breaking up is hard to do

we’re pretty much done with bad news. had enough. not interested. can’t take any more. seriously.

so when shannon walked through the door the other evening and announced “i have terrible news” it was all i could do not to break into tears. and that was before i even knew what was wrong.

and then he hit me. hard. told me that kresta had called him and given her notice.

now, i’m thinking that we haven’t said nearly enough about our daycare situation for anybody to understand how truly devastating this is. kresta and her two daughters — elizabeth, 4 and piper, 2 — have been spending three days a week with eamon and mairin since i went back to work last december. finding kresta was our own personal version of winning the lottery. we could not afford to send both mairin and eamon to the daycare that mairin was attending when eamon was born, and as much as s and i really love our jobs neither of was ready to quit. the search for quality day care is not an easy one — it’s kind of like job-hunting, apartment-hunting, and having a hangover all at once. but after informal interviews with about a dozen people who responded to a craigslist ad, we were ready to meet two women face to face: jamie and kresta.

we liked jamie. she said “holey-moley” a lot, but hey, she’s from the ‘burbs. she was sweet and affectionate and clearly was looking for a family she would feel comfortable with. we liked that. and she was up for trips to the zoo, the park, the children’s museum. she seemed nice and good and fine.

and then we met kresta.

kresta showed up at our front door, piper and elizabeth in tow, about half an hour after jamie had left. the three girls took to each other immediately, tearing around the front yard and hollerin’ up a storm. kresta was smitten with 7-week old eamon, and it was easy to see that she meant it when she talked about loving to care for infants. when piper had an unexpected accident we grabbed a spare pair of mairin’s pants for piper to wear. kresta was mortified — less by piper’s accident than by her own lack of preparedness for it – but i simply realized how natural it was for all of us to look out for each other, to help each other out. in that moment i was sold. kresta and her girls stayed so long playing that she had to call her husband to assure him that she wasn’t being held hostage by psycho-craigslist-posters. it was all i could not to offer the job on the spot.

it took s & me about 4 seconds to talk things over and agree that we wanted to hire kresta. she was thrilled. she’s a PT nursing student and was looking for a position to carry her through until elizabeth starts school — at least a year and half away. perfect. perfect. we were all so happy and it was all so perfect.

and it has been a thing of beauty, this relationship. the kids adore each other. mairin asks about piper and elizabeth all the time when they’re not here, and has even named two dolls (well, one doll and one weird disney-princess-head) after them. she has lengthy conversations with ariel/elizabeth and bald baby doll/piper about thomas & percy & gordon, or about grocery shopping and running errands, or going potty. you know, the stuff of toddlerhood. eamon is smitten by the girls as a group: if he’s having a rough morning it only takes mairin, piper and elizabeth sitting around him singing a song to send him into infant ecstasy, huge toothy grin and arms a-flappin’. mairin is an obedient gem of a child for kresta, eamon doesn’t like to be taken from her arms, piper gives me a hug every morning when i head off to work…it’s a good, good thing.

when kresta needed to register for summer term classes we gave her the password to log onto our laptop so that she could stay home with the kids and just register online. when she told us later that afternoon that one of the classes she needed had been full neither shannon nor i thought much of it. big deal, right? you miss a class here, you take it another time, you fill it in with something else, life and the educational system carry on.

or they don’t. for kresta, missing this class threw her PT schedule off enough to set her back a year — something about prerequisites and how often courses are offered and what she’s eligible for as a part-timer…all stuff i understand and believe but just didnt bother to think about,  having never been a mother in school on a part-time basis. after a lot of conversation with her own family, kresta decided that she couldn’t afford to be set back a year. even though the only way to avoid that is to go to school full time. starting this summer. well, starting may 11. which means the end of our good, good thing.

kresta called shannon and told him over the phone. she was sobbing and so so sorry and so so sad that it was hard for them to get any useful information from each other. so kresta and i talked later that evening, and i got the skinny and we both cried but i told her i understood and would probably have made the same decision myself. and i would have — family first and all that — but still. still.

and now the new craigslist ad is up, and we have three potential new caregivers to interview this week, and everything will work out one way or another. in the meantime, every morning that kresta comes over we three adults look at each other and it’s obvious that we’re fighting tears. kresta says she doesn’t know how to tell elizabeth and piper that they won’t be coming over any more. my heart breaks into a million little pieces when i imagine my weekly monday night conversation with mairin: instead of yes! piper and elizabeth are coming over tomorrow!, i’ll have to tell her no, they’re not coming tomorrow, or the next day. no, honey, even if you set out elizabeth’s favorite dinosaur cup for breakfast she won’t be here.  even if we make pancakes and eat them from the monster plates they won’t be able to come over.  yes, honey, i know you miss them. yes, i know you want to play with them. i know i know i know. i just can’t do anything about it.

so while this will work out just fine, i’m certain, i also feel a bit like this is another cincy-bite-in-the-butt. something was finally working and now it’s not.

okay, so really, REALLY this time, cincinnati, i mean it. enough. please. just for a little while. okay?

you’d think i’d have more to show for it

given that i have lain awake most nights this last week, clever-sounding one-liners running through my head, you might think i’d have written a post or a dozen by now.

the problem with writing ideas born from sleep-deprivation is that by the faint and dull yet somehow buzzing light of morning they have lost their brilliance.

so forget my wit. (wit? what wit? oh, your humor is too cruel.) here’s a snippet from our real life, instead.

m: mommy, where is daddy?

c: on a bike ride.

m: with his friends?

c: no, tonight he went by himself.

m: oh. on his bike?

c: yes, sweetie.

m: mommy, i want to be a daddy.

c: [...!...] really?

m: yiss. when i grow up i want to be a daddy.

c: oh. how come?

m: daddies have bikes.

[note: insert your own version of the long and tortured conversation between shannon and carole when carole recounts this conversation to shannon and shannon tells mairin that mommies can have bikes too. who was the better feminist -- carole for letting mairin want to be a daddy and so not foisting gender roles upon her but also losing the opportunity to tell her that girls can have bikes? or shannon, for helping mairin see that girls can have what boys have but also reinforcing the notion that mairin could be a mommy if that's what she wants? i think we're waiting to finish the argument until at least one of us has had a decent night's sleep.]

long overdue family-ramble

gus is the laughin’-est kid i ever have seen. he sees mairin, he laughs. he sees his dad, he laughs. (he sees me, he lunges for my breasts, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue.) you blow on his face, he laughs. he wakes up in the morning laughing. and blowing raspberries. which makes him laugh. the kid is amazing. perfect in every way.

mairin is going to be the death of all of us. she has turned into the world’s most loving toddler and smothers everybody with affection. and i do mean smother: she will jump on top of eamon, wrap her chubby arms around his neck, and croon “i love you beebee, beebee-noni-eemon i love you.” i tell her to be gentle. she turns on me with a glare: “i am being gentle, mommy.” and then i am pronounced “gabba-mommy” which sometimes seems to be a step down from “noni-mommy,” but which still comes complete with hug so i think it’s okay.

mairin and eamon are now sharing a room, with mairin bribed out of her crib and into her big-girl bed with the promise of a sticker every morning that she gets up after spending the night in the bed. “mairin’s big-girl sticker chart” has the place of prominence in our entryway, and she has earned herself two stickers in two nights. not too shabby, little girl. of course, she did wake up at 2:24 this morning crying for blueberries, which woke the entire family.

which ruined the first good night’s sleep any of us has had in a week. eamon has decided that while being 6 months is pretty cool, and sitting up and rolling over and chewing his toes are great ways to while away the hours, he would prefer, thank you very much, to spend his days eating like a real  infant: on the breast, every two hours, day or night. especially night. by last sunday i was so frazzled that there was talk of me abandoning the whole stupid family idea and striking out on my own, somewhere, anywhere, without children, so help me god. i’m better now, thanks for asking.

which is partly thanks to shannon, who ordered me A WHOLE BOX OF JENI’S ICE CREAM for my birthday, and so now has renewed status as THE BEST PARTNER EVER (a status he lost due to my sleep deprivation, see above). the box came yesterday, and i had the grace to share my belgian milk chocolate with mairin, leo and leo’s mama while we all sat outside enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.

tomorrow i am taking the day off work to test-drive a new decade. i started out loving my 30s but they got kind of questionable for a while there and they’ve ended with a deafening thud. i’m really forward to the fresh start.

smug

this weekend the kiddos and i:

did 8 loads of laundry. mopped the kitchen floor, including wiping down the baseboards. made vegetable stock. finished cutting the fabric for the twinslers’ quilts. did most of the grocery shopping. sorted and delivered seven (COUNT ‘EM!) bags of baby clothes to goodwill. sorted and delivered two HUGE boxes of maternity clothes and one medium-sized box of infant boy clothes to auntie ‘ra and cousin emmet. baked bran muffins. delivered bran muffins and one box of infant girl clothes to the twinslers’ house. caught up on top chef & damages. made paneer. worked on potty-training with mairin (no, tim, we’re not done yet.) rearranged the living room furniture (slightly). wrote a little bit. took the kids to the park. walked the dogs.

i am awfully proud of myself.

have we mentioned…

…how much we love piper, elizabeth, and their zen queen of a mommy, miss kresta?

i thought not.

we do.

sleep? sleep? mwaaa-ha-ha-ha.

okay, so forget that last post. eamon has since decided that the best way to sleep is next to me, or on me, or attached to me in some way. all night long. with wakeful periods every 90 minutes (on the nose) just to remind me he’s there. in case, you know, i forgot.

on the other hand, mairin loves sleeping. and she loves waking up (HI mommy! it’s GOOD MORNING time! the SUN is UP! daddy is at WORK!) especially when, as this morning, she can get ready for a big adventure. boots on, sweater zipped, hood pulled over head, backpack (empty) strapped on, bike helmet buckled: thusly attired, this toddler was ready for her visit to the children’s museum. i can only imagine what she thinks she’s going to do with the bike helmet. and i’m waaaaaay too tired to ask.

because you know you want it

come take a look at our goings-on:

eamon, four months.

new year’s in columbus.

and a bonus pic just for visiting us today:

 

someone likes herself some frosting

new love

Manhattan Coffee Soda

Made with actual espresso, this drink is a bit of heaven in a bottle — especially when accompanied by the world’s best sandwiches, courtesy of the Cafe al Mercato on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. YUM!

health hath no fury like a virus taken on a road trip

somehow i managed to leave cincy in perfectly good health, only to arrive in ny — okay, okay, it was new jersey, but SO CLOSE! — with a raspy voice. not a sexy lauren bacall raspy voice, more like a phlegmy rhea perlman raspy voice. not attractive at all. and it is only just now clearing, in the seriously unattractive ways that phlegmy voices eventually clear.

mairin left cincy in perfectly good health only to arrive in nj with green rivers running out of her nose. pair that up with the cutting of the last of her two-year molars and the child was seriously uncomfortable. the molars are through (and consequently she is no longer chewing on her own hand in some desperate-coyote-like manuever to free herself), her nose has cleared, she no longer asks for medicine to make her feel better, and she is almost sleeping through the night again.

all of which makes this a perfect time for eamon’s teenytinylittle nose to get plugged up, making it difficult for him to nurse and breathe at the same time, which in turn makes it difficult for me, as i alternate between stuffing his milk-hole and unstuffing his nostrils, squeezing milk in and suctioning mucous out.

we were all, i thought, on the path to good health and returned good humor. instead, eamon and i were up all night and i’m tired as, tired as…well, as shannon put it so delicately yesterday, “tired as i was back in graduate school when i started [fill in your own verb] this hot aerobics instructor and never got any sleep.”

yep — that tired. and not nearly so, um, relaxed.

road trip: homeward bound

from ny to oh: google never got it so wrong.

we knew going into the thanksgiving week that we faced two 12-hour drives. we thought we were ready. we planned to break up the outbound trip with a stopover to see COUSINS! in maryland; we thought we were prepared to tackle the inbound trip in one fell swoop: bite the bullet and drive, as s said. we had steeled ourselves for a 12-hour drive with a toddler and an infant, knowing that neither of them would want to be in a car seat for that long.

but everybody assured us the drive home would absolutely not take 12 hours, and that we were crazy for worrying it would.  it’s so much shorter to go straight from ny to cincy than to go via baltimore, they all said. it will be a lot easier than you think. trust us. trust all of us.

so we did…for the last time. we’re done trusting you, rocco, or you, stephanie, or even YOU, mapquest:

Total Estimated Time: 10 hours 49 minutes
Total Estimated Distance: 641.01 miles

my ass.

we drove for fourteen and a half hours. in the cold and dark. with two crying children, leaking breasts, icy roads, and foul, foul moods. by the time we got home shannon had blisters on his hands from gripping the steering wheel, our children were sobbing, and shannon and i were each contemplating the list of irreconcilable differences we would be handing the divorce attorney.

somehwere in pennsylvania, a britney spears moment. no, not that kind. the other kind.

eamon is on my lap, nursing, in the front seat of the car. (wanna make something of it? i didn’t think so.) we come to the end of a tollway. shannon points out that we’re going to have to stop and pay, and i may want to put a blanket over the baby. so that, you know, it’s not so obvious that i’m holding an infant in the front seat of the car, where, when we wreck, well, fill in your own terrifying images here (i shall not tempt fate by publishing my own).

i am, for once, relieved that shannon is indeed not brad pitt, so there are no paparazzi to catch this on film.

welcome to west virginia! or, carole ponders blessed relief.

we are 10 hours into a long, cold, rainy, windy, icy drive, during which neither eamon nor mairin have seen fit to nap. mairin is crying “mommy, mommy! hold my hand! mommy!” as she leans as far forward as her car seat will allow, reaching her right hand toward me. eamon is crying “mommy, mommy! feed me! hold me! i’m not even 12 weeks old! what in god’s name are you thinking, woman?” shannon has suggested i ignore them to see if they will stop. this was about seven hours ago, and appears not to be working.

i sit up, undo my seatbelt, and turn around to lean my chest against the back of my seat. with my right hand i reach out to mairin, who grasps at my fingers, sighs, and collapses, eyes closed. with my left hand i give eamon something to suck on, alternating between my fingers, his fingers, and the only pacifier i can find that isn’t on its way to road-trip-disgustoville. i rest my forehead on the headrest of the passenger seat. a car cuts into our lane, forcing shannon to suddenly brake hard. i push my knees down into the seat, hoping that will be enough resistance not to send me flying, face up and shoulders first, through the windshield. i briefly flash on the pleasantness that oblivion would bring.

did anybody really think i wanted to drive through west virginia again?

almost home, or, no, no, no! i do not like it.

our two-year-old child has been in her car seat for twelve hours. she has had it with the car seat, the road trip, us, the whole damn world. her sad, sad cries now culminate in desperate full-body twists, olympic high-dive style, accompanied by the shrieks “mommy! MOMMY! HELP ME!” shannon looks at me desperately. oh no, i say. not you too. help your own damn self.