Category Archives: Parenting

Holidaze

Posted on December 29, 2012 | 18 comments

It started last Sunday at church. We had a cookie and a glass of wine as part of the Winter Solstice ceremony. The cookie was a gingerbread person. But when you held it upside down it looked like an alien. I snapped a picture. But I didn’t come home and write up a post. Or put it up on my Facebook page. Or tweet it. I just took the picture and ate the cookie.

Christmas Eve I took a picture before we went to bed. I didn’t want to get busted by my big girl. I was careful. So, I didn’t do anything with it. I uploaded it to my picasa account quickly and deleted it from everything.

Christmas day was a blur of food and laughter and champagne and naps and turkey and stuffing and wine and coffee and cookies and family. My little family. We had a toast at breakfast. Only twelve months earlier we didn’t even know that Lucy would be a Lucy and now here we are, our family of four. We cheers’ed. We cried. Emily asked me if you could only have one toast. I said “Of course not” and we all chimed in with our thoughts. Our hearts were full.

It has been only four days since Christmas. The tree is down. I have put it all away. Christmas clutter on the 26th feels like the walk of shame, dark eyeliner in the morning or beer cans all over the kitchen at 10 am. It has to go. This moment seems like a lifetime ago already.

Sometimes I write everything down so I won’t forget. But Christmas is too fast. How can you capture all of those moments? Emily’s face when she saw the bell that Santa left her from his sleigh. She believes, with her whole heart she believes. Lucy has started making a crazy face, a kid face. She ripped up paper and ate the tags on every new toy. When the toy frenzy was over and every gift had been opened the only one that Mom remembered that she never wrapped (and still can not find) was a pair of gloves. There is always one “Wait! There’s a something!” or at least there was in my house,

This morning I decided I wasn’t getting dressed. Both kids woke up warm, low grade fevers and nasty coughs. We napped. We ate leftovers. We napped some more. We watched Mrs Doubtfire and I cried when Robin Williams and Sally Field decided to separate and again when he walks back in the door at the end to pick up his kids. I spent four hours on the floor in my living room while my kids crawled all over me.

Late this afternoon I showered. We went in to town for dinner. Mexican food. It feels like Christmas was ages ago. It is January cold outside already.

What started last week with a picture I never posted has led to a week of radio silence for me. I might be quiet here for a bit. I have been more unplugged in the last week than I have been in the last year. I have been present. In my home, my little family has made me laugh and cry and giggle. We have eaten cookies and made big meals and loaded and unloaded our dishwasher. We have been together. Just the four of us.

Santa Claus gave me everything I have ever dreamed of for Christmas this year. I hope he gave you the same. 2012 has forever changed me. I have two more days to soak it up. Catch y’all on the flip side.

18 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged Christmas, Family, Parenting

Bruiser

Posted on December 21, 2012 | 22 comments

Little bitty kids have little bitty problems. It stands to reason that the bigger a kid gets the bigger their problems get.

The cooties a kid catches in elementary school become broken hearts. The tricycle wrecks become fender benders. The lunches eaten at the silent table in the cafeteria become detention if you don’t watch your smart mouth.

Em was fearless as a little girl. She would walk across the back of the couch and race her trike as fast as its teeny wheels would go. There were scrapes and bumps and bruises along the way. But she was never one to cry for terribly long. Her big blue eyes were steely when she was hurt. She was a tough little kid.

She still is.

I rounded the corner of the hallway near the Nurse’s office in school and my heart sank when I heard her crying. Minutes earlier MQD had called and said “Didn’t you see the missed call? Em is hurt. They want you to come and get her. She hit her head on the playground.” I started to fire questions at him and stopped myself. I knew better. He had told me everything he knew.

We live close to the elementary school. It had been fourteen minutes since my missed call. Two minutes to park and walk inside. My baby girl had been crying for sixteen minutes.

I was expecting them to say “It’s protocol that we call a parent when there has been a head injury, we need you to sign this form.” I’d be back at school with Lucy in tow in less than an hour for the Holiday Party.

But she was crying.

I saw her and I dropped to my knees and wiped her hair from her face. She put her arms around my neck like a child of preschool age. I stood and she clung to me, her long legs wrapping around me like they did when she was young. I was lucky that a friend had popped by when I got the call that I needed to go to school. I had run out the door without Lucy. So, for the first time in a long time my big girl was my baby and it was just the two of us. With her head on my shoulder she wept.

A lot of bandaids and ice packs and tears later we were home. A little bit of nausea later we were at the pediatrician. And not long after that we were at the Emergency Room. Somewhere between the doctor’s office and the triage room of the hospital my sleepy, weepy, nauseous big girl turned back in to the stone cold little bruiser she had been as a little, bitty girl.

She hadn’t said much of anything to me in hours. Suddenly she was chatting away to the nurse and the doctor at the ER. She was tired. Rattled. But she was smiling. She looked from left to right, she followed the doc’s finger. She walked up and down the hall and might have even rolled her eyes when they asked her what year it was.

We aren’t out of the woods. I will continue to watch her for worrisome signs. Incidentally if you have never monitored a child for “strange behavior,” it is rather maddening. Small people are weird. They do strange things.

Kids get bigger and their thumps and bumps get bigger, too. I knew this before today. Intellectually, anyway. I can’t yet say I am grateful for the object lesson, Universe. Fingers crossed for an uneventful tomorrow.

22 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged Dear Emily, emergency room, hospital, motherhood, panic, Parenting

Do you believe in Magic?

Posted on December 21, 2012 | 13 comments

We had tickets for the 7 o’clock train at the museum. Through the woods we would ride, woods filled with magical twinkling lights. We would drink hot cocoa and use candy canes as swizzle sticks. We would make a Christmas ornament while we waited. We were going to see Santa.

Emily was rolling her eyes and giving me attitude. Lucy was screaming bloody murder because she was going to be forced to wear a hat. Dad was grumbling and trying to get us out the door. I was stifling the desire to shout out “Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas” every few minutes. It was pouring down rain.

But at least we would get a picture with Santa. Right? Through the lens of the camera we woud forget all about the rolled eyes and the tears. Baby’s First Christmas would be perfect.

We were boarding the train when the Conductor said “Santa is on the right, m’aam” and he winked. Oh. Okay. I’ll put Emily on the right side of our bench seat so that she would get a better look.

When we rounded the corner and I saw Santa standing near his sleigh with an oversized elf and an umbrella I realized we weren’t getting off of the train. Santa would stop at each bench and ask each child a thing or two, they would chat. “Is there anything special you’d like this year? How about something for your little sister? I’ll see you next year, dear!”

There would be no picture.

The Mom in me started to panic. Well, I will take the kids to the mall. Tomorrow. I’d get a picture. It will be fine. I frantically tried to snap family pictures with my phone in the dark. With flash. Without flash. It didn’t seem to matter. We were blurry. There would be no picture with Santa.

And then I saw him. He had ornate brocade around his coat. His beard was soft and long. His glasses were bifocals. I don’t think he had his suit stuffed with a pillow. I couldn’t tell if his boots were real or those pleather boot shaped shoe coverings popular with mall Santas. I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to look him over carefully for an hour as we waited in line. He was there right next to us for a moment. And then he was gone. “Well, hello, there,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”

He talked to the kids for a minute and then he moved to the next row. True to form, I was misty eyed. Ever my mini-me Emily looked to me and said “This might be my first Christmas crying when I see Santa!” I laughed and decided not to tell her right then that it most certainly was not.

As the train pulled away from Santa and headed through the tunnel we were all smiles. The tunnel shone, the christmas lights that adorned the train reflecting on the tunnel’s interior. We looped back around and drove by Santa once more on our way back to the station. The children waved and I reached for my phone. Maybe I could get a picture of just Santa. That would suffice.

I showed the picture to MQD as soon as I snapped it. I was laughing. “It’s the best picture of the night!” he said. And in unison we both shouted “He’s like Bigfoot!”

I love our blurry picture of Santa. I love that we did not get a posed picture at the mall. I love that Em can’t scrutinize the picture later, examining the image, searching for any indication that maybe it wasn’t really Santa after all.

Because for one more year, at least one, my big girl believes in Magic. I hope you all have a groovy holiday.

Do you believe in magic in a young girl’s heart
How the music can free her, whenever it starts
And it’s magic, if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
I’ll tell you about the magic, and it’ll free your soul
But it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout rock and roll… ~ The Lovin’ Spoonful

13 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged Christmas, Family, Life, Magic, Parenting, Santa, Santa Claus, The Lovin' Spoonful

The Point

Posted on December 20, 2012 | 4 comments

There are milestones in a child’s life. If you are not careful they slip right by and you don’t even notice them. Yesterday in the car Em was making Lucy giggle and she suddenly shrieked “Mom!!! Lucy has another tooth!!” I expected to see a little tooth showing, that almost imperceptible whiteness of a tooth that has barely popped through. But, nope. Up top, to the right of center we have our fifth tooth. It isn’t just kind of there. It’s a Tooth and I missed it. The kid grins from ear to ear all day I don’t know how I missed it.

This week Lucy started pointing. She doesn’t point at things she wants exactly. And she doesn’t point if you say “Lucy, where is your puppy dog?” or “Lucy, where is your mama?” She just points. She walks around and points. Remember Larry Dallas, the womanizing sleazebag that lived downstairs from Jack and Janet and Chrissy Snow? He would just point and grin. Lucy doesn’t wink, but she doesn’t have to. It’s fabulously ridiculous and I am glad I didn’t miss it.

This morning she was pointing and laughing. Technically she was pointing and laughing at me (which if you have ever spent ten minutes in my presence you know that is like the Life Jackpot for me.) Laugh at me, please. Nothing makes me laugh harder.

So. Lucy does this now.

And since she does that. It means that from time to time she does this, too.

And if you have ever lived with me or taken a long ride in the car with me or watched a movie with me or hung out with me when the air is dry than you know that I pretty much do that, too. This kid, Lucy, in her Boston Red Sox sweater looking just like her father… maybe she looks a little like her mama, after all. Just a little.

4 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged Lucy, milestones, motherhood, nose picker, Parenting

We are four.

Posted on December 17, 2012 | 26 comments

“A table for four?” the hostess asks me.

More than a decade in the restaurant business and I can not resist the urge to smile and say “Three and a half!” while gesturing to the baby. It’s not particularly funny. It wasn’t the first time I said it and it won’t be the next hundred times. We get a high chair and we head to our table. A table for four.

There are four stockings hanging.

When I fold laundry I make a square in my mind, sorting things in to the invisible quadrants: Mom, Dad, Emily & Lucy.

I set the table and in the past few weeks I have begun to pull out four plates (even if the fourth remains far away from the smallest dining companion in an effort to keep her from pitching it to the floor.)

There are four spots in a booth. Four spaces in an average vehicle. Three spots on the couch plus the chair in the living room make four spots to sit.

Four means a family to me. I was raised in a family of four. Four means parenting is never zone defense by design. Man-to-man is my preferred style and two adults and two kids lends itself nicely to this.

Friday afternoon Lucy fell asleep in the car. I pulled in the driveway with forty minutes or so to spare before Emily was to get off of the bus. I thought I would read, goof off on my phone and let her sleep. I rolled the windows down in my car and grabbed a blanket and my laptop from inside. With Lucy tucked in to the backseat and a cool breeze on my face I started to write about how we have four people in our family and that fact brings me a great sense of calm, a feeling of being complete.

Lucy started to wake and I quickly turned my car on, hoping the vibration of the engine would put her back to sleep. In twenty minutes Emily would be getting off of the bus. The radio was on and the news of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary filled my car.

I was waiting for my child to get off the bus. There were twenty families whose children would not come home from school. I had twenty minutes to wait until I could hold my oldest in my arms. School had let out already, I couldn’t go pick her up. So, I waited. With fat tears rolling down my face I waited.

My heart skips a beat when I see her face every day after school. There is nothing so care-free as a child as they toss their backpack to the ground and run up the driveway. I dropped to my knees and buried my face in her neck, breathing in her scent of sweaty kid and cold winter day and cherry chapstick. “Mom, are you ok?”

“Yep. I am. I am ok.”

“You can keep hugging me, but can I just grab a snack?”

We are four. Four is our little family. To the families that woke up a four on Friday and became three, woke up three and became two, whatever your number is now know that Americans will keep setting a place at their table for your children. We will hang a stocking or make a space on our couch. Your children will not be forgotten.

26 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Parenting

Tagged Bad Mood, Family, sadness, sandy hook elementary, tragedy

I have two daughters. I just realized that today.

Posted on December 10, 2012 | 33 comments

I have fallen in love quite a few times. I love to fall in love. My heart beats fast and my arms go numb. Falling in love is exhilarating.

Falling in love happens long before loving someone. When you are in love the possibility exists that you will fall out. You will grow and change or feelings will get hurt and hearts broken. But when you love someone you love them forever, day in and day out for the rest of all time. You can count on them and they count on you and you know that no matter what ever happens in your lives you will love one another. Forever.

I fell in love with Lucy when I felt the top of her head. It was early in the morning on January 20, 2012. She was not quite yet born. I felt her head and she slipped back inside me. I wept. I called to her. “Please, baby, please…” I was desperately in love with her in that moment and I needed to hold her to feel my arms around her. I had fallen in love in a moment’s time. And I have been falling for almost a year.

This morning it changed.

She was sitting on the floor, playing with her pile of noisy stuff. She was jabbering to herself. I was sewing Christmas ornaments. She turned and she looked at me. She smiled and looked back at her things. All she did is smile. But in that moment everything changed.

A few times a day I will say to Emily “Hey, you know what?” and she turns to me and smiles or occasionally smirks and says “You love me?” and I nod.

Sometimes MQD will hand me a cup of coffee and instead of “Thank you” I say “I love you” and what I mean is not just thank you for this cup of coffee but “thank you and I love you and I will love you for the rest of all time.”

And this morning when Lucy looked at me it happened. The hair stood up on my arms and I realized I loved her. Forever. Not my baby Lucy Q that is sweet and warm and sleeps in my arms. But this person. This tiny person that will slam her bedroom door some day and break my heart in a thousand ways, I love her.

Little Lucy Quinn, today you are a baby but you won’t be one forever. In a little over a month you will be a year old and you will officially be a toddler, although you have been toddling around for well over a month now. Today it struck me that you are already becoming the little girl that you will be in no time. You looked up at me from your pile of noisy stuff and I said “I love you” and you smiled.

And the hair stood up on my arms and I realized that I will love you until the end of all time. You’re really here. Forever. You are my daughter. Yesterday I had a daughter and a baby and today I realized that I have two daughters. You are this tiny person that I love.

No picture today. I can’t pick one that captures this moment. But I won’t ever forget it. It took me eleven months to realize that my baby is here to stay. I won’t forget it.

33 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged Daughters, Dear Lucy, Family, Love, Lucy, motherhood, Sisters

True Love

Posted on December 8, 2012 | 13 comments

When I first met my husband he gave me a little spring in my step. He was hot. He was 25. I was a mom. I was 32. He liked me. He like liked me. It made me feel a little extra sassy. Mama’s still got it and all that, right?

Years later the discrepancy in our ages sometimes creates the opposite effect. I wonder if I look older when I stand next to him. Does his under 30 skin make the spots on my face more obvious? I am tired. It shows. I aged quite a bit the year after Emily was born. It’s happening again. Staying awake for a year can wreck you. The lines in my forehead are deep, rivaled only by the dark circles under my eyes.

This morning I took matters in to my own hands. I took an old, old man to bed. He has a grey beard and his feet smell like corn chips. But he makes me feel beautiful. He kisses like me there is no tomorrow. His brown eyes have seen me happy. They have seen me sad. He loves me unconditionally. His breath leaves a little something to be desired. But I love him. With everything I am.

13 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged black lab, Dogs, Family, Fisher, Humor, Love, Marriage

GTFO, Sad!

Posted on December 6, 2012 | 27 comments

Sometimes I feel inside out. Like the parts that are supposed to be on the inside are on the outside. When I was 18 I got the cartilage in my ear pierced and it didn’t hurt when the needle went through. It didn’t hurt when he put the earring in. But when I went outside it stung. Maybe it was the chill in the Boston air. But the way I explained it to myself is that a little bit of my insides were exposed to the air. And it stung.

I live with my insides on the outside. Lucy called me Mama this week and I wept. Emily realized that I want every single extra minute she will give me and I held her hand tight and tried not to cry. The littlest moments make my heart sing. These moments don’t have to wind their way down deep in to my heart and soul to touch me because my heart and soul is right underneath my skin. Sometimes it is even on the outside of my skin holding itself together with nothing but sheer will.

When there is this much good, this much joy, this much Christmas spirit and this much love in your day to day it is harder to reconcile when the Sad rolls through. Usually I exercise the Sad away. Bicep curls make me feel like a bad bitch. Even if I do those bicep curls in my living room while I watch Rikki Lake and listen to Katy Perry somehow I still walk away feeling strong. Because I made the time. For me. Because I am important.

I have been busy. I have run errands. I have made Christmas ornaments and cooked holiday meals and wrapped gifts. I have not exercised much at all in ten days. And I have cried. Holy shit, I have cried. And I have lied by omission. “How was your day?” he asks me when he gets home from work.

“It was great! I hung the stockings!”

But it was not great. It is hard to throw yourself a Pity Party when you are married to a realist. This morning I gave up the act. I tried to tell him this morning about my bad case of the Sad and without forethought I blurted out “I don’t feel special.” Before I could stop myself I pointed out that he will surely tell me that no one is special and we will all be eaten by the worms some day.

Sometimes when you lean on the people you love they give you what you need. The last time I felt paralyzed with fear MQD gave me just what I needed. He gave me strength. I was trying to mentally wrap my mind around having a baby last January. I was in labor and I was scared. “You’re a bad ass, Kelly. You just can’t be too much of a pussy today to be a bad ass.”

This morning I was wallowing. “But the worms will never have had a meal JUST LIKE YOU,” he said.

He’s right.

Hey, Sad! Yeah, you with the swollen eyes and the runny nose and the bad mood, I’m talking to you, Sad. I have seasonally inappropriate toenails now and I am taking back the reins. You can kiss my ass, Sad, my sweaty ass while I do a million jump squats in my living room and evict you.

Even if it is sixty-some degrees outside it is Christmastime, Sad. I have a sweet, sweet husband and a big girl that makes me laugh. My baby girl has started saying mama and she kisses with tongue. Things around here actually pretty great. You gotta roll out, Sad.

27 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Exercise, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged Bad Mood, Exercise, Sad, therapy

I’ll stop the world and melt with you…

Posted on December 5, 2012 | 20 comments

It is hard to know if things are moving too fast or if they are moving just right.

Walking through the store today with Emily I imagined the day when we play Santa together. She mentioned the other day with a smile that she believes in Santa Claus “because if I don’t he won’t come, you know.” She looked at me an extra second. I don’t know if she was winking or if I imagined it.

My little girl is not the only one growing up before my eyes. My big girl is growing up every day, too. She wears some version of the same outfit every day these days. In her pink cowgirl boots she is fearless. In her leopard scarf she is warm and kind.

I picked her up from school today. As we walked to the car she said “You picked me up instead of having me ride the bus. How come?”

I reached my hand out and she took it. “No reason,” I said.

“You just wanted a few extra minutes, didn’t you?” She squeezed my hand.

That kid knows me too well. Yep. I just want a few extra minutes.

20 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Christmas in the Cackalackey

Posted on December 2, 2012 | 17 comments

Sometimes the spirit moves you slowly. In years past the Christmas spirit has crept in on little cat feet like Carl Sandburg’s Fog. Christmas usually comes in slowly.

This weekend it was unseasonably warm. I didn’t expect the spirit to grab me. I was in the produce section at the grocery store. I cruised right by the poinsettias. I didn’t bat an eye at the paperwhites. It was almost 65 degrees outside. I was wearing flip flops. Christmas was coming. But it wasn’t coming today.

Christmas candy

And then I saw them. All at once two things happened. The Christmas Spirit seized me. And I was an old, old woman.

I don’t think these Christmas candies have ever looked good to me before. But I wanted them. I am blaming it on Sudden Onset Christmas Spirit Disorder and not some kind of rapid aging.

I resisted the candies.

But it was a close call. As I walked through the grocery store I had the fully formed thought “I should really keep my eyes open for some kind of a crystal dish.” A crystal candy dish? I have small children. I am in my mid thirties, I am in my sexual prime, dammit!! A crystal candy dish??!! The Christmas Spirit works in mysterious ways.

Hours later the spirit had grabbed hold of me. The tree was up. The mantle is half decorated. Rudolf is hanging on the wall. I had the girls take naps so we could decorate the tree in the evening and not stress bedtime. It was shaping up to be a good day. The tree would go up in a corner I could gate off. It is possible that Lucy will not crush herself or ruin 36 years of ornaments. I was wearing a velour sweat suit. MQD was out with his father to watch football. The windows were open. Chili in the crock pot. I didn’t dare ask the Universe for another thing.

Lucy was running like a drunken linebacker with her hands up. It is a text book bum rush. I glanced at her and back to what I was doing, I had a few seconds before she would slam in to my legs. “Mamamamamaaaa….” I wasn’t sure I’d heard it until I looked to Emily. Her mother’s girl, her eyes were wet and already leaking “Mom!!! She said Mama!”

I dropped to the floor and tried to hold her in my arms, to drink in this baby that is growing before my eyes. She was in a hurry. She had things to do. I let her go. My baby had called for me. I was Mama.

The day carried on. We took showers.

We put on Christmas pajamas and we decorated the tree.

The Christmas Spirit has grabbed hold of Mama by her ankles and it is pulling me under. I might not come up for air for the entire month. This evening when MQD and his father walked in to the house I was peace. I was love. I was goodwill.

There is only one spirit stronger than the Christmas Spirit.

And damn if they didn’t stroll in the house with some. Now excuse me, I need to kick back and watch a Christmas movie and sip a little shine. Christmas spirit is swell. But the white lightning is the spirit that warms me head to toe.