fleeting

i caught a glimpse of us in the spinning doors of the hospital headed to the pediatric clinic today, in for owen's 6 month well-baby appointment. just after passing a care provider pushing a sweet elderly woman. widened soft and smiling eyes as we had come into view. "oh, she has her hands full." "looks like dad does, too!"

'you've/he's got your/his hands full' is the #1 line said to vern. yes. we've been keeping a poll it happens that often. there's a joke going round that he should get a t-shirt that on the back reads, "yes! i do!" so i was happy to get a little credit during this public outing.

and then i saw us. owen and maddy seated in my lap, both sitting straight and proper and 13 months apart, but only a few inches and mere 6 pounds difference in size. maddy with her baby doll brody nestled at her side. vern pushing all 4 of us. caleb at pre-k, but usually walking to vern's side holding either his dad's hand or mine.

i'm going to miss this when the kids get older. being able to carry them. have people make note of the children, and my status as a mother, before really taking note of my missing lower limbs or oddly structured hands.

people's faces are so much softer when there's a baby in your lap. they look you in the eye. somehow having a kid or two (three) in tow has been the great equalizer. i'm not so different. i have kids.

i like this.

of course. it also quickly hit me that the she with hands full to whom they were referring was not me, but maddy.

and indeed maddy is busy tending to everyone - with her quiet insistence that the ped also check brody's heart and tummy. having already checked his blood pressure and eyes and ears during our time in the exam room herself. brody weighs a whopping 4 pounds. a water baby, we can't wait to see how much he weighs at 9 months with a full-fill.

i love this. and i know it is shooting by So Very Fast. we need to take a picture of our reflection before the kids outgrow us.

foggy mom statements

as caleb is chasing his sister with a foam cone "boom-boom-boom": "no shooting people! unless you're shooting them with love!"

?

i don't even know what that means, but he now has her cornered behind a chair booming "i just killed you with love!"

easters past pt 2

i find it crazy how something that has stirred in me for as many years could seem so wimbly when put to paper. screen. maybe over time i'll have better words to express how hollow easter has felt when i look back on it. maybe now that i've written with the words i have on hand now the feeling will pour out and allow for something new to enter.

either way, i've been racking my brain to think what on earth we did do as kids. i know we had baskets. we went to church. we had ham or kentucky fried chicken with grandpa. or whatever family we were able to visit/be visited upon that year from the hartfords. there are sweet pictures of us as itty-bitty mites with our loot. in our sunday best. not too many of the ham or kfc buckets, but still...


also in this brain rack i am trying to find the name for the whole 'plastic grids you cut to shape and stitch with yarn and needle into awesome 70's-80's art'. the varied household decor - kleenex box covers, toaster covers, ornaments, mobiles...


in our easter tub is packed the two baskets mom made in this medium for carl and me one year. the baskets formed of bunny faces with two opposing cottontails sporting extra long ears that met - united with pretty little yarn bows - forming the basket's handles. white bunnies with pink features, pink bows. i amuse myself with images of carl opening such a girlie easter basket past blast this year.


they serve as reminder for how much mom did. how easily kids forget. i can't help but wonder how ours will recall their easters past. if the fun we have now will only firm up into tradition that they will replicate with their families one day or. or life will happen to cloud out their early years like they did mine.

and so. bunny notes. just in case life happens. and then we lose all our pictures to fire, flood and a dropped external hard drive.

easters past

i list my last easter with mom as being spent in omaha. i think she meant it as some relaxing getaway, but it felt more like we were in hiding. and maybe we were. just the 3 of us. in omaha, at a hotel. with a pool that usually meant high-times, but that year carl was yet on crutches and not about to get wet. i was too old as a high school senior to find much joy in swimming by myself. with strange guys around. who might see me. i really can't think what we were doing there. if the stress i recall was because it was meant to be a good time and wasn't or ? - if we were hiding out and it's never easy to relax when you're running away. it's only as a side that i remember it was even easter. mom was so tired, frazzled, on-edge. she ran a red light through a major intersection.

my last easter with dad was my junior year in college. at a hotel in omaha. he had rooms there for our family of 4 plus aunt mary. grandpa horne had died the september before. we were there for the hotel's big easter sunday buffet. i remember saturday night watching... that movie with the action hero and shoot-out with the alligator tank. joking around with carl in his hotel robe. showing pictures to mom and mary of some college activities. habitat over spring break maybe?

dad wanted so badly for us to all just relax and enjoy one another's company. we all did try. trying can be tiring. and then came sunday morning and dad was making stern phone calls because his credit card was maxed out, and they had no way to pay for the rooms. carl and i went down to the big buffet by ourselves. surrounded by strange, smiling happy families. when we came back up to the room, dad was still at the little desk, on the phone. rubbing his forehead. that's how i left him, down to the parking lot and back to school.

those two seasons are fresh every year in my mind. my poor parents. all through toddlerdom and elementary and baskets and candy and... and all the kid remembers are the two weekends you wish she didn't.

dad as the dad

i never remember my dad being around when we were sick. mom found that quite convenient. i only remember being sick once in my youth, and not making it to the bathroom. i called out. dad answered and then ran away. fast. my brother paid back his negligence by once throwing up over the interior of the back passenger door and the power lock never let dad forget as it kept for many years after a funny squeak. but dad really couldn't handle it less he be sick himself and burden mom with twice the mess to clean. he complained he could not help his weak stomach any more than his early hair loss. mom rolled her eyes.

i grew up associating myself with my strong-willed, able-bodied mother until i became pregnant with caleb. i have a new respect for my dad now. there's no doubt i have inherited more than just his unique gene mutations.

the flu struck caleb down in the prime of easter's season. vern handled the mess over the weekend, but come monday - i sat on the couch with the little man and his trusty bucket all day. i held his head when he got sick and rubbed his back and counted my blessings that his stomach was pretty empty by that point.

and i was thinking. it had to be junior high when i became horribly ill. mom was taking courses for her lpn in the evening, working nights and keeping the house afloat, us kids clothed and fed all by herself. it seems i became sick over a weekend visit to grandpa's an hour south in omaha where dad was residing. helping on the office end out of grandpa's basement the family farm/ranch/bank operations. that or mom brought me down and handed me off to the husband that was just be-bopping around a home office anyway with grandpa's housekeeper, mattie, cleaning and cooking...

i don't remember much of it other than how i existed in grandpa's big arm chair watching tv with a bucket beside me. the extreme sick. and dad. who somehow never got sick himself. who actually hung out with me. who called mom the second or third day concerned that while my stomach finally seemed somewhat settled, i needed to go to the hospital. mom directed him to have mattie pick up some thera-flu. mattie did, and i remember quite clearly how much i did not want to have anything to do with it. dad called mom and said he thought it was a bad idea. mom reminded him she was still the mom. dad pleaded with me and then gave me the phone. mom reminded me she was the mom. i tried the thera-flu, and woe was me. i had actually begun to feel slightly better, and then. oh. bad.

i'll never forget dad's expression. pissed at himself for not being the dad in that moment with a hint of vindication for being right. when i realized my situation - sick under dad's care, i felt some consolation that at least mattie would be around here and there to make sure i did not die. i suffered through the fog and haze of extreme ill and emerged to discover this dad who actually parented. somehow in my misery we bonded. just a little. and i did go to the hospital where mom met us and held my hand as the iv fluids coursed through.

she was the mom after all.

she apologised for making me take the thera-flu. and followed up that dad shouldn't have had me take all of it. dad went back to his bachelor pad and i home with mom to my brother and the world spun.

but those 3 or 4 days with dad, sick, were huge. i couldn't put it in his obit, but i sure did want to list it alongside his college degree... "cared for daughter all by himself when she was throwing up green".

scratch that

i'm really happy we never went with caleb and madeline now that i've had time to use them. now to work on william xavier, winston xavier or ___. i keep waiting for the perfect name we never gave the youngest to occur to me so i can work it over in this blog, too. hence owen before although it belongs to a few special kids in our existing circle.

i really loved joshua. maybe i go with that.

thanks to vern the kids have started calling me 'mambo'. as in 'hey, mambo! mambo italiano...!' nice. i never minded 'mamacita'. which is probably why they're now so hooked on changing it.

this is why i do not seek a following. this post has no relevance to anyone but the people i live with. how the wife worked out her crazy woulda-shoulda notions regarding baby names...

buttons

i told my girlfriend not 3 months ago that i had yet to experience the pull and slip into blogland. hm. i think i'm now looking up at the grassy knoll on which i made that statement. grassy knoll. it's really the bathroom i began cleaning before the laptop and i sat down to nurse...

there are these little buttons, you see. buttons with cherub faces. beautiful babes. sick. deceased. loved.

i guess i had always assumed the blogosphere was full of ___. well. stuff that would make me want to take my eyeballs out and wash them. but here i am ignoring the side of my husband waiting in bed because my eyes have spied yet another joyful praise beaming from the depths of pain and grief and confusion and bone-tired.

i honestly never expected to find such wealth of testimony to God's peace. everywhere i turn. praise. peace. joy. faith. Him.

o loke to ote opples ond bononos

i'm having a hard time lately finding a good bite of banana, and today considered the hard facts that maybe i just do not like them anymore. it's one thing - those proud moments when you report to your 88 year old grandmother "i like tomatoes now!", but quite another when a tried and true and beloved breakfast companion seems to be slipping away from you. i'm almost afraid to try my grandfather's grapefruit and guava juice. afraid that i'll like it. i will have then fully turned some sort of corner separating who i am with who i was. though. those little grapefruit sporks are sure cute.

brag on your kid

i passed up a carnival last week for moms to brag with wild abandon on their offspring. this method versus the art of subtle implication most of us tend to use. the purpose of this carnival was to focus on the good if you've felt swept up by the less than pleasant bits of parenting. even so, i find plenty of parents are skilled at back-handed bragging on themselves and their children during tales of ornery, stubborn and boundary-testing.

on that day my daughter opened the child-proof cap of our flintstone vitamins and, knowing she was about to be stormed, grabbed as many freds and wilmas and barneys as she could in her little fist. and then realized her fisted score was trapped, fist and all, inside the bottle. it took some cajoling and quite a few tears to get maddy's hand out of the bottle. playing out another of aesop's fables which was what made the whole thing so amusing to me.

i laughed to myself what part of that a person would brag up for the carnival. in the hands of the right parent...

we have friends whose roughly 2.5 yr old once spent a few minutes eyeing the cookie jar on top of the counter before getting a piece of paper and sliding it under the jar until the paper became wedged firmly underneath. then. he pulled.

now that's something to brag on. same as the sweet little girl the today show featured once who was reading at 18 months.

there isn't really much our kids do that other kids their age are not. or simply haven't had the opportunity to try. or been caught doing. we just do not come up with the fun nicknames like "teeny houdini". the art is more in the parent than the child. turning whatever that child did into something so uber-spectacular. doesn't mean i'm not proud that caleb recently read 'go, dog, go' all by himself. he knows that, and that's all that matters. (versus the self-served blogging to strangers about it.) but. he also knows about that little 18 month old baby who could read circles around his 4 year old self.

it's the second shoe: 'God made you. He gave you special gifts and talents, and loves you SO much. and oh. by the way. He made everybody, and gave everybody special talents and gifts, and loves everybody SO much...'

i get a kick out of little kid stories. every child is gifted, you just have to pay attention. it's usually the brag, implied or hanging-all-out, by the parent who does that annoys me. unless the story has a large dollap of tongue-in-cheek or acknowledges that second shoe, i instantly bristle assuming the parent thinks their child is the only one who did/said/thought/strutted. i bristle so much so anymore that it alters the whole sweet story sour.

that's pretty lousy of me. and it assumes i'm always so deft at telling stories of my children without coming off like i hold a lime-light above their heads myself. i know i do not. sometimes i'm in a hurry and lucky just to get the story of how maddy scaled the oven door and climbed on top of the stove emailed before she goes at it again. let alone touch on how i know she's not the only one who can climb...

so. i set out to read all those blog posts with a smile on my face. practice makes perfect. i'd like to work on this flaw before it cripples me entirely, and - forget the random stranger's blog - my friends start to wonder what's wrong with my face whenever they start in on a tale about their smartest kid ever. or worse still, their smartest kid ever starts to wonder.

i'd like to eventually brag on myself for not being this person anymore who rolls her eyes at a blog carnival titled "brag on your kid". that would be something special.

not fair

caleb got sick before he even had a chance to dare our warnings about eating too much easter candy. this morning he was found crumpled in a ball on the floor of the bathroom. resting his head on a pile of dirty clothes left from the night before. he cannot understand why he's now being urged to lay on his bed rather than the couch. there being no tv by his bed - the only thing he can even sort of 'do'. they may as well have left him on the bathroom floor passed out in discarded jeans and undies. he's sick and cannot play and now they want to banish him away. no one cares about the sick kid.

owen is likely next to fall. he's smiley yet, so long as he's being held, and his mom's soaked. as is anything in a 2 foot radius. this spitting up seems excessive even for him.

and maddy. not only is there no room for her on the couch, but she keeps getting hollered at for pitching easter eggs in the 'basket' next to caleb. and for drinking twice now from his sippy of gatorade. wailing, looking for comfort after being reprimanded, she stepped right into owen's mess her mom was trying to get cleaned up. we won't even mention how often she's had her hands on some easter candy, only to have it taken away...

worst of all. 'barney' is on and i cannot find the remote to change the channel.

25 things about me i will not post on facebook: 8 & 9

8. i use the same old code # my two girlfriends used for things when they roomed together in college. granthillbobbyhurleybobbyhurley. it's the first thing that ever comes to mind. though i can never remember what order, and when asked for confirmation, i'm usually like, um, it's either aabb or bbaa... what's crazy is not only do i have my own number unto its own, but when it came to basketball in that era i liked christian laettner.

9. i have a weak tongue. i can never drink the hot chocolate being served at holiday events. it's also hard to share a cup with vern as he typically forgets and keeps drinking as i wait it out. by the time it's cool, it's about gone. that tid-bit is probably more about vern than me, but it does speak to why i consider my tongue to be such a handicapper. and as i think on it, probably why i'm not a big fan of soups.

can you say va-jay-jay?

i let loose caleb and maddy the bonds of nap time and turned on the tv to hear "and the erect penis goes into the vagina" even before the picture became fully lit. oprah. at 4 pm. i've never scrambled so fast to find that super-hero word girl on iptv.

it's 9 pm, little ears are in bed, and i'm taking advantage of this program's re-airing on the fancy-schmancy digital abc pt 2.

dr. berman is playing wing-man for a mother talking to her 10 yr old daughter about the mechanics of sex, the great period, and whatever else the child wants to ask. diagramarama. "but, where does the period come from?" followed with something like "i better stop wearing white pants, that could be dangerous." oh. priceless.

mine with my mother started in the car headed home from horseback riding lessons wednesday nights. mom would pull out some prop or diagram finishing up our conversations in pj's before bed. never a photo picture. but once a wooden-handled back massager and a condom. i was 8.

i asked mom just before leaving for college why she told me so much, so young, and she gasped, "you were asking!" ah, so. kids. they tend to forget the details. i thought all through my teens that mom was just a real women's libber at heart. like in college she may have burned her bras had she not actually needed them for comfort and support. no. apparently i ran out of things to say about my day at school, homework and horses 5 minutes into our 25 minute drive. i spent the following 20 minutes giving my mother hives.

and now what the doctor suggests to discuss with an older 15-16 yr old girl...

oral sex
sexual response
vibrators
self-stimulation
self-control

omilord

gayle's throwing up her skyped hands and oprah's fidgeting a time or two.

i spent a summer month or so with my aunt and uncle in indiana watching their two toddler boys. it was just before i entered the ninth grade, and i still question whether i was really old enough to be watching a 3 and 2 yr old. but there i was. feeling pretty grown-up. away from home for the first time. defining myself.

one day i walked into their guest room-turned-mine to find my aunt and uncle had left two books on the bed. the one i no longer remember, but the cover and title were equal in 70's flair to the other i do: 'the joy of sex'.

i'm still all these years later at a loss to describe my reaction. sheer thrill embedded in...terror? nothing was ever said about this inter-room loan. i kept the two books stuffed deep under the guest bed-turned-mine. meaning at night i would sometimes have to crawl underneath to retrieve them again where i would be up late pouring over the pages.

no more diagrams. these were pencil-drawn folks with faces. and skin. and in the other book? real people. and skin. some of it i found exciting, some disgusting, most of it i'm sure went over my head. all of it, i realized, just wasn't all so forbidden. or racy. these people in pencil and real were old. and i have to say. not all that attractive. i had a new found appreciation after that for the imagination clothing allows to flourish.

when i left for home, i tucked the books under the guest pillows-turned-mine, and that was that. mom filled in pieces here and there when i would ask, and i felt confident throughout high school that i need not be doing it to know about it. i questioned whether i would ever find a husband, not whether i'd know what to do with one.

i cannot imagine had someone left a vibrator on a guest-turned-my bed.

mom never even had the sex talk as a teen. she actually once suffered banana confusion. sex to her was intercourse. straight up. oral was beyond intimate. in fact she often subtly reminded me that the fun of being married (aka 'having sex') was finding all the other erogenous zones. like the ear. not in addition to, but instead of. ya know. as in 'tickle the ear, you don't need to touch anything else. he won't believe you maybe at first, but trust me... it works just as well.' (i have to say. vern's ear is not ticklish or otherwise, and when i realized that i busted out laughing wishing so badly to call up mom.) and here these middle school kids think oral is just a step after kissing and under-the-shirt. and sexting each other. and ___. and i feel an emerging case of the hives.

dr. berman makes the point that girls need to be able to learn their own sexual response, and if your girl understands her own body and can do it for herself, she's less likely look for it elsewhere. and that climax is often hard to acheive without clitoral stimulation. and that she believes every woman should have one. berman's not waving around anything obscene. i mean, it's little, and does not look male.

but wow.

but.

yeah. you can be book smart and still get caught up in the moment. not be able to recognize that moment for what it really is. not be able to separate in that moment the feeling from the person you're feeling it with. it can all be a little overwhelming. we do have our kids run through fire drills for a reason. so they can think through the emotion. so they can stay safe and make the smart decisions you hope you've guided them to.

but. whoah.

and. is it so different for boys? and do we not teach them self-control?

i'm glad i have 14 more years to think on this with vern. i can handle the great period questions. i can point out girl and boy parts on a diagram. we have somewhere 'the joy of sex' for later years. but i do not have a vibrator. manly or otherwise.

the matter of sex ed is two-pronged. i do not want my children to be having sex until they're married, or way-old in a committed relationship. way-old and married. but really, it's not up to me, the when. i want them to always have respect for and ownership over their bodies. and when they do have sex, i want it to be good. simply waiting until marriage does not guarantee the good part. mom taught me that. still. a vibrator? for my teen daughter?

oh. for now to bask in the pre-school confusion over phonics, and ponder privately if i'm really missing as much as mom was always just touching dad's ear.

hootinanny

i like 'the office', '30 rock'. i've recently discovered 'the biggest loser'. but i only watch 'lost'.

mom absorbed books. dad collected them, but it was mom who read. anything with a mystery or puzzle to solve and she was on it. and she shared. a 7 yr old, i would sit on the table as she would triangulate in the kitchen and give play-bys of the latest story she was de-tangling. we would speculate and theorize together as she kneaded bread. so wrapped up in her stories, and to this day i cannot smell bread without thinking of those moments. i was fascinated by my mother.

when applied to television, however, fascination quickly became irritation. mom would triangulate the laundry, helicoptering around what we were watching downstairs. she never had the patience to sit through something she figured out within the first 10 minutes, and would simply return with each load to see if the show had caught up to her yet. i think the only tv she watched was 'magnum, pi'. mom loved her a moustache. sometimes she'd have on old 'dr. who' or 'star trek'. she lived for perry mason and columbo. but she really just never could sit. and truth be told, her impatience was only steadied when it came to books because she could read so fast and was not above scanning the last page after gathering her theories in the first few chapters.

and then one year brought 'beauty and the beast' and mom would drop every household task and just be. and watch. and discuss. i'd probably chuckle at it now, but at the time - the on-going mystery of the people below, the romance, the weekly crime dramas. it was our show. she often said it was like a good book.

i adore 'lost'. i often say it's like one amazing novel. or series of... i can only imagine how mom would have been with it. i know she'd be the one up at 4 am yet posing theories on the boards. she'd be hosting season finale parties and calling us even before matthew to share her observations on that week's epi. the little one liners and comments would be our shared speak. she'd draw from backstories and have predicted the flash forward. she'd swoon over a shirt-less sawyer and begin meaningful discussions sparked by eko.

i really miss my mom, but most acutely so on wednesday nights.

i-o-wa!

i have an old college friend who updated her facebook status as "proud of iowa today". the supreme court took down the ban on gay marriage. i expect hell fire and brimstone will soon be following with a chorus for something like california's prop 8 to be on the table.

should it happen in 2010 or 2012, i would vote to legalize gay marriage,

and the only people i really care to know this are my children.

vern and i do not debate family or friends firmly planted in the opposite corner. we both know nothing would sway their opinions in what we'd have to say anyway. and truly, we respect their opinions. the rest we leave to the Holy Spirit. i guess we're lucky that the issue has remained on the outskirts of our little hub. by lucky, i mean this has afforded us the luxury of remaining relatively quiet without offending anyone. we're not gay. no one in our immediate family is. none of our close friends have ever come out. our kids are still babies. discussions have always been hypothetical and non-personal and while we ask questions, we rarely submit rebuttals. we once listened to loved ones expressing their views on homosexuality as sin and afterwards, when vern carried me into their powder room, whispered, "do you agree?" "nah."

and so was life before children. easy. non-confrontational. we're all too soon realizing that our children's impressions of the world are being formed now, and everyone around here is a lot louder than their parents. unless we're going to make a family affair of taking mom to the bathroom, vern and i need to speak. just so our kids know where we stand, and why.

not to mention the awkward round-table discussion of "what your parents thought about homosexuality" should an angry glare and thrown box of kleenex prove mutually fatal any time soon. it haunts me to think our children might never really know, that our family and friends might never reach a true consensus.

which of course means letting our family and friends hear us - the ones who would strongly disagree and probably shake their heads a time or two. the ones who would be, who is now, a part of the community raising our children.

it'd be easy enough to simply list it out in a facebook note. i mean, that'd get it out there. that's just not me. i did, however, with these thoughts in tow, remark on another dear friend's status updated "disgusted with the iowa supreme court" with "i'm happy we can agree to disagree on this one..." a response from another one of his friends followed:

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 - "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

Leviticus 18:22 - "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable."

Leviticus 20:13 - "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

Romans 1:26-27 - "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."

and then:

And for the non-christian gay-rights lovers, think about this; If all society bought into the gay love ideal, how long would society last? No offspring would be created (as intended) from the love of two men or two women. Society wouldn't decline, it would cease to exist. How could this scenario possibly work indefinitely? Haven't seen too many bulls screwing bulls or sow pigs mating with other sows in the countryside lately either so the other animals among us must have already figured out there is no fruit to gay love, when will we?

my face flushed and then i kind of giggled. and while i refuse to debate this, especially on my friend's wall, i think i will here. later. for now, i want to share what my dear husband was willing to reply:

I've seen some bull-on-bull action.

and so. we've got a lot of practice and red faces ahead of us. as long as we stay true to ourselves, our own discourse and brand of humor. i think we can find a way to quietly voice ourselves, just loud enough for our children to hear without disrespecting our loved ones. and then. i hope. having heard us, they will branch off and find their own voice.

i really do not have any expectations for what they believe, so long as they first commit themselves to listening.