golden

Here is our boy, nearly four and a half years old, proudly wearing his Ravens jersey and a cluster of heart-shaped temporary tattoos, presiding over everything he carefully assembled that we would need to give each other manicures at our pretend spa. Nail buffer, oil, acorns (obviously), nail file, clippers. Soon he found a bottle of blue nail polish in my bathroom. After I painted his tiny nails, he sat back on the living room floor and quietly admired his chubby hands. He's old enough to file his own nails, and young enough to savor the sparkle of nail polish without fear of disapproval.  

We are in one of those golden moments with Gabriel. Creative expression is at a marvelous fevered pitch, independence and pride in accomplishments inspire the most charming grins, and as always when Gabriel is in a good way, he is heart-stoppingly affectionate. He asks for hugs, he tells us he loves us. At bedtime the other night, as I stood in the open doorway about to leave, he said simply, Mama, I had a good day with you today. I can't wait to have another one tomorrow. 

...Oh my.

I mean, don't get me wrong. There are still tantrums, infuriating fights with his sister, and refusals to put on his inside-out shorts the right way (I like them this way, okay??) before school. But most of the time, most days, he shines.

Competency is the name of this happy game. When a new developmental leap in on the immediate horizon, my kids get seriously grouchy. But once the kid is in midair, or has landed neatly on the other side, happiness and equilibrium return. These past weeks I hear "Mama, look what I can do!" about six times a day, and for the most part it isn't the least bit tedious. I share his delight in being able to construct a paper scabbard for his paper doll knight's sword, and in hopping the entire length of his classroom at pick up time, and in identifying every question mark on the page of a book. It's awesome what this kid can do.

(And I haven't even told you how he mashed the bananas today into a smooth-as-silk puree for banana bread!) 

I've been doing this long enough to know we will keep on cycling through times of struggle and change and times of equilibrium, from disorganization to reorganization and back again. Growing up can be so relentless in that way! Babies sometimes move through these states in a matter of days (keeps you on your toes), but with big kids - every so often - we get to sit back, relax, and savor a moment that goes on and on. Gabriel, your golden glow is a gift. It lights up everyone around you.  

my desperate late night plea for antibiotics

Since I put out the call for home cures, and since some of you gave me great suggestions (both here and on the Facebook page), I thought I'd update you. It's not pretty. After days of trying just about everything - including steaming, neti potting, drinking apple cider vinegar (awesome), eating many cloves of raw garlic (more awesome still), pouring hydrogen peroxide in my ears, and drinking gallons of tea - I hit a wall. The pain in my ear and jaw was driving me batty. I called an urgent care place last night and practically begged them to a) tell me antibiotics wouldn't hurt my baby and b) prescribe them, right now, please.

The P.A. I saw was very nice and reassuring, and told me not to worry, that amoxcicilin is safe, especially in the second trimester. (Oh, my nurse/doctor/health care professional friends out there, I have lingering doubts. Was she right?) She also told me to take some Tylenol, which I did. Oh man. I'm not proud, but this morning I feel so much better.

It occurred to me last night that every post on Mothering discussion boards and other similar sources of hippie mama insight that I scoured in the early days of this infection told a similar story to this one: lists of all the fantastic natural home remedies various women tried ... before eventually heading to the doctor and taking antibiotics. It's a little discouraging. What are reasonable expectations for us to have of the healing powers of garlic, teas, essential oils...? Should we consider these things more preventive than curative? I suspect if I had been taking garlic the moment I felt a cold coming on, things might have turned out differently (garlic is the only thing that seemed to at least temporarily help with symptoms).

I'm so interested to hear your insights on this one. How do you think about health, prevention, and healing in your family, and the place of medicine in all of it?

sunday morning

The quiet, slow Sunday morning feeling only comes in fleeting moments since I've become a parent, but that just makes it all the more precious. Now that school is in full swing and Saturday mornings begin with soccer games played by hoards of adorable, easily-distracted four year olds, Sunday mornings are in fact the only time that the Sunday morning feeling can spread slowly around our breakfast table. And here is the miracle: it does! Even though church begins at 9! There's about an hour every week during which all of us can lazily linger over breakfast in groggy, subdued harmony, and yesterday we rose to the occasion splendidly.

The scene: leftover whole wheat muffins that revived nicely when toasted and spread with lots of butter, perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs*, lukewarm tea, and the Sunday paper spread in every direction. Mike and I read all about the 47% while the children made faces at each other and only interrupted me with requests for egg-peeling assistance once or twice. They are big enough that they tolerate me reading the paper in front of them. They are big enough that they read the paper themselves! (See more on the experience of marveling at big kids while anticipating a very tiny one's arrival in my last post. I detect a theme developing...)

During these moments that Velvet Underground song always begins to hum in the back of my mind. I've never paid that much attention to the lyrics. For all I know it's another prettier-sounding take on heroin. But doesn't it suit the mood? I played it for the kids, who were completely indifferent. After that we rushed to get ready for church and put the breakfast dishes away and hastily wipe milk moustaches off small faces and the magic disappeared. Just like that.

But it didn't go far. Later in the day I announced I wasn't feeling so great and needed quiet reading time, and - again, shocking - rather than protest the kids found their own things to do. For a long time. Frances made the masks you see above, which I must confess took my breath away when I wandered into the kitchen and saw them arrayed like that.

As we head deeper into life with older children, may I always remember that inner peacefulness, creative expression, and sanity itself depend upon unscheduled time together! The Sunday morning feeling is balm for our busy days. Here's hoping we can find a bit of it tomorrow.

*                            *                            *                              *                          *

*How does one make a perfect hard-boiled egg, you ask? It is so beautifully simple that even though I've been making them this way for years I still get a little thrill of satisfaction when they turn out so nicely. Place eggs in a pan of cold water (enough to cover) with a lid, heat until water boils, then turn off the heat. Leave them undisturbed for eight minutes. Voila! Yolks are a bit soft in the center, which is how I like them, but you could leave them for another minute if you want them to be firm.

And one more aside: I think I'm coming down with a sinus infection. This is tragic. My fear of the lingering pain is so great that in desperation I just ate an entire clove of raw garlic in little bits, swallowed like pills. No vampire problems here tonight, but dear me, pity my husband when he gets home from teaching. I googled natural remedies for a pregnant woman and that one kept coming up. The neti pot, steaming, lots of water - these things I've been doing, with little result. I'm sharing all this in case one of you knows of a miracle cure that the internet hasn't heard of yet. ...Do you? Would you tell me about it? Please?

growing

I woke up this morning to the sounds of my husband and children in the kitchen. I checked the clock, and though it was already seven I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, relishing a quiet moment of observing my family unobserved. I love to listen to them. I love the sound of them getting along just fine without me. 

Of course, as I made my way to the kitchen a few minutes later, hearing Gabriel joyfully announce my presence with an excited Didi! Mama's coming downstairs! was also rather nice. 

There was no school today and we had minimal plans. So in the morning, after a long pajama-clad putter involving a few rounds of Uno and a desultory attempt at Memory, I packed us a picnic and we went for a hike. 

It was a beautiful morning. The kids brought their favorite birding guide, admired raccoon prints in the mud near the water, and pondered the wisdom of trail blazes. Once their attention was drawn to the red marks on the trees, they were compelled to imagine different and better systems of orienteering. Could you perhaps dig holes in the ground, and put big painted rocks in them? Or make flags and stick them along the trail? Or plant a special vine that only grew along the trail? Mama, wouldn't that be better than painting a tree? 

(Why is reinventing the wheel so tantalizing? And is the affliction worse for us Americans?)

I kept realizing how extraordinary it is to have big kids. It didn't even occur to me that anyone would run out of steam and melt down on the trail (which would have been likely a mere year ago). The whining was negligible, and our conversation ranged all over the place. And here I am, marveling at these independent hiking partners, with an avocado-sized little baby growing inside me, a person we have talked about and dreamed of for years, who is already drawing me back to another way of being a mother just as I am being delightfully tugged into big-kid-dom.

I remember the deep sadness that struck me at the end of my first pregnancy, as I mourned the impending loss of being just us. Mike and I would never be just us again. And then when I was pregnant with Gabriel, I cried on more than one occasion, worrying over the attention that Frances would necessarily forgo, the imbalance we were introducing to our happy trio. I confided those conflicted feelings to wise friends during both those times, and was reassured in a deep and lasting way by their strikingly similar advice: yes it will all change, and no you will not for a moment regret it.

I overheard Mike explaining why we decided to have another child to a friend of ours over the summer. He said we had more love to give. Yes! That is the truth. But already I am realizing I will have to lose the family we are in order to become the family we will be. I have to walk through that door, and feel the sadness that comes with changing. There's no way around it.

But it is all tempered by experience with these beloved, zany kiddos. The world will change, and I will not for a moment regret it.  

slow and steady

On Tuesday night, I turned from my laptop - full of that vaguely ill computer screen-overdose feeling - and told Mike I was in sore need of some leisure. I felt like I'd been running all day, only to click and type through seemingly endless work odds and ends and volunteer commitments after the children were in bed.

Then on Wednesday morning I was awoken by the sound of one big sneeze, followed by a series of mildly croupy coughs coming from the direction of Gabriel's room. Not the kind of sick noises that make a mama panic; rather the kind that make her heart sink. I'd keep him home from school, he'd go stir crazy, and I wouldn't get any of the things done that I'd left from the night before. Oh dear.

But was I mistaken! Those coughs were in fact the sound of the universe enforcing the slower pace upon me that I'd been wishing for just hours before. Sometimes it takes a sick kid to help me take a breath, look around, and really know that everything will be just fine. It's okay if those emails go unreturned for a day. Nothing will fall apart if I refrain from productivity - or the scrambly, inefficient semblance of it - for a nice, long stretch.

It doesn't hurt that the weather has become glorious and cool. I watched that bee climb all the way inside each morning glory, with only it's industrious, fuzzy bee bottom visible for a moment, and then climb back out, straight onto the next flower. He was busy enough for the both of us.

Gabriel and I pitched balls to each other, and watered the garden, and tried in vain to catch the tiny baby grasshoppers everywhere. I hung a load of laundry. (The mosquitoes have not yet received the memo about how the beastly buggy days of summer are on their way out, but they'll catch on soon enough.They attacked me through my leggings! Wily, wicked creatures).

So when we were driven indoors, we realized we had time to tackle a project we've been conceiving ever since soccer season started. Daily, Gabriel asks if today is a soccer day. I explain practice is on Wednesdays and games are on Saturdays, but the days of the week are not conceptually easy for him to grasp. So finally, we made a calendar.

I found some nice watercolor paper, which we first drew on in pencil to create a grid. Gabriel wrote the word "September" above it with such pleasure and satisfaction! In the past week the whole world of letters and words has suddenly opened up to him. It is a joy to watch him make connections and feel compelled to write important things down, all by himself.

We went over the pencil lines in marker. Then Gabriel drew soccer players on every Wednesday and Saturday. Finally, he painted his calendar. And the finishing touch? "I will draw a wild poodle at the top. Made out of...balloons!"

We added the God's eye he made in church on Sunday, and the calendar was complete.

Does he understand the days of the week, or when soccer practice is any better? Doubtful. But he is very proud of his work. And honestly, so am I. A long morning of creative mothering at home was just what I needed to tip the scales back towards a place of balance.

whirlwind

Day One of Second Grade was last Tuesday, and all things considered I think it was a success. I mean, from my perspective. Sure, Frances was full of excitement, curiosity, and at least a little dread - it was her first day of school after all - but it was also my first day of school. The day that ushers in a long season of lunch-making, schedule-adhering, and calendar-loading with school events, activities, and child care back bends. So is it any wonder that I approach September with at least a little trepidation myself?  

The truth is that though the job falls to me, I am at best a mediocre Family Manager. I put everything into iCalendar, then write out the important things I absolutely cannot forget in dry erase marker on the white board in the kitchen. Yet still I woke at 5 am most mornings this week, my head abuzz with the day's happenings. (And I still manage to arrive five minutes late to nearly everything on the calendar).

These first couple of weeks are the hardest, don't you think? Everything begins at once. Tonight was the kickoff event for the terrific nonprofit I work with, at which most of the Hispanic families I support showed up and made me feel so very privileged and proud. The rest of 'everything' for us included Gabriel's first day of preschool, for which he was nervous,

 

excited, and happy. Today was his third day, after which he reported on a nature walk that featured spider webs sparkling with rain drops and a blow out party with a huge parachute. I think he's doing just fine.

Also Frances's first gymnastics class (thankfully she got a ride there with a friend who is also taking the class, so that I could get to my event), a job interview and related supervisor-pinning-down process for me, the creation of the 2012 parent schedule for our cooperative preschool class, endless school-related forms and supplies to send in, and Gabriel's first soccer practice.

It was a rush job to get there, and I was hot and sweaty and suffering the latest pregnancy symptom (if you must know - and you must, right? - it's bizarre itchy skin, one of  the little indignities that no one tells you about, you just discover along the way). Let us just say I was doubting the wisdom of another commitment on the calendar every Wednesday from 5 - 6 pm.

But oh! Seeing my boy out there, looking simultaneously midget-like (emphasized by mingling in a crowd of four year olds wearing oversized tee-shirts) and very big and capable, relishing his big kicks and runs for the ball...? It was, in fact, a great idea. He is a real soccer player now.

That does not, however, make me a real soccer mom. I'm just the hot, itchy lady sitting in the grass with a heart full of gratitude and tenderness.

incorrigible

In the shower tonight, after I momentarily lost my mind and agreed to let Gabriel wield the shower head (ostensibly to rinse himself off, but really to feel powerful and soak the entire bathroom, including his mother), he began dancing with it and singing:

Dang me.

Dang me.

Oughtta take a rope and hang me. 

Hang me from the highest tree! 

Mama would you weep for me?

Which of course made me laugh. And abruptly turn off the water, residual shampoo notwithstanding. He has been gripped by the compulsion to make mischief of late, especially in matters concerning his sister. She has been overtaken by the same disease: baiting, taunting, and engaging her brother in wild wrestling matches that sadly - this should not happen so soon to a big sister - often end with Gabriel pinning her, crowing with satisfaction while she shrieks under his considerable weight. 

Last night she shut him out of her room while he beat on her door in agony. How he hates to be excluded from her doings! So in retaliation he ripped her meticulously written "room rules" off her door, tore the sheet in half, and shoved it into the kitchen trash. Well. Furor erupted from Frances's light, long-limbed form. She screamed at him from the other side of her door, something about being a bad brother and never, never forgiving him.

A moment passed - long enough for Gabriel to realize what he'd done - and he knocked. She screamed some more. Then she heard his tearful voice choke out: Didi. I am trying to say I'm sorry.

She threw the door and her arms open to him. I saw the whole thing go down. They were wearing matching bright yellow over-sized sleep shirts from the University of Iowa (my sister's alma mater), clutching at and hugging each other, Gabriel with tears of remorse streaming down his face, repeating his apologies, and Frances tenderly comforting him and eventually taking him downstairs to read Green Eggs and Ham. 

I watched the whole scene, slack-jawed. The drama, the mysteries of sibling intimacy! Only later, after Gabriel was in bed, did Frances look pensively at me and say, I don't think I really did forgive him, Mama. I'm still mad. But when he cried like that I got so confused.

It happens to the best of us, kid. The thing is, the gripped-by-naughtiness bug is not limited to sibling relations around here. Since school started last week, my daughter has been push, push, pushing me. My patience wears thin during these spells. On Friday night, as I was saying goodnight, she said something complaining and mean to me that stopped me in my tracks. I told her it was disrespectful and hurt my feelings. 

She gasped, immediately apologized, and then earnestly blurted out: I've been evil for the past four days Mama. I say and do mean things when I don't even want to. But I can't stop. I don't know why this is happening. I'm sorry!

Well, that took all the windy indignation out of my sails and gave empathy a chance to make itself felt, something I am always grateful for during difficult times. Her confession reminded me of a passage that resonated deeply when I first read Anne Frank's diary, so many years ago. Do you remember this? She describes standing back and watching herself be cruel to other people, while feeling powerless to stop the behavior. How comforted I was by that eloquent echo of my experience as an eleven year old! And Frances, at seven, was somehow also able to articulate that awful, trapped feeling too.

At dinner Mike talked with us about the story of the golden calf from Exodus, as he was planning to ask an opening question about that passage for seminar at St. John's tonight. About three minutes after the Israelites receive the ten commandments, they build themselves an idol, thereby breaking the very first one. Curious. I sneakily but steadily ate four chocolate chip cookies this afternoon, having just told my children one cookie was plenty. We humans are incorrigible. We do the things we know we should not do. But oh, if we could express remorse whole-heartedly as Gabriel did, and in turn receive the kind of abundant, open-armed forgiveness Frances offered (at least in that moment!), those inevitable bouts of saying and doing the wrong thing might become a lighter burden to bear.