The Three Year Old Vomits

It’s a perfectly picturesque day on the Little League Ball Field.  Folks are packed in, the snack bar is buzzing, the nearby playground is full of the happy noises that children make when they’re left to laugh, play and have fun while an older sister or brother steps up to the plate to hit the next home run.

As the birds are chirping and the fans are clapping, you, as the mother, look to the sidelines to find your 3-year-old.  Noticing a funny look on his face, you go running.  As you approach the small little man, he begins to toss his cookies, or in this case, red vines.  Your hands go out, your eyes start scanning the immediate area for somewhere to go, but the vomit keeps coming.  From behind you, another mothers voice chimes in.  “I have some baby wipes and an extra shirt.  Let me help you.  Poor little love.”  Gratefully, you meet her eye and you both run off behind the bleachers to clean up and figure out whats wrong with the small, vomiting child.

Or, that’s how it should go.  Instead, the mom behind you is indignant.  Now, not only are you paired with a child covered in throw up, but you’ve got in on your shirt, your arms, and there is a big circle of it all around you.  Other mom snarls, “I can’t believe you’re letting him do that here.”  In your mind, you’re just wondering where else the toddler could have thrown up that could be more convenient and maybe secretly hoping some had gotten on her and her better than thou attitude.  You’re wishing and willing yourself to be anywhere but on the sidelines of a ball field being yelled at by a less than understanding mom.

So, you flee the scene.  Older child can get a ride home with grandparents and you spend the car trip home feeling sad for your poorly child who is vomiting for no apparent reason, kicking yourself for not having extra clothes, and swearing you’ll never show your embarrassed face at a ball game again for as long as you live.

We’ve all been there, under different circumstances, obviously.  Change the ball field for the middle of Target, change puke to a kid with a temper tantrum, change the other mom for a Grandma who “in her day wouldn’t let her kid do XYZ” and maybe it hits closer to home.

Mothers.  We judge each other harshly, sometimes.  Most of us are doing the very best we can at any given time.  Sometimes, that means paper mache models of the solar system and sometimes that means wearing yesterdays sweat pants but remembering the juice boxes for the class party.  There are those days, those awful days where the worst happens and we hope that there will be understanding around us.  That perhaps, another mom might step in with a laugh and say, “You think this is bad, my Johnny once peed on a police officer when we were potty training.”  We’re looking to the crowd to be a part of the village.

Too often, mothers get wrapped up and forget that we’re all working towards the same goal; chiefly to create a new generation of adults that look both ways before crossing the street, apologize when they’ve done something wrong, stand up for whats good in the world and find their own tribe of people who’ll help and encourage them on the path of life.

I’m willing to bet that the mom in this story has a lot on her plate.  It may very well be that she’s a first time mom, and her first instinct was just to be outraged.  I am hard pressed to find the terrible in most people.  I can find superficial flaws not to like, but at the end of the day, my mind reverts to my basic belief that people, in general, want to be good.  When they aren’t, it’s usually when they don’t know any better.  This mom will eventually find herself in a crisis and I hope other moms reach out to her.

In the end, this parenting gig can be really, really hard.  There are a lot of wonderful, beautiful moments wrapped up inside, of course.  We live for those moments. In between those moments are the messy ones.  So, when you notice another person in the midst of a parenting crisis, lend them a hand or an understanding smile.  The old adage rings true, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.  If all else fails, just go with that.

 

 

 

 

That mom…

There was once a ring… a ring to rule all… oh wait, wrong story… there was once a ring that lived in a family.  This ring was simple. It was a ring of gold, with nothing fancy on it.  No diamonds, no sweet inscription when you looked under.  (well, there might have been, I’m not actually sure that anyone has seen the underside of this ring.) This ring lived on the hand of my mother.  The ring has a great story, but I’m not here to tell that part.  The ring came to be before my cognitive memory, and so, it always was.  The ring wearer would say the ring was never anything special, and yet, she also never went without it.  Not when her children had the chicken pox, not when something got stuck in the garbage disposal, not when she ailed… simply never.

I grew up looking at that ring, on my mother’s finger.  I remember thinking it was very special, and very beautiful.  I wasn’t sure why.  Maybe its because it was there, as the back of her hand checked for my fever.  Perhaps it glittered when she looked over my sometimes so-so report card.  I really believe its because it was always there, in front of me, never wavering.

Things in my life did waver.  My constant was her and the family she made.  She hates it when I say things like this.  However, we are all her creation, at least in part, so it sticks with me.  Her marriage, her family, her visions… she pushed us all into where we are today.

From conception, literally every need of a child is on its mother.  I’m not sure when we actually and truly grow out of this.  I’m pretty sure that every angsty teen pushes back to fight this off.  I know that I did.  You come to an age where you no longer want to accept wisdom like you did in your childhood.  “No, no, don’t touch the hot stove. You’ll be burned.” In that phase, you trust the infinite wisdom of your mother, or face immediate consequences.  Children growing into teenagerhood and beyond still lack the frontal lobe development to understand that your choice is actually the hot stove.

I’m facing growing pains at home.  I want to be able to say “I will climb a fence and hang up all of your posters that have been thrown to ground for you!” to my oldest growing girl.  (back story…?  When I was in the sixth grade, I ran for student council.  A lot of very not so nice girls would rip my posters down and my mother would sneak back to campus and hang them back up in the dead of night so I’d never know.  Fun fact, I still won.  I sort of ran a campaign that might have led the lower classes to believe I’d change policy and get them invited to dances, which was quickly shot down. Sorry, guys!!)

You could do a lot of things to my mom.  She’s seen and heard it all from her four kids.  There were two things you could not do.  Not live up to your own potential and lie.  Those were her deal breakers.  She had a shelf full of books.  We went to the library.  She was on the school board to break up unjust policies and create ones that helped students succeed.  When computers became a thing, we got one… with both Carmen San Diego and Encarta. (c’mon, clap if you remember encarta!) The fact is though, in her eyes, we are all smart enough to go out and change the world… and come hell or high water, we’d all graduate with good marks and the world opened for each of us.  And we did.  Each of us did, in our own. ways.

Sometimes, we’d be angry with her.  She held us in such high regard, not necessarily individually.  We were reminded of who we were.  We were a family.  Bad on one of us, bad on all of us.  And so, sometimes to our chagrin, we were raised as a unit.  She was a girl scout mom, a cub scout mom, a room mom, the leader of great sleepovers and the master of an absurdly great dinner every night.  But we’d fight back, as kids do.  Kids need to push their limits in their tiny worlds, and more as they expand.  In our own way, we each drove her the brink of insanity.  Which is terrible, but we didn’t know better, because we were all finding our own way.  There is one thing we knew to be true, though, no matter what.  One phone call, one knock on her door, one “hey mom?” and she would be in our corner, right behind us, guiding us like a beacon towards right.

Its funny, we’re all grown.  We all know this now.  We still have growing pains.  Sometimes, we’ll call eachother and try it out first.  “Don’t tell mom… but…” In the end we call Mom anyways, and much later, more often than not we find out that the other sibling already told her and she was just waiting for us to say something.  That kind of patience is not born within.  Its years of watching children grow.  Its kids that sneak koolaid to school as a snack, kids that insist that there is a new way to make the letter k, its kids that sneak out of windows, its kids that do the impossible.  The years of training have seasoned her to wait for the call, the moment when the kids will listen.

Wait! The ring?  Where does this tie in? Oh yes, the ring.  It symbolized everything that was stable in my childhood. I sometimes wonder if they see my ring, the symbol of marriage, the beginning of their own family the same way

I’m months away from having a 12 year old.  It terrifies me.  I want to say that the retrospect has given me clarity.  It hasn’t.  I know she didn’t have all of her shit together when my older sister turned 12.  I know she didn’t have it all together when I was 12. I know she was making the best decision she could in the moment in the she made it.  But damnit, it doesn’t seem like mine are coming off as confident as hers.

The Little Tearful Tooth

Before you become a mother, you read the books.  These become your bible at 3 AM when brand new baby won’t stop crying, or your friends cute daughter born a month after yours starts crawling or talking.  In that first year, its really hard, but at the end, you can find your comfort in an answer.  It comes from your mom, your sister, the nice family from church, the weird lady who sat next to you in the waiting room, the dr, the internet or, the baby bibles. As they age out of infancy, things get weird.  The well meaning people in your life suddenly want to know why your toddler is sporting two different shoes and putting green beans in their tiny noses.  They’re pretty sure your tumultuous tot needs a nap, needs a snack, needs to wear a bib if they’re going to be messy, needs to be quieter, needs to for-the-love-of-all-thats-holy stop touching things.  They don’t know why anymore.  Their children either never did what yours is doing or, in some cases, their hypothetical children never will.

This is when you get your mommy playbook rolling.  Life got weird, all of the sudden, and very weird.  Nights get spent googling “why will my child only eat white foods” or “kids who refused to wear socks and still got into college” Each new day, a new challenging search.  “What to say when my child sounds like he’s cursing but is only saying truck” and “How to trick my child into potty training” or “what happens if I don’t potty train my child” plus  “how to get spaghetti off the ceiling” and obviously,  “wine sales”

As they grow, the searches cease as you realize that the answer to most questions is to wait it out, be patient, learn to laugh it off, and the number to poison control.  You suddenly discover you have a knack for always carrying spare crayons in your purse, but that you never know where your keys are.  You master the pony tail, and you allow your make up compact to take on a new life as a frog that can sing songs, but only if little junior or junioress is really, really good for the next five minutes at the bank.  (just me??)

You’re still constantly surprised by what they come up with, but you’ve grown used to it.  You know they’ll crack you up, make you scratch your head, and how to hide while you google an answer to one of life’s hard questions they come up with.   (only to discover that half the time, when you’ve found the answer, they’ve discovered a squirrel in the tree above you and no longer care) The thing you get exceptionally well trained in is how to make up the answer to the unanswerable questions… 

And so tonight’s tale begins.

A month ago, Josephine’s tooth began to wiggle.  Only slightly.  Every day, every waking hour since then, I’ve been asked, “Mommy, when will my tooth fall out?”  The answer is always the same.  “I don’t know.  When its ready.  Wiggle it.” Well meaning friends of ours would tell her they’d be happy to pull it, which she would momentarily consider and decide that prospect was much too frightening.  *wiggle wiggle*  “Mommy, when will my tooth fall out?”

It came out tonight.  We all shared a round of high fives and at bedtime, she raced upstairs to brush her teeth, and then her lonely lost tooth, lest the tooth fairy find it in less than pristine condition and she get dinged by the dreaded “This tooth was not well cared for” note.

Stories were read, songs were sung, kisses placed upon her little head, down a tooth.  She closed her eyes with a smile, surely thinking of what she’d spend her bounty on.

30 minutes later, she came running down the stairs, and with a tear stained face and a moan, threw herself into my arms.  “Mommy… I’m so sad!” she told me.  “But why?”

She went on.

A few huffs as she caught her breath, then wiped her nose on the back of her hand (we’re working on that!)…

“Because, Mommy, that *sob* was *sob* my *sob* favorite *nearing total breakdown here* tooth!”

…

…

“Your favorite??”, I ask, “Why?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve always had it as long as I could remember.  And well, Daddy told me that the tooth fairy will take my tooth back to where she lives.  She has a special machine.  She’ll put it in, and it’ll clean it, and polish it, give it some extra flouride… (Points for dad, I’m thinking!  This is a GREAT story!) and then, then, Mommy, she’s going to shrink it down to very very tiny.  And a baby somewhere…. *sobs* Mommy, a baby somewhere is going to grow my *sobs* toooooth.”

(David took that story to second base and then started playing a different game I think)

After some comforting, where I choked back my laughter over her head buried in my shoulder, I told her that the tooth fairy was surely not going to give her tooth to someone else.  I also told her if she felt strongly about it, I would message the tooth fairy and ask if this one time, just this once, she could keep her tooth AND her reward.  Satisfied with this, she sobbed back upstairs where I think she might be waiting to interrogate the tooth fairy later….

This is DEFINITELY not in the books.  Definitely.

The Evolution of a Family

We all know the story.  I don’t know how many times I’ve looked over a glass of wine at a party and told it to some one.  I won’t bore you with all the silly details there.

Honestly, though… who could have known that one shy young man and one much thinner than these days young girl could have gone from the people we were back then to the small army of a family we are today?

Well, I’ll tell you who.  Me.  And him.  And I’m pretty sure my mom knew… mothers have a way of figuring these things out before daughters get a chance to wrap their heads around it.  As a mother of 3 girls, I still pray this is true.  I pray for that, and that I’ll have the sense to know when to push and when to let go.  Oh, and that they’ll figure out an earlier age than me that even if *they* don’t think my pushing is necessary, it probably is.

Enough of that, this isn’t an accolade to my mom, although I could probably write a few dozen of those.  This is the story of my life.  The one that I hope that in 50 years, I’ll still be begging for more of, like I am today.

6 years, 5 houses, 3 kids, 2 dogs, one misread pee stick, countless victories, almost as many arguments and at least as many apologies, here we are.  I’d love to say we’ve got our wrinkles ironed out, but instead, we just learned to like wrinkles.

Thinking back, to when it was really just David and I (gosh how brief that moment was!), the memories flood into my mind, one after another.  Sneaking into a garden to take pictures, going to the beach, staying up until 3 am and being up at 6 (and not being darned near dead!), and camping trips where bugs seemed to favor girls an awful lot more than boys… but before that, at the very beginning of our official life.

The Drive.

So much trepidation, so little planning.  Typical of our age group, probably.  But we packed what would fit into that trailer and headed out of town with minimal tears.  I remember how many told me that if we could make that trip, our marriage would forever be just fine.    I shook my head and laughed.  A road trip couldn’t possibly be a testament to how a marriage could work.

Fast forward to what felt like 700 boring hours later, and zoom in on me, huddled in a sleeping bag with the dog at my feet (in the sleeping bag with me!).  David tapping on the gauges of the car.  “Is everything ok, honey?” I asked.  “Of course,” he assured me, “Why wouldn’t everything be ok?”  “Well, because the heater isn’t working anymore.”  *silence*  Then I offer, “Maybe we should stop?”  “No,” he told me, “We can’t stop.  If we do, we might not get started again.”  Looking out the window, down what one could only assume was the interstate in Wyoming or Antartica (I’ll never be certain), was a cozy hotel.  This beacon in the bleak night called to me.  I suggested we stop and he said that at that time of night, it’d hardly be worth it.  After all, it was nearly 3AM and we’d have to check out at 11.  Wanting to argue and push my point, I remembered all those voices telling me how this drive would test our new marriage in ways we couldn’t imagine.

I decided not to push it.  The fight wouldn’t be worth it, and I didn’t want our first test to be a failed test.

I’ve weighed so many issues on the “how important is this, really” scale since then.  It’d be so nice if I could report to you now that I didn’t let silly stuff get the best of me.   It just isn’t the truth.  I am quick witted and sharp tongued.  David has a temper like a flash bulb.  It goes off, and by the time it fades, he’s usually over it. I can chew on something for days on end. As middle children, we’re both set on being fair to the death.  Our versions of peace keeping are different though, so we butt heads more about how to solve a problem than we do about the actual problem.

That stuff doesn’t matter, though.  Not really.  We never stopped during that storm, except to put a cardboard box over the engine/turbine/spinny bobber/otherwise important useful piece of machinery in a car.  And, when we were safely in South Carolina, we flung open the doors to our first home together, placed our 3 pieces of furniture and began our life together.

The drive did define us.  We learned how to deal with conflict right there.  He isn’t always right, and I’m not always either.  But instead of fighting, I decided to trust his decision, which turned out to be a good one.  No matter where we’ve been since then, or what problem we’ve had, we’ve both put our faith in each other first.

It wasn’t long at all before baby made 3, and in so many ways, it was perfect timing.  While we both wish we’d had longer to enjoy just being married, we don’t know what it was like to not have been a family.  And once we were 3, it seemed we were 5 before we turned around again.  For those of you wondering, we’re done for now with what we have.

Most older couples would say that we’re still newlyweds.  So, I don’t attempt to sit before you and know it all.  (Nice change of pace for me, eh?)  All I know is that nothing ever felt so natural as the path I’ve walked along side my very best friend.  Its all been a lot of fun, a little bit scary, at times frustrating.  But I’ve gotten a lot more than I’ve given, and I’ve been thankful a lot more than I’ve prayed.

So, in a few days, when our marriage turns six, we’ll definitely be getting out the champagne, dancing in our living room, and toasting to 10 more sets of six years.

No refunds, no exchanges… right baby?

Trip to Washington DC

Show Week at The Little Gym…

Dear Josephine….

As your mother, I support and encourage your constant attempts at creativity and individuality. I believe this is a crucial part of your development and will do almost anything I can to make this segway into full blown toddlerhood easier for you.

As the third child and fifth member of the family, I’m sure this is a very hard thing to do. All the normal and most obvious ways have already been taken by the senior members of the Shenanigan Sisters.

However, you must trust me when I say that constant nudity will not achieve the results you are looking for. First of all, it has been done before by both of your older sisters. It really wasn’t cute when they did it, and it surely isn’t cute when you do it now. Second, it is the middle of winter. When your sisters were your age, they basked in the brief but glorious Oregon summers, picking blackberries right of the vine and running through sprinklers. Nakedness was slightly more supported by me at that time.

You live in a chilly world, my dear burgeoning toddler. Clothing is not an optional thing these days and peeing on my wood floors is painfully unpleasant.

Please understand, you have been officially notified of this. I’m only a few short steps away from duct tape and staples. If you continue down this reckless path, I’ll be forced to play the only hand I have.

Perhaps you would like to take up another individualized habit such as refusing to wear hair ties, sleep through the night, or if you are really wanting to bring the heat, refuse any food that is not light beige… scattering it on the floor for the dogs to eat with a playful smile and a shouted “NO!”

Wait, you already do those things.

Well, I guess you’ve got your bases covered. Now put your clothes back on, my child.

Love,

Mommy

Well, my camera battery died…

So you, my two faithful readers, get a picture that Carly took.

If you ask me, she is showing a lot of promise.

Darn kids….

I’ve learned the hardest obstacle to this 365 project… and that is my children.  They flat out refuse to cooperate with pictures.  I sneak around my house like a ninja, trying to get candid shots of them, and like wildlife, they scatter as soon as I’m discovered.

So, I tricked them into a game of hide and seek and then snuck around trying to get a picture of them before I “found” them.

Kelsey, hiding in the bath tub.  (genius, btw)

Just to see if anyone is paying attention…

I skipped a day.  Turns out, one person IS paying attention.  (Thanks, honey)

Ok, so tonights dinner.  I made ribeye steak.  It was fantastic.  I meant to take pictures of the before and after, but got too hungry and too excited to take pics of the finished product.  haha.  Take my word for it, it was GREAT.

And last nights pick, Carly, trying to smile, trying not to giggle: