If You Feel It

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This post is for all of you who think nobody else knows.

If you can’t recall what uninterrupted sleep feels like…

If your nostalgia for another time and place borders on homesickness…

If you’ve lost your temper with beautiful, perfect small humans who are doing their best the only way they know how…

If all the fun, beautiful, and exhilarating moments of your day blur at the edges due to frustration and drudgery…

If your current career renders you advanced degree superfluous…

If your lower back is frozen from having an increasingly large person draped on your body a substantial portion of the day (and night)…

If you bristle when other people (especially those under four feet tall) touch your stuff…

If you choose daily between exercise, shower, and reading, since you may only have one…

If you are pondering *multiple* advanced degrees, at any age, because that’s simply how you’re built…

If it feels as though there is not one thing in your house that is yours and just yours…

If you look back at the day and find that you’ve only eaten cheese…

If you really need to start saying no so you can find the more important yeses…

If you feel like a jerk every time you’re feeling sorry for yourself while people in the world are starving, killed for their beliefs, and struggling to do their best but failing because of capricious or cruel forces outside themselves…

If you burst into tears every time you hear a sad story…

If you also burst into tears every time you hear a joyous tale…

If your colleagues make you want to change jobs…

If your boss makes you want to change jobs…

If you can’t change jobs because yours is not, technically, a job…

If shock and nausea washed over you when you realized that any time you spend out of the formal workforce to raise children, write a book, or pursue education meant a huge hit to your ability to save for retirement…

If you need the world to stop for a day or two so you can figure things out…

Holla!

Police Blotter

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Area woman exhibited manic enjoyment of her children’s every breath Friday. She breezed through the morning, laughing with the kids, relishing their company, and playing their games, all while tidying the house, cooking a fabulous lunch, cleaning the bathrooms, and changing her voter registration.

Local law enforcement officials have surmised that the local Peet’s pulled her a regular Americano despite her decaf order.

Peet’s employees were horrified. “I really hope we didn’t give her a regular,” said the charming young man who served her. “She seems like the type who would lose her freaking mind on caffeine.” He clarified later, “That lady had enough energy already, you know? It’s like, there are just some high strung people…no offense…who order decaf for a reason.”

The woman herself is oblivious to her frenetic assault on the neighborhood and her house. She just feels really really really really really productive. Woohoo!

It’s like cleaning closets, only better

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I have never looked at the tally in my blog where the little elves in the computer tabulate how many posts I have and how many … drumroll … drafts I have.

Drafts? What? You mean I’ve done some of the work already and have only to polish and publish?

Well, sign me up. There are, according to the WordPress computer, 109 posts I never finished. Cool! I don’t have to think of a new post for, like, 109 days!

The stats are either disheartening (if I feel that 109 false starts is a bit too many to have abandoned) or impressive (if I check my batting average: 900+ published and 100+ just languishing, ignored).

Ten percent waiting, frustrated sounds about right. In fact, that ratio is almost exactly like my to-do list when I finally give up on the mess and start a new list, dutifully transferring the 10% left uncrossed, pristinely written weeks before and totally snubbed.

The lowly items on my to-do list that are transferred every time and then left sheepishly wringing their hands, all alone, should get their own special list. They’re not moving to my To-Don’t List, because the forgotten and ignored items are not bad ideas or wastes of time. They’re just never gonna happen.

To that list I’m now adding, “Read through old drafts and decide what should be edited and posted.”

There. I just spared you 109 hair-brained ideas, snarky whining, and categorical evidence of either poor behavior from my offspring, or poor behavior toward my offspring.

You’re welcome.

A Whole New World

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I have to admit: I’m confused.

The topsy turvy sensation of new parenthood, of everything taking an extra hour because of a newborn’s needs for swaddling and nursing and diaper changing and napping and…that feeling is long gone. I’ve ditched the diaper bag. I always have snacks and crayons. I’m still not in my element, and it all feels like being in a foreign land, but I know about how long it takes to get the small people in my charge ready.

It takes a long damned time.

I learned pretty quickly that, to get a school-age child and a toddler in my house somewhere on time, I have to start the “we have to leave soon” announcements a full thirty minutes before we need to go. Apparently, dressing, brushing teeth, grabbing a lunch bag, putting on shoes and hat, and checking for a jacket takes my children longer than it takes to pass a Constitutional Amendment. (Like, say, for instance, a law overturning the Citizens United decision by making sure people and corporations can’t buy elections. Perhaps.)

But this week I’ve been shocked by the speed with which my offspring are out the door. Two days in a row, I issued the “we have to go NOW” announcement with fifteen minutes remaining on the oh-my-gawd-how-do-we-do-this-every-day clock. The toddler checked the weather and declared no coat. The six-and-a-half double checked and declared it was freezing and he needed his jacket. They both got shoes, sun lotion, lunches, and…holy crap, we’re ten minutes early.

I don’t understand. This process worked for a year. Has gravity reversed itself? Do we live in a wormhole? Is the time-space continuum not continuing?

Why?

Because Butterbean loves preschool so much he fights getting ready less than he used to? I doubt it. He still refuses and stalls and asks for “one moe meedee” of naked dance time. (Green Day, Diana Krall, and Bee Gees, thanks for asking.) He still refuses shoes and screams about lotion. And the older one still needs several reminders and a relatively calm, “I’m getting angry. You can get ready now or I can put you in the car in what you’re wearing, but whatever you choose right this minute is your final answer.”

Is it possible I’m getting faster? That they’re getting faster? That Schrodinger’s Cat is helping them get ready while I’m not looking in the box?

Why?

Should I now prepare for five-minute departures and actually play with my kids, or do I maintain the twenty-minute prep phase, knowing full well that just as I get used to quick mornings both kids will get a case of the Eff Yous?

Maybe someone switched my decaf for full strength. Just saying.

Place your bets

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Butter had a fabulous first week of school. So did Peanut.

So I’ve crossed “worry incessantly about my children’s school-centered well being” off my list. (Don’t get too excited. I still have “worry incessantly about my children’s future” and “worry incessantly about my children’s intellectual, emotional, and physical development” on the list. It’s pre-pre-school, not magic.)

That means three times a week I have just under three hours in which to pursue other To-Do List items.

I could:

1. Tidy the house and declutter our lives.

2. Work on my book.

3. Read.

4. Work on my scholarly articles.

5. Tackle the long to-do list of boring but necessaries (e.g., pay bills, plan meals, research reasons to worry about things).

This bouquet of glittery kid-free time I’m giving myself is new territory—it has been years since I’ve had regular blocks of daylight hours alone without constraints.

So feel free to vote for your favorite, or place bets on what I’ll actually settle on.

Which of the Shoulds sound like something I should do?

Every day miracles for once in a lifetime

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Remember when I asked you to send your thoughts, prayers, and good vibes to my friend? I promised you an update on his battle.

Here’s an update, in his words.

Go read this post. I don’t bandy about hyperbole often, but it is a breathtaking story of heart and humanity.

Look, aphorisms are cheap and annoying. But genuinely good friendships are something into which to pour your every energy. Use whatever words you want but send to some lovin’ to your friends.

And, as you did when I wrote a weepy plea for your thoughts, send a little love to my friend.

Breath held, eyes closed

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When I ask you to do something and you’re willing, you sing back to me, “Oak-kay, Mommy Day!” A nicer song was never sung.

When I ask you to do something and you’re unwilling, you brace yourself, and enunciate each word, “Mommy, I heer jew. One meedee.” And usually, after that minute you comply.

You think it’s funny to say that your stuffed alligator says, “Meow.” And that your stuffed elephant says, “Meow.” And that your baby doll says, “Meow.” But you named them all “Poe.” I don’t understand you, kiddo. And I dig that about you.

When you want something right now, you tell me, “Mommy. Look me eye, Mommy.” It’s nice of you to tolerate me and to use such compelling ways to get my attention.

You spend a week or so screaming in desperate frustration any time your hands didn’t do what you wanted them to. I taught you to ask for help instead of screaming, and now you cheerfully bellow, “HELP, EVEEBODY!” when your train won’t work. Luckily for you, everybody hears you and everybody helps. Nice world, eh, buddy?

You ruin even the best jokes, friend, with your own favorite punchline. “Knock knock,” your brother and I begin. “Who’s there?” someone replies. “POOP!” you shout. Very funny. Very, very funny.

When your brother is mean you pull his hair. When he ignores you, you hit. When he yells at you, you bite. These are not okay, things, Butterbean. Angry is okay, hurting is not okay. That nonsense has to stop.

Thank you for saying “soddy.” It feels nice to hear a sorry.

It’s very nice of you to thank me for the things I do. It’s wonderful of you to use words and ask gently to have a turn. And yes, it’s kind of funny that you insist on locking me out of the car every chance you get.

I don’t know how I’m going to leave you at school tomorrow, sweet cream Butterbug. I know you’ll have fun and you’ll learn new things about how people are different but all like gentleness and kindness. I know you’ll be happy to see me when I come after lunch.

I just don’t know how I’ll do. Aside from the whole “allowing a thought to proceed to completion” thing I vaguely remember from before you and your brother were born.

I think I’ll be pretty much demolished without you. I’ve wanted some space from you since those days at three months that you just screamed yourself purple. But I’ve never followed through with it for more than an hour every six months because I just can’t take it. You’re too little, too sweet, too attached, too new.

You’re my guy. I love love love you. And I’ll come get you after lunch.

Okay, Butter Day?

First day of First Grade

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Oh, bloggity blogosphere. Hold me, for I am wrecked.

I wanted everything to go right today. Yesterday Peanut was terrible to his brother, and confessed when I asked why he seemed to bent on emotional destruction that “I’m worried about school tomorrow.”

Of course you are, I said. New people, new classroom, new things to learn. But you know, I reminded him, some of the people will be familiar. We checked the class list together right before dinner and he very much likes three of his returning classmates. We’ve seen the classroom before. And they won’t expect you to be in high school yet. They know what you learned in kindergarten, and they’ll start there for first grade.

It’ll all be okay. Uncomfortable in the beginning, but just fine once you get rolling. Hang in there. Newness fades fast.

And then I set out to make the day a success.I packed his favorite lunch. I gave him his backpack early enough that he could accessorize it with all his hoarder packrat-y bits of fluff and string and old raffle tickets. (Seriously, the kid’s middle name should have been Templeton.) I calculated and recalculated how long it would take us all to get ready, get the bikes out, and ride to school. I checked air pressure and helmet status and bike locks.

I woke early (I swear to Aphrodite, Butterbean, if you keep waking up so early and shrieking at me to get you vitamins, I’m selling you to the gypsies before you have a chance to unleash the Threes on me) and brewed some chamomile for the adorable little cautious and easily unsettled first-grader. I made a lovely breakfast. I kept Butter out of his face.

We made it ten minutes early and met the LOVELY teacher who fawned all over Peanut. Then I walked off with Butter for our first solo date in over a month.

And a few blocks later I sobbed. Walking down the street, toddler in my arms, I was more than a little surprised that I bawled to the tune of “I left my precious baby with someone else. Someone new who didn’t even know yet which of his resistances were based in fear, which stemmed from shyness, and which from assholishness.” Tears streamed down my face as I ordered coffee and a cheese roll for my littlest Little.

—

I got Butter to nap a bit late, but figured I’d wake him early to get his brother. First graders are important, and we must be on time. Don’t forget: first grade gets out later than kindergarten. Don’t forget.

The phone rang half an hour before I was to wake the little guy. (Why do phones only ring REALLY loudly when a small person is napping?)

“Did you know that today was an early release?”

My heart just fell to the floor, bounced twice, turned to crystal, and shattered down the stairs.

“Today is WHAT?!”

Every child in the first grade was taken into the safe, warm, loving arms of a caregiver, except mine.

The new teacher, who knows nothing of my commitment to family, learning, and being ten minutes early to everything, reassured me that Peanut was fine. In the office with our delightful secretary.

I grabbed the sleeping toddler, my keys, and the backpack I needed for our bike ride home. I walked as fast as a human has EVER walked the almost-mile back to my little boy.

Twenty-five minutes late the first day of school. His first experience of being a really big kid. And I screwed it up. Beyond screwed it up.

While I stew in that, I’ll add this tidbit for your information so you can help me pick out the right hair shirt for the next twenty years of self flagellation: Closing up his lunch this morning I wanted to add something extra, in case he was first-day-of-school hungry. Something easy, somewhat healthy, and adored…

A lovely, locally grown, organic apple.

For the kid with *three* loose teeth.

Effing parent of the century, don’t you think?

How Parenting is Like Camping

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All the parents who hate the dirt, bugs, and lack of showers implicit in camping already know from the title why having children is like camping. Dirt. Bugs. Lack of showers.

But I feel the need to expand a bit more for those who have not experienced the wilderness joys of small children.

1. If it’s not locked up, wild things will eat it.
My toddler climbing the fridge to eat what’s in the freezer = your teen eating a week’s worth of groceries in one sitting = bears. They all need it, they all want it, and they all *will* get it unless it’s properly stored.

2. You’ll be surprised at the end of a day how much dirt can get on one person.

3. Rain is the least of your worries.

4. You will learn to handle bugs. Don’t care if you like ’em or hate ’em. Children and camping are both inextricably linked with bugs.

4. People tend to plan for the first day (year) and forget to brace for the third. If this blog teaches you nothing else, let it be that Year (day) Three is the hardest.

5. Someone won’t like the food.

6. You’ll get less sleep than you think.
Nope. Even less than that.

7. The fun is exhausting. So are the frustrations. So is the worrying.

8. You can never have too many washcloths.

9. When you forget sunscreen or bug spray, bad things happen.

10. No matter how prepared you are, you’ll forget at least one thing.

11. No matter how many times you’ve done this, at least one really obvious thing will surprise you.

12. Good luck using the phone, shower, or bed.

13. It will be your most ____________ experience ever.
(You fill in the blank. Rewarding? Amazing? Annoying? Memorable? Frustrating? Give me a status update on your camping or parenting below.)

September rituals

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When Peanut was born, I vowed to create rituals to mark the passage of the seasons. Hanging peanut butter pine cones for the critters on Winter Solstice. Springtime Egg Hunt on birthdays (because egg hunts only once a year is some bullshit). Heavy drinking and sobbing the penultimate day of school. Stuff like that.

I’m not on top of my game yet, but I’ve been consistently playing around with traditions for summer, winter, spring, and birthdays. I’ve been thinking this week about our Fall events and noticed we need something for September. Peanut, the eldest just started school last year, so I’m new to the signpost of how a new class and teacher colors the rest of the year.

I think we’re going to send letters (actual paper with actual stamps…ask your parents, they’ll know) for the boys as school starts.

When Spouse and I married, we kept the lovely notebook in which our vows were handwritten. We take it out each anniversary and write each other a letter to be read the following year. [Well, we did, anyway. We haven’t since Peanut turned Two several years ago. That’s another problem for another day. See also in the forgotten category: personal grooming, libido, sanity, and ability to think at advanced level. We’ll start writing notes to each other again when the kids are in college, right?]

But I thought that starting a journal of letters we write the boys should be family-heirloom-caliber important. So for birthday, first day of school, and last day of school, we’re going to write a letter to each boy and mail it. We’ll keep a scan of each as a .pdf and make them a book of the images for when they go to college. Or the Peace Corps. Or prison. (Laugh all you want, but if you prepare for everything, steady stress comes from the daily nonsense yet the catastrophic stuff seems manageable. Example? College funds easily transition as use for bail.)

Peanut starts first-grade this week. I’m nervous for him…will The World adore him or abuse and misunderstand him…but not as terrified as I was last year. He can now read a bit, but I’m not expecting him to read these letters from me and Spouse. I’m just hoping to add gravity to the year—to create milestones that don’t exist anymore in our electrically homogenized year. If I can’t get them to bed at 4pm in the winter like agrifamilies did in the 1800s, at least I can write a missive that makes them feel guilty for not appreciating me, right?

Butter starts day care next week. Three times a week for a few hours each morning. I’m devastated. And desperate to blink again. And wrecked. And clawing toward the air. And heartbroken. When words fail me, I steal: “It will work out.” “How will it?” “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.” He’s perfect in every way and will do fine. I’m abhorrently flawed and will not. But that is the way of the world, no?

What do you do for the first day of school (or the transition from Summer to Fall if you homeschool)? If you don’t have children, does your year stretch from New Year’s Day to the next New Year’s Day without markers or do you do repeat something special each year to note the passage of time? Which of your rituals may I steal and fold into our family calendar?

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For my friends Twenty Twenty, The Kitchen Witch, and all others who have little ones poised to make their mark on the world.

Naptimewriting's avatarNaptimeWriting

‘Twas the night before kindergarten
and all through the place
not a creature was stirring
except the frenetic author of this space.

The children were tucked haphazardly in bed
because they fight going to sleep
like most resist the undead.

Preparations were made and concoctions couldn’t lag
sweet potato waffles for breakfast
and tortellini for your lunch bag.
When in the kitchen there arose such a clatter
Spouse ran to the room to see what was the matter.
Homemade honey ice cream was whirring around
and the tea kettle was making a delightful whistley sound.

For what to my addled brain did become clear
was that the family needed enough chamomile
to tranquilize a deer.
So I brewed and I chilled and I diluted in safe steel
that magical herb that would make us all feel
that your first day of school would be more than okay
though nothing in…

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Sad-sack-itis

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Today, my two-year-old asked for help with his wooden train tracks. His trains were upstairs, his train tracks were downstairs, and he preferred relocating the relatively large, intricately linked and somewhat difficult to move rails to transporting the things on wheels.

Cool. It’s a day, man, and we gotta live it however we gotta live it. Happy to be of service if you’re gonna play and not scream.

So I went downstairs and brought the train tracks up.

When I arrived at the new train station, he said, “You good helper, Mommy. Good helper.”

And I got a little weepy.

Because nobody in six and a half years has told me that I’m a good helper. Or if they did, they used a regular, grown-up voice and verbs in their sentence so I didn’t completely internalize what they were saying. Either way, it felt really, *really* good to be noticed.

So, either I need a job with regular performance reviews again, or I need to hear these wonderful children when they thank me. We all know the appreciation in this job is at best implied and at worst deferred until they have kids of their own and call, weeping with the exhaustion and overwhelming terror of having a newborn, toddler, preschooler, or teenager to apologize for what shits they were as kids and to express their awe at what great parents we were to tolerate them.

So I’ll take my “good helper” kudos and chalk up my points for teaching him to ask for help, appreciate it, and articulate his feelings. Plus bonus stickers for actually *being* a good helper.

Now, where do I turn in these tickets for prizes?

Your baby or your life: wilderness edition

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The family and I went camping and as we checked in heard the same dire warnings that we’d heard before: our local bear problems mean lock up every single thing that smells like food. Not in your car, because they’ll claw it apart. Not in your tent because that’s like gift wrap to a bear. If your kids spill, change their clothes and store them in the bear locker. If you have a chance, vacuum out the carseats before you enter the park.

On and on. Lip balm will draw them. A closed can of soda in a car will draw them. Referring to your unsightly waistline as a muffin top will draw them…okay, not that last one. But close.

So we always heed the warnings. Spouse and I watch the kids carefully and pick up every crumb they drop. We put dirty clothes and washcloths in the bear box. We store the bug spray and sunscreen and lip balm in the bear box. We even lock up the backpacks that might have at one time had a cracker in them.

And on night three it occurred to me: I’m still lactating.

I think Butter has weaned. He went from nursing before bed every night to several nights a week to a couple of times a week to forgetting for two weeks to forgetting again for…I think it’s been a month now. I’m a child-led weaning sort, and I don’t offer, don’t refuse. And he’s a toddler, so he’s busy and he forgets and…

What if a bear can smell that you make milk for months after weaning? I’m not kidding. Tiny babies can smell if mama is in the room. Bears are about seven billion times better at smelling.

When my first child was born we visited a wonderful friend. My four-months’ pregnant friend held my four-month-old baby, who took about two minutes before he opened wide and went right for her fully clothed breast. Made a hilarious (or mortifying, depending on whom you ask) wet circle on her shirt.

Because he could smell that her milk had just come in (at about 20 weeks).

If my four-month-old can smell milk through several layers of clothes and unused milk-delivery system, I’m guessing that a bear can smell me through the single-layer-mesh tent windows better than that closed soda in that closed car.

And riddle me this, readers: What week of the month do you think we happened to be camping? I was surprised to find (on day three of the trip) that it was the time during which an old myth holds that women are attacked by bears and mountain lions much more frequently. Blah blah blah pheromones…blah blah blah bleeding…blah blah blah unsubstantiated claims that mostly apply to polar bears.*

Whatever. These wee hour machinations did not inspire relaxed appreciation for the scenery: firmament, heavens, flora, nor fauna.

So now, wide awake at 3am, surrounded by the most beautiful bear country, after three glorious days with my boys and husband, who do you think felt more small and threatened than any woman should?

I lay there, reeking of honeydew ice cream on one end and of sloughed nutrients on the other, desperately hoping I’d live to plan the next camping trip a little better.

It’s rather unfair, I raged, after I spent an hour *terrified* and flinching at every sound. The two things that give me superpowers, the two things that make me the most vital I will ever be in my biological life…those things should not be a life-threatening liability.

I wouldn’t, even if I could, stuff my breasts and uterus into a bear box. I don’t care if the mountain lions and the bears and the wolverines all planned a hunting party with my photo on their usenet.

I can make a human and feed a human. And that means bears will come from miles around to feed on my superhero flesh?

Oh, hell no.

Except there was no “hell no.”

There was a small creature lying next to me who cried, in his sleep, “No! No! Carry!” And he reached his arms toward the sky lit with more enormous stars than I have ever seen in my life. I silently rolled him closer to me and curled around him. Knowing I couldn’t protect him. Knowing that, if anything, my very existence threatened his.

But he twined his fingers in my hair and settled into the warm, sweet baby sleep of a mammal with its mama.

I wanted to sink into our nest.

But his damned breath was so loud I couldn’t listen for bears. I had to choose whether to take this time to be his mama, in all its painful and scary challenges, or to roll away in the name of vigilance and preparedness.

I woke up exhausted and stiff with his fingers still in my hair, hoping the bear would at least wait until I had my patented campfire coffee and cocoa blend.

Sometimes weakness makes you strong. Sometimes strength makes you weak. And sometimes you gotta hope there’s a bumper crop of blueberries, honey, and salmon several miles away.

*Public service note: the myth about bear attacks on menstruating women is patently false. See this article and this study, to which I did not have access in the wilderness, because apparently a wilderness without cell access seems more attractive to nature snobs like me. Must rethink that position next time I’m awake at 3am.

Toddlers are…

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Oh, dear sweet Two-and-a-Half. You’re so delicious. What amazing life skills you have developed.

It shows impressive planning skills to wait until Mommy’s not looking and then do what she just asked you not to do. My! Your scientific mind is certainly in prime display while rolling trucks down the stairs. I know I’ve cost you the  Nobel in Physics by stopping you. But right now it’s not safe. No rolling trucks down stairs.

Hey. No throwing them, either.

Oh, how clever you are to think of ways to achieve your goals yourself. Yes, the refrigerator handle is a pretty handy foothold when you’re trying to get into the freezer for ice cream. I have an idea, too, that’s probably less to your liking. Maybe ask a tall person for help. I know. That would preclude your eventual gold medal in pole vaulting.

You, sir, model quite impressive forethought and patience to ask for a spoon, then throw food at your brother when I go to get it. And again when I turn to look as the doorbell rings. And again when I close my eyes to sneeze. You’re going to be an internationally renowned ninja master if you can teach others not to blink for fourteen hours, too.

I marvel at how prepared you are, already, for college.  How you can sit there an concentrate on carefully removing the screw from the battery door on your train despite having not napped in four days is simply beyond me.

But really, I most marvel at your fine-motor skills. Only an experienced jeweler or a well trained surgeon could take toy pliers and, pinch by pinch, remove most of the potting soil from that palm tree in the living room. And heap it onto the arm of the couch. And call me over, quite proud of your accomplishments. Sorry I gasped and said “uh-oh.” I’m sure that questioning your crowning glory has scarred your for life. But I had to sweep it up. That, my friend, is a no touch.

Even when I’m not looking.

Hey. Did you hear me? Or are your training to be in Congress?