Things That Are Easy, Things That Are Hard
I have been meaning, Internet, to write up a post telling you all the ways in which my life has improved.
Sleep, chiefly. The sleep situation has gotten so much better. Davy never took to the crib, and he still isn’t what you would call a great sleeper, but he sleeps through the night more often than not. And the difference this makes to my daily well-being? Is enormous. I was prepared for three months of sleep-deprivation, right—when you choose to have a baby, that’s what you’re signing up for. At six months I started to feel sorry for myself. At nine months I was really reaching the end of my rope. And then, shortly after I began complaining publicly to you, dear Internet.…it broke. The baby started sleeping. And I started remembering what sanity feels like.
Given that great relief, I really shouldn’t have anything to express but simple gratitude. So let me talk a bit about the things I am grateful for.
I am grateful that I can sleep more than three hours at a stretch. It’s still a rare night where I don’t have to wake up at least once to address one child or the other, but I’m getting enough sleep that I have a handle on my own mind again. It’s amazing. Sleep, it’s a wonderful thing, and we take it so much for granted.
I am grateful for Davy. He’s such an amazing baby. When he wakes up every morning he tells me, “Hiiiii! Hiiiii!” And he gives me sloppy open-mouthed kisses, and he pats me, hard, on the shoulder and face and arm. “Hiiiii!” he says, and hits me, in the face, with great love, moments before he comes in to press his wet open mouth all over my nose. This doesn’t sound enviable but it is, it is.
Davy is a smart little guy. You can see the cogs whirring behind those agate-colored eyes. I posted about this before, with Robin, but I had forgotten how single-minded babies can be in their projects. Davy is working on walking. He works on this project with a kind of devotion that would put the most obsessed Olympic athlete to shame. He pulls himself up on every vertical surface, standing whenever he can, taking sideways steps as far as his grips will allow. When he’s put on a soft surface (like the bed) he will stand, sway, inevitably topple over, and then pull himself up to stand again, over and over and over, tirelessly. He doesn’t care how many times he falls down. He’s going to keep pulling himself up until he’s strong enough to stand on his own power. When do we lose that, that indefatigable baby drive? When do we learn a sense of defeat?
I am grateful for Robin. He’s such a good big brother. He plays beautifully with the baby—there’s nothing I like more than listening in on their games. They sing together, sometimes, or play peek-a-boo. Or sometimes Robin finds a defensible position and Davy assaults it with great gusto, while Robin shrieks.
And for the things that are hard: I am still struggling with the edits that my agent wants. I put them off, and put them off, because I knew that finding the time will be hard. And when finally I did try and carve out a day just to sit down and work on the manuscript—well, I had forgotten exactly how hard it is. There’s a good reason I’ve been putting it off so long.
I am going to throttle with my bare hands the next person who asks, “Oh, so you stay home? But what do you do?” I frickin’ take care of two preschoolers, that’s what I do. It’s not that I don’t have any other interests or ambitions. It’s that it’s completely impossible to concentrate on anything for more than fifteen minutes at a time when you’re looking after two small boys. It’s actually pretty easy to find a lot of those fifteen-minute increments throughout the day, so sometimes I feel I’m just being lazy, because in a typical day I do spend a lot of time on the computer. But it’s constantly interrupted, constantly dropped and picked up again. I mean–I do read to them every day, take them outside every day, play with them every day, but I actually feel strongly that it’s also important for children to have independent time, to be at their own devices for a portion of every day. But even in those times I’m always available and I’m always solving various low-level crises: someone needs a drink, someone needs a change of pants, there’s a fight brewing over the play silks (or whatever particular toy). The kind of deep concentration I’d need to really work just isn’t possible, not in the normal course of events.
And by the end of the day, once the kids have finally dropped off to sleep, I’m just exhausted. Even though Davy’s sleeping better now, that hasn’t changed. The difference is that most days I feel pretty sane and able to manage, instead of barely holding it together with a lot of caffeine. So—I’m doing better, a lot better. But am I “not working”? Not hardly.
August 2nd, 2011 at 7:20 pm
AMEN.
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:32 pm
It is so important to know that I’m not alone in this experience! Thank you for commenting — and thank God for the Internet.
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:33 pm
The 15 minute interruptions are what make me craziest, too. When I worked in an office full-time, I used to bitch about all the interruptions — and I got interrupted a lot when I was the boss lady — but now I laugh at my whiny old self. At least when my coworkers were above the age of 6 I got to finish a sentence.
Here’s the problem with 15 minute increments: when you’re trying to actually think and especially when you’re trying to write — you can’t sit down and do it on demand the same way you can walk over and unload a dishwasher. You need time to percolate and turn things over in your mind. By the time you get through with that you’re lucky if you can get more than a few sentences down on the page before the kids come calling. And even if they don’t interrupt, I start worrying about when they’re going to interrupt and it breaks my concentration. It’s maddening.
August 5th, 2011 at 5:39 pm
EXACTLY. Neal Stephenson actually had a pretty great blog post about this—in his case it was about why he doesn’t answer his e-mail, but the principle is very very similar.
“Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless.”
http://web.mac.com/nealstephenson/Neal_Stephensons_Site/Bad_Correspondent.html
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:50 am
Holy crap, do people still refer to looking after children as “not working”? How Neanderthal. If it’s “not working” then why do we every month pay our day-care provider more than we pay our mortgage servicer? I was under the impression that it’s because she’s performing a difficult and valuable job. I’m sorry you have to hear such stupidity.
I’m so glad to hear, though, that you’re sleeping better. That sounded like torture.
Davy’s sloppy kisses sound entirely enviable to me. They remind me of Silas’s eat-your-face game. Nowadays Silas’s thing is asking for “a-hug! a-hug!” (never just “hug” for some reason; the article is important). And may God strike me dead if I ever fail to drop everything I’m doing to immediately give him a-hug when he wants it.
August 5th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
They do. A lot of times people ask me what I do, and I say, “Well, I’m home with the kids,” and they come back immediately with: “But what do you *do*?”
The sad thing is that I usually, then, defensively, bring up the novel thing, which I rarely actually want to talk about in the first place, and which is equally hard to explain to an unsympathetic ear.
August 3rd, 2011 at 11:20 am
Let me tell you something: I have actually seen a resume on which the candidate put Homemaker as part of her experiences. So it is not only a job, but also a hard job. It definitely proves the candidate can multitask and work under pressure. For that same reason, I have heard more than once from different people (including myself) that they would rather going out to work than staying home to take care of children, because one 7/24 job is definitely harder than having two jobs.
But the thing is: The staying home business is not forever – once they grow into school aged children, they will be gone a couple of hours a day. Once they are old enough to live on their own, we will be missing them terribly by then.
August 5th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
That’s very true!
August 3rd, 2011 at 4:41 pm
OMG I love your new hair! I am way behind on blogs in general so I just noticed today.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest:
This is the best joke in the world:
http://mymeproject.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/joke-what-did-you-do-all-day/
You may have read it on my blog many years ago but whenever I hear people snarking out SAHMs I think about it again and it gives me comfort.
I have two jobs now and work 11 hour days. It is a freaking vacation compared with being home with the kids. Be proud! You’re doing good work, hard work, and lots of it. The people who don’t get that, don’t matter.
August 5th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Aw, thanks for the pep talk (and the compliment on my hair!)
How excited are we getting about Mass Effect 3? I personally am getting pretty excited!
August 6th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
I was pretty darn disappointed that it wouldn’t be out this year after all, that’s for sure. Definitely eager to get back to my story! Isn’t the trailer *amazing*?