Crybaby

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My husband is very big on pushing the limits with our son. When he was an infant, for example, Spencer would toss him into the air like a hacky-sac, calling me a baby every time I screamed at him to stop. He warned me that I was going to hinder our son’s growth; that I was going to turn him into a sissy. And over the past two years not much has changed, except that now that our son is a little less fragile, the games have become appropriately more hazardous. When they wrestle (which is a daily occurrence between fathers and sons), the game doesn’t end until Matthew taps out in tears. When he pushes him on the swings at the playground, Spencer isn’t satisfied until Matthew’s bottom is raising up out of the seat, and he’s screaming the word Mommy like his legs are on fire. In teaching him something new, whether it’s swimming or riding a bike or letting him man his pop-pop’s tractor, nothing is allowed to be gradual. He wants Matthew to dive into every endeavor with no fear of consequence and no consideration for life or limb. He pushes Matthew to do everything that scares him, no matter how heartily he screams in protest or how violently he thrashes about in fear.

Usually, I have to step in. Usually, I’m standing on the sidelines, dishing out my warnings. “If you hurt even a hair on that boy’s head, don’t THINK I won’t divorce you, Spencer Stucky!” He tells me I’m horrible for saying something so mean and he smiles and he lunges my son into some kind of terrifyingly dangerous situation. My son screams for me and I hesitate just as long as I can stand it…Then I inevitably run to his aid and I cradle him like a newborn, aiming a stink-eye at my husband while he calls us both crybabies.

I never meant for it to be like this. I never wanted to be that kind of mom. To be honest, I agree with Spencer almost completely. I know that sheltering Matthew from any potential for a bruise will cripple his adventuresome nature. And after all, isn’t it that adventuresome nature that is at the heart of a little boy’s very essence? Isn’t that thrill-seeking hunger what fuels their very zest for life? I guess that’s why I let it go as far as it does, and I guess that’s why I don’t actually divorce him over every scrape and bruise that his ideas leave on my kid, like tally-marks on a jailhouse wall.

Fast forward to the other day, just before Spencer left for his two-week trip to Canada. The kids and I are staying for the two weeks he’s away at my boss’ house while they’re away in Italy. Spencer spent the first night there with us. We lit the fire pit and shared some pizza and soda in the hammocks while the kids explored the wooded backyard. Lo and behold, Mary pointed out the rope-swing to Spencer. It’s a long rope, hung low to the ground from a tree branch, that has a small disc attached to the bottom. The idea is to pull it back as far as you can, hop on the disc and swing about forty feet in the opposite direction going about a zillion and six miles an hour, depending how far the rope is pulled back when the ride begins. Below this disc is a portion of the backyard that has been layered with a blanket of pebble. If you don’t hold on tight enough to the rope, or your legs dangle down below the disc, you can get pretty seriously hurt. Normally a kid is only going about the speed that their minimal height will propel them -- but put a retardedly hazard-blind father behind the force of the swing, and there’s no telling what kind of damage could be caused. Spencer pushes Mary a few times, sends her sailing into the air at speeds I’m pretty certain are going to kill her, and then still isn’t satisfied. He wants to put Matthew on. Matthew isn’t sure, and I’m not helping to build his confidence by yelping how dangerous a swing like that is for a FUCKING toddler. Matthew makes his way on, uneasily and attaches himself to the swing, only to second guess his judgment the moment his father pulls him back at what would have sent him ripping through the air at the same speed as Mary. He shrieks for me -- “Mommy, I scared! I scared!” I scream that it’s too high and that I am NOT KIDDING. “Lower!” I bark, “Spencer! Lower!” He barely obliges, and then let’s go at the same time that I fly to the side of the swing. I jog alongside of the rope, keeping Matthew at arm’s length for the duration of the ride. It’s not as bad as I thought, but it’s still light-years away from being safe. I don’t want him to panic and let go of the rope, so I fake a smile and cheer for him as gravity sends him sailing back and forth. He’s clutching the rope for dear life, and leaving no room to question how badly he wants to get down. By the end of it, I really am smiling and though I would never admit it - feeling a little proud, too. When the ride slows down and I can bring him to a gradual stop, I take him off safely. Maybe he and I are both better for the experience, but still, I aim a mean stink-eye at my husband and he calls us both crybabies.

Spencer left for Canada the next day, and for the first time ever, I was left to brave the elements of family life on my own. I still had to work, but since we were staying at my job overnight the whole two weeks, the kids were able to stay with me the whole time. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to crunch in some real quality Momma time. It was also kind of a way for me to cut down on my growing dependence to Spencer. Two weeks without dad around to help with this and take care of that. Two weeks for me to really prove my self-reliance as a capable and independent mother.

At first it was going well. Matthew put on his first pair of water-wings and went swimming at Grandma’s backyard pool. Spencer would have been so proud of how much less fearful of the water he was just since our last swimming excursion just a few weeks before. He jumped off of the steps into chest-deep water, and he rode to the deep end in an inflatable tube. His progress was amazing - and for the first time, I wasn’t sitting on the sidelines, gasping and lecturing about all of the perils of mixing children and water. I was able to relax. I was able to be the fun one! The next day, we went to the park. Matthew ran ahead much too far and for the first time (which I’m sure had everything to do with his father not being around to threaten his world famous bottom-busting) Matthew laughed at my request for him to return to me, and then, with a spin of his arms, turned away and ran even farther. It put a dampening on my vote of confidence, but was the only hiccup in an otherwise picture-perfect outing, so I was still feeling pretty good. Over the next few days we went to the library and out to lunch; we ran errands and took care of the animals; we played games and baked brownies and rode bikes along flower dotted paths. We said Sorry after every time-out; we read three stories before bed every night and we ate decent meals on time everyday. Then, one bad day broke it all down.

Riley wasn’t behaving. He’s not used to being put in a Kennel, but he’s not able to drift freely through my boss’ house the way he is at home, so as much as neither of us liked the arrangement, he had to be in one for much of the day. That meant taking him out of it to run around outside as much as possible. I took him out four times a day, to just run off and burn energy. It was a perfect arrangement for about two days. Then, he noticed the stream of dirty water that flowed at a certain point into a tunnel underground. After him running through the mucky stream water and traipsing afterward through the mulch and dirt, I stopped being able to bring him into the house at all -- even just to get him to the kennel which was a good four clean rooms away from the front door. If I kept him on the back deck with his food and water dish, he scratched incessantly at the screen and glass doors. If I hosed him down, he shimmied out of his collar and ran straight for the stream with a great big, “Fuck You Mom!” grin on his face from floppy ear to floppy ear. If I managed to carry him to his kennel back in the house, he intentionally pissed through the wire walls onto the floor beneath. Finally, I resolved that I’d have to keep him out back in the kennel with my boss’ dogs -- which only prompted him to chew through the fence and come scratching at every basement window of the house. At home, this dog is the model of upstanding behavior. But here - I was pretty sure this animal was going to get me fired. I was almost in tears, trying to carry a twenty pound rock up the hill to block the hole in the fence - which I prayed had been there before my dog arrived.
He knocked it down and scratched at the windows.
I shouted. I replaced the rock and found another, even HEAVIER rock to place in front of that one.
He chewed a second hole through the fence directly next the giant pile of rocks that I made.
I could have KILLED SOMETHING. I was too pregnant to be carrying all of these giant rocks everywhere and I was too un-masculine to know how to fix a hole in a wire fence!

And apparently, I was too terrible of a mom to notice in all of the commotion that my son had made his way out the front door. In my rush and frustration to get to the dog, I didn’t bother to notice that my son was trailing behind me. As I cursed myself and the dog and my husband being gone, I catch my little boy’s voice squealing “Hey, Mommy!” from what couldn’t have been more than three inches away from me. I huffed at the thought of him coming outside without my permission, but I was too wrapped up in what I was doing to take him back inside. At least he was with me, I thought, which was better than him being inside unsupervised anyway. Two - MAYBE - three minutes later, after fidgeting clumsily with some pliers at the green wire, I used the fence to pull myself up and grunted about how I can’t even stand up without help anymore. I call for the dog and for Matthew and I make my way to the front door. A few steps later, I can tell that no one’s coming and I call again, looking around. My heart stops as I scan the landscape and see not a trace of movement in any direction. This landscape is HUGE and manicured with rocks and ponds and woods and hills and trenches of every variety. I check thirteen place at once, leaping from one location to the next, craning my neck to see every possible angle of the yard, calling his name furiously. At first I just want to know that he isn’t getting into anything dangerous… but within split seconds, I’m paralyzed with fear that he’s actually lost. I run back behind the dog kennel, up a hill toward a clearing in the woods, where I find him - A SPECK in the distance! - our beagle bobbing senselessly beside him. My nerves are not soothed. He’s dangerously far away in an area off the property I’ve never even been to before. I scream his name, and he hears me. He turns in my direction, then like a bad dream, he turns away and keeps running. It’s an all uphill run to get to him… Then my bad dream worsens itself into a very real nightmare, as my run clears a view of an enormous cliff maybe ten feet from Matthew’s side. The cliff is laden with jagged rocks the entire way down, ending in the same stream of dirty water that is only a very misleading inch and a half deep once it reaches the house. But here, it’s a death trap. I scream Matthew’s name like I’ve never screamed it before. I sound like a lunatic, but I WANT him to be scared. I want to terrify him so he will just turn around and run to me, like he has so many thousands of times before. I want him to yell, “Mommy I scared, come hold me!” but he’s choosing now to be that stupidly brave little boy he’s never had the courage to be before. My legs are burning and my stomach is cramping up. Pregnant people are not meant to run uphill like this. My head is burning and my face is tangled up in tears. My son trips over thin air almost every time he runs. I know that in the next few seconds his foot will get caught in a weed or his toe will snap a stick or a rock or on Riley or on nothing at all and he will go toppling down this mountain of rocks, but he just keeps running alongside of this ledge! Until finally, I reach him.

I’m crying, but he can’t tell. He’s too frightened of me to react. I can’t spank him or hug him or kick the stupid dog for leading him up there. I can barely breathe. I just clutch his arms and I drag him what must be a mile downhill to the house, his little sneakers pouncing the ground only every couple of steps.

When I got inside, I slammed the deadbolt behind us. I ordered Matthew to wait in the bedroom for his spanking and with the smallest Okay I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth, he went without argument. I turned away, I crawled in my bed and I cried like a baby.

I wish I could say that I came out of that room with some kind of enlightening revelation that made me a better parent. But I didn’t; I simply came out because I had to. I was scared and ashamed and I missed my husband more than our kids did. I’m not a big crier, but everyone has their limits. I got out of bed and I didn’t spank Matthew. I called my friend to vent, and got help finding a place to keep Riley for the rest of our stay. I did my best to pick up the pieces of my day, and as it turned into night, I began to get my grip back onto reality. I simply realized that this was life. I was stepping up to the plate of a new level of motherhood. I was about to be responsible for two babies… three lives, including my older step-daughter. That sobering moment of crisis wasn’t there to change my life or teach me anything I didn’t already know - it was just there because that’s what having children sometimes is: completely, earth-shatteringly frightening. It doesn’t mean that limits shouldn’t be pushed or that fears shouldn’t be conquered. It doesn’t mean that I should be any more neurotic than I already am or that Matthew shouldn’t respect reasonable boundaries. It does mean, though, that I’ve got to get a grip on feeling more assured. Sometimes the truth is that I’m going to be on my own, and that I’ll have a lot riding on my capability to handle the whole load.
And Lord knows, it wont help anything to have three crybabies traipsing through the house.

Picture Unperfect

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My stomach muscles tighten around my uterus. My skin feels like it’s stretching and I can feel every move the baby makes inside of me. It feels like she’s fighting for space as my insides cramp up around her. Nothing about this hurts because it’s only another Braxton Hicks contraction. Between the stronger kicks and the quicker growth and the early practice contractions that I don’t remember even having in my first pregnancy, I feel closer to what I did in my last pregnancy around 36 weeks than I did at a measly 25. Even when I’m not contracting, I can feel how fully real this child is from the way that her movements dominate my body, as if she’s less a passenger than a pilot; More a part of me than I am. For instance, I’ve been waiting to be able to do this really cool juice cup trick from Look Who’s Talking Too, to illustrate the idea of in-utero kicks to Matthew, and the other day I was actually able to. Scarlett was jerking about with an extra bit of spunk thrown into the end of her kicks one morning - so much so that the skin overtop of my stomach bounced and shimmied in the aftermath of her dance. Quickly I grabbed the first inanimate object I could find off of the coffee table and laid the uneven chunk of Legos that used to be a part of something discernable onto my stomach. The whole family got to watch their little one knock it clean over and send it tumbling down my thigh.

And in the next few moments, I witnessed something incredible. With a grin on his face, and his head cocked just a little to the left, Matthew’s eyes fixed motionless onto my stomach. While the rest of us huddled over her and let out just a quick laugh, not giving it much more attention than that, I noticed in the following seconds that Matthew hadn’t joined in, or lost interest, or even moved. You could see the gears turning as his brow lowered his face into a look of serious consideration. Mary took a shot at breaking the silence that followed and tried to put a hand on my belly, but Matthew lashed out. “No, Mary!” he demanded, and without another word or even a look of explanation, his face softened and he very gently placed the fallen Lego back on top of his baby sister. His smile resurfaced and he leaned in closer, digging his elbows into the couch cushion and folding his forearms in front of him. He waited for his sister to respond, and all at once I knew that I was watching my son become a big brother.

Toddler hood doesn’t leave a lot of breathing room for quiet moments like these very often. Catching a perfect moment in time, even on film, sometimes can feel like standing in a stream trying to catch a trout with nothing but your bare hands. No matter how hard you prepare for it; regardless of the fact that you’re standing there, camera-ready waiting for it to happen, they still manage to slip by much too fast, far too often. I take him places -- museums, parks, zoos and beaches - and when I let him loose from my hip, I cling to my camera like a lifeline, grasping for pictures that might make him last just a little longer the way he is before he changes into one more newer version of himself… stronger, leaner, smarter, taller, more articulate and less inhibited. Every day he sheds a little more of his soft baby skin to become more of himself. Every night I lay him down to bed, swooning over the parts of him that still haven’t changed and falling in love with the new parts that just so recently have. His leaner, longer limbs, his more prominent chin, his thicker hair. The love I have for Matthew now is virtually unrecognizable from what it was in it’s early stages. It’s a love that’s like the undercurrent of the ocean. Sometimes the changes are as subtle and slow as the sand shifting beneath your feet as the tide retreats, and sometimes they’re like waves that knock you off balance with forceful intention, stripping you of all poise and direction. At some point you’re bound to look up to find yourself miles from where you began without ever trying to move.

He grows, my love grows. It’s a constant in our lives that’s always taking us to new heights in our relationship. Then our family changes, and my love for him reshapes itself again. Always adding more to what I thought had no more capacity to grow.

A few weeks ago Spencer and I took him to a jungle gym at the Hockessin Athletic Club. There was an enormous obstacle course maze of nets and cushioned pillars and slides and colorful obstructions that Matthew was almost no match for. He dove in with buoyancy. Spencer was latched onto the net from the outside, coaching him the whole way… all but shouting directions at him until that boy made it over obstacles I’m pretty sure some nine-year-olds have struggled with. It was somewhere in between being insanely difficult and being exhaustingly fun - for all of us.

As I was watching Spencer throw his arms around, trying to illustrate these vital instructions to our two-year-old through this net of separation, as if he were counting on Matthew to disarm a bomb, I realized what an appropriate way this was to relate to our toddler years with our son. I thought about us going into everyday, literally searching for new adventures - taking him from one end of the state to the outskirts of the next, digging through every sandbox, scaling every playground, rolling down every grassy hill, just for the thrill of seeing him discover and react to a single new sensation. Then you find it; the one thing he’s never seen before that makes his eyes pop out of his head and his lungs gasp for air. Suddenly, you feel like a kid yourself - you can’t wait to climb into this experience with him, to watch his mind expand and his senses come alive with sensations they’ve never known before now.
And on the way up you get stuck. You leave diaper bags in the car while your kid seeps diarrhea through his brand new cargo shorts half a mile away, or your son experiments with temper tantrums in the middle of a museum you paid way too much to get into, or you almost roast your two-year-old in the backseat of your junk-ass van after it breaks down on your way to the GOD FORSAKEN FUCKING BEACH… directly in front of a pool that you don’t possess passes to on the hottest day of your first family vacation. And for the first time, while you tear your screaming son away from the gates of the pool, you actually let him hit you because you HONESTLY can’t blame him for thinking you are the worst thing that has every happened to him. Yeah, stuff like that happens. And when it does, the only thing you can do is yell and grunt and throw up your hands, feeling as helpless as a parent screaming instructions through a net to a two-year-old -- until something just clicks and somehow you fight your way up another division of the obstacle course. You make it through. And you forget how far back it was that you forgot this was even supposed to be fun, but it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re too lost in dedication to give up now.
Then!
Then, you look down through the very last plexi-glass window, just before your ass hit’s the really big slide, and you beam like the sun knowing you are a total rock star for owning that maze. Dad is cheering you on and mom is waiting at the bottom with an ice cream bar. And when you get home, all of the mishaps of the day are laughable memories and all of the pictures are of the very best moments. Yes, that is toddler hood, from every workable angle.

But sometimes -- not often -- but sometimes, you are graced with the oasis of a slow-down. Sometimes it comes when he falls asleep in your arms on your way to Dunkin Donuts, and since you spent half of the bill on special treats for him, you can’t leave the store until he wakes up. You sit in the air conditioning and you rock him and kiss him and sip on an iced coffee until he wakes up to the best surprise in the entire galaxy, and he loves you in little sleepy whispers while he slurps a chocolate milk on your lap.

Sometimes it comes right after a diaper change, while you’re swaying to the melody of your own terrible voice across the hardwood floor in his room, and suddenly he starts singing to you every last word of “You Are My Sunshine,” the song you’ve been singing to him since before he was born and never knew he’d ever paid attention to - until now.

These kinds of moments aren’t the kind you’ll ever find in a scrapbook or a photo album. They are unrehearsed and unexpected and beautifully real. They are the kind that you don’t have to pay money for, or plan a day trip around; the kind that don’t happen when your hair is washed and your clothes look clean; They are the kind that would make an awesome Norman Rockwell painting.

This was our Lego moment in history. I didn’t have pictures of it, or mementos from the occasion to scrapbook, but sometimes family moments are bigger than their ability to be immortalized. When Scarlett is out of diapers and Matthew is too old to remember me even being pregnant, I don’t only want to remember the scrap booked moments of their childhood. I’ll want to remember him sitting on my lap sipping chocolate milk at Dunkin Donuts. I’ll want to remember him waking up in the morning with his hair in eighteen different direction, wearing mismatched pajamas, telling me the way that he does every morning that the sun is awake. I’ll want to remember him chasing Riley in the backyard and tripping over his own left foot. I’ll want to remember all of his first clever attempts at being defiant, and the way that they always make us laugh despite ourselves. I’ll want to remember the way that he dribbles on my shoulder when he’s really (I mean, really, really) beside himself in tears.




Or maybe, I just don’t want him to grow up at all.

Matthew's Initiation Into Manhood

Pin It Spencer and I decided this weekend that we wanted to take Matthew somewhere special for Memorial Day… Not necessarily to celebrate; but just for the fun of spending the day together. We spent over an hour online searching for a place to go for a couple of hours and couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t basically cost half a day’s worth of pay just to visit. Finally Spencer put his foot down and decided that we were going to find something special to do for free. We packed up a few fishing poles, a tackle box, a towel, some water, a change of clothes for Matthew, and the dog, and after a short drive we followed him under a bridge, down a mountain of jagged rocks, over tall thorny weeds and trudging through thick clay mud until we landed at the exact kind of place I pictured when he told me we’d be going to his favorite spot to go to catch frogs and turtles as a kid. Talk about a couple of boys completely within their element.

Just getting there was worth the trip. It was long, exhausting and dirty – just the kind of adventure little boys live for. Once we arrived, we let Riley off the leash and watched him go completely nuts with freedom. Spencer took Matthew out into the water with him while I stayed on land and took pictures. Between the dog ripping through the mud like a rabid animal and belly flopping into the water from any perch he could find, and Matthew braving the elements of nature for the first real time, I couldn’t stop laughing. Spencer was like a kid again… In fact, when it was time to leave, I had to gently remind him about half a dozen times before he actually gave in and left the water without finding another excuse to stay for ten more minutes.

(The slideshow cuts off the better half of a lot of pictures in here, but it's not worth fixing so you'll just have to get the idea.)

The Boy's First Fishing Trip

fishing trip - Slideshow