Happy Birthday, Chlyni Ma

Sunday

It’s been a long week. I don’t even know what to say at this point other than it’s been a long week but I made it through the weekend, which was the melt-down point the last time R was out of the country for two weeks, without anybody losing it.

I’ve even managed to find some of the shiny.

Jetzt geht’s los!

Well I was right about one thing. R did miss the Boychen’s first real not-holding-on-to-the-wall-or-tottering-over-right-away steps. Perhaps five stumbling ever forward trying to keep up with himself feet - not steps, mind you, feet - from my desk in the office to R’s desk. Then again later in the day coming towards me across the living room not only walking but holding a child’s broom aloft like a torch to light his way.

To light his way into the future. One step at a time.

Family

One of the reasons I’m glad we’re living in Switzerland right now - and on any given day there are many reasons I’m glad to be living in Switzerland - is that I have family here to lean on. My husband’s family lives on their family farm fifteen minutes outside the city. (And yes, the fact that there are family farms fifteen minutes outside the capital city of the country is one of those many reasons I enjoy the Swiss life.) This is the farm my husband grew up on, the farm his brother has taken over, the farm my older son loves. He spends one day a week with his grandparents and uncle on the farm and it often turns into a sleep-over. During a regular week, the fact that I can count on grandparental childcare is a relief; during these times R is away doing this degree program he’s doing it’s a life-saver. During the thirteen night-times R will be gone we’ve got four sleep-overs at The Farm planned. Tomorrow when the big one goes to Spielgruppe (sort of like pre-kindergarten) R’s mom will come and look after the little one and I’ll have THREE! WHOLE! HOURS! during which I do not have to worry about small children. When we go to hockey on Saturday, R’s mom will stay at the apartment taking care of the Boychen. We’ve got a weekend lunch at The Farm planned after which grandparents and grandchildren will go for a walk in the woods and I will retire to the guest room to catch a nap. So I’m grumbling a lot about these two weeks in London, but in truth I’ve got a lot of help.

If we were living in the US I imagine we’d be somewhere along the East Coast, far from what remaining family I have. And even if we were to live near my brother and sister-in-law, they have young children of their own, they’re not like my retired (mostly - farmers never quite retire, it seems, even when somebody else takes over the farm) in-laws who have time to take Small Boy for the day. We’d spend time together, but they would not serve as child-care. Even if my parents were alive I wouldn’t trust my mother alone with my children. I’d barely even want them to spend time with her under my supervision. In terms of having a support system to rely on, I’ve got a better one here in Switzerland - in this foreign land - that I would have in the land of my birth.

And my sons have a good life here. They have grandparents here, and they’re growing up having a real relationship with them. When I see them together I see what a gift my boys are getting having grandparents in their lives, these very grandparents who are so good to them and who love them so. When I first moved to Switzerland R and I had a plan about when we would move back to DC. But now? It would take a lot to get me to leave here now. I can’t think what would be worth taking these boys away from their grandparents, and these grandparents away from their grandchildren.

I can’t think what offer would be good enough to break up this family.

Day One

Day one of single parenting is off to a rollicking start. The Boychen threw up* and the cat pooped on my bed.

Sigh.

* I’m pretty sure I just over-fed him and then when he was gnawing on a pizza crust he triggered his gag reflex on a super-full stomach. Still. Bleh.

Dark days ahead

So my husband is leaving tomorrow for a 13-day business trip in London. (Well, it’s 12 1/2 days but 13 bedtimes, and we all know it’s the bedtimes that count in this sort of thing, right?). Leaving me single parenting two boys under four. He will miss Boychen’s first birthday, and in all likelihood his first steps as well, so that’s probably punishment enough, but perhaps I should make him bring this back for me. Or this? It is London after all.

Snow, fleeting

It snowed last week (before Halloween), wet heavy snow though not much of it. Just enough to introduce the little boy to snow

and to remember how much the big boy loves the snow.

And to make this.

Hockey Mama?

I’m not sure if the hockey is going to last. He might be too young, it might be too early, he just might not like it. I have no experience in how to gently make him stick with something; this is new territory. We’ve gone three times - today we left mighty early though, as it seemed pointless for me to sit outside in the cold with a cold if he was just going to lay on his back on the ice and refuse help from the trainers* - and we’ll try again next Saturday but I don’t know. How long do you make a three-and-a-half year old keep doing something? If I push him will I spoil something that he might like at four-and-a-half when he’s got more confidence? If I don’t push will he walk away from it forever without really knowing if it was for him? If I let him walk away from this am I starting him down the road of walking away from what’s hard, not learning determination? And if I’ve got this much angst about three-and-a-half-year-old hockey camp, what am I going to do when things get real?

It’s just hockey.

* Okay, in fairness he did skate once. Doesn’t he look good?

And I am foolishly attempting NaBloPoMo. Consider this Day One.

The curse of the mama schedule

I have two small boys at home. They are both pretty interactive little boys (which translates variously as “strongly attached” or “made of velcro” depending on the day). I have daycare for Small Boy two days a week, days on which I used to get a fair amount done - or at least enough to feel as though I had gotten a fair amount done - but as The Boychen grows older and more adventurous (which translates variously as “curious” or “highly destructive” depending on the day) I’ve found that my single-son days are hardly more productive, work- and/or adult pursuits that replenish the spirit-wise, than my double-son days.

I am not one of those people who can get by on a fistful of hours a sleep a night; on the contrary, getting only a fistful of hours a sleep at night brings me dangerously close to a return to the post-partum depression days. Staying up late and working, or waking before the boys (who are early risers), is simply out of the question at the moment. I can work after the boys go to bed until about 9:00 or 9:30 but then it’s time to start getting ready for bed.

Here’s the problem: I find that when I work right up until bed-time, when I lay me down to sleep my mind is racing with ideas, reviewing that poem I wrote or thinking about that journal I might submit to. A phrase comes to mind, a better way of closing out that stanza that was troubling me. I’m wide-awake, as wired as if I were hooked up to a caffeine-IV drip. Last night I was awake until 2:30 this morning - the new 2:30, that is. (I got a lot done - one submission package completed and ready to go out the door and a group of poems picked out for revision and submission to a second journal - but it’s hardly the ideal situation.) Fortunately today is Sunday and R and the boys are over at The Farm for lunch and a little afternoon stroll with the grandparents and I can recover. But when that sort of thing happens on a Tuesday night it’s a bit of a disaster the next day.

So what’s the solution? Only work until 8:30 in the evenings and then spin-down with a book or TV? But Small Boy only goes to bed at 8:00 - that’s hardly any time. Crunch all the work in on the weekends when R takes the boys? But weekends are family together time. It’s a real time-crunch. The hours just are not there and when I steal them from the wee hours, the wee hours take their revenge.

It’s just where I am these days, this is what my days look like right now, but I’m having a hard time accepting it gracefully.

Eyelashes in the night

The Boychen* spent a troubled and restless night last night, waking and crying, somehow in pain. I kept waiting for him to throw up, it seemed so much like he needed to throw up but he didn’t, he just spent the night sleeping and waking and crying. Until late this morning, when he did, at last, throw up. And as sorry as I felt for the poor little monkey, I was also relieved. Not relieved that he threw up. Not relieved that he is sick. But relieved that I was right. Relieved that I do know this boy from whom post-partum depression stole so much time, so many moments. So many nights spent sleeping with his father instead of me so that I could get more sleep. So many times comforted by him instead of me. So many naps he spent in the FisherPrice Aquarium Cradle Swing** instead of in my arms. So many of the times he was in my arms I was unable to make them magic moments of stroking hair and counting eyelashes. So many walks in the stroller, walking walking walking through the winter streets of the Old Town, walking until I could breathe again, walking until I loved him again. So much time lost, time we’ll never get back. So much about my second son I never got to know. So many gray clouds shrouding the mother of his infancy.

So many gray clouds in his first months, and yet he loves me. I know this, I see it from the light in his eyes. I see it in the way he comes crawling across the floor to me when I enter the room. He loves me, and I am every day relieved to know this.

So many tears in the house of his infancy, and yet he is a happy child, an unbelievably happy child. Sometimes I think his head will explode from the sheer joy of simply existing. The ecstasy of seeing ducks. Of touching a dwarf goat at the petting zoo. The wild joy of wearing a fireman’s helmet JUST! LIKE! HIS! BROTHER! It is all a great wild adventure to him, to this little boy as happy as sunshine. His every laugh, his every smile, is a relief to me.

And I am relieved to know that even through the fog of post-partum depression I did get to know my second son; I understand him. I was right. I am sorry, for his sake, that I was right but so relieved to know I was right.

And I am so indescribably relieved to discover that although I do not remember quiet hours in the middle of the night spent counting his eyelashes, when the moment came I knew exactly how many he has.

* Formerly known as Little Boy C, a pseudonym that never sat right with me: he has always been my Boychen and Boychen he shall stay.

** Oh, FisherPrice Aquarium Cradle Swing how I do love you!