Part One: Moving away from Punishments

In my post about why we said yes to Television, I touched briefly on how my husband, Shawn, and I try and raise our three (soon to be four!) kids in a consensual environment. Several people had questions about what exactly it means, and how it leads to us handling different situations in our family. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll address how living in this environment effects how we approach discipline, day-to-day living, and school.

Essentially, for our family, living in a consensual environment means that each member of our family’s wants and needs are equally considered, regardless of age. Our six year olds’ opinions and feelings about any particular issue are addressed just as my husband’s and mine are. It means we see it as our job as parents to teach and guide our children, not to punish or control them. I know this philosophy is hard for some people to imagine. It can be hard to let go of the “My house, my rules” mentality that many of us were raised with. But doing exactly that has led our family to a level of peace and contentment I didn’t think was possible to have.

After Connor, our oldest, was born, Shawn and I had lots of discussions about parenting/discipline philosophies. Both of us agreed that for our family, spanking was off the table. When Connor hit a fiercely independent and challenging phase at about three, we experimented with timeouts. If he threw a toy, we would put him on a chair for three minutes. Generally, he would scream and cry, which would elevate our frustration. Then, when the three minutes were up? He would get down from the chair, go back to playing, and inevitably end up throwing a toy again within minutes. At this point we decided that punishment of any kind left the important question of WHY unanswered. If Connor was throwing a toy because he was angry, it was beneficial to find out what had led to that feeling, and then talk to him about more appropriate ways to release his anger: hit a pillow, go in your room and scream, walk away from the situation, etc. This approach allowed us to address the reason for the behavior: Was he hungry or tired or bored or angry? And then help him find a solution, rather than punishing for the behavior. It seems so simplistic, but it has made a tremendous difference. As time has gone on, it has also helped Connor put into words why he is feeling or behaving in the way he is without fear of punishment.

As we began to let go of the idea that we had to be “in control” of him and his behavior, we found it was helpful to ask ourselves, “How would I respond to this situation if my spouse was behaving this way?” If my husband had been working on a project, and left a mess all over the floor and I wanted it cleaned up…how would I handle it? I certainly wouldn’t yell at him to clean it up right now because I said to, and then threaten to send him to bed early, or take away his toys if he didn’t do it. My husband certainly deserves more respect than that, so why do we, as parents sometimes act as though our children do not?

We’re not perfect. Our children aren’t perfect. But moving away from a household ruled by authority, and moving towards an environment in which we treat our children with respect and equal consideration has led to a contented, peaceful household that I didn’t think was possible to have. If you would like more information, I highly recommend Alfie Kohn’s book, Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community, or Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves: Transforming Parent-child Relationships from Reaction And Struggle to Freedom, Power And Joy, by Naomi Aldort.

*Join the discussion at www.fairfieldvoice.com*

Along with topics like breast vs. bottle, circumcised vs. intact, vaccinate vs. non-vaccinate; I’ve found that  tv-free vs. t.v.-viewing is one of those “hot parenting topics” that ignites a lot of emotion and debate on both sides of the issue.  It’s not an issue I feel incredibly impassioned about, but in light of the television discussions going on here on the blog recently, I thought I’d share our perspective.

In our house, we allow television.  My husband and I made this decision much the same way we decided on every other parenting decision we have made: Through lots of research, discussion, and most importantly, by evaluating our own personal experiences.  And we came to the conclusion that we would be a t.v.-watching family.

Why?  Well, here are a few of our reasons:

* We strive to  live in a “consensual” environment with our children.  Each member of our familys’ wants and needs are equally considered and addressed, regardless of age. So, even if I felt that t.v. was “poison,”  (which I do not) Connor may not feel the same way.  As an independent being, he needs to come to his own conclusions about t.v.

* My kids are home-schooled, so we have the opportunity to approach television in a different way than parents of schooled children are able to.  My kids don’t spend 8-10 hours of their day in school.  Their television watching doesn’t impact our time together as a family, the time they should be spending doing homework, etc. They can watch a half-an-hour show and still have more than enough time for all of the other activities they love.

* Homeschooling alone sets my child apart from many of his peers.  He can’t have a conversation with his friends about what he did in gym class or which teacher he’ll have next year.  It was important to me not to further that stigma of homeschoolers being “isolated” by having a six year old who doesn’t know what Star Wars is all about.

* My kids enjoy reading books, comics, magazines, listening to books on c.d., watching youtube videos, and pretty much any form of media which tells a story.  Television is just another mode of story-telling for them.  They don’t turn into passive television zombies while watching Word World.  They dance and sing and practice spelling words, all while enjoying the story they’re being told.

* Contrary to what a lot of “child-raising experts” will say, I don’t believe that everything on t.v. is complete crap.  Connor, my oldest, loves the educational shows on the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic, and PBS.  We have a great time every year watching Shark Week on Discovery as a family.  And his favorite show, Cesar Milan the Dog Whisperer, helped him decide that he would like to be a veterinarian when he grows up.

* I suppose, most importantly, we watch television, because it works for our family.  Lots of our friends don’t have the same outlook on media that we have, and it doesn’t really matter.  Their kids aren’t social outcasts because they don’t watch television, and my kids aren’t socially and creatively stunted because they do.

And whether it’s breast-feeding or vaccines or t.v. watching, I think we’re trying to do the same thing that every parent is trying to: Simply raise our kids the best way we can.

*originally posted at www.fairfieldvoice.com*

Alright, so harvest might be over-stating it a little!  But we were able to pick some wonderful, crisp, butter crunch lettuce to go with the grilled chicken we made for dinner on Wednesday night!

And this whole gardening thing has had some unexpected advantages.  My vegetable-hating six year old was so excited to help pick, wash, and then he actually ATE the lettuce!  And he loved it!  My child…who generally makes pretend puking noises at the sight of anything remotely vegetable-looking…could not get enough of our home-grown lettuce!  There may be hope for him yet!

The rest of the garden is coming along nicely.  There’s been enough rain in the past month, and as a result we’ve only had to water about six times.  After each hard rain we go out and respray the plants with the cayenne pepper/garlic solution to keep the bugs away, and spray the perimeter  of the garden using the bottle of pee to keep the rabbits and birds away.  (Gross, I know, but it’s working!!)  We’ve had to pull weeds a few times, and I’ve pulled a few dead leaves off the strawberry plants.  Otherwise, we’ve taken a “less is more” approach with it and it seems to be working.   We can literally watch the tomato plants change every day.  They’ve gone from being about eight inches tall when we first planted them, to now being almost as tall as my six year old.  We have dozens of tomatoes started, the leeks and onions are flourishing, the pepper plants have nearly doubled in size, and the strawberry plants have finally sent out their feelers.

Overall, for this being our first gardening attempt, I’m thrilled with the progress so far!

*originally posted at www.fairfieldvoice.com*

Yesterday, Dr. George Tiller was gunned down in the lobby of his church, in front of his wife and daughter.  This was not the first attempt on his life.  Dr. Tiller was shot in 1993, and his clinic had been bombed in 1985.  Despite your views on abortion, Dr. Tiller dedicated his life to supporting women who so desperately needed his help.  Despite your views on abortion, as many have said, there is nothing life-affirming about gunning down a man in front of his wife at church. 

This is Gretchen Voss’ story.  She was one of the  24 women who had to have a late term abortion 2006.   I could go on for hours on exactly how I feel about old, white men who think they get to have an opinion about what I do with my uterus.  But I won’t.  Because it’s a topic that I have a hard time discussing logically.   So….I will let Gretchen’s article speak for me.  Please read this,  pass it around, post it on your own blog.  This is a story that needs to be heard. 

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 Way too excited to sleep on that frigid April morning, I snuggled my bloated belly up to my husband, Dave. Eighteen weeks pregnant, today we would finally have our full-fetal ultrasound and find out whether our baby was a boy or a girl. I had no reason to be nervous, I thought. I was young (if 31 is the new 21), healthy, and had not had so much as a twinge of nausea. Well into my second trimester, I was past the point of worrying about a miscarriage.

The past 3 1/2 months had been a time of pure bliss — dreaming about our future family, squirreling away any extra money that we could, and cleaning out a room for a nursery in our cozy, suburban home, then borrowing unholy amounts of stuff to fill it back up. From the day that we found out we were expecting a baby — on New Year’s Eve 2002 — we thought of ourselves as parents, and finding out whether the “it” was a he or she would cap the months of scattershot emotions and frenetic information-gathering. I just couldn’t sleep. I invited our 105-pound yellow Labrador “puppy” into bed with us and snuggled even closer to Dave.

Later that morning, at quarter past 9, Dave held my hand as I lay on the cushy examining table at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center office in Lexington. As images of our baby filled the black screen, we oohed and aahed like the goofy expectant parents that we were. “Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” I must have asked a million stupid times. The technician was noncommittal, stoic, and I started feeling uncomfortable. Where I was all bubbly chitchat, she was all furrow-browed concentration. She told us that she had a child with Down syndrome, and that none of her prenatal tests had picked it up. I thought that was odd.

Then, using an excuse about finishing something on her previous ultrasound, she left the room. Seconds passed into minutes while we waited for her to return. Staring at the pictures of fuzzy kittens and kissing dolphins on the ceiling, I knew something was wrong. Dave tried to reassure me, but when the ultrasound technician told us that our doctor wanted to see us, I started to shake. “But she doesn’t even know we’re here,” I said to her, and then to Dave, over and over. That’s when I started crying. I could barely get my clothes back on.

The waiting room upstairs, usually full of happy pregnant women devouring parenting magazines, was empty. Our doctor, who usually wears a smile below her chestnut hair, met us at the front desk. She was not smiling that day as she led us back to her cramped office, full of framed photos of her own children.

As we sat there, she said that the ultrasound indicated that the fetus had an open neural tube defect, meaning that the spinal column had not closed properly. It was a term I remembered skipping right over in my pregnancy book, along with all the other fetal anomalies and birth defects that I thought referred to other people’s babies, not mine. She couldn’t tell us much more. We would have to go to the main hospital in Boston, which had a more high-tech machine and a more highly trained technician. She tried to be hopeful — there was a wide range of severity with these defects, she said. And then she left us to cry.

We drove into Boston in near silence, tears rolling down my cheeks. There was no joking or chatting at the hospital in Boston. No fuzzy kittens and kissing dolphins on the ceiling of that chilly, clinical room. Dave held my hand more tightly than before. I couldn’t bear to look at this screen. Instead, I studied the technician’s face, like a nervous flier taking her cues from the expression a stewardess wears. Her face revealed nothing.

She squirted cold jelly on my belly and then slid an even colder probe back and forth around my belly button, punching it down every so often to make the baby move for a better view. She didn’t say one word in 45 minutes. When she finished, she looked at us and confirmed our worst fears.

Instead of cinnamon and spice, our child came with technical terms like hydrocephalus and spina bifida. The spine, she said, had not closed properly, and because of the location of the opening, it was as bad as it got. What they knew — that the baby would certainly be paralyzed and incontinent, that the baby’s brain was being tugged against the opening in the base of the skull and the cranium was full of fluid — was awful. What they didn’t know — whether the baby would live at all, and if so, with what sort of mental and developmental defects — was devastating. Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live. None of them would repair the damage that was already done.

I collapsed into Dave. It sounds so utterly naive now, but nobody told me that pregnancy was a gamble, not a guarantee. Nobody told me that what was rooting around inside me was a hope, not a promise. I remember thinking what a cruel joke those last months had been.

We met with a genetic counselor, but given the known as well as the unknown, we both knew what we needed to do. Though the baby might live, it was not a life that we would choose for our child, a child that we already loved. We decided to terminate the pregnancy. It was our last parental decision.

So this is our story — mine, my husband’s, and our baby’s. It’s not a story I ever thought I’d share with a mass audience, because, frankly, it’s nobody’s business. But now it is.

On November 5, George W. Bush signed the first federal ban on any abortion procedure in the 30 years since Roe v. Wade, and the first ban of a surgical technique in the history of this country.

“I’m pleased that all of you have joined us as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 becomes the law of the land,” Bush said. After singling out 11 political supporters of the bill — all of them men — the president whipped the 400-strong, antiabortion crowd into a frenzy. “For years a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth, while the law looked the other way,” he said to cheers and whoops and hollers.

The signing ceremony staged by the White House was part evangelical tent revival, part good ol’ boy pep rally, ending with the audience muttering “Amen.” The president stoked the crowd’s moral indignation with emotional platitudes like “affirming a basic standard of humanity” and “compassion and the power of conscience” and “defending the life of the innocent.”

But on that Wednesday afternoon, President Bush never addressed what, exactly, the ramifications of the bill would be. His administration portrayed it as a bill aimed solely at stopping a “gruesome and barbaric” procedure used by healthy mothers to kill healthy babies. That portrayal served to spark a national, emotional knee-jerk reaction, which precluded any understanding of the practical outcome of the legislation. But it was those very real practicalities that immediately prompted three lawsuits and got three federal courts to prevent the bill from actually becoming law, starting a fight that will probably drag on for years.

At the heart of the debate is a term that legislators concocted. They created a nonexistent procedure — partial-birth abortion — and then banned it. They then gave it such a purposely vague definition that, according to abortion providers as well as the Supreme Court, which ruled a similar law in Nebraska unconstitutional, it could apply to all abortions after the first trimester.

Though some proponents of the bill say that they merely want to ban a specific medical procedure — properly called intact dilation and extraction, which accounts for fewer than one-fifth of 1 percent of all abortions in this country, according to a 2000 survey by the Alan Guttmacher Institute — they never specifically called it that. Instead, the bill is written in such a way that the much more common procedure — dilation and evacuation, which accounts for 96 percent of second-trimester abortions, including my own — would also be banned.

Supporters of the ban have argued that this procedure is used on babies that are “inches from life.” But in the bill, there is no mention of fetal viability (the point at which a fetus could live independently of its mother for a sustained period of time). Nor is there any mention of gestational age. Thus, the ban would cover terminations at any point during pregnancy. (In fact, Roe v. Wade already protects the rights of a fetus after the point of viability, which occurs sometime after the 24th week of gestation, in the third trimester of pregnancy. Massachusetts bans all abortions at and beyond the 24th week, except to protect the life or health of the mother. Indeed, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in 2001 there were only 24 abortions after the 24th week, out of a total of 26,293 abortions.) By not mentioning viability, critics say, this ban would overturn Roe v. Wade, which clearly states that women have the right to abortion before fetal viability.

So what does it all really mean? It means that all abortions after the first trimester could be outlawed. No matter if the fetus has severe birth defects, including those incompatible with life (many of which cannot be detected until well into the second trimester). No matter if the mother would be forced to have, for example, a kidney transplant or a hysterectomy if she continued with the pregnancy. (Legislators did not provide a health exception for the woman, arguing that it would provide too big a loophole.)

In the aftermath of the signing of the bill, its supporters spoke about having outlawed a medical procedure and protecting the nation’s children. “We have just outlawed a procedure that is barbaric, that is brutal, that is offensive to our moral sensibilities,” said Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader. Its opponents bemoaned an unconstitutional attack on legal rights. “This ban is yet another instance of the federal government inappropriately interfering in the private lives of Americans, dangerously undermining . . . the very foundation of a woman’s right to privacy,” said Gregory T. Nojeim, an associate director and chief legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

But lost in the political slugfest have been the very real experiences of women — and their families — who face this heartbreaking decision every day.

I don’t know what was worse, those three days leading up to the procedure (I have never called it an abortion) or every day since. I clung to Dave. He was always the rock in our relationship, but I now became completely dependent on him for my own sanity. Though abortion had never been part of his consciousness, he was resolved in a way that my hormones or female nature or whatever wouldn’t let me be. But I worried about him, too. The only time I saw him crack was after his brother — his best friend — left a tearful message on our answering machine. Then I found Dave kneeling on the floor in our bathroom, doubled over and bawling, his body quaking. That nearly killed me.

I don’t remember much from those three days. Walking around with a belly full of broken dreams, it felt like what I would imagine drowning feels like — flailing and suffocating and desperate. Semiconscious. Surrounded by our family, I found myself tortured by our decision, asking over and over, are we doing the right thing? That was the hardest part. Even though I finally understood that pregnancy wasn’t a Gerber commercial, that bringing forth life was intimately wrapped up in death — what with miscarriage and stillbirth — this was actually a choice. Everyone said, of course it’s the right thing to do — even my Catholic father and my Republican father-in-law, neither of whom was ever “pro-choice.” Because suddenly, for them, it wasn’t about religious doctrine or political platforms. It was personal — their son, their daughter, their grandchild. It was flesh and blood, as opposed to abstract ideology, and that changed everything.

I was surprised to find out that I would no longer be in the care of my obstetrician, the woman who had been my doctor throughout my pregnancy. It turned out that she dealt only with healthy pregnancies. Now that mine had gone horribly wrong, she set up an appointment for me with someone else, the only person who was willing to take care of me now. I felt like an outcast.

As we drove to his private office in Brookline that Monday, April 7, 2003, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were going to meet my executioner. I had never met this doctor, but I did look him up online. With thick, mad-scientistlike glasses, he looked scary. In person, though, he reminded me in both looks and manner of Dr. Larch in The Cider House Rules. He had the kindest, saddest eyes I had ever seen, and he sat with us for at least an hour, speaking to us with a heartfelt compassion and understanding that I had never encountered from any doctor before. His own eyes teared as Dave and I cried.

 He explained the procedure to us, at least the parts we needed to understand. Unlike a simple first-trimester abortion, which can be completed in one quick office visit, a second-trimester termination is much more complicated, a two-day minimum process. He started it that day by inserting four laminaria sticks made of dried seaweed into my cervix. It was excruciating, and he apologized over and over as I cried out in pain. When I left the examining room, my mom and my husband were shocked — I was shaking and ghostly white. The pain lasted throughout the night as the sticks collected my body’s fluids and expanded, dilating my cervix just like the beginning stages of labor.

The next morning, Dave and my mother took me to the hospital in Boston. I was petrified. I had never had any sort of surgery, and I fought the anesthesia — clinging to the final moments of being pregnant — as I lay in that stark white room. As I started to drift off, my doctor held one of my hands, and an older, female nurse held my other, whispering in my ear, “You’re going to be OK, I’ve been here before, lean on your husband.” It was my last memory. When I woke up, it was all over.

Dave had to return to work the next day. He didn’t want to leave me, and he certainly didn’t want to return to the furtive stares of his co-workers, all of whom knew that we had “lost the baby.” I really don’t know how he did it. My mother stayed with me at home for the next week, trying to glue my shattered pieces back together with grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup. I had no control over my emotions. I felt like a freak in a world full of capable women having babies, and I couldn’t stop whimpering: Why did my body betray me?

For months, I hid from the world, avoiding social outings and weddings. I just couldn’t bear well-meaning friends saying, “I’m so sorry.” So I quarantined myself, and would try to go about my day — but then, bam, heartbreak would come screaming out of the shadows, blindsiding me and leaving me crumpled on the floor of our house. It wasn’t that I was questioning our decision. I knew we did it out of love, out of all the feeling in the world. But I still hated it. Hated it.

I wrote my doctor a long thank-you note on my good, wedding stationery. I thanked him for his compassion and his kindness. I wrote that it must be hard, what he does, but that I hoped he found consolation in the fact that he was helping vulnerable women in their most vulnerable of times. He keeps my note, along with all the others he’s received, in a large bundle. And he keeps that bundle right next to his stack of hate mail. They are about the same size.

The trio of lawsuits that has been filed points to the Supreme Court’s decision three years ago that overturned a similar so-called partial-birth abortion ban in Nebraska. The court, in Stemberg v. Carhart, ruled in a narrow, 5-4 decision that the ban was unconstitutional on two grounds: the lack of an exception to protect a woman’s health; and the fact that the ban would prohibit even the most commonly used and medically safe abortion procedures throughout the second trimester of pregnancy. Many legal scholars think that this federal ban will also be ruled unconstitutional on those same grounds.

Because of the lawsuits, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 cannot be enforced, though it could be years before the abortion debate winds its way through the system and heads back to the Supreme Court. By that time, the composition of the court could be entirely different. “We are looking for a permanent restraining order,” says Petra Langer, the director of public relations and government affairs for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. “Who knows what the long-term situation will be? If George Bush is reelected, all bets are off, unfortunately.”

But even the short-term situation is bleak. The doctor who performed my termination has stopped doing the procedure, worried that he might get caught up in a lawsuit. He is not a lawyer or a politician, and he doesn’t know what this law means for him right now. “I may go to jail for two years,” he tells me. “They can suspend my medical license. It would cost me a fortune to have a lawyer to defend me.”

His fears are justified. “There are bunches of doctors out there who could be prosecuted today under this legislation,” says Roger Evans, a lawyer for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The three injunctions cover only doctors who are affiliated with Planned Parenthood clinics, who are members of the National Abortion Federation, or who are one of the individual plaintiffs in the Nebraska suit. This leaves “scores of doctors who, if they perform an abortion that falls under the very broad definition of the banned procedure, could be prosecuted,” he says.

The doctor who performed my termination talks about the women he has helped through the years — the pregnant woman who was diagnosed with metastic melanoma and needed immediate chemotherapy, the woman who was carrying conjoined twins that had only one set of lungs and one heart, the woman whose baby had a three-chambered heart and would never live. Now, he is turning these women away. “Now, today, I can say no, but what is she going to do?” he says sadly. “What is she going to do?”

Way too nervous to sleep on that frigid morning this past November, I snuggled my bloated belly up to my husband and curled into a little question mark. Sixteen weeks pregnant, today we would finally have our full-fetal ultrasound, finding out whether our baby was developing normally. Given what happened the last time, I had every reason to be nervous.

The last four months had been a sort of emotional no man’s land where the baby was concerned. While we were elated to be pregnant again, we were also terrified. It was hard to become fully attached to this pregnancy, knowing that it could be taken away from us. Instead of shopping for layettes, we were consulting genetic counselors. We now knew all too well that pregnancy was a hope, not a promise.

In the lobby at Beth Israel, I shoved my face into a tattered Redbook, waiting for Dave. As soon as he walked in, I started crying. “I’m so scared,” I said. “I know, but everything is going to be OK,” he answered, and gave me a hug.

Dave held my hand tightly as I lay down on the examining table. This time, the technician was chatty and jokey, while I was silent and concentrating. She pointed out the kidneys and the stomach, the two hemispheres of the brain, and the four chambers of the heart. I started to feel more optimistic. Everything looked fine, she said. She printed out pictures for us. She asked us if we wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl. She never left the room.

My doctor said the ultrasound was completely normal. Completely normal. They were the words I craved to hear, but at the same time seemed almost impossible to believe.

As the rest of our prenatal testing results started to pile up, all of them completely normal, we began to let hope back into our hearts. Of course, we know that anything can happen at any time. We’ll never forget that. There will be many more months of worry — and then, I guess, a lifetime more. At least for now, though, things look hopeful for our son. But I worry about my friends who are planning to have children now and in the near future, friends who are as naive as I once was. It’s a different world these days. “Now, it’s like the Stone Age, it’s like a Muslim country here,” says the doctor who performed my procedure. “This is the most backward law, it is not for a civilized country. If this was Iran, Iraq, I wouldn’t be surprised. But to pass this law in the United States, what is this government doing?”

Dear Check-out Cashiers at Hy-Vee,
Please, for the love of god, ASK ME before you try handing my two year old a lollipop.  Because, NO!!!  She cannot have one!  MAYBE if you had lollipops with safety handles on them, I would consider saying yes.  But considering you’re offering my daughter a sugar-filled marble on a stick, the answer is NO.  And when you hand her one without asking me, and then I have to take it away because she can’t eat it in the car, and then I have to listen to her scream the ENTIRE.WAY.HOME???  It makes me want to leave flaming dog poo on your car.  You know what would be even better?  If you offered a safe, non-choking hazard like a sticker or even better yet? If you could just ring up my groceries and let us be on our way…that would be awesome. 
Oh, and also?  The babies are one and two…yep, just one year apart.  And yep…I’m pregnant again.  Yep, we’re going to be busy.  Yep, we know how it happens.  Nope, it’s none of your freaking business if my husband is getting a vasectomy or if we’re going to try and compete with the Duggars for a special on TLC.  Again…please…just ring up my groceries, and I’ll take my massive amount of children and be on my way. 
Thanks so much,
That woman who looks at you like you have three heads every time you open your mouth

Dear woman in the craft department of WalMart,
Thank you for your very nice response when you asked Connor what grade he was in, and he told you that we homeschool.  It’s rare that we have people respond so positively to our educational choices.  And the fact that you used to be a teacher made this response more rare and appreciated.  However?  When you followed your niceness up by asking me what curriculum we used, and when I told you that we don’t use one, but instead focus on learning from the world around us, and then you snarled your cat-butt face at me and literally rolled your eyes at me??  It made me want to throw my  package of binding tape at you. 
Thanks so much,
The woman who is really getting tired of lousy customer service in this town

Dear cute brunette woman at Thymely Solutions,
You have been the saving grace to the lousy customer service I have received in this town this week.  Thank you for taking the time to help me find something to help my babies’ eczema.  The cream you suggested has been a life saver.  Their poor open, bleeding patches are almost gone.  Thank you for being so helpful, and so polite.  I was beginning to wonder if there was such a thing in this town!
Thanks again!
The woman who will be back in this week to buy more cream from you just because you were so nice

Most years, Shawn will ask me what I want for Mother’s Day, and I will respond with my usual, “I don’t know…let me think about it.”  Which I never will, and then he’s left to come up with something on his own.  This year, when Shawn asked me what I wanted, I told him, without hesitation, “I want you to help me plant a garden.”  And he was all for it. 

Yesterday, we got the kids ready and headed over to the Farmer’s Market to hunt for plants. (Connor was riding his scooter down the sidewalk while he waited for us). 

After much deliberation, and after chatting with a helpful woman at the Farmer’s Market, we picked out buttercrunch lettuce, yellow tomatoes, red tomatoes,cherry tomatoes, green and yellow bell peppers, leeks, and onions.  Then we went and got flowers to plant in the partial sun area of our yard.  We got lillies, columbines, and a type of daisy. 

But, choosing plants was only the beginning of the work that had to be done.   See, to begin with, our yard looked like this:

 (The partial sun side of the house)

The full-sun side of the house, was just a big, open rectangle of yard, and Shawn had to hand-turn the soil. 

My sweet husband, in an effort to give me a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend, worked almost nine hours yesterday turning soil, pulling out ferns and bushes, all while battling massive allergies and a sore shoulder.  Because he’s awesome like that. 

The kids could not have loved being outside more.  They had a blast running and rolling in the grass. 

And Connor even convinced Daddy to let him help a little.

And when they were all done, we had a beautiful garden…

And some lovely plants that will grow into beautiful flowers before summer’s end…

And today, I feel very lucky to have such a wonderful husband who will work so hard to make sure I feel loved and appreciated, and I feel lucky to have three wonderful, beautiful children who make me feel lucky to be a mom everyday.

 

My amazing, wise, beautiful boy turns six today.  Watching you go from a tiny, adorable infant who had the biggest nostrils I’d ever seen on a baby, to a curious, intelligent, imaginative boy has been the greatest experience of my life.  You have become exactly the child I’d hoped you would.  You are caring and loving, and hilarious, and compassionate.  You care and worry more about other people’s feelings more than any little boy should.  You are a wonderful big brother who tolerates and teaches, and loves his siblings more than anything else in the world.  You are obsessed with Star Wars and Harry Potter and Xbox 360, and you love spending your evenings watching Avatar in your room with Daddy.  You make me want to be a better mom, and you make me so proud every day.  Happy Birthday Lovey!  Thanks for making me a mommy.

Our homeschool aid from the school came out on the 17th of March, and while she was here, I filled out the paperwork to register Connor for FIRST GRADE!!  I cannot believe he’ll be in first grade!  His sixthbirthday is coming up at the end of this month, and I can hardly believe I am about to be the mother of a six year old!  Six seems so…not babyish anymore! 

I’ve been doing lots of thinking about motherhood lately.  I had a funny moment the other day…I was making the kids lunch: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bananas.  I had three plates lined up on the counter:  Connor’s sandwich was made from two pieces of bread, and then cut in half (rectangles; not triangles!) and his banana was hole.  Autumn had one piece of bread, folded over and cut in half, and half a banana cut into three bigh chunks.  Then Aiden’splate had one piece of bread folded over and cut into small, bite-sized pieces and his half a banana was cut in half length-wise and then cut into bites.  It was just a funny symbol of the three different stages my three different kids are in.  And soon, I’ll have a dish mashed up banana in it to feed the fourth baby! 

My days are busy, and the older the kids get, the more fun I have being a mom.  I love the process of watching them become their own person, and develope their own interests.  I like having babies, but I’m the first to admit I love having toddlers and older kids much better. 

Connor has been going through a bit of a tough stage lately.  He’s been very arugumentative, and trying to get his cooperation for even the simplest tasks has been….well….let’s just stick withchallenging!  The tantrums and the tears…I would imagine it’s just a tiny preview of what puberty will be like!  After MANY days of observing and discussing, Shawn and I felt like nearly every problem was a result of Connor being overly tired.  He’d had a rough few weeks as far as sleep went; going to bed after eleven, and getting up before seven-thirty.  He was clearly not getting nearly the sleep he needed.  So, we sat down with him and had a discussion about the way things were going.  We came to the compromise that he would go to bed at nine o’clock every night, except Wednesdays, when he could stay up until eleven o’clock.  Wednesday nights are our family night.  We make a fun dinner and a yummy treat, then after the babies go to bed at seven, we watch LOST and Ghost Hunters, and have the treat we made earlier. 

As a part of our compromise, Shawn and I agreed that we would spend an afternoon and really deep clean the upstairs for Connor.  The way our house is set up, we have the main living area plus two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the playroom, on the first floor, and then two bedrooms upstairs.  On the main floor, Shawn and I have our bedroom, then Autumn is in the nursery that is connected to our room.  Recently we moved Aidenfrom our room to the playroom, which is now working as his temporary bedroom until we move him into the nursery with Autumn. 

And the upstairs is all Connor’s.  He has his bedroom, and the the other bedroom is set up as a playroom/media room with a few toys, a tv, dvd player, xbox, hundreds of books, and two comfy recliner chairs.  And he?  TRASHED both rooms.  I mean…trashed.  Filthy.  Disgusting.  And we?  Have to take the blame for letting it get so out of hand!  We hardly ever go up there.  He usually takes himself to bed, and there isn’t really any reason for us to go upstairs.  Except…we should have.  We really, really should have.  Because it took us two thirteen-gallon trash bags, an apple box full of dirty dishes, a good two loads of laundry, almost an entire vacuum cleaner container of blech sucked up from the carpet, and two-and-a-half hours on a Saturday afternoon to get the upstairs clean.  But…clean it is.  Spotless even.  And now?  Before Connor goes to bed?  We take 15 minutes and make sure it STAYS picked up.  Because the rest of my house is pretty freakin’ clean all.the.time.  And the upstairs was like….I don’t even have a good analogy.  It was like the upstairs was my “Monica’s closet” from Friends.  Remember that episode?   But, it’s clean now.  And Connor is getting more, restful sleep in his newly cleaned room.  And I no longer have to worry that other children will disappear during play dates if they follow Connor upstairs! 

Autumn and Aiden are doing great.  I mentioned earlier that we moved Aiden into the playroom.  He’s been sleeping in our room for the last 14 months.  Sleeping either in our bed, or in a bed side-carring our bed.  But the poor thing was getting woken up several times a night.  He’d wake up when we came to bed, and when Shawn’s alarm went off, or when Autumn called out in the middle of the night.  And more recently, every time I’d get up to throw up or take my perscription in the middle of the night.  He was waking up between two and four times a night.  And it was taking him AGES to fall back to sleep.  And then he was waking up to stay by six o’clock every morning.  We were all exhausted.  The poor thing would sit in his high chair and suck his thumb through breakfast, and barely make it to nap time at eleven!  So, we made the very difficult decision to move him into the playroom.  Which is literally three feet from our bedroom door….but I cried anyway! 

The first night he went to bed at seven, (with no tears, except for Mommy’s!)  and slept until 3:30.  He woke up, and Shawn went in, and it took about 45 minutes to get him back to sleep.  Then the next night…he slept from seven p.m. until seven-thirty a.m.!!!!!!!   And EVERY NIGHT since then, he has slept the entire glorious night through!  I have waited fourteen long months to get more than three consecutive hours of sleep, and now I am in heaven!  I look forward to going to bed now, instead of dreading how long the night will be!  And Aiden is so happy and playful, and is clearly so much better rested during the day! 

Autumn is….well….I don’t really have one word to describe Autumn!  She’s hilarious and loving, and naughty and thoughtful.  She will be Connor’s best friend one minute, and then literally be biting his arm in the next.  She’ll be running and laughing with the boys, and then be screaming at them and trying to take their toys!  She’s found a new love for drawing the past week or so.  It’s hilarious to watch her.  She has a big sketch pad, and she’ll take a pen and tilt her head way to the side and stick out her tongue and draw.  She’s very focused, and very deliberate with every line she makes.  It still comes out looking like two year old scribble, but according to her it’s a blanket or a bottle, or her brother.  Shawn and I are amazed at how intensely she concentrates.  We may have a little artist on our hands! 

Anyway…this update is turning into a novel!  My midwife came yesterday for my first appointment, and everything looks good so far.  I can’t believe we’re only 12 weeks into this!  I feel like I’ve been pregnant for years!  And well…basically I have!  But, I’m loving being a mom.  Even on the challenging days.  Even when I’m so sick from hyperemesis I can’t get off the couch.  Even when it looks like nothing but mass chaos from the outside.  It’s our chaos!

Dear Connor,
I love you, you smart, amazing, charming boy.  But if you don’t stop jumping out from behind doors, and from dark hallways, and from beside the couch, to scare the crap out of you sister, I’m going to lose my crap on you.  I realize that you find her screaming at the top of her lungs and then running away crying to be funny, but unless you find ME screaming at YOU at the top of MY lungs to be funny, you need to knock it the fuck off.   And also?  No matter how many times you ask/scream/demand that we move your bedroom into the playroom…it’s not going to happen.  That room is for EVERYONE.  So please, take the suitcase of clothes and toys BACK to your bedroom. 
Thanks lovey!
Mom

Dear Autumn,
For the love of all that is holy…PUT YOUR CLOTHES ON!  This “I love to be naked” phase needs to stop right.now.  If you would leave your diaper on, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.  But since you insist on taking your diaper off, whether it’s full of poo or not….It needs to stop.  Or else, I’m going to consider duct-taping your diaper closed.  Mommy cleans up enough poo from the dog.  And one more thing? Please stop throwing random things in the trash.  I’m tired of digging through gross diapers and banana peels to fish out your sippy cup.  It goes in the SINK, not the TRASH.  Please learn the difference!
Thanks honey!
Mommy

Dear Aiden,
My sweet, sweet baby, who has finally started sleeping through the night….I am so sorry that you hurt your head today when I sat you down on the floor after you were trying to push the power button on the t.v.   But honey?  That’s what happens when you have a tantrum and throw yourself backwards.  The hardwood floors are very unforgiving.  Sorry about that.  Mama wasn’t expecting you to tantrum already, or I would have sat you somewhere safer.  Apparently your sister has taught you well.   Oh, and just an FYI??  Mama’s hair is ATTACHED.  No matter how hard you pull….it’s not coming off.  Sorry ’bout that. 
Thanks boobers!
Mama

Dear Little Fetus,
Mama REALLY wants chili with potato fries tomorrow.  With onion, and peppers, and the whole bit.  Please, Please, let me keep it down.  Not that I don’t love bananas and applesauce and plain pasta with butter…but Mama could REALLY go for some food with FLAVOR.  So…you’ve had some advanced warning.  It’s coming.  Do what you can to keep from pushing it back up, would ya? 
Thanks so much
Mama (That lady whose stomach you hold the keys to)

Connor spent about a half an hour yesterday teaching himself how to do a cartwheel.  When he began, he could was mostly belly-flopping and then rolling sort of somersault style.  But then, he got to the point where he could get his feet over his head, but then he’d land on his butt, and a few times, he narrowly missed smashing into the wall. 

He’d stand beside the table saying, “Hand, hand, feet, feet,” to himself before every try.  After much persistance, he was able to accomplish just that.  The look on his face when he realized he’d completed the flip without landing in a pile on the floor, was PRICELESS.  His eyes got so big, and he looked at me and gasped and then yelled, “OH MY GOD, DID YOU SEE ME??  I DID IT!  I ACTUALLY DID A CARTWHEEL!!” 

Autumn was trying to get in on the fun, and she’d yell, “My turn! My turn!”  And run to where Connor had been standing and she’d put her hands way above her head and then drop to the floor and walk a few steps, sort of Mowgli-from-Jungle-Book style, and then jump up and yell, “Ta Da!!”

When Shawn got home he insisted on teaching Shawn how to do them.  “Watch and learn, Dad, Watch and learn,” he kept saying.  Watching Shawn do cartwheels in the living room with Connor was probably the best way I’ve spent a Friday afternoon in a long time!