Yesterday seemed like the perfect day to break out the Easy Bake oven. The little oven that let’s you cook a minature cake by the heat of a 40 watt lightbulb, yet affords you all of the mess of a real cake! What’s not to love about it?
My daughter got started on her own. Opened the little package and poured it into the tiny bowl. She added the water and stirred away. It didn’t look right. In fact I twittered: Easy bake oven cake mix looks frighteningly disgusting. Like curdled milk baby vomit. Just in case you wondered.
But I assumed that little lightbulb worked miracles or something.
It did not.
It was then I realized our Easy Bake oven mistakes. I had assumed my daughter could read the packages well enough to differentiate between cake mix and the frosting mix. She, on the other hand, was not even aware that she was supposed to read “all those letters.” So we had just baked miniature pan of frosting.
The second attempt went much, much better.
The little piece that is missing from the cake? That was the amount she was willing to share with her siblings.
Tracking Santa’s flight on the computer. One of the best things about having children spread over a wide age range is the opportunity to see your older ones be genuinely sweet to the youngest ones. To get excited for them. To play along to all things Santa.
At our house Santa got a vodka and cranberry.
It was so windy yesterday that both of the trees blew over and the wreath blew off the front door. Unlike the snowmen donuts I chased the wreath down and hung it back up.
At o’ dark thirty Christmas morning.
The aftermath.
One of the toys that Miles had to have. A toy which will be broken and/or discarded never to be looked at again in a week.
It isn’t Christmas until you give yourself some tattoos. It’s like a holiday tradition.
It was an iPhone, iTouch, iPod, Ninetendo Christmas. My daughter’s craptastic must have present of the season… Pixos.
My daughter doing her Amy Winehouse impression. For the record that is a tiny bottle of 7Up flavored jellybeans.
And then on to the homemade pizza. New life, new traditions. We also had crack. If you haven’t made that recipe you should click over and make it now. No, really. I’ll still be here when you copme back.
Jingle bell hair ties.
Rootbeer floats, the movie Elf, a glass of wine. The perfect ending.
I found this in our little letters to Santa “mailbox” I love the phonetic spelling. And honestly I am just happy that there are not any last minute present must-haves in the letter.
We are down to the wire and I don’t have most of the present wrapping done. I like to live on the edge.
*****
It was crazy windy today, gusts of 30mph. And cold. You know, relatively speaking.
Today I had to go out to the grocery store. I really did not think that it was going to be that busy. I guess there are more procrastinators out there like me than I realized. I pulled in to the grocery store parking lot and it was FULL. As in there were no parking places. I don’t even like going to the grocery store when the parking lot if half full
I circled once and then left to go to that store I hate and pretend not to shop at. Seriously, I felt like I had walked into the people of walmart website.
While in there Miles convinced me to buy a dozen donuts shaped and decorated like snowmen. He was very excited by these snowmen. It took forever to get through the store and check out. We stepped out of the doors what felt like hours later and a huge gust of wind came along. It grabbed our box of donuts from the top of our groceries in the cart and blew it across the parking lot like it was a sheet of newspaper. It landed face down half way across the parking lot. Where it was promptly run over.
Miles was distraught and said it was the SADDEST THING that has ever happened.
The day you were born is still etched in my mind like a series of snapshots. You know those little flip books that you flip through with your thumb, and the quicker you flip the less they look like individual pictures and the more they look like a cohesive story? That is how I remember your birth, only my thumb involuntarily pauses and I get stuck on certain photos longer than others.
Flip, flip, flip…
Waking in a pool of my own blood, gushing like an artery with each contraction. It was shocking to see my own blood everywhere.
Flip, flip
Running back to get my camera from where it was charging. I almost didn’t bring the camera. I had paused with my hand on it and walked away.
Flip
Driving to the hospital in frigid temperatures. The roads were icy. There was some sort of weather advisory. I sat in the front seat silent. My hands on my belly, silently pleading with you to move, even a little. You were stubborn. I watched the scenery pass by through the window, the frozen landscape whizzed by. The sun was just beginning to peak over the hillside in the distance. Hope rising.
I remember thinking that this is what it felt like to feel absolutely nothing. And yet to feel everything with a striking clarity. All of my senses were heightened. I was concious of the contractions, the gushing of blood, the heat blowing out of the vent and hitting me in the face, the frost on the car window, but mostly the stillness of my belly. I rolled the window down. I need fresh air, I had said.
The cold air hit me in the face. It seemed to speak to me, to say everything I had feared for those nine months.
Who do you think you are to be so lucky?
Flip, flip
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.
Please. Just please.
I prayed and bargained with the universe, if you only you give me this– this one thing I am asking for. I have forgotten now what all the things were that I held up as offerings, all the ways I promised that I would be worthy. I hope that I have kept them.
I hope.
Because you were worth it. Are worth it.
Flip, flip, flip
I am laying on a table wearing a hospital gown. The nurse is trying to find your heartbeat with the doppler. We hear nothing. I am acutely aware that I am not in a regular labor and delivery room. I am tucked away in some assessment room. There is no litttle bassinet, no receiving blankets folded and waiting. She moves the doppler around to a different spot on my belly. I am holding my breath.
Finally we hear whoosh. whoosh.
Flip, flip, flip
You came out of my body screaming. You were laid on my chest. Our eyes met and you immediately stopped crying. You were an old soul in a tiny five pound package. In that moment it was like we had known each other forever.
My heart seized in my chest. As much as I couldn’t bear for anything to happen to you moments before you were born, it was ten fold now. I kissed your perfect little face.
Flip, flip, flip, flip…
Now you are five.
And I? I am lucky beyond measure.
The prayer I say when I close my eyes is still the same.
It is all on you this year. I eagerly anticipate your arrival with gifts. I am plum out of ideas, money, and the will to enter a mall.
Love, Chris
I did spot this little gem while out the other day. I am not yet sure which teacher will be the lucky recipient of this rhinestone encrusted Playboy goblet.
,
I have not bought any Christmas presents. Zilch. Zip. Nada.
It doesn’t help that my children have no ideas of anything that they want. Which I think means that they have everything their little hearts desire. I may just put an orange in their stockings and call it a day.
My baby turned five the other day. I know! That sound you hear was my uterus hitting the floor in utter disbelief. How is it even possible?
It seems like only yesterday I looked like this. Without a head, even. It could be a photo of some other, random pregnant woman for all you know. Some woman wearing the world’s most unfashionable jeans. And a red velour shirt. In my her defense I she was pregnant and therefore can not be held accountable for my her fashion choices.
Yesterday afternoon was like any other day after school. Little kids came home, threw their stuff everywhere, ate snacks, talked about their day at school in increasingly loud volumes.
Then my middle schoolers walked in the front door.
Mom, you need to call the school. Like right now.
Why?
I caught two kids being mean to [12 yr old brother] in the hallway after school. It’s just… you need to call the school.
Anyone who has kids this age knows that they never want you to call the school unless it is something big. Something they feel is beyond their control… and most of the time they feel they can control everything.
Then the story came out.
*****
My 12 yr old is not one of the “cool” kids.
I don’t say this disparagingly. I say it as a fact. He doesn’t like sports. He prefers to wear clothing that is the equivalent of wearing pocket protector and head-gear back in my day. The non-conformist in a sea of Underarmour, Aeropostale, Abercrombie.
He plays the trombone in the band. He is crazy smart. (Mom brag alert– he has a 107 average in science) He prefers to talk to adults rather than kids his own age.
He reads things like the Thesaurus for fun. And then feels compelled to use the words than no one knows in his every day conversations. Not the sort of thing that makes you wildly popular with your peers.
The thing is that he also is one of the most tender hearted kids. He never even thinks that kids are being mean to him. He shrugs it off. He is the eternal happy optimist.
But I knew that this day would come.
I have watched him skip out the front door, swinging his instrument case in one hand, his lunch box in the other, and thought that he only lacks a Kick Me sign on his back.
And yet. And yet, my heart breaks.
I have tried to get him interested in other clothes. Maybe something that wouldn’t make him stand out so much, make him blend in more. Perhaps he could not slick his hair down like a 50 yr old man with a greasy comb-over.
And I am ashamed to even admit that I often wish he wouldn’t want to march to his own drummer so much.
To be so different.
To behave in a way that makes him a magnet for bullying.
It has always been more subtle before this. Things that have saddened me, but always been firmly on the non-parental intervention side of the line. A blurry, squiggly line whose edges become more difficult to navigate the older your children become.
*****
My 13 yr old went to go find his younger brother. All the different grades have their lockers in separate hallways. He got up to the 7th grade hallway of lockers and saw two boys bullying his brother. Slamming the locker shut on him. Shoving him. Stabbing him with their pencils. Hitting him on the back of the head.
My 13 yr old called out down the empty hallway,
Hey, leave him alone.
Why? What’s it to you?
He is my little brother and you had better get away from him.
Oh, I didn’t know he was your brother.
Yeah, now you do. So get out of here.The bigger of the two kids walked away down the hallway. The other kid stood there.
If I were you I would leave too.
My son tells me later that his adrenaline was pumping so furiously he could hear nothing but his own heartbeat in his ears.
*****
It was so cool, Mom, how he showed up out of nowhere. Like a superhero.
*****
My 10yr old and 13 yr old are in the kitchen alone together. They are the cool kids. The athletes. The ones who make friends easily. The parade of kids that come knocking on our door every afternoon after school come for them. They are the kids people gravitate toward, whatever elusive, undefinable quality it is that makes people like you, they have “it.” Remember those kids from your own days in school? The ones who made everything seem so effortless?
They are joking around, wrestling, giving each other “dead arms.” I am almost to the point where I am going to have to tell them to knock it off. It is inevitable that one of them will get hurt or they will break something.
You know next year you will have to watch out for him. I’ll be at the high school.
Yeah, I know.
Just for one year though, then he’ll be at the high school with me and [15yr old].
Yup.
My heart shattered. I don’t know if it is because of the fierce protection they have for their brother. Or the fact that they recognize he needs their protection. Or if it is because in spite of evidence to the contrary on an almost daily basis, they love each other deeply and without reservation.
I do know that I have never before felt as acutely what I missed out on growing up as I did in that moment.
*****
The sound of the trombone wafts into the family room. Waft might be glossing over the reality a little. Okay, a lot.
My 13 yr old describes it as the sound of an elephant dying.
Do you have to play that stupid thing now? NOW?
When should I practice?
I don’t know. Can’t you practice outside? So I don’t have to hear that noise?
It is like 30 degrees outside.
So?
I’ll freeze to death.
Yeah?
Most often this is what love looks like with siblings. They knock you down. Keep you humble. Laugh at you when you least want to be laughed at. But no one else had better do it or they will be the first at your side, the big S peeking out from underneath their Underarmour sweatshirt.
