Happy, Sad (and that’s okay), and Hopeful Thoughts for the End of the Year.

It is after lunch now, and that I have been awake since 2 a.m. is only a slight exaggeration.  I decided earlier in the week that I needed to do something to lift a cloud I’ve found over me a lot lately, so I aimed for a 6 a.m. yoga class that would’ve taken place today.  After another (another. another.) Eli-filled night of screaming and nursing and rocking, I dragged myself out at 5:45 to get my Zen on and my chakras aligned and my hips released and, oh please, just to make me all happy and buzzed like I get after a thorough yoga sweat.  It’s really a bit misleading to make it sound like getting to the class was hard.  I was inhumanely tired, but I had a chance to go and do something. Something nice. And something alone.  What was hard was getting there and seeing that the studio was closed for the holidays, and trying to observe instead of implode when I found myself falling to pieces over a trivial matter.  It’s been one of those weeks.

And it’s also been one of those weeks when you try extra hard to hang on to all of your gratitude.  Last week was the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, an event so layered with horror and sadness in every direction that my mind has never found any entry into saying word one about it, except to ask my husband whether his work holiday party, which was held on the day of, was cancelled.  So I hugged my babies tighter along with everyone else.  And I said my prayers out there, to whatever there is, for whomever could use it.  But gratitude doesn’t cancel out stress, exhaustion, and one’s personal hardships.  And beating yourself up over that fact doesn’t serve a soul.

I remember after my sister died, on top of mourning, I felt sick with guilt for that very same mourning.  I seethed at myself for daring to wail over the loss of someone I bickered with so often.  Someone I didn’t call enough.  Someone who I judged and who judged me.  God yes, we loved each other.  But it was the love of two sisters in their twenties, each fueled by their own life’s drama and nowhere near the place where you can sit back and appreciate, with true perspective or real maturity, what was before you.  We were closer to that point, though, and I was so very angry we didn’t get to finish our story.  More so that she didn’t get to finish hers.  There is no sense to be made of accidental drowning of a 28 year old who’d been a lifeguard as a teen.  And I didn’t want to pretend it made sense.  And I really, really didn’t want to pretend that those who grieved her had a right to act like we had done enough, known her enough, tried hard enough, such that the story was done and we could say good-bye.  It took me a long time to make any peace with that feeling, and the peace has all come from time.

I’m not sure it makes sense, but this feeling I have now – one that I have often but is especially acute at the moment – is familiar to me because of losing my sister.  It is a sense that I don’t deserve to feel negative emotions (and therefore certainly do not deserve any sense of catharsis) because I don’t really appreciate what I have.  It’s the “Of course, my kids are great” syndrome.  Needing to remind yourself, others, the ether, that you know this time is precious in spite of your complaints.  That these people you are raising are miracles.  I know I am wrong to begrudge myself the right to feel lousy – without layering it with shame.  But it is hard to really let that sink in.  I’m working on it.

It’s been an exhausting year.  New house, new city, new (old) country.  New friends, new baby, and for Will, a new job that is poised to swallow him whole if he lets it.  Not to mention we did a different version of all those new things not two years beforehand when we moved from California to Germany.  Will and I have grown up immeasurably in the last few years, and we’re solid.  We’re solid but we’ve got little or nothing left for “us,” which neither of us spend much time complaining about, but it still takes its toll.  In the past few weeks, Eli has nearly stopped napping, stricken apparently with late-onset colic (that’s not a thing, but it feels like a thing), spending much of the day screaming.  And my reaction has been less than exemplary.  Lately, we’ve decided that two kids is all we’re going to have, which makes sense, and on almost every level it feels like (these) two kids are all I am equipped to deal with.  Except the level that that is heartbroken at the thought of never holding a new baby in my arms.  Maybe it’s the confluence of events today, from winter solstice, Eli’s 6 month birthday, to the not surprising (but still somewhat relieving) non-happening of the Mayan foretold apocalypse, but my heart feels heavy and so full.

I was going to write about how I worked out in loafers this morning because I forgot to wear sneakers to the gym.  That would’ve been a funnier and more chipper story.  I looked like a fool, for the record.  I’m talking blue denim loafers, which already verges on silly without pretending they’re appropriate for an elliptical machine.  Alas.

None of this is not to say that I think complaints and laments are good to dwell on.  Indeed, they are nothing less than toxic.  But to deny the feelings as they arise?  That’s not good.  The whole “two arrows bit” – pain is not avoidable; but suffering is.  For me, pushing down the pain I feel from an objectively simple but subjectively challenging and wearing life always comes back up as suffering.  The pain from when my nerves are shot from my son screaming for hours on end, unable or unwilling to get the sleep he so apparently needs.  Or the pain of losing my temper at my daughter for the umpteenth time, and seeing her wince at the sound of my loud, shrill voice.  It’s a tricky line to walk: openness and release versus glum self-pity.  And rarely can I come to any internal consensus on which side I’m on.  But I’m trying.

It is crystal clear at times, though, that I let suffering get the best of me.  And because I’m working on “it,” because I am trying, the person who manifests during those times no longer feels like me.  And that seems like a step.  Where I’ve not been able to get yet, however, is the presence of mind to talk this being when she is stomping around, sniping at her husband, being dismissive of her children, and generally stewing in problems colored heavily by theatrics and self-martyrdom.  I go quiet and let her run the show.  And I know that in order to get further, I need to give myself some space to feel lousy, sad, overwhelmed without a voice judging me for my pettiness.  Because that voice? The one that says “BUT YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL!” All that voice really wants is a whole lot more darkness.

Today I had the opportunity take the kids and spend a couple hours with other moms.  Women I met only months ago, some of whom have become absolute pillars to me.  These are people who make you understand how villages raise a child.  It’s not about cooperative preschooling, or tag-teaming diaper changes.  It’s about culling the strength of many so that when one of us wanes, there is still enough to go around.  On days, like today – and a lot of days lately, it is a place for me to speak about my pain and watch much of it evaporate after a sincere “Oh, I’m sorry.  That sounds terrible.”  When the baby who I don’t have patience for at the moment gets cuddled by a friend, giving me the space to go and take a precious moment with my older child and feel my cup get fuller.  Getting out and seeing people during dark moments, for me, is real progress.  I am tremendously grateful to them, and, as hard as it is to say because it is against such deeply ingrained habits to be kind to myself whatsoever, I am proud of me, too.

I don’t like to get this lofty on paper.  It makes me feel like a fraud.  I do not believe myself an expert on anything, let alone contentment.  But as this year comes to an end and in the midst of a dark time on which we all work hard to shed our (twinkling) lights, I guess I just had some thoughts on it all. So, the good can’t cancel out the bad.  Expecting it to and bullying yourself over the inevitable failing makes one’s load that much heavier. 

Thank you to my friends, my family, my amazing, loving, devoted, forgetful, over-worked, and determined husband, to the best teachers a mom could ever ask for: my (im)perfect children, and even … thank you to me.  Here’s to room to cry or laugh, to release of both, and to the true gratitude that can finally settle in once we let go.

Thanks for the gifts and lessons, 2012!  I am hoping to get at least a couple good nights of sleep before we start in on all that 2013 will bring.

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My Son's Pink Boots

Now that I've got a son and a daughter, my usual levels of hyper gender-awareness are even heightened. It was easy to put my daughter in whatever clothes I wanted.  Dinosaurs or kittens.  Pink or blue.  And I did so at my whim, trying neither to diminish the feminine nor glorify it; an attempt to postpone the day that my wild, sensitive, stubborn, perceptive, loving child absorb a sense of the power or importance of "prettiness" before the world shoved it down her throat. 

Up until quite recently, it was a common occurrence for people to mistake Edie for a boy.  I keep her hair short, and on the days she had no signifying pink on her person, she was often thought a lad.  That does not happen anymore, because preschool happened.  And that means my sponge of a daughter now has an intricate classification system of what is for boys and what is for girls, and even tells me the exact source of her gender attribution from time to time.  "That," she'll say "is a Matilda shirt.  Da sleeves are puffy.  Wookit dat.  I smoosh dem."  One morning, as I tried to get her to put on some grey sweatpants, she collapsed on the floor in anguish, and after a some indecipherable blubbering, I gleaned between sobs that she was begging me not to make her wear "boy" pants.  These were in fact from a girls section of a store.  But they were 100% grey.  I've since sewn hearts on them - it's come to that.  Sometimes she'll wear them now, always taking the time to point out the embellishment that makes them acceptable.  This did not happen just a few months ago.  She wore a dress as happily as she wore a boxy navy blue tee shirt.  These preferences do not stem from her DNA. 

But I am decidedly not trying to raise Baby X, either.  I certainly read "female".  My family is not a performance piece, and I totally understand and respect Edie's desire to fall in line.  It's the pull to be part of society. It's natural. It's limiting. But right now, it's simple.  There will be days to come when it all gets more complicated for her, so I do appreciate the grace of this moment, knowing it won't always be so easy.  But I can't pretend to like watching my daughter in emotional pain over the thought of not displaying her gender the way she's been shown she ought to.

And then there is little guy Eli.  If you know me, you may have told me how much he looks like a little boy.  If you do not, you may well have told me how pretty my daughter is.  Both of these things happen. A lot.  I don't correct people on the s/he issue unless not doing so will result in my dancing around pronouns in a disingenuous way.  I mostly hate the correcting because people look positively stricken when they realize they've called a boy "she".  As a "she," who is raising a "she," I'm a little put off by that reaction.  Moreover, Eli is a baby.  He's not macho.  He's not femme.  He's cuddly and needly and giggly and drooly.  And, yeah, there is some male genitalia up in that diaper.  But besides a higher risk for getting your shirt peed on, it truly makes no difference at the moment.  I know that won't be the case forever.

Because as sad as it is to see Edie turn away from ways to express herself and to expend her precious energy on performing "girl," she does not devalue that which is for boys.  Not the way we all do when it comes to "girl" things for our boys.  Even me.  Even women's studies major feminist stick-in-the-mud me.  I didn't know the sex of either child before they were born (and folks: it's sex. Babies have a sex. You don't find out the gender.  You presume the gender and statistically speaking you may well be right.  But it's the sex the ultrasound tech can discern.  Not the psychosocial, behavioral, cultural, etc. experience of being a boy or girl.) So, I had lots of yellows and duckies and beige as far as clothes.  And, some boy stuff.  That is, clothing or decorations that say: boy.  But none that read: girl. I have had to face that a lot more this time around.  I have given away truck loads of Edie's old clothes only to replace them with the drab palette of little boy.  It's not just blue.  It's navy blue.  And his career choices seem to land him as either fireman or quarterback. Just aesthetically, it's depressing.

But again I am NOT trying to make a statement with my kids.  I don't mind a good statement, but I'll go ahead and make those myself.  So it's a fine line I walk.  I'm not about to put Eli in a tutu just because, hey, why can't boys wear tutus?  Because he's got no horse in this race at the moment.  And what I want for him is to feel love and comfort, and that means going with the (sexist) flow.  Now if he wants to wear dresses and tutus one day?  Well, he's going to have a mom who is particularly (perhaps peculiarly) ready to fight for his right to do that.  If he wants to denigrate dresses and tutus?  That will be a whole lot harder for me.  Especially considering I feel like a contributor to that eventuality at times, trading perfectly good butterfly shirts for yet another puppy dog brown number.

He will, however, be wearing pink boots this winter.  Because while I don't want to make him a walking (um, rolling) statement, I also can't help but want to push back on an impulse to keep pink away from my son.  Because there is endless beauty in the feminine.  And until the world and preschool comes in and teaches him otherwise, I do want him to develop as freely as his sister was allowed to.  Not in some gender vacuum.  But, ideally, with thoughtful and careful parents who try and stay mindful of not labeling our children and their preferences, behaviors, or other traits in limiting ways.  And because, these boots, these are really nice boots.  Thinsulate.  They stay up and keep him warm while he swings in the baby swing at the playground, babbling and laughing at his big sister, looking at her with pure love and admiration, not colored by pink or blue.

On Borrowed Time

The baby started to stir, and so I braced myself for his hostile takeover of my existence, but he inexplicably fell back asleep. Yet dinner has been prepped, I've worked out, I changed out of my flannel pants (questionable whether this is progress or regress), and have positioned the double stroller in the ready-to-go position once he awakens so we can go get big sis from school.  It's 2:30 pm and I am reveling in some sweet, sweet borrowed time.

Dad's annual poinsettia arrived.  Big smiles ensued.

Staying on theme, here's some other sweet, sweet stuff.

Last night, I went out with an old friend.  Not only was it great to see her, but she let me vent about why I really love vampires, but really really don't like Twilight.  Like, she let me talk about it for verging on half an hour.  Also, it made me think about the time in college that she and I went to a psychic for no other reason than we drove past a psychic.  Oh, to be 18 and in the company of someone great enough that you can dabble momentarily in the black arts without risking any judgment.  Shout out to Suze D!

Edie, as always, is into imitating everything I do.  Since I spend a lot of time cleaning, she's interested in cleaning as well.  But, she's also a free-thinking little lady, and if I get too pumped, she will put down the child-sized Swiffer forever.  It's a careful mix of encouragement and nonchalance, plus a genius selection of a task suited perfectly for her 3 foot frame.  So, I don't want to jinx anything, but I am on the verge of getting her to be decent at cleaning base boards.Yyyyyessssss.

The house is getting all holiday-spirit-y.  Not in a haunted way.  Just that we've decorated it. And I've had time to get crafty lately.  I've made yarn wreaths, felt rosettes,  and I just ordered some chalkboard contact paper.  It's enough to make Pinterest itself gag.  But it's good clean fun.

I went to a mall yesterday, Eli in tow.  And he didn't have a meltdown.  AND I got some jeans that fit, for 50% off their manufacturer's suggested retail price no less.  I did a little bit tear off part of my finger while over-zealously shutting an umbrella.  BUT, I had baby wipes to sop up my blood and a nice lady at Bath and Body Works gave me an excellent band aid.  Slam. Dunk.

Then there is the weather.  Not everyone is happy. And I get it.  It is borderline eery warm outside.  Like, mosquitoes tricked out of hibernation warm.  But. It's in the 60s and 70s.  Let's set aside notions of "should" and just agree that this is the best temperature range one could ever be in.  It is December and yet I am taking hour-long walks with the kids and dogs, everyone taking in fresh air without having to wrap oneself up in Thinsulate or slather balm on the babies' faces lest their skin get chapped.  It is phenomenal. 

Geez. I am so chipper, I might even go pet my dogs.

Road Tripocalypse 2012: my end is neigh. Live blogging the madness.

Alarm set for 3 am. Husband insisted. I lobbied for 2:30. "Rachael, that's not safe." YOU'RE not safe, I imagine retorting. But, maybe he's right. OH WAIT. It's 2:40 and like some cruel and twisted alarm clock, Eli is awake. And just for good measure, he was up at 11 pm too. Nothing about my life is safe right now. The baby is already playing dirty. All bets are off.

3:50. Late start. This is, however, happening: we are in the car. My husband just offered me a "go team" fist bump. Edie wailed "why are you taking me out of my bed." This blog will hopefully serve as evidence of her non-kidnapping should she decide to continue wailing this at a patrolled rest stop.

45 min in. Edie is still awake. Not shocking. Eli finally passed back out. Some thoughts: are the waffles at Waffle House really awesome? Like all thick and fluffy? Why do I have a song from Dinosaur Train in my head? And not even the theme song. No, the B-side tune "Troodon Night Train." I want it out. Slightly better than when I got The Thong Song in my head during a 10 day silent meditation retreat, though. National corvette museum in 15 miles. That is a specific museum. I don't want to go to it. I DO want to go to the medical oddities museum. In Pittsburgh, is it? I don't know. But it looks crazy cool.

5:33. The screaming begins. Eli. Edie is awake. Super.

5:45. Screaming stops after crawling back to Eli and singing Hush Little Baby 9 times. Now he is chattering to his Sleep Giraffe. Cute, but, for real, go back to sleep. Edie lost baby Calin. But we found her after only one tear. Victory. Now SLEEP, creatures! The sun is way not up yet.

6:05. Eli "waaaah!" Edie: "my tummy hurts." Mom "it is not today, yet. Shhhhhhhh."

"If you lived here, you'd be home right now." is a really popular slogan for apartment complexes.

Passing through Louisville. Which is way hard to say properly. If you think it's "loo-ee-ville," think again!! It's some inexplicable back of the throat pronunciation. I practice when I'm alone sometimes.

Asked will if he thought Waffle House would be awesome. He said maybe. Do I want to try it? I said maybe. But he knows I do. Then he asks if I heard what their CEO did. Sigh. No, but I am guessing it will cause me not to eat at Waffle House. Yep. I was right.

9:03. But I think that accounts for a time zone change. Who knows. Anyways. Half way there. It's going ... mediocre with a dash of bad. Eli is massively unhappy. I nursed him when we stopped and he fell dead asleep. But him in his car seat, he immediately woke up and had been yelling at me ever since. Will broke the car outlet by trying to "fix" the mp3 radio device by jamming it in with all his might. He's pretty adamant that the issue is a shoddy outlet. I think that, by design, these outlets aren't meant to withstand full blown rage. Oh!! Oh!! Eli closed his eyes! Maybe? A nap?!?

10:40. The nap was 10 min long. He woke up mad. We had to pull over after awhile. Starbucks!! Small miracles. We get out, use a moderately clean restroom, order chai and whatnot. Wish we had eaten breakfast here, because, lets face it, we are inexcusably and irredeemably prissy and the Waffle House (yeah. we ended up at one. The screams, people!) made us feel lousy. City slickers (*knocks heel of boot against a rock and spits in dirt*).

Ok! Almost there! *ish*. 30 miles to go. Eli's voice is raspy with exhaustion and anger. But he perseveres, lest we forget that he never signed on to this. He has taken two 15 min naps. Yet I specifically ordered a baby who was not capable of substituting sleep for shrieking!! Customer service, these days. Dreadful. Edie is mostly delightful. The back seat is decorated on polka dot stickers. My toe is bleeding. Something under the dash cut me. I think a little blood is appropriate.

Current theme song: "We Gotta Get Out of This Place." by the Animals.

Traveling with Kids. Also, I am Scared of My Spawn.

Even though it is - I believe - common knowledge that young humans go to bed earlier than full grown humans, for some reason it doesn't fully register how that will dictate so much of your life until you are in it.  Bedtime is sacred, because without it, there is End of Days-type chaos, complete with blood curdling screams, gnashing of teeth, eyes rolling back in head, occasionally swarms of locust, etc.

The first trip we took with Edie was when she was seven months old.  And it quickly dawned on us that if we wished to survive this ill-advised escapade, we would need to put her to bed relatively on time.  Ok, that makes sense.  But, what of you, the parent, once The Scary One is asleep?  Well, you can try to make some sort of game out of it.  (Who wants to play "Anne Frank?!")  Or you can do what we did.  Hunker down behind the hotel bed, plug in two sets of head phones into the DVD player you purchased under the duress of nearly-expired credit card points, and watch The Sopranos really, really (really) quietly.  Edie was unimpressed with our efforts, however, and sent us this message by waking up every. hour. all. night.  She woke up with this cute little peep.  Almost like "Hey, mama.  I'm not sure where I am. Can I have a cuddle?" Nope! That's not true! Hahahah!! Actually she woke up as if Boogey Man himself was playing peek-a-boo one millimeter from her face.  Edie's special brand of alchemy which converts exhaustion into rage is really something.  Edie has gotten better to travel with, now approaching three years old.  But, that's not really much of an endorsement considering the baseline.

We are currently planning a long road trip to the in-laws for Thanksgiving.  Seven hours according to Google maps.  To me, that is tortuously long. But, see, it's even a little worse than that. Because during the day, Eli nurses about every ninety minutes, requires being held in my arms for an absurd rain dance of sorts in order to defecate (and if the dance is done improperly, he'll just scream and writhe in pain indefinitely), oh and he poops half a dozen times a day, plus he hates the car and the car seat and will also scream about this particular brand of confinement/isolation for an amount of time whose limit we've not yet discovered.

Allegedly, there are babies who don't mind cars.  Some of these "babies"** even stay in their car seats while their parents eat out or socialize.  (**Maybe they're babies.  Maybe they're automatrons put into circulation by some underground population stimulation cabal.  And if so, hey, cabal! What's a lady got to do to get implanted with one of those automatrons?)  I don't make this version of child, though.

I am not not content to sit and worry, however.  I am a woman of action.  So a plan is in place.  And this plan is - ETD: Three In The Morning.

3:00 a.m.  Not a time for the faint of heart.  But we need to play to our strengths here.  Will and I are outmaneuvered by these children all the live long day.  And though they can and do haunt us at any time, statistically speaking, we are left alone for almost the entire night.  They do require some modicum of rest for survival, and their blessed circadian rhythms seem to pull them into slumber best during the darkness.  Will and I also require sleep.  But we have additional tools, including coffee, snack food, and a delicious adrenaline and cortisol cocktail produced by the fear state in which we live.

My fat-cheeked oppressor.

I have been introducing the idea of a middle of the night flight to Edie for a few days now.  She does not like changes or surprises.  And it seems like a messy ordeal to get an Amber Alert wiped from your record, which would inevitably result after our first stop on the road, as our tear-stained and drunk with exhaustion toddler would almost certainly yell out the window some variant on "Take me home! I don't want to go with you! Why did you take me from my bed! I don't like this!"  So I've been trying to make this all seem like an exciting adventure, with the end point being her beloved Grandma Sally.  So far, my campaign is a dud.  Our last conversation about it went like this: "Remember how we are driving to Grandma Sally's for Thanksgiving?" "Yeah" "Well, it's a loooong drive. It will take most of the day." (Child's eyes narrow in a "what's your point?" fashion) "So, to make it easier, we are going to leave when it is really early.  So early, it will still be dark out! And I will pick you up and wrap you in your soft blankets, put you in the car, and you can go back to sleep! Sound good?" (Eyes widen) "Why?" "Well, if you sleep, the drive will seem shorter" "But WHY?" "You will be comfy and so tired, so you should just sleep." (Eyes well with tears) "Why are you gonna do dat? WHY?!?" "Honey, we will all be there, it will be fine. And then we'll be at Grandma Sally's so quickly!"  "I'm NOT gonna sleep! I'm gonna SCREAM! And I'm gonna WAKE UP ELI!"  Fabulous.  Way to be a team player, Edie.

But, I mean, come on. Can she really make good on this? She's two.  It will be the middle of the night.  I am trying to find some comfort in science, here. She's got to sleep, right? (Repressing memories of Edie staying awake for entire transatlantic voyages). WHAT DOES SHE WANT FROM ME?  My youth, beauty, and my iPad.  All these things I have sacrificed at her altar, yet she scoffs.  (Seriously. She scoffs at the iPad.  Once she realized it was a device we gave her for our convenience, she shuns it, often crying at its mere suggestion.)

That said, I am honestly looking forward to being at my in-laws for a few days.  And perhaps, living there forever if I am unable to work up the nerve to leave.

You Have Got To Be Kidding Me: A Baby Doll Story

Back when we lived in Munich, I developed a bit of a past time going to yard and consignment sales.  They did them on a large scale - entire neighborhoods at a time, for example.  The thrill of the hunt, plus the near certainty of getting adorable euro-fabulous kids clothes for cents on the dollar (Euro cents on the Euro?), and throw in the fact that I would typically go sans Edie and with my friend Lara, it was a delightful way to pass a Saturday morning.  A big draw for me was toys.  Oh, German toys.  So lovely.  So wooden.  So praktisch.  And so spendy.  Used was the way to go.  At one I found a teeny tiny baby doll.  I hadn't been looking for one.  Edie was only just over a year old.  But it was very cute, and the perfect size and feel for a little one to enjoy.  I bought it on a whim, as one does when the price tag is 1 or 2 €.  

As life would have it, Edie loved her doll.  She was just learning to speak then, and so it was simply "baby," which remained its name for sometime.  Baby was taken everywhere.  At 15 or so months, I remember seeing her "nurse" her baby, soothe her baby, and rock her to sleep.  When Edie got a little older, she loved to take the baby's romper off, and then hassle me loudly until I put it back on, so she could do it again and again.  During my pregnancy, baby became even more important to Edie.  With all this talk of my new baby, Edie began to treat hers with even more care and concern.  At some point, the baby got a new name: Bow-Oh.  I know it sounds weird and isn't a name in the traditional sense, but there were a few months there when Edie invented names and words for things she didn't know, and though she does it less these days, preferring to name things based on people or characters in stories, Bow-Oh stuck.  

Some time after Eli was born, Bow-Oh disappeared.  Edie asked after her all of the time.  Because she was so special to Edie, I was very careful never to let her take Bow-Oh out of the house or car, and if we did (as sometimes the fight was just not mine to win), I was very, very careful.  I lost two special "friends" as a kid - a stuffed dog and a Cabbage Patch doll.  I still remember way too much about the ordeals.  I did not want Edie to go through this if I could avoid it.  Nevertheless, somewhere in the chaos of baby brother's arrival, it seemed as though Bow-Oh truly went missing.

On several occasions over the past few months, I have gotten serious about finding her.  I have even been quite harsh on myself, thinking "Come ON.  It is in the house somewhere.  Quit your laziness and FIND THIS DOLL."  I've spent precious hours, when I could've been resting for once, instead tearing up the joint in her pursuit. Though thorough, I've tried to be strategic.  One of the adorable complaints I lodge at my husband is that when I ask him to help me find something, he opts for the completely random approach and then calls defeat. Honey, please, I cannot find my wallet anywhere and I am so late! Can you help?? [Will checks freezer, toilet tank, and bottle of ibuprofen.]  Sorry. I can't find it anywhere either.  I went through the entirety of her toy closet, nooks and crannies I know she favors, every millimeter of the floor of the cars.  I even sent a sad-sack email to all of the moms I know in Nashville to see if Bow-Oh had turned up somewhere.  Nothing.

For a couple weeks, it seemed like she'd forgotten about Bow-Oh.  But, even though she has not seen this doll in months and months at this point, she began asking about Bow-Oh in earnest again last week.  It was getting depressing.  Did some body take Bow-Oh, mom? Is Bow-Oh coming home, mom? Can we look for her? Yeesh.

The decision was made to get her a new baby.  She has a couple dolls, but no baby dolls that meet the needs that Bow-Oh filled.  But still it was not an easy decision.  The kid is ... particular. I had to spend two weeks inoculating her to the eventuality of needing to switch sneakers because her current ones were getting too small.  It started with showing her the new ones online.  See Edie? Aren't they nice? * Yeah. ... But I am gonna wear MY sneakers. * Ok.  But your feet are growing. And soon you will need bigger ones. * Ok.  But today I am going to wear MINE. * But soon, these. * ... No. I like mine. I recently found out at parent-teacher conferences that it was upsetting Edie so much that her teacher spent one hour a day with the Kindergarteners, that Edie had to accompany the teacher so as to avoid an hour long meltdown.  Edie does not like change.  So our question was: would a new baby be awesome, or awesomely traumatic?

I had an idea of the brand of doll that hers was, but after much detective work, I could not find an exact replica.  There would be no way to convince her that Bow-Oh had returned. The stakes were high.  We ordered a doll, got it, but it was wrong.  Right face.  Too big.  I contacted a friend whose son had a similar doll.  She wised me up to the correct model.  First doll sent back.  Second doll, ordered.  I get an email saying that my shipment would be delayed because of Hurricane Sandy.  This both put things in perspective and made me impatient. Go figure.

Now, I get a shipping notice.  And so I begin to plant the seed.  The next time she asks about Baby Bow-Oh, I finally concede that Bow-Oh isn't coming home.  But before she is totally crushed, I gingerly offer that there are lots of baby dolls who need mamas.  She looks interested.  In fact, I say, the mail man helps these baby dolls find mamas.  And he just told me that there was a baby doll named Calin who needed a mama. (Calin is the name the company gave the doll.  I did not dig too deep here. Though I failed to consider that she still can't say "L" so this is actually a very difficult name for Edie to say.  But it's done now.  No going back.)  After I said this, Edie's eyes widened and she said - hand to God - Maybe I could be her mom?! Oh I'd be patting myself on the back for quite some time! Yes! I replied. That is a great idea! I will let the mail man know.  So we've been talking about Calin for a few days now.  Things seemed to be going great.  I even made a bed for her, planning to unwrap her and lay her in the bed, leaving her momentarily on the front porch for Edie to find.  I am a little bit great.

From a cardboard box, the dolly bed was forged.

Calin is set to arrive today.  Edie knows this, as Calin-fever has been raging around here, and details have had to be offered to keep her sated.  Edie is at school today, so while she was out, I was going to whip up a simple little pillow and mattress for the bed, and voila!  And then, on my way out the door for a walk with Eli and the dogs, I scurry through the house to grab some poop bags from the right drawer of the entryway table, and upon finding none, I chance open the left drawer - the drawer nothing, nothing, is in - and BAM.  Oh. Hello, Bow-Oh.

The smuggest baby doll I have ever seen.

So, what to do?  Oh, decision of decisions! Throw out or donate beloved, sweet, rummage sale Bow-Oh? And stick with Calin and the lies I've spun? Take the chance that Calin actually will become special to her - something that cannot be taken for granted? Or somehow convince Edie that Calin found a different mom, rendering her totally confused but perhaps ultimately happier? 

Or maybe, just maybe, I could get a life and think about important things? 

I don't know! WHY, BOW-OH, WHY DID YOU FORSAKE US FOR SO LONG? 

(Is there an election or something this week, btw?)

Nanny Wanted

I have been picking up more and more legal work lately, which means that any moment that Eli is sleeping Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I work.  On Thursdays and Fridays, when the children are both sleeping - which I believe occurs if Saturn and Venus align and the moon is waxing and the humidity is over 20% but not above 43% - I work.  And in the evenings, after 12+ hours with child or children, Will and I turn on a show and then - sadly - we both work.  I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have the skills and opportunity to work from home on a freelance basis.  But, I am getting in a bit over my head from time to time lately.  Especially as Eli transitions from sleepy newborn to short napping baby.  So, I have decided, without consulting my husband, to hire a nanny.

Here are the basics:

First, the pay is dismal.  I mean dismal.  We can't afford you at all.  So basically, I'll look at where we're at in the old bank account come month's end and I'll cut you a check based on any surplus.  On the upside, maybe you are thinking about applying to grad school but have suffered no hardships that you could write about in your application essays?  Perhaps you never have any good stories to tell at parties?  Maybe you are a trust funder with time on your hands? I don't know.  That's really your thing to figure out.

The snack situation is also not great.  But you are welcome to whatever health food scraps you find.  That tub of hummus I buy from Costco is large and deelish, so dive right in!  There will also be sporadic batches of brownies.  Their occurrence will be dictated by my mental state, conjured up either because of the precise level of happy or sad has been achieved.

Ok, next, I'll be around all the time.  Because I am a control freak and I don't ever plan to ever let anyone else manage care of my children.  So I'll butt in, give you endless suggestions, and basically hen peck you until your spirit is broken and you are remade in my own image.  This sounds awful, I know.  But it apparently totally liveable.  Just ask my husband! He's alive and everything.

What will your responsibilities be?  They will widely vary.  You will get me water when I'm nursing.  You will change poopy diapers while I coo at my baby from the stink-free end.  You won't need to feed the baby because I love nursing him and cuddling him and also I am very (very) afraid of babies not sleeping enough, so I would just as soon handle that whole situation.  If he does not sleep enough and is freaking out accordingly, I'll want you to take him from me and pace around.  And then I'll demand him back a short time later because I can do it better.  But know that I did, truly, appreciate the reprieve.  I just needed to catch my breath.  Thank you.  Go ahead and figure out a way to sit between the car seats when I drive, because I am done with the emotional torture that is driving with my car-phobic baby.  The wails are just too much for me to bear, so squeeze on in there and solve that.

And you're going to run a lot of toddler damage control. Keep her quiet.  Dear lord, just let me live in peace.  Unless I am making her laugh, or she is making me laugh, in which case take a bathroom break or something and I'll hand her over when she's good and wound up.  If I need to go somewhere and take the toddler, I'll give you a heads up and then you can walk six inches behind her, convincing her not to be distracted by a toy, a dog, or a dust particle so that I may actually leave the house at some point.  If you feel like letting her change her socks ten times, as is her wont, then do so but just get her in that car seat RIGHT NOW!

Cleaning.  There will be a lot of this.  You see, I adore a clean house.  In spite of what the state of my abode would often suggest, I want a place for everything and all things in their place.  And these places ought to be dirt and germ free.  While I love a clean house, I take no particular pride whatsoever in cleaning it myself.  So, go nuts on this.  I'll let you run the show.

Things you should know about my kids: they are crazy.  I mean they can drive me up a wall.  Other people say their kids are challenging, but, come on, mine are doozies.

Also re: the kids, my kids are hands down the best kids in the world.  I don't advertise this often since it's both boastful and self-evident, but have you seen these two? They're amazing. Eli is the cutest, cuddliest, smiliest, most happiness-inducing baby in the world.  Edie is the smartest, funniest, most loving and sensitive kid there is.  I'm going to need to know that you get this.  Otherwise, I can't really let you touch them.  You will, however, still be permitted to clean.

As if I don't deal with enough poop on the serious.

Humor is not easily defined, and indeed ceases to be humor if you try.  I had a rather blunt English professor as an undergrad who, during a final-paper topic roundtable, told a student not to even endeavor to write about the role of humor in her selected literary work because the result would be terrible.  I imagine this professor read a great deal of terrible things, so who can blame her for nipping one in the bud, given the opportunity to do so.  My memory also flashes back to sitting in this particular professor's office, trying to get productive advice but wholly and infuriatingly unable not to cry every time I tried to utter a word.  I'd go in all Hello Professor. I would love to discuss the progress on my paper.  Then she'd say something like Well, I think your second point is quite weak and needs work.  Aaand, commence trembling and blubbering.  It is just an exquisitely awful experience when your emotions betray and shame you like that.  A handful of authority figures have had that effect on me.  But that is another story all together.

Anyhow.  Humor.  Yes.  I grew up in a family in which a high value was placed on dry wit.  After I grew out of my painfully shy period of my early years, I became a big old jokester.  This made me exceedingly popular with boys,* since I was always zinging them left and right. (*No it didn't.)  And it made me exceedingly popular with girls, too**.  (**No it didn't.  But I bonded very closely to the few that liked my nonstop talking and joke making.)  I ended up marrying someone who has just an inhuman ability to tolerate my nonstop jokes.  If you know me and you think I'm funny, know that a lot of work-shopping has to happen for me to create that appearance.  My husband is a one man workshop with a bottomless fount of patience, as well as some thick skin.

Welcome to Edie's Laff Shack! We're About to Get Gross Up In Here!

Edie is now on the threshold of humor.  She's always loved to laugh, and it's clear to me that she can tell how much I value humor.  From a very young age, she joined in laughing whenever her dad or I chuckled.  "Funny" is one of the best compliments she can give a friend.  But lately she's started to venture beyond just silly-as-funny into the more nuanced stuff.  And lemme tell ya, the learning curve is steep.

I think the Billy and Sugar jokes started during some desperate attempt to keep her from melting down during dinner.  Billy and Sugar, our dogs, are always a good source of laughs for the kiddo.  So I capitalized on this by telling a joke in which Billy and Sugar went some where (a park?), Sugar said I smell something and Billy replied I don't and Sugar said It's terrible! and Billy said I don't know what you're talking about and finally Sugar realizes Billy! You POOPED! It stinks! PEE-UW! It's low brow, for sure, but that suspense build up and the final just-a-little naughty ending was a huge hit.  But these jokes quickly dominated all family conversation.  They became tedious, of course, but I also began to regret my forethought-less decision to incorporate dog excrement jokes into our dinners, on account of the gross factor.  I've told a couple of variants without any bodily functions. The only ones that got any play, however, involved Billy and Sugar going to a restaurant and the server doing something abusive to Billy like dumping a bowl of soup on his head.  But even at the end of those, she would request amid giggles for a joke where Bih-wee and Sugah go to a restaurant, Bih-wee POOPS! And den FAHTS! Of late, I'm trying to enforce a stodgy new rule that we don't tell poop jokes at dinner, consistent with my dualistic role as family comedian and family buzz kill. 

In an effort to make the no poop jokes rule more practicable, I've tried to introduce some new jokes.  The first one she's been able to understand goes like this: What does a cat say if some one steps on its tail? ... Meee-OW!  She likes that one, though it's gotten a bit darker through retelling.  She has this beanie baby cat who she is quite attached to.  Its name is Margot.  The joke now goes What does Mah-got say when I STEP on her? Meee-OWW OW OW OW! Hahahahahaha (maniacal toddler laugh).  I've tried to explain that the joke isn't about what happens when she intentionally abuses felines, per se.  But, at least we're out of the bathroom for a spell.

I've also brought some knock-knock jokes into the mix, but these have proven too subtle as of yet.  Of course, she still wants in on the funny, so she now insists on knock-knock jokes many, many times a day.  And she won't even let me tell her the jokes. Even though I am - without a doubt - way better at knock-knock jokes than she is! No.  Edie would like to be the performer, thankyouverymuch.  So we now endure numerous, senseless knock knock jokes. Her foray into joke telling has also dove-tailed nicely / horribly with her new interest in anatomy.  At lunch yesterday, I got, Hey Mom! Knock-Knock! I bite.  Ok, who's there? She searches her punchline bank and then answers with eyes gleaming: PENIS!! Bwahahhahaha! I think I managed a Penis who? just to see whether she'd gotten that far, and her response was something like Penis I needa baf and let me in! which is an amalgam of two classic knock-knocks, involving  "Anita" and "Lettuce."  Her dad heard her PG-13 ending from the next room, and although I was able to play it cool, it got big laughs from him.  So if you see Edie any time soon, there's a good chance she'll try to get some more mileage out of this one. 

Things I don't want to forget, and that my children won't be able to remember.

A friend of mine keeps this amazing blog about her life, which, like mine, is dominated by her kids these days. (Well, mine is dominated by my kids.  Hers are very little work for me at all, actually.) She writes letters to her babes (almost) every month.  And one of them is almost three years old!  Amazing.  She has super powers, I tell you.  Her kids will have the gift of their mother's reflections on their life every step of the way.  Mine will be able to read stories about how I wish I were a real lawyer, but am glad I'm not a real lawyer, and how I'm tired and I hate dog puke.  Life's a lotto, kiddos.  No promise of justice, and odds are you won't strike it big.

All right! With that uplifting message of mediocrity, I am going to copy my friend a bit as I am in the mood to tell you kidlets all about the things you are and do right now.  Because time is just flying.  And times are so crazy right now, they need to fly.  Your dad and I aren't whatever-one-must-be enough to be parents of tinies indefinitely.  But, these great efforts are rewarded by what I already know will be among the most meaningful moments of my life.  I ain't no Buddha-mama. I don't claim to always be in the moment, nor to always let the tough moments pass through me without judgment or strife. But would you believe I am trying?  I really am trying. (And trying not to try, of course, because that's what it takes. So confusingly simple.) In the spirit of gratitude, here's to my little loves, as they are at this moment, as they will never be again.

 
Edie. My first born.  My little girl.  You are a firecracker.  You love big and fight hard.  You care deeply about others, and love to please, but you do not fall in line easily. In spite of yourself, I think.  Your vocabulary is dazzling, and where you find it lacking, you just invent words.  Hand sanitizer is hanitizer, the tongue of your sneakers has been dubbed the "shoe pit," and when you run out of things to say, you spew nonsense and then insist that it's Spanish.  Back when you had just turned two, you named your feet Tex and Poppy.  And that has stuck.  But the naming continues.  We must keep track not only of what all your dolls and stuffed animals are named, but recognize that after several months, their names may change.  The big white bear was Mary Mary for almost a year.  Now she is Havana.  I don't know why.  But I try to get it right.  You have been telling us for ages that you are concerned about putting your hand in the ocean because "a seal can bite it off."  I really don't know where this fear of seals comes from.  Frankly, we try to sweep this one under the rug.  You are a master of accents.  When you were about 20 months old, you came out of YMCA daycare, where you spent about 45 minutes once or twice a week so your mom could get a little time alone, telling me one day that Oma (a daycare lady with a discernible Southern accent) called you "Eh-Day" but that I called you "Eee-Dee."  This morning, you called me out on my Midwest accent when I said "potty."  You squinted at me and said "It's POtty, mom. You said 'PAHtty.'" Yeesh.  I'll work on opening up my vowels for you.  Tough crowd.  You have been working hard since about 18 months of age in learning everyone's names - including dads and pets.  Your memory floors me.  When we are in the car, you routinely tell me or quiz me on the names of all your friends and the names of the friends' parents.  You are also very interested in how everyone is related, and you've got it down pretty well.  The other day you talked to your Grandma Sally on the phone.  And when your dad came home you said "I talked to your mom, dad."  You've even mastered the fact that both of your grandpas are named Tim.  That was poor planning on our part, by the way, sorry about that.  You've been in school for a little over a month now.  You love it.  It still makes me sad some days but it's where you need to be.  I'll admit, though not happily, that I feel a bit of distance between us right now where school and your little brother came in.  But before school, where there is now distance, there was so much strife and struggle between us.  You are growing up and needed more than I could offer.  So though I miss you, I know these are growing pains.  Yours and mine.

You first note home from a teacher.  At two and a half.  

And you actually like this teacher a lot.  

Lord help the ones you do not like, and there will be some, 

daughter of mine. I am in for it, aren't I?

 
Because of school, you have a host of new traditions.  Before we eat, you now ask (ahem...demand) that we put our hands in our laps, and then we all must say four times, "We are thankful."  It is absolutely lovely and has given us a small moment in time to take a deep breath and smile at each other during the most chaotic part of our day.  Another dinner time favorite is "jokes."  We all make up jokes these days, at your request (ahem...dire insistence).  These jokes all involve the dogs doing silly things together.  And the punchline always involves a bodily function.  It gets big laughs.  You pick out your own clothes, and this can be challenging, but I do my absolute best to not interfere.  I do draw the line when you climb up into your closet and ransack summer clothes that I packed away in a box, and attempt to wear a tank top on a 50 degree day. You think that time is cyclical, and tell us about when you will be a baby, and that one day when you are a mama we will be kids and you'll take us to the zoo.  Your dad and I go to sleep most nights laughing about and marveling over the things you say and do, Edes.  You make our heart so full.

Eli.  My sweet little boy.  Oh how I cannot get enough of you.  I don't know you that well yet, because you are only three months old and still have worlds to show us about who you are.  What an honor it is to witness.  You are just the snuggliest baby ever.  You love to sit cradled in my lap, stare right into my eyes, and talk and talk and talk.  You have chattered at us since you were only four or five weeks old, and you truly respond to us! It's amazing. You adore your sister (and she you).  She is like a celebrity already in your eyes.  You have the most incredible laugh.  All I want to do is hear it.  I would not want a record of all the dumb things I do to try and make you smile.  Lately, I have to be careful about looking at you too much when you are nursing, because when you are in the right mood, just seeing me cracks you up so much that you pop off and milk goes everywhere.  And then it is so hilarious that I keep doing it anyways.  And it's a mess. As your conversation habits imply, you already want to be part of the action.  If we try to put you in your bouncie seat while we eat dinner, you shout at us until your dad picks you up, plops you in his lap, and eats with one hand.  You are pleased as anything after that.  You love your baths - as long as I don't wait until you are too tired!  And it's a rather small window, love, so I don't always get it right.  You kick and splash the water, and stick your tongue out as you arch your neck to get your head further in the water. As sweet as you are, you can certainly dish it out when you are unhappy.  And good on you for that, sonny boy!  That's how your sister has trained us.  You deserve your shot to be heard as well.  Your current move is swiveling on your stomach like a break dancer on your crib.  You tend to get your little head pressed up against the bars.  If you'd give me a little warning about what you were up to, I could prevent this more often than not.  But you prefer to work covertly until you are in a real jam.  You are so close to grabbing your feet and to grasping toys.  Which reminds me that I have a mess of toy sanitizing to do before you begin the everything in your mouth phase... When I am holding you, I feel so warm and complete.  I used to doze off when holding or nursing you all the time during your first few weeks.  And that's not like me at all.  I never fall asleep without concerted effort.  But you were like this soft, warm little slumber magnet.  My thoughts would quiet and my body would relax, and there we'd be, dozing together.  That you are already three months old - quickly going on four - blows me away.  Thank you for choosing us, Eli.  I can't even say that I look forward to all the good times in the future, because honestly I can't wish away these moments for anything.

Drowning in a sea of cupcakes

It went in a blue cupcake.  And it came out a blue... well... you can fill in the details.  It was some scifi sh... Yeah.

Edie just got invited to a birthday party.  Another birthday party.  And now that she is in preschool, there will be another, and another, and another.  We were told (warned?) before moving here that Nashville was a friendly place.  And in the sense that people intended it, that is certainly true.  Strangers are wont to chat you up, or holler "that's a cute baby you've got!" from across the street.  But in a sense that we didn't fully expect, we've found ourselves in a genuinely open-hearted community where we've made more friends in the last year than ... ever?  Yeah.  Ever.  We selected our neighborhood carefully for a place where we'd fit in (Google terms: over-educated + sort of hippies + babies + enough money but not a lot of money + Tennessee = East Nashville).  And while East Nashville is delightfully nonhomogenous, we've generally fit in well. 

You see, the hub and I met when we were 18.  In the dormitories of the University of Michigan.  Me, a native Michigander who did a terrible job ranking dorm preferences so I ended up stuck in North Campus in the engineering/music school-dominated abodes.  He, a math and circuits loving Iowan with hair that covered his eyes and just a rocking hemp necklace.  It wasn't love at first sight (he had to pretty much work his way through every friend, roommate, and relative I had before he settled on me), but we were attached at the hip from early on.  And by junior year, there were bells, on the hill, and we finally heard them ringing, etc. Since then, we have lived in no less than ten (TEN!) separate abodes, in three states, and two countries.  We are each other's constant.  And thus, even more than your typical married couple as best friends, we have often been each other's only and best friends.  This whole having lots of friends thing is new territory. (One day, after several people had stopped to say hello to me in Will's presence, he looked at me with narrowed eyes and said "You're really popular." in a tone that connoted his willingness to go to the police if I were in fact now a meth dealer.)

In keeping with my comfort zone of not knowing anyone, I even resisted joining a neighborhood moms club for the first several months I was here.  The cost of joining was twenty dollars.  The personal obligation was nothing.  But the idea that I would just meet a bunch of people that I would like enough to want to spend time with so easily seemed absurd.  So I wrote them off as some type of Stepford sorority for awhile and just be'd by myself.  It took me a long time to find a (comfortably) small handful of awesome moms/friends in Germany and it had been sad to leave them and exhausting to think of starting over.  Mostly for the two year old's amusement, I joined last February, and now I am stuck with a massive amount of friends among truly some of the best folks I've had the pleasure of knowing.  It's a real burden.

And these people we've met and confoundingly like a lot? They've pretty much all got kids.  Oh, and here's the kicker: I genuinely like their kids, too! And I don't just like all kids.  Seriously. I mean I love them all because they are children and humans and therefore deserving of love.  But, like them all? Notsomuch.  The kids of these great people, though, are these cool, funny, darling children.  But every last one has a birthday.

Edie has never had a birthday party.  Her birthday has been celebrated in low-key family ways.  There have been desserts and a couple gifts.  Last year, the grandparents came down and we all trekked to the playground down the street.  And that's been great.  But she's wise to the whole thing now.  When's my birfday, momma? It's my birfday soon, mommy! I will have a party! Your birthday is in January, child. That is not soon at all.  And who, pray tell, is throwing you this party?

And now we've got another kid.  And unless I start really offending people (because offending them a little is clearly not enough to make them write me off, according to my field research), he is going to get invited to birthday parties.  We are talking roughly one a weekend until I am old and grey - presuming that my birthday bash lifestyle makes me old and grey over the course of the next decade.

I am not proposing that we stop birthday parties.  I must concede that the parties themselves are in realm of delightful.  Just feeling like I am on the edge of jumping into a balloon-filled rabbit hole.  And before I do - because even me and my heart o' stone will - I am taking a look behind me.  To the lazy Saturdays of getting brunch with Will at I don't even know what time because my life used to not be ruled by the iron fist of naptimes.  To the simplicity of sending a birthday card that I carefully selected from a bookstore where I spent awhile perusing, instead of mass ordering birthday presents from Amazon Prime because my children will eat my soul if I take them on too many errands.  Days when I looked in the mirror for more than just to check for lettuce in my teeth and then to scowl at my weird hairdo or puffy eyes. 

And Will and I do still enjoy the benefit of our ease together from almost eight years as a couple before we had kids, and the shared history of so many new starts made hand-in-hand.  Well, I still enjoy the benefits, anyways.  I have learned over the years to amuse myself wildly by teasing Will about absurd things.  I did a killer monologue pretending to be him ordering dinner alone at a Subway the other day. I was in stitches, I tell you.  Friends? We didn't need no stinking friends!


But we've got friends in spades now, and it's time to pay the birthday piper.  Bring on the sugar highs and lows, because we're here to party.

Transitions

Two year old's shouldn't be this pensive.  But Edie didn't get that message.

 
After posting about Edie's troubles at school, I reviewed what I'd said and I think the day's frustrations obfuscated the heart of the matter;  it's not as if I am anguished over her not napping - if she could not nap and be ok, I'd be peachy keen.  School, as such, isn't the issue.  Edie loves school.  Her lack of sleep, however, is hurting her ability to be a kid who can be at school.  And her lack of sleep is caused, I believe, by a deep-seated insecurity about the world; a constant sense of disquiet which - while always lurking under the surface - has now reached a full boil since her brother was born.  I have felt for sometime that when Edie acts out when I need to take care of her brother, she is experiencing not jealousy or anger, but sincere grief.  But though my heart breaks for her, I am in the middle of so very much that my cup is not always full enough to be there for her during her bouts of (loud & raging) sorrow.  All of this is a roundabout way of saying that at this time, I need her in school because of the way she acts at home, but the way she acts at home is caused by the same inner-turmoil that is preventing her from being at school.... and round and round we go.

I am currently reading Raising Your Spirited Child in my never-ending, though frequently faltering, attempt to be the parent I want to be.  This book doesn't purport to be for everyone, but instead for those of us with so-called Spirited Children.  Before I had Edie, I would have most likely judged this book to be a self-fulfilling prophesy for ineffective, neurotic parents.  I don't feel that way now.

The Spirited Child, so the story goes, is a child who is more intense, more sensitive and alert, and just more, more, more.  There are several characteristics of these children, all of which Edie meets, some to staggering degrees.  And the greatest of these: difficulty with transitions.  Transitions being changes; any variance from what was or the status quo.  Check plus for that one.

Edie and Changes: A Case Study

From birth, Edie did not like anything outside of her comfort zone.  She could fall asleep no where but in her own house, under controlled conditions.  Her pediatrician warned me when she was just a few weeks old that my baby was not good at "shutting off."  That she seemed unable to turn away from stimulation and relax, instead compelled to follow everything around her with all of her senses, quickly becoming overwhelmed and overwrought.  It took me sometime to figure this out about her, and so I expected her to do what other tiny infants did.  For example, when she was tired, wouldn't she just fall asleep?  The answer, I would find, was no.  And I soon had a two month old baby who was awake for hours and hours at a time, with bags under her eyes, and hours-long screaming fits each day.  She rarely smiled or laughed, and instead just seemed exhausted with existence.  Breast feeding was one of the few places in which she found comfort, and I am so glad for it.  As my midwife pointed out, when a baby is nursing, she knows she has nourishment, warmth, and her mother all right there.  So it's the best place to be.  Indeed, for Edie, I believe it was essential to her thriving.

We figured out the sleep stuff, though it meant a lot more of training me than training her.  I truly stayed home for months on end, leaving for dog walks and essential grocery trips, all with Edie in tow, and all with her in a baby carrier able to nurse at will, or at least have her meltdowns against my chest.  We did not eat out, we did not play with friends, but she became rested, I became attuned to her schedule and helped her to sleep.  Will and I did attempt to get Edie used to her dad putting her to sleep, mostly because I was going to have to leave on a trip by myself for 5 days when she was six months old.  That trip, one I am still glad I took as it was for my little sister's wedding, was nevertheless totally heart breaking. Each time we had Will put her to sleep, I would leave the house to avoid any confusion, and he would painstakingly recreate the bedtime experience.  And each time, when I would return, the experience was so catastrophic that my husband could not speak to me about it until the next day.  It went like this: Edie would have her wind down with daddy, get her pajamas put on in her dim room, take her warm bottle of breastmilk, begin to fall asleep while he rocked her, and then as if a ghost were shaking her awake from the great beyond, Edie would lose it.  She would wail in his arms, choking on tears, spitting up her milk, and continue in this manner until she literally passed out from exhaustion, usually an hour and a half later.  Edie was capable of this at four months of age, and her sweet father continued this tortuous exercise once a week for two months in our sincere attempt to get her used to him before my trip.  No progress was ever made, and once the trip was over, I put Edie to sleep for every nap and every night of her life until past her second birthday.  Do you guys ever get a sitter so you can go out an enjoy Munich? well-meaning friends would ask. No. We do not.

Fast-forward to nap consolidation, and Edie and I did enjoy ourselves in Munich.  We made friends, played in every park and playground, dined in many restaurants, and just made sure we were always. home. for. sleep.  Challenging, but doable, and we did it.  As she got older, we noticed her sensitivity to change in other ways.  At a year old, she had a line up of stuffed animals in her bed memorized, and you'd better get it together if you wanted her to sleep.  Edie was fiercely attached to a particular blanket (so we bought three more of them).  When I rotated her crib 90 degrees to improve the flow of the room when she was about a year old (I am clearly a glutton for punishment), she was inconsolable for a day.  As the time approached for our move, we decided to shield Edie from the chaos as much as possible.  She was eighteen months old when we moved.  So for the weeks leading up, as we sold items, and packed up this and that, we confined the mess to our bedroom and kept her out.  The times she managed to peek her head in, she was aghast and battered us with her baby-sized questions? Whas-sis? Whas-dat, mamma?  Will took down one item in her room before I left Germany with Edie, leaving Will to deal with the movers and join us in the U.S. a few days later.  It was a small shelf with hooks on it.  That night, as I went to put Edie to sleep, she could not settle, pointing at the void where the shelf had been, asking me about it and her towel, which normally hung on it.


Transitions, on the whole, have not gotten easier.  After we moved to the U.S., she became upset at any and everything changing.  She cried when the moon when behind the clouds so that she could no longer see it.  Edie begged us for "meow, meow," with tears pouring down her face, when a neighborhood cat walked away out of eye sight.  Trains coming, and then, sadly, going, were causes for meltdowns.  These days, when I change her sheets, she spends five minutes fawning over every new detail, thanking me and commenting on each change.  Her teachers tell me she cries when either one of them goes on break.  She yells at me with true indignation if I drive her father's car or wear his shoes.  I recently replaced the bottle of soap in her bathroom, and weeks later, still hear about that.  I bought a new stroller this weekend, and even though we are still keeping the old one and promised her this one was just for when she AND Eli needed to be in the stroller at once, she was thrown for a total loop by its existence and had to be cajoled, begged and bribed (perhaps strong-armed, too) to get into the new wheeled-beast.  My daughter notices if I change my shirt, wear shoes she hasn't seen in a few weeks, buy new cereal, or put out a fresh box of tissues.  Edie doesn't want to go to sleep, doesn't want to wake up, please don't make her put down that toy, and god forbid you need to get her into the car. 

That Edie has difficulty with transitions is no surprise to learn, but I've never pondered on it specifically before.  We've done pretty well with coping strategies, from empowering her with certain choices to always giving her a heads up about upcoming changes in the day or in life.  As far as her brother's existence, she was at my side through each of my prenatal visits.  They were performed on my couch, and my midwife would generously let Edie be as much a part of them as a two year old could be.  We explained that a baby was coming, and I believe all of this preparation did do something.  But it wasn't going to be enough for Edie.  You can't prepare any kid for a shift so jarring and fundamental as having to share your mother's world with another human being of equal rank.  And you especially can't expect my Spirited Child to like it.

The Root of It All: A Look in the Mirror

One interesting part of reading this book is that it's made me reflect on my own nature.  And, news flash, me - you are the WORST at transitions!  It's difficult to describe, but even down to the most mundane, I feel an utter sense of dread and inertia at the prospect of many even minor changes. Even when those changes are bidden by me, totally inevitable, or routine.  I still cry when leave my parents' house after a visit.  I had insomnia for a period of time in college due to my inability to cope with the fact that days kept slipping away into nothing and nighttime meant the end of yet another.  As a child, I would stay in the car after arriving home for a prolonged period, continuing to read my book or just sit awhile.  I still did this before we had children - much to my husband's frustration, and only do not these days because it is simply impossible.  No matter how tired I am each night, I have to be dragged to bed because I just don't wanna.  When friends or family come over, I find myself being cold and averting eye contact - totally in spite of me begging myself to act nice! - until I have a chance to adjust to their presence.  I spent the first year of my marriage telling my husband that we'd made a huge mistake and we should just end it now.  And then I would have nightmares most nights about losing him. (My crazy brain couldn't figure out which change was scarier with that one.) I experience pit-of-my-stomach grief when a good book ends.  And when my children were born, it is now clear to me that a lot of what I felt was neither sadness nor happiness, but simply a rush of emotion that I was not equipped to deal with because the change that had just occurred was so huge.  For days (weeks?) after Eli was born, I often found myself in tears and if asked why, I could only manage that it was all "so much."  And I didn't mean the work, or the lack of sleep.  It was the bigger picture shift.  It was, and is, hard to put into words.

So, um, sorry little girl.  Mommy didn't do you any favors with this one.

The Prognosis?
Well, let's be real.  I read this book in 5 page increments because that is all I have the energy for. It ain't over yet. BUT, I feel good about it.  Right now, I don't have my plan of action in place.  What I am appreciating, though, is a sense of forgiveness that it has allowed me to bestow on myself.  And then when I consider the fact that in the past three years I've lived in California, Germany, and now Tennessee, utterly starting from scratch each time, going from zero to two kids in the meantime, I try to cut myself a little slack because this way we've been living has been hard on me.

I must forgive my own frustration.  I am starting to forgive my imperfect parenting, and acknowledge that Edie - though easier than many children in certain ways - has presented me with challenges in this respect.  I do forgive Edie for her inability to process change - and will continue to remind myself of this.  I will try to forgive myself for being so triggered by seeing her react in ways that I see reflected in myself.  And in the process of forgiveness, the dam starts to come down and I am a tiny bit better for it already.

We still have a way to go. But we're getting there. We've got to get somewhere, what with impermanence inconveniently defining existence and all.  And I will not be buying any new furniture or dying my hair a new color in the meantime.

Puke-tastic Wednesday

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Sad sack in penguin jammies.  

I've been picking up some legal work lately and it's been taking up a lot of my spare time.  Which is to say, the moments that I am not utterly needed by one or both of my children, I sit down to draft a motion or two.  I love being able to contribute financially, even though it's not a whole lot.  I like being able to keep my resume honest, and to exercise my brain a bit.  But I do not care for being stretched so thin some days that I am not good at, or pleased about, the too many tasks at hand.

It's not that I never have time to work.  I do, though it means forgoing all hobbies and most relaxation.  The main issue is that the work of a caretaker is totally unpredictable and allows for no putting off.  The inferior design of our offspring does not end with their chillingly floppy necks at birth, or the fact that as infants passing what is essentially high-pressure poop water requires strained grunts. Children also lack snooze buttons. And child who is hungry, tired, hurt, or sick needed you five minutes ago.

Today was Edie's last day of school for the week.  She attends Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I miss her in a way, but truly life with her at home all day everyday was unmanageable.  And I love having some time alone with the shiny new baby.  This is only her third week at school, and despite its notable challenges, school has been a good thing.  And though it’s only her third week, I’ve gotten real used to this set-up.  Playing lawyer while Eli sleeps, and when he wakes, cuddles and luxurious stroller walks through my neighborhood, basking in the company of a child who has not yet learned to fill the air with “Mama, mom, mommy. What’s that? Where is that guy going? Are we going to a friend’s house? Where’s dad? What did you say? Mom? Mommy? Mama?!”  It’s all been working out pretty well.

So I was less than pleased when Ms. Preschool Teacher called me this morning less than an hour after Edie was dropped off to tell me that Edie seemed sick.  I knew that I had sent the kid to school with some minor sniffles.  I did.  And I had some hesitation.  But another human child defect is that their noses run like 50% of the time.  This obviously has a lot to do with the fact that they spend a great deal of time acquiring every germ in a five-mile radius.  Don’t put that in your mouth! you will beg.  And then they will put it in their mouths, and look at you with dead eyes, as the bacteria which once coated the floor-Lego at Target gets transferred to their bloodstream.  But it wasn’t the sniffles that earned me this phone call.  It was projectile vomit.  I wanted to pick up my daughter immediately, of course.  But more than that, I wanted to rewind back to the happy place where I was drinking coffee, wrapping up two projects, and contemplating one of those lovely unhurried days where you clean your house with a song in your heart – instead of as fast as you can so you can retain some dignity when the visitors arrive.  

When I came up to the door, Edie was there, dazed and pukey. “Mama, I did vomit.”  The teacher warned me that there was vomit on her shoes.  And on the sweater she’d warn.  This was in addition to the clearly visible vomit all up and down the child’s shirt and pants.  And it was just a warm-up for the heart breaking and disgusting day we were about to have.  Suffice it to say that the mini steam cleaner we bought paid for itself many times over. But the thing is, though super sad and nauseous Edie needed 100% of me 100% of the time, Eli needed 100% of me about 33% of the time, and then work needed me sometime.  But sometime today.  Because outside of my personal Groundhog Day vortex, there are deadlines. 

There was a magical moment when Eli was sleeping and Edie, in spite of her best efforts, drifted off for about twenty minutes.  I was able to return the work call that I’d gotten earlier while I was driving home with a screeching three-month old and a pitifully sick and sad two year old.  Watching that call come in, avoiding even touching the phone lest I accidentally answer it (and almost certainly turn it onto speakerphone instantly), makes me feel like an imposter.  

There were less magical moments, like when I was rubbing Edie’s back as she let loose into a bucket and Eli woke up, screaming himself into a sweaty rage as he waited to be rescued.  I did manage to finish everything I needed to as my alter ego, Lawyer Lady.  And I was glad to be here for Edie, to wipe her face and to answer her question “why am I sick, mom?” over and over again.

I have days that I wish I worked.  But I don’t have any days where I wish I wasn’t here with these kids.  A break now and again?  Absolutely.  Armed with my steam cleaner, though, I feel really lucky.