Being Sara

Would you like to add a little extra stress to your life?  Here are some helpful tips from me to you.  Enjoy!

Step 1: Sell your house – be sure you are required to pack everything you own and move in exactly 3 weeks.  The 3 weeks before Thanksgiving is best.

Step 2: Find a new house you love at a great price, but be sure it’s in a small town.  This way, when it comes time to do an appraisal it’ll take over a month because there won’t be any comparable houses on the market for them to determine current market value.

Step 3: Make sure the seller knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the house he is selling.  This way, you can do fun things like call the town clerk on her cell phone while she’s at work, or leave a mildly desperate message for the original owner of the house, or wait impatiently for the State Archives to uncover a map of your septic layout.

Step 4: It’s a good idea to try for an FHA loan.  The rates are good, and the percentage you need to put down is nice, and the best part is that there are a million and one extra requirements that ordinary loans don’t need to follow.  This will ensure that your application goes to underwriting a few times and gets sent back for more information, delaying your closing time and time again.

Step 5: It’s also a good idea to only sign a 2 month lease at your rental house (where you can only stay until the end of April, max) so that you’ll have a small amount of hope that you won’t have to pay yet another month’s rent, but then in the end you’ll be forced to because you can’t seem to convince anyone to give you money to buy the house before rent is due.

Step 6: It’s awesome when the septic map you send to the underwriters from the State Archives doesn’t have distances labeled on it.  That way, the underwriters will reject it and say your application doesn’t meet FHA requirements.  But wait – there is one more trick up your sleeve!

Step 7: Have your mortgage broker convince the Town Clerk to write a letter from the town saying that the septic plan meets the state requirements.

Step 8: Try to sleep knowing that tomorrow you’ll find out whether you’ll be able to buy your forever dream house where your family can enjoy many happy years, or the money you’ve already invested in the deal is gone and you don’t have enough left to put a down payment on a different house, so you and your family will be forced to rent an apartment for the next several years while you try to save enough to start this cycle all over again.

The following steps are nearly guaranteed to give you the following:

• More gray hair
• Baggy eyes from lack of sleep
• Less sleep
• Stomach pains
• Ulcers
• Reduced work productivity
• Potential snappiness

Good Luck!

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When Xander was this age:

He discovered the joys of wandering around while snacking.  In Xander’s opinion, he always needed to have two of whatever he was eating – one in each hand.  It was pretty cute to watch him toddling all over the house with a cheerio in each hand, and if he ate one, he’d come back for another – never satisfied being out of balance with just one hand filled.

Now this kid comes along:

He toddles around the house in a very similar manner as his brother.  However, he’s taken this snacking while toddling thing one step further.  Not only does he need a snack in each hand, but one in his mouth as well (don’t worry – we keep everything smaller than bit-sized to minimize choking risk).  That’s my second son – he never does anything part way.  I think “go big or go home” will someday be his motto…

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I think I might be a little too self-righteous when it comes to encroaching on family time.  I have two recent examples:

Example one: An old friend was scheduled to come into town for a visit earlier this week.  Plans had tentatively been made to meet up at a local bar/restaurant after work on Monday to catch up.  The person making the plans was a little vague on the details, but since the location was family friendly, and I hadn’t seen this person in a long long time, Zach and I decided we’d be brave and have the kids tag along.  So, Sunday night was full of preparation – I packed a diaper bag, and a bag of toys to hopefully keep the boys entertained.  I prepared Xander for the following day’s plans.  I carefully picked out clothing for school that wouldn’t accentuate the large amounts of food my kids manage to spill on themselves throughout the day.  The next morning I packed a few remaining supplies – milk for Parker, a juice box for Xander, gummies for both of them.  I continued mentioning Xander our plans for after school, and told him he could even have a “special” drink (a.k.a. shirley temple).  3pm rolls around, and I hear that plans have changed – they are no longer going to the family friendly location, but rather to one of the sketchier bars in town.  Needless to say, there was no way I was bringing my kids to that bar.  This made me so frustrated.  Not only was I really looking forward to catching up with my old friend, but I had put so much effort into planning for the evening and I just knew tears would ensue when Xander found out we were not going to a restaurant and he would not have his special drink.  I ended up sending off a short and rather snarky email – the location was shifted back and we all had a pleasant time visiting before the kidless crowd relocated themselves to the sketchier bar.

Example two: Wednesday night we arrived home at 5:30.  At 5:40 Zach received an email from his boss with a request.  After a follow-up to check the deadline, Zach learned that he had exactly one hour to finish the request.  This threw our whole evening out of whack.  My plans for a healthy meal – gone.  My hope to help Xander with a thank-you note and Valentine’s Day Cards for school, not happening.  Instead, I packed the boys back into the car (over many protests) and we drove to McDonald’s.  We spent $12 for the three of us to eat fried crap and Xander to get a junky toy.  An hour later, we drove back home (again).  I understand that Zach’s job requires more than just 9-5 attention.  I am completely supportive of his efforts to tweak scripts and research problems in the evenings and respond to emails nearly 24/7.  What I couldn’t fathom was why Zach (and others in his office) had to drop everything from their evening routines to get a request done for 7pm on a Wednesday night.  There was no 8pm meeting that I was aware of.  And other than convenience for the boss to have some extra reading time, I couldn’t see any other logical explanation for the upheaval in our evening.

Twice this week my hackles have been raised by people without children failing to consider the massive amount of effort that goes into shifting plans or last minute requests.  I feel like I’m being unreasonable – as one of my childless friends loves to remind me “kids are a choice” – and he’s completely right.  I chose to have children, and I accept all of the responsibility and hassle that comes with that choice.  But, I do get frustrated when others forget about the effort and hassle that I’m juggling.

Am I being unreasonable in expecting those without kids to remember the time and effort that goes into preparations for them?  Should I just suck it up and continue juggling without complaint, or should I continue to remind people when they forget that it is more work and effort and some consideration is appreciated?

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Each child has their own specific set of joys and challenges.  I guess that’s what keeps us on our toes.  With Xander, I sometimes worry that he is too sensitive, that he doesn’t stick up for himself and therefore it’s easier for him and his feelings to get trampled on.  I was just getting used to this – to responding to Xander and encouraging him to be assertive where appropriate.

With Parker, it’s the exact opposite.  Case in point: yesterday I arrived at day care to pick up the boys.  I stopped to check in with Parker’s teacher, and while I was there, another little boy’s mother arrived.  Parker was already in his coat and ready to go, but toddling around happily while I talked.  When this mother help up her son’s coat to get him ready, he immediately laid face-down on the ground and began to cry.  She and the teacher began discussing this new behavior of his while a little girl in the class helped the boy up off the floor.  He continued to cry, but was standing.  Parker toddled over with his arms out.  I almost picked him up as he walked by, but he had his arms out like maybe he was going to hug this other little boy, so I let him go.  What did he do you ask? He walked right up to this crying little boy with a big smile on his face and pushed him in the chest.  I was mortified.  I of course swooped Parker away and said “oh Parker, we don’t push, we hug” while demonstrating a hug.  Parker may or may not have understood the lesson (I repeated it a few times) but it’s been sinking in with me for months.  Our boy is rough and tumble through and through.  He loves to push, pull, tug and hit.  It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we remind him to be gentle or how many times we show him how to touch people gently.  His first reaction is to hit.  His behavior means that he is the child who is put into a pack ‘n play or a jump-a-roo to give the other kids in the room a break from him.  Parker really believes that he is just playing, that his actions are all in fun, but of course they aren’t interpreted that way.  We won’t give up, but this new kid with this new behavior is certainly proving to be a challenge for us!

How about the rest of you – do you have a hitter or a biter, and have you found any effective strategies in teaching them other methods of “playing”?

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Ok, confession time: I watch Private Practice.  It’s a cheesy spin-off of Gray’s Anatomy.  I can’t convince anyone else I know that it’s worth an hour of their time, but I faithfully tune in each week (or so).  Most of the time, the cast is dealing with some rather depressing issues – infertility, abuse, death, etc.  I sat down to watch the most recent episode last night and it was especially heart wrenching.

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t seen it and you want to, don’t read the rest of this post. The episode opens with a woman giving birth (not the gory stuff), but she isn’t interested in the baby, only in the baby’s cord blood.  It turns out the couple has a pair of 8 year old daughters with leukemia and they need the cord blood to treat them.  Unfortunately, the cord blood has a low cell count which means there is only enough to treat one of the girls.

This is of course Hollywood drama – the parents are  then faced with the decision – which daughter do they save?  The mother puts her foot down.  She refuses to choose.  If they can’t both live, then they both die.  The show paints the mother as crazy, and cruel for not choosing to save at least one of her daughters.  And I found myself sympathizing with her.  In her shoes, I don’t think I could choose which child lived and which child didn’t.  It’s the age-old Sophie’s Choice question.  It kind of surprised me that the writer’s of the show weren’t more sympathetic to this woman’s position.

None of us can really know how we’d react in a similar situation unless we are actually faced with it.  I know that much as I’d love to be the type who springs into action, my instinct is to freeze in the face of an emergency.  I can only imagine that I would freeze, shut down, if faced with that sort of choice.  The father in this episode did choose, sort of.  He voiced his opinion, and a few minutes later (again with Hollywood drama) the daughter he chose to let go got too sick for the treatment.  Watching them explain to the two sisters that one was going to live and one was going to die was most definitely a tear-jerker.

If nothing else, the story from this episode made me squeeze my children a little tighter and longer this morning and send a silent non to the Gods that everything is right in our little world, and that my kids are healthy, happy and safe.

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