Birthing Beautiful Ideas

Some days, the kids really kick my ass.

I mean sledge-hammers over the head, sucker-punches to the gut, I-will-melt your-brain-into-Gruyere-and-neuron-fondue ass-kicking.

All you parents out there have those days, right?

Right.

Today’s ass-kicking was a byproduct of teething (the work of the devil, I tell you) and potty-training (the work of a choir of SAINTS).

Mixing those two is kind of like mixing bleach and ammonia.  EXCEPT THEY’RE MORE TOXIC!!!

Seriously dudes and dudettes, I think I actually ended up sporting a Jack-Nicholson-from-The-Shining-esque grin on my face today after trying for two fa-reakin’ hours to get my two overtired kids down for two too-much needed naps.

Whining reached all-time highs, meltdowns reached all-time emotional lows, and ways of expressing frustration or sadness or exhaustion reached exasperating levels of weirdness.

(Yeah, if I haven’t mentioned it before, A likes to LICK things–like carpet, walls, toys, etc.–when he is upset.  It’s bizarre.)

And I was all like, “WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO OPEN UP MY SKULL SO THAT YOU CAN DIP SOURDOUGH IN MY BRAIN-MELT, MY LOVELIES?”

So by 5:45 p.m., when the proverbial fondue was bubbling out of my eyeballs, I started crying.  I just sat down on the couch and sobbed, and when M (four-years-old) asked me what was wrong, I just said that “sometimes it’s really, really hard to be a mommy.”

And both kids lumbered up on the couch next to me, M covering my legs with a blanket, A wiping away my tears, and I was all like, “SERIOUSLY?!  All I had to do was bring out the WATERWORKS to get you kids to calm down?!”

(Don’t worry, I didn’t diminish the moment by saying those words out loud.  I kept ‘em deep inside the mushy, squishy contents of my skull.)

Once upon a time, there was a little kid who would eat most anything put on his plate.  Anything.

Black bean chili?  Curried chickpeas and tomatoes?  Berry medley?  Couscous with steamed carrots, broccoli, and spinach?

Bring it, baby, this kid liked good food.

Once upon a time, this kid also had a mother who had the really stupid idea that kids were only picky because their parents didn’t offer them enough of a variety of foods.

Ha.

Haaaaa haa.

Yeah, she was a first-time parent with all sorts of first-time-parent lofty (and misguided) ideas, so cut her some slack.

(I’ll stop talking about my hypothetical, third-person self…now.)

I don’t know where it all started, but somewhere along the line, M (who is now four years old) gave up on veggies.  Just…gave up.  Refused to eat them.  Refused to allow a single one of them (with the exception of plain steamed broccoli) to even grace his plate.  Thought they were the devil.  That they tasted like dog poo.  And all that anti-veggie jazz.

Without turning mealtime into an all-and-out battle (’cause I don’t happen to think that’s a healthy way to prepare a person for a lifetime of eating), Tim and I did try the occasional “bribe.”  (Here, kiddie, kiddie, here’s a cookie for just three bites of that spinach!)

We tried “reasoning.”  (Yes.  We tried reasoning with the kid who can fire back with this.)

We even tried pureeing roasted yellow peppers and/or carrots and “hiding” them in the melted cheese of his quesadillas and grilled cheese.  (Funny thing, those veggies.  Kids can actually taste them.)

(As an aside, I should mention that M’s diet still includes some healthy foods.  The kid can eat his weight in channa masala, black beans and rice, and blueberries.  And while he enjoys the occasional chicken nugget, he’s not going to “turn into one,” as the saying goes.  But I have this strange fascination with making sure that my kids get their veggies, even if they get lots of vitamins and minerals through their daily multivitamin.  I dunno, perhaps I’m weird that way.)

In any case, when bribery, reasoning, and hiding didn’t work, I resorted to the bottom of the barrel: trickery.

One morning, I peeled a sweet potato, sliced it into 1/4 inch circular slices, set them out on a cookie tray coated with cooking spray, drizzled some olive oil over them, sprinkled some brown sugar on the tops, and baked them for 15-25 minutes at 400F.

And that was the morning that M thought he had died and gone to heaven when he got to eat a dozen cookies for breakfast.

And I laughed all the way to the vitamin A bank.

Sometimes we even put sprinkles on top of the "cookies!"

On my 29th birthday, I posted a list of 29(+) accomplishments I hoped to tackle before turning thirty.

Within hours of creating that post, I was able to cross one of those accomplishments off of my list.

I took the kids on more sled rides than I did last year.

(If only all of my to-do lists could be met with so little procrastination and so much fun.)

Last Thursday marked the second day that I took the kids sledding this year, which means that I have already taken them sledding more than I did last year.

And I think they enjoyed it.

tandem sledding

In fact, I think they enjoyed their afternoon of being pulled around on the sled by Mom even more than they enjoyed the mega-watered down hot cocoa that I offered to them after our fun-yet-frigid adventure.

(Yes, I gave a nineteen-month-old watered down hot cocoa.  Oh the humanity!  And it wasn’t even organic!)

And I think we’ll do it again.  (Well, maybe not the hot cocoa.  I think that stuff was laced with PCP.  Or at least that’s the effect it had on my kids.)

Because welcoming the snow with the joy of a child is so much better than whining about it, right?

In the past few days, two recent conversations have gotten my mind venturing beyond Christmas and house-guests and struggling to get two overtired and overexcited children to bed when all they really, really want to do is take one more hit of the Christmas Spirit and ride out the high until way-past-bedtime o’clock.

One was a real-life discussion with a real-life friend, and the other was an online discussion over at The Feminist Breeder’s blog.  And both discussions (like many great ones elsewhere) revolved at least in part around kids, toys, gender, and feminism.

I’ve probably mentioned a couple (hundred) times that I have two kids–M (4) and A (19 months).  They are biologically male, or, as I like to abbreviate, boys.  (They also have full names, but I’m sort of protective of their identities because when you write about riding crops, vaginal birth, inverted nipples, and funny stories involving hernias, you get some REALLY WEIRD PEOPLE searching for REALLY WEIRD THINGS to get to your blog.)

In any case, for the most part I’ve tried not to assume much of anything about my kids based on the simple fact that they arrived on the planet with male sex parts. 

I’ve tried not to assume that they are inherently “more aggressive” than their female playmates.

I’ve tried not to assume that they are hard-wired to like playing with dump trucks and cars and to dislike playing with dolls and toy kitchens. 

And I’ve tried not to assume that their particular ways of playing are specifically boy ways of playing.

These efforts aren’t simply a matter of trying to practice feminist parenting.  For in addition to wanting my parenting to be informed by my feminist values, I also want the decisions I make as my kids’ mother to be informed by my very real respect for my children.

For just as I “listened” to my children’s needs when they were infants–when they needed to nurse, when they needed to cuddle, when they needed to sleep, etc.–I’m trying to listen to their interests and unique personalities as they grow older.  And part of that effort involves making a conscious effort to “de-gender” their interests and ways of playing.

My four-year-old son, for instance, has an enormous verbal strength and loves to arrange and organize and “make up movies and plays” with his toys.  Sometimes he’s setting up an array of pirates in his pirate ship, other times he’s talking about his love of ocean animals, and still other times he’s “making up movies” about fairies and unicorns. 

My 19-month-old son, on the other hand, tends to favor more physical play that involves building and constructing and using tools.  Sometimes he’s playing with the plastic hammer and drill at the kids’ workbench, other times he’s pretending to use a vacuum cleaner or a broom, and still other times he’s playing with my make-up brushes. 

As I see it, M and A’s general interests and ways of playing seem devoid of any gender-stereotypical significance.  Sure, the objects they play with are often associated with “girls’ toys” or “boys’ toys.”  The objects represent socially constructed gender roles and they illuminate the various socially constructed gender cues that send little boys (and their parents) down the TRUCKS AND WAR GAMES aisle and little girls (and their parents) down the VOMIT-OF-PINK-PRINCESSES-AND-PONIES aisle at the toy store.

But as I see with my own kids, a boy who loves arranging and organizing can do so with pirates and fairies, and a boy who loves playing with tools can do so with a toy hammer and with his mom’s make-up brushes.

My own boys have ways of playing that they like and prefer, and I try to give them the space and freedom to explore these ways of playing with lots of different objects, whether or not they are traditionally associated with “boys’ toys”

And allowing them to be themselves in this way is one of the best things I can do to respect who they are and what they like.

My 18-month-old son, A, has ginormously wide feet.

Like, wiiiiiiiide feet.  Feet that are so wide that I have never been able to squeeze them into any of the shoes I’ve ever found at Target (i.e. our affordable-shoes location of choice).  Feet that are so wide that they have literally drawn gasps from those who have looked upon them.

I love his feet.  They are squishably adorable baby feet, the sorts of feet that are the epitome of squishably adorable baby feet.

But there’s a catch to all of this squishable adorableness.

Before A started walking, I often chalked up his foot girth to the rolls (yes, rolls) of fat with which his feet were once cloaked.  And as much as I adored those rolls, I hoped against hope that once he started walking, all of the extra “foot-exercise” would “thin-out” his feet a bit, so then we wouldn’t have to make any trips to those outrageously expensive kids’ shoe stores to find footwear that fit his tootsies.

But this morning, four months after A’s first step, a day in which he was still only able to fit into the pair of Crocs that I purchased for him this summer (and FYI, Crocs aren’t exactly practical in during Ohio Decembers), I decided that it was time to make my very first journey to Stride Rite and buy some really damn expensive shoes for A’s really damn wide feet.

Turns out the kid doesn’t just have wide feet.  He has what the Stride Rite saleswoman called “double-wide” feet.

Just like a couple of trailers.  Parked at the bottom of his (c)ankles.

Trying on shoes didn’t take very long since there were only two styles in the entire store that came in “double-wides” in A’s size.  So after we spent nearly a gabillion dollars on a pair of tennis shoes for A’s trailers, we took our loot to the car, and I began buckling the kids into their car seats.

And then our shoe-extravaganza took a surprisingly scary turn as one of those large wind gusts that I had heard the weatherperson predict on the news earlier this morning blew through the area.  I heard an awful creaking sound and felt the car rumble and shake violently, and I literally threw myself over the boys as it all happened.

From where I lay, I saw the giant metal awning, which mere seconds ago had hung above the Stride Rite entrance, skid across the street just a few inches to the left of my leg.

Suddenly, the saleswoman from Stride Rite was rushing out to the car to make sure that we were alright, and I was unbuckling car seats with lightning speed. 

Debbie (my Stride Rite hero) helped me carry the boys to safety inside the building, where I took a moment to decompress.  To chuckle (in what was surely a moment of shock) about the “freak things” that often happen to me.  To hold the boys a little tighter than they were probably used to.

After exchanging a few harried yet relieved words with Debbie, I asked her if she had seen “all that glass” on the sidewalk as we were sprinting inside the store.

“Yeah, but I think it was just some plastic that had broken when the awning hit the lightpost,” she responded.

“It hit the lightpost?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think it hit the lightpost and then was knocked over toward your direction.  Oh my God, oh my God, I’m so glad that you three are alright!”

“Me too,” I muttered, still wondering about the glass.  “You know, I’m going to check outside real quick to see if it did any damage to the car.”

And then I saw it.  Our entire back windshield, shattered to pieces.  Not cracked.  Not marred by a hole in the glass.

But gone.

And the door that was open as I was buckling A into his carseat?

It could no longer shut entirely because of the force with which the awning hit it.

(This was one iron-clad awning, if you haven’t pick up on that already.)

The enormity of what has just happened was starting to hit me, was finally starting to seep its way into my consciousness, but I still wasn’t ready to “go there” quite yet.

Because I needed to file a police report.  I needed to gather insurance information from the store manager.  I needed to call Tim to come and pick us up from the mall because I couldn’t really drive home with the kids in the car, without a back windshield, in the middle of a windstorm.

And after about fifteen minutes had past, I finally burst into tears.

It wasn’t the car.  I didn’t give a flying crap about the car in that moment.

Instead, I was letting my mind “go there.”

To the “what ifs.”

What if we had left the store a minute later, leaving at least one or even all three of us still outside before the wind struck?

What if I had asked M to stand and wait on the sidewalk next to the car while I buckled in his brother first?

What if I hadn’t popped my head into the car to check A’s seatbelt right before the wind struck?

What if M hadn’t been acting up in the backseat, thereby delaying the moment in which I stepped outside into the awning’s path?

What if my children had been in the path of that awning as it flew across the sidewalk and street with enough force to shatter our entire back windshield?

I know parents with lives much different than my privileged life face these “what ifs” almost daily.  I also know that not every parent is lucky enough to even ask “what if” while staring at their very-much-alive child’s face.  And I even know each second of our life and each one of our decisions has some sort of meaningful impact on our future.

But I also know that I cannot even begin to face the other side of the “what ifs” that I asked myself this morning in that store filled with overpriced children’s shoes.

It’s too impossibly painful even to think about the other side of the “what ifs,” to articulate what that “other side” could have been.

I do know and can articulate this, however: there are lots of people who deserve some hefty thank-yous after today.

First and foremost is Debbie, shoe saleswoman and superhero to my kids and me.  She got us drinks and held A while I filed the police report and gave me loads of hugs and joked with me about how we both needed to go out for a glass of wine after this all was done and even volunteered to be a witness for me if one were ever needed.  She’s awesome, and if you’re ever shopping for really damn expensive children’s shoes in the Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio, you should go and see her and tell her how awesome she is for me.

Many heartfelt thanks also go to the cleaning staff at Easton.  Those guys were under no obligation to clean out the trunk of my car with a ShopVac, but they did it anyway.  Hell, they offered to do it at a moment when my mind was eons away from thinking about my car.  Again, they are totally awesome people who make me wish that I were independently wealthy and/or wielding lots of community power so that I could lobby to get them major raises and/or giant holiday bonuses.

Thanks too to the anonymous mother who, after purchasing shoes for her daughter, returned to Stride Rite moments later with a bag of Harry and David chocolates in her hand.  She gave them to me and said, “I didn’t know what to do for you, but I know that I need chocolate when I’m in crisis mode.”  Dear anonymous mother, I hope everyone on this planet gets to experience moments of small-yet-enormous kindness-from-strangers like yours.  Oh, and M and I finished the whole bag of chocolates before we even pulled into the driveway of our house, so yes, I guess chocolate was what I needed too.

And for anyone who needs a jolt of levity right now, I’ll leave you with this:

As I was on the phone with my mother earlier this afternoon, recounting for her the events of our day, I got to giggling and said, “You know, it would have totally sucked if my obituary had read, ‘Kristen died after getting whacked in the head by an awning at the Stride Rite.’  But you guys would definitely have had permission to laugh about it after my funeral.”

And that’s the only “what if” I’m allowing myself to think about for the rest of the evening.

Dear M,

It was four years ago today, at just about this time, that you were born.

Four years ago today that you began a life separate from me, but that I began a life indelibly marked by yours.

And in this past year, as you have grown from a three-year-old to a four-year-old, I can say with absolute certainty and honesty that I am even more amazed by you and even prouder to be your mother than I was a year ago.  And I was pretty damn amazed and proud to begin with.

I have watched as your already vast knowledge of the animal kingdom grew this year.  I watched (sometimes with admiration, sometimes with distress) as your verbal agility grew into some pretty formidable verbal acrobatics.  And I watched as you ventured into the world of sports, developing a new love for playing soccer and baseball.  (As your left-handed mother, I should add that I am also pleased to see that you at least bat left-handed!) 

I love that you are passionate about these and other interests.  I love that you are giddy to share your interests with those around you.  And I hope upon hope that you remain just as passionate about what you love as you get older, and that, some day, you find a way of life for which you can maintain that level of passion.

This year, I have also watched you as you have grown into your role as A’s big brother.  You are so caring, so patient, and so loving for your age.  The unprovoked hugs and the out-of-the-blue “I love yous” to A give me (and, I’m sure, your brother) some of the most touching and delightful moments in my day.  He is so lucky to have you as his big brother.  And you are both so lucky to have one another. 

And finally, I have watched as you had your feelings really, truly hurt for the first time this year.  The agony of witnessing your first “boo-boos” was nothing compared to the agony I experienced when I saw that pained look on your face.  And I do believe my most fervent prayer this year was that the pain you felt was nothing compared to the pain I felt as I watched my baby boy have hurt feelings for the first time. 

And you were so calm, so resilient, so wise.  As Mommy boiled with rage, rage, rage, you remained steady.  You expressed your hurt feelings with an admirable depth and kindness.  You did not conceal your pain, but you did not let it consume you either.  There were tears, but there was no lashing out.  You were upset, but you were not angry.  And your method of forgiveness was not an act of retreat but was instead brave and kind.

At moments like these, I want to carry you up on my shoulders.  I want a crowd to surround you and lift you up and cheer for you, and I want to shout, through muffled tears, “That’s my boy!  That’s my boy!”

M, you are a bustling, bouncing ball of love.  You have a deep and sensitive heart.  You have a generous spirit and a lively sense of humor.  And whether your ever-present intensity manifests itself through joy or anger or explosive wildness, I know that this love is always, always there.

And as you’ve said to me on many a day, in many a moment when I’m frazzled or mellow, anxious or bored, happy or depressed, “M, you know, I really love you.”

Happy birthday, angel-boy.

I had always expected the sleep deprivation of the newborn weeks. 

I knew enough about babies even before I had children of my own to know that one of the best ways to navigate the newborn stage was to surrender to the sleeplessness and the fatigue and  the pajama-clad days.  To surrender to our baby and to the brand new life that we were forging for ourselves.  To tolerate and even come to enjoy the extended nursing sessions, the 2 a.m. blow-out poops that Tim and I eventually learned to handle with our eyes half-closed, and the hours upon hours of holding our helpless, precious baby. 

And then there were the months of late-night infant-feeding.  Those quiet moments wrapped up in blankets and shadows where I could cuddle my baby and nurse him back to sleep.  Those nights where the interruptions in my sleep were special, almost magical.

I had expected those mildly sleep-depriving nights as well, and I treasured the tranquil bond they afforded to my sons and me.

But (and here’s where this blog post takes a surprising turn), I do not ever and will not ever and do not ever condone anyone who finds pleasurable or magical or enjoyable those mornings where my or any other children decide to wake up for good at 3:30 a.m.

It’s cruel.  And unusual.  And it certainly feels like punishment.  (And I’m looking straight at you, my deranged little toddler.)

What’s especially disconcerting is that after the newborn era and the regular nightly nursing sessions, one comes to expect a certain amount of restful sleep each night.  One expects to wake up at a predictable hour (say, after the sunrise), and one even expects a few early wakings (say, just before the sunrise).

But 3:30 in the morning?  3:30 in the ridiculously early morning?!

It’s so ridiculous that my brain hurts just trying to think about it!  And I’m not really even thinking about it!  I’m just trying!

So now, I’m walking around all morning like a drunken seven-year-old and making statements like:

“Please!  Don’t jump the duice from your strawberries on your lap!”

“Hey, let’s keep your bottom on the table so that you don’t fall off your chair.”  (M proceeds to get a wicked gleam in his eye as he thinks I have just given him permission to play on top of the kitchen table.)

(Spoken to my own mother): “Mommy, thanks for making coffee this morning.”

(After a quesadilla I’m preparing for my three-year-old somehow sprouts legs, leaps high into the air, and makes a death-defying plunge toward the kitchen floor): “FIVE SECOND RULE!  FIVE SECOND RULE!  You can still eat it!  I swear!”

“You’re doing such a great job of taking your clothes on…I mean putting your clothes off…oh, whatever, you know what I mean.”

It’s days like these where even a giant-sized styrofoam cup of brown sludge from the gas station sound like a big slice o’ heaven to me.

I’m proud to say that I’m teaching my kids their manners.

You know, the basic ones, like ”please and thank you,” “you’re welcome,” “excuse me” (which I will address momentarily), etc.

And my reasons for doing this have little to do with caring about what’s “proper.”  I, for one, am pretty much a slug when it comes to all things proper, and I am ten shades of horrible when it comes to etiquette.

Nor do I care at all about teaching my kids to be deferential toward adults.  Of course, I want my kids to listen to an adult when s/he has their health, safety, and general well-being in mind (*ahem* like ME, darling children).  But I certainly don’t want to instill in my children the idea that they are somehow lesser persons or are less deserving of respect than adults are.

In fact, the reason that I do care about teaching my kids to say their “please and thank yous” and so on is that I want to instill in them a respect for all people–adults and other children alike.  And my hope is that this respect and gratitude and kindness and whatnot will translate into some pretty awesome grown-up versions of my kids some day.

Now, before you go thinking, “Oh JAYSUS, is this lady trying to nominate herself for parent-of-the-year or something?!” please think again.

As I was on the phone with my sister yesterday, our children interrupted us a couple of times in the manners-infused way they’ve been taught.

With a polite “excuse me” to introduce their interruption.

On my end, these interruptions were mainly filled with the sorts of questions that are only meant to communicate, “Mommy!  You’ve been on the phone for fifteen seconds already!!!  Get off the phone!  It’s time to talk about apple juice, poop, and dragons again!!!” 

You know, questions like, “Um…EXCUSE ME…um…Mommy…um…um…is it sunny out today?” while the kid is standing right next to an open window through which sunlight is pouring and shining upon said child’s little angelic head.

Or, “EXCUSE ME, Mommy, you’re a PEANUT-BUTTER HEAD!!!!  Ahahahahahahahaha!!!”

Nonetheless, I heaved a little motherly sigh to my sister and said, “Well, at least we’ve taught them to say ‘excuse me,’ right?  At least they have good manners.”

And she said, “Yeah, but I think that the ‘excuse me’s’ even get old and annoying after a while, don’t you think?  It’s just not like those other manners words.”

And I paused for a moment.  And then I said, ever so quietly, “Yes.  They are kind of like tiny little needles piercing your eardrums.  Especially when you’re trying to get something done.  Can’t we just find some sort of manner that represents the whole, ‘Please sit down and stay silent for a few moments so that Mom can drink her coffee and get her gab on with her sister’?  Or at least a, ’Hey!  This little box pressed against my ear does not mean that you have to stop playing with your toys and tug at my shirt until I’ve stopped to hear you call me a peanut-butter head!’?”

But instead, I stopped to endure the indignity of patient peanut-butter heads all over the globe.  And I confirmed that, yes, it was sunny outside.  (And I also inserted a few, “Why don’t you work on this puzzle here for a few minutes while Mommy talks to your aunt!  Please!  Thank you!  YOU’RE WELCOME!  EXCUSE ME!  POLITENESS EXPLOSION!”)

Because I’m afraid that if I act like a jackass to them, they might internalize some of that jackassery and not grow up to be awesome grown-up versions of themselves some day.

And I please, pretty please, would not like that.

Thank you very much.

Have you ever read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?

It’s about this little boy who wakes up one morning and goes on to have (you guessed it) a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  His brothers treat him like crap, his mom forgets to put dessert in his lunch, his best friend relegates him to “third best friend,” and his entire day reeks of the sort of one-damn-thing-after-another suckitude that dooce  talks about when she bemoans Ben Stiller movies.

My day started off by taking a page right out of that book.

Both boys were up before 5 a.m. (CURSES to the paper guy who hurled the blasted newspaper into the front door!)  With M in our bed with me, and Tim in the bed next to A’s crib, we were hoping against hope that the kids would at least sleep until 6.

But then M started kicking me, and when I kindly asked him to stop, he began kicking me more, and when I sternly told him to stop, he started kicking me and giggling, and then the pre-dawn erupted into a mommy-and-preschooler-tizzy, which ended with both M and A wide awake and ready to roll.

And oh the crankiness.

There was a bath attempt.  An attempt at “calmness.”  Except that as I removed A’s diaper on the bathroom floor, I discovered a SURPRISE poo, which meant that I had to chase A around the house with a wet wipe, all the while hoping that he wouldn’t sit down and smear brown stink onto his grandmother’s carpet.

Then when I wrangled him, wiped him, and whisked him back to the bathroom, he peed all over the floor just as I set him down on the linoleum.

It was something a 6 p.m. brain could handle.  But not my 6 a.m. brain.

Then during breakfast there were Cheerios strewn across the kitchen floor, and then teeny angry feet stomping said Cheerios into oblivion.

There were sippy cups chucked at Mommy’s head, and bits of cheese launched onto the stove.

There were screams and whines and alternating demands for more juice and more milk and a banana and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and where’s that milk already and hurry it up with the sandwich would’ja, and after about an hour I wanted to shout, “When are you kids going to be old enough to make your own damn sandwiches?  In fact, why don’t you both get me a drink, a warm meal, and then tuck me into bed while you clean up the kitchen and write my dissertation?  Mmmkay?”

I didn’t really say those things.

But I sure was thinking them as I walked my cranky boys back to their bedrooms for an 8:50 a.m. nap. 

I was thinking about how nice it would be when they weren’t so dependent on me for their health and safety and well-being.  I was thinking about how much I look forward to “sleeping in” until 7 a.m. some day.  I was thinking about a future in which I could let A run off into the next room without me worrying about whether he’s about to hurt or poison or otherwise harm himself.  I was thinking about a future in which M could, yes, make his own damn sandwich.

I was wishing away the days.  Wishing away the next few years until raising kids could get “easier.”

(I know parents of teenagers are out there going, “Just you wait, Kristen.  Just you wait.“)

After both boys fell asleep within minutes (evidence for God’s existence?), I had the chance–a precious sliver of time–to review some of the pictures I had taken during a recent outing to the playground.

And my attention was immediately drawn toward a particularly sweet photo of M and A.

There was my almost-four-year-old M at the bottom of the slide.  That little boy who just earlier this summer trembled at the mere sight of a slide.  The little boy who once refused to go down the slide even on his parents’ laps.  The little boy whose independence and confidence is blossoming each day.

From where did this new-found bravery come?  Who is this big boy now anxious to slip down the giant twisty slide fifteen times in one park visit?  What happened to that little guy who always needed Mommy’s reassuring hand in his hand on the playground?

And then there is A, M’s 16-month-old brother, at the top of the slide.  No prompting.  No positioning.  He just turned around at the top of the slide and slid down to the bottom, all by himself.  As if it were no big deal.  So nonchalant.  So cool.

From where did this new-found independence come?  Who is this toddler who can now navigate the playground equipment all by himself?  What happened to the snuggly baby who used to spend each park outing in the comfort of his sling?

In fact, it seems like just yesterday that both boys were tiny, squishy newborns.

And though I cannot soon forget the sleepless nights and marathon nursing sessions and the ear-piercing cries of their infancy, I also cannot soon forget their sweet baby smells and their small, helpless bodies pressed against my own as I held them.

And I now treasure those moments that they still want my reassuring hand in their hand, in which they still need me to help them cross the street or to read them a bedtime story…or even to make them a sandwich.

These moments slide by far too quickly for me to want to wish them away.

Even if I have to trudge through a few terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.

Tim and I spent several hours at the house yesterday, and “all” I had to show for it was a nearly-entirely-primed kitchen.

Lesson learned?

Priming takes a long time, especially when one is attempting to cover up lavender trim, “ghosted” walls, and grease-stained ceilings.

But at least the streaky primed walls look better than they did before.  (And that’s a sad and sorry testament to just how bad they looked when we closed on the house.)

In any case, after all that priming–and after an ice cream treat at our favorite local shop–something funny happened on the way back home.

I don’t know if it was the effect of an hours-long subjection to paint fumes or of the utterly splendid cup of cherry lambic sorbet that I ate at Jeni’s Ice Cream, but I had what one might call an “epiphany” about my parenting skills.

And that epiphany left me thinking that I am doing well at this whole mothering thing.

While this in and of itself would not constitute an epiphany for most, it is a big one for me.  And I will be the first to admit that I am hopelessly neurotic about the looming question of “whether or not I am a good mom.”  I am (perhaps to the point of narcissism) constantly concerned about what others think of my parenting skills.  It’s as if I think that any time the kids or I do something that can’t be construed as “parental/child perfection” the words “BAD MOM” are suddenly scrawled across my forehead.

I yell when instead I should take a deep breath and step back a minute?  I’m a BAD MOM!

The kids sometimes whine and scream and throw giant fits?  They must have a BAD MOM!

I don’t practice all of the same methods or techniques that all those other seemingly serene and good-choice-making parents make?  BAD FREAKIN’ MOM!

It’s irrational and silly, I know.  It’s actually beyond irrational and silly.

But as Tim and I were making the journey back from our new house to the house where we currently reside (i.e. Chez My Parents), we started talking about a few of the especially cute things that the kids had done in recent weeks, and I began to recognize just how irrational and silly my bad-mom worries were.

Because I realized that I had been holding an unattainably broad conception of “good parenting.”

For the past three-and-almost-four years, I have been thinking that if I do not excel in every aspect of my parenting, then I am somehow deserving of that dreaded “bad mom” moniker.  That if my kid whines more than the next kid, then I am doing a bad job of meeting his needs.  That if I don’t organize “enough” play dates or read “enough” books to my kids or make sure that they get “enough” vegetables each day, then I am shirking my parental duties.  That if I do not instill the perfect forms and levels of justice and peace and tolerance and respect and love in my children, then I am an absolute failure as a mother.

That if I am not a perfect mother, then I am not a good mother.

And my conversation with Tim last night made me realize that one parent’s version of “good parenting” need not be the standard-bearer of parental success for me.  That it is more than acceptable for me to narrow my focus on a handful of hopes and dreams that I have for my children in order to determine whether or not I’m a “good mom.”

That a lack of perfection need not imply a lack of good parenting.

So what actually gave me that epiphany?

Tim and I were talking about how when M (our 3-year-old) was crying earlier in the day, A (our 16-month-old) stopped dead in his tracks, walked over to M, and wrapped his chubby arms around his brother’s neck.

And then about how when M was not even two, he had comforted a crying friend (a two-year-old girl who had recently moved from Serbia to the U.S. and who was not only unfamiliar with the English language but also partially deaf) by performing a finger puppet show for her.  (He even had his elephant puppet proclaim, “It’s alright, Tara, your mommy will be home soon!”)

And then about the many times that our children have offered up consoling hugs and “it’s okays” and “I love yous” and other kind words to others who have been hurt or sad.  And all without any prodding on our part.  And all (at least presumably) springing forth from the love and kindness and compassion that Tim and I have helped to instill in them.

And reflecting upon all of these events finally told me that one of the primary parenting hopes and goals that I have tried to realize in raising my children–to raise kind and compassionate and loving people–is in the process of being actualized.

And that made me think that I may be an alright mom after all.