American Idol 2010 -- not a mom

How bad does it sound to say that because she is a mom, I'm glad Crystal Bowersox didn't win American Idol? That's not completely true. I just wondered how bad it would sound to say it.

Make no mistake, I was and am a Crystal fan. I think she's amazingly talented, so damn centered, and really someone I would love to have a beer with (metaphorically anyway. My best drinking days days were winding down when she was still a preschooler). But I'm kind of relieved for her that she didn't win, the same way I was relieved for Adam Lambert. As Lisa deMoraes of the Washington Post put it this article, Crystal "escapes the whole 'American Idol' beauty pageant syndrome -- shilling for Ford, etc." She will still go out on the summer concert and have the backing of the AI machine, but there's a bunch of stuff she won't have to do since she's not the winner. For someone as clear about who she is as Crystal (same goes for Adam Lambert), I think it sounds like a relief to have a lighter load of product endorsements and the like, especially since she's got a young son.

I don't think her career or her ego needed for her to win, and it sounds like she agrees from the "don't cry for me" comments she made after Lee Dewyze won the competition.

Read the rest of this entry at DC Metro Moms Blog.

The call to simplify...

A friend sent this piece by Ann Patchett as inspiration for taking oneself seriously as a writer. I love it and did find inspiration in it, but I also found it rather divorced from the world of being an at-home mother.

Additionally, I am someone who seriously needs to spend a good bit of time on meal preparation -- and on exercise and/or yoga, and at least one bodywork appointment per month, if not more -- or everything else falls apart. I know that I need a lot of components to be running on all cylinders. If I ignore one thing -- sleep, or healthy food, or exercise, or acupuncture/chiropractic/craniosacral work -- for a month, I spend the next 6 weeks or more playing some kind of catch up.

My feeling is often that there just isn't enough time -- not to do all the things I "have" to do, but to do all the things I want and feel like I need to do to feel alive and with both feet on the ground and my hands pressed together reaching for a star. It's like there's a Top 40 of needs in my world, not just one or three things that can demand my laser focus.

I know there are ways I can cut down on some things. Blogging for instance. But the work (to upgrade/combine/streamline) seems so much more daunting than just plodding along (which has some personal rewards, or I wouldn't do it). Shifting toward a new momentum is where I need some motivation, a coach, the decision to make something a priority. But I don't think working on writing presence/business development is going to help me fit more writing hours in the day anytime soon (as the article discusses). So the goals seem to be at odds. Would that I'd quit teaching and started freelancing before I became a mother!

The multiple strands in multiple directions are not doing wonders for my sleep or centeredness, especially as long as I keep acting like I rue them.

I am resolving nothing for the new year other than to try to be kind to myself and to be in the moment in whatever I'm doing -- even if I've got multiple things going, I'd like to stop making that wrong and just play with the complexity, which is, I recently realized, something I do truly value for its own sake.

Sleep + run - child = better mood

My poor kid. He can't do anything right these days as far as I'm concerned. I have been working with a very short wick, even though I'm sure it's completely developmentally appropriate that he whine all the time, fall into tears when the mango isn't ready and rush to assure me "I'm not tired anymore" when I suggest rest to his whine of "I'm tired!" (Just in case it's a bigger issue, I got him a craniosacral session yesterday.)

I just can't put up with all this 3.5-year stuff very well because I just cannot get a break from him. Days that start at 6:30 and end at 7:30 with no nap or other help are just too much for this partially-introverted and wanna-be working-at-home mama.

Waldorf school starts next week. I'm counting the minutes. That sounds terrible, but with each passing day I feel more and more secure that I could never handle it as a homeschooler. I really hope it all goes well and that he transitions without incident from the big morning program to the small afternoon program where, I hope, he might actually learn to rest and recharge, which he has clearly not learned from me.

Thankfully, today I have him with a sitter so I can address some Holistic Moms work and so many other things I haven't been able to get to unless I use the dreaded TV (which I think is awful for his brain, but clearly is not the reason he stopped napping a year ago because he didn't even know TV existed back then. I cannot believe it has been a year since I could not count on naps. No wonder I'm fried).

Last night, my husband had to work late again, so I was on bedtime duty, which is normally a daddy thing. I had a flashback to earlier days: I fell asleep while putting my son to bed. I woke up at 7:40 in a pretty grumpy mood, not at all geared up for the chat my husband and I had actually (amazingly!) scheduled to talk about marriage stuff. So I called my husband, who was still 15 min. away and told him I was going to bed. Before 8:00.

I didn't drift off immediately, but close enough. I slept through the night, and you'd think I'd have popped up at 5 a.m. But instead I was still wanting to doze when little E crawled into our bed and started trying to feel me up. Without my post-bed checking in on work and friends the previous night, I felt like in fact I'd had no break from my son.

But the sleep did do me a lot of good, and it worked out that my husband could drive the boy to the babysitter for my one day of help (watch the minutes tick by while I write!). With the extra time, I felt like I could really go running. On a cool fall morning. It was fabulous. Then I came home and juiced and meditated. What a day before 10 a.m.

Now it's time to head back to other pressing matters on the computer, but I feel a lot better and hope that after a day with other kids (and quiet time, if we're lucky) my son will be happy and refreshed ... and that after a day without him, I'll be able to handle it even if he's not.

Homebody for a Day

I did not leave the house today except to pick up the newspaper from the sidewalk. And this is not because anyone was sick.

I had four hours of childcare and then an extended quiet time with my son (after lunch) of a puzzle and nursing followed by cooking and baking and him looking at photos on the computer while I answered some email. With the exception of the dependence on technology, I think this is something like what I envisioned of life as a SAHM. But it was only the dreary, cold weather that kept me from running to the grocery store or the library or taking the kid to the gym so I could go to yoga -- or from playing tag-team parent and leaving as soon as my husband got home to attend an International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) meeting (it's been a long time since I've gone, and my membership is overdue). Normally I feel like the kid and I both need to get out at least once a day. At least he'd had his friend and the sitter to play with.

But today it felt nice to just put on my fleece pants and settle into my home (especially since I used the first 40 minutes of the childcare to clean the main level so it's not quite so challenging to inhabit). Then, after my son went to bed (8:00; I'm sure it could have been earlier if we'd rushed through dinner or not all eaten together), I got today's roll recipe up on my other blog and then did some yoga while half-watching Tivo'd episodes of "The Office" from last month and a few minutes of American Idol. I don't like to waste a lot of time on TV, and we do have a Netflix of "Freaks and Geeks" to finish, but it was nice to not have a major agenda of meeting, tutoring, volunteer work, a home project or a Marriage Conversation to address. It seems like there's always something I want to accomplish and, while one could argue that I was multitasking all night until my husband went to bed (when I blogged about my day with my boy), there's something nice about just hanging out in your living room, especially when it's not because your kid won't sleep anywhere but on you.

So even though one energy worker told me recently that our new satellite dish and its electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are part of what caused my son to get ill (and I do intend to spend some serious research time on that soon), I went ahead and enjoyed the small window I have into mainstream America via NBC, and I even sat with my laptop on my lap.

I do have a headache, though. I'll do a little more yoga before I go to bed to detox.

"C'mon, Mom."

I got called out by my son today. Next Tuesday he will turn 35 months old.

After weeks of lost childcare due to snow and sickness, I was finally trying to finish preparing a mailing with just the last few loose ends to be tied up in my son's presence. As I addressed the remaining envelopes, the little dude kept inching closer to me. I was copying addresses from my laptop screen, and he wanted to be near both me and that glorious, glowing light hovering above the sticky-from-fingers (and all-enticing) keys. ("I like the arrow keys," he said, knowing they are what he can use to see images on Picasa).

I asked him to move away a little, to back up, because it was hard for me to write with him on me. Perched on my knees, I kept scooting just a little bit away from his toddler breath and paws. Standing next to me, his chin at my shoulders, he stepped in to fill each small space. I asked him not to, fully understanding that he wanted to be near this project that seemed so important to his mama, whom he wanted to believe thought he was all-important.

At first when I protested about his causing me a challenge, I got the most recent catch-all response: "Why?" But then, after a pause, when I said again, "Please. It's hard for me to write when you're so close to me," he replied, eyes peering into my soul, "No, it's not. C'mon, Mom."

Get a grip. You can't be serious. Oh, please. He's heard those implications in my husband's voice and in mine, and now he has made them his own, with our words and tone. "C'mon."

Though it was a annoying to have him hovering, he's right: it wasn't worth getting worked up over. I keep saying he's "almost three," but he's still technically a two-year-old. How much patience can I really expect out of someone so small? He'd already "helped" me close some envelopes, put paper in and out of the printer and was not wreaking any real havoc. He just wanted to be close to me. What could I really complain about? Come on, Mom.

Finding My Tribe - Holistic Moms Conference

This weekend I attended the Holistic Moms Network national conference. Just like at the Green Festival, I had a hard time restraining myself against free stuff (some swag in a bag, some free magazines -- won't someone else just have to lug them back?) and against buying stuff (pictured in the second photo). Better to support WAHMs and independently-owned businesses than not, right? The irony of accummulating more and more is not lost on me, even as I hand over my credit card.

Some stuff I bought for friends, and other items and books I intend to review in coming weeks here or on my holistic health-minded blog, Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families.

I hope to write more about what I learned at the conference in the future. The short version is that it was definitely nice to feel like I was at home in my style of mothering, though without my son there with me and without a plan for another baby in the near future (don't think my body or my mind is ready yet), some of it did feel a bit of another era, especially all the babywearing and birth stuff.

But then there were also moms who had young ones and were there with their own businesses, making me feel like a loser that I'm kind of just coming up for air and starting to enter the world of writing and working. And yet, a few folks did remark on the distance I came, so perhaps I should give myself credit for the fact that I drove five hours and left my son with my sister for the day to get to the conference. (He had a blast, by the way).

My arms are getting a little tired from the pull, on one hand, to work and, on the other to be a calm, intentionally-living SAHM.