My VD Badge

This week I earned my Mom badge for Vomit Duty (VD).  

No, not the baby vomit, spit up variety, you know, the for real, GET THE BOWL BECAUSE WE'RE SITTING ON THE COUCH AND I DON'T WANT TO SMELL THIS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE vomit.  

Here's how it went down:  9:30 PM, Thursday night.  Both kids sound asleep upstairs.  Matt away at school for the weekend.  I'm on the phone with a friend when I hear Carson crying out, terrified. It's a distinctly different cry, I don't wait to see if he settles. I rush to his side and reach out to touch his face.  I feel something wet on my arm. Ugh. Then I smell it. And feel it.

Yep. Chunks. In the bed. And on the wall. 

My sweet little two year and nine month old boy doesn't move.  He just lies there, crying and awake, but frozen in fear.  He stops crying long enough to make a request, "Mommy, get a washcloth." Wow, good idea, dude.  Where'd you learn that, a past life as a drunk?  

"Get it off my arm." Oh my poor sweetie. Even at two he knows how completely foul it is to lie in your own vomit. 

The next fifteen minutes probably are something he'll seek therapy for in the future, because I absolutely have no choice but to take him to the tub and hose him down like some kind of Guantanamo Bay Abu-Gray Prison terrorism suspect. Poor little guy has chunks in his hair, on his neck, all over him.  Terrified and still shaky from vomiting, there is no amount of verbal consoling that helps. In the end I manage to spray the chunks off of him without letting him slip and crack his head open.  His screams awake Amelia, of course, who's room shares a wall with the bathroom shower.  Her cries quickly escalate into the fearful shrieks of a terrified baby.  Probably out of sympathy for her brother.  

In quasi-crisis situations like this, everything slows down for me, my heart pounds.  My brain begins making to-do lists to resolve the crisis like some kind of Operations Management textbook problem. I stack the priorities and begin planning their completion: 

1. Breastfeed the 10 month old and put her back to bed

2. Scrub the puke off the walls

3. Wash the bedding (especially coveted "blankie").  Just a quick aside: as it turns out, the chunks don't always come out in the wash, as they say, so I advise shaking them out beforehand. 

4. Monitor the puking child sitting in front of the TV (wreaking of vomit because I could not manage to get soap on him during his GTMO shower) in case of subsequent hurls.  Special caution, there is a shag rug involved. 

5. Redress the bed. 

6. Read story and cuddle the sick child back to sleep. 

Here is where my inability to accept help from others is completely insane.  I actually spend a moment evaluating this to-do list in my head as both Carson and Amelia continue to cry at the top of their lungs.  Matt's out of town, so there is no chance of waiting it out until he gets home.  Items #1 and #6, are mom-only tasks (yeah, ya think)?  Item #4 has to happen in parallel with everything else.  How the hell do single parents do this?  I'll tell you how: the sane ones ask for help. 

Enter Steve and Heather. My angels.  My God, I swear, there have been so many situations in our lives where without them we'd be F'd. I mean, for real. They live three blocks away, but I am sure they would be just as responsive if they lived an hour away.  They came over in the middle of the night when I went into labor. They take our calls any time, arrive with open arms for our kids, comic relief for the adults, and often, tasty food.  As a bonus, Steve is a Chef, and my "adopted" little brother. 

This time they pull through for us again. I interrupt their dinner at a restaurant while I try to calm Amelia and cue up PBS Kids for Carson on the DVR. Steve and Heather change their food order to go and arrive in minutes. As I'm scrubbing puke off Carson's walls, Heather comes upstairs. "He needs mommy." I hear Carson whimpering downstairs. I meet Heather's eyes with exhaustion, defeated, holding the disinfectant in one hand and a rag in the other, "I need to get this off the walls or the smell is going to make him sick again." 

Before I even finished the sentence, she's rolling up her sleeves, taking the rags from me, and waving me off-- "Go be his Mommy."   That's friendship. Someone who scrubs your kid's puke off the wall.  

Later, Heather gets another friend of the year nomination when Carson ambushes me with a hurl mid-sentence while watching Clifford. I'm completely paralyzed in fear and attempting to catch it my own hands (God, did I ever think I'd do that for anyone? Ever?).  She quickly grabs the puke bowl, pulling it under his chin and expertly grabing his neck and aiming his face into the bowl. Wow. Let's hear it for that sorority house training, huh? Kidding... I don't even know if Heather was in a sorority, but it sounds good. 

The beautiful thing about this evening (and yes, amidst the puking there still is a beautiful thing), is that Steve and Heather were not the only friends who would have done this for us tonight.  We are so very fortunate to have so many great friends who are like this, so many that sometimes the sinister side of my brain wonders how long this blessed season of our lives will last. Then I remember these are relationships we've built on years of reliability with each other. They don't happen overnight, but with commitments to working through stuff together, weathering the normal ups and downs of life, and accepting each other at face value, assets and defects (and by defects, I'm referring to mine) in all. I am so thankful God has put them in our lives. 

I can't wait until Steve and Heather have kids so we can be there in the same way for them.  Well... then again, who really hopes to be able to scrub puke-walls,…? Ah. Maybe I can settle for a dirty diaper or two?

Ten Lies Working Moms Tell Themselves About Staying Home With Kids

Ok, I'm not the first person to leave a successful career in exchange for staying at home with my kids.  And probably not the first to figure out it's not quite what I'd imagined, either.

I'm not just talking about having to do dishes and wipe butts.  Or even the countless hours of clock-watching while I wait for reinforcements to arrive, or horrendously boring kids programming on PBS.

I'm talking about the whole ball of wax.  You know, the isolation, inability to finish any task that takes longer than three and a half minutes, and the constant subjugation of my own needs for that of my kids.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, I am the first to tell you I say prayers of gratitude every single day that my kids are healthy, that I'm healthy (aside from the Guantlet that is).  Having grown up on Brady Bunch reruns, however, I think somewhere out there is a fantasy that I should at least look good and always be happy when I'm doing this job.  Of course, that beee-aaach had a maid / nanny. Or whatever Alice was.

Back in January 2010 when I made the decision to stay at home with my kids, my blackberry was jam-packed with corporate job life, back to back meetings and tasks. If I wanted to take a break to do anything remotely mom-ish, I put it on my calendar.  Literally.  By that I mean, "PUMP BREAST MILK" was actually on there.  But when I was making the decision to leave my job, I had a lot of misconstrued notions about what it'd be like to stay home.  

Now, I don't regret my decision to stay home with my kids, but I do feel like it would have been nice to have these myths debunked before I took the plunge.  Here they are:  

1. The nanny (or sitter, or childcare provider) has it pretty easy.

Let me preface this with the statement that when we had a nanny, she was absolutely the most awesome nanny you could imagine (Tammy, you rocked).  Irregardless, there is a strange built-in resentment that comes when you let someone else spend 50 hours a week with your kid.   It's not personal, but it might feel like it at the time (on both sides).  Aside from the obvious fantasy that you get to sit around and paint your nails all day, (which Tammy never did),  I guess the underlying fear is that you will come home one day and your kid will cling to the nanny instead of want to come to you. That is rubbish, and absolutely could never happen-- but the mom-guilt I carried had me constantly afraid of it.  Now I laugh at that fear-- and it's irony, knowing that place I go when I'm at the end of my rope.  That place is one that starts with expletives and ends with me my son cowering in fear at the booming voice I resort to in total anger.  That voice is far more likely to cause him to not want to come to me than the goods any Mary Poppins nanny could possibly bring.  It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, it makes the nanny's job look a lot harder. 

2.  You'll have more time to work out. 

If you count the huge amounts of physical labor you'll do at home as a "work out," then yeah, sure.  But if you're counting on plugging in your iPod and cranking out some serious miles on the treadmill or ellipitcal, think again.  And if you're a cyclist? Laughable.  With one child it's easier, but not so easy that you realize it when you're in it.  By the time you have two kids, working out becomes a highly focused strategy game you are constantly trying to figure out.  You carry your sports bra in your car and hope to squeeze in a twenty minute run when in the past that might have just been your warm-up.   You settle for pushing a 2-kid stroller for an hour long walk as a work-out, and trade timing with your spouse for a true solitude workout a couple times a week.   Oh, and now sex counts as a workout because let's face it, the ole heart rate is not getting up there any other way on certain days. The gym daycare is an option, but it's expensive in other ways...reference again The Gauntlet.  It's an option best exercised when you don't have a vacation or a family outing planned in the near future.

3.  Your cooking is healthier than what you eat at work

OK, true if you are disciplined.  But remember a lot of what you're feeding young kids is pretty easy prep stuff.  Maybe if you have older kids they will eat the tofu curry dish?  I dunno, so far I've had to cook my husband and my meal and then make something supplemental for my son.  This has been an area in which I've had to build skills.  I'm finding healthier options out there, but it takes a little research and a little planning, which is always tough when you're working around 2 kids and their individual nap schedules.

4. Most of the time it'll be heaps and loads of fun!

If "most of the time" you mean "greater than 50% of the time", yes, this is true.  If you mean 90/10, then you need to adjust your barometer for fun.  

5. You won't miss bringing home a paycheck, or making your own money.  

One of my "going away from corporate life" gifts to myself was a Coach purse.  That was January of 2010, and I have not bought myself something so extravagant since.  The mom-guilt is just too huge. I can't get over that sucking sound my credit card makes when I go shopping for myself and think about the immense NEGATIVE impact it's having on our household budget.  This is one I have got to reframe and work on, I know it's a false fear.

6. Your house will be very organized. 

Gaahhahhaahahah!! I - gasp - can - hardly - GASP--quit laughing at this one. I did recently find an awesome resource through the recreation department of my town, a lady who runs organization classes.  She's kind of Tough Love, but she's pretty good. Her name is Kathi Miller and her business is Clutter Coach, LLC.  Check her out. I'm scared to hire her though, she'll probably show up with a megaphone and a trash bag. So far it's easier to just go to the group classes and learn a few tips.  

7.  You will spend more quality time with your significant other. 


 Since most of my day is spent in the house with the kids, by the time Matt gets home I'm soooo ready to have a break. I swear I feel like I'm in 4th grade again waiting for the bell to go off.  I stand at the front door sometimes when he pulls up and it's all I can do not to hand him the kids and just run from the house waving my arms wildly like some kind of mental patient, or hop on my bike and ride up the biggest hill I can find, turning around and careening down it kicking my feet out and throwing my head back "weeeeeee!!! I'm FREEEEEEE!!!!"  Of course this is the classic problem a lot of folks have when one person stays home:  the working person wants to be at home after being out all day, and the stay-at-home wants to interact with society.  So Matt babysits probably more than he would if I were working, and then we do date-night like we used to before. So net-net, I think we're about the same in terms of "time together" that we had when I was working, minus the business trips.

8.  Your kids will be smarter and more well-behaved.  

The jury is still out on this, but I will tell you, I am not home-schooling these monkeys.  No F-ing way.  Carson just started pre-school two mornings a week, and it's helped us both immensely.  Maybe me more than him. 

9.  You won't need a cleaning person since you can do it all yourself.  

Shortly after I decided to stay home, I made myself a task chart for cleaning the house.  I started out with pretty low expectations.  You know, mop the floors once per month, vacuum upstairs 1 x week, downstairs the other week.  After two months I gave myself an "F" and realized I'd totally underestimated how hard it is to run a vacuum cleaner when they're napping, and how hard it is to complete ANY task when they're awake (see intro).  I've now resorted to "triage" approach. Whatever's dirtiest gets my attention.  Always the kitchen, of course, but the bathrooms are a close second.  The other areas get vacuumed when the cat hairballs are so bad that Amelia is crawling over to me with fur on her tounge.  That's when I know it is due.  Why don't I just get a cleaning person, you ask? I have about 2.5 hours a day that I don't need to have the kids home for one or the other of them to nap.  And that 2.5 hours is a sliding window changing every day.  I give up. 

10. Your kids won't annoy you as much as some of the people at work.   

Well.  Most days, right.  But the truth is, you leave the people you work with at work.  They don't throw a tantrum at 6 AM because you won't let them watch TV before the sun comes up.

   
All this is sort of tounge and cheek, I hope you know.  I love my kids, and the truth is, I love my job as staying at home with them more than any other job I've ever had.  It's kind of an 80/20 thing-- 80% of the time it's the best job in the world, and 20% of the time it blows.  But the worst days are still better than most of the mediocre days at any job I've ever held.  It's not perfect, of course.  But it is rewarding, and more than ever, I'm learning how to be present in this moment with my kids.  Because I can't meet a person on the street who doesn't look at me with my kids and say "They grow up fast, appreciate it now while you can!"  And I believe that's God reminding me of it, that the 100 sweet moments I take for granted are about 90 more than my husband gets to see everyday.  I know he loves them as much as I do, and I feel incredibly privileged to get to experience them fully while they still think we're the best thing in the whole world.

After all, I'll have plenty of time to work when they're teenagers and don't want me around.  And that's when I will read this list and be grateful--I'm at work. 

The Gauntlet

      We've come through the gauntlet. That's what it feels like around here. Eight weeks. In the gauntlet of cold, and flu, and pink eye, ear infections, and bronchitis, and probably a ton more germs that we've encountered and miraculously conquered. Oh I don't even want to know. Like head lice at gym daycare. We didn't get it, thank God, but the thought of it made me scratch my head for days (and just now, again).
       Everyone tells me this is just the way it is when your kid starts school. Everyone in your house gets sick. I somehow thought Carson had enough exposure at gym daycare. When I can muster the courage, I drop him in that petri dish of snot and God knows what else with a cacophony of crying children who's mothers or fathers also can't take  it for another f*cking minute without the calming force of a work-out. And I get it man, I've stopped judging all of you who unload kiddos no matter what is oozing out of their nose or butts-- really, I get it. Sometimes you just need to go for a run, or to take a shower without someone pulling the curtain back.  What you doing in there Mommy?  Sometimes the edge of insanity is just so close that whatever they've got doesn't seem that bad, and you weigh the trade off: being a monster to my kids, or adding to the petri dish? Which evil do I choose today? Most of the time I am polite, I keep my kids home when they have runny noses.  After all, they're sick, they need to rest. But having spent the last 8 weeks in the Gauntlet, I can see how there are "degrees" of health. Like when they always have a runny nose. Or when that cough lasts 4 weeks.  We'd all be morbidly obese and insane if we rat-holed ourselves inside that whole time.

Our little Vector on his first day of school.

      It got so bad around here I actually hired a micro-biologist to come do a "healthy home" assessment on our house. I was convinced we had some kind of toxic mold that was making us all sick. And in typical Rachel style, not just a micro-biologist, a forensic micro-biologist. He showed up with this rolling case full of equipment--a laptop, a tripod with some sort of expensive air sampling machine, a microscope.  It was damn CSI around here. He took swabs of dust from all over our home (and there was plenty to swab). His conclusion was that though we do have some elevated levels of mold in the basement, it's nothing we can't clean up with a little elbow grease and a sponge, and God forbid, a DUST RAG. And it's not enough to make us sick. So, our little vector, Carson, is the culprit.
      I'm hoping we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with the illnesses. We all have gone to taking our vitamins with dedication, but I know it will take at least a few weeks for my immune system to catch up. Hopefully this is not the new stasis-- someone in my home being sick at all times. Friends tell us this lasts for about two years and then you are superhuman and nothing gets you sick. Oh God, we're still in The Guantlet.  Are you on the other side? Will we survive?