Minivan Follow Up

Remember how I was spending a lot of time stressing over the should-we-get-minivan-when-we-get-a-second-car? question. Well, I'm throughly convinced that some day in the future, at some point in time, we will get a minivan. But not in the next year or so!

1
There was a point in our long drive home in our little station wagon from Iowa at Thanksgiving; Fritz was riding copilot and I was driving. Now, if you've ever road tripped with a 2 and 5 year old for several hours, then you probably already know that the copilot position is much more stressful than the driver position. Fritz was getting an especially bad dose of copilot, because we had failed to find an appropriate pitstop along the highway. An appropriate pitstop with kids meets three criteria: 1) space to run around (indoors if the weather is bad), 2) food to eat, and 3) a bathroom. What we had managed to find was a mega hunting killer enabling gun selling sportsmen store. For running around and a bathroom, it was great. It was one of those places with live fish and waterfalls, stuffed deer displays, and vehicles that were labeled DO NOT CLIMB ON. (We saw the DO NOT CLIMB ON signs too late. But I think that's because the good folks at Cabela's hid the signs towards the back of the display. In reality, they understand that kids need to climb around in mini-sized jeeps. How else are they going to sell parents on $5000 mini jeeps if they don't enlist the help of the kids?)

Where the mega sportsman store failed us was food. The grill was open, but they told us it would take 30 minutes to make a pizza. Thirty minutes to make a pizza?! Ridiculous. I packed everybody in the car, and informed them we were going to do something REALLY FUN: we were going to the Burger King Drive-Thru! If you deprive your children of these things in ordinary life, then it seems like a real adventure when they are 500 miles from home.

Fritz groaned, but took his place in the copilot seat.

He groaned a second time at the drive thru window when I started handing him the array of bags, boxes, drinks and condiments to distribute around the car.

He groaned many more times as he retrieved cheap plastic toys from the floor, helped the boys insert their straws into their drinking containers, found condiment-acceptable applications, and mediated french fry proportions disputes.

But he really started groaning hard when it came time to clean up. Now, look, if it had been me as copilot, I would have crushed - or folded - all that packaging down into the smallest size possible and put the trash on the floor under Mattias' feet. But Fritz had a sudden round of car sickness (from all that turning around!) and could only manage to fill a huge bag with uncrushed packaging, which he decided to leave sitting on his lap, barricading the entire copilot space. I'm not sure he could even see out the windshield anymore. I don't think it was helping his car sickness.

"Papa? Papa! Können wir jetzt was gucken?" Daddy? Daddy! Can we watch something now?

Fritz groaned one last time at the prospect of setting up a DVD for the boys to watch on our borrowed car DVD monitors.

After sitting silently in his trash barricaded copilot seat for ten minutes more, Fritz said forcefully,

"ARGH! Let's just buy the damn minivan!"

2
There's illness common to all architects. I've touched on it before. But for this post, I'll say it like this: we hate to spend money on things we don't like. If we can imagine something BETTER, then it's hard to let go of imperfections. With the minivan, my disease keeps rearing its stubborn head. What I like about the minivan is the car chassis which gives you the ability to freely move (inside) between the front seats and far back seats. The pure interior volume in a minivan is impressive. And it's comfortable. But from the exterior, the aesthetic of the minivan is just...dated. Really dated. And uninspired. When I'm sitting behind a minivan at a traffic light, I find myself mentally re-sculpting the exterior body. Not just making stupid little changes to the shapes of the windows (Boo, Odyssey!), but rather trying to reposition the mass of the body, reveal a little more undercarriage, perhaps? Something. Something to make the damn thing look less – less minivan-ny. Of course it's possible. Of course it is. It's just that by introducing 7 seat SUVs, car companies thought they could still solve the ugly design problem AND make yet more money. Why bother to truly re-design the minivan, if you can sell more by introducing a NEW product?

Our second car presumption has always been that if I'm the one driving the car, hauling around three kids, the car should be very reliable and (probably) new. But why would I spend $30,000 on a design that I can't really get behind? I'd hate to do that. I'd hate to mis-use my buying power. And that's how I see $30,000. Buying Power. And a Stamp of Aesthetic Approval.

But I don't approve.

3
One of Fritz's students finished his PhD and headed home to Germany. He was trying to get rid of his 12 year old, 2 door car. It was so inexpensive. The taxes and insurance on it are so low. We bought it for Fritz. That means we've joined the ranks of the two car family after 8 years of sharing one car - and Fritz gets the new addition. I think we're paying less than $400 additional a year in taxes AND insurance. Part of me thinks that it's wrong: here we are producing more carbon dioxide with an old, second car. We're driving more miles than we used to. The real costs in terms of greenhouse gases and less exercise are high. But the out-of-pocket expense? Shamefully low. In the end, maybe you could accuse me of short term, near-sighted action: even if the old car only lasts a year, I felt that, at least financially, we'd come out ahead. Additional benefit: with a 12 year-old car, it's allowed to be an ugly car. The Stamp of Approval is faded and less significant. So, it's done. It's over. We are officially a two car family. But no minivan.

Even though we haven't improved the copilot situation, it feels like we've entered some new world of luxury to have TWO cars. I worry about 95% less knowing that Fritz is driving home, as opposed to biking home, in the dark. (Yes, he does have a very good, strong bike lamp. STILL.) Fritz laughs when I tell him this, because he's been biking home in the dark for years. But it worried me. Maybe I just didn't know how much.

I'll remember this feeling of luxury when I'm cramming all three kids and carseats into the tiny backseat.

Also, baby steps: don't want life to become too luxurious too quickly. Next task? Purchasing the seats to actually fit in the back of the car.

Part 1 here.
Part 2 is what you are reading.
Part 3 here.

Transition

I might win the Most Grumpy, Self-Absorbed Pregnant Woman of the Year Award. I've taken to reclusion in efforts not to infect anybody else with my mood. I promise that I was not like this with the first two pregnancies - I was the obnoxiously happy pregnant woman twice. (And BTW, I can ONLY use the descriptor "obnoxiously happy" because I'm clearly not that woman this time.) No, pregnancy can be fun! Someday soon, I might reclaim the fun. We'll see.

You know what's not fun? Gaining so much weight. (Feeling like there's nothing I can do about it.) WHY do I have to grow another chin as well as a baby?  I especially dislike it. For some reason – probably because I see it every time I look in a mirror – it bothers me the most, even though it is probably the least mass added anywhere in terms of pure numbers. Also annoying? Sciatic nerve pain. Mine's not terribly bad as long as I keep moving around and switching shoes and doing exercises and so on. But still, ouch! Overall, I just feel like most of my body is atrophying this time around. It's not pleasant. I can't believe I still have over 3 months to go. UGH.

Yesterday I crawled around on the floor extracting legos from underneath the sofa. And it occurred to me, that as gigantic and big as I think I already am, I must not be that big. At some point in my pregnancy with Mattias, I stopped being able to reach toys hiding under the sofa. So, after I lifted myself off the floor, I informed my (three) boys that I wouldn't be able to rescue sofa-hidden legos from vacuuming death much longer. The vacuum attachment fits much better under the sofa than my arm-attached-to-my-pregnant-body. The boys better figure out how to crawl around on the floor themselves. It seems they DO know how to do this because I stitched three knee patches onto pants in the past week. Or maybe they need to just stop placing the legos under the sofa. How does that happen, anyway? Are legos kicked under there? The boys just stared at me when I snapped. Clearly, I've failed in educating all three of them.

Surely, some of my grumpiness is hormones. But some of it is just fall-out from the last seven months. I have no idea how to blog about these Big (Bad) Things in my life right now. Some stories feel like they are not mine to tell; some would threaten the relative anonymity of this blog. Sometimes I think I'm still busy processing what's happened; I couldn't write about the Big Things even if I wanted to. Sometimes I think that I'm just afraid of how my emotions will come pouring forth, raw and unfiltered and ANGRY. Sometimes I think that I can just focus on the Small (Good) Things – I can post about the Small Things.

There's something really genuine feeling about my favorite blogs. I want to be genuine, too. But it's scary. It's scary to be completely honest about your feelings. And if I take the easier route: well, then, every time I sit down to type about Small (Good) Things, it feels false because my head is really full of Big (Bad) Things.

Most recently, I've been thinking that instead of feeling like I can NEVER post about such-and-such, I'll just think of it as, I'm not ready to post about it YET. Maybe things can just come out slowly over time if I can just be patient with myself. That makes me feel less tongue-tied and false. I think it does, anyway.

Also, it occurs to me that maybe I just need to set a goal for myself. Like posting every other day. I mean, there's value in that, right? I'm pretty sure I don't believe in the theory that every blog post should be a work of finished work of art. That's not why I like blogs at all. For polished work, we can get some books from the library, right? So, here we go: another post in 2 days - shall I talk some more about minivans? Hmmm...

Girl

The ultrasound says we're having a girl.

I'm not so excited. In fact, it's three weeks later and I'm still adjusting to this information.

At one point, I really wanted a daughter. But then I gave birth to two boys. And I adjusted my expectations. And I refocused. And I was really, really okay with having a third boy. Have you met mothers of three or more boys? They're an admirable bunch that I would be proud to be a part of.

Also, the longer I've been out of little girl culture, the more foreign it's become to me. And frankly, I've got some serious concerns about little girl culture these days. Princesses? What are those? I don't think we had princesses when I was a child. American Girls? Huh? Aren't most of us (in the US) American girls? WHY were all the little boys at the swimming pool under 7 years of age wearing swim trunks AND swim shirts this summer, while none of the similarly aged girls were wearing half as much swim clothing? I'm not even sure that I own a proper pair of heels anymore. Hmmm.... No, I don't. I wore clothes that were unisex as a child. Well, maybe not everything was unisex. But, do you remember that? Unisex clothing for kids?

I'm not sure I can get raising a girl right. I'm not sure I ever figured out how to be a very good version of 'girl' myself.

Maybe the ultrasound is wrong.

But it looked like a girl to me, too. In Germany, the standard of care during my pregnancy with Noah was an ultrasound at every check up. I got used to looking at those ultrasound images. Also, I'm an architect, I'm trained to think in section. What I'm saying is: I think I'm somewhat adept at reading ultrasound images.

It did look like a girl.

Another observation: there's been a totally different reaction when I tell people I'm pregnant with a girl than the last two times when I told people I was pregnant with a boy. There's a lot more enthusiasm. And a lot more talk about cuteness and beauty and clothes. Maybe that's because I already have two boys? Or maybe it's expected that I want a girl this time? It's especially interesting to me because I've seen (twice) how both my boys gravitate towards vehicles versus dolls. Over the last 5 years I've thrown up my hands innumerable times when trying to de-traditionalize their gendered play. I guess it's nature, nature, nature, I mutter to myself, because obviously I'm trying to nurture them in other ways. So then, to find myself in this position, of being treated differently simply when I tell people I'm having a girl.... It's kind of crazy, you know? Kind of makes one think about the subconscious sides of the nurture argument.