in praise of intransigent, articulate, stubborn, creative and impossibly fidgety almost-eight-year-olds

So, Frances can be tough. Her intensity has always been something extraordinary to behold, in times of sparkling growth and during those painful, window-rattling meltdowns. She drives me batty; she takes my breath away. And as with all children - well, people, really - I could never give up those parts of her that can enrage me, because they are the very same parts that make her completely and perfectly wonderful. Completely and perfectly herself.

I was reminded of the double-edges of my eldest this morning, watching her walk to the neighbors' for a ride to school. How I wish I'd snuck a picture of her! Better that I didn't really, because we were enjoying a silly, tension-less leave-taking and I might have ruined it. So instead you'll have to imagine her: mary janes with two different socks (one spotted, one striped), brand new pants covered in a rainbow of butterflies (I thought she'd make an exception to her no-pants rules for them), a too-short dress with a print of large flowers in different shades of blue (she did decide that the pants were worth wearing, but she would still wear dresses everyday - so she picked a dress that was short, to better display the butterflies), the sweater jacket my mother knit for me in kindergarten with flowers embroidered on the front, and to top it all off? The navy blue adult-sized rain poncho Edith bought for her in Vermont, after she had admired the functionality and drape of an identical one that Edith's father Franklin was wearing.

The poncho almost dragged behind her, and gathered in bunches around her backpack straps. She marched off through the gently falling pink petals of our cherry tree, in the misty wet morning, the quiet everywhere, and yelled over her shoulder: Adieu! Adieu! I blew her kisses from behind the screen door, holding Bea over my shoulder.

As she did last year, she is planning a May Day party (early) during recess today. She made the invitations last night. She was dressed for the occasion. She dragged a heavy bag of animal crackers and pink lemonade along the sidewalk.

She is an artist, a party-spark, a bright jewel. I only hope that as she grows she keeps on learning to manage those big, boundless feelings that are ever moving, ever stirring, ever inspiring inside her.

a sweet storytime

yesterday

I was nursing the baby yesterday afternoon. She pulled off, looked up at me, and flashed one of her brand new, slightly awkward (yet absolutely stunning) smiles. Oh, I melted! Then Gabriel asked me for a snack, and I looked up at him to respond. Part of my brain registered something pleasantly warm run down my side and onto my lap. Hmm. Yes, apples and peanut butter. Let me get that for you.

When I stood up I finally figured out that the grinning baby had spit up what must have been all the milk she'd taken in, soaking my shirt, her shirt, and my pants. So we went upstairs to change. On the way back down, I felt - and heard - the most impressive, rumbling poop. Oh dear. Back upstairs, where it was clear that there'd been significant leakage. I determined there was still time to give the oozing, messy baby a quick, much-needed bath before the big kids had swimming lessons.

Holding the baby, a towel, a change of clothes and a clean diaper in the bathroom, I reached down to add the baby tub to my burdens and predictably dropped the diaper in the toilet. Ugh. Back to fetch a clean diaper. Back downstairs to bathe the babe on the kitchen counter. Back upstairs because I forgot the soap. Back down with the naked baby. My patience was sliding away from me, a thin rope that uncoiled and dragged along the floor behind me, tracing loops along the stairs. Thank God we live in a split level. (Did I just say that?)

Anyway. Once the tub was filled, I picked up the baby to put her in, and she immediately peed all over my front. I took off my shirt and used it to mop up the floor. The slender rope continued to slide away. Bur once the outrageously beautiful naked baby was finally laid in the little mesh sling in her bathtub, looking around peacefully with her clear blue eyes, I began to feel restored, and could not help covering her warm expansive belly in kisses.

Mike came in from mowing the lawn just as she pooped - again - a lot - in her tub. I think I screamed. My tenuous return to decent spirits was derailed.

He cleaned up the tub, I plunked the baby in our bathroom sink and rinsed her slippery body as best I could, found myself a shirt, dressed Beatrice, herded everyone into the minivan and made it to swimming only a little late. But I was a brittle, humorless shell of my usual self, and found Frances's contradictions and correcting (Mama, it was 6 minutes, not 5) and Gabriel's baby talk (You put on shoe shoes!) utterly intolerable.

We made it home. The dark cloud around me seemed immobile, impenetrable. But then something miraculous happened: Edith called. And we had time to talk! Edith is a kindred spirit, a friend of my heart, a bright light who lives in Colorado and has two sparkling children and a full time managerial nursing job and who I have not seen in nearly a year. I got to cry and complain and laugh and within minutes the rope - whose end I had bid adieu to hours ago - was neatly recoiled and put away where it belongs.

I really was all better. Edith, you saved me. The recovery was cemented later by Taco Sunday.

The survival of children, and most definitely the flourishing of children - at least mine - rests so solidly on the steady shoulders of good friends, those unsung heroes of family life! Oh my friends, near and far: thank you.

eat, sleep, play

Most of my creative energy these days remains absorbed by the demanding work of growing a baby. The scope of my concern is so narrow, so confined to the most essential: eating, sleeping. I recognize this is pretty boring stuff, so I really won't be hurt if you stop reading here!

The dinners are slowly petering out, and I'm back to cooking for my family on a regular basis. I've found my usual culinary ambitions (i.e. dishes that require chopping) have been seriously curbed by life with little Bea, and no one seems to mind too much - in fact the kids are probably hoping the spaghetti and eggs and quesadillas will last for a long time.

The reason I can handle quesadillas is that Beatrice is six weeks old, and breathing room - at least a bit of it - is reentering my life. Our dear babe can tolerate solitude for a few minutes at a time, doesn't scream for the entirety of short car trips, and - the most wonderful development - has started smiling at us. And a couple of nights ago she slept for five straight hours! Heavenly. It's crazy when doing a few dishes without a baby strapped to your torso seems luxurious, but that's where I am, and most of the time I don't mind it. This morning I ran into a very pregnant woman in the bottle/nursing aisle who was expecting her third, bracing herself for this intense newborn period. She said according to her husband, it's completely manageable when you know what to expect: two weeks of blissful falling in love, followed by four weeks from hell, followed by gradual easing - more sleep, more smiles - until by six months, everything comes up roses.

I don't know if I'd say the past month has been from hell exactly, but I guess the timeframe for a period of, ahem, serious challenges sounds about right to me. Slowly we are integrating this new person into our family, and the more regular life things we do together, like eat dinner (even if dinner is peanut butter sandwiches), sing songs in the car and - wonder of wonders - smile at one another, the better everything gets.

Beatrice is too little to partake, but she is always on someone's lap when we play this new game. Frances and I learned about it in Then There Were Five, one of the exquisite books in the Melendy quartet by Elizabeth Enright. Maybe one of you has a name for it? One person is It, and while It is not listening, everyone else decides on a person - either famous or from regular, shared life. Then the person who is It has to figure out the identity of the person by asking everyone what flower he or she most resembles, what gem, what color, what tree, what fruit, etc. Frances has an almost alarming genius for this game. Last night our friend Chester and I chose the mother of one of Gabriel's friends. She was peacock blue, a ruby, a paw paw tree...and Frances guessed it. We've done everyone in our family (I was brought to tears when I was It and Frances, tricky girl, did me - an amethyst! a deep, deep blue! a rose! a dolphin, goodness me!). Everyone except Beatrice. We need to get to know her a little better. These sweet little smiles are just the beginning.

p.s.

An hour or two after I called the pediatrician to finally ask about Beatrice's blocked tear duct, her eye miraculously cleared and I haven't had to wipe away any gooeyness since. And after I told you yesterday about the ravages of life with a newborn, I had a beautiful afternoon with my three children. (I'm not suggesting that the worst is over; just that things were so much brighter the next day!)

Since Frances is still on spring break, I decided to take them to our new favorite place for sweet warm drinks on this blustery, cold April day. We brought our deck of Uno cards and unlike many of our Uno games, nary a one of the three rounds we played ended in tears. Beatrice slept in the Moby wrap, then woke, nursed, needed a change, and sat on my lap and watched the action - and somehow I tended to all these needs relatively peacefully while keeping up my end of the game. (At this point, I'm used to doing things one-handed, and the kids are used to waiting.)

Then we had a totally fun, totally ridiculous walk around Eastport and over the bridge (the wind whipping Frances's hair while she danced ahead crazily shivering and singing, Gabriel laughing at her, me doing my best not to cramp her style with reminders to not get too far ahead of us). We played Red Light Green Light and noted cool dogs and brilliant purple pansies fluttering in the wind.

Gabriel had his first soccer practice tonight. It was so cold and he was exhausted at the end. Soon after we got home it was time to read stories and get ready for bed. I helped him brush his teeth and tuck him in, and he told me that all day at school he was thinking about how a few days ago I taught him to waltz in the hallway and hummed that song from Sleeping Beauty. "That's a really good song," he said.  "It's so catchy. Can we do that again?" I almost cried with gratitude. That had been a precious sweet goofy moment in a hard afternoon and I had been thinking about it since too.

Here's to all the points of connection and intimacy that carry us through. Night night, everyone.

reality

So, I was going to tell you all about my worries as we all do our best to weather life with an increasingly fussy newborn. How Gabriel seems distant and spends more time face down on the couch - or lying on his back, face up, whispering imaginary stories to a lego creation or tiny plastic knight - than can possibly be salutary for a growing boy. How Frances lashes out at me without warning. How Mike is in the midst of the most stressful and busiest time of year at the college, leaving me on my own more than usual. How I am miserably short tempered and spent the wee hours of Easter morning crying in bed, absolutely wrecked with fatigue, unable to settle Beatrice. 

But then last night, in the few moments I had with a quiet baby wrapped up on my chest, I looked at the most recent photos on our camera. The above one made me smile. Such a nice reminder that despite the 24/7 nature of baby-induced stress on this family, the kids are still their excellent selves. They still have each other in a major way. Mike took them to hunt eggs at church and snapped that picture while I recovered from my meltdown at home. One of the blessings of having a new baby with older kids is that they have so many meaningful worlds and relationships beyond our family. There are plenty of places they can go and people they can be with that are wonderfully the same. 

Oh, I do worry about Gabriel. Indulge just a little more hand-wringing, would you please? He just seems wrapped in cotton batting, blunted around the edges. I have to say things to him twice or even three times sometimes before he snaps into focus and responds, and he seems to run into things more than usual (an interesting aside: a handful of friends have shared with me that their older kids became accident-prone in the weeks after a new brother or sister was born. It's as if the emotional stress saps physical coordination). I get irritated, he gets tearful. I miss him terribly. We came back together during his spring break last week, which was like balm for my worried soul, but somehow over the weekend he slipped away again.

This too shall pass! I keep reminding myself. These early weeks with Beatrice are hard, yet peppered with the sweetest moments - with her siblings, nursing, in the bathtub, in the arms of family and friends. I know I will find a tiny set of pajamas and ache for her one month old self when she is four months old. I can't wait for her to grow just a little more and start smiling; I can't get enough of her perfect tiny hands. Long days, short years, right?