Life/Parenting & Family

Falling Back

Posted on by noemikjames / 8 Comments

I remember when the hour we got at the end of Daylight Savings Time felt like a gift. A whole extra hour to do with as I pleased.

Now I dread how this day drags on like the longest day of the year. I suppose it is!

And then I feel guilty for wishing I didn’t have an extra hour with my kids.

The truth is, things are definitely better. Or at least, they can be. My daughter has become, for the most part, pleasant to be around. She still has her challenges and we are still working on some very real struggles around self-control and appropriate emotional response, but since she started the magnesium, things really are so much better.

Unfortunately right around the time things got better with my daughter, they got impossible with my son. The month leading up to his 3rd birthday was a nightmare. He is still really hard to manage, with volatile meltdowns happening frequently, and most of the time for seemingly no reason at all.

When he’s emotionally regulated, he’s the sweetest boy in the world. When he’s not, it’s very hard for all of us around him.

I hope there will be a time when things are, for the most part, easier, when the extra hour at the end of Daylight Savings Time feels like a gift. Right now, we’re just not there yet. Or maybe I’m not there year.

I really appreciated Elizabeth’s recent post about loving the big picture of her life, but feeling overwhelmed by the daily reality of it. I think about that divergence in my own life all the time. When I look at what I have, in the abstract, it’s my dream reality. I’ve quite literally checked off almost every box I thought I needed to filled for me to be happy. And yet the day to day is still so challenging, and I have to work hard to find contentment in what feels like the daily grind of mornings, work, pick-up, evenings with the kids, bedtime, work at home, too little sleep, lather, rinse, repeat.

I will say that October was one of my better months as far as generalized contentment goes (I attribute this to sticking my head in the sand as far as the rest of the world goes and having so much creative work to lose myself in–I plan to write more on that soon), and I know part of that was because things with my daughter were so much easier. So maybe when my kids are a little older (4 and 7-years-old? 5 and 8?!) my feelings about the day to day will better align with my feelings about my life in general.

Life

Cartoon Fall

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

This morning I slipped on my daughter’s homework folder and came down on my tailbone. Hard. Like, really hard.

In the moment it felt like slow motion, like a cartoon fall. I swear my legs were as high as my head before my body hit the floor.

It happened right in the door way to the kitchen, and the kitchen tiles are higher than the hardwood floor of the living room. That intersection is right where my tailbone landed.

To say it hurt would be a grave understatement. Holy shit, was it painful.

I lay on the ground for a long time, hyperventilated between sobs. My husband and kids were freaking out. It was kind of awful.

But at one point my son reminded me to take deep breaths. “Sniff a flower and blow out a candle Mommy.”

I did and I immediately felt more calm. I was able to gain control of myself and eventually I even managed to roll over.

I’ve been lying on the couch a lot, with a cold pack under my butt and back. Thankfully we had my husband sleep in my daughter’s room last night, in an attempt to get him a good night’s sleep, so is well rested enough to manage the kids with little assistance from his banged up wife.

Ugh, so not how I wanted to start the weekend.

Work/Teaching

A Positive Outcome

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

I swear, this will be my last post about my event.

So it’s two days out, and I’m feeling really positively about my big even at school. I want to write about it, because I feel like it would be easy to look back on it and remember only how much work it required, and how exhausted I was at the end of it.

For the past two days I’ve asked my kids to tell me what they enjoyed about the day and to give me one recommendation of how to do it better (if I ever do it again). The responses have been very positive; the kids clearly enjoyed the day, and even their recommendations were respectful, and even grateful. I feel better about this 6th grade class than I have all year, and I do think the festival will cast a positive light on all our interactions for the rest of the school year. I created something for them and we shared it, and they seem to be genuinely appreciative. That is really all I could ask for.

The staff has also blown me away with their congratulations and praise. Every single person who participated (and many who did not) have taken the time to say something to me in person or via email. They all thought the event was very well organized and very fun and interesting for the students. They loved seeing the kids participate so enthusiastically, and were proud of being a part of something so unique and fun.

And honestly, I’ve been nothing but grateful for the support I received. My administrators have been so generous and understanding, giving me basically everything I asked for. The teachers were equally as giving of their time and they were super flexible about facilitating activities that they knew nothing about before hand.

Right before the big event, I was feeling pretty down about my job. We voted to abolish the block schedule we were trying this year. Without a FLEX period we had planned for (that was impossible for various reasons), the block periods were too long and the administration determined it was not working for both students and teachers. I was totally bummed (and actually put forth a considerable amount of effort pushing for a third option that the administration wanted to embrace, but that ultimately was postponed until next year), and in the wake of the decision I plunged deep into that dark place I was in at the end of last year, feeling nothing but doom when it came to the school year ahead.

This was right when I was hitting on the wall on preparing for the festival. My 6th graders were giving me a lot of grief and I was sure they were going to grumble through the whole day I was working so hard to prepare. Working on both campuses was feeling so burdensome, and I just generally hated my schedule. I was just done, and to have the one thing I felt positively about (the block schedule) be taken away, felt like the last straw. I was despondent for 2-3 days. I just didn’t see how I was going to make it through the year.

Then the festival happened and I’ve felt a renewed appreciation for my school, my staff and even my students. Not only do I feel really good about myself, for everything I accomplished (I’ve been realizing in the days after the festival that no one else has ever organized such a big event all by him or herself, usually a grade level or content area team will work together, but no one else has put on something like this alone), but I’m so grateful that I work at a school where an event like this is not just tolerated, but supported and even celebrated. I really am proud of myself, and I’m trying to revel in that feeling, but I’m just as proud of my school, staff and administrators. And I needed to feel good about my work almost more than I needed to feel good about myself.

So there you go. The Day of the Dead festival ended up being 100% worth it, and I’m so glad I took it on. Sometimes it really is worthwhile to challenge yourself.

Parenting & Family

Abusing the Babysitter

Posted on by noemikjames / 11 Comments

I am working out right now, and my kid is in front of the TV.

The AAP just updated their TV recommendations for 2017. The generalized “two hours of screen time for kids over 2-years-old,” has been modified quite a bit. Now they recommend just one hour for kids between 2 and 6-years-old, and after that it depends based on what the screen time is for. School-based screen time evidently doesn’t need to be restricted, or at least doesn’t “count” toward their goal amount.

And of course, the TV is not to be used as a babysitter.

Except that is the main way I use my TV.

Sure, I watch movies with my kids. Well, I watch movies with my daughter. The movie version of a book incentives her to listen to longer and more complex novels every day, and I love discussing how the book and movie are different after we’ve read and watched both.

When my son is older, and we can watch a movie together as a family, I will cherish that time together and I won’t cringe thinking that our 90 minute flick went over the one hour a day recommendation.

But right now, my kids get at least 45 minutes of TV a day (they each get to pick one 22 minute show when we get home)–sometimes more–and I absolutely use that time to make dinner, check my daughter’s backpack, start a load of laundry, and just generally get shit done.

My husband has been using screen time to get ready in the morning. Our son is in a very challenging period developmentally, and there are only so many battles of the wills one adult can have before 8am. (I totally support him on this, by the way, our son is impossible right now).

Sometimes I have to drag my kids to a meeting and I absolutely sit them in front of devices so I can participate in a meaningful way. Most days my kid are getting around the one hour of screen time that is recommended, and that time is almost always in a “babysitter” capacity.

It just makes me feel bad. As if there aren’t enough things that make me feel shitty as a parent, now I’m feeling bad every time I use the TV to get some shit done. Ugh.

I get it. I really do. I understand why they have these recommendations. I understand it’s their job to educate people on what is best for kids. I also know I’m probably doing better than a lot of people when it comes to screen time. But I’m surely doing worse than many too. I mention that not to tear myself down or build myself up in comparison to others, just to be honest with where I probably stand in the using-the-TV-as-a-babysitter continuum (which is probably somewhere in the middle, and so probably not something to actually be alarmed about).

I’m sure if I asked my kids’ pediatrician about it he would smile understandingly and tell me not to worry. So why do I? Why do I feel bad about something that I can’t see changing any time soon?

Maybe if I feel bad about it now, when there really doesn’t seem to be much other choice–my kids just cannot entertain themselves in the afternoon/evenings, especially not when they are together (they will fight and need constant refereeing)–I will be more inclined to make better choices in the future, when those choices are hard but still manageable. Or maybe I’m just a glutton for (self-imposed, totally unproductive, guilt-induced) punishment.

All I know, is I wish the AAP hadn’t amended their recommendations. I felt safe when I was under the two hours, and when I didn’t have to feel so bad about using the TV as a babysitter.

Life

Getting Caught Up

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

I really just wanted to take a few days to rest after the big event, but there are only two weeks until the end of the trimester and I fell way behind grading and inputting scores online so it’s been more go, go, go these past few days.

It’s nice getting caught up. Sometimes I don’t realize the weight of something in the background until it’s no longer there, taunting me.

I also finally accomplished a big item on my long term to-do list (it’s been on there for over a year) and moved my retirement money to a better account that will provide greater long term yields. I also upped my monthly contribution considerably, which needed to happen. It feels amazing to get that done; it’s been languishing on my best intentions list for so very long.

So now I’m looking ahead to Thanksgiving break, and the day or two I hope to get at home to do some purging. After my son’s birthday, and before Christmas, we really need to get rid of some stuff. The house is driving me crazy again.

I’m sorry these first posts of NaBloPoMo haven’t been very substantial. I’m still sick and working well past my bedtime on stuff for school. I’m hoping things will calm down next week, once I’ve gotten caught up on all this grading.

Thanks for bearing with me until then.

Work/Teaching

It’s Over!

Posted on by noemikjames / 3 Comments

It’s over! And it was, all things considered, a success. The teachers running the activities that I couldn’t be at said thing went well and that is what I was most worried about (that I’d saddle them with a half-baked activity that resulted in chaos).

And, dare I say it, there were a few moments when I managed to have fun.

By the end of the event I was totally exhausted. I plowed through two hours of clean up before I picked up the kids for swimming. Now I’m grading some papers (I got WAY behind when preparing for the festival started taking precedence) and planning for my recently neglected 7th and 8th grade classes.

There is still a lot to do, but having that massive weight off my shoulders is a big relief. Opening my computer today I was able to shut down so many tabs that have been open for so long–that felt amazing! I am proud of myself for attempting something I’ve never done before, and making it work well enough. The kids seemed to have fun and the teachers were incredibly supportive.

This festival is also the end of a chapter I created myself, one that I wrote four stories and drew 18 illustrations for. I’m proud of that work as well. It’s been a crazy month, but I’m really pleased with how everything turned out.

As you can see, I went all out with it.

day-of-the-dead-portrait

Uncategorized

Tomorrow and NaBloPoMo – F*ck Yeah! (x2)

Posted on by noemikjames / 6 Comments

Tomorrow is my all day, all 6th grade, Day of the Dead festival. I have never attempted anything on this scale before: organizing activities for 192 kids over five hours, coordinating 10 teacher schedules, 18 parent volunteers and over 20 student facilitator/helpers. It has been a massive undertaking, and the final week of preparation ended up being one of the busiest I’ve had in a long time (filled events unrelated to preparing for the festival).

I hit a wall last week, and I hit it hard. I’m sick. I’m exhausted. But I just had to keep plowing through because what other options were there? Shit needed to get done, and no one else was going to do it. After a month of working my ass off to make this thing happen, I am SO READY for it to be over, and to get a little (much needed) rest.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up at 5am to get to school early. I’ll move the final materials into place, have the art teacher paint my face, and hope that everything goes off without a hitch.

Wish me luck everyone!

(Oh, and I can’t wait to jump start my writing after such anemic posting last month with 30 days of uninterrupted posting in November! Woot!)

Identity/Infertility/Writing

That space inside

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

It’s been ten days since I posted. I don’t generally stay away that long. I’m in the middle of a very busy month, and I’m creating a lot of new content for school, which means my time on the elliptical, which is usually where I write my posts, has been spent writing stories in Spanish about Day of the Dead for 6th graders, or emailing parent volunteers about when and where to pick up the supplies to make sugar skulls, or working on the schedule for the big festival I’m organizing at the end of the month. My late afternoons are spent illustrating my stories, because I still have plans to sell this chapter next year, and I need my own illustrations if I’m going to do that.

It’s actually been, dare I say it, kind of fun.

I’m enjoying drawing again. It’s been a long, long time. And I’m getting my writing fix with my mornings pages, where I’m working through some stuff that I’m not quite ready to bring here (I’m sure it will end up here eventually), don’t you worry.

But I think about this space a lot. Maybe because I’ve been away from it. I missed my blogoversary this fall, in early September. I’ve been writing now for seven years. Seems hard to believe. And the fact that those words are all still up somewhere, for anyone to see. That seems even weirder.

So much has changed since I started writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about what brought me to this space so long ago. The wave of light was Saturday. I didn’t have a candle to light. That loss feels far away these days, but it’s still very much a part of me. Reading the posts about pregnancy and infant loss and remembering, I spent an hour or so ruminating over the fact that if it weren’t for my own loss I probably never would have started writing. Something was born of that tragedy; it wasn’t a baby, but it was a sort of a child, that I have nurtured and watched grow over the past seven years. It may not be a product of my DNA, but it’s made of me.

I think a lot about the people that I met through my writing. Many of them I’m still close to, despite my escape from social media, but I’ve lost touch with a large number of them. I miss them. I wonder. How are they doing? How are their kids? It seems strange to think of people I’ve never met this way, but that was the magic of those early years of writing. It felt like we were all in a community, together. A cohort of sorts. We were always scattered, but it didn’t feel that way when our online spaces were so easy to get to. Now most of those spaces have been abandoned. The writers have moved on.

I never consider moving on. Not really. Writing here is too important to me. Even though I’m not sure what direction this space will take, or what words will find their way on to its page, I know I’ll keep writing. It’s not a record of my life, really, since I don’t feel comfortable writing as much about my kids or my marriage anymore. But it is a record of something. Me, I suppose? The me that’s left when you strip everything else away.

Sometimes she’s hard to find, that just me. My days are so tightly woven with the needs of my children, the commitment to my husband, the hopes for my students, the inside jokes with my friends. Maybe this space is so important to me because it reminds me of who I am, when all of the rest of it falls away, and I can just be.

My period is about to arrive and my breasts have been exquisitely tender. The kind of tender that used to convince me that surely, this cycle is the one, surely this time I’m pregnant. I brushed my arm against my chest yesterday and the feeling took me back so fast I literally stopped in my tracks. Just stood, there, frozen in the middle of the parking lot at work, totally submerged in the memories of that time. It was so all consuming, the quest to get pregnant and the ectopic pregnancy, that it left a space inside me that I can still fall into. It’s more vivid and well defined than any space before or since, more so than high school or college, or early parenthood. It left a microcosm of desperation, fear, confusion, despair, frustration and hope, and if something pulls me into that space, it’s like I’m there again, back when everything was about that. Everything.

Now my life is so full of so many things. Now my biggest challenge is integrating all these divergent parts of myself into something whole, something that I recognize as myself. Perhaps that is why I keep coming here, to aid in the integration. To talk through the more challenging aspects, to figure out who I am, and who I want to be.

And surely, that is why I’ll keep writing.

Life

A couple things

Posted on by noemikjames / 6 Comments

Nothing coherent to say today, so just a couple bullet points.

October is going to be a mega-busy month for me. I committed to putting on a giant, all-day, all-6th grade Día de los muertos celebration at my school on November 2 (the actual Day of the Dead). It’s going to be the culmination of a unit we’re doing on the Day of the Dead and should be a really awesome experience for the kids.

{I notice that when I tell people about it I couch my announcement in “I’m such an idiot for taking this on” terms. I’m going to stop doing that. I don’t know why it has to be a stupid idea to take on a big project, especially when that project is meaningful. I don’t know when committing to something that requires a lot of time and work became a stupid thing to do (in my mind), but I’m going to stop referring to big commitments as such. Instead I’m going to talk them up for how awesome they are, even if it’s something everyone else things I’m crazy for doing, like the PTA.}

*   *   *  *   *

The other thing that makes October crazy is all the Kindergarten Information nights that happen at the end of the month. I have volunteered to represent my daughter’s school at many of the these, because I think I can provide a good, enthusiastic (but realistic) representation of the school and what it has to offer. Mostly I just want people to know more about it, because it’s not on a lot of people’s radars. So far I have three Kindergarten Information events on my calendar in late October. I’m pleased I have this opportunity to represent the school.

{We had a PTA board meeting yesterday and the new principal presented a few items. You may remember I was less than enthusiastic about her ability to take on the role of principal, as she’d only been vice-principal (anywhere) for three years. But I have to say that I was very impressed with what she said and how she said it. I may be pleasantly surprised by her ability to step up and get things done.}

*   *   *  *   *

My son’s birthday is also in October. We didn’t plan a party with his friends, but now he’s asking about one almost every night and I feel guilty. The thing is, I don’t think a 3-year-old needs a party with his friends, and I know he’ll be very happy with cake and presents in the company of his grandparents, but I still feel twinges of, I don’t know, regret that we’re not giving him what he really wants. Of course, that is a parent’s job sometimes, but there is something about this being his birthday that makes it hard for me. We’re thinking about taking him to a train museum a few hours away, which we know he’d love, to make the day really special. I hope he stops talking about how all his friends are coming to his party for his birthday, because that just isn’t happening.

*   *   *  *   *

My daughter continues to do well, though the initial amazingness of last week has lost some of its luster. She is falling back to many of her old, physically and emotionally aggressive habits, but she does seem more able to check herself and bounce back after an episode. She did land on red once at school this week, but was able to make it back up to yellow. And she got two college cards. She also reports being the FIRST one done with homework at aftercare, when she used to consistently be the last. She is grumbling a lot during homework at home, but does get it done much more quickly than before. So obviously things are still much better. I continue to have high hopes for what she may accomplish this year.

*   *   *  *   *

She seems to really be liking Harry Potter so far. She talks a lot about how she wishes she could be a wizard, and how she’d fix whatever problem confronts her with magic if she could. I keep reminding her that even Harry has to do homework, even he can’t use magic to get out of that, but she is unconvinced that magic wouldn’t make her life pretty much perfect. It reminds me of how I truly mourned the fact that a place like Hogwarts didn’t really exist, and that magic wasn’t real. I was in my mid-twenties when I was mourning this, mind you, but it felt hard to work though at the time. I guess I just wanted a different life, at the time, and a magic one seemed pretty amazing.

*   *   *  *   *

My daughter is starting Girl Scouts next week. I have deeply ambivalent feelings about it. My own Girl Scouts record is not great: I got kicked out in 6th grade for repeatedly lying (with my friend) that we had to pick up her sister and couldn’t attend a meeting, and then going shopping at a market near our home (this was in Hong Kong, when we had surprising amounts of freedom in 6th grade). So, yeah. But she really wants to do it (many of her friends are in the troop), and I don’t think I should keep her from it just because I wasn’t that into it as a child. We’ll see where she goes with it.

*   *   *  *   *

My parents are taking the kids this weekend from Saturday to Sunday and I’m SO EXCITED. I need a 24 staycation SO BAD. Here’s hoping nothing happens between now and then to mess this up.

*   *   *  *   *

I got caught sneaking out of school early on Wednesday to make a parent/teacher conference at my daughter’s school. We had professional development slotted for that time, but usually I don’t have anyone to meet with, or anything specific to do during those hours because I’m the only language teacher on my campus. So I didn’t think much of leaving an hour early to make the conference (if I hadn’t scheduled it on Wednesday, I would have had to ask a colleague to cover my last class, and no one wants to do that).

As it turns out, the PD was a site-wide training and my absence was noted. I was pretty mortified when I got the email from my principal. Luckily he was very understanding. The thing is, I don’t really feel guilty for leaving an hour early on a Wednesday: I spent 7.5 hours in my classroom this past Sunday, and I’ll never get paid for that. I know I spend more than my contractually obligated time at work, so I don’t think it all has to happen during the days we’re contractually obligated to be there. Teaching is a very inflexible profession, and I refuse to feel guilty for taking an hour or two when I can, because I know I’ll make it up later.

Also, the training was about how to better support English Language Learners, which was MY JOB for seven years (they just took the EL class from me this year because my schedule couldn’t accommodate it), and (ironically) I’m the only one not actually teaching English at the school so…. Yeah it was just dumb, and annoying, and I really appreciate that my principal didn’t make a big thing out of it (though I will have to take that time on my time card, which is annoying).

Mostly, this was just another reminder of how I’m struggling just to meet everyone’s expectations, and sometimes I’m just going to fail on one or more fronts. Some days it will just be impossible to be the involved mother, the dedicated teacher, and the caring wife. I guess I have to be okay with that.

*   *   *  *   *

So glad it’s Friday. I so need a break.

What have you been up to lately? Any plans for the weekend?

Uncategorized

How do you take care of your clothes?

Posted on by noemikjames / 12 Comments

Since I first cleaned out my closet a couple years ago, I’ve done a good job of only keeping the items that “spark joy.” This means I have fewer articles of clothing (good) and wear each of them more (also good). The problem is that as I wear them more, my clothes are looking, well, worn. Very worn. 

I really don’t know how people don’t buy clothes for 1 or 2 years. My pants get holes in the ass, my shirts get discolored around the underarm area and pill all over. They look dingy, or get oily looking stains. My underwear are in tatters. 

I wonder if I’m not taking proper care of my clothes. I started soaking my white shirts with my daughters (she has to wear them with her uniform), which helps but is time intensive (and I hate the perfumey smell of Clor.ox White Soak stuff). I already wash my jeans together, I hang most of my permanent press pieces to dry. I’m not sure what else I should be doing. 
Any tips on how to keep my clothes looking nice longer? How do you take care of your favorite clothes?