First Annual Bring Your Ironman To Work Day

We dropped off Zane at the daycare, and then I dropped off Larry at his school. I got into the car and looked back. There he sat, looking back at me: Ironman.



I felt kind of bad for a few moments, since he rode a good 30 minutes in the car not safely restrained. Then I thought that perhaps the fact that he's Ironman would render him impervious to most automobile crashes. I decided to take him with me. To work. I've always wanted a lackey.



We had a brief discussion over who got the comfy chair, which I won, and then I put Ironman to work. Or rather, I tried to. He flat-out refused to go and get me coffee. He just stood there. I felt that this was certainly not the proper way for a lackey to behave.



Ironman apparently has an extreme aversion to filling out forms, which I found odd for a bazillionaire. It was probably some paper cut related trauma. I can totally understand that. That's why I hate filling out forms, too.



Ironman's spelling is atrocious! Hadn't he ever heard of spellchecking? Ironman responded that he was a physicist, not a dictionary. I told him to stop channelling Leonard McCoy from Star Trek.



Ironman was as bad at speaking on the phone as I am. I can't tell you how many people he 'accidentally' hung up on(Sorry, Mom!)! This was very frustrating, as I had such high hopes for our office relationship. However, toward the end of the day, I did find one thing that Ironman could do in my office that really came in handy.



He was a great pen holder.

Family is an Awesome Thing

One of the biggest issues that a working mom faces is what to do when your child gets sick. On the one hand, the ever present desire of your heart is to look after the welfare of your child. On the other hand, working women have a duty to their employer to show up to complete the work they were hired to do. And on the third hand, there's the paycheck. The paycheck that can make a huge difference if it is not there on billpaying day.

I once told my husband that he needed to become a famous person so he could support me in the lifestyle to which I could become accustomed, he apparently did not believe me. So we both work at this point in our lives, and it will be that way for awhile. When our beautiful little big boy is sick, one of us is more than willing to stay at home with him.

Except...when I have federal deadlines to meet, kids to test, important parent meetings to attend, lesson plans to create, writing projects to present, and workshops. Then it's not so easy to decide to stay home with a sick child. Larry usually ends up staying home, because he, at one point, had more sick days than I did. But it is getting close to the Imaginary Time, as I call it, when all of the school children will suddenly and magically learn to read fluently and write coherently for the flagrantly worshipped idol called TAKS. So now his days are limited as much as mine. We live in Converse, but carpool to New Braunfels. Sometimes we work late, for various reasons. Sometimes,as painful as it feels, we just cannot drop everything and leave to go pick up Zane.

Yet just as we have been gifted with the most miraculous child, we have been gifted with the blessing of family. My family is not very chatty. We don't talk a lot on the phone. We do try to eat lunch together every Sunday, although I don't get to pay as much attention as I would like because I have to pay attention to Zane around sharp knives and forks. My husband marvels at how little I seem to communicate with my family, and I marvel at his seemingly constant communication with his mother. (when we first started dating, Larry was on the phone with his mother at least 7 times a day. I am not kidding.)

But here's the thing: whether I talk to my parents or my brother five times a day or never, they are there for me when I need them. My sister-in-law spent two years taking care of Zane for us because he wasn't supposed to be at a daycare. Denise did this cheerfully on most days, and Zane thrived. He still talks about going to 'Auntie's house'.

On Friday, when the daycare called and asked us to come pick up Zane because he was ill, Denise went and picked him up. Then my parents picked him up from her house and took him to our house and played with him until we were able to get home. Today, Denise is going to be taking care of Zane(once again, he's got the runs, so no daycare). If my parents finish their appointments early(my dad has a CT scan to check for any cancer, they are going to go and get Zane and take him home and will watch him until we are able to get there. Occasionally, when we have to work late, Larry's mother will go and pick up Zane from daycare and take him home and wait for us.

I think that it doesn't so much take a village to raise a child as it does a family. Parenting is such an extreme sport that you never know what is going to happen. I am grateful that Zane has such loving and wonderful people in his family to help raise him up to be a good man. His Mama and Daddy sure do need and appreciate the help!

A SAHM I Will Never Be...

My mother was a stay-at-home-mom. My dad worked three jobs at one point while he was earning his masters degree, but my mom did not work outside the house. Even after my brother and I were in school, my mom stayed at home. That will never be me. I love my son, but I was never cut out for the hausfrau life.

For one thing, I am a terrible housekeeper. I start one cleaning task, only to see three more than need to be done. Or I start a job and then get distracted by something and forget to finish. Or I decide to clean out a closet and then spend all day going through every single box and traveling down memory lane instead of tossing things out. I doubt that this would improve if I were at home. In fact, it would likely get worse.

Second, I am barely a passable cook. After two or three horrific adventures as a child, my mother essentially banned me from using her kitchen(to be fair, she never was able to get those stains off of the ceiling). I can follow a recipe, but any attempt on my part to deviate from the plan usually results in a less than palatable meal that my husband refuses to even fake eat. Maybe my culinary skills would improve if I were to devote more time to them, but who needs that kind of pressure, especially with a very active child underfoot?

Third, I know myself very well, and I know that if left to my own devices, I would curl up somewhere with a good book and forget about most things. When I am engrossed in reading, I tend to hear nothing and see nothing around me. This is not a good idea with a three year old boy who likes to climb as high as possible and jump off into the stratosphere. And I have to face it, Zane is an extremely active, inquisitive child who needs consistent structure from someone much younger, more active, and less distractible than me.

No, the reality is that I wasn't meant to be a stay-at-home-mom. At the end of the day, I don't do well with too much time on my hands; after my miscarriage in 2003, the deep dark pit of despair I fell into was made much, much, worse by the fact that I really had nothing to do for an entire month before I could go back to work. I unabashedly admit that I live entirely too much in my head most of the time, and time at home would not help. Being at work gets me thinking about other things that are not me and my little troubles. So while I admire those who choose to stay at home with their little ones, and occasionally wish I could spend more time with Zane, I am more than happy to work.