08/30/2006
Childcare
Or how to pull a babysitter out of your ass in three easy steps.
One of the major things that has happened with me getting not just one job, but two - is an overwhelming need for Picklesitting. This also occurs when the Mother-In Law is on hiatus visiting the wife's sister in Seattle (yes, Zero Boss that bitter tension in the air is probably not a coincidence).
So here I am having to beg favors from any reliable source. I have even gone so far as to ship my mother in for a couple of days - having her bail on her adopted library kids. It is pretty desperate here.
I have been so preoccuied with the issue of finding childcare over the last couple of days that I haven't had to emotionally prepare myself for the actual moment of driving away from the drop off without her.
I have not felt this good about myself since I landed the 6 foot Romanian girl who didn't speak English on St. Patricks Day in 1999 when I was so drunk I couldn't speak English, but this morning as I got in the car . . .
That sucked.
I don't like crying. It's not a good look for me - especially at red lights, but there I sat feeling like I had abandoned my child to the wolves. In all actuality I left her with Mya's Mommy whom many of you have read enough about to know is completely trustworthy.
Didn't matter. I cannot recall feeling simultaeously so proud and ashamed of myself for one single act of going to work. I have to admit that I have not been able to ignore all of the subtle and sometimes not so subtle opinions of those who felt that I should be the one earning a paycheck. I kept feeling like once I went to work - it would show them that I was capable too.
In all actuality I feel very much like I've turned my back on all of the issues that I have come to feel so passionately about. I feel as though not only am I abandoning my child, but I am also turning my back on the validity of what I have been doing for the last seven months.
I do believe that having at least one parent stay at home with an infant is an invaluable asset to the development of a child. I think a father can play that role just as well as a mother, but unfortunately it is an asset that we cannot afford. I somehow feel that my going to work is an insult or degradation of the role and value of a stay-at-home-dad because in going to work I have walked away from my job.
I knew this day was coming but I don't think I knew how hard it was going to be to do the job - how hard it would be to deal with the insecurities it brought, and now to walk away from it. In the build up over the past couple weeks to getting work, I didn't think through one vital element - in getting these jobs I would actually have to quit the one I was doing.
One of my flaws is that I am never satisfied with the work of others. I am now passing off the care of my child to someone else, or rather, several someone elses, who I know will not put the same love and dedication into satisfying the lovely angel that is The Pickle. I dont want to leave my old job.
This is not easy, and as happy as I am that I have the work I do - I cannot help but wish I could clone myself to still spend my days with the little girl I have come to know and love.
Pickle's Papa
18:58 Posted in Pickle Perdicaments | Permalink | Comments (7) | Email this
08/14/2006
Changing Gears
While many of you are reading this I am going to be at my first real job interview. I’ve actually had one other interview, but this is for the first opportunity that I actually want to get the job.
I am nervous.
This was the plan as The Wife and I drew it up: I was going to stay at home and take care of The Pickle while I finished school, and try to find employment when she reached the six month marker because that was the point we thought we would feel comfortable letting her begin some day care.
This would be that point when I need to find a job, and I am all kinds of conflicted on this.
The good news is that if I get this gig it would be a great deal of work from home, and work that I have done and enjoy doing with little supervision. All things good for my well-being.
The issue is that I don’t want to leave my baby. It is difficult to gear up for an interview that, as much as I want the job, would be very happy being told that I get to stay at home until the next opportunity arises – which isn’t very often.
The problem is that this could be a great job . . . but the kid in me loves the frosted side.
Now I’m just being redundant, but I cant get over the feeling like it’s a lose/lose situation. If I get the job I will probably lose three days a week with The Pickle; however, if I don’t . . . we wont be able to eat or pay our mortgage.
See, its really a very tricky balance.
I am beginning the process of preparing myself for having to leave The Pickle. I don’t like it, and I don’t want to do it – but I know it is an inevitability. If it isn’t this job it will be another, and perhaps one I wont want to do.
I guess the biggest issue is that I am actually having to come to terms with the fact that one way or another I am going to be rejoining the workforce.
I cant imagine The Pickle spending a whole day without either The Wife or me there as the problem solver in the moment to moment issues that arise throughout the day.
We are lucky in that the MIL is near enough to take up some of the slack, but the truth is that she will soon spend her first day in day care.
I don’t know which aspect of this will make me feel like more of a failure: if I am not good enough to get the job, or that I abandon my child.
I seem to have a very positive attitude about the whole thing.
I am feeling very insecure about the whole process, and have that horrible child sensation of wanting to throw a temper tantrum scream and cry running to my room yelling, “I don’t want to!!”
I almost wish that the job weren’t so perfect for me and my situation. I honestly don’t think that I thought an opportunity would arise that I would get excited about the work . . . but here it is, and I am caught between the decision of which selfish act is in my better interest.
My brain wasn’t designed for compromise. I could never make it in politics, and parenthood is turning out to be a real challenge . . . who’d a thought?
Pickle’s Papa
09:33 Posted in Pickle Perdicaments | Permalink | Comments (6) | Email this
07/07/2006
To the fear of impending travel
As part of my reward for finishing grad school we are flying down for a week to stay at a condo on Hilton Head that the in-laws have rented there. The Pickle will be almost six months old as we stick her on a flight to Atlanta, to meet up with friends - before renting a car, and driving for five hours over to a beach and a bottle of Jameson or two.
Sure, it seems like a good idea . . .
There is part of me that is absolutely terrified of us becoming THOSE people on the flight, and me turning into my father in the car. Luckily this is a fairly short flight, Cleveland to Atlanta can go pretty quick. The keys, as I see them, are that we get underway as soon as we’re seated, and are allowed to get up ASAP.
The Pickle is amazingly tolerant as long as she is walked around; nonetheless, I am concerned – not only for this flight, but because this is a test flight in prep for what is to be the mother-of-all-baby tests.
The Wife’s sister won a Fulbright, and is going to be in Belgium finishing her DMA for essentially the next year. Her family has put together an all out frontal assault by planning a mass visit in February (imagine, I married the underachiever with the law degree).
The Pickle will just be turning one year old when we plop her in our laps for her first trans-continental flight. We are very intelligent people, yet we make decisions like this.
We have also planned a fall weekender trip to NY to visit friends. The idea is that in the first two shorter trips we will fine tune and hone our flight catastrophe scenarios and emergency tools and tricks before the ‘Biggie’ in February.
The good news is . . . I will be drunk for the trans-continental, cuz it’s the only way I can handle that flight. I know from experience – or maybe its just that I’ve never tried to do it sober.
Well, the last time I asked for opinions and advice it was one of the few posts which actually got zero responses – so I hesitate to put myself out on that emotional limb again, but . . . if anyone that has flown with infants has any advice I would greatly appreciate it.
Pickle’s Papa
13:02 Posted in Pickle Perdicaments | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this
05/19/2006
To The Great Fear of Dogs and Babies
Of all of the things that concerned me before I brought The Pickle home, the one that has proven to be the least significant is how the dogs would react.
Let me state: I do not think that this fear was without justification, nor do I think that the battle is won - but as a mere analysis of where we stand to date . . . I am amazed.
The reason that there was great apprehension is quite simple. We have horrible dogs, or more appropriately we have one horrible dog and another angel that was put on earth and into our house to make the other one look even worse than he normally would be perceived. . . Harold (the beagle) and Maude (the husky mix).
To say that Harold is rambunctious might be the understatement of the century. True. We just began this century, but I think it may hold up.
Harold came to join our family on Christmas Eve, 2003. He was my present to my wife as she sat wrapping gifts in the home we had just closed and moved into days before. For years we had said . . . “some day we will own a home, and have a puppy – and his name . . . shall be HAROLD!.” I know, it’s . . . one of those - sharing a dream – things. we couples . . . do . . . whatever.
OK. So we got a beautiful baby beagle at Christmas, and he is my wife’s dog – but I picked him out. Are you putting the blame game together yet?
He is an untrainable, hard-headed, occasionally violently defensive member of our family, but damn if he isn’t cute – and we unfortunately love him too much to simply cut our losses.
My wife and I both were both raised with dogs, and we were both bit by them - and they were put to sleep. I am kind of hoping to avoid that.
The thing is . . . Harold is better with the baby than he is with us. I don’t know. I am worried that as she becomes more active, and mobile that their relationship will change, but for right now he has a baby and he couldn’t be happier.
The main problem with Harold is that he is very protective of his resources, and territory. I know that as the baby grows we are going to have to do something to define roles as they change.
Everything has failed so far to get Harold to understand that he is not in charge, but I am hoping that he too will mellow as he gets older – or he could just be like the rest of us and get cranky.
I do not want to wait until he bites her to take action, but so far he has exceeded all of my expectations. What is to say that he won’t continue to?
My gut instinct is to take him out to the country and let him chase a rabbit, but I know I could never do that. I am caught in the middle of my optimism and my paranoia – perhaps the two strongest delusions I have.
The Mom and I have had a dozen conversations about training options, things we can do . . . and the basic truth is that we haven’t done anything.
I have heard a million horror stories, and know Harold is a prime candidate to act out at our daughter to defend his toy, food, or spot on the bed – and yet I am like a deer in the headlights waiting for him to change on his own. I feel helpless because I can’t get rid of the dog, not that I would even want to, - and I don’t know what to do as she grows and ‘invades’ his space and stuff.
Just worried on this one. – yes, I’m looking for advice to help keep from having to hang my dog out to dry.
Sorry, I already had the picture . . .
Pickle's Papa
21:54 Posted in Pickle Perdicaments | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
05/11/2006
Dingo ate my baby
INCOMPETANT!!!
That is what I expect my daughter’s first word to be - when she can muster up the will and take it no longer.
One of the miracles that is the pickle - is that I have not, by some strike of dumb luck, killed her yet. At least once a day I find myself saying, “HOLY S**T!!! – What am I doing?” as I catch myself in some random act that would make child services mouth water.
This morning we somehow averted a burst stomach through the balanced use of Mylecon and prayer - as papa had inserted the super-sized Avent bottle and stopped paying attention to how much the pickle was eating until 6 ounces of lovingly pumped breast milk had gone into a belly - which should really only hold 2 to 3 of those lovingly pumped ounces (my wife reads my blog). It was at this moment that I took the bottle out of her mouth that I had my daily ritual exclamation . . .
I will give her credit in the fact that it took her a good minute to realize that her abdomen was in peril. It was at this point that the wailing began, and papa’s emotional self-flagellation ensued.
This emotional state of mine has become habitual - as yesterday my inadvertent attempt to strangle my daughter was given the old ‘wrench-in-the-works’ by a half-hour crying fit that would have led a normal father to think that something may be wrong – but no - it was not until the car reached its destination that I discovered that I had in fact strung up my daughter in her car seat like some old west bandito - through a bad angle and a over-assertive strap job.
Then there’s the time I was struggling to put on a onesy, when I swear one would have thought I had torn her arm off (from the popping sound that came out of her shoulder) as I pulled her arm through the hole. She didn’t make a sound. I on the other hand was inconsolable.
The hardest to admit is the time I took three steps toward the Target entrance before realizing I was about to leave a sleeping baby in the back seat.
What the hell kind of father am I? And if I am supposed to be so smart, how in the hell hasn’t everybody else already found themselves in serious dutch with the law for random acts of stupidity regarding their children.
At some point teenagers lost all credibility with me – because it just seemed way too common for everybody to blame their parents for everything that’s wrong in their lives – well, yet again, I may be altering my opinion - as I have come to suspect that there is a good chance that everybody’s parents really did screw them up.
I am fairly certain, from my performance to date, that the pickle is doomed.
The most I can hope for is sympathy – like that that I am starting to feel toward my parents now that I realize how much of an a**-hole I was in holding them to some superhuman standards in how they raised me.
I know I am going to make mistakes. The question is, which ones? I only hope I do a good enough of a job to make sure that she faces a whole new set of traumas than I did, and is a strong enough individual to put it all into perspective.
Until then I just need to try to keep syringes out of her crib, and stop baby bowling - no matter how much fun it is.
Pickle’s Papa
11:40 Posted in Pickle Perdicaments | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
The story of the bee
The bee sits at the edge of her bouncy seat, mirrored by his silent sidekick the blue raccoon. They are both held in place by retractable arms that sit in constant eyeshot of the pickle as she whiles away her time unaware of the emotional threat - happily listening to the pinging melody of ‘the wheels on the bus go round and round . . .’
The bee first made its appearance at the grandma’s house and was such a hit that we bought an identical bouncy seat for home as well. Little did we know the torment and torture we were submerging our poor daughter in.
You see the bee is in fact colorful and smiley and overwhelmingly interesting to the pickle, but unfortunately the bee is an inanimate object - and this tends to piss off the pickle and cause torrential outbursts when the bee refuses to respond, dance, sing, or climb into her mouth of its own volition – the entire time being mocked in silence by the ever present blue raccoon.
The battle started when that thing that sporadically waved in front of her face and occasionally bopped her in the head was realized to be, in fact, her own hand. It was soon after that she grew intensely interested in bopping everything near her and occasionally grasping these objects for fleeting moments until a spasmodic loss of control resulted in the bopping of the head with whatever object happened to be held.
The love-hate relationship that has developed between my daughter and the bee is a tale for the ages. Homer could only scratch the surface of the joy and betrayal that etched the young heart of my beautiful girl.
The bee sits in mocking silence throughout all of her elaborate coos and bellows attempting to gain some form of reaction . . . but to no avail. If you look in the attached album you will see an example of the struggle . . . and the hollow core of a girl left in torment and exhaustion after yet another failed attempt to achieve love and understanding in a cruel world.
Pickle's Papa
10:30 Posted in Pickle Perdicaments | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this