Our Morning Routine

As a working mom, I have felt guilt over the years for taking my young children to daycare. Sometimes that guilt still hits me, like a sharp little stab to the heart, especially on mornings that are calm and sweet. But on the mornings when the kid throws an impressive fling-herself-to-the-floor-and-thrash-about tantrum because she doesn't want to put on her shoes; or when she throws her waffles to the ground defiantly because she wants to eat cheese instead (always with the cheese, this kid); or when she just wakes up on the wrong side of the crib and whines about everything, that guilty pang isn't quite as noticeable.

The truth is, I enjoy my job. Some days I think I'd love being a stay at home mom, and I fantasize about the fun crafts we'd do, and the places we'd visit. I spent most of the week of Memorial Day home with the kids and was pretty frazzled by the end of it, though. And Lord, was my house messier with us in it all day! People who think they'd have more time to clean if they were stay at home moms are insane. At least in my experience, the house is a thousand times messier when the kids are home to make the messes. So I think this working outside the home thing is a good fit for me.

This morning was one of those calm and sweet mornings. After I dropped Nati off I reflected on how special these mornings are to me, and thought I might want to remember it someday.

Our morning routines usually go something like this:

I get up and the house is quiet. I walk into the kitchen, trying not to step on the kitten's head as she shrilly announces that her stomach is empty. Because I am the boss of this place, I ignore her as I make my coffee and take the first hot sip. Only then does she get fed.

And then it's time to deal with the dog, who is patiently waiting to be let outside. I could be imagining it, but I swear that he shoots me a look that says "It's not FAIR that the cat gets to eat twice a day when I only get to eat at night!" He gives the cat, who is noisily scarfing her food, a jealous death glare as we head outside for him to do his thing.

Almost always, this is when Nati wakes up. She's got an internal clock that is set to 6 a.m. It works well during the week, but on weekends, I wish that clock came with a snooze feature. Nati is generally happy in the mornings, and she announces the fact that she's awake by holding on to the crib railing and bouncing up and down on her mattress and hollering, "Mom! Mamma! Mamma!" Pause. "Mom! Mooooom-AAAA!"

It's pretty cute, as long as I've got that coffee in hand.

The rest of our home routine flies by quickly. I give Natalie a bottle and we snuggle together on the couch for a few precious moments. (Yeah, she still gets a bottle. She LOVES them, and she's my last kid. I figure she'll stop drinking from the bottle before Kindergarten. First grade at the latest.) After our snuggle, I leave her on the couch, drinking her bottle, as I hop in the shower. Sometimes Nati comes into the bathroom and sits down to wait for me to finish. I like when she does this, because more often than not, I turn off the shower to hear her softly singing to herself.

I finish getting ready (usually with her 'helping me' in the bathroom) and then get Natalie some breakfast. As she's jailed in her high chair, I run around and gather my lunch and make more coffee.

And then it's time to wake up the older kids and leave for the day. Vali gets up and we have our good-bye ritual. "Love you!"

"Love you too!"

"Have a great day!"

"You too!"

"Best mom in the world!"

"Best Vali in the world!"

Hugs. Kisses. More hugs. Time to go.

On the way to Megan's, we drive through a picturesque stretch of farmland. I slow down when we get to the farm on end of our street so that Natalie can get a good look at the horses that live there.

"Horsie!" She says with glee. Every time.

And then when we drive away, "Bye-bye, horsie!"

We drive for another mile or so until we get to the farm that has cows out to pasture. Lord, but this kid LOVES cows. "Cows, Mamma! Cows, Mamma!" she shrieks and points. I slow down the van. I try not to piss off any cars that might be behind us, but c'mon... my kid wants to look at the cows for three seconds longer. Deal with it for a moment, ok?

"Bye-bye, cows!" She says and waves.

We drive on and I sing the Nati song to her as she smiles. (I made up a song for her, just like I did for Vali when she was a baby.)

The Nati Song
Oh, I know a girl named Natalie
She is so very dear to me
She's very, very sweet, and very, very smart
And she's as tasty as a peeeeeeeanut.

(Yeah, you probably have to hear it sung in my spectacularly bad voice to appreciate it.)

As I sing, we make eye contact in the rear view mirror. Nati cocks her head to the side and sighs contentedly. As the song finishes, she smiles and kicks her little feet. This melts me, you guys. It makes the tantrums, the poop explosions, the early morning wakeup calls worth it.

We make it to the small town where Megan lives and as we walk in the door, we're greeted by the noisy, cheerful chaos of her happy kids. Lately, Nati has been crying as I leave, so the trick is to distract her so that I can sneak out. That only works about half of the time. It tugs at me when she doesn't want me to leave, but when I pick her up for the day, she NEVER wants to go home. She loves it there.

After I drop her off and head into the office, the van seems quiet, lonely. I smile to myself as I'm left with the memory of that particular morning's events.

Mornings rock.





"Ok, Mamma. Enough with the pictures."

The Boy's First Prom - and a Perfect Weekend.

We looked like a Home Depot commercial yesterday. I was on hands and knees rolling on porch paint while  The Husband was replacing the garage lights. The weather was a perfect 75, Valerie and her friends were playing in the back yard with Natalie, and the dog was resting on the driveway watching us work. Jake had been up all night for prom, and was sleeping soundly in his cave of a bedroom. As I rolled that paint on back and forth, back and forth, I thought about how sometimes life is as idyllic as it appears in those commercials aired on HGTV.

Saturday night was prom, and although only a Sophomore, Jake was invited by a friend of his who is a Junior. We had picked up the tux earlier in the week and ran to the florist to pick up the corsage. Since our son doesn't have a job, he owes us "chore hours" to pay for prom activities. We spent a few hours weeding and raking the berm in our backyard. This berm is huge - about 25 feet across by 12-15 feet tall. It's covered in river rock and houses our septic lift tank. I have never quite known what to do with the area, and over the past two summers when I wasn't into yardwork because of pregnancy or having a baby to care for, it became overgrown with tall weed grass. Not pretty. Anyway, Jake and I spent a few hours doing the tedious task of raking up the river rock, ripping out the root base of grasses that have overgrown the area, and then placing the rocks back. I've already spent at least 20 hours on the stupid thing and we are maybe 1/4 of the way done. Oy.

Before long, it was time to get ready for prom.

Jake asked me if I know how to put suspenders on. "Uh... I think you'll want your dad to help there, Buddy." I said.

They finally got it all figured out:



As I watched him help Jake get dressed, I felt sort of left out. Of course when Brie went to prom, I helped her along the way: did her hair, painted her toenails, laced up her dress... But with my son, I watched his dad get him ready. It was a much quicker process than it had been with Brie.

Speaking of Brie, you'd think I would be used to her being away at college by now, but all of this prom activity made me lonesome for her something fierce. I remembered back to her two proms and the fond memories I have of helping her get ready and watching her go... Sigh. But - she'll be home for the summer in a few weeks, and it will feel good to have her around again.

We took a couple of pictures of Jake at home before heading out to meet his friends:



I love this one... I think it's because the expressions on the kids' faces perfectly captures the personality of each one of them. My porch looked terrible in this photo, but as of last night it is freshly painted.



We took pictures out at the farmhouse of a friend of Jake's. How great is this photo?



Jake's friend Chloe put on his boutonniere:



And then the friends posed together. I love this one of the boys:





And the girls:



And Jake being silly:





Finally, it was time for them to head off to dinner. Here they are before getting into the car. Don't you just love the smile on that son of mine?



Our school still does the grand march where the town meets up at the prom and announces the couples as they walk in. Luckily, this year it was nice and warm, so we didn't freeze as we watched the couples enter the prom venue.

Jake came home Sunday morning exhausted, and said he had a great time. All weekend long, I found myself shaking my head in disbelief that he can be old enough to go to prom. At one point, I was all choked up thinking about how fast it goes from prom to graduation to college. But then I decided to busy myself with chores to shut off my brain. And that worked for a little while.

Potpourri Post

This is what happens when I don't post forever. I have so much to write about, but not enough time.

Sports Drama



Vali is on two softball teams this year. She’s doing a travel tournament team and little league. I wasn’t sure about her doing the travel team because of the extra cost, and after all was said and done, it was quite a bit more money than I expected. But she said she wanted to do it, and so I agreed.

We had the first tournament last weekend and it was freaking FREEZING. Seriously – the first game on Saturday morning was at 8:30 and it was like 37 degrees (and WINDY!) when it started. By the end of the day, it had only warmed up to about 45 degrees. We were wearing our winter coats, wrapped in blankets, and shivering the whole day. Sunday was a bit warmer, but only by about 10 degrees, and then the rain hit. So we had cold, windy, and wet. Awesome.

Extreme weather is normal here in Iowa, I get that. The girls enjoyed the game and won the bracket they were placed in. (Which was the lower bracket, but Vali got scolded for exclaiming happily that they won the ‘losers bracket’.) They got trophies that Vali calls her “grammy.” Oh, Lord, but that kid and her quirks crack me up.

Yesterday another team mom made a comment to me about how she and the coach were talking and they think that Vali could be “really good” if she took hitting lessons.

Oh, hell no. I already send her to practice twice a week, she’s got twice-a-week games starting up this Friday (the high is supposed to be 45 – yay) and she’ll do three more weekend tournaments. I am not spending more time on softball. If it ever warms up here, we’ll practice at home – tossing the ball around in the back yard and having her hit some of her dad’s pitches, but no. We’re not doing extra lessons. I won’t pretend not to be annoyed about the fact that they were talking about her needing lessons. That should be a conversation the coach has with me, not another team mom, but whatever.

Vali is a ball of fire. She’s a 4 foot tall, 56-pound munchkin with more energy than 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. She’s a fair ball player, but not a naturally gifted one, and lately she’s gotten spooked by the idea of getting hit by the ball. By the time June rolls around and the season for both leagues is behind her, she’ll have learned a lot and will be much better than she was at the start of the year. She’s NINE years old. That’s all we ask of her.

Sometimes I feel like an alien when I hang out with these sports parents. They seem to really live for the drama – they get so involved in these games. There’s always conflict brewing. Always. Someone is inevitably pissed off about a decision of some kind, and there are constant whispers about this and that. Ugh. It’s exhausting to me. I have to say that although she wears me out, having an 18-month-old to chase around is a welcome alternative to being caught in the crossfire of the drama.

I guess this is just a giant gripe. It’s funny – Jake and Brie have been involved in music and drama at school for years and there is never this amount of drama with those parents.

Words!



Oh, how I love this picture. Giggles galore.

Natalie is starting to talk now. It’s like something just clicked a few weeks ago and she realized, “hey! I can make sounds with my mouth, and these people will know what I want from them!” Her favorite words are Jakie, uh-oh, bite, more, ball, poo-poo, belly, dog, shoe, and outside.

She’s a funny kid – we are really enjoying this stage with her right now.

National Book Festival



My mom sent me information about the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival this fall. I don’t think I’ll be able to go since we have a family wedding that weekend, but I’m going to send Jake out to spend the weekend in DC with my mom so they can go together. There are some amazing authors who will be speaking at the festival – I’m excited for him and know that he will love it!

Uganda



My kids are world travelers! Brie will be traveling with a couple of non-profit groups this summer to Uganda. She’ll get to see first-hand how these non-profits are helping women in Uganda to support their families and create sustainable business models. People seem to be nervous about this when I tell them she’s going there. (“Isn’t there a war going on?” they ask.) We are assured that she’ll be in a safe part of Uganda – far away from the conflict that is happening near the northern borders with Sudan.

Brie is wrapping up her freshman year at the University of Iowa and will be coming home in a few weeks. We are looking forward to having her here this summer – the house will be full and happy with all four kids under the roof.

Well – that’s all I have time for today. Maybe if I wrote more often, I wouldn’t have to do these disjointed updates.

Dear Winter,

Dear Winter,

Yesterday was the first day of spring. Get the hell out of here, mmkay? You are making me cranky and my kids are stir-crazy and we need to get outside.

My skin is the attractive shade of a melting snowman.

My body's lack of vitamin D is making me want to stab kittens.

I want to wear some of those cute and colorful ankle pants that are in style this year. With sandals instead of boots.

You, Winter, are no longer welcome, so skedaddle.

Buh-bye, now.

-Mon

BFF

Today's writer’s group prompt: Tell us about your childhood best friend. Are you still friends?

This is the perfect prompt because I had lunch with her today!

First of all, that photo up there is about four years old, I can't find anything more recent. We totally need to do some fish-faced selfies the next time we're hanging out. And she is WAY taller than me, even though it doesn't look like it there.

My best friend is Jen. We’ve been friends for something like 27 years. (How can that even be possible?!) She moved to my town in eighth grade (from another planet, it seemed: the state of Mississippi) and we hit it off right away. She had a soft, southern drawl that she lost when she grew up, although the ghost of that accent haunts her voice after she’s had an adult beverage or two.

God, the memories we share. I don’t even know where to start, so I’m just going to write what pops into my mind:

At fourteen, we walked home from the drugstore in the dark, linked arm in arm, laughing so hard that I wet myself, which made us laugh even harder.

In high school we did everything together: We worked at Maid-Rite, making greasy burgers for the fine people of Newton, Iowa. We went to youth group together, hung out at the mall, got ready for proms together, spent time in between classes with each other. She was tall, willowy, and beautiful. I was short and cute. We made quite the pair.

Jen's mom and dad were my second set of parents, always making me feel welcome in their home. Her dad is the only person I ever allowed to call me "Mony." I can hear that nickname in his gentle voice, along with the soft chuckle of his. Mr. M introduced me to my favorite Beatles song (Oh! Darling) and would drive us around in his little truck before we got our licenses.

We learned to drive together as partners in Mr. Bond's driver's ed class. She drove too close to the curb, I drove too fast. But we both passed the class! Her parents bought her a cool blue mazda, and it was a stick shift. I will always be impressed by her badass ability to drive a stick, maybe because I never mastered the skill, but also because it's just cool for a girl to know how to do that at 16.

At sixteen, Jen and I went to a Bon Jovi concert and had seats so close to the stage that we could see the trickle of sweat run down Jon Bon Jovi’s neck. (Swoon!) Some guy, who seemed old to us at the time but was probably not even thirty, offered us beer and weed. Being the good girls that we were, we looked at each other wide-eyed, the unspoken "Oh my gosh, can you believe this is happening?!" passing between us in a flash, and politely declined his generous offer.

Oh, the memories that a Bon Jovi song brings back. Just yesterday, the song "Never Say Goodbye" came on the radio and I was instantly taken back in time to Jen’s living room. The room had dozens (hundreds?) of family photos on the wall, Jen’s dad’s comfy chair in the corner, and the tv tuned to MTV. In that room, a couple of girls with permed, frizzy hair belted out (badly, we aren’t singers, Jen and I) the verses to "Never Say Goodbye" while mooning over the band in the music video.

Now’s as good a time as any to show you just how cool she still is. At lunch today, she gave me my birthday present, which was a thoughtful collection of items that remind her of me. Some of the items: A jar of Chi-Chi’s salsa, because we loved eating at Chi-Chi’s. A bottle of purple Gap nail polish, because I love purple, and we loved shopping at the Gap. A hilarious plastic foot with a suction cup attached to it (that is actually meant as a toothbrush or pencil holder) because I have always been grossed out by feet. And THIS:



That’s right. It’s a Bon Jovi charm bracelet with four photos of Jon Bon Jovi. Who has the best best friend ever? This gal.

Once we sat in Jen's driveway as the end of Journey's "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezing" was on the radio. We counted every one of the "Nahs" at the end of that song, and then promptly forgot how many there were.

At eighteen, we said goodbye to our families and went away to college together. Every time I hear Bob Seger’s "Old Time Rock and Roll" I remember the feeling of pure, giddy excitement that filled us as we unpacked our black and white (with an accent of red!) dorm room items, because that’s the first song we put on the stereo and blasted through our open door. All around us, the small college town of Ames, Iowa buzzed with freshmen moving into their dorms. The atmosphere was electric and something I will never forget.

In our first year in the dorms, we won the floor's "dipshit" award because our dorm room was so messy that we couldn’t find our cordless phone and we had to go next door to call our phone to find it. We went to parties together, held each other’s hair when the world was spinning, encouraged each other to wake up for class. We sized each other’s boyfriends up. Approved of some, kept quiet about what we thought of others.

One of my favorite memories of Jen is when we were at a party and the song YMCA came on. She was holding two beers (I’m not sure if she was holding one for someone or just felt like having two). During the part of the song where you form the letters Y, M, C, A out of your arms, she held up her arms and made a perfect Y. Transitioning to the M, she apparently forgot that she held two glasses of beer and dumped them both on her head. Hee.

Two days after my 20th birthday Jen and I sat in our dorm room. I held a pregnancy test in one hand and a bottle of some kind of liquor in the other. “If this is negative, we’re splitting the entire bottle.” I told her. I peed on the stick. She waited with me for three of the longest minutes of my life, and then she held me as I sat shaking and tearful, terrified because I was going to be a mom.

We shared an apartment when Brie was born. When I came home from the hospital, she’d decorated our door with "Welcome home, Niki!!" signs and balloons. She helped me with Brie for those first months before Dusty and I moved in together. I remember that she had kittens who liked to lick up Brie’s projectile vomit.

And then we left our crazy college years behind. We graduated, got married, stood up at each others’ weddings (Brie was her flower girl) and our families grew. She is Brie’s godmother, her youngest son is my godson.

As in life, not everything is perfect. Our husbands had a serious falling out years ago. As you might imagine, that changed things, so instead of going out as couples, we socialize through lunches, book club, and the occasional girls night out. Family events aren't what they used to be, but we are still as close as ever.

Jen is one of the most amazing mothers I know. She’s raising four happy, respectful, productive and beautiful children. She gets how crazy life can be as a working mom with four kids, because she’s one too! We both work at the same giant company and we both drive Honda minivans. Our families both cheer for the Packers and the Cyclones, and we both still love Bon Jovi.

I am incredibly blessed to have someone like Jen in my life, and I look forward to the days when we sit laughing in a restaurant, our false teeth clacking away, all the while hoping that our Depends are in place (we have a history of making each other wet ourselves, after all!)



The Boy is Sixteen

I can hardly believe this, but Jake turned sixteen yesterday. I could go on about the passage of time, and how that doesn't seem possible, but I think that goes without saying. Instead, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about this young man, and what makes him so incredible.

First of all, he is an amazing big (and little) brother. I snapped this photo yesterday and am going to frame it and put it on my desk at work, because it is just so, so perfect. You can see how comfortable Natalie is with her big brother, and you can see how much he loves getting the hug from his baby sister.



He and Vali fight like the Bloods and the Crips, but every so often you'll see him helping her with homework or playing a game with her.



One of the things I admire about my teen-aged children is their strong religious beliefs. Jakob is very involved in his youth group at church and he gets a great deal of support from his friends and the youth leaders who are teaching him to grow in his spiritual journey. I admit to being a skeptic on many things in the religious world, and so it sometimes surprises me to see that my two oldest children have such a strong and powerful relationship with God. I bring my children to church to expose them to religious life and the sense of community that belonging to a parish provides, but I admit to keeping my own feelings on many things to myself. I want my kids to form their own spiritual existence. It fills me with warmth to listen to my son talk about how he has experienced spiritual enlightenment in his church activities. I remember being his age and having such a strong and powerful faith, so I can identify with those euphoric and hopeful feelings, even if the bloom has fallen off the rose a bit for me as an adult. Having something to believe in is so very important for children.

My son is a writer, and while I can't for the life of me get this kid to tell me about upcoming schedule commitments and deadlines, he will talk for hours about plot lines of stories he has in his head. Seriously, I don't know how he keeps it all straight up there, but he has about seven novels being simultaneously constructed in that mind of his.

In so many ways, he is like I was at his age. He's got a close-knit group of friends but is a homebody who would prefer to stick around home with one or two of the guys when he has free time. He's got a self-conscious air about him that I know will fade with time. For now, though, he is still learning about himself. Still coming to terms with who he is and isn't. It might be years before he sees how amazing he is.

He is SUCH a boy. This morning I was driving him to play practice when one of his friends texted him to see if he'd be at practice. He didn't reply to his friend's text. When I asked why, he looked at me like I was crazy. "Mom, I'm going to be in the school in 10 minutes and he'll know the answer. What's the point of telling him?" ARGH. THAT right there, is his father shining through. :)

He used to struggle with school, but somehow he grew into his academic life. This year he's gotten all As and Bs and has had no trouble keeping up with his schoolwork, even though he's been involved in more activities than ever before. He's not afraid to try new things. This year he got a part in the school play, joined the speech team, and signed up for golf. These are all new things for him, and I'm proud of him for trying them out.

I could go on and on about him. I am his adoring mother, after all. But I'll end with this: Jakob has the best hair in the world. It's curly and thick and has the perfect texture. I'm jealous of that hair.

Happy birthday to my little guy. The one who stands a good 8 inches taller than me.

(Weird picture alert - the candles are glowing in a strange halo-effect.)

Surprise!

I tend to get sentimental and nostalgic on my blog, which is probably annoying at times, but sometimes I just can’t help it. My cup truly does overflow. I have so many things to be thankful for in my life.

I’m also a serious bitch sometimes.

I was not in a good mood yesterday. On Friday evening, we stayed up playing Kinect bowling and then I made the mistake of getting completely engrossed in a book. I stayed up way too late, and even when Dusty came to bed, I read under my covers just like I did when I was ten. It was after 2 when I fell asleep, and before I knew it, my alarm had gone off. I had to get up early because Jake had his districts individual speech contest, where he was performing a poetry reading. He had an early morning performance about half an hour away.

After the performance (it went great! He made it to the state competition!) I took him to the DOT to sit for his driver’s permit test. I am convinced that the DOT is some sort of homing station for the rudest, most oblivious, self-absorbed, shower-deprived people in my county. We sat scrunched up next to these charming degenerates for an hour, and then when Jake went to take the test (it’s a computerized written exam) he didn’t pass. Brie failed her test the first time she took it too. In their defense, it’s a nitpicky test that I’m not certain I could pass today, but it still made me grumpy to think that I will have to take him back there again until he passes.

We got home and Dusty handed the baby to me. I get that. When I’m home with her for long periods of time and he comes home, I like the break too. She’s going through a phase where nothing pleases her for more than ten seconds, and the constant effort of keeping her entertained is exhausting. I began to get grumpier by the second.

I was also starting to feel sorry for myself. Dusty had mentioned earlier in the week that we’d go out last night to celebrate my birthday, but he hadn’t said anything else about it. I was stewing, thinking I’d have to plan something, pick the restaurant and whatever we did after we ate, if we didn’t come straight back home. Sometimes a girl wants someone to take charge and just plan something nice for her, you know?

Eventually I threw a temper tantrum at Dusty. “What are we doing tonight?!” I hollered. He said we’d go eat somewhere – he didn’t care where. At this point, it was 6 pm and I was wearing a scrubby old Iowa State sweatshirt and jeans, I had no idea what we were going to do, because he wouldn’t plan anything, and I lost my temper. “Would it kill you to make a birthday outing ‘special?’” I yelled after complaining that I didn’t want to have to plan everything all the time and that he was waiting until the last minute to decide what we were going to do.

I sat there and tried to give myself a pep talk, telling myself that only I could reverse this bad mood. But it wasn’t working. Natalie was starting to get cranky, so I snuggled up with her on the couch and was slowly getting her to sleep when I heard music coming from the basement. Then Vali and Jake got into a screaming match downstairs and Dusty came up and asked me if I could come break it up, because ‘they wouldn’t listen to him.’

I started thinking something was up around this time, because Vali’s screams sounded a bit more energetic than normal, and if anything, my kids listen to Dusty better than me when they’re told to stop fighting. I walked downstairs and saw the door to the family room was closed, I opened it a crack, and saw this:



(Except, they looked more animated than this. My camera appears to have stunned them.)

It was my family. My mother-in-law, my dad, brothers and their families, Brie home from college. They were all there and then it made sense. I ducked behind Dusty, flushed with embarrassment. Not because I was the center of attention, but because I was mortified about my outburst earlier. I should have given my husband the benefit of the doubt, but I let my bad mood spawn a temper tantrum. He was gracious about it, and didn’t make me feel worse than I already did

Of course the kids were in on it – the plan was that Dusty was going to take me out somewhere and on the way, Jake (who was going to be home babysitting) was going to call with an excuse to get us back home where we’d walk in on the party. No wonder he didn’t care what restaurant we went to! We weren’t ever going to go to one! Since I was sulking and not really in the mood to go out anymore, Dusty offered to go pick up something for dinner. Meanwhile, my family, who had gathered at my brother’s house a few miles away, came over and parked in the driveway of the vacant house next door. They trudged through the snow and came in the basement the back way, and I had no idea they were there.

It was done very well, and I was humbled and ashamed of my bitchiness. But my bad mood vanished because we did my favorite thing in the world, which is to hang out together and eat and drink and talk and watch the kids run around. It was a nice, low key party with the family I am so very thankful for.

Kissing cousins, who will hate this picture someday, but oh gosh, isn't it cute?









Some cool bowling moves:





Blurry picture alert. The person operating the camera may have had too much wine to drink to properly focus the lens, but it's too cute not to share:

February Writing Challenge: Tidy

Prompt: Next to godliness, or just keeping yourself off of Hoarders? Where do you fall on the cleanliness/organization spectrum?

I don't like having a messy house, but let's be real: I have four kids and I work full time. My house usually starts out looking like this in the morning:



But then it quickly turns into this:



I am not picky about things like baseboards and ceiling fan blades and I am woefully bad about scrubbing my tub. Just tonight I cleaned off the top of the exhaust fan that hangs above the stove and wondered when the last time I'd done that was. I do my deep cleaning like the Pig of If You Give a Pig a Pancake fame on crack. Which is to say that I bounce from project to project, get distracted by something else to do when I leave the room for a moment, go back to what I started only to see yet another thing that needs to be cleaned. By the time I'm finished, I've spent a whole day and have seventeen cleaning projects halfway done.

So deep cleaning isn't my forte, but I do like the clutter picked up. My GOD, the clutter. My children bring home paper after paper from school and those papers hook up with the bleeping junk mail and have one great big paper reproduction orgy and by the middle of the week there are piles of credit card offers, forms, permission slips, magazine renewal cards, PTA announcements, worksheets that the kids did in class (for the love of Pete, why do they have to send those home with the kids?!) and so on covering every square inch of counter space in my kitchen. It makes me homicidal and I usually glance through what I can while holding a baby who is covered in slimy banana at arm's length so she can't get it in my hair. As you can imagine, the kid distracts me and I typically end up throwing it all away anyway. Which means I lose stuff, but whatever.

Along with the paper comes the homework paraphernalia. Pencils, erasers, sharpeners, pencil bags, notebooks, half-eaten candy bars, etc. My dining room table is full of this stuff when I get home from work. As I slave away over a hot stove making dinner, the mess on the table seems to grow. We usually shove it over to the sideboard when it's time to eat. The whole time I can see the mess out of the corner of my eye and it stresses me out.

If I've had the kind of day where I can feel my blood boiling and know that I'm not fit to be around any human, let alone my children, I will sometimes call ahead and warn them: "Bad mood. Hour commute. Clean for your lives!!!" They are pretty good about doing it these days, and a clean house does lift a weight off me on a day like that.

Jake has to do the dishes now that Brie is away at college. He's not as thorough as his big sister was, but he's learning. Every so often, I clean the kitchen myself so that it looks like this:



The best time to clean is on Saturday and Sunday mornings around 6 am. I'm an early riser, and I am less prone to ADD in the morning, so it's an effective time to clean for me.

Tonight my house is quiet, the baby is asleep, and my house is reasonably clean. All is well with the world.

Then and Now

I'm deviating from my writer's challenge group today, because a coworker of mine suggested a writing prompt for me. She asked me to write about how I was a mother to Brie so long ago, compared to how I am with Natalie today.

It's an interesting thought. As I sit here writing this, Nati is doing a repeat loop of the following: climb on the ottoman, gauge the distance between the ottoman and the sofa, determine that it is close enough to jump onto the sofa, attempt the jump. She is successful at making it onto the couch about 75% of the time. When she comes up short, she flops to the ground with a dramatic whimper and looks at me to see if I've noticed her injury. "Dude," I say, "If you don't want to fall, quit jumping on the couch!" Poor kid gets no sympathy from me, and so she gets up and starts all over again.

I didn't expect to become a mother at age 20. Dusty and I were so, so young. Our relationship, in its infancy back then, was bound together by a thread no thicker than a spiderweb. Before Brie was born, I was a mix of emotions. Uncertainty ruled my thoughts, calling in reinforcements from fear, shame, and feelings of inadequacy. But I slowly began to get used to the idea of becoming a mother, and I started to feel better about what my future held. This was still part of my life plan, it just happened sooner than I thought it would. I was on scholarship and although it wouldn't be easy, I could still finish college. I could do this. I had a feeling that even though I was young (just LOOK at the picture - I was a BABY!) I would be a good mother.

A week before Thanksgiving break of my junior year in college, Brie was born. She was a beautiful, bright-eyed baby who screamed her ever loving head off for the first six months of her life. She was a difficult, colicky baby, and there were times I had to lay her in the crib, walk away and shut the door to collect myself. I cried along with her many nights. I can say that dealing with the pressures of first time motherhood along with going to college and working 25 hours a week wasn't easy. But once the colicky period passed, it became easy for me. No, that's not right. Parenting is never easy, and Brie gave us a run for our money. Lordy, did that child throw us some curveballs. So "easy" isn't the right word. But enjoyable and rewarding will do.

When Brie was Natalie's age, we read books, played with blocks and babies, went on walks, sang songs, watched videos, and I rocked her to sleep. I do the same things with Natalie. Some of the books are different, and I am thankful to say that we're no longer prisoners of Barney in our home. I'm probably more creative with our playtime these days. But some things are so much the same. I sat and snuggled with Nati last night and was singing the "Hush little baby, don't say a word, Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird" song. I almost substituted 'Briana' for 'Baby' because that's what I did when she was little. Nineteen years later, and I still sing the same soothing songs. I don't suppose that's all that surprising, since those songs were sung to me by my own mother.

It is easier with Natalie in many ways. I know that the runny nose will most likely pass, and if not, we have a great pediatrician. Dusty and I have good jobs, and so our financial situation is much better than it was when Brie was a baby. But most significantly, Dusty and I are in a stable marriage. Each year that thread that binds us together (the one that was so thin when we learned Brie was on the way) has been reinforced by our shared experiences and our commitment to one another. It is now a rope of galvanized steel, forged by a history of twenty years that have gifted us with more peaks than valleys.

It's natural to assume that parents become more relaxed with subsequent children. Perhaps the years of experience and learning from mistakes erode the fear and vigilance that keeps a first time parent up at night. In many ways, I am more relaxed. I know that I am less strict with my children now than I was at first. I don't think I would have let Brie play the "jump from the ottoman to the couch" game. But the experience of having a stillborn baby has made me more protective, almost neurotically so in other ways. Even now that Natalie is well past infancy, I sometimes place my hand on her chest to make sure she is breathing. But the older she gets, the looser fear's grip on my heart becomes.

I look at the pictures above and think hard about how I am different. The physical differences are easy to spot: I've got wrinkles and I'm heavier in the recent photo. I like to write those differences off as laugh lines and a softer lap for snuggling. I'm so young, so inexperienced, so green in the first photo. There is so much ahead of me. After this photo is taken, I will get married, have three more children, build a happy life with their father, and enjoy a fulfilling career. I will kiss dozens of boo-boos, read thousands of story books, and become the woman in the photo on the right. The woman who cares a lot less about what others think of her, the one who knows that things don't always turn out the way you expect them to, but that they usually turn out better than you ever dared to hope. But at the end of the day, they're both still me, and they're both still "Mama."

February Writing Challenge: My First Kiss

I’ve slacked off on the writing challenge, and I didn’t want to even think about doing today’s prompt because, well, it’s a memory that makes me squirm, and not in a good way. However, I looked at my calendar and see that I have a free half an hour here at work, right now, and I realized that if I’m going to do this writing challenge thing, I need to do it when I can. Which is now. So here it is, in its unedited glory.

My First Kiss

I was that girl in high school who seemed to sit on the sidelines watching everyone else have fantastic experiences while my life just ticked on by. My best friends all had boyfriends before me. At the time, I thought it was because they were prettier than I, but no. We were all pretty. My friends were simply in possession of a self-confidence that bloomed much later in me.

He was a senior and I was a sophomore when we started dating. I must have been attracted to him back then, but the thought of him makes me shudder today. It’s likely that my memory of our first kiss is tainted because he turned out to be Emperor of Psycholand. But even if he would have turned out to be a normal, non-crazy person, I have to believe that the memory of kissing him would still make me cringe.

It was that bad.

He was a sloppy, slobbery kisser, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that my entire face was wet and faintly sticky after a make-out session. My sixteen-month-old baby who comes at me with an open mouth and her tongue sticking out has a more refined kissing technique. Hell, my DOG is a better kisser.

I can’t go into more detail without losing my lunch. It was just that gross. I never liked kissing him, and it certainly didn’t make me want to do other things with him, much to his dismay. And there it is, the silver lining in that frothy, dripping cloud: he was such a bad kisser that I was never tempted to go "all the way" with him. Thank God for that, because I don't believe I could handle THAT kind of memory.