I'm Just Sayin'

Gone, Baby, Gone

2011-09-15T21:16:00.000-04:00

Hey there, friend! If you've stumbled onto this blog via some outdated link I've forgotten to change, please come visit the new and (dare I say) improved I'm Just Sayin', which is now called Holding the Strings.

Come on over; you've got some stuff to catch up on....
Robyn

Clock Slayers Bring Time Back to Life (or something like that ... I'm too overtired to understand Faulkner)

2011-07-16T23:43:00.005-04:00

“Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” – William Faulkner

This morning I was woken up by my 2-year-old, who slid all the covers off my body, pulled himself onto the bed, climbed onto my back and proceeded to use all four of my limbs as train tracks for the little red engine in his hand.

Neither one of us said a word, and after opening one eye to see the time — 6:29 a.m. — I closed it and sank back into my pillow, trying to convince myself this was like a little mini massage and I could just go right back to sleep.

That’s when he turned on the train’s whistle.

As I lay there listening to the shrill whine and chug-chug-chug of the toy, I thought about how long it had been since I’d woken up on my own. My internal alarm clock is no doubt rusted out and dead from lack of use. Having children has meant their internal alarm clocks trump mine every single time. It doesn’t matter how late I stayed up or how many times they woke up in the middle of the night for feedings or diaper changes or a parental reassurance in the dark. They’re still almost always up earlier than my body would choose to be if it was in charge. Which it isn’t.

I have friends who tuck in their kids around 7:30 p.m., close their bedroom doors and rarely open them again until 7:30 a.m. I’m sure some of these kids are amazing sleepers. I suppose others are well trained to stay in bed, or at the very least stay quiet. Our boys were never amazing sleepers, and a strict lights out, parents out policy was never our style. So while I’ve always been envious of the predictability of such lavish amounts of free time and uninterrupted sleep, I still prefer the loose system we have of musical beds and multiple wakings. (OK I don’t prefer the multiple wakings, but I’ve made my peace with it.)

Very young children are acutely aware of their own internal clocks, and nothing else. They wake when they’re ready to wake, no matter how obscene the number is on the bedside clock. And they sleep when they’re ready to sleep, no matter where they are or how high the sun still is in the sky.

Externally, though, they don’t quite get it. My kids ask what’s for dinner when they mean breakfast. “Yesterday” could be 10 minutes ago or two years ago, depending on what they’re recalling. They think that a return to a local amusement park we went to weeks ago is imminent, even though we’ve told them we’ll go again next year. That’s because “next year” to them is both tomorrow and a million days away.

Conversely, living with them has shown me how dependent we adults are on schedules and clocks. There are many days I spend 20 minutes or more trying to cajole them into sitting down for lunch “because it’s time for lunch.” They revolt, saying “It’s not time for lunch, Mommy!” What I mean is that it’s noon, and we have to get lunch out of the way so that we can move on to reading books and taking naps. What they mean is that they’re not hungry yet; it will be lunchtime when they are hungry, and until then please leave them alone. I am paying attention to the clock on the wall; they are paying attention to the clock in their brains.

One of my biggest challenges as a mother has been honing the ability to focus on the brilliance of the moment rather than the five things I have to get done before naptime. To watch their faces instead of the clock, to respond to their wishes and giggles and neediness regardless of what I think they should be doing based on what the big hand and the little hand are pointing to.

It can be so hard to succumb to the immediacy of childhood, to respond instantly when you feel your covers sliding away and your happily slumbering body being roused prematurely yet again. But doing just that is imperative, if for no other reason than because the tick-tick-tick never actually stops. In fact it’s pretty much on warp speed from the second you give birth until forever. Kids change in a heartbeat. I swear to you, there are days my children wake up from their naps and their faces have matured in that hour while they slept. Two months ago I was still cutting Evan’s sandwiches into bite-sized pieces because he hadn’t yet mastered the whole “Just take a bite!” concept. Now he’s biting his way through an entire PB&J like the big boy that he is quickly becoming.

Last week Kostyn couldn’t reach the faucet to turn it on and wash his hands by himself. Today he can. I don’t know how this happened, but it did, like magic. And the recognition of this feat, for me, was both wonderful and sobering.

Time is magic. Now you see it, now you don’t. It is at once a pounding in your head of to-do lists and deadlines and meetings and appointments and dinner to get on the table and one more book to read before lights out. Then, *Poof!* It’s gone. The lights are out.

One day right around the corner I will once again wake to the persistent, emotionless beep-beep-beep of my alarm clock, and I’ll plod down the hall to the boys’ room to wake them for school. “Time to get up!” I can hear my future mom self calling to them, opening curtains and telling them how much time before the bus gets here. “Hurry or you won’t have time for breakfast.” Because there’s never enough time.

And in that moment of wishing for more time I will be greedy, as all parents are. I will long to rewind the clock not just to give us all more time for breakfast, or more time to sleep in. I will wish the clock much further back … all the way back to the days when my body became a train track at 6:30 in the morning. Back to when the clock stopped, and time came to life.

Allies

2011-07-05T22:51:00.000-04:00

The boys and I sat on the front porch tonight while they ate ice cream cones and looked for bugs, a summertime routine in the making. When Kostyn finished his treat he grabbed a big piece of sidewalk chalk from the box near the front door and headed down the stairs to draw smiley face after smiley face on the still-hot concrete. Each one was a little bit farther away from our porch than the last.

After a few minutes Evan handed me his soggy, dripping cone and picked up his own piece of chalk, smearing it with melted ice cream on his way down the steps. He chose a sidewalk square in front of the house and began furiously scribbling.

Kostyn, meanwhile, took a few steps farther down the street.

“Kostyn, that’s far enough,” I called to him, wanting to be able to see him from my perch on the porch. He looked at me, whirled around, slashed at the sidewalk with his chalk, and then danced several more feet toward the end of the block, giving me a sideways glance to make sure I’d notice.

“Kostyn, do you want me to take away the chalk?” I asked calmly. Truth be told, he was just on the other side of the next-door neighbor’s house — hardly a solo trek into uncharted territory. But he wasn’t listening to me; he was testing to see where the boundaries really were. Both kinds. Plus he wasn’t wearing pants. (Long story.)

“Oh Mommy,” he said dismissively, drawing imaginary figure eights in the air.

Evan, who’d barely walked 10 feet from the porch steps and was now satisfied with his masterpiece, stood up and looked back at his brother. Kostyn looked from me to Evan but didn’t move.

“I want you to come back this way,” I said. Then I added, “Where Evan is is far enough.”

It took less than 2 seconds for Evan to run to his big brother’s side. Then he turned to face me, elbow to shoulder with Kostyn, who was beaming with an even bigger grin than his little partner in crime.

Yeah, that's right: I was outsmarted by a 2-year-old.

I think we all learned a valuable, dangerous lesson tonight: Those boys are far more powerful together than they are alone.

Dear Insecurities: You Don't Get to Win

2011-06-21T08:11:00.000-04:00

I have this recurring daydream where I’m in a terrible accident and have one of my legs amputated. Sometimes both of them are gone, and I’m pushed around in a wheelchair by my husband, who assures me he still loves me just the same as he always did. As he wheels me around I look down at the nothingness that used to be my ability to run and dance, and I try like hell to remember what I looked like and felt like with all my limbs intact. In the dream I love them, my poor hacked-off legs, with a passion generally reserved for treasured family members and dark chocolate. I concentrate on that loss until the yearning for what I had is palpable. Then I let the dream go.

Because, like I said, it’s not a nightmare. It’s not something I wake from in a sweat, wiggling my toes under the blankets to make sure I’m still in one piece. It’s a daydream. I force it on myself once in awhile, in the light of day, in an attempt to regain my sense of thankfulness for having been blessed with a healthy body. Because it’s a body I’ve been so hopelessly insecure about my whole life that it’s paralyzed me from doing and wearing and feeling the things I should, which I know is pointless, annoying and sad. Hence the daydream. And yet.

Everyone has insecurities. Everyone has something about their appearance they don’t like. Right now you’re thinking of yours. Over the years my “something” has shifted. In my teens it was a general sense of “I don’t think I’m pretty.” I would sit on the couch beside my high school boyfriend and panic if he looked over at me. “He’s too close! He’ll see what I really look like!” Like the idiotic schoolgirl I was, I would hide my face from him, tell him to look away. It wasn’t a flirty ploy; it was a response to real fear.

In my 20s my “something” became a quantifiable list, a new insecurity always seeming to take the place of one that was fading away. I didn’t like my freckles. I hated my hair, back, legs, feet, chest, fingers, nose, ears, smile. There was something wrong with just about every part of me, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.

Perhaps because of that, I settled on one giant insecurity and clung to it: My legs. I decided they were too hideous to be seen. I stopped wearing shorts in public. (And I was living in the South at the time, so that was a fairly stupid, terribly uncomfortable decision.) Then I stopped wearing shorts at home. I didn’t want my husband to see them. I didn’t want to have to look at them either.

When my college roommate was getting married I spent weeks shopping for a dress that might be stylish but still cover my legs completely. I finally found a black sleeveless dress that went down to my ankles. There were two slits up the sides, reaching almost to the knee, so when I walked the bottom of the dress flapped open a little, revealing just a hint of a calf muscle. I spent an hour of our drive from Florida to Virginia frantically pulling a needle and black thread through that dress, closing up those slits so I’d be comfortable enough in it to relax and have fun. I’m no seamstress, but my hack job worked.

My long, cozy cocoon, bought and first worn here in June 1999.

It worked so well, in fact, that I think that black dress is the only one I owned and wore for the next 12 years. It is downright comical how many photos I have, of various events through the years, in which I am wearing that dress. Other weddings, awards banquets, fancy dinners, my own bridal shower, even a funeral or two.

Accessorizing with a corsage for my bridal shower. (Pretty china!)

Amazingly my amateur seamstress work has kept those side slits closed, allowing me to feel safe in that polyester blend of a cocoon that for the past six years or so I’ve told myself is “timeless,” even though the sheer length of the frock makes it pretty dated.

Another wedding, years later. (Hey, you made the blog, Chew!)

Insecurities. Everyone has ’em. For a long time I thought age and maturity would take care of mine. I’ll just grow out of it. Get over myself. It’s a phase.

I thought faith would take care of it. God gave me this body, and I should love and exalt it as the gift that it is.

I thought finding the right man would take care of it. He compliments me all the time, says I grow more beautiful every year. Shouldn’t that be enough?

I thought therapy would take care of it. My physical insecurities are apparently an outward manifestation of something inside me that I have not yet come to terms with.

I thought having kids would take care of it. This body grew two human beings. It produced miracles, and fed them for the first year of their lives. This body ROCKS for that reason alone. Show it some respect!

Maybe all of these have added pieces to the puzzle, but there are still these gaping holes and I’ve spent years rolling around like a Shel Silverstein drawing trying to find my missing piece. I’ve done the psychobabble, the self-loathing behaviors, the empty relationships. I’ve spent years avoiding mirrors and eye contact because I didn’t want to be seen. For awhile I tried writing down every compliment I received so that they might not dissolve in my mind like snowflakes on my tongue, the way compliments usually do.

I’ve ruminated and prayed for an answer to this problem of low self-esteem. I’ve cried about it, argued about it, read about it. It sounds so silly, but it has debilitated me for years.

Finally, in a fit of genius, I gave up.

I recently decided to stop thinking about all the things that are “wrong” with me, because frankly I’m sick to death of thinking about it. Berating myself for not being perfect is exhausting, not to mention pointless, stifling and completely self-centered.

So instead I thought I’d just try to wear a pair of shorts. Not all the time, mind you (baby steps), but once in awhile. It probably sounds like a simple thing; it’s not. But I bought a pair a few weeks ago (thanks Mom, for your extreme patience during that particular shopping outing) and have worn them three times, including to a 3-year-old’s birthday party, which was excruciatingly difficult for me to do.

I also bought a new bathing suit — something I haven’t done in about eight years — and a new dress, with a hemline that just brushes my knees, and I'm currently psyching myself up to actually wear it to my cousin's wedding in a few weeks.

Look out, world.

It hasn’t been easy, this new strategy. Last weekend I happened to be in a pair of shorts when an impromptu gathering of neighbors and their kids took place on the sidewalk in front of our house. As quickly and casually as I could I excused myself, slipped inside and ran upstairs to change into jeans, sweatpants, anything that would cover up my legs. But I stopped myself, took a deep breath and looked in the mirror instead. I envisioned my insecurity as an object, and I pulled it away from my actual body.

“Ya know what? Screw you,” I said to the imaginary mass of self-loathing and shame I could practically see. For the first time, I saw it separately from my physical self. I still didn’t like the way my legs looked, but I could see they were just legs. Just freckles. Just shoulders. Just a nose. Taken as a whole they are who I am, but they do not define me unless I let them.

I kept the shorts on and went back outside. I made eye contact. I laughed and joked. I watched the kids dance around, blowing bubbles and chasing them down the sidewalk, totally unaware of their bodies as anything but vehicles for the life that propels them forward, outward, upward.

It’s too late for me to feel that again, to be unaware of my body in that way. But maybe if I force myself to wear shorts sometimes, after awhile I won’t feel like I’m baring my soul, just my skin.

When I sat down to write this post, I knew only what I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to say something trite that means nothing to anyone, but I didn’t want to make it about you when it’s really about me anyway. I got so muddled I considered deleting the whole thing. And then I remembered French model Isabelle Caro. At 25, she posed for an Italian ad campaign to highlight the tragedy and danger of anorexia in the fashion industry. She was 5’5” and weighed less than 70 pounds at the time. She was a walking skeleton, and she knew it.

“I saw death coming for me,” she said. “At that stage I freaked out.” She started diligently trying to gain enough weight to live. She knew she’d ravaged her body, but she was hoping it wasn’t too late. What struck me about Isabelle, even more than her skeletal frame, was some dramatic freckles she’d painted around her eyes and cheeks. When an interviewer asked about the makeup, Isabelle said, “I do have freckles naturally but I use makeup to accentuate them because I like to bring out my eyes. Because if someone is looking at my eyes, they are not looking at the rest of me.”

Isabelle spent her entire life trying like hell to disappear. But she realized, too late, that unless she disappeared completely, her attempts to shrink were actually making her stand out more and more and more, until people literally couldn’t look away. Isabelle died at age 28.

We all paint on freckles. We highlight what we like about ourselves and downplay what we don’t. But downplaying is different than hiding. Hiding is fear, paralysis, unnecessary tears. Hiding is wearing jeans to the beach in July. Like Isabelle found, the most ironic thing about hiding is that it often captures attention that is unwanted in the first place. (I mean how can you not notice someone sweating like crazy in rolled-up jeans with her two little boys on a beach in the middle of summer among crowds of normal people in bathing suits?)

So I’m trying to take a vacation from the self-loathing. I’m trying to make eye contact. I’m trying to wear shorts once in awhile. I’m trying to pretend it’s something I do all the time. Basically, I’m trying to fake it ’til I make it. To redefine myself, just in my own mind, in simpler, gentler terms than the ones I’ve used for many years. Because it’s summer, dammit; it’s hot out there. And because, as the sharp-witted Dooce tweeted recently, “Self-confidence is not something you strive to get. It’s something you finally realize.”

A Father's Hands

2011-06-19T07:50:00.000-04:00

Poor guy never got to cast his own line when he took my sisters and I fishing. I don't think he cared.

When I think about my dad, I think about his hands. He’s got these big strong, calloused hands, and though I have a terrible memory I memorized those hands long ago. I can see the huge knuckles, the coarse dark hair on his fingers, the way his fingernails are always nibbled way down below the skin from a lifetime of quietly fretting over finances and family matters. His hands are often dry and cracked; his wedding ring looks like it was permanently fused to his left ring finger. His fingers often smell like the pipe tobacco he smokes, a scent that fills me with both nostalgia for my childhood and guilt for not being harder on him about that habit.

For the first several years of my life his were the only male hands I would hold. I’m told I broke the hearts of my grandfathers, uncles and close family friends because I refused to have anything to do with them. I was the shy little girl crouched behind her daddy’s leg, holding his hands for safety.

They still make me feel safer than just about anything in this world.

One of the sweetest days we ever held hands.

My dad never knew his biological father, never held his hand or even looked him in the eye. To this day the paternal side of his family tree is one ghostly bare branch. His mother was never forthcoming about his father’s identity; over the years the name she told him changed, and her story of him being a police officer killed in the line of duty could never be corroborated with anything in the public record.

Sometimes I try to imagine what my life would be like without those hands in my every memory, without the feeling they gave me, and still do. Because my father doesn’t have such a memory, and how could anyone possibly grow up well without it?

The memory my dad has is an opposite one. It’s a memory from when he was a very young boy, the day his stepfather left him alone on a corner in Times Square, purposely slipped away amid the mass of people and then watched from afar to see what his stepson would do. When I hear this story I ache to run and hold that little boy’s hand, to lead him to safety, to be his shelter and his rock.

And I am in awe that he grew up to be mine.

I think about my father’s hands sometimes when I see Chris holding our sons’ hands as they cross the street or head into a store. “Give Daddy your hand,” he says, and everyone lines up to form a family chain. I look at Chris’s hands and wonder how immense and strong they must feel when they’re wrapped completely around Kostyn's and Evan's hands. I think about how every trip across the street is imprinting that “I’m taking care of you” feeling in their hearts.

It’s what a father does. It’s what a father should do: Be there, to hold your hand. I am so thankful I married a man who does this (and so, so much more), who will forever be their shelter and their rock. He is the perfect proportion of strong and gentle, leader and follower, fan and friend and teacher.

Just like my own dad.

These days Dad holds my heart more than my hand. The last time I saw him he got out his laptop (which has a giant Penn State cover on it, in true “Proud Parent of a PSU Grad” fashion) and said he wanted to show me something. He proceeded to “Google” my name and proudly scrolled through the first few pages of what the search engine turned up. He couldn’t wait to show me my own successes.

I’d Googled my own name before (hasn’t everyone?), but the results looked different that day.

He’s such a dad, I thought as I sat there looking at broken links to outdated stories in publications I no longer work for. But I realized that — He’s such a dad — is about the nicest compliment I can give someone, because of how the word has been defined for me throughout my life.

And I wonder, how did he become what he didn’t have the good fortune to experience first-hand? I’ll never understand that, but I’m so thankful for it. It speaks to the sheer power of fatherhood, how a man with little experience can dig deep within himself and become the parent he wills himself to be. Because every child deserves a strong hand to hold, on every corner and at every turn of his life.

Thanks, Dad, for giving me so much of yourself, but mostly for giving me your hand. I realize now your heart was in it. Happy Father’s Day.

And thanks to my husband, my love, for giving our boys the gift of an incredible father. I love you so much.

And now, a little postscript, just for fun:
Ya know what's awesome? Genes. And fate. And seeing the two little boys that mean the world to you begin to resemble the two men in your life that mean the world to you. Check it out.


Here's my father as a baby...


...and Evan Thomas, who happens to be named after Dad.

Here's Chris as an adorable 8-year-old boy (with his mom, who incidentally is 38 in this picture -- the same age as me. Blows my mind that she has five children ranging from 18-8 here.)...

....and Kostyn Orrie, named after both his father and his paternal grandfather. I know there's four years difference here but I think the resemblance to his daddy is still pretty striking.

He's Takin' What I'm Givin' 'Cause He's "Workin'" For a Livin'

2011-06-16T07:51:00.000-04:00

Kostyn has recently discovered money. I think that’s partly because his daddy has been talking to him about why he has to go to work every day (which Kostyn hates), and partly because he just likes coins. He likes holding them, collecting them, keeping them from his brother and dropping them into his blue piggy bank that’s actually a bear.

So now that he kind of understands that people work for money, he has begun asking me if he can work for money. But, it turns out, he doesn’t want to work very hard, and by “very hard” I mean “at all.”

We had this exchange recently:

Kostyn: “Look, I have some money for work.” He handed me a penny and a small round piece of rubber. “Mommy, I want some money. I need some money to buy things.”

“Really?” I said absentmindedly, handing back his stash and continuing to put away his clean laundry.

“Give me some money,” he said, more to the point. “I need an urn.”

“You need an urn?” I asked, imagining him filling an urn with found coins and random rubber toy parts.

“Yes, I want money to earn.”

“Ohhh, EARN,” I said. “You want to earn some money? You need a job to do?”

“Yes I need a job,” he said excitedly. “What job can I do?”

“Well I wish you’d asked me that yesterday, because I just cleaned the whole house,” I said. “But you can help me set the table later.”

“Uhh, no.”

“OK,” I said, heading downstairs. He followed me, undeterred by my utter lack of interest in handing over cash for nothing.

“I need a job, mommy. I need to earn something. Like work,” he said so earnestly I thought he was serious.

“Well I’m about to sweep the kitchen floor. Want to help me do that?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I need an easy job.”

“Heh. Don’t we all,” I said, getting out the broom.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What about music. I could play music all day long,” he said.

“For money?” I asked.

“Yes, I can play music and I will earn money!” he said, the scheme coming into focus in his little brain.

“Well, you could do that someday, sure,” I said, imagining I was giving a pep talk to the next Yo-Yo Ma or Bruce Springsteen. “It will take a lot of practice and hard work, but you could be a musician and make money.”

“Will you give me money to play music?” he said, apparently aiming to skip the “years of practice and discipline” stage.

“Uh, no," I said. I might give you some to stop playing, I added under my breath, but he had already disappeared into the other room. Then I heard the faint sounds of the boys’ musical Sit ‘n’ Spin playing. It’s among the most annoying musical toys they own, and every time I hear it I vow to secretly remove the batteries the next time they’re asleep.

He returned 20 seconds later, stepping all over the pile of crumbs I’d just swept up.

“OK Mommy! I played music! Where’s my money?!” he said.

“What? You didn’t play music,” I said. “You pressed a button.”

He considered this truth, then countered. “But I danced.”

I looked at him.

“And sang,” he said.

We sized each other up, and in that moment I knew I was in for it. Sometime down the line, I would surely lose the argument — any argument — to this little guy. But not today.

“I’m not giving you any money for playing that toy, sweetie,” I said, smiling.

“OK,” he said, turning toward the staircase. “Maybe Evan has something for me to earn.”

The Work-From-Home Mom's Desk Calendar Alternative

2011-06-08T00:09:00.000-04:00

When the source I'd been trying to reach all day long finally called back to schedule a phone interview with me, I had no laptop handy in which to type the details.

I had no pad of paper or pen.

I had no idea how to type a note on my phone while talking to her.

I had no desk calendar, secretary, or memory left to rely on.

Luckily my roaming "office" is wherever my kids are at the moment, and my roaming office "supplies" are whatever my kids happen to be using.

Nobody call me at 9. I'll be busy talking to a NYT best-selling author, and the boys will be thoroughly and silently engrossed in "Sesame Street." OK only one of those is true.

Spiking the Football

2011-06-01T08:32:00.000-04:00

I got a check in the mail last week that made me wish I was a football player.

Back in January I started writing a monthly column on family finances for a small handful of regional parenting publications across the country — including the one in my own back yard, Central Penn Parent. It’s a very small handful, and each one pays me very little, so it’s really nothing to brag about. But in another sense it did allow me to realize a lifelong dream of becoming a syndicated columnist. It’s not exactly the topic I dreamed I’d be writing for such a column, nor does it have the kind of widespread audience befitting of such a dream, but there it is.

See what I did there? I somehow managed to disclose the fact that I met a career-long goal while simultaneously crushing it to bits. I fear that’s a talent too many of us have ... which brings me back to the football players. A few weeks ago I received an email from the editor of Calgary’s Child in Canada, letting me know they were picking up my finance column to run in the May/June issue of their magazine. This means — and I type this with a big smirk on my face — that I’m now technically an internationally syndicated columnist.

Silly? Absolutely. But still kind of cool, right? I smiled when I read the email, told my husband, who smiled too, and that was it. I considered posting something on Facebook or emailing a friend but decided that would come across sounding self-important and needlessly boastful. So I did nothing.

Instead I sat there silently and thought about how football players get to at least spike the ball when they get into the end zone. That’s got to feel good, ya know? They train, they sacrifice, they work hard, and when they finally score some points, they take a moment to do a little dance. They thump their hearts and point their fingers toward the sky. They chest-bump teammates who helped them get there. They spike the ball.

There are days I scoff at some of the Facebook posts people write, moms who pat themselves on the back for having finished two loads of laundry and made dinner. That’s it? I sneer. What did they do the rest of the day?? This is all they need to feel accomplished, folding some laundry?

But the more I think about it, the more I believe those women are onto something. They’re laying their heads on their pillows at night feeling satisfied, accomplished. Perhaps they don’t shut off the light and turn on an endless list of Things I Didn’t Get Done Today in their brains, the way I do. Perhaps they glance at the empty hamper in the corner of their bedroom, smile inwardly, and fall blissfully asleep.

OK maybe they don’t do that, but my point here is that they allow themselves to feel good about what they DID do, however simple or menial or ordinary or necessary. They spike the ball.

I’m not suggesting excessive celebration is a good thing. I’m not saying I enjoy watching overpaid thugs doing a terrible Michael Flaherty impression in the end zone or taunting the opposing team and fans. I’ve always loved the way Joe Paterno coaches his kids about end zone celebrations. He says, “Act like you expect to get into the end zone.” Over the years I’ve seen so many Penn State players do just that — simply and nonchalantly hand the football over to the official as if they’ve been in the end zone a million times and will surely be back there in the next series.

I like the respect and modesty that implies, but I think sometimes if we try too hard to not celebrate the things we’ve worked hard for, our successes become muddled. Our dreams become slighted, pushed from a list of Big-Time Goals onto a merely mundane ‘To Do’ list we discreetly check off without so much as a “Woot woot woot,” Arsenio Hall-style.

So I think, when the spirit moves us and the stars align and our hard work pays off, we should spike the ball. Which I suppose is what this particular blog post is, really. Consider this my two fist bumps to the chest and an index finger pointed to the sky. I can’t throw a kiss to God in front of 80,000 fans, but I can do this. I can tell nobody in particular, and anybody who reads it, that I got a check in the mail a few days ago for $50 Canadian from my first international publication, and it made me smile.

(What’s the exchange rate these days, anyway?)

The Decider Coin

2011-05-26T14:42:00.000-04:00

It's no coincidence that the word "mother" is embedded in the saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Mothers are constantly inventing tactics and tricks to get their kids to do stuff.

Moms come up with catchy little "clean up" songs to make picking up a roomful of toys sound like a carnival game. Moms allow their kids to dip every imaginable fruit, vegetable and source of protein in gobs of ketchup just so the important nutrients make it to their little tummies. Moms (and dads too) are constantly inventing new ways to get and keep kids fed, dressed, bathed, helpful and happy. It starts long before the first time they turn a spoonful of baby food into an airplane, and it never stops.

Last week I had just such a moment of invention, one that is continuing to reap benefits for me and should for at least three more days, when my sons will surely tire of it (or lose it). I call it The Decider Coin.

My boys are great pals and playmates, but they've hit that point of no return in siblinghood where everything ends up being about Who Goes First, or Who Picks First or Who Picked First Last Time. Seriously, we cannot accomplish anything--ANYTHING--lately without a great debate about who's first.

Usually it's because neither of them wants to do the task at hand (putting on shoes, getting dressed, washing hands, whatever), unless they're talking about their ladybug night light. Then both of them demand to go first. Oh, how I loathe that ladybug night light.

The little plastic and plush ladybug has stars and a crescent moon on its back that get projected onto the bedroom ceiling at night. It's a great little night light and the boys love it, as I knew they would. The problem is that the darn night light can shine its stars in three different colors and my sons have yet to agree on one color. Ever.

This is made far worse by the fact that I can never remember who got to pick the ladybug's color the previous night. It's a serious mental block and one that gets me in trouble every single night, because how can they effectively take turns when they're both telling me the other one picked the color last night, and I don't know which one of them is lying?

Consequently, the ladybug had become the bane of my existence; the argument at bedtime over the color was getting out of hand. It was no longer a sweet bedtime ritual, it was a power struggle that almost always ended in a tackle and a wrestling match and often tears. Sometimes even they cried, too.

So last week they were in the throes of whining over whose turn it was when a lightbulb went on in my head. Maybe I didn't need to remember who picked the color the previous night. Maybe we didn't need to agree on a color. Maybe we didn't have to resort to Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe. (My 3-year-old had already figured out how to start that one so that it ended in his favor anyway.)

I marched downstairs into the playroom and grabbed a poker chip from the stack they'd been playing with earlier. Then I rummaged through their craft supplies until I found some stickers with letters on them. I stuck a big green "E" on one side of the coin, and a big blue "K" on the other, marched upstairs and showed them my new Instrument of Peace and Harmony.

"This is The Decider Coin," I said. "I'm going to throw it up in the air and we will all watch to see it land. If we see a 'K' for Kostyn, then Kostyn gets to pick. If we see an 'E' for Evan, then it's Evan's turn to pick."

They loved it. I threw the coin. It bounced once and landed. "K" for Kostyn. Kostyn jumped and beamed and Evan did too, excited about this new game. Peace and Harmony, and red stars on the ceiling. And it's been working wonders ever since.

Nobody wants to be first to put their shoes on? Let's try The Decider Coin. You can't agree on whose book Mommy should read first? Grab The Decider Coin. Can't remember who got out of the tub first last time? Throw The Decider Coin in the air.

I love this thing. I grew up with two siblings, so we lived by "majority rules." But I'm tellin' ya, parents of two kids, The Decider Coin is the perfect tie-breaker. In fact, the other day Kostyn helped me make one with a "D" for Daddy on one side, and an "M" for Mommy on the other side. We have yet to use it. But rest assured, people, we will.

A Dog and His Boy

2011-05-24T08:54:00.001-04:00

“I want to play fetch with Sadie,” Kostyn says, nearly getting knocked over as he crosses the dog’s path. Sadie’s on her way back to me with a gnawed, gnarly tennis ball in her mouth.

“OK,” I tell him reluctantly. She’s a good dog, an obedient dog, but a powerful one. She’s a pit bull/chow mix that jumps when she’s excited, and sharp claws on strong paws can easily bump a little boy to the ground. We didn’t have much luck with Kostyn and Sadie playing fetch last year.

“Drop it,” I command the dog; she drops the ball at my feet. It bounces down the porch steps where I’m sitting, and Kostyn scrambles to get it.

“It’s wet!” he says, thrusting it at me.

“I know," I smile. “It’s been in Sadie’s mouth.” I throw the ball against the garage and Sadie takes off after it. Kostyn whines. “I wanna play fetch with her!” And I know this time he’s serious.

“OK!” I say. “I didn’t think you wanted to touch the wet ball.” Sadie trots over to us. “Drop it,” I say.

“Drop it,” Kostyn echoes with all the authority in his voice he can muster (which is a lot, actually, as there has been lots of practicing on his little brother). Sadie drops the ball; Kostyn picks it up. He brings the ball up to the side of his head and Sadie jumps around, excited. I stand up protectively.

“Down Sadie!” She fidgets and paces but stops jumping. Kostyn’s hand is still poised above his head, frozen, waiting for the perfect moment to throw. With an overly excitable dog, the perfect time is as soon as possible, like right now.

“Go ahead and throw it,” I urge him. He throws; the ball drops into the bushes directly in front of us. Sadie doubles back, having grossly overestimated how far the ball would be thrown. She noses around in the bushes and comes up with it. Kostyn cheers.

“Drop it,” I say out of habit, and Kostyn once again echoes me. “Drop it. Sadie, drop!” She doesn’t drop it; she brings it over to me and loosens her jaws when I pull it from her mouth. Kostyn starts to protest, but I hand over the ball.

“Down Sadie,” I say instinctively as she hops on her back paws and paces energetically. Kostyn throws; Sadie fetches; Kostyn giggles and cheers.

After awhile, I sit back down. I am not so much impressed with the dog, who is overall docile and obedient, but with the boy, who is changing daily in the way he sees the world and the way he is seen in it. A year ago he wouldn’t have held the disgustingly wet ball. Six months ago he wouldn’t have been able to effectively command her to drop it. Two months ago he wouldn’t have had the patience to try again and again to get it right, to throw it straight down the yard, to fetch it himself when Sadie loses sight of it, to pat her head when she retrieves it from the bushes again (and again). (And again.)

Four years ago next week Chris brought Kostyn’s tiny newborn cap home from the hospital ahead of us so Sadie could familiarize herself with this new scent before we brought the baby home. I remember all those late-night hours of nursing, burping, rocking, and pleading with Kostyn to go to sleep, when Sadie was almost always at my feet. I remember the terrible phases the dog has gone through with both boys as they became mobile and were finally able to chase her, pull her tail, sit on her. Thankfully, we have all emerged from that phase unscathed.

“Good girl!” Kostyn exclaims as Sadie catches the ball in her mouth. After awhile the dog takes the ball to the corner of the yard and sits down in a patch of dirt, panting. “Come on, Sadie!” Kostyn says. “Where’s the ball?”

“I think she needs to rest,” I say. He watches her for a minute, asks me why her tongue is sticking out.

“OK,” he says finally with a glimmer of maturity I see more of lately. “You rest, Sadie.”

Right here in this tiny back yard on this spring day, she has become his dog. I kind of think in her mind, she’s been his all along.

Chew on That?!

2011-05-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

My niece Cora, who's 7, has four missing front teeth. She is very proud of her increasingly toothless smile, and makes her mom fire up Skype each time she loses another one so she can show off the new hole in her grin. Kostyn saw Cora last month but never mentioned her Jack-O-Lantern appearance until today.

He was being silly on the way home from the grocery store, saying he was so hungry he was going to eat the store. And then he said he was going to eat a house, eat the world, eat that tree, etc. So when he said "I'm going to eat the car," I challenged him.

"Eat the car?! I don't know; the tires would be pretty chewy. Are you sure you could eat the car?"

He giggled. "Yes! I'm going to eat the car."

"I think if you ate the car you'd break your teeth," I said. "Then you'd have no teeth!"

Without skipping a beat he said, "I'd be like Cora!"

I chuckled and said, "Yes, like Cora."

He paused for a few seconds, then quietly asked: "Did she eat a car?"

My sweet niece Cora, rockin' the look favored by hockey goalies who don't wear cages.

Survey Says!

2011-05-10T22:55:00.000-04:00

(The following is a column I wrote for the May issue of Central Penn Parent magazine. I was asked to write about gender differences in baby care based on a survey Evenflo conducted. Instead I wrote a column calling the survey results hogwash.)

Let me preface this by saying I don’t believe mothers are liars, exactly. I think we’re just “book smart.” We know what the right answers are, even if we don’t personally put them into practice. At least that’s my best guess for the contradictory results found in Evenflo’s recent “Savvy Parents Survey.”

And by “contradictory” I mean “completely incompatible with reality.”

When I saw a press release for the survey, I was intrigued by the claim that it found “moms and dads build baby’s brain in different ways.” But when I was given the full survey results I found very little to support this. What I did find was that moms were supposedly considerably more relaxed than dads about their baby’s development and their overall parenting skills.

This, of course, is false.

I know because I am a mom. Also because I’m surrounded by moms, I’m involved with online networks of moms, I spend time with other moms at playgroups and story times, and I have a mom. And I can tell you, without any formal survey needed, that most moms are not more relaxed than dads when it comes to babies reaching developmental milestones.

We’re borderline obsessed.

It’s not our fault. In the first trimester of my first pregnancy, I was given at least six books on pregnancy, baby care, breastfeeding, and something mysterious and frightening called “the fourth trimester.” My husband, on the other hand, was given a smattering of advice — mostly about me, which he can sum up by whispering “Be careful!” while simulating a man tiptoeing on a tightrope over a hormonal volcano that’s spewing lava and incoherent accusations.

My point here is that from the get-go we mothers are the ones wired with information. We’re the ones with the manuals, the inside scoops, the tips gleaned from pregnancy message boards and parenting magazines. We are the designated drivers on this bumpy road toward parenthood, and the navigation begins at the moment we see those two pink lines on the stick.

First we’re given those Your Pregnancy Week by Week roadmaps, and we get used to being told what our baby’s doing, how he’s developing, and what size fruit he is. Then the baby arrives, and the “helpful” emails continue, only now they’re about how your 3-week-old might be smiling by now or how most 4-month-olds are rolling over. We read the fine print at the bottom about how every baby develops at his own pace, and we know it’s true intellectually, but we don’t internalize it emotionally. We secretly want our bundle of joy to be an overachiever, or at least a middle-of-the-pack kid. If his development falls behind that month’s email guidelines, we fret. We can’t help ourselves.

But we know better, which is why when a researcher calls to survey mothers of babies younger than 18 months old, we answer “correctly,” not necessarily honestly. That’s the only way I can explain how 25 percent of moms surveyed say they don’t worry about how their child will progress developmentally, whereas just 9 percent of dads say they don’t worry.

And 64 percent of moms say they are “calm, cool and collected” about their child reaching developmental milestones, whereas only 43 percent of dads say they are all zen about their kid’s progression toward being a walking, talking, tantrum-prone toddler.

But perhaps the greatest evidence of skewed reality is shown by the “neurotic” numbers: 12 percent of dads label themselves “neurotic” when it comes to how much they worry about their child meeting proper developmental milestones. Know how many neurotic moms are out there, according to the survey? Only 1 percent.

Yeah, right.

Look I’m not saying all moms are anxious about their child’s development and second-guess their own approaches toward helping that development along. (Noooooo...) And I’m not saying dads aren’t interested in their baby’s development or that they’re not taking an active approach toward helping Junior learn how to sit up and eat with a spoon. In fact, I think they are much better at balancing realistic expectations with slightly irrational parental concern. But the online juggernaut Babycenter.com boasts that it reaches more than 8 million U.S. moms each month with its email updates on developmental milestones and other parenting-related articles and tips. Know how many dads it reaches? So few that it doesn’t even mention them.

We moms are arsenals of knowledge and anxiety. It’s our privilege, our job, our guilt-spewing cross to bear. And all that knowledge means we’re also smart enough to know we shouldn’t be neurotic, which is why only 1 percent of us is. Wink.

Robyn Passante is a freelance writer and mother of two young boys who are developing just fine, according to the latest Babycenter emails.

Thanks a Million, Mom (Parts I, II, and III)

2011-05-08T00:19:00.001-04:00

I don't have many traditions on this blog (I don't have any), but my Mother's Day post is one of them (it's the only one).

On my first Mother’s Day as a mom I wrote something for my mother about all the little things I never realized I should thank her for until I had my own child. Last year I reposted it, then added more since I'd just survived being a mother of two little ones and had a new list of "thank yous."

This past year, as my kids have been climbing (literally and figuratively) into and out of toddlerhood, I have yet more accolades to shower on my mother for surviving this stage of the game. So in keeping with tradition (ahem) here are all three posts. I hope there are mothers out there who can relate to some or all of these thank you's, but mostly I just want my mom to feel the sincere gratitude in my words. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you.

My First Mother's Day Post:

Over the years I’ve thanked my mother again and again for all the support she’s given me in life, for all the chorus and band recitals she sat through, for the birthdays and holidays she made special, for pushing me to be my best, for allowing me to do more and be more and experience more than she was allowed to do and be and experience as a kid.

But until this past year, I never knew enough to thank her for the less noticeable “mom” stuff, the stuff I don’t remember or couldn’t understand until I experienced it firsthand.

So thank you, Mom, for enduring the anxiety and discomfort of pregnancy, and the pain and uncertainty and exhilaration and terror of labor, to bring me into the world. Thank you for all the nights you got up from your bed to come to mine and soothe me back to sleep. Thank you for the million tiny prayers you sent up on my behalf, every day, even now, whenever you read or saw something about a child being sick or lost or hurt or, God forbid, killed. Thank you for all the times you surrendered yourself into fits of silliness, making funny faces and blowing raspberries on my tummy and dancing around the living room to make me giggle.

Thank you for wondering “Is this right? Am I doing okay?” about a thousand times in quiet moments right before you fell asleep at night. Thank you for overcoming your frustrations when I was clingy or whiny or overtired or sick to keep caring for me with tenderness even when you felt like your mother’s deep well of tenderness had surely run dry. Thanks for putting up with every diaper change I squirmed through, every bit of food I threw at you, and every time I spit up on a clean shirt you’d just put on.

Thank you for giving up your free time, surrendering your privacy, and setting aside some of the dreams you had as a woman to make room for all the new dreams you carried as a mother. Thank you for all the warm baths and bottles, all the practicing you did with me to say “Dada” and “Momma” and “milk.” Thank you for holding onto my chubby fingers and helping me take my first steps. Thank you for all the hugs and kisses and smiles you showered me with in that first year, and know that those tiny acts of love created the foundation of independence and happiness on which I built my life.

Mom, I always appreciated you as a mother but I couldn’t fully understand who you are — who you’ve been — to me until now. Now I get it. Now I realize that all those years when you hinted and asked and practically begged me to tell you whether I was ever going to “start a family,” it wasn’t because you merely wanted to be a grandma. It was because you desperately, secretly wished for me to experience the same blessings of being a mom that you’ve experienced.

I’ve learned this past year that parenthood sucks up your time and money and patience, but in their place it leaves this warmth and richness that is quite indescribable until you feel it yourself, from the bottom of your heart to the top of your soul. I hope when I was a baby, and a child, and perhaps even now, I added some of that warmth and richness to your heart, Mom. It’s the least I could do, for all you gave to me.

My Second Mother's Day Post: On Surviving Two Children

Thank you, Mom, for my siblings. Thank you for finding within yourself the ability to love all of us equally yet differently. And thank you for instilling in us respect for and allegiance to one another.

Thank you for working so hard to put food on the table for every meal, every day, even when it was met with complaints or downright refusal to eat it. And thank you for all those times you found yourself on your hands and knees picking up the food that was so carelessly dropped, spilled or thrown.

Thank you for enduring the exhaustion that comes with caring for more than one child in diapers. Thank you for all the juggling and cross-checking that took place just to get us out the door, or into bed. Thank you for dealing with all the extra splashing and water and chaos that comes with bathing two children at the same time.

Thanks for folding laundry at midnight because that was the only free time you had to do it. And thanks for giving up whatever it was you would have liked to do with that precious free time in favor of making sure your kids had clean clothes to wear the next day.

Thank you for bearing the days when the whining and fussing of multiple children seemed enough to send you running for the hills. Thank you for the sacrifices you made to be home with us as much as you could be, even in those tiny secret moments when you wished to be somewhere — anywhere — else.

Thank you for forcing us to share, but for never making us feel like there wasn’t enough of you to go around.

Thank you, Mom, especially for the laughter, the love and the lullabyes.

My Third Mother's Day Post: Because Both Boys Are Now Talking. A Lot.

Thank you, Mom, for enduring endless hours of whining and fighting. Thanks for finding new and creative ways to break a tie, figure out who did what to whom, dispense punishment, dole out equal amounts of affection and somehow pay attention to more than one busy child at a time.

Thank you for teaching us that taking turns is one of the most important and universally necessary skills to have. And thanks for teaching us manners, Mom, for instilling in us respect for every living thing and showing us how to be compassionate.

Thank you for introducing me to God, for praying with me and for me, and for helping me to recognize that still, small voice inside me that has so much power.

Thank you, Mom, for not completely losing your mind while potty training me.

Thank you for teaching me how to write my name, put on my own shirt, wash my hands and all the other little skills you taught me when I was too little to thank you for them. Mostly, thanks for rejoicing in my growing independence and for knowing that it didn’t mean I needed you any less.

Thanks for hanging in there once I figured out how to open, close and lock doors, jump, climb, run, plot, scheme, lie and hide. And thanks for putting up with every single debate over how many more bites of peas I had to eat before getting the cookie.

Thank you for loving me even when I was being annoying. (Especially when I was being annoying.)

Thank you for all the times you said “I can’t believe how big you’re getting!” Back then I just thought you meant I was getting taller, but now I know those words convey everything from pride and wonder to nostalgia and even sadness.

Thanks for pushing aside the self doubt when it creeped in, and for hanging in there when you weren’t sure you could. Thanks for the prayers you whispered and the tears I’m sure you shed, Mom, in quiet moments after losing your patience. Thank you for somehow hanging onto the belief that parenting is a journey and a process, not a test we pass or fail.

Thank you for living through me, for me and beside me, for carrying me when I needed you to (and sometimes when I didn’t but still whined to be held, again I'm SO SORRY for the whining!) and for letting me run ahead more often than you may have wanted me to.

Oh, and thanks for all the hugs and kisses I didn’t ask for but got anyway. They were way better than all the treats and toys I begged for but didn’t get.

Here's mom holding Kostyn when he was just a couple days old. She sang many a lullaby to him in the wee hours of the morning that first week, so we could get some sleep. Still owe her for that, too, come to think of it...

Hamida's Heartbreak

2011-05-04T22:23:00.000-04:00

Hamida married Mohammed, a powerful construction magnate, when she was 22 years old. The Syrian beauty caught Mohammed’s eye later in his life; she was his tenth wife. Muslim law allows men to have up to four wives; Mohammed got around this rule by keeping three long-term wives, and marrying and divorcing other women who filled the fourth slot. Hamida was one of these women.

She moved to Saudi Arabia when they married, but she was reportedly never happy there. An independent woman, Hamida disliked being confined to Mohammed’s family compound. It’s been reported that she didn’t like covering her face with a burka, and was scorned by the other wives and ex-wives. They called her “the slave,” a nickname that conveyed how she felt living in the confines of the family complex, under her husband’s rules.

She had only one child with Mohammed before they divorced; his name was Osama bin Laden.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about her, this woman who mothered one of the most impressively evil terrorist masterminds in modern history. Because he was once merely a baby in her arms, a little boy making her laugh, a child being taught right from wrong.

It is said that he lived with her off and on during his childhood and was tended to in the early years by nannies and nurses, a common practice there. As one of Mohammed’s reported 50-plus children, Osama no doubt craved the attention of his father, who died in a helicopter crash when the boy was just 10 years old.

None of this is meant to paint a sympathetic picture of a man who is responsible for the destruction of so many lives. Still, I keep going back to his mother. Hamida eventually remarried and had four more children, yet her first son had to have held a place in her heart, as all children do in their parents’ hearts. When she heard the news of his assassination, was part of her relieved that the hunt for her son was over, that the trouble he’d caused might cease? Or was she just a grief-stricken mother, feeling with absolute clarity once again the babe she rocked in her arms long ago? Did she hear in her heart the echo of his newborn cry one last time?

I couldn’t find much written about her, which strikes me as a pretty accurate parallel for motherhood. We are at one time the center of our child’s universe, yet by the time they become adults we are mere footnotes to their story, at least to the outside world. And really, that’s the goal, isn’t it: To help them grow up and then get out of the way and allow their lives to unfold as they were meant to.

How painful to be a footnote in that story, though. I wonder if she disassociated herself from him years ago. I wonder if she felt guilty somehow, culpable in the way we mothers feel responsible for our children’s behavior, the way we believe it reflects our values or our parenting, the best and the worst of who we are and what we taught them. How do you live with knowing you gave birth to a person who would mastermind the deaths of thousands and take up permanent residence on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists lists? Did she choose to marginalize in her head Osama’s ties to Al Qaeda and the large-scale terrorist attacks they carried out? Did he have any contact with her toward the end of his life? Did he say goodbye before he disappeared into hiding?

I wonder if she was too afraid or ashamed to ever say, or even think, “I still love my son.”

I’m not trying to glorify her plight or slight the Sept. 11 victims or their families. There are plenty of mothers who to this day mourn the loss of their sons and daughters at the hands of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda henchmen, and we, as a nation, have grieved with them.
But as the free world rejoices over the demise of such a commander of hatred and violence, there is a woman, somewhere, perhaps hidden beneath a burka, whose mother’s heart grieves for a life wasted and ultimately lost.

There is something about that haunting image, however imaginary, that makes me think we might learn a great deal about the soul of a mother by speaking to Hamida al-Attas.

Converting a Kid to Vegetables, One Purple Radish at a Time

2011-04-27T15:04:00.000-04:00

I need help.

(Pausing here to give friends and family time for their inevitable jokes.)

Done? Today I need very specific help, the kind of help I’d get from Pooh’s friend Rabbit if he existed. If I could knock on his rabbit hole door or find him in his garden tending to the cabbage and whatnot, I would introduce myself and ask him for advice.

“Please tell me,” I’d say, “what to do with radishes.”

And not just what to do with them, but how to cook them in such a way that delights and entices a 3-year-old boy who refuses to eat any vegetable except raw baby carrots. (SEE, RABBIT, YOU’RE THE PERFECT MAMMAL FOR THE JOB!) Incidentally, the same child also refuses to eat any meat except his father’s homemade meatballs, and then “only the hard parts” around the edges that have been fried to a garlicy crisp in olive oil. (OK, he’ll eat the occasional hot dog, bacon slice and Chicken McNugget, but we can’t really count those as meat now can we?)

He’s a fantastic fruit eater, I’ll give him that, but veggies he won’t touch. Not even potatoes, sliced and fried, with ketchup. So imagine my shock and awe when he picked up a clump of radishes in the grocery store the other day and said “I want these.”

“What?” I asked, barely paying attention, busy searching for the fresh basil.

“These. What are these? I want to try them,” he said, thrusting them at me, then scampering off to fondle and drop as many peppers as he could.

“These are radishes,” I said as I honest-to-God CHECKED THE LABEL TO MAKE SURE, as these radishes were quite a bit more colorful than I thought radishes normally were but let’s be honest I’ve never bought a radish before, not even when a recipe I was making called for radishes. Turns out these radishes are more colorful; they’re “Easter Egg Radishes,” a clump of brilliant purple and pink and white and red root vegetables I had absolutely no idea what to do with.

My first instinct was to put them back. He’s never going to eat these, and in two minutes he’s going to forget he even picked them up, I thought.

“Um, Kostyn, are you sure you want these, or are you just pretending?” I asked. He didn’t reply, and I placed them back on the shelf and went over to the peppers instead. “You want to help me pick some peppers, we can grill them, they’re really yummy.”

“No, Mommy, I want those.” He pointed back to the radishes. I walked back over and picked them up.

“These are radishes, honey. You’ve never had them before. Would you really like to try them?” I said. “If I buy them I want you to try them, OK?”

“Yes I will I will I will” he said in that dismissive way that a child says something when he just wants the parent to stop talking already and move on. I was still doubtful that he’d eat them, and there was no price listed for these pretty puppies, but I felt I had no choice but to buy them. I wasn’t about to deny the child the only vegetable he’d ever been inclined to put in his mouth, no matter how fleeting that desire may be.

So they’re here now. In my fridge. (They should be refrigerated, yes?) They’re just staring at me each day as I ponder what to do with them. Should I cook them at all, or just slice them raw? I’m sure I could find several quality recipes for radishes online, but I want to do something with these things I know someone out there has actually made and a child has actually eaten and liked. This could be a moment here, people. This could be the Vegetable That Made Kostyn Stop Refusing All Vegetables. It could be his Green Eggs and Ham! "Try them! Try them and you may. Try them and you may, I say!"

So since I can’t ask Rabbit I thought I’d ask you, as many of you are parents and most of you are far more culinarily inclined than I am. I mean we're talking about radishes here, not some exotic vegetable nobody's ever heard of. I'm just really that lame in the kitchen, which brings me full circle, back to the part where I need help:

How should I “wow” my son with these colorful radishes?

For God So Loved the World That He Gave Us Public Television, That Whosoever Doesn't Have Cable Still Has Dr. Seuss

2011-04-26T09:26:00.001-04:00

I came downstairs this morning and overheard the end of an exchange between the boys in their playroom. I stood on the stairs and just listened.

“...and we really, really will, Evan. We will. OK?” Kostyn said.

“O-Tay.”

“But first we must go in and sit on the couch and the big chairs,” Kostyn said, then added, “that God gave us.”

My mother’s pride swelled momentarily at my 3-year-old mentioning God’s creation wait is he talking about the couch?

“What are you boys talking about?” I came around the corner and asked, as they were walking hand in hand toward the living room.

“I was just telling Evan,” Kostyn said. “He wanted to eat breakfast and I wanted to watch TV and he kept saying ‘No no no,’ so I told him that we had to watch TV first and THEN we could eat breakfast.”

Thank you, God, for couches, on which we are able to sit and watch “The Cat In The Hat” while our little brother starves obediently beside us. Amen.

Best Part of My Day: A Shocking Discovery

2011-04-18T22:04:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago I read a topic prompt for bloggers that asked, “What’s the best event in your day?” The first thing that popped into my head shocked me, because it does not involve dark chocolate, wine, or peace and quiet. In fact it is the moment in my day that usually elicits either an energy-mustering sigh or a muttered curse word.

It’s the moment my boys wake up from their naps.

I know, right? Shocking. There’s just something about the way they look when they come trudging down the stairs, with their hair disheveled and their cheeks flushed from the warm blankets. It’s like their eyes grow three sizes in their sleep and the morning's silly defeats are wiped away from their innocent faces. Most of the time they come to me so snuggly and smiley, so genuinely happy to see my face ... it’s simply the best part of my day.

I think the end of nap time also somehow signals a “Round 2” in my brain. It’s like a reset button, wiping away the silly defeats from MY morning and giving me another go at this parenting gig. In that moment I don’t have to nag them to eat their dinner or scold them for not picking up their toys. I just get to ask them how they slept and what they dreamed and what they’d like to eat for a snack. In those few precious moments before they wake up enough to remember how to whine, fight and push my buttons, it’s all sweetness and light.

All of that together makes the end* of nap time somehow, miraculously, the best event in my day. So when Kostyn came bounding downstairs and running into my arms this afternoon with a huge smile on his face after an extra-long nap, I cuddled him on my lap on the floor and told him about the best part of my day.

"You know what my favorite part of my whole day is?"
"What?" he asked, his eyes growing wider with anticipation.
"It's the moment you wake up from your nap and I see your smiling face again!" I said, kissing his big round cheeks. "I miss you when you're sleeping!"
He closed his eyes for a minute and smiled, then popped them open. "You know what my favorite part of my day is?" he asked.
"No, what?"
"It's when I wake up from my nap and I come down and see you smiling at me," he said, a grin from ear to ear.
"Really?" I hugged him tighter, "Really?"
"Yes!" he said, his whole face lit up. "I love when you smile at me. I love your smile!"

Sweetness and light, people. It's the best part of my day.

*: The blissfully silent hour and a half leading up to that moment is a very, very, very close second.

Siblings

2011-04-06T14:34:00.001-04:00

I listened to this exchange last night after lights out, as the two of them stared at the little blue stars projected onto the ceiling from their ladybug night light. It reminded me of about every third conversation my sisters and I had growing up.

Kostyn: “Evan, do you know I picked BLUE stars tonight for the ladybug?”

Evan: “No.”

Kostyn: "Yes they're blue tonight Evan! See?"

Evan: "Nooo."

Kostyn: “Blue is my favorite color Evan.”

Evan: “No.”

Kostyn: “Yes it is.”

Evan: “Uhhh no.”

Kostyn: “Blue is my favorite color. You like green, and I like blue.”

Evan: “Uhhhh, no.”

Kostyn: “EVAN!”

Evan: “Uhhhh no.”

Me: “Evan stop teasing Kostyn.”

Evan: “No.”

Me: “Evan?”

Evan: “O-tay Nonny.”

Pulling Double Duty (or 'Exercise In Futility, Work Edition')

2011-04-04T14:15:00.000-04:00

As a full-time newspaper editor turned part-time freelance journalist, I feel blessed to be able to do my job while I’m home with my kids. The problem is that means I frequently have to do my job while I’m home with my kids.

Attempting to do two jobs simultaneously — one that calls for no background noise, the other that is the very definition of background noise — is often frustrating and sometimes laughable.

Case in point: Last Friday I had a scheduled 10:30 a.m. phone interview with a world-renowned doctor in New Jersey. The man has dedicated his life to researching reproductive health and actually invented a diagnostic test to determine a woman’s reproductive capacity. It’s a revolutionary breakthrough in reproductive medicine and is now being used all over the globe. Needless to say, the guy’s kind of important and the subject matter is kind of technical: I really needed to focus.

Enter the 2-year-old and the 3-year-old.

It was a gorgeous Spring day and I decided to try my luck with letting them play in our very small, completely fenced-in yard while I sat with my laptop on the back porch steps. I imagined them playing quietly in the new sandbox their dad had just set up while I got all my questions answered and some great quotes to boot.

And I was right — for about five minutes. That’s when they started removing sand from the sandbox by the shovelful, dumping it on nearby deck chairs, their plastic slide and the sidewalk. I glanced at the pile of sand in the box and tried to calculate how long this could go on, as the game was wreaking havoc on our backyard but was also keeping them quiet. No matter, though, because dumping sand quickly led to throwing sand and that, of course, landed right in Evan’s face.

Kids cry loudly when sand is thrown in their eyes. Luckily I managed to race over and silently console him while the good doctor talked without faltering through the Bluetooth headset. (Yes!) But the move put me back on the boys’ radar, which means they followed me like gnats back to my base camp on the porch. (No!)

That’s where Kostyn noticed the snow shovel leaning against the wall behind me and wanted it. He knew I was on the phone and he was supposed to be quiet, so we engaged in a 45-second silent battle of wills that involved me looking wild-eyed, shaking my head violently and pointing my finger toward the yard. It involved him raising his voice incrementally until I handed over the shovel to keep him quiet. He proceeded to SCRAAAAAPE it along the sidewalk, which to someone on the other end of a phone probably sounded like a small aircraft landing in my yard without its landing gear.

Then they wanted a snack. I’d had the foresight to bring out a bag of Goldfish crackers but I hadn’t brought out plates or napkins, so I hastily dropped my jacket on the steps and dumped Goldfish on it. Evan immediately moved the Goldfish to the dirty sidewalk and ate them off the sand.

In the middle of their snack Kostyn started dancing around — you know, that dance, the one small children do right before they start whining, “Mommy I have to go poooop!"

Somehow, silently, I managed to get both boys and the dog to follow me inside while carrying my open laptop and my phone and continuing to “Uh-huh....” and “Oh wow...” the source as if he had my undivided attention. Once upstairs, though, Kostyn started crying that he needed help. “I can’t get my pants off! Mommy my shoe is stuck!” (Because for some reason he has to strip naked from the waist down to poop.)

At this point I was kind of losing my mind. The doctor was giving me awesome quotes, but I couldn’t type them because I was helping a 3-year-old out of his big boy underwear while praying for him to just be quiet already please! In the blink of an eye I got him undressed and on the potty, gave him a handheld game and headed downstairs with my laptop and phone and headset and Evan and the dog.

Any other time, Kostyn would have happily begun playing his little Mobigo game. This day, he started screaming that he didn’t want to be alone. It was the only time the doctor mentioned being able to hear any sort of background noise. “Well, it sounds like someone’s not happy,” he said as good-naturedly as he could muster. I was thinking “NO. I’M NOT.”

I suppose I could have given up then. Taken a rain check. Asked to follow up via email. But I was almost done with the interview. There were just two crucial questions I still had to ask, and I'm a professional, dammit! Kostyn was neither dying nor in pain; I knew he was fine. So I made an excuse for my son, an excuse that most certainly did not involve disclosing where he was sitting at the moment, and forged ahead with my follow-up question from my new makeshift office space in the kitchen.

The good doc started in on his answer and I had both hands typing notes but both eyes on Evan, who was climbing onto one of the kitchen stools. Maybe he'll just sit there, I thought, still typing. Maybe I can finish this interview in the next two minutes before

“I WANT TO EEEEEAT.”

“I WANT TOAST!!”

“AND WATER! MOMMY, WATER!”

There was only one way to shut his sweet little trap, and that was to fill it with toast. So I stopped taking notes again. I fetched the toaster, the peanut butter, the paper plates. Then I took furious catch-up notes while making sure the toaster didn’t set off the smoke alarm, which happens every day. (No, really, every day.) Luckily it didn’t go off, but that’s really because my son didn’t actually have “toast” so much as “warm bread” for lunch that day.

And all the while, Kostyn continued to cry from his perch on the potty upstairs. He sobbed right up until he heard me say the word “Goodbye.” In the second it took for my headset to beep in my ear and my phone to go silent, I had one son happily playing a video game and another with his mouth stuck shut with peanut butter. The lack of background noise was deafening, and maddening. And laughable.

Exercise in Futility

2011-03-25T22:27:00.000-04:00

I gave up my gym membership when we moved in January. Instead we’ve set up a small but adequate workout space on one side of the basement. On the other side is a rec room of sorts, complete with the boys’ train table, Kostyn’s drum set, an electronic keyboard, some large push toys and a cabinet full of puzzles and toys.

One recent morning I decided to exercise while the boys played with the instruments and toys. To ensure success with this endeavor, I set up their indoor Thomas the Tank Engine fort with two detachable tunnels. Pleased with myself for having this kind of foresight, I imagined they’d spend the entire time conspiring in the fort and racing through the tunnels, practically oblivious to my very existence.

This did not happen.

10:30: I got Kostyn settled on his drum set and Evan playing with a truck before hopping on my elliptical and punching in a 30-minute cardio program.

10:32: Evan wandered over to the drums and tried to edge his brother off the seat. “My turn! My turn!” Kostyn countered by screaming “NOOOOOOOO” Fearing he’d eventually use his brother’s head as a drum, I hopped off and refereed the fight.

10:35: Evan couldn’t get a push toy over a rolled-up carpet and needed help. Paused the iPod, hopped off the elliptical, mom to the rescue.

10:36: Kostyn grew bored with the drums and managed to get down by himself. Score one for mom’s warmup.

10:36:05: Evan wanted a turn on the drums and needed to be helped onto the stool. Off the elliptical I went.

10:38:50: “All done! Mommy? All done. Get down?” Fourth stop to my cardio in under nine minutes.

10:40: Paused the iPod but stayed on the elliptical as I talked Kostyn through how to turn on a remote control car. Instantly regretted that decision.

10:43: Broke up a fight over the car.

10:44: “The car’s stuck.”

10:44:20: “The car’s stuck.”

10:45: “The car’s stuck.”

10:45:02: The car got put on a high shelf.

10:50: “Mommy can you get this?” “No, Kostyn, find something else to do. Why don’t you play with your train. Or that awesome fort sitting right there in the middle of the room?!”

Turns out nobody wanted to play in the fort, or build a train track. What they wanted to do was take a turn on the elliptical machine. Barring that, they wanted to keep me from staying on it. Nas and Damian Marley were piping through my earbuds telling me “the strong will continue....,” but I was starting to doubt I had it in me. As if sensing their victory was close at hand, they began an onslaught of questions:

“Mommy can you reach this?”

“Can I do this?”

“What are you doing?”

“Where are the people that go in this camper?”

“Can you go get them?”

“Can I go get them?”

“Mommy, I need to be pushed out. The stool is too close to the drums.”

“Help me, Mommy. How does this go?”

After a few minutes of this needy nonsense I realized, perhaps more clearly than ever before, that my workout time is as much about peace and focus for me as it is about cardio and strength training. And I was not really getting any of those things.

At 10:53 a.m., I gave up. I turned off the iPod, rounded up the kids, and felt the defeat and frustration wash over me as we climbed the stairs. I silently vowed to move the VCR/DVD player combo from the main floor to the basement, and try again the next day with the help of an old Disney movie.

I was wallowing in self pity, feeling like the morning was a total waste, when we reached the top of the stairs and Kostyn exclaimed, “We had SO MUCH FUN playing downstairs!” The laugh I got out of that statement did more for my abs — and my attitude — than all the effort put forth in the previous 23 minutes.

(This post first appeared on my other blog, Training Wheels.)

Everything Was Better In The '50s, Unless You Were A Woman Or A Baby

2011-03-22T23:23:00.003-04:00

A bunch of these old ads were forwarded to me the other day and I was so impressed by their collective ignorance I felt the need to pass them along. What amazes me most is the fact that we're not all that far removed from them. These are the images and values and ideals thrust upon our mothers, and their mothers.

These are perhaps the scariest ones to me, a parent who doesn't plan on giving my kids soda, beer, cocaine or guns anytime soon. (I'd say "Call me old-fashioned," but I suppose that doesn't really make sense here.)

Yes, it's never too soon to start baby on a diet of chemicals and carbonation. For those who can't read the fine print, it tells parents that laboratory tests have "proven that babies who start drinking soda during that early formative period have a much higher chance of gaining acceptance and 'fitting in' during those awkward pre-teen and teen years."

I remember the days of breastfeeding, when I daydreamed that sipping an occasional glass of wine would help my son sleep better. It never worked for me, but then again I wasn't drinking Blatz beer, with its "nourishing qualities that are essential at this time." Shame on me.

No idea what the little stick house has to do with cocaine, but it all looks sort of darling, doesn't it?

Nothing does WHAT like Seven-Up? Rot your teeth? Stunt your growth? Add zero nutritional value to your infant's delicate system?

"Papa says it won't hurt us." Papa's a liar, kids. Apparently the only thing more dangerous than that gun is your papa.

But these are also pretty terrible. I love seeing women being respected and honored as equals, don't you?

Before the invention of the screw-on cap, were ketchup bottle tops welded shut?

Frankly I'm not sure what this is about with the whole "store-testing for fresh coffee" thing. But I am sure nobody should be pushing violence against women for any reason.

This is twisted on so many levels.

Oh THAT'S what wives are for.

Also, the advertising industry telling us how we should look has pretty deep(ly disturbing) roots.

Screw the sensible diet, I'll just eat these tape worms. They're "easy to swallow," with "no ill effects."

Freckles once made her "actually homely." I wonder how many jars of this stuff it would take to cover all of mine.

And, of course, the cigarette ads. Oh those cigarettes.

It makes me wonder what ads we see today will be laughed at in 50 years. I have a few ideas...

I Stole My Kids' Bath ... And Made a Clean Getaway

2011-03-03T21:27:00.000-05:00

I’m often torn about the rap we stay-at-home moms get, specifically about the “letting go of ourselves” cliche. There’s the image of us at home all day in our pajamas, or running errands in our slippers with spit-up on our shirts and not so much as a brush having been run through our hair.

I bristle at this partly because I don’t want anyone to think I’ve “let myself go,” and partly because it’s, um, sometimes true. There are days I don’t take a shower. (Gasp!) There are days I remember at 3 p.m. that I never brushed my teeth that morning.

Being a stay-at-home parent — really, a parent in general — is all about compromise. You don’t have to let yourself go, but you do have to let go of some things. This morning I let go of a shower in favor of squeezing in a workout while the boys were happily playing drums and watching TV. But then right afterward we got busy building a giant race track, and then there were lunches to make, eat and clean up, books to read and naps to take. And while they slept, I worked; as soon as I hung up the phone from doing an interview for a story I’m working on, Evan woke up.

Before I knew it it was 7:45 p.m. and I was still in my workout clothes, unshowered, a fact I’d honestly completely forgotten until I wandered into the bathroom and noticed the nice big bubble bath Chris had just drawn for the boys. Their plastic boats and foam letters were floating amid Johnson & Johnson baby bubbles, and I could see their little blue mat on the bottom of the tub. My first thought was one of mild regret, realizing I had missed my window of opportunity to grab a shower before their bath and bedtime routine started. I glanced at the clock and sighed, knowing I’d have wet hair at 10 p.m. at the rate the night was going.

But as I stood looking longingly at the bubbles, I could hear the boys happily playing downstairs. Completely engrossed in their cars and toy garage, they hadn’t heard Chris call to them that it was bath time. And since Chris had school work to do, he’d handed over his usual bath time duties to me and was already buried in his laptop in the living room.

I had two choices: I could go herd them upstairs to take their bath, or I could take their bath.

I probably stared at that water for another 20 seconds before kicking off my sneakers (and everything else), ever-so-quietly closing the door, and climbing in. I pushed aside boats and ducks and plastic fishermen and sank back into the bubbles.

It felt fantastic.

It wasn’t one of those hourlong, candlelit, book-in-one-hand-and-wine-glass-in-the-other bubble baths, but it still felt totally indulgent. Like I was cheating the system. Getting one over on my own chaotic life.

Finally, a parental compromise that felt more like a win.

Looking Like a Movie Mom Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

2011-02-22T07:33:00.000-05:00

(Originally posted on Training Wheels for Central Penn Parent.)

I was working in our church nursery on a recent Sunday when a 13-year-old kid who was there to help did anything but.

“You know who you look like?” he said, his eyes focusing on me intently for a moment, as if he was confirming his suspicion.

“Uh, who?” I asked nervously, suddenly feeling 13 myself.

“Have you ever seen the movie ‘Home Alone’?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course,” I said nonchalantly, searching my brain for whether Kate Beckinsale or Natalie Portman or some equally fetching twentysomething might have been featured in that movie. The only people I could recall were Macaulay Culkin and Joe Pesci. Please don’t say I look like Joe Pesci, I thought.

“You look like Kevin’s mom,” he said, and in that moment two thoughts came rushing at me in quick succession: The first was the full-on realization that I now, at least to anyone younger than 30, look like a mom. That’s it. People who are too young to drink legally no longer see Robyn. They don’t see my super-cute shoes (um, if I owned any); they see my diaper bag. They don’t notice my new haircut; they notice my son holding a lock of it like a security blanket. In short, they no longer see me: They see mom.

The second thought came fast and furious and played like a loop in my head until after church was done and I could look it up: Who was Kevin’s mom? Who was Kevin’s mom? WHO WAS KEVIN’S MOM?! Clutching every ounce of self-esteem I had left, I let my husband gleefully and curiously queue up IMDB.com on his phone while I sat next to him, hoping Kevin’s mom was either young and pretty or looked absolutely nothing like me.

Turns out perhaps a little of both was true, as Kevin’s mom was played by Catherine O’Hara, a red-haired, blue-eyed actress who really sort of looked like ... a mom. Perfectly mom-like, in typical mom clothes and a reasonably stylish mom hairdo, not to mention a very mom-like way of speaking. In all the photos and video clips I saw of her from the movie she was sort of wild-eyed and shifty, most likely from the guilt and manic fear associated with leaving the country and forgetting to pack your son.

While I lamented the fact that such a nondescript mom figure is someone I am now and forever will be compared to, I did the math and realized something: Catherine O’Hara was born in 1954, which means she was 36 when “Home Alone” came out in 1990, which means she was two years younger than I am right now. This probably should have struck me as a win, because it meant the 13-year-old thought I looked like someone who was actually a bit younger than I am.

But it didn’t feel like a win. It felt like yet another confirmation that I’m old, and getting older, and won’t ever be young again. Young is done. I mean of course age is relative, but let’s be honest, I’m way closer to 40 than 30, and 20 is nothing but a hazy memory. (Not that I’d go back to being 20, but it sure would be nice to look 20. Or even 30, for that matter.)

I have nothing against Catherine O’Hara; she’s really quite lovely and from what I can tell a talented actress with a solid career. The problem isn’t with O’Hara, it’s with me becoming more comfortable in my skin as I age and mature and redefine a life that is at the moment largely centered around my sons. None of that is bad, necessarily, but it takes time to process and fully welcome (with open, mom-like arms).

So when it’s pointed out by a pubescent boy with a Bieber haircut, it’s a little bit hard to swallow.

A Belatedly Happy Birthday

2011-02-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

I spent a lot of my birthday last week thinking about my kids’ birthdays. If that makes me a hopeless sap, so be it. I suppose it’s partly due to the fact that theirs are the only birth days I remember so vividly. But also because so much of me wasn’t born until they were.

So I peeked under their shirts at their belly buttons and gently poked my fingers into their doughy soft skin, telling them they were once connected to me right there. This of course they didn’t understand, but it hardly mattered because they were engulfed in giggles from me tickling their tummies.

I held my younger son against me and felt his hair on my cheek as he lay his head on my shoulder. I felt how long his body is now, how he stretches so far beyond the stomach he was once curled up inside. Later I did the same with his older brother, who is so impossibly big I cannot fathom the fact that he was just 7 pounds the day I first held him.

It’s funny that for most of my life I equated February 13th with the day I was born. But now it’s February 13, and June 2, and March 10. I think if we are really lucky, we are forever being born again, our eyes opening ever wider to life as it unfolds.

On our birthdays Chris and I often play that memory game, the one couples who’ve been together forever like to play. We search our collective memory for what we did on that day last year to make it special. And what we did 5 years ago, and 10 years ago, and 15. Where were we living then? Did we eat at our favorite restaurant? Was that the year you bought me that super-expensive shirt I wore twice? Which birthday did I spend in the hospital since you were sick?

This year one of us wondered aloud what we were doing seven years ago on my birthday. Neither of us could really remember any specifics, and we mumbled that was probably because it wasn’t the best time for us and we’d both rather block it out. Every relationship has its ups and downs, and seven years ago we were beginning to tumble down.

But half a world away, on Feb. 13, 2004, this little girl was born. Aniska Victorien was born into poverty in Haiti to parents who work when they can find it, which isn’t often. She couldn’t have imagined, nor could we, that our paths would cross nearly seven years later when something tugged at me to click on her picture on a website filled with similar faces of children in similarly desperate situations. And the first thing I noticed, apart from the dusty knees and scuffed shoes, was her birthday: Feb. 13, 2004.

My birthday girl.

We didn’t know seven years ago, when we were wallowing in our own rut, that God had just given us a little miracle, one He knew we wouldn’t be ready to find and accept for several more years (and two kids of our own). I smile at the new memory that creates.

So on my birthday this year I spent a little time writing to Aniska, introducing us as her new sponsors through Compassion International, and wishing her a happy birthday. I told her how beautiful she is. If I get a letter back, I will consider it a belated birthday present. But in reality, this opportunity to impact her life is the coolest gift.

Haunted by History: When A Priest Betrays Our Ultimate Trust

2011-02-10T07:28:00.006-05:00

For the past week or so I’ve been obsessively thinking about junior high. I’ve never before had an urge to return to those days -- that dawn of knowing my carefully feathered bangs and name brand clothes bought at discount stores were no match for the stylish perms and preppy outfits worn by the popular girls with the cute bubble handwriting. I always knew I was shy but in junior high it was made official, at least in my head: I was a wallflower in every sense of the word. Stand back away from the action; smile; try to blend. I wasn’t an outcast, but I wasn’t in the “in” crowd either. I was background, not foreground, and I was happy about that.

I remember being terribly uncomfortable with myself, as I’m sure most junior high school kids are, and because of that the one passing interest from a boy I received was squashed on the false assertion that I wasn’t interested. There was never a word spoken between us, just a note passed through friends, a sweet note really, telling me I was a good person and seemed really nice and would I like to go to the dance with him.

I wish I could remember the exact wording of that note, but I ripped it up in a fit of embarrassment when my sister found it in my bedroom. I so wish I hadn’t done that. It only punished me.

Truth is I’d had a crush on that boy for a long time, which made the next day’s act of telling my friend to tell her friend to tell him that I wasn’t interested especially privately painful. I was simply too afraid to say yes.

I’ve thought about that many times over the years. I’ve thought about how terrible it felt to rip up the nicest thing anyone outside my family had ever given me, and how powerless I felt to the embarrassment that made me do it. I’ve thought about saying “no” when I wanted so badly to say “yes,” and I’ve tried to use that disappointment in myself as a springboard to more confident decisions in later years.

I’ve thought about that brief moment in my life only as it pertained to me, not thinking much about how the boy felt by my rejection, not spending any time considering how he’d carefully chosen his words to me. It was not a romantic note, even by junior high standards. It was more like “You seem kind and good. Can I be with you?” I even learned that this boy had asked my friend who he should ask out, me or another girl he knew was also nice. She’d picked me, so he had too.

Some time ago I learned that he, this crush from my youth, was terribly, repeatedly abused by our town’s Catholic priest. The abuse started at about the time we entered junior high. He told no one for years.

I am not so drenched in self-importance that I think if I’d said yes to his note he would have confided in me. I’m quite sure he wouldn’t have said a word, he probably didn’t even understand or couldn’t yet register the hell that was happening to him. But the thought that he might have needed a friend, despite all the ones he already had, haunts me. I want to turn back the clock. I want to snatch the note back from my sister and not rip it up. I want to say yes, on the off chance.

In my fantasy we go to the dance together, we become friends. He trusts me. He tells me. I help him.

In reality, I can do nothing but send encouraging text messages and emails as he waits for a verdict in the trial just ending that hopefully will convict this demon who demolished his youth and the lives of so many others. It has been a great test of my faith to pray for not only my friend, but for this broken man, this lost soul who forced boys to close their eyes and pray while he betrayed them and God.

To seek justice in the courts seems too shallow for this crime. I rest easier knowing God is just, and mighty, and this criminal will be made accountable for his sins. But shaking my fists feels empty; I hate what he did to my friend, who I love. I am filled with sorrow that anyone, any child, endures such agony. I know other victims of sexual abuse, and I know it never goes away. For my friend, there is no embrace warm enough today to erase the cold and bitter history of junior high.

Unfortunately, that’s all I have to give him, that and my prayers — for peace, that he might find it, and closure, that he might reach it. Mostly, though, I pray that he still has faith. That he didn’t completely lose sight of God when surely God seemed hidden, or cruel, or simply nonexistent.

My friend today is a man of integrity. He is beautiful and intelligent and funny and kind and loving. What happened to him may cause some to question God’s existence. But I say his life, the very man he has become, is proof of it.

[This post was published with my friend's blessing, and at his urging. The priest was convicted today of all four charges against him. He is facing possible life in prison.]

Listening To My Kids Is Like Reading Dr. Seuss: A Whole Lot of Amusing Nonsense

2011-02-05T07:47:00.001-05:00

I love hearing the boys trying out new words; they’re so innocent and adventurous and oblivious about it. Evan’s favorite new word is “ta-da!” This he says with the widest smile and proudest inflection at every turn, whether it’s a moment fitting a magician’s greatest reveal or not.

When he finishes “reading” to himself and closes the book: “Ta-da!”

When he spills smoothie all down his pants: “Ta-da!”

When I lay him on his back and open up his dirty diaper, he smiles up at me proudly: “Ta-da!”

Ironically, Kostyn’s favorite word this week is “nonsense.” Everything is nonsense, and somehow he’s mastered the proper way to channel a cynical old man when saying it. He curls up one side of his mouth in disbelief and adamantly exclaims “Nonsense!” He doesn’t say it in any sort of traditionally appropriate situation, just whenever the mood strikes. Thing is, when you live with two kids under 4, there’s almost always some nonsense going on.

Yesterday Evan managed to put on his snow boots (on the wrong feet, but still on) and came clunking into the kitchen beaming. “Ta-da!” he said, his arms outstretched for effect. At that moment Kostyn swept by with a puppet covering his hand and one of them, I believe it was the puppet, snarkily said, “Nonsense.”

I stopped Kostyn and asked if he knew what the word “nonsense” meant.

“Nonsense?! What?!” he said, surprised that I, his own mother, might not know the definition of this, his favorite word. “Nonsense is the way somebody is missing. That’s nonsense,” he added authoritatively.

“What?” I asked, and he caught the doubt in my voice. His eyes shifted sideways for a moment, the gears whirring inside, searching for an alternate definition.

“I know all about nonsense,” he said finally. “It’s the way ... Aughalgh!” he said, suddenly falling dramatically to the floor. Then he stood up. “That’s nonsense.”

“Ta-Da!” Evan chimed in, completely amused.

I guess sometimes they do get it right.

Kostyn glanced at his little brother, clearly pleased that he had an audience, and the puppet flapped its paper mouth — “Bye. Bye.” — before the two of them disappeared.

“Wow,” I said to Evan, loud enough for Kostyn to hear me. “That was silly, huh?”

“Yeah!” Evan said, galloping around in a circle in his ill-fitting boots.

“NONSENSE!” called the curmudgeonly 3-year-old from the other room.

Virtual High-Five

2011-02-02T17:10:00.000-05:00

I got an email a couple days ago from the assignment and syndication editor at www.BlogHer.com. If you're not familiar with BlogHer, it's the largest online community of women who blog: 23+ million unique visitors per month, per the website.

So, ya know, it's pretty big.

Anyway, somebody there read my blog post about the blind bagger versus the hand model and liked it. Liked it so much they wanted to syndicate it on their website's home page, give my blog a link, and pay me for it.

This, to me, is huge. I am one of a million or more moms out there blogging about their kids and their lives. Some do it for money, some for fame, some for freebies, but the vast majority of us do it simply because it's how we best express ourselves and relate to others.

It's an incredible feeling to be recognized for that.

When you have a moment, go check me out on BlogHer's home page, and leave a comment!

Go! To! Sleep!

2011-02-01T00:24:00.001-05:00

Is it just me, or does a child’s reasoning for calling you back into his bedroom at night get shiftier and shiftier with each “Mooooomyyyyy!!”?

First visit tonight: “Mommy, Evan’s crying.” Totally reasonable.

Second visit, five minutes after the first visit: “Mommy, I’m trying and I’m trying and I’m just not having any sleep.” A little lame but high on the cuteness scale, so he got another kiss and a sweet talk about what he should dream about tonight.

Third visit: “Mommy, I need my blanket.” Puh-leaze. It was covering him up to his stomach. Begrudgingly I yanked it up to his chin and left the room again, swearing to him, myself and God above that “I am not coming back in here tonight!”

(Incidentally, all three of us knew there’d be a fourth visit as soon as I said there wouldn’t be.)

Fourth visit: “Mommy, I’m just trying to scratch my finger. Can you scratch it?” OK this was clearly a test, but after four flights of stairs and four interruptions to the assignment I was working on, I was worn down. Feeling like a trained seal, I actually scratched his finger, people. I am not proud of this. (It was either that or repeatedly bang my head into the wall, which I sort of felt like I was already doing.) He smiled, said “Thanks. Good night!” turned over and fell asleep.

I’m not sure about the final score in this scenario, but I do know the kid’s well tucked, sufficiently scratched and, finally, down for the count.

(Aaaaand, now that I’ve typed that, there will be a middle-of-the-night visit. Guaranteed.)

Feeling Your Way Through Life: A Handsome Approach

2011-01-20T22:55:00.003-05:00

I had a blind bagger at the grocery store today. If he wasn’t legally blind he was close to it; he kept his head up and his eyes half closed as his fingers ran over every item that landed at the end of the counter.

It was lunchtime and the boys were melting: Evan was loudly protesting the fact that he couldn’t eat the Goldfish he could clearly see in our cart, and Kostyn was whining that he was tired. Perhaps in that moment I should have been annoyed that the bagging process was taking longer than usual. But I was just amazed by him.

I know those who can’t see feel their way through life, but something about this man being able to identify and categorize by touch every single thing the store sells in a split second was impressive. He had a whole system in place, with multiple bags set open in front of him as his hands separated and positioned things into place. Then he’d feel his way to the cart and make sure the bag was in the right spot, not in danger of being crushed. He let me know where the eggs were as he placed them gingerly on top.

It reminded me of a video I’d seen just a couple days ago of a hand model being interviewed about her “talent.” She spends her life protecting her hands by not doing anything; she said so herself.

“No cooking, no cleaning, no taking out the garbage, no opening cans, no opening windows, no opening doors, no gardening, no sports, no no no no no....”

At the time I felt sorry for her, gazing at her perfect hands and bragging about her sizable income while denying herself so many of the little joys of life. She doesn't bake birthday cakes for loved ones, or collect sea shells on the beach. She doesn't rake leaves on a cool fall day. She doesn't open doors for strangers. She doesn't open doors for anyone.

She watches people do things all day long that she could do but doesn’t dare for fear of a paper cut or a burn or a chipped nail or a freckle. “I view my hands as elite athletes,” she said.

But her hands may as well be lumps of perfectly sculpted clay — glazed and fragile and set on a high shelf gathering dust. Today I saw hands that were elite athletes. Big, calloused, efficient hands, earning a bagger's wage. They were the most beautiful, most useful things I saw all day.

And I bet they would hold the door open for that hand model, if the two ever crossed paths.

Potty Power: Who's Training Who?

2011-01-14T08:51:00.002-05:00

(The first part of this post appeared on my Training Wheels blog earlier this week. There's a sweet little postscript below the original text -- with an emphasis on "sweet.")

A couple days ago Kostyn went into the bathroom and peed in the potty as usual, washed his hands as usual, and then came out and asked for a treat for him and his brother, also as usual. (Not to get into the ins and outs of the whole potty training fiasco at our house, but suffice it to say we haven’t had as much luck with various tactics as we’d imagined we’d have when we started this process A YEAR AGO, so the “bribe with treats” thing is currently in full effect as we try desperately to build some positive momentum with the whole thing while he seems, finally, at least mildly interested.)

Both boys enjoyed their Hershey’s Kiss, as usual, but then they asked for more, which is surprisingly unusual. Of course I shot that request down, saying that there would be no more treats until there was more peeing or pooping in the potty end of story go play.

But instead of running off to the playroom, they both ran back into the bathroom, with Kostyn yelling “Ohhh Kaaaaaaay I’ll go pee!”

Curious, I followed him into the bathroom where Evan lifted the seat and Kostyn pulled down his pants and peed approximately .01 ounce of urine. Seriously, I peed more in my pants when I sneezed while pregnant.

“I peeeeeeed!” he said proudly, pulling up his pants while Evan helpfully flushed the toilet (because this has somehow become a team effort. Frankly I’m happy Evan’s pulling his weight in this whole exercise since he always gets rewarded with a treat, at his brother’s insistence. Then again, only one kid’s peeing and I still have to wash both their hands.) Then we paraded out of the bathroom and Kostyn asked for chocolate again, with Evan echoing “Treeeeeat!” for good measure.

I was a little perplexed, and a little impressed. He did technically pee in the potty, which was what I had suddenly come to realize was a way-too-vague stipulation for getting a treat. But did I really want to get into the amount of urine necessary to deem the exercise “treat-worthy,” some sort of baseline grid for what actually constitutes “peeing in the potty”? No I did not.

Did I want to discourage him and undermine his progress by removing the one incentive that seems to be working? No I did not.

Did I want to risk losing my shirt in Hershey’s Kisses now that my son seemed to be able to pee on demand? No I did not.

It was one of those tough parenting calls, and I had a split second to make my choice. So I told him I was proud of him for peeing in the potty, and that he was doing so great with it that starting very soon we were going to focus our treats as rewards for pooping on the potty only. I told him he had mastered the peeing part and I was sure he could do that treat-free.

And then I let them have more chocolate.

Fast-forward a couple days to this morning, when both boys decided it would be a good idea to strip naked and run around the house. Before I scooped them up to get dressed I asked if anyone had to pee in the potty, and Evan enthusiastically exclaimed "Peee pottyyyy!!" So we ran into the bathroom and he hopped on the stool and pushed and grimaced and squirmed like he's seen his brother do a million times, a look of determination on his face. And all the while Kostyn, standing beside the toilet where his little brother has stood so often in the last eight months, served as cheerleader.

"You're gonna do it!"

"Evan's gonna be such a big boy!!"

"You'll get it, it's OK Evan."

And then, triumphantly, he did. It wasn't much, but it was still more than Kostyn's on-demand peeing episode from a few days back. I think Kostyn was even more excited than Evan. Then they switched spots, washed their hands, got dressed, and ate some well-deserved M&Ms for breakfast.

Life is a learning process. And rewards sure are sweet.

As the New Year Dawns I Realize: We Are All Smokin' Something

2011-01-05T08:22:00.002-05:00

On New Year’s Eve, while sitting in our parked car with both boys waiting for Chris to return from the store, I noticed a woman two spaces over. She was leaning against the grille of an SUV smoking a cigarette, and on her feet were a gleaming white pair of those ridiculously shaped Easy Tone sneakers, the ones with 3-inch soles that are supposed to help tone and shape your backside and legs just by walking around in them.

What an ironic contradiction you are, I thought as I watched her take a long drag. You think magic sneakers are going to get you in shape? You know how those shoes will do the most for your health? By stamping out that cigarette.

I immediately considered posting something snarky on Facebook or Twitter about her. But as I worked on the wording in my mind for the perfect biting comment, I realized something that stopped me cold: I am just like that woman (and I suspect most of you are, too). I have goals and dreams for myself, good ones that would actually probably be attainable if I didn’t also have a two-pack-a-day bad habit that keeps me from reaching them.

My cigarette is self-doubt.

I don’t think I’ll ever measure up to everyone’s expectations, so I stop myself from really trying. A friend passes along his contact at Parenting magazine and says I should pitch something to her. For a day or two I stare at that contact info and the encouraging email that came with it like it’s a brilliant step — a gift, even — toward a long-held goal. Like it’s a shiny new pair of sneakers guaranteeing the perfect tush. All I have to do is lace them up and walk around.

But then the self-doubt creeps in. I realize in all likelihood that my pitch would be rejected, which wouldn’t be so terrible if nobody knew about it, but my friend will surely ask how it went and he’ll know I failed. Besides it’s silly to even try, I reason, that magazine doesn’t run the kind of stuff I would pitch anyway. Plus I’m too busy with other assignments, real stories that come attached to real paychecks, however small. Suddenly the sneakers I was so excited about start to feel more like a burden. They’re not really going to work, my muddled mind says. Your body needs a lot more help than what any stupid pair of sneakers can do.

So the friend’s email gets slowly buried by others. Instead of polishing a column pitch and intro letter I spend my idle time chatting with friends and mindlessly scrolling over my Facebook feed, feeling the smoke fill my lungs. It burns with counterproductivity but it feels familiar, calming. I take long drags as the minutes become hours of another unproductive night spent on my laptop, and the self-loathing about my bad habit kicks in, which just makes it worse.

My cigarette is self-doubt. And I am a willing slave to how it weakens me.

I was still watching the woman puff away some of her last minutes of the year when Kostyn piped up from the back seat. “Why is she sad?” he asked. Without glancing back at him, I knew he was talking about her. Her wrinkled skin pulled the corners of her eyes and mouth downward, and her gray jacket hung shapelessly over her small frame.

“I don’t know if she’s sad, honey,” I said. “She kind of looks sad, though, huh.”

“Yeah,” he said. The woman flicked her cigarette to the ground and stomped on it with those giant soles. I watched how her breath continued to puff like a cloud in the wintry weather as she walked to the car door and climbed inside. She didn’t want to smoke inside her car. She wants to look and feel better. She wants to be healthy. But quitting is difficult. Taking control is hard.

She is sad, I thought.

At some point in our lives keeping the bad habit becomes even harder than quitting it. When you have used up all your self-pity, self-loathing, excuses and reasons, you are left with a choice: Make peace with your self-imposed prison and let it slowly suffocate you, or resolve to break free and breathe only fresh air.

Let this stand not as a trite resolution but a simple statement of intent: This is the year I’m going to kick the habit.

Who’s with me?

I'm Taking My Marbles and Going Home

2010-12-27T21:30:00.003-05:00

When it comes to Christmas I’m torn between the pull to be with extended family, and the desire to simply enjoy my own family’s developing traditions.

This year, as in years past, part of me wanted to hunker down at home with just our cozy Party of Four, ensuring that our little ones would wake to the magic of Christmas morning in their own living room, spend all day playing with their new toys uninterrupted, and enjoy the foods and treats my husband and I have made our own traditions over the years. At the same time, we wanted to be near grandmas and grandpas, siblings and cousins, both so we could relive the magic of our Christmases past and so our boys might develop richer memories with those we love.

We thought a good compromise to this dilemma was to invite my in-laws to spend Christmas with us. They wholeheartedly agreed, and this seemed like the perfect solution. But a few weeks ago it became apparent that my father-in-law’s recent surgery was going to keep them from traveling. So we were left wondering what to do. Should we just make plans to see them sometime after New Year’s? Should we give up our visions of Christmas at home and drive the five hours to their house instead?

Ultimately, my husband’s “1,000 Marbles” memory instigated a trip northward on Christmas morning. If you’re not familiar with the “1,000 Marbles” parable by Jeffrey Davis, it’s about a man who, at age 55, realizes his life expectancy is about 75 years and calculates that he has about 1,000 Saturdays left to enjoy. He buys a thousand marbles and places them in a clear jar, then marks the passing of each Saturday by removing one marble from the jar and throwing it away — a tangible reminder of the passing of time and how we can’t get it back.

When my husband first heard that story it made him think about more than just how many marbles are left in his own jar. He thought about his mother, who is in good health but turns 75 this year. He wondered how many more Saturdays we have left with her. Supposing we see her four or five times a year (which is a lot more now that we only live five hours away instead of 15), he envisioned each of those visits as one precious marble in a jar. And he realized there are not enough marbles left in that jar.

Often those of us who live far from extended family only get to see such loved ones once or twice a year. While that is a sacrifice we make for job opportunities or other personal decisions, I think it’s important to consider our time with family like those marbles in a jar. I am reminded of a couple dear friends of mine, one who lost her mother 10 years ago this month, and the other who lost hers just a few weeks ago. I know both would do anything for just one more marble.

So we put the kids in the car after breakfast Christmas morning, and they got a second visit from Santa Claus at Nana and Papa’s house. The look on Nana’s face as she watched the kids’ excitement made the trip worthwhile. (Plus when the boys got home they re-discovered all the gifts they’d opened just 48 hours before.)

Christmas is, sadly, over. The cards from loved ones I’ve been taping to the wall all month are starting to fall to the floor, our tree is nothing but a bone-dry fire hazard, and there is one less marble in each of our jars.

I’m comforted to know that the marbles we just tossed away were replaced with memories that hold love captive, and they can’t slip through our fingers like time.

(Originally posted on Training Wheels.)

And the angel said unto them, "Fear not, because the sheep are contained by tiki torches and your wings are probably not flammable."

2010-12-24T09:44:00.003-05:00

When the call for volunteers went up at our church in November for the first-ever live nativity hayride being planned, I hesitated. I can’t act; I can’t build sets; I can’t sew. But this was going to be a pretty big production: Two wagons would carry community members through an adjacent field, stopping at several stations to watch amateur actors re-create the scenes leading up to Jesus’s birth. To do all that, it sounded like they really needed help.

So I shuffled up to the Big Events director after church one Sunday and let her write my name down on her pad of paper under “Actors.”

“Can you do a speaking part?” she asked.

Absolutely not, I thought.

“Sure, if that’s what you need,” I said, trying to sound helpful and nonchalant but feeling regret wash over me. I don’t like speaking in public. Heck I don’t even like being in public.

But two weeks later I picked up the master script of this live nativity hayride play and my part was highlighted in orange: I was an angel. Not just any old angel, either, but the angel who brings the shepherds good news of great joy.

For a moment I smirked at the idea of officially being called an angel. “I’m an angel,” I practiced saying with authority. Then I realized I couldn’t just stand there and look angelic, I had to say 57 words. (I counted.) Luckily they were words I’d read and heard pastors and singers and actors say countless times over the years. I knew these words by heart. Except when I tried to say them without looking at the script I realized I didn’t know them by heart, and every time I opened my mouth to practice all I could hear was Linus in my head saying “Lights please” while holding his trusty blanket and telling everyone “what Christmas is all about.”

I was about to toss aside the script and worry about it on rehearsal day when I noticed a directional note above my lines:

[Angel: Up on the top of the hill, lifted up in the air on the “teeter/totter” above the grasses, light shining on angel]

Why was “teeter/totter” in quotes, I wondered. Was it just going to be some plank of wood balanced on a boulder? I had visions of being accidentally catapulted onto the wagon, my cardboard wings mangling innocent children. The whole thing made me laugh out loud and I couldn’t wait to hear what in blazes they were rigging up to get this old angel to “fly.”

But at the first rehearsal a couple weeks later, learning my lines and teetering on a totter suddenly became the least of my concerns. It was there that I got the full scope of what my scene entailed: Two 12-year-old shepherds and a couple of live sheep.

Sweet baby Jesus, I was going to spend three hours in a frigid field in the dark of night with two fidgety pre-teens with huge wooden staffs, and somebody’s borrowed livestock. Oh, and I was assured that there would be a big barrel of fire at each station to help keep us warm between performances. (Or to more easily burn the grumpy angel’s cardboard wings when the shepherds got bored, I just knew it.)

The boys weren’t too keen on remembering their lines (I know, hypocrite), but what they seemed to lack in short-term memory they more than made up for in acting ability, as every time we rehearsed me appearing before them, they fell to the floor and literally convulsed in fear. This made it impossible to keep a straight face, and it’s really hard to sell the sheer magnitude of the line “Today in the city of David a Saviour has been born” when you’re giggling.

So they were advised to tone down the fear and play up their lines, and I was advised to dress warmly and everything would be fine. I had faith that it would, and that faith played out the night of the dress rehearsal, not because of the shepherds’ performance in front of the director, but because of their performance in front of us while we were waiting around to do our scene. In the hour and a half we were outside that night, the boys entertained me and my fellow Heavenly Hosts with 20 minutes of Monty Python, delivered flawlessly; three sheep-related knock knock jokes; three other jokes of questionable taste for a church-related event; two riddles I still can’t make sense of; and at least 5 minutes of a Jeff Dunham stand-up comedy routine with Achmed the dead terrorist. Between the two of them they had one sentence to memorize for our play. I stood there in stunned silence wondering why I ever was concerned that they might not remember those piddly 18 words about going to Bethlehem to “see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

And indeed, they didn’t disappoint; they nailed that line every time.

On the night of the first performance the church buzzed with activity. People I’d only seen sitting stoically in the same pews Sunday after Sunday were now wearing long robes and talking in character. I quickly found my appointed classroom-turned-dressing room marked “Angels and Shepherds,” where everyone seemed extra-concerned about being cold. The temperature was hovering somewhere around 38 degrees and dropping, and we knew we’d be outside for at least three and a half hours. So halos were perched atop white winter hats. White robes were squeezed over winter coats. Cardboard wings were worn over three or four layers of clothing.

We angels were looking more like an army of Stay Puft Marshmallow Men than Heavenly Hosts. But still, we were cheery, if not cherubic, and eager to earn the wings we were wearing.

When everyone was dressed and assembled we piled into a haywagon and made the bumpy ride over to our stations, wishing each other luck. The Wise Men, whose original costumes didn’t fit over their coats, were wearing royal blue Snuggies. The “Pregnant Mary” clearly had a lumpy pillow strapped to her waist, and Joseph was wearing a Penn State parka over his robe. (He assured me he took off the coat each time a wagon came by.) Still, we were there. Over 60 volunteers, all of us with busy holiday responsibilities and families at home, giving up a little time and a lot of body heat to bring the magic of that holy night to a field in Cumberland County, PA.

Call it cheesy or homespun or just plain hokey, but I found it inspiring.

When the two shepherds, three other angels and I were dropped off at our station as the sun set, we met our costars, the sheep.

“I think we should name them,” I said of the friendly ram and skittish ewe that were, thank the good Lord, confined in a small round pen surrounded by lit tiki torches. “We’re going to be hanging out with them all night.”

“I already did,” one shepherd said. “The boy sheep is Baaaaaab.”

I laughed, and instantly really liked these kids.

Someone named the ewe Mabel and everyone made their acquaintance. I thanked them for my wool mittens and sweater before we turned our attention to our “set,” which was essentially a set of risers hidden behind a camouflauge hunting screen, behind which we angels were supposed to appear. The plan was to crouch down on the ground behind the screen when we saw a wagon approaching, then stand and walk up the risers to effectively hover over the shepherds (and Baaaab and Mabel) to deliver the good news.

Crouching on the frozen ground while trying to keep four sets of huge cardboard wings from getting tangled was a trick, but we managed. When the first wagon load of people finally came, everyone delivered their lines flawlessly. After the wagon had bumped on down the field toward the manger, we all stood up from our crouched positions and cheered. For the sheep, of course.

“Great job guys!” one angel exclaimed to Baaaab and Mabel, who seemed unfazed.

“You didn’t show up to a single rehearsal, and still you nailed it!” I said, impressed.

The shepherds were supposed to walk to the manger after their line and join the actors there in song. But by the fourth wagon they’d had enough of high-tailing it a half-mile back and forth, opting instead, like good shepherds I suppose, to stay with their sheep. “I sang enough,” grumbled one as he lay down his staff and fiddled with the headband over his headdress.

The fire barrel was a nice touch to keep us warm between performances, though you can’t get too close to a sparky fire when you’re wearing flammable cardboard wings. We spent most of the evening dissuading one eager shepherd from adding yet another log to the fire, lest we angels had to fear actual flames jumping up out of the barrel, not just sparks.

And so the night passed with us telling jokes and family stories, petting sheep and looking for constellations. We wondered aloud how the rest of the scenes were going and whether everyone else was having a good time. Eventually clouds rolled in and talk turned to the fact that coyotes were known to roam around these fields at night. One angel told a story of a coyote taking out a dog right at a children’s bus stop nearby. Suddenly I was excessively thankful for the tiki torches, as if they served as any real deterrent from a pack of wild animals deciding to have us all for a late-night snack.

Every 25 minutes or so our conversations would be cut off by a shepherd who, pulling lookout duty, would yell “A wagon’s coming!” I’d crouch on the ground in silence, my breath puffing in a cloud, then rise up and stare through a blinding spotlight at two kids as I told them, again and again, about the greatest promise ever kept.

“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the city of David a Saviour has been born, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Nine times I said it, and each time it got more real.

“Do not be afraid!”

“A Saviour has been born!”

“You will find a baby.”

The last wagon came through a little after 8 p.m. and afterward everyone in my scene high-tailed it toward the church to warm up. Someone had to stay with the sheep until they were picked up, so I volunteered. I wasn’t all that cold or all that antsy to get inside. When they’d gone I stood heating my mittens over the dwindling fire, then pressing them to my cheeks to warm my face. I watched the sheep circle their pen, and I thought about coyotes.

But mostly I thought about my lines, and about the baby in a stable. After the first few times I hadn’t heard Linus in my head anymore, only me. And after the next few times I hadn’t heard my own voice anymore, but imagined an actual angel, the real deal, telling ordinary people about the most extraordinary thing.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel said to the shepherds, and that command echoes today for us all. Do not be afraid of the cold, or the dark, or the unknown. Do not be afraid of fire, or coyotes, or even sheep that suddenly begin to move frantically around and around in their pen when you’re left alone with them. (Although for the record that really can be scary.)

Do not be afraid of having to crouch down, or speak loudly, or feel silly. Do not be afraid. Because this good news, this great joy, isn’t the climax of a play, it’s history. We lived it. We are living proof of it. And it is indeed for all people.

Amen and Merry Christmas.

I can't stress enough how itchy that halo was, a sure sign I'm not ready for it. Yet.

The Longest Shortest Day of the Year

2010-12-22T08:01:00.002-05:00

Yesterday the following things occurred, in order:

Kostyn peed through his pajamas, sheets and blanket, twice in one night.

Both times I was up I forgot that there was A LUNAR ECLIPSE happening and didn't even pull the curtains back to take a look.

I got hopelessly lost driving to a children’s birthday party and we arrived 20 minutes late.

It took an hour of wrestling, rocking, demanding and cajoling to get one child to take a nap. The other never caved.

I had a total meltdown stemming from the stress of having to move (re: mold) at the most inopportune time in our lives.

I ruined all of our Christmas cookies and one perishable Christmas gift we had stored in plastic containers in the oven* when I preheated the oven for dinner and forgot to look inside first.

I ruined dinner in the process.

I dropped a 2-liter bottle of cran-grape juice and the top broke, splattering half a bottle of dark red juice all over the kitchen.

For the shortest day of the year, it was a very long day. It is somehow comforting to know that today there will be less darkness and more light, guaranteed.

*I sure wish I had taken a picture of the melted plastic and chocolate destruction that was inside our oven. Unfortunately I have no visual proof. But the smell of burning plastic lingers...

Sweet (Moment Between) Dreams

2010-12-18T08:25:00.001-05:00

There are many nights Kostyn wanders over to my bed and tries to climb in next to me and “snuggle.” This I generally let him do, for a few minutes or a few hours depending on whether I fall right back to sleep or not. Whenever I wake up I usually carry him or lead him back to his own room and tuck him in, and he goes without complaint.

Last night I woke up and he was asleep next to me. I had no recollection of him climbing in bed, but there he was. Before I had a chance to nudge him and bring him back to his room, I got a tickle in my throat and coughed. And coughed again. And cleared my throat. And suddenly he was awake, pulling the blanket down and swinging his little feet onto the floor. I thought he was going to shuffle back to his own bed, in search of some peace and quiet.

Instead he walked over and grabbed my water bottle and brought it back to me. “Here Mommy drink some water,” he said, and suddenly I was the 3-year-old and he was the parent.

The tickle was already gone but I propped myself up on my elbow and dutifully slurped down a few gulps. He took the bottle and set it down and climbed back in next to me. As he straightened the blanket over him he said, sweetly and matter-of-factly, “I will always love you.”

And then he fell back to sleep and I lay there amazed, blessed and thankful that for all the chaos and harsh moments we find ourselves in around here, little ones somehow soak in and display the best kind of behavior we model.

Where Do You Turn When Your House Is Sick?

2010-12-16T09:08:00.001-05:00

(This was first published on my Central Penn Parent blog, Training Wheels.)

We moved into our rental house last September, and by October we were sick. In the past year we’ve missed parties and family get-togethers, date nights and other plans. Chris burned through all his vacation time and then some, and we wore a path to the pediatrician’s office for Evan’s repeated sinus infections and other afflictions. For a normally healthy family, it just seemed like a very bad year.

But something in the back of our minds continued to nag at us: The basement was very damp. It had flooded more than once since we’d moved in, and though we bought a dehumidifier, it just never seemed to dry out.

After this last round of doctor bills for sinus infections and upper respiratory infections, we decided to have the place tested for mold contamination, and our fears were realized. We’re most likely sick because our house is sick.

The home inspection company took samples in two rooms in our basement. They say “safe” levels are in the range of 7,000 to 10,000 CFUs (colony forming units) in any given space. The furnace room in our basement measured 740,000 CFUs. The other room measured 1,800,000 CFUs. Yeah, that’s over a million individual colony-forming mold spores in one room. “Dangerously high,” was the note attached to the numbers.

They say knowledge is power, but sometimes knowledge makes one feel more helpless than the bliss of ignorance. I’ve spent the last several days beating myself up for being so careless with my kids’ health. I feel like I failed them. Every time the heat kicks on and the warm air comes streaming up from the furnace room through the floor vents, I want to hold my breath. I want to scoop up my boys and race outside so that they only breathe clean air.

We’re not sure what our landlord will choose to do about the situation, but we’re not so naive to think she’ll pony up the cash to fix the problem. The thought of packing up and moving all our stuff on a frigid, snow-filled January weekend is unappealing to say the least. Living on one full-time income we, like many people out there, are just getting by. We’ll have to rely on family and friends, once again, to help us make the change we know we need to make.

When it starts to seem overwhelming, I think about my parents and what they did for me and my sisters when we were little. My folks were both raised in a modest neighborhood in Niagara Falls called The Love Canal. When they married in 1968 they rented a house there and started a family. But in the early 1970s, strange things started to happen in the neighborhood. A black tar-like substance started oozing into basements and bubbling up from the ground. Dogs began acting crazy. Neighbors were falling ill.

The year I was born, my mother was one of nine women in the neighborhood who were pregnant. Yet she was the only one to carry her baby to full term; the others all miscarried.

In 1973, shortly after I was born, my parents packed everything we owned and left the area. It would be another three years before the local newspaper began to dig up the fact that the neighborhood and nearby school sat on top of 21,000 tons of buried toxic waste. The Love Canal was eventually declared a federal disaster area, and our house and many others were smashed to the ground and covered in dirt, roped off like a crime scene.

My folks were long gone by then. It wasn’t until now, now that I have two young kids of my own and a bank account no one would be envious of, that I can truly appreciate what they did. Many of their neighbors were staying put, determined to not lose their homes and uproot their families. My parents barely had two sticks to rub together in those days; I can’t imagine the hardship they faced deciding to move a 3-year-old and a new baby across the state. But I know they didn’t hesitate.

And neither will we.

Stranger Danger and Santa Claus: A Muddled Message

2010-12-13T00:47:00.002-05:00

I always vowed I wouldn’t force my kids to sit on Santa’s lap, for a few reasons.

I didn’t like to do it as a kid.
Most “mall Santas” look so inauthentic I envisioned my 3-year-old seeing right through the plastic boots and fake beard and ruining the magic of Santa before it had barely begun. Seriously, aren’t most of them sort of creepy and sad?
I figured why spend all year teaching them to stay within their own comfortable boundaries with people — not forcing them to hug relatives, not making them talk to strangers we pass at the store — and then go and plop them on some random guy’s lap and expect them to talk to him like he’s their grandfather?
I was reluctant to start the tradition of gift expectation. “Tell Santa what you want for Christmas” is something that hasn’t occurred to my son yet; he has no idea that he can ask for a certain present this time of year and Santa very well may deliver it. I’m sure that day is coming, but I rather enjoy the freedom to shop without any pressure of a child’s expectations.

So for those reasons listed above as well as our general laziness, bringing the boys to a local Santa hadn’t been on our holiday Things to Do list. Funny how the magic of Christmas finds you, though, even when you’re not searching for him. Er, it. We were in York this past weekend and stopped at a local nursery and market we’d heard about for a bite to eat. We’d barely sat down when this guy showed up.

Most Adorable Santa-Related Candid Ever.

He looked so sweet and genuine that I could literally feel all my icy-cold, heartless “Reasons For Not Liking Mall Santas” melting away right there inside the greenhouse. Suddenly I was a puddle of commercial Christmas mush. I started planting seeds before our sandwiches were even delivered to the table. “Do you want to sit on Santa’s lap?” I asked Evan. “Let’s take your picture with Santa Claus after lunch!!” I prodded Kostyn.

I didn’t like myself, but I couldn’t help myself. Suddenly I wanted that elusive perfect picture with this perfect Santa. I was regretting the outfits I’d put the boys in this morning. And the fact that both of them are about a month overdue for haircuts. And every time Kostyn smeard ketchup on his shirt, I winced.

As we ate, the boys watched other children get their pictures taken with Santa. Evan kept chanting “Santaaaaaaah!” like an obnoxious frat boy; I thought he’d be a sure thing for Santa’s lap.

Not so much.

Within 3 seconds of walking up to Santa it became obvious I was going to have to sit with him too if I wanted my boys to come within 20 feet of the bearded fellow. Thank goodness he was on a bench big enough for two, because there ain’t no way I was giving Santa’s lap a spin.

Evan felt the same way.

Holding on for dear life.

We tried to coax Kostyn over to sit with us, but he was not havin' it. Until we bribed him with the promise of a candycane. At the mention of sugar his face brightened and he high-stepped it over to us. The next thing I knew, Santa was hugging Kostyn. Or Kostyn was hugging Santa, I'm not sure which, but the whole thing caught everyone off guard, including the photographer.

The look on Kostyn's face is how I envision 90 percent of kids feel when placed atop Santa's lap.

Luckily, sugar always makes a kid smile. (Mine anyway.)

We left with two happy boys holding candy canes, no perfect picture on Santa's lap, and a mother who finally regained her sense of What's Most Important Is That My Kids Feel Comfortable.

Which is probably why the more I look at this picture, the more I love it.

Happiness. Wonder. Excitement. Christmas.

The Wizard of Oz: Witches and Trailers and Nightmares, Oh My!

2010-12-09T15:34:00.002-05:00

As a kid, The Wicked Witch of the West scared the bejeezus out of me.

OK, honestly, she still does.

I can’t watch “The Wizard of Oz.” I couldn’t watch it as a kid without getting nightmares, and I can’t watch it today. If I even catch a glimpse of it while scrolling through the channels I sort of freak out, lest the image of that green witch or her horrendous cackle penetrate my retinas and eardrums and, therefore, my memory and, therefore, my dreams.

For most of my adult life I thought I was alone in this fear. I mean, “The Wizard of Oz” is heralded as an American family classic. I was embarrassed about being scared of a kids’ movie. But in recent years I’ve heard from more and more people who fear green witches, flying monkeys, harmonizing munchkins, and nosy neighbors who maniacally ride their bicycles inside tornadoes.

My goal has been to shield my sons from all things “Oz” until they’re at least teenagers, but I might not make it out of the toddler years. My in-laws just bought the boys a DVD of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and guess what movie trailer precedes the Peanuts gang? It’s strategically placed right before the cartoon starts, and you can’t skip it outright; you have to fast-forward like a madman so your 3-year-old doesn’t see the pure evil and implausible weirdness that goes on over that rainbow.

All Kostyn has ever seen of the “Oz” trailer is a big green fast-talking blob, but he still mentions “the monster in Charlie Brown” on a regular basis. Because, as I’m learning, nothing gets past a preschooler. A couple nights ago we had this exchange:

“What is the monster in Charlie Brown?” he asks me.

“There is no monster in Charlie Brown, Kostyn.”

“Yes there is; it’s green. In the beginning, before the music. What is that monster?”

“It’s an ad. Ads are a little like monsters.” Heh.

“Is it scary?”

“No, it’s not scary,” I lie. (At this stage I don’t really want him to know that his mommy is afraid of anything. Also, I don’t want him to know his mommy is afraid of a harmless actress with green paint on her face.)

“Can we watch an ad?”

“Well sometimes we have no choice; but ads are not scary,” — lie! — “and they’re not really real. They’re just these funny little things that we ignore.”

“Can we watch the green ad?”

“No.”

“But why not?!”

“Because Mommy doesn’t like that one.”

“But Kostyn likes that one.”

“You’ve never seen it!”

“I’ve seen it a little bit,” he says, pinching his index finger and thumb together.

“Well a little bit is all you need to see,” I say. (“Put ’em up, put ’em up!”)

My voice sounded authoritative enough to end the conversation there. But I swear the only lingering voice in my head was hers.
“I’ll get you, my pretty! You and your little preschooler, too!”

Brotherly Bonding (Or, WHY ARE YOU SITTING ON YOUR BROTHER??)

2010-12-01T07:55:00.001-05:00

The pictures I’m posting here are by no means good quality photos.

Proof.

I’m posting them because on a day like today — a day laced with whining and pushing and shoving, a day when the older brother was being bossy and the younger brother was not havin’ it — I need to remind myself why it’s a good idea that we have Two Children.

They wear these old scarves better than I ever did.

(As opposed to the much quieter Only Child, which is what Kostyn would be if we’d had the good sense to stop while we still outnumbered the kids in the house.*)

Even the drums have multiplied.

But we didn’t; we forged right ahead and had another, tried for another even. And now we have two.

Two kids who are this close in age (21 months apart) means a good deal of my time is spent refereeing their domestic disputes. Who was playing with the drum first?! and Whose turn is it to use the piano?!? and WHY ARE YOU SITTING ON YOUR BROTHER???? are all things I find myself saying with alarming frequency.

Overall they're great playmates but they are at slightly different developmental levels, which adds to everyone's frustrations. Kostyn wants to sit and play in a more cerebral way, making up intricate rules and characters and directing the action. (“No, no, Evan, don’t sit there sit here!”)

Evan wants to charge through the toys, his attention flitting from a book to a train to a basket of blocks and back to his brother, always back to his brother, as he tries desperately to please a demanding 3-year-old. (Believe me I know the feeling, little guy. It’s nearly impossible.)

Bottom line is by the end of a day like today I am worn thin, and they are both still craving attention — from each other and from me.

....or Daddy.

A day like today can do a darn good job of erasing from my brain the knowledge that they are actually best friends.

Proof.

So I pawed through some recent photos to remind myself. And I thought about how when Kostyn is offered a treat for peeing in the potty his first words are “Can Evan have a treat too?”

Goofing around in Kostyn's bed.

And how Evan follows Kostyn like a groupie — singing when he sings, running when he runs, playing how he plays. No matter how often he gets it “wrong” in his big brother’s eyes, the little brother tries again to please, and even impress.

Living with a sibling is a learning game. How tight to hold on, how fast to spin, how far to stretch away from the one person who is becoming more tied to your identity every day. I know they'll figure it out; looking at these snapshots helps me to re-realize that.

Lucky for them, they've each got a best friend along for the ride.

[*No offense, Evan; I couldn’t imagine my life without you.]

"If I was a flower growing wild and free all I'd want is you to be my sweet honeybee..."

2010-11-22T10:24:00.003-05:00

“If I was a flower growing wild and free
all I’d want is you to be my sweet honeybee....”

“Mommy it’s our song!” Kostyn screamed, dropping his drum and drumstick and flying toward me with abandon. I turned to face him just in time to see him draw up his knees and jump in my direction, his arms outstretched. It was a fumbling catch but a catch nonetheless.

“Aaaaaghh!” I said, tripping between annoyed and thrilled. “You have to warn Mommy, honey, you’re getting so big.”

“It’s our song,” he said matter-of-factly, his eyes bright and his head bobbing up and down, willing me to start dancing.

It was, after all, our song. For no particular reason than I happened to have gotten my hands on the “Juno” soundtrack when he was a baby, and quickly became addicted to it, playing it nonstop for several weeks. And something about the sweetness of this tune — “All I Want Is You” by Barry Louis Polisar — always caused me to scoop him up and twirl him around. And I’d whisper, “This is our song.” Because back then I was a new mom who thought she needed something tangible, audible, to cement a bond between mother and son. I thought I needed to plant a seed that would root and grow to keep us connected always.

“And if I was a tree growing tall and green
all I’d want is you to shade me and be my leaves.”

I used to dance with him in my arms until the song was done, and then we’d sidestep over to the stereo and hit “Rewind.” And when it finished, "Rewind" again.

But this time I felt myself straining under his weight a little bit. He didn’t sit in my arms or curl around my waist so easily, like he used to. His eyes were still dancing, humming, happy to be in Mommy’s arms for “our song,” but I was imagining how it would feel — how it will feel — to be holding his hands instead of his whole body when we dance. I wondered how it will feel to watch his feet move to the music across from mine. I wondered how it will feel when he takes the lead, and I follow.

I wondered how it will feel to watch him dance with somebody else.

I was reminded of that book “Let Me Hold You Longer,” about how parents often note the first but not the last time a child does something. (Parents: If you’re not familiar with this book, get it. Read it. Sob.) I knew this wasn’t the last time we’d dance to our song. But still, I scooted us over to my computer and took this:

And then I twirled away, jumping in circles to watch his eyes dance and his open-mouthed smile, silently vowing to do more upper body weight-training at the gym. Or just hit “Rewind” more often.

“All I want is you, will you stay with me?
Hold me in your arms and sway me like the sea.”

Exercising Their Right to Climb

2010-11-20T10:10:00.003-05:00

(This post first appeared on my parenting blog Training Wheels for Central Penn Parent.)

This afternoon I walked into the playroom and found one child standing on the table and the other standing on the toy shelf. There were various toy bins turned upside down, their contents strewn everywhere. I watched for a moment and realized they were using the bins as stairs. Or rocks. Or something other than their intended use. It was a delicate game of “Can’t Touch the Ground” and I was actually kind of impressed.

Still, the mother in me had to question the safety of this activity.

“Um, what are you doing?” I asked the 3-year-old.

“I’m exercising,” he said, taking a giant wobbly step from a table to a chair a few feet away.

Evan chimed in, “Cising!” with a big grin as he stomped on the toy box.

“You’re exercising?”

“Yes!” Kostyn said, glancing at me to discern my reaction. “We are just exercising, Mommy.” He could see the whole thing was close to crumbling, so as casually as he could he added, “Exercise is good for my brain.”

Kid’s got a point, I thought.

“What kind of exercising is this?” I asked.

“It’s stair climbing,” he said, leaping down from the chair and landing inside a toy bin. Evan climbed up onto the table and said, “Tall!”

Not to be outdone, Kostyn clambered back up onto the table and looked out over the plantation shutters, which even at Evan’s “tall” vantage point he still couldn’t muster. Evan moved toward conquering another toy bin instead.

Little brother's always just one step behind...but closing fast.

“I can see everything from way up here! I can see all the things!” Kostyn exclaimed, his voice muffled.

“I’m sure you can. You’re way up high,” I said. “The thing is, I don’t want you to fall...”

“I know,” he turned around and took a deliberately slow step down to an upside-down toy bin on the floor. “I’m standing on every breath,” he said, exhaling dramatically.

I’m sure that meant he was being very, very careful. So I let them play, supervised, for awhile longer. After all, I hate it when they interrupt my workout.

I'm Thankful for Solo Roadtrips, Loud Music and a Husband Who Rocks

2010-11-15T23:55:00.002-05:00

I went away last weekend with several of my female relatives, leaving my husband home with the boys to fend for themselves. I loved not being the least bit worried about them -- knowing Chris had everything under control and they would have a fantastic time together.

On the two-and-a-half-hour ride home, as I was blaring Zeppelin at decibels I surely wouldn't have subjected my sons to if they were in the car, I was thinking about all that I was thankful for that weekend, namely:

1. The ability to blare Led Zeppelin (and anything else I wanted, which included Barenaked Ladies and, I am not at all embarrassed to say, Neil Diamond) as loud as I wanted, without fear of popping tiny eardrums or making someone cry (especially my husband, with that last selection).

But also
2. Spending quality time with my sisters, mother, aunts, and cousins, made easier when it's not shared with little ones needing something from Mommy.

3. The luxury of climbing in bed at night and not having to wake up, let alone get up, until I wanted to the next morning. (Because I was fighting a cold, this little treat was extra heavenly!)

4. Enjoying 48 hours of not having to change a diaper/cut someone else's food/dress a wiggly boy/read the same book five times/sound like my mother.

5. The reminder of how it feels to miss my kids. Being a stay-at-home mom means I'm with them almost constantly. I love them dearly, but absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

Little did I know that just as I was thinking about thankfulness, so was the rest of my family. When I walked in the door I was greeted with the most exuberant hugs and kisses and smiles and "Ohhh Mommy we missed you!"'s (seriously, it was as if I'd returned from war), and when I rounded the corner into the living room I saw this:

Our Thankful Tree. I'm thankful the playroom wasn't as messy as it usually is when I took this picture.

Our family's own Thankful Tree made by my three guys, thanks to the dual inspiration of my friends Amy and BJ's Thankful Tree tradition and the one Chris noticed outside the preschool room at church. I was already impressed that he'd taken both boys to church by himself that morning, but this sort of put him over the top in my book.

The boys had told Daddy all that they were thankful for, and he'd dutifully written each thing on a leaf and taped it to the tree. Chris said the first thing out of Kostyn's mouth was "God." The second was "Jesus." The third was "Daddy."

Others that followed included "Cookies," "Grammy," "Evan," and "Vegetables." (That last one's a cheap ploy for Santa's approval, I'm sure.) And, of course, "Mommy."

Jesus got a higher branch. I suppose that's OK.

We'll add more leaves to the tree in the next week or two, and then put them all in a bag marked "2010 Thankful Tree" to store away with other holiday decorations until next year. The plan is to do a new tree each year, and to be able to pore over the things we were thankful for in previous years.

Every time I glance up and see that paper tree on our wall I'm reminded of what I'm thankful for. As you might imagine, I don't even need to read what's on the leaves.

The Art of Falling: It's All in the Direction - Face Down, or Face Up?

2010-11-10T23:20:00.003-05:00

Falling is one of those things that can go either way. Falling in love? Good. (Soooo good.)

Falling down a flight of stairs? Bad. (Soooo bad.)

Falling is something we all do, and not just once a year when we “fall back” by an hour. No, we pretty much fall all over ourselves every day. We fall asleep. We fall behind. We fall apart. Often we fall short of our own expectations, desires and potential.

Sometimes we even fall flat on our faces.

Yep. We unconsciously, accidentally fall a lot. It takes virtually no effort at all, it seems. Nobody sets out to fall from grace or fall apart at the seams. Yet as scary and uncomfortable (and sometimes downright painful) as falling is, it always leads to life’s better moments. Like being in love. Pushing oneself to do better. Picking up the pieces. Standing back up.

Or just looking up.

I like to think I’m a laid-back person, but in recent years I’ve come to grips with the harsh reality that I’m sort of a perfectionist. That’s not to say I think I’m perfect, or that any facet of my life is perfect. But in my mind, I’ve mostly equated falling with failing. A C may as well be an F. A bad run meant I was a bad runner. A story that didn’t get praise from my editor meant it probably totally sucked. Having legs that don’t look like a model’s meant I couldn’t wear shorts, ever, even in August in South Carolina, lest somebody see them. (Man those Southern summers are killers!)

Thankfully, being a parent has reinforced the lesson I learned way back in Sunday school, the lesson that is only now taking hold in my brain’s darkest corners, where imperfection and uncertainty fester: That lesson is that falling is not failing. Falling is merely a stumble, a momentary loss of balance that skins the knee to remind me to be more careful next time with my actions, words and thoughts. There is always (*knock on wood*) another day, another opportunity to say “I’m OK,” keep my cool, make a memory, choose laughter, forgive myself, move on.

I fell yesterday, flat on my parenting face. And when parents fall, we’re not the only ones who get hurt.

It was just one of those days. Kostyn got up super-early and refused to take a nap, so he was cranky right out of the gate and it just got worse. Plus he was testing limits left and right, and my limits were getting shorter and more rigid as the day wore on. I have a patience “fuse,” as they say, that I have carefully, painstakingly stretched and strengthened through trial and error, frustrations and setbacks and tears and prayers, over these last three-plus years. But when that fuse reaches a certain point, the spark that ignites can be fast and fiery. I do not hit or spank, I do not resort to name-calling, but I do yell. My face shows anger. My movements are harsh.

His Pull-Up was not carefully unfastened at the waist, like usual; it got yanked down to his ankles. His shoes were not taken off with care while he smiled and helped; they were pulled off and thrown against the wall in frustration by me as I carried him, screaming, to his bed.

Those examples are a decent snapshot of our day. I’m ashamed to include them, but context is necessary here. I know there are parents who react in worse ways and in better ways. But this is not about them.

I knew it had been a rough day but I didn’t realize how much of my anger had seeped into Kostyn’s psyche until the middle of the night, when I heard him whimpering “Mommy” from his bed. I stumbled to his room as quickly as I could but instead of being met with outstretched arms and “Mommy can I hold you?” like usual, his eyes showed a mix of fear and anger when he saw me. “No!” he shouted, crying. “Get! Out! I don’t want you!”

In that moment I felt the full force of the pain from my earlier fall, and it knocked the wind out of me. “Are you all right?” I asked in my gentlest voice. “You were calling for me....”

He cut me off. “No, Mommy!” he yelled, kicking at the air in my direction. “Go away!”

I had no choice but to leave, reassuring him that I was here if he needed me, which I’m sure sounded like an empty promise. As I settled back down in my own bed I heard him whimper “Mommy” again and I realized he was not calling for me, he was lamenting my disappearance from earlier in the day. His usual soft cradle of safety had turned to jagged rocks of anger, and he felt betrayed. My little boy would rather sit in the dark, alone and confused, than risk the false comfort of my arms.

I barely slept the rest of the night.

Before dawn I was wide awake, lying there thinking about how I’d failed myself and my son the day before. I was just about to get up when I heard him creak out of his bed, his tiny footsteps headed toward me. So I lay very still and pretended to sleep while watching him out of the corner of my eye and praying he’d approach me. He hesitated for a second but then walked up to me. I opened my eyes and he smiled. “Hi!” he said without a hint of apprehension. I asked if he wanted to snuggle, and he climbed in next to me.

I kissed his forehead and asked how he slept. “Good,” he said. I whispered that I was sorry that yesterday wasn’t such a fun day, and he said, “Aww, I’m sorry too.”

“What are you sorry for?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t take a bath,” he said. Which was ironic because by the end of the day I was just trying to make him happy and keep the peace, knowing he was overtired and overstressed from the day. So when he’d balked at having to take a bath, I’d immediately shifted gears and told him he didn’t have to, and there had been no argument about it at all.

I assured him again, as we lay there, that it didn’t matter about the bath, it was OK if he doesn’t want to take a bath every day. I said I was sorry that I scared him with my mad face, and I promised him we would have a happy day today.

“Yeah,” he said.

And because I had a full night’s worth of remorse built up in my head, I kept going. “I love you so much, Kostyn,” I said. “I never want to make you sad, and sometimes I do and I’m so sorry. But I promise to try even harder. Because I love you so, so, so much.”

“Like the doves,” he said.

“The what?” I asked, unsure if I’d heard correctly.

“The doves,” he said. “When you pull the curtains, there are doves.” He pointed to the closed curtains behind us. He was talking 3-year-old jibberish. It could have been a reference to a book he read last month, a “Sesame Street” episode he saw last year, or something he was making up on the fly. But in that moment it made perfect sense to me, because the image that immediately came to mind was of Noah and the ark, of him releasing a dove after drifting so long on the water, and watching that dove return with an olive leaf in its mouth — a sign that God had kept His promise. That there was hope. A new day. A second chance.

I have no idea what made Kostyn mention doves but the message felt divine. Especially when, in the next breath, he placed his small hand over my mouth and pressed just lightly, saying, “The doves are here.”

I looked at him, this child of God, and I said a silent prayer of thankfulness, for him and for me. That he would place his hand over my mouth, on a face that contorted with negativity in his direction barely 12 hours before, and invoke a symbol of peace astounded me. Suddenly instead of falling flat on my face I was falling backward, freely and faithfully and with great relief, into the arms and promise of the first and greatest parent of us all.

And with that fall, the lesson was reinforced once again: Falling isn’t failing. It is not without pain, but it can actually be quite cathartic when done correctly, like a calling back to God — a reminder that we stumble far less when we hold His hand.

Propellers and Penises: Not Remotely Related

2010-11-08T21:05:00.001-05:00

I knew the question was coming, and it popped out of Kostyn’s mouth the other night at bathtime.

“Mommy, can I see your penis?”

The boys were pointing proudly at theirs, and apparently I was next in line. I breezily explained that I didn’t have a penis because I was a girl, and only boys have penises. All splashing and giggling stopped. They stared at me like I was from another planet.

“But, Mommy, how do you pee??”

I'd never hidden my anatomy from them, and they'd been in the bathroom with me countless times. (Hello, like every time I've peed or tried to distract them with Sesame Street long enough to jump in the shower for the last three years....) We'd talked more than once about how girls sit to pee and boys stand. But beyond that, I guess they'd never really paid much attention to me. So my answer that night straddled (ahem) the fence between clinical terms and kiddie language. It was maybe a bit vague, but I thought I did OK for an unplanned introduction to the whole gender thing.

After today I’m not so sure.

We were reading an I Spy book this afternoon and Kostyn saw a picture of a single propeller plane and called it a helicopter. “No, that’s an airplane,” I said.

He pointed to the propeller and said, “It’s a helicopter!”

So I explained that airplanes are similar to helicopters, but they're not the same. That sometimes they have propellers on the front, but helicopters have propellers (rotors) on top, not in front.

He thought for a moment, then said, “It’s a boy helicopter.”

Making the leap in his analogy, I can only hope and assume he doesn’t think girls have penises on their heads. This parenting thing is getting trickier...

You're Gonna Want to Brush Your Teeth After Reading This

2010-11-05T23:07:00.002-04:00

At almost 20 months, the whole teeth brushing thing has not yet become a chore to Evan. He loves it. (I know his Grammy, a semi-retired dental hygienist, is beaming with pride over this.) Whenever one of us heads to the bathroom to do anything, he trots behind us, standing on his tiptoes on Kostyn’s stool so he can point at the toothbrushes that are just out of his reach. “Teeeeeth!” he says, all smiles, over and over, until you wet his brush and hand it to him. Which I often do when I just want to finish brushing my teeth, or putting on makeup, or whatever it is I’m trying to accomplish at the bathroom sink.

Evan loves wetting his brush over and over under the running faucet, and he loves showing you his shiny white teeth when he’s finished. This amounts to saying “Seeee!” and then sticking his tongue out, so that all you see is pink tongue and no white teeth, but you fake it anyway and say “Wow, Evan! Look at those nice clean teeth!” and he beams and runs away.

Anyway, the thing about handing my toddler something in a distracted state (the way I usually am when I’ve come into the bathroom to accomplish some manner of personal hygiene as quickly as possible) is that I sometimes do not fully register that I’m handing it to him. And couple my distraction with the natural distracted tendencies of said toddler, and I often find the toothbrush 20 minutes later on the kitchen floor, or the playroom floor, or any number of places where people’s feet are supposed to be, not people’s toothbrushes. (I know, Ick. Just wait.)

So today I distractedly gave him his toothbrush. Ten minutes later the three of us were in the living room where I was talking to Kostyn and I noticed Evan was still gnawing on it. I was about to ask him for it when he looked at me, took the toothbrush out of his mouth and said, “More.” Then he made a beeline for the bathroom.

I reached him just as he lifted the toilet lid and said “Wawer,” poised to plunge his toothbrush into the toilet.

“Noooo!” I yelled so fiercely that I scared him. He jumped, looking at me, and his lip quivered as if he might cry. For an instant I was glad I’d gotten there just in time, and then I remembered that he’d just said “more” in the living room. As in, “Mmmm, that tasted sorta interesting. If anyone needs me I’ll be in the bathroom dunking my toothbrush into the toilet again.”

I grabbed the toothbrush and said, as calmly as I could, “Evan, no. This water is yucky. We never never never put anything in the potty.”

“O-Tay,” he said.

“Did you put your toothbrush in here?” I asked.

“Nooooo,” he said, shaking his head solemnly. I wanted to believe him. Mostly because I couldn’t figure out how I was going to BOIL HIS MOUTH, which was the next goal my motherly instinct was telling me to accomplish.

But then I noticed the drops of water all over the toilet seat.

“Evan, did you put your toothbrush in here, to get it wet? Did you wet your toothbrush in the potty?” I asked.

“Yeaaaah,” he said, and you could tell that until about 10 seconds ago he had been pretty proud of this display of independence and ingenuity. I threw the toothbrush into the sink as if it were on fire, and allowed myself five seconds to do that ridiculous tongue-flapping “grossed out” dance we chicks do when we’ve seen or touched something that’s either disgusting or has several more legs than we do. Then I closed the lid of the toilet and scooped up my son, carrying him into the kitchen to boil his mouth.

“Don’t ever, ever, EVER put anything in the potty, OK Evan?” I said. “No, no, no. The potty is dirty. Yuck.”

“Yut,” he said.

“That’s right, yuck!”

“Yut!” he said, faking disgust to please Mommy.

Then because I couldn’t figure out how to boil is mouth, I boiled his toothbrush. (And his brother’s, for good measure.) And I vowed to do two things from now on:

Institute a “Teethbrushing Only Under Strict Adult Supervision From Beginning to End” rule.
Clean the toilet WAY more often.

An Extra Little Piggy

2010-10-26T14:21:00.002-04:00

(This was first published on Training Wheels, my blog for Central Penn Parent.)

A couple days ago Kostyn stepped on a Lego or something. It could have been anything, really, because my boys’ favorite pastime lately is Dump Everything Out of A Basket/Bin/Drawer/Hamper/Box Onto the Floor, and Then Get In The Empty Container and Coax Your Brother To Sit In It, Too. This little game is leading to several broken baskets and tons of crap all over my house.

But that’s not the point of this anecdote.

“OW OW OW MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY!!!” he yelped all the way over to me, that pained expression on his face that 3-year-olds get when they are interrupted from their playing by the slightest little boo-boo.

“Ow, ow, ow, my toe my toe!!!” he squirmed and hopped in front of me as I knelt down and carefully inspected his foot.

“This one?” I said, rubbing his pinky toe, which looked a little red.

“No, my big toe!” he whined, “Ow!”

I rubbed his big toe. “Ohhh, this one? Did you hurt your big toe?”

“No my big toe! My big toe!” he said, the whining now coupled with a twinge of annoyance at his ignorant mother.

“I’m holding your big toe. This one?” I said, wiggling the little piggy that went to market between my thumb and forefinger.

“No, my biggest toe,” he said, and I was perplexed for a moment until I noticed he was rubbing his heel.

His heel.

My child thinks his heel is his biggest toe? I thought, now unsure whether I should offer a soft kiss of comfort or a hard dose of reality.

“Ohhhh-kay,” I said, rubbing his heel and giving it a little peck. “This is your heel, honey. You stepped on something with your heel?”

“Yeah, my heel. It’s like a toe.”

Well, sure, because they’re both found on your foot. But other than that, my dear boy, the heel is not a toe, or like a toe, or even next to a toe. It’s on the other side of the foot!

I didn’t say any of that out loud, of course. I just nodded and watched him scamper off to go jump into a laundry basket.

Sometime later I interrupted his play to tickle his toes and ask “What are these?”

“My toes!” he exclaimed, squirming and giggling.

“And what’s this?” I said, grabbing his heel.

“My heel!” he said, laughing.

“Very good!” I said, relieved.

“It’s my biggest toe,” he added. Uhhhh....

“It’s your biggest toe?”

“Yep. It’s HUMONGOUS,” he said, his eyes getting wide and his grin even wider. I opted to smile and not correct him — partly because he technically already proved he knows it’s his heel. And partly because his cuteness factor is just too darn HUMONGOUS.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Rock Holder

2010-10-18T14:26:00.002-04:00

Here's a look at our bounty from this morning's leaf hunt.*


Mommy's bucket.

Evan's bucket.


Kostyn's bucket.

(*Results are typical.)

Mining for Inspiration

2010-10-13T22:06:00.002-04:00

Associated Press photo

We pulled men out of the ground today. Not just out of the ground, either. We pulled men in a tiny tube a half-mile up from the depths of the earth to the surface, where their loved ones and the rest of the world waited, breathless.

And we feel pretty good about it, don’t we?

I’m saying “we” because today, for this story, I need to be a part of it. I need to feel the heart of humanity, the power harnessed when millions focus their prayers and efforts and TV sets and web browsers on 33 men trapped somewhere deep within their long, narrow country on the other side of the equator.

For the last few months (at least...) it seems we’ve seen the darker side of humanity. Political attack ads. War. Environmental devastation. Religious persecution. I could go on, but I won’t. The point is, these are aspects of the world that I suspect are not going to change, and one day my sons will learn about them. And their perceptions of the world will be irrevocably altered, not for the better.

But then something will happen, some potentially catastrophic event that turns on a dime and a prayer when something unexpected and hopeful occurs — something like 33 men sending up a note 17 days after their gold and copper mine collapses, to tell the world they are all alive.

And when that happens, life becomes more personal in a beautiful way. We find something to really root for. We witness the strength of the human spirit, and we feel that spirit inside us soar when others triumph. Our faith in humanity is restored when we watch hundreds of strangers come together for even a single human life.

I was 14 when “Baby Jessica” McClure, an 18-month-old living in Midland, Texas, fell down a well 22 feet below the grass where she’d been playing. For 58 hours the world watched and waited and prayed for someone to figure out a way to get that baby out of the 8-inch-wide well casing she'd fallen through and back into the arms of her frantic parents.

It was the first time I can remember really experiencing that feeling, that pride in humanity at the image of one life saved by so many others. Thinking about her rescue invokes a feeling and an image I’ll never forget. Afterward I remember daydreaming about being part of something like that, not to feel the glow of the spotlight but to experience first-hand the inspiration of so many joining forces for such a simple common goal -- the preservation of human life.

When I think about “Baby Jessica” now it is with different eyes, a mother’s eyes. My little Evan is 19 months old, and if he was injured and out of my reach for 58 hours, as she was, I might have clawed through rocks to get him out. I’m quite sure her mother tried.

Fifty-eight hours seems interminable until I think about those miners not seeing daylight (let alone their own mothers, wives and children) for 69 days. I didn’t allow my kids to watch any of the rescue coverage these last two days, only because I was afraid my 3-year-old might misinterpret what he saw and heard and be afraid -- that mines collapse, people fall, the earth sometimes swallows you up.

But the lesson I am eager for him to learn is that when you do fall, invariably someone is there to help pull you to your feet.

We pulled men out of the ground today. And it feels pretty good.

The Fine Art of Parenting

2010-10-05T22:19:00.001-04:00

(This first published on my blog Training Wheels, which I write for Central Penn Parent magazine.)

Don't just stand there, Mom; wipe my hand. "Hand!!!"

I’m not a crafty mom. I don’t have delusions of grandeur when it comes to art projects with the boys, because I know my limitations. A creative art day for me is one in which the boys use both crayons AND markers to draw pictures, preferably on the paper and not on themselves.

But every now and again I get this idea in my head that we should try something different. That surely my 3-year-old would be gung-ho about any type of new artsy activity I brought to the table. That maybe my 18-month-old is ready for paint.

None of this proved to be true.

I didn’t try anything difficult, just potato stamps. I’d read about them online and they seemed so simple even I could make them. So while the boys played quietly one morning last week, I carved two potatoes into five cute stamp shapes, including a heart and a star and even a hot-air balloon, in honor of the hot air balloon festival our family had just attended the previous weekend.

I got out their art smocks, covered the table, and prepared two paper plates with globs of washable paint in several colors. I set out two paint brushes, two plastic cups of water for rinsing the brushes, and my newly carved potato stamps in a happy little row between their chairs. Then, feeling like a bonafide art teacher, I called the boys to come see the exciting new thing we were going to do!

Kostyn outright refused to leave his toys (which is such a kid thing to do, because if I was begging him to stay in the playroom he would have been at that table faster than I could say “Finger paint!”); Evan ran over excitedly, assuming we were going to eat. He was dismayed when I strapped him into his booster seat and he saw that his paper plate was filled with paint, not Goldfish.

“Crack-uh?” he asked.

“No, we’re not eating crackers right now, Evan. We’re painting! See these stamps I made?” I said, showing him how to dip the stamp in the paint and press it onto his paper.

He whined and pointed toward the kitchen.

“Crack-uh?” he said again. I sighed and fetched a sleeve of Ritz crackers from the pantry. He smiled and said, “Tank you,” and started nibbling, getting crumbs all over the paint.

I tried again to coax Kostyn to the table, but he wasn’t interested, so I waited patiently while my only art student ate. And ate. And ate. Finally, he grew interested in the art supplies laid out before him. Except every time his fingers touched the paint, he held up his hand and wanted me to wipe it clean. Every time. Do you know how hard it is for an 18-month-old to press potato stamps into paint globs and not get any on himself? It’s impossible.

“Hand?” Wipe. “Hand?” Wipe. “Hand!!” Wipe.

After several minutes of me wiping his hands clean every 3.4 seconds, I held up the paintbrush and showed him how to hold the potato in one hand and brush the paint onto the stamp with the other hand. This proved too difficult. So I showed him how to dip the brush in the paint and then paint directly on the paper. This he tried, mashing and bending the bristles so quickly that in no time at all it resembled a toothbrush that’s been used to clean grout. Plus he got paint on his hand again.

“Hand?” Evan said, holding his wet finger up to me. Grrr, I thought, wiping it clean and grabbing the brush from his other hand and swishing it around in the cup of water before handing it back to him. This piqued Evan’s interest; he, too, wanted to swirl the brush in the water.

So I held the cup while he swirled, and then he painted the paper with colored water from the brush. This made him happy, and I mentally kicked myself for not remembering every “easy art tip for toddlers” book I’d perused over the years with the idea of letting them paint using water, a paint brush and colored paper. I had five homemade potato stamps and eight rich colors of paint in front of us, and all he wanted was the cup of water.

Then he wanted to hold the cup. This I realized would be disastrous, but at that moment Kostyn wandered over and wanted to know what we were up to. Yes! I thought. An art student who would totally “get it.” I put on his smock and he climbed up in his booster seat and I showed him the stamps. “See! A hot air balloon stamp!” I raved, dipping it in red paint and pressing it onto his paper.

He was not impressed with the potato stamps.

He wanted a brush, “just like Evan!” And then he wanted a cup of water, “just like Evan!” By that time Evan had dumped his cup of water all over his paper. I cleaned up the mess, gave him a much smaller cup with a few drops of water, and handed over the other cup to Kostyn.

So they sat, painting water on paper, while the paint globs crusted on their paper plates and the sad little potato stamps lay in a cluster on the tablecloth. While I watched them, I thought about the cardboard box they’d favored over their toys for a six-week stretch last spring. I thought about the times I have set out with them on a treasure hunt only to get stuck in the driveway as they watch a trail of ants for 20 minutes.

And I realized that they may be learning things from me along the way, but I am truly the student in this awesome journey we’re on.

Also, I should have saved the potatoes for home fries.

Sunday Slice of Life

2010-10-03T23:45:00.001-04:00

The following random exchange took place between Kostyn and I late this afternoon when I got up to stretch my legs after an extra-long puzzle-making and books-reading session with him.

"Hey, Mommy, I wanna show you somethin’ in the playroom!"
"Oh honey what do you want to show me? I’m kinda tired, I need to rest right now."
"Aww, are you ruined?"
"What? No, I wouldn’t say I’m ruined. I’m just tired."
"Aww, you’re ruuuuiiiined. But you look great! You’re really good and great."
"Thank you, Kostyn."
"You look very nice and great. You’re OK."
"Aww, thank you honey. I’m fine."
"You’re good, Mommy. Very good and nice."
*He pats my leg*
"Kostyn, what do you want?"
"Nothin’ Mommy. Gotta dash!"

And off he went, leaving me very much the opposite of ruined.

(Im)perfections

2010-09-30T07:57:00.002-04:00

The other day the boys and I went hunting for leaves with which to make Leaf People, thanks to some inspiration found on Playful Learning. I told them we needed lots of leaves in different shapes, sizes and colors to make our Leaf People, and that’s the only direction I gave.

About halfway through our leaf hunt I realized I was doing something wrong.

It started when Evan came bounding over to me with half a leaf, ripped and brown and really unremarkable. I accepted it with fake enthusiasm — “Oooh, good one!” — and when he had turned away to search for more, I let it fall from my fingertips.

With Kostyn I was being more direct, showing him only the perfect ones, the brilliant reds and yellows with no browned corners or torn edges. “Look at this one, Kostyn!” I’d say, heralding a fallen leaf’s beauty and giving my son a subtle example of what he should be striving for.

The second time I silently rejected one of Evan’s broken leaves, Kostyn noticed.

“Mommy you dropped it!” he said, hurrying over to pick it up and give it back to me. He thought my letting it go was a mistake, and in that moment I realized it had been.

Perfection, unless we’re talking about God himself, exists only in the eye of the beholder. The gorgeous maple leaves I was gathering were perfect to me. But the giant brown poplar leaf pieces were in some way perfect to Evan. They were worthy of his attention, worthy enough for him to want to give them to his mommy. So why wasn’t I accepting them as beautiful, useful, and perfect in their own way?

It made me think about how ingrained the ideal of perfection is. From an early age we are shown what others deem “perfect.” Perfect bodies, perfect grades, perfect relationships. We’re wired to equate symmetry and proportion with beauty and perfection. But there is a time, before the judging world works its weariness into our psyches and souls, when perfection can be found in anything. A time when everything is useful, admired, wondrous. My boys are still in this phase. They still don’t mind an apple with a few bruises on it. They don’t notice the stains on the used Fisher Price playhouse we just bought at a garage sale. They showed the same level of excitement and awe at a trail of ants on the sidewalk as they did at a fleet of colorful hot air balloons lifting off right in front of them at dawn.

A few nights ago I spoke to the mother of a 12-year-old girl named Allie who has epilepsy, a seizure disorder she was diagnosed with at age 4. Her affliction is unusual in that she only has seizures at night, while she sleeps. So every single night for the past eight years her parents have taken shifts to sit by her bedside and watch her sleep, waiting for the first sign of a seizure so they can give her the medicine she needs to stop her from convulsing, foaming at the mouth and breathing irregularly. Allie’s father takes the more difficult 11 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. shift. He sits on the floor and tries to stay awake, but he keeps his hand resting on her back all night long; that way if he dozes off he’ll feel her begin to convulse and will wake up in time to help her.

If that isn’t perfect love, I don’t know what is.

Before she was diagnosed, she was a bright 4-year-old who already was reading and writing. But she now has a continual spike on her EEG from the minute she falls asleep to the minute she wakes up, and that constant rush of extra electricity keeps her brain from doing what it’s supposed to do at night — processing and storing the day’s information.

Allie can no longer read or write, and has been trying for eight frustrating years to regain that ability. She’s supposed to be in seventh grade, but developmentally she’s in first grade.

“She’s in Life Skills now,” her mother told me. “I never, ever thought I’d have a child in Life Skills.” Allie’s Life Skills room was moved to the end of the hallway this past year, her mother said. “It’s as if they’re putting those kids away where nobody can see them.”

As she said the words, I imagined myself letting go of Evan’s leaf pieces without so much as a backward glance.

The whole conversation made me think of Evan’s leaves and how perfect they are, as Allie is, in God’s eyes. For the sake of Allie’s frustration and her parents’ heartbreak, I wish her epilepsy would disappear. I wish she’d be able to progress in her studies. I wish her whole family might someday get a decent night’s sleep. But her mother was quick to tell me not to pity them.

“Don’t feel sorry for us,” she said. “Everybody has their stuff, and this is our stuff.”

It’s true, isn’t it? We are all like those poplar leaf pieces as much as we are like the brilliant maple leaves. We are all torn and jagged, with a burnt edge here and a broken stem there. And we are all beautiful and unique and perfect in our own ways too.

So an afternoon art project ended up being more of a life lesson. Thankfully we’d used both kinds — the whole and the torn, the brown and the brilliant — to make our Leaf People. I guess we’d made them in our own image without even realizing it.

I’d say that’s pretty perfect.

'Daddy, Don't Quit Your Day Job'

2010-09-12T20:50:00.002-04:00

Chris started grad school a couple weeks ago, taking two classes a semester — all online — in hopes of getting the advanced degree he needs for his "someday career," when he wants to make the switch from leading a newsroom to leading a classroom. It’s going to be a lot of work (and a good bit of sacrifice for all of us, I’m guessing) but it will be worth it to watch him realize a dream he’s had for so many years.

Last night Kostyn pointed to Chris’s Mass Comm Theory textbook and asked what it was.

“It’s a book I need for school,” Chris said. “I’m going to school so I can be a teacher.”

Kostyn was silent for a minute, still looking at the book. Then: “No.”

“You don’t want me to be a teacher?” Chris asked. “You want me to keep being an editor?”

“Nooo,” Kostyn said again, this time more forcefully. Then he climbed up on Chris’ lap and said, with quiet concern, “I want you to be a Daddy.”

Chris and I exchanged glances before he wrapped his arms around Kostyn and held him perhaps tighter than he ever had. “Ohhhhh I will ALWAYS be your Daddy,” he said. “Always always always. No matter what else I do, no matter what job I go to during the day, being your daddy is the most important thing to me. OK?”

“Yeah,” Kostyn said.

Powerful validation and motivation from one moment of misunderstanding.

'Struggle,' Redefined (Or, When You Feel Like You're Losing the Battle, Stop Waging the War)

2010-09-06T23:35:00.003-04:00

Struggling is a part of life, and it’s certainly a part of parenthood. We struggle with the decisions we’re making on our children’s behalfs. We struggle to make ends meet, to feed the family. We struggle through health problems, job losses, marital strife and a host of other things that weigh on our hearts and minds and wallets, all the while being called upon for carefree smiles and piggyback rides and “one more book, please!”

It seems like this is the season for struggling, as many people I know and love are in the thick of it, with no clear end in sight. We’ve had our share of struggles this year, too, and it’s added stress that saps the spirit and clutters the mind.

In light of that fact, I came across two things recently that gave me both pause and inspiration, so I thought I’d share them. One is religious; one is not. Perhaps someone else out there who is struggling will read these words and be able to dig just a little bit deeper inside oneself for the faith, strength and will to carry on. We’re all in this together, after all.

The first is from Chuck Swindoll’s Insight for Today daily online devotional posted Wednesday, Aug. 25. It was about 2 Corinthians 1, a letter from Paul in which he “spells out the details of his persecution, loneliness, imprisonments, beatings, feelings of despair, hunger, shipwrecks, sleepless nights, and that ‘thorn in the flesh’ — his companion of pain.”

Swindoll dissects Paul’s words in a way I found particularly helpful:

“...There is another observation worth noting in 2 Corinthians 1. No less than three reasons are given for suffering, each one introduced with the term ‘that’: ‘that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction’; ‘that we would not trust in ourselves’; ‘that thanks may be given’ (vv. 4, 9, 11). Admittedly, there may be dozens of other reasons, but here are three specific reasons we suffer.

Reason #1: God allows suffering so that we might have the capacity to enter into others’ sorrow and affliction.

Reason #2: God allows suffering so that we might learn what it means to depend on Him. Over and over He reminds us of the danger of pride, but it frequently takes suffering to make the lesson stick.

Reason #3: God allows suffering so that we might learn to give thanks in everything. Now, honestly, have you said, ‘Thanks, Lord, for this test’? Have you finally stopped struggling and expressed to Him how much you appreciate His loving sovereignty over your life?

How unfinished and rebellious and proud and unconcerned we would be without suffering! May these things encourage you the next time God heats up the furnace!”

In particular, I like the idea that the suffering I endure is not a test but a gift, a gift that bestows the ability to empathize with another human being who also suffers. It is obvious but we don’t often see or acknowledge this perspective when we are in the depths of our own hardship.

The second bit of inspiration I came across is from a post titled “Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose,” from the blog Cage Free Family. Cage Free Family is a blog about a family who gave away virtually all their possessions and bought a 25-year-old RV to hit the road and teach their kids, and themselves, about the differences between “want” and “need.”

You should really check out the entire post, but I’ll give you a good teaser here:

“... Your choice is in perspective. It’s all how you look at it and this too shall pass. The thing you bemoan now will be the source of nostalgia in the future. The change you perceive as a loss now is actually the door to something new. Loss makes room for gain. Death makes room for new life. Trying to hold onto a moment, a life situation, is like trying to hold onto your breath. You can't. Things will be as they are meant to be - with or without your approval. Worry is only an echo of that thinly veiled and unenforceable threat. It’s rather like trying to avoid getting wet when you're already soaked. ;-)

Life will be what it will be. Everything you experience is for you. It’s a gift. It’s what makes life worth living: the contrast of moments. The lifting, exhilarating inhale ... the sweet, peace of the pause, the utterly necessary, releasing exhale. Just breathe. Let it be. Life is beautiful. Do your best. Live with intention and acceptance. Loooooove. Everything. While you can. Because, Baby, you don’t have forever. The only thing you will ever truly have is the opportunity to see the beauty of this one fleeting moment. Savor the pain as fully as you taste the pleasure. This moment is the only thing that can be promised to you. Love it for whatever it is.

How lucky are we?”

How inspirational is that? “The only thing you will ever truly have is the opportunity to see the beauty of this one fleeting moment.”

This is what I’ve been trying to put into practice lately. When some aspect of my life feels oppressive or shaken or feeble at best, I keep my heart open and fill it with anything I can. Faith. Peace. My kids’ laughter. A warm memory. Thankfulness. The staggering beauty of the written word. Empathy.

And just like that, I feel lucky again.

Manners: The Good, The Bad, and The Crime of Indifference

2010-08-30T01:24:00.002-04:00

At 3 years old, Kostyn is practicing a lot these days. He’s learning how to use the potty and how to sound out words to read them. He’s practicing how to scale the local playground’s rock wall, and how to pronounce the “L” in “ladybug.”

But more than anything else at the moment, he’s practicing his manners.

We used sign language as a communication tool with both our boys, so before they could speak they were signing “please” and “thank you.” Essentially those were among Kostyn’s very first words, and he used them gleefully and proudly every chance he got. Somewhere along the line, though, the “me!” toddler within emerged. Suddenly, “Can I have some more milk please?” turned into “Mommy I want more milk!”

So we’ve gone back to the drawing board, so to speak, to reinforce the basics of manners both at the table and out in the world. There’s an awful lot of patiently “ignoring” his demand until he re-formulates it into a pleasant request going on around here.

It can be frustrating for both of us, but in the grand scheme of things I know this is the easy part. It may take some time, but it’s not difficult to train a 3-year-old to say certain words to get what he wants. What’s more difficult -- and far more important -- is teaching that child the reason behind the words. Teaching him about respect and kindness, about The Golden Rule.
I’ll never forget the first time I was called out for breaking that rule. It’s a memory that haunts me, thankfully, to this day.

I was in fourth grade (many many many years ago) and was a total wallflower who was by the grace of God (I thought) blessed to have found favor with the “cool girls” in my class. They were bubbly and cute and I was so happy that they considered me worthy of sharing their lunch table. I don’t think I added much to the conversation, but I tried my best to blend in.

Another shy girl in our class who hadn’t found favor with the “cool girls” was a short brunette named Wendy. Wendy’s clothes were worn and ill-fitting; her hair was always a mess. When I was in school, kids like Wendy were called “grubs.” It shames me to type that today.

I don’t remember what was said to Wendy, or who said it, the day my fourth-grade teacher called my friends and I out into the hallway. She did not mention Wendy by name, nor did she call out a single one of us for any particular transgression. She merely handed us a dictionary and told us to look up the word “clique.”

“I don’t want any cliques in my classroom,” she said, then left us there in the hall.

I wonder if the other girls remember that incident; it has certainly stayed with me. I came from a good home, a Christian home, with caring parents who taught me right from wrong. For years I assuaged my guilt over that memory by telling myself I was merely a silent partner in the crime. I never actually said anything bad to Wendy, I was just guilty by association.

In time I realized that was perhaps the greatest transgression of all — the crime of silence when someone else is being mistreated, misrepresented or misunderstood. Because having good manners is not just saying “please” and “thank you.” It’s not merely holding a door open, or not snickering too loudly at the joke your friend is making at someone else’s expense. “Minding your manners” involves learning and using the tools needed to gracefully walk beside a person and offer them, at the very least, your respect. Because that’s what they deserve. That’s what everyone deserves.

I worry about kids today, about how they’re learning The Golden Rule and how the neverending cacophony of technology affects their ability to live by those lessons. I know even I have trouble sometimes setting the right tone in my own emails and text messages, and minding my manners when addressing people on Facebook or Twitter.

I read something tonight about how manners expert Maralee McKey is looking for Manners Mentors, a small army of Christian women who’d like to influence a generation by teaching children manners. I think it’s a lofty goal, and a much-needed one. Perhaps a manners class would have changed the outcome of my story from fourth grade. It certainly would have given Wendy a better chance for a happier childhood.

Isn’t every child worth that?

[Disclaimer: This post was prompted by the opportunity to win a sponsorship to the Relevant Conference, a blogging conference for Christian women bloggers. But every word of it is true.]

The Workaday World

2010-08-29T12:25:00.000-04:00

(The first part of this was originally posted on my other blog, Training Wheels. I would just link you to that post but the website doesn’t give me such an option, so I have to repost the entire thing here. Skip ahead if you’ve already read it....)

The other day I herded the boys outside toward the car, and like usual Kostyn took a detour into the side yard while I was strapping Evan into his car seat. He picked up a stick and started tapping things with it.

When I finished wrestling his little brother’s limbs into submission, I motioned for Kostyn to head over to his side of the car.

“OK, Kostyn, your turn!” I called. He ignored my request and continued beating things with the stick. Tap, tap, tap.

“Come on, Kostyn! Let’s go!” I urged. This time he addressed me but didn’t look up from what he was doing.

“I’m working, Mommy. You have to wait,” he said, targeting a random patch of grass. Tap, tap, tap.

In an instant, I was the child and he was the parent. I stood there, silent, watching.

“I just have a little bit of work to do. You have to wait,” he said again. He moved toward a row of rocks. Tap, tap, tap.

Then he whirled around to a low-hanging branch. Tap, tap, tap. The leaves shook. Evan sucked his thumb and watched his brother out the open car door. I remained silent, thinking of how nonsensical and pointless it must look to him when I am tap, tap, tapping on the laptop keyboard.

“No, honey, I can’t play a game with you right now.” Tap, tap, tap.

“Yes, I will read that book to you in just a few minutes. Mommy’s almost done working.” Tap, tap, tap.

I try hard to save my work for when the boys are sleeping, be that in the afternoon or late at night. But there are days when phone interviews overlap with the end of nap time, or no nap is taken but deadline nears. It is a blessing for me to be able to work from home. But unfortunately, that sometimes means I have to work, at home.

When their father kisses their foreheads and heads out the door in the morning, there is no whining or carrying on. Only a happy “Bye, Daddy!” as we continue to read books or talk about what’s for breakfast. Working is what Daddy does, it’s something that has been associated with him in their little minds from the beginning. Daddy goes to work every day, then he comes home and plays with us.

But Mommy is here all the time. She’s the one who’s supposed to drop everything to read the book they bring, the one who is supposed to jump up to play Hide-and-Seek as soon as it is proposed. My lap is supposed to be for them, not for my laptop.

Priorities are complicated, and that is a hard lesson for all of us. Sometimes it seems like nobody wins. They don’t understand that the alternative to me working from home is me working AWAY from home, which I’m willing to bet would make them far less happy than the occasional “Shhhh, Mommy’s on the phone!”

So I stood there in the driveway and watched Kostyn tap, tap, tap his way around the yard for a few minutes. I wanted to demonstrate the same patience and quiet I ask of them on those occasions when I am tap, tap, tapping away. Eventually I asked if he wanted to bring his “work” with him and he gleefully skipped over to the car and climbed in with stick in hand. At first I was worried he might use it to hurt his brother or insist on bringing it inside the store. But once we started driving and talking, it was dropped to his feet and forgotten. I made sure to do the same with my “stick” later that day.

As if my child hadn’t given me a healthy enough dose of perspective, I got another heap of it on Friday when I actually had to get up and out the door for work. I had two separate business appointments for a freelance project, one on a Wednesday afternoon and the other on a Friday morning. That meant I had to find child care for two different days. It also meant I had to find two decent outfits in my closet that were considerably more professional than my usual playground attire. The second challenge proved to be much more difficult than the first.

Even more challenging, though, was actually getting ready and leaving the house on time without making my kids feel like I was shoving them aside in favor of five minutes in the mirror with my makeup bag. Which, in actuality, I was. It was difficult to be in both work mode and mom mode, to know that people outside the house were counting on me and waiting for me, but to not want to brush off my son’s request for one more hug or my baby’s need for another cup of milk. I got a newfound respect for my husband, and for every other working parent out there who has to rush out the door each day, leaving behind waving, smiling, sometimes crying little ones. And I can’t imagine having to do all that AND get the kids ready and out the door for day care or school at the same time, too.

In the end, I was on time to my business meeting and my kids had a fun morning with my sister and their cousins. It was nice to be wearing heels on a Friday morning, nice to chat with other grownups about grownup things, and it was super-nice to meet my husband for lunch without spending the hour tending to toddlers. (We hadn’t done that in over three years!) And it was extra-nice to leave work at the office and come home to my kids, without having the need to tap, tap, tap on the laptop that afternoon.

Well, until they took their naps....

On Guard

2010-08-21T13:29:00.001-04:00

Kostyn has been going through a phase where he asks constantly if I’ll keep him safe.

“Mommy, will you keep me safe?” he asks when I tuck him in at night.

“Mommy, sit here and keep me safe,” he says when I make a move to leave our little nest of books and blankets on the couch.

“Mommy! You have to keep me safe!!” he whines for no discernible reason, scrambling into my lap at a moment’s notice.

He hasn't been exposed to anything dangerous or frightening, nor has he watched anything scary on TV, so I'm not entirely sure where this is coming from. But he has been sick this past week, so I think some of it stems from that queasy feeling that leaves one grasping for comfort, wanting a loved one’s arms to wrap around you when you’re not feeling like yourself. When his little head spins and his tummy betrays him, he wants to know I’ll steady his world. And when his imagination moves into dark places when he sees a shadow on his wall at night, he wants to know my eyes see every corner of his existence.

Every time he asks me I tell him I will. “Of course, I’ll always keep you safe,” I say, scooping him into my arms and sweeping his shaggy bangs to the side of his forehead.

“You will always keep me safe?” he asks again, sinking into the comfort of reassurance.

“Yes, always and always. I will always make sure you and Evan are safe,” I say.

And then I say a silent, desperate prayer that God helps me keep my promise.

Fighting Summer Fatigue

2010-08-12T09:00:00.019-04:00

Now that we’re over halfway through the summer, I find myself falling victim to my inner child whining “There’s nothing to doooooo!” The novelty of splashing in the kiddie pool, experimenting at the water table, digging in the sandbox, walking around the block, collecting leaves and bugs ... it’s all feeling a little “been there, done that” lately. I think the boys are feeling that way, too, because they have taken to running away from whatever activity I’m trying to interest them in when we’re in the backyard. Evan takes off for the neighbor’s yard, Kostyn runs toward the road, the dog sprints in the direction of a rabbit she saw under the neighbor’s bushes three weeks ago, and I’m left scrambling to keep everyone corralled in a fence-less yard right next to a highway.

So our outings have become an exercise in my patience, stamina and agility. I feel more like a warden than a carefree mom on summer vacation. Plus, it seems like no matter how much I cajole Kostyn into peeing in the potty before we go outside, he opts to wait until I’ve finally gotten shorts and shoes and suntan lotion and art supplies and towels and kids and the dog outside before peeing down his leg and waddling over to me saying, “I peeeeeeed.” Inevitably this happens just when Evan is, against all odds, contentedly playing with something right in the yard, and I’m forced to pluck him out of the sandbox as he loudly protests, and drag all of us back inside to change his big brother.

Add to all that the fact that Kostyn has been going through a serious tantrum phase these past couple weeks, and I’ve got myself a formula for Summer Fatigue. I actually began daydreaming about snow yesterday, which really is insane given the fact that snowy weather means wriggling tons of layers on little boys, fighting with them to wear hats and mittens, dragging them around the yard in a sled while one cries and the other kicks the cry-er, and then bringing everyone inside to strip all those wet layers, towel off the dog, warm little toes and fingers, and inevitably soak my sock in a puddle of slush on the kitchen floor.

As you can see, I’m in serious need of an attitude adjustment.

To get out of my “woe is me” funk and gain some much-needed perspective, I spent some time really studying the snapshots I’ve taken so far this summer. I wanted to relive the little moments when both boys were smiling and engaged, with dry underwear and eyes wide with wonder. I noticed the subtle changes in their faces over the last few months. I marveled at how far both have come this summer in their physical abilities. And I smiled at the digital proof of their growing camaraderie.

I think it’s a good idea to do this once in awhile — to flip through the pics on our phones and scroll back through our Facebook updates about silly things our little ones have said and done. It’s particularly important for us stay-at-home parents entrenched in the everyday routines that, if we’re not careful, sometimes begin to feel like drudgery. Because every day our kids become different people, with stronger bodies and more expansive imaginations than the day before. And they deserve our excitement about every spashfest in the kiddie pool, not just the first time we fill it.

Turns out it really has been an incredible summer. Take a look....

Kostyn loves to torture himself with ice-cold water.

If Kostyn's not careful, Evan will soon find another use for that golf club he likes to carry around.

Shaker art activity. The shakers filled with glitter never made it back inside. We have the most magical-looking sandbox sand ever.

"Yeah. Great craft idea Mom. Glue and glitter and all sorts of other crap? Well done. Now clean me..."

Ev's first popsicle! He's giddy with the non-dairy sugar rush.

Washing their animals in a questionably clean "bathtub."

I love the size comparison here. This was taken at a county fair.


I swear his looks changed so much this summer.

See caption above.

I think this one sums up our summer perfectly.

Wait, so does this one.

Aaaand, this one.

Half-birthday wishes

2010-08-07T11:47:00.001-04:00

The following exchange between Kostyn and myself took place out of the blue a few days ago. My birthday is in February, so I'm not sure what prompted it.

"Happy birthday Mommy!!"

"Oh, wow! Thank you! How old am I today?"

"Well, you are 20 years ago!"

"If I was 20 years ago, you wouldn’t be here and I would be 17."

"Seventeen?! I don’t know about 17. Can I have cake?"

"Um, we don’t have any cake."

"No cake! But it’s your birthday!"

It ain't my favorite (chocolate mayo cake), but for a half-birthday I guess it was appropriate:

Top Ten Things I Learned From Taking a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old to a Wedding

2010-08-04T22:33:00.001-04:00

[The following was swiped from my other blog, Training Wheels, which you can find at www.centralpennparent.com. It's a great resource for families everywhere, not just in midstate PA.]

10. It doesn’t matter if you start getting your kids ready at 12:30 p.m. for a 4 p.m. wedding. One of them will still poop in his diaper at 3:57 p.m.

9. It is absolutely essential to have something with you in the church pew to occupy little ones during the ceremony.

8. If that “something” is Goldfish crackers, be prepared for your child to yell “I want another one!!” during solemn vow-exchange moments.

7. It doesn’t matter if the reception has an open bar or cash bar. You’ll be too busy — and your hands will be too full — to drink much of anything.

6. It’s not a good idea to wear a necklace that looks like a teether.

5. An hors d’oeuvres table looks like a free-for-all to toddlers. They have a very hard time understanding the etiquette behind filling a plate, not grabbing whatever block of cheese looks tasty and eating it immediately.

4. A dance floor is very much like a playground to little kids. Most adults — especially servers carrying heavy trays of hot food — don’t find this amusing.

3. A toddler will be enamored by a DJ’s light and sound system until he is brought to see it up close, at which time he’ll scream bloody murder that “THE LIGHTS ARE TOO LOUD AND SCARY!!!”

2. I can’t slow-dance with my husband unless each of us is holding one of our sons.

And the Number One Thing I Learned From Taking a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old to a Wedding is......

1. Swaying with all three of my boys at the same time is actually pretty great.

BONUS LESSON: The live betta fish centerpiece I thought would be an awesome distraction during the reception gave me more than I bargained for, as I was forced to hold it on my lap for the six-hour car ride home. Welcome to the family, *Dokey!

[*Named by Kostyn. I'm not convinced he wasn't trying to say "Dorothy," as in Elmo's goldfish. But I'd rather it be Dokey, as in "O-key..."]

On broken nests and babies

2010-07-24T15:08:00.000-04:00

I’ve learned in the last couple weeks that babies are incredibly fragile. They’re also remarkably resilient.

Recently my niece Z fell off an ottoman onto the floor. The fall was less than 2 feet but her head struck the leg of a desk chair, and something about that impact jarred her little brain and sent a wave of panic and prayers rippling across our family. She had a seizure, started throwing up, then eventually went totally limp, her eyes open and fixed — catatonic.

It pains me to imagine the scene at my sister’s house as they frantically tried to revive her, as they choked out an address to 911 operators, as they cried and shouted and waited an eternity for help to arrive. My sister flew in a medivac helicopter with her baby girl to a nearby hospital, praying, crying, bargaining with God.

Within an hour of arriving, Z was better. She could focus on her parents and move her limbs. She eventually nursed to sleep and was discharged the following afternoon after round-the-clock tests and doctor consultations and many, many more prayers.

In the hour between my younger sister’s call to tell me about the accident, and my older sister’s call to tell me “She’s going to be OK,” I didn’t do much except pray. I tried not to imagine the worst, but that’s difficult to do in such a moment of uncertainty.

My mind kept drifting to a former colleague of Chris’s who lost his infant son a couple months ago. The tragedy had caused Chris and I to talk about such a grievous loss, and how — or if — we’d be able to go on living.

During that discussion I told Chris that I try hard to remind myself every day that Kostyn and Evan are not fully our kids, that God has merely placed them in our care until the time He calls them home. Every night I thank God for having been blessed with one more day with “my” boys.

I think when we lose a child we grieve for ourselves, for all the dreams we had and all the beauty of this world we wanted to show them. But the beauty of heaven is, without a doubt, infinitely more amazing than this place we call home. As a parent, our most basic prayers are for our kids to be happy and safe, free of pain and darkness and struggles. In that regard, a parent couldn't ask for anything more than for her child to be cradled in the hand of God.

And still we grieve, because Oh My God the pain, the loss, the broken dreams and unfulfilled potential. At the time I said that the challenge, for all of us, is that we have to love God more ... more than we love ourselves, even more than we love our children. If we love God more than we love our children (which isn't as hard as it seems, when we realize they are of and from Him) then we are better prepared to “let go and let God.” And in the meantime, all we can do is cherish every second we have with them, not just go through the motions but really soak in their presence. Because they are only on loan to us. Their heavenly Father is their parent for eternity — and actually, we would have it no other way.

So went the discussion when it was all hypothetical. But when Z’s actual fate was hanging in the balance ... it was a lot harder to “let go and let God.”

A day after Z’s ordeal, a nest of baby birds came crashing down from its perch on our chimney onto our fireplace floor. We knew that a couple of Chimney Swifts had taken up residence in our chimney awhile ago, so when we heard one suddenly fluttering around near the fireplace floor we assumed he had fallen and needed to find his way back up to the nest.

Sure enough, by morning we didn’t hear him or see him anymore, so we figured once dawn broke the bird could see the chimney’s opening and made his way toward the light.

But just before noon, I opened the fireplace doors to see if there was any sign of the little fella, and that’s when I saw them -- three tiny nestlings, no bigger than my thumb, lying on the fireplace floor. Their nest lay in two pieces, and one baby bird’s neck was caught in the branches. Another was lying face-down in the soot, barely moving. A third one was trapped under the broken nest. An uncracked egg had rolled a few inches away.

It was a horrible scene and I instantly felt terrible for not having peeked into the fireplace sooner. All morning the boys and I had walked by, not noticing the struggle for life happening behind the small glass doors.

I spent the next hour frantically calling around trying to find someone who could tell me what to do. I didn’t know if I should touch them, move them, try to feed them? Where would I put them? What would I give them to eat? I finally got a wildlife rehabilitator on the phone who said she’d take them and “do her best” but that I needed to get them to her, in Hershey, about 45 minutes away. I told her how long they’d likely been there, struggling, and she said, “Come as soon as you can.”

So I got a small jewelry box (she told me to put them in the smallest box I could find) and lined it with tissues before gingerly scooping up the tiny birds and lying them next to one another. One gave a small chirp; another tried to lift its head but couldn’t manage it. The third barely moved. I placed the egg, about the size of my thumb nail, in the box as well.

I told Kostyn about our rescue plan and he wanted to see the little creatures we were saving. He was astounded at their size and so earnest in his desire to help. We sped off to Hershey, me and the boys and three baby birds, and I kept looking down at the box, its top slightly turned to allow fresh air to reach them. Every once in awhile I heard the faintest chirp and I’d smile outwardly and grimace inwardly, wondering if I was too late, if it had been too long. If the fall had been too far. If they were too young to make it without their mother.

I thought about my sister in the helicopter, unable to do anything but hold her baby girl’s hand as she was strapped down for the ride.

We made it there in record time but one of the birds was no longer moving, and I was sure the fragile egg would never open. I handed them over and asked if I could call in a few days to check on them. But my messages have gone unanswered, and I’m left to wonder about their fate.

I think part of me doesn’t want to know.

The hardest part of the ordeal was returning home and hearing the flutter of wings high up in the fireplace, as the mother undoubtedly returned for her babies. I know she couldn’t have saved them without our help, but still my heart breaks a little because I cannot tell her where they are. I can’t reassure her that they’re getting help, that this was their only chance. That I’m so, so sorry.

But she’s a bird, which means she exists more on instinct than emotion. Perhaps she feels the power of Life and God course through her wings in a way that gets muddled in humans by the voices in our heads and the distractions in our minds. Perhaps she doesn’t need my explanation at all.

So these are my recent lessons about the fragility and resiliency of life. Nests fall; babies fall. Lives change forever in ordinary moments. If we’re lucky, the very next moment includes a watchful eye. A caring hand. A helicopter. A prayer. Always, a prayer. Because these are not our babies, and these are not our birds. His hand is the unbreakable nest, the eternal cradle. Our goal is to get there one day, all of us. Just not yet.

Not yet.

Amen.

Our Little Stars

2010-07-14T22:56:00.000-04:00

One of the hardest things for parents to do is to shut their trap about their kid. Seriously, how obnoxious are those parents who make their toddler perform for their friends (“C’m’ere Junior, show Aunt Rita and Uncle Jerry how you can do the Macarena....”), or the ones who casually let slip after Story Time that their 2-year-old likes to sing nursery rhymes in Spanish?

When we’re not showing off our child’s talents or putting them in accessorized ensembles just for the “oohs” and “aahs” of fellow moms at the park, we’re apologizing to random strangers in the checkout line about how “he’s usually not like this” when our whiny little boy is melting down over wanting a candybar, or admonishing our shy little girl when she doesn’t pipe up with her name and a clear “Hello! How are you today?” when the sweet senior citizen stops our cart and tries to engage her in conversation.

Believe me, I’m admonishing myself as much as anyone else. I have been known to interrupt my happily playing toddler with a gentle command to perform for some relative over the phone: “Kostyn, come here and sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ for Nana.”

Why do we do this? Why can’t we just leave our kids alone to be who they want to be, to sometimes speak up and sometimes stay silent? To dance and sing when they want to, not when we want them to? Are we worried that our child’s every move is a reflection on us, on our parenting skills or discipline tactics or genetic imperfections? What are we trying to prove, and more importantly are we trying to prove it to the rest of the world, or to ourselves?

I was wondering all that today as I found myself biting my tongue more than once at the pediatrician’s office. We were there for Kostyn’s 3-year checkup and Evan’s 15-month checkup (which, hello, scheduling two kids to get two shots each at the same time can absolutely not be done unless both parents are there), and Kostyn was acting like a 3-year-old. Which is to say he was not answering every question the pediatrician asked in the way in which I know he is CAPABLE of answering.

“How old are you now, Kostyn?” she asked.

“Two,” he said, and I smiled and waited for him to laugh at his obvious joke, which he did not.

“You’re 2?!” I mocked surprise, obnoxiously trying to coax him into a correction. “How old are you now?” I sing-songed, hating my tone of voice instantly and vowing to keep my yapper locked unless spoken to from then on.

And that was hard. Oh-so-hard. It was hard to do when the pediatrician asked where his heart was and he proudly held out his left hand. You know where your heart is! I thought as I bit my tongue and smiled, watching the pediatrician scribbling notes in his chart.

And it was hard when she pointed to the color orange and he called it yellow. He knows his colors! I thought as I clamped my jaw.

And it was especially hard when she asked him all sorts of questions and he basically answered with monosyllabic grunts. Because my kid is normally very verbal. He’s articulate. Opinionated. Outgoing!

“He’s usually not like this,” I kept thinking. But I didn’t say it. I let him be who he wanted to be in that moment. So what if he wasn’t displaying his *obvious brilliance; he was polite and cooperative, and he got a clean bill of health (and a kiddie sundae at Dairy Queen across the street after braving the needles). Really, what more could I ask for?

I swear I’m not even going to prep him with answers before his 4-year checkup.

*Old habits die hard.

Hello, my name is ...

2010-07-11T14:44:00.001-04:00

Me and "S"....er...."Z"

After months of agonizing over it, my sister just changed her daughter’s name. The little girl will be 1 in a month.

While such a decision may seem daring, if not a little wacky, to a casual observer, those who know my sister probably barely batted an eye at the announcement. This is because she’s always been the audacious, march-to-the-beat-of-her-drum type, so this is just the most recent in a decades-long string of bold moves pulled off with confidence after exhaustive contemplation and extensive research.

The whole thing has made me think about the act of naming babies. When does a string of letters attached to us at birth truly become the word to which our identity is tied? When, along the course of our lives, do we take ownership of our own names? When does our name become a part of who we are, not merely a word that pleased our parents or came to us under some obligation of family tradition or cultural or religious demands?

I know I was named Robyn at birth, but when did my personality, my very being become synonymous with the word “Robyn” to myself and to my family and friends?

I’ve had people look at my son and say, “Oh, he defintely looks like an Evan,” which really makes about as much sense as saying “He definitely looks like a Steve” or “He definitely looks like a Rodney,” because really, there are a million Evans out there who I suppose all “look like an Evan.” What do any of those words truly “look like,” anyway?

Both of my son’s names, Kostyn Orrie and Evan Thomas (Kostyn, Orrie and Thomas are all family names), came to us long before their births. Both first names were ones we personally liked, but more than that, they were names that were laid on our hearts as the “right” names for each child the very days we found out we were having a boy.

Even so, when we had our second son I had some regret over his name -- not because I didn’t think Evan was right for him, but because I loved the name Orrie and wished I’d known I was to have two boys, as I probably would have “saved” that name for my second child. (Hindsight is 20/20.) For the first several months of Evan’s life I would look at him once in awhile and think, Orrie. He could have been an Orrie. Was he an Orrie? He seemed to fit that name as much as he fit Evan. Should we have gone with Kostyn Thomas, thereby leaving Orrie open? Would it be weird to have a Kostyn Orrie and an Orrie Thomas? Were these the whims and imaginings of a crazy, sleep-deprived woman??

Eventually any wishful thinking I had about Orrie disappeared, as Evan grew more strongly and fittingly into his given name. But I can feel my sister’s plight and empathize with her predicament.

My sister and her husband didn’t pick a name for their child before her birth. Like many parents, they had a short list of possibilities — a few boy names, a few girl names — and they waited to see which name struck them as being “right” after their baby was born. Except none of them leapt off the list and declared itself her name, the way their son’s name had done upon his birth four years earlier.

Pressured to sign a birth certificate before leaving the birthing center a day after their daughter was born, they begrudgingly picked a name off their list and hoped it was the right choice. Instantly, my sister regretted her decision — not necessarily the name, but the decision to pick a name rather than wait until the right name revealed itself.

So for the next nine months or so she fretted over the name she’d chosen, S*. It just never seemed to fit her, my sister said. People pronounced it differently, and she struggled with figuring out how it should be pronounced. Without meaning to, they rarely called her by her given name, instead resorting to nicknames and pet names.

Sometime this spring, as S’s personality began to emerge, so did her name: Z. It became increasingly clear to both my sister and her husband that Z was the right name. (Though he’d tell you he liked the name Z best from very early on.)

“She’s just going to be a really strong, intense person,” my sister said, “and Z suits her.”

Behind closed doors they began to call her Z, to see if it fit. They explained to her big brother that when he was born he smiled at them in such a way that said, without a doubt, “My name is T!” But his sister had kept her name a secret, and was just now revealing it to them. He accepted this logic without so much as a cocked eyebrow, and was somehow able to compartmentalize the whole thing, calling his sister Z at home and S when out among friends. After a couple months they were absolutely sure: They made S part of her middle name and made Z her first name for good.

And they began to reintroduce their almost-1-year-old daughter to friends and family.

My sister knows the decision makes her look a little crazy. (OK, maybe more than a little.) Ultimately, though, she doesn’t care. She is finally able to put the burden of having picked the “wrong” name behind her. She also knows when Z grows up and hears the whole story, she might identify with S and want to change it back, and that will be OK too. Because your name is a very personal thing, and it should sound right, feel right, and be spelled right, for you. I can’t imagine being “Robin-with-an-i,” for instance; that’s simply not me. That ‘y’ in my name is as much a part of who I am as the double-z’s in my middle name (Suzzane, thanks to a spelling error by dear ol' Dad on my birth certificate, which I love).

So S is now Z, and my 3-year-old is looking at me a little funny these days when he points to a picture of his cousin and says “There’s S!” and I correct him and say “No, Z!” He probably thinks his mommy’s a little nuts, and that’s ok; it’s only a matter of time before he realizes I’m not the crazy one in the family. ;)

How did you know the name you picked for your child was right? Have you ever known a parent who had “namer’s remorse”?

*My sis prefers for her kids’ real names to be kept offline.

Freckle Face

2010-07-05T23:31:00.001-04:00

Can you see it? Right there below the corner of his mouth? Faint but getting darker...

Chris told me today I’m obsessed with freckles. He’s not wrong.

I distinctly remember the first time Kostyn noticed my freckles, and the time I noticed Kostyn’s first freckle (on his right forearm). And his second one (behind his left thigh).

And just last week, he got his first freckle on his face, which coincidentally is in the exact same spot as one of my first facial freckles — right at the corner of my mouth. I know this not because I remember the day it appeared, but because I remember all the years my mother tried to wipe it off with a napkin or washcloth or spit-moistened thumb, mistaking it for some sort of crumb, a stray remnant from my last meal.

It was not.

I never really imagined or wished for either of my boys to inherit my skin, because frankly I've never liked it. I hate that my skin has only two shades: pasty white or sunburnt red. There are parts of me that appear to be tan, but when you get real close you realize it’s just that I have so many freckles they all sort of melt together to create the illusion of tanned skin. Not. The same. Thing.

Chris, on the other hand, has great skin — that olive-undertoned, tan-at-the-drop-of-a-hat skin that I so covet. I wanted my boys to inherit that skin.

But so far, I gotta say, they’re both pretty pale. And Kostyn now has three freckles on one arm, two on the other, two on his legs and this one, "Just like Mommy!", on the corner of his mouth. (And yes, I slather both boys head to toe with sunscreen every day.)

So now I’ve started to daydream about what he’d look like with his nose and cheeks speckled with freckles. And I gotta say, the vision is pretty darn cute.

This is ironic, because I’ve never been fond of my own freckles. In fact I remember meeting a girl in college who had even more freckles than me, and when she said, "Don't you just love having so many freckles?!" she couldn't believe I rolled my eyes and said, "What?? I hate them!"

"Are you kidding?! I LOVE my freckles!" she declared, and until that moment it had never occurred to me that there could be people who love having tons of freckles. Thing is, it had never occurred to her there could be people who DIDN'T love having them. We were equally astounded.

"But ... they're so different!" she said. "They make us stand out!"

"That's the problem," I replied. "I don't want people to notice me because of my freckles. I don't WANT to stand out."

What I remember about that conversation, besides how annoyingly bubbly she was about the subject, was that I thought she DID look great with freckles. They were adorable on her. I remember wishing I looked like her, which, in hindsight, is fairly crazy for the obvious reason that SHE HAD MORE FRECKLES THAN ME.

I guess what I didn't like about my freckles was that they’d taken over, covered everything exposed to the sun, as well as some spots that rarely get to see the light of day. Stupidly, I spent most of my life resenting them for doing that. But now I realize they aren’t covering me, they ARE me. And with each tiny sun spot that appears on my little boy, I see even more of me in him, and that makes me smile. They make me smile.

His AND mine.

World Cup, playground style

2010-07-03T15:34:00.002-04:00

I’ve watched several World Cup games over the last couple weeks, and the boys have barely taken notice of the tiny men running around the great green field on TV, as a mass of mosquitoes seems to hum in the background.

But yesterday they were stopped in their tracks by the sight of a gang of young boys, the oldest barely 14 or so, playing some sort of playground soccer hybrid on the lawn of the private swim club we often walk by. All of them were barefoot and tanned, their ridiculously long board shorts somehow staying wrapped around impossibly skinny waists.

I could have stood there for a half-hour and not figured out the rules, though I’m sure any 10-year-old who stepped in instinctively knew how to play. I do know they were playing a game inspired by the World Cup, because every player was a country (which further confused me, since why would you kick the ball to another country?).

“Netherlands! Over here!”

“Hey guys, we just lost two Italys.”

“Yes! Brazil scores!”

Kostyn and Evan stood on the other side of the fence transfixed by the kicking, the scrambling, the high-fiving. Twice the ball sailed over the chain links and they asked if we’d get it. Kostyn ran to that ball with a seriousness of purpose I’ve rarely seen, and when he heaved it back to them they actually thanked him, and waved to Evan, before resuming play. Kostyn didn’t so much as crack a smile; he was too engrossed in studying this future version of himself.

I saw it too. I saw several years ahead of us right there before me, the time when my boys have their own board shorts and shaggy haircuts. When they’re old enough to be alone with their friends; to play simple-yet-complicated playground games; to be part of a team. When they’re big enough to pass, and score, and win. And lose.

These boys were not aggressive or foul-mouthed; they were friendly, polite and positive. They all went wild when the smallest among them scored.

I smiled, imagining the future and hoping it will look like this — especially when they welcomed the lone girl who wandered over. She, too, was impossibly skinny in her little bikini, and her long brown hair hung in tangles down her back as they asked who she wanted to be.

“Is USA taken?” she asked.

“No, nobody’s USA,” they answered.

There were a few mumbled rules and vague pointing toward the imaginary net at the fence where my boys were standing, waiting.

Then, “She’s USA!” one boy called out as the mad scramble began again.

I gave Kostyn and Evan a few more moments before I shuffled them on down the road, hoping all the lessons they had just soaked in will stick. Because someday when they’re playing a pick-up game with their pals, all without shoes and cares and adult supervision, I hope they remember to thank the wide-eyed 3-year-old who fetches their lost ball.

(And they sure as hell better welcome the little girl who asks to play, too. Go USA!)

And so it begins

2010-06-30T22:45:00.003-04:00

This afternoon while I was putting away laundry in the bedroom I heard an all-too-familiar pattern of noises coming from the other room.

1. Kostyn and Evan laughing and shrieking
2. Tiny footsteps bounding around the house while hand-held musical instruments are played
3. A sudden stop to the footsteps
4. Evan’s pained cries
5. Three quick footsteps heading in the opposite direction of the downed toddler

Like the three dozen other times this happens daily, I bolted into the room to assess the damage and dispense consequences. Usually a wordless Evan just looks at me, his face pink and his expression helpless, while Kostyn tries to be casual, as if everybody’s fine. This leaves me to question Kostyn about what happened, trying not to jump to conclusions JUST IN CASE the whole thing was an accident or Evan provoked his brother, neither of which is ever the case.

But today something different happened. Today marked a new chapter in their relationship as siblings, a new dimension to their communication. Today when I ran into the room and said, “What happened?!” while looking from one to the other, Evan looked at me, set his jaw and pointed, adamantly, at his brother.

“HE did it, Mommy,” his tiny index finger yelled. I saw Kostyn’s eyes widen nearly imperceptively, and I couldn’t help but smile, and then laugh, at the little tattletale-as-self-defense brother Kostyn had unwittingly created.

Just like that, alongside Give and Take, Follow and Lead, Teach and Learn, and Tickle and Laugh, they added two new roles to their repertoire as siblings:

Assault and Accuse.

Not a Shadow of a Doubt

2010-06-20T22:18:00.008-04:00

Someday, a long time from now,
you’ll look at these pictures and smile.
You probably won’t remember this particular playground,
or this particular day.

You won’t remember how you ignored the other kids
and played with your shadow instead.
And you won’t remember how joyful you were
to realize your shadow always played back.

You won’t remember hiding your shadow inside Daddy’s,
or studying the differences, and similarities, between the two.

Someday any photo of your father will make you think
of how he pledged his life to you,
and your brother,
when you were born.

Someday you will believe that no matter how big you get,
you could never match the length of his shadow,
or the depth of his love for you.

You will know
that he has guarded and guided you,

but never overshadowed you.

Someday you won’t need a picture to show you that,
because a lifetime of being his son
will have etched it on your heart.

But I took these photos
so you could see it anyway,
right there on the concrete
on this hot, sunny Father’s Day.

Oh boy! Kostyn's 3.

2010-06-14T13:58:00.013-04:00

I’ve been wanting to write something about Kostyn turning 3, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it is I wanted to say. Nobody needs to read another “My how time flies” post or a drippy “My kid is so amazing” post. That old Chinese proverb is true: “There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.”

Still, I wanted to say something about who he is, and who we are, at 3. Sometimes I think it’s best to just get the ordinary stuff down on paper (so to speak) ... before it slips away to new habits and phrases and obsessions that make him quite a different kid than he was just a few months before (because it really is amazing how time flies, and my kid is uniquely beautiful).

Trains

So when I think about the everyday Kostyn, I think of the little ways he’s shedding his toddler facade and becoming a boy. He’s still tiny compared to his peers — I think all the shorts he’s wearing this summer are still size 24 months, and several of the T-shirts are, too — but his eyes are impossibly big. And they are somehow even bigger, round as saucers, when he wakes up from his nap. He wanders out of his room, his hair matted and damp, and there is something in the way he looks at me — so wide-eyed and rested, his mind already tripping over itself with ideas for the afternoon and memories from the morning he needs to share — that makes me love him a little more somehow. I often wish I could capture that look on film but I know he is at his most fragile upon waking, and if I were to whip out a camera at that moment instead of open arms, I’d capture something entirely different than what was intended.

Sprinklers

He often spends all day talking nonstop (non. stop.), just a constant barrage of questions and statements and songs and gibberish and role-playing with his cars and trains and animals. There is always a mommy and always a baby, and there is almost always polite conversation between the two.

“Hi!”

“Hi!”

“How are you today?”

“I’m fine thanks, how are you?”

“I’m fine thank you what’cha doing?”

“I’m just riding around,” one car says to the other, and off he goes with both, riding and talking and singing and playing ... until he notices Evan playing with some random thing (doesn’t matter what), at which point Kostyn decides he MUST play with THAT EXACT TOY right away, and he grabs it from his bewildered brother and much whining and shoving and crying and possibly a Time Out ensues.

Bubbles

Oh, the trials of being 3. He understands concepts of love and family and friendships and manners, but he still wants what he wants when he wants it. (Don’t we all?) It is still hard for him to control his emotions and desires. It’s a trying time for all of us, but I’m sure it is somehow hardest on him. He loves his brother deeply, that is apparent and the feeling is mutual. Yet he naturally loves himself more, and it’s difficult to find a balance.

But he keeps trying. I know this because when he’s not taking toys or yelling “No Evan!” or throwing a shoulder as he passes by, he’s doting on his little brother like the best friend he is.

“You want a puzzle Evan?” Kostyn asks when he notices Evan looking up at something on a high shelf in the playroom. “You want this one?” he says, reaching up on tiptoe to fetch his brother a puzzle. (No matter that it’s often one Evan couldn’t possibly put together.)

Cars

Or “You want to read a book Evan?” he’ll ask, and when Evan nods excitedly Kostyn gets one off the shelf and sits down with his brother, patiently labeling everything Evan points to.

“Dat,” Evan says.

“That’s a cow,” Kostyn says.

“Mmmmmoooooo,” Evan says.

“That’s right! A cow says ‘Moo.’ Good job, Evan!” he encourages, mimicking Mommy and Daddy and making us smile and swoon ... until Evan wants to go back to a previous page and Kostyn wants to turn to the next page, and in a flash the idyllic brotherly bonds evaporate into a board book tug of war, and much whining and shoving and crying and possibly a Time Out ensues.

Oh, the trials of being 3. (Did I mention that already? Because a lot of my life at the moment feels like “Groundhog Day.”)

Books

Right now Kostyn’s favorite things in the world are trains, sprinklers, bubbles, cars, books, bugs, ice cream and Evan. He is getting more physical every day, wrestling and climbing and jumping and head-butting and bouncing off the walls (literally) for a laugh. He is curious and careful. He loves to sing, but only on his terms. Every week we go to a playgroup/storytime at a local church, and he refuses to sing the songs with the rest of us (although he will do the hand motions that go with the tunes). But on the ride home, and for the rest of the day, and three nights later in the tub, and in the grocery store checkout line a month after that, he will sing all the songs he learned at the church over and over, sometimes asking me to join him and other times telling me to shut my trap when I try to sing along.

“I’ve got peeeeeeace like a riverrrrr, I’ve got peace...”

“No Mommy!”

“....like a river....”

“NO Mommy! No, it’s NOT. You CAN’T sing.”

“Um, OK.”

Bugs

Incidentally, when he’s in a “No singing!” mood, it doesn’t just apply to singing silly storytime songs. He also considers “singing” to be humming, clapping, snapping, or tapping one’s fingers on, say, the steering wheel. “Stop singing!” he’ll admonish me from his car seat if he sees my thumbs moving like drumsticks as we listen to the car radio.

He’s trying on a sense of humor these days, too, which I find adorable and surprising. He tells me, “Mommy, you’re a silly...boy,” and his dimples get deeper with every giggle. Then he follows up the joke with more. “And Daddy’s a silly tree, and Evan’s a silly dog.” And I shake my head and scoop him up and kiss his face a dozen times while he writhes around and explodes with laughter as I tell him he’s a silly house.

Ice creammmmm!

“I wipe your kisses off Mommy,” he says with a smile, waiting for my reaction, and I tell him it’s impossible to wipe off a mother’s kiss because it seeps right into your skin instantly and besides, I’m going to kiss him a million-billion more times and he can’t possibly wipe them all away. And then I kiss him six times for good measure and he claws at his face and shakes his head and laughs in a way that says “I love you and your kisses, Mommy.” And my heart is so full that I forget about the whining and the shoving and the Time Outs and the “NO SINGING!” and just soak up the laughter, the dimples, and those impossibly huge brown eyes.

So there ya have it. I have a 3-year-old who wipes off my kisses and calls me a boy and tries to walk on my shins when I’m kneeling on the floor changing his brother’s diaper. Yep, that toddler facade is fading fast and in its place a silly boy is emerging, an aggressive, thoughtful, sweet, complicated, quirky little boy.

Evan

He is the only pretty child in the world, and I have him.

Blocked

2010-05-27T22:55:00.003-04:00

I have blogger’s block. My mind is muddled with ideas for things I want to write about but I can’t seem to find the words to write them. Or I can’t figure out the point I’m trying to make. Or it just seems like something I’ve already written, or something that doesn’t really need to be written down and thrown out there for anyone to read. I have photos I want to share but no clever captions to go with them. I have milestones to talk about but I can’t wrap my brain around how to quantify them.

I have blogger’s block. So I sit here, night after night, thinking about how much I miss writing. Which is why I decided to write this, so that I was at least writing something, because honestly I feel more like me when my fingers are tapping on a keyboard. Aaaaahhhh.

So there’s that, at least.

It’ll come back. This weekend we’re going camping, the first trip of the summer. I’m hoping a little crackling-campfire-in-the-woods zen will help me break through the block. I can't wait to wake up and smell the campfire smoke still clinging to my hair (strange as that sounds, I suppose). If nothing else, I'm sure camping with two toddlers will give me something to write about, even if it's just that Oh my God camping with two toddlers is soooo not a good idea. (Let's hope not!)

In the meantime ... Happy Memorial Day!

The 'Mom' Job

2010-05-18T21:40:00.007-04:00

Last Saturday night I was sitting in a banquet hall filled with fellow journalists, and I felt a little out of place. We were at the annual awards banquet for the PA Newspaper Association so Chris could pick up his first place award for editorial writing, along with a bunch of other awards his paper won -- so many, in fact, that he had to give a brief acceptance speech for the Sweepstakes Award, given to the newspaper in each circulation category that wins the most awards.

I’d felt a little odd last year at the same banquet, playing the role of “spouse” instead of “journalist” at such an event. I’d won a couple writing awards myself back in the days before diapers, and I remembered that bit of vanity and validation that comes with seeing one’s name on a plaque. Last year I remember feeling an urge to announce to no one in particular — and everyone within earshot — that I was a journalist too, gosh darnit, that I was a freelance writer and former newspaper editor. It was weirdly isolating to be in a room of colleagues and feel like I didn’t belong.

But this year was even stranger. I didn’t feel resentful of the people scooping up their prizes, or jealous of those trading inside jokes and anecdotes about their favorite stories and sources from the past year. I just felt like these weren’t my colleagues anymore, no matter how many freelance stories I wrote the previous year or how often I deliberately labeled myself a “work from home mom” instead of a “stay at home mom.”

When I gave birth to Kostyn in 2007, I had finally gotten to a place in my career that I was happy with and proud of. I was a features editor at a small-town daily newspaper, not to mention a weekly columnist and a published author. Not something every journalist aspires to, but all three had been personal goals of mine. I knew that stepping off the career ladder at that point would mean sacrifice; I knew I wouldn’t be able to merely step back onto the same rung several years later, once Kostyn entered school. Still, it wasn’t a difficult choice — I knew if we could swing it financially, I wanted to stay home with him.

At first my former employer had hooked me up with an instant part-time gig as an editor and allowed me to write my weekly column from home as well. Other freelance projects came rolling my way and before long I wasn’t sure I had enough time to handle it all.

But three years, one long-distance move and another child later, I’m working harder and harder for fewer freelance jobs, and the ones I get don’t often pay well either. Perhaps this slowing of the freelance workload has contributed to an internal shift in my identity. Or maybe I’m just busier now with two toddlers and don’t have as much time to worry about how small my byline is in this community. Either way, I haven’t really felt like a journalist in awhile.

I was contemplating all of this during the keynote speaker’s spiel on journalism in the digital age when I noticed someone out of the corner of my eye. All the way across the banquet hall one door stood open to the gracious hallway outside and straight across from that door was a staircase leading up to the hotel’s second floor. A uniformed maintenance worker was walking slowly down the stairs with a duster in his hand, sweeping the dust from the corners of each step — the sides of the stairs where nobody walks and nobody notices. There was a cadence to his movements, an efficiency born of hours of repetition at such a task. Step, reach, wipe; step, reach, wipe. I wondered whether his back aches at the end of his shift, and whether he gets dizzy looking back and forth and back and forth so quickly while climbing up and down countless steps.

As I watched this stranger I felt an overwhelming kinship with him. I felt like he, more than any writer in the room, embodied my life’s work. I saw the beauty in his contribution, the monotony of the repetition, and the chore of such insignificance that contributes wordlessly, imperceptibly to an overall impression of cleanliness. Friendliness. Excellence.

I thought about the diapers I change and the noses I wipe and the same picture books I read a thousand times. Step, reach, wipe; step, reach, wipe.

He didn’t appear to be bored or glum or rushed. I wondered whether he knew who was inside this banquet hall, that there were even a couple 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners among us. I doubted he cared, and that made me smile.

I still believe journalism is one of the most important vocations in the world, and I’m privileged to call it my second job. There are many days when I miss my weekly newspaper column, and many days when I start to doubt my future in the business when I can’t seem to cobble together much of a presence in it today.

But every day I thank God for where I am and what I’m doing, whether it’s cutting strawberries for the boys’ lunch or folding tiny T-shirts, again.

Step, reach, wipe.

One recent day after hearing me use the boys’ full names (probably something like “Kostyn Orrie! Evan Thomas! I said leave the cat alone!”), Kostyn started calling me by my full name too — “Mommy Robyn.” He knows my name is Robyn, and likes calling me that occasionally. But to him my first name is Mommy. Hence, Mommy Robyn.

I think it’s the best byline I could ask for. And he and his brother are the most amazing stories I’ll ever help to “write.”

(Addendum: Chris just read this post and sent me a long encouraging email which, while extremely sweet, made me feel like I should clarify to anyone reading that this post was not meant to be "Woe is me" but more "Such is life; and life is beautiful." I always welcome feedback and encouragement, but please don't think I'm down on my day job. I love my life!)

Thanks a Million, Mom

2010-05-17T23:37:00.010-04:00

On my first Mother’s Day as a mom I wrote something for my mother about all the little things I never realized I should thank her for until I had my own child. After having spent the last year caring for another infant those words still ring so true that I thought I’d re-post them:

Over the years I’ve thanked my mother again and again for all the support she’s given me in life, for all the chorus and band recitals she sat through, for the birthdays and holidays she made special, for pushing me to be my best, for allowing me to do more and be more and experience more than she was allowed to do and be and experience as a kid.

But until this past year, I never knew enough to thank her for the less noticeable “mom” stuff, the stuff I don’t remember or couldn’t understand until I experienced it firsthand.

So thank you, Mom, for enduring the anxiety and discomfort of pregnancy, and the pain and uncertainty and exhilaration and terror of labor, to bring me into the world. Thank you for all the nights you got up from your bed to come to mine and soothe me back to sleep. Thank you for the million tiny prayers you sent up on my behalf, every day, even now, whenever you read or saw something about a child being sick or lost or hurt or, God forbid, killed. Thank you for all the times you surrendered yourself into fits of silliness, making funny faces and blowing raspberries on my tummy and dancing around the living room to make me giggle.

Thank you for wondering “Is this right? Am I doing okay?” about a thousand times in quiet moments right before you fell asleep at night. Thank you for overcoming your frustrations when I was clingy or whiny or overtired or sick to keep caring for me with tenderness even when you felt like your mother’s deep well of tenderness had surely run dry. Thanks for putting up with every diaper change I squirmed through, every bit of food I threw at you, and every time I spit up on a clean shirt you’d just put on.

Thank you for giving up your free time, surrendering your privacy, and setting aside some of the dreams you had as a woman to make room for all the new dreams you carried as a mother. Thank you for all the warm baths and bottles, all the practicing you did with me to say “Dada” and “Mama” and “milk.” Thank you for holding onto my chubby fingers and helping me take my first steps. Thank you for all the hugs and kisses and smiles you showered me with in that first year, and know that those tiny acts of love created the foundation of love and independence and happiness on which I built my life.

Mom, I always appreciated you as a mother but I couldn’t fully understand who you are — who you’ve been — to me until now. Now I get it. Now I realize that all those years when you hinted and asked and practically begged me to tell you whether I was ever going to “start a family,” it wasn’t because you merely wanted to be a grandma. It was because you desperately, secretly wished for me to experience the same blessings of being a mom that you’ve experienced.

I’ve learned this past year that parenthood sucks up your time and money and patience, but in their place it leaves this warmth and richness that is quite indescribable until you feel it yourself, from the bottom of your heart to the top of your soul. I hope when I was a baby, and a child, and perhaps even now, I added some of that warmth and richness to your heart, Mom. It’s the least I could do, for all you gave to me.

And because I am now mothering two children, I have a few more “thank yous” to add:

Thank you, Mom, for my siblings. Thank you for finding within yourself the ability to love all of us equally yet differently. And thank you for instilling in us respect for and allegiance to one another.

Thank you for working so hard to put food on the table for every meal, every day, even when it was met with complaints or downright refusal to eat it. And thank you for all those times you found yourself on your hands and knees picking up the food that was so carelessly dropped, spilled or thrown.

Thank you for enduring the exhaustion that comes with caring for more than one child in diapers. Thank you for all the juggling and cross-checking that took place just to get us out the door, or into bed. Thank you for dealing with all the extra splashing and water and chaos that comes with bathing two children at the same time.

Thanks for folding laundry at midnight because that was the only free time you had to do it. And thanks for giving up whatever it was you would have liked to do with that precious free time in favor of making sure your kids had clean clothes to wear the next day.

Thank you for bearing the days when the whining and fussing of multiple children seemed enough to send you running for the hills. Thank you for the sacrifices you made to be home with us as much as you could be, even in those tiny secret moments when you wished to be somewhere — anywhere — else.

Thank you for forcing us to share, but for never making us feel like there wasn’t enough of you to go around.

Thank you, Mom, especially for the laughter, the love and the lullabyes.

Something tells me I’ll have more to add to this list every year. Happy Mother’s Day to every mom out there — but mostly to mine.

Basket Case

2010-05-08T09:54:00.003-04:00

Getting the boys dressed for bed after bath time seems like it should be a sweet act of parenthood, but in actuality it’s often a frustrating chore. (Lucky for me, Chris usually is in charge of this particular parenting duty.) They choose this moment to expel whatever energy they have left from the long, busy day of being them. They squirm and jump and giggle and writhe around as I try to beg and sing and bargain them into submission, all the while thinking longingly about the days when they were infants (which is something I rarely do otherwise). When they were babies they came out of the tub relaxed and sleepy and pliable, and the ritual of rubbing their dewy skin with lavender lotion and tucking them into footed sleepers was like a little reward for both of us.

Those days are long gone.

So a few nights ago during this mad, jumpy chaotic pre-bedtime routine, Kostyn started yelling, “Help!” At first I ignored him, as I was tending to Evan at the moment and knew he wasn’t being hurt by either his brother or me. But he continued, looking out our bedroom door and across the hall into his room, as if calling to someone in particular. But his father was at band practice, and the dog was already at the foot of the bed.

“Help! Help!” he cried, jumping on his knees and flipping onto his bare back.

“What’s wrong?” I finally said.

“He’s saying ‘Help!’” he said, still looking across the hall into his room, which I couldn’t see. He really seems to be looking at something — or someone, I thought, and a tingle went up the back of my neck.

“Who’s saying ‘Help,’” I asked, leaning over Evan to peer out the bedroom door.

“The basket!” Kostyn said. “He say, ‘Help! Help! Get me out of here!’”

It took me a moment. Then I smiled.

“Ohhh, I see. I see his blue eyes and his mouth is wide open. He’s talking to you?” I said. “I’ll bet he’s lonely. Tell him you’ll be in there soon to go to bed, and then he won’t be alone anymore.”

“Yeah!” Kostyn said, and I patted myself on the back for acknowledging his imagination and getting him excited about bedtime in one fell swoop.

“Kostyn’s coming!” he called to his basket friend, lying down without a fuss for me to put on his diaper and pajamas.

It’s still making me smile, days later. Witnessing a child’s imagination unfurl and bloom is one of the greatest gifts of parenthood, don’t you think?

A Peek Into My Life

2010-05-06T21:48:00.006-04:00

I watch these — and dozens like them — and I cannot believe how big my boys are getting. This first one is of something we call Evan's Jig. He does it with or without musical accompaniment though often, like here, he makes his own. (Taken 3/31/10)

Here's a clip of the boys playing. Kostyn appears to be in the lead position through most of it, but watch 'til the end and you'll see the real leader. (Taken 4/26/10)

This one makes me laugh from start to finish. (Note: The videographer was not injured in the filming of this segment.) (Taken 5/3/10)

I Take Mine Wherever I Go, Too

2010-05-04T14:56:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we woke up to find our basement had flooded, a nightmare Chris discovered at 6 a.m. when he plodded downstairs to iron his shirt for work. Seven hours later he finally finished vacuuming up water, moving valuables, hauling boxes, cleaning gutters, mopping floors, discarding ruined items, and hanging things to dry. Not a good way to start the week!

When he was finished with the messy chore of cleaning all the soggy gunk out of the gutters, he took off his wet, dirty shirt and was carrying the ladder across the lawn when Kostyn noticed him out the window and exclaimed:

"I see Daddy! He's outside with his nipples!"

Parental Concessions

2010-04-19T20:19:00.003-04:00

In just three short years I’ve learned there are certain things a parent has to learn to live with — and live without — in order to keep one’s sanity. For the sake of time, I’ve narrowed these down to one neat little list.

Two things parents have to embrace:
1. Silliness
I am not by nature a silly person. Whoopee cushions and magic tricks and clowns are not my thing. Physical comedy rarely does anything for me. But when you’re a parent you must embrace silliness, because kids love it. They love when you pile things onto your head and sneeze them off. They love when you dance like a convulsing chicken. And they absolutely love when your silliness helps their imaginations run wild.

My kids and I have been sick for the better part of two weeks, so we’ve largely been cooped up inside watching spring bloom like live theater outside our living room windows. Kostyn now knows several different kinds of birds — Incidentally, I love hearing him say “Look! There’s a robin!” — and we’ve studied the moving clouds and the blossoming trees. But mostly they’ve been transfixed by the ants that always seem to be crawling around the tip of an ivy vine that is slowly, slowly creeping along the windowsill.

In a moment of silliness (and boredom) a week ago, I named the ants Bob and Larry and made up a conversation between them. To Kostyn, I wasn’t merely pretending; I was actually translating their feeler-to-feeler telecommunication. And almost every day since, he has asked if we can talk to Bob and Larry.

“Are Bob and Larry here?” he wonders aloud, climbing up onto the couch to peer outside. “Mommy, talk to Bob and Larry!” I don’t have the heart to tell him there’s a one in a million chance that the ants we happen to see each day are the same two ants we gave names to a week ago.

Also, I am running out of things for Bob and Larry to talk about.

It makes me feel silly, this “talking to Bob and Larry” thing. But you should see the smile on Kostyn’s face when he hears what Bob and Larry are commiserating about down on that vine.

2. Repetition
For several reasons kids love doing, watching, eating, and listening to the same things over and over. When they find something that makes them happy, they want to experience it ad nauseum. It is mid-April and we’re still dancing around the coffee table to Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” almost every day.

As a parent, you must embrace this ritual of repetition in an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” sort of way. Because really, you know you’re doing something good as a parent when your kid shouts “Let’s do it again!”, even if it’s the 17th time you’ve made a hand puppet snore in your lap so your toddler can “wake him up” by banging child-sized cymbals near your knees. (Whose idea was it to give my toddler cymbals?! Oh yeah, mine.)

In that vein you will, at times, silently curse the words “Let’s do it again!” For example, the first time you heave two toddlers into your arms and spin around and around to Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” all three of you will be full of smiles and giggles. But by the third time, the toddlers will be smiling but you will be dizzy and panting under the weight of carrying 50 pounds of children.

And as soon as it ends you’ll hear, “Let’s do it again!”

Two things parents have to make peace with:
3. Lost stuff
Little kids are kleptomaniacs. They think they’re entitled to everything they see, and they will walk away with anything they can pick up that isn’t nailed down. Case in point: Our TV remote control has been missing for over a week. For the first few days we assumed it would turn up in one of our 1-year-old’s usual hiding spots for stolen goods (the pantry, the bathtub, his mouth), but as the days wear on, our hopes are dimming.

Do you know what it’s like to have to actually get off the couch to turn the TV on and off, or the volume up and down? It’s like living in the Dark Ages. I’m thankful that we still have the remote we use to change channels and work the DVR (What did parents do before DVRs??), but not having volume control at one’s fingertips is a downright uncivilized way to live.

My fear is that our beloved remote made its way to Evan’s Ultimate Hiding Spot, the kitchen garbage can, and by now it is sitting in a landfill with our trash, Kostyn’s blue socks, the “S” piece from an alphabet puzzle, and the yellow and red plastic stacking rings.

I am now coveting the channel-changing/DVR remote as if it was the Hope Diamond.

4. Less time
It’s not that kids force you to give up your identity entirely, but they do force you to make yourself a lower priority, at least in some respects. These days when I’m trying to leave the house I’m focused on getting socks and shoes and jackets on the boys and shuffling them out the door while keeping the dog inside. I rarely, if ever, take a moment to glance at myself in the mirror before we go, which is why I’ve often been out in public before realizing I have a mashed raspberry from breakfast dried onto my shirt, or my hair looks like I slept in the dryer.

A few days ago I was at the library checking out a pile of new children’s books. I had propped Evan on the counter and was trying to fasten a snap on his jeans that had come undone. The librarian watched me for a moment with a look on her face that I thought was one of annoyance until I glanced down and realized my own shirt was unbuttoned about halfway down. I remembered then that I’d only gotten half-dressed after my shower that morning because one of the boys had some crisis right then and I’d scrambled into my clothes and run off to fix the problem. And I’d never returned to the business of getting myself dressed.

Well no wonder that father reading to his daughter upstairs in the children’s room kept looking at me, I thought. And here I’d assumed he’d been fascinated by the truck tale I’d been reading to Kostyn.

What is perhaps most telling about this incident is that, upon realizing my bra was on semi-display in the library, I still kept fumbling with Evan’s jeans until he was properly dressed before attending to my own garment malfunction. Silly, I know, but such is life as a parent (see No. 1, above).

(Originally posted on Training Wheels, my blog for Central Penn Parent.)

My work here is done

2010-04-14T19:51:00.001-04:00

Kostyn wandered out of his room after naptime the other day looking dazed and fragile. Sometimes he bounds out with a smile, but other times he needs just the right words and just the right cuddles for just the right amount of time before he’s ready to return to his day.

This was one of those times, and he was barely out of the hallway when something happened — I looked at him too soon or didn’t look at him soon enough or said the wrong thing with the wrong tone of voice — and he lost it. The crying turned to screaming and then quickly to whining, as I scooped him up and he wriggled out of my arms and onto the couch.

I crouched in front of him, trying to be attentive but not suffocating.

“Are you sad?” I asked, as this often gets him to stop crying and start talking about, and recognizing, his emotions.

“Yeaaaah,” he whimpered.

“It’s OK to be sad,” I said. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Nooo. I’m still sad. And nothing can’t make me sad, not Mommy or Daddy or Evan or Sadie or the cat,” he said, letting me know he was not about to be cheered up.

“You’re right,” I said, seizing the moment. “Only you can decide to be happy. Isn’t that great? You can decide to be happy!”

He looked at me with interest.

“Do you want to be happy?” I asked.

“Yeaaaah,” he whined, his bottom lip still sticking out.

“Well, you can be. It’s totally up to you. How about we count. I’ll count to .... let’s see.... six. I’ll count to six, and then you can decide to be happy!”

He straightened up and watched me intently.

“One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... six!” I didn’t get a smile, but the bottom lip had vanished. “Did you decide to be happy?”

“No, not yet,” he said.

“Want me to count again?”

“Yes!”

“OK, here goes: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. SIX!” I said, waving my hands in the air and waiting for the magic.

And it came.

“I’m happy!” he said, beaming that smile that makes me fall in love with him every day.

“Wow, Kostyn, you did it! See? You decided to be happy. It’s all up to you. What a big boy!”

“Yeah!” he said.

It was one of those moments I was proud of as a mom, to not just be teaching him to recognize his feelings but to accept them for what they are — not good or bad, just feelings. And above all, to let him know that happiness comes from within, that he doesn’t need people or pets or toys or promises to make him smile. He just needs to decide to do it.

But I’m posting this mostly so I’ll remember to count to six sometimes too.

The Landlady

2010-04-05T22:30:00.005-04:00

Our landlady is super-sweet, and we’re lucky to have her. But she’s, to put it delicately, “up in years,” and sometimes our conversations can be frustrating. Here’s one, from today:

Landlady: Hello?

Me: Hi, Mrs. Smith, this is Robyn, your tenant on Easy Street*.

Her: ...

Me: Uh, I was calling to let you know the dryer isn’t working.

Her: What?

Me: The dryer, in the basement. You know, the washer and dryer? The dryer isn’t working; there’s something wrong with it.

Her: I don’t have a dryer.

Me (suddenly thinking I should have checked the lease for any mention of who’s responsible for appliances): Um, you mean this isn’t your dryer? Did a previous tenant leave it?

Her: What? Who is this?

Me: It’s Robyn Passante, your tenant on Easy Street?

Her: Oh I don’t live on Easy Street anymore.

Me: I know. I DO.

Her: Oh! Hi! How’s the house? Are you liking it?

Me: Yes, yes, the house is great. Except the dryer isn’t working, and I’ve got laundry that’s either dirty and dry or wet and clean piled up all over the place.

Her: I drove by there the other day and saw pictures drawn on the sidewalk. Did your boys do that?

Me: Um, yes. It’ll wash off the next time .....

Her: I sat in my car and cried. That’s exactly where my boys used to draw on the sidewalk. It’s a perfect spot for that, isn’t it?

Me (relieved my boys weren’t being accused of vandalism): Yes, Kostyn and Evan love drawing with sidewalk chalk. I need to get some new pieces for them; we’ve been using the little stubs of chalk left over from last summer.

Her: That house is full of love. It was always a house of love.

Me: Yes, it certainly is. Now about that dryer....

Her: Oh I don’t have a dryer, sweetie. You’ll have to call a repairman and get yours fixed.

Me: OK, I’ll just let you know how much it is, then? Also, there seems to be some type of leak or spring or something outside. There’s a little bit of water coming up out of the ground, near the kitchen window.

Her: Oh I don’t know anything about that. Just tell me how much it is and I’ll deduct it from the rent.

Me: Um, OK. Do you have any idea who I should call about that?

Her: I don’t know honey. I don’t have a dryer.

Me: Right. Got it. No dryer. It was nice talking to you, Mrs. Smith.......

(*I wish...)