The rest of the story

It may be my duty to tell you - in the interest of honesty and full disclosure of moments when I am a schmuck of a parent and truth in mommy blogging, etc. - that seconds after taking the adorable photo of Nate sitting at a picnic table, staring awestruck at his first whole chocolate cupcake, surrounded by his siblings and the children of our close friends merrily singing Happy Birthday in an beautific, Rockwellian first birthday scene, he biffed backward spectacularly and landed flat on his back in the soft, padded, rife with the aroma of summer, green grass.

An event which I should have seen coming from a mile away, but missed in my eagerness to deliver the chocolate cupcake myself while his father snapped photos of his delighted, excited, chocolate besmeared face.

And then, nature was stroking his face with her gentle tendrils and touching his back and his legs and ohmigod, you heathens, it's everywhere; it's touching me; it's eating me.

I'M MEEEEELLLLLLTING!!!!

(Down. Because I didn't nap and mommy wouldn't put me to bed because she had to have her thrice-damned pictures of my mouth covered in chocolate. It's all about her, people, stop believing the charade. Sob.)

SOB. HOWL. CHOKE. WHIMPER.

Did I give up? Of course not. Because I have pictures of both of his brothers covered in chocolate at their first birthdays and his sister covered in chocolate at her first birthday spent with us AND I MUST HAVE NATE'S PICTURE TOO, PLEASE CHILD I DON'T CARE HOW TIRED YOU ARE OR WHERE THE BITCH TOUCHED YOU OR HOW MUCH IT TICKLED JUST EAT A CHOCOLATE CUPCAKE FOR THE LOVE. For mommy? Snookums?

I offered him the cupcake again. On the ground, whilegrassstilltouchedhimohthehorror. He was somewhat distracted by trying to get as much of his legs as possible out of the grass, but he managed to aim a pretty accurate annoyed bat at the cupcake that I lovingly shoved in his face.

Undeterred, I picked him up and offered him the cupcake for a third time, because no child of mine rejects chocolate and also, holy mother of all compulsive obsessions, I wanted that picture. This time his swipe had some power behind it and he sent the offensive cupcake hurtling across the lawn.

Not to worry, though. He refused to let me put him down for the next fifteen minutes while he smeared my back, left arm and hair with chocolate frosting. So, I was appropriately covered in chocolate for my efforts. There's no photo of that because I'm not particularly cute covered in chocolate and this is mostly a family blog.

We might just reuse Garrett's picture. Red hair, same clothes, in ten years, no one will notice. Shhhhhhh.

That's totally Nate. Shut up.

How do you measure a year?

He still suckles in his sleep. I watch him over the crib railing, on the last night that he is a baby, in his yellow chicky pajamas, his legs pulled up under him and his chick-covered ball of a bottom in the air. His tongue moves rhythmically inside his mouth, suckling. He is so long in his crib and still so small. Were my other children this small at one? I don't remember it that way.

Through the crack between the black out curtains, the sapphire twilight sky is pierced by black pines. The final minutes of my last baby's first year tick away.

How do you measure a year, the song asks.

I have measured years in trips taken and countries visited.

I have measured years in billable hours.

I have measured years in semesters, in football game won and parties attended.

But never, until I became a mother, have I measured a year in heartbeats, in smiles, in naps and nursing sessions and milky sleeps, in teeth and inches and discoveries. In shots and well baby checks. In onsies outgrown.

Funny how I have come to find, relatively late in life for baby making and baby growing and baby birthing, that there are few yardsticks more satisfying, or more bittersweet.

Nate is one year old. He still suckles in his sleep. In another year he won't, but it's okay. I'm okay. We'll find other yardsticks together. Books read. Friends made. Bike rides taken. Maybe even countries visited. Hours spent grounded? Who knows? I know it will be just as satisfying and every bit as bittersweet.

My four - er, wait,


make that five(?) big kids.


Happy birthday, Babynater.


Or, maybe I should say, happy birthday, Nate.

If you didn't fear me before...

Shaking that last blogger-publish-thing off to say: 1) it's finally summer here; 2) thank god; 3) my older two are attending day camp this week; 4) thank god; and 5) I have a bunch of little things to tell you, in no particular order.

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This one is actually big, at least to me. I so often get lovely notes in my comments, delightful thoughts, ideas I hadn't thought of, stories that someone shares with me about their own experiences. I know that some of you want to be anonymous, and that is no problem, but I wonder if you know how nuts you are driving me because if you did you would absolutely fix it by following the advice that I am about to give you.

If you are going to leave me lovely comments, what you could do (pretty please) is set up a dummy gmail account, just make sure that your real information is not provided when you create the account. If you comment on blogger blogs while you are logged into that gmail account, the blogger can email you back to thank you or chat with you or whatever.

If you are going to leave me nasty comments (completely distinguished from challenging or disagreeing comments), please remain anonymous so that I can pretend you are not a real person, but rather that computers have overtaken your brain and caused you to lose your perception of what is acceptable behavior in any medium.

And I KNOW. I know. I know. Why don't I just switch to wordpress? It writes up comment responses for you and let's you approve or disapprove them before it emails them out for you. I'm scared of wordpress, okay? I'm scared of all things that require a "plug-in" including vacuum cleaners. (Also, public sandboxes for the record. Cats and squirrels poop in those things; it's disgusting. What public safety genius thought: I know, let's put giant wild life litter boxes beside our public playgrounds. I bet they don't have public sandboxes in Canada. Moose shit is huge.)

I'm done bossing you around now.

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Remember this?


Not so much.



He's huge. Do not let him any where near your sandbox.

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Nate still hates for nature of any kind to touch him.

You are about to stick my precious little piggy toes in that disgusting natural lake water, aren't you? Does that fact that I am trying to rip off your cheek give you any clue as to how I feel about that?


No? Well that let me howl my displeasure.


It's like a big fish toilet, you idiots, what next, do we drink it?

I don't know where he gets this attitude. I swear.

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

Finally, this scared the crap out of me last night.


I'm not sure if I thought Nate had climbed out of his crib, crawled down the hall, and navigated a flight of hardwood stairs, or perhaps that the horrid, scary baby in Pet Cemetery had come to get me at last, or if I thought my house was being invaded by giant, mutant babies of another variety, but it took a long time for me to recover and I had to disassemble the giant, mutant baby stack-o-boxes.

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That was a disturbing little peek into my psyche, wasn't it? I fear sandboxes and giant baby heads. Please leave me an email when you comment so that I can contact you. Huh. Wonder why some people don't?

Oops

Whoops. So apparently there's this collection of keys that equals a short cut to "publish this post blogger" except that it is mislabeled as a short cut because it's really a short cut to "OMFG?! Did I just publish that crap?"

Damn blogger and damn the whole feed reader thing and the inability to kill anything in cyberland.

That weird, half written, poorly spelled first draft that appeared in some of your readers today ... it's a half written, poorly spelled first draft of a sort of post that is more of a concept and some notes. Blush.

Sorry. And no. I totally am not. It is about five years ago. The whole thing. I swear it on the bottom of my happy, busy, little heart.

Please ignore. Carry on. Nothing to see here but an embarrassed, computerly inept blogger.

XO.

Icarus

We went into the woods and I was forced, by the weight of the quiet, by the weight of sunlight on water, by the weight of my own joy, to think deliberately, but my mind found only questions.



Should green be this green?


Should red be this red?


Is blue like this allowed?


Is this what they mean by black and white?


Do children and uncles have some talisman in their blood that keeps them from feeling fifty degree water?


It hurt deep inside, where life sparks and ends, where the fear lives that leaves me gasping, sweaty-palmed and tight-chested, in the fast lane of the highway, wondering how it is that I, puny and inconsequential, slow-reflexed and sluggish-minded, dare to assume that I can keep them safe, work the pedals, mind the curves.

Holding tightly to my present,


I glimpsed the future,


and cradled my past somewhere between laughter and tears.

I flew too close to the molten center of it, to the very definition of love, and I had to crawl back out, dragging singed wings.


If I view it obliquely, through mirrors and lenses, maybe I can protect myself from the fearful basilisk of change? So, I hid behind my camera, nursing the blisters on my soul.

She's a butterfly

She's a butterfly, pretty as the crimson sky - martina mcbride


It's a moment of quiet, stolen like a cookie in a ceramic jar on the counter from the bustle and swirl and constant movement that is house guests. She is impatient with me. Grandma and Grandpa are already downstairs, pouring coffee and listening to another of her brother's endless tales and trying to understand whatever copycat yarn Quinn is spinning. She sighs and shuffles her feet.

"Just another minute," I soothe and I continue to massage mango scented oil into her thirsty hair despite her little mewling cat noise of displeasure. "There's a lot of fuzz in your hair," I add by way of explanation.

If you have not cared for wiry, kinky hair, you probably can not imagine that. Hair that needs oil, olive oil, Jamaican oil, essential oils, added straight from the bottle and left in to seep down and feed the roots. My hair is slick with oil of its own creation after three days without washing, hers drinks oil for breakfast and begs for more at bedtime, parched with thirst. We are trying her hair's natural look this summer, without the tears and the beads and uncomfortable hours spent sitting while momma's ten thumbs wrestle with tiny braids. It looks beautiful, so long as I stay on top of the moisturizing oil, but the impossibly tight, spiky, dense spirals of curls collect fuzz and debris like a lint brush. The pieces must be picked out one by one, pulled to the end of the twig of hair that holds them and extracted.

I pale at blanket games. Don't EVEN get me started on sand.

She sighs again. She cares nothing for fuzz-free hair. "Your hair collects fuzzies and lint, I could use it to get Hampton's dog hair off of my shirt," I tease her. "But, it's very beautiful."

I don't know why I ask her, I hardly ever bring up this subject. I prefer to let her take the lead.

"Do you think it's beautiful?"

"Yes," she answers, emphatic and enthusiastic, "I think my whole body is beautiful, I think my hands are beautiful and I have very brown skin," she holds up her arm to show me as if it is a discovery of hers, "and it is beautiful too."

"It sure is," I barely choke around my sudden tears. I am struck dumb. Again. Yet again, every day in some small way that is also huge, I am stuck dumb by my children. It is not a script I have fed her or an answer she thinks I expect, it is not something we have discussed directly before this.

The moment sinks in like sunlight on my skin. It warms my core. We have to take these small triumphs, let them bask us in success, let them wash us in certainty. We have to take these moments for what they are and not question or second guess or wonder, just say to ourselves, briefly convinced it is truth, "I am an impatient and imperfect parent, I make mistakes, I stumble, I have no idea, for the most part, whether I am doing this well, but I am doing something right."

She sure is beautiful. May she always know it.


And then, her brother called her a pee-pee, poo-poo head, because potty language is all the rage at the anyhouse these days, and she screamed at a volume and frequency that could shatter glass that he had to stop it right now or she would send a witch to stab him in his sleep, and then he sobbed that Saige was teasing him about witches and I think I might have hidden in the bathroom for while.

I didn't say I was doing everything right, now did I?

Like an hour glass glued to the table

He climbs the stairs for at least the twentieth time with his unsteady gate. His foot thuds announce him long before he rounds the corner into the kitchen. The grin splits his face in half it is so wide. He starts talking on the landing and he is on the second or third verse of his song when he bursts in behind me.

"...like Saige and Darrett. No nigh-nigh. No nigh-nigh, momma!" He pauses for my nod, my smile. "No nigh-nigh? My a big boy. My a big boy like Saige and Darrett."

"Yes, you are. A very big boy, but you have to play in the basement. It's quiet time."

"My know. My go-ing." He turns and patters back across the kitchen. He'll be back, I know. He is bursting with this change. His joy can not be contained. He needs affirmation of his good fortune in fifteen minute increments.

I yanked his nap yesterday. He would still sleep every afternoon, if I chose, but his naps were affecting his bedtime and nothing, no.thing., not one thing, is more important to my sanity, my free time, my marriage, my soul, than my children's early bedtime. It's a selfish thing. I believe, strongly believe, that parents should be selfish to a certain extent, in that, they should identify the things that are vitally important to their well being and give themselves permission to make them possible.

I need time. I like to write, to read. I like to talk to my husband. I like a neat, uncluttered house. I take that time from 7-11 every night. His more natural rhythm would probably be to nap and go to bed around 8:30. I dislike that because it affects me. I weighed the options. Go with his schedule or end the nap and deal with his horrid, tired self from 4-6. I decided I could live with the consequences of keeping my evenings to myself.

I yanked his nap. For me. But if you could have seen him, grown inches just from pride, walking on air, so happy and proud. MY A BIG BOY.

I wanted to take it all back. To follow him up the stairs one more time, drinking in his giggles. To snuggle him down into his little bed with his three butter yellow nanny blankets. Three! butter yellow nanny blankets. All my back up nanny blankets confiscated by my small nanny blanket hoarder and now we must have THREE! Not one less! nanny blankets to sleep.

To hear him say, "I can't seep."
"Close your eyes."
"Not closing."
"Close your eyes and think of something nice to do after naps."
"Dokay."

To peek gingerly around the edge of his door a little after three, terrified to let him sleep another moment because for sure, then, I'd hear him kicking the dresser in their room until 9:00 p.m., driving me insane with the banging and the singing, and whisper, "Quinner. Quinner, baby. It's time to wake up." To see him flip sharply to face me, his eyes bright in the dim light, "OH! WHERE YOU COME FROM?"

Here he comes again, up the stairs, I should tell him that he's going to have to nap if he won't stay in the basement for quiet time like the big kids, but I don't. I can't wait to see his face. It is effused with joy. How often do you get to see a face like that? Shining with joy.

"No nigh nigh! My a big kid!" He doesn't pause this time; he turns instead and heads right back down the stairs, but he pauses at the top and points a finger back at me, "We playing animals. You stay up here."

I will. I'll stay up here and cry a little. I'll cringe when they are unkind to you and you cry. I'll let you work it out, my three (three!) big kids.

Stay a baby. Grow up. Isn't that just the way of it all? He revels in the leap forward while I stand shell shocked in a crater of my own creation and mourn the napping baby of two days ago.

I have my time back. Two days ago he was staying up until 8:45, irritating me with his kicking and his singing and his general awakeness. Now, he can barely keep his tantruming, irrational eyes open through my lullabies at 6:30. I have my time back. I am reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I am caught up on laundry. I have time to write and I do. I write ... long posts mourning the loss of yet another piece of his babyness, the loss of his naps. That I yanked. For me.

I don't regret it. I need my evenings to be me outside of them. But, I still mourn it a little and I am reminded, yet again, that no matter how much time I carve or wrestle or wrench out of this crazy baby time for myself, I still have no freaking time.

((I know. I know. Time and I, we are on round 300 or so on this little blog. It could be a slightly boring, angsty summer chez Anymommy until I get past all these birthdays and settle into the idea of it all. Forgive me. This is where I try to pin it all down like pretty butterflies on a velvet page that crumble when you touch them.))

Birthday season

Nater turns one in two weeks.

Cue turns three in one month.

Ess turns five in two months.

Gee turns five in four months.

My days with four children four and under are numbered. Thank god. Oh my god.

Today was their last day of preschool. We hugged Teacher Priscilla tight and said goodbye and chattered about camp. In a blink, a splash through a water park (that's assuming of course that winter will ever end here), a few visits from family, an afternoon or two collecting bugs, in no time at all, it will be September and they will be Kindergartners. Remember when three months was a long time? Endless summer. Endless happy, carefree summer. How did it get to be so short? Just a quarter of a year; three book clubs; two hair appointments; six miraculous house cleanings by Dan the amazing cleaning man; twelve wine nights.

Four birthdays.

"Ruggin nugget, here I come!" They used to scream. They still love hide and seek. They can hide under the same blanket over and over, squealing with glee for me to count, to "find" them. But, they don't mangle the words any more with little mouths full of marbles. Their speech is clear, their vocabulary is impressive. 'Ready or not' is no longer a challenge.

"Thank you, mommy, I like this dinner," they say. Occasionally, even when it's not hot dogs.

They used to say "tu tu, welcome."

I can't write 'the toddlers' any more. It doesn't feel right. The big kids? Cue, Ess and Gee?

One of their favorite games is eating dust. They school randomly around my living room like flashing silver-blue minnows with their mouths open to catch the dust motes floating lazily in the sunbeams. Har-rumph! Har-rumph! The chomping noise is the best part of the game.

"Masmos, momma!! Masmos in mine hot chocolate," Cue exclaimed over and over yesterday. A few sips of chocolate with five mini-marshmellows thrown in and the child crowed in wide eyed ecstasy for thirty minutes. I would give him hot chocolate five times a day to hear him say "masmos" with tears in my eyes. I know too much now, a jaded mom of four. It can't be held. In three months, he'll ask me for a marsh-mel-low with perfect diction and think nothing of the way my heart jags sideways and regains its rhythm in brief acknowledgment of another toddler grown to child while I was loading the van and herding the day slowly and inevitably and gratefully to blissful bedtime, nipping its heels and cutting it off if it tried to double back.

"Ta, ta, ta," Nate sings in triumph, hand outstretched to the ceiling and wall just above our heads. It is his first word. The same first word as Quinn because their tall father slaps the wall that he must duck half way down the stairs and tells the child in his arms, "touch." Our quiet family history repeating itself.

By the end of the summer, he'll have too many words to count. By the end of the summer, I'll have children who don't wear "T" clothes. By the end of the summer, I plan to have worn them out from hot chocolate with masmos and hot dogs and hide and seek, maybe even ice cream if it ever gets warm. And, I'll forget. I will fall into my familiar patterns, put on my sheep dog hat and nip ankles toward bedtime and a quiet glass of wine. I'll remember and stop to enjoy. And forget. And remember. Our quiet family history repeating itself.

One, three, five, five...ruggin nugget, here we come!

Differences of opinion

"Difference of opinion," he shrieks at my feet, his face contorted into a mask of nearly-five-year-old rage and anguish.

"DIFFERENCE OF OPINION!!"

I rub my eyes and press a tight, unhappy knot at the top of my neck. I'm tired. Hampton Noodle has Giardia. Take a minute to appreciate that sentence. Our massive dog, who does not use a toilet and is barely housetrained on a good day, has an intestinal parasite that causes the explosive shits. We've lost some carpets this week. We've lost considerable sleep to dog clean up and maintenance.

"That hurts my fe-e-e-elings," his sister chimes in, in what is perhaps the most irritating tone on the planet, the nearly-five-year-old-girl half-sob, half-whine of ear piercing mother brain death.

Even as I am, in part, its product, I roll my eyes at current popular parenting theory, at acknowledging and labeling feelings, at preschools that encourage long, drawn-out discussions of hurt feelings, at "positive" discipline. I don't want to have a forty-five minute discussion about why we are not having hot dogs for dinner and how that offends the temperamental sensibilities of the under five set in my domain. I. HAVE. RAVIOLI. IN. THE. FREEZER. PERIOD.

That's the kind of parent I am, honestly. The I-have-ravioli-in-the-freezer-period kind. Still, crushed hot dog dreams notwithstanding, I respect the need for children to have their feelings acknowledged. I understand the problem with repression in our culture. Most of all, I want my children to enjoy deep discussion and debate, to understand that argument is healthy and fun. I don't want to raise people that can't handle disagreement.

I taught them the phrase 'difference of opinion.' "It's just a difference of opinion," I say as they scream at each other in the back of the van about whether the lyrics to Rudolf the Rednose Reindeer are "it's a jelly story," or the more popular "he'll go down in history." "Different opinions are okay," I remind Gee when he sobs helplessly against my leg because Parker doesn't like the color blue and he does.

It's just a difference of opinion. We can all think differently on this. We don't have to scream at others until they agree with us. We can agree to disagree and still like each other, even love each other. I validate their feelings when I can. I know it's frustrating that your sister is singing words with which you disagree. I'm sorry time out hurts your feelings.

But, puh-lease. Do you see this oh great and powerful labeling and validation gurus? All this crap about letting them express their feelings and giving them words for situations, etc., etc. They gang up on my ass and use that shit against me. Whether of not we are having hot dogs for dinner is not a difference of opinion. It's an edict from on high. I am most definitely the "high" in this situation and I don't mean from the huge glass of wine that I'm about to pour before I boil the raviolis. I'm not interested in hurt feelings over dinner choice. In fact, the first answer that runs through my head and almost makes it out of my mouth is something like: "Good. Take your hurt feelings to bed. More ravioli for me."

Except. Except. Do I want to dissuade them from questioning authority? Do I want to discourage them from asking for what they want? No. Sometimes? No? Are they independent, questioning souls or snotty, bratty children who want hot dogs for dinner? Is it too much to hope that I'll raise independent, questioning souls who are polite and non-bratty? I'll accept the snot.

"Gee," I begin over his hot dog induced howl. "Disagreement is respectful. You are whining and your behavior is not okay."

"But, I WANT hot dogs for dinner."

"I heard you, but I am in charge of dinner, hot dogs are not good for our bodies every night, and I am making raviolis."

Ess moans again. "That hurts my heart." There is no drama like the drama of a nearly five year old girl scorned.

I raise my eyes to the heavens momentarily, so that they can't see my smile. "Your heart will recover. I could give you a hug."

They straggle to the basement, amid snivels of defeat, for a conciliatory viewing of bizarre animated robots. It's another hard lesson, I suppose. You can disagree with authority, you can tell authority respectfully how you feel, that you are hurt, that you are outraged, that they are wrong. Hopefully, if you are lucky, authority will acknowledge your feelings, but you won't very often change their position. I know it hurts, babies, but someday, you will have spent the prior evening drafting a letter to the city planning commission expressing your outrage and outlining the legal reasons why a parking lot is wrong and setting forth, in careful detail, your grievances, your loss of property value, your expectations under the current zoning laws and master city plan and someone will look down on your pain and say, "I have parking lots in my freezer." Or something along those lines.

The very next day, tired and raw and on edge, you will find a miraculous well of patience that you don't normally display for your children's outrage and railing against the dinner machine because you have been woefully and painfully reminded of what it feels like to suffer what is, to you, an extreme injustice, and to be told, "eh, sorry, difference of opinion."

Losing is hard. Difference of opinion helps you accept others, but it doesn't lessen the emotions. Sometimes, you want hot dogs and you don't get them and it's over. Sometimes, the edict is just plain wrong and you have to rage against it until you achieve change or you die trying.

I don't know if I'm even coming close to teaching my children how to walk these lines. All I've learned from life and from parenting is that being the authority is hard too. That and that occasionally, after reflection, there's a way to soften the loss. Like, maybe chocolate ice cream after the ravioli. It's not hot dogs, but it's something.