"I'm a little girl!"

I've realized that Dee Dee has had the spotlight in my recent blogs. This one goes out to my littlest girl, Sylvie. 

                                                                * * * 

            Like most families I know, we've been blessed with loads of wonderful hand-me-downs. Over the last two and a half years, we have worked our way through box after bag of passed along clothing and shoes. The girls’closet is full of more shoes than I have probably owned in my lifetime. Tennis shoes with pink lights that flash at ever step, purple crocs, felted Mary Janes, Berkenstock-style sandals, sports sandals, flowery sandals. They have about as many dresses, but I can count on my fingers the number of times they have actually worn any of them. On the surface of things, it has simply never been the right time. They were winter babies, wearing fleece onsie over cotton onsie day after chilly day. Then, when they were crawling, dresses seemed absurdly impractical, their chubby knees pinning the skirt to the floor, immobilizing them. As toddlers, it was no better. They'd trip over their hems, get hung up climbing into the car or stroller, splatter the front of an otherwise immaculate dress with yogurt or tomato sauce. And so, with few exceptions, their plethora of dresses has remained, neatly folded, in the bottom drawer of their dresser. 

            Until now. Now the girls insist on picking out their own clothes. I pull open their drawers for them. "OK," I tell them. "Pick a shirt.  Now pick some pants." They have never, ever, ever looked as well-dressed as so many young children do, but if Dee Dee wants to wear a pink shirt with striped orange pants, well, honestly, I couldn't care less. At least she's dressed, after all, which these days, especially, is not something to take for granted. 

            Then, a few days ago, Sylvia pulled open the bottom drawer, the one with the dresses. 

            "I want to wear this one!" she announced, holding up a pretty white sundress with different colored buttons all down the front. 

            "Okay," I said, and pulled it over her head, wondering if it would fit her. That drawer hadn't been opened in almost a year. 

            She looked down at herself, smoothing the front of the dress, touching the colorful buttons. 

            "I'm a little girl," she said in her cute little sing-song voice. "I'm a little girl." 

            It is not the first time she has said that. In fact, pretty much any time Sylvia picks out a particularly girly-looking shirt—like the one with the glittery purple tutu that says, "All girls love shoes!"—she says it. This is in contrast to most other times, when she says things like "I'm a ghost!" or "I'm Shaggy!" Almost always, these things are said with a tone of exasperated defiance, as in: 

            "Come on, Sylvia!"

            "I'm Shaggy!"

Or: 

            "Hurry up, baby girl.”

            "I'm a ghost!"

            But, "I'm a little girl" she says with a note of somewhat amazed satisfaction. It's not that I can't relate. The other night I got dolled up for the YWCA's annual fundraising Black and White Gala. In the ten minutes I had to get ready, I painted my toenails and inexpertly applied foundation and eye shadow. I honestly think I might have had both since I was a teenager, and since I so rarely wear make-up, I feel like a teenager when I'm putting them on, wondering if people will notice that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, like my best friend in seventh grade did.

“You didn’t put it on right,” she told me scornfully as we walked to the bus stop one day. She had a very knowledgeable older sister, so she knew about things like eye shadow. “You have to use two colors. Like this.” She pointed to her own expertly made-up eyes. That was over twenty-five years ago, but to this day I cannot wear eye shadow without feeling like a make-up wearing impostor.

I put on some lipstick, pulled on my dress and some fancy jewelry I picked up at a clothing swap, opted for the comfortable sandals instead of the heels. And even though my hair hadn't been cut in eight months and my make-up was surely wrong, when I looked in the mirror, I felt a little of the same pleasant surprise I imagine Sylvia does when she sees herself in her girly-wear. "Wow. I'm a girl!"

            I'm a girl. Having two girl toddlers, the question of what it means to be a girl is constantly swirling in the air around us. After weeks of wanting to be Daphne, Sylvia has abandoned that character in our on-going Scooby Doo role-play. Now, Sylvia is Shaggy, Dee Dee is Freddy, I'm Scooby, and Clayton is the monster. I'm constantly mixing up my pronouns when I talk to them, saying things like "Shaggy needs to hurry. She needs to get in his car seat." 

            "Why do they want to be boys?" Clayton wants to know. "They're girls!"  

            "They're just pretending," I tell him, but, like him, I wonder. When I was little, I always wanted to be a boy, too. Boys didn't have to wear dresses, or sneak shorts under the skirts they were made to wear to school. And although in elementary school, I could beat all the boys but one, I had a sense of myself as an anomaly among my female classmates. Maybe I could run fast, but most girls couldn't, or didn't care to; girlhood, in the way that I understood it then, did not merit my respect. Even as a girl myself, "being a girl" was nothing to aspire to. 

            Then there's the fact that Scooby Doo, even in its most recent incarnations, seems mired in an outdated sexism. In one especially awful episode, Freddy gets caught up in a winch. "Oh, what do I do, Freddy?" a helpless Daphne asks. Even smarty-pants Velma gives up without trying. "Mechanics aren't my forte," she confesses. The answer: go get a man, even if the only one available is hapless Shaggy. It's no wonder to me that my girls don't want to be the female characters. Even though they've only seen the show a handful of times, I'm not surprised they're not dying to be either air-headed Daphne or know-it-all Velma. 

            It wasn't until I went to college that my disparagement of girlhood began to shift, even as I became almost immediately indoctrinated that the very word girl was taboo, carrying as it did the implicit sexism of centuries of inequality. (My favorite cartoon from that era was of a proud father looking into a crib. "It's a woman!" he says. "A baby woman!") Suddenly, girl/womanhood was no longer represented by the mall-loving, boy-crazy, gossip-spreading girly-girls who cared only about how to apply eye shadow. Suddenly, being a woman meant being smart and strong and comfortable in one's skin—and one’s body hair. It meant being competitive and ambitious in the world, but affirming and supportive of one's fellow woman. Whereas until then I had felt proud to be a different from most girls, for the first time I felt proud to be one. 

            Looking back, I wonder why that shift felt so drastic. Even in high school, I had plenty of strong female role-models. My mom was brilliant and nurturing. My best friends' moms were self-sufficient and independent and successful. My older sister was smart and athletic, whose impressive feats, both academic and on the track, I struggled to keep pace with. My best friend was just like me; we recognized each other as kindred spirits during the first warm-up lap at basketball practice, so determined were we both to come in first. But somehow my conception of what it meant to be girly, i.e, a girl, did not stretch to include these people I admired. And although I was outraged—and baffled—when my calculus teacher told our all-female math team that girls were just not as good at math, my vision of girlhood had remained, for the most part, derisive and uninspiring. 

            It came as something of a relief, then, to go to college and come across a different way of conceptualizing womanhood, however sophomoric our ideas. For, after all, we were the children of the second wave of feminists; our world was very different from the one in which our parents had come of age. As girls, we had always been expected to excel as much as our brothers. We had access to reliable birth control. We had never doubted that the world was ours.

            And yet, we found things to be outraged by. I scolded my father for calling his office workers “girls,” found misogyny even in the lines of my beloved Robert Frost. Before, eye shadow had seemed to me merely trivial and superficial; now it took its place in the myriad of ways that women were objectified and thus belittled.

            Once, while my college boyfriend and I were visiting his family in upstate New York, he scoffed at an ad in his younger sister's magazine. The ad pictured three young girls, laughing with their arms around each other. His exact point, I do not remember. It was probably something about the ways in which gender is constructed by society; the ad was teaching girls to be tender and nurturing, for God's sake! I remember his father looking at his self-righteous son with confusion, gesturing at the picture. 

            "But this—this ability to be close to each other, to be loving and emotional—this  is what is wonderful about girls!" 

            His dad's perspective has stayed with me. There's nothing wrong with loving and emotional. For that matter, there's nothing wrong with eye shadow either. If we deride any quality we identity as feminine in the name of equality, it seems we have fallen prey to our own latent sexism. 

            I am guilty of it, myself. When I first learned I was to have daughters, I was nervous. What if they're girly-girls? I thought. What if they want to hang out at the mall, or be cheerleaders? What if, in other words, they're the kind of girl that made me think so little of being one myself?

            I haven't ruled out this possibility, but somehow it makes me less nervous. When the girls pick out their shoes from the overflowing cardboard boxes in their closet, Dee Dee wants her running shoes. Sylvia picks out the sparkly silver slippers with the flowers. Maybe her tastes are her own, but I don't rule out our influence either. "Look how nice you look," her dad tells her. Or, "Come on, let's go show Ms. Devon your sparkly shoes," I say, when I'm trying to hurry her out of the car at the gym. 

            The other day, I said to her, "You're a pretty girl, Sylvia." Because she is! She is ridiculously cute, with her little round face, almond-shaped eyes, and golden hair. As soon as I'd said it, I felt guilty. What if she grows up thinking that pretty is all she is, or that it's the most important thing? "You're a good girl," I added quickly. "You're funny and smart." 

            "How is she smart?" Clayton wanted to know. I hesitated. It's true that Sylvia is not as precocious as her sister. She wasn't counting to sixteen at two-years-old, doesn't recite books almost verbatim after hearing them read once. I could explain to him about Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, how, when it comes to interpersonal intelligence, Sylvia takes after her grandmother and namesake, who, in my father's words, "could talk to a stone." Like my mother, Sylvia charms people easily. Although less out-going than Dee Dee in so many respects, when it comes to people, she is the one to reach out and to bond. She holds out her arms for all her grown-up friends, gets scooped up and adored. 

            The other day, I sent Sylvia to her room after dinner, since she wouldn't stop her high-pitched screech. ("Could you just try for an octave lower," Don suggested. "Like this: Aaawwwhhh!") When I opened the door a few minutes later, she was standing on the bottom drawer of the dresser, her baby doll on the changing table, washing its face with a wipe as she sang it a little song.  

            "You've got to see this!" I whispered to Don, so of course Clayton comes running. Our ooh-ing and awing isn't lost on him. He's sees his little sister's nurturing side, sees the value we give it. The other day the two of them played together in the living room with Sylvia's baby doll. "Now she's hungry," he told her. "She wants mama's milk. And you're the mama, so you have to give it to her, like this," he instructed, positioning the baby in front of her chest. Later, Sylvia found half of a plastic Easter egg shaped like a hippo. She sat down outside the van and cradled it in her arms, gently swaying back and forth, and began to sing "Rock-a-bye Baby." 

            "Mom!" Clayton said. "Sylvia's being really sweet to her hippo!" 

            In his voice there's genuine appreciation, the same admiration I feel when I see her tend to her baby or love on our pets. Sylvia is very, very sweet. 

            In college, I would have scoffed at sweet. Why do girls have to be sweet? As a girl, I always hated that rhyme about sugar and spice and everything nice, as if girls were nothing more than life-size, cloying cookies. Even now, I'm way too much a feminist to deny the dangers of the feminine ideal, that model of docile, sweet-natured beauty that the first wave of feminists fought so hard to disarm. And yet, I can't help but see Sylvia's nurturing spirit as feminine and wonderful. 

            I'm reminded of another college experience. My first day on campus, I briefly met a beautiful girl—um, I mean, woman—with long blond hair and sexy cowboy boots. She appeared to be everything that I would have liked to be: gorgeous and confident, smart and sexy. Two years later, I met her again. She was now an out lesbian, and very butch. I wondered about her transformation, about why in discovering her love of women she'd felt the need to let go of the striking femininity I had so admired in her before. 

            She seemed to read my thoughts. "My mother wants to know why I can't look more like a girl," she said. "I try to get her to understand. There are lots of ways to be a girl." 

            Even to this day, I want to holler "Yes!" when I think of her words. Because, in a nutshell, that's it. There are simply lots of ways to be a girl. Girls can have long hair, or short hair. Girls can wear eye shadow, or not, or just try their best to sort-of wear it once in a while. Girls can wear the running shoes or the sparkly slippers. They can build towers out of blocks like Dee Dee, or sing songs to potatoes, rocking them in their arms, like Sylvia.

            In a way, I think having a daughter who might just turn out to be a little bit like the girly girl I once disparaged is teaching me something I wish I'd known long ago, when I was sneaking shorts on under my skirts and secretly wishing I'd been a boy: It's okay to be a girl. And not just okay—it’s great. Because there are just so many ways to be one. Thanks, Sylvie. 

                        

Dee Dee's Pinata

        We have a column cut from the satirical page of the Asheville weekly attached to our fridge.  “How do you know if you’re ready to have a baby?” a teenager named Lucy writes in to “Kid Care With Arnold.” Arnold, a fictional Vietnam vet, replies, “Dear Lucy, There’s a very simple test: Stay awake for four weeks straight chained to the sofa in your living room listening to a looped recording of someone screaming. Periodically explode a pinata filled with pee and poop in every room of your house. Then burn a pile of money while your mother-in-law yells at you for not doing it correctly. If you think that sounds like fun, then you’re ready for a baby.”
This column cracks me up every time I read it. Thankfully, it seems we have pretty much made it through the first trial, despite Sylvia’s persistent weepiness. The money part goes without saying, even though I have a supportive mother-in-law, who even if she thought I “ wasn't doing it correctly” would never say so to my face. It is the pinata line that never fails to give me the giggles, so aptly does it satire the reality of my experience with motherhood. Take this week for example...
On Monday, as usual, I put Dee Dee down for “quiet time” in the Pack-n-Play in our room. It was quiet for a little while, and I presumed Dee Dee was reading as she normally does in lieu of actually napping.  Then there were some rustlings, some bangs, sounds I chose to ignore, calculating that I’d rather enjoy a few more minutes, if not of quiet, at least of solitude, even if it meant having to clean up later whatever she’d gotten into. Soon, however, a loud crash brought me in, and this is what I saw.
Dee Dee, naked from the waist down,was on her knees on top of my dresser. Her bare legs were streaked with poop. The dresser sits in a corner, and the walls that met there were smeared in feces, like two Jackson Pollock canvases in monochrome. The offending turd had evidently cascaded down the dresser, of which, unfortunately, some drawers were slightly ajar, and landed squarely on a plastic easel that was in a pile of things to be donated to Goodwill. My dresser, a housewarming gift from my parents when I bought my first house in Asheville, has broad, artsy groves between the boards. These grooves were now spackled with a compound whose tint very closely matched the stain of the wood, although the fragrance and the consistency were all wrong.  Even my jewelry box, which I had painted and decorated with beads in another life--one in which I had time to contemplate, and even execute, such crafts--was now covered in shit.
Of course I did not, at first, take all of these details in. I simply gasped as the stench. Dee Dee peered down at me from her perch atop the dresser, looking a bit like Diego on his scaffold.
  “I pooped,” she said matter-of-factly.
I picked Dee Dee up by the underarms and carried her to the bathtub for two rounds of cleansing. While she played in the tub afterwards, I tackled the dresser clean-up with toothpicks, spray cleaner, and paper towels. I emptied the contents of the jewelry box into a plastic bag and then threw the box away, telling myself I was sort of tired of it anyway. By the time I finished the clean-up, quiet time was over, and I went to let Sylvia out of her room. When I opened the door, she was standing over a puddle in the middle of the floor, pant-less and diaper-less.
“I peed,” she said.

“That’s it,” I told Don later, “I’m done. Our room is now a kid-free zone.” The girls haven’t napped in weeks, months even.  Let them not nap in their own room, together. Let Dee Dee destroy her own stuff, smear poop on her own walls. She had done her last quiet time in my room.

***

That, at least, was my plan. The next day, I avoided quiet time altogether in favor of an afternoon trip to the park. On Wednesday, Sylvia was so exhausted and tearful, I was sure she would nap if given the chance. I didn't want her sister in there disturbing her, so instead I set Dee Dee up on the futon downstairs.
For almost an hour, I heard nothing. Could it be? Maybe, just maybe, I allowed myself to hope, she’d been so cozy on the futon she’d fallen asleep. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs. I saw her head appear first, then her torso, then... oh no! Her bottom half was completely bare.
“Oh no, Dee Dee!” I said. “What did you do?”
“I pooped!”
Into the bath she went. While she was soaking, I went downstairs, dreading what I'd find-- with good reason. There was poop on the futon cover, poop on the comforter, a poop-filled diaper on the floor. I thought that was the worst of it until I saw the brown streak on the rocking horse. Maybe it was mud but I didn't bother to check; I just scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed.

On Thursday, I went on a walk in the morning with a good friend, with whom I shared my recent travails with the poop and pee pinata exploding in my house. I don’t know what to do, I say. I know that the obvious answer is “Potty train!” After all, “does not tolerate wet or soiled diapers” is a textbook example off the  “Your toddler is ready for potty training when...” checklist. But honestly, I just don’t feel I can bite that off right now. With four kids to take care of most days of the week, I’m pretty maxed out. When we’re out and about, it is a relief that the girls are still in diapers; it’s one less thing I have to worry about. And even when we’re not, it doesn't feel much easier. Dee Dee wants you to read War and Peace every time she sits down on the potty. Meanwhile, the baby needs feeding and the dishwasher emptying and the lunch made.... For better or for worse, I've been holding off on true potty training until summer, when Don will be around and there’ll be one more pair of hands.
So what to do? Abandon quiet time? Admonish Dee Dee with threats?“There will be no Dora unless you keep your pants on!”
“Well,” my friend shared, half-joking. “The mother  of one of my daughter’s classmates says she used to have to duct tape her daughter’s diaper.”
Aha! That afternoon before quiet time I found a roll of shiny red duct tape in the closet. “Ok, Dee Dee,” I said. “Let’s change your diaper!”
“No! I don’t want...” she began. And then it came to me-- the best idea ever.
“Look, Dee Dee!” I cut her off.  “You can look like a super hero!”
Because she could! As I attached the glossy red tape to the front of her diaper, it did look rather superhero-like.
“I want to see!” Clayton said, coming in. He’s obsessed with anything Halloween, make-shift superhero costumes included.
He looked at Dee Dee lying on the changing table with the red tape on her diaper and nodded seriously.
“She does, right?” I confirmed
“Yeah.”
That did it. If her brother thinks she looks like a superhero, she’s sold.
“Super Dee Dee!” she yelled as she grabbed my hands and jumped to the floor.

I wish it ended there. That would be such a good ending! But alas. That afternoon, I put the girls down in their room together. Again the promising quiet, fueling my ridiculous hopes that a nap might actually be happening.
Then, “Aaaahhhh! Dee Dee pulled my hair!”
Inside, the room is a complete shambles, the floor covered with barrettes  blocks, and books. It also reeks. I glance sharply at Dee Dee, but although her pants are missing, her diaper is intact! Hallelujah!
A few minutes later I notice the poop on the rocking chair, just one slender swipe, like someone had wiped a chocolate-covered finger on a napkin.  Oh no! Dee Dee has immediately headed downstairs to find Clayton, and yep, that’s her poop. Still, I am triumphant. It was just a finger swipe! Just one little bit of poop on a chair, and only her hands to wash. What a victory.
It is only that evening as Sylvia sits on my lap reading books that I realize what an idiot I am. I absolutely failed to put two and two together. Dee Dee had poop on her hands; Sylvia was crying because Dee Dee pulled her hair. Is it any wonder the top of Sylvia’s head smells so awful?

On Friday, I put Dee Dee downstairs again, with the duct tape and a serious talking-to about not taking off her pants. And, low and behold, when I go downstairs to get her she is reading a book on the futon, poopy diaper intact, pants on.
She is very proud of herself.  “I left my diaper on! I didn't get poop everywhere! I pooped but I didn't take off my diaper. I left my diaper on...”  (Honestly, she never stops talking.)
I am proud of her, too, but mostly I’m just relieved that today I don’t have to drag anything out to the driveway to hose off. Maybe we’re getting somewhere, after all.

* * * 

I wish that were the end. That would be a good ending, too-- uplifting, optimistic. But, again, alas.
Today I started this post while the girls were doing quiet time. The quiet ended with the predictable screaming, but when I went to open the door, it would not open. I leaned in and forced it ajar. Inside, Dee Dee had barricaded the door with Sylvia’s crib. Beyond the crib, it was as if the room had exploded. The diaper basket, the dirty clothes hamper, the bookshelf-- all had been emptied onto the floor. There was a stuffed turtle in the garbage can and little Indian bracelets all over the changing table. And standing on the other side of the crib was Dee Dee, butt naked, covered in poop.

The Highs, The Lows

         I'm typing this without the "n" key on my keyboard. That's the kind of afternoon I had yesterday. Dee Dee and I were in the side yard getting the eggs, Sylvia was finishing up an episode of Dora on the laptop, Clayton was, well, Clayton was somewhere.
Somewhere along the line, I must have made an impression with my impersonations of animals talking, because now it's "What is Howard saying?" "What is that fly trapped in the window saying?" "What is my cereal saying?" "What is my poop saying?" Ad infinitum.
Right now it's "What are the chickens saying?"
At first, I play along. "They're saying, 'Thanks for the food, Dee Dee."
"And what am I saying?"
"You're saying, 'You're welcome.' Come on, Dee Dee, let's get the eggs."
"What are the eggs saying? What are the chickens saying? What is this egg saying? What is the basket saying? What am I saying?"
"They're saying, 'Hurry up, Dee Dee!" I am exasperated. This has long since ceased to be cute. Finally,  one, two, three, five gregarious eggs are all in her basket.
"Hurry, Dee Dee!"  I say.  I want to get back inside before another episode of Dora begins on the laptop.
Inside, I am met by Clayton's muffled shouts. "Mom!! I'm all done pooping!" he yells from the bathroom. (Oh, that's where he was.)
I close out Netflix and hurry in to help wipe Clayton's bottom. He had a bout of number 3 earlier today and he could use the expert help.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but the toilet needs some attention, too. I'm getting out the toilet brush while Clayton washes his hands. "What are my germs saying?"
Ugh. There's no Comet under the bathroom sink, so I head for the kitchen. Sylvia is still sitting in front of the laptop, her tiny fingers curled over the keys, as if she's got some important writing to do. It's cute, until I notice the missing "n."
"Oh no!" I exclaim. Don just replaced the keyboard a month ago, after another letter mysteriously detached itself. This time, the mechanism still seems to be in place, at least. Maybe it will snap right back on, just like in all the infuriating You Tube videos we watched about replacing missing keys the last time around.
I'm fumbling with the n as the kids head out onto the back porch. I glance up to see the screen from the sliding door has been totally detached from the frame and is flapping freely in the wind. At this point, I could care less about the screen; what worries me is how angry Don will be when he comes home. I glance at the clock. 4:23. He could be home any minute. The screen will be the first thing he sees, and he'll swear and scold the kids, and I don't like to start the evening out like that. I put the n on the counter and grab the roller tool to reattach the screen.
The kids head out to the fish pond while I struggle with the door. Clayton is looking at the tadpoles when the girls start throwing the pebbles that Don sprinkles decoratively around the edges to cover the pond lining. To be honest, I don't care much about that either. What young child doesn't want to toss rocks into water? It's irresistible. But Clayton knows his dad's rules; he is outraged.
"Mom!! They're throwing rocks! They're not supposed to do that!!"
Dee Dee, for once, listens when I holler at them to stop. Sylvia just gives me a look and reaches for another handful.
"Put that down or you're going to your room," I threaten from the porch.  She pauses, looks at me again, and then hurls them into the pond.
I want to give her a time-out right then about as much as I want to rip out a hang nail. But out I go to the pond. Sylvia sees me coming and reaches for another handful of pebbles as fast as she can. If she's going to get in trouble, she might as well get her money's worth. She is also laughing gleefully, which makes me madder than I care to admit. I scoop her up and take her to her crib. She laughs all the way there, and by the time I drop her in her crib, I am boiling.
Meanwhile, Dee Dee and Clayton head up to the tree fort.
"Dee Dee! Don't! You can't! Dee Dee! Don't climb the ladder! You will fall! And you will die!"
All of this is said, I am sure, to get my attention, but I am still working on the screen. Dee Dee can manage the ladder.
A few minutes later hysterical screams are coming from the tree fort. I imagine someone impaled on a nail or dangling by one leg from the ladder. I sprint up through the woods.
Dee Dee is sitting, smug as can be, on one of the make-shift stools Don made out of two by fours. Tears are streaming down her older brother's face.
"Dee Dee won't share!" he howls.
There is another, bigger, unoccupied stool in the tree fort.
"Why don't you just sit there?" I suggest.
"Daddy made this one for him and this one for me and Dee Dee had a turn, but she won't share!" he sobs. "And I tried my best but she pulled my ear!"
I'm not sure how to react. Is this true, endearing, four-year-old despair or is my son already a very good actor, knowing just how to turn on the chin-quivering and the tears? Most likely it is a little bit of both. Even if it is an act, he seems to have convinced at least himself by his performance-- the tears are real. (And I wouldn't put ear pulling past Dee Dee, either.)
Dee Dee, meanwhile, is still perched impassively on top of the stool, holding on with both chubby hands. My heart goes out to him. She must be an infuriating little sister.
I glance at my watch. It's 4:39. Surely Don will be home any minutes, and the energy will shift as it always does.
Clayton is red-faced and sweating. It's over eighty degrees, and he's still picking out his winter clothes when he gets dressed in the morning. This is one conflict there seems no point in resolving, so I don't even try.
"You look hot, Clayton," I say, changing the subject. "Let's go change your clothes, get you a drink, and read a book until your dad comes home."
Dee Dee hears "book," and hops down off the stool.  Clayton whimpers all the way back to the house, where we meet Sylvia on the porch steps. I don't even have it in me to wonder how she got out of her room, never mind scold her.
"We're going to read a book, Sylvia. Come on."
It's mere seconds now, I tell myself. Don will come home, and we'll be peacefully reading on the couch and everything will be fine.
Dee Dee and Clayton are bickering over which book to read when the phone rings. It's Don. He hasn't left work yet.
A year ago, that would have put me over the edge. Doesn't he know, doesn't he care, why can't he, etc., etc., etc. I try to be more understanding these days. I know how hard it can be to get out the door at the end of the day. But today? I allow myself a moment of self-pity before I head back to the couch.  I was (more or less) offered a teaching job last week, but I turned it down.
"Momma? What's the robot saying? What's the horse saying? What's the cookie saying? Clayton's squishing me!"
  Maybe I could still change my mind.

* * * 

Don's had a rough week at work, too.  With the warm weather and no air conditioning, his classroom is sweltering. There were faculty meetings, coaches' meetings, a staff breakfast that meant a late night trip to the grocery store for orange juice and yogurt in the name of faculty "morale," and inane bureaucratic decisions to move final exams up by a week, when he's already racing to get through the curriculum.
We sit down to dinner. The kids are talking a blue streak. "Nobody talk!" he demands. "I want a few moments of silence!" In the past I would have smoldered. (i.e., "What's your problem? You haven't seen the half, the quarter, the eighth, of it!") I try to be more empathetic now. We're both doing the best we can.
At work, Don deals with bureaucratic crap; I deal with the other kind-- all over the toilet. He's got meetings that squander his time and good humor; I've got bickering, whining, naughty children that squander mine. He's got all the perks of a professional life for which I sometimes yearn; I've got all the perks of being with our kids full-time.
Because today, really, was pretty great. I went to the gym in the morning, then took the kids to Lake Louise. We watched the ducks, had a picnic,"winged on the wings" (to use Sylvia's expression), read books in the shade. The trees were blooming, the sun was warm, the lake sparkled, and I realized I was making the ducks talk without even being asked.
Afterwards, we treated ourselves to chocolate ice-cream on Weaverville's quaint main street, and when we got home, we all read books piled together on Clayton's bed. At quiet time, Clayton brought Dee Dee a stuffed pig to "make her happy" and later he let Sylvia play with his teddybear, whom Elmo immediately began to mother and put to bed. And when I stubbed my toe on the coffee table, Dee Dee hugged me and sang me "Twinkle Twinkle" so I wouldn't cry.
So what if Dee Dee pulled out all my dental floss and dumped the matches into the bathtub when I thought she was sleeping? So what if the n key is still missing and sometimes Sylvia cries so much I just want to scream at her, "Stop crying!" (Which doesn't help-- I've tried). Those moments are just the faculty meetings and irritating emails of full-time motherhood. They are the lows that make the good times feel like flying.

Hair Cut

       A week ago, we cut Dee Dee's hair. Oh, how I hated to. After all, hadn't we endured months of growing out her bangs, hanging on to the hope that one day she would tolerate a barrette, a ponytail, a headband? Her hair was beautiful, dark blonde and thick, with lovely golden highlights and the sweetest curls down her back. It reminded me of my hair as a girl, hair I took such pride in even when the other kids teased me that I looked like Laura Ingles Wilder. 

Dee Dee's hair was beautiful, all right. When it was clean and brushed, that is, and therein lay the rub. Dee Dee hated to have her hair brushed, hated to have it washed, hated to have it pulled back in a barette or, God forbid, a ponytail. If I even tried to push it behind her ears while she ate, she would shake her head violently and push it back into her face. "I WANT my hair in my face!" For better or for worse, she had claimed it as her domain, and any encroachment was fought tooth and nail. No matter that she could barely see when she ran or played, or that she was forever peering out at life through a tangle of crusty locks. She'd brush it back from her face with an impish grin, looking just like a mischievous little elf parting a curtain into this world. 

 Forever in her face, it was inevitably caked in food, snot, and tears. "Crunchy hair," we called it, and tried to peel away the strands plastered to her cheeks with God knows what. Every night, Don would wash it, but after her bath she would run screaming around the house while I chased her with the brush and the spray bottle of detangler. "No!" she howled. "Don't brush my hair!" When I caught her, she would collapse in a writhing heap of tears and sobs, and I would quickly rake the brush through her hair, exasperated by her dramatics but still hating to torture her so.

Once we had decided that there was nothing for it, the hair had to go, I couldn't look at her without wanting to break out the electric clippers right there and then. "Do you want to cut your hair?" we asked again and again, and the answer was always a predictable "No!" Finally we enlisted the help of Clayton, to inspire her with his own hair cut, and when that proved insufficient, Dora. Dee Dee sat at the kitchen table with her sister, watching Dora the Explorer on the laptop, as Don tried out the buzzer on her hair. She hunched her shoulders and jerked her head away.  "No hair cut! No!"

I had better luck with the scissors; she barely flinched as her long locks began to fall away. "Look at Dee Dee!" Sylvia kept saying, tearing her eyes away from Dora to stare at her sister's new look. "Dee Dee got a hair cut! It's mine turn!" 

 I was, I admit, quite proud of the cut, since I have absolutely no experience as a barber, but at first my stomach fell every time I looked at her. What had we done? "I don't like it," I told Don sadly. 

But, really, that wasn't the point. Because Dee Dee did like it. Immediately. We could tell from the way she smiled and made faces at herself in the mirror. From the way she plowed into her food with her customary zeal, without that darn curtain of hair getting in her way. From the way she ran and played and jumped without having to stop to push the crunchy strands out of her face. And that night, after bath, there was not one single tear. 

The first few mornings, it was a shock to go into the girls' room and see her standing there. Now, of course, she just looks like Dee Dee. In fact, she looks even more like Dee Dee than she did before. This is who she is. She is wild, mischievous, curious, funny. She cares about making people laugh, running fast, and books--- not ponytails or barrettes or pretty hair. 

A few weeks before Dee Dee's hair cut, there was an article in The New Yorker about a transgender teen. One of the hardest parts, the author wrote, was for the parents, who had to learn to let go of everything they'd expected for their child, and just let her be who he was. A haircut is nothing like that, I know, and yet the article gave me the kick in the pants I needed to finally let go of what I thought Dee Dee should look like and break out the damn scissors already.

As parents, of course we have hopes and dreams for our children. I want all of my kids to love books and nature, to do well in school and treat others with kindness. But, ultimately, they are who they are, each with their own unique light inside. This was just hair, after all, but the lesson was there for me, nonetheless. I'm their mom, and it's my job to let 'em shine, let 'em shine, let 'em shine. 

Before

After

"That's Just the Way God Made You"

Last week, I was invited to a spa party at a friend's house. A friend of hers is a representative of a line of skincare products, and she had agreed to host a gathering so the friend could plug the products. There was, my friend's email assured, absolutely no pressure to buy, and I had no intention of doing so. Our family is getting by on one income, plus the little extra I bring in caring for Gemma, so fancy lotions and bath salts are just not in the budget. Plus, my skin care regime consists of an economy size tub of Pond's Cold Cream, my mother's cast off trial-size moisturizers from Clinique, and whatever sunscreen happens to be on sale. I went to the party for the promised pampering, the chance to see my friend, and a break in the routine of after-dinner clean-up and bedtimes.
Cocktail in hand, green paste on my face, and my feet submerged in salt-softened warm water, I listened to the presentation with mild curiosity  There are more than 200 chemicals banned in European skin care products that are allowed in the U.S. Really? After the sun, mineral oil is the second most aging agent for your skin. Hmmm... how do they know that, I wonder?
      After the facial and the foot soak, my face felt tingly and my heels soft. Maybe there was something to this stuff after all, I thought. While we oohed and awed over our rejuvenated feet and smooth cheeks, the rep handed out the catalogues. The women inside walked along the beach, glowing in flowing linen and flawless skin. But... eighty-five dollars for a bottle of moisturizer? Thirty-five for the salt scrub! I closed the catalogue, downed the rest of my cocktail, finished my chocolate cookie, and said my good-byes.
"Maybe when I'm gainfully employed again," I told the rep apologetically, and agreed to be added to her email list.
I am never good on spending money on myself. My closet consists mostly of Goodwill finds and hand-me-downs from my better-dressed friends. I get my teeth cleaned just once a year, my hair cut twice. I'm certainly not the type to spend two days' wages on a bottle of lotion. Still, when I got home I checked the label on the tub of Pond's.  Mineral oil was the third ingredient.
These days, the mirror is not my friend. My hair cut from October has grown out, if not badly, then unremarkably. My receding gums expose my teeth's stained roots; my face seems lined beyond my years. As my thirty-ninth birthday approaches, I find myself almost wishing that this one were forty, so that I could bid farewell to this decade while I still cling to some semblance of youth. Although my abs have never been stronger, the skin on my belly is loose and wrinkled, all of its elasticity spent accommodating the twin pregnancy I carried until thirty-seven weeks. And no matter how many Kegels I do, I still pee my pants whenever I run downhill.
"Do you worry about getting old?" I ask Don as I head out of the bathroom. I don't even kid myself-- I'm fishing for some reassurance.
"What's to worry about?" Don says matter-of-factly.
Discouraged, I grumble something about it being easier for men. I mean, just look at Mad Men, all those middle-aged men still hooking fresh-faced women barely out of their second decade. But Don is right, of course. We all grow older, so what's the point of worrying?
Don's sisters recently came through town on their way to a birthday getaway in the mountains. One of them lives in Colorado Springs, where so many lost everything in the fires last summer. As a counselor, she's had to help many of her clients come to terms with their loss.
"Loss...It's everywhere," she said. She's an avid runner, but recently she says she's had to slow her pace. "Getting older... there's loss there, too."  Her words resonated with me, both as a woman nearing forty and as a mom.
After years of insisting that he is a "yittle" boy, Clayton has finally begun to assert that he's big. This change in his self-identification has been accompanied by a surging independence that I can't help but welcome. Suddenly, he is determined--or at least willing--to do things for himself: put on his shoes, brush his teeth, buckle his carseat, jump into the pool. The twins, on the other hand, have caught that bug early. Sylvia is reduced to tears daily when I try to help her get her shirt on. If, hurrying to get Clayton to school on time, I give her a gentle boost as she struggles to climb into the van, she'll shriek in protest, get down, and start all over, so adamant is she to do it by herself.
Dee Dee is the same. "I'm a BIG girl," she says. She sprints after Clayton with all her heart, undeterred by the distance he quickly opens up between them. On the trampoline, she jumps with the big kids, her little body flying through the air as she gets bounced around like popcorn.
  The girls are still in cribs and diapers. I still say, "Where are you, Baby Girl?" and "Are you okay, baby?" but I don't kid myself. They're definitely not babies anymore.
Yesterday Dee Dee said to me, "Momma, can I have more cereal please?"  It suddenly hit me: they don't say "tee" for "more" anymore! ("Tee cereal pease," it used to be.) That evening, I mentioned it to Don.
"I'd forgotten that they even said that!" he said.
And so it goes, the endearing little habits of their toddler-hood dissolving in time, so that sooner or later even their most characteristic quirks fade from memory. It is enough to break your heart daily. Looking down on Sylvia's compact little body, it seems unfathomable that one day she won't be quite so adorably little. I can't help but pull her to me. "Don't grow up!" I tell her.
"Okay," she says, agreeable as usual.
And yet. I never look at Clayton and wish he were two again, and certainly never three! I am too busy being charmed by his blossoming self.
"Mom, did God make Santa Claus?"
"Does Dad still like that big kid who was naughty in his class?"
"Mom, we live on a planet. So are we aliens too?"
       "Daddy, what's your favorite part about God? My favorite is that he made me all these books to read."
It is what saves us, that each stage flows so seamlessly into the next, the joy of watching them never faltering. Even as they pierce us with their screams, try us with their whines, wear us down with their unceasing needs, our love for them never stumbles, never stalls, never looks back. Oh, I can bring myself almost to tears thinking of the girls holding hands while they nursed, but never would I wish them back to their infancy and lose all that they are today.
When we were in Florida a few weeks ago, I sat with Clayton in my parents' garden. He wanted to play; I was content to sit in the shade and watch the fountain. I was wearing flip flops, and as we talked, I picked idly at my big toenail.
"Mom," he said, looking over at me. "That's just the way God made you."
I burst out laughing. "Where did you hear that?" Sometimes I wonder if we're getting more than we bargained for with his Baptist preschool education.
Still, he has a point. I never look at my children and wish they were any different than they are. Not one day older, nor one day younger. Not smarter, cuter, smoother, faster, better...
Maybe when I'm rich I'll buy the expensive wrinkle cream without the mineral oil. But still I think Clayton's is the better lesson. This is just the way we're made, our bodies weathering the years as best they can. I wouldn't wish the years away, so I might as well learn to be at peace with the lines they leave.

G is for Gratitude

Last night Don was taking the dogs out for one last pee when he noticed water gushing out from beneath the patio. It had stopped raining hours before, so storm run-off seemed an unlikely culprit. He was convinced a water main had broken, and called me outside to take a look. I was coming back in, envisioning a morning of meeting with plumbers, who would surely tell us that the concrete patio would have to be jack-hammered to get to the line underneath, when I noticed my running shoe on the floor of the office. My stomach fell. The office is where Howard, the hound dog mix we adopted from a shelter last spring, leaves his victims: headless toys, shredded wooden clothes pegs, the plastic doorstop he can't resist.  The shoe itself was untouched, but the custom orthotic inside had been expertly removed, the foam arch chewed. I'd had those orthotics made for the os navicularis in my feet when Clayton was an infant, and was counting on them lasting at least until I have good health insurance again. It was the last straw. First, Kima got shot on The Wire, then the water main, then this! I went to bed in tears. It is just a thing, I knew, but a ridiculously expensive thing I depend on nearly every day. I slept poorly much of the night, but when I woke in the morning without an alarm, the clock read 6:56. Clayton had woken up before five thirty almost every day this week, so sleeping in until almost seven felt like a small miracle. In the kitchen, Don already had the phone book on the counter, ready to find a plumber, but when I went outside in my slippers to inspect the torrent, it was gone! As unlikely as it had seemed the night before, the gush had been storm run-off after all.
Hallelujah! I felt like I do when I've lost my wallet or my keys, have gloomily resigned myself to the expense and inconvenience of replacing them, and then, suddenly, there they are! Suddenly it's not an awful day but a joyous one. That's what this morning felt like. I wouldn't have to spend the morning waiting for a plumber, hoping we had enough money in our savings account to cover the repair. What's more, the sun was coming out after four days of near constant rain. It was barely dawn but already the chickens were out in their run, pecking in the frozen mud, jubilantly free after days spent huddled together under the coop.
Clayton came into the girls' room as I was lifting them out of their cribs.
"Mom!" he said. "I prayed to God! I prayed to God all by myself! I told him thank you for my mom, my dad, my sisters, my toys, my crafts..." I pictured him alone in his bedroom, on his knees in his space pajamas  looking around for things to thank God for, all his art work from school and story time taped helter-skelter to his bedroom walls. When a four-year-old begins the day by being grateful... what a lesson that is!
With no plumbing emergency on the horizon after all, I felt overwhelmed by my own gratitude.
* * *
"Have cereal in a bowl!" Dee Dee greets the morning with the same words everyday, her voice still groggy with sleep.
"Momma, I had a nice seep!" Sylvia pipes up.
"Why did awake time come so fast today?" Clayton wants to know.
"Because you slept!" I tell him. I want to hug them all at once.
As soon as Don and I join them at the table, they drop their spoons and reach their hands out for grace. (Clayton, who sits between his sisters, holds their wrists or elbows; he is fastidious in his neatness and can't bear to touch their sticky, slimy fingers.) "Thank you for the food! Thank you for the family!" we recite, and end with an enthusiastic wave-- the kids' favorite part.
“Do it again!” Sylvia and Dee Dee demand in unison.
“Nope, just one grace per meal!” I am in love with them all, am full to bursting with gratitude. I have even forgiven Howie; maybe I can patch the orthotic with mole skin and eek out another year. Two weeks ago, I was on the verge of taking him back to the shelter. He’d dug under the chicken coop fence, the chickens had escaped, and Soca had killed one and was stalking another before I’d realized what was up. I was in a dark place, and had suddenly been sick to death of the chewed toys, the muddy footprints on the bed, the way he jumps up on the neighborhood kids and knocks them down. As if life isn't hard enough right now already-- why did we do this to ourselves? But when I thought of him back at the shelter, after having had a taste of the good life with us-- I couldn't do it. He hadn't worked his way into my heart like Dulce had, but he was a good dog, or he would be one day. And the way he keeps so close, lying by our feet while we wash dishes, or on the bathmat while we shower... He may be a pain but at least he’s grateful, unlike our other dog Soca, who has been with us since he was a puppy and thinks his lucky dog luxuries are his God-given right.
The girls are a bit like that right now, too. If I had to pick two words to characterize the terrible (and terrific) twos, they’d be “I want!” “I want water! I want a marker! I want a lollipop! I want to read a book!” “I want up!” “I want to do it!” “I want to see!”  I want, I want, I want... To them, there is nothing so urgent as their desires, and if they are denied, postponed, or negotiated, there is nothing right in the world and they let you know it.
And yet, even as their little selves seems propelled through life right now by the urgency of their own wants, they love each other. Sylvia will fight tooth and nail for a toy, but if her sister is really sad (rather than just being a bully) she’ll hand it over. “I give it to Dee Dee!” she’ll say, and watch, fascinated, as her sister’s sobs cease. When Clayton had an awful stomach bug last month and was so weak he could only leave his bed to lie on the couch, Sylvia pulled his favorite purple blanket up over him, and stood there patting it softly. “Tayton seeping!” she kept saying. When he threw up in the car on the way home from a restaurant, Dee Dee, her hair splattered with her brother's vomit, reached over and patted his arm. “Oh, buddy!” she said compassionately. “Are you okay, Tayton?”
I remember a Sesame Street segment from when I was a kid. The picture on the screen was divided into four frames, and in each one a child was engaged in some sort of activity: playing baseball, for example, or painting, or playing an instrument. Three of the kids were doing the same activity, but one was doing something totally different, roller skating,  say, while the other three were playing basketball. "One of these kids is doing his own thing! One of these kids is not the same!" was the theme song, and you were supposed to guess which one was different before the song ended. So often when I watch my three kids, I can't help but hear that song playing in the background. Clayton and Dee Dee are jumping wildly on the trampoline; Sylvia meanders the paths in the vegetable garden, clutching her baby doll under one arm . Clayton and Dee Dee chase each other around the living room; Sylvia reads books at the coffee table, talking to the characters: "Hello, Grover. How are you?" Clayton and Dee Dee race up and down our street, pretending to be robots with superpowers attacking a space monster (watching Dee Dee enact superpowers at her tender age has been one of the more priceless moments of parenting); Sylvia wanders around eating a muffin or, more likely, begs to be held.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the similarities in their temperaments and interests (and because she really can be such a pain in the neck), Clayton is much more likely to be pissed at Dee Dee. "I love Sylvia!" he says as we sit down to lunch. "I don't love Dee Dee." Totally unfazed and characteristically argumentative, Dee Dee retaliates: "I love everybody!" She proceeds to list each member of the family, "I love Clayton. I love Sylvia. I love Mommy. I love Daddy. I love Soca. I love Howie." I look down to see Howie licking congealed macaroni and cheese off the kitchen chair. Just like Dee Dee, he's so cute and endearing it's hard to stay mad at him.
"I do, too," I agree. "I love everybody."
Today has been brought to you by the letter G, I think to myself. For gratitude.

Choosing This (Revisited)

          "I in there!" Sylvia says a dozen times a day, and somehow the words resonate with me. I'm in here. Two years out of the classroom, and my sense of self as a teacher is fuzzy around the edges,  like the murky shape of an action figure at the bottom of the bathwater. There are many moments each day, moments when I am reduced to the menial automatism  of full-time childcare-- changing diapers, wiping counters and noses, procuring meals and cleaning up after them-- that I, too, want to affirm, "I'm in there!" Those are the times, even when I am hardest at actual work, that I wonder about my choices. Surely anyone could do this! It is not that the work is devoid of all satisfaction. I feel the same sense of fleeting accomplishment after changing diapers from the after-lunch "poop fest" as I do cleaning out the chicken coop. It is just that I do not feel that I am bringing any special skills to bear. If the kids were in daycare, or had a nanny, their meals would be served and their bottoms cleaned. Books would be read, and naps would be taken. Often I suspect that many of those things would go more seamlessly if it were not I to orchestrate them. I've seen the miracle of the daycare classroom, one- and two-year-olds sitting patiently around a table, singing songs while waiting for their grub, whole roomfuls of toddlers sleeping all at once with their butts up in air.
 It feels impossible for me to do this job without wondering, "Why?" almost daily. The only written treatise on staying home I've read began with a defense for doing so. Despite the protestations of the writer's usual publisher, and at the risk of alienating the millions of moms without the option or the inclination to stay home, she felt compelled to compile evidence for why a parent's full-time presence in the home during the early years was good for kids. It couldn't be left out, the author argued, for how else could she tolerate the endless tedium and frustrations that came from staying at home?  In other words, there had to be a good reason to choose to suffer so.
Honestly, I don't buy it.  I'm sure most kids do fine in daycare. Most kids would probably do fine anywhere; it is in their very nature to adapt, to thrive. Although in my heart of hearts I can't help hoping that this time with me will matter to my kids in some unknowable way, when I am most honest with myself, I know that it is not really for my children that I choose to be a full-time mom.
 So why? As I contemplate going back to work, it's a good question. At Thanksgiving, my dad reminded me of a study he'd read that reported couples are happiest when both partners work outside the home at moderate-income jobs. A childhood friend raved about how happy her daughter is since she's started daycare. The other morning, when everyone needed or wanted something, urgently and loudly-- Gemma a nap, Dee Dee "CEREAL IN A BOWL," Sylvia a clean diaper, Clayton paints to color the monsters we'd made out of paper towels and rubber bands--when the radio I'd turned on in the futile hope of actually hearing some real-word news was just background noise adding to the chaos, when my half-drunk cup of tea was cold on the counter and the dog was chewing up one of the baby's pacifiers, I thought, "This is nuts! This sucks! I'm going back to work!" It wasn't even eight, a whole day of the same stretched out before me. And for what?
 In a calmer moment, it's not that hard to answer. For one, I like a challenge. Maybe anyone can change a diaper, pour a bowl of cereal, get down the paint, carry a thrashing toddler to her crib for a time-out. But to do it, to make Dee Dee say please and teach Clayton not to nag, to get the milk and rock the baby and rescue the paci and change the diaper, all while maintaining some sort of cool-- that is the challenge! (A challenge, which, to be honest, I did not master on that particular morning. "I have four kids to take care of!" I said crossly to a wide-eyed Clayton, "I cannot be at your beck and call!" Being the oldest, he often bears the brunt of my frustration.)
      Taking care of a lot of kids at once is like riding a sine curve. When you're in the trough, it's good (albeit basically impossible) to remember that things will look up soon. Ten minutes after I snap at Clayton, the baby is asleep, Clayton is happily painting at the kitchen table, the girls are dressed and fed. I'm sorting laundry and wiping marker off the kitchen chairs while the girls race back and forth from the living room, holding up animal cards and asking over and over, "What's that one say?" Sylvia is the funniest, since she's not really there yet linguistically. She just mimics her sister's words, as proud as she can be: "Whatthatonesay?" Clayton, ever attuned to my shifts of mood, looks up from his painting and says, "This is fun! Mom, are you having fun?" I can't help laughing. "I am!" I say, and strangely, I mean it. Sorting laundry is my least favorite chore, and yet, seeing all three happy and engaged, while I bask in the sweet relief of having weathered the storm--well, it is a certain kind of fun.
Another nice thing about full-time parenting is that, like teaching, it gives you the chance to screw up a lot and still do a generally good job. In the classroom, no matter how poorly a class period goes, there's always the next class, the next day. You can tweak the lesson, recover your cool, turn over a new leaf again and again and again. The times that I'm at my worst as a mom, impatient and unhappy, ready to meet every new frustration with mounting irritation and self-pity-- "Oh God, what an awful day!"--, I try to keep that in mind.  Not only will the day get better (the troughs can last only so long) but I can be better, too. Sometimes all it takes is trying on a little joy. I've learned from Clayton that the surest way to lighten the general mood is to start singing about poop and pee. We just alter the usual lyrics with a little potty humor, and soon everyone is giggling away, me included, because, as cliche as it is, there's nothing quite so heart-warming as hearing your children laughing.
I also believe in apologizing. After the chaos of that particular morning had subsided,  I told Clayton I was sorry for snapping at him. "But you're a grown-up!" he said. "Grown-ups don't have to say they're sorry!" So there was a lesson in this for each of us: mine in patience and self-possession, his in human fallibility.
In preparation for the eleven hour drive to Florida for Thanksgiving, I checked out a Sesame Street video from the library for the girls to watch in the car. It's geared for the very young (even Cookie Monster is a baby), and it opens with a doctorate in child development talking to the camera with her son on her lap, telling parents that kids learn best when they share experiences with someone they love. Her words, meant mostly, I think, to encourage parents to enjoy their thirty minutes of peace and then turn off the TV, have stuck with me lately. I do try to give my kids lots of experiences, often out of mere survival, since too much unstructured time at home makes us all crazy. But I've begun to wonder if maybe it's not just the experiences that matter: all those trips to the library and the lake, the paper towel monsters and the elaborate games of make-believe on the trampoline.  Maybe my being there for all of it matters more than I've ever allowed myself to believe.
When I think of my own young childhood, it certainly mattered to me that Mom was there. I wasn't aware, then, of the time she must have spent preparing meals or cleaning up after them, or doing any of the other endless tasks that go hand in hand with caring for young children. And yet, the fact that she did those things surely contributed to the sense of abiding security and warmth that make up my memory of those times. Perhaps all those little menial tasks that never stay done are really at the root of what it means to "take care," every chore really an act of love.  Sylvia, in her little two-year-old heart, understands this: she wants to change her baby's diaper again and again. She gets it. This is the way a mom loves.
Ultimately, I choose to be a full-time parent for me. When Sylvia wakes up trembling and tearful from her nap, I'm glad it's my shoulder she rests her head on, her little legs pulled up tight against my body. When Dee Dee, normally such a tornado of destruction, slides out of my arms at Clayton's Play-n-Learn class to sit quietly with her hands clasped sweetly in her lap, her little round face the very essence of expectation-- it is a moment well worth all the times I've had to chase her down in parking lots and libraries. I choose full-time mothering because I want to do it long enough that I do it well, that I meet each new challenge with a little more expertise, a little more grace, a little more patience, and when I do not, I can forgive myself my own imperfections. I choose it for the patchwork of memories that come together from our day-to-day: Dee Dee pretending to be "Shaggy" for days on end ("Shaggy took a bath! Shaggy went down the slide!"), Clayton unrolling an entire roll of paper towels in the kitchen trying to turn himself into a mummy, Sylvia quietly reading Little Doggie Go (more commonly known as Go, Dog, Go) aloud to herself at the coffee table while Dee Dee and Clayton chase each other around the living room. I choose it for me, because I cannot pretend to know what is best for my children. Almost certainly, there is no "best." But more and more, I find myself believing that this path were on is good, for all of us.