parenting

Three years. Can it possibly be true? Have you really been here with us for three whole years already? Was it really three years ago today that my heart felt whole at the sight of you, the smell of you, the sound of your beautiful cry, the feel of your tiny body held tight to my chest? Was it really three years ago today that my heart just as quickly broke again knowing that a piece itself was no longer safely cocooned within the confines of me?

Three years. One thousand ninety four days. Twenty six thousand two hundred and fifty six hours. An impossibly long time. But as much as my mind can’t quite grasp that number, you with your impossibly clever mind and your impossibly tall and ever-growing body, so vastly different yet completely reminiscent of that tiny squalling baby of three year ago, you are the proof of time’s passage.

Three years. As we went through the motions of our day, I couldn’t help but look at the clock and recollect what we had been doing three years ago that moment. My water broke right about now. We were scarfing down Burger King before heading to the hospital right about now. They started pitocin right around now. The pain started to get pretty bad right about now. I couldn’t stand it any more right about now. I laid eyes on you for the very first time right about now. And from there, our lives were forever changed for the better. The world seemed to become a happier and more hopeful place for having you in it. The universe somehow more…right.

Three years. Your dad and I reminisced tonight about that first sleepless night with you. Sleepless because you arrived so late in the evening that after all the hubbub died down, it was well past bedtime for us all. Sleepless because your every movement, every whimper, every cry pierced me to my very core. Sleepless because even while you rested quietly, I was afraid to let my guard down because I knew you might need us at any moment. Sleepless because I could not pull my eyes away from you and because I wanted to hold your delicate little body close to me forever. As I held you this evening in our nightly cuddle before bedtime, I felt your legs drape far over my lap, and your head resting comfortably above my shoulder. I wondered how it was that three years later, it still felt like you fit into my arms perfectly. You and I talked quietly about your day, about birthdays, about cake and candles. You reminded me that you had to turn the cake plate at your party so that you could get close enough to the candle to blow it out. I told you that I thought that was a very clever move rather than blowing hard over the entire cake to reach the candle on the other side. Then we both grew quiet and in an unusual move, you turned your head and body so that you could look straight at me. Your thumb positioned comfortably in your mouth. Your pinkie tracing my nose and cheek. Your eyes searching my face. I smiled and watched you for a long time, marveling that for you, my face can bring comfort and reassurance the same way my own mom’s familiar lines do for me. And as it always has, I was caught off guard by the fact that I’m someone’s mama. Your mama. And the weight of that role felt strangely terrifying and comfortable all at the same time.

Three years. I wish I could explain it, that feeling I get when I see you, when I think of you. It’s the same feeling I got in that moment when I first realized I was pregnant. It’s the same feeling I got when I first saw you. It’s the same feeling I still get every day when we play, and talk, and laugh. It catches in my throat. It fills my chest until I feel like I might never be able to draw another breath. And then the pressure releases in a flood of happiness, of love. I will never get used to it, and I will never tire of it.

Three years. This most recent year has been amazing for you. You’ve grown dramatically, and you look like such a big girl now. You’re simply beautiful in your generous heart; your witty, charming personality; and your lovely smile. Even your saddest faces are somehow crushingly beautiful. You have continued to learn so much, to demonstrate an amazing faculty with language, to show a love of books that rivals my own, to rise to the new challenge of learning numbers in addition to letters. You’ve coped with losing a best friend and a close auntie and uncle to a move. You’ve charmed new friends, family, and total strangers alike over the year. You traveled all over the country like an old pro. You danced your heart out at a wedding. You were the source of my strength at my brother’s funeral. You’ve endured the bumps and bruises of bravely trying out your new-found physical abilities. You’ve learned to pedal a tricycle. You’ve learned that the Madeline cookies at Starbuck’s are really good, and you’ve learned the joy of collecting a substantial Halloween stash. Your imagination has blossomed, and you’ve learned how fun it is to pretend to be different people and to do different things. Every day you’ve wanted to learn, and more and more you beg me to teach you all kinds of new things. You’ve laughed hard, and you’ve cried hard. You’ve endured good days and bad, and you’ve been resilient and strong throughout.

Three years. I’m certain that soon I’ll find myself writing on the occasion of your fourth birthday, and tenth birthday, and sweet sixteenth birthday. I’ll wonder how it went by so quickly, how you grew up so fast. But I plan to savor the time we have, and I can’t wait to see what these next years will hold for you. Thank you for three precious years of joy, laughter, tears, heartache, and love like I’ve never known before.

My love forever and always,
Mama

Scene: Driving home yesterday afternoon with my nearly 3-year old, passing many schoolbuses on the road

OneShoeOff: Look at all the schoolbuses, honey!
Wee Girl: They’re taking the kids to school!
OSO: Well, probably not. They’re probably taking the kids home from school.
WG: Why are they taking the kids home from school?
OSO: Because the kids are going home to see their mommies and daddies.
WG: Why do the kids want to go home to see their mommies and daddies? (Yes, my friends, we have entered the Why Stage with zeal!)
OSO: Well, don’t you want to go home to see your mommy and daddy?
WG: No.
OSO: Uh…
WG: You’re right here in the car with me and daddy’s not at home.
OSO: Oooohhh. Right. That makes perfect sense. Thank you for clarifying, oh wise one.

Fin

Man, that brain of hers is ALWAYS working. Unlike mine which is currently atrophying in the recesses of my skull. Which means it’s reasonable to assume she should be smarter than me in approximately 6 months. And believe me, there’s no shame in being outsmarted by a 3-year old! None at all! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go finish reading the Encyclopedia Britannica before she does.

She played me like a fiddle. My precocious, clever toddler daughter has figured out how to lay on the guilt like an expert, although I’m sure her intent wasn’t to hurt, and I’m not even sure she knows she did it. Not just with sad puppy eyes and crocodile tears, but with words that stabbed like so many arrows STRAIGHT to the heart. And believe me, I suffer from my fair share of maternal guilt, so this poses a new! exciting! fun! parenting challenge.

She had been having trouble listening today, lots of touching things I had repeatedly asked her to leave alone, lots of ignoring my requests, just testing the boundaries again. When do they stop doing that? 25? 30? I was already quite cross with her when my potty-trained child then had an accident on the floor of the bathroom, just shy of 2 feet from the potty where she had been playing for several minutes with her tub toys. File this under “Things You Shouldn’t Do as a Parent,” but I got frustrated and really upset and raised my voice. I know, I know, not good. Especially because when I got upset, she got upset, and my goal here isn’t to give my kid a complex about the potty. I asked her to stand there, wet, while I cleaned up. I told her that if she couldn’t use the potty, she needed to wear a diaper (which she HATES) because peeing on the floor isn’t okay. I told her that kids who can’t use the potty can’t do lots of fun things like go to school; this didn’t make her happy. I cleaned her up, put a diaper on her, which also made her unhappy, and I explained that she could pee and poop in the diaper, which she vehemently did not want to do. Clearly I am NOT any kind of parenting genius. After much back and forth about the diaper issue, she insisted that she didn’t want to pee in her diaper, she wanted to pee in the potty. I took her back to the potty, where she did pee just a bit more. When she was wiped and dressed again, she was practically giddy with excitement.

“I peed in the potty ALL BY MYSELF.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I’m SO happy.”

“I’m very glad you’re happy.”

“Mama, are YOU happy?”

Uh oh… “Honey, I’m not happy that you peed on the floor, but I’m glad you told me you had to go potty again.”

Please note that at this point, I’m already feeling pretty rotten about how I handled the situation and strategizing about how not to be an asshole the next time it happens.

In her most sacchariney sweet voice she follows up with this: “Mama, I just want to make you happy.”

If the coroner asks, tell him I died of guilt.

But is she done? No. Nyet. Nein. “Mama, when I say ‘I love you,’ it makes you happy. Mama, I love you.”

So, yeah, ouch. She’s totally got me pegged, and what can I do at this point but have a long conversation with her about how lots of things make mama happy like when she’s a good listener, and when she’s kind to her friends, and when she shares her toys, and yes, of course when she says ‘I love you.’ Then we follow that up with a conversation about how it’s okay for people to get sad and angry, including her and all her favorite people in the world, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t love each other. Then we talk about how mama loves her all the time, even when she’s not a good listener, or when she has accidents, or when she doesn’t share. Then we talk some more about how we’ll work together to make sure she continues to use the potty like a big girl, and mama is really sorry she raised her voice. Hopefully this was a reasonably good save after a decidedly lame parenting decision. She, of course, seemed perfectly fine, but I have to be grateful that kids are smart and resilient and that I don’t always have my head shoved halfway up my ass.

Scene: Doing somersaults in Sweet Girl’s room today

SG: I’m going to be a somersault.
One Shoe: You mean you’re going to do a somersault?
SG: No. I’m going to BE a somersault. And you’re going to be a somerpepper.

I ADORE how her mind works.

My daughter has entered week 5 of Operation Whine Incessantly Until Mama Sticks Forks In Her Ears And Twists Them Repeatedly. I don’t know why she’s doing it. Perhaps that last molar that broke the skin some weeks ago is still causing her grief. Perhaps she’s testing the boundaries. Again. And again and again and again. Perhaps she’s just feeling discombobulated. All I know is that it’s making everyone in our family miserable. Except for the cats. Because one of the cats is always miserable, and the other one has popcorn for brains and can’t be made miserable even when you hogtie her so that she stops chasing random small objects around the house so we can all get some damn sleep already. Not that I would ever hogtie my cat. Because I don’t actually know how to hogtie anything. If you happen to know would you mind leaving detailed instructions in the comments? I mean, just for hypothetical situations, of course.

So back to my kid, who will shortly be enrolled in yodeling instruction. She’s miserable; we’re miserable; everyone’s on edge, and we’ve all spent way more time tantruming than what is normal and natural. Especially me. Since according to Doctors Without Licenses, or some other such reputable establishment, the norm for someone pushing 30 is roughly two throw-yourself-to-the-floor-and-kick-and-cry-until-someone-gives-you-your-way tantrums per day, right? And each morning we start out happy and optimistic and great until whine after whine after whine my patience level plummets into nonexistence and we fall into an awful cycle of her whining and falling to pieces and me losing my shit in a totally undignified manner which only causes her to get more upset. Which then makes me feel guilty. None of you could POSSIBLY relate to this, right?

After all this time as her mama, I KNOW that she responds better to frustrating situations when I make light of them and work to get a smile out of her rather than get frustrated and annoyed. I KNOW that if I do this, she’ll usually snap out of it, and we’ll all just go along our merry way. And under the best circumstances, I can hold it together like that for days on end, even if she’s having an especially long rough patch. But after several weeks of this and the added good times of some PMS to boot, I fail at doing what I know will diffuse the situation and what I know is best for all of us. Can I just tell you what a hard thing that is to say? Especially out here in the big wide open internet where anybody might see it and, heaven forbid, judge me for it? But there it is, in all its truth. I fail at acting in ways that are the most beneficial for my family sometimes. We all do, but oh, how I hate that. I hate to fail at anything, let alone failing to give my daughter room to have bad days without mama getting all freaked out, too. And really, although I don’t think I’m a terrible parent, I do think there are parenting skills I can definitely work on. For my daughter’s sake, for my own sake, for our family’s sake.

Let me tell you what I’m thinking. When I first started a job at a local hospital some years ago, I made myself a set of notecards on which I wrote down critical information for my job: elevator passcodes, what types of patients (oncology, med-surg, OB-GYN, etc.) were housed in which wings, doctors’ names and pager numbers, nurses who could make my life hell, all kinds of random stuff. I kept those notecards, held together with a metal binder ring, with me in my lab coat pocket AT ALL TIMES. And I used them constantly until one day I realized that everything on those cards had become second nature to me. Of course I would never suggest that motherhood could be so simply summed up on a set of cards, but there are things I forget, things I need to be reminded to do. So I’m making myself a set of cards to keep with me as we go about our day. Reminders of things we can do when we get bored. Activities we can do around the house when it’s crappy outside. Reminders about how best to handle stressful situations with her. Reminders about things I want to teach her and things I think she needs to know. Does it seem a little neurotic to do this? Maybe. Does it feel necessary for me to make the effort? Absolutely. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Some of my most treasured memories from this stage of my sweet girl’s life will be of our nightly bedtime ritual. Each night, after she’s snug in her jammies, with all her lovies tucked into her arms, and her daddy has kissed her good night, she and I snuggle together on the rocking chair in her room. We talk about our day and all the things we did. We talk about whether it was a good day, or whether we hope tomorrow will be better. We talk about our plans for the days ahead and the people we’ll see. Or sometimes, we just sit quietly in each other’s company and enjoy the warmth of blankets and lovies and one another. It always ends the day on a positive note, no matter how badly things have gone, and I hope that we can continue this tradition in some form for a good long while.

Anyways, as we were snuggling tonight, she asked me to sing a song…

“Which song would you like me to sing?”

“The rainbow song, please.”

“Okay. The rainbow song it is.”

After finishing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the room grows quiet. Then, a tiny whisper, “Mommy?”

“Yes, my sweet?”

“I like you.”

“I like you, too, love. I like you very, very much.”