Soul Gardening

Odyssey

So, it turns out moving an entire household, two adults a toddler and two cats across an ocean is difficult and complicated. Who knew?

It feels like I've been moving for years and we're not there yet. In the past six months our lives have been been a series of jerky stops and starts, a roller coaster of ups and downs. We've had bouts of amazing success and good luck followed by crushing disappointments. It's like regular life on steroids.

Because the real estate market in southwest Florida is further in the toilet than Jon and Kate's dignity, we decided to rent our house rather than try and sell it. After a short time on the market, we found amazing renters. Seriously, these people could not be any more perfect and we feel totally confident leaving our house and some of our furniture with them for the foreseeable future. Score!

After much preparation and organization, a huge yard sale, several craigslist and eBay encounters, countless trips to various charity organizations, we sold or donated a huge quantity of our belongings including our cars. It was actually kind of freeing and looking back on it now I wish we would have done more.

We moved out of our house a month ago, sending about a third of our remaining stuff - clothes, kitchen goods, family photos etc., across the Atlantic in a 20 foot cargo container. It arrived on the eastern shores of the UK yesterday as far as we know. Another third of our stuff - furniture, tools, yard items, was left in our house for the renters. The rest of it was packed up and sent to a local storage unit presumably not to be seen again for several years. Doing all of this with a two year old was a herculean effort.

We've been living with Jeff's parents for the last month. These are incredibly kind, generous and accommodating people. In fact, after we leave here in two weeks, they will be keeping our cats until they are clear to come over to England on December 10th. The cats should have been able to travel with us, but due to a snafu with our veterinarian and some tests that were not done properly we have to make a separate trip to pick them up and ferry them over, but that is another story entirely. An interesting point of fact for anyone planning to move out of the country with domestic animals: it's a huge pain in the ass. Colossal. 

Anyway, as I was saying, we are living with Jeff's folks in a beautiful house on the Caloosahatchee River and they are lovely. Luckily we will be leaving just in time as familiarity can indeed breed contempt after six weeks.

So, we have our Visas, our house is rented, our belongings have arrived in England, we have a plan for the cats. There is just one more small detail to be worked out. We don't have a place to live.

Fucking hell.

Everything was moving along perfectly. I've made two house hunting  trips to England in the past four months and between Jeff and I have looked at close to 75 properties. The rental market in the areas we are hoping to live is completely insane. Rentals come on the market and get taken within days, sometimes hours. As you can imagine it's difficult to coordinate remotely with time differences and us not wanting to rent something we've only seen on line. On our last trip over, we had chosen a place that was beyond amazing and we were set to move in on October 14.

I can't talk about it too much because I'm still a little in shock but we lost it at the very last minute. Literally two weeks before we were scheduled to leave, because of something completely out of our control, our contract fell through and we don't have a place to live.

Our interim solution is going to be an apartment that is furnished and outfitted with everything we'll need for a month or two while we find a place to rent more long term. We won't have access to any of our stuff, so we'll have to make do with a week's worth of clothes and that's pretty much it. No bed for Myles, none of his books or toys - blah, blah blah. 

Everything will work out eventually. Hopefully by mid January we will be in our more permanent residence with our belongings unpacked and our cats cozily ensconced. In the meantime, we're flying over on October 25, for better or worse and I'm getting a lot better at dealing with uncertainty. I've been reading Anne Frank's diary, a book I've never read. It's helping me keep things in perspective. What an amazing girl. It's staggering and heartbreaking to think what she would have done with her life and what she managed to do with it, without even trying.

Myles is two and a half now. He's a sweet, good, even tempered, funny little boy and smarter than I ever imagined a kid his age could be. I suppose we're getting a break now considering how hard the first year and a half of his life was for all of us. We finally figured out what was wrong with him - gluten intolerance. He's been gluten free for four months and the change in his health was almost immediate and absolutely shocking. We've been working through the rest of the eating issues that come along with two years worth of getting sick every time you eat and he's making leaps and bounds toward eating like a normal kid.

We're stressed and we still have so much work ahead. I'm trying not to feel like my life is on hold and to enjoy our last weeks here in Florida. There are still so many things I want to do. But we're managing to have fun.

A lot in fact.

 

Thanks for asking, Schmutzie.

Goodbye Pinot Noir

I've got five months to enjoy my favorite California reds. We're moving to the UK in September, for a few years anyway.

This possibility has been swirling around us since last fall. Now we know for sure. Jeff got an incredible promotion to go work in his company's home office in Manchester, England.

Things are crazy at the moment. I'm thrilled, excited, scared. Did I mention thrilled?

I'm hoping my online friends who have spent time as expats will offer lots of good advice.

More to come soon when I've had a chance to settle in with all of this.

Things are about to get interesting.

Epiphany, nee I Need Reinforcements

Why is it every single time Jeff leaves town for a week, Myles gets sick. Sleepless, vomit-y, fever-ish,  diarrhea-like sick?

Good god I haven't left the house in two days or brushed my teeth today and I may be losing it. I think I just saw the Imagination Movers dancing on my ceiling. Does eating half a box of All-Bran crackers and some extra-sharp cheddar count as dinner? At least the bran will cancel out the cheese.

The last three nights Myles has been up for hours at a time. He's napping less than an hour and at lunch, he vomited half chewed hot dog, sliced tomatoes and curdled milk pretty spectacularly.

Jeff doesn't get back until Friday night and he's been gone since last Saturday.

Of course I just paid for 10 weeks of mommy and me music class and it's the most beautiful weather of the year right now.

Send help. Also Tecate and whole milk as I'm not sure I'm going to make it out to the store tomorrow and we need provisions.

**********************************
I was just about to hit the publish button on this when Myles woke up screaming for what I am sure is not the last time tonight.

I went into his room to comfort him. I picked up his shaking body, still light enough that it's never a burden to carry him around. I cradled him in my arms and sat in the rocking chair in his room, still left over from our breastfeeding days.

And I realized we may not have many moments like this left; moments when he is still small enough to be completely enfolded in my arms, when I can soothe him with my voice and my touch.

Even though everything I wrote above is still true, I already feel a little better.

Introversion and Motherhood

Perhaps the most difficult thing I've experienced in attempting to settle in to being a mother has been dealing with classic introversion. I've been this way my entire life. (Myers Briggs/Keirsey type INFJ) I have an almost visceral need for space and time to process daily life and I need to be alone to recharge my batteries. I am sure, as bloggers, many of you understand this.

It's not that I can't. or don't enjoy being social. I can and often do put myself out there. But if I spend an entire weekend with friends, even people I love dearly, I feel like I need a day in bed to recover.

When it comes to mothering Myles, there are several different factors to consider, the least of which is that I hardly get time to myself and it's the thing I need most to feel like a normal, functional human being.

This is partially my fault: I could make time before Myles gets up at 6:30am or after he goes to sleep at 8pm but I'm either sleeping or just too tired to do more than watch an hour of tv while folding laundry, and then go to bed. All I really need is half an hour to sit alone and write or make a great Sonos playlist, heavy on Kings of Convenience and Meg Hutchinson. I hardly ever do it though and when I do, I feel guilty.

Because I'm an introvert or whatever personality quirk you want to call it, taking care of Myles and the mental acuity and creativity it requires is often exhausting to me rather than rejuvenating. I wish it were different, I truly do, but this is something I can't control. I know that might sound like a cop-out but I don't know how else to explain it

I also tend toward being over-critical of myself. I often have a hard time living up to my ideals. I know all of this would be a lot easier if I could let up on myself a little and I am actually getting a lot better at doing that.

Just in case anyone is wondering, this is not as pervasive and soul-sucking as depression. I know what that feels like. This is just an aspect of my personality and I have to find a way to let it work for me rather than against me.If anyone has book recommendations, I welcome them.

On the flip side, being an introvert makes me better mother in so many ways. I believe I have a great sense of nurturing Myles' spirit because it's not hard for me to be intuitive with him. As someone who values being acknowledged for accomplishments and contributions, I'm hyper aware of doing this for Myles. Not having had a lot of this in my own childhood, I know how important it is for his self-esteem.

I look forward to having a better sense of Myles' temperament because I know that I'll be able to help him make the best of his strengths and work within his limitations. I'm seriously excited to be able to do this for him.

He's already an incredibly sensitive and sweet-natured boy. I'm sure I could be changing my tune about this if/when he hits the growing pains of two to four, but right now, in this stage, he's just delightful, if a tad challenging at times.

I don't think that being extraverted or introverted is better or worse in general or that it has any bearing on ability to mother. It has everything to do with mothering style though, so to me it's incredibly important to know yourself so that you can find ways to make it work for you.

Writing here really does that for me. Going to a great concert or festival does it too. Also being outside in the warm sunshine, of which we have an abundance. 

Life is pretty good.

My Future Is Loud

But at least now we can start our garage band.

We bought the drums over the weekend for $100 from a drunk British barkeep. We weren't even in the market for a drum kit. It was all very rock and roll. 

Holy crap does this kid love them though.                                                                                       

The harmonica belonged to Jeff's grandfather.

He actually dances while he plays. It's freaking awesome.

There are parts of life with Myles that are still extremely difficult. He weighs less than 21 pounds and needs to be spoon fed more than half of his food every day in pureed form. I worry about his nutrition and this eating delay every day, at every meal.

It's getting easier though. Every week Myles feeds himself new foods and I know that this isn't going to be forever. His vocabulary is increasing at a much faster pace now and I'm often surprised and delighted by the words he knows.

And there are so many other things, sublime things that happen every day that make everything worth it.

Open Letter to Rachel Sarah

Dear Ms. Sarah, I don't know you and as of today hadn't read your book or blog.  I read your excerpt at Salon as well as all 128 (and counting) comments and felt compelled to add my two cents.

I am a married mother. I breastfed my son for 13 months. As a point of clarification, I take issue with anyone who judges another woman for choices related to motherhood in general and breastfeeding in specific. It's none of my business how anyone chooses to birth, feed, discipline, educate or otherwise parent their children as long as they are safe, cared for and loved.

You should know I'm not at all prudish and my husband tasted my breast milk on more than one occasion. I am also not squeamish about sex or bodily functions taking the tack that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes is their business and having myelf particpated in more than a few things that most people might find left of center, sexually speaking.

My issue with the albeit small excerpt I read at Salon is this:

Breastfeeding to me was not just nourishment for my son. It was one of the most intimate acts I have ever experienced. I simply cannot imagine or understand how you could take such an intimate act that you shared with your beautiful daughter and turn it into a one-off first (blind no less) date hook up.

We suffer from such a fetishization of breasts in American society, so much so that as you noted in your story, your friend was removed from a public library for doing just that. Women continue to struggle with this issue every day in venues from libraries to restaurants and at the largest online social networking site.

It seemed like such a "Sex in the City" type of tale you were telling and perhaps that was the point. I'm sure your book demographic is similar.

But here's my point: So many women in that very demographic like to think of themselves as feminists. To me what your article excerpt and the resulting comments at Salon have done is the exact opposite of feminism.

Why continue to sensationalize breastfeeding as something sexual with this type of story, even if it did happen to you? Just because we CAN do something doesn't necessarily mean we should.

Sticky Ball

Jeff and I went to a black tie event Friday night. It was actually a Ball. The story behind why we were attending a Ball is complicated and difficult to explain and also not that important to the story. It's much more interesting to note what happened before the Ball as I was getting ready Friday afternoon.

A little back story: We are incredibly lucky in so many ways to have Jeff's parents living less than 15 minutes away, the least of which is that we have free babysitting pretty much anytime we need it. And Myles loves spending time with his grandparents so it's an ideal situation.

Jeff's mom came over Friday around 4:30 to pick Myles up, giving me a chance to get ready unmolested by a toddler who will do just about anything for my undivided attention. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, heaven. But, I only had an hour to get showered and dressed, slap on some makeup and do something with my fingernails and toenails to make them look less like goat hooves.

Somehow, there is always a direct correlation between the small amount of time that I have to primp and my desire to do things I haven't done in months. Usually this means I'll suddenly decide I need to deep condition my hair or use a facial mask taking an additional ten minutes that I don't have. This time, it occurred to me that I should exfoliate my skin. 

There's an Origins product I love that comes in a glass jar. It's an oil and sea salt emulsion that you use in the shower. It smells like ginger and makes my skin feel like silk. I've had this particular jar for a while:

 

And I was down to the last little bit. 

As I scooped out the dregs from the bottom of the jar I noticed that the texture was a little off. It seemed as if the oil had congealed. "No matter" I thought as I hurriedly forged ahead. I figured it would melt in the heat of the shower.

I slapped a giant wad of goop on my body and began madly rubbing it everywhere I could reach. Then I realized the stuff wasn't dissolving. It also wasn't spreading the way it was supposed to, instead remaining in a ball of what I can only describe as the consistency of rubber cement.

At this point I only had about half an hour to finish getting dressed so I quickly tried to rinse off, thinking I could wipe off the remnants with my towel. As I began frenetically scrubbing myself with a towel the fine, tacky sheen on my entire body began to turn into tiny, gray balls of glue that lodged themselves into the hair on my arms and stuck anywhere else there might have been fuzz on my body. 

Now I was beginning to see the error of my ways.

I called to Jeff (who was already showered and dressed except for his tie) to help, but rather than offering any good suggestions he just laughed at me. So, with 25 minutes to spare I got back in the shower, turned the water as hot as I could stand it and began scouring myself with a more traditional body scrub. My skin began turning the color of an angry sunburn.

By the time I was finished, I had removed most of the adhesive, along with my epidermis, so mission accomplished I guess, since my original goal had been exfoliation. My skin returned to its normal shade and remained only slightly tacky, especially in areas like the crook of my elbow and behind my knees. 

We made it out the door in time to get some sushi before the ball and in the end, we both cleaned up pretty well.

Good

Things have been so much better lately. In the last month or so it seems we've all turned a corner in every possible way.

After Myles' evaluation with the feeding therapist,  he's begun improving such that I actually notice it a little more each day. It's literally as if a switch got flipped and suddenly he just gets it. His verbal skills and his eating are taking off in amazing ways.

His speech therapist was here today and she thinks that we should be seeing just about normal eating habits (feeding himself solid foods exclusively) in four months or so and normal language skills around his second birthday in April. He's not "cured" and we still have some work ahead of us, but knowing that things ARE going to get better with the feeding delay makes such a difference in my attitude toward this whole thing. It shouldn't but oh my GOD it does. And Myles finally being able to ask for what he wants/tell us what's wrong has been like a small miracle. 

l'm beginning to feel like myself again due in no small part to the fact that I'm eating better now than I have in a decade. I've essentially cut out processed foods and dairy, except a bit of good cheese a few times a week. Oh sweet, sweet cheese how I miss you. And although I still do eat meat two or three times a week, I'm getting most of my protein from soy. My body just seems better equipped to process vegetable protein.

Myles and I go for long bike rides a few times a week and I've been going to weekly yoga classes. I've lost ten of the twenty pounds I gained in the last year. And best of all, my head is beginning to feel clear again.

For a long time when I looked in the mirror it was hard to recognize myself. I saw an exhausted, frustrated, sick, overweight, angry person who didn't look anything like me and I hated that. Now, I'm beginning to see my old self again. I don't feel immobilized by the sheer force of inertia that had me in a stranglehold for so long. I'm finding it so much easier to just let go and not make things harder on myself. All of it feels so good.

It's difficult to describe but I felt like I'd been in a fog for so long. It was a lot like the feeling you have if you're underwater in a pool. You can look up and see and hear a distorted version of the world, but you're not really participating in it.

As for Myles, his disposition has taken a 180 degree turn along with his language development and the fact that he's eating more now. He used to be a sleepless, whiny, super clingy and needy baby. Trust me, it was not as much fun as it sounds. Suddenly he's morphed into a sweet, loving, fun, (somewhat) independent little guy who sleeps through the night regularly, amazes me with his ability to communicate and has a new found sense of himself. Honestly if I had not witnessed it with my own eyes, it would be hard to believe the difference in six weeks time.

It's been three months since I decided to try and beat post-partum depression without drugs. The decision didn't come easily. After 18 months of trying several different anti-depressants I came to the conclusion that they don't work the way they are supposed to for me, at least not on post-partum depression. I don't know why, maybe it's my body chemistry, but every medicine I tried either stopped working after a few months or made me feel even worse than taking nothing at all. I know anti-depressants work for more people than not. They have worked for me in the past and there may come a day when I need them again, but for now things are really pretty good.

Because I believe that everything is connected, l'm positive that this sea change in me for the better is also directly related to the leaps and bounds that Myles is making. I can't think too long or too deeply about which thing affected which. It's not worth it to do that now.

What I know is that we're both good and we're going to keep getting better. And how we got here doesn't matter in the least.

Calling a Spade a Spade, or You Know, a Shovel

Before Myles was born I was resolved that we would call all of his body parts by the proper names. No cutsie euphemisms for genitalia for us, no sirree. I have a friend whose sister calls her daughter's vagina a "front-bottom". And the thought of that just horrifies me. 

Penis was easy. I couldn't really think of another name for it that made sense anyway. You don't want to call it a pee-pee because it's just confusing when potty training rolls around. Wiener and dingaling just sound silly to me. We also call his balls testicles because this kid owns probably 50 different kinds of toy balls and I just thought we should keep things simple.

Vagina was a little more difficult at first; it just felt weird to say to a small child. Myles always points mine out whenever he sees me naked, which is pretty much every day since I can't shower or change without this kid being all up in my business. He delights in naming my body parts when I get out of the shower and now that we've said it fifty times or so it's fine.

Breasts didn't work out the way I had planned at all. We call them boobies, mine, his, Jeff's, the cat's. Pretty much all nipples are boobies and I'm okay with that. Some words are just more fun to say.

Here's where I've really fallen away from my original plan though. The outside area of the backside is called a bum-bum in our house. I know. Don't judge me. Anyway it gets even better.

We have to have a way of differentiating between the ornamental and the functional. Myles discovered anuses several months ago. It started with the cat, who prances around with his tail in teh air most of the time. Without thinking, the first time Myles tried to put his finger on/in/near the cat's anus, I said: "Myles, stay away from Petey's butthole.". Now he's also discovered his own.

All I can say is that when Myles uses the word butthole, he's using it in context. We're so proud.

I can't wait until the first time he says it to his grandmother.

Honestly though, it's nothing short of a miracle that he's not dropping F-bombs already. I just haven't found a satisfying replacement for actually saying fuck. Mostly I just try to mutter it under my breath.

So, tell me, what do you call body parts in your house?

Ambivalence and Distance Training

A few days ago, if you had told me it was possible to feel both elated and horrified in the same instant, I may not have believed it. Now I know differently.

If you've been following this blog at all, you'll know that my son, Myles, has a pretty serious developmental delay related to eating. Even now at 21 months, he weighs about 20 pounds. Over the past year or so we've been working to get him to eat enough each day to begin to gain some weight, learn to eat solid food rather than the puree that we have to feed him and to learn to feed himself - all with only minimal success.

Myles has seen doctors and specialists. He has been tested for every physical condition and abnormality. He has been evaluated by developmental specialists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists and pediatric gastroenterologists, still with no real diagnosis. All we have really known is that our child, despite our best efforts doesn't eat, doesn't like to eat and will not eat even when we know he's hungry. It is sometimes nearly impossible to coax him to eat enough each day to allow him to maintain his weight, more less gain a few ounces.

This has been my life of late. And it has been without a doubt the most difficult thing I have ever, ever had to deal with. I truly believe that everything we encounter in our lives is put in front of us to teach us something and I know exactly what I am supposed to be learning from this: I am meant to learn that there are things over which I have no control, no matter how hard I try.

I have beaten myself against this wall again and again until I am bloody and broken. I have experienced some of the darkest times of my life in the past 21 months - a time that by all rights should be the happiest. Through all of it my best hope, my lifeline has been that eventually we will have a diagnosis, find out what is wrong with Myles so we can go about the business of beginning to fix it. And it just hasn't happened. 

After everything our last chance at finding some answers was in an evaluation from a feeding specialist this week. This was what I had been hoping for from the very beginning and we've been on a waiting list to see her for months. Our appointment was on Monday.

This was it, I thought. A behavioral therapist with expertise in feeding issues. This person would ask me questions, learn Myles' history then watch him "eat". I was sure that after this session we would finally have some answers and a recommendation for some therapy that would put us on the road to normalcy.

I was to bring a few things Myles likes to eat and a few things he won't eat at all. For the things he likes, I chose Goldfish crackers, strawberries and dried cranberries, pretty much the two staples of his solid food diet, things he's been eating for months and months. As for the things he doesn't eat, Jeff and I discussed it and chose soy hot dogs and cheese - things we've been offering him and trying to get him to eat for the same amount of time with absolutely no success.

Our appointment was at 1pm and I wanted Myles to be hungry so at least the appointment wouldn't be a total bust. We showed up a few minutes before one. The therapist took Myles' medical and feeding history, questions I've answered so many times now I could do it in my sleep. Then we sat down in a small room with a high chair and all the food I brought.

Myles worked his way through the strawberries in record time then started on the crackers and cranberries. Then with a little prompting from the therapist, Myles ate the entire soy dog and a whole piece of cheese. Just like that.

Never in my life have I been so thrilled and so dejected in the same moment.

Of all the times for Myles to buck up and begin to eat like a normal child! I just didn't know what to feel in that instant. I was astounded and happy and then utterly horrified. This woman must think that I've completely made up some eating disorder for my son, like some sort of crazy Munchausen's by Proxy mother, because clearly there was nothing wrong with him. Which of course means that he doesn't qualify for any therapy.

On the other hand, I just witnessed Myles eat cheese! And hot dogs! Holy fucking shit! If you would have told me this would happen three days ago I would have laughed in your face, with no small trace of irony and bitterness.

I know without a doubt that things are going to get better. And it seems that we've exhausted all of our options for getting help to get to that point. But strangely, I feel really good and positive about the future right now.

I'm not going to say anything so stupid and cliche as that I wouldn't trade having a normal healthy child for the knowledge that there are truly things in this world over which I have no control. And I know that Myles hasn't magically been cured either. If I could go back and have a second chance at all of this with a baby who had none of the issues Myles has, I would take it in a heart beat. This has been hard. So. Fucking. Hard. 

But what Myles' little command performance on Monday showed me (aside from the fact that he can eat some damn food) is that all of this is a marathon and not a sprint.

And now I think I'm ready to run.