Posted by Kimberly on October 18th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple
There’s a baby boom going on right now both online and in my real life circle of friends. Suddenly there are bellies and babies everywhere and it’s got me thinking about my own belly and the babies that may or may not take up residence there. It’s natural, I think, the sense of nostalgia and possibility that accompanies the announcement of a pregnancy, the swell of a belly, and the scent of a newborn baby–Particularly when you’re removed enough from your own last experience with new motherhood that you no longer have a visceral memory of the morning sickness, blocked ducts, and bone deep exhaustion that go with it.
Grown women aren’t the only ones subject to this pull; small children are also susceptible to the allure of the new baby. Along with passionately held food beliefs and a penchant for princess dresses, one of the hallmarks of 3 is the desire for a younger sibling. When Diva Girl was 3, so great was her desire for a a baby sister, she stopped asking me for one and simply started announcing to all and sundry–including her grandparents and her kindergarten teacher–that she was getting one. The Zen Baby isn’t quite that obsessed, but not a day goes by without her asking, “Can I have a baby sister?”
Although I never planned to have Regan when I did, I always knew that Sabrina wouldn’t be an only child. Life with my wee Diva Girl was a fulfilling rollecoaster ride, but somehow with just the two of us our family didn’t quite feel complete. The evidence of this ambivalence could be found in my mother’s basement in the boxes of carefully folded onesies and the outgrown baby paraphernalia packed away in corners rather than passed on. I wasn’t sure how or when I’d have a second child, but as I held my friends’ newborn babies I definitely hoped that one day the tiny blanket wrapped bundle I held would be my own.
This time, things are different. Now when I switch the baby’s wardrobe over from Summer to Fall the outgrown clothes are not lovingly packed away in a gesture of hope and faith. Now, they are donated to shelters or to other single moms I know, the sentimental attachment I feel to my favourite dresses outweighed by my desire to free myself from unnecessary clutter. In the back of my head, each time I gave away another box of my children’s babyhood I thought, “Well, it doesn’t really mean anything. I can get new things if I ever need to.”
And then I went to the hospital to see the long awaited, newly arrived Nicholas (and his mother, of course). I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel, seeing this new baby for the first time. Would I be overwhelmed with maternal lust? Would his tiny form spark in me an enormous yearning? A 7 lb empty place in my heart?
Sitting in the hospital rocking chair with this tiny bundle in my arms, Regan snuggled up against me in an attempt to get as close to the baby as possible, felt…content. I knew then, even as Regan was asking me “Can we have our own baby?” I knew that I’m done; my family is complete.
I’m not saying that I’ll never add to it, because never is a very long time and the universe has a very twisted sense of humour sometimes. But I am saying that I feel complete with what I have. I don’t feel like I did before The Zen Baby, like our family is missing someone. Holding my friend’s new son I realized that I don’t feel any need to have another child as I cuddle this one. I feel content, and complete, and at peace with the fact that I am the mother of Sabrina and Regan and that is all.
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Posted by Kimberly on October 17th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple, Blah Blah Blog
Eden dared me to do that. This post really has nothing to do with penises, penile enhancement, or really anything penile. It does, however, deal with being a dick.
Everybody knows that while blogging is about the outlet, the chance to get your thoughts and ideas out there, the comments matter. Nobody likes feeling like they’re shouting into the void, and the comments let us know that we’re not. That we’re part of our very own self-selected communities. That there’s someone listening who understands, and who cares about what we have to say. And that’s why spammers really suck. They get your hopes up that someone is listening, that what you said actually struck a chord somewhere, and then you find out that you just happened to use a key word–like lets say “ortho” or “depo” or “typhoid”…”viagra”…”penis”…”boob”…that causes the spambots to start circling your posts like vultures around a wildebeast.
I’m getting a lot of spam these days. More spam than comments, actually. Which, frankly, sucks. There are few things more demoralizing (in the bloggy world, anyway) to see you’ve got 15 new comments, only to find out that 14 of them are ads for cialis and at home hypnotism, and some penile enhancement device that I really don’t want to think about too deeply. I mean, I’m still thrilled and excited by that lone comment, but by the time I’m done deleting the rest I’m so annoyed that it feels like some of the shiny has been rubbed off.
So, I’m thinking of turning on some sort of comment moderation. I’m torn about it, especially since I spent a good couple of months sending out humiliating, “Hi! Your blog thinks I’m spam but I swear that I am in fact an upstanding member of the blogging community who has just left and intelligent and insightful comment on your post so please please please take me out of the filter!” messages after WordPress decided that I was persona non grata. But I’m also sick of the tramadol people posting comments 17 times a day. I don’t want to control the conversation or impose some sort of police state on the comments–I’m a big believer of the Greater Fuckwad Theory of the Internet (and also Rule 34, but that’s a completely different post)–but I do want the spamming to end.
Oh, and speaking of fuckwads and imposing a police state, is anyone else having trouble with commenting over on iVillage? I’ve had at least half a dozen emails asking me what’s happened to someone’s comment and my honest answer is “I don’t know; I’m just the blogger.” If there’s comment moderation going on, nobody told me. But then again, the last memo I got was, “you’re fired.” so I don’t think I’m exactly in the loop. I do think it’s odd though, that comments like Nat’s are being published, but longtime commenters are having theirs held. So, I’m asking you, is there something weird going on with the comments over there? Is that why I’m hardly getting any? Because I didn’t want to say anything, but holy radio silence, Batman!
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Posted by Kimberly on October 16th, 2007 — Posted in Just Like Riding A Bicycle, Facebook Guy
I still haven’t mastered this whole dating thing. If what I’m doing is, in fact, dating. Which I question, since I’m still not sure that what Facebook Guy and I have been doing actually counts as going out on dates.
What are the rules for dating when you’re a grownup, anyway? It was pretty simple when we were all teenagers. Back then, dating was a lot like pornography; we may not have been able to define it, but we sure knew it when we saw it. Now that we’re grownups, though, the rules just seem so much more complicated, while remaining unspoken.
First there’s the coffee situation. As Willow so astutely pointed out in Reptile Boy, “It’s the non-relationship drink of choice. It’s not a date, it’s a caffeinated beverage.” A very high pressure caffeinated beverage. Everybody knows that coffee isn’t a date, it’s an audition. A predate, if you will. If the coffee goes well, you move on to the actual dating; however, if you find yourself draining that mug the way a trapped fox will gnaw off its hind leg, you’ve got the perfect out. No harm, no foul. After all, it was just coffee.
And then there’s the movie, a classic date scenario. Unless, of course, you’re going dutch. Which can under some circumstances still be considered a date, but it should never be assumed. But what if you share popcorn? Or if the tickets were free? Is it still considered going dutch? Even if it’s not, is it a date?
What if there’s a movie and coffee? Do they cancel each other out? Or is there some sort of magical dating equivalent of the two negatives make a positive rule that states that two non-events create a date?
The clincher, of course, is the kissing. If there’s kissing at the end, the evening is definitely ending as a date regardless of how it began. But what if there’s no kissing? Does that automatically mean it’s merely an outing? Does there have to be kissing for it to be a date?
It’s all so complicated. Was it always this way? Is this why I didn’t date much in high school? Preferring to just get on with it over all this pussyfooting around? I’m not sure. What I do know is that managing the dating scene as a teenage babysitter was cake compared to navigating it with a teenage babysitter.
All of this is a pretty roundabout way to tell you that I went out for coffee and a movie with Facebook Guy last night, and I’m still not sure if it was a date or an outing. I do know that I had such a good time that I was shocked to look at the clock discover that we’d exceeded the Tim Horton’s time limit, not to mention my mommy curfew, by a good 2 hours.
Pelting home at midnight, hellbent for leather and racing the clock, I didn’t feel like a naughty teenager, though. I felt like Cinderella. And she was definitely on a date, right?
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Posted by Kimberly on October 15th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl
It was just a simple interim report–a series of checkmarks on a sliding scale from 1-5–but it opened my eyes to the ways I parent sometimes, the lazy shortcuts and the easy ways out.
Diva Girl’s first report was excellent, nothing below a three and mostly resting solidly in the four category. She’s settling in to this new situation incredibly well, and finally, after 5 long years, flourishing in school the way I always knew she could. Looking at this tangible evidence of that, I was really proud of her.
But when Sabrina asked me what I thought of her report, I didn’t see her shining, eager face; I saw those 5 little checkmarks in the “Satisfactory” column:
“I think it’s great, honey. But I want to talk about those level threes.”
And that is where the lesson comes in, because I overlooked the excellent to focus on mediocre. I breezed right past her accomplishment in my haste to get to the correction, the parenting. But while a big part of parenting is about setting up the expectations and talking to the kids about meeting them to the best of their potential, it’s also about celebrating the achievements along the way.
My daughter taught me that when she answered my dismissal of her achievement–10 level fours and 2 level fives–with, “Ok. But what about the fives? Are we going to talk about those, too?”
I’m ashamed to admit that she stopped me cold. Because no, I hadn’t really planned to get into the level fives. They’re fives, for crying out loud. Excellent. Couldn’t do any better. Did we really need to talk about them? Especially when there were the threes in “listens attentively” and “neatness” to deal with?
Well, yes. The fives deserve just as much attention as the threes, when you think about it. But we rarely give it to them. We’re so concerned with doing our job, with teaching the children, that we constantly focus on how they need to improve. Very rarely do we take the time to put the spotlight on what they’re doing right. I mean, they’re already doing it, so why talk about it seems to be the default so many of us fall into.
It’s easy to remember with the toddler and preschooler set and cheer them on as they master each new milestone. Somehow along with way, they become kids and we start to expect things; the accomplishments become less exciting and the failures are more glaring. Their accomplishments still need to be celebrated and reinforced, though, and our kids need to know that we’re just as interested in what they can do as what they can’t.
So, instead of talking about those level threes, Diva Girl and I talked about the whole report–the good, the excellent, and the satisfactory. We talked about those level threes and how she could do better with the paying attention in class and putting in her best effort with her printing. But we also talked about her level fives and how great she is at oral reports and class discussions. We talked about transferring those skills to help her in other areas, but we also just celebrated them for the achievements they are.
The best report cards should provide teachable moments. This one certainly did. Who would have thought that a child’s report card could be the lesson in parenting I needed?
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Posted by Kimberly on October 14th, 2007 — Posted in Just Like Riding A Bicycle, The Man I Didn't Marry
I’m not a scrapbooker; cutting up pictures and artistically gluing them to acid free paper has never been the way I manage my memories. That’s not to say that I don’t indulge in keepsakes; it’s just that my mementos tend not to fit neatly between two pages. Kind of like life itself.
My reminders might look like an untidy jumble of meaningless bits of paper and random objects, but to me, they are touchstones of immense power; each one of them has the ability to send me back to a specific moment in time. Like most women, since I’ve become a mother these tokens tend to centre around my children–report cards, baptismal candles, special rocks, outgrown toys, and tiny outfits fill the battered shoe box that holds my memories now. But once upon a time I had a different memory box, one covered in rose velvet with a tapestry lid. The box itself was a memento, and inside it contained the story of a relationship told in movie ticket stubs and stray bits of this and that picked up along the way.
I kept that box long after the relationship it chronicled had joined the ranks of memory, moving it with me from apartment to apartment. It was always unopened and tucked behind the Christmas decorations on the top shelf, but there nonetheless. A touchstone of sorts, although of what, I’m not quite certain.
Evidence of another time? Another life? Another girl who had been loved once? Who had done all those things that lovers do, saving the evidence of once upon a time to remind herself that fairy tales do exist, and that the princess doesn’t always have to rescue herself?
Eventually I gave up the box, first delivering it into Kirsten’s safekeeping during a move, and then, on the eve of Regan’s birth, leaving it behind on the curb. It was time to let it go, and I was ready. And yet, even though I haven’t seen it in over four years tonight I find myself thinking about that box.
Not surprising, really. What is surprising is that even though it’s been years since I opened it, I have no trouble recalling many of the treasures inside. A ticket stub from our first date–Jurassic Park. I misunderstood when he asked me out, and he lifted me down off of a wall into a terribly romantic first kiss. A broken knife from a silly lunch with friends. A pebble from the day on the rocks at Presqu’ile and a programme from the Montreal Jazz Festival we never attended on our camping trip that was equal parts heaven and hell. My Miss Saigon ticket–the first musical I ever went to, and still my favourite, even though I was a sobbing mess by the end and he laughed at me. A bit of ribbon from the first piece of lingerie I ever received as a gift. The ring pop he proposed with that left me laughing so hard I could barely say yes. The green apple box the real ring came in (the ring went back to him, but I kept the box). A wedding invitation that was never sent. A wedding gift that was never given.
I can see it all as plainly as though the contents were spread out in front of me and a thousand memories I didn’t even know I had come flooding back. That’s what happens when you open Pandora’s Box, I guess. Everything you’ve been keeping stuffed deep down inside flies out, clamouring for your attention, demanding acknowledgment.
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Posted by Kimberly on October 13th, 2007 — Posted in Just Like Riding A Bicycle, The Man I Didn't Marry
It’s killing me, having him there, just out of reach. Wondering what his life has been like these past ten years. Is he still bitter? Did he heal? Is he happy? Is his life good? Everything he always wanted? I want all that for him. I always have.
So, I peeked. I messaged the friend we have in common, one of my best friends from highschool and another Facebook reconnect, and asked, “Is he happy? Is he good?” I knew that I really had no right to ask her, have no real right to know, but I had to ask.
He’s divorced, with two kids.
Damn. That’s not the life I was hoping for for him. I wanted him to have the white picket fence and the wife who keeps a spotless house and has dinner ready when he gets home from work. I wanted him to have happily ever after, not just “after.”
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Posted by Kimberly on October 12th, 2007 — Posted in Just Like Riding A Bicycle, The Man I Didn't Marry
The Man I Didn’t Marry is on Facebook. I wasn’t looking for him, I swear. He just showed up on my news feed as the friend of a friend. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this; I knew that we had old friends in common. I just didn’t expect that we’d, you know, have friends in common.
I couldn’t resist clicking on his profile, which turned out to be public. There’s a picture–he looks the same–and a bit of information but not much. He owns his own antique store now and I’m glad. That was always a dream for him. The personal info, though, the stuff you really look up people on Facebook for, is sadly lacking.
I heard he got married and had a daughter, but there’s no mention of that here. Not that that means anything, of course. But I want to know. I wanted to click on his page and see the evidence of his happy life. That it’s not there makes me wonder.
In the normal course of Facebook events, I’d add him as a friend, or maybe send a message. But this situation falls a bit outside of the boundaries of normal. This isn’t my third grade crush or my high school boyfriend; this is the man I all but left at the altar. Somehow, a random “poke” out of the blue seems, I don’t know, a bit tacky.
Other than some nostalgia around my “unniversary,” I haven’t thought much about this man for the past ten years, but tonight as I sit here in a livingroom filled with furniture he didn’t help pick out, surrounded by children who are not his, I find myself wondering about him. Is it a good life? Is he happy? Is he wondering the same things about me?
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Posted by Kimberly on October 11th, 2007 — Posted in The Ladies, Kipple
“I’ll say right now I’m not a fan of unplanned parenting. The world is filled with unwanted children, parents by situation, not by choice. We’re not breed-to-exist mammals anymore. In this day and age where overpopulation is a reality, to think that there are children out there that aren’t wanted or loved 100% is nothing short of a social crime.“
That, in a nutshell, is Facebook Guy’s Philosophy of Procreation. It’s not exactly a deal breaker, since in theory I agree with his basic principle, but in practice….well, there I have some issues.
I think we’d all agree that planned parenting trumps unplanned parenting almost every time. But we all know what they say about best laid plans….
I am a parent by situation. I have never greeted the arrival of 2 lines on a home pregnancy test with unabashed glee nor have heartfelt congratulations ever been the first reaction to sharing my news. But for all that, I am also a parent by choice.
I’m Canadian; we don’t even really debate abortion here, and it’s covered under the universal health care benefits. So it’s not an overstatement or simple dramatics for me to say that I chose to have my children. I didn’t have to, and I certainly thought long and hard about my options before I did. Given the resources available to women today, I agree with Facebook Guy that there is absolutely no excuse for an unwanted or unloved child in this world.
Where Facebook Guy and I part ways in this discussion is in his conflation of the terms unplanned, unwanted, and unloved. These are not synonyms and are not interchangeable ideas. Not every unplanned pregnancy is unwanted, and not all unwanted children are unloved.
My children are deeply loved. But as I’ve pointed out, neither one of them was planned. As to wanted? Well, that’s a bit more complicated.
I always wanted children. So I guess in that way, you could say they were wanted. But did I want these particular children? The union of dna that became Diva Girl and The Zen Baby? I suppose so, since I chose to allow them growing room in my body and tv rights in my livingroom. But if you had asked me, at that moment of conception, if they were wanted, the honest answer would have been a resounding, “No!” And yet, when it came time to choose, to decide on the shape of my life, I found that I did want them, despite my best efforts put forward to prevent their being.
In spite of the lack of planning (or should I say failure of planning, because there were plans. Just not good plans, apparently.) , in spite of the less than ideal circumstances of conception and beyond, regardless of the upheaval and difficulty I knew they would each bring to my life, when it came time to make that choice, I found that I wanted my daughters. Or I that wanted to be their mother, anyway.
I’ve never regretted that decision. I may not always like my children–or my life with children, if we’re being honest here–but my love for them is the unshakable foundation that allows me to acknowledge that momentary dissatisfaction and move on. This may not be the life I planned, but it is everything I never knew I always wanted.
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Posted by Kimberly on October 10th, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Zen Baby, Kipple, Oncology Odyssey
Even though I breastfed The Zen Baby into preschoolerhood, finally weaning her around 40 months, I don’t consider myself a lactivist. I don’t believe that formula is poison, that silicone nipples make the baby Jesus cry, or that bottles mean braindamage. I do, however, believe that “breast is best” and that no woman should be made to feel ashamed of the choice to feed her child according to her conscience.
I have a been a bottle feeder and a nursing mother, and I don’t think one choice was more right than the other. Each decision was dictated by circumstance, and was made with the best interests of that particular child in mind.
I tried to breast feed Diva Girl, but threw in the nursing towel after about three months. It just didn’t work for us, and we were both happier and more relaxed once I finally admitted that and stopped trying to force both of us into a dynamic that just didn’t work. Diva Girl on breast milk was a fussy, uncomfortable, unhappy baby with the worst case of acne I have ever seen. For her, the switch to formula was magical. Suddenly, I had a happy, content infant in my arms rather than a flailing, angry demon. I threw away my cheap, uncomfortable nursing bra, gave away the expensive yet awkward breast pump, and started buying formula by the case at Costco. I’ve never looked back.
Clearly, my experience with The Zen Baby was the polar opposite. With Zen Baby, the issue wasn’t the boobs, it was the bottle. I taught summer school when she was 4 months old–when she was busily growing the tumour that would cause so much heartache, but before it had made its insidious presence in her belly known. During the month I worked, Regan nursed all night and refused all forms of nourishment during the day–it didn’t matter that the bottle contained the exact same nectar that mommy provided, she wasn’t having that thing in her mouth.
Tired, frustrated, and at a loss of what to do with my tiny girl, I consulted our pediatrician, who advised me to stop nursing the 4 month old baby altogether.
“Starve her for a couple of days,” she advised, handing me a free sample of formula. “She’ll finally give in and take a bottle.” I smiled and thanked her for her advice, privately vowing to ignore, or at least modify it.
During the day while I was at work, my mom worked hard at getting a bottle into Regan. Once I got home in the afternoon, she pretty much latched on and stayed there for the rest of the night. And still, her weight gain dropped to ounces, not pounds. The medical solution? Once again, “stop breastfeeding.” This time, however it wasn’t offered as a convenience solution, but as a medical necessity shrouded in blame and judgement. Clearly, my boobs were defective. The baby was starving to death, and it was all my body’s fault.
Again, I declined to follow the doctor’s advice to the letter; I began feeding Regan solid foods, but I also, against her recommendation, continued to nurse her. I did the same thing two months later when I was advised by another doctor to give up breast feeding because “she didn’t need it anymore.” and place Regan on a high fat diet. Had I followed that advice, at best, Regan would have suffered far more lasting effects from her tumour, as it starved her body of nutrients–primarily the fat I was directed to feed her–and severely limited her stomach capacity.
I truly believe that breastfeeding saved my daughter’s physical and emotional health, first by providing her overtaxed system with easily digestible nutrients, and then by giving her traumatized little psyche the safe haven and comfort it needed to heal. And that’s why I’m joining in today. Not because I think bottles are bad, but because I think children have a right to what they need to thrive, and that mothers have a right to provide it for them without shame, ridicule, or judgment.
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Posted by Kimberly on October 9th, 2007 — Posted in The Ladies
I knew this day would come, the day when being outnumbered 2 to 1 would mean more than inevitably losing the pillow fight. The day when I would wish that there were two of me, the better able to meet the needs of both my daughters.
No, they’re not plotting against me. Well, they are, but they always do that. No, tonight was the first time we encountered the space/time continuum questions that come when your family math equation looks like this: 2 kids, 1 adult, 0 car.
Swimming lessons this summer were no problem because they were both held at the same pool. Ditto the fall session, where I even achieved the holy grail of scheduling by managing to get them into classes at the exact same time on Saturday mornings. And thanks to the age gap between The Ladies, scheduling conflicts haven’t even been a possibility until this year.
However, this year Diva Girl isn’t the only one with things to do and places to go. For the first time, the Zen Baby has activities of her own, and it’s created a bit of a complication.
I don’t believe in overscheduling kids, but I do think they should have some out of the home activity, so in addition to the weekend swimming or skating, I’ve always allowed Sabrina to enroll in one other activity during the week. For the past three years that activity has been linked to Girl Guides of Canada, and that’s not about to change this year, especially now that she’s a “real” Guide.
In past years, Regan was simply carted to and fro, with little thought given to her needs. Partly she was too young to enroll in anything that didn’t require mommy participation–not really an option with her sister still needing adult supervision–but mostly, up until this year, she was too shy to have benefited from any sort of social activity of her own. This past year, however, she’s blossomed into a new child; a happy, confident, vibrant little girl. It was time to sign the Zen Baby up for an activity of her own.
We chose dancing, partly because she loves to dance and partly because it ran on Tuesday nights. That was important, because Guides has always run on Thursdays. With 2 kids and no car, the last thing I needed was some sort of scheduling conflict. So of course, that’s what I got; when we went to sign Diva Girl up for her new troop, we were informed that the night had changed. To Tuesdays.
This is the point where if I had a more traditional type family there would be a bit of moaning and groaning about the inconvenience of it all, and then we’d divy the kids up and everything would be fine. But that kind of solution requires a different kid to adult ratio than the one we’re working with here, so I’m still stuck with the question of how to be in two different places at the same time.
Giving up one of the activities simply isn’t an option. Sabrina has been a Guider for 3 years now. She’s committed to the program, and I feel it’s got a lot to offer (not the least of which is a very quiet hour and a half a week). Regan’s dance lessons were well underway when we found out about Guides, and it wouldn’t be fair to take them away. Besides, every time I see my formerly timid little girl skip through the door into class, and then throw herself into the movements with a wild abandon rivaled only by her enthusiastic running commentary, the wounded little places in my heart heal a little bit more. I can’t take that away from either of us.
So, another solution needs to be found. Fortunately, single parenting is often all about finding the creative solution. This week, as I generally do in an emergency, I threw myself on the mercy of my parents, asking them to ferry Diva Girl to Guides while I took her sister to dance class. Believe me, I know how lucky I am that I can do that. But if being a single parent is about creative solutions, it’s also about building a strong support network that allows you the wiggle room to figure these things out.
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