Tag Archives: parenting

An Email to My Husband so He Knows I’m as Tired as He is

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Subject: Timeline of events between 5 and 6:30 this morning, because I know you’ll want to know

5:14am—Aaron gets in bed with us

Some point after that—Oscar scratches the bedroom door because I fell asleep without crating him and you likely didn’t think about it, which makes sense since I’m the one who wanted a dog and you told me from the beginning you weren’t doing dog-chores and Oscar doesn’t listen to you anyway

Some point after—you wake up and let Oscar in the bedroom. He immediately joins us in bed, circles 827 times, then tries to dig a hole in the mattress.

Aaron sniffs, snorts, coughs, and spoons an unwilling Me, while I lie very still and try to sleep while also trying to will Oscar and Aaron to sleep. I’m unsure of your sleep status, but I assume it isn’t good

5:54am—Oscar licks Aaron because Aaron moved slightly in his sleep, thus indicating a willingness to be licked

5:55am—I get up with Oscar so maybe you and Aaron can stay asleep, and also to avoid any later comments about perhaps “not getting another dog in the first place”

5:56am to 6:16am—Oscar frantically searches for Bear until Bear gets up and scratches at the basement door while barking one bark every 42 seconds

I don’t know Nana is downstairs getting her robe on to take Bear out on a leash, so I let Bear out in the backyard, unleashed. He immediately barks because that is what Bear does.

Every.

Single.

Morning.

Nana comes up in her robe, but only after tripping on the big beanbag and grabbing onto the armchair for support, which then falls on top of her

Nana heroically stops Bear from barking simply by yelling his name through a crack in the backdoor

I watch backdoor number 2 from my position at door number 1. Nana is at door 2; the plan is to let Oscar out door 1 as soon as Bear goes in door 2.

I pat myself on the back when this works beautifully, but then realize Oscar ran straight out of door 1 and into door 2.

I sit, knowing you are awake and feeling very sad about that, yet am hopeful that Aaron has fallen asleep and you are at least comfy in bed.

Many random things occur, mostly involving dogs

I write this email.

6:17am—You cough, and I realize sadly that at least 5 of 6 household inhabitants are awake. 😦

The end

 

Post-Christmas Gingerbread Dilemma: A Solution in Ten Easy Steps

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I don’t entirely love making gingerbread houses with the kids at Christmastime, but I do like it. Even if I didn’t, I’d do it anyway because in the Book of Mom it says I’m supposed to. This year we had bonus gingerbread fun by not only making our own at home (and by “making” I don’t mean “baking”—thank you, Trader Joe’s!) and going to a super cool gingerbread house birthday party.

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Super fun gingerbread party!

Despite how much fun this was, it also meant we had double the sugary construction taking up space in the kitchen. Of course, that also means double the sneaking of candy pieces, double the arguments over whether or not Aaron stole Rachel’s gingerbread girl, and double the “what the heck do I do with these houses now,” come January.

Thinking others may face this same dilemma, I thought I’d share what I do to solve the problem of gingerbread overabundance.

Step one: Make the houses, cursing the mess and arguing with Rachel about whether she can use the stand mixer to make the icing because I’m distracted by something else. Chastise Aaron for continuing to eat the icing/candy/cookies without permission and then lying about it despite a face covered in royal icing. Notice that the kids forgot to put something under their houses and examine the sprinkles that have found their way into the cracks and crevices of our reclaimed wood table. Know that my mother will notice the sprinkles and tell me once again she hates my (super cool) tabletop and wants to make me a new one. Pretend she isn’t correct when she claims bacteria might grow in its artistic and funky blemishes.

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Step two: put the finished houses on top of the dog crate in the kitchen because there’s no other convenient place for them. Leave them exposed to the elements for one+ month because what the heck else am I supposed to do?

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Step three: alternate between chastising the kids (okay, just Aaron) for sneaking pieces off and pretending I didn’t notice them (him) sneaking pieces off.

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Step four: mediate fights over Rachel’s (usually well-founded) suspicion that Aaron stole her candy figures.

Step five: forget they exist (the houses, not the kids)

Step six: during the January 2nd (or post-Epiphany) take-down-the-decorations storm—because by now I am SO TIRED of the Christmas clutter—debate what to do what the houses. Warn the kids that I will soon need to get rid of them (again, houses, not kids). Respond to their protests by giving them an arbitrary deadline by which they need to have said their goodbyes.

Step seven: Notice the deadline has come and gone yet the houses remain and no child has said goodbye. Add on a couple more days because I struggle with consistency.

Step eight: after a few more days pass and my frustration with remaining Christmas decorations has reached a new high, break the houses into pieces so they’ll fit into Ziplocs bags. Put them on the top shelf of the pantry just in case someone breaks down in tears once they notice the neighborhood of gingerbread people has been razed for new development.

Notice the extra GBH in the background! Notice, too, that the badness of GBH breakage is hidden by a generic box. This is essential to the 10-step solution!
Notice the extra GBH in the background! Notice, too, that the badness of GBH breakage is hidden by a generic box. This is essential to the 10-step solution!
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Step nine: After a random period of time has passed—say, three days to three months—and no child has noticed their absence, toss the gingerbread in the trash and put lots of other trash on top of so kids don’t see any evidence of parental meanness.

Step ten: develop idiopathic amnesia (or perhaps it was brought on by overindulgence in pumpkin-flavored items?) in November and buy more gingerbread kits from Trader Joe’s before they sell out, eagerly anticipating the family fun that will come from decorating them with the kids while sipping cocoa and listening to Christmas carols.

And that’s all! By following these ten easy steps, you too can rid yourself of leftover gingerbread houses, guaranteed!

Liquid Paper and Solo Parenting: A PSA

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I used to write about my kids and their fiascos all the time. There was the Habitot catastrophe, the Lutheran calamity, and the swim class crisis, to name just a few. But lately, there hasn’t been that much to write about. Well, there was the alter-altercation, in which the kids began slapping each other around in front of the whole congregation during the children’s sermon… That resulted in Andy walking to the front of the church, picking Rachel up (not that she was the most culpable, it was just who he chose) and moving her to the other side of the pastor and gaggle of well-behaved kids. She immediately stood up and moved right back to where she was before—sitting by and hitting Aaron—which all but about two people (guess who?) in the entire church found hilarious.Children's Sermon

Anyway, the fiascos are of a more ongoing type these days, and mainly consist of the kids hitting, pushing, and yelling at one another. And even that has almost stopped thanks to our new parenting method, which involves so much talking through things and compromising that I’m usually hoarse by 10am.

But today… today was a fiasco the likes of which I haven’t seen in I don’t know… two months, maybe?

I showered. That was my first mistake. We don’t have any real plans today, and I’m flying solo while Andy gets to do fun things like enjoy the all-you-can-eat dining hall at Wheaton. But Rachel was sewing and Aaron was watching Trotro and I promised myself I’d hurry. Giving in to my I-want-to-feel-human self, I took a shower.

About 1 minute before I would be all done and head downstairs to check on the kids, Rachel came running in.

“Mama! Mama! You know the stuff, the mistake stuff? Aaron has it! And he painted my hands with it and it’s everywhere!”

I, of course, had no idea what she was talking about and also couldn’t see her hands see because I wasn’t wearing my glasses.

“What are you talking about? Where is your sewing needle? Your scissors? We need to get downstairs immediately!”

She thrust her hands in front of my face.

“No! The white stuff you use if you make a mistake… the stuff we aren’t supposed to touch!”

I saw the white on her hands, now only an inch from my eyeballs. Crap. He had the Liquid Paper. “It’s everywhere,” she had said. My wool rugs, newish-couches, the dog’s fur… all sorts of visions went through my head.

So we ran. Ran pell-mell through the bedroom and hall, down the steps and into the kitchen, where I found an entire bottle of Liquid Paper dumped on the floor, and white kid-size-11 footprints trailing from the kitchen to the living room, while the culprit stood in the middle of the sticky, rapidly drying puddle, clearly happy with himself.

After wiping both kids’ feet, I assessed the damage and found, thankfully, that other than a few white streaks on the couch (it’s under warranty!), the bulk of damage was only on the wood floor. Bullet dodged, or so I thought.

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After about 30 minutes of scrubbing the worst spot.

People, Liquid Paper is some serious business. If I ever want to keep a secret from the NSA, I now know exactly how to do it. Almost NOTHING can get through well-placed white out. Trust me, I know.

I tried hot water, a plastic knife, my fingernails, 409, Goo Gone (I thought I had a winner there, but nope. It just made white swirls on the floor), hardwood cleaner, a mop, a rag, a bigger rag, and Rachel’s fingernails (hey, she offered!). All this gave me was a bunch of dirty laundry, a back- and elbow ache, broken nails, and a floor covered in swishy stuff. So I did what all good moms do when faced with a housekeeping stumper: I Googled it.

Liquid Paper 2

She wanted to help!

It’s Google, so the answer came up within nanoseconds. I didn’t even click any of the links, but just read the little snippets to find my salvation: WD-40, baby. That’s the only thing that’ll cut right through the atrocity that is Liquid Paper.

Liquid Paper 3

After 409, Goo Gone, fingernails, a mop, and one round of WD-40.

So, WD-40 it was. It stank, it still took an additional hour or more to clean (took about 2.5 hours total), and, as you may have guessed by now, it made my floors about as safe as speed walking in flip flops on straight up ice.

“Don’t walk on it, guys. It’s slick.”

Despite having used my serious voice, with three minutes they had both forgotten, and Rachel shot right across the worse patch to get a pony off the steps (of course). That resulted in a bruised tailbone and lots of tears, as well as a little brother who thought that he’d just witnessed the coolest thing ever. I could see him planning his Tom-Cruise-sock-slide even as Rachel howled in pain.

So I got super hot water from the on-demand tap and began to scrub.

It didn’t help.

At this point my house shoes may as well have been slathered in Crisco, so I took them off. This, of course, turned my “special” socks into a greasy mess, so I took them off, too. Prior to this my back had ached and elbows throbbed, while my hands cracked and nails split in two. Now I had the added benefit of aching feet and swollen legs. I was not a pretty sight, and if things didn’t change, I’d be cleaning the floor right through ‘til bedtime.

“Kids,” I said. “I have no other choice. I’ll have to tea-kettle it.”

Tea-kettling is a trick I use for things like Popsicle drips all over the deck, pee on the front steps, or cleaning off the remnants of dead birds that show up at the back door. Rather than drag out the hose, I boil a kettle full of water then dump it right on the offending substance. Boiling water is the only thing that will cut through ant-attracting sugar, take the wafting odor from stinky things, and undo the slick from a floor ravaged by kids and saved only through the use of harsh and oily chemicals.

“Stand back, kids. This is going to be hot.”

Aaron moves closer.

“Aaron, it’ll splash. Move back!”

He takes maybe half a step back and does his shivery little thing he does when he’s trying to pretend he’s nervous.

Kids safely enough away, I pour the steaming water on the slickest, still white-speckled spot. I stand on a towel and began to move my feet around to wipe the mess.

“Hot! Hot!” The boiling water, of course, seeps right through the towel and onto my now-bare feet. The kids are both worried and amused by this.

I shuffle down the hall, pouring boiling water onto the hardwood floor then sashaying over it with a towel, until I get all the way to the last little kid-sized-11 footprint. Pour, slide. Pour, slide. Then I do it all over again in the opposite direction. Pour, slide. Pour, slide. I do this again and again until finally the floor is only moderately dangerous. There’s only so much one person can do.

During all this, one child was asking for cheese toast, the other for chocolate milk. Somehow the dog’s food ended up in his water bowl, and cracker crumbs found their way into just-vacuumed couch cushions. Ponies were stolen, fought over and reclaimed, clothes that were once on a child’s body somehow didn’t remain that way.

When it was all said and done, I decided I would eat chocolate at some point today, despite having had a slice of chocolate mouse cheesecake with double whipped cream from The Cheesecake Factory yesterday. Maybe I’d even make some decaf and make the kids go somewhere—anywhere—else so I could write this and recuperate.

While I haven’t had my chocolate or coffee quite yet, this PSA has been written. The morals of this story are many: sometimes, on those days when you feel in your gut it probably isn’t a good idea, skip the shower. If you shower anyway, make it a 3-minute-or-less one. And when Liquid Paper gets on your porous hardwood floors, go straight for the WD-40 and Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups. You’re going to need them.

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Loving Hard: In Memory of Gideon Bruce

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In many ways it made perfect sense that I would call her at 7:30am, blurry eyed and frogged-voiced, having just rolled out of bed, bone-weary. It was the day after Christmas. All six of us were sick—whooping cough, we’d later find—and exhausted from both the fun and the coughing.

After I received her text—stilted, formal, apologetic for its intrusion—I called every hospital in the area, finally finding her where two of my own four were born.

Her husband answered, his voice making clear his surprise. After all, who calls the hospital phone these days? But I didn’t want to call her cell. At least I was awake enough to think of that.

“She’s with a nurse right now. She’ll call you back.”

Of course, she didn’t. And who can blame her.

She’d been at my house just four days prior, shuffling from one foot to the other the way pregnant women do. Her daughter ate a cupcake. They left within moments—I’m sure she was tired.

He was born a trimester too early, weighing barely one pound. Placental failure. Not insufficiency, but failure. I cried all day.

One hundred and ten days later—on her birthday, no less—he came home. Still tiny, still feeding through a tube, still too cold for his own good.

I finally met him at five and a half months, found him not yet the weight of my second the day he was born.

“Are you kidding, he’s huge!” His mother protested.

I was embarrassed at my gaffe.

“Yes, yes! He is. Of course.”

He was beautiful. I held him as long as I could, only putting him down when I ate my burger. So warm… he had finally learned the trick of self-regulating his temperature and he performed it masterfully.

He was beautiful.

A mere three weeks later, I cried again. This time the news came by mass email, one I read at least three times before feeling it settle, hard, between the shoulder blades, the eyes, the heart: “Almost zero chance of normalcy… Leave us alone. We’ll let you know. We don’t need anything. Just… let us be.”

“Should I come home?” A text from my husband.

“No. It’s fine. I’m praying.”

I’m praying.

I prayed to God, to Google, searching every avenue for an answer, but finding none.

I emailed a client—world-renowned pediatrician, a fellow congregant at my church. He would know.

“This will be difficult. No matter what, this will be difficult.”

The next day a follow up: “Be patient and hope that some sort of answer will come in the years that follow.”

And the next day: “Do they go to our church?”

No.

When I lost my son, eight months old, flaming hair, world’s most gummy smile, I thought those answers would never come. No years would follow—the earth stilled, and with it, my heart.

I know her days are frozen—she’s said as much. Each day she lifts him, tries to gauge if he’s gained an ounce. Half-an-ounce. A stack of envelopes in one hand, a baby in the other. How do they compare? Which fatigues her muscles more?

She looks at his head. Measures it’s circumference. Eyes it against her daughter’s .50 cent bouncy ball—the kind on end caps at grocery stores, drawing the sticky eyes of children, begging meter money from purse bottoms. She’s refined the skill—can tell you the weight and width of a fly these days. She and her husband take bets; they’re experts now.

I pray.

Google frustrates me with its ambivalence, God tries my patience. I keep living. Cooking, cleaning, writing. My daughter hits her first single. My oldest lands an internship and the youngest just won’t quit climbing the stove. We are living.

She’s living too. Living in fear, in doubt, in the hollow place between inhale and exhale. She watches him breathe. Smooth, warm, the way he should. Air fills small lungs, routes oxygen to all the necessary places. Escapes in sighs so sweet a flower bears its name.

But his name is not sweet. His name is that of a warrior who dared ask God for more. More miracles, God, and I will do your bidding. Do not be angry, God, but I simply must have more. God relented and the trumpets blew and the idols fell. And when that warrior died, years later, the alters were resurrected and the false Gods rose.

Let him live, God.

Full and healthy, conqueror of enemies. Bearer of swords and trumpets and weighty things of glory. An unlikely warrior, God. Let him live.

**********

I wrote this prayer in July of 2014. Four months later, on November 28, 2014, Gideon passed from this world and into the next. He was not quite one year old.

Today, on this one-year-anniversary, my household is where it should be: in a time of board games and late nights, of midnight pie with cream, and just one more game of pool before heading off to bed. We’re enjoying the smell of simmering soup while the just-put-up tree glitters with fresh-bought lights and tip-top star, and the littles dance to a singing snowman we plot to sneak away as soon as their heads are turned.

We are living life as it should be lived. As Gideon’s mom would say, we are loving hard.

I can think of no greater tribute to a boy so loved and missed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Parental Discipline a Black and White Issue?

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Let’s be clear from the start: this is not just about Toya Graham.

Toya Graham is the woman captured on video physically disciplining her son for throwing rocks at police officers during the Baltimore protests, hitting him several times in the face and head, forcefully removing his hoodie, and pushing him away from the crowd while swearing and yelling at him.

The clip went viral, and Graham was quickly labeled “Mother of the Year.” Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts praised her actions, saying, “I wish I had more parents that took charge of their kids out there tonight.” Some on my Facebook feed applauded her actions, quoting Scripture as support: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

But after the video made its rounds on social media and news sites like CBS, other opinions began to emerge. Graham was branded a child abuser and a prime example of violence begetting violence. Calls of “racist” were directed from and to both camps of opinion, rendering discipline an issue of race, class, and cultural norms.

You can read the rest of this very non-controversial article (haha) at Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics
.

Shrimp-tutionalized

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Knowing that I just moved to the area and am searching for kid friendly ways to Get Out Of The House, a friend told me about a local swim class she attends with her two little ones. If I remember correctly, the conversation went something like this:

“You know, there’s this great swim class we take the kids to—“

“Did you say swim class?”

“Yeah, it isn’t far, and it’s relatively inexp—“

“I HATE swim classes for kids. They are TORTURE. Let me tell you….”

I went on from there, probably for a good thirty minutes, disparaging every swim class between here and Berkeley.

I’m sure I appeared both selfish (or at least a bad listener) and crazy (or at least slightly obsessed), but being selfish and/or crazy doesn’t make it any less true that my experience with kids’ swim classes is one of misery.

In the funny way life has of being weird and coincidental, shortly after that heated one-way exchange, I was searching for an old email and accidentally stumbled instead upon an email I sent Andy in 2010, detailing every painful moment of one of Rachel’s first forays into Shrimp-dom:

Today’s Shrimp class was soooo not worth it. You know how it starts at 10am, ends at 10:30am, and then it takes until approximately 11:45am to get both of Rachel and me dried off, showered, dried off again, and re-dressed? Well today I had a definite plan for how I was going to reduce that time to about 20 minutes. Seriously. Of course, I failed miserably, and I ended up driving home in my wet swimsuit.

The five other moms and babies in class seem to have it all figured out. The moms put the younger babies (6-8 months) on towels on the changing benches, and the moms with older babies stand them up in the little closed off area the benches make. One mom even gets her seven-month-old to sit on a towel the whole time. Amazing. When I try any of these things, Rachel: 

  1.  falls down
  2.  crawls on the icky floor
  3.  cries
  4.  all of the above

The mom with the seven-month-old who sits on a towel without moving saw me struggling to keep Rachel from crawling away and said, “does she know the word ‘stop?’”

“No.”

 “Oh. Well what about ‘Red Light?”

Uh, no. She’s seven months old. She thinks ‘no’ is the funniest word she’s ever heard and has not a freaking clue what a red light is. I told the women this and she smiled like she felt really sorry for me and my obvious incompetence.

This was when I decided to wear wet clothes home.

I put Rachel in the stroller and she immediately started crying and reaching up for me. Okay. Rachel out and gym bag, diaper bag, and purse in. I pushed the stroller to the elevator with one hand. This did not go well. You know how the stroller alignment is all screwed up? Well, there’s an old-person class right after the Shrimp class, and I was forced to dodge canes and walkers lest I take some old lady down. I got a lot of glares. That was especially true when I couldn’t figure out how to push the stroller with one hand while carrying Rachel and her Froggie blanket through the swinging gate to leave. The gate swings IN, which is just plain stupid, but everyone looked at me like I was the stupid one.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so disorganized: no makeup, hair half wet/half in a ponytail/half in a bun, wet swim suit soaking my clothes, one hand busy knocking down old people with my run-away-stroller, the other hand struggling to carry a grumpy baby and her Froggie blanket, all while wearing disgusting, soggy sweats as I walked the two blocks to the parking garage where I was parked on the sixth floor. Rachel freaked out as soon as I put her in the car seat, so I had to drive all the way home with my left hand while my right hand was twisted behind me holding a bottle for Rachel. I could see a mom in a minivan behind me laughing as I drove down the garage ramp.

I’ll admit that one reason I felt so incompetent is because I’m used to being the one who has it all together. I certainly did with Collin. Collin thinks things are different with Rachel because I’m “old” now. I think it’s because I don’t co-sleep with her like I did with Collin so I get up every two hours between midnight and 6am and am too damn tired to do something like change a wet, squirming baby with one hand while sitting on a cramped, stinky pool locker room floor with five other moms and their kiddos watching me, waiting to see if I’ll screw up.

Anyway, finally Rachel fell asleep in the car. Yay! We were almost home and since it wasn’t yet 1pm, Collin would be asleep, too. I figured I’d get something hot to eat, maybe write you an email about today’s Shrimp fiasco, and then take a long hot shower.

Uh, no.

Rachel did stay asleep, but as soon as I got home Collin let Bella-dog out of his room, so she started barking and whining and Winston-dog started trying to rough house with her, then Collin turned his techno music &!*$ up really loud and the bass started thumping the half of the house I wanted to relax in. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my hot food and drink, so I went straight to the shower, desperate to get in there before Collin came upstairs and started running his day’s plans by me, such as, “can I experiment with smoking tree bark today? Can I drive the minivan to Taco Bell? Can I go to a girl’s house while her parents aren’t home and she’s having a pillow-fight-pajama party?” Honestly though, at this point I would have said yes to all those things just to get some peace and quiet in the house while Rachel was still sleeping.

Anyway, I finally managed to shower. Ready to recover from my horrible morning, I sat down at the computer with coffee and homemade blueberries muffins slathered with butter. Of course, that’s when Collin walked in and said, “Andy wants me to check my email right now.” Crap, crap, crap. So I turned on Martha Stewart, which I almost never watch, and guess what? It was one I had already seen.

Maybe someday I’ll re-write this to make it touching or funny or something more than what it is, but for right now, I just needed to get this off my chest.

Shrimp class sucks.

Author’s notes: if the person who advised me on a great local swim class is reading this (and I assume she is because I’m going to tag her on FB), now you know I am neither selfish nor crazy. I am, quite simply, still in Shrimp-covery.

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Mythbusting for Foster Parents

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As a community committed to caring for those in need, Christian families looking for ways to reach out and serve often think about foster parenting. Barna Group reports that 31 percent of Christians have seriously considered foster parenting (compared to 11 percent of non-Christians). Strikingly, only 3 percent have actually become foster parents.

Why the discrepancy between those who are interested in the opportunity and those who have actually gone on to serve in this way?

While there are many practical reasons that could prevent people from taking on foster children, negative perceptions of the foster care system—such as front-page stories of social worker neglect and the belief that most foster parents are only in it for the money—loom large in America, including among Christians.

Whether from movies, media, or word-of-mouth, people worry that they will be unable to take on the responsibility of welcoming a child into their home for foster care or will become frustrated with the demands of the system itself. The Dave Thomas Foundation, which advocates for orphan-care in the U.S., cites this negative view as the most common reason people choose not to foster.

As with most things, it helps to know the facts. We are more comfortable and more willing to commit when we are well-educated about a cause. As an attorney and advocate who has spent 14 years working for and volunteering with foster children and their families, I’d like to offer the nearly one-in-three Christians considering becoming foster parents a realistic look at the demands and benefits.

To have the top truths and myths explained and debunked, click here to read the rest of the article on Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics.

I Know You Think You’re “That Family,” but Trust Me, You Aren’t. We Are.

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The nicest guy in the world is painting the inside of our house. His name is Gonzalo, and he’s a single dad to six kids. And yet, there he is, every morning, knocking on my door with a giant can of Monster is his hand, looking like he’s ready to take on the day.

When Gonzalo signed on for the seemingly-easy-enough task of painting the house, I said, “You know my husband and I both work from home…. and the kids will be around most of the time, too. Think that will be okay?”

“Oh, that shouldn’t be a problem… just work around you. No problem at all.”

“So, you’ve done that before and it’s been okay?” (tone of hope)

“Eh, no… we’ve never had this come up, but I’m sure it will be fine. Don’t worry.”

Here we are, about two weeks into the job, and Gonzalo’s default cheer is fading fast. I feel for this guy. If I remember correctly, he’s got a three-year-old, an eight-year-old, an eleven-year-old, and a thirteen-year-old with him full time. I imagine work is usually a reprieve from the insanity of childrearing. I mean, I know that for me even a trip to the dentist for a root canal is a reprieve (I can lay down! I can close my eyes and no one will try to decapitate me with a plastic object!). But for the last two weeks, Gonzalo has gone from his own zoo to mine. So when yesterday dawned dull, gray, and wet, and neither kid was scheduled to be at daycare, I knew I had to do something, anything, to avoid death by paintbrush.

So we went to Habitot.

Andy and I took Rachel to free day at Habitot when she was younger, and I’d say it was a resounding failure for a number of reasons. It’s also expensive and germ-filled, so given our little kids’ propensity for getting sick, we just haven’t been back.

Until yesterday.

I would love to list each and every adventure we had, from attempting to use a broken handicapped lift, strewn with debris and what I think was (adult) urine, upon entry, to losing our parking ticket—twice—upon exit. But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll just say that Aaron stole the show. I mean, seriously. We were THAT family. It wasn’t even close. Given that it was a rainy day, Habitot was packed and I had a lot of kids to evaluate against my own. The results? Rachel measured up beautifully. Aaron… not so much.

For real. He was the ONLY child not playing nicely at a station. That isn’t to say other kids weren’t running back and forth, but they were doing it in an orderly, okay-now-I-know-he’s-going-to-fall-down-get-up-then-take-a-sharp-left sort of way. Aaron was just hopped-up-on-Mountain-Dew crazy.  I am so not kidding: there were at least four other moms—you know, the kind who not only say it takes a village, but actually live it—helping me keep Aaron from drowning, throwing himself from high places, moving furniture from one side of the building to another, etc. And that was just the moms. There were also two STAFF women who assigned themselves to the not-paid-enough task of looking after us. Habitot has been around for a looooonnnngggg time, but it wasn’t until yesterday that staff had to check with their boss to ensure that neither the paint nor the soap was toxic. Because, you know, Aaron ate them both. And that was WITH a total of five moms and two staff watching.

At first, the non-helping, spectator moms seemed to get a kick out of watching Aaron run pell mell down the hall covered in paint and a ladybug apron. But after a while, they started taking notes, with headings like “What Not to Do in Public With Your Child,” and “How to Studiously Avoid the Woman Whose Eyes are Pleading With You to Help Her.” I honestly think our neighbor was there with her daughter who is Aaron’s age, but every time I tried to get close enough to talk she’d quickly leave the scene.

Rachel, sweet little Rachel, went straight for the art room and began to nicely paint the walls. After much corralling, Aaron joined her. He started off double-fisting the paintbrushes, painting with one and eating the other, Fun-Dip style. Then he decided to cut out the middle man: he tossed both brushes to the floor, grabbed the supposedly-child-proof cup of paint, and dumped it straight into his mouth. And then the floor. You know, for variety.

So I convinced Rachel that instead of painting, she really wanted to give the little naked, plastic, private-part-endowed babies a bath. She was totally into that, so we went to the water station. I actually got to sit down at this point. Aaron was thrilled to splash around, and there was the added benefit of washing the paint off him without any effort on my part.

Just as I started to relax, thinking it wasn’t so bad after all, things took a turn for the worse. I realized Aaron had not just been splashing, but for the last five minutes had been actively DRINKING the water from the splash tub. The same tub that had ten little cootie-filled kids around it, arms in up to their elbows, and filled with dolls, boats, scrub brushes, and other toys that had been only-God-knows where being used for not-even-God-knows-what before landing in that tub.

The other village moms and I tried our best, but I finally had to resign myself to squatting beside the tub right by Aaron, one arm out, defense-style, ready to pushhisfaceoutofthetuborgrabthebowlfromhismouthorextractthetoyfrombetweenhisteeth.

This gave me the perfect vantage point for watching Rachel put the smack down on a kindergartner who picked on Aaron.

Little kid: “Hey, give me that!” snatches toy from Aaron.

Aaron, who is the youngest of three, doesn’t hesitate to take it back.

Little kid, getting pissy: “You took my toy!” Takes toy back. Aaron glares but then takes a big gulp of swamp water and is happy again.

Not so much Rachel. From the other side of the tub, Rachel says in a mama-voice, “he’s just a baby. He doesn’t know any better.”

The kid stares at her. About 30 seconds pass and then Rachel apparently decides this simply isn’t good enough.

Rachel walks like she has a purpose–arms swinging, face determined–to the other side of the table to stand by the bully. She gets right up close, peering into his freckled face for a few seconds before saying, louder this time, “He’s just a baby. He doesn’t know any better. You have to be nice to him!”

Bully-kid thinks Rachel is off her rocker, but from that point on is much nicer. Rachel seems satisfied and shuffles off (not quite happily, because I couldn’t play with her, what with trying to keep Aaron from drowning and all) to the cool water ramp-thingy.

At no point in all of this did I feel embarrassed. Not even when I had to send Rachel alone to the cubbies to put Andy’s favorite sweatshirt (which I was wearing) away before it got ruined, and one of our two self-assigned staff members offered to walk with her since, you know, Rachel is four and the cubbies are right by the front door. It just is what it is. I commiserated with another mom whose first—her first!—was the same way. A year after her first was born, she gave birth to twins (who were much, much calmer, she said). I was encouraged by the fact that this woman was still alive and able to function well enough to share her story.

My mother-in-law has suggested that Aaron is such a handful because he doesn’t get out much. That’s a nice suggestion, but given Aaron’s recent adventures climbing six-foot tall ladders, jumping into buckets of oil-based Kilz, and tying himself up with blue painters’ tape, I think Gonzalo would disagree.

This is a Day For

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knee-falling, anything-pleading, pressure-relieving.

intercession, supplication, massage, and Tylenol.

good quietly appearing, a breadcrumb trail for morning, when heading home becomes all
you’ve got.

cheap pizza, letting your three-year-old paint your face, hoping your rain jacket catches
the drips.

finding your just-clothed baby, puddle-naked, pride-giggling

and happy.

watching her bent head analyze the paint, realizing how the spot between her hairline and her eyebrows is exactly right, and just how much she has your hair

and that your oldest needs you, even more than he knows.

breaking the rule
you created yesterday
about how much TV the kids can watch.

meeting a long blond woman gone platinum. Ankle-length skirt—denim—gold cross, and orthopedics, who asks you, unbidden,

if all four of yours are living,
because hers are not. And before you can answer, she says she can tell just by looking
that they are, and judging by the one at her feet,
that they are all
doing well.

realizing it’s all a metaphor, but refusing
to point it out.

 

Happy Birthday, Worm Lips

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Worm Lips

That little boy at soccer:
I stare so much his mother pulls him closer to her side.
His hair is on fire.  The wind stirs the flames,
and I am blinded by ashes I try to blink away.
It looks like smog in a sunset
before the final light of day fades to dark.

Your smile suggested petals in spring,
lips new as a rose in bloom.
They looked like gummy worms:
stretched and lined with dry skin.
Worm lips don’t sound like much,
but sometimes they’re all I have.

Your skin was soft and white, at times translucent.
You were my burning Irish boy.
The day I took you fishing, your legs
stuck out from under your overalls,
turned red in less than an hour.
Had you grown older, freckles would have covered your nose.

The blue of your bright eyes stunned me
until I probed and found only gray.

The box lowered was enormously small,
stark against glittering rocks
almost as pale as the morning I found you,
swamp cooler humming and hiding my cries
made faint by cinder block walls.

This soccer-child climbs onto my lap.
I hold my arms loose around his slender boy-waist,
too afraid to hug any tighter.  His hair tickles my nose,
wafts Cherry Blast scent, and I struggle against this smell,
so clean and alive.

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10.10.94 Jeremy at birth