Ring of Despair

I suppose it's OK to let Max play in his bedroom while I'm here in the boys' bathroom sorting his brother's laundry he is going to be stuck downstairs all day it's freaking snowing again and I'm too filthy to go to the gym and take him so he can have fun in the kid room there I didn't wash my hair yesterday it's so dirty it hurts I'll just wait until he naps if he naps he hardly ever sleeps but maybe he will be merciful to me today and I can pop in a workout DVD and shower too while he naps Jesus how much laundry does Gabe have did he go to school naked his closet is only so big wait a minute what's that sound that very distinct tinkling sound of delicate metal and gems on crystal oh my God that little shit has gotten into my jewelry dish again I'd better rush into my bedroom and see what's happening he hears me coming he's already saying "oh no no no" and "it's OK" like I'm not going to spank you look what you did dammit how many times do I have to tell you oh yeah you can run but I'm going to catch you oh God you're struggling and I'm mad and I just hate myself for spanking you and this morning is just going to shit I'm trying to do laundry and housework and act like I've got it together and here you are dumping my jewelry you're entertaining yourself you've got no one to play with I guess there's just nothing to do but pick it up no I don't want your help just get away from me I don't even want to look at you right now and I hate hate hate myself for how I feel about you when you're just a little guy and you're just curious and I wish I was a better mother and oh my God where the fuck is my wedding band no get away stop it oh shit where is it where is it I've found all the earrings and the diamond and the other rings where is the band how many times do I have to tell you to leave my things alone this is my stuff stop it leave it just leave it alone my wedding band is gone I'm crying now and I know it's just a ring just a thing but this makes me so sad your daddy gave me this ring this is from daddy he gave it to me on the day we finally got married and this is my wedding ring and I miss him so much he's gone so long at sea and he gave me this ring and I'm sobbing and there is snot coming out of my nose and I'm on the floor now you're really crying and upset and trying to hug me and crap I have to hug you because you're making that funny little upset penguin honk and you only ever do that when you're super upset of course you're upset because you're just 2 and you don't know why your mom is on the floor sobbing but you know it might have something to do with you and you just said "it's OK" in half reassurance to me and half hope for yourself and you're putting your soft little chubby hands on the side of my face and trying to physically lift my sobbing face into a smile this makes me love you and hate myself even more and stop it you have to go somewhere else now I can't do this right now I just want to find this ring it has to be here somewhere I'll go through everything and lift up everything and put away all this piled stuff maybe it fell into this stuff everywhere wait a minute I'm doing extra work now and it's taking more time where did he go I hear the rattle of the blinds in the guest bedroom my God is he hanging himself in the cords of the blinds while I'm looking for a stupid ring I'm running down the hallway nope there he is just screwing around trying to make that noise again with the blinds c'mon let's go downstairs and do this laundry please I just want to do some laundry it's the one thing that always makes me feel like I can accomplish something just something anything in this house that can be some evidence that I have done something right.

(Just a little snippet from my morning.)

The Tax Tutor Cometh

My husband is a great provider for our family. It's a hard way to go about it -- being away from that family more than half the year in one of the hardest professionally skilled jobs on the planet, IMHO -- and sometimes we wonder if it's all really "worth it."

There's not much arguing with the net worth on the balance sheet, though. We may not be together like most couples get to be, but when we are together we get to live and travel and have experiences that a lot of couples only dream about. I mean, Robin Leach isn't going to show up any time soon, but it's a comfort for which I can be only grateful.

One of the greatest things Dan ever did for us financially was to contract with a local firm that manages all of our money matters. Taxes, investments, cash flow, household budget, college savings plan -- you name it, they do it. They set up a trust for all of our assets, and I finally got a power of attorney that makes handling business while Dan is away at sea so much easier.

The best part is that Dan and I can pester our financial consultant and our accountant -- hell, even the secretary there -- as often as we want. They are extremely nice and knowledgeable. And whenever there is an issue, or some sort of hoop jumping that financial matters inevitably require, they and the rest of the team there will do the research and make the calls and fill out the forms.

Oh my God, the forms.

Any and all forms ever sent my way should come with a brown paper lunch bag. Forms make me hyperventilate. I have a bad association with forms when it comes to money and insurance and other Really Important Stuff. Very bad. But the folks at Hantz, along with Titus & Urbanski, just handle it and tell me where to sign.

Spare me any lecturing on how I, especially as a smart and capable woman, should know more about finances and should be able to figure it out myself. I'm scarred, OK? Besides, for good or evil, money is rather important and having experts sort it all out isn't a dumb idea. I take my clothes to a really good tailor, even though I could take three times as long to hem my own pants and probably end up with uneven stitches and a bloody finger. I'll take my money to a really good financial firm, and I won't be the one calling the banks and the brokers and the myriad governmental gatekeepers and waiting on hold until Christ comes again.

Enter Tony the Tax Man, as I call him. T-Bone, as my husband calls him. We met him at a vendor's booth for his firm at our little village's annual summer festival. Dan had been on the hunt for a new CPA to prepare his taxes, which are ridiculous because of his sailing schedule, independent consulting, union, Navy orders, etc., and was considering a financial adviser too since I had quit earning my own paycheck and the whole family's financial stability was now in one basket.

Filed under Small World Wonders, it turned out folks from Tony the Tax Man's firm were the exact same ones who gave a presentation on retirement investments that I had covered for the newspaper. [You can read that little gem here: "Older residents urged to do estate, tax planning for retirement" -- I did not write that boring headline, by the way.]

Dan and I ended up scheduling a meeting with Brian the Brain (a moniker I only now made up but which totally fits), and it was he who had been the first one to ever make any of that 401(k) shit sound sensible to me -- and hopefully to the Silver Sneakers seniors gathered at the YMCA that day as well. A copy of my article was even laminated and among the pile of magazines on the lobby table when we first arrived at the office. Good omen, eh?

So now, Tony the Tax Man prepares our return, Brian the Brain keeps our finances on track, and Kristine the Great (our lovely lawyer queen) helped us prepare all of the documents that say who gets our kids when we die. Now that is one-stop shopping.

But today I'm particularly fond of Tony the Tax Man. A preview ad for HBO's "Silicon Valley" finally made me realize why he looks so familiar; Tony apparently is the stunt double for Zach Woods. A letter from the Ohio Department of Taxation made me realize how very vital Tony is in keeping my hyperventilating feelings at bay.

Good ol' ODT sent both Dan and me an "identity verification" letter stating how very concerned the department was with being responsible to the American taxpayer and doing everything it could to combat fraud. What I read was it wanted me to jump through one more goddamned hoop and had made it cumbersome enough in the hopes that it wouldn't really have to issue us any refund.

At first I played it very cool. I followed the letter's directions, went online to take the ID quiz, and had Dan's letter scanned in and ready to attach to an email that I planned to send to him aboard his ship with this very easygoing and reassuring note that I had successfully passed the quiz and he just needed to do this teensy little thing and everything would be golden.

Instead, I wrote him and cc'd Tony the Tax Man with a record of my failure. I couldn't even get past the log in page. But Dan couldn't either, and I suppose that made me feel a bit less incompetent. We kept getting these errors that we weren't in the Ohio Department of Taxation's system. All I could think was, "Then why the f*ck did you send me this letter?" This is why I hate this stuff so so so much. It never works out.

But Tony eventually got us the answers we needed and set us on the path to passing the quiz. Tony the Tax Tutor.

I highly recommend getting a financial adviser or manager or consultant, even if you think you don't have that many finances to be advised/managed/consulted in the first place. An adviser actually helps you find more money. And if you can, find one that does all these services together, especially if you are ever paying for anyone else to do your taxes. The fee for this particular firm is $100 a month, and that includes our annual tax preparation so really it's only 60 more bucks a month for the year. Money doesn't scare me that much to miss the good deal in all of this. Kristine the Great had her own fees, but if you have people you love and property you want to protect and pass on, you really need the kind of stuff she handles.

Now all that's in my little brown paper bag is a sandwich. Bought and paid for, baby. Pass the mayo.

Co-Sleeping Nightmares

The scene this morning.

I hate co-sleeping with my baby. I do it, but I hate it.

Here are a few things you should know:

1. Max has been a terrible sleeper since the day he was born. Hates to sleep. Never seen anything like it.

2. He isn't really a baby anymore. He's a 17-month-old toddler, and co-sleeping with him has gotten increasingly frustrating.

3. My husband doesn't like this arrangement any more than I do, although for different reasons.

4. Yes, I've tried everything. Yes, it's safe. Yes, I'd like it to be different. Your advice is not being solicited here. I need to vent.

Co-sleeping supporters tend to be the enthusiastic kind, the ones who are really into attachment parenting and point to cultures across the globe who don't put their offspring in cages in a separate room at night. They fiercely defend the practice against the traditionalists and the medically panicked alike.

I'm not one of those people, really. I'm doing it just because that's the only thing that worked for Max. I found myself trying to explain the history of his sleep habits and justify how he ended up in my bed here in this post, but I deleted all of that. You'll just have to believe me. From the day he was born he was like this, and having him sleep next to me was the last resort.

Gabe had slept in his own places, after all, with no trouble. Fifteen years later, I had every intention of my new baby sleeping in his own bed. We had a bassinet, a crib AND a playpen set up well before Max even came home. We were fools.

Getting Max to nap during the day in his crib was a major achievement that took months and months. Hell, just getting him to fall asleep in the first place is a victory every time. I spend hours of my life trying to rock him and sing to him and pat him. No, I don't let him Cry It Out. That's mean. And he doesn't cry. He just lies there awake, happy, waiting to throw a tantrum later in the day when we're out in public and he hasn't napped.

Nighttime is still ruled by co-sleeping. And not just sleeping in the same bed with me; Max wants to sleep cuddled up right up next to me, and I can't stand it. I don't like sleeping with anybody else, not even my husband.

Hold on -- there are several things I like to do with my husband in bed. (How do you think Max got here?) I'll cuddle, talk, have sex, horse around, even submit to the occasional spooning for a nap. But when it comes to really sleeping, at night, to recharge my body and brain?

Get. Off. Of. Me.

I don't need a BTU factory or a sheet stealer or a nerve pincher. I need a good rest. In a bed all to myself, with no one else's tossing and turning, snores, or farts other than my own. Selfish, I know.

My dear husband wants to sleep in a bed with his wife in it. Sigh. I suppose, but it's just all rather moot since there is a toddler in his spot. My husband is out to sea right now so it's not like he's getting much sleep at all, but when he comes home the guest bed is still waiting for him. I had hopes that I would train Max to sleep in his own crib at night by the time his daddy came back, but that plan is going to the same place where most of mine go lately: straight to shit.

Still, sleeping-as-in-sleeping with my husband would be better than sleeping with Max. Because the real issue is that Max likes to sleep with strands of my hair clenched in his grasp.

I forget when Max started using my hair as his security blanket, but it's lasted for more than a year now. Some kids suck their thumbs. Max holds my hair. He runs his fingers through it, he holds it taut and strums it like a guitar, he even sucks on it if I'm not paying attention.

He is still quite the restless sleeper at night, but he can usually self-soothe with a little handful of hair.

This does not mean restful sleep for me. Max doesn't just reach for my hair, really. He drowsily gropes for it, which means he first picks my nose or slaps me on the forehead before he finds my scalp. And as he has gotten older and more independently mobile, he also wants to be cuddled up RIGHT NEXT TO ME. He even tries to put his very heavy, bowling ball-like head on top of my head. No matter how much I push him over onto his own side, he rolls or scoots or slides until he is pressing every available body part against me.

It sucks.

Try being asleep and getting head-butted in the nose so squarely you bleed or poked in the eye so hard you see stars. Happens to me nightly. Oh, and try to conceal your rage. Try to feel like a good mom when you throw your toddler into his crib from a rather significant distance just because you can't freaking take it one more night and then feel how tightly his arms clutch around your neck when you go back in and pick him up and he goes instantly back to sleep because all he needs in his little life is a fistful of hair and a warm cuddle and the assurance of love from the woman who just moments before treated him like bag of trash thrown into a can.

Trust me, if I could get Max to sleep through the night in his own bed, I would. I was rather desperate to get it done while Dan is away. Then I would truly get some time in the bed all by myself. Because I know that as soon as I kick out the kid, the husband is going to come back in. At least he stays on his own side and hasn't punched me in the head yet.

I'm not looking for suggestions, or even sympathy. I'm just trying to put an alternate perspective out there on co-sleeping. Not everyone is doing it out of choice or good will. Some of us are doing it because it's the only way that works, and by that we mean what's best for our kids. It certainly isn't because it's what is best for us. So give us a break.

Just not on my nose.

Hello, There, Sailor!

How did I let a whole week go by without blogging? Because that was the week that my husband's ship was in U.S. ports.

Everything revolves around when I might get one of those precious phone calls from him. Depending on what kind of bridge watch he had or how many hours it had been since he had slept, the calls ranged from quick check-ins to lovely chats. My job is to be available and to keep my phone charged and nearby.

Most importantly, I let one of those calls go to voice mail so that he could record a message for Max. When I play the distinctive voice of his daddy to him, his eyes get very wide and he holds very still. It's one way we're trying to help his memories connect for when they are reunited.

We had very little advance warning before Dan went out to sea this time, but hopefully by the next cruise we will get around to my idea of video recording him reading children's books. Playing those videos for Max would make a very special bedtime routine indeed.

But now it's back to my routine. Which apparently will include bathing my husband's dog, Hippo. She is filthy.

Should Baby Boys Have Only Baby Girlfriends?

When I saw my friends' announcement on Facebook that their son had finally made his debut in the world, the thoughts that zipped through my head went something like this:

"Oh neat, he was born two weeks after Max. Dan and I were born two weeks apart too. Maybe he and Max will find each other someday like we did."

I was startled by these thoughts. I think somewhere behind them were imaginations that had this couple stayed in the area and not moved away, our sons likely would have grown up together as church friends.

But my brain quite innocently went to comparing their happenstance of being born two weeks apart to the same time frame between me and the person I love most.

I have decided that it is normal to have an innocent thought about your son finding companionship or love or romance or whatever with the progeny of good and decent friends, regardless of the biological sex. We do it readily enough between baby boys and baby girls.

The other day at my OBGYN office, a nurse was admiring how handsome Max is and told me that there had been a mini burst of girls born and that she would be happy to serve as matchmaker and secure him a little girlfriend.

I smiled politely, but all I could think about was how willing we all are to sexualize our children at an early age as long as it is in a heterosexual way.

I wonder if that same nurse ever would dare to say something to me like, "Oh, there was another handsome baby boy who was in here yesterday. I should arrange a meeting between you and his mom so that you can get them betrothed -- in the few states that allow that sort of thing."

I believe that whatever bent his sexuality will take, Max has it right now. There's no way to tell, but there are ways to let it develop naturally. We did this with his big brother, and he is all about ogling the ladies right now. In fact, it would be better for someone to come up and offer to match-make for my teenager.

If Max and my friends' little boy ever do find each other, I hope they do indeed note how close they are in age and find some joy in that. Whatever other connections they discover will be up to them.

My Three Husbands

When I married Dan in Las Vegas,
I think the something "old" might
have been the groom himself, who
was a boyfriend 16 years prior.

No, this isn't an episode of "Big Love."

For those of you keeping track, you may have noticed that I have mentioned three father figures so far.

Yes, yes, I've had three husbands, but don't bother trying to shame me about it. I did that enough to myself and I'm long over it.

I am fortunate to have had three good marriages. True, two of them ended, and there was much sadness and pain involved, but on the whole they were loving experiences. Divorce ends some aspects of the relationship, but it shouldn't obliterate the honor. While not all of the guys are crazy about each other, I maintain friendships and co-parenting of Gabe with each of my ex-husbands.

In a roundabout way, my marital experience actually begins with my current husband, Dan. We met while we were undergrads at Syracuse University, where his philosophy major and my religion major brought us together in a class called -- get this -- "The Ethics of Love."

We dated for a little while but ended up as friends. And we stayed friends, the best of friends, for 15 years while we moved to other places and joined our lives with other people. I had a baby, he went to war, life just happened.

Fifteen years later our paths intersected again, and everything we had been through made it all the more poignant when our hearts were ready to be one again. We got hitched in Las Vegas on May 8, 2010, and fast-tracked ourselves into parenthood. In all likelihood, we conceived in a town called -- get this -- New Hope, which is on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border. I'm hoping to at least get through our one-year anniversary dinner next week, at the restaurant where he proposed, before I pop this baby out.

Ted and Gabe at Chickamauga
National Military Park.

I don't often think of Dan as a stepfather to Gabe, mostly because my oldest son already had such a good one in Ted, my second husband. Ted and Gabe don't see each other as often as either of them would like, but they keep in touch and exchange gifts on holidays and birthdays. Truthfully, Ted and I share my dog Johnny more often.

Ted and I had about a decade together, in our home and in our profession. We suffered through major flooding events, including a national disaster-level one in 2007, and other joys of homeownership on two journalists' pathetic salaries. He dutifully parented Gabe through youth sports, something I rank slightly above diving into a vat of snot on the enjoyability spectrum, and was there for those milestole family vacation trips. Ted helped Gabe grow from a little boy to an adolescent, and there's no limit to the amount of gratitude I shall always carry for that.

Snuggled in his daddy's arms,
Gabe experiences his first
snow. In Syracuse, that was
probably in September.

I was married to Gabe's dad, another Dan, for like a minute. We too had met at Syracuse, and we were ostensibly engaged during what was supposed to be my last semester there when we found out that I was pregnant. My studies derailed, but Dan had another year to go anyway after changing schools and majors several times, so our little family had its beginnings in central New York while I took another year to get my degree. We soon moved to Ohio to be near my family, and I was able to start my newspaper career.

Dan F. was a loving, attentive, patient baby-daddy. He even survived a poo bomb incident during a shared bath with generally good humor. Gabe was an adorable toddler when we finally got around to marrying, but we quickly realized we were going to be better parents than good mates, and we amicably parted ways in under a year. Dan F. soon found Jackie, who became the world's most amazing stepmother and has been nothing but wonderful to Gabe since the first day she met him. Dan F. remains a loving, attentive, patient father.

It was a great advantage to have four loving parents working together to raise Gabe. It's just me and Dan K. with this incoming one. That will be different, if I'm permitted an understatement here.

"Two times is lucky, third time's a charm," croons folk singer Meg Hutchinson in her song "Can You Tell Me." I certainly do love my charming third husband, more than I ever could articulate, and I'm having the life with him that I dreamed of having when I was a mere 19 years old and hoping he was going to be my first and only. But I feel lucky to have known and loved and lived with Dan F. and Ted too.

Of course, they may be wiping their brows in relief to have escaped me.