Birth of a Blog
I received a lengthy email from my mother-in-law today chock-full of family news, personal updates, and requests. Requests for Christmas lists, for our interest level in traveling to be with her for Thanksgiving, and for an update on the first week of preschool. Her final request was kindly worded but direct: she wanted to hear from me/us.
Things have become...hectic? is that strong enough a word?...in the last couple of months, and I've fallen off the keeping-in-touch wagon on several fronts. Local friends call and ask if they've offended me. Relatives suspect that our mail service has been disrupted. There are phone calls received during our July vacation to New Jersey that I have yet to return. I have shifted from uber-connected to barely hanging on in some relationships.
In desperation, I'm turning to this. I'm a cliche of the internet. "Many people are using blogs to keep in touch with their families and friends." Now I'm one of many, a simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable position to occupy. Well, who cares? At least now my mother-in-law will know what her grandchildren are up to.
As far as that goes, preschool is at the top of the list right now. We just started this week and are two class days in. The term "class day" is a bit deceiving, given that the day's program is a measly two hours and ten minutes long. I barely had time today to drop my little pupil off, get to the grocery store with my not-so-baby girl, smash a jar of tomato-basil pasta sauce on the floor (oops), and return home to stuff the fridge and freezer with a week's worth of food before I had to hustle back to the Y to pick him up. He looked a little dazed as he handed me not the paper-plate mask the other moms were getting but rather a narrow strip of manila folder with some random green crayon marks inside. I'm still not sure what that's about, but I suspect it suggests that the little guy is mildly overwhelmed by his first structured educational experience.
I've been asked by at least three acquaintances whether I cried on his first day. Another cliche. The truth is that I left after dropping him off with a smile on my face. He had run into the room without looking back and seemed glad to be there, which was reassuring, but that's not the real reason for my contentment. I was in part happy to have my first-ever alone time with my daughter, but mostly I was relieved to have a brief hiatus from the four-year-old opposition machine. If I say it, he contradicts it. And it's not just verbal retorts, either, which would be hard enough to handle. His self-assertion is a full-body experience in which he throws himself to the floor, ground, or driveway, clamps his eyelids shut, and rolls his eyeballs to the back of his head in a pseudo-sleep of protest. What do you do with that?
I also feel compelled to say that parenting under these circumstances is strongly contraindicated by PMS. But I suppose what human interaction isn't?
Things have become...hectic? is that strong enough a word?...in the last couple of months, and I've fallen off the keeping-in-touch wagon on several fronts. Local friends call and ask if they've offended me. Relatives suspect that our mail service has been disrupted. There are phone calls received during our July vacation to New Jersey that I have yet to return. I have shifted from uber-connected to barely hanging on in some relationships.
In desperation, I'm turning to this. I'm a cliche of the internet. "Many people are using blogs to keep in touch with their families and friends." Now I'm one of many, a simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable position to occupy. Well, who cares? At least now my mother-in-law will know what her grandchildren are up to.
As far as that goes, preschool is at the top of the list right now. We just started this week and are two class days in. The term "class day" is a bit deceiving, given that the day's program is a measly two hours and ten minutes long. I barely had time today to drop my little pupil off, get to the grocery store with my not-so-baby girl, smash a jar of tomato-basil pasta sauce on the floor (oops), and return home to stuff the fridge and freezer with a week's worth of food before I had to hustle back to the Y to pick him up. He looked a little dazed as he handed me not the paper-plate mask the other moms were getting but rather a narrow strip of manila folder with some random green crayon marks inside. I'm still not sure what that's about, but I suspect it suggests that the little guy is mildly overwhelmed by his first structured educational experience.
I've been asked by at least three acquaintances whether I cried on his first day. Another cliche. The truth is that I left after dropping him off with a smile on my face. He had run into the room without looking back and seemed glad to be there, which was reassuring, but that's not the real reason for my contentment. I was in part happy to have my first-ever alone time with my daughter, but mostly I was relieved to have a brief hiatus from the four-year-old opposition machine. If I say it, he contradicts it. And it's not just verbal retorts, either, which would be hard enough to handle. His self-assertion is a full-body experience in which he throws himself to the floor, ground, or driveway, clamps his eyelids shut, and rolls his eyeballs to the back of his head in a pseudo-sleep of protest. What do you do with that?
I also feel compelled to say that parenting under these circumstances is strongly contraindicated by PMS. But I suppose what human interaction isn't?
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 11:30 PM
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