Mom Goes Back to Work-Grandma to the Rescue

Well ... as I am sure I could start out any of our blog entries, the past few weeks have been busy.  Owen is growing at a rapid rate. We don't know how much he weighs since he doesn't go back to the doctor until next Friday. I could stand on the scale with him, but that would require me standing on the scale, and as curious as we are about just how fat he actually is, I'm not curious enough to also find out how much I weigh. 

 

The biggest developments over the past few weeks are that Owen is now a smiling giggle monster (more on his monster-like features later) and I went back to work with the start of the spring semester January 26.  As fellow moms reading this know, it has been a challenging two weeks on all accounts.  This transition, however, has been bearable because my mom Eleanor has generously packed her hybrid with a week's supply of cookies, clothes, and Greek & Japanese language CDs, books, and dictionaries and made the three hour drive to San Diego on Sunday nights to spend the work week with us taking care of Owen while I am at school and helping out in the mornings and evenings so that I can prepare my lectures.  And this isn't because she doesn't have a full life of demands at home including my dad (he accounts for many layers of demands: emotional, professional, and making frequent pots of coffee) a 2 acre garden threatening to overtake the house and neighborhood, 2 geriatric horses that regularly try to die and are the bane of our geriatric vet, 4 spoiled kitties, and a barking dog that rubs the last nerve of the litigious neighbor who should have never moved to the country. After rereading that description, perhaps her time with us isn't that altruistic after all.  

In all seriousness, we are so blessed to have her help.  On the eve of me returning to school (I teach mornings Monday through Thursday) Owen decided to stop sleeping at nights, so some days he doesn't even know that I am gone because he sleeps right through it--it's exhausting staying up all night!  But even if he sleeps through it, Owen and grandma spend their mornings in Balboa park, an amazing park located north of downtown San Diego in the heart of the city.  My college campus backs up the park, so they drop me off and then park and wander through the gardens and numerous museums. At this point, Owen would much prefer to be outside in the gardens than in the museums.  Owen has become a regular at the Norwegian House, where the old ladies have offered him membership, despite his Finnish heritage.  If Owen sleeps, grandma sits and studies her Greek (she and my dad will be traveling there in June).

I know spending the week with us means that many things that should be getting done at home are not getting done and that grandpa is wandering aimless and lonely without his other half (I joke that grandma left him for a younger man), but it has been wonderful to have her help.  My mom has always believed that a mother's place is at home with her baby, and it has been a very hard decision for me to return to work.  Of course the debate I have had with myself over this issue is purely rhetorical since we need my income, and should Drew eventually get out of the Navy it's important for me to have a job that can provide health insurance for all of us.  The decision to continue teaching has been further complicated by the fact that I enjoy what I do and believe in it.  I would like to think that I am working to make the world that Owen will inherit a better one, which isn't to say that I am not jealous of my girlfriends who have the privilege to be full-time moms and I hate that we live in a society that makes the choice to care for my child a privilege. 

My mom joined an amazing community of mothers when I was born and 30 years later she is still friends with the women from her Mommy and Me class.  I don't get to join one of those groups for stay at home moms, instead I will find community with the mothers who go to work and talk about their babies.  There are no easy choices, all I can say is that in the end I would not be able to do the most agonizing thing--walk away from my screaming baby--unless I knew he was going to get as much love, care, and respect as I would give him, and we are all, most of all Owen, so fortunate that his grandma is there for him.  

When Drew has surgery (we are waiting for them to schedule it), grandma Kerry will travel from Texas, and we are eagerly awaiting her arrival, so that she can also get her much deserved Owen time.  We know she wishes she lived closer so that she could watch him or that she and grandma Eleanor could arm wrestle over who got him which days.  I definitely don't fall into the Bible thumper category, but I can't think of a better word than blessed to describe how lucky Owen is to have been born into a world with so many people who love and support him and us too as we muddle through this adventure of parenthood.