Temporary SAHM

I practiced going to work last week. I had an AP conference for 4 days, from 8 to 4:30, pretty much the same hours I will be at school in just three short weeks. But really this is my last week off – my last week to be the temporary stay at home mom.

All summer I’ve tried to remind myself that my stint as a SAHM is temporary. It will repeat itself in 10 months, but it is temporary nonetheless. Last year, when I had to transition back to work from being home with Nora for seven months, I was a total basketcase. How could I send her to daycare? They would never love her like I do. How could I be a good teacher? I wouldn’t have the time to work as hard. I cried every morning when I dropped her off, later in the day at work, and at night when I reflected on just how hard all of this was. It was awful. It was surely the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my entire life.

So this summer I made my best effort to remind myself of the fleeting nature of summer vacation at every possible turn. And I will admit that there were some moments, especially early on as I transitioned to being home, that I wondered if I would survive staying home, that I wished daycare was still an option. But I haven’t had one of those moments recently and looking at the calendar and seeing my Nora time diminishing is starting to make me teary eyed again.

The practice run was great. Nora was with Mimi and Papa, certainly only second to Elmo as people to spend time with. She asks for Mimi and Papa at the lunch table and in the car. So I wasn’t worried about her. I knew they would love her back – not like I do – but pretty close. And she is old enough to communicate now, so they would know just what she needed. The first three days of the conference, I left the house without a problem – said goodbye, got in the car, drove to UT, sat in class – it was all fine. But on the fourth day, when I realized that this practice run was going to become reality rather quickly, I cried on my way out the door.

Sending Nora to Mimi and Papa is one thing. Sending her to daycare is another. She will have new teachers, new classmates, new sickesses (please, not as bad as last year.!). So I sit anticipating it two weeks before it will happen. I know it won’t be as hard as last year, but it will be hard.

The thing is, I just need it to happen. And I need my students in my classroom. The week of teacher prep only gives me time to wonder what Nora is doing, to think about what I would be doing with her if we were home. Once those students walk into my room, I am distracted and dedicated – not that I ever forget about Nora. This anticipation is really the worst part.

And, when it really comes down to it, I think if I didn’t stand at the front of a room full on teenagers on August 24, if I got up, watched Elmo, chased Nora around the yard, said hello to the chickens down the street, I would begin to miss that part of my life too. I really do love teaching. I just hate leaving Nora.

Tight Spaces - A Vacation Story

I’m not sure the term vacation can ever truly be applied to traveling with an 18 month old. Not to say that we didn’t have fun and some relaxation on our trip east, but “vacation” connotes a whole different kind of jaunt away from home from what we just experienced. In considering the best way to organize my many stories of our trip I realized that most of them involve being in some tight spaces.

It all began with the plane ride. My perfect plan to fly at nap time so Ken and I didn’t have to hold Nora the jumping bean was, of course, thrown to the wind when the flight was delayed 3 hours due to weather. Ken was smart and knew to stay at home longer than we had originally planned, arriving at the airport later than I was comfortable with, but really at the exact perfect time since our flight was pushed back even further. So Nora, of course, fell asleep in the car, stayed asleep in the stroller while we checked in, but was woken up by the security check since I had to carry her and not roll her through. Which began Nora’s enjoyment of the airport – screaming in pure joy as she ran down the hallways and into many people’s way. And then the tight space – the airplane. She did not sleep for one second on the four hour flight. She bounced around between my lap and Ken’s lap and even spent a stint on the lap of the poor woman sitting next to us (who said she didn’t mind since she had a 2 year old grandson she was just visiting, though I suspect she would have preferred Nora not poke her every time she closed her eyes to sleep).

And the lack of nap on the plane led, essentially, to our next tight space. Betty drove us from Logan to Harwich; Nora promptly fell fast asleep in the car. We arrived, I whisked her in to fall peacefully asleep in the pack and play pre-prepared by Mimi and Papa. But no. She HATED the pack and play. And as Ken said, she added an exclamation point on the end of our long journey by vomiting all over me and herself to prove just how much she hated the pack and play. The problem was solved by having her sleep in the bed with us. With the way Nora flails and moves in her sleep, Ken and I were quickly relegated to the edges and the bed came to feel very small and crowded. But at least there was no vomit (night two of trying the pack and play led to regurgitated whole spaghetti noodles on Ken).

Not all tight spaces were bad. The next tight space was the back of a 1930s truck in the Welfleet Fourth of July parade. There was the picturesque harbor, the classic Cape-Codders, the small town floats and seven very happy children and 5 happy but stiff adults in the back of Rich’s antique vehicle. It was amazing to watch Nora watch the scenery. I’m sure she had no idea that she was in a parade – but what a great story to be able to share with her later. That’s a tight space I hope to revisit with her.

On the Cape Nora put on many shows for her adult admirers. She grunted and groaned as she faked the struggle to open her nesting barrels. She passed around her Mimi’s hat to play the “Hachoo” game that Mimi invented and Nora still loves. She paraded around with purses and tried to hang with her older cousins out in the yard. She adored the beach and ran into Oyster pond, up to her neck, without even a second glance at the shore.

From Cape Cod we headed south to the big city – New York. It was here that we experienced perhaps the tightest space, which I guess isn’t very surprising. We took Nora all over the city – to FAO Schwarz where she found purses to play with and a giant Elmo to hug, to many kid parks in Central Park, all of which she loved, to Union Square to meet up with a friend, on many taxi rides and on one horribly memorable subway ride. At rush-hour. With our giant stroller. A very nice woman gave me her seat to hold Nora, Jess and Ken, with giant stroller in tow, squeezed in and we made it home. It was the most crowded I have ever seen a subway. Nora’s favorite part of New York was probably Aunt Jessica’s air mattresses. She jumped, sometimes with a running start, onto the mattresses over and over again. She had us all cracking up. And she tired herself out and started sleeping a bit more soundly than she had been, making the shared bed feel just a tad bit bigger.

From New York we traveled to Alexandria to visit Nora’s Nana and Grampa. This was where the tight spaces took a temporary hiatus. In the big house Nora had large circles to run, stairs to get in trouble on and many rooms to explore. It was easy to lose Nora here after our many tight spaces. We went to the wide open space of the zoo and saw real live animals that Nora just loved. She was speechless when she first lay eyes on the Panda and over the moon about seeing elephants up close and personal. She had strangers laughing at her ferocious roar as she watched the tigers and lions. She even went to her first Smithsonian Museum – to the War Floor – as Owen called it. She liked the wartime cartoons and was surprisingly patient as we wandered the museum.

And then, the final real stop of the trip, Raleigh, to see Todd and Tania in their new home. We were no longer in the realm of open space. While the house was large, Nora’s sleeping issue returned us to tight spaces – or me in particular. In my hope to be able to visit with Todd and Tania, I tried to get Nora to sleep in Owen’s toddler bed. I spent the first part of the attempt actually in the toddler bed with her. That was not going to work for long. And then I moved to the floor right next to the bed. And Nora decided that she would lay right over my head. In my desperation for adult time, I let her lay like that for a while, until I could hardly breathe any more; thus, I moved her up and she lost her concentration on trying to sleep. And so I moved her to our bed and fell asleep with her and missed all of the visiting. Some day I’ll be able to visit with adults again.

And then began the road trip. From Raleigh to Austin was a long haul. And the Corolla came to feel smaller and smaller each day as it filled with cheerios and toys, the ipod lost its charge, Ken got sick, we got closer to home but were still far away. Nora was an excellent car traveler. Her new puzzle and Elmo stickers got her through. She had no major meltdowns, she ate and slept in the car like a champ. She enjoyed the running at the rest stops and the play places at McDonalds. I’m not a huge fan on McDonald’s, but the play place is a genius move. Fence the kids in (in Atlanta it was even air-conditioned!) and let them play! But Nora is a bit small for the playscape so I had to go with her. And I was a bit big for the tunnels she was crawling through. Once she lost her shoe in the tunnel. I could hear from within the tiny voice saying, “mama, shoe” and I knew she had lost it. I told her to bring it to me. And she hobbled over with just one shoe. I was not about to crawl inside the tunnels, so I told her again to bring me her shoe and she kindly complied. That was one tight space I successfully avoided.

We stayed at a cabin on the Bayou where Nora got to play on the swing and visit with a family of cats. We sat in park on I-10 in Houston waiting for an accident to clear. And then suddenly we were home. And we had more than survived the road trip. Nora ran around screaming every time she saw one of her toys she had perhaps been missing. I bet she thought we were never coming back, that we were forever going to be squeezing her into tight spaces, napping her in strange places and introducing her to new people to perform for each day.