January Joy

I thought being a mother to a toddler and baby was tiring, but it turns out that being a mother to a big kid, a toddler AND a baby is even more tiring. Especially to the poor baby. When is the baby supposed to nap when the big kid needs to get to tennis lessons? And what does the big kid do while the toddler goes to gymnastics? And how do I get the baby to stop finding Cheetos while I read "The Wizard of Oz" to the big kid and the toddler? Whew. I am tired just writing all of that juggling down.

I hear it only gets worse from here. I hear the babies grow into toddlers who need more story hours and more gymnastics lessons, and that the toddlers grow to big kids who go to basketball clinics and Girl Scouts, and the big kids grow to teenagers who ask you for the keys to the car at which point the whole cycle ends because you become a giant baby yourself, curled into a fetal position and CRYING.

It is fun though, when all the worlds collide and all of you have fun together at the same time and no one is thrashing on the floor and screaming that their sleeve is wet and WHY? WHY? can't you GO AND GET ME ANOTHER SHIRT?. The planets aligned last night when we were all at church and Dean and I were watching Molly and Frankie sing praise songs and the baby was cheerily shouting "HI!" to everyone within arms' reach. Our hearts did a little swell to see my big girls linking arms with friends and kicking their legs like Rockettes along with songs that I think mentioned Jesus but I couldn't really hear above the drums and the bass guitar. When you add that the baby was giving out kisses, well, when you take away the sloppy-joe dinner, it was pretty much close to heaven.

Guileless stabs at your ego: Part One

When I lifted a kitchen stool up over Molly's head to get it out of the way of the highchair, she turned to me and exclaimed happily: "Wow, Mom, you're smart! And heavy!"

Winter is here

7 p.m., Sukie walks in snow for the first time

7:30, p.m., When shoveling doesn't work out for her, she uses her walker

 8 p.m., I find Molly, as usual, in the tree outside the front door

 6 a.m., Waking up early to a world made new

 6: 45 a.m., Molly's tree in the morning

 6: 50 a.m., Looking out the back door

7:15 a.m., Frankie tackles shoveling the driveway

7:30 a.m., Worn out and ready for breakfast

11 a.m., Sukie gets her first sled ride through a sunny wonderland

Girls,

When I was pregnant the first time, as I thought nervously about what might lie ahead, I asked my dad if he ever regretted having kids. His answer was emphatic: no, not once. Well, girls, I am here to tell you a real and terrible truth. I don't want the haze of distant years and revisionist history to alter what I am about to tell you. I want to face it head on and I want each of you, if you contemplate parenthood someday, to know the whole story.

Girls, I want you to BE PREPARED.

The truth is, you will regret having children almost every day. The days you don't regret having children will be the days that your husband is home and he feeds them and puts them to bed. Or the days when you work an especially long day at your part-time job and come home and find everyone sleeping. Or during nap time, up until three o'clock when Arthur is over and the baby wakes up. Other than those days, girls, you will regret parenthood every evening around dinnertime. As the brown rice cooks and the baby is eating chocolate chips from the floor and your three-year-old is pulling out the Jenga pieces while you try to get your six-year-old to play "A Dog Named Bright" over and over again with perfect piano hands, you will regret parenthood. You will regret parenthood when you step on a stray MultiGrain Cheerio on your freshly vacuumed floor. You will regret parenthood when you have to pretend that you are a bear who is nineteen and you have no friends. You will regret parenthood when you are standing in yoga pants in twenty-five degree weather, helping up snowsuit bound ice skaters who fall again and again but aren't ready to leave.

But here's another truth, girls, and listen carefully. Those moments when you regret parenthood? They will be fleeting, the briefest scent of freedom, quickly replaced by a deep, certain feeling that you only get when you know you've really hit on the truth. Every day, sometimes every hour, you will stop and think THIS, this is one of only a few things I am sure about.

And pretty soon, girls, you'll be all grown up, and this big house will yearn for yells and spills, and when you come to me and ask if I ever regretted having kids, I'll only remember to tell you about the true things and say, no, not once.

Lessons on leaning

One of my favorite things about Sukie, besides the fact that she has is incorrigible when it comes to standing up in her high chair, is that she is a snuggler. She loves to sit in your lap, slouch a little and lean back so that her fuzzy little head is at just the right level to smell her woolly smell. And every time she leans, I am reminded that I, too, have a safe place to lean, a place where the arms are bigger, stronger and, though it hardly seems possible, more full of love than mine around her. And then I start singing and when I come to the chorus, I find myself closing my eyes and singing to all the things around me that would steal my peace. To you, worry, what have I to dread? To you, illness, what have I to fear? To you, future, I am safe and secure from all alarms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear?,
leaning on the everlasting arms
I have blessed peace, with my Lord so near,
leaning on the everlasting arms

Leaning, leaning.
Safe and secure from all alarms,
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms

My book on motherhood

My sister forwarded me a request from her local MOPS group: If you had to write a book about the joys and challenges of motherhood, what would the chapter headings be? While I literally sketch my sleeping children because the sight of them fills me with such overwhelming joy, I am the first one to admit that I put the pencil down and pull myself up by the bootstraps a lot of the time, because being a mom is not easy. Well, being a mom is pretty easy, being a good mom is just plain good old-fashioned hard work.

Chapter 1:  Idealization: Knitted booties, white onesies and lullabies on the string guitar
Chapter 2:  Reality: Plugged ducts, poop stains and hot water soaks for episiotomies
Chapter 3: Acceptance: Learning to put your back to the laundry while you play peek-a-boo
Chapter 4: Not for quitters: Staying the course when you want to flee to Nebraska
Chapter 5: Just for today: Encouragement when you cry to theme of Curious George
Chapter 4: Discipline for Dummies: How there's no such thing as motherly intuition
Chapter 5: Joy: First steps, first words, first love notes written in crayon with backward letters
Chapter 6: Specific challenges: Getting a newborn to sleep while an older child screams "MOMMY, WIPE ME!"
Chapter 7: The working mom: Finding time for a fourth full-time job
Chapter 8: The homeschooling mom: Just to kick up the crazy another notch
Chapter 9: Mom of many: How adding a third child (or more) means you're really not messing around
Chapter 10: The case for maternal amnesia: How the irrational mind causes repeat conception
Chapter 11: You are still a person: When you feel enslaved to midgets yelling "I want more chocolate milk!"
Chapter 12: Never alone: How to connect to God, your husband, your friends and a good therapist

Loving my kids doesn't mean loving every minute

My friend Janice and my sister sent me a link to this blog on the same day. This post in particular was touted as "the greatest blog post ever written". And I have to agree.

I'm done lying; being a mom is just plain grunt work 23 out of 24 hours a day. It's hard, hard work. It's the hardest thing I have ever done. Sometimes it takes superhuman strength to keep standing and peeling the kiwis and steaming the broccoli and putting plate after plate of nutritious food in front of three crying individuals who are complaining that they are too tired to eat or want a piece of bread with butter or they don't like chocolate milk even though I'm the only mom around who doesn't make them just suck it up and drink white. There are large parts of me that want to yell "Just forget it! Feed yourself! Forage around for butterscotch chips and help yourself to the Diet Mountain Dew. I don't care. And while you're at it, don't take a nap if you don't want to. I want to bludgeon someone at the end of it anyway because all you did was thrash around and moan about wanting Daddy and you woke the baby up with your shrieking." But the point is that I don't. I pick myself up, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on to shape these eternal creatures placed in my care. And meanwhile, it's shaping me.

Celebration comes to town

Sukie massively enjoyed the trifecta of Christmas babyhood: readily available Hershey's kisses (wrappers included if desired), newly acquired walking skills, and benign parental neglect.

 Me stuffing my face with what I hope is a big mouthful of roasted beets and brussel sprouts, but what I suspect to be a very large buttered crescent roll.

 Sylvie, Molly and Frankie taking a bow after a wonderful Christmas program that included expressive reading on Frankie's part, interpretive dance on Molly's part, and a memorized portion delivered perfectly by Sylvie in a hot, red-cheeked and gasping manner.

The odds of getting five children aged six and under to smile at the same time are about the odds that I will get a good night's sleep. Pretty much zero.

 Playing checkers beneath Oma's Christmas tree on Christmas morning.

Frankie bought all the children presents from the dollar store with her own money. Sukie opened her book about puppies and received it with great delight. The giver, however, was nearly overcome with gladness.

 Opening stockings after spending Christmas Eve at church.

 Raising her hands high for the joyous occasion of Christ's birth. Actually, probably more for the York Peppermint Patties at this moment, but she knew what we were really celebrating.

My sister caught red-handed stuffing one appetizer in after another.

 Sometimes, when your child least expects it, you just have to snatch them and squeeze them until they scream. That's just your prerogative as a mother.

 My deliciously blond-feathered nephew, Jude, examining, probably with fear and consternation, a monster pen in his stocking.

 Sukie learned to walk during the Christmas week and celebrated at every turn by stiffly lurching on peg legs holding living room pillows.

Opening presents on Christmas Day, the matriarch and patriarch reign from their sofa perch.

My hard-working husband, probably reclining in his chair complaining of being physically uncomfortable from the amount of turkey he consumed, as is his wont after holiday meals.

 Matt and Jude rejoice over a present less threatening to Jude's tender sensibilities.

 Aunt Saskia takes the lead in the race for Jude's affections (take THAT, Rebecca and Heather), by getting him this awesome Hot Wheels track that attaches to the wall. He never left this corner for the remainder of the visit.

 Cheering for both the Packers and the freedom to have a giant bag of Doritos all to themselves.

Morning Motherhood: A lose-lose proposition

Early one morning....

Molly, in gravelly sleepy voice:  "Mom, where's Daddy? Daddy? I waaaaant Daddy."

Mom:  "Daddy's at work, Molly. I'm sorry. (brightly) But I'm here! We can go watch Curious George together!"

Molly, crying:  "I want Daddy. I want Daddy. I only want Daddy. I want to go downstay-uhs. I waaaant pop. Where is Daddy?"

A few minutes later, snuggled in front of Curious George...

Molly, mournfully:  "I already watched this one. I don't waaaant this one. I already watched this one. I want toast with cinnamon and shu-guh."

Mom:  "Aw, Molly, do you miss your Daddy right now?"

Molly, snorting disdainfully and looking at me like I'm slow:  "No."

Right now

Right now....my husband has taken the big girls to cut down a Christmas tree. Just saying "the big girls" makes me realize that I have enough children to divide them into groups. When you can divide your kids into categories, you are in the motherhood big leagues.


Right now...I hear Susannah waking up from her nap. She will be hungry. She is always hungry. Her Opa calls her "bulky." I am hoping that years from now, when she reads this blog she will not be emotionally scarred by having been called bulky. Although, bulky is akin to being called Prim and Proper Saskia Doctor, which bothered me greatly at the time, but I find quite fantastic now.

Right now...the sun is shining and the first dusting of Michigan snow has melted.

Right now...the tub needs to be cleaned from this morning's bath, which found Molly playing intense imaginative games with Strawberry Shortcake and a plastic dolphin ("No, NO, NO! OH, STRAWBERRY! I don't want you to die! If you die I will never see you again! OH, NOOOOOOOOO! AAAH, you are falling to the lions! STRAWBERRRRRRY!") and Frankie trying to read a Junie B. Jones book without getting the pages wet. She is her mother's daughter, for good and for ill.

Right now...I'm going to go hug my bulky baby.

Sometimes the truth is not pretty

Is it a problem that my youngest daughter makes a phone out of everything and yells "HI" in a eerily grown-up voice? Or that my older two use their pretend phones and say "Uh huh. Uh huh. Really? I know. I agree. Uh huh. Uh huh. Oh, yeah, okay, I have to go now, my babies are all crying."

Dear morning, your mercies may be new, but I still do not enjoy you

It's five thirty a.m. and I've been up for an hour. The sun is nowhere to be seen and my husband accidentally woke me up, get this, by sliding the bathroom drawers open too loudly. In the bathroom down the hall. With the bedroom door shut. And the sound machine next to my head. With orange foam earplugs in my ears.

As any one of my college roommates can attest (if they are willing to revisit the hateful looks and dramatic mound of pillows stuffed around my face), I have what my family refers to as the Bionic Ear. The real princess could feel the pea, but apparently I can hear lunar changes. You've heard of the butterfly effect? I can hear it beating its tiny, frail wings.

Now all of this would be of no consequence if I were a person who was preternaturally wired for just a few hours of sleep. If I woke up at 4:30 a.m. feeling rested and was one of those creepy people who likes to venture into the cold dark frost of a Michigan December morning and do something wildly insane, like actually trying to run from one place to another instead of ambling leisurely only when the minivan is getting its tires changed, that would be one thing. But I'm not. I'm no Bill Clinton. I am a person who tells herself to exercise and then says "Self, who are you to tell me what to do?." I'm a person of hot baths, long books, warm beds and, preferably trays of prepared food brought to my reclining body. I'm a person whose childhood nickname was Couch, short for Couch Potato.

I'm putting my time to good use. I'm studying my Bible, folding my laundry, drinking Diet Mountain Dew after Diet Mountain Dew and carb-loading to try to keel through the day on a sugar high, but I'm not happy about it. Just ask my husband.

To Susannah Glory as she turns one

Dear Susannah,

I didn't know a year could pass so quickly. In many ways, it seems like only a few days ago that I was lumbering around, ankles spilling over the tops of my socks and chewing Tums, yet here you are twelve-months-old, standing up in your high chair yelling for more blackberries.

You have changed my life, Susannah. Your presence has brought me joy and brought me to my knees. I have learned this year how incredibly hard it is to be a good mom to three little girls, but I've also learned how indescribably wonderful it is to roll around on the living room floor with a pile of three laughing daughters.

You have made it so easy for us to fall in love. Since you were a few days old, you have always made it very clear that you love to be loved. When you'd cry while your diaper was changed as a newborn, the minute I picked you up, you would calm. And now, when you get up from a nap and Daddy brings you to me, I hear him tell you that you'll see me soon and you laugh and moan "Mama" and throw your head back in ecstatic delight as you catch a glimpse of my face. Who wouldn't fall in love with a baby whose eyes close in happiness at the sight of you and grins a wide gap-toothed smile when she hears your voice?

I'm not the only one who finds you wholly irresistable. Where other babies scream at the sight of a bearded man, you have such a soft spot for your Opa that you flirted with a goateed stranger during dinner in Russ's, stretching your hand out to him. When Daddy comes to get you from your crib, you inhale sharply with delight and kick your fat little thighs with happiness. Oma gets a loud "Hiiiiii," drawn out with joy and the news that your sisters are downstairs is met with low eager chuckles.

Like the valedictorian of babies, you have it all: big blue eyes, rolling meaty thighs, a snorting laugh when nuzzled in the neck folds, and the ability to entertain yourself with office supplies. But though your bald head and rounded back-side say innocence, I know better. That baby face belies a very strong stubborn streak. At a few weeks old, struggling with congestion, you were my only baby to object so strongly to having your nose suctioned that nursing couldn't comfort you. You're my only baby to have to wear the five-point harness in the high chair because saying "NO" twelve times in a row as you stuggle repeatedly to your feet with handfuls of lasagna elicits nothing but a knowing grin. When I tell you to take a tiny toy out of your mouth, you are my first baby to turn your back to me and try to shovel it back in.

You're also my first baby to try to scribble on paper, write on a chalkboard, kick a ball, try on shoes, and push a car before their first birthday. You are my first baby to spend her whole twelfth month of life saying "What that?" and pointing at the tiniest of objects for an explanation. You are the first baby I can't get shoes on, who curls her feet into fleshy balls. You are my first babbler, letting loose streams of nonsense as you use half a banana as a phone. You are my first baby to give herself a nickname, shouting "NANA!" angrily when you see something you want. You are the first baby whose babysitter has called in a panic saying you've been screaming for a half hour because she subjected you to a diaper change. You're the first baby who continued to scream so loudly every time there was a diaper change that you've earned your own electric toothbrush to occupy you while we do it.

You are so full of charm, Susannah. You have made our lives so much brighter and fuller since you blew in with your man-sized appetite and oversized thighs.

I didn't know you twelve months ago, but now I pity anyone who doesn't. I am so glad that God knew you and gave me the most delightful opportunity to be the mother of such an outrageously loveable baby.

Sukie, I'm so glad you're mine.

Love,
Mommy

God is good. All the time.

Sometimes, when you are a child of God, you ask for wisdom and you don't think you are being heard. In the moment, despite the history of God's intimate workings with His people, despite the evidence you hold in your hand, you think that somehow you are the exception, the forgotten child, the one the promises don't apply to.

It's a lie.

God loves every one of His children so much that He knows every hair on our heads. He calls the stars by name and knows when a sparrow falls. He knows every cry of our hearts. There is not one thing that will ever happen to you in all your years that He is not aware of, in control of, able to use and direct.

I forgot that. Or else, I knew it in my head, but I didn't truly know it in my heart.

God reminded me this week that I am His and in Him and in Him only, redemption is found. We still have to deal with the consequences of our choices, but He forgives.

Though my intentions were not sinful, I let work take up far, far too much of my emotional and physical energy. I was trying to be all things to all people and not being wise.

If you've ever owned a cat, you know what it is like to open the door with your foot out to keep it from coming in the house. Metaphorically, I opened the door a fraction of an inch, intending to keep my foot on the cat and shut the door quickly, and instead a grizzly bear shoved its way in. I shouldn't have opened the door. When I took on more responsibility at work, it snowballed out of control more quickly than I could have imagined. It took being physically present while the bank seized and secured all assets of the business to bring me to a halt. It took my husband vomiting continually with the most severe head pain of his life and thinking he might die of a hemorrhage to bring me to a halt. It took depression and illness and back pain and me getting sicker and sicker until I had to concede that I had no control, not over anything or anyone, to bring me to a halt.

Praise God that I learned my lesson and it didn't take the death of someone I love to teach me. Praise God that I am able to redeem my relationships with the people I love. Praise God that I have a husband who stands by me no matter what bad decisions I make. Praise God I have my mother and father who let their own lives and duties fall to the wayside to help me clean up my mess. Praise God for my husband's good job, his health insurance, his willingness to work as hard as humanly possible for his family. Praise God for medicine and money and the luxury of recuperating in my king-sized bed with meals made by my best friend. Praise God for my baby celebrating her birthday and my girls having so many people who love them they don't even notice that I am gone. Praise God.

Top ten reasons I love Susannah

10.  The way she recoils in terror and makes the sign for scared when I show her a pumpkin.

9.  The fact that her meaty thighs were made for jeggings.

8.  The way she can eat through three pieces of raisin bread and a banana in the time it takes me to turn on a cartoon for her sisters.

7.  The sheer fury she reserves for diaper changes or commands to spit out crayon tips.

6.  Her wispy, fuzzy, duck-tailed hair


5.  The way she buries her head in my neck when I come to get her in the night.

4.  The determined way she swiftly unloads her dresser drawers, book shelves, wipes containers.

3.   The fact that she tries to muscle her way into every activity and heedlessly ignores the yells of her sisters to stop taking their puzzle pieces.

2.  The giant tombstone front teeth that she grins with.

1.  The thought that she is mine.

Keepin' it real

I sometimes come back from browsing blogs and feel depressed because I haven't made vintage glitter crowns and curled up with buttered yeast rolls before a roaring fire reading "Little Women" aloud while my faithful golden retriever, Cinnamon, lolls about being used as a pillow by my clean and freshly pajamaed girls.

Instead, I have seven baskets of laundry in stages varying from stained with poop, freshly washed but needs another round of Oxiclean for the poop stains, left in the washer overnight so the mildew smell is faint, clean but wrinkled from sitting in the dryer, to folded. And my children are uncombed and naked, wearing Darth Vader masks and eating ice cream sandwiches in the baby jumperoo.

Such a sensitive soul

Molly:   Look, Frankie, I found my tiny little compass!

Frankie:  You can't have that, Molly, Susannah will choke on it.

Molly:   That's okay.

Frankie:  You can either have that, Molly, or a baby will die!

Molly:   I want a baby to die.

Suke Bottom Blues

Dear Susannah,

Though you are nine months old and have made only a handful of appearances on this blog, please know that it is not for lack of love, but only for lack of time.

Lack of love for you is certainly not a problem in this household. You are an intensely, jaw-droppingly, sickeningly loveable baby. At first glance, you win everyone over with your giant blue eyes, but, let me tell you, your eyes are just the start of your delectableness. You've got just the right amount of chubbiness and padding. All babies should be modeled after you. Your arms, which I like to show off in sleeveless onesies, are smooth and creamy and and your thighs, my goodness, the delight of those massive thighs.

You are a good-natured little thing 99.9% of the time, content to crawl around and try to insert your chubby self into whatever games are being played by your big sisters. There are resounding shouts of "No, Suke!" all day long as you sidle up and take a game piece or two, or the last piece of an almost finished puzzle and put it straight in your mouth and start crawling furiously away.

Watching you crawl has been the one thing that has brought home the fact that you are made from the same combination of DNA as your sisters. Daddy and I agree that there is nothing about any of you that makes us love you because you biologically belong to us. You could have sprung fully formed from Zeus's head and we would have loved you just because we have gotten to know you as our little Sukie. But when you crawl, there is no denying your genetic tie to your sisters. Your crawling style is part Frankie, right leg back and on the knee the way it should be, but your left leg forward and humping along like a daddy long legs that was stepped on, and part just like your sister Molly,, carrying whatever catches your magpie eye firmly between your gums, like a bone, since your hands are busy.

You are a tremendous eater. At nine months, your big sisters were dutifully strapped in their high chairs a few times a day and tossed a handful of Cheerios and coaxed to eat a portion of squash puree. It was a hobby, a recreational activity to pass the time. They nursed like crazy and nibbled at small slimy squares of strawberries. Not you. You nurse like crazy, too, but you insist on your three square meals. For breakfast, a few muffins and banana, tossed in tiny pieces on your tray and disappearing as fast as I chop them. For lunch, a whole sandwich, a large nectarine, some broccoli, your sisters' leftovers. At dinner, you still have room for two bowls of stuffed shells, impatiently guiding the spoon to your mouth. You don't like peas. That's the only thing I haven't gotten you to consume in large quantities. But you'll eat them in a pinch. Thighs your size don't come without work.

You are my most snuggly baby thus far. You love to have your neck kissed and your eyelids smooched and your belly snuggled. You don't mind if I squeeze you tight and sing looking into your eyes. You are content to sit on my lap and explore my face and insert spit-covered tiny fingers into my mouth searching for my "teeh." You love the cats and yell "KKKKK-y"  when you see them. You call Daddy "Da" and say "hi" and try your hand at saying Frankie. You've become a real live baby this month. One we find tremendously amusing and utterly intoxicating.

So, Susannah, if things aren't written here, they are written on my heart, little sweetheart, my favorite baby. We are all so smitten with you.

Love, Mommy

The vagaries of DNA

Lament for Ellis

My brother-in-law, Matt, is the oldest of three boys. His youngest brother, Tim, and his wife, Rebecca, are the parents of Ellis Timothy Henry, born early this morning and now in the eternal safety of his loving Heavenly Father's arms.

In 2 Samuel, chapter one, when David receives word that Saul and Jonathan have been killed in battle, he took up a lament for them, and ordered that all the men of Judah learn it by heart and all the daughters of Israel weep.

I wish I could legislate that everyone on earth take up a lament for the treasured and beloved Ellis. Weep with Tim and Rebecca for their little boy. Grieve for them because he is gone; not as those who have no hope, but as those who know that this is not how things should be.

Remember him.