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Sunday, February 20, 2005

natalie things

I wasn't going to write about this but the words keep running around in my head and maybe they'll stop if I type them out.

There are a lot of things associated with Natalie's brief life which are a source of guilt for me. First there's the gut-deep automatic maternal guilt that whispers that somehow it must be because of me that she was born with problems in the first place. Then there are the more realistic things, like: I should have been more assertive with the medical staff. I should have held her more often. And probably number one on the list, as far as the "we just should have known better" factor, is that we should have taken more pictures of her. We only have a small handful of them, and none (ZERO) from when she was at home, all from the hospital. Once at the hospital we took T's camera in and took nearly an entire roll of pictures of her on what was, in retrospect, probably the best day of her life health-wise. She was not attached to any machines, she had no tubes, she was wearing a cute little ducky sleeper and she drank from a bottle and nursed. We took an entire roll of film. Except when we went to unload the camera we realized there was no film in it. Did we run to the gift shop in the hospital and buy film and take more pictures? No. We still kick ourselves over that. Anyway.

At the time (late 1997/early 1998) we didn't have a video camera, but my brother did. He took some video of Natalie on the day she was born, and then we borrowed his camera and took some video of her in the NICU a few days later, and then he set up the camera to take video of her funeral. We never saw any of that footage, I think initially because it was too raw, and then later because it was all buried in my brother's sizable collection of camcorder cassettes and we never got around to getting it from him. But lately he's been working on a project where he's putting all his home video on DVD, and today when we were at his house he showed us the digitized video of Natalie -- all 15 or so minutes of it. T and I sat at the computer and watched it together. We were handling it OK until it got to the part where I sat by her NICU bed and did what I'd dreamed of doing with my daughter since the age of thirteen or so -- read to her from Anne of Green Gables -- at which point I know I started to cry and I think T did too.

Tears and all, though, it was a wonderful experience. T says that for him it is like, in a way, we got to visit with her. For me, well... hindsight being 20/20 is not always a good thing for our psyches, I know that. From my position in the present time it's easy to look back at all the things I did wrong. I'm so thankful that today I had the opportunity to manage to get past the feelings of guilt and watch the 23-year-old me do what I really did do, whether I remember it most of the time or not -- love her the best I possibly could, and do the best for her that I knew to do at the time.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

feeling snippety

I feel snippety. All these little journal-thoughts keep skittering through my head, but nothing long enough for a whole entry. So, here; I'll nail a few of them down long enough to type them, as I do other stuff online:

Today's Lessons had not one but TWO concepts I wanted to steal today. One was blogging every hour all day long about what had gone on in the previous hour (which is much, MUCH more interesting in that particular author's house with her five children than it would be in mine) -- and one, which I may actually go ahead and steal since she OFFERED it like that, is "Before and After Thursdays" -- where I would take a picture of a room in my house before cleaning it, then clean it, then take a picture after, and blog about the whole thing. Oh good Lord that could get a little embarrassing though. Maybe nevermind on that one.

You know what motherhood smells like? It smells like VapoRub. We were not a Vick's family when I was growing up -- I did not even know that there was anything you could do about a stuffy nose besides drink hot tea and wait, until I was a nanny and was introduced to the wonderful world of Dimetapp Elixir -- but when I married T, I found that any time he was stuffy he'd use VapoRub. I still don't like to use it myself, but it works wonders for the kids so anytime we all start getting sick, I smell like it, from spreading it on their sweet little narrow chests. Sometimes as I'm applying it I think about the change that ten more short years will make to those knobby little kid chests, and I just want to grab my kids and take them someplace where they will stay young until I'm tired of it and can let them proceed with growing up.

Henry (the cat, remember?) is sleeping on the chair near me. He wakes up and sneezes periodically, and it startles me. I am such a worrywart about pets (kids' illnesses, I am familiar with; animals are a whole different world) that I have to work hard to stem the fear that he's going to get sick and die. Because he sneezes.

I was tucking LT into bed tonight and I put an extra blanket on him; it was the Toy Story one he got for I think his second birthday. One side features Buzz and the other Woody. When I put it on him I remembered that I used to ask him, as I made his bed each day, whether he wanted Buzz or Woody showing. He would almost always say Buzz, but occasionally would relent and choose Woody because he knew that Woody was my favorite. I reminded him about it, and we laughed. I had completely forgotten about that little ritual until tonight. It makes me wonder how many other things I've forgotten. While I was clearing out our dresser so that I could move it to paint our room (I AM DONE PAINTING), I came across a little note from myself to T from the first year of our marriage and it contained an inside joke of which I have absolutely no recollection. There was a time when I thought that could never happen. That's thirty for you, I guess. :)

Since the other snippets have skittered away, apparently never to return, I present:
11:05 PM At Rachel's House

A Photo Essay

Henry, asleep on C's coat. (now he is coughing a little bit too. Must not panic.)

Mary, in her favorite sleeping position (although she does often get more contorted than this).

DO YOU SEE THE EMPTINESS? I walk into this room and the shock is, well, shocking. It's unrecognizable. Laundry has been my let's-return-to-sanity-now-shall-we occupation this week. I am not sure HOW sane it is to obsess about getting to the bottoms of every single one of our hampers, to the tune of about 20 (small, because our new-to-us washer and dryer were apparently made for single people, or something) loads of laundry washed, dried, folded, and put away, over the course of three days, but oh well. At least I made it all the way through "Pride and Prejudice" while I did the folding.

Me. Man, I look tired. And also, more like my dad every time I see myself. Dad, in turn, looks remarkably like a Caucasian version of Bill Cosby (which is not, you understand, a bad thing for HIM, being male, but oh goody, just think what's in store for me in about 20 more years).

In between loads of laundry this afternoon, since P&P had long since been finished, and, well, because I am the kind of person who likes this sort of thing, I rearranged my living room. The atrocious couch used to be on the left, and the computer and ugly loveseat on the right, with the computer nearer the camera. I also switched positions of the stereo cabinet and TV. The reason for this (other than just my love of change) was so that I could wire the computer sound through the stereo. Which I did ALL BY MYSELF, and I also fixed it so that the DVD player's sound can go through the TV or the stereo or both, instead of just the stereo as was previously the case. This is all thanks to Dawn and her Go Girl Power inspiration, dating from early in our diaryland acquaintance when we were both so new at it that we were using the stock templates. Or I may have been in the fuzzy duckling stage by then; I don't remember.

Notice the little container of VapoRub sitting on top of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Now please avert your eyes from the rest of the clutter, especially the one basket of laundry which I swear I am folding as soon as I post this, I SWEAR, and also my shoe, which is sticking out from the edge of the coffee table, even though I am always scolding the kids for leaving their shoes in the living room. Because I am the world's best mom, that's why.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

guilt

I think I need to regain a little perspective here. So if you ever had an experience where your parents hurt your feelings without realizing it and you cried quietly in your bed but your dad heard you and you told your parents you felt like you were being ganged up on (or "teamed up on", hey, whatever word choice you may happen to have made was fine), and they hugged you and told you they were sorry and told you to please tell them next time instead of crying quietly alone in your room and they prayed with you and you told them you loved them too and went to sleep afterward, and then you grew up into a normal adult who loved your parents and didn't cut yourself or start doing drugs at the age of twelve, please tell me.

Not that this has anything to do with ME, or with an enormous load of parental guilt I'm staggering around under, or anything. It's just a little, um, survey.

Other than that.

Today was a beautiful day. I am the first to say that I love winter storms -- at least California "winter" storms -- but a week of days like this in between them is like a gift. We spent the afternoon at my parents'. The grass is so green; the creeks are burbling; the afternoon sky is bright, dark blue; the moonrise was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It was perfect weather for a walk, which we took, and for roasting hot dogs, which we did.

We got to the halfway point in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, our current family read-aloud book, today. I think I read about eighty pages of it today -- in the car on the way to church, in the car on the way home, and on the way out to my parents', and on the way home (WITH A FLASHLIGHT), plus the regular nightly chapter before bed. T and I already loved this story, and the kids have fallen completely in love with it as well, and they just won't let me stop reading. Except for tonight, when LT wanted to play a game instead but the rest of us wanted to do the nightly reading first, and then we kind of jumped all over LT for not paying attention, thus making him feel like he was being "teamed up against". Because we are the world's best parents. (somehow the most heartbreaking thing to happen to a person -- not ME, a purely hypothetical person who accidentally hurts her child's feelings, I mean -- who has hurt his/her child is hearing that child say that s/he is the best Mommy/Daddy ever -- while the child is still crying. That seems like perhaps it would tear a person's heart to pieces, doesn't it. Not that I would know.)

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

not the kind of day homeschoolers brag about

This was one of those days. By that I mean, it's the kind of day which I think those few bitter individuals who think mothers can't teach their children and shouldn't try to do so would wish on me, if they had a little Rachel voodoo doll (let's not give them that idea, shall we?). It's Wednesday, which means chapter summaries. Ordinarily these go very smoothly. LT has become pretty good at them; the format's simple and anyone from a 5-year-old (C does one too) to a professional Bible scholar can get a lot out of it. Today, I think maybe because he got up early, but maybe because he decided subconsciously that this had to be a day to make Mommy alternate between doubting her calling as a mother, and fantasizing about running for the hills, arms flailing wildly, not looking back -- today he just DID NOT WANT to cooperate. So instead of going to Bible study with T and C tonight, we stayed home, and he went to bed after dinner. Apparently he's not TOO sleepy; he's in there reading. That's my boy.


I really hope tomorrow's better. Meanwhile I'm going to go drown my sorrows in a Jane Austen adaptation (P&P, the standby? Or should I branch out into the Kate Beckinsale version of Emma? Or maybe I'll just keep listening to Yahoo Launch's "Big Hits of the 80's" station -- when was the last time I heard a Heart song? Decisions, decisions...) and some crocheting.

Sunday, November 07, 2004

holding onto sanity by my fingernails

This last week has made me eat every word I ever said about my children's utter lack of sibling rivalry. It is as if they have been possessed by the spirits of my brother at 8 and me at 5. In other words, you know they love each other, but they keep driving each other (and hence their mother) absolutely bananas. I think it was Thursday, or maybe it was Tuesday, when I was awakened at around eight o'clock by my son's voice: "MOMMY! C said [swear word beginning with S, and yes, this is all my fault, because I am the best mom ever]!!" Of course that meant he had said it too, so I let him know that he would share her punishment, which was to have to write forty nice words, in addition to their schoolwork. He called her a name for "getting him into trouble", so in addition to the forty pleasant words, he had to write ten nice words about his sister. All in his best handwriting. C's words were largely illegible, and very faint, but they ran heavy to horses and names of flowers. Here is LT's list, spelling intact:


10 NICE THINGS ABOUT C

1. Prety
   
2. Swete
3. nice
4. cute
5. smart
6. good
7. sciny ["skinny" (!!)]
8. Gubby (one of her nicknames)
9. Hoy (another nickname, because she used to get up in the morning, stumble into our room, and say, "Hoy, Daddy")
10. C-girl (did I mention T gives out nicknames like some dads give out noogies?)

OTHER NICE WORDS

1. happy
2. rainy day
3. cheerful
4. Morobay
5. soft
6. dry
7. warm
8. flours (flowers)
9. fun
10. games
11. elifent
12. ducks
13. crusht tranchlas
14. playing
15. frends
16. love
17. singing
18. Mopar
19. Legos
20. choclit
21. snoeflakes
22. grene
23. moon
24. rose
25. ladybugs
26. grass
27. trees
28. cute
29. crusht joonbugs
30. swimming
31. no school
32. Daddy home
33. holiday
34. thanksgiveing
35. reeding
36. drawing
37. creeks
38. rivers
39. lakes
40. frendly

Hey, I'll take my parenting high points where I can get them, in a week like that one.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

more answers to questions

This is the second entry today with answers to the question "meme"; don't miss the first one.

Some GREAT questions from Paula:

Do you think your kids would be as well off if it were your husband instead of you home with them, assuming you were making as good a wage?
I think they are maybe marginally better off with me home. Mostly, a role reversal would just make their lives different, not necessarily better or worse. But I think our family is better off overall with me the one at home, and T the one at work. Hey, if we could have it any way we wanted it, both their parents would be home all day. Not a lot of work for a telecommuting dad around here, though.

If not, is it a matter of gender or just who would be better at child-rearing and home-schooling? (Because both certainly take talent to do well.)
Well, initially it was definitely a gender issue, because I was the one with the breasts. ;-) Nowadays, well, we each have different strengths. I am more patient, and am more inclined to accept that kids are kids and not to expect them to behave like little adults. I am perhaps better at breaking things down to teach them, although chances are he'd do fine at that, he's just never been tried. I have less of a tendency to expect them to catch on to academic concepts as soon as they're presented the very first time. He, on the other hand, is more organized than I am, and tidier, and probably more attentive, because he's less trusting that the kids are OK left alone for longish periods. It would certainly be an interesting learning experience for both of us to switch roles for a while.

As far as why we don't do it, well, that's more complicated. The simple answer is, we do it this way because the status quo works and why fix it if it's not broken. Also, the fact is that I probably am a LITTLE better-suited to the homeschooling aspects of raising them, because of the patience thing. And he is better at "regular" jobs than I am. I've done "9-5" in a variety of occupations, and I will again someday I'm sure, but if it's one of us going to work and the other not, he's the one to go, because he's better at taking criticism and dealing with the sort of interpersonal stress one encounters in a workplace without getting trembly. Also, husband working/wife tending the home is the Biblical pattern, which is important to us, and it's more suited to our inherent natures. It's not that he's not nurturing, because he is; he's a fantastic and loving father who is seriously emotionally invested in his kids. But he is also tougher and more aggressive than me, which is important in a work environment, and I, as I said, am more patient, which is good for someone who's going to be the sole caregiver for kids. And I'm a better cook. ;-)

None of this is to say that if circumstances changed in some way, we would not roll with the punches and switch roles. I've thought about doing it for a few years just to help T have a little more freedom to find a job that he LOVES rather than one that he tolerates and at which he is competent. But again with the status quo thing -- it's hard to just step out and do that.

Did you have to decide if you wanted kids or was it something you always knew and never questioned?
I have always, always wanted kids. I never ever went through a period when I didn't. I used to pretend I was "having a baby" with my dolls, when I was like three. For a while when I was in high school I decided that I wanted to be a single mom -- didn't want to marry or live with anyone, but still I wanted the kids. My husband also wanted kids as soon as he was mature enough to think about it seriously, and never had to be convinced. When we were first married he wanted to wait a couple years and I didn't, so we compromised and waited one year. :)

Monday, June 28, 2004

aah, motherhood

I guess motherhood and hedonism just don't mix. All day I've planned that I would take the afternoon off today -- the house is passably clean, and the laundry's caught up, and it's summer vacation. LT reads like a whiz and can write intelligible paragraphs and he knows about the water cycle and the life cycle and the food chain and money and something about the American Revolution and pioneer days and Native Americans, and he can add and subtract multiply and divide and tell time, and nobody taught him any of that stuff but me; HE gets a break during the summer, so I'm entitled to one too, right? At least one, an hour on the porch swing with a novel and a tall ice-rattling bottle of ice water? Except it never happens; there's just too much to do. It's not that I'm some workaholic or that I'm house-proud -- far from it, I'm afraid; I do manage to find myself sitting in front of this machine plenty of times when I thought I was folding laundry or what have you. But as far as just scheduling some down time for myself, something always comes up. This afternoon I thought I'd made it -- ballet and swimming lessons were over; the clothes were clean, dry, and folded; dishwasher emptied; kids fed and playing quietly in their rooms. I was about to get my diet Coke out of the fridge when I noticed that the counter could really use scrubbing. And the table too. And I may as well put away the laundry... and put back the couch cushions C messed up... and load the dishwasher. OK, then that was all done, and I picked up my book and noticed that the floor needed sweeping. Swept the floor. And then I remembered... I'm supposed to mail that letter for T today in TODAY's mail (we live in town which means we have no home delivery/pickup of mail; we have to go to the post office). So now I have to get the kids out of their quiet play (never mind, they just came out on their own and said they were hungry, could I fix them a snack?), get them all shod and combed and washed, and load us all into the car, and drive to the post office and back, and who knows if that golden moment of solitude and freedom will present itself again before next year... and it'll be time to get dinner going when we get back anyway.

sigh.

It's not that I'm not grateful. This is a life that I have chosen for myself, and I love it, and wouldn't trade it for any of the alternatives (after all, even if I did want to, I think I'd find that a "working mother" has to do all this stuff anyway, with the added frustration of dealing with coworkers from 8-5 and with children being raised by someone else's ideas the rest of the time). And granted, it is so. so. so much easier now than it was, say, three years ago, when my children were much less capable of doing things for themselves. But sometimes it just seems like it will never end until I'm faced with the rest of my life stretching ahead of me, childless -- at which point, of course, when I have the porch swing and the book and the solitude available full-time, I'll wonder why they ever looked so appealing in the first place.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

separation anxiety

This may seem ludicrous to most of you (OK, all of you. Well, not QUITE all) but I have just for the very first time left my eight-year-old son and his four-year-old sister at the home of one of their friends, just around the corner from our house. Always before the darling boy has needed his mom (or dad or grandparent) on the premises, but this time he was willing to let me leave for twenty minutes. We know these people, we know the kids, he's in good hands, but I'm nervous for that little guy in the biggish body, and how he'll cope. He needs to learn, a bit at a time, that he'll be OK without us, and he needs to learn to use his own mental and emotional and spiritual resources to get through situations that seem scary. Sometimes I wonder if I've created this insecurity with homeschooling, and with my baloney-to-the-idea-of-shoving-them-out-into-the-schoolyard-jungle-at-five-to-cope attitude, but I really think not -- I think he is naturally inclined to be clingy and that public school would have been a disaster in more ways than one for him. His sister would actually handle it better; she's a chirpy, confident little lady with none of her brother's social anxieties.

damn, I've only killed eight minutes typing this. Twelve to go.

I've recently switched to using Mozilla instead of IE. Not because I've become any kind of open-source anti-Gates purist, but because for some unknown reason my popup blocker was letting through about a popup a day, so I uninstalled and reinstalled it, and BANG, all of a sudden I was getting three popups for every page. I'd installed Mozilla months ago, so I could check pages I designed on it (and I know that some of my diary designs have been really impossible to read in it. I'm sorry. I just didn't care at the time. I'm reformed now.), but it is now my default browser and I'm getting it configured to fit my kinks. I still have to brave the wilds of IE to view a few of my favorite diaries **rdhdprincess**ahem**, and I'm slowly getting used to the lack of the transparent effect in my own design. (One has to wonder why the heck the folks at Mozilla can't get on board with this kind of thing). But it's worth it to avoid having to close four windows for every one I open. Plus I have that pristine pure feeling that comes from doing something against the grain, even if that's not the reason I'm doing it.

damn. Still four minutes to go. I think I'll go clean out the toaster.

* * * * * * * N E W S F L A S H * * * * * * *

I just called to have them come home and he requested permission to stay longer. Yay for my brave boy! Next thing I know he'll be asking when he can borrow the car...

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Monday, May 17, 2004

three more questions

These are from Jenn. Good questions! (if you're going 'huh?' about this whole three questions thing, see the first paragraph of this entry for an explanation.)

1. what types of dreams/nightmares do you have and what do you make of them?
I don't usually remember what I dream (or dream at all, whichever). But the dreams I do remember are generally pretty classic easily-interpreted dreams. Either I'm losing my teeth (which supposedly means I'm insecure about my appearance, which I can say OK to) or everything possible is going wrong in an out-of-control way, or my husband is nonchalantly announcing that he's leaving, or I'm nonchalantly having an affair, which is something I would never do, and in the dream I'm always worried about hurting my husband, and when I wake up I always feel creeped out (and unreasonably guilty) that I dreamed something so awful. That last type I don't pretend to understand. Sometimes I wonder why God gave us so little control over our dreams.

2. what action would you take if you ever found out that your children smoked pot or drank?
Oh my. I'm glad that this worry is years in the future for me. If this happened the first issue I would address is why they were doing it, and we'd have some serious discussions about that, and then we'd look at where they were getting it, and we'd be pretty hard-nosed about who his/her friends were and what they were doing and how much time they spent unsupervised. As one of my brother's student's mothers used to say to the student, "his world would get a lot smaller for a while." Not just as punishment but to help effect a change in priorities.

3. What do you think you'd be doing with your life if you never got married or had children?
Interesting question! It is amazing how many factors this would depend on. Before I decided to marry I was thinking of heading for a Christian college in Pensacola, Florida -- except I'd pretty much decided NOT to go there for a few reasons. Then I was going to go to the local junior college and "get basics out of the way" while I decided what I wanted to do with my life. I'd just begun to veer away from the idea of teaching, which had been my life goal since fourth grade. (Can you tell that the year I was 18 was a year of HUGE change and upheaval for me?) So I imagine that if I'd not married, I'd probably have wound up with a degree in something (librarianship maybe?), working somewhere near here but probably not actually in town. I'd have an apartment, a cat, hundreds of books, a really great stereo system, and some church friends, and I'd be on the lookout for The One. (Thank GOD I don't have to be doing that. Literally. Thank you, God.) However, I'd probably be a lot better at playing the piano than I am now, and I'd have done more traveling. Definitely not enough of a trade-off to make me wish things were different. :-)

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Friday, May 07, 2004

Happy Mother's Day To Me

Recipe for an improved day:

1 son with a recycling habit
About fifty pounds recyclable beverage containers
1 daughter with a roll of quarters
1 set of parents, middle-aged, in on the kids' scheme
1 husband, likewise in on the scheme
1 frustrated mommy
1 Lowes ad
1 PORCH SWING, which the mommy's only wanted for, oh, say, eight or ten years.

I had some idea this was coming -- neither of my children are great at keeping secrets, and they'd gone with my parents to trade in LT's recycling this afternoon. But I wasn't sure until the kids arrived home with this big box:

An eight-year-old and a four-year-old, deciding of their own accord (nobody told them to do this! they just knew I wanted a porch swing and had heard me mention in passing that there was one in the Lowe's ad for $70) to pool all the money they have to get their mother a Mother's Day present? That's THE SWEETEST THING I ever heard. I am compelled to hug them, hard, every time I go past one of them. Anyway, T wasn't home yet so the kids and I put it together.

Early in the project, a progress picture


C took this one. Whoops.


LT as the photographer


We were using C's hat as a work bucket. (how Mothers-Dayish of us, no?) Note the owner wiggling her way into the picture -- if there's a camera in the vicinity she thinks she absolutely must be in front of it.


That's me, sitting on the finished product. Don't we all love how wonderful our bottoms and legs look when we're photographed sitting down in shorts? grr.


Another one by LT

This whole thing just completely turned my day around. It didn't fix any problems, but hey, who cares. :)

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Posted by Rachel at 09:37 PM in kids | motherhood |

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