31 May 2007

keeping me on my toes...

Ho hum, here we are with E-chan at almost 1 year old, and just as we were getting accustomed to him having 2 naps a day (ah! 2 chances to slow down and take a breath during the day...) and he starts transitioning to 1 nap a day! Naps have been all over the place, and I've been running around like a madwoman on my days off work, trying to work out when to try to settle him, when to feed him, when to give a bottle. So now we are aiming for 2, but if he doesn't get to sleep until late, I whisk out an early lunch, shove it down the gullet as quickly as possible, and let him sleep long in the middle of the day. We are ever hopeful for a late afternoon nap, but they don't seem to happen any more.

On top of this, there have been childcare settling/new people/new places things for him to get used to - he's decided "I like the way they settle me there, thanks!", and poor Mum and Dad have had to adjust to that! AND, he's decided he wants to awake with us as much as possible when he isn't at childcare (very sweet, and reciprocal of course), but unhelpful for putting him to bed at night time. There are some toddler like tantrummy things starting to happen, which ain't pretty.

All this has lead to me having to upgrade to a new, hyper-efficient version of myself. Yesterday, for e.g., I managed to do an hour of work and make E-chan lunch while he napped, and eat lunch myself. Every little window of opportunity is taken up with doing little things. Yesterday I felt like I'd crammed more into my day than I had in ages. No wonder I've lost a few kilos (and of course this would be a few weeks after I bought some new jeans - I've hot washed them once and they didn't shrink, darnit!!).

E-chan is now regularly moving around greater distances than the few metres he used to venture before, and opening up cupboards and drawers and pulling things out! Time to baby proof!! 2-3 times a day, I tidy the floor up - blocks, trucks, toy monkeys, and maracas etc strewn all over the place - put everything back in place so we can walk around with up tripping up on things, only to have them all pulled out again later. Seems a bit pointless, but not doing this leads to things getting lost, people tripping up over things, and there not being a clear path to wheel the pram out the door, so it must be done.

Might make myself a coffee and tidy up now... ciao for now!

23 May 2007

"Career crisis" is too strong a phrase...

So. Work.
Sure I'm still in the "honeymoon period", but I'm liking things so far. If I'm going to pause my "career progression" for a few years and pursue convenience and fit with my family needs & lifestyle, this is the sort of job I'd want...

Location: tick (within walking distance of home and son's childcare centre)
Salary: tick (high enough to be worthwhile)
Boss: organised, high flying, with shit together, seem to get along with her, sympathetic to people with families.
Greater office/colleagues: nice people, already invited me to a girls night out, great cake at staff meetings, good systems in place

As C-chan was saying the other day, you learn from people who are better/smarter than you, or more experienced than you. So even though I don't see a future for me in the area of work I'm working in (although it is a noble cause in the big scheme of things), I can absorb certain things - how and what my boss delegates, how she accumulates contacts and networks for example. But every so often, working where I do raises questions in my mind.

(I'm suprised I have the time to think about it, but I do).

I've done the opposite to what I think you're supposed to do, and that is that I've started of specialised and am becoming more generalised in what I do. This is a trend that was deliberate initially, as I worried about job transportability - I wanted to make sure that if my position was cut or I was restructured out of my fairly specific job role, I could take my skills elsewhere easily. But now becoming more generalist is starting to concern me, as I get further and further away from the areas of research I care about. In order to get more interesting again, I need to actively seek work in interesting areas and/or study again. Where? What? I know what areas I find important generally, but I haven't thought deeply about which direction I might want to head in the future, where I might make a difference, where I might be driven enough to maybe end up working at the level my high flying boss does, 20 years down the track.

I suspect I need to back track a few years of my "career" and take another fork in the road that I didn't explore all those years ago. Because when it comes down to it, what I wrote I wanted to be in my Yr12 school year book wasn't that far off the mark, conceptually (don't ask me to tell you - high school year books are just EMBARRASSING all round). Not that I have any regrets on my career up until now, I've learned a LOT, I know what sort of work I'm not suited to, what I wouldn't want to do, and what I'd need to work hard at. But for now, it's not high enough up the priority list for me to focus on it. I just have to take the next few years one year at a time.

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Yesterday I was pleased to find one part of my new job that is engaging. My institute as has all these Associates - that is, people with various related expertise who advise the institute on direction, high level projects etc etc. Most of them come along to a meeting every 4 weeks, to discuss matters, while us lowly staff sit in the background and eat cake*. The ensuing discussion, I was pleased to find out, was very interesting. Associates noted how (our Institutes' area of research/governance) received almost zero attention in federal budget as (causes I actually care more about, but dont tell them that) seem to be 1st tier election issues this year. Some of the experts who work in communications or political party policy development then discussed how and if (our Institutes' area of research/governance) would be used by the current government as issues that are no brainers for the public to agree with in the election campaign. They also discussed how they might put (our Institutes' area of research/governance) on the agenda, including Today Tonight style heartache stories, backed up with "here's what to do about it" policy papers to thrust at relevant ministers or shadow ministers.

Very interesting!!


* yesterdays cake was this Yummy cake with zucchini in it. Might have to get the recipe...

17 May 2007

Happy Mother's Day


Hey there! My first Mother's Day ROCKED! It wasn't anything in particular that anyone said or did (but the wellwishings were nice also). I just looked at what we've created and felt happy, chuffed. Even though E-chan was a tad miserable with his little middle ear all achey and infected, I can't remember what I did with my time before he was around.

The other night I was even remembering going into labour, when I was ringing the hospital to ask when I should come in, had to put the phone down until a contraction passed, and C-chan was there to help me stand up. I thought - "Hang on, where was E-chan at that moment?", before remembering that as that was the day he was born (derrrr!) , he was in my tummy! So there you go. Suddenly you forget there was life without the little critters, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

14 May 2007

Continuity...

There was a big break in my family between my generation and the next. For starters, my family had moved away from my grandparents and extended family, so we just has a small family unit of 4, relatively unconnected. Being the youngest, I have few memories of babies and little kids, bar a few childhood friends who had younger siblings. So as I outgrew nursery rhymes, so did my family. Then my brother moved overseas, and his family is growing up a bit disconnected from us too (but less so, now that the digital age allows things like this, and cheaper telephone calls and flights than there used to be, and at least he has his wife's family). And I've moved interstate, and am again disconnected from my family geographically when I'm starting mine.

This is presenting challenges at the moment, now that I'm back at work, and E-chan came down with his first big cold the same week. The works - snozzly nose virus, which developed into a chesty cough, that went bacterial with conjunctivitis, then an ear infection. It's been about 10 days now since the first hint of it. Last week, C-chan was sick too, so he took time off to care for E-chan at home, and also because it was my first week at work. Today, I am taking carers leave. C-chan's mum very sweetly offered to fly over and help out, but apart from this being a hideously gross usage of carbon and money for the purpose of a few days of babysitting, this is not a long-term solution for us when we are in need.

So, what are our options? Unfortunately, apart from making lots of lovely new mum & baby friends (who I hope stay as friends), my mothers group is not quite what I hoped it might be, in my naivete. The first thing that has started to happen is going back to work, which means we all work different days and don't have much spare time anymore, so staying in touch is getting harder. Secondly, as people consider needing cheaper living costs or a larger house for a future second child, they are gradually planning to move out of our suburb - mentally I think they are suspending putting down too strong roots for now. Also, most of my mother's group has family in this city, and choose to rely on grandparents etc to babysit. I have offered to babysit for anyone who needs it, given a bit of notice, but only got 2-3 of our group of about 10 saying they might take me up on my offer. A few have offered to babysit E-chan regardless of their need for babysitting, which is nice.

That sort of takes care of the occasional night out for C-chan and I together. But what about the other sorts of things? Picking up E-chan in case of emergency or illness from day care/school because they can't reach us, alternative role models, E-chan learning there are different ways to live than ours, and people who care for him in varying degrees? We're doing our best. Obviously, this is more daunting for our childless friends and difficult for our few friends with children, as E-chan is so young and "high maintenance"*. It will get easier as he gets older. And people are busy, and work full time, and have their own extended familes to catch up with. I keep telling myself, my parents coped, and I turned out OK**, so we should. But mum didn't work until I was 3, and then it was part time nightshift. Moving back to 'Delaide was something we explored last year, but we have an ever diminishing circle of friends there, so while we'd have 4 grandparents and an uncle for E-chan there, we'd be faced with re-integrating with friends there, the awkwardness of getting back in touch with those we've not kept in touch with***, and having to find new friends of our own (not to mention finding jobs).

So, I'm (still) finding it really hard to put our vulnerabilities out there on a placard, but am having to do it out of sheer necessity. And thanks a lot to those of you whom I've had to call on in the last year who have said "yes". And to those of you who brought me around hearty soups/lasagna/lunches to eat when E-chan was first born so I wouldn't have to cook. (Just for the record, if any of you have friends who have new babies, this is one of the best things you can do for them - bring them healthy meals and snacks. Even if they're not breastfeeding and therefore eating around the clock, it's one thing they don't have to do when adjusting to everything else).

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* no offence, buddy, it's just the way it is when you're so young!!
** feel free to disagree!
*** you know, was it them or was it us? Was it something I said that made them drop us from their christmas card list? Did they ever really like us that much?
And now to continuity in a different sense...

Nursery rhymes I never thought I'd forget have slipped my mind, and I'm finding myself reliant on CD's, toys and the internet to remember them. The funny thing is that kids really do dig nursery rhymes. We play other stuff for him all the time, but it's the simple tunes that he hears again and again the seem to catch E-chan's attention. So here's what I keep finding:

Hey diddle diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon,
The (....something, something, something else...)
And the dish ran away with the spoon!

Usually it's the third line of a rhyme that totally escapes my memory. Thankfully, there are CD's of these things out there, and gradually you remember or re-learn them.

Then there are toys that play music. These aren't necessarily things you'd choose to have your kid listen to, but if there's a button on the toy that he can press to play music, he'll do it - again and again and again.... We have a toy that has such a button that we give E-chan to play with when we're changing his nappy. It plays Camptown Races. I was getting the sh%ts with the fact that I only knew the "Doo daa, oh Doo daa day" bits, so did a search on the internet, and lo and behold! There were the lyrics! I think I'll only bother with the first verse (there are about 30), but now at least I can sing along. The song is a negro non-spiritual, that talks about going to the horse races and placing bets, but then 'Ring a ring of roses' is about black death or something ("a tissue, a tissue, we all fall down!"), so I'm hardly going to worry about lyrical content just yet.

09 May 2007

Bluriness and first days at something new...

The last week has streamed past in a blur. Last Friday night, E-chan and I were left on our own as C-chan had a wanky law retreat (roughly his words there). E-chan picked that night to get a cold. I managed it OK and calmly, as you have to when you are on your own. The cold has dragged on now, and developed into a chesty cough and icky eye. He and his dad had a blokes day at home together on Monday and Tuesday afternoon, but not really much fun as they were both feeling below average. I think I got the cold fleetingly, but seemed to have only had it mildly and kicked it by Monday.

And Monday was the big first day at work!! At first I was worrying - they think that 3 days in the office may not be enough, and I worried about what they had to do to accomodate me doing this. But as the day went on, I realised they hired me with their eyes open, wanted me for 75% of my job experience, and are prepared to review the situation after a few months. And by review, I get the feeling we might either employ another person part time to do some things on my "days off", or get someone else in the unit to formally cover the part of my job that needs someone there in the office all the time. Part of my job is being an EA to my boss, the other part is being a Program Manager - the latter being more along the lines of my past work.

So I think it is a pretty good job. Much of what I'll need to do I can do easily, I just need to familiarise myself with a new research area and new people. This is the first time I have taken a job that hasn't stretched me far at first, and I think that was the right decision (not that I had heaps of choice!). It's a bit strange to be someone's EA. Interesting to see how someone at that level has to delegate lowly stuff to be effective, but also the hours and travel they have to put in. Possibly something for me to absorb and use 15 or so years down the track, if I ever feel like/am capable of a high flying job. It's also bizarre to find myself in the medical world. It's interesting to be in the area of health policy development, with people beavering away at strategies to reduce chronic disease incidence.

I know it's all very important, but I'd be suprised if I end up staying in health research. I've always felt that health research gets all the glamour in the research funding world (research, as opposed to the actual funding of hospitals), and money thrown at it by governments and anyone else who has had someone close die of cancer for example, while other worthy and important causes struggle to get the funding and recognition they deserve. But I do find the policy development side interesting.

My new boss is a pro. She knows how to work effectively at a very high level, and delegates and manages better than anyone else I've encountered so far in my sector. She's had kids (albeit 30 or so years ago), and seems sympathetic to the needs of someone working part time with a family. I think I saw her having a cranky day yesterday, and that wasn't so bad. I actually heard her say "go home, your family is more important" to one of the other people in my unit who works part time. A few people I work with also work part time, which is a relief (I'm not the only one!), and I find myself in a female only unit! That's a first for me!

Went to a staff meeting yesterday, and the head of the Institute (not my boss) is very fond of exploring analogies whilst talking ("...throwing a frying pan into the fire, but not adding vegetable oil to fuel it, then taking it out before it gets too hot and cooking something else..."). Some of them (e.g. frying pan) went on for a few minutes! But importantly, the meeting only lasted an hour or so, had excellent cake, was mostly concerned with research and communication of it, and didn't digress into a complaining session, which is a good indication of job satisfaction in the Institute.

So thumbs up so far.

04 May 2007

And we're mobile!

Yesterday, E-chan zigzagged his way through the loungeroom (via a detailed study of the internet cord, a box of recycling, and his pram wheels), to visit me in the kitchen! With a combination of rolling and commando-style crawling, he is more or less mobile. This is the point where we find out what needs to be child-proofed. We're doing it gradually, as he isn't moving so fast that I can't really keep track of him. I know he won't go to the laundry/bathroom unless I put him there, for example. But I do have to make sure the stereo is turned off and that there are no CD's in the player, so that when he swivels the volume knob up to 10, I don't have to worry about anyone getting deafened. And any nice books are gone from under the coffee table. And all our kitchen drawer knobs are linked together with rubber bands so that he can't get at the gladwrap rolls and other spikey things.

E-chan also went to Child Care twice last week with me there (just for brief visits), and three times this week, without me there. He went for half a day the first time, a bit longer the next day, and a whole day today. He seems to be stimulated by it all, and hasn't cried - yet. The first day there, he wouldn't go to sleep and didn't eat much. The second day, he still didn't sleep, but ate well. Today, he ate well and actually slept once, which is as good as many days he's at home. When I picked him up, he was giggling with one of the carers, and smiling a lot. In fact, I think one of the carers in particular was a bit taken with him.

I'm happy that he seemed happy, stimulated, and has been well taken care of. We are lucky that the centre is a 10 minute walk from our house, and the centre is 10 more minutes from a train station. I'm not sure how long it will take me to walk from work to pick him up, but it won't be more than 15 minutes, so my work/home/childcare is all within a 30 minute walking triangle. I'm very pleased that our household is such a low carbon emitter!!

The carer to child ratio in the nursery (0-2 years old) isn't bad, especially when you consider most of the kids are closer to 18 months old and therefore a bit more independent in their play and eating. But some days in the centre are busier than others. I'm bracing for the likelihood that the implications of where he is going haven't fully sunken in yet, and that some time in the next few weeks he'll start crying when his Dad drops him off, or when I pick him up. And of course he seems to have a runny nose already.

So: so far, so good.

Next step: starting work on Monday. I hear my mother's words echo in my ears: "you're gonna have to be organised... you're gonna have to be organised". (Yeah, Mum, whatever you say... We'll be organised... sort of... well a combination of that and bumbling along...).

And in other news, I've left it until the weekend before re-starting work to get some fabric and embark on my first sewing project in about 10 years.