I have three different glasses of water on my desk. Two green glasses and one orange. I don’t know how that happened. I was trying to fill in the November calendar on the wall and be sure to fill in the google calendar at the same time so that it will send me reminders to my phone. I need reminders because this week the kids in kindergarten are wearing a certain color each day and I even have to put that on the calendar because I am always always That Mom that forgets. Like last week, Asher went to his preschool Halloween party with no costume. Then I felt awful. He didn’t seem to mind though. They got to see a fire truck that day anyway. Another day I’m supposed to remember to bring a cucumber because they’re making pickles and then another day it’s Asher’s day to bring the snack. Then […]
I went with my mom and Elsie on a day with the girls and we met Auntie Kay and shopped and ate. I wore Elsie in the Ergo, her happiest place, and she napped in there two times, even while we were eating. When we were shopping (for her, of course) (and I don’t even like shopping but for her I do) she snoozed up close and I would tighten the straps to get her even closer and then I’d sniff her head while fanning through the hangers on those round things. It’s a two hour drive so that’s four hours in one day and she only totally lost her mind for one hour of it. Which feels like five. That poor screaming baby in the car seat. Ugh. People remark on her saucer eyes a lot and it makes me stare at them even more. There’s this new Twin Cities online show […]
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 […]
Oh yes I di’id I was going for the Jenna Elfman look… So I have really really short hair now. Maybe if I dye it blonde you can call me Dharma. I’m not even going to tell you how long it had been since I got my haircut last. I’m a whole new woman. Still Heather, but a little Elfmanesque. You never know what’s next. Maybe I’ll even get a new sweater! xoxo
i don’t know how in the world people this fantastic are mine. but here they are and I am so tired and so overwhelmed and so glad that these are the ones that are mine. he looks so unhappy in this picture but really he’s just watching a show. He’s doing so well with his broken collarbone and sometimes I just cannot for the life of me figure out how kids can be so wise and strong. {I want to randomly take this opportunity to thank my mom and my dad and my sister because without them, while Ryan travels for work, I would certainly lose my ever-lovin’ mind. For instance, my mom is staying overnight this week and last night she was on Elsie duty from 4a.m. on. And she makes dinner. Seriously. Thank you, Family. I love you so much.}
{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 […]
There is a head space I think we strive for. It’s a chance to get the hamster off the wheel or the monkeys out of the trees. To just shut it off and listen to the quiet. The unquiet mind is exhausting. Do you know what I mean? There is a pit of the stomach drop that I think we avoid. It’s the one that comes after trying and trying to get the baby to sleep and then a wail cuts through the silence. Drop. Or when you walk in a room and the people stop talking. Drop. Do you know what I mean? There is a flutter in the soul. It comes with light that refracts and shines off a perfectly still lake. It stares back up and causes that soul space to beam. Like if you could see inside yourself, you would glow for a moment. It is the zap of […]
She doesn’t fit her age, I think. She’s still a sprite of a thing, fast footed through the hall of the house. Her body is aching these days though, all over she says, but she makes it look easy. I know it’s not even close to easy. Her arms swing a little at her sides and her posture is better than mine. She heads to the kitchen to get apple crisp ready for us. I wonder if it hurts her knees or hips to walk and her fingers and wrist to serve up the crisp. My Grandma, she makes the best apple crisp. And lefse, for the record. We sit down and look out the window and she tells the story of her half sister, the one she didn’t know until later in life. How their mother had her very young, before she was married, and she was a blue baby. She says, […]
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 […]
He’s off to school so there is less battle to do. Lately, there’s been so much resistance, a different kind of over-tired and angry boy. I start to get worried, that maybe I don’t know how to help him through this stage or the next or the next. I pick up yesterday’s jeans, the ones he was supposed to put down the chute, and I reach into a small pocket. One rock. One penny. The jeans go down the chute. The treasures go on his dresser. Time is just a blur of squares on the calendar and nonsense numbers on a clock, swallowed by exhaustion and so many thoughts about these three little people I love so much. Nothing is clear. It’s funny how a mother can love the business of sacrificial living while still coming face to face with an end of herself that feels like a scream caught in a dry […]
I want to believe my kids will never drink. That when they’re teens, they’ll never dabble with chasing a buzz or ever drinking under-age at all. I want to believe that they won’t cave to peer pressure. I wish that they were somehow exempt from that particular inevitable adolescent temptation. As a recovering alcoholic, of course I’m scared for them. And maybe I wish my sobriety would erase any potential addictions that might lie in wait for them. Of course that’s not how it works, so we’ll always talk about it, as we have now, in a way that they can understand for their age. But the reality is that no matter what a parent does, the issue will arise. Or the glasses will be lifted, so to speak, all around my impressionable offspring. Cheers to high school rebellion! As much as I’d like to believe my kids are going to take the […]
We went to the farm yesterday. It was the most perfectly beautiful day and we got cotton candy and I ate most of it. Everything felt good about yesterday, but especially how it was so freeing to be able to take Elsie somewhere for the day now that she’s doing better. These are the kinds of things I missed a lot in the last four months. You know, going places without loads and loads of crying. I’m so so grateful. We saw baby chicks and roosters and cows and a pumpkin being catapulted through the air via a trebuchet. Before Elsie was born we would tell people what we thought her name might be and they’d say “Oh! Like Elsie the cow!” and I would say “OR! Like Elsie my Great Aunt!” (In case you don’t know, Elsie is the name of a cartoon cow, the spokescow for the Borden Dairy Company.) […]
