Soft in the Middle

I took Iris to gymnastics this morning and left the other two kids here with my mom ("here" meaning my mom's apartment, where we're sleeping while the inside of our house is being painted). While Iris was in class, I had some time to kill, I mean, to savor. I purged some old emails--my inbox has just under 2500 messages, yikes--then took a walk. What a treat, to walk without some animal or child attached to me! After gymnastics, I went to brunch with four other moms from Oliver's preschool class. We agreed to not talk about kids the whole time, and we really didn't except for maybe two brief slip-ups. Amazing--we all still have non-mommy personas hidden away somewhere. Anyway, it was so rejuvenating to have child-free conversation with peers--I forget how much I need it until I get it again. I do generally have Thursday night walks with two close friends after our kids are in bed, but I didn't get it this week. One takeaway lesson for sure: I was able to be so much more patient and present with the kids after my three hours to myself. I may not get three-hour chunks all that often, but even an hour helps. Sometimes even going to the bathroom by myself helps. Three cheers for private elimination!

I've been meaning to post about this since it happened about six weeks ago . . . We were out to eat with some friends at our favorite pizza place a couple of weeks before Christmas. At the table next to us sat three men and one woman, all around our age or maybe a little younger. The man closest to our table had his back to us but kept turning around and looking at Eve in a strange way. She was in a highchair at the end of our booth and was closer to his table than any of us, so it was easy for him to turn around and look at her. After this happened several times, I began to get a little uneasy. Then, out of the blue, he leaned over to me and told me something that almost made my heart stop. "I just lost my son," he said. "Oh, I'm so sorry," I answered instinctively. I asked him how old his son was. There was a long, painful pause. "Twenty months." Shit. I'd read about people losing their kids, even their babies, but it's not supposed to REALLY happen to anyone. I mean, those are just stories, right? "What's his name," I asked. Another long pause. "Riley." I didn't know whether I should have asked, and it obviously hurt him to answer, but I figured it was better to ask because I didn't want to say nothing and I thought he might want to tell people about his son, even if it was painful. "Can I hold him?" he asked, referring to Eve. I didn't bother to correct his mistake. I let him hold her. He cuddled her for a few minutes and then handed her back. God have mercy. The look on his face was what was seared into my memory more than anything else about the encounter. I have never seen such a look of pain and longing on anyone's face in my life. And I never hope to again. I felt so helpless. Nothing I could say could help him or take away any of his pain. But I still kept trying to think of something. The right words for such a situation. Because it's so hard to accept that maybe there just aren't any. Maybe the best thing I could do was to be grateful for my own healthy kids. Which I was. I just wish that had felt like enough. I just have to hope his pain lessens in time--that faith, in something, sustains him. And I know I will never be able to go to that restaurant again without that incident haunting me.

Well, I knew I probably wouldn't blog every day of the month but I did think I'd only skip a day here and there. Oops. As I learn more and more every day, I can't have it all. One of the hardest things about parenting, aside from the actual parenting part of it, is the wanting with all my heart to, say, do all the dirty dishes, have all the clothes clean at once, pursue my own interests, blog every day for a month, and the not finding the time or energy to be able to do those things. Right now, it's nice to finally be posting, but I should be in bed. I just have to trust my gut to tell me which thing is the most important one to do at any given moment. And I don't always listen to my gut or understand it when I do.

Anyway, I'm ignoring my gut telling me what to do (go to bed) and will now report on our rather eventful day. Top of the morning saw a garage sale that benefitted Iris and Oliver's former preschool. Wasn't much to be found but twas fun to go (by myself!). Then I took Oliver and Eve to Music Together class. Iris left for gymnastics with a friend while we were gone. After Oliver and Eve and I came home we went straight to pick up Iris and her friend and went to the Austin Zoo, where we got to see Curious George for about three minutes before he took off. But Oliver especially enjoyed meeting him. We stayed at the zoo for a while and then took the kids to Jason's Deli to feed them. And then we came home and were DONE. Not even 5:00 and we'd had it. We're getting old, I guess.

So Oliver and Eve both have colds and Eve's kept her and me up for too much of last night. Every time I'd lay her down in bed she'd wake up from her stuffy nose and get mad because she was awake. So I'd have to put her back to sleep. Finally I just sat up in the living room with her so she could be upright. We were there until 4:30 a.m. when I was finally able to take her to bed. So I'm especially exhausted today.

Eve is getting to be more herself all the time and it's fascinating. She's into doing this very guttural yell that sounds like she must be giving herself a sore throat when she does it. I guess she has to make herself heard in a house with two older siblings!

None of us left the house today. I was super tired and could barely muster the energy to move around in the air conditioning, much less in the 100-degree heat. Will was working all day. My mom came over and I tried to take a nap with Eve, but it didn't really happen. Yesterday was busy, though. Iris had her first gymnastics class in the morning. She took it a couple of years ago and then wanted to stop but decided last spring she wanted to do it again. She seemed to have fun but was afraid of the high bars and balance beam. Then Will and the kids and I went down to Whole Foods while a couple of different people looked at the house (sigh). Then the five of us went to the pool. The pool closed after about a half hour because they had to add more chlorine, so then we went over to the adjacent park. Oliver is a swingin' man. He wanted to be pushed on the swings about 75% of the time we were at the playground. Iris ran around with her friend Carden, scheming about how to get the second graders to stop putting rocks down the slide so Iris and Carden could slide down sans rocks. I don't think they succeeded. Ah, elementary-school drama!

But it wasn't a New Year's resolution or anything so it's okay. Mid-August resolutions are fine to break, I'm sure.

The first week of school for Iris has come and gone. At the beginning of the week I was kinda freaking out about whether Iris's teacher was good or not. I didn't know anything about her and was being embarrassingly judgmental (is it ever not embarrassing to be judgmental?). Like, I was looking at her turquoise eyeshadow and thinking, "Hmm, I wore turquoise eyeshadow in seventh grade, and she's wearing it as an adult, so therefore, she must be a BAD teacher." (Apologies to anyone reading who wears turquoise eyeshadow. It's just not my style any more.) Okay, so obviously I knew that her choice of eyeshadow didn't really mean anything, but I was looking for some clue, any clue, about who she was, what kind of person would be in charge of my oldest baby for seven hours day for the next nine months. I have since relaxed and am feeling better about her, after talking to her a little more and talking to other parents about her. I am somewhat bummed, though, that Iris is not in the bilingual class. Those kids get taught in both Spanish and English all year. And I REALLY want my kids to learn a foreign language. Oh well.

Before I pass out . . . Iris's second day of school and she seems happy enough so far. I don't know how good her teacher is yet but Iris says she's nice. Iris says they "learned about science" today. Well, okay then, that explains everything! They are all writing every day and by the end of the year each kid will have a book. Or so I understand. Iris may be fine, but I am missing my mom buddies that I used to see after school while our kids played! Guess each new year has its ups and downs for the parents too.

Part of my depression last night about our house/financial situation was based on my assumption that our realtor updated our house listing last Tuesday with the newest price drop land no one had even come to look at it since. But it turns out that she may not have updated it after all, although she was supposed to. Will checked the listing on Zillow and it was still at the old price. So maybe we'll have some more interest after the price drop actually shows up.

I also am trying to think of the big picture. Yeah, this is a scary and difficult situation, but at least we're all healthy (knock on wood) and safe and all that. Cliche maybe but still good to remember.

It looks like I will probably have to go back to work--now. It seems increasingly unlikely that we can sell our house anytime soon, but we can't afford to stay in it either. At least not the way things are going. And if I want Will to be around for a while (I do). He can work only so hard and so much, after all. But going back to work will require finding, and paying for, some child care. I would only work part-time but it is still breaking my heart to think about not being able to be with my kids (especially Eve, because she's still just a baby) for those hours. I'd have to work at home so I could still be around to nurse her (I really don't want to pump at this point), so that might be easier. Or harder. One of the two.

Maybe tomorrow things will look a little brighter. But tonight everything is grey.

I think we need a new realtor. Ours is really getting me down. She's talking like our house isn't going to sell unless we lower the price to an amount that we can't afford to sell it for. And she's just generally very negative. Maybe all realtors are right now; I mean, I know the market sucks, but it wouldn't hurt to get some other opinions. The main reason we wanted to go with the realtor we have now is that they (it's a husband-wife team--or at least it used to be until the husband decided he wanted to go back to his previous job--coding--because he couldn't handle the uncertainty of the real estate industry. I mean, you can't predict what a house is going to sell for, can't write a code for that. You can plug in all the numbers and STILL NOT KNOW!) donate 1% of their 3% commission to charity. Great, we thought, we sell our house and get money and still get to do some good for others. But now it's looking like we will, in fact, lose money on our house. Will said we should designate ourselves as the charity. He's got such good ideas, that man I married. Anyway, I wonder if I'll ever get used to this being-a-grownup thing. I mean (I keep saying that; it's annoying me), selling a house? Am I really old enough for that? Nah, seriously? I don't care if we did do it once before already. And let's not get into the whole having three kids part of it . . .