Mother's Day Words of Wisdom from Anna Quindlen

This is one of my favorite essays about motherhood...I just love that Anna Quindlen. Happy Mother's Day, everyone!!! Here's to living in the moment! Love, Elizabeth


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.

Magic Buses and Singing Cows

On Saturday night we watched the latest movie from our netflix queue, Into the Wild, and it is still haunting me. Have you seen it? I keep trying to figure out what about the movie has me feeling so unraveled. I think it probably has something to do with having a son and imagining him running away and doing something so foolish/brave as trying to live on his own in the middle of the wilderness of Alaska. I think the movie touches on a parent's biggest fear: losing a child. But this case is worse because the child wants to be lost. And you can't even blame drugs or mental illness or anything. The main character, Chris (a.k.a. Alex), is a very intelligent, sensitive young man who wants to detach himself from his past and upbringing and parents so much that he destroys anything with his name on it, gives himself a new identity and disappears into the snow. Is there anything more nightmarish as a parent? The movie is not just about him living in an abandoned school bus in Alaska, though. It also tells the story of his gypsy-like journey across America to Alaska. Along the way he meets all sorts of characters who teach him how to be a better person/nomad in some way, and who he touches with his charismatic love of the wild (and literature about the wild). He cannon balls off of cliffs into beautiful rivers, he kayaks his way to Mexico, camps in the exquisite starkness of the desert. His journey is like one Ansel Adams photograph after another, portraying the utter gorgeousness of the American landscape. You can totally see how he would want to keep wandering forever.

Coincidentally, I also stumbled across a new blog after seeing this movie. The blog details a family's account of selling/donating all of their possessions so that they can live out of a school bus with their two small children. Their plan is to travel the country trading their plant and flower tinctures for other services from like-minded individuals. This of course led me to a host of other blogs who are also written by people living out of school buses with their small children. So I guess these buses all must come equipped with wi-fi?

As a family, we have done our share of wandering, having moved almost every year for the last six years. (Granted, the closest we've come to living out of a school bus is living in corporate housing for a few months.) As someone who has lived in an apartment or a townhouse for the last several years, the idea of living off the land and raising my children like little nymphs in the forest sounds sort of appealing. I think I might just settle for a back yard, though. The school bus bloggers write about their vision of raising their kids in a sort of Utopian society where everyone's needs are met, everyone loves and respects each other, the earth and the universe, and people are allowed to live off the bounty of nature and their yarn crafts... But what happens when someone gets bitten by a tick and you need to go to the pediatrician? Will the doctor really want to trade his services for a pair of felt moccasins? Or what happens when your child becomes old enough to decide for themselves what they want their life to be...what their version of "utopia" is? Will their idea of going into the wild be running off to business school? That'll show Mom and Dad! One way or another, no matter what you do, are your children going to run away from you? Won't there always be something to worry about? Is it really possible to escape the human condition with a magic bus?

Lately, in our house, you will be doing something, maybe you're downstairs typing on the computer, or in the kitchen washing vegetables, or in the bedroom sorting laundry, when all of the sudden you hear a faint whistling coming from Emma and Charlie's bedroom. You realize you recognize the tune that is being whistled, and that the tune is "Don't Worry. Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin. (go on, click over to that youtube link...and don't forget to turn up the volume...it will make nice background music for the rest of this post.) Anyway, you will hear that music and know that Charlie is in his room pressing the hoof of his new stuffed cow that inexplicably sings "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Ever since his Gigi bought him the singing stuffed cow, he can be found in his room listening to that song, much the way I listened to 10,000 Maniacs' "These Are Days" over and over again in my college dorm room. "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is now like the theme song of our house and I have to say, hearing that tune drift down the stairs into whatever room of the house I'm in always brings a smile to my face. That's nice, Elizabeth, you're thinking, but what does this have to do with Into the Wild and living in school buses? Well, I'll tell you. I want to write to those school bus people and tell them that they don't have to live in a bus to find peace and happiness. That it is all around them. That there are singing cows around every corner and that the world is filled with so much love that it is like a balloon with too much air in it. When I stop and look at the world through my children's eyes, I can see things this way. Charlie's song reminds me of that and it makes me want to cry when I hear it...not just from pregnancy hormones either...but because I realize I am happy. Right here where I am. No school bus required.

Food Network, why can’t I quit you?

I admit it. I am a total Food Network junkie. I don’t get time to watch TV very often, but when I do, my cooking shows are always waiting for me on Tivo and I can hardly wait to click on them and find out what Ina or Rachael or Jamie are up to. Grey’s Anatomy? No thanks, I’d rather watch a pork tenderloin slow roast in someone else’s oven. I keep trying to figure out what it is about these shows that has me so addicted. It makes no sense. I can’t smell or taste the food. Most of the time I would never cook what they’re cooking in a million years (usually because the recipe calls for about a gajillion sticks of butter and/or huge hunks of meat—something I eat only rarely these days). What am I getting out of, say, watching someone pick through a big bucket of clams, tossing out the open ones, checking them for sand? With two preschoolers in the house, I am about as likely to make clams for dinner as I am beef carpaccio.

Sometimes I do make the recipes though, and there is nothing like the feeling of conquering a new territory of culinary terrain. It is empowering to see something on a show, print out the recipe from my computer and recreate it in my own kitchen. When I make a meal, all of my senses are satisfied. I am fully engaged in the act of creating something, and those moments are hard to come by as a mom. Plus, I really love to eat yummy food. This may sound sort of sad, and by all means you’re allowed to pity me, but I think one of the best parts of my day is when I’m making dinner for my family. I start at 5:00 usually and take an hour or so to chop and sauté my way to some form of inner peace. I know. That sounds a little over-the-top, a little too Eat. Pray. Love. But it’s kind of true. The work of cooking allows my mind to wander, to reflect, even to meditate. I’m not saying this happens every night. Last night I wasn’t feeling well and I popped a Stouffer’s lasagna in the microwave. But, on a good night cooking dinner is my time to make something beautiful out of something as simple as what’s in my refrigerator.

So, I think the cooking shows are appealing because obviously those cooking show people feel the same way about cooking as I do. They get it. I can watch them cook and I can learn, but I can also see myself—my own passions, my own creative spirit—reflected back to me. Someone, I think it was C.S. Lewis said, “I read to know I’m not alone.” I read for that reason too, but I also think I watch to know I’m not alone. Now, if only they had a cable network devoted to the art of raising children. Then I think I would be totally hooked.

With Five You Get Minivan

So, in case you're wondering why I've been sort of lame in the posting department lately, I have a good excuse! It's because I've been too busy falling asleep spontaneously, surfing baby name websites for an obscene amount of time, pondering whether a laundry-hating person such as myself could actually attempt cloth diapers, and researching minivans. Yes, mommytown is getting a little bigger....baby number three is on his/her way!!!

For a long time Brandon and I really debated about whether or not having three kids was such a good idea. We have a pretty good thing going on right now seeing as we have the two most awesome kids ever (all of my readers' kids excluded, of course). Are we just setting ourselves up for some really lame kid that maybe won't be as cool as our other two? What if no one really likes this new kid? Or they are the type to always stir things up and want to play cowboy when Emma and Charlie want to play space explorers? What if they hate all things princess and transportation-oriented?

Plus, you pretty much have to get a giant car once you have three kids. Our hip, small car days are numbered. We considered all these possibilities and decided to go ahead and tempt fate in the hopes that we will have a third kid who is just as awesome as the other two. Plus, I am a third child myself, so I am biased toward third-born children everywhere. My parents probably had all these same worries and discussions and went ahead with things anyway. Hopefully they don't have any regrets? There was probably a moment of regret there in my late teens.... We won't go there now, though.

Baby number three is due November 5th-ish and we couldn't be happier. The first trimester is pretty much history and I am glad to be back to my non-nauseated self. So far, this baby is quite the mexican food aficionado. I had the realization recently that I incorporated guacamole into just about every meal we ate last week. I am all about the avocados (and the chocolate ice cream) lately. He/she also already gets the hiccups and seems to be very laid-back--both traits we witnessed on the ultrasound last week when, save for a spastic hiccup every now and then, we could not get the little bean to wake up and show off his/her spinal cord and profile.

Well, the kids are home from preschool now, so I better pay them some attention. The kids are talking to me in their robot voices right now. WE-ARE-TALK-ING-LIKE-RO-BOTS-TO-DAY-A-PPAR-ENT-LY. IT-IS-PRET-TY-FUN-TO-TALK-LIKE-A-RO-BOT. GO-A-HEAD-AND-GIVE-IT-A-TRY...YOU-WON'T-BE-SOR-RY. HAVE-A-GREAT-DAY-MY-FELL-OW-RO-BOT-FRIENDS.

Fight for Your Right to Potty

Will Charlie ever be potty trained? I'm beginning to have my doubts. Visions of him in a cap, gown and a pull up are becoming more and more realistic to me. Sometimes I imagine a college-age Charlie in his dorm room, asking his roommate to toss him a diaper so that he can take care of business...because it seems highly unlikely that Charlie will ever attempt to go #2 on a potty of any shape, size, color, or type. I think I just might be doing something wrong in the potty training department? Truthfully, I think the person who is the most in need of training is me.

Tell me your secrets, all you potty training wiz kids out there (no pun intended), I need your expert advice, please! Do I need to have a potty party? I actually bought the book Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day at the beginning of this potty journey and started to read it. It reads like a high school term paper about going to the bathroom and throwing parties. If, for some reason, your personal hobby is learning about potty training through the ages (Did you know "in the mid-1960s children in London were starting their potty training before they were five months old, while Parisian children--just across the English Channel--weren't starting until they were almost eight months old"?), then you will love the section of this book entitled "Changing Traditions." If you're like me, and just want your child to get his pee pee out of the tunnel (as in, "Charlie do you need to go pee pee? No, Mommy, it's in the tunnel."), then this section could easily be skipped. If you are one of those moms who likes to research a little before making a major purchase like a plastic child's potty, then there is a great chapter on which potties are the most popular. I was proud to see that our Safety 1st Potty 'N Step Stool made the cut (phew!). There is also a section explaining how to trace your child's bum so that you have a little bum pattern to take with you on your potty shopping trip (because "one size doesn't fit all").

Finally, chapter 5 gets us to "potty party day!" Now, we're finally getting down to business. This is the chapter that promises to unlock the secrets to potty training Charlie in one day. Here is the Potty Party Checklist:

• "Acquire all items on the Potty-Training Essentials list ( potty chair, baby doll that wets, doll underwear, training pants, disposable pull-ups, big-kid underwear, potty chart, flushable wet wipes, waterproof mattress covers, waterproof blanket)


• Purchase the items on your chosen party theme list (I think our theme will either be "spiderman scooters" or "super dinosaurs.")


• Buy and wrap a present for yourself that you really want (totally on board with this one).


• Wrap the doll.


• Wrap and hide your child's big-kid underwear.


• Cut fabric or alter big-kid underwear to make a dozen big-kid underpants for the doll--these underpants should match or have the same theme as your child's big-kid underwear.


• Place the potty-chair in the bathroom.


• Decorate the bathroom and party room with the chosen theme.


• Wrap party prizes.


• Wrap your child's Grand Finale Big Kid Celebration gifts from you and your family members.


• Prepare a variety of enticing bite-size treats.


• Stash a handful of potty-training books in the bathroom and a handful in the party room.


• Stack the potty training videos next to the VCR.


• Purchase a variety of drinks and prepare ingredients to make fruit smoothies .


• Place the waterproof blanket or rug on the sofa in the party room."

I estimate that this potty party will cost me about $500 and will take about six months to prepare for. I think I'd rather change disgusting underpants for the next six months than spend the time sewing tiny doll-sized spiderman underwear and acquiring potty videos and books by the handfuls. I do like her idea of buying myself a "present that I really want," but do I really have to wrap it?

I also worry a little about post-potty-party letdown. I'm not sure I can maintain the potty joie de vivre for the time it will take to make this no diapers thing a reality. The author recommends having a "potty parade" the day after the potty party. I guess I will consider that option. I don't know...there has to be an easier way. Right? I have a few more minutes left before I have to go pick the kids up from preschool...just enough time to run to Target to pick up some more diapers and wipes for Charlie. Or I could use the time to study up on potty party themes and surf the web for places to buy a waterproof blanket. Stay tuned and I'll let you know which way I decide to go...

Free Range Kids

Here's another interesting story that is kind of in the same thread as shampoo visors and banning tag... also check out http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ for more stories about giving kids independence. Are you a freerange mom? I'd like to be, but I don't know if I'm quite there yet.

On DC Urban Moms (a local mom listserv I read) people have been talking about the "subway kid" and reminiscing about the good old days of their childhood when they were allowed to ride the subway, take international flights and ski behind school buses without so much as an adult peeking between the blinds to check on them. I'm sure that there was the occasional injury and natural consequence as a result of this much independence, and I'm not saying that people should send their four-year-old off on a trip to backpack through Europe by themselves, but a little independence and the trust in the basic goodness of humanity would be nice. Yesterday I watched my kids ride their wheeled vehicles of choice (Hello Kitty bike for Emma and Spiderman scooter for Charlie). I was sitting on our front steps while they rode on the sidewalk in front of our house. I told them not to go past a certain point (which was pretty far away...almost beyond yelling distance) and then gave them the freedom to go up and down the sidewalk by themselves while I sat and watched. It was so amazing to watch them zoom away from me (well, Charlie zoomed...Emma sort of moseyed along, riding her bike the way a muppet might ride a bike). I watched them get farther and farther away, wondering with a tiny bit of anxiety if they would zoom and mosey away from me into some sort of danger zone, and then I watched as they stopped themselves when they got to the designated boundary and turned around and came back to me. My heart filled with pride as I watched them. It seems like if you never let your kids have a little freedom in life, you never get the opportunity to teach them how to stop and come back to you. I think we both learned important skills yesterday: me, how to let go and them, how to come back.

Apparently, my sub-conscious was still working through some of this though, as last night I had a very vivid dream about Emma taking a trip solo to the mall in our car. (!) She came back totally unscathed, but the car was returned to the garage mangled and dented. I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm guessing that dream means I'm not completely ready to let go just yet.

Tag, you're too aggressive

I saw this article today in the newspaper and thought it was interesting. Basically this elementary school principal has outlawed tag from her school, claiming it had become a game of "intense aggression." Granted, I don't have a kid in elementary school yet, but I don't really see what the big deal is with a little bit of intense aggression during recess. For some reason this article reminds me of thumbing through the One Step Ahead catalog and seeing the ads for the shampoo visor and thinking 1) Whatever happened to just telling your child "close your eyes"? and 2) How have I been washing my kids' hair this long without a shampoo visor? What kind of mother am I?

I feel the same way about this tag thing...whatever happened to letting your kids get a few scrapes and bruises on the playground? Isn't that pretty much what childhood is all about? Come to think of it, isn't that what life is all about? Is there a shampoo visor for every aspect of childhood these days?

What do you think? If you have a shampoo visor, it's time to fess up.