Sprinting Toward the Finish

Some backward progress on the sleep front. Will now requires one of us to lie with him until he falls asleep. It’s something I don’t mind, especially after a long day and he falls right asleep after we get in some good snuggle time. But other times, after a long day, and he isn’t ready to sleep right away, it turns into a struggle with me usually leaving after a half hour of hair pulling (mine) and screaming (Will).

I swore I’d never do this again. I thought he was getting to be a good sleeper, dozing off nicely after playing for a while with Emily in their room. Now? I’m doing exactly what I swore to never do. Play bed-roulette all night, with poor Emily sleeping in the living room most nights because of all the shuffling. Not that she minds much, really, but it’s no way to enjoy an evening, you know?

Eleven more days until we can return to some sense of normalcy. Eleven more days of driving to and from work in the dark, and never seeing the kids. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my work, I do. I’m just very grateful that at least the kids are seeing one of us full time and that Will isn’t spending more time with strangers than his parents. Okay, parent.

I asked one of the other politicians in our district how his daughter is doing, she’s six months old. He said, “I’m told she’s beautiful”. It makes me question what we’re all doing, giving so much of ourselves when some days it seems all I get in return is angry phone calls and whiny volunteers. I guess, in the end, it makes you appreciate those that go into public service.

And even though this isn’t one of those crazy political blogs, I’ll politicize here for just a minute, so indulge me. When people ask the politician I mentioned above why he’s running with a six month old daughter, he says it’s because he has a six month old daughter.

And you’ll have to excuse me here, as I find it difficult to think about anything but work at this time, eleven days before the election, let alone write about anything else. I know I’m living this stuff, things most people never even think about. After November 7th, I’ll be able to focus on other things, then again, I’ll be moving on the next thing, the next campaign. I know it’s crazy to jump back into this, but it’s an opportunity of a lifetime. I’ll be running the campaign for a school bond in the district I graduated from. The bond will go toward building a new high school, and alleviating the over-crowding that has plagued the high school for over ten years. When I attended high school there, it was an era of failed back to back levies, and threats to cut all extra-curricular activities, sports, even any school dances.

After I graduated, I swore I’d never come back to this area, to the town, I felt, betrayed me, my classmates, and didn’t value us or our future.

But this is my opportunity to change that, to change the future of my town, my home. To make it possible for my kids to have a future here. So I guess that’s why I’m doing this – the crazy hours, the time away from my family, standing on an intersection at 6am waving signs like a crazy person. And I guess that’s why this post isn’t exactly off-topic.

The reason I continue to work 15 hour days, is my kids. I want to do my best to provide not only a roof over their heads, but a future for them in the kind of world I can be proud of.

Da

So, probably when you start checking your own blog to see if someone updated it yet, you start to wonder how justfied you are, keeping a blog at all.

That's almost what I feel like, some kind of imposter writing about the kids. The month of Septemeber I spent two and a half weeks sneaking out of the house before dawn and returning long after the kids had been put to bed. So what right to I have to write about my days with Will and Emily, when the days are nonexistant? You start to wonder if it's worth it to miss that much, to go days without seeing, really seeing the kids. And meanwhile I'm still leaving the office before every one else, and feeling like there's always more work to do.

But anyway.

Enough writing about not writing eh? I'm getting flashbacks of every single journal I kept in my youth, where I'd start out writing diligently, then trickle off slowly, and finally each entry would be about how I need to write more.

Will is growing more and more into a toddler every day, tantrums and all. We finally got wise and decided to put up a baby gate so he can't get into the kitchen. It was sort of one of those slap yourself on the forehead parenting moments where you just compleately miss the obvious answer to the problem. Somehow yelling at Ian in the other room to grab Will so I could open the oven safely was eaiser than just putting up a gate. Will dealt with it okay, he was pretty upset about it for a while, but he's gotten over it and moved on to other things like climbing on top of the dining room table every ten seconds, interrupted only by climbing onto my desk, the coffee table, and eyeballing the (gulp!) bookshelves. Needless to say, Ian and I are exhausted trying to keep up with that boy. Ian especially.

But while Will continues to communicate primarily with "Uhh" and "Ehhh!", he's starting to say a few more words, and can even make animal noises.

Will's vocabulary:

"DA-DA!" - by far his favorite word, he always says it with such gusto, sometimes giving Ian a sound pat on the back as he says it)

"Ma-ma" (not as much of a favorite as da-da, he even calls me da-da when I come home from work)

"Ba-Ba" - can mean baby or if accompanied by a wave, bye-bye

"Haio" - Hello or Ha - Hi

"Na-Na" - Bananna, wich is said with as much enthuasism as da-da usually

"Poo-poo" - that one's pretty obvious

"Da" - Thank you, or yes, or that, or pretty much anything he doesn't have a word for

He also says "Woof-Woof", "Meow", "Neigh", and quacks like a duck. And, since he's a baby genius, he also knows where his eyes, tounge, belly-button, hands, and feet are.

Yeah, I know, don't worry, we're working on filling out his application to Harvard right now.