March 16-18: comes in like a Lion and goes out like a Lamb

So the weekend started out with another poop watch reaching critical mass.  

I left work on Friday to pick up a particularly fussy Elizabeth who had been holding back from pooping again after 4 days.  Now we'd been upping her veggie intake (crazy baby actually likes asparagus and broccoli over fruit or cookies) and supplementing with the stool-softener so we thought it was just a matter of time.  But what should have happened naturally days ago had become a battle of wills between Elizabeth and her little body.  I bring her home thinking that Chris would come walking through the door minutes behind me since he said he'd be leaving work shortly after we'd spoken when I left work.

The whole way home she fussed and cried and pretty much from the moment we got in the door she was wailing.  I tried rubbing her tummy, bending her legs, walking her around while her shows were on the TV and still nothing would stop her crying.  This probably went on for a good 25 minutes when I decided to call Chris and see how far out from home he was.  To my horror, he hadn't even left yet!  He'd decided to stay and get some more work done.  Not a call or a message to let me know during the hour it'd taken me over at my parents house and driving back. But that's not the point.  The point was that I knew what I'd have to do. 

So I take the baby upstairs and get the dreaded suppositories and handled it all on my own.  Not an easy task considering that I hadn't been the one to apply it before and when we had used it there had always been an extra set of hands to hold a very unhappy and squirming Elizabeth.  Somehow I got it done with the least amount of tears possible on the part of both mother and child. And  then the waiting game began as I unknowingly hoped that Chris would not hit traffic and be home in record time.  Unfortunately, the start of his weekend was just as...poopy.  He calls me back to say that his car wouldn't start and now he'd be waiting for his co-worker to give him a ride home (complete with a pit stop of his own). 

Everything begins to move along and I've already changed 3 poopy diapers on my own by the time Chris is home.  Saturday, he gets to leave to go deal with his car that ended up being left at work then towed to the shop, while I'm alone with the baby for most of the day.  I'm not sure how it happened but our usually good system of "it's your turn to change her" ends up with me on duty to change all the poo-filled diapers in a row over 3 days even when he was home.  That's Ann 7- Chris 0.  That just reminded me that Elizabeth, age 1 and half, already knows way too much about her own bodily functions. Poor kid.

Back at Christmas, she got a baby doll complete with all the gear from my cousin.  As soon as we opened it up, she was doing all the things we do to take care of her.  She started rocking the baby in her arms and sang to it.  She put the binky in it's mouth. Then she fed it a bottle and gave it drink from the little sippy cup.  She handed it the teddy bear. It was so cute and everyone says that it's because that was all the things we did for her.  Then the next day she proceeded to take off all the baby's clothes and tries to stick things up the little hole in the baby's butt.  This was not something I had wanted her to learn but it was unavoidable.

Just a footnote about the rest of the weekend,  Chris and I were able to make it out to a movie on Sunday night.  We just hustled out the door as Grandma and Grandpa were agreeing to watch the baby.  We had to make it out quickly before we felt bad for leaving her and decided to stay home like so many other weekends before.  (The last movie we saw was Captain America, probably a good 9 months ago now.) As it was Chris heard her calling, "Mommy! Mommy!" when he was walking out the door and almost nixed the movie. Good thing I was already in the car or it would have been over for sure. We ended up seeing Friends with Kids  because that was the only non-horror movie playing within 15 minutes of the time we made it to the theater.  I guess that's our new selection method.  Works for me because there's never a movie that we both really want to see; only ones that either of us will tolerate. It was actually very funny and had Chris laughing out loud.  There were a lot of parts that we could definitely relate to. Let's just say, explosive diarrhea and leave it at that. And so goes the mild end to the chaotic start of our weekend.                                      

Daylight Saving Time

I forgot that it was the start of Daylight Saving Time yesterday.  I hate to "spring forward".  And if I had remembered ahead of time, I would have scheduled a vacation day today. 

It's not just that you lose an hour, you also gain an hour.  How you say? Well, you gain an hour when your child decides that regardless of what it might say on the clock, she is not tired and now stays up for an hour past her bed time.

How are you suppose to get a 1 year old to understand that her bedtime is the same according to the clock even if she's not tired and her body says play more?  If I could have remembered, maybe I would have prepared her throughout the week. But unfortunately, I didn't get the reminder until I logged onto my computer yesterday and it showed 10:30am when all the clocks in my house still said 9:30. 

So we even tried to tire her out throughout the day.  Running around in the yard, going for a walk, pushing her own stroller around.  It seemed like a good plan when she went down for her nap an hour earlier without fuss.  We even tried to feed her dinner and get her bath done 45 minutes earlier. Seemed like it had the potential to work until we tried to put her down for bed and instead she decided it was time to bounce around. 

12:30am I think it was when she finally went down.  Somehow, she had managed to stay up an extra hour longer than when she would have usually gone to sleep. I hate daylight saving time.

Guilt

So I read an article that summarized my back and forth struggle with guilt. Guilt that I work and don't spend as much time with Elizabeth as I'd like. Then guilt that when I am home I'm busy doing things around the house and not playing with her. Followed by guilt that when I do get around to playing with her, that I'm not doing things for me and my health.  To be then followed by guilt when I do something for myself that I haven't been spending quality time with my husband.  (Unfortunately, you see where he falls on the list of priorities. Only by circumstance, honey, not choice.)

Early on when the baby was born, I read something very thoughtful: Guilt results from a choice you made knowing full well the consequences while remorse/regret is from a decision made with the best judgement you had available but no actual knowledge of what the outcome would be.  So I guess for now I don't have remorse.  That's reserved for when Elizabeth becomes a teenager and then I regret what I did and didn't do with her. 

That leaves me with guilt now to guide my choices and sacrifices.  I choose to work (actually it's a necessity so not much of choice there) but how much I work can lead me to guilt.  When I choose to go to a lunch function or get called into a lunch meeting instead of having lunch at my parents house where I can see the baby makes me feel guilty.  When I'm home with her in the evenings and trying to get dinner on the table instead of pick her up when she's tugging on my leg makes me feel guilty.  I even tried putting her in the sling when I washed the dishes but she's getting too big to be toted around.  So I tell myself that these things can't be avoided and that overall it's better in the long run. I don't think I buy that completely though.  

I tell myself that by working I'm making money to support her, get her the things she wants, and save to send her to college.  True it does put food on the table and a roof over our heads but right now the thing she wants is me and my attention.  She wants me to play with her not to make money to buy toys for her to play with.  So much for that justification. And yes I can save up for college but we're probably going to fall at that point where we make just enough to not qualify for financial aid but can't afford to pay for everything on our own so she'll still have loans. Again the guilt. Why is it that you can always make more $$$ but you can't always make more time? You can get $ back but you can never get time back...you might not always lose money but time will always be used up...these are the profound things that should be a daily reminder to me in the choices I make. 

This week, I was feeling particularly tired and went to bed early while Chris stayed up with the baby.  (Extreme guilt on this one because he was trying to catch up on some work at home.) But I also missed a cute display of her making him put each pair of new socks we'd just picked up for her (5 for $5) then taking them for a test run around the room, pulling them off and making him put on the next pair and repeating the whole process.  Guilt Guilt Guilt.  or should I say regret. 

I've been reading a book called Things Good Mothers Know: A Celebration, and in it the author says that in order to be a good mother one needs to be happy with ones self and fulfilled in your own life in order to model that to your child.  And I think about all the articles in Parents magazine that I've read where working moms talk about how they need the work outside of the house to make them feel fulfilled and validated.  That they choose to make sacrifices at home in order to work because it rounds out their life as a mother and wife.  I can only wish I had that opportunity to find out if that was what my sense of wholeness would derive from.  But somehow, reading it is supposed to make me feel like I'm fulfilled already.  How would anyone know that without living the alternative in order to make the comparison because right now I sure as heck don't feel that way.  I just feel full of guilt. 

I feel like I come up short in all areas; mother, wife, worker. They say that you should devote 100% to whatever you are doing at the time and that will mean you have done all you can in that role.  Easier said than done. But I guess that's all you can ever hope to do and some how that will alleviate the guilt.  So for now I choose to skip date night with my husband to spend family time with the baby. I don't like sticking her with the grandparents to sneak in some personal time since I already don't feel like she gets enough of my attention.  In Parents, there was an article by their writer Shawn Bean where he was talking about his daily commute to and from work being his daily personal time just for himself and his thoughts.  Well, it doesn't just apply to dads because in those 15 minutes between dropping off and picking up the baby from work, I can listen to the radio as loud as I want and have the windows open as much as I want.  And in the personal space of my shower I get my me time for now.  Like now, when I wake up before everyone else on a Sunday morning, I have me time.  Guilt free, do what I want, me time.