Birthday Blues + First Haircuts

We celebrated Little Beauty's fourth birthday last weekend with a campout-themed party. We had a tent and made s'mores and the girls ran around with their flashlights. What fun!

BIRTHDAY BLUES

But about a week before the party, Little Beauty and I were snuggling in bed, post bedtime stories, talking about turning four and how big she was getting, when her eyes welled up with tears and she told me she doesn't want to grow up - that she wants to play with her mama and her toys forever.

I didn't tell her that the thought of her growing up made me want to curl up in my bed and cry too.

Instead I laughed a little (to keep from crying) and promised her that we would be friends forever. I would always be her mama and she would always be my girl. And, or course, I promised that she could play with her toys for as long as she wanted.

I pray that I can keep that first promise.

LITTLE HANDSOME'S FIRST HAIRCUT!!!

The afternoon of LB's party we took both kids to get haircuts. LH cried his little head off as his first haircut took him from hippie-baby to running-for-office-baby (LH in '08!).

LH before...

LH after ...

Me and my little man!!!

Dinner Alone Again...

I cooked a old person's dinner last night - salmon, wild rice and an artichoke. I'm not exactly sure why it felt like an old person's dinner, but as I stared at my plate I couldn't help but think that it looked like an early bird special from Coco's.

It tasted okay, lots of fresh lemon on the salmon, and artichokes are one of my favorites, but I think the fact that I was eating alone ruined it for me. My husband was working on his all consuming thesis at the library. My kids were with me, of course. LB was even talking to me. But neither child took an afternoon nap, so after all day with them my attention was drifting inward.

I ate fast. I thought about my grandma. We had met for lunch. She will be seventy-nine on her next birthday, but suddenly she seems so much older. I couldn't walk slow enough to keep up with her, even pushing my heavy double stroller. She speaks slowly now and often about the same things - what time she ate her orange in the morning, and what she heard on conservative talk radio.

She is going on a trip to Israel this summer and I worry about her. But then I think of her eating dinner alone most nights (she has been divorsed for over thiry years), and I think: Good for you grandma! Go to the holy land - and walk as slowly as you need to.

I took our plates to the kitchen and scraped the leftovers into the trash. That night, as I was reading bedtime stories to the kids, watching their emotions flicker over their clear bright faces (rapt-attention suspense surprise laughter), I thought of something else my grandma told me repeatedly - the early years of her children's lives, when she was home with them, were by far the best years of her life.

Steward of My Babies Bodies

I suspected that my seven-month-old son had breast cancer - yes, breast cancer. I cancelled yet another play date and brought him to the pediatrician. It turns out a bright red nipple with a distinct lump beneath it is a normal reaction to mild irritation. Nothing a little Vaseline and a soft cotton onsie won't cure.

I've begun sneaking flax seed meal into my daughters food in a last ditch effort to quell her eczema. I asked the pediatrician about the constant flare-ups and he said eczema is a chronic condition that just has to be managed. I have been trying to manage it with colloidal oatmeal baths, creamy Vaseline rub-downs, and even hydracortisone cream - all without much success. Flax seed is suppose to help with skin allergies - we shall see....

The bath water isn't dirty... it's the colloidal oatmeal!

Space and Perspective

I was out on the ocean today... what a luxurious experience of space and perspective. It was an antidote to the feelings of suffocation I've been experiencing lately. My soul is craving the wild and uncharted. I am tired of toting my kids around in my car. The gridlock of the streets is invading my life. I want to walk, to run, to get tired in a good way. Something has got to give.

I was listening to the radio this morning while doing the dishes. LB was playing in her room and LH was taking his morning nap. I had my coffee and was enjoying myself (I like doing dishes in the morning for some reason, like I'm giving myself a fresh start- you couldn't pay me to wash a dish at night). Then the announcer on the radio broke in with a news flash that there had been a workplace shooting in my part of town, only a few blocks from my house. He gave the address of the incident (in which four people were shot, including the shooter who turned the gun on himself), and knowing exactly where that was I realized the kitchen window above my sink where I was standing doing dishes faced directly toward the shooting.

Out on the ocean today I stared at the water. I needed to stare at the water. I sat on the side of the boat, toward the back, and watched the two white lines of our wake pull away from each other. I watched the water run up the side of the boat as the hull cut it. I watched it arc, splashing back down into itself. My eyes drifted along the surface of the water, away from the boat, as far as I cared to gaze. The green depths of the water drew me in, and although I didn't see anything, it seemed that any second I would. I wasn't going to miss it. I needed to stare at the water.

Why Try?

Maintaining friendships is such a drag when mixed with motherhood.

Here is how my latest attempt went:

I call a friend of mine on Monday afternoon and invite her and her nearly one-year-old daughter to meet me and my kids at the Japanese Gardens on Wednesday at whatever time works for her. I leave this invitation on her machine.

I run some errands, and come home to a message from her on my machine. She'd love to get together on Wednesday. She asks me to call her back to set up a time.

It is early evening. I put Little Beauty in the tub with some toys, and put Little Handsome in his highchair and begin feeding him his dinner. With my free hand (haha) I grab the phone and call my friend back. I'm busy with my kids, she is busy with hers, but we manage to have a brief conversation about Nanny 911 of all things, and then, after discussing the kids nap schedules, we decide to meet at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday. I write it on my calender.

Great!

Wednesday, 11:00 a.m. - I call to confirm. We are still on, and we decide to meet a bit earlier, 12:45 p.m. All is well. She even says that she will try to be on time (quite the challange with kids).

The Japanese Gardens 12:45 p.m. I pull into the parking lot and don't see her car. I'm not worried though, we've been so diligent in our planning.

1:00 p.m. LB has the koi swarming beneath the little bridge as she drops dried pellets of fish food which she has purchased with a quarter. I'm wondering if my friend knows where the Japanese Gardens are because we didn't talk about that. But they are on the campus of the college she attended, so . . .

1:30 p.m. We've walked the loop of the garden twice and spent another quarter on fish food. LH is asleep in the stroller and LB keeps asking where her "baby friend" (my friend's daughter) is. I tell her I don't know if they are going to make it. LB says it wil be sad if they don't make it. I agree. I curse myself for not having a cell phone. Who do I think I am, living without a cell phone!

1:45 p.m. We walk the loop one more time - around the lake, over the little arched bridge, past the garden of immaculately raked stones, beneath the blossoming tree and darting hummingbirds. I realize another attempt at friendship maintance has gone awry and we decide to leave. LB is sure we will she my friends car when we go to the parking lot. I tell her that we won't, but we will probably have a message on our answering maching when we get home. She asks me what an answering machine is.

The message: my friend says she forgot to ask which Gap we were meeting at, so she is going to go to the one on 2nd street and hope to find me there. I think, The Gap??????

We talk later that afternoon. She thought I invited her, on that original message I left, to meet at the Gap at some gardens. She says my voice was muffled. In subsequent conversations we never discussed where we were meeting, just at what time. The location was a given, for me it was the Japanese Gardens, for her it was the Gap at some gardens.

The moral of the story: We both laugh (more like a fatigued, dissapointed chuckle), knowing that it is par for the course. Then we bravely make plans for next Wednesday, tenative plans anyway. So why even try? Because I wasn't the only one feeling stood up and bummed out, my friend was too. And the idea of giving up on her, not to mention my other friends, just because we have kids and it is hard to get together - I can't think of anything more depressing.

Jackpot!!!

This week has been full of parenting payoff. Little Handsome uttered his first word: mama. I love it! He has said it three times now, twice with me and once when my mom was babysitting.

He claps now too, when he is really happy or excited. His singing Spider-man doll seems to do the trick. I place that thing in front of him, turn it on and LH goes clapping crazy and his little hands even make real live clapping sounds! LH claps wildly for Spider-man and I clap wildly for LH!

More payoff: I find myself waking up in the middle of the night and wandering through my quiet house - only out of habit. LH is making it through the night with a minimal amount of fuss lately, so my fatigue is fading away like a bad dream.

Little Beauty is also paying dividends. She appears to be slowly and steadily emerging from what I like to call 'three-year-old brain fever.' Her manic episodes are diminishing in intensity, although she still possess an awe-inspiring amount of energy, she is better able to harness it while remaining coherent.

In addition, my battles with LB are ending more often and more quickly with the words: "Okay mama," or "Alright, alright!" Music to my war-torn ears.

And what shall I do with my new found parental currency? I will revel is some of it (LB's steps toward sanity), and I will save some for a rainy day, as they say (LH's first "mama") - because if I've learned anything as a parent, it is that next week I will probably be bankrupt.

Working Mom

I am a working mother now, two nights a week. I am actually writing this post from work. My job as an English tutor at a community college takes place in a room full of computers, and comes with a lot of down time. I usually tutor an average of three students for twenty minutes each over the course of my four hour shift. Needless to say, I've caught up on a lot of reading, and now that they have generously offered me access to a computer, perhaps my posts will become more frequent. I'm shooting for one a week! Ambitious - I know.

Speaking of reading, I've just started the book The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. I'm getting a lot out of it so far.

The past six months have been difficult for me. LB turned three and morphed into this incredibly complex creature. We went through a period of intense, wild tantrums. She developed an alter-ego in the form of "kitty" - and kitty doesn't like to follow the rules. She doesn't like eat off of a plate, or the table for that matter. Kitty eats only the tiniest morsels of food she has placed on the dining table chair while she crouches on all fours on that same chair. We have a new rule - no kittys allowed at the table. Then, into the madness comes the second child, LH. I am still adjusting to having two kids. I am battling the constant frustration that comes from getting nothing done.

Then I started this book and it has me adjusting my outlook.

Hollowell writes: There is one point that many parenting books miss:children do more for us than we do for them. The most important advice in any parenting book ought to be this:Enjoy your children. Learn from your children, listen to what they say, play with them while you can, let them activate those parts of you that had already started to go dead before they were born, and let those parts of you energize your work, your friendships, your spiritual life, every part of your life that there is.

When I am able to get past the dirty dishes, the laundry, the unfinished home improvement projects, the unread books, etc.- what my children have given me is what really defines my experience as a mother.

When my kids are happy, when they emanate the purest kind of joy, the satisfaction and contentment I feel is primal and complete. The basic desire to feed, clothe, nurture and heal my children comes from a place in me I didn't know existed. As a person who leans toward the cerebral, motherhood was sort of off my radar. It took the presence of my children to, as Hollowell puts it, 'activate' the primal, instinctive, sensual side of my nature. And I believe that the other areas of my life, my relationships, my understanding of myself, have benefited from what my children have brought out in me. Instead of ruminating on what I'm not getting done, I need to become aware of the ways in which God is refining me and humbling me and blessing me through the gift of my children.