One more than three. Six less than ten. The product of two and two..... My baby is four. I ask him how it happened and he looks at me out of the corner of his eye, flashes a dimple and says, "Uh, 'cuz I growed up." He isn't wrong. Somewhere along the way... he growed up. This year, his round baby belly stretched long and vanished completely on me. His ankles kept appearing until I finally figured it out, moved all his pants into his little brother's drawer and bought him new ones. He weaned. And then he weaned again and again and maybe one of these days it will be for good. He started a MDO program and he doesn't love it all the time but he goes and that is a step in the right direction. He ditched the pacifier and most of his baby words along with it. We even lost "newt nacks" and that was a hard day. He growed up. This boy is all freckles and feelings. He is audacious and wild and loud and beautiful and he always smells delicious- I can't figure out why. He holds my heart in the palm of his hand..... and he knows it. He loves pockets- like, he really loves pockets. He likes spraying things with the hose and he likes to draw and he likes to get dressed first thing in the morning, as soon as he wakes up... and he really likes video games. He is petrified that people will make fun of him for wearing underpants. He loves thrill rides. He hates it when his shirts are too long and when people laugh at him. He loves to buy people presents. He loves anything vanilla. This second child of mine is my big slice of humble pie all wrapped up in the cutest package you have ever seen. I cannot count how many times this kid has made me eat my words, re-examine my beliefs, and totally doubt my ability as a mother. I cannot count how many times I have yelled, "Where is Dexter?!" or felt my heart drop through my belly because I could see him running head first into danger. I cannot count how many times he has made me realize that the idea that I had mothering even remotely figured out was totally ridiculous. And I cannot count how many times I have looked at him and felt flooded with overwhelming gratitude that he is here, he exists and that I get to be his mama.
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Last year, I turned thirty. I was vaguely dreading it before it happened. Mostly because the death of your twenties is supposed to be a big deal and it felt like something I should be dreading. In the end, my birthday passed by largely unnoticed as we road-tripped to Louisiana. The boys were acting the way small children tend to act when trapped in small spaces for hours on end so there was no moment of silence for my twenties and life went on. I think if I had known what was in store for my thirtieth year, I might have been a little bit more excited about it. Until this year, I have never really known what I was interested in. I would always dread the moment of introductions when someone would ask, "So, Michelle, tell me a little about yourself? What do you like to do?" It seems like such an innocent question, but it would send my stomach plummeting because I never had any idea what to say. It only took thirty years to discover I have a ton of interests and hobbies and a deep desire to explore many more. Now, my only worry when someone asks me what I like to do is that I will talk too much and bore them to tears. So, I have discovered a lot of truths about myself this year and uncovered a lot of lies that I have believed as well. While I have not yet completely unraveled the hold the lies have on me, the discovery of their existence was a step in the right direction. Tomorrow, my thirtieth year will come to an end and I decided I would put a few of the lies I am in the process of laying to rest here....for my own benefit and maybe for someone else's as well. Lie 1. Beautiful experiences are meant for beautiful people. Since I am not a beautiful person, I should focus my energy on fixing that before I even attempt to experience the beautiful things that I want out of life. This is true even if the experiences I desire have absolutely nothing to do with my physical appearance. Once I have achieved some level of attractiveness (maybe so that I will not completely ruin any pictures I take of my experiences... because if you can't take a good picture of it, did it even happen?) then I can turn my attention on experiencing the things I yearn for in life. Lie 2. The things that I love are probably stupid. The things that I care about in life are probably a dumb way of expending my energy and I will probably never be any good at them. If I choose to continue expending energy on these things, the only thing that makes this acceptable is if I pretend that I also find them sort of dumb in spite of spending my attention and resources on them. If I do that, then I can get away with continuing to love them, but taking myself too seriously is absolutely the worst thing I could do. Especially because I will always be bad at everything I try. Lie 3. Other people are allowed to be human but I am not. If someone cracks a joke at my expense, takes advantage of me, oversteps my boundaries, makes an insensitive comment, put their feelings before mine or generally treats me carelessly or maliciously, I owe them grace and forgiveness because they are human and everyone makes mistakes. However, if I make a mistake as a human and someone else chooses to call me out for it or not forgive me, they have every right to do so because I should have known better. Lie 4. Saying no is wrong. When someone asks me for something, I should find a way to make it happen. Other people being uncomfortable or unhappy is the worst thing that I can experience so if I can find a way to keep that from happening, I will do it at any cost. If someone expresses displeasure with my actions, I am automatically wrong and should change my behavior to make the other person feel better immediately. My perspective of any given situation does not matter, only the perspective of the other party. And there are a million more!
When I see these lies in black and white, they look absurd, of course. Yet, I have lived my life within this reality for decades. Every time I recognize one of these lies dragging me along now, I am grateful that I can recognize them for what they are. Sometimes, there is nothing I can do about it, but I am getting better. I am slowly but surely unwinding their death grip on my life. I am slowly but surely replacing them with truths, breathing in deep, and basking in the freedom. I am in such a sweet spot in life and I do not take it for granted. I am in love with a wonderful human. My babies are still under my wing. Everyone I love is safe and healthy. Problems I face usually have a solution. I have a great roof over my head, good food in my belly, and I am exceptionally privileged to be living my life in a way that I choose to. There have certainly been years when I could not say these things and I know that there are years waiting in the future where pain might outweigh pleasure. But this year has been a good year. I say farewell to thirty with fondness and welcome thirty-one with open arms. Happy birthday, me! If you knew me or read my blog when Liam was a baby, then you probably know I was a pretty hands on mom for a very long time. Liam and I spent hours a day engaging in activities, art projects and quality time together. I played with him constantly and talked to him constantly and, whenever I wasn't available, his father or another family member stepped in. He spent basically all his waking hours stimulated and engaged and totally entertained. Liam is a brilliant kid. It probably doesn't have everything to do with the first four years of his life as Prince of the Haddock House, but I am sure it didn't hurt either. He is undeniably intelligent, quick to learn new things, full of questions, outspoken, opinionated, engaging, quirky and fun. But there is one thing that life as the center of the universe did not teach Liam: resiliency. I certainly did not set out to raise a fragile child and I do believe that some of it is just Liam's personality. He is quick to tell anyone that questions his approach to the world that he is sensitive and that just means he feels things more than other people. He also struggles with sensory processing issues related to his premature birth, as well as ADHD. The aftermath of Liam being born 11 weeks early is relatively invisible to an outsider, but it is a large part of our daily lives; a small price to pay to have this beautiful boy here and healthy, but a price nonetheless. I do also believe that some of Liam's sensitivity to life is a direct result of my awesome, engaged parenting and I believe this because in recent years I have become a terrible mother by my own standards, and, as a result, my children have become increasingly better at being children. I have three children now. Two of them are 15 months apart. One of them has special needs. All of them are tiny tornados. While the desire to engage and play and talk to each of them constantly is still there, the time simply is not. I do not spend hours planning and executing educational activities any longer. I do not sit down and fill my daily planner with fun, engaging projects for times of the day that I deem dedicated to science or art or reading anymore. My Pinterest pins sit collecting figurative dust. My baby brain building books sit collecting literal dust. I spend most of my time just keeping them fed and in clean clothes, on a somewhat reasonable schedule and relatively safe. I also spend a lot of time feeling pretty guilty about that as well.... unless I really stop and watch my children. When we first moved into our house, Liam could not go play in the backyard alone. I would set a timer for 10 minutes, tie his shoes and send him and Dexter out to play until the timer went off. Within two minutes, Liam would be standing at the back door, crying to come in because he was bored. I would spend the entire 10 minutes negotiating with him to find something to do and when the timer went off he would stomp inside, shed his layers, complain about the torture I had subjected him to and then ask me what I really had planned for the day. These days, I will often discover the back door standing open and Liam outside, swinging on the swing, digging in the mud, or deeply engaged in an imaginary world he and his brother have created together. Sometimes, they last an hour and sometimes they spend the entire day outside, coming in only to grab a hand full of pretzels or an apple, before heading back outside for more adventures. Either way, it never stops feeling like a miracle. After years of having his every move dictated to him by a loving but overzealous mother, Liam finally has the freedom to just.... be a kid. It isn't always easy. It is hard when things change. He sometimes tells us that he misses life before the babies and I understand it. He still feels uncertain about a lot of things and looks to adults for guidance, reassurance and companionship more frequently than a lot of kids. But my recent "neglect" has still allowed Liam to grow a bit wild. He runs out the front door to play with the neighbors, climbs fences, skins his knees, and gets dirty. He builds forts and reads books and plays all alone. He has secrets I will never know and conversations I will never hear and, without my careful, perfect curation of his life, he has a messy, beautiful life of his very own. Dexter and Rory have grown wild from the start. They have never been pruned or weeded or trellised. They do not know even know what it would feel like to have an adult tell you what to do with yourself. I am constantly dazzled by their ability to entertain themselves. They look to me for love, acceptance, conversation and food.... mostly for food... but never for entertainment. Rory is always busy and I have to go looking for him a thousand times a day. Dexter will often be found curled up on the couch with a book, or on the kitchen counter with a snack, or in the front yard watering the plants. It would never occur to him to ask permission or even for help unless he really, truly needed it. There is a lot of pressure on parents these days...or, perhaps, it is simply that there are a lot of options for parents these days and, with those options comes a feeling of urgency to utilize the resources we have at our fingertips. We are well-meaning, but overzealous. This is my first year gardening outdoors. It has been exciting and terrifying. When I first put the tiny seedlings in the ground, I was eager to take good care of them. I watered them every day, added egg shells and coffee grounds, sprayed them with organic fertilizer, picked off insects, whispered sweet nothings and watched over them like a mama bird. In spite of my tender, loving care, they started to grow weak and spindly and wither away. I could not figure it out! How could this be happenings? I was paying such careful attention to them! Digging through my many (many many many) gardening books for answers, I finally figured it out. I was killing my garden.... with too much love. Yes. Seriously. I needed to take a step back and let nature take its course. After some watchful neglect, my plants started to grow stronger and now they are stretching and reaching and producing abundant fruit. I am sure you can see where I am going with this.... With a little bit of watchful neglect, my children are growing stronger. I have to admit that I miss the days of being a best friend and constant play mate every single minute of the day. I enjoyed that time and it hurts a little to fade to the background of my children's stories. It makes my heart ache just a bit to know that one day my children will have childhood memories that I will not even be a part of because I was somewhere else doing the laundry or cooking the meals or just being a boring old mother.
But I also so love watching them stretch and grow and run wild. I love seeing them fall and pick themselves up, work out the solution to a problem on their own, create amazing things, and have epic adventures. There is something beautiful to be said for taking a step back and letting nature take its course. |
WHO AM I?
I am Michelle: a wannabe hippie in love with a bonafide geek. We also spawned. I spend my days with our four wild, beautiful boy children and I overshare about our life online because I am a Millennial and that is what we do.
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