“Five More Minutes”

Being a mommy has lots of implications.  I was prepared for the obvious ones- head chef, taxi, 24-hour on-call service, boo-boo kisser, tear-wiper, snuggle buddy, disciplinarian, etc.

But almost exactly two years into this journey, I realized that if I were going to survive (and more importantly, if my children were going to), I was going to have to develop some wicked negotiating skills.  Because let’s be honest:  our kids are, in our own eyes, the most magical and wonderful creatures we’ve ever known.  But they are master manipulators.  I mean, right out of the gate.   One of the first words that both Ella and Milo ever learned to sign and say was “more.”  Coincidence?  I think not.

And so, as Ella’s vocabulary started expanding, so did her independence.  It got increasingly difficult to get ready for bed, to come and eat the rest of her lunch, to get in the car, to put on her shoes.   Oh and leaving the playground?  Almost makes it not worth it to go in the first place, some days.

So I started telling her she had “five more minutes.”

“Five more minutes, and then we need to leave.”  

“Five more minutes to play upstairs and then it’s time to eat.”  

“Okay, fine.  Five more minutes to stay up, but that’s it.”  

Suddenly, I seemed to be measuring my life in five minute increments, in the same way I had measured it in 3-4 hour increments when they were newborns.   Those days and nights had felt so long and slow when I was right in the thick of it.   And yet somehow, I turned around for just a minute, and they’re now 3 1/2 and almost 2.   Milo still lets me rock him to sleep, but Ella?  She asks for a few stories before bed, and then says, “goodnight, mom.”   Not mommy, not mama.  Just “mom.”   (Soon, I’m sure, to morph into the multi-syllabic elongated “mo-o-o-om” complete with attitude and sass).

The truth is, the days seem long even now.  Those five minutes waiting for the timer to go off so that we can get ready for bed seem to drag endlessly.   I sometimes envision the five more minutes we spend at the playground eating into the already long to-do list I have waiting for me when we get back home.    Some days, I feel that if I have to watch just five more minutes of Bubble Guppies, I will gouge my eyes out with a fork.   Five more minutes playing with their Little People.  Five more minutes reading a book. Five more minutes of tickling on the floor.  Five more minutes swinging on the swings.  Just five. more. minutes.  mommy, PLEASE!  (And do they ever honor MY request to sleep in just five more minutes??  HAH).

And then this morning, as I’m going upstairs to sit and write, Ella asks me to stay downstairs with her for five more minutes, and as I sigh, exhausted because really, all I want is to just sit by myself with a cup of coffee-  it hits me.

What if it’s really not about a power struggle?  What if it’s not that my children are master manipulators, but little creatures who are teaching their mommy how to live in the moment?   What if I started looking at those five minutes as gifts, instead of negotiations.  Would that be so bad?   And what about those parents who would give anything to have five minutes back with their children, who would give anything to have them be healthy for just five more minutes?

And lest anyone should think I’m heaping a steaming hot plate of guilt alongside their turkey today, no.  It’s not that.   It’s just some perspective that I have been severely lacking as of late, and the realization of that, in and of itself, is a gift.  These are exhausting years that call for sacrifice, sacrifice, and just when you think you’re tapped out- even more sacrifice.  And some days, in all brutal and pathetic honesty- I’ve been bitter about it.   There are moments I look at this life I have- the life that I always wanted and thought for sure I couldn’t be lucky enough to live- and even in the midst of seeing how beautiful it is, I still find ways to feel sorry for myself.   Some days, my worst battles aren’t actually with my three year old; they’re with myself.  Over whether or not I live selfishly or selflessly.  I don’t always make the right choice.   But none of us do.  And we’re also allowed to let ourselves off the hook for some of that, too.

The days are long.  Sometimes the very minutes are long.  But the years are short.    We can get back just about everything we give, except for time.  And five more minutes, in the grand scheme of things could be a little- or actually, a lot.

Hurricane, Defined

“Mommy, why didn’t we go to school today?”

“Well, they cancelled your school because of the storm.”

“There’s a storm?”

“Yep, a big storm is coming, with lots of wind and rain.”

“Why??”

“Because that’s what happens during a hurricane.”

“What’s a hurricane?”

“A big storm with really fast winds.”

“Why?”

*sigh*

“Why- what, Bug?”

“Why are there fast winds?”

“There just are.”

“But WHY???”

“Because that’s what happens when a high pressure system and low pressure system collide somewhere out in the ocean, then they start swirling around looking like a Cinnabon, and….*cough-something unintelligible-cough* with warm temperatures and an eye and cumulonimbus clouds.  You know, and wind and rain.”

(Really, do I look like the NBC 12 weather guy?  Come on….)

“Mommy, you’re so smart.”

Here’s to being smack dab in that very short season of life when Mommy still knows everything.

And to keeping our electricity.

Memory Banks

Dear Ella,

One day when you’re older, you might read this blog…and you’ll probably cringe just a little.  Okay, maybe a lot.  You’ll probably be embarrassed, but just remember, one day you’ll be lucky enough to have your turn at humiliating your own kids.  (It’ll be as awesome as everyone tells you it is).   But I hope, that if or when you read these posts, you get a glimpse of your momma’s heart.  I hope that you’ll come to understand that all of the funny, endearing, awkward, scary, and horribly painful moments that scatter your growing up, are making me grow up just as much.  I look back at the pictures of me holding you in the hospital, and I see a baby.  And then I see a kid holding that baby.   I was young and naive and I didn’t know what I was doing, nor did I have any clue what was coming.  And they let me take you home.   Panic.

Case in point:  You won’t remember this, but when you were about 6 months old,  you fell fell off of our bed onto the hardwood floor.  You screamed and I screamed and called your daddy in near hysteria and I thought for sure that you would be permanently brain damaged and of course, it was all my fault (we mom’s want to be sure we can take the blame for everything, you know).   But you were fine- just a little shaken up- and all of my friends consoled me and said, “It happens to everyone.  You’re not a bad mom.”  And then they added,  “And she’s so young, she won’t even remember this.”

And then, relief.  It was as if someone handed me the memory eraser flash thingy from Men in Black.  OF COURSE  you wouldn’t remember that (although, I suppose I’ve just outed myself).  I might have been scarred by the experience, but as long as it was just me and not you, we were golden.  I did some quick calculations and realized that I actually had approximately  2 1/2 more years worth of mistakes and bad judgment calls that probably wouldn’t be retained in your little memory bank.   So I prayed and ask God if he would just go ahead and let me get all of those slip-ups out of my system then.  That way, I could  be a perfect parent for you from your third birthday forward.

But there was a flaw in my plan.  Because I wasn’t prepared for your three’s.  I told everyone I was so proud of you and how you were becoming this independent little person (and it was true), but then your little person started getting REALLY independent and talking back to me and pushing buttons I never even knew I had.  And suddenly, it seemed like I was making more bad calls than ever before- losing my temper and yelling, snapping at you from under the weight of sleep deprivation and our finances and work and all of these things that you had nothing to do with.

Last night was, unfortunately, another one of those nights:  a bedtime routine that had lasted an hour and a half, back-talking, kicking and screaming, wooden toys being hurled across the room at your door.   And there I stood in your room-turned-battle-field, in all of my dinged-up armor.  Weary.  Inadequate. Overwhelmed.  Ready to wave the white flag and lock myself in the bathroom for the rest of the night.    But in spite of the exhaustion, I somehow managed to find just enough strength to say and do something that hurt your heart, and it made me feel sick.   Suddenly, I wished for the days of small goose-eggs and bruises that I could kiss and instantly make better.  There was no bandaid for the kind of hurt you felt last night, and Mommy is sorry, from the bottom of her heart.

It’s sometimes easy for me to forget that being a mother isn’t something I’ve earned.  It’s not a right.  It’s a privilege, and there are times like last night when I feel ashamed to realize that I’ve abused it in some way.   But I hope you and Milo will always know that, no matter what goes down or who happens to be the offending party, being chosen to be your mommy was, and will always be, the best gift I’ve ever been given.

Our capacity to love can only grow when we allow ourselves the capacity to hurt.  And in this family, we’ll be doing a lot of both.  It breaks my heart to think that you’ll probably remember last night at some point.  (I checked on Amazon for those memory eraser things but they were sold out).  But I hope what you choose to remember is how you learned what forgiveness looks like and I hope you know that Mommy is never above asking for it when I’ve hurt you.  You have the biggest heart of any little girl I know.  Don’t ever let that change, Bug.

I love you to the moon and back.   Always.

Mommy

Hope and Earthquakes

 

I really dislike buying pregnancy tests. I thought about it and it’s not like I’m buying Depends or hemorrhoid cream or some other equally embarrassing hygienic item. I’m pretty sure part of it is because I don’t just buy one box.  (They’re like Pringles- you can’t just have one).  I usually pick up two or three boxes because I know I have a problem and I like peeing on sticks and holding my head at certain angles and taking pictures of them to text to my friends to ask, “do you see a line???” And when I don’t see a line, or maybe a barely-there squinter that I can only see when I hold it up to the window and tilt it at a 45 degree angle, I’ll blame the box of “faulty” tests because it’s easier than blaming my body.  So, I figure I had better make sure I have a couple of boxes of tests, just in case one of those boxes is a dud and maybe they just forgot to put enough dye in them or something like that.

 

The thing is, I know my body isn’t faulty at all.  Well, it didn’t use to be.  I’ve done this before- twice. And after I had Milo, I swore up and down that we were done.  After what amounted to almost three years of being either pregnant or breastfeeding and at the mercy of my ever-shifting hormones, I wasn’t sure I wanted to jump on board the baby train ever again.

 

But look what just pulled into the station.

 

And so there I stood, at the counter of CVS trying not to make eye contact with the young man who was ringing me up and I wondered why it couldn’t have been a woman working that day.  She’d at least get it.  I mean, just about every woman has bought a pregnancy test at least once or twice in her life.   Why did I suddenly feel so embarrassed?   Maybe it was because he might have remembered seeing me in there the month before, buying the same tests.   As I took the box of sticks out of the basket, I might as well have been heaving the gigantic elephant in the room up onto the counter by myself.   Look everyone!  I’m trying to get pregnant!  I’ve actually been trying for a while now and I’m starting to feel really beat down because it’s like my body doesn’t work like it used to and even though my OB says it will happen, I’m just not sure I believe him anymore.

That elephant.

But, if I knew anything from past stick-purchasing experiences, I knew he would be like everyone else and at least pretend he didn’t notice them.  Neither of us would say a thing and I’d be on my way.

But then he did say something.   And I wasn’t sure I heard him right the first time.

“I’m sorry, what?”  I stuttered.  Surely, he wasn’t calling me out.  He couldn’t possibly have just asked about the tests.

“Are you hoping?” he said again, a little louder.  But there was a glimmer in his eyes.  He couldn’t have been any older than 21 or 22.  I quickly did a mental checklist of what was in my bag: a package of Fig Newtons and some hair clips.  I knew exactly what he was referring to.

He eyed me with a genuine, disarming kind of smile.  I laughed nervously.  “Oh.”  I felt my cheeks burn a little.   “Yeah.  Yeah, I am.”   

“Boy or girl?” he pressed.

 

“Well, I have one of each, but it wouldn’t matter to me in any case.”  And as I spoke, I felt my embarrassment start to fade, to be replaced by gratitude.

 

“I’m having my first,” he blurted. “It’s a girl.  She’s due on December 20th.”  And I looked at this kid (really, that’s all he was) and it was like his cheeks couldn’t contain his grin.  And I thought about all the things he could have asked me, as it pertained to the boxes of tests–  Are you trying?  Are you pregnant already?  Are you crazy???? (No doubt he’d seen me in the store on any number of occasions with my wild crew).

But he didn’t ask that.  He just asked, simply–

 

Are you hoping?

 

Suddenly, I wondered why I ever thought it taboo for him to bring it up. This kid is getting ready to be a father and I can see just by looking at him that he’s over the moon. Before he’s even held his baby girl, he already gets that buying pregnancy tests is, in fact, a big deal- no matter how many times you’ve done it before.   And instead of seeing a tired, frazzled woman try to pay for her stuff and run, he chose to speak a reality that I haven’t wanted to claim for myself.

 

It’s okay to hope.  (Not only “okay,” but “necessary”).


It’s okay to be vulnerable.  

It’s okay to let people see you try and fail. (But keep trying).

It’s okay to let them hold you up.

It’s okay to think for yourself, to recognize that gut feeling as something more than a sixth sense. To not do what everyone expects you to do.

 

It’s okay to be in the trenches- whatever that looks like.  Be there.  Be all in.  Call for backup, but keep digging- even if it’s on your knees.

I paid for a box of pregnancy tests, but I took away a lot more in that two minute exchange than I had anticipated.  I congratulated him.  I told him to get ready to say goodbye to his money and his will and that his world was about to be turned upside down in all the best ways possible.   And for a minute, I desperately wanted to go back in time to those final weeks when I was pregnant with Ella- to not know what I didn’t know (you know, when I thought that I knew it all) only to be rocked by the earthquake that is the immense love and fear and hope I felt when I held my daughter for the first time.  Who knew the weight of the world was a whopping 6 lbs 13 oz?

 

I’ve been blessed beyond belief, if for no other reason than the fact that I’ve experienced that earthquake twice in my life.

 

And maybe, I’ll get to feel it just once more.

 

Here’s to hoping.

Forget Me Not

Yesterday, I reached my breaking point around 9:40 in the morning- at least a solid three hours before I usually reach it.  The kids were touching me and I didn’t want them touching me.  They were touching each other and provoking each other and I decided that the only way to keep anyone from touching anyone else was to pile them in the car- even though it was a good hour and twenty minutes before Ella’s gymnastics class.  I needed them to be restrained, I needed myself to be restrained, and I needed to drown out their whines with some Mumford & Sons.   Period.

So we drove around.  And I decided that time goes incredibly slowly when you don’t have anywhere you have to be.  I refused to go into Target because killing an hour there would mean killing our disposable income for the rest of the month.  I thought about going to McDonalds for a bacon egg-n-cheese biscuit, but hadn’t I already done that this week?  I considered the park that was up the road, but just didn’t have it in me to run around after the kids.  So we just drove.  Up and down the interstate.  In and out of parking lots.  About every two minutes, Ella asked if we were at gymnastics yet and why were we driving so much and could she please get out of the car now and a couple of other random questions, and I think after the first dozen questions, I just started saying “yes.”  I’m not positive, but I think I might have told her she could have a pony.

Finally, I decided we would just pull into the parking lot of the gym and I would let her play with my phone and Milo had a V-tech laptop and hopefully that would keep them occupied until her class started at 11.  It was 10:30, but maybe if we made it to 10:50, I would just take her in early and her teachers would let her run around before her class started.  I was actually kind of proud of myself for being early, for once.   We would be there on time- ahead of time, actually.   She’d have time to get her shoes off, find her cubby, stretch and warm up, and I wouldn’t be the lame mom who was once again busting in the door ten minutes late to class.

The minutes ticked by.  Finally, it was 10:51 and I decided we could go on in.  We walked through the door, I put her hair in a pony tail, took her shoes off, and her teacher whisked her into the gym.  Wow. A lot of other kids got there early, too.  In fact, I didn’t see any other parents.  That was kind of odd.  Everyone usually gets dropped off around the same time and the lobby is usually hopping.  Hmm.  I grabbed Milo by the hand and we turned to walk out the door to run some errands.

And that’s when her teacher called out, “see you at 11:30!”



11:30?  Her class is only a half hour today??  And then it hit me.

Oh.

Ohh.

Her class didn’t start at 11.  It started at 10:30.  Just like the other six times we had been there.

I’m not exactly sure why, but all of the sudden, I remembered the time my dad was filling up the family car on one of our many long car trips between Lousiana (where we were currently living) and Virginia.   It was late and we had been on the road for a good seven hours by then.  He walked inside to pay the cashier, hopped back in the car, and we took off.   With the nozzle still in the gas tank.  Ripped it clear off of the hose.

I tried to hold it in, but soon, both my mom and I were overcome in fits of laughter as we watched my poor dad first turn around in shock, then hang his head in defeat, and finally get out of the car, walk over to pick up the nozzle and take it inside to the cashier.   For years after that, I wondered how someone could forget something like that.  It must really suck to get old, I thought.

And now I know I was right.  It does suck.

Like when I pulled up to the bank earlier this week to return the tube that I had forgotten to put back in the machine and that I found only after I’d gotten home.  Or when I put the milk in the pantry and the cheerios in the refrigerator.  Or the times- way too many to count- when I’ve left wet towels in the washer for a couple of days.  Or when I made my kid show up a half hour late to a class she’s been attending for weeks, when I was sitting in the parking lot for that entire half hour watching the minutes tick by.

I take small comfort in knowing that one day, parts of her brain will go dormant too.   It makes me smile just a little bit, actually.

And I will tell her that it’s funny, the things she’ll remember.  And sometimes, it’s even funnier what she won’t.

Full Circle

So it appears, my immune system has an uncanny ability to sense when I’m on vacation.  Maybe it was the salty air, or the crisp citrusy white wine.   Or, it could have been the fact that at some point in the week leading up to our vacation, I simply said, “I’m so excited to go away!” and by doing so, invited all of the surrounding germs to pack themselves away in my toiletry bag.

I’m betting that it might simply be that I have a three year old and an almost 20 month old.

Whatever the case, all I know is that for the past four years- as it pertains to vacations, all I have to do is show up, and my immune system shuts down.

So, in a state of something close to deja vu, I drove to the local Doctor’s Care facility just up the road from our condo.  The same one I’ve visited every other time we’ve been here.   I pulled up in the parking lot, feeling more than a little bitter that I knew exactly where it was.  It’s the one right across from the Treasure Island Putt-Putt, with its dusty blue chairs, oatmeal-and-mauve colored walls, array of retirement magazines, and 11×14 prints of random medical pictures– cross-sections of things like the urinary tract and an esophagus and god knows what else.

I walked in to find approximately four empty chairs and decided that the only thing worse than feeling bad is having to sit somewhere and feel bad in close proximity to other people who feel bad too.   I twice scared the poor old lady to the right of me when I coughed, so I sat very still and wheezed and checked facebook and wondered if I looked as bad as I felt.  I scanned the room and took a mental inventory:  a young-ish couple- the husband had obviously done something very painful to his lower back and was twisted in a very awkward way on the edge of his chair.  The old woman next to me was apparently with her daughter.  Her hands shook as she rummaged around in her purse for something (I imagined it was probably hand sanitizer or lysol spray, after the way she had re-coiled from my boisterous coughing).  Then, a young boy- Nintendo DS in hand- sat quietly with his dad.  He  had a bucket beside him. (The four empty chairs were all located around that poor kid).   A 20-something blond and uber tan girl hobbled through the door with a cane, her right foot bruised, swollen, and jutting from her ankle in a grotesque manner.   We were a homely bunch.  Tired, worn-down, sick.   Impatient.  We exchanged sympathetic nods if our gazes met, but no one was up for small talk, understandably.  Which worked for me, because I’m no good at small talk.  I’d rather people-watch and be a busy-body.

After about an hour, a man walked up to the front desk and signed in.  Then, he went back outside and returned with a tiny woman.  She was 1/3 his size, hunched over, with a head of silvery white hair.  She clung to his elbow, walking gingerly, and her hands were splotched with sun spots and bruises.  Her face was worn, and her eyes were kind but possessed something of a confused look.  As they walked by, I heard him say, “I’m right here, Mom.  I gotcha.”  They settled themselves a few chairs down from me, and I glanced out of the corner of my eye to watch as he helped her sit down.  I noticed the way he took her purse and placed it gently on the floor beside her and the way his hand found hers again in a loving, reassuring gesture.  As the minutes passed, I found myself stealing glances at them more so than the others in the room.  It’s not that I had never seen a son looking after his elderly mother.  It was just something about the way he spoke to her, the way he interacted with her- like it wasn’t an inconvenience for him to be there, not like it probably was for the rest of us to be whiling away the hours in a crowded doctor’s office.

I thought of Milo.   I thought about how big he seemed to me last night when I went in to look at him before I went to bed- the way he was stretched out and somewhat contorted in the bottom right corner of the pack-n-play we brought here to the beach.  I remembered how I had caught a glance of myself in the mirror while I was holding him and noticed for the first time that his feet could now wrap all the way around the back of my waist and how I felt my heart break a little bit again upon noticing it.  I thought about how these last few nights when I’ve been rocking him to sleep that it really felt more like he was the one holding me- how his arms wrapped around my neck, stroking the back of my head with his hand, and how he sometimes caressed the side of my arm while humming something in his tiny sing-song voice.

“You’ll love having a boy,” all of my boy-mama friends had said after we had found out we were going to have a Milo.  “There’s just something about a boy and his mama.”



I couldn’t have known how true that would be.   For all of the sweet moments I’ve shared with Ella, it seems that for the time being, we’ve hit a patch of butting heads and vying for “queen of the household.”  And that’s okay.  I want her to be strong and to go her own way and I know her spunkiness will serve her well as she gets older.  But there’s something so pure about my connection with Milo- the way his face beams when I walk into his room, the way he runs up to me with his mouth gaping open and drool flinging about, the slobbery open-mouthed kisses, the way he burrows himself into my chest and belly to watch TV.  I tell people all the time that my kids are everything to me.  Because it’s true.  But as I held Milo last night, I was struck by the realization that, for a time that’s quickly diminishing, I am his everything, too.   And I am reveling in that while it lasts.  Because I’m not everything to Ella anymore.  Oh, I’m still a lot to her, I think.  She still needs me.  She still wants me around, and hopefully she will for many more years.  But she’s becoming more and more self-sufficient.  She pours her own cereal, turns on the TV, gets her own sippy out of the fridge, runs to the bathroom when she needs to go, dresses herself (god help me).

With even these small advances in her independence, things have gotten easier in our household in the recent weeks.  But because parenthood presents so many dichotomies, it’s gotten easier… but it’s also gotten sadder too, in a way.  Because it stings when we recognize we’re not needed as much, even if it’s the natural order of things.  We strive to raise our kids to become self-sufficent, to think their own thoughts, go their own ways, and prime their wings in preparation to “fly the coop.”   But that doesn’t mean we don’t break out the box of tissues or hope they decide they’re maybe not quite ready to let go of us yet.

Everyone has probably read “I’ll Love You Forever.”  I’ll be honest– I’ve always found it a tad creepy that a grown woman is still sneaking into her son’s house (and vice versa) in the middle of the night, but I get the point, and of course, I still blubbered like an idiot when I read it for the first time.  As parents, it’s so easy to get stuck in the here and now.  It’s easy to focus on how long the days seem, how sleepless the nights are, to worry endlessly if we’re doing it “right.”

And then there’s an older man and his frail, aging mother in a doctor’s office- holding her and loving her in a way she probably never imagined he would so many years ago when she held him.   A reminder that this parenthood stuff isn’t just about what happens today or tonight, or next week, or even next year.   It’s a twisting path that we walk, putting one foot in front of the other, because that’s all we can do.

And it’s one that, if we’re truly lucky, will eventually come back full circle one day.

Whose Tantrum Is It Anyway?

Confession:  I get into arguments with my three year old.  I wish I could say I was kidding.   Some days, I find the inner strength to take the higher road, keep my voice calm and steady.  “Love, I understand you’re upset, but you really need to take a nap.”  Or, as I stealthily dodge a half-eaten turkey sandwich, “Wow, that must make you really angry.”

Then, there are times when I’ve reached my breaking point, and it’s only 1:05 p.m. and I say, “To HELL with the higher road.  Love and Logic, my ass.”  

 

 

“ELLA.  CLAIRE.  You WILL go upstairs and take a nap!”

 

“No!”

 

“Yes ma’am.”

 

“NO!  I want five more minutes.”

 

“NO, we’re going up now.  RIGHT NOW!”

 

“NOOO!   I’m gonna hit you, mommy.  You’re ugly!”  (Her new favorite phrase- isn’t it charming??)

 

. . .and before I know it, I get overly excited and then I over-deliver punishment:

 

You do, and you’ll NEVER be able to drive a car, EVER!  (Wait….mental note:  Next time, it might be more effective to just take away her TV privileges).

And then, silence.  But it’s not over.  Not even close.  Now, we’ve entered the “death-ray stare” phase.

I snarl her name slowly, through gritted teeth, stretching it’s normal two syllables into six.   I lock my pupils into firing position and we stare each other down, jaws set, chins jutted out.  I also try to make my nostrils flare because I’m sure that would add to the overall effect, but I’ve never mastered it, to be honest.  (I’m working on it).   We stare, without blinking, and now my eyes are stinging and watering, but I won’t give in.  Then, she makes some sort of guttural noise in her throat that I swear I’ve only heard on National Geographic.   Pretty impressive.  And still, I think:

She will. not. win. this.  

I’M the mommy.  I’M the boss.   I’M mean, damnit.   I can dish it out just as good as she can and I’ve got way more experience.

And so I pick her up as she’s kicking, screaming, clawing.  I carry her upstairs and gently place her on her bed, tuck her in and kiss her forehead.    Okay, no.  I don’t always do that.   Usually, I drop her on her bed and haphazardly throw her blanket on her.  Then, I say something menacing like, “I don’t care if you stay up here and cry the rest of the afternoon because you’re acting like a big baby.”   And then, because I know I’m already WELL past the point of no return, I storm out of her room and slam the door, just for good measure.

I stand outside her room for a moment and wait.  I keep waiting to feel accomplished.  To feel just a little bit victorious.

But I don’t.  Not one bit.

Instead, I feel defeated.  Deflated.   Exhausted.  Maybe even a little pathetic.

Then, something deep inside me starts to hurt.   And in about 90 seconds, I’ve gone from hell-bent to heartbroken.  It’s not the first time, and I’m positive it won’t be the last.  And oh God, here comes the guilt.   Oh God, have I broken her?  How big of a check should I be prepared to write for her future therapy sessions?  Will she grow up to hate me?  Walk on egg-shells around me?  The inner dialogue is incessant.  It’s utter torture.

And so I walk back into her room, sit down on the bed with her, and even though I don’t deserve it, she fumbles her way into my lap and curls up.  And I cry, too.  Oh, I wish I was always so quick to forgive people the way she forgives me.  Being a three year old is rough.  And being a mommy to a three year old might be even rougher.

And in the end, I’m sure I’ve learned the bigger lesson.   Funny how that works.

Poop Art & the Art of Poop

“Is that chocolate, or poop?  Here, let me smell.”

If you’ve ever uttered those words, you’re either a mom, or someone who is entirely too curious for their own good.  (If it’s the latter, please go get help).

As a mommy, I bear many titles.  “Expert of all things poop” is not one I thought I’d ever add to my collection, but alas, here I am.  I’m assuming it started the day I changed my first diaper three years ago.  As the weeks passed, what was once considered taboo became a regular topic of dinnertime conversation, right down to the nitty gritty details- consistency, color, smell, volume, and gag-factor.   “It was so weird.  Kinda orange, and I could see little chunks of sweet potato…oh, can you pass me the salad dressing?”

Ella pooped.  I changed her.   Wash, rinse, repeat.  Several hundred times.  It was often barely noteworthy and as long as it was contained in her diaper, pretty tolerable.  But God must have sensed that life wasn’t interesting enough for me, and that maybe, I needed that little extra push out of my OC comfort zone.  So, he gave me a beautiful little boy, who I’m convinced is also part canine.  There is nothing this kid won’t touch, pick up, and then immediately proceed to put in his mouth.  Nothing.  So when I walked into his room one afternoon after his nap to find little brown smear stains on his crib rails and mattress, I feared the worst.   Then gagged.   The next morning, there was more of the same, now including small pellets around the floor of his crib.   When I fussed at him, he simply clapped his hands and laughed at me.  Looking back now, I think there might have even been a hint of pride in his baby blue eyes.   This, I was not prepared for.  Poop was supposed to stay in the diaper.  Maybe sometimes, it’s allowed to come out, but only if they’re sick.   I realized I was going to have to step up my game in order to keep from becoming a daily pooper-scooper.   It’s been a few weeks now, and after searching to high heaven for onesies in a size 3T along with threatening the use of duct tape, I think he’s finally gotten the message:  Please unleash your creative side, son, but by all means, CHOOSE A DIFFERENT MEDIUM.

I had barely gotten Milo’s poop art under control before we entered full-fledged potty-training mode with Ella and I mentally shifted gears.  Now, it was time to learn the art of poop.  You know, how to coax it out naturally and try to make it sound fun, maybe even appealing.  Ever had those moments when you say something and pray to God that you’re not being secretly recorded?   If you haven’t had any of them before you start the potty training process, you’ll experience a host of those moments while you sit endlessly on the bathroom floor beside your preschooler, praying to see just one floater.  Just one.

This week,  I actually personified poop:

“Poop is nice.  He (She?) wants to come out and go to the party in the potty.”  



I found myself bringing every topic of conversation back around to poop:

“Mommy, when birds make nests in the top of trees, do the nests fall out?”
“No, they stay up in the tree and the birds can go to sleep there.  And speaking of birds, do you know what birds like to do?  
“What?”
“They poop.”



We drew pictures of potties and pictures of poop.  I pretended not to hear Ella when she told me she had named her poop “Mr. Man.”

We made up songs about it.  In case you’re wondering, there are lots of words that rhyme with poop:  soup, stoop, loop, croup, dupe, group, coop, hoop, goop.  

I bought stock in every brand of dried fruit that Ella would eat.  I stuffed her silly with craisins, dried mangoes, prunes, high fiber cereals, apples, whole wheat toast and apple juice. I watched her like a ticking time bomb.   How was she NOT going?  It had been three days and I knew she was miserable.

She sat on the potty and I read her books.  We waited for poop.  I painted her toenails.  I painted my toenails.   I made funny poop sounds with my mouth.   I made toilet paper origami.  I offered chocolate chips.  Cookies.   A trip to Target to buy a new toy.  I told her pooping was so much fun, it was almost like riding a carnival ride.   We sat.  And sat.  And nothing.

  

 

 

When I felt like we weren’t making any progress, I found comfort in the wise and poignant words of a saying that has become one of my parenting mottos:

“Sh** happens.”   

And in this case, quite literally, it was going to happen- sooner or later.  We would wait it out.  Keep our chins up.  Drink apple juice and pear nectar.  Then a few mornings ago, unbeknownst to me, Ella wandered into the bathroom by herself while I was getting Milo his breakfast.  Minutes later, an enthusiastic screech pierced the air: “Mommy!!!!! POOOOOP!!!!!”

Never were two more glorious words spoken.  We looked in the potty.  We danced and jumped up and down.  Milo came in and started clapping (God love that kid.  He had no idea why, but he wanted in on the fun).

“It looks like a whale!” she exclaimed.

I stared at it for a moment, as if trying to play some twisted version of the “shapes in clouds” game.

“It DOES look like a whale,” I agreed emphatically.

 

I’m aware that in that very minute as I stood studying my daughter’s “accomplishment,” I had once again become that mom I said I would never be when I was “pre-mom.”  Suddenly, I was the Clorox wipes commerical Mom.  The mom who blogs, tweets, and posts updates about her child’s bladder and bowel-emptying abilities.   The mom who imagined shapes out of her kid’s excrements.  

 

But I wouldn’t change a thing about it.   We do crazy, inconceivable, yes- even gross- things in the name of building our children up and setting them up for success.   

 

 I’m proud of you, Bug (even though I know one day you’re going to despise me for writing about this). 🙂

 

  

"Good Part, Sad Part"

For the past several months, we’ve been doing “good part, sad part” of our days at the dinner table.  It took a little while to catch on, but now it’s a regular thing with our family and Ella is often the one who initiates the conversation, which I love.

After a particularly rough afternoon and naptime debacle,  we sat around the table and Ella said, “Mommy, ask me what my sad part of the day was.”  (Usually, she asks one of us first, so this was kinda different).

“Okay, what was your sad part today, Bug?”

“When I was crying in my room and you locked the door.  I really wanted you to come in and wipe my face.  If you had just come in and wiped my face, I would have gone to sleep.”

{Did you hear that sound?  That would be the sound of a knife ripping through my heart}.




She said it just like that, too.  I’ve always known that she’s an old soul, but she sometimes speaks with such concision and maturity that it frightens me.  I looked at Jake, searching his eyes for some kind of response of my own.  Then, his mouth turned down a little at the corners.  Crap.

Yes, she had thrown another of her stellar tantrums.  And yes, I had locked the door because I had warned I would do so if she continued to get up.  From downstairs, the muffled sobs really all sounded about the same, all of them intermittently laced with “mommy..” and “come in here…” and “nap..” and well, I just tuned it out.   Eventually, it got quiet and I had patted myself on the back for sticking it out and not giving in.   Not only did I need to follow through with what I had told her would happen, but, whether right or wrong, I also felt a certain amount of entitlement to my own rest time.

But something about the way she spoke at the table last night broke me.  After a few minutes, I realized why.  It wasn’t about “discipline versus no discipline” or because I felt that I shouldn’t have followed through on what I had told her I would do.  Instead, her words made me realize that often, I treat parenting as a “cause-effect” relationship, not always a “mother-child” relationship.  It’s easy to do, especially in the three’s, with all of it’s button pushing, negotiations and boundary-drawing (then erasing, then re-drawing).   But Ella doesn’t recognize this yet.  The only difference between these two scenarios, to my three year old, is a comforting snuggle or the wiping of tear-stained cheeks, even if those tear-stained cheeks had been warned, multiple times.   So, while it didn’t seem like much to me, it was HUGE to her.

I sometimes forget, from high atop my mountain of discipline justifications, to climb down and see things from her vantage point.

“Oh.  Oh….Bug, I’m so sorry about that.  I didn’t know that’s all you wanted.   Mommy will listen better next time, okay?”




Her face instantly brightened up.  (Man, I’m so thankful she doesn’t know how to hold a grudge).  “It’s okay Mommy. I know you didn’t mean it….  She looked down at her plate, then back up at me.


Hey, mommy??”  




I winced just slightly, waiting for her to twist the knife a little more.

“If I eat all my pasta, can I have some mango ice cream??”






And suddenly, we’re on to the good part of our day.  Just like that.   This is life with a three year old.

Just Keep Swimming

I honestly can’t remember when I last wrote a post.  (bad, bad K).   It usually only takes 3 or 4 days of no writing or some other creative output to cause me to shrivel up like, well…like my plants in our brown front yard.  I’ve been throwing all of my spare time and energy into starting up my photography business and wow, is it overwhelming.  Fun, but overwhelming.  Between reading blogs and tutorials, studying rules of exposure, composition, color, etc., researching marketing and branding strategies, and working with Jake to launch a new website and corresponding blog, there just hasn’t been much time to do anything else that I love.

But admittedly, I haven’t been the best at managing my time.  When I first decided to pack in the piano-lesson teaching and shift my artistic gears into neutral, I figured I would just take things day by day.  I’d work from home, when I could.   I heard and believed rumors of phenomena like napping children and creative space.  Oh, and energy (how silly of me).  A few years from now when my babes are in school, I’ll probably shed a tear or two (they miiiight just be happy ones) and be grateful to have had these precious, fleeting and frustrating years with them.  But I also think I might find myself standing in my silent kitchen, which for once isn’t littered with tupperware lids and bread crusts, and think, “I saw that going differently in my mind.”

The truth is, I’m not good at making choices.  Never have been.  Even now, standing in the makeup aisle of Target can nearly give me a panic attack.   Jake learned early on in our relationship to never, ever ask me where I wanted to eat.  I’d change my mind seventeen times before we finally landed on a restaurant and by that point, we were both too crabby and hungry to talk to each other for the first half of our meal.

But those are just little things.

There was the time I lost a scholarship to VCU because I decided at the very last minute that I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to major in music anymore.  I decided that maybe I’d like to write, be a journalist. So I picked a track in mass communications. And precisely one semester later, I was back in the music office filling out a change of major form.

Seven years and one Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education later,  I’m now using the years I spent holed up in musty practice rooms to….um, launch my photography business.  The piano is sitting dormant in the corner of our dining room collecting dust, and if given the choice, I’d still grab a pen and paper before I’d even think of parking my butt on that piano bench.  I’ve also decided that if Ella or Milo should tell me they want to major in music, I will probably have to bite clear through my own tongue to keep from saying anything.  It will be their choice, not mine.  (Repeats over and over).

And it’s ironic, how much I hate having to choose, because I find myself in a season of life where I’m having to make more choices than ever before.  Some I make all by myself.  Some, life makes for me.  (I’m still not sure which ones I tend to resent more).  Hands down, the easiest decision I make in a given day is deciding which creamer to put in my coffee.  From there, it gets much more complicated:

“Do I sit down on the floor and play with my kids or do I turn on a movie so I can send out those emails?”  

“Do I clean the bathrooms while they nap, or do I finish editing those photos?”  

“Should Jake and I take the evening to reconnect, or should we work on our individual projects after the kids go to sleep?”  

“Do I play with my camera, or do I write?”

“Meditate, or work-out?”

And somewhere, in between every choice I make or don’t make, there’s that tiny voice that tells me I shouldn’t have to choose.  Why can’t I just do it all?   Because I can if I really try.  I’m just not doing it right yet.  

It reeks of immaturity.  A voice that preys especially on the young, the energetic, the eternally optimistic.  It dupes us into believing exactly what marketing companies around the world are paid the big bucks to make us believe:  we can do it all, have it all, be it all.  And if we can’t, don’t, and aren’t- then we’re obviously not trying hard enough.  Period.  

So this voice accompanied me out of high school, into college, through my engagement and early years of marriage, and got ever louder until I couldn’t discern which was my own voice anymore.  It finally took panic attacks and trips to counseling to make me realize there was no other choice than to have it bound and gagged.  

And yet, like a cockroach in a nuclear holocaust, it refuses to die.  Although not anywhere near as loud and obnoxious as it once was, there are still echoes of it in my day to day life.  Like, my first inclination to be frustrated with myself that I let my blog fall to the wayside.  Because, why shouldn’t I be able to have the time to write up my business plan, blog, have tickle fights with the kids, cook, take care of the house, go to doctor appointments, have playdates, have long conversations with Jake over dinner, visit with family, balance the checkbook, shave my legs, actually open the new Pilates DVD I ordered 4 months ago.  In reality, I’m extremely lucky if all of the above happens in the span of a week.

Big time reality check.

I don’t have anything figured out.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  Both my kids are screaming upstairs in their rooms, fighting naptime, I have paperwork to fill out and submit for my business license, and I haven’t figured out what I’m making for dinner tonight.  But for now, I’ve decided that the best way to reel myself back in is with an open bag of chocolate chips and a cup of coffee.  

There are many people and forces in my life that require my steady grace and patience.  But it never ceases to amaze me on days like today, that the person who always needs it most, is myself.

And so I take comfort in the words of a beloved blue fish on Ella’s current favorite movie:

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do?  We swim, swim.”

(And also, don’t forget to come up for air).  

Wise fish, that Dory.