Good things come to those who wait

Here's a really interesting article from The New Yorker about how important it is to teach our children to wait...and then reward them for their efforts. Sadly, I think I'm an eat-the-marshmallow kind of girl. My parents are going, "yep, you are, and this article explains a lot." You'll see what I'm talking about when you read the article. Whatever you do, don't think about eating marshmallows while you're reading it. You're already thinking about it aren't you?

Hands-free blogging

Really wanting to write a post right now, but have no hands to do so. Need some sort of magic blog helmet that I can wear and just download thoughts to. I have so many things I would do if only I didn't have have a handful of baby most of the time...
1. knit--I'm pretty into knitting these days. It's sort of a theoretical obsession though because anytime I actually have the hands to do it, I have to do other annoying things like unload the dishwasher or fold the laundry.
2. Write. It looks like I can sort of do this with limited hands, thanks to my sling, but it is painfully slow as I keep having to stop and bounce up and down and fend the kids off of the keyboard, lest they hop on noggin.com.
3. cook something that's not spaghetti and meatballs or quesadillas. So sick of these two dinners.
4. Spend time developing all my cool invention ideas like magic blog helmet and baby paci helmet (device for keeping paci in baby's mouth). Most of my ideas are of the helmet variety.


Okay, bouncing and telling kids they can't use the computer while typing one-handed is for the birds.

Greetings from the Weeds

It's tempting not to blog right now because I really don't have a lot to say that's positive. I'm not feeling well...kids are all a little sniffly and under the weather, but not sick enough to be still and watch tv. They were actually spitting on Teddy this morning (unsuccessful attempt at blowing raspberries at him, I think) and so now Teddy is showing signs of being sniffly.

Do you ever have those days when you feel like you're babysitting your own kids and you're just waiting for the real mom to come home so that you can go home and do your algebra homework and talk to your boyfriend on the phone? I feel like that right now. Brandon is out of town--something that is becoming more and more frequent. It's now more of an exception if he's in town for the whole week. I feel like I'm the only person in charge here and that is really scary and overwhelming sometimes.

There are so many people with real problems that are so much bigger than my non-problems. I got an email from a friend today asking for prayers for her friend who is probably losing her newborn baby today in the NICU. The email made me cry and I hid out in the bathroom for a few minutes and prayed for the baby and his mother and for me to get my head on straight and start appreciating my own children and my own life a little bit more. But then a few minutes later Charlie spilled a jar of tiny buttons all over the floor and I could feel my blood pressure start to sky rocket again. And then I just felt guilty because my moment of redemption was only like 5 seconds long.

Sometimes I am able to see my life with a wide angle lens, rather than a telephoto one and I can see that someday I will tell pithy stories about this time...that I will laugh at how hard everything was and realize that it didn't last forever and that my children can now wipe their own bottoms and noses and don't have to be bribed to brush their hair. But right now I am only able to see the micro view of everything. Right now, I am "in the weeds"--restaurant lingo for having too many tables sat in your section at once.

Just now Charlie asked me for tape....all of our tape is stuck to itself and would require a much more patient lady than myself to pick at it until it becomes un-stuck to itself. On a better day I would laugh about the tape, but today I want to throw it across the room. Or set it on fire. Can you set tape on fire?

Anyway, where was I? I really am wishing that we still lived in little villages, you know as in "it takes a village..." I want to live in that village. I want to be like, hey fellow villagers, here's the kids, I'll be at the starbucks the next village over if you need me. Catch you later!

I need a break is what I'm trying to say. But a break is not an option right now. So, there you go. And I feel like a bad mom for wanting a break from my precious children who are currently hitting each other with palm leaves made in Sunday school.

Sorry, no craft ideas or recipes or cute kid stories today. But thanks for listening anyway. Gotta go make dinner now. T minus 2 hours till bedtime. Come on 8 o'clock!

Things I am sick of

1. Finding peanut butter smeared across my white kitchen cabinets.
2. Not being able to use my computer without someone begging to play Wall-E or noggin.com or for something to eat or to watch a show.
3. Finding my hair on everything constantly. I now understand how "mom" haircuts happen.
4. People always asking me for food.
5. People making toys out of things like hangers and old vitamin water bottles.
6. Constantly dressing like I'm running late for my 8:00 a.m. freshman English class.
7. Yelling about how I'm not going to make food at the moment.
8. A certain yogurt fan always leaving her foil yogurt lid yogurt-side-down on the table.
9. Losing my patience.
10. Kids playing "ghost baby" with Teddy by putting the living room throw on his poor little head.

Having sort of a "day" over here in case you couldn't tell. Nothing specific is that horrible. Just lots of little things that make me want to lock myself in my bathroom and hide out for a little while. Except nothing makes the kids want to hang out with me more than if I am in the bathroom, so that won't really work. Emma's hungry... back to the grind.... Serenity now.

This gets me every time...

I'm sitting here posting this through tears because I just re-read this Anna Quindlen essay again. I'm reading it on the heels of reading the Rosin article I just posted about and all the wonderful comments that followed that post, and so now it's like I'm seeing it with fresh eyes.

It's hard to pick a favorite line from this essay, but I think right now my favorite is this:

"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, matter-of-fact and 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."

It seems like this should be some sort of "goal" (for lack of a better word) of motherhood...right? To end up with people you "like best in the world?" Doesn't that make breast milk sort of seem like a grain of sand on the beach of childhood? That's a rhetorical question--I don't want to spark another debate. ; )

Here's the rest of the essay...get the tissues handy!

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, have 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 poring 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 some thing 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 pick up. 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 onto 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, matter-of-fact and 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.

Breast Is Best?

I just read an article in The Atlantic called "The Case Against Breast-feeding." Here's the blurb about the article from the magazine:

In certain overachieving circles, breast-feeding is no longer a choice—it’s a no-exceptions requirement, the ultimate badge of responsible parenting. Yet the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates. Is breast-feeding right for every family? Or is it this generation’s vacuum cleaner—an instrument of misery that mostly just keeps women down?

Whoa. I don't know about where you live, but around here, saying something like that will get you kicked out of Music Together or Baby Mandarin pretty quickly. Despite the shocking premise, I think the article has a lot of really interesting things to say about modern motherhood.

Hate this? Like this? I'd love to know what you think. I think this subject is so interesting! If you're like me and never click on links to videos, then I would urge you to make an exception and click on the podcasts that accompany the article. I think you'll really like them. Really. You should click on them. Please? Here's the link again just in case you forgot. : )

Limiting Scream Time

Guess what? Charlie is totally addicted to the computer. Where, I wonder, could he have picked up such a nasty habit?

So, in an effort to wean the boy off of this seemingly innocent piece of machinery, we are limiting screen time. This, has an inverse effect on scream time: the less screen time, the more scream time we experience. This has not been an easy habit for Charlie to kick.

Last week we were all sick and it seemed like Zee and Moose A. Moose (of Noggin fame) had unpacked their little suitcases and moved into our living room permanently. The first few bars of "Everywhere I Go" is enough to send me over the edge at this point. And now we are getting Noggin piped in through the computer as well, thanks to noggin.com and my addict son.

I told the kids that we needed to limit screen time in an effort to not have our brains turn to mush. We talked about things that have screens...Leapsters have screens, computers, TVs, portable DVD players, Daddy's Blackberry (talk about addiction...) , and Charlie pointed out that windows also have screens. Touche, Charlie, touche. So we're limiting screens that you have to plug in. (She said, while typing on the computer. ahem.)

One thing we've been doing to ease the noggin.com withdrawal symptoms, is to have family drawing time. I cannot take credit for this idea I got it from this book. So far family drawing time has been a smash hit. It is a great way to kick off the morning and a great way for us to do something quiet together that we all enjoy. When was the last time you drew a picture? It had been a while for me, but it is amazing how therapeutic it can be. I even sharpened a pencil today. I might as well have been churning my own butter, it felt like such a throwback to yesteryear to watch pencil shavings collect in the little pencil shaving collector thingy.

So, family drawing time is very simple. Really it's no different than any other drawing time; it's just marketed better. Giving it a name (Family Drawing Time) makes it seem official, as does having special paper and supplies reserved just for FDT. The other special thing about Family Drawing Time is that you're all doing it together (it's not mommy empties the dishwasher while the kids draw time), and really that is what kids want more than Leapsters or their own iPhones: our undivided attention. I don't mean to sound preachy here; really I'm talking to myself.

Now, I don't want you to think I'm some purist. I did say we're limiting screen time, not cutting it out altogether. I admire the moms who can make it through the day without a little Max and Ruby or Toot and Puddle. However, I have come to terms with the fact that as much as I'd like to be, I'm not one of those moms. I need a break sometimes and so do my kids. And I personally enjoy a little 30 Rock or tivoed Oprah in the evenings, so I'd feel pretty hypocritical denying my kids the same pleasure. And, hello? I'm a major computer junkie and would be on the thing all the time if not for trying to set a good example for Charlie. Checking facebook while Charlie's in the room is kind of like sipping a crisp chardonnay in front of a pregnant woman. I totally get his obsession with the computer, but it's my job as his mommy to not let the obsession get too out of control.

I will say one thing that I keep thinking of when I think of Charlie's computer addiction. You never know where an interest like that can lead. I heard an interview with Malcolm Gladwell recently where he was talking about his latest book Outliers. Maybe you've heard of this book, but the general gist is that he wrote a book about exceptional people and what common traits or backgrounds they all share. Basically, he was trying to get at what made these people so successful. I haven't read the book, but in several reviews and interviews about it, it is mentioned that one of the reasons Bill Gates became such a success is that he had rare access to a computer as a child in prep school. Not that Charlie is the next Bill Gates or anything (he totally is), but it does seem like if a child is naturally interested in something and shows some talent for it, then they should be encouraged in that area. So, basically, what I'm getting at is that computers and TV aren't all bad. They appeal to some of us more than others and they are tools for making our lives easier and more fun and could possibly lead to Charlie becoming a cajillionaire someday (you never know). Everything in moderation, I say.

First though, we need to work on Charlie writing all the letters in his name in the right order.

And now screen time is officially over. Next order of business: laundry time!