Tide Shifting

So I done got told to update this blog for goodness sakes.  The last thing I had up here was so depressing.

Well, it rightly was.  I have depression.  I have anxiety.  Hello - means often times my thoughts are actually depressing.  :)  Fancy that.

What had precipitated the last post was the fact that my brother, whom I knew had been looking for reasons to fully distance himself from the family, finally found what it was he needed as an excuse and decided I was no longer a good enough influence on his child and therefore he wouldn't be bringing her near me again.  Now let me assure you that what he found pales in comparison to some of his nasty habits, and it's not even my habit that has him making this decision...but whatever.  I'm tired of clawing at things that would eliminate his excuses.  I don't want him in my life if he doesn't want to be in mine.  With that realization, which admittedly came AFTER the last blog post, I found a liberating peace in my life.  While it's been painful to have to tell my mom that her kids won't likely be in the same room for a good many years, she's had her own similar experiences with her own brothers, and I think she understands.  Besides which, she's good at staying out of things...so there's that.

But after that moment of liberation, I started to plot a course to better things, and the tide is finally shifting in my favour.  I've been offered a new job with more money and better title and better learning opportunities.  It's a really exciting change that I think will be better for our family in the long run.

It's not coming without it's fair share of anxiety.  At the moment I feel like a great big bungled up ball of whoa...and there's no way to release it because I can't submit my resignation for at least 1 more week.  The biggest anxiety I'm having though is putting my daughter back into a daycare situation.  There's no way to make it work with commuting to stay home til she goes to school, and be home in time to collect her from school.  They don't give parents 5 hour workdays and pay them this great.  SO, we're trying to lock down on a sitter that makes the most sense, but it's breaking my heart already.  She's been in daycare before.  But it seems like I'm giving up the cup of christ by handing her over.  It's no easier than when I did it the first time.  That's because no matter what job I do for another company, it will always be at odds with my baser instincts of being a mom first.

But onward and upward.  In 20 years, when my daughter heads off on her own path, she'll have seen an example in her mother of a woman who stopped at nothing to ensure her family was well provided for, and who broke herself in two trying to be everything to her and her daddy.  Not such an awful legacy to leave behind.  She'll have witnessed confidence in the face of adversity, and thoughtfulness in a woman who truly looked for every possible way to make the best decisions for her family each and every single day.  She'll see a woman who spent as much time with her child as humanly possible, playing, engaging, and caretaking...and she'll see a woman who hopefully made the world outside our home just that little bit better.

Right?

The big job changes come at the end of the month and hopefully keep me busy and engaged and inspired for a good number of years to come.  I'm beginning the second half of my work journey - and I'm hoping it's a wild and woolly ride!

Onward and Upward.

Time Flies

The past week has been quite the emotional roller coaster here.  My husband has been violently ill, to the point of scaring me, and it's looking more and more like the reason for it is stress.  I'm afraid of how much of the stress he's feeling is my own doing, but am also afraid not to intervene and try as hard as I can to pressure him to let up at work and let things start really breaking.  I mean for real, break til they can't legally enforce any more.

I want to beg him to take a leave of absence, knowing that might cause him more stress than not doing it, and I want to beg him to put this house up for sale and start looking at trailer park solutions.  I know we can't keep going the way we're both going forever.

Which brings me to my own work.  It's making my eyes twitch and giving me a chronic migraine.  Yep.  I've inherited quite the crap storm and I'm left trying to sort it out, streamline it, fix it just so I can figure out a way to co-exist with it...all before I lose my own marbles, and need another crazy sabbatical of my own.

Add to this that last week I registered my baby girl for junior kindergarten and I'm left emotionally drained as a dried up grape.  Only the raisin that's left is pretty bitter.  She is sooo very excited to be going to big kid school, she even started doing her letters and numbers in high gear.  She's already told me she wants to wear a dress on her first day of school, and daily she checks out their progress on her new school.  You see her school is being built right at the end of our street, and that means she can watch as construction progresses...many days she can't understand why it's just not done already.

I on the other hand, as excited as I am to see her happy and diving in with both feet, am emotionally devastated at the thought that my last chances to be a stay at home mom have come and gone.  Literally, there's no way, unless I was choosing to home school her, that I will have that "opportunity" to be the kind of mom I always wanted to be.  I used to dream that I'd stay home with my kids til they were in school full time.  Then I'd go back to work.  And that was when full time school didn't start til kids were 6 years old.  She's  just going to turn 4 in June and will be going to school full time in September.  Unless I win millions so that I can take the summer with her, this is never going to happen for me at all.  It makes me all the happier that I was able to take the full maternity leave.  It was worth chewing up 6 years of my retirement to take that year.  Thank GOD I did that much.  She still snuggles with me, and holds my face in her tiny hands and tells me that I'm a good mommy.  And that fills me.  And her stellar behaviour, politeness and caring for others shows me every single day that I'm doing right by her.  But my god how I wish that I could have done this for her.  Been a 100% visible, dedicated and fully attentive mommy.

Every kid deserves that.  And every mom deserves to be able to do that for their kids without pushing themselves to the brink of death trying to be super mom, breadwinner, housekeeper, and CEO.  Exhaustion kills...My husband and I, and our grey skin tones are virtual proof of this.  I guess at least if we keel over tomorrow, our child will remember snippets of awesomeness, and will hear the stories of how we killed ourselves trying to give her the best we could.  That's reassuring for kids, right?

In the meantime, my little monkey has become a butterfly ready to leap off the leaves and float through the sky.  She's buoyant and light, and graceful, and sweet.  This world is changing because she smiled at it.  And she's about to be let loose, to get her footing and show the world what she's capable of.  I'm infinitely proud of her.  Of the person she is and the woman she will become.  I'm so terribly sad I've not been able to soak up 1000% of her moments the last 2 years.  And so thoroughly grateful for the hundreds of moments I've been given in place of them.

I'm a Good Mommy

It's true.  My husband has said so more often than I can count recently...but best of all, my three and a half year old bundle of perfection just told me so!

We seem to have what many would consider a "tough year" most years in this family.  It all simply amounts to being the stuff of life that all the good moments happen around, but this year in particular, we started with close to $100K in consumer debt (not counting mortgages and car payments), and we are now exiting the year with half that problem.  While we started out fighting every unknown bug that could affect a tiny little human, we are now exiting with very distinct bugs and we've not had too terrible a time of it since tonsils and adenoids were removed in February.

And while we're much, much, much happier than we were last January (anti depressants and half the debt problem with limited illnesses is the magic answer), we're sending 2013 out with what appears to be a flaming stake up the arse hole.  In our general geographic area, the kids have been plagued with an outbreak of gastroenteritis in epic proportions, and now we're dealing with one hell of a head cold, which is robbing people of their will to live.  And I without a sick day left to my name, my grandmother has had an accident, my mother has needed help taking care of her, and I have been trying to be the model parent of a sick kid at the same time that I'm trying to be a model employee and model grand/daughter.  Them's the breaks.  I always told my mom I wanted to be supermom...now karma's kicking me in the teeth...asking me how's that feel?

But I'll tell you, the suffering, the sleeplessness, the emotional binge eating and general slavery for others is worth it, when your husband hollers from the rooftops how much he loves and appreciates everything you do.  And when in a moment of pure perfection, your sick child looks over at you, strokes your cheek gently and whispers "you're a good mommy".

I wish we could ring the bells on 2013 right this very second.  I want to leave it feeling like this.  I want to greet 2014 with more optimism, hope and energy than I had last January.  God I hope nothing else tries to kill the holidays for me between now and then.

A Woman's Balance

I read an article this morning on Linkedin wherein I found the contents somewhat repetitive of other similar articles I'd read elsewhere.  The article titled I'm Not Balancing Work and Life, and I Feel Great, pretty much tried to give the impression that when you do what you love and you have a family that lets you do it, there is no such thing as a struggle for balance because it inherently exists.  The argument is simply that doing what makes you happy is all the balance you need, and as long as the kids are taken care of, what's the big deal?

The comments as you can imagine were far more interesting than the article.  Many calling out exactly the issue with this argument for the general populace, which is simply put, not everyone can afford to offload their kids and not think twice about it.

I've read other articles by high ranking female executives who talk frankly how they are both in a flexible work arrangement where they set their own hours, and who have the financial means to buy the support they need at home.  They either have a full time live in nanny, and/or a spouse that either has similar flexibilities / finances OR who is willing to support the primary worker by sacrificing their own career to stay at home with the children.  In all cases, the word balance comes with a steep price tag.  Balance in any of those reports only calls out how affluent you are and how fortunate it is to be able to "buy" flexibility when you need it.  And in all cases too, it's critical not to overlook what I like to call the "Quota Quotient".  The ratio of female executives and CEO's as compared to male executives is still a product of inequality in the workforce.  Any woman who has made it to the top of the career ladder must still prove that they are worthy of being there for their skills and actual value rather than the fact that their gender satisfies a company's male to female ratios in support of their diverse work culture policies.  This naturally translates to a need then that they have to reinforce that their work dedication is no different in absolutely any way to that of their male counterparts.  If it's harder for them in any way shape or form, it's riskier and it's perceived as a blatant lack of dedication or loyalty to the company and it's profitable outcomes.  We want so much to believe that feminism has been a blanket success, and in the face of providing the "other side" any ammunition to to the contrary, well, we'll opt every time to prove that we can have and do it all, the way our fore-mothers fought for our rights to have it that way.  Especially if the perception of our current status is that we've already won the battle.

I have similarly found a level of balance that makes me happy...but here is the key...I'm happy with it most of the time.  There is no such thing as equally weighted balance, and I make sacrifices every day in my career to facilitate more time with my child.  I was fortunate enough to be able to hire a nanny when I first returned to work after maternity leave, AND was fortunate enough to change my work arrangements in such a way that I was able to work from home full time when I returned to work.  This meant I really got to extend my time with my child beyond my sanctioned maternity leave, and enjoyed that much more "parenting" time, without putting my job at risk.  When the nanny moved on, and we started our child in preschool, again, it was disruptive and I struggled (still do most days) with the choice to work rather than raise and take care of her full time.  I was still fortunate enough to be able to work from home, and so, I'm not losing 2 hours or more every day with a commute, and that 2 hours more I can spend with my child each and every day.  When my systems shuts off at 4 pm, it doesn't go back on until 7:30 am the next morning.  If I have evening calls with Asia, it's done after my child is in bed, and very rarely before.  On the rarest occasions when things have to overlap and work infringes on my time with my child, my husband has to step in and do it alone, but more often than not, she's sitting on my lap colouring and drawing while I listen to the conference call on mute.  Again, I have more flexibility than your average Jane, and I know I'd struggle immensely managing my family priorities if I had just the 2 hour commute to deal with even.

A complicating factor however is my husband's job.  While he's very much a hands on dad, and spends as much time as possible with us doing the family thing, there isn't the same appreciation for familial responsibilities with his job.  His commute is a total of 3 hours every single day.  It significantly reduces his time with the family, AND means that I am the one who takes every single sick day, who takes the burden of most of the child rearing responsibilities and who absorbs the daily tasks of meal preparations, dishes and house cleaning.  We're not financially free enough to afford a housekeeper or other types of domestic help.  And our child was sick for over a year.  This meant my career really took the back seat and it meant that I worked during naps and every spare singular moment on those sick days so that I could avoid losing my job due to excessive absences.  The company I work for is more awesome than most at providing the kinds of flexibility that made this possible, but it took them a lot of years to recognize and acknowledge the lesson.  And it also means that it's hard to reignite my career trajectory, now that my child is healthier and there's more room in my life to prioritize work.  As they say, the damage may have been done.  For someone at the top of the career ladder, this is likely less of a concern weighing on the sleepy mind of a mother who is trying to balance the priorities of work and her family.

So here's my message for let's say, new mom's who are returning to work for the first time, and facing the fact that they'll have to leave their children in the hands of potentially strangers, for care between the hours of 7 til 6, Monday to Friday.  Find as much flexibility as you physically can in your job without jeopardizing the fact that you have one.  Remember to choose caregivers you trust and keep a hawk eye on the care they are giving your child.  TALK to your children every single day about their day, no matter how young they are, so that they open up and actually tell you what happened.  Eventually, their vocabularies will catch up, and you'll know more than you probably ever wanted to.  Remember that you working, is as much about making your family a priority and providing for them as staying home would be.  AND, remember that you are more capable than you think you are.  Balance for average working moms is really about the quality of the time you are spending with your kids.  So involve them in your chores, and make the work to up keep the house feel more like fun.  Get your itty bitty's helping with dinner preparation, or let them paint at the table while you do dishes.  Let the living room be less tidy than the dining room, and play with them while you have your tea and watch the news.  Make baths fun, and crash at 9pm.  Take them grocery shopping, and find a babysitter once every couple of months to watch the kids while you and the spouse do something grown up - like getting beer and wings at a restaurant and watching a grown up movie, you know, at the actual theatre.  Work is work, and it's important.  But remember it's a tool to buy you more time with your kids.  Prioritize it this way, and you'll see some semblance of a balance, in a ratio that works better for you.

AND DON'T READ the articles by women executives thinking they've figured out some magic math that affords them better balance than you can achieve.  The only thing they figured out was how to prioritize work so they could afford more support at home with the kids.

Mommies are Magicians. I'm sure of it.

So, the recovery thing is plodding along, and I'm trying very hard to get back to a sense of normalcy.  Regularity and routine and schedule in my life are pretty integral to my sanity.  I mean, I am a mom.  A working mom, and so chaos sort of goes with the territory somewhat, but for the most part I can keep that chaos under control by using the guardrails of our routine.

After my daughter's tonsillectomy, she's eating and eating...she can't seem to stop.  It's clear that she's making up for lost time.  As a result, she's growing.  Like whoa - is she growing!

So last night I pulled out the clothes I have been storing from last summer and we went through the exercise of trying everything on to see what no longer fits, and what will need to be bought.  The good news is that all the pants and shorts that she was once wearing over diapers and which were in most cases too big, are now finally fitting her without diapers.  It might help to remind you that she's nearly three years old now, and most of these pants & shorts are size 18-24 months.  Her shirts are mostly ok...there's only a handfull of shirts and 1 pair of shorts that are going to donation.

But she got attached to one of the summer dresses from the pile, and she refused to change back out of it.  She ponied up and suffered through trying everything else on, but that dress couldn't come back off.  I negotiated and told her she could wear it with a sweater and her slippers until bedtime.  I reasoned with her that it was a summer dress, and it's still too cold to wear it alone.  Acquiescing. she tromped downstairs to flaunt her new dress in front of Daddy, and peered out the window to our backyard still blanketed by 2 feet of snow.

She looked out, and looked back at me.  Looked out once more and sighed, whining "make it summer now":  The implication being of course that I can change the weather with a snap of my fingers and fix this situation.  I laughed and said, "if only I could, I certainly would."  After all, I'm about as finished with winter as the average Canadian is this year.  That was met with a resounding and very whiny "no, make it summer now!"  I told her I couldn't just change the weather, but she didn't seem to believe me.  We trekked up the stairs just half an hour later to get ready for bed.  She didn't want to put her pajamas on, but there are still just some battles she's too little to win.  But her disappointment was evident.

It struck me this morning, it's not the first time we've had this type of discussion.  On the rare occassions we've seen sun this winter, she's been guaranteed to be in the spot of the car where it's glaring in through the windows and blinding her.  I've heard more than one giant huff and the whine "The sun is looking at me.  Make it stop."  Again, implying that I can just reach up and with a twist of my wrist, change the sun's direction.

The absurdity of it is one thing, but this morning as I was thinking about it some more, I realized how wonderfully awesome it is to be viewed by a tiny human as being 100% in control of the universe.  For her, it must obviously feel that way, though most days when I look at my day to day, it sometimes feels like I control very little.  But how special it makes me feel to be idolized so much in her tiny eyes that I am capable of changing the weather, or redirecting the sun.

A mother will often tell her children that she would lasso the moon for them if she only could.  Maybe we need to realize more often that we actually already are.  And moreover, I'm going to make sure my child always remembers that she brought a special star from the furthest corner of the universe, straight into my heart from the very first day I found out she was coming.  The universe is here.  In our hands.  I'm so very lucky to have her for my very own.

Raising good little mommies

So yesterday was a day where my daughter and I called out to the world to let them know they`d have to go on without us.  We were taking a sick day.

We stayed in bed virtually the whole day.  With a small break for some much needed groceries, we stayed in bed, and watched movies and read books and just generally snuggled and slept.

When Maggie awoke from her nap and came in, I was just starting to drift off...so no surprise that I didn`t get all the rest I needed, but when she crawled up on the bed and saw that I was not moving as quick and alert as I usually am, she snuggled in quietly and cradled my head with her whole body.  She was as quiet as a mouse and barely stirred for almost an hour which (if you know toddlers) is unheard of.  In fact, anyone would wonder if there was some cruel and unusual punishment afoot.

That`s when I had an epiphany.  She`s growing up so quickly that it`s almost always that realizations of our children`s development come to us in big brief glimpses.  They quickly flash through our minds and set us on our haunches where they leave us to ponder them.

My daughter is learning how to be a good mother...and she`s learning this from me.

So for the last 24 hours or so, I`ve felt like a great success.  When I had my child my life long goals changed.  In the blink of an eye, my sole purpose in living became moulding this new life into a caring, kind, and capable woman who would take on the world, turn it on it`s end, shake it out and make something remarkable from it`s pieces.  I have just seen precisely how capable of that she already is.

When, as a parent, you spend most of your days worried about what a failure you are, and how badly you may be doing at not poisoning their little minds and leaving them with mental footprints they`ll need therapy to cope with later on in life, a success like this is huge!  Ginormous even!  It`s enough even to get you through another 24 hours without medication.  These small successes are the foundation for good mental health.  These types of successes are the ones where if you`re actually able to recognize them, can carry you through just one more difficult moment.  These are the successes that are often the hardest to trust, but the most important ones to put your faith in.  They most certainly should carry more weight than those ugly dark moments that cause us to doubt ourselves.  If you were to award points, you would award at least 10 points to such a remarkable success.

And then she asked about my boobies, and compared them to her own itty bitty 2 year old chest, and life returned to normal quicker than it gave me a view to the surreal.  BUT, in all this you can see, she knows how to comfort and console and repair and build up.  She knows how to nurture, and what helps in that process..  Boobies are the best comfort in the world - as any man will tell you.  And she already has that instinct.  My baby is an awesome caregiver.  My baby just changed my world...again.