Must.
It is quiet right now in my home, all the boys are still sleeping. It's rare that I get a chance like this in the early morning to be alone and have silence.
I have (to be honest) been avoiding journaling for some time, although I know that it's not necessarily the best for me, mentally. Journaling has always been the way for me to document the ups and downs, the milestones I've made and now that the kids are making, my thoughts and reactions to this world that we live in... and for so long I've been frozen-- thinking but unable to write, or wanting to write but afraid that my words would be insufficient or misunderstood.
Some of it stems from Ferguson, and now the Eric Garner protests. I have been dismayed, miserable, watching the outcomes of these grand jury investigations and the subsequent protests. I have felt helpless, powerless to do anything meaningful to help as a white, upper middle class woman with a, yes-- privileged -- life whose problems are in no way relatable to those suffered by people of color on a daily basis.
One of my friends from graduate school is constantly posting on Facebook articles and commentaries, rallying people to stand and support or, at the very minimum, do something other than post ugly Christmas sweater photos... and it makes me feel as though I shouldn't post anything trivial while such enormous events are taking place, yet having nothing of value to add to the dialogue. I'm reading and reading and trying to rip off my rose-colored glasses to see the world as other do. It's hard and makes me feel ashamed and locked in stasis against doing anything.
Some of it stems from being frustrated at work with students and fellow faculty/staff for issues that strike me as morally wrong but I can do nothing about. Or rather, I could, but I would be a snarky bitch and it would probably come back to hurt me in the long run. So I'm trying to stay quiet online, not to create a record of what's going on so that I can move through and past and eventually look back on this without the details slamming me in the face every time I scroll back through old entries.
Reading through the entries leading up to my thesis defense (the whole 2010-2011 academic year, actually) is like being plunged right back into the tension and drama and stress that our entire family was steeped in. It's almost traumatic, and although I am glad that I have these records to remind me of a turning point in my life, sometimes I almost wish I hadn't written quite so vividly. But I suppose I'll miss or regret not having a record of this fall, so I should just get over myself and start writing again.
Some of it stems from October and November being absolutely hellish in both work and personal life. These are usually the two hardest months of the semester for me and it's go-go-go all the time which is exhausting. This semester was made doubly hard because I was ill for most of it. Feeling sick all the time really saps your energy and energy is something one desperately needs when trying to promote student enthusiasm for learning on a particular topic. I was cranky and tired and sick.
And pregnant.
We're expecting an addition to our family in late May-early June. The first trimester was the worst that I've ever experienced, worse than anything I've had with either boy. I was afraid for a time that there would be two little floating fetuses in there because of how sick I was feeling, but an early ultrasound showed only one.
We are happy. Jake is done (done!) with having any more children and relishes the fact that this is our last. Ben is excited to be a big brother again and desperately wants a sister so he can name her Violet. He also speaks of wanting an older sister and is confused with us when we tell him that's impossible (unless we pursue adoption at a later time). Leo is sometimes ambivalent about a new baby, sometimes excited, and was adamant about wanting another boy until this morning when he spoke about having a baby sister and next year needing help to keep her from opening his Christmas presents.
Leo's going through a kick where he likes to imagine that he's Elsa from Frozen, mostly due to the fact that she has ice powers and all the little girls at daycare want to play Elsa all the time. This morning he wants to name the baby Elsa. I'm not really concerned about his gender-bending that's going on right now because well... I'm not and it doesn't matter at all who Leo is and it's not really up to me to decide how he should feel about his gender and also because he's very firmly in love with being a "boy" who gets to have short hair and pees standing up. So he's exploring and that's good, using his imagination and that's good, and is a normal three-year old with all the "three-nager" stuff that comes with it.
Ben is finally adjusting to school life, as much as that probably represents a repression in his innate personality quirks. He's learned that in order to have a "good day" he needs to sit still at his desk and not wiggle at circle time and that he needs to focus and attend the teacher when given instructions. I wish that this could have been a more gentle process for him but he seems to be doing ok. We are on tenuous ground with the teacher now (and grateful that her student teacher has finished up... On a tangent, why in the world would a teacher who is going through a rough patch in her personal life (father dying), with a class that's problematic for her to control, accept a student teacher who is going to further take away from the teacher's ability to interact with the classroom?!?).
Ben's had his good and bad days, which we understand will happen. He's learning to recognize small "sight" words now like the, at, in, like, you and we're working on him pointing those out to us when we read bedtime stories. He's also getting really good at sounding out words, although he gets frustrated when he has to work longer than 2.7 seconds at it so we take it a few at a time.
Jake had his two choir concerts these past weeks (first 6th grade and then 7/8th grade combined). After his 7/8 concert he stopped by a local convenience store to pick up some eggs for the house and walked in on a mini-Duck Dynasty convention in all his 6'8" majesty wearing a tuxedo with his music note bow tie. Cue the sounds of a record skipping, glass breaking, and ... silence. "What the fuck?" was whispered not-so-quietly.
Hilarious.
Ok, so this has taken a couple hours broken up because as soon as I wrote "everyone is sleeping" they woke in stages and needed breakfast, cuddles, iPad, my computer... Time to go.
I have (to be honest) been avoiding journaling for some time, although I know that it's not necessarily the best for me, mentally. Journaling has always been the way for me to document the ups and downs, the milestones I've made and now that the kids are making, my thoughts and reactions to this world that we live in... and for so long I've been frozen-- thinking but unable to write, or wanting to write but afraid that my words would be insufficient or misunderstood.
Some of it stems from Ferguson, and now the Eric Garner protests. I have been dismayed, miserable, watching the outcomes of these grand jury investigations and the subsequent protests. I have felt helpless, powerless to do anything meaningful to help as a white, upper middle class woman with a, yes-- privileged -- life whose problems are in no way relatable to those suffered by people of color on a daily basis.
One of my friends from graduate school is constantly posting on Facebook articles and commentaries, rallying people to stand and support or, at the very minimum, do something other than post ugly Christmas sweater photos... and it makes me feel as though I shouldn't post anything trivial while such enormous events are taking place, yet having nothing of value to add to the dialogue. I'm reading and reading and trying to rip off my rose-colored glasses to see the world as other do. It's hard and makes me feel ashamed and locked in stasis against doing anything.
Some of it stems from being frustrated at work with students and fellow faculty/staff for issues that strike me as morally wrong but I can do nothing about. Or rather, I could, but I would be a snarky bitch and it would probably come back to hurt me in the long run. So I'm trying to stay quiet online, not to create a record of what's going on so that I can move through and past and eventually look back on this without the details slamming me in the face every time I scroll back through old entries.
Reading through the entries leading up to my thesis defense (the whole 2010-2011 academic year, actually) is like being plunged right back into the tension and drama and stress that our entire family was steeped in. It's almost traumatic, and although I am glad that I have these records to remind me of a turning point in my life, sometimes I almost wish I hadn't written quite so vividly. But I suppose I'll miss or regret not having a record of this fall, so I should just get over myself and start writing again.
Some of it stems from October and November being absolutely hellish in both work and personal life. These are usually the two hardest months of the semester for me and it's go-go-go all the time which is exhausting. This semester was made doubly hard because I was ill for most of it. Feeling sick all the time really saps your energy and energy is something one desperately needs when trying to promote student enthusiasm for learning on a particular topic. I was cranky and tired and sick.
And pregnant.
We're expecting an addition to our family in late May-early June. The first trimester was the worst that I've ever experienced, worse than anything I've had with either boy. I was afraid for a time that there would be two little floating fetuses in there because of how sick I was feeling, but an early ultrasound showed only one.
We are happy. Jake is done (done!) with having any more children and relishes the fact that this is our last. Ben is excited to be a big brother again and desperately wants a sister so he can name her Violet. He also speaks of wanting an older sister and is confused with us when we tell him that's impossible (unless we pursue adoption at a later time). Leo is sometimes ambivalent about a new baby, sometimes excited, and was adamant about wanting another boy until this morning when he spoke about having a baby sister and next year needing help to keep her from opening his Christmas presents.
Leo's going through a kick where he likes to imagine that he's Elsa from Frozen, mostly due to the fact that she has ice powers and all the little girls at daycare want to play Elsa all the time. This morning he wants to name the baby Elsa. I'm not really concerned about his gender-bending that's going on right now because well... I'm not and it doesn't matter at all who Leo is and it's not really up to me to decide how he should feel about his gender and also because he's very firmly in love with being a "boy" who gets to have short hair and pees standing up. So he's exploring and that's good, using his imagination and that's good, and is a normal three-year old with all the "three-nager" stuff that comes with it.
Ben is finally adjusting to school life, as much as that probably represents a repression in his innate personality quirks. He's learned that in order to have a "good day" he needs to sit still at his desk and not wiggle at circle time and that he needs to focus and attend the teacher when given instructions. I wish that this could have been a more gentle process for him but he seems to be doing ok. We are on tenuous ground with the teacher now (and grateful that her student teacher has finished up... On a tangent, why in the world would a teacher who is going through a rough patch in her personal life (father dying), with a class that's problematic for her to control, accept a student teacher who is going to further take away from the teacher's ability to interact with the classroom?!?).
Ben's had his good and bad days, which we understand will happen. He's learning to recognize small "sight" words now like the, at, in, like, you and we're working on him pointing those out to us when we read bedtime stories. He's also getting really good at sounding out words, although he gets frustrated when he has to work longer than 2.7 seconds at it so we take it a few at a time.
Jake had his two choir concerts these past weeks (first 6th grade and then 7/8th grade combined). After his 7/8 concert he stopped by a local convenience store to pick up some eggs for the house and walked in on a mini-Duck Dynasty convention in all his 6'8" majesty wearing a tuxedo with his music note bow tie. Cue the sounds of a record skipping, glass breaking, and ... silence. "What the fuck?" was whispered not-so-quietly.
Hilarious.
Ok, so this has taken a couple hours broken up because as soon as I wrote "everyone is sleeping" they woke in stages and needed breakfast, cuddles, iPad, my computer... Time to go.