Loose teeth and other mysteries

It's that week again. The secret week of bliss. But don't tell. I'm working...remember? If anyone asks, I'm working, and it's hard work.

But truly, the work leading up to the opening day of the workshop is hard, and the first day is, if not hard, then stressful. I have to give a speech to a roomful of strangers and field myriad requests and complaints from the participants and faculty. I'm very good at faking poise and aplomb. Underneath, I'm all sweaty palms and knocking knees.

Last night, my nervousness about opening day bubbled up in a seemingly unrelated anxiety dream. This dream revolved around a current household drama, the drama called "when will Owen's first loose tooth fall out?"

Ever since I told Owen that the tooth fairy makes a very big deal over one's first lost tooth, he has been obsessed with its potential date of loss. He begs me for details, "Will it fall out in one day? Two days? Three days and 4 hours?" He has always required precise answers to his questions; unfortunately, I am not well-versed in the typical behavior of loose baby teeth. So I give vague answers, and he is crazy with anticipation.

In short, the loose tooth is a Very Big Deal.

So in my dream, Owen's tooth came out, and he gave it to me for safe keeping until bedtime. And I lost it. On a beach covered in tiny tooth-sized shells. For hours (in dream time) I crawled on my knees in the sand, frantically sifting and sifting and fretting and fretting. But I failed. I woke up before I found it.

It was one of those dreams that exposes very tender vulnerabilities: not only my fear of forgetting some detail for the workshop, or of failing to do my job in some way, but also the deeper, more penetrating and painful fears of a parent, the fear that I'm going to let my child down, scar him in some way, and, ultimately, lose him.

All of this incoherent rambling is an attempt to purge the uneasiness the dream left in me. I can't stop replaying it, feeling that panic and worry. And I realize that my worst fear, in my professional and my personal life, is letting people down, exposing myself as an impostor, as someone who never should have been given the job.

Is there really a Calgon?

And can it take me away?

This has been a tragic weekend, beginning at 6 am Friday morning with the littlest one throwing up what seemed like 3 days worth of meals on my bed. Her first tummy bug...funny, there's no page for that one in the baby book. This comes, of course, on the heels of virtually 3 months of sickness in our household. I don't know what we did, but the universe seems really pissed at my family.

Then there was some other unhappy stuff, too complicated to relate here, and some financial stuff that I won't bore you with, and then, a few hours ago, there was Mitch, wandering around the back of the house in a half-asleep daze, leaving a trail of puke behind him as he stumbled from room to room (the worst of it landing--where else?--on my bed). And now I'm sitting beside him as he sleeps fitfully, raising up every 10 minutes to dry heave.

You never imagine this stuff when you picture motherhood. No little girl ever plays "stomach virus" with her doll babies. No one ever muses, "One day, I'll be a mother, cleaning puke off the tiny strip of floor between the bathroom sink and the wall and from inside the crack at the top of the floor molding."

I'm feeling drained and sorry for myself. It's a been a long damn winter.

You are my favorite because

My mom tells a story about my sister Blair once asking her, "Who's your favorite?" The question warmed my mother's heart because she realized that Blair wouldn't have asked unless she thought she was the favorite, and isn't it every mom's wish for each of her children to feel that special?

My favorite part of the story is my mom's answer to the question. She said, "You're my favorite because..." and listed all the reasons Blair was special to her. Then she said, "And Kelly is my favorite because...." and "Neal is my favorite because..." and "Ashley is my favorite because..." And it was an honest answer. She had four favorites, all for different reasons, which was just exactly the right answer and is just exactly how I feel about my own kids.

My very first favorite is turning 6 today, which puts a small lump in my throat. I can still look at him and feel the brand new momma love that filled me to overflowing 6 years ago. The first time I felt that love from head to toe was the morning after Owen was born. I was dozing in my hospital bed, trying to ignore the hot throbbing of my cesarean incision and a bit out of my wits from pain medication. John had spent the night at home and was coming to the hospital early, but he hadn’t arrived yet. I was alone. The room was half-lit with the purple glow of 6:00 AM in November and quiet but for the gasping of some monitor they’d strapped me to. The nurse came in with Owen and told me his body temperature was down. She untied my hospital gown and helped me bear my chest; then she stripped Owen to his diaper and laid him on my breast. “He needs your body heat,” she told me. “I’ll come back in an hour.”

The night before had been long and brutal, a nearly 30 hour labor ending in an unexpected and emotional c-section. I’d been a mess in recovery, shaking and sobbing, and they’d kept me there longer than usual, so I’d had very little time with my baby. The time I did have was bleary and crowded with family who’d come to see. Now the nurse left me alone with this small, warm, breathing boy tucked under my chin. She'd given him to me because I was his mother and it was my body heat he needed. Artificial warming lamps were no match for my blood-warmed body, pulsing with the heat and the love he needed.

I experienced that moment out of time. I’d never felt so exactly in the right place, so content and certain and calm. I think of that hour as my initiation into motherhood. I’d been on the threshold before, but during those minutes alone with Owen for the first time and nurturing him wholly for the first time, I crossed into that realm from which you can never retreat, the realm of mothering and its fulfillment, its love, its fear, its anxiety, its complication, its sadness.

Owen is my favorite because…

He thinks my jokes are funny and he makes jokes that I think are funny.

He loves reading and writing and music.

His dearest birthday wish is a package of dry erase markers.

He hugs his brother and sister goodnight every single day.

He loves school as much as I loved school.

He can’t tell a lie and has the guiltiest conscience of anyone I’ve met.

He taught me to be a mother, and he gave me my first taste of the gorgeous, swooning love of parenthood.

Happy birthday, Snowball!

The last installment

We call Paige "Boomba," short for "Fatty Boombalatty." She really is a pudge, but in the most adorable way possible, of course. I am particularly fond of her leg rolls.

I don't yet have the perspective on how she's changed my life that I have with the others, since she's only been here a year. And that year felt like days, I swear. Paige's first birthday is next week. Next week, people! I know all parents say it, but it goes so. damn. fast.

Paige was not a planned pregnancy. In fact, John and I had been in negotiations over the big "V." He wasn't thrilled with the idea, but as we all know, a vasectomy is less invasive than a tubal, AND it feels like an eensy bit of compensation for the months we mothers put in as vessels of life and the hours we spend in labor. (Of course we also realize that a tiny snippity snip of the vas deferens doesn't even come close to what we go through to bear children. Our men are, in reality, eternally beholden.)

We'd decided that Bailey and the boys had taken us to the edge of our resources, financial and psychological. Raising two boys who are 2 and a half years apart is, er, taxing. To put it nicely. And our house is small, our savings account even smaller. I was satisfied with this decision, but I have to say, at times I heard a wee little voice warning that we weren't finished yet. It first piped up while I was packing up newborn clothes to donate to the women's shelter. The voice said, "Pssst. Don't do that. Wait a bit. Just in case." So I did. Unfortunately, the voice must have been on a coffee break when I sold all of our big baby equipment and gave all my maternity clothes to a friend.

I think it was giving away the maternity clothes that did it. The universe saw it happen, pointed a bony finger at me, and cackled, "Look at the silly woman! Giving away maternity clothes before the vasectomy. What gall! Pregnancy for you, woman!" It was a little embarrassing to call my friend, after much hoopla was made over my generosity and her life-long gratitude was expressed, to say, "Hey, can you give me my stuff back?" But I made the call because it was a whole wardrobe for heaven's sake. I couldn't start over from scratch. And of course my friend was thrilled for us (at least outwardly) and handed it all back happily.

So the little voice (lazy as it turned out to be) was right. It was also right about Paige's gender, something I'd intuited from the start but was thrilled to have confirmed at my 20 week ultrasound. I've long imagined all the ways I could force my own childhood loves on a girl: model horses, Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, dollhouses. I've already imposed my fondness for old school Sesame Street on her. Happy birthday, Paige! Mommy got you a gift I know I'll love!

I have to admit, I do love having a girl, and yes, it's different. Already...it's different. It could be a difference in personalities, but Paige is much more observant, much more willing to sit in my lap and watch what's happening around her, much less likely to jump into the fray and assume that all gatherings of people happen to honor her. (When Owen was a baby, any time he heard applause, he'd grin and beam and puff his chest out, believing the cheering was for him.) Paige is a snuggler; she seeks body heat and will curl up beside me in bed, hold my hand, stroke my arm. She pats my back when we hug. She pats her baby dolls' backs when she hugs them. She plays quietly on her own and can sit in one spot for more than 15 seconds.

All of this to say, I am thrilled to have a daughter. As the daughter in a very close, exceptionally healthy mother/daughter relationship, I was a bit sad when I thought I wouldn't have that with my own little girl. And who knows, maybe I won't. But at least I have the chance now.

And I have an excuse to buy paperdolls.

Part Three: The Snitch

I call him the blond sheep of the family. Apart from his tow head, he has many other ways of distinguishing himself from the brunettes in our family. He's the sassiest by far, the most self-assured, the least ingratiating. He doesn't need the attention and validation that Owen yearns for. He mastered self-care abilities (getting dressed, pouring drinks, bathing himself, putting on socks and shoes) at a startlingly young age. Mitch faces the world with bravado, and I have no doubt that he will plant his flag wherever he pleases.

His was my only planned pregnancy (yeah, we're just careless like that), but he wasn't conceived at exactly the ideal time. We'd hoped for a summer birth to avoid the messiness of turning my courses over to a substitute, but gosh damn we're fertile, and Mitch was made on our first try. So he was a March baby. Two months shy of the goal. Troublemaker from the start.

His birth was enormously different from Owen's, whose arrival was somewhat violent and traumatic. My c-section with Mitch was planned, but I went into labor 2 days before the scheduled date (troublemaker--see?). Still, his birth was very calm and controlled. I went to the hospital; they slowed my contractions; the doctor came; they prepped me for surgery; out came Mitch. I felt in charge from start to finish. I knew what to expect. All went smoothly. I even got to hold him in recovery. When I remember Mitch's birth, the salient feeling is peacefulness.

Going from one child to two didn't phase me much. I expected to feel overwhelmed and manic, bleary and helpless, but Mitch (rather misleadingly) was a very agreeable newborn. He fell asleep easily, took long naps, ate well. I joyfully witnessed the brotherhood unfolding between him and Owen, who accepted the role of big brother with aplomb and never fretted much about the sudden appearance of his fuzzy-headed rival.

I experienced the second-child honeymoon, a confidence and calm that I hadn't felt with Owen, an ability to trust myself and my baby, the wisdom to see that the best thing to do is simply the thing that will work best in that moment. The greatest advantage to being a second-time mom is knowing that all the difficult phases will pass. With Owen, I felt mired in every wrong turn. If he went through a spell of waking more frequently or refusing to nurse, I was sure I'd messed him up forever. With Mitch, I knew that there would be bad weeks and good weeks. (Well...good days. I'm not sure I've ever actually experience a whole week of goodness.)

Like many second-time moms, though I wasn't consumed with him, wasn't spilling over with the love and devotion of a new mother, I enjoyed Mitch's infancy more. It ebbed and flowed, a gentle tide instead of a tsunami.

In some ways, being a mother of two felt like my true initiation into parenthood. I don't mean that mothers of one are lesser parents, but as someone from a family of six, raising children meant juggling, mediating, stretching myself and my resources. When I took on the challenge of nurturing more than one and succeeded, I felt like I'd arrived. I loved having two. I relished their interactions; I was moved to the core by their brotherly bond. Our family felt whole and balanced. I proclaimed myself finished with childbearing.

Then, one afternoon in February of 2006, with Mitch one month from 2 years old and weaned for more than a year, I felt the sensation of let down when a book I was carrying brushed against my breast. And I spoke aloud to an empty room. And I said, "Oh shit."

Bon's first question, part two

Owen's birth changed me to the core. Being his source of life, the woman who carried him for 9 months, nurtured him with her own milk, and met his endless, ever-changing needs flipped a switch in me. Suddenly, I knew mother love, a brand new, intoxicating emotion.

When I think back to those early days with Owen, I really do remember them as drunken. I was high on baby, consumed with his every movement, gesture, sigh, burp, yawn. When he was asleep, I journaled about him and organized his pictures. I shot hours of videotape, meticulously recorded his milestones, read parenting book after parenting book. I was utterly, hopelessly smitten.

Though I consider Bailey a daughter to me, I am not her mother in the same way I am Owen's mother. Bailey has a mother--a wonderful one--who lives only a few miles from me and John. Bailey sees or talks to her mother every day. When she is sad or excited or upset, she will settle for me if she has to, but her mother is the first place she turns, even when she's with us.

I am Owen's first place to turn, and being that kind of mother changed my life. Everything shifted. All that I'd considered important--career, ambition, travel--was instantly downgraded. Being Owen's mother fulfilled me in a way I'd never imagined. A brand new feeling unfolded in me, and I saw right away there was no going back. Once you experience mother love, you are ever more a mother, and you will always see the world through those eyes.

In November of 2001, when I gazed down at that squirmy, squinting newborn, I knew I was face to face with the meaning of life.

The one where Mean Mommy answers Bon's questions

I'm participating in my first blog meme (I didn't know the word either, mom) -- a list of five questions about you presented by another blogger. One of my very favorites, Bon at cribchronicles, whose blog is (and should be) kinda famous, did me the honor of providing my questions (because I asked her to). Apologies in advance because I think I might be long winded about some of them; they're provocative questions.

The first question: There are four offspring in your family. How has each child changed you or impacted you as s/he came into your life?

I'm going in birth order, so I'll start with Bailey. Bailey Boo, Booper, Bailes, Bailey Wailey.

The first time I met Bailey, she was barking. The summer I met John, he and I both worked at this upscale Italian restaurant, and he had a major crush on me, so he came by the restaurant on his day off on some false pretense (really to see me), and he brought Bailey with him. She was 3 years old, with huge brown eyes, long, dark eyelashes, and these adorable blunt cut bangs. She was pretending to be a dog. Loudly.

I tried chatting with her, but she would only yip. I admired John's manner with her, and I thought she was a darling, funny girl. I didn't see really meet her one on one, as someone in her dad's life, until months later.

After John and I had dated for awhile, including a few months of my living in Mexico, he invited me to come along with him and Bailey to the State Fair. She largely ignored me until it was time to leave, and she was unhappy about going home. I found a little stuffed animal of hers in the front seat and, while she sniffled and pouted in the back seat, I made him peek around the head rest and then dart away when she spotted him. We played peek a boo with the little stuffie until she was wracked with giggles. From then on, she was my buddy.

Bailey did change my life, but more slowly than my others did. Our relationship developed by degrees; I tried hard to be sensitive to her position and to the fear, anger, and resentment she might feel towards me as I got closer to John, and I didn't force myself on her. By the time John and I got engaged, Bailey was as much a part of my life as he was. By then, I not only wanted to spend my life with John, but I couldn't bear the thought of Bailey growing up without me.

Bailey taught me many of the lessons first time parents learn: that even the best laid plans are subject to upheaval; that the magic of childhood is revived in the lives of your children, allowing you to experience it all over again in a much more exciting, fulfilling way; that "sacrificing" for your family is not sacrifice at all since there's nothing you'd rather have; and that her dad was someone I wanted to have more children with.

One rainy Saturday when Bailey was 7 years old, we were home watching a movie, Air Bud, I think. As I lay on the couch, this overwhelming feeling of exhaustion washed over me, a heavy tiredness, weighing down my bones. I slept through the movie. That night, John was planning to make spaghetti for dinner, but when he took out the Italian sausage he planned to put in the sauce, the sight of it made me ill. Later, I drove to the drug store and bought a pregnancy test. It was positive. It was Owen.

Next installment (still on the first question): How Owen changed my life...

Allow me to Translate

All mothers laugh at themselves for using those "mom phrases" they swore would never cross their lips. But who ever stops to wonder why we can't stop ourselves from saying them? Who takes time to consider why every mother in the universe (yes, universe; Martian protozoa are parents, too) has muttered "Just wait til your father gets home."

I stop to think about it, that's who. And I have a theory.

It's simple: If we didn't say something trite, we'd say something...else.

If we didn't say, "Because I said so," we'd say, "Enough with your why why why already! Now SHUT IT! ShutItShutItShutItShutItShutItShutItShutIt! SHUT. IT!"

If we didn't say, "I can't have anything nice," we'd say, "You little... Do you think I paid $2000 for this TV so you'd have somewhere to display your handprints? Sit the heck BACK and keep your grimy hands OFF MY STUFF. Allofit!"

If we didn't say, "Well, I'm not Timmy's mom," we'd say, "Well, Timmy's mom is a flippin' idiot."

If we didn't say, "I'm not your maid," we'd say, "I have 2 degrees, 7 years of professional experience, and kick ass references. But I spend my days picking your dirty socks up off the kitchen floor? Keep it up and I'm putting in my notice, kid."

If we didn't say, "I don't care who started it," we'd say, "Keep it up. Just keep beating each other in the head. Maybe you'll knock yourselves unconscious for a couple of hours. "

If we didn't say, "There are starving children in the world," we'd say, "I spend my once disposable income on mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, and Lucky Charms. Eat or I'm using the grocery money for 12 packs and handbags."

If we didn't say, "Turn it off. TV will rot your brain," we'd say, "Please, for the love of goodness, sit there all day and watch Nickelodeon so I can have more than 10 minutes of quiet and maybe a nap."

If we didn't say, "I can't hear myself think," we'd say, "If you don't stop yelling, howling, and whining, I'm going to get in the car and drive far far away to California and start life over on a cooperative farm."

If we didn't say, "Mommy loves you even when she's angry," we'd say, "Even if you grow up to be an armed robber, a polygamist, a Wall Street asshole, I will welcome you home. You have me wrapped not only around your little finger, but your thumbs, pinkies and at least 3 of your toes. I'm a sucker for you, I'm a fool for you. Please miss me when you go to college. Please look at me with the same trust and adoration when you're 35. Please love me always as much as you love me now."

Love, Mom

When I was little, I'd come home from school, go up to my room, and find the bed neatly made with my stuffed animals on it arranged in some silly anthropomorphic way: peeking out from behind pillows, curled up under the blankets with stuffed paws tucked sweetly under stuffed heads, sitting in a circle as if holding a round table. This was my mother's doing, of course, and she admits now that she got tremendous pleasure out of setting those stuffies up in a new way every day, imaging my giggles when I came home and found them.

My thing is lunch box notes. I love writing them. Sometimes my lunch box notes are so elaborate, I'm afraid Owen's teacher will think I'm an obsessive compulsive freak with too much time on her hands. I compose poems, write rebuses, draw illustrations, decorate with stickers. I am endlessly amused at myself over the clever lunch box notes I craft. The best ones I show to John before tucking them away in Owen's bag. John is never as impressed as I'd like him to be.

Like my mother and I about her stuffed animal jamborees, Owen and I don't really discuss the lunch box notes. I don't think he's even mentioned them more than once or twice, and he never comments on them in detail. In some ways, this is disappointing. It makes me wonder if I'm kidding myself to imagine him reaching into his lunch box with giddy anticipation, excited to see what my notes will say every day. I picture him reading and giggling and smiling to himself and feeling my mom-love from 15 miles away. And maybe that is how it goes, but he never tells me so.

I do have one clue, however, that the notes mean something to him after all. Every day, Owen comes home with a tidy lunch box. In true type-A fashion, he is sure to throw away his scraps and trash instead of stuffing them back in the bag for me to deal with later. But he has never, no never, thrown away one of my notes. Every evening, when I unzip the bag to prepare the next day's lunch, today's note flutters out, neatly refolded. He keeps them. While all else is tossed in the trash, he keeps them.

I Did It

I made a person. A real, live person with a life independent of mine, who goes on about his day while I go on about mine, our paths crossing only in the afternoon, at the end of the day. Someone whose peers will now influence him almost as much as I do, whose teacher will know things about him that I don't. A person with an inner life who is, as I type, sitting alone in a room full of strangers, calling up all of his young emotional resources to adjust to a new place, a longer day, new friends and authority figures. A person who's doing very well with his first year of big kid school. Mostly.

I have been trying to write this post since Wednesday, Owen's first day, but my computer is acting wonky again, and I don't have time to take it over to tech services. But it's almost better to have a few days under my belt, a bit of perspective. I was fine when I dropped him off on Wednesday (maybe a wee bit sentimental), and he was fine, too. I looked back once as I walked to car after delivering him to his teacher, and he wasn't watching me, just sitting among the other kindergarteners on his new red and blue nap mat with a bravely stoic expression, that look we get when we're somewhere new, a little disoriented, and don't really know what to do with ourselves. He gazed around kind of blankly, waved when I finally caught his eye and gave me a small smile. Part of me wanted to run back and scoop him up, spare him those first few awkward days. I just kept thinking, he's only FIVE years old, and I'm leaving him in this brand new place with all of these strangers. Adjustments like that are scary even for grown-ups. It amazes me how he's taking it in stride.

So far his favorite things about kindergarten are art, recess, reading, and the discipline system, since his teacher rewards good behavior with a weekly trip to her "treasure chest" to pick a prize. He's striving with all his might to earn that damn treasure, so I guess the system works.

However. I'm also afraid what I feared may be happening. Remember the post about Owen's fear, where I predicted the conversation we'd have if he found a noise to be anxious about at school? That conversation happened this morning, almost word for word as I imagined it. But it's not a school bell that's bothering him, it's the building's intercom system. It startles him when it comes on with morning announcements and to call the kids' names for carpool. On the way to school this morning he said, "Mommy, I want to stay home and do fun things with you." Shit.

When he came home on the first day, he announced that they had a "speaker" in his classroom, then assured us that he wasn't scared of it at all. Not me. Uh uh. No way. But that's how his anxiety starts: first he denies it, fights it, tries to pretend he's not feeling it--hoping to get past it, I suppose. So when he tells me he's not afraid, he really means, "I'm very worried." Then it escalates. The second day he mentioned the intercom again, still claiming to be fine with it. Then this morning.

I knew why he wanted to stay with me, so I saved him having to tell me and asked, "What's bothering you? The speaker?" He said, "You got it!" Sigh. I told him he couldn't stay home, that he'd have a very sad and boring life if he let noises keep him home because noises were everywhere. I explained that every child in his class had something he or she was trying to get used to, even if no one else was worried about the speaker, and that everyone would feel more comfortable in a few days. I told him that the intercom was a very small part of a really fun day and he shouldn't let one part of the day ruin the rest of it. I assuaged him for now. I only hope his anxiety doesn't grow further.

I hate that his worry about that stupid speaker is complicating his adjustment to kindergarten. I wish we'd gotten in touch with a child psych before school started. I wish he could be reasonable about the whole thing and overcome it. Because when I imagine him, alive for only five years, on his own at real school for the first time, waiting for me to pick him up in carpool with his hands clapped over his ears and that alarmed expression on his face that makes him look like almost like a baby again, it breaks my heart. Why does life have to get harder? Why does it have to pull us farther and farther apart, separate an anxious five year old from his mother?

But truly, I know why, and I'm proud of him for doing as well as he's done so far. I'm proud of him for going without hysteria and tears today, for trying to listen to me and get past his fear. He left the car this morning with a quick hug, and I could almost see him brace himself for the day. That's one "first" I didn't expect--his first public face. The first mask he'd wear for everyone else. The first year he's old enough to realize that sometimes we have to grin and bear it, even if the grin masks fear.

Their Lives Flashed Before My Eyes

Two scares this week, and that's enough for me, thank you.

The first one happened on Wednesday. I'd had just about enough of the Bobos ("big brothers"), so I hauled them off to their room for a nap. Naps are rare for the boys these days because if they nap, they don't go to bed until at LEAST 9:00 if not much later, but some days I just can't wait for bedtime to restore my sanity.

We read some books, then I got up to put Paige to bed. Owen started whining that he wasn't tired, didn't want to sleep, needed a snack etc. If he's tired enough to sleep, he doesn't usually argue, so I told him he could go out and quietly watch a movie on the couch. Mitch was already snuggled in and content, so he stayed put. As I left the room, John came in to take a cat nap and have a snuggle with Mitch. I put Paige to bed.

When I came out 20 minutes later, John was back at the computer, and the house was quiet. Really, really quiet. Owen wasn't in the family room, so I checked the playroom. No Owen. I asked John where Owen was, expecting him to tell me he'd come to bed after all, but he didn't know either. As John started calling Owen's name, a flutter of panic passed through my gut, and a gruesome slide show of possibilities--seriously awful scenarios--started up in my brain: kidnapping, freak accident, crossing the street alone, wandering through the neighborhood... I didn't think Owen would leave the house without permission, but we could not find him.

We'd already looked in the bedroom once, but John went back in to check again, and I followed. As I entered the doorway, I noticed, at the same time John did, a spot of blue under the covers: Owen's shirt. And there he was, sprawled on the bed, thumb half out of his mouth, glasses still on, a puddle of drool on his pillow. He'd crawled into bed unnoticed, pulled the covers over his head, and gone to sleep, and John hadn't seen him when he left the room. Oh thank god. Thank god thank god thank god.

Suddenly, the 30 minutes of quiet I was after didn't seem quite so desirable, after having imagined our loud-mouthed, relentlessly needy, sometimes purely obnoxious first born child lost or maimed somewhere out in the world.

The second scare was last night.

We were at the pool and had finally convinced Mitch that he could safely stand in the 2 feet. After finding his footing, he went from deathly afraid of swimming in the big pool (though the 2 feet is in a roped off area that gets no deeper than 3 feet), to exuberantly fearless.

John was standing in the 2 feet with Mitch while pulling Paige around in her floaty, and I was with Owen, who was trying to work up the courage to swim underwater to the other side of the rope. My back was to John and Mitch and Paige. Suddenly, John barked, "Ashley!" in his panicked, do something NOW voice, and I whipped around to see what was happening. But I didn't see anything. Then I spotted him. Mitch, right behind me and nearly completely underwater, his face--blotchy, red and wracked with panic--turned up to keep it above the surface. While John was busy with Paige, Mitch had followed Owen and me from the 2 feet into the 3, and the water had gotten too deep.

I snatched him up, and he started burping and spitting up water, head on my shoulder. I kept him there well after he'd stopped coughing, feeling his furious heart beat against my chest.

That heart beat filled me with a powerful sense of relief and despair. We'd been within a hair's breath of something awful happening, and we hadn't seen it coming. That's the way of tragedy. It does not announce itself. It is sneaky and vile and forever right around the corner.

But we'd kept it at bay one more time. Thank god thank god thank god.

Rock A Bye Baby

I'm such a sucker. I cannot think of one other person in world for whom I would go through the rigamarole that is required to get Paige to sleep lately.

First the nursing, which is getting less snuggly by the day. We do side-lying nursing in my bed, and she starts out curled up sweetly, holding on to my finger. After the first few gulps, she begins the rolling. She rolls to the right, rolls back, nurses for 3.4 seconds, rolls to the right again, gets up on her arms, drags herself forward and tries to latch on from the tummy position. Tonight, she scooted over to me on her back and, I swear, arched upward and tipped her head like she was going to try to nurse upside down.

After I give up on the nursing, I put her in the crib on her tummy with the pacifier, and we do our "drop, grope, stick it" routine. First she drops the paci; I grope around for it; then I stick it back in her mouth. Then she drops it; I grope, stick it... You see where this is going. If she's feeling particularly sassy, she will, instead of accidentally dropping the paci, pull it out of her mouth and, I swear, drop it outside the bars of the crib. Who knew a round-faced, pink-cheeked, sweetly drooly 7 month old could be defiant? Please dear baby, give me more time. Just a wee bit more time before you join your brothers in Project Drive Mother Flippin' Nuts.

When she gets just sleepy enough to hold on to the pacifier but not quite sleepy enough to actually, you know, go to sleep, she plays bumper pad peek-a-boo. First she teases me by lying quietly for a minute or so with her eyes drooping. Then she experiments with the limits of my patience by raising up and clawing at the crib bumper until she has pulled it down far enough to peek over the top and grin at me. The grin, oh so darling, causes the paci to drop; I grope... So you see, it's a 1 step forward, 2 steps back thing.

If she takes too long to settle down, I have to resort to the finger holding strategy. For this one, I lie down on the bed beside her crib (yes, she's still in our room. If you want to object, email my mother and ask to sign the petition) and stick an arm through the crib bars so she can hang on to my finger or stroke the back of my hand as she dozes off. This is a last resort, however, because once I commit to the finger holding strategy, I'm in it for the long haul. I cannot remove my hand until she is well asleep--that is, past REM sleep and on her way to heavy, loose-limbed sleep. If I try to remove my hand prematurely, her head pops up and she reprimands me with a whine that, if studied by the Baby Whisperer, would probably translate to, "What kind of mother are you? Only devoting 45 minutes of your precious night to holding my finger...hmph." If that happens, we start over.

However, if it comes to finger holding, there is a small window of time before my arms goes numb and my stores of patience are depleted during which I feel the purest sort of bliss. When Paige reaches for my hand and wraps her fingers around mine, I remember that I am her alpha and omega. It is the deepest kind of intimacy to lie in the dark beside your baby and feel her tiny fingers stroke the back of your hand, to hear her breath slowing and deepening, to finally feel her limbs slacken, and to know that she only fell asleep--finally--because she believed she was safe. Because she was holding on to you.

We Are Family

I took all 3 kids to Roanoke Park today--it's a "mini-park," just a little strip of jungle gym, sandpit, and blacktop between 2 one way streets in Five Points. The kids love it because the blacktop has become a repository for people's cast off ride-on toys: cozy coupes, small bikes and trikes, scooters, even a seen-better-days Power Wheels. It's also known to my boys as "the park where you can pee in the bushes" because there is no bathroom and once--ONCE--I let them go pee inside a big, hollow bush in the corner of the park. The hollow bush was so great, they stayed in there afterward and played "secret fort." Only boys. No qualms at all about playing where they'd just peed.

When we got to Roanoke Park today, they spotted a new ride-on toy, a little toddler car with a push handle. Mitch ran over and called back, "Mommy! A car for Paige! A car for Paige!" He insisted that she ride it, so I buckled her in, and Owen and Mitch took turns pushing her slowly around the blacktop. They got the biggest kick out of seeing her squeal and grin with the excitement of her first ride.

It's amazing to me how much both boys appreciate watching Paige experience new things. They love watching her try to pick up fruit puffs, play her xylophone, sit up on her own. They dote on her completely. It's heartwarming--and probably short lived. I'm sure their adoration will diminish when Paige starts crawling and wrecks a few of their games or snatches their toys. And woe to the baby who knocks over Owen's painstakingly constructed train-track highways and road signs. I hope she's a fast crawler.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying how smitten they are. The minute I put Paige down for a nap, Mitch asks when she is going to wake up, and when he finally does hear her on the monitor, he jumps up from whatever he's doing and gallops back to the crib to see her. By the time I come in, he's usually in the crib with her. Both boys come running any time I have her on the changing table. They race to beat each other to her room, then jockey for a spot where they can see and talk to her.

Today Mitch got down on the floor with Paige while I ate a quick bite of lunch. They were playing peek-a-boo with a blanket, and Mitch was pretending to make Paige disappear. He'd toss the blanket over her, wave his arms and say, in his mysterious magician voice, "Capital Boulevard!" Then he'd yank the blanket off of her, and she'd kick and squeal.

I'm not sure why Mitch was using "Capital Boulevard" (a busy road near our neighborhood) as his magic word, but watching them was magical. My children may evolve into sworn enemies later in their childhoods, but I know that the joy they find in one another now, the bond they are forming, is strong enough to connect them for life.

I may regret those bonds when their father and I are old and the three of them are complaining about us behind our backs, but in the end, I suppose that's what brothers and sisters are for. And hopefully, they will be annoyed enough by John that my name will never come up.

5 is the New 18

Who knew 5 was such a big year?

This year has been full of milestones for Owen, and they all add up to the same reality: he's officially becoming a kid. And he's taking me with him into kid land. I'm not sure I can explain what I mean, but this year, I have become aware of the world of the kid, which is much more complicated--for child and parent--than the world of the preschooler.

The world of kid includes, but is not limited to, the following: stronger friendships, deeper conflicts with friends, more complex feelings about self and how the self relates to the rest of the world, wiping one's own bottom every time, team sports, going to school, an increasing vulnerability to the influence of the outside world, more intense mothers and fathers, better insults (usually reserved for younger brothers or mothers), eye rolling, and the first whiffs of peer pressure.

Apparently, the threshold to kid world appears the year a child turns 5. The changes I see in Owen over the past few months are, for me, some of the most painful yet because I can see him growing away from us. Yes, yes he's only 5, but even this glimpse of his growing away gives me a sense of the emotions I will face when he's 10, 13, 18, getting married, beginning his tenure-track position as a professor of literature...

At the same time, I ache with pride and happiness as I watch him move forward. The most recent age 5 milestones were preschool graduation (no one warned me about preschool graduation. I went in cavalierly, with no tissues) and tonight--the last game of Owen's first season of t-ball and his first trophy.

I cannot describe the joy in Owen's face as he held that trophy. His whole body smiled, his eyes brimmed with pride and pleasure; then he looked over at us, saw pride and pleasure there, too, and amazingly, his face, already as brights as I've ever seen it, brightened further.

I know he has to grow up and away, but my hope is that he will always look back. Look back to see if we're watching. Look back to see if we're proud.

Habits of the 7 Month Old

Ten Irritating Habits of the 7 Month Old

1. Blowing pureed pears into the face of her mother
2. Squeezing and twisting noses
3. While being changed, placing a cleanly socked foot into a freshly soiled diaper
4. Spitting out the pacifier and screaming for the replacement of the pacifier 6,324 times a night
5. Pulling off sun hats and tossing them in the pool
6. Grabbing, yanking, and dislodging fistfuls of hair
7. Rolling across the floor to find and attempt to eat the one dangerously tiny object that her mother missed when clearing the floor of dangerously tiny objects
8. Lunging for anything that crosses her line of vision, especially when being held
9. Diving face first into ice cream cones that her father carelessly holds within face's reach
10. Arching her back at the indignity of being placed in the carseat or highchair.
    

Ten Endearing Habits of the 7 Month Old

1. The nursing purr
2. Rocking and bouncing when someone sings "You Make me Feel Like Dancing"
3. Banging gleefully on her xylophone
4. Belly laughing
5. Giving strangers a tiny grin, then bashfully burying her face in her mother's shoulder
6. Flailing arms and legs with joy when daddy comes into the room
7. Raspberries
8. The nursing look: grateful, peaceful, trusting eyes
9. Stroking and holding her brothers' faces
10. Learning to lean out and reach for mommy from someone else's arms

Fear Itself

I've been thinking a lot about Owen. So much is happening around him lately, and he seems to be growing, mentally and physically, faster than is comfortable for me.

The first thing is his anxiety, his fear of fear...and that's exactly what it is. He cannot stand sudden noises and falls apart completely--completely--when he knows he might encounter one. But it's not the noise that undoes him; it's his anticipation of the noise. Once the noise happens, he calms down, even as he's hearing it, because he doesn't have to wait and wonder when it's coming anymore.

The best example is the coffee maker, which is currently the sorest subject in our house. Every morning he hops on my bed to wake me up. First he tells me the time (usually 7:30 or something close), then he says, "Mommy, please don't make coffee. Please." Our coffee maker beeps when the coffee is ready and then again 2 hours later, just before it shuts itself off. Owen cannot tolerate the suspense of not knowing exactly when this beep is coming, and his fear seems to be escalating. This morning, in a gesture not unlike an environmentalist trying to save a tree by perching in its branches, Owen woke me up, then ran into the kitchen and camped out in front of the coffee maker, trying to make it impossible for me to reach around him to make the coffee. When I tried to pull Mr. Coffee toward me, he shoved Mr. Coffee back against the wall. When I pushed the little button to set the brew to "strong," he pushed it to turn it off. Finally, I had to carry him back into his room and tuck him back into bed. "I'll come get you after it beeps," I told him. He told me to turn on the fan. The fan drowns out all outside noise.

You might wonder why I choose to torture my child by subjecting him to the horror of the unpredictable Mr. Coffee beep every morning rather than getting a different coffee maker or giving up coffee all together, and I'll tell you why. Because if I shaped my life around Owen's anxiety, I also would not be able to do laundry (our dryer beeps when it's finished), receive phone calls (he will not allow he phone within 20 feet of him), listen to CD's in the car (as it is I have to turn the radio all the way down before I start the car, then turn it up gradually, oh so gradually, until we can hear it), bake anything in the oven that requires timing, watch Family Feud, and so on. And trust me, the list goes on. And on.

So we've called a child psychologist, a remedy that I would not default to, but after realizing that fear is limiting Owen's joy, we decided we needed help to get him past it. I was finally convinced that we needed help the day Owen told me he didn't want to go to a good friend's house anymore because they have a mantel clock that chimes the quarter hours. And there's nothing that boy loves more than a play date.

He starts Kindergarten in July, and I can imagine the conversation we'll have after his first day:

Owen: "Mommy, they have a bell."
Me (trying to be nonchalant): "They do?"
Owen: Yeah. It rings when it's lunch time and when it's time to go home.
Me: Oh. Neat.
Owen: I'm not going back to that new school. I want to stay here and do fun things with you.
Me: Well, you have to go to school, sweetie...

Then the heartbreaking fit will commence. Heartbreaking because I can see that he's really truly scared, and as ridiculous as it seems to me, this fear is so not ridiculous to him, and there's nothing I can do to make him feel better. Thus, the call I have in to the child psychologist. I'm still waiting for her to call back.

The whole starting Kindergarten issue is, I see now, another post. But really both issues come down to the same realization: he now has--and will continue to have--problems that are bigger than me. For the first time, something is wrong that I alone cannot fix. And thinking of him starting school, stepping further away from us and deeper into the influence of the outside world, has made me realize that his life will only become more and more complex. And I won't always be able to pull him out of the chaos.