My boy turned blue in the tub tonight. That sounds horrifying, but it wasn’t quite what you think. Rather inexplicably, the bathtub appliques we have peacefully coexisted with for six years suddenly shit their ink like a shoal of frightened squid. When he got out of the tub, the boy appeared to be the product of an illicit union between myself and Papa Smurf.
After a week of all manner of What-The-Fuckness occuring; a visit to the ER after a reaction to Novocaine, some manner of child plague resembling mononucleosis, night terrors, dog mishaps, impromptu birthday parties, tickets selling out, and a million other irritations etc., I considered leaving him blue. Just for a moment, I thought, well, eff it. There’s a point, you know? Where it’s too much What-The-Fuckness and you don’t want to deal with it anymore.
And then my parental anxiety that the blue was somehow harmful took over. And the realization that if I didn’t scrub him down, there was no one else who was going to swoop in and do it. And that eventually the scrubbing will have to be done, whether it’s tonight or tomorrow. Because I am the mother. My job to make sure this little beast is safe and clean, no matter how much What-The-Fuckness has gone on. It never ends.
That’s how I found myself a shower, a bath, and another shower later on my knees dabbing rest of blue ink off. The boy was intently watching the iPad while I used up a half a bottle of the good olive oil and a years’ supply of make up pads. We decided it was unlikely Papa Smurf was his dad, but thought maybe if this cleaning effort didn’t work out he could join the Blue Man Group. We agreed this would be funny when he was older.
And it made me calm, sitting on that bathroom floor. My other boy running in to show me his pyjamas and asking about words in books. The dog checking out all the amazing garbage we were producing for her later consumption. We got him back to his normal pale self. We figured it out. We laughed, knowing that all manner of What-The-Fuckness is ahead. It’s kind of what this parenting gig is all about.
As of today, I have dragged this carcass around the sun 37 times now. I know that doesn’t exactly put me in the category of wizened old broad just yet, but I have come to the realization over the past year that time is marching directly on, right across my face. I have upped my game a little bit and tried to live a balanced, healthy, outlook regime. It seems a popular thing to do to overshare lifestyle routines on various social media outlets, and I want nothing more than to be popular. So here you go; this is how you be a somewhat presentable 37 year old woman with various neuroses.
Sleep
Sleep no more minutes per night than your age in years. My body steadfastly maintains that rule, and has for nearly four decades now. So fuck you, science; insomnia doesn’t kill.
Exercise
I do get my heart rate up from time to time, mostly getting generally feminist mad about people telling me to lean in/employ parenting methods/be more mindful/eat more kale/generally put in any effort into anything besides subsisting. Not only does this have cardio benefit, but yelling is good for the lung capacity too.
For the past year I have also had intensive daily cardio whenever I drop my kids off at daycare. Among other daily atrocities, I think I can sum up our entire daycare experience in telling you that we had to find TWO CHICKEN COSTUMES for their Christmas play December. With two weeks notice. In December. When Christmas is. I drop my kids off at daycare because I have a full time job, and it is not as a chicken costumer. The subtext was that we should make the costumes because we don’t spend enough quality time with our kids. Two weeks before Christmas. In December. In terms of cardio effort, I should be thanking them for saving me thousands of dollars on a personal trainer.
We actually had one chicken costume. I made my husband drive an hour and a half out of town for the second chicken costume, only to have our children refuse to sing the song in front of an audience. I still don’t understand what happened because the song was in Spanish. But I assume there is a Christmas Chicken. There’d better be a fucking Christmas Chicken.
Then there’s all the idiot attempts that I make at doing shit that I am not prepared for. Like this for example:
Those are my cousin’s hands firmly on my butt. She is the only thing between me and 30 burpees. And death.
My cousin asked me to do this, and I NEARLY DIED. It was one of those obstacle races, on the hottest day of the year, and I was grateful to wallow about in the mud pit to have some relief from the dust and heat. At my worst moment, a mystical unicorn of a woman well into her 70’s (who I mentally named Helen, because it felt generationally appropriate) breezed past me. Instead of the demoralizing effect of crumpling into the dust to let an army of fit young dudes with something to prove trample my corpse, it spurred me on. If Helen could do this goddamned race, so could I. When I finished, my dad congratulated me by saying “wow, I was pretty sure your cousin would make it, but I thought you’d die out there.”
That’s me, exceeding expectations.
Diet
I am a really strict omnivore. I just really go out of my way to eat every goddamned thing I see to adhere to my principles. I have also skipped the cheap gin and tonics and switched to fancy gin and fancy tonic, which has had an enormous benefit because I can no longer afford to drink to the point of hangover. I also look at a LOT of healthy recipes on pinterest and share the fuck out of things like squash tacos and whatnot on Facebook and I rail about organic foods and GMOs literally all the time. I mean, I haven’t actually implemented most of these dietary changes at home, but change has to start somewhere right? Armchair activism is as good as any other method of anything out there.
Hobbies
Look, you gotta stay mentally sharp. My recent blog posts are fairly indicative of my primary hobbies, which are “having ennui about children growing up too fast” and “comparing everything to flowers”. Consider the lilies and all that.
I also keep bees and suffered a LOT of bee stings last year, you guys. So goddamned many. I was not sad even a little bit when one of my hives died over the winter because those things were jerks. They were honeybees masquerading as Japanese hornets. My thighs were constantly throbbing, and not in a fun way, but because they were constantly full of venom.
Q: Which hand got stung by a bee? A: You have stupid hobbies, lady.
So anyway, between ennui and metabolizing venom, I feel like I really have this hobby thing nailed down. No one is getting bored around here.
Grooming
If you look good, you feel good. Although my husband would argue that I have long since given up on making myself appealing at most points of the day, I do spend an inordinate amount of time and money maintaining my “I don’t give a fuck” appearance. You would be SHOCKED to learn that my hair is not naturally blonde, and neither is my 93 year old grandmother’s. Yet here we are.
I have an army of women who tend to my various bits and bobs as they start the long (hopefully) slow march toward death. Estheticians, massage therapists, personal trainers. It’s a slippery slope to duck lips and immovable foreheads, friends. For now I am hung up on expensive potions and ablutions though, and that is giving me the false sense of security that I have stopped aging in it’s tracks.
Which is why I found myself siphoning a precious “brightening oil” off bathroom counter with a medicine dropper when my son dumped it out. Twice. He came out of the bathroom smelling suspiciously like tangerines, and I knew right away that I was in one of those precarious parenting situations where I didn’t want to teach him that possessions are anything to freak the fuck out over, or that aging creams are important. What I ended up teaching him was that Mommy will cry as she desperately uses her City recreation pass to cut the oil into strips to be sucked up like so much precious cocaine using the a leftover syringe for dog medicine (I don’t think cocaine is particularly precious but as my only pop culture reference to how I managed to get oil back in a tiny bottle let’s just say it made me feel pretty desperate.)
Anyway, it was totally worth it because my skin is so bright it lights up like a goddamned Christmas tree now. No, it doesn’t, but it should for what I paid.
So. To conclude: sleep, exercise, diet, hobbies, grooming: CHECK. I’ve got this shit all locked up. I can cruise well into my 90’s with no concerns for the future. Keep on keepin’ on. Or something.
DO NOT WISH ME A HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Instead, tell me what you do to stay youthful, or whether you give a hot damn at all.
Remember this, your little boy. Riding down your block, bright red shirt, 23 in big white letters against the green grass and apple blossoms. Training wheels still banging against the sidewalk. The moment you got to spend with him, before he zoomed off ahead of you to get to his brother and the house he will remember growing up in.
Press it into your brain, like a flower in a heavy book, set to fall out at some moment. Reminding you of the sweetness of the bloom so long after it would have been otherwise forgotten. Remember that all the things he did had firsts, and this was one of them.
Technically, they were born mid-morning, but only for a minute will I have a 4 year old and a 5 year old and then 4 will be a memory. A fellow twin mom lamented how there is no time to think about it when it’s over; no going back when your second child reaches that age. No reflection. I never felt that more than this year, where I was just trying to keep pace with the relentless nature of four. Until this year, their needs were always fairly easily met; exhausting, but simple. An endless run of snacks, meals, drinks, diapers, and desperately seeking any form of socialization.
Then four comes and all that goes out the flipping window. Suddenly I am knee deep in shark puppets.
Hiding treasure boxes.
Conceptualizing dreams.
Having birthday parties for angry birds
And in between swimming, soccer, preschool, piano, snowboarding, dance parties, camping, and the library, there is the more mundane aspects of life. As we make beds, we are answering how babies are made, what happens when we die, and every question that can be made out of all permutations of words in the English language.
Doesn’t this look like it ended calmly? It didn’t. SOMEONE’S BUTT GOT BITTEN AND IT WASN’T SOMEONE I KNOW.
Suddenly, this year, I had to think about what would happen if a shark ate a turtle, or ate a people, or ate another shark, or ate a dead sperm whale, or if the shark died, or if people ate a shark, or what things eat in the abyssal zone. If I stopped to think too hard, if I had the time, it would seem to me that life is SO unfair, that things get eaten and die. But my four year olds, now five year olds, take this all in stride. Life is what it is, and it is their job to figure out what that it is.
We help them navigate daycare politics, but more often than not, I find myself just listening in on their conversations; clues to the things that are important to them. What I hear is secrets and jokes that they have with their friends; the first things that I won’t understand. I see a decade into the future; a world entirely their own. I know we’re on our way to that.
Life is big and complicated, and it’s impossible to keep up with little brains that never stop. Looking back at how much they’ve grown this year, it makes me also realize how much I haven’t; I am constantly trying to apply the same expectations and methods to boys who have clearly outpaced us. I’ve had a lot of failures this year, tripping over myself and my words, and letting my own feelings get in the way of being a good parent. Hopefully, all they see is that I tried really hard, tried to be present with them. But now, more than ever, I feel behind them. Constantly trying to catch up to something I’ll never grasp again.
Every year, on their birthday, our mayday tree blooms. For a few days before and after, our front yard has erupted in white. I like to imagine it is just for them, even though the tree long preceded their birth and mayday trees have been blooming for time immemorial. I tell them that it’s their birthday present, and we stop to look at the flowers and the little ecosystem of bugs they host. This year, the mayday is a little late. Like everything this year. I hope it’s enough for you, sweet boys. I hope you don’t notice how far behind you the world is; just keep powering ahead and we’ll all catch up. Or maybe I’ll just stop for a bit to watch you blaze ahead; I don’t want to miss the streak you leave trying in vain to keep up.
Maydays just about to go. What this photo mostly told me is that I need a new macro lens for my camera. My birthday is also happening, family.
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday. Your old mom loves you more than you know.
The unicorn and his many “smile!” faces this year.. things that are important to remember.
Also, thank you to Brother Jon for the shout out. If you don’t read his blog, you really should. The internet needs more gentle, kind people like him. On the plus side, he’s also funny and goodlooking. And SMART. He even understands what engineers want sometimes.
1 in 68 children is diagnosed with Autism. Chances are, you know a family that lives with this unwieldy thing, and you know that comes in so many different shapes and sizes.
Our family knows Autism intimately. Eight years ago my cousin gave birth to her second boy; a curly headed chub with big blue eyes. He was so unlike his brother; his brother entered the world loud and gregarious. T was quieter. We would laugh about how he would put himself to bed at 8 p.m. no matter where he was, without fuss. His ways were ordered. His younger sister came quickly after him, and in the midst of all the chaos of 3 kids, all under 5, my cousin and her husband noticed that T wasn’t hitting his milestones. That his ordered ways gave way to meltdowns when they weren’t observed. That he couldn’t be coaxed out of his moods. That he liked certain textures. Once you saw a list of symptoms, there was no denying that he was on the spectrum.
My cousin and her husband wasted no time. T was diagnosed as soon after his second birthday as they could get him to the doctor. T was born in a town and a time where resources were scarce, and the only certainty they had was that the sooner therapy starts, the better. There was a flurry of finding aides, setting aside rooms for therapy space, educating family, joining advocacy groups, googling, reading books. We developed a new lexicon for behaviours. There was worry about what the future would bring. Some people criticized them; some people were afraid. I hope most people were supportive and kind, but I would venture that most didn’t understand all the challenges. And on top of managing everyone else’s emotions, there was the rest of their life; two other small kids who had birthday parties and skating lessons and play dates and all the rest. There was a business to run and a house to keep and an extended family to tend to and vacations to be had. Life only accelerated for them in the wake of diagnosis.
And yet, it all worked. They made it work. T worked hard, his aides pushed him, we all adjusted. His parents doggedly maintained a life for themselves and their other kids. And somewhere along the way, things started to click with T; his speech came along, he started to hit milestones. There was lots of hard days in between, but he made progress in leaps and bounds. I still remember the pride when T gave me a high five for the first time, when he was 5. I felt like I had been invited into his club. Now, I can hug him and joke with him. He goes to school, he’s got friends. Life is not without it’s challenges, but so much has happened already that we were never certain would. And yet, the goal is not to “fix” him and make him neurotypical; it’s to help him live the best life he can. It is the same goal we have for all of our kids.
This is what we have learned of Autism; it brings out the very, very best in families. It is so hard, but the successes are so much more. When our kids are all together it is mad chaos, but autism centers us; we temper our schedules because T needs us to. It gives me perspective raising my own children, reminding me that life is uncertain but you can deal with anything that gets thrown in your path. Mostly, I see T and am reminded that he is a person; he was the same baby we giggled about going to bed at 8 p.m., the same kid who loves to play Lego and Super Mario. He is a kid; he is not Autism. His needs are a little different from the rest of ours, but that doesn’t exempt him from all the love and respect in the world.
Autism is not a terrible affliction; it is a different way of seeing the world and we are invited to try and understand it. To choose not to is to miss out on all the gifts that individuals with Autism have to offer. For me, that is watching T light up talking about something he loves, or giggling with him over silly jokes. These are relatively normal things with most kids, but from him they feel like a really big present with a bow on top. My cousin’s family lives three hours away, so this isn’t my daily reality, but I am glad to be a part of T and his family’s life. I am grateful for the resources he has and the support they get from their community. I am so grateful that T has a brother and sister who love and support him. I am grateful for our extended family who have rallied around him. And mostly, I am so grateful and filled with admiration for his parents; who are T’s greatest champions.
So today, on World Autism Day, let’s celebrate families who share their kids’ struggles and get them through. And let’s celebrate everyone on the spectrum, because they aren’t problems to be solved, they are people to be loved.
To learn more about Austim, and how to support individuals with Autism, please visit Autism Speaks.
I found a Hungry, Hungry Hippos marble in my garbeurator recently.* It’s been months since we had a marble sighting, but I know that there is at least 17 more to be found around our house. It is a true statement that 74%** of North American households with children has a Hungry, Hungry, Hippos set, and every single one of them promptly loses 18 out of the 20 marbles. If you can still place more than two Hungry, Hungry, Hippo marbles, you are supervising your kids too much. Let them go: it is the beginning of an unraveling that you can’t fight any more than time itself, or the magical allure of an Oreo cookie.
There were days, early on, when I put all the puzzle pieces back together at the end of the evening and kept floor mats down, and gates secured. Those were the days where the boys just loved the feel of objects, and were constantly trying to understand the physical laws of the world they were born into. What tastes good, how things stack, that things exist even when you can’t see them. But the scale is small; it exactly fits the capacity of their imagination. It is easily tidied in a few minutes, life can be ordered.
Somewhere along the way they have learned to navigate the world around them enough that the mundane turns fantastical. Your children’s play takes on a life of its own as imagination makes every surface is a cliff, every object something completely other than it appears to be, and every game rule is just a starting point for another thousand completely contradictory and complicated ones.
They pick up skills. Their little fingers and brains learn to navigate finer and finer things and before you know it, it’s no longer building the Duplo wall; you are being told how many legs are on the Lego Hobbit Spider they got for their fourth birthday. Moments later they smash that spider into smithereens and start building it anew into something completely different. They are fitting themselves in and out of costumes, shedding their identities every few minutes. They try to understand the mystery of families and how they come together and what they want for themselves, while loving their own so fiercely the mere mention we’re not all together makes them cry. Except one day you will look outside and you will find your son, fully dressed in winter gear that you didn’t wrestle him into, gleefully flinging himself into a snowbank completely of his own accord. He’s never been outside alone before, but there he is, with you watching through the glass.
But it’s not just them that change. Who was that woman who kept all the puzzles ordered in Ziplocs and religiously swapped out age appropriate toys? I barely recognize her anymore. Now I’ve lost count at 14 stuffed angry birds and I am mildly concerned they’re breeding in the walls at the alarming rate they appear all over the house. I no longer look below adult eye level in order to ignore the stickers all over the closet door, and I am only asked to arbitrate in serious matters such as a brother suggesting that he would like to change his middle name to Corndog. I have someone peeking over my shoulder when I cook or work, and I gladly invite them in to my world too; this duller one they will inherit. There is crayon on my walls, and unadulterated joy in my heart that we have arrived at this place. Because while it is hard to rein Luke Skywalker’s and puppy dogs’ attentions back to practical matters, it is witness to them come into being.
It is apart from you. Without noticing, at some point you feel yourself relaxed in a room alone while they are happily brandishing swords in another. This is life, as it is. Their worlds will grow ever bigger and expand outwards from yours, with secrets and jokes and opinions that represent them, entirely. And that is the point of all of this; not to make them in any image, but to provide a world sufficiently large to find their way in it.
Notes:
*I wanted to take a picture of the marble, but I promptly lost it again. It will turn up.
**74% is a completely made up statistic, but I bet it’s not far off. Any takers? Actually, you know what, I don’t need a gambling problem.
I did not know about this commercial thanks to the magic of PVR, but when I purchased this behemoth of a ten-person tent for a 5 day family camping trip, Coleman was unwittingly fulfilling all of my unexpressed desires. I wanted to be the envy of all the tenters out there, all one amongst the army of 30 foot trailers. I wanted a tent that would house me, my camping-averse husband, my four-year olds, and my wayward dog for 5 days in a temperate climate during a family trip without causing a domestic dispute.
Is that too much to fucking ask? Yes. Yes, it is.
Set Up
Pros: YES. FUCK YES. BUY THIS TENT RIGHT NOW.
Setting this tent up set me up for a level of optimism I can only describe as “overly confident” at best, but “delusional” is a more realistic term.
Cons: The worst part about setting up this tent was that I had to set down my beer to do it because the poles have clicky things that require two hands. I really tried not to set down my beer, friends, but things just couldn’t be helped. My husband fiddled with this random piece of material that we think is some sort of fly or perhaps, OH MY GOD I JUST FIGURED OUT IT’S PROBABLY A WALL FOR INSIDE THE TENT THAT IS SO SMART BUT HAS VIRTUALLY NO USE TO US NOW BECAUSE I AM HOME WITH ACTUAL WALLS MADE OF DRYWALL AND I AM GOING TO KISS THEM.
There are two queen sized matresses in there and room to spare. Camping is going to be goddamn aces, you guys. Optimism level: OFF THE CHARTS.
But really, this delivers on the promise of the instant easy set up, if you subtract the hours worth of fiddling with mystery material.
Staying In the Tent
Pros: This tent is large. There is lots of room. It seems durable. There are lots of windows. It is a rectangle. I am a tallish woman and can stand up straight in it, if you don’t count me nailing myself in the head with a lantern at least six times during this trip because I evidently don’t have a short-term memory anymore.
Cons: You guys, being dry is all well and fine when you’re in a car wash for a few minutes, but what do you get when you’re in a downpour with two small people with only passing knowledge of potty training, a camping-averse husband who said (for real, I am not shitting you) “I didn’t change my clothes for three days because I kept thinking we were going to shower” and a dog who prefers feces and rain-soaked kibble to anything else?
The answer is condensation. You get condensation.
I can see the water is beading on the outside, so why is it dripping on my head? This is my thought process for two hours.
This is what I figured out as I clung desperately to the side of the brand new air mattress that required complicated re-pumping every day after having seven children (five not my own) abuse it to the point of disrepair. I had four-year old feet in my face, I was half out of my sleeping bag, and I was getting dripped on. So I had some time to think. And I thought “FUCK YOU, Coleman. Fuck you for making a completely sealed off “family” tent.” No one wants to be sealed off with their family. That is why suite hotels and boarding schools were invented. It’s all well and fine that you can make a neato commercial, but the practicality of having a completely sealed off tent is nil. So basically, I was having angry thoughts.
All that air took hours to escape because I did not have the cognitive ability at the end of the trip to open a door or window to let it out.
And then, just as I was getting some sleep, the voice of my dad appeared from the heavens. He’s not dead, so it was especially weird that he was offering us respite in form of a the hotel room key that he and my mom were checking out of, so we could take a hot shower. So weird that I grumbled “but there’s pay showers here”, and he retreated as quickly as he came, but left wine. I thought it was a dream until my husband lost his shit over the fact that there was no hot showers to be had and I tripped over the wine bottle on my way out of the tent. I am drinking that wine right now you guys, and nothing ever tasted so good.
Take home message: Coleman denied me a hot shower by making me think too hard. It does not matter how big the goddamn tent is, friends, if there is no ventilation and five mammalian bodies, you have a problem.
Take Down
Pros: Take down of the Coleman Family Tent is relatively easy because of the magic of presto buttons and neat shit like that. I completely fooled our spectators (my cousin and the assorted kids) that everything was fine because we got it all sort of down minus all the massive air/ventilation problem seen above. And they left for the beach, with us promising to follow shortly as soon as we got our tent in the bag.
Cons: And that is when the proverbial wheels came off the proverbial fucking piece of shit tent.
Friends, I said and did things this morning that I don’t care to repeat. A lovely, lovely couple staying in the campsite next to us who were quietly having breakfast, and who live-in-the-same-city-as-us-so-I-will-probably-run-into-them-at-the-Farmer’s-Market-tomorrow-because-they-seem-like-the-type and their two-year old daughter, did not need to hear the things that they heard this morning. There was a domestic scene of epic proportions, rivaled only by our camping neighbors trying to park a 35 foot trailer in pitch black the night before. I feel ashamed, dear readers. Ashamed at what that tent made me do.
All of this shit had to go back into our van. I would have just set it back up and lived there on a permanent basis if they let you stay more than 16 days. I could have been a charming campground resident who helped you back your trailer in and made hilariously burned pancakes every morning. I had plans. A lot of plans. I had a lot of time to make those plans.
I have many reasons for yelling, but that tent became the lightning rod for all of my frustrations this morning. I was furious at Coleman for disabusing me of the notion that a family camping trip could be the joyous family fun times that I was envisioning. Mostly though, I was furious at them for saving the shitstorm right for the end of the trip, when we had lost all organizational capacity. All I wanted was a hot breakfast, Coleman. What I got was a maelstrom of throwing shit around, patronizing, and accusations. Where is that in your goddamn commercial, Coleman?
But on the bright side, at least we didn’t leave the camping tradition of having a major domestic incident aside. It’s right up there with roasting marshmallows and beer fueled hikes.
Rating
Let’s review:
Pros: I was lulled into a false sense of security that everything was going to be ok.
Cons: I do not enjoy 1) being disabused of notions and 2) having all the shit saved for the end of things. I like the shit up front so I can deal with it.
This tent is recommended for the camping-averse and those with short attention spans. This tent is highly recommended if you have lost your sense of smell, prefer moist environments, and you can afford to just abandon it at the end of your trip.
This tent is not recommended for actual families, those in shaky marriages, or people with dogs of any kind, especially ones who have earned the moniker “Smelly” by a horde of children becoming collectively more odorous by the moment.
I have certain traits that I don’t have to think very hard to figure out where they came from. In many ways, I am my dad in female form.This is not surprising; until my tumultuous teenage years I was my dad’s shadow. I would watch him carving ducks in his wood shop, happy to go retrieve the dead mallard from the freezer when asked. I was reasonably competent with power tools for all of my overachieving art projects. He would let me sit on his lap and drive the big blue GMC around the prairies when I was merely 8 years old (or maybe it was the red Dodge by then?). We went for family bike rides in the prairies and hikes into the coulees and we would stop along the way to check everything out. Our annual family vacations were just roaming with only a final destination in mind; stopping along the way to see anything that interested us. Saturdays were for mowing my grandma’s lawn, and Sundays were for going; anywhere and everywhere. Even in our small prairie town, I grew up as cultured as we could manage because my dad challenged me to try new foods and see new things wherever we went. And oh my god, we had to watch so much PBS.
About a year ago my dad sent me copies of slides from the 70’s that he had scanned and I laughed and laughed when I realized how much of my dad I have become.
My Dad, sometime in the late 70’s
Me in 2011
That fierce, get’er done, explore everything, be afraid of nothing, kind of guy that he is. And I love that he now passes this on to my kids, and reminds me to do the same even when I want to wrap them up in bubble wrap. I think he would have been a natural raising boys, but I think I did my best despite being a girl.
A family that drinks together has a very expensive wedding. Paid for by my dad.
Now, life is not without it’s challenges being raised by your exact personality match, but I am very glad now to have a dad that will bravely go approach a beehive with a screwdriver at midnight after I have wussed out and gotten stung three times already. In his shirtsleeves. Thanks for taking one for the team, Dad.
HERE I AM! Rocking you like a hurricane. Or maybe more caressing your face like a gentle breeze. I don’t even know anymore. I have a lot happening right now all the time. It’s all good stuff, but it’s so much stuff that I don’t have time for other stuff. Like blogging stuff. I have missed you all though, I swear.
When I started work two months ago I was all manicured, pedicured, spa’ed out, well rested and excited.
Proof! I felt awake once!
Now I have been through training and trial by fire. Adding to that is field season, in that being a biology type person who works on industrial type things, spring and summer are the time when all the critters have to stand up and be counted. I am terrible at that sort of thing, so my job is to do paper work while the more talented among us are out enjoying the sunshine. That suits me just fine; I get to go pick up my kids at 5:15 every day and they’re happy to see me. It makes my life.
May is also stupid with birthdays in my family, along with Mother’s Day, inlaws visiting for two weeks. And me insanely deciding that we have to put our house on the market RIGHT NOW the day our inlaws arrived, and despite no evidence that we are going to be able to get our house in show condition without an intervention from that hoarders show.
Did I mention I am in a beekeeping workshop? Yeah. So there’s that too. Although I hate the snow, I am glad at least that our late spring delayed the bees for a couple of weeks this year so I could catch my breath a bit. My hive from last year gave me a lot of grief and I am just going to do a separate post on that for the bee lovers among us.
I have a beekeeping helper this year
Did I also mention that I am taking a running workshop? I AM GOING TO LOVE RUNNING, GODDAMMIT. Or I am at least going to do it. Because since kids, I can endure basically anything for any amount of time.
This may have been more than I was up for, but in typical rollergiraffe fashion, I careened right into it. As a result, all of that pampering and pedicuring wore off quickly. This is a recent photo:
Smoking relaxes me
My kids are totally validating my daycare provider’s assumption that I was really shitty at parenting. When they started daycare they were hot messes and we were limping in every day barely alive. In the last two months they have learned to dress themselves, mastered potty training, learned all the continents and many countries, learned to write their names, done art projects that I can’t even do, grown grass, and learned a whole second language. I worked for TWO YEARS on that potty training thing. So, basically feeling pretty amazing about my daycare picking skills, you guys.
But they’re FOUR! My babies are four, and of all the things I have been through this month, that is the most exciting and fun. They’re so cool right now. I love every day that they come home with something new.
Fourth birthday at the amusement park
One of these kids is a bit dramatic. I’ll let you figure out which.
Anyway, I make no promises about blogging right now, but do know that I do my best to keep up with y’all’s prodigious blogging pace. So tell me, how are YOU?
My time at home with my babies is over. Four years ago, almost to the day, I was heavily pregnant with twins and left my job with only a vague idea of what was to come. I had notions of heading back to work as soon as my maternity leave was over. I was all “I am woman, hear me roar” about it and there was no way I was going to give up a career I had worked so hard for.
That didn’t happen. A different kind of feminine notion took hold in the minute between the first and second of my sons was born. In an instant, holding them both in my arms for the first time, I grew up, got wise, and became the fierce mama I am.
This. This is when it happened.
Being a stay at home mom has been an experiment in extremes, punctuated by life events that were completely out of control and all the expected things that kids bring, but double the intensity. The highs are higher and the lows are lower with two, and we have ridden that rollercoaster 1398 days now.
My boys are wild, loud, beasts who will take over the world some day with sheer force of abandon. My Unicorn has imagination beyond compare and an incredible depth of kindness. My Engineer has an aptitude and precociousness for figuring out how the world works and he does it with wit. These are things I already know about them, and I know in my heart who they will be long before they get there. And so I don’t worry for that; I know that they will be themselves, and if they’re lucky, be happy at that.
The Engineer and The Unicorn
And tonight, tonight it hit me with the force of a speeding railway, after they were snuggled into bed, after all the dishes were done, and the wine drunk, the relaxing over. Tonight, as I went to check on them before I turned to bed myself, I realized that tomorrow we will wake up and be a different kind of family. I will be a different kind of mom.
I know that the fact that I had a choice to stay home and now go back to work was a great luxury, so I won’t dwell on it. But I will grieve a little for this shift in my universe; this separation that I never wanted. I will still do all the mom things that moms do everywhere every day. I will still be there in the morning and at night and every minute that I am able. They will still need so much from me.
And oh my god, I am grateful, so profoundly grateful that I had nearly four years to spend with my little folk and grateful that I found it in me to do it, because I was so afraid that I didn’t. I am grateful for the things that they have given me; the patience, the knowledge that time passes whether it’s good or bad, and how to find joy in those small moments even when the day has been hard.
Like this. This was hard. OMG I HAVE CLEANED UP SO MUCH SHIT IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS.
So tomorrow I send them off into this world a little bit in a way I am not prepared for yet. I will have to approach it the same way I approached becoming a mom; vague notions and blind faith that it will all work out alright. And it will, because I am armed now with the knowledge that as long as those two little goofballs are in this world with me, everything is ok.
the rollergiraffe 