Monday, May 5, 2014

"Calm down a little bit."

I suppose I should be happy. The nightmare that has been the process of finding child care for Eleanor is over (more on this in another post). We found a place we like, they have an opening and we’re good to go.

We’re good to go, right? Right?

So why do I find myself thinking about the next step, and the one after that? I spent about 24 hours in my happy, peaceful place last week before I began to obsess over Eleanor’s preschool and elementary school options. And then I began obsessing about whether or not we need to move to a new neighborhood, sooner rather than later. And then I began obsessing about everything, from whether people like me to what I’ll be having for breakfast tomorrow morning. Did I mention I’ve been having trouble sleeping again?

Eleanor is starting daycare in a month, and I am starting a brand new job in two months.

***
On Sunday afternoon, as our church small group was meeting (as we do every Sunday), I spotted Eleanor across the room. She was running out of milk in her cup, still thirsty. Suddenly, she became terrified that someone was going to offer her water (no one had, by the way). She began to repeat, “No Water!” over and over. This is a (somewhat) typical behavior for her. The phrase repeated phrase gets louder and louder, and it always ends on a panicked rising note. She sounds like a Dalek from Doctor Who:


Every time she gets like this, it’s like she realizes for the first time how little control over her life she has. She clings desperately to this obsessive idea, this panicked tone. And she’ll keep spiraling, ever upward in tone and volume until she’s out of any control she might have had in the first place.

And all this happens in the time it takes me to cross to the other side of a room.

Her panic makes sense to me, even though I find it hard to deal with sometimes. I have a really independent toddler, one who demands to put on her own shoes several times a day. But we’ve got a perfect storm of a situation in which she is preternaturally self-aware but not particularly coordinated. She gets stuck trying to do tasks on her own while being saddled with a realization that there is very little she can do by herself. Man, that must be frustrating.

***
You know, the good thing about being in therapy for the better part of a year is that you start noticing your spirals before you get too out of control. You remember the tools you’ve learned and you consider returning to therapy, if for nothing else than to just clear your head. I consider the fact that I can consider all this a good thing.

***
I cross the room, pick my daughter up, and I talk to her. I tell her that I’m going to get her some milk but that she needs to take a deep breath and calm down a little bit. I take a dramatic, exaggerated deep breath and blow it out, modeling for her. She does it, too, and she smiles.

As we walk to the kitchen, she says, “Calm down a little bit.”

I think she’s talking to both of us.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Where I’ve been

The last couple of months have been a whirlwind, full of sturm und drang, and signifying much. It’s difficult to know where to start, and what to put on the blog at this point. But with the momentous changes underway in the Holz-Russell house, I feel like I should put an update out there.

Here’s a blast of the essentials:
  • Eleanor speaks in full sentences, likes to “make jokes” and loves flowers.
  • I got a new job. It starts July 1st.
  • We have toured or will tour eleventy thousand childcare centers.
  • Katie and I went on our first no-kid vacation. (It was awesome.)
  • We tried snowboarding. (It was not so awesome.)
  • We dabbled in potty training. We thought we were ready. We weren’t.

Deciding to go back to work has been hard. In fact, I wasn’t even planning on it until my dream job showed up on my doorstep, a job I would have been looking for two years ago if I hadn’t made the decision to stay home and take care of Eleanor. Now that I’ve received and signed the offer letter, I feel like I can announce it: I have accepted a position as Education Technology Coordinator at STRIVE Preparatory Schools.

I’m sure I will spend the next six months (or more) processing this move. I’ve certainly spent the last few weeks processing what this will mean for my family. But I know it’s the right decision. Eleanor is ready to hang out with new people, and I’m ready to get back to work.

It’s funny. I’m sure that a lot of blogs reach this point, particularly those about parenting. Life decisions happen, and they take you away from the snapshot writing captured in a blog. I think that’s why it’s taken me two months to get back to writing. I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that I wasn’t really covering any new ground by writing about my experiences as a stay at home parent. And knowing that I’m moving into a new phase of my life (as is Eleanor) has made me hesitant to commit any thoughts in writing, blog or otherwise. I’m honestly not sure I’ll continue blogging about fatherhood. I don’t know if I’ll have the time or mental energy once I go back to work. It’s been hard to have the mental energy already, just thinking about going back to work and all the preparation that’s gone into it.

I spend a lot of time wondering if my daughter will remember any part of her first two years of life, hanging out at home with Daddy. Will she remember the library storytimes? The weekly strolls through the Denver Museum of Nature and Science? The tickles and pretend naps on the couch or the bed? All the book reading? On demand, all throughout the day?

My wife keeps telling me that it doesn’t matter if she remembers, because we will tell her the stories. I hope that’s enough. Sometimes I wonder if she’ll forget the bonding we’ve had for two years, or if it will be like muscle memory, and it will always be a part of our relationship. God, I hope so.

I have no regrets about staying home the last two years, and it’s taught me so much about who I am and what I value. The reverberations will sound through the rest of my life. However, I’m looking forward to spending most of my day talking to adults again. I miss adults. I miss them. So. Much.

Spending your day with a hyper-verbal, precocious toddler is a precious, unforgettable experience. However, I’d like to have conversations that don't involve naming objects I’m looking at or objects I’d like to build out of Play-Doh, like snakes, balls, kitty-cats, pancakes, etc. My current balance of conversations is completely out-of-whack. Heck, I’d like to talk to somebody about baseball during the day. And I don’t even like baseball that much.

I will start my job in July, and I think I have at least a few more posts in me before that. If nothing else, I must write a post about the search for child care. I feel like I could have a whole blog dedicated to our search. It has been...challenging. Two more months until our world changes again. I have to keep reminding myself that life is a constant state of personal world changing. But these world changes are a blessing, and I know we’re on the right track.

Stay tuned.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

“The stars are sleeping.”

It’s becoming clear to me that most of my parenthood reflections lately are centered around language. That makes sense -- I have a language teaching background and my daughter is in the process of acquiring language.

But I never expected the changes in her language to be so dramatic so quickly.

On the drive to a gymnastics class for Eleanor, we listened to a story on Colorado Public Radio about a new study examining sleep in young children. The story itself -- telling us that children’s brains are developing really fast and that connections are consolidated during sleep -- wasn’t surprising or particularly revelatory. However, this fact (from the CU press release about the study) stuck with me:

“They also found that the strength of the connections between the left and right hemispheres increased by as much as 20 percent over a night’s sleep.”

Twenty percent! That’s crazy! But what I’ve seen in the last week at least anecdotally confirms the possibility of this kind of leap.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about more cute, cool things that Eleanor says for the last couple of weeks. I make a mental note every time there’s a new phrase or a new way of constructing sentences. Fast forward to today, and it feels impossible to keep up. It’s incredible. Just the last week has been one of the most astonishing of my life. My wife went back to work after the Winter Break, and I expected to struggle mightily with the transition. And there were struggles, to be sure. A resurgence in explosive, unexplained tantrums is just one front in the transition war.

But the fact is that being able to have real, functional conversations with my 19-month-old daughter has been perhaps the most meaningful experience of my life.

Here are a few of the phrases and sentences she’s uttered in the last week (context in parentheses):
  • “Stars...sleeping.” (Gazing at the sky, under the noonday sun)
  • “Eleanor eat toast...honey.” (nodding vigorously as she replies to the question, “What do you want for breakfast?”)
  • “Wait turn.” (Hands clasped behind her back, waiting for the toy tunnel to clear in the library storytime play area)
  • “Mommy sing choir church” (On Thursday night, while Daddy does bedtime while Mommy is at church choir rehearsal)
  • “Mommy...here” (She says, all day Monday after Mommy returns to work after the weekend)
  • “Papa (grandpa) ship. Mama (grandma) ship. Eleanor boat.” (Eleanor’s spoken desire to join her grandparents on their recent cruise)
  • “Ottoman Game?” (Any time Daddy sits in his favorite armchair, near the ottoman Eleanor likes to leap off of into Daddy’s arms)
  • “Climbing.” (In response to Mommy saying, “What did you do at gymnastics class today?”)
  • “All town” (omitting “through the” which are the words she doesn’t understand in the “Wheels on the Bus” song)
The development speed is dizzying. Because she’s a really verbal kid (no surprise there), I’m getting to witness a brain getting wired in real time. What she talks about and the way she talks about it indicates in the most elegant way how her brain works and what she understands and what she remembers. She strings series of objects together because objects make sense -- she can see them and they can fall into categories or systems. In certain environments, objects exist and processes occur. If we’re at the library, there are books and toys and friends and snacks and turn-taking. If we’re eating breakfast, there are base foods and toppings and the highchair and the pink or purple bib.

If I ever return to teaching in a formal setting, I will hopefully remember this process my daughter is going through. People build on what they know. They will experiment tentatively, but only if they feel safe enough to make mistakes. They’ll keep learning and expanding their schema if they keep having successful interactions with the content.

But academic pursuits notwithstanding, I am so privileged to be a part of this little girl’s life. She is an amazing kid, and she’s almost always soaring through these experiences with a beaming smile on her face. I’ll try to remember that during the next tantrum.

For Eleanor, the stars really are sleeping. Something so beautiful, so way up in the sky, must need lots of rest so they can stay up there and shine so bright all night long.