Category: Gong Girls

The Secret to My Sanity

Snowed in today, with all three rugrats and a kicking tummy tenant. It’s actually been delightful, despite my worst fears: I find that much of parenting can be delightful if I don’t worry about the house being torn apart. And, thankfully, it’s nap time now….

An impromptu nap on the floor.
An impromptu nap on the floor.

 

I write this without judgement; by now I certainly know that all children are different, all parents are different, and God help us if we think we alone have it figured out. But here goes: sometimes, as I’m talking with other moms, they’ll reveal that their child doesn’t nap, hasn’t napped since infancy, or has never napped. Whenever I hear this, I’m filled with a mixture of awe and concern — not for the child, but for the MOTHER.

I don’t know what I’d do without nap time.

The title of this piece is highly subjective, I know; anybody can call themselves sane and believe it, even if they’ve just heard the voices in their head telling them it’s true. I do (occasionally) scream at my children, weep during episodes of “This American Life,” and forget to pay preschool tuition. But still, I think I qualify as relatively sane. With three nonstop children, a fourth child halfway incubated, a puppy who tracks in everything from outside, and a husband who comes home every night saying things like, “I’ve just spent all day staring at this regression,” how do I manage to hold things together? Answer: all my kids still take naps.

Any discussion of sleep training can be polarizing, so I’m not going to get too detailed here. Again: all kids are different, all parents are different, and my own philosophy runs towards “whatever gets you through the night.” I will say that our first child was — and remains — by far our most difficult sleeper. Whether that’s because we didn’t know what we were doing, or because that’s just who she is, I’ll never know. I remember pushing Fiona in her stroller, screaming (SHE was screaming; I was just screaming on the inside), through the Berkeley Hills when she was three months old, and thinking “This child is NEVER going to nap.”

But she did. It took effort, but by the time Campbell and Georgia came along — both of whom are more natural sleepers than Fiona ever was — I had my compass firmly pointed towards NAP. “Okay, baby,” I would tell them, “now is when you nap.” And they did.

I guard those naps fiercely. I know some families feel that younger siblings get cheated on naps because they’re always running around to their older sibling’s activities. That’s not how I roll. It was clear once we went from one child to two that coordinated naps would be even more essential to my sanity. So, if I can avoid it, I don’t schedule playdates or activities during nap times. (It may help that our children are so young; there still aren’t many afternoon activities happening in our lives).

WHY is nap time essential? Well, at this point, nap time and bed time are the two guaranteed moments in each day when I’m not with any of my children. Wait a minute, you may say, you’re telling us that the key to sanity is getting rid of your kids? YES. Yes, I am. I know that the rest children get during naps is beneficial to their overall health and development, blah blah blah — but for me nap time is a selfish thing. I love my kids, I’m thrilled to be a mama; but the thing that feeds me, the thing that energizes me, the thing that enables me to function better as a mama, is the daily quiet time when all children are behind closed doors.

How do I spend my two hours of child-less time? Here’s what I DON’T do: I don’t nap. “Nap when the baby’s napping,” they say when you have your first child. To which I reply: Are you KIDDING?!?! This is MY time, my only chance to breathe during the day. I want to use it, savor it, roll around in it, make the most of every minute! The only time I’ll nap at nap time is during the first trimester of a new pregnancy, or if I’m sick. Otherwise, I use nap time to DO things. During the first months of Fiona’s life, “doing things” included re-watching all 95 episodes of Sex and the City on my computer. (I filed that under the “mental health” category). Later, when I started working again, naps went toward my 20-hour work week. Now that I have more children, a larger house, and a fully employed husband, I spend naps cleaning, prepping dinner, paying bills — and writing. And no matter what I’m doing, I usually drink a cup of coffee to gas up for the afternoon ahead.

I already feel nostalgic for nap time. We’re on the threshold of some big changes around here, and the day is fast approaching when I won’t be able to depend on naps. Fiona no longer sleeps during naps. Because her preschool still has afternoon nap time, I enforce a “quiet rest time” on the days when she’s home. By “enforce,” I mean that I shut her in the guest room with a bin full of library books, my iPod (which I’ve filled with wholesome, educational games, like choosing outfits for Tinkerbell), and the dog. When she starts kindergarten next year (full-day, five days a week) I’m certain that she’ll no longer be napping. Campbell begins kindergarten the following year, so her napping days are similarly limited.

I’m filled with terror at the thought of weekends — not to mention entire summers — when I’ll have one, two, three, and then FOUR children who are awake all day. I can only hope that the benefits of full-day school and increased independence balance out the loss of naps. In the meantime, here’s the best advice I have for new mothers: NAP TIME. Do it — not for your kids, but for yourself.

So, An Only Child Walks into a Bar…

How did this happen to me?
How did this happen to me?

FACT: I am an only child.

FACT: I am about to be the mother of four children.

The other day, a friend asked me, “How did you, an only child, end up with FOUR children?” And the answer is: I have no idea. When Erick and I were having all those premarital, heart-to-heart discussions about our future, the subject of kids did come up. As I recall, we both sort of shrugged and said, “Yeah, we probably want kids someday — not right now. Probably more than one.”

Once we started having children, the only thing that was important to me was the “more than one.” I had a happy childhood, but I spent a lot of time with adults. I always wanted a sibling. So we gave Fiona a sibling (with a vengeance). Then, after Campbell was born, I felt like we weren’t quite done. Our days in California were numbered, and we wanted the same doctors we’d had for our first two children, so we went for a third without giving it too much thought.

And our fourth, as regular readers know, was a total surprise.

As an only child attempting to raise three (going on four) children, I often feel like I’m missing the playbook.

But the more I talk with other mothers, the more I realize: THERE IS NO PLAYBOOK. It doesn’t matter whether you had no siblings or 44; we’re all running around out on the field with no idea what we’re doing. Do we catch, throw, or pass? What game are we even playing?

That said, there are daily occurrences in our house that I never experienced as an only child: sibling fights, simultaneous calls for attention, vastly divergent food preferences, and — above all — three distinct personalities.

The other day, out of nowhere, Fiona said, “Mommy, me and my sisters are really aliens from another planet. We knew each other before we were born, and then we decided to become babies in your tummy.” (She assured me that they’re planning to stick around for the long haul, though they might go back to their home planet when they’re grown up, “just to visit.”)

This was one of the most helpful things anyone’s ever said to me. It made perfect sense, and it explained a lot; until Fiona laid it all out for me, I had NO IDEA where my children came from.

Oh sure, our children have certain traits that Erick and I recognize as coming from us, or from our parents. (Anxiety and drama, for example, and a peculiar inclination to listen to the same song over and over and OVER). But for the most part, each one of my children is — and always has been — stubbornly, beautifully HERSELF. Where did she get that idea? Who taught her to say that?

Unfortunately, each child’s self is also completely unique from that of her siblings (aside from the shared desire to play with the exact same toys at the exact same moment). And therein lies the rub of parenting multiple children: these three unique individuals are stuck with two parents who are also stubbornly themselves. Erick and I came to parenthood with our own styles, ways of giving love that are natural to us. But having a child is not like buying a pair of shoes; you don’t get to choose what fits you. One child only feels loved through constant affirmation and attention, and another child wants to be left alone, and the third child needs to be prevented from climbing into the medicine cabinet — all at the same time. Needless to say, it doesn’t always work; I can’t simultaneously give undivided attention, grant freedom, and vigilantly tail a determined toddler, though God knows I try!  Each of our children needs a personalized parent.

And that’s just what you get as an only child: two parents who can focus entirely on YOU. It’s a blessing and a curse, of course. But I will say this: it’s simpler, and it’s definitely quieter. (Sometimes, when all three girls are clamoring to be heard at the top of their lungs, Erick and I helplessly stare at each other across the dinner table and shake our heads).

Where am I going with this? Well, I’m NOT going to make a judgement about whether it’s better to be an only child or have siblings, or whether it’s better to parent one child or more than one. As an only child, I learned to be happy spending lots of time alone, and I had enriching experiences that wouldn’t have been possible had my parents had multiple children. On the other hand, my daughters have best friends right in their own house, and they’re learning interpersonal skills much earlier than I did. Parenting multiple children often feels like trying to play a video game that’s been sped up, but parenting only one child seems like it might be a lot of pressure.

In the end, you get the childhood you get, and you handle it accordingly. Then you grow up and get the children you get, and you handle that accordingly, too. We all seem to be slightly mismatched, but I’m holding out hope that we’re mismatched for a purpose. To some degree you can plan and “choose” what your family will look like, but to an even larger degree things happen the way they will. One morning you wake up and have four children, and planning had very little to do with it.

Unless you’re an alien from another planet; then you get to choose your host family, or so I’m told.

Chloe and Kylie Kill the Chickens

IMG_1820

This is about fresh starts, new beginnings, and healing.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a few months, you’ll recall that earlier this fall, two neighborhood dogs broke into our chicken coop and killed all of our chickens. Our next-door neighbor notified the dogs’ owner, who called and was very apologetic and offered to help in any way possible. But really, what can you do?

I received some responses to that post, written and verbal, that were ANGRY with the dogs’ owners. Things like: They should do more! and Did you report the dogs to the police?!

I’d like to say that Erick and I maintained only peaceful, loving thoughts towards those neighbors, but I’ll be honest: not always. Especially when the dogs CONTINUED to escape their fence and run through our yard, we went grumble grumble.

And then, one afternoon in early December, the dogs’ owner showed up at our front door, carrying an ENORMOUS basket of doggie treats. She’d somehow gotten word that we had a new puppy, and wanted to welcome our “new addition.” Attached to the basket was a note, including another apology for the chicken massacre. This was the first time I’d met her in person; we chatted a few minutes, and she was just lovely.

From the note attached to the gift basket, we learned that the dogs’ names are Chloe and Kylie. My two oldest girls were fascinated by that fact, and the day after the basket arrived they showed me a little something about healing.

It started as they were getting dressed in the morning. “Hey, Campbell,” said Fiona, “want to pretend to be Chloe and Kylie?”

“What’re you going to play?” I asked, in my always wise, mature mothering style, “Chloe and Kylie Kill the Chickens?”

“YES!!!!!!” screamed my girls in unison. And for the next 30 minutes, they alternately pretended that their stuffed animals and Georgia were chickens. They chased, and bit, and ate. The game included lines like, “Hey, I just threw up a whole bunch of feathers!”

My girls are weird, yes, but they are also resilient. Over the course of a few months, they were able to take the sight of their chickens torn apart, and turn it into a game. They LAUGHED.

I mention this to give us all closure, especially those of you who shared in our grumbling. And also, as we start a New Year, to give us all hope: that fresh starts are possible, that healing happens, and that most people, when you get right down to it, are pretty freakin’ great.

On the Willows: Great Expectations

Because Christmas is really more about the outtakes....
Because Christmas is really more about the outtakes….

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Dashing through the snow? All is calm? Peace on Earth, goodwill to men?

Is that how your Christmas is looking this year?

Mine, either.

I have a little piece over at On the Willows today about our expectations for Christmas, and how they’re never quite realized. A version of something I published here last year, but I like the new one better. Click here to read.

LOVE > Fear + Hate

Yesterday afternoon, during nap time at our house, I decided to log in to my computer and check on the world before heading upstairs to wrap Christmas presents. Like so many of you, that’s when I was first confronted by news of the unimaginable tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. For the next two hours, I sat glued to my computer screen, refreshing my Google news feed every few minutes. As if more FACTS could somehow help me make sense of this thing.

On the one hand, it feels like there’s nothing to say, especially when others are saying so much, so eloquently. On the other hand, it feels wrong to NOT say anything. So I’m going to re-post something I wrote back in April, in response to other unimaginable tragedies. I think it still stands; you can add Sandy Hook to the list of bad news, Adam Lanza to the list of bullies, and replace Easter with Christmas.

I find it hard to apply my own logic here to the Sandy Hook situation, but love IS hard. I post this to remind myself that, although it’s important to discuss things like gun laws and the mental health system, the root cause of senseless violence is US: broken people. And also to remind myself that love always, ALWAYS wins out over fear and hate in the very end.

This photo, and all photos in this post, were taken by my friend and amazing photographer, Zoe Reyes.

I feel like there’s been a lot of bad news this year, and we’re only four months in. I suppose most years are like this, but we have such short-term memories that the world seems to be crashing down…again. (I think I have to stop blaming pregnancy hormones for my poor memory, since I’ve now been un-pregnant for over a year. SO I’m going to assume that everybody has no long-term memory, just like me).

Here’s a little run-down of some bad news that comes to mind: daily news of Syria’s violence against its own people; US Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of massacring 17 innocent civilians in Afghanistan; unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is shot and killed amid unclear but disturbing circumstances in Florida; Mohamed Merah kills 7 people in France, including students at a Jewish school; Dharun Ravi is convicted of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy for using a webcam to spy on Tyler Clementi, his college roommate, who committed suicide after learning that Ravi had watched his romantic encounter with another man; the “Kony 2012” video goes viral with the story of LRA atrocities in Uganda; and in Oakland, CA (birthplace of all 3 Gong Girls) One Goh shoots and kills 7 students at Oikos University. And that’s just in the past month.

Even here in Vermont, where a typical police blotter item runs something like: “Woman called police to report hearing footsteps downstairs. Police arrived on the scene to find that her husband had returned home earlier than usual.” (I’m not kidding — that was an actual item), there’s been violent news. Melissa Jenkins, a popular science teacher in St. Johnsbury, answered a call for car help from a couple who used to plow her driveway; when she arrived on the scene, the couple attacked her in front of her 2-year-old son, killed her, and dumped her body in a shallow pond.

I hear these things, and my soul screams. Because EVERY DAY I tell my kids some version of: “You have to be kind to people. Especially people who are smaller or weaker than you — you have to look out for them, help them.” I’m pretty sure that most people tell their kids something like this; isn’t it the best way to function as a family? Isn’t it the best way to function as part of the HUMAN FAMILY? So, when do we start forgetting this?

The answer, of course, is that we forget as soon as we hear it. The reason I keep reminding my kids to be kind to those smaller and weaker than themselves is because their default setting is to grab toys from their baby sister, or hit their other sister, or fight with their friends. Violent emotions begin at birth and are universal. Being kind is so easy to say, and so hard to do.

So how do we process the bad, soul-screaming news? The news that keeps us awake at night with questions of “What if?” and “How could they?”

I’m working out some answers after a little thing that happened to Fiona at preschool this month. One day, when I went to pick her up, Nick, one of her teachers, pulled me aside and said that a new boy at school — let’s call him Billy — who’d been having some “behavioral issues,” had gone up to Fiona during naptime and, completely unprovoked, hit her across the face. Fiona had apparently been “great about it” — she hadn’t cried or retaliated — but Nick wanted to let me know in case she mentioned it.

I don’t care if you’re Gandhi, if somebody hurts your kid your immediate gut instinct is to go after them with a tire iron. But I decided to put on my “grown-up face,” and on the drive home I casually said to Fiona, “Gee, honey, I’m sorry to hear that Billy hit you today.”

She said, “It’s okay, Mommy. It’s okay if he hits me.”

Now there’s a response to make your blood run cold; “It’s okay if he hits me,” is something that you NEVER want to hear coming out of your daughter’s mouth.

But, holding my grown-up face verrrry tightly in place, here’s what I said: “Actually, Fiona, it’s NOT okay if he hits you. NOBODY’S saying that’s okay. You shouldn’t EVER hit another person, and if you do then there has to be a consequence, just like there was for Billy today. So if he ever does that again, you need to tell a grown-up. But if he hit you like that for no reason, then he must be really mad or afraid about something, so I think the best thing for us to do is to be really kind to him, and to pray for him.”

Before you roll your eyes and click over to Facebook, let me remind you that I’m not some glassy-eyed, preternaturally wise and loving sitcom mom spouting cheesy cliches. I’m a real person, and if I occasionally fail to mention here all the times I lose patience with my kids or get angry with my husband or ignore my friends, it’s because I’m still vain enough to want you to like me. So I assure you that my little speech to Fiona came from somewhere outside of me (you can call it what you want; I call it God) and took every ounce of my emotional energy.

But after I said it, I realized that it was true. We did pray for Billy that night — just that whatever was making him afraid or mad enough to hit could get better. And all of this helped me to remember that Billy is four years old, and if you’re running around with “behavioral issues,” hitting other children at four years old, then something really is going on that is bigger than you. Something is making you so afraid or mad that you’re out of control. And it’s scary to be out of control; I see this with my own girls who, whenever they throw a massive screaming fit, just want to curl up in my lap and tell me they love me for the rest of the day, because they’re terrified of themselves.

And this made me think about Joseph Kony, and Dahrun Ravi, and Robert Bales, and George Zimmerman, and Mohamed Merah, and One Goh, and all the other bullies and criminals and dictators throughout history. Because once, they were four years old. Heck, once they were somebody’s tiny baby. And if, as they saying goes, we’re all the ages we’ve ever been, then inside each of them is a mad or scared little kid — and even deeper is the baby who blinked against the first light and held every possibility in its tiny fist. Inside every single person is a spark of humanity; sometimes it’s just buried underneath years of anger and fear. And those layers make it harder to access your humanity — to remember what your mother may have told you about being kind to those weaker than you — when, to quote St. Bono, you end up “stuck in a moment you can’t get out of.”

So, where does the prayer come in? I’m really, really hesitant to write about my faith, because it’s so easy to offend people, or be misinterpreted. And I’m not a religious scholar or expert. I’m just me, and I have some things that I believe are the truth, but I’ll also defend to the death your right to believe what you think is the truth. That said, here’s what I think is true:

I think, as I try to process somebody senselessly hitting my child, and all of the world news that’s essentially telling that same story, that I can and should get angry and demand justice, but I can’t stop there. Because if you stop and sit down in your anger and fear, then you just start to fester inside. Erick’s first reaction, when he heard about Billy hitting Fiona, was to teach her how to block hits and defend herself. That’s fine and useful, but it doesn’t begin to address healing her heart. The same applies to us when we demand arrests and reparations, and install alarm systems in our homes…and then stop.

I took a yoga class last week (!! the first actual, non-video yoga class I’ve taken in two years !!), and the instructor talked about “cultivating the opposite.” This means that, when something negative happens out in the world, we should cultivate the opposite response inside ourselves. That’s a little bit like what I’m advocating here. To respond with anger or fear to an act committed out of anger or fear solves nothing; it just makes us more angry and fearful. I think that, in order for true healing to occur, we need to acknowledge that every unkind act has two victims: the person being bullied, and the person doing the bullying. This requires that we recognize the spark of humanity — no matter how tiny — flickering in the perpetrator.

But that’s nearly impossible to do. The worst thing that’s happened to any of my kids so far is a smack at preschool; I can’t imagine if my child was one of the victims mentioned in this month’s news. I get angry enough just reading about these things; how do you recognize humanity in someone who kills your child? My yoga teacher seems like she’s probably a nicer person than I am, so maybe she can just will herself into “cultivating the opposite” — but I can’t. I need a yoga teacher to show me how to bend my body, and I need another kind of teacher to show me how to bend my soul in order to process life’s horrors. The kind of teacher who gets wrongly accused and sentenced to death, and while he’s slowly dying from torture looks down on the people mocking him and killing him and says, “Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

So that’s why the prayer. And why I’m celebrating Easter this weekend.

Surprise!

And then there were  four: Three girls and their dog.

When Georgia was born, we were positive that she was our last child. Three seemed like a good place to stop: large without being TOO crazy. There was a certain logic to three:

-The logic of space: We still had an extra seat in the minivan, and an extra place at our table — you know, for Elijah or whomever else happened to drop in.

-The logic of stuff: We had girls’ clothing and toys that had now been used three times — a pretty good run for the money, which also called to mind the horrible alternative: what if we risked another child, and it was a BOY?!? We’d have to start all over again.

-Erick’s logic: Erick noted that many of the families we most admire have three children, and “they must have a good reason for that.” (Of course, we later learned that for some of these families, child #3 was an accident, and others sorely regretted not adding another child before it was too late, but that’s another story).

Also, the cinnamon buns that we sometimes like to eat for breakfast are sold in packages of five.

Then, around Georgia’s first birthday, I started having feelings of longing. I knew these feelings well; in the past, they’d resulted in two things: Campbell, and Georgia.

I wanted a fourth child.

I promised Erick that I wouldn’t raise the subject until he was done with his first year of teaching. So, on the last day of classes I was waiting outside his office door, with my sales pitch carefully prepared. It went a little something like this:

-If we don’t give Georgia a buddy of her own, how will she function within the sisterly relationship of Fiona and Campbell, who’ve proclaimed themselves, “MORE than best friends!”????

-We have three wonderful daughters, whom we adore. Why not add one more????

-Another child would add more love to our family. Isn’t more love ALWAYS a good thing????

Erick kindly refrained from pointing out the loophole in what I thought was a logical “more is always better” argument. Because more ISN’T always better. If that were really true, we’d live in an overpopulated world of obese, promiscuous, hoarding venture capitalists. (Hmmmm….)

ANYWAY, the point is that Erick didn’t share my longing for a fourth child. For the very first time in our 10-year marriage, this put us on opposite sides of a Major Life Decision. (That statement is less a testament to the strength of our marriage than a tribute to Erick’s amazing agreeableness).

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Yep: WE GOT A DOG!

Here’s how it happened:

Also around Georgia’s first birthday, I started experiencing headaches, body aches, and exhaustion. These symptoms lasted throughout the summer. Whatever it was remains a mystery, but while the doctors ran me through a series of tests to determine the root cause, there was no question of pregnancy. First I was on antibiotics, then I had to have an MRI, then I had to have another MRI, and until we knew what was going on, we weren’t sure a pregnancy would be safe.

All of which made me frustrated and sad. But it also gave me time to think. I looked at our life and realized that three kids is a LOT of kids! In fact, most doctors would probably assume that the cause of my symptoms was: my children. I looked around for proof that we should add another child to the mix, and the proof just wasn’t there. Instead, I was snapping at my kids, counting the days until preschool started, and bribing my four-year-old to have “quiet rest time” by handing her my iPod. Don’t get me wrong: I love our three kids, I can handle three kids. I just couldn’t see how having a fourth child would do our family any favors.

Then I noticed something else: Brinkley, our neighbor’s dog who’d adopted us as his second-string family. I when I was doing yardwork, Brinkley would often come over to keep me company; he’d romp around, then sit at my feet and stare lovingly at me. I really liked that. I also noticed how our girls loved Brinkley: he was a prominent figure in their conversations, and every time they spotted him outside they would RUN to play with him, which kept them entertained for hours.

But he wasn’t our dog.

So, one day I said to Erick, “How about, instead of a fourth kid, we get a dog?”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but here’s a tip for anyone who wants a dog, but whose partner isn’t into the idea: First, say that you’d like to have a baby. (For added drama, moon around for a few days, sighing over baby pictures and tiny baby clothes). Then, say, “How about, instead of a baby, we get a dog?” And watch the relief fill their eyes. It’s a great bargaining strategy.

So, we got a dog, which made much more sense than having another baby. Yes, I KNOW that dogs are a lot of work, but when it’s a choice between a dog and a baby, the dog is a tropical vacation; an adorable, adoring creature whom we won’t have to send to college, and who does add more love to our family — without ever screaming, “Mommy, you’re being MEAN!”

You can read more about our dog, the amazing Gracie, here.

On the very day that we put down the deposit on Gracie, we found out that I was pregnant. Further proof that, whatever else you might say about God, he’s got a spot-on sense of comic timing.

That’s right, folks: Kiddo FOUR, due in early June.

Youngest child no longer….

Fiona.

Self Portraits by Fiona

Fiona turns five tomorrow. Just as with Friend Parties, I doubt I’ll be writing a birthday post for each of our children every year. For one thing, this is going to embarrass them very soon; for another, not many people (aside from their grandparents) are interested in me writing nice things about my kids. It’s boring, and maybe a little braggy.

But right now, you’re going to have to deal with it, because Fiona is turning FIVE. My firstborn, the one who scared us all with her early and dramatic arrival. Of our three daughters, Fiona is the one I still can’t see in her baby pictures. What I mean is: as newborns, Campbell and Georgia looked like themselves — they looked like they do now, only smaller and balder. Perhaps because Fiona was so tiny and fragile, when I look at her baby pictures I can’t see any trace of the tall, strong, beautiful, energetic almost-five-year-old who lives in our house.

Erick will tell you that Fiona is the daughter who is most like me. That’s probably true, poor girl. Of the three, she’s the most sensitive, shy, and nervous, and she’ll probably have to work through the same issues that I did as she grows. She’s a real person, like all of us, with flaws and neuroses to overcome.

But because today is Fiona’s birthday, I’m going to tell you my very FAVORITE thing about Fiona:

She wants to make everything special.

Fiona loves celebrations — holidays, birthdays, any excuse to celebrate — and she’s in her element when she gets to help plan an event. Whether or not the celebration is for her, Fiona has a CONCEPT. She knows exactly what paper goods, food, gifts, and party games should be involved. She wants everything to be fun and beautiful, and to conform to a theme. She wants to make cards, dress up, and  play pin-the-SOMETHING-on-SOMETHING (in the past we’ve played, “Pin the tail on the cat,” “Pin the mane on the lion,” “Pin the feather on Pocahontas,” “Pin the seed on the watermelon” — you get the idea).

It’s not just official celebrations, either; Fiona is great at celebrating people, making them feel special just because. I can’t tell you how many times she’s suggested that we send a card to one of her grandmothers, or prompted Erick to buy me flowers, or asked me to bake something for someone we love. When our next-door neighbor cleaned up the bodies of our dead chickens (another story), Fiona — completely unprompted by me — met our neighbor at the door with a little “Valentine” that she’d just whipped up.

I’ve always said that I don’t care if my children are smart, or talented, or beautiful; the most important thing to me is that they grow up to be KIND.  So far, it looks like Fiona is heading towards kind, but here’s the best thing about it: I had nothing to do with it. Honestly. Fiona was born this way. It’s a trait that began appearing once she was old enough to start being herself. And that’s why it’s my very favorite thing about Fiona: because it’s nothing I had to teach or nag her about, it’s just who she is.

Craft Update: Owls and Mermaids and Chickens (Oh My!)

At first, my husband didn’t read this blog — at least, not regularly. He was more like a “check in every few months” type of reader. But when I gently told him that he might be missing major insights into my inner life, that some 300 readers might possibly know me better than my own husband, and that I might just post embarrassing stories about him, he subscribed to the blog feed.

Now that he’s a regular reader, Erick is my most honest critic. So, he tells me that things have been getting a little…heavy…on this blog lately. I know, I know: What’s WITH all this life and death and introspection?!? Where are the cute photos of our girls, the puppy updates (coming), the humorous anecdotes about our pest-control problems?

All I can say is: those cycles of life and death that I’ve been writing about apply to blog topics, too. And what with autumn’s darker and colder weather, the butterfly that never hatched, and the backyard chicken massacre, lately I’ve been kind of on the death side of the cycle.

But that’s about to change; the upswing is starting with this very post. Because, my friends, today I am writing to gloat — er, SHARE — about my latest craft projects!

Those who’ve been reading for a while will recall that, when we moved to Vermont, my mother gave me her old sewing machine. Last winter, I decided to start becoming a craftier person by sewing some dresses for the girls.

Well, my craftiness took a vacation for the summer. But now that it’s fall-becoming-winter, I’M BACK! It gets dark at about 5 PM now, and I’ve got to find something else to do around here at night. We seldom go out after dark, since that involves babysitters (i.e. MONEY) and driving down empty country roads with the brights on. We don’t have a TV, and there’s only so much reading and writing and cleaning a person can do. Bring on the crafts!

Here’s the thing I’m most proud of: I didn’t use a pattern for any of the crafts below. They’re all things that I dreamed up in my head and then made real. Which is a lot of fun, and probably takes me to the next level of craftiness, don’t you think?

CRAFT #1: The Owl Pillow

We have a beige couch and beige chair in our living room, and I was feeling the need to inject a little color and fun into the place. So, I decided to sew an owl pillow. Why an owl pillow? you ask. Well, we have a whole bunch of barred owls who live in the woods around our house. All night long we can hear them calling Who-who-who-whooooo! I love these owls; they look stately and wise, and whenever I hear them I think, You go, owls! Eat those mice!!!

So, here’s what I did with some burlap, fleece, felt, and embroidery floss from Ben Franklin’s:

CRAFT #2: The Mermaid Fins

One of Fiona and Campbell’s best friends decided to have a Pirate Party when she turned five. There was no way I was getting my girly-girls to dress up in pirate garb, but MERMAIDS are another story. I designed these fins to work like wrap skirts. They look great, are super-comfortable, and the girls have been wearing them for dress-up long after the party. I may have to make one for myself.

CRAFT #3: The Chicken Stuffie

Okay, so first of all, my girls call stuffed animals “stuffies.” I have no idea why; it’s certainly nothing Erick or I ever said.

ANYWAY, when their 2-year-old cousin Aiden came to visit us in Vermont last summer, we weren’t sure if he’d like it here. Aiden lives in Orange County, CA, which is pretty much the epitome of planned suburbia. He lives near Disneyland. How would he handle our crazy Vermont-woods girls?

He did great, and it turns out — huge surprise to all of us — that Aiden is NUTS about chickens. When we took him to Shelburne Farms, that kid was chasing after hens bigger than himself and catching them with his bare hands. He couldn’t get enough of our chicks (R.I.P.), who were then still fluffy and cute in the brooder box in our garage.

So, when I started thinking about a Christmas present for Aiden, which I do early because (a) I have only one nephew, and (b) I’m clueless and terrified at the prospect of gifts for BOYS, the obvious choice was: make him a chicken stuffie! That way, he could have his favorite part of Vermont in Orange County — only it would be much more hygienic (and hopefully have a happier outcome) than the real thing.

I’m sharing this here because I’m pretty sure that Aiden doesn’t read this blog, and I’m trusting his parents to keep it on the down-low:

Of course, the predictable outcome, which I somehow failed to anticipate, was that once I showed it to the girls, Campbell said, “I don’t have a chicken stuffie.” So I suspect there may be a few more of these in my future.

There you have it: a little peek at what I’ve been up to in the evenings. See? It’s not all deep thinking around here!