Just Powers

One thing I know about my Emma, that I have known since the first time she tried to breastfeed at only a few minutes old, is that she is happiest when she is doing something as perfectly as she can. “If at first you don’t succeed” is not really a part of her experience. She likes to get it right the first time, no “try, try again” for this girl. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when she walked practically the first time she got up on her legs. And I didn’t worry at all when she talked a little later than some, since she was speaking in full-blown sentences within two weeks.

She has been writing her name for about a year and a half, but didn’t seem to have much interest in any letters beyond e, m and a, until the last few weeks. But that is how it is with Emma, she fools you into thinking she is paying no attention to whatever developmental milestone you think she should be hitting, until you give up. And then she hits it, right in the center of the bullseye.

She has been getting excited lately about writing and has been asking us to tell her what letters are in particular words so she can write them down. We have helped her and she has been writing words this way for a few weeks. Last Friday I came home and Emma had written this:

Our au pair told her the letters to write and Emma wrote a short story (a poem really isn’t it?) about our weekend plans.

The next day Emma took her handy dry-erase board (thanks WP for a great birthday present!) and said “Wait Mommy, don’t look!” She ran out of the room for a few minutes, then came back and said triumphantly “LOOK!” and she had written this, with no outside help:

I know I shouldn’t be surprised. I know kids learn how to write. I know it’s no big deal really.

But holy mackerel - how did she know how to DO that? I mean “William”??? That is NOT a short word. And “Mommy (momy)”?? How does she even know what letter that is supposed to start with? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Didn’t she just start walking? Didn’t she just say “lasagna” for the first time? Suddenly I feel like I am on a wondrous boat ride with Mr. Willy Wonka that has turned into a psychedelic trip down the chocolate river - “There’s no earthly way of knowing, what direction we are going…”

It’s a whole new world…

This post is part of the Monday Link up with Just.Be.Enough. a site empowering us all to focus on what we are proud of in our lives instead of being discouraged by what we aren’t quite doing right. This Monday Link up is the last one in the Be Enough 4 Me Cancer Campaign, a collaboration between Just.Be.Enough. and Bellflower Books that will provide memory books to women diagnosed with breast cancer.

I went back to work full-time this past February.

After being a work-from-home-mom for two years after Emma was born, and then a stay-at-home-mom for two more years after William was born, I left my children in the capable and loving hands of our new au pair Claire, and marched off into the world to earn my keep as an Administrative Secretary for two academic departments at Gallaudet University.

The first month or so was much better than I thought. There were some tears in the mornings when I left, from the kids and from me, but it was reported to me that they recovered quickly and once I hit the office I recovered too. Dressing up in office clothes was exciting after four years of the jeans-and-a-t-shirt uniform of a stay-at-home-mom and being actively appreciated by my new employer made me feel great. I thought “wow, this isn’t as hard as I thought - we’re gonna be ok!”

As we settled into our routine the tears stopped but in their place Emma would ask me earnestly at bedtime “Mommy are you staying home tomorrow?” When I explained that I needed to go to work to help the people in my office she replied “but what about your kids?” and my heart broke. Then one day a couple of months after I started, she said “Mommy when are you going to STOP working and stay home with us again? Like not go to work anymore at all.” Ironically I was having the same realization around the same time - that this new arrangement is permanent. There is no time in the foreseeable future when I will be home with my children for a large chunk of time. I had no answer for Emma when she asked me that, except to say “I don’t think that is going to happen sweetie…but we are going to the beach in a couple of weeks!” Lame.

The truth is that I don’t think I was a very good stay-at-home-mom. I was impatient, I tried to do too much, I lost my temper, I lacked creativity. Claire is much better at it than I was - she is patient and kind with the kids, she has boundless energy, she has new, fun and creative activities for them every week. She is a rock star.

Admittedly things are different for Claire than they were for me. Her ONLY job is care for the kids - we don’t ask her to clean or do laundry or go grocery shopping - so she has the energy to play with them and the ability to focus all her energy on them all of time, something most multi-tasking SAHM’s don’t have the luxury to do. She also gets off at 5:00 or very soon thereafter. She works 9-10 hours a day as opposed to 24. Knowing there is a break coming up in your future helps fuel the patience required to deal with little ones I think and the lack of a break can be soul-crushing.

Which brings me to the heartbreaking reality of the situation - maybe my kids are better off now.

I go back and forth with myself about this - if I didn’t have to work, would I still choose to? Most days I say no, I would not. I would gladly give up the appreciation and fulfillment I feel from going to work every day if I could only be with my children while they are little. I am painfully aware of how fast they are growing and it hurts my heart to know I am missing large 10 hour chunks of their life every day. And Emma still asks me, seven months later, when will I stop working and come home. All of that causes me to spend large amounts of time plotting how we can lower our expenses enough for me to be able to stay home.

But occasionally - usually on a weekend day when we are having a particularly rough time, they ARE two and four after all - I will think to myself “I could never go back to being with them full time, we would kill each other.” And I realize that maybe missing each other desperately is ok. They have fun adventure-filled days with Claire. We snuggle and kiss when I get home from work and get to reconnect on the weekends. People always say that the most important thing is that your children know they are loved - maybe my kids are feeling more love from the three stable-ish adults in their life than if there were only two less stable ones? Or maybe I am just justifying it because the alternative - that my kids would rather have me home regardless of my less than stellar care-taking abilities - is too painful to bear.

Many moms I know love going to work - they miss their kids but are very clear for themselves that staying home would never be an option for their family. And other moms I know have gone to great lengths to make sure they can stay home with their kids. I fall somewhere in the middle - I sit at work feeling great that I am a contributing member of my team but with a huge pit in my stomach from missing my kids so much. Most days I cry either to work or on the way home, sometimes both. I miss going to the park and to Brookside Gardens, I miss the Zoo in the Fall, I miss snuggling with them on a rainy afternoon, I miss cooking with them and eating lunch with them. I especially miss macaroni and cheese - a guilty pleasure that is mostly absent from my work place.

So I don’t know the answer to the work vs. stay home conundrum that so many millions of families struggle with, but I will continue to try and figure it out. Our situation at the moment may not be “perfect” but I am coming to believe that it is “enough” - for all of us - and in the end that is all I can ask for.

But I still really miss macaroni and cheese.

Emma and Will shared an ice cream cone recently. It was rough going for a minute or two but they worked it out.

Being a mom has brought me some of the happiest moments I have ever known in my life, which has surprised me a little I think. I guess that’s the thing about being a parent, you have no idea what you are missing until you have a child and your entire world is rocked.

And yet, despite the joy being a mom brings me, there are moments when I weep.

It usually happens in the middle of the night, in the dark, and I am usually holding one of the kids as they sleep, or struggle to sleep or refuse to sleep.

I weep because in the quiet of those moments, I realize how tiny my kids are. And in the same breath I realize how big they are, and how fast they are getting bigger. I flash forward to a time when they are in elementary school and refuse to let me kiss them goodbye when I drop them off; then to high school when I am lying awake at night waiting for them to come home from a night out; then to the day when they leave for college and finally I end with the time in the future when Mike and I have time to go on dates again, are able to sleep for eight hours uninterrupted and can clean up a room once a week instead of every hour.

And as I sit there in the dark, fast-forwarding through my life, I try desperately to memorize the feel of the little body in my arms, the look of the sweet face sleeping and the smell of a freshly bathed baby. I know I will forget, as the days move on and get fuller and more hectic, I will forget the quietest moments in the dark of the night. And the knowledge that I will forget makes me cry even harder.

My babies are slipping away from me, which is what is supposed to happen of course, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. Really, they started slipping away from me the moment they were born, and I am just fortunate enough to be along for the ride.

I know there is more weeping in my future, because time will only move faster as the years go on. It’s ok really, because those moments in the dark help me remember to try my best to cherish every moment with my kids, try not to get upset about the little things, and make sure they know how much I love them.

We bought a minivan a few weeks ago. I have to admit that I was not prepared for the level of emotion I experienced after the purchase.

I was never one of those people who vowed I would never own a minivan. In high school my family had a white Dodge Grand Caravan with wood paneling, and I loved it - the size, the myriad of places to stash things, the fact that I could sit in the third row far from my siblings. I always kind of assumed that I would own a minivan someday. When we bought the Mazda 5, classified as a “microvan” by some, it was a tiny step in that direction, what with the sliding doors and third row of seats. The Mazda was different enough though that I felt special in it - it had sliding doors sure, but it also had Zoom-Zoom and a sunroof. People stopped us to ask us about it and we loved to tell them. I was a rock star in my cute little red Mazda and no one could tell me any different.

When the Mazda got totaled, however, we had to replace it with something and it seemed to make sense to replace with something that was newer, more reliable, had more space and ended up being substantially cheaper for us each month, so we decided on a silver 2009 Toyota Sienna.

For a week after we bought it, I will not lie to you, we thought we had made a terrible terrible mistake. I will go so far as to say I was downright depressed about our purchase. I was no longer a rock star, I didn’t have any zoom-zoom, and no one stopped me to ask about my cute little car. Emma started saying “I just saw another silver mini-van! Mommy, why are there so many silver mini-vans?” and I wanted to cry.

When you are a stay-at-home mom who lives in the suburbs and cares for small children all day, it turns out your car plays a pretty vital part in shaping the identity you create for yourself. I hadn’t realized this when we had the Mazda, but once we had the same car everyone else has, it became clear that the car had become my identity. And I didn’t really like who I had become. In the Mazda I was cute, different, agile and downright sexy. In the Toyota I was big and cumbersome, not to mention boring, practically invisible, and definitely NOT sexy.

I am feeling better about the purchase now. The Sienna is comfortable, it gets us from point A to point B safely and it seats eight with room left over for the stroller, the bikes, stadium chairs, a kitchenette and a porta-potty (ok, a kitchenette doesn’t really fit, but if we put the back seats down it almost might.) It isn’t sexy but in the end I know we made the right choice for all the reasons we decided on it in the first place. Someday, all too soon, I won’t need all this space and then I will buy something tiny and zippy that decries my age. But as I drive it off the lot I will probably be jealous of all the young families in their generic mini-vans driving on the road with me.

Here is my dilemna - my daughter adores the children’s show “Caillou”. I do not.

It isn’t that Caillou doesn’t have some redeeming qualities. He is a big brother, helpful for teaching Emma lessons about having younger siblings. His parents are less than perfect - I completely love that they are slightly paunchy and definitely over 30. He has lots of multicultural friends and even a close friend named Emma. I mean c’mon, he’s even Canadian - what’s not to love about that?

Here’s my issue: Caillou giggles. A lot. As in makes-me-want-to-throw-my-television-through-the-window a lot. And the problem is that Emma can now do a dead-on impersonation of Caillou’s giggle, making me want to throw HER through the window. It is this unbelievably high pitched “hee hee hee hee” kind of a thing that you can’t even imagine could be so annoying until you hear it. Over and over and over. Even Emma’s preschool teacher has remarked that Emma seems to be doing a “giggling thing” lately.

Other issues I have with the show - Caillou is a whiner and his sister talks in baby talk. The whining - ugh - is something anyone with a 3ish year old child will tell you is a constant battle, so thanks Caillou but we really don’t need YOU to reinforce that it is cool to whine for everything.

And his sister Rosie is voiced by a grown up talking in baby talk: “Rosie want milk” “Rosie no like sleep” and on and on and on. Maybe it is because she is relating to the female character, or maybe it is because she is feeling some ambivalence about being a big girl now instead of a baby (developmentally appropriate mind you, but oh so annoying) but Emma now talks in baby talk constantly. I talked recently with the mother of a classmate of Emma’s - a boy who also has a baby sibling - and she said her son talks in baby talk all the time too. So it may be that Emma would be talking in baby talk at this point in her life anyway, but certainly the prevalence of it on her favorite tv show can’t be helping it. I choose to blame Caillou.

As a result of the above issues, Caillou is about to be banned at our house. I am not sure how we are going to do it, short of just telling her “it isn’t on”, and in the end it may not work. But we are going to do our darndest.

We just can’t take it anymore.

Emma and Will playing together. It was sheer luck that I turned around at the very moment they were playing and even better luck that the Flip camera was within arm’s reach.

I am hoping that moments like this will outweigh moments like the one tonight where Emma sat on her brother and earned a time out in the process. Didn’t get that one on video. Sorry.

I discovered something important about myself last week. I hate bath time.

I thought I liked it. I thought it was fun and relaxing and a great way to keep the kids occupied for a half an hour or so, while getting them clean at the same time - what a bargain!

Nope. Bath time at my house has turned into my worst nightmare. The ten month-old flaps his arms in joy as he lunges and lurches and nearly drowns every ten seconds or so. And the three year-old, oh the three year-old…she has discovered that bath time is the perfect opportunity to really REALLY push my buttons, and that I am mostly powerless to stop her.

The game starts when she first steps into the tub and refuses to sit down. She lingers, standing in the tub, pretending she can’t hear my requests to “sit flat”. Finally, when I up the ante and it becomes “sit flat or you are getting out” she sits.

Then the splashing begins. It starts out pretty sweet really, just little splashes, the kind you might watch with joy as you think about how fun bath time is for the pre-school crowd. But soon the tiny flicks of water turn into bigger splashes, whole hand splashes, and they start to find their way OUT of the tub.

That is when I realize I have already lost. I try desperately to regain control of the bath, threatening and cajoling her - as I clutch my youngest by his upper arm to keep him from going under. But my three year-old just looks at me with a glint in her eye, she is having too too much fun now, and there is no going back.

Soon she is doing full body seated leaps - throwing her entire self into the air from a sitting position and landing in the water with as much force as she can muster, sending water everywhere and drenching me and the bathroom in the process. At this point I am usually completely hysterical as I systematically remove all privileges and finally threaten that she will not be allowed to attend the senior prom if she doesn’t KNOCK IT OFF RIGHT NOW.

Usually it is around this time that the boy looks at me, then at his sister, and with a huge grin on his face, begins to copy her. And that is when, depending on the day, I either surrender and pull the shower curtain closed to preserve the patch of dry still on my clothing, letting them splash to their hearts content, or I put an end to my torture and pull them both out of the bath.

Next time, showers for us all.

STANDING!!, originally uploaded by Justpowers.

Will stood by himself for the first time today. I think I let go of his hands because my fingers were turning purple, and lo and behold he stood all by himself for at least 5 seconds before he lurched forward. It wasn’t a chance standing, it was a definite balanced-on-two-feet-holy-crap-I-can-do-this standing. When I did it again he stood for even longer and got a huge delighted grin on his face. The third time I was able to snap this photo just before he fell.

Of course I know that this is the end of the world as I know it. He has already shown that he is, and will continue to be, more interested in getting into trouble than Emma ever was. This is not a kid I can leave alone in a room for even a second. Even now, only crawling backwards, he can find any number of things to put in his mouth, pull down and rip apart in just a matter of seconds. Once the walking begins…ai ai ai…I don’t think we even own enough gates to keep him out of trouble.

Emma turned three years old today.

It’s hard to know what to write really. She amazes, delights and frustrates us every moment of every day.

Last week she picked up a towel we were using as a door mat by the front door to soak up rain and mud. Mike asked her three or four times to put it down. She ignored him and instead shook it, spreading dirt and leaves all over the living room. Mike was understandably, um, annoyed and in a stern voice reprimanded her for not listening. She continued to ignore him, making him more and more mad, until she finally said in the calmest, sweetest and most sincere voice “Ok Daddy, I’ll stop. I was just being a goofball.” I looked up at Mike, who had been fuming, and we both had to stifle a laugh.

Out of nowhere the other day she said to me “Do you know what I want to talk about? I want to talk about a short nap. I want to take a short nap so I can watch Dinosaur Train.” Dinosaur Train replaced Thomas the Tank Engine this fall as her favorite show on television and she is rewarded with being able to watch 30 minutes of it after she takes her nap. This was a deal we struck recently after weeks of her refusing to take a nap left her weepy and whining by 5:00 PM every day. When Emma is weepy and whining, mommy is weepy and whining, so something had to be done. Dinosaur Train to the rescue!

Some of our favorite Emma-isms at the moment:

What is happolling? (happening)

It is so much bun. (fun)

Where’s the mokinintrol? (remote control, of course)

No bones at the table Daddy. (phones)

Things she loves:

Dancing - one day I took her to the mall and as soon as we walked in the doors and she heard the music playing overhead she started to spontaneously dance with joy. She especially loves to put on a princess (see below) dress and talk one of us into dancing with her to “I Could’ve Danced All Night.” I guess one of these days we should formalize her dancing and get her into lessons, but for now we are enjoying her enthusiasm and passion.

Reading - this girl loves books. And she loves “snuggling on the couch” and reading together. I think that started last year when I was on bedrest and I couldn’t do much else with her. However it started, it is a habit I am happy we got into.

Macaroni and cheese - I am pretty sure she would eat mac and cheese for every meal if I would let her. I used to be able to get her to eat homemade mac and cheese and could even sneak a little butternut squash in the recipe every once in a while to make sure she got her veggies for the day. A few months ago she informed me she liked the yellow kind and now will only eat boxed mac and cheese with nary a squash in site. *Sigh* The biggest problem with the Kraft mac and cheese of course is that Mike and I have to eat it with her sometimes - like for her third birthday dinner for example.

People - Emma loves to be with people. We have been working hard lately at getting William on a regular nap schedule, hoping it will help him sleep through the night. Unfortunately this means we are housebound from about 9-11 in the morning and 1-3 in the afternoon while he naps. The other day we went to an open gym session at a local gymnastics center and when we left and I told Emma we were going home she became almost inconsolable, crying to me that she didn’t want to go home, that she loved being out and doing ‘bings” and that she wanted to play with someone. It just about broke my heart and made me realize how bored she must be, home with me so much of the time. This is the challenge of having two I guess - figuring out who needs what, and how on earth you can give it to them. Something to work on I suppose.

Her bear-bear - this is a pretty sad looking little white bear head on a piece of white blanket lined with yellow satin. It was the thing she chose a long time ago to be her comfort object, especially at bedtime. When we realized she had chosen it, we ran out to Toys R Us and bought two more. Now she rotates between the three, switching them only when I am able to sneak the used one out for a freshly washed one. Every once in a while she will find one in the wash and grab it, laughing as she says “two bear-bears!!” She doesn’t suck her thumb and was never very interested in pacifiers, but I don’t really know what she would do without “sumping to chew on” as she says when she is asking for her bear.

Waffles - Eats ‘em every day. Eggo Nutrigrain waffles. She can get them out of the freezer, out of the package and into the toaster before I have even poured my first cup of coffee. If she could reach the syrup on the top shelf her father and I could probably stay in bed and get a little extra shut-eye.

Dinosaurs, Rocket Ships and Princesses - Thanks to Dinosaur Train Emma can tell you about all sorts of dinosaurs that I had never even heard of prior to about three months ago. She has decided her favorite is Tyrannosaurus Rex, and she loves to talk about Giganotosaurus, Deinonychus and Ornithomimus - but that Spinosaurus scares the heck out of her.

She was an astronaut for Halloween this year and as part of the lead up to that we got a couple of books about space out of the library. The books were far far too old for her but they had some good pictures so I got them. She was fascinated with the space shuttle, the training the astronauts go through and especially the pictures of the moon landing. She started planning a trip to the moon and asked me if she could wear her sparkly shoes when she went. I told her of course she could, and asked when she was planning on going. She told me when she was six and a big girl. Once Halloween was over we thought she might stop talking about rocket ships and astronauts, but much to our delight she is as interested as ever.

And what three year old girl living in America isn’t obsessed with princesses - Disney or otherwise? I loved princesses as much as the next girl when I was growing up - my favorite thing to wear when I was four was a “long dress” so I could twirl and dance around - but I am far from being the princess type now. Upon learning I was having a girl, I am pretty sure one of my first thoughts was, oh Lordy, please don’t let my kid be obsessed with princesses. Obviously I realize now that I would passionately adore my daughter no matter what she was obsessed with, but I have to say that the dinosaurs and rocket ships make the princesses much more palatable, even enjoyable, for me.

That’s our girl in a nutshell. She is spunky and determined and musical and challenging and sweet and passionate and loving and we are having more fun watching her grow than we ever imagined we could have.

Happy Birthday sweetie. We love you.