moving day

A couple of days ago, Frances observed - apropos of absolutely nothing - that the fourth trimester is now over. As in, things should start changing around here. Beatrice is twelve weeks old. To an almost-eight year old, I guess things aren't moving very fast. For me, it's hard to keep up.

Case in point: she moved out. Beatrice is so old and independent, so totally done with the whole newborn thing, that sleeping with us was cramping her style. Well, that's a little misleading; in truth Beatrice is so long that sleeping in her bassinet was cramping her toes. She was knocking against the ends and waking herself up in the night. And she'd been napping pretty well in the crib next door for a few days. So two nights ago I put her to bed in the crib. Later that night, I walked past the darkened nursery and saw her sleeping there swaddled up all by herself. She looked so small and alone.

She did great that night. I did not. It was like when the older children spend the night somewhere else and their rooms, with doors ajar, exude emptiness: weird, and a little wrong. I spent the night listening for her. I was wide awake when she woke around four to nurse, and nearly leaped out of bed to run to her.

Last night was better. For me, I mean. She certainly looks more comfortable in her new digs. And it's a shorter trip from the rocking chair to the crib, which makes for a more successful transition from being soothed to sleep to actual sleeping. (Listen to me justifying the whole thing! I'm not abandoning her, I'm telling you. This is good for my baby.)

Beatrice really is making her way into post-newborn life. In the past week or so she is suddenly able to nap independently, sit in her bouncy seat or lie on her mat for longer stretches happily, watching the family action, and tolerate the car relatively well. She loves when someone sings to her, and flashes smiles at her brother and sister all day. I love all of these changes: life is easier, she is more sociable. But oh, a little part of me feels panicky when I realize how fast it is all happening.

Tonight I watched my big kids jump with gusto into a soccer game played by teenagers and adults. They were great! So skillful and enthusiastic, so ready to receive a pass from a much taller player. Gabriel melted down at the end when it was time to go. But before that, for most of the game I stood with the baby in her stroller, jiggling occasionally to facilitate a longer nap, watching in complete awe of my kids. Bafflement, really. Are they mine? Can they possibly be so big and so separate from me?

End of the fourth trimester indeed! Now it begins. Beatrice and I are getting onto the delicate tippy see saw - moving apart, coming back together, moving apart a tiny bit more, moving back together again. My arms start to ache when I haven't held her for awhile. But when she sits apart from me, I have such a great view of her beautiful, expressive face.

goodbyes

Gabriel is out of sorts. Maybe he's getting sick. Or maybe he has more sadness and anger inside him than he knows how to handle. (Most likely it's both). Little things uncharacteristically throw him for a loop; a minor bike crash this afternoon resulted in wailing, prolonged tears. He's in a kind of developmental stall out. I'm desperate for him to experience a confidence-boosting, joyful breakthrough in soccer, biking, reading - something. But everything seems hard and taxing. It's as if his feelings are sucking up all his extra energies that normally go towards mastering new things. I wish I could send him to a kid-version of a 19th century sanitarium: a verdant, peaceful place where nice nurses in starched whites would push him around in an enormous jogging stroller, feed him healthful and delicious food, and leave him alone while he plays with legos on a green lawn all morning.

I anticipated the losses that would come with the arrival of Beatrice for Gabriel. He lost his place as the baby of the family, he lost all the routines and rhythms of our daily family life, he lost his special place as Didi's one and only sibling. But I hadn't really considered the loss of preschool. Gabriel's cooperative nursery school is a caring, intimate community. He loves his friends; he loves many of their parents, too. The routines at school stayed blessedly consistent when his baby sister arrived. And now it's the last week of school, and he's so sad.

It wouldn't be so bad if he weren't anticipating the great Preschool Diaspora next year. I can think of eight different schools off the top of my head that his friends will be attending for kindergarten. Many families we know are moving this summer to the suburbs (land of better school districts). Last night at dinner Gabriel suggested we might consider moving back to Lancaster, where Gramma and so many friends live, since so many of his Annapolis friends are moving anyway.

Oh dear! All I can really do is attempt to build excitement around and connections in his new school community. That, and try to patiently wait out this time of quick temper and easy tears. I know this too shall pass for Gabriel, as the transitions soften and he slowly finds a new equilibrium. But while he walks this hard in-between stretch, how my heart hurts for him!  

enjoy your body

A couple of days ago I was sitting with Beatrice in my lap at the table. She watched her brother eat his lunch with great interest. Gabriel said, "It'll be nice when she's older." Why? I asked, expecting something along the lines of she'll be more interesting. But instead, he surprised me. "Because then she'll really be able to enjoy her body!"

Like how? Like eating good food, and walking and running, and climbing things, and reaching out for something she wants to hold and being able to do it.

Oh! Such a nice reminder: our bodies are wonders. Moving, stretching, tasting, smelling, seeing - such excellent everyday gifts, bodily pleasures that usually go unnoticed - until they become inaccessible. I am especially attuned to the miracle of a body that more or less works, just coming off a nasty stomach bug. Mothers should never have to get sick.

But today I feel much better! That virus was just getting started in me when I had the conversation with Gabriel about bodies, and all that Bea has to look forward to. I was feeling worn down and the day was gorgeous, so after lunch we went outside to watch birds and check on the garden. Gabriel found some acorns there that resembled tanks. So I sat on the deck while the baby snoozed on my chest, and watched the great acorn battle rage across the table.

Just one more way you can enjoy your body: war games. They seem much more benign when enacted with acorns, don't you think?

That afternoon of bird-watching and battling was, not surprisingly, made possible by the fact that we had absolutely nothing on the agenda. Thank you to Amelia, Becky, and Emily for their words of wisdom  after the last post. To Tobie and Meg as well, via Facebook! I appreciate hearing your thoughts and insight - a lot. 

lost in the woods

In last week's New Yorker, the Talk of the Town section features a piece about Amanda Knox's forthcoming memoir, dwelling on her almost bizarrely naive and childlike approach to life as a student abroad in Italy. Frances and I are in the midst of reading Spiderweb for Two, which is the final book in the exquisite Melendy quartet by Elizabeth Enright. Somehow reading about Knox trying to order chocolate milky mochas in Italian cafes with a copy of Harry Potter under her arm against the backdrop of the Melendy children's independent adventures in the woods and farms around their rural home (circa 1941) has me all stirred up. The portrait of Knox was so disturbing familiar, and minus the whole getting-mixed-up-in-an-Italian-murder-trial part, so uniquely American. So very, very far from adulthood.

And I'm not sure why - maybe the media told me, in every story and radio interview I've heard about the effects of helicoptering on young people - but somehow I intuited that the kind of immaturity Amanda Knox represented was about overscheduling and overmanaging children. The Melendy kids - who are, I grant you, fictional - sometimes spend all day long alone, building dams in streams, watching moths, composing music. They put on performances for the neighborhood and in the summer they squander whole days getting lost in the woods. They come in at dinner and the adults ask them: What did you do today? The adults have no idea; they had no hand in the children's activities and pursuits.

The thing that Enright captures so beautifully is the alert, quiet, interior yet observant state that children enter sometimes, most especially when they are outside and alone, watching crickets or clouds, or listening to water move. It's a porous, open, extraordinary feeling of being suspended, still and watching. Do you remember those moments? In the backyard, at camp, sitting on a stoop at night? I cannot explain exactly why, but I think to become a real adult a person needs to spend a lot of time just being - with absolutely nothing to do. Kids need long, open afternoons. They need solitude. It builds character!

Well. I was trying to talk about some of this tonight with a friend when it occurred to me that really, all this crotchety talk about Kids Today and how things were better Way Back When is probably really just about my own anxiety with our kids, and how relatively little they do extracurricular-wise. I think I'm trying to convince myself it's okay. So many of their peers are playing multiple sports, dancing, gymnastic-ing, playing instruments, and taking the test for their black belts in karate. Some of them seem to have activities every day after school, and all kinds of skills to show for their efforts.

My kids couldn't wield a lacrosse stick to save their lives. They can just barely swim. Nearly every time we need to mobilize to get to a structured activity, they protest. What they want to do after school is putter, paste, build. Hang face-down on a swing in the backyard. The last thing they want to do is follow instructions! We do manage a few things: Gabriel is playing soccer and Frances is playing the piano. Sometimes we make it to swim class. On paper it sounds just fine but sometimes I do wonder if they will feel less confident, less accomplished than their peers someday. Maybe they already do! Am I setting them up, all while convincing myself that without lots of open free time they'll turn in scandalous students abroad...?

Thoughts on this one? How important is unstructured, unsupervised time? Is it really as essential as I suspect? But is a real commitment to it a kind of gamble - I mean, will my kids get into college even if 2nd grade was more or less lacking in extracurriculars? How do we protect the space children need to grow into who they are, while still helping them to be confident, competent participants in the world they live in?