Edge Staff Mom (170)
I used to know what my opinions about things were. And some days I still have a decent handle on it. But on others, I'm a mess of conflicting emotions about stuff. Today is a snow day. I feel really weird about it. On the one hand, it's annoying, because instead of a half day in which I can do work, I have to try to cram it into a smaller window of time. On the other hand, I'm weirdly happy that they have some nice fresh snow to play with. This is beyond bizarre; I stopped enjoying snow around the same time I started having to drive in it.
Then my son came down with a sudden and gross stomach bug. I was somewhat relived he had it on a snow day, because otherwise it would have happened while he was in school and I would have had to bring him home. And who knows how much work I would have gotten done at that point. See, when I have less time, sometimes I can actually get more done.
I'm not a big fan of complaining it accomplishes very little and makes me feel like a whiner. Also, I find a positive outlook is helpful to my mental state (which is fragile on the best days). However, in the interest of perhaps helping people who may have multiple children or even people who have a lot of children (just maybe spaced them out a bit) I thought I'd be honest about something that I'm afflicted with. It's called singleton envy.
I may have touched upon it here and there in past columns, but every once in a while something will hammer the point home about just how weird my situation is.
You don't start out wanting to quit something. I mean, if that were the case, we would all still be crawling it's safer and easier than the balance and coordination needed for bipedal locomotion (er walking. I could just say walking). None of us would talk, use the bathroom correctly or tie our shoes all skills that are learned through painstaking practice. And you learn by falling down all the time.
A few short years ago, our kids couldn't use cups that didn't have covers on them. They couldn't dress themselves. I remember a time, not too long ago, when they couldn't communicate things they wanted in anything other than screams. And even as early as last year, tantrums were the go-to emotion they defaulted to when things weren't going their way.
When you're hanging out with your little kids sometimes really little, sometimes older you get these flashes of insight into what they're going to be like in the distant or not so distant future. Sometimes it's a certain look they get. One that is so adult and clear that you are taken aback by it you can see before you the adult they are going to be, right before they spill their milk all over the dining room table.
Other times it's an attitude or a tone of voice that jet-propels you into exactly what you think the teenage years are going to be. Sometimes it's a casual dismissal of your foolish suggestion.
I'm not a hoarder, but sometimes it's difficult to tell. Being sentimental, it's really hard for me to throw certain things away especially when it comes to my kids. I still have scribbles they did when they first started using crayons, and I don't want to chuck them.
Then they started school, and the projects started rolling home on a weekly basis. Now I'm so inundated with sentimental items I could scream. I may have screamed actually. This is not the first time I wished I was a more organized person, nor will it be the last. And no, this isn't a story about how I magically clean my house though there are times I get it to passable.
Sometimes you learn things about yourself that are disturbing. I had such a lesson during last week's vicious snow storm. It was nasty out, the roads were horrendous, accidents everywhere you looked. But when the event I had lined up babysitters for was cancelled, I was bummed.
Despite all the odds, I still wanted to be able to go out, and I was mad. Not mad at perfectly reasonable people for doing perfectly reasonable things, like cancelling a performance due to nasty weather. I was mad at the weather personified. I'm aware that the weather is not a person you should really get mad at. But that didn't stop me.
Time is weird when you're a parent. There are times usually when there is fighting or crying - when time seems to stretch out and last forever. That witching hour before bedtime when no one can behave can feel like a miserable eternity. And on the other side of the spectrum it can seem like yesterday when they were just wee bundles, swaddled and blankets and having that amazing 'new baby' smell.
And now, with the kids in school it's a whole new level of weird time. On the one hand, the weeks seem to fly by. I get up at 4:50 a.m. to get lunches made, backpacks packed and at least locate the majority of items needed to get out the door (hats, mittens, snow pants, boots, coats plus shoes for indoors). Technically, I don't have to get up that early. I've proven this on days where I slept through the alarm. But it's also when I do some room cleaning, then sit and relax for 20 minutes before the rush.
Over the weekend I saw 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens,' which allowed me to pick up my nearly-revoked nerd card and continue on my merry way as a happy geek don't worry, just in case there is still someone out there who hasn't seen it, there will be no spoilers here. But it was awesome. I cried entirely too much at points where you aren't necessarily supposed to cry like the opening credits. But whatever.
This is also the soonest I've seen a new release since the kids were born. It hadn't even hit the second run yet. Well, it probably would have if it had been any other movie. But it wasn't. It was still playing everywhere. That's another point in my favor.
In 2014, we received a board game for the kids from my cool sister-in-law who lives down in Mass. I remember taking it out of the box and scrambling to understand the basics while the kids were all grabbing at different pieces. She grinned as I fumbled with the directions and said, 'I just make up the rules.'
It was some of the best advice I'd ever heard about gaming with young kids.
There's a lot to be said about the isolation of parenting. About how much you give up for your kids and how much they change your lives. There are many, many great articles about it. But this one is more about how they made me a more creative person.
You lose large swathes of free time when you have kids, especially if you have three kids at the same time.
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