Newsflash: Not Everyone Likes You

Like most kids after school, Ellie isn't usually very forthcoming about her day. Our conversation is probably the same as it is for millions of parents and kids everywhere:

Me: How was your day, Buddy?

Ellie: Fine.

Me: Did you do anything interesting?

Ellie: No.

But this week Ellie burst from the crowd of jostling second grade elbows and backpacks with a lot to say.

"Something happened today, Mommy. Something not very nice."

I'll give you the abbreviated version, because the Ellie version was, shall we say, detailed.

According to Ellie, it was during recess and she and a group of children were playing basketball. Ellie said she noticed that some people were only cheering for one of the players.


That's Ellie on the right, saying: "That might hurt other kids' feelings."


Ellie announced that she didn't think it was very nice and one of the girls (who was doing the cheering) shouted, "You're not the coach, Ellie!" And that's when a bunch of people laughed.

Thus ensued a lot of she said, she said. I think Ellie was mostly embarrassed. And she felt misunderstood. She was just trying to help. She was looking out for the other kids who weren't getting cheered for. And the girl who accused her of being the coach is someone that is mentioned quite a bit when it comes to conflict. She and Ellie just seem to spar.

I found the drawings above when I was cleaning out Ellie's room (I try to keep out of her room as much as I can but she will not part with a single piece of paper and wants to save everything--her desk had become unusable--there were actually coloring pages from Thanksgiving on it, so it was time).

She did these drawings after I read to her and tucked her into bed one night this week. Clearly, she was really, really bothered by the exchange on the playground. That night she also wrote a letter to the girl, who she said she "really wanted to work thing out" with. In the letter, Ellie apologized for what she called a "misunderstanding." She stayed up late writing this note and she crept downstairs around 9:30 and asked me if I thought she should give it to the girl or read it to her. I told her I wasn't sure and what did she think? We concluded she would think about it, and decide later how to handle the note.

The next day after school, Ellie informed me that she talked to her teacher and that she, the girl and the guidance counselor were going to get together to talk about things. I told her I thought that was a good idea. I know you are all on the edge of your seats about the outcome of that meeting but it apparently hasn't happened yet.

This morning Ellie brought up the girl again. "I hope we can work things out," Ellie said quietly, out of the blue, as she waited for her toast. Clearly, this is something that is weighing on her and occupying a lot of her thoughts. I feel for her. In a word, girls suck (don't worry, I was good--I didn't tell her that).

But I remember the pain of fourth grade (fourth grade!) and not knowing who was going to be my friend on any given day And as we all know, it starts earlier and earlier (as is evidenced by Ellie's second grade "drama.") And honestly? Does it ever really end? But a wonderful thing comes with age: we just stop caring what people think of us and boy is it THE BEST.

As I waited for Ellie's toast to pop, thoughts of fourth grade and sixth grade and eleventh grade and 27-year old (and hell-40-year old!) spats swirled around in my head. Finally I looked at Ellie and said: You know what Sweetie? You are doing everything right. You're voicing your feelings. You're explaining your side of the story. You're apologizing when it's appropriate. You are nice to people and you do your best. That's ALL you can do. The simple fact is, not everyone likes everyone. This girl just might not want to be your friend. And you know what? That's OK. I mean, think about it. Do you want to be EVERYONE'S friend?

Ellie shook her head and said she guessed not.

I am in no way belittling or negating Ellie's feelings. I just felt the need to share with her the simple lesson I wish I'd learned a LONG time ago and it's not an easy one to swallow when you're a people pleaser like I am (and like I know Ellie is). Not everyone is going to like you. And that's OK.

It's probably cold comfort for a seven year old who wants everyone to be her friend, but I felt better saying it, and I hope she heard just a little of it, even if it doesn't get fully absorbed for another thirty five years.

On Grandma Eleanor's "Joie De Vivre"

My mother taught me many things.

Among them:

1. Try to take a walk every day. The fresh air does your mind and body good.

2. Sometimes the best meals come out of what you happen to have on hand in the cupboard or refrigerator.

3. It's never too late (she remarried at 46 and went to Europe for the first time when she was 47).

4. Life can be short (sometimes, heartbreakingly so). It should be enjoyed, whenever possible.

The last lesson was inadvertent--she probably never realized she would teach me that one. But watching your forty-nine-year old mother take her last breaths has a way of putting things in perspective.

***

For a long time, I denied myself. Subscribed to nonsensical rules like If I don't eat breakfast, then I can eat dinner. During high school I managed to spend an entire summer vacation working in a cookie shop and never once ate a cookie (I was afraid once I started I would never stop). For years, I spent too much time standing sideways, not liking what I saw, squinting angrily at my reflection and adding up numbers in my head, of calories and scale digits. It was exhausting. Who knows why all those years I didn't think I deserved certain things: Breakfast. Chocolate chip cookies. Love.

My mid-twenties were a particularly disastrous time, as they are for so many. I suffered through a series of brief, painful romantic relationships (one so ridiculous it ended via email, on New Year's Eve, to boot--I cringe just thinking about that). My dear mother seemed to make it her pet project to see me through this time. She was particularly concerned about me on the weekends and would start calling me early Saturday morning to make a plan. Did I want to meet at the mall? She would take me to lunch and surely there was something I needed at Meier & Frank.

If we didn't meet during the day and I had no other plans, she'd insist on taking me to dinner. Though it was a little humiliating to be several years out of college and spending Saturday night with my mother, I told myself as long as I didn't run into any of my friends (unlikely at the finer restaurants she and my step father  frequented) it would be OK.

Some days I would hardly eat anything all day, knowing my dinner that evening, with my mom and stepdad would include things like fresh roma tomatoes and buffallo mozzarella; handmade mushroom gnocchi and red wine. Plenty of red wine. And of course, dessert.

One Saturday night dinner in particular stands out in my mind. It was Valentine's Day, and I must have been about twenty-five. Valentine's Day dinner with your mother, how pathetic could a person get, right? But with the help of two glasses of merlot, I was soon laughing about my predicament. "Every pot has a lid," my mother would remind me. "When the time is right, it will happen, Sweetie." And of course, she was right.

That meal--homemade ravioli, if I recall correctly--concluded with something so decadent, so incredibly wonderful and delicious, no one at the table could contain themselves. Chocolate fondue, served with fresh fruit and pound cake. I know. Eating it bordered on what I can only describe, as a religious experience. I'm not sure I've tasted a desert this delicious since and I'm pretty sure I closed my eyes while eating the fondue. It was that good.

It was a meal--a dessert--we would recall for years. Well, a few years, anyway. My mother died about two years after that incredible chocolate fondue. But I still remember that night and that food, and how good it made me feel. Safe. Warm. Happy. And oh so full of joy.

***

The day after my mother's death, my stepfather gave me a letter my mother had written to me. It was dated February, 2000, three months before she died. She wrote it before the big surgery that would determine if her colon cancer was treatable (it was very much not). She wrote the letter in case she never got to see me again.

That letter said many things, and it is something I will always, always cherish (I sometimes think I should put it in a deposit box or something to keep it safe--do they even have those anymore?). But one thing stands out in particular: She said that she delighted upon my "joie de vivre" (French, for "cheerful joyfulness of living), that she took great pleasure in watching me enjoy a good meal or glass of wine. I wouldn't be surprised if she was thinking about that infamous Valentine's Day fondue meal when she wrote the that.

This is funny to me, because I feel like I fought that kind of enjoyment for so long, not feeling myself worthy, or some such adolescent nonsense. But reading that letter, I was so glad my mother had seen it in me, however briefly. And I was certainly not going to waste any time in making sure that I embraced joy (and chocolate fondue) whenever possible.

***

Last month, Erin took Ellie out for a "British tea." It was there that she discovered clotted cream.

Need I say more?

This might be my most favorite picture of Ellie, in the history of pictures. To me, it perfectly depicts Grandma Eleanor's beloved joie de vivre. Cheerful joyfulness, indeed.

Erin showed this picture to a friend whose response was: "She looks like she's been waiting her whole sweet life for this!"

I sure hope Ellie (and the rest of the children) don't waste any time, and that they all enjoy the many sweet things life has to offer, whenever possible.

Their Grandma Eleanor would be so proud.

Wrecked

I am sorry I was cranky, Bye [sic] Ellie. Ellie wrote me this note a few weeks ago after an evening tantrum.

It always happens like this. A terrible event, a horrific loss puts it all in perspective, reminds us of what really matters. Being late for school suddenly feels trivial. The giant piles of laundry that require me to wade through the floor of the laundry room? Eh.

And then gradually the loss fades away, and my occupation in trivialities returns.

But this time really feels different. And nearly everyone I know agrees.

In the last week I've cried washing dishes. I've cried on the bus to and from work. I've cried listening to "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas." I've cried reading about how one of the children who died at Sandy Hook had special needs and his aide reportedly died trying to protect him. I've cried reading about the teacher who barricaded herself and her class in a bathroom, telling her students she loved them because she thought it was the last thing they were going to hear. I've cried dropping Ellie off at school, not because I'm afraid for her safety, but because of all those little faces, all those teachers and support staff and the principal. It could have been any of them.

"I can't even think about it," a dear friend wrote in an email yesterday. "Except I can't stop thinking about it."

It just feels so close.

"What Six Looks Like" summed it up perfectly for me (if you haven't read it already, please do). Why are so many parents of young children having such a difficult time with what happened in Newtown (aside, of course from the obvious horror of it?)--By the way, I'm not saying that it's only the parents of young children who are struggling--I'm just speaking about it from that perspective:

"I think it's because we know what six looks like. We see it every day... in all its glory...this friend and I both have a six-year-old child. I, a six-year-old son. She, a six-year-old daughter. Both are in first grade. Both, I imagine, so heart-breakingly similar to those 20 kids who were so brutally and senselessly killed on Friday morning. And we do, indeed, know what six looks like. We do see it every day. In all its glory. We see the good, the bad and the ugly. The beautiful and the infuriating. It's in our face. We live it and breathe it."

Overnight, mundane events like school drop off and bedtime became fraught and loaded.

For some reason Ellie has been having a hard time going to sleep the last few weeks, and coincidentally it heightened following the Newtown shooting (and no, she doesn't know about it).

She wants to sleep in our bed. She wants us to stay with her until she goes to sleep. She's lonely. She's scared and sad. But she can't tell me what she's afraid of or why she's sad.

In my head I'm thinking: Will you just go to sleep? I still need to pack lunches and snacks and clean up the kitchen and hopefully do a load of laundry-lights-we need more washcloths-before I collapse into bed with Words With Friends. Really I just want to play Words With Friends.

But in my heart? I'm thinking about how she is hurting and scared. And would it be so terrible for me to wait another thirty minutes to make the damn lunches? I could lie down next to her and listen to her breathing change as she slowly relaxes and falls asleep, feel the warmth of her small, sturdy body next to mine (but not too close--she gets hot--sleeps with a fan in December--don't ask).

I think of the parents less than two hours away who I imagine would love to have a drawn out bedtime with their children.


This is Five: Ellie's illustration of last week's unit on Probability. I realize I'm biased, but I don't think it really gets much cuter than this.

"The harder life is, the softer I must become," read a comment on a blog I read sporadically. Yes. This. It's hard to care so much about packing lunches and loading the dishwasher, right now. Except that those tasks do still have to get done, preferably before 10:30 p.m.

But right now, I have more patience. I am yelling less. I am hugging more. I am stepping over toys instead of fretting about the mess and clutter.

I would like to stop crying, and I know that I will. But I don't want to forget this feeling, or all that we lost that day.

Love and Light: It's All I Have

Yesterday morning, bleak, cold and rainy, I dropped Ellie off at school, like any other Monday. Except it wasn't any other Monday. It was three days after Newtown. It was the day the funerals started. 

I thought about all those parents, who had hugged and kissed their little first graders goodbye on Friday morning. Not knowing, of course, that the unthinkable was about to happen.


As a parent, I worry about a lot of things. But never, in a million years, would this scenario have entered my mind. 


First graders.


Teachers and administrators and educators just doing their jobs.


None of it makes any sense. There is no way to explain what happened, there is no "reason" for it. Yes, we can hope and pray that some good comes out of this terrible tragedy, but that won't make the losses any less heartbreaking.


I can't stop thinking about the parents. The siblings. Lives will never, ever be the same. 


It's human nature to seek comfort and answers, when something so awful happens. I do like what President Obama said at the memorial service in Newtown on Sunday:


We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain, that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that, no matter how good our intentions, we’ll all stumble sometimes in some way.


We’ll make mistakes, we’ll experience hardships and even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans.


There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace, that is true.The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves and binds us to something larger, we know that’s what matters.

Others have been saying better, what I've been feeling. I wish I could do something with this grief, this guilt (besides donate money, yes, donating to very worthy causes is of course, wonderful). I'm interested in this idea of Tonglen, a Tibetan Buddhist term, which writer Kyran Pittman describes as something that "teaches neither to resist or cling to suffering when it comes, but breathe in the pain, and breathe out peace. A kind of spiritual photosynthesis that helps everyone."

Perhaps of little comfort to those who have lost a child (I don't dare imagine or speculate as to what they are feeling). But, something. I have to do something.  

***

In the midst of the horror, tiny gems of grace are trickling in. I was moved this morning by the story of Gene Rosen, a retiree who found a group of Sandy Hook students at the end of his driveway minutes after they escaped the school shooting. "We can't go back to school," one little boy reportedly told Rosen. "Our teacher is dead. Mrs. Soto; we don't have a teacher." 

Rosen entertained them with stuffed animals, gave them juice and called their parents. He said it was his experience as a grandparent, not a trained psychologist, that helped him on Friday.


Look for the helpers, as the wise Mr. Rogers advised, in a now well known quote that (deservedly) went viral shortly after the shootings in Newtown:


When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”


***


A twin group I'm a member of raised $5,000 in less than twenty-four hours, to plant a tree in Central Park for Noah Pozen, one of the young shooting victims who was also a twin. They actually raised close to $7,000, total (and people are continuing to give). A donor just stepped in to donate an additional $5,000 for a second tree, a "twin" that will grow beside Noah's tree.


***

Saturday night was the last night of Hanukkah. I was tired and emotional and I'm a little embarrassed to admit there was a part of me that hoped the kids would forget. I didn't feel like dealing with the frustration of trying to jam fragile candles into tiny, wax clogged holes (there has to be a better solution, menorah makers of the world!) while Leo and Ellie bickered about who go to light which candle first;  and then I'd be left with cleaning the mess of the melted wax off of the kitchen table. But wouldn't you know it? Ellie has fallen head over heels for the whole notion of "a present every night" and she would certainly not let me forget it (lighting candles = presents).

And how could I ignore the eighth night, when all the candles are lit?

For the first time this year, I used all three menorahs.

They flooded our little house with light. 

It was all I could do. 

More is More

I couldn't resist posting more from this "series" that Erin shot over the weekend. These pictures are just SO these kids, if that makes sense. I love how in each one, everyone is doing something different. And the irony is not lost on me that once we had everyone fed, clean and safely ensconced in their little beds on Sunday night, what did I do? Lay in my own little bed and browsed through these pictures, of the small children I was so relieved to have put to bed. Isn't life funny?

We went to a party of an old classmate of Leo's this weekend. These friends throw the same backyard party every year and we all look forward to it. Last year, at six weeks old, it was one of the babies' first social outings. This time, we hadn't seen some of the partygoers in a whole year and everyone was impressed by how big the babies were, how much they'd changed. Of course we heard the usual: "Four kids, how do you do it?" and I gave my stock (true) answer, a shrug and a smile and a "We just do it!"

"But the payoff is going to be so big when the babies get a little older," one of my friends said. "Think of how fun it's going to be."

I've said this to myself (and others) and have written about it here, many times. She's so right (not that it's not fun now--it is, truly.). But I can't be reminded of this enough. This little crew is something else now but in a few years? It's going to be so, so different. It's so easy when you have four little people that are so dependent on you, to forget that these four little people are just that--people. And they are not always going to be little. They are people you will spend your whole life getting to know.

I love how the babies are looking at Leo here, especially Harry. Harry just adores Leo, is fascinated and amused by his big brother's every move.

I was reading a blog the other day where a mom was talking about how she was struggling to keep up with the demands of three kids, two preschoolers (not twins) and an infant. She said that when things get really bleak and when she feels overcome by the neediness and the relentlessness of everyone, she thinks to the future--of a Thanksgiving dinner that her three adult children (and their families, presumably) will come to. That really struck me. Imagine it--four kids--well, four adults, coming to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. As an only child of divorced parents, big, boisterous Thanksgiving dinners with siblings were something for the movies, certainly not something I ever imagined for myself.

I don't want to wish away the babies' babyhood just because it can be hard. Welcome to parenting, right? Welcome to life. Not to mention, these babies are it. These are the last diapers I'll wash, the last little heads to grow heavy on my shoulder as they drift off to sleep, the last soft little buttery backs and arms and shockingly plump little thighs I will wash in the kitchen sink.

Look at how Leo is trying to hold Lucy's tiny hand. He loves these babies in a way I didn't think was possible.

It can be so hard to enjoy the moment. Hard for me, anyway. I think it's one of the most difficult things about parenting, about life really, but it's especially true for me in parenting because on the one hand everyone is telling you to "Enjoy This" (Carpe Diem) because It Won't Be Like This For Long, but at the same time, you're exhausted and there's been non-stop whining and snack fetching and goddammit I still have to make lunches for Monday morning and unload the dishwasher for the ninety-seventh time.

Leo, will you bring pumpkin pie? Ellie, how about cranberry sauce?

And I can't wait to see what Harry's and Lucy's favorite dishes will be. I can see Harry being a mashed potato kind of guy.

But I'm in no hurry.

Spread Thin

Photograph by Rick Regan (and Instagrammed by me).

My mind has been a jumble lately (nothing new there). I'm stretched thin, as usual.

The babies have been a little sick. Summer colds with a little teething thrown in, I'm pretty sure. Knock on wood it's nothing more serious than that but it's definitely hard to have two whiney babies. I'd venture to say that's one of the hardest things about having twins--when they are both sick (which, let's face it, is usually the case, if one is sick the other is pretty much guaranteed to catch it).

I think back on Ellie's whiniest period (Leo, bless him, was never a whiney baby) and it pretty much started at the age the babies are now: thirteen months.

I have a very clear memory of when Ellie was this age, of coming home from work, frazzled from the daycare pickup (and to think I only had to go to one daycare in those easy, breezy two kids days-- ha!), trying to cook dinner one-handed, while balancing a clingy, miserable Ellie on one hip.

I've said this many times before but it bears repeating (for me, anyway). A mother's instinct is to soothe her baby, to give her what she wants and needs but it is SO HARD to do this--I would venture to say impossible, much of the time, with twins. I mean, I KNOW I'm doing the best I can and these babies have it good and they are showered with love and attention much of the time but when it's 6:45 p.m. and Lucy hasn't napped and is pulling at my legs and Harry is pushing up onto Lucy and scrambling to climb my other leg and I pick one up (whomever is crying loudest) and the other one looks at me wearily as if to say "Really? Really? No! Pick Meeee!" It's just...challenging. I know. Newsflash.

It's like you're constantly being reminded of what you're not doing and that you are failing someone. I've likened it to feeling like someone is picking at a scab on my body. Just picking, picking, picking. Sometimes I just feel like I can never, ever do enough. I know that I'm way to hard on myself, always have been. But it's just how I feel so much of the time.

And I haven't even touched on how I feel like I let Leo and Ellie down sometimes, how I lose my patience with them over ridiculous, silly things, when they are demanding something (More milk! At dinner! How could they?) at the same time there are two babies crying in the background. Yes, yes, yes I am doing the best I can. It's just so hard to keep up with everything and everyone. Invariably it feels like someone is not getting what they need, at least at that moment.

Of course, there are wonderful moments, wonderful times. They happen every single day, amidst the messiness and the noise and crying and the whining.

Yesterday, July Fourth, we spent much of the day outside.

Lucy loved her front row seat to Ellie's water show.

We (Erin) rearranged the living room furniture on Sunday and ye old broken Lazyboy finally got the boot. (Don't ask me why Leo is making this face--I think he's trying to be a tough Superhero.)

Leo and Ellie pretty much live for the ice cream truck (seen here enjoying ice pops from said truck).

This too shall pass (the whiney, sick babies) and yes, parenting is such a series of seasons. There is the season for non-stop nursing and not sleeping and there is the season for (I can only imagine) worrying about your teenager, out on a Friday night with the car (and a few things in between). "It won't be like this for long," I remind myself often, and I am both heartened and humbled by that notion.

A year ago at this time I was sleeping in one hour increments, (talk about stretched thin--oy) and pretty much breastfeeding non-stop while also trying to keep two older kids happy, healthy and occupied. The Summer of 2011...that was...interesting.

So yes, it gets better. It has gotten better. And my goodness those babies are stinking cute. They've both finally mastered one of my favorite baby games (albeit sporadically and unpredictably): "How big is Lucy? How big is Harry?" you ask them, and then they throw their buttery smooth, chubby little arms up in the air and smile at you like you are the most wonderful, fascinating, most favored person in the whole wide world. And that just never gets old.

Because You Can Always Buy More Cheese

Keep your sense of humor.

This has become my new mantra. At least, I'm trying.

I am not always successful at doing so, but since the babies have become so mobile (and they aren't even walking yet! Ay yi yi!) and my home life has become, well, the word Ridiculous really sums it up. I've been trying to remind myself that humor is key.

Speaking of ridiculous:

This is where I spent most of this past Saturday. Manning the steps at our house which are apparently the Eighth Wonder of the World, according to Harry and Lucy. Lucy (aka Evil Kaneevil) likes to stand on that bottom step (while holding onto and rattling the step ladder we use as a baby gate--don't ask). Also? While she does this? She laughs at me.

Like I said. Humor. I need to keep it. Or maybe get it? Take last Sunday as another example.

It was a typical weekend day. A laundry list of To-Dos but also the frenzied! panic! to enjoy! and relax! (as much as that's possible these days). But it was also the day we had to switch three out of four car seats (the babies finally, blessedly graduated from the infant "bucket" seats while Ellie got a new "big kid" seat), and by "we" I mean Erin, of course, did all the actual car seat installation work.

While ye old switcheroo took place, the four of us (Harry was napping) provided moral support to Erin, who was busy doing the heavy lifting in the mini van, parked in the driveway. It was an idyllic scene, really. Leo and Ellie played in the front yard, reveling in the age old joy and fun that comes from an empty (in this case, new stroller) box. Yes, a discarded box in Leo's eyes almost always becomes some kind of vehicle. Car, truck or as was the case last Sunday, a rocket ship.

The rocket ship and the maps that Leo and Ellie drew, for said rocket ship.

While the two big kids played, I had Lucy in my lap in a rocking chair.

Then when she got squirmy, I put her on a blanket.

She's a very efficient crawler, but the prickly grass on our front lawn seems to slow her down, keeping her mostly confined to the blanket (at least as of last weekend). Fine. Two big kids frolicking nicely, one baby on a blanket. It's in these moments that I can feel relatively calm. Relaxed. This is totally doable, I think to myself.

And then the frenzied, quick-to-crescendo cry of Harry waking up from his nap begins to rattle through the baby monitor. Any semblance of relaxing or doableness is shattered.

And so begins the quick scramble. The run inside the house to grab the exersaucer so that I may park the second baby in it while I go grab the first baby (can't hold two babies with one set of arms, at least not at this stage). But before you can grab the first baby (who is now screaming very loudly), you first have to run the exersaucer outside, put the baby in it, then dash upstairs to rescue second baby. Note Lucy, in an exersaucer in the background of the waiting-to-be-installed car seat, above. I don't normally just randomly plop babies in exersaucers on the front lawn, I assure you this was a temporary arrangement, and she was not unattended.

Now comes the humor part.

At some point while all this was going on, Ellie went inside and came back out holding a block of delicious, extra sharp cheddar cheese (do you sense foreshadowing here?). She wanted a few slices as a snack. I admit, with all there is going on these days, the older kids don't always get their every snacking whim requited, which I don't think is entirely a bad thing. At that moment, with all I had going on, Ellie's desire for extra sharp cheddar was answered with "Get a string cheese" (unlike sharp cheddar, Ellie can get a string cheese all by herself). A disappointed Ellie disappeared back in the house and returned with her string cheese.

So Harry had his turn in the rocket ship. But before long, Leo and Ellie had tired of the empty box as rocket. Harry's delight (see above) in the box was short-lived. Two mobile babies on a blanket on the front lawn seemed to be entirely too much to ask. Then the babies began to enter their late afternoon, we're too cranky, we don't know what we want phase. Erin was almost finished with the car seat project and I got everyone back in the house to begin the journey toward dinner, bath, books, bed.

That's when I found the empty plastic bag with a few crumbs of extra sharp cheddar cheese.

The bag was sitting on the entry way table. You know, where everyone keeps their cheddar cheese (can you hear my eyes rolling around in my head?).

"Ellie! Why is the cheddar cheese bag here?" I demanded.

She scurried over to me, looked at the bag, then at me. "I don't know. I think I put it there."

"But where is the cheese?" I asked.

"Maybe Ruby ate it?"

Long time readers will know that Ruby is our dog who does serve one key purpose in our home: she is the official eater of all food off the kitchen floor so that I do not have to sweep the kitchen. Ever. So she does serve a purpose.

No, no, no, not the extra sharp cheddar! That I had just bought at Trader Joe's the day before! It would have been one thing if she'd just eaten a small block, but this was a brand new, hardly enjoyed block. It was so ridiculous, it was funny.

Which pretty much sums things up for me, right now.

"Someday, we'll look back on this and laugh," one wise reader once commented here, and I never forgot it. "Why not start now?"

Worth a Read (Or a Re-Read)

Have you read this?

"I'm Not a Saint, Just a Parent."

Cate reminded me about it and I just reread it and yes, I'm a big ball of hormones right now but wow. It's beautiful. There are so many passages worth repeating. This might be my favorite:

On being a parent:

"Some bits are hard, some bits are easy, some bits are fun, some bits are a frightful bore. That’s true of life with Eddie [writer's son with DS], it’s also true of life with Joe ["typical" child]. But you don’t even begin to break it up into categories: it is the one endless, complex business of being a parent. You don’t gointo parenthood to make sure that the benefits outweigh the deficits: you go into it out of — brace yourself but no other word will do — love."

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Parenting Advice From the Unlikeliest Places

I’m always pleasantly surprised when wisdom comes in unexpected places.

Most recently? Last night’s season premiere (hurray! Finally something on television worth watching again other than Friday Night Lights!) of Mad Men. It was from the all-knowing and wise Joan, who responded to Don Draper’s tantrum with the pronouncement:

“It’ll pass.”

Honestly I think if parents need to receive just two words of advice, this should be it. I realize it’s unbelievably simplistic, but think abut it. It applies to, well, everything really.

Baby won’t sleep through the night? Hysterical toddler demands “Uppy! Uppy!” while you’re trying to make dinner (her dinner, the way, the one she will mostly throw on the floor)? Children run to the back of the mini van instead of climbing calmly into their car seats?

It’ll pass.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this but it’s always a welcome reminder, since it’s can be so hard to remember, especially when you need to.

Granted, it is very challenging to remind oneself of this in the heat of the moment. When your almost six year old is throwing an enormous tantrum because he absolutely does not want to leave the pool at that moment, it’s hard to tell yourself calmly and quietly that it’s going to be ok, that someday you will be able to leave a place when it’s time to go without making a scene, but you will. You will.

As an added bonus, it reaches far beyond children. Fight with a friend or spouse? Can’t pay your cable bill? Don’t know how you’re going to shake the grumpy, heat wave induced bad mood (purely hypothetical of course)? It will pass.

Of course the whole “It’ll pass” reminder is also a touch bittersweet. Sure, I won’t miss whining through dinner (hi Ellie!) or getting shoved when I have the nerve to suggest Leo take a bath at the end of a hot, sweaty day. I'm pretty sure I won't look back on Leo’s propensity (still) for spraying me with the garden hose every chance he gets with much nostalgia, nor do I think I will ever pine for the nights when Ellie is cozily ensconced in her crib, blanket up to her chain, all the various stuffed animals arranged as they are required and she announces: “Mommy I have to go potty.”

Thankfully, the list of things I will long for is much longer: Being asked by Ellie when I pick her up from daycare: “Mommy how was your great day?” Watching small, wet bodies move with grace, ebullient happiness and complete confidence through the backyard sprinkler on a sultry July day, the smell of clean hair before bedtime, and hearing Leo proclaim, from the backseat, “Happy!” as he clutches a bag of grapes in one hand and his beloved dog tucked under his arm.

Watching Leo, the human pretzel sleep, and knowing that for now, there is no where he feels safer and happier than in his house.

Witnessing Leo at play. Here he is lining up his "guys." Clearly, he has a plan.

Leo eating watermelon. Pure joy (in case it wasn't obvious).

Ellie and her love of accessories. (Actually that probably won't pass, will it?)

Mostly clothing optional baking with Ellie.

It all reminds me of the great joke in one of my all time favorite movies, Annie Hall. In it, Woody Allen’s character, Alvy Singer does a bit about two elderly women at a Catskill resort:

“One of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.”

Ditto for parenting (though thankfully, in addition to the loneliness, misery, suffering and unhappiness I would add moments of transcending joy, pride, and a love like no other). So take that New York magazine, who recently proclaimed: "All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting."


It'll pass. Much too quickly.