Random Outlaw

The More You Know...

Apparently I have been tying my shoes incorrectly for 25 years.  I had been reading jo(e)'s site, catching up on all her posts because I had gotten so far behind on reading her site that I had given up all together (sorry jo(e)!).  Anyway I found this post from back in November about how her shoes were always coming untied and I was nodding vigorously the whole time going, "Yeah, my shoes are always coming untied too!"

In the comments to that post someone posted a link to Ian's Shoelace Site where he explains the ins and outs (quite literally!) of shoe tying and how it is quite possible to tie a bow that will come undone quite easily, which I have apparently been doing for the last 25 years.

I have now learned a cool new way to tie shoes, which I intend to teach to the Moosh, mainly because that technique always creates a correct bow.

I feel 12 kinds of wrong.  I am totally going to give my mom a hard time for teaching me to tie my shoes incorrectly.  How could she? Damn you mom!!!!

Solutions

I feel better.  Last week sucked though.  Lisa V. was right when she wrote in the comments that I was in a low period... I was sick.  Sick, sick, sick last week and loathe to take a day off because it was only the 2nd week in January and I can't even think of using my precious sick time in the first 2 weeks of the year. It makes me twitch.

I have decided to rearrange my schedule so that I am doing almost all of my chores in the morning and leaving the evenings free for relaxation and family.  I had made this elaborate menu plan but all the stuff just takes way too long to make.  I think I will cook complicated meals on the weekends, and feed R leftovers during the week while the Moosh and I eat pasta and chicken nuggets.  We'll waste less food that way, too.   I used to make the Moosh's lunch in the morning, but instead I decided to move the lunch prep to the evening before and make it with the Moosh's input (so that he will acutally eat it rather than playing with it).  Moving the lunch prep makes room in the morning for a quick run to the store before I get home.  I also decided to reallocate 20 minutes from the afternoon after I wake up to the morning before I go to bed (so I will be waking up later) and making sure that I utilize the time well rather than slogging around the house doing absolutely nothing.  Waking up later also has the benefit of making me less tired at work... so I think this will be a winning situation all the way around which makes me hap-hap-happy.

I have also decided to let the TV watching go as long as we are getting other stimulation and everyone is happy.  We have a unique situation in our house with a husband who's gone all the time, a working mom, and a kid who cannot spend a single minute by himself without practically having a heart attack... we have to make judgements based on OUR situation at THIS time, and me beating myself up over something so trivial is not helping.

Whew.  That was boring!

I am really enjoying the winter solitude at work these days.  It is notoriously slow around here in the winter and I love it.  It's a good down time before the whole country gets rained on in the spring.

I Thought I Would Be Better At This

I've been thinking a lot lately about parenting because honestly I think I'm doing a pretty crappy job.  I was such a great parent before I had a kid!  I envisioned all these things we would do together and how wonderful it would be... and while we do things together and it is occasionally wonderful, there's also a whole lot of work involved. 

I know what the primary problem is: I am an introvert, and the Moosh is an extreme extrovert.  He fills his cup by spending time with people.  I had hoped that being at school all day would help him, um, leave me alone more at home, and it kind of does, but all he wants to do is watch TV.  When the TV is off, he wants to be with me.  But if I have spent every waking moment of my day cooking/cleaning/picking up from school/etc. I need time to wind down, or else I become a horrendous bitch.   So what happens is that the TV gets turned on when we come home, and I feel massively guilty because it pretty much stays on until R comes home.  That is not to say that the Moosh sits there like a lump in front of the TV all night - far from it, actually - but it's still there, and it feels like a constant intrusion.

I thought parenting would be more fun.  It turns out that I am just not that good at being pulled in 17 directions.  It's not something you can really know until you're being pulled in 17 directions and you start going slowly insane.  THEN you know that you're not good at it.  That's how I feel now.

I am really worried about the Moosh starting real school in the fall.  I don't know how I am going to handle homework on top of everything else.  The Moosh is really opposed to me doing anything structured with him at all. He won't even let me read to him these days.  It's very discouraging.   I worry about how is school performance will suffer if I can't help him with his homework.  We all know R is not going to be around to help. 

I thought writing this out would help, but I'm feeling more down about it now.  I'll stop here an revisit later if I can.

Week From Hell

Whiny, whiny.

Oh man last week suuuuuuucked. 

I started the tax process on Monday, only to realize that I screwed up the accounting for one of the companies for the business.  Which meant I had to do it all over again.  Then I had to do the business taxes, which led to a lot of head slamming against hard surfaces.  Trying to reconcile all the quarterly tax filings to the yearly tax filing is an experience that I do not want to repeat. Ever.

I worked on the taxes in the evenings from Monday - Wednesday while the Moosh enjoyed the company of his rectangular headed parent (i.e. the television).  I am such an awesome mother that I totally ignored his ever-increasing illness until I got his entire lunch back from the school on Wednesday.  Then I compounded it by making him go to a half day of school on Thursday.  Poor baby.  I hate the fact that the business stuff gets in the way of my parenting, but there it is. 

I took the Moosh to the doctor on Friday and they determined that he had a sinus infection.  I already knew that because I also have a sinus infection.  It hurts.  The doctor surmised that the drainage from the sinus infection was causing some reactive airway issues (aka asthma) so they did a nebulizer treatment and after that he felt much better.  He is now on a long course of antibiotics to try and kick the infection.  I hope it works because the kid is a walking pharmacy these days.

I'm at work currently, miserable and wondering if I also have an ear infection in addition to my lovely sinus infection.  Sigh.  I fear there is another trip to the doctor in my future...

Items For The New Year

Lots of things to cover, so I'll jump right in:

Santa

I caved like a cheap canvas tent on this one.  It was all Santa, all the time at our house until, like, yesterday, when I told the Moosh that Santa is now firmly esconced in his ice palace in the North Pole, and no, we can't visit.

Honestly he buys into Santa so deeply that even if I did tell him that I am Santa, I don't think he'd believe me, so I decided just to go with the flow.

New Year's Resolutions

I tried to make these attainable this year, because I usually fail miserably at them.  So, without further adieu:

• Extend the Moosh's school day to 7-7.5 hours, thereby allowing me to get more beauty rest.
• Treat school like school and not daycare... no more skipping even if I happen to be off that day.
• No more picking the Moosh up early on Fridays as a matter of course... I need downtime, and I am paying for it anyway.
• Try to get in a massage/hair cut/eyebrow wax/pedicure once a month (picking one, not all of them!).  If I go to the beauty school it is not at all expensive and I need to pay more attention to myself.
• More exercise! My T-Tapp schedule got thrown out last July and I need to at least do BWO+ 3x a week.  That's 45 minutes.  Surely I can come up with 45 minutes a week!

That's it, boring, I know.

Fucking Taxes

R didn't pay me last month causing me to swear loudly, and go on strike, so I was secretly hoping that he would continue not paying me so that I could blithely ignore the looming tax season.  But no.  There was a shiny, shiny check sitting on the desk for me this morning, so I need to prepare to send out W-2s and finish cooking the books balancing the accounts so that our accountant can file our tax return ASAP.  Even though I upped my withholdings considerably last year I am due a fairly sizeable return as long as the business didn't make any money (which, if it did, would only be about $500 - $1000 but it still screws things up because we have to pay mega taxes on that money).  I know for sure that one company lost money, not so sure about the other one.  So we'll see.

Hope nobody got too drunk over New Years.  I was at work, so no drinky for me.

Happy Early New Year!

Happy new year to all! Sorry for the long-ish absence, but I was sucked into a Christmas vortex.  I'll be back later and post more!

The Santa Dilemma

Like most people who become parents, I had many lofty ideals, most of which, had I written them down on pieces of paper, would now be ripped into tiny shreds.  My kid watches TV, eats sugar, I have used threats and coercion to elicit certain behaviors, I have lost my temper and yelled, etc.  The list goes on.

As of today 4.5 years after becoming a parent, only two of the lofty ideals are in force: 1) I have never hit the Moosh in anger, and 2) I have not perpetuated the Santa myth. 

Well folks, I think one of those mighty redwoods is about to fall.  I have kept my personal obligation not to lie to the Moosh about Santa.  I have never played up Santa, or pretended Santa was real.  In fact, I think it's safe to say that until this year my sweet son had no idea who/what Santa was.  I did not go out of my way to achieve this.  In fact, this year he's been really interested in Christmas specials that play up Santa and it was no big deal.  Lofty ideal intact.

Enter pre-K, and a whole slew of 4- and 5-year-olds who are all crazy about Santa.  The teachers indulge them (of course - and I really don't have a problem with it) so there is now adult agreement that Santa is real and will bring presents on Christmas.

The last two weeks have been a constant theme of, "Is Santa coming yet?" "Not yet." "Is Santa coming yet?" "Not yet." "When Santa does come, will he bring me presents?" "Hm, what do you think?" "I think yes!!!!" etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. 

It is around this point that we start crossing "my line" of not lying about Santa.  However, I feel like a big, crappy stick-in-the-mud for disabusing him of his enjoyment of Santa.  He is 4 years old.  It only seems right to let him enjoy his fantasy.  So I had kind of relaxed about it, and while I'm still not all rah-rah-rah about Santa, I haven't been guarding my language and I've tried to let go of my ideals.

Until.  Until.

Today we got into the, "Is Santa coming to my house?" and I was kind of only half listening and said, "Oh, sure honey!" without really thinking about it.  See, we celebrate Christmas almost entirely at my parents' house.  We don't even have a proper Christmas tree because I am a cheap ass and wanted to pick up a nice fake tree in the after Christmas sales this year.  I have to work on Christmas night, so after I get home we'll be going straight to their house to celebrate and open presents.  My sister had already planned to leave out an unwrapped "Santa" gift for him there, but he is clearly anticpating there being a present at his house, Christmas morning.  Um.

You see, while slightly positive Santa based conversation is merely tiptoeing on "my line," me leaving a gift out at my house for my son from a mythical being takes such a giant leap over "my line" that the line is really no longer visible.  It just makes my skin crawl.  I hate the notion of it.  But at the same time, there is the whole "stick-in-the-mud" issue.  He's a kid.  Kids love Christmas.  Kids love Santa.  He is four.  It's not like I am torturing him or anything. But ugh.  Ugh and yuck.

I have been a believer in letting other people believe what they want to believe for a very long time.  I don't want to enforce my beliefs on him.  It's inevitable, I know, that he will pick up on what R and I believe and either assimilate that or not, but I don't want to limit him in what he wants to do because it's his life, and it's his decision. 

So, taking all that into consideration, what should I do? Should I participate in something that I think is dumb for the sake of my child's beliefs, or should I let my beliefs override his?  I can't decide.

Wherein I Am A Sucker

They took pictures of the kids at the Reggio school a couple of weeks ago.  It was like the 3rd day we were at the school, I totally forgot about it and just dressed him in what I normally would, and planned not to buy any pictures because they are usually prohibitively expensive.

The pictures came in yesterday, and I thought, "What the hell, I'll take a look."  So I opened up the envelope and I swear to you, all the photos turned out beautifully.  I mean they were gorgeous.  Gorgeous in their gorgeousness. 

Then I was like, well, maybe I'll just buy a sheet or two... but which ones to buy? I sorted through them for a few minutes while the Moosh whined and moaned (dunno what's up with him lately, but he is Mr. Whiny these days) and finally just decided to screw it and I bought the whole set.

I realize now what a total racket the whole school picture thing is.  You take a parent, sit them in a room, and give them beautiful pictures of their beloved child, then sit back and watch psychology at work and count your money.

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Reggio, Day 12

After the serious let down of the previous school, I waited a couple of weeks to decide if I liked the Reggio school or not.  Well after 2.5 weeks, the verdict is in, and Reggio wins.

I really think that the difference here is with the teachers.  In the old school, there were a lot of rules and regulations, which initally drew me to the place, because I agreed with them and felt that the Moosh and I could operate well within those limits.  Unfortunately I think what happened was that the teachers were heavily scrutinized and the facility was more interested in appearances than the happiness of the kids.

At the Reggio school, there are almost no rules and regulations, other than the obvious ones.  It's clearly meant to be a free environment for the children.  The teachers are warm and caring, as is the director.  Last week when I kept the Moosh home one day, the director wouldn't let me off the phone before I promised to pass their love on to the Moosh and that I would tell him they would miss him and couldn't wait to see him the next day.

The teacher in the Moosh's class is brilliant.  The first thing she did was to pair him up with another boy in a mentor/mentee type scenario, so the Moosh had a friend to look forward to seeing from the very beginning.  Then as of this week she wanted to expand his relationship with the other children in the class, so she made a book for us to read at home with all the kids' pictures and names.   She plays with the kids, and she always has a little cute story to tell me about the Moosh.  She never phrases things as complaints (a major issue I had with the teacher at his old school), instead she approaches things with solutions (like the facebook).

I wouldn't go so far as to say that he loves school.  He still doesn't like the nap, but since all child care facilities are required to have naps by law, and the Montessori school (the only non nap option I found for his age group) was prohibitively expensive, he is just going to have to learn to deal with the nap.  he complains about it, but he does not act fearful about it like he did with the old school, so we are just going to roll merrily along.  However, he does like his friends and teachers, so that's a plus. 

I'm interested to see how his learning takes off as he gets more used to the school.  I like the Reggio Emilia curriculum approach, and I can't wait to see if/when/how it helps him process information.

They are having a "holiday musical" on Thursday for the parents and his class will be singing "Jingle Bells."  I honestly can't wait.

It has been such a relief to have him happier at school. 

Who Knew?

We did end up at the doctor on Wednesday, only to discover that the Moosh had walking pneumonia and an ear infection!  I was shocked... I mean, this is the kid who was bouncing around the living room not 5 minutes before we left for the doctor's office.  He never ran a fever. She asked me if he had been complaining about his ear... and he hadn't.  He'd complained a lot about his stomach, but never mentioned his ear at all.

I posted about the Moosh's awful runny nose back in the beginning of November.  I had taken him to the doctor's office that same day and asked the nurse practitioner to give him a different antihistimine/decongestant because the stuff he was on just wasn't working and I was worried about him getting a serious illness.  She pooh-poohed me and gave me the same stuff that hadn't been working for months. 

Honestly after that I was reluctant to take him in with "just" the runny nose because nobody seemed that concerned about it.

I complained to the doctor, loudly, on Wednesday that I thought the nurse practitioner's incompetence was directly involved in the Moosh's current pneumonia (for fuck's sake), and made sure that she knew he needed something else to control the drainage.  She started him on a one-two punch: Singulair and a nasal spray called Rhinocort.  Lo and behold... 3 days later we are now free of the runny nose of doom.  He seems a lot better, but I can't help kicking myself for just allowing that nurse practitioner to give him the same stuff that didn't work the first time.

Meanwhile I thought I had the same thing on Thursday, and ended up calling in to work because I felt so rotten.  I think now it was lack of sleep and worry... I felt fine after a good night's sleep. 

I truly hope this is the end of the runny nose of doom.