Loading up the van

It's official.  The baby stage is over.  I think that hit me at their 15 month Dr appointment when we were told that other than their 2 year molars and this last incisor that Teeny Tiny is working on, they have all their teeth and then she said that they are officially toddlers.

By the way, they are almost exactly the same size now, both 20lbs and a few ounces.  Yay 25th percentile!

This of course brought to mind whether or not we're going to have another.  The further we get in this parenting adventure, the more we lean towards "no".  I keep enjoying each stage more than the last and I really don't miss the stages we'll never see again.

I just don't like babies!  I never have.  Everyone kept telling me how it would be different when they were my own, but it wasn't!  I still didn't like babies!  I loved mine of course, but I'm a crap baby mom.  We all have our talents and being a mom to babies is not one of mine.  I did what needed to be done to keep them safe and healthy, but I never relished in it.  Nothing in me ever said "I wish they would stay like this forever."  Nope.  Everything in me was "I can't wait until we get to the next stage and this shit is over!"

But I'm shaping up to be a great mom to kids.  No really, I am.  Hard to believe that such a shitty baby mom could turn into a pretty awesome kid mom, but like I said, we all have our talents.  I'm much better at this.  I'm much better at being creative about making toys, about teaching them skills, about learning play in general.  I'm not a good baby snuggler, but I can convince a whining, crying toddler that it would be much more fun to shake the shaker bottles I made than to continue pitching a fit.

I don't want to do being pregnant again.  I don't want to do the baby stage again.  Sure, we'd all love the chance to correct our mistakes, do it better the second time around, to use what I've learned in some capacity, but probably not enough to actually make it happen.  I don't want to miss out on a stage the girls are going through because I have to focus on the needs of a newborn.  I also want to start drawing some focus back to me in a few years when the girls begin school and I can consider starting a career again.

Still leaving the options over of course, just in case empty nest syndrome hits when the girls start school.  I'll also be casually tracking my cycles (I've had 2 so far, 2 months apart, let's see if a pattern emerges) and give us the best chance to get ourselves a surprise.  If someone wants to join our family, we'll be thrilled, but we probably won't be seeking that soul out and actively trying to coax them into our home.

Today, I loaded up the van for a big consignment store drop off.  3 laundry bins stuffed with clothing were sorted, and I didn't pull out anything to hold on to.  The swing we thought we might use for another kid one day, gone.  The snuza alarms that convinced me my babies were breathing all the time, adios.  All the breast pumping supplies and extra bottle nipples that would be gross to share, trashed.  As far as our storage shed is concerned, babies have left the building.

As for those few newborn outfits I did tuck away in a box and that dream I've talked about of just snuggling one baby without another one crying for attention, just one word - grandchildren.  ;-)

Advice for my daughters - the secret of being cool

One of the main reasons I had children was so I would have someone to pass on the things I have learned throughout my oh so long life.  In case I get hit by a bus or something, I feel the need to document some of that advice somewhere.

Today's lesson - the secret of being cool.

I was an unpopular kid.  My unpopularity tortured me during my grade school years.  With older, wiser eyes, I look back on those years and try to see from an outsiders perspective what made me so unpopular and what made the cool kids what they were.

Everyone knows what it is that cool kids have that the uncool kids don't - confidence.  But what does that mean exactly?  How does confidence manifest itself in a way that makes you cool?  When you don't have it, but you try to have it, you generally become an arrogant asshole, and while arrogant assholes sometimes give off the appearance of popularity and often have the general public fooled, in quiet corners everyone is whispering about how much they actually hate the popular assholes.  Even their "best friends" are getting in on that hatred.

A couple of things I remember being cool in the third grade - these little flocked teddy bears and playing with the wax from those individually wrapped cheeses.  Everyone had to have those cheeses for lunch to get the wax to play with and everyone had to collect those stupid little bears.  Why?  Who started it?  Who decided those were cool?  I dunno, but I have an idea.  The person who decided they were cool simply enjoyed them and had no idea she was supposed to be shy about enjoying them to see if others would agree with her before going public with her enjoyment.

Her lack of apology, of question, of seeking approval convinced the entire class that these things were simply cool and she was cool.  Why?  Because she said so.  I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.  I don't even like cheese but I requested my parents put them in my lunch every day because the cool kids had them.  I had the biggest collection of those stupid bears in class.  Did that make me cool?  Not even close.  I was a total poser.

Collecting the trappings of being cool will not make you cool.  It's something I struggle with to this day.  My instincts tell me that if I can have the best / be the best fill in the blank cool thing, I will be cool and people will like me.  So I had the biggest Barbie collection, sticker collection, stupid bear collection, I was the best at tetherball, and doing spinning tricks on the play bar.  I had all the trappings, and I was still a nerd*.

*Kids, back in the day, being a nerd was the worst thing you could be.  It's not like today where being a nerd or a geek is something to be proud of.  If you watch 80's sitcoms, you'll find that all the characters are the cool kids, and each one has that one nerdy friend.  The purpose of the nerdy friend was to make the main character likable, to demonstrate how even though they are an awesome cool kid, they are nice enough to allow a geek to hang out with them.  In real life, those cool kids would never lower themselves to be friends with a nerd.  I'm looking at you Silver Spoons and Family Ties.

So what changed?  What turned the tides and made the geeks the kings of the world that they are today?  Is it the money they earned being smart?  Eh, that helps, but no, that's not it.  I'm pretty sure it's the internet.  All of those geeks, with their unpopular enjoyment of nerdy games and sci-fi suddenly went online and found out that they weren't the only ones creating detailed maps of the Starship Enterprise.  When they discovered they weren't alone, they stopped being ashamed of what they enjoyed.  They reveled in the knowledge they had acquired during their study of whatever their joy was and found others who were impressed by that knowledge.  Communities of geekdom where "geek cred" was cool.  The apologies stopped, the shyness and shame stopped, and the moment those things stopped, cool started.

Personally, there came a moment where I simply gave up trying to figure out cool.  I just couldn't figure it out so I stopped trying.  I said "fuck it" and just started spending my time how I enjoyed spending it.  I spent my highschool years in the theater and pottery rooms.  Did suddenly saying "fuck it" make me cool right away?  Not that I know of.  If I was, no one bothered to mention it to me.  But I had some good friends to watch Monty Python with and generally enjoyed myself.  Years later, people look at the work I put in for years becoming good at pottery and now think it's really cool that I can do it.  Did spending hours upon hours alone and covered in mud make me cool?  Well actually I probably was pretty awesome but I was alone so again, no one around to tell me how awesome I was being while enjoying my cool hobby.

So that's the secret to being cool.  Enjoy what you enjoy and don't apologize for it.  Rock out to the band that others are laughing at.  Master that hobby that sitcoms use as a punchline.  Play that game that others pretend they've never heard of.  If I'm right, and you sincerely make no apologies for enjoying what you enjoy, you will soon find yourself surrounded by people marveling at how cool you are.  And if I'm wrong, who the fuck cares?  At least you've spent your time enjoying yourself instead of wasting your time trying to collect the biggest stupid bear collection in the class.

And for all the totally cool nerds out there, please spend the next 3 minutes celebrating your nerdiness with Weird Al.  One of the first people to become totally cool by being weird.  White and Nerdy video.

Two out of two babies agree

The best seat in the house is the Daddy lap.

 

 
Mommy lap ain't bad either.

Remember when I was bored?

Wow!  Ok, interesting week.

So, remember when I was all bored and feeling useless?  The employment gods changed their minds about that.

In order to get some brain activity, potential income, basically have something to accomplish in my life, I spent the last few weeks treating pottery like a job.  I've been working on Christmas ornaments, throwing them during naps, then decorating after the girls go down for the night.  It's totally got my brain firing again as I geared up with excitement of new ideas to try and constant thoughts swirling around.

Then I get a call from a temp agency I applied to 2 1/2 years ago.  Yeah.  A month after my miscarriage, I went applying to temp agencies and really pushing to get a job and nothing ever went anywhere, then suddenly this call out of the blue years later.  They tell me they have a video capture job, work from home primarily except for an initial meeting, am I still looking for work?  Yup!  Then they tell me they submitted me as a candidate, but someone else got it.  Ok, no prob.  Get a call the next day, that person decided they don't want it after all, so can I get downtown tomorrow to start?  Uhhhhhh, sure!  But I tell them that I'm booked the following day (one of my regular video gigs that's just a couple of hours every month) and they say they can work around that.  Awesome!

The weirdness of it all - when I've needed to work, K has been home to entertain children.  Seriously, this is how it's gone -

Tuesday - 10am meeting for me so I'm gone half the morning, then work from home in the afternoon.  It's K's day off, no problem.

Wednesday - Parents come to watch the girls while I'm at my video gig.  They wake up in the morning about a half hour before I have to leave, then go to sleep about 20 minutes before I get home so I have a couple of hours to work while they nap.

Thursday - I work all day, K's day off.  Project almost finished.

Friday (tomorrow) - Project due at noon, K has the closing shift and will be leaving for the day around 12:30 so I can work all morning.

How did we luck out that exactly the days I need to work, K has been home to entertain?

Now they're talking about having me do the next project too and according to K's schedule, the same thing is going to happen (for the most part).  I go in for a meeting Tuesday morning, then they say the job will take a couple of weeks of working remotely.  Well, K has Thursday and Friday off, then he's taking off the entire following week for a vacation!  I'll probably be calling various relatives to come over for a few hours at a time to just play with babies while I work, but just pure dumb luck in timing means this won't be a daycare scramble.

Oh!  And not only do I have this gig and my usual video gig, but someone contacted me today about making some custom pottery too!  And did I mention that this week I was going to spend K's two days off tearing the bedroom apart, hunkering down and getting the rest of the floor installed?  Yeah, that's now put off for even longer.

So, I guess the lesson here is to find something to devote yourself to, that gets you excited, that you look forward to every day.  Because when you find that, when you really get working on it, other opportunities will do everything they can to keep you from doing it!

And since this is a baby blog and what's a baby blog without babies, here's a picture of the ghetto baby water park I made in my kitchen for these hot days.