Coffee Wars

We don't own a microwave. Haven't for eleven years of marriage. I can't stand the smell when you open them. I've been told that it's fine if you keep them clean, but no thanks.

I like really, really hot coffee. I'm not even sure I like the taste of coffee. What I like, adore, need, in the morning, is a scorching cup to wrap my hands around and steam wafting into my face and an occasional sip of hot liquid burning the chill out of my head and throat and stomach.

These two things are tragically related in my house. Bear with me here.

No microwave. A woman who nourishes and adores four small children as her current life's work and likes only the first few sips of coffee in a full mug. After those first sips, I hold it and love it until the cup goes cold and then I want a new cup. Or the same cup, I don't care as long as it is thermonuclear hot again.

So. Here's what I do, once Matt leaves for work and the coffee is mine all mine, I spend about two hours every morning dumping my coffee back into the pot and reheating it to scalding goodness and repouring it into my cup for two sips and ten minutes of hot enoughness and then dump, reheat.

This saves coffee. I know it's kind of gross, but it's my cup and I'm drinking it and I wash the coffee pot afterward, sostopjudgingmewhocares. It saves coffee. If I dumped each cup after it got too cold for me, I'd need approximately 25 cups of coffee to get through a morning. Wasteful. Think of the coffee growers and pickers, not to mention the water and my effort. Clearly, no.

I am an environmentalist is what I'm telling you. A coffee bean preserver. Plus, I'm endlessly lazy and I don't want to brew new pots of coffee when I have a perfectly good cup of coffee that is a smidgen or 100 degrees or so too cold.

What's the problem? You ask. I don't care if you have disgusting coffee habits as long as you confine them to the nastiness of your own home.

MATT. Matt is the problem. Damn the man. Matt and his new shift which puts him in MY house, and yes, from 8 - 6 this is my house, until 11 a.m. every morning. That's a long time. And it's coffee drinking and reheating and drinking time. Used to be, in the good old 8-6 days, he would fill his big to-go mug and leave, leaving me the end of the pot to sully at will.

NOW. NOW! He's here until eleven. It's endless, that three hours. (Also, frustratingly productive. Handyman Matt can accomplish more in the three hours before work than I accomplish in an entire week. It's like he deserves hot, non-slobbered-in coffee or something. To top it off, he does fantastically annoying things that are my fault and that I've asked him to do. Like, for example, last week, after I intentionally ordered a bench and a hanging wall thingy in cream, even though I knew all the trim and built-ins in the newly finished mudroom were painted white, because, well because PB didn't sell them in white and I loved them and, and ... ? He spent a week re-painting every stitch of trim in the mudroom cream. And the doors. And the built-ins.) He's basically a saint, except that he's an irritating saint that likes hot coffee and gets all grumpy when I use the entire pot of coffee as my personal cup.

The gall. The cold coffee.

I'm going to need a bigger chai budget. Or a second coffee pot.

I hope that you're having a fabulous long weekend with all the scalding hot coffee you can drink and steam in your face and a few tears in your eyes for all of the incredibly brave people who have lost their lives in service to our country in the last 233 years.

Tell me all your thoughts on God

Gee has entered the "why" phase, closely related to the "what is" phase. We walked past a large Synagogue on our way to the library a few days ago.

"What is that building?" he asked me.

"It's a temple."

"What's a temple?"

"It's where Jewish people talk to God."

"What's God?"

Wince. "I don't know for sure. People think different things. I think it's a very powerful force for order instead of chaos."

He watched me so carefully.

"What do you think God is?" I asked him.

"The stars." He told me casually.

"That's a good thought. And the movement between the stars, our whole universe exists based on movement and force and energy. What else do you think God is?"

"The waves."

The stars and the waves. Powerful forces, elegantly ordered, on earth and in the heavens. Huh. Kind of blows my theories out of the water.

Do as I say, not as I do

Thank you. Reading all the thoughts and points on that last post was emotionally exhausting. Your comments were unbelievably thoughtful and kind. I'm in awe that so many people were willing to look at a really hard issue from another perspective. Thank you so much.

I could write twenty posts on different things that came up in the comments. I want to highlight so many of your insights. For now, I'll just quote Princess Jenn because she said it so well.

"There needs to be more understanding and less condemnation, not just in adoptive situations, but (for) ANY family who is dealing with a child with behavioral issues."

Yes. There does. More understanding and less condemnation. Exactly.

********************************

Okay. I need a break. You probably need a break from me. I'll follow up with drivel. I bring you incredibly mature parents in action.

Very early morning. Ess, Gee and Cue "play" in their bedroom. Matt and I try to pretend that the house is still quiet. Some kind of feud brews over blanket placement.

Gee: NO! I don't WANT the blankets there.
Cue: Yes! YES THERE! I want them ON.
Gee: I want them OFF.
Cue: I want them ON!!!
Gee: No. NO! I won't let you.

(ominous silence)

Cue: (calmly and quietly) Then, I will hit you with this book.

And we did not stop the ensuing book-as-weaponry drama. Because we were laughing so hard we couldn't get our breath to intervene.

Very early the next morning. The children are annoyingly awake and playing some loud game in the next room. Matt reaches for me and tries to cuddle.

Me: NO! I don't want the blankets there.
Matt: Yes! I want to.
Me: NO! The children are awake. It's morning. NO!
Matt: YES! They're playing. I want to.
Me: NO! They're distracting. I don't want to.
Matt: They're fine. I want to.
Me: NO! I won't let you.

Silence. Matt rolls over to his nightstand and then faces me again.

Matt: Then, I will hit you with this book.

I know. It's a good thing we aren't obnoxious, sarcastic people. Because otherwise where in the hell would I get off writing about what everyone else should do? XO. Thank you again. Truly.

Threads

A very long, very heavy post. Sorry. This lovely lady and her thoughtful, respectful commenters got me writing. I know some will think it is foolish, or self-serving, or stupid, or uncomfortable, or wrong to speak openly about this. It probably is. Every single time I write about this topic, I get emails from parents in terrible pain. I guess this is my way of being a thread in their rope.

**************************************************

I read the news articles and I didn’t know what to say.

I braced myself for the tweets and the posts and the comments of outrage and disgust, laced with vitriol and judgment and they came. I didn’t know what to say.

I watched the posts and the essays and the discussions switch from direct condemnation of abandoning a young boy to officials in a foreign country to sweeping generalizations decrying any family that didn’t make it after adoption. I didn’t know what to say.

Reporters contacted me and I was silent.

Talk shows asked me to participate in “a balanced discussion of international adoption and its outcomes” and I stayed wisely, safely silent.

Bloggers whose writing I admire and whose opinions I respect and whose families I hold in awe couched the issue in harsh black and white terms, either you commit forever and make it work, no matter what, or you are a terrible person, not fit to be a parent.

People linked here from chat groups and posts about adoption disruption and I sat here thinking I don't know what to say.

Adult adoptees spoke up on the pain and trauma of being abandoned and I took it to heart, as I always try to do, because their voice is vital and unheard. I cried and I stayed silent.

There is no return policy.
Adoption is for life.
You said forever.
What part of parent don’t you understand?

No part. I understand too well. I understand parenting one child to the detriment and trauma of another. Do you?

Finally, futilely, but necessarily, I know what I want to say. They aren’t wrong, these outraged, indignant, outspoken people. They aren’t wrong; they’re just taking the easy road. Point a finger and move on. Shake a head. Gasp in dismay and turn away. That’s easy.

Outrage is easy. Sarcastic snark is easy. Judgment and dismissal are easy.

Compassion is hard. Action is hard. Being a part, even a tiny part, of the solution, is hard.

Are some parents worthy of disgust? Frothing outrage? Vicious diatribes on their worthless horribleness? I don't know. Here's my question. How does it help? Does it help the child? Does it help other parents balancing on the precipice?

I don’t think so. I think we should save it. Save our disgust, save our sweeping, unknowledgeable generalizations, save our casual expressions of horror and our shocked, callous comments about what we would never do. Save our mocking tweets. Save our holier than thou comments and posts.

We are not helping anything. We are not helping the parents in absolute crisis and as a result, we are certainly not helping the child.

We have to meet people where they are if we want to help them. With open hearts, not wagging fingers. We have to meet people where they are and I will tell you something that I know for a fact about a parent, like me, who considers disrupting an adoption because they have reached their capacity to parent a traumatized child - I will tell you something that I know in my heart about a parent that places a child in foster care or in a mental health facility or at ranch for troubled kids, or even a parent who abandons a child on a plane alone - they are at rock hard bottom.

They are already wearing the hair shirt of guilt and self-loathing and it is cutting them to the core every single second of every single day.

And you are right. All of you who breathe your fiery dragon breath of indignation and blame across the internet and across the lives of families. It is about the child. It is about a child and how tragic it is that a child can be so damaged, so traumatized, in the first few years of his life that he can become a terrifying and heartbreaking impossibility for the parents who finally bring him into their home and try to love him.

I agree with you, in a perfect world, adoptions would be open and potential parents would get full information and intense preparation and meaningful support. In a perfect world, parents wouldn’t give up and they wouldn’t break down and they wouldn’t say I can’t do this any more. In a perfect world, children wouldn’t be abused or starve. They wouldn’t spend years in institutions or in foster care.

But, this is not a perfect world. So yes, it is about the child, but there is no way to help a child without helping the child’s parents. Are you? Are you opening your heart to try and help the child’s parents? Before you type out a vicious comment with your fingers tap tap tapping in staccato righteousness, have you tried to parent a traumatized child? There are many who need you. Have you opened your home to chaos and anger and pain and fury? Are you a respite family for foster care? Do you volunteer at your local shelter for run away teens? Your local crisis nursery?

No? That’s okay. I mean that. That. Is. Okay. But take a breath and ask yourself, what good is your anger “for the children” what good is your tweet or scathing commentary? How is it helping families, parents, people who have opened their hearts and their homes to this possibility and found themselves drowning in the aftermath?

We have to meet parents where they are and make decisions based on where parents are and offer suggestions based on where parents are. Parents in these situations don’t open up very often. They don’t tell you the truth. Do you know why? I do. The judgment is crushing. The casual, "just do xyz" comments, cut to the bone. The failure is overwhelming, can’t breathe, drowning in black water without knowing which way is up, overwhelming. Their emotions feel shameful. They are afraid. They are so afraid. Of your awful words. Of losing their other children. Of losing their minds for a moment and losing everything.

Maybe your callous, offhand remarks are made in ignorance. Parents of traumatized, unattached kids don’t talk and so how can you know. Maybe you don’t understand what rock bottom looks like for a parent with a rage-filled, traumatized child.

I will try and paint it for you. If you will try to keep in mind that I am shaking as I type. I am still shaking, three long years later.

I sat on my couch and the sun shone in the windows and for the first time in two months, I felt a fragile peace. My traumatized, institutionalized five-year-old son with valid grief, with understandable rage and abandonment issues, actually leaned against me to see the story that I read. The tentative, warm touch of his arm against mine made it difficult for me to breathe. He was touching me. He was choosing to touch me. I could do this. Two months of screaming tantrums set off by nothing and rages and incidents with our little ones that I tried to ignore faded away, melted into nothing at my feet. I could do it if we could have these moments. If I could see the progress. If I could have something to give me hope that I was on the right track and he might someday love me and trust me enough that I could breathe.

My one-year-old son, my first baby, my healthy, untraumatized child who had my heart like any first child does, from birth, toddled back and forth from the books to us, carrying offerings. He asked to sit in my lap and I pulled him up, but he cried and fussed and I set him down. A few minutes later, he tentatively approached with another book and I pulled him up on my other side, but after a minute, he screamed and I set him down. He leaned against me from the floor and then started to cry again and crawled away. Maybe eight or ten times, until I started to wonder in the back of my mind whether he was sick, maybe an ear infection, but the fragile bond with my oldest boy stayed in place and so when the baby found a quiet game to play on the far side of the room, I read books and snuggled with him as long as I could.

Shadows fell. I kissed my son and thanked him for reading with me and got up to start the evening routine. I sat on the ground to change the baby’s diaper, pulled off his pants and pushed up his shirt. Angry red welts scattered across his stomach. One on his side. One on his back. My heart leaped up to my throat. An allergic reaction? Hives? They weren’t raised. They weren’t itchy. In the middle they looked bruised.

I knew, then. I looked up and met his eyes and I knew. The hard, angry heart-breakingly familiar set of his face. Defiant, daring, asking. What are you going to do now? Do you still want to be my mother now? The price for my peace. The price for my oblivion and my quiet and my desperate need to just have everything work for an afternoon. Just one afternoon. I could see my older son’s rage and jealousy and grief and trauma splashed in vivid red on my baby’s stomach.

I could see the price and it was too high for me. I knew he needed to learn that he would be loved no matter what. Trauma, anger, grief, some small part of my brain whispered to whatever small part of me remembered to be his mother. I know. I know. I know. I knew and I still shook with rage at a five-year-old boy. There’s no easier way to say it. I shook with rage at a five-year-old boy.

I went to him and I took his hand and he writhed and screamed and fought and bit and scratched and I don’t blame him. Pure survival instincts. He sensed the danger as well as I did. I pulled him up the stairs as gently, but quickly, as I could, protecting myself as best I could and I put him in his room and I locked the door.

It wasn’t to keep him in. It wasn’t to contain his tantrum which raged inside, turning over furniture and ripping apart bedding and kicking and screaming.

I didn’t lock the door to keep him in.

I did it because I didn’t think I could open a locked door to hurt a child.

And I didn’t. But I wanted to. I wanted to go in there and spank him until I couldn’t lift my arm. I wanted to hold him down and hurt him like he hurt my baby.

I stood on the other side of the door with my head against it and all my education, all my love, all my good intentions, all my reading, all my preparation were nothing. Nothing. There was nothing and no one there to help me and I have never been so angry, so on the edge of out of control, in my life.

You can call me a monster. You can say something must be wrong with me. You can judge and parse and critique and discuss and feel superior and safe in the knowledge that you would never feel that way, no matter what and I will say this:

Bullshit. You don’t know. Unless you’ve stood on the other side of that door, shaking with animal rage at the child – person – entity – being – that intentionally hurt your baby, with you sitting right there, like an idiot, watching, and walked away, you don’t know who you are. I dare anyone, anyone with children who has never lost control, even the tiniest bit, even for second, with your precious, bonded, untraumatized, relatively easy child, to throw the first stone.

I’m proud of who I was that day. No. Actually. I’m proud of who I wasn’t. A news story with a sad ending you could all shake your head and cluck your tongue over.

That is the bottom. That is what the bottom looks like and I know from my email inbox that I am not the only parent of a traumatized child who has been there. Could I have put him on a plane that day, alone, with a note saying that I couldn't parent him any more? If I didn't have resources and options and a loving, supportive husband, I don’t know. It would have been the wrong thing to do, but we aren’t making our best choices at the bottom. Can you imagine, for a moment, how far down at the bottom, at the end of wits and hope and sanity, a parent must feel to see abandonment as her only option?

That’s where these parents are. Let me ask you this, you are standing at the top of a dark well and you are looking down at a parent, sitting at the bottom with her head on her knees. Are you going to try and throw her a rope, or are you going to spit on her? Which do you think helps the child?

Twittering your disgust is spitting. Ranting in comments on articles and posts is spitting. Rolling your eyes and using your best snarky voice in a Momversation video on a topic on which not one mother involved has the first iota of experience is spitting. Rolling your eyes at the playground or commenting negatively on someone’s parenting or their child’s behavior is spitting.

Families hit crisis. Their adjectives don't matter. Adoptive families. Biological families. Step families. All types of families. How can we help them? Because that is what helps their children and isn’t that the goal here? Isn’t it?

That is what helped my children. A family that wanted a child. A family with only teenagers. A family that had parented traumatized children before. A family that has never spoken to me with anything but compassion and understanding.

They didn’t throw me a rope, they built my whole family a staircase and it was in the best interest of every single one of my children, my oldest son most of all.

What could you do? I don’t say that lightly. You don’t have to be the whole rope. We don’t have to be the whole rope. All we have to be is a thread. Bad things happen to children and we can each and every one of us be a thread in the rope for change, for healing.

After agreeing with the thoughts of many birth mothers, slamming the resources and support for young mothers in this country, arguing that the first choice for children should always be with their biological parents, I signed up to mentor a young, single mom. I meet with her once a week. I buy her coffee. I listen; Provided everyone is safe, I just listen. I give her a place to spend an afternoon without alcoholic relatives or chaos or unhappiness. Is there a program like this in your town?

Is there a crisis nursery near you? The one in our city takes volunteers in two hour blocks. It’s a safe place to drop off a child for a short time and know that you won’t lose custody, as long as you follow their rules.

Could you be a respite family for foster care? There is a family in your town, right now, that is putting everything, their hearts and souls and sanity and every shred of energy, into a hurting child and they need a break. They need a night to go out to dinner and feel normal; attend a function for another child without worry; have a conversation that isn’t tense and guarded. Could you help?

If not, I understand, but do you? You are not willing to have a disruptive, emotionally challenging, possibly violent child in your home. Not even for a short time while the family that tries to function in that environment every day takes a much needed break. That's understandable. But consider keeping your thoughts, then, on the family's lack of love to yourself.

I know these things aren’t possible for all of us. We all have lives, troubles, griefs and concerns. I’m not condemning you if you can’t make such big commitments. I’m not standing above you. I’m standing beside you with my hand outstretched. Being a thread in the rope can be so much simpler.

How about this? The next time you see a mom “with a horrible kid” “losing it” at the playground, take a deep breath and instead of commenting on the “terrible parent doing nothing while her daughter screams,” think:

Maybe this is the twentieth tantrum today;
Maybe she was up all night;
Maybe the situation is ten million times more complicated than I realize;

And then meet her eyes and smile.

Because maybe, an hour ago, she walked away from that child’s door. And maybe, for the cost of a smile, you gave her the strength to do it again.

Just like that, you’re part of the rope. Now, we’re helping children.

Mother Nature's son

Yesterday was a hellish day. Every May, I drag - d.r.a.a.a.a.a.a.g. - my family to a gorgeous flowering wall about five minutes from our house for pictures. Last year, the sun was way too bright and you all kindly helped me and suggested earlier in the morning as a way of avoiding all the squinting. Just so you know, Matt totally blames you, yes you, for our 8:30 a.m. excursion Friday morning. Don't mention it.


It was like herding four children and a Great Dane puppy. Cats would have been a pleasure is what I am telling you. And no, I didn't put on any make up. We were there before 9:00 a.m. It's a miracle some of us aren't naked.



I know they look all cute and adorable and cuddly, but mere seconds before each of these pictures was taken, I had to wipe and moisturize and threaten and cajole to rid them of the snot and tear tracks and nasty, pouting faces. No shadows though. Yay!!




Quinn's pants got wet. THE TRAGEDY OF WET PANTS. WE SHALT NOT SURVIVE IT. Saige was excellent. She likes having her picture taken. Hallelujah. Garrett was constantly doing something dumb with his hands. I have 80017 outtakes in which it appears that Garrett's hands are possessed by freakish aliens.

Nate decided a few days ago that he hates nature. Hates it. Trees? Hate. Grass? Hate. Sticks? Leaves? Natural surfaces of any sort? HATE. He even cries when I set him down on the sidewalk. It is absolutely bizarre and disturbing. If you even shift him on your hip over grass he clings like a little howler monkey and cries. Ohmigod NO! NOT THE GRASS!!!!


You see? Flowers! Are! Touching! Me! Nature. The horror.


Saige: You're totally going to blame me if the baby falls, aren't you? Also, I look pretty, adore me.
Garrett: How can I unexpectedly do something completely bizarre and picture-ruining with my hands before the shot?
Quinn: Mine panz R weehheetttt. Oh. Something shiny.
Nate: I see how you have cleverly arranged it so that nature is not touching me right now, but nature is alarming close to me and the minute nature brushes any part of my body with its pretty soft little flowers, I am going to howl my outrage and ruin your pictures. I see you nature. I'm on to you.
Matt: (That's Matt hiding behind the baby in order to ensure that at no time does nature sully said baby by touching him with its beautiful, but deadly, blossoms of doom. He's thrilled, I can assure you.) You have got to be effing kidding me.

The pictures turned out okay this year, don't you think? Which is all that matters, no? Who cares about stinking reality as long as I have beautiful, idyllic NON SNOTTY pictures posted on my mommy blog with which to not-remember how my real life went down. Perfect.

If I can summon the courage and energy sometime this weekend, I'll write a little story about the rest of my Friday. Because it got progressively worse from yelling at my entire family about my obsessive compulsive need for cute flower pictures before 9:00 a.m. Have a fabulous weekend, and be careful out there, campers: NATURE, she is sneaky, she is everywhere, and that bitch will touch you.

True north

Mostly mothers read here. It's no mystery why that's true. And, though, I value every one of you, though I am enriched and strengthened by your thoughts and your understanding and our joint experiences and our different points of view, though I appreciate the fathers and the mothers-to-be and the non-parents and the people that read here to remind themselves of why they absolutely need to keep taking their birth control...

Today, I am talking to the mothers. In particular, the mothers in the thick of it, with no distance to gain us perspective, no stretch of years to soften the rough edges.

There is so much information out there. So many opinions, so many considerations and permutations and questions and certainly no lack of answers. Ask any question about raising a child and a hundred experts will tell you what to do. Question any technique and another expert will tell you why it's wrong and argue for the opposite tack.

We are buffeted and blown off course over and over by the fickle winds of "popular" parenting. Until our mainsails crack and our boom swings out of control and we can't find true north. It's enough to make your head spin. It's enough to make you feel like a really crappy mother. It gives some people the ammunition they need to treat you as if you're a really crappy mother.

Here's what I want to say to you and to me, today. To all of us. Every single one. Yes, you. Even you, the one who glared at me yesterday.

Don't ever let anyone make you feel like you are doing it wrong.

Whether you breastfeed or use formula or both, no matter how you gave birth, no matter if you didn't give birth at all, whether you yell or never raise your voice, whether you are Christian or Buddhist or Nilhist or Big Fat Goose Egg Nothingist, whether you work or stay home or try to work while staying home;

whether you immunize or don't, whether you hold your children in your arms or you had to let them go, whether you believe in positive discipline or love and logic discipline or no discipline or just do it because I totally told you to and that is FINAL discipline;

whether you would like to change your body or not, whether you limit TV or stress about TV or let your children watch TV all day or don't allow a TV in your house (am not sure how you survive), whether you homeschool or unschool or schoolhome, whether you pick whatever school program is closest or agonize for weeks;

whether you cook a nutritious meal every night or rely heavily on chicken nuggets, whether you buy organic or cheat and buy only organic milk and the veggies on the "worst for pesticides" list because ohmigod, organic is expensive and a girl's gotta have her chai, whether you co-sleep or cry-it-out or co-sleep until six-months when you are so sleep deprived that you can't stand it any more and then cry-it-out, whether you have one child or ten;

You are doing it right. You are right for your children.

No one else delights in them like you do. No one cares about their every thought, their every pain, their every joy (trust me on this, we really don't care the way you do, we love you and know it is important to you and we are pretending to care because we want you to love us and listen to and pretend to care about our stories too). No one else thinks they are absolutely precious no matter what. No one else loves them so deeply, so thoroughly, through their anger and their tantrums and their screaming and their happiness.

You are not too hot or too cold or to tall or too short. You are not too hard or too soft or too big or too small. You are just right. That's a promise.

Just look into their eyes today, the only compass that you need. You will see true north.

Happy Mother's Day.

Eleven years ago

Eleven years ago last night, I didn't sleep at all. I lay awake on my parents' couch with my heart pounding and a sick anticipation in my stomach. Excitement. Anxiety. In that quiet before my wedding day, I remember my thoughts. I barely recognize that girl, about to graduate law school and start a career, sleepless over flower arrangements and schedules and blue napkins and chocolate mousse cake.

The next day went so fast.

The flutter of girlfriends, hair, make up, photographer.

A blurred ride to the chapel in hose and a button down shirt. My sisters' giggles. My dad in his formal uniform.

Brief panic. The bus delivering the guests had not arrived. Hushed whispers. Don't tell her. It came; the procession began.

The beautiful strains of Pachelbel's Canon in D. Still my favorite, never jaded or cheapened by overuse in my mind.

My Dad's arm and the long, too fast walk to the alter. Slow down, slow down the planner had said, you only get to do this once.

If only I knew that those words would be the ticker running along the bottom of the rest of my life. Slow down. Slow down! Oh, please, slow down.

Matt's eyes on me.

The stifled giggles of my sisters and girlfriends every time the Cantor said "marrwidge."

The best man fumbling for the rings in his breast pocket, a welcome break, a chance to laugh.

Our joyful exit. We released the pews and finally got to greet our friends. So many hugs, catching the veil that fell from my hair and pulling my head back in uneven jerks.

Dancing. Eating. Laughing. Japanese tourists on a huge bus snapped pictures of us outside of Mt. Vernon Inn. Waiters and waitresses in colonial dress brought beer to the table where all the cousins sat for a beer chugging contest.

The cake covered in dark blue delphiniums, cut open to reveal its chocolate core. Listening to toasts with tears in my eyes. Hugs. Kisses.

Suddenly, the end came, standing on the steps to the fairytale inne that tomorrow would be just an ordinary gift shop beside a quaint colonial restaurant. My flowers sailed through the air and into the arms of a sparkling blond and flowers rained back, down on our heads as we laughed our way to Matt's jeep and drove away.

My last memory of the day, late that night, sitting on the side of our plush bed in an adorable hotel in Old Towne Alexandria, eating the top of our cake, ravenous with relaxation, while Matt pulled ten thousand bobby pins from my aching head.

*************************************

Last night, eleven years later, I slept soundly, a solid, blissful eight hours of rest. At 6:45 a.m., my eyes opened reluctantly to hot breath in my face and gray-green eyes inches from my nose.

"There's poop on Quinn's bed," Garrett informed me in a stage whisper. Alert at once, I heard Matt's even breathing shift with a soft groan. I barely had to roll over half way before he was sitting up, feet on the floor.

"Show Daddy, bubs."

From my sleep-warmed nest under the covers, I listened to the discovery and discussion in the other room. "Did you get sick, Quinn? Is your tummy owie? What happened buddy? Stacey? I think he threw up."

Uh oh. I padded in to find that my two year old had, in fact, thrown up. Judging by the crusty, clumpy evidence, early in the night, and then gone back to sleep with out so much as a whimper.

Aren't mothers supposed to have some kind of sixth sense for this kind of thing? Did I really sleep through my son vomiting in the room next door. So, Matt took chunks (I can't do chunks. He takes the chunks for me. That is love.) and I took follow-up disinfection. Quinn appeared to be more sad about the disgusting state of his bed then anything else and so we moved on to breakfast with hardly a hitch.

It isn't quite the day that it was eleven years ago. There's no chocolate mousse cake, for one thing. There's no chapel full of friends and loved ones gathered to watch us proclaim our love. No dancing. No once in a lifetime dress. No gorgeous hotel room.

And yet, today is better in a way that only eleven years of watering and patting and tending and weeding and whispering sweet words of love can create.

Eleven years. Many mistakes. Very few regrets.

Mother's Day Tea

I often feel like I dread the very things that most mothers look forward to the most.

Birthday parties. Pageants. Fun runs. Extraneous school functions. Mother's day teas.

Part of it is me. I'm social, but introverted and lazy. I haven't shaved my legs since Mexico in February. It's the only perk of living in perpetual winter and I don't want to have to shave them for preschool, no matter how special the occasion. I'm not a shopper. I never have appropriate clothes for myself or my children for special events.

In part, it's really hard for me right now, at this crazy, four kids under five phase of my life. Kids must be juggled; schedules must be changed; Matt must be pulled from his numerous garage projects; precious hours to accomplish chores and errands must be relinquished to dressing up and appearing and sipping. I know I'm not alone in these difficulties. That's not a plea for sympathy, it's just a fact. It can be hard. Then, there's the bathing and the hair braiding. I'm not worried about appearances, but my kids hadn't had a real bath in over a week and honestly I needed the kick in the ass.

Another part of my reluctance is Saige and I and our struggle to find our balance outside of familiar situations. It's the inevitable tantrum and the inevitable baleful glances. It's the dialogue inside my head that I attribute to others. Why is she so hard on that child? I'm not really; she feels insecure, she is looking for me to set limits and regulate her behavior, she tests my authority to make sure I'm still her mother and that I can keep her safe.

We all have our issues, our discordant, six part harmonies inside our heads, that can make "fun" things seem, well, less than fun.

This morning, skipping breakfast to braid the last three braids in Saige's hair while yelling at the dog to drop the baby's sock and giving Matt the run down for drop off as a prelude to bustling him out the door so that I could shower while playing peek a boo with Quinn and Nate around the curtain, I thought seriously about calling it off. Just not going. Taking the whole family to a quiet, freezing cold park for the morning where my leg hair would be appreciated as the heat insulating layer that it is.

But, Garrett's outfit still fit from my sister's wedding. And Saige begged to wear her blue dress. And I actually finished her braids and remembered to buy the bananas I signed up to bring. Mostly because we have at least two bunches of bananas in the house at all times, but, that did not take away from the fact that I signed up to bring bananas and I had bananas in my possession. We went.

It was lovely. Some moms were dressed up and some were not. Some kids were dressed up and some were not. There were yogurt parfaits and adorable handmade presents at our places and a professional photographer. The class, fifteen four-year-olds in all, sang the sweetest song, arrayed in a crazy, lop-sided row with their "toes on the carpet line." I have absolutely no idea what the lyrics were but the chorus said "I love you." Saige and Garrett pointed at me so enthusiastically that I thought my head would snap trying to meet both of their eyes on either end of the wavering line of preschoolers.

Saige threw a fit about bananas. Because we have nine hundred of the damn things at home, so of course she did. Garrett ruined another little girl's art with his water, which he spilled two or three times. I chatted a little. We had our pictures taken.

I realized something, sitting on the floor for story time in my black skirt with my ready-to-be-entered-in-a tarantula-look-alike-contest legs because NO! I do not shave for preschool! with my biggest babies in my lap. Maybe to some of the moms sitting there I looked like I was really into this. My kids, by some miraculous last minute alignment of the stars, looked really cute and I wore a skirt. I showed up with bananas and laughed and smiled.

She might have sat there thinking, am I the only one who dreads this shit a little? She didn't see me almost cry over braids or tell my husband that I might just keep the kids home. She doesn't know that I had to talk myself down in my head when I sensed the start of the great banana fit.

Maybe I'm not the only one who secretly dreads certain child-oriented situations that are supposed to be fun. I'm just not the only one who's good at hiding it. Or is that just wishful thinking?

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Before we get yogurt all over ourselves, look how kind of cute we are, if you overlook the funny faces.




Y'all come back now, ya hear?

If we didn't have a horse-dog

oh the joy I would have missed.

1) I would not have had to stay up all night a week ago, holding my husband's hand as we sat vigil on a swallowed dirty wet wipe. Because everyone (me) knows that you shouldn't just leave dirty diapers, containing dirty wet wipes, laying around on the floor. Well, perhaps, everyone (Matt) shouldn't let the dog wander around upstairs, which is in general off limits to all creatures of this house under the age of five and any all beings who can not be trusted to not play with/throw about/touch/sample/taste and/or otherwise SWALLOW cloth like rags with poop smears on them.

Sadly, this is not the first time that a baby creature in my care has swallowed poopy paper.

2) I would not have had to run, gagging, from the room when horse-dog, aka, Hampton Noodle horked up his entire breakfast with a dirty wet wipe, like a cherry, on top. Thus, endeth my husband's doggy death watch. Gross.

3) The antique (this house is over eighty years old, and therefore, everything in it qualifies as antique, otherwise known as old, broken, not functioning in a modern, predictable and efficient type way) door to the kids' room, which matches all the other antique upstairs doors, with its antique (read that, malfunctioning and irreplaceable) hardware, would not be, currently, scattered about the upstairs hall in splintered, broken, (SOB!!!!) pieces. The result of Matt kicking it in. Because Garrett locked himself in the room with the antique (old and malfunctioning) lock. Because he kicked the door repeatedly while in a time out. Because he hit the dog.

Clearly, the dog's fault. With a side of omigod Matt, while I am thrilled that you are manly and strong and capable of breaking a dead bolt (and a door frame and the entire door lock casing) with one blow of your powerful, manly foot, I think, in retrospect, that I wish you hadn't been here, because I might have cried and panicked and discussed the situation with Garrett until I realized that the dead bolt was locked. RAH. MY DOOR. HAMPTON.

4) I would not cringe in horror every time I walked into the kitchen and glimpsed from the corner of my squinty averted gaze, the massive claw marks down the front of one of my custom cupboards. Where a certain 45 lb begging machine "requested" a chip. Why does he even know there are chips in that drawer? Children. (Tears. Unhappiness. I have survived almost five years of children with nary a scratch on the kitchen cupboards. Yes, I am insanely anal retentive and no, my children are never, ever allowed in the kitchen without me. Five years. Nary a scratch. For naught. Naught, I tell you. And sure, you can judge me. Crazy. Ridiculously strict. Non-Montessori-ish, values-her-cupboards-more-than-her-children-shouldn't-even-be-a mommy. And I will tell you, it's just who I am. A loving, happy, reasonably well-adjusted mother who never ever lets her children in the kitchen. We can't change our core beings, people, we just have to work around them.)

5) I would not have to spend dinner time with a squirt water bottle in my hand the better for banishing horse dogs from under the table where they are not allowed to be while we are eating. GASP! CHOKE! RULES! ORDER! No heads in our laps while we eat. No stealing of socks and shrieking of children. No eating off of the baby's high chair tray. NO EATING OFF OF THE BABY'S HIGH CHAIR TRAY. SQUIRT!! SQUIRT!! SQUIRTSQUIRTSQUIRT!!!! SQUIRT HIM MOMMA!! SQUIRT HIM!!! SQUIRTME!! SQUIRTSAIGE!!

6) I would not have to walk around the house holding the squirt bottle at the ready like some kind of old west law woman. Freeze! Drop the baby toy! Squirt! Release the baby's sock with the baby's toe still in it, outlaw! SQUIRT!! SQUIRT!! SQUIRTSQUIRTSQUIRT. Squirt him momma!! Squirt him!! Get your nose out of his diaper. SQUIRT! Don't knock the children down and steal their socks. Squirt! Get off of my sock! For the love of god, are you actually stealing my sock off of my foot?!?! SQUIRT!!SQUIRTSQUIRTSQUIRT!!

I'm not going insane at all. Nor do I have squirty water bottle issues. What? Are you still here? Get off of my blog! SQUIRT! Are you touching my cupboards?!!! SQUIRT! IS THAT MY SOCK!!!! SQUIRTSQUIRTSQUIRT!!!!!