No worries -- I'm ok!

I know you have been terribly worried about me, what with all those flamin' hot baked cheetos...

you will be amazed to hear that I have only finished off two bags so far.  Which is probably too many, but that's better than eating all of them, yes?  I have the rest now stashed in my office under my desk.  I might have shared my purchase with you and my sister, but you think I'd let Dh know about that gluttony?  Nope.

Part of the reason for my apparent amazing restraint is that I am in Africa for a short research trip.  It has been great -- so long since I actually got to sit down all by my lonesome and just focus, focus, focus.  No logistics (I'm acting as a specialist on someone else's project for this trip, as opposed to running my own like I usually do when I travel).

But things at home don't sound so good.  My trip is only 7 nights out of 12 away, and boy did they look bad last night on skype.  Little M had the hugest pout interrupted with those "waaaaaaaaah..... waaaaaaaaaaah" pretend cry things she does (which are heartbreakingly cute).  And her daddy looked beat.

I feel bad for him, but you know, he was the one who decided to invite his 86 year old mother over for the weekend.  These weekend stays NEVER worked out well last summer when he did them last time I was gone.  You would have thought he'd realize it is a mistake and not repeat it.  But no.  He does it again.  To top it off, he decided that he and M would drive in rush-hour traffic over to pick up his mom AFTER he picked M up from daycare on Friday.  Ok, bad idea on so many levels that I can't even begin to start listing them, but given that M gets really hungry for dinner about 15 minutes after her usual pick-up time, the 1.5 hours in the car to pick up his mom could not, could not have gone well.

And it didn't. And that was just the start.  I haven't heard all the details yet, but apparently the weekend just got worse from there.   And she's so frail that you have to look out for her too, it's like having two little kids to take care of.  She can sort-of watch M, but she can't cook and she can't do the dishes because she doesn't see so well and leaves them all dirty, for example.

But it was his choice, and I never said anything to deter him, other than reminding him a couple of weeks ago about how it went last summer...  I wonder how this upcoming week will go.  M is out of daycare on Thursday and Friday, and I don't get home until after nap on Saturday.  He really doesn't seem to have found a groove for being alone with her all day.  He insists on trying to do too much, to try to do yard work or host his mom or some other such thing, rather than just  being in the moment with M. I feel bad for him, and even moreso for M, but they need to figure this out.

And speaking of figuring things out.  M has such a hard time going to sleep these days.  It started in December, but hasn't gotten any better, maybe even worse.  I would spend so many nights in the glider chair in her room holding her for hours.  After Dh got home in January from his fieldwork, I took to bringing M to bed with me at whatever time she woke up, anywhere from 11:15pm to 3:30am, to 6am.

I am really hesitant to bring her to bed with me when it is just me, as she rolls around so much when she sleeps that I spent most of the time not really asleep, watching to make sure she doesn't fall off the bed.

But when Dh is home, she's in the middle and so we act as body-barriers on either side.  There was only one time that she had managed to get all the way to the foot of the bed, and Dh just happened to grab her before she got too far.

So, do any of you sleep as the only adult in the bed with your toddler?  How do you do it?  Do you have your bed against the wall?  A little fence thing?  (I used one of those when she didn't roll around so much, but she'd be around that thing in a minute now a days.)  Any advice?  We'll be traveling together, just M and me again sometime soon, and the sleeping thing is always an issue.

Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated!  Thanks.

Single Mothers by Choice

Here's a New York Times' article on some SMC's that didn't have internet, but did form a community...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/world/asia/in-vietnam-some-chose-to-be-single-mothers.html

what a beautiful story!  These women are amazing, as are those of you who are SMCs too.

Oh yes, yes I did.

I just received a huge box of baked flaming hot cheetos that I ordered from amazon.my.best.friend.

They don't sell them in the state I live in and I just recently learned that were options.  Maybe it cost me $40.   I don't know.  I blocked that part from my memory.
OMG. What have I done?
Please, someone, save me from myself...

getting older, 2 stages

My little M, she really doesn't like to go to bed.  I mean, really really doesn't like it.  She was really upset with me last night when I was putting her in her crib and said to me, "mama, I little, hold me!"  It totally worked on me.  But it's amazing.  How did my little baby get to be so intellectually advanced that she completely knows how to play on her cuteness?

Is it just me or does it seem like aging is not a gradual thing?  I feel like I have changed visibly and dramatically over the last year.  My neck, the skin on the back of my hands.  The elasticity is just gone.  I dye my hair, to cover the gray.  It's amazing.  The good thing is that I have been able to handle this realization with a bit more grace than I would have expected.  In fact, I look at my daughter, I look at the college students and graduate students in my lab, and I am kind of relieved that I've already been through a lot of the things that still face them.  A lot of that is really good stuff, some of it won't be, but a lot of it will feel uncertain.

When you get to be 42, you know how a big part of your life has turned out.  Yes, there is still lots more to go, I hope.  But I have a much more stable feeling inside me than I did when I was 20 or 30.  Some, or perhaps most all of that comes from knowing how things have played out so far.

But then, I must also acknowledge that doors are closing.  I am pretty sure that being discovered as the next Hollywood starlet or Vogue model is not even remotely in my cards anymore.  You know how you always carry a secret little glimmer of, "maybe?!" in your mind.  Just a tiny little one.  Or maybe it was just me.  But I'm betting most everyone has something like that in their head, some fantasy that's crazy.  Then you hit an age that precludes that from being even a remote, remote possibility.  And that's a funny feeling.  Not all bad though.  I wouldn't give up all that I've learned over these years for anything.

But it does feel odd.  This getting older thing.