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What I Thought I Knew About Staying at Home

I'm sitting on my back deck at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, drinking a pumpkin coffee and reveling in the coming of autumn. I've dragged Baby Alex's activity bouncer out here with me, and she's listlessly pressing buttons that play kid versions of classical  music while two caterpillars of snot work their way toward her upper lip. Life isn't perfect, of course, but with the older girls at pre-school and "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John drifting through the open kitchen window, I can say that it's solidly good. 

A year ago at this time I would have been just starting my third period social studies class, a collection of twenty of the dearest and most adorable seventh-graders that has ever existed. Unlike my nightmare second period, which seemed hell-bent on driving me out of the teaching profession (Congrats, second period: you did it!), these kids left me feeling lucky every day. They were what I loved about teaching. When I asked them to change the lyrics of a popular song to make it about the French Revolution, they agonized over whether to use Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" or something by Lorde. They made music videos and album art. They willingly performed their songs in front of the class. I mean, they made those fifty minutes each day delightful.

But I was pregnant with my third child, and we all know that the teaching profession isn't just fifty euphoric minutes and a feeling of accomplishment that you've taught them the basic difference between mercantilism and capitalism. Even my third period couldn't convince me to stay. 

It was a process, the decision to quit teaching, at least for the time being, and to stay at home. It involved a series of conversations with myself - that is, between "Working Me" and the woman I thought I would become, let's call her "Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me". These conversations went something like this:

Working Me: I'm thinking of becoming a stay at home mom-

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me: If you're going to join the club, you need to start learning the proper lingo. The commonly used abbreviation is SAHM. So, you're thinking of becoming an SAHM?

Working Me: Do people really say that? It doesn't seem any shorter. 

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me: It is. I would know.

Working Me: Okay, so I'm thinking of becoming an SAHM. 

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me nods appreciatively. She is very good at listening. Also, her hair looks pretty.

Working Me: But I worry that staying at home is going to send my daughters the wrong message. I want them to know that women can have fulfilling careers outside of the home.

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me: I think the real question is, do you want your children to know you love them? Isn't that the most important message? 

I thought I would be a stay-at-home superwoman.
Turns out I already was one.

Working Me: Good point. So anyway, when I see stay-at-home moms dropping their kids off at school, they are almost always wearing yoga pants or some other variation of workout gear. That's because they are super into fitness, right? And they have more time for it?

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me: That's exactly right. Now that I don't have papers to grade and lessons to plan, I have more time for everything. Whenever I go out in public, I'm either on my way to or from the gym. I feel great. Have you seen my abs? 

Working Me: I have. They're impressive. Do you eat healthier now that you're staying at home? Lots of salad and light, home-cooked meals?

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me: When I worked, my kids hated vegetables. Now they love them. It's probably because I'm finally able to execute those ideas I see in magazines and on Pinterest. Just last night I made a plate of broccoli look like Oscar the Grouch. 

Working Me: How many Pinterest projects have you done since becoming an SAHM?

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me: Oh, gosh. 400? 500? I lose count.

Working Me: And your sex life must be great.

Fake Future Stay-at-Home Me: Obviously. 

She convinced me, this confident, put-together version of myself. And I don't hold it against her, even though everything she said was a lie. Maybe I knew it even then, that it was too good to be true. That a woman with three small children is a woman with three small children, regardless of whether she works 9-5. The exhaustion, the frustration, the feeling of being totally overwhelmed - none of those things would change. I'm still not on Pinterest.  My abs are non-existent. My vegetables are boring. But I get to watch my baby sleep on the back deck on a Wednesday morning while leaves spin to the earth and little green lizards soak up what they can of the sun. 

In a few minutes we will have to go pick up her sisters. They'll climb into the car and tell me about their morning, and the afternoon will stretch out in front of us, daunting as ever. So much time to fill. It's a good problem to have.

Five Minutes a Day

It's one of those Adirondack mornings that I dream about when I wake in my South Carolina home, where most days it reaches a humid 90 degrees by 9 a.m. I've come here to vacation with my family, the same as I have each summer since I was born, except now there are more of us. My two sisters and I have brought four of the five kids to a small playground at the rural airport just down the road from our camp. They are happy; my girls see their cousins only two or three times a year, and their delight is almost painful to me, a reminder of how far away we live from one another. 

Swing selfie… Swilfie? 

The four-year-olds climb and hang on a structure built to resemble a helicopter. The one and two-year-olds descend a tiny slide with a repetitive, almost obsessive determination. While Beth, my oldest sister, watches the little ones, I join my sister Meghan on the swings. 

It's not something I do often. Playgrounds are for supervision, for readying snacks and mediating conflicts. Swinging is something I used to do, before I had real responsibilities, back when I still felt young.  

In grade school it was my activity of choice at recess, pumping my legs in time with the other kids with a force that lifted the legs of the swingset out of the hard-packed gravel and made us shriek, believing, every time, that this time it really would tip over. 

As a teenager, my friend with a car would pick me up to go get ice cream or a gas station cappuccino. We'd drive to the playground at Hughes Elementary, get out and dangle on the swings, looking out over the Mohawk Valley, which was green and beautiful in a certain early evening light. We talked about boys. We talked about the future, which was so close. How everything would change. We'd swing, because growing up was scary and we liked the way the wind felt in our hair.

These memories are present in the cool of the chains in my hands, in the way my toes push off from the ground. The sun is warm and the air smells like pine trees and dirt. I lean back, my feet against the blue sky.  Meghan glances over at me, points out that we are just… about… synchronized. And then we are, our legs rising and falling in exactly the same rhythm. It's an effort to stay that way but we try, laughing, the kids on the helicopter pausing mid-flight to stare. 

I recognize this feeling as joy, but it's more than that. Joy is scattered in my every day. It is my baby's fuzzy head on my cheek, my two-year-old walking around wearing a hood that has monkey ears on it, her curls bursting out on either side of her face. She calls it her "sweatshirt hat". Joy is not always easy, but it's there when I remember to look for it. No, this is something far rarer. This is fun, uncomplicated by stress or worry. This is me allowing myself to let go, briefly, of the person I have somehow become: tired and impatient, plagued with papers to sign, doctor's appointments to make, meals to plan. 

Three weeks ago I put my feet back on the ground, skidded to a stop, and walked away from that swing. I was smiling. I felt new. "If I could do that for five minutes a day," I told my sisters, "I would be a better person."

A few days later, we drove back to South Carolina and resumed our lives. But I can't let go of that feeling, that freedom, the weight lifted as I was suspended in air. Five minutes a day of fun, of real laughter. Five minutes where I can feel like I used to, like I'm about to embark on something big. Like I'm about to actually take flight. 

Mom-Style: It Happened to Me

Sometimes being a parent is depressing.

I'm not complaining, I'm just stating a fact. I think about my pre-children life all the time, how much easier it was to pack for a weekend trip, say, or to run a quick errand.  I mean, the light fixture in our kitchen takes a special lightbulb, and we've just been eating in the dark since it went out a few days ago. It could be weeks before we get to Lowe's. No joke, I would rather eat in the dark than attempt to take all three of my kids to a store.

One of the things I miss most about the old Jenny, though, is what I used to look like. I know it's shallow, but there it is. My husband says I'm more attractive than when we met; he likes that I'm low maintenance. He's sweet. But I miss having a body that can be trusted to remain at a fairly reliable weight. I miss knowing for sure what size bra to buy, which pants will fit me correctly. Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood times three have changed all that.

Don't know what to wear? How bout a baby?

My closet, right now, contains a range of sizes, clothes I bought in the early stages of pregnancy and in the months after giving birth. They're too big for me now. At this moment I'm wearing a pair of saggy "boyfriend" jeans from Old Navy. On me, they should be called It's a good thing you're married because you would NEVER land a boyfriend in these jeans. However, they're preferable to (and far more comfortable than) the other jeans in my closet, the Hey! Check out my muffin top! ones, also known as the Just wear an extra long top and no one will know your top button is undone jeans.

The last time I bought myself a nice pair of jeans was at least seven years ago, but I just don't see the point. While it is very likely that I am done riding the whole pregnancy roller coaster, I'm still waiting to see where my body will decide to settle. Like it's a freaking traveler on the Oregon Trail. Plus, I can't justify spending a lot of money on an article of clothing that will be soiled within the first hour of wearing it by either a) spit-up, b) poop, c) snot, d) a condiment that was intended for dipping but which my child is eating with a spoon, e) some kind of art utensil, or f) all of the above. So I shop the Merona clearance racks at Target and make do with wearing combinations of my new stuff, which only kind of fits me, and my old stuff, which feels new to me because it's the first time in five years that I've managed to cram my hips into it.

And it wouldn't be so bad, trying to piece together an outfit from the five shirts and two pairs of shorts that fit me, but then there's the issue of hair and makeup. The issue being, who the hell has time for that? Every time I see a fellow mom with her hair sleekly blow-dried, every highlighted strand sprayed into place, face powdered and lips bright with lipstick, I wonder what I'm doing wrong. (What business does she have looking so good, anyway? She must be trying to have an affair. That's the only explanation.) Do I need to get up earlier? I've tried. The truth is, it doesn't matter what time I wake up: I never end up looking like those gorgeous lipstick moms, and after I have spent forty-five minutes attempting to beautify, it's ruined when I get all sweaty tackling my two-year-old to the floor because she's refusing to have her teeth brushed.

I'm not complaining, really, I'm not. I am what I am. I'm a mom. My looks should be the last thing on my mind, especially because I would hate to send my daughters the message that that's what matters. I guess that, with all the insanity in my life, it would be nice to look like I have it together, even if I don't. And I know that things will start to plateau soon, and I might actually get to go shopping for clothes that fit me. At least, I hope it's soon, because it really would be nice to make a detour to Lowe's. Until then, I'll be hiding in my dark kitchen.

Why It's Not Creepy to Watch Your Children Sleep

During the daylight hours, my children are loud. The older two chase each other in circles through the kitchen and dining room, narrowly missing the baby in her bouncy seat, or stopping to yell "Goo goo, Alex!" in her face, which for some reason she loves. Sometimes they choose to add drums to this circuit, or a whistle, or a plastic shopping cart that sounds like a Mack truck rolling over our floor tiles. And they need something, always. "Mom!" they say. "Can I have some milk? Can I watch a show? Can I look at pictures on your phone? Can I have something to eat? Can you read me a book? Can you play a game with me? Mom! Maggie just hit me! Ceci just said I was a flying apple! I have a poopy!" Meanwhile, the baby cycles through her baby emotions of hungry, sleepy, happy, angry, and chimes in where she sees fit.

But then 8:00 rolls around. Well, 8:30... 9:00 at the latest. Books are read, songs sung, lights turned off, night lights turned on, and these people who have spent their day in motion - running, arguing, discovering, tantrum-throwing - are still and silent. And while you love your kids all the time, obviously, it seems that with their volume turned down, your love is dialed up.

Like the other night, for instance, I crept into the room that Ceci and Alex share. Ceci had been tucked in a short time before, and I was now laying Alex down in her crib for the night. As I tiptoed toward the door, trying to make my escape as quietly as possible, Ceci shifted and groaned softly around the edges of her pacifier. Something about that moment hit me. I felt my love for her as an actual, physical pain deep in my belly, a fierce animal protectiveness: She's amazing. She's mine.

When Maggie, my oldest, was five or six days old I woke in the middle of the night in agony, unable to turn my head. It was my habit of staring at my newborn baby as she nursed that had caused my neck muscles to rebel, and the symbolism wasn't lost on me. Watching over my child, it seemed, would never be easy or comfortable. Often it would hurt like hell. In those days, though, I had little else to do but look at her. In the following months we would hang out on the couch, me half-watching TV or half-grading papers or taking forty-five minutes to fold a basket of laundry while she reclined in her Boppy pillow. I would fold a pair of pants, take a picture of her. Locate the match to a sock, and then edge closer to examine her as she slept, the veins in her eyelids, her parted lips, her hands in tiny fists, prepared, even then, for a fight. She was my world. I couldn't look away.

It's harder now; my world has expanded. Distracted by my daily tasks, just trying to get everyone fed and bathed and changed, I find it difficult to look at my own children closely (that is, when they slow down long enough for me to catch a glimpse). At nighttime and nap times my fear of waking them almost always outweighs my desire to watch them dream - I mean, a run-in with an overtired Pray girl is like a scene straight out of The Walking Dead. It ain't pretty.

But on occasion an opportunity will present itself. Maybe we were out late, and promised the kids we would sneak in for a kiss when we got home. Maybe Ceci is sick, and I need to check in on her during the night, or Maggie passes out in the middle of a book, even though she clearly isn't tired.  Just today Alex fell asleep on the bathroom floor while I ran her water for a bath and I left her there to finish her nap, because I think there's some kind of adage about that.

I love my kids all the time, obviously. But sometimes, when they are still and silent, when their breath comes in sighs and their cheeks are pink with their own body heat, when the only thing they need from me is to let them be, I can feel my love swell, bigger than I even knew.

They are amazing. They are mine. Someday they are going to hate me for taking so many pictures of them sleeping, but for now they are… waking up?

Oh. They are their father's. Forget everything I just said. They are totally his.

The Look (And Why I Love It)

This isn't actually the look I'm talking about, but it's a look.
And a darn cute one.

Yesterday afternoon I was heading out of the YMCA with my three kids: Alex dangling in her car seat  carrier from my straining bicep, Maggie doing her crazy version of hopscotch on a "Hop Back to School" decal on the floor, and Ceci's feet spinning like the Roadrunner as she attempted to keep up with her big sister. As I herded the older two through the turnstiles and toward the door, I noticed a middle-aged woman watching us closely, a subtle smile on her face. Our eyes met and we acknowledged each other in that silent, secret mom language: The Look.

The Look generally lasts only a few seconds at the most, but it carries with it decades, perhaps even generations, of memories and parental experiences. It says this: I may not know your name, but I know you, because I was you. I know the joy of watching your children run wildly and your desperate hope that they won't embarrass you in public. I know the aches in your muscles and your desire to escape, if only for an hour, to a place where no one demands anything of you. My children were once as small as yours, and I would give anything to be back there again, to warm baby skin and unrestrained laughter. So I envy you, a bit, you and your fledgling love, but I pity you too, because you are drowning in the day-to-day. I see your struggle, and I understand.

That's The Look. I see it everywhere, in grocery stores and airports, at the library and on the rare occasion when we venture into a restaurant. It is sometimes accompanied by a small gesture, a door held, a jovial, "You've got your hands full!" To these, I can say thank you, but for the others, the ones who catch my eye from a distance, I must reserve my gratitude and pass it on. Because I am also a giver of The Look. I know its power, and while my hands may be too full for me to help in any other way, The Look is something I can always impart to those who seem to need it.

Most of all, I love that The Look carries no trace of accusation. It isn't a judgment of my inability to keep my kids obedient, quiet, and under control.  (Though I've gotten those looks too.) I'm with you, it says. I get it. I know. It's kind of like when you're hiking and you see someone who is on their way back down. It's not all uphill, you think, feeling a sort of kinship with your fellow hikers. In just a little while, that will be me.

So you march uphill and you bear your load, whatever that might be: a busy schedule, a dirty house, an exhaustion that you can't help but believe you will carry with you always. Every once in a while you'll remember to glance up - everyone says you're supposed to, that you have to look around and appreciate the little things. It will take your mind off of how damn hard this is. If you're lucky, you might just catch a Look thrown your way.

And honest, your load will feel a little lighter.

The Pillow Pet Fiasco (Or 'The Tragic Life of an Oldest Child')

Being an oldest child has got to be hard.

You've fulfilled all your parents' dreams just by being born. They delight in every facial expression, every little sound you make. They take videos of you doing all those cute things you do. (Then, when they watch them back years later, they think, "What is this supposed to be? She's just lying there.") You are used to four eyes staring at you, four hands ready to pick you up. Everything belongs to you. Your room. Your  toys. Your mom and dad - until they get this deluded idea that you want another person around to use all your stuff and take up your space and divert their attention.

But they never asked you, did they? So eventually this other baby arrives and grows, becomes mobile, follows you around and does your bidding and worships you and agrees with you and you totally take advantage of this. It's awesome, actually. She lets you pick out her clothes and what book to read at nap time. When you play, you're the teacher, she's the student. You're Cinderella, she's the ugly step-sister.  You're the star, she's the audience. When you call your mom a "poopy poop" she laughs and laughs. To her, you are the epitome of cool and amazing - until one day she decides she has opinions and preferences of her own and she (gasp!) says NO to you.

Where does that leave you? You are bereft of power and influence, set adrift in an unfamiliar world where other people are just as important as you. How does a person live like this?

Take this episode that happened with my oldest daughter just a few days ago. A little bit of background: Maggie is four, almost five. When she was about two and a half, while I was pregnant with number two, we went to visit family for Easter. She was given a Pillow Pet as an Easter gift: a purple and pink ladybug with a little velcro tab that, when undone, transforms it from pet to pillow. (Not that normal humans keep ladybugs as pets, but we'll overlook that.) She was like, "Ooh, I love my pillow!" for about two seconds, and then, like most nice gifts my children are given, it was soon forgotten about.

Over a year passes. The pillow is in Maggie's room, in a heap on her bed with all of her other stuffed animals, but she shows absolutely no indication that she would care if it were given to Goodwill or ripped to shreds by the dog. By that time, her baby sister Ceci is not a baby anymore. She is walking and smiling and ready to have a pillow in her crib, and one day Maggie says something like, "Here Ceci, have my pillow." I promise you, this is how it went down.

Fast forward another year, to the present. Ceci and the Pillow Pet are inseparable. She calls it "my poo-ple pillow" and shows it to everyone she meets. She rubs the soft side of the little velcro tab to soothe herself to sleep. She freaking LOVES this thing that her older sister bestowed upon her in what we now know was a blackout episode of generosity. Because suddenly, from out of nowhere, Maggie says: "I used to have a pillow just like that when I was little."

Seriously?

I believe in being honest with my children, even when the truth hurts. "Maggie," I say very calmly, as if speaking to a cornered Rottweiler, "This is the pillow you used to have. But you didn't really care about it, so now it is Ceci's special pillow. It is very, very special to her."

The kid just falls apart. I have seen pretty much every type of crying known to man, and these weren't bratty tears. These are bona fide, from the bottom of her soul, I just lost the thing most dear to me in the world tears.

"IT'S MY PILLOW! YOU GAVE IT TO HER AND NOW I DON'T HAVE IT ANYMORE!"

Oh. My. God.

When she turns to Ceci and asks in her most pitiful voice, "Can I have that?", I brace myself. Ceci has been asserting herself and standing up to Maggie, at least on occasion, for the past couple of months. But the sweet, submissive middle child hands it over, saying, "Sure. Here Maggie!" It was the least she could do to atone for ruining her sister's life.

Unfortunately for my persecuted eldest, I wasn't going to let that fly. In the end I had to compromise and promise to buy her a new Pillow Pet. I've been to several stores and haven't managed to locate one,  and she already seems to have forgotten all about it, so it looks like the oldest child gets shafted once again. Her pillow torn from her unjustly, her demands for its return denied, and now no restitution in sight. Just another day in the life of an oldest child.

Wipe that smile off your face, you smug bug.

How to Parent the Coolest Kid on the Block

It's 7:00 in the evening. The dinner dishes are put away; the children are bathed and in their PJs. Baby Alex and I have ducked into the kitchen, my unofficial writing space. From the living room I can hear the other three members of my family completely engaged in watching "Return of the Jedi".

The Two-Year-Old: That Chewy! That Chewy! That Chewy, daddy!
My Husband (Reading subtitles): There will be no bargain.
The Two-Year-Old: There Chewy! There Chewy right there! (Pause) Where Chewy?
The Four-Year-Old says nothing, having fallen into that wide-eyed, slack-faced TV stupor that makes one wonder if she is comprehending anything she sees.
The Two-Year-Old: Chewy!

Some people call it indoctrination; we call it intentional parenting.

I have two questions for you:
Why are you making me root for a cursed team, and
do you realize I have no idea how to sit upright?

We started before our kids even knew what was happening: Star Wars and Chicago Cubs onesies, a bedtime CD of instrumental Phish lullabies. We were never big on listening to kids' music in the car, so our girls learned to love the music we listened to. Maggie was barely three when I became obsessed with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' song "Same Love". She called it "her song'" and asked to hear "I Can't Change" every time we drove anywhere. These days she's just as likely to frolic around the house singing something by Foster the People or Cold War Kids as she is to be belting out a tune from Frozen.

There's just something about involving your children in the things you love. Maggie and Ceci, as young as they are, know how happy it makes their daddy to hear them root for the Cubbies or to snuggle with them after a long day at work and watch Tony and Michael - our kids are on a first-name basis - on Pardon the Interruption. We can't wait to take them to their first baseball game, their first concert. The thought of teaching my girls to play pool, as my dad taught me, makes me giddy. And I can't lie, I look forward to educating my children on the difference between good beer and crappy beer once they're legal.

Right now our kids don't know any better; they still want to be like their mom and dad. We know that the day is coming when that will change, and they'll think that everything their parents do and everything we like is totally lame. Maybe they'll get into some teeny-bopper band that uses emojis in its song titles, and we'll totally support that. We'll load them and a bunch of their giggling, squealy friends into the car and shuttle them to an arena where we will watch a group of pre-pubescent boys perform overtly sexual choreographed dances. We will buy them souvenir t-shirts that we think are stupid. We will hope that this is just a phase, that at some point soon they will realize that their parents' taste in music is actually amazing, and then they will get on their knees and thank us for being so insanely cool.

Look on the bright side, Maggie as a baby-
you could be wearing a gold bikini.

Our daughters are going to be who they are; we get that. We can only steer them so far. My husband and I were both swimmers, so we might prefer that they choose to join a swim team over a cheerleading squad, but in the end, of course, it doesn't matter. (I touched upon this some about a year ago in my post  "Who Will You Be? (A Parent's Guessing Game), if you haven't read it!)

In a way, it's kind of nice that our children will likely set aside a lot of the tastes and interests that we have worked so hard to instill in them. Our interests will change with theirs, because no matter what they're into, we will want to be a part of it. It will give us a chance, when we're middle-aged and fading into irrelevance, to broaden our horizons and get involved in something we otherwise would not have. One example: when I was in 7th grade I begged my dad to take me and my friends to a local alt-rock music festival, and he's still listening to the Butthole Surfers. (I've moved on.)

But for now they're our babies, ours to cuddle and dance with, ours to dress in amusing clothing and force to participate in themed family Halloween costumes. Which reminds me, I have to find Maggie a Princess Leia costume for her birthday party. She's having it at the bowling alley and we're calling it "The Empire Strikes Back". Stay tuned for a future blog post titled, "How to Breastfeed a Baby in a Robot Outfit."

A Stopping Point

Stop.

Stop what you're doing right now, the thing where you make lists in your head of all the shit you need to do that you already know you won't do today. Clean your bathroom. Change the sheets. Call someone to repair the siding that was damaged in a storm a month ago. Get to the bank to open a savings account for the baby, even though you've had a check in your wallet from your husband's grandmother since the week after she was born. Write it all down already, tear up the paper, throw it in the trash. Make yourself a new to-do list that says this: Stop making to-do lists.

Stop telling your kids, Just a minute!, when they ask you to play with them, or Sure I can, right after I: wash the dishes, fold the laundry, feed the baby, pay this bill, finish this supremely important task that cannot wait.

Stop assuming the baby needs to eat or sleep every time she cries. Maybe she's over being strapped to your torso or in a bouncy chair because you legitimately fear your other children will trample her if you allow her to lay on the floor and roll around holding her little feet, which is probably what she wants to do, because she's a freaking baby. Maybe a boob in the mouth isn't the answer to everything. Maybe she just wants you to look at her.

Stop picking things up off the floor as if you are accomplishing something. That Play-Doh top will be replaced by a Barbie shoe will be replaced by a half-chewed handful of raisins.

Stop checking your phone. The anecdote you posted this morning about your older two kids, and how they're so hilariously dirty, has gotten 23 likes. So what? And it's not like you have text messages. Your family and friends are all at work. Or, if they are at home with their kids, like you, they are too busy picking items up off the floor to think about texting you.

Stop looking at the clock and wondering when it will be nap time, when your husband is coming home, when you can put them in bed.

Stop thinking about how damn tired you are.

In this moment you are the luckiest person in the world, and you're not even paying attention. In this moment these little girls are yours alone. One day you will have to share them, hand them over to teachers and mean girls and boyfriends and one day, God-willing, families of their own. In this moment they want their mommy, and you almost missed it.

Start here: When the older girls are napping, prop the baby up on the couch. See the way her eyes eat you up. Watch her smile when you smile. Coo to her: Goo. Gah. Hear her baby voice repeat after you. Hand her a rattle shaped like a bear or a cow, you're not sure which. She bats it a little with her hands and lets it drop. Pick it up and shake it gently in front of her face. When she tires of this, lift her up over your head and look up at her. She is delighted, could do this for hours.

Later, when your four-year-old comes downstairs, follow her into the playroom. Clear a space for the baby to roll around. Play dolls: she is Ariel, you are Elsa. Drag a laundry basket into the already crowded space and pretend that it is a pool. Ariel dives right in while Elsa, ever cautious, perches on the side. Switch gears; she is a queen. Help her find the right tiara. Hold a tiny mirror in front of her face as she examines each option, finally settling on a silver and purple number from the Target dollar bin. Make the queen a pretend pizza in her pretend kitchen (pepperoni and green peppers, please), then ask her if she wants a real ice cream cone.

When you get another moment, after your husband has come home and dinner has been mostly eaten and put away, start a game of tag with the two-year-old. Chase each other around and around - kitchen, dining room, hallway, kitchen, dining room, hallway - while she giggles so hard you think she might actually vomit and the four-year-old watches from the table, shakes her head and says, "You two…"

Stop. Is there anything you would rather be doing? Is there anything you should have done today that you failed to do?

Not a thing.

Start being grateful. Start being present. Start being the mom your kids think you are. Start now.

Recent Realizations that Keep Me (Somewhat) Sane

The past few months have been a little wild, what with giving birth to baby number three, starting my time as a stay-at-home mom, and trying to entertain all three kids while school is out. There have been moments, probably daily, when I feel like a mental patient. Or like I somehow mistakenly ended up in a mental hospital, and no one believes me when I try to reasonably explain the mix-up. Or like I would rather be in a mental hospital, because that would be a pretty nice vacation.

Picture this: It's lunchtime. Ceci has finished her meal and is now pawing at my leg, fingers pasty with macaroni and cheese, yelling Mom-may! Get my milk! in this strange, deep two-year-old voice that she reserves for ordering me around. (Pay with me, mommy! Mom-may! Get my shoes on!) Maggie is shoving her plate off the table because she allegedly "doesn't like" the meal that she begged me to prepare for her literally fifteen minutes ago. Alex, who is generally a good baby, usually chooses to begin howling just at this moment, apparently agreeing with me that this sucks and that crying is the correct response. I'm standing in the middle of the melee, trying to speak to these people as if they understand logic, my voice becoming more and more desperate as I plead, "Can't I just finish unloading the dishwasher?"

No. I can't.

At times like these, when I find myself screaming at everyone to calm down (because that's effective), I need to stop and give myself a silent two-second pep talk. It goes a little like this:

1. Children are disgusting. If you can remember this simple fact, and if you are strong enough in mind and spirit to accept its perfect truth, you will have a significantly greater chance of maintaining your sanity. The macaroni and cheese residue on your clothes will most likely be the least disgusting thing with which you are soiled today. Changing your clothes or your children's clothes every time something gets dirty will just become one more thing that makes your life difficult, your laundry pile bigger, one more reason to have to haul an infant or a struggling toddler up and down the stairs and pin them into submission while they express their displeasure at having to remove said clothing. And I mean, my God, what if the new pair of pants you choose for them is "not good"? Leave the mess for now. The mess isn't going anywhere. And as for unloading the dishwasher, it's actually kind of nice to let something in this house remain clean for more than five minutes.

2. If the thing stressing you out is the potential judgment of others about the state of your home, the cleanliness of your children, or your own physical appearance, stop. No one cares about these things as much as you do.  If you don't have a chance to shower because you're dealing with your smaller fellow mental patients, guess what? In all likelihood, no one will notice. All the other parents at the YMCA or the grocery store or the playground (because let's admit it, where else do parents go outside of working hours?) are probably wrapped up in their own worries: Is anyone is staring at the gap in my shirt that I just now realized I misbuttoned in my rush to get out of the confines of my house? Is there any conceivable way to fix it without drawing even more attention to myself? or Oh Lord, what is that on my shoe? Is it poop? or I'll just explain to anyone who comes within twenty feet of me that we're letting her pick her clothes out herself, because that's cuter than the truth, which is that these are the only clean clothes remaining in her closet…

So, yeah, get over yourself. People are all way too self-absorbed to look that closely at you, your kids, or your kitchen floor.

3. There's no point in fighting crazy. These irrational, impulsive, hyperactive small people with whom the Big Man has entrusted you are inevitably going to make you lose your mind. Embrace and accept. Instead of yelling or weeping or whatever you are on the verge of doing, make a conscious choice to be a happy lunatic rather than a raving one. React in a way that will surprise your kids into stopping what they are doing, kind of like how you spray a misbehaving dog in the face with a spray bottle. Bust out a spontaneous dance move, make up a song, pretend you're the Wicked Witch of the West and chase them up the stairs and into their bedrooms. If you lose your cool, they win. Don't let them win.

4. You're actually doing fine. You don't let them bring baby bottles of Fanta to bed with them. You feed them vegetables at least once a day. They are relatively healthy and happy (maybe not in this moment, but since they seem to have the memory of goldfish, this should blow over pretty quickly). You are not a total failure as a mother. Good job, you!

5. Maybe you are crazy, but you sure do love these little buttheads.

Psychos.

What Freedom Means to a Mom (or Dad)

This Fourth of July weekend has been a bit incongruous for me. Amid talk of liberty, freedom, independence, and whatever other synonyms might be out there, I was at home with three small children while my husband journeyed to Chicago to see the "Treyful Dead" perform. Let me be very clear, this post is not meant to be a diatribe against my husband. I fully support his escape back to his old stomping grounds- in fact, I'm ditching him next weekend for a friend's wedding, leaving him with all three kids and no boobs for the baby. So we're even. 

Freedom also means wearing whatever you think looks good...

In the meantime, though, I didn't feel free at all. I felt tethered. I felt stuck, and I mean that in the most loving way possible. Seriously, where could I have taken three kids ages four and under on the Fourth of July and have any fun at all without someone getting lost or maimed? So we stayed home, mostly inside, and they trailed toys from room to room, followed me around asking, "Mom, what can I do?", and asked me for a snack about every fifteen minutes. I felt like a huge meanie putting them in bed before the rest of the town was even warming up for fireworks, but 36 hours into my solo weekend, mommy needed a little time to herself (well, with Baby Alex, who basically just nurses, sleeps, and gazes at me adorably). 

My husband's weekend of freedom was a bit of an eye-opener as I realized how dependent I am on him and the help he provides at home. Mark my words, we are never EVER getting a divorce (and not just because he folds laundry, changes diapers, and makes a mean shrimp and grits). It also led me to come up with my own, revised, Declaration of Independence: Parents Edition. And since I'm not sure what the rules are when it comes to plagiarizing historical documents, here's where I stole the wording from: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all parents are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… so let's break those down. 

Life: Parents have the right to have a life that extends beyond their parental responsibilities. They should not lose their identity as spouse, sibling, friend, etc., just because they also happen to have children. This means that the children will occasionally be left with babysitters or shipped off to grandma and grandpa's house so that said parents can do something decidedly un-parenty like attend a Flaming Lips concert or go to a beer festival or, I don't know, watch 16 hours straight of "The Walking Dead". 

Liberty: Parents have the right to saddle the other parent with the kids for an hour or a weekend in order to experience that blessed realization that, wait! I'm not carrying my child's 20-pound car seat in the crook of my arm! I can walk faster than .05 miles per hour! I can order a coffee at Starbucks without having to explain to my child why she can't have one too! I'm free, free at last! And since we are all created equal, that means that parents should be equitable in providing this time for one another.  

The Pursuit of Happiness: Parents have the right to do the things that keep them happy and sane. It might be working out, serving on a church committee, taking a photography class, blogging. If there's something they need to do in order to feel like a person and not just a parent, they have the right to take a little guilt-free time and attention away from their children. And besides, shouldn't our children see us pursuing our interests and broadening our horizons? Isn't that the example we want to set? 

I love my kids, and I want to spend time with them, but I find that I am the best version of myself as a mom when given a little freedom. Absence does, after all, make the heart grow fonder. I should know: my oldest two are currently having a sleepover at my in-laws, and words can't even express how fond I am of them right now. 

A Memory to Hold On To

Yesterday, on Father's Day, my sister posted a picture of her and my dad circa 1992. The photo is actually of her entire softball team, but the other girls (including me, I'm pretty sure), all decked out in green shirts and boxy, unattractive hats reading "Packy's Pub," the team's local sponsor, have been cropped out. My dad is the coach. His arms are crossed and his hair, just reaching the point of more gray than black, is styled in a Mel Gibson-esque - dare I say it? - mullet. He looks tough. He looks proud. According to my sister's caption, he is "smizing," a term coined by the eloquent Tyra Banks. It's a pretty spot-on character study of my jock dad, who embraced having three daughters and supported us in all of our athletic endeavors, regardless of the fact that my sisters and I were basically useless on a softball field.

Over the last few years, on every trip home, my sisters and I have found ourselves flipping through our parents' extensive collection of photo albums, pulling prints out every so often and snapping pictures of them on our iPhones. They are mostly of us when we were kids: piled together in our flannel nightgowns in a bed with a Care Bears comforter; crouching in the sand, making our Strawberry Shortcake dolls frolic along the roots of an old beachside pine; posing with the whole family on Beth's First Communion day with a giant white teddy bear. Some are pictures of my parents or grandparents when they were younger, as teenagers or brand new parents. I like to imagine them then, before they became my mom and dad or grandma and grandpa. I like wondering what they were laughing about or how many drinks they had had. 

I'm a little obsessed with photographs and the way they can capture the essence of a person or a moment. They've also become, for me, an anchor that helps me hold on to a memory, a feeling. For example: my dad and I laying on the couch in a small cabin in the Adirondacks that we rented for a week each summer. I'm three? Four? It's clearly past my bedtime. I'm in an oversized t-shirt and I'm stretched out on top of my dad. Neither of us is smiling, which makes us look even more alike, over-tan skin, brown eyes and sullen faces. Maybe we're just tired. Maybe he's annoyed at my mom for ruining a nice father-daughter moment with the flash of a camera. Maybe he's frustrated because his youngest daughter just won't go to bed.  I know that feeling. 

I may have changed the details of the picture, I don't know. I don't have it; it's in an album on a shelf in my parents' house. It could be that I was actually asleep in the picture. In fact, the more I think about it, I'm fairly certain that I was sleeping, so there's no way that I actually remember that moment. But I feel like I remember it, even if it's a false memory. The comfort of being little and sun-soaked and resting with my big dad, the only one in my family with the same color eyes as me. 

This is why, when so many others are trusting their photographs to "the cloud," I continue to order prints of all of my pictures, hundreds at a time, with doubles or triples of my favorites. I meticulously insert them into albums, trying my hardest to keep them chronological.  My two older daughters, like their mother, already love to flip through the pages and "remember" the trip we took to visit family in Brooklyn, or the time their grandparents took them to the zoo. They're little; Ceci, at nearly two years old, won't have any real memory of the events we are currently documenting on camera. But she will have a photograph that she can carry in her car seat with her on the way to the grocery store, as she sometimes does with a picture of her cousin Howie on a playground nearly a thousand miles away. Later, I hope she'll tape them to the mirror in her bedroom or put them in her locker at school. Maybe she will take some to college with her, tack them up on a cork board or put a small album on a shelf above her desk.

My kids will be inundated with pictures on Facebook and Instagram, as well as whatever sites and apps I don't even know about and the ones that don't exist yet, but I hope pictures won't become meaningless to them. It's old-fashioned, but I want my girls to have something they can hold onto, not just something you swipe through, then it's gone. I want Maggie to think she remembers the time she took up residence in a child-sized princess chair in the middle of an aisle in Target and refused to budge, for her to laugh at how stubborn she was, even at the age of two. Remember that, mom?, she'll say. I hope she pulls that picture out to show her own kids, along with a host of other small, shiny rectangles, and they will revel in the feel of the paper in their hands, like pieces of a puzzle or a treasure map.

The Myth of "Mother Knows Best"

First, A Quiz

I don't claim to be a professional quiz-writer like the ones for YM, but indulge me for a moment. For each of the following statements, answer "Always," "Sometimes," or "Never".

• I know how to respond when my child asks a difficult question such as, "Why do all people have nipples?"
• I know when my child is actually sick and when she is just being a butt-head
• I am an effective disciplinarian
• My children listen to me
• I set a good example for my child. Like, I could say in all seriousness, "Do as I say AND as I do."
• My child is safer in my care than she would be in anyone else's
• When it comes to my children, I do what I feel is right rather than what "everyone else" is doing
• I feel confident in the choices I make about my child

Finished? If you answered "Always" to any of these statements, then I would like to know if there are any vacancies in your household, because apparently my kids would be much better off with you, Mr. or Mrs. I'm-an-Imaginary-Parent-that-Doesn't-Really-Exist. Because really- always? There's no way; I'm calling your bluff.

The Truth

Let's all say it together, this awful secret that none of us wants to admit: About half the time, we parents have absolutely no idea what we are doing. Yes, it does get somewhat better after the first child, but one thing that I have learned in the past five-ish years is that parenthood is a complicated guessing game. I can't tell you how many times my husband and I have looked at each other and asked, "What do I do?" or "Did I do the right thing there?" and the other person just shrugs and makes that face that seems to say, "You think I know?"

We make countless decisions every day. Some are small and need to be made on the spot: Do I ignore my daughter when she insists on using the word "poop" 875 times at the dinner table, or do I address it? Do I intervene in a sibling squabble or let them figure it out on their own? Other decisions seem huge and take a lot more forethought: Should my child undergo surgery in order to have tubes placed in her ears, or do we take a chance on less invasive treatments? Which pre-school should I send my child to? What do I do when I feel my child is being bullied? And these are just regular scenarios; I can't even imagine being faced with the choices the parent of a child with special needs has to make. 

I Make You Feel Like a Better Parent

The choices keep on coming, and at times it can feel overwhelming, because what if we make the wrong decision? Well, I've done it, and I can tell you what will happen. You'll feel shitty, you'll learn from it, and if you're lucky no one gets hurt or severely emotionally scarred in the process. A few cases in point:

Here's hoping I don't irreparably damage these three sweet, crazy girls...

When Maggie was about two and a half, she woke up and was acting like a total brat. She refused to eat her breakfast and then kept dissolving into a screaming puddle at every little thing. "You're hungry," I insisted. "You just need to eat and then you'll feel better." Despite her hysterical protests, I finally got her seated at the table. In my meanest, sternest voice, I commanded her to take bites of apple sauce. After about three bites she threw up all over herself and the kitchen table. Clearly not my proudest moment, but guess what? I felt shitty (I still do, but maybe writing this down for all to see will serve as my catharsis and I will finally be able to let it go), I learned from it, and I hope to God that Maggie does not remember it, because there could be some expensive therapy sessions down the road…

Here's another one. Just a few weeks ago, Maggie asked if she could go in the backyard by herself to play on the new play set. "Sure," I said, "I'll keep an eye on you from the kitchen window," and I continued with the dishes I was washing. Only minutes later, Matt glanced outside and asked, "Is Maggie okay?" The poor child had been playing in the baby swing, it had somehow tipped over, her feet were caught in the ropes, and she was now hanging upside down, unable to get out. She was scared, but fine, and of course, I felt shitty. (Actually I felt even shittier because she looked really funny and I couldn't help but laugh. To be completely honest, even now when I think of her hanging there I can't help but laugh. I don't know why it's so funny to me- maybe it's a defense mechanism to keep me from crying. Either way, crappy parent right here.)

The Moral of the Story

Obviously these are not the only times I have made the wrong call or done the wrong thing. Some of my bad decisions may not even be clear at this time, but will reveal themselves down the road when my kids are adults that still use the word "poop" 875 times at the dinner table. 

I guess I just want to debunk the whole "maternal instinct" myth, the one that makes you think that in the heat of the moment, the "right thing" will magically make itself known. When my baby is screaming and I don't know why, it's not maternal instinct that leads me to a solution, it's a lot of trial and error. The same goes for when my toddler is acting like a wild animal in the grocery store. I think sometimes people equate not knowing what to do with being a bad parent, so we're either really hard on ourselves or we over-compensate by trying to project confidence about our own parenting style and choices. I'm probably in the former group, and I look at the latter and secretly hope to find a chink in their parenting armor. 

But neither of those reactions is fair. We're all in the same boat. Or, to look at it a different way, we're all in totally different boats, with totally different passengers, so how can we possibly compare ourselves to or judge other parents? None of us is right all the time. None of us has perfect children. If you do, let's trade, and you can have a go at making mine perfect too. All we can do is support one another, offer guidance when we can, and be as forgiving of our own shortcomings as we would be of our children's. 

(Like for instance, I should not feel shitty about using the word "shitty" multiple times in this post, even though it sets a bad example and is not what I would want my children to do. But hey, they can't even read, so whatevs. I'll worry about that one later.)

In Hindsight: What I Want My Girls to Know About Friendship

This weekend, fellow graduates from Trinity College's class of 2005 will converge upon Hartford, Connecticut for our tenth college reunion. I will not be there, partly because I have an eight-week-old, but also because I have not managed to sustain most of my college friendships. I have alluded to this in previous posts and expressed my disappointment that many of my memories of those four years, which at the time were some of the best years of my life, now make me inexpressibly sad because I can't laugh about them with the other people who were there.

Make sure to be the kind of person
your friends can look up to :)

I can now take responsibility for the role I played in the erosion of these relationships, and I suppose the one silver lining is that I now truly cherish the women in my life with whom I have built strong, mutually supportive bonds. What is most important to me at this point is using what I have learned to teach my three daughters how to navigate the often terrifying territory of female friendship.

Here is what I've come up with:

Friends should lift each other up. If a friend makes you feel ugly or less, reevaluate the importance you place on her opinion. If she has hurt you, express that immediately and with a willingness to hear her side. If you fail to communicate your anger or disappointment, you have no right to hold a grudge.

If you hurt her, apologize, but most importantly, mean it. Don't get defensive. Even if you don't think you did anything wrong, validate her feelings and try to make it right. I vividly remember a fight I had with a friend in college. I had kissed a boy she liked, and we were sitting down to hash it out. "But I like him too," I argued, "Doesn't that matter?" She looked at me with disgust and said, "With you, it's always, 'I'm sorry but.'" Ten-plus years after the fact, I get it. I wish I hadn't been the kind of person who said, "I'm sorry but." I don't want you to be that kind of person either.

Pick up the phone. Texting is okay for a lot of purposes, but you should want to hear your friend's voice. You can't laugh or cry with a person over text. When you get older, you need to be able to hear her baby cooing in the background or her toddler inching toward a tantrum to really understand where she's coming from.

Look at old pictures and think,
"I love these girls even more now."

Don't you dare talk about her behind her back, because if ever there was a rule to follow, it's to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Value every friendship equally. My sisters used to tease me when I was little because they said I had first, second, and third tier friends. My mom had designated a page of our family's phone book "Jenny's Friends", and underneath that heading was a long list of names and numbers. Every time I wanted to invite a friend to come over to play, I started at the top of the list and worked my way down until I found someone who was free. I'm nicer than I was when I was a child, because I know now that nobody wants to feel like a second choice. All of your friends bring something to the table. Appreciate them all, because as an adult, I can tell you they are all awesome and irreplaceable: your mom friends, your drink-a-glass-of-wine-together friends, your childhood friends, your weekend-getaway friends, your funny friends, your same-political-opinions friends, your passionate friends, your older and wiser friends, your work friends, all of them.

Understand that friendships go through stages. This is natural and will allow you to grow as individuals. You'll drift apart and, when you realize that you miss her, you'll come back together. My friend Lindsey and I have followed this pattern time and time again since we first met at age three. We spent time with different cliques, pursued different interests, but always found our way back to each other and continue to do so because our friendship makes us better.

And if, when you reach out, your friend doesn't respond in kind? I've learned the hard way that there are some people that you will have to let go of, regardless of how painful it may be. Not every relationship will last, but they will all teach you something that will hopefully make you a better friend in the future.

When your friends feet are swollen from pregnancy,
go get a pedi with them

Friendship is not always easy but should always be worth it. If you reach adulthood and have a handful of friends that are honest with you but kind, who lift you up and keep you grounded, who challenge you, who forgive you, who share their struggles with you and genuinely want to hear about yours, well, you will be counted lucky.

How to Say I Love You: Lessons from My Mom

There are a lot of adjectives that I could choose to describe my mom. Generous. Goofy. Unassuming. A little scatter-brained - three daughters might have had something to do with that. Loyal. Dependable. Social (my middle-school self would have said embarrassingly so).

When it comes to her parenting style, though, one word stands high above the rest: loving. I honestly can't remember even one time in my life when I thought to myself, "My mom doesn't love me." She showed me, and still does, in a million little ways. Here are just a few:

Note: Although I put these in the past tense, they all still hold true today. (My mom would probably like even more opportunities to do them!)

1) She fed me. I have such fond memories of my mom's apple pie, her chicken parmesan, of sheets and sheets of fresh-baked cookies. I think of her busy in the kitchen, watching episodes of All My Children on a tiny black-and-white TV with her hands coated in flour or wrist-deep in ground beef, making meatballs. Even now, when her children and grandchildren come to visit, breakfast is cooked to order and meals are planned well in advance, after much forethought about who likes what and what leftovers can be sent home with who. For my mom, preparing food is a way to provide physical nourishment and enjoyment to those she holds dear. 

2) She worried about me. I remember the annoyance I felt as a teenager each time I tried to sneak in past curfew and there was my mom in pajamas and robe at the living room window, waiting to express her displeasure. Even when I did come in at an acceptable time she would often get out of bed and come down to ask me about my night. Sometimes we would make a snack of cinnamon toast and sit at the kitchen table together until we were ready to retire (or re-retire) for the night. She is also notorious for travel-stalking my sisters and I (just ask my sister Meghan about a certain incident during a trip to Guatemala). Each time we fly anywhere, there is a voicemail from my mom waiting when we land. "Did you land yet? Are you there? Let me know when you get there!" It's become somewhat of a running joke, but at the end of the day I would rather have a mom who wants to know if I arrived safely than one who doesn't bother to check. 

My mom in all her grandma glory with Ceci, January 2014

3) She was there. I still have a hard time figuring out how she and my dad managed to be at every important event: track and swim meets, band concerts, awards ceremonies. She took the opportunity to be the substitute nurse for my school on occasion. She volunteered as room mom. She was my Girl Scout troop leader. This, on top of working and all of the other responsibilities that come with being a mom of three. Even now, anytime she can get away and travel the 864 miles to come help me with the kids, she will do so in a heartbeat.

4) She told me. At night, when she tucked me in. Every time we said goodbye on the phone. In the notes she would leave us to read when we got home from school each day. All the time. I try to do the same for my own children. 

5) She didn't judge me. I don't recall a time when my mom ever tried to steer me toward a particular interest or activity just because it was something she wanted me to be involved in. She was always wholly supportive of my hobbies, whether I was collecting Troll dolls, asking her to let me attend a modeling conference in the hopes of being "discovered" (alas, I was not), or blogging about details of her personal life. My absolute favorite story about my mom, the one that proves she loves me no matter what, occurred when I was a freshman in college. I had a roommate named Liz, but I had recently started dating a boy down the hall by the name of Louis. When I called my mom to tell her about my new boyfriend, she misunderstood me and thought I had said, "I'm dating Liz." Her reaction: "Umm, won't that be a little awkward? You know, since you're living together?" After I asked her to repeat what she heard me say, we shared a laugh, but I continue to be so impressed by her reaction at what she thought was the big moment of my coming out. While I felt bad about the misunderstanding, I am also so glad that it happened, because I know without a shadow of a doubt that my mom loves me for me.

6) She let me go. My mom likes to tell a story about bringing us to the pediatrician as small children and receiving this piece of advice from him: "Bernie, your job as a parent, as soon as your children learn how to walk, is to teach them how to leave you." I think it probably hurt her at every step, but my mom did not place limits to keep her daughters close to her. First it was off to summer camp for a week, then two. When it came time for us to go away to college, my sisters attended Boston College about four hours away, and I was only slightly closer. Two of us studied for a semester abroad in Europe. After graduation, she helped me move to St. Louis, then to South Carolina after that. I know she wants me closer, but she would never ask that of me. What better way to prove a mother's love than that?

On this Mother's Day, I wanted to do more for my mom than send a card or buy her a new pair of yoga pants- the "slippery kind", as she always requests. I wanted her to know that I know what she has done and continues to do for me. It has not gone unnoticed. In fact, I am taking notes, because I hope to be even half the mom that she has been to me. 

Tired Mommy Karaoke

When I was in college and in the years immediately following, I was a self-proclaimed karaoke junkie. Despite my less than pleasant voice, there was something intoxicating (pun intended) about getting up in front of an often skeptical crowd and winning them over with a spirited (pun also intended) rendition of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" or "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)". 

Those days are over, at least for the foreseeable future. The only stage I'm getting on is the one in my kids' play room that my four-year-old created by ripping sheets of paper off an easel pad and laying them on the floor. With a microphone borrowed from our rarely used game of Rock Band for Wii she makes me perform Raffi songs while she and Ceci serve as spectators. If I somehow manage to get to a  karaoke night, however, maybe I will bust out this original take on a classic bar song:

Mom of Three (Sung to the tune of "Piano Man")

It's 5 a.m. on a Saturday
When I am roused from my sleep
By a baby in a bassinet
Crying her heart out just five feet from me

I say, "Child, do you know what the time is?
Only two hours ago you were fed."
But her diaper's turned blue, she smells faintly of poo,
So it's farewell to my cozy bed

La la la, di da da
Will I ever rest again?

This is my life, I'm a mom of three
This is my life today
Right now sleeplessness is my reality
But in eighteen years I'll be okay

When my spouse and I chose to have children
There were some things we couldn't foresee
Like pregnancy mood swings and the tumult that they bring
Or how painful labor would be
I said, "Matt I believe this is killing me
I'm not sure that I thought this all through."
Then they handed us our little bundle
Oh my God, what did we get into?

La la la, di da da
I would never be the same

Now Maggie, our first, was a darling
The light of our lives, our sweetheart
Then the terrible twos hit, and she started to throw fits
And we thought a sibling would be smart

Well our second, Cecilia, she fit right in
A regular partner in crime
And we thought, despite all of the messes
What the heck let's do this one more time

This is my life, I'm a mom of three
This is my life today
Right now wiping butts is my reality
But in eighteen years I'll be okay

This new babe doesn't care that it's Saturday
Or that her mama wants to sleep
So I feed her and watch Netflix series
Until downstairs the other two creep
And their laughter borders on maniacal
And they tear through my house like banshees
Though they may make me poor and drop crumbs on my floor
I still love to be called their mommy

La la la, di da da
I need a cup of coffee

This is my life, I'm a mom of three
This is my life today
Right now chasing kids is my reality
But in eighteen years I'll be okay

Where Does the Time Go?

Way to monopolize your mom's time, children...

Since my last post, I have become a mother of three- seventeen days ago, to be exact. Before Baby #3 (or Alexandra, as she would probably prefer to be called) was born, I went out and bought her a baby book, as I had for my other two. As a third child myself, I was determined not to short-change my youngest daughter  when it came to recording the memories and milestones of her infancy. In the day or two after her birth I spent some quiet moments in the mother-baby unit filling in the first few pages with details of my pregnancy and her arrival. Since then, despite my best intentions, I have allowed it to sit in a corner of my kitchen amidst a steadily growing pile of junk mail and pre-school drawings.

There are some people who refer to this time as the "Fourth Trimester". Personally, I think "The Forgotten Weeks" would be an apt name as well. My mind is foggy from sleeping in 2-3 hour stretches. My waking hours often feel like a struggle to survive. Just this evening, while waiting with all three kids for my husband to get home from work, I was dealing with a one-year-old who fell down the steps of the deck face-first and a newborn who pooped through her diaper. In the meantime, dinner was adamantly refusing to cook itself. The days can feel endless, yet somehow the days get away from me. They will continue to get away from me, I know from prior experience, until my newest daughter is a month old, and then two months, and then a year. And so on.

Anyway, in order to answer the question so frequently and hypothetically repeated by parents - "Where does the time go?" - I documented a recent twenty-four hours of my life, then typed up the results in an Excel spreadsheet, then made a pretty pie chart (see below). Because clearly I have time for that.

I learned that nearly a third of my day is spent with a baby physically attached to me, and that I now categorize using the bathroom, showering, and going to Target to purchase cleaning products as "me time". In fact, aside from treating myself to the luxuries of errands and basic hygiene, none of my time is truly mine.  Turns out, I've been asking the wrong question. It isn't where the time goes that matters, but who I give my time to. I learned, in short, that I have good reason for not finding the time to update the baby book. Scratch that- three good reasons.

Why I Can't Put My Feet Up

I knew this would happen. I would make the decision not to return to the classroom after spring break, and my due date would approach with no sign of a baby. Instead of filling my days with meaningful human interaction, distracting myself with my teaching duties, I have ended up with a whole bunch of time on my hands. I did this with my first pregnancy as well, and found myself sitting around for a week and a half feeling, well, expectant.

People keep telling me to enjoy this time. Put your feet up. Take naps. No one thinks you're a slacker for taking a few extra days off of work, especially when you've decided not to return after the baby is born. A third child will change everything soon enough, so focus on your family. Shower them with affection. And don't feel guilty about doing something that YOU want to do for a change.

It's good advice- brilliant, really- and I wish I could follow it to the letter. But let's face it, relaxation does not come easy to us moms (particularly when said relaxation cannot involve a margarita). I first observed this quality in my own mother, well before I had children of my own. When she's in full-on Mom Mode, she doesn't sit down. As soon as she finishes eating dinner she begins clearing the table, regardless of what progress others have made. Many times I have had to remind her that it's not particularly easy to enjoy a meal when someone is hovering around me with a damp sponge waiting to wipe crumbs from my area.

Can I blame her? Every night after putting my girls to bed I want so badly to sit on the couch with my husband and let go of the stresses of the day. But what do I do? I spend at least twenty minutes collecting items from the floor and attempting to find a place for them; taking care of the dirty dishes in the sink so I don't need to look at them tomorrow; glancing at the mail and checking school bags for important papers. If there was ever a time when I had an excuse to not do these things, it's now, but instead these mundane tasks have taken on a new urgency. Each sweep I make through the house could be the last time I pick up before the baby arrives. Each item I check off my to-do list is one more pat on the back for me, one less task that would have taken my mind off my new little girl once she is here.

But there may be something else to this frenzied "nesting" that we go through before welcoming a new addition. Maybe it's the way we mothers avoid facing the real fact that control is an illusion. No matter what I do in the meantime, how many loads of laundry or bills that are sent off and paid, baby girl will come when she is ready, not when I am. (And let's be honest, I'm never REALLY going to be ready.) My life will change, again, and I won't know exactly how or what to expect. If I put my feet up, if I empty my mind, I may just have to contemplate these thoughts- and that's scary.

I'm not good at waiting, particularly when the event I'm waiting for is so exciting and life-changing. (And painful and terrifying.) I'm trying, though, I really am. In the last few days I have purchased a new camera in preparation for lots of family photos, and have been having a blast learning how to use it. I've gone shopping for an extremely impractical but incredibly "aww"-inspiring outfit for the new baby. I started and finished (!) reading a book just for pleasure.  I'm currently sitting outside on a beautiful spring day with a cup of half-caff and an empty plate with the remnants of a Panera cinnamon crunch bagel (if heaven were a carb, this is what it would taste like). Ceci and Maggie are at daycare and school. My house is in the process of its last cleaning-service deep clean before we become a family of five.

In a couple of hours it will be time to go pick up the girls and be mom again, trying to figure out who took what toy from who and settling disputes over stolen yogurt raisins. Despite my physical state I will need to chase after Ceci when she doesn't want her diaper changed or put Maggie in time-out if she speaks to me with a little too much sass. So I'm going to go home to a clean shower and enjoy the fact that no one is screaming for me while I wash my hair. Maybe, while my husband isn't home, I'll even watch an episode of Downton Abbey on DVR (the better to free up recording space for Pardon the Interruption and really bad 90s sic-fi movies). I might as well try to enjoy it, because tomorrow, everything could change.