Don't Sing Mom

"No sing," came the emphatic voice from the carseat in the back, "No sing."

Image courtesy of photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It might have have been Oldest Girl's first sentence.*

It actually started before she had words.  We went to a "Mom and Me" class at the library once a week. All the babies sat on their mom's laps and we sang such classics as "The Wheels on the Bus" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".

Some of the babies grinned and giggled in pleasure waving their arms.  Some sat there bemused as their mothers manipulated their hands to do the motions.

Not my baby.

I tried to help her do the motions.  She pulled her hands away.

So I did the motions myself.  She turned around in my arms and swatted my arms down.

At least I can sing, I thought, singing out a little louder.

Nope.  She turned around again and put her hand over my mouth.

Okay.

It was years before Oldest Girl let me sing without protest.

Now I'm no concert vocalist but my singing voice isn't that bad.  They let me sing in the church choir and I haven't noticed anyone wincing at my voice.  Babies are supposed to delight in their mother's voice right?

I blame it all on sleep training.

I got pregnant with Music Girl (who has never complained about my singing voice thank you very much) with all the morning sickness and exhaustion that entails while Oldest Girl was still a wee little thing who wasn't sleeping through the night.  I decided that for all our sakes this situation had to change.

I read all the many conflicting books on how to get your child to sleep from the "let them scream it out forever and lie in their own vomit if necessary" to the "just let them sleep with you and nurse constantly and learn to love it or you will damage them permanently" points of view.  Then I did what I always did in the end with conflicting parenting advice, whatever worked for me that I could live with.

So first I night weaned.  When Oldest Girl woke up in the night I would walk with her and sing until she fell back asleep.  Then I moved to singing without picking her up.  Eventually she was sleeping through the night.

Which. Was. Wonderful.

Except, it apparently lost me the right to sing to her.

The irony of it all is that my current job involves singing to small children.  I teach Creative Movement and my day is filled with me singing, often acapella to preschoolers.  And, if I may be so bold, I am good at my job and the kids love me and my singing.

Take that Oldest Girl.


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*I can't be sure because I'm not the kind of mom who carefully wrote these things down in a baby book.  Instead I'm writing them down now, haphazardly, as I think of them.  This has the disadvantage that I don't remember everything perfectly but the advantage is that I can remember it the way I want too.

Grandma 'Rene

It was Grandparent's Day recently at the preschool where I work.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The program was cute with the kids singing for the grandparents and then joining them at tables for snacks and playtime.

And I found myself fighting back tears.

I'm not really that much of a crier but my tears are much closer to the surface again these days.  I feel like I'm back in those earlier days after my dad's death when each day I wondered if it was safe to put on eye makeup because it was just so unpredictable what might set me off.

I tried to figure out where these particular tears were coming from.  Was it my children's loss of their grandfathers, one before they were ever born and one more recently.  Or was it the many grandparent events my kids missed out on because we lived too far away from their remaining grandparents.

Then I remembered that when my kids were the age of the preschoolers I work with not only did they have more living grandparents (and even great grandparents) but they also had a bonus grandma who lived only two blocks away.

Grandma 'Rene.

Grandma 'Rene was my great aunt.  My mother's mother (who died when my mom was in high school) was the oldest of a large family.  Her youngest brother, in what was probably the wisest decision of a wise life, married Irene.  Unfortunately I never got to know him as he passed away before I moved to the area.

So technically Grandma 'Rene wasn't even a blood relation.

But she was one special lady.

When I think of hospitality I think of her.  She opened her doors and took us in when we needed a place to stay even though she had never meet us.  The Professor, Oldest Girl and I moved in with her when Oldest Girl was only six months old.

Oldest Girl is now a delightful young lady who I am always happy to spend time with.  As a baby however, let's just say she didn't break me in to motherhood easily.  As a young mom I felt like I was surrounded by advice, mostly contradictory, on how to handle this baby.  Most people, well meaning as they were, made me question my ability to parent this child properly.

Grandma 'Rene didn't see a difficult baby.  She saw a delightful baby with her own personality.  And she genuinely enjoyed interacting with my child.  As a result she set me free to delight in my daughter for who she was.

When Music Girl and Imagination Boy came along, Grandma 'Rene delighted in them too.

When we walked Oldest Girl to school for the first day of kindergarten passing near her house, Grandma 'Rene was standing at the corner to give her a hug and wish her well.  When we walked home that day we stopped at her house to tell her all about the first day.

Whenever it was time to leave Grandma 'Rene's house she would encourage the kids to visit the cookie drawer, a large drawer at perfect child height that was always filled with delicious cookies.  "Take a cookie for the road," she would say.

When Oldest Girl was in first grade and Music Girl in kindergarten, Grandma 'Rene visited their school for Grandparents Day.

When we learned we would be going overseas one of the hardest people to tell was Grandma 'Rene. There were many people we knew we would miss, including all the grandparents but we knew Grandma 'Rene's age meant she might not be alive when we moved back.

She wasn't.

We were able to visit Grandma 'Rene several times during our trips back to the states but by the time we moved back she was gone.

Oldest Girl remembers Grandma 'Rene fondly.  Imagination Boy remembers her vaguely.  But I will never forget the gift she gave me that was so much greater than the cookie for the road.  She gave me the gift of freeing me to delight in my children.

How to Throw a Perfect Surprise Party

Today I am going to tell you how to throw the perfect surprise party.  The kind where the person whose birthday it is is totally and completely surprised.

Image courtesy of mrsiraphol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Step 1. Make sure it is a first birthday.

That's it.  There are no more steps.

When Oldest Girl was turning one we were living in a small cheap apartment while we waited for our house in another state to sell.  No one had ever visited us there and I don't think Oldest Girl was aware that such a thing was possible.

The list of people Oldest Girl truly knew and loved at that point in her life was pretty small so when pretty much all of them walked in the door and said surprise, she was stunned.

She sat there in total disbelief and delight.  And then we got on with the party and a great time was had by all.

We threw a surprise party for my dad when he turned 50.

It is hard to throw a surprise party for a pastor and invite the entire church and have it still be a surprise. But we almost pulled it off.

He pretended to be surprised but when we asked if he had guessed he told us the truth. Earlier that day some idiot a caring member of the congregation called him at the church to ask him if the party that night was at the church or at his house.

He was surprised when my oldest brother showed up having flown in from out of town.  So at least we surprised him a little.

Moral of the story:  It is a lot harder to surprise an adult than a baby.

Flushing Fish

When the children were small and the thought of a dog seemed like just too much to handle we decided to try fish. Fish are an easy, low maintenance pet, right?

Image courtesy of Phiseksit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Maybe not so much.

When I was in college my roommates and I bought a goldfish in a bowl freshman year and managed to keep it alive almost until graduation.  So perhaps I was overconfident in my ability to keep fish alive.

The girls were very excited with the process, buying and setting up the tank and then especially the going to the store to choose the fish, watch the pet store man chase the chosen fish around the tank with the net, carefully carrying home the fish in the plastic baggie, floating it in the tank and then releasing it to swim free.

It's a good thing the girls enjoyed this process since we went through it several times.

Things would go well for a few days and then we would find poor Fishy or Blacky or Swimmy floating upside down in the tank.  We were a little afraid this would traumatize the children but they seemed to take it pretty well.  As a family we would gentle scoop up the deceased and carry it to the toilet for the traditional fish funeral.

One morning Oldest Girl informed us that yet another fish was dead.  We gathered for the familiar ritual.

But this time there was a miracle.

As the dead fish hit the cold water of the toilet tank it revived and began swimming happily around.

Music girl clapped.

The Professor and I looked at each other in shock wondering what we should do now.

Oldest girl didn't hesitate at all.  "Oh well," she said as she reached out and flushed the toilet.

Remind me that when I get old and feeble, Oldest Girl might not be the best choice for my Medical Power of Attorney.

Some days a shower is too much to ask for

"5 minutes alone in the shower.  That's all I need."  How many mothers of young children have said those exact words.  It doesn't seem like much to ask for and yet sometimes it is.

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It was one of those days.  I needed a shower. Badly. Desperate times call for desperate measures so I dumped a pile of toys on the living room floor and told the girls, aged 3 and almost 2, to play together.  I stripped off my clothes, grabbed a towel and headed to the shower.

And then I made the fatal error.

I closed the bathroom door.

Nothing attracts a small child like a mother desiring a moment's peace in the bathroom, so the sound of the bathroom door clicking shut immediately pulled my sweethearts away from their toys.

"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, when are you coming out?  Open the door.  We want to take a shower too.  Let us in.  Mommy, Mommy, Mommy"  complete with pounding on the closed door.

I ignored them and stepped into the shower.  The pleading turned to tears.  And more pounding.

I didn't take long and as I quickly toweled dry I reassured them,  "I'm almost done.  I'll be out soon. Stop crying."  I could hear them trying to open the door but it is an old house and the knob is very difficult to turn.

I took a deep breath to prepare myself to reenter the fray of motherhood and put my hand on the door knob to turn it.

It wouldn't turn.

"Oldest girl, you need to let go of the door knob so I can open it and come out of the bathroom."

"Oldest girl, Music girl, stop crying and listen to me.  Let go of the door knob."

"But Mommy, (sob, sob, sob) we aren't touching the door."

Then I remember that the bathroom door knob sticks from the inside.  It opens well enough from the outside but for some reason doesn't open easily from the inside.  It is just so rare that I actually close it all the way since I'm rarely alone even in the bathroom these days.

I try harder.  I tell Oldest girl to try harder to open it from her side.    I start searching the cabinets for any tool I can use MacGyver style to take the door knob off or the door off it's hinges.  Nothing is working.  The cries from my two little girls are reaching panic levels.

I contemplate climbing out the window and walking around to the front door.

There are only a few problems with this plan.

• The window is pretty small and I am currently 8 months pregnant.  
• It is a story and a half drop to the ground and, although I might be willing to risk it ordinarily, did I mention I'm 8 months pregnant.
• I undressed in the hallway so all I have is my towel which is much too small to even wrap around me much less cover my naked 8 month pregnant body.

I turn back to the MacGyver option and manage to remove the door knob with the only tool available, fingernail clippers.  This doesn't help at all.

Throughout all of this, four little hands are pounding on the door and the soundtrack runs from pleading to sobbing to screaming.

Back to the window plan.  Nakedness or not, my babies need me.  I open the window and look out to realistically assess the drop.  Realize the drop doesn't matter.  There is no way I could fit my body through that window.

Okay, deep breaths, think calmly.   

An adult should be able to open the door from the outside so I need to get an adult in the house. 

The Professor won't be home until late.  Waiting is out.

How embarrassing is it going to be to have someone come let naked pregnant me out of my own bathroom?  Pretty embarrassing but there aren't really any options here.

The only neighbor likely to be home right now is across the street.  I carefully weigh the risks of sending my 3 year old out by herself to cross the street and get help.  It's a pretty quiet street but still.  I try to quiet the crying long enough explain the plan to Oldest girl.  She's game but she can't open the front door either.

Curse that deadbolt.

It will have to be the fire department I decide.  They can break down the front door.  Plus it will be a fun story for them to tell for years to come about that day they rescued a naked pregnant lady from her own bathroom.

Now the trick is to get oldest girl to dial 911.  She can't find the cordless phone so this is not a good start.*

"Honey,  do you know what the number 9 looks like?  You don't remember.  It's a circle on a stick.  Go to the phone in the kitchen and see if you can find the number that is a circle on a stick.  You touch that one time and then you touch the number 1, that's just a straight line.  You touch that two times.  You can do that for Mommy can't you?"

She could not.

And then the miracle occurred.

Throughout all this both Oldest girl and I had been regularly messing with the handle.  Oldest girl gave it one more try and this time it opened.

Praise the Lord!

So just remember, some days a shower IS too much to ask for.

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*Yes, I realize that now any halfway intelligent 2 year old could use a smart phone and call for help, but this occurred way back in the dark ages before smart phones existed.

Power naps

Music girl was the queen of power naps.

Image courtesy of Stoonn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As a small child she would run and run and run and then suddenly just stop, lie down whereever she was and close her eyes.

30 seconds later her eyes would open, she would jump up and be off and running.

We have a photo album full of pictures of Music girl sleeping in strange places. My favorite is the one of her asleep on the front door step with the door wide open and half her body inside the house and half outside.

We had come home from an outing and she had run to the house but before making it all the way in needed a quick nap.

That particular nap lasted a full 5 minutes, long enough for me to grab the camera.

I wish I could power nap like that.

Sometimes my day seems full of running, running, running.  Maybe I need to copy Music girl, close my eyes for a moment, breathe deep and then get up to run again.

Cultivate your Creativity

If you aren't being creative, you aren't fully alive.

Too strong a statement?  I don't think so.

During those mind numbing days of preschoolers, poopy pants, and perpetual laundry, I absolutely had to be creative at least some of the time or I would have lost my mind.

My creativity then took many forms, including but not limited to the following:

• I planned elaborate (but extremely low budget) birthday parties.
• I wrote my own curriculum for the church youth group I led.
• I painted murals on my kids bedroom walls.
• I cooked.
• I scrap booked.
• I found joy in stretching our budget as far as it could go.

  

  Image courtesy of David Castillo / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My kids were (and still are) creative too.  I remember the first time Oldest Girl painted.  She stood at the easel with her little smock on holding tightly to the paintbrush as she hesitantly brushed some paint on the paper. 

Then she noticed that some paint had dripped on to her hand.  She immediately had to stop and go wash her hands.

It wasn't long before she got more paint on her hands.  Again she washed.

The third time she noticed paint on her hands she stopped and stared at her hands.  

She thought for a bit looking from her paint splattered hands to the paint brush to the paper.

Then she took the brush and proceeded to paint her hands, both of them.  Then she put hand prints all over the paper and proudly showed me her creation.

Oldest girl had it right.  Sometimes creativity means letting go of your expectations.  Sometimes it means getting messy.  Sometimes it means joy.

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This post was inspired by reading The Modern Mrs. Darcy's post “Unused Creativity Isn’t Benign. It Metastasizes.”

April Fools

Happy April Fools Day

When the kids were younger we made a big deal of April Fools Day.

I'm not sure Oldest Girl has forgiven me yet for my first real trick on her.  She was 3 years old.

I made lentil loaf in two round cake pans then frosted it like a birthday cake with mashed potatoes.

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She knew something special was happening because I had the professor keeping her out of the kitchen.

When I carried the "cake"in  on the special cake pedestal, her eyes got big.  This was the best thing that had ever happened to her.  Birthday cake for dinner.

Then I served the cake and she was mad.  Really, really mad.

In retrospect, things would have gone better if I had included in the meal a real dessert, although nothing really makes my family happy about lentil loaf.

Now the tricks in the house are played by the kids.  Music girl tinted the milk blue this morning.  The most entertaining part of this was watching her try to convince everyone to have milk.

"Imagination boy,  do you want me to get the milk out for you for your cereal?"

"Oh, you're having a bagel today.  Are you sure you don't want cereal?  You're sure?  Would you like me to pour you a glass of milk to go with your bagel?  You want juice instead?  Are you sure you don't want a glass of milk?"

Then she watched very closely while her father got his morning coffee to see if he was going to add milk.

Thankfully the Professor played along and she headed off to school satisfied.

The best pranks cause no harm and no lasting hard feelings.  My advice, if you are going to make a child think lentil loaf is cake there better be some real cake in the picture too.

Memories or Junk

One of the hardest parts of any move is sorting through all the stuff that you never use but somehow find it hard to part with.

And how do you decide which of the kids artwork and handicrafts make the cut?

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My mother and my mother in law neatly illustrate two opposite ends of the spectrum on this issue.

When we were newly married and trying to furnish an apartment, my MIL offered us a dresser that was  in her basement.

"You just have to clean it out first," she said.

It turned out to be full of the Professor's school papers.  And I'm not talking interesting stuff like stories he wrote or drawings.  It was full of ditto master worksheets like circle the object that starts with the letter "C" and old spelling tests.

My mother, on the other hand, had to be watched carefully or she would throw away a book I was reading that I had left sitting on the coffee table.*

As a mom now myself I can emphasize with both approaches, the desire to hold on to tangible evidence of a time now past and the desire to have a clean slate and live in the present.

So when the kids were 7, 5, and 3, and we were facing a downsizing move, I decided to turn some of the decision making over to the kids.

I started with Oldest Girl.  I gathered up all her artwork, school papers, etc. and made a huge pile.

"I want you to sort through all these things and decide what is important to you to keep.  See this trash bin?  Throw away anything that isn't really important to you.  See this big bin?  This is for artwork that is special to you that you want to keep that we will put into storage so you won't have it now but will have it again someday.  And see this little bin?  This is for those few things that are so special to you they need to move with us so you can have them near you."

Oldest girl took the job very seriously.  She sat down and carefully considered each piece of paper.  Some items moved from the storage box to the keep box and back several times as she weighed her options.  In the end, there was an overflowing trash bin and full storage and keep bins with their lids on.

So I moved on to music girl and gave her the same instructions.

Music girl looked at the situation.

"You have these sizes wrong," she said, switching the larger storage bin for the smaller keep bin.  She then got down to work.

In the end, there was nothing in the trash bin, a couple items in the storage bin and a completely overflowing keep bin.

I didn't even try with Imagination boy.

Sometimes it is hard to part with the objects that spark memories.  I'm greatful that I never have to part with the memories themselves.  And thus this blog.

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*This was especially true if the book had a scantily clad woman on the cover, which happened a lot since I read a lot of science fiction as a teenager and it was practically a requirement to have a scantily clad woman on the cover whether the story included any women or not.

Work = Candyland

I have played numerous hours of Candyland, one of the most boring games in the world.

It started when I was a teenage babysitter and one little boy made me play every time I came over.

Then I had children of my own and of course someone gave Oldest Girl Candyland and she loved it.

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So I've gritted my teeth and played more than my share of Candyland.

One day, when Oldest Girl was two we dropped the Professor off at work. The baby needed to nurse before the drive home so we sat there in the car and Oldest Girl looked out the window at all the people in business attire heading into the tall building.

"Are all these daddies going to work with Daddy?" she asked (never mind the fact that many of the "daddies" were women).

"Yes, honey"

"What do they do at work?"

Hmmm, how to explain that at a 2 year old level.  Time for the old standby.  Answer a question with a question.  "What do you think they do?"

She thought for a moment. (One of the things I love about Oldest girl is that she always thinks for a moment, much like her dad and unlike her mom).

"I know," she said with excitement. "They play Candyland."

The thing is, that isn't such a bad description after all.  Some days at work are like Candyland from my perspective: boring, repetitive, advancement seems to be just a game of luck.  Some days are just about turning over the cards to see what your lot is, and some days you are stuck in the molasses swamp.

But some days...  Some days at work are like Candyland from Oldest Girl's perspective: exciting, fun, full of all the colors of the rainbow, and delicious treats.  Some days are looking forward to turning over the cards because it just might be a double color card or even better it might be Queen Frostine and you get to leap ahead of all your competitors and the end is in sight and winning in your grasp.

The trick, it would seem, is choosing a job where more days are like Oldest Girl's Candyland.

But the secret is deeper than that.  The trick is choosing to view whatever job you are in like a 2 year old views Candyland:  comfortingly familiar yet full of exciting new possibilities each day.