Listen To Your Belly

Recently, two neighbor bloggers, Dawn and Amy, have posted beautiful musings on body image issues. This is a topic that I have thought about a lot off and on throughout the years. I was a gymnast beginning at a young age—I even said, for several years, that I wanted to be an Olympic gymnast when I grew up—but my ability to defy gravity was seriously hindered by a twenty pound weight gain the summer that I turned 14.

There were many things that contributed to my own unhealthy body image and eventual (thankfully short) struggle with bulimia, and the actual weight didn’t have a whole lot to do with it. A great deal of it was just my personality. I’m a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser. And so when my gymnastics coach told me to try the cabbage soup diet so I could lose a few pounds, I did it. When my uncle told me to “watch it” when I scooped up seconds on ice cream at age 13, I began to watch it with microscopic concern.

Last week, as Luke was recovering from his virus, he had a couple of days of stomach cramps. He didn’t want to eat at all. And not eating made his stomach even worse. I told him that he needed to eat, and it became a huge power struggle.

“I won’t eat! You can’t make me!” he yelled.

And I couldn’t make him. And that was scary. For a few minutes, I thought about what it must be like to have a child with an eating disorder. And in so many ways, it must be worse than having a child who screams and storms around and sneaks out of the house. Because it seems to be the disorder of the people pleaser, and that is harder to combat. That is in the mind.

Once, when I was a freshman in high school, my gym class was doing a weight-training unit. What a wonderful opportunity my teacher had to encourage young teenagers to value their bodies and the amazing things they can do. My gym teacher that year was Mrs. S., the former gymnastics coach and current dance team coach. You can probably see where this story is going.

One day, we were being evaluated, and our grade was partially based on how much we could lift/press etc. in relation to our own body weight. So we lined up to weigh in.

“Good girl!” I heard Mrs. S. say to more than one young woman ahead of me.

When I weighed in, she was silent.

And that silence--not really just silence but the opposite of "good girl"--has been in my mind for over twenty years since.

I have boys, and so the chances of them developing eating disorders are quite slim. But I can try to teach them not to assign moral value to body features. I can teach them that exercise is great for stress relief and health. I can speak positively of my body in front of them.

Also—and this is one of the biggest struggles for me—I can try not to be controlling about their eating. My goal is to keep fairly healthy food in the house and my eating mantra with the boys (and a place I am getting to eventually with myself) is this: “What is your belly telling you?”

I hope I am raising boys that will never tell the women in their lives to “watch it.”

Growing Pains

We’ve had a couple of rough nights around here. Two nights ago, Luke was tossing and turning and moaning with a high fever for much of the night. He came up to our bed and I didn’t sleep much. And last night, Henry came upstairs crying around midnight because of a leg ache. I ignored him for a while due to my exhaustion from the night before, but finally, I had to attend to his pain.

Two nights ago, when I was awake with Luke, my nighttime despair began to creep up on me. For a period of time when I was a child, I used to hate nighttime. I had an overactive sense of guilt and at night, I worried a lot. I dreaded nights. And more than anything, I hated spending nights away from my parents. I usually avoided these situations, but if that was impossible, I often spent the night nauseated and restless. While I eventually grew to love sleepovers by my teenage years, I still often struggled with waking in the night in a panic. Now, sleepless nights sometimes bring on a bit of this fear.

As I was feeling a little panic two nights ago with Luke, an airplane flew overhead, and at that moment, my worries abated. My maternal grandparents lived near an airport, and when I spent the night with them, the sound of the airplanes flying over me all night long helped to soothe my worries. Something about being tucked away in their little guest room under the rhythm of the jets overhead made me feel that the world was an orderly place.

And last night, as I fixed a heat pack for Henry’s leg, I was transported back to the days when my own mom fixed a hot water bottle for my own growing pains. In my memory, I am lying on the couch in the dim midnight light, knowing that relief will come, listening to the sound of the water running and running as it gets hot enough to fill the bottle. My mother’s calm, measured actions, performed so many times, took on that same soothing nighttime quality as the jets.

Part of growing up for me was learning to fear the night less, learning to let go of my strange and overactive senses of worry and guilt. It has taken me a long time to learn to be peaceful in the night. I have suffered many growing pains over the years, in my legs and in my heart, and always at night.

I wonder, in the dead of the night, what growing pains my children will face. Just as I have overcome some of mine, theirs are beginning. Just as certain aches of mine fade away, I help to soothe theirs. And I can’t know which of these things they will carry with them into the future, as memories, as part of the rhythm of their beings. I hope the moonlit shadows, the warmth of the heat pad, the murmers of comfort in our bed, are enough.

Boy Quote of the Day

Luke, while in the car: My testicle hurts.

Mom: Maybe you are just sitting funny. Try shifting in your seat.

Luke: I think one of my testicles just popped!

(To ponder: Is this even possible?)

Love Is In the Air

Henry had two little girls from his preschool, E and C, over for a play date on Wednesday. About a month ago, Henry began talking about E a lot. Then, a week ago, he started begging to invite her and her best friend over “for a sleepover.” He was quite emphatic.

“I want to have E and C over for a sleepover!” he moaned while rolling around on the floor. This went on for a long, long time, with my position being that he is far too young for a sleepover, especially with two girls that he has never even had over to our house.

“If E and C come over,” added Luke, ever so helpfully, “They can sleep in bed with us.” Luke and Henry share a double bed.

Oh my. I can’t help but think that this has something to do with the fact that E and C are darling and blond.

Finally, we compromised. We arranged an after school play date, which Henry anticipated all weekend. Every morning, he woke up asking, “Is today the day that E and C are coming over?” While whining about not wanting to go to bed, he stopped for a moment to ask, “Do you think E and C don’t want to go to bed right now?” And while constipated, he added, “Maybe E and C’s poop also won’t come out.”

My Henry. Always thinking of others.

Both boys seem to be entering a new era: The Era of Love. While E and C were over, Henry stood up at the table to make an announcement:

“E and C? You are my gowlfriends,” he said, with his funny mispronunciation.

And Luke? He has a new girlfriend every day, according to his accounts. Right now it is O. But she doesn’t know it.

They come by all of this naturally. Craig, in grade school, stole a deer figurine from his parents and gave it to his sweetheart, along with a note that read, “A deer for my dear.” No wonder he went on to score so highly on the verbal section of his SAT. Voluntary homonym usage at such a young age!

After Luke tired of playing with the little kids, I took him upstairs to settle him into another activity. When I came down, I heard Henry saying, “Let’s play lovebug. Chase me and if you catch me, you have to give me a kissy kiss.”

And this morning, I overheard Henry saying to Luke, “I have bad news, Luke. We didn’t get to play lovebug in school yesterday.”

“Too bad,” said Luke.

Oh my. I don’t think I’ll be inviting the girls over for a sleepover any time soon.

Boy Quote of the Day

Henry: Mom, you need to trim my nails! It hurts when I scratch my butt.

Another Post That Isn't Funny

I have been meaning to write a follow-up to the posts about Luke’s visits to the psychologists, but, frankly, I’ve been a little embarrassed. But it is only fair to Luke that I say this, for the record. The short version: Luke is nothing more than an intense little guy, and we haven’t been parenting him very well.

And here’s the long version:

While the first psychologist believed that Luke might have a mood disorder, the second believes that Luke is just very intense and somewhat oppositional. In other words, he is a challenging kid. And while Dr. B. didn’t say this in so many words, we haven’t been rising to the challenge.

Dr. B. gave us a very specific discipline plan to follow with Luke, and we have been doing it for almost three weeks now, and things are going much, much better. Luke has a set of rules at home, and if he isn’t following a rule or we want him to do something, we tell him that. Then, if he ignores us, we say, in a calm but stern voice, “Luke, please do xyz. If you don’t, you’ll go to time out.” If he doesn’t stop, he goes to time out. We say, “You are in time out because you didn’t xyz.” We have a plan for what to do if he doesn’t go to time out, too, and what to do if we are on our way out the door. Basically, we have a very simple, clear plan that has been completely scripted for us. And it is working.

I could go on and on about why I think we weren’t very effective before. Part of it is that I read too many parenting books and everything was always muddled in my head. Part of it is that I don’t much like conflict and so I avoid it. But really, it is hard for me to be objective enough to analyze the dynamics in my family very clearly.

I’m not saying that we don’t have any challenging situations with Luke (or Henry, for that matter) any more. And I’m not saying that Luke’s intensity has gone away. But we are managing it much better, I think, and when things do get a little out of control, we have a plan. We have something to cling to.

And also, just because I’m always talking about Luke’s difficult behavior, I want to throw this out there: He just got his report card, and he is doing GREAT in school. I couldn’t ask for better. He has had his name written on the board once all year, and his reading and writing and math are all going very well. And he loves art and music and gym class.

This parenting gig? Sometimes it’s a little bit of a roller coaster ride. Actually, scratch the little bit. And the sometimes.

Adjustments

We have survived another snow day and a sick day and a lot of bitterly cold, icy weather since my last post. It has been a long week and a half. Making it longer has been the fact that we have now instituted a screen time only on weekends rule.

We have gradually, over the last two years, become more and more lenient with our screen time allowance for the kids. Until Luke was five years old he was only allowed about a half hour of screen time a day, computer or videos or PBS. Then, on the weekends, he could watch a longer movie if he liked. Once we moved away from Hyde Park I started getting a lot more lenient. Part of it was that we had just moved and neither the kids nor I had any friends. Part of it was that we had moved into a more conventional community—and I wasn’t sending Luke to a media-shunning Waldorf school any more—and so I didn’t feel so conspicuous allowing more screen time into our lives.

But a half hour on weekdays has become an hour, and a movie on the weekends has become several. The kids have been whining for more and more screen time. Sometimes they ask to get on the computer or watch a video first thing in the morning. And you know what? Even though it is nice to have the kids occupied while they watch, they are always out of sorts when we turn it off. They are surly and demanding of my attention.

So we sat them down on Sunday and told them no more screen time on weekdays. And, surprisingly, they didn’t whine much. And now we have completed one media-free four-day stretch, and it has been wonderful. We have been doing things that we haven’t done in a long time. We’ve pulled out puzzles that haven’t seen the light of day in at least a year. We’ve made a lot of very fashionable shrinky-dink jewelry. We have played every board game on the shelf. We biked through the snow.

And yes, I have had to work a little more to keep them occupied, but once they are in the groove, they are playing by themselves pretty well. And last night at the beginning of the weekend, we borrowed Home Alone from the library (which was marginally inappropriate, I thought, with the swearing and the fake shooting and all, but oh well) and we made nachos and popcorn and enjoyed ourselves immensely. There is nothing like laughing at slapstick comedy with little boys.

Snow Day

We are all snowed in here. Of course, snowed in is relative. My sister and I made short work of shoveling the driveway while mocking the poor shoveling skills of our neighbors. It turns out that there are some advantages to getting tied onto a roof and ordered to shovel on a regular basis while growing up—it makes regular shoveling seem easy. That last sentence makes it sound like we were maltreated as children, which we were not. We just had a really awful roof that needed shoveling regularly while we were growing up in Alaska, and our dad didn’t want us to fall off. So he tied us on up there. It turns out there are advantages to having five kids, too. I don’t live in Alaska, or on a farm, so I think two kids are probably enough.

My kids weren’t much help with the shoveling. They did shovel the lawn off so they could make a big mound of snow in the middle of the yard. Then we played a little king of the mountain. I tell you, I don’t know what to do about these kinds of games. I think the best thing is to look away.

We made a list this morning of all the things we wanted to do today, this day where even Craig didn’t have to go teach. We all got to contribute to the list, and here’s what we wrote down:
Play outside (mommy and boys)
Shovel (mommy and Mara)
Play star wars with our bodies (boys and daddy)
Naptime and quiet play time (everyone)
Make peanut butter play dough (boys and mom)
Read Books (daddy and boys, mommy and boys, Mara and boys)
Play Lego Star Wars (daddy and boys)
Write (mommy)
Yoga (mommy and Mara)
Clean Room (boys and dad)
Clean T.V. room (boys and mom)
Finish homework (boys)
Bake a cake (Luke and mom)

I’m writing at the moment—I will try to work on something else after blogging—and Craig is playing Star Wars with the boys. Our list is complete! The cake is in the fridge and there is Indian food simmering on the stove.

It was a lovely snow day. But I hope school is back in session tomorrow.

Christmas Form Letter

Dear Friends and Family,

I skipped the Christmas form letter this year, but I’ve been getting calls and emails every day begging me to write one. Craig is the most vocal, as he tells me that my blog was much better last year when it was funny and “not so touching and poignant.” I decided to comply with his wishes, since I know it is one of the highlights of everyone’s year, hearing the accomplishments of our family. I feel a bit as though I’m bragging when I write these letters, but just know that I’m simply thankful for our abundant gifts. Of course, my careful planning and coordination—not to mention my regimented day planner and perfectly organized home—help us to maintain the highly accomplished lifestyle to which we are accustomed.

This is the first year that I can report that Henry has been weaned! At three and a half, he still begs for “nursies” every day of course, but that is to be expected since he has only been weaned for six months. He seems to be gifted in languages, as he talks regularly in “baby talk.” He also takes French once a week at his preschool, and he knows the words adieu and magique after five months of study. We are so proud. He also, amazingly, can read the Bible already. It is simply magique!

Speaking of the Bible, each Sunday morning Luke first tries begging, then crying, then telling me his throat hurts in order that he might stay home from church. Despite his resistance to church services, Luke asked, just last Sunday, when he could become an alter boy. This was, strangely, right after he saw a cute little girl wave to one of the alter boys. Luke is also developing great spiritual insights about the saints. In other Luke news, he is working hard this year on his hypochondria. Last month, he asked me 953 times—once waking me in the middle of the night to do so—if his eyes were pink after several of his classmates developed pinkeye. Other ailments that have concerned Luke on several occasions recently have been chicken pox, vomiting, strep throat, measles, and dry drowning.

Craig continues to organize his woodworking workshop. He also has begun collecting antique woodworking postcards. As he works hard to complete his collection, I wait patiently for my bed frame while sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Big projects like this take time! Craig continues to serve as faculty advisor for the Argentine Tango Club at Ohio State. I’m glad he has hobbies, since this quarter is very stressful at work: he has to teach two classes, which means he has to be to campus by 10:30 every morning, and he often doesn’t get to leave work until 5 pm. And if you can believe it, he has to do this five days per week!

I, too, am hard at work. I write for at least one hour each week, and I have one publication to my name. As you can see, I recently learned how to create links in my blog, which is one of the big accomplishments of my year. My little sister Mara, ten years younger than I am, has been staying with us for a while, so I’ve been busy regressing. It is so nice to have her here, and we try to show our appreciation by allowing her to stay in our cold basement. It is a bit moldy, too, but we don’t think it has reached the “toxic mold” level yet. I have made a lot more friends here in our little town this year. I have made friends with a group of local blogging mamas, and we get together regularly to discuss writing drink beer. I also have made friends with a couple of women who have boys in first grade at Luke’s school, and we get together to talk about how to be good soccer moms go to wine tastings at the local wine shop.

We have so much to be thankful for this year. We are truly blessed. We hope you all can be as blessed, fortunate, and talented as we are.

Love,
The Jacksons

Relic

Luke lost his first tooth last night. He pulled it out himself, blood and all. For him, this was amazing, since he has been known to go nearly hysterical over the sight of blood. He was so excited, and it seemed to be less about the money that he was hoping to find under his pillow and more about the coming-of-age significance of losing the tooth. He was proud.

And when I held that tooth in my hand, I couldn’t believe how tiny it was, so insubstantial, a small speck in my palm. The relic of my firstborn’s babyhood.

As my kids get older, I feel less and less like I can write about them. As they become more and more their own small people, their stories less mine to tell. When they were wee little ones, I could tell all because it was all about me, too. Now it is not.

This is all a preface to me writing about Luke and his journey into psychotherapy again. We left the last psychologist, as we weren’t getting any real help or answers. But as we left, we very strongly asked Dr. P to give us his assessment of the situation, and he put a name to Luke’s behavior that was very hard for me to hear. It made me cry, although it isn’t such a bad diagnosis, truth be told.

And now we are just beginning to see someone new, and this psychologist, Dr. B., doesn’t seem to think that Dr. P’s diagnosis is correct. There have been other words floating around. And these words, these possible diagnoses—these disorders, as some might call them—have been weighing heavily upon me.

And then something happened. I don’t know what, exactly--maybe it was sitting with these words and realizing that they are just words. Maybe it is that I am beginning to understand that a diagnosis is always subjective. Perhaps it is that I am beginning to realize that a diagnosis is simply a lens through which certain behaviors can be better understood and managed.

What happened was this: I was sitting at dinner listening to some crazy story from my creative, passionate, unique Luke, and it was as though something inside me shifted, and I all at once became thankful for everything that he is, for all of him, the whole package. And it is to my shame that I must admit that I could not say this before.

It was as if the world tilted just a little bit, or my eyes focused just a little more. There was some small change, some shift of molecules or atoms or parts of some kind, and my world is now a little bit different. A little bit better.

Biblical Free Association

Henry is “reading” to me from his children’s Bible. I asked him if I could type what he is saying so that I could put it on my blog, and he said yes. I’m trying to keep up.

The handers was the may
He wanted it so badly
It was already God
And then the angels went to God and he was already there
One big woman burped like a chicken
And then the woman came up and it was all a chapter number 6
I’ll find God
And then God was on a boat
And then he was a bigger jote
Then there was God
His friends was peeking in the castle of God
And then the wizard was a saint of God
And there was a trail up to the sky where heaven is
It has a lot of maps because God is up a long way
Just paper meetings to God.

As usual, it is clear to me that Craig and I are doing a really excellent job with religious education in our home.

I feel so behind on blogging, but I want to start the new year off without a big cloud of should-be-blogging guilt, so I’m writing but excusing myself from any expectations today.

One of my goals for 2009 is to write more in general, this space included.

What I want most to remember about the start of 2009 are the songs that my boys wrote this morning in their new blank books. They built some instruments (from cardboard) and a stage (from chairs) and formed a rock band. Henry, my fickle little three year old, wrote the following:

Oh yah Poopy
Oh yah Poopy
I don’t like you.
You are a dumb nut!

But Poopy . . . I love you.

Henry is quick to forgive and forget.

Luke remembers and holds grudges. But he has a truly poetic soul. He wrote several songs this morning, but this is my favorite:

There’s a ghost town
In the back yard of my mind
A ghost town
With goats and boats
A ghost town
In the back yard of my mind.

Somehow that seems so appropriate at this time of year when I am feeling both nostalgia and a sense of a new beginning all at once.

Magical Christmas

The fast approaching Christmas interrupted my regularly scheduled blogging, I’m afraid. Every December, no matter how well I prepare, I reach a point where I freak out about getting everything purchased, wrapped, boxed, and shipped out. This happened last week for me. Oh, and also the boys and I visited the dentist (each at different times), Henry had a double ear infection and had to go to the doctor, and Craig and I had an appointment with Luke’s new psychologist (who is wonderful so far!!!). So we’ve been a bit busy. But now everything seems to be done and I’m really looking forward to Christmas. My only concern is the fact that Henry keeps asking for outrageous gifts from Santa. He gave up on the robot with a remote that controls the world, but now he wants a crocodile key chain that can turn into a real, full-sized crocodile when submerged in water. We read about it in a children’s book.

That Henry. He really doesn’t seem to have much of an understanding of the difference between reality, fantasy, and dream. A few weeks ago he woke up insisting that we used to live in a little yellow house.

“Remember, Mama? The little yellow house? With the porch? Remember?” he kept asking me over and over. I finally had to answer him in the affirmative because he wouldn’t stop with the constant badgering.

Henry also has the charming tendency to make the most bizarre statements regarding his past.

“Remember when I was a teenage girl, Mama?” he’ll ask.

Last week he was talking about the birthday party he would be attending. Henry has never gone to anything other than a family birthday party, and this one was extra special because it was Henry’s first social invitation that was his and not his and Luke’s.

Stretching out on the floor, he said, “I might take a nap at Adam’s birthday party, Mama.”

“Oh really?” I asked. “Well, usually people don’t take naps at parties.”

“Well,” he responded in a condescending voice, “When I lived in North America, before you or Daddy or Luke were born, back when I was a boy that went to high school, I went to a party and we took a nap.”

Okay then. Maybe in North America when you were a teenage girl, Santa can give you a magical crocodile key chain. It's Christmas, right? Anything could happen.

My Little Sister

My sister Mara has been living with us for a month. I keep meaning to write about her, but somehow, I find this hard. She is just so much a part of me that I have a hard time saying anything about her. I can’t really remember when she wasn’t here. I forget to ask people if she can come with me to various events because I forget that she isn’t, say, my left arm.

My husband cannot understand this in the slightest. Mara is ten years younger than I am. We have rarely lived around one another since she hit puberty. And yet, somehow, we know each other inside and out. We have many similar mannerisms and gestures.

I think I understand, just a little, what it must feel like for twins who have been separated to be around one another for the first time. You begin to understand genetics in a more profound way.

My boys say that we have five people in our family now, Mom, Dad, Luke, Henry, and Auntie.

Auntie is going to Vietnam at the end of the month. Though she will likely be back, it is clear that Columbus, Ohio will not be her permanent home.

I am having phantom pains already.

Amazing, Bizarre, and Lovely

We had a lovely weekend. On Friday night, we went to church to celebrate the feast of St. Nicholas. On the car ride there, Henry was in a particularly curious and chatty mood.

“Mom, why can we swallow food but we can’t swallow our fingers?” he asked.

“Well, our fingers are attached to our hands,” I answered.

“No, I mean, why do our fingers make us throw up a little and our food does not?” Henry pressed further.

“I guess that is because we chew up our food before we swallow it, but most people, if they choose to stick their fingers down their throats, do not choose to chew up their fingers first,” I said.

“Hey, Mom,” Henry went on, moving on to another topic. “God made us, right?”

“Yes, Henry.”

“So God made OUR POOP???” he asked, laughing uproariously.

A brief lesson on the digestive process followed.

After church, a service that reminded me why we very rarely choose to take our boys to church in the evenings, we went upstairs to eat cookies. Luke’s class had made a booklet on St. Nicholas to distribute to all of the parishioners, a booklet entitled, “What St. Nicholas Means to Me.”

There were some lovely drawings and writings by these first through third graders. Many of the girls wrote, “I love St. Nicholas.” Many of the boys stuck more to the facts, writing things like, “St. Nicholas was a Bishop.”

Luke drew the picture featured above. In case you can’t see it clearly, it is a drawing of a head with wings with this caption: “St. Nicholas is a Spirit.”

Ahh, my Luke, so spiritually advanced.

The next morning, the kids ran shrieking around the house, very impressed that St. Nicholas knew to give them Bakugan battle brawlers and cheetos in their shoes.

It snowed gently all day, adding to the festive atmosphere, and Craig kept the fire stoked against the cold.

That afternoon, we ventured out carefully in the car to attend a Tae Kwon Do belt ceremony for Craig and Luke. They have been taking class together and both recently earned their yellow belts. Luke took the ceremony seriously, clearly very proud as his instructor tied the belt around his waist.

Feeling like we should celebrate, we drove the car home, bundled up and found Auntie Mara, and ventured out to the local pub by foot. Along the way, the boys made snow angels in the smooth, new blanket of snow.

My Children, Amazing and Bizarre

I write so often about Luke and his difficult temperament, breaking for funny stories of his wild antics, but I don’t usually talk about his many gifts. There are a lot that I find rather astounding—like his amazing memory or his musical ability—but right now, at this moment, I want to remember his first grade school year, and how totally average he is. This, for my oldest son, is wonderful. He is reading right where he should be, writing like a slightly above average first grader. He is extra good at math, he likes gym, he has several good friends. His teacher reports that he is a good classmate, that he doesn’t get into trouble, that he doesn’t do anything unusual in class. He rarely protests going to school.

Luke seems to be a free spirit learning to follow the rules.

Henry, on the other hand, is a rule follower who is learning to rebel. He recently has been defying our every instruction, baiting and teasing Luke to no end. I think this is all a play for power, in this family where the dynamic has so often been that Luke commands and Henry worshipfully follows.

Henry has asked Santa to bring him a remote control robot for Christmas. Except that the remote control is a universal remote. And by universal, Henry means that “it can control everyone and everything in the world.”

Can I find it at Target?

Love Letter to My Readers

I rarely respond to comments. Somehow it always seems a little arrogant, like I’m assuming that my readers are checking back in on my blog every five minutes. Although I LOVE it when other bloggers respond to my comments, and I myself often check in on the blogs I read (very nearly) every five minutes. So that is something I probably need to start doing. Responding to comments on my blog, I mean. Not checking blogs more often.

But until I start responding to comments, I want to send out a general thank you: I love all of you wonderful people that comment on my blog. You make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because you say such nice things and because this space here is the only place where just about everyone I love gets together.

My friend Jenny recently wrote a lovely post about moving around and how she wants to gather everyone she has ever known into one place. Now some people are not like this. My husband, for instance, probably thinks that this is a possible version of hell, everyone he has ever known gathered in one place, yammering at him and distracting him. For me, though, this is what my heart yearns for: a place where everyone I love and have ever loved—and I’m using the term love quite freely here—is gathered together, getting acquainted, sharing food and drinking coffee until about three in the afternoon and wine after.

There have been a few times in my life where I have experienced just a hint of this. When we were visiting our families in Alaska and our good friends Troy and So Yung came up to visit, for instance. All of my family and all of Craig’s family and these dear friends all were gathered together for a few days. Or when my friend Jenny moved into the same condo building as my friend Marji in Chicago, and we began to have afternoon kid free-for-alls in their backyard, often including other close friends of mine like Nancy or Molly. Really, to me, these experiences have been a taste of perfection.

And this space here, too, is a glimpse of how I think things should be. Everyone I want in my life meeting in one place. So yes, here’s what I’m saying, cheesy though it may be: my blog is, to me, a little bit of heaven on earth. Until the day that I can convince everyone that I hold near and dear to move onto a big farm somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, this is as good as it gets.

VIPs for a Night

So on Thursday night, Craig and I got to go to the grand opening party at Martini Park courtesy of Dawn, who, thanks to her work in blog marketing and web strategizing, was asked to invite some Columbus bloggers. You can see some pictures of the evening at Pepper Paints and Doobleh-Vay. I unfortunately forgot my camera, so I only have this wonderful picture of us crashed out on the futon at the end of the night. Don’t we look hip?

I was somewhat mistaken when I said it was a trendy bar for hipsters. It is more a club for those thirty and up. But still, when I looked on the website, most of the people in the photos looked pretty hip to me: let's call them midsters. Really, Martini Park seems to be geared toward those thirty and over people that actually go out and also that pay ten dollars for a drink. We are more of the take the kids to happy hour at the local pub for the half off pints sort of folks. But my sister just arrived to stay with us for a while, so we got to leave the kids with her for the night.

I had a very busy and somewhat stressful day, and Craig and I had to go straight from Luke’s school conference to the party. I don’t know if his teacher even recognized me as Luke’s mom, since I was wearing makeup and (cheap fake leather) awesome black boots, while she usually sees me in workout clothes and a headscarf.

Driving from the school to the party, I did what all glamorous folks do: I dried out my armpits by blasting the heating vents in the car. I sometimes have a little bit of a sweating problem, especially when I’ve had a stressful day. At this point, I wasn’t feeling particularly enthusiastic about the evening.

After we got there and each had a martini, however, we both began to have a lot more fun. Craig, usually a beer and whiskey kind of guy, surprised me by ordering a pomegranate martini, which he maintains, even today while sober, was delicious. I had something called the Martini Park #10, which was fabulous. Craig also had one of those. And a cosmopolitan, at which point I knew he was getting a little tipsy. I mean, come on, a cosmo? I ran off to talk to Amy and the PR guy hosting the party for a few minutes, and by the time I got back Craig giddily informed me that he had sampled the mango martini and another cosmo.

So really, we had a great time at Martini Park. It was a different sort of evening than we would normally have. We got to have free food (also quite good) and drinks. And apparently my husband likes fruity mixed drinks. “I love that place!” he told my sister when we returned home. “I want to go back!”

Maybe I ought to take him there for a cosmo on Valentine’s Day.

Happy Second Anniversary, Blog!

I’ve been feeling a little discouraged about my writing lately. Ever since our summer vacation, I can’t get back into any kind of rhythm. I thought that with both of the boys in school I would have more time to write, but the opposite has happened. I honestly don’t know how anyone can be a soccer mom because it is all I can do to get Luke to and from school, get Henry to and from a different school, stay moderately on top of the household chores, and exercise enough so I’m not a sad crazy lady.

To be honest, I’ve been feeling a bit like giving up on the writing. Because this spring, when I was going out of the house in the evenings to write several nights per week, I might only have gotten one piece published, but I felt like I was making some progress. Now I just barely maintain my blog, my small following of mostly friends and family being my current motivation. I put up a post once per week, whether I feel like it or not.

Today is the second anniversary of Just Another Mama Blog. I started it on a sleep-deprived whim, and I’ve plugged along for two years now. I’ve been thinking about this date for a week or two, knowing that it was approaching, wondering what I could say. Because I didn’t feel like there was a whole lot to celebrate with my writing.

But it is shaping up to be a sort of magical bloggiversary. Last night, a couple of new neighborhood blogging friends that I have mentioned before, American Family and That Patti, invited me to go out with a group of local blogging mamas: Milkweed, Amy, Karen, and even the fabled, well-connnected Dawn. Not only did I get some great tips and leads, I also scored my first free blogging perk! Craig and I get to go to a swanky (free!) party at a hip new bar tonight. I’ll write more about it tomorrow, since I’m sure it will provide me a great deal of material. You know, since Craig and I will fit in so well, being the posh hipsters that we are.

And today, my story is one featured on the new Highlights site celebrating former contributors. A poem of mine was featured in the magazine when I was six years old, which was my first publishing experience.

So all in all, I would say that it is shaping up to be a not-too-shabby bloggiversary. Not too shabby at all.

Weekend Update

It is not even seven in the morning and I am currently enjoying a “jam magnificent.” It is the drink I have ordered, having opted for this over the “blueberry surprise” at the internet café that I am at. I took a time machine here. The café is run by pirates. Two pirates named Luke and Henry. I have obtained the secret recipe from the chefs: it is a cupful of jam with sprinkles mixed in.

Craig is out of town with the car, and the weather is cold and rainy. I think this might be a long weekend.

This is a rather strange café. The options are so very limited in some ways, and yet the chefs/owners/operators are so very accommodating in other ways. While my main entrée must involve yogurt and there are no bowls available, I have my choice of a red, blue, pink, or green cup.

Ooooh! I’ve just been given a complimentary appetizer since my entrée is taking so long. Chips with a whole cup of Sriracha hot sauce. For those of you not familiar with Sriracha, it is basically the asian version of Tabasco sauce.

Last night I slept in Luke and Henry’s room. In the middle of the night, Henry sat up in bed and started crying and crying. I kept asking him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t answer me. Finally he said something that sounded like “Forgive me!” and promptly lay back down and was immediately asleep. And a few minutes later, Luke yelled out, “Slimy!”

Oh, I’ve just been informed that the kitchen is out of the yogurt entrée. I must now choose between nachos and “yuckness.” I went with the former. Chef Pirate Luke just told me that he needs a candle so he can roast the nachos.

Nothing like candle roasted nachos with Sriracha and jam to start the day off right.

Slasher Butterfly

I conducted several highly scientific experiments this weekend in pursuit of this elusive question: just what is the difference between the Snickers and the Baby Ruth? Wikipedia helpfully points out that the nougat found in the Baby Ruth is more fudge-like than that found in most American candy. So that is probably it.

I feel sort of awful today, and I was thinking that it was due to the time change, but it is probably more due to the 25 fun sized candy bars that I ate yesterday. Yes, the boys made out like bandits, what with trick-or-treating and class parties and secret happy phantoms delivering treats to our house. If you are reading this, Happy Phantom, thank you.

Henry decided, at the last minute, that he no longer wanted to dress up as Frankenstein’s monster, but instead dug around in the dress-ups bin and devised a costume that he dubbed “alien butterfly.” It was rather fetching if I could ignore the Jason mask part of his costume. (The boys bought the Jason mask for a dime at a thrift store. How could I say no when they have no idea what it is and it was only ten cents?)

I’m glad Henry still gravitates toward more “girly” things now and then, otherwise I would be simply overwhelmed by all of the masculinity floating around the house. The boys are currently preparing their fort outside, a fort designed, Luke says, for “eating, fighting war, and building contraptions.”

Luke tells me that my job will be cooking the food. I think I’ll make seven-candy stew.

And They Still Like Me

Here it’s Monday again and nearly a week has gone by since my last post. It seems that when things are going well and we are settled into our routine, I don’t have nearly as much to write about. I guess I like to write about drama and sadness. And I like to tell funny stories about my kids, and, I’m sorry to say, I think Luke is growing just a tad bit more conventional. Although he did yell this at Henry when he was angry with him for stealing off with a toy a few days ago: “Henreeek! Your stench is so bad I can smell you from 50 feet away!” You go with those metaphors, Luke! And word play, too! That’s my boy.

I can tell a funny story about myself, I guess. I told my two new-ish friends Tracy and Stacy this story the other day, knowing it could either make or break our friendship. I’m a risk-taker.

I was tidying up the yard the other day and I walked to the edge of the grass to pick up a few pieces of trash that had found their way onto our front lawn. I grabbed what I thought was a beer can, but found it was an unopened can of Bud Light. I brought it in so I could dump the beer and recycle the can, but then threw it in the fridge since I thought I could offer it to Craig as a joke. But then, later, when the afternoon stretched on and on and the boys were bickering and Craig still wasn’t home, I drank the beer. The beer I found in my yard. The Bud Light I found. Because I’m classy like that.

Where I Come From

Wow, this election has really made me think a lot, and I don’t mean about the issues. I’m from Eagle River, Alaska, just a fifteen-minute drive south of Wasilla, the town Sarah Palin governs. And then I became a mother and lived for six years in Hyde Park, Obama’s neighborhood. Our first apartment there was only two blocks from Obama’s current home.

And it isn’t just that I have ties to these two places, Alaska and Hyde Park, but that I feel like these two places formed me as a person and a parent. Both places are very unique, viewpoint-shaping sorts of places, which has been made much of in this presidential race.

I’m hoping to write a whole long post about how I had to move to somewhere like Columbus--a more neutral sort of place--to truly find myself as a parent. But I really don’t have the energy for that today. So instead I’ll link to a few of my favorite articles and websites that do a wonderful job of explaining my geographical past and perspective.

First, here is a great op-ed piece about Sarah Palin from an Alaskan woman's perspective on Literary Mama. In this essay, Nicole Stellon O'Donnell pretty much sums up my Alaskan feelings on Palin.

And Hyde Park. There is so much to be said about this place, and I've never been able to exactly put my finger on everything that makes this neighborhood on Chicago's south side so wonderful and unique. But then I found this great article that appeared in the Washington Post last week that does it for me. And here's the website of a place called the Experimental Station on the edge of Hyde Park that embodies the spirit of the neighborhood quite nicely. The year before we moved, we attended a little boy's birthday party here that involved playing mini-golf in an interactive art installation of Rube Goldberg-esque golfing challenges made from scavenged materials.

So there. Go forth and spend hours reading about the two weirdo places that I have lived so that you can understand my personality and background. I know you really want to.

Halloween, Round One

My kids LOVE Halloween. They enjoy dressing up all year round--although Luke's budding self-consiousness has prevented him from dressing up as spiderman for trips to the grocery lately. They also love all things creepy, crawly, and scary. On Friday night we hit the local community center's Halloween celebration, Luke going as a ninja and Henry as Frankenstein's monster. (Yes, my children DO know the difference between Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. I'm putting those degrees in English to good use, darn it!) These costumes are a great improvement over their original hopes to each go as the grim reaper.

Apple Picking

This and That

I think I may have misrepresented our experience with the psychologist just a little. I was trying to describe my emotional reaction to the visit, how unsettling it is to explain in detail the profoundly challenging and often upsetting experiences going on with my child. It was a fine visit, though. I like the guy well enough. He didn’t say, “Wow, you have one troubled little boy.” He basically just acknowledged that there are areas in our family life that are very challenging, and it has reached a point where we might benefit from someone helping us formulate a plan to deal with some of these difficulties.

* * *

When Henry and I were out walking the other day, he said, out of the blue, “When I am a teenager I am going to stay up all night watching horror movies and eating junk food.” Boy, I’m glad I have that to look forward to. I guess there are worse things he could do as a teenage boy.

* * *

Luke has brought a book home several times from his school library called Deadly Spiders and Scorpions. It is part of the Wild Predators! series, which is right up his ally. This is a kid, after all, who had the vast majority of a book called Animal Monsters memorized at age three. No wonder they didn’t seem to like him at his Waldorf preschool.

So the thing that I find a little disconcerting about this book is the fact that it goes into detail about the mating practices of each variety of spider and scorpion. I’m not a prude, and I will answer any questions that Luke or Henry asks me, but so far they just listen to the book. I guess what I find a little funny is cuddling down on the couch, sipping coffee, and reading aloud to my boys choice passages such as this:

As with giant trapdoor spiders, female funnel-web spiders rarely leave their burrows. But males, once they are fully-grown, abandon their burrows to look for a female. Males are attracted to a female’s burrow by the scent that she produces. When a male finds a female’s burrow he taps out a signal to the female. If she is ready to mate, she comes out and lifts up the front of her body, fangs ready to strike. If the male is not alert the female may make a meal of him. But he uses a pair of spurs (hooks) on his second pair of legs to hold on to the female’s fangs, stopping her from striking. He is then able to mate with the female.

Stripped Bare

I had a mole check with a dermatologist this week. It was something I have been wanting to do for a long time, since I have a lot of moles and very fair skin, and also because I had several really horrible sunburns as a child. I guess I knew that she would be examining my whole body, but wow, I was not prepared for the inch-by-inch scrutiny that my body would be subject to. It was a little hard to turn off the inner critic as she examined the fat roll around my stomach, my stubbly armpit, the sole of my foot darkened by walking barefoot on my dirty floors.

And then, the next day, Craig, Luke and I took a little visit to the psychologist. I have been not sure whether I should write about this on the blog, but here it is. I'll keep it general. It is something we have considered doing over the years with our creative, passionate, loving, but very intense and lately, increasingly angry eldest son. We finally decided to do it, because there is a warning bell that sounds in my head every time he gets angry, a small voice that sounds like this: we hear too much about angry boys in this society, and we don’t know what else to do to help you get a grip on these strong feelings.

And there was another quiet voice in the back of my head--a voice without words but more of a wish--that was hoping our visit with the psychologist would be like venting to a girlfriend. Deep down inside I was hoping that it would be all he is a boy, he is gradually gaining control, what great parents you are to him! (you know, basically like all of you wonderful people who comment on my blog) but I have to say that it was not so much visit with a girlfriend as I was subconsciously wanting. It was really much more wrenching and halting and difficult than I was hoping for.

I imagined what it would be like. I held a secret wish for what it would be like. But really, it was like stripping down naked and having a person we had just met look us over, inch by inch, examining every lump, every irregularity, every discoloration on our cold, exposed bodies.

Pooping and Palin

My throat is better now, although I haven’t been exactly steadfast with taking my antibiotics. I take half the prescribed amount half of the time, the full amount the rest of the time. That’s got to be better than nothing, right?

Henry is being a real pain right now. Every time we drive anywhere from mid-morning to lunchtime, he nearly falls asleep in the car. But as soon as I try to get him to sleep in his bed, it is a no go. At least he is pooping regularly again. I guess if I had to choose between regular napping and regular pooping, I would go with the latter.

And with that, on with politics! I don’t think I’ve ever talked politics on my blog. I don’t talk religion much either. I question why I’m shy about these topics, since I ramble on and on about pooping and nursing and other such subjects. Here’s the thing: I am a people pleaser. I hate to make people mad. I’m a mediator. So bringing up clearly controversial topics is hard for me. While poop might be personal, it isn’t exactly divisive.

But I swear there have been close to fifty people who have asked me about Sarah Palin, since I’m from Alaska and all. A few people have stopped by my yard, having noticed our Alaska plates on the Mercedes. I’ve gotten two emails from old friends back in Chicago asking for my special Alaskan viewpoint (hi Dina and Katie!). Really, I probably don’t have much to add to the general knowledge out there, especially since I haven’t lived in Alaska for a long time.

I do feel like being from Alaska gives me a bit more cultural perspective than most people, though, and at the beginning of Palin’s run this made me want to defend her in a few ways. Not politically, because I disagree with her politics. But I didn’t feel like she was so bizarre and extreme as some people had made her out to be—at least for an Alaskan. I know plenty of people who go hunting (many of whom, like my husband, do it purely for the outdoor experience and the free-range, delicious meat), plenty of people who don’t think it would be a bad idea for Alaska to secede from the union as it is purported that Todd Palin did many years ago. Alaskans in general pride themselves on being a bit “maverick” in spirit.

But I am sick of the word maverick. Because, at a certain point, I grew weary of Sarah Palin using this word to defend her bizarre statements. Perhaps it was when, during her interview with Katie Couric, she insisted on maintaining that Alaska’s proximity to Russia (and Canada, she added during the interview, as if to bolster the argument) constitutes foreign policy experience for her. Perhaps it was when, during the debate with Biden, she used her “maverick” spirit as an excuse not to answer the questions, but to “speak to the American people.”

Whatever. I know this has all been done to death by the political analysts. But there it is, the opinion of a former Alaskan (we are now Ohio residents!) and a “maverick” leaning Democrat.

Continuing a Theme

I have step throat.

Luke ran a fever again this weekend.

Henry is still constipated.

But did I ever mention that my sister is moving down here for at least six months starting in November? Really, that is what is keeping me going.

Now I'm off to sip soup and chant my little mantra: "Mara. Mara. Mara."

Regression All Around

I know my posts have been whiney and boring lately. I haven’t been telling very good stories. We’re struggling around here, and either my kids aren’t as fun and funny lately or I’m just not finding the story in it.

But here’s a quick one, before I launch into my complaints. Yesterday, knowing full well that this is not his parents’ choice for president, Luke told me that if he could vote, he would vote for John McCain.

“Why would you vote for him, Luke?” I asked.

“Because he is in the Republic, like in Star Wars.”

At least his reason is something besides rebelling against his parents.

So on to regression. It is happening around here. Big time. Both kids seem to be having a hard time adjusting to school. Luke is very angry these days. He used to be a biter and a hitter, and, although I sometimes have to get on him for being physically aggressive toward Henry, I haven’t had to deal with him being violent toward other kids in a long time. But remember how I was talking about my wonderful new town? How I finally fit in? How my web of friends is intertwining and overlapping and I’m weaving myself a wonderful, beautiful life? Well, yesterday at the park, Luke tried to throttle the son of one of my new acquaintances. Right in front of all the moms.

Not to sound like all I care about is what the other moms think. I’m quite concerned about Luke and his behavior, and I have just taken a couple of very good steps toward figuring out what is going on with him. But I have to admit, I also just felt very humiliated. I cried the whole way home.

And Henry. Henry had no trouble saying goodbye to me at school for the first few days. But yesterday, he pitched a full-on tantrum when we walked into school. I had to hand him, thrashing and kicking, over to his teachers. It might be because he hadn’t pooped since Sunday. We seem to have some sort of control issues going on. He appeared to be constipated, so I kept sitting him on the toilet yesterday morning. By yesterday afternoon, he refused to sit on the toilet even though he was writhing in pain. When he moaned and I looked at him, he said, “It’s nothing, Mom. I’m upset you are eating all the chips.”

He finally pooped in his pants. Now he’ll only go in a diaper.

And now I’m officially the author of a mommy blog, since all I can seem to do is rant about my kids and talk about poop.

In the Wake

Ever since the big storm, my kids like to walk around the neighborhood and take note of what they call “the destruction.”

“More destruction!” Henry will yell, although a week and a day after the storm, they are becoming more and more oblivious to the piles of tree limbs and branches stacked on the edges of nearly every yard. The city assures us that their two wood chipping trucks are slowly but surely making their way around our town.

The electric company gradually restored power throughout the city. Ours came back on Thursday night. My friend Stacy’s was finally reinstated on Saturday morning.

Luke set off to take some pictures of the destruction one evening and wound up with a few good ones—featured above—of the mess in our yard. He asked me to post them on my blog, so here they are.

As far as I’m concerned, the main problem with all of this was the disruption of our schedule. Yes, I’m happy that the kids were forced to do without movies and computer games for a few days, but the cancelled school was hard for everyone involved. Luke swore that he was thrilled to have four days off in a row, but his horrible mood proved otherwise.

We can’t seem to catch a break this school year. Luke’s first week was a day and a half. His second week was a four-day week—the best so far. The third week, Luke was sick and missed three days. Then there was last week, when school was in session only on Friday. Which was most convenient, since I had to spend the whole morning in the doctor’s office with Henry, who had an ear infection. Last night, Luke woke up with a fairly high fever and he missed school today.

I’ll just consider this the wake of the storm. Things will settle down eventually, right? Right? RIGHT???

That Ike

A "wind event" occurred here in Columbus on Sunday afternoon and evening, the tail end of Ike that no one expected would cause such mayhem. Our little town suffered many, many fallen trees and limbs, such as the one above from our yard. This is the same hackberry tree that dropped a huge limb over the winter. Once again, we were lucky that it didn't hit our cars or house. It did take down the power lines, though, and we expect to have power restored on Thursday. Thank goodness our landlord lent us a generator, so we have a working refrigerator and computer. What else do we need?

Our Town

All of a sudden, the whole last year of posts where I wrote about how I didn’t feel like I belonged in our new town—about how moving is so hard and how I’m the only mama around nursing a preschooler and I’m such a big hippy dippy parent—seem just silly. Because a sense of being settled, of this community becoming my own, has crept up on me. How does that happen? I think, for me, it has something to do with a critical mass of people that I must know before I feel as though I belong. And it isn’t that they all have to be like me. I just need to feel as though I have allies scattered around the neighborhood.

I have been getting to know more of the parents at Luke’s school, and I have begun to socialize with a few of them. And I have recently met and hung out with (both pre-arranged and accidentally) two people from my town whose blogs I have been reading, American Family and ThatPatti.

And there’s Milkweed, who I became friends with at the end of my graduate school career but was out of touch with for the whole six years that I was in Chicago, who lives ten minutes down the road from me now and who is a kindred spirit. She is a member of the book club that I belong to, another member of which is a different graduate school friend who has her own Henry, who gets along smashingly with my Henry.

I’m also getting to know some of the parents at Henry’s school, now that he is a big preschooler. His school is just a couple of blocks from our house and is named St. John’s, as was my parochial nursery and elementary school in Alaska. Craig, I have to say, hasn’t been helping much with first impressions there. He went with me to pick Henry up yesterday, and he wore a T-Shirt that says, in huge letters, EAT ME. Underneath EAT ME are tiny little letters, probably a tenth of the size of the larger letters, that say “closet,” because the “eat me closet” was a fundraiser for the dorm in which we were house parents for four years in Chicago. It was a closet full of snacks that the kids would sell for house profit. But anyway, Craig wore this shirt to preschool pick up, and I was a little embarrassed, Craig meeting the director of the school in such a shirt, but we have a long history of conflict over his semi-offensive T-shirts, and I decided to let this one go.

Last night, after a lovely afternoon of meeting up with a new acquaintance and her boys, just the ages of my boys, at the park—where we also randomly met up with my blog-turned-real friend of American Family—the boys and I sat on the porch eating strawberry sorbet cones. The evening was warm and the cicadas buzzed, and I waved at neighbors out for their evening strolls. The boys were humming some random, made-up song, creating harmony for music neither of them knew to begin with. I was just beginning to feel the bliss of the moment, when all of a sudden, after a long pause, both boys came in at the exact same time with the exact same note.

And this place felt like home.

Sick Day

Luke has been quite sick, feverish and achy and congested. Last night he tossed and turned, moaning all night in his sleep. I didn’t even take his temperature, having learned my lesson long ago that I would rather not know. I just dozed and fed him Tylenol every four hours, water whenever he would take it.

He awoke this morning, the worst of the fever broken, when Henry came upstairs and climbed into my bed where Luke had joined me for the night.

“There isn’t room for five in this bed!” said Henry, not used to finding Luke in mom and dad’s bed.

“This is three, Henry, but if we added two more we would have five,” said Luke.

“Well, Daddy can’t come in because I love Mommy best,” said Henry.

“I love everyone in this family so much!” said Luke, in an uncharacteristically mushy mood. “I’m wonderful! I love myself! And I love Henry and Mom and Dad!”

I think Luke is learning a lot in school. Math word problems. Self-esteem catchphrases. Oh, and world religion.

A few nights ago at the dinner table, he said, “There is a holiday going on right now where people don’t eat anything all day and then they eat a huge meal at night.”

“What is the holiday called, Luke?” I asked.

“Hmm, rrrr, rrrr, Romeo?” he said uncertainly. Mrs. Romeo is his new teacher.

“Oh, is it Ramadan?” I asked.

“Yes! That’s it! People RIGHT NOW are eating a large meal to get ready for not eating all day tomorrow,” he said.

“Who has this holiday?” I asked.

“Anyone at all! Anyone who wants to know what it is like to be poor,” he answered. “But I don’t want to do it,” he added quickly, shoveling another bite of burrito into his mouth.

Luke is at home today, still running a low fever and recovering from his restless night. But hopefully he’ll be back to school tomorrow, back to learning all of the important things to be learned when one is in first grade.

The War on Crime

Well, Luke’s first week of first grade is now complete. All in all, it went really well. He seems to like it a lot. Last night I asked him to rate it on a scale from one to ten, and he gave it a 100.

I’m overwhelmed by the drop-off procedure, myself. Gone are the days of three neat and tidy kindergarten lines in the front of the school, patrolled by the crossing guard kids and at least one adult monitor. Now we walk to the back of the school to the huge concrete expanse and three large playgrounds, where all of the kids—I’m not sure how many, exactly, but it’s got to be hundreds—run around until the bell rings. Then they run and line up in the designated line spot for their class. I find it draining. And this is all before 8:15 in the morning.

So it is no wonder that Luke seems utterly exhausted when I pick him up six and a half hours later. It is hard for me to see him so tired and dazed. It usually takes him a snack, a video, and some cuddles and book reading before he can really tell me about his day.

Last night we went out to eat at a local pub, as is our custom on Thursday nights. We go during the happy hour so that the beer and appetizers are half price. The boys color and watch sports on TV while eating French fries, and we drink half price beer. We were all talking about the day, and Luke casually mentioned that one of his former kindergarten classmates, J, bit a boy—one of Luke’s friends and current classmates, H—on the back of the neck during recess.

“Did he get in trouble?” I asked.

“Yes, he had to sit on the thinking wall for all of recess, and he lost his Popsicle during the Popsicle party,” answered Luke.

“Oh,” I answered, relieved to hear that the recess monitors were doing their job. One of my fears is that recess is chaotic and all Lord of the Flies, although I really have no idea what it is like. And not that I’m scared Luke will be a victim. I’m more scared that Luke will be a bully.

“But before they took J to the thinking wall, we got in a fight!” Luke proclaimed.

“Oh,” I said, trying to remain calm and casual. “You got in a fight? What kind of a fight?”

“A bully tangle,” said Luke resolutely.

“A what?” I asked, visions of West Side Story dancing in my head.

“I told J, ‘You better stop it right now!’ and he said ‘No!’ and I said ‘Yes!’” explained Luke. “We said mean words.’”

“Oh, okay,” I answered, relieved. He was really just standing up for his friend H.

Henry is developing his own ideas these days about how to maintain order. As we were walking to pick up Luke from school, Henry said, “I wish I was in a video game with bad guys and I could chop them all up with a knife.”

Now, had I not gone through this very stage with Luke when he was just Henry’s age, I would have been disturbed. But Henry has the benefit of being the second child, and I know that Luke began speaking this way at age three in order to make sense of “good” and “bad.”

“Well, what if you could teach the bad guys to be good?” I asked.

“I told them and told them to be good,” said Henry, “but they didn’t listen.”

“Well, what if you just put them in jail instead of chopping them up?” I asked.

Henry paused, considering this alternative.

“Okay, I would chop them up then lock them in the zoo.”

My Relational Process

I left academia because I worked myself silly, researched myself nearly into the ground. I slept for four hours per night. I was exhausted and not sure how our family would be able to sustain two academics.

But I didn’t leave academia because I didn’t like literary theory. I actually quite liked it. It was one of my focus areas for my M.A. exam.

Lately, while searching for places to submit my writing, I’ve stumbled upon some calls for papers in an area that wasn’t on my radar back when I was getting my Master’s in English: academic writing about mothering. And I’ve got to say, it’ s pretty interesting. But having gained eight years and two kids worth of perspective since I abandoned the proverbial ivory tower, the word play and jargon in this description made me laugh:

While much of Western thought has celebrated the splitting of women’s identity into “mother” or “other”—the perception that women cannot be both—re-thinking mothering from the perspective of “performativity” recognizes the relationality between mother and other. When mothering is conceived of as performative it becomes an active practice de-centering the notion that motherhood is passive and static. Performativity shifts our attention from motherhood as biological, selfless, and existing prior to culture, to a practice that is always incomplete, indeterminable, and vulnerable. A relational understanding of m/othering opens up the possibility of an ethical form of exchange between self and other and allows us to understand the maternal subject as engaged in a relational process which is never complete and which demands reiteration. M/othering as performance contains the potential for a disruption of dominant discourses on maternity and thereby makes room for maternal agency. This re-conceptualization of m/othering refuses to be split, while also remaining ambivalent.

Now that I’ve read it about four times, though—I’ve gotten slower with my advancing age and kid-riled brain—I’m starting to get pulled back in. Really, who can resist such a playful idea: the m/other. I might even submit something. Of course, there’s the little problem of my curriculum vitae. It isn’t exactly impressive. But hey, I’ve been busy. I’ve been engaged in a relational process which is never complete and which demands reiteration. Darn laundry.

An Early Morning Run

Luke just found out who his teacher will be for first grade and who else will be in his class. He is pretty excited that four of the boys that he really liked in his class last year will be in his classroom this year. When I listed the four girls from his kindergarten class on this year's class roster, he mentioned that he considers two of them to be his friends.

Then he sighed. A long, deep sigh.

"But McKenzie isn't in my class," he said.

I vaguely remembered that McKenzie was the girl he called his girlfriend last year.

"She is sort of my girlfriend, Mom," he said. "Really."

"Oh, okay," I answered, as nonchalantly as possible.

"I want a girlfriend!" whined Henry.

"You can have one!" said Luke emphatically. "All boys need girlfriends."

"Can Spiderman be my girlfriend?" asked Henry.

“No, Henry. Spiderman is a boy. If you want him for a boyfriend, that means you are a girl,” said Luke.

“Do girls have vaginas?” asked Henry, abruptly.

“Yes,” I said.

“Girls don’t poop out of their butts?” he asked.

A rudimentary anatomy lesson ensued. Rudimentary because during all of this, I was running while pushing them both—over 80 pounds of kid—in the double jogging stroller.

After Henry was a little clearer on waste elimination, he told Luke, “Okay, I’ll have a big girl friend.”

Luke laughed—perhaps envisioning Henry and a giantess—but I told Luke that Henry was probably just thinking of a big girl who was his friend. On our trip, he considered his cousins, 10, 13 and 16, to be “big girls,” and he loved them. They played with him, painted his face, read him books, danced with him.

“No, Henry, you need a GIRLFRIEND,” said Luke.

“What do you mean by girlfriend, Luke?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“A girl you are friends with?” I asked.

“No, Mom,” he answered, obviously impatient with me.

“A girl you like an extra lot?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “one you might marry.”

“Oh, so the other night when you said that you would never move out of the house, when you said you would live with Mom and Dad forever—that might not be true?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible, lest the excitement in my voice betray me.

“Yah, I guess I might move out some day,” he answered.

That Luke, He's a Growin'

Luke turned six a couple of weeks ago while we were in Alaska. It was the perfect sort of birthday for him: a two-part celebration, taking the pressure off of any one night. Because we were doing it this way, we talked to him a lot about how he wouldn’t be getting many gifts on either night, and how at the second party, his birthday was only part of the focus. So he was sweet and grateful for his gifts and not too demanding of attention. (Okay, he did demand that my dad design a treasure hunt with a birthday present at the end.) On the day of the birthday itself, we made his favorites for dinner—boxed macaroni and cheese, cheese pizza, and a huge platter of berries, with chocolate cupcakes for dessert. It was just my family and a couple of presents—and the treasure hunt, in the clues of which my dad obligingly included the word poop. Then, a few days later, Craig’s parents had their usual summer “friends and family party,” where we also sang Luke happy birthday, ate cake, and watched Luke open a few more presents from the guests who knew he had recently turned six.

And next week—next week!—Luke starts first grade. Somehow this feels a little scarier to me than Kindergarten. He will be in school until three in the afternoon instead of until 11 am. He will probably have homework. Last night, Luke tearfully asked, “If I am in school all day, and if Daddy puts us to bed, when will I ever see you?” I tried to explain that “full day” school doesn’t mean “all day” school, but he is still anxious about the upcoming year.

But Luke is growing up. He is often calmer. He doesn’t scream and cry as much as he used to. He wants more independence. He climbed a whole mountain when we were in Alaska.

And he has big plans for the future. Last night while we were driving in the car, coming back from a canoe and swimming trip and listening to what the kids refer to as “rock and roll,” Luke said dreamily, “When I grow up I’ll have to get a job. And the job I will get is a player in a rock and roll band.”

Here he paused dramatically, making sure that we were all listening.

“And we will play INAPPROPRIATE MUSIC.”

Oh, yes, he is growing up. Climbing mountains, making plans for the future. He even recently commented on his past writing, noting how “babyish” a story that he wrote a year and a half ago is. At one point, the hero of the story is in big trouble, but then he finds a “radiation poner” which saves him. Luke laughed and laughed, and then said, “When I was four I said crazy stuff.”

This morning he spent an hour in his room, finally emerging with a contraption that he called the “bionitransmogulator.” Boy, good thing Luke is six now so he no longer invents crazy stuff.

I remain hopeful that his imagination will serve him well. The other day we were playing at the park and he wanted me to pretend to be his slave. I said no, that I would pretend to be his servant but not his slave.

“But WHY?” Luke whined.

“Well, Luke, in our country we used to do something very horrible. We made black people slaves and it was so awful, one of the worst things in the history of our country. And so the word slave makes a lot of people think of that,” I responded, thinking, as I talked, that I was saying too much.

Luke thought for a little while. Then he replied, “Okay, Mom. But who were the People of the Black?”

How I hope Luke can continue to invent bionitransmogulators, conquer mountains, imagine worlds in which race doesn’t exist. Happy Birthday, my big six-year-old boy. May it be a year of wild stories and big dreams.

Greetings From Alaska

So I’ve been neglecting the blog lately because we have been on the road (so to speak, since we abandoned our car in St. Louis) for the last week. We drove from Ohio to Illinois where we stayed for one night, and then over to St. Louis where we stayed for two nights. Then we flew from St. Louis to Dallas and from Dallas to Anchorage.

All of the traveling went beautifully. Really, two years ago I couldn’t have imagined that we could drive for hours and hours and fly for hours and hours and our kids would really just behave perfectly. They ate snacks and read books and drew pictures. They watched a part of a movie on my laptop, but stopped when the headphones weren’t working properly. When we told them to nap they closed their eyes and napped.

In central Illinois we stayed with Craig’s aunt and uncle and we visited Craig’s paternal grandmother. In St. Louis we stayed with Craig’s cousins, visited his maternal grandparents, and hung out with his sister. Here in Alaska, we have been busy visiting with the usual—Craig’s parents, my parents, all of my grandparents, various cousins and aunts and uncles, my brothers and sisters. And for the first time since my brother Joe’s wedding five years ago, we have gotten to spend time with my brother Joe, his wife, and his three step-daughters, all up from Utah.

Henry has been overwhelmed at times. “No more grandmas!” he sobbed when he woke up at his great-grandparents’ house in St. Louis. And when my parents, who picked us up from the airport, dropped us off at Craig’s parents’ house where we are currently staying, Henry moaned, “THIS grandma is worse than THAT one!”

But both of them, now that they have adjusted to the time difference and have caught up on their sleep, are acting like this is the thing they have been waiting for all of their lives. In the past, Luke has tried to create some extended family for himself. He recently began calling my good friend Nancy’s daughters, Emily and Hazel, his cousins. He played with them nearly every day from birth to age three, after all, and we meet up with them at least a few times a year.

But finally Luke and Henry have real cousins. All girls, ages 10, 13 and 16. It is a match made in heaven. They play and paint faces and dance and practice kung-fu and put on magic shows. The girls beg to take care of the boys and the boys adore the attention. Craig and I have gone out for walks, gone out to lunch, hung out for whole afternoons in the same house as our children without seeing them.

I think I understand people having large families now. I could have six or seven kids, I think, if I had extended family around to help. To fill in some of the blanks. To keep me company and to enjoy my kids while I bear witness—preferably with my feet up and a drink in my hand.

Music to a Mama's Ears

Henry just came up to me while I was watching some videos on Youtube and said, "Come on! Turn that off and let's read some of our awesome library books!"

The Livin' Is Easy

I'm really too tired to write anything. It is summertime, you know. We are busy, busy, busy around here with lemonade, art and comic sales. I don't know if I'll make it for another week until we go on vacation.

Luke made 20 dollars in two hours, by the way. I think I should give up this writing thing. The money is in the lemonade, art and comics!

You Aren't In Alaska Anymore

To follow up on my last post, Craig spoke to Officer Fox on the phone this morning to clarify just what constitutes a "junk vehicle." Basically, our cars are fine so long as they have valid tags from some state and they move now and then. So since our Mercedes isn't insured and we don't intend to use it for transportation until we move or diesel prices go down, we are unders strict instructions to "turn the vehicle around in the driveway once per week" so the neighbors will know that the car runs. Officer Fox is going to be driving by our place later today to make sure the car is pointing out toward the street.

And, trying to be extra, extra helpful, Officer Fox said we might also want to check our valves now and then. You know, before we take the kids to the movies. Oh, and he said, "You aren't in Alaska anymore. You are in Worthington."

Just so we are clear.