Category Archives: Parenting

Adventure that’s beyond compare…

Posted on October 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Many of you may assume I was going to write about the Gummi Bears.  But they are not the only family that is bouncing here and there and everywhere.  Or even the only family that is “Dashing and daring, courageous and caring,  faithful and friendly, with stories to share….”

I’ll cool it with the Gummi Bears.  But once it gets in your head…

I will (hopefully) be very busy this weekend prepping to (hopefully) move in to the new place on Tuesday of next week.  Fingers and toes are crossed.  So, I thought I’d point you in the direction of some entertainment for the weekend.  If you’ve been reading here than there is something that appeals to you about a good gross story, or a moment that deserves to be on candid camera, or a sappy mom that is bursting at the seams with love.

I started reading my friend Colleen’s blog at The Adventure of the Family Pants because I love a good do-over.  Colleen’s story is hers to tell, but believe me when I say that the path that led her to her family wasn’t always a picnic.  She survived.  With her humor, her grace, her potty mouth, her love of glitter all of it intact.

A few highlights –

There was the day bees attacked her kids.  And her highly allergic husband.  It’s the kind of story you hear and think “No fucking way.  Oh, man…”

And the day a baby skunk scared the shit out of her.

It’s not always the wild that gets her all worked up.  Her two year old can be his own version of a wild animal.   And her Pearls of Wisdom are to die for.

If her son was not enough of a handful, her daughter, whom she calls Ms Plum, is nine handfuls.  She is raising the world’s largest baby.  I am not a woman that wants to do things like eat babies.   Ms Plum is positively chewable.

Colleen is a special kind of woman.  She will make you laugh. And make you cry.  Her post honoring her mother and Domestic Violence Awareness Month is somehow chilling and heartwarming all at once.

Go visit her. The Adventures of The Family Pants.  Like her on facebook, follow her, bookmark her.  Just go say hello.

Because if you have ever been handed a shit sandwich or loved your kid so much you could explode or wondered if you were on a hidden camera show then you should read her.  And you’ll know you’re not alone.  Or that there are three of us, at least.

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To Doula or Not to Doula

Posted on October 20, 2011 | 7 comments

I have given up worrying about when we will close on the house.  Both our real estate agent and our mortgage broker have confirmed that it is a “when” not an “if,” so my time spent wondering when we will close, when I will escape the maze of boxes and pet hair and madness in my house is time I could spend worrying about something else.

Like this baby.  That we are apparently going to have sometime in the next…  eighty some odd days.  The alternating stress and excitement of moving and packing has kept my mind occupied.  But the heartburn and reflux I have at night has given me ample opportunity to worry when I might otherwise be sleeping.  Thanks, baby.  You must have known I wanted to squeeze in some extra worrying, I appreciate the reflux keeping me awake so I can get that worrying in.

Lack of sleep and stress finally resulted in two inevitabilities yesterday.  Both involving tears.  I called my mom and informed her that I want to come home.  I tearfully announced that I need to blow it out all over her so I can get through the rest of the day.  I don’t think thirty five is too old for the occasional “I WANT MY MOMMY” moments.  I had a nice explosive one.  I thought it would tide me over.

Nope.  I don’t think I had even shut the door from tucking Em in to bed last night when the tears started to flow again.  I sat down on the couch with MQD and all I could get out of my mouth at first was that I was so scared.  So very, very scared.

As is always the case when something is eating at me I never realize the degree to which I am bothered until it comes out of my mouth and I can breathe again.  My labor and delivery with Emily was not what I had planned.  And this time around I am again hopeful that I will achieve my goals, an un-medicated birth.

My clearly not un-medicated labor with Emily June

There is no part of me that imagines I will deliver in a pool of lavender scented water, a hot sweat on my forehead but cool and calm on the inside.  I go apeshit when I stub my toe.  It is an emergency when I can not find my keys.  Cool and calm are not adjectives that describe me in the best of circumstances.  So I am prepared to bring the hysteria.

But I am frightened that it will be difficult on MQD.  We have planned what could best be described as a Bradley birth.  Bradley, by design, is a method of primarily husband or partner coached laboring.  The theory being that a woman needs to trust her body to do what it does naturally and that no one (certainly not a medical professional or a nurse they’ve not ever met) is better suited to remind her of who she is, of her strengths, of the love and support available to her in this difficult time than her husband or chosen partner.  But this is where it gets hairy for me.

What if you know that your reaction to pain and fear is occasionally not particularly…. kind?  What if you know that there will be a moment when you lash out at that person that is there to support you?  And even more, what if you know even while you are doing it that you wish they could go take a breather because while you know that you are the one in pain that it hasn’t been a picnic to watch you, to support you, to love you through this time?

I have been afraid to suggest to MQD that we hire a doula because I didn’t want him to hear that as a criticism or a lack of faith in his abilities to support me.  I told him this last night and he said the only thing he could have possibly said in that moment “But this isn’t about how I feel.”

But to me, in some ways, it is.  I have been more and more inclined to want a doula because I see how very much he does want to make this happen for me.  I see this while he reads Robert Bradley’s book, index cards in hand.  While he is supporting me, who is supporting him?  Who is reminding him that my swaying and moaning like a wildebeest is great work and that I am right where I should be?

He is a scientist.  He assimilates data and information rapidly and with a precision and attention to detail I can not comprehend.  But what if what I need in that moment is not his rational mind, what if I want him to just put his arms around me and tell me that he knows I can do this, because at the end of it all, we will have a baby, our baby, in our arms, and cry right along with me that we have the good fortune to have this moment so close at hand?   How can he feel free to let go for a moment if there is not someone else to take the reins?

So… this morning I started a hunt for a doula.  It feels a little like online dating, I imagine.  You look at a picture, of a woman, and her family, smiling.  And you think, can I imagine you in the room at a spectacular moment in my life?

This morning at our midwife appointment we could feel the baby’s head.  We could actually almost juggle it back and forth between our hands like  a tennis ball.  And so “the  baby” that I have been up late at night worrying about is now really a person to me.

The moment your fingers curl around the back of a babies head… you are never the same.   In that moment you realize you made a life.  And that you hold that life in your literal hands.  I told MQD last night that I thought it would  be less scary to be pregnant the second time.  I could not have been more wrong.  This time, I know.  I know how much I will love this baby.  I know that s/he will change my life in ways I can not imagine.  Last time I could only speculate.

After the boo-hooing and the conversation and the “what do we do about this now?” kind of conversation a couple has we finally got to just talk.  MQD smiled and looked at me and said “It’s a girl.”  Neither of us have been quiet about our hopes for a boy.  Who wouldn’t want one of each? But last night was the first time we both admitted we have a feeling it is a girl.

This morning I said that I thought it was kind of silly to be disappointed at all, no matter what we have, because when your worst case scenario is still a baby, who cares?  I said “It’s like someone with both hands behind their back says “I have a cupcake in this hand and a slice of cake in this one, pick one” and you choose.  Even if you really wanted a cupcake, who in their right mind is gonna say “Fuck, man, I got cake!”

Emily June, September 2006 ~ The only time I have ever seen a person so thoroughly pissed off at a cake.

I think the cake vs cupcake argument applies to the labor and delivery, too.  No matter what happens, hysteria or a blissed out hypno-birth, at the end of it all we will have our baby.  And in that moment when I am expecting MQD to look at me with tears in his eyes, as he passes me our baby, fresh from delivery, crying and red and tiny and ours… when I am expecting him to say “It’s a girl/boy” I hope he has his wits about him.

Through his tears, I hope he says “It’s a piece of cake!”

 

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The Village

Posted on October 17, 2011 | 3 comments

They say it takes a village.  I think it takes only slightly less than a village.  Which is fortunate, since I am not sure where exactly I’d go to find a proper village.

I think raising a kid takes more of a compound.  And several cases of wine.  We went over to the new house again this weekend to take some measurements.  Through the empty house I could hear Em and her long time pal, Kellan,  raising hell.  Eventually we threw them outside.  I could still hear them, chasing each other across the yard.  I stopped and looked out the window and there was my daughter.  Stick raised like a spear in hot pursuit of a boy she has known since she was three months old.

When they were small we lived within walking distance of one another. .9 miles if we walked Bay Drive.

Amy recalls the weeks before Kellan was born, we’d walk.  The dogs on the leashes,  Emily crying in her stroller. Me, crying and mumbling about how I didn’t know  what to do!  Eventually Em stopped shrieking all the time.  And Kellan was a calm sort of fellow.  And we took them for strolls around the neighborhood and we stared at them.  Because that’s what you do.

And then before we knew it they were big enough to haul around behind the bikes.  And we could stop staring at them for a few minutes at a time.  And they’d entertain each other.  They were moderately mobile.  Those were peaceful months.

The following year went by fast.  My “village” moved to Chapel Hill.  I took walks by myself.  I trained for the OBX half marathon and Em and I listened to music as we ran up and down Bay Drive.  Solo.  I’d talk to her when we’d pass Dock Street, the cut-through to Kellan’s house.  “Do you remember where your buddy lived?”

We visited.  We got the requisite “Look at you two on your potty seats” picture and in retrospect it seems we didn’t miss much.  The story told by the pictures hardly registers a lapse.

The Fall of 2009 I moved closer to my village.  I had to go somewhere and Chapel Hill felt like home.  There were trees and Targets and a DSW  (a welcome combination after eight years on the beach with a K-Mart and a hundred Wings beach stores.)  When you are picking up your life and starting over you need something that is familiar.  I needed trees.  And Amy. Chapel Hill gave me both of those and more.  The kids were still too little to register that they had ever been apart.  Em delighted in telling people that she knew Kellan “before he was born.”  And I had a standing invite to dinner.

We kept waiting to see when the evidence of their being opposite genders would appear.  Slowly it reared its head.  Em wanted to play house and “family.”  Kellan wanted to dig in the yard.  He informed me on a few occasions that his “buddies at school” they played games Emily did “not even understand.”  When Kellan told Em he had planned to marry another little girl in his pre-school she told me it was okay.  She’d just be Kellan’s friend for now.  And marry him later “when he was done being married to that other girl.” She is wise beyond her years, that girl.

Em went in to her deeply pink and purple girly phase.  Kellan embraced the dirt, his trucks, and all things LOUD.  But they still entertained each other.  And we got an evening, an afternoon here and there to feel like grown ups.

I tried not to tell Emily that we might be moving in across the street from Kellan.  But she is whip smart.  And I was too excited.  She was over the moon.  Kellan is thrilled to have a sidekick that is available to play at 8 am.  And Amy & I are becoming those parents that talk about the “damn teenagers speeding through the neighborhood” and getting a “Slow: Kids at Play”  sign.

I looked out the window and I couldn’t help but imagine the changes we will see in them both.  Kellan is a Big Brother now.  That rough and tumble boy kissed my stomach this weekend and said “Hello, baby!”  Em has grown out of the 24 hour a day princess phase and seems to be wielding a spear-shaped stick with skill.   Next week they will add neighbors and school friends to the list that describes their relationship.  It should be entertaining to watch it pan out.  We are both prepared for the day they announce that they “hate” one another.  It’s inevitable.

In the meantime they got busted kissing and playing wedding behind the side of the house on Saturday.  And we haven’t even moved in yet.

She claims she was telling him a secret. Perhaps the first of many these two will share.

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Our girl

Posted on October 14, 2011 | 5 comments

I am cleaning up cat puke.  I may or may not have been scowling and grumbling to myself.  “You shouldn’t have to do that, Mom.  It is not your repsonsibility.”

To my credit I did not say “Really, Em?  Are you gonna do it?”  Instead I simply said “Of course it is.  Cats don’t clean up their own puke.”

“But it’s really Dad’s cat.  I mean, it is our family’s cat, but it is really Dad’s cat.”

“Well, honey, that’s not very nice.  What if Dad said you were really my kid and you weren’t his responsibility?”

It came out of my mouth and it was like I could see the words floating in the air.  I couldn’t shove them back in to my face.  So, I froze.

MQD giving me "The Face."

And in an instant I knew we were a family.  She might worry why the neighbors don’t play with her.   But she knows damn well her place.  There is a face that MQD makes.  He makes it kind of a lot.  At me. It translates to “Did you just say that?  Are you listening to yourself?  I love you, I do, but you are out of your ever loving mind.”

She made The Face.  And said “Right.  But we know that’s not true.”  And she shook her head.

We might never close on our house.  I might go insane from the boxes and the waiting.   Any one of a million things could happen with the baby.  I might not have a lot of the answers.  But we are a Family.

 

 

 

 

 

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I don’t know.

Posted on October 13, 2011 | 8 comments

Last year I remember thinking that I was glad I had an iPhone.  A world of information at my fingertips.  “Mom, how do 3-D glasses work?  How far away is the sun?  Can we walk there? What happens while a bear is hibernating?  Where do the squirrels sleep?  Do tadpoles have eyes?”

It was exhausting.  But I was fortunate enough to be able to tell her “You know I don’t really know, but we can find out.”  And together we would look it up and if we were lucky we’d get a diagram, maybe even a video.  And a few minutes later she’d have forgotten that she had ever asked me a question, but I would feel like I had passed a parenting test.  I admitted I did not know something, and I helped her find the answer.

I knew when we got pregnant the questions would get more difficult.  Age appropriate answers – that was the next parenting hurdle I breezed right over.    My own mother reminded me to only answer the actual question that was posed.  This has been helpful time and again.  “What part of the boy and what part of the girl make the baby?”  Why the sperm and the egg, of course.  So far she hasn’t asked about the method of delivery.  And I haven’t volunteered.  All in due time.

But in the last few weeks the questions have gotten harder.  I am not afraid of sex, drugs and rock and roll.  I can explain that.  But the questions are getting more and more confusing.  And more and more often I just want to take her in my arms and say “I don’t know, baby.  I don’t know.”

Last night we took Fish out for a walk.  Our typical route takes us past a playground where a lot of the kids congregate after dinner.  For the most part they are older kids, but there are a few younger ones.  She seemed hesitant.  She called out to a girl who is in her class.  The same little girl who was her bus riding buddy the first few days of school.  Until Em decided that she did not want to ride the bus anymore because “no one wants to sit by me” and “everyone already knows each other.”    I let the bus riding go, she had so much on her plate, a new school and still another new school only weeks away.  I really didn’t give it a lot more thought.

And then last night she started to cry as we were walking.  Not the dramatic tears she lets roll on occasion.  But the quiet tears a kid tries to hide.  “I wish I wasn’t the only white person in our neighborhood.   No one wants to be my friend.  I wish there wasn’t only black people.”  The last sentence, of course, came out as we passed by a few neighbors in their driveway.  I felt my cheeks flush and gave the knee-jerk politically correct answer.

“But it doesn’t matter what color skin someone has, right?  It only matters what is on the inside. ”

“I KNOW that, Mom.  But it’s like no one in our neighborhood even knows that I am very kind.  And I want to be their friend….” and her tears grew heavier.  And I stopped walking and crouched down right next to her.    I had no answers, but at least I could make sure she knew I was listening.   I tried to tell her that a lot of the kids in the neighborhood had known each other for a long time.    Our neighbors that moved in at the same time we did,  Em was great friends with them before they moved.  I listened. And I hugged her.  And I told her that in your lifetime everyone won’t be your best friend.  One platitude after another spilled from my lips.

And then she asked me one simple, sincere question for which I had no answer at all.  “Don’t those kids know what it feels like to be the only white person in the whole neighborhood?”   So, I just hugged her.  And I realized I had no answers.  If we were the only black family in our neighborhood we might get a book from the library and talk about it.  If we were the only Jewish family in her class at Christmastime we might educate the class about our traditions.   But somehow “celebrating” your blonde hair, blue eyed-ness seemed so impossibly confusing to me.  But only to me.  I had missed the big picture all together.

She feels different.  And she thinks no one wants to be her friend.  She doesn’t need a lesson in tolerance.  She needed me to hug her and tell her that she IS kind and that those kids will figure that out.  Or they won’t.  But that she needs to just keep on being who she is.

We have lived in a predominantly black neighborhood since we moved to Chapel Hill when Emily was two.  She had never noticed until about six weeks ago.  It doesn’t seem fair that she is six years old and the days when her life was simple are already behind her.

Perhaps that is melodramatic.  Her questions were simpler. Either her life still is simple or it never actually was, depending on your point of view.

We came home from our walk.  And I was exhausted. My feet were swelling up as I had foolishly walked in boots with a heel.  But I was more exhausted in my head.  “You wanna snuggle on the couch for a little bit before your shower?”

She seemed to think that was a fine idea.  She had a seat at the dining room table for some frozen yogurt while I elevated my feet.  I relaxed.  My little girl came back around the corner and sat next to me, her hands on my belly as they often are.  We waited to feel some baby dancing.  I inhaled.  And I exhaled.

“Why don’t we go to church?  What to do they do there?  Is church like a funeral?  Is God dead?”

Oh for fuck’s sake, Em.  Can’t I get a break?

 

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Saturday Morning

Posted on October 8, 2011 | 3 comments

It was 6:51 when Fisher’s tail started thwap-thwap-thwap at the end of the bed,  the sound that a dog’s tail makes when he is excitedly wagging his tail against the bed from the prone position.   “Mom!  Did I sleep in? I think I slept in!”

It was about a quarter after seven last night when I felt my eyes get heavy. It didn’t seem fair that I pass out during Friday night movie night,  I had picked the movie, Lily Tomlin’s  The Incredible Shrinking Woman.  But there was no fighting it.  MQD woke me a little after eight and I climbed in to bed.  Continue reading →

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If you go down to the woods today…

Posted on October 7, 2011 | 10 comments

We hit a snag on the closing on our house.  It happens.  We had planned to close several weeks before we needed to move just in case.

My computer at work fried.  That happens, too.  I had my data backed up because it is always a possibility.

Jer’s grandfather had an emergency surgery yesterday, he pulled through like a champ, but it was quite a scare.

I think there was something else that had me blue.  How quickly one forgets… I had a tantrum because MQD “doesn’t like me.”  All in all, I had a shit day.  Nothing permanent.  All things that I had either prepared for, could have predicted or that turned out okay in the end. Continue reading →

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Just like Rock Hudson and Doris Day

Posted on October 4, 2011 | 7 comments

I was reading back through some of my gloomiest posts and it is interesting (perhaps only to me) to note that even though I am pregnant it seems I am down and blue damn near once ever 28 days.  And if my “woe is me” can be tied to some kind of hormonal cycle than so can the rest of my hormone inspired thoughts and desires, right?  Consequently making them a product of my chemical make up, fair game for discussion.

I am a firm believer that a romantic relationship with the person who is truly in your heart of hearts your best friend is a good idea.  But you have to do the work to make sure that your romantic partner is equal parts best friend and  lover, or you slide in to that scary territory of living with a roommate.  There are lots of ways to accomplish this, I think.  Lots of complicated, time consuming ways.  Sexy posing on the bed in the “good” nightgown, not the 15 year old band t-shirt.  Try not to bitch and moan about finances and cook a decent meal.  Don’t change in to sweatpants as soon as you walk in the door.  Shower with the door closed and shave your legs in private and maintain some kind of… what do they call that? mystery?  Make an effort to make absolutely zero jokes related to bodily functions.  But all of these ways rely on another party noticing you sending out these signals. Continue reading →

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Fear

Posted on October 1, 2011 | 12 comments

Fear seems to be a reoccurring theme with me.  I’m not sure if the pregnancy induced insomnia makes me crazy on the inside or if it’s just that I have the time to dwell on the crazy I have already got.  No reason to spend hours dissecting that question, which came first the insomnia or the worrying.  Either way, I don’t sleep lately.  I just worry.  Continue reading →

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If I knew then….

Posted on September 19, 2011 | 2 comments

September is a tough month for me.   Em’s birthday, her due date and the day Jer and I were married are all within a week of one another.  It’s impossible for me to think about one without thinking of another.

I told Em the story of the day she was born yesterday.  And it was hard.  It is equally hard to call her father and hear him tell her that he loves her.  On this day it is harder than any other day for some reason.   I don’t imagine it is a picnic for MQD to hear me tell her about Jeremy, either.  I do my very best to let Jeremy speak for himself. I never speak ill of him to her, nor do I tell her fantastic tales of a man she sees not enough of.  I do what I can to let her love for him carry their relationship.  She sees him with her own eyes, not mine.

I just dug up the letter I wrote Em on her second birthday.  I had no idea just how much her laughter would carry me through some dark days. When I wrote Em this letter I knew what was coming…. but I had no idea where I was going yet. Continue reading →

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