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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
eight years ago today
Please pardon the mushy nature of this post. Mothers will understand.
April 21, 2004
It just doesn't work quite the same, does it. The picture does not adequately convey -- probably because I am, as I have mentioned many times, an oversized ox-woman -- how monumentally BIG that boy is. He is 50th percentile for height and weight... for an eleven-year-old. We feed him well.
Still, there's nothing like a cuddle. When he was a baby, a teeny tiny newborn, a day old, just trying to get used to life outside his little uterine haven, he would stop crying instantly if someone rubbed his head. (Maybe it reminded him of the comfort of bouncing his head repeatedly against my bladder. He certainly did seem to enjoy that during his stay in Chez Maman...) Even during baths, which he hated -- as soon as you started rubbing the shampoo on his hair he'd quiet down and look up at you with those big blue eyes that always looked like he was doing some serious contemplation (he looked like a little old man as a baby, minus the excess hair). Anyway, as he grew he'd climb in my lap and ask me to "cuddle his head", and I'd run my fingers through his hair over and over until he fell asleep. Nowadays, every once in a great while, he'll still ask for a cuddle, but usually it's me, hauling that hulk of a child up into my lap (which is not as easy as this picture makes it look) so that I can have my baby boy back for a few minutes.
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Here's a little -- THING, not a poem exactly -- that I wrote just after his fifth birthday. It still applies. :) CAUTION: EXTREME MUSH FACTOR. Could be hazardous to your health. Proceed with caution.
You used to live under my skin.
My every breath and motion rocked you.
My muscles wrapped around you in a protective embrace.
Your movements kept me company.
Your presence answered my prayers and filled my dreams.
You gave my body a reason for being.
Then you were a noisy bundle of Boy
hungry for my breasts, needful of my attentions.
I doted on you (along with the rest of Western civilization).
I fed you, held you, stroked your head, changed your pants, dressed you in fuzzy yellow sleepers.
You gazed at me like I was the only person you ever needed to see in the world.
I have never felt so important in my life.
I turned my head, and then looked back at you
and found in place of that bundle
this tall
capable
headstrong
loving
beautiful
intelligent
PERSON.
Who told you your legs could get that long?
When did you get permission to be four feet tall
and learn to read
and make up stories out of your own head
and have a best friend?
It is almost impossible to see that needy, helpless baby in this joyful, wonderful boy before me.
That is, until I creep in when you are sleeping
and fold you into my lap with your head under my chin.
You almost wake up, but then
your breathing is even and your lashes are on your cheeks.
(who says you can have lashes like that?)
I rock you gently back and forth
and cuddle your head.
You are busy dreaming about dinosaurs or animal crackers
or motorcycles or big trucks or helicopters
or jigsaw puzzles.
You don't even know your Mommy is wetting your stubbly
hair with her tears.
I have found my baby boy again.
You won't remember this moment in the morning
but I shall never forget it as long as I live.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Happy eighth birthday, birthday boy. It's such a blessing to be your mother. --------
Monday, January 12, 2004
what good little munchkins
I am so so proud of my little munchkins. After a day which was, to say the least, NOT the best day of parenting and homeschooling I've ever experienced -- let's just say I had visions of my head exploding all over the living room from the stress, and they weren't pretty -- I had to take them with me to my chorus rehearsal this evening, and they behaved flawlessly. I choose to believe that this is because they love me and know how proper children behave and want to please me and grow up into gentle and competent individuals, and not because they were threatened with the removal of literally all of their very favorite privileges for two weeks if we had to leave the rehearsal because of their behavior. (yeah, it was that kind of day, and what, me delusional?). They were oohed and aahed over; they were aren't-they-cute, look-how-they've-grown-ed-over; they played quietly when appropriate and charmed the room by dancing and singing on the stage during the break. AND they even walked all the way home without complaint. They sure know how to make me feel guilty for having fantasized earlier about sending them to my parents' until they turned eighteen. Not that I would actually have done that to my parents. ;-)
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Tuesday, December 16, 2003
guilt
Now I feel a little guilty for poking gentle fun at my little hypochondriac yesterday, because now she really and truly is sick. The cough is now just part of one of those ubiquitous childhood-illness complexes consisting of a high fever, a sore throat, and a really, really goopy nose. Poor sweetie. And she's like her father in that anytime she gets a fever, her tummy gets upset. So, darling daughter (or "double density", as altavista translates dd), I am so sorry to have teased you in such a manner. Here's hoping you don't throw up the Tylenol next time.
SpaceCamp just got over and I counted the seconds until LT was over here asking, "Can I play Starfighter [his beloved Star Wars game]?" It took six. So I'll vacate the computer for him and his obsession, and go do a guilt-assuaging load of laundry before I sit down on the couch with C's head in my lap and read one of the five or so books which have earned a place, for one reason or another, on my MUST BE READ NOW list.
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Friday, November 14, 2003
whiny post about kids
You know how I mentioned, in that inverted Smothers-Brothers kind of way, that both my kids love their Daddy best? They fight over who has to sit next to Mommy instead of Daddy at the table. They fight over who has to hold Mommy's hand instead of Daddy's when we're walking through the mall. T tries to put a stop to this; he is by turns diplomatic and stern about it. Honestly, all kidding aside, this whole thing really breaks my heart and makes me feel more than a bit resentful (it feels frighteningly like sixth grade, actually, and kids fighting over who had to sit next to me on the bus) and I really hope it's temporary. Here I am, the one who has put her entire adult life into raising these kids the right way, I stay home with them, I put off going to college for them, I educate them, wipe their noses, cook their meals, bandage their wounds, answer their embarrassing questions, teach them to get along in the world, not to mention love them so much it brings tears to my eyes on a regular basis. And it's not like Daddy doesn't love them just as fiercely as me, and he works really hard so that we all have a place to live and food to eat and all that fun stuff, and he does discipline them and do all that daily-care stuff for them when he's here, and very well, I might add. But because he's gone all day and I'm the one home with them (ironic, isn't it), he is [insert Monty-Pythonish heavenly cloud chords here] DACY THE MAGNIFICENT and I am Just Mommy. Except -- and this is where I was going with all this on this particular morning -- except at 3 a.m. What name comes flying out of C's mouth when she's cold/hot/thirsty/had a bad dream? "MOMMY!" Sometimes three or four times a night, or should I say morning. I suppose I should be grateful that I at least am this important to her, but I'm not, I'm resentful as hell about it, especially at 3 a.m. when nobody is inclined to be rational.
In my sane moments (OK, most of the time), I don't mind this too much. I certainly don't regret being a stay-at-home mom or homeschooling them (yet). I know that they really do love me very much. I still get plenty of hugs and kisses and "surprises" and cuddles. I know that when they're adults they'll look back and appreciate me in that reverence-for-Mom sort of way. I just wish I didn't have to wait quite that long.
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
kids' therapy
Those of you who are mothers (fathers? any fathers at diaryland?), you know those moments when you're doing something with your children and you look at them and just know exactly what they're going to say to their spouses (or perhaps their therapists) in twenty years about that very moment? Tonight I had one of those.
LT [TWENTY YEARS HENCE, LYING IN BED LATE AT NIGHT WITH HIS WIFE HAVING ONE OF THOSE PENSIVE MARRIED-PEOPLE TALKS]: Yeah, it was after an Awana club meeting. Mom and Dad had this idea that we'd go to a restaurant and get pie and cocoa for dessert, and of course we're kids so that sounded great even though I'd just had a candy bar AND a sucker at the meeting and my sister had had this little four-year-old's snack with crackers and peanut butter. It's pie and cocoa, right? And I'm sure Mom and Dad thought it would be this nice family bonding time. Except I was just too damn full, and feeling sick from all the chocolate I'd already had, and I ordered this chocolate cake and it came and it was almost ALL frosting and I just hated frosting. And my sister kept insisting the cocoa was too hot even though it wasn't, and she got her sleeve in her pie like four times. And Mom just had diet Coke, even though we had, like, hello, a refrigerator full of diet Coke at home, because she was on her perpetual diet, except she ended up eating most of my cake. Dad was trying not to be mad and Mom was sitting there begging him with her eyes not to get mad and it was just a mess. I felt bad for them, they meant it to be so much fun for us and it just ended up being stressful for everyone. Man.
Oh well. It could be worse, right?
Speaking of my perpetual diet, I was down two pounds today from last Thursday, woo hoo! I'm back down to my lowest weight so far -- 172, halfway to my goal. Of course that was before the cake tonight...
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Tuesday, November 04, 2003
real value
Bacon, eggs, gravy mix, sausage, milk, and OJ for family's favorite meal: $14.00
Time involved from shopping to starting the dishwasher: 3 1/2 hours
Spending 20 minutes watching everyone bicker ungraciously with each other while eating it: priceless
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Friday, October 24, 2003
two old poems and some miscellaneous stuff
Well, T just called and said that he's been called out on another fire, and he'll be home to kiss us goodbye and grab his stuff any time. So we're in the midst of scurrying around getting his stuff ready to go, and writing him love notes, and drawing him pictures. I have a few minutes to spare while his clothes are in the dryer so here I am, trying not to think about how much I'm going to miss him.
I was going through the papers he keeps with him when he's away (sentimental stuff) and came across these two poems I'd written. They're the only two poems I've ever written that I still like. The first is about falling in love with my best friend; I wrote it just over ten years ago.
All these years
peeking around corners
waiting impatiently for him to appear
THE MAN OF MY DREAMS
He would have all the right pieces
yes, his puzzle would be well-put-together
He would be all I could ever want from a person.
A best friend, a partner in my walk, a fabulous person
all wrapped up in a body for which I'd have died
I waited
and watched
applicants came and were discarded
nobody seemed to fit and I would have lost hope
had I not turned
and seen you.
God pointed you out
(how could it have ever been any other?)
You'd been there all along, our love patiently waiting
to be found
(like misplaced glasses sitting on my face)
No earthly discovery ever pleased me more
than when I found us
sitting right beside me all the while.
--September 10, 1993
OK, so I was 18. "Would have lost hope?" But still, I like it. And I always had wanted to marry young. :)
The other is one that I wrote one night a couple of years ago, having just picked up my then-five-year-old sleeping son to put him to bed.
You used to live under my skin.
My every breath and motion rocked you.
My muscles wrapped around you in a protective embrace.
Your movements kept me company.
Your presence answered my prayers and filled my dreams.
You gave my body a reason for being.
Then you were a noisy bundle of Boy
hungry for my breasts, needful of my attentions.
I doted on you
(along with the rest of Western civilization).
I fed you, held you, stroked your head, changed your pants,
dressed you in fuzzy yellow sleepers.
You gazed at me like I was the only person you ever needed to see in the world.
I have never felt so important in my life.
I turned my head, and then looked back at you
and found in place of that bundle
this tall
capable
headstrong
loving
beautiful
intelligent
PERSON.
Who told you your legs could get that long?
When did you get permission to be four feet tall
and learn to read
and make up stories out of your own head
and have a best friend?
It is almost impossible to see that needy, helpless baby
in this joyful, wonderful boy before me.
That is, until I creep in when you are sleeping
and fold you into my lap with your head under my chin.
You almost wake up, but then
your breathing is even and your lashes are on your cheeks.
(who says you can have lashes like that?)
I rock you gently back and forth
and cuddle your head.
You are busy dreaming about dinosaurs or animal crackers
or motorcycles or big trucks or helicopters
or jigsaw puzzles.
You don't even know your Mommy is wetting your stubbly hair with her tears.
I have found my baby boy again.
You won't remember this moment in the morning
but I shall never forget it as long as I live.
August 3, 2001
That one, I still really do like, and it means more as time goes on. (for example, now I can't even put him on my lap and tuck his head under my chin; he's too big.
Today is the day I am going down to give platelets. I put off leaving until T could come home, so that we could kiss and hug him before his departure for what could be a two-week absence. I think I'll still have time to go by the bookstore on my way to the blood center, but I'll be putting off all the other shopping and dining until after I'm done there. I have printed out a long list of book ideas for myself -- some of them culled from the book list from ivillage, and some from Amazon's recommendations. I have discovered the joy of tinkering with my Amazon recommendations -- I spent an unmentionable amount of time doing that over a couple of days and now they actually recommend things I would be interested in, for the most part. It is almost creepy how they remember what I've bought in years past better than I do -- and heaven forbid you buy one Star Wars book from them; I had absolutely NO idea there were so many Star Wars books in existence. I think I'll have to make LT his own wish list for them; I had to delete them all from mine because my wish list was 80% Star Wars stuff. yikes.
Friday, October 17, 2003
alone for the afternoon
My parents took my children with them to the city and T won't be home till 3:00. So I have two and a half hours to spend totally alone and what am I doing? Sitting here writing a diaryland entry. How totally pathetic.
OK, well, I am playing Alanis Morissette, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Barenaked Ladies, Meredith Brooks, Evanescence, and the Proclaimers at non-kid-friendly volume levels. Good thing the neighbors are all either a) deaf, b) away at work, or c) members of an aging-baby-boomer garage band which generally tunes up at midnight and gets really blasting by 1 AM, so I don't have the slightest inclination to accommodate them with my stereo volume. In fact I've often been inclined to pipe some really, ah, stereotypical Wagnerian opera at extremely high volume directly into their living room at 5:30 in the morning while my poor bleary-eyed husband's getting ready for work. But I digress.
I just don't have a lot of activities I enjoy that are substantially more pleasant without children in the vicinity. I don't smoke, don't drink, don't swear, don't even have a secret stash of Godiva chocolates (which actually, I don't like) hidden somewhere. Here's a list of possibilities that generally run through my head when my two munchkins are going to be gone:
- Sex. T isn't home yet so that's out.
- Blasting loud music. Check.
- Going to the grocery store. Well, it's not that I enjoy this, but it is a necessary activity which is simpler to do solo. And I did that already today.
- Going for a brisk walk. Did that.
- Going to a fancy restaurant. Doing that next week.
- Watching a nice romantic comedy without having to use my psychic Mom powers to mute or skip to the next scene at just the right moment. Hmm, has possibilities... but can't do that while "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" is playing....
It used to be that reading was at the top of that list. But now that the kids are older, if I'm going to neglect my housework to read, I can do it almost just as well while they're happily occupied playing with Legos or running around the yard as I can while they're gone or asleep. So when they're gone, I'm kind of at a loss -- what to do to maximize this time on my own? I guess I can just bask in my uninterruptedness... for the first twenty minutes until I really start missing them, and start having to remind myself every two minutes that I'm supposed to be enjoying this break....
I know that many of you are agreeing with my first paragraph right now: I'm totally pathetic. Which is as it may be, but I guess I kinda like it that way. I'm just gonna go lip-synch to "Bring Me To Life" while I fold some laundry and give up on being wild and reckless for today. ;-)
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Friday, October 03, 2003
book sale
ooh, joy, joy, the "members only" opening night of our library's semi-annual book sale was tonight. I only realized the book sale was going on when I read a post on one of my many email lists, wherein someone was offering a possible explanation for the quietness of the list -- "is everyone off at library book sales?" At first I thought, what an absolutely idiotic thing to say, does she think everyone's library has book sales the same weekend? And then I thought, Oh my goodness, my library's book sale IS this weekend!! So I turned around and asked the kids if they wanted to go to the library sale and buy books. C was enthusiastic; LT was not. Now here's the awful kind of mother I am: I said, "But you know, they might have some Star Wars books... it'd be a shame to miss it if they had Star Wars books..." and before the words have even finished leaving my mouth I'm mentally kicking myself -- what kind of mother ARE you??? First of all, you're the mom, he's the son, you say we're going to revel in cheap books and by golly, he just has to go! And secondly, exactly what are you going to do when you get there and there are no Star Wars books? You manipulative, lying excuse for a mother! So went my mental self-flagellations. I needn't have worried on one count, though, because we'd barely arrived at the children's section before LT found not one but two Star Wars books -- a storybook of Return of the Jedi, with photos from the movie, and a comic-novel version of Episode IV, most commonly just called "Star Wars", but actually, if we're going to go with the naming conventions used in the other movies, it would be called "A New Hope". Egads, let's not go with that, shall we?
Anyway, I spent $17 on books, and they're 50c apiece. This time I got stuff for the kids or for school, almost exclusively; I only got two books entirely for myself and they're children's books also. I found an almost-complete set of the Narnia books from the 80's (missing The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, which, before someone determined to re-order the series, was #1). This edition is especially significant to me because it's the same as the set my brother and I had when we were little. I think I may even have our old copy of LWW sitting around somewhere. If not, I can find it on eBay. And I got a Trixie Belden book (#5, The Mystery Off Glen Road). It is my goal to re-accumulate all of the first 20 of this series. I had them when I was younger, and somehow they got lost or disposed of. I got a few horse-y books for C (I am a sucker where those are concerned. I figure she'll read them eventually...), and the rest of the books were just odds and ends that I thought we should have, either for reading aloud or for school or for both.
Enough about the book sale. We had a really nice evening after that. We came home and I barbecued chicken burgers and hot dogs for supper; I sat outside and read a library book (The Time Traveler's Wife -- maybe I was just predisposed to enjoy whatever I read tonight, but so far I am really intrigued by this book) while the kids played happily. It was a really happy scene, without a doubt the best part of the day. Earlier we went to the valley with the neighbor ladies; it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd worked myself up to think it would be, but still, it was not an insupportable amount of fun either. I got the very bright idea to walk along the bike/walking path in smallish-shopping-city from the park to Toys R Us, so we could look at stuff and the kids could work on their Christmas lists while we waited for the ladies to be done with what they were doing and ready to go home. It proved to be too much of a walk for C, and she had a spectacular meltdown on the way back to our car. I never expected to be one of those mothers pulling a sobbing child along by the hand on the sidewalk. Next time you see one of those mothers, please have some mercy in your thoughts of her, on my account. It was far less fun for me than it looked. The rest of the trip was nice enough, though.
I am kind of bummed because I lost my really nice Mary Cassatt stamps. I have got into the habit of requesting something other than the ordinary standard stamps given out by default, when I buy stamps. A couple of months ago I requested Audrey Hepburn stamps; this last time I just asked for "something different", and the postal person handed me these really wonderful stamps with Mary Cassatt's artwork on them. I don't collect the stamps, I actually use them; it just feels all interesting and different to use a stamp that's something besides the traditional flag or whatever. I'd used about half the stamps on that sheet when I lost the sheet. I am far more upset about this than I should be. For one thing, I can just get more. It wasn't a limited edition thing or anything. But that's not what bothers me. I am just idiotic about stamps. One time the kids got hold of a partial sheet and stuck two or three them on their clothes like stickers, not knowing they were actually for mailing things. I went borderline ballistic, as if the stamps were worth, say $34 apiece instead of $.34 apiece. I know for a fact that I have spent more than $.34 per sticker for a sheet of stickers for them to play with, on more than one occasion. Don't ask me why the stamp thing bothers me so much, but it does. There are many strange things about myself which I will never understand.
random thought: I love how on amazon.co.uk it says that the item is "usually dispatched in 2-3 days" instead of "shipped".
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Saturday, September 27, 2003
fun afternoon
This will just be a quick, not-very-witty entry because in a few minutes I'm getting off the computer. The kids and I are going to have a stay-up-late-and-play-boardgames kind of night. Watch out, "Leave it to Beaver"; here comes something wholesomer. ;-)
We just had such a great afternoon. We went to Fresno with the goal of buying a family zoo membership, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while. We got there at two, and when we went to buy our membership we were told that all zoo members had free passes to Storyland AND all the rides at "Playland" today. Only problem was, the rides shut down at 4 along with the zoo (which I had expected to be open till 6), and Storyland was only open till 5:30. So we had a limited amount of time to do everything. We decided to skip the zoo for today, since we'll be able to do that for free for a year (criminy, I hope it's not for the rest of this year; gotta log onto their website and check that out...), and just enjoy the other two places. We had an absolute blast, it was the best day in a long time. I just wish T could have been there, and I wish I'd brought my camera. Next time. There were so many places in Storyland that I remembered from my own childhood -- I hadn't been in there since I was about seven. And the kids enjoyed themselves there immensely. (LT: "I sure liked Storyland better than I thought I would. I thought it would just be a bunch of boring people reading stories."). Their favorite thing in there was King Arthur's castle, which of course was renamed by them as Cair Paravel, and they took turns sitting on the throne pretending to be King Peter and Queen Lucy.
I keep forgetting to post about something I find hugely amusing. You know (well, if you're not the parent of someone who is or recently was a preschooler, you might not know) that guy Steve from Blue's Clue's? Well, I know this sounds like one of those urban legend things (why are they called that, I wonder, when they spread equally well in rural areas? anyone?), but it is really and truly true that he is now a singer/songwriter and has released an album. The music is pretty decent -- let's just say that if a really famous alternative musician came out with songs like his you might go, huh? but if your next-door neighbor's teenaged son's garage band could play this well, you might actually set up a lawn chair and listen. You can look at his website and listen to some of his music at www.steveswebpage.com. Drat, I wish I'd been the one to come up with that mouseover-face thing first, it's really kind of cool. Anyway, there's my goofy link for today. :)
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