peevish mama

Oh, this made me chuckle, but, then again, I have a serious weak spot for Stuey. I might consider having another child if I were guaranteed that he would emerge with a British accent, football shaped head and red overalls. I’m thinking with proper placement during labor, that head might actually be quite easy on the cashoosha.

Incidentally, I found this over here, where I had gone out of green-eyed curiousity because this lady has written a book called Got Milf? The Modern Mom’s Guide to Feeling Fabulous, Looking Great and Rocking a Minivan. Of course the title alone killed me because WHY WHY WHY didn’t I think of that first? GAH!!! I would hate her if she weren’t so absolutely adorable. And funny. Grrr.

Maybe you’ve already seen this, but I’ve been in spring break unplugged mode and I just stumbled upon it and it made me feel like weeeeeeee! Apparently, the National Geographic Channel actually pulled off recreating a house flight inspired by the movie UP. Check out more pics here. So neat.

So, on a seemingly (but never entirely) unrelated note, yesterday we had no real plans aside from a date with the couch and a US v Argentina friendly soccer game at 6:00 p.m. We had a lazy Saturday morning and I managed to scoot out of the house for a noon yoga class. When I came back, Saint James had a friend over and they promptly took off for the community center down the street to kick a soccer ball around. Good boys. The girls, though, were bored, whiny, bouncing around the house and getting on each other’s nerves and mine. I finally got so exasperated that I kicked them out – it was a beautiful sunny day and they needed to be outside, breathing in the last bits of cold winter air. Go build a school of snow children, I snapped as I shut the door. They stayed out for a while, came back in soaking wet, pink cheeked and smiley, just the way I like ‘em.

Later that night when we were cleaning up after dinner I found a paper magazine subscription insert on the counter. I was about to toss it in the recycling when I saw that Supergirl had meticulously filled the whole thing out. Name, Address, E-mail (made up), Number of Issues – all in neat, tiny, purple letters. I still tossed it, of course, but not without a twinge of guilt. She was so bored, sooooooo bored, that she filled out a magazine subscription card.

But let’s be real, here. I shouldn’t feel guilty. Not at all. We just spent three glorious days in Lutsen with Nanook, Gear Daddy and familia. They got to ski and snowboard their hearts out, bunk up and giggle into the night, feast on all sorts of yummy food, celebrate Nanook’s birthday, watch American Idol with peeps, color, bicker, chat, spy, and generally scamper around a big, cool house while the grown-ups talked, drank, cooked and cast a lenient eye over everything they were doing. It was a blast. What is wrong with coming home from that kind of trip and just chilling out?

If you were to look at my shoulders, you wouldn’t see the devil and angel taking turns whispering in my ear. Instead you’d see Julie McCoy, our fave cruise director, on one shoulder, hatching plans, leading adventures, planning field trips, always thinking of ways to make my kids’ lives more FUN. On the other shoulder you’d see Joan Collins in a silky dressing gown, maribou kitten heels and a very large martini glass muttering that these kids need to learn to occupy themselves. The truth is, I like doing excursions with them because I’m a bit of a “flee the house” kind of a gal. But it’s just that kind of on-the-go life that has made them so intolerable if we ever do want to hang out at home. If they don’t have friends over, they are pretty much guaranteed to be driving me insane. Which makes me yell at everyone and shoo them into the car for – you guessed it – an excursion.

As far as I can remember, my parents didn’t spend all their free time trying to keep us entertained. There were giant swathes of idle time in my childhood, which I filled by reading books and the backs of shampoo bottles, playing Dukes of Hazzards, spying on the neighbor boy and convincing my brother I was a wizard. I know this isn’t anything new, but I wonder what my kids are missing out on by being constantly occupied and entertained. There are so many things that can only be learned with ample time: how to get along, how to love books, how to French braid hair, how to climb trees, how to choreograph dance routines to the entire Grease album and then the entire Xanadu album. I bet the dude who thought of floating that house had lots of idle time in his youth (and she brings it back! bam!)

The way things are going, it seems like our children’s generation, more than any other, is going to find success through knowing how to hustle and being creative. Seems to me, those are just the kind of skills that may be borne of a little boredom. At the risk of sounding like I’m rationalizing my laziness (which, don’t get me wrong, I’m totally comfortable doing), I think I need to be less Julie McCoy and more Joan Collins. And maybe, just maybe, my kids will be better off AND I’ll get to do more of this:

The Summer Day – Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan,  and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,  how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me,  what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I love this poem. It’s so simple. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. But I do know how to pay attention. I see a pink cheek, small freshly painted blue nails and the twist of  a braid on a late winter’s day and I know to pause and take note.

Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my one wild and precious life?

I think so.

What will she do with her one wild and precious life?

To ponder that exquisite question too closely or for too long is like staring into the sun. Better, for now, to stick with my moments.

According to Devil Baby, sometimes babies drop out of God’s pocket and fall into ladies’ bellies and then they are born by shooting out of ladies’ butts. Only sometimes though. If they don’t fall out of God’s pocket, they just shoot out of ladies butts. Spontaneously. Which means that chances are good that with all these babies dropping out of pockets and getting shot out of butts, you could get hit, so take appropriate precautions, is all I’m saying. And all of this simply because Devil Baby’s school had an author come in to read and sign books and said author is with child, igniting Devil Baby’s curiosity and imagination. When I asked her who told her about this pocket business, she said it was Supergirl. Sigh.

Remember when Jamie Lynn Spears got knocked up and I was trying to figure out how to explain the whole debacle to Supergirl? Well, I found this series of books by Robie Harris and I think they are wonderful. When I sat down to read it with Supergirl and Saint James, however, Supergirl scampered off in short order, uninterested in or unable to digest the topic. Saint James, on the other hand, loved it. It felt so familiar and normal to be reading a book together, shoulder to shoulder, that it completely mitigated any awkwardness or wondering how to phrase things on my part. He was genuinely interested, curious and amused by the (admittedly) preposterous sounding facts of life.

My little conversation with Devil Baby was a good reminder that I not only need to purchase the next book in the series to read with Saint James, but I need to revisit the first one with the girls. This time Supergirl will probably sit through it and Devil Baby will scamper off, but such is the process I think. Pass the knowledge along, bit by bit, but come back to it often. In the meantime, helmets and parasols to protect from those flying babies.

Four Monkeys by Andy Warhol 1983

It’s one of my many New Year’s resolutions. I’m sitting here in the sunroom on a sunny, frigid Sunday morning and I hear a rooster. Why do I hear a rooster? To my knowledge, we don’t own a rooster. But such is life with little kids. Now they are fighting. Apparently rooster sounds are annoying to the non-rooster types in the family.

When will I not find a plastic chicken drumstick under my pillow? When they are grown. When will I not find pink socks in my coat pocket? When they are grown. When will I stop catching rejected mouthfuls of food in my palm? When they are grown. When will I not have to clean the banana smoothie I just made out of the radiator? When they are grown. When will my phone be where I left it? When they are grown.

When will I get to stop doing giant mountains of laundry? When will I get to stop cutting up apples? When will I stop impaling the soles of my feet on the legs of plastic horses?  When will I stop reminding practice piano, brush your teeth, grab your lunch, hat, coat, backpack, clarinet? When will I stop hearing “mommy” a million times a day?

When they are grown. Which I most definitely do not want. Not yet. So I will embrace it. All of it.

I posted an article over at Simple Good and Tasty which contains my super secret recipe for empanadas and a bit of insight into the Argentine psyche. Hope everyone is staying warm and dry – and most importantly, SANE!

It has begun. Saint James has jumped down the rabbit hole once and for all. He will emerge fully grown, taller and bigger than I ever imagined, utterly transformed from the scrunchy baby with the face of a boxer I held just yesterday. It has begun. When a child is growing up under your nose, you cannot possibly see the daily change, but there are certain points when the growth is palpable, obvious and crushingly bittersweet. The transition from tiny, tenuous newborn into unbeatable smiling buddha. The jump from toddler to big kid, seemingly overnight some time in the fourth year, when the baby fat melts away to be replaced by long legs, pointy scapula and verbose swagger. And now this. This.

It seems like forever he was the same. Maybe taller, in need of bigger shoes from time to time, but essentially the same. Always hovering around the 60th percentile, Saint James wore the same swim trunks from the age of 5 to the age of 9. Any time I tried to buy a new pair, I’d have to sew a little gather to make them smaller at the waist. My first clue that the winds of change were stirring the trees outside our house was when he ate five pieces of barbecued chicken one night earlier this fall. I could practically hear the latches of his stomach unbuckle to reveal a cavernous secret compartment. All of a sudden he was foraging for cereal after dinner, grabbing a banana on the way out the door, tucking into heaping bowls of pasta and then asking for more. All while I held my breath, giving him searching looks, bracing myself for what was coming.

And then he started to grow. Up and out. His hands are bigger, his face is bigger. His voice isn’t changing but he seems to be pulling it out of a lower spot in his chest. He still tries to climb in my lap when I’m on the computer but he’s really, truly getting too big. I can barely see over his shoulder. My legs start to fall asleep. He pokes me with his knobby elbows. Not that I would shoo him – no way. I will be the scrawny mouse with the giraffe in her lap as long as he’ll let me. I could be gasping for breath under his hulking boy mass, and I would still welcome him with open arms.

I can feel myself doing that thing that mothers do, staring at my kid just a moment too long, searching for the end point, the future, my heart thumping in fear, in joy, thinking: impossible, but true.

This morning Supergirl and Saint James were perched at the laptop while I got their breakfasts together when I heard Supergirl say Hey, google pole dancer! Even in my undercaffeinated state of grog, I whirled around with a snap. What? What? Everyone FREEZE! I blame my yelling “freeze” on the fact that Doctor Dash and I just finished watching Season 2 of The Wire last night. I may even have pointed a frozen waffle at their foreheads, but I holstered it pretty damn quick. The two of them actually kind of look like each other when they are giving me “the look.” You know what I mean. The look you might give a monkey dressed in bell bottoms and a fake beard running around with a butcher knife – like, is this funny or is this serious?

Me: WHY do you want to google pole dancer?

Supergirl: (with eye roll) Just to look at one.

Me: WHY do you want to look at a pole dancer?

Supergirl: I don’t know. pause pause. I like them.

Me: What? Why? WHAT? WHY? Why do you say you like pole dancers?

Supergirl: I don’t know, you know. And here she hops off the stool and starts doing a little soft shoe number and jazz hands in her pajamas, singing da na na na bum bum de bum pum . . .

Me: Are you tap dancing?

Supergirl: Ya, like those peanuts who wear suits. They dance with a pole.

Me: There’s only one of those guys. And that’s a cane.

Supergirl: Same thing.

Me: Not at all.

I think we’re in the clear, but I say that as I knock on wood with all the knuckles of both hands and feet. That’s TWENTY knuckles, mother fuckers! It is dangerous to underestimate the louse. You need to go in hard. Like a psycho. And you need to keep at it, day after day, like a psycho marathoner. Endurance is key. I think Doctor Dash would agree that I was indeed a psycho last week, and as I breathe my first few tentative sighs of relief (With the wood knocking! With the wood knocking!), I realize that this battle was not without its casualties – namely, my sanity and the signature blond pouf.

How else can I explain the fact that I paid $22 for a hard cover book called 100 % Official Justin Bieber: First Steps 2 Forever: My Story? I was at the bookstore buying this, when Supergirl approached clutching the Bieber tell-all to her chest. I totally don’t want this at all, she blurted, but (Devil Baby) would want this so bad. What is it with my children and their inability to admit love for the Bieber? I can totally admit I love Justin Bieber. So far Devil Baby and I are the only ones who will come clean, but I know there is more love for that young teen nugget in this house. I know it. Since I am understanding and benevolent and INSANE, I said If you read it to her, I’ll buy it. And now we own it. If you want to borrow it, just let me know. I should be done with it any day now.

Further proof that I have lost my mind? I can’t stop buying accoutrements for our new Halloween Spooky Town that I’ve set up in the dining room. WHAT is my problem? These Lemax collectibles are NOT MY THING. In fact, before the lice, I would have sworn on my life that NO collectibles were my thing. But look at me! I have been to Michaels three times looking for the Dreaded Zeppelin with the mechanical spooky blimp that spins around. I want it. I want it so bad. I HATE Michaels, with its smell of cinnamon, vanilla and craft-loving old lady – it’s like Mrs. Claus is  standing in front of a fan and waving her skirt at us. Bluh. But the collectibles are all half price, you see? And, well, the kids are only young once and they love our Spooky Town, right? And I really do love Halloween. So, so, so much. And also, I am not well. Not well at all.

And if it weren’t enough that my sanity is gone, gone also (and arguably more tragically) is Saint James’ signature blond pouf. Panicked with having to pour through several pounds of hair (this family has A LOT of hair), we asked Saint James if we could buzz him. He acquiesced rather than submitting to hours of my nitpicking and sighing and belly aching and now he looks like this:
Beautiful, no? But you know me and my unhealthy love for THE HAIR. This is the first time in his life he has ever had it short and lately we had a good thing going because he and I sort of banded together on the hair thing and we would shut down Doctor Dash whenever he suggested a haircut. It wasn’t just me loving the locks – Saint James loved them too! And I would say to Dash with a cavalier swish of my wine glass, Oh, please, who cares about hair? Respect the lad’s wishes. He’s entitled to have an opinion about his own hair. Let him be. Let him be. La-di-da. Di da. Who cares about hair . . .

Although he looks like a handsome devil and I can see the soft skin on his temples for the first time in ten years, I am bereft. I know hair grows but something tells me he’s going to like it this way and that I’m not going to see da pouf around these parts for a very long time. If ever. So let’s take a moment to say our good byes to the golden pouf. I thought better of putting together a montage set to music for fear it would seem strange, so I leave you with the pictures below. The golden pouf was in rare form a mere two weeks ago at the NSC Cup – extra golden, extra poufy, barely contained by the gigantic bandana. Sigh. Good times . . .

For starters, I could have sworn it was Eddie Murphy in Flubber, not Robin Williams. Shows how much I know. Secondly, I’ve been sort of obsessed with the idea of Flubber lately, and I know no better way to expunge absurdities from my head than to write about them in a public forum. Also, as you may have noticed, I haven’t been writing much lately. Have you noticed? So why not just wow you, and woo you with some seriously shitty shit. Writing about Flubber, after a long absence, over a critical juncture (das right, homeys – I turned 40!) is not exactly the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but kind of. Or hoisting myself on my own petard, but sort of. Or throwing good money after bad, or making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Whatever it is, it’s sort of lame, I admit. But here we are. I’m busy, I’m stuck, I’m distracted and I can’t get flubber outta my brain.

We had a little fest in celebration of our birthdays and somehow managed to lure all our best MPLS peeps along with an ALL-STAR cast of out-of-town college buds to our house on a steamy night in late August. I suppose it’s the nature of the beast that fun things vanish in the blink of an eye. You plot and plan, you spiff and shine, you make everything just so, and then your brothers jump out of nowhere wearing Lucha Libre masks ten minutes before the party, sending you into an elated tizzy from which you don’t manage to climb down until after four a.m. And the thing about a tizzy is that although tizzies are a blast, it’s hard to focus in a tizzy. After the party, through that woozy, satisfied, hungover, happy haze, I was haunted by all the people I didn’t get to dig in with, all the people I didn’t get to fully love up. I wondered about all the funny exchanges I missed, all the random connections that were unearthed or newly forged. I looked through pictures for clues, seeing a bunch of really happy people, looking damn good, but I wanted a do-over.

And I wanted to be Flubber. I wanted to be Flubber so I could boing-a-boing-boing into a hundred tiny pieces and spread myself around the party and not miss a thing. I would perch on shoulders, hoop earrings, watches and rims of glasses. I would hang out in guys’ breast pockets, ladies’ cleavage, on cocktail tables and cigarrette packs (which, by the way, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many non-smokers, smoke so much. It pleases me, I’m not going to lie, because the implication is drunken, decadent abandon and that was, for sure, what we were going for), and I would miss nothing, laugh at everything, and DO! IT! UP!

OH FLUBBBAAAHHHH!!!!! TOGETHER WE WOULD BE UNSTOPPABLE!!! FLUBBBAAAAHHHH!!!! Alas, Flubber is not meant to be and so I have to be happy with my foggy memories, some great pictures, the random tidbits my friends are willing to share, and faith in the party process – once you set everything up, bring everyone together and the magic starting time ticks past, the party swells and takes on a life of its own, following its own course, its own rhythm, and if you’ve brought the right people together, it’ll be fun – no matter what. Even if I didn’t hear it or see it with my own two eyes, I’m pretty sure fun was had. And that’s what it’s all about. Setting aside my own grabby, selfish, Flubber fantasies, fun was had.

But if you think the Flubber obsession ends there, you’d be wrong. A couple days after the party, Doctor Dash and I got on a plane headed to British Columbia. My parents stayed with the kids so that we could take our first extended, grown-up, sans brood vacation in ten years. Before we knew it, we had hopped in a sexy black convertible and were on the road to Whistler, hair flying, wind on our teeth, laughter trailing behind us like streamers. We were giddy. We were Thelma and Louise. Well, maybe not Thelma and Louise, exactly, but you get the gist. It was awesome. For the next three days we gorged on the Pacific Range – we hiked our faces off, took a million pictures, set up self timers on boulders like we used to when we were in our twenties. We rented a canoe and checked it all out from way down low, portaging, paddling, picking our way around sharp turns, disentangling ourselves from the poky, gropy foliage lining the banks. It was AWESOME. It was everything we used to do before kids but couldn’t possibly do now because of the short legs factor. And the whine factor. At night we ventured out and drank beers with tourists and youngsters, wondering where we fit on the spectrum between tourists and youngsters. Actually, I doubt Dash wondered anything of the kind, but despite all evidence to the contrary, I think we still got a little youngster in us. I do. In Vancouver we stayed at the super chicLoden Hotel and ate and walked our way around that beautiful city for two more days. Every day was different. Every day was a blast. And yet, through it all, I missed our guys. Not every minute, not even very much – just when I saw something they would like and my thoughts strayed to them. And at night. And in the morning. And, not surprisingly, the Flubber returned to me. If only I could have left a little piece of myself at home with them. Just enough for them to clutch in their warm little fists as they drifted off to sleep. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Oh, it would be so perfect. Oh, boohoo, FLUBBBEEEERRRRR!!!

So there you have it. Flubber. Genius. Sigh. Who knew?

So, I’d say it took me until about mid-July to hit my stride this summer. It took that long to find a way to be at peace with the level of activity (high), to embrace the heat and sweatiness of summer (moderate), to figure out a way to carve out a wee bit of time on my own (low). I figured out a few things as I was racing around in the minivan or cooling my heels at the pool, just in time for hazy, lazy August.

First of all, I need to consolidate these kids next summer. Getting them each to their own separate activities is hair raising and severely taxing on my temporal and spacial reasoning skills. So next year, for one week, they’ll all be doing ONE camp in ONE place. Even if they all have to go to a My Little Pony camp at Southwest High, I will kill 3 birds with one stone if it’s the last thing I do.

I also realized I don’t always have to go somewhere. I’m an out-of-the-house kinda girl. I never ever ever ever manage to just hang at home (which, I think, goes a long way toward explaining why the syrup bottle is still on the dining room table at 5:00 in the evening.) Most of the time we’ve got somewhere to go, but just as often, the exodus, the springing forth into the world, it’s completely self imposed by the ants in the pants mother who pretends her kids have ants in their pants and that’s why she’s dragging them out of the house all the time when really, let’s be honest, she’s totally the one with the ants in her pants.

Rain is good. Rain forces us to stay put and catch our breath. It soothes our parched nerves and grass. I love rain in the summer – even if it does catch me with all my beach towels hanging out to dry (grrr).

Dinner can be bread and cheese. We have a strange air conditioning system that cools half the house – a Phantom of the Opera air conditioner, if you will (but hopefully you won’t because that is terrible. Apologies!) Fortunately the half with air includes Dash and my bedroom. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include the kitchen. And most of the time, we don’t even bother with it during the day since we’re not home, so hanging out in my steamy kitchen is not high on the list of things I like to do. I really haven’t been cooking as much as assembling meals this summer and you know what? That works just fine.

I can’t write for shit in the summer. I just have to accept it. It’s as if my words are stuck in a big pot of warm honey and pulling them out is too messy and laborious an endeavor to attempt. I’m busy, yes, but also, I may be getting my fill of words out in the world. Catching up with our families in Michigan and Massachusetts, talking, talking, chatting with neighbors at a block party, friends at the farmers market, bored ladies at the pool, people standing with their bikes waiting for the light to change, talking, talking, talking. We are out of hibernation for a few shimmering months and there is much doing to be done. Our heavy humid air is thick with words, more than usual, and that’s enough for me right now.

Summer is flying, just like I knew it would, just as it always does. Every day, I will notice something, really notice something, in an  effort to slow it down. This morning. Devil Baby. Tousled swimming pool bed hair, eyes still puffy from a heavy summer sleep, puts on her rainboots and contemplates saving her forgotten stuffed dog and blankie from the rain. I watch her realize and accept. It’s too late.

A few weeks ago Doctor Dash was reading through some of the earlier nuggets in this blog and he told me that he loved remembering the stuff I had written about. It was a curious statement to me because I’ve only been doing this for a couple years. How much could he have forgotten? The truth is, we forget a lot. We forget most of the little details – the favorite t-shirts, the silly stories, the chatter after the tooth fairy visits, the white lies, the fights, the tears, the giant mosquito bites. We forget the minutiae, and without the minutiae, our memories are flat, colorless, or worse yet, not there at all. I can’t figure out any rhyme or reason to what sticks. And the firsts with our firsts tend to be clearer than the firsts with our seconds and thirds. I can’t remember Supergirl’s first steps, but I remember Saint James’ like they were yesterday. And I actually do remember Devil Baby’s, but that’s just because we were hoping and praying that she would be soothed by her new found locomotion, that some of the energy she spent screaming at us would be redirected to moving her chunky little legs.

This blog started out as a way for me to slow down time, to take notice of the quotidian, to be present. It is only now, after the passage of a couple years, that we’ve discovered that it also helps us remember. I don’t go back and read, but you’d better believe that someday I will. And I think that my kids will too. So, with that in mind, some minutiae:

Supergirl finally lost some teeth. We seem to spawn late teeth getters, hence late teeth losers. With each baby, we would wonder, gazing at their gummy drooly mouths, whether they would ever get teeth. As Saint James’ and Supergirl’s first birthdays approached (yes, we even kinda freaked the second time around), Doctor Dash took to the internet and I put my ear to the ground. I sorely regretted it when my neighbor, in her Texas drawl, said “Well, ah don’t know, but mah cousin had needle teeth.” NEEDLE TEETH! I gasped. I love their tenacious baby teeth, but my kids hate it. In kindergarten and first grade when their classmates are spitting out teeth left and right, my children frustratedly wiggle their tiny pearlies, hoping in vain for some movement. Supergirl was literally one of the last three kids in her grade to lose a tooth. (It’s incredible that I even know this, but I do. How many times did I invoke those other two names in an attempt to cheer her up about her stubborn baby teeth?) We went to Michigan and she managed to lose three teeth in two days, maximizing the attention as Supergirl is wont to do. Her big teeth are already growing in. Her face will change. I only wish she could keep that little Jack-o-lantern smile for a while longer, because as far as I’m concerned, those big chompers are a one way ticket to big kidhood.

When I started this post it was a nothing kind of afternoon. The kids were dressed for soccer with some time to kill and in the rarest and loveliest of moments had started playing a peaceful game of chess, unbidden by me. This is the kind of thing that would make me roll my eyes if I were reading it, so I’ll assure you that they aren’t usually this highbrow and civilized. Normally when they’re bored they turn on the T.V., play Wii, google Justin Bieber or fight. Supergirl also has this move where she lies on the ground and whines about how bored she is while using her legs to spin herself around like a clock hand. But just this once, on a muggy afternoon, with a basket of folded laundry lurking in the corner, they played chess. I grabbed my camera and just like that, minutiae became memory.

I feel like parenting is all about pressing the re-set button. Every day, multiple times a day, fighting your way through the bickering and the rushing around and the whining and the melted popsicle on the counter (grrr) and the muddy footprints on the carpet (double grrr) to the root of how you really feel about your children. We all have our ways of reminding ourselves that we love them, that we are lucky to have them and that every day that they are healthy and happy, is a blessing indeed. A good night’s sleep works wonders. Sitting down to crank out a bit of creative work does too. But the topper for me is yoga. Today, I walked into yoga feeling like Mommy Dearest, sweat out about a gallon of white wine and nitrates, and emerged feeling like June friggin’ Cleaver. After a quick shower, I got to pick up my laptop (yay!) and some new shades (double yay!), stopped to grab a little grub at The Good Earth and ate in my car in blissful silence, save the sound of the pelting rain. This took no more than two and a half hours and I came home feeling like whatchu got, kids? Who wants a bagel? Watermelon? Cookies?! Who wants to play checkers?! Who wants to dance?! Whatchu got, my beautiful babies? Whatchu got for your mama because she’s feeling good!

For the next few hours, anyway.

You know what I said before? Like, yesterday? Well, fuggedaboutit. In the last twelve hours I’ve gone to Devil Baby’s spring concert and Supergirl’s spring concert and both were so dear, so sweet, so filled with chubby arms and tiny voices in the case of the former, boisterous joy and proud smiles in the case of the latter, that I take it all back about the too much. We can never have too much of this. This is what it’s all about. Some day, breathtakingly soon, we will have no more of these precious little concerts. So I drink it in, wishing there was some way to bottle the joy of children singing. Wouldn’t that be something!

I know I have a teensy little habit of taking something I’m experiencing and projecting it on the whole world, but something is definitely up. All my friends are feeling all freaky deaky, and quite frankly, so am I. We’re careening toward the end of the school year and I feel like we’re all driving runaway cars, pumping the breaks to no avail. Where did the time go? It feels like we were just wiping our brows after putting Christmas away and here we are in a deluge of end of the year obligations. Seriously, could we possibly pile on more stuff right now? End of the year masses, field day, plays, spring concerts, class picnics, graduations, class parties and on and on. On the one hand, it’s absolutely lovely. On the other hand, we may be getting too much of a good thing here. Everybody I know is racing around clutching camcorders with crazed smiles plastered on their faces which do nothing to hide the panic lurking in their eyes.

Yep, PANIC. Because in a few weeks we are ON, babies. ON. ON. ON. 24-7. Children all up in your business ALL THE TIME. No breaks, except for whatever camps and activities you’ve managed to sign them up for, which will require more running around with crazed smiles and more yelling hurry up, grab your waterbottleballracquetfishingrodclubscleatsclarinetloom.

I am really of two minds here. On the one hand, I love summer. I love the sun, the heat, the water and the not having to do anything. But then I went and filled us with activities because I’m no fool – the idle is not idyll. The quiet lazy afternoons never pan out the way I envision them. We don’t sit in the shade and eat popsicles and draw and fish and read. Possibly because of the frenetic pace we keep during the rest of the year, my kids want action and adventure. Or T.V. And honestly, we don’t even do that much. I suppose it’s relative, but I DO draw the line sometimes. For example, I drew the line at Irish step dancing earlier this year because of the wigs. I also draw the line at fencing, curling and golf. I don’t like golf. I’m not sure it’s an environmentally sustainable sport – especially in the driest areas of our country. It seems elitist and I will run the risk of subjecting my kids to forever being shitty golfers, but if they want to learn they can learn on their own time and their own dime. Plus the outfits are not cute. I pat myself on the back about golf, but then I signed up Supergirl for another run at Circus Camp, because obviously, the trapeze is a life skill that will serve her well. I signed Saint James up for a month long Junior Naturalist program and a drawing class. Why? Because this is their bliss and what can I do, but follow their bliss? And this is how I get myself in this pickle of the anti-Huck Finn summer.

It’s a paradox and I’m making a huge muddle of trying to explain it, but here it goes.

I sign them up for stuff because I don’t want them to be bored and drive me crazy, but in the end I’m crazy anyway and maybe even contributing to their being bored by keeping us on the run all the time. On the other hand, I only sign them up for stuff they love. These lucky, privileged children just happen to have a lot of interests. Take all that and dip it in guilt for not being 100% perky about all of this because a) I chose this life; and b) shouldn’t I want to be with my kids more more more? and c) I’m damn lucky to even have this to complain about, so I should just shut the hell up. Right? Right.

So I, like many others, spent the last few weeks with the calendar, various program catalogues and a furrowed brow, trying to figure out the right amount of stuff to put in our long summer days and how to physically get everyone where they need to go at the times they need to be there. I won’t know, until I’m neck deep in it, whether I got the right proportions of free time to camp time. And by then my freakydeakiness will have worn off, to be replaced with a numb exasperation with myself and my kids. The days will seem hot and endless and long and then all of a sudden it will be late August and I’ll get all freaky again, dreading the crush of school and all that entails, looking back longingly on our summer that seemed to stretch like taffy, and I’ll wish to be back here, right where I am right now.