I Don't Know How We Do It, Either

Lately when I tell people how our family's schedule is looking these days, the most frequent response I get is for eyes to enlarge in bewilderment, heads to shake and I am told, "I don't know how you do it." Well, most days it involves watching the clock, desperately counting down the minutes until it's another day passed, because another day gone is one day closer to things settling down.

Mark officially passed his CNA certification, and he got a job at a local care center. Check him out in his new uniform!

A lot different from his previous work uniform, I'd say. After he'd been working as a CNA for a few days I asked him what he thought of it. His response was, "It's a lot easier than I thought it would be." Well, yeah, being a CNA isn't innately difficult, the job itself is easy, but the hard part is the physical labor. Mark, being the healthy strapping male specimen that he is, isn't having much difficulty with the physical demands of the job (that was the difficult part for me way back when I was a CNA - I like to think I'm Superwoman sometimes but I am not physically capable of turning and transferring totally dependent people weighing 400+ pounds by myself). He is, however, having some difficulty with the questionable ethical practices of the management team. I am having lots of difficulty dealing with the schedule they put him on. So even though the extra money has been nice I think everybody will feel much better about this situation when Mark 1) starts working at a different facility/ in a hospital where there's more accountability, 2) starts school and drops to part time, 3) starts working a different shift, or 4) some combination of the above.

Mark's shifts are 10 PM - 6 AM, 5 nights a week. I work 7 PM - 7 AM, 3 nights a week. Ally, our friend who in the past has been extremely helpful with childcare, is still extremely helpful at nights and the odd weekend but unfortunately, due to a schedule change, is not available during the weekdays. So what that leaves us with is Mark and I are both working graveyard shifts with no one consistently available to watch Mira during the day. Some days we've been able to get Mark's parents or my mom to watch Mira for a few hours so we can snatch a few hours of rest but more often than not, we have had to resort to switching off during the day every few hours. Unfortunately Mark gets the brunt of it because as he pointed out, if I'm doing back-to-back shifts I have much less time to sleep than he does. I've offered to break up my shifts to see if that will help but Mark has told me it's his fault we're in this situation so it's his duty to deal with it. I say we're in this as a family so I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make life easier in the meantime but I've been too tired to really argue the issue so far. So in a nutshell, all I can say about life right now is it's kinda rough (okay it's a LOT rough) but as they say, I can sleep all I want when I'm dead.

Mira, I hope, isn't picking up on our stress and exhaustion. I feel bad that I've been so bone tired these days that even the idea of taking her to the park feels about as overwhelming as hiking to the top of Mount Everest, so maybe it's in my favor that we're in the middle of triple-digit heat so it's not like going to the park would be that comfortable anyway. I feel bad that I'd had all these plans for fun things to do and places I wanted to take Mira and now, in the interest of paying our bills and buying groceries, we haven't been able to do those things. I try not to think about any of that because there will be more summers and things will calm down, but thanks to being chronically sleep-deprived molehills become mountains in my head and it's a depressing thought for me. I need to realize it's okay to not be an over-achiever and to not have to do everything. It's such a hard lesson for me. And honestly, Mira is happy and won't care as long as she's got her parents.

And she is such a ham! I sometimes am taken by surprise at her sense of humor. One night I put her to bed, which usually isn't much of a struggle but this night she wanted to stay up. I kept telling her she had to stay in bed because it was night time and blah blah blah she wasn't listening anyway but I was obliged to spout it all off. I walked downstairs into the kitchen, and a few minutes later I walked back into the living room to see this:

That is Mira's laundry hamper. She had dumped out her dirty clothes, and crept downstairs under the hamper. I actually laughed out loud. It's hard to get upset at cuteness like that.

Mira's expectations of me are actually not as high as I tend to think they are. I mean, one of the many highlights of her day can be something as simple as having a bowl of "white ice cream" (vanilla) outside on the steps.

And sometimes all she needs to have fun is to nab my phone and take a bunch of pictures. I came home from work a few mornings ago and sat on the couch, which is a great way for you to realize how tired you are. Mira fished my phone out of my pocket and got this:

Mark asked her if she knew how to take a selfie. She took about 30 of them but these are my favorites.

And then we took a family selfie.

And sometimes, just spending the day with Grandma and munching on an apple will do the trick.

See, I don't need to make tons of plans and take her lots of different places to make her happy. She is happy and I sure don't feel like I'm doing a whole hell of a lot to make that happen! So there you go.

And conversing with her can be entertainment by itself. One evening she was getting really frustrated with a princess outfit she was wearing. The skirt wasn't doing what she wanted it to do or something, I don't know what her problem was, but she was getting more and more frustrated and was right on the edge of having a full-blown tantrum about it. After trying patiently for awhile to talk her through it without much success I finally commented, "Someone's getting tired." Mira looked at me and says, "You?"

Also, attitude. Not sure where this comes from. I asked her to do something, like put a toy away or some such business.

Mira: "No, Mom!"

Me: <warningly> "Mira."

Mira: <dramatic eye roll> "Ugghh!! TAY, Mom!" <stomps off pouting to do the bidding of her Big Mean Mom> (Also, tay = okay.)

Another time, Mira was playing on the iPad and had the volume up higher than I liked.

Me: "Mira, could you turn the volume down on the iPad please?"

Mira: "Ummmmmmmm.... No."

At least I asked.

Mark told me today that before we had Mira he had thought a lot about what our kid would be like. He says he always knew we would have a girl, and he pictured her having long, dark hair and a calm personality. At least we got the gender right but I dunno what happened after that!

July means two holidays in Utah. I unfortunately worked the entire Fourth of July and that weekend so nothing fun happened there. But Pioneer Day of course rolls around and I had that off, so we still got to spend some extra time with family. Last night we went to Mark's parents' house with some other family members and had dinner, then watched the city fireworks from the yard. A storm just barely grazed past and the light was amazing. Of course the iPhone camera doesn't do it justice but still stunning.

Today we slept in. In case you were curious, a three-year-old is just about as tall as our bed is wide. Mira doesn't sleep in bed with us very often but when she does I find it's one of the sweetest things. Then I took Mira to the community pool at my dad's condo. Mira was a little more cautious with the water at first but she had a lot of fun.

She sure loves her grandpa!

She would swing from the pole and cry out, "Save me! Save me!"

Auntie Sara to the rescue!

No fear of the deep end!

Eventually things will get easier. We'll figure something out. At least when Mark starts classes he'll drop to part-time so in some ways that will help our schedule. I should mention that Mark is thinking now that instead of being a scrub tech he's going to do nursing school to become an RN. For not a whole lot more extra school, we're looking at more job opportunities, and much better pay. We still need to pound out the details because unlike scrub tech, nursing school has prerequisite classes that we'll need to factor in, so this will be a longer time commitment but the payoff will be better. I've always thought he would be a great nurse so I'm secretly (but not so secretly now, obviously) very excited, and as always so proud of him. He'll do great. (He claimed he could never be a nurse because after hearing me talk about my job he's convinced he's not smart enough to be a nurse. I countered with a story of a home health nurse I did clinicals with back in nursing school who was convinced that caffeine is a vasodilator, and if she could pass the NCLEX, Mark definitely was smart enough to be a nurse. And let's not even get into a NICU nurse who though an albuterol nebulizer would be absorbed through the patient's eyeballs. Clearly, passing the NCLEX is not the best indicator of how smart a nurse is.)

On that note, a few nights ago at work I demonstrated why nurses shouldn't be allowed to play with sharp objects when I tried to cut a pill in half and ended up slicing my fingers open. This is why we can't find the staplers, we can't be trusted with them. (Needles are still okay though.)