Summertime

The baby at our house is almost five months old now.  He's sleeping better, so I can put him down for a nap and wander away to work on the computer for an hour or two until I hear him fussing.

There's apparently another new baby in the neighbourhood too, and now that the weather is nice and the windows are open, we hear that baby.  And whatever they might say about a mother knowing the sound of her baby's cry, that baby sounds a LOT like ours, at least when I've got an ear cocked towards the upstairs waiting for the faintest noise.

Somehow we have started referring to the other baby as "Outside Baby".  Perhaps we're both sitting in the kitchen, and we hear a cry... my husband will say "Is that Outside Baby or our baby?".  

I hope we won't be overheard one day and have someone think, in horror, that we have a baby we keep outside.  Even if the weather is nice...

Father's Day

I wish I could write some kind of grateful, witty, touching entry about my parenting partner, what with it being Father's Day and all.  I'm not sure I have anything like that in me, though, so I hope you will put up with awkward rambling.

Last year at this time my husband was a stay-at-home dad, while I finished up my last year of teaching before becoming the stay-at-home parent.  When we got to Father's Day I realized that it's quite something for a man to stay home with kids who aren't even his.  In our case, he was caring for my son from my previous marriage, who was 13 at the time, and our first foster child, an 11-year-old boy who had been living with us for a couple of months by then.

He dealt with teachers and administrators at two different schools.  He made breakfasts, packed lunches, bought and doled out after-school snacks, and usually made supper too.  He dealt with all the various appointments that come with fostering - as many as three a week at the busiest times, usually involving pulling the child out of school for a pickup.  When there wasn't a volunteer driver available he became the volunteer.  He played soccer, basketball, chess, and tennis.  I ran 'Homework Half-Hour' after dinner every night, but he was the one who made sure the homework actually made it into the backpacks the next day.  It was really pretty amazing to watch the almost-instant transition from "Ask your mother" to me saying "uh... I don't know... did you ask...?"

Now we both work part-time from home, so the parenting duties kind of slosh around.  Depending on who is stressed about work at any given minute, the other will pick up the slack. The baby is nominally 'my' responsibility, but if he wakes up at 6am I'm not the one who gets up with him.  Even this morning, Father's Day, I entirely slept through the baby waking up, having breakfast, being up for an hour or two, and going back down for a nap.  I had coffee brought to my bedside and had to ask "What time is it?  Is the baby asleep?". 

So, the day got off to a slow start, but I think it has worked out okay.  Even though no-one here actually calls him "Dad", he spent the afternoon watching Arrested Development.  At dinnertime we stuffed him with steak (okay, he cooked that), Caesar salad, french fries, and homemade from-scratch chocolate cake.  There was a funny card signed from all the kids and cats, and a new pair of slippers.  He'll stay up until 5am watching movies and drag himself to bed after sleeping a bit on his black-leather bachelor's couch, for old time's sake.  I'll get up with the baby in the morning and Father's Day won't end until noon tomorrow, after he has slept through the morning.

It might not be the perfect Father's Day, but in our clumsy way, I think we've made the point that he's loved and appreciated.

Dubious Relief

One of the curious aspects of foster parenting is that the child has some appointments that the foster parents do not accompany them on.  The Children's Aid has a cadre of volunteer drivers that pick up children from wherever they are and deliver them where they need to be, and then bring them back again.  Today, for instance, Jason was picked up at 10:30am and will be delivered back to our door at 1:30pm.

Three hours of relief!  Awesome, right?

The reality is much more stressful, although I don't know how much of this I bring on myself.

Firstly, his napping schedule.  We're doing pretty well with sleep right now, considering he just hit four months.  He's generally not awake for more than 90 minutes during the day.  He'll get up at 6:30am, say, but then be back down for a nap at 8am.  The naps are totally unpredictable in length, ranging from 20 minutes to four hours.  His morning wakeup time is totally unpredictable as well, and could be anything from 5:30am to 9am.  Fortunately today he was awake when the driver was due to come, but usually I have to wake him up to get him ready.

Secondly, the prep.  I was doing laundry late last night to make sure he had an appropriate, cute outfit that matches and fits.  He has clothing that was a gift from the people he is seeing, so I wanted him to be wearing as much of that as possible.  I waited until five minutes before the driver was due because I have had him spit up on his clothes before leaving the house before.  He needs a diaper bag packed with everything you'd expect, but also a communication book that I fortunately remembered to bring up to date on the weekend.  (That's not a fun thing to be trying to do as you watch out the window for the car to arrive.)

Part of the prep involves cat hair.  I got the feedback once that it was "mentioned" that he had cat hair on his clothes, so of course now I'm militant about trying to eradicate it.  The clothes he wears come straight out of the dryer and on to him, and I brush off the bag.  The carseat is the hardest - it sits right inside the front door, usually, on the floor where the most hair accumulates.

The volunteer drivers are subject to human frailties such as being late and going to the wrong address, and civic problems such as traffic.  I've woken the baby up at 10:15am to get him ready, only to have the driver arrive at 10:58am, at which point I'm sending off a baby red-faced, blotchy, and inconsolable from a half-hour of screaming.  On the other hand, I've waited until I saw the car coming to wake the baby up, only to have the driver standing over me and waiting impatiently while I try to do the world's fastest diaper-and-clothing change.

Thirdly, the time he's gone.  I've got three hours to get done everything I need to get done (you know, 10 hours of work for the week, all the laundry and housecleaning, run errands), but instead I'm sitting here missing him, wondering if he's okay with the stranger who picked him up today, and worrying that I forgot to put the diaper rash cream in the bag.  I know from experience that I'm going to spend the time roaming around the house, unable to focus anything, and snapping at my husband.  It has also happened in the past that a visit is cancelled at the last minute, and the driver turns right back around and brings him home.  So I can't actually run errands - I need to be home.

Lastly, the fallout.  Last time the baby came home he was asleep in the driver's car, but of course bringing him in the house woke him up.  He was happy for a half-hour, then screamed for a solid two and a half hours until finally falling asleep at 4:30pm.  It's not like the baby never cries, but that was exceptional.  And who can blame him, when his schedule has been disrupted and he's been away from his primary caregiver for hours?  It leads to a weird mix of wanting to see him, but yet dreading it. It also probably means that I'm, sadly, too attached myself.

"That's Not Fair!"

You know the classic problem when you give each kid a piece of cake, or a cookie, or whatever, and they scrutinize to see who got the bigger piece?  My brother and I drove my mother crazy with that, to the point that I think I remember the wooden spoon being deployed.

Every now and again my husband will lean down to carefully pour our glasses of wine to make sure we get the same amount, and I will invariably remark "we're spouses, dear, not siblings."

You'd think I would have gotten out of that whole mess by having only one child, or at least, only one who eats solid food.  So what kind of Bad Mommy actually encourages it?  Friday night is family pizza and movie night, and we make our own pizza by using the breadmaker to make the dough, then patting it out on a cookie sheet.  Many Friday night dinner conversations revolve around how to cut a rectangular pizza into three equal pieces, where the amount of crust each person gets is also fair.

Normally we cut it into six squarish pieces, but that leaves four corners and two edges. That's clearly not fair, because someone gets two corners.  The previous solution of cutting the crusts off the short ends and making them into six breadsticks was rejected as lacking a certain elegance.  Today at lunch (which was relatively non-combative sandwiches), we finally hashed out a solution we were all happy with.  It turned out to require only a tape measure, grade eight math, and a large helping of pigheadedness.


From then until the end of the meal we got to debate how to mark the pizza for ease of cutting... my son favoured burning it right onto the cookie sheet, while I think my husband was leaning towards marking the pizza while raw with cilantro.  Sometimes making something fair can be deeply satisfying.


P.S.  If you really need to know the solution, for our 12" by 18" cookie sheet the solution is laid out in the picture.  All cuts originate from the centre of the pizza.  The cut represented by the pen ends 6" up from the nearest corner.  Rotate to the left and make the cut represented by the first pencil 8" along that side; then the final cut is just 2" short of its nearest corner.  Each person gets 72 sq. in. of pizza and 20 in. of crust.

Cats and Babies

I'm afraid I may have inadvertently given the impression that I deserve a cookie, so it's time to come clean with a little more appropriate post for a "Bad Mommy" blog.

I love babies, but I've also loved cats from a very young age.  I remember my Mom having a coffee date, and me playing on the floor nearby, listening to her say "Kay knows every cat between school and home.".  That was my first inkling that everybody doesn't know all the cats on their walking route somewhere.

So where babies and cats co-exist, I tend to treat them as equals.  This probably horrifies people who like to keep their pets firmly in the non-human category.  I don't mean that I would have to stop and think about which of them to save in a fire, but in the day-to-day I talk to them, play with them, and enjoy them in fairly equal measure.

Now here's where the odd part of fostering comes in.  Our worker claims to like cats, but given the way she looks at ours, I think she just says that to be polite.  She says we need to keep the cats away from the baby at all times, but how do we separate out what is the Society's official stance, and what is her personal opinion?  Also, she's our worker, not the baby's, so should we ask the baby's worker as well?  We have a 4" binder that's our Foster Care Manual, but the only mention it makes of pets is the policy on banned breed dogs.

Realistically, of course, what they say goes in the big slushpile of what has been said, and we try to make sense of it all in a bigger framework.  As you can see from the picture, though, on at least one occasion I let the baby and our young cat nap together. 

I could fill up another two paragraphs with an apologia on why this was okay on this one occasion, and defending my breaking of the safe sleep guidelines with a comforter.  But I'm going to resist the temptation.  I trust that you all know that even though sometimes in the little things I'm a Bad Mommy, in the grand scheme of things we're all doing the best we can, and it's generally a pretty decent job.

Trouble with a teen? No, really?

I'm having trouble with my fourteen-year-old.  I'm sure you're shocked.

Up until recently we've had all the best parts of the mother-son bond, plus the usual good behaviour and eager-to-please traits of the oldest child.  But lately, he's sullen and quiet, speaks in grunts (if at all), hides behind a wall of greasy hair, grumbles about doing his chores, and complains endlessly about going to school and his teachers.  I never see him reading a book anymore.  What really drives me to distraction is his butt, because it's constantly parked in front of the computer.

But you know what?  He loves, loves, loves our foster baby.  From the day the baby (let's call him Baby B) came at two days old, my son (let's call him Boy A), has been a huge part of B's life.  A. had no warning that B. was coming; A. came in the door from school, hung up his coat, turned around and saw the baby lying on a blanket on the floor.  After standing frozen for a moment, he nonchalantly remarked "We have a new foster child".  Later that night he was stroking the baby's head and said "Mom, this is great, we get to have a cute little baby, and I never have to have an annoying little brother!".  He babysits for me (when I'm working, and I pay him $4/hr for that), but he also "brothers", which is when I say "can you just take this screaming baby for 15 minutes so I can have a shower?", and he never says no.

And you know what else?  He grumbles about his chores, but he does them.  He complains about school, but as far as I know he has never skipped a class yet.  When we go to the library together (which we still do), it's so obvious that the kid's and YA books are too easy for him, and the adult books don't interest him.  When we're at home and nobody can see, he still calls me "Mommy" and gives me big hugs, and kisses me goodnight.  (Sometimes it's me going up to bed first these days.)  And how can he be hogging the computer if I spend so many hours of *my* day in front of that same computer?

I get tied up in knots about perfection.  As a break from worrying about my own shortcomings, I focus on his.  My Mom was the same way, and after internalizing that worry about never being good enough, apparently I'm passing it on.  Why would I do that?  Why wouldn't I love him just the way he is?

So, yes, I'm having trouble with my fourteen-year-old... but I'm starting to think the trouble is really me.

Parenting on $6 a day

Remember those old travel books that used to promise, for instance, "Europe on $5 a Day!"? I have a vivid memory of flipping through one in the 1970s and imagining myself grown up and drinking wine in a fancy Paris restaurant.

I still remember that sometimes as I change a poopy diaper or put on a load of laundry. I especially remember when I sit down with a glass of wine at the end of the day, and when I open my statement from the Children’s Aid Society at the end of the month.

You see, although I’m a bona fide Mom with a fourteen-year-old son, I’m also a foster parent. We have a three-month-old baby living with us right now, and the Society pays an “all-inclusive” per diem of $6 for an infant. Some magic switch is flipped on a computer screen when a child is placed with us, and early in the month from then on we get a direct deposit of the accumulated amount from the previous month.

My bemusement comes from this fictional $6/day. You can’t go to the grocery store and buy a little $6 kit of baby stuff that will last one day. If you want to get a good price on diapers, you buy the huge box of 276, not a dozen. Like every parent I scrutinize the growth charts and count diapers per day to see whether I should buy the huge or extra-huge pack, but I have the additional wrinkle of not knowing how long he’ll be living with us.

Let’s say you buy the huge $45.99 box of diapers. Voila! You’ve just spent his first week of per diem. What about wipes? Do you spend another five days on the big refill pack? Do you spend one day on the small Penaten, or spring for the more-than-twice-as-big one for twice the price? Of course you have to buy the better value, but you’re already hoping you’ll get paid for at least two weeks, and only his bum is covered so far.

Through the extraordinary generosity of friends, I have only had one Naked Baby day, and that was on purpose (the remarkable April day that reached 24 degrees). I’ve been touched and moved by the friends who dropped off bag after bag of sleepers, onesies, and flannel blankets. A bath tub, toys, books, and even a stroller have found their way to us.

What nobody has is bottle-feeding supplies, since my friends are generally staunch breasties. That wasn’t exactly an option for me, so another couple of week’s worth of per diem went for bottles and nipples – all the while I was hoping the cheapest ones wouldn’t give his newborn tummy gas, in which case I would have to pitch them and start over.

$6 a day works out to $2190 a year. I read a statistic, years ago, that families tend to spend 10% of their after-tax income on a new baby. If my income was $21,900 a year, that would put me solidly under the poverty line. What does that say about how we treat babies in foster care, I have to wonder?

Sometimes it's just a bad dream

As a foster parent, I sometimes feel like I've traded money for the right to make parenting decisions.

It's not generally true; most of the time we're expected to use our judgement and knowledge of the child in our care to do what's best for that child. But one of the big things we're flatly not allowed to do is share our bed with the infant we're currently caring for.  It's not the big-brother "you're not related" reasoning I originally assumed; it's because bed-sharing is associated with higher rates of SIDS.  Because because babies in care tend to have more risk factors (prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, maternal smoking, low birth weight), we have to control the risk factors we can.  So, sharing a bed is out, but sharing a room is encouraged.

That's why from the tender age of two days, our baby has slept in a proper crib at the foot of our bed.  It's a pretty bare-looking crib, too, with no blankets or bumper pads; just a plain white sheet.  He doesn't seem to mind, though.  He has learned to sleep well and will even put himself to sleep at bedtime and during the night.  When my friends talk about how easy it is to feed in the night, or more likely complain about getting a foot in the face at 3am, I just keep quiet, because I don't get to share those experiences.

At his three-month checkup on Friday, the Children's Aid clinic doctor, after a long conversation with my husband and I about the baby's situation, recommended that we move his crib into his own room.  Friday night he slept through the night for the first time, from 10pm to 7am, so it seemed like a good omen.  Yesterday afternoon we moved the crib, and at 8:30pm I put him down to sleep.  He squirmed in, yawned, and fell asleep just like normal.

When I slept I dreamt that he was crying, and when I went in to him the room was cold, with a storm blowing outside and the window open.  I couldn't get the window closed, and when I turned to call my husband to help, I saw another window in the opposite wall, with the glass all broken and the rain pounding in.  I don't need a therapist to tell me what that dream means - obviously I feel I've abandoned him to the big, bad world and the elements by moving him to his own room!

At 5am he woke up for a feeding, with no more fuss than usual.  If he'd had to cry more to wake me up, it wasn't obvious.  I got him a bottle and fed him, and put him back down.  Back in my own bed I could hear him cooing to himself, then sucking his fists, then gradually getting quieter.  It was fainter than usual, but I've been listening to it several times a night for three months, and I could fill in what I couldn't hear.

No fuss from him; no tears from him.  I was the one who cried, as quietly as I could, so I wouldn't wake up my husband and have to explain the mix of guilt and sadness I felt.