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I stood and looked down into the bassinet. I’d forgotten how small babies are when they’ve just arrived. A wash of thoughts and emotions flowed through me as I contemplated the infant boy. The foremost emotion was a desire to touch. I wanted to rub my hand across the soft down covering his tiny head. I wanted to feel the little warm head cradled in the palm of my hand. I wanted to hold the baby up against my shoulder and smell the scents that only babies have. I wanted to close my eyes and rock the baby. I wanted to remember what it was like when the baby I held was mine.

The second thought was a flood of memories that remind me why I’m currently glad not to have an infant. Adapting your life to meet the needs of an infant is hard. It is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I remember the emotional turmoil and physical exhaustion that accompany having a baby. People always talk about diapers, as if disposing of waste is the hardest thing. Diapers are easy. When they smell, you change them. Much harder was all the anticipation. The planning ahead and nudging feeding times so that they nestled with the other events of the day. The staring at a rash on your baby’s skin and trying to figure out if it matches the descriptions of common harmless infant conditions, or whether it matches that other description of a rash you should take to the doctor immediately. The exhausted frustration when baby falls asleep after an hour of crying only to wake again 10 minutes later. Feeling totally overwhelmed at the contradictory advice; all with the direst warnings about possible irrevocable consequences if I got it wrong. I wondered how I was going to manage the rest of childhood if I could barely handle feeding, diapering, and rocking to sleep.

The baby’s mother let me hold him for awhile. I did tuck him up on my shoulder and hold him close. I think that once you’ve had a baby, those sensations are forever wired into your brain. Holding a baby, I can remember the soft glowing times amidst the hard times. In fact the remembrance of those glowing moments assaults me and almost makes me wish to have it back again. It was wonderful and it was hard. I don’t really want to do all of it again right now, but I would not trade the experiences for anything. Even better, I have all the children that my four babies grew into and they continue to grow and delight me every day.

I handed the baby back to his mother. She cradled him close and I watched her for a moment. He is her first baby. She still has ahead of her so many of the experiences that are behind me. Joy and heartache both await her. I sought for something helpful to say. I finally settled on “Have you had the moment where you’re holding your baby and bawling because you feel like your life is over and you feel guilty because you’re supposed to love your baby but you just don’t because he ruined your life?” Tears came to her eyes as she answered that yes she had. There may be new parents who never feel that, but every time I’ve asked, the new parent always answers yes, relieved to not be alone.

Expectant parents go to classes, and read books, and try to prepare all that they can. This is like trying to learn how to swim by standing at the side of the pool practicing arm and leg motions. Babysitting is like splashing on the steps of the pool. When you finally have your baby, you’re thrown off the edge into the deep water. All that preparation may help reduce the panic, but nothing prepares you for the sensation of the water and the knowledge that the bottom is a long way down.

This mother is fortunate. She has lots of close friends and family nearby to help her. She has people to lend her more rope when she reaches the end of hers. I had that too. I know there are many new parents who don’t and I wonder how they survive. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to keep the parents sane while the kids grow up. I had, and continue to have, villages for my kids. Now it is my turn to be part of the village for others. It is time for me to put my experiences to good use. Parenting is like a refiners fire, excruciating and transforming, but what survives is much stronger than the sum of what went in.

Today has been both good and bad. Note the lack of superfluous capitals there. Not Good and Bad, just good and bad. Nothing amazing happened. Nothing awful happened. There were just the little ups and downs that fill so many days.

The downs:

Spending hours on end sorting invoices until my brain was exhausted.

Not having a book to escape into.

Having to leave the sorting unfinished because I ran out of time and had to leave for cub scouts.

the running, screaming, door-slamming chaos that is so typical of childhood games.

Link slamming a shopping cart into the back of my heel so hard that I was limping for the rest of the shopping trip.

My throat is a little sore, I hope I’m not getting sick.

Feeding the kids ramen for dinner because I had no energy/time to cook.

The ups:
Buying lunch for Patches and I, then sitting with him at the kitchen table while he chattered about all the thoughts that crossed his mind. He’s fascinated with the concept of reading and we read the ketchup bottle with great seriousness several times.

Kiki made a very logical suggestion that saved hours of shipping preparation work (“Mom, can’t you print those 1200 insert sheets on the computer instead of handwriting them?” Duh. Of course I can. It just completely failed to occur to me.)

Kiki came home from school and plopped Gail Carson Levine’s Fairest in front of me. She checked it out from the library and says I can read it first.

Driving off with Link to cub scouts only to discover that the mysterious thing pressing against the back of my leg was the neighbor’s cat who’d sneaked into the car while I was not looking. I stopped and opened the window to allow the kitty to jump out and run back home. (We’d only gotten about 50 feet down the road.)

Getting to walk around outside while my cub scouts picked up trash in the school yard.

My kids playing giggle-games together without arguing.

Gleek picking up three times as many toys as I asked her to do.

Link going shopping with me and cheerfully helping me load and unload groceries. He also talked cheerfully with me the whole time.

Finding clementine oranges on sale.

Freshly baked cookies from dough I didn’t have to make first.

Gleek requested to read her first chapter book. We’re starting with Junie B Jones.

Bedtime ran smoothly with no frustrations or upsets.

Howard had a productive day too.

Funny how a few inconsequential bad things completely over shadow the day until I sit down and line them all up like this. I started this entry grumpy and whiny. Now I want to go hug all of my kids and tell them how happy they make me. It’ll have to wait until morning though because most of them are asleep, which is in itself a happy thing.

I was setting up our Wii console so that Patches could play a video game when I found the message. It was a little memo that Link wrote for himself. It read “I like Bestfriend.” He wrote similar notes several days running. Link still misses Bestfriend even though they moved away more than a year ago. Looking at that note I thought about the long journey that Link has taken this past year. A year ago this month we chose to medicate Link for ADD. It was a decision we approached with great trepidation. It was, and continues to be the right decision for our family. Link flourishes. He is no longer constantly scolded for things undone. He has more confidence in himself and in his capabilities. He is catching up in so many of the social and emotional arenas where he lagged behind for so long. He is capable of examining his own emotions and working through them. It made me so glad to find this little memos. They are evidence to me that Link is acknowledging his emotions and dealing with them rather than avoiding them as he used to do. This is good.

Now I need to be making more space in my schedule to talk to Link about things. He needs quiet one-on-one conversation just as much as his noisier-pushier siblings do. I need to create quiet times where the two of us can talk. I’d like him to be able to turn to other people with his sadnesses as well as writing notes on a video game console. The more he connects with people here and now, the less he will miss Bestfriend who is gone. Link has grown so much and yet he still seems so much younger than his peers. I need to extend myself more to help bridge that gap.

Whether or not we are consciously aware of them, anniversaries are important. They carry emotional freight both good and bad. Last Sunday I passed an anniversary. It was one year ago that Howard and I decided to put Link on medication for ADD. The one year mark is a good time for me to pause and assess the results of that decision. It was not a decision we made lightly. I was frankly frightened. Even after the medication proved to be a great boon to Link, I worried about what the costs would be.

A year later Link is still on medication. It is hard for any of us to remember what it was like before. We’ve all adapted to the more focused Link and he has finally been able to learn some things that were beyond him before. He has learned them well enough that he is still able to do them when he is off the medication. The major side effects have been suppressed appetite and difficulty settling down to sleep. We make sure that he is off the medication every other weekend or to have a chance to sleep and eat lots. The doctor helps me monitor closely his health and development.

For Link continued medication is the right choice. He still has social, emotional, and some educational catch up to do. He probably will not completely catch up to his peers until he is adult. That is a typical developmental pattern for ADD brains. But I’m trying to minimize painful experiences as much as possible. I can’t take them all away. That wouldn’t be good for him either. We all need painful experiences so that we can grow from them. Right now he is struggling with recess. He keeps getting left out of games and being at loose ends. I’m trying to talk through that experience with him and help him find his own solutions. He also needs practice speaking. This means I need to be sitting down and having him read out loud to me. Not just that, I need to be talking to him about things. I need to be having conversations with him.

Today has the feel of November. The sky is cloudy gray and sprinkling rain have made the multicolor leaves damp and wet. Even though they are limp, those colored leaves remind me that we are in November and not January. The warmth and glow of the holidays lies ahead of me and so I’m willing to forgive a little gloomy weather. In fact the gloom seems more an excuse to curl up inside and drink cocoa than cause for mourning. November is filled with promise of things that are yet to come.

I like November. I particularly like this November because I was ready to be done with October about a week before it was ready to be done with me. I fully expect to find stress again before November is over. Book shipping is imminent and there are holiday preparations to be made. But I’m not going to let tomorrow’s potential stresses squash the joy out of the space I have today. Tomorrow has enough time for the business tasks to be done. Today is for calm and quiet. It is for curling up and napping. It is for snuggling children and finding things to giggle over. Today is for joy.

I’m posting this from a laptop computer because a very kind friend chose to loan me his old one. I’m still in the getting-things-configured stage, but the machine is already far better than what I had. Yay for laptop!

Today was mostly spent in a marathon roleplaying session at my house. Everyone wanted to complete things because we know that this group will be unable to meet again until after the book shipping in early December. It has been fun roleplaying again. It has also been exhausting. I’m just not used to spending long quantities of time with focused social concentration. By the end of the session I could barely add numbers anymore. The game is fun. The story being told is fun. The group is a good one. They’re even really nice about letting Kiki play with us.

The other kids have all be surprisingly good during the day. Howard is out buying ice cream for them to thank them for being so good while mom and dad play. We’ll eat the ice cream tomorrow after church.

Since November 1st, when I had my perspective shift, the heart palpitations have disappeared completely. This lends much credence to the idea that they were stress induced. I was apparently inflicting them on myself.

I finished the first pass on Teraport Wars layout. I now have the strips in place. This gives us a firm page count (224.) Next week I start prepping images of bonus art so that I can put them all into place. Next week I also do more work on sorting invoices and printing labels for the upcoming mass mailing.

Things are well in Taylerland.

I feel as if my life has changed since November first. I am happy and relaxed in ways that I haven’t been for months. But when I really examine what I do in a given day, nothing has changed. I still get up and get kids to school and work hard on business things and work hard on household things and manage tantrums and handle bedtimes. The difference is in how I am perceiving my daily tasks. Instead of viewing my tasks as things I have to do, I am remembering why I put them on my task list in the first place. I’m remembering why I want them done.

The entire month of October “Mow Lawn” was on my task list. It was a thing I needed to do. It lurked there. Every time I had to move it to the next day’s list, the task would whisper “failure” at me. Wednesday I mowed the lawn, not because I had to in order to avoid feeling like a failure, but because I remembered how much more I enjoy my yard when the lawn is neat. I’ve noticed the messy kitchen and realized that I want the kitchen to be clean, so I made it that way. I helped the kids with their homework because I want them to grow up educated and because I like to spend time with them. I worked really hard on business things because I want more empty spaces in my schedule next week.

For the past week I’ve spent all day, every day, doing only things that I want to do. Amazingly they are exactly the same things that I had to do the week before. I want to keep doing things this way because I am happier and because I’ve promised myself a frivolous sewing project if I can get all the book and shipping work done on schedule.

I’ve been beating myself with a stick to make me move faster when I should have been using carrots instead.

When I was a child I had a hamster for a pet. It was a somewhat frustrating experience for both of us. You see I wanted the Hamster to play when it wanted to be asleep and vice versa. We usually had some overlap in the evenings though. That was when I would watch in fascination as the critter would scurry around the cage on hamsterly errands. I loved it when my hamster would run on the wheel. I never tired of watching those tiny legs move so fast that they were a blur. The hamster ran and ran, trying to climb up the side of a constantly rotating wheel, but the hamster never really went anywhere.

My thoughts have been like a hamster lately. Right around bedtime they start to run overtime. I find myself spinning scenarios and replaying events. Songs linger in my head repetitively. I re-hash the day just gone. I make plans for the next day’s activity. Mostly the thoughts just run and run and run without really going anywhere.

I’m not sorry for the brain hamster. It is happening this week because I am totally and happily absorbed in the Teraport Wars layout project. I’m very pleased at how quickly and smoothly the work is going. By the end of the day I am physically and mentally exhausted, but I can’t wait to get up and do some more. When I reach the point where I physically have to rest, then my enthusiasm turns into a brain hamster who runs and runs and runs.

Did I mention that sometimes my childhood pet kept me awake at night? Yeah, hamsters are like that. Brain hamsters too. My best defense is to find a nice no-stress train of thought and let the hamster run on that. So I’ve been planning an amazing costume that I’m going to sew. I’ve always wanted a beautiful costume dress, so now in my moments of down time I’m beginning to leisurely collect the supplies for it. I acquired a pattern today. In fact I acquired 7 patterns today because the fabric store was selling them for $.99 each. Since a single full-price pattern costs $15, I figure I came out ahead.

Lack of leisure was one of the things in my life that was broken. Leisure time is not the same as “down time.” For me down time implies that I have no energy to do anything. I want to zone out. Leisure time is when I use my energy on something simply because I want to do it. I’d stopped allowing that and now I’m giving it back to myself. Since last Thursday, every day has had some leisure time in it. I’ve surprised myself by discovering that many of my leisure choices are actually task list items, but they are things that I never get around to doing because the priority is low. Yesterday I mowed the lawn with my leisure time because I wanted it done and I felt like doing it. I’ve reclaimed writing as a leisure activity rather than an assignment. I’m glad to have writing back as a joy rather than a stress. Most importantly, leisure activities have no deadlines. I might finish this costume before Christmas, or it might be in two years. I might finish a story this month or maybe it will take three. Either way is fine because I’ll only work on it when I choose. It is more important to get it right than to get it done. (This is unlike other areas of my life where both “done” and “right” matter enormously.)

The brain hamster also often runs upon Christmas thoughts. Fortunately I now have plenty of budget for this. The auctions did well and then Howard’s sister contributed a large donation despite our protests. But I think I may declare Thanksgiving weekend a “no work” zone and sew some things for Christmas. Just because I want to. Or maybe I won’t. We’ll see.

The layout is going well. I have only four more Chapters to lay in. This is good because next comes all the bonus art which I have to select and photoshop and lay in. Then there are the copy edits and the bonus story that have to go in. Interspersed with that stuff is all of the mailing preparation that I need to do. But I have enough time. I just need to work steadily (4-6 hours each week day) and it will all be fine. And I will have some time to do things that I don’t need to do, but just want to do.

Now if my hamsters will just let me fall asleep quickly. Fortunately brain hamsters are amenable to rituals of appeasement such as taking a bath or reading a book.

Happiness is coming home from writer’s group after a fun conversation to discover that Howard got home first and did the dishes. The kids are all abed except Kiki, who had to stay up because she was babysitting. Now I have a fun hour to talk with Howard who is also cheerful because he had a productive day too.