I miss it less and less

I was brought up Catholic, and got married in a Catholic church, even though Frank and I were both at serious odds with our own lingering beliefs in any sort of god.  He’s since declared himself agnostic, and I generally think of myself as a secular humanist, but I am also comfortable with the atheist label.

Luckily, our paths to this point have been pretty smooth.  Nobody in our family is particularly knock-down crazy religious, so while we got a couple eyebrow raises because we didn’t baptize our kids, there weren’t any damnations or disownings or anything like that. 

There are things I really miss about organized religion.  I love the sense of community that a church provides, and I love the formal sense of ceremony of a mass.  These two relatively minor things were actually my greatest personal stumbling block with disavowing my Catholicism and all the teaching of Cathol (anyone?).  But as religion has figured less and less into my life, I can’t really understand why I was so attached to it.  Familiarity, perhaps… the same reason why some people travel the world and still only eat at McDonald’s.

But, there’s the other side of the coin.  The sex abuse scandals.  The “we’ll take our social services away if you legalize gay marriage” threats (because that’s what Jesus would do!).  The extortion of socially liberal Catholic politicians with the denial of Communion.  And that’s just the Catholic church. 

Yes, I know they do good things, too.  But the bad things… the domineering, bullying, hurtful, hateful bad things, they sure make me happy I can say I have nothing to do with them anymore.

Ketchup

I’m getting really bad at this, aren’t I?

Anyway, here are my general goings-on:

My photography business is going well.  My last two jobs – a sweet sixteen party and a portrait session with five kids under five – both mentioned wanting me to work for them again in the future.  That makes me so happy, that these people are happy enough with my work (and with me) that they want to give me more of their money to have fun taking pictures.  I can dig it!  I have a wedding to photograph tomorrow, which should be fun and is in a lovely location.  It’s just a touch less pressure because the couple actually is already married – they tied the knot about a month ago for technical reasons.  So tomorrow’s just for fun and show for their friends and family.  The bride and groom are both older, and most of his family won’t be there (he’s from very very far away) so the posed formals of the whole thing (by far my least favorite part of weddings) will be very low-key and relaxed and focused mostly on the bride and groom.  The only thing I’m really not looking forward to is that I’m sick right now.  Not crazy feverish or anything, but feeling kinda stuffy and with a tickly throat and feeling very, very run down.  I foresee fueling myself with cold medicine and coffee tomorrow.

Lane’s doing really well in kindergarten.  We had our first parent-teacher conference and we heard how her skills are all really far along, and (more importantly to me) that she is a real pleasure to have in class.  I can officially say she’s reading.  We laid all the building blocks for her, and something about school just helped her put it all together and she can read straight through some of the simpler Dr. Seuss books now.  She’s started taking *very* informal piano lessons and likes them. 

Jake is just such a boy now.  He was watching Little Bear on Noggin today and just laughing in a very amused way at very appropriate parts and it just struck me that he’s a kid now.  Not my baby anymore!  Though I wish someone would tell that to him when he insists on nursing.  I still mostly don’t mind but where Lane was more laid-back about scaling back or shortening sessions, Jake will have none of it.  Oh well, he’s only little like this once.

Frank and I are talking about another baby.  Gluttons for punishment, no?    It’s funny though… for a long time I’d bring up the subject and he was very noncommittal about talking about a baby.  Very recently though, something’s changed.  He’s more into it now.  I wish he’d be more forthcoming with his affirmation, rather than me having to infer it from his intense concern that I get the H1N1 vaccine in case I get pregnant.  Though it may be a while in coming, as I and my (new, feels like a great fit!) midwife are both pretty sure I’m not ovulating, and we’re trying to figure out why through myriad tests, including an ultrasound of my lady parts that I have to schedule.

Frank, in actuarial matters, took one of the FSA exams a couple weeks ago, and he’ll find out if he passed in January.  In the meantime, he got ahold of the syllabus for the other FSA exam and he’s started studying for that one.  Each of the FSA exams is only offered once a year, but not at the same time.  So the first one was offered in October, and the other one will be offered end of April.  So… you either focus on one and only take an exam once a year (and have to wait a whole year if you don’t pass the first time) or you split your focus on both of them so you’re always working toward an exam that isn’t more than a few months away.  Not to say Frank’s definitely chosen one approach over the other, he’s just in limbo right now, not knowing if he passed, with an exam coming up in April.  So I think he’s optimistically going to start studying for that one, hoping he passed the exam he just took.  If he finds out he failed the exam, I imagine he’ll switch back to studying for that one.  I know this seems a sort of weird subject to dedicate a big ol’ blog paragraph towards, but our lives sort of revolve around exams and the time Frank needs to study for them.  Plans are put on hold in favor of studying.  Our friends have largely forgotten what we look like.  However, we ARE taking two vactions in the next few months!  In addition to the week we’ll spend in Buffalo for the holidays, we are going to Disney world in mid-February, and Aruba in April.   I kind of hope I can make those trips pregnant. 

LOL @ Donny Osmond

Watched Dancing With The Stars tonight.  Discovered my husband doesn’t know who Adam Ant is.  Googled it.  Subsequently discovered we helped place Adam Ant in the top 40 search terms on Google.

That wind machine part was frigging hilarious.

I’m glad my girl Mya pulled off the first perfect score.  She’s so freakin’ awesome.  I’ve liked her ever since she did a Dancey Dance on Yo Gabba Gabba.  (For my fellow Office fans, Angela will be doing a Dancey Dance on the new season of Yo Gabba Gabba.  I have no idea why I know that.)

Randomness over.  Good night!

 

Someone to watch over my girly-parts

When we lived in New Jersey, I saw an OBGYN.  He was really cool, and pretty laid-back, and knowledgeable, and quite hot, to be honest.  He also was very forthcoming about his support of breastfeeding and shared that his wife nursed both their kids into their preschool years.  There were small things that bothered me… he was a bit dismissive of my desire for a drug-free birth with Lane.   His office gave out tons of formula coupons and samples, and nary a bit of anything breastfeeding-related.  His practice partner told me he had like a 90% episiotomy rate.  I stayed with them, and wrote a birth plan, and when I went into labor got incredibly lucky that the nurse-midwife that shared their hospital rotation was on-call, and between her and a pretty decent OB nurse I had a pretty great birth with Lane.

Then I got pregnant with Jake, and the stuff that I was able to get past at the OBGYN I was seeing just wasn’t passing muster any more.  On top of that, the nurse-midwife wasn’t even in their on-call rotation anymore.  So I went out on a giant limb, and switched practices at somewhere around 20 weeks pregnant.  The practice I switched to was a group of all women practitioners – 4 OBGYNS and 4 midwives.  When pregnant, you got to pick whether you saw the OBGYNs or midwives for your prenatal care and for your birth.  They were on a rotation, so you couldn’t be sure who would attend your birth.  But I went with the midwives, and they were all so lovely, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed no matter who attended my birth.  They also delivered at a different hospital than my old practice, so that was something new, too, but the hospital had a good reputation and had nice, huge rooms, so it didn’t seem too scary.

Midwife Wendy ended up being on-call that night.  The birth went great, my OB nurses were amazing, and the whole experience was very warm and intimate and just about perfect.

And then we moved, and now we live an hour and a half away from that perfect situation.  There are only two hospitals in my county… one has a decent reputation, and one has a great reputation, but they are a Catholic hospital and won’t allow procedures like tubal ligations (aka tubes tied) to be performed in their hospital (not a procedure I’m really interested in, but it just burns my bustle when choices are refused like that.)

The idea of a homebirth was always intriguing to me, but while I know I would be a good candidate for a home birth, there’s just something a little scary about being far away from a hospital when it all goes down (the closest is a 15 minute car ride).  In my mind, the ideal place for giving birth was a birthing center associated with (or at least close to) a hospital, but I was having a hard time finding anyone who knew of anything like that around here.  I found one in the Bronx, which isn’t obscenely far but does involve crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge which is never a guaranteed fast process.

And all this time, my body has been acting wonky.  It wasn’t until Jake was 18 months old (just over a year ago) that I got my period back, but since then it’s come with alarming frequency.  The average is 18 days apart, but it’s often as fast as 16 days.  A couple cycles stretched out to 21 or 22 days, but even that is way short than my relatively clockwork 27 days from before I had Lane.  (Between Lane and Jake I had an IUD, and then once it was removed only had two periods before I was pregnant with Jake.)  I’m sure it’s probably because I’m not ovulating.  So at least we don’t have to worry much about birth control, but when you’re bleeding 6 out of every 16 days, sex isn’t exactly on the forefront of your mind.

So finally after 3 16-day cycles in a row, I decided enough was enough and got on the ball.  I figured I really needed to be seen, especially if another baby was going to be in the cards.  I got recommendations galore for a OBGYN practice with a couple midwives that was closeby, so I called for an appointment.  But, even with the assurance I had something not right going on, they couldn’t get me in until February.  Um, no.  Back to the drawing board.

Then the magic of the internet saved the day.  I found what looked like a great option.  A practice of three midwives, one with a doctorate in nursing.  *They* run the practice, and have two OBs that work with them.  They deliver at a birthing center that just opened a few years ago, attached to one of the best hospitals in the state.  And while it’s not in *my* state, at least I don’t have to cross a bridge to get there, and it’s still only 35 minutes away.  It’s also pretty close to where Frank works, which if I do get pregnant again will make it easy for him to meet me for prenatal appointments.

I called today to make an appointment, fearing the worst.  Well, first, the phone was answered by a real person, not a “press 2 to make an appointment” recording.  Then I briefly explained what was going on and asked when I could get in.  I could have gotten in even sooner, but I have an appointment for 10 days from now.  The only very minor issue is that they are out-of-network for all insurances, so I have to pay at time of service and then be reimbursed.  But, we have a high deductible PPO with a health saving account, so I end up paying out of the health savings account for most stuff anyway.  But, to balance that, she said they keep their fees very reasonable, and gave me a couple of very reasonable-sounding examples.  So I’ll go, and see how it is, and keep my fingers crossed that it’s as good a fit and I feel like it might be.  Because frankly, if it’s not, I am so not looking forward to going back to the ol’ drawing board.

Does your kid really need a perpetual snack buffet?

I’ve noticed something with other parents.  Now, I hate to generalize, but it does seem exceedingly common.  What’s with having snacks available to kids every single minute of the day?  Jake and I attend this open gym that our town runs.  Basically, every weekday they use one of their community center gymnasiums, fill it with toddler/preschooler-appropriate toys, and let parents and kids have the run of it for two hours.  Most people aren’t there for the full two hours, maybe an hour, hour and a half tops.  Nearly every single kid there has snacks openly available to them.  They walk around with bags of Goldfish.  They nosh on pretzel sticks, and apple wedges, and Cheerios.  Two babysitters were there with three kids between them, and they literally had a buffet set up for the kids they were watching – four or five different snack choices, plus a drink for each kid.  Then there’s the other moms that follow the kids around as they play and pop food in the kids’ mouths as they’re playing.

You may have guessed, but this is nowhere near my modus operandi.  I make sure my kids get something in their bellies in the a.m., around lunchtime-ish, and at dinnertime.  Snacks are happily supplied if a kid says they’re hungry (unless a mealtime is imminent and that food is forthcoming shortly).  Sometimes I keep snacks with me if the kids say they are hungry, but often I don’t.  When I do have food with me, it only comes out if our time away from home unexpectedly encroaches on a mealtime, and the kids say they’re hungry.  It is rare for me to offer a preemptive snack, unless I realize we’ve missed a meal.

I hate to feel all judgmental about it, but gosh, it just really seems like some parents are still stuck on that infant feeding schedule, thinking that their kid will starve if they don’t eat every hour.

Bringing in reinforcements

I waffled on the idea for the last couple days, as I am staunchly a work-it-out-yourself sort of parent most of the time.

But Lane’s struggling.  Emotionally, physically, socially, with the estrangement from the girl that I think was her best friend at school before this.  Lane has a strong personality, so I imagined from the beginning that she might be a polarizing figure — the girl that other girls love, and/or hate.  I sort of mentally prepared myself for dealing with that.  I guess I didn’t predict Lane’s reaction to it.  Playing sick, changing her preferences, begging me not to send her to school.  Her heart’s aching, and so is mine.

So I emailed her teacher.  Just in a friendly heads-up sort of way, and seeing if she’d be open to doing a bit of mediation with them.  I’m still not sure it’s the right thing to do, and we’ll see how the teacher responds.

Ugh.

Really, I have to deal with this already?

Oh, sigh.

Now, let me remind you.  My daughter is five.  She just started kindergarten.  She watches Sesame Street and Dora.  She thinks farts are hilarious.  She was dumb enough to cut her own hair five months ago.

Yet, I am already dealing with a full-on case of girl-angst-drama. 

Before last week, Lane loved school.  Couldn’t get enough of it.  Rejoiced at getting an earlier bedtime so she’d be well-rested for school.

Then this week, something changed.  It was harder to get her out of bed.  She didn’t feel good.  She didn’t want to go to school.  Tonight, there were tears when she pleaded with me to not make her go to school tomorrow. 

Time to get to the bottom of things.

I’d gleaned a couple days ago that she and her friend (I’ll call her Katie) were mad at each other over something.  But when she told me, Lane didn’t seem very affected by it.  So when she had her minor freakout this evening, I dove deeper.  The story I was finally able to extract was that Katie hit her last week, and Lane told on her, and Katie got mad because Lane told on her, and declared they weren’t friends any more. 

Gosh, I hate this.  I was not good at being a girl through school.  I gravitated toward the jock girls, as we always seemed to be slightly more immune to the drama.  I was just never good at navigating through that social minefield.  And now, I have to teach my daughter the ways of this nonsensical world?!?  Ugh.

I did my best, and I think I gave her decent advice.  Well, first, I gave her a huge hug and thanked her for trusting me with the whole story, and now I’m her mom and it’s my job to be her friend and help her and protect her, so she can always tell me this stuff.  I told her that I totally understood that she would be mad that Katie hit her, because nobody likes to be hit.  However, even though Katie did something wrong, maybe Lane could have handled it differently too instead of telling the teacher right away.   Lane’s also a pretty big tattle-tale at home, too, and 95% of the time I make her work it out herself.  Tell your brother you don’t like to be hit.  Don’t play with him if he’s not nice to you.  Blah blah blah.  I told her tonight that while she wasn’t wrong to tell her teacher, that maybe she could have done something differently.  Maybe she could have asked Katie not to hit, because Lane doesn’t like to be hit.  There was a little more talking, a couple rephrasings, a couple examples, a little talk about how maybe she go about making amends with Katie, who before this incident was arguably Lane’s best friend at school and the only one she talked about having playdates with.

And, sigh, again.  I feel so ill-equipped with dealing with this crapola.  I want Lane to be better equipped to deal with all this angst and drama. 

Or maybe I can just encourage her to be a jock. 

Seriously though, I’d totally take some advice here.   Any thoughts?  Any good books to read?  I need help.  I’ve considered shooting an email off to the teacher, just to give her a heads-up about what’s going on between these girls… but how much is helpful to a teacher, and how much is needless meddling?  Would she want to help mediate the situation, or prefer to let the girls work it out themselves? 

Help.