Three Perfect Months

Pin It I wake up to the rustling of your body against the mattress of your bassinet. You’re digging your spine into the sheets, wriggling around like a freshly bathed puppy scratching it’s back in the dirt. Your feet are high in the air. You’ve kicked out of your swaddling and the blanket is tented around the rest of you, getting caught up in your legs. You kick and you kick and you snort and then you cry. And so, our day begins.


Dear Scarlett,

It’s kind of cool that my day begins and ends everyday, with you. You’re gaining on the world inch by inch, but you’re still such a tiny thing, Scarlett. You don’t take up much space yet, and even though you are still that same high maintenance baby you were from the day you left the hospital, you haven’t begun to wreak the kind of havoc on this house that you will when you become mobile; The kind that your brother, who administered his very first bloody nose to a friend the other day, does (but that’s a whole different blog post). To the rest of the family, you’re a little like pretty background music. The house is altogether more enjoyable with you in it, but they can kind of tune you in and tune you out as they please. You’re there to cuddle and kiss when you come into view or when a brewing storm of tears catches their ear and draws them in, but otherwise, you’re just this pretty little prop in the background. To me, though? You are always center stage. Everyone relies on me… and everything that I do, pretty much revolves around you. You and your schedule. You and your mood. My day literally begins and ends with making you happy. And even though that has become a more involved task in this past month, and there have been times you’ve really exhausted me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.



The other day a friend of mine came over to tell me she was pregnant. Her three year old son won’t stop calling the baby his “sister,” even though they won’t know the sex for another two weeks. “Don’t tell me I’m having a girl. Please! Don’t tell me I’m having a girl,” she kept saying. I looked to the other end of the table where her husband was shaking his head in total agreement. When I asked her why she was hoping so much for another boy she dropped an eyebrow at me and said, “Do you remember what we were like?” The universal consensus seems to be that compared to sons, daughters are… well, a pain. Daddy, having had a daughter before, was a firm believer in this theory. In fact, even though the whole point in trying for you was to aim for a daughter, he started crumbling under the pressure. “I want to have a little girl with you,” he’d say once I became pregnant, “but boys are just so much easier. It’s hard to not hope for another one. Just a little.” I laughed, and I told them about daddy. And then I told them that he was completely right.

“This child is only three months old,” I said, “and she runs me ragged. One minute we’ll be playing happily, trading smiles and silly noises, and out of nowhere, she’ll just pout her lip and fall apart. And I’ll be like: What? What the hell just happened to you? You’re clean, you’re dry, you’re fed, you’re burped, the boogies are sucked from your nose and if you wanted attention, I was in the middle of giving it you already!” It’s like you just forgot that you were perfectly happy. Maybe you got bored of it or something. But you cry on. And on and on and on while you sway back and forth in my arms, eventually lulling yourself to sleep with the sound of your own grief. It wasn’t a hard thing for them to believe because our entire conversation was shouted overtop of you, while you - wouldn’t you know it - threw a terrible fit in my arms. “I have to say, though,” I started, as I looked down at you, red in the face and flailing your legs in a way that made me think you were aiming for someone, “I am so in love with having a daughter.”

“You needed to have a daughter,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was asking or telling me, but it didn’t matter because she was right.

“yeah. I think I did.”

If there’s one way that I could sum up my feelings on having a daughter, it would be that I love you so much, it almost doesn’t make sense. I don’t know how to explain it or describe how it’s different, but I have this well of sympathy for you, that just doesn’t seem to dry up no matter how much you cry. I’m patient with you in a way that I don’t think I was with Matthew, and that I have to strive to be with Mary. Maybe it’s that they never required as much patience, or maybe it’s because my nervousness about having a daughter prepared me. Either way, the truth is that making you happy can sometimes be a tireless effort, but I just can’t stop wanting to.

I think there’s a word for that. Oh yeah. Spoiled.




Physically, you’ve changed so much this past month that the baby in last month’s post could pass for an entirely different baby. You’ve put on some chub, and are probably over ten pounds now. The funny thing about your size is that the two most recent babies born into the family were your cousins Angelina and Ralphie, both of whom were about your weight when they were born! Even though you were born at a very hearty 7 lbs. 10 oz. and have put on all the steady weight your pediatrician says you should, everyone comments on how utterly tiny you are. Since everything about your budding personality so far points to the likelihood that you will be a very dainty kind of female, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if your petite size continued to follow you into the rest of your life. As Daddy puts it, babies girls were meant to be tiny. And you are ‘perfectly tiny.’ So tiny, that I’ve taken to calling you Polka Dot. My teeny, tiny polka dot.

You might also notice that in last month’s post, you looked a little like a hormone ridden teenager. Baby Acne had you bad for about two weeks. Even though you looked like the before shot in a Proactive commercial, I’m so glad that I caught it on camera. I have never seen baby acne look so incredibly adorable. Mind you, there is a certain love-is-blind factor to motherhood that might be at play here, but I’m convinced that even pimples look good on you. In any case, it’s almost hard to believe, but your skin has cleared to the complexion of glass. I swear sometimes it almost glows. I will say though, that if there is any link between baby acne and what’s to come in your teenage years, we’ve got the makings of a pimple cream spokesperson on our hands.

Another thing: you were born with ridiculously dry skin. Every time I took your clothes off as a newborn, I was scared to death that you would eventually climb right out of yourself, like a snake shedding it’s skin. Mom-mom told me that eczema runs in daddy’s side of the family and that you would need a dermatologist and pretty regular treatment for it throughout the rest of your life. I talked to your pediatrician about it and even though he didn’t complete confirm it, he agreed that it was a fair probability and that we’d treat it as became necessary. But then, as if someone flipped a switch on you somewhere, your skin just cleared. There hasn’t been a patch of dry skin on you anywhere for more than a month. I haven’t even needed to put lotion on you. Not even after your bath. For a baby with such difficult newborn skin, it has blossomed into the most radiant skin I think I’ve ever seen on a baby.

So, to sum up so far… basically, you are a maniac. But a very, very, beautiful one. Oh, boy.

Now that you’re a little older, you have some pretty clear likes and dislikes. You like bath time. It’ll actually even calm you if your fussy. A normal part of bath time for us has become taking you out of your little tub and holding you so that your body is submerged and your head is reclined in my hand just above the water. Then I’ll carry you through the water from one side of the tub to the other and say, “Look at you, just a swimming’ little girl!” And you’ll just smile and smile……. But when I take you out, you go instantly berserk. Berserk has got to be the stupidest word in the English language, but it is the only one I can think to describe how wacko you become when I take you out of the tub.

Speaking of wacko, that’s become a nickname of yours too. Wacko and Little B-word. We call you that lovingly, because we do love you… we do. But you are kind of crazy with how many things you don’t like. And how intensely you dislike them. I’m tempted to describe to you how vehemently you refuse tummy time, but instead I’ll just show this picture:

You aren’t always a wacko though. There are a couple of things that you like. Sitting up and being bounced on my knee. Being patted firmly on your little butt until you fall asleep. Your full-color projector crib accessory (that I think I love as much as you do). Being read to. And then there are a few things that you love. I have two wonderful pictures of you smiling that say it all.

One is of you looking at your Mary.

Who can make you smile the widest. And who is an Godsend at keeping you happy until I can get to you when I’m busy. She is the only one who can make you smile even when you’re really, really upset. (You know, all the time).

And one is of you looking at your Matthew.

The wonderful thing about your relationship with Matthew, is that he lives to make you smile. He can’t keep himself away from you. He follows you from room to room. He plays at your feet. He begs to hold you. He kisses your head when you cry. He tries to put your socks back on when they fall underneath of your swing. He sings to you. There is NOTHING he won’t do to make you smile. But he doesn’t even have to. You smile, just watching him. When he has no idea that he’s got your attention, you study him like a hawk. And when he’s most distracted with his own thoughts or his own toys and you couldn’t be further from his mind -- you’ll grin at him, and that grin will just hang there, like someone stuck it on a fence. It’s like you love them the way I do. And that makes me love you even more than I already did.

And that is an awful, awful lot.

With So Much Love,

Mommy

Reindeer Feet on Christmas

Pin It This is the kind of post that probably has too many pictures and really, really too many words - but it being Scarlett's first one, I don't want to leave anything out. Even the mushy stuff.

Especially the mushy stuff.


This Christmas Eve was the first one in a couple of years that I didn’t have to work. It was just me and the kids, and there’s just no better way to spend Christmas Eve than with two kids psyched out of their mind with anticipation and a new baby girl wearing reindeer on her feet. We didn’t have anything out of the ordinary planned for the day, but the thrill of it all just made the whole day feel like a holiday itself. I woke up early to put together a play list of all the best Christmas music so that the kids could wake up to it, and I let it go all day. The first half of the day for me was all about getting the house clean for Santa. Mary was home from school this week so we spent a lot of time away from the house, keeping the kids occupied and running last minute errands before Christmas. It didn’t leave me a lot of time to catch up on wrapping or keep up with the housework, but her being home Christmas Eve was a blessing. She took over story time for me and spent the whole day getting Matthew worked up about the next day. They collaborated on a note to leave for Santa by the cookie plate, and we all made a big deal about kissing whenever we passed under the mistletoe. Not to mention there was a little someone in her first pair of Christmas Pj’s who kept the kids engaged with her hypnotic intensity of Christmas cuteness. Unfortunately, she was a bit of a distraction for me, too. I have about an hour’s worth of photos of her just like this:

When Daddy came home early, it was on. I’d already started baking and my sister-in-law was on her way over to get handprints of the kids for a gift for my parents (Scarlett’s first set - which made it extra fun). Somewhere around one in the afternoon, the Christmas gift I’d been working on for the past few weeks for my parents FINALLY arrived in the mail, just in the nick of time, which totally made my day. Spencer and Mary took a ride out for some extra butter and came back with some little Clearance trinkets for Mary’s friends, some treats for us and a giant carton of eggnog. I baked two pumpkin rolls this year. One to take to each set of parents. So between the eggnog, the peppermint bark, and the bowl of cream cheese filling that was practically licked clean, it was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas in our bellies -- before we even put Santa’s cookies in the oven. So much so that we had to settle on a gourmet serving of tuna sandwiches for dinner that night.

Once the kids go to bed Christmas Eve night, it always gets a little insane at our house. Spencer had a bike to assemble in the garage while I finished getting too very wired little kids to bed, and then cleaned up from all the baking. By the time Spencer finished with the bike around midnight, I hadn’t even begun wrapping the gifts for the kids yet. Usually, staying up all night to wrap together is something we make an occasion out of, with drinks and music and a plateful of cookies, but because of Spencer’s new job, this year just couldn’t be the same. He plowed through the night with me, though, making sure everything was just right for the kids to wake up to, until he’d literally been up for 23 hours -- a good deal of which was spent at work, where he doesn’t exactly sit at a desk all day. We wrapped like our lives depended on it, and were able to get in a solid four hours of sleep before the kids were ready to get the party started.

The baby woke up right on schedule and sat happy as pie in the living room swing where she was front and center to all of the action. As tired as she was from what was a long night for her too, I don’t think I saw her blink all morning. With the music on quietly in the background, Spencer and I snuggled on the couch with our coffee and let the kids just go to town at our feet. Since the sun wasn’t even up we didn’t get much in the way of pictures, but it took the pressure off trying to capture it all. I shot a few good videos but mostly just let myself relax and enjoy what all of our hard work had earned us. They shrieked and squealed and danced and laughed until every last gift was unwrapped and three bags of discarded gift wrap were tossed out into the recycling, about two hours later. As far as Christmases go, I don’t think we’ll be able to top this year. With the ages of everyone, the enthusiasm, it was just a perfect mix of everything. The sun even came up to flurries of snow that fell all day long and continued to carpet the ground into the next day.

It works out that Spencer’s parent’s thing is Christmas breakfast, so even though we’re usually the late arrivals being that Christmas morning with three kids isn’t something we could rush if we wanted to, it works out perfectly for us to be able to visit his family before making it to mine for Christmas dinner. In fact, looking back, I’m appalled that everything that day worked out so perfectly, but I’m thanking my lucky stars that it did. We got an amazing breakfast after working up a crazy appetite and walked away with a boatload of gifts, but the most exciting part for me was getting to see my newborn nephew… My giant newborn nephew who is equal in size to my THREE MONTH OLD DAUGHTER. Pictures like these made for a charming little Christmas morning, the way Christmas mornings should be. There is just nothing more precious than babies on Christmas.

We went to my parents around 2:00, which I was excited about because my little brother and his family were down from New York for the first Christmas in two years. Their second daughter, I hadn’t seen since she was practically a newborn and only for a few hours. I eased over to this little stranger who was hugging my brother’s leg, expecting her to be a little timid around me, but before I could even introduce myself, she was throwing two tubby little arms around my neck like I was someone she missed. I couldn’t get over what a strange feeling it was to hold my brother’s child and not know her at all. I was glad I got the chance. So, as could be expected from a Christmas at the end of such a fertile year, I spent a lot of time trading babies with siblings and in-laws and only really holding my own when she either shit her pants or started trying to wheedle breast milk out of her knuckles. Surprisingly, she seemed to like it that way. I don’t think she’s ever gone such a long time visiting family without screaming like a psychopathic lunatic. If that was her gift to us, it was a good one.


The best part about Christmas this year was that it seemed to float right on into the next day. When Matthew woke up, his reaction was priceless. After Spencer picked him up, he let out this dramatic, melancholy sigh, dropped his little cheek into the palm of his hand and said with a shrug, “I guess I’ll just go back to sleep if Santa didn’t bring me anymore presents this morning.” What a perfect way to capture the disappointment of Christmas gone too quickly. We nearly peed our pants as we walked him out to the living room where he was quick to realize it was now twice as full as the morning before with gifts we’d collected from the rest of the family, on top of the ones Santa had left… and better yet, there was no unwrapping to do this time; no scrubbing down or dressing up; no thanking relatives or looking at cameras. No waiting to open the ones with losable pieces. Today, we didn’t even have to get out of our Pj’s. Today, we told him as if teaching a very valuable lesson, is when the real fun starts.

Spencer and I took our time, setting up every gift, one by one and finding space to make it all fit, explaining to him who it was who thought about him when they picked out that gift. Not a toy among them was left alone. Matthew spent half the day with his Cars bike helmet strapped to his noggin, easing in and out of doorways, careful not to get his open Cars umbrella caught on the wall. And he did it all clogging through the house in snowboots that (you guessed it) had Cars sewn onto the sides. He flipped patiently through every page of all fifteen new books added to our collection, while at other times, he’d dart after a moving toy so fast, he’d trip over his own feet and fall into a crumpled heap of laughter on the floor. Spencer had as much fun as Matthew training him on the mechanics of Hot Wheels obstacle courses he still remembered getting as a kid himself, and Matthew hung on his every word as if his little life hung in the balance. We did crafts, we raced motorcycles, we even constructed the entire Island of Sodor on the floor of his bedroom, where wooden tracks that worked with magnets intertwined with fancier plastic ones that used batteries and remote control joysticks. We dressed up in explorer gear and captured pretend wildlife in nets, with binoculars and other tools of science dangling at our hips. We shot each other with Buzz Lightyear dart guns. And you better believe that Stinky The Robotic Garbage Truck -- the toy of the year that just happened to come out the year that his Daddy started driving a trash truck for a living, the one Matthew had to be taken to Santa Clause’s lap THREE times in an effort to overcome his fear in order to tell him he wanted -- was a major inclusion. We fed that silly thing any and everything that would fit in his mouth, just to watch it drop out the back and hear him belch out a very mannerly Thank You! Since Mary spends every Christmas with us, she likes to give the next day to her mom. It’s always a bummer when she’s gone, but it gave us time to do some things like, hang up her Twighlight posters, adjust the breaks on her bike, and set up her laptop and Wii, so that when she gets back home she can dive right into all of her new stuff.

I regretted not getting the kids out into the snow to some degree, but after such a long day prior, and with the smell of a ten pound Christmas ham encompassing every room, the house just felt too cozy to leave. We did manage to collect a bowlful of snow to bring in for homemade ice cream, though, and whatever part of the day wasn’t spent playing with toys, was spent huddled over the windowsill kissing beautiful babies and watching snow blanket the yard under twinkling displays of neighborhood lights. If that isn’t the way to bid farewell to a long, cozy Christmas weekend, than I don’t know what is.

What My Kids Will Learn at Christmas.

Pin It Every year, all year long, these kids hear an awful lot of the word No.






With three kids, it’s rare for a week to go by without an out-of-the-ordinary expense popping up. In fact, out-of-the-ordinary expense is a complete oxymoron. Take Mary alone, for instance: Sometimes the expenses are big, the kind you prepare for long in advance, like school clothes in the fall… and other times they’re small ones that sneak up on you, like a donation to the PTA for some kind of upcoming school event. No matter what the nature of the expense, whether it’s Book Fairs, field trips, fundraisers, school pictures, class parties, a dress for a recital, birthday gifts for friends… every child has their own steady stream of output. And you can bet that for every week Mary won’t need something, Matthew will and you can also bet that a lot of the time the biggest and the sneakiest ones will ruthlessly overlap. Not to mention that for every family outing or holiday, our expenses are multiplied that many times a pop. Dinners. Activities. Day trips. Costumes at Halloween. Baskets on Easter. And oh yes, gifts at Christmas.

With so many needs having to be met all throughout the year, wants are just a back-burner kind of a thing in this family. Basically, they don’t get met until they become a need themselves -- like at Christmas.

That being said:
You know when you were like five and you asked your mom or dad what they wanted for Christmas, and they tried to convince you that you enjoying the holiday was all they could ever want. And you were like, yeah right. Well, yeah. They were right. A thousand times over. My parents were miracle workers in their heyday. MIRACLE workers. Still, every Christmas I’ve had since I’ve become a mom has topped every Christmas I’ve had as a child put together, tenfold. --Fortyfold. There’s just nothing like it in the world. I know that they’ll never believe it until they experience it for themselves, but telling my kids no will never be any more disappointing to them as it is to me. And the truth is, we don’t do it solely out of necessity, either. Spencer and I make it a high priority to live well within our means, and even at our penny-pinchin’est the biggest percentage of our paycheck that we could scrounge was put into savings. We do it to teach them about priorities and moderation and other things that are just not always a whole lot of fun for kids to learn, but that they need to. And whether they believe it or not, it isn’t the most fun part of parenting either.

So on Christmas, I get to GO. NUTS. And you better believe that I do, and that I eat up every minute of it. Materialism be damned. I finally get to spoil my kids, and I’m the worst of all offenders when the holiday season comes rolling around. Now I don’t spend recklessly. I have rules and I have boundaries just like I do the rest of the year that keep us from overindulging. I make sure, for one, that the things that we buy are things that will last the test of physical abuse as well as the test of fast-fleeting trends (especially the ones of a pre-teen girl -- you know, the kind named MARY STUCKY. The kind who beg you to buy their entire school wardrobe in hot pink, only to spend the second half of that same year crying in front of her closet because she can’t be caught DEAD wearing PINK in front of her friends at school. THAT KIND.) Also, Spencer and I don’t buy anything for each other. We both believe strongly that any money we’ve set aside for the holidays is better spent on our kids than on anything that could be spent on two full-grown adults who’ve, quite frankly, had their turn. Finally, I don’t spend more than we have, but I do definitely milk every penny that we’ve set aside for all the mind-blowing reaction and years of enjoyment that it’s worth. And you wouldn’t believe how much a gasp and a squeal from your kid on Christmas morning can be worth until you’ve been the one to make it happen.

It’s more than just giving them what they want. It’s getting the chance to really think about who they’ve become and how much they’ve grown since years passed. It’s matching these wonderful little just-for-the-freakin-fun-of-it non-necessities, the ones you’ve unyieldingly said no to all year, to their specific personalities. It’s looking through isles and isles of toys and clothes and games and books and being drawn to that one awesome thing that just has your kid’s name written all over it, and it’s measuring out in your mind how much their brains are going to explode all over the Christmas tree when they unwrap it.

Christmas, especially for young Christian families like ours, is filled to the brim with lessons. Lessons in relation to what the holiday is about; why we celebrate it in the first place, and where these wonderful traditions originated. This year is the first that Matthew is learning not just about Santa Clause, but also about Jesus and about what the prayers he’s been reciting with us every night at bedtime actually mean. This year is one in which Mary, who no longer believes in Santa Clause, is learning tough lessons about how Christmas gifts aren’t just magically created; they’re worked very, very hard to earn money to purchase all year long and that the budget for them is one that she will need to share with two siblings for the rest of her childhood. An enormous part of the magic of Christmas for me is having the opportunity once a year to remind my children that being a kid isn’t just about learning lessons. Sometimes it’s just about crazy, just-cause-you’re-a-kid-and-you-can FUN. And I love teaching them to live it up with as much enthusiasm and discipline as I teach them everything else, all year long.

Babies

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When I was pregnant with Scarlett I remember saying more than once that it would be nice if we could just skip the whole baby phase altogether… To move right on into the fun stuff. I know that sounds terrible, but it wasn’t one of the stages I was looking forward to the most, having been through it all before.

When I was pregnant with Matthew, I looked forward to having a tiny baby in the house more than anything, just like any new mom would. And it was wonderful. But then he started walking and using the potty and cleaning up his own toys and saying things like, “I love you, Mommy,” and without warning, toddler hood totally swept me off my feet. I fell in love with it more and more everyday. With every new thing that Matthew learned to do, my life as his parent got easier and with each new understanding he made about the world around him, the things that we did together became wildly more fun. Like crazy fun. Like telling each other totally juvenile jokes and laughing like we had no sense at all kind of fun . Like falling in love kind of fun. Of course I’ve always loved my little boy, but once he hit toddler hood and could actually hold a fairly intelligible conversation with me and could make me laugh by doing more than just looking cute, I got the first sense of who he actually was. And it was like falling in love with him all over again in a brand new way. Like I wasn’t just loving my son anymore, I was loving Matthew, and there was a very cool difference between the two that was so much fun to explore.

After finding out how much easier and how much fun it all turned out once you got through all the diaper blowouts and laundering of thousands of outfits covered from neckline to crotch snaps in baby slobber, babyhood started to seem like just kind of a means to an end. Something to enjoy as much as possible, but essentially still just something to get through.

When I wanted to have another child, it wasn’t because I missed smelling like a trendy mix of baby powder and spit-up all the time or the evenings that centered around a five minute sponge bath and pictures of a loud, wet, angry infant. Not that those things aren’t wonderful in their own sentimental kind of way, but I was looking forward to the big picture moments. Hearing hysterical shrieks of “I DID IT” bouncing off the water the first summer she’s able to do little bits of anything at all on her own in the pool; Watching her eyeballs turn to saucers, glowing in the holy gleaming light of a towering Christmas tree the week after Thanksgiving; Witnessing her brain explode before my eyes the first time she goes darting clumsily into the open sand of a beach, with ice cream dripping clear down to her stomach and no one in any rush to clean her up. I couldn’t wait to watch another piece of my heart unfold into a beaming little spirit of it’s own.



Then, Scarlett was born. And one afternoon while Matthew was napping, I tucked her into the arm of the sofa with a thick blanket and a small stuffed giraffe and I read her a couple of stories. They were the longer ones with the gorgeous, hand-painted illustrations, the ones that used to be my favorite to read to Matthew before he grew too impatient to make it through all thirty large pages of a story without dinosaurs or bridges collapsing in an island with magic, talking trains. When the stories we over, she was working hard at falling asleep. She was thumbing the mane of her small giraffe, and I noticed very small things about the way she was growing; the kinds of details a toddler is just never still enough to let you see for very long.

I noticed that her movements are becoming more lucid and her expressions are more intentional now. I noticed that she was squeezing things and bringing them closer to her, snuggling soft, fluffy materials and biting down on them, exploring her sense of touch, and clearly enjoying the way it all felt. I noticed that when her pacifier tumbled down her chin, she didn’t immediately cry out for help. Instead, she synchronized the use of both barely capable hands to ladle it back up toward her mouth, she dropped her jaw and fished around until her tongue met the rubber and she was able to pop it right back into place. It was small, but it was probably the very first thing she’d ever accomplished on her very own. And I was watching it happen. Slowly and easily. The way that only the parent of a very small baby can watch their child grow.
And I don’t know that I would want to slow time down, and I’m not saying that I look forward to the fun parts any less, but I’m beginning to remember why I was in no big rush to leave this part behind.

Tots on Wheels

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Okay, not those wheels. But super cute summertime picture, right?

About a year ago Spencer and I looked into the possibility of putting Matthew into a preschool program, only to find out that we couldn’t afford it -- you can imagine our lack of shock. Since at the time we were also working on having our second child, it worked out that when the baby was to be born I could just be home with Matthew and teach him what I wanted to myself. So far I have, and so far it’s proven to be one of those few precious things in life that just works out exactly the way you imagine it would. (Apart from the fact that we stay in our Pjs a lot more than I would have planned) I love it. For this small window of time, Matthew totally eats up being a little nerd with as much enthusiasm as I do, and I get to reap the satisfaction of making and watching it all go down. It’s been incredible. And eye-opening too. I never would have imagined Matthew could know half of the things he does at his age. I’m convinced at this point that if I had put him into an early education program, I’d never know how capable he actually was of learning more than he was being taught. I love knowing exactly where he is and being able to tweak our little games and activities accordingly. After spending so much time away from him while I worked, there’s so much I love about spending this time with him, that I can’t even boil it down into just a few sentences. Point is: it’s working out.

Matthew is awesomely capable of learning almost anything you put in front of him. The problem, though? The problem is that, as with a lot of very smart kids, he has a bit of an issue with being A MAJOR PAIN IN THE ASS. Mostly whenever he’s around anyone other than just me or his dad, which can make leaving the house with him very touch and go.


Learning shapes at his buddy Evan's house over the summer.

A big part of the plan was supposed to entail getting him out of the house and interacting with other kids, especially since he was pulled out of daycare. My plan was to have scheduled activities that we went to maybe twice a week. I wasn’t trying to overdo it, especially since there was still a lot I planned to take care of around the house with my time off, too. My main concerns were that I wanted to get a little mix of activity into his routine, I wanted him to meet new friends (and not beat them up or boss them around), and more than anything else, I wanted to introduce him to the concept of listening to someone else in charge. A couple of things I felt would help to prepare him for school.

For the first few weeks that Scarlett was home, getting out of the house was just too much, too soon. It took us all a while to adjust in our own ways, and I didn’t want getting out of the house to be a chore, so I didn’t push it. We started small with the Bear library which is cozy, quiet and close to home. It was the easiest place for me to get used to juggling both kids at once… In fact it was where I learned that if I absolutely needed to, it was possible for me to grab Matthew with one arm and pull him up onto my hip during a meltdown with Scarlett snuggled undisturbed inside the wrap. It was where I could introduce Matthew to a handful of rules without it really disrupting anybody else if he chose not to listen -- we could just leave (and without having wasted any money, which is very important to me since Spencer works really hard to bring in the family’s income on his own now and I want to be considerate of that). We’ve been going once a week now for a while.

Tuesday I took him to Tots on Wheels, which I was super excited about for two reasons. One, it was his first lesson of some sort with an instructor and two, because Matthew LOVES to skate. I can’t put into words, though, how nervous I was about it not being a good experience. I worried about being embarrassed if he didn’t listen, I worried about him disrupting the other kids’ experience if he didn’t listen, I worried about Scarlett being off-schedule and throwing things off, but I also knew we had to start somewhere and this was the only activity I’d found so far that I knew would be worth the effort.


All in all, there weren’t really any surprises. Scarlett scared me by crying for no apparent reason through the start of it all (which is like her, you know, just to keep me on my toes) but then stayed pleasantly alert and quiet through the whole session. Matthew enjoyed skating, but didn’t really take to the idea of accepting instruction. If he was asked to be over here, over there suddenly looked a lot more appealing, but I liked that it wasn’t the end of the world for him to just go off of his own either… He kind of tuned in and out to the lesson, and was probably able to get more out of it that way, in all honesty. He got excited about story time at first, then got bored half-way through and politely informed me he was done with it, something I saw coming a mile away even though he LOVES story time at home (I’m a total nerd for books so I get really weirdly into the reading and Matthew’s very picky about only wanting me to read to him). One thing I did notice, though, that surprised me in a good way was that seeing everybody else stay seated after he got back up to skate, pulled him back in. (Hmm. Could that be an early sign of the cooperation bug catching on?? Mayyybeeee!) Matthew’s not a shy kid, but be didn’t talk to anyone else while we were there, even though he was open to the idea when I suggested it. That was disappointing because it kept me from having much of a chance to talk to other adults - which I was looking forward to, especially when some other moms I knew coincidentally showed up, too -- but I can’t complain. We had a total blast just hanging out together and he even looked up a me a few times while we were skating and thanked me for taking him. Any other time we’ve been skating I’ve had to go out on the floor with skates too, which is fun, but being able to go on the floor in sneakers for the first time made it much easier to keep pace with him and allowed me to bring the baby out with us.

For five bucks there was a lot of time to just skate freely, plenty of instruction, free rentals (even for adults if they choose to skate along), fun music, story time, a good deal of other kids without feeling crowded at all, a snack, games, and even a treat as we were leaving. And the employees there could not have been sweeter. Plus, you can’t beat the exercise. I think we may have found our second weekly activity for the winter!

The Green Beans Almost Made It In.

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So, Matthew is really sick. Yesterday he threw up three times. It’s only 6:00 a.m. and I’ve already cleaned up the first of many, many times I’m sure he’ll do it again today. He started the day before yesterday coughing up just the tiniest bit of pasta ever, seemed to be over it without even catching a fever, then asked for a bite of my green beans at dinner time the next day and puked everywhere before he even had the chance to swallow them. On the nicest sweater he owns, right before Mary’s clarinet recital. And you can probably guess that the third time was in the middle of the night. Because, obviously, that’s when little kids like to throw up best.

Spencer’s been getting all kinds of gifts and cards with his Christmas tips from customers this week. One of them was a homemade loaf of chocolate chip pumpkin bread. We were reluctant to even share something homemade with the kids -- but against our better judgment decided we were probably being overprotective and to just go ahead. When he got sick but never caught a fever we figured it must have just been the bread that didn’t agree with him. We kept his meals light the rest of the day and tried to make him rest. Now he’s not keeping anything down and you can tell without taking his temperature that his fever is up. He’s had like, eighteen baths in the past day and a half and I keep finding little gems of vomit on my clothes that I didn’t realize had gotten on me or hadn’t been wiped up completely. This morning, (and by morning I mean barely) after spending a good, solid hour changing sheets, loading the washer, scrubbing puke from a pillow without a case, bathing Matthew, and then washing my hands -- I went to grab the belt of my robe and got a palm-full of vomit I never realized had been covering my side the whole time.

To make it worse, I’ve had to transition from tending to Matthew to tending to Scarlett so often that I’ve already forgotten to wash my hands twice and I've pumped the hand sanitizer dry. I’ve never been a germ-aphobe before, but having a newborn around a sticky, reckless toddler -- the kind who thinks nothing of popping abandoned skittles he finds under the seats at the DMV in his mouth and bragging about it -- is enough to turn anyone into a nervous wreck. Every time the baby dribbles differently now or farts in a new pitch, I’m sure she’s dying, and Spencer has to calm me down. Matthew’s no infant, so him having a stomach bug is nothing new and nothing to get dramatic about (in fact, I’m silently celebrating that this is the first time I don’t have to have a panic attack about not making it into work, and that we have another excuse to stay in our Pjs) But keeping him away from the baby is a new challenge for me. I started typing this at 6:00 and it’s almost 9:00 now because I’ve had to put Matthew back in his own bed forty-six hundred thousand MILLION times.

We'll see how it goes.

Can I be dead yet?

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Silly Mommy, we can sleep when we're dead!

I’ve tried it all. I’ve tried every different combination of swaddling technique known to man. I’ve kept her active throughout the day. I’ve bathed her right before bed. I’ve smothered her in baby lotion “clinically proven” to help my baby sleep better, while she screamed profanities at me in hysterical baby language for doing it. I’ve tried repositioning her bassinet in our bedroom. I’ve tried using different blankets. Adjusting the thermostat. Playing music. I’ve tried everything short of hiring live sheep to hurdle over her bassinet in the night.

Two weeks ago, I swear I didn’t mind being up half the night. I knew it was just all part of the deal. I woke up sometimes even before she did, ready and waiting calmly for her to stir, because I was adapting to her schedule. I bragged about it. I even lectured her father more than once about how we knew this was coming when we decided to have a baby. I was the world’s most patient mother. After all, I knew it couldn’t last much longer…. Then, week after week, it lasted. And then it lasted some more. And then it lasted right on into the Much Longer period. And for nine entire weeks, this child woke up
Every
Three
Hours.
Through
Every
Single
Night.

And somewhere around the eighth and a half week my body just gave up. I started not waking up until she was going off like an alarm. Pulling myself into an upright position suddenly took what felt like the strength of ten men. I started dozing mid-meal, only waking to catch my nodding head before I keeled over completely. I was a zombie by lunchtime. My body had clearly had enough of this kid’s appetite. My body (not me) was ready to cut her off, whether Scarlett and I were behind the idea or not. I needed to get her on board. For the love of God, I needed to sleep.

Including the last two months of my pregnancy, when I woke up every two hours to pop a leg cramp, eat or pee, I was going on FOUR MONTHS without a single full night’s sleep. FOUR MONTHS.




Then, last night, it happened! I put her to bed in extra fluffy pajamas. I put her in a double swaddle that she wouldn’t be able to kick her way out of. I placed her in the bassinet just so. Then I laid a blanket up to her waist and tucked it under the sides of the mattress pad so that it wouldn’t ride up or down in the night. I turned out the light and I slept for three hours. When I woke up, I realized the room was quiet. Not a shift or a snort or a whine to be heard. I checked her. Yup, still breathing. Well that’s weird, I thought. Good, but weird. I almost turned on Conan and waited, but I opted for a few extra minutes of sleep before she was sure to wake up. When I woke up for the second time, I checked the clock expecting to see that maybe another thirty minutes had passed. 2:45!! That’s almost another 3 hours! In a semi-panic, I checked to make sure she was still breathing. She was. I looked at the clock again. Then, in complete disbelief, I had to check her again, this time taking her head in my hand and stroking her hair with my thumb, hoping for a small reaction. She lifted her eyebrows as if she just might break into a stretch, then as if deciding against it, dropped her head to the side once more, and drifted back to sleep completely.



Easy to say coming from the one who gets to nap through the day.

I let an hour passed before I woke her up myself. Apparently my breasts didn’t get the memo either, and they were backed up two feedings. When the poor child came to enough to latch on, she choked, and when I pulled her off, the milk didn’t stop flowing. It might have been funny if it weren’t 3:30 in the morning.

When Spencer woke up just a few minutes later, I flashed him the kind of smile you would expect to see on a person in my situation. No, not a person covered in their own breastmilk -- A person who might finally be able to sleep for the first time in FOUR MONTHS! But then, no longer did Scarlett slip into a full-bellied coma did a certain two year old came scooting groggily down the steps, trademark ragdoll puppy in tow, into our pitch black bedroom. Oh my God, no. No. No. No. No.

“Mommy, Daddy, I can’t sleep. I’m ready to wake up now.”

“Yeah, buddy, I figured.”

Pulling It Off

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This transition has been nothing if not challenging. More than probably anything else, becoming the mother of two (or three, for that matter) has been an enormous exercise in humility. I’ve never tried so hard or fallen short so many times at anything as I have in Scarlett’s first few weeks home. I used to have such a grip on it all. Sometimes it felt like I was stuck in a continual loop of falling and getting back up, falling and getting back up, each time having to figure out what even went wrong before I could focus on trying to do it better the next time around. The process was redundant and frustrating. How arrogant I must have been to think that I could actually pull this off…

But it got better. Partially because things fell into place the way that things tend to do on their own after a time. But also partially because I worked and worked and worked at a routine, chiseling away at all the rough edges of our schedule until I was able to build back the time and confidence that I knew it was going to take to raise these guys the way that I wanted to.

A super simple project we put together with our favorite fall leaves

from around the neighborhood. I planned to just throw it out when we were done, but it turned out so cool, I had to share.

You hear so many people advocating the neglect of housework in order to handle the demands of a newborn, but that wasn’t going to work for me this time. Scarlett was only one of four other people who depended on me now - and on things getting done that were my responsibility. So I had to get creative.

At first I thought that it would just be a matter of multitasking, but I learned pretty early on that a two year old can sense when he only has half of your attention. Especially a two year old battling jealousy. Sitting him at the table with a couple of crayons while I went to work on some dishes during the 30 seconds the baby had drifted off to sleep during the day was not going to do it. I was expected to helicopter over him the whole time, to get in on the artistic action and to actively critique throughout. He kept my leash short, even testing me; Making me think that maybe he wouldn’t notice if I just quickly and quietly snuck this plate into the sink behind us…. Then, bam! The second I looked up from the table, he’d snap me an icy, disapproving glare and shout, “Mommy! Look at me!” as if such a neglectful mother had never before existed. And heaven help me if our play session had to be cut short on account of the baby -- such a thing was like confessing to an affair. There were tears of betrayal and the throwing of objects, pleading apologies as I left the room.

Matthew combing the baby's hair for me.

If only they were half as agreeable as they appear to be in pictures.

They are lying to you, trust me.

Basically, I owe my sanity to a few life-saving tricks that I picked up along the way and I thought it would be fun, now that the storm has finally passed, to write about some of them. So below are a list of the games that I was able to come up with for Matthew and I to play during the day that have become an irreplaceable part of our everyday routine. Either quick ways for me to devote my full attention to him in between taking care of other responsibilities, or games that I’m able to be fully involved in even while I tend to other things at the same time.


#1. Train Letters:
This one’s great for keeping him near me and out of mischief while I’m busy tending to housework. Matthew runs into his bedroom and grabs a random foam letter or number out of the “Letter Train” (a ride-on train that holds all of these letters/numbers in the seat -- Hence the name). When he brings it to me, I ask him what it is. He tells me the name and the sound it makes. In return I give him a super silly word that begins with the sound. (If it’s a number, he counts to it, and I give him an example: (Matthew has TWO stinky feet!) This is the one we fall back on most when my hands are occupied -- like when they’re buried in dish water or raw chicken juice and I can’t stop what I’m doing to play, but I still need to keep an eye on him. Part of the genius of this game is that he runs back and forth from the letter train to me, so 1.) it’s a physical activity that I don’t have to be physical for and 2.) since he has to go back to get a new letter, he can put the old one back each time and there’s nothing to clean up when we’re done!

#2. Parade:
There is a Leap Frog video that puts the tune of The Farmer In the Dell to letter sounds of the alphabet: (The A says Ah, the A says Ah, every letter makes a sound, the A says Ah…)
We have a parade around the coffee table, singing this song from the letter A all the way through the alphabet, marching and dancing and being as silly as we can to make it fun. I’m in front. I stop on the last phrase of the verse, turn to him and let him say the sound the letter makes. If he gets it right, I give him a high-five and we keep going. This is a great way to keep Scarlett entertained while she’s in the living room swing, too. (We usually make silly faces as we pass her by and she loves it!)

#3. Flashcard Matching -- uppercase to lowercase:
I’ve tried flashcards a lot with Matthew and even though I’ve nannied kids who could do them all day if you gave them the time, Matthew always got bored of going through them pretty quick. Or if he didn’t, I did. One game I’ve come up with using the flashcards that always excites him though is uppercase, lowercase matching. I just lay all of the alphabet cards out on the table or floor (a stack that has a separate card for upper cases and lower cases), and I let him pick up any letter he wants. He shows it to me, tells me what it is (“Big M!”) and then has to find the corresponding upper or lower case one. This one is great for playing while I’m either nursing the baby or while I’m giving her Tummy Time on the floor. Again, I can take care of both kids at once without Matthew feeling like he’s only got half of my attention because I’m actively involved in the game the whole time.

#4. Counting Groups:
I’ll ask him to count things that are in groups, and we count them out in a rhythm so that he gets familiar with number patterns. Like: How many ears are in the kitchen -- one, two… three, four… five, six! How many tires are on the driveway -- one, two, three four… five, six, seven, eight! Sometimes I’ll even use colored cotton balls to make little groups and we’ll play that way. The former makes for a great anytime/anywhere version of the game while the latter is great for playing at the table during breakfast or snack time.

#5. Tens Song:
We sing the UmiZumi “tens” song about counting to 100 by tens, and with each number he holds up a finger, until we reach 100 and we have all ten fingers extended. I especially like this because it’s a ridiculously cute song, for one, but also because a lot of kids have trouble holding up the right amount of fingers to show a certain number at his age. Since we’ve started singing this song around the house, he’s gotten pretty good at it (which has got to say something for motor skill development, I’d think). He also learns the early concept that twenty corresponds with two and thirty corresponds with three, etc… even if he doesn’t understand exactly how just yet. Sometimes if the house is a little too quiet, I’ll just bust out into this song and he immediately jumps up from whatever he’s doing and joins in with a huge smile.


#6. Waiting Room Shapes:
This one is a life-saver. There are two factors that ALWAYS, without fail, when put together contribute to Matthew acting up: 1. Being bored/tired and 2. Being in public. I always pack a small notebook (like a memo pad) just for him in the diaper bag with a baggie of crayons. Whenever we’re waiting somewhere boring, like the DMV or the doctor’s office, he hands me the notebook and I draw a shape. He tells me what it is and then looks for that shape around the waiting room.

At risk of sounding terrible, I have to admit that a huge part of the reason some of these games are so useful is that they are games that have a clear ending, and one that he can see coming, at that. Sometimes we have an afternoon to devote to building with blocks or a game of pretend. But for the times when I know I only have somewhere between five and twenty minutes to play before dinner will need to come out of the oven or Mary will be home from school, I love that I can devote that window of time to just him, however small it may be… without feeling like I’m ripping his heart out because after two hours of capturing pretend dinosaurs around the house, I’m just ready to be done. This way, even on my busiest days, I can feel good knowing that we’ve made some memories together and he can feel good knowing he’s still my top priority without every other priority (other members of the family included) falling off the radar.