Two years of my daughter's life.

Four semesters.

Four hundred and fifty-one hours of second-job labor.

One thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five pages of grading.

Five hundred and eighty-five rubrics filed and recorded.

Sixty grades given or in progress.

Five episodes of classroom narcolepsy.

Two guest speakers, one video, one shot boyfriend, one fiance in a hospital, five children in a hospital, two unexpected pregnancies, one suicide attempt, one dead dog and one torched house.

Twenty dropped students.

Tonight, one of my students said he wanted to be a writer.

Success.

So last night I left a LENGTHY comment on Dooce's site. The subject was sleep.  I have a lot to say about children and sleep. I think I'll say some more!

I've written about the little angel's sleeping habits on this blog approximately one bazillion times. The most recent discussion that I remember was here.  However, I made a New Year's resolution this year to NOT TALK ABOUT HOW I NEVER SLEEP, and so I have made a Herculean effort not to bore you with any more of the wah-wah-I-just-walked-into-a-wall commentary that has plagued me yea these last seven months.

It wasn't always like this.  You see, we Ferberized.  Yes, and as everyone knows, once you Ferberize, you never have to do it again. Life is then perfect.

Bullshit.

For a while, it worked. The little angel ate every three hours when she was first born until I stopped breastfeeding at seven weeks.  You see, I was a wee bit tired after seven weeks of not getting more than two hours of consecutive sleep. Like, ever.  You should've seen her, though - she grew like a weed.

We Ferberized her for the first time when she was about four months old.  And it worked!  It worked about as well as quitting smoking has done for me.  It works for a few months to a few years, but inevitably, there is some wee setback that threatens the whole damn healthy house of cards and takes a supreme act of will to resist toppling altogether in a huge cloud of whatthefuck.

So yes, the Ferberizing didn't really make it through Christmas break.  When we were ready to try again, she was about eight months old. This began a series of five ear infections in a row and five rounds of full-spectrum antibiotics.  Between the ear pain, the teething pain and the rats that visited her at night to gnaw her perfect toebuds (she claims - I'll never believe it), she was NOT HAVING THE SLEEP.  We tried, oh, we tried!  I read every book!  We finally decided that since this was not working anyway, maybe we should wean her off the paci while we were behind.

I had just seen the episode of Supernanny where the four-year-old has the paci and stays up ALL NIGHT LONG when Supernanny takes it away.  I feared this consequence of too-long-paci-love.

Hee hee, ho ho - if I ever have another child, he or she will be hanging his or her paci around the rear-view mirror of the family car and sporting invisible braces until the child is 34.  Taking away the paci equaled seven months of the worst hell I have ever faced.

Each night, she would wake up. She would cry.  She would scream.  We got the white-noise machine.  We tried four different types of nightlights.  We Ferberized for three weeks.  One night she actually was awake for four hours, screaming.  SCREAMING LIKE THE HOUNDS OF HELL HAD STOLEN HER SOUL.

I'm not one of the mommies who can't hack the screaming. What I can't hack is the not sleeping.  She got her naps in at daycare.  I had to work all day.  So did my beloved.  Where were our naps? We cried, we sobbed, we read 90 more sleep books.  We tried Weissbluth, we tried others.  My beloved refused to co-sleep even when I begged for it when she was nineteen months old.  He was adamant.  I said fine, I'm sleeping with her on the couch.  FOREVER.

So for a while, if she woke up after three a.m., she got to come down on the couch with us.  We stretched this to four a.m.  After this past Christmas, when she was about twenty-odd months old, we got her the big-girl bed.  What the hell?  She wasn't sleeping anyway.

Around the holidays, I started getting really depressed. I was crying up to two hours a day while I scoured the Internet for a clue as to how to get my daughter to FUCKING SLEEP.  I felt like a complete failure of a mother. And the worst part?  I started irrationally thinking she was somehow doing it on purpose to torture me.  Probably because my pediatrician's nurse accused me of being wrapped around her toddler finger when I called for a child psychologist's phone number.

I called the child psychologist. I consulted the head of the Emerald City.  I considered taking her out of Waddler B.  We kept working with her.

One night from two to four a.m., I sat on a stool in her room. Every time she got out of bed, I would put her back in.  She cried and screamed the entire time. I finally got her to the place where she would at least stay in bed. I promised her I would lay down on the floor until she fell asleep if she would stay in bed. 

One might say I had "won."

But see?  That's where we go wrong in these sleeping battles.  They become a battle of wills, or at least all of the literature will try to convince you that it's that way.  And me?  I don't need more challenges.  I was already deranged.  I went and saw a psychiatrist, who listened to my deranged crying and told me she thought the prolonged sleep deprivation was giving me a chemical imbalance.  She offered anxiety medication. I took her up on it.

About a month into the medication, I still wasn't sleeping, but I was feeling a little better about it.  I started feeling stupid for making such a battle out of the whole thing. I even felt good enough about myself that I decided the hell with the kid, I was going to sleep. Even if that meant on the floor of her room. 

And so we did.  My beloved and I would take turns getting up when she awoke, walking in her room, handing her the sippy cup of water and wordlessly lying down on the floor beside her toddler bed.  Both of us have been known to fall asleep there upwards of four hours, but usually we get up after twenty minutes or so and come back to bed.  Our bed.  Our blissful, adult bed.

I'm not criticizing the Sears fans or the attachment parents.  I begged for this relief.  And I love, blessed Jesus do I LOVE cuddling with the little angel.  I love the little noises that she makes when she sleeps. I love how she wraps her arms around my arm and stuffs her toes between my knees.  She is the perfect size for spooning.  She is like a little kitten in my arms.

But my beloved?  He wants to sleep with me.  And so, I decided not to do it.  Because folks, if you're going to share your bed with dogs, cats, children or extra adults, the other person in the bed better be down with it, you know?

So this was our compromise.  For some reason, the less attached I became to whether or not she was sleeping, the more she slept.  I don't know if it was the toddler bed, the sticker chart, the promise of getting to wear blinky shoes if she slept (this started a shoe fetish, though), the constant praise for sleeping, the reminders of the importance of sleep or time, but her sticker chart in March was more full than not. 

We're very proud of her.

And you know what?  I'm very proud of me.  It was hard for me to let go of that need to WIN. That need to bend my child's behavior to my will. It seems like so much of the parenting advice and literature and television is trained to getting us parents to always be Large and In Charge.  Heavens to Betsy, no, I don't want to raise a spoiled brat, but I also don't want my tendency toward obsessive Type A behavior to be what my little angel remembers about her childhood.  In some ways, I'm very proud of myself that we struck this little compromise where neither of us exactly won.

And all of us, most of the time, are sleeping.  Her decision, not mine.

Last weekend, I bought my beloved and I new phones.  We have always just taken the shitty free phone that comes with the service (with the exception of one fabled birthday of my beloved's), so it was with a bit of trepidation that I plunked down $300 (with mail-in rebates that will only take $50 of effort to get in the mail by the deadline) for two, brand-spankin' new, shiny, hipster camera phones.

Before I bought them, though, I had lots of questions.  The salesman was eager to help me, sensing my desperation with my old phone. Also, the little angel was wandering around the store, pointing out the balloons and trying to touch everything.  I alternated between asking questions and wondering how much damage she could inflict if I turned my back on her long enough to listen to the answers. 

It was while I was tuned out, trying to keep the little angel from deconstructing a delicately-stacked display of car chargers, that he started talking about the Razor phone. It's really thin.  It looks cool.  I didn't buy it, though, because for the same price you could get a different one that had expandable memory. Before making this decision, I asked what the difference was. 

Thus began the conversation about bulging.

Him:  "Well, the Razor is so thin, you can't even see it in your pocket."

Me:  "Huh?"

Him:  (laughing nervously) "Well, women keep their cell phones in their purses, but men tend to put them in their pockets. Except, well, you don't want a bulge."

Me: (inside going MWAH HA HA HA HA)  "I see. Bulges are bad."

Him:  (not getting my gutter references)  "Yeah.  So you have to use a holster if you have a really thick phone."

Me:  "You wouldn't want, then, a noticeable bulge."

Little angel:  "BULGE."

Last night I had my students read "Marrakesh" by George Orwell.   It's an essay I read when I was in graduate school that has always stayed with me.  It speaks of streams of urine running down roads and donkeys who work diligently for a decade, drop dead, then are eaten by wild dogs before their bodies grow cold.  Mostly, though, it talks about Orwell's sudden awareness of the "brown people" who labor there.  He writes about seeing bundles of sticks walking by each day and only realizing later they were carried by old women.

I'm teaching the class to go beyond just a book report or a reaction paper to forming a solid thesis in response to a literary text.  It's a concept none of them seem to have been taught before, though they are the brightest class I've had in four semesters.  I could tell I was losing them when I began the lecture by waxing nostalgic on the fun in trying to invent a thesis that had not been done before, but when I had them read "Marrakesh," I could tell they were shocked I would introduce such an inflammatory work, especially since so many of them were brown or black and the essay speaks of the invisibility of the inhabitants of the city and the Senegalese army.  I reminded them that Orwell was writing in the late thirties, a time when Jews were accused of owning the world, even though in Marrakesh, they made only pennies a day.  I also reminded them that the world was not always so politically correct as it is now, and back then people just said the things that unfortunately I believe so many still think but do not say today.

The students all recognized what it is to be marginalized, but this new vocabulary and forum for discussion seemed new to them.  I take for granted that academia is a place to examine without emotion and bring to the forefront the things in society of which no one is proud.

On the way home, I was listening to the replay of "This American Life" on NPR.  They were talking in Act Three about Elizabeth Smart and how she walked the streets of Salt Lake City with her captors and nobody saw her.  She went to a party.  People talked to her.  Someone she'd known since she was four saw her at a gas station.  Nobody recognized her - partly because she was wearing a veil, and partly because they were so used to seeing her homeless captors that they ceased to see them, even when two became three there by the Burger King or Blockbuster.

Many who were interviewed for the story said that even though the third person in a veil was young, they never assumed Elizabeth was their daughter - they all assumed she was a second wife.  Those who were interviewed attached no judgment to their assumptions about polygamy.  The story went on to say that many in Salt Lake City have polygamous ancestors, and they accept it without supporting it with a combination of recognition and shame, not wanting to acknowledge what is so hard to understand.

Heather Armstrong of Dooce had a great entry the other day about her thoughts on polygamy and the new show on HBO.  I read the entry with interest and remembered it last night when I realized that the mixed emotions she describes are what enabled Elizabeth Smart to be invisible - not on Heather's part, necessarily - but on the part of those who were interviewed for "This American Life."

In much the same way, the Moroccans were invisible to Orwell.  People who clean office buildings are invisible to the white-collar workers. The homeless are invisible to commuters.  I think one section from "Marrakesh" on the topic of invisibility is the most disturbing:  "For several weeks, always at about the same time of day, the file of old women had hobbled past the house with their firewood, and though they had registered themselves on my eyeballs I cannot truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing-that was how I saw it. It was only that one day I happened to be walking behind them, and the curious up-and-down motion of a load of wood drew my attention to the human being underneath it. Then for the first time I noticed the poor old earth-coloured bodies, bodies reduced to bones and leathery skin, bent double under the crushing weight. Yet I suppose I had not been five minutes on Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys and was infuriated by it."

See people today.

Tonight the little angel and I read books before bed.  One of the books was Once Upon a Potty.  Part of this book discusses the different parts of Prudence's body and what they are called. 

Me:  "Can you point to Prudence's eyes?"

The little angel pointed.

Me:  "Good!  Can you point to Prudence's ears?"

The little angel considers the picture, then decides Prudence's wiry ponytails are her ears.  Good enough.

Me:  "Good!  Can you point to Prudence's hands?"

The little angel nails the hands.

I look at the next page, where Prudence is leaning over, Girls Gone Wild-style, revealing a small circle that is the hole from which her poopy comes out (I know, because it says so in the text).

Me:  "CAn you point to where Prudence expels her fecal matter?"

The little angel laughs.

Me:  "Okay, fine.  Where does Prudence's poopy come out?"

The little angel has not considered this before.  She carefully studies the picture.

Me:  "Do you see a hole where the poopy might come?  Like where we put your diapers?"

The little angel finds the hole.

And I am deeply disturbed by the entire conversation.

Damn, parenting is hard.

Hi.  I'd like to direct your attention to the link below that lovely photo of the little angel in the left navigation bar of this blog.  See that survey link?  Tempted, aren't you?  You know you want to click on it.

Here's the gig:  I've been invited to join the BlogHer advertising co-op, and they would like to learn a little more about you so that we can get all sorts of hipster cool ads instead of that one with the Kewpie doll that says it's not even the weirdest thing they found in their mom's closet, or some other equally bizarre thing.  Also, if the ads do well, I'll eventually make money and can quit my stupid job working for the man.  Okay, I probably won't do THAT well, but everyone's got to have a dream, right?

As a reward for taking the survey (which I KNOW you will do), I will now present you with a list of all the jobs I have had, so that you will understand my deep and underlying need for alternative sources of income.  They are in chronological order, starting in high school:

1. concession stand attendee at the pool
2. professional gift wrapper at the mall
3. chick who takes photos of kids sitting on the Easter Bunny's lap
4. waitress at a dog track
5. waitress a gazillion other places
6. telemarketer
7. public relations assistant account executive (professional faxer)
8. public relations account executive (media whore)
9. temp/secretary
10. technical recruiter
11. content director for a marketing website
12. web director (28 days) for a nonprofit that I bet you've given money to
13. information architect for an advertising agency (see #8)
14. usability consultant
15. freelance writer
16. sr. product manager - corporate
17. sr. product manager - small start-up
18. adjunct professor of English
19. wife to sports fan
20. Mommy

See?  And I'm not even going to tell you like everyone else that I hate the ads. I don't hate them. I've worked in advertising. I do prefer pretty ones, though, so tell them who you are, yo.

The other day at work, the conversation turned to fraternities and sororities.  The Editor Across the Aisle had asked me where I went to school, since it turns out we are both from Iowa. (Someday, I will really start the club Originally From Iowa, and it will have more members across the country, especially in California, Chicago and Kansas City, than any other state's club, because nobody that is born and raised in Iowa lives there in their thirties.)  I told her my old house, then along came another co-worker, he of the famed Bathroom Humor, and mentioned that he had been in a fraternity, lo, the same fraternity as a few of our other co-workers.

This led to a description of living in the Greek houses.  My experience with living in the sorority house was a) it sucks to have to hide your alcohol, b) it's nice to have cleaning ladies - an experience I would draw upon later in life, c) everyone borrows your car when you live in a sorority house and d) if I didn't already know how to make myself throw up by college, I would've learned how in the communal bathroom.  Some of those rumors are true, kids.  My co-worker went on to describe the antebellum splendor of sorority houses, how nice and clean they are, etc., etc.  Fraternity houses are, of course, NOT CLEAN. In fact, they are not the sort of place you want to go the bathroom in, let alone exist.

Then we talked about how I was not only Greek, but I was also on the Panhellenic Council.  I busted parties with underage drinking after giving a thirty-five minute warning and loudly announcing my presence so that anyone underage stupid enough to still be holding a cup deserved a little extra study hall and a monetary fine.  The remainder of the conversation was as follows:

Co-Worker:  "I remember we used to get so crazy in the house. I hated living there. They were always throwing things."

Me:  "Really? Like what?"

Co-Worker:  "Like...beer bottles."

Editor: (incredulously)  "What?  Didn't you get hurt?"

Co-Worker: "Well, one guy did cut his eye when a bottle broke. We took him to the hospital, got in trouble, all that.  After that they passed out safety glasses when we partied."

Editor:  "Why didn't you use cans?"

Me:  "Or kegs?"

Next...followed a stunned silence.  My co-worker was actually dumbfounded that they hadn't just used cans.  We were blown away that he was blown away.  It was one of those surreal moments when you realize just how scary group-think can be.

Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Zeta Eta Theta Iota Kappa Lambda Mu Nu Xi Omicron Pi Rho Sigma Tau Epsilon Phi Chi Psi Omega...I can barely remember being that person, but I can still sing the damn alphabet.

My least favorite expression is "See Me."  I hated it when teachers wrote it on my papers.  I hated it when bosses e-mailed it or wrote it on Post-Its stuck to my computer monitor.  I never thought I would have to deal with this most hated expression in the world of the little angel.

Today her teacher in Waddler B wrote it on her sheet.

Apparently the little angel has been "clingy, whiny and wanting to nibble on her cup" during the day. "See me," the note read.  "I need to talk to you face-to-face."

I HATE it when someone says that when there is no even remote possibility I can see them face-to-face in the near future.  I won't even see her face-to-face tomorrow morning, because I can't do drop-off due to an appointment.

I'm sure the recent regression is easily explained by one of two things:  1) my new job and our recent schedule changes (hell, I was nibbling on my cup most of the day, too) and 2) her hatred of the growing midget population of Waddler B.  Oh, Two-Year-Old Room (henceforth to be dubbed Toddler High), you can't come soon enough for the little angel.  She hates those damn babies, yes, she does.  She loves certain babies, such as Baby N. and Arrruuuuun (as she says it, as though she is howling for the moon), but these babies are children of our friends.  They share their toys and gurgle cutely at her.  They don't steal her toys and yell when she's trying to sleep.  Even Ms. S. finally said something to that effect the other day.  We all know that it's time for her to go, Waddler B has jumped the shark, let's move on to the next thing already, WTF.

Yet still.  I'll have to call her teacher, Ms. J., and either come off as a busy working mama who doesn't care if my daughter is, like, totally regressing or an obsessed mother-of-one who doesn't know a phase when it breathes Doritos in her face. I can't win.  Really. 

See me tomorrow. I'll let you know.

Today I happened to see one of the executives administrators at Large Corporate Tax Prep Company where I'm on a three-month contract (I hope) until June.  I haven't seen her since I left exactly one year ago last week. 

Her:  "Oh, my gosh!  How ARE you?  How is the little angel?"

Me:  "She's fine!  She's almost two."  (I'm wondering what the right next question to ask is, since the last time I saw her, she'd just suffered a miscarriage.)  "How are yours?"

Her:  "Oh, he's great.  He's almost four."

(I pause.  So do I ask?  What's the right thing to do?)

Me:  (I'm rude) "How have things been going?"

Her:  "No luck yet.  There's nothing wrong, though.  Just have to keep trying. When are you going to have your next one?"

Me:  (Long pause while I consider why the hell everyone assumes you plan to have multiples if you have one.)  "Never?"

Her:  "WHATTTT?????"  (She could not be more mortified than if I had told her I thought I might just leave the little angel outside for the squirrels.)  "You CAN'T stop with one?"

Me:  "Really?  Why not?"

Her:  (sputtering)  "Because...only children...they just...don't you WANT another one?"

Me:  "Well, no.  That's the thing.  I'm sort of happy with the one that I have."

Her:  "I just don't understand.  It can't work."

Me:  "There are a whole bunch of people who have made it work.  They're called 'China.'"

Her:  "Does your husband want another?"

Me:  (I'm starting to tire of this conversation.)  "He's seventh of eight, and he doesn't want another one."

Her:  "Don't you?"

Me:  "No, not really.  No.  Plus, look, G. - I don't even have a REAL JOB.  How would I afford even more daycare?  My beloved is an entrepreneur.  It's just not in the cards."

Her:  "But maybe later?"

Me:  "Um."  I shrug.  What does she want from me? "You know as well as I do that the brunt of it will be on me.  I've got to want it to do it, G."

This stops her.  She does know.  She does know that despite the father's best intention, it is generally the mother who worries about nutrition labels, knows exactly whom to invite to the birthday parties and why, when to make doctor and dentist appointments and how far in advance to Ebay the playclothes to get the best bargains.  My beloved does not even know what size shoes the little angel wears.  He knows these are all things I keep in my brain, along with a possible menu for dinner tonight, six possible job leads, my syllabus for the entire semester, all his relatives' birthdays and a reminder to buy conditioner that will go on sale next week.  Oh, and I needed to return the book Raising Your Only Child to the library.

Her:  "Well, I would never tell another woman how to live her life."

Me: (shocked silence)

So I took this last comment back with me to my prairie dog hole in the cube farm.  I looked at the editor, who sits across from me. 

Me:  "Do you have kids?"

Editor:  "Um, no."

Me:  "Do people ever ask you why not?"

Editor:  "Um, no.  I might have to kill them."

Me:  "Why does everyone tell me I need to procreate again just because I managed to do it once?"

Editor:  "Really?  That's so rude.  That's like asking someone when they're going to get married."

Me:  "Yeah."

Editor:  "I think you should tell them you can't have another because it would interfere with your drinking."

I think I love her.