Single Track

I can still hear crying when I lock the door behind me, but M shoos me on. I can actually "hear" it all the way down the street, but at that point it's actually just a noise stuck in my head. Once I turn down the first gravel path into the park, my head starts to clear a little. By the time I get to the single track turnoff, my shoulders have lost their tension and my arms are swinging freely. My breathing slows and deepens. After an hour or so of walking in the park, I feel recharged.

I spend a lot of time with my kids right now. This is not a bad thing, because I have fun with reading aloud and painting and playing with Legos. Poop, pee, vomit and blood do not phase me at all (loose teeth are another story). I have remarkable patience for answering the same question over and over again. I would say that 90% of the time I'm really enjoying myself as a stay-at-home-mom. But still, the twenty-four-hour-ness of the job can be taxing. Taking a break is key. I try to do different things....hang out with friends at a bar, go to the coffee shop to write, or take a yoga class. But none of those are as effective as an hour of walking on single track paths in the woods.

It's rained a bit the last week or so and the trails are very muddy and slick. I like the focus that is required to remain upright with each step. I like how my eyes adjust to the wall of green and brown surroundings and start to pick up all the variations in color and texture. I like how the city noises fade into the background and what I mostly hear are birds and squirrels.

When I get back home, M has generally succeeded in getting all the children into bed and will have a dish towel slung over his shoulder, while he cleans up the dinner dishes. Our evenings together are much more pleasant when I've been walking. My birthday is coming up this week and the best thing about getting older is figuring out what makes me feel good and not worrying about whether it's what I should be doing or getting. Frankly, a haircut causes me great anxiety and a pedicure would probably put me over the edge. Walking in the woods does the trick, though.

Stop Biting Her Face!

My house is a giant mess. Marko gets into everything. Anytime I sit down, I sit on a raisin or stale Cheerio or a blob of jelly, even on days when I know I didn't serve anyone jelly (how do they reach that high?). Laurel's preferred activity is to make "art" out of little bits of garbage she finds. Max leaves puddles of drool. Most nights, I tidy the house but it takes only 5 minutes for it to look like burglars rifled through all our stuff but decided to steal nothing, because everything we own is a broken down piece of crap, or if it was once good, has since been destroyed by the children. But then we have a morning like this one, everyone hanging out in the dining room, painting and listening to music, Max looking on from his high chair. I have time for a second cup of coffee. All is calm.

I am learning that there needs to be a balance between structure and flexibility. I made a daily routine that includes post-dinner outside play, and that has turned out to be a really good thing for bedtime. Playing outside after dinner has become this privilege that I can use to leverage good behavior. I didn't intend for that, but that's they see it as a reward. We play outside before dinner, too, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to be viewed the same in their eyes. I'm thinking ahead to summer time, when I'll have all three kids all day long again and trying to get ready for that. I give them a bucket of warm water (because it's still kind of cool here) and some shovels and containers from the recycling bin and they pretty much entertain themselves with mud.

Laurel and Marko fight a lot. I try not to intervene, but you have to draw the line at face-biting! (Seriously, I said, "No face-biting" today.) If I stay back, usually they move through the conflict in 5 minutes or less. But there are days when they seem to pick at each other all day long.

Mother's Day

My gift from Laurel. She
was so excited to give it to
me and I love it.

Sunday morning I was awake at the very first light. I don't mean the sunrise, but long before that, before even the first bird songs, when the darkness of the sky shifts ever so slightly to gray, and you can imagine the end of night coming. I was sleeping in the back of our SUV with Max, which sounds horrible to every single person I ever tell, but is actually really comfortable. The seats fold down and it's pretty much flat and firm. M was in the tent with the other kids. We were camping with our neighbors, who have two kids. Other than that, there weren't too many people at the campground this weekend. It rained for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. It was dark, dark, dark.

I spend most nights in the well-lit city though, so even enjoying camping as much as I do, it can be unnerving to experience the darkness of the forest in the middle of the night. Max is five months old today, and wakes up several times at night to nurse, but last night I had no diversions to see me through these night feedings. No Facebook to scroll through, no Atlantic stories bookmarked in my browser. (Once I even placed a grocery order in the middle of the night.)

It's good to have some time to think, and especially on Mother's Day. Motherhood has been this hugely transformative force in my life these last 7 years. It's not easy all the time, but it has become a role that I find deeply fulfilling. And this is perplexing to me, because all the "doing" of motherhood is repetitive, messy crap that gets undone quickly, that mostly goes unnoticed by others and is highly undervalued in our society. The other tasks of raising up children...teaching kindness and empathy and conflict resolution....you can't actually be very successful at them if you set out to them "right." It's actually a lot more effective to just strive to do them well yourself. They will see. They see everything. At the end of the day, I have little tangible evidence of my work. I was me. I swept crumbs. How is it that I am so happy doing it and that it feels so worthwhile to be doing it?

I've written about this before, but motherhood feels like I am on a stage, constantly watched and imitated. As the children gain language they experiment with my phrases, with my tones. Their play mimics my work. My missteps are reflected back immediately by the expressions on their faces. But on the other hand, they are not growing up to BE me. I can't really make them be any kind of way. Admitting that lack of control over them is both freeing and terrifying.

Our camping trip - our first with Max - went well. We found sites at Ohiopyle that had a little creek flowing behind them so the kids had someplace to play. I brought just enough changes of clothes for Marko. Nobody seems to have gotten poison ivy, miraculously because it was everywhere. We had a really nice hike along the river and saw a water snake and tadpoles and tons of spring wildflowers. And my mother's day wish was fulfilled when we managed to get a photo with all five of us in it!

April Showers bring Neighborhood Cleanups

Still crazy here. Marko is wearing Laurel's underwear (he couldn't find any of his, despite the fact that at least 50% of our clothes are clean and it is highly unlikely that he doesn't have any in his drawer). This morning I caught him handing a pencil to Max (eeek! But at least it wasn't sharpened...).

Max continues to have difficulty feeding during the day and nurses a lot overnight. However, if he eats a lot overnight then he pees a lot overnight and with his weird rashiness, he really can't sit in a wet diaper for very long. I am too tired to google solutions and just try to keep my focus on the year 2021 when Max will turn 5 and theoretically everyone in the house will be sleeping in their own beds and all night long.

This weekend we organized the neighborhood clean up. Frankly I'm a little burned out on community organizing at the moment, but I have to admit that it was kind of fun. I got up early on Saturday morning and baked banana bread. We had a bunch of garbage bags and shovels and work gloves leftover from last year's clean up (which nobody attended) and set up a table outside. The kids made a sign. Abut 15 people actually did show up this year (probably because I put a facebook post advertising the fresh-from-the-oven banana bread), and it was really nice to stand around in our yard, eating little slices of banana bread balanced on paper towels and making small talk with people we haven't seen all winter.

When I manage to organize something like this, I feel like myself, or some part of myself outside of the motherhood part of my existence. Many days, I can only see myself as mother, all the way to the horizon in every direction. I have heard lots of people talk about getting "lost" in this phase of life. I always assumed that it would feel bad if you made it to that level, but it doesn't really. There's a lot of joy and gratitude and satisfaction and it often feels very right to be doing it. You just stop and wonder every now and again what happened to that other person you were before you had all these little people swirling around you all day and night.

Things That Happened This Week (So Far)

Max learned to laugh this week. Laurel was dancing in front of him and he went from his usual coo/grunt/heavy breathing to an actual giggle. A baby's laughter is a magical sound. It should be recorded and piped in to stressful situations.

I had to take him to the doctor for his eczema last week. He has it pretty bad. While I was there, they weighed him and he is 13 lbs 12 oz. He has great head control and can hold himself up pretty well when he's sitting in someone's lap. We got lots of new creams and a prescription antihistamine to try. He looked and seemed to feel a lot better over the weekend but had a big flare up last night, so now it's on to try an elimination diet for me, since he's still breastfeeding. This does not make me excited, but to be honest, I could do a better job of eating well, so maybe it's a good thing for both of us. I have a suspicion that it's eggs, so I'm going to start with eggs and dairy.

Laurel and I had a Daisy troop meeting. It's wild, this group of kindergarteners at 7 o'clock on a school night. Last night I was really dragging and didn't particularly want to be there. But M was home with two crying boys, so I guess at least it was a break from that. I really do like the Girl Scouts program, though, and we are very excited to do our first day at Girl Scout Camp in May. And when they sing their friendship circle song at the end, it is the cutest thing ever.

I went to two different social events, by myself, to hang out with other moms. This required a Herculean effort on my part to get out of the house because I'm beat-ass tired from getting up with Max all night and chasing Marko around all day. But I love talking with other women about stuff they're doing. Travel, volunteer stuff, work, politics, etc. I'm burnt out on talking about parenting/mothering at the moment....so I want to talk about other stuff, but for some reason, I really only want to talk to other moms about non-mom stuff. How much sense does that make?

Things That Happened This Week

1) Max rolled. He was delighted with himself. I was slightly less delighted because now I have to be super careful about where I leave him.

2) Marko ran up to me in the schoolyard at pick up time holding a plastic baggie of something brown and said, "Here's some poop, Mom!" It wasn't (I don't think), but still. WHY DID YOU PICK IT UP IF YOU THOUGHT IT WAS A BAG OF POOP, MARKO??

3)  Laurel and I had a Daisy meeting. I am a recent convert to the Girl Scouts, but I love two things about it. First, her Daisy troop is definitely bonding with each other and I think it's cool to have some good friends outside of school. Second, I think our society has degraded into a decidedly uncivil state, and I adore hearing Laurel recite the Girl Scouts Promise and the Girl Scouts Law because it reminds us to be friendly and helpful, honest and fair and so forth.

4) I became obsessed with Property Brothers. This is a tv show where a realtor and a contractor first trick an unsuspecting couple by showing them the house of their dreams...that is way out of their budget. HAHAHAHA! LOLOL. They are always mad. Then they show them ugly houses that smell like cat pee and convince them to buy and renovate. Don't worry, it always turns out great. Neatly wrapped up in 42 minutes. Personally I disagree with the "open concept" obsession. This when all your rooms are open, especially the kitchen. For "entertaining" they always say. I prefer a door, to hide the dishes from my guests. Also, what's the fuss about granite countertops? I'm saving up for butcher block.

5) I planted some green onions. I keep seeing these articles about food you can grow from scraps. We often buy things like green onions, cilantro, or ginger and usually only need a little but you have to buy the whole bunch and then some of it goes bad. Well, it goes into my compost pile, so I'm not totally wasting it, but I've really been thinking about food waste since I did a volunteer mission for 412 Food Rescue. If you are local to Pittsburgh, definitely follow them on Facebook and you too could save some food that is perfectly good, but about to get dumped!

Sleep

The 24 hour-ness of being a stay at home mom is pretty intense.

I feel like I'm underwater. Everything slightly muted and moving a bit slower than usual. Max does not sleep in long stretches and at first I was buoyed by post-partum hormones. He's a newborn, I told myself, and this is a phase that will end soon. Besides, he went back to sleep easily. But this last month has been torturous. With everyone in the house battling colds and flus, I found myself sleeping less and less. When I went to physical therapy this week and answered some questions about my activity level I was horrified to discover that I may be sleeping as little as 2 or 3 hours a night. A few nights I slept not at all, being woken by one child after another just as soon as I drifted off.

Sleep begets sleep, they say. When I have adequate sleep, I find it easy to fall asleep, or to nap when the opportunity presents itself. But when I haven't been sleeping, especially when it's because other people keep waking me up, I start to dread night time. It becomes very difficult to even lay down and close my eyes because I think, what's the point? Someone is going to need something in a minute anyway. I feel less tired when I just stay awake than if I am constantly jolted out of sleep. Of course, this is logical only to a very tired person, and in fact staying awake for many days in a row will literally kill you or make you crazy. But then I start feeling anxious about not having slept and perpetually worry that I may already be crazy. It doesn't help that over the past month we've been stuck at home a lot and the only person I'm talking to is three and says things like "I know how to swim in Spanish."

This is one of the biggest downsides of breastfeeding. Trying to pump enough to make a bottle someone else could give the baby is a lot of work if you also have to nurse the baby throughout the day. And even if you do get enough and someone else can feed the baby, you will probably be woken up by engorged, leaky breasts and then either have to pump in the middle of the night or hope the baby wakes up and needs to be fed again.

I started googling for answers - never a good thing - and almost bought the Magical Merlin Sleepsuit. Yes, that's a real thing. It costs like $40 and looks like one of those sumo costumes you put on when your company has decided your division should do some team building. It's supposed to ease the transition out of swaddling.

I also decided I should probably stop eating dairy, eggs, peanuts and shellfish. Oh and gluten. And start eating more oatmeal and brewer's yeast. (That's from the internet, can you tell?)

Later I thought I'd maybe just throw in the towel and wean Max onto formula. Until I saw what a can of formula costs. Then my commitment to breastfeeding was renewed.

I made a schedule and tried to stick to it for naps and feeding. Max slept even less.

I bought him gas drops. He seems to enjoy the taste, but farts as much as he ever did.

I tried to banish Marko from my bed, thinking maybe Max was disturbed by too many people in the room. But then Marko slept even less.

I cut down on coffee, but that just gave me a headache, and you know how they say to put on your own oxygen mask before you try to help someone else? Well, my coffee is the oxygen mask I must put on before even thinking about pouring the first bowl of cheerios.

They say the days are long but the years are short. Right now it just feels like one big long never-ending day. The good thing about this phase is if you are a person who likes hugs (which I am), there is no shortage of that. Hugs are available from my children 24-7.

Things That Happened This Week

In no particular order...

1) Laurel had her last gymnastics class for the session and I finally ended up making it to this one. She was bubbling over with excitement. Marko even got to come in and was super excited to scamper over all the equipment and try out the trampoline. I would not have been able to pull this off without the help of my friend, who also has children in this class. We met at the bus stop last year and due to similar schedules, we ran into each other a lot. Our kids play well together, so even though they aren't at the same school anymore, we've kept things going. I didn't even imagine that I would be able to go in to the class and hoped taking pictures from behind the glass would satisfy Laurel, but Valentina appeared, scooping up little Max and singing to him for 30 minutes because that was the only thing that kept him from crying.

2) Marko sneezed while having a nosebleed, spraying blood all over my face, neck and hair. It was like a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Oh, sorry, Mom! he said cheerfully, because he gets nose bleeds periodically so they are not a super scary event to him. This was during school pick up and because we live one block from the school, I didn't have a diaper bag. My friend Alison appeared with kleenex and wipes and even dabbed off the spots that I missed on my own neck. Without making me feel dumb at all.

3) The neighbors who borrowed our book on fermentation brought it back and delivered homemade blueberry oatmeal muffins along with it. Muffins are pretty much the best breakfast food ever for my kids so for a change they all got dressed and ready for the day without screwing around.

4) I wrote a complaint email and got a refund. I usually really suck at this so it was a pleasant surprise.

5) My mom took Marko to her house, and with Laurel at school I got a chance to spend some one on one time with Max while he's not just strapped in the back of the car. He's starting to roll over and loves scooting around on his back by pushing off with his feet. I can feel his eyes following me, waiting for me to make eye contact with him, and then he smiles and pushes his legs up and down. He reminds me a lot of Laurel.

Something About Me

It's still February and it's actually snowing today, but it was a spring-like snow. Pretty flakes falling but not accumulating. I like to see the little gatherings of snowflakes on the ground next to the crocuses and snow drops that have started to come up. Springer Fever is hitting us hard.

Compost is my new obsession and we've had warm enough weather that I've taken the boys into our woefully neglected backyard. Max lays in the stroller and looks at the sky. Marko drags every blessed toy out of the garage. And I turn my compost pile. I find it extraordinary that (certain) things we discard can turn into soil given enough time. I'm more pragmatic than scientific about my compost, and pretty much try to create optimal conditions for available materials. I shred up corrugated cardboard and newspaper when I run out of dried leaves to mix with my food scraps.

I feel exceptionally tired tonight, I think because of all the shoveling and pitchforking. I have a new mom friend who has equal enthusiasm for dirt and we even went to an urban farm down the street and voluntarily turned their compost pile, in return for a bucket of their finished compost. I've also procured a BOB double jogging stroller, and have been taking the boys on lots of walks at a brisk pace instead of at a Marko pace. I definitely feel the burn though, pushing that thing up a hill.

And speaking of burn, the other exciting and muscle fatiguing thing that I did recently was go to the rock climbing gym. They have a bouldering section so you don't even need to belay at first. After a brief orientation, they pretty much let you at it. I climbed so hard that I had blisters on my hands and could barely lift my hands over my head. The only downside was the awkwardness of being too old to fit in with all the college kids who were hitting on each other and not old enough to be one of the quirky old people. They really didn't know what to make of me.

I'm writing this down because it's a reminder that even though parenting takes up the vast majority of my time, that there are still things that I do that are about me or for me that have nothing to do with the children and I'd be just as likely to do them if they'd never come along. Of course, I'm delighted that they are here...but I'm equally delighted that I'm still here.

Two Months Post Partum

I don't have a newborn anymore! Max is 2 months old, weighs 11 pounds 14 oz and is 24 inches long. He wailed through the measurement portion of his check up. Also the vaccination portion. He's kind of a homebody, likes to nap in his own bed, with his white noise machine. He needs breaks from the action-packed life going on downstairs. But when he's with the whole family he seems to really enjoy us.

He smiles at us, kicks his legs, and tries to scoot backwards while lying on his back. He looks delighted when he manages to get all the way off the changing pad, which I usually lay on my bed. He's not a huge fan of babywearing or nursing. Definitely an eat-to-live sort of guy and I very rarely nurse him to sleep. He likes a pacifier. He hates wearing hats. If he's feeling a little fussy the only thing that will do is laying him over my arm on his tummy and walking around while patting his back. This is an extraordinarily difficult position to maintain while getting anything else done, like say helping Marko use the toilet in a sanitary fashion, or cooking dinner. I love having a baby and it's nice to be somewhat relieved of most of the new parent anxiety around rashes and pooping. I can just enjoy him. But I'm glad that the baby phase only lasts for a short while.

As for me, I don't feel the way I did before I had this third baby. I think three kids might be a tipping point of some sort. Your belly button will only take so many years of being stretched out. I still have a linea nigra, but it's fading. I try to work out every day in some way, although even getting in a 30 minute cardio video without interruption is kind of impossible some days. From past experience, I know that my body will hang on to the extra weight until I wean Max, and then it will come off pretty easily.

I can remember when taking one child out with me was an arduous task. Getting into the car with the three kids is like reverse Jenga and requires a careful order of entry and buckling. It has sort of a carbon offset effect though, because I tend to plan our outings and errands for one day and stick to the neighborhood the rest of the time.

When I think of having a family, I always think of three kids, maybe because I was from a family of three kids. I have fond memories of my siblings from childhood, but I don't remember any of the chaos that we are currently experiencing. We were very close in age, only 2 years apart, instead of the 3 that my kids are. So maybe it was crazy when we were all very young and I just don't remember it. The only memory I have when I was 4 is the color of the carpet in my house, and I only have a few memories of when I was 5 or 6. Sitting at the orange table in kindergarten. This Toyota minivan that the neighbors drove. The color of my sister's hair when she was very young. It's kind of depressing when I think about it, that my kids will probably not remember very much of what has happened so far in their lives, especially when the last 7 years have been such a formative experience for me.

This morning, Max took a nap and Laurel went to school, so Marko and I hung out and sorted the coins in his piggy bank. We dropped some pennies into a solution of vinegar and salt and watched them turn shiny again. We arranged them into shapes - triangles and squares. I have a tendency to get a little too lesson-oriented sometimes, but Marko lets me know when it's too much for a three year old. For instance, today I started pointing out some of the pictures that are on the coins and telling him about who they were. His response was to lay down on the couch and say "I'm going to lay down. It's a pretend nap. Cover me up." Then I remember, he's 3 years old. There's no rush to learn a damn thing about Abraham Lincoln. The constant flood of language that middle class parents believe is giving their children a positive early childhood experience might just be a little annoying to them. Sometimes, you should shut up and listen. Or just be silent together.