Category Archives: Parenting

I try not to get all of my self worth from my kids.  Or from my husband. Or from anyone really but my own damn self.  That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?

As a person I am reminded that I am the only one that has to live with my decisions.  As a fledgling athlete I am competing only against my own times.

But sometimes something will happen and I can feel myself riding high.

Two words.  “Mama funny.”  She was smiling to herself in the car. Lucy said I was funny.  Man, there really is no better feeling.  This was on the heels of Em telling me that I was hilarious just a few days prior.  I know that the days are numbered, these days that my kids find me the pinnacle of good humor.  How many times can I drop trou in my kitchen when someone asks if I have seen the moon that night?  But for now I am funny.  Emily says so.  And now Lucy is in agreement.

I enjoyed this inflated sense of self worth for not quite 24 hours.  This morning at the breakfast table Lucy made a second proclamation.

“Yogurt funny.”

Dammit, man.  I swear I am funnier than yogurt.

It has been far too long since I have been really disgusting.  I can’t have you all thinking that I am somehow growing out of my penchant for being gross.

Moments ago I got myself to laughing hard enough that I almost demonstrated a literal display of one of my favorite expressions.  Allow me to set the scene.

Perfect morning.  It was supposed to rain but it didn’t. 8 mile trail run with friends turned out to be 8.4 and I didn’t even mind.  Came home and the kids were happy, the husband was cheerful.  We have plans this evening and a babysitter (HOLYSHITWEHAVEABABYSITTER!) so I hopped in bed with Lucy and thought I might close my eyes while she slumbered.

She napped. I did not.  I stealthily snuck out of the bed SIX times in the course of her hour long nap.  She made it known she was not pleased with my intermittent absence upon her waking so I figured I’d just try and stay put.  Instead of running back and forth from the bathroom I amused myself as she fell back to sleep by googling “diarrhea and running,” “diarrhea and distance running,” “running hydration diarrhea.”  You get the idea.

And then my clumsy fingers slipped down and before I noticed I had mashed the “share to facebook” button.  Because obviously the whole world needs to know that while my run was great my post-run intestinal situation left something to be desired. And then I started to laugh. And I couldn’t stop laughing.  And then I started really laughing.  And then I texted my husband this picture and said “When I poop in the bed it is Lucy’s fault.”  Because when you are married you can do things like that.  (Text stupid pictures, not shit the bed.)

Crisis averted.  Lucy has awoken and I did not “shit the bed.”   But this evening’s gathering?  It just might be BYOTP for this girl. Because that is exactly what Dr Google says to do about runner’s diarrhea, by the way.  Dr Google says to make a tasty appetizer, pound some Prosecco and go to a party. I added in the BYOTP.  And maybe BYOCOP (which is, of course, change of pants.)

Sometimes spilling your down and dirty details on the internet is weird.  And other times it can save you from having to say “Oh, hey, guys.  I have raging diarrhea but I understand it is very common….” when you walk in to a party.  Because at least one of my friends is bound to read this before I get there.  I’m looking at you, JW and LA.

Happy Saturday!  Bottoms up! And may no one shit the bed!

I have never understood the phrase “drawing a line in the sand.”  How drawing a line that will surely be washed away in the next 24 hours can be an indicator of an unwavering stance is a mystery to me.

But I still do it.  I draw lines in the sand.  Sometimes the lines are washed away by the ocean and I meticulously draw them again. And still other times I am grateful to the great and powerful ocean for letting me change my mind.

I have not drawn an irreversible line in the sand with regards to making more babies.  There has been no snipping or frying or tying of anything, not mine or MQD’s.  This is not to say that I have not quietly wept and pressed my lips against Lucy’s head, inhaling her sweet scent and choking back the ugly tears because I know that she is my last baby.

Shortly after she was born MQD and I would joke about more babies.  I joked.  He smiled.  My newly post-partum hormones gave way to hysteria one day and I begged him to say it out loud that we were enough, the four of us.  He had the good sense to keep smiling and say “Of course.”

We are a family of four.  I am more than satisfied.  Sometimes I see a mother and a little boy in overalls and I will tell his parents “Most of the time I am at peace with having two little girls, but damn if a little dude in overalls doesn’t make me start to wonder.” Sometimes a woman will laugh and say “You want him?”  Sometimes she will say “You could have one more?  C’mon, you could try?”

I used to explain.  I’d explain about how happy I am with the spacing between our two children and that if I was to wait four or five more years before I had another I would be 43. I am tired now at 38.  Sometimes I would tell her about how I am certain that my husband is blessed/cursed to spend his life in a house full of women and that I know we’d have three girls if we had another. Or I’d laugh about how 2 kids means we can keep our house and our cars.  I would mention that my husband and I have always had children and while I adore them with every fiber of my being I do look forward to a day when he and I can be alone.

There are so many reasons. Some humorous.  Some sincere.  All of them valid.  I am done.

This afternoon I cleaned out Lucy’s closet.  I do it frequently.  I am a sentimental soul but I save memories and moments in time with photographs and words.  I am a recovering packrat and I am cautious not to fall down the rabbit hole of “saving just this one thing.”

So when I put these overalls on the “Donate” pile and my eyes welled up I didn’t know what to make of it.  She didn’t even wear them all that often. It can’t simply be that she is growing up so fast.  There was a pile of clothes she had outgrown that didn’t make my nose start to tingle and my eyes leak.

Why the overalls?  Right there on the front they say “OshKosh Girl.”  These overalls aren’t for the boy that I think I am destined to bring in to the world.  And surely the pile of pink I was donating could be useful if my suspicions proved themselves to be accurate and we had another little girl one day.

I put the overalls back in the closet.  And I sat down on the floor and I had a good cry.  “Mama?  Mama sad?” Lucy asked.  I started to laugh.

“Baby girl, I have no idea what I am. Except pregnant.  I know I am not pregnant.  Mama isn’t sad, Lucy. Mama just might be a little bit crazy.”

It’s a good thing proximity to small pairs of overalls has nothing to do with getting pregnant.  Because if teeny OshKosh could knock you up I am afraid we’d be expecting a baby next summer. 

It’s really Freaky when everything is going along just fine.

It was a fairly simple question. “What time do you want me home on Thursday for Trick or Treating?”

I was standing in the kitchen making him a sandwich when he asked me.  I was in my pajamas, complete with pink fuzzy slippers.  Lucy was quite literally underfoot and Emily was getting her things together for school.  He was wearing a tie.

And he asked me for direction.  It is not as if he asked me to write him a to do list or asked me to fill out a satisfaction survey.  But in that moment, I was The Boss.  And it felt so good.

“Whenever you can work it out.  We leave here at 5:50ish.  Trick or Treat from 6 to 8pm.”

“Ok.”  That’s all he answered.  No questions about what time the kids would get in bed or how long it would take to get over to our friends’ home.

I tried to just keep making sandwiches.  Eventually the words came spilling out. “This is why I am so happy at home, you know.  Because I am in charge of something.  Even if it is just what we eat for dinner and what time we go trick or treating, I don’t feel like I work for you.  It’s so hard to feel like you’re not really in charge of anything or in control of anything and really it is just about how you say things and if you were a different kind of man and you said “I will be home at 5:30” instead of “What time do you want me home?” it would just feel different to me and I can see how it could feel like I….” I stopped eventually.  He was gone.

He was standing in the kitchen but he had mentally checked out.  How many times can you dissect out loud exactly why you are so happy before someone feels like they don’t have to hang on your every word?  I suppose if someone you loved was sad you might be inclined to listen longer.  But the weekly, sometimes daily, “Let me tell you why this is working for me” speeches I am prone to giving, I imagine they are growing tiresome.

But I still can’t really understand it. This Life. I want to understand why it works.  I want to understand so that I can never, ever break it.

Five years ago on October 27th MQD took me out to dinner.  We had never met.  We spoke only briefly on the telephone prior to our first date. We had a nice dinner.  We drank beers and laughed.  It wasn’t more than a few weeks later that we talked about kids. We talked about a family.  I said that in a perfect world I would stay at home and raise my children as long as it worked.  He agreed.

And here we are.  And it’s working.

I am in charge of some things.  He is in charge of other things.

And then last night he asked me if I’d make banana bread today. Uh.  Banana bread is your job, MQD.  Don’t upset the delicate balance.  It’s in the oven.

I made it. Because he doesn’t ask me to do things often.  So, I hope it is tasty. But I secretly hope it is not really tasty because banana bread is his job.

Happy Halloween, y’all.  Happy Anniversary of our first date, MQD.  Five years is not a terribly long time.  But it is long enough to build a pretty super life. And apparently it is long enough to start shirking on banana bread duty.

Sometimes my favorite thing about giving Lucy a bath at night is having the opportunity to eavesdrop on Emily’s conversations with MQD while they clean up the kitchen.

Okay, maybe it is my second favorite thing.  Sitting on the floor next to the tub and drinking a beer is also pretty fantastic.

In another lifetime I used to sit back in the bathtub and enjoy a beer and a smoke. Recently a friend posted on Facebook that her son said that when he was in her belly he was “just like….this is the life.” Actually his entire sentiment bears repeating “I love fat Moms. Fat moms are so comfy and snugly. I bet when I was in your belly I was just like….this is the life.” All of this is  a long way to say that when I say that drinking a beer in the bathtub is like “fat moms” you should know that I mean that I think it is “the life.”

These days I don’t kick back in the tub … umm… ever. But I do sit on the floor and drink a beer while Lucy splashes around and is both contained and occupied.  And on a good night, I get to listen to Emily and MQD clean the kitchen.

Tonight MQD said to her something along the lines of  “Don’t do that, don’t put a plastic bag near your mouth.  You don’t want to be that kid in the newspaper that died from breathing in a plastic bag and everyone wonders why his parents didn’t tell him not do that.”

At the ripe old age of argumentative, I mean, 8, Emily knows everything. I sat back and waited for her rebuttal.  It was sure to be a good one.

“Dad, that kid had a name.”

You can’t make this shit up.