Oh yeah sure... it'll be easy

G points out that I "outed" myself as pregnant when I noted here that we'd appreciate toys safe for small infant/toddlers to mouth... so here's what we've been thinking about lately.

G has been worried that this is going to be very very very hard. He is more worried than he was the first time around waiting for Otter. I think this is because, when you have zero kids, you know (and if you don't, EVERYONE, including strangers in restaurants) will tell you that it will be harder and more work than you can imagine. (People actually appear to take great joy in telling you this. But that's a whole separate entry.)

But once you have one kid, you do see how much work a kid is, and now, as we see Otter moving through toddlerhood and we search our sleep-deprviation-dimmed memories of his infanthood, we realize: oh my. Oh my. All that AND a toddler at the same time. (and if you are G, you think: ACK! Help! How on earth will we manage?)

However, if you are me, you think:

hey, what the hell. My dissertation will be done by then, or over, one way or another. I'd rather juggle a baby and a toddler than a dissertation and a toddler.

I'd even prefer the baby plus toddler plus teaching, though I confess I perform all that beautifully when I went back to teaching--first part-time online when Otter was six weeks old, then "fulltime" (not fulltime at campus, but in theory forty hours a week of work) for the school year when Otter was three months old.This time I am praying we can scrape by enough for me to stay out of paid work for three months. (And hey, if any of my readers can somehow bring US maternity/paternity leave into line--or even vague proximity of--the parenting leave policies of the rest of the world, please, feel free!)

I am not sure this is an argument everyone would agree with, but personally I think I prefer the uncertainty and work of parenthood to the uncertainty and work of writing 200 or so pages of stuff that I pray a committee of professors (all non-parents!) will accept as deserving of a doctorate.

Of course, I have only parented one child at a time. Perhaps parenting two will be so radically different that I will realize how woefully wrong I was in my own preferences.

I just can't get all freaked out by it. I have friends and family now who have recently had their second children, and some say: not as hard an adjustment as the first--while others say that two are way more than twice the work.

I end up back where I was when we had Otter:

• I LIKE doing laundry (one of the household chores I somehow find very satisfying),
  
• I am way psyched to re-experience happy relaxing nursing chemicals (which, if you're wondering, GO AWAY when you're pregnant, even if you keep nursing, as I have--but they come back when the baby comes!)
• I like my family and my in-laws, so family visits are a plus
• I cocoon quite well, so not going out much is fairly copacetic by me
• I enjoy the long long long hours (eight plus hours a day!) of nursing a newborn when all you can reasonably be expected to do is sit there and lactate--and if you can figure out how to hold a book or reach the Tv/DVD remote at the same time, no one can call you lazy--at least no one I'd listen to
• I enjoy taking little tiny naps while the baby sleeps.
• I have fabulous daycare for Otter that will continue as long as we can afford it, probably cutting back to part-time for money reasons sometime--thought NOT immediately--after the baby is born
• I have a toddler who thinks helping is fun--helping to hand me towels for folding from the laundry pile and helping by carrying clean cutting boards from the dishwasher to his father to put away, that type of stuff. It's stuff that's not lots of help in getting more things done but is lots of help in prepping for when he gets older and in keeping him occupied while we get things done.
• I have a partner who does TONS at home and is a great cook and who makes me laugh.
• I like small children.
• I think Otter is the coolest toddler in the world today (just as my nephew is the coolest preschooler in the world today). Sorry, but if your kid is cooler than they are, I'm just not objective enough to see it.)
• I love kids' books and kids' music and kids' shows... not the schlock-y Power Rangers ilk, but good quality stuff
• I'm used to my house being a mess (this is KEY: my ability to relax and ignore chaotic domestic clutter; no dust and pile phobia here or I'd already be locked up somewhere industrially lit and disinfected)
  
• I have had disrupted sleep for going on two decades now due to PTSD.

I really believe that my low low standards for my own non-parenting household achievement is key here. All those stay at home moms and dads out there who think they need to have clean and organized homes are just anxiety attacks and guilt fits waiting to happen. If my family and I mostly eat food that is fairly healthy and satisfying and our home isn't actually a biohazard, I feel fairly content--provided, of course, that I have no additional non-domestic professional repsonsibilities.

Which brings me back to that dissertation thing.

I missed my in-laws Mother's Day celebration today (G and Otter went without me), and stayed home and did research for over four straight hours for my dissertation. Now tonight I'll try and write more, then write and read more tomorrow. I should go work now. Bye--

(but I still think a newborn, even with poopy diaper, is a heck of a lot more soothing work than squinting at PDF files of education articles and working to fit them into the lit review chapter of my dissertation.)

You can wait and hear if I'm wrong in August.