Unhappy Birthday. Sometime this month you turn one year old.
You've been here for a while and there is not much I'm going to say about it. We're eating and sleeping and laughing and talking and paying our bills. We do preschool pick up and bedtime routines, book reading and grocery shopping, and everything else that you do in a day. The only thing I'm not doing that I'd normally be obsessing over is thinking about moving. I'm not obsessing over it even though at this point, in my opinion, with a kid in preschool, and the school system the way it is, we're behind. We're behind in the research (which neighborhood schools are the best, and are they in affordable neighborhoods, and which neighborhoods are they and do we want to move there). And we're behind in location, in that we aren't already living in one of those neighborhoods and we have to start applying to kindergartens next fall. So you could say that we're in a holding pattern, in that we aren't making those long-term plans.
There are good things about holding patterns, if you don't mind a little sentimental reflection. There are good things about holding patterns, like having a sixteen month old smushed in to your chest. Jett hugs my neck and blows raspberries on my cheek. Kai sits in my lap and hugs me belly to belly, cheek to chest, arms curved around my ribs like a smile. He lets me play with his hair. He takes a break from his hug and sits up to grin at me, then snuggles back in to my arms.
Jett sleeps in the car on the way to school. We leave the house two hours early. He falls asleep in the first 10 minutes and I park at the school and read for an hour. Then I wake him up, with his sweaty hair and creased cheek from resting against the car seat. We sit on the playground and have a snack while he wakes up, waiting for his classmates to arrive. There are always one or two other kids who come early to play on the jungle gym. Then Jett jumps up, hands me his half-eaten snack, and is off, running with the girl or boy he knows from school, climbing up the slides, following-the-leader along the white paint that outlines a baseball diamond and a hopscotch game. Running to get in line when his teacher appears. Knocking me over with his hugs and his kisses before he walks in a line in to school.
No. Kai turns his head when I offer him peas. He crinkles his nose, holds out his arm, and says, "NO!" He refuses his vitamins with iron, so I hold down his hands with one hand (briefly, very briefly) and use my other hand to pucker his lips (gently, very gently) and use the dropper to squirt in the liquid vitamins as quickly as possible. I hate to do it, but I do it anyway, because it seems important in the long run. I wonder if there are chewable vitamins for 16 month olds, maybe tabs that dissolve on their tongue. Maybe he would like those. I add it to the grocery list, and wonder if Charlie, who does the shopping, will know what I mean.
Jett wouldn't sleep in his bed. Just like that.He said he heard noises in his room, and had to run away from them, and run in to our room. It was so easy to put him to sleep in our bed, so one night we did, and just like that, we had a new routine. I made a little bed for him on the floor, and we'd move him there when we went to bed. I'd lift him up and because he's so tall now, his head would fall back over my wrist, and his legs would swing, hanging over my arms, but he rarely woke. One morning I asked him if he wanted to change anything in his room, and he said he wanted to sleep next to Kai. So we rolled Kai's crib next to Jett's bed, and pushed the changing table to the other wall, and I told him if he slept all night in his bed he could paint the next morning (which was this morning). He came in to our room at 6:30 this morning, asking to paint, so we did. Four 8 1/2 by 11 inch masterpieces, hanging on our mantel. He painted for an hour, until Kai woke up at 7:30.
Kai's so frustrated. He wants to keep holding on to my fingers so he can get over to the cupboard to play with the pots and pans, but I have to do the laundry. He doesn't want to crawl, he wants to walk, but he needs me to help him, and I'm trying to do just one more load. I console myself and think he could just crawl over there if he really wanted to. Now he's crying and one of his little hands is gripping my jeans at shin level, and his other hand is reaching, reaching, reaching out in front of him, wishing for something to hold on to, and I keep picking up clothes and putting them in the washer instead of giving him my hand to hold. I try to soothe him by talking to him, telling him I'll be done in just a minute. I pick him up in order to sit him on the floor because I have to move a little to reach the laundry detergent but I can't while he's gripping my leg. I pick him up and try to sit him down, but he is stiff-legged and angry and he won't sit down. I'm holding him now and he's a little happier. He sits on my hip and watches me twist the cap off the detergent, measure it out and pour it in, one handed. He reaches for the cap and helps me twist it back on the bottle. I put it away and push the button and finally the laundry is started. I carry him over to the cupboard he's been pining for. I sit on the floor. He sits in my lap and picks up a wooden spoon and bangs on all of the glass bowls, none of the metal pots, and I wonder if they will break, if I should move the glass dishes out of his reach. I think I should have helped him walk over here as soon as he started crying. I think the laundry could have waited.
Twelve months ago I was sure the job hunt would be short. Then I got kind of nervous. Now it's just routine. We never spent very much money on a day-to-day basis anyway, and I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I don't think about it for days at a time, which is a luxury. When I wonder how we keep paying our bills while buying the occasional treat, Charlie pulls up the spreadsheet and reminds me of our cost-saving measures, unemployment checks, the work he's picked up here and there, the consulting I did for a while, our tax returns, the coupons, the gifts, our savings. Then I go back to not thinking about it for days at a time. I might be naive. I might not be carrying a fair load of the stress. But we're in a holding pattern, and it feels like a luxury.
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