Time Management

I've decided that there is no bigger obstacle, and at the same time, impetus, to effective time management than a baby. I often thought I was busy before, but now it seems like there is always something that needs doing, and not enough time to do it in. My evenings, which used to consist of coming home from work, relaxing, making and having a leisurely dinner with my husband, and chilling out watching TV, now are packed with feeding, bathing, bedtime, and then way more washing of various and sundry items than I ever could have predicted was necessary. Now that Little Man actually does go down to sleep on his own, we have approximately from 8pm to 10:30 (when he wakes up for a feeding, and we go to bed) to do whatever needs doing, but anything we do must be done relatively quietly, and since the kitchen is right next to the bedroom in our apartment, not much can be done in there (where usually the most work needs to be done). Vacuuming has to be done when he is out of the house (he can't stand the noise of it), and any organization of our bedroom, where he also sleeps, is unheard of.

Then there are things like shopping for groceries or cleaning the bathroom that seem to always get rushed or overlooked, and we end up just ordering out for pizza since there's nothing in the house (not good for my attempted weight loss), and a somewhat scummy bathroom (which I'm trying desperately to be better about since Little Man likes to lick the sides of the tub when he takes his bath...)

Suddenly I am feeling a desperate desire for a strict schedule and constant diligence. And I finally understand the seemingly constant frustration of my mother when we were growing up. I come from a family of 7 children, each one messier than the last. I didn't start actually liking things clean and organized until after college, and really not until after I met my now husband. I was always a little OCD about randomly organizing things (I remember one day as a kid when I was supposed to be cleaning the bathroom and I instead spent all morning reorganizing the drawer where we kept things like bandaids and spare toothbrushes -- my mother, while exasperated with me, couldn't really be too angry since I had, in essence, been "cleaning"...) but actually being diligent about cleaning was another matter.

But where do you begin? When is the best time to do all the things you want to do? For now I'm just trying to figure out how to keep the laundry from (literally) piling up everywhere, or how to make sure we have vegetables to eat at every meal, but what about all those other things I want to do? I am not too far behind in making Little Man's 1st year scrapbook, but I haven't even opened the sewing machine my husband got me last Christmas... and then there is work... okay, yes, maybe I try to do a few too many things at once...

I have one friend of a 3 year old who tells me that we are even ahead of the game from where she was with her child at the same time when it comes to adapting from the fairly carefree life of a childless couple to the relative insanity of being first-time-parents. I'm sure I'll figure it out in time -- of course by then we'll probably be having another child, and then there's a whole new set of worries... 

Perspective

I'm tired. Mentally, physically, literally, figuratively, every way possible, I'm tired. Little Man has figured out how to get to sleep pretty much on his own now, but still wakes multiple times a night. In the lab, my project is slowly, slowly moving forward, but I still keep thinking about so many things I'd rather be doing then the tedious benchwork I have ahead of me for the next few weeks. This week has been dark, gloomy, damp, and gray -- the kind of weather that can make your bones ache and your body sag. So, in so many ways I'm tired.

But I had a thought this morning as I plodded up the stairs from the parking lot to my building. This weather reminded me of the Blue Mountains in Australia, and the most perspective-altering vacation I've ever taken. Five years ago, my husband (then still my boyfriend) and I took a trip to Australia for a friend's wedding in which he was Best Man and I was singing. We spent two weeks there, the first week before the wedding in and about Sydney, staying with our friend's parents and in a Sydney hotel, and the second week we took three days to go backpacking in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and then 3 days in the coastal town of Umina where our friend's family had a vacation home. The whole trip was incredible, but the backpacking trip was in many ways life changing. I look back on that trip as being important for testing my limits, and for learning to see the wonder in many things.

It started out like so -- we took the train to a town called Katoomba, where there was a natural monument called The Three Sisters, a hiking trail called the National Pass, and (we were told) plenty of places to camp. We stopped at the information center and asked where we should go. The woman there told us we couldn't just camp anywhere off the trail, like we had thought, but that there was a spot called Ruined Castle on the trail that was a popular backpacker destination. We could camp there, she said, and all we had to do was walk down some stairs down to the bottom of a cliff, where the trail was, and we could easily walk to Ruined Castle in an afternoon. It was about 1pm when we started, so we hoped we could get there by sundown. We found the staircase, called the Giant Staircase, and started our descent.

Now, keep in mind that my husband and I were in only mildly good shape, and this was our first time backpacking. We had loaded our packs with enough food for three days, and water for at least one. They were heavy. and the Giant Staircase consisted of a metal scaffold staircase, straight down, for 1000 ft or over 800 steps. We very very carefully made our way down, but when we got to the bottom, we considered ourselves to be doing pretty good. The path was wide and inviting, and the scenery was lush and green. We walked along the path for a bit, and we passed the train that went up the side of the cliff back into town -- the normal route for tourists wanting to explore the area. We figured we had just a few hours, and we'd be able to set up camp and enjoy a magical night.

After we passed the train, however, the path abruptly changed character. What had been easily wide enough for three people and fairly smooth shrank down to a narrow, rocky, one person trail through plenty of brush. Undeterred, we kept onward, knowing that we had to find two landmarks before we hit Ruined Castle, one called "Landslide" and the other "The Golden Stairs". We kept walking and walking, thinking maybe we found one or the other, but it wasn't until we hit Landslide that we knew we were in trouble.

Landslide was exactly that -- a place where the cliff had slid down into the valley back in 1928. The path, once we got there, went from being a narrow but navigable trail to a boulder climb, marked with the occasional metal pole or painted white arrow. The ground was littered with pebbles, and getting a sure footing became very difficult. The cliff was on the right of us, and on the left a steep descent into a tree-filled valley of unknown depth. We also thought we were in the middle of nowhere, and far from any civilization by this point. Now, I am 5'3", and some of these boulders we had to climb over and then jump off of were easily a few feet high -- so for a short, somewhat clumsy woman carrying 25% more weight than usual, and with a deep fear of falling off of precipices -- this was absolutely wretched. So wretched, in fact, that at one point, I had a breakdown. I sat down, started to cry, and told my husband I just could not go on. I still remember the fear in his eyes as he tried to figure out how the hell he was going to get me out of there. Finally, after much coaxing, he got me to move again, and we made it past landslide, and back to the walking trail.

At that point, I got a second wind, and we marched on swiftly, looking for the Golden Stairs and then on to Runined Castle. But the day's hours were becoming fewer, the light was lessening, and we still had not found the Golden Stairs. Finally, after about 7 hours of hiking we came upon a sign. "Golden Stairs. Ruined Castle, 6 km". We were ready to die. 6 kilometers??? And night approaching. We looked at our map, and found that at the top of Golden Stairs there was a gated road. So we climbed up the cliff -- this time on uneven rock stairs with no real railings, just the occaisional rope at the steep parts -- using up the absolute last of our energy, and got to the top of the cliff. We put up our tent behind a sign on the side of the road, and spent an uneasy night. It was windy, and we thought we were in the middle of nowhere, but we kept seeing a mysterious white van drive by -- and since my mother-in-law had decided to regale us with stories of campers being murdered by the mob after seeing secret activities by accident right before we left... my husband slept with our camping shovel in his hand, ready to bludgeon any invader at a moment's notice.

The next day, we found that what we thought was the middle of nowhere was a commonly used dirt road. People jogged by, walking their dogs, and we found that the mysterious white van was one of potentially many camping vans. At one point as we packed up, a group of tourists came to hike down the Golden Stairs on the way to Ruined Castle. We started walking back to town, and discovered that at the top of cliff where I had my breakdown was a housing development -- if I had yelled loud enough, a whole mess of suburbanites would have heard me. We also discovered that what had taken us 7 hours at the base of the cliff took us two hours on top -- if we had walked to the GOLDEN stairs instead of the GIANT staircase, we would have easily made it to Ruined Castle in an afternoon. We still want to find the woman at that info center...

So the next night, we decided to take it easy, and took the train to a town where there was a designated campground, just a 5 km walk from the train station. Of course, though, that night, it started to rain. And it rained all night. My husband and I were crammed in our tiny two person tent all rainy night. But at least we felt safe, and the next morning, the mist still falling, we saw a beautiful sight.

The mountains where we stayed had hugged the mist to themselves, so it looked as if we were walking above the clouds. We walked back to the train and breathed in the damp air, determined to find a nice dry hostel to stay in for our final night in the Blue Mountains (which is a whole other story), but I remember the dampness seeming not that bad. It felt clean and cool, especially with the promise of a warm bed that night. In retrospect, it seems even more magical, that morning in the mountains. We had survived a crazy ordeal and had made it out better.

Later we looked up the trail in that stretch and found that it was rated "expert" -- pretty much as difficult as you can get without needing special equipment. We were nieve and full of bad information when we attempted it, but that trip gave me a lot of new perspective. I had found my limits and surpassed them. I had felt like I couldn't go on, but I pushed through. And after all that, we found that so many of those percieved dangers were really not -- we had been safe all along, but for lack of knowledge, we feared the worst. And we got through to a beautiful misty morning, and a few days later to a glorious sunrise over the ocean after we reached the vacation house in Umina. Those moments would not have been so beautiful, so glorious, if not for the rough experience the days before.

So now as I look, bleary eyed, out the window to the grey, damp day, and prepare myself for my workday, I think about that morning with very similar weather but in a very different time. What makes this day dreary and that day soothing and magical? Perspective. I was tired then too, but tired with triumph and the promise of good times ahead. If I just shift my perspective just a little, I can remember the feeling of that morning back in the mountains, and suddenly my fatigue doesn't feel so overwhelming.

Am I doing it wrong?

Opinions about parenting seem to bring as much fervor of belief out of their proponents as the most devout religion. Search for advice about things like breastfeeding or sleep, and you get so much different advice, all of which is supposed to be the "right" thing to do. I keep telling myself that as long as I love and care for my son, he's going to grow up just fine. Nurturing is important, but HOW you nurture doesn't seem to have too many measurable effects. But there is a major conflict between the rational, logical scientist, and the emotional, feeling mom in me. So I am frequently left with this feeling that I'm doing everything wrong, even as I try desperately to tell myself that there are so many "right" ways to parent.

Take the sleep thing, for example. My husband slept with his parents for the first two years of his life, and wanted to do the same with our son, but in my family, while (as far as I remember) we were in a crib in my parents room for the first few months of life, we were all taught to sleep on our own much earlier than 2. we both turned out just fine (I think), but if you ask certain people, they would say either his parents or my parents were horrible people for how we were taught to sleep.

I was uncomfortable with the idea of cosleeping because of all I'd heard about the potential for smothering the child in the family bed. We always planned on having him in a crib in our room (partially out of necessity due to the size of our apartment, but we would have done it for the first few months regardless). However, our son did not like to sleep flat on his back. He slept okay in a swing, but we didn't have room for the swing in our bedroom and we turned off the heat and used a space heater at night to save money, so we couldn't really keep him in the livingroom at night. We tried having him in a chair which we placed in the crib, but he woke so frequently that we eventually switched to having him share the bed with us. This presented multiple issues. First, Little Man, while technically a "happy spitter", spat up a LOT. Pretty much anywhere he laid down was destined to be wet within a matter of minutes. Second, my husband and I were so paranoid about smothering him that we ended up sleeping on less than equal thirds of the bed, and I ended up with many nasty back, neck and shoulder aches because of it. Thirdly, Little Man was a very very restless sleeper, and we wondered if part of it was that he was overheating (he tends to run warm) or uncomfortable with our movements.

Finally, after 6 months, we decided to "train" him to sleep in his crib. I read and read and read all the books I could find about how to get a child to sleep better. One common trait among all the books? THEY ALMOST ALL MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY IF YOU CONSIDER ANY OTHER METHOD. Same with the websites. Whether I was looking at no-tears or cry-it-out or something inbetween, every "expert" had found all the supporting evidence they needed to convince you that they were right and everyone else was wrong. Truth is, there are very few actual scientific studies to tell you one thing or another. Most studies out there try to look at cause and effect by what parents tell them they did, which often is not what actually happened. Often unintenionally, parents misreport how they raise their children because most people just can't remember every little detail that could be important in a scientific study. So the results are anecdotal and inconclusive. When I finally found a book I liked, ("Good Night, Sleep Tight") it was because out of everything I had read, the author made me feel the least guilty, and her method just seemed to make sense to me. It is essentially an "inbetween" method -- you place the child in the crib and let them cry a little, but you don't leave them alone. When you're "training" them, you sit with them, talk to them, and wait until they fall asleep before you leave them. My husband and I figured this way he would go to sleep in the crib but still be able to trust that we would be there.

So far (we've gone three nights) Little Man fusses for a bit, usually for less than 10 minutes, but each night his fussing gets less. He is breastfed, and I feel weird about night weaning just yet, so I feed him every three hours and if he wakes up inbetween, my husband goes to soothe him. Some people would say we're horrible for still letting him wake up to eat, some would say we're horrible for not feeding him every time he wakes up. But this is what works for us right now -- and I am not ashamed to admit that feeding him at night alleviates some of my guilt about letting him cry at all. (Which other people would say is horrible). I already miss letting him sleep in my arms, but having the freedom to watch loud TV, work on crafts, or frankly, go to the bathroom without having to worry if he'll wake up, is nice. I have to fight every instict not to go to him and snuggle him when he cries (which still other people would say is terribly wrong) but each night, as he fusses less and less in his crib, I feel like this will work out better for everyone in the long run. My back already feels better, it is nice to be able to cuddle with my husband again, and in opposition to all the cosleeping advocates, I honestly feel my son sleeps better when he can move around and get himself comfortable. He is a long baby and has always liked to stretch, and being in the crib allows him to do so. So it seems to be working.

Why then do I feel like I'm doing something wrong? I don't think it's because I am. I felt like I was doing something wrong when we were cosleeping, and I'd feel even more like I was doing something wrong if we let him cry-it-out. I'd feel like I was doing something wrong if I nightweaned him now, or if I fed him every time he woke up to soothe him. And almost every mom you talk to would tell me that I was doing something wrong if I chose one option or another, and many probably think I'm doing something wrong for trying to live somewhere in the middle. Those few who say "you have to do what works for you and the baby" still have their opinions, and I'm sure secretly think that whatever way that worked for them must be the right way, or of course it wouldn't have worked. Devout Baptists, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Wiccans, all would say that the other is somehow not right, and even agnostics or Unitarians wouldn't be on the spiritual path they are if they didn't have some reason for believing everyone else is wrong. Parenting has it's own religious sects, and many would defend their beliefs as fervently. So I guess I'll always be wrong, no matter what I do. But in some ways I'll always be right. The scientist in me will have to deal with the absolute lack of logic of it all, but maybe the Mom will someday accept that as long as I love Little Man as best I can, no matter what I do will be right. Someday.

Discovery

Poor Little Man is so impatient lately. So many things he wants to do, so hard to do them! He is almost at the point of crawling, rocking on his hands and knees, straightening out his legs underneath him and pushing forward as hard as he can only to belly flop. Wriggling and wiggling so that he goes round in a circle. Always moving, but never forward. So, so frustrating! Add to that the tooth that is through but won't really come in, or the strong desire to feed himself but not the manual dexterity to do it -- there are so many accomplishments a 6 month old desires but just does not have the skills yet to achieve. No wonder he gets angry!

Then there's me -- part of me would love him to get those teeth, move those legs, feed with that spoon -- and part of me is scared s***less about it. I suppose it's the dilemna of every mother. You want your child to achieve great things, but at the same time, you don't want them to grow up. I love my son at this age. Just a few months ago, he was nothing but a little warm doll in my arms, and now he squirms and squeals and laughs and loves with such eagerness. The way he discovers the world is just fascinating to watch. The slow study of everything from the cat's twitching tail to the trees in the wind to the menu at a restaraunt -- everything is wonderful and marvelous in the eyes of a 6 month old. I don't want him to lose that facination with the world, ever. I fear with the passing of time that he might.

I suppose as a scientist, the thrill of discovery is one of the things I prize most about life. In my spiritual life, I also find the journey to spiritual discovery in some ways even better than the discovery itself. I almost fear the passing of time because I don't want the discovery to end. I want to keep learning and not find that I have learned all there is to learn. Having that thrill in learning is one of the most important things I want for my son as well.

I know that discovering the world is something that is continuous and fascinating for years at a young age, and one of the best things about having a child is that you can rediscover the world through their eyes. Watching Little Man struggle to figure out how to get those knees working underneath him is incredible. Watching each step -- first figuring out how to lift his head, then his chest, then his belly, then get up on his knees, now his feet... the slow passing of each skill as it progresses to the next -- is awesome. Everything takes time, but soon he'll have figured it out, and then watch out, world! And watch out everything within arms reach...

Wants and Needs

Last night, Little Man screamed for over an hour when he should have been sleeping. He has never liked sleeping in a crib, and when he was first born, we attributed it to his mild reflux. He slept in a chair, in a swing, and in our arms, but did not want to go in the crib. So we could sleep, he ended up in the bed with us, and there he's been. Now, at 6 months, we are looking at sleep training, but it's just as much for him as us. Little Man cannot figure out how to get himself to sleep. He fusses and wriggles and cries, even when we are right next to him, talking, soothing, singing, touching -- if he's not being held (with me sitting up) he won't go down. And even when he does sleep, it's restless. I'm tired of the bags under his eyes. I'm tired of listening to him cry. Something needs to be done.

Part of the issue I think is that Little Man is at the age when wants and needs begin to differentiate. At birth, babies wants and needs are the same -- feeding, changing, cuddling, sleeping -- all are basic needs. While some people think that cuddling is a want, really it's as much a need as eating -- babies who don't get cuddled and loved don't thrive. It's a scientific fact. But now, at 6 months old, my LM knows the difference, and his wants are not necessairly his needs. He wants to be cuddled all the time, he needs to sleep. He wants to eat every other hour at night, he definitely doesn't need to (being that he has gone as long as 5 hours during the day). Wants and needs are not the same -- or are they?

I think that even as adults, we sometimes have issues differentiating wants and needs. Eastern philosophy is full of ideas about how to differentiate them. Buddhism is about letting go of all "wants" to achieve happiness. Confucianism states that we must want to follow strict rules and order to achieve serenity. In Taoism, if a want is one with the "way" we should not fight it, but if it leads us off of our natural path, then it is to be avoided.  So in some ways, Buddhism states we should differentiate wants and needs clearly and only go for the needs, Confucianism states we should learn to want what is right and orderly, and Taoism states that wants are really not bad as long as they keep us in harmony with nature.

So, back to my sleepless, cuddly son. His wants and needs are becoming separate things, but how to deal with it? Of the above philosophies, I favor Taoism the most, and currently my dear little man is most definitely not in harmony with nature. Since he is incapable of meditating on the Tao te Ching (I figure we have to wait until he can at least hold a book without eating it to work on that one), I must figure out how to apply it for him. Which of his wants are in tune with the Way? Well, since his fussing and crying unless he is being held is in conflict with MY way (I cannot sleep while holding him all night), and for now, my way and his way need to be the same way...

Really, we just need to get the boy to sleep on his own. And when he's older I'll totally weird him out when I explain how I thought about ancient Chinese philosophy when considering how.