What’s it all about?

This parenting stuff is complicated shit. “Difficult” is not exactly it, nor can you gush about how rewarding it is without feeling like you’re pushing cheese without the macaroni. Complicated is my word of choice. Here’s why.

Every time you think that you’ve finally mastered some elusive parenting skill (i.e. getting your kid to sleep on it’s own or not scream in the Safeway checkout line) things  change. I don’t mean every month – we’re talking every day, almost. There is never “getting the hang of it” because “it” refuses to stay the same for more than 48 hours. And really, who can keep up?

I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent person, quick to catch on to the subtleties and delicate nuances of human interactions. But these small people are just relentless in their mind-numbing rate of change. As soon as you figure out how to fix something today, the sun sets and rises and you find yourself in tomorrow – and back to square one. The magnificent solution that fixed your problem yesterday will not necessarily fix that same problem today.

What it all boils down to is this: babies are completely hand-crafted and custom-wired. And the factory does not offer troubleshooting assistance. I checked. You pretty much just have to guess what to do about 99% of the time.

So what does this mean for you? Well, I guess what you’re supposed to do is just try to keep up and hope like hell you don’t make any tragic miscalculations. Hopefully you won’t do any permanent damage and your child will turn out OK. This sounds like terrible parenting logic, I realize as I look at the sentence on the page. Did I write that? Like most people I guess I kind of thought that parents are these incredible orchestrators, molding tiny babies into thoughtful and responsible adults. I guess I believed that if I just studied hard enough (and being the nerd that I am, I read everything I could on the subject) that I would quickly master “being a parent.” But it’s not like that. There’s no logic to it, no formula. You can’t just apply an equation and get an answer. It’s complicated. Most of the time I feel like the kid is raising herself and I’m just a groupie along for the ride.

Update

Someone asked me today if I have a blog and I realized I had to say “no” since it’s been, what, like 8 or 9 months since I’ve posted here (?) So it made me start thinking (I try not to most of the time, you see) and I figured I’d at least post an update on what we’ve been up to lately.

Natalie is 1 year old and a full-fledged toddler now. She walks. She talks. She throws everything she gets her hands on and then says “uh oh!” like she is actually going to convince you that it was an accident. She has about 2 inches of very fine blonde hair, so fine she still looks bald. Her feet are a size 4. Her passions are balloons, dogs, her friend Jack and her little red push car. She does not care for strangers, loud noise, getting her nose wiped or being told where to go. She still thinks peek-a-boo is the most hilarious thing in the entire world. She likes her books, her baby Einstein music and her bagel & cream cheese in the morning and she wants her prune juice, bath, bedtime stories and songs in the evening. She is her own little person and the bigger she gets the more I am amazed at the intrinsic nature of temperament and personality.

And me. Well I have been home for 13 months and it’s time to go back to work. The last year has been really great and really soul sucking all at the same time. Infants require just so much of your energy and focus that it’s pretty much impossible not to lose part of yourself in the chaos. Eventually you forget what you even did before your child. And then they get older and need you less and less and you are left with this big open space where your own private life used to be.

So that is where I am at the moment. Remembering my passions and re-learning to live life for myself sometimes. And interviewing and looking for childcare. It’s a huge process and I’m worried about how Natalie will handle it all but I figure that it has to happen some time. Otherwise I’ll be one of those vacant women still at home when their kids are grown and out of the house. I have seen the slow and painful death of the mind. Let me go out in a blaze of chaos and disorganization.

Mean mother crackdown

“What do you mean you don’t exist for the sole purpose of being my bed/food source/transportation unit?”

We are weaning Natalie from her sling carrier and trying to pursuade her that sleeping in the crib during nap time is the latest and greatest fad among her tiny peers. She is not convinced but seems to be going along for the ride. The last couple of days have been hard and we’ve both been pretty tired as a result, but it is getting better. There will be other major changes going on around here, too. Oh yes. Once we have mastered “napping on your own” we are moving into second phase: operation binky elimination.

A crappy, rainy day

Today was dreary so Natalie and I skipped our play group and just hung out at home. She found much satisfaction in staring down stuffed wildlife, while I… uh, well, I enjoyed her enjoyment I guess. Luckily it doesn’t rain too much here in sunny California. I mean, she’s a great conversationalist, but all we seem to talk about is “Bah ah ah” and occasionally “guhhghrllll…” We’re working on branching out into new topics, but it’s been slow going.

Irony

a subtly humorous perception of inconsistency, in which an apparently straightforward statement or event is undermined by its context so as to give it a very different significance.