I don’t very often resolve to do things for the new year. I try to find the resolve every day and fail and triumph and triumph and fail. The time does fly but sometimes I wonder if that’s just because we forget so quickly so it just seems like it when really a lot of the time it’s kind of slow. Either way, there is the illusion of fast and so fast it is. I was writing the numbers on the wipe off calendar in the little squares inside the bigger squares and it felt like I just did this, writing July and then October and now it’s a new year. I am writing those little numbers so often. Almost every time I have to try hard to remember how many days are in the month. The months fly by forgotten and it still says “Get Asher left-handed kid scissors” at the top […]
The boys went to the neighbor’s house to play at the same time that Elsie fell asleep. At a (very rare) time like this I try to decide what I’m going to get done. I start by throwing in a load of laundry and then today, I randomly dusted two rooms. Then I ate a peanut butter and chocolate Christmas tree and packed away a few ornaments. All of this took less than a half an hour and so I sit down expecting time to write. Now I hear Elsie starting to chatter baby chatter from her crib. So I’m typing as fast as I can before the chatter turns to cries. First the garbled adorable chatter, then the fussing, then the crying. I usually show up somewhere in between. Lately I’m living in more acceptance of this stage of parenting. Sure, it helps that Elsie isn’t crying anymore but I don’t think that’s the only […]
Did you know anxiety can be like an unwanted house guest? The kind that completely randomly shows up and doesn’t even really have a reason and then does things to hurt you? And you can stand there and wonder, Why did I feel so good yesterday or one hour ago and now this? It seems to hit me during down times, when it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe it’s a build up from all the stressful moments and then POW! This uninvited guest seems to only get the hint to leave in two ways (No, one of them is not Xanax. I wish.) (Read: I am an addict and would probably eat Xanax like I do marshmallow Peeps so I can’t have any.) (Because I eat A LOT of marshmallow Peeps.) (Hello! Sugar addiction!) Anyway. #1 – HUMOR #2 – GRATITUDE I know. I know. If you struggle with anxiety/depression too, […]
I was grocery shopping when the nurse called about the CT scan. I was with Elsie, in the produce section and she was sleeping and OH how I felt that feeling like you’re floating around yourself, watching. The nurse said that the CT WAS NORMAL and I cried right there in front of the other shoppers. As the janitor at my college always said, PRAISE-A-LUJAH-TO-YA. I nearly woke Elsie up to tell her but then I remembered that she doesn’t speak very much English yet. So I just stared at her and let carts go by me. Then I went to get milk and bread and all the usual things. The usual things are good. Thank you so much for surrounding us with so much love and support again. How many ways can I say thank you? I wish there were more words. Thank you. Oh! An explanation of sorts, as far as I can tell? You […]
I woke up out of the habit of a lot of waking up and looked at the clock. 5:48. I rolled over, back to the dream I already can’t remember. Then came the shuffle of Miles’ morning entrance, the way I can feel him there even if I don’t hear him. 5:53. I really thought it had been at least a half an hour since I dozed off again. We last got Elsie back to sleep at 4 something. But 19 minutes after Miles came in, she was crying. I picked her up and she didn’t stop so I sat down with her and we rocked in the squeaking leather chair. Her brother wandered off to watch something on TV but suddenly he was in the next room, trying to get a butter knife out of the drawer. Loud. Clanging. Banging. On a Nutella mission. I couldn’t call out for him to be quiet for the […]
It’s Friday and do you know what that means? My husband will come home from a work trip to Texas and find out how cold Minnesota has gotten. He’ll also walk through the door and then I’ll fall on the ground and roll around for a while. What a week, friends. If I added up the hours of sleep I’ve gotten the entire time, it might might equal about one night’s worth. (cry you a river) So let’s just say I’m relieved that it’s Friday and I’m going to get through today with all of its Things. I’m going to do that by coloring the walls. I hope. Heather, what do you mean, coloring the walls? Good question. I’m over at Just Be Enough today to tell you that the walls are closing in and so are yours and what should we do? Well, try to paint, of course. See you there.
Thousands of thoughts race through my head every day and I’d guess 80% or more have something to do with mothering–what I’m doing, how I’m doing it–critically thinking, judging myself, measuring and sitting certain that I’m coming up short. A lot of those thoughts have been about Miles lately, his difficult adjustment to school and his new way of being as a result. What to do, what not to do, where I’ve gone wrong, where I’m sure to go wrong because I’m only one me and there’s just not enough time to work and work at it. I used to think I’d be able to mother a certain way, imagining all kinds of time to sit and talk and nurture and talk some more. It turns out there’s so very little time for that, at least right now. Ryan is gone this week and my sister brought us homemade chicken noodle soup. So the boys and I, we broke […]
It was just Mommy and Asher, making a trip to the grocery store. I was playing Sara Groves and she sang, it’s a sweet sweet thing, standing here with you and nothing to hide. Light shining down to the very inside… sharin’ our secrets, barin’ our souls, helping each other come clean. He asked, Why does she say…sharing secrets? (this is when I had some rapid-fire mommy thoughts of how to explain the point of the song so a four year old could understand.) I told him that it always feels best to tell the truth, even if you have a secret about something you’ve done that you think you could never tell. I asked him if, when he sneaks something he’s not supposed to and then he tells me about it, he feels better. He said, without hesitation, YES. Yeah, it’s about that. It just feels better to not keep things inside, even […]
A big part of the reason that I blog is that I feel so un-heard so much of the time. Maybe that’s sad, but it’s just true. Every mother repeats herself far too many times before someone finally listens. It’s just part of the deal. The most lovely Erin said something that runs through my head every day, at least a few times, each day. It went something like this: I could martyr away nine lives and no one would come to even one funeral. The truth is, I martyr a lot. It’s like an old habit. Maybe much like drinking or smoking or eating too much. The pathways in my brain are all stomped down with sighs. I so easily tromp on through the same wooded incline, begging to be seen. So I could go on and on and on right now about how hard the last weeks have been, months really. […]
Miles was eating breakfast at the counter while I did all kinds of things in the kitchen. He said, Grown ups are way busier than kids…especially you, you are the busiest grown up. I told him that I’m sure there are people busier than I am and he said, No. Because you have to feed Elsie… and put her to bed… and make us food and make your own food and make Asher finish his food because he doesn’t, and drive me to school and that’s 7 things OH! And what am I forgetting… You also give us stars (referring to the stars they earn for doing things) and you give Elsie a bath and you give US a bath… THAT’S TEN THINGS!!! See? You are the busiest! So. According to my six-year-old, I do ten things (maybe his counting is a little off) and all but one of them are for my […]
He comes in the door weighed down by bags. He got the wrong sandwich meat but who cares, he went grocery shopping for me. He’s a trooper of a man, always helping, especially when I just feel awful and don’t know why but can’t help it. My husband. I’m wearing Elsie in the Ergo, with big dark circles under my eyes and I tell him that I think my thyroid must be screwed up. I’m going to get it checked tomorrow. He’s the one that made sure I made the appointment. Now he’s making me lunch. I just vacuumed again so Elsie would fall asleep. What a hilarious routine. Such a cleanly one. Now I sit here and tell you these little things and wonder how our simple stories can be so interesting to each other, so intriguing. They are the glue that holds our cyberspaces together. We see where we overlap and it’s like […]
“If they come out from under our roof with only one healthy tool in the belt around their lives, let it be…” Please won’t you head on over to the Million Moms Challenge Community to read the rest? Oh and don’t forget to reply there for a chance to win an exclusive Million Moms Challenge Gift Pack, which includes an iPad2, a custom-made Million Moms Challenge pendant and a $50 donation in your name to Global Giving.
I’m vacuuming while wearing Elsie in the Ergo and I’m loudly answering the boys. They are at the table, practicing rainbows with color crayons. ROY G BIV, I say. And then I realize they have no idea what I’m saying. So I just say, Start with red. What’s next? Asher asks. ORANGE. I am a multi-tasking superhero mother-woman. Or so you would think, if you didn’t know that I am only vacuuming because it makes Elsie fall asleep so I’m just vrooming that thing around everything that’s all over the floors so I’m not really getting anything clean. Everything is done just sort of these days and I’m perfectly fine with that. Most of the time. The vacuum juts out in front of us and Elsie quickly starts the deep breathing of sleep. I hold one hand to her back just to feel even closer to her and I move the vacuum around […]
These are my ninjas. All parts to these costumes as pictured above are now strewn about the house. There were plastic swords and knives involved, that could be slid into a backpack type of ninja-wearing thing but most of them are gone. Somewhere in the yard or the playhouse or probably downstairs, buried in Legos. The masks? Maybe under a bed or something. But for one day, the boys were TOTAL ninjas and they loved every second of it. Especially the candy part. Right before trick or treating was coming to a close for us, they started actually saying trick or treat and thank you. This is progress. They don’t like talking to random people. Even random people with candy. Since that night, we’ve been battling sickness, each of us. Elsie has her first ear infection and right now as I type this, I’m trying to ignore the chills and the cough and […]
I’m putting away the laundry, opening and shutting wooden drawers, shirts on shirts, pants on pants, socks in the bottom. I notice the dust covering all the surfaces. Again. The closing of the windows to keep out the air that smacks of winter makes even more dust, stuck swirling inside. Sometimes I watch it in the sunlight, mesmerized. Other times I watch it with disgust and something screams inside me, I can never be enough! It could be more simple, like, I can’t keep up! But dust strikes something deep within. The Not Enough place. Not enough time, not enough strength, not enough wisdom, not enough me. I run my finger through the dust, making a line and then I’m flooded with all the other things, more laundry, more dishes, more noise, more discipline, more lists, more piles, more spit up, more paint on the floor, more crumbs on the counter… There […]
Elsie Jane is more magical than I could ever have imagined and it just keeps getting better. There aren’t enough words and there isn’t enough cyberspace to fit them in if I were to try to explain how much I love her. She has an ear infection that makes her mad. Oh, life. There are small things like ear infections and then really Big Things that are breaking my heart. It’s always something, huh? That’s why it’s so good that there are tiny soft socks and wrist wrinkles and wave-y little eyebrows that remind me of fuzzy caterpillars. These are the things we have to focus on. All the small things that make up grace. {I also wanted to tell you that I started as a columnist for She Posts this last week and I wrote about Steph from Adventures in Babywearing. I’m going to be writing there about people every week […]
“I do my best to not regret the way my babies entered this world. After all, they are here and I’m crazy about them. Regret only keeps me stuck in thinking of myself in a way that doesn’t serve my family at all in the now…” {Please won’t you continue reading our story over at the Million Moms Challenge hosted by ABC News and the UN Foundation}
I let them cut across the grass in front of the house next door, forgetting to worry about whether or not the neighbors will mind. That’s just which way they were going and so I followed, fast-footed and giggly. Like I’m seven. The earth under the just-starting-to-autumn-crunch grass is bumpy so I was even more awkward and clumsy than my usual. But who cares; I was catching up, carefully and not carefully, with lunging forward and ankles wobbling. Like life. We’re home fast and one boy flies through the front door and the other turns to me and does his I beat you home dance– butt shaking, fingers pointing to the sky, singing a song and laughing, I wiiiin, I wiiiin. And then I can’t stop laughing. There is always joy at the sight of them, especially after a separation, even one of only one hour. That feeling rises up, of needing them and […]
I am exploding. Not with excitement or doughnuts but with syllables and vowels sandwiched in consonants. I have two ninjas at my house right now ready for Halloween. I’ve tried to convince them that ninjas are perfectly quiet. I am still meeting midnight and two and three and five every night with a huff, mad at the clock and my body. And just think to them, I say control your body about 97 times per day because I have two boys around a baby. They wrap each other up in black and red ninja, helping with masks and tying ties around arms and knees. The brothers ninja. The tallest one with the broken collarbone cannot stop sniffing sister-head like he’s got his face buried in pillows. WATCH THE SOFT SPOT. His love for her is so intense and free and good in the midst of the battles. Mama Mama Mama I am beckoned […]
{freely written words phone-thumbed to a friend via email} “Elsie is in the Ergo, sleeping on me. I love this rocking with her breath on my chest. I wish this were all that I had to do today. But I’m watching Miles like a hawk and he’ll be home from school for at least a few days. Ryan just left for another work trip. There was so much stress trying to get ready while juggling. Uncle K is here and last nite I woke up to he and Ryan screaming out. I put together bits and pieces to know it was an emergency. Ryan was saying to call 911 with so much panic. I thought Miles was dead. Of course I did. Because of the accident and how much fear I’ve been living in lately. But Kevin had been on the phone with his girlfriend and she said someone was outside her house […]
We were getting so much support and love through facebook and twitter last night and the whole time I felt weird that I wasn’t saying what happened exactly. Here was Miles, all cut up and head-bonked and not moving his arm and I couldn’t say why because I don’t want to hurt the person that was with him. It was an accident. They were on a four wheeler and I know that’s not okay. I should have said “my kids can never go on the four wheeler even if I know you’ll be so slow and careful.” But I didn’t. I wasn’t there, but I never said don’t ever do that. We all knew in our heart-guts that it wasn’t the safest thing but you want to make the kids happy with a short and slow ride, you know? So here is another lesson in listening to ourselves. They weren’t even moving. They […]
Today is the first day in a long time that I’m functioning on more than three hours of sleep. (I use the word “functioning” loosely.) My Elsie woke only once in the night and that was around midnight. The next time I woke up the clock read 5 something. I stared at it for a while, confused. How can that be? I tried to go back to sleep, but of course, there I was wondering if she was okay. She just recently moved across the hall and so she’s a million miles away in my mother heart. At 6:15 I just couldn’t take it anymore and I went in to peek at her. She made a little snoring sound and of course I couldn’t leave it at that. I had to touch her, I couldn’t help myself. She woke up. I was okay with that. There have been so many times lately that I have […]
The boys are decorating Halloween cookies. There are little black and orange candy balls rolling around the table to the floor. They’re asking for help with the frosting, so I stop what I’m doing to spread white over a sugar cookie ghost. Their little boy bodies are vibrating with sugared excitement. I steal away to empty the dishwasher only to find that running it didn’t actually clean the dishes. I take them all out, one by one and set them next to the sink for the hand washing with all the rest that are waiting. I’m beckoned back to the table while Elsie starts to squawk from her seat in the sidelines. She’s tired of watching. She’s just plain tired. I pick her up and balance her on a hip while spreading frosting. Later my free hands find a long occupation at the sink. Plate after plate and cups and piles of silverware. […]
The truth is that The Now is still really hard. I make jokes with Ryan that I wish we had loads of money so we could have loads of help. Would I really want to spend my money on loads of help? I don’t know. I fantasize about having a cleaning service and a cook and well…basically another Heather, to act like me when I just need a half hour to be Heather-Somewhere-Else. Do you see the little hole they’re peeking through in this picture. It made me think of blogging. How we get this peek into each other’s lives but we can really only see so much. No matter how authentic a person tries to be, the hole is only so big. So I really am who you see in there, but I just thought you should know that I’m sometimes a real jerk. I don’t say that to be mean to […]
I am not shy about my uneasy truths. I think it’s because truth gets covered up in grace when it is spoken, not hidden. Even if it’s a long road to grace after the telling comes. I struggle with anxiety and depression and it gets worse after I grow a baby and then have a baby and then feed a baby. This is so common, but like alcoholism, we mothers don’t talk about it very easily. And then we wonder if we’re the only one feeling this heaviness, this cloud of melancholy that has nothing to do with whether or not we love our babies. Being online has made it possible for us to start talking if we’ve had no other way. If this talking is not happening in our mom groups or at preschool drop-off or with the ladies at our places of worship or on our blocks, we can find it […]
Today I’m sharing the one thing that keeps me semi-sane. When I have a lot on my mothering plate (i.e. all the time) (don’t we all?), I tend to get that caged animal/buried feeling, you know? I try staying on top of things with tools for organization and I try finding time for myself and I try taking deep breaths…but sometimes there’s only one thing (besides praying my face off) that works for me. To read about that, please visit the Bravado blog… and then have a really good weekend, okay?
I am all chills and aches and so are they, the whole family. There is much whining, mostly from me. I have Mastitis on top of the bug or whatever we have and isn’t it funny that the first time Elsie slept through the night was my second night of Mastitis? So I didn’t even get to enjoy it because I was too uncomfortable and couldn’t sleep. See? Whining. Ryan had to take me to the doctor for antibiotics because everything just hurts and I didn’t want to drive and we were driving along and then went to Target to get Needed Things and there was a mom standing in front of the gas drops for infants and I walked right up to her and asked about her baby and then we talked about things that help those very fussy gassy babies. (That was all one huge run-on sentence and I’m not even […]
If I were a box of cereal or a container of spice or a bag of brown sugar in a pantry, I’d be at the end of my shelf life. Expired. It feels like all of my nerve endings are exposed. I’ve got that everything-feels-like-sandpaper-rubbing-at-my-skin feeling. Too. Too much not enough. Not enough sleep, clarity, writing, health, time… A mother’s verse in every song is love-pain. I want all of this that hurts so much. I even want more of it when the day is done and quiet or when the womb is never going to do its stretching work ever again. Even though the quiet is good and more is not an option, I reach for more love-pain. In the dawn I say, it’s too quiet everywhere. Even when all I’ve wanted all day and all night is a buffer from The Loud. Suddenly quiet just doesn’t fit right. Quiet is the […]
We went to an art festival yesterday and the boys created. I love it when they do that. paper water ink flower by Miles (from a coffee filter) drying in the wind If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you probably already know, but my boys have been saying THE FUNNIEST things lately. Like yesterday when Miles went to greet Elsie after she woke up and he noticed she was sleeping in a sleep sack (in her crib) and he said, She’s like a little slug…a slug stuck in jail. And then the other day, Asher was in the bathroom and I heard him say, in a robot-like voice, You. have. 55. pees. So I said, What honey? and he answered, Oh nothing, that was just the toilet talking. Last night I was reading them books and the book said that a mother’s eyes sparkle like the stars in the sky. So […]
Miles with apple trees and apple picker I don’t know how to talk to them about God. I get worried that I should be saying more than I am. I want to tell them all about the way that I’ve come to know He’s there and He loves me and I know they can’t fully understand an invisible Being that made them up and follows them around quite yet or ever. Mystery. I mean, that’s what it sounds like to them. I know because of the confused questions they ask and yet mystery is exactly where He is, in the best possible way. He is story on a breath and inside all quiet things, good or bad all working itself out to matter and mean something. We are all just kids trying to make sense of things. More and more I realize that not knowing things is how we stay open, less […]
