Single Mother Diary
Today my daughter Ke Muzi and I sent my mother to Beijing West Railway Station. Originally, the mother said that she would take Ke Muzi back to her hometown, and then send her back to Beijing before the kindergarten started at the end of August. But for the family I formed with Ke Muzi, I have my own clear plan—July this year is the time I imagine Ke Muzi will return to Beijing. For this plan, I have been preparing for two years.
If there is any sweetness and bitterness in life, we should share it together.
After sending my mother into the station, I decided to take Ke Muzi home by subway. From Beijing West Railway Station to my home, I have to transfer twice, a total of one and a half hours by car. I decided to take this subway trip as a test for me and Ke Muzi to see where the limits of each other are. For Ke Muzi, who is three years and two months old, it will take some time for me to get familiar with him, and Ke Muzi also needs to adapt to a new life.
The mother said that she would fly to Beijing to live in Beijing for a period of time at the end of August, and accompany Ke Muzi to adapt to the kindergarten environment. This means that Ke Muzi and I will spend more than a month with only each other.
Ke Muzi and I successfully completed two transfers and got out of the subway station near my home. It was raining today, and the snails were dispatched collectively. Ke Muzi found them immediately after leaving the station. She talks to each snail, calling them by the names of family members she knows. We walked for almost an hour on the road that originally only took ten minutes. I was exhausted after waking up early in the morning to send off to the station, so I tried my best to accompany Ke Muzi, but she was full of energy and did not feel tired at all. This was my first experience of taking care of young children. At that moment, I was completely moved by Ke Muzi’s innocence and cuteness, and I was also full of anxiety about my future life.
This reunion, which had been anticipated for nearly two years, finally came true.
July 25, 2021
Ke Muzi’s work and rest are still stuck in Xinjiang time. After arriving in Beijing, the two-hour time difference made us both a little distressed. It’s okay in the morning. On days when I’m not at work, I’ll sleep with her until she wakes up naturally. The more difficult ones are at noon and evening. She took a lunch break from three to five in the afternoon, and fell asleep at one or two o’clock at night. The battle line was very long, and I often yawned. She always refuses to turn off the TV before going to bed. Since we had just met again, I didn’t dare to turn off the TV rudely, for fear that she would resist living in Beijing, so I could only talk softly.
When cooking, she would want me to put down the knives in my hand and play with her in the living room. This results in me often not being able to cook on time. Fortunately, she drinks 300ml of milk three times a day, so I won’t worry about eating less. After she fell asleep, I often didn’t have the energy to cook, so I had to eat some simple meals. But this feeling makes me even more depressed, I will feel like an incompetent mother.
In the beginning, I always took Ke Muzi to the supermarket to buy vegetables. She’ll wish to buy some toys or treats, or look around curiously. As a result, the time for grocery shopping has become very long, and I am also very tired. I started to order food on “Meituan Shopping”. The first thing I do when I wake up every day is to buy eggs, milk, vegetables and fruits on the app. The food will be delivered in twenty minutes.
I hope that Ke Muzi can feel the family atmosphere, no matter how much she eats, I must ensure that there is plenty of food on the table. And I was frustrated by not being able to cook on time for days on end. In the past few days, I have learned to wash and cut the meat and vegetables before she gets up, and adjust the time of the rice cooker, so that it takes 20 minutes to cook until it is almost noon. After filling the rice in this way, you can eat.
At six o’clock in the afternoon, I will take Ke Muzi to do some outdoor sports, sometimes riding a bicycle, sometimes playing skateboarding. Until I get home around 8pm, watch TV and take a shower before getting ready for sleep.
This kind of life repeats itself.
Ke Muzi hadn’t come to Beijing in June, and I was still a cafe girl. Every weekend, I hang out with my friends in places like Sanlitun, 798 Art District, and Art Museum Street, participating in various cultural activities, drinking coffee and smoking hookah with friends. Live a standard urban life.
This month, I have become a housewife, living in seclusion every day. The refrigerator has become the place I am most concerned about. I will make overall plans based on the inventory in the refrigerator and make corresponding plans. In the past two days, I found that there was no beef, so I took Ke Muzi to the butcher shop to purchase.
My friend Frida couldn’t accept this change of mine the most. She thought I was a single girl like her until she realized that I was, in fact, the mother of a three-year-old. When Ke Muzi came to Beijing to live with me, she still refused to see us. “How can you be a mother?”——In the past two years, when I was worried that I would not be able to bring Ke Muzi back to Beijing on time, she was the one who comforted me regularly and gave me spiritual energy.
In any case, the arrival of Ke Muzi completely changed my life. But I am very satisfied with my current life, because from the time I gave birth to Ke Muzi to the time I returned to Beijing alone after the seven-month maternity leave, my greatest wish is to be reunited with Ke Muzi in Beijing.
August 10, 2021
Because we were worried that Ke Muzi would fall off the bed, we have been sleeping on the carpet in the living room. Recently I realized that the mix of play area and rest area made Ke Muzi’s schedule irregular. And now I have the confidence to keep a certain amount of vigilance at night to protect her. We moved back into the bedroom yesterday. This small change made me very happy, and I felt like I was gradually learning how to be a mother.
However, another thing happened that made me very upset. Today I took Ke Muzi to work in the office. At two o’clock in the afternoon, Ke Muzi wanted to go home. So I carried my bag and a gift from my colleague and friend to Ke Muzi, and took Ke Muzi’s hand to take the subway. As a result, Ke Muzi fell asleep on the subway, so I had to pick her up and get off with all my belongings. Taking the elevator to the exit hall, I adjusted the items in my hand, held Ke Muzi in my arms and walked about 20 meters, ready to exit the station. As a result, Ke Muzi, who was sleeping, suddenly said, Mom, your bag! I looked back, and it turned out that my handbag was really forgotten on the ground. I had to carry her back to get it. This time and again made me very embarrassed. Looking at Ke Muzi who had fallen asleep again, I felt distressed.
When I got home, I put the sleeping Ke Muzi on the bed and sat there for a long time. My arms were sore from holding Kemuzi, and I was even more ashamed to leave my handbag behind. If I had thought ahead about Kemuzi’s sleeping habits and our travel times, or organized our personal belongings, this situation would not have arisen. I was shocked by Ke Muzi’s subconscious reaction. I was both relieved and sad that she could notice the items we left behind.
I really don’t like being too sentimental in my life choices, it just looks cowardly. I put away my emotions, bought a mother bag with a large capacity on Taobao, and put all my Kun bags in the cabinet.
August 12, 2021
I realized that always taking Ke Muzi to work in the office is not a long-term solution, and I must find a way. During this period of time, many interns came to our office. I asked one of the girls to introduce me to a college student who took part-time job to take care of children, and I found him on the same day. I promised to pay her a salary of 150 yuan a day. She needs to work two days a week: she will come to live at home one day in advance, and I will get up early in the morning to go to work, and she will take care of Ke Muzi until I come back from get off work. This girl is very hardworking, and she can play games with Ke Muzi, and Ke Muzi also likes her very much. A difficult problem is thus solved.
During this time I drank a lot of coffee, even at night. Spending a whole day with a toddler can be overwhelming for an adult. I don’t want my life with Ke Muzi to become messy, so I am busy cleaning the house. Often just after I packed it, Ke Muzi pushed the storage box and dumped the toys on the carpet. As a result, I have a sore back and back pain, but it has little effect. Sometimes she wants me to play games with her. She most often plays a firefighter game – she drives a car, and I need to sit in the passenger seat to accompany her to fight the fire. She has formed her own concept of space, and I can’t find exactly where she thinks the co-pilot is, which annoys her very much. I need to play this game with her for an hour or two each time, until she decides to take a break and watch TV.
During this time, the kitchen was always cleaned and dirty, the washing machine was always turned on every day, and the toilet had to be scrubbed from time to time. The carpet in the living room is full of toys, and sometimes Ke Muzi will put the baby bottle on the carpet casually, and when I find out, the milk stains have stained the carpet and give off an unpleasant smell. I hope to maintain a clean and tidy living environment and maintain a happy mental state, so these cleaning tasks have consumed a lot of my energy.
Ke Muzi is very resistant to bathing, and it is very difficult to bathe her. But when she comes out of the bathroom with wet hair, lying on the towel and smiling beautifully, I feel that it’s all worth it.
I think about when I was a kid, my mother used to walk up and down the kitchen after we were asleep, messing here and there. Now that I have become such a mother, it wears me down and makes me feel at ease. Housework brings real joy.
But at night, when she fell asleep, I would sit at the kitchen table for a long time and take an hour or two to calm myself down. There is more Ke Muzi in my life, and a series of family services derived from it, I also need time to adapt. I don’t want to show my negative emotions when I get along with my children during the day, so I will take time to adjust my body and mind.
During this period of time, the friends around me have given me great spiritual energy. Regardless of whether they have given birth or not, they always show great empathy for my tiredness in taking care of children. This moved me very much.
August 13, 2021
In October of this year, I will take the professional qualification examination for publishing professional technicians. The leader said that if you fail to pass, you will be fined to do proofreading. He was joking, but I still value this exam. If it passes smoothly, not only will there be many conveniences at work, but Ke Muzi and I will have a complete National Day holiday starting next year. The day of the exam is getting closer and closer. Because of taking care of Ke Muzi, I have no time to review at all, so I can only pin my hopes on her admission to the kindergarten.
Today, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission officially issued a notice that primary and secondary schools and colleges and universities will start school on time. I infer from this that kindergarten will also start on time, which is also a relief. But at the same time, Ke Muzi’s kindergarten also issued a notice that even if the school starts on time, the first week will be a half-day school system, and the second week will start full-time classes. The extra half a week of parenting time has compressed my review time again.
As early as March, I had already visited four or five kindergartens around by bicycle, and had a preliminary intention. In June of this year, I signed up for Ke Muzi through the website of the Chaoyang District Education Commission. According to my colleagues, when they registered their daughters for kindergarten a few years ago, they had to line up in front of the kindergarten in the middle of the night to grab a place. If you fail to grab a place in a public kindergarten, you have to go to a private kindergarten with high prices or a private kindergarten with worrying teaching quality.
I was speechless after hearing this, but fortunately the situation has improved now, I just need to screen and register on the website, and wait for the final admission. On July 12, I logged on to the website and found that Ke Muzi had been admitted to our favorite kindergarten. The environment of that kindergarten is good, small class teaching is implemented, the scale of the school is small, and the most important thing is that it is close to home.
”When Ke Muzi goes to kindergarten…” I have been saying this for nearly two years. Taking her with her when she was in kindergarten was my most important plan. Now looking at the admission results, I let out a long sigh of relief. My life in the next three years has a basic direction because of Ke Muzi’s admission.
In the evening, Ke Muzi and I were cycling downstairs when we ran into a neighbor. The neighbor’s son is about to enter the kindergarten, and she hopes that it will only be for half a day, so that the child can have an adaptation period. She also worried that her son would not be able to adapt to the kindergarten diet. And I think there is no problem for Ke Muzi to go directly to the whole day. As for the diet, I think it can be overcome.
At night, I began to reflect on my parenting philosophy. From childhood, my mother was extremely strict with us, and we have long been used to such strict requirements. Growing up, my sister and I didn’t have nicknames, and my mother always called us by our first names like adults. My father often kissed our foreheads and the backs of our hands, which was an important memory of my childhood. After living with Ke Muzi, I very much hope that she will be softer than our generation of family members, so I always say “I love you” to her anytime and anywhere, and she will respond sweetly to me. The “I love you” out loud gave me a great sense of relief that we had changed some of our family habits. However, I can still feel the imprint of the family education of the previous generation on me. For example, I also think that there is nothing impossible, only people who don’t work hard. Even for Ke Muzi, who is only three years old, I often ask for this.
Seeing the mother who was genuinely worried about her son’s entry into kindergarten made me reflect on myself even more, should I be more soft and delicate? A few years later, when Ke Muzi grows up, how she treats me and the people around her may depend on how I raise her now. And this topic, I am currently studying, and it will take many years to know the answer.
August 17, 2021 In
the past two days, Ke Muzi started to cough, and my throat also started to hurt. I am very worried that she will have a fever. If she has a fever, not to mention hardships, taking care of her will also be a problem. Our current family situation does not allow us to get sick at all.
I immediately bought cefixime granules and amoxicillin online, found her commonly used antipyretics and put them on the kitchen counter, and told her to drink more water. Every two hours, her temperature was measured with a forehead thermometer. After a while, I was worried that the forehead thermometer would not be accurate, so I found a traditional thermometer to measure her temperature. The whole person was very nervous.
After Ke Muzi fell asleep, I couldn’t sleep well, and I watched her until dawn. Fortunately, she has no fever and her cough has improved. Only then did I realize that my throat had also improved. Because of taking care of Ke Muzi, I always unconsciously drank water together, which relieved my symptoms instead.
August 31, 2021
Today we got back the uniform and bedding for the kindergarten. I put on the uniform and schoolbag for her at home, took pictures of her and sent them to relatives and friends.
I left home when I was young and studied abroad for many years. I also have a rather cold personality and rarely have close contact with relatives. Ke Muzi lived in Xinjiang for three years, and my relatives loved her very much. After Ke Muzi came to Beijing, they often contacted me to ask about Ke Muzi’s recent situation, so this time I also sent her photo to everyone.
Forty days have passed since my mother returned to Xinjiang. I really don’t know how I survived the forty days of parenting alone. For a few days, my little aunt helped me take care of Ke Muzi, but I still had to cook and clean after all, so it was not that easy. I just feel that the responsibility is on my shoulders, and I clenched my teeth and persisted.
