Moving Out

So, after talking about it for over a year, we have finally decided to move to Steiner Ranch from our cozy little neighborhood in south Austin.  As much as we love this area and our house, Jason is getting sick of commuting an hour each way, and I'd like him home in time to help with the whole dinner, bath, bedtime routine.  That, in addition to a better school district for our children, finally got us motivated.  So, we contacted our realtor and started a long "to-do" list of things we've been meaning to do to the house for a long time.  Two weeks and a lot of elbow grease later, we were ready to list.  The house was sparkly clean and thoroughly de-cluttered, with nary a sagging gate or cracked light fixture to be seen.  Photos were taken, a sign went up in our yard, and we waited.  We worried we had listed too late in the season and would not be able to sell, but after eighteen days on the market we had an offer.  We are currently under contract with our house and have found a beautiful house in Steiner Ranch for which we are under negotiation.  Now we have to move...shit.
When I first began to think about moving, I was overwhelmed.  My brain raced with the process:  First fix the house up, then sell it, then find a new one.  How do we coordinate moving out and moving in?  Can we close on them both at the same time?  Will we need to stay with my parents in the interim?  What about a new preschool for Jack?  Will he adjust well to moving?  In order to keep from exploding, I forced myself to only think about one step at a time, so I started with, "Fix up the house," and moved on from there.  The downfall of this system is, now that we are actually to the part where we box stuff up and start taking in out of the house... well, I had kind of sort of forgotten about that part.  And, as we have started packing things and moving them to my parents' house for temporary storage, I'm realizing how much stuff we use on a regular basis.  There's a ton of stuff I can't pack until the last minute because we use it every day - the dishes, pots and pans, bottle warmer, kids' toys, clothes, towels, toiletries...But I can't pack it ALL at the last minute. 
And, of course, there's nothing like moving to make you realize how much you don't need - stuff you kept "just in case" that you're simply not willing to pack and move.  I had a cabinet full of nondescript cheap glass vases that I recycled instead of packing.  I am also in the process of giving away all the baby stuff Gage doesn't use anymore.  Some of it I feel some emotional attachment to, but not enough to pack and move it if I don't have to.  There are some fairly silly things I can't let go of, though, like all my files and posters I made when I taught school.  I may or may not go back to teaching some day, but regardless, I can't let it go. I worked so hard making, collecting and organizing it for years, and it was so valuable to me when I taught.   So, even if it's heavy and bulky and annoying, I'm takin' it.
I know most of my postings have a point or a moral or some sort of cohesive theme giving them merit.  This one is more of an inane rambling about selling the house and packing up all our crap, but since I feel more like a pack mule than a philosopher these days, I guess it's reflective of my life now.  we all need themes and cohesive endings though, so the point of this one is...
Moving sucks, but we do it anyway.

Feminism in a New Millenium

Right now, I'm reading a book that's a departure from my normal fiction/fantasy fare - The Girl I Left Behind, by Judith Nies.  The book is about Nies's life, both her personal and her political one as one of the few women working on Capitol Hill in the sixties as something other than a secretary.  While the book tells her personal story, it is also a vehicle to describe what the world was like in a time of great change and turmoil during a myriad of movements:  civil rights, anti-war and women's rights.  Reading this book makes me realize that I take a lot of things for granted.  The crap that women had to put up with as recently as the 1960's was absurd - separate entrances for ladies at various facilities that Nies visited during her political career, not being able to wear pants in public and having to endure what would today be considered gross sexual harassment in the workplace, not to mention being paid less than men for doing the same work and being categorically excluded from certain professions.  One of the points Nies makes periodically throughout the book is that the changes that took place during the sixties and seventies that allow women today to enjoy equal opportunities did not "just happen," as it often was portrayed in the media.  There were many women who fought long, hard uphill battles to achieve those changes.
So.... I feel a little guilty.  I feel like I have it easy.  I've always felt I could be whatever I wanted - a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a chef.  Not that I had a mind to be any of those things, but I knew I wouldn't be excluded from them for being a woman.  Women of the sixties and seventies fought political battles and even went to jail sometimes to liberate us from the mindset that women are only good at cooking, cleaning, child rearing and other house-wifey type things.  So what have I gone and become? - a stay-at-home mom.  I doubt the women's rights activists of yore would be impressed with my two-kids-and-a-minivan lifestyle.  I spend a lot of time doing laundry, cooking dinner, shuttling my three-year-old to preschool and feeding the baby.  All in all, my days are not generally that intellectually stimulating.  Maybe I should be off full-filling my potential.  I should be more politically involved (except I hate politics.)  I should be writing for a newspaper or magazine or something (except that I don't want to spend that kind of time away from my kids at this point.)  I should be....
Wait, hold on a minute, wasn't the heart of the women's rights movement about women having the same opportunities as men?  Wasn't it really about a woman's right to chose her own path and her right to be respected for her intellect?  When I take a closer look at my life, I realize that I am the quintessential liberated woman.  I am an updated version for 2011.  I chose to stay home with my kids because I wanted to.  I help my dad run our engineering business, and I have not once run into anyone who thought  a woman couldn't run a business.  I write a blog, because I know I'm a good writer.  I know I have some contemplative things to say, and I'm married to a man who supports that idea.  I don't feel defined by the housework I do or the dinner I cook.  This is good, because I don't actually do that much housework, and I'm a mediocre cook at best.  Yes, "Mom" defines a lot of my persona these days, and I'm okay with that.  It's a big job, and as a liberated woman, I am up to the task.  And, even though sometimes I have to remind myself that wife and mother are not all of who I am.  I am a writer, a runner, a business owner.  I have my own set of valuable skills I can contribute to society and they are only limited by my ability, not by someone else's view of my gender.
One thing I have learned over the past several years is, every person is deeper and more complex than they appear on the surface.  You cannot make assumptions about a person's character based on what they do for a living or some little snippet of their life you happen to witness.  Most of all, you can't make that assumption about yourself.  So even though on the surface, I may fit the stereotypical definition of a soccer mom, I am about as liberated as they come.  I know this because I have made choices without feeling limited, and I am truly happy in the path I have chosen.

Life with Two

In the beginning there was life.... And a sick three-year-old, a sick husband, a throwing up peeing in the house dog, and not enough breast milk for the newborn. This, in a nutshell, is how the first week of Gage's life went at our house.
It started off well enough. Gage was born on a Thursday, we took him home on Friday, and Jason's parents stayed with us through the weekend. Those first few days were blissful. Gage and I practiced nursing, Jason and Jack spent time together, and my mother-in-law did the dishes. Then came Sunday. I haven come to realize in the seven short weeks we've been the parents of two, things can go from perfectly calm to mayhem in the blink of an eye. Sunday afternoon, Jason's parents left. Sunday evening, we discovered Jack was running a fever. Sunday night, Gage fussed for hours straight in the middle of the night because he could not get enough milk. By Monday morning, we'd gone from blissful to a wreck.
Our plan had been to, with Jason off work, spend that first week getting to know and enjoy our new family dynamic. It instead turned into a moment-by-moment fight for the survival of our sanity. I nursed, pumped and bottle-fed Gage. Jason took care of Jack, who had a whopper of a virus, complete with 103-degree fever and vomiting. Our dog, Zoe, who was lucky I was still remembering to feed her, decided to show her displeasure at being completely ignored by peeing all over the guest room bedding where Jason and Jack had been sleeping to keep the germs away from the baby. Jason discovered this one evening while he was transferring a sobbing Jack to the guest room after he'd thrown up all over his own bed. With so much going awry, Jason didn't even get mad. He sighed and accepted it as a matter of course, as he tossed the stinky dog pee bedding downstairs and went on a hunt through the house for more queen-sized sheets. I would have helped, but I was tethered to the breast pump for the tenth time that day.
As the week went on, things went from better to bad to worse. Zoe threw up all over the carpet upstairs. Apparently, due to our lack of communication with each other, she had been getting double-fed a lot. Jason came down with Jack's virus, and Jack continued to run a high fever. I told myself over and over that this could not last forever and we would get through it. Aside from a crying spell over my inability to make milk, I stayed pretty calm, considering. I attribute a lot of it to the fact that I got to sleep alone with only Gage in our big king-size bed, so I was getting a good eight or nine hours of sleep each night. Jason, on the other hand, was sleeping with a coughing, fidgeting, sick Jack who has the habit of sticking his feet down your underwear when you sleep next to him. By the end of the week, Jason was sick, seriously sleep deprived and definitely not okay. One morning (Thursday, Friday, I have no idea) he hit his breaking point and could no longer rationally deal with Jack's incessant coughing and whining. This is when we switched kids. I laid with Jack in his bed, stroked his hair and told him stories. Jason sat in the rocker and fed Gage, relieved at the relative quiet of a newborn. Friday morning, I called the pediatrician and got Jack an appointment. Jason took him in later that day, and it turned out that besides the raging virus, Jack had his first-ever ear infection.
Jason took several more days off work than he intended, due to his own illness. My parents came over and helped, which was an absolute life saver. And we made it through. It was the longest week of our lives, but we came out the other side, and things have gotten better since. We are adjusting to life with two kids after surviving what felt like a bizarre fraternity hell week. That first week wasn't at all what we'd expected or hoped for, but if we got through that, the rest of it should be a walk in the park...right??