I wrote a post a while ago about my plan to work from home with a little turning-two year old at home. A friend, www.tricolon.wordpress.com, and I decided to try working in the same place (my house) while our two babies ran around and played. The original ideas was to hire a mother’s helper to watch them, split the cost and get work done while saving money. Sounds great, right? The mother’s helper seemed to be a constant sign that we must be going out any minute now, and said children got much clingier. We got rid of the mother’s helper but kept on working.
Now that the school year is starting to wind down, I think I can declare the experiment a success!!!
We have both managed to get work done, and I think more than we would have gotten done working separately. It doesn’t hurt that tricolon occasionally changes my son’s diapers when I am on a deadline and stressed. It has cost me time in preparing lunch for two instead of one, but much less than it has cost me.
The challenge has been with the talking. If we work and don’t share, work gets done. I have often cut my friend off so I can force myself back to work. But the sharing is also urging to make the at home business work and to push ourselves.
What I wanted to write about was the unexpected benefit which has seemed to me to be the very best part of the arrangement. Our sons have bonded in such a tremendous way. Just was twins develop strong love long before they are verbal simply through closeness and time, these two boys have such love for each other that they manage to express even without being able to speak.
My son has such a special place in his heart for this boy and for his mommy. And the face of her one year old lights up the whole room when he sees my son. They hug, they share and they laugh.
We wanted them to be a distraction for each other so we could work. What they have turned into is an opportunity to develop empathy, love and compassion at a very young age in a way that just doesn’t happen with “Ima”.
The socialization benefits of preschool without all of the many problems of preschool and my hugs on hand when needed. Truly the best part of the experiment.
I don’t suffer from allergies, but I have learned that if you live in the Garden State long enough, sooner or later you, too, will become an allergy sufferer. It is one of the many, many reasons that living in NJ is not my favorite thing in the world. Mostly because I belong in Israel (don’t we all?). But I digress…..
Because of the dry allergy cough, I have also lost the use of my voice. Not competely; it just hurts to use it.
One might say that losing the ability to yell at your family is a blessing. You have to find proper and healthy ways to communicate. It really isn’t, believe it or not, the loss of the yelling that is making me crazy. It’s the rest of it.
Taking the voice from a mother is like taking the scalpel from a surgeon. How can we do what we do? I don’t know sign language very well, and even if I did, my kids don’t. And we don’t live in one room or on one floor. And they don’t stay put or come to where I am to speak to me.
Furthermore, apparently having the big ones read bedtime stories to the little ones isn’t good enough. And the child who only agrees to be diapered with the “itsy bitsy spider” song sung to him (performed with Music Together sound effects of course) isn’t going to accomodate and get changed without.
This post is sounding a lot more like one long complaint than I meant it to. Laryngitis is truly not the worst of problems. It certainly curtails lashon hara.
However, motions, and speaking quietly so that they will all quiet down to listen can only take me so far.
I parent with food, I parent with hugs, I parent with gestures, with carpool, with laundry. But most — a HUGE most — of my parenting is done with those two, very precious, very sore vocal chords.
No, I am NOT “ima2nine”. I am just really proud of two friends who have given birth to their own Jewish Mommy Blogs. Welcome to the blogosphere, ladies.
I would love to think I have inspired them, but I happen to know that they have been reading blogs better and more successful than mine. I hope they take my advice and check out Hannah Katsman’s advice to new bloggers. Yet one more reason A Mother in Israel impresses so many of us.
While I am making shameless plugs, I am really amazed by Allie Brosh and her blog success. She is hysterically funny, and I just could never, ever do what she does. he blog is http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/, or Hyperbole and A Half. It isn’t Jewish, and it isn’t a mommy blog; in fact, it isn’t even appropriate some of the time. This interview with her is even better; I learned a lot about her, her humor and how she is the kind of multimedia blogging phenom that she is. (Two million hits a MONTH!)
I owe anyone who is kind enough to visit here a more significant post. Working on it.
