A Giant in the Sky

“Maybe there is a big giant watching us,” he says as he pops the last of his cupcake into his mouth.

“You think so?” I say, pilling the dishes into the sink and wiping the counter in front of him with a damp rag.

“And he’s moving the wind and the clouds so that sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Maybe that’s God,” I say.

“What’s God?”

Since before Sam was born I’ve been prepared for discussions about why our family doesn’t have a daddy. I’ve made books explaining his conception and our story and what a gift he is. But I’ve never even mentioned God to him? God hasn’t ever come up when we snuggle at bedtime and talk about things we’re grateful for or the people we love? Nobody has ever mentioned God to him? How did this happen?

When my best friend was trying to figure out how to teach her young boys about God, whether to bring them to church, I admired the balance she struck between her beliefs and her husband’s beliefs, the way she wanted to educate her children about what others believed without forcing them to believe anything in particular.  A decade later when my sister grappled with the decision to send her son to a Lutheran pre-school, I understood her reluctance.  She and I had stood up during her children’s baptisms and vowed to raise her children in the Catholic church but at the time we both had our doubts and questions about religion and God.

Standing in the kitchen with a wet rag in my hand, all of my earlier pronouncements to my friends that “I want to teach my children about spirituality, not religion” come back to me.  How do I teach my child about God if I don’t know what I believe about God?

In Buddhist teachings there is a description of a huge net reaching in all directions called the Jeweled Net of Indra.  This net teaches about the interconnectedness of us all.  We are all part of something bigger than just ourselves, part of a whole that includes plants and animals and friends and neighbors, people across the world and people right next door.  What we do to the least of our brothers we do to ourselves.  I know I believe this, but how does my idea of God or a creator fit in with this?

I was raised in a Catholic home and from the distance of my adulthood I look back gratefully for the tradition and the community and the center the church gave our family.  My earliest and most pleasant childhood memory is of my head in my mother’s lap as she stroked the hair back behind my ears as the priest’s voice droned from the pulpit.  I look back and see how no matter what was going on in our lives, we made time for God on Sunday.  We got out of bed and got dressed and rode in the car together, whether it was raining or sleeting, whether we were healthy or sick, whether we were getting along or fighting.  Every week we traveled the short distance to St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, and we sat in the pews together.  My Sunday memories include silver dollar sized pancakes at The Village Inn, peeling apples for pie, and watching football in the family room.  Together.

I’m still forming my ideas about the spiritual traditions our family will follow, but when I think about what I want my children to know about God and religion and spirituality, THIS is what I KNOW I want them to learn:  that we are a family, the three of us as well as the greater human race.  That there is no “us” and “them.”  That each human being has as much value as the next.  That those who have a different skin color or speak a different language or form families with two moms or ride in a wheelchair or follow the teachings of Mohammed or believe that Christ was the son of God or don’t believe in God at all are all human beings.  I want them to learn that families can come from anywhere, that what we do and say can influence others and we don’t always see the effects we have on others, and we’re all in this together.

I stand in the kitchen and look at the frosting smeared into Sam’s hair and the blue sprinkles caked to the corners of his mouth, and I do not even know how to begun to talk to him about God, how to even put a human word to something I consider to be so grand and awesome that even the act of naming it diminishes the greatness of God.  But I know that it is time for our family to begin forming our spiritual traditions, our Sunday memories.  Better late than never.

“God is love,” I say.  “God is all of us.  Together.  Love.”It’s not perfect and it never will be.  And as my son grows he will develop his own ideas about God and religion and community and tradition and humanity and love.  So while it may not be perfect, it’s a start.  We are finally talking about God.

This story originally appeared here.

Something's Gotta Give

When I picked up the kids from daycare this afternoon, I saw that Jamie had brought out the exersaucer, the plastic activity center that supports a baby that can't walk yet.

"Does Eva go in that yet?" I asked.

"Yah, she loves it," Jamie said.

"That's so funny because she hates the one at home," I said. "She gets mad at me whenever I put her in it."

"She plays with all the little toys and she spins around," Jamie said as she showed me how it worked.

"She gets mad at me for just about everything I do at home unless I'm holding her," I said. "I think she just needs more time with me."

"So does Sammy."

"So does my boss," I sighed.

Something’s gotta give.

When you’re in survival mode, it’s okay to serve your 3-year-old just buttered noodles and a big glass of milk for dinner.

The Mess Walk

“We’re going to fix Kelly’s Daddy,” Sam said.

I was bundling him up in his blue jacket and red hat, and my friend Sarah was standing in our kitchen holding Eva. The day before the forecast had been for about 32 degrees with mixed precipitation-- the dreaded “wintry mix” – so we had agreed it would be best if I left Eva behind.

Earlier in the morning I had told Sam that we were going to have another special day, a special day with just Mommy and Sammy. But I had explained that this day was even more special than our usual special days because we’d be walking in the local MS Walk. I told him that we were going on a special walk to raise money to help find a cure for the disease that Kelly’s daddy has, that MS is the reason Kelly's daddy doesn’t walk.

“We’re walking in The Mess Walk to fix Kelly's Daddy's leg,” Sam told Sarah. “Just Sammy and Mommy.”

And so we did. The weather wasn't perfect and we never did find the other Sam's Squad team members who were walking in our area, but we rode on a glass elevator and turned in our donations and ate two donuts apiece and got our pictures taken and walked 3.1 miles and saw a rake in a tree and the flood waters of the Mississippi and the same patch of daffodils we saw when we walked in 2008. We got our orange t-shirts and talked with people as we walked and listened to people tell their stories on the microphone and called Kelly's Daddy to tell him we finished, and we had a very special day. Just Sammy and Mommy.

What Spring Looked Like...

...before winter returned.















See more photos of Sam's Special Day Hiking here.

See photos of a visit from Brooklynn and a great visit from Eva's soulmate on this page of March photos.

See more photos of outdoors spring activities with friends on this page of April photos.

Tumbling

Usually we are the second family to arrive. We walk in as a dad in sweats leaves his daughter alone waiting for class to start. We met them the first week, chatted as Sam removed his boots and I tucked Eva’s carseat in the corner. Sam’s first official extracurricular, potential-for-overscheduling experience. Tumbleweeds. This week we arrive to a room full of moms and dads and siblings pressed against the murals painted on the wall, digging cameras out of their bags and watching as children run around the room, jumping on the trampoline, sliding along the balance beam, zipping down the giant yellow slide or tackling each other martial arts style and yelling “hi-ya!” Graduation day. The day we finally get to see the deep dark secrets of toddler tumbling that we were not previously allowed to witness...

Eva has been left at home with a friend, and this morning is to be all about Sammy.  He stands close to my side, his hand clutching my pants leg, and I lead him to a spot on the wall where a rainbow grows out of the top of a giant castle.  Near big foam blocks stacked in front of the trampoline Sam takes off his boots and sits on the mat.  I encourage him to run and play with the other kids, but he is sizing up the crowd, looking at all the people.

They say the nut doesn’t fall too far from the tree, and as we stand there I realize that I am becoming my mother and Sam is becoming me.

“Nobody is watching you,” I say.  “Just Mommy.  Everyone else is just watching their own kids.”

I think back to how much I celebrated being able to finally see him do “gymnastics”, how excited I was, what a big and special day it was.  This is the moment I find myself NOW trying to back track and convince him that really it isn’t that big of a deal.

My sister and I had the same parents, and you’d think we would have essentially the same memories of our childhood.  But we don’t.   She remembers we had a dog.  I don’t.  She remembers me holding her down and spitting in her face and threatening to throw her beloved Bunny out the car window.  I remember her reading my notes from friends and borrowing my clothes and always being mad that I never wrote anything about her in my diary. 

Ten years ago she told me that she wished she’d have gotten more pressure and direction from our mother, that she never felt like she knew what was expected of her.  I could only sigh because I had always felt nothing but pressure.  Ann always hated that teachers compared her to me, told her that she should be more like her sister.  I always hated that no matter what I did academically, she was the one with the higher IQ, she was the one who won the UWGB summer camp kids golf tournament, she was the one who got on the basketball team and in the band and on the cross country team.  She was the one that did everything.  I was the one who did nothing.  After I didn’t make the cuts for 7^th grade basketball or 7^th grade volleyball, I never tried out for anything again, afraid of rejection, afraid of failure, afraid of disappointing my parents.  Extracurricular stuff was terrifying for me but for sister it was where my sister could escape comparisons to me.

“It will be fun, Sammy,” I say.  “Look.  There’s Nico.”

“I don’t want to.  I want to go home.  I don’t like tumbling,” he says.

I’ve read so much about what to do and what to say and how to handle your children in different situations.  I’ve learned something from almost every “expert” from almost every position on the spectrum.  I’ve listened to the Tiger Mom and Michelle Rhee talk about assuming our children are strong and expect strength from them.  I’ve read books and blogs telling me to get down to my child’s level and reiterate what they’re feeling and give them control.  I’ve read about building my child’s self-esteem and teaching boundaries and accountability and understanding omnipotence and interdependence.

Standing there next to my child, my back against the big grey castle with the rainbow leading up into the sky, I felt the same pressure I did when I tried out for 7^th grade basketball.  I felt like everyone in the room was watching, and I was so afraid of failing.  Of being the mom that everyone would say “Did you see what she did?  How she treated her son? How she failed her son?”  It was one of my most challenging moments as a parent, not because of anything my child did, but because I had to in that moment let go of my own feelings, admit my own fear of failure, and focus on Sammy.

I walked Sam to the corner of the room where the kids were doing mat exercises.  We watched as they stretched their hands towards the ceiling and then as they sat on the ground and stretched to make pizzas in between their legs.  I asked Sammy questions, tried to get him engaged.  “Can you do that?  Do you want to do that?”

He put his hands on the floor and did the donkey kick with the other kids but stayed outside the circle.  And then as the group lined up behind Carrie, Sam joined in and followed the line to the trampoline.  Eventually he even walked on the balance beam, his arms stretched wide as his little blue socks slid along the wood.

“I did it, Mommy,” he cried.  “I did the airplane move!” He beamed at me as he ran back to me after the class demonstration was over.  He kept his arms spread wide and I picked him up and hugged him as tightly as I could and I felt myself exhale.  “You sure did, Sammy.  You sure did.”

This story was originally published HERE.

End-of-the-Day Connection

Earlier tonight I sat in the large rocker in Sam’s bedroom, the room I used to call “the nursery.” It is now Sam’s big boy room complete with glow-in-the-dark stars and a dresser full of dinosaur puzzles and a shelf displaying his Lego creations. An infant tub filled with discarded newborn clothes sat in the corner. The little yellow leg of the Winnie the Pooh onesy that Eva wore when she came home from the hospital dangled from the top of the pile. Eva still sleeps with me at night, and the crib has been moved next door. It’s piled full of clothes that no longer fit her, clothes that only a newborn could wear, clothes that I can’t quite let go of yet. Just in case.

Before Eva was born Sam and I would snuggle on the rocking chair and talk about our day.  We’d think back to how we had squeezed bright colored play-doh through a press and made a giant grey-brown mass or we’d laugh over the way he’d lifted up his shirt and told me he had a baby growing in there too.  “Your baby is pink,” he’d say, “But mine is green.  It’s not ready to come out yet.”

Tonight as I wedged a pillow in between my hip and the arm of the chair so I could nurse the baby Sam sat up in bed and asked if he could climb in with us.  His big green eyes have recently started dominating his face, and most nights during what used to be a carefully orchestrated bedtime, he crinkles his forehead and looks at me sideways and uses words like “snuggle” and “cuddle.”  Eva is four months old, and Sam has tired of having to share bedtime with her, having to lay in the bed while Mommy rocks Baby.  He used to be the one getting rocked.  Before Eva arrived we would read three books, and then turn off the lights and turn on the lullaby music.  I would wrap my arm around his shoulders and we’d quietly take about what we’d done that day and the list of people we love.

Now bedtime is often rushed or broken into pieces.  I nurse Eva until she’s asleep and then lower her into the swing in the living room and hope she stays that way until Sam and I get through our books and our rocking.  Sam and I are both trying to hold on to our old bedtime routine, our end-of-the-day connection.  Most nights Eva wakes and starts screaming while we’re still reading so we improvise.  Tonight Eva would not go to sleep at all so I had held her on my lap while we sat on Sam’s Lightning McQueen sheets and read about tractors and trucks and Sam’s new favorite, a book of opposites.  Up, down.  In, out.  Happy, sad.  Sam does not like nights like tonight, where he lays in bed and watches me hold his baby sister.

“Can I sit with you?” he said.  And the eyes. “I want to snuggle.”

Sigh.

I held Eva as close to vertical as I could while still nursing, and I pulled my leg over to make room.  Sam squeezed in and pulled a blanket up over us.  I pushed the rocker forward and backward.

“No more spots,” Sam said as he folded his arms over the top of the blanket.  The light in the hallway showed his big smile and reflected off the infant tub filled with newborn clothes.  The Winnie the Pooh onesy was the same one Sam had worn during our early days together three years ago, and even after two babies, it looked barely worn.  They grow so fast.

“Nope,” I said.  “No more spots.”

(This is a piece I recently wrote for thenextfamily.com, and you can read it here.)

Cracking Open

The weather around here is the same weather that drives us all crazy every year. Sunshine and melting snow and mild temperatures that make it okay to leave your coat in the car one day. Freezing drizzle and fog and big fat snowflakes mashing into a mess on the streets the next day. Every morning when I walk into work someone comments in the parking lot. "Not going to be too bad today" or "I thought winter was over" or "I see spring coming" or "Is Summer ever going to come?" The ice has started melting on the river, large areas of open water growing bigger every day, the bald eagles perched on the edge fishing. Sammy has started looking for barges as we cross the bridge into Minnesota every morning, and some days he whines that he can't see anything, that it's too "froggy." March in the upper midwest. Manic depression.

I just told someone the other day that I was beginning to feel myself coming out of the newborn, 24/7-breastfeeding-can't-be-put-down baby fog. I could almost physically feel the world and our lives cracking open in the same way the early ice does, pieces moving and sliding against each other, trying to find the position that will relieve the stress and allow it all to settle into place and melt comfortably.

Muscles!

The kids love Brooklynn

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind, and we've gone back and forth between constant motion and complete standstills, between days in which Mommy needs to get away and days in which the kids need more of me. Mommy the introvert who has never had much of a social life has been out visiting friends, reconnecting with the world, going to readings and meeting friends for lunch and getting back to the gym. Eva is cooing and babbling and figuring out that those are her hands out in front of her and she can use them to put just about anything into her mouth. Sammy has been enjoying tumbling classes and playdates and evenings with Mommy's friends. And we've all survived the inevitable meltdowns of a 3-year-old who is upset when tumbling class is over or the play-doh has to be put away or Mommy's friend gets in a different car and doesn't come home with us after a lunch date at Culver's.

Sam enjoys wrestling with Tara's fiancee Robb

Every morning before the children wake up, I look out the window and try to prepare for what the weather will bring today. Will Sam need his winter coat and his snowpants? Will Eva need her brown fuzzy snowsuit? Will Sam's boots end up slapped into puddles and soaked or will they slip and slide along the ice patches in the driveway? Last week we turned a corner in town and did a slow 360 in the car ("Mommy, look, it's like hockey!") but by the end of the day Sam's boots and pants were soaked to his knees from playing in puddles. With all the ups and downs and turmoil and transition, I look out the window every morning and try to prepare my children for the day... one day at a time.

See more pictures of Brooklynn's visit here.

Sam helps paint the bathroom

Blowing out the candles on the birthday cupcakes
Sam and TT made while I was in Iowa visiting a friend

A Blip on a Radar Screen

Last week I ventured out for our first social function as a family of three. I dressed Sam in his Packer jersey and wrapped Eva in yellow and green. I changed my own clothes a dozen times trying to find something that would make me hate my post-pregnancy body less. I filled the diaper bag with Size-One Pampers and a thick stack of wipes and a bottle of breastmilk and a change of clothes for both children and the camera with a fully charged battery. I always charge the battery before Sam and Lucy get together.

“I love her, mommy. She is my best friend,” Sam had told me the night before as we wrapped her birthday present and made her card.

When we got into the car to head to the party I wasn’t even thinking about Sam’s peanut allergy. I was taking deep breaths and trying to remind myself that it was going to be okay, that I could handle two children out in the world, that if Kate Gosselin can manage eight, I can certainly manage two…especially when one of them can’t walk.

We climbed the steps of the lodge that Lucy’s parents had rented for the party. Sammy held on to the railing with one hand and carried Lucy’s present with the other. (“Can I help her open it, Mommy?”) I carried Eva and the diaper bag. We entered a party filled with soft lighting and pink lollipops and strawberry frosting and toddlers running in every direction. Lucy greeted us as only Lucy can –sure and confident and approachable –and Sam’s fist immediately gripped the material of my pantsleg. He gave her the present and we hung our coats on the back of a chair.

Eva slept contentedly in the car seat bucket under the pink blanket I’d gotten from the hospital and I tried to encourage Sam to go run with the other kids. I pointed out Gedion and Arie and Quinn, all racing in circles. Sam leaned his head against my leg and said nothing. I told him I was going to catch him, and we chased each other for a while until he was comfortable going off on his own, hiding with the other kids behind the stacks of folding chairs leaned against one wall. I sat near Eva and wondered how anyone could sleep with all the noise. And when Sam sat down to drink pink lemonade out of the can and eat Nerds and Smarties out of the box, I wasn’t thinking about the half-dollar-sized welt a tiny piece of peanut protein had raised on his back six months earlier and the way the doctor had said “Imagine that happening to his throat.” I was listening to Lucy explain that Arie was from the neighborhood and Nora was from Wednesday night Daddy and Me and that girl over there was from Montessori.

And this is where everything becomes a blur for me. I know lollipop centerpieces stood in the middle of every table, and lollipop cookies on sticks were laid out near the kitchen, and in the corner was a gorgeous cake with delicious strawberry frosting. And there were shiny white plates with silver piping around the edges. And the entire room smelled of warm spices and fresh baked bread. But that’s all I really remember in detail after that.

 “Hey, Sammy. Go get some treats,” Gedion’s dad said. “Did you see the chocolate covered peanuts?”

 And some kind of anxiety that I have never experienced before shot through me. “Peanuts? There are peanuts here?” I said. “Sammy can’t have peanuts.”

“Oh that’s right,” Gedion’s mom said.

This is the point in the story where I should have stopped and thought to myself, “Okay, find the peanuts and see if we can put them away.”

But I didn’t.

Instead my postpartum hormones took over and I rushed around the room and pushed the peanuts back from the edge of the table and sighed and sweated and hoped that none of the twenty sprinting toddlers would be eating them or carrying them or rubbing them on Sam’s skin. Instead I hovered near Sam all night and thought of his cousin who had gone to the hospital after a peanut reaction…from a kiss. Instead my heart raced and sweat ran down my chest and I had to take off my gray and green Packer sweatshirt. Instead I sat in a chair by the door and felt the enormity of my life fold in on me.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to go home and pull myself into a cocoon and protect my son from peanuts, protect myself from chaos, protect myself from life. But I didn’t.

Here’s the thing I did do right: I stayed. I let my son climb on the metal chairs and roll the balls on the pool table and spin the rods on the fuseball table. I let him eat too much sugar and drink too much pop and lick too much frosting off cake he didn’t really want. I let Sammy be a kid.

The next day at work I talked to a friend whose 11-year-old son has lived with allergies since he was a baby. When Sam was first diagnosed she had given me books and links and advice on Epi-pens and which kind of Benadryl to keep in my purse. She had talked to me about medicalert bracelets and immunotherapy. She had warned me about Dairy Queen and Chinese food and ice cream processed in facilities that process peanuts. The day after Lucy’s party I asked Laura how to handle such a situation, how she deals with it, what she would have done.

“What you have to realize, Barb,” she said, “is that even though Sam’s peanut allergy is very real and very scary to you, it is not even a blip on the radar screen to other people.” She told me to think of all that I had to do to get ready for Sam’s party last month, to think of all the things I had to remember and manage. She reminded me that other people are in the same place dealing with their families, raising their own children, doing the best job they can.

Lucy’s parents love Sammy and they would never do anything to harm him. And he is so much more than a blip on a radar screen to them. They are bend-over-backwards kind and generous to both Sammy and me. They are bend-over-backwards generous to everyone. And they had made sure all the other food they served, including the cake, was peanut-free. But our first outing as a family of three reminded me that I, alone, am fully responsible for my son; I, alone, need to pay attention. I wasn’t prepared for how out of control life could feel when there are two children and one mommy and a body full of post-partum hormones, but with the first adventure out of the way and many lessons learned, I think we’re going to be just fine.

(This story originally appeared on thenextfamily.com)