My essay is up over at Sekund. I chickened out and didn’t use that photo though. Instead, we chose a lovely image that had to be altered by my husband using his lame Paint program to blot out the huge crease on the front of my PAJAMA shirt, the MULTIPLE ketchup stains on Sam’s shirt, and oh, the fact that we are sitting in front of a bunch of CINDER blocks on our patio (have I mentioned I can’t wait until we move?). Poor man sat there and drew over the lines of those blocks for like an hour and a half - must be love.

Click on over there though. Some of it may sound a little familiar to a few of you because it did start out as a blog post. But there are other very cool essays, and it’s a free online magazine . . . and you should go check it out.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I also wanted to follow up and thank all of you who expressed interest in doing the Total Mom Bookclub. I think we could get a great group going over here, and I’m very excited about it. To be realistic though, I’m not going to start until after we move next month. Nothing lamer than hosting a book club when you haven’t done the reading. We’re piled in boxes and packing paper, so I just don’t think now is the time for me to get it going. A month from now though, I’m in. Details to follow.

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Books, Writing

He gets out late. There’s traffic due to the rain. It’s already dark, almost dinner time already, and he hasn’t been home for about ten hours. He’s missing his family - his wife, the older child, the baby - but he’s so tired and ready to just collapse and go to bed. A full day of work and more to come at home, drudgery of a different nature.

A tantruming toddler, battling over dinner - what chair will he sit in, what plate will he use, how many bites will he eat, how many times will he scream, “No! I want Mommy to do it”? A fussy baby - cranky and tired from naps that were too short, unwilling to be held by anyone but his mother because she is the most familiar. And the mother, herself? Cranky. Angry about his lateness, tired from a long day, also just waiting to collapse, bitter and resentful about a lack of help that is beyond his control.

Being a stay at home mom is hard, no doubt. But as much as I complain and feel sorry for myself about my difficulties, when I think about what my husband does every day, I am humbled and so very appreciative. He drives home for an hour after a long day of work and rolls in to find everyone is approaching their threshold. We are at our worst at dinnertime, meltdown time; it’s the scene of an accident. And he is stuck on the side, trapped between trying to help and not wanting to make things worse by getting in the way.

Sam, almost three, often insists that I do everything for him because that is what he’s used to from our days together. My husband believes Sam gets angry at him for going to work. When he comes home, Sam often frowns at him, sometimes he even yells at him, acting out on his hurt or just responding to a change in our normal pace. Robby is so attached to me that often I am the only one who can calm him and keep him happy. He often cries when other people hold him. My husband has to watch his children, who he has missed all day, deny him the privilege of participating. And that is the time he gets with us each day, the hour and a half before bedtime. That’s all.

Occasionally he gets some interaction with the kids in the morning, on those days where everyone is awake before he leaves, but that’s not necessarily any better. Either the kids are awake too early and are therefore cranky, making me irritable and exhausted from the start, causing all of us to act much like we do at the end of the day. Or, and this might be even worse, all goes well in the morning and everyone is pleasant. But then when he has to leave for work he has to face Sam, who wants him to stay because he has been so happy to see him for that extra period of time: “I don’t want you to work; I want you to stay home.” At which point my husband has no choice but to hug and kiss us goodbye, turn around, and walk out the door, listening to Sam cry as he walks down the hall of our building, or watching us wave to him from our apartment until he turns the corner. He does this every day. And I can’t imagine it. He does it so that at the end of the day, he can come back home to us and hear about what we did together, without him.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I wrote this for Scribbit’s Write Away contest. The theme is “Going Home.”

Labels: Hubby, Writing

****Edited below ******

Curses on you, Croup!

I sleep between two fevers

Barking baby seals

For more of Haiku Friday go to A Mommy Story or Playgroups Are No Place for Children.

******I just wanted to add, for those of you waiting for an update on this fiasco, that the blog has finally been removed from the website (after several weeks, several phone calls, and a deadline of today, issued by my lawyer husband). And someone emailed me to ask if that event might have a relation to the publication I mentioned yesterday. No, the two events are not related at all, so please don’t think that Sekund had anything to do with that.

Labels: Bodily functions, The Big One, The Little One, Writing

I love this picture. I think it’s both hysterical and oddly artsy.

I found this new online magazine recently, Sekund, which focuses on parenting the second time around, ie. when you go from one kid to two (”Second”). I’ll have an essay in the May issue, coming out some time this month, so my husband has been taking pictures of the kids and me to publish with my article. I’m actually considering submitting this one because I think it pretty much captures it all.

Go check out the magazine though. It’s fun and brand new. You can subscribe to have new issues sent via email, and I’ll also update here when the new one with my essay is out (of course!).

Labels: Pictures, The Big One, The Little One, Writing

So I think I’m going to be all daring and try and write a book. For quite some time, since the days where I taught in a middle school, I’ve had an idea for a novel for young audiences. I never really got anywhere with it, some character names and a written and rewritten first page that I didn’t even end up saving. But as of late I’ve been kind of flailing around, wondering what the heck it is that I’m doing with myself and what I intend to do with myself in the future. I must admit I need a little more than what I’ve got going on right now. It’s not that I don’t find being a stay at home mom to be fulfilling…well, maybe it is. Maybe that’s exactly what it is. I think right now I am lacking goals of my own, and that’s hard. So when Heather over at One Woman’s World posted about National Novel Writing Month it was perfect. It’s time to get down to business and try to write this thing to see what comes of it; hopefully it will be more than 1 page this time.

I apologize in advance for my intended lack of blogging for the next month or so. Honestly I’ve been lame anyway when it comes to posting and commenting, as you may have noticed. Perhaps it’s time for a little blogging break. I don’t mean I’m going to disappear or anything. I think I’ll just post a little less often and relax about that, rather than feeling like it’s “been 3 whole days and I HAVE to get a post up.” No I don’t. Blogging is not an obligation – remember that all you blogging ladies because I know how hard it is to get caught up and then it’s not fun anymore.

Today I wrote the first page or so (again) and I have to say it was amazing to do something that had nothing to do with Sam. It was bizarre and weirdly exciting. I kept feeling like I should stop and write a children’s book instead so that I could somehow relate what I was doing to him. But I didn’t, and for half an hour I did something of my own. So for all of you out there who have ever had the inclination to try and write more than your blog, join me and go on over to the NaNoWriMo site and sign on up.

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Writing