her 'la-la-latte!' (half soy milk, half ice water). She chatted up the people at the counter, asked questions about the jugs of chai tea, marveled at the ice machine, and the barista with the multi-colored dreadlocks.

After she had finished her drink, cleaned up her drips, and tossed her cup and napkins in the trash we were headed for the door when she starts her faux giggle, the two year old kind when they are forcing a laugh for comedic effect.

"I joke you, Mommy!" she declares.

"What's so funny?" I inquire.

More laughter, two steps forward, and a full body wiggle reveals that somehow, without removing her jacket or fiddling with anything in any noticeable way, the ever modest creature that is my two year old daughter has managed to unhook both of her Oshkosh overall straps and is now standing in the middle of the coffee bar with her pants around her ankles laughing hysterically along with every person who is seated in a twenty foot radius.

Upon being re-dressed, amidst her doubled over laughter and chorus of "I joke you, Mommy! I JOKE YOU!!!" La Chica made her way for the door, suddenly over the hilarity, to announce that it was, 'Bookstore time!'.

Never a dull moment when you share the days in your life with a toddler.

And now, just to make things more interesting, there are JOKES!

Knock, knock...