As per my last post, I’m not supposed to be generating new material here at this point. But I’m breaking my self-imposed maternity leave because inspiration has struck! Today! On Facebook (of course)!
Here’s the thing: today I am 38 weeks pregnant, and I have been stuck at home with all three girls ALL DAY. Stuck this morning because Erick had to take the minivan to Burlington for servicing; stuck this afternoon because of greenish skies that come with a forecast of severe thunderstorms and flash floods. Have my girls risen to this situation by being on their best behavior? They have not. Instead, they’ve taken turns having meltdowns and squabbles about crucial issues like: not wanting to wear bug spray, not having a roof for their pillow fort, and why their sisters won’t play with them when they’re in the middle of a temper tantrum.
So, of course, this is the day when multiple friends (beloved, respected friends and wonderful mothers) shared a viral link on Facebook about the importance of not yelling at your kids.
Guess what? I yelled at my kids this very morning.
Guess what else? I don’t really feel guilty about it.
Mind you, I’m not a fan of indiscriminate, totally out-of-control screaming at my kids. But:
-There are definitely times when I think a well-placed yell is completely appropriate. The author of the Facebook article writes about seeing the fear in her daughter’s eyes after spilling a bag of rice as her inspiration to stop yelling. I would not consider food or drink spillage — which my girls do countless times each day — as appropriate grounds for yelling. However, there are PLENTY of times when I’d like to see a little fear in my children’s eyes when they look at me. “Fear” might be a loaded word; I’m talking about “respect,” “knowledge of wrongdoing,” and — at the very least — “attentiveness.” These situations include but aren’t limited to: hitting/biting/spitting at your sister, refusing to hold hands and running into the street, and all three girls screaming at the top of their lungs — just for fun — after repeated pleas to tone it down.
I’m all for taking a deep breath and using a reasonable voice the first time (or two) that I ask my girls to stop a certain behavior. After that, if I don’t raise my voice to get their attention and show that I’m serious — as the saying goes — shame on me.
-There are definitely times when I yell wrongly, but I wouldn’t trade those moments. Do I sometimes lose it too much? Is my yelling sometimes less about my kids and more about me feeling (theoretically) exhausted, swollen, and sweaty? You bet.
So guess what I do after those bad-mommy moments? I apologize. I apologize sincerely, ask my kids to forgive me, and emphasize that I, too, am human and make mistakes. I think that’s a really important part of parenthood: letting our kids see that we’re not perfect, that we regret certain behaviors, and that we can confess to those behaviors and ask forgiveness and move on. This gives them permission to acknowledge their own inner darkness, and an example for how to handle outbursts in a healthy manner. In the end, I’d rather be a mom who’s human than a mom who always speaks at the same calm pitch.
I’m certainly not advising anybody to yell at their kids. I just wanted to say that, if anybody read that Facebook article and felt guilty, felt like a bad parent — DON’T. We’re all just human moms (and dads), doing our best, trying to simultaneously love our kids and guide them towards being functional members of society. That ain’t easy work. At the end of the day, like so many things we feel guilt about, worrying that we yell too much at our kids is a first-world parenting problem.
When I was preparing for Fiona’s birth, I had A Plan. An actual, pen-on-paper plan that I’d written on the “Birth Plan” worksheet given by Kaiser Hospital to all expectant parents. I made a music playlist called “Birth.” My suitcase was packed. My mother was scheduled to fly out and be my birth coach.
Confident in my plan, I worked until two weeks before my due date, and scheduled my baby shower for the weekend following my last day at the office.
Fiona arrived, in what I’ve come to think of as “her customary dramatic style,” via emergency c-section at approximately the time my baby shower was supposed to be ending. I went to the hospital hoping for relief from what I thought was history’s worst case of heartburn; I returned home five days later with a teeny-tiny baby to a living room full of unopened baby shower gifts.
So much for The Plan.
When I was preparing for Campbell’s birth, I was determined not to make the same mistake twice. I didn’t bother with a birth plan, didn’t schedule any relatives to fly out in advance, and skipped any baby shower. Instead, I focused all of my energy on preparing myself and my house for the new baby: I stopped work a full month before my due date, and during that first week off I stocked up on enough diapers and baby supplies to last until Campbell turned two. (Not exaggerating: we still had newborn-sized diapers left over when Georgia was born).
Campbell arrived, in what I’ve come to thing of as “her customary laid-back style,” ONE WEEK LATE. She even pulled a bait-and-switch by causing enough contractions to send me to the hospital (after calling my parents to tell them to GET ON A PLANE – THE BABY’S COMING!); a few hours later, the contractions stopped for another 36 hours, until Campbell decided that maybe she’d like to be born after all. (It shouldn’t surprise me that, to this day, Campbell is the HARDEST kid to get out the door). By the time she was born, I was about to lose my mind with the impatience and boredom of waiting.
When it was Georgia’s turn, I tried a more moderate approach: I worked a little closer to my due date, but made sure I was prepared well in advance. (By your third child, “preparing” involves buying one pack of newborn diapers). While I didn’t have a birth plan per se, we did book a doula to coach me through the delivery because Erick was so busy finishing his PhD.
Georgia arrived exactly one week early, and in what I’ve come to think of as my customary, “‘Hey, Georgia, you doin’ okay?’ style,” I barely even noticed; just prior to her birth, Erick had accepted a new job in Vermont, so my mind was full of the logistics of buying a new house, preschool registration, and packing-and-moving. (Of course, when we called the doula to tell her that the baby was coming, it turned out that she had the flu, so poor Erick ended up being my birth coach after all).
All of which is to say that I no longer put much stock in plans when it comes to birth. The old adage, “Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans,” seems to apply particularly to labor and delivery. I know almost nobody who got the birth they’d planned, and the odds diminish the more children you have. The few people I know whose Birth Plans progressed flawlessly always seem a little smug — at least, I have trouble judging them charitably. When they tell me about how they gave birth on a bed of roses surrounded by candles, listening to the soothing music of their labor playlist, while attended by a unicorn, I want to say, “OKAY, so you got a perfect birth experience. Let’s check in again in about 18 years, shall we? See if everything’s STILL going according to plan?”
I have no idea what to expect from Kiddo 4. He or she could come early or late. We’ve got some plans for grandparents to arrive in advance of my due date, but who knows? I just hope I’ll have time to buy a pack of newborn diapers and dig the baby clothes out of the bottom of the closet.
Despite all of these unknowns, I do have a plan for this blog. So here it is: you’re reading this post about 2 weeks in advance of my due date. For the next couple of months, the only new material you’ll read here (aside from a baby announcement when the time comes) will be my regularly-scheduled articles for The Addison Independent and On the Willows.
If that doesn’t seem like enough, have no fear! Here’s what I’ve done: I’ve had a lot of fun going back through the archives, pulling up some of my favorite posts from the past two years. I’ll be regularly re-posting these pieces through mid-July. The Pickle Patch readership has increased A LOT over the past year, so for many of you this will be a first look at some older material. For faithful readers who’ve seen these before, I hope it’ll be a fun re-read (or maybe you’ll say, “Boy, Faith sure was a lousy writer back then!”).
While I’m away, in addition to caring for a newborn, I hope to work on some new material. I have lots of ideas, and there’s nothing like round-the-clock feedings to spur the creative process. Stay tuned!
Thank you all so much for taking time from your busy, overstimulated days to read what I write! Have a wonderful start to your summer, and I’ll meet you back here in July!
Kiddo 4 is officially full-term today, which means that his/her birth date is fast approaching. To be honest, I’m kind of hoping this baby arrives on the early end; I’m feeling tired, and it takes a lot of effort to get our family’s “ducks in a row” EVERY NIGHT, just in case the baby comes. Then again, my personal deadline keeps on moving to accommodate major life events; at the moment, this baby can’t be born until after: tonight’s preschool potluck, Erick’s poker game on Saturday night, my cousin’s law school graduation on Sunday…and definitely not until I’ve watched the final Season 3 episode of “Downton Abbey.” (Got it, Kiddo? That last one’s especially important).
While looking though all of my past blog posts in preparation for my maternity blogging plan (to be announced shortly), I noticed something distressing: the overwhelming majority of them had to do with parenthood. This was distressing because, in all honestly, I don’t think of myself as writing a “mommy blog.” I try to keep motherhood and my children in perspective, and there are MANY things that I find MUCH more interesting than child-rearing.
But I write this blog, it reflects my life, it’s full of my thoughts and experiences — and I am a mother. So I suppose it’s inevitable that my parenting should seep into my writing.
As I prepare to become a mother for the fourth time, I’ve been thinking how 5.5 years of parenthood have changed me. Here are a few things that I came up with, some of which are a little hard to admit. (Please note that this is NOT advice! No no, just changes I’ve observed in myself.):
1. Passing the baton? Erick brought home a couple issues of Vanity Fair magazine from his recent travels, which I’ve been reading slowly as a guilty pleasure. While perusing the glossy profiles of the fabulously rich and famous, I noticed a change in my thinking: No longer was I imagining what I would say if interviewed for a Vanity Fair profile. No; instead, I was imagining what my children would say about their childhood — specifically, their blissful childhood with their loving, supportive mother — if they were someday interviewed for a Vanity Fair profile. I don’t think you can call this “humility,” but it’s sort of close: abandoning grand plans for self, recognizing that one has to step aside and let the kids shine. Something like that.
2. Shifting goals. I’ve realized lately that what would make me happiest at the end of my life — my ultimate marker of success — would be if our children all still love each other and still enjoy family time together, even when they’re grown. Needless to say, this is a life goal that wouldn’t have entered my thinking six years ago. It doesn’t even seem all that lofty, but IT IS. To have adult children who still like each other and their parents — how many families can claim that? And how wonderful for the families that can!
3. A looser grip. This probably has more to do with the number of children we have rather than parenting itself, but here it is: I don’t worry about my children nearly as much as I did when I had my first child. I can’t worry about my children nearly as much as I did when I had my first child, because I just don’t have the capacity to store that much worry. When Fiona was first born, it would rip me to pieces if she screamed in her car seat. A fever was cause for a call to the doctor and a day spent in quarantine. If I wasn’t stimulating her in some way during her waking hours, I felt horrible.
I look back at the mom I was then and think it’s pretty cute. Because NOW I am deaf to screams. NOW fevers don’t scare me, I just want them to go away quickly so I can send the kids back to school. NOW, as long as the kids aren’t asking me for anything, I will leave them playing and go about my business for as long as possible. True confession: I’ve even left Georgia alone in the backyard for short periods of time as long as the dogs (Gracie and the neighbors’ dog, Brinkley) were with her. Large, protective dogs are considered appropriate childcare, right?
4. Never say “never.” I made a lot of proclamations as a younger mother. I laid down my laws because I was terrified, because more rules made me feel more in control, and because I naively put (well-intentioned) principles ahead of sanity. So I said things like:
“Absolutely NO T.V. until age 2, and then only 30 minutes a day!”
“I will never, ever make meals to order. Dinner is what’s on the table!”
We don’t own a T.V., which I’m glad of for many reasons, and I really do try to limit early exposure to the DVD player, and to limit consumption to 30 minutes a day. But never say never! What do you do with the 18-month-old who wants to watch what her sisters are watching when you need to make dinner? What do you do with three kids in the car during a three-hour drive to Montreal? I’ll tell you what you do: YOU LET THEM ZONE OUT IN FRONT OF THAT VIDEO, AND YOU GIVE THANKS TO GOD FOR PORTABLE DVD PLAYERS!
As for food, I do try to have everyone eating basically the same thing — especially for dinner. But I ask you, what do you do when your first child only wants bagels with cream cheese, your second child only wants peanut butter & jelly, and your third child wants a bit of what everyone else has AND a grilled cheese? Then comes the day when everyone decides they no longer like your go-to crowd pleaser: macaroni & cheese. Really, all you want is for everyone to enjoy dinner with a minimum of screaming, to stay at the table as long as possible, and to consume some calories. What do you do? I’ll tell you what you do: YOU MAKE THEM WHAT THEY’LL EAT, PLUS OPTIMISTIC SAMPLES OF THE FOOD YOU & YOUR HUSBAND ARE EATING, AND YOU RESOLVE TO ENFORCE ONE-DINNER-FOR-ALL NEXT YEAR!
So, there you have it: the collected wisdom of six years and three children. I’ve changed, I think mostly for the better. Whether this fourth child will push me over the edge is yet to be seen….
If you were to ask me now, almost two years since I moved to Vermont, what I miss most about the other places I’ve lived – the Virginia suburbs, Manhattan, the San Francisco Bay Area – I would answer: “Sidewalks.”
A picture of four mud-soaked and delighted children was recently posted on the Facebook page of a children’s museum that we frequented when we lived in California, under the caption: This is how kids should be playing.
I chuckled when I saw it, with a mixture of amusement and bitterness. In that instant, here’s what I thought:
-This is what my own kids, and our dog, have looked like for the past month.
-YES, at my core, I do believe that’s how kids should be playing.
-It’s very easy to sit in Berkeley, California — where THERE IS NO MUD SEASON — and say that’s how kids “should” be playing. Never, in the five years I lived in the Bay Area, did I see kids who really looked like this.
It’s mud season here in Vermont, that fifth season that marks the transition between winter and spring. The snow melts, the ground thaws, and until the trees burst open green leaves we spend weeks squishing through inches of mucky mud.
My husband, Erick, has what we jokingly refer to as Daddy Ears. Here’s what I mean:
In a house with three children, we have plenty of “Miss Clavel” moments — Miss Clavel being the nun in charge of the Parisian girls’ boarding school in Ludwig Bemelmens’s classic book Madeleine. Remember? “In the middle of the night, Miss Clavel turned on her light and said, ‘Something is not right!'”
In our house, there are cries in the night, and bumps, and potty emergencies. The noise announcing these crises may range from a whimper to a shriek, but I can guarantee that noise will pull me out of a sound sleep and send me running down the hall.
These days, our dog, Gracie, is always a few steps ahead of me. Gracie usually sleeps in her doggie bed downstairs, but she has the sharpest ears in the house and she loves her girls, so she comes barreling upstairs at the slightest sound of upset. (When she knows that things are really bad — a terrifying nightmare, say — Gracie plops herself down next to the bed in question, where she’ll sleep protectively for the rest of the night. Never have I understood so well why the Darling family in Peter Pan used a Newfoundland as their nanny).
Guess who never, ever comes running, who rarely cracks an eyelid at these moments? Erick. Once I’ve put out the fire in question and returned to bed, I’m impressed if he turns to me and mumbles, “‘It okay?” Usually he’ll slumber on, blissfully unaware.
That’s because Erick has Daddy Ears.
Point of clarification, before I get in trouble: We call them “Daddy Ears,” because in our house it’s always the mommy who comes running in the night, while the daddy snores. This may not be the case in other houses. I’m sure there are some daddies who are the first responders. For that matter, there are plenty of homes in which there’s only one parent, and it’s up to that particular mommy or daddy to handle all nighttime emergencies.
But in our house, we have Daddy Ears.
One more point of clarification: Erick is an amazing father. Really, I couldn’t ask for a better co-parent — when he’s awake. During the daylight hours, Erick is fully engaged with his daughters. His job keeps him busy, but he makes a point of being home for breakfast and dinner. He tries to limit his weekend work, and frequently takes all three girls out of the house on Saturday mornings to give me a break. When I have moms’ nights out or book club meetings, Erick has no problem handling the dinner/bath/bedtime routine solo.
When Fiona was born, we got a lot of advice about how to include Erick in the newborn experience — like introducing the baby to the bottle as soon as possible, so that Erick could take over one middle-of-the-night feeding. Erick gamely went along with this plan, and since Fiona was such an exceptionally tiny baby that she had to be fed through a dropper for the first few weeks of her life, his help was invaluable. Of course, we were both completely wasted with exhaustion, but I was such a believer in this equal-opportunity parenting that, when one wise family member (and experienced parent) advised us: “Do NOT make Erick do nighttime feedings; someone has get sleep!” I was horrified.
It wasn’t until we were expecting our second child — who, thankfully, was less tiny than the first — that Erick and I began to re-think our newborn parenting duties. And the re-thinking stuck.
In this time and place, we (rightly) strive for equality in the division of labor within our relationships. Having children, like marriage, forces us to wrestle with what “equality” actually looks like. At the beginning of my marriage, I defined “equality” as “doing the same things.” In other words, if I was cooking and cleaning, then Erick should be cooking and cleaning, too. It soon became clear that this wasn’t a good model for us; Erick is the better cook, I am the better cleaner, and our ability to complete these tasks shifted based on who was working and when.
The same proved true when we had kids. When Campbell — and later Georgia — arrived, Erick no longer participated in nighttime feedings. Since I nursed the girls for most of their first years, Erick was of limited usefulness to begin with. Then there’s this: I can function with far less sleep than Erick. Also this: When Erick did nighttime feedings and the baby woke up in the night, I’d shake Erick awake, then lie awake until I knew the baby was fed and back to sleep. Nowadays, there’s also this: Erick has to report to work in a public place every morning. And Erick himself will honestly tell you that no matter how many nighttime bottles or daytime cuddles he gives, he never feels very connected to any of our children until they’re about one year old.
And that is why, when our fourth child is born, Erick will not be taking paternity leave.
This arrangement makes sense for us. Do I sometimes glare at Erick across the breakfast table after I’ve been up every two hours all night? Of course. Do I sometimes feel snarky when Erick comes home from work and I ask, “How was YOUR day?” — meaning, really, “Did you enjoy sitting at a desk, eating leisurely meals, and interacting with adults?” You bet. But I’ve learned that Daddy Ears work just as well as Mommy Ears, they just function at a different frequency — like when a tickle pile is required, when chocolate chip pancakes need to be made, and when Mommy really needs a break.
So, there will be no paternity leave with Kiddo 4. On the contrary, about one month after this baby arrives Erick will spend three weeks conducting research in Africa. And I’m really okay with that. I’ll have lots of help: We have two sets of amazing grandparents who’ll be here for most of the summer, and we have a very supportive community of friends. (I’m seven months pregnant, and people are already bringing us meals, which is either an indication of how kind they are or what a mess I am).
Then, by late summer, I’ll have a pair of Daddy Ears sleeping next to me again, although it may be a few more months until he realizes there’s a fourth child in our house.
Today is International Women’s Day. This is not a day I’ve noted before, because until recently I didn’t think much about being a woman.
Growing up, in the time and place that I did, I had the strange “luxury” of feeling ambivalent about my female-ness. It was something that I took for granted; Hair: Brown, Race: Caucasian, Sex: F. I never disliked being a woman, but neither did I take any particular pride in it. I emerged from adolescence with some vaguely negative stereotypes about what it meant to be a woman: women were overly emotional, too sensitive, too talkative, bad drivers, and subject to the ultimate Sophie’s Choice of career vs. motherhood: no matter how you chose, your life was doomed to be less than satisfying. Back then, I would’ve been afraid to say I was proud to be a woman; such a statement might align me with the angry voices of second-wave feminism. Granted, those angry voices were necessary in order to get the culture’s attention, but anger doesn’t usually speak to me. I was brought up to be polite; I still don’t do angry very well.
It’s gradually dawned on me that I am a woman. Not only that: I am the mother of three little girls who will one day be women. As such, I am my daughters’ first example of what it is to be female.
That’s a charge I shouldn’t take lightly.
My role as a mother, I repeatedly tell my girls, is to help each one of them become “the best YOU that you can be.” How do I help my girls become their best selves, and instill pride that their SELF includes being a WOMAN?
I think pride in being a woman begins with recognizing that there’s something unique about womanhood. Men and boys are special, of course, but women are special because they’re not men — we bring something different to the table. My daughters, despite being raised in the relative cultural isolation of small-town Vermont — few chain stores, no billboards, no T.V., and the only magazine we get is The New Yorker — STILL gravitate towards fairies and princesses and ponies and pastels. They choose to dress and play differently than the boys we know. I can either fight this apparently inborn female-ness, or I can encourage them to find the strengths in who they already seem to know they are.
Those female stereotypes I grew up with, many of them are in some way true. But they also encompass some of the qualities I love best in my girls, qualities that I think make them uniquely female. In trying to get at what’s special about women, I’ll take each stereotype I grew up with and highlight its strengths:
–Women are too emotional: Emotion results from feeling things deeply. Being able to feel deeply is a gift; like any gift, it has a dark underbelly, but its bright side is an ability to be passionate about ideas, causes, people. Passion is what gets things done. If nobody was emotional, we’d end up with a world of economists, and TRUST ME, that would be tragic.
-Women are too sensitive: Like emotion, sensitivity can be problematic if overindulged, but it’s a necessary ingredient for successful relationships. Being sensitive may mean that you’re easily hurt, but it also makes you more aware of the feelings of others.
-Women are too talkative: Sorry, but as a writer I don’t have a problem with this. Aren’t words the essence of life? Isn’t the moral of the story of the Tower of Babel that, without the ability to communicate, our cities end in ruins?
–Women are bad drivers: I don’t really know where this one came from, but I DO know that when I’m a bad driver, it’s usually because there are three little people screaming at me from the backseat. Which gets at something that I think is a female strength: the ability to multitask. Just about every woman I know thinks nothing of talking on the phone while preparing dinner with one hand and bouncing a baby on her hip. Or writing her PhD dissertation with one side of her brain while simultaneously solving her best friend’s relationship troubles with the other side. So pardon us if we’re distracted! (In contrast, when my husband watches the girls, he’ll get dinner cooked…while the girls run around naked setting small fires in every corner).
-Work vs. motherhood: This is a whole can of worms, but the WONDERFUL thing about being a woman is that you GET a choice. You can become a MOTHER, for crying out loud! That’s an amazing thing that only women can do. But, thankfully, in this day and age, you can also choose a CAREER! The world needs women represented in all fields — and with fewer and fewer restrictions, you can do what you love. Nowadays, there are creative ways to cobble motherhood and career into something that works. But it’s NOT easy: it’ll never be easy to be a mother, it’ll never be easy to carve out a career, it’ll NEVER be easy to balance both. But women do it, and have done it forever — since back when “career” meant “keeping a farm running.” And that’s why the toughest people I know are all women.
Those are a few strengths that I’d claim for women. But what makes me PROUDEST about being a woman is the company in which it puts me. Powerful women have surrounded me my entire life, it’s just taken me a while to notice. There are the women in my own family. There are the six years’ worth of students I taught at two girls’ schools (two of them recently re-introduced herself to me here; they’re students at Middlebury — talk about feeling old!). There’s the Pakistani woman I tutored for six years in Manhattan, who’s currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree. And there are my friends across the world: women who have amazing careers, women who are mamas, women who have careers and are mamas, single women, partnered women. Women who stay in hard marriages; women who leave impossible marriages. Women who show up with a meal at the perfect time (because it’s always the perfect time!). Women who create things of beauty. Women who tell the truths you need to hear. Women who raise the children — and not just their own. Women who care for the sick and comfort the grieving and fight for justice.
These women are beautiful. They make the world more beautiful. They keep life going. I’m so grateful that my own little girls can grow into women, surrounded by women like these. As my oldest daughter said the other day, “Every girl’s a princess, even if she doesn’t live in a castle.” Amen, and Happy International Women’s Day!
I am six months pregnant: I feel large, Kiddo 4 is making it increasingly difficult to breathe, and I get winded from walking up one flight of stairs. Not much gets me running these days.
Except for these words: “Mommy, come look what Georgia’s doing!!!”
When I hear that, I know that I can expect to see Georgia balancing on top of a piece of furniture. Or removing all of our CDs from their cases. Or sitting on the floor holding an empty bottle, surrounded by Erick’s allergy pills. Or programming my computer. Or pummeling one of her sisters.
This kid is a firecracker. She makes Campbell, the child we thought was our “wild one,” look like the Dalai Lama. Our children seem to be getting progressively wilder, which makes us worry about the outlook for Kiddo 4.
It just goes to show that you never really know your child until they turn two. Georgia turns two today.
And no, I am NOT having a Friend Party for her, because sometimes you just have to break from tradition and say, “Enough!” (Or, to put it more mildly, we ARE having a two-year-old Friend Party for Georgia, and the two friends she gets to invite are Fiona and Campbell, with a bonus visit from three of her cousins).
But I am going to stick with tradition and tell you a few fun facts about Georgia as she is right now, just as I’ve done in the past for Fiona and Campbell. Because, unlike last year, this year we’re starting to really know Georgia.
1) Georgia is a lunar girl. I don’t know where this comes from, but Georgia loves the moon. If there’s a moon in any book, she’s the first to point it out (which may explain why her favorite books are Goodnight Moon and Owl Moon). She’s also the first to spot the moon in the sky, even if it’s just the hint of a moon during the day. For some reason, on a family nighttime stroll this fall, we thought it would be fun to howl at the moon. So now, whenever Georgia sees the moon, she yells, “Moon! HOOOOOOOWWWWLLLLL!”
2) Georgia is the most independent of the Gong Girls. I say “independent;” her sisters say “rascally.” This is partly because she wants to be just like her two big sisters, partly because she’s received less supervision than her sisters (so sue me, I’m exhausted!), and partly because she’s lived almost her entire life in Vermont — which breeds a certain kind of independence. Georgia, at barely two, wants to do everything herself: dress herself, cut her food, wash the dishes, and drive the car. She throws herself wholeheartedly into life: art projects, singing and dancing, and temper tantrums. The girl has no fear, which is nice when she’s not afraid to help Erick stack wood outside on freezing pitch-black nights, and not so nice when she disappears upstairs with a mischievous agenda. [Note: Last year, I proclaimed Campbell the “most independent” of our daughters. I proclaimed wrong.]
Georgia, helping herself to an apple.
3) Georgia never met a dog she didn’t LOVE. All of our girls love dogs, but Georgia takes it to extremes. She responds to dogs the same way she responds to the moon: “DOOOOG!!!” If the dog is within reach, she immediately wants to cuddle. “Cuddling,” for Georgia, includes putting each hand on the dog’s cheeks and kissing it square on the mouth. If Gracie, our own amazingly tolerant dog, is sleeping, Georgia will throw her entire body across Gracie’s. I think the only reason Gracie puts up with this is because Georgia’s other favorite activity is to “Give treats!”
Can’t a dog get a minute’s peace around here?
So, there you have it: two fun Georgia facts, and one to grow on. We love this third daughter of ours like crazy. But we’re still holding out hope that Kiddo 4 will be “the laid-back one.”
Something’s been bothering me lately. Looking back over the past month’s posts on this blog, here’s what I see: an essay about how I stay sane because all my children still nap; a Valentine’s day guest post in which my husband reveals his secret for recapturing married bliss; and a smattering of more spiritual, serious, almost advice-y pieces.
It all comes across as a little too good to be true.
Someone reading this blog over the past month might get the impression that I Have It All Together. That I Have It All Figured Out. That I sit here in my perfect little life in Vermont, enjoying my perfect marriage, dispensing advice while my perfect children nap.
This bothers me, because of course it’s NOT true. It bothers me because, once we get other people believing that we have it all together, 1) we damage our relationships with those people (Who’s going to be honest about the muck in their own lives with someone who’s perfect? Too embarrassing.), and 2) we run the risk of believing our own hype. I’ve lived long enough to know that once WE — by which I mean the average person — start believing that we have it all together, that we’re pretty dang okay, then we’re in BIIIIIG trouble. Life has a way of keeping us in check, keeping our egos in balance, smacking us down to size just when we think we’re at the top of our game.
And it bothers me because it’s completely NOT the point of this blog. Inasmuch as this blog has a point, it’s that somewhere around December 2011, I decided that I was bored with posting happy pictures about superficial events in our family’s life. So I slowly started experimenting with what would happen if I told the truth, if I wrote honestly about what I was thinking and feeling and experiencing at any given moment.
Therefore, in an effort to avoid coming across as Together and thus risking the wrath of the universe, I’m going to lay out some total honesty right now.
1. My Marriage is NOT Perfect. I deeply love and respect Erick, and I’m thankful every day that he’s my partner in this crazy life. We get along pretty well. But we’re real people with real, annoying quirks. As Erick was working on his Valentine’s Day blog post, he talked through some of his ideas with me. One night, he pulled out this line: “One of the biggest ways I show you ‘costly love’ is by listening to you at the end of the day.”
I almost fell off the couch laughing. Because, at that point, I had just spent at least 20 minutes listening to Erick talk about HIS day. He’d been home for three hours; had he asked once about my day? No, he had not.
Erick hit it out of the park this Valentine’s Day, which is usually a pretty minor holiday in our household. In addition to the blog post, he came home with flowers and candy, and surprised me by getting a sitter and taking me out to a nice dinner. All of which, he said, was “to build up credit for the next time I screw up your birthday.”
I’m hardly at my most romantic these days, either. I’m six months pregnant, and I feel about twelve months pregnant. I’m trying to get through this pregnancy without buying any maternity clothes (I gave away all my old ones back in California, because, remember, we were done having children?), which means that I cycle through the same four outfits each week. So, when Erick gets home, he finds a massive wife in the same old yoga pants and oversized sweater, who’s been chasing after three kids and a puppy all day long, and who’s prepared a meal based on the simplest thing that the kids might actually (maybe, just possibly) eat — which means crockpot, mac & cheese, or nachos.
It may be a comedy, but trust me, it ain’t a romantic one.
2. My Kids Are NOT Perfect. My kids are normal, average kids, which means that they’re people-in-training. I’m not going to list all of their individual issues — that’s just not fair to them — but let me assure you that they’re a long way from being presentable to polite society, let alone perfect. About every fourth day, I’m flooded with love and awe and gratitude over these remarkable little creatures who’ve graced our lives. On the days in between, I mostly feel like jabbing an ice pick into my temple.
They squabble with each other all day long. The oldest two want meals made to order, and Georgia demands whatever she sees anybody else having — which sometimes means she wants four meals at once. They aren’t always nice to their friends. They often have to be asked ten times to do something. And, while they really are pretty good nappers, bedtime feels like psychological torture: an hour-long party of screams and thumps, punctuated by at least three call-backs per night. Also, these days, they want to listen to the Annie soundtrack around the clock.
3. I Am NOT Perfect. Want to know what I said to Erick this month? I said, “How many kids do I have to have before people stop asking me to do things?!?” How’s that for kindness and love and repentance and all the other nice things that I write about and try SO HARD to live out?
What I said was awful, with its implication that I really don’t care about others — that my motivation for having kids, in fact, is mostly to put a buffer between myself and the needs of the world — and it’s not even accurate. In many ways, my life now is simpler than it’s ever been: I’m not working outside the home, life in Vermont is slower and less stressful than anywhere else we’ve lived, and people aren’t really asking me to do much at all right now. (Even if they were, we live in a small town, so there are fewer people to do the asking).
What that comment really reveals is my own guilt. People aren’t asking me to do too much; I’m asking too much of myself, and then falling short. I do believe in living out love and kindness, but sometimes I get my motivations and self-expectations all mixed up. I start comparing myself to others, or I start feeling overwhelmed by the needs all around me, and I wonder why I don’t deliver as many meals to the ill or infirm as other people, why I accomplish so much less than mothers who work two jobs, why I don’t feel able to reciprocate the countless acts of kindness that others lavish on our family.
I am selfish, and lazy, and it’s hardest for me to love well the people who are closest to me — the people in my very family.
Remember how Erick surprised me with a babysitter and a dinner out on Valentine’s Day this year? Want to know my reaction when he came home from work and announced that we were going to a nice restaurant in 45 minutes? I thought: You mean I don’t get to have a relaxed pizza dinner with the girls, take a shower, and eat popcorn on the couch in my pajamas? I have to make myself presentable, when the only clean clothes I have are the yoga pants I’m wearing? I have to make this disastrous house and these messy kids presentable for a sitter?
So, no, I Do Not Have It All Together. I am imperfect, a poor source to be dispensing any sort of advice. But in the course of a life spent dealing with my own imperfections and the imperfections of those around me, I have learned a couple things.
I’ve learned that when someone close to me — husband, child, family member, friend — asks me to do something reasonable that gives me a chance to show love, I should always say “Yes,” no matter how I really feel. So I try to always say “Yes” to a husband who wants to take me out, to a daughter who asks to be excused from nap to read together, to a friend who needs me to take her children. When I say “Yes” against my feelings, the feelings will eventually follow.
And I’ve learned that the only way to avoid guilt over my own imperfections and anger over the imperfections of others is to embrace grace. Grace — a word overused so that its meaning gets lost — means “unmerited favor.” I am a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad friend, a bad daughter, and most days I don’t deserve the love of those close to me. But they — husband, children, friends, family — somehow love me anyway. And when they don’t love me perfectly, the way I want — because they, too, are imperfect — that’s when I need to remember that I believe in a God who has the grace thing perfectly covered.
The Pickle Patch 