Frith O’Steen

Mother’s Day is rapidly approaching, so I will indulge myself once again and dedicate a portion of this post to my life as a mommy. I will then add some other non-parental related stuff, if for no other reason than to reassure myself that I do still have separate identity other than “eh!”.

“Eh!” is the closest I can phonetically come to spelling Decker’s name for me. It’s funny, b/c an outsider might not hear the differences in tone for what essentially tends to be the same word for him. (I imagine it’s sort of like how a non-Chinese speaker has a harder time hearing the subtle differences in pronunciation of similar words in Mandarin). Anyway, while “aaah?” means what’s that?, “eh!” is the word he uses when he calls for me. It works, I know who he wants. It will be nice eventually to hear “mama” (or any words at all for that matter), but for now we are certainly able to communicate all the same. The kid has gotten really good at pointing to things, and it’s actually pretty rare that we can’t figure out what he wants. I was reflecting this morning that Decker and I have become good buddies for each other. As he’s getting older and developing more and more personality and a sense of humor, I realize that we have a rather fun time together! He forces me to slow down and appreciate small stuff (seriously - like he brings me really tiny pieces of tanbark and wants me to hold them for him) and he also is the easiest audience in the world if you want to make him laugh (gratifying!).

It’s great to see him healthy again, too. I do NOT like to see my son get sick, and it sucks when I can’t do anything for him besides ride it out and help ease the discomfort as best I can. It’s amazing what is so NOT disgusting when it’s your own flesh and blood. He basically couldn’t keep anything down for approximately 7 days, and I had to laugh at how savvy we got at catching/deflecting as he did his thing:

“Decker, are you going …ack! Wait! Don’t throw up on the carpet/couch/bed - here - throw up on this blanket and on mommy’s shirt, ok? Good boy!”

I don’t want to get cocky, but our couch remained unscathed despite the biblical scenes of destruction his stomach flu left behind. Let’s hear it for covering your furniture in tarp cloths of washable baby blankets!

Anyway, like I said I had to laugh because here I was, elbow deep in stuff, doing 6 loads of laundry a day, getting up multiple times a night to rock him back to sleep, and getting very little sleep myself. Quite a far cry from the days of working at Berkeley (although Sean pointed out, not so different from being an RD on duty!). Doesn’t mean it didn’t take its toll though…last Wednesday night (week 2 of the plague), I told Sean at the end of the day that I had to get out NOW or I was most likely going to peel my face off of my skull right there to release some tension. (Did I mention that the whole time Decker was sick, the roofers were up above us and making an unholy racket? I didn’t? Well, that adds a bit to why I was so on edge - it wasn’t all Decker’s fault!). All of which is why I have to say I really appreciate the new study that came out today from a site called salary.com. They basically surveyed a ton of stay at home moms, tallied all the stuff they do every day, and then totaled what they should earn per year if they were paid. Drum roll, please………including overtime (THANK YOU!), we SAHMs should be pulling in $131,471 a year! It’s just very validating to hear someone put an actual number value on what we do. Don’t get me wrong, I know the value of it even without a salary, and I know that Sean values it too, which makes a huge difference. I feel very lucky and priveleged to get to do what I do for a job. It’s just nice to see it given some value for context with the rest of the world.

Hmmm…you know what? See the next post for my non-mom stuff - this is getting too long otherwise!