Here is one of the videos where they show their love and dedication.

For me, I certainly have opinions about guns, politics, and the media, and a lack of well-formed ideas about the ways to resolve the state of mental health in our country.

But first and foremost, I have a six year old.

First graders are something pretty special.  They are smart, they are articulate, they can wipe their own butts (which is HUGE!).  They are moody, they talk back, they whine, and they test boundaries.  They are beginning the awkward phase of missing all of their teeth.  They have crushes, they are navigating friendships.  They take spelling tests, they read, they want to be more grown up, but are also still just kids.

Oliver is six years old (he would tell you six and three-quarters).  He believes in Jesus, he believes in Santa, and he is so frustrated that he hasn’t lost any teeth that weren’t forcibly removed by the dentist.  He wants to like hot sauce like his dad, so he puts it on everything.  He hopes that on his seventh birthday, I will let him have a can of caffeine-free diet coke.  He plays BeyBlades, obsesses over iPad apps, and cries when his friends move away.  He is finally learning how to tell a funny joke (sometimes), and still will give me lots of hugs and kisses and tell me he loves me and that I’m the prettiest lady in the world.

Oliver drives me nuts sometimes, too.  He nags and whines about stuff that he wants.  He doesn’t like to share, and his insistence that he is right all the time is trying on the nerves.  If he doesn’t think something is fair, he will go on and on and on… actually, he will always go on and on…

Oliver’s hair is so long that we could cut off half of it and it would still be longer than anyone else’s in our house.  He insists on keeping it long, even though people mistake him for a girl all the time, because he loves it and thinks it is cool.  He loves swimming and can’t wait to start swimming lessons again.  He adores Taylor Swift and has dreams that she is also six and they play tag together.  He wants to grow up and be a rock star, a singer, a doctor, a cowboy, a scientist, and an adventure writer.  He adores his siblings, and sometimes asks Hazel to climb up to the top bunk so they can snuggle together.  He is infinitely patient with Henry and doesn’t get mad when Henry pulls his glasses off, tries to tear up his books, or takes up so much of my time that we aren’t able to do all the fun things he wants to do.  Oliver describes himself as “a little bit serious”, but you can crack him up by talking about bodily functions or making up silly songs.

And all I have been able to do since he stepped off the school bus on Friday is look at him, and make sure that I cherish him.  It doesn’t help anyone else; it doesn’t make anything better, or help the victims and their families.  I’m hugging him extra tightly, and we are saying extra prayers.  I cannot imagine life without my sweet boy.

I can’t lessen the loss for the victims’ families.  I can’t answer the political questions or come up with a solution to prevent this from happening again.  But I can love my family a little bit harder, and try not to take for granted the wonderful family that Kullervo and I have created.  I will be a little less distracted when I’m with my kiddlywinks.  I will read with them more often, watch more movies together, play a little bit harder, and pay attention to how amazing my kids are.  It is the only way that I know of to honor and respect those who no longer have that privilege, and would do anything to deal with one more tantrum if it meant one more day.

So, and this is one of Hazel’s favorite jokes to play on us, today she got quiet.  Since it was her song choice (“‘We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together Like Ever’, Mommy”), I checked her out in the rearview mirror to make sure she was okay.  Since we moved to Baltimore, she and I have been occasionally prone to bouts of tears, so I was concerned.

I asked her if she was okay.  She just looked at me.  I stopped at a red light, and turned fully around to see her more closely.  And this is what I saw.

When we got to the store, I asked her to come closer to let me take a better picture.
This little girl is somethin’ else, let me tell you.  There is not a day that goes by that she doesn’t crack me up.

They stopped laughing, and Henry looked back and forth between the two of them, and then started laughing.  It was really cool to see him learning the social cues and the turn taking of interacting with others.

So I told the kids to start laughing again, and I took a video of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORvYXMZoS3M

I generally make friends quickly, but I don’t make best friends.  I try to be a great friend to other people, but have a hard time accepting the same level of friendship from others.  I don’t open up to people, I don’t like being vulnerable or admitting that I need help and can’t do everything all by myself.  I’m a bit of a gypsy.  And I sort of like that.  There are the few friends that have stuck from every place, and while moving is always hard, because it turns out that most places are awesome, there was always a new adventure waiting in the next place.

There have been two moves that were different.  The first was the move from New Jersey to Florida.  I was halfway through my freshman year in high school.  I had a boyfriend (and he was cute!).  I was settled, I was comfortable, I was happy.  I mean, I was 14, so I was plagued with all of the usual insecurities, melodrama, and self-doubt.  The bombshell dropped—we were moving to Florida.  It was devastating.  We moved over Christmas break, and I spent New Year’s Eve alone in my bedroom, drinking two wine coolers (scandal!) and sobbing on the phone with my old friends who were all together at a party.

A life again later, I lived in Chicago.  The timing brought together that perfect confluence of preschool kids, a wonderful city block, and stubbornness that being ‘city kids’ wouldn’t mean my kids didn’t spend as much time as possible playing outside.  I met people.  And over time, I made friends—the kind of friends who called me on my crap and who insisted on being there for me when I was certain I didn’t need it… but really did.

Moving away has been just awful.  Aside from all of the regular craziness of moving, this is the first time we have transferred a kid from one school to another.  We are also in a bit of a transient living situation right now—we are living in an apartment while we look for a house to buy.  So we don’t feel settled, and it is hard to want to settle down when you know you’re probably, hopefully, going to be moving again within a year.

And so I am fifteen again, crying in my bedroom.  I am filled with all of the hesitation of not wanting to call the people I miss because I’m afraid they’ll get annoyed, or think that I should just move on already.  All of the insecurities and self-doubt are back.  This time, at least, I got to bring my cute boyfriend and my fantastic kids.

I know that it will get easier.  One day, I will love Baltimore, and it will feel like home.  But for now, it is gut-wrenching.  But I also feel so lucky that I have so many wonderful people in my life, and that my life in Chicago was so full of light and laughter and love that makes it hard to leave.

So the next day, the kids and I decided we wanted to spend a bunch of time cooking.  I really enjoy cooking with my kids.  I have the patience for the messes and the spills and the fact that it takes at least three times as long.  (It’s a point of pride for me, too, because Kullervo doesn’t like cooking with the kids, and I feel like in general, he is much better at doing stuff with them than I am.)  There are also the generically educational aspects to it—measurements, fractions, and whatnot.  I also spend a decent amount of time talking to the kids about where we get our produce, and living sustainably, etc.

Anyway, I told the kids that we were going to take the chicken from last night, and they were going to choose all the other ingredients, within reason, and we were going to cook their creation.  So, I had them choose if they wanted rice or pasta.  Then I had them choose what kind of a sauce we wanted to make—a tomato based sauce, a cheese based sauce, or a brown butter sauce.  And they chose which vegetables they wanted.

So we measured out the rice and got that cooking in the rice cooker.  Then Hazel and I set about making brown butter sauce—which I had never made before, and I think we actually did incorrectly.  While Hazel stirred, I chopped up the vegetables they asked for—green onions, garlic scapes, red and green bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, corn, and Swiss chard.  We cooked them with the butter and the chicken, and Hazel delighted in getting to add the salt and pepper.

Hazel stirring her dinner in the cast iron pan

One of the things that I love about cooking with my kids is that they like to try all the individual ingredients.  They ate some of the cold chicken.  They tried raw garlic scapes and green onions.  I didn’t let them try the bell peppers ahead of time because we only had a couple of small ones from our CSA and I wanted them in the dish.  They tasted the corn from our garden that we froze last weekend.  They also tasted each of the herbs in our herb garden to see which one they wanted to flavor it with—rosemary, thyme, or sage.  They tried to convince me that the Stevia plant would be a good idea, but I wouldn’t let them use it, although I did let them munch on some leaves.

While we were working on that, Oliver was busy with our snack recipe.  We got a recipe from my sister for no-bake protein balls that is filled with healthy stuff like ground flaxseed and oats and peanut butter (and chocolate chips and coconut too!).  He mixed the ingredients together and rolled all of the individual balls.

Oliver, rolling the dough to make our protein snack!

Oliver with the finished product!

Altogether, it was a successful meal and they both ate a healthy meal that they prepared themselves, with a fun snack for dessert!

I’ve read The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley, and I love it.  I love the idea of gently putting my baby to sleep and having him know how to just go to sleep.  And, when I put him down at night, that works.  I follow our routine, and I put him in his crib, rub his back a few times, tell him I love him, and I leave.  He generally rolls over and goes straight to sleep.  It’s absolutely lovely.

But that doesn’t help me two hours later when he wakes up crying.  If I go in to him, he wants to nurse.  Which I might be happy to do, except then two hours later he wakes again and wants to nurse.  And he is nine months old, 23 pounds, and I’m not old enough to have the kind of saggy boobs that will surely result from overfeeding a tired baby.  If I don’t nurse him when he wakes up, he just cries and gets more and more worked up.  Kullervo is able to go to him and calm him down… sometimes… and it takes a really long time, and still doesn’t last for more than a couple of hours.

The poor thing just doesn’t know how to fall asleep.

I started to suspect that I would have to let him cry it out.  To validate this idea, I called the one person I was certain would tell me to just let him cry—my mother.  When Hank was a month old and she came to visit, she told me to put him on a schedule, that he didn’t need to eat on demand, he should eat every four hours, and if it hadn’t been four hours, he should cry until it was.  (I didn’t follow this advice.)  So I was certain she would tell me Hank should cry it out.

So, of course, she didn’t.  She said that if he’s crying a lot at night, he must be sick or teething.

I really don’t think he is though.  He’s not crying in pain… he’s fussing.  And when I go to him, it doesn’t help.  What helps is going back to sleep.  He won’t take a pacifier.  He won’t suck his thumb or fingers.  And he really enjoys sitting himself up, so if I lie him down, he just pushes his little body back up so he can holler at me some more, with accusing eyes about the fact that I won’t just help him fall asleep.

I have spent a lot of hours considering crying it out.  So many people recommend it.  So many.  And it doesn’t fundamentally bother me to consider other people’s babies crying it out.  But the idea of my baby crying it out does.  So I have spent some time navel-gazing, trying to figure out what exactly it is that bothers me about it.  Is the issue to do with him… or is it an issue with me that I shouldn’t project onto him?

I haven’t come up with any definite answers yet.  I think that part of it is just the natural maternal instinct to not like the idea of my child hurting or being sad and not going.  I think part of it relates to some really powerful memories from my own childhood of feeling abandoned and feeling alone.  I think that one of my goals as a parent is for my kids to know that I love them unconditionally… and ignoring crying doesn’t seem to convey that.  But if this is an issue where I am concerned with my own reaction, or a short term solution, as opposed to how it affects the baby long term, then I don’t think that’s fair to the baby.  It’s always easier to do something as a short term fix than to implement a long term solution—hence all the problems with government policies.  Long term, I want my children to know how to sleep and sleep well, and I want them to be independent and not need me to coddle them, if that makes sense.

I’ve also had to consider the fact that if Oliver or Hazel decided they didn’t want to go to bed, and threw a fit about it and cried… I would totally tell them to suck it up, tell them I loved them, and leave them to it.  If they cried in the middle of the night, I would go to them… but I wouldn’t do whatever they wanted just because they had a nightmare—I would reassure them and leave, and if they got really upset about it, tell them I loved them and that they needed to go back to sleep anyway.

So what makes my nine month old different than my four year old?  There is certainly a matter of being able to communicate ‘suck it up and I love you’ to Hazel, but can’t be sure that Hank gets the nuance.

Ultimately, we have decided that at night, we are going to try to let him cry, situation depending.  We’ve done it for three nights now… and it’s hard.  The first night we did it, he first woke up at 11:30.  I figured I would nurse him and put him back to bed, and he could then go for a longer stretch.  No big deal.  Except that he woke up again at 1:00.  Kullervo went in to him, rubbed his back for awhile, and he fell back to sleep.  Success!  Except that he woke up again shortly afterwards.  So we let him cry.  And he cried on and off (and, I guess, slept on and off) for the rest of the night.  I’m honestly not sure how much he cried because when I would drift off to sleep, I would dream he was crying.  I also had a dream that Oliver and Hazel were sitting on a beach, staring vacantly at me like they were zombies, chanting, “My mommy lets me cry.  My mommy doesn’t care.”  Seriously.  We brought him into our room at 6:00, and I nursed him and we both fell back to sleep.

The next night, I think he woke up less.  I didn’t have any zombie child dreams, which I consider a mild victory over my subconscious.  I’ve been giving him extra love throughout the day, and he honestly doesn’t seem any worse for wear.  He is still happy to see me in the morning, and all day long, and seems more well rested.

And then, last night, he slept.  He slept from 7:15 until 5:00.  When he woke up then, we let him fuss for a few minutes, but then brought him into bed with us, where he nursed and then slept until we woke him up at 7:00.  And we have all had such a wonderful day as a result.

So, I’m still not wild about the idea of letting Hank cry it out at night.  But I am wild about the idea of all of us being better rested.  Should we backslide, we might consider other options.  In the meantime, I was able to have an amazing, fun filled day with all of my kids today.

Last week was a tough week.  Coinciding with (or perhaps because of) the no-sleep solution I had been working on with the baby, Hazel decided to test her boundaries.  Over and over and over, and then some more for good measure.

We’ve been having a lot of conversations about respecting other people’s property.  The street that we live on has tons of kids, and most evenings everyone goes outside to play.  This is great—the parents are all so much fun and we all tend to get along really well.  The downside to that is that sometimes we let the kids wander off a bit and they find some mischief.

One of the current mischievous activities is for the kids to tear flowers out of people’s gardens/pull leaves off their plants/pull out their grass.  Inevitably, they are pulled from the people who have either spent lots of time and energy taking care of their gardens, or from people who have paid landscapers.

So, I spent a lot of time explaining to Hazel, over and over again, why I don’t think that’s appropriate.  We’ve talked about respecting other people.  We’ve talked about how it would feel if someone destroyed something that we cared about.  We’ve talked and talked and talked… and she still did it.

So I instituted what Kullervo called a draconian punishment—if she tore up someone’s garden, essentially destroying their property, I would destroy one of her toys so that she’d know how it felt.  I really hoped that just the thought of this would be enough to keep her from doing it… but of course it wasn’t.  So, the first time she did it, I chose out one of her toys, got a hammer, and brought her to the backyard so she could watch me hammer it into pieces.  Then she cried and I cried.

It didn’t feel good to do it.  To me, it was like spanking.  I have spanked Hazel (her consequence for hurting the baby is that she gets spanked because she has a tendency to be carelessly cavalier about how she plays with him), and I hate it every time.  I was certain that she wouldn’t destroy someone’s property again, and I reminded her a few times what the consequence would be.

Well, last week she did it again.  So I destroyed a toy.  Again.  Again, she cried and said she wished she hadn’t done it.  I was certain then that she had learned her lesson.  The next day, we went outside again, and before we went out, I reminded her not to do that, and that we should play nicely and not break any rules.  Immediately, she went into our next door neighbor’s yard and tore up some of their plants.  I made her sit on our steps for the rest of the time that we were outside, because, I told her, I can’t watch her all the time, and since I can’t trust her to behave, she has to stay where I can see her.

But destroying toy after toy didn’t feel right.  I wanted to do something different.  I reached out to some wise women that I know and asked their advice.  Almost immediately I got feedback—she should do something more restorative.  The punishment should be more of a positive consequence instead of a negative one.

I mulled it over.  Nothing seemed just right for our current situation.  But the next morning, we went outside where each of the kids has been tending to their own tomato plants.  Hazel is growing cherry tomatoes, and every few days she is able to pick a handful of ripe tomatoes.  She looks forward to it, and loves to bring them inside and eat them with her breakfast or her lunch.

And then it hit me.  As Hazel was picking her tomatoes, it came to me.  We brought them inside, and I sat her down.  I reminded her about picking Mrs. O.’s beautiful flowers, and asked her what she thought about it.  I told her I didn’t want to destroy a toy, because clearly that consequence wasn’t working to change her behavior.  I then asked her how it would feel to her if someone came at night and picked all of her tomatoes.  And then I told her that I thought I knew a way that we could make it right.  I had her write an apology card to Mrs. O., and we put all of Hazel’s ripe tomatoes into a bag.  We knocked on Mrs. O.’s door, and when she answered, Hazel apologized for picking her flowers, and gave her the apology card.  And we told her that we wanted to make it right by giving her the tomatoes that Hazel has been growing.  Mrs. O. thanked Hazel, and we all went on our merry way.

And on our walk home, I said, “Hazel, how do you think it would feel if you had to go to Mrs. O.’s house again to apologize because you couldn’t resist picking her flowers?”

And, lo and behold, Hazel has not picked anyone’s garden since.  I’m not saying it won’t happen in the future, but in the meantime, I feel like we’ve done a decent job of righting our wrongs, and doing it in a more positive way for everyone.

So, at Hank’s age, he should be taking two naps, which should add up to a total of two and a half to four hours of daytime sleep.  When I started this whole maybe-my-kid-should-sleep-every-now-and-then thing, he would catnap when we were out and about, while I was driving the kids to camp, etc., and not get a good solid nap.  When camp ended, I put him down for regular naps and he just wouldn’t sleep.  He has gone a couple of days where he napped for a grand total of 30 minutes all day.

Sometimes I can lie down with him, hold him tightly, and he will fall asleep.  Sometimes that just means he’s screaming in my ears.  I feel like I’ve tried everything.  I nurse him until he falls asleep, but when I transfer him to the crib, he wakes up.  I nurse him until he’s drowsy, but not asleep, and when I transfer him to the crib, he wakes up.  I have held him so that he will just get some darned sleep, but he won’t sleep for that long on me, and then I can’t get anything done.  I have begun putting him down to nap and letting him cry for an hour, and then just giving on up on that nap and trying again with the next one.  But honestly, it’s exhausting.

So, while I’ve been doing that, I’ve been reading a bunch of books about sleeping.  My days and nights are literally filled with thinking about nothing but sleeping.  Either I’m reading about sleeping, listening to Henry not sleep, trying to sleep myself, or planning how to deal with the next time everyone is supposed to sleep.

So, naps are failing.  Hank wakes up so often at night that it would be funny if it wasn’t so terribly not funny.  It’s seriously ridiculous.  And I really feel like I need to figure out the best solution for us.  I don’t think that one size fits all.  I don’t think that an idea that works for some kids will work for all kids.  Over the last few days, Hank has shown me that if he decides that he won’t nap… there is nothing I can do that will make him nap.  I can ignore him for an hour while he cries… but then he will keep himself awake crying.  I think that he will do well with a routine… but it’s hard to establish a routine for a baby when there are two older kids.

And then, today, it hit me.  I was attempting to catch up on emails (ha!), drink a gallon of coffee (to keep me from sleeping), and listen to Hank not nap.  And I saw a calendar that showed that school starts for Oliver and Hazel in three weeks.  They have three weeks of summer left.

I had intended to spend a few days getting Hank on a schedule, and had anticipated that within three or four days, he would be sleeping regularly and our lives could go on.  This hasn’t happened.  Instead, Oliver and Hazel have been cooped up inside. Thankfully, we’ve had some rainy days, which mean that we would have been inside for a decent part of that time anyway.  But with no end in sight to the current dilemma, I made a decision today.

I am done trying to put Hank on a schedule until school starts.  I am going to spend the last few weeks of summer with these kids, and have a blast.  We are going to go to the zoo if it strikes our fancy.  We are going to go to the beach if we feel like it.  We are going to spend time with friends, and read books, and play outside with the neighbors.  And if Henry naps while we’re out, hooray.  If we are home and he naps, hooray.  And if he is a zombie because he has chosen to not sleep, so be it.  I am going to do my best not to take my sleeplessness out on my kiddlywinks, and make sure that the end of summer is great.

And when I made that decision, I breathed a big sigh of relief and really feel like I’m making the right choice.  Beyond that, all I want is for Henry to start sleeping well before he learns to call out for Mommy, because then all efforts to cry it out will go out the window.

Or, My Baby Likes to Party All the Time

Maybe you don’t recognize me… I’m that girl who, a few months ago, was able to make a light hearted joke, play and have fun with her kids, cook a meal and maybe tidy up a room.  I used to be that girl.  Now I’m the girl who snarls at everyone I see, yells at my kids too often for being kids, feels guilty all the time about my apparent personality transplant, and only thinks that dark humor is funny.  In other words, I’m not myself.

Hank is nine months old.  He is generally delightful—he likes to scoot around looking for sticks to chew on outside, he eats like a superstar, preferring savory flavors to sweet ones.  He claps, he thinks his big sister is pretty much the funniest thing in the world (and she is), he chews up Uno cards (so we always know who has the yellow skip card), he loves taking a bath and wrestling with the kitten.  He’s pretty much awesome in all ways but one.  The child never sleeps.

For a long time, he slept in our room in the bassinet.  Then I looked at it, and saw that the weight limit was 15 pounds and he was 21 pounds… so we assembled his crib in Hazel’s room, and he started going to bed in there.  When he woke up at night to nurse, I would bring him into our bed and we would cosleep for the rest of the night.  It worked alright.  He would also nap in our bed, but only if I laid down with him until he fell asleep.

Then he started fighting going to bed.  Putting him down at night would take two hours.  In the meantime, I would not have tucked in Oliver or Hazel, or I would have while he screamed and I would rush through it.  It wasn’t working.  It also meant that we were eating out a lot because I was exhausted, or we would eat dinner super late at night because I couldn’t start cooking until 9:30 or later.

I wanted to go the no-crying-to-sleep route.  I haven’t found the magical solution that works though.  A few weeks ago, I decided that there were three problems:  1.  He didn’t nap.  2.  He fought going to bed at night.  3.  He didn’t sleep through the night, waking up 2-6 times a night.

I figured that the easiest thing would be to tackle the issues one at a time.  The thing that has been the most difficult on me has been the falling asleep at night.  Kullervo and I worked out what we decided would be a good bedtime routine for Hank, and started implementing it.  The first night, putting him to bed took two hours (and thankfully a dear friend had taken Oliver and Hazel to see a show at a nearby park, so they weren’t sitting at home being bored).  The next night, an hour and twenty minutes.  The third night, forty minutes.  The fourth night he went straight to sleep.  These were all done without him needing to cry.  I would do the routine, put him to bed, and then rub his back until he fell asleep.  Now I am able to do the routine, put him in his crib, and even though he often sits himself up right away, he winds up going to sleep without crying.  Success!  We even have been able to eat dinner before ten at night!

Next up:  naps.  Sleep begets sleep, so, I decided to tackle naps as the next step in my plan.  More on that soon!