Footie-blut

Or something like that. My kid has been going around saying "footie-blut!" as a sort of toddler curseword. I'm told it means something like totally naked, but in a kid sort of way. So, I've decided not to try stopping her from saying it on buses and trams and in public. And at home. As long as she's not going around yelling "sweet mother of jesus, what the fuck is that?!?!", she can toddler-curse, I guess.

Totally naked. Brings me to that discussion from the last post where she brought up body hair and I proceeded to skip happily down the rabbit hole of women on the internet who don't shave. I also managed to avoid, by careful forethought of Google search terms, all those other unshaven women one might find on the internet when one is in to that kind of thing in a way I am not. Phew.

It took me to lots of photos on a blog of hairy legs, which is meant to be a positive space for women to share photos of their legs (and all else clothed, thankyouverymuch) with hair. Lots of it, not so much of it, in sneakers, in heels. I have to admit many of the photos made me cringe inside. Not a reaction I'd like to have, but the "hairy legs = male" association is strong in my mind. So I just scrolled down, and kept looking. Kept thinking about how it made me feel, and why. About whether or not I was ready to do this thing, too.

I'm still bothered that I'm still bothered by women's hairy legs. But a few things came through all that rumination. This isn't about making all women stop shaving their legs or other, um, areas. It is about really feeling like it is a choice instead of a fear that small children will run away screaming as their adult counterparts make puking sounds in sheer disgust. I also learned that my legs and their fur lie in about the middle of the distribution, which is not something I ever imagined was true. Yes, we're mammals, but I honestly thought I was the furriest one around. And, after having a dream that my unshaven legs looked like Chewbacca's, and waking up to realize that is not true (probably not even for any human being on the planet, in fact), I went out today in a dress and whatever legs. It didn't matter. I may shave this summer (I probably will), but I don't have to do it to be presentable. I may be itchy if I shave, but if I don't, I'm presentable the way I am.

(Note: I found another site today, about not wearing make up. I wear lipstick about once every 10 days and mascara once a month. I don't wear foundation or anything else, so these photos were not so shocking to me. But I imagine this is the same feeling for women who do wear make-up daily as it is for me with the shaving. And then, just for good measure, I let my tummy pooch hang as I went to the grocery store. It was an anarchist sort of day over here in northern Switzerland.)

At glacial speed

If I stay quiet, calm just long enough, I feel the motion. But it has to be a just-woke-up quiet, the kind where I am still pretty tired but not going to fall asleep again. The 6:53am kind, where 7am is so close that the best option is to roll around a bit, and just try to start waking up.

Usually, I will go for my iPhone to help my brain get started by a barrage of useless activities like Facebook and checking the weather. This morning, it is cold and rainy, what feel like the first day of fall just sneaking in, and even 6:53am seems a lot darker than it did yesterday. And I let myself be calm and feel it.

It is a slow motion, of something big, something heavy. It is the passing of time, the approach of my 40th year, the changing of the guard, the end of the summer I thought we might just get pregnant and without having to do all that soul searching just get thrown into the mess, and chaos and energy and fray of a new life. And I would put off thinking about my career a bit longer, or my age. We would have a few more years of not even having the time to notice that time is passing.

Mind you, this isn't really a sad feeling. It is slow, it is calm. There are probably still a few years in which, if I really want (or just accidentally end up there), I can hop on over to that glacier top. It isn't going anywhere fast. I could probably even just step a bit more vigorously and catch it, with its new baby and upheaval, and blinding in-the-momentness that a new child brings to a family. It wouldn't even require a jump. But where once that 40 years old mark was slowly approaching, it is now almost lined up with where I'm standing, and soon will be receding. It is the next stage of life. I will still enter it, sooner or later, and I realized yesterday afternoon that having another child will not make me 36 again. And many of those women around me that I've felt the second-child-having influence of so strongly, they are still in that 35-38 range.

So yes, of course I can still try for a child. I'm healthy, I've gotten pregnant at least twice now, it is likely possible. But it means something different to me approaching 40 than it did approaching 36. I'm not "too old" to have another child in the literal, can your ovaries and uterus do this sense. My husband is not 65, and on and on. But I did not realize that the cycle of having one child would last 6 years for us, starting with starting to try getting pregnant, through infertility and interventions, through a difficult beginning, a first ray of light and then through a miscarriage and then the recovery. When I started this baby having activity, I was 33 years old. I've woken up this morning and I'm 39.

And I have no certainty about another child or not. I know that this morning I was calm, I had time to lay in bed another 10 minutes and hear that slow movement of life. I had energy to make a nice breakfast and to not pull A to run to the bus. We had smiles and time to talk about how sometimes none of us wants to go to work or school. I had time to sit in the foyer, while she screamed about having her pacifier taken away, until she calmed down - I didn't have to wrap her in a jacket and carry her flailing with boots to the bus.

It is the first day of fall, and I've decided to have a month of calmer, thoughtfulness. I will not be giving up on losing it sometimes, but I will be trying to find one thing per day to do or actively choose that connects me with others. That makes the world a bit better place and funnels some of my energy of not being pregnant with a second child back into the world that could definitely use it. I will slow down this month, for the next 3 weeks at least. I will notice this month passing.

I may not be able to move the glacier back (in my mind it is majestic, grand, solid and slow, its coldness is not really a feature, it is not a sad glacier, it is just ancient and bigger than me), but I can make this time before 40 fuller and honor it. 

Giving the pacifier back

My daughter loves her "nuggi" (the Swiss German name for a pacifier).

I don't love it. Sometimes I'm just embarrassed by it - that some other kids her age (and seemingly every last child in Istanbul) gave theirs up months ago. Granted, I feel embarrassed when I'm in that "my parenting is what makes her who she is" state of mind. Sometimes I just know we're getting close to 3 years old and both the pediatrician and dentist say that is the time to be done with it.

We've gone through so many cycles of my pushing to limit it. She doesn't use it anymore, even for naps, at daycare. And now that constitutes much of the work week. At some point when she was around 20 months old, after a long trip, we found ourselves in double-binky territory for sleeping, and I was beside myself with anguish about it. First world problems, indeed. Except that, if she awoke in the middle of the night, and couldn't find both pacifiers, I or M was called in, loudly, to help.

I imagined that by this time, close to 3 years old, she's be over them for naps. For a while, she was falling asleep in her stroller without them. But not for long.

Now the challenges of convincing her to go sit on the potty in the morning, and getting her cooperation to get dressed (generally and issue of mine, but vital when my back is acting up), have gotten greater. They are accompanied by a lot of whining (I'm not saying whose is louder), and me finding myself trying more time-outs for not putting on socks when I've asked. That isn't what I need time-outs for. And in general, I can always use some practice in negotiating and compromise.

So the nuggi is back in our life, no longer removed once she is out of bed (although for a month or two that helped her stay in bed a bit longer and me get that last 5 minutes of sleep I needed to not be a zombie). It stays with her as long as she is making progress on the taking off of the pajama, the diaper, the sitting on the potty, the getting dressed. And in the evening it calls her name, encouraging her to sit still a bit more while I finish brushing her teeth.

I get it, it is bad for her dental something or other. Looking at that last sentence, perhaps I don't get it. It is bad for something. But so is having a morning full of tears and cajoling and general unhappiness.

The pacifier has taken some ground back. For now. And if a second binky tries any campaigning, forget about it. No deal. But one nuggi, I've conceded that ground.

Pass the Kleenex

I probably shouldn't be writing this right now. I'm sick, just a spring head cold, but my ears are plugged, my head is plugged, and doing anything more intellectually challenging than drinking from a cup is a struggle. But, I'm one of those women who feels like she isn't holding her own when she isn't actively doing something. I've written about this before, the not feeling like "enough," but it continues to amaze me how primal that urge is, to gain worth by what I do.

The dog has been napping with me all day, and apart from having free reign of the balcony, she has only gotten to go to the corner potty spot. I'll sit with her there for a while, let her smell the sights, but going up any hills is just not in the cards for me today.

And the babysitter picked up baby A from daycare and is with her now.

I've got a cup of tea in hopes that a theraflu drink with an English Breakfast chaser will help me at least get something done. Because I have to, right? Otherwise, my stock starts dropping. So I've made myself send a form to finish up to M, and I made some rhubarb, apple, pear, raisin, prune compote for the baby for her afternoon snack (actually, came out sweet enough with no added sugar), and watched her try to stuff both hands full of it into her mouth at once. And I'm back in bed, resting my slightly spinning head.

I'm not so sick that I couldn't do most daily things, but it would take it out of me. And right now my husband's job is enough. And all the other days I do a lot. So why does this make me so nervous?

Oh, and I've managed to lose my phone again. This time, I really hope, in the house. But the batteries are drained so even the "find my iPhone" app has let me down. I guess it is okay, because I can't spend so much time lamenting that I don't have the energy to go take a photo of all the shoes we came back from the US with and write something riveting about shoes and feet and all of that.

There is one thing that has made me feel like today's rest and extra help is okay. The babysitter relayed the message from the daycare that they think baby A might be into what they call the terrible three's stage. Well, I may be just able to keep a kid and dog alive and clean by myself right now, but a full blown tantrum from the little one today would have ended in her in a crib, the dog (and perhaps me, too) in a crate, and a lot of rocking back and forth until M came home. Thankfully, we have our babysitter, and that scene didn't have to play out today.

It'll do

Last night, while preparing for a big day today, I was frantically trying to get these programs made for our naming ceremony for Baby A. Since we aren't practicing Catholics anymore, and I'm not crazy about the state of the Roman Catholic church's handling of sexual abuse of children anyway, we aren't baptizing her. But we have guardians chosen and it is still nice to officially welcome a new child into her families. So we are doing our own ceremony. Short, hopefully not to corny, but still symbolic in some ways. I think it will be nice.

But there I was trying to get my new version of iPhoto on the Mac to hurry the hell up and load photos of her so I could use the cool card template to make an amazing (and oh so stylish) program. Yeah, well, this new version of iPhoto hasn't been playing nice with all our old photos. It may take until the next decade for this software to actually do whatever precious conversions of old photos it keeps assuring me I need. Whatever, iPhoto, you're bumming me out.

So there I was, getting more frustrated, feeling the time pinch of having to get to bed soon, Baby A's intestines decided that last night was the night to either get constipated or have loads of gas and the poor thing was screaming and writhing on the bed, us not being able to help much.

I'm running around the kitchen trying to get the cumin (I think) seeds boiled and strained to make a warm tea (in case it is gas), and soak the prunes in boiling water and then mash them up to make prune juice (in case it is constipation).

I'm thinking about how we'll even do damage control to those crib sheets (and walls, and floors) if she isn't actually constipated and I just fed her two whole prunes.

I'm cursing under my breath at the Mac and restarting the whole computer.

And finally, she settles on M's chest and then asks to go to her crib. We put some loose clothes on her and she drifts off to sleep.

I go back to the desktop, inhale, exhale. Blink blink. I open MS Word, pop one photo of Baby A I have from the desktop to the document. Put the text in, print out a bunch of copies, and I'm done.

Good enough, yo. That's all that it needs to be. And I get to go to sleep, instead of feeling that sinking "I'm not even 1/4 done yet" feeling I used to get at the beginning of a long night, way behind on my thesis writing in that last month. Phew.

Oh, and I'm happy to say, there will be no baby-poo Spilled Milk #4 photo. No explosion from the diaper area last night.