Postcards from Motherland

Autumn installment

2009-11-24T16:08:00.000-08:00

I have a sore throat and am feeling generally run-down, so I came home early from work today. I've come off a recent stretch of working an awful lot, and I'm grateful, in a way, for the little bug I'm fighting off: I think I need the down time.

I wrote what follows in an email to a good friend of mine; I think it does a nice job of crystallizing what's up with me of late. Enjoy the cheater's blog entry!

I think I am approaching a point in this crazy world of social work at which I might be able to begin to synthesize the experience into a few words, so this is my best effort -- fingers crossed for an arrow into the heart of the truth of the experience ... or at least in the vicinity of the bull's eye.

The experience of now a year of working at social work is crazy and comical and tragic on multiple levels simultaneously. First, there's the Greek tragedy that is working for a small government bureaucracy, full of procedural quirks, the monotony of the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts of governmental red tape that takes about as much time as my actual work (and this ratio is a definite improvement over my first six months, when I struggled to manage the myriad stupid tasks in something approximating a 40-hour week); the sense of rubbing shoulders, six degrees apart, from small-time elected officials; the insane personalities and cliques endemic to a mid-size government agency.

Then there's the tragedy of the work itself, which is just full immersion in every "social ill" imaginable. Substance abuse, mental illness, criminality, domestic violence, and most of all, grinding, bone-crushing poverty, have been the most common of the lenses through which to view the clients I've worked with. (Oh, and the custody battles that make me want to rip my eyelashes out, one at a time.) The actual work with clients is harder to try to explain, because learning to manage the multiple levels of the job, and having done well at it so far (I've just recently broken through to a new level of feeling competent on a number of fronts), means that the job is actually treating me well, personally. Which is a crazy thing to say, when in a certain sense, I guess you could say I'm benefitting by others' misfortunes. But that's not really what's going on, of course: my goal always is to try to help, and it does affect me deeply when I have to walk away from a situation that I know is awful, but it's not awful enough for me to justify escalating the intervention, which obviously would have its own negative consequences. Above and beyond "do no harm," I'm cultivating the mentality of "leave no trace," which also is not entirely accurate, but it's helpful in terms of a check on my "good intentions."

I feel like a cliche sometimes: the well-meaning middle-aged middle-class white lady who just wants to help. I guess the part of the stereotype that doesn't fit is the idea that the well-meaning white lady is often sort of stupid. I'm not. I try to be as transparent as possible with my clients, especially regarding the legal or technical stuff, which often means I'm talking over their heads. I haven't yet figured out how to translate it into regular talk. But at the same time, I am smart, dammit, and I think sometimes complex concepts just can't be oversimplified, and I don't want to find myself in a situation where I'm talking down to people and, by doing so, misleading or misinforming them.

Yet another level of the work to be mastered, which I've come a long way at in the past three weeks, is the court report writing that I do on a very regular basis. In Emergency Response, we are the first line of direct contact, after the hotline screeners. What this means is that our unit does the least writing of court reports (later on in the life of a case, there are status review reports that are due at least every six months; when you have 25 kids on a caseload, this means workers are probably writing at a minimum 1-2 reports a month, with heavier months when the report-writing schedule gets bunched up). In ER, we only have to write court reports when we need to initiate a CPS case with a family; in those cases, we write the initial court report that gets the ball rolling. So my co-workers in ER write these reports ("petitions") here and there, some workers just write more petitions than others, due to a variety of factors, and sometimes it comes in waves. Bottom line: ER workers don't, as a rule, write a lot of court reports. And when they do, they tend to be on the shorter side. So, in addition to investigating referrals (which may or may not lead to court cases), I also have two other major job functions: I investigate non-relative guardianship applications heard in probate court, and I investigate the teens who have gotten into some trouble with delinquency court, in the event that the court requests that we assess in conjunction with Probation to see which agency would best serve the kid and family. Having these two other functions as part of my job means that every time I'm assigned either of these types of investigations, I am automatically writing a court report. I've just finished a 2 1/2 week period of writing 6 court reports. And Veteran's Day was thrown in there, so I lost a day. I was writing 2 or 3 reports a week; over the week of Veteran's Day, I wrote about one report a day. And the craziest part was that it sort of catapulted me to this Zen place, where I knew everything would get done, and I wasn't worried about it, and I had this clarity, like, I can handle this. I don't really know how or why it happened, but it was true, I did get everything done, and I didn't work on the holiday or on the weekends, and I didn't work overtime, and all my court reports were turned in on time.

After the reports were all turned in, I thought, I wish I could just write all the time for my job. And then it took me a few more days and I realized, oh, that is what I do! I like my job a lot. The county I work for is about to lay off a bunch of people in the position below mine, and it sucks. I think they're using the economy to restructure the organization and lay off people they view as dead weight. It totally sucks, I have all this survivors' guilt about walking in with no seniority, and in effect displacing people with fewer credentials but way more experience. At the same time, I'm just grateful to have a job, and that it's a job, as I say, that I like a lot.

There are several other things that are treating me well these days, primarily our new house (which I love) and my Kid (ditto). Kid A is doing just great -- she blew past walking and is running practically everywhere now. She understands just about everything we say, and has just started learning words at a frightening pace (time for us to cut out the salty sailor talk!); she now knows, in addition to "no" and "shoe," "light," "leaves," "car" (a favorite), "cat," "dog," "duck," "water," "cracker," and just this morning, said "flor" ("flower" in Spanish). She's just come out of a particularly fussy phase (I think it preceded the new developmental leap of learning to talk), but still has moments where she's easily and thoroughly frustrated by knowing what she wants to have or to do, and not being able to get the thing, or to express what she wants. Fortunately, she's fairly easily distractable, as well, so she can often redirect well. She's just so much fun, and she makes us laugh a lot. She's also starting to find things funny, and she loves to "talk" in full Audrey-language sentences that nobody but Audrey understands, but boy is she emphatic about whatever it is she thinks she's saying! She's got inflection mastered.

Our new house is just perfect for us: not too big, not small at all (for us), tons and tons of yard, and all of us have settled in super easily. It feels like home, and it has made a huge difference in my overall quality of life. The cats adjusted almost instantaneously (the only stress in their lives now is the large toddler that chases after them and shrieks with delight when she sees them. They are not fond of this). I feel frustrated a lot of the time, when I think about how I want the house and yard to look, and how little time and money I have to make the place live up to its potential, but I'm trying to take the longer view, and think of it as a marathon rather than a sprint, but it's hard sometimes. And sometimes, it's just great and perfectly fine, because it's a great house.

And now, some pictures:

Taken a few days after her 1st birthday, in mid-July. She was not yet walking on her own.

A few weeks later (early August). Just beginning to walk. Doesn't she look so proud?

Her first hair bow! This hair clip only worked once or twice -- it was waaaay too easy for her to take out herself. We've moved on to teeny tiny hair elastics that she can't pull out. Ask me in a few months if I'm still trying to let her bangs grow out.

Does it get any better than that face?
This was an amazing late summer/early fall afternoon: sunny, windy and cool. Wood chips and climbing on the play structure at the park.

SPAGHETTI!!!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Probably a little incoherent

2009-09-30T22:06:00.001-07:00

This post has all the potential for either being rambling or shockingly brief, but almost undoubtedly will be a mess. But the house is quiet, and I should digest the homemade bean-and-cheese burrito I just devoured before I fall into bed and pass out from utter exhaustion, so here's a new post. Enjoy!

In the past two weeks, I have racked up over 13 hours of overtime. That's almost two whole work days. I know that some people work that much, and more, on a regular basis, but this is new to me. Or at least it has been a very long time. Although I honestly can't remember a job I've had where I've worked this much. Of course, as I've pointed out in recent posts, the work is also quite demanding (obviously). I do enjoy it, but I am very much looking forward to a reprieve. It's hard to imagine, at the moment, exactly how I am going to get caught up. That's the most daunting part. I wish that there were some way for the documentation and paperwork to just get done without my having to enter all my contacts, etc., etc. I need a secretary! Too bad that will never happen.

Sharp departure, and abrupt change of subject! We're buying a house! Escrow will close in 10 days' time; the sellers will move out the day after we close, and I'm taking the week of October 12th off in order to coordinate and orchestrate the move. Woo hoo! It's all very exciting, but I wish I had more time not working lately in order to start lining up bids for some minor cosmetic work on the new place, getting estimates for movers, that sort of thing. TM says just a couple of hours on the weekend making calls and scheduling appointments should do it; we'll see.

Kid A has been amazing. I got her some teeny tiny hair elastics, to keep her bangs out of her face, and I've been putting in these adorable little samurai top-of-the-head ponytails ... OMG, too cute. I'll have to take some photos and post them. It's enough to make a person die of too-much-cuteness. She's still not really talking, but she is going through an intense imitative phase. We feed her graham crackers with cream cheese for breakfast, and if we give her a cheese-less cracker, she'll break it into pieces like she sees us do for her. Last week, TM said she opened the kitchen cabinet where we keep the garbage and recycling, and threw away a paper towel. We never even realized she was watching us throw things away until she did it herself that day. Wow, that sounds like such a trivial thing, and I cannot fully describe it appropriately, but having this kid just blows my mind sometimes. The things that kids learn, just by watching and living with other people -- it makes me realize how much of parenting is accidental, and at the same time, makes me want to be so much more intentional in what I teach her, which translates into wanting to be much more intentional and deliberate about who I am, and what I do.

This corresponds with some major lessons I have been taking away from a current family I've been working with, as well as something super interesting I was reading about during my lunch break today (read the book excerpt). In a nutshell, there are things I want Kid A to learn from me and her dad -- practical skills (laundry, cooking, managing money) that will help her succeed in adulthood, as well as concept stuff like the value of effort and determination -- that so freakin' many kids just don't get. Kids on both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, as I was reminded in the above-linked article today. And the family I'm nearly finished working with is the absolute poorest end of that spectrum; this family is not the noble, downtrodden poor, with a quiet dignity of bearing that suggests finer things are in store for them someday. No, this family embraces a specific culture, one that is completely foreign, even anathema, to me. If there is an antonym for "industrious," I don't know it, but I wish I did, for that would be the word which best applies. I have such little compassion for the members of this family, and I know it, and I hate that I have insufficient compassion. I get angry that people like these are the beneficiaries of heroes of mine, those who have fought tirelessly and suffered greatly to promote civil rights and social justice, and people like my clients just spit on the memories of my heroes. I mean, 14-year-old kids who tell me that they want their education, but can't go to school because their hair's not done, or they haven't been taught how to wash their clothes out in the sink in order to have clean clothes to wear? Intellectually, theoretically, I know that this family is the product of lots of problematic forces in our society, and that mostly, it's not really their fault -- they're just casualties of a messed-up set of institutions and systems (mine included!) that oppress and disempower the poor, the uneducated, and those with little to no economic opportunities. And yet, at some point in time, every person has to make a decision that they're going to live and act like a grown-up, and stop blaming everything around them for their own problems. I want insight, I want ownership, I want some goddam responsibility every now and then.

If you've made it through my ranting and raving, congratulations. You now have a greater insight into the early stages of my transformation into a more conservative creature. We shall see, over time, how this plays out.

And now, after a very very long day, I am going to bed, as I am nearing the point where I can no longer see straight. Sweet dreams!

Major developments

2009-09-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true, it's been a while. Life has been a bit fuller of late, so the updates, they have been not so regular. I hope what is to follow makes up for it, a little bit.

Work has been very full over the past month. I began working with a family in mid-July that consumed much of my time, culminating in a placement into foster care, complete with a petition and report to the court, at the end of August. For six weeks, I spent I don't know how many hours working with the mother to try to remedy the chronic problems she's been struggling with for decades: mental illness, substance abuse, and homelessness. After four weeks, it was clear that she was going to need a bit more, um, authoritative intervention, and we planned to go to court to see if the court would order Family Maintenance services. After I wrote the court documents, one week before the scheduled hearing, things got a bit out of control, and law enforcement ended up placing the kids into protective custody, and we removed them from mom and placed them in foster care, and moved up the hearing a few days.

Having spent so much of my working life with one family that consumed my time, it has been disorienting and strange to shift gears and begin moving at the different pace of more typical investigations. I still think about them often, but it does seem to be subsiding. I feel proud of the work that I did, and I feel good about the outcome. I hope that the mom is able to pull things together and reunify with her kids, because she loves them and they love her, and of course they all miss each other. But there were -- are -- serious problems that need to be addressed, and the outcome for the kids would have been worse, I think, if we had not taken the actions we took. Ultimately, my goal with every family I work with is to leave as few traces as possible that I was there; when that is not possible, I strive to leave the situation a little better than when I came on the scene. I think I did that over the six weeks with this family. I'm looking forward to a time when weeks will go by without thinking about them.

The other thing that has been disorienting and strange is that we made an offer on a house, and it was accepted! My goodness, I can hardly believe how fast it's all happened. It's not far from where we live now, and I feel pretty good (in theory) about the schools we'll be in if the whole thing goes through. Escrow is expected to close on October 9, and our contingency/inspection period ends next Sunday (September 13). It's an older home, built in 1954, and very small -- just 2 bedrooms and 1 bath -- but the lot is huge, with tons of room for gardens and for Kid A to play. It's on a quiet street that dead-ends; we're in about the middle of the street. We've had a number of preliminary inspections this week, and things are looking great, so our full home inspection will be next Saturday, at which point we should be full steam ahead!

It's crazy, because we only went house-hunting on two consecutive weekends, and this was the first house we saw on our second outing. Everybody's said that "when you know, you know," and several people have compared it to finding the perfect wedding dress (an apt analogy). TM and I spent a lot of time in it the first time we saw it, and have gone back twice (with my mom, and with his parents), and have liked it just as much each time we've seen it. I spent about three hours there yesterday with my realtor, for the inspection of the septic tank, and it felt just great to hang out there. I haven't been sleeping very well, because I'm thinking about it all the time, and it has definitely affected my ability to fully focus at work. But I think once the inspections are done and the lending has been secured, I'll be able to focus on other things again.

I'm 36 years old, and just entering the world of home-ownership for the first time. It's funny: for having spent my teens and twenties being so parentified and mature, I'm certainly a late bloomer in many respects: just starting my grown-up career, first-time mom of a toddler, and first-time homeowner. I wouldn't trade it for anything, though (well, maybe more traveling during my teens and twenties); I did get to do so much as a result of being somewhat fancy-free for all those years. And TM and I really got a long time to get to know each other and work out the kinks before throwing all these stressful and highly-charged components into the mix. Seriously, how do newlyweds go through all these things together, while they still hardly know themselves and each other? I feel so very grateful, and lucky, that these transitions have been so manageable, and I attribute that in large part to having this super solid foundation with the spouse.

Speaking of, our 11-year wedding anniversary is this month. Eleven years. That means we've been together now for 15 years. (That anniversary came and went with both of us forgetting about it! It was last month. We both just acknowledged it and kind of did a little "Wow!" thing, and now we're both back to doing what we were doing just seconds before.) We don't have anything planned, and if the house is going to go through, it's probable we won't do anything beyond toast one another over dinner on the night of the anniversary. But that's kind of my favorite way to celebrate, anyway.

Now for the Kid A developments. She's walking! It started for real the week before last, although for months she'd been walking well with assistance. She's getting to be a real pro at it. I bought her shoes last weekend, and "shoe" is one of the three or four words she can say, which is hysterically funny to me. Dear god, I hope I don't have a Carrie Bradshaw-type shoe nut on my hands. Her other words are "dog" (actually, "doh") and "duck" (see "dog"). Occasionally, she'll make some "mama" sounds, that these days do seem to be aimed in my direction, but usually only when she's super tired and about to go down for a nap. She's also lately saying something that sounds like "H" or "itch," and I have no idea what she's trying to say. She babbles beautifully, and often, and I would love to know what she's trying to tell us. I'm super surprised that it's taking her so long to talk, because we talk and sing and read to her all the time. I attribute it to the steady stream of Spanish she gets, as well.

I'm trying to speak Spanish with her at home, in addition to the full-time Spanish she gets at Carmen's during the week. I went to a bookstore last weekend, in our old neighborhood in Oakland, that carries a great selection of Spanish-language children's books, and bought six. I've been reading to her in Spanish at home, and it's helping my Spanish improve. I also regularly practice my Spanish with some of my co-workers, and of course with Carmen. I'm hoping to raise Kid A to be fluent in both languages. I think that might take some work as she gets older, but I hope that she and I can help each other improve our understanding of Spanish together. When you're born and raised in California, there's no excuse for not being bilingual, and I wish the public schools in our area had Spanish-immersion options for grade school. Anyway, I think it's taking her longer to speak because she's busy processing two languages.

Unfortunately, I don't have any recent pictures uploaded. Maybe I'll get a chance before my next post ... but frankly, I doubt it! Wish us happy escrow, and happy moving!!

Warning: From Icky to Sappy

2009-07-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

We survived a parenting rite of passage last night: Kid A threw up (repeatedly) for the first time. We're not sure if it was something she ate, too much pool water (followed by too much milk) combined with lots of throwing and splashing and dunking in the pool, or if perhaps she ate a teensy bit of bar soap at the end of her bath. Or a combination of all of the above. Whatever the cause, we put her to bed at just before 7 pm yesterday (so very tired), and she slept well for about an hour. Then we heard her wake up and start to cry instantly. We both figured that she was still hungry, as she hadn't finished her bottle, but had pushed it away after a few ounces, so I took that upstairs and went in thinking I would sit with her while she finished it, and put her back down. Instead, when I opened the door, I found my poor little pumpkin sitting up in her crib, with an ungodly mess in her lap, on her hands, etc. I think my exact words were, "Tom, I need you," and he came upstairs with a quickness. Meanwhile, the poor thing was screaming at the top of her lungs.

I took her into the bathroom and put her in the tub while I stripped off her pajamas and diaper, then ran some water and got her cleaned up; Kid A screaming all the while (and by the end, she had started to shake, which really freaked me out). The whole tub ordeal couldn't have taken more than a couple of minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I wrapped her up in some towels and took her back into her bedroom, where I tried to rock her and calm her down, but she was beside herself. Finally, I just decided to get her diapered and dressed again. I think TM took over at some point, because I remember changing the sheet and matress pad in the crib. We were able to get her calmed down a bit, but before we got her back into bed, she threw up again, all over herself. See above, from "I took her into the bathroom ..." except no tub this time. She finally passed out, exhausted, nearly an hour after I went upstairs thinking I would feed her.

Two hours later (10 pm), it happened again. Fortunately, she didn't throw up as much, and we hadn't dressed her after the second stripping, so from clean up to back down was much faster (this time, though, it got in her hair, which ... ew).

Twice more: once at 11:30 and again at 12:30. Worried and exhausted, we took her temperature both times, and she had no fever. Both times, she woke up crying, we cleaned up (by this time we had perfected putting down a clean baby bath towel under her, so clean up was now quick and easy), and she passed out from exhaustion within minutes of waking. It was harder, by far, for me to get back to sleep after each episode than for her.

I woke up a couple of times between 12:30 and morning; I checked the time, and went back to sleep. At 7:30 this morning, I heard her happy little Kid A morning babble over the monitor in our room; I went in to find her beaming at me, standing up in her crib in nothing but her diaper, the towel and her quilt in a heap at the foot of her crib. She went back down for a nap within an hour of waking up, but she had a decent breakfast and some formula, and no signs of any lingering problems.

So we're initiated. Growing up, I hated stomach bugs and vomiting worse than any other kind of sickness in the world. I would cry and cry and cry any time I had to throw up. My mom is the same way. I always thought that I would not do well the first time I had to be the responsible parent in that scenario, but I did just fine: plenty of compassion, plenty of keeping my wits about me, and plenty of (intestinal) fortitude. I'm not looking for a trophy or anything; I'm just glad she seems to be fine today.

And tomorrow, we celebrate (with about 40 of our closest friends and family members) her first birthday with a big party in the park. I think about those parents who go through much worse -- those who have children with medical or behavioral problems -- and I feel so much gratitude for our happy, healthy, strapping big girl. She's the light of our lives, and I can't imagine this world without her in it.

One-year portraits

2009-07-16T07:12:00.001-07:00

Our fabulous photographer, Nicole, came out to our place again last Saturday. Here's a sneak preview of three of the photos:

http://nicolescarborough.blogspot.com/

As of this moment (7/16/09), Kid A is the most recent blog entry; within a day or two, you may have to scroll down (or search) to see the pics. The entry is dated 7/15/09.

Don't you just want to eat her up?

Happy birthday, Audrey!

2009-07-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

Here's our happy little water babe, a few days before her first birthday.

Chompin' on a watermelon rind in the park. She's not a kid who likes a lot of fruit, so when she finds something she does like, we tend to let her go for it!

With her buddy Molly, at the park. Look, Mama: I've got my foot! I know I do this all the time, but still: I've got my FOOT!

It's so hard for me to believe that my tiny little baby is already one year old. I know that everybody says that, and I hate to be cliche. And yet, the reason everybody trips about their baby turning one is because it goes so fast, and so slow, and the days add up, one by one, drop by drop, and before you know it, what was once your baby is now your child. I think about all the things she can do now, and how very strong her will and personality are becoming, and even the seemingly simplest things that she can do now were impossible just a short time ago.

And I'm oh so very tired, because, well, remember back when she was first born? How hard she was, how difficult to soothe, how particular her needs? Well ... I'm a little concerned that we're entering a renewed period of cantankerousness. I am praying to whatever benevolent forces might be that we're not going to go through three tough months every year. That would be, well, not fun. TM and I joke that she's hit her terrible twos early. She is an advanced child. Seriously, she has begun to throw some pretty phenomenal temper tantrums. And she seems to be tired all the time. And she sleeps, it's not like she doesn't sleep: at least two naps a day, at least one hour each, and more often at least one of her daily naps is more like two hours or more. AND she sleeps for anywhere from 9 to 11 hours at night! Oh, I'm hoping this fussy phase will be short. And I'm fearing that it might not be.

But when she isn't fussy or tired, she is just the sweetest, happiest baby around. She still loves to be on the move; she's learned to climb the stairs, and loves to chase after the cats (who really do not love to be chased. Fortunately, she rarely gets close enough to them to freak them out too badly; Georgia, in particular, is a very good sport about the whole thing). She had two weeks of swimming "lessons" with her dad in mid-June, and spent 30 minutes a day for eight days splashing and shrieking and having a grand time. Since then, they've been hitting the pool in our condo complex more days than not, and they both love it.

She's closer and closer to walking all the time. I think that's what's making her both tired and fussy: I think her little brain and body are churning out new programming at a furious rate, and when it all comes together, I think we'll all settle back into a more "normal" state. Of course, it will be a new normal, involving chasing after a toddler for 12 hours a day!

We're looking forward to her big birthday bash on July 19th, but we celebrated fairly quietly over the July 4th weekend at my mom's, with dinner out (and breakfast, too), more presents (from Nana) than a one-year-old needs (thanks, Nana -- we love you!), and, of course, her first cake:

Fortunately, she was far more interested in getting it on her than in her, so thus far we're successfully dodging the sugar beast. We'll see whether that trend continues at her next party!

I'll try to post more often than once a month, I really do try not to let so much time go by. We'll see how July works out.

Developments

2009-06-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

This has been such a long week. I spent Tuesday and half of Wednesday in Santa Rosa, at my (hopefully!) very last CORE training. This one was on child maltreatment: indicators of physical abuse. With pictures and everything. Pretty much what you'd expect, so I won't go into detail for those who haven't ever been exposed to anything like that, and it wasn't like it was the first time I was seeing those sorts of things. But it's made it a lot harder this week to leave Kid A at daycare and go to work.

And she's been sleeping so much lately, that I hardly get to see her when I am at home. With the exception of last night, which I'll get to shortly, she's been going down between 6 and 7 pm, and sleeping until I wake her up at around 6:45 am. Considering that I drop her off at daycare as soon as she's changed and dressed, and that I don't get home until 6 pm, you can see that it leaves very little time to be together. I realized this morning, as I moved the box of formula out of my way while I made my breakfast, I've prepared maybe three bottles all week. If that. That's pitiful.

It makes me feel so sad. I know I'm not stay-at-home material. I do like my job. A lot. But Kid A is just so much fun these days -- so happy, smiling and laughing all the time, getting into everything, learning new stuff practically every day -- I would love to have more time with her. This week really makes me despise spending 40-50 minutes commuting each way. Bleh.

So last night*, she decided to stay up until 8:00. It was so nice to be able to finish feeding her her dinner, take a bath with her, and watch her play. Such a nice change from the rest of this week. TM even said she took an independent step while I ate my dinner and he supervised her playtime! We're pretty close to walking, I think. I predict before the end of the month.

* I began this post on Friday morning before work. It's now Saturday morning, and she's napping. So "last night" actually refers to Thursday night, for those of you following along at home.

Still no words yet. Lots and lots of babbling, and lots of new babbling sounds. She babbles along when TM or I sing to her, and "dances," too, by moving her little belly back and forth. A couple of weeks ago, we had our first heat wave of the spring, and we took her to TM's parents' pool, where she had an absolute blast. Splashing in such a big pool was big fun for her. Last weekend, we took her to the beach** for the first time, and she was amazed by the sand. She had an opportunity to check out both dry, sandy sand, and harder-packed sand. When we got her onto the harder sand nearer the water, she crawled around in huge loops, as fast as she could go. It was great to get her out into the fresh air and let her blow off energy. She's a very kinetic kid, constantly moving or trying to squirm her way out of a cuddle to get moving again. She loves to have her daddy hold her while he dances and jumps around -- she laughs and giggles like crazy. She loves it when we dangle her upside down. She's beginning to try to launch herself off of couches and chairs, and is starting to crawl up stairs and trying to crawl over things. She has discovered that she can open doors, and that there are things behind the doors that are interesting to check out. She opens the pantry door, and pulls herself up with the middle shelf, where there are boxes of cereal, and heavy cans of things. She'll take interesting things off of the shelf, and hold it with both hands while she sits back down to check it out. She carries things in her hands, or pushes them along with her, while she crawls all over the house.

And she is beginning to demonstrate her will. This is interesting to me. She is just beginning to push or swat at our faces if she doesn't like something. Nothing too serious yet, nothing big, but it is interesting to see her "push back" in an effort to change the course of things.

** The "beach" was actually a river beach. Even though I've been hankering to take Kid A to the ocean, our heat wave didn't last, and so we remained inland. Nice to have options, though. We'll eventually make it to the coast!

TM was laid off, and then his lay-off was rescinded. He will undoubtedly, though, be teaching at a different school in the district next year. He is credentialed in both biology and chemistry, so there's also a big chance that he might be teaching a new subject next year, as well. The district has not yet told him where he will go, and, as with most beaurocratic systems, their process leaves much to be desired. But we are thrilled that he has a job, and things are still looking ok in my line of work, so we feel very lucky and grateful.

I have taken a bunch of amazingly adorable pictures over the last few weeks, and plan to upload them this weekend, so I might add another post of pictures in the next day or so. Check back!

Oh, and Kid A is eleven months old today. The last month of her first year! I can hardly believe it.

So much to say, so much to say

2009-04-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

Boy, that's terrible: March 6 was really the last time I sat down to write anything? And even then, I was amazed at how the time was slipping away. Now that I'm up and running at work, it seems as though I am up and running from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep. But Kid A seems to be sleeping in this morning, I'm having an easy breakfast, and my lunch is already at work, so surprise! I've got an unexpected half hour free to talk to you! (Spoiler: there is a new picture at the very end of this post. It's a little treat for those of you who make it through to the end, and also for those of you who skip all the words and just scroll down to see the sweet little pumpkin.)

First, the Kid A milestones update:

She learned to crawl about a month ago! (Oh, she's 9.5 months old now.) Very exciting for her, and for us. I was beginning to think she would skip crawling, because she was getting so frustrated with wanting to be mobile, but not having the patience to stay on her hands and knees -- she much preferred to be helped up to standing than to practice trying to crawl. But, as babies are wont to do, all of a sudden she figured it out, and has been crawling all over the place. She's much happier that she can now get to where she wants to go. Of course, we haven't done all the things that the magazines and websites say you should do to babyproof our place, so that means we're just watching her like a hawk all the time. So far, so good, though!

She's become Olympic-class at pulling herself up to standing and getting back down again. She loves to stand in her Pack-n-play and wave at us and say "Hi." (That's her only word so far, by the way. "Hi." It's adorable, although I'm looking forward to some recognizable syllables.) She's trying out this new royalty/beauty pageant wave, the kind where it's all in the wrist. She seems to be doing it all the time, even when she's falling asleep on the bottle. Very cute. And the waving thing now seems to be happening for "Bye," too, which has just started in the past couple of days.

She still loves her daycare provider, Carmen. When I drop her off in the mornings, she gives them all big big smiles all around. It's wonderful to see, and I feel great about leaving her there.

She's eating lots and lots of different foods. She's losing her patience for pureed stuff and really wants to be trying real food. So far, pretty much anything with protein is a hit (oh, except for salmon. We were having some a couple of nights ago and she was sitting in her high chair at the table with us, and was eyeing my plate, so I gave her some. Not super successful. It's a strong flavor, so I'm not hugely surprised). She LOVES chicken, and has some for dinner every night. (This works out great, because I cook up some chicken breasts every weekend for my lunches during the week, and I just make a little extra that TM cubes up for her to feed herself with.) She also loved some amazingly delicious tofu that TM made last weekend, cooked in coconut milk and soy sauce and basil. Again, we were sitting down together, and she was super interested in what I was eating, so I gave her some, and she just kept coming back for more. I wasn't surprised that she liked tofu -- it's pretty bland, after all -- but I was surprised that she liked the other flavors that were with it. Although it was delicious.

Oh, and she has entered the beginning of the shrieking phase! So far, it's really cute, because she'll emit this high-pitched little scream, and then we'll sort of do it back to her, and we'll play that game for a good while before she gets distracted by something else. It's also cute because, so far, she isn't screaming for long periods of time, and it isn't yet super loud. We just sort of play catch with the screaming. It's fun ... for now, anyway!

Ok, briefly, before she wakes up and we have to get going for the day, my own personal updates:

I have been given my assignment in my new county, and I am back in Emergency Response (still with CPS, of course). I've been doing actual work for about 2.5 weeks now, and it's going very well. Very, very busy, but very well. For reasons that are unknown to me, I feel much more ready this time around to do ER investigations. Partly, it must be that I've done them before and so I've gotten over some of my initial fears about barging into people's lives (although I am, of course, still respectful and do my best to barge in as unobtrusively as possible). I think another piece of it is that Kid A isn't so little this time around, and the emotional nakedness of having a newborn has subsided a great deal; last time, I think I feared being an emotional basketcase, and this time I feel much stronger.

My referrals so far are intense: much more so than anything I worked on in my old job. I'm glad they're giving me real work to do, and I'm glad that because I'm still new, I won't be getting any new referrals for at least two weeks, but I have quite a lot on my plate for the next two weeks. I definitely feel the pressure, with the mandated timelines, to get things done quickly, but investigations themselves just take so long. There are always lots of people to talk to, and so far, nothing is just cut-and-dried "Yep, it happened and we have proof" or "Nope, it's all a big misunderstanding." I know that there will be a few of those, on both sides, but most of the time not. I wish I could write some details to flesh out what I'm talking about, in terms of the intensity, but, well, of course I can't. So yes, it's intense and busy, but I really like it. I like my supervisor, and I like the vibe of the ER unit in my new county. Good folks, little drama, good supervisors all around ... I'm happy. I feel like I landed in the right place.

And generally, I feel like I landed in the right place. I think my new county is, in many ways, a better fit for me than my old county. I think the size of the operations, and the size of the county, suits me better than the large county and bloated agency I worked for last year. I see that there's room to make an impression and advance my career in a more tangible way; the deputy director is in our building, as opposed to being off in some office somewhere far away. We only have three program managers, as opposed to the however many -- ten? twelve? -- the other county used to have. So there's fewer layers of bureaucracy, which is also a much better fit for me. Had I started out here, I wouldn't have appreciated it; I had to have the experience I had, with the bloat, and the layoffs, and all of that, in order to really appreciate what I've fallen into. So I'm immensely grateful for all of it: the roller coaster, and the job experience, and going back to work so early, and the layoff, and the six weeks with Kid A before I started working again, and the sheer joy of discovering that I really like my job. I like ER, and I think I'm going to be good at it. And I like my new, goofy, little county.

I've got some great new pictures of Kid A from Easter, and I'll try to post some soon. (We just went to the park during the day, and that's where the pictures were taken; that night, we went to TM's parent's house to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. 35 years! Congrats, M & E!)

But here's one for your enjoyment for now. She's SO CUTE!

Picture postcard for the new year (albeit not so new anymore)

2009-03-06T22:32:00.000-08:00

From Christmas: Boy, how time flies. Truly frightening.

Kid A is 8 months old today!

In honor of the occasion, some more photos:

Again, from Christmas. We call this "Christmas Drunk," also known as "too much Christmas." And it was only the first one (of three)!
Early January, just before her 6-month birthday. I like this one because her face has changed so much from the months before (and has changed so much since then). I also totally dig her expression:

Priceless.

At the end of January, we took our first family trip to a museum, the De Young in San Francisco. Kid A did so well; she loved looking at all the different shapes and colors (and people!). This was her little cafe stop snack break.

Although we don't have photographic evidence, a few weeks after this outing, we took her to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (which I think I may have written about), and she loved, loved, loved it.

We like to buck convention when it comes to gendered clothing; here's our "little prince" enjoying the delights of the Cheerio:

The weekend of my birthday, our dear and dearly missed friends were in SF, and we caught up with them and their twin boys for a little visit. Here's Kid A's first playground swing ride:

From last week, lovin' both "grandpa" and breakfast (the latter being much more present than the former):
Life's been super busy, and I wish I had time to write words, but perhaps another time. Love to all!

New stuff, good stuff, old stuff ... blue stuff?

2009-02-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

I finished the first week at the new job. It's a mixed bag, really: I'm happy to have a job, I'm not happy about how little I'm going to be seeing my child. She's sleeping great at night, and she's now sleeping a total of 11-12 hours each night. Which means: I get home a little before 6:00, and she's down for the night between 6:30 and 7:00. She will usually wake up for another feeding between 8:00 and midnight, but it's a total of about 20 minutes or so that she's up, and then she sleeps through until somewhere between 5:30 and 6:45. And I drop her off at Carmen's at 7:00, and I'm off to work. Yeah. That's going to suck. I have a feeling I'm really going to be living for the weekends.

It was great, though: they observe Lincoln's birthday (which is also my dad's birthday), and they observe it on the actual date. Which meant that I had Thursday off. And they also observe Presidents' Day, this coming Monday, so I'm at the dawn of a three-day weekend. So my first two weeks are short weeks, which is pretty nice. (Sadly, though, there won't be another holiday until Memorial Day, so I'm looking at a pretty lengthy dry spell. Can't have everything, I suppose.) Nice to have a soft landing, as my friend Ryan would say.

Last weekend, we went down to my dad's house for a pre-birthday visit. Dad is doing surprisingly well, physically, but cognitively he's not going so great. He's having difficulty with mental functioning like math, reading and writing. He's supposed to be doing some brain-boosting video games and the like, but I'm not sure he's able to get his computer functioning in order to get going on that. He's also almost certainly going to have to move out of his house. He's 8 payments delinquent, and even if his lender approves a modification of his loan, I'm not sure the payments will be affordable. He got approved for Medi-Cal, but it's a share-of-cost benefit, and what they expect him to cover before Medi-Cal kicks in is about half of his monthly income. I'll be applying for some other stuff for him -- IHSS and an application for low-income housing -- but I'm just not sure what's best for him, or what's possible.

That said, it was a pretty nice visit. TM and I were both pretty tired, having hosted TM's family the night before for a little dinner party, so it was nice to have a mellow little visit and go to bed early. And Kid A did great -- slept straight through the night, something like 11 hours without a feeding. On the drive down, I was venting a little bit to TM -- sometimes it gets to me that my dad isn't normal, and I end up feeling sad and sorry for myself that we can't take advantage of all the fun things there are to do in that area -- and TM said, "Well, let's just start doing things that we want to do when we come visit. We have a family now; let's spend some time with your dad, and also spend some time doing stuff with Kid A." TM's parents are great about balancing together time and not-together time when they visit relatives or go on trips with their children and grandchildren, so he's had some good modeling in that respect. I, on the other hand, am blessed with two parents who can never quite get enough of their children, and so there's a lot of guilt (especially with my dad) about not doing/giving enough. And so, last Sunday morning, we got up when Kid A did, fed her, went out to the local coffee shop for our Salinas coffee ritual, came back to dad's and did a few more things around the house for him, and then broke the news that we were going to Monterey to take Kid A to the aquarium. He did his usual I'm-upset-because-you're-leaving grumbling, and I felt my usual guilt for not doing/giving/being enough, and then we left. And had a GREAT TIME.

Oh, the aquarium. I love that place. Kid A was her best Little Mesmo* and could not get enough of looking at the fish. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is an incredible, amazing place. The tanks themselves are stunning: lots of contrasting colors and interesting, unpredictable movement, perfect for a baby to get transfixed by. She stared and stared and stared all day, was happy in the Ergo carrier, and only fussed when she was hungry. We spent probably four hours there, longer than I would have expected, and she never cried, never fell asleep (even though I'm sure she was probably tired). When we left, we walked up Lighthouse Avenue to Gianni's Pizza (a place with a lot of memories for me, not to mention delicious pizza), and within a block or two, she was asleep.

* Little Mesmo is a name we have for her when she's utterly transfixed (i.e. "mesmerized") by something. It's that look of wonder and awe that all babies get when they are looking at something new, and wonderful, and awesome. "Little Mesmo" is also an idea we have for a series of books that we joke about from time to time, where the same story is told from two different perspectives, the baby's and the parent's. Yeah. Like that's ever going to happen. But we like to joke about it sometimes.

I'm turning 36 in a couple of weeks. No, actually, in 8 days. I told TM that what I want for my birthday is for him to do all the parenting one night a week so that I can go to a yoga class. We agreed on Tuesday nights, and even though it's not my birthday yet, we agreed that I would start going when I started working. So, last Tuesday night, I went to my first yoga class since before Kid A was born. It was great, and really hard. The studio is easy walking distance from our place (ah, pedestrian living, how I will miss you when you're gone), so from the time I leave the house until the time I get home, it's only 2 hours of being gone, but boy, it's some quality self-care time. I'm very happy about it. (And, of course, I'm waaay out of shape and way heavier than I'm happy with, so it also kind of sucks. But you gotta start somewhere, no?)

Ok, she's waking up from a nice, hour-long nap, so I'm off. Happy Valentine's Day to one and all!

The Ill-Advised 25 Things

2009-02-02T21:58:00.000-08:00

My goodness, it's been a long time! I thought, at the beginning of my unemployment, that I'd be posting all the time. Obviously, that was not to be. I don't even know where the time goes. Okay, I can think of a few things. Kid A's a lot more fun these days, and when she's with me (she has spent some time with her care provider to keep some continuity, and to provide me an opportunity to handle some miscellaneous things), I have hardly a minute of down time. Facebook has proven endlessly fascinating of late: people have been exploding out of the woodwork of the past, and whenever I'm online, it's hard to tear myself away. And TM has gotten us completely sucked into Battlestar Galactica. Yeah, shut up. It's a good show.

In the interest of brevity, and in an effort to cover as much of the last few weeks as possible, I am inspired by the silly "25 Things About Me" that seems to have taken Facebook by storm.

1. We just transitioned Kid A to her own crib. This is night 3. I was surprised, on the first night, at how sad I was to have her out of our bed. If someone had told me before she was born that she was going to spend almost 7 months sleeping in our bed with us, I would have said that person was out of his mind. Just goes to show, I guess, that nothing, especially parenthood, ends up fitting in with one's preconceptions.
2. The transition to the crib has gone really really well. She's handled it great, and it really is nice to reclaim our bedroom.
3. I went to IKEA today and bought a new dresser for our bedroom. Yay!
4. I have been engaging my domestic goddess fantasies somewhat. Last week was all about cooking. (The last couple of weeks, actually.) Here is a partial list of some of the dishes I have made:
- chocolate chip banana bread
- havarti-and-oregano-stuffed chicken breasts with mustard sauce
- spinach and bacon quiche
- butternut squash pecan spice bread
- baby food (butternut squash and peaches)
- chicken thighs with tomatoes, capers, anchovies and olives
5. Kid A's diet is increasing in variety. She now eats peaches, pears, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, avocado, Cheerios, oatmeal, bananas, and rice cereal. We haven't tried peas again since the first time (they made her cry!).
6. Kid A can now sit up independently and reliably. This means that she can play independently for longer periods of time, which is both fun to watch and also a benefit to getting adult things done (albeit brief adult things).
7. She has cut her first tooth. It's still pretty close to the gumline, so I haven't actually seen it, but I've been able to feel it for about a week now.
8. I officially have a job! I start on Monday, February 9. I just received my final offer letter via fax today.
9. I just realized that this isn't so much "25 Things About Me" as it is "A couple of things about me and 20-some-odd things about my daughter." *sigh*
10. I am surprised at how hard it has been to get the baby weight off. It kinda sucks, actually.
11. The various projects I had for myself -- the photos, the sewn scarf, the crocheting, the quilt-making -- none of them has materialized. I started the scarf, and I've cut out some pieces for the quilt, and I've made half of one crocheted baby bootie. Nothing completed.
12. My dad has got me worried. He's so depressed (or out of it, or something) that he never calls anymore. I'm trying to work on some of his financial affairs, since he's in pretty bad shape, and I call him every 3-4 days, but he never calls anymore. This is highly unusual for him. This has been going on for several weeks. I have no idea what's going to happen.
13. I turn 36 in 3 weeks.
14. Kid A turns 7 months on Friday.
15. I bought a new baby carrier (2nd hand, off the internet) for Kid A recently -- an Ergo -- and I love it. This morning Kid A and I went on a brisk (okay, cold) morning walk.
16. Having so many people from my past pop up on Facebook is tripping me out. It has me reminiscing, for sure, but also thinking, "Am I still who I was then? What changes? What stays the same?"
17. I have decided that someday, when Kid A is much, much older, I will probably return to grad school. Can't get enough, apparently!
18. I was 18 when I got my first tattoo. I have many tattoos now that I like, but that is the one that I dislike. Someday, I will get it covered up with a piece of ink that I feel good about.
19. Now that Kid A is grabbing at my face all the time, I badly want eye surgery to correct my vision! I haven't been able to wear contacts for years.
20. I am tired and should probably be in bed.
21. I can't stand forwarded emails that are all, "pass this on in the next 5 minutes and you shall have your hearts desire!"
22. I should probably make a list of all the things I have to do tomorrow.
23. One of my favorite little unemployment projects has been adding to my recipe collection. I started a journal-type book, into which I'm cutting and pasting (like literally, not the cyber kind of cut and paste) recipes that I've gotten off the internet, or from magazines, etc. I have quite a few new recipes to try, as well.
24. I was 21 years old when I got engaged; 25 when I got married.
25. Before I became a mom, I had dreams every night, and could almost always remember them in the morning. This used to be a regular topic of conversation for TM and me. Now I'm lucky if I remember one dream a week.

Wow, I did it. Not sure I would do that again as a blog post, but there you have it. I hope it wasn't too boring!

Long overdue

2009-01-05T19:04:00.001-08:00

Well, hello there. It's been a while. Life's been a bit hectic, with getting fired,* enjoying the holidays, and beginning my new life as a (temporary) housewife. First things first: it would seem that I have a job. The county in which I interviewed in December finally called on the 30th to say that they would like to "move forward" with my "hiring process." It's by no means a job offer, but they go through these layers of background checks prior to making an offer. So far, I've done my fingerprinting, and am waiting for that clearance to be completed; then, they'll call to schedule a physical and drug test. THEN, they'll call to officially offer me the job. In the meantime, I am enjoying my time off.

* Of course, I got laid off, not fired, but it amuses me to say "fired." My first year of grad school, I interned with a guy who I just adored who was constantly worrying -- in a half-serious way -- that he was going to get fired. This cracked me up every time, because, as I kept telling him, you can't really get fired from a job you're doing for free. It's hard to screw up so badly at a mandatory internship that they tell you not to come back.

At any rate, I've been really busy, even after the layoff. My first week of unemployment flew by, because I scheduled lots and lots of things for myself. This week is shaping up to be a bit mellower, but I've written a long list of projects for my down time. There's no way I'll be able to get to all of them:

- scan, organize, and put away photos (probably a 4-hour project, once I have all the supplies I need)
- organize the bathroom cabinets and drawers
- thank-you notes from Christmas (yes, I realize it's already the 12th!)
- finish Kid A's baby blanket that I started knitting when I was pregnant
- crochet (I recently taught myself, and am making a hat. I am considering, though, unraveling it and starting over, since I was making stuff up until TM's mom showed me what I was doing wrong)
- scarf (a coworker had this amazing cloth scarf that I was inspired by and am planning to sew one for myself)
- quilt (out of the excess of receiving blankets that we have and are not using -- and probably never will)

Of course, this list does not include the various cooking and baking projects I'm planning to indulge in, or the exercise I plan to get, or the various mundane things I also plan to do (like cleaning the house for TM, so that he can spend his non-working time on the weekends with us, or paying bills). As you can see, I'm indulging in some throwback domestic fantasies, and am enjoying it. It's great if it's not the only thing I'm doing, and I know there's an end in sight. It would be truly not great if I didn't have a job to start in a few weeks.

Kid A update: she's eating! So far, she's had rice cereal, baby oatmeal (which she really digs), carrots (that I steamed and pureed myself), peaches, and peas. The peas were a little advanced for her; they were pretty thick. Next time, I think I'll thin them with a little formula. It's what I do with the carrots, anyway.

She's also sitting up extremely well. She gets excited about toys she's playing with or a toy she wants and ends up face-planting a lot, but she does great in the couple of high chairs she's been in (when we've been out at restaurants). So I just ordered a Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair online, and I can't wait for it to come. It should be here on Friday! Whee!

As I mentioned in November, we had some professional photos taken of Kid A. We wanted to wait until we gave the family their Christmas presents before posting them widely. Here are a few shots from our session. Kid A was 4.5 months old. (She just turned 6 months on January 6th!)

Well, Happy New Year! I'm off to clean the kitchen ...

O Holy Pink Slip

2008-12-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

What a week. On Wednesday, I was officially laid off. It's now Friday, and soon I will be getting ready to go to a countywide "After the Layoff" workshop with who knows how many other people.

In my office, 38 people got pink slips. (And no, they are not pink. Sadly.) Only 13 CPS workers remain; only 2 workers remain in my Emergency Response unit (out of 15). The district I work in was hit harder than any other; we are the office that gets the bulk of the new hires. Even so, there are plenty of people with more than 4 years with the county who are gone. The people that I associate with child welfare in this county are gone. Damn good workers. Committed. Gone.

I decided ahead of time that Wednesday night would be the night to bring in our living tree and decorate it. For the first time in years, we have a Christmas tree. It's lovely. It's small, but it's got a string of white lights on it, and I was able to fit more than half of our ornament collection on it.* It really looks lovely, and it makes me happy to show it to Kid A in the mornings, all lit up, and talk to her about some of the ornaments.

* Our ornament collection is surprisingly large, especially considering how long it's been since we put up a tree. For years now, my dad's side of the family has exchanged ornaments for Christmas presents, and they have always given one each to TM and me. And for a few years in the early days, my dad got ornaments not just for TM and me, but for our two cats, as well. One year, he even got ornaments for the Yorkies we'd inherited from TM's grandfather ... Point is, we've got a LOT of ornaments. Go, little tree!

Tomorrow, our Christmas begins. We're heading up to my mom's, where we'll see my cousin and his wife and their twin boys for the first time since Kid A's been born. They live in Des Moines, and we took a trip out there in early January, so Kid A was with us, of course, but not on the outside. My brother is coming, too, with his girlfriend, who I'll be meeting for the first time, which is very exciting. And my uncle and his wife, who is excited to meet Kid A. It's a big weekend coming up. And of course it means that we have even less time to get ready for Christmas than usual, because I'm working pretty much every day except for the weekends and Christmas Day. (The rant about having no time off for the holidays and yet being laid off on the 31st would go here, had I the time to write it. Imagine what you might say, and that's pretty much what I would say, too.) Surprisingly, I'm pretty ready. I've still got a number of presents to wrap for later Christmas celebrations, but TM said he would help me with that, so I'm not stressing. He's got the next two weeks off, you bet he can help!

Last night, I baked a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie for this weekend. I'm super anxious to find out if the crust turned out well. I'm a big crust person, and to me, a pie is only as good as its crust. When we were in Mendocino for our 9th wedding anniversary, the Mendocino Bookstore clerk gave me a simple pie crust recipe that calls for Crisco instead of butter. She swore that Crisco's the secret. TM was joking that his mom would be appalled; when we talked pie crust with her after that, she said, "Oh yeah, that's what I use." We'll see if Crisco is the answer. I'll report back.

Tonight, we're going to take Kid A to TM's department Christmas party at the chair's house. None of his colleagues have met her, so it'll be fun to show her off. Hopefully, she won't get too tired and cranky -- the party starts right at her usual evening naptime. Fingers crossed!

If I don't get a chance to post again until after the holidays, Happy Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice, Happy Kwanzaa, and a Happy, Jolly Good New Year to all!

Stone soup

2008-12-09T21:27:00.000-08:00

The Board of Supervisors of my county voted today to cut millions of dollars, hundreds of jobs. Read the article, it does a better job of explaining the details of the approved budget cuts.

I was at that Board of Sups meeting today. From a little before 9:00 this morning until nearly 2:00 this afternoon. Public comment was still going on (wrapping up, though) when I left. Hundreds of people spoke. Social workers, eligibility workers, clerks, foster parents, adoptive parents, attorneys, community members, former CPS clients all turned out and spoke from the heart. Adult Protective Services faces huge cuts in a tiny department. It's brutal.

One of the sups said at one point during public comment, "You make it sound as though we have a choice about making these cuts. We don't. We have no choice." The point was that we know cuts have to be made, but the cuts as proposed will break the Bureau. Some estimates from workers and supervisors indicate that 80% of the workers in my district office will be laid off. Workloads for remaining social workers will double. APS will lose over 60% of its small workforce. One of the people who spoke sounded like an individual with lots of job security -- 30 years with the county, and a pretty high-level individual. He got a warning letter.

Things are bad all over. It's an incredibly scary time for me. I never thought that I would see the kinds of headlines that have been all over every media source for the last few months. I never thought that good, secure, necessary, federally-mandated county jobs would be subjected to the axe like this. I never expected that this country would face another Great Depression, but it looks like that's exactly where we're headed. I feel super lucky for the opportunity to have already had an interview with another county. Things could still work out. But I'm appalled at what's happened here. I'm horrified at the careless disregard that this county is demonstrating toward its employees. I'm disgusted that they must have known this was coming, and over 100 people will be getting pink slips within the week, and summarily dismissed on New Year's Eve. I'm outraged at the mismanagement: less than four months ago, they hired four new people, and spent nine weeks putting us through an intensive training unit. The waste just sickens me.

Needless to say, the atmosphere in my office is dismal. My colleagues are angry, stunned, deflated, worried and depressed. We still have three weeks to slog through. We still have the long march of the pink slips calls, whenever those come out. We still have families to serve, investigations to complete, court reports to write, children to protect. We have to find new jobs, get our own families through the holidays, figure out how to hold on to our remaining assets. It's exhausting.

And tomorrow, I get to drive to Novato (over an hour away from where I live) for another day of training. For real.

Joy to the World

2008-12-06T21:25:00.001-08:00

Man, I'm so tired, but if I don't write now, I suspect another weekend will go by without a post.

Kid A has not slept through the night since that first night, but nights are definitely easier since she's transitioned from nursing to exclusively formula. In fact, life in general has been easier. I think that, because I knew she wasn't getting enough from nursing, but I didn't know how much more she needed, supplementing with formula was always such a guessing game. Does she need 2 ounces or 3? Is she really still hungry, or is it time to try to get her to sleep? Is she hungry, or is it gas? Since the wean, it has been so easy. Now she's up to four ounces per bottle, and she wants a bottle every 2 hours or so. She makes these little grunts when she's hungry, and if she doesn't look tired during a feeding, that means she's still up and ready for more playing. It's just terrific, being able to tell what she wants and meeting those needs. Life is sweet these days.

Here's some things that she is NOT doing yet:
* sitting up on her own
* teething
* rolling over
* laughing (much)
* eating cereal (she plays with the spoon every few days, though)

What she IS doing:
* Standing. As often as possible, for as long as possible.
* Holding the bottle during feedings, and practicing putting it into and taking it out of her mouth.
* Refusing the pacifier. This started maybe two weeks ago, and she has been consistent both in refusing it when offered, and no longer needing it when going to sleep.
* Grabbing her feet
* Looking for dropped toys and trying to get them back
* Continuing her love affair with her hands and everyone else's
* Babbling, squealing, and raspberry-ing

This morning, Kid A and I went out to Peet's while TM slept in. On our way back, we stopped off at Home Depot, because they had some living Christmas trees on display. I picked out a tree and had them set it aside, and later in the day, TM and I went back with Kid A and purchased the tree and some new lights. TM did a little research when we got home, and learned that our tree shouldn't be indoors for more than 10 days, so instead of putting it up this weekend, we'll put it off a week. I'm going to try to put up some lights outside tomorrow.

I also called my mom today, since TM had more work to do today than he'd originally anticipated, and asked her to come down and help out with a little babysitting. Fortunately, she was able to spring into action and came in the late afternoon. Ironically, Kid A went down for a nap just a few minutes before Mom got here, and napped for about three hours. But Mom and I spent some time visiting while I dusted and put up a few Christmas decorations, and we even made a little garland out of old-fashioned colored glass ball ornaments and white curling ribbon. It's hanging from the curtain rod above our sliding glass door, and it looks very festive. When Kid A woke up, Mom played with her while TM and I rushed around, vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms and whatnot. All in all, it was a great visit.

Tomorrow, we'll head back into our native lands to visit friends. Originally, the plan was to make eggnog, but now it looks as though we will be making gingerbread houses! How fun. We're also going to have a brief visit with some friends who just had a baby boy about a month ago.

December is already feeling so crunched: we have our first family Christmas gathering the weekend before Christmas at my mom's (my cousin and his wife and their twin boys will be in California over Christmas, and their first stop is my aunt's house, who lives across the street from my mom). That means I only have 2 weekends to get ready for Christmas, and this one's already half over! I'm kind of in denial about it.

My interview on Thursday went fine, I think. It's out of my control now. I did my best; we'll just wait and see.

Visual Representation of County Employment

2008-12-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

Sadly, this has become my life:

more animals

All Through the Night

2008-12-04T07:31:00.000-08:00

Woo hoo! Put Kid A down last night at 7:45, and she slept STRAIGHT THROUGH until 5:45 this morning! A little after 3, she made some noises that sounded like she was going to wake up for a bottle, but no -- she went back to sleep! I'm sorry for all the exclamation points, but hey! I feel great! I even went to bed late last night!

I have my interview today. I've been preparing, so I'm hopeful. Will post more later.

Slept through the night! I'm so proud of my big ol' baby.

Hello Dolly holiday

2008-11-30T22:20:00.000-08:00

Despite driving for two hours every day from Thursday through today, our Thanksgiving holiday was truly wonderful. We spent Thanksgiving and Friday with my Dad and my late aunt's family, and it was great to see everyone. It was a wonderful, laid-back, mellow day, and not as sad as I'd expected. We did not do the standard Thanksgiving meal (it was too hard for my cousins to try to do the traditional stuff, having lost their mom last month), but instead my cousin grilled steaks, chicken, and corn on the cob, and there were baked potatoes, a terrific garlic potato soup that my brother's roommate contributed, salad, rolls, and more desserts than you can shake a stick at, including the amazing Hello Dollys that I discovered were the simplest crowd-pleasing dessert imaginable. I started making them when I was eight months pregnant, and have brought them to every potluck I've been to since. The only people who don't like them are those who have aversions to pecans or coconut, otherwise, people can't seem to get enough of them. (They're also sometimes called Magic Cookie Bars, and some people call them Nanaimo Bars, although the cookbook with the Hello Dolly recipe has a different recipe for Nanaimo Bars. That is probably more information than you wanted about Hello Dollys.)

Yesterday and today we spent at my mom's house. My mom invited TM's parents and grandparents, as well as my brother (who again brought his roommate -- Hi, Peter! Thanks for the terrific bruschetta!) to spend the afternoon with us on Saturday, and again, a lovely time was had by all. Kid A is TM's grandparents' fifth great-grandchild. They really enjoyed being able to spend time with her. As TM's grandpa pointed out, they had only met her once, and that was when she was about a week old, so they had a great time with her emerging sociability.

It's much later at night than I would like, and there's so much I want to write. Kid A is doing amazing. She's exhibiting some head-cold symptoms, and the last half hour of our drive home was excruciating, but once she was out of her car seat, she was mostly back to her usual (of late) happy, talkative self. She's been hungry lately, taking in more formula than I've ever seen her do. And the big news is, we weaned her this weekend. She nursed to sleep the last three days (for naps) and nights, but today she did not nurse at all. I feel a little nostalgic already for our nursing days, but I am really glad to be done with pumping. The last 2 weeks I'd been pumping less than 4 ounces each day, and it was starting to feel like more effort than it was worth. I'd really been keeping it up for the antibodies more than for nutrition (and had been protecting my supply so that I could nurse at night). But we started introducing a midnight bottle last week, and it worked out beautifully -- she falls asleep almost instantly upon finishing the bottle, and sleeps longer, so I'm up fewer times during the night -- so even the night nursing no longer seemed necessary or even beneficial. The upshot is, only 5% of me misses nursing. The other 95% is glad that formula isn't as difficult as I would have thought, and in public or among mixed company (such as male family members -- I'm way more modest with my family than I am with my friends!), it's quite nice to be able to feed Kid A without having to sequester myself, or drag out the hooter hider.

Ok, I'd love to keep going, but I really must get to bed, or else I'll end up with a head cold! Happy Thanksgiving!

So FUN!

2008-11-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

This morning, a photographer came to our place to take some photos of Kid A. It was an amazing, wonderful time -- Kid A had a meltdown about 10 minutes before the photographer was due to arrive, and we were able to get her down for a nap.* And thankfully, our place is somewhat hard to find, so our photographer got a teensy bit lost, which bought us a slightly longer nap for the babe. When we were ready to get started, we brought her into the nursery, swaddled, thinking we'd get some sleeping photos, but she woke up pretty much right away, and once we got her unwrapped, she was so taken with the novelty of the big black camera and the sound of the shutter that she didn't fuss. She proceeded to be an absolutely delightful angel of a Gerber baby for the next 90 minutes. TM and I had such a great time, and Kid A graced us with smile after smile after smile. Yay yay yay!

*Thank heavens we didn't have to actually go anywhere for the photos. It was wonderful to be at home, with all our stuff, able to change her (and ourselves!) in a flash (so to speak), and not worry about getting her to a location on time. I cannot wait for the (digital) proofs to arrive!

Ok, now for the other, work-related news. The day that the CFS director gave us the news about the "potential" layoffs, I decided to dig up the email I received at the end of September from a neighboring county, indicating that I am on their eligibility list for an interview. I called them up, in a spirit of gathering information about when they are looking at interviewing/hiring. The HR person I spoke with said, "Oh, we were planning on sending you an email today or tomorrow to set up an interview!" Wow. I mean, really. Wow. The timing could not have been better. Within two hours of the most dismal news I could have imagined, at least a window of opportunity had opened, just a crack. What I really have going for me (as does my friend who was hired along with me, and who also has an interview pending), is that this county has hired a large group of new workers, all of whom we have been in trainings with for the last 2.5 months. Not only do we know all of their new workers (many of whom we already knew, through being classmates or having interned together), but this county has been the lead host county for these trainings. It is even possible that my current county did not actually pay for our trainings, but the host counties (four in all) may have footed the bill. This is a huge selling point during my interview: "You have already paid to train me, therefore you should hire me."

My plan is to prepare like crazy for this interview, so that I stand the best chance possible of receiving an offer. In this whole process, there is very little that I can control, but the one thing that I am sure of is that I can prepare my answers. Not that I know what the questions are, but I know some of the points that I need to make, and I am going to write, whenever I can, some social-work-y paragraphs. If all goes well, it is possible I will transition seamlessly from layoff to new job. Please send whatever prayers, visualizations, good thoughts, etc. you feel comfortable with my way! Mama needs a new job!

Yesterday, I met a good friend, who happens to work for the other county, at the Farmer's Market near where we used to live in Oakland. It was great to see her, and Kid A was delightful. It was a beautiful day, and people were out in full force at the Market. There was a zydeco-flavored band playing when we got there, and Kid A really seemed to enjoy the music. I also had a great time talking with a lively and exuberant 5-year-old girl who was fascinated by my knitting. We spent a little time walking along Lake Merritt, and then we headed back home.

This weekend has been all about sleep for my little one. She took a gigantic nap yesterday when we got home -- three hours, I think. She woke up this morning at 5, but was ready to go back down at 6, and slept until I got up at 8. She napped again for about 30-40 minutes (and likely would have slept longer, if we hadn't awakened her for the photos) at 10, and went back down at a little after noon. And who knows how much longer she'll sleep?!

I am absolutely LOVING having DVR. I have been able to keep up with my shows, and I'm stoked. Grey's Anatomy was awesome this week, as was Survivor. I'm even watching Top Chef, The Daily Show and Colbert, even 30 Rock! Ah, life is good ...

Everybody knows things are bad, worse than bad

2008-11-21T07:28:00.001-08:00

That's a sampled lyric from a mix by Steinski. TM bought the CD about a month ago, and I've been hooked on it ever since. He's a great DJ, check it out: "Nothing to Fear" is the disc.

Anyway, that lyric has been in my head for about 48 hours straight now. My first-choice county, the only county I wanted to work for, the one that finally hired me after being passed over in the first round, the one that has been a serious roller-coaster ride, is looking at layoffs. And when I say "looking at layoffs," I mean they are going to do it. When I say "looking at layoffs," I mean it's a bloodbath -- somewhere between 10-25% of their workforce just in Child Protective Services. So things are bad, worse than bad. Morale is shot, the office is a crummy place to be. In fact, I'm supposed to be in the shower right now, getting ready to go. But I kind of can't bring myself to do it. I got assigned another referral yesterday, and I'm wondering, How am I supposed to apply myself to learning a new job and all its functions and duties, when I know I'm out the door in less than six weeks? I know that I will do it, because that's the kind of person I am, but the whole office is feeling that way. One of the supervisors told workers that they should be looking for a new job if they have less than three years with the county. That feels insane to me.

So things are going to get weird. I have some good news, too, but I'm going to hold off on writing about that now. I think I need to stay in the crappy part of it right now, to honor the bad feelings, since I so often jump to optimism and the power of positive thinking. That's there, too, but this is all about the fact that it kind of sucks right now.

More later.

What she's up to

2008-11-15T22:34:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost two weeks since I last had a chance to write. It's late, and I really should be in bed, but I'm not sure when I'll get another chance to post, so ...

Kid A is now well over four months old. She is doing all sorts of cool new stuff. Mainly, she is practicing -- over and over and over again -- grabbing objects and stuffing them into her mouth, taking them back out, and putting them back in again. It's really funny when she has been staring at something we are holding for her, and then makes a sudden move to grab the object and tries to put it in her mouth ... but she has missed the toy, and she succeeds in putting only her own hands in her mouth. Very amusing for her daddy and me!

She is also "talking" much much more. The other night, while we were having some quiet time after nursing, I started just making random sounds, and actually worked my way through the entire alphabet. There were certain sounds that interested her more than others (I could tell by how vigorously she kicked her legs in response to a sound), but she was transfixed by all of them, just looking up at me with her enormous eyes. Anyway, I have been making a greater effort to introduce her to "letter" sounds, because she is more and more interested in "talking" to us. She doesn't really laugh yet, but she does this funny thing when she's excited or really happy ... oh my goodness, I don't know if I can describe it! It's a loud and vocal inhale. I don't know if it's something she would have done anyway or if she learned it from me; for the longest time now, I've been giving her tummy-raspberries when I change her diaper, and in between belly-blows, I lift my head up and inhale with an excited look on my face, and I make a sort of excited sound while I'm breathing in. I sort of think that that is where she got it, and it totally cracks TM and me up!

Another neat thing is that it is now a surprise as to what she might decide to smile at. For instance, one night I was holding her quietly, thinking that she was going to fall asleep. I had nursed her, and she was lying in my arms with her pacifier, just looking up at me, and I decided to "shush" her. So I started going, "Shhh," and she looked at me and just broke into the biggest grin behind her paci. I did it again, and she had the same reaction. I did it 5 or 6 more times, and by this time I was laughing so hard. Needless to say, there was no nap after that!

Kid A and I went shopping with my mom today. My mom was nice enough to buy me a few new shirts for work (thanks, Mom/Nana!). Unfortunately, Kid A had a super rough day and it was really hard for me. She got hungry and tired and overstimulated, and I was never able to meet all of her needs sufficiently. The worst part was the noises. Over and over again, there were way too many loud and surprising noises that just sent her over the edge. First there was a really loud motorcycle, just as she was about to fall asleep for her Nana, while I was browsing in a store. Then, after a fairly decent nap, I went into a public restroom to for a long-overdue diaper change. The bathroom was really small, and the toilets were so loud when they flushed! Five or six flushes during our short diaper change, and poor Kid A's eyes bugged out every time and she flailed her arms and kicked her legs ... it was pretty awful for me, since her little system had already been overtaxed. I realized today that if I take her on outings like that, I have to ensure that I have comfortable places for her to eat and to sleep, so that everyone concerned will have an enjoyable time. If I can't be sure that those things are possible, I probably shouldn't go. This will be an adjustment for me, but I think she's starting to be easier to read, in terms of her preferences and sensitivities.

In other news, I am fully an Emergency Response worker now. I have completed the client contact portion of my first two investigations, and all that remains is the bureaucratic documentation/forms-completion components. So far it's going well. I suppose that's really all I have to say about that right now.

And I have new hair! I have chopped off the long, graduate-student hair, and I have a cute, short, new 'do. I hope to post some photos soon, especially since I have no idea when I might be seeing folks these days!

So glad I got a chance to do this. Off to bed!

Picture postcard

2008-11-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

Kid A had her 4-month pediatrician appointment on Friday (Halloween). The doc said she's doing great. Here are her stats, at not-quite-four-months old:
- She weighs 14 lbs, 9.4 oz
- She's 26 & 3/4 inches tall
- She's in the 75th percentile for weight, and
- She's off the charts for height (above 95th percentile).

Basically, she's healthy, tall and lean. She handled her vaccinations like a champ. TM and I got DTaP and flu shots at the same time, and I think we were in worse shape on Saturday than she was!

And now, for your enjoyment, photos!

Kid A loves putting her hands in her mouth. It's her favorite activity these days.

Well, one of her favorite activities. Her other favorite activity is looking at her hands.

Dude, why you all up in my grill?

Sleepy little lamb, at the yoga mama reunion.

She loves to stand!

And tonight, her very first rice cereal!

Sometime soon, I'll write actual words. Tonight, I'm too tired. Hope you liked the photos!

Little lamb

2008-10-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

This was not the photo I had intended to put up when I promised a couple of days ago to post photos, but a) it's too cute, and b) it was easy. I still haven't had a chance to upload the photos I took of Kid A last weekend, but I really really hope to do so soon.

We had a little reunion of my prenatal yoga class today, along with a couple of mamas-to-be, at a little park in North Berkeley. There were six babies and their parents. There were even three grandparents in attendance! This is the group that is the closest thing I have to a mom's group, and so it's always wonderful to be with them. It's also always wonderful to have an excuse to get back to Berkeley and Oakland! I started my urban adventure with a trip to the Oakland location of Arizmendi, which I miss so dearly. (If you don't know about it, but are in the East Bay, you definitely need to check them out. Morning pastries to die for, yummy yummy pizza, good breads ... just go. Seriously.) Then we were off to the park, for fun in the sun with the mamas and babes. Delightful.

As you can see, Kid A was not altogether pleased with her first Halloween costume. But there's a lot that she's not pleased with, and I'm doing much better at taking her displeasure in stride. All in all, she was a real delight this weekend. Last night, we went to a pumpkin carving party with Krista Is A Mom and her family and our former neighbors, who are truly wonderful people. It was a great weekend of self-care, in which I was surrounded by the very best of humanity. It was wonderful to be in the company of our chosen "village." Too bad we don't actually live near our village!!

NO on 8

2008-10-24T21:27:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since my last post. I was sick, and then there was my aunt's funeral (really lovely, actually), and then I got sick again. I'm planning to put up some new pictures of Kid A really really soon, 'cause there are some great new ones, but tonight's post is political.

I know I'm in the suburbs now, because tonight I saw something I never would have seen in our old neighborhood. Driving home from what will be my new office, I saw a group -- a large group -- of people holding up signs. Yes on Prop 8 signs. The signs had slogans on them that read things like "Yes on 8 = religious freedom" and "Yes on 8 = freedom of speech". I'm a long long way from Berkeley, where I was never confronted with conservatism the way I'm confronted with it now. I've seen Prop 8 signs at a ratio of about 10 yes for every no. It's disheartening. It's pretty sickening. It boggles my mind that there is a large segment of the population that thinks it's okay to try to deny people their civil liberties, simply because they are morally opposed to homosexuality. It disgusts me that there are people who oppose same-sex marriage because it would somehow defile the sanctity of marriage, and yet many of these folks have gotten divorces, or cheat on their spouses, or are secretly gay themselves. In addition, those who support Prop 8 are often the same people who advocate for smaller government, and more freedom to make one's own choices (with their money, with their children's education, etc).

I'm not writing this very well, because it's late (for me, anyway), and I'm tired. What I really want to say is that an amendment to California's state constitution is not something to be taken lightly. If we were to change the operational definitions, and deny the right to marry to any other group within the population -- banning marriage between religions, or between races, for instance -- it would be clear as day that such an idea should go down in defeat. Proposition 8 denies fundamental human rights to a segment of the population and, as such, it is wrong. If you live in California, vote NO on Proposition 8.

First cold

2008-10-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Not hers, mine. I got really run-down, and have been feeling crummy for the past 2.5 days. I came home from work early today and took a great, nearly two-hour nap. I am definitely feeling better, but still tired.

Kid A fought against her final nap of the day today, and had a hard time going down to sleep, despite lots of feeding, a bath, and playtime. She's doing this very unpleasant thing while nursing lately, which, if it continues, will mean an early wean. Feel free to comment with suggestions if this has happened to you: she's clamping down. It HURTS. Even though she doesn't have any teeth, that shit hurts. I don't know why she does it, and I don't know what I can do about it, other than to take her off the boob for a little while.

There are some really lovely things that I've been noticing about nursing though, and they are things that I want to be sure to remember. Like when she throws her arm across her eyes, as though melodramatically saying, "Oh, it's all just too much!" Or putting her hand on top of her head, as in the I'm-a-little-teapot song. Or when she grabs the top of my thumb, as though it were a doorknob, with her strong little fingers.

Since she's so restless (even though she's asleep, I can hear her stirring), I'm going to cut this one short. Night!

A Happy Postcard

2008-10-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm really tired tonight, but I wanted to write a little bit about Kid A before another whole week goes by. Suddenly, she's just delightful to be with. She's still sometimes a fussy girl, but last week, around her 3-month birthday, she sort of turned a corner, temperamentally, and she's a sweet, happy baby now. She smiles so often these days (mostly at the big plastic sun at the apex of her activity mat!), and spends lots and lots of time shoving as much of her fists as possible into her mouth. She is endlessly fascinated with hands, her own and everybody else's. And even though I am not a very good singer, she is very often calmed by my singing. The most reliably calming song? The chorus from Fiona Apple's "Extraordinary Machine." Go figure.

TM picks her up every afternoon at around 4:00, and watches her until I get home, anywhere between 4:30 and 6:00, depending on where my training has taken me on a given day. He also spends lots of time singing to her, and it always brings a smile to my face. Unlike me (I'm pretty unoriginal, for the most part, with my song choices), TM makes up song after song after song for her. It's usually stuff about what she's doing, or looking at, or wearing, but it's always adorable, and very often it's clever and witty and funny, too. My biggest accomplishment in the made-up song category? "Oohhhh, pumpkin, doo-doo-doo-doo," repeated four times with slight changes of key. The only reason it's an accomplishment is because it made TM laugh, and also because it caught on with TM.

We had a lovely weekend. On Saturday, I went back to my old neighborhood, and visited Krista and her baby daughter, Molly. Then I swung by some friends' who are expecting their first baby any day now, and dropped off a big ol' package of diapers that I bought, thinking they would fit Kid A (what? they were for 8-14 pounds ... ), but were too small for her. On Sunday, our little family went to the plant nursery where TM used to work (for more than 10 years), and picked up a bamboo that TM had reserved as an anniversary present for me. Then we did our usual grocery shopping outings, and came home and did housework. It sounds like drudgery, but it was really wonderful to have such a low-key weekend.

My milk supply is still fairly low, despite a return to pumping three times a day at work all week last week. I was able to feed Kid A without formula on Saturday, but on Sunday I gave her a couple of bottles. I'm okay with it. I'm hoping to be able to get to four months before my supply completely peters out. The good news is that even though the supply is low, it hasn't dropped any lower since I resumed pumping more often.

And I booked a photographer for November! We'll be doing Christmas cards, of course, and will be giving the grandparents holiday photos. We're doing the session the weekend before Thanksgiving, which will mean Kid A will be 4.5 months old. I'm really excited, because I loooove this photographer's portfolio. After the shoot, I'll post a link to her website.

Ok, off to bed!

RIP, Auntie Uck

2008-10-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

My aunt, the one who had her arm and shoulder amputated at the beginning of August, died during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. About a week before her passing, she began a rapid deterioration, losing cognitive and motor functioning. I don't know many of the details, but the short version is that, considering what she was going through, it is a blessing that she went quickly. I am very sad for my uncle and my dad, and for her children and grandchildren. And, of course, I am sad for myself, too. We hadn't been all that close since I left my hometown at age 18, but she was always very kind to me, and she was a very big part of my childhood. She was an amazing person, who had been through a lot. I will miss her.

The last time I saw her was at the baby shower that my sister-in-law threw for TM and me in June. My aunt presented us with a very sweet handknit sweater and hat. Kid A will wear them next week when we go to the funeral. On that day, my aunt looked well, and happy. I don't know whether or not she felt as well as she looked, but I feel grateful that our last visit together was on such a happy occasion. Also at the shower, my aunt presented us with a quilt that my grandmother, who died in 1997, had made. Granny had made four quilts, one for each of her grandchildren, for the children that they would have someday. My aunt had kept them all in a cedar chest since my grandmother's death, and brought Kid A's quilt to the shower for us. My aunt was a special person.

My little brother called her Auntie Uck. I don't remember the story of how the name originated, but I will gather reminiscences from the family, and will post again. I'll miss you, Auntie Uck. I am glad to have known you.

Walking, Working, Watching

2008-10-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

It's been a good week. On Sunday, Kid A will be 13 weeks old, and on Monday, she will celebrate her three-month birthday! This week, we discovered walks. I got home early on Tuesday, and was feeling worried and embarrassed about work (I'll elaborate on this below), and so I decided to put Kid A in the stroller and go for a walk. Since I started working, I've been concerned about how I'm going to get regular exercise, and so I decided to see if Kid A would enjoy getting out into the world. She did not like her stroller when she was younger, but I am very pleased to report that she really enjoyed going for walks this week. In fact, it's been a strategy that I've begun to employ when she's fussy and won't eat, and also won't yield to a nap easily. We walk for about 15 minutes or so, and then she falls asleep. There's a park nearby that has gravel paths, and the bumpiness usually puts her right out. We walked today for nearly an hour.

When we got back from our walk, after I fed her, I remembered about the Baby Einstein activity mat that my cousin and his wife bought for Kid A. It's one of those things that has the bars overhead for hanging toys and such from. I set it up for her, and she loved it! We have one of those bouncy seats that TM and I call the neglect-o-matic; well, this is the best neglect-o-matic ever. (Ironic, isn't it: a CPS worker bragging about neglecting her baby?)

So I am adjusting to working, and for the most part, it is fine. This week, though, I had a bit of a crisis of confidence about being in a new job, at the beginning of a new career. Last week, the issue with work was that I felt almost completely overwhelmed by the intensity of what it is that I will be doing: assessing whether children are at risk of harm, and deciding whether it is worse to take them out of their homes, or to leave them in situations that I wouldn't want for any child, but are minimally sufficient to meet their basic needs. It's bad all the way around, and, even though I'm not completely green at this, it suddenly feels all too real.

So the crisis of confidence: on Monday of this week, I had two incidents, right on top of one another, in which I felt as though my professional reputation was in danger of being damaged. Without going into detail, I will say that one of the incidents involved the person who will be supervising me, if I remain in the position to which it seems I've been assigned, and I fear that I may not be getting off on the best foot. The other incident involved a colleague, and while it was ultimately a positive interaction and, I think, restorative overall (I was revisiting a difference of opinion we'd had, and was essentially apologizing), she said during the conversation that she had "talked to a couple of people" back at the office after our disagreement. So I panicked inwardly, a little bit, and felt super crummy for the next 24 hours or so, feeling like my own professional reputation was rapidly spinning out of control. Thus, the walk on Tuesday evening. And I phoned Krista, who is the best listener I know, and walking and talking really helped me get out of my head about it (thanks, Krista!). And, as TM pointed out, I am more sleep-deprived than I have ever been, and so that was undoubtedly contributing to my shaken confidence. And I'm also adjusting to two new identities: mom, and CPS worker.

This week I also attended two days of training in Napa, and one of my former classmates is going through some pretty nasty office politics at her new job. I have therefore resolved to turn over a new leaf and rise above the cattiness that seems to be rampant among offices that are almost exclusively populated by women. I've sort of taken on a New Year's resolution early: no negative comments about colleagues. Our jobs are damn hard enough without piling on with junior high school type clique-y bullshit.

We've had our first rain of the fall this weekend, and I love it. The air smells nice, and the sidewalks look cleaner. I love the fall. It's hard to believe the holidays will be here so soon!

Oh, and we now have DVR!! I can watch things I would normally miss because they coincide with Kid A's neediest hours. Oh hooray! Thanks, Astound Broadband!

As promised ...

2008-09-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some recent pics of Kid A, including the adorable bath photos ...

I'm pretty new at posting photos, so I'm going to play with the layouts a bit.

She's not quite 10 weeks old in this photo, but as you can see, she loves to look into the mirror at the beginning of the bath. The grins are incredible. Tonight's smiles were even better than these, but, alas, no camera. Just as well.

Here she is, reppin' the town where she spent most of her gestation. Oaktown in the hizzouse!
Eleven weeks old. And, you can't see it, but she's sporting a fauxhawk. It's true. But with all that hair, you'd do it occasionally, too!

Total knockout. She's getting so strong. She rolled over once this weekend, from her tummy to her back, but hasn't been able to replicate the feat yet. This is from today, her 12-week birthday.

... and this is three minutes later. Oh, it's hard to be a baby.

12 weeks and 10 years

2008-09-26T21:22:00.001-07:00

Today is our 10-year wedding anniversary. TM and I married in our twenties (he was 23, I was 25, so you know how old we are now). Tomorrow, my mom is coming to babysit Kid A for a few hours in the afternoon, so that we can go to lunch and a matinee. It's our first outing for pleasure without Kid A since she was born. As much as I'm looking forward to it, it also seems a bit strange that I am voluntarily leaving her to go enjoy myself for a few hours. I know that balance and self-care are important, and it has been something of a rough week, and, as I say, I'm looking forward to our celebratory afternoon (tame as it is), but still. It feels a little weird.

On Sunday, Kid A will be 12 weeks old. This week, she has been fussier than normal. It started last Sunday, when we went to a baby shower for our friends; Kid A cried a lot, most of the afternoon. TM was feeling sort of under the weather all weekend, and Kid A looked a bit snotty on Sunday, so I was worried that she was coming down with her first cold. And pretty much all week, she's been a little off. Her runny nose never got too bad, though -- I only noticed it a few times over the course of the week -- but she's definitely been fussier than she had been for the last 2-3 weeks, and her sleeping rhythm was quite a bit different. But this evening, when I got home from work, she spent a good amount of time enjoying her hands (she studies them pretty intently, and they seem to be one of her favorite diversions these days), and she even gave me quite a few smiles, which hadn't been the norm for our evenings this week. It was great to see her smiling again, and I suspect she really wasn't feeling all that well for most of the week, so it's so nice to have her back to her calmer, more grown-up self.

Last night was pretty rough, though. She'd been going to sleep for the night between 7:30 and 8:30 pretty consistently, and last evening I put her to bed around 7:30. I was quite pleased, for two reasons: I was exhausted, and I was really looking forward to watching Survivor and maybe even the first hour of Grey's Anatomy. Ten minutes into Survivor, Kid A woke up and started to cry. I went upstairs and fed her, hoping that a few minutes of nursing would put her back to sleep (not unreasonable, since that's often the pattern), but "a few minutes of nursing" turned into 40 minutes of nursing, and rocking, and putting her down, and her beginning to fuss immediately and so starting the cycle all over again. I was completely wiped out (I had to do a lot of driving this week, and I desperately need a pair of sunglasses; I think my eyes got a little burned), and hungry, and the cumulative effect of adjusting to a life where every minute of my day is done for or given to someone else was really starting to get to me. TM was great, and helped out a lot, but Kid A did not successfully go down until around 10:30, when I finally got her to nurse lying down with me. We fell asleep together, and she slept great until 3:30 this morning, when I fed her again and swaddled her and finally put her in her own little bed between us.

I think a lot about whether Kid A's fussiness is created by the way we parent her, or is just the result of her own, innate temperament. I am about 75% convinced it's her temperament, because who wants to think that as a parent, they're creating the "problem", but there is that 25% that wonders whether she'd be easier if I was more laid-back about parenting her. But the answer to that question, for me, is "cry it out," and I just don't believe in that, at least, not yet. For one thing, even medical professionals say that you can't spoil a baby in the first three months, and so I do believe I'm parenting in a highly responsive way. I believe that I am following her cues and her lead about what she wants and needs, and not imposing my own will on her. And for Kid A, "cry it out" just doesn't work -- she doesn't yet self-soothe, she just gets more and more worked up and upset. She's unhappy and can't calm herself down, and I hate it, so I try to help her. We'll see if, in 3 or 6 months, whether she still needs the same level of intervention to soothe and to sleep. If so, maybe I'll have to revisit my working philosophy of parenting. But for now, even though it's demanding and intensive, I think it's working.

We discovered Mylicon this week. Our day care providers had suggested it in the first or second week, but I didn't think we really needed it. But Tuesday they reported that she'd had two bottles of formula* -- twice as much as she'd ever gotten before -- and she just seemed really uncomfortable. She was screaming her fool head off, and arching her back, and acting like she wanted to nurse but wouldn't, so I sent TM off to Long's for the Mylicon (it's an anti-gas over-the-counter medicine), and it's been quite the discovery. I think she's been gassy for quite some time, because that stuff really seems to work for her. Thankfully, we don't need to use it at every feeding, but the handful of times that she gets it in a day really seems to help.

* Since I've been working, despite pumping 2-3 times during my work day, plus pumping at night and in the mornings, I am not producing enough to feed her during her hours in day care. I am glad that she will be starting on rice cereal in a month or so, because she's been getting at least 1 bottle of formula every day for the past 2-3 weeks. I also think we're going to have to start feeding her a bottle of formula each day on the weekends, too -- I think part of her fussiness last weekend might have been because she was hungry. I'm still surprised that I really cannot produce enough to meet all of her nutritional needs myself -- I could grow this big baby but I can't feed her sufficiently? It's just crazy to me. At this point, I'm just hoping that I can keep producing long enough to supply her with at least some breast milk until she's 6 months old. I gave up, a week or two ago, on the idea that I was going to be able to produce enough that she wouldn't need supplemental formula, and it's been really nice to let go of that pressure. I've even, in the last couple of days, stopped pumping before and after work (unless she's fed lightly and I need to). We'll see.

I do plan to post those bath pictures soon, but I haven't uploaded them to my computer yet. I'm hoping to get to it this weekend, so look for a short post of primarily (exclusively?) photos in the next couple of days. And maybe someday I'll get a chance to post about work! That, too, has been pretty intense, which is perhaps another reason I was so fried this week. And with that, I'm off to bed!

Settling in

2008-09-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

Kid A is turning 11 weeks old tomorrow. It's hard to believe how quickly it's going. I realized today that she's going to grow up so quickly. Everyone who's ever had kids says how fast it goes, and I felt the first twinges of that a few hours ago. Nothing specific, no major milestones reached today, just the sense that she won't need us anymore, all too soon. I suppose that realization might come in handy when I feel frustrated about not having "me" time.

She's getting a lot easier to please these days. I'm not sure whether that's due to her getting older, or spending time in day care, or a little of both. She's also going down for the night much MUCH more easily, which is a big relief. We've developed a little routine: sometime between 6 and 7 pm, I give her a bath, which she LOVES. TM took some pictures of her in the bath last night; I'll try to post them here soon. Her biggest smiles of the day are when she's in the tub. I used to bathe her in the kitchen -- her little plastic bathtub fits into our kitchen sink -- but for the past couple of weeks, I've taken the tub upstairs and bathed her on the bathroom counter. Even though having to haul it from the tub to the counter and back again to fill and drain it is a little less convenient, this was a tremendously great idea, because she loves watching the bath proceedings in the mirror. In fact, every time I put her in the tub, she looks into the mirror, at me, and gives the biggest, happiest smiles I've ever seen. Tonight, she gave me at least half a dozen of these huge, heart-melting grins. It was awesome. The photos don't do it justice, but as I say, I'll try to get some up soon.

Oh yeah, the routine. So after the bath, I get her dressed, and I've even started brushing her hair (she has so much of it!). If she's upset from getting dressed, I'll nurse her, and then we play on her blanket on the floor of her room until she's fussy. Then I nurse her (again), and rock her until she goes to sleep. She often wakes up for another quick feeding in an hour, and then she's down until her first middle-of-the-night feeding. I'm really pleased that the routine is being established so quickly.

I'm also more and more pleased with our day care providers. (No harm in referring to them by [real] name, so that's what I will do.) On Wednesday evening, Carmen sent home a couple of small containers of Peruvian food for TM and me -- so sweet! There was a chicken and rice dish, and a very interesting potato dish that had a custard-y, egg-y sauce that had a slight kick to it. And when I dropped Kid A off on Friday morning, Eugene commented that she had had a wonderful morning on Thursday, and had napped for a good long stretch. He also said, "She doesn't like noise," as in when she's napping. I know it's a super small thing, but it felt great, actually, knowing that they are learning her specific likes and dislikes, and working with them.

I'm becoming more suburban by the week: I took Kid A shopping again today. I wanted to get a bag for work, one that I can fit a full-sized notepad into, along with the various forms and such that I will need to carry with me when I'm actually doing the work. I typed "TJ Maxx" into my Garmin (a.k.a Rhonda, as in "Help Me, Rhonda"), and several locations popped up. I selected one that seemed like it would be sort of on the way to my next stops, and off we went. I'm not saying where it was, because it was AMAZING. It was the nicest, cleanest, best-stocked, most organized discount store I've ever been to. Let me know if you want to go, and I'll take you. But otherwise, I'm keeping it my little secret. Man, did they have some good stuff. But Kid A was fussy by the time I'd picked out my bag. I wanted to look at some winter clothes for her, but she pretty well lost it. I did find a cute little cool-weather hooded jacket, though. Sadly, it's pink, but it'll be warm, and it will fit her ... at least for another month or two!

This week, I have to make a 126-mile round trip, two days in a row, for training. That made me tired, just typing it. I'll have to make sure I load up the car with some good CDs (thank goodness TM bought a bunch of new albums the last couple of months). And I'll probably be making some phone calls ... look out, you just might get one!

Cliffs notes

2008-09-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, a whirlwind post, because I am tired and want to go to bed, and because Kid A could wake up any minute, and I'm gone again. This is about as bullet-point-y as one of my posts is going to get.

Dad update. Let's see, he went home on Wednesday (the day his 100% Medicare coverage ran out), and is still battling an infection in his foot (feet? and legs?), and is still in a lot of pain. He came up with his own, very comprehensive, plan for help and support (the very nice man and his daughter -- complicated, and unnecessary for me to go into details), which is a good reminder for me in my work that folks can almost always come up with better plans for themselves than I could. I just have to get out of the way! Apparently, though, one of the pins in his ankle is wiggling around a fair bit, which is contributing to at least the pain and possibly the infection, so the surgeon may have to remove the pin(s) and put the foot in a cast. The other worrisome issue is the mountain of debt hanging over his head, and whether he's in good enough shape mentally to deal with it. LB reports that 1) the realtor is supposed to come to the house soon to measure and appraise, so it looks like Dad really is moving forward on that, and 2) the very nice man's daughter is going to help Dad prioritize the big ol' spreadsheet of debt that I worked up for him, so hopefully Dad's going to have some debt-wrangling help. He's not very good with money. Oh, and his dog came home today! I'm sure the two of them are super happy to be reunited.

Kid A and I had a lovely day together yesterday. I needed some new shoes, and I had to return a defective baby monitor, so we went shopping in Walnut Creek. Kid A did great. She only lost it once in Target -- the electronics section was way too much for her, so loud and busy and overstimulating -- and she held it together really well while I browsed the outdoor mall for clothes for her and tried on shoes. She became inconsolable just as I was paying for my shoes, so I headed out of there as fast as the salesman would let me, and whisked her up to Nordstrom to feed her in the 3rd floor bathroom. It was a lovely outing, and I realized that shopping is actually a great place to take a 10-week-old baby, because there's just so much for her to look at and be distracted by. Or maybe she just really likes shopping, in which case I'm really in trouble.

Work. It seems as though I have been assigned to my permanent position, and the fact that I know about it is highly unorthodox. Typically, new workers are not notified of their positions until the very end of the 8 weeks of training; tomorrow is the beginning of week 3. So although I am not counting on anything, I have been told that I will be in the Emergency Response unit in the district office in which I interned last year. While ER was not my first choice of unit, the district office was much more important to me, and I am thrilled to be there. In addition, I am simply thrilled to know where I'll be working, and in what capacity. It makes the training much more relevant, because I am looking at everything through the lens of an ER worker. I know that's partly why they don't tell new workers until the end, because they don't want them to tune out the other parts of training that they think won't be relevant. Oh well. Too bad, if they decide to move me to a different assignment! But I'm hopeful that things are settled.

Ok, last story and then I'm off to feed the cats and go to bed. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had a funny story about pumping while out in the field. So this other breastfeeding mother and I are out investigating a referral at a hospital. Because it involves a newborn, we are in the labor and delivery wing of a small regional hospital. It's approaching 4 hours since I last pumped, and I need to do so again, so we ask the staff if there's someplace for me to pump. They're nice enough to let me use an empty labor and delivery room, so off I go. I have this hands-free contraption that I can hook up to my bra, so I'm sitting there, getting milked, and I drop something. I lean over to get it, and I spill milk on my skirt! Ack! So I get up, still pumping, and go over to the sink, and start trying to clean up my skirt, so I don't walk around all day with a big old milk spot on myself (and mostly so I don't smell like milk all day). Ok, I'm pretty well cleaned up, and I head back over and I notice that something else is on the floor. I've learned my lesson, right? Don't lean over. So I decide that it's perfectly okay to squat down to get it, but unfortunately I have to lean over just enough to spill milk on myself AGAIN. Genius.

By the way, thanks for all the sweet offers for weekend babysitting. We will definitely be hitting you all up in a few months. Right now, my time with Kid A on the weekends is just too precious to pass up, and it's working for now to try to "do it all" in 48 hours. Eventually, though, I will be just too tired to do it all myself, and I really appreciate knowing that I can rely on you for help! I feel so lucky that Kid A has such an awesome village, with all manner of cool and interesting and wonderful aunties and uncles (and Nanas!).

TGI (almost) F

2008-09-09T19:22:00.000-07:00

I have survived my first four days of full-time work. My first week is almost over. It has been both good and very very hard. Surprisingly, dropping Kid A off with the sitters has not been the hardest part. I certainly don't like it very much, but it's been easier than I expected. The tough stuff has been pumping (brutal) and managing the evenings.

Pumping sucks for two reasons. One, it's time-consuming and uncomfortable. Pumping for 15 minutes ends up taking half an hour: getting set up, doing the deed, and then cleaning the equipment and storing the milk ... bleh. No fun at all. And because it's a new job, even though everyone's been super supportive, I still feel self-conscious and awkward about how much time it takes. The other reason pumping sucks is because I'm not producing very much milk. The sitters have just barely been getting through each day with what I'm giving them, and I'm having to pump in the mornings before Kid A wakes up just to get enough to leave with her each day, but today they had to give her formula at the end of the day. I finally had to readjust my philosophy on pumping, and I feel somewhat better about it. Rather than carry the expectation (and the pressure) that I am pumping in order to feed her while I am away, I have decided that
I am really pumping in order to protect my milk supply so that I can continue to nurse her whenever I am with her. The fact that I am able to leave some of my milk with her while I am gone is just a bonus. Mind you, I am taking fenugreek supplements and drinking mother's milk tea, so I haven't completely given up on the hope that I will begin to produce more and be able to provide all she needs ... But as one of my colleagues pointed out, she'll be on rice cereal soon, and then additional solids after that, so it's just a few more months of pressure. Which, of course, I am no longer feeling. Of course.

Ok, the evenings. The evenings have been hard because I've been trying to care for Kid A, who has been consistently fussy at night, as well as trying to get myself ready for work the next day. And pump. And I'm now way more sleep-deprived than I had been up to now, because I used to be able to make up for interrupted night sleep by sleeping in until 8 or 9 every morning. Now I'm up between 4:30 and 5:30, depending on where I need to be that day. Tonight, though, I came home with very low expectations of what I would "accomplish." Bathe, feed, and otherwise care for the baby, and feed myself dinner ... and a much-longed-for bowl of ice cream, which I had gotten into the habit of having every night while pregnant, but had not been able to eat for the past four nights. And in fact, it was a much better evening. I bathed, and played with, and nursed Kid A, and then took her for a long walk in the Moby, and she finally fell asleep. I came home and ate dinner, and started typing this post, and dished out my ice cream, and she woke up. Now TM is holding and rocking her, while I finish dessert, and I would say mission accomplished. :)

I have a very funny story about pumping in the field on my very first day, but that will have to wait. I think I'll probably only be able to post on the weekends for a while, at least until she's predictably and consistently going to bed at a certain time each night. So, more later. Stay tuned!

Kid A's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

2008-09-04T19:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe it wasn't as bad as all that. But still, a very rough day for the poor little kiddo.

I dropped her off at the sitters' yesterday morning, so I could go in for a couple of hours so as not to miss turning in all my paperwork to payroll (important in a new job). It was actually kind of fun -- the payroll ladies were quite a hoot. I was able to pick her up a little before 1 pm, and it turns out she had a great morning: spent some time in the swing, wasn't fussy except when she was hungry, all in all a good morning. Except she didn't really sleep; she only napped for 30 minutes or so. And of course, this was the afternoon of her 2-month pediatrician appointment, complete with her first round of vaccinations.

Ok, no problem, we can deal. Except we waited, and waited, and waited. And then we got into the exam room and waited some more. Finally, after 50 minutes, with Kid A throwing a complete fit for at least half of that time, I went out to the nurse who'd weighed and measured her and complained. The pediatrician came in shortly after that, very apologetic (there had been some gnarly complication with a spinal tumor [!!!]), and we ended up liking this one (the first ped we saw at Kaiser we didn't like at all). And then we had to wait some more for her shots. By then, no amount of nursing was going to distract her from her exhaustion, and she was alert, unhappy and overtired when she got stuck with three different needles. She screamed and screamed and screamed, and this was my first moment, as a parent, of unbearable helplessness. I was so proud of myself for not breaking down when I dropped her off at the sitters' in the morning, and although I did not cry while she screamed from pain, exhaustion and confusion, my heart broke completely. The worst was the first one, as I was trying to nurse her, and she was as comforted as she could be in her agitated state, and then the needle, and her eyes got huge, and then the scream. I felt horrible. I couldn't help but think of Laura, Jaime and Simon, and thinking, "What if this were something real?" No one should have to go through what they are going through. (Please read their blog and send them love, good thoughts and prayers.)

I love my little pumpkin so much. She slept in the car on the short ride home and, sure enough, woke up as soon as we got home ... and was in fine spirits for an hour or so. TM said, "Good thing babies have short memories." Agreed. I think that's partly why we survive as a species: pain fades, and with it, so does the memory of it.

Last thought: I realized, driving home from my brief appearance at work, that I like working. I don't think I would have been very good at, or very happy, being a SAHM for very long. I think it's wonderful, and in many ways, I wish I could do it. Ultimately, I like what I do, despite all the bad that goes along with it.

Briefly

2008-09-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

So the first day of work was fine, nothing interesting to report, except that we got to go home a bit early, because we had to drive to a different town to do our LiveScans, scheduled for 3 pm. Thanks, trainer!

Kid A's first day of child care must have been fine (I did check in by phone at lunch, and TM got a full report when he picked her up, but beyond "She was fussy in the morning, and she really liked the swing," nothing was unusual or substantive), because she did not fuss -- AT ALL -- from the time we picked her up until the time she went to sleep for the night. And she went down for sleep so easily, we couldn't believe it. We thought either they had swapped her out for a different baby, or that they had worked some crazy Catholic voodoo on her. She really was like a different child. It was ... I don't even know what word to use to describe it. Crazy. Amazing. Unsettling. Unbelievable. Awesome. Maybe she would have been that way regardless -- maybe she's "growing up" and deciding that the world isn't so bad after all, or something -- but it was both cool and sad to see that she was okay. My ego is the teensiest bit bruised, knowing that she was okay without me. But I'm also pleased and relieved to know that she will be fine.

Not much to report on Dad. Spoke with the surgeon today; Dad's looking anemic, so they were going to check out a few things, maybe give him another transfusion. But the infection is improving, and they will probably send him to a (different) rehab in a few days. I am very slowly working on the business end of things, but progress is quite slow.

When I'm less tired and have a little more time, I'll write a bit about today's outing with Krista Is A Mom. Two urban mamas with their babes, hangin' in the beautiful 'burbs. We were lunching ladies. Shopping, too! So fun. Thanks, Krista!

Taking care of business

2008-09-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's trip to visit Dad was both good and hard. Our first long trip with Kid A (two hours in the car), and I wish it could have been under more pleasant circumstances. Little Brother (hereafter "LB") and I had been communicating in the days leading up to the visit about strategies for dealing with the mountain of issues, and were on the same page about our "message": sell the house ASAP, find a foster home for the dog, figure out the financial situation, make sure he goes to the better rehab after the hospital stay.

We arrived in town around noon, a bit later than we'd hoped, and had some lunch with LB, then went to the hospital. We dispensed quickly with the small talk and got down to business, talking about realtors (Dad has been trying to sell the house himself, to save money), and selling his extra car, and selling his big, gas-guzzling diesel truck and getting him something smaller and more affordable. He actually did okay until we started talking about the neighbors' offer to have their sister foster the dog, and he panicked. It quickly became clear that he had no idea he'd been out of home for over three weeks -- he must have thought it had been just a few days, a week at most. He said, "It's sad, but that dog's all I've got left." After much discussion, and a real shutting-down on Dad's part, he relented, and agreed that the dog would be better off staying with people and other dogs until Dad was ready to take her back.

That was the hard part: forcing Dad to deal with the urgent, pressing business of the possibility of foreclosure, and the reality that he must sell his home immediately. I hope as few people as possible have to go through that, because even though LB and I have parented our Dad for a long time, this was some of the hardest stuff we've ever had to do. From there, though, the visit definitely improved. Dad needed his beard trimmed in the worst way, so LB had brought his trimmers, and I brushed off my hairdressing skills and whacked away. I think that helped his outlook a bit, and then TM brought Kid A back from their long walk and, after I fed her, Dad got a chance to hold his first grandchild, for the first time in a month. She was on her best behavior, too: no fussing, and even some big old smiles and grins at her grandpa. He seemed to be a lot happier after that, and I really hope that the visit from Kid A is the shot in the arm he needed.

Medically, he's doing okay: he's lucid and coherent, and was shocked to hear about his last three weeks, since most of what we told him he didn't remember happening. It's still rather unclear how the pin in his ankle "came out." He may have fallen again, and that may have jarred it and the IV loose. He claims he did not pull out the pin or the IV. He's got big bandages on both ankles; apparently, at some point in the last 3-5 days, one of the pins punctured his other ankle, and who knows how that happened. And both legs are infected, from the surgical and puncture wounds. But he is in the hospital and being well cared for. All reports are that the rehab he was in was a bad place. They've lost their license at least a couple of times. Probably a good thing that he needed immediate medical attention, because it got him out of there, but it's probably their fault that he got in that condition in the first place. Dad is talking lawsuit. We'll see.

So I've now got a plastic shopping bag full of bills to sift through, phone calls to make, etc. Fortunately, I have a bit of experience from last summer, dealing with similar matters for him. It's a bit more intense this time, though, and not just because of the baby and the new job. We've got to move fast if we want to save what little equity Dad's got left. The good news is that the housing market in his immediate area has recently improved dramatically, and the elementary school across the street from his house has reopened this year, after several years of disuse. So we're hopeful.

I know this has been a long post already, but I want to write a little bit about Kid A, too, before I head off to do other things. It's certainly happier than writing about Dad, and I want to write about her regularly, so that I don't forget stuff. I know that childhood goes fast, and there are all sorts of new things happening all the time, and I have a terrible memory, so I want to capture as much as I can. Just in the last 24 hours, I am amazed at how different her hands and arms feel to me. She has always been a solid, big girl, but there's a new density to her hands and arms that indicates to me a new level of muscle tone and dexterity. Her hands feel bigger, her arms more solid. And I'm noticing that her arm movements seem to have more purpose, are less incidental. It's really exciting. She plays a lot every day, and is really interested in the world around her ... so much so, that she needs a fair amount of help getting to sleep! She gives most of her best smiles to everyone else -- including her toy that she plays with every day -- but we get so much sweet quality time together every day that I really don't mind. I know the smiles that are just for me will come in time.

Tomorrow I go in for my first day of work, and Kid A will have her first full day of child care. Then we'll dive in next week for five days in a row. I know she'll be fine, and eventually, I will, too. Wish me sanity and perspective!

It's like a bad episode of House

2008-08-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

Dad's Doc did not admit him to the hospital on Thursday, as planned. I called the rehab in the afternoon on Thursday to see if he was still there, and sure enough, he was. The nurse/case manager read me the doctor's orders (and made me wonder if they would have been read at all, had I not called, since she sounded surprised at some of the notes), and the plan was to hydrate him via a saline IV, and clean the surgical wound regularly with Betadine, and admit to the hospital if he doesn't improve.

Well, he didn't improve. In fact, he got way worse, real fast. The neighbors called yesterday afternoon, relaying a message from the very nice man: Dad was taken to the hospital by ambulance in the afternoon on Friday. Apparently, he was completely disoriented, and had pulled out his IV, as well as one of the pins in his ankle.* By 10 pm last night, he was stable and coherent, but had received a blood transfusion, as his actions had led to a significant amount of blood loss. It seems likely, at this point, that he will need to undergo another surgery to repair the damage and replace the pin.

* The surgery was an attempt to fuse together the foot and ankle bones, providing more support and stability. It involved metal pins that hold the bones in place while they fuse; these pins extrude through the skin, which creates a sort of exoskeleton that allows for weight-bearing recuperation.

TM and I had planned to go visit Dad tomorrow, anyway, so we will know more tomorrow. I don't really have anything wise or insightful to say about this latest development; it is what it is.

But here is something completely unrelated, just for the sake of levity and cuteness. Enjoy!

see more puppies

Not so fast ...

2008-08-28T09:16:00.001-07:00

I suppose it was wishful thinking that I was taking a day off from Dad. Around 6 pm yesterday, Dad's surgeon called to say that progress is slower than Doc would like, and will be re-admitting Dad to the hospital today. Apparently, the infection isn't getting better, and there are some numbers, related to his kidneys, that are causing some concern. Also, Dad isn't complying with medical advice/orders. He needs to be doing physical therapy 5x per week, and is apparently refusing 3x a week. He also needs to keep the foot elevated, and Doc says that every time he goes to check on him, Dad's sitting on the side of the bed, with his feet on the floor. I can just picture it: that's how Dad's most comfortable, and he has always sat like that.

After I spoke with Doc, I called the very nice man and the neighbors about the dog. Since Dad's not going home any time soon, it seems a lot to ask of people to check on the dog multiple times a day (there's a dog door, so she can get out to do her business, but she needs food and water and people time). And since Dad doesn't work, the dog is accustomed to being with someone all day, every day. So we are all starting to feel bad for the poor little thing, and will probably need to find a foster home for her while Dad's laid up. Fortunately, the neighbor's sister has a Bichon Frise, same breed as Dad's, and is willing to take her in. (Last time Dad was in the hospital and rehab for an extended length of time, my mom was kind enough to do it.) It's so wonderful that there are good and kind people in the world.

What really sucks is the financial situation. Dad's been living on the razor's edge for quite some time now, and after the hospital stay, he'll surely return to rehab. He's got 20 days in the rehab that are covered 100% by Medicare, but after that, the coverage for the remaining 80 days is only 80%, so he'll rack up over $100 a day for as long as he stays beyond the first 20. (Universal health care now!!!) In addition, he's not in any shape to attend to his bills while he's recuperating, so he'll likely incur late fees on things like his mortgage, and I'm not entirely sure what he's been doing to make ends meet (his mortgage is more than he brings in monthly from his disability checks). He's been trying to sell the house for months, but it's a terrible market. I fear that he'll be denied Medi-Cal (the rehab helped him apply, but he has at least 1 too many vehicles), and will be forced to sell his house for less than he could, just to be able to pay his medical expenses, and then where will he live?

Ultimately, so much of this is out of my hands, but it certainly causes concern. Thank god I have a job now, just in case Dad's financial situation starts to get super intense. I'd hate to have to pitch in (I've got to save for my own retirement, plus a college fund for Kid A), but I suppose we do what we have to do, right?

Outings today

2008-08-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

Kid A and I had a big day today. Ran some errands, attended a breastfeeding support group (where I asked some questions about pumping and returning to work), and then went back to the office where I interned last year to say "hi" to everyone. Since I was (very) visibly pregnant during my internship, people were pleased to see me and to meet Kid A. TM and I had not divulged Kid A's name prior to her birth, so it was fun to introduce her to people who had called her by various pet nicknames during my work there.

Kid A did great. She's been fussy for the last couple of days, and so it was really nice to take her out and about. She definitely had her fits, but they were mercifully short and very few. She did sleep in the car between stops, but would not stay asleep once we got home. TM came home a short time after we did, and applied the Moby and stayed with soothing her until she went to sleep. I think she's so tired, she just might stay asleep while we eat our dinner -- something that rarely happens!

No news on Dad today. I took a day off from attending to his troubles. Will keep y'all posted.

A New Wrinkle

2008-08-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

The generation of women just slightly older than me is, I've read, sometimes called the "sandwich generation." "Sandwich" because they are torn between the needs of their children and those of their increasingly dependent parents. Although I'm not quite middle-aged yet, my father has (and has had for quite some time) the physical ailments of a much, much older man. For nearly a decade of his young adult life, my younger brother lived at home and helped out around the house, but a couple of years ago he decided it was time to live his own life and moved out (yay, little brother!). Dad did okay for a while, but within six months of living alone, he deteriorated significantly. Around that time, I encouraged him to start thinking about making some changes. At first, we discussed the idea of selling his house and moving up to where TM and I live, getting a duplex or something along those lines. After Dad decided to take out an equity line of credit on the house, we realized there wasn't enough equity left in the house for a down on something big enough for all of us. We then started discussing other options. This was a lengthy process, punctuated here and there with medical scares and stints in the hospital. I think Dad probably felt let down, after we decided that he couldn't come "live with us," and he was definitely afraid of making a major life change. The time for that was probably 10-15 years ago, when he was younger and quite a bit healthier (although none of us thinks of him as ever really being healthy). At any rate, Dad resisted much of my attempts at trying to fix things.

Fast forward to the beginning of August. Dad went in for a surgery on his ankle; he had it "fused," and, although I don't know what that actually means, he had had the other one done somewhere around 10 years ago or so. They kept him in for a few days and sent him home. There is a very nice man, about 20 years older than Dad, who lives near him and checks on him every day. The day after Dad went home from the hospital, this man checked on him and decided to take him back in. Dad then went to a rehab facility, where he's been ever since. All this was happening right around the time Kid A is 4-5 weeks old, so I wasn't really staying on top of things. And Dad's generally been really good about calling every few days to check in. Last week, he didn't call at all. I called him on Thursday, and left a message on his cell phone, which he never returned. I called him on Sunday, and he sounded terrible: really drugged up and pretty incoherent (mind you, this is not highly unusual for Dad, but is definitely an indication that things are bad). I made a few more phone calls, and everyone I talked to is concerned. Dad's neighbor said, "You and your brother need to make a plan, he can't make decisions for himself anymore." Dad has fallen at least once (again, not unusual but bad: Dad is a very very large man, and falling is worse for him than for most of us), and the foot is infected, which requires IV antibiotics.

So here we are, in the very predicament I had hoped to ward off: Dad in the neediest position he's been in at least a year, and me with a brand-new baby (and about to start a brand-new job) and unable to travel or do anything besides make some phone calls. (And even that can be difficult -- leaving messages for doctors and then hoping that when they return the call I'm not completely consumed with immediate infant needs.) I mean, half the time I can't even get a meal in or use the bathroom -- what am I supposed to do for Dad from two hours away?

There's yet another layer to all this, as well. Dad's sister, my aunt, who lives in the same town, has been battling cancer for well over a year (and this is actually a recurrence of a previously-treated cancer). Very long story short, yesterday, my aunt had surgery to amputate her arm and shoulder. The cancer, when it recurred, showed up as a large tumor in her shoulder. It has been painful, and the pain became acute earlier this month, and she went to the hospital. It was finally discovered that her arm was broken, and there was nothing they could really do to fix the break due to the tumor, and she hasn't really been able to use her arm anyway, so she decided to go with the recommendation to have it amputated. The surgery was successful, but we're now in a wait-and-see situation as to her recovery and prognosis.

Dad has relied on the very nice man, and my aunt and her family for a long time. It's how he's been able to live alone. He also has very nice neighbors who look out for him and help him out, taking out his garbage and recycling cans every week, and things like that. He's got a good support network near him. However, as a very prescient social worker with whom I spoke about a year ago said, "Supports are good, but ultimately, friends won't do what family will." I could tell when I talked to the neighbor yesterday that people are definitely getting Dad-fatigue. Hell, I've got Dad-fatigue! And now, even family is pretty unable to do "what family will."

I feel pretty defeated, and pretty sad. I'm also mad, which is typically where I go when it comes to Dad troubles: I tend to blame him for not planning ahead (his health has never been good, he should have planned for his old age, his financial situation is bad bad bad, which I blame him for, too). But today, I mostly feel really sad for him. It must suck to be all alone in that place, confused a lot of the time, away from home and his dog, unable to visit his sister in her time of need and worrying about her, unable to visit his brand-new first grandchild. What's also sad is that he decided to go forward with the surgery as part of a broader plan of getting into better health and better shape so that he can spend more time with Kid A.

So here I am, sandwiched between Dad and baby, both of them vulnerable, and needy, and helpless in their own way. I know what to do, it's the only thing I can do: take care of my daughter first, and do whatever is humanly possible to look after Dad in the moments I can steal. We're all going to go visit on Sunday, and hopefully we'll have a better sense of what sort of plan we need to make. It certainly isn't easy, but I'm hoping our options will be clear.

The Utmost in Mixed Feelings

2008-08-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

So Kid A is sleeping on my chest in the Moby as I write. She's going through this phase where she won't stay asleep for naps unless she's on somebody. TM wore her yesterday while we were visiting with his folks; I wore her last night while we ate dinner. And at night (although she rocked her first sleep shift from 9 pm or so until 2:30 this morning), she pretty much wants to be on me, nursing and sleeping intermittently, for hours. It's mostly hard because she's so big (2-month pediatrician appointment next week -- we'll see what she weighs! I'm guessing 13 pounds or so), and my arms and back get tired. And I'm shocked at how much my knees are bothering me -- it's like I'm carrying a 13-pound fetus because I'm holding her so much! And for the most part, she isn't content with just being held, oh no. Girl wants to move: swaying, bouncing, rocking, walking. Sometimes she won't even tolerate my "compromise" position of bouncing on the exercise ball. And she often needs to be held a certain way, or she isn't happy.

But I am grateful that I have discovered what does make her happy, and that she is mostly content for most of the day. And I love that she is such a snuggler of a baby; I am soaking up these last few days before I have to turn her over to others for 40+ hours per week. It makes me nervous that she has such specific needs and preferences, and that, undoubtedly, others will attend to her differently, and I wonder whether she will be happy. I know I am not unique in my worries and concerns for my daughter's welfare; most parents must rely on others to help raise their children. But I feel so sad when I think that someone else will get her onto her daytime schedule, will get the lion's share of her waking hours, will teach her how to fall asleep for naps without me or her dad. And I know that this is not new or special, either; we are just one family of millions who go through this and feel this way. But it is hard. So I am wallowing in the sight of her, the feel of her little baby cheek against my chest, her sweet slack-jawed expression as she sleeps.

And at the same time that I am devastated at having to leave her so soon, I am also, equally, very glad. I am glad to have a job, and that the uncertainty is over. I hate the unknown, and I don't do well with it. I am glad and grateful not to have to go through the ridiculous exam-and-interview process in other counties. I am glad that I was hired in the only county I really want to work in. And, I must admit, I am glad that I will be a working mom. I would rather have started working a month later than I will start, but I know I would not have done well with vast expanses of unstructured time. I love Kid A beyond describing, but I am not SAHM material. I want adult conversations, and meaningful work, and (yes) a paycheck. So when I think about those things, I am very glad. And, simultaneously, it sucks. I wish this country was more supportive of maternity leave.* TM says that, even though it sucks now, at least I'll have benefits like vacation time and sick leave and whatnot when she's older, when it will matter more because she can remember it. And I agree, but, well, see above re someone else laying a lot of the foundation ...

* We saw Sicko several weeks ago, when Kid A was just a couple of weeks old (she's 7 weeks now), and we were super impressed by the French system of neonatal in-home supports, provided by the government. A lot of western European countries, too, have lengthy (paid) maternity leaves, job protection, etc., so that parents can be the ones to raise their children. I have Euro envy.

I spoke with the county trainee supervisor this morning, and it looks like I might go in for a day or two next week, and will start full-time on September 8. I really have to buy some clothes that fit!

You've GOT to be kidding me (or, Oh the irony)

2008-08-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

Wow. How quickly things change. I posted at 8:30 am today, and already there's news. Unbelievable.

This afternoon at around 1:30, as I was attending to a crying Kid A, I got a message from my first-choice county -- wait for it -- offering me a job. Seriously. Ha ha, very funny, universe. Very funny. At first I was pissed -- boy, was I pissed. Really? I wait around for two weeks to hear from you, and now you offer me a job? And I'm supposed to start in 10 days? And find child care? Really? Man oh man. Some nerve.

But then I returned the phone call and was able to connect with the supervisor who offered me the job. I accepted, but indicated that we do need to find childcare. I think I used the word "scramble." The first thing out of her mouth was, "Oh, I've talked with my supervisor, and we can work with you on the start date." Immediately, about 85% of my anger dissipated. Huh. Maybe that's why I was passed over in the first round. Thank goodness I have the leverage of the time crunch working in my favor. Wow. Wow.

So now it's time for me to cram in all the bonding I can with Kid A in the 10 days or two weeks or however much time I have left before I'm back in the working world. How quickly things change, no? And I've got to start pumping like a milk factory, and go buy some clothes that fit that are suitable for work ...

But before all of that, I've got to go make dinner.

Oh, one last thing: I do plan to keep writing about motherland, but maybe not quite as frequently as I would have if I weren't working! So do check back, if you're interested. And if it's been a while, and you're wondering what we're up to, holla!

Six weeks old, and no job

2008-08-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I would be receiving a job offer from my first-choice county. When Kid A was 3 days old, we returned home from the sad, sad check-up appointment to discover that I had ranked #1 on the county's oral examination. Considering that it was the only county I'd applied to, Teacher Man (TM) and I were pretty happy, thinking that I would absolutely get a job offer after the hiring interview. That hiring interview took place at the end of July -- Kid A was just over 3 weeks old -- and I felt great about how it had gone. The supervisors who interviewed me said that they would be hiring to fill 4-5 positions, and that the training class would start on September 2. Based on this information, TM and I started looking into child care. They also said that they would notify applicants during the second week of August.

My friend, with whom I had interned (in my first-choice county), sent me a text message on the Tuesday of the second week of August, asking me to let her know when I heard from the county. I texted her back, asking whether she'd been offered a job, and she replied that she had. I gave her a call and we chatted for a little while, and I told her I'd let her know as soon as I heard something. It was around 10:30 in the morning, and I even made a joke that if I had to wait around too long for their call, I'd be upset. My mom was with us for the day, visiting Kid A. I was really excited for my friend, and was anxious to get the call, but no call came. When I hadn't heard by lunchtime, I was annoyed. When I hadn't heard by 4:00, I was angry and confused. We ended up putting a movie on to pass the time (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is NOT a great movie to watch when you are waiting for news and when no news is bad news), and I got more and more annoyed. It was unfair, but I really wanted my mom to leave, because I just wanted to be able to express my anger and frustration in my own way, with just TM, who knows me better than anyone, and who is better than anyone at helping me work through stuff like this. But there we were, the four of us, sitting around, waiting. By 5:30, I was going stir-crazy, and took off for a short walk around our complex. I felt near tears, but no tears came. It was helpful to walk a little, to move some of the negative energy that had been building all day, but it still sucked.

I'm not accustomed to being passed over for things that I want. It's certainly happened -- by no means have I always succeeded at getting what I want. But on balance, I tend to be a top candidate for things like jobs. It just so happens that a) I am now dealing with big, nameless, faceless bureaucracies and am vying for one of a handful of jobs (it happens to be the crummiest economy in recent years, and our state is facing a budget crisis, which trickles down to the county level), and b) I am competing with really, really talented people, many of whom are my friends, in a year when several local counties have put on hiring freezes for the jobs we all need to get. I should mention that, here in the Bay Area of California, there are four colleges with MSW programs, all of which offer the Title IV-E stipend, which means that, every year, there are roughly 80 new MSWs, all of whom are contractually obligated to begin working in public child welfare (which means "get a CPS job with a county") within 6 months of graduation. When the economy sucks, that becomes harder to do.

However. Despite the bad economy and the resulting uncertain job market, I am one of a handful of recent grads that still does not have a job. Part of this is my fault: I deliberately held off on applying to counties that were not my first choice because I was due to have a baby in July, and I did not want to be offered a job that I could not take (the larger counties around here tend to hire a "training class": a group of new hires that all start on the same date and attend roughly 8 weeks or so of training). But another part of this is my #1 ranking: I know a large contingent of the group that was hired in a large adjacent county, and during their hiring interview process, rankings seemed to matter more than performance at the hiring interview. I thought, when I received my ranking, that my first-choice county would be similar, and that I could put off applying to other counties until I determined that I needed to. Well, now I need to. And I have missed the deadline for that large adjacent county, which has just concluded interviewing for the training class that will begin in mid-October. Which is exactly when I wanted to start working. Grrrr.

So, for the foreseeable future, I am home, with Kid A. And I am very, very happy about that: I didn't want to start working in September, anyway, so I have begun to think that someone is looking out for me/us. I did NOT want Kid A to be cared for, full-time, by other people at 2 months old, no matter how wonderful and loving and talented those people might be. So I have shifted from confusion and anger to something approximating gratitude.

But it may be difficult for me to adjust to being a SAHM (stay-at-home mom, for those unfamiliar with internet-based acronyms). I am able to write this (well, finish it, anyway) because, after three days of virtually no daytime naps, Kid A has been asleep for three hours. Given that the last several days have been completely consumed with childcare during waking hours, and that this is TM's first full day of back-to-school (students arrive next week), I have spent the last hour or so not knowing what on earth to do with myself! I've (mostly) prepared dinner, I've leafed through a magazine, I've spent some time online, I've washed (and eaten) some grapes ... I even had a friend here for a visit during the first part of Kid A's massive nap. If I don't find some hobbies, either my house is going to be insanely clean (which TM would love), or I am going to wear out our local library. Any recommendations for some good books?