Hi. It's been a while. Thanksgiving has occurred. Solid foods are happening. O's body is inching toward various crawl-like positions, and the desire to move without the full understanding of how is making him alternate from frustration to excitement and back again. Working and having a babe is still hard, even though I'm working part time.
Thanksgiving: we had a very quiet one with my mom and step-dad, O, Shannon and I. And O's favorite new being, Ollie the cat. Now this cat is not like any other cat I have met. He's a Dr. Suess cat, with a long, curling orange tail and body that springs out of his tail. He purrs like a Tibetan Throat Singer. I think he has a triple purr. O's face upon touching his soft, orange fur is pure bliss. So much so that I may have convinced Papa that we need to get a cat for him. There is one caveat: we must get rid of our shedding rug before we get another "pet".
Working. I know I have little to complain about compared to most. But I have to say, this working thing isn't currently working very well for me. Maybe it's because I'm working almost as hard as I did full time and every month don't know if I'm going to have enough money to cover my basics. After paying for four days worth of childcare from my part-time check, I have about $600-700 left for my student loan and groceries. Will I need to use a handful of change to get gas? Will I need to float the check to my childcare person or ask her (god forbid) to wait a day to cash it? Will I need to make something with all of the dry goods I have in the kitchen and avoid shopping again? Will I need to sell back clothes that I actually want to keep, rather than just the ratty ones that no one wants to take anyway? Now, I know I'm being a bit dramatic. My husband still has a full time job and we have only reduced our expenses somewhat. I still go to New Seasons a few times a month. I still get a hot beverage when I really think I deserve a treat. We still have cable (i.e. high speed internet). But there is something about a bank account being tight that affects me psychologically more than it should. It takes up more emotional space than it needs to. The stress affects other parts of my life inordinately.
It could be because I don't feel I can really give my all to my job, and at times I feel like I don't give my all to O because I'm distracted by work. I'm sure this push-pull will always exist. Some days though, I feel like I don't do anything well when I try to do everything. Would starting new jobs feel the same way? Is it easier to just push through this and keep doing something I know, rather than start something new that will take more of my energy to get started?
Sometimes the effects are on my milk supply. Feeling rushed at school when pumping, feeling pressured in the morning when I'm getting ready, and feeling stressed in general all take a toll on my milk supply, and I'm not producing as much.
The long and short of it is that I have started looking at other options for work. My boss has actually suggested that I could take the rest of the year as unpaid leave of absence and still have my job in the fall. I wanted to quit right then, but I still need to come up with that $700+ a month. There must be some work that allows me to be home more days a week and make that much money. If nothing else, there's taking care of someone else's kid at the same time as taking care of O, for maybe 10-15 hours weekly. I've applied to some online jobs that look promising, and if I can come up with enough semi-guaranteed work, I will take that leave of absence!
I googled this theme and did not come up with many helpful suggestions. I wanted some advice on how to carry your baby while gardening, what kinds of contraptions to rig to put your baby down where he would be happy, safe, and relatively bug-free. Perhaps I rely too much on the google. We'll just have to be innovative.
We started with O in the car seat, which only lasted about six minutes before he would squirm and cry unhappily. I would then put him in the baby bjorn, which worked alright for him but I could only water and not really bend over. We also tried "the grandparent", which is very effective but time-sensitive and not always available.
We have settled on bringing his bouncy chair and putting him under whatever source of shade is available, from the neighbor's raspberries to our ever-expanding sunflowers. It seems to work pretty well. We also put down a blanket with a blue and white umbrella over the top and he seems to like kicking his legs up and feeling the breeze. Now that we finally have a comfortable situation for him, I think he's getting out of gardening what I'd hoped: exposure to the sounds, sights and feel of nature, from the birds to the soft breezes to just getting his eyes filled up with all the different shades of green.
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Let me back up and explain a bit more about our garden. (First, see my other post about our community garden plot.) Last year our plot was prolific. We had broccoli, tomatoes, tomatillos, strawberries, daikon, corn, arugula, cucumbers, pumpkins, peppers, eggplant, artichoke, spinach, lettuce, and sunflowers. We also had an earlier start and an easier time gardening pre-baby. This year, we got a notice in May saying that we needed to tend to our garden or give it up. We had visited once to survey but didn't get started until O was about one month old. We gave them our reasons and got to work. In the fall, Shannon had become disinterested in gardening and I had become increasingly larger and less mobile, so we didn't "put our garden to bed" as we should have. Thus, we returned to mostly weeds. It took some work to clear out, but some brilliant person had brought a ton of used burlap sacks from coffee shops in to kill weeds. We covered most of our plot with these sacks.
We also learned that in our absence, a killdeer family had nested in our plot, and people staked out the nest so no one would disturb it. We felt glad that we had inadvertently provided a space for another fledging family.
Other changes had occurred in our absence. A number of the plots had not sold, so the city decided to give them away to immigrant families in the area. We now have about five plots being worked by Eastern European families who have brought with them their knowledge of cold-weather gardening and have created amazing structures (cold frames I guess, though they are solid enough to call green houses). These families must have some agreement to raise food for their community, because there are so many tomatoes they could feed hundreds of people!
With new community members comes some strife, of course, and it came in the form of cultural misunderstandings. I have noticed that some of the greatest issues between cultures has to do with the use of space. In this case, I think being helpful has been confused with being invasive at times. We so far have thoroughly enjoyed the exchange. Shannon can speak a small bit of Russian, which quickly ingratiated us with George and Maria, who have given us tomato plants, cucumbers and a great big zucchini. When I asked George what kinds of tomatoes we got, he said "good". But apparently, not everyone had this experience. Early on, a woman came up to me to complain about pillows in the shed which might lead to homelessness (or something like that. I couldn't quite follow). She began yelling at me as a way to get me on her side (not effective, obviously) and in her rant, she said something about "the war with the Russians and you have to pick a side". I decided she was crazy and tried not to find out too much more about any war with the "Russians", who are not Russian. On the other hand, it has helped me to see others advocating for each other where I did not expect. A woman who can sometimes be interested in drama was defending the Eastern European families by explaining the difference in how people view ownership, and mentioning that they were impressively multi-lingual. Ultimately, we all will grow from this experience.
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So, back to our plot: this year we have not taken on as much. We are being realistic about what we can handle (though with donations from George, our plans have changed a bit). So far we have seven tomato plants (two volunteers from last year's heirlooms), two butternut squash, a tepee trellis of green beans, a whole bed of strawberries, six broccoli plants, onions, arugula, cucumbers, three peppers, eggplants, and sunflowers. Actually, it sounds like a lot. We still have paths of burlap sacks and a small and dwindling weedy section, but it is a great work in progress, and now we have another person to share it with, which makes it even more meaningful.
Busy day. Here are some awesome blogs to check out. I've highlighted my favorite posts.
The Rookie Moms Blog has this brilliant idea that I wish I'd thought of: 25 things to do on maternity leave. It's awesome because the writing is great and the ideas are exactly what a new mom needs. Here's one: http://www.rookiemoms.com/write-a-did-do-list/ .
She also has tips for how to fit a shower into your day---[HOLD THE PRESSES! My baby just smiled in his sleep]--- Okay, anyway, she has this great list that includes things that will help you build confidence going out and about as a new mom, like scouting out the baby-friendly bathrooms and nursing spots, and going to a Mommy Matinee, which I have already done! She also has the brilliant idea for couples to pretend one night that they are teenagers babysitting rather than parents in their own home.
The other one that I just have to read daily is Mommy Shorts. She is a brilliant writer with the right sense of humor for me. Here are a few of my favorites:
http://www.mommyshorts.com/parenting-math and for father's day, this one.
I also adore the writing (and the people) in this one:
http://therhodeslog.blogspot.com
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