I Don't Love You, Mommy

For the past 6 weeks before Jake started his job, he spent a lot of time with the kids. I worked 5 days a week and Jake watched the kids whenever Buddy wasn't here.

Now he's at work every day, which Nora hasn't really noticed, but Milo has and he can't understand it. Today I stayed home with the kids, which in Milo's mind means the weekend, so where is Daddy? He has been asking about Daddy a lot, and was pretty teary and sad this morning over Daddy being at work. We practiced what he'll say to Daddy when he comes home at 5. We also looked at a picture of Daddy to help him feel better. It's where he can always find it, so he can look at it whenever he needs to. That did seem to help a little. So did going to a big park and playing outside for a couple of hours, and walking to Trader Joe's to get dinner ingredients, and blowing bubbles and playing in the sand. Those things helped a lot.

Today before his nap Milo informed me that he doesn't love me. He loves Daddy. He made sure to say it several times so that I really got the message. I am definitely a poor substitute for Daddy (despite that fact that it's me who actually takes him places, and changes his diaper as soon as it gets wet, and gives him creative options for lunch, and refills his bubbles).

Whatever, kid. I know you love Daddy best but you're gonna have to deal with me now.

Of course once Daddy came home and gave the kids a bath, Milo proceeded to scream bloody murder and demand that I hold him, not Daddy. Who do you love now, huh?

I Am Tired But My Kids Are Not

I am finishing up revisions on a paper and it has taken me a whole month. Today I re-wrote the discussion section and it was so hard...like pulling teeth. I've been doing academic writing for many years now but there are some days when it is still very gut-wrenchingly difficult. Hopefully this means I am articulating something new and important, but it could just mean that writing is hard for me, and always will be.

I am very tired, and having a hard time recovering from an illness which keeps hanging on and hanging on. In a couple of minutes I have to go back to work for the evening. I am tired. Did I say that already? There is no time to get burned out because I still have to keep working at full throttle for the next year. This is the last 6 miles of the marathon.

I just gave Milo a nasal aspirator to hold in his crib and told him that it was a dragonfly eliminator. He was upset because he thought there were dragonflies in the room. It seems to have worked...he is quiet now.

Meanwhile Nora is chattering away in her pack 'n play in our bedroom and doesn't seem close to going to sleep. She has taken a fancy to a doll, which she has named Sally, and Sally is in the pack 'n play with Nora. She is talking to Sally, saying "I'm going to change your diaper now. Ooooo! I'm going to put it on you!"

Summer Time

It's nice and hot here, but not too hot. In that second-to-last picture is my friend in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, even though it was like 85 degrees out. She's from Florida and thought it was kind of cool here! As far as I'm concerned, it's just right.

The in-laws were here this weekend too. When they left Milo got kind of upset. He teared up and said that he was sad. He said, "I need Grandpa!" Then he thought for a moment and added, "And Grandma, too."

Jake starts his job tomorrow. Because of his early start time, I will have to be the one to get up and get the kids ready every day of the week. I am really not psyched about that. But, on the other hand, 2 incomes. Time to break out the caviar and champagne, or whatever it is that people who have money do. Or we would, if our basement hadn't flooded, our freezer wasn't refusing to stay shut, and our windows weren't rotting.

I am behind on work deadlines, and feeling like I shouldn't have taken that trip last week.

Rich Kids

Jake and I watched a documentary the other night about rich kids. This Johnson & Johnson heir decided to make a film about all of his other heir and heiress friends, to talk about what it is like to grow up so rich, with money so old, that in some cases their parents and their grandparents have never worked. So nobody in the family even understands what it means to have a career.

The guy making the film asked his dad what he should do for a career. I got the impression that the dad painted, but has never worked a day in his life. The dad suggested that he begin working on a collection, perhaps of old maps. It was so bizarre that the dad was so out of touch with reality that he thought that collecting things counts as a career.

Now to make a totally gross generalization, it seemed to me that the older the money, the dumber the person. So if the person's money was so old that his parents had never worked and his grandparents had never worked and his great-grandparents had never worked because they all lived off the fortune of the great-great-grandfather, the person just seemed so out of it. Whereas there were a couple of people in the film whose parents had actually made their fortune, and these people seemed to be the sharpest and most with-it of the group.

One guy talked about how it is important for him to be involved in bettering himself, being actively engaged in the world rather than just passively consuming. He gave, as an example, the fact that he goes to the tailor and spends hours with the tailor making sure that his suit is just right. That was his example of being active.

It was funny to hear people say things like, "If I were to date somebody, I don't know if I'd bring them to my houses." Just the way they throw around houses, plural, the way that most of us talk about our house, singular.

The heirs and heiresses keep within their own circle for friendships and dating. Which probably makes sense in a way. I imagine it would get messy trying to be involved with a non-heir. How would you know they weren't just a gold digger?

People with wealthy inheritances fascinate me in some weird trainwreck way. This is probably because I used to teach at a school that had a number of kids like that, and a lot of other kids were rich too, even though it was new money. These families tended to treat teachers like servants and I didn't respect their values. I have some old fashioned values about the importance of work, probably.

If I had unlimited money I think I would still work. Jake always says that he wouldn't but I'm not sure about that because he also has this weird man thing going on about how he's supposed to have a career and all. (After all, he could not work now if he wanted, but he starts work on Monday). I think one big difference is that I'd have more kids. I mean, I guess it's kinda late for that, but if I had a ton of money I'd probably have like 4 or 5 kids total, and just get a bigger house for all of them and hire the help that we'd need to take care of them. Big families seem like a lot of fun.

How Much Do I Owe Jake for This?

OMG I am never going anywhere with the kids ever again.

I noticed, on the plane ride to Portland, that Nora had what felt like a really high fever. She was burning up and of course my baby Tylenol was packed in my suitcase because the bottle is 4 ounces. She was exhausted and kept drifting off to sleep only to wake again immediately and cry as if in a lot of pain, so she couldn't get any rest. She kept pointing down her mouth and asking me to take the hurt out of it. I thought she was teething but later realized (as I suffer from this now) that she must have had a wicked sore throat.

As soon as we strapped Milo into the rental car, he threw up all over everything. He threw up 3 more times that night (yes, we are THOSE house guests). Neither kid ate hardly anything the whole time we were on "vacation", which meant they were also crabby and hungry in addition to being sick and exhausted. Poor, poor kids. Nora fared pretty well and seemed just about fine the next day, but Milo suffered throughout. Then on our last night both kids progressed to the stuffed up and coughing stage of the illness, which meant they woke about 800 times throughout the night and pretty much nobody got any sleep at all.

Given the incredible sleep deprivation and the stuffy noses and popping ears, the kids were real troupers for the flights home today and didn't really lose it until pretty much the end of the trip. They did the best they could and I could tell they were suffering.

It was freezing for our entire time in Portland (which provided a visceral reminder of how I could never move back to the pacific northwest). So it was nice to return this afternoon to a real summer day, hot and humid. We had put the air conditioning on before we left for the cats, and we remarked on how glad we were that we did that, given how hot it was.

Except...the pump that pumps out the water from the AC failed, and the basement flooded. Who knows when this happened. As long as 5 days ago? The person feeding our cats was a neighborhood teen who probably wasn't with it enough to realize that the squooshy wetness in the carpet wasn't supposed to be there. I saw that the power had failed, which would have caused the pump to stop. I hope that was the problem. Anyway, we need to get rid of the carpet. And figure out what new flooring to install on the basement floor that won't get ruined when we have water. This trip ended up costing us a whole lot more than I'd anticipated.

Predictably I am sick now, but whatever. I am an adult and can handle it, but I do feel bad for dragging the kids all around tarnation when they felt so lousy.

The reason we went was to see family, and that was really nice. We ended up canceling a side trip to Seattle and it gave us unexpected extra time with our beloved cousins and their kids, and I loved that too. Nora took a real shine to one of my cousins and even today was asking about her and wondering when she'd see her again. I wish I lived closer to everybody, or more accurately, I wish everybody lived closer to me. Still, no more big trips until 2012; maybe at 4.5 they'll have an easier time. At least 4.5 year olds no longer need naps, right?

B is for Bubble

If Milo has a favorite thing right now, it'd be the iPad. He's going to be such a gamer. That and the color orange, I guess. This morning in the car Milo was going on about something or somebody he didn't like, I don't remember, he's in an "I don't like" phase right now. I asked, who do you like, Milo? Milo said, "Orange." Orange? "I like the color orange." Well okay then.

Nora: I don't like orange. I like yellow! (Except she calls it "lellow").

If Nora has a favorite thing right now, it's definitely bubbles. Blowing bubbles. All bubbles, all the time. She's totally into bubbles. Which is a little interesting considering I used to be kind of afraid of bubbles.

Here's Nora holding her bubbles. She won't let go of that thing. Look at those curls! Now that it's humid her hair has sprung into crazy curls all over the place. Look at that cute little face! The look of menacing intent! Are you afraid? Because you should be.

Milo blows the bubbles. See that tuft of hair on the back of his head? It's so cute, but I'm thinking it's getting kind of over the top and maybe I should cut it off. I haven't cut Milo's hair yet at all. His hair has grown into a natural mohawk so now everybody who sees him says "Oh, he's got a mohawk!" It's starting to look like we did it on purpose. I don't want to be seen as the lame parent who would give her toddler a mohawk.

Why can't you kids stand in a more scenic location when you're blowing bubbles? Sheesh!

Look how serious Jake looks here. He is so aristocratic. Those sideburns! Those Euro glasses! That cleft chin! The razor-edged nose! It is a pleasure to gaze upon him. I need to do extra gazing in the next couple of weeks while we've still got him at home.

Nora says, yes, I'm totally exhausted, probably because I never go to bed on time and instead I throw giant toddler parties every night with Milo instead of falling asleep. Plus, I like to crap my pants precisely 1.5 hours into any nap I ever take. But no matter how exhausted I might be, I am not going to stop blowing bubbles. I don't care if it's dinner time. If you try to make me go in and stop blowing bubbles, there will be hell. to. pay.

Milo says, enough with this bubble stuff, let's go play ball!

And Another One Moves On

My doctoral student successfully defended his dissertation today! Woo hoo!

Today I asked for a raise. I framed it partly as an equity issue because a new faculty member in my area is joining us this fall at a salary 5K more than what I'm making. (This phenomenon is called compression).

I learned many interesting things about money in this meeting with my department chair. In particular, there are several different pots of money that a dept. chair here can use to get a person a raise: a) equity pot, b) compression pot, c) promotion pot, d) high demand pot, e) retention pot.

The equity pot? Empty. Has been for a few years. No money in the equity pot, which means no raises to address salary inequities. This is confusing to me because you'd think such a thing would be actionable, but whatever.

The compression pot seems like it should apply to me, but it is only for full professors at certain points in their careers. The department doesn't get to choose who to put up for a compression raise. There's some sort of formula.

The promotion pot refers to the raises you get when you get tenure and full. Obviously I want to try to get a raise before I go up for tenure, so that my tenure raise will happen on top of the other raise.

The high demand pot is for faculty who are deemed high demand faculty. These are people in high need areas who are productive and successful and tend to get wooed away to other schools. Departments in our college fight each other over this money. The dean has the final say and the typical raise she tends to give from this pot is 3K, which is quite small in my opinion.

The retention pot gets activated when you get an outside job offer from another university. Then they will try to retain a faculty member by giving him or her a raise and other perks. Often this raise is not quite as good as actually matching the other university's salary offer. Because we're lame that way, and we don't have any money.

My department chair offered to go after the high demand pot to get me a raise. She wants to avoid having me go on the market and get another offer, for obvious reasons. She said that I am a good candidate for the high demand raise, so she will put my name forward with the dean and advocate for a higher-than-usual raise because I could be making so much more at a different institution. Ultimately the final decision will be up to the dean in terms of whether to offer a raise, and how much, and the dean's decision will determine whether I go on the market. Meanwhile, though, I'm glad I asked!

Here are some family pictures after I got home today, looking a bit wilted after a day of work and walking 3 miles in the heat and humidity. It is so humid today that I'm surprised it's not actually raining right now! Hence we all look a little wet, but I don't mind. I like this weather.

Bullets of Money and Shirtlessness

• It's a great time to refinance. We just refinanced our mortgage in order to lock in a 4.5% interest rate, which is, like, crazy low. We decided to shift from our 30-year fixed to a 20-year fixed, which basically keeps our monthly payments the same but knocks 5 years off our mortgage. Not bad.
• The only down side is that this probably won't have been worth it if we turn around and sell the house in a year or two. (You know. If I don't get tenure. Or if I go on the job market and decide to take a different job.) On the bright side, if that happens, I'm not particularly worried about selling our house. So many people want to buy in our neighborhood that we regularly get emails on our listserve from families asking if anybody is thinking of selling their house.
• In mildly related financial news, this morning they reported on the radio that the university system president commissioned a study to compare salaries at our universities to other institutions in this region of the country. Not surprisingly they found that we lag behind everybody else. This is true for both faculty and staff. For instance, full professors' salaries lag by 13% - 20%. It would be nice if this study and its publication ended up making a difference somehow. But given our higher-ed unfriendly state legislature, I doubt it'll matter.
• The first thing Milo says to me when I come home now is, "Shall we do the iPad?"
• This morning Nora declared, "I'm quite funny!"
• Tonight both kids thought it was hilarious to take their shirts off and run around the house shirtless. Such simple things bring so much joy.

Milo Isn't Interested

Interesting comments in reaction to this NYT blog post about a kid who is almost 4 and still in diapers. It's funny to me how this sort of made-up notion about "readiness", which wasn't actually based on any research, ended up becoming the mantra of potty training. So now kids train about a year later than they did a couple of generations ago. If there was something truly biological about this readiness stuff, then you'd probably see kids training at about the same age across history and cultures. That's not the case, however, and kids these days are potty training later than ever before. My guess is that disposable diapers and pull ups might have something to do with that.

At the same time, Milo and Nora aren't potty trained yet. They're sort of behind in comparison to their peers around the neighborhood. They play with a number of different friends their age who are now potty trained. A couple of their friends trained before 2. But at 2.5, Milo and Nora aren't even close. It bothers me a little bit to know that they're behind, especially because it would be nice to stop washing diapers. But, they've never exactly been at the top of the curve when it comes to physical developments like sitting, crawling, or walking. So I suppose potty training late sort of fits in with that trend. They weigh as much as babies 1 year younger than them, so sometimes I wonder if their size is related to being on a slightly slower-paced curve.

And I can kind of see why parents don't push it because man, what a pain. I haven't done anything to try to train them yet. We've been sitting them on the potty since they were much younger, but that's about as far as we've taken it. We haven't done that classic "ditch the diapers and potty train in a weekend" thing or anything like that. Because why? To be honest, I'm lazy, I guess, and procrastinating it. Also, it's weather related. I figure I want to do it when it's hot, so that means summer. So that they can be in as little clothing as possible, or naked.

I guess I'll probably do something about it later this summer, and give it a try in August before school starts. If they take to it, great, if not, then we'll wait. I don't think that encouraging kids to use the potty is "pushing". Pushing isn't the same as encouraging, and frankly I can understand the draw of diapers from a toddler's point of view. Milo especially does not want to stop his playing and have to think about the potty. But training will be good for their little bottoms, which still occasionally get sore and red. And I do not believe in waiting until a toddler necessarily decides that he or she is ready and eager to do something new. If I followed that philosophy, then the kids would still be using bottles and still be eating baby food. So obviously they need a little structure and guidance from us.

Anyway, today I was in Target and I bought some training pants for the kids for later this summer if we decide to give the whole thing a good old college try. Jake was putting them away and he remarked to Milo "Oh, it looks like Mommy got some training pants." Milo immediately said "I don't want those. I want diapers." Okay then! Hard to get a clearer message than that!

Daddy Stay Home!

This morning Nora said "Mommy's staying home today." I told her that I had to go to work, but I'd be back in the evening. Then she switched tactic. "Daddy is staying home today." Milo agreed, stating firmly "Daddy stays home."

Nora: Yay! Daddy's staying home.
Milo: Daddy's staying home. Daddy, stay home!
Jake: Buddy's coming, but I'm staying home too.
Milo: Hooray! Daddy's staying home.

These kids are so accustomed to Jake being there all the time. They're going to be in for one nasty surprise when Jake starts a full-time job at the end of June. (I have a feeling we all are).

When the family left on Saturday, I was sad. And so I took a nap. In my own bed. For as long as I wanted.

The end. That should be the end of the story, because that is all that really matters, isn't it? You don't nap with small children. Maybe you can catch a few winks after they're down, once you eat your lunch, clean up the dishes, get the laundry going, and water the plants. Then you might sink onto the sofa in exhaustion, never your own bed, because one of the kids is napping in there, and as soon as you start to drift off, they're up. And you regret it.

So I took a nap, in my own bed, and I woke up when I was ready. And then I cleaned the house. And then I had 3 days of a clean house. Clean floors. No crumbs ground into the floor, no milk splatters, no sauces dribbled on walls, no toys strewn about. No diapers to empty out into the toilet, so I had clean, pristine, toilets. Clean kitchen counters. A clean bedroom.

I slept. I woke when I wanted to. When I woke, I looked at my email, got dressed, and went for a run. When I wanted to. When I got back, I was able to stretch and lift weights for as long as I wanted. Then I actually took a shower right away, instead of 2-3 hours later. I went out at night. I sat with friends at the terrace and looked at the boats on the lake and listened to the music in the humid, summer air. And I stayed as long as I wanted to. I did not look at my watch, or worry about when I had to get home. I knew I'd be able to sleep in the next morning.

I worked. At home. In silence. I worked for as long as I wanted to, and only stopped when I was done. I made myself meals, and my cooking was not rushed. I took as long as I wanted. I ate when it was ready, instead of at 6 p.m. on the dot. And when I sat down to eat, I remained sitting the entire time. I did not once get up to get milk, water, extra bread, paper towels, fruit, or anything else. I just sat and ate my meal. And when I cleaned up, it only took a few minutes.

Once upon a time I lived in this house by myself. I am trying to remember...what did I do with all of my time?

A few nights ago we watched a movie about a French family whose mother / grandmother owned the family estate. Each summer the three children and their spouses and children gathered at the estate, and they played in the pond and ate outside on the patio and laughed and argued and it was loud and chaotic. And the old mother, whose husband was dead, loved being surrounded by her family.

And then they all left, one by one. They packed up their cars and drove away, and the mother waved goodbye, and then they are all gone. And dusk arrived, and she slowly walked back up the drive to her big, big house, where she was all alone. And she sat in her kitchen, the room growing dark, the sound of the clock ticking loudly.

It was a sad moment. I thought, I can imagine feeling that way.

The house felt quiet this weekend when the family was gone, but I could enjoy it because it was so rare. But it does feel good when they return. I like a lively house, filled with noise and music and talk and laughter. It is never quiet around here. That's okay. It's the way I wanted it.

And the kids, they had a good time: