Third Culture Kid(s)

I’m afraid I’ve been quiet the crap poster just lately. I keep meaning to write, but it seems like everything has been conspiring to whip my ass:

• C. had his 2nd month appointment, complete with 4 (count ‘em, 4) immunizations!! I don’t remember MM having 4 in one go, and it was two on each leg. For the rest of the day he squealed in pain every time I held him, and he ran a fever until last night. He’s fine now, but it screwed with our feeding schedule and now he’s back to every 2 hours (he was starting to make moves in the direction of 3-4 hours…). So, AGH!
• MM is going stir crazy, and she’s taking me with her. Or maybe it’s me who’s taking her along for the ride. Either way, we’ve been doing too much TV watching (even for me, and that’s really saying something) and staring at each other. Happily, right now she’s playing on her own, but I chalk that up to the much-needed trip to the library and park that she took with my too-generous-for-her-own-good SIL. I didn’t get much of a break, since C. has been needy ever since the shots, but I know that MM enjoyed being away from me for awhile.
• I have a conference coming up in less than 3 weeks - the big one in my field - and I only have part of an outline prepared. It’s hard to write on 3 hours of sleep/day.
• Because, seriously, I live with crazy sleepless people. I’ve decided that MM’s comic book villain name should be Insomniac, and her little henchman can be Insatiable. She’s been consistently waking up at 5:30 for weeks now, and it’s killing me (not least because C’s usually sleeping then - and sleeps for another two hours or so. Time when I could be sleeping, too, but no.
• Really, it’s all about the (lack of) sleep. I’m such a nice person when I’m even moderately well-rested. I’m such a horrible b**ch when I’m not. I’d bug M. about it more, but ultimately there’s little he can do. He doesn’t breastfeed, C. doesn’t like taking breastmilk from a bottle, and anyway M.’s got a stupid amount of stuff going on at a job he doesn’t like, and night school on top of that. What am I going to do - make it worse?

So, things are kind of hectic and they’re keeping me offline. Happily, C.’s appointment went well (12 lbs! Or, as the doctor said when I told him he’s still eating every two hours, “He doesn’t need to do that anymore.” Um, yeah. I’ll tell him you said that). And this will all pass. And it will get warmer. And I’ll probably even write my conference paper, which is only 20 minutes long anyway and that’s barely enough time to get started before it’s done.

But that’s where I’ve been.

I’m sorry I’ve been AWOL for a bit - things have just been (predictably) crazy around here and computer time is at a premium.  So, another bullet points update:

• We registered MM for preschool in the Fall!!  It’s only two mornings a week, but she’s so starved for human contact and play outside the confines of our small home that she’ll do fine, I think.  Unfortunately, we had to drag her out of the place literally kicking and screaming yesterday, since the toys and the prospect of other kids was just too tempting.  Poor kid.  Since it’s the preschool my SIL and brother send their daughter to, we can hopefully get together sometime to take the girls over to the playground, at least.
• After talking it over with M., I’ve decided to see what kind of progress I can make on the dissertation by the end of the summer before giving it up completely.  I posted asking for advice from other ABD parents on a board I frequent, and most people said that they couldn’t have written their dissertations without outside childcare.  Now, M. and I are ::thisclose:: to paying off our car loan, and I’ve been looking forward to putting that money towards paying off our remaining credit card debt for a long time.  If we were to get childcare, it would mean postponing that indefinitely, and I just don’t want to do that.  But, on the other hand, I don’t want to give up my dissertation just yet, either.  Happily, one person commented and said that, for her part, she’d done the whole thing without childcare and with two kids who were roughly the same ages as mine when she was in the thick of it.  It was a very encouraging post, with a lot of emphasis on “don’t beat yourself up for what you’re not doing right now,” which helped a lot.  I do know, in my rational mind, that very little is going to get done while C. is nursing every two freaking hours, nighttime included, and while MM is waking up at 5 am every day, but I guess there’s a reasonable expectation that this state of affairs won’t last forever.  God willing.  So, we’ll see where things are this summer; if no progress has been made, I’m out.  If I’ve made some tangible progress, I’ll keep going.
• Speaking of sleep, or lack thereof, well, we just don’t get any around here anymore.  Not quite sure what to do about this.  The toddler seems to have decided that 5 am is a good time to kick off the day, while the infant shows few signs of giving up his every-2-hours feeding schedule.  He’s nearly 2 months old - isn’t it about time he stretched out the time between eating already???

And that’s the long and short of it right now.  It’s still too cold to get us outside right now, and I’m still very wary of the flu that’s going around, so we’ve been cooped up in the house for what seems like an eternity.  I feel too tired to do anything constructive or interesting with MM, so she’s bored, I’m frustrated, and C.’s, well, hungry.  Things aren’t bad, they’re just kind of trying.

Seriously, does it even qualify as a blog post if you just use bullet points??  Or could this be the new wave of Mommyblogging?  You know, for when all you have to work with is two functioning brain cells?

• So, we just got an infusion of new video content, since Mommy has officially seen Totoro, Toy Story, and Toy Story 2 too many times.
• Mommy is seriously considering quitting her dissertation-in-progress.  She hasn’t decided anything yet, and is having angst about the whole thing, but it occurs to her that she would probably be a much happier person and mother if she chucked the whole thing.  Stay tuned…
• M. is so stressed right now that he uncharacteristically sniped at someone on the way home from work the other day.  Apparently a lot of people piled on to the elevator ahead of him, but cleared some room for him and his scooter.  Seeing this, a transit worker shouted out “Usually we let the handicapped people board first,” which apparently rubbed M. the wrong way and he retorted, “It would be nice if the handicapped could speak for themselves.”  And a couple of other snarky things.  He hates being ’spoken for’ by others, almost as much as he hates people touching him just because he sits at their hand level (or, as he puts it, “Don’t touch the cripple”).
• C. gave me the gift of four hours of sleep yesterday evening, and I blew it all talking with M. until 1 am.  Stupid, stupid Mommy.
• He’s giving me the same gift as I type, and what am I doing??

Anyway, there’s probably more but that’s all my brain has right this minute.  Oh, except to say that I loved the first episode of Season 2 Torchwood.  It’s all about the Spike!Love, of course, but the music was fabulous, the unspoken angst hung heavy in the air, and that last parting shot about John/Spike having found…um, someone, and the look on Jack’s face were priceless.

C. wound up catching The Cold; so far he’s okay.  A little congested, but nothing that I can get at with the suction bulb.  But that also means he’s not leaking from every orifice.  He’s crabby, though.  Temperature’s holding it’s own right now.  Otherwise, he’s getting fatter by the day and is generally doing his usual nighttime routine.  Average nightly sleep right now: between 4-5 hours.  Not too bad.

My brain, however, is fried.  I’m hoping some of it will return to me once C. starts sleeping through the night, but until then I’m running on fumes.

MM is bored.  It’s winter, there’s an infant, apparently there’s a strain of flu out there that the vaccine didn’t target, so I’m keeping us inside a lot.  Unless Daddy brings it home with him, we’re not getting it.  So we’re kind of climbing the walls.  Toy Story and Toy Story 2 have joined Totoro on the list of movies she’ll watch.  The TV is raising my kid.

Was thrilled about the Giant’s win yesterday.  We (by which I mean my parents and whoever watches football with them) don’t like Tom Brady AT ALL, and We think that Eli Manning has really been getting beaten up by the press this last season, so We were very excited by that last pass.

More later - right now the toddler is raising herself, with the aid of the TV, and C. has gotten quiet.  Too quiet.

My anniversary gift from M. (for whom I got…nothing.  He’s remarkably hard to buy for and never says what he wants, dammit) was an Itzbeen - a wonderfully versatile timer for mothers who lost 50%+ of their brain cells during the birth of their child.  It lets you know how long “itzbeen” since the baby had a diaper change, nursed, how long the kid’s been sleeping, and which side you last nursed on.  There’s even an extra bonus! timer for whatever, which might come in handy when I’m doing diss work away from the computer (ie: reading).

I really debated asking for this, since it’s $30ish (I think it was actually $24.99 on Amazon - $.01 short of the required $25 for free shipping, mind you) and C.’s not going to be an infant forever, hopefully.  But since I keep forgetting all of the above things, to the point that I think we tend to nurse all night long on really sleepy nights, I decided that it would probably be a good idea and ultimately pay for itself in better organization.

And, you know, it’s purdy and low-tech electronicky.  Satisfies my gadget cravings without costing an arm and a leg.  Some people get i-phones, and some of us get Itzbeens.

To, um, me and M.  I’m into the self-congratulation, apparently.

We celebrated our third wedding anniversary with lunch at Todai, the cheesy Asian buffet chain.  M. had a craving for sushi (but didn’t want to pay $4/piece to have it, and the place we were planning to go didn’t do lunch on Sundays), so we went and ate and ate and ate.  Taste: okay; value for money: M. good, me “not Korean enough.”  Apparently a good Korean is supposed to eat until blood actually begins flowing from your bursting stomach (or, as M. put it, “if you start feeling like you can’t eat any more, you’re getting there”).

After a crap night on Saturday, C. settled back into his decent sleeping pattern last night, so the sleep deprivation-induced homicidal rage that I was fighting back yesterday seems to have abated today.

Some work getting done.  But not as consistently as I’d like.

Toddler is calming down, though.  We’ve had several days in a row where she actually woke up after 6 am.  Not much after, but after is after.

We found out that our tax return - in which 2.0 and his timely arrival have been key players - works out to a substantially higher refund than we originally thought.  This means that we should be able to finance our trip to see M.’s family and have some to spare - yay!

So, on the whole, things aren’t too bad.

The only fly in my ointment today is that MM has caught M.’s cold.  It’s making her a little miserable, since she almost never gets sick, and now I have to try and keep her away from C. in the probably vain attempt to keep him from getting sick.  Wish me luck.

banging my head against the wall.

It’s been quite a weekend at Casa del M.  Among the highlights:

• On Friday night - beginning of a three-day weekend for M. - I managed to get into an argument with him concerning my inability to do anything of substance on the phone.  Let’s just say that I have an irrational fear of phone confrontations, with “confrontation” encompassing anything falling between asking about movie times (was I the only person who was happy when all that became automated??) and challenging a credit card charge.  This time, it’s potentially to the tune of $157, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it is right now.  I managed to keep us both up talking until 2 am, which substantially cut into my prime sleeping time (generally, the period between 11-ish and 2-ish, although lately it’s been about midnight until 2…ugh).
• MM has finally gotten over the newness of having C. at home and has become freakishly needy.  Usually - and predictably - when I’m feeding or otherwise attending to C.’s needs.  On the very, very plus side, she hasn’t been taking it out on C. himself; he seems to still have an aura of difference that she likes.  But it’s been “can you play/read/sit/eat with me??” almost nonstop, and always in her little heartbreaking way (”Can you pway wif me, Mommy?”).  M. really stepped up to the plate over the weekend and pwayed with her as much as possible - and he also had her “help” with making dinner, made her hot chocolate for the first time (and emphasized that hot chocolate was a big girl drink), etc. - in a way that made me very glad he’s the Dad here.  But today it’s just us again…and I’ve typically got her watching Totoro (she asked for it, for the record) while I grab a few minutes to myself.  Sigh.  And she’s still the 5:10 kid - wakes up like clockwork every morning at 5:10 am.  And this is the kid who used to sleep until 7. *cue Mommy weeping*
• No work happened over the weekend.  In fact, no work has happened since I last posted.  Well, except this morning; M. went down to his university yesterday and picked up some books for me at the library.  Hmm.  Rereading all of this, I realize I really should cut M. a little freaking slack.  He’s been working his butt off for me lately.
• Which is all perspective I would probably have more of if I were getting more than three hours of sleep per every 24 hour period.
• And, of course, there was the waking up on Sunday morning to a smashed driver-side window on our car - yes, we’d left our GPS (our CHEAP GPS - I mean, they’ll be lucky to make $50 off of it) visible, and it was stolen.  The GPS isn’t the issue; we have one car, that’s it.  When it’s out of commission - say, to have a window replaced - it means that someone is going to be seriously inconvenienced.  As in possibly missing work (M.) or having to figure out how to juggle a toddler and an infant while getting the repair done (me).  We did call the guys who come to your house to do the repair, and he was here in the freezing cold at 9 yesterday morning, but with the wrong glass.  So M.’s driving around with my dad’s clever, but not long-term, Plexiglas solution.  And it’s supposed to rain/snow today.

So, it’s been that kind of weekend, and that’s why I’ve been pretty scarce.  I did manage to get 30 min. of reading in this morning, so there’s that.  But the worries that I’m never going to be done are lurking in the back of my mind, and it gets in the way sometimes.  MM’s having a better day today, it seems, so there’s that, too.  C. is sleeping right now - you would if you’d spent a good part of the night awake.

The good news: C. weighed in at 9.02 lbs yesterday, so we officially don’t have to go and get him weighed anymore. For those of you keeping track, this is 13 oz. over his weight last week (8 lbs. 5 oz.). Told you all he does is eat.

The bad news: The “diaper rash” he’s had since he got home, pretty much, has not improved. It’s angry red little patches, and I just realized this morning that it’s oozing a bit. I’m sure it hurts like nobody’s business. So, back to the doctor we go, first thing tomorrow morning. Which means that - since we have just the one car - we need to get M. to the station at stupid o’clock in the morning, and then bolt on over to the Dr.’s office. Again.

And I never got my 15 min. in yesterday. Marauding anxieties are starting to pound on the door again; it’s starting to feel very overwhelming, and I’m doubting my ability to finish the thing when I never have five minutes to myself (or when I do, I apparently spend it blogging…).

C. didn’t sleep as well last night, so this is an especially sleep-deprived day. It’s cold, gray, and snowing outside - the kind of weather I like if a nap is somewhere in the offing. If it’s not, it just feels unspeakably dreary.

Things will improve. Just not today.

I’m finding that I’m experiencing most days like some kind of psychotic rollercoaster ride; I vacillate between feeling like I can do anything and that things are well under my control, and feeling like I’m trapped in some kind of unrelenting hell and doing everything possible wrong, wrong, wrong.

I suppose hormones could be partly to blame.  And sleep deprivation - that’s probably a big contributing factor.  But it makes the days a little difficult to get through sometimes.  I’m unreasonably crabby with MM first thing in the morning - partly because “first thing” lately has been 5:15 am, and at that time - at least the last two days - the baby is still sleeping, which means that I could still be sleeping if some people would just stay in bed.  But no.  I could refuse to go take the gate down or something, but she’s getting so short shrift right now anyway that I feel guilty about it.

I’m not sure how well the feeding thing is going; right now, I’m primarily breastfeeding, pumping when he misses a feeding (not very damned often during the day), and - forgive me, breastfeeding purists everywhere - supplementing when I have nothing left and he still thinks he’s staaaaaaaarving to death.  There’s a clear difference between his “I think I’m starving, I need more food” cry and his “I have nothing better to do so I think I’ll try to feed” cry, and when he’s sucked me dry there’s little else I feel like I can do besides supplement.  But because I do, I feel a bit like I’m failing somehow.

(and I have to confess to a little strategic supplementing occasionally; he’s much more likely to get some formula when I’m ready for him to sleep for awhile…bad, bad mommy)

I’m trying not to even think of the diss in any kind of big picture sense; therein lies paralysis.  Just trying to keep my head down and stick to my daily 15…although one of these days I’m going to have to get in touch with my advisor and let her know where things stand.  Since I’ve been promising a chapter draft for well over half a year, I’m not looking forward to this.

Aaaaaaaaaagh.  I’m never going to have my own life again.  I’m never going to sleep again.  I cannot see the forest for the trees.