Updates

Here I am teaching my favorite little people in the schoolyard garden. The picture doesn't capture the amazing bounty and beauty of the vegetable beds, nor my highlight of that particular class...when all the kindergarteners were exploring the garden pointing and going "buzzzz!!!" when they saw a bee, and "chomp, chomp, chomp!!!" when they saw a ladybug (if you didn't know, ladybugs eat lots of garden foes, particularly aphids in this case.)

Seems like work is going to be over before it began! School gets out in a few short weeks and I'm trying to decide whether to take on some summer hours watering and doing paperwork. Since someone is moving into my teaching position full-time in the Fall, I'm not guaranteed a position, but I'm hoping that some of the part-time opportunities they've been dangling with other schools will come to fruition. I'm still not willing, or ready, to go to full-time. The buddyO-baby is just too amazing and good daycare too hard to find (and so freaking expensive! Why work just to barely pay for someone else to hang out with my kid?)

I have been feeling the tug-o-war of part-time work and home life more acutely these days, as the pressure to wrap up work on a high note starts to bring the ever-precarious work/life balance to a boiling point. Sometimes I just don't feel like I'm doing anything extraordinarily well...when I'm at work I'm pulled home, and at home I'm pulled to work, and both sides end up with a tired, stressed, not-superbly-confident gal. But I think that's the nature of both beasts - part-time work never leaves enough time to accomplish anything as great as you want to, and everyone thinks they could mother better than they are, right? Luckily I get long weeekends for escapes. This time we tried to go camping...it was fun for the first two days, and then fevers and rains hits and we had to return home. But now we get to enjoy the comforts of downy beds and dvds. I think we finally struck a good balance!

Back in the Dirt

I had a nice round of teaching in the garden today, even though my administrative duties are piling up. I'm discovering that this job is not the most suited to half-time, but I'm trying to learn to expect less of myself (there's a work ethic for one to live by!)

Sorry for the lack of blog upkeep. Here's what you've missed: sick, miss work, healthier, work, sick, miss work, healthier, work, sick...in a vastly less-complicated-than-real-life-trama-and-turmoil nut shell. But enough about me. Wait, no. Not enough about me. Gail memed me to tell you 5 things about myself. As if a blogger needs an excuse!

1. I've never found a Vietnamese spring roll better than those at Pho Pasteur in Boston, but I keep looking. It is all about the peanut sauce and the right noodle to veggie ratio.
2. I've built my baby's music collection by stealing from the library.Well, not really stealing. You know what I mean, come on...Dan Zanes is awesome, btw, just not super kid appropriate, as evidenced by "like every honest fellow I drinks my lager beer, like every jolly fellow I take my whiskey clear."
3. I have a proven methodology for picking out kittens. Huge ears + big paws + long tail = big cat
4. I am an "E" network addict. I've seen most episodes of the "Girls Next Door". For those of you sane and intelligent, this is a show that chronicles the exploits of Hugh Hefner's three young, blond girlfriends. What's the appeal? I have no freakin' clue, I just can't turn away.
5. As a tween I played hide-n-seek in the corn field next to my house. There is nothing more eerie.

I tag Carrie (not linking you in case you want to protect your kid's privacy) and Adam.

Monday, Monday...

Here we are, day 2 of daycare! Finally. Though baby-o was crankers when he woke up this morning (too early!), so I'm not convinced he's 100% yet. I'm certainly not. Now that I have a day to myself (thank you for being born, Abe Lincoln, and to the school district for decreeing it a paid holiday - there are hidden benefits to a M-W schedule!) my body has decided to give in to the germs instead of allowing for the errand running and housecleaning I've been putting off all weekend. "Slow down, you're moving to fast...got to make the moments last child..." I aspire to learn that lesson someday.

We did take a break Saturday to get out in the sun. We went down to Ardenwood Farm and introduced the little guy to his first BABY GOATS and peacocks... and added some new cows, chickens,sheep, monarchs, ladybugs, and various plant groups to his acquaintances. After all my farming years, I have decided that baby goats are the cutest babies of all. And MY baby wanted to jump right into the pen with them! He also had a lot of fun "weeding" (pulling up all plants in reach and sharing them with us) in a big open field while his daddy and I lounged. His favorite activity was dropping eucalyptus leaves and seed pods into a hollow stump while monarchs whirled around him admist towering eucalyptus trees (ah, California, how we love thee.) I almost put Silas into the stump for a photo op, but realized that there was a tunnel opening into it. I wonder whose head we were dropping all those leaves and pods on?!

Welcome to my day off! Working the last three days has made me appreciate things I never thought I would...like waking up at 6 am to a crying baby with explosive diarrhea. Already he wasn't able to go to daycare this week because of illness, so Nat and I were trading off, he covering days and then driving down to the telescope to observe all night, me covering evenings, nights, and early mornings before heading out to work. Glad that's over. But now another bug???? Viruses need to pick their targets more fairly.Maybe we'll catch a break next week.

I do like the job, btw.

The plunge...

Here I am, working on lesson plans after returning from a work-related appointment, trying not too worry too much about my biggest boy, who has now been away at daycare for almost 7.5 hours!! I dropped him off this morning and drove away after making the care providers PROMISE to call if he showed any signs of freakish separation anxiety, sudden onset illness, or general dis-ease. After 2 hours I figured we'd be getting a call, but here it is, almost 4, and not a peep. We did call to check, of course, but I thought we did good hanging in until 1:30 to do that, and he was playing after a nap. A nap! On his first day! A nap without breastfeeding, without Daddy's patented sing-song-rock-rock, without his own bed. DO you think they might have drugged him? Or could it possibly be that he might actually be prepared and ready for this experience? I'm crossing my fingers. If anything defines my sweet buddy, it is that he always delivers far above and beyond my expectations.

As I twiddle my thumbs (er, blog) waiting until the time I can jump in the car and go rescue him, I'm reflecting on how little time we've spent apart. Looking back, I've certainly never spent this much "awake time" away from him. I went shopping for 2 hours around 4 months, but he was napping. Nat and I went out to dinner alone once...yes, once...in June. And over the past month he's hung out with grandparents for a couple hours so Nat and I could get our skiing and snowshoeing in, with a potential nanny for a scream-fest hour, a mommy-friend for a relatively tear-free hour, and with Nat and my friend Paul (manny-in-training) for a couple hours...all preparation for the great experiment that is today. An experiment that will continue next week as I start my own schedule in a new environment. Hopefully I'll adjust as well!

(Those of you without kids are shaking your heads, grinning, and wondering how the hell I turned into such a mushy-mommy who never leaves her baby...maybe someday YOU will get to embrace the insane anxiety coupled with forgotten freedom that accompanies leaving your tiny, impressionable, developing, cutie-pie, person-whom-you'd-prefer-to-spend-time-with-over-pretty-much-anybody-in-earth with relative strangers...then you'll be proud and teary right along with me.)

****Note: Literally the MOMENT I clicked on "publish post", I received a cell phone call that the baby had been crying off an on for nearly an hour, so could I please come and get him half-an-hour early?...I showed up to find him quiet and happy, but his questionable cold had turned to major virus(fever/cough/pflegm city) during the course of his day at daycare. I feel so guilty dropping him off sick! But it is even more amazing that he handled the day so well. I just hope we don't lose points on the responsible parenting tally card by spreading disease all about town.

The Employment Soap Opera Continues...

Apparently playing hard-to-get is a good tactic for securing the precise employment situation I've been asking for for months...now that I've refused two offers the white flag has been raised today and I've been given the offer I'd been looking for all along! Why the heck did we all have to go through the drama, I ask, oh so beseechingly????? At least the drama has bought me more time with baby-grubs. But ignore the last post, because I think I'm FINALLY going back to work. 20 hours/ 3 days a week. And Nat's going to work from home (well, watch Silas and try to work if he'll nap) one day a week, so that means we only need care for two days. Two days seems doable, right? Baby gets time for socialization and learns how to nap without the boob; I get to grow some plants and minds and get the foothold in the garden-education community I've been wanting for years; and Nat gets to hang with his boy-o one-on-one. Win, win, win! I feel pretty good about this. Not that I don't expect tough transitions, some healthy doses of guilt (can you attachment parent if you're not with your kid 3 days a week, Dr. Sears?), and a whole lot of new stress. But aren't we lucky to have such options at our disposal? Nat and I both love the work that we do, and we're able to do it without sacrificing ourselves, our family, or our lifestyle. How many people can say that?

7:48 (Feels like Midnight!)

Nat is already asleep, and Silas has been down since 6. I feel like a party animal waiting around for prime time t.v.! These last weeks have been busy, busy, busy. Childcare visits and interviews, doctor and dentist appointments, dinners with friends, playdates with babies,trials runs with nannies/mannies, meetings with employers, stressful and sleepless nights and days...and it all culminated in a decision last night....drum roll, please...

We cannot afford for me to work! Ironic, isn't it? Ive been working like a crazy person to make it work, and when I'd finally collected enough information to run the numbers, it doesn't make any sense financially or otherwise for me to be away from the baby and the house 4 days a week. I'd be coming home with no energy, little quality time with the babe, and like $40 after all is said and done. How nuts is that???? (If I had less of a nursing brain in my skull I'm sure I could launch into some sort of sociological analysis of the failings of the government to offer no help with childcare, the underestimated value of mother's work, and the failings of the feminist movement...but that mind is tired.)

It is the second time I've had to turn down this organization, but amazingly they aren't phased...a good sign if I do decide to go back when we/Silas are more capable of handling a general (aka: cheaper) daycare situation. And I've learned, yet again, (like graduate school) that sometimes you have to actually try out things to see if they're going to work. But now that it is all said and done, I'm still pretty psyched to be able to justify continuing to coddle and wrestle and spend my (sometimes long, sometimes mind-numbing, but always productive) days with my baby-grubs. (And I've learned that I need to stop saying "yes" before I've stopped to examine who is going to benefit.)

Silas and I celebrated our continued security by hiking in the Marin Headlands under sunny skies today...looking out to the ocean for whales and making up songs (Silas has this habit of humming in sing-song when we walk lately.) It was a perfect day. Who'd want to be working? (even in a garden...)