Things I never though I would say
"Finish your Cheerios before you can have some more salmon..."I need to start logging these silly phrases immediately, instead of trying to remember them until I get around to firing up the computer.
Speaking of salmon, my mother-in-law (who is in her early 70's) seems shocked that I feed my 7.5-mo-daughter all manner of things - avocado, canned salmon (she'd get the fresh stuff if I would bother going to the fish market), bread dipped in olive oil and spices...still toothless but quite adept at gumming soft foods to death, and equipped with industrial-grade pre-teething saliva, she manages to eat everything I give her. Pureed vegetables are so boring.
New semester started yesterday, so I am back to the big juggle again. The next challenge is trying to find short-term child care for a couple of short trips in Feb and April that I have to take for one of my jobs. Damned if you do, damned if you don't: short-term solutions are hard to come by. Seems that if you're not set up in a full-time program, you're up the creek, and I feel like asking friends is imposing. Unappropriately, I also feel like asking grandparents is imposing. My mom is fine with it as long as she has plenty of notice. It's hard to tell with my inlaws, though. Granted, chasing a crawling baby is not easy for 70-somethings. They do have a highchair now, so maybe I should just ask. Or get my husband to ask. They live a lot closer, too (1.5 hours vs. 6 hours.))
I wish that perceptions were easier to change. Many of this world's office workers are not all that bright, even some of the higher-paid ones. I'm finding more and more stay-at-home moms who are well-educated and essentially have put careers on hold to give their kids a good solid start. However, I get the impression that someone with a shirt/tie, paying job is generally perceived as being brighter, and perhaps more of a contributor to society, than a stay-at-home mom. Nothing could be further from the truth, and besides, mothering is a LOT harder than an office job. I just wish I didn't have these ego issues that make it so annoying when someone asks what I do. "Stay at home" seems to imply that I'm dependent and dim. That's my perception of the perception, anyway, and I wish it would go away...
Meanwhile, I need to get the car fixed (engine light is on), and am suffering from a different perception of the perception in that down here in Dixie, I just naturally expect to get lied to by mechanics because I am female. I feel like I need to walk in wearing a t-shirt copy of my PhD diploma. I hope that I'm completely off the mark, but am kind of afraid that I'm right.
I really should quit worrying about what other people think...that's easy most of the time, but not always. Meanwhile, I'm busy trying to keep little Magellan from falling down the stairs before our baby gate arrives and gets installed. She started crawling two days before Christmas, right at 7 months, and is off to the races, also pulling herself up on anything and everything. I'm glad - the older she gets, the easier it gets. She has such bright little eyes that I guess I just assume she's a little adult trapped in a very uncoordinated body. Not true, of course. I was at playgroup yesterday and saw a newborn; while some of the moms were cooing about how it made them want another one, and how they missed their babies being small, all I could think was thank GOD that my daughter is bigger now, and how much I am not looking forward to going back to the sleep-deprived delirium of a new baby when (if!) we go for #2. Nope, 7.5 months is a blast, and while I know that I am capable of doing it all again, it's a load of work and the idea doesn't excite me. Probably more work than writing a dissertation.
posted by Anne Johnson @ 7:36 AM
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