Pecked by Ducks

This is my brain on drugs Friday…

We’ve been nominated!!

Pecked by Ducks (yep that’s me) has been nominated by the Nickelodeon’s Parent’s Pick Awards as the best local blog for the Raleigh area. <garsh!> <blush>

Woohoo!

wait, let me say that again…

Woohoo!

I am beyond excited! Please vote for Pecked by Ducks. Voting will be open until July 15th and you can vote once a day.

Captain Smarty Pants sent me an article the other day called “Mothers’ talk is key to kids’ social skills, study says” so of course I started worrying and wondering if we provide enough emotional cues for our boys. Then I remembered something.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. Captain Smarty Pants had an ultimate frisbee tournament on Saturday and Sunday (4 games each day) so I was coming up with things for us to do.

We decided to go to the library, Target, out to lunch and to REI to buy a tent, when Quinn said, “Mommy, I want to shaved my head.”
“You want to shave your head?”
“Yes.”
“Ummm…Ok…why?”
“I want to shaved my head.”
“All the way to skin or you want a buzz cut?”
“All the way to skin.”
“Well…how about we try a buzz cut and you see how you like it and if it not short enough then we can just shave more off.”
“Ok.”

So we went to Snip-its and asked the lady to give him a buzz cut.

This is how the first draft went, but it wasn’t enough.

When we were done with this he hopped down and said, with a big grin on his face, “Now I look like Michael.”

Wait for it…

Yep… Michael is the child in Quinn’s class who is going through chemo.

For a moment I couldn’t breath. Tears stung my eyes.

I am beyond amazed by the sweet, innocent empathy of my delicious child and I am tearing up again just thinking about it. I am not sure if he understands what Michael is going through or even the sweetness of the empathy in his little heart, but I’m so glad that instead of going with my initial impulse of “No…why?” I said “Okay…why?”

Side Note : Thanks Mom for for letting me pierce my nose and dye my hair blue and black and red and cut it A-line and wear combat boots to my high school graduation etc. all without blinking. I really appreciate your example of calm acceptance right now!

So anyway, I guess I have to now conclude that we aren’t doing too bad of a job encouraging our children’s emotional intelligence.

(Note: Names have been changed to protect those who may not want to be mentioned.)

I almost killed my entire family yesterday.

I know, that sounds crazy, and not something one should make a joke about, so let me be more specific. I drove my husband and sons within hundreds of feet of a tornado yesterday.

Seriously.

We missed it literally by 1 to 3 minutes and I could see the swirling clouds over my left shoulder.

Just finding news reports to link to this post is making it hard to breath and I’m shaking.

So it was Cinco de Mayo, and since Rocio is from Mexico, Captain Smartypants and I wanted to do something to mark the celebration for her. I searched online and found that this awesome Mexican restaurant, Dos Taquitos in Raleigh was having a Cinco de Mayo party, so we decided to meet her and the boys there for an early dinner.

We arrived at 5pm and got right in. They had live music, lots of drinks (I only had 1- a pina colada of course) the food was amazing, Rocio loved it and by the time we left, there was a 3 hour wait for seating. Also by the time we left it was pouring down rain. We got on 440 South to Route 1 South out of Raleigh towards Cary when it started raining so hard I had to watch the yellow line to stay in my lane. When the wind started blowing sideways I asked Judd to check his iPhone because I had never seen anything like it before.

He said there is a tornado in Cary headed North towards Raleigh and that it should be at the intersection of Route 1 and Cary Parkway at 6:47 pm and to be careful that the tornado might be obscured by torrential downpours. We were on Route 1 and we looked up to see the sign for Cary Parkway. I looked at the clock… 6:48. Just then, we burst through a wall of rain into deadly calm and I swear to you the air looked green.

Ominous was the first word that came to mind. I have seen weather like that on TV but never in real life. Give me 7 feet of snow and I know exactly what to do, but I had never seen anything like that before. There were dark swirling clouds as far as the eye could see, roiling and boiling right at building height. Everything looked greenish and it felt… well, it felt dangerous. That was when I looked back over my left shoulder and saw the swirling funnel cloud reaching towards the ground not 1000 yards away. I told Judd to watch it.

He (Captain Smartypants) said well what are you going to do if it changes directions? And I said, I am going to stay calm and keep driving away, but if it switches directions I going to drive like Grand Theft Auto until we find an overpass or a good ditch so keep watching it.

Thankfully it kept going North and we kept going South.

Quinn was playing the PSP and Max was watching a video. They never knew a thing.

But seriously?

HOLY CRAP!

Wow!! I’m blushing! Karen’s Kitsch has again been featured. This time on the Amazing Carolina Etsians Team blog (or ACE Team).

Thanks guys!

Especially thank you to Beth from UberArt who did the interview and to April from April’s Originals who nominated me. I am beyond pleased to be a part of your community!

Art Earrings, featuring French postcards from the 1890’s

Custom Single Strand Mother’s Bracelet, designed for Sky Hoppus

This is too cool. Out of the blue, Missie over at Sykin’s One Stop Etsy Shopping Guide e-mailed me to tell me that she had featured Karen’s Kitsch’s etsy shop on her blog.

Like I said, too cool right? Anyhoo, Missie is a fellow Twilight fan and has a neato shop with Twilight inspired stuff on etsy. So you can check her out there.

Thanks Missie!

Quinn has had a fever since Saturday. It has spiked up and down. He is a little pathetic sick man in the morning, does okay during the day and then around 4 o’clock starts to decline again into little sick man mode just in time for Captain Smarty Pants and I to get home from work.

This morning his little lips were all chapped and crusty and as he listlessly lay on the couch, mouth breathing and watching Noggin, we decided it was time to see the doctor. Or, pedia-chicken, as our good friend Dana calls them.

Now up until January of this year, I had been a SAHM for almost 6 years. When the kids were sick, I’m the one up all night, I’m the one who worries or not and I’m the one who takes them to the pedia-chicken. Right?

But not today. Today I have a half hour presentation on a piece of software I hadn’t even seen until 3 days ago because it took a month for the powers that be to deem the futile hours of our troubleshooting efforts to install the software urgent enough to give us a workaround (the presentation was in 3 days after all). And all of this for a presentation to a group of “new college hires” of which I am a part, because I took an entry level job (don’t get me wrong, I love that everyone always asked me where I went to college because they think I am one of them and I love the lack of responsibility that comes with being the bottom of the totem pole) but public speaking on a piece of software I don’t know, for a program I am not sure needs this kind of “cross product exposure” is just rubbing me the wrong way today.

So I’ve got a sick kid, a husband who didn’t bring his laptop home, but who now has to stay home and take said sick kid to the pedia-chicken. I’m not well rested because, well, hello, sick kid since Saturday, I had to wrap a birthday present for a party this afternoon for a friend of Max’s at 4:30 (who plans a birthday party for a kid on a weekday at 4:30? ) and get the electric bill in the mail box. Thanks goodness Captain Smarty Pants made me breakfast! And then? I got to work and had no badge.

Yep, high security building, crazy day with a presentation in a different building that I also need my badge to get into and I don’t have mine. Where is it? On the counter in my bathroom, next to the curling iron I am pretty sure I left on (don’t worry, it has an emergency shut off).

Yep.

That’s my day.

So I called security and they tell me they are doing something and will get to me “as soon as they can” and I sit down to catch my breath and wait.

And wait

And wait.

For 30 minutes. Until I finally just piggyback in with someone who recognized me because I am now 25 minutes late for my 9:00am conference call and have a dry run at 10:00am.

And that security guy? Didn’t call me until almost an hour after I arrived at work. At least he didn’t give me any crap for just going to my desk. Baby steps right?

Okay, so I’m here, I have my Cinnamon Apple Spice Tea, I finished my dry run and am “listening” on live TV at my computer to a presentation, that (yes even before I started blogging) is all Greek to me. Things are settling, I can relax, get my day together, center, prepare for my bout of public speaking, go through my e-mail and “start” my day.

Then, do you know what I just noticed?

Oh, yes, I know you really want to know….

My pants are too big.

Not that I am complaining that I have lost enough weight that my pants are too big, but they are too big to even belt because the waistband just all bunches up unattractively. So now, in two and a half hours, I get to go stand in a room full of people, present on a piece of software I had never seen until 3 days ago, in pants that keep riding down low enough that you can see skin (probably stretch marked skin), and I will have just heard the good or bad news from the pedia-chicken as to what is up with my baby.

Yep. It’s that kind of day.

I’ve been working in an office for a little over a month now. I’ve chronicled a little bit of my forced wardrobe acclimation woes and my re-remembered loathing for tights and pantyhose, but really, I kind of like wearing nice, put together clothes for a change. However, something strange keeps happening to me.

I keep catching sight of myself in reflective windows or mirrors or glass and my first instinctive, involuntary thought is: “Who’s that pudgy girl?”

I know, it’s not very flattering, and probably not very good for my self esteem, so normally I wouldn’t even bring it up.

Except that it keeps happening.

Kind of all the time.

For over a month now.

Since I started working in an office.

And wearing office clothes.

It occurs to me that I haven’t worn heels, black slacks and blouses for almost 10 years. Not since I worked at a financial firm when I first moved to Boston. After that I worked at a dot com, then a video game company and then was a SAHM for 6 years. I’ve been wearing jeans, t-shirts and slip-on shoes for a long time now.

Since I was in my 20s.

Since before I had kids.

Since I was slender, and sassy, and fun and funky and well rested and cute in my clicky heels and black slacks and blouses.

I think what happens is that I hear my cute little heels clicking and am wearing the familiar clothes if not in familiar sizes and I expect to see that 24 year old girl in the reflective surfaces I pass.

But I am not her. I’m not thin or sassy or well rested or cute in my clicky heels and black slacks and blouses. I’m kind of pudgy. And tired. And beat down.

And I think I miss that girl. Not just the svelt girl, but the fun, sassy, well rested one.

And I think I need to find a little of her again.

Judd has been in the hospital since Saturday. I brought him home last night (Tuesday) but, as you can imagine, our lives flipped upside down for those 4 days.

As I think about how lucky our family is that (other that Quinn’s precipitous ER birth) we have never before been to a hospital, it occurs to me that we forget in the hustle and bustle of everyday life how fragile we humans really are, how easily things can go wrong and how insanely lucky we are that we have health insurance that is going to cover “90% of eligible costs”.

So many things could have gone wrong but didn’t. I think about health care coverage, the relative health of our family (our kids haven’t even had antibiotics yet), how scary sitting day and night in a hospital is, worrying about where to be, at home with the kids or in the hospital with your sick husband and all of these are blog posts in themselves. I can only imaging these thoughts are not unique to my experience, so I am not writing about them here. At least not today.

What I do want to talk about is community. On Saturday when I realized that we were headed for the ER, I called Rocio and asked her to come home. But I really wanted to leave right then so I called neighbors until I found one that was home and asked if they could come sit with the boys until Rocio got home.

The response? Literally, “One of us will be there in 2 minutes”. And she was! This never would have happened in Framingham. We didn’t even know our neighbors, much less have their phone numbers and I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable leaving my kids with them for 30 minutes, and we lived there for 5 years.

We are insanely lucky that we have Rocio too. Having her come home and be with the boys, kept them from being upset. On Monday when I left to go into work for a couple hours before I went back to the hospital, Max happily gave me hugs and kisses and said “See you tomorrow Mommy!” It broke my heart, but I was also incredibly relieved that he was okay.

Then our next-door neighbors took the boys on Sunday afternoon to give Rocio some time off and let me know that anything we needed to just call.

Neighbors, colleagues and friends all e-mailed, IMed and called to see if there was anything they could do. So this morning when I got to work, I decided to take them up on their offer and I sent out an evite with this message.

Hi everyone! Judd came home from the hospital last night and is feeling much better. He is weak, but is grumpy and doing conference calls and thinks he is going back to work tomorrow (not gonna happen), so I know he’s feeling better.

We still don’t know exactly what happened, but basically he had a bowel obstruction. The doctor is not sure why, but he thinks it may have been precipitated by the flu Judd had last week and/or by food poisoning. They are going over his tests and will get back to us in a few days. Judd also needs to go for a follow up in a week or two.

So the reason I am sending this is to ask for a little help. I was also sick with the flu last week and, possibly due to the events of this weekend/week am still very tired and the remnants of symptoms are lingering. How does this concern you? Well, for Valentine’s Day, Judd surprised me with a weekend with my sister in Boston. I am supposed to leave on Friday.

I, of course didn’t think I should go, but Judd thinks I need some down time and in typical male style is all bent out of shape because the tickets are non refundable. Also, ( typical) he thinks that he will be fine alone with the kids for the whole weekend. Now normally this is totally true, but just not this weekend. Also Rocio was on pretty much 24/7 from last Saturday afternoon until last night (Tuesday) so I really don’t want to ask her to help this weekend on her time off.

So here is what I am thinking. Maybe if I broke things down into easy pieces maybe y’all would be able to help him out a little? Here is the list I came up with and if each person picks just one thing, then it won’t be so much. Also I plan on reciprocating with your choice of me babysitting for you for a date night or a weekend day or evening. Something so you and your sweetie can have some worry free time for yourselves. Or cooking for a party or baking. Really just anything I can do to reciprocate and help out! Okay so here goes…

1. Take the kids to play from 8am to 11am (ish) on Saturday
2. Take Max to a birthday party from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm on Saturday.
3. Take Quinn to a birthday party from 1:30 to 3:30 on Saturday.
4. Bring dinner to the boys on Saturday night
5. Take the kids to play from 9am to 12pm (ish) on Sunday
6. Take the kids to play from 2pm to 5pm (ish) on Sunday
7. Bring dinner to the boys on Sunday night.

Within in an hour, I already had dinner for Saturday and Sunday and playtime with the kids Sunday afternoon claimed.

I feel overwhelmed and blessed with the outpouring of love and support, but I also am fighting my feelings of guilt for asking for help. I feel selfish for “giving in” and going to my sister’s. I know I should go take it easy, that my family needs me in good shape. I know that I shouldn’t waste this ticket and that my community is stepping up. But I still feel guilty.
It was incredibly hard for me to write that evite. I even put in how I am willing to reciprocate. And when people responded, I e-mailed back with asked for details with a reminder to start thinking about what I could do for them.

One of my neighbors wrote back. “NO NO NO…you do not owe me anything. that’s what neighbors/friends are for honey. if we are out walking, i’ll be sure to check on the house for you. if i make a chicken, is judd well enough to carve, etc?”. I of course wrote back “okay, but if you ever need anything please call me first!”

It takes a village. I know this. We know this. There is a Jewish expression. “Family’s family.” It is accompanied by a shoulder shrug and it means, doing something for someone, especially family just is what you do. It’s not a burden, or an imposition, it’s just what you do. Mitzvah is another one. Doing something for someone else for nothing. I would do any of this without thinking.

I bring homemade freezer food to new moms. I butt in and offer my help whenever/however I can. So why is it so hard for me to ask for and accept help? Because I feel guilty for asking other people to take care of my family while I go off for a weekend with my sister? Because I think I shouldn’t take time for myself…especially now? Because I think I shouldn’t be a bother? Conversely I know I feel better when I am given something I can do when someone I know is going through something. So I am providing that something for other people, but I still feel somehow like I shouldn’t. You know how I feel about “should” so I sent the evite anyway. But still…

These wonderful women whom I have known for a year or two or less are all stepping up and pitching in. Isn’t this how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t this how it always was? Isn’t this what we all hope for in our lives? Isn’t this what is missing in modern culture? We hope for connection, community and a place within it.

I cannot tell you how incredibly blessed I feel today to be living and contributing to a community like this and that Judd is home, weak but safe!

Katja Presnal over at Sibmaco Lifestyle featured this article today in her Live Life to the Fullest series. Thank you Katja! Please give her a little love and go check out her site here.

Rocio has been with us since October.

For the past 4 years, we have had an au pair each year and I cannot say enough about how wonderful our experiences have been. We’ve used an agency called Cultural Care Au Pair but there are more out there and I’ve heard they are similar except maybe the areas they cover.

True, you have a 18-26 year old living in your house, driving your car and last, but certainly not least, taking care of your kids. This is why I highly recommend using an agency. It costs a little more, but they do background checks, wait let me say that again background checks, check references from a local office, check driving, English ability and provide all travel arrangements and healthcare insurance, plus provide a social network of other au pairs in your area, which is invaluable for mitigating feelings of isolation and homesickness. Plus it’s nice for your au pair to have girlfriends they can hang out with, not just on their own time, but getting their “kids” together with people you feel comfortable with, because the other au pairs have been though the same screening process.

Vicky was our third au pair.

You need to invest time in guiding your au pair. Teach them your rules and teach them how to give consequences you are comfortable with. And, honestly I think the program only really works well if you consider your au pair to be like a much younger sister. Part of the family, but still needing guidance.

You also have to treat your au pair like a decision maker in front of your kids. Back them up, let punishment for transgressions stand, which should be a variation/extension of the rules/consequences you taught them anyway (unless their interpretation is dangerous or horribly inaccurate and you have to correct it immediately of course) but in general, if you disagree, work it out where the kids can’t hear/see. This gives your au pair a sense of trustworthiness and also sets up a dynamic in which the children know it is necessary for them to listen to their au pair.

Jenny was our second au pair.

Also, ask your kids about their day and listen if they complain about your au pair. If it is just sniveling, because they didn’t get away with something they shouldn’t have anyway, back up your au pair. Occasionally though it is something you will want to talk about, reinforce or clarify for your au pair. And in very rare instances you can help your child talk to your au pair about something that upset them or hurt their feelings. Usually your kids will be shy about talking things out but this is a great, safe opportunity to help them learn how to speak up for themselves.

For example: last night Max, told me that kids were calling him a baby and it hurt his feelings and that a kid slapped him in the face and that he was upset that Rocio didn’t help him. This obviously concerned me, but I wanted to hear the whole story. So Max and I went to talk to Rocio about it. Max sat in my lap and wanted to hide in my shirt, but I gently prompted him to tell Rocio why he felt sad.

It came out that there were some (we called them “naughty” kids) at the playground and that they were teasing Max and calling him baby. Rocio had told Max that the kids were not nice and to stop playing with them. Max kept going right back to them over and over again. So I told Max that he needed to listen to Rocio and not play with naughty kids. Some kids just don’t listen to your words and the only thing you can do is go somewhere else.

Then we talked about the kid hitting Max and it turns out that Rocio didn’t see it happen and the kids left right after so there wasn’t really an opportunity for her to follow up. But Max needed some reassurance. So in front of Max I told Rocio that in the future, if a kid ignores Max’s words and hits him, that physically intervening is called for if possible AND I want her to tell the other child it is not okay. A loud enough voice to scare them a little is appropriate and if the other parent has a problem, a calm, “it is not okay for your child to hit” while leaving is also appropriate. I asked Rocio if she felt comfortable doing that and she said yes.

Max needs to feel safe and that he will be protected if he is unable to protect himself. Max also needed to hear that he should to listen to Rocio and stay away from “naughty” kids, AND that Rocio would protect him more actively. Rocio heard me back her up, but also that it was important not just to Max but to me that she more actively protect him that that sort of situation.

Marina was our first au pair. Max was three months old when she arrived.

It is a little more work forging a great relationship with your au pair than with day care or with teachers, but having an au pair can be a wonderful experience, not just for your kids and you, but for your au pair as well. The level of personal attention your children receive and the cultural exposure is, to me, invaluable. Our next door neighbors, my husband’s boss as well as a co-worker and 2 friends have joined the au pair program since they met our au pairs.

But when it comes down to it, what you really want to know is the details right? What do you get in terms of child care and costs?

Basically you have up to 45 hours/week of coverage for $179/week (state department mandated wage/hours). You also have somewhere around $6-8k in up-front agency fees depending on the agency (although in response to current economic conditions our agency has just started offering payment plans for the fees). This totals around $15-17k/year. Also consider if you have small children that, when we were in Boston, we were looking at $13 - 20k/year each for day care. Plus if your baby/child has a cold you are out of luck, and at pick-up, after 5 minutes, you get charged $5/minute for every minute you are late and that is for only Monday through Friday 8:30am to 6:00pm. This did not include coverage for date nights, or weekends, or cooking dinner  or doing the kid’s laundry.

Your au pair must have 1.5 days off consecutively a week with 2 full days off once a month. But that could be a Wednesday/Thursday if you want weekend coverage. Also your au pair may not work more that 10 hours a day, but you can break it up so they are on in the morning and then off while the kids are at school and then back on for pick up, dinner and bed if necessary. They also can be asked to do light housework, the kid’s laundry and cleaning up any kid rooms. I have our au pair help the kids do it themselves though and not just clean up for them.

For us, an au pair has been by far the best choice. We are comfortable having another person live with us and become part of our family. We love the amount of coverage, the flexibility and sharing a year with people from all over the world (Ukraine, Sweden, Colombia, Mexico and counting). However, I am always about whatever works best for you is the right choice. It’s just that for us, this is what has worked best. Plus, very few people know specifically about how the au pair program works and many people don’t consider it when thinking about childcare.

P.S. As an added bonus, my 3 year old speaks Spanish and my 5 year old speaks fluent Spanish. Such an important skill in this day and age and all for free-ish:)