One of my best friends and her husband had kids a few years before we did. I’ve had the honor of witnessing her bring up her children in a way that…well, it floors me. She’s a really really good mom. She’s that person I call when I just don’t know how to handle something. I ask her what she did, or what she would do if this or that was her child. I often joke that I’ve decided I’m just always going to do whatever she does, because that’s how much I respect her wisdom and grace in motherhood. Her name is Katie and whenever she talks about raising her kids, I pay very close attention. When Miles and Asher were babies, I was over at this Katie’s house and noticed six little tin buckets sitting along a shelf. Each one had a different word painted on it: Save, Spend, Give. And then […]
I love that game. I mean, you get to share two unique things about yourself and also make something up just for fun while coming clean within minutes. Then you get to hear interesting facts and silly made-up things about your friends and family while trying to guess which one isn’t real. It makes people rightfully angry and sad when bloggers play this game (or something more like 3 Lies And No Truths) without letting anyone else know the game is on. We feel duped, stunned, confused and pissed off when the truth inevitably comes out. Of course we do. Drama void of truth and bearing no common sense brings on strong feelings. Online, people have famously hidden behind screens and typed themselves into characters living something Other–the faked death of a baby that never was, too many pretend cancer stories to count and a million other Lies big and small, from letters […]
There were older boys walking by and they took the boys’ soccer ball as they went and kept going. This was quickly reported back to the mother whose house our boys were playing in front of with friends. She told her oldest son to go get the ball. Just ask them if the ball is theirs, she said. So he did. He gathered courage and picked up his bike and hopped on to go find them and it was almost like he wanted the challenge–the adventure. He came back with the ball. My eyes were wide when she told me this, the way she encouraged her boy to figure it out. She told him, If they won’t give it back, just leave. It’s not worth fighting over. He came back with the ball. No big thing. He surprised them. He said they acted nervous and couldn’t answer his question. Is that your ball? […]
(photo courtesy of google) My friend Sarah and I (so) often talk about missing quiet. About how we probably stay up too late at night because we’re so hungry for the quiet that’s only there, after all the little human noise boxes are sound asleep and the computer and TV are off. Who am I there? In the quiet moments? I just asked me that this morning because I had a few awake moments in bed before I could hear the bang and crash of fresh morning boys. I don’t know that I’ve lost myself in motherhood, like they say not to do, or if motherhood has stolen me. Or if I am motherhood. And really, is that so bad? Maybe it’s only bad if when given the chance I can’t remember me at all, and even then maybe it’s not my fault. Maybe it’s just because there’s been so little quiet or […]
The weekends have been rolling through with paintbrush strokes lately. There have been many more bright yellows and reds where there had been a lot of darker things, like depression and colic. We are moving now, wheels turning down the road to places with familiar faces and isn’t it silly that I started to wonder if that would ever happen again? If we would always stand still? You do, you know? You start to believe that “it will always be this way” whatever that way is, but it never stays. We have that one constant, in counting on change. You would think I’d be sure of it by now but I still get scared sometimes when things are hard. I get scared they will only stay hard or get harder. But this weekend Miles had a play date and there was a pizza fundraiser and a huge indoor garage sale where I got […]
I ask our boys (and soon Elsie) what they can know for sure. They answer, I belong! It’s true. They do. I want them to know they can always come home and that we have a belonging kind of family. And I hope one day that expands to my children having a knowledge of their role in a greater belonging. That they play an important part in their little corner of the world, wherever they’ll grow to live and that what they do and say causes a ripple effect far past those corners. So much of that kind of belonging starts in our home and in the ways we spend time together. I love it when I come across a way to make good ripples from our corner of the world, something that will teach my kids that doing something small can be really big for someone who needs them, someone close or far […]
My soul begs for quiet maybe even more than my body begs for rest. A quiet room and mind. No racing thoughts or legs no loud no hustle no no no no no strife no strain just peace just a moment. No, that’s not true. I want moments. Many many moments of quiet, in a row. It would take days and days of quiet moments for the recovering of this heart and mind. This person. I am tight shoulders and held breath, sleep deprivation and overstimulation. I am numb. I am not. I am crying. I am trying. I am not. I am feeling a tinge of pride when my Dad walks in and I’m making brownies with Asher on a very bad day. Look at me go! I found the energy! As if his love for me changes based on what I’m doing or not doing. As if he has a piece of graph paper and […]
My early riser is up with the light. Bouncing around and all chatter and energy. He passes the hours (yes, hours) before school with Nutella and checking in on the baby chicks (yes, chicks) and Legos and Animal Planet. Today we learned about walruses. Walruses apparently get annoyed with each other and jab those big tusks into each other. The narrator man says that’s okay because they heal fast and they’re made of six layers of blubber. On a commercial break, there’s an ad with a woman in a hospital bed. She says she had a stroke because she smoked her whole life. Her son is giving her a sponge bath and she’s talking about how she can’t do anything anymore. She tells smokers to “enjoy your independence now”. I asked Miles what he thought all of that meant and he said that everyone should stop smoking. Then he added that if you […]
This morning I sat on the floor with a nice woman I had never met before today. She was here to evaluate Elsie because at a recent doctor’s appointment, our pediatrician raised some concerns about EJ’s gross motor skills. So there we were, criss-cross applesauce, nice to meet you. I knew right away that I was answering her questions with too many no’s. No, she doesn’t do that. No, she hasn’t done that. No. No. No. I hadn’t even noticed it before, that when she does her army crawl, she only uses one side of her body.The right. It’s like she’s a little wounded soldier and how didn’t I notice that before? She’s fine. I kept thinking. She’s fine. And you know what? She is most likely totally fine. But all these months. For months and months now and even years, things have not been fine when I start to think they’re going […]
We went out for an early Valentine dinner so we could get back for putting Elsie to bed. She needs me at bedtime. We didn’t say, Now no talking about the kids! Because usually I think of the things They say to do and not do and then I fail and think about it too much. So we just did our thing the best we could on that day. We ended up not talking about the kids. I got curious about things I didn’t know, from life Before Us and so I asked a lot of questions and Ryan told me about road trips and moving to Arizona and the last time he saw his Grandma. I told him some stories too and we never run out of them, you know, if we just keep digging. I remember my Grandpa saying that he learned something new about my Grandma every day. I couldn’t really believe […]
How do you do this? I am on week three of four of solo parenting. I’ve hit that wall in which I can still kind of handle it but I can’t handle the waffle getting stuck in the toaster. Right now the teething sleep deprivation is so severe I’m not sure at all ever what I’m doing exactly. Just getting him to school and then him to school and feeding and wiping and trying. Then I want to throw the toaster and I follow that I’m losing it feeling with guilt of course because look… Just LOOK at what I have… They are sooooo… THEM, you know? When I am solo, we all move down the totem pole, so to speak. No time for all of our needs or for the family utopia in my head to even come close to existing and I suppose this […]
(originally shared Jan. 2012) (I thought you might need the reminder. Or maybe you’re a new mom of one or someone who didn’t read this the first time. I hope it helps.) Before Asher and Elsie Jane came along, I was out with some friends and I was venting about a hard day with Miles. I was surrounded by mothers with more than one child and they rolled their eyes and sighed and looked at each other and started laughing. One of them said something to the other like, Do you even remember the last time you ever showered alone? Their reaction hurt a lot, as unintentional as that may have been. I got a message–they had it harder than I did–and in that moment I felt foolish for feeling tired or maybe even for having feelings. Today, just like that day around five years ago, two more kiddos later, I am exceptionally tired. Is it […]
under my surface I harbor a great fear like there’s a meteor on its way to earth headed right for our home it shines like it’s beautiful and we reach for so many things that twinkle to destruct so take my hand you’re still the one my soul loves and maybe we need to duck and cover bob and weave but we are underneath it all while meteors fly through the sky and what should we grasp? we don’t know what we’re doing just trenching maybe all of it and then even more ignites beauty and some will destruct but no matter we are cared for at every aching end so take my hand.
“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 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 […]
{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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Miles – 2005 I say every mother needs to trust her heart-gut. She knows, I say. It’s hidden inside her, the answer. Answers to all the many many questions that rise up, all day every day. We’ve made our decisions about Miles and school after years of wrestling with homeschooling versus public or private out-of-home schooling. We made the decision to have him not start school at all last year, after doing more heart-gut wrestling. So now here we are. We’ve made our decisions and I even feel good about them, as good as I can feel when every decision we make always has its right and wrong parts. This boy is going to full-time-is-the-only-option kindergarten at a public school next week. {Rain photo circa 2007} Mothers dream of a person and then grow them in their very soul and bring them here and then release them with a great push. Unleashed […]
You eat some sugar snap peas and a bowl of cereal and call it dinner. You worry that the crunching of your cereal may wake the baby. The baby that is in another room, behind a closed door. You consider yourself more accomplished than ever before in your life if you water your two plants in the same day. Wait. Scratch that. You consider yourself more accomplished than ever before if you master the magical babywearing contraption called the Moby wrap on the first try. If it takes twenty tries, you are normal. No matter how many times it takes you to master the wrap, every time you wear your baby in it, you feel a bit smug and also totally in love with carrying your baby close, hands-free! You throw a pillow across the room at 3 a.m. because you just can’t.be.awake for one more second and then you cry when the […]
You’ve gotta teach ’em to self soothe, you know. You can’t tip-toe around or they’ll never sleep with noise. Babies know how to get you to pick them up–just let her cry. ::: I know which floorboards squawk under pressure. I avoid them. I am up on the balls of my feet, lightly stepping a dance out the door, gently turning the knob to make a silent shut. I so badly want these quiet moments to last, more for her than for me. Minutes later, it’s as if some unknown force with a foot has forgotten the dance and stepped on her. She squawks first, then she screams. A loud train has gone by and shook her from her light and always tummy-disturbed sleep. I rush back in, no longer careful just quick. Her face is beet red and crinkled with pain, her body making little sounds of too much air. I pick […]
I wrote this (lengthy) post to be a helpy helperton to those of you who have (or know someone who has) a colic-y baby in your life. And maybe I wrote it for me, like an article to myself…one that reminds me that I’ve tried, that I am trying, really hard. This is not the only way I’m a good mom and I forget that all too often. (What’s that? You forget too? Well then, stop that. You’re good. You really are. Believe it.) ::: I don’t even know if “colic” is the word, you know? Babies are magical puzzles for the figuring out and sometimes what’s happening just IS. I guess colic is just a word we use when there are one thousand question marks and a whole lot of crying. Just as I say “constipated” when Elsie isn’t able to get the poops out because there’s so much air holding […]
I wake up thinking about another creative endeavor. I think this makes 5 Big Things I dream to do in the world. Number one is mothering, creating humans that live like this. Then the others, they are all of the other artist parts of me, reaching out and begging to explore the story of this life. I wake up with that new idea and then I feel the tap tap tap of the start to the day and I’m on my feet with breakfast and answering questions and rubbing away the sleep from all of our eyes. I’m reaching all around. We talk about finding balance and she has none and neither do I. We talk about accepting that in motherhood and then I think it’s impossible to accept that all at once. The only way to do acceptance is in moments. The balance is not in the big picture. It is in […]
wicker bending to hold intertwined and tight with empty oval spaces for hands grasping and lifting I’m a wicker basket, I said to myself. I was sitting on the bed, staring down at a storage chest made from wicker. I doubt I can remember the analogy all that well right now, but I’m going to try. It’s 5:30 in the morning in San Diego. Elsie is sleeping soundly for the first time all night…or morning. My lovely friend, co-host to the Serenity Suite and constant helper with all things baby, Ellie, is up with me. We laughed at ourselves because this sweet baby is finally at rest and now we cannot. Our time zones betray us. This trip and conference and hosting of the suite is all so much. It is so much good while it is so exhausting, especially while my head is buzzing with a high-speed need to think only of Elsie while I […]
I shook with sobs, perched with my back to pillows on the bed, holding a swaddled and screaming Elsie. It was 1 a.m. and I’d been pacing and bouncing for six hours. Somewhere in there, I put the boys to bed by calling out brush your teeth and go potty over the cries. I shouted prayers and they giggled at the absurdity of our…routine. !!!God bless Miles and Asher and Elsie!!! Ryan texted from Salem, his plane had landed. My heart dropped; that’s far and long and this is just the start. I want him home. He wants to be home. But alas, the bills must be paid. The sobbing came with her eyes wide open after so much trying and over my inability to make it stop, to take away her pain, to know what to do. I am not complaining, in all of these posts. I am simply telling this story. […]
There are a lot of infomercials on in the night. Every channel it seems. I’ll be up in the night with Elsie, either pacing the floors to lull her to sleep or nursing her in a sleepy haze. And someone is always trying to sell me something if I turn the TV on. When I was up nursing Miles I remember watching Little House on the Prairie a lot. I think there were marathons every night. With Asher I remember watching televangelists a lot. I don’t even like televangelism…at all, but there I would be, zoned out and strangely fascinated. Now, when I’m up with Elsie, I do more reading on my phone than TV-spacing. I read blog posts mostly, and a reflection of the day for we recovering alcoholics. It’s a good start to the day-night. Sidenote: I’m going to just go ahead and point out that I tried to discreetly erase […]
notes to my children: Don’t forget to feel and then move on if things don’t go the way you thought they should go. Sometimes what you want isn’t even what you wanted anyway. Open doors for girls. Or better yet, open doors for anyone and everyone coming through. Please. Your brother will be your best friend, if you let him. Don’t pass up chances to go to far-away places even if it doesn’t seem like the right time. Marry someone who likes so many of the very same things that you like. Please. You need to trust your heart-gut, it speaks to you. It is a true voice that can keep you safe from danger and lead you to great things. You were made for those great things, like laughing or changing your corner of the world. There are dreams in your heart and you’ll surely forget them sometimes so circle back and uncover […]
Her profile is so much like her oldest brother’s profile. I wonder if she’ll be more like him, or more like Asher? Or just plain different than all of us? For now all we know is that her profile is a lot like her oldest brother’s profile, a boy who will turn six the week after she is born. Ryan and I walked through aisles yesterday and we talked about six years ago. We carried that registering-for-baby-things-gun that beeps. (Yes, we created a registry for a third baby. We did. For moms and grandmas to know what we need, since we did that thing where we got rid of everything somewhere between colic and hydrocephalus…or maybe that was after…whenever it was it was obviously too soon, but we thought we knew we were done. Stress will do that to you…until time passes…I think I’m rambling like this because registering feels greedy even if […]
I am here alone in a place with Internet access and food, trying to clean up my inbox and clear my head. But their conversation is turning my limbs light and my stomach in circles. They are men, with gray hair and pot bellies and low grumbling laughs, at the next table. They are reminiscing about the good old days, the “good old days” with women. Heat is rising in my cheeks and my heart is beating faster and everything in me wants to strangle, to rail, to fight, to scream…to get them to stop, to get them to see. Here you sit with all these years to know…and you still don’t know. They are talking so loudly…with so much pride, it sounds like bravado, and I feel sick. :::::Last night I was randomly struck with a thought, right before bed. I called out for Ryan, to come from the other room and […]
