Tag Archives: Parenting

Can’t even imagine….

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When you are a parent of young children, you can’t even imagine what it would be like to be called and told that there was a tragedy at your child’s school.  I have a hard time figuring out where to put the Connecticut shooting in my brain….and my heart doesn’t even want to begin to touch it yet.

Last night Micah had one of those difficult nights in which he refused to follow anything I asked.  It started escalating into a series of his “swear” words….”you’re an idiot; you’re stupid;….” all aimed at me.  I kept trying to remain calm and asking him to come upstairs to bed, starting to layer on consequences as the battle continued.  We had reached no Mommy-sitting-in-bed-with-you, no TV times 3 days, no Mommy iPhone when you wake up at 6am, and had just moved to “you-will-not-sleep-in-bed-with-me-tonight when you come crawling over around midnight.”  I stood yelling at him that he was not going to treat me like that – calling me names….for I am his parent (despite the fact that I was so clearly not acting like a very mature adult at the time).  (Sometimes it’s hard for me to figure out where the “line” is ….do you let them be rude or do you draw some strong expectations? Is this the time for the lesson or is it better to wait for another time?)

He finally slinked into bed.  I sat in the hallway rather than lying beside him with my arm around him.  And yet, I didn’t really feel justified in my punishment, sitting there on the hard wood floor as he tucked himself in.  He quickly fell asleep and it was hours before I did….I lay in bed last night feeling the sadness of the recent deaths of so many young children wash over me.  Crying that I had just yelled at my own 6-year-old….as tender and precious as he is (much of the time)….and realized that I was listening for every sound that might say that he was waking up and was coming to my room….so that I could say “I forgive you and I’m sorry for yelling at you” and wrap him into my arms.

And that’s what I did at 11:45 at night – sat up on the side of the bed and held his face and said, “I’m sorry.  I love you.”  He climbed in and slept in such a way that my back was terribly sore in the morning and yet I was so glad that he was there.  Knowing we don’t remember much in the middle of the night, I repeated my words in the morning with a hug.  He said something about whose fault it was….and then bounded out of the room asking “what does fault mean?”

What a world these kids have to figure out.  Just a few days ago Micah asked “what does love mean?”  How do I explain these concepts to the young child….. I have not talked to any of the boys about Connecticut.  We did talk about the death at the Pittsburgh Zoo last month, because that is near to us.  But the killing of young children would just be such a big burden to them. How would I explain that?  So the grief for the families, I hold in my heart.  And I hold within me the grief for the children who survived that terrible experience.

Tonight I read the words of a Buddhist monk who said, “A five-year-old child is always vulnerable, fragile and he or she can get hurt very easily, so I have to handle a five-year-old child in a very gentle way. A five-year-old child as a flower get hurt and the wound will stay for a long time. And most of us have been five year old and the inner child in us is still alive. And the little child in us, in you all, may still have wounds within.” (Brother Thay)

So I wonder about those children in Connecticut.  And I wonder how to make sure I do not wound my child with my words or my action.  And I wonder how I can make a difference in the world to protect children.  And I thought to myself last night that every night when I talk to the boys as they fall asleep, that I would tell them of at least one thing that I loved about them that day.  (Tonight I told Micah that I loved seeing how he was learning to wrestle “gently” – that he was taking care not to hurt Noah and Ryan while they bounced around on the floor, body slamming each other and sitting on each other.  If you know our house, this is a huge accomplishment and I hope it will last longer than one day!)

An elderly man stopped me on my way out of a coffee shop yesterday after Micah’s basketball game.  He wanted to tell me that Micah had such a beautiful face and it made him think of all those kids who were hurt.  And he wanted to find ways to make a difference – in fact, he was going to call the principal of a school that had recently just let him walk right in to “drop off a package”!!  And, he thanked me for doing so well with parenting Micah.  He probably doesn’t know how much those words touched me.  I may slip.  I may fall into the abyss of yelling at my boys.  I will make tons of mistakes in parenting.  But I am committed to every day being the best parent I can be in loving and protecting my boys and praying that God will fill in when I fall short….again this morning…and I know again tomorrow.

“Awesome” Gifts

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Words of Micah: “I like it when adults share their things with me. It makes me feel awesome.”  These words struck me and I pondered them over the course of the weekend.

Saturday morning I was trying to tuck up some things for the crisis nursery work before we headed out of town.  Micah was so eager to get into the car that he kept coming in and out of my office.  Suddenly, he gasped when he saw a small digital camera in a box.  “Will you let me use this camera?” he asked hopefully.  “Why, sure,” I replied (and then of course thought about the fact that Christmas is just weeks away and wouldn’t it be great if I had thought of giving it to him for Christmas!).

His excitement of being able to share in the grown-up world with “grown-up things” runs through my mind.  We are in the season of giving as we enter the month of December and I always work so hard trying to find “great” gifts for people because it’s so much fun to see their joy.  What it is, though, is that I feel good when I make someone else feel good…..when I give, and someone feels “awesome” because of that.  How wonderful to be able to do that for a child.

So this past weekend, I gave the boys the “gift” of tradition.  Since at least 1996, I have driven to a small town east of Cleveland to visit one of my best friends from college.  Her best friend from high school joins us in making Christmas cookies (2260 cookies this year!).  Years later, the group that gathers has grown to between 25 and 30 people and many of them are our children.  It’s such a great day for the boys.  They run around

Young baker

Young baker

and play with the other children.  They taste-test triple chocolate cookies, hazelnut shortbread, coconut pyramids, decorated sugar cookies, chocolate crinkles and chocolate espresso cookies, peanut butter blossums, thumbprints, kolaches, and so many more (probably the only day of the year that I’m not constantly saying “no more treats!”).  They stay up as late as their bodies can survive and then wake up as early as possible the next morning to continue to marvel in the abundance of new-to-them toys!  They love this day….and it is my gift to them to create such traditions.IMG_2141

Naturally, there are so many gifts that I give to my boys – not even thinking about the upcoming swarm of Christmas presents they’ll find under the tree in two weeks.  As I trudged back upstairs with Micah just now at 11:22 pm, I realized that in agreeing to stay “just one minute” more with him as he drifted back to sleep, I was gifting him with some time (a pretty precious commodity which is not always my strong suit in gift-giving!).

There are many gifts that other people give to my boys as well – love and attention from

Thank you, Tom.

Thank you, Tom.

grandparents and other family members, care and education from their teachers and day care workers, and the gift of attention from the men at Cookie Day who wrestled with the boys, threw balls, exclaimed happily at a new skill, and rustled their hair.  I thank these men for the gift of making my boys feel special.

And there are many gifts my sons bestow upon me – slobber and snot on my work clothes first thing in the morning, painful cheek from being accidentally whacked across the face, and of course, the favorite gifts of bodily fluids spewing onto floors and carpets in the most unexpectant and triumphant of fashion.

The best gift, though, came from one particular woman…. Miss Hannah …. who carried each boy in her heart and her womb for 9 months and then walked away so that they would experience a new life in my heart.  As I contemplate this most wondrous of gifts, I consider the greatest gift of all – the reason we celebrate this time of year, the reason we give so many gifts, the reason we live at all – the newborn in the manger.

Draining, demanding dependents

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That’s the phrase I texted to a friend yesterday.  Of course, I was telling her that I have 3 of them….but it’s very important to not getfor (as Noah calls it) that there are actually 5 boys in this household….none of whom can pour their own glass of milk, completely toilet themselves or get a bath, or really even get dressed without either hands-on work or mental exhaustion in reminding them to at least put underwear on!

It’s been an exhausting weekend and it’s shocking to realize that the house looks just as trashed Sunday evening as it did Friday evening, despite the fact that we were home all weekend and actually did some cleaning.

I had to look back in some older messages to find a short paragraph that I sometimes send to new parents….just as a way to get them thinking about how life will change with a new baby:

Did you know that – – A typical baby needs to be fed every 2 or so hours for about 15-25 minutes each time and about 8 times a day. – If you mix formula, that takes about 20 minutes of your time each day. – Changing a diaper will take approximately ten minutes 8-10 times a day. – Extra laundry, cleaning or shopping may take an extra 2-3 hours a day. – Playtime and cuddling the baby should be done 15-25 minutes at a time a minimum of 4-6 times a day.  Total time required: 8 hours and 40 minutes to 12 hrs and 40 minutes a day!

That’s for a baby!  This is how our “typical day” falls….

– a typical boy age 1-6 needs to be fed every 3 or so hours for about 20 minutes each time and about 5 times a day; but it takes an additional 15 minutes to sop up the spilled water (Noah!!), pick up the flying chicken nuggets (Micah!!), and mop up the overturned cereal bowl again (Steven!!) at least 2-3 times a day = 2 hours and 10 minutes

– changing a diaper of a squirming fussing 18 month old will take at least 5 minutes, chasing them around the house to get the clothes back on, another 5 minutes, for 50 minutes a day x 2 diaper-clad bottoms (the 2-yr-old isn’t much easier) = 1 hr, 40 minutes

– laundry of 5 boys, partially folding, sorting and stacking clean clothes onto the back of the couch, refolding and restacking and resorting after Micah falls onto the couch in his Immaculate Reception imitation football catch, lugging clothes upstairs into dressers, washing towels and towels and towels = 2 hours a day

– Shopping for food, gallons of milk, clothes, shoes, toys, milk, coats, diapers, wipes, more diapers, more baby wipes, more milk, more food, back for bananas, gallons of milk (“why in the world did you only buy ONE gallon of blue-top milk?!!?) = average 1 hr a day

– And then there’s Steven…..in one day, he removed his diaper at nap time and woke up distressed by being covered in “poop” (I mean, who wouldn’t be?) = 30 minutes bath (well, 60 minutes by the time all the boys decided they needed one too at 2:30 pm) and 45 minutes laundry and wipe up; emptying of a practically full box of cereal onto the floor (awesome gravity effect) = 15 minutes of cleaning; upending a mug of hot chocolate splashing across the kitchen floor = 15 minutes; dumping over a bowl of cereal = 15 minutes…. 2 hours and 30 minutes of completely unproductive cleaning and close behind this tornado is little Seth emptying the papers from the recycling bin, removing Tupperware from the drawer, and shredding bits of papers.

Right – and now we have to add in “play” with the boys?  Let’s see, 2152 Lego pieces emptied across the floor, a diaper toss battle with Pampers flying, paper airplanes arching through the air, lightsabers dropped after battle (and guaranteed to make you slip and break your neck), Kleenex plucked from the boxes and dropped throughout the house (used? unused?), books wildly tossed off the shelves….I could go on…and on….

My total was at 10 hours before getting to the “play” and the aftermath of it.  If my sister and I sit down for 5 minutes we start to get antsy….knowing that someone is destroying something somewhere.  So from 5:56 (first child up) to 9:17 (last child down), there is absolutely no letting your guard down.

But they sure do look like angels when they’re all asleep!

Never…and No, I won’t

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“Well, acknowledging your ‘issues’ is 3/4ths of the way there,” a good friend recently said over a very nice margarita and nachos supreme.  And I kind of wanted to ask – if I’m at 75%, is that good enough or do I have to actually try to go for 100%….ie, do I have to work on improving myself?

I was explaining to my friend the difficulties that I sometimes have with Micah as he continually tries to test the limits I set.  I joked that I had just picked up another book, this one called “Try and Make Me,” and it described us perfectly in the first 5 pages.  It also suggested rather firmly that the fault of all power struggles lies solely in me, the adult.  Yes….I roll my eyes, I know.

So, I am starting to feel a little confident that I have found a book that understands my problem, and on Thursday as we are all getting ready for school/work/day care, Micah is throwing a ball at the chandelier (right after being reprimanded and having the first ball removed from his hands).  I turn to my sister and say “he’s baiting me.  Yep, that’s what the book says – he’s baiting me.”  “So,” she replies, “what does it say to do about it?”  I shake my head, “no clue, haven’t gotten there yet, but he’s baiting me!”

Then this morning, the woman working at the community center where Micah plays basketball offers that her life was completely changed around by the “1-2-3 Magic” system by Thomas Phalen.  Good, I think, another book for me to read….

A few months ago, I joked with a co-worker that the only “literature” I read now is parenting books.  He surprised me when he said, “you know, I really admire that.  I mean, if I want to become an expert at something, I read about it.  I would imagine that if you want to become good at parenting, it’s good to read about it.”  I actually had never thought about that.  Somehow I expected parenting to be as easy and natural as babysitting – feed them, rock them, play with them, viola! – return them to the parents!

But no….not that easy.  Now I feed and rock and play and worry about whether their school/day care is right for them?  Whether Seth’s hair will grow back quickly as he has no bangs after that haircut yesterday?  Whether they will grow up to be independent, ethical, hard-working young men?  Whether they will stay as beautiful (ahem, handsome) as they are now.  So, now I read books:

Wild Things, the Art of Raising Boys – loved it

Love and Logic – couldn’t really get into it

The Explosive Child – described Micah and our difficulty perfectly, but the solution – not so helpful

The Help – great book

The Irresistible Henry House – thought I’d love it, never finished it

Goodnight Moon – a classic

The Very Cranky Bear – my favorite

Here’s what it boils down to.  My issues.  There are two parts of my personality that I struggle with – my need for control and the desire to be right.  Those two qualities are deep-seated and highly ingrained features of me.  And I’ve come far because of them (elementary education degree, developmental psychology doctorate, pediatrician – driven by my ability to control my learning and my need to be right).  However, these two qualities are at the root of much of my parenting difficulties.

Guess what?  You can’t actually control a child – they are their own unique human beings with their own will (and, not surprisingly, their own desire for control!).  My job is to help shape that will, but I can’t control it.  And when it comes to parenting, I am not nearly as right as I sure would like to be and that frustrates me.  So when Micah and I are escalating into one of our classic power struggles, it is actually me grappling with my own self and nature and refusing to give in or be perceived as being “wrong.”  Heavy stuff.

So….this is where I am right now – at 75% – and halfway through one book with two more in my Amazon cart….and I am open to suggestions.

————————- A  brief update to last week’s post ———————–

I called the caseworker supervisor on Monday to say that the visit almost never took place as the mother’s name was not on the list again.  He said, “Well, that’s her responsibility to make sure she’s on the list.”  I replied, “She didn’t even know a visit was happening that day.”  To this, he became quite agitated – saying that the mother’s lawyer had thrown a dramatic fit at the court hearing a week prior that CYF was ignoring the mother’s rights and treating her poorly and that the mother was so upset about not having a visit.  And now we’re all wondering how much of this craziness is being driven by the lawyer….rather than the mother….and is the lawyer even talking to the birthmother.  Who needs fiction?  Life is crazy enough!  So birthmother will be released in about two weeks and we’ll see what happens next.

Voice….less

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“Didn’t you miss me just a little, teeny, tiny bit?” I asked Micah when he first woke up.  “Nope,” he replied, “I was having too much fun.”  “Just a little?!?!?”  I tried consoling myself that this was good.  Clearly he wasn’t miserable that I was gone for 3 days.  Clearly he had a good time with grandma and Aunt Kathy, but seriously, can’t you miss me just a tad.

Well, I missed the boys.  I was away for 3 days at the Prevent Child Abuse – America national conference and can’t even remember the last time I was away, not even for a day, much less three.  It was the first time for Seth who is almost 18 months, so he had quite a lot to say about it in his body language.  Noah, however, gave me the sweetest tightest hug when I woke him up in the morning after returning home late Sunday night.

I confess, it was nice to have some time away – without noise, without 68 pounds of deadweight in the bed beside me, without the demands of feeding hungry mouths or giving baths or getting them to bed “on time.”  I also had a visceral reaction to seeing families in the airport carrying babies in front packs and remember getting back from Disney World last year and being so thankful not to have the weight of a baby constantly strapped to my body almost 24/7.

But I missed them and I missed having a physical presence in their day and knowing what they were doing.  It’s not the same to listen to them on the phone (the 6 year old doesn’t really want to talk, the 3 year old just repeats himself, and the one-yr-old just stares at the phone).  I missed sharing in all their activities and joys (like winning the soccer game again – still undefeated!).  I missed interpreting their world for them as they moved through it.  I missed being their voice.

I’ve been contemplating that concept today – being a voice.  My kids clearly have a “voice” but they really don’t know how, much less when, to use it.  And often they use it at decibels I wish they wouldn’t or to talk about subjects I really wish they wouldn’t.  But they don’t really have a voice in their world and in their community.  For the most part, that is funneled through me – their mother and protector.

Yet, as I think about the project I am working on – to develop a crisis nursery (a safe place for temporary care of young children when their families hit crisis) – I realize that the real reason we need this is because the very little children in our world and in our city do not have a voice.

My safe, secure, fun-loving boys do not have a voice….and so too the child who has been hurt at some time in his life or has seen one of his parents hurt.  And the child laying in the hospital bed being treated for multiple injuries has no voice.  And the little boy hungry and dirty and cold….alone in his house…. has no voice.  And the teen “graduating” from the foster care system and moving into a world all on her own where she might one day get married and have no one to walk her down the aisle has no voice.  And the four-year-old who has moved from one house to another and one apartment to another until he ends up in a cold dark homeless shelter has no voice.  And the girl taken from her family and ravaged by the human trafficking nightmare that is upon us has no voice.

It is we who give voice to our children.  It is we who need to speak up and speak out for them.  It is we who need to demand a change for the sake of our children’s hearts.

Be the voice.  Be the change.  As often as you can speak.

“Conditioning our children”

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“Green and green” is my mantra to Micah now as I drop him off at kindergarten.  They are using the “stoplight” system – green is good, yellow is your warning, red is trouble.  At the end of the day, the teacher puts a “face” (smiling green, flat-lined yellow, frowning red) on a sheet of paper that comes home in the folder.  I pick up Micah and look at the sheet every day and we talk about the day.

Last week was rough….On the previous Friday, Micah was yellow for school and his after-school teacher wanted to “talk to me” (so far, I’ve never been excited to have a teacher want to talk to me….maybe they need to start making up some good stuff, because I’m starting to get Pavlovian conditioned to not want to walk into the after school building to pick up Micah!).

Anyway, on Friday he was yellow and yellow.  I said “aw, that’s too bad, Micah.  I did plan to take you for a surprise treat at Rita’s if you were green and green.” He sobbed…literally from the bottom of his heart sobbed all the way to the daycare center to pick up the brothers.  He wasn’t upset about the treat – he was upset that I didn’t tell him about the “reward” ahead of time.  He thought it wasn’t fair to “surprise” him like that.  I thought as I drove along – all those years of training, 7 years of grad school in psychology learning that “variable-ratio schedule of positive reinforcement in operant conditioning” is best (ie, “Variable-ratio schedules occur when a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses. This schedule creates a high steady rate of responding.” http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/schedules.htm) – all for naught.  My son is tearfully telling me that psychology doesn’t work for him!

So now we’re back to “green and green, Micah, green and green….and I’ll take you to Rita’s.” Monday – yellow and yellow.  I spend a long time talking to the afterschool teacher about Micah being a “boy boy” and that after 5 hours of academics in kindergarten, the only thing he wants to do in afterschool is play (worksheets and more worksheets and sitting at a table with his head down along with the rest of the class is not really what he wants to be doing).  Yes, I agree that he needs to listen to his teachers, but I’d like to know that his teachers are also striving to match a 5 or 6-year-old’s developmental stage.

Tuesday – yellow and yellow.

Wednesday – red….hmmm, apparently Micah has decided to become the class clown with “potty words.”  Yes, Mr. M., I do inform Micah that those words are inappropriate (I think at the same time about Micah and Ryan sitting at the dining room table every night cracking each other up with pee and poop stories….).  You know, Mr. M., I do think he’s doing it for (ahem) positive reinforcement, I mean, there wouldn’t happen to be a group of boys sitting around him cracking up, would there?  Right.  (Psychology at work.)

Thursday – yellow and green…progress.

Friday – green and green!  Wahoo – Rita’s!!  We stop.  We get an ice cream cone for

This machine is outside our local fire station!

him, a guava ice for me.  We’re so happy.  He eats half and throws it away – it’s too cold for ice cream he informs me as we walk through the farmer’s market across the street.  Kettle corn – now that’s what we need.

So, are you going to get Pepsi or Coke out of this machine?  How do we match our expectations for our kids with the reality of how they function?

Smitten by a Kindergartener

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“My baby girl fills a place I didn’t even know was empty. I am positively smitten.”  (K.H.)  I love this line that I “borrowed” (with credit) from a friend in her Facebook stream.

I also love vicariously reliving the “smitten” stage of the first-born child.  There is something so wonderful and special about those magic moments.  Those moments when time stands still and you realize that you have sat on the couch for two hours listening to the uneven yet peaceful breath of your baby and your mind has been still and content.  Those moments when you stare into your baby’s face and realize you never knew love could be so powerful and so peaceful and so strong.  Those moments when you realize your life has changed forever and you’re so thankful for that.

I watched my friend cuddle her 2-year-old son on the subway during our recent trip to New York City.  Her arms wrapped around him.  Her face bent forwards to snuggle against his cheek.  She spoke softly, whispering. Smitten. Blissful.

I was on the other side of the train – restraining a one-year-old with one arm, “spotting” the three-year-old as he bounced around looking out the window into the darkness and jumping back to look at all the people on the train, and verbally reminding the 6-year-old to “hold on,” “sit down,” and “be quiet.”  There was no quiet within my brain.  And yet, I was still okay with it all the chaos and the madness of my three.  (Alright, actually….I was thinking “yes…just you wait until baby #2 is born and then all of that lovey-dovey-attentiveness will change.  Just you wait.”  Not in an evil-haha kind of way, but in a reality-is-coming kind of way 🙂 .)

You see, I have a great friend who has 4 little boys about the same ages as my three guys (poor dear – she’s amazing!).  And we are good for each other because we are honest with each other.  And we agree that we absolutely love our boys.  No questions about it.  But we don’t always feel that love.  Sometimes, I’m just going through the motions of care-taking. Sometimes I’m just changing another diaper, wiping another snotty nose, putting on another pair of shoes that I just put on and that he just took off again.

And sometimes, I am “not happy with your behavior” and the love feels far away.  Present, but currently unavailable.  But then I sneak into the boys’ bedroom before I go to sleep each night, and lean over to kiss each one (a blown kiss to the little guy whose crib mattress is too far away), and whisper I love you.

Yet, it is in some of the “big moments” of parenting when I am overwhelmingly reminded that I am still, 6 years later, smitten with my boys.  This week Micah started kindergarten.  I stood along the wall of the church’s gymnasium and watched as he made new friends with the boys sitting beside him as they waited to go to their classroom.  I signed “I love you” whenever I caught his eye, and I gave him a kiss as he walked away from me.  The tears flowed by the time I reached the anonymity of my car.  My boy.  Kindergarten.  The start of the journey of school.  And as I drove to work through the fog of my eyes, the chorus of a song played over and over in my brain – “well done, well done…” (Moriah Peters).  It just seemed to sum up my love for him, all the work that we’ve done together over the past six years, all of that – well done – you got him to kindergarten!

I did much better the next two days of dropping him off, until I opened his backpack Friday evening and found a card that Micah made at school.

A Handful of Love

(by D. Conway)

It was my first week of school,

And now that it’s done,

I can’t wait to tell you

About all the fun.

We read a book called The Kissing Hand

About Chester, a sweet raccoon.

He went to school up in a tree,

Beneath the shining moon.

Chester was scared and a little shy,

Until his mom kissed his hand.

It sent the love right up his arm,

Towards his heart for it to land.

Just like Chester, I was brave

Because of love from you.

I made this gift so I can show

How much I love you, too!

The Pediatrician in Me

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Sometimes it really pays to be a pediatrician as well as a mother.  Take yesterday afternoon for example.  At precisely 3:51pm, Micah looked at me and said “this ear really hurts.” (“Darn!” was my first thought – “oh, honey” were my first words.)  Now, there are very few lessons from my residency training program that I remember verbatim, but I do remember a senior doctor telling me, “If a child older than 4 says their ear hurts, it’s likely to mean something real.”  So I went to the “medicine bag” and pulled out my otoscope (very handy to be a pediatrician), smiled happily that the battery was charged enough that the light turned on, and looked in Micah’s ear.  Yep, that eardrum was screaming red.  So, I thought through the options….see a doc?  Hmm, pediatrician’s office is closed…could go to the hospital’s urgicare satellite clinic….seems like a pain because it would take the rest of the afternoon (and I’m planning on cooking up some yummy Thai food!)….hmmm, Target pharmacy is open until 5…. Picked up the phone ….. “Hi, this is Dr. Lynne…”

And that is pretty much where the limit of me treating my own kids ends (my sister will vouch for that – I don’t even treat her kids…..and no one else in the family either!).  I will do ear infections on the weekend.  That’s it.  Anything else – “go see a doctor.”

You see, I can’t be objective when it comes to my kids.  This winter Micah fell in basketball and naturally cried for a bit afterwards…but was soon back in the game.  The next day (yes, after paying no attention to his hand for well over 30 hours) I noticed that his right thumb was swollen 3 times its normal size and was black and blue.  It looked ugly.  It was Sunday evening.  Seth was to have minor outpatient surgery on Tuesday.  I had a day to figure out what to do.  So, I spent most of Monday driving him around wondering how best to get the thumb evaluated.  His pediatric office?  The emergency room (over 3 hour wait time per some inside sources)? Does it need anything at all?  What if I ignore it and then it’s actually broken and we go 2 more days?!?  We ended up at the hospital’s urgicare center where he was fitted with a very nice little splint…more to help him feel better, the doc said (but I knew it was actually more to help me feel better).

I get stuck in wanting to do everything I possibly can to take care of the kids as well as I can.  But that’s in the midst of not knowing sometimes what the best care is for them.  And believe me, this is only mild stuff we’ve been dealing with.  A little asthma.  A little ear infection.  Colds.  Fevers.  Nothing serious – no real emergency room visits (though I was sure Noah was trying absolutely positively EVERYTHING he could to require an ER visit before he turned two – “how about a few stitches, Mom??” – and I give myself full and unending credit for thwarting that plan!) and no hospital stays.  I am very thankful.  Because I have decided that I will either overreact with the kids (oh yeah, it’s clear, that’s one of those can’t-catch-your-breath, have-10-seizures, fall-over-and-get-a-concussion, lose-a-kidney, break-the-thumb and end up in the hospital kinds of situations) or completely under-react (oh, just rub it!).  There’s no middle ground.

Which is why, unless it’s a weekend evening and they are complaining that their ear hurts…I drag my kids to go see a doctor every time.  (Though I will confess to being a tad late on this last guy’s well child check-up….um, 15 month visit?…. or 16 months ….who’s counting?!?!)

Anyone else have this trouble of under- or over-reacting??

Surviving New York City Madness

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I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow I just survived 3 days in New York City with three young boys (6, 3, and 1).  It’s probably entirely related to the fact that I traveled with a good friend who is very easy-going, her 2-yr-old son and her nanny (whose back should be sore from holding my 1-year-old most of the time in a front-pack!).

I personally only had one minor explosion, I think — trying to navigate a stroller out of a narrow NYC Starbucks doorway on day one — with octopus hands lunging from both sides of the stroller and two boys fighting each other for the right to get through the doorway first, despite the presence of said stroller.  And a very sweet woman holding the door open for me heard me mutter “I can’t do New York City by myself with 3 little boys.”  Without a pause, she affirmed, “no, you can’t.  It’s too hard.”  Fortunately, my friend is wonderful enough that I repeated the same phrase to her shortly afterwards despite my usual hesitancy to ask for help.  From then on, my youngest was graciously strapped to the nanny most of the time and I was able to have hands free for two other boys who liked to dart away.

I was pretty stressed about how Micah would behave during the trip, knowing that triggers for his outbursts include tiredness (how could he not be tired, traveling in a car for 9 hours, getting to bed late in a new environment, walking and sightseeing, pushing past thousands of people….), lack of consistency (every day we visited something different), and hunger (it’s hard to figure out new places and new food, finding food in time before blood sugar crashes, and really, where can you get “chicken nuggets and ketchup” in NY City?).  So the fact that I only had one minor from him when he cut his lip on a water bottle (that he was trying to open with his teeth despite multiple reprimands to “never do that!”) and then again a few minutes later when waiting in the sun in a crowd of hundreds of people trying to get on the ferry leaving the Statue of Liberty island…Wow.  I am impressed with him.

So here’s what I learned from our trip:

  • No matter how impressive the “tourist” sites are in a new city, the most favorite place of all is the local playground.
  • My 3-yr-old will continue to challenge his immune system no matter where we are.  Apparently (according to the nanny), he ran his Hot Wheels pickup truck up and down the benches at the playground, through the sand, across the open rim of a garbage can, and then right into his mouth!
  • Kids six and under have absolutely no concept of how high the Empire State Building is (nor do they care about the history of how it was built), but they sure are impressed by the 10-minute “Sky Movie” ride simulating flying over and around New York City (and bumping into people in Central Park and into a shark in the bay! Who knew there were sharks in the waters of NY City?).
  • Any and all bottles of fluid, no matter how costly (even if $3 for 16 ounces), will be spilled – including red Powerade onto my fresh mozzarella and basil hot Panini sandwich that I was just about to pick up to eat.
  • It is scary to think how easily the one-year-old could fit through the criss-cross wires on the observation deck of the Empire State Building – 86 floors up!
  • It is important to travel with good friends who are comfortable letting each other’s kids take turns having melt-downs….as well as multiple requests to return to the playground.
  • There are a LOT of dogs in New York City and one can get tired of the “can I ask the owner?” question prior to petting each and every one of them.
  • I can see why New York City parents might worry about “nanny stealing” – there was a clear difference in the spectrum of nannies available for observation at the playground.  I wanted to bring one of them home with us!
  • There’s no guarantee of getting good sleep after a long drive. Got home at 1:30 am, tucked in the boys, and my head hit the pillow at 2:00am – and then some alarm on one of my running watches went off at 2:01…. and then the 3-year-old crawled into bed with me at 2:09 after a nightmare…ahhhh!  But the sense of accomplishment this morning made it all worth it.

So, here’s a photo of our “calm and bliss” traveling together…but photos only capture the moments of glory.  This was taken right after Micah’s first melt down and his refusal to accept an ice cream cone.  So I held his which Seth shared with me and his white  T-shirt.  Noah also demolished one but not before it melted into a river dripping down his arms.  Stickiness did not stop him from playing with the “coin” a friend gave him which he dropped over and over, bent down to pick up repetitively, and clearly has his right hand raised, playing with the quarter in his mouth.  Seth was tired of the front pack and being given over to someone “new,” so clung to me.  Micah’s shorts and my pants are red on the front from the Powerade that spilled on my lunch and the backpack holds tiny Statue of Liberty snow globes the boys picked out as souvenirs…among a TON of other heavy stuff.  That’s the story behind this “calm” – and thank goodness there are moments of tenderness like this.  We might even go again some day!

Top Ten

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We had an office picnic this past week.  It was great – everybody came….all 6 of us!  I brought baby wipes (….okay….and desserts).  You can wipe down a picnic table with them.  You can wash your hands with them before eating.

What many people don’t know, and probably particularly people who do not have kids, is that baby wipes are golden.  They are strong.  They are moist. They can do just about anything.

So here’s my Top Ten List of what baby wipes can clean:

10.  Spills around the minivan cup-holders from mocha lattes (that are just necessary some days to survive after long nights)

9.  Food spills on the couch despite the rule of no food in the living room

8.  Sticky lollipop fingers compliments of the boys’ pediatric office (sugar-free of course)

7.  Dried green snot smeared over cheeks and nose, especially first thing in the morning

6.  Greasy hands from putting a bicycle chain back on….again…and again for the 3-year-old

5.  The dining room table after a meal of spaghetti (good for the floor too)

4.  Chocolate chips ground into the car seat of a 1-year-old who completely demolished a granola bar within a few minutes

3.  Puke on the carpet

2.  Pee on the carpet

1.  Poop on the carpet

(yep, all of that has been tested in private, home-based research, but repeating this research is not necessarily recommended)

What baby wipes can not clean:

10.  Nope – can’t think of a thing….

This is the reason why there is always a box of baby wipes in my car and several of them scattered around the house: third floor for the midnight diaper change; second floor bathroom to clean little behinds before they get into the tub; first floor living room/diaper changing area (we gave up on changing tables long ago…we just chase them around the living room!).

My mind has been spinning this week with “lists” of things related to parenting.  Don’t ask me why baby wipes was the first “list” on my mind, but stayed tuned this week for more lists coming :).