Today was long. I have absolutely no memory of when I woke up, which is weird. Usually I notice that time and it imprints on my memory. Time is a big deal to me.

I’ve always been obsessed with time and clocks. I play a variety of little games with myself about manipulating the numbers and the lines in analog clocks. I play the adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing games with face clocks too. I’m really into thinking about how to get everything to 10.

Anyway.

Today we woke up and went out to breakfast. It was a weird ass day. We ate out twice. After breakfast we came home to grab a few odds and ends and nurse the baby then we drove to San Jose. We went to the consignment event I said we weren’t going to visit this spring. Oh well. I found the stuff I wanted and the big kids filled in their summer wardrobes. We were down to 1-3 tank tops or shorts for each kid. Even though we do laundry a lot the summer is a little annoying with one tank top and three shorts.

I also found a swing for $35 to replace the one my friend gave me… which was broken. To be fair the one from my friend is like ten years old. These things are not manufactured that well to start with.

Then we went out to lunch. Lots of veggies were had.

We came home for a brief respite. The kids and I weren’t home for two hours. Then we got to go to chess class. Then the kids had belt testing in martial arts. We got home almost 12 hours after we initially left this morning.

The baby was great.

I would say that if you added up every minute of her screaming/crying there were about 10 more minutes of upset than we would get in the same time period at home. It just… went fine. She’s a trouper. (And now I’m second guessing that spelling of that word, Noah… even though I’m not wrong.)

This is a baby to inspire frequent breeding.

“Have a baby…. ” she says, “then you can experience the bliss of soothing a tiny helpless human with baths and car rides and being put down while you do things….”

IT’S A FUCKING LIE. NOT EVERY KID IS LIKE THIS. DON’T DO IT. KIDS ARE USUALLY HARD AS FUCK. THIS KID IS A GOD DAMN MIRACLE.

I mean, she’s still a lot of work. But she’s so sweet about it…

There are moments when I seriously think that karma is a real thing and I paid so hard when I was young that I earned having my life get better and better starting at 25. The last 11 years of my life have been surreal.

Thank you, Noah.

I am grateful that you have been willing to essentially train a feral animal. I am not who I was when we got married. There are parts that are better and parts that are harder but absolutely none of who I am today would be possible without the safety, support, and love you have given to me.

And the kids. You gave me three specific reasons I never get to quit on you. You made it so you have a permanent manipulation button on me. “It would be better for the kids if you…”

You are a genius.

I’m getting over my internal whine about oh my god I signed on for 30 god damn years of active parenting and moving into a feeling of gratitude. This spacing is really wonderful so far for a variety of reasons. I’m really glad we didn’t get pregnant right away. Our big kids are at the perfect developmental stage for accepting a sibling and six months ago I think it would have been shitty. They were both in hard disequilibrium periods and right now they are both riding high on equilibrium, self assurance, and mastery. They are both feeling good in their bodies and lives.

I mean, there is still that deep pocket of shame. There is still that base line of emotional volatility… but it’s doing so much better. There will always be seasons that are easier or harder and we lucked into having the baby be born during an easy season. This timing is wonderful.

I think MC in particular would not have coped with a sibling before this. Being a middle child isn’t easy. There is all the fuss and complication of always striving to feel “as good as” the older sibling and all the pressure of being an older sibling and not being permitted to “be the baby” forever. I think MC would have done poorly at pretty much any point in the past. They needed seven years of being the baby before they were ready to move on and let someone else be the baby.

MC is really latching on to “Sibby”. In my family of origin Sissy is the name for the oldest sister in the family. So we have Sissy and Sibby and both of them really wish I was more supportive of them being little mommies. I believe with all my heart that while it is good for older siblings to be capable of helping and for them to do some of it… they aren’t parents. They are not going to be given power or authority over their younger sibling(s). Just no. There are lots of life circumstances where I might have no choice and I am not judging folks who have to.

It is important to understand how and where your personal choices and preferences are about the intersection of needs, abilities, resources, and desires of the people involved.

I understand why people have to leave an oldest in charge. I just want to do everything I can to avoid doing that. If I have to then… everyone’s principles can change in case of need. That’s life.

In four more years when YC is around four and MC is around twelve and YC is around fourteen…. I can imagine paying the older children to babysit so I can drag Noah to a munch with me so we can make friends in a new place.

But it won’t be frequent and when my kids babysit… I will need to pay them. Given all the schtuff in my life… that’s just part of the deal.

I don’t know why I kept the Sissy thing when I hate my Sissy so much.

Because I love her and I want to look up to her and Auntie was such a good Sissy to my mom. Auntie is always there for my mom. Sure she’s codependent as shit. I’m pushing EC to not put up with being disrespected and working on teaching her patterns of abuse and what to put your foot down about.

Can you be a good Sissy and not be an enabler?

I tell my children, “You only stay in a relationship with someone if they treat you decently and that includes your family members. If you don’t like how I, or your dad, or your (whoever) treat you then you don’t have to continue knowing us as an adult. It will be up to you. Hopefully we will act right and you will want to have relationships with us… but you never owe us. Only share what you freely want to share.”

I owe them because I selfishly chose to bring them into the world. I made them just because I wanted to know them. Because the other seven billion fucking people didn’t love me enough and that was never going to change.

It’s interesting perceiving how much I have changed because of the simple reality of having relationships that are intensely physical and completely non sexual. I am pretty sure that the longest I ever lived with my mother was a six year span from when I was 12-18. My mother and I did not have an intensely physical relationship. She would hug me at times but mostly she didn’t like to be touched; I get it.

I have wonderful friends. We don’t see each other much. Mostly we don’t touch that much when we do see each other unless we are having some kind of sex. Because…

Yeah. Because.

Because that’s what I do. Only I can’t anymore. I have to be something different.

I feel sometimes like I was born when EC was. Sometimes I wonder if part of the reason I went through a really horrible long period when sex was pretty traumatic most of the time was because I did a lot of abreacting and trying to identify with EC’s life to learn how to feel safety in my body and it kept being interrupted by physically painful and damaging sex.

I started really coming out of it eight years later.

I started coming out of it on my own at a time when women in my family have often gone into puberty in generations past.

True and not true. Just looking at patterns. They don’t mean anything.

Abort. Abort. Delete Paragraph.

Anyway. I should go to bed. I’m starting to hit the wall. I was overstimulated like I had been sucking down… I don’t know what. Caffeine doesn’t keep me awake very well. Nothing keeps me awake when I’m tired except intense emotion. I can stay awake. But it takes something ridiculous like a new baby or a term paper I didn’t write until 24 hours before it was due.

Not that I was ever such a slacker. All the way through grad school.

But I don’t stay up well for parties or social events.

Why did I used to go to so damn many parties?

Ahhhh…. so I could meet my wonderful friends. But once I find them I can go home and contact them in my preferred mediums.

It works. Mostly. I do have some neat friends. I find them all over.

I am struggling with talking myself into holding the baby while I brush my teeth. Whine. It’s wonderful. It’s a great job. Holding the baby (or being on my side while I face the baby and nurse in bed) for approximately 22 hours a day gets… ouchie. And I’m not seeing my normal body workers because no I don’t leave my baby for an hour or two because this is my thing. I spend the fourth trimester with my babies.

Sure I dragged this one out of the house all day. But she was in the car for about two and a half hours in chunks spread over twelve hours. The. Entire. Rest. Of. The. Day. Is. On. Me. 

Noah hasn’t had her for an hour out of the last 24.

And I give him dates by himself. Two of us on a self abnegation spree goes poorly. Someone has to be getting some damn needs met.

Ok, I’m getting most of my needs met. Just not alone time or body care. There is more of that in my future. I can be patient.

In the past I made poor decisions because I pursued self-care stuff at the expense of my children. I won’t do that again. If it hurts sometimes… well… I didn’t have kids because I wanted a convenient life. I wanted purpose and connection. I wanted to have someone whose opinion I care about.

I am selfish and small and not everyone else in the world was enough without them.

I needed to have there be more people who think of the holidays and me and “home”. Noah feels like that and it’s great.

When I was born I was told I would get three older siblings. Instead I was raised mostly as an only child and I had occasional visiting abusers.

Now I get to have one kid on one side of me and another kid on the other side of me and another kid on top of me. Noah leans on some part of me or another.

They want me here so much.

This is what safe feels like.