2016 can go die in a fire

I hate to be overdramatic about a year.  But 2016 really has sucked in so many ways.  I think a lot of the cultural fuss about 2016 being awful is mostly a way of superstitiously convincing ourselves that it will magically stop on January 1st -- that no more celebrities will die, no more gorillas will get shot, and Trump will crawl back wherever he came from.

But really, the reason 2016 has been so awful isn't actually because it was immediately bad.  Rather, it's a year we came into with a lot of optimism, only to have our hopes dashed and the prospect of a grim future laid out ahead of us.  So looking to 2017 to save us isn't going to help.

I know that, personally, that's been the way 2016 has been for me.  2015 was a really hard year, but I had a great deal of confidence 2016 would be better -- that it would be the year I finally pulled out of the rut it was in and saw some improvement in my life.  I mean, look what I wrote one year ago!

However, it is slowly getting better.  I realized today that 2015 is the first calendar year since 2008 that I haven't been pregnant for any part of it.  If I can just keep plugging away, there will (hopefully) be a day when I can sleep through the night again.  When I can put a cartoon on for the kids and take a nap because all of them are old enough to be briefly unsupervised.  When I can count on some time to work on my own projects every day, and the energy to do it.  I'm dreaming of a day when thinking about my garden or my next novel doesn't make me overwhelmed and exhausted, but excited and ready to start.  It'll happen.

Just reading these words makes me feel kind of bitter.  I had such high hopes.  And for awhile it looked like things really were starting to get better.  Miriam got a little older; that helped.  And around April or May I started feeling alive again ... instead of struggling to stay awake all day and accomplish a few tiny things, I actually started feeling like doing stuff!  Probably it was my hormones returning to normal at last, which would be why I got pregnant that same month.

If it hadn't been for that momentary improvement, maybe I wouldn't have minded so much.  But to have things get better, to remember how it felt to feel good, to be able to go places and do things again, to be doing well financially, to feel for a short time that I was actually doing well as a mother, and have that yanked out from under me?  That was what made it so horrible.

Objectively, this year has been less horrible than I might have feared.  Our move did set us back financially, but we were able to manage it better than we would have been able to a year or two before -- our frugality for the past five years paid off in our ability to make this happen.  This pregnancy has been unpleasant, but I don't think I've had any prenatal depression this time around.  The kids have struggled -- Marko quit making those amazing gains in schoolwork that he was doing last spring; Michael has returned to his baseline level of "could power a small city with his whining," Miriam has slept way worse -- but they're still doing better than they were when I was pregnant with Miriam, probably because I am taking better care of them than I was then.  And while the wonderfulness of John and I getting to spend time alone together from time to time, and having our room to ourselves, is ending soon, so far at least this pregnancy hasn't put a noticeable strain on our relationship.  We're a lot better at getting along than we were in the past, for one thing, and neither of us is horribly depressed.

Basically what has gotten me through this year has been asking myself the question, "What am I objectively suffering right now?"  And often, it isn't a whole lot.  Maybe I'm tired, or I'm achy, or my stomach's bothering me, but that isn't the source of most of my unhappiness.  My unhappiness is caused by worries about the future, and I can choose to set those aside as much as I can and focus on how, right now, things are okay.

I still get sad if I think of it too much.  Like how I was not able to write a single word of the book I wanted to write this year, or how we've basically given up on our dream of ever living on a farm because we don't want to have to move again.  When any of the kids gets needy and whiny, I feel like I am failing them because I'm not as emotionally available as I want to be ... and because I know that's only going to get worse when they have to share me with a needy baby.  That's especially the case with Marko right now; it seems he's going to need a lot extra from me this coming year, and it's a year when I won't be as able to give much.  I would like to imagine a reality in which it was no big thing for me to be able to care of a newborn while also taking him to assessment appointments and speech therapy, but that has never been my experience of what having a newborn is like.  Instead I have always barely been able to keep everyone fed and not biting each other.  I don't know who's going to fall through the cracks the most, but it seems inevitable that somebody will, and that kills me.  I thought mother guilt was bad when I had only two kids!

I wish I had something optimistic to say at the end of this post, but I really don't have much.  I'll certainly be cheering 2016's demise, but I have few hopes for 2017 being better.  I fear the post-Miriam lethargy will return, and that I will never find a cure for it (I've had several things tested; no luck).  I fear that Marko will fall behind in school because I won't be able to work with him; that he'll miss out on help he needs because it takes us so long to get him diagnosed; that I'll fail to bond at all with the new baby because I will resent it so much for its neediness when the other kids need me too; that I will resent Michael and Miriam for still expecting me to pay attention to them too; that John and I will drift apart because we are so busy putting out brush fires with the kids that we never spend time together anymore.  Maybe it won't be as bad as that. But I remember, before Miriam was born, saying "maybe it won't be so bad" and it totally was that bad.  Optimism is a hard thing to keep renewing when it keeps getting blown up in your face!

I hold onto small things.  We will soon have paid off the extra costs from moving and the midwife, so that starting in February we will be making financial progress again and I can buy myself some new socks.  John has been working long enough at the library that he is going to earn some time off next year, and we'll actually be able to take a family vacation.  I have found a good babysitter who may be able to help ease some of the burden.  And lately I have felt very encouraged and supported by friends and family -- the more crappy stuff life flings at me, the more people have made a point of standing by me.  It means a lot.

Still stuck on what my word should be for the next year.  I have an image in my mind -- of me rising to the occasion, of being a different kind of mother than I thought I'd be.  A more active mother, one who manages crap like appointments and therapy plans, even though I'm scared of making phone calls and terrible about writing stuff on my calendar.  I meant to be a laid-back mother, one who trusted my kids to blossom into adults with help from me, but without any pushing.  But it's looking like I may have to take the lead more, seek out professional help, and make more concrete plans.  Already I've started being more of the leader in terms of Marko's schoolwork -- setting a time for it every day and choosing the work he'll do.  It doesn't suit me, but it suits him, and isn't that what it really means to follow the child?

Basically, I have to be way more type-A in the coming year than I want to be ... and I have to be that way despite any postpartum exhaustion I may have.  I have no idea how I'm going to make that happen, but I have to, because my kids need it.  I need to take charge of my life more.  I need to quit putting off going to the dentist and I need to schedule a physical and I need to buy new clothes.  The year when I feel totally prostrated by the increased demands on me is not a good time to do all that -- I was supposed to get a year when things steadied out so I could take care of things.  But that year did not come and I can't keep putting stuff off forever.  I have to find a way to be the person I need to be, regardless of how little that is like the person I am.  Comfort or accomplishing some of my own dreams will just have to be a project for another year.

Can you think of a one-word way to explain all that?

Problems with the infancy narratives

Heresy warning: This post does not question the existence of God or Jesus.  It does challenge Biblical inerrancy.  If that will ruin your Christmas season, please skip this post.

If you've heard the different versions of the Christmas story enough times, you generally aren't listening very critically when you hear them again. For instance, many people believe that somewhere in the Bible it says there were animals present, or that the birth of Jesus was in the winter, or there were three wise men, when in reality that's just the way we've traditionally imagined it.

However, if you look at Matthew and Luke side by side, some contradictions start to appear right off.  Other problems show up when you study the historical background.  I'd like to list a few of these problems briefly; if you're interested, you can research further on your own to see what responses apologists have made as well as the responses to those responses.

1.  The genealogies.

This is well-known but not really a huge problem.  Matthew and Luke list different names in their genealogies of Jesus, even while parts are the same.  There are two very simple explanations for this: first, you can be descended from the same person by two different lineages; and second, genealogies of the time didn't distinguish between fathers and grandfathers, so it's not a huge deal that whole generations are skipped.

Of course, you can also believe that the genealogies were never intended to be factual in the first place.  It's quite possible that neither Jesus nor Mary knew his exact genealogy (heck, I only know like three generations of mine) and so the evangelists made up something they thought was fitting, for symbolic and typological reasons.  It doesn't really bother me that they would do this; I don't think it necessitates that the more obviously intended-as-factual parts of the Gospels are equally untrustworthy.

2.  The reason for traveling to Bethlehem

Both Matthew and Luke are intending to deal with a problem in Jesus' credentials -- the Messiah was supposed to come from Bethlehem, but everyone knew he came from Nazareth.  The Gospels report that Jesus' hearers thought no one good could ever come from there.  So both evangelists had to explain how, despite being well-known as a Nazarene, Jesus really was born in Bethlehem.

Matthew seems to assume that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem all along; at any rate, they are living in a house when the Magi arrive.  The reason they have to leave is that Herod is seeking to kill Jesus.  They go to Egypt first (to fulfill another prophecy) and later avoid Judea for fear of Herod's son, so they choose to settle in Nazareth.  In Luke's account, they live in Nazareth at the beginning, going to Bethlehem only because of the census and then returning home after visiting the temple in Jerusalem, when Jesus was forty days old, to offer him to the Lord.

These accounts are usually mixed together and conflated, so that we can come up with a single narrative.  Yet it doesn't seem they can really be reconciled.  If the family was only in Bethlehem for the census -- for something under forty days -- why would they have a house where the Magi could visit them?  If, as in Matthew's narrative, Herod is seeking for Jesus so that they have to sneak out of Judea, why would it make any sense for the family to go to Jerusalem of all places -- where Herod is -- and allow Simeon and Anna to speak publicly about Jesus to everyone there?  The shepherds, as well, are said in Luke's gospel to have spread the news everywhere.  It seems it would be difficult for Herod to miss finding him if Bethlehem is overrun with shepherds telling the whole story.

The usual answer is that the Magi show up well after Jesus' birth, and after his dedication at the Temple as well.  After all, Herod later tries to kill all infants under two, so Jesus could be any age two or younger when the Magi finally arrive.  However, if he were under two and over 40 days, Luke says he'd be back in Nazareth already, and Matthew seems to imply pretty clearly that the choice to go to Nazareth at all was only made later.

3. Dating problems

This one's simple but extremely problematic: Herod died in 4 BC, while Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until 6 AD.  These dates are considered pretty solid by historians from multiple sources.  So Matthew's account comes ten years earlier than Luke's, rather than at the same time or two years later.  Any reconciling of them requires at least small inaccuracies to be admitted in the text -- that the Herod referred to is Herod's son Archelaus, or that Quirinius wasn't really governor yet but still referred to as a governor because the author knew he eventually became governor.  The first can't be right, because Matthew specifically mentions Herod dying and being succeeded by Archelaus, and the second is directly contradictory to what Luke actually says ("this is the first census that took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria").

4.  Historical context

Unlike much of the gospels, the infancy narratives include information that one might expect to see attested elsewhere.  For instance, if a census had been conducted of the whole Roman Empire, we would expect to have heard about it.  Yet there is no evidence that any such thing happened.  There is a record that there was a regional census in 6 AD, under Quirnius, and it makes perfect sense of course that this is what Luke would have been thinking of.  But there is no reason why people would go to the places of their birth for a census; this wasn't the custom for a Roman census so far as we know.

The other big issue is the slaughter of the innocents.  If all the babies in an entire town actually got slaughtered, that seems like the sort of thing that would be remembered and recorded.  Herod's biographers were big on recording the awful things he did -- would they really have ignored a mass infanticide?  In fact, it seems likely that the slaughter of the innocents would have sparked a rebellion.  Wouldn't you protest at least a little if soldiers came to your door and demanded to kill your youngest child?  But not a word appears about this event anywhere else.  Personally I find this comforting, because it's one of the most horrible stories in the Bible, but it does of course cast some doubt on the rest of the infancy narrative if it didn't really happen.

Of course another thing that seems odd is that even within the Gospels, none of the infancy events are remembered by anyone later.  When Jesus' neighbors ask, "Isn't this the son of Joseph?" no one says, "Ah, but remember, he wasn't born here, we don't know where he comes from."  No one ever brings up that the entire region of Bethlehem heard the story of the shepherds, or that everyone who visited the temple in Jerusalem heard Simeon and Anna talking about him.  This isn't impossible or anything, but it sure is unexpected.

Conclusion

Most of the narrative of the Gospels is more or less unrefutable.  No one else wrote about Jesus in any detail, and few historical facts are mentioned, so you can't easily fact-check anything in there.  And when the gospels contradict one another, that isn't really a problem most of the time because you can always assume the same event happened twice with slight differences -- that Jesus fed five thousand one time, and four thousand another time -- if you're interested in preserving exact numerical accuracy.

The infancy narratives are one of the two places (the other being the Passion narratives) where we can clearly say we're dealing with the same time period and so some things must happen only once.  And the differences between the only two accounts we have are so drastic as to cast doubt on the whole story.  Is it possible that the evangelists invented their infancy narratives for symbolic and typological reasons?  Matthew, of course, as is his habit, is mostly interested in demonstrating that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies; while Luke wants to talk about the virgin birth and include beautiful canticles.  Maybe they never intended to be accurate; or maybe each was recording a completely different tradition already going around in his congregation.

Still, this is worrisome for the accuracy of the Gospels as a whole.  If a story is unverifiable for most of it, but all the verifiable parts are verifiably false, what reason would you have to believe any of it?  At the very least it downgrades how confident we ought to be in a source, because if some facts in it are false, others may be as well.

7 quick grievances

I hear today is Festivus, the day for the Airing of Grievances! I don't have many grievances from this year, because most of the things that have gone wrong aren't personal, but let's see if I can come up with seven, in honor of the day.

1

My uterus. Seriously, I hate that dang thing. Not only does it get pregnant when I don't want to, it's giving me Braxton-Hicks contractions all the dang time and I hate those.

My pelvis is also as out-of-joint as it's ever been, so grievances for that too.  I take good care of it, and it just does not return the favor.  The big thing that kills it is lying down with Miriam at night, which I have to do half of every night because it takes her a lot longer to fall asleep than it takes me ... so long before she's still enough for me to creep away, I've drifted off on the floor mattress beside her.

At this point I have some really painful separated abs -- every time I bend over to pick something on the floor (an activity I can't easily avoid) it feels like the baby is going to clamber right out the front.  Hurts like the dickens.  And my stomach is too squashed to eat much of anything, and yet somehow I can't quit snacking all the time.  Especially if it's dry Cheerios, which I've oddly become addicted to.

Anyway, I won't be dealing with this much longer, because I'm 36 weeks today. And yet, I'm not to the point yet where I want it to be over, because I know what comes next.  Hint: it involves screaming.

2

Miriam.  Don't get me wrong, she's still sweet and cute and hilarious, but she is in the thick of a difficult stage.  She wants to nurse every half hour or so, which I won't let her do, so there is wailing.  (She is on my lap wailing right now.)  She can't bear to be more than about twelve inches from me, and even when she's right on top of me, that's not good enough unless I am nursing her, feeding her, reading to her, singing her a song, or otherwise giving her my undivided attention.  If she's not getting that, she'll go deliberately break something in front of me in the hopes of getting it back.

This is either the effect or the cause of her terrible nighttime sleep, which ranges from one wakeup a night to five or six wakeups.  Or sometimes an hour in the middle of the night where she can't go back to sleep and just kicks the wall and whines.  I wanted to nightwean her but I honestly don't know what else I'd do -- she always wakes up a little panicky and if she doesn't get to nurse she screams.  No reasoning with a half-asleep child ... but of course if you get her fully awake then she might stay that way for some time.

John is going to be taking over her night waking soon and I am not sure what he's going to do.  I don't think he knows either.  He can get her down for her initial sleep better than I can, but in the middle of the night she only wants me.  It's something I worry about a lot.

3

Michael.  I'm pretty aggrieved at Michael just now, which mainly isn't really his fault. He just whines a LOT.  See, he likes to play with Marko, but he is about done with Marko dictating all the rules of every game and yelling at him for any detail he attempts to improvise on.  And he likes to play with Miriam, but she's gotten very grabby and pushy lately.  So there's a lot of him either lashing out at one of them or running to me screaming and wailing that they're being mean. And they are.  It's just, I used to be able to count on him to be the mellow kid who'd adapt to his demanding siblings, and he just isn't right now.  Instead he flips out long before they've actually done anything to him, because he's so sure they will.

What he really wants, more than anything, is to run around wild, screaming and roughhousing.  In the summer there are ways he can do that that don't make me lose my mind ... in the winter, not so much.  So I find myself telling him to SETTLE DOWN and BE QUIET 47 times a day, and I feel bad because he needs to get that energy out somehow.  Sometimes I allow some craziness downstairs while I'm upstairs, or upstairs while I'm downstairs (yay big house!) but he really can't moderate his wildness so often he or someone else gets hurt.

Also: did he really need to spend half an hour sobbing this morning because I poured the milk into a measuring cup (to sniff it and make sure it was still good) before I poured it into his oatmeal?  I think not.

4

Wouldn't want to leave Marko out! I'm aggrieved at his extreme rigidity.  Hard to say if I'm noticing it more now that we are working on his assessment, or if he's stepping it up to match with his siblings' demandingness, but it feels like anytime he's crossed at all, there's yelling.  He throws a fit if I ever serve chicken.  He throws a fit if anyone says something inaccurate.  He throws a fit if someone pretends differently from how he's pretending.  Last Saturday he screamed and cried and tried to hit people for half an hour because, I kid you not, Michael said his lizard, Swampy, was made of scales, and Marko says no one is allowed to pretend that because lizards in real life aren't entirely made of scales.  I feel like I'm walking on eggshells, and it's not fair to his siblings either to have to always be telling them "just don't talk to Marko, you're upsetting him."  (Though that's something I have to tell every kid, because every last one of them seems addicted to repeating over and over whatever phrase they have found makes their sibling scream the most.  It's the worst.)

About Marko's assessment: the bad news is, our stupid fake insurance will not cover him seeing the specialist he is supposed to see.  The good news is, the school district will "unofficially" assess him on their own.  By law it doesn't matter if a child is homeschooled; if a child has or may have a disability that is affecting their ability to get an education, the school must provide him with whatever it provides the other children in the district -- whether assessments or specific educational help.

The further bad news to that is, they're taking their own sweet time setting it up, and that's not great for us because now is a great time for me to be taking Marko to appointments and a month from now is not.  Legally they have to move on this by February, which, hello, is no comfort to me at all.

John recently introduced the boys to Minecraft, having heard it's really educational and so on, and Marko latched onto it with the full force of his obsessive personality.  He talks about it so incessantly I fear my brain will leak out my ears.  He's only allowed to play on weekends, and only if he's done schoolwork every weekday (which means we are being a lot more consistent about that, and no real power struggles about it), but the rest of the week is all taken up with talking about it, asking questions about it, flipping through the Minecraft books he got from the library, playing "real life Minecraft," refusing to wear any clothes but dark pants and a blue shirt like the character in it wears, etc.  He's suddenly amazingly cooperative, but only if you remind him that only good listeners get to play Minecraft.  So much for my self-motivated, no-rewards-or-punishments approach to education.  And every time I try to do something else fun with Marko -- convince him to go outside, read a book to him, get us all playing a game that another kid wants to play -- he tells us he just isn't excited or interested by anything else anymore but Minecraft.  He even spent a few days hating Christmas  because he was afraid he'd miss the chance to play Minecraft because we were opening presents and eating cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  I kinda hate Minecraft by this point.

Yet, when an obsessive kid has an obsession, you have no choice but to read up on it and try to take an interest, so I have.  And Marko is getting a Minecraft action figure for Christmas.  I have hopes that it will make him appreciate Christmas at least a little -- and that he'll use it for some creative play instead of just following me around reciting different rules of Minecraft.

6

Might be cheating, but my sixth grievance is all of my kids together.  They just are all going through difficult stages at the moment, and these stages work together synergetically to result in a massive cluster of awful.  They spend their time antagonizing each other, winding each other up in wild games, or fighting over who gets to be closest to me.

That last is probably the most annoying.  You know how you can go outside and it seems pleasant and not buggy at all, but within five minutes gnats are swarming around your head?  That's what the kids do whenever I attempt to sit down.  They all want to sit next to me, and of course three kids can't all sit next to the same person.  So they either start pushing and pinching one another, or they try climbing on top of me to stake out my lap.  But of course once one kid has done that, the others get jealous because someone else is closer to me than them, so there is screeching and pulling at each other.  A couple of weeks ago we all had the stomach flu and every time I tried to lie down on the couch, they would actually pile on top of me like a rugby scrum, kicking each other (and me, accidentally) and wailing.  Mothers should never have to be sick; it is simply not feasible when you have children.

The funny thing is, I was looking at old posts the other day and saw that at this stage of Miriam's pregnancy, the exact same thing was going on.  Lots of fighting, and lots of clinginess and jealousy.  What is it about being massively pregnant that makes children misbehave?  A few months ago I felt a lot worse than I do now, was crankier and more prone to neglect them, and they just played downstairs half the day and left me out of it.  I know that pregnancy makes sensory stimuli more annoying to me, but I'm pretty sure that objectively, they really are being more overstimulating now than they were then.

One possibility is that we just aren't leaving the house enough.  It's too cold and wet for them to want to play outside, and there are very few places around here to go in winter.  And, of course, every time we do go anywhere they come home with the plague, so I'm not eager to try.  Once I hit 37 weeks I'm planning to cloister myself because they pick up germs so easily and you all may remember what a disaster it was giving birth with sickness in the house last time.  But that always does leave the kids bored and bouncing off the walls.

Another is that I'm feeling a lot less willing to treat Miriam as the baby lately.  I do hold other children on my lap now, even when she throws a fit and tries to pull them off yelling "MY Mama!"  So instead of the peaceful coexistence of "Mama belongs to Miriam so everyone else had better go find something else to do" there's jockeying for more lap time.  And Miriam gets super needy because she's not getting the attention she's used to.  I could just go back to open season on nursing and hold her 100% of the time she wants, but ... that just would be pushing back the inevitable, and I'd rather get it out of the way now so it's not a new-baby thing.  Though experience with Michael was that it took him over a year to get over the not-the-baby-anymore wailing and clinginess.  I certainly HOPE Miriam doesn't react the same way.  She certainly is excited enough about everything baby-related.

And maybe it's just a matter of them all just happening to be having a hard time at the same moment, or one kid's hard time spreading to the others, and therefore not really my fault.  I may be able to help -- I think adding a bit more structure to our days has been good, when I've done that -- but in the end the kids might just have to struggle through it and hopefully be done with it by the time the baby gets here.

7

You know what?  Six is enough grievances and I honestly don't feel that negative about life.  So I'll cheat and talk about good stuff that's going on.



First, I still have a pretty decent energy level.  While it's true that I can't do much of anything without putting my hip joints in excruciating pain, I still would pick that over the horrible dragging feeling that I dealt with a few months ago.  When you have energy but lack mobility, you can still knit, spin, read challenging books, write emails to friends, and come up with activities for the kids.  And I am getting more housework done than I was then, albeit at the price of some pain.  And the thing about pain is, you can kind of get used to it, especially if it's not one of the really bad kinds like headaches or labor.

Second, I've been getting a lot of good crafting done.  No time like the third trimester to knit hats.  I even dug out my loom for one special gift.

Third, everyone has been extremely nice to me lately.  Friends keep showing up at my house to listen to my problems and sweep my floor.  I was in a panic about childcare for labor and a post to the local parish's Facebook page got me a ton of responses.  The person we've found is so perfect I want to adopt her.  I remember having all these doubts about being the "heretic" among the tight Catholic community here, but the reality is that these are great people with an actual functional community and that's not the sort of thing one should give up.  Maybe I don't fit in perfectly, but I am being welcomed and treated with kindness even by the people who know my Awful Secret.  Whereas the other friends I've made in the past year or two?  I still like them, but I wouldn't call them up in a pinch because I just don't feel like our relationship is up to favor-exchanging yet.



Fourth, with the leaves off the trees I get gorgeous sunrises and sunsets every day.  I really like living here.  Still puzzled by the radiator -- why does the thermostat downstairs read that it's set to 66, the actual temperature is 76, and the radiator is on, while the thermostat upstairs reads it's set to 70, it's actually 68, and the radiator is not on?  Or why, in the middle of the night, is it boiling in our room and freezing in Miriam's room, even though the thermostat in the hall supposedly controls both radiators?  But propping doors open is mostly taking care of all the weirdness.  Our fridge also started to fail recently, but it turned out it was covered in our home warranty and we got a whole new fridge for a $100 deductible!  Not too bad at all, even though it took them forevvvveeeerrrrr to get to it.  Home warranties are pretty cool, and I'd recommend them to anybody who doesn't have a lot of savings.  If you've got the savings to buy new appliances as needed, you'll save money just doing that, but if not .... the amount of panic that you are spared when you realize that you pay this month exactly what you pay every month, even though a major appliance broke, is definitely worth the money.  It means that one terrible month can't wipe you out.

I would have liked to visit family for Christmas, but of course that isn't feasible at 36 weeks pregnant, and it looks like we are going to have a very nice Christmas at home.  And it's nice not having to stress about travel.  Our plans are very simple and relaxing; no 12-hour drives or plane flights or anything.  I've baked cookies a lot lately. Tomorrow we're having bacon and orange juice and some kind of sweet bread for breakfast, and then for dinner a beef roast which hopefully everyone will enjoy.  (ONE DAY where no one complains about the dinner would be delightful.)  Our tree is set up in the living room, where it does not dwarf our entire living space, and I have a wreath outside.  It's all very low-key, but that's kind of how we roll.  John even has the next week off, so he and I can knock out some new-baby chores and maybe go for one last date.

I hope you and yours have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

TV babies

Sorry for the recent gap in posting ... that is, if anyone has actually been here to check.  It's partly that I haven't had anything interesting to say, partly that I've been tired and busy, and partly that the spacebar on my tablet is sticky so typing anything requires an annoying amount of effort.  Suffice it to say I'm still alive, and I still haven't had that baby.

I've been watching Scrubs lately, which I mostly like, but lately it's getting very baby-heavy.  Don't get me wrong, I like babies, but I'm often dissatisfied with TV babies. They are a very popular plot device .... and handled totally unrealistically.  I understand why -- I mean, there's only so much you can do with baby actors, for one thing; and for another, not everyone who writes TV scripts has any kids.  But I wonder if people actually get their impressions about what having kids is like from TV.  So I thought I'd clear a few things up with some facts about real babies.

1.  TV PREGNANCIES:
They involve three symptoms, usually: feeling queasy, getting huge, and going completely bonkers.  All pregnant women experience all of these, and generally no others.  They bounce around like normal people and gain no weight except in the belly.  They eat a lot, even when they're nine months pregnant and their stomach is the size of an egg.  But MAN do they go bonkers.  They go from laughing to crying and back again in seconds, because it's so hilarious to watch a woman go crazy.

REAL LIFE:
Pregnancies vary a lot. Some people puke incessantly and some never feel queasy.  Some people gain weight just in the belly, and some gain a little everywhere.  And the stages of pregnancy progress slowly -- you don't actually go from flat-bellied one week to pillow-strapped-on the next week.  Almost everyone eventually gets the pregnancy waddle; somehow actresses aren't always informed of this, because they spring out of chairs and dash down hallways like spring chickens.  And the emotional roller coaster?  Yeah, okay, emotions can be harder to manage during pregnancy.  But it doesn't usually stop us from being competent adults.  Also, your average pregnant woman is not going to bite your head off one moment and the next tolerantly watch you laugh at her with your friends saying "Pregnant women be crazy, amirite?"  No, you're going down for that one. IT'S NOT FUNNY TO FEEL LIKE YOU'RE LOSING YOUR MIND.

2.  TV LABOR:
You know the routine: the woman's water breaks somewhere embarrassing.  Everyone rushes around trying to get her to the hospital RIGHT NOW because if they don't go RIGHT NOW the baby will be born in the car!  Once at the hospital, the woman shrieks and curses and begs for drugs, while still looking pretty.  For mysterious reasons the mother never gets any drugs (unlike 80% of women), probably because watching someone scream and cry is so fun.  There's time for a few conversations and then bam, out pops a baby!  (Generally a two- or three-month-old because actual newborns don't act in movies.)  Unless, of course, there's some kind of problem, in which case everyone acts like the mother is absolutely going to die.  I remember a clip from a soap opera in which the dad is told in whispers that the baby is breech, and then there's a long montage where he pictures life without his wife.  Breech birth is not a serious complication!  After the birth, the mother always looks exactly as she did before getting pregnant and is capable of all her normal activities.

REAL LIFE:
Labors tend to be long, especially first labors.  They usually start with contractions, not water breaking, and nobody knows at first if it's the real thing.  The smart thing is to stay at home for awhile because there is no point in going in while it's still getting started.  There is usually no rush.  Once you get to the hospital, there might be some time for screaming and begging for drugs, but when labor gets serious, the mother probably isn't going to be able to talk at all during contractions.  She'll probably look a fright -- no more TV makeup.  Pushing usually involves more grunting than screaming.  And while complications are common, doctors are pretty good about reassuring the parents that a c-section is not normally life-threatening.  Newborns look totally gruesome.  They are covered in blood and vernix; they do not have belly buttons; their skinny little arms and legs flail around in a jerky way.  Call the Midwife is the only show I've watched which actually has newborns in it; any other "newborn" you've seen on TV is an older baby or a doll.  Oh, and mothers who have just given birth still look pregnant for several days or weeks after.  For the first week or so they can often barely walk.  They cannot chase down bad guys.  They can barely make it to the bathroom.

3.  TV CHILDCARE:
This one drives me bananas.  In television, you see, children only need to be cared for when the plot requires it.  Single mom spontaneously decides to stay at her boyfriend's overnight?  She can just do it, no need to call the babysitter and ask her to stay over.  The baby just vanishes as required.  Oh, and if the spouses are having a fight, both of them can meet up at random in a non-home location, without the baby, and that's totally fine.  Dad does not see Mom and ask, "Where's the baby?" because of course the baby is perfectly fine unattended late at night.  It's probably doing the dishes so they're sparkly when Mom and Dad get home.

Conversely, it's no biggie for parents to bring their babies anywhere, at any hour.  A toddler can come to a 10 pm concert, no sweat, and rather than getting overtired and throwing a fit, will make cute comments or entertain himself in someone's lap.  A crawling infant is a real asset at work and nobody ever says anything mean about it; they are all happy to abandon their own work and watch the baby.

REAL CHILDCARE:
Babies have to be watched 24/7.  That's the reality.  It does in fact put a massive kink in your life, and unless you're independently wealthy and/or have a live-in grandma, there are going to be dramatic moments you'll just have to miss.  I'm sure, of course, that in all these TV shows there's some reasonable explanation; they just don't *include* the frantic 10 pm call to the babysitter explaining that Mom just *has* to chase down her husband to yell at him for playing too many video games, she'll pay time-and-a-half!  But it leaves anyone who actually is a parent asking themselves, "Where is the baby? Who is watching the baby?"

And in real life, when you take a baby somewhere, they can be very intrusive.  Doubly so for a toddler. You have to consider their usual schedule, they will definitely melt down if they can't have a nap when they are used to one, and even a toddler on his best behavior is a great deal of trouble.  But even if you've got an infant and they are peacefully slumbering in a carrier, people always think they're intrusive, even when they're not.  They do not (with rare exceptions) say, "Oh, cute, you brought a baby with you!"  They say, "Are you serious about this job?"  Or, "This is a nice restaurant, not a Chuck E. Cheese."  People vary, but in any group of ten people or so there's likely to be someone who dislikes babies.



Now, of course, TV shows and real babies aren't all the same.  Some real babies act like movie babies (quiet and totally accepting of whatever you do) and some pregnancies and labors actually go like on TV, which is why the scriptwriters thought that was realistic.  And we can ignore the little details (like newborns not being newborns, or babies very obviously leaning away from the person who is supposed to be their parent) because of course there is only so much you can expect a baby "actor" to be able to do.

The only TV shows I've seen that consistently portray babies and parenthood realistically are Jane the Virgin and Call the Midwife.  The former is so good that I want to make every first-time mother watch it.  It covers the real stuff -- the emotional journey of motherhood, the anxiety, mother's groups, juggling childcare, the conflict between career and parenting, postpartum depression, breastfeeding problems.  My only tiny quibble is that there is no way a girl of Jane's economic class and frugal habits would have such gorgeous maternity clothes.  She never wears the same thing twice and it's all super cute.  Your average real pregnant woman, by 40 weeks, is wearing the same pair of maternity sweatpants every day and her belly is hanging out of an XL tshirt.  Nice maternity clothes are hard to find and extremely pricey.

And as for Call the Midwife, it absolutely is what labor and birth are like.  True, it was the 60's, so some obstetrical practices have changed, but the stages of birth are accurately depicted, along with the emotional challenges of each.  I would recommend it to anyone who wants to have kids someday, as well as everyone who thinks the past was so much better than now.  But I don't recommend it if you're actually pregnant -- it will make you ugly-cry about 50% of the time.

Scrubs is hit-or-miss -- you can tell some of the scriptwriters have kids and some don't.  There's a PPD episode that is totally raw and real ... and then there are whole episodes where apparently no one actually remembers they even have kids.  And even the shows that manage babies terribly have their moments.  House MD has a scene where a mother wonders if being a parent was the right choice, and it hit me where I live.  And on Friends when Phoebe has the babies .... well, there was one very real moment in there.  (Also, her maternity overalls?  Hideous but tempting ... no waistband!)

I'm sure I didn't include all the terrible inaccuracies of TV parenthood -- feel free to chime in!