Because

I just locked myself in the bathroom for about 20 minutes to bawl my eyes out. Because I somehow got caught on the wrong side of friend politics with one of my oldest and closest friends. Because I’m totally overwhelmed by life in general right now. Because I am hormonal. Because I’m facing a summer with no money with which to entertain my children and to be frank, I’m just not that creative. Because I just want one thing to go our way, and it’s not. Because my dad is dying. Because my son is struggling mightily with growing up and I don’t know how to help him. Because my daughter is sweet and amazing and I just cannot keep up with her right now and thus the guilt is nearly overwhelming. Because I haven’t had a day off in longer than is healthy for me. Because I miss my friends and I’m not entirely sure they miss me back (although that might be the hormones talking). Because the fucking wind will not stop. Because I can’t seem to stay on top of laundry. Because we didn’t get to plant flowers on Mother’s Day this year because of lack of money and the weather won’t settle into spring. Because our lawyer has turned into a jackass. Because I desperately want to ask my in laws to please come for a visit just to have fun and get to know their grandchildren and I’m terrified to ask because I couldn’t handle it if they say no, but I miss them. Because I’m tired and the sleepless nights have already started. Because I’m in a cooking rut I can’t seem to find my way out of. Because we got invited to a fancy party on Sunday night and I don’t have anything fancy to wear and no one to watch my children so they have to come with us to this party where there will probably be no other children and they also don’t have anything fancy to wear. Because my neighbor across the street is moving and I’m going to miss her and her children. Because, because, because, because…I guess I just needed a good cry.

4/21/10 - The Boy

The Boy is having a hard time. He’s spent the last couple of weeks throwing magnum force meltdown temper tantrums. He’s been full of anger and not at all responding to redirection well. Essentially, for lack of other more politically correct parenting terms, he’s been freaking out. And it just keeps getting worse. Until he had the mother of all meltdowns last night. My husband and I were up with him until almost 9:30pm (we typically put both kids to bed at 7pm). He spent most of that time crying, screaming, kicking, slamming his head into the wall and throwing things. He would not listen to me or his dad, he would not calm down. He was totally lost in this gigantic emotional outburst. We finally just left him in his room and told him to let us know when he was ready to talk. After another almost hour of crying and screaming he asked us to come in and talk to him. And after another almost 30 minutes of unintelligible mumbling we finally got out of him that he was just really mad and sad that his papa was going to die.

Ah. Ok. Here we go.

I’m actually surprised it took this long to surface. I was surprised with how well he took the conversation my dad had with both the kids. But there was also a sneaky suspicion boiling that he in fact did not take it well at all and was instead just stuffing all the emotions the news brought up with him. That he was hoping that keeping perpetually busy, running like a wild child with his friends that maybe the news would just go away. And then I told him that his sister and I were going back to Nana and Papa’s next week and it was all downhill from there.

He had another meltdown at school today which ended with the school calling me three times to give me updates on how he was doing.

I’m worried about him. And I don’t know how to help him. I think all I can do right now is love him and make sure he knows that he is not alone.

Ultrasound #2

Ok, so I’ve now had two ultrasounds and the absolutely, positively last word on the subject is that there is only one baby in my belly. I had the second ultrasound yesterday and I made sure the tech looked everywhere a second one could possibly be hiding and she was willing to stake her job on the fact that there’s only one in there. But there is still the issue of why I’m so big already, which apparently can be explained by a couple of different things. The first of which is that this is our third baby and a woman’s body tends to just really know what it’s doing by this point and lets it all hang out, so to speak. The second of which is that I’ve got a good sized fibroid attached to the wall of my uterus which is making me seem bigger than I am because it’s taking up space where there normally wouldn’t be anything taking up space quite yet.

The ultrasound tech didn’t sound too concerned about the whole big picture. And after doing some research on fibroids I understand why. They’re incredibly common and don’t usually cause any major problems for pregnant women, although they do introduce a risk of preterm labor if they get too big as they typically continue to grow during pregnancy. So that worries me a wee bit, but I’ll just talk to my OB at my next appointment and get a really good handle on what she sees as the big picture specific to me. So I’m trying to let any worry seep away and let burgeoning excitement over this new baby take its place.

Because this sweet fuzzhead in my belly was wiggling madly whilst on camera yesterday. It was stubbornly refusing to turn at all, so we got awesome back and butt shots. Because despite how little this babe still is, I can feel it kicking occasionally and no matter how many times I do this, that will never cease to send an immense thrill through me. Because the kids are super excited and we get to start choosing names. Because my expanding belly means our family gets to grow.

4/19/10 - Parenting Hackles

I’ve read a couple of articles this week that have my parenting hackles way up.

One article is about raising daughters and how to handle the issues of body image. I think what has me so upset about it is the fact that the article does not even recognize that boys have extreme body image issues as well. And as a mother raising a son and a daughter I’ve got it from both sides. With both kids it’s a double whammy. Because I’ve got to figure out how to help them foster their own positive body image as well as how to support the people, regardless of gender, that they have in their lives. They both have to learn how to see people as they want to be seen – as the kind, compassionate, creative, intelligent, amazing people they are.

One article is about bullying. And this is an issue that is a tremendously loaded for me. I survived an abusive relationship while in high school and vowed to never again allow another human being treat me as anything less than what I felt I deserved. And that is also a very high priority for me to teach my children. Which is why this article pisses me off so much. Because essentially it’s saying that you should expect your child, regardless of age or gender, to be able to handle it themselves and that you should “praise them for suffering well.” If that fails to remedy the situation, then you could intercede on their behalf. I’m sorry, but are you frigging kidding me?!? There is no part of that that is acceptable to me. I will not accept my children facing bullies alone. And I sure as hell won’t accept teaching them to suffer well. I’m raising people, not martyrs here.

The root of both issues is self confidence. On every imaginable level. Honestly I don’t think I know anyone who has utter confidence on every level. So I’m setting a tall order for myself to be able to impart that to my children. But if I could just help them to see themselves as I do, I think we’ll be heading in the right direction.

4/10/10 - Reintegration

So here’s the part about being home that I always forget about in my excitement to just be home – the reintegration process. I always forget that the kids and I are in our own routines and daily patterns and so is my husband. And that my internal daily to do list is vastly different at my parents’ house than it is at my own house. So there’s always several days of relearning how to live with each other in this day-to-day life.

Plus, and this always emerges no matter how hard I try not to let it, there’s always the issue of the fact that my husband essentially just got a 3 week vacation. Yes, he was still working, but that’s all he had to do. He was wonderful and did a bunch of stuff around the house we’ve been meaning to get to, but I even envy him that. Because of the simplicity. As I’ve said many, many times, his life is no easier than mine, but it sure is a whole lot simpler. Because he has dedicated time to do everything in his day. He has dedicated time to work. Dedicated family time. Dedicated alone time in his commute to and from work. Whereas I have to carve out time for all of that stuff. I have to juggle between time with the kiddos playing, laundry, cleaning and everything else that crowds my plate. And when I go down to my parents’ house, that plate just gets even more crowded. So inevitably my husband will say something about having to get up a bit earlier to take The Boy to school and I end up yelling at him. I know it’s silly and doesn’t make sense. But there you go. I’m just badly in need of a very real vacation.

In the meantime however, I need to get our laundry done, start back with my meal planning and compiling a grocery list to re-equip the kitchen with non-bachelor mode food and assorted other things. As well as catching up with friends, getting the kids back into the swing of things with school and so on and so forth.

All in a day’s work.

4/6/10 - 0 to 60

I feel like this pregnancy has taken me from 0 to 60. I know I’ve written about this before. Like last week I think. But seriously. I’m just so not accustomed to doing pregnancy at this kind of warp speed. Typically my pregnancies take a bit of time to ramp up. I sort of slowly start rounding (more than I already am that is). Mostly the things I’m feeling are entirely internal, i.e. fatigue, some nausea, aches and pains. It’s really not until about half way through that someone could look at me on the street and know that I was pregnant and not just falling prey to whatever holiday associated candy happens to be lining the aisles. I’m tall and I am blessed with breeder hips so I carry well and covertly until my belly literally just pops.

This time however, I knew almost immediately that I was pregnant. And here I am, only 12 weeks into this journey and I already look 20 weeks pregnant. There’s no mistaking this belly for chocolate bunny over indulgence.

And I’m sorry to keep going on and on about this. It’s just got me totally shocked. I am sure it’s just that this is the third baby and my body is ramping up more quickly because it’s done this before so successfully. It’s probably just totally in “Oh honey, I got this!” mode. Except for the fact that friends and family keep saying, without prompting, that I should get ready for twins. Or asking how the twins are doing. Or wondering if twins run in our families. It’s a strange thing that has me totally paranoid. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I would welcome the opportunity to have twins. Yes, the idea of it scares me silly and puts in doubt my patience and sanity levels. But at the end of the day there’s some symmetry in it that I find really appealing and it would mean that I would get two sweet babies to snuggle with at once. But at this point, it’s all projection. Again, here I am projecting.

Back to the here and now. With my quickly growing belly and equally large curiosity.

3/29/10 - Caretaker

I’m a caretaker. I always have been. For as long as I can remember I am always the first to wonder if someone is ok if I see them hurting, no matter if I know them or not. I latch onto babies because I know that they need to be taken care of. I’m just a care taker. Which is a good thing considering the rigors my children have put me through. If I weren’t a natural born care taker, they’d be hurtin’ kiddos right about now. There was a part of me that thought once upon a time that being a caretaker made me weak in some way. That the act of caretaking surrendered my power to the person I was taking care of; that by putting myself at their disposal that I was somehow expressing codependence instead of the inherent strength it takes to honestly put someone else before yourself.

Now I know that was all bullshit of course. I embrace my caretaking abilities on a daily basis. And it turns out to be an extraordinarily good thing when you have one parent have a massive heart attack one day, move in with you to recuperate for 3 weeks another day and then six months later have the other parent diagnosed with end stage lung cancer.

So here I am, taking care of my Dad. By cooking all of his favorite food for him while he still has an appetite and wants to eat. By doing things around the house to make his life easier. By helping to keep track of meds and new symptoms to tell the hospice nurse. All of these everyday things that seem so simple but are the best way I know how to take care of him right now. Because all of these things still allow me to be his daughter whilst doing them. Despite my caretaking proclivities, I have no desire to morph into a full time nurse to my father. I just want to be his daughter. Love him as his daughter. Support him as his daughter. It’s a delicate balance to strike to be sure. But I hope I’m at least in its general vicinity.

It's a Blech Kind of Day

Do you ever have one of those days where you look at everything you’ve done and everything you’re doing now and just think, huh, wow, I’m just not all that good at much of anything. Yeah. I am having one of those days. It’s an utterly silly day to have, I know that. Rationally. With the rational part of my mind, I know that these sorts of thoughts are silly and useless and do nothing but cosign my own bullshit. But nevertheless, here I am, having one of those days.

As I was driving home from taking The Girl to school I was thinking about all the work I’ve done in fundraising over the last 10 years. And for some reason I could not think of one absolute success through my entire career. There was always something there to taint every single thing that I did right. And the fact that, of my own choosing, I haven’t worked in more than a year and even though this time last year was sending out resumes every single day and never got past a first interview with anyone just seemed to put the last nail in the coffin of my career.

And I’ve committed to writing. Because I have to. It has always been my heart of heart’s passion and it’s time that I stopped talking myself out of it and just did it. But my weekly story deadline is tomorrow and I can easily think of a hundred other things I’d like to do rather than finish this week’s story. Of course, then the little self doubt voice chimes in with “Well, it’s not like you’ve got a huge readership anyway so they probably won’t even notice if you skip a week.” Yeah, not so much with the helpful.

On top of it all, with the severe cold and tons of snow, I have been using TV entirely too much lately. The Girl is bored out of her skull and I’ve got a serious case of “I’m a bad mom” going on.

I know it’s mostly just cabin fever, stress and haywire emotions. And that ultimately, tomorrow will be different. It’s just one of those days.

In Defense of Nest

My college roommate picked a fight with a bunch of moms on Facebook today. Which actually turned out to be a jumping off point for she and I to spend an embarrassing large chunk of time first IM’ing and then talking on the phone about the whole thing. It’s a really huge parenting can of worms. Or at least it’s been turned into a huge can of worms for modern day parents. I don’t remember it being all that big of a deal for my parents when I was a kid.

It’s the question of how old your children should be before you allow them to have a sleepover at someone else’s house. I remember the biggest issue being whether or not I was ready to be away from home all night or not. I remember having to call my parents at about midnight my first sleepover because I just couldn’t handle it. It turns out now the biggest concern is one of trust. Trusting the parents and children at whose house your child will be sleeping. Mostly in terms of safety. Whether or not the parents can be trusted to provide adequate levels of supervision. Whether or not older siblings will introduce your child to inappropriate things. Whether or not your child will be put in a position to be hurt in this surrounding. And to be entirely honest, the whole thing baffles me.

See, these other mothers immediately jumped to sexual abuse and molestation as an imminent and real threat. And my mouth just dropped at this. I think it’s the imminence these mothers see that shocks me the most. They essentially feel like they won’t allow sleepovers at all until they feel their children are old enough to be their own advocates. Which essentially means their first night away from home will happen when they leave for college. I don’t mean to be flip, but seriously. Can anyone truthfully say they were completely equipped to be their own advocates, not to be influenced by questions of social or emotional pressures, much before they left the nest? Or more to the point, until they had to create (and perhaps defend) their own nest?

2/8/10 - Tearful Reading

I discovered a few new websites today that had me in a variety of tears as I waded through their archives; everything from tears of recognition and sisterhood to raucous laughter and hell yeahs.

The first website is www.theshapeofamother.com and its entire existence is dedicated to providing a space for women to tell their bodies’ stories as they grow, birth, feed and continue to take care of the children we carry for the rest of our lives. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful site full of heartfelt stories from women coming to grips with and developing immense gratitude for their bodies as they change along the process it takes to become a mother. They celebrate stretch marks as mementos of our bodies’ ability to conform to the needs of the babies we have had in our bellies. They laugh good naturedly about the march of gravity across our boobs, bellies and asses. They jump for joy when weight goals are met and are at the ready with encouragement when they’re not. And they do it all with pictures. Unabashedly displaying all of these things that we hide from even our husbands and definitely from ourselves because of the sheer pride of being able to participate in this group of women exclaiming at the top of their lungs what miracles their bodies are capable of. It’s lovely.

The second is Shapely Prose (www.kateharding.net) and she is awesome. She’s hilarious, witty, amazingly honest and I adore her writing for all of these things and the fact that she just doesn’t take herself very seriously which I have a deep appreciation for as that’s a personality trait I’m trying hard to adopt as of late.

The last is www.mamamia.com.au and apparently she’s a pretty well known author and commentator but I’ve never heard of her. I found her through The Shape of a Mother’s Facebook page and while her site has a more journalistic feel to it, she’s still lovely, funny and honest. She write scathingly about the media’s obsession with body image in a way that makes me want to jump up and down and yell hallelujah!

It was a good day immersing myself in new to me writing.

On the Edge of Panic

We’re home again. And I am really, really crabby for some reason this evening. The drive was fine. The roads were, by and large, fine. I got to listen to a good portion of the awesome CD’s that D made for me. But I got home and The Boy was just bouncing off the walls hyper and full of attitude. And my husband told me about he had to call his parents and ask for money because we couldn’t make our car payment this month. And even though they, of course, graciously offered to help us out, I was mortified that he had to call and ask (their generosity has known no bounds the last few months but it’s one thing to have them send us money because they want to and an entirely other thing to ask for it outright). And I know the reason we can’t make our car payment this month is because of things like me driving back and forth between my parents’ house and home, having a powerful need to eat (can you name the movie?) and unfortunately needing things like shampoo all at once. It’s ridiculous that things like gas and groceries can screw up our entire budget. This whole awful bankruptcy process was supposed to make this better and instead we are still in dire straits. And I feel like I’m inches away from just succumbing to this state of panic and coming apart at the seams. Panic about my dad, panic about our finances, panic about what my mom will do after my dad goes…

And I have this idea for this week’s 52 story but I can’t quite get a handle on it enough to actually write it out. It centers on a woman who gets caught in this sort of dream loop/jump, popping from one dream to another without any control, rhyme or reason. I won’t spoil the end for you, but if I can get it all to work out on paper it could be pretty cool. If not then I don’t know what I’ll do this week, but hopefully I’ll come up with something.

Hopefully some quiet time tomorrow will lend some focus.

My Blue-Eyed Boy

My husband told me a story about a 2^nd grade girl tackling my son so that she could kiss him goodbye as he was leaving school for the day. And I just about came unglued. I am SO not ready for those kinds of stories.

I always thought I’d be the super cool mom. The one everyone loves. The one that my kids’ friends will come to when their own uncool parents do something, well, uncool. The one who is easy to talk to, totally laid back and fun. Yeah, my hopes for being that mom are fading quickly. Because the idea of any girl (especially an older one!) kissing MY boy seriously makes me feel unstable.

Maybe because he is my first born, or maybe because I’m the mom and he’s my son. I don’t where this sudden rush of over-protective behavior is coming from, but it’s strong. Like mama bear strong. I’m sure that this same feeling will kick in eventually with The Girl, but she’s still so young that it’s not even on my radar yet. And to be honest, it wasn’t on my radar with The Boy either until my husband shared this story with me.

I mean I always knew he’d be popular with the girls eventually. He has gorgeous blue eyes, he’s outgoing, smart, creative, funny and naturally athletic. All of those elements put together make for one very popular boy receiving many “Do you like me? Check Yes, No or Maybe” notes in class. I saw it coming a long time ago. But I didn’t think I’d actually have to see or hear any of it in reality until he was at least in early middle school. I guess that was a large piece of naïveté on my part. I guess I forgot about the times when I was a second grader pegging the cute boys in class with snowballs and then running away giggling. I guess I forgot how many of those notes I wrote myself to the blue-eyed boys in my own class.

I’d like to freeze time. To put this off a bit longer. Or at least be allowed to lock him in the attic.

Shower Time

In my early months as a new mother, at the top of my list of concerns was how to get a shower every day. The Boy wouldn’t really let me put him down much and he hated the swing. So I spent good portions of my day finagling time and space to take a shower as it was the one thing I was utterly unwilling to give up. Having a clean house? Meh. Getting errands done? Who cares really. Staying caught up on laundry? I can wear jeans more than twice. But even if I was in dirty clothes and never got to do my hair or get on deodorant, I was hell bent on taking a shower every single day.

I kept the same priorities when The Girl came along. Although she was much more agreeable and loved the swing. She was generally pretty easy going and willing to just go with the flow. So taking a shower wasn’t ever really all that hard.

Until now. Now she insists on taking a shower with me. Every. Single. Day. Which isn’t really a huge deal except for the fact that she plays directly underneath my feet. And I just know that one of these days I’m going to accidentally step on her, over correct and end up falling in the shower and breaking a hip. It’s completely infuriating. And it also means that I don’t even get those 10 minutes without her in my shadow. But really? The problem is me falling and breaking a hip.

The Girl would stay in the shower all day long if I’d let her. As long as the water stayed warm, I’m fairly sure she would play happily under the water until I forced her out from underneath the waterfall. She babbles on to herself as I’m brushing my teeth, doing my hair, and finally getting on my deodorant. She concocts elaborate scenarios that often require singing.

And I still have to occupy The Boy so I can take a shower. Keep him busy and distracted, not to mention threatening him with everything I can think of to prevent him from flushing the toilet while I’m in the shower.

Baby on the Brain

Babies, babies everywhere!! It’s one of those things where I don’t know if I am just paying more attention because I’ve got babies on the brain or if they really are just everywhere right now. But I just had two friends have babies, another is due any day and three more are just out of their first trimesters. And dearest C and her husband are in the waiting process of adopting a baby. They are everywhere I tell you, everywhere!

And it is making me crazy. And even making me start to second guess myself a bit. I’m sure that the second guessing is coming primarily as a matter of self preservation. Because I’m thinking, well maybe we don’t really need to have another baby. We went out to dinner (a huge splurge) with some friends the other night after our court date and as I was sitting there, I realized that my children are big enough to go out to eat with friends and I no longer have to hover above them ready to avert any impending disaster. They could sit at one end of the table with their friends and eat dinner just as we were eating dinner with our friends at the other end of the table. The Boy astounds me daily with how big he is. The Girl is getting more and more self-sufficient every day. If we have another baby that will mean starting all over. In another year and a half The Girl will be in kindergarten and I will have my days back. Back to do with what I want. Whether that be diving head first into grad school, writing a novel or going to see a movie or watching bad day time TV. Another baby means that in a year and half I would have an infant and spend all of that free time sitting on the couch nursing. Or trying to write with a sleeping baby strapped to my chest or my back.

All of these reasons to be grateful that I’m not pregnant. And yet, at their core they are little more than a way to put off the crushing disappointment for one more month.

Next....

As it’s becoming more and more obvious that my career in nonprofit is over, I’ve been spending some time thinking about what’s next. Since we’ve got the bankruptcy in process and our financial woes are going to soon be considerably lessened, I’ve been trying to give myself permission to look at what I want to do from the point of view of what makes me happy, what I feel most passionately about, what makes me want to get up in the morning instead of what I’m qualified for and what’ll pay me the most. And it’s interesting the things that float to the top when you allow yourself to focus on what you really want rather than what you must.

So what gets my blood pumping? Writing and motherhood. Pretty simple really. And I think I’ve known this for a quite a while, it’s just taken me this long to have that fact be ok. And to try to figure out how to do something more with those two passions than just be them; a writer and a mother that is. I’m fairly sure I don’t want to be a freelance writer. I like to write what I want to write too much to write just for the money. So that leaves me writing because I love it, not because I ever expect to be paid or published for it.

That leaves motherhood. How can I kick that up a notch and do more as mother? Bring my passion and love of motherhood to more than just my friends. And I immediately thought of becoming a doula. And to be honest, it’s something I’ve thought would be amazing for quite a while, it’s just not something that I actually let myself think about as a real possibility. But why not? The opportunity to assist women in obtaining the empowered, dream birth they’ve always wanted would be such a gift for me. To be able to advocate on their behalf, to help them plan and realize the labor and birth experience they’ve hoped for would be like making the most nurturing part of my own role as mother tangible.

So let the research and planning begin.

Over the Top

I have six words for you – Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Blueberry Sauce. Oh. My. God. This is how my day began. Sitting next to dearest R, having breakfast and being grateful for my taste buds. I don’t usually gush over pancakes, but these were over the top amazing.

It was pretty much an over the top kind of day that just kicked off with breakfast.

My mom was having some work done on her car so the dealership gave us a fully decked out Honda Pilot to drive around while they messed around with her car. This sucker had GPS, the rear camera that turns on whenever you back out and fully automated seats. The Girl crawled into the backseats and proclaimed “This car is awesome!” I had to agree.

We proceeded to the gigantic mall just down the way to polish off the remnants of our respective shopping lists. When we arrived, it was quiet, subdued even. And I was so grateful for it. Then all of a sudden it was jam-packed full of people and I was not so happy. But we found everything we needed and then some.

And the big event of the day was that The Girl got her ears pierced. She has been talking about it for quite a while and we just decided that we would be completely honest with her about what it is to get your ears pierced. We would not leave anything out about the pain or how long they take to heal or anything else and if she still wanted to get them pierced that we’d let her. So today when she proclaimed that she was ready to get them done and I reiterated everything again and she was still gun-ho to go, we took her to Claire’s, let her pick out her first earrings and got her ears pierced. And she cried. A lot. And then she got over it and is now fine and thrilled to have “sparkly rainbow daisies” in her ears.

And now I’m back from our 36-hour tryst in the big city, valiantly trying to pull my head out of the pancakes and put it back into what’s next.

On the way to dinner

“What did you do in school today?”

“We had a sub.”

“Was Mrs. E sick?”

“No, someone in her family passed away.”

“Do you know what means?”

“No.”

This was a conversation that took place on the way to a splurge dinner out after The Boy’s winter program at school. It was a nearly tortuous event that took entirely too long given the age range and time of evening, but we showered The Boy with praise because I could literally hear him singing in the very back of the gym.

He chose to ride with me on the way to dinner and this was the beginning of our conversation about what it means to die. And as I was coming to fully understand the gravity of the can of worms my innocent questioning had just opened, I realized one of the biggest reasons I’ve been avoiding, this conversation with The Boy. I just wasn’t sure how to answer his questions. I’m not a religious person. I haven’t ever been. I just cannot bring myself to buy wholesale into any one dogma or another, so that leaves me without a religious home if you will. I consider myself a very spiritual person, especially after this past year, but not religious. So I had to kind of make the whole thing up as I went along.

“What happens when you die?”

“Well, when a person dies it means that your body stops working. But the part of you that makes you, you, your laugh, your ability to love, all the things you’re good at and all the good you’ve done goes back to the universe. To the stars and sky; it goes back to where it came from when you were born. It goes back to the beginning.”

We talked quite a bit about how your body can stop working and what parts of you go back to the stars.

“Will my toys go to the stars with me?”

“No, baby. Those stay here with your body. But remember how you gave your sister that pink bear you won tonight because you saw she was sad and wanted her to feel better? That will go with you.”

11/22/09 - The Drive

There are no words to tell you how good The Girl was on the drive down to New Mexico. She is three and a half and she sat in her car seat for the entire 6 hours that we were in the car, listened to music and played with whatever toys she could reach and didn’t ask until we were about 20 minutes out when we were going to be there. She was amazing.

I can see how people could get lulled into the whole only child thing. One kid at a time is just so much easier than more than one. They get your full attention, so they are more easily pacified. They don’t have to share the spotlight so they are more willing to entertain themselves rather than needing someone or something else to constantly keep them engaged.

And if it weren’t for those amazing times when The Boy is teaching his sister something or The Girl is looking at her big brother with those adoring little sister eyes, I might find myself lulled by these moments of relative peace as well. But I’ve always wanted a big, raucous family and for the most part, I love the chaos. Except when we are in the car, so that brings me back to how unbelievably good The Girl was on the drive down to my parents’ house. It was an easy drive. Not too much traffic given that it is a Sunday. We stopped in Chama (our traditional get out of the car, walk around and get treats to last us all through the last 90 minutes of the drive stop) to get my all time most favorite beef jerky ever, which is only sold at this one specific gas station in Chama, and to get The Girl her stop gap gummy bears.

The only bad part of the whole drive was having to drive into the setting sun for the last hour or so. That gave me a headache, but all in all it was a lovely and painless drive.

And I got to hug my dad. He’s still here. He’s whole, smiling and happy to see us. And I didn’t even cry.

Change it Up

Sesame Street has been on the air for 40 years today. NPR did a big story on how it’s changed throughout the years and what’s stayed the same. Apparently the biggest thing that has stayed the same is that the show could count on the kids loving pretty much whatever they did. Because it turns out that kids are super adaptable. It’s the adults who disagree with the change. I laughed out loud when I heard this.

Because here’s the thing: as parents we go out of our way to get our kids into routine pretty much from birth. Feeding schedules, sleeping schedules, developmental schedules, you name it and we have a schedule or recommended method for it. And the routines only get more entrenched and complicated as the kids get older. We all cuss out daylight savings time for screwing up the kids’ schedules and blame all the temper tantrums and sleep troubles on the slightest disruption in routine. Even when we don’t really think we have a routine. We stay home on week nights instead of having family get togethers because we don’t want to mess up the kids’ routines. We schedule our whole lives around naps and eating and homework and school and anything and everything else we can jam into our daily lives.

But according to all of the child development experts that Sesame Street calls on when constructing its programming, children are utterly and completely adaptable. They don’t care if Elmo is moved around with wires or if he’s computer generated. They don’t care if Big Bird says hello the same way every morning. They don’t care if the Sesame Street sets are the same every time they tune in. As long as the show is there and singing and engaging and giving them awesome Muppets to look at and believe in, they couldn’t care less whether Cookie Monster has teeth or not.

I guess it is nice to know that as long as my kids are engaged and being loved through every day that that’s good enough for them. Now, if I could just figure out how to let go of my need for routine we’d be getting somewhere.

Oh, Procrastination, You Minx!

Procrastination. It’s such a lovely thing.

“Oh, I’m procrastinating!” said in an offhand, giggly sort of way. As if I’m some well to do woman who has a gigantic list of things to do at all times and occasionally gives myself permission to be naughty. Tee-hee, tra-la-la, pish posh and all that.

When in reality, I am a stay at home mom who is literally just taking each day as it comes. My favorite days are actually the days when I can lay in bed and stare out the window until The Girl comes to get me and we end up lying in bed cuddling for minutes on end. When I can leisurely drink my cup of coffee while checking my email or get The Girl set up with some artsy project. I love days that can just unfold. I go back and forth on whether this is because I am really in my core an inherently lazy person or because I just like to dictate my own pace.

But there are days, especially coming after I’ve essentially done nothing for a week while I’ve been begging someone to take me out back and put me out of misery, where I actually have real stuff to do. Lists jockeying for attention in my peripheral vision while I do my damnedest to ignore them. Like today for instance. I actually had several things on my to-do list today and I got exactly zero of them done.

Partially because I didn’t really have a burning desire to do any of it and mostly because I let my college roommate’s impeccable timing on instant messenger steal the bulk of my afternoon. Seriously, she and I could chat for days if we’d allow ourselves to.

But then I hear the garage door go up and I realize that my husband and The Boy are home and suddenly my to-do list is doing a sultry little “I told you so dance” right smack in the middle of my line of sight. I smile when they walk through the door and dodge the “what did you do today” questions knowing full well that I will indeed tackle that to-do list. Tomorrow.