Peacefully Domestic

Life has been so placid lately.  It's unusual for me to keep a strolling pace with the world.  Generally I'm sprinting from one moment to the next, seeking sensation.  But the last couple weeks I'm content to stick around at home keeping on top of the household chores.  I'm very domestic this month, cleaning and organizing clutter, planning and cooking meals, and going to play dates and volunteering at the kids' schools.  It feels very balanced and sane - which is not typical me!  So I'm not sure what changed, but this will get boring I think, as does every phase eventually.

We used to get out of the house on day trips a lot, but with Kaio at school I'm tempted to stay indoors with Nala laying low.  Kaio was our fire, our yang.  Now we're peacefully maintaining the house. It may sound old fashioned, a digression of the social equality women have strived to achieve.  I've done plenty of corporate productivity in my life and proved that I can be a woman in the workplace and all that.  Now I'm glad I have the right to stick at home, peacefully domestic.  

 Drawing in the yard

Power tools.  This one is a toy, but I let them use the real drill too.

Shaping the tapioca cheese bread (pao de quejo) 

Sawing the drag ramp 

The Spiderman web we found spun to the front grass fronds on the way to the bus stop, covered in dew

The "nest" Nala made, with rock eggs 

The only time they have ever set the table.  Who knew they could do this without any instruction?

 There was an incentive (brought over by our neighbors)

 Putting Rainbow Dash to sleep in a castle

We watched Avengers and the kids turned into super heroes.  Kaio became Captain America, tossing a throw pillow around the house and almost taking down the TV.  Nala transformed into a princess who throws petals at the bad guys.  She also fights in heals, and wears jewelry   She calls herself Dragon Fire.

My Life Mission

They call the first month of unemployement the toughest.  You feel demoralized, undervalued, disliked, helpless, and lost.  Lucky for me, kids offer tons of distraction.  But, I've still been plagued with recycling thoughts and philosophies around my life direction.

Is it really ok that I'm not pursuing a career?  Is it really alright that my identity revolves around my children and home?

I always come to the same conclusion: yes it is, chill the f*** out and get a job when you need/want/feel like it!  I've bounced these thoughts off various friends.

The most encouraging folks have been my (ex) colleagues at work.  The team of three of us who got laid off together set up a recurrent weekly meeting to support each other for this first month.  They've been my most fervid cheerleaders of stay at home parenting.  Steve's wife left her career as a chemical engineer 18 years ago and never looked back.  He choked up on the phone recounting the profound impact of her decision, "Our kids are so great, we've never had a problem.  I know I owe this to her being there.  She can sense if something is wrong and talk to them about it.  She teaches them and guides them though discovering as they grow."

Kate also stayed home with her children, supplemented income by providing in-home daycare, and only went back to work after her children left for college.  "I can't stress enough how important I feel it is to be at home with your children.  Actually, when I went back to work my son started having trouble in school and I didn't hear about it for a month.  Then I decided to cut back on working and focus on volunteering at the school.  My son needed more attention than my daughter and if I wasn't around then I don't think he would have turned out as well."

But I was still harboring these incessant thoughts of 'what to do with my life.'  Feeling like my parents had worked so hard to give me choices and opportunity and I'd be dishonoring their investment in my education to throw my career away.  Yes, that's what consciously deciding to not get a job feels like: tossing my vested experience to the birds.

I never particularly desired a career in IT and I frequently daydreamed about transitioning into health sciences.  I studied psychology in undergrad and enjoyed participating in the research community.  Last week I checked out a local Master's of Acupuncture program and then began investigating whether I would qualify for low cost daycare through Virginia Social Services.  I just kept feeling the need to do something.  But knowing that would add another layer of complication to our family life.

My mind took off in-flight chasing jets planes of hypothetical life scenerios, shooting each one down, and always landing at the same conclusion: "chill the f*** out, enjoy the kids, you can pick up a profession later in life."

Then, peace at last.  During our last call Kate asked if I had any short term goals for my time with the little ones.

No.  I didn't.  I dodged the question by asking if it was crazy for me to wait until the kids go to school to get a job. To which she went into a long response about how not-crazy that is.

This weekend I sat down and drafted a mission statement, themes, and short and long term goals for my life. Writing these thoughts down brought me such peace!  Freeing the obsessive repetitive thoughts, placing them on paper, looking at them, analyzing them, finding comfort and security in them...  I feel so much better.  Somehow seeing my plan on paper, in crayon, grounded me.

Now here's the giveaway that I come from corporate America; I aligned each goal with themes from my life mission.  A funny thing happened when I brainstormed the themes: I realized achievement is important to me.

Not to say that raising kids isn't an achievement!  But, frankly, I'd like to go on to do something GREAT eventually.  Like, earn-a-page-about-me in Wikipedia kind of GREAT.  What's funny is that I hope my kids grow up to be happy and generally successful.  Why do I hold myself to a higher standard?  I don't know.  I'm not humble I guess. I'd really like to accomplish something significant for society.

So I realized I definitely want a professional identity outside of the home - and that can be a part of my long term goal.  I can see how focusing on my kids and family now fits into my life mission.  This stage doesn't need to feel like a step back, or a PAUSE button, but really another stage in my development.  It feels secure and smart to focus on certain elements of my mission now and take on longer term elements as the appropriate time arises.

I also realize that going back to work in IT could be a part of my future if I need the income to maintain the Mission Theme of "Comfort."  Seeing how working in IT could fit into my life mission helped me make peace with the possibility that I may need to go back to work.  So if it happens, I'm not allowed to whine about selling out my soul anymore.

Would you like to see?  Here it is anyway.  Work in progress.  I left space to add more goals.  Written in crayon (no spell checker - ugh - embarrassing), taped to the wall in our room, subject to change and evolution.

If you're interested in doing a mission statement exercise, I'll share my process.  Google search reveals lots of websites with instructions much more intensive than mine.
1. Brainstorm words that capture your particular values
2. Group the words and identify the key themes and how they relate
3. Form sentences that join the words coherently and logically
4. Keep it short and sweet
5. Then draft some goals, start with some really easy and simple ones.  See how they align to your mission themes.
6. Make a goal (long or short term for each of the themes)
7. Enjoy the feeling of creating a path for your personal nirvana

Let me know how it goes

Turning a New Leaf

The great thing about being kicked out of the corporate world is that you don't need to spend money on stupid professional looking blouses, suits, and jewelry.  I can go back to shopping at thrift stores.  I can dye my hair purple and pierce my lip.  I can erase the uncomfortable memories of feeling confused, bored, and out of place.

I've been secretly (and not so secretly) praying for this moment.

It's going to be tough to survive on one salary, it really is.   So I'm worried, but optimistic.  Scratch that. Scared.  I've been bored out of my mind at work and hoping for this chance to reset by goals and direction.  But staying home all day with a cranky disobedient four year old will be a major test of my mothering instinct and resilience.

Antidote Simplify

Saturday mornings for the past month Mari and I have been taking an Introduction to Bee Keeping class at a library nearby.  The class is great.  I've been learning a lot of incredible things about bees.  Like, did you know that the colonies are primarily female and males only serve for breeding?  If a male goes too long without fornicating, the hive will kick him out.  AND once a male does get it on, he dies shortly afterward.  What a way to go!  The bees communicate using pheromones, and by little dances, like sign language or a game a charades.  So interesting.  I've already put in our order for a package of Italian bees, bread in Georgia.

bbq for carnival

We're fixing to build a couple Warre hives for the back.  The Warre hive, also called the People's Hive, is lower maintenance than Kenyan Top Bar or Langstroth hives.  That is exactly what we need, since Mari and I tend to get a little lazy sometimes.  Not many folks sell them still, the Warre hive is pretty uncommon in the US.  But I've been doing some research, and I joined the yahoo Organic Beekeeping group as well as the Organic Homesteading Group.  Heard all good things about the Warre.  Also found this great blog, The Bee Space, with help on how to build them.  Plans are available on the internet for free.  So I'm ordering some wood off of craigslist, and we're either going to get my mom's contractor to cut the wood for us, or we're going to borrow his tools and do it ourselves.

his lego art continues to get more complex in design

So since the class is at a library, I've been perusing the isles during break time.  Found a book on simplifying your life with kids.  The book is from the 90's.  It's not exactly AP or crunchy.  But I like the size of it, only about 5" tall, and also like the chapters broken into bite size pieces.  So I can pick it up and always manage to get through at least one chapter before falling asleep or getting called to attend to something.  Nothing groundbreaking, but I am finding the little tidbits and helpful suggestions worth trying.  Like the latest one: do one thing at a time and you'll be amazed how much more you get done.  

Iggy

I do pride myself on my tremendous ability to multi task.  It's something I always put on my resume, and slip into interviews, "I thrive off of high stress situations."  Well, I'm starting to believe that in our day of ADHD, speed dating, and internet and channel surfing: the new highly marketable skill will be the ability to focus on one thing to completion.  

Sometimes at work I realize that I've got 7-10 different programs open at the same time, and it takes me a few minutes to remember what I was doing and cycle through them an find the window I need.  At home, I might be dialed into a meeting, making and packing a lunch, and helping Nene go potty while finding Kaio's shoes and helping him get dressed to go out.  Take too long on one task, and Nene gets bored, gets off the toilet, Kaio runs off and ends up with even less clothes on, burn the food, and miss something important being said in the meeting.  

If I manage to make it all work, I don't feel fulfilled, I actually feel pretty spent.  If I drop the ball, well that's devastating.  So my goal this month is to try simplifying life a bit by focusing on one thing at a time.  

Or at least no more than 3 at a time.

ravenous for quail

So Wednesday I waited until my meetings was over, then got the lunch packed before I started telling the kids to get ready.  Then I helped one kid at a time.  When I put Nene on the potty, I stayed in the bathroom with her instead of running off to get myself dressed.  After they were dressed, I handed them their socks and shoes and asked them if they could put them on while I got dressed.  Amazingly, when I came back, they were ready.  

So I doubt that we were out the door any faster, but it sure felt kinder to my brain and energy.  

Merging Work and Family

Kaio's Coop daycare was closed today due to two feet of snow falling over the weekend.  My mom was snowed into her neighborhood, and both Mari and I needed to work, so I stayed home with the kids.  Working from home and taking care of the kids.  I thought it would be an impossible task, but really it was not so bad.  I sat them down with a movie and some toys.  Made them lunch and left it with them to eat and toss on the floor as they pleased as I held a meeting over the phone, and stealthily muting when there was some crying episode or fighting.  Nala came into my room balancing a princess plate full of beans and rice, and with a big smile on her face she handed it to me like she was sharing.  Of course right after she handed it to me she yanked it back and it dumped all over the floor.  She's so cute.

Kaio is potty training.  The thing is that he is totally in control and totally conscious of peeing and pooping and holding it and everything.  The only thing in between him and success is his stubbornness.  I have been trying to give him real underpants so that he feels uncomfortable when he wets himself.  It works, but he still doesn't want to go sit on the potty sometimes.  I might have given up after the third wet pants, but i was out of diapers.  Sometimes I like to run out of things just to prove my independence from them.  So we kept with the underpants.  He even shat in them during his nap.  So I changed his poopy pants in the shower while on a conference call.  And then he went back to sleep.

Overall I was able to get all my work done, well the minimum and still look like I'm working.  The toughest part was to ignore the urge to clean and fold laundry, and instead focus my attention on work or quality time with the kids.  It was great to see them all day long and play occasionally.  I felt guilty for turning on the TV as a substitute for my attention.  But, I imagine that if I could be a stay at home mom then i do activities instead.  I would really like that.  I hope that eventually we will be in a place where I can transition to working less hours and have a day or two with the kids.  I don't think that we are in a place to make that happen anytime soon though.  I know it is my fault for not being financially prepared enough to have kids.  But, that is the trade off for having kids early and buying a house.  booo for expensive mortgages.  I am totally day dreaming about moving to a farm today.  If I ever have any more kids I vow to be a stay at home mom, at least part time.  Hopefully Nalini and Kaio will not be jealous.