Planning

So, I feel like I swimming with my head above water again (is that the right analogy?) and able to look at life more than one day at a time, which is how I feel like I've been surviving for a while now. Gerard and I have been trying, and I feel in a good emotional spot about the actual TTC aspect of everything (that's Trying To Conceive for you non-infertile people). Basically I have granted myself that label because I have met one criterion: I'm not constantly obsessing over it and taking pregnancy tests multiple times a day half a week before my period is even due. So that's pretty good, right? I don't know how mentally prepared I am to actually be pregnant, however. I'm still terrified of freaking out Solomon and ruining a fairly decent family balance we've settled into; I'm freaking out about the cost of childcare for two kids; Mostly I'm freaking out about having another miscarriage, or worse- late-term stillborn. I feel like every time I turn around I hear about someone else losing a baby in their second or third trimester. The thought makes me nauseous. I feel like even if/when I get pregnant again and even if it's a healthy pregnancy, I'll never again experience a happy, relatively carefree and enjoyable pregnancy like I did with Solomon. I'm afraid I'll be next to crippled with fear, and have anxiety over it's health the whole 9 months. I'm not sure how to move past it.

Anyway, I've decided I need to move along with my life instead of constantly being in a state of 'well what if I'm pregnant in 3 months?' etc, when it comes to planning... anything. I'm afraid to train for a race, to change jobs, to enroll Solomon in a FT daycare... I'm afraid to do anything because I don't know how much will change if I do get pregnant/ have a baby, etc. But now I'm resolute to planning the foreseeable future as a regular, non-pregnant person with one child. So that means that one child should go to preschool in the fall (we're going to what I hope will be an awesome preschool's orientation on Tuesday) here in San Jose, and that means I should change jobs and be closer to home and not be so wrapped up into trying to make sure I have maternity benefits by working at a place for more than a year (I also have an interview on Tuesday), and that means I'm signing up for a 5 mile race with Ben this summer- and maybe I'll even up the ante and find a ten miler or something, and that means I have to continue to work out consistently (I think I'm going to coordinate workouts with my old high school running buddy who lives next door). So, yes. Instead of constantly peeing on sticks, and planning what my due date will be if I conceive on this particular day, and how pregnant I may be at one particular event... I'm going to focus my efforts on planning real life events for the real life people in my family. And if we have to make room for someone else in the near future, fantastic.

My third musing

Aha! As soon as I hit 'Publish Post' I remembered my last musing!

Today I left the office for lunch, and our security guard opened the door for me and said goodbye. He's not our everyday security guard, mind you, he's like our sub when our regular guy is out. Point being I don't see him every day, and he doesn't know my name let alone my family situation. Anyway, so he had said bye, and have a good day... and then called out 'Oh and have a happy Mother's Day!'

Sooooo, how am I supposed to interpret this? I'm doing good to say happy mother's day to my own mom, let alone a practical stranger. I guess I'd say it if it happened to cross my mind to a friend who I knew for certain was a mother. But never in a million years would I say this to a random person I didn't know.

Is this something people do? Say happy Mother's Day to anyone and everyone, because presumably everyone has a mother to celebrate? Was I supposed to say 'you too?' Or do people only say it to people who are mothers? In that case, am I supposed to be offended something about my appearance screams 'Mom'??

Those 3 seemingly innocuous words just gave me that annoying and confusing 'I'm probably not supposed to be offended but I kinda am anyway, which probably says more about my own faults and neuroses than anything' feeling. It's one of my least favorite emotions.

2 Random Musings...

1- Ever notice how when you're in the South or East, everyone calls California 'Out West'

But in California everyone (everyone) says 'Back East.' Are you as intrigued by this as I am?

2-Damn. I know I had a second musing, but I've totally lost it. This wasn't it, but I will say that we finally broke down and bought crocs for Solly after one too many fights upon daycare pickup, when he has to release his pair (meaning the extra pair of crocs another family brought in for Solly to wear at daycare to minimize the flights Solly picks with their son as my child tries to steal his shoes... off his feet). He wears them so much at daycare that Aston- the boy who the crocs actually belong to- will go and get them for Solomon to put on when it's time to go, if for some reason he hadn't already been wearing them. So, I begrudgingly ordered a pair that came in the mail yesterday. I pulled them out of the box and Solly's whole face lit up. 'Shoooooesssss!' He was so happy. It made the purchase worthwhile for about 30 seconds, until he reached up for the box on the counter saying 'More!? I want more!' Sigh.

Dissecting the toddler brain

You're nervous already, aren't you? So am I.

So, before giving up and letting Solomon wear his pajama top to daycare this morning, I spent approximately 45 minutes chasing him down to change him, pinning him down to take off his beloved helicopter pajama pants, holding his feet still to put on clean pants while he frantically tried to put his helicopter pants back on, and then listening to him tantrum mercilessly afterwards. His tantrum could have gone on much, much longer (he was inconsolable until I finally wrestled the octopus into a mesh bag so they say by strapping him in his carseat-- the second we started driving he was magically happy again), and I'm still in awe of how only 45 minutes passed on the clock, because I'm pretty sure I aged at least 7 years during this ordeal.

Regardless of his random, spontaneous obsession with his helicopter pajamas, and regardless even his hoarding of about 10 objects he must have in his crib with him, and maybe 5 that must travel with him in the car, there is the one toddler act that drives me the most batty. It's the 'I want shoe! I want shoe! I want shoe!' But when I try to put on his shoes, 'Nooooooo,' when I try to hand him his shoes 'Nooooooooo,' but when I put down his shoes it's 'I want shoe! I want shoe! I want shoe!' So far this morning he's done that with: mama, up, shoe, keys, bottle, teddy, blankie and play doh. It really legitimately drives me bananas. Way more so that any other form of tantrum. At least with your normal, run-of-the-mill tantrums, you have an out. It'll make you a bad mom and susceptible to scorn and ridicule, but you know any second you want to you can make it stop by just giving in and giving him whatever he wants. So you have some little inkling of power or control you feel inside you, even if no one looking on might agree with you on that. But this.... is indefinite. You don't know what he actually wants, so never are you sure in your stance of giving into him, or holding out. Seemingly no one has the power or control, no one is happy, and there is no end in sight to the cyclical trauma of wanting something you don't want the second it is offered but wanting it soooooooooooooo bad when no one will give it to you. Ooof.

So, my question is: why?? Why on earth do toddlers do this? Surely Solomon is not the only guilty party. Please God tell me other kids do this too (really I want to hear that other moms somehow survive this... phase. Yes, that's the key, tell me it's a very short-lived phase.)