Learning mommy

The days have been slipping by. E had an ear infection, them M. E is 95% potty trained, M is 95% walking. Some days they look so big. I've been telling E stories about when she was a baby, she did this, or that. She thinks its funny that she used to kick mommy from inside the tummy.

I haven't journaled or blogged about M the same way I did about E's babyhood. Lack of time, fear of showing "favoritism", I'm sure a thousand other reasons. I need to start. I need to write things down to remember how she crams food in her mouth, how she clutches her blanket at nighttime, and lays her head on my shoulder when I sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to her. I need to remember her sweet disposition and how she's already chasing and playing with her sister. I'll try to do better, baby.

And now some words from another mommy that I found in my inbox. I love this piece. I need to find out if Anna Quindlen really wrote it. ;-)

An Essay by Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago pouring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?" (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, and matter-of-fact - I was sometimes over the top.

And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

Momentous Occasions

Yesterday was such a huge day. E started the 3 year old class on Monday, and yesterday wore big girl panties -WITH-NO-ACCIDENTS-...!!!!! She also went poopy on the potty ("but just a little bit, mommy.") If she does it again today, I'm taking her out for ice cream, or something.

Also, M walked. Repeatedly. Granted, it was like 3 steps, fall down, Mommy pick up, 3 steps, fall down, Mommy pick up, but still. She knew what she was doing too, I could tell. For the past few months, I've been trying to get her to "walk to mommy" since she is the biggest mama's girl ever and who does she finally walk to, last night? E, the big sister, who was brushing her teeth and running around having a grand time. J doesn't believe me, as he worked late last night and didn't see it, and she wouldn't repeat the feat this morning. But I think we're off and running.

What else is happening? I get to close out a case that was reassigned to me when I returned from maternity leave... from my first baby. This was not a complicated case, but still rather huge and one of first impression. We got a signed commitment from the recipient last night, and I get to tell the person who filed that it's finally over. Yay me.

1 Year

A year ago today I was tired of being pregnant, excited to find out if my baby was a boy or a girl, nervous about how E was going to handle it all... I'm going to cry a lot today, tomorrow, the next day. Happy Birthday Margaret. Your mommy loves you very much.

It's Friday!

Here's the latest column. I actually like it, although I realized after I turned it in that I spelled Gayle King's first name wrong, and my editor didn't catch it either. Oh well.

For those of you that tune in from time to time, I apologize for not blogging more frequently. I want to be a good blogger, I do. I just am frequently overwhelmed with how much information I have to share, and overwhelmed with the amount of things I have to do in a day. Typical working mom complaints, yes?

Another thing to take you into the weekend. If you (hypothetically) inadvertently feed a baby a tiny little bit of very very hot salsa, you will feel really really bad when she starts wailing, but you will also be trying not to laugh at the way her face turned red like a cartoon character. So heartbreaking. Hypothetically, of course.

Good times

Every day when we leave day care, I let E pick up two or three packs of crackers for the ride home. Yesterday, she gave me one and as I was holding it, M grabbed it from me and started gnawing on it. I tried taking it away from her, but she pouted, and I caved, since I had made her cry when I first walked in yesterday. (I was at the front desk signing the kids out, and she happened to see me from her room. Literally, there’s one spot where she could sit and see me, and she was there. I heard a kid crying quite loudly, and I thought, “my, that’s one pissed off baby…. That kinda sounds like mine.” I turned around and there she was, crying that she could see her mama and her mama wasn’t coming to get her. It broke my heart. Therefore… crackers.) So E got to get two more crackers.

We’re in the car, and E has finished her crackers and gets all pouty about something, and starts kicking my seat. I say, “look at that temper tantrum right there!” And she says, “I wanna see!”

“What?” I ask.
“I wanna see temper tan!”
“You want to see a temper tantrum?”
“Yes!”
“Right there! You’re the temper tantrum!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO. I WANNA SEE TEMPER TAN!”

It was pretty funny, and nothing I could do could convince her that a temper tantrum wasn’t something really cool outside of the car that she was missing.

She calmed down a little, and saw M still gnawing on the pack of Club crackers (yes I’m a horrible mother for letting her do that, I know). “I want Aggie crackers.” (E calls M “aggie”)
“You want Maggie’s crackers?” I ask.
“Yes.”
”No, baby, you had your crackers, those are Maggie’s crackers.”
“I want to share.” She pouted.

So freakin’ cute. She gets sharing! Kinda.