Dear Musical Chipclip —

I love you so much I almost can’t stand it.

You make me want to be a better woman. I again ran over 2 miles — 20 minutes — on the treadmill today because I was having so much fun. I was going so fast (for me, you scary running freaks — don’t even dare make fun of my pace!) that I think my butt fell off, so that was cool.

Instead of chanting swearwords in my head the entire time — which is what I used to do on those rare occasions in the past when I was forced to treadmill it instead of using the elliptical trainer — my thought process ran roughly like this: “Killers! I love the Killers! Let’s run fast in celebration of my love for the Killers! Hey, it’s Moby, and it’s that song from the end of the Bourne movie where Matt Damon walks off in that AWESOME black coat. Let’s run fast in celebration of Matt Damon’s awesome coat! Hey! Garbage! I love Shirley Manson’s accent! Let’s run fast in…” yeah, you get the idea.

Musical Chipclip, therein lies another of the miraculous changes you have wrought: I voluntarily got on the treadmill tonight. Volun-fricking-tarily! I may actually become a runner in a manner that does not entail escaping from creepy potential rapists jumping out at me from the bushes in a park in Prague where I was traveling by myself and no one would know I was dead for weeks.

Musical Chipclip, thank you. Thank you for being in my life.

Love,

The Nutcase Pumping Her Fists in the Air on Treadmill 3

Leaving aside, for the moment, your feelings in general about capital punishment, answer me this:
Does anyone besides me think that executing Saddam Hussein at dawn on a day that marks the start of a Sunni religious holiday — when, as I heard on NPR tonight, Islamic law forbids the execution of a condemned man on a religious holiday — is a REALLY, REALLY bad idea?

The best thing I got this Christmas was time with Jim and Eliza.

(Besides the iPod Shuffle Jim got me, that is. Oh, how I love that little musical chipclip! I ran for 20 minutes(!!!) on a treadmill the other day just because I was so enjoying the noises in my ears. Mmmmmm, Killers. But materialism aside…)

Both of us took the week before Christmas off, and I had Monday through Wednesday off this week as well. Event with a dinner date and a couple of visits to the Y where we left Eliza in Childwatch (another unheralded, Nobel-worthy invention), it was by far the most time the three of us have spent in one place, awake, at a time, since Eliza was two weeks old.

I loved it.

Before the vacation began, I was reminded of a visit from an acquaintance some years back. She and her husband were passing through after a week’s vacation with their toddler, and by the time they got to our house, they were all crackly tempers and snippy remarks. They usually used part-time daycare for their child, and the week’s uninterrupted family time had clearly proven harder than they anticipated. I wondered if it would go thusly with us.

I was surprised to discover it went the opposite way with us. What I never stop to think about is that, because of our opposite work schedules, Jim and I are essentially single-parenting our way through the week. Sports metaphorically speaking, we don’t doubleteam, we run a relay, and that means we are 100 percent ON during our shifts. On weekends, we often continue that way because we’re just so used to it from the week.

But with 9 days stretching out before us, we relaxed into parenting as a team sport with shocking ease — an excursion together, 15 minutes here for Jim to noodle around on his guitar, 15 minutes there for me to email, 5 minutes laughing our heads off at some weird stunt our progeny has pulled. (Toddlers are so, so strange.)

It’s been food for thought.

Our usual arrangement means that each parent shares different things with Eliza. I so enjoyed accompanying her and Jim to tumble class and singing class and watching them interact and sing Jim’s alt-version of Itsy Bitsy Spider. On another night Eliza and I took Jim on our tour of the best lights in Northampton, Eliza and I shouting out commentary: “Mo’ comin’ up!” “That’s right, and who’s that?” “Baby Cheezus!” “Hey look, it’s the super crazy Christmas house!” “Cwasee house!” Jim seemed amused.

Seeing how the other side operates left no doubt that she’s forged bonds with each of us that she wouldn’t if she were in day care, or if one of us were the primary caregiver. Now that it’s turned out this way, we’ve come to deeply value those bonds and are loathe to abandon them in favor of the advantages another arrangement would undoubtedly offer.

However, transitions are sometimes stressful for her, and no mom-to-dad-to-mom hand-offs meant that these 9 days saw fewer meltdowns than usual. She saw Mommy and Daddy being together so much she coined a new name for us, “momendaddy”, and got less clingy with both of us.

However, was this just a vacation phenomenon? Would it hold if one of us went back to work or would that mean she would become really attached to the parent who was with her most and view the other in a more secondary role? And what about me and Jim — would we do as well over the long haul, if one of us quit to be the primary caregiver — or would that person start to feel stuck in that role? Or what about daycare? Would that allow us more time together as a family and more flexibility in our parenting? Or would we feel like we were away from her too much?

As I said above, once we discovered the advantages our arrangement offered, we came to value them highly. But this vacation allowed me to experience some of the benefits of another setup, and it’s made me more aware than ever that, depending on your priorities, there are a lot of ways to do this right. (And wrong, I suppose, because someone could read our pros and cons and shudder.)

It’s just as well though. All these communal meals are getting to be a real problem. I have 2 pairs of pants that fit right now. It’s high time to go back to the soy-cakes-for-lunch weight loss plan.

This evening, before she went to bed, Eliza put a plastic doll’s brush and a windup mouse cat toy in an old yogurt cup. She carefully carried it to the fireplace and set it down in the spot where she had put the cookie and milk yesterday.

“Santa,” she explained.

A report on Eliza’s Christmas morning, in her own words.

Ewiza oh-pen pwessents!

Twain! Tunnow! Bwitch!

Wead-a-book!

Mommy wead!

Cookin!

Fayv-wit pwessent! (kidding! That one was for Jim. -ed.)

Dwums!