Moving On

Friday will be the last day I pump at work. As I mentioned earlier, Pumpkin will move to using a regular cup when she moves up to the 18 month room at day care. I am sure there will be lots of spilling as she learns how to do it, so it seems like a good time to switch her entirely to cow's milk. (Right now, I send about 5 ounces of breastmilk and about 7 ounces of cow's milk to day care.)

I have written before about my ambivalence to the changes in nursing that started when Pumpkin started on cow's milk at about 13 months old. We currently nurse after her nap (on the weekends, when I'm home with her), after her evening walk, once in the middle of the night, and once either first thing in the morning or when she wakes up at 5 a.m. (after which she usually sleeps a little longer). I suspect the afternoon nursing will be the next one to go, although I am lobbying hard for her to drop the middle of the night nursing- I'm telling her stories about how a little girl with her name who learns how to sleep through the night from a little bird (Pumpkin loves birds).

I'm looking ahead to my final pumping session with bittersweet feelings. I don't particularly like pumping, but it is the end of a specific time period in my life, a period in which I've grown in ways I never really imagined before I got pregnant. It feels like I should have some sort of ceremony.

Of course, I won't have a ceremony. But the fact that if feels like I need one tells me something- my ambivalence about quitting pumping is mostly about me, not Pumpkin. (My conflicted feelings about how long to nurse, on the other hand, are mostly about Pumpkin.) I need to move on from this stage to the next one. This is a general problem I've been having with motherhood- I have a hard time letting go of each stage. This manifests itself most clearly in my occasional bouts of day care angst. If I really analyze these bouts, it always comes down to day care thinks Pumpkin is ready for X, and I'm not ready for Pumpkin to be ready for X. Pumpkin, it turns out, is usually ready. It is just me who has difficulty moving on to the next stage.

Once I figured this out, my latest bout of day care angst evaporated. I had been feeling anxious about the fact that Pumpkin is having some aggressive episodes at day care. Sometimes she bites, something she learned how to do at day care, and so far, only does at day care. Sometimes she pushes or hits at another baby. The teachers aren't overly concerned- many of the babies have these episodes, usually because they don't really have the words to tell the other babies what they do and don't want, and the other babies wouldn't really understand them if they did. Anyway, the teachers work with the babies to learn how to "use your words". But sometimes, a baby has to go into time out. And that has been hard for me to adjust to. How can my little baby be old enough to have time out???? I was questioning my day care decision (again). But really.... Pumpkin is almost 17 months old, and definitely needs some sort of discipline to accompany aggressive actions. Toddlers of her age are notorious for tantrums and aggressive behavior- I read about this issue in some of the stay at home mommy blogs I read, too. Maybe Pumpkin learned how to bite earlier than she would have without day care, but I don't think day care is making her aggressive.

I was mostly over my angst by the time I got to day care to pick her up today, and what happened when I did get there pretty much finished off my angst. Pumpkin was still inside. They play outside in the mornings and afternoons, and are usually outside by the time I get there. Today, I was a little early and they were running a little late, so the class was inside reading stories with the teachers. As I got Pumpkin's bowls and bottles together, and admired the incredibly cute "scrapbook" they had given us with pictures from their recent picnic, the teachers were getting the other babies ready to go outside. Pumpkin saw this, and squirmed in my arms until I let her down. She ran over to the door, and took her place in line, saying "outside!" the entire time. The teacher opened the door, and the line of toddlers walked out to the gate to their play yard. They waited patiently by the gate until the teacher came and let them in. Then they all ran in to play. Pumpkin wouldn't come near me for at least five minutes, and even when she finally did let me come pick her up, she clearly wanted back down so she could play more. I managed to convince her to drop her toys so that we could go, and we left.

Time outs or no, this day care must be doing something right, because my baby, who is always so happy to see me and runs to give me a hug, didn't want to leave. Stay tuned. I'm sure I'll eventually have some angst about that. But for now, I'm just happy to know that Pumpkin is happy with how she spends her days.

A Big Win

I mentioned recently that I feel like I'm playing sleep roulette these days. Well, I won big last night- Pumpkin slept all the way through until 5 a.m. before she woke up, and then she nursed and went back to sleep (in her crib) until 6:45.

Of course, I want to know what caused such excellent sleep. So I asked Pumpkin:

Me: Pumpkin, why did you sleep so well last night? I know you don't have enough words to tell me, so just tell me, was it because we played outside after work? If it was, say "ball".

Pumpkin: stares at me silently

Me: Was it because I let you have an entire oatmeal cookie for your bedtime snack? If it was, sign "cookie".

Pumpkin: signs cookie

Me: Was it because we let Baby sleep with you? If it was, say "baby".

Pumpkin: Bay-bee!

Me: Hmmmm

Pumpkin: Hat!

I'm not sure what part of our routine "hat" represents. Maybe the randomness?

Tonight, Pumpkin wouldn't finish her cookie, and she threw Baby out of the crib. So I've got my hopes pinned on the hat factor.

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Thanks for the comments and emails yesterday! It is nice to know that we aren't the only couple who struggle with the decision about whether to hire a cleaning service. We're currently thinking about leaving some rooms out of the cleaning, which will reduce the cost. Personally, I think that it is silly to have a cleaning service and then tell them not to clean some things (except for the office- I actually see no way that we could ask someone else to clean the office), but marriage is all about compromise, right? We'll see how it turns out. I'm still waiting for the estimate from the second company.

Something Lost, Something Gained

For a little while today, I thought we'd finally be getting a cleaning service. I got my fiddle out this weekend, to see what Pumpkin thought of it (she was a little bit scared- which says something about how long it has been since I played and makes me sad). I found some sort of dry mold like substance on the part of the case that had been sitting on the carpet. That, and the fact that my allergies have been pretty bad lately, finally spurred me into action. I dug up the coupon that had come in the mail for an environmentally friendly cleaning service and took it with me to work today. Not only did I call them, but I also sent in a request for an estimate from a competing environmentally friendly cleaning service (it is a sign of the times that I easily found two such services).

I brought my info home to Hubby tonight- it would be about $105 per visit for a biweekly service, and $120 per visit for a monthly service. He balked at the price. He (correctly) pointed out that this was close to $1500 a year (at least) for something we could do ourselves. He mentioned all of the other nice things we'd like to do with that money (travel, save up for a rooftop deck so we can actually see the little bit of blue water view we have, etc., etc- it was a long list).

We're right back where we've always been: ambivalent about getting a cleaning service, but falling behind on doing the cleaning ourselves. We had written up a schedule that involved each of us spending one night per week cleaning, plus some monthly chores to be done on the weekend. We've been sticking to that schedule (mostly), but it is clearly not enough. Our house is not clean enough to keep me healthy. And don't even talk to me about our long term to do list- I've been trying to knock "tidy office" off that list for months.

So tonight, while Hubby gave Pumpkin her bath, I vacuumed the guest room and Pumpkin's room and dusted Pumpkin's room. After I made Pumpkin's lunch, did the dishes, swept the kitchen, and spot cleaned the floor around Pumpkin's chair, I went back into the guest room and finally found homes for enough knick knacks and other stuff to make it possible to easily dust the shelves. I cleaned the floorboards. I dusted. I rewarded myself with a beer while I worked.

It didn't take that long- maybe 30 minutes. But that was 30 minutes I could have spent reading, or working on the scrapbook I want to do for Pumpkin, or... well, you get the idea. "Clean the guest room" was not high on my list of things I wanted to do tonight.

Hubby will no doubt pick something to work on tomorrow night, while I give Pumpkin her bath and get her down. It is not like I am bearing more than my fair share of the burden of chores. But I feel like I've lost just a little bit more of the part of my identity that isn't tied up with being a mother. Pre-Pumpkin, we used to do our cleaning in a big blitz every other weekend, leaving our weeknights and most of our weekend time free to spend on our hobbies. Now, the hobbies are showing signs of neglect along with the house. It has been so long since I went to my session that I'm almost embarrassed to talk about it anymore, and as I mentioned above, it has been so long since I got the fiddle out at home that Pumpkin didn't know what to think when I finally brought it out. I manage to keep up with the one book per month that I read for book club, but not much more. I don't do the kickboxing or yoga that I did pre-baby. In fact, I don't do much for exercise beyond taking Pumpkin for walks and chasing around after her. It is only thanks to the wonders of breastfeeding that I lost all of my pregnancy weight, but I know that I am out of shape even though I still fit into all my clothes.

It is not all loss. I've gained a lot, too. It is harder to put what I've gained into words, though. A much younger coworker was asking what those of us who don't watch to local football team do on Sundays. I told him that before the baby was born, Hubby and I would often go to the beach, go for a long walk on the beach, or go rollerblading, and then stop off at our local pub for beers in the afternoon sun. I said that now, we spend our weekends with Pumpkin. The young coworker clearly thought that we were worse off now, but I do not. Spending weekends with Pumpkin is a lot of fun. But I can't really explain why, and how that more than compensates for no longer stopping off at the local pub for beers. 25 year old single men don't really understand why it is so fun to watch your toddler tote her baby doll around wrapped in a blanket, saying "bay-bee" and putting the doll down for a nap in various locations.

I like the identity I've gained- I'm Pumpkin's mommy, and that is wonderful in a way I can't fully explain. But I am still struggling to figure out which parts of the pre-mommy identity need to be let go to make room for the mommy-ness. Somehow, I thought I'd be doing better at this almost 17 months after Pumpkin was born.

And how can I explain to Hubby that the cost of the cleaning service may in fact be worth it, if only to allow me to reclaim a little bit more time for non-mommy interests? More importantly, how do I convince myself of that?

Zenbit: Woof Woof Rough

Kiwis love their puns.

Location: Wellington, New Zealand
Date: December 24, 2005

Pattern Recognition

If someone could observe our nighttime routines for a week, and tell me what is different on the nights when Pumpkin sleeps well (defined as waking only once to nurse, and then sleeping until at least 6 a.m.) versus the nights when she does not sleep well (defined as several periods of wakefulness, perhaps with some unexplained screaming and a refusal to allow Daddy to calm her, followed by waking up at 5:30 a.m. or earlier), I would be very happy.

As it is, I suspect we are looking for a pattern where none exists, and are actually at the whim of random luck. It is a bit like sleep roulette. I go to bed, never knowing how long I'll get to sleep.

So maybe what I need is a sleep charm? Or some superstitious system by which I try to guarantee a good night?