That's True. So True.

   Scene I: A messy kitchen on a morning before school; Mommy is finishing packing her son's lunch and trying to find a container big enough for all the Halloween candy that has taken over her house. She grabs a brown chest and begins to dump out the assorted stickers. Son enters, Stage Right.)

"Mommy, why are you emptying the Treasure Box?"
   
(Please don't make me talk about this.)
"Because."

"Because you don't have any piano students?"

(Really? We're going to talk about the fact that my blasted infirmities have robbed me of my career, my vitality, even my sense of humor? And my favorite students? We're going to talk about this at 7:41 a.m.?! )
"That's right."

"So you - " he paused over the big word, " - cancelled your studio?"

(Sure, kid. Twist the knife.) "Yes."

Pause.
(... It's ridiculous how much this hurts. Please go away.)


"But you're getting better now."

(Slowly but surely -  now that I've cancelled my whole life.) "That's true. I am getting better."
   
Son dashes across the kitchen and throws his arms around Mommy with enthusiasm. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

Mommy nearly falls over, startled. "For what?"

"For getting better!" Son beams with his father's beautiful smile. "Because I want to play with you!"

"Oh. And I can play with you now?"

"Yes! Because you don't need to sleep as much anymore!"

(That's true, little man.) "That's true."

 

In Defense of Procreation: Part I

  "The Time has come," the walrus said, "to Talk of Many Things,
      We Might Want to Have Kids -
         So Convince Me This is A Good Idea - "

  "Well..." I answered slowly, "mine just spent four days at their grandmother's so that we could see if eleven prescription drugs could get my migraines under control and guess what? I'd forgotten that you can watch movies without closed captions! Did you know that characters have VOICES?! That there is such a thing as sound design?"
   "Er..." my friend (who is not a walrus) answered.
   "SOUND DESIGN!!" and then I cackled a little too maniacally because really, I  haven't blogged in two months because I've been bouncing from one neurologist to another while they all poked me and stuffed me into machines and went "OOOH!" and "Huh" and "That's rare" and "That shouldn't do that" and "You hallucinate WHAT?" and finally just pushed me on to another doctor because none of them are Dr. House and they are not interested by my rare condition. They are annoyed that I won't fit in their boxes or respond as I ought to their medications. The last doctor simply called me a "unicorn" and said we were in  waters, so "let's try some stuff and be patient".
   Where was I? Right.
   I owe my friend. I owe all my friends. I owe every reader who has ever skimmed this blog and laughed at my stories of poo and thought, 'Thank heaven I have no offspring' because frankly, I've done you a disservice. You deserve all the same misery I've had. More than that, you deserve all the same joys.
   It isn't really a good idea to have kids.
   It's the most crazy, fabulously adventurous thing two people can do.
   So you really ought to try it.

  Why?


 Reason #1: Your children will show you the Worst of Yourself. And the Best.
    Sure, the first thing you may hear in the morning is sarcasm. Your six year old may be helping his little sister get breakfast cereal, and she may be demanding 2% milk, and he may suddenly sigh and snap, "Well, we are out of that milk and I am not a magician so I can't just make it appear!" And you think to yourself, 'That is absolutely my fault. Sorry, kid'.
   And perhaps, later on, while he attempts to set the kitchen timer on the microwave, he will fall into your habit of yelling at inanimate objects: "NO, MICROWAVE, NO! NOT COOK! JUST TIMER! DO NOT COOK! AAARGH!"
  This may be the moment you despair. You may think, 'I am not fit to care for children. I have harmed society by allowing my DNA to replicate. Perhaps it isn't too late to find a good home for them - they are cute and housebroken, after all."
   But then, there is a moment when you hear your son playing a game with his sister where he is obviously cheating FOR her, so that she will win. He whispers the answers to her, and when she calls them out, he praises her to the skies as the smartest little girl he knows. Then he reads out loud to her and gets her a snack while Mommy has to lay in the dark bedroom with her Superhero mask (blackout sleep mask). And when your son comes in to check on your headache and kisses your cheek, you think, 'Well, I suppose I haven't done the worst job ever.'
   Then he clinches it by asking:
     "Can I make you a sandwich? Would that make your headache better?"
  In his defense, not one neurologist offered that as a cure for migraine, so for all we know, it could very well be the missing link.
     
  I guess what I'm trying to say is that kids are a little bit like marriage - the force you to face yourself every single day in a brutally honest way. The make you grow up in tough ways, in good ways, in hard ways, in beautiful ways.
   I highly recommend it.

   Of course, your other kid may flash half the church with her new dress during the Lord's Prayer, and you will spend the rest of the service in a silent facepalm of shame, but hey! A little humility is good for us all.

God is a Ninja

"WHERE IS GOD?!" the four year old demanded from her throne (car seat). Her tone would allow no pathetic minion to fail in producing her desire immediately. "Where is he?"
  Her wise, older brother rolled his eyes, for, being seven, he was infinitely more knowledgeable in the ways of the world. "God," he declared sagely, "is invisible."
   "What," his sister asked, "does that mean?"
   "It means you can't see him."

   Silence.

   Then, the Princess declared with a logician's confidence: "God is a ninja."
   "WHAT?!" her brother cried. "No he isn't!"
   "Yes! Yes, he is!" she argued, "because I can't see him!"
   "MOMMY! Tell her that God is not a ninja!"


 

Thins your Mother Won't Tell You Because She Wants Grandchildren, Part IV: The First Trimester

   The greatest irony of pregnancy is that when you most need the love, help, and support of strangers is during the three months when no one can tell that you're pregnant. They can tell that you're bloated, maybe a little more pudgy than they remembered, but not obviously pregnant.
   Unfortunately, that's when you find yourself bent over in the canned goods aisle while praying to every God you can think of and a few you made up (God-of-Lost-Earrings) to please, please, please deliver you from puking in the Food Lion.
   You would think, thanks to heartwarming TV dramas, that Morning Sickness would cause you to throw up a little, so that 27 minutes into the episode it can be - gasp! - revealed that you are pregnant! Then you instantly get a cute bump and six screen shots later, you're rushing to a delivery room with a vaguely Chris-Pine-looking OBGYN and ninety seconds after that, you're presented with a thoroughly cleaned, pink, non-sobbing infant.
   But none of that is true.
   In the first few weeks (or months, depending on your distraction), no one knows you're pregnant - including you. You might experience what doctors call 'fatigue', but what actually feels like carrying an 80lb. pack through a swamp. You suddenly hate the smell of food, or you love the smell of food, of you're surprised that you suddenly notice and care about the smell of food. You may experience 'hormonal changes', which means that you will break out in acne and cry over toothpaste commercials.
   My personal experience was an earth-shattering, overwhelming, incredible rage. The first time I was unwittingly growing a small person, I had to lock myself in a relative's bathroom to cry; not that cute I-need-a-hug cry, but the vicious I'd-kill-if-I-could-get-away-with-it cry. You may be thinking that is a perfectly normal response to spending Thanksgiving with in-laws, but not in this case. My in-laws are nice people. I was just insane. I sobbed and seethed all the way home, while my bewildered husband attempted soothing, "I don't think it was as bad as you're making it out to be". He said it once. Only once.
   The next time I felt that way, I knew that #2 was on her way.
   My mother, on the other hand, had no ill effects at all. She told me that she did feel dizzy, once. Once. So when she felt dizzy again, ONCE, she knew that she was pregnant with my brother. But that was it. I remember answering a phone call from her, whispering, "I think - I'm gonna - puke..."
     "Oh! That never happened to me," she answered. "You shouldn't have morning sickness. I didn't."
     "Uh-huh."
      You might be one of those people who gets glowing skin and sparkling eyes and a general feeling of bliss. I hope you are. I wouldn't hate you. Really.
     Not much, anyway.
 

   The first 13 weeks are LOOONG. And if you want to Keep It A Secret, it's even harder. You have to plan brilliant excuses for why you're not drinking (I don't drink on Days that have a 'Y' in them) or avoiding caffeine (I'm cleansing my auras) and you have to try to remember who you whispered it to (but your brain has started going). You can't even beg your colleagues to lay off the Jungle Gardenia hand lotion.
   No one opens doors for you, or offers to carry groceries, or compliments you on your glow. You're just a desperately pale woman leaning against the cool doors of the Frozen Pizza section for relief. You don't seem pregnant to the customers who avert their eyes - you just look weird and hungover.
    If you do decide to keep it a Secret, make sure you have a few friends who know. People who can be gentle with you and send you back to bed, people who will love you enough to go to the grocery store and buy pastrami because you can't go near the Deli anymore since the smell rotisserie chicken makes you gag. And be gentle with yourself!
   Your mother will tell you that she planted 14 rice paddies and walked three miles uphill both ways to work while she was pregnant. Women all over the world are pregnant and able to complete triathlons and climb Kilimanjaro and you can't handle the smell of olives?!
   In which case, you must retort that you are an educated, globally-minded individual who honors the cultural heritage of Bali. In Bali, any request made in the first 3 months by an expectant mother is believed to be an outworking of the baby's desires. So when someone rolls their eyes at you because you're suddenly ravenous for cheesecake at 4 a.m., just remind them that it isn't you talking at all. It's the baby. And they had better get you that cheesecake right away - because you have to get it swallowed down before the morning sickness kicks in again.
 

60 Seconds of Quiet

   I planned an enormous shopping trip. The kind that required two shopping carts and separate lists because we planned a reunion with friends and I needed to find six different kinds of cereal. Since the second round of antibiotics has knocked me for a loop this week, I didn't make it to Harris Teeter during the day, and finding that all the milk was gone, subsisted on the last four ounces of orange juice and called it 'lunch'.
   So when the headache lifted, briefly, around 7:30, I feebly put on shoes and asked my darling husband to please, please, please help me buy groceries. And he assented most generously, and the children consented most piteously, and we went to the store.
   It was epic and exhausting, and the little Jetta wagon could not have held another bag. I sat with a 24 pack of Dasani on my lap for the drive home. And while the children had really, really tried their best to not ask too many questions, my headache was certainly back. When we were half a mile from home, after the umpteenth question about the fate of the last two popsicles in the freezer, I lost the will to live and simply closed my eyes. Perhaps if I stopped answering, the questions would fade away.
    At last, Daddy intervened.

D: "All right, all right, guys. Let's take a break, ok? Let's all try to be really quiet for 60 seconds."

J (6-year-old son): "60 seconds? That's one minute!"

D: "Yes. Let's try to be quiet for that long."

J: "One minute?"

D: "Right. You're still talking."

A( 4-year-old daughter): "But I'm not! I'm being very quiet!"

J: "No, you were just talking!"

A: "But - no - the before - I was - and you were NOT quiet - "

J: "Why are you both laughing? Mom? Dad?"

Nice Try, Kid

  I should have known better.
  I stood, smelling like Lysol, in my cleaning tee and shorts, with my hair glistening from lack-of-shower and my face rosy with the allergic response to seasonal pollen. In another few minutes, I would discover that I was wearing the T-shirt inside out.
   I should have been on my guard.
   But when Princess wandered through the living room and stopped, mouth agape, I couldn't help but trust her beautifully innocent expression. "Mommy!" she cried. "You are SO. BEAUTIFUL!"
   I melted. "Oh, sweetheart," I said, "Thank you. I needed that! That is so kind - "
 
   "Can I have a cookie?!"



    It was a nice try. Thank heaven it will be a few years before subtlety kicks in.

Not Food

  My children are obsessed with the "Veggie Tales Christmas" CD, and while Junior Asparagus does a particularly strident 'While By My Sheep', I can't say that I'm a fan. Something about hearing it 735 times and having to sing a Jamaican "Angels We Have Heard" in March makes me want 'accidentally' destroy the CD player. I could never do that, of course - my children love this CD.
   In order to stem the tide of singing French peas, I have created a few games: The Rhyming Game, The Synonym Game, The 'What Starts With L" game, The 'Seriously, if you make one more annoying tongue noise you will never see the Kindle again" (less of a game), etc.
   Anyway, Daddy suggested that we play the Antonym Game on the way to church.
   "What's an antonym?" Spiderman asked.
   "An opposite," Daddy explained.
   "Oh! Like FAT and SKINNY!" Spiderman cried.
   "Sure," I said, hoping he wasn't referring to the front seat passengers, "or FAST and SLOW. Your turn, little girl."
   "Say 'UP & DOWN'," Spiderman whispered to his little sister.
   "UP & DOWN!" the Princess shrieked.
   "Why don't we let her come up with one on her own?" I suggested.
   "Do you know an opposite?" Daddy asked.
    She thought about it. "CHEETOS."
    Pause.
   "And FOOD," she finished.
 
    Daddy laughed so hard he nearly veered into oncoming traffic.
    "No," Spiderman sighed. "That's not an opposite."
    "Oh, yes, it is!" I said. "She is wiser than you know."

Things Your Mother Won't Tell You Because She Wants Grandchildren, Part III : There is No Such Thing as Privacy

The Right to Privacy.
   It's important.
   My daughter, currently three-going-on-fourteen, insists on shutting doors for herself and others in the name of 'piracy'. The ACLU is obsessed with it. You're used to having it.
  But when you try to inform your relatives that you are PREGNANT you may be surprised to find that your middle isn't the only thing growing. The circle of people familiar with your temperature, constipation, and hormonal rants expands as well.


   For example, if you confess to your mother that a series of hormone-based birth control has caused you to gain six pounds in two weeks while crying constantly, you think that is private information. But the public thinks that reproductive health is not only your concern, it is everyone's concern (insert national politics). So when my doctor recommended taking a break from the contraception that had turned me into a raving lunatic, my mother shared this information with a friend while standing in a hardware store. And they decided it would be a great thing to pray that God would give me a baby.
   Now which would you suspect is more effective? Three forms of birth control? Or two women praying in a Lowe's?
   You know the answer.
   I was sitting in the doctor's office for my birth control shot two weeks later when the nurse came back smiling. "I ran two tests," she said. "They are both positive. Congratulations!"
 
   Piracy - - I mean, privacy. It went right out the window.
   I stammered, "But... but... HOW?!"
   She winked at me. "You'd know better than I would, dear!"
   The. Horror.
 

   Soon, the post office employee was asking me, "Are you sure you know who the daddy is?" The random passerby would smile sweetly and say, "Awww!" Strange children would gape and say, "Do you have a BABY in there?"
    "That's what I'm told."
     Your middle becomes a public talking point. Where once people commented on your fabulous taste in shoes, they now speculated on your past sex life. And strangers in Target were happy to corner you near the yogurt to advise you on natural birth practices or the absolute need for an epidural the minute you set foot on hospital grounds. I have never discussed my nethers with so many people I didn't know.


   Which brings me to the story of my second child. Since our first was eighteen months old, some insane instinct informed me that having more children couldn't be that much harder than having one (Note: There is no evidence to support this idea). My dear husband and I decided to 'think about it'.
   A week later, my mother came to visit. She descended from the guest room for breakfast and announced, "You're pregnant."
   "I'm not," I sighed between flipping pancakes and wiping juice off the chair legs. "I don't have time."
   "You are," she informed me. "I dreamed that you are pregnant."
   "I'll inform my biological clock," I answered.
   Two weeks later, I called to inform her that she was correct. "Please, please don't dream about me having twins," I joked (NOT A JOKE.)


  The following week, my brother, on tour in Afghanistan, called from an undisclosed location.
  "Guess what?" I asked, swaying nauseously.
  "You're pregnant!" he cried.
   "Mom told you?"
   "No," he said. "I dreamed it."
   "That is NOT how people get pregnant," I told him. (Right?)
   "I dreamed it!" he insisted. "I dreamed that you were pregnant, and it's a little girl!"
   "I can't guarantee that."
   "I know it," he said sagely. "It's a girl."
   "Please, please," I begged, "You and mom have got to stop dreaming about my reproductive system. Please."
    It was a girl.


   'Uncomfortable' doesn't begin to cover the feelings that come with knowing your family is dreaming about your *ahem* 'lady parts'. More horrifying still is the moment when a friend asks, "How many weeks are you?" and you see them mentally counting backward, trying to pinpoint the moment of conception, and really hoping it wasn't while you were visiting them, and all the while you realize -

    Now everyone knows you've had sex.
   At a dear friend's wedding, sitting among the bridesmaids dishing out post-wedding advice, I added a tidbit of my own. There followed a shocked silence.
    "I keep forgetting," one said, "that you're married. You've... ya know."
    And I looked down at my enormous five-month bump. "Yes. Yes I have."
 
 
    Privacy. You will have none. You won't have any after the kid either. It's just one of those things you have to give up for, say, twenty years. Be prepared.

 
 
 

Impression of a Mommy

This scene was recently enacted in the living room.

(Daughter enters stage left in a huff. She pounds the buttons of her toy cell phone with ferocity. )  "Hello? Yes? What. What."
Pause.
"Hurry, I need to go take my twelve-bath."
Pause.
"UGH." (She wanders, harried, searching through random bags.) "Hang on, hang on!"
(Retrieves a toy.)
"I will call you back in a minute!"'
(Slams phone. Hurries to the bathroom). "No, kitty, no! Do not use the toilet!"





The accuracy is a little unnerving.

Introducing "Unca-Xander"

  My daughter, the Princess-Who-Does-Not-Like-To-Wear-Crowns-and-Insists-She-Will-Grow-Up-To-Be-A-Gentleman, received a doll for Christmas from her great-grandparents. It was hard to tell which of us was more excited. My daughter was ecstatic because the doll came with a working umbrella and a bright red rain outfit. I was thrilled because I had been dying to buy a doll for her and just couldn't justify the expense of a certain name brand.
   I asked her what she would name the doll. She looked thoughtful. "I don't know," she answered. Her face spoke of many agonizing hours to come, deep in thought.
   The next day, as she carried the doll around the house, I asked again. "What is your doll's name?"
   "Oh!" She spun about. "Unca-Xander."
   "I'm sorry, what?"
   "UNCA-" she said, "XANDER."
   "Uncle Xander?" I asked. "You mean, like your Uncle Alexander? We call him Xan?"
   "Yes," she said. "No," she went on. "Unca-Xander."
   I meant to continue the conversation and attempt to salvage the moniker, but I had already fallen into a fit of laughter, so the child and doll moved on, unperturbed.
 
   Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce our beloved Uncle Xan:

and THIS, if Unca-Xander:

The resemblance is simply uncanny.

The Princess is simply in love.