Well, That Explains A Lot, Actually

Tags

crankiness, hormones, pregnancy, pregnancy after miscarriage, ttc

So, the day after my stressed-out freak-out (yes, I did thoroughly apologize to the staff member in question) I was back to my normal self. Several people needed me, and I had no complaints about helping them. I even drove over to a friend’s house with husband and son in tow to do some first aid on her pug dog.

The day after that, I learned this:

So, hormones.

That’s good.

 

Mommied-Out, Or, Someone Needs To Grow Up And That Person May Be Me

Today, I’m tired of being a mother.

I’ve always wanted to be a mother. I’ve always looked forward to it. When I was a teenager, I got attached to my Baby Think It Over and didn’t want to give him back to my Family Studies teacher.

I like to be needed.

I like to take care of things.

Even PH’s Quidditch team has voted me their “Quidditch mom.” I already have refreshments ready for practice next week, and I’m going to make sure they’re wearing sunscreen. I may get a shirt.

However, there’s another side to me. I warned PH about it before we got married, but I think he already knew it:

I have a strong need to be cared for.

I am an only child. I like to be doted on, to be spoiled a bit. I like to have someone to lean on. Luckily, PH was always very good at that. He took care of me, I took care of the animals/baby, and it worked.

Over the last year, it hasn’t been working so well. 

Overall, PH has been doing better. He stepped up wonderfully when I was sick, taking over a lot of the parenting while I slept, but it took its toll on him. As my functionality improved, he collapsed into a dip that he’s only just starting to emerge from. When he is in a dip, all of his physical and emotional energy are devoted to staying alive. I become the only functional parent and I still have to work at two jobs. I feel like my entire life from dawn to well after dusk is consumed by the overwhelming needs of others.

Owl needs me to get up in the morning. Owl needs me to play with him. Owl needs me to pull down his pants even though he is perfectly capable of doing it himself but needs the parental care and attention. The house needs me to wash its dishes and sweep its floors and clean its counters and scrub its toilet. Then my dog training clients need me. PH needs my love and support. Then work needs me.

And boy, how does work need me.

I’m not sure what is more demanding, my three year old or my job. In a strange turn of events, this particular workplace perceives me as competent. Since all my workplaces since 2007 had considered me to be a useless waste of space, I find this turnaround both flattering and bewildering. I didn’t mind being asked how to do insanely simple tasks, because it felt so good just to be needed instead of hated.

But with no one to actually take care of ME, I’m crumbling under the weight of it all. I’ve given and given and given until I’m hollow and still more is needed so I’m starting to just hand out pieces of myself and I’m not being gracious about it.

I’m losing my ability to handle it. I resent having to put on Owl’s shoes on the days when he wants me to do it. Sometimes I snap at him and make him do it himself anyway, even though I know that this really isn’t about shoes (Owl is Mr Independent and loves to do things by himself, so if he wants help it’s usually because he’s feeling lonely or insecure in some way, probably because Mommy has turned into a resentful ball of snark).

I’m no better at work.

Don’t know why your user profile has corrupted on your laptop? Neither do I. No, I don’t feel like fixing it for you. I am not an IT person, just someone who knows how to use Google. Google the solution. That’s what I always do. No, I don’t really feel like showing you how to do something that I’ve already shown you three times. I realize that you’re new, but I still don’t have the patience.

Today, I lost it completely.

TuTu Cool For School

Tags

boy, child development, clothing, feminine, feminism, gender, preschooler, three year old, tutu

Every parent I’ve spoken to agrees – the selection for girl clothes is way better than the selection for boy clothes. The girl section is always twice the size of the boy section, and full of adorable pea coats, polka dot dresses, and bluejeans with butterfly embroideries. Meanwhile, the boy section is full of grubby looking t-shirts covered in corporate characters like Batman and Ninja turtles.

I guess Owl agrees, because one day we were trying shorts on him in the store and he looked longingly over to a rack of pink tutus and said wistfully, “Someday… when I’m a girl… I’m going to wear that.”

PH and I exchanged looks. We looked at the price tag of the tutu. Seven dollars.

“We can get that if you want,” I said.

“No, but those are for girls.”

“Yes, they are,” I said. “But you can PRETEND you are a girl. I mean, you wear a fireman suit sometimes, but are you a really a fireman?”

“No! I’m a little boy!”

“Well, you can pretend to be a girl just like you pretend to be a fireman.”

“Okay! Let’s try it on!”

He has never been so excited about a piece of clothing. He carried it proudly to the cashier, and insisted on donning it the moment the transaction went through.

We were pretty amused, and took some pictures, and tried to cherish this moment while it lasted. We got seven dollars worth of cuteness just that night at Montana’s alone, where he did pirouettes for the admiring waitress.

That was months ago.

He STILL loves his tutu.

We won’t let him wear it to school, ostensibly because tutus are dress-up clothes, and it is no more appropriate to wear tutus to school than to show up in his shark costume. The real reason, though, is that there is a boy at his school who is a little punk and would tear him a new one. This charming child introduced words into his vocabulary like “dead” and “kill” and “gun”. The same kid also taught Owl that pink is for girls, among other things. Once I took him to school with his nails painted and he came home and said “Little Punk says that nail polish is FOR GIRLS.”

God knows what would happen if Owl showed up in a tutu.

We’re not just trying to protect Owl’s feelings – we don’t like things like that parroted at him and we’re not going to set up opportunities for him to receive a lecture in gender norms from some four year old peer.

Other than that, he can wear it pretty much anywhere. He wears it to the store and playing around our complex and out to the park. He wore it to a boy’s birthday party, using the logic that birthdays are a dress-up occasion. We couldn’t argue it and so he went. No one teased him. One larger boy did see and point, but Owl didn’t notice. The other three year olds didn’t even blink.

 

He was just another boy… in a tutu.

He even sleeps in it most nights. Last night he didn’t sleep with it, but he must have put it on first thing in the morning because he was wearing it when he crawled into bed with me this morning, saying “I’m pretty now, Mom! I’m VERY PRETTY.”

We don’t know if this is a phase or not. We used to think so, when he was a baby. It was his love of pretty dresses that turned me into a feminist. We thought he’d outgrow it once he understood about gender. Now we aren’t so sure. He spotted a doll in PH’s study and wanted red lips like her, so I came home to find him wearing lipstick.

For the most part, he seems all boy. He likes to pretend he’s a super hero who fights bad guys. He likes to shoot things, and destroy things, and he has the restless energy of a male child. But he really likes to do these things while wearing a pink tutu.

Maybe these are the sort of passing inclinations that all children have, and PH and I have seen more of it because we don’t discourage it. Maybe other boys admire tutus and their parents just nod and keep walking, which is what we almost did.

Or maybe he’s a cross dresser. Or maybe he’s a trans girl (although I don’t think so, his mind is still pretty masculine). Or maybe he’s gay. Or maybe he’s just Owl, an active boy in a tutu, like Puck in the performance of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream that PH and I attended recently.

Will this be Owl in twenty years?

We don’t care.

Maybe he will grow out of this and then be humiliated by all of these photos of him in a tutu. If so, we’re going to have a word with him, and try to explain that admiring the feminine is not a shameful thing. If a girl can admire the masculine and play with tools, what’s wrong with a boy admiring the feminine and playing ballerina?

That’s the part that I don’t want him to outgrow. I want him to always know that it is okay to be whoever he wants to be.

As long as the Little Punks of the world don’t wreck it too much for him.