Parenting
Children are surprising. I have said a million times that I never thought I’d be a mom whose son wore athletic gear, and lo and behold. My brother’s shirt from 30 years ago, but still. I’m surprised at my son’s love of both knights AND pirates. Two seemingly completely different sorts of fantasy. He fell in love with knights last summer. In part due to my lego set from childhood, and in part due to these two books: Look inside Castles & Built to Last. Then we found this at a second-hand sale, missing the sword and shield. But that’s okay because my mom gifted him with this handmade set for his birthday, Christmas, and every event from here on out. And presto. Add a few hand-dyed silks as cloaks from my sister and BOOM: the love of a knight was born. Sprinkle in Jim Weiss’ King Arthur CD on repeat and you have Sir Gwaliwad, feared by dragons and loved by small children. (that’s his self appointed title.) I’ve promoted knight imaginative play for a number of reasons. Chivalry. Manners. Courage. Hard work. Skills. Endurance. Including your sister as Maid Marion who is an expert equestrian and skilled swordswoman. Help the poor. Charging around with your lance a lot. so punny, Nell. Then at his nature school, his buddies started in on their newest passion: pirates. I have to say, pirates have not captured my fancy like knights did. He insists that they’re all bad guys. I guess there’s merit to empathic…
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Like, really did. What would happen in our marriage? Well, he showed me what would happen because for some unknown reason in December, or was it late November?, my husband of nearly seven years decided to LAVISH me with verbal affirmation. I mean, it was hilarious. It was over the top. It was insane. It was . . . amazing. To this second of this very day I’m not entirely certain what inspired him. He thinks it was when we had our home blessed by our wonderful priest with a particular prayer: the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart. He felt like the graces we received from that kicked him into constant personalized affirmation land. I figured it was a way to battle against the winter blues that inevitably accompany long cold dark days away from us at the office, peppered with periodic trips out to our family Lodge in Wisconsin. But I digress. Here’s what happened when my husband totally met my love language needs (and who knew my need for verbal affirmation was really so inordinately deep?): 1) We laughed. A lot. They say laughter is the best medicine. It’s not as though I was ill, or our relationship was in a rough dark place (as it has been, haven’t all of ours?). Everything was just fine. Not splendid, but certainly not abysmal. But we laughed and laughed of his daily babblings about what a wonderful wife I was, and an award-winning mother, and a chef beyond compare (lies,…
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I keep searching my mind for an excuse. I’m sleep deprived. Yeah, that’s nothing new. I don’t feel great. Well, again, three kids in, this is no surprise. I’m not pregnant so no matter how badly I feel because of broken sleep, little alone time, next to zero exercise time, I’m not throwing up. I’m moody. Well, even though my little nursling turned into a weanling, and then back into my longest nursing tot, my hormones feel really stabilized and I can’t blame them. I’m scanning my mind for an excuse. Any semi-palpable reason for being not nice. It’s habit, really, that’s what I’m finding. As I’m about to preface my short remark, my cross look, with a “I’m _____” and then come up truly short. Without a distinguished cause. Just simply because I’m used to complaining and not being NICE. In reality, my days are so easy and delightful. SweetPea is almost 4 (in April, our shared birthday) and BabyLoves is 20 months and finally starting to say words you can understand and they both still nap 2 hours a day. And SuperBoy? He’s easy going, five and a half, and loves to read, play with his legos, listen to his Jim Weiss (today all about ancient Egypt), and hardly has those knock-down drag-out tantrums he was prone to a few years back. They’re all healthy. They all love to eat and easily poop. I can put all three to bed at night if need be and they can actually…
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I struggle with this. With a daughter + girly-ness. I struggle with wanting her to feel empowered and not be victim to the trashy marketing of “you’re just a girl” and “pink is the only color” and “math & science are hard for girls.” She’s a few months shy of four, but these thoughts really pound on me as she continues to grow into her own (carefully shaped by me to the extent I can) interests. Despite coming from a family with four girls and then one boy, we weren’t girly girls. I didn’t shave my legs til I was 20, around the same time I got my ears pierced. I never learned to apply makeup or shop for my body type. I still struggle with “doing” my hair. And I’m the fourth girl! My older sisters weren’t complete tomboys but were more interested in academics & athletics than shaping their eyebrows. So when I look at my little girl, I think oh gosh, I need to teach her how to be feminine and powerful in her femininity. I need to teach her how to dress for her shape, perform basic female upkeep, and all the while battle away the influence of early sexualization and imposed roles on her. It’s on my heart a lot. I think I have a lot to figure out as she ages. But one thing I can/do deal with right now is gifts. Christmas & birthdays–we love gifts in my family! Here’s my list of gifts for…
Read MoreI find myself still fighting poorly with my husband. We’ve come a long way in how we convey disagreements since our engagement (when we had our first real super duper fight?). And neither of us are the argumentative sort. Well, I’M not. And we know him to be easy going and generally laid back. So maybe one of us might be more stubborn and opinionated but I wouldn’t know that for a fact. Late into the hours the other night, my (sick? not really. teething? not really. growth spurt? maybe, sure. insomnia? could be. sleeping with his eyes open? definitely) littlest babe was up. In a weird way. Like, when I sat by his crib and held his hand periodically he would murmur off into a sleep that meant his eyes were taped open but his breathing and twitching indicated he was in REM. And when I tried to sneak out multiple times, he knew, oh! he knew. All this to say, I had a few hours sitting in a chair to braid segments of my hair, and think about this. How to fight better when you have small kids. Why is fighting different when you have small kids? Because you’re worn out to begin with, so your starting base isn’t a rest-filled, restored, peaceful, tranquil, my house-is-as-i-clean-up-last-night sort of life. You live in the rings of a tornado. So your fights can’t even come from a solid foundation. You’re like swinging into the wild winds hoping your spouse hears you because…
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I learned a really important lesson for me last year. Without deliberating meaning to, my word must have been No. I experienced saying “no” and how wonderful that was for me. Saying no, feeling guilty about it, sounding selfish, but sitting happily situated knowing that it was a good kind of selfish. No: meaning, do less, be more. Meaning, say no to the world more, say yes to what’s going to work for our little family more. The inescapable pressures on a mom of young children to perform every conceivable duty well grates on me. Advance in your career! Have the perfect birth & nursing! Be on your kid’s preschool committee for healthy treats! Stay//become thin and sexy for your spouse! Don’t complain about being tired! Don’t gloat about having kids! Rinse, repeat. Perhaps for me the turning point was sending our oldest to a few hours a week nature school. Not much time away from home, but it still felt like a big shift from our laissez-faire, surviving three kids in under four years kind of life. Suddenly I got the two little kids on the same nap schedule, and I started homeschooling a little more in earnest with our oldest. I tuned into how our son was playing with his little frenemies at school, how he was coping with adjusting to listening to other adults, how our middle child needed special girl time, how our monster tot was, indeed, exceptionally physical, and that he needed extra attention just unto himself…
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