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.

Baby Naps

Why I sleep with my back to my baby....



I don't understand the co-sleeping phenomenon. How can I sleep with this perfect little face in front of me? My eyes refuse to close with something so beautiful before them. The impulse to kiss the fullness of his cheeks and to rub the softness of his tiny hands overwhelms me, and if I do then he wakes up, squandering my rare moment of rest. So now I've learned to only indulge in his sleeping beauty for a few minutes, then I turn my back to him. Sometimes his warm foot or hand will fall against my back and instantly I am asleep. When he begins to stir I wake not only rested but restored, then I turn back to him and bask in his smiling reaction to my face.

You Indian!

Little Beauty has begun name-calling. It started when she told her little brother, who was hitting himself in the face with his tiny fists, "Don't hit yourself in the face you silly Indian!"

As she repeated this phrase over and over again, as is the tendency of a three-year-old, my husband and I looked at each other, wondering where she got the term Indian and what exactly she meant when she called her little brother one.

The mystery was solved a few nights later when I was washing her hair in the tub and some water got into her eyes. With her little eyes squeezed shut she shouted at me, "You got water in my eyes - you Indian!" Suddenly, it sounded familiar to me, and then I got it. What she meant was - you idiot.

Sadly, idiot is a term I'm fond of and obviously I throw it around a bit too much. Note to self: watch the idiot ejections. All I said to LB in the tub was that it wasn't nice to call names and I made her apologize. I didn't correct her. I didn't tell her that what she meant to say was idiot not Indian. Maybe I should have. It's probably worse for her to throw around what some consider a racial epithet rather than an ordinary insult. I'll have to think more about that one.

Then we were at the park the other day when LB discovered some graffiti on her beloved rock climbing wall. She said, "Mama, look what some dummies did. They're ruining our park!" I agreed with her and told her she was right - and I didn't say anything about her using the word dummies, mainly because I agreed with her and thought she was right. Moreover, she wasn't using the word to be mean. It was simply and adjective - an astute one at that.

Post-Widsom

Seven days of excruciating pain and counting. The perks evaporated as the bruises appeared. My husband is calling me "Vicki" because I renewed my perscription for vicodin. This is not pleasant.

The Wisdom in my Teeth

After having all four of my impacted wisdom teeth yanked from my head within the space of an hour (bravo to my oral surgeon), I've spent the majority of the last two days in bed hopped up on a cocktail of vicodin, ibuprofen and acetaminophen. The swelling and the pain has been intense, yes, but the perks are worth mentioning.

Did you catch the part where I said I've spent the last two days in bed? A miracle for a mother. When we arrived home from the dental office my husband parked me in bed, popped in one my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski (and if you've seen The Big Lebowski you'd know it's well suited to vicodin-laden viewing) and then hauled the kids off to the park. Normally when he takes the kids anywhere I tackle the chores that are otherwise impossible with kidlets underfoot.

Another perk: I couldn't talk, at least not with any volume or clarity due to the wads of gauze in each cheek, the dryness of my throat and the numbness of my entire lower face. So what was the perk? Well, when I felt the compulsion to control coming over me, I was simply unable to give commands. I had to let go. I had to forgo asking my daughter is she wiped, flushed and washed after each visit to the potty. I couldn't raise my voice over my screaming son's to tell my husband to rock him not bounce him. My voicelessness forced me to relinquish my control over the minute workings of our family - and no bad has come of it. My daughter has not fallen ill due to poor hygiene and my son eventually got to sleep. All is well and I have discovered a measure of peace and freedom that comes from giving up micromanagement.

Another perk: La Leche League faithfuls please forgive me, but the responsibility of nursing my five-month-old son fell from my shoulders and I reveled in it - I reveled in the bottle! My husband fed him, my Little Beauty was delighted to feed him, and he was fine with it. I am still nursing him at about every other feeding, but I feel that this episode has given me the chance to wean him. Bring on the sexy bras!!!

Abundance

Christmas has come and gone, as have the in-laws, the gifts (many of which were returned/exchanged), and now the year itself is coming to a close. I've put away all the holiday decorations, even the tree which stayed up through Grandma and Grandpa's post-Christmas visit despite its dry and drooping branches. The only thing I've left up to ring in the new year is the string of multi-colored Christmas lights on our balcony. I think it will be festive to sit out there with our champagne tonight.

My largest task was sorting, organizing and putting away the Christmas presents - in fact, I have not completed that task, thanks to the second load of presents from Grams and Gramps. I can't bring myself to tackle that pile, so it is shoved in a corner behind the couch. I've found that my anxiety level corresponds exactly to the amount of loot amassed and this year there was a lot.

Last year, instead of getting gifts for each other, my husband and I opted for a single joint gift in the form of a digital camera. It was pleasant. Neither of us missed the gifts and we both appreciated having a camera. We still filled each others stockings and that little element of surprise sufficed.

This year we had no big gift on our wish list, so gifts were back - in abundance. My husband got me everything I asked for, from the locket at Banana Republic, to the water bottle I asked for to help me in my attempt to drink 64 ounces a day. My husband was not so fortunate with his loot. I got him a nice coat, but I also got him a toaster oven. Yes, a shiny red toaster oven from Target with a GO RED FOR WOMEN heart health awareness sticker on it. Needless to say, he promptly returned the offending appliance to Target (did I mention he despises Target). I think we will probably go back to the joint gift + stockings next year for my husbands sake.

Speaking of stockings, my daughter had gift opening burn-out by the time she got to the orange Santa puts at the bottom of her stocking to "keep her healfy." It took serious coaxing to get her through the dozen other presents stashed under the tree for her. The amount of presents we got her was a happy medium for my husband and I. It was more than I ever got, but less that he got at Christmas. Still, my Little Beauty seemed genuinely overwhelmed. By the time she got to the number one thing on her list, what she called the "Big Ariel Thing," actually the Little Mermaid Shimmering Lights Dolphin Chariot, LB could barely manage a smile.

My idea for next year: My husband and I will do the joint gift + stockings. For the kids, one gift from Santa and one from each family member (mom/dad/brother or mom/dad/sister) + stockings. I'm hoping this will alleviate bad gift guilt (toaster oven), spending too much money (everything on my list), and gift opening burn-out (LB's experience). We shall see....

Kid Person Post-Kids???

Having a second baby has given me all kinds of false confidence as a parent. Being two deep (as my husband likes to say) has me in the "If I can do this, I can do anything," mentality. Wrong. This past weekend I babysat for the first time in my life. I offered to help out a friend with a new baby by taking her daughter off her hands for a few hours - and she took me up on my offer.

At first I wasn't worried. Our daughters were good friends and they would keep each other amused, right? My confidence began to crack the night before B-day (babysitting day) with one long, continuous nightmare - the kind you attempt to stop by waking up, but are sucked right back into when you drift off to sleep, no matter how hard you try to think of something else. Highlights of the dream: I didn't know when they were going to pick her up and it was getting later and later... I gave her a bath and they were upset and offended... they came to pick her up but they were lecturing and criticizing me and wouldn't leave. All in all it was a long, tedious, stressful dream - just like I imagined watching someone else's kid would be.

I had forgotten (seems to be the theme of my blog) that pre-kids I was not a kid person, and it seems that post-kids I am still not a kid person. The ugly nasty truth is that I am a kid person only for my own kids! Sure, I can appreciate a cute kid, even laugh over silly kid quotes and stories, but to actually take care of someone else's kid - to feed them, correct them, tease them, tickle them... I'm not sure I have it in me. This is probably the reason I've never put Little Beauty in daycare. She has been with me her entire three and half years of existence. Somewhere in the back of my mind I imagine that whoever would be taking care of her would only be tolerating her, and that's not good enough.

Still, I would hate for my friend to think I was only tolerating her daughter. We all enjoyed her visit. She and my daughter made a fort in the living room and unstuffed one of the throw pillows that had a hole in it. Then they cooked the stuffing up as fish inside their fort and my husband happily crawled into the fort and ate the pillow stuffing, I mean fish, that they served him. Little Handsome was a bit more skeptical because of the insane noise level created by the girls. He's a quiet soul, like his mama. I'll admit I did run and hide in my bedroom a few times. My husband would tease, "Don't forget that you're in charge out there." But then the teacher in him would kick in and he'd go take over for me.

Hopefully, other people's kids are like an acquired taste, and it time, with more adventures in babysitting, I'll grow to love babysitting them.

The Post-Apocalyptic Playground

There is something post-apocalyptic about an abandoned playground. It is the movie scene with the mushroom cloud in the distance, while the foreground is a landscape of sharply defined shadows, nobody and nothing left to push the swings except deadly atomic wind...

The first couple years of my daughters life, our routine was to run our errands, then stop at a park before heading home for lunch. So often the parks were completely, eerily empty. Sometimes we'd even drive from park to park hoping to find people - people like us. I met a plethora of nannies and grandmas, but no young stay-at-home moms like myself. I did meet older moms able to stay home after putting twenty years into their career, but it was difficult to relate. The trend, at least in Southern California, is to have children later in life. I suppose there is just too much fun to be had here. But was twenty-five a ridiculously young age to have had a child... I didn't think so.

It began to feel as though the birth of my daughter was the A-bomb that decimated my life, leaving my daughter, my husband and myself as the sole survivors. A habitual prayer of mine became a prayer for friends. God began to answer my prayer just in time, just before I became pregnant with my now four month old son, because secretly I was sick with dread at the prospect of going through the baby years alone again.

Although I am thouroughly thankful for this burguning network of support created by my new friends, I am realizing that there is a fundamental aspect of lonliness to being a mother of small children. The other day, preschool, runny noses, and conflicting naptimes conspired to land my kids and me back in the post-apocalyptic landscape of an empty playground. I sat in one swing with my son on my lap while my daugher played tinkerbell on the swing next to me, swinging on her belly and waving her plastic wand which lit up and chimed.

We were alone most of the hour we spend there, the exception being the point when homeless man came through the park, stopping at each trash can and methodically sorting the contents into black trashbags attached to some kind of wheeled cart. He was shirtless in the chilly autumn breeze, and his bent back was bronzed. A sweatshirt tied around his waist indicated that he had aclimated to a life outdoors.

Watching him I discovered that I too had aclimated - to motherhood. It was enough to feel my little son's warm body leaning back against my belly as we swung, and to see my daughter's radiant face as she acted out her fairy fantasy. My new friends were like that sweatshirt, not always necessary, but a good thing to have for when the weather turned on you.

The Moment...

I've discovered that living in the moment is terrifying. It amounts to a concession that the past is utterly gone, and the future simply doesn't exist. All we have then, the only tangible, is the present - and the present is but a moment.

Yesterday I held my friend's week old son in my arms. He was wearing a hand me down outfit of my son's. I was filled with wonder and amazement that only four months ago my son was that small, that sleepy, that fragile... I'd already forgotten.

Another thing I had forgotten...

My daughter, Little Beauty (3 1/2), was looking at this picture from Halloween (obviously) and she said she liked it because Little Handsome's eyes were open (my son, obviously). When LH was a sleepy newborn LB would get the biggest thrill out of him opening his eyes to look at her. It was a rare occasion. She would torment him with a chorus of "open your eyes little buddy, don't you want to see your sister," until he struggled to produce the little blinks that had us both enchanted with him. Now his eyes are always open, following LB around the room as she meows like a kitty, squinting away from her when she comes up to smother him with kisses, or licks, if she is still playing kitty. I'd forgotten the first thrill of my son's eyes.

Living in the moment means knowing I will forget. It is just too painful. My only solace is this, writing. Not just living in the moment but capturing it - however flawed and clumsy.

A Formal(ist) Introduction...

Motherhood, for me, has been like conducting a deconstructionist reading of myself. The state of motherhood, and even pre-motherhood - from the moment of conception - has exposed the raw inconsistencies and contradictions of my character, soul, spirit. But from these black holes of logic essential truths have emerged, or in some cases, exploded in my face. As a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two, I finally feel ready and somewhat capable of exploring these truths, even the ones that exist in the darker places.... and so I begin this blog.