Before Ava, After Ava

Before having Ava, I wondered how parents did what they did, that is, when I thought about it at all. I really agree with Anne Lamott when she said she thought having a baby would be more like having a cat.

Now that my life includes Ava, I tell myself a few dozen times a day that I am a good mom, that it's going to be okay if she eats one cookie as long as she doesn't eat them all the time and that one cookie isn't going to cause ADHD, and even though I haven't given her a bath in four days, nobody can tell.

I just deal, somehow, and I'm really, really grateful I don't have access to firearms when I'm angry because my anger got 5000% more intense during my second trimester and hasn't stopped yet.

Then Ava falls asleep and the whole house goes quiet and for two seconds I can vaguely recollect my life before her when it I thought it was pretty full, but if Ava monkey-scooted out the door to the nearest living relative for good, there would be a big gaping hole where she used to be and I know I would stare at her crib for hours, thinking what am I going to feed her for dinner?

Still employed, not looking

I just created a very long, hopefully interesting post, but when I went to spell check it, all of the words disappeared. I suppose that's why I only trust my first drafts of stories to paper.

Long posting short...

I didn't quit my job, and I'm keeping the one I have for at least 3 months. I had a great lunch with the owner of our 12 person company and he listened to me. I felt valued, important, and part of the team. It's not in the city, but good enough for me, for now.

Ultimate luxury & recipe for a new job

My favorite inexpensive luxury is getting a pedicure, but I have a new one that's got that beat. It's when I wake up before Ava, and get to lie in bed and wake up slowly in the silence. This morning I woke at 6:15, heard Ava make one short AGH sort of noise, but she's not awake yet. I waited as long as I could in bed to go to the bathroom, and didn't flush on the chance I might wake her.

Precious moments, sandwiched between time when things are demanded of me. Now Unagi is staring at me, wondering about breakfast, but at least she's not making all kinds of noise yet either.

I'm facing a dilemma currently. I work in a job that I sort-of like that is about 30 miles away. I hate the commute, now that I think about it, I really hate driving to work. I'm a public transit girl and love taking BART or MUNI to get places when I can. I have been at this job for 3 months now, it's my first "real" job since I had Ava and even that it's only 3 days a week. When friends ask me how the job is going, I can't find much good to say about it. I don't hate the job, really, and we have a great team of techies. I just don't love my job. I'm spoiled too, because for three years starting in 1998 I did love my job (it was a company that built dot-coms and I was one of the last on the boat to get laid off out of 1000 people).

I don't have hopes that a new job would top the job I had in 1998, but when I got this job I have currently, I really doubted myself. I had been out of the industry for a year while I was taking care of my newborn. My confidence was shot.

Not to blow my own horn, because heaven forbid the deities of humility would have me hunted and shot, but I am valuable. I'm really good at what I do. I don't know everything when it comes to computers, but after 10 years of doing internal IT, managing WANs for the State, designing & implementing the infrastructure for seven start-up web businesses in the last six years, and now back in the world of outsourced IT, what I don't know, I can figure out.

So I'm starting a slow search for a job I either love, or like a whole lot better. Here's the list of what I want in this new job:

> My new job is in San Francisco. I can take BART or MUNI to work.
> I work with a great, energetic team
> It is either an IT Manager role or there is a clear path to being an IT Manager/CTO
> It is part time, 24 to 30 hours a week. I have one or two weekdays off with Ava.
> I work from home some days or afternoons.
> I am paid a salary and it is direct deposited into my bank account.
> My annual salary is $X5 for 24 hours/week, $Y5 for 30 hours/week
> Management is open and communicative. I know what is going on with the company. I trust upper management.
> I start with 3 weeks vacation a year. I get health, dental, and vision benefits paid for me, affordable for my family.
> I can wear jeans to work.
> I do all my work for the same company that employs me.
(I'm tired of the consulting stuff where I work on five customer networks in the same day.)
> Ideally for a web business startup with about 20 employees
> Anything else fabulous that I would love

> I am willing to do this kind of work:
> IT Operations: Windows 2003/2000 server support, Exchange 2003 support, Desktop/Laptop support (Win XP, Mac if needed), Phones if I can be taught by someone else first, cabling as needed.
> Web Business infrastructure support: work in co-location facility, design and implement highly available infrastructure using Unix (pref Linux, FreeBSD, or Solaris), or Windows if we must
> Monitoring and management of web infrastructure
> I make a great interpreter to translate technical jargon to management, and also between the world of Unix and Windows.
> Work with applications architect to implement applications on web infrastructure
> Anything better or more amenable that I haven't thought of yet!

Whew! Part of me thinks I'm asking too much. The other part of me is telling that part to shut up and wait and see and enjoy these last few moments before Ava wakes up.

This is how writers begin

I'm quite amused that Ava has figured out that if she has a pen it will make marks on the paper. I also think she might be right handed.

Julie Day Plus Ava

Back in the days before Ava, I used to take semi-regular Julie days that were sort of like artist dates from the Artist's Way. A lot of times this would be to get myself unblocked or unstuck - as Ann Lamott writes in Bird by Bird - when a writer can't write they're not blocked, they're empty, go get yourself full.

So what usually fills me is to go somewhere, by plane, train, bus, or automobile. Once I took a train up to Oregon and then drove up to Washington. Often I'd get on a bus in the city going anywhere and keep bus-hopping until half the day was gone. After my Africa trip, I wasn't quite ready for reality yet so I got up jet-lagged early and drove up to Pt. Reyes.

For this trip, I consulted yahoo maps to figure out where I could go within a couple hours. Somehow I ended up choosing Pinnacles national monument. I packed the car with everything for an overnight stay, just in case, and the robust Ava-backpack and we hit the road.

The one thing quite different about Julie Days vs. Julie and Ava days are that previously there was minimal crying involved. This does take some getting used to.

Something in the slow meandering road through the dried out yellow hills of central California calmed me down. My brain started going slower, and all those angry thoughts started to become less critical, less vital.

Ava and I made friends with a nice man and his nine year old daughter at the start of the trail and ended up hiking just over two miles round trip while managing to only slightly get lost. I'm still amazed I managed to carry the 25 0r 30 pound Ava+pack up hills, through caves, up narrow rock stairs & back down. Ava loved it, no surprise, and even tried to touch the rocks whenever possible. She babbled most of the way in her happy baby babbling talk saying things that make perfect sense to her, but to me sound like ba-ba-da-gee-gee-gee with the occasional uh-oh to really throw me off.

When we finished the hike our new friend said he thought I was courageous for doing the hike with Ava. Desperation breeds courage, and I was desperate to get out of town and see something new and unfamiliar, if only for a day.

Okay

I want to believe for just 5 minutes that I am okay just as I am.

Are you sleeping, little one?

I seem to squish everything I need to do that requires more than thirty seconds of concentration into Ava's naps. Ava's naps, of course, are not predictable in any sense, except that there is at least one a day, sometimes two, and they can arrive anywhere in between 10AM and 4PM.

The other toddlers in our playgroup seem to have predictable naps, but even when I was at home full time with Ava, her naps were never predictable.

It's always a mystery how she'll go to sleep. In the day she falls asleep in the car if she's tired and I've become an experienced transporter in moving her from car to crib without waking her up. The biggest thing is to go slow and make no sudden movements.

Night sleep is always interesting. I've never been a "cry it out" kind of Mom, that is, I can't really let her cry in her crib for more than 5 minutes without coming to her rescue. Before I was breaking her from nursing, and then from the bottle, she used to crash from those. With the bottle I could lay her down at say 7 or 8PM, hand her a bottle, and she'd drink it and crash. No fuss, most nights. But now, I try not to give her a bottle because she's 14 months old and according to doctors who say they know their stuff, that's time to quit the bottle habit. So the question became, how to get her to sleep. Some nights, I rock her while saying the words to Goodnight Moon, because after reading that book only five hundred times, I have it entirely memorized. Sometimes the pacifier is, well, pacifying, but lately we've been trying to break that habit too.

Some nights I just let her stay up until she starts to rub her eyes or fall into a pillow on the ground and struggle like a drunk person to get up. This happened around 9PM last Saturday (daylight savings curse) and I actually laid her down in her crib, promising to come check on her in a few minutes, and wouldn't you know it, my little darling rolled over and went to sleep.

I would pay good money to have all nights go that smoothly.

Cupboard fun

I believe one cupboard should be a "yes" in the toddler world of "no"

Nothing but change

My life has shifted dramatically since my last posting in 2002. First, there was T. He showed up at my front door in 2002, shortly after I returned from Africa. Last year, along came Ava, our daughter who turned one in April and is above in tiger stripe pajamas.

Lately though, I've been feeling like I've lost myself. I've been foraging for bits and pieces of who I used to be before I became a Mom, when my focus was entirely and solely on me. I used to spend my time writing much, working as a computer engineer just enough to pay bills without emptying my savings, and travelling whenever the opportunity showed up. Now I'm learning about being a partner and sorting out our varying styles of raising our daughter.

And I'm trying to get my writing voice back and journaling on paper just isn't cutting it.