Day five: from a high angle

View from the top of the back porch down to the patio. Isobel, water play table, black cat and sun shade.

Day four: something green!

There were many green opportunities today:  Isobel colored herself green all over with markers and called it blue! The bathwater which  I eventually persuaded her to enter turned a lovely shade of teal green and then Susan went to the gym and saw these pearl-like balance balls. The ivy on our building and fence is a beautiful shade of leaf green but that will have to wait for another green kind of day.

Day 3: clouds

Chicago: 5pm - 6pm. The dull before the storm.
And the baby turns 23 months!
Unbelievable!

Day 2: something that makes me happy

My two best gals at the beach. Favorite place again. This is Lighthouse Beach in Evanston, Illinois, home to Northwestern University and beautiful beaches and parks. We haven't been here for about two years. We usually go to other beaches that have shallower slopes into the water. Turns out this year this beach has a gentle slope too. This is the kind of beach where its easy to imagine you might be somewhere a little more remote. There are rocks and trees and little inlets at the north of end of the beach. First we met up for an end of summer picnic with some of the baby mamas in our group at a park right by the beach. We had yummy food, wine and snatches of interrupted conversation. Then Susan, Isobel, Aunty Ann ( supplier of books and princess skirts) and I tramped down to the beach and hung out for a couple of hours. The water was a little chilly and so was the air. But I swam anyway. In a borrowed t-shirt and sarong and my undies. I know, I make my life sound idyllic. The family time is the best thing ever. I wish I was off work tomorrow. Alas, no. See you all on day three.

30 day photo challenge

Hi folks, this is blogging from the I phone on my couch. An offering of love and Insert Metaphor are at it again! Photo blogging challenge. I'm still in on day one. This is me chilling on the couch after a late afternoon at the beach with my best girls. Swimming was done by all. ( or zumming) as Isobel calls it. It was chilly but so relaxing. Now she is watching Telly Tubbies in Croatian on u tube while sitting on mama S's lap. Bedtime soon!

Playing catch up and the changing of the guard

It is an unusually quiet night in our household. We are both on our computers. Isobel is in her toddler bed asleep and not performing her almost usual late night antics. The dishes are done. The bills are paid. I have clean clothes for work tomorrow. They may not be glamorous or fashionable but they are within the dress code ( no t shirts or slogans or hoochie mama short shorts).  We don't know how we are going to make it through til next pay day but we will do our best. These days I consider it a feat  if we are all fed, clothed, I can make it to work on time, Susan and Isobel are content with their plans for the day and we are not drowning in dirty dishes, dirty laundry and toys. One of my co-workers today told me that if only I could lose a bit of weight I would curb my snoring ( I had confided to her that the old night choo choo train was keeping the other occupants of our bed up at night). I told her that was all very well, but I was just pleased to be able to keep on top of the bare essentials and I didn't know when I was going to be losing weight any time soon.

It has been almost 8 weeks since I started back to work, full-time, as the sole wage earner in our household. We had run out of all our borrowed moneys ( 401ks, money from my deceased parents, student loans etc.) The job came just in the nick of time. I almost did not apply for it as I had been trying so hard to get out of not for profit social services and into a hospital or healthcare setting. Now I am back in social services I realize that I am where I was supposed to be all along. I am an administrator / manager / clinical social worker type in a social service agency that serves homeless women and their families and also single men. It was as if my resume was written in preparation for this job. In a very strange circular motion I have come back to where I started 16 years ago when I first started working as a case manager for a homeless services agency and shelter in Chicago. The agency had many flaws and problems but they did hire me and sponsor me for a temporary work visa, which was the first in many steps to get to my green card. It was a baptism of fire and roaches. The fire is metaphorical, the roaches are not. And they are now joined by armies of bed bugs, immune to most pesticides and taking refuge in the mattresses of shelters, in the rooms of hoarders who are incapable and sometimes unwilling to take the complicated steps to rid themselves of these scourges. We all live in fear of bringing bed bugs home. I am one of at least three staff that regularly say that if I bring them home I will be getting a divorce.

But I digress. This agency where I started my social work career went under last year in a big pile of mismanagement, funding cuts and other amorphous shit. The agency where I now work took over the contract and with it 100 hundred clients living in tiny SROs and studios in the area of town that has the highest per capita homeless and social service agencies. And it is my job ( among other things) to whip this "program" - for want of a better word - into shape and to make sure that these clients are getting services and their lives are improving. There is one client left who was there when I was at the agency when I left in 1998. We had to go through the files and pick out  paperwork that can be transfered to new files. It was like going back in time to a place I never thought I would return. Seeing familiar paperwork, having flashback to the often traumatic times at that job. Walking the streets of Uptown and remembering clients that I had forgotten about for years. Finding out that a client who I thought was dead ( and whose death had lived on my conscience for a decade) was actually still alive. I had been the lackey who helped to evict her. And I had heard that she was murdered shortly afterwards. I was so relieved to hear that she is still there, still living in the shelter ( after how many year?!!!!) and her blood was not on my conscience. She should of course be housed. But her mental illness is so severe it puts barriers in the way of this. Because in this country and many others, if you have a mental illness whose most salient  symptom is that you don't think you are sick, you are doomed to never get any benefits because you don't know that you are sick. You don't believe you are. Everyone else tells you that you are ( if they dare) but it doesn't matter. So you are deprived of ever getting the benefits that are due to you. True story.

So here I am after all these years, trying to salvage these 100 neglected clients from the wreckage of a program and a system that has kept them stagnating in place for years, often with  no income, sometimes with nothing pleasant to say or do, often with sad stories and earnest eyes. And to be honest, it does kind of feel like coming home. Except things are worse now than they were then. There is so much brokenness and scarcity and overwhelming misery. There is hope and success stories and there are small victories. We cling to the small victories. And as well as the 100 clients I am also responsible for ( via the work of the case managers I supervise) for another 80 or so. Many of them seriously mentally ill. Some of them drug addicted. Many with children whose lives are just horrible. We watch as the mothers ruin their lives in front of our eyes. We can't do much.We do what we can. It is one thing seeing a single adult living a miserable and hopeless life. It is another seeing a mother inflict that on her children. It's not all about poverty. Much of it is, but much of it is about a sick society, pathology, inequality, families dependent on hand outs for generations, families who are perpetuating cycles of abuse, violence and neglect. We call DCFS quite a bit. But they are so overwhelmed that they can only respond to the worse cases.

So here I am, an infertile woman, surrounded by women who breed without seeming to give it much thought. I am  not exactly bitter, but I am horrified and I do find it hard to be hopeful for these women and their children.

This was supposed to be a post about our new lives. About going back to work and trying to make ends meet. But I got diverted into a ghetto on the north side of Chicago. There is no nice way to end this post. Except to say, I am glad I am there, glad I am  doing something to make a difference, glad to be finally making some money and glad that I can come home at the end of the day and hug and kiss my two girls tight and do my best to keep them safe and warm.

Twenty on the dot - ( warning - toddler stories below)

Well, I am back for a post on Isobel McGorgeous.  Today is her twenty month birthday. It seems as if every time someone asks me her age she has grown another month.The same thing happens when people ask how long I have been in the states. At last count it was 16 years.

The biggest milestone actually  happened around her nineteen month birthday, which we forgot, but we can be forgiven because of all the excitement around this milestone - finally she  walked. It seemed to  happen almost overnight. Susan was with her in the kitchen and she came to tell me to come watch Isobel who had just done four laps around our kitchen island. And she kept on lapping and lapping. We had tried to practice walking with her and have her hold our hands and she could identify the word "walk" and say it when she wanted to practice. That day or the next one, we went to the park by the beach and she  was headed to the sand, so  I suggested we walk, and she held my hand and did a great job of walking on the bumpy sand. Then she let go of my hand and kept going. She would teeter over and then pick herself up again over and over. We walked quite a distance and she did not want to stop. Eventually it was time to go home and I had to pick her up and carry her as she did not want to leave. Since then she just got more and more proficient at it and never really looked back.  All our anxiety over when and if she would walk is gone. It's so remarkable. We tried so hard to believe that patience would win and it did, but it was also hard to keep the faith with so many anxious naysayers around.

Now that it's summer we are out a lot more, and she really loves to go outside - one of her favorite things to do is to go in her little red and yellow car - which we pictured in my last update. She has started to call it her "hum" or  "hummie" and we have no clue why, but as far as we know she does not know what a hummer is and we have never mentioned it. She has had skinned knees from falling over on the sidewalk  and she does cry, but also can deal with it with equanimity especially as she learnt to say the word, "scrape". She really picks up words very quickly and it's so cute to hear her saying them. She says "scrape" and "grape" with a real punch on the p and it's so cute. She loves grapes and raisins, which she also calls grapes.

Isobel has definite opinions about things like shoes ( "shoo-eys") and clothes ("on"). Yesterday she asked over and over to put on her new hand me down bathing suit, complete with frilly skirt and pink flower corsage, and I of course complied. It worked out well because we then went out into the sprinkler to play and also to her "water park" which is her water table in the back yard. She has recently  discovered the joy of pouring and now likes to pour water all over her mamas - especially over our  pants or jeans when we are sitting in the garden watching her play. We are so fortunate that even though we have a grotty basement for an apartment ( complete with A/C thank you very much, so there are some bonuses) we have two enclosed outdoor spaces for Isobel to play in - front and back. And now that she is so mobile and so fast, it's really important to have enclosed spaces when you are near a road - which of course, this is Chicago, so we are. The kinds of things you never even think will happen when you are doing IVF is that one day you will have to teach your daughter about traffic and make sure she holds your hand near the street, crossing the street or the alley. SO many things I never thought of, especially as someone who did not have much experience with babies and toddlers before Isobel came along. And when I say Isobel  "came along", I use it  in the same way that I could never say I "fell pregnant".

One big change that only happened in the past two weeks is that I am now working full time outside the home. It has been a rude awakening but in many ways it is a superbly ideal situation and I count myself very very lucky. I want to write more in detail about it another time, but suffice to say, this has really solidified and nurtured relationship with Susan to the point that they are so much more connected and sometimes when I come home, even though I get squeals of delight and hugs, I sometimes feel a bit like the outsider. She definitely needs to check in with both of us and make sure she knows where we both are now, whereas previously she did not seek Susan out so much when she was with me. It's really gratifying and equalizing.  I often get to experience the joys of the tired, hungry crabby end of the day toddler too. It's not all bad though - waking up with her is full of fun and joy and sunshine. I wish wish wish that I could feel the joy she displays when I wake up. I don't, as I am really not a morning person, but seeing her happiness makes me as joyful as I have ever been in the morning. 

Isobel is so much more aware and conscious and tuned in. She notices details that completely pass me by, and loves to play with tiny things - like gravel and sand and rocks at the park - often  more so than the playground equipment. She is adept at playing kitchen, whisking her soup vigorously and serving it to Susan and me. Her eating away from the make believe is just not that thrilling, in fact, she is a very very picky eater. She prefers to eat "snack" - crackers, pieces of fruit etc, than sitting down for a meal in her high chair. The things she once loved, like raspberries, are eschewed as are her beloved peaches. She still favors broccoli ( al dente and bright green). But she is so not interested in typical baby foods like yoghurt, has yet to like cows milk and we can never predict how much if any she is going to eat. She does like eggs and will ask for them. And she loves "choc" - olate. That you can predict.

One of Isobel's favorite phrases- which she got from her beloved babysitter is "what's that" or "wazzat?"  which she repeats over and over when she is checking out new things. Isobel loves loves loves her babysitter - and whenever she sees a woman who has a similar build and complexion, she calls out her name. She has so many words it's hard to keep up with what is new and what is old, but she can be a total chatterbox -especially when she is going down for a nap or at bedtime - and mostly with Susan and not me. Tonight she was breast-feeding with me in bed and she kept popping up her head and saying "mommy, mommy??" very loudly to check that Susan was there - and Susan would call back from the next room, "baby", and say "night, night Isobel"  She has just learned the name of my sisters partner - "Sam", which is much easier to say than my sister's own name and she has assigned the name Sam to both of them. She says it very sweetly with a real emphasis on the m. It's kind of like how she calls us both mommie now ( just like one of her favorite characters Cailliou calls his mum). So today when we were at the beach with just my sister and she was calling her Sam, I decided to differentiate by calling them Uncle Sam and Aunt Sam. Cute!

So many more things to say but time to close. I leave you with the thought of Isobel learning about dress up and wearing a tulle skirt that her boyfriend Ellis let her wear while doing ballet twirls with him. Oh the make believe! Oh the fun!

And now for pictures!

hanging at the park

a walk in the park

tolerating my  hat!

me and my fan are just blowing in the wind!

uncle mike's fountain is a great water park!

"cray, cray"!

..."but I don't want to sit in my car seat!"

me and my swimsuit and two pairs of sunglasses

in the garden with my fab purple water shoes

"snack" at the beach - today 

wild fun at the park!

even more fun!

in my box!