The Boogie

Every night I put my daughter to bed with an elaborate ritual of stories and songs. I lay next to her as I recite a chapter of the continuing story of a three-year old hero named SuperLucy who rides around town on a tricycle and saves the day by finding missing zoo animals. This is followed by my singing and humming to her until she finally falls asleep 30 or 40 minutes later - if I'm lucky.

Somewhere between tonight's third and fourth song, my little girl reached out to me with her delicate hand and quietly announced, "I have a boogie". She then matter-of-factly transferred the aforementioned boogie (aka booger, snot, bat in the cave) onto my finger where I proceeded to hold it just far enough away that it couldn't actually touch any other part of me or the bed but not so far where I could lose it for all eternity. Because my daughter doesn't fall asleep easily or swiftly, I chose not to get up and walk to the bathroom to remove the offending boogie. No, instead I lay there next to her, softly humming in the dark, with something that felt like a sticky, mashed up inchworm on the tip of my outstretched finger. For 30 minutes I lay there balancing this boogie on my finger wondering, among other things, if there might be a world record for holding a boogie in the dark.

When she was finally sleeping deeply, I glanced over at her innocent face and noted how sweetly she clenched a stuffed bunny rabbit in either hand. I acknowledged this cuteness for the requisite amount of time, thought about how much I loved her, then high-tailed it out of there, ran to the bathroom and washed my hands. Twice.

It's true - your life really does change once you have kids.

Link to Art

Jessica Gonacha writes a blog called Pecannoot. She was gracious enough to post some of my paintings today on her blog, so thank you Jessica!

http://www.pecannoot.blogspot.com

What I Know

Everyone knows how much love and joy kids bring into your lives. There's nothing more amazing than watching them clench and unclench their little fists, wrapping their hand around your finger, or walking, dancing, and singing for the first time. Oh, and that belly laugh - it's like pure, unadulterated happiness. But are there things we don't know about - and should - prior to having kids? Mine are still in the toddler stage, but here's what I've learned thus far:

1. There will be copious amounts of diapers in your life. And just when you think you can't change another diaper, there will be potty training. Potty training will have you yearning for the days of diapers again.





2. You will be peed on, pooped on, spit up on, and thrown up on countless times. At some point you will simply throw your fluid-laden clothes in the trash because it's just too gross to wash.





3. You will never eat a bowl of cereal alone. Little ones will stand at your side clamoring for your food like baby birds.





4. You will make endless amounts of pasta (aka noodles with butter and Parmesan cheese). They will eat inexplicable amounts of pasta. Pasta will be your primary food group.





5. Your clothes, house, and life in general will be covered in sticky things.





6. You will continuously and pointlessly pick food up off the floor.





7. Your house will never be the same.





8. Your body will never be the same.





9. Your memory will never be the same.





10. You will experience some of the best things about childhood all over again: playdough, blowing bubbles, and fish crackers.





11. You will find things in strange places. Last week I found the following: toys in our shoes, dandelions in the washing machine, an orange magic marker in a box of wipes, and two Thomas the Trains and a dictionary in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator.





12. The innocuous sounds of children's songs will be stuck in your head for days.





13. You will be tired. So very tired. You may not have a decent night's sleep for three years, 3 months, and four days - but who's counting?





14. You will patiently answer the question 'why?" and "but why?" no less than forty-two times in a row. You will provide, thoughtful, kid-friendly, scientific explanations for these probing questions. Other times you will simply cut to the chase and say 'because", "just because", and "I don't know".





15. The floor of your car will be covered in cheerios. You will no longer care.





16. You will laugh out loud a thousand times a day, making the above points 1-15 entirely moot. Your tired, worn out body and pathetically addled brain will experience gratification like you've never felt, even if you do have to do laundry 4.7 times a week from now until eternity.

A Perfectly Simple Day

There are those days that you plan in detail; activities, places to go, or elaborate dinner menus to make. You try to create a perfect day by packing so many things into a 24- hour span. Sometimes it works, but more often than not someone is in a bad mood, a nap is missed, there's a misunderstanding about something or other, the menu doesn't go as planned.

Then there are days like this. A rare day when we are unexpectedly home together. No particular structure to be followed. Some chores to get done - a haircut, a walk, laundry, and baths. But somehow everyone is happy, together, peaceful. The meals are basic but everyone eats. We ramble out into the yard where there is hopscotch to be played, tricycles to be ridden, dump trucks to be filled. No one fights, everyone's feeling playful, and we all seem in sync with some kind of good family feeling. It feels nice. If I look closely enough, there's a lesson in there somewhere about just letting things be, but for now I'm content to just bask in the glow of a good day.

For all the planning we do and the places we go, in the end, it's a simple day like this one that will be etched into our memories.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.

~Rumi

Let's Be Three

I was going to write something profound. Really I was. You know - about the wonders of childhood and their innate ability to play and just be. How little they need to find joy and how we lose that as adults, over-structuring and complicating our lives, etc...

But then I realized it all boils down to this: When you're three, happiness is nothing more than a beautiful day outside and ice cream for dinner.

Traveling Ducks, Part Two (Or A Trip to Paris Minus the Jet-Lag)

Not too long ago, we discovered that ducks have the power to transport us to faraway places, if only in our minds. My family and I have been going to a nearby lake, in the center of a suburban commercial area, to visit the local ducks. This is the first time my kids have experienced feeding breadcrumbs to these stout, waddling creatures. They may be 'wild' but they seem awfully familiar with wheat bread and baguettes. They're bottomless pits - much like my kids - and flock to sticky, little outstretched hands in a feeding frenzy.

Before we stop to feed the ducks we get provisions at a nearby bakery. It's a sweet replica of a French boulangerie - the real deal - and serves bags of sugary chouquettes to go with cups of strong coffee and hot chocolate. The chouquettes are cheap and plentiful; little puff pastries that are crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. They are dusted with chunks of pearl sugar and are completely addictive. One of the best things about this little family adventure of ours is that once a month or so, I get to pretend we are living in Paris. Watching my kids throw bread crumbs to the fat, hungry ducks while drinking good coffee and eating tiny pastries doesn't exactly make my new suburban digs a parallel to French city living, but it comes close, if only for a moment.

Traveling Ducks, Part One

Two mallard ducks have recently taken up residence at our suburban home. Somehow, this charming couple spotted our murky backyard pond and have decided to call it home, at least for the time being. This has delighted my little ones to no end. They are thrilled to see them splash in the pond every day and they watch out the window for hours. I admit, I like it too. They've transformed our '70s house in the burbs into a farm of sorts. The only thing better would be a gaggle of little ducklings, but I'm afraid the orange cat prowling the neighborhood would put an end to that. So for now, I'll just stare out the windows along with my kids, enjoying the family farm.






I just wonder what the ducks are thinking when they look back at us in the windows and see this:

Thanks

Yesterday I was trying to explain to my girl what gratitude meant. Today the sun finally broke through and we played outside. I get to be her mother. She's my girl. And for that, I'm eternally grateful.

Half a Box of Thin Mints, Chris Cornell, and a House to Myself

Since starting his new career -- and our new lives -- my husband has been working long hours. We no longer have equal time when it comes to the daily task of raising our kids. I'm with them 24 hours a day and have had almost no opportunity in the past five months to escape for a couple of hours. While I love my kids more than anything, I needed a break. Burnt out, depleted, I, like most people, occasionally need a minute to breathe and remember who I am. I need a moment to not be needed. Recently, after a little bit of pleading, my husband agreed to take the little ones out on his next day off and give me that time I so desperately required.

That day arrived and, after what seemed like a painstakingly slow process, the three of them finally got dressed and out the door. As I shut it behind them, I felt downright giddy with anticipation. There was an eerily foreign world waiting at my feet with the promise of two whole hours to myself. Time and space and nobody's needs to fulfill. Oh my god, the FREEDOM! My heart was actually pounding and I felt a little light-headed. What to do first? Think, THINK! Ok, I needed a game plan and it involved a box of Thin Mints that I had bought two weeks ago from a conniving little girl scout. I hadn't touched the cookies until now but suddenly it seemed like the next best thing to uncorking a bottle of good champagne. I effortlessly devoured half the box while aimlessly surfing the Internet. It was good step - but why waste the precious little time I had by going online? I turned on the tv. I havn't seen daytime tv (that wasn't animated) in a long time. I fidgeted while I flipped channels. Ok, now I know why I hadn't seen daytime tv in so long. Waste of time. Lame. What else? Not enough time to nap and I was way too amped up to sleep anyways, so I wandered from room to room aimlessly. Music! Of course. I flipped through the CDs looking for something that didn't include The Muffin Man or Itsy Bitsy Spider. White Stripes? Jazz? No, I decided to go back to my college days - music I didn't much play around my kids...Nirvana, Opal, Soundgarden. It felt ridiculously good to listen to it loudly and alone.

Because I couldn't totally fight the 'to-do list' mindset, I decided to finish repainting a bookcase that I had started weeks ago but couldn't do while the kids were awake and about. I picked up a cheap brush and began to paint. The music was visceral to me - the stuff I listened to back when I was in art school, painting in a studio without heat at 1:00 a.m. It was palpable, emotional music, get-lost-in-it music and it was the soundtrack to a very heady time in my life. When you're in your early 20s, everything is a roller coaster and anything is possible. Back then I stood for hours painting in a freezing cold studio that smelled of turpentine and oil paint. I loved it. Nothing but easels, splattered walls layered with paint, and an old beat-up couch that I didn't dare sit on back then because I'm pretty sure it had scabies. I can picture everything about that studio as I were standing in it right this moment. But on this day, I sat listening to the Bose stereo in our suburban 1970s living room, slapping odorless acrylic paint on a cheap bookcase that we couldn't afford to replace and wondering how we wound up in this town, this state, this somewhat mundane reinvention of our lives.

Two different scenes; two different lifetimes. I really don't yearn to go back, but the opportunity to listen to Chris Cornell wail on Black Hole Sun, or sing/scream at the top of my lungs to Nirvana's Where Did You Sleep Last Night gave me something I needed. I'm not the same person I was in my 20s, but then again, a part of the younger me still exists. I miss having butterflies in my stomach and that intangible feeling of potential and excitement - like anything can happen. It's easy as a parent to get so caught up in parenting that you forget the other facets of who you were and what brought you to this point. But we all have the fire in the belly somewhere deep down. It gets buried sometimes beneath Elmo videos and sliced bananas and bath time, but a little spark is still there, waiting to be ignited. I just need a little time to myself, every so often, to find it again. And once I do, there's nothing better than seeing my family burst in the door yelling, "mama, mama, mamaaaa!!!!".

48 Hours of Spring

When it rains for what feels like 4,117 days in a row, and you finally get 48 hours of sun, you take it for all it's worth.

Forget tulips and daffodils: tired, happy kids and muddy laundry are the true signs of spring.

Morning Chaos

There was a time in my life - and I vaguely recall this now - where mornings were calm and measured and consisted of leisurely drinking several cups of coffee. Most days I slept late. I loved sleep. It was always so good to me. These days, mornings at our place are early, frenzied, and chaotic. My pajamas are usually spackled with some kind of mushy cereal left behind by sticky little fingers. Coffee is quickly consumed in between diaper changes, the making and feeding of waffles and oatmeal, and doling out sippy cups. My brain is generally muddled and fuzzy, much like this photograph.

I love the fullness, even if I do miss the sleep. And I barely recall what it was like to shower without two little ones bursting in the room in order to jump on the bed, take everything out of the bathroom drawers, and leave a 10-ft. trail of cottony, white toilet paper unraveled across the floor.

Our peaceful morning routine is a distant memory, but our morning chaos is a thing of beauty.

The Brilliance of Lloyd Dobler

Does Cameron Crowe's quintessential teen movie, Say Anything, and it's iconic lead character, Lloyd Dobler, hold any relevance to my current life as I know it? You wouldn't think so, but while laying awake at 3:00 a.m. the other night, my mind thought otherwise. Apparently there is some wisdom, truth, and a touch of brilliance to be found in the Dobler, and it just took me a dark and sleepless night to understand exactly what that was all about:

1. Because he serenades the girl (Diane/Ione Sky) with a power ballad professing love and adoration and who doesn't want that? *Note to former '80s hair band fans: Having someone blast Def Leppard's "Pour Your Sugar on Me" from the stereo in their Firebird in a gas station parking lot does not count. Ditto for Cherry Pie by Warrant. If that someone is wearing a cut-off sleeveless concert tee, it counts even less.

2. Because he doesn't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. He doesn't really have a life plan right now, he's just trying to date your daughter. He is, however, looking for a dare to be great situation. Don't get me wrong - Lloyd has passion (kickboxing, Diane Court) but he realizes he's young and is really just trying to find a little meaning and joy in his life, without filling in all the blanks prematurely. I sort of followed that model and chose to fly by the seat of my pants while following my passion. Of course it left me without a 401k and financial security but I did have a few good years where I was rich with time and promise.

3. Because he's Corey's (Lili Taylor) friend and protector. Sure he tries to steer her away from the boyfriend who continuously breaks her huge, open heart, but he's also there to prop her up after she dives in for more. See below.

Corey: Hi Joe. How are you? I love you.
Joe: I love you too.
Corey: You invade my soul.

And after all, if it weren't for her big open wound of a heart, we would never have heard some of the best penned song lyrics in the history of cinema including, "He likes girls named Ashley" and the profoundly succinct, "Joe lies". That will never be her. I know what she means. It was never me either.

4. Because of this:

Diane: You're shaking.
Lloyd: I don't think so.
Diane: You're cold.
Lloyd: I don't think I am.
Diane: Then why are you shaking?
Lloyd: I don't know. I think I'm happy.

5. Because Cameron Crowe created the anti-hero. He rolled the nerd, jock, and rebel into one complex character, defying cinema's stereotypical view of teenagers. And because John Cusack played him flawlessly, imbuing Lloyd with quirkiness, likability, and a just little edge.

I like Lloyd. I respect his goodness. I think I'll watch it again soon but right now I just really want to sleep. Dear brain: As the sage Lloyd once said, "You must chill. You must chill!!".