She Laughs at the Days

I miss my computer. I don't like borrowing the GH's laptop to type on. Anyone know how to make changes to a wireless network without the "special number" that comes with the router? We can't figure out how to make it accept my computer without that "mysteriously missing" number.

****************

In other news, the other night I was getting ready to go to bed and the boy walked out of his bedroom blinking in the light. "Do you have to go pee buddy?" I asked, hope rising in my chest that perhaps he might finally be learning to wake up and use the toilet at night.

"No mom, it's time to go, daddy says it's time to go."

"Were you dreaming Boy?"

"No... oh wait, yes I was."

"Where were you going in your dream?"

"To Beema's house."

I made him try to go pee anyway, but it was too late, the diaper was already wet.

********************

The Girl has been talking in her sleep. I shared a room with my litt…

Well sweet baby, your three month letter is hard to write with you mid growth spurt and nursing constantly, and crying when I put you down. You no longer sleep through anything, loud noises now startle you awake. That means mommy is not able to watch a show and get you to sleep at the same time. Sigh.

You are such a bright girl. We love it when you smile and talk to us, which you want us to do all the time. Everytime one of us stops to pay attention to you we are rewarded with big smiles and your attempts at conversation. You love to chat, you will spend hours just talking to me only fussing if I walk away. Even tired and hungry you will smile at me if I make eye contact with you. You are indescribably sweet.

With your ears sticking out from your head like that, and your big blue eyes that look like they will pop right out if you open them any wider you look like a little elf, an elf that does Kung-fu. You thrash your arms and feet around like you are practicing some ancient form of mar…

It's almost two in the afternoon and she has yet to wake up. She fell asleep last night before midnight and aside from two nursing times last night she is still sleeping. I keep going in to check on her and she is in fact still breathing.

I made challah bread first thing this morning. She was still asleep. So I made this complicated custard for dessert that involves beating the egg whites and poaching little mounds of them in the milk to place on top later, it took a while. She was still asleep. I made lunch. She is still asleep. That's almost 15 hours so far. This is kind of freaky.

It’s hard being the middle child, I know, there is an older sibling bossing you around and a younger sibling getting all of the attention that you used to get. It irritated me the other day when our neighbors looked at and talked to the Baby for a long time, and didn’t even look at you. You sat there next to me smiling so sweetly and I hoped you wouldn’t notice that they were ignoring you. I realized it was a good time to give you some attention and so you and I smiled at each other and gave hugs and kisses while they were distracting the Baby.

I’ve relaxed my expectations of you more than I should have the past week or so. I’ve been so tired from late nights with Baby that I just ignored it on occasion when I told you to do something and you ran off to play instead. I’m sorry about that, it doesn’t help you to learn when I’m not consistent, and I’m sure that is a contributing factor in the way you have started to crumble and cry at the drop of a hat, especially whenever we say “No” to…

After the Boy was born I would have these moments when the magnitude of the responsibility I had just undertaken would slam into me. It’s unnerving to think all of a sudden that if I got it wrong, this child could die. It wasn’t anxiety exactly, just these moments, as I was bathing him for example, when I would suddenly think thoughts like, “I am the only one keeping this kid alive right now. If I walk away he will die.” It usually had the result of causing me to hyper vigilant for a while, and humbled and awed by the role I now found myself in. Those moments just kept slamming into me over and over until I barely notice them now. There are all of those days at the swimming pool, and standing under the ladder at the playground to catch if they fall, and sleeping with one ear open, and putting the things they shouldn’t ingest somewhere else, and generally panicking when they’re outside and it’s been longer than a minute since I last saw them. Living under this mantle of responsibility …

Today is International Women’s Day and I thought it would be fitting considering all of my ramblings about being a woman if I did something to notice this particular day.

Women the world over still live in poverty, are victims of violence, are often refused education and bear a greater load of the care-giving burden when it comes to taking care of families. How can we, as women who are in a much better position than most of our sisters, help?

So I have a few ideas that work for me. Today I am finally contacting my local WIC chapter to see if I can volunteer to teach nutrition and budgeting classes. Kim mentioned this to me ages ago and today is the day I am going to do it. After all, one of the biggest obstacles for women is lack of education. Knowledge is power, so I will share what I know.

Since the birth of the boy we have sponsored a little boy in Rwanda who lives with his grandmother after the death of both parents. I always planned to sponsor a little girl after the Girl was born b…

Have you ever had one of those moments when you stop and look at yourself, or someone else and sort of mentally compare what they are like now with how they were, say 10 years ago? Every so often I feel a little shocked as I survey the changes that some of my long time friends have gone through over the years as they become mothers. It’s as though my teenage self pops her head out to look around and exclaims, “What the heck?”

There was the time I was in my best friend’s house after a couple years absence and asked her who gave her all the canned jams I spotted in her pantry. “Oh I did that.” She replied. WHAT! This is the girl whose entire gourmet repertoire in high school was burned grilled cheese and mac’n’cheese spirals, and sandwiches. This is the girl in whose closet I sat in the 3rd grade reading Trixie Beldon books together racing to see who could finish the page first. She was usually a sentence ahead. This was the girl who would never get married, never have children, who clai…

The Boy just walked up to me this morning and completely unsolicited declared, "Mommy, I'd be happy to help the Girl pick up all of the toys."

I love it when he tries to talk like a grown-up. I could tell he was pleased with himself because of the way he grinned and capered after I smiled at him and told him thank-you. Now he is eagerly picking up toys with her.

Some days I feel really good about how this parenting thing is going.

Today is a paradox. Today I’m a paradox. Today is full of hope. Today is full of neglect. I have hope that we are turning a corner as a family, that things will get better that the future is brighter. I have a good foundation for this hope, and yet won’t be surprised if it turns out to be false. Yet my response is to neglect the elements of this day that should have my attention, reading to the Boy, tidying the house, setting things in order for the changing tides of the next few days. Instead I am craving words, pretty words, words that express and move and carry me away. I am reading the words fashioned by others, I want to write my own. I am responding to the careless way I have spilled out words this past while, wanting to take them back, to make them pretty, to give them order and poetry that I feel they lack.

Today the Genius Husband rose early and stayed for breakfast; made breakfast for the kids and myself. Today he smiled easily. Today his voice was full of life and hope. I fe…