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LockedIn

Before I begin, first let me say that I am not a fan of the word "playdate." Are you hearing that? Playdate. Sounds so preppy, doesn't it? Very la-dee-dah and let me don some pleated khakis and pristine Keds so my perfectly groomed offspring can delicately sip tea in your living room. As a girl who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and whose neighborhood wasn't immume to the occasional drive-by, it just sounds pretentious to me. But there isn't another word that better describes coming to somebody else's house for a couple hours of hands-on toddler fun, so there you go.

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It was a cold, snowy day in February, and I had just pulled into Katy's driveway for a playdate. And not just any old playdate: my very first one. Katy, my racing partner in crime, is the first non-work friend I've made since moving to Indianapolis and also becoming a mom, and we are still very much in the courtship phase of getting to know each other. Add to that the fact that family and work obligations have prevented us from meeting up outside of the occasional race, and you're left with a mother who is equal parts nervous about unleashing her kids on unfamiliar turf and hopeful that everyone would hit it off famously, laying important groundwork for future merriment to come. It was perfect timing, too, as Luke was supposed to be out of town visiting his BFF, so I wasn't even cutting into our family time.

The first crack in our plan was the cancellation of Luke's trip due to poor weather; Indianapolis had been hit with a few inches of snow, making a lengthy road trip on I-65 not such a smart idea, so he decided to reschedule for the following weekend when conditions were predicted to improve. The second was Nathan's accidental ingestion and prompt regurgitation of a pretzel stick that became lodged in his throat, resulting in a clothing change two minutes before we were supposed to leave the house. As I buckled the children into their car seats, pulled out of my garage, and began the 45-minute trek to Katy's neighboring town, I quietly wondered if God was trying to tell me via snow and vomit that maybe we'd all be better off if I just stayed home.

But, but.... Friendship for me! Social interaction for the children! (Think of the children!) As Gollum would say, "We wants it, we needs it!" And so I trudged on.

We arrived at Katy's house about twenty minutes later than planned, so I was already feeling the pressure to get the kids out of the car and onto her door step as soon as possible. Not helping matters was Kara's entrance into Dreamland minutes before pulling into Katy's subdivision. The minute I killed the engine and grabbed my purse I was faced with an issue I hadn't previously given much thought to: When you have a wide-awake, rambunctious one-year-old who can't be trusted to follow directions near a residential street and a two-year-old who COULD be trusted but is snoring louder than any adult you've ever heard in your whole entire life, what are you supposed to do? Which child do you grab first?

In hindsight, I know what I should have done: I should have called Katy on my cell phone to ask if she could take Nathan while I handled Kara. But what can I say? I'm not a stay-at-home mom, and this was the first time I had ever traveled alone with both of my kids, and I was afraid of playing into the stereotype often ascribed to working dads--being too far removed from the trenches of day-to-day parenting to do anything more than run around like a decapitated chicken when presented with the simplest of tasks, like, I don't know, GETTING MY KIDS OUT OF THE DAMN CAR. I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

This is what laid the groundwork for my fatal error.

I grabbed Nathan first.

With the boy perched securely on my hip, I checked to see that my purse was still hanging from my shoulder (it was) and made my way to the other side of the car, where Kara continued to snore. I opened the door, lay my purse down at her feet (DANGER DANGER), hit the automatic locks (OMG WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS), and with my free hand shook her lightly by the shoulders. "Kaaara, Kara, honey, we're here now. It's time to play with our friends!" I chirped loudly into her ear. Silence. I grabbed her hand and kissed her cheek and ruffled her hair, but nothing.  I unstrapped her car seat buckles and even tried to tickle her, hoping all that jostling would wake her up enough to, at the very least, crabbily push me away. Fughettaboutit. "Kara-Kara-Kara-Kara-KAAARA," I shouted, Nathan wriggling like an earthworm, struggling to break free of my grip which was fast losing hold. And it was all in vain. 

Well, shit.

That's when I heard the turn of a doorknob, and Katy stepped outside.

"Is everything OK?" she asked. "Do you need any help?" At least, I think that's what she said. It's hard to recall exact wording at this point, but I trust it was something similarly hospitable and kind and caring.

"Oh, yeah," I called back, trying to sound casual when the whole time I was dying inside, DYING, "my daughter went and fell asleep on me, that's all!" I swiveled to get a better look at my hostess, and before I could process what was happening, my hand instictively pushed on the car door, and the car door snapped shut.

Internally, my slow-motion battle cry was so loud it was deafening (NOOOOOOO), and my eyes grew bigger than Pamela Anderson's double endorsements because holy hell, I done locked mah baybee in the car. In twentyish-degree weather. Almost an hour away from home.

The tears, they were threatening to surface any second, and if this had happened in front of one of my sisters I definitely would have pulled a Sally Field (I WANNA KNOW WHYYYY) but I pushed them away because crying in front of a woman who doesn't even know if you have a middle name is perhaps not the most inviting way to get better acquainted.

I would have stood there maintaining my deer-in-headlights expression a la Uncle Jesse from Full House except Nathan was still in my arms and I needed to call somebody to free my toddler from her hatchback prison. Plus, the car was parked in Katy's driveway in a town with a reputation as one of the safest and friendliest in the Indianapolis area, and the engine was off, and Kara was plenty warm in her winter coat, and besides that she was STILL snoring away, so I pried myself away from her long enough to carry Nathan inside. Katy called a local locksmith, but there was either a communication gap or a sense-of-urgency gap on his end because while the guy promised to call back with an estimated time of arrival, he never did, mother-effing bastard, doesn't he care about the children?!

So I called Luke. The husband who should have been in Kentucky some three and a half hours away with our only spare key but due to a random stroke of luck just happened to be at home.

That was a pleasant phone call. Especially since we'd had a slight disagreement earlier that morning.

Again with the forgetting of specific details, but the phrases "OH MY GOD!" and "I'm so sorry!" were involved. I'll leave you to guess who said what.

He had to dig the Cobalt out of a mountain-high pile of snow, Luke said, but he was on his way.

So, every three minutes for the next hour, I ran outside to check on my girl and make sure that a Wizard of Oz-like tornado hadn't suddenly carried the Outlander away. I imagined her waking up, realizing her predicament, and throwing herself against the window sobbing for Momma to get her out. I feared she would slither onto the floor and hit her head against the base of her car seat. I worried Luke would get lost or stuck in traffic and that I'd have to beg the fire department to pull the door off its hinges. Not that I'm even sure they do that sort of thing, mind you. But you know. I was scared.

I also felt very much like an idiot in front of my new friend, my new friend's husband, and my new friend's children.

After what seemed like an eternity but in reality was just a little more than sixy minutes from the time we called the locksmith, Luke was parking behind the Outlander and unlocking the passenger-side car door. I pushed past him to gather Kara in my arms--my baby, my baby--and brought her into Katy's house, and let me tell you, Sleeping Beauty never even stirred until I started removing her coat. She yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes and seemed generally refreshed from her leisurely mid-afternoon nap. She didn't even notice that her mother was curled into a fetal position on the floor, cheeks burning in humiliation, giving silent thanks to God, already drafting the inevitable blog entry.

Mom in training

Here at work, March 1 kicks off a month-long spotlight on the annual performance review. Instead of being evaluated around the anniversary of your hire date, The Powers That Be decided to make it more efficient by subscribing to a more collective approach, setting company-wide deadlines for completing your self-evaluation and meeting with your manager to discuss what you're doing well, where you'd like to improve, and how the company can help. Last Monday was the cut-off for turning in self-evaluations, and it got me thinking: if there were performance appraisals for parents, what would they look like? Who determines if we're doing a good job? How do we know if we're getting better?

Before I had kids, I had pretty specific (if not slightly traditional) ideas of what it meant to be a good mother. I would stay home with my babies, for one, and spend oodles of time with them every day. I would learn to cook and bake so I could fill their tummies with mouth-watering, nutritious, interesting foods. We would visit the park and check books from the library and go swimming and biking just like the Von Trapps and hang out with friends and family and "talk out" our problems and always, always have naptime.

By those standards, Donald Trump would have kicked me out of the mommy board room at the end of my first maternity leave.

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The most glaring disconnect between the mother I thought I would be and the mother I am is the working. For better or worse, I am and probably always will be the primary breadwinner for my family. Full time, outside the home, Monday through Friday, with occasional travel and evening conference calls and the need to be accessible 24/7. I can count on one hand how many hours I spend with Kara and Nathan on a typical work day; usually I'm home long enough to eat dinner and rough around for an hour before we jump into Nathan's bedtime routine, followed by Kara's, followed by Nathan's sporadic cries and Kara's pleas of "Mommy and Daddy sit with you?" followed by oh, yeah, my husband, there you are, hello, now who gets to wash the dishes? Though really, since Luke cooks, it should always be me washing the dishes. It takes all my reserves just to complete fundamental tasks to get through the day; forget luxuries like updating a baby book or posting to my blog (a fact that doesn't escape my readers, for sure).

My most upsetting fail as a parent, though, is my struggle to stay patient in times of stress: Kara's random tantrums when asked to pick up her toys or brush her teeth; Nathan's restlessness in the middle of the night when bouts of cradling, rocking, and sitting beside his crib all fall short in their attempts to comfort. To me, THOSE are the instances where you demonstrate true growth in parenting, putting your "training" to good use and pushing beyond your natural instincts to achieve new results. I know hissing at Nathan to "just be quiet!" won't help him fall back to sleep; I know threatening to skip stories at bedtime won't encourage Kara to clean her pearly whites. Yet so often I'm the hamster on the wheel, repeating old behaviors, hissing and threatening in the hopes that this time it will resonate, but it never does. Instead, they get upset, and then I get upset, and then I feel guilty because shouldn't I know better by now? Is this really the example I want to be setting for them, that these are the only tools at my disposal?

But then Kara will shout "Oh, Mommy! There she is!" and clamour for a piggy-back ride, and Nathan will clench his arms around my neck before plopping into my lap for a story, and I feel so damn good about my relationship with them and how connected we are, and I vow to hold fast to the "quality versus quantity" mindset and stop measuring myself against other women. Even wonderful women whom I love and admire. When it comes to mothering, somebody will always outperform me in one way or another, but I have my own strengths, and my kids seem to like me just fine.

(For now.)

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When it comes to assessing future growth opportunities, I think that for as long as there are children under my roof, I will have to constantly re-grant myself permission to be anything more than "just" a mother--to also invest in my marriage, extended family, community, friends; my faith, work, education, health. How to get it all done? You can't. At least, I can't. So I'm trying to focus my attention on two or three tactical objectives for any given day and appropriately prioritizing the rest, all the while knowing that if my kids don't rank first from that perspective (their safety and well-being is always top priority on a grand scale), they sure as hell are going to come second. I stole the basic idea from our chief operating officer, who says he spends his hour-long commute to the office reviewing what's on his plate and determining where his presence will make the biggest impact. "Some days that means all eyes on human capital and not touching sales and marketing. It's all about making the best use of my time for the people that need me most for that moment in time."

As a mother and not a c-level executive, this translates into leaving my laptop at work to make a deposit in the "mommy bank" even if there's an end-of-quarter presentation looming over my head. Other times it's dragging my ass out of bed and working on my fitness when I want to cuddle with Luke instead. On the days I travel, my primary goal is to make the trip worthwhile for my company, and my roles as wife, mother, and fledgling athlete fall into place where they can. And so it goes, trading long runs for blog time, bedtime for work time, bedtime for date night, and understanding I will never do them all in the same 24-hour period. Some dreams will collect dust for years, dreams like earning a second master's degree or changing career paths or running my first marathon. I am slowly learning that the key to preserving my sanity is treading water when I know I could swim, being just good enough when I'd rather be great.

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When I was a junior in college, on the day a term paper was due, students were commiserating with each other over the hellish writing experience when somebody warned the professor to expect flaws in her draft, explaining her difficulty in managing coursework with on-going family issues and a part-time job to boot. She wasn't making excuses, exactly, more just disappointed for not meeting her own expectations. "If only I'd had one more night," she said wistfully. "Just one more night and I could have really given it my all."

My professor just shook her head.

"You can't look at it that way," she said. "We faculty don't expect our students to live in a bubble. We know you have other responsibilities and that school can't always be your focus. All we ask is that you do your best in your current set of circumstances. If that turns out to be A-level, great. But if not? That's okay, too. Just do what you can with whatever you've got, and show us that you're trying."

Hopefully our children will be at least that understanding when grading our performances as parents--if not now, then at least when they're grown and in the same boat. And if merit increases are involved, may they all be prorated.

Because sharing is caring, as is more frequent posting

Okay, so apparently even the mere thought of writing cohesive paragraphs for the Internet is enough to keep me from updating, so in an effort to get back on track, may I present--bullet points! Also known as The Lazy Blogger's Best Friend.

• Jillian Michaels must have read my last entry wherein I complained about my first yoga experience and then took note of Jen's recommendation to give power yoga a try, because two days ago she released a new DVD called Yoga Meltdown, based on "quickly flowing yoga sequences to burn mega calories," which sounds like just the thing to convert me. I still do the Shred every once and a while on my "Stretch and Strengthen" training days, and I've recently revisited her Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism workout for cross-training purposes, AND the average overall review on Amazon is pretty high, so while I'm still wary of the practice, I trust her enough to shell out $11.49 plus shipping. I know it's early, but has anyone tried this yet? If so, what did you think?
• Speaking of banishing fat, I'm only three pounds away from the weight listed on my driver's license. Go, body, go, quit making a liar out of me.
• Did you know that writing references letters to help your very good friends achieve their dream of overseas adoption is really hard work? Even when they are wonderful people and you just know they've got this thing in the bag. Really, really hard.
• Lost. OMG. Crazy momma Claire! Jack's sideways son! Evil incarnate Sayid! Mind = blown!
• I can't seem to keep my hands off my kids these days: hugging their torsos, smooching their cheeks, nuzzling their necks. Each new skill they acquire makes me more aware that their babyness will not last forever. Kara will not always moan piteously to "try Mommy and Daddy's bed?" when she wakes up in the middle of the night; Nathan won't always insist on sitting on my lap while I eat my dinner. And at the end of a long day, they will not always wait at the kitchen gate for me to come home from work. As excited as I am to increase our mobility and explore new activities as a family and SLEEP THROUGH THE DAMN NIGHT, ALREADY, part of me is sad, hating that the days where they would sleep for hours on my chest are gone. This is what gets to me the most about not having more children, I think: the idea of never experiencing those early weeks of sleep-deprived euphoria again: the moment they are placed in your arms for the first time; the way their body wraps around you like a blanket. Commenter dcmama on Amalah's Bounce Back post on family size summed it up perfectly when she asked, "How do I know that I'm not just missing being pregnant and hoping for a less awful first few months with a baby?" Nathan's pregnancy was such a surprise, and the first year dealing with two babies was so hard. SO HARD. Surely it's not always that difficult; surely I would have an easier time with baby number three if numbers one and two were more self-sufficient. What if, what if.
• I guess that last bullet point could have been an entry in and of itself.

Now let's move on to my second BFF - Pictures With Commentary:

 

This is Kara. Kara is my daughter, a little girl who's made pee-pee in the potty several times in the last seven days and who gets a kick of riding around the living room on Mommy or Daddy's back. She also continues to soak up language and manipulate common words and phrases to sound utterly adorable; if you have something she wants (usually related to food: peanuts, raisins, pretzels, etc.), she'll come up to you and ask, "What do you you say?" instead of actually saying the thing we've coached her to say ("Please"). And no, that second "you" isn't a typo. I don't know, either.

This is Nathan. Nathan is my son, a baby-toddler more commonly known around these parts as Buddy, Little Boobah, Freaky-deak, and Crazyhead, a whirlwind spit-fire who enjoyed his handful of experiences with snow and sledding much more than his sister, except after one unfortunate face plant mid-ride in the backyard. (Here is tangible evidence that I've been attempting an entry for almost two weeks, because not only has all our snow melted, but this Saturday we should see temperatures elevate to the fifties. Better late than never?)

Nathan is still mostly on baby food at this point, not because we enjoy paying for pre-packaged jars of beef and vegetable dinners but because he still has a hard time digesting large amounts of their non-mashed alternatives. He can handle things like bread and pizza and tuna cassarole in small amounts, but anything more than that sends his digestive tract into a tailspin. Luke fed him eggs yesterday and five minutes hadn't even passed before Nathan vomited. This isn't the first time he's reacted to table food this way, so instead of pushing him to play catch up with his sister's milestones, we are allowing him to progress at his own pace. Isn't that nice of us!

This is Luke. Luke is my husband, a grown man who was insanely excited to take a second stab at devouring "The Big Ugly" at Bub's Burgers and Ice Cream, an Indy-area franchise. Patrons who finish the one-pound burger (one pound! fully cooked!) earn the honor of getting their picture on the wall. Being an avid Man vs. Food fan, Luke wanted his picture on that wall, so finish it he did, future stomach pains be damned. Adam would have been so proud.

 

The romantic outing took place two Saturdays ago while leaving the kids with a sitter, the niece of my old boss who currently interns in my department. Now that our formula days are over, we have a little money to play with in our budget, so Luke's and my goal is to have a couple of dates each month to recharge our battery away from diapers and graham crackers and Nick, Jr. Our next one is tonight, and the plan is to hit someplace in downtown Indy that doesn't sport high chairs. What can I say? We are simple folk.

Okay, now YOUR turn. What's going on with you all lately? It's like we never talk anymore.

P.S. Remind me to tell you about last month's playdate with Katy where I locked a sleeping Kara in the car. Because that was so much fun!