How My Life Turned Out

Depression is a fat liar. Also, it has bad hair.

2010-06-16T18:50:00.000-05:00

I got into a fight with my husband the other day. One of those stupid fights everyone gets into sometimes, where it starts out about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher and the next thing you know, you're maligning one another's cultural upbringing. It was stupid and unwarranted and is sure to be repeated at least once in our life, because that's the way it is when you share your life with someone. You piss each other off sometimes.

But while we were in the midst of all this, he stormed off, and I sobbed, suddenly confronted with a terrible realization: There is no one in this world who loves me unconditionally. There is no one who would love me no matter what. I sat there for a while, thinking through the people in my life and realizing, as I considered them one by one, that one of the reasons I don't stand up for myself is because if I don't keep them happy, they'll leave. Sure, my kids love me pretty much unconditionally, but that doesn't count. They will (as they are supposed to) grow up and move on to a more complicated relationship with me, one more like the (I now realized conditional) relationships I have with my parents.

It was the kind of moment that just shatters you, when you realize that you are, fundamentally, alone. I couldn't believe that this was true, at the same time that I couldn't believe I'd taken so long to see it. And now I was faced with the choice of whether to keep everyone in my life happy and keep them around, or whether I ought to try to make the tough choices, taking the chance that they--my husband, my sister, my mom--would decide they'd just had enough and leave.

That was my evening.

Then a few hours later, when things had calmed down and we'd done all the "I'm sorry I was such an ass" and the "I'm sorry I was such a jerk" and everyone loved one another again, I couldn't help but poke at that wound, like sticking my tongue in the hole left by a lost tooth. You know it's going to hurt like the devil, but you can't help exploring in there. And you know what? There was no hole. That realization, so obvious at the time, was completely gone. Yes, we piss each other off. Yes, we have hard times, all of us, in all our relationships. And sure, there are some relationships that I know wouldn't make it through a test. But that's not true of my most important relationships. When we say we love one another unconditionally, we mean it. And instead of feeling sorry for myself, I ought to be grateful that I have so many people who do love me.

That's one of the lousy things about having depression. It makes me feel like a loser sometimes, like someone who just couldn't hack life and went running to get the diagnosis du jour and some pills. When that happens, I sometimes quit taking those pills, because, hey, I'm better than that. But inevitably, something happens that reminds me why I have that diagnosis. Because when depression gets ahold of me, I lose all perspective. I'm just so glad that I got it back. And now, instead of feeling like melting into a puddle of self-pity, I feel like calling Depression on the phone and telling it that no one loves it, and hey, how does that feel? And also, it has a big butt. And it's not as smart as it thinks it is.

There will be more bad times, because there always are, whether or not we have depression to deal with. But I'm grateful, today, for the ability to see that Depression tells you lies, and you don't have to believe them.

It Don't Mean a Thing...

2010-03-29T07:06:00.001-05:00

I was in college in the late '90s, and among other things, that was an era when swing music was just coming back. It was just post-grunge, and we were going from sullen and flanneled to peppy (in a campy kind of way) and dolled up. It was surprisingly exciting, to feel like we were doing something new, in doing something old. I had been wanting to try it for a long time, but if you've been swing dancing, you've seen those girls--red lipstick, high heels, swinging dresses, and feet that move faster than I could ever possibly manage without falling on my face. But one night, my friend Elizabeth and I decided to try it.

Though there were a lot of places one could go swing dancing in the Twin Cities, many were populated by people who'd been around when it was popular the first time--which was cool, but not really the kind of people we were looking for. So we opted for this strange little bar on the edge of the city. This was not the kind of place I would have expected to go swing dancing. It was the kind of place I would expect to get stuck to the floor in some sort of unidentified goo and end up leaving in terror as more and more unsavory men decided I was the girl of their dreams. But once a week, they had a swing band there, and the entire atmosphere changed.

I had never actually tried swing dancing, though the dance scene in "It's A Wonderful Life" had convinced me at about the age of 7 that this was something I had to try, and that I would automatically be wonderful at it. We didn't have dates, so we spent a few minutes standing off to the side while she taught me the steps, and then we sort of hovered and watched the couples. It was amazing to watch these couples move in such tight rhythms, their bodies so precisely timed and yet so, so free. And one man in particular stood out. He moved from one female dancer to another, always asking politely if he could dance with her, staying for one song, then moving on. He wasn't tall, slender, or wearing an impeccable suit. He was short, stocky, and sporting a white T-shirt. But the way he danced was amazing.

Eventually, as he made his way around the room, he asked if I would like to dance. Not accustomed to anything I was seeing in this strange place, I wasn't sure what to do, but I said yes, and he led me onto the floor.

To say he danced well would be a tragic understatement. I, who had learned these steps a mere half hour before, spun around on the floor with him like I'd been doing this forever. He held my hand and my waist just tight enough, as though promising that he wouldn't let me fall. Back and forth we danced as the music bounced and swung. He spun me, turned me, dipped me. I, in my black-and white polka-dotted Donna Reed dress, felt invincible, as though that feeling I had been searching for my entire life was actually within reach. He smiled and made me feel beautiful, not as though I were uniquely special to him in all the world, but as though he was able to see the thing that makes us all beautiful and bring it out of us so we could see it too.

When the song ended, he walked me back to my table and my friend and moved on. I never saw him again after that night and never danced with him again after that one time. Perhaps if I had, he would have turned out to be kind of a creep, and I wouldn't have actually been that good a dancer, and the whole experience would have become another run-of-the-mill life experience. But I didn't, and none of those things happened.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately. My life has seemed sort of out of-sorts. Nothing in particular, just a general sense of being out of step with the rest of the world. My brain and my body and the rest of the world all seem to be on different timetables, and I never feel entirely right. But then I think about that night, about that one dance, and there was a time when I felt as though I was moving perfectly, as though every moved I made was filled with purpose and beauty, perfectly in step with everyone else. And I think, if I felt that way once, even if only for a moment, perhaps I can find it again. It's certainly worth trying for.

This Evil Future Brough to You By

2010-02-23T16:59:00.000-06:00

I am going insane, and more quickly than usual. First of all, thank you so much to those of you who have stopped by to see whether I have dropped off the map, and no, I haven't, though it kind of seems that way. And I'm sorry you haven't heard anything from me recently, but not only have I been unable to write here, but at last count, I had 59 unread items in my Google Reader. So to all you lovely folks whose blogs I read and enjoy, soon you will be getting pages and pages of comments from me as I attempt to catch up.

It started, I suppose, around Christmas, when we got a Wii. You see, my brother is getting married in May, and I have been asked to be in the wedding. Though I am very flattered and honored, I am also terrified of being "the fat bridesmaid." So during nap times (the only free time I have in any given 24 hours), I've been trying to get in a solid hour of Wii tennis. Now, say what you will, I know that you can play a perfectly respectable game of Wii tennis sitting on the couch and flicking your wrist, but I've been trying to run around the room as much as possible (and hiss "shit!" as little as possible). It may not be as good as the real thing, but it's a good deal better than sitting on my ass, which is what I've been doing up until now. I don't own a scale, so I don't know if it's doing any good, so I'm just hitting the hell out of an imaginary ball until my dress comes in the mail and I know just how much I'm going to have to do in order not to actually look like a granny smith apple at the wedding.

Then last week, we got a computer virus, which I then spent--seriously--ten hours trying to remove. Now, I am a child care provider, not a rocket scientist. I think I'm pretty smart, but you can tell me just about anything about a computer and I will believe it, including that they will someday rise up and take over the world. And I got really emotionally invested in proving that I could do this. I eventually got the worst of the virus off, so that it was usable again, but it still redirects almost all Google searches (How else can I find anything out? What do you mean, books? Wait, there are other search engines? Who would dare to mess with my Google?) and periodically pops open random Internet Explorer windows to places like askmehowtomakeamilliondollarsfromhome.com. We've been fighting and fighting with the damn thing and finally just said screw it, it was $300 five years ago, it had a good run, and we're getting a new one.

Matilda's birthday is coming up, so since I like to think I'm all cute and helpful, I decided to make Evites, instead of my usual approach, which is emailing everyone I know the day before the party and frantically trying to convince them they want to come. But our computer it, as I may have mentioned, of the devil. So I spent a good 20 minutes registering with the damn site, trying to choose and fill out an invitation, and then trying to import addresses, which of course did not work because, yes, our computer is of the devil. So I manually entered all the addresses, several of them wrong, and hit "send." The computer then froze up for the next 20 minutes, time I spent shouting nonsense at the frozen screen and listening to Zachary try to read me his latest chapter book, Matilda request "up please" for the bazillionth time so that she could sit on the desk and bang on the keys, and trying to reassure Ezra that I wasn't entirely going crazy. But of course I was, because in the midst of all this, I kept glancing at the (still frozen) screen and seeing the words "This Evite feature is brought to you by..." But in my insanity, it kept looking like "This evil feature is brought to you by..." This struck me as funny, but not nearly as much the kids. Ezra enjoyed repeating it over and over again, but it always came out as "This evil future," which actually seemed more accurate as they kept asking me to repeat it and tell them more things that are "of the devil."

Eventually I was able to confirm that the invitations had been sent, I fixed the email addresses I had entered wrong, and everybody got a bath. A new computer is on the way, and eventually I will get that dress and find out just how many pounds I have to lose by May. And to all the lovely people who have stopped by to check on me and ask where I've been, thank you, thank you, thank you. As my mind slowly slips away, it's nice to know there are people wondering for me where it is. And I promise I'll get it back just as soon as I can.

Deep Thoughts

2010-01-14T14:11:00.000-06:00

When trying to describe something that is completely futile, why don't people ever say "It's like trying to sweep up macaroni and cheese"? Because have you tried that? It's horrible, spending a full minute trying to catch each noodle and whisk it in the general direction of the others, all the while watching it get more and more covered with the dog hair and sand that perhaps will unstick it from the floor enough to make it mobile. I finally end up on my hands and knees, manually picking up each and every piece of macaroni, every time. Don't even ask what it looks like when we have couscous.

No matter how much we are intellectually aware that the human experience is essentially the same for all of us, we can't help but feel that we are the first one ever to experience the things that are truly profound. Clearly I am the first person ever to fall in love, ever to lose someone I cared about, ever to watch her toddler dance in the kitchen and be overwhelmed by the urge to call everyone I've ever met and tell them, "You'll never believe what she's doing right now!" Never mind that kitchen dancing is a pretty common toddler activity. There has never been a little girl with soft curls down her back, pushing the button on the Leap Frog farm again and again, so proud that she's mastered this way of making music, twirling around in front of the refrigerator, whispering to herself, "Dance. Dance. Dance. Dance..." Or if there has, I don't want to hear about it, because I want to tell you about mine.

Sometimes there simply are no words. The other day, Zachary and Ezra were in their room doing something they weren't supposed to be doing, maybe wrestling after I'd told them for the thousandth time that they were going to get hurt and that game was done for today. So I walked in and, I admit, raised my voice a little. Ezra turned to me and said, "Mommy, will you leave the room now? I want to tell Zachary that you're a yelling machine."

And finally, just because he didn't get featured here and his siblings did, I would like to announce to the world my pride that my oldest son, my first-grader, is the best reader I have ever met. (Or if there's a better one, I don't want to hear about. See the reasons cited above.) It hasn't been a struggle exactly, but it hasn't come easy. I was one of those who was reading by kindergarten, but with a November birthday, I was almost 6 when I started, so I had nearly a year advantage over the rest of the students. And I don't remember whether it came easy or was a struggle. Zachary was barely 5 when he started kindergarten, and I've worried so much that he's at a disadvantage because he's younger than his classmates. But last week, he read--all by himself--an entire "Captain Underpants" book. If you're not familiar with them, and I wasn't, they're chapter books, but with a lot of graphic novel components thrown in. And he didn't just flip through the pages; he read it. He happily answered all my questions and then filled me in on the plot. Then he read another one. I've ordered numbers 3 and 4 from PaperBack Swap and he's asking every day if they're here yet. There are so many wonderful books in his future and such pride to be gained from learning to read them, and I'm delighted that a superhero in his undies is getting us so far.

Aunt Becky Asks, I Answer

2009-12-07T17:28:00.000-06:00

It seems that the only way to pull my head away from screaming children and overdue assignments is to offer me free stuff. I am all about the free stuff. So dear Aunt Becky (you know her, my dad's sister's husband's second cousin's married-in aunt's daughter--but we call her "Aunt" to be polite)* has posed this list of questions, promising a hefty prize of a super-awesome book for a random respondent. And since I am as random as they come, I figure I qualify!

1) Do you like sprinkles on your ice cream?

I like everything on my ice cream. Peanut butter, chocolate, fruit, and probably bacon. Sprinkles are made of sugar and fun to look at. That means they are essentially perfect.

2) If you had to choose one word to banish from the English language, what would it be and why?
I'm tempted to go with "irregardlness," but that's my English major coming out. I have learned to accept that the language changes, however, and I have to go along with it. So I guess I'd go with something like "the," just to see the chaos and creativity that would result from having it removed.

3) If you were a flavor, what would it be?
Well, a friend once said I was like lime juice: I go with almost everything. (But in retrospect, that may have only been because we drank a lot, and lime juice does go with most alcohol. Turns out it doesn't work with all that much else.) But I'd say I'm more like vanilla: I seem boring, but I'm actually surprisingly delicious.

4) What’s the most pointless annoying chore you can think of that you do on a daily/weekly basis?
Taking out the garbage, especially the diapers. I am notorious for tossing bags of garbage out the back door, where they surprise my husband when he gets home from work. He likes to come in, all flustered, and announce that there's a menace roaming the neighborhood, leaving garbage bags of diapers on people's back porches. At least now that it's below freezing, they won't smell so bad when I forget them out there.

5) Of all the nicknames I’ve ever had in my life, Aunt Becky is the most widely known and probably my favorite. What’s your favorite nickname? (for yourself)
All my college friends called me Kendar--technically, Kendar, Knight of the Dark and Oblivious Abyss. Started as a misspelling in an email, and it stuck. Kendra doesn't really lend itself to nicknames (plus I'd never really belonged anywhere enough to warrant a nickname), so that one was really special to me. Only a few people know about it now.

6) You’re stuck on a desert island with the collective works of 5 (and only five) musical artists for the rest of your life. Who are they?
I really have to go with Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger first. I have a lot of their stuff and still haven't tired of singing out loud to their albums, after years and years of subjecting the kids to it. Plus on a desert island, no one would complain that they didn't want to hear that song again. Then I'd probably add Flight of the Conchords, because you need that kind of humor on a desert island. After that, maybe ABBA (because sometimes you're in that kind of a mood) and the Tragically Hip, because they're my husband's all-time favorite band, and if he were there, he'd want to hear them; and if he wasn't, I'd miss him, and they'd remind me of him.

7) Everything is better with bacon. True or false?
So true. See #1. Even ice cream is probably better with bacon. I've never gone so far as to put bacon bits on my ice cream, but now that I think about it, that sounds really good.

8 ) If I could go back in time and tell Young Aunt Becky one thing, it would be that out of chaos, order will emerge. Also: tutus go with everything. What would you tell young self?
No one is actually looking. I've spent so much of my life convinced that I was being judged by everyone. And the truth is, most people aren't noticing me. Some are, and some are judging. But they're judging everyone, not just me. And they can go to hell. Everyone else is too concerned about being judged themselves. I wish I'd figured that out sooner.

Those were surprisingly fun questions. I'd love to see anyone else's responses to them!

* My dad does not have a sister. But if he did, I bet Aunt Becky and I would totally be related.

Mommy?

2009-10-30T11:57:00.001-05:00

Ezra seems to have figured out that when I'm sitting at the computer, I'm a captive audience. Because every time I sit down, he magically appears with a question. For example, I sat the kids down with their lunch and opened the computer--yay, I'm going to check on a couple of blogs while the kids eat. And imediately:

EZRA: Mommy?

ME: What?

EZRA: Can I have more goldfish?

ME: Yes, but you have to eat your fish first.

EZRA: Now?

ME: You only ate one bite.

EZRA: But it's very hard to find things to eat when you're always telling me stuff.

ME: What? Never mind. Just eat your fish, okay?

EZRA: Okay... Mommy?

ME: Yes?

EZRA: What to red and yellow make?

ME: They make orange. See? (I hold up two Ikea kids' plates in front of the window and show him.)

EZRA: Oh. What do red and blue make?

ME: Purple. See?

EZRA: What do red and green make?

ME: Um, brown, I guess?

EZRA: Can you find a green plate and show me? And can I have more goldfish?

ME: You still need to eat your fish, honey.

EZRA: Mommy?

ME: Yes, dear?

EZRA: What does tan do?

ME: What do you mean, what does tan do?

EZRA: What happens if you stir it? What would it do? I like to know about what colors do. And why are some crackers crunchy? I like to eat them like this, slow. Mommy? What's inside wood?

At this point, I've stopped answering and am just grunting in his direction, because really? "What does tan do?" I don't even know how to start answering these questions! My kid is (clearly) brilliant, and I try to answer all his questions, often resorting to Google Images, my favorite thing. ("How do raisins get made?") But sometimes, I just have to nod and make random noises until his battery runs down and he's out of unanswerable questions, and we can just go find his red fireman hat, because tomorrow is Halloween.

Addendum:
Immediately after I wrote this, I turned around to check on Ezra, eating the slowest lunch of any person ever, and saw his hand covered in mustard. He's been repeatedly chastised for eating condiments instead of food, so I reminded him not to eat ketchup and mustard with his fingers, then put the two bottles away. He called to me from the table, "I won't do it anymore! I promise!" And I came back and told him it's okay, I'm not mad, I was just cleaning up. And he said, "Okay, but your eyes, they looked like this... like this... like this." And he made a series of eye-rolling, face-scrunching expressions that caused me first to wonder if I actually look like that when I'm mad, and then to nearly dissolve on the floor with laughter. Literally from the day he was born, he has constantly surprised and challenged me. Sometimes he can get under my skin like no other person in the world. But Lord, I love that kid. He may be a challenge, but he is himself and will never, ever be anything else. And what a gift that is.

Coffee With the Buddha

2009-10-17T18:29:00.002-05:00

I grew up in a suburb some distance from Minneapolis, far enough out that kids made a special trip to go there but most people didn't go that often, close enough that a few of our parents worked there. And when I was in high school--newly minted driver's license and the freedom that came with it, grunge and coffee culture on the rise--I suddenly discovered this entire city that had been just out of my reach. It had multiple universities filled with the most interesting people, it had one-way streets which I was constantly trying to go the wrong way on, and it had all these coffee shops.

There was this one coffee shop in particular. It sat (sits, though I only ever drive past it nowadays on the way to the pediatrician) right on the edge of the U of M campus, where the university meets the bars, which meet the vegetarian restaurants, which meet the low-income housing. It's an amazing conflux of places, and in those days, it was an amazing conflux of people. Students reading, professors grading, homeless people staying warm, young punked-up parents with their green-haired toddlers--they all roamed around together and somehow seemed to all enjoy one another.

I had recently started smoking (don't worry, I've quit since), and every possible evening was spent with my friends in that coffee shop, smoking, playing cards, and drinking--as often as not, Jolt. (Remember Jolt? Man, I could totally go for "twice the caffeine" these days.) And we always made friends. One night, a very intelligent, though incredibly superior, man taught me to play Go. He spent hours explaining the history and significance of every aspect of the game. I can explain to you the many ways in which Go reflects the culture from which it originates; I cannot tell you how to play it. Another night, we met a man who wanted to play cards with us. In hindsight, and with greater sympathy, I realize he was almost certainly quite ill. At the time, he seemed simply entertaining. He didn't follow the rules of rummy and kept slapping down cards at unpredictable times, and he repeatedly tapped his cigarette over his head, even after we offered him an ash tray. Another man just stared at the fish tank all night, every night. One evening, my friend was waiting for us in line and started talking with the fish tank guy. He was a little confused, hard to follow, but really kind and easy to talk to. Turned out, most people were.

One night I was there alone--maybe I'd just been dying to get out of the house, maybe I was waiting for my friends, I don't remember. But I got to talking with the guy at the next table. He was probably in his 20s, graduated from the university not too many years before, just hanging out and reading the paper. And while we were talking about whatever it was, we hit on the topic of teaching and learning. And he told me a story about an introductory philosophy course he had taken. It was taught, he said, by a very well-respected man who was in every way the stereotypical professor--glasses, crazy graying hair, etc. (I always think of him as looking like Richard Dreyfuss, possibly because my dad is also a college professor and he looks a little like a cross between Richard Dreyfuss and Geraldo Rivera, but that's neither here nor there.) They were discussing Buddhism and the professor was explaining its basic tenets and the life story of the Buddha that had given rise to Buddhism. In the back of the class was a kid who was sort of the classic dumb college kid--got in by the skin of his teeth, athletic scholarship, taking this class and hoping it would be easy. And when the professor asked for comments or questions, this student burst out with, "Buddha was a cool fuckin' dude!" The class, of course, all laughed, especially my companion and his friends. When the class was over, the professor asked them to stay behind, and he asked why they had laughed. They said it was just such a strange thing to say about Buddha. And the professor thoughtfully replied, "Buddha was a cool fuckin' dude. And it just goes to show how unenlightened you are that you would laugh at another man's enlightenment."

My new friend didn't say much after that, at least not much that stayed with me. He left or went back to his paper. My friends showed up, or I went home. I don't remember. But I have always remembered that story. This morning, I overheard a person I didn't know saying that someone else I didn't know was "a cool dude." And for the millionth time since that night, I thought of that story. Moments of true enlightenment are rare and usually arrive unnoticed until later. But that was one for me. Like everyone else, I struggle with the daily battles, internal and external, that make up my life as I try to make sense of my world. And like the student in that philosophy class, I hope that I will always be able to see the truths that plainly, that I will always be able to speak them so clearly, and that I will always be brave enough to announce my own enlightenment. And that I will always be enlightened enough never to laugh at another man's.

You Capture

2009-10-15T11:51:00.000-05:00

This week, I'm joining in on a photo project called "You Capture." I thought it would be nice to have a project to think about all week, as well as encouraging me to pull out the camera. And I learned a couple of things: first, it's really fun to take pictures. Second, I am a lousy photographer. I think I actually got better results messing with the pictures on Picasa than I did trying to use all the fancy features on the camera. But I had a lot of fun with the assignment, "Still Life." And here are the results!

This is the book shelf in Zachary and Ezra's room. The shelf itself was a hand-me-down when Zachary was born, and I know it had a long life before it came to us. It was always awkwardly shoved in a corner until we finished the construction and built Zachary and Ezra their brand-new big bedroom. Now it has a special place in the corner and the kids regularly go there to select books. Zachary's reading has recently exploded and in addition to being able to read a lot more by himself, he's more interested in longer stories and chapter books. So I gathered all the chapter books together, and on the lower shelf are all the I-Can-Read and similar books. One of the things I love about this picture and this space is the juxtaposition of the old and the new, the old bookshelf with the brand-new reader, the Wizard of Oz and Ramona books that were mine when I was little alongside the Magic Tree House and other new books that we're discovering together. Watching my kids grow up helps me to remember a lot about what it was like.

On a completely different note, this is a fresh-baked loaf of bread. A few years ago, we realized we were spending tons of money on nice artisan bread, when we (which is to say my husband) could just be making it. And a Sunday tradition was born. It's been enough years now that the kids don't know anything different than Sundays spent kneading and rising, always making a small roll, or "circle bread," for each of the kids, the smell of wild rice and sourdough filling the kitchen. As my kids get older and more aware of themselves and their peers, I realize that I am setting examples, establishing traditions, creating memories. And that's a lot of pressure. It's nice every once in a while to be reminded that those things don't have to be high-pressure, perfect creations. The best memories are going to be the ones that were created organically, that were special to our family because that's who our family is. Like Sundays with fresh-baked bread.

So let me know what you think. How did the pictures turn out? I have to admit that I liked them a lot more once the pressure of taking the picture was off and I was able to think about why I wanted to take that picture in the first place. Do you have any thoughts on the nature of Still Life? What would you want to capture?

How to give three kids a bath

2009-10-12T19:45:00.003-05:00

For anyone who has never attempted this, I offer you a tutorial on getting three children clean.

1. Inform said children that it is bath time. Listen to the oldest protest that he's not done building the Lego boat that, incidentally, will never be done. Listen to the middle one insist that he has to take bath first--or is it second? No, wait, he wants to go first. Probably. But he feels very strongly about whichever one it is. Chase the little one as she high-tails it to the bathroom, shouting "Bath!" Try to intercept her before she throws everything she can reach into the tub.

2. Fill the bathtub. Try to find the exact point at which the oldest can easily dunk his head, while the youngest will not simply tip over and drown. Insist, despite many arguments, that no, you don't have to leave the water running through the entire bath. Wish you had never started that when the 6-year-old was a baby, because now you pay for it at every bath. Agree that perhaps bubbles would be nice. Curse the fact that you didn't think to bring dish soap into the bathroom, and if you go get it now, the toddler will plunge headfirst into the tub. Try to convince them that a bath without bubbles is also fun. Lose argument, and finally fill the tub with hand soap, which makes reasonable bubbles. Consider getting some (surprisingly expensive) bubble bath just to prevent these arguments.

3. Tell youngest that she can now put the bath toys in the tub. Help her locate the cabinet that houses the toys and lift out the plastic tub in which you store them. Take a moment to feel good about yourself for coming up with such an elegant solution to the storage of all those wet toys. Have that feeling taken away as youngest child throws all the toys into the bath, including the soap, splashing water all over the floor, then hurls in the plastic tub as well.

4. Tell middle and youngest that the bath is ready. Lift them into the tub and try to keep one ear out for the oldest, playing in the next room. Pray that he doesn't choose this moment to jump off his bed, decide he simply must glue things, or act on any of the other bad ideas he seems to be full of lately. Tell youngest not to drink bath water. Admire middle child's ability to stick his nose in the water, but clarify that it doesn't really get all his hair wet. Tell youngest not drink bath water. Try to get middle child's hair wet, fighting with him about when his hair is actually wet enough to wash. Tell youngest not to drink bath water, and take cup away. Sigh, as she replaces cup with a washcloth, which she then sucks on.

5. Conclude that they are both relatively wet and try to wash them. Agree that maybe they can wash themselves, and besides, the water is pretty soapy anyway, right? Hand middle child bottle of shampoo, and try to stop him before he pours the entire bottle into his hand. Remind him, after he dunks hand in the water, that he was supposed to put that soap on his body and hair and get clean. Try again. Put soap on youngest child's hair while she tries to steal it. Pour a small amount in her hand so she will hold still and get washed. Figure that she's probably pretty clean, and you're losing your patience anyway. Rinse them both amid much shrieking.

6. Tell children that it's almost time to get out. Remind youngest that if she stands up in the tub, she will have to get out. Try not to laugh as she smiles and sits down every time you say this. Insist that it's almost time. Remind them that the time has almost come. Inform them that it's time to get out now, and try to ignore the shocked cries that it can't be time to be done yet! Lift middle child out and dry him off as quickly as possible, while he tries to run away, across the wet and slippery bathroom floor. Tell oldest that his turn has come. Inform him that, at six years old, he doesn't need to be quite so concerned about getting undressed all alone in the room. Give in and remove youngest from the tub so that oldest can get in. Try not to slip on the wet floor as you carry youngest off to get diapered and dressed. Tell oldest that you're running late so he's going to have to get clean right away.

7. Get youngest dry and start getting her diapered. Stop to inform middle child that he has his underpants on backwards, and he's putting his legs in the arm holes of his pajamas. Try to find youngest's pajamas. Swear that you left them here, and tear drawer apart while she tries to get the ball point pen you left on the changing table. Give up and put her in leggings and a sweat shirt. She can wear them tomorrow too. Help middle child find the arm holes in his pajamas. Pick towels up off the floor and brush off the dog hair. Call to oldest that he needs to be getting clean. Get a very noncommittal "Okay!" in response.

8. Turn on whatever is on Nickelodeon (please be Spongebob) while you check on oldest. See that he is still mostly dry and has been "swimming" around the tub, sliding on the slanted back of the tub in a way you explicitly told him never to do. Try not to get upset and tell him that he really, really needs to get clean now. Go check on younger two, and take dog bone away from youngest child. Return to oldest child, and see that he's putting soap into dry hair. As calmly as possible, offer to get it wet. While you're there, quickly wash and rinse his hair. Tell him he really needs to get clean now, and go check on the younger ones. Yay, Spongebob! That buys you at least 10 minutes of TV hypnosis; maybe you can check your email tonight before you all fall asleep. Respond to oldest child's calls that he's ready to get out--now!

9. Provide oldest child with a towel to stand on and another to dry with. Agree to dry his hair. Feel a little frustrated that he won't do it. Feel a little grateful that this great big person will still let you dry his hair. Send him off to get dressed and go clean the bathroom. Empty the bathtub and start removing toys. Curse the stupid plastic toy tub, now as wet as the toys it holds. End up drying the tub with a towel and putting it away. Go check on oldest and find him yelling at middle child that he needs "to be alone right now" to get dressed. Giggle a little at the fact that he is naked while yelling at his brother that he needs privacy to dress. Remind oldest that he needs to take care of his dirty clothes and towel after he gets dressed. Go check on youngest and take the dog's bone away from her again. When oldest child emerges from his room, go check and resignedly put away his dirty clothes and wet towel.

10. When all children are dry and dressed, turn on a show for them, collapse onto the couch, and count the hours until you can go to bed.

Flying Rodents and Nudity

2009-09-19T12:36:00.001-05:00

When I was junior in college, I did a 6-month study abroad program and got back in June, at the end of the school year. What this meant was that while all my friends were sorting out their housing arrangements for the coming (and presumably final) school year, I was off trying not to get malaria and getting a lovely staph infection instead. So largely via email--which, in 1993, was not the fun and user-friendly experience it is now--I tried to set up living arrangements long distance.

Thus it was that I arrived, the following August, at the house I had agreed to share with four other girls. One of them, I knew; she had shared an apartment with another friend of mine, so I'd seen her pretty often. One, I had never met and knew only as the quiet and kind of scary friend of the other girls. One, I had known for a while and she was a pretty good friend of mine. (Of course, just to show that I'm not always great at picking friends, what I didn't know was that over the next few months, she would have many screaming tantrums, repeatly get engaged to a friend of ours and then break it off, and finally she would move out, leaving all her things and a big hole in the rent check for several months until we got a new roommate.) And the last girl was someone I'd gone to high school with but hadn't really known until college. Between shared friends and a shared hometown, Stacy and I had grown pretty close, and she was mostly the one that I was looking forward to living with.

The house had been split at one point, and there were still two doors--one upstairs, one downstairs--that could be dead bolted shut to split the house into two apartments. There were two bathrooms, five bedrooms, and two kitchens. It was an odd setup but it worked well for us. What didn't work well, from the moment I arrived in the house, was the bedroom that had been assigned to me while I was away. Of the five bedrooms in the house, I got the one with no windows, the one literally under the stairs, the one that was only a bedroom in the sense that a bed would fit into it if you tried. I was pretty unhappy that this decision to give me the crappy bedroom had been made without consulting me, but when I got to the house and saw it, I was just exhausted. I had been driving all day, all my things were still in the truck parked outside, it was late, and I just wanted to go to bed. Fortunately there was a bed already in the room, so I borrowed a blanket, took out my contacts, stripped down to my t-shirt and underwear, and crawled into bed.

A couple of minutes later, I heard a strange sound in the room. It was a sort of a flapping, whooshing sound. I didn't have my contacts in and my glasses were in the truck with the rest of my worldly belongings, so it took a moment for me to identify the weird little flying shadow. But when I did, I leapt into action. Well, figuratively leapt. Actually, I wrapped the blanket around me, including my head, and I dropped to the floor. I scurried out of the bedroom and up the stairs, whimpering all the while. Finally I made it to Stacy's room, and I knocked on the door as politely as I could. When she answered, I threw open the door and cried, "Stacy, I can't see, there's a bat in my room, and I'm not wearing any pants!"

And bless her heart, she just scooted over on the bed and said, "Hop in."

That year probably did more than any other to change my life and turn me into the person I am now. It was full of independence, romance and foiled romance, academic achievement and frustration, and the realization that soon enough, we were going to be expected to do something with our lives. And through it all, I had these amazing people who, no matter what, were always willing to move over and make room for me, whether or not I had pants on.

Stacy and I have seen less of each other in recent years, though we try. It's hard, as your lives change, to keep in touch as much as you'd like. But there's something about the changing seasons, school starting, watching my own kids grow up and make friends, that makes me miss her terribly. I want to stay up late playing (and drinking) gin, talking about everything and nothing. I want to hear all about her job, her house, her love life. I want to show her my kids, my projects. I think I'll email her, see if she's free sometime soon just to get together and remember why we were friends in the first place. And to remind her that, no matter how much time goes by, there's always room for a good friend.

Just How Lame Am I?

2009-08-29T17:19:00.000-05:00

Here's a pop quiz, just to see how well you know me.

How sadly, embarrassingly, craptacularly lame am I? So much so that...

A: Not only am I still nursing Matilda (something is in and of itself not a source of embarrassment), but, at 18 months old, I am still nursing her to sleep (that is). From the time she was born, she was in our bedroom, and I've always nursed the babies to sleep when they were little. Zachary took to the pacifier right away, and Ezra decided it was pure gold around his first birthday, but Matilda has never thought it was anything more than slightly amusing--definitely not comforting. Around her first birthday, it seemed like time to put my foot down and insist that she learn to put herself to sleep. But then construction started and Ezra was moved into our bedroom with her for the duration; it was hard enough to get them both to sleep at all, never mind if she was fussy because she didn't get to nurse to sleep. Almost as soon as the construction ended, we left for a vacation--11 days in a pop-up camper together, again not time to insist that she learn to put herself to sleep. Now we're home, and she's in her own room, and it would seem to be the time. But she's decided that now is the time for teething and unexplained diarrhea, plus the fact that my husband fell on some rocks and seriously damaged his shoulder. So anything that leads in the direction of a good night's sleep ranks above theories about parenting. But seriously, at this rate, I'll be having to stop into her kindergarten class to nurse her before rest time. It's getting out of hand.

B: Back in March, I slipped up a flight of stairs and broke my wrist. Fortunately it's my right wrist and I'm left handed. But that was not fun, having to explain over and over again that no, I'm not being mistreated in any way, I honestly fell up a flight of stairs and did this to myself. It's healed fine, but it still gets sore sometimes, especially when it's expected to sit in a position under pressure for more than about ten minutes, like, say, when I'm nursing Matilda to sleep for the second time that night. Then that mother aches like nobody's business, and all I want is to move it so it will stop hurting, but I know that if I do, she will wake up and all hell will break loose. And it's all because I can't climb a flight of stairs like a normal person.

C: I can't boil an egg. I can boil water and put an egg in it and take it out a while later, but no matter what I do, I always end up with slightly soft-boiled eggs that I then have to peel and put in the microwave because, of course, you don't know that it's soft-boiled until you peel it and it feels too soft, and at that point, you're not really going to start the water boiling process all over at the beginning. I honestly feel like I end up pulling out "The Joy of Cooking" every time I want a hard-boiled egg, and it's really ridiculous. Maybe I need to laminate the instructions and tape them to the inside of the refrigerator so that at least I can pretend that I can boil a damn egg without instructions. Or maybe I can try to convince the kids that eggs are supposed to be that way, that there was something wrong with all the hard-boiled eggs they've ever seen and eaten, and that Mommy's way is actually superior in a way she can't quite articulate.

or D: All of the above.

What do you think?

I want my baby back, baby back, baby back

2009-08-27T10:02:00.005-05:00

Part of me misses my old film camera. It was just so simple. You take pictures, then (eventually, perhaps years later) you take them in and have them developed. Then you have film and pictures. How simple! How tactile!

Now I have this (lovely) digital camera. And it's so strange. In the same way that Mp3s and even CDs are weird and scary to me because really, how to they get sound onto that and how do they get it out, and how many ways are there to break it? I'm a little leery of the camera's memory card. So when we got home from our vacation, I immediately thought, "I must transfer all those photos to the computer." You know, so that I can forget to order prints and spend the next several hours messing with Picasa to get them just so.

And this is the first photo that shows up on the memory card:

That's Matilda, who will be 18 months old on September 3rd. There are 62 photos still in the camera from that day and the next, the day she was born, the first time her daddy held her, the first time she met her brothers, the first time she saw her grandpa. And I can't seem to get rid of them. They're in the computer (probably in several places) and backed up on another memory card, just in case. And somewhere I have prints. But there's something about deleting them from the memory card in the camera that I can't handle. Is it that if I delete the pictures, that time is gone for good? Is it that if anything happened to the pictures, I'm afraid I would lose that precious memory? I had no such problems with the film when the boys were born. I developed the pictures, then stuck the film in a drawer.

This is the picture that I actually wanted to show you:

While we were on vacation, Ezra got really into pooping on the potty. This is a pretty big deal, since, though he's been pretty good--if not reliable--about peeing in the potty, poop has been harder to come by. And at the same time, Matilda has decided she must spend all day, every day putting on clothes. So it logically follows that as soon as we got home from our camping trip, Ezra had to pull out his coveted shark underpants and prove that he is big enough to wear them, by spending all his time on the potty. (Which is way easier now that going potty doesn't involve pulling three kids in the wagon half a mile to the bathrooms.) And Matilda took that opportunity to swipe and put on the shark underpants. They're both so very proud of their accomplishments!

Zachary goes to first grade in a week and a half. Ezra is now officially too big for me to carry up the stairs. Sometimes I wonder if I really do let Matilda get away with more than I let the boys do at her age; my husband insists that it's true. And if so, is it because she's a girl and there's some secret sexist in me who can't stop her? Is it, as I sometimes think, because of the way she came to be with us? She was a surprise, one of those "Oh my god, what are we going to do now?" surprises. And I don't ever, ever want her to feel like she is anything less than the perfect completion of our family. Or is it just that I can feel these years, these baby years, slipping away, and I can't stand to let go just yet? How is it possible that the waxy, cranky little thing I see in that picture has already turned into this person who wants to dress herself all day and prefers one cup over another?

Maybe I'll hold onto the pictures a little longer, since I clearly can't keep the babies.

What would happen if a 17-month-old drank most of a can of Pepsi?

2009-08-11T16:17:00.002-05:00

Seriously... does anyone know? Because I left a can on the coffee table and then got wrapped up in some baked on crap on a cookie sheet, and the next thing I know, Ezra's walking into the kitchen telling me that he thinks Matilda is drinking pop. And then Zachary appears with a nearly empty can and tells me he got it from her hand. And when I go out to the living room, she's looking especially bright-eyed and her shirt and pants are soaked and she smells like baby and Pepsi.

Though I'm not a health food nazi, I don't give my kids caffeinated soda; so other than whatever is in the occasional M&M, she's never had caffeine. I'm worried. Very, very worried.

Does this mean I'm crazy?

2009-08-07T09:54:00.000-05:00

I love the word "vicious." As a total word geek (when I was little and learning to read, I actually used to see the words people were saying up over their heads, like a green running caption), it always reminds me of "viscous." So instead of a "vicious rumor," I always picture something slimy and slow-moving, which is much more humorous.

There is this joke: Micky and Minnie Mouse are in counseling, and after Micky explains the reasons they're there, the therapist says, "I understand you're upset, but I don't think it will help to call her crazy." To which Mickey replies, "I didn't say she was crazy. I said she was fucking Goofy!" I think of this joke every single time I am forced to watch "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse."

I had a dream the other night that I wrote a song called "God is an Atheist." It was a huge hit. Then, because I apparently have no scruples in my dreams, I sold the rights to my song to a right-wing religious group, which changed the lyrics to "God is a Christian." I woke up and thought this was such an odd thing to "come to me in a dream," as it were, and I couldn't possibly be the first person to have come up with this phrase. Thanks to Google, I know I'm not. It got over 7,000 hits, including an actual popular song, which I had never heard of before.

Am I watching too much late-night drama on TV, or spending too much time with only small children and myself for company?

Gratitude

2009-08-04T11:54:00.002-05:00

My cell phone just rang. My cell phone never rings. Everyone knows that I'm always home, and I never answer it anyway. I have it so I can call from the grocery store and ask what that other thing was that I was supposed to get. So there I was finding my purse, which I had left on the kitchen table, then struggling with the zipper, because Ezra decided to be helpful and zip it (I have never zipped my purse, and now I know why). Then I had to find the phone in the recesses of the purse, while it blared "Flight of the Bumblebee" at me. I finally found it and saw "mom-cell" on the display. Of course. She's the only one, other than the occasional telemarketer, who calls that number.

I answered it and was told, "Jeanne is gone."

One of my mom's oldest friends, she was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago. Particuarly because of its unspecified origin, they attacked it with everything the local hospital and the Mayo Clinic had. And a couple of months ago, she started to improve. I should have realized she had merely been granted more time (of course, isn't that all we ever have? never all the time in the world, only more than right now, if we are lucky). She was able to attend a famliy reunion, spend time with her sons and grandchildren, and go on an annual trip with her girlfriends to the Boundary Waters. Then the cancer regained its strength and slowly took all hers. Last week they decided it was time to stop treatment, to let go, to get ready to let her go.

I am full of grief for my mom, for Jeanne's children and her dear grandchildren. For her husband, whose great joy in life has been sharing a tandem bike with his wife--now left without a partner. I am soberly reminded that there are no guarantees, that even "remission" does not mean "cured." That a time will come when I must say my goodbyes as well.

But while I think these things, life goes on. Matilda insists that she must eat noodles like the big kids, which not only means using silverware, but for some reason, eating them directly off the serving spoon. So one noodle after another goes onto the spoon, then she spends most of a minute trying to slurp it off with her lips. Ezra eats his favorite lunch with unbridled enthusiasm, saying things like "Thanks, Pishy, Pishy," then laughing hysterically. Zachary shows me that he has indeed eaten his broccoli and then is excused to go play with his new Batcave, where I hear him telling stories to himself about buying gas and never stopping until the job is done.

I am sad, but oh so happy. For in the same moment, my heart is full of aching grief for a mourning family--and aching gratitude for the family I have.

The Coward's Guide to Courage

2009-07-24T17:52:00.004-05:00

How do you teach your child to be brave... especially when you don't want to?

This is something I've been mulling over for a long time. I feel like I've spent Zachary's entire life, starting from when he was three days old and didn't want to sleep alone, trying ride the line between protecting him and teaching him self-reliance. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that though I want him to be brave, I don't want to have any part in the learning. And I suppose that that's because, at heart, I am really a giant coward.

I was floored when, at the age of 2 or so, Zachary was visiting my mom and she stood him on the kitchen counter and encouraged him to jump off it into her arms. She insisted that this was a game she'd played with my brother all the time when he was little; I insisted that we were trying very hard to get him to stay on his bottom when he was on high things like the kitchen counter! And so it's gone.

In a couple of days, Zachary will be six years old. He has mastered kindergarten and will go to first grade in the fall. He made friends, listened to the teacher, and didn't wet his pants (I don't know about him, but that was really my biggest fear). He has made friends, all by himself, with a little boy down the street and goes over there to play, without me, though his friend's mom does come get him, since I'm not yet okay with him walking down and across the street by himself. He's reading well, likes to play soccer and video games, and helps out with the younger kids. Let me be clear: He is a wonderful, well adjusted kid.

But he lacks courage. He won't ride a bike--with training wheels--because he's afraid he's going to fall. I try my hardest to be honest with my kids, so I tell him yes, you probably will fall, just like you fell when you were learning to walk. But it won't be the end of the world. I fell all the time; in fact, my sister used to ride her bike into parked cars all up and down our street. But we kept trying and eventually figured it out. He doesn't like to try anything new, because of the infinite number of things that he things may go wrong. We've spent months and thousands of dollars on turning Ezra's room into his and Ezra's room. And last night, he was ecstatic to move in. Until it was time to go to sleep, when he started crying and crying. Dad came up and lay on the floor in his room, until Zachary said it was okay, he could go. Not five minutes later, he was downstairs, sobbing, saying things about how the room was just too different and he couldn't sleep and red was suddenly a scary color. He ended up in bed with me all night.

And while I find myself so frustrated with this apparent lack of courage, I think that it's not all his personality; some of it is mine. Courage is, after all, simply acting in the face of fear. And I don't like to see my kids scared. I don't like to see them feeling unsafe, frightened, wanting someone to tell them that they will be fine, that they will always be safe. Rather, I like being able to tell them that I will always keep them safe, that nothing bad will ever happen to them--because at heart, I am the hugest coward there is. And apparently the hugest hypocrite as well. Because I ask my son to take a chance, to try something new, to face his fears and act anyway. But I don't face my own fear, the fear that someday, something bad may actually happen to my kid. And I don't quite know how to reconcile my own cowardice with my desire for him to live a life of courage.

Where have I been?

2009-07-23T17:23:00.006-05:00

Thank you so much to Jasmine for letting me know that I am not alone in the world and that there actually are people who read this blog--when I get around to writing in it!

It's been a pretty busy summer; I'm a little inclined to say lousy, but let's go with busy instead. If you are ever inclined to do any major home renovation, take a deep breath and ask yourself if it's truly worth it. The first week in May, we broke ground on an addition to the house. The second week in June, Zachary finished school and has since been home. Around the middle of June, we lost the use of Ezra's room, since they knocked out the wall to expand the room so the boys can share it; since then, he's slept in our room. Since Matilda is already sleeping in there, this almost immediately meant that he stopped napping. A couple of weeks later, we lost the upstairs bathroom when they ripped it apart to add onto it, and we lost much of the use of the basement bathroom, since they tore apart the ceiling in there to get to the pipes. Somewhere in there, we were also informed that we needed a new roof and that insurance ought to pay for it; but of course we had to fight with claims adjustors for a few weeks.

Last week, I got an email from the mother of the victim of Matilda's biting; she'd been bitten again on Friday, and they decided to take a couple of weeks to decide what to do next. I cannot overstate the anxiety this created in me. I have already been all worked up about the biting, have taken two classes about it, and have consulted my child care licensor and another child care provider, who is the person I go to whenever I have a question. I have done--and am doing--all I can, and now it's just a matter of waiting to see if it gets better. I understand that's a lousy thing to hear when it's your kid getting bitten, but it's also pretty upsetting when you feel like you're the only person in the world who doesn't think your 16-month-old is a little monster. There actually hasn't been a single biting incident in the two weeks that this baby has been gone; and though I don't blame the other baby at all (she is just a baby, I realize that), it's so much less stressful when she's not here and I don't have to wait, poised, to see if Matilda is going to strike.

So yesterday this family gave me their notice that they're going to pull their daughter out of my day care. After a couple of weeks to think it over, I'm not surprised or extremely upset. I've talked with a lot of people about it and believe that she's a little caveman, not a bad person, and though I can't tolerate biting, I can accept that it's common for kids her age.

The house is almost done. Though the backyard is a mud pit, the bedroom and bathroom are just about done; I think the boys are going to move in tonight. We tried to find a baby sitter and only found a guy who kind of creeped us out and now won't stop emailing to ask why we didn't hire him. We decided to use my husband's nephew instead, and he was great the first weekend but just didn't show up last weekend. We have a woman who comes every two weeks and cleans the main floor of the house, making our lives easier and my father-in-law's room a more pleasant place for him to live; she also didn't show up, for the fourth week in a row. I need a haircut. It's dumb, but it really bothers me because I have short hair and have been in in the "I need a haircut" stage for at least a month.

Today I had a screaming match with Ezra during nap time. He wouldn't stop screaming, and eventually it made me scream, and there was a lot of screaming and crying, from both of us. I feel like I haven't had more than three seconds in a row to call my own since April. Sorry if this sounds bitchy, but I can't tell you how good it feels just to complain about it all, to get it out and admit that there is all this stuff that is bothering me. As I've been writing, the kids have been eating supper--eating ketchup with their fingers instead of eating actual chicken dipped in the ketchup, insisting that they give their crackers to the dog and then needing new ones, wanting to "try something" on me that they saw on TV. They're being kids--my delightful, annoying kids. Tonight I'm going to help the boys move into their new room, and sometime soon Matilda will move into her new room, Zachary's current room. And then I will have a bedroom with only adults in it, something that has been true only sporadically since Zachary was born almost six years ago.

I keep thinking of a line from The Simpsons, one of my favorite shows. Homer is upset about something, as usual, and says, "Why do I have three kids and no money? Why can't I have no kids and three money?" I admit, I feel that way sometimes, especially about the total absence of space and time to call my own. I've never had high financial aspirations, but space and time used to be things I could claim for myself. Sometimes I wish I could have "three space" and "three time," but most of the time, most days, I'm still overwhelmingly grateful to have three kids instead. Especially ones as delightful and annoying as mine.

A Truly Awesome Book

2009-06-18T17:53:00.005-05:00

Some time ago, I had one of those really amazing internet experiences where someone sends you a link to something, which then refers to an article, which is featured in a blog, which mentions something else, and before you know it, you've discovered this whole part of the universe that you otherwise would not have known about. (Though I don't know how it came to be that I had that much free time.)

And in the end, I discovered An Awesome Book, which is really one of the greatest discoveries I've ever made. (Even better because I found it on my own, not because Amazon said I would like it.) Really. You should check it out. It has the overall sound of Dr. Seuss, with that lovely rhyme scheme and incredible imaginative world it creates. But lest you think this is someone trying to be another Dr. Seuss, the look is all his own. The illustrations look like they were done with colored pencils and have that uneven quality in the color that makes it feel so personal, as if they were drawn just for you, so you could have a book all your own. And the story is one that every child should hear, a simple message: Dream Big. If you follow the link, you'll be able to read the entire book online, which Zachary and Ezra have wanted to do just about every day. And though I am always a fan of getting things for free, I actually ordered a copy and it arrived just a few days ago. Now we have to read it all the time.

I will admit that it made me cry the first time I read it, and it still gets me a little choked up every time. But unlike some books, which are supposedly written for children but clearly have adults in mind (like "Love You Forever"), this one is very compelling to kids. When we read it, we talk about what kinds of dreams they have, how you make your dreams come true, what it means when a dream dies.

There is a marvelous sense of humor in the book and in everything he writes. To give you a sense, in the copyright information, he suggests: "PLEASE SHARE. DON'T STEAL. IT MAKES PEOPLE UNHAPPY. I HAVE A DRAGON. HE WILL CRY."

So don't make his dragon cry. Make your kids happy, and check out a really awesome book.

So Long, Fortress of Solitude

2009-06-16T18:15:00.006-05:00

I posted a while ago about my relationship with the bathroom. It's been an emotional one, full of missed chances to take advantage of such small joys as peeing by yourself. But my bathroom is no more. Literally. My bathroom is no more. In the bastardized words of John Cleese, my bathroom has ceased to be. It is an ex-bathroom.

You see, we live in a 1958 house that is, really, much too small for our family at its current size. My father-in-law has a bedroom on the main floor, technically the master bedroom, and Ezra has the other bedroom on the main floor. In the basement, my husband and I share a bedroom with Matilda, and Zachary sleeps in what is really a study, across the hall from us. If I ever want a decent night's sleep, we have to get her out of our room--and so a plan was born. We're adding on to the house. We knocked out the wall of Ezra's room and, next to it, the bathroom, extending both those rooms into the backyard 10 feet. When the project is done, Zachary and Ezra will share a nice big bedroom, and we'll be able to open the bathroom door without banging into the vanity. Sheer heaven. However, in the meantime, we have construction going on, in the house, where I spend approximately 23 hours a day.

First we had a giant hole in the backyard for the foundation. That lasted about 2 weeks, with a giant pile of dirt, no backyard to play in, and a frustrating lack of progress. Then suddenly there was a floor, then walls--progress! Of course, we had a rainstorm in there that caused the entire basement to flood at 5 AM on a Monday morning. And the giant pile of dirt was "graded" all over the backyard, killing the strawberries and most of the lawn. And we lost power to the garage. And we have no outside water, so it takes about 50 watering cans and many trips to the sink to water the garden. But that's progress!

Along with the progress, of course, came messes. So first Ezra had to move out of his room and into ours. Just one big happy family--all in one room. He contends that he's afraid of the dark, so we have to sleep with a giant night light, which wakes Matilda fairly often, and I keep waking up disoriented by the light. Still, progress!

Then Monday of this week, they gutted the bathroom. So we had to empty out all the accumulated crap in the bathroom (Sudafed that expired two years ago? Can that still be good?) and create a temporary shower in the basement. Nothing like showering next to the washing machine and the dog's kennel to make you feel sexy and refreshed. And when they gutted the bathroom, they knocked a lot of sawdust and sheet rock all over the downstairs bathroom and the pantry, but we can clean that up, right? Progress!

Then they had to cut a hole on the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom so they could get to the pipes. This is a slight mess, and I couldn't use the bathroom for about 7 hours without asking a guy I've only just met to move his ladder so I can pee. That's not such a problem. But they did have to cut a hole in the floor of the upstairs bathroom so they can move pipes around, meaning that I can (and nearly did) sit on the toilet and look up and see the feet of my contractor, his assistant, the plumber, the electrician, and whoever else has stopped by to see the mess that is my house. Plus they had to move our bed into the middle of the room so they could get into the crawlspace, which means that our bed, Ezra's bed, and Matilda's crib are all now pretty much touching in the middle of the bedroom. But that's the price for progress, right?

And did I mention my underwear? You would be right to wonder how that could possibly figure in, but it's really quite logical. You see, I am a slob and we have a bedroom in the basement. For these reasons, I don't really keep close track of my clothes as I discard them. I kick them around for a few days and then gather them up on laundry day. It's a system that has served me well and that my husband has more or less learned to live with. It is also a system that does not account for the massive numbers of people who will be wandering through my bedroom, to deal with a leak, to cut holes in the ceiling, to crawl out through windows. And it is, of course, only after they've all been wandering through there for several days that I realize that my bra is hanging on a hook next to the bathroom door and I've got a pile of underwear on my dresser. Progress, dammit!

And the roof. We mustn't forget the real icing on this "burn it down and buy a new one; heck, in this economy, they're practically free anyway" cake. As they were assembling the roof for the addition, the contractor came and grabbed me one afternoon (I was probably nursing at the time; my dignity is so long gone with these people) and asked if I could come take a look at something. I was unprepared for the suggestion that I climb up onto the roof. But once I was (in most undignified fashion) settled up there, he proceeded to show me that our roof has signs of major wind and hail damage. Since I was up on a roof and don't know what they're supposed to look like anyway, I immediately agreed and called the insurance company. Many phone calls later, an insurance adjustor arrived and informed us that it was mild damage and he was going to recommend a repair, not a replacement. Since then, we've had him try to find a matching shingle (he says he did, but it clearly doesn't match our current shingles), my husband has cussed out the adjustor and our insurance agent, we've had several estimates for the roof repair, I've gone back and played "good cop" with the insurance agent and managed to get the case appealed to another adjustor, and I've called our friendly adjustor to tell him that his so-called "matching" shingle isn't going to work (if there is no match, it seems they have to pay to replace them all). And while all this is going on? Sure, our roof is in need of replacement; we knew we'd only be able to make it another year or two. But on the addition, we only have a tarp. We can't pick shingles for the addition until we know what's going on the rest of the roof. So when it rained the other night, we had to fill the boys' room and the bathroom with wading pools and laundry tubs to catch the rain where it leaks, because though they're almost complete rooms, they have no roof! But it's all in the name of goddamned progress!

And you want to know what the saddest part is? (Arguably the saddest part is that I would think that anyone would want to read about my home improvement woes, but we're going to set that aside for the time being.) It has taken me three days to write this post. Little by little, my house has been whittled away to almost nothing as the bathroom and Ezra's room have entirely ceased to be, the backyard is mostly unusable, and with all the plumbing activity taking place in our bedroom, Matilda has been napping in Zachary's room. Zachary has only been out of school for the summer for a couple of weeks, and he and Ezra are completely on top of each other. Not only are they used to having more time apart, but they're used to being able to get away from one another when they're both home. So now my days seem to consist entirely of "stop that," "give that back," and "if you do that one more time, so help me, you will spend the rest of your life in time out and we will never go outside again!" (I've actually said that. Not my finest moment.)

Someday all this will be done, and I will almost certainly (please, please, please) be glad we did it. But until then, I time my bathroom visits for when there's no work going on, put out buckets when it rains, and try not to think about how great it was when all I was upset about was how many people wanted to be in the bathroom with me. Unlike the legs that threaten to appear in the bathroom these days, at least they're related to me.

Taking a Bite Out of Crime--or other people

2009-06-04T18:29:00.003-05:00

Well, yes, I did disappear off the face of the earth, but only for about a week. We had a terrific camping vacation full of all kinds of interesting stories about my cute kids and hiking with a stroller and the evil that is tent caterpillars.

But is that what finally got me to the computer? No, of course not. It was Matilda and her incessant biting of her friends. I've kept thinking it was a phase, every time she would bite another little girl I watch, who is 10 months old and her closest playmate. She was teething, or she had an ear infection, or there was some other excuse. But today I thought she'd been doing a really good job of being gentle, touching her friends with her gentle hands to show me what a good baby she was, and yet when they got home, her mom called to tell me that she had a big bite mark on her arm!

So how did I not notice that? I'm a little upset, first, because I swear I looked her over several times to make sure there was nothing I hadn't seen. But possibly worse, will she ever stop this? I've never had a biter; Zachary is really easygoing and is more likely to cry than to lash out (though he did get in trouble for hitting at school the other day--but that's another story). And Ezra is a fighter, but he's been one to scratch, and the kid he used to scratch would hit back just as hard, so there was no real sense that my kid was being a bully.

She's got her 15-month-checkup tomorrow, and I've also registered for a class on toddler biting. But I think at the heart of it is this feeling that my kid, my baby, is somehow bad, that only bad kids bite, and I've failed her and everyone else. My wonderful, beautiful, last baby is a biter! And my day care mom (who's kind of been becoming a friend) is upset--understandably. And I just feel like everything that's wrong in the world is wrapped up in my baby girl and the things she continues to do with her teeth.

I need a vacation from my family.

My Fortress of Solitude

2009-05-12T15:12:00.004-05:00

I have recently realized something: I am never going to be really alone in the bathroom again.

When I was about 22, I moved into a miniscule apartment in downtown Minneapolis. It was the first time I'd ever lived alone--no roommates, no parents, no nothing. Just me and 200 or so square feet. So I immediately went out and got a cat--apparently it was vital that I start living up to crazy-cat-lady stereotypes right away. Many things happened, of course, when I was living in that apartment. The battery on my phone died as I was talking to my dad after I'd only been living there a few days, and he sped the entire half hour from his house, to come make sure I was okay. I sublet my apartment to a coworker and moved to LA for three months (three of the most painful months ever, but that's another story). I met the man who would become my husband. And I learned to pee with the door open.

Now, as a woman, and a pretty self-conscious one at that, closing the door when I entered the bathroom was kind of a requirement. But if you've ever had a kitten who was somewhat over attached to you, you know what happens if you try to close the bathroom door. First comes the whining, then the scratching, then the incredibly pathetic little paw starts feeling around under the door, trying to figure out where you've gone and how to get you back. So rather than dealing with that every time I wanted to go to the bathroom, I started just leaving the door open. It was an incredibly freeing development in my life. I even started wandering around my apartment (sometimes) naked (partly). I couldn't turn into a free-thinking nudist overnight, but it was a big change for me nonetheless.

Of course, when I met my husband, I realized that I was still the kind of person who would prefer to close the door. I can live with a cat wandering around the sink while I pee, but I can't be one of those "I'm on the toilet while you're brushing your teeth and we're both fine with this" people. We moved in together a few months after I got back from LA, and while we were living together, his father stayed with us for several weeks after he had a stroke. He moved back into his own apartment later, but when we decided to buy a house, we concluded that having him move in with us was a good idea for everyone involved. Another reason to be a "bathroom door closed" kind of person.

Now we've come to a point I probably could not have envisioned when I was trying to get the cat to leave the bathroom door alone. My father-in-law's bedroom is across the hall from the bathroom. I have three small children who apparently cannot exist unless they are interacting with me in some way. I usually have a house full of other people's children, who are in all likelihood fighting with one or more of my kids. And the bathroom door? Well, until recently, I was convinced it was the one thing separating me--just for a few minutes--from all that. Right? I don't get to take leisurely baths; I don't even get showers without a 5-year-old suddenly needing to potty the second I turn the water on. I don't have a commute to complain about the other drivers while secretly enjoying this time that doesn't belong to my family or my employer. I don't have a bedroom to disappear to; while I do officially have a bedroom, it's shared by our daughter until the addition to the house is complete. So I am not out of line to expect that I get to go potty without interruption.

Except it seems that I am. One of the things about the blogosphere is that it's like having lots and lots of mom friends, and you can ask them anything you want or listen to them rant about anything they want, as though you had this endless back fence you can talk over anytime you want. And one thing I keep running up against is that no mom in the world can claim that she is left alone in the bathroom. There is always a kid who needs you the very moment you close the door, a dog who is scratching at the door, a spouse who doesn't understand that maybe you don't want to answer any questions right now.

I know that someday my kids will want to be left alone, that I will not think of the bathroom as the only place in the house I can hide. Someday I will miss them. I will bug them in their rooms when they just want to close the door and be left alone for a little while. I know that I ought to cherish these years, when they just want to be near me. But inside, I will grieve for the bathroom I once knew, the place I could think my thoughts, my onetime fortress of solitude.

Bruce Wayne's Car

2009-05-08T20:01:00.001-05:00

So first the big news: This morning, for the first time ever, Ezra pooped in the potty! We were sitting on the couch when he announced that during nap time, he was probably going to poop in his underpants (fortunately, I do put him in a pull-up during naps, since that happens often). So I suggested, if he was planning to do it, that we try now. He was pretty iffy about the whole idea until I suggested that, like his friend who has been learning to poop in the potty, if he does it successfully, I would take him to the store and get him a new toy. Well, that was all the pushing he needed! It took a couple of minutes and a couple of tries, but he did it! I was extremely proud of him and think that we may go the "pooping chart" route that worked with his friend. This little boy had to fill his chart (the size varied; I think the first charts had only a few squares, then as he got more proficient, he had to do more to fill it), and when it was full, he would earn a toy. Usually the toy was preselected, and often it was already purchased and sitting in plain sight, like on top of the refrigerator. Ezra has really wanted a toy of Frank from the movie "CARS," but it's a little expensive for just a random toy, so I think maybe I'll try that as an incentive.

So after this big news, we had to call Daddy at work. Ezra got to tell Daddy his big news, and he got to talk on the phone--very exciting. Then after we had hung up, Ezra got pretty worked up because he saw something out the window that he wanted to tell Daddy about--Bruce Wayne's car.

I was understandably confused about why the Batmobile might be parked out in front of our house, but I got it in a minute. Our next-door neighbor's name is Wayne, and he delivers pizzas. This means that his car has a topper on it with the name of the pizza restaurant. Zachary is very obsessed with Batman right now, and Ezra is obsessed with whatever Zachary is obsessed with. So when he saw our neighbor, Wayne, pull up in front of his house in his pizza delivery car, Ezra concluded that it was "Bruce Wayne's car."

Maybe I ought to worry that Ezra seems to know more about a fictional superhero than he does about our next-door neighbor, but I still think it's cute.

Stupid Layouts

2009-05-08T15:13:00.002-05:00

Well, it occurred to me finally that though I liked my old layout, it wasn't the most interesting thing in the world. And though I may not myself actually be the most interesting thing in the world, I like to think that I am at least a little interesting, and it would be nice if the appearance of my blog reflected that. So off I went in search of a new layout for my blog.

And then I was immediately reminded of two things: one, the world (as it is represented by the inernet) is an extremely big place. And two: I am not good at anything more technologically advanced than an egg beater. So it took me most of my free time yesterday (which is probably a couple of hours in real time), but I did find a layout that I liked and that seemed to function with the limited instructions I was able to give it. ("Here. Go here. Be Pretty.")

So please let me know what you think. How does it look? Should I just go back to the old look? Does the new one work on computers other than mine? Are you there, Internet? It's me, Kendra. Any and all feedback is appreciated, since it lets me know I'm not completely talking to myself here.

Things My Mother Taught Me

2009-05-06T07:22:00.007-05:00

Several years ago, I wrote this essay. I submitted it to a parenting magazine and, in one of the more humiliating events in my life, received only a smudged photocopy of their submission guidelines in response. After scouring the document, I confirmed that it did in fact meet their guidelines; I don't know why they chose to send me that. But I was thinking of it this morning and still like it. So in honor of Mother's Day (because there's no way I will remember to post this on the actual day): Things My Mother Taught Me

When I was a little girl, I always looked at the cover of the coloring book to see what color the pictures should be. Then as closely as I could, I matched them. To me, staying inside the lines was an accomplishment to be proud of. And imitation was the closest thing to perfection.

I never mixed the play-dough. Such a thing would never have occurred to me. My creations were always of a single color, dismantled and returned to their canisters before they had a chance to dry.

Then one day, when I was about seven years old, my mother sat down with me at my little table to color with me. I remember clearly, it was a Tom and Jerry coloring book, and calm as can be, she started to color Tom purple. I was in shock that such a thing was even possible. There, right before my eyes, my mother was creating a lavender cat. It was my first inkling that the right way was not the only way to do something.

Last week, I was playing with my 11-month-old son in his room. He has several wooden puzzles with farm animals and food-shaped pieces. He had recently discovered that there were pictures underneath the pieces and was enthralled with the process of removing the pieces, one by one, from their puzzles. He would then hold them up, examine them, sometimes suck on them. I found myself asking him again and again, "Where does the cow go? Can you find the cow?" I even guided the pieces to their correct places and applauded when they fit. And suddenly I remembered my mother coloring Tom purple.

Now that I am a mother, I have the opportunity to shape my son's view of the world. I can teach him that there is only one way to do everything, or I can show him that there are a million ways to look at a problem and there are a million solutions. Putting pieces into puzzles is one way to play with them. Sucking on them, banging them together, and putting them into drawers are others. And are they any less useful? When I color the cat purple, I am showing my baby that he can do anything he wants, that the borders of thought and action aren't closed. I am letting him try out life and see what works. I am letting him mix the play-dough.

He will figure out what cows are and what they say and how they fit into the puzzle. That will come with time, I have no doubt. But more importantly, he will figure out who he is, what he has to say, and where he fits into the world.

When my mother colored that cat purple, I'm sure she was thinking only that it was pretty. But she taught me a lesson that day, one that I will be sure to pass on to my son: No matter what they tell you, there is more than one way to color a cat.

I Have Twouble Saying My Awes

2009-05-04T19:07:00.005-05:00

I can't seem to decide whether I ought to worry about Zachary's speech.

See, my mom is a speech therapist, and she's always been all about correcting his pronunciation. When he was little, for some reason, all words that started with "sn" became pronounced as though they started with a T. So "snake" was "take," "snow" was "tow," etc. It was endearing and, as long as you understood what the system was, easily understood. He also converted "sm" sounds to P, so if there was a fire, there would be "poke" coming from it. My mom would notice this and make these exaggerated sounds when she talked to him: "You want to play in the s-n-o-w? The s-s-n-n-ow?" And I would roll my eyes and think, "He's 3, for crying out loud." And of course, he outgrew it.

Now he's 5 1/2, and he still has trouble with certain sounds. All the sounds in a certain family, the G, the J, and the SH sounds, seem to get the better of him. They all sound like S or Z sounds. It can make him a little hard to understand but you can usually get what he means. The most noticeable one, which seems to be rooted in an actual misunderstanding, is that most of the "th" sounds come out as Fs. So he "frows" the ball. He actually writes them that way. And since he's in kindergarten, my mom's voice starts whispering in my ear, telling me the time has come to help him talk right. So I had a talk with him and asked if he would like help listening to words so he could write them better, and he said yes. So I told him that "free" is actually "three," and he's been practicing it. For a while, I was all proud of him, listening to his speech improve, thinking my mom and her over-helping can kiss my good-mom butt. Then I started listening: "Free. Three. Three. Thirteen. Firteen. Thirteen." And my heart broke just a little. Is this what I've created? A kid who is worried, at 5 years old, that he doesn't talk the way he should?

When my sister was little (I don't remember exactly how old, but about Zachary's age), she had trouble with certain sounds too. And so, the story goes, she marched into the school speech therapist's office and announced, "I have twouble saying my awes." And, because the story is about how cute and determined she was, she was saying her Rs perfectly in no time. It's been one of those family legends about my sister's determination and ability to overcome things, even as a little kid. But now it makes me wonder: Was that her desire to talk better, or was there a voice whispering in her ear that she ought to do things better? Would she have sorted it out on her own, the same way she learned to walk and use proper grammar on her own schedule?

Tonight during his bath, Zachary must have counted to 500. Or rather, he counted to 100 about five times, since he's not sure what comes after 199, so he tends to start over. And as I listened to him go back and forth between the "frees" and the "threes," I felt so confused. Should I be helping him to reach some developmental milestone that I'm not entirely sure about anyway? Am I doing him a disservice, either by helping or by not helping? Is my desire to meet my mom's expectations, coupled with my desire to prove her wrong, getting in the way?

I asked his teacher at conferences, and she said there are other kids with more pronounced difficulty than his. I'm not sure that comforted me. I guess perspective is a pretty hard thing to come by in this world of terrorist threats and swine flu, and parenting questions are no exception.

Pants Optional

2009-05-01T14:52:00.004-05:00

It's been brought to my attention that Ezra almost never wears pants. I mean, seriously, he never wears pants. Somehow, since he is: 3, at home with me, and extremely strong willed, I haven't made a big deal about it. But maybe the time has come.

We're working on potty training, which means that some time after he gets up in the morning, I get him out of the (with any luck) poopy diaper and into underpants and a clean shirt. He's currently convinced that he can't poop on the potty, so I'm not making a big deal of that at the moment. So every morning, I say, "Pick out a shirt and underpants." And every morning, he answers, "I don't want pants, though." And since I convince myself that he's more likely to have potty success with fewer barriers to making it to the toilet on time, I agree. But this morning, I realized I'd really set up a system, when he added, "But after nap, when Zachary gets home from school, I'll put on pants and we'll go outside."

So I've apparently established a system where you don't have to wear pants, as long as you're in the house. How is this going to play out in the next few years? Will I convince him to wear pants to school, only to have him take them off as soon as he gets inside because, hey, we're not outside? Will he disrobe in front of his girlfriend's parents, explaining, "I don't like to wear pants"? Will he have to find employment in a pants-optional office?

Considering that we are talking about Ezra here, that's actually a possibility. The kid's got more force of personality than anyone I've ever met, including his father, which is saying something. But I figure I've got a few years before the kid with no pants on becomes an actual problem. Until then, he can go pants free--except when we leave the house. Then we all wear pants.

Swine Flu Means

2009-04-30T18:01:00.010-05:00

"Swine flu means you shouldn't go around licking pigs."

That was Ezra's thought upon seeing this picture my mom emailed me.

In Other News

2009-04-29T17:08:00.002-05:00

Okay, I feel kind of bitchy about that last post. I'm still not happy about it, but I love my dad and would someday like to have a relationship with his wife again. It will never be the way it was, but I know I can either spend my life being angry about it or I can stop being angry and start feeling better.

So here is some other news.

First of all, Matilda has been giving kisses the last couple of days. She selects her victim, uh, recipient, and waddles up to them. Usually it's another kid, so she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him in tight. The first time she did this, I was nervous, since she's had a bit of a biting habit in the past. But once she's got a firm hold, she plants a giant, open, slobbery mouth on top of her friend's head. Then she smiles at me to make sure that I know what a wonderful friend she is. Of course, I'm sure to let her know that I do know what a nice person she is, which usually leads to more kissing. I'm still always a little nervous that she's going to bite or strangle, but the thought is there. (As I am writing, Zachary and Ezra are standing at the dining room table playing play-doh. Matilda just took the opportunity to walk up and kiss Zachary's bottom.)

Second, I received 6 separate emails today about swine flu. Three of them were from our health insurance company, and three were from child care organizations. Let me summarize the information they contained: There is this thing called swine flu. It's not like the regular flu, so your flu shot? Worthless. It's really dangerous but so far only in Mexico. If you get sick, don't come to work, because that could make others sick. If you're a day care provider, tell parents if their kids get the swine flu, they shouldn't come to day care. The best way to prevent it is by washing your hands. Seriously? For this, they emailed me six times? If you have a vaccine or a cure or a case in my town, that warrants six emails. But "wash your hands"? I think I could have figured that one out on my own. And no, no day care parents have been asking about my swine flu policies. I know perspective can be a difficult thing to come by, but it doesn't help to have 35 channels screaming that we're all going to die (maybe) and getting the same advice we get for preventing the common cold.

Finally--and definitely best--my mom called this morning to say that my brother had called her. He wants to know if he can give his girlfriend the ring my dad gave my mom for their 30th anniversary. She said she wanted to ask me and my sister before she told him it was okay, so no one felt slighted. I told her of course it was okay, that I think it's an absolutely beautiful gesture. He's been saying for years that he can never get married, because with mom and dad in such bad shape, how would he manage the wedding? I think that concern faded a few years ago, but I think it was replaced by a very real fear of marriage--that if his parents' marriage could turn into this mess, what would happen to his? So we learned never to ask if they were ever going to get married. They live together, and he just got a job in New Orleans, and it's been understood that she would go too. But we were never allowed to ask about permanence. And now my baby brother's going to get married! She made it very clear that this is a big secret, but this is the advantage to not actually telling anyone you know about your blog: you get to spill the beans, because if anyone reads this, who are you going to tell?

So even in this messy world that makes me so mad sometimes, good things happen. And I'm so grateful.

My Dad's Marriage(s): Part 1

2009-04-28T13:50:00.005-05:00

I felt it was appropriate to title this one "Part 1" because I know this is going to be one of those stories that, even though you think it's done, there's really more.

Let me begin with the most basic information. My parents were married--to one another--all my life. I was born (several weeks early after an unplanned conception--yay me!) a little over a year after they got married. I grew up as one of the only kids I knew whose parents were married to one another. It wasn't the greatest marriage in the world, but I figured they were doing a good job, because they were still together. I always knew, although it was almost never discussed, that my dad had been married before. It was short lived and there were no kids. In fact, it was very shortly after his first marriage ended that he met my mom; the story went that he was visiting a friend to "get over" his divorce, and they threw a dart at a map to decide where to go. It landed on Crystal Ice Caves, where my mom was a tour guide. And the rest was history. Until 2005, when, a month before Ezra was born, my dad announced that he was moving out. There had been stirrings in the marital waters to be sure; in 1997, when I was studying abroad for six months, we learned that he'd had an affair with one of his (graduate) students for pretty much the entire time. There had been speculation, mostly between the siblings, that this wasn't the first time. But officially things were back on track. And then suddenly they weren't. Officially they were taking a break, he was going to "find himself" or something for a year while living on his own, but it was pretty quickly clear to everyone but my mom that he wasn't looking back.

He told us all that this was a hard time for him, that he was really a private person who'd been living for the last 30 years as though he were a very social person. He was trying to be true to himself, to be the fundamentally alone person that he was. And no, there was no way on earth that he was seeing someone--not now, not while he was still with Mom, not at all. Those rumors that he was dating my friend--the one who had coincidentally gotten a divorce around the time he moved out, the one who was his student, the one who had kind of stopped calling me? Those rumors were completely false, and it was kind of insulting that we would think otherwise.

Until the day he told me they were true. And they were getting married. And, as I have tried over and over to explain to him, I don't have excesses of friends or family. And my dear friend, the first one to visit me in the hospital after Zachary was born, the first friend I'd made at my first grown-up job, the one with a daughter 9 months older than Zachary, my friend and my dad had chosen one another over me.

There's more, of course. There's always more. But that continues to be a crux of the situation for me. My mom is hurt and angry and insists that the only thing we can do to help is "be loyal." My brother, who has always looked up to my dad, is not speaking to him. My sister is sick of being the one my mom turns to, sick of being the one to take care of her and tell her it's going to be all right. And I'm the pushover, the easy one, the one who's always been closest to him--and terrifyingly, most like him in personality. And I'm the one they betrayed most, at least more than my siblings. And though I haven't actually spoken to her since all this happened, he has never once apologized. He's said he understands that people are hurt and it's too bad that things worked out that way, but he's never once said, "That must really be hard on you. I wish you hadn't beem hurt like that. I'm sorry."

I smelled the chemicals and that's how I knew

2009-04-24T08:37:00.003-05:00

I had this roommate in college, Gwen, who was this really unusual mix of trying too hard to be different and genuinely being different. She was pre-med, very scientific mind. But she also wore this long red velvet cloak all the time and hung out at the Renaissance Festival. She also claimed to be a wiccan, which frankly has colored my impression of all other people I've met who claim to be wiccan. It didn't seem to be so much an identity or a religion, so much as a thing she could call herself when she wanted to stand out: "Don't mess with me, I'm a witch," and so on.

But the thing that always amazed me was that in addition to all this trying to hard to be different, she was genuinely different in some of the most amazing (though not always good) ways. I first met her when I was a freshman in college and a friend of mine had had it with her assigned roommate, so she moved into the on-campus apartments. She was assigned three roommates there, two other freshmen and Gwen, a sophomore. Gwen was a whole year older than us and way more experienced in just about everything. She was an EMT and worked odd hours and knew boys and stuff. So she was the one we went to with all our problems. For example, one winter morning Gwen had worked late the night before and was passed out in the bedroom. Her three roommates were up and around, making toast for breakfast. Suddenly, the toaster caught on fire. It was placed under the cabinet in the kitchen and flames were shooting up out of the toaster and touching the cabinets. In a fit of terror, the girls ran into the bedroom and started screaming, "The toaster's on fire! The toaster's on fire!" Gwen rolled over, said, "Put it out," and covered her head with the pillow. They ran back into the kitchen and, seeing the toaster still shooting flames, turned around and ran back into the bedroom, screaming. Gwen realized they weren't going to stop, so she got out of bed, stumbled into the kitchen, ripped the toaster out of the wall, walked out onto the balcony, threw the toaster off the balcony and into the snow, and went back to sleep. Saved the day, classic Gwen style.

A few years later, Gwen and I shared a house near campus with three other friends, five of us there altogether. And by this time, she had developed some truly strange habits. Now, granted, we were not the neatest people you'd want to meet. I don't know that we vacuumed the entire year we were in that house, and the dishes just piled up until we ran out. Then it was an entire day (there were A LOT of dishes in that house) of washing disgusting smelly dishes. But Gwen had her ownthing going on. A favorite was that she liked to keep her cheese in the couch. I'm completely serious. She would buy a block of cheddar cheese and stick it in a zip-loc bag, then she would shove the plastic bag between the cushions of the couch. She insisted, "I like my cheese warm." And that in itself wouldn't have been so terrible if she hadn't always included a knife with it. So you never knew, when you sat down on the couch, whether you were going to be stabbed in the ass by a cheese knife.

She also had a propensity for falling asleep on the couch and just staying there. One night our roommate had been bartending all night and was finally coming home. But this night was special, because she'd had a long-term crush on a friend of ours (who had been briefly, painfully engaged to another one of our roommates). He'd hung out at the bar all evening with her and was now coming home with her. This wasn't so unusual since many of the people in our large group of friends often ended up coming over after the bar closed, but this was the first time it had been just the two of them. When they walked into the house, there was Gwen, asleep on the living room sofa. She was wearing a peasant dress and nylons, nothing else--and the dress had hiked itself up to her armpits. So my poor friend grabbed kitchen tongs and used them to lift the blanket back over Gwen while she slept; it did not turn out to be the most romantic evening. (In case you're wondering, yes, they did get together eventually; it was always rocky and he finally broke up with her via email.)

Another time she was sleeping on the couch, we decided all of a sudden to pln a party--a themed party. So as we were coming up with storybook characters for people to dress as, we thought of the Seven Dwarfs, from Snow White: Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Doc, and someone else. I always forget the name of the other dwarf, and neither of us could remember it. So we ran into the living room to ask Gwen. We shouted at her, "Gwen, what was the name of the seventh dwarf?" The logical question would have been, "Which six have you already named?" But that wasn't her style. She definitively announced, "Pinchy Smurf." And that was her nickname for years.

But the best ever sleeping-on-the-couch quote was heard by me alone. I had been tending bar and came home later to find her passed out in her usual spot. I probably said hello or "Are you ever going to get off the couch?" or something like that. And she mumbled, "10... 9... out of 10 birds are dead. I smelled the chemicals... and that's how I knew." It seemed to sum up something, although I've never been certain what it was.

It's been more than 10 years since I last saw her, and I still think of that quote all the time. My husband, whom I met years after losing touch with her, will sometimes repeat it. I hope she no longer keeps her cheese in the couch and that she sometimes sleeps in a bed these days. But I hope she still offers up such entertaining nuggets of wisdom.

Good One, God!

2009-04-23T19:06:00.003-05:00

So remember all the sobbing on the floor after the hitting the head? (I still have a big red scab there, by the way--very sexy.) This was followed by much crying about pretty much nothing, leading to a few possibilities: one, my medication isn't working. Since I'm on an insanely high dosage of antidepressants, I hesitate even to think that's an option. In fact, I was just thinking that it was about time to talk to my psychiatrist about lowering my dosage, now that all the having babies and other stressors are done with. Two: maybe I'm just crazy. This is a logical next step in my head, that if I'm not dealing well with whatever is going on around me, I must therefore be "broken." That was mostly what I had concluded until... this afternoon, in a moment that confirms that God has a sense of humor, I got my period!

Now, this might not be very exciting news, but for a few things. One, it does seem to explain a lot; I've just been been PMS'ing. But I'm nursing, and I have a body (and kids) such that I don't get a period for a year or so after baby is born, what with the refual to sleep in their own beds and such. Additionally, I've been on the pill since, oh, 1999. Seriously. When we got married in 2002, I decided to switch brands over to the good-for-your-skin one before the wedding. Dumbass. I spent our honeymoon dealing with spotting and finally decided to go off it for a month or two and reset my system; I was pregnant before I got my first period off the pill. (We had been planning to try "soon," just hadn't decided on "immediately.") I went on the mini-pill as soon as he was born and was on it until he was 15 months old. I was pregnant within a month. I lost that pregnancy but was pregnant within a month after that. (3 C-sections; my body dearly loves to make babies, and it would keep them forever if it could.) After Ezra was born, I went back on the mini-pill and then onto the regular one. It was while I was on that pill that I got pregnant with Matilda. (Yes, I obviously screwed up somewhere; everyone asks if I forgot to take it. Apparently I did. And of course, I will be forever grateful that I did, since if I had been more responsible, I would be missing one of the things that makes my life whole.) After Matilda was born, I had my tubes tied.

So you see, I have not been without strange hormones of some kind coursing through my veins in about 10 years. I've been pregnant or on the pill pretty much the entire time. And I'm terrified. I first started the pill because of the severity of my periods, and now they're back, with no artificial hormones to dampen them down? (Could I even go back on the pill now, if they're intolerable? Would they think I was crazy if I tried?)

What's more, we're leaving tomorrow for the weekend. It's not a romantic getaway, at least there's that. And we're not camping. My potential discomfort would put a real damper on the outdoor experience. No, instead, my husband, three children, and father-in-law are driving 3 hours to visit my husband's brother (who we see a couple of times a year) and his wife. So for the next few days, I will be dealing with cramps, diarrhea, cold sweats, and all the shit that goes with something I was so grateful not to have to deal with for the last, well, two years at least. And I'm going to do it all while dealing with extended family who don't know me very well and make me nervous at the best of times. I'll be placating everyone, watching the little kids while my husband takes Zachary into the hotel swimming pool, being the good daughter-in-law and making sure his dad has everything he needs, and generally trying not to think about how much I wish I was alone, in my bed, with a novel and a glass of wine.

God, you crack me up!

I hate all things sharp and pointy

2009-04-21T18:03:00.006-05:00

That's it, I am clearing out the house. At the curb, I am placing all things pointy. Forks, knives, pens, scissors, all yours for the taking. Everything must go. Especially shelves that stick out of the wall at forehead level and then attack without warning when all you did was drop a can of juice that you were trying to put in the recycling like a responsible person until you bent down to pick it up and then--wham! On the floor, sobbing, for five minutes.

It had been a cruddy afternoon. No one was listening to a word I said, then they decided to pull out every single puzzle. Some time ago, I took all our jigsaw puzzles of 100 pieces or so and put them in zip-loc bags and put the bags in a plastic tub. Clever storage, no? Yes, until they decide to open the tub, take out every puzzle, and open the puzzles on the floor in Ezra's room. I told them several times that as soon as all the puzzles were picked up, we could go outside. But every time I turned around, there were more. So I was near the end of my rope anyway. I decided to take a break from the puzzle-related anger and make more juice. And then came the dreaded shelf to the forehead. I was bending over, didn't realize it was right there, and now I have a giant, red, swollen rectangle on my forehead. It hurt enough to justify some serious swearing, but probably not the actual crying that ensued. I just couldn't believe that the world was being that mean to me today--and that the house full of children, whose owies I kiss, whose butts I clean, whose fights I referee, not one of them asked if I was okay, as I lay on the floor crying.

That was several hours ago, and it still hurts. When I suggested that it would be a good night for a pizza, my husband reminded me that we're going out of town this weekend and will be eating out for several meals. Of course, he's not doing any cooking tonight, so what does he care? My head hurts, and no one is being nice to me. Zachary and Ezra are playing "sneak up tp Mommy and pull her hair, because we're spies... or something." Matilda is following them around and getting pushed over occasionally. They need baths, and I don't feel like giving them. I'm so cranky and really want someone to take over my jobs--all my stupid keeping-everything-in-this-house-clean-and-alive jobs--for just a few hours.

On second throught, maybe I won't put all the pointy things out on the curb. Maybe I'll just sit out there. Maybe someone will offer to take me away, or maybe I'll just get a little time to myself.

All Set, Mommy!

2009-04-20T18:09:00.007-05:00

So Ezra has been genuinely working on the potty training lately. We've had him in Pull-Ups since forever, but much like Zachary, he pretty much saw them as diapers and had a hard time distinguishing wet from dry, much less actually trying to make it to the potty. Since he's been able to pee on demand for a long time, I decided to suck it up and just have him run around in a shirt and underpants (he's so anti-pants that he didn't often wear those anyway). We've had a few accidents but not many; he's actually been doing really well. Now, unless we're going somewhere or we (Daddy) are feeling especially lazy, he's in underpants full time. He's a first-thing-in-the-morning pooper, so he usually wakes up wet and poopy. So we're not working hard on that particular hurdle yet, but otherwise, potty training is going just great. (Aren't you glad you tuned in to read about my kid's defecation habits? I tell you, I don't have that much going on in my life.)

So anyway, today he had a little accident, so I told him to go potty, then put his pants (he was actually wearing them today) and underpants down the laundry chute, then grab clean ones. What I meant was clean underpants:

He dressed himself, then ran up to me and announced, "I'm all set, Mommy!" And who was I to argue? He'd put on pants, no underpants, and the pants were on backwards (that's the elastic cinch at the waist peeking out the top there). They were also folded over on the top, so that he had the most definite plumber appearance going on. But he was so deliciously proud of himself, announcing that he was "all set" for whatever adventure he had planned next! (That adventure, I believe was emptying out the bin of books.)

Of course, as soon as I pulled out the camera, I had to take pictures of everyone. So here, just because it's so dang cute, is one of Matilda and Ezra. I love that he's hugging her so sincerely, I love it that they really do resemble one another; but mostly I think I love it that he may be two years older, but her head looks like it's exactly the same size! And he's got one gigantic head. Part of it's the perspective, but my kids do grow some gigantic heads.

Hooray for spring!

2009-04-17T18:03:00.002-05:00

In happy news, spring has finally arrived--in the form of summer.

When I was little, I always thought that the adage "April showers bring May flowers" was some kind of taunt. In Minnesota, April showers are promptly followed by April showers, then April snows, then April general cruddiness, then some rain that freezes on top of the almost-melted snow. May is when we finally start to get something that looks a little like spring. But this year, we seem to be having actual spring weather, and in April no less!

I swear it was just a couple of weeks ago that I was swearing about the new snow, replacing the snow that I had dared to dream was gone for good. And today, it was 75. Is that confusing for anyone else? I just yesterday finally removed the hat, mittens, and scarf from Zachary's backpack, trusting that there wouldn't be a snowstorm while he was at school, trapping him 2 blocks from home without adequate winter gear. And today it was uncomfortably warm with all the windows open (yes, I am a big baby when it comes to the weather, and I only have about a 2-degree comfort range). I also figured it was probably safe to take the paper snowflakes off the window, since they look kind of silly surrounded by green grass--though no more silly than the Halloween straw broom I still have hanging from the front door. At some point we're actually closer to the holiday next year, so I may as well leave them up.

So I told the kids yesterday that since it was getting to be real live spring, maybe we should make some construction paper flowers to replace the snowflakes we were taking down. And then we spent a mostly cheerful hour or so cutting, folding, gluing and coloring paper flowers. It was nice because: it killed some time, I could send day care kids home with concrete evidence that we did not just stare at one another or Baby Einstein all day, and because it reduced the number of pounds of construction paper in the house. (I couldn't help it. I found it at Sam's Club. Cheap construction paper! Must... purchase... it!)

That was yesterday. Today was the last day for one of the kids, so I decided to make cinnamon rolls. And as I was in the kitchen, mixing and rolling and rising, the kids were playing on and under the dining room table--a favorite pastime. And I should have been worried when Ezra and his friend came in and started apologizing. First Ezra said he was sorry he had ripped his paper flower. I told him it was fine, it was his, and it wasn't a bad thing if it tore. Then his friend said he was sorry he'd been playing with the scissors; I had left the safety scissors on the dining room table in case we decided to make more flowers today. Any idea where this is headed? So I told him never to play with scissors if I wasn't there, and I walked in to check on the situation. And there sat the other little boy in this particular trio, holding a pair of safety scissors in his hand, scraping them in a half circle over and over across the dining room table--the nice, wood dining room table that, I might add, predates me in my husband's life. I washed away the pile of sawdust and looked at the damage. It's not pretty. I tell them every day not to put their forks on the table (they like to drum) because it will scratch it. I sort of thought that "don't dig into the table repeatedly with safety scissors" was sort of implied. Clearly I was wrong.

Apparently there are wood crayons, some sort of wax markers, and Old English wood markers--or something. I Googled fixing a wood table and came up with a lot of possibilities. I think it's going to result in me wandering around Menard's until I find someone who can explain to me in the simplest possible terms how to fix this. Hopefully I can do that without altering my husband to the terrible thing that I allowed to happen to the table. I hate getting in trouble. I also hate the giant scratched quarter of the table. This is what I get for trying to celebrate spring--and make cinnamon rolls.

Come Together, Right Now, Over Me...

2009-04-14T15:14:00.007-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about community and what it means. I started a blog partly to reach out to a world from which I've felt very isolated. I wanted to feel like I am making some kind of meaningful connection with all the other people in the world. And between writing here, following several other blogs, and commenting there, I've really started to feel less alone; I feel like there are a lot of people out there in the world who make sense to me. I read a blog and read the comments left there by other readers, then follow those readers over to their blogs, and before I know it, I feel like I've discovered this whole hidden world of people who, in another world or several years ago, might have been the girls I went out drinking with in college, the ones who told me whether my professor was actually being a jerk, whether I ought to just quit my bartending job, and yes, whether that guy was in fact worth my time.

Now, my darling husband, God bless him, has no faith in the internet at all. As far as he's concerned, it's just a way for people to scam other people. He uses it, checking his email regularly and checking sports scores, but you would never find him on a message board or Facebook. He just fundamentally doesn't trust them. So after I read about the tragedy that was Maddie's passing, I immediately went and made a donation to the March of Dimes in her name. Just $10, not a huge sum, but it seemed like it would be an even greater tragedy if I knew there was something I could do to prevent losses like this and I didn't do anything at all. Shortly after that, Stephanie of Baby on Bored suggested that if people wanted to help, she would organize efforts to send Maddie's family meals for the next couple of weeks. I can only imagine what her family is going through and would guess that eating is not one of the things they're thinking about much. So I offered to send them a meal one day.

Later that evening, my husband opened the computer and saw the automated March of Dimes email thanking me for my donation. He immediately asked who I'd met on the internet that I was giving money to. I explained that a family had lost their daughter, and I'd made a donation to the March of Dimes for them--totally reputable charity. He said that was fine, but remember that you can't trust people on the internet; they could be anyone, running any kind of scam. He went on to use this example: "If you meet someone in the grocery store who says they just lost a $20 bill, give them $20. But don't just hand out money online." Okay, I agree with the last part of that--don't send your bank account number to the Nigerian prince, because you're not going to get the money he promised you. But that guy at the grocery store? Dollars to donuts, he's running an even simpler scam. I decided not to start that argument with my husband and didn't mention that I would be sending this family a meal later in the week. He doesn't need to know everything.

But this got me started thinking about the very idea of community. Are relationships by definition more meaningful because of the way they started? I also belong to a message board. When I found out I was pregnant with Zachary, I didn't even know where to start, so I think I probably just Googled "pregnancy." I found a message board of women all due in the same month. Now our kids are all roughly 5 1/2, and I still keep in touch with most of them. My husband gives me a hard time about these "pretend" friends, but what about them isn't real? No, I haven't seen most of them in person. But we've known each other for more than 6 years. Doesn't that count for anything? When I read about Maddie, I was overwhelmed by this family and their story. And now I read about another little boy whose family is mourning today. And it's not that I sit around and search for bloogers who've lost their children; I assure you, I have no desire to track down that kind of story. It's just that as I try to feel connected to the other people in this world, bad things keep happening to those people. Has the world always been this cold, this uncaring, this just plain cruel, and I just didn't know it? Part of me wants to say, "Okay, this was fun, but I have to call it a failed experiment. I tried to connect to the world, and all that happened is that I found out that the world is full of pain I cannot heal. So I am going to crawl back into my hole, watch CSI, and complain that I don't have any friends. Because I can't take this kind of pain." But isn't this what it means to be part of a community? That you identify with one another in meaningful ways, and when someone in your community hurts, you remind them that they are not alone in their pain.

I didn't know Maddie or Thalon in life. I, probably like a lot of other people, got to know them only when they were gone. Does that make me nothing but a voyeur to other people's pain? I hope not. I hope that what it makes me is someone who is trying to establish connections in a world where it is so easy to go through life in a box. I hope it makes me one more thread in a web that can help to keep parents afloat in a time when it would be so easy to drown in their pain.

My husband talks a lot about things like the homeless people who gather in the public library; there is, he says, no substitute for actually seeing the people who populate our world, and it is a privilege to visit the world from our computers, one we should not accept as a substitute for "real interaction." And I would not want to live in a world where the only people in my life were seen through the screen of my computer. But I also want--need--to feel like the community that has been created this way is a real one, that I can be there for its members when they are in need and that maybe, someday, I can count on support from them too. And that's real community, isn't it?

Madeline Alice Spohr

2009-04-09T17:50:00.008-05:00

I am not what you would call a person of faith. More like a person of doubt. I was raised in a church but have spent most of my adult life struggling with the most basic questions. I am deeply envious of people of faith, since they seem to have something to lean on when things are difficult. But on this day, I am calling out to whatever is out there, in a prayer of equal parts gratitude and confusion.

About 6 months ago, I got a copy of Sleep is for the Weak. It was funny and touching and introduced me to this world of mommy blogs--that though I didn't know them personally, there was this whole world of funny, supportive, smart women who were moms, just like me, dealing with kids just like mine. And I started reading these blogs--the ones I link to from my blog. These moms are so honest about their lives, so caring of their kids and their friends. And they make me feel so much less alone, in this world where I really don't have that many connections with other women.

Tuesday I learned for the first time of a little girl named Madeline Alice Spohr. Unfortunately I met her too late. What an ungodly tragedy to meet someone when it is too late to know her. I read of her on Baby on Bored and on Mommy Wants Vodka. And though it is always horrendous to learn of the loss of a child, something about Maddie has touched me deeply.

Maybe it is her beauty. She is so vibrant in all the photos I see, so very present, that it is so heart-wrenching to think that she is gone. Maybe it is the way I see she has touched the lives of people who have touched mine. Becky, of Mommy Wants Vodka, insists that "Because Maddie Alice Spohr was here, dammit, and she mattered." Yes, she was, and she did. Maybe it is because my own children are driving me crazy today. And as I try to deal with them and all their minor dramas, I am torn between finding it hard to focus on who stole what from who, with my mind full of the loss of a beautiful life, and wanting to scoop them up and hold them tight, so grateful am I that they are here to fight and scream and complain.

And maybe it's because this doesn't feel like something that happened to someone else, someone so unlike me. When I first read about Maddie, I went to her mother, Heather's, blog, to get a sense of who she was and who she had been. And as I read down the posts, I got her April Fool's Day post. Every year, I read or see something that reminds me why April Fool's Day is just about my favorite day of the year. Google's annual joke, or someone telling me they just got convinced that the government is going to start subsidizing pet health insurance. It's such a delightfully silly day, and I enjoy all the ways people celebrate it, with such wonderful humor. Heather's post was one of the best. An April Fool's grilled cheese sandwich, made with pound cake and frosting. She describes it so simply, even including pictures of the process--and, of course, of her dad falling victim to the prank. She had me smiling and thinking, "I'm going to have to try that one!" And at the end of the post, a picture of sweet Maddie, enjoying the prank and the laughter. And that got me. No matter what I'm doing, I keep stopping to think of that silly sandwich. Just such a beautiful, simple moment, the sort of thing that wouldn't really stand out in a life over all--except that to me, who only got to know her after she was gone, this is Maddie. Surrounded by people she loves, who love to laugh, who are just so much like us.

So I am reaching out today, to whoever is listening, whether reading this blog or up in the heavens somewhere. Thank you, thank you, with my whole heart and soul, for the safety and well being of my family. I know that I am lucky. But why? Why must another mother suffer a loss I can't imagine? I don't know if this pushes me further toward faith or doubt, only that it makes me feel more like there ought to be answers somewhere.

And the final reason I may feel so deeply the loss of Maddie: her name. I have been nervous about what to share in a blog. How private ought we to be? I don't want to be unsafe, in a world where you don't who you can trust. So I haven't shared much in the way of identifying information. Sure, if you knew me and you came across this blog, you'd almost certainly be able to identify it as mine. But a stranger wouldn't be able to track me down using the information in here. I haven't even shared my kids' names. But in honor of sweet Maddie, I'm going to trust the world a bit more. My kids are Zachary (5), Ezra (3), and Matilda (13 months)--Mattie. And every time I look at my chubby, spoiled, loud little Mattie, my heart breaks yet again for a family that has lost theirs.

I wish I could do something to ease the pain, but I wouldn't know where to start. Instead I will send them a meal from a friend they didn't know they had--one they didn't have until just now. And I will pray--for guidance, for answers, and for grieving families.

(If you would like to donate to the March of Dimes in her honor, visit http://remembermaddie.com/ and you will find instructions. It is the most tangible way I know to help a little life.)

Seriously... What the Hell?

2009-04-06T12:49:00.003-05:00

My mom's friend is dying.

I haven't really accepted it until now, but I went and reread her CaringBridge journal entry from this past weekend, and it looks like it's pretty official.

20 or so years ago, my brother was on a grade school soccer team. All the parents on that team became friends. All they had in common was that their boys were in the same grade at the same school. Some had older or younger kids, some had no other kids at all. They varied a lot in terms of their income, relationships, education, and ages. But for the last 20 years, they've kind of been the focal point of my mom's social life. When I was in high school, we used to go camping every year over the New Year. We'd rent out several cabins at a group campsite and spend the weekend. I remember one year, when it was the men's turn to cook, and they all--10 or 12 men my dad's age--came marching out of the kitchen in full drag. They'd all gone to used clothing stores and put together these elaborate, ridiculous outfits. My dad's was a navy blue sequined jumpsuit with black feathers at the wrists and collars. It was spectacular. When one of the dads was sent to prison for reasons related to a pyramid scheme, all the other families rallied around his wife and sons. And when he came back, they were still there for him, friends. When my parents got a messy, messy divorce, my mom said she didn't want to lean on them, because she was embarrassed; but I reminded her that they've been her friends for 20 years, and this is what friends do. All the ladies have breakfast together once a month and go camping in the Boundary Waters every year. My mom says this year it looks like they'll be taking ashes with them.

About 5 years ago, my uncle was diagnosed with colon cancer. My mom assured us that this was it for him. He got good treatment, they caught it early, and he's fine. My brother's friend (one of the kids from that long-ago soccer team) was sent to Iraq, and my mom was sure that he wouldn't be coming back. He served his time there and is back in the States now, physically no worse for wear. I've grown used to the fact that my mom always assumes that the world is ending. So what do I do, now that it kind of is? Her friend was diagnosed close to a year ago, with lung cancer. They've treated it, more and more aggressively. She's been on drug trials, but now they're starting to wonder if she can handle them or whether they ought to just back off. My mom says she has only weeks left, but I never know what to think of my mom's conclusions.

I'll take a moment, I promise, to be grateful. I am healthy. So are my kids, my husband, my parents and siblings. I think of this woman's sons and grandchildren, of her husband who is having to mourn while still do all the things to keep life going day to day, and I am immensely grateful. I know this is not about me. But I'm still overwhelmed. She threw my bridal shower and my baby shower. She has been a part of my life, even if mostly behind the scenes, for most of my life. And I don't know what to do. My mom is a mess (between this and ongoing stuff with my dad). I want to do something. They take turns bringing her meals. I live 45 minutes away and have three kids. I want to send flowers, a card, a blanket for crying out loud. But what do you do, send a card that says, "I'm so sorry you're dying"? Maybe they have a "This Really Sucks" bouquet.

I just can't stop thinking about her, about my mom trying to deal with this and also with the mess of sorting out a divorce after 30 years of marriage. And I feel so helpless. Words are the thing that I'm best at, the thing that I bring to the table, and there are times when words just simply aren't enough.

Project Honesty 2: I Love My Husband

2009-04-04T10:02:00.010-05:00

I was trying to fall asleep last night, while the baby (13 months old, but still my baby) was fussing in her crib across the room. And I was trying not to get frustrated with her, so I started thinking about how much I love her--and everyone else.

My darling little girl: I love you purely. Who else would I allow to keep me up all night, every night, because you'd rather suck on me than sleep? Who else has such kissable cheeks, such a tickle-able belly, such sweet curls? When I look at you, I am horrified to think that there was ever a chance you would not be in my life. We were clearly not a complete family until you arrived. You are my daughter, and as the daughter of a mother myself, I know that our relationship will not always be so simple. I do not relish the day when you accuse me of being selfish because I won't allow you to do something, or when I worry that you're making all the same mistakes I made--and that I am making all the same mistakes my own mother made. But I will always love you, no matter what. And when things between us are hard and complicated, I will look back on this time, when I cheered your every word, when I laughed with you as you discovered how to roll a ball across the room, when I swung you up in the air and watched your two little bottom teeth flash as you screamed with delight, and I will know that I love you with a pure love that can never be tainted.

My sweet middle boy: I love you fiercely. I think that is the only way to love you. It is certainly the way you love me. You approach everything in your life with the same no-holds-barred intensity, it floors me. I remember the night we were staying at a hotel, on our way to our vacation. You were refusing to settle down, keeping your brother and the entire family up, and nerves were frayed. Finally Daddy told you, "That's it! If you don't go to bed right now, I'm going to put you in the car, and you're going to have to sleep out there, all alone in the dark, all night." You quietly gathered up your blanket and pacifier and prepared to head out the door. That was the night Daddy called you "Cool Hand Luke" for the first time. I love the way that you stand up for yourself, never compromising for a second. You may get scratched, pushed, even bitten, but you give as good as you get. You are a force of nature, and I admire the hell out of that. But I also love the way that you curl up against me, rest your head on my chest, insist that I snuggle you just so, and remind me that for all your intensity, you are 3 years old. You must have your water from the "big giant cup" (the pitcher), in your orange cup, often insisting on ice. You will agree to put your head on your pillow at nap time, but you insist that you will not be closing your eyes. You drive me to distraction, bringing me to levels of frustration I have never known before. Then, in the same breath, I find myself loving you with a mother bear intensity that almost scares me. We fight to be sure; you push my buttons and my limits. But the ferocity of my love is astounding.

My wonderful firstborn: I love you with my soul. The way I feel about you fills me up from the inside. When I think about how I love you, my heart drops into my stomach for a moment, as though being your mother is some sort of carnival ride I never understood until I was strapped in for good. You are so much like me that it frightens me. You look just like your daddy did at your age, and you have his imagination to be sure. But sometimes I look at you, and I think you're going to turn out just like me, and I get scared and sad. You're so sensitive that you cry at perceived slights, not just the real ones. You regularly complain of throat and stomach pain, when your emotions get to be too much for you. You don't want to ride a bike or jump off the edge of the pool, so afraid of what might happen. And when you do these things, I think: That's me. That's the worst of me, coming out in my son. And I try so hard to encourage you to try, and then I push, and then I see myself turning into my mom. I don't want you to live a life scared of what might happen, and I don't want to hurt you by pushing too hard. But I also want you to have a better life than I have, to be more confident and proud than I am. Because believe me when I say: You have no idea how spectacular you are. I didn't know I could love someone as much as I love you. It consumes me, and I burn up inside of it, then rise again to love you some more. And if I make mistakes, if I push too hard or not hard enough, if I understand you too well or too little, know that it is only because my love wants to wrap you up inside it and guarantee that you will live the best, happiest life there is.

My beautiful husband: I love you unfairly. I know this. I love you intellectually, timidly, fearfully. I admire you. I enjoy you. I live afraid that you will stop loving me. We have three amazing children together, and we both know that we love our kids; we say so all the time. And loving our kids is so much easier than loving each other. They're uncomplicated in their love, they're flesh of our flesh, and they depend upon our love for their very survival. We, on the other hand, have our own agendas, our own complicated desires, our own assumptions about the world and about each other. And without me, I know you would go on living. So what is it that keeps you here? Is it just that I'm a good mother? Is it that staying is easier than leaving? Or is it that you truly, deeply love me? I'm afraid to even ask the questions, so afraid of what it looks like to be asking why my husband stays with me. At the root of our relationship, I know, is our friendship. You are there for me in a way that no one else is. You protect and encourage me. You listen to me and you guide me when I need it. As our children grow, I know they will need us less, and we will have more and more time with the two of us, to remember why we fell in love in the first place. I worry that your love is conditional, that one day you will simply run out of reasons to love me. But though I may not love you with the completeness you deserve, I hope that you will hang on and love me anyway, giving me time to believe that, the same way that our children know there is nothing that would stop my love, you and I really will be in love forever.

The Day I Almost Ran Away

2009-04-03T12:51:00.003-05:00

Yesterday we had to have the garage door replaced. (And as an aside, I can't believe how much of a difference it makes to have something in your life function, when you've grown completely used to it broken. The garage door was plastic, somewhat transparent, and made a sound like a jalopy being strangled every time you used it. Now it actually works, and strangers walking by can't tell whether there's someone inside. It's the little things.) So since the garage door was being replaced, I had to move the car out of the garage.

I told the kids I was going to move the car and would be right back. Now, moving the car in our case is a little cumbersome. I grew up in a second-tier suburb in a housing divison that had been built in the '70s. We had an attached garage that opened right into the living room. Now we have a house in a first-tier suburb, just a few blocks outside the Minneapolis city limits. The house was built in 1958 (and a lot of it is original, like the harvest gold sink in the kitchen--but I digress.) It has a detached garage and an alley. So I had to go out to the backyard, into the garage, and take the car out of the garage and down the alley. As I got to the end of the alley, all I had to do was turn, drive half a block to our street, turn onto our street, and pull up in front of our house. But just for a moment, I thought: What if?

Now, I stay at home. And I don't just mean I'm a stay-at-home mom, because technicially I'm not really that either. I'm a day care provider, which means that I have an income; but it also means that I can't (ever) leave the house during the day. A little stir crazy? Too bad, you're watching 8 kids. Slept badly and thinking you'd do anything for a fancy cup of coffee? Well, unless you're willing to take all three of your kids with you and get back by 7:30, when the first kids show up, it's going to be Folgers with milk and sugar for you. Thinking that the kids are driving you absolutely over the edge and you'd really like to just have a bath and a glass of wine? Well, it's not the day care preventing you from doing that (at least I hope other stay-at-home parents aren't getting baths and wine at 9 AM), but you still don't get to do it.

And I don't get to leave home after 5 PM either. My husband, God bless him, is a creature of habit to the extreme. His evening routine is predictible almost to the minute. And it takes him all the way up to 6:30 in the evening, at which time kids have been fed, probably bathed, and are ready for a video, juice, and some quiet time before bed. If I want to go somewhere (to the bank to make a deposit, to Target just to wander around and listen to the music for 5 minutes, to the liquor store for the aforementioned wine), I'm probably taking at least one kid with me. Or else I'm going after 8:30, when they're all in bed. My 3-year-old, by the way, can identify the liquor store when we drive by and announces that "That's the liquor store where we get suckers." (In my defense, it's on a corner we drive by all the time, so it's not like we're driving across town to the liquor store every day.) All week, I look forward to grocery shopping, because it's an hour or so that I only have one kid with me (I take the littlest one, since she's really too young to bug me and ask for stuff yet) and I get to do more or less what I want, like talk to strangers about their preferred brand of canned corn.

So when I say "I stay home," I mean it. I'm always home. Standard parental disclaimer: I love my kids, and I obviously chose to stay at home with them. I know I'm lucky not to have to commute and to be here with them all day every day. But all that being said...

When I got to the end of the alley yesterday morning (you thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? There's always a mental map of what I'm talking about), just for a moment, I thought: What if? What if, instead of turning right and then pulling up onto our street, in front of our house, going back inside and making breakfast and changing diapers and refereeing, what if I turned left? I could go to the coffee shop. I could go to Walgreens and get a new lipstick. Hell, I could just keep driving. They wouldn't even realize for a while; two of them are still sleeping. And at that point, of course, I thought, Holy shit. What kind of person thinks that? And I turned right and pulled up in front of the house and went inside and made breakfast and changed diapers and did everything else I do all day. And I did it partly because, really, I do love my kids--more than I could ever find words to express. And partly because I was scared to think that I was a person who, even for a second, had that thought.

But that's the thing about staying at home. I used to have friends, and I used to bounce ideas off them and get a sense of what about me was more or less normal. But now many of them have dropped away, because I'm married with kids and they're trying to decide whether to just go off the grid for a while; we don't have a lot in common. And the ones with kids, well, they're trying to balance kids and jobs and houses and families, and they just don't have a lot of free time for answering questions like: Am I a total crazy person for the thought that just popped into my head? I was at book club the other night (yes, I do get to leave once in a while) and we were talking about The Shack. Somehow this led to a lot of talk about families and kids and our own histories and things that have encouraged or challenged our faith. And before I knew it, I was telling this group of women (only one of whom I knew before that night) about my miscarriage--about how it happened, how I felt, what it was like to experience a D&C, and how I now feel about that little person who was, so briefly, a part of me. I don't know why I did it, other than the fact that extreme social anxiety and a single beer seem to combine to make me unusually chatty. But when I was done, several of them thanked me for being so candid; they said that though we all know at least one person who's been touched by miscarriage, no one wants to talk about it. It's like we're afraid to admit that we once failed at the one thing we're supposed to be able to do perfectly--bring a pregnancy to term. But when we start talking about it, we realize that we're not the only ones who've been through it, and other people have been holding back just as much as we have, trying not to admit their failures.

So I hope that I'm not the first (non-certifiable) mom ever to think, just for a moment, how great it would be to run away. And I didn't, of course. And I never would. But I'll fantasize about it again, I'm sure. And I hope that someday, when I've managed to make some friends again, that they'll admit that, once or twice, they had the same thought.

19 and other tricky concepts

2009-04-01T15:02:00.005-05:00

There are few things I love more than listening to my kids talk to one another. They are trying so hard to piece together the world, and much the same way I do, they often have to fill in the blanks.

My oldest son is in kindergarten this year, and it's been extremely exciting. He loves going to school every day, even if he doesn't love getting up. He tells me he has 4 friends (though their identities vary) and that there's not that many girls that like him. He tells me he's being bullied, but when I talked to his teacher, she said that it was a pretty boy-heavy class this year; he's not being targeted, there's just a lot of boy energy going around the room, with a lot of rough play and some fights. Then, a few weeks after that conversation, I happened to walk him to school (he usually gets a ride). I decided to take the chance to poke through the lost and found for the various hats and mittens that have gone missing this year (no luck). And as I was on my way back toward the door, his teacher hailed me. It seemed that she had been out one day recently, and she wanted to know if I had heard about the "incident." I hadn't, and of course I immediately wondered what my kid had done. I shouldn't have worried--about that--because as it turns out, another student had choked him because he wanted my son's crayon. That's right, strangled over a crayon. She assured me that she was dealing with it and had spoken with the other child, but in case my son had said anything, she wanted to make sure I knew it was being handled.

Of course, I told my husband about it that evening, and we both sort of had the same reaction--that we were very surprised that it had happened but more surprised that he hadn't said anything. So after dinner that night, I asked him: Are you doing okay in school? Yes. Are you getting along okay with the other kids? Yes. I heard you had trouble with another kid the other day. No. Okay, cards on the table: Your teacher told me that another kid tried to choke you--that he put his hands on your neck. Do you remember this? No. Can I watch my show?

I couldn't get over this: My kid keeps telling me that he's being picked on, that there are bullies in his class, but it's no more than what he deals with from his little brother at home. But the one time he has every right to complain, that a kid actually is mean to him, he not only doesn't mention it; he apparently doesn't even remember.

Some time later, there was a day when both my boys went to work with Daddy one day. While they were there, he got them each a little toy from the hospital gift shop--a miniature measuring tape. They love the real ones and are always getting in trouble for playing with them, so these were extra cool toys. In the car on the way home, they were measuring everything in sight--the windows, their seats, one another. And my oldest said something about 21 inches. So I said, "You were 21 inches long when you were born. Your brother was 19 inches long. Can you find 19 inches?" He's been having trouble with the teen numbers, mixing up 19 and 90, for example, so learning to properly identify all the teens has been a math goal lately. He worked hard for several minutes, looking all over his measuring tape, considering and then rejecting several choices. Finally, very thoughtfully, he announced, "I found 19. Except it has a 2 in it."

Never stop finding the answers, my son. And in the absence of any useful answers, never stop provinding your own.

Project Honesty

2009-03-22T18:17:00.008-05:00

I recently heard an author comment that he found, in writing his memoir, that the more intensely personal he was in his writing, the more nakedly honest, the more universal he found that his message was. This was really a powerful insight to me, and I've been thinking about it a lot. Deep in our cores, we as humans are all really similar. We differ from one another in a lot of ways that are very important as well as in ways that are not at all important. But we are all afraid, we all want to love and be loved, we all want to matter. In the most important ways, we are exactly alike.

So in that spirit, I hereby launch Project Honesty. In each entry, I will discuss something about myself in as honest and open a way as I possibly can. It won't necessarily be of the "tell me something you've never told anyone before" variety, but it will be true. I will attempt to strip away all the things I usually say that make me look better, or that make me sound wittier, or that I just don't want to admit to. I will attempt to simply be honest.

Today's entry: No One Knows About This Blog

It's true. I have a husband, a few friends, a mother, a father, a sister, a brother; and none of them know about this blog. If anyone has read it, ever, it has been a stranger who either found it accidentally or who followed me here from a post on another blog. At first, I was just not sure what I was doing, and I was embarrassed that someone I know might read my words--sort of like my mom reading my diary, which is silly since you don't publish your diary on the internet if you want to keep it a secret. I was also concerned about how honest I would be able to be if I knew the people in my life were going to read it. I mean, it's a little hard to talk about my dad leaving my mom for a woman who was formerly my best friend... if I think any of them are going to read it. I read several other blogs, and I'm regularly amazed at how open they are with the details of their lives, not only with things like pictures of their kids but with being honest about things that I don't think the people in my life would love me sharing. I'm just not that comfortable with the idea of how unhappy people might be with what I'd say about them.

But now I just feel kind of dumb. My dad (who, despite having married my friend, is someone whose opinion matters to me) commented recently that he thought I ought to start a blog--because I'm such a good writer that I ought to easily become one of those people whose blogs gets read. Now, to be 100% honest, I think I'm a so-so writer. I read enough to have a good sense of what words look good together. I think I have a decent sense of humor, enough to recognize when something is witty though not necessarily enough to produce it myself. But mostly, I'm really good at spelling, commas and knowing when to use "your" and when to use "you're." I'm not really sure that makes me a good writer, it just makes me relatively good at passing for one.

So I'm trying now to put my words out into the world, to feel like the things that I say matter... but I'm not telling anyone about it. That must be some major kind of statement about my emotional well being. If you're reading this, thanks. If you comment, thanks even more, because it's the only tangible evidence I have that my words, sent out like some sort of sonar, have hit something and returned. I promise to be as honest as humanly possible, though not necessarily as entertaining as I'd like. But I'll work on that too.

Post to the President

2009-02-13T14:56:00.012-06:00

Have you seen this website, Post to the President? I love this idea. First of all, I love the idea of getting in on the ground floor of something that could really be earth changing. Could you imagine President Obama reading each and every one of those posts, actually giving them all the weight they deserve? Equally importantly, I love the fact that this is such a 21st-century thing to do. He got elected largely through raising funds via his website. He gets major press for refusing to give up his Blackberry. If ever there was a president who would take a blog devoted to communicating with him seriously, this is him. But I just keep thinking about what I would say if I had the chance. And you know what? I do have the chance. I'm at least as intelligent, articulate, opinionated and important as Joe the Plumber, and his opinion was taken mighty seriously. So this is the post that I'm adding to the website:

Dear Mr. President:

First of all, congratulations. My son is five years old, and when he saw your picture on my computer this morning, I asked if he knew who it was. He thought a moment, then said, "Our president! Barack Obama!" I almost cried. At five years old, yours is the first presidency he will remember. He has no idea what a big deal that is. After 8 years of putting up with what can only be called a shitty administration, he will get to see what it's like to have a president you can be proud of.

I'm not proud of you because you're the first black president, though you certainly have broken down some barriers. And I'm not looking to you to stand up as an example for an entire race. To me, your color is beside the point. I'm proud of you because when you talk, I want to get up and act. You have called upon a nation to take responsibility for itself and you have promised to lead us on to better days. When I talk about you to my son, I talk about a man who is helping our country to find a better way. He asked me, "So the president can do anything he wants?" And I told him about being elected, about how the people choose who will lead them--and I told him that being a leader means helping people to get things done, getting people to work together, listening to the people and working toward their goals. It doesn't mean working alone; it means working with us.

So that being said, what are you doing and what can we do to help? All I hear about is the economic crisis. I send my oldest child to a school that is finding new and creative ways to make fewer dollars go further, and I'm trying to help. I care for my youngest two children at home, along with their friends and playmates. I don't eat out. I rarely drive. My sister and I pass garbage bags of baby clothes back and forth. I provide child care from home and do freelance work when I can. We do okay. But while we're managing, thousands and thousands of families aren't. We have health care we can afford--for now. We have a house we can afford--for now. We have jobs we can rely on--for now. I'm all for government doing what it can to help the people; government is supposed to be an entity, created by the people, that provides us with a way to create peace, safety, and prosperity. But you got where you are because you made people want to act. Now help us out. Do what you can from up there. Pass that stimulus package, get us out of Iraq, close down Guantanamo. I will trust your judgment and that of the people you have chosen to work with you. But since I have such faith in your ideas, pass some along this way. I want to do what I can to make this country a better place, but I don't know where to start. So here's your chance. Send out a call to action. Be the leader that makes us want to follow you. Show us the way to help one another, and we will. But you have to help us out. I don't have much in the way of money or time, but I have to believe that I can help this country get back on the path toward living up to its promises.

Don't be the first black president, because that's just a historical milestone that will be reduced to a date in a textbook. Instead, be the president who led the United States out of a period of fear and intolerance and into an unprecedented era of unity and responsibility. We will follow you, if you will show the way.

-- A mother and citizen in Minneapolis

Now is your chance. Take a minute and tell him what you have to say.

Ninja Turtles Don't Hit

2009-01-15T17:46:00.003-06:00

and other things I never heard myself say before I was a mom. I swear I'm going to write a book someday full of the random things I hear come out of my mouth now that I spend my days following wee ones around.

Just let me smell your butt. I bet this one doesn't get heard most places. But believe me, when you're chasing around 8 kids and 6 of them are in diapers, you really need to identify the source of that smell before it gets out of control. Especially since a part of you knows that you've been missing a sippy cup for a few days and the last time you saw it, it had milk in it, and it was somewhere around here, and if you don't find it soon, you're going to have to evacuate and disinfect the whole house.

Get that out of your mouth. Or better yet: Get that out of your brother's mouth. How many people spend their time inserting things into other people's mouths? People who are not frighteningly creepy. Pretty much just the small ones I spend my day with. I cannot believe the things they will put in their mouths. Only a kid thinks that it's a good idea to spend all their energy removing the outlet cover from the outlet just so they can then suck on the outlet cover. It must be a real treasure if it was stuck that hard in the wall!

Just because you want to, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Oh, so many people could stand to learn this one. M will be a year old in March (how crazy is that? It seems like just yesterday I was wondering what we were going to do with a third baby), and she's just insistent that absolutely everything she wants to do is the best idea ever. But I want to eat an entire magazine! But I want to crawl behind the toilet! But I want to suck on the soles of my brother's shoes! But I want to nurse from 9:30 PM to 6:00 AM without interruption, either by your need to sleep or by your desire to roll over or by your eventual need to get up because my brothers are up!

Could you be quiet for just three seconds in a row? I've recently realized that the whole "count to 10" thing is just ridiculous. I was talking to my sister and she commented that counting to 10 just gives her enough time to pause in her anger; she's just as angry as she was 10 seconds ago, possibly more since she's had enough time to think about it. Me, I'm the other way. I get angry quickly and calm down quickly. I keep thinking of the old parenting advice to count to 10 before you get mad. Let's see, I'm standing in my living room. Z, just home from kindergarten, is angry that E, 3, has taken something from him and is starting to whine and yell. E is running around with the toy, chattering at 90 miles a second about the toy he's swiped and about how excited he is for the next time he's going to get to see a certain cereal commercial with me so I can see how funny it is. K, 3, is parked on the couch, sullen because I've told him he can't take toys away from his friends. When I asked him to listen, he yelled, "I DON'T LIKE YOU!" and swatted my face. When I told him it wasn't okay to hit, he screamed, so now he's in time out on the couch until he agrees to listen and be nice. A, 2, is sitting on the floor crouched over his most treasured possessions, all the cars from the "Cars" movie and several "Thomas" trains. He's shrieking "NO!!!!" every time M looks in his direction, because he's certain she's going to try to take them all away. She, however, is clinging to my leg, possibly getting ready to bite it because she feels that the attention is insufficient and so is the acknowledgement of her distress. She may have an ear infection but I'll be damned if I know when I'll be able to have it checked. And Baby A, 6 months, is banging in the saucer, sobbing because she doesn't want to eat or play or nap or crawl, but she doesn't like being set in the saucer. And now the phone rings.

At this moment, I am pretty much at my breaking point. This is the moment where I am going to snap and yell at someone for something utterly inconsequential. ("How many times have I told you not to play cars on the coffee table? There are a thousand other perfectly good places to put cars!") And this is the point where I'm supposed to stop, take a deep breath, and count to 10 before flipping out. But the problem is that I can't find 10 seconds in a row in which to breathe, where I don't have to answer a question or referree a fight or feed or change or console someone. And if I did have 10 seconds in a row, all the fight would go right out of me and I wouldn't need the 10 seconds anymore.

And that, dear readers, is why I spend so much time in the bathroom. Sometimes that's the only way I can get 10 seconds in a row to myself.

Who Do You Think You Are?

2009-01-07T18:21:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about identity. I'm sure that for some people, they think of themselves first and foremost in terms of their profession. "I'm a lawyer." (I guess that when you spend that much money to become something, it better be a pretty important part of your personality when you're done!) And I hear other people describe themselves in terms of their hobbies or interests: I'm an avid read; I'm a volunteer; I'm a passionate fisherman, or whatever. And of course, a lot of people describe themselves as parents. And I do the same thing. I mean, to most of the people who know me, I'm Z, E, and M's mom. But a few years into parenting, especially if you're a stay-at-home parent, I think you have to start to wonder if you're ever going to be anything other than your kid's mom again.

There was a time when I was widely considered to be smart; when people actively sought out my opinion about things ranging from punctuation to politics. There was a time when I had an active social life and knew which places to frequent when, depending on the kind of crowd you were up for that night; when I knew how to make a martini and how to drink one and still usually chose beer. There was a time when I had all kinds of friends, all ages, all interests, all backgrounds; when we used to get together and just see what was going to happen that night. There was a time when I was considered funny; when I used to say witty things and people would laugh. And let's not forget one of the fundamentals: There was a time when I used to spend all my time with people who were totally, completely potty trained--people whose poops were no one's business but their own. Those were the days, huh?

Now I'm considered an authority on how to get babies to sleep, on how to stop fights from getting out of hand, on how to handle diaper rash (there are several schools of thought on all of those, just so you know). Now the places I go rarely vary: the living room, kitchen, and E's room for most of the day, occasionally interrupted by the TV room and bedroom. Once a week or so, I venture out to the bank, and on Saturday I usually make it to the grocery store. Once every couple of months, I make it to book club, and I'm trying to make it to PTA once a month. I remember only that you shouldn't put too much vermouth in a martini; but I'm very good at mixing a bottle, even with that tricky, crazy thick formula. I still usually drink beer, but now it's always at home. I haven't heard from most of my old friends in years. We lost touch when I got married and had kids and they didn't. I had birthday parties and day care, and they had budding careers and new relationships. Now they may have the birthday parties and day care, but too much time has passed, and we just don't connect anymore. We try to email or call occasionally, but it never lasts. And new friends are hard to find when you never leave the house. No one thinks I'm funny anymore, unless you count my 10-month-old, who laughs when I stick out my tongue and wiggle my finger at her. And very few people in my life are potty trained. Let's face it: poop is now a major player in my life/

I'm not complaining per se. It's not that I would leave my kids and go off to some sparkling new job all day if I could. I love getting to be here with them, and I love the kids I stay with. (Both genuinely true and the "standard mom disclaimer," as my sister calls it.) But I think in addition to the isolation that comes with staying home with kids, which is another post in and of itself, it really calls into question who exactly you are; if you're not all the things you used to be, who are you instead? And have all the previous dimensions of your personality been replaced by "my kid's mom"? I try to do things--this blog is an example--that remind me and everyone else that I am more than just the person I appear to be from day to day. But I wonder how everyone else handles it. And how women have handled it for hundreds of years. Because I do wake up most mornings wondering, now that things have changed so much in the last 5 years or so, just who I think I am.

I'm losing a battle of wills with my 3-year-old

2009-01-05T17:47:00.004-06:00

First of all, in the name of full disclosure, I feel like crap. I've caught some sort of cold that immediately went to my chest, leaving me with a perpetual smoker's cough, without any of the fun nicotine buzz. And M, now 10 months, is teething or something and is up approximately all night long, wanting to nurse, but not really, and ideally on the other side, and plus on her stomach. So I was a little crabby. But this was the worst parenting day I can ever remember, at least for a few hours.

E is apparently outgrowing the need for a nap, which is leaving me breathless with terror. I can't tell you how much I count on that hour or two in a 24-hour period that I can kind of call my own. He wasn't napping at all well the last 2 weeks, but Z was off school, so I blamed it on having a non-napper in the house, making just enough noise to keep him up. I was seriously looking forward to today, since the husband was back at work and I would have some naptime me-time for just a little while. I got the little day care kids down and settled E and his friend in his room. We tried a new approach today: "You don't have to sleep today. There are only two rules. Stay in your bed and be quiet." Holy crap. I seriously thought that was a practical request. I got M to sleep, nursing, and just as I put her down, I realized two things: Z would be home from school in 20 minutes, and E and friend were running and yelling just above M's head. Thus followed several of the worst hours of my life.

I tried the nice approach: "You don't want your sister to cry, do you? You're going to wake her and make her cry. Do you have your book? You can read, you just have to be quiet." I tried the stern approach: "That's it. You are going to plant your butt on your bed and shut your mouth right now. And if you want a book, there's one right there. You don't get a different one." And I tried the mean approach: "You don't get a show for the rest of the day. No Baby Einstein, no SpongeBob, nothing. And if you don't shut your mouth right now, you don't get anything tomorrow either!" And while all this was going on, M woke up and started screaming--twice. (My new approach to getting her to sleep more at night--let her work it out during the day. I'm way more willing to let her scream for 10 minutes at 2 PM than at 2 AM.) And E, whom my husband has referred to as "Cool Hand Luke" and as "a force of nature," sat through it all. I swear to god, I have never actually met a more strong-willed child. I've seen the titles referring to "the strong-willed child" and always thought "I could get that, but nah." I mean, in order for you to get a book because a description of your kid is on the cover, your kid has to be diagnosed with something, right? I mean, mine must not be what they're talking about because he doesn't have Strong-Willed Child Syndrome--or something. But I think the time has come. He's a really smart kid, no question. He obviously listens closely to what people say, and then later I'm always shocked at the way he uses them in context. And when he's really engaged in listening, I can see what a great learner he is. But the strength of his will just gets in the way of his comprehension. As I explained the consequences of his behavior, he would just scream at me that he wanted to listen. And I would tell him that he wasn't listening, or that he had already lost one thing and was on the way to losing more. And he would just scream that "I WANT TO LISTEN!" I know that the idea--that a person makes a choice and there are consequences that follow that choice--makes sense to him. He sees it with his siblings and the day care kids, and even with his parents. But when he gets all up in arms, he just can't grasp that things aren't going to happen the way he wants them to. And he gets into a mode of just consistently making them worse.

By the time Z got home from school, E was in major trouble with the bedroom door closed (which he hates), M was crying her eyes out, and I was barely holding it together. An hour later, I think everyone but Z was in tears. Fortunately he was pretty into his Dora game and didn't really notice my tears--I think. But I was amazed. I am admittedly a pretty emotional person. But this was over the top. I thought I was going to have to run away for a few minutes so I didn't lose it completely. My husband has said that E is about 4,000 times better at conflict than I am, and about 4 times better than he is. So I know I'm outmatched. But if I want him to grow up into someone the rest of the world loves as much as I do, I have to find a way to deal with this insanely strong will of his. (We came up with a reward system for quiet naps, by the way; we'll see in the next week or so how it pans out.)

UPDATE 1/6: After tearfully describing my day to my sweet husband, he suggested a chart approach instead. Every day that E is quiet at nap time (being "a god listener," which is what we're always telling him he needs to be), he will get an X on his chart. If he fills his chart (6 Xs), then he will get a special big treat like going out for fast food or getting to pick a movie. Today was like night and day. The chart incentive worked absolute wonders. I realized first that I would always rather give them something than take something away; it just feels better as a parent to make them happy rather than sad. And second, he's much more motivated by working toward something than he is by avoiding something bad. Fingers crossed that it will continue to work well!

The "Smart One"

2008-10-10T11:27:00.003-05:00

I imagine it's true in every family, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how in our family, everyone got assigned roles--and pretty early, it seems to me. For as long as I can remember, my brother, sister, and I have all had pretty clear labels in the family structure. I was "the smart one" but also "the disorganized one" and often "the emotional one." My sister was "the organized one" and "the social butterfly" (read: the pretty one). My brother, four years younger than her and six younger than me, seemed to have his own set of rules. He is the only boy so inherited the "boy" identity: the sporty one, the daredevil, daddy's boy. He's also the baby, so he got to be the special one in some ways. (I think that sounds resentful, but it's not meant to be. I don't think any of us really chose our family roles; he just took what he was handed.)

So fast forward: We're now 32, 30, and 26. And in many ways, we're still acting out these same roles. My brother has moved halfway across the country. My sister has lived all over the country and has settled (for the moment) here in Minnesota with her husband and 1 1/2 kids. I'm the mother of three obsessing over whether I'm assigning them roles the same way they were assigned to us. My parents split up in a very, very messy divorce just as my second was being born (he moved out when I was 8 months pregnant.) Now my dad's remarried and I have a step-mother and step-sister to wrap my head around (particularly tricky, as step-mom is my age, and step-sister is in kindergarten, just like my oldest). The family as we knew it is gone with the wind. The more we think and talk about it, the more we realize it was never really there. And yet there I am, still trying to live up to being "the smart one," still accepting that I'm disorganized and will never be any better. And my sister is realizing that she went through much of her life thinking she had almost no emotions, and she's only now trying to get in touch with the ones that have been there all along.

My oldest is sweet and sensitive. He's been that way since the day we brought him home from the hospital and I slept on the couch with him in the bassinet next to me, eventually bringing him in with me--where he then slept for the next year. My middle son is, as my husband says, "a force of nature." He's surprisingly sensitive, but I am often reminded of Stampy from "The Simpsons," head butting people just for kicks. And my youngest, our girl, is so far pretty sweet and easy going. And I'll admit to wanting to dress her in sundresses and hair ribbons until she eventually screams in protest. So how do I look at these three and stop myself from assigning them the roles of "the sweet one" or "the strong one" or even "the girl"? Long after they're at all relevant, my siblings and I are still acting out our family roles and trying to outlive their impact. I know I'm going to screw them up somehow, but shouldn't it count for something that I see this one coming?

Things are not improving

2008-09-30T10:10:00.001-05:00

So I hate conflict of any kind. I accept that. I even accept that I'm going to pay for it, mostly by being walked over. But how did it get this bad?

I'm the oldest of three children, and I'm very close to both my siblings, a brother and sister. And to this day, I resist telling them things because I'm afraid of what they're going to think of me. I'm having a problem with one of my day care families, and I've been trying to sort through things with the mom. We've been emailing and we've spoken (just barely) a couple of times. And through this, I really need all the insight I can get--this is both a business and a personal relationship, and I'm trying to sort out how to balance them and how to stand up for myself in both aspects of the relationship. But it all started with some time off that I took, which may have been a misttep on my part (I've apologized repeatedly for the "inconvenience"). And as I'm talking to my husband, to another day care provider who has answered questions and helped me out in the past, and trying to sort through things in my head, I'm still not telling my siblings about this, mostly because I'm afraid of what they're going to think. I'm afraid that they will both come at me with a list of reasons that all this is my fault.

I've had the same problem in any area I can think of. In my old job, before I started day care, I remember standing in the parking lot and crying one afternoon because I hated it there so much--and I later realized that this was 5 years (!) before I finally left that place. What kind of person stays with a job for 5 years after they realize they're deeply unhappy there? Either a person with no other options (thankfully not my problem) or a person who is secretly convinced that they deserve every bad thing that happens to them. I'm not for jumping on the "we're all clinically depressed because of the breakdown of society" bandwagon. I don't go for the romance, that was so appealing when I was 14, of wallowing in self-pity until I eventually die a very beautiful death. But it is frustrating that this many years later, I still find myself in the same position of being walked on because I can't find the guts in myself to tell people that's not okay.

I come up with lots of reasons not to confront this parent directly: I'm afraid I'm actually wrong; I think if I back off, she'll calm down and we can move on; her son is E's best friend and he doesn't have a lot of friends (also my fault for not getting them out in the community enough). But I think the truth is I'm terrified. When I had to talk to her in person yesterday about this problem, I realized when she left that I was shaking. At what age do you have to suck it up and become a grown-up, and how do you start when you've really had no practice?

Welcome to the Blog, My Dear

2008-09-29T10:16:00.000-05:00

The time has come to join the technology generation. Now that I'm the mother of three kids who will all grow up with cell phones, PDAs, mp3 players, and other technology that I haven't heard of yet but which they will all positivly die without, I guess it's time for me to try to keep up.

A little about me: I'm 32 and grew up in Minnesota. I met my husband the day after Christmas 1999, and we were married in Itasca State Park in September 2002. Our oldest son, Z, was born the following August. In December 2005, our second boy, E, was born. And this past March, we had our daughter, M. Until E was born, I worked outside the home, but since March 2006, I've been doing day care. It's been a phenomenal way for me to stay home with my kids, though I do get a little nuts for grown-up talk sometimes. I crave adult conversation and have recently joined a book club and the PTA mostly to get to talk to grown-ups. I swear I used to have actual friends, but between the kids and staying home and my old friends sort of disappearing, I'm pretty much down to my sister and a few "virtual" friends. Not that I object to "virtual" friends--they're a damn sight better than nothing. But I would love some more actual people in my life--you know, people who are potty trained.

Things get stressful and you start looking around wondering if this is where you really expected your life to end up. That's when you start blogging, I guess, sending your thoughts out into the universe to see if anyone else out there has any insight, or whether your thoughts are even worth anyone's time. We'll see.