not sure how today ends
an optimistic online journal about love, life, and parenting in a big city
O: Hey mom, let's be Toms.
A little bedtime Silverstein
We try a lot of things as parents. Much of the time, it just feels as though you are shouting into the void, with not even an echo coming back. Every now and then, however, you may get a glimpse that your thought, energy, and love are building up in that tiny brain, affecting those synapses, helping to form new connections.
Lay a foundation. Keep having conversations. Act with love. Maybe it's working.
O: Mommy, you are the best mommy I've ever had.
On that stellar recommendation, I have distilled all of my parenting experience into a single piece of universally applicable advice for any and all new parents. Everything, other than this gem, is just situational guess work and opinion. Breast or bottle? Cloth or disposable? Cry it out or attachment? Stay at home or back to work? These are choices you get to make. I have no input or insight to share, because what worked for my family may or may not work for yours. Ok, here it is:
Clearly I know what I'm talking about. Look how happy and well adjusted she is. She looks like this ALL the time.
Get a heating pad, plug it in and leave it on or near your rocking chair. BAM. That's it.
Full disclosure: I'm two kids and nearly four years in and I just did it a week ago. Don't make the same mistake I did.
To everyone else, the already-parents, the never-been-parents, the parents-of-grown-adult-children, hush. Let these sweet new families have some peace. Don't scare them with stories of poop in the tub, the 5:00am feeding that lasts until noon, or the panic they will feel the first time that baby sleeps for more than two hours. They'll know soon enough. If they need you, they'll ask.
Make them dinner, but don't tell a woman who is eight months pregnant to sleep while she can. Drop off cookies, but don't ask about their birth plan, or, even worse share your own harrowing tale. Offer to come over and hold the baby for twenty minutes so she can go take a shower and promise to leave right after, but, please, don't comment on how she is feeding, clothing or washing her baby, partner, or hair.
New parents, know you can always ask. Someone will have an answer for you, and you get to hear that answer, listen to your heart, and make a choice. Some of those choices will be right. Some of them will be wrong. All of those choices will be yours, and it will be ok. You know more than you think you do.
But, I am serious about that heating pad thing.
O: When my sweet pea plants turn into sweet peas, I'm gonna do a sweet pea dance.
We love living in Los Angeles, but I would be lying if I said there was nothing I wish I could change. I wish people drove down our narrow street like it was a residential area, which it is, instead of like it was a highway, which it isn't. I wish I knew the names of all of my neighbors and we would congregate on the front porch for cocktails and a catch-up on a warm summer evening. I wish my girls had a garden, a verdant hideaway, where they could chase butterflies, make mud pies, hunt for fairies, and grow sweet peas.
There are gardens in LA, beautiful public spaces to roam, private back yards of multimillion dollar homes, and, even, community gardens, where you can rent a patch of earth to call your own and get your hands dirty.
Generally, we, the renters, are left with potted plants, sad window-box herb gardens, and that lush basil that I buy at Trader Joe's every few months that makes my kitchen smell like heaven, until I denude the poor bastard to make pesto.
Out of my own sheer stubbornness, we do have a garden, a little plot of dirt, a raised bed that is intended to sit on harder-packed earth. Ours sits on the concrete pad outside our dining room window. The roots of the plants often creep out from under the forest green plastic, seeking soil, but we forge on. We have grown kale (attacked and desiccated by cabbage worms), tomatoes (never ripened), pumpkins (this was acknowledged, in advance, to be folly), and cucumbers (of which we harvested 3, making them approximately forty-six dollars each).
This bull shit is expensive
(the above contains actual bull shit)
This season, it is sugar snap peas. As we scattered the seeds, O was already planning for the harvest, listing the names of dear friends who would share in our bounty. I love, at times, how short her memory can be, how the failures of the past months don't even register in the face of this new and hopeful venture. The tiny green shoots have been measured daily, their growth tracked by comparison to her tiny index finger. The first bloom, (see, I can be hopeful too) will be an event, celebrated with leaping and dancing.
We have a garden, not the garden I imagined, not the garden I would hope for, but a garden none the less.
It is pretty good for making mud pies
Mostly, we just make a mess, but sometimes we make magic.
When those sugar snap peas are harvested, dear friends, be they five or five hundred, they will be the best sugar snap peas you've ever tasted. I'll keep you posted.
O: Roses and thorns. I go first. My rose was when you left me at school, and my thorn was when you picked me up.
We have been up at 4:45am almost every morning. The laundry is piling up. The house is mess. O has been sick all week. P is teething. Jim has been insanely busy at work. I am trying to catch up on everything I put on hold to open a show. Even the unflappable brown dog seems to be a little out of sorts.
And...
Oh, my god, you guys, my dress is purple and ruffly at the same time!?!?
this happened today.
So, roses and thorns. But mostly roses.
O: Will you just stay and rub and jostle me for a few more hours? Just a few more hours and that's it.
When you first have a baby, everyone asks how you are sleeping. Is he or she making it through the night? How often are you getting up for feedings? No one talks about how nearly four years later, you still might be sleeping in two to three hour stretches. How, unless you live in Bruce Wayne's manor house, tiny human #1 is inevitably waking up tinier human #2 and visa versa, like some never-ending ouroboros, consuming its own tail.
god, they are lucky they are cute
We are so exhausted, we regularly have text conversations like the one below, usually while one of us is patting a tiny tushy. WARNING: the text below contains content that is not rated for some viewers. It not only uses foul language, but it also makes a passing reference to the act that got us into this mess. Scroll at your own risk.
please note the time stamp
Nobody talks about what happens to your brain somewhere around year three, how you forget things, basic things, like how old you are (I've added an extra year to my age for nearly all of the last calendar year), how you will count five hours where you don't get out of bed as a "good night," how even when everything else is really pretty wonderful, it can start to feel like nothing is working.
I'm here to tell you, the fatigue factor is a real thing. It is hard. It is unreasonable. It can feel untenable. Starting your day on two and a half hours of sleep and ending it lying in bed filled with anxiety about when the next wake-up will be, is not a recipe for a good night.
Someday, we will sleep until we feel like getting up. Someday, we will be dragging their cranky teenaged butts out of bed to do something enriching, whether they like it or not. Someday, we will be well rested. Today is not that day. To all of the other sleep-deprived parents out there, I salute you. Keep your chin up, your pillow fluffed, and your back to the door, because maybe, this time, they'll go back to sleep on their own. Maybe.
O: Mommy, I don't love you.
And she is three, but someday she will be 13 and 33 and on and on and on. This tiny person who is a mirror I hold up to my heart every day, says things to me that I have said to myself, in the dark and quiet spaces of my mind, where I sometimes hide. She says it frankly and with no malice, some kind of test, or she says it while hurling herself at the ground, her body hot with anger and her face red, wet, and salty. She is a tiny sponge sopping up all of the sweat and tears I have left behind. It takes my breath away, like a punch to the gut.
K: That's ok, bug. I love you enough for both of us.
O: Mommy, you have a soft, squishy belly.
And she is right. The folds of my skin have multiplied over time. Where there was once a firm stretch of smooth, tan skin pulled taunt over organs and muscle, there is now a soft, doughy pad, a pillow for the downy heads that find their way to me on the couch. Their tiny hands and impossibly perfect feet have clawed and kicked the vanity out of me, leaving me content with my own softness. It is because my human form was stretched and I expanded, responding to the needs of the people I have made. It has left its mark on my soul. It would be shameful if it had not also left its mark on my body.
K: I love my soft, squishy belly, because I got it when I made you.
O: Mommy, did you know that I am strong and brave?
And she is. My heart swells. In a world so big, in a body so small, she tackles new things daily with a voracity and passion that I envy, but I worry that this is simply the patter that we have filled her head with, words with no meaning, repeated for effect. I worry that my attempt to replace the voices of strangers has backfired; that the words of the woman in the grocery store, who pats her head and tells her she is pretty, or the voices of the parents at the park, who call her “princess,” will still echo in her ears, and that I have merely left her confused, still seeking the approval I want so badly for her not to need.
K: It doesn't matter what I know, my darling. All that matters is that you know.
O: Mommy, I love you.
And she does. But this is after 9:00pm, long after bath and stories and lullabies and cuddles. This is the hundredth time she has been out of her bed tonight, popping up like a jack-in-the-box at the same moment I sit down on the sofa and attempt to shut off the noise in my head by switching on the television. She has been out for water, colder water, trips to the bathroom, a pajama switch, because the ones she picked at bedtime became too itchy. She has had her back scratched, rubbed and tickled. And yet, here she stands, back-lit by the hall light, dragging her quilt behind her. She crawls into my lap. Somehow, the top of her head still smells like sunshine and the fire from our camping trip over a month ago. I breathe her in. Even though she should have been asleep hours ago, even though I have never been more tired in my life, even though I'm not sure how today ends, I put my lips close to her ear, like I’m sharing a secret meant only for her.
K: I love you too.
O: We are on Pico! (this is said regardless of our actual location, but every time we pass a fire house)
You are raising Angelenos if...
1. They think a heavy mist is weather, and warrants an umbrella, a pair of sweet rain boots, and some serious swagger.
2. Someone, somewhere, has told you your kids should be in commercials.
3. You have a real love/hate relationship with sand. You love the sand at the beach and you hate the sand in your car, which makes you start to hate the sand at the beach in a way you never thought possible when you were in your early 20's and lived in a bikini, but I digress.
4. They call this a quesadilla cutter.
It is multipurpose
5. You have them tested, and find that they are 90% avocado, and that half of those avocados came from someone's backyard.
6. They have had sushi, pho, carnitas, beignets, dim sum, tom kah kai, saag paneer, and bibimpap all before their second birthday, but they might make it to college before they know the joy of Lucky Charms.
7. When getting in the car, they ask, "Are we going on the freeway?" If the answer is yes, they act as though you have stuck hot pokers in their eyes.
Are we there yet
8. They have a vegan friend, a vegetarian friend, a paleo friend, and a friend who eats KFC on the reg.
9. Dealing with a film crew in the parking lot of preschool is a normal occurrence.
10. You have uttered the sentence, "If you want to go play in the fountain at the park before yoga, we are going to have to hurry," in a Starbucks, in December, more than once.
O: Mom, when is she going to be able to do stuff?
K: Someday.
Somehow, over the past few weeks, that someday is upon us. Tiny P isn't so tiny anymore. She sings, tells jokes, and dances. She has a real thing for shoes, hers and everyone else's. She would eat a hand of bananas a day if you let her. She wants to walk everywhere, except when she doesn't, and then she wants to be carried like a monkey, snuggled high on my hip with an arm hooked around my neck. She exerts her will, loudly, with a noise canceling pitch that Jim and I both find remarkable. She runs after O everywhere she goes, flapping her arms and tweeting like a baby bird. Look out O, P can do stuff.
K: We are going in. Do you remember the two rules about museums?
O: Quiet talking and no touching.
K: Right.
O: But those are the two hardest things in the whole widest world. I know, if I feel like feeling a painting, I'll just touch my nose instead.
Collecting Camellias
I've been in rehearsal for Much Ado at the Long Beach Playhouse for the past month and family time has been hard to come by. We used our first day off after opening to go to the Huntington Library. It was drizzly and glorious, and I had a new camera.
P had about 6 wardrobe changes due to excessive puddle jumping
We stayed outside for nearly our entire visit. The children's garden was a huge hit.
Pink bear really got into the microscopes
Then, we attempted the main house.
P is a rebel, just like her momma
After a pep talk about museum etiquette and promises of cookies, we visited several galleries and touched our noses a lot. O thought that The Blue Boy looked very sad because he didn't have any one to play with. I agree. I wonder what she'll think of the Gutenberg Bible. Maybe next time.
So long, farewell...
We took selfies in the bathroom (babies and buttons), had a subpar lunch at the cafe (packing a picnic next time), and had, by all accounts, a stellar day.
Which button?
The camellias were all in bloom and it was nice to forget we live in a city for a minute, and even nicer to be back in that city when we were were done.
Fairyland
Can't recommend enough, a thirty minute drive and a world away.
Where do you escape to when you only have an afternoon?
O: I know! We'll put on our puddle splashing boots and go on a veeventure!
There are a handful of markers that help you track the passing of time when your kids are little: how quickly they grow out of their shoes, where their head falls when they lean against you (O, hip bone and P, crotch), and those magical mispronunciations. O has been losing about a special word a day. As her diction becomes clearer and her vocabulary expands, I have embarked on a mission to halt the passing of time. We have embraced some of her early pronunciations into our framily lexicon. A living creature is an aminal. The stuff you put on your lips to make them shiny is glip glops. You go to the dentist when you have a gabitiy. On really special days, read everyday, we go on veeventures.
This blog is really just that, an attempt to slow down the passing of time by documenting it and a fresh new veeventure. To that end, I got a shiny new toy. You can't defeat the passage of time with poor image quality after all. If anybody out there in the ether can show me how to work it, I'd be forever in your debt.
Oooh! Shiny...