Three (short, unrelated) Thoughts

As part of my maternity leave I negotiated a work – from – home scenario for when I returned after leave.  My work often involves me working alone, on my computer.  Formerly, I was doing this in my office, in dressy work clothes with minimal interaction with others (doesn’t my job sound fabulous?) Now I do it at home, in sweatpants with minimal interaction with others.  This work – from – home scenario has enabled me to keep doing carpool for Lou, sit with her while she has a snack after school, kiss the baby when I want and on a slow day, even make dinner ahead of time. I like being able to do these things, it makes me feel like I can still participate in the little moments in the kids lives and keep our home-life from getting too out of control. The days my work is more intense, that home stuff waits and that’s cool because I know that its just a lower sweatpants  to dress pants ratio for that day or week.

I don’t know that I’ll be able to keep my job when we move in June. I’ve been making every effort to make this work – from – home scenario easy on my boss so the possibility of a work-from – an – out – of – state – home scenario is indeed a possibility.  Even the days where I wish my sweatpants ratio was 100% home and 0% work, in the back of my head I know that’s not the best scenario for me. I need some other, non-family thing to keep me happy.  Today when I emailed out a big project I felt great. I felt proud of what I produced and I felt happy that I could go into the kitchen and make lunch for myself before carpool.  Then, I felt very lucky that I had those two thoughts in tandem.   

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I’ve been trying to find a ballet class for Bea.  I often feel that Bea is such the middle child- overlooked and dragged along.  Not quite old enough for a real social calendar or after school activities but not quite young enough that I need to pay attention to naps or bottles. She really never seems to mind, occasionally she asks “peas, I have playdate?” in her little muppet voice but mostly she’s happy to tag along and enjoy the ride.  I thought ballet would be nice for her.  A good way to get her moving a bit and also something that she would genuinely like (she’s never one to turn down a costume.) But its been so frustrating trying to find a class! There are so many options but I can’t make a single class fit in our schedule! Argh! I hate those people who are “so busy” all the time.  This isn’t really one of those cases, we’re not busy we are just rigidly scheduled.  Bea is in school until 1. Lou has to be picked up at 3. I work in the office on Wednesdays and one other day so there is no car for the nanny those days. I feel like this is life tetris and I can’t get out of this level.

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We send Lou to school with 2 snacks and a lunch. We write his insulin dosage on a post it that lists what is for snack, what is for lunch and how much to dose.  Today the teacher gave the afternoon snack in the morning with the morning dose.  Lou had taken out the wrong snack from his bag and she didn’t pay attention to the list we sent in.  She didn’t realize until the afternoon when she saw him eating the wrong snack. She called but when we were discussing it she blamed it on Lou.  This really gets me upset.  He’s almost 6 and very responsible with his diabetes. However, we write the list FOR HER to read and check.  He is in Kindergarten.  She is not.  I understand that mistakes happen and this isn’t even the first this year. But I need to know that she is paying some modicum of attention to him and what he’s eating.  I would have so much less of an issue if she had owned the mistake. By blaming him, I’m more frustrated with her.