Squidbits
1.5 years. Wow. Soon he will no longer be a baby.
\o/
He's been in an all-Daddy mood on and off this month, which is nice to see. I don't think we've really had an all-Daddy mood before, maybe once, and it was sad to watch him turn away from Himself and cry during the weeks of all-Mama mood we had in July. It gives me a bit more of a break, too, because I am not the one on call all the time for a change. My guys are great together, and I love to see them rolling around the living room in the office chair, laughing on the couch, or playing with the big stuffed giraffe.
I am not a particularly sentimental person, but my eyes misted over tonight, I kid you not. "Come into the office! You have to see this!" Himself called to me, so I schlepped my leaden post-work self in there to find the Squid on his lap, thwonking gleefully away at the strings of Himself's old guitar. They got out the keyboard after that, and in less than ten minutes the Squid had figured out that the low notes were on the left, the high notes on the right, and the black buttons changed the sound, and was visibly trying to emulate the fingers-on-keys style of his daddy (in between rounds of gleeful cacophonous whacking, that is; he's a toddler, after all). His little face was so serious and yet delighted as he flailed and plonked away, dressed in his pjs and leaning forward from his daddy's lap. I was so delighted, and proud, and overcome with the sheer awesomeness of the moment. Sometimes, being a parent is magic.
Several days later: He is now obsessed with the guitar, and beelines for it whenever the office door is left open. Taking him away from it occasions heartbroken sobbing. He tries to grab every guitar he sees, which is embarrassing when they don't belong to us, to say the least. We have created a monster.
I know I talk about how my kid dances a lot, but it's seriously remarkable. Most babies dance, occasionally - usually just the white-boy knee bends, but it's an instinctive response to a beat. The Squid, though, he rocks out all the time. Seriously, all the time. When he was a colicky little squidlet, pretty much the only thing that calmed him was dancing - energetic, bouncy dancing to loud dance music. And now that he's a Big Squid, he wakes up in the morning, has breakfast, and then starts dancing to let me know he wants me to turn on the music. He dances intermittently pretty much all day to whatever music is on, and sometimes to nothing at all.
At the café
We take him to the local café that has live music and he'll dance up in front of the band the whole time. Now, I may be a bit biased about the Squid, but I tell you, it's not just me. When he starts dancing, the whole café gathers around to watch. The owner takes movies of it on her camera and the patrons applaud and snap photos. They all know him there now and treat him like a rock star! It's not just there, either; he went to Santa Cruz with his Daddy the other day and wandered right into the middle of a drum circle and got down. The drum circle, Himself reports, had no audience to start with, but as soon as the Squid started to boogie, a crowd of onlookers developed.
In the drum circle
Squid has moves, which is like, I don't even know how that happened; it must be Himself's side of the family. He has at least seven separate dance moves, one of which even looks like the "shake a tailfeather" sequence from The Blues Brothers, which is possibly coincidence but also possibly not, as the Blues Brothers are his favorite music. He headbangs, he spins, he plays air drums, he stomps, he shakes his booty, he sways back and forth, and every week there's something new in his repetoire. I came out to the living room this morning after Himself let me sleep in and found the Squid still in his pyjamas rockin' out to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat." The musical renaissance I'm so enjoying these days is pretty much directly attributable to the fact that the Squid surrounds me with music and rhythm constantly. Thanks, Squid!
Apparently, one of the awesome things about being a grandparent (other than, you know, the joys of kidlet without the trials of parenthood) is that the Squid will eat for you. Himself is a committed omnivore (I was a vegetarian of thirteen years when I met him, and he essentially whined me out of it) and has been terrified that the Squid will end up a picky eater. So it is with growing trepidation that I have watched as the kidlet rejects meat, and tomato-based anything, and veg of various kinds...some days all I can get him to eat at home is fruit, bread, and cereal, and rarely much of that. I pack him a HUGE lunch for daycare every day, and it always comes back totally empty, but I have secretly suspected the daycare lady of throwing it out to make me feel better, though she swears he eats it all. I just couldn't believe that my kid, my kid who only wants graham crackers and strawberries, thankyouverymuch, was really eating all that meat and veg and eggs and cheese and bread and pasta and...
Look at his chins!
The fan club came down last night to give us a night off (we saw Transformers, which was about how you'd expect) and brought a foot-and-a-half-long Armenian cucumber from my mom's garden with them. About eight inches of that cucumber are still in the fridge. The great majority of the rest is in the Squid. Seriously, he loves cucumbers. So when we left, I said, well, he probably won't eat much after that! But I came home, and he'd eaten ALL of his (huge) pasta, veg, and fruit dinner, and some of my father's meatloaf, and some bread. WHAT. Apparently all it takes is being a few decades older and wiser, and the Squid will eat anything you give him. Which means that when he is twenty, I will be able to feed him full meals all by myself! Woo!
I really need to get over feeling like a terrible mother every time I misjudge his naptimes. They aren't on a schedule right now, as he's in the process of going from two to one, and so we get a lot of inconsolable howling in his crib when both Himself and I thought he looked and acted tired. It makes me feel horrible. On the other hand, if we let him keep going, he literally plays until he starts to fall down, whining all the while, so I'm not sure what's the better option. I just get to a point where the whining or howling gets to me physiologically/psychologically; all my muscles tense up and I just want to run away and hide. And yet it's impossible to make a baby happy all the time; a lot of the time being a good parent is trying to make them do what they need to do, not what they want to do (not play with knives, not eat dirt, take naps, etc.) and so the howling is inevitable, really.
Part of it is just that I am really tense lately. My insomnia has kicked back in, with middle-of-the night-wakeups and my brain on a hamster wheel of anxiety all the time. I am about to enter my yearly Season Of Hell, in which all four of my freelance projects, two of which I loathe even thinking about, kick into high gear with multiple deadlines. This is also a busy time of year for Himself, so we can add 2.5 weeks of solo parenting in there as his company sends him out of town for various meetings and workshops.
I am not fun when I am tense.
I was thinking about this yesterday, and when I took on the first of these freelance projects, I was in grad school. Full-time, but school. Then I was working, but flexibly, from home. Then I had four projects, but was still working from home. Then I had four and the work-from-home job and a six-month-old. Now I have four and a 9-5 office job and a toddler and I want to cry. This is too much, not even counting how much I dislike the work or the solo parenting stretches or any of the rest of it. I have PMS right now, so I am literally on the verge of tears, but I kind of feel justified about it, hormones or no. I have ramped up my life obligations over time, little by little, until I am juggling twice as much as I was five years ago, with the same amount of self. No wonder I am unhappy.
And yet - I am so lucky. Look at this guy!
That, and I am underemployed - deeply underemployed - at my new job. Which is not making me unhappy yet, because I have been actively working to get my position reclassed since I started, and have managed to weasel my way into quite a bit of more interesting work while my manager was paying attention to other things. The job's great for lifestyle (humane hours, an office, close to home, nice co-workers who are also generally competent, flexible, great benefits) but the job title is essentially the one I had seven years ago, at the beginning of my career. Granted, I'm better at it than I was seven years ago, but it is making me feel really crappy about myself that I've taken so many steps back. You wouldn't think the word "assistant" would be so soul-crushing, but I am thirty-three and my last job title had "manager" in it, so yes. It really is. But I am very anxious about the reclass request, which I plan to put forward in November; if they turn me down I will have to start looking for another job, and it's only been four months since I last had to do that, and I was so unhappy and I don't want to have to start over. I woke up fretting about it this morning.
I have tried to offload at least half of two of my projects, and I had an appointment with a new therapist last week, who seems smart and savvy, though she kept saying "this sounds like it is about emotional safety" to me about various things, which kind of makes my eyes cross, because what does that even mean? I asked my parents for more babysitting time while Himself is gone. I'm putting a moratorium on social engagements through November beyond what's already on my calendar. I still want to cry. I am a person who needs a lot of down time to maintain any kind of stability, and there just...isn't much, in my future. And I am already not so stable, you know?
Of course, I just used half an hour of the 2.5 hours of precious freelance-work sans-baby time I have this weekend to type that up, so I guess I'll steal it where I can, per usual. All too often by borrowing against my sleep debt, I am afraid.
...wait, you mean this post was supposed to be about my kid?! Oh, right. I am just sneaking my angst in in between the baby pictures so that I don't make a whole separate whiny post about it and feel even more like a self-absorbed emo disaster. Yay? Here, have a picture of the Squid that matches, just for symmetry.
waaah!
I'm trapped in a cheap hotel room in Our State's Fair Capital, going to a stressful meeting in full monkey suit tomorrow, which is always fun in the summer heat. I still don't have anyone to watch our dogs while I'm gone, the freelance jobs get worse by the day (this morning I got literally hundreds of tests in the mail that were not the Scantron forms they were supposed to be, and will have to be hand-graded and entered), I woke up at 3:40 last night from a seriously motherfucking creepy dream about zombies, of all things, and another week of solo parenting starts Thursday.
It's a really good thing that I have such a great family to come home to; this too shall pass (after last night I'm looking at just dumping one of these projects, for my sanity). There are mitigating factors (see: first half of this post); it's just, sometimes I get so buried in the rest of it I lose sight of them.
\o/
He's been in an all-Daddy mood on and off this month, which is nice to see. I don't think we've really had an all-Daddy mood before, maybe once, and it was sad to watch him turn away from Himself and cry during the weeks of all-Mama mood we had in July. It gives me a bit more of a break, too, because I am not the one on call all the time for a change. My guys are great together, and I love to see them rolling around the living room in the office chair, laughing on the couch, or playing with the big stuffed giraffe.
I am not a particularly sentimental person, but my eyes misted over tonight, I kid you not. "Come into the office! You have to see this!" Himself called to me, so I schlepped my leaden post-work self in there to find the Squid on his lap, thwonking gleefully away at the strings of Himself's old guitar. They got out the keyboard after that, and in less than ten minutes the Squid had figured out that the low notes were on the left, the high notes on the right, and the black buttons changed the sound, and was visibly trying to emulate the fingers-on-keys style of his daddy (in between rounds of gleeful cacophonous whacking, that is; he's a toddler, after all). His little face was so serious and yet delighted as he flailed and plonked away, dressed in his pjs and leaning forward from his daddy's lap. I was so delighted, and proud, and overcome with the sheer awesomeness of the moment. Sometimes, being a parent is magic.
Several days later: He is now obsessed with the guitar, and beelines for it whenever the office door is left open. Taking him away from it occasions heartbroken sobbing. He tries to grab every guitar he sees, which is embarrassing when they don't belong to us, to say the least. We have created a monster.
I know I talk about how my kid dances a lot, but it's seriously remarkable. Most babies dance, occasionally - usually just the white-boy knee bends, but it's an instinctive response to a beat. The Squid, though, he rocks out all the time. Seriously, all the time. When he was a colicky little squidlet, pretty much the only thing that calmed him was dancing - energetic, bouncy dancing to loud dance music. And now that he's a Big Squid, he wakes up in the morning, has breakfast, and then starts dancing to let me know he wants me to turn on the music. He dances intermittently pretty much all day to whatever music is on, and sometimes to nothing at all.
At the café
We take him to the local café that has live music and he'll dance up in front of the band the whole time. Now, I may be a bit biased about the Squid, but I tell you, it's not just me. When he starts dancing, the whole café gathers around to watch. The owner takes movies of it on her camera and the patrons applaud and snap photos. They all know him there now and treat him like a rock star! It's not just there, either; he went to Santa Cruz with his Daddy the other day and wandered right into the middle of a drum circle and got down. The drum circle, Himself reports, had no audience to start with, but as soon as the Squid started to boogie, a crowd of onlookers developed.
In the drum circle
Squid has moves, which is like, I don't even know how that happened; it must be Himself's side of the family. He has at least seven separate dance moves, one of which even looks like the "shake a tailfeather" sequence from The Blues Brothers, which is possibly coincidence but also possibly not, as the Blues Brothers are his favorite music. He headbangs, he spins, he plays air drums, he stomps, he shakes his booty, he sways back and forth, and every week there's something new in his repetoire. I came out to the living room this morning after Himself let me sleep in and found the Squid still in his pyjamas rockin' out to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat." The musical renaissance I'm so enjoying these days is pretty much directly attributable to the fact that the Squid surrounds me with music and rhythm constantly. Thanks, Squid!
Apparently, one of the awesome things about being a grandparent (other than, you know, the joys of kidlet without the trials of parenthood) is that the Squid will eat for you. Himself is a committed omnivore (I was a vegetarian of thirteen years when I met him, and he essentially whined me out of it) and has been terrified that the Squid will end up a picky eater. So it is with growing trepidation that I have watched as the kidlet rejects meat, and tomato-based anything, and veg of various kinds...some days all I can get him to eat at home is fruit, bread, and cereal, and rarely much of that. I pack him a HUGE lunch for daycare every day, and it always comes back totally empty, but I have secretly suspected the daycare lady of throwing it out to make me feel better, though she swears he eats it all. I just couldn't believe that my kid, my kid who only wants graham crackers and strawberries, thankyouverymuch, was really eating all that meat and veg and eggs and cheese and bread and pasta and...
Look at his chins!
The fan club came down last night to give us a night off (we saw Transformers, which was about how you'd expect) and brought a foot-and-a-half-long Armenian cucumber from my mom's garden with them. About eight inches of that cucumber are still in the fridge. The great majority of the rest is in the Squid. Seriously, he loves cucumbers. So when we left, I said, well, he probably won't eat much after that! But I came home, and he'd eaten ALL of his (huge) pasta, veg, and fruit dinner, and some of my father's meatloaf, and some bread. WHAT. Apparently all it takes is being a few decades older and wiser, and the Squid will eat anything you give him. Which means that when he is twenty, I will be able to feed him full meals all by myself! Woo!
I really need to get over feeling like a terrible mother every time I misjudge his naptimes. They aren't on a schedule right now, as he's in the process of going from two to one, and so we get a lot of inconsolable howling in his crib when both Himself and I thought he looked and acted tired. It makes me feel horrible. On the other hand, if we let him keep going, he literally plays until he starts to fall down, whining all the while, so I'm not sure what's the better option. I just get to a point where the whining or howling gets to me physiologically/psychologically; all my muscles tense up and I just want to run away and hide. And yet it's impossible to make a baby happy all the time; a lot of the time being a good parent is trying to make them do what they need to do, not what they want to do (not play with knives, not eat dirt, take naps, etc.) and so the howling is inevitable, really.
Part of it is just that I am really tense lately. My insomnia has kicked back in, with middle-of-the night-wakeups and my brain on a hamster wheel of anxiety all the time. I am about to enter my yearly Season Of Hell, in which all four of my freelance projects, two of which I loathe even thinking about, kick into high gear with multiple deadlines. This is also a busy time of year for Himself, so we can add 2.5 weeks of solo parenting in there as his company sends him out of town for various meetings and workshops.
I am not fun when I am tense.
I was thinking about this yesterday, and when I took on the first of these freelance projects, I was in grad school. Full-time, but school. Then I was working, but flexibly, from home. Then I had four projects, but was still working from home. Then I had four and the work-from-home job and a six-month-old. Now I have four and a 9-5 office job and a toddler and I want to cry. This is too much, not even counting how much I dislike the work or the solo parenting stretches or any of the rest of it. I have PMS right now, so I am literally on the verge of tears, but I kind of feel justified about it, hormones or no. I have ramped up my life obligations over time, little by little, until I am juggling twice as much as I was five years ago, with the same amount of self. No wonder I am unhappy.
And yet - I am so lucky. Look at this guy!
That, and I am underemployed - deeply underemployed - at my new job. Which is not making me unhappy yet, because I have been actively working to get my position reclassed since I started, and have managed to weasel my way into quite a bit of more interesting work while my manager was paying attention to other things. The job's great for lifestyle (humane hours, an office, close to home, nice co-workers who are also generally competent, flexible, great benefits) but the job title is essentially the one I had seven years ago, at the beginning of my career. Granted, I'm better at it than I was seven years ago, but it is making me feel really crappy about myself that I've taken so many steps back. You wouldn't think the word "assistant" would be so soul-crushing, but I am thirty-three and my last job title had "manager" in it, so yes. It really is. But I am very anxious about the reclass request, which I plan to put forward in November; if they turn me down I will have to start looking for another job, and it's only been four months since I last had to do that, and I was so unhappy and I don't want to have to start over. I woke up fretting about it this morning.
I have tried to offload at least half of two of my projects, and I had an appointment with a new therapist last week, who seems smart and savvy, though she kept saying "this sounds like it is about emotional safety" to me about various things, which kind of makes my eyes cross, because what does that even mean? I asked my parents for more babysitting time while Himself is gone. I'm putting a moratorium on social engagements through November beyond what's already on my calendar. I still want to cry. I am a person who needs a lot of down time to maintain any kind of stability, and there just...isn't much, in my future. And I am already not so stable, you know?
Of course, I just used half an hour of the 2.5 hours of precious freelance-work sans-baby time I have this weekend to type that up, so I guess I'll steal it where I can, per usual. All too often by borrowing against my sleep debt, I am afraid.
...wait, you mean this post was supposed to be about my kid?! Oh, right. I am just sneaking my angst in in between the baby pictures so that I don't make a whole separate whiny post about it and feel even more like a self-absorbed emo disaster. Yay? Here, have a picture of the Squid that matches, just for symmetry.
waaah!
I'm trapped in a cheap hotel room in Our State's Fair Capital, going to a stressful meeting in full monkey suit tomorrow, which is always fun in the summer heat. I still don't have anyone to watch our dogs while I'm gone, the freelance jobs get worse by the day (this morning I got literally hundreds of tests in the mail that were not the Scantron forms they were supposed to be, and will have to be hand-graded and entered), I woke up at 3:40 last night from a seriously motherfucking creepy dream about zombies, of all things, and another week of solo parenting starts Thursday.
It's a really good thing that I have such a great family to come home to; this too shall pass (after last night I'm looking at just dumping one of these projects, for my sanity). There are mitigating factors (see: first half of this post); it's just, sometimes I get so buried in the rest of it I lose sight of them.
posted by The Stute Fish at 22:57
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