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Eyeing College And A Crib

Tribune photo by SUSAN M. GREEN

Penny Harding, a new mom again at 40, shares a moment with 17-year-old daughter Christina and infant daughter Sydney.

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By SUSAN M. GREEN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 10, 2008

RIVERVIEW - It's the day after Sydney Harding's 3-month birthday. Her mother has just completed her first full week back at work after maternity leave.

"I'm tired," Penny Harding concedes.

She hadn't expected, at 40, to be feeding an infant at 2:30 a.m. and facing the workday alarm clock two or three hours later. She hadn't planned to be shopping for diapers and baby toys at the same time she was buying college entrance exam prep books for her 17-year-old daughter. She hadn't expected a third term of motherhood.

But that's where Harding finds herself this Mother's Day.

Already a veteran parent, Harding raised her stepson, James, whom she considers her oldest child, from age 3. He's 21 and serving in the Army in Iraq.

Daughter Christina is a junior at East Bay High School. She's busy taking courses such as precalculus and anatomy and physiology, scouring scholarship opportunities and planning to get a part-time job to help pay for college.

She wants to be a cardiologist.

The teenager enjoys helping out with her new sister but hasn't failed to notice how demanding a little one can be.

"I'm going to go to college, get a good job, save up, find a nice guy and then have children," she declares.

She jokes that she's now the middle child, nudged from her longtime niche as the youngest.

"It's usually the teenager that gets pregnant, not the mom," Christina teases her mother.

She and her mother are close, making time for outings and exercise together. The two were in a tennis program when Penny started suspecting she was pregnant.

She and her husband, Donald, had thought they couldn't have more children. But diet and exercise didn't stymie Penny's weight gain. Christina was with her at Wal-Mart when Penny bought a pregnancy test.

Her daughter lectured her all the way back to the parking lot.

"Everything you told your teenage daughter comes back at you," Penny says, repeating key points from the conversation. "Don't you know it only takes one time? Why didn't you use protection?"

For Penny, things are different the third time around. She has more money, less time. More patience, less energy. As an older parent, she feels more settled in her career as an accountant but worries that she will be nearing retirement age when her youngest graduates from high school.

Other things have changed since she raised her first two children. Innovation in baby products, for example. Penny rattles off some products that have come along since Christina's infancy: Swim diapers. Heavy-duty, easy fold-up strollers. Fancy bouncers that play music.

With the family's dual income, Sydney will be able to have more material things than her siblings.

"She's got a bassinet," Penny says, nodding at Sydney. To Christina, she says, "You got a laundry basket."

Time is another issue. Penny still has a guilty conscience about going back to college at night to get her bachelor's degree and missing some of Christina's middle and high school activities, including orchestra and theater performances and swim meets.

Early on, though, Christina had a stay-at-home mom. Sydney won't. The baby will be staying with family members when her mother is at work. But Penny worries that her youngest will not have as much time with Mommy as her older children did, and she worries that her energy will be zapped at the end of workdays.

"By the time I get home, I've got a couple of hours to spend with the baby, and then it's bath and bed time."

Even the colorful toys and educational DVDs offer a two-edged sword. Penny gestures toward a towering, rainbow-colored apparatus parked in front of the television set, where she can count on Sydney being enthralled by "Sesame Street" or excerpts from "The Mickey Mouse Club."

"I call it the Neglect-o-matic," she says, fretting that she spends too much time trying to catch up on domestic chores when she's not at work.

She worries that the demands of a baby sometimes force her to stint on time set aside for her other children.

For Christina, nothing has changed.

"I listen to her issues, and she listens to my issues," the older daughter says. "She's my support person in life, and I'm hers."

Reporter Susan M. Green can be reached at (813) 865-1566 or sgreen@tampatrib.com.

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