I've been away. We've been on holiday in Cornwall for a week (it's nice, you should go) and I'm facing that back-from-holiday horror.
I've come back to find over two HUNDRED things in my google reader, which sort of makes my head spin. Apologies for not commenting. Also messages on my phone asking me to do things that I'm already too late to do. Realisations that I was supposed to do some stuff before I went away that I totally forgot about. And a message from our social worker saying that she can't make our scheduled appointment so can she come at ten on monday instead? That's ten AM, folks. Today.
Some days, I feel like I'm just going to crumple. It's not really the parenting so much as all the other obligations. It's not like they're at all unpleasant. Many of them involve coffee, and I really like coffee. But I constantly feel like I'm on a social hamster wheel - never doing enough, never returning enough phone calls or writing enough emails, never inviting enough people over or going to enough people's houses. Saying a lot of 'oh yes we must' and not a lot of 'so next tuesday is free for me, how about you?' The thought of adding a social worker to the mix, first thing on a monday, pretty much tips me over the edge.
My parents have beeen here for weeks, and were due to go home Wednesday but have been caught in the cloud of volcanic ash, which sounds excitingly apocalyptic but mostly turns out just to be extremely tedious. It's been great having them around but I have cancelled pretty much EVERYTHING else while they've been here to maximise nanna-grandpa baby face-time, so there are a lot of catch-up things planned for next week after they've gone. But now they're still going to be here then, and I should probably cancel everything again and rebook it a week later but the thought overwhelms me. I just can't think about it. And now the social worker is due in 49 minutes.
I'm trying to think about how to maximise my productive time in the 48 minutes remaining. What really, REALLY needs to be cleaned? I get an unexpected answer when L vomits all over me. It's not baby spit-up any more, it's proper vomit with a smell to match. I put her down, wipe her off and go into the hallway to breathe.
This weekend, my father told my mother that holding baby L reminds him of holding me when I was a baby. I think it's mostly the tininess, and the predisposition towards facial eczema that's doing it, but this gave me a real rush of emotion. I'm thrilled, because my Dad does not make stuff up just to make people feel good, and this does make me feel good. It makes me feel, illogically, that we really were meant to be together because look! She's just like me! And then later the same day I overhear a friend telling someone else that his daughter has his wife's eyes, which is innocuous enough but it hits me again that whatever my children have that might be like me, didn't actually come from me. And I'm well past the stage of wanting a different child, one that does inherit my genes, but it still hurts me that I don't have that connection to these children.
And now, I'm still thinking about it and it all feels like too much. I want some quiet. I don't want to have to unpack in the 33 minutes remaining before I have to account for our family to a stranger with a clipboard.
I want out of this day.
I sigh, pick myself up and go in to check on them. Their faces light up. They grin at me, and make excited hyperventilating noises like nothing could ever have made them so happy as to see me walk into their room. I look at them, my roly poly wonder boy, and my fine boned wood-sprite of a girl, and finally my face lights up too. They make singing noises. I sing back. I cuddle them both, and they nuzzle my neck. And I realise: oh babies, my babies - I'm the luckiest woman alive. I would see a thousand social workers for you.
I've come back to find over two HUNDRED things in my google reader, which sort of makes my head spin. Apologies for not commenting. Also messages on my phone asking me to do things that I'm already too late to do. Realisations that I was supposed to do some stuff before I went away that I totally forgot about. And a message from our social worker saying that she can't make our scheduled appointment so can she come at ten on monday instead? That's ten AM, folks. Today.
Some days, I feel like I'm just going to crumple. It's not really the parenting so much as all the other obligations. It's not like they're at all unpleasant. Many of them involve coffee, and I really like coffee. But I constantly feel like I'm on a social hamster wheel - never doing enough, never returning enough phone calls or writing enough emails, never inviting enough people over or going to enough people's houses. Saying a lot of 'oh yes we must' and not a lot of 'so next tuesday is free for me, how about you?' The thought of adding a social worker to the mix, first thing on a monday, pretty much tips me over the edge.
My parents have beeen here for weeks, and were due to go home Wednesday but have been caught in the cloud of volcanic ash, which sounds excitingly apocalyptic but mostly turns out just to be extremely tedious. It's been great having them around but I have cancelled pretty much EVERYTHING else while they've been here to maximise nanna-grandpa baby face-time, so there are a lot of catch-up things planned for next week after they've gone. But now they're still going to be here then, and I should probably cancel everything again and rebook it a week later but the thought overwhelms me. I just can't think about it. And now the social worker is due in 49 minutes.
I'm trying to think about how to maximise my productive time in the 48 minutes remaining. What really, REALLY needs to be cleaned? I get an unexpected answer when L vomits all over me. It's not baby spit-up any more, it's proper vomit with a smell to match. I put her down, wipe her off and go into the hallway to breathe.
This weekend, my father told my mother that holding baby L reminds him of holding me when I was a baby. I think it's mostly the tininess, and the predisposition towards facial eczema that's doing it, but this gave me a real rush of emotion. I'm thrilled, because my Dad does not make stuff up just to make people feel good, and this does make me feel good. It makes me feel, illogically, that we really were meant to be together because look! She's just like me! And then later the same day I overhear a friend telling someone else that his daughter has his wife's eyes, which is innocuous enough but it hits me again that whatever my children have that might be like me, didn't actually come from me. And I'm well past the stage of wanting a different child, one that does inherit my genes, but it still hurts me that I don't have that connection to these children.
And now, I'm still thinking about it and it all feels like too much. I want some quiet. I don't want to have to unpack in the 33 minutes remaining before I have to account for our family to a stranger with a clipboard.
I want out of this day.
I sigh, pick myself up and go in to check on them. Their faces light up. They grin at me, and make excited hyperventilating noises like nothing could ever have made them so happy as to see me walk into their room. I look at them, my roly poly wonder boy, and my fine boned wood-sprite of a girl, and finally my face lights up too. They make singing noises. I sing back. I cuddle them both, and they nuzzle my neck. And I realise: oh babies, my babies - I'm the luckiest woman alive. I would see a thousand social workers for you.
