Chicago Moms Blog

Victorian Morning

I was working at the dining table this morning, and suddenly realized just how Victorian my workspace looked. Funny! I had to take some photos to demonstrate:

The dining table as a whole, suitable cluttered in Victorian fashion. Note curtains in the background (they liked curtains), and richly-patterned rug, very much in keeping with their sense of style.

A mug of tea (strong black tea, with milk and sugar, just they would have drunk it), in a mug I actually bought in England, with a delightful illustration and text from Charles Dodson's original Alice in Wonderland. (Mclaggan Smith Mugs, Ltd., copyright the British Library Board -- and now that I've visited that site, I want many more of their mugs -- dangerous!) I also love my new table runner, embroidered with cheerful orange and magenta flowers on a dark mustard yellow background. Not hand-embroidered, alas -- this one's the Bridget runner from Crate and Barrel (currently on sale, if you're tempted). Hand-embroidering something like this is far beyond my skills -- and my patience!

Open Floor vs. Closed Doors

This Sunday, we're going to take another look at the Victorian we fell in love with, but are also going to two other open houses in Oak Park. Here are three of the top contenders:

The prices are similar, as are the locations, so it may come down to the actual houses. Which has me thinking about styles of house. The first is a Victorian -- the other two are American Foursquares.

Would You Carry a Double Mortgage?

On Sunday, we dropped off Kavi at Jarmila's, and went to look at open houses in Oak Park. This was meant to just be a preliminary look at some of the places we've been avidly perusing online, since we're not actually listing our place until next week (the painting is half done! The de-cluttering, ditto! The masonry guy comes today! The handyman comes Friday!), and who knows how long it'll take to sell after that. Average time for condo sales in our area is about six months right now. We have some advantages (in that our place is gorgeous and unusual and there aren't that many three-bedroom condos in our neighborhood), but also some disadvantages (in that it's a high-end unit, and as a result, a lot of potential buyers would need a jumbo loan to buy it, and banks are not so happy to give those out these days). So while our place could get an offer the week it goes up, it could also easily sit for six months, or a year, or more. So our very sensible plan was to wait until it sold before seriously making an offer on an Oak Park house.

Then our sensible plan went (half-way) out the window.

See, we looked at houses. The first one was too small. The second one was workable, and relatively cheap, but would probably start feeling small in a few years when second kid starts wanting his/her own room. The third was the ranch house, and I vetoed it because it's just not the kind of house I like (apologies to those who love ranches, but I'm a multi-story gal, as long as my legs keep working). So far, so good.

Then we decided to just drive by one of the houses we'd really liked, but which didn't have an open house listed. We were very curious about it, because it seemed huge, and we were worried that they'd just extended the house right over their entire backyard. It was lovely from the front; we stopped and sat on the low stone parapet surrounding a massive tree, and admired the many levels of Victorian loveliness. The grey walls, accented with pretty purple trim. The incredible wraparound porch, and the mature shrub garden that screened off the porch, providing privacy. The turret! :-) But we couldn't see the backyard at all from the front, so Kevin suggested driving around to the back alley behind the house.

Newsflash: U.S. Parents Spend More Time with Kids than Ever!

"Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time."   -- NY Times Article:  Till Children Do Us Part

Really, that could be my whole post right there -- I stumbled across this article and then just ended up reading that sentence over and over again.  Seriously?  We're spending more time with our kids than in 1965?  But I thought 1965 was part of the 'golden period', when every (upper-middle-class) family had a stay-at-home mom dedicated to her children every waking hour.  When children blossomed under the intensive care of their biological parents.  If that's just not true, and the kids turned out fine anyway, what am I supposed to do with my vague sense of guilt over our having just upped our nanny-share from three days a week to five?

 

Our daughter (21 months) is now keeping company with a 3 month old in our home, under the supervision of a wonderful young woman from Brazil, who is here in the U.S. doing her Master's degree.  And oh my god, we love it.  Sure, I feel a pang when I go upstairs to work, and Kavi freaks out for oh, about thirty seconds, before she gets down to the serious business of playing with Jarmila and baby Gavin.  And I try to minimize my trips downstairs for tea and snacks, since often that freakout is repeated every time Kavi sees mama.  There's a little guilt with that, I admit.  But for the most part, having two extra days to work (and rest, and even knit a little in peace) is just gorgeous.  I feel so much more sane than I did last fall.

Taking Care of My Man

My partner's mother, Ann, opened her home to us today, allowing us to have a holiday brunch for our friends. I particularly appreciated that Ann not only ran out half an hour before the party to pick up the whipping cream I'd forgotten (to top the trifle), not only pulled out all kinds of Christmas mugs and serving platters for our use, not only carved the ham, but also helped with all the cleaning afterwards.

I particularly appreciated all her generous labor since she also had to go in to work this evening to do some extra holiday tasks. Ann left her husband, brother-in-law (visiting for the holidays) and son behind, noting that there were plenty of leftovers for them to eat for dinner. Kevin's dad, Ron, can cook a few dishes (his baba ghanoush is superb), but for the most part, Ann does the cooking in the house, putting a hot dinner on the table most nights for forty years and counting.

Full-Time Childcare When You Don't "Need" It

So I'm feeling weird about the whole nanny-share, full-time care thing we're starting in January.  We've found this semester that the 3.5 days of care we currently have (8-5 MWF, 9-1 Sat), is basically enough to cover our teaching responsibilities (prep, teach, grade), admin work (mostly Kevin's, although I have some DesiLit/SLF stuff), and household needs. But it leaves no time for math research or writing fiction. I've squeezed out a bit of time here and there, as has Kevin, but we're both really starting to feel the need for more time. Hence, turning to a nanny-share so we can afford full-time care (probably 8-4 M-F). We like the other family, and love our current nanny, so I think this will work relatively smoothly. That's all good.

But.

Crocheting to Stave Off Election Panic

After five years away, I've taken up crocheting again.  I'm doing it for three reasons:

1. I stumbled across amigurumi (quirky little crocheted animals) and am totally charmed.
2. The international and personal budget crunch means that homemade presents are the way to go this holiday.
3. Crocheting helps me not panic about the election.

I'm at work right now, and on my lunch break have been reading knitting sites for the last hour; I tell you it is torture to do that when you have left your crocheting at home. My fingers are aching for my beautiful Victorian birch crochet hook and the silky blue-green yarn I'm working with right now.  I have a weakness for gorgeous, expensive, sensual yarns.  I'd love to roll around naked in a big vat of cashmere yarn. That would make me happy right now.

Academic Mama: Not So Flexible As I Thought

I thought I was doing well, balancing three days a week of teaching with our three days a week of childcare, Kevin and I switched off on toddler-watch the remaining time, keeping the house pretty clean and the meals mostly home-cooked.  Then this post from an academic mother just kicked me in the head.

"Having It":  "I was a productive new mama. I worked fast and with real focus when I was away from my baby, I think because the time felt so precious and so crucial to my sense of self. I desperately wanted to feel like I had my brain back and that I hadn't sacrificed my career by deciding to run with this pregnancy. Because I was working with such intensity, it seemed like I could get by on much less than full-time care. Mr. Vane and I didn't feel enthusiastic about institutional daycare at this point, and the few places we did feel good about had years-long waiting lists. So we hired a sitter for about 16 hours a week. Over the next 8 months, I wrote my prospectus and first chapter and taught a class during those 16 hours/wk, supplemented by frequent evening and weekend work. I felt good, like I was managing things.

No House For Us, In These Dark Times

I want to make clear, I'm not complaining.  My partner's job is stable, and while there's a good chance mine won't be renewed in three years now (given that I work for a state university, and the state is in dire straits), we can survive on just one income in our current home (if it's his, that is, since he makes three times what I do).  We'd have to give up child care and I'd try to keep writing from home while doing the full-time stay-at-home-mom thing, which frankly terrifies me, but lots of people survive that, so I imagine I would too.

What I'm mourning is the loss of my house.  Not the quite nice three-bedroom condo we live in, which really is plenty big enough to accommodate us, even if we do have that second kid we're trying for.  But the house of our dreams, the one we've been browsing real estate listings for.  Nothing fancy -- just something with a back yard, and a fourth bedroom, or at least a basement or attic that could be converted into a playroom.  I'm getting a little tired of tripping over blocks, and it would be lovely to exile the bulk of the toys to a playroom.  Not to mention that a house would hopefully have a bit of storage space somewhere for old baby clothes and outgrown strollers and the like.  With a house, instead of confining all my gardening to pots on a rooftop deck, I could actually sink some roots into the ground, and plan a garden over a few decades, instead of working desperately to keep a few things alive over the winter.  Maybe we could find a house in a quieter neighborhood, somewhere our daughter could eventually safely ride her bike down broad tree-lined streets.  That sounds really nice.

Not Actually So Much About Palin

Ever since we had our daughter, Kavi, fifteen months ago, Kevin and I have been enmeshed in conversations about our careers.  He's a mathematician; I'm a writer; we're both academics.  He has tenure -- I have a short-term, part-time visiting faculty position.  Both of us worked 60-100 hours a week at our jobs before we had a kid.  Because Kavi was born in May, right at the start of summer vacation, both us were able to take three months off when she was born, which was essential as we attempted to cope with breastfeeding failures, lack of sleep, incessant crying (more on my part than hers, but still), etc.  I can't imagine how we would have survived if even one of us had had to go back to work right away, much less both of us.

But of course, people do cope.  Maybe they're younger than us, or just more energetic.  Maybe they have more family around to help out, or more money to hire childcare (and more willingness to do so).  Maybe they don't have any of those things, but they just weren't lucky enough to have a choice in the matter, and so they cope, because they have to.