"That's Not Food!"

A Turkey Trot

2025-02-22T06:15:00.000-08:00

The sound of ominous gobbling filled the skies, and I buried my face deeper into my jacket collar. The school bus would drop my daughter off at any moment, but I was preoccupied. My stance at the corner was a cower, my nervous gaze darting left to right. The wild turkeys were on the move. The gobbles bounced off the trees and homes, off the eight broke down cars in the driveway of the corner yellow house. I used to side eye that house anxiously, wondering about the comings and goings of the literally 16 people who lived inside of it, some of whom drove on the front lawn in order to access the garage. Today, my nosy ass didn't care. Today, it was all about the gang of roaming birds that had recently descended unto our neighborhood, numbering no less than twenty.

My hands tapped against my thighs. I was agitated. My eleven year old son had screamed a surprising fact at me a few days ago when the turkeys had abruptly lurched into our front yard while we were unloading groceries from the car. "Turkeys can fly up to 55 miles per hour!" He had inherited my anxiety about unchecked, untamed animals. "Stay away from them! They're going to attack and PECK OUR EYES OUT." Later, I posed a question to Google, feeling like there was hope we were overreacting. Surely wild turkeys couldn't fly up to 55 miles per hour. But, oh yes. Those beasts could get some air. In short bursts, Google qualified, but still. I didn't need to ask about the pecking our eyes out part, that factoid I already believed.

The neighborhood was already home to two regular, wild residents- a pair of elegant herons who pencil legged their way slowly around the park, harmlessly strolling and only occasionally lifting into a slow, dainty flight pattern. The herons provided a touch of beauty to the area, adding whole percentage points to our property value, practically negating what the yellow house had subtracted. I enjoyed the herons. "I do like some animals," I told my husband as I unclipped a dead chipmunk from one of many snap traps in the yard. "The herons are downright classy. I bet they listen to NPR."

Now, finally, the school bus was rounding the corner. I tapped a foot impatiently, staying alert as it ground to a halt and the accordion doors creaked open. Could these kids be any slower? They made their way to the front of the bus like octogenarians with tennis balled walkers, loose papers escaping their backpacks and creating a slow motion flurry of hunting and gathering. Meanwhile, the gobbling still sounded in the skies, getting louder, getting closer.

"Let's get the show on the road!" I called out to my daughter and her bus mates, stepping in front of the other parents who'd been waiting at the bus stop as well. "Just leave all the papers, I'm sure Mr. Cliff can clean them up later."

Mr. Cliff glared at me from the bus' driver seat. "Like hell I can," he muttered.

Finally, the kids were off the bus, squinting into the daylight as if emerging from a thousand year night. I grabbed my daughter's hand and pulled her forward down the street, her little feet stumbling to keep up. "Let's get home! Gotta start dinner. Club sandwiches, maybe?"

I didn't hear her reply over the abrupt rush of blood to my ears. We had turned our corner, and there, mere feet from us, was the turkey squad. We skidded to a stop in our tracks. I had seen the turkeys head off cars in the street and circle baby strollers on the sidewalk, their wattles rattling as they prepared their coordinated attack. The turkeys were fearless, strengthened by the foolish homeowners in our subdivision that thought them novel and attractively photogenic, the ones that tossed food their way and let them stroll into their open garage while snapping away photos for Facebook. "OMG! Look how cute! Turkey emoji, red heart eyes emoji, laughing until I cry emoji!"

They had only emboldened the turkeys. They obviously did not know the factoids my eleven year old did.

At the sight of the turkeys, my daughter yelped under her breath and gripped my hand tighter. The turkeys assembled, staring us down with their beady black eyes. There were so many of them, well over a dozen. It was like varsity team and junior varsity team, combining their forces in an unfair game.

"Mommy?" my daughter whispered, and I tore my stare away from the turkeys to where she pointed. It was the duo of herons, their heads bent gorgeously as they picked their way toward us from across the street.

"Jeez. Save yourselves!" I hissed at the herons. Of course, it made sense that they wanted to protect us from the savagery. The herons were civilized and graceful, posh and refined. I could not let these delicate creatures risk their welfare to help save mine from these untamed turkeys.

"Mommy?" my daughter whispered again, more urgently. Something was happening, a fresh layer of hell revealing itself. The herons were moving faster towards us, gaining speed and coming at us from one side while the turkeys still advanced from our front. The slim, knife sharp bills of the herons seemed to glint in the sun, and- hey, was that a small amount of blood and human hair dripping off the end of the larger one? In a mere moment, they would be fully upon us. If a heron had eyebrows, their eyebrows were both knitted together angrily, emphasizing the murderous sheen of their eyes. Was this really happening? Had the world gone mad? Did the herons have rabies? Helpless, I squeezed my eyes shut and let out the scream that had burbled up my throat, cringing as I waited to be eaten alive by nature's most deceptively appealing bird. God, I had been a sucker. I was no better than the neighborhood Facebookers with their misguided turkey adoration.

"Mommy." The soft whisper of awe in my daughter's voice jerked me back into the moment. I opened my eyes slowly. The herons were inches from us but had stopped. The turkeys, however, were on the move. They gobbled in a sort of unison, feathers ruffling and puffing as they performed a chaotic dance. And then, one by one, they leaped to attention, aiming their squat horrible bodies toward the herons. Was it 55 miles per hour? Maybe. They bypassed me and my daughter, taking aggressive flight towards the herons. We took the moment that was given to us and raced past the scuffle towards home, glancing back only once to glimpse the mess of birds. Dashing into the house, we double bolted the front door and then plastered our hands and faces to the window, peering down the street to see how the bird fight would finish off.

Yet the road was eerily empty. Only a couple of loose feathers floated perfectly in the air, spiraling down to the ground like a commercial for down pillows or expensive mattresses. It was almost as if nothing had happened; except, in the in the distance, we could hear it. The reassuring sound of gobbling. And maybe the hum of an engine as a car rolled over a front yard into its garage.

And If You See My Reflection In The Snow Covered Hills / Well, The Landfill Will Bring It Down

2025-02-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, well into my adulthood, my father said he had a gift for me. He handed me a tiny pink box, and I immediately waged silent guesses as to what could be in it. A golden pendant passed down six generations from the old country? A key to a lockbox in the Swiss Alps or even the local Chase branch? Maybe a check with a lot of commas, made out to me and folded up tightly as to fit in the tiny box. I could use a check, as I'd recently lost track of a 401K and was beginning to believe I'd never find it. Oops.

I cracked open the box, and then rattled its contents around in bewilderment. Were those...?

"Your baby teeth," he proclaimed. "Every last one of them."

So much for the check, the lockbox key, or the old country pendant. My sister and I exchanged glances, like we always did whenever our dad handed over something random that he'd come across in the deep, dark recesses of our childhood home. Old progress reports from catechism. Thirty year old Santa's Village bicycle license plates with our names on them. Attendance certificates from second grade, the year that I quietly suffered through two bouts of strep throat while feverishly half asleep at my desk. Photos featuring bad 80s hair and ugly Kmart sweaters. Sometimes those photos were useful in an apex parenting sort of moment. I'd call my children over and have them inspect the evidence of my 1989 wardrobe. "Do you think I picked that Donald Duck sweatshirt out?" I'd ask. "Do you think I had any say in what I wore? NO. I had three hideous outfits, each of them purchased at deep discount, and I had to wear them on repeat. Now get out of here with your UnderArmour and Zara, you spoiled brats."

"What am I supposed to do with these?" I laughed, kind of grossed out by the dental collection. My old baby teeth were tiny, rotten looking pebbles from an age when our household television had a knob that switched from UHF to VHF. "Will you be insulted if... I throw them out?"

"They're your teeth," my dad shrugged. But he seemed visibly disappointed when I dropped them into the trash can without ceremony, little pink box and all.

Are parents supposed to save baby teeth, amassing them in a gruesome collection of crusty enamel only to pass them on some thirty years later during a lull in dinner conversation? Because that's not what I've been doing. I pluck the tooth from under the pillow, stick in the smallest denomination of bill I have, and then bury the tooth in the trash under something extra slimy. True, for the very first tooth that Andy ever lost, I hesitated briefly before committing to the garbage can. But it was only very briefly, because I'm a busy woman with lots to get done.

Last year, Alex lost a tooth at a friend's house. "Oh, I lost my tooth," he said to the mom casually, inspecting the bloody molar in his palm. Then, with a shrug, he threw it away. The mom, horrified, said, "Don't you want a bag for that? What about the tooth fairy?" To which Alex replied, "There is no tooth fairy, and it's not worth the dollar to have to bring it home."

Maybe Alex will take after me (although honestly, he is a mini Chris through and through, even though Chris finds that comparison increasingly insulting as the years go by and Alex grows more annoying.) What I mean is, maybe Alex will have the same love language as me, which is Throwing Things Out. My lowest love language, just so everyone knows, is Gifts. I don't want gifts. I can buy myself my own stuff. I hate extra crap. Also, gifts make me feel guilty, since I am a terrible gift giver. I shop for gifts and I think that everything is overpriced garbage and maybe I should just give the gift recipient something useful, like eggs.

I throw things out to show my love. Admittedly, it's a bit of a selfish love language, since much of what I throw out doesn't belong to me, but I maintain that love is somehow being demonstrated. Who wants to live in a cluttered shithole? Not me! Or my loved ones, right? There was a stretch of time when I would walk into Chris' home office and throw away one large item per week. I did this for a month and a half, and, to this day, he has never once asked where anything went. "Where is my collection of interesting scraps of paper?" he has never asked. "Where is my broken desk clock in the shape of Harry Truman? What happened to my childhood jump rope? My folding chair with the rips in the fabric? Where is my Rubik's Cube with the missing red stickers? WHERE?" He has never asked any of this. But if I had said to him first, "Hey, I'm going to toss out this scratched DVD of 'Howard The Duck' that doesn't play," it might have been a marriage ending fight because someone special once gave him that DVD, and it has sentimental value.

Throwing Things Out is not Chris' love language. I think his love language is Explaining Game Directions Without Being Interrupted Because He Will Eventually Answer Your Questions So Stop Asking Them Now.

Anyway. I throw out mementos and broken bits in the same breath. I'll throw out an old diary and a discarded candy wrapper with the same amount of thought. Andy won the Illinois Principals Award last year. I put the certificate on the fridge for a month and then threw it away in the same bag as some used overnight maxi pads.

So proud of this kid! But I threw this certificate away.

Maybe I go too far with my throwing things out. True, I don't think many parents would try to convince me to keep the nasty baby teeth, but I did have a moment many years ago when I felt VERY JUDGED. I was super pregnant with Emily, and we were moving houses in less than a week or two. I was picking Andy and Alex up from preschool, and they each had backpacks full of subpar art projects. I simply could not take any more junk into my chaotic house, and so I unloaded it all, by the handful, into the garbage can there in the preschool lobby while the boys waited patiently. As I finished and we were about to leave, I turned and happened to see the preschool director staring at me. Staring. "I'm moving!" I wanted to shout at her. "I can't pack this shit! I'm out of boxes! It's not even that good! MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!"

So, I won't be one of those older parents who have their adult children over to the house in thirty years' time only to hand over a small box of discarded body parts or old report cards or clearly not art projects saved from preschool. What will we do when they come to visit? If I'm not going to be like my dad and hand over dusty childhood items, maybe I'll be like my mother. I'll put the blood pressure cuff on the kitchen table and we'll all take obsessive turns with it. I'll seek out illicit gossip about extended family members I really don't like. I'll wonder aloud what size TV everyone has.

I don't know, maybe I should start saving a few things just so we have something to do.

Lured In

2025-01-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

Alex embraced a new hobby this past summer. This one fits right into his overall 60 year old white man vibe of classic rock, bowling, and what appears to be moderate to severe psoriasis. Actually, the doctor told us the disgusting rash he developed on both legs was most likely folliculitis aggravated by too much hot tubbing one weekend- yet another 60 year old white man pursuit.

It's fishing. His best friend Matthew got him into it because Matthew's grandma lives by a stocked lake in a bougier part of Lake County. I've seen random kids fishing in the smaller ponds of our own non-bougie area, but all they ever seem to catch are Miller Lite bottles and the occasional patch of folliculitis. Actually, it's nice where I live- we are minutes away from a plethora of beaches. I always tell my kids how lucky we are to live here. When I was growing up, we went to the beach maybe once a summer, and it involved crossing over to the dark side (Indiana). Here, we can have impromptu beach days whenever we'd like! Are the beach sands white and pristine? Well of course not, they're brown and have to be raked for goose poop. Is the water crystal clear? It can be a little murky. But do we have a great time soaking up the rays and floating our cares away? Sometimes!

When I was a kid, we'd also drive long distances to fish. Well, my dad would fish, my mom would watch him fish, and my sister and I would wonder aloud if there was any endeavor more excruciating than fishing. Honestly, it seemed like he never caught a thing. But that can't possibly be true or why we would go so often? Was it a punishment of some sort? Was taking your kids to the Kankakee River the 1987 equivalent of telling kids today "no screen time?" You were screwing around and you broke the door off the TV console. You're in big trouble, young lady. Go get my worms.

Perhaps my dad would have had better luck at Matthew's grandma's abundantly stocked lake. It certainly could have been a quicker punishment. If I'd have grown up around these parts, we could have been at the lake within minutes. Dad could catch a handful of blue gills, toss them back in as to illustrate the futility of life, and then get us home all before my mother could even piece together where we'd gone and what the heck had happened to the TV stand.

But isn't that the irony of parenthood. An activity I loathed as a child came back into my life this past year in the form of a skinny 12 year old boy and his tackle box of ambition. Between myself, Matthew's mom, and Jack's mom, we managed to divvy up the role of Unlicensed Young Boy Fishing Uber into manageable nuggets. It truly takes a village, and that village is full of moms with camping chairs, Elin Hildebrand novels, and terse smiles for the grizzled old fishing guys who always have some sage advice for the kids. They might recommend Lily Lake right after sunrise. They might say something helpful about the amount of pepperoni the boys are using as bait. They may or may not question why Alex keeps physically getting into the lake and if he knows he has a hook stuck through his finger.

As Alex collected fishing wisdom and supplies, he'd ask to go more and more. Oftentimes, my village nowhere to be found, it was just me and him. Once I dropped him off at Bangs Lake while I went to run errands, and that felt like a low in my parenting career. I couldn't just sit with him and keep him company while he fished? I couldn't watch like my mom did? Not to mention the grizzled fishing guys seemed especially grizzled that morning. That was sure a lot of beer in their cooler for 9 am.

One morning, Alex talked me into renting a boat at Independence Grove. He had just purchased a huge nylon net the day before at Bass Pro Shop, and he was desperate to use it. We had to get into deeper waters in order to potentially need the net, deeper than Alex could reasonably wade into from the pier. Proving just how much I loved this annoying kid, we headed out early, purchased worms at the Ace Hardware (pepperoni would not do for the kind of catch Alex had in mind), and headed to the boat rental pavilion on the lake. Alex did all the talking, selecting the size of boat we would need and telling the college kid behind the counter that we would take a motor, too. "The works, my good man," Alex basically said, sliding my credit card across the counter while I wondered if using a boat motor was hard. I did not really know my way around boats, not to mention boat MOTORS. Actually, Alex and I as a pair were not especially good with boats at all. We had just a couple weeks ago had to be rescued from the middle of Devil's Lake during a boy scout canoeing trip gone wrong. The part that went wrong was that neither of us was strong enough to row back to shore. Plus I'd lost my hat in the breeze, so I was pissy.

To be fair, adding on the motor was probably a good idea. Getting back into a boat so soon after the boy scout rescue probably wasn't. But after snapping on a couple life jackets and getting a quick tutorial on the motor (and being heavily reminded that their emergency phone number was in the boat and we could call in case of any issues), off we went towards the middle of the lake.

Over an hour went by with no activity. Alex would fiddle with the worms and lures, casting in and reeling all to no avail. I tried to relax on my soaking wet bench seat while simultaneously yelling at Alex to sit down, be careful, stop rocking the boat, stop dicking around with the motor, don't eat chips with the hands that touched the worms, etc. Once in a while, he got some promising tugs on his line, but when he'd pull in, the bait would be gone and so would the fish. Grizzled fishing men called out to us from the shore. Had we caught anything yet? Alex, still optimistic but increasingly aware that our boat time was almost up, would call back no. No, no fish yet. He looked longingly at his new nylon net, at his gigantic blue box of various lines, lures, bobbers, whatnot. He gazed into the calm waters of the lake and made a wish.

Then, something amazing happened. Something that got my heart pumping and made me feel differently than I'd ever felt before. Something that Alex will remember for the rest of his life. There was a jerk on his fishing line, and Alex started to reel in. "Oh my God, it's a big one," he said, suddenly the most alert he'd ever been in his whole wide awake life. He fought with the fishing pole, trying to pull in his catch. For a moment, I rehearsed in my head how I would make Alex feel better when we discovered it was a dead badger or something. But then, I saw it. It was the biggest fish I'd ever seen up close, and it was there on his line, wriggling madly right beneath the surface of the water.

"GET THE NET!" Alex yelled.

The next ten seconds were a blur of activity. Alex tried to maintain control of his fishing pole while I shot up and grabbed the net. The beast of a fish was pulled up and scooped into the net, and somehow we got it aboard, into the boat, which was rocking so wildly that I'm shocked we didn't flip over. We dumped the fish onto the floor of the boat where it flopped crazily in all it's wet, slimy glory. Alex fumbled trying to pick it up, and I screamed nonsensical, ultimately unhelpful directions. Eventually strong arming the lake monster into a good grip, Alex shrieked at me to get out my phone- which I luckily had handy with the emergency boat number pre-dialed. I exited out of the dial mode, switched to camera, and snapped a picture. Proof of dominance. Proof of joy. Alex smiling hugely, so proud of his great big catch (Northern Pike, he'd inform me later), the happiness radiating off of him in tangible waves. I felt like a mirror of my son, my pulse racing from the excitement, and together we laughed and waved back at the fishermen on the shore who had been cheering on us the whole time.

Then, without much fanfare and only one quick last look, Alex dumped the fish back into the water and said, "Ok, we can go return the boat."

Heading home, classic rock blaring through the car speakers, Alex and I relived the moment while he texted Matthew and Jack the picture of his big catch. I was still coming down from the high of the moment, a fishing expedition unlike any other that I'd ever been on. It sure didn't feel like a punishment that day. It was a new core memory with my son, a story we would both retell all summer. He'll probably tell it to his own kids when he gets older and takes them out onto the lake. Of course, his kids will probably hate fishing. I'm sure that's the way it goes. "Fishing is fun," he might insist. "Heck, even your grandma Jackie used to like it!"

Time Traveling The Easy Way

2025-01-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

And in a flash, it's six years later. I'm 44 years old, slathering enough retinol on my face each night to burn off the most amount of skin cell layers I can until I'm in danger of showing bone. There's some hair dye involved, and my contact lenses are multi-focals. That means that my eyes are more focalled than they were before, from near to intermediate to kind of far to way back in time to a less cruel decade. Chris is doing fine, or at least that's what he likes to tell me in between back pain winces and handfuls of ibuprofen. He's a reassuring sort, that Chris B. Somebody has to be in a marriage. I'll flip out over the day to day snags and snarls along with the litany of things that could completely go wrong at any given moment and Chris, Chris will give a half shrug and go about his evening.

What have we done in the six years since I've given up blogging? Well let's see. There was a pandemic; that was kind of awful. Millions of people died and, even worse, my kids couldn't go to school. Emily started kindergarten on a goddamn laptop, playing Barbies just out of sight from her harried teacher's camera view. Just so everyone knows, I take credit for everything she learned that year. I taught her to read, I babysat her assignments, and guided her through online programs while she curled up next to me on the sofa and I stroked her hair. It was a strange, divisive time, one that may require revisiting on a different blog post if I keep this up. We wore masks outside like ding dongs, but some people refused to wear masks at all, also like ding dongs.

Completely realistic AI rendering of me

I had my first mammogram followed by my first biopsy followed by my first foray into anti-anxiety drugs. Turning 40 was no joke. One day I'm 115 pounds and feeling pretty vibrant as a 30 something year old, and then overnight I'm staring down the barrel of my own mortality and edging in on 140. Oh yeah, the biopsy came back fine. But every year, I go and it's something else. A scary phone call followed by an expensive ultrasound I'll choose to pay off monthly for the next three years. Some mysterious, eye catching cysts. Fun! In between, I notice that my hair is thinner than I'd like and sometimes I wake up at 3 am feeling like someone poured tepid water from old soup into my bed. That's not pee, in case you're wondering. That's pre-menopausal night sweats, and they're gross. But ain't nobody changing the sheets at 3 am; sometimes I don't even bother to change my pajamas. I just roll over and will myself dry.

Maybe I'm putting too much out there right now. It's been a long time since I've blogged; I've forgotten how to hold back.

I'm still driving the black minivan. It's a 2016 and it's going strong except for its many, mostly cosmetic problems. The parking lot designers at Goodwill put a pretty low barrier right by the drop off lane and I was so frustrated by the fact that I crunched into the barrier and completely dented my car that I almost didn't let them have my bag of old clothes. That would have taught them a lesson! The sliding doors don't really open and close on their own anymore, parts of the interior keep snapping off like Lego accessories, and there's a persistent layer of sand over the floor. I don't know, I think it makes us look like carefree beach goers, not dirty, negligent assholes.

I'm working consistently part time. The kids are off at school (in session since we've moved on from COVID and have gone back to completely disregarding headaches and swollen lymph nodes), and so I find myself with a desire to fill my days. I keep waiting for Chris to tell me that I need to work full time, especially on days when he's working from home and I'm laying on the couch taking an only partially deserved nap. But, I think if he did broach the topic and tell me to go make a little more money, I'd probably explode. Do you know how much I do around here? Without my constant attention, this house and everything in it would burn to the ground. My employment status is something that I've made a shaky peace with over the years. I am very, very lucky that Chris makes enough to support us and that I'm able to focus on our family as much as I am. What a gift it has been to lead this life. But do I occasionally feel like a loser who can only handle 20 hours of work per week and basically just goes to hang out with my coworkers and maybe get some Chic-Fil-A? Yes. But just occasionally. Luckiest loser alive!

Are you wondering about my children? The whole reason I started this blog? Well, they're getting pretty big! Andy's a freshman, and I just couldn't be prouder of him. When you're pregnant and they tell you it's a boy, your mind flashes forward and Andy is everything you hope your son will be. No pressure, right? Then there's Alex, who is not that child you picture when you're pregnant but is so surprising and unique in all the right, but sometimes questionable, ways. He always makes me laugh and he has a heart of gold, even if you have to scratch around for it sometimes. My sweet Emily is nine now, not at all a toddling baby like when we left this blog six years ago. She is fashionable and smart and makes my heart swell. Not like I have a medical condition, but like I'm in love. And I am! She can be bitchy and moody and impatient and all the things that I know I was at that age, but she is the love of my life. Tied with everyone else in my life that is.

I've missed blogging. I've missed having a place to keep my memories and observations. More to come, maybe.

Crazy Day Ever!

2018-12-11T12:27:00.004-08:00

I've lost the desire to blog. I'm compelled to keep writing so that Emily has as many stories about herself to one day read as the boys do, but whenever I sit down to write, I just don't have it in me. It's not that I've run out of material, per se, because children- all children- are endless fountains of humor and amusement. It's just that it's started to feel repetitive. This mommy blog thing is so played out. The couple of mom bloggers I follow online generally follow the same sort of formula. Kids are annoying, and we also drink wine. I'm in the trenches with an army of beautiful morons. Or it's a humble brag of winning at motherhood. That kind of thing.

So what do people think when they read *my* blog? I've become hyper aware of that question over the past year, which is partially why I haven't written. What do they think about ME? That question becomes more nuanced when you whittle down your audience. To family, to current friends, to former friends. To those who are quicker to judge, perhaps, and who don't really like me that much to begin with. Oh, there's Jackie with her stupid blog again. We get it. The kids are funny. Whatevs.

Also, now that the boys especially are getting older, writing about them feels like stealing. It feels like I'm sawing off a chunk of their soul and tacking it up on display. They see the world, but they don't always want the world to see them. "Don't put that on Facebook," they might warn if I take a compromising picture of them in their ratty pajamas with ice cream smeared on their nose. "I won't," I say. There's always Instagram.

Yes, they are my kids. I created them, they are essentially my property. I get to catalog their adventures however I see fit because my name is stamped all over them with the copyright logo. But sometimes I think of writing a less than flattering tale about them which would absolutely KILL with my top four readers, and then I stop. Because Andy would be pissed if the world had access to some of his darkest moments of deepest shame. And I can't say that I blame him. I'll choose to respect that notion, even if it hasn't been expressly stated.

I think I will suspend the blog for now, and make a new year's resolution to find a new avenue for writing. One that's not focused on my children. But, what should that look like? Sometimes I dare myself to write a novel. Go ahead, you lazy coward, just do it. Maybe I should start with a single short story. Or a haiku. It's been so long since I've written anything fictional, and I'm disappointed that that used to be something I wanted to do with my life, and now it's not anything.

I title this last post "Crazy Day Ever!" because it was the post I started to write, which is something Emily says all the time whenever things go slightly awry. If she discovers her shirt is on backwards, she'll look down, chuckle and mutter, "Crazy day ever." She is easily charmed and amused by small things, a sweet little princess whose most entertaining moments I may just have to try my best to remember and retell one day. And, so, that is where I'll leave you.

Cast Away!

2018-07-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

Would you believe Alex broke his arm again? It's six weeks later, and he just traded in his awkwardly angled cast for a spiffy new brace, the kind that bowlers wear. I will not be taking Alex bowling any time soon, of course, for fear of resnapping his arm bones. "That's the biggest complication we see with these type of breaks," Alex's doctor has said many times. "It takes a year for the bones to fully strengthen and straighten. Rebreaking is a major concern." His doctor relayed the same story twice, giving me the uneasy impression that he's only had one other patient besides Alex. Another young boy broke both his radius and ulna at the playground, same as Alex. Six weeks after the cast coming off, he got smacked in the arm with a flying soccer ball. Bam! Forearm broken again! Sucks to be that guy.

What fun! An ambulance ride.

Everybody knows how Alex broke his arm. Every stranger and semi-stranger who has seen Alex bumbling around town in his bright blue cast has asked him, "How did you break your arm?" And Alex has replied with the same rehearsed, oft-repeated, condensed story. He speaks with the sort of resigned exasperation of a mother who is tired of saying the same thing all day every day but still has to keep reminding their kids of something super basic, such as putting their dish in the sink. "I was at the playground playing tag and somebody went to tag me so I stepped back and fell by the fireman pole straight down on my arm and broke it."

When Alex fell, Andy screamed, "Mommy! Come quick! Alex is really hurt!" I ran over, looked down at his completely bent forearm and screamed something unintelligible and shrieky. And Alex, looking down at his completely deformed limb, said rather calmly, "Oh no. I think I broke it." And the boy that had been reaching out to tag him by the five foot opening of the play structure slunk away into the shadows, vowing to never make eye contact with anybody surnamed Berger again.

Alex had two casts. This second one gave him
a thumbs down.

The doctor removed Alex's cast this past Monday, unceremoniously concluding Alex's treatment. There is no follow up visit, which I find odd, since doctors love scheduling follow up visits. It's their way of saying, "Shall we deal with this another time?" Instead, "Let me see if I can get a brace for him," were the doctor's last words to us right before he disappeared down the hallway, reminding me of the young boy who tagged Alex right into six weeks of broke arm misery. Their retreats were clouded by similar sentiments. It's not my fault, but it sure doesn't look good. Alex's arm does not look good. It's skinny and weak looking, obviously, from the casting, but it's also crooked. Like, noticeably, freakishly crooked. The doctor warned it would take a year to fully straighten out after such a bad break, but he didn't warn that my initial reaction to gazing at my young son's creepy, bowed out arm would be to swallow back my own vomit and avert my eyes.

The nurse gave us the wrist brace, and now I am imagining Alex growing up from within the confines of the brace, since he is terrified of taking it off. Tonight I'm going to at least make him keep it off after his bath and throughout the night. But even good-natured Alex feels morose looking down at his hideous arm. The black brace is soothing to him. Anything could be under that brace! Even a completely normal, perfectly straight arm!

Alex with his new brace, which
conceals his not so awesome arm.

I'm hoping Alex eases into using his bent matchstick arm with the same positivity that he adapted into having a broken arm in the first place. Truly, I was much more upset by the break than the victim himself, as I saw all of our lofty summer plans vanish into the sky like smoke from an extinguished fire. Last week, Alex and I were at the library when another stranger inquired about the arm. Alex rattled off his summary of how he broke it, and the lady replied, "Well, that's a good way to ruin the summer, huh?" To which Alex replied, rather snappily, "No. I'm having a great summer!" And finally, after so many weeks of lamenting his fate- our fate- I realized that he was right. It was a great summer! With a waterproof cast, we still went swimming. We went to the zoo and strawberry picking, to parks, a baseball game, Great America, and the arcade, and to see fireworks, movies, and a magician. We saw friends and played games and discovered new favorites- barbecued ribs, Radio Flyer wagon rides around the neighborhood, gas station slushees, the movies "Click" and (no pun intended) "Cast Away," tank tops instead of T-shirts, new stuffed animals from well-wishing friends, different things having to do with Pokemon. He didn't have to play baseball anymore since his arm was broken- a silver lining for Alex, yay! So was the summer ruined because of a radius and ulna snapped like strands of uncooked spaghetti? No! Not really.

And Alex will get through the rest of his recovery with that same can do spirit, I hope- despite the current state of nightmare arm. I tried to summon a bit of that spirit as I opened the first of Alex's hospital bills, but I've always had more of an unleashed negativity thing going on. Perhaps what I need in my life is a good Radio Flyer wagon ride, or an unhealthy interest in Pokemon. Maybe a little more gratitude, the reminder that bones do heal, and we're all so very lucky. So just put me on the payment plan, doc. Automatic deduction, because I'm busy with my kid, looking right into his smiling face while trying to keep my eyes off his grossly misshapen forearm.

Chip Off The Old Block!

2018-05-14T10:47:00.002-07:00

"I'm going to win! I'm going to win!" Emily raced alongside me in the rain, giggling and threatening to beat me to the entrance of the library. I was holding her backpack, my purse, the bag of library books, and her pink puppy. We were neck and neck in our fake race, and then her feet tangled up in their unstrapped shoes. Down she went, hitting her face on the concrete steps. The howl was immediate and terrible, and I knew what I would see before even dropping to my knees and looking. A mouthful of brilliant red blood. Shattered, jagged front teeth. A shaking little girl, in pain and scared.

Oh my God. Oh my God. I juggled all of the things, including Emily, wiping blood from her face to the front of her jacket while digging through the backpack- no wait, my purse- looking for my phone, which would not turn on or work right, which did not contain the programmed number of the dentist, which did not have sufficient Wi-Fi to search the internet for said dentist number. Emily stood beside me, screaming. I told her it was going to be okay, but I could not look at her for more than an instant, the sight of her injury too grisly for me to behold. I found the dentist number and jabbed at my screen with uncooperative fingers. "It's an emergency," I told the receptionist. "My daughter just fell and broke her teeth. Please take us now!"

Emily was trembling when I picked her up. Back to the car, I ran us and our bags and our bloody baby wipes and a bottle of water I had managed to unscrew and assist her in sipping. I strapped Emily in to her car seat, my hollow reassurances filling the air. She quieted as I started the car and got us going, her eyes staring straight ahead, empty and dulled.

It's just teeth, I told myself. She's fine. It's no big deal. It's nothing. She's healthy. It's just teeth.

But I remember my own just teeth, from twenty years ago. I was much older than Emily, alone at the public pool when I smashed my face into the bottom of the deep end and chipped my front incisor. Instant hysteria. By the time I collected myself and walked home, I was a sobbing mess. I yelled for my dad to wake up, as he had been sleeping after working the night shift. "LOOK! My tooth!" I told him, and he stared at me for what seemed like an eternity through tired, worn eyes. He did not say anything other than "Huh" as he examined my newly busted face, and I was suddenly awash with a horrific fear. This is just how my face was going to look now. Nobody was going to take me to get this tooth fixed. I was fourteen years old. I had my whole life ahead of me to live with a jagged, ugly smile. Now I would never have a boyfriend!

"Call MOM!" I screamed at my father, his lack of action frightening. "Call the other adult in this house! PLEASE."

Emily and I made it to the dentist, my little girl walking into the lobby on unsteady feet shod shamefully in shoes with loosened straps. The receptionist was calm when she greeted us, failing to acknowledge the urgency. We were seated in a room after a few minutes, and the dental hygienist was also infuriatingly calm. "I'm not sure what the dentist is going to do," she murmured. "Sometimes we just leave them. When you called, we thought the situation was a lot worse."

"Well, I mean, I know it's just teeth," I replied, squeezing my hands together. "But we can't just leave them. THREE of them are broken! Her smile! Her beautiful smile. She's only two! She's not going to lose these teeth for at least three years. Heck, my almost six year old still hasn't lost any teeth and he falls straight down on his face literally once a week."

"I understand," she said. "Let's just see what the dentist says. Perhaps we've talked enough."

The dentist swooped in a few minutes later, a white blaze of straight toothed glory and lab coated confidence. There was talk of bonding, of tooth repair, of making things right where they were now so horribly wrong. To my dismay yet understanding, they asked us to leave and come back tomorrow for a full appointment. I agreed, making the dentist promise that she would not close up shop in the middle of the night, taking all of her dental tools and associates with her. I asked to see the office's financials. I may have forced her to do a pinky swear. My daughter's teeth. We needed them fixed.

Baby's first dental appointment.
Not the way I pictured it.

We got back into the car, where Emily immediately stuck her thumb into her mouth for a quick suck. "Ow," she moaned, pulling it back out. "It hurts! My owwie teeth hurt my thumb! Oh no." My heart ached for my sweet little baby, needing comfort now more than ever and not able to get it from her favorite source.

We spent the next twenty four hours in a state of waiting, with popsicles and cuddling and promises. I did a thorough reliving of my own tooth bonding experience, of the many years of dental strife that followed. And I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that parenthood is simply a retelling of one's own childhood, with different twists, turns, and perspectives. A reinvention, perhaps. I have been through most of these traumas before, in earlier chapters, this tooth disaster plus all of the others. Things turned out somewhat okay for me. I am trying to make them turn out somewhat better for my children. I am trying to reconcile the relationship from childhood to parenting, constantly.

The next day, Emily's teeth were fixed. I was so proud of Emily, laying there in the chair and following directions perfectly from the dentist. Open your mouth. Bite down. Stay still. She went through the whole procedure better than me at fourteen, and my heart swelled with too much love and protection. "No apples," the dentist told me as we were paying, our ordeal having come to its relief. "Don't let her have anything too hard." And I nodded along and thought to myself, no submarine sandwiches from The Patio Restaurant in Tinley Park. Because that's what knocked out my own bonding, years after the pool incident. Of course, something will knock out Emily's bonding too, most likely, before she fully loses these baby teeth. It won't be a submarine sandwich, probably. But it will be something like it, and it will make a sort of parallel sense.

It's Not Your Birthday!

2017-12-20T12:45:00.000-08:00

Emily was laying on the floor at my feet, body curled into a fetal ball, thumb dangling out of the corner of her lips like a half smoked, forgotten cigarette. "Happy birthday to you," she crooned softly to herself. "Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Emmy. Happy birthday to you."

"It is not your birthday, Emily," I stated above her as I scraped her entire, uneaten lunch into the trash. The sentence was barely out of my mouth before she protested. "No, it IS my birthday!"

We had been going back and forth for days. Everyday was her birthday. Everyday, she asked about her party, when her cousins and papas were coming over, and when she'd get her presents and cake. When bedtime arrived and the day had closed without the spectacle of said cake, party, and presents, I believe she turned in her crib, hugged her stuffed puppy tight, and said, "Ok. So TOMORROW must be my birthday." In the morning, if she was asked how old she was, she'd confidently answer, "I three."

"No, you are not three. You are two."

"NO. I three!" Tears, instantly, on that beautiful, sweet little face. "It's my birthday. I not two anymore, I three." Where are my damn balloons?

This May baby- late May baby- has many more non-birthday days until she reaches the big 0-3. Long days filled with singing "Happy Birthday" tunelessly to herself on the cold kitchen floor, of wondering about the start of her imagined party, of waiting for gifts and cake that simply do not materialize. As I looked down at her sweet face staring up at mine, crinkled in denial of my proclamation, I wondered if I should go fetch the library book I had checked out for her the day before. It was called, "When Is My Birthday?" Spoiler alert. It's not today. But, no. Perhaps it was best to just move past the B word entirely.

She'd been to a couple birthday parties in the last month, most notably her older cousin's (big party) and younger cousin's (even bigger party). A couple of her classmates at preschool have also celebrated their birthdays. Surely, Emily has felt that she has waited patiently for her turn to feel special and to be on the receiving end of an infinite pile of slickly packaged presents and an entire cake addressed specifically with her name on it. "Today must definitely be the day," she likely thinks each morning as we swap out her ten pound wet diaper for a dry one with an air of optimism. But, of course, she is wrong.

What do you tell a three year old about patience and selflessness? Wait. I mean, what do you tell a two year old? Dammit, Emily, you've even got me partially fooled. Here's the problem, Emily, and it's a lesson of grace that most of us don't fully comprehend until we are much older, if ever. Other people will have parties or honors that you simply may not have, but the joy that you have in celebrating with them should not be tempered by the question of when you are going to get yours. Perhaps, when your birthday rolls around FINALLY in May, you might have a party, or you might not. There might be a mountain of presents, or there might not. I'll probably get you a cake. But hey. Maybe not. All birthdays are not created equal, as individual lives which may veer off down different roads aren't either. But regarding the cake- let's just see how Mommy's feeling.

Yikes. Perhaps that came out heavier than I intended.

I looked down at my daughter curled into a knot on the floor, singing Happy Birthday to herself and I put down the plate I'd just cleaned off. What triumphs await these kids of mine- what heartaches? It's too much to sift through, sometimes- the possibilities both full and hollow. What are we to do with these sweet little kids too tiny to understand the intricacies of magnanimity? Sometimes I just follow my heart. I scooped up my darling Emily, ignored the fact that she'd dismissed her healthy lunch with an insulting smirk, and found a Little Debbie cake for us in the pantry. I did not sing Happy Birthday as we ate it together. I did not say the B word. But yeah, Emily definitely received my slightly confusing message in between bites of chocolate. Happy Today, Emily. Happy Today. Now excuse me while I go find something to wrap.

Footsy Wootsy Bang Bangs!

2017-11-09T12:58:00.002-08:00

"Come on, Emily!" I yelled from the stairs. "Time to put your socky wocky ding dongs on your footsy wootsy bang bangs!"

Perhaps these sound like words uttered by a complete lunatic. Somebody who is playing with only half a deck- a stay at home mother who has been speaking nonstop baby talk for the past seven and a half years and has lost her ever-loving mind. Or- at the very least- had every vital piece of adult information ever learned replaced surely and methodically with the entire screenplay of Moana, the names of all of Caillou's goofy friends, where to find a library story time at any given moment, and desperate parenting hacks that often fail.

Desperate Parenting Hack #384

If your child won't take her liquid antibiotic, perhaps the prescribed 6 milliliters of it will dissolve into the chocolate Twinkie she's been begging for.

How Desperate Parenting Hack #384 Actually Plays Out

"NO! NO! There's MEDICINE on my CAKE! NOOOO!"

"Amelia Jane!" I yelled, waving the socky wocky ding dongs in the air. "LET'S GO!"

And of course her name is not Amelia Jane, either. Neither of those names is correct. I had a neighbor once hear me call her that, and she asked, "Oh, is that Emily's full name?" To which I had to reply, "No. She's Emily Julianne. I don't know why I call her Amelia Jane. It's completely incorrect."

But I do call her Amelia Jane. Maybe that's what I should have named her. None of it makes any sense.

I know the baby talk and all of the nonsense that comes out of my mouth irritates Chris, but he also spends the majority of his day with adults even if most of those adults make him want to stab out his eyeballs in much the same fashion of how my children often make me feel. He doesn't get overcome with the urge to baby talk like I do. However, he's come around to footsy wootsy bang bang. "You played the long con with that one," he said the other day. I've been saying footsy wootsy bang bang for years, and now it's finally paying off, because nothing is as satisfyingly funny as when Emily hits her foot against something and innocently, casually mumbles, "Oh, my footsy bang bang."

She leaves out the wootsy part. Perhaps that little bit is just one step too asinine for her.

Often, I put her socky wocky ding dongs on her footsy wootsy bang bangs and drive her off to preschool, which is something that many parents don't do with two year olds. Two year old preschool is completely unnecessary. Three year old preschool is probably completely unnecessary, too. I mean, unless you add up all the social benefits of a little one meeting new friends and being around different adults and all the mental benefits for a mom to just go somewhere and scream into a pillow uninterrupted for two hours- except for all of THOSE benefits, it's completely superfluous. Something we do for our tykes to mix it up a bit. Because even though I KNOW where all of the library story times are- much like an addict can find a meeting whenever they need one- whenever we hit more than one story time per week, I start to feel like maybe I'm unraveling a bit. Plus, at this point, on child three, I've heard all the stories. I've read all the books. I've done all the crafts. Sure it's new for Emily, but not everything is just for Emily.

Two year old preschool. That's just for Emily. Or so she would be led to believe.

We have our own language.

The other day, I picked her up from preschool only to be greeted by the teacher: "You know, Emily is having such fun in class, but we just feel bad because we can't understand her a lot of the time. Is she currently in speech?"

Inwardly, I groaned. Here we go again, I thought, thinking back to every conversation I'd ever had with Andy and Alex's preschool teachers. I mean, admittedly, both boys do have documented speech issues. You got me there. But, come on. Emily too? She's a powerhouse of conversation. She's only twenty-nine months old. She's basically perfect. And, let's not forget, this two year old preschool thing? It's a BONUS for her little life. This conversation we're having about her speech right here in front of all of the other moms? An EXTRA in our lives. I will take the remarks about her speech under consideration. But for now, she's fine, and where should I put my monthly tuition check?

"Hmm," I replied intelligently to the teacher. "No, she's not in speech...." It was at this time that Emily looked down at her new shoes. The teacher smiled at her and said, "Emily is proud of her new shoes!"

Ah, yes, her new shoes. The ones that we put on over her socky wocky ding dongs atop her-

"Footsy bang bangs!" Emily murmured, sticking her foot out, to which the teacher smugly shrugged as if to say, "See? What the hell did she just say?"

It may not be a speech problem as much as a consequence of spending too much time with her nutty mother. Her wacky Jackie. Her mommy mommy bo bommy, banana fana.....

Yep.

But, they are only itty bitty once, for such a short time, and the pure joy I get from hearing Emily talk about her footsy bang bangs and her resistance to going down for nappy wappies- it's mine, and I will wrap myself in it for as long as I am able. Like a socky wocky ding dong around the toesy woesies, I will be warmed by the beautiful craziness of our own easily decipherable secret language for as long as possible.

Now, would anyone care for a wicky woon?

Somewhere You Feel Free!

2017-10-03T08:56:00.001-07:00

My dad took me to see Tom Petty in concert when I was 16. He got the tickets well in advance, and when the night of the event rolled around, I was mildly surprised to learn we were still going. Oh, yeah. A night with my dad. I have to do this- no driving around aimlessly with my friends tonight, no sleepover at Jane's house, no movie at the dollar show. I have to go see Tom Petty with my dad, go dancing at the zombie zoo.

It's what I'm seeing a lot on social media now, twenty years later, on the occasion of Petty's death. The link between Tom and people's dads. The dads of my childhood loved that guy. And so did we, the good girls and Indiana boys. I remember first discovering music and it started in my family room with the tapes and some shiny CDs that I would divide up between my mom's collection and my dad's. My dad's collection was for sure a lot better. Toni Braxton sucks. Chaka Kahn can only take you so far. But my dad had the good stuff. Journey. The Stones. Steve Miller Band, of course. And Tom Petty. I remember unfolding the lyrics in the cassette box and singing along with "Refugee." "Breakdown." "Here Comes My Girl." And, yeah, man. That Tom Petty was pretty rad.

We still talk about that Tom Petty concert, some twenty odd years later. It was one of the most surprising nights of my youth, how much fun I could have with my dad. We both sang our hearts out, and I remember looking over at him and seeing him in all his loud, sweaty, rocking out glory. It's like those celebrity magazines, the ones that show famous doing ordinary things like grocery shopping in yoga pants. "Stars are people, too!" Except it was the reverse. "Dads are awesome, too!"

And when Tom Petty belted out his cover of "Gloria" for his encore and the audience was crazy, thrumming, glowing, and feeling more alive than possible, I could officially admit it, out loud. This was a hell of a lot more fun than a sleepover at Jane's.

Lately, I've been dwelling on some of the sour bits of my childhood. I think this is mostly a function of looking at Andy and understanding that he's in the golden age of childhood- the years that feel like they physically form you forever. I remember a lot about being seven, many more things about seven than being five, like Alex. I'm quite sure I don't remember anything about being two, but I suppose it's all there, buried deep in my cells. I'm looking at my kids and praying that when they reminisce about being young, at home with mom and dad, they will have wonderful, joyous, and happy things to say. I am devoting myself to them, both selflessly and selfishly. I give to them all I wanted as a kid, or at least I try. And I attempt to hold the crazier parts back, but sometimes they come spilling out anyway. You don't know how it feels, I sometimes think with an anxious flair. To be me.

But when Tom Petty died, yesterday, I immediately thought about that concert with my dad. One of the best nights of my younger life. Despite the harshness with which I have sometimes judged my parents, there were shining, surprising moments that I need to give more equal weight. You wreck me baby. Yeah you break me in two. But you move me, honey. Yes you do.

I am nostalgic about the past and preemptively so about the present. I take pictures of special moments, both spectacular and ordinary, so that my kids can look at them when we're all so old. Running the bases at Wrigley Field. Soccer on Saturday mornings. That seven dollar ice cream cone. Drawing in chalk on the driveway. Riding a roller coaster at Six Flags. Buying all the flavors of Pringles at the store. A stay at the water park. Look guys! Mom and Dad were fun! They loved you so very hard.

I wonder which musician Andy, Alex, and Emily will associate with me? Which otherwise happy songs will bring tears to their eyes? I suppose that's not mine for knowing. The kids will tell. And me? I'll just take it on faith, I'll take it to the heart.

Rest in peace, good man.

My Time Traveling Son!

2017-09-18T12:16:00.001-07:00

Before Andy was even born, I was relatively certain that he'd invented time travel. We had picked out his name, and when I googled it just to make sure that there weren't any Andrew J. Berger serial killers or Fox News commentators, an image of my son popped up- or at least a pretty spot on predication of what my son would look like. He had dark brown hair, brown eyes, and seemed to awkwardly rock a kind of a skinny, dorky look. He wore glasses- clearly myopic just like his mother. He was a professor in another state, and when I looked at the picture, I had a tumbling feeling in my gut. My son had invented time travel. This was him. And he had come back to the past to fix a wrong or to apply an academic solution to some future problem. Who knew- his mission could be multi-faceted. Maybe he'd show up in my life just in time to push me out of the path of an oncoming bus. Or into it, depending on what kind of mother I was about to become.

Over the years, my suspicion has grown. Last year, Andy become obsessed with inventing A TIME MACHINE. That's right. He has worked hard on his blueprints, mapping out the machine in crayon and talking earnestly about it with his school friends. Now, I'll be honest. These time machine plans are a bit rudimentary. There's usually a pretty big, unevenly drawn circle in the middle of the page where one would assume the time traveler would sit. Then there's some wires wiggling out. A couple months ago, Andy asked me what the most powerful battery was. "Lithium ion?" I guessed, only semi-confident that I wasn't just making those words up.

"Lithium ion," Andy repeated. "What does it look like?"

"I think they're rectangular," I replied intelligently, and Andy scribbled in a rectangular lithium ion connected to the wires of his latest time machine circle.

"There," Andy said, satisfied. "Laminate this, ok?"

Of course, time travel is the ultimate form of entertainment. Andy and Alex have been captured by the time travel plot lines of Captain Underpants, and I myself often look up "Best Time Travel Books" on the Goodreads website looking for my latest fix. Sometimes I have to look up "Decent Time Travel Books" because I've already read all of the best ones and now I'll just take something mediocre to keep me going.

"I think I would go back to... 1639," Andy said one day at dinner when time travel was once again the topic of conversation. He was throwing out a completely random date. "Yes, I would go back all the way to then. I'd probably have to wear something old in order to blend in. Maybe I could borrow something from Daddy."

"Yeah, good thinking," I agreed. I know for a fact that some of Chris' T-shirts go back 20 years, and they're not even cool ones. If anyone would keep four hundred year old clothes, it would be him. "Alex, when would you go back to?"

Alex had his answer ready. "I would definitely time travel to when I was four," he announced. "I would time travel to when I was 4 and go find Daddy and tell him to buy the right Skylander Trap Force portal." This, of course, was in reference to last week's video game disappointment. You know, the one in which the aforementioned Daddy bought the wrong Skylander Trap Force portal. Alex, with his dry, non-ironic delivery is either a stand up comic in the future or everyone's favorite office coworker at some low to medium level job in which his droll comments at the water cooler are basically what keep all of the other associates from hanging themselves each night. He never fails to unintentionally crack me up. To wit, we were recently at Great America, sitting inside the Mystery Van Scooby Doo ride. I called it a bus when describing it to Emily, and Alex, looking disdainfully around at all of the sticky surfaces, was quick to correct me. "It's not a bus, it's a van. A mystery van. Because there's lots of mysteries on the floor."

"That's probably a good era to travel back to," I replied to Alex now. "Like four months ago, in the pre-kindergarten period. That was truly the golden age."

Andy, never quite amused by Alex, just ignored us and asked, "What exactly is the time-space continuum?"

Oh boy, here we go. I cut into my chicken and began to wax poetic on the very fabric of time, explaining the intricacies of the universe and of course, the most important thing about time travel, which was that you could never accidentally kill your grandmother. "Just think," I said, "about the paradox created if you did something and your grandmother died and then I wasn't born and then of course YOU weren't born."

Andy's eyes got very wide, and Alex, who I had assumed checked out of the conversation five minutes ago, poked around his plate and piped up, "Yeah. Maybe we shouldn't do any time traveling. It sounds pretty unsafe."

You know, it does sound pretty unsafe. Would these wise words convince Andy? Later that day, I googled his name just to see. Andrew J. Berger- my grown up son, the professor- still came up first in my search. He was still here, existing in the present. My time traveling son who figured out the exact precise way to connect the lithium ion battery to the time travel machine. You did it, boy. Now even though we've all been born and it's technically okay to kill your grandmother- it's probably still best if you don't. But maybe you could go back a few weeks and drop Daddy an anonymous note about that Skylander portal, just to be a nice big brother.

Unfair and Biased!

2017-08-23T11:53:00.001-07:00

After I put Alex on the bus to kindergarten yesterday, Emily and I hopped into the minivan and raced over to the school. We were there to give him an encouraging wave as he entered the building, found his teacher, and sat among his classmates. He was quiet and still, not chatting or crying, not fiddling around or getting up and switching seats. He gave us a brave smile now and then, and my heart nearly broke in two when the teachers all led their classes away to their room. Alex brought up the rear of his group, looking aimless yet tentatively stoic as he disappeared from me. There it was. My baby boy was gone to school.

I didn't drive to the school like that when Andy started kindergarten. I didn't really think that parents were supposed to do that, and so when I put him on the bus that morning, Alex, baby Emily, and I went on with our morning as planned, and Andy started his on his own, sans encouraging wave from a loving face in the crowd. Later, getting off the bus, he was quick to ask where I was. "All the other moms were there," he said accusingly. To which I replied, "Really? My bad."

I try hard not to treat my children differently from each other, but it's exceedingly difficult not to. In the grand scheme of things, I'm sure they understand that I love them each (about) the same. I mean, if there's any differences in the quantity or quality of my love, the fluctuations are mostly minute to minute and tend to even out towards the end of the day, at least if you measure to the closest tenth decimal. But, yes, I did drive to school on Alex's first day of kindergarten when I didn't drive to school on Andy's first. And, yesterday, when Alex and I were discussing the fact that I was there in those first few minutes, Andy was quick to pick up on it.

Alex, realizing at Kindergarten
meet and greet that shit was getting real.

"How come you didn't come see me today?" he cried. It hadn't even occurred to me to check in on Andy. I mean, it would have been impossible due to the fact that I am only one person who cannot be in two buildings at once. Also, who cares about a second grader's first day of school? This is your third time doing this, buddy. The novelty's worn off for all of us.

"I did come see you, though!" I was quick to lie. Dishonesty- the answer to most of life's problems. "But your class was too fast! I got to your building, and you guys were already gone! I was so bummed out." I snapped my fingers in an aw-shucks kind of move in order to get my point across.

"Hmm. Ok." Andy was willing to accept this explanation, even though I saw a glimmer of distrust in his dark eyes. "Can I have an extra cookie for dessert? However many Alex has, plus one?"

I still carry Alex up the stairs at night, to bed. He's a skinny little bag of bones, and he weighs next to nothing. Honestly, Emily with her solid, tree trunk legs and chubby little belly sometimes feels heavier in my arms. Alex is light, and he likes it when I carry him like a baby, which I do, kissing him on his cheeks on the way up the stairs. He's still transitioning from babyhood, as far as I'm concerned. I feel like it goes fast once they turn five. So I soak moments like that up, perhaps a little too flamboyantly, as Andy has complained about having to walk up the stairs. Obtuse mother that I am, I thought Andy's complaints were because he just didn't want to WALK to bed, to expend any of the energy. Lazy bastard. Then, last week, I tucked Andy in with a hug and a kiss, and he motioned for me to move in closer. Like a secret, he whispered into my ears. "Can I tell you something? I don't like when you carry Alex up the stairs. It makes me feel a little jealous." And when I leaned back and looked at him, I saw it written on his face. Hurt. Envy. A feeling of rejection.

"Oh Andy," I replied. "Thank you for telling me that. I didn't know. Alex is younger and still small, so that's why I carry him. Just like I did when you were five." But the truth, as I was suddenly remembering, was that I didn't carry Andy like that when he was five. Because I was carrying Alex that way, since he was only three. In both of these scenarios, Emily was already fast asleep, having her earlier bedtime. So during the times when it is just the two boys, it always reverts the same way, to Andy being Big Brother and Alex being Baby.

The next night, at bedtime, I grabbed Andy around the waist and scooped him up into my arms, kissing his face and carrying him up the stairs like a newborn baby. I literally dislocated four of my vertebrae and almost fell down the stairs killing us both, but the look of surprised joy on Andy's sweet face made the subsequent $600 ER bill totally worth it.

Andy and I have our favorite TV shows that we like to watch together that Alex isn't interested in. I'm mostly thinking "Impractical Jokers" and "This Is Us," both of which I understand are super age-inappropriate. There's a lot that Andy gets to do that Alex doesn't. Of course, Alex will get most of those things too with age, and probably earlier too if we're all being honest. And Emily, now that it's just her and me during the day- something that's new to both of us, since I've never been home in such extended hours with only ONE child- well, there's bound to be a whole lot of specialness there. So what's the answer with bouts of sibling rivalry or feeling unfairly treated?

I don't have an answer. But I do hope that the occasional extra cookie will go far in smoothing over any residual hurt feelings. If a little well-intentioned dishonesty solves a few problems, maybe emotional eating and/or an extra treat can solve a few other.

The Keys!

2017-05-22T13:09:00.004-07:00

I lost my keys this morning. Emily and Alex had finally just been buckled in after the usual fifteen minutes of frantic cajoling. I never truly understood the idiom of herding cats until I became a mother, specifically Alex's mother, and just getting him into the car in the morning is a task in and of itself. When I tell him to go upstairs and brush his teeth, he without fail wanders off towards his bed and simply climbs back into it, burrowing into the pile of blankets and animals he affectionately, and irritatingly, refers to as Comfy Town. While I tackle Emily to put on her socks, he forgets what we're doing and heads off to check if his various dragon eggs have hatched yet on his iPad game. When I tell him to put his shoes on, I hear him clear on the opposite side of the house singing Elton John's "I'm Still Standing," or at least that one line of it, over and over, ad nauseum, until I tell him it's time to go NOW and he blankly asks me, "Oh. Are we going somewhere?"

In the driver's seat of the car, I could feel myself teetering on the verge of a panic attack. Have I ever actually had a panic attack? I think in order to answer that question, I have to refer you to when I gave birth to Emily. I went in for my scheduled induction, feeling perfectly normal- or at least no less normal than usual- and when they hooked me up to all of the machines, they gave me a puzzled look and said, "You're having contractions less than five minutes apart. You're in active labor already." My body is constantly in a state of frenzy that I am fully used to just pushing through my day even if I can't breathe because my keys are lost, we're late to preschool, I have my morning plans, I have to drive two other kids home later, there are two baseball games to get to in the evening, and seriously, who has time to replace ALL of those keys? Or, you know, I have a seven pound baby peeking out of me. Same difference. So, no I have never had an official panic attack. My life itself is just one living, breathing, mostly functioning panic attack.

I rifle through the belongings of my purse, smearing a tube of uncapped red lipstick across the upholstery. There's so much useless stuff in my purse, it's ridiculous, and the next time Emily goes in there and pulls out an unwrapped tampon caked in gum bits, that's probably going to be the final straw on the farm of mortification. I pushed aside bags of food, old coupons, diapers, wipes, loose change, thinking my keys have to be in my purse, they have to be, I'm just not seeing them, they must be there, shit, they are totally, absolutely, NOT.

Oh, but to retrace my steps that morning! I know I had my keys when I unlocked Chris' car to get the extra car seat out. Then I hauled two overflowing bags of landscape waste to my neighbor's house because they pay for landscape waste pick up and, you know, we don't. Then I took our garbage cans out, both of them. Then I put the extra car seat in my car. I went back in the house and literally went into every room, making breakfasts and lunch, getting children dressed, wiping asses, turning the TV volume down, chasing a toddler, putting on make-up, putting together Andy's backpack, going out into the backyard to get a bag of dirt, bringing it up front to the garage, then, while I was out there, watering all the dead spots, sod spots, seeded spots, dirt spots. Then I walked Andy down to the bus stop, stood around a bit fielding questions about large numbers multiplied by other large numbers, then headed home and yelled after Alex for twenty minutes. So, somewhere on this map of crazy- from the garbage cans to the landscape bags, to the interior of my home, to the exterior of my home, from here four houses down to the corner and back- SOMEWHERE had to be my goddamn keys.

I sucked in my breath, got out of the car, and started looking.

I felt like I looked everything and still couldn't find them. The clock was ticking ahead, and the morning was going to go on without us if I couldn't get the car started. Somewhere in all of this searching and overturning and running around, I found my inner monologue running on high. It was telling me I had to stop. I had to calm down. I had to stop trying to do so much, so fast. I had to give some things up before I had a full on heart attack. I had to just breathe.

I got out my phone and called Chris, thinking that maybe I'd dropped the keys in his backseat while I was getting out the car seat. On the highway, en route to his job that supports five people, I had him craning his neck to look behind him. I imagined his red car swerving wildly across three lanes while he humored me and felt around back there. "I'll get off the highway to check," he said. "Did you retrace your steps?"

"Of course, I retraced my steps, you moron!" I replied. And then, aloud, I retraced my steps again. The garbage. The house. The backyard. The car seats. Oh, there had been Andy's baseball snack back there from Saturday, right before we'd received notification that the game was cancelled due to rain. A big bag of oatmeal cream pies and juice pouches. What did I do with those when I brought them in? I stuck them in the pantry. In the pantry. But first I put my keys in there because my hands were full.

"Okay, I'm pulling off the highway now," Chris said, just as I reached into the oatmeal cream pie snack bag, pulled out my keys, and hollered, "I found them! Thanks. Gotta go, running late."

*

I am not a perfect mother. I am not a great wife, I'm an insecure friend. I'm a terrible daughter, and I don't call my sister nearly enough. Sometimes I feel like I'm floundering as an adult, like everybody else has it together, and I'm running around like a chicken with her head cut off, poorly doing five things at once, and expecting way more out of a four year old than he is actually capable of. Also out of a six year old. Not so much out of my almost two year old. I expect very little from her except her unwavering cuteness. I'm failing. I'm falling apart. My body is in labor and I don't even know it.

But then I find my keys. I pull them triumphantly out of the oatmeal cream pie bag, hang up on my husband, and I think, "YES! AHA! Eureka!" And everything is instantly wonderful again. I got this. I got ALL this.

I just need to find a minute to stop and appreciate it. And to remember the oatmeal cream pies.

Better Start Packing?!

2017-04-12T12:34:00.001-07:00

Andy's Iceless Hockey team won third place! They won third out of fourth in their division. If my team won third out of fourth, I would feel rather ho-hum about the whole thing. That's because I'm a jaded adult who wouldn't bother to get out of bed for less than second place. But Andy, who has the heart of a champion, cannot be more proud of himself and his team. This is partly because he doesn't understand that the third place is within his given four team division only. And partly because they gave him a trophy!

Andy's thrilled to be a winner and to have a trophy. When we got home after the ceremony, he ran the trophy upstairs to his room and immediately dumped it into this big cardboard box he's started keeping on the foot of his mattress. There's a bunch of stuff in that box. His Captain Underpants books. The basket he built at Home Depot. His wallet. His diary. (Entry one is the poetic masterpiece: "Alex is a poop face.") I watched him throw the trophy in, and I asked, "Andy, don't you want to put that trophy on display somewhere?" And he replied, "Nah. I'm going to pack it in my box so I don't forget to take it with me."

Pause. Take it with him?

"Wait," I said to Andy as he closed the flaps on the box. "You're packing? To move out?"

"Well yeah," He climbed down from the top bunk, and in the shadows I saw, for an instant, the first few buds of facial hair. "I mean, eventually I'm going to have to move out. When I'm grown up, that is. And that box is full of all the stuff I don't want to forget."

"Makes sense," I mumbled as he moved past me to get downstairs and perhaps brew himself a strong pot of coffee, clean out the gutters, or do something else equally adult-like. I very clearly remember, two years ago, having to gently break the news to Andy that one day he would grow up, move out, get married to a woman other than me, and have his own family. I have since learned from my mistakes, and now when Alex tells me he loves me, wants to marry me, and will stay with me forever, I squeeze him tight and say, "That's right, Alex. You belong here with me. Until the end of time." I try to keep my voice from sounding creepy, my squeeze from being painful.

These kids are growing fast, though. Of course they are. It's what kids do, and it's the foundation of every mother's mothering blog. Andy's aforementioned diary contains other hints of this growing, and yes, of course I read his diary. The lock is not exactly difficult to pick. "I love Lori," he wrote recently. Lori! Who's this Lori bitch and how dare she try to steal my son! I have since sought out this Lori in line for gym at the school, which is when I see Andy's class while I drop Alex off for speech, and have basically given her the stink eye. Two stink eyes, really. Isn't this all too soon? This liking girls nonsense? Of course, when I clearly remember my first crush right around first or second grade, my heart sinks like a stone for my children. Crushes. They use that crippling, air compressing word for a reason.

Alas, I'm also in deep denial that Emily is turning two next month. I thought for a long time that Andy was a brilliant baby/ toddler/ child. Then I thought Alex was really the smart one, as I watched him, as a three year old, put together 50 piece puzzles with ease. "Forget Andy," I muttered to myself. "Now my money's on Alex." Lately, I'm thinking I had it all wrong, and Emily is the real genius of the family. Of course, a better mother than me would never make such comparisons on her children's intelligence levels, but I never said I was a better mother. I'll be honest with you, though. Emily's blowing these guys out of the water. She can already count to ten, she knows her ABCs, she sings many different songs, and she has a penchant for doing things correctly. She is independent, laughs at jokes, and tackles the playground like a child twice her age. Truly, she is turning into everything I wish I was as a woman. Beautiful, fearless, funny, smart. Looks good in tight pants. Can polish off an entire ice cream sandwich leaving behind nary a crumb or drip. Is excellent at penciling in information on long, complex forms. All of this does nothing for my denial that she is also growing older.

Now Emily's diary will be a sight to behold when she gets to be a little older. And yes, I will read that too. Which brother will she call a poop face? Which young boy will she get her first crush on? Hopefully it is someone like I think and hope Andy is. Someone who their teacher calls an "absolute pleasure." A really nice boy, the kind of boy who thinks ahead and starts packing for college eleven years in advance.

Or maybe a boy like Alex who giggles nervously when he talks about growing up and says, while snuggling in, "I'm going to stay with you forever, Mommy." Either way, I guess. Either way.

JackieReads2017!

2017-03-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Did you know it's National Reading Month?

I started an ill-conceived journey to document how many books I'm reading this year. It's like when people with other, more adventurous hobbies chronicle how many countries they're visiting, miles they're running, or meals they're prepping. It's like that movie "Julie and Julia," where the aforementioned Julie decides to work her whole way through Julia Child's cookbook. Except I can't eat anything when I'm done. I don't need to know how to make a roux. And I'm not working my way through an entire anything. Or am I?

"How many books will I read in 2017?" I wondered late 2016 as I finished Jodi Picoult's "Small Great Things" with a satisfied slam of cover. I tried to do the math in my head. Maybe two books a month? Three? Somewhere between 24 and 36? Who knows! But what better way to find out than to snap a picture of each book I finish in the year. And of course place it on social media for posterity.

I'm getting the distinct impression that I'll be closer to 50 books. Which is much more than I thought. But we shall see.

I did a version of this when I was a kid. I had a notebook, and I wrote down the titles I finished, and by the time 1989 or whenever was done, I'd read something insane, like 250 books. Some weekends, I would crank through 3 or 4. Perhaps I have given you an unasked for, distasteful peek into young Jaclyn's social life. Perhaps you feel sorry for such a shy bookworm in red plastic glasses. Or perhaps you envy me. "If only I'd read 250 books in 1989," you might be thinking, "My life wouldn't have turned into such a goddamn disaster."

Because 36 year old Jackie has it all. Including free afternoons with a napping toddler and a self-entertaining, Wii-loving four year old in which she can plow through a couple chapters. Including quiet evenings tucked into her bed with her lamp glowing late into the night so she can find out what the hell's wrong with The Couple Next Door. Is my reading a product of being a stay at home mom with heavily routined children and a nighttime social life that rivals 1989? I don't know. I think if I were working and/or busier, though, I'd probably read close to the same amount. Possibly a little less. I carve out time for it. Nothing is better and more relaxing than a really good book. With the Super Mario theme song playing softly in the background, punctuated by the sound of Mario falling off the same simple cliff 27 times in a row.

The only problem is that now that I'm documenting it, I'm starting to think, "Oh crap. I finished another one," every time I snap that picture. "This is getting embarrassing."

I care about reading, though, and reading to my children. I'm pushing Andy to read independently more, and I thoughtfully pick out all sorts of levels of books for the three of them to get into. My book bag's getting heavy.

Novels for me.

Board books about princesses and grandparents for Emily. (She really loves books about old people.)

Picture books for Alex.

Easy Readers for Andy.

Beginning chapter books for Andy and/or Alex.

Nothing for Chris.

(That last part is pretty light, at least physically.)

Some of the books I read with the kids, I really get into and appreciate. Yes, I did like Captain Underpants. I think Robert Munsch is pretty cool. Old school Curious George is great. Unfortunately, most of the books Alex in particular picks out- well, they're awful. We've gone through every superhero book in the superhero book at the basket, and I know none of these tomes are NYT best-sellers, but seriously, these are the worst written books I've ever read. Terrible writing. Ridiculous plots. Asinine pun-based dialogue. Abrupt scene changes. Actually, that last part may be due to the fact that all of these books at the library are missing pages (because they're all checked out by rambunctious boys. The books in the Barbie and My Little Pony box look a lot more pristine,) It almost insults my own parental intelligence and integrity to read these aloud to Alex. But I know this is how readers are raised. If he's drawn to the insufferable, then that's what I will read to him, and that is true love.

The book I was most embarrassed to take a picture with.
So far. It's only March!

I love to know what everybody else's kids are reading. Sometimes I'm blown away by other children's choices. I found out a friend's daughter, also in first grade, is reading "The Boxcar Children" by herself. The Boxcar Children! My first thought, upon hearing this, was flashing back to Andy reading his Level 2 book the night before about Tiny the Big Dog, thinking "Why is Andy so damn dumb??" My second thought was a much more tempered, "Hmm. Why is my friend's daughter such a damn genius?" I then surreptitiously asked my friend for a list of nutrients and vitamins she was slipping into her daughter's diet so that I could mimic the formula in an attempt to boost Andy's own brain power. She said something about hard-boiled eggs. It takes like twenty minutes to hard boil an egg, peel it, etc. Forget it. Tiny the Big Dog it is!

Which brings me to my final point. Tiny the Big Dog. Superhero books with atrocious storylines. I could write this stuff. Anybody could. I just need an illustrator, a couple semi-original ideas, and some more free time. Children's author could totally be my next career! But not in 2017. My afternoon time is already taken up with novel reading for Instagram.

Fun House!

2017-02-23T12:09:00.001-08:00

The nice thing about having a preschooler- one of the many nice things, of course- is that you can pick their friends for them. Sure, your preschooler may express feelings of friendship towards any number of children they encounter at school, but ultimately it is in your hands as parent to set up the playdates with the children of your choosing. "Yes, that child will do," you might think to yourself in a voice that rings, only slightly, with the tone of evil mastermind as you steeple your fingers together and narrow your eyes at the kind, smiley young specimen. Then you may find your gaze drifting to a different child, one who is just brimming with a loud and naughty sort of glee. This particular child is holding a Nerf gun, racing around madly, and demanding lollipops. He has shoes that leak playground sand for some reason. "That child will never darken my doorway," you think to yourself, and you don't even bother to smile at his mother, the only woman standing there who would be genuinely grateful for a smile. You suck. A little.

Then, your child leaves preschool and is in kindergarten. Let's just say first grade. Let's just say your child's name is Andy and has a wild head of hair and a history of poor decision making. Actually, I take that last part back. Andy's decision making is mostly sound. He is now out in the world and he is making his own friends, coming home and discussing other children in that excited tone of voice that adults usually reserve for landscaping or a good deal on a late model used vehicle. Right away, in first grade, Andy made himself a new friend, a young whippersnapper we shall call Ramone. "Ramone is always right," Andy said matter-of-factly one evening. Humorlessly, I laughed in his face. "No one is always right," I replied. "ESPECIALLY Ramone."

Nonetheless, having seen sweet cheeks Ramone out and about at school functions, I decided I really liked the always right, never wrong young man, despite his obvious ego situation. "Yes, you can have a play date with Ramone," I told Andy. "Let me just find his mom.... Oh, there she is." We exchanged numbers after an awkward hello. I've been told by other friends that when I start greetings with "Are you such-and-such's mom? This is awkward but..." it sounds like I'm about to pronounce that their kid was doing something shitty and NOT that I was interested in setting up a play date with their mostly UNshitty child. Ironically, my pronouncement of awkwardness once again makes things more awkward. It's as if my social life is a never-ending loop of eighth grade.

And so, three months later, young Ramone finally came over. These playdates can take a while to plan. The boys had a wonderful time after I laid down all of the ground rules. No being loud after Emily goes to sleep. No running or fighting or throwing. No crumby snacks on carpeted areas. But HAVE FUN, KIDS! And they did have fun! Alex too, who announced, "Ramone is my friend, too!" Ramone came back a week later, and then Ramone's mother invited Andy over.

"I want to go, too!" Alex yelled excitedly when I told Andy he was going to Ramone's house. I got down to eye level with Alex, which is one of those parenting tips that really only works if you're delivering good news, not bad news.

"You cannot go to Ramone's," I told Alex. "Only Andy was invited. Ramone is Andy's friend from first grade."

At this point, Alex was sobbing so hard and so loud that the neighbors were dialing the first few digits to DCFS. The across the street neighbors.

"You will have your own playdates with your own friends," I said, struggling to be heard over the sound of misery. I racked my brain, the pictures of the boys in his preschool class spinning through my head like images in a slot machine. Chucky. Ivan. Harry. Jackpot! "I'll talk to Harry's mom. Please stop crying. Please."

He did not stop crying. His wails continued as we all piled into the car, Andy grinning from ear to ear, and went on until we got out of the car three minutes later at Ramone's house. I listed all the reasons why Alex could not go to Ramone's too. I offered to go buy him a Wendy's frosty. Or take a turn at his Batman Lego game and get him to the next level. Anything! We all got out of the vehicle- me, Andy, Emily, her pink puppy, and sobbing Alex. At the doorway, Ramone's mother swung open the front door and said, "Hello! Does Alex want to stay and play too?"

"YES!" Alex screamed, wiping away the last of this tears, kicking off his shoes, and running off joyously into the depths of the house.

"Wow," I said to Ramone's mother. "That is so nice of you." Silently, I told her, "Just so you know, you've sealed your fate and made this into a package deal from here on out. Sucker."

The boys had had a wonderful time at my house the week before. But they had an AMAZING, MIND BLOWING, JUST GODDAMN INCREDIBLE time at Ramone's. It was truly the House of Fun. Kids running everywhere! Being loud! Eating candy! Making crumbs! Throwing things! It was a child's paradise! When I finally picked up the boys two hours later, they both declared Ramone's house THE BEST HOUSE EVER!

"Ramone's house is so much fun!" Andy exclaimed, sinking down into our sofa.

"Our house is fun, too," I replied defensively, looking around our own crumb-free family room, which was forever dimly lit as to set a quiet, studious mood. "Lots of fun! Stop wiggling so much. I mean, it's SO much fun here!"

Going to bed that night, I had a small panic attack. What if my house just wasn't fun enough to keep the kids captive? What if they loved me less because I didn't want them swinging plastic swords around my neatly painted walls? What if they ran away one day because I wanted their volume at a respectable five instead of a headache inducing, toddler waking ten? What if I LOST MY KIDS FOREVER?

This is where I drop my kids off.

The next week, the boys (both of them, of course!) went back to Ramone's. I felt sick again afterwards when I picked my children up, inspecting their blue tongues (Blue candy, Mom! And we had pop, too!) when we got home. The following week, I anxiously suggested we invite Ramone over. Afraid the boys were going to try to twist their playdate into another fun-filled afternoon at Ramone's House of Rowdy, I suggested all the great things they could do. Play video games! Set up the Gotham City toys! Get out the Crayola animation kit we hadn't opened up yet! Have a sugary snack! (No crumbs, though).

Finally, dinner was over and Ramone was at our door, busting through the doorway with the glee of a child truly happy to be in my home. And the kids had a good time, I reassured myself. Such a good time, with just enough rambunctiousness that I decided to silently retract my offer of sugary snacks and instead slipped a little Benadryl into each of their juices. I'm kidding of course! Ramone's mom, I would never do that to your kid! Never.

Watching Ramone and his mother drive away later, and watching my kids tuck themselves into the sofa to play a quiet, relaxing game together (Batman Lego video game), I decided that any new friend and house was going to shine with the novelty of being different. It was okay. I was not going to lose my six year old and four year old to somebody else's good time party shack. Probably.

And, yes, it was working out with Andy picking his own friends instead of me directing the selection like I could still do with Alex. It was working out very well. Because, as I may have mentioned, I get to drop Andy AND ALEX off at playdates. Package deal! Two for one! BOGO half off! Free with purchase! Et cetera.

Young Ramone will stay in our lives for a very long time.

A Love Post for Emily!

2017-02-11T12:09:00.001-08:00

I hate to see her go, but I love to watch her run. Emily runs, and I drown a little every time, the blood pumping double time from my heart and filling me to the brink. Her booty shakes. Her head bounces. Her hands and arms bob side to side. Her legs are steady and assured, pretty Mary Jane clod feet landing each step confidently. She runs to her brothers. She runs to the bus stop, to Alex's class at school. She runs when I announce we're going out, spun into an excited panic to gather up her shoes and coat, which she will attempt to put on herself- a first in this family where some mornings I find myself rolling socks onto the growing, slack foot of a lazy six and a half year old. She runs to the stairs if she hears the words "bath" or "night night." She runs to find her best friend, her pink Pup Pup. She runs, and I can't help but beam.

Emily brings this family joy. Yes, obviously, Andy and Alex bring this family joy, too, in their boyish, loving, poop joke telling ways. Chris every once in a while comes home from working bringing joy (and a case of wine). Perhaps some of these people in this house look at me, Mommy, and think that yes, that stressed out, chronically dehydrated, full of reminders, rules, lists- yeah, that lady sometimes brings a little joy. Perhaps. But Emily. Emily brings this family joy. Constantly.

Perhaps it's because I'm still surprised that I have her at all. When Alex was born, I thought, This is it. My complete family of four. Cut to two years later, when Alex started his first day of two year old preschool and I suddenly found myself without a *baby.* Oh crap, I distinctly remember thinking. These boys are growing up. I'm losing my babies. I'm going to be thirty-five next year. It's the perfect, fertile storm.

And now we've got Emily starting two year old preschool in the fall. No matter how many kids you have, they just keep leaving you for the wide open, lonely expanse of two hour twice a week preschool. I swear this time, the storm brewing will not be one of aging, last chance baby fertility. For real this time, the family is complete. And it's because of the most beautiful, giggly, girl I know- future track star, Emily.

Emily has her quirks. She says Andy's name constantly, calling out for him and referring to him when he's not around. But she has never really said Alex's name. Is it too hard to pronounce? Does she think "Andy" is just the word for brother and so it fits Alex too? Or does she just simply not like Alex as much as she adores Andy? Andy is kind and thoughtful to her. Andy is proud of her. Alex- well, Alex has a different view of Emily than the rest of us. Alex sees her as a pain. And if Alex sits on my lap when Emily is around, Emily will SHOVE him off. Those two have a little something different going on. It's called "unabashed dismay."

Emily talks a lot. She says, "I don't know" if she doesn't know. She says, "Here it is!" when she's found something she's looking for. She cries out "Eww!" when she's disgusted by something. "Shoes?" if she wants to go out. And she sings, as toddlers are want to do. Her favorite song is "Baa Baa Black Sheep." But her second favorite song is "No" by Meghan Trainor. Emily sings, melodically, "No no no no no no no no." And, hilariously, her third favorite song is "Don't Wanna Know" by Maroon 5. Emily also sings along: "Don't wanna know, know, know, know...."

I'd like to just state, for the record, that Emily and I have drastically different favorite songs.

Emily will do anything if her brothers do it first. If they are nice to somebody she's not familiar with, she's okay with that person, too. If they are playing a game, she butts her way right in. If they are looking at the iPad, she runs to me asking for our cheap little tablet: "Pad! Pad!" And then she'll run right back to sit next to the boys with her own device. She likes to splash in the bath with them, usually standing at some point to dump a large cup of water right onto Alex's head. Never Andy's.

She runs with the boys. Literally.

Emily's not always front and center in this family. Her needs often get shoved to the bottom of the list if Andy and Alex need to go somewhere, get an assignment done, or need help with their own pursuits. For the most part, everything Emily does is as a tag-a-long for the boys. This is one reason why I look forward to her starting two year old preschool in the fall. It will be something just for Emily that doesn't involve walking around Target with Mom. She deserves to feel special, to make friends, to sing songs that don't have the sounds baa or no and feel proud of things she made without me. Emily, bearer of joy and happiness, who may sometimes feel like an afterthought growing up, must know that although she's the last, the little one- without her, we'd be lost.

Alexander the Bate!

2017-01-27T12:25:00.000-08:00

Alex got his first library card this week. I told him that he had to be able to sign his name before he could get one, and he's only been writing his name consistently well for the past month or so. I've been worried about Alex, since I know he's starting kindergarten in the fall. Is he as prepared as Andy was? Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that he doesn't know any of the letters of the alphabet? Maybe I should sit down and work with him while Emily is napping... or maybe since he seems content to play Batman on the Nintendo DS, I should just let sleeping dogs lie while I get in some of my own quiet time. Yeah, we'll work on letters tomorrow.

Alex took the task of signing up for his first library card very seriously. He signed his name on the back of the card as directed, and then, later, I compared his signature to Andy's, the one Andy wrote out when he was basically Alex's exact age. Here are the two of them for your own perusal:

So, of course Andy's signature is faded. And he has an "n," a difficult letter (of which he wrote backwards.) However, I'm going to go ahead and say the writing is about the same. Could have been done by the same kid. Except- Alex's is slightly better.

I need a little encouragement on the Alex front. I finally got his speech evaluated, after two years of brushing off his poor enunciation as "normal" or "almost normal" or "it'll eventually be normal." Because the thing about Alex, as documented in his IEP paperwork, is that his comprehension, interpersonal skills, and ability to relate and converse to others is through the roof. He gets it. He's great fun to have a conversation with. His sense of recall is eerie. These are the things that reassured me that he was basically fine. But his blended sounds come out as "d"s or "b"s. The color green is bean. A grape is a bape. A green grape would be a bean bape. And if you ask the guy at the grocery store (bocery door) where the bean bapes are, you are certainly not coming home with any kind of grapes, green or otherwise.

Did I mention that kindergarten is on the horizon? I need to get his speech up to speed before the fall, before he is sounding out words to read and expressing needs and participating in a classroom that is less forgiving than those lovely Lutherans down at the church preschool. Suddenly, I have a deadline and a sense of urgency, and my parenting knob is being turned from a lazy 3 to an amped up 11. The good news is that the speech pathologist has set up goals for him to start making progress as early as March and really does he think he'll be up to speed soon. "He has a great attitude and motivation," the speech pathologist reassured me. "Yeah!" repeated Alex to himself as we walked out. "I'm BATE!"

At the library, my sweet Alex- who I of course love no more than my other two kids but inexplicably holds an extra special place in my heart- immediately lost his new library card. "Oh no! My library card is gone!" he exclaimed, exactly forty-five seconds after it had been issued. I tracked down the missing card for him and we went downstairs to pick out our library books. Alex chose three superhero books and a Batman DVD with his new card. Andy, not to be outdone even though I'd already been to a DIFFERENT library earlier that day where I had picked out exactly fifteen books for him- a blend of picture, chapter, and easy readers as to meet all of his literary needs- decided to pick out his own book, too, using his library card. When he handed me the book on Dios de la Muertos, I didn't have the heart to tell him that nobody in our household could speak or read Spanish.

I had signed the boys up for this program at the library, which was the real reason we were there. They were going to program these little robot bees to navigate mazes, which sounded fun to me. The program was ages 5-7, which didn't stop me from enrolling four year old Alex. Of course, I forgot about honest Andy who immediately called out Alex's correct age upon hearing another, more official adult than myself, speak out the ages of the program. "Alex is close enough," I said with the smile of a beauty pageant contestant who is realizing she knows nothing about the specifics of World Peace during the Q & A portion. "Now get in that room. Take your little brother with you. And help him out. He's only four."

And yes, Alex is only four. He has a lot of growing to do, even in just the six months before kindergarten. This is the portion of my blog entry where I tell you all of the reasons I am NOT worried about Alex. He can easily put together 100 piece puzzles by himself. He is a hard worker on any task given to him. He loves assembling Lego sets and creating his own storylines using the mini-figs. He takes pride in his accomplishments. He has a great heart, which shines through his smile, which shows all of his teeth, lower and top. It's a smile of pure happiness. He has the exact right amount of attachment to me. He will be perfectly fine getting on that bus, which is an important accomplishment in and of itself, and he will give me that wide, toothsome joyous smile when he gets off eight hours later.

Eight hours later.

But Andy did it just fine, and so will Alex. Although, when Emily sees both boys get on that bus in August, she's going to fall apart, far worse even than how she fell apart when they went into the robot bee program at the library without her. "Get a grip," I'll have to tell her. And Alex will wave from the window and say, hopefully, "Yeah! Get a grip!"

As opposed to, "Get a bip."

Because he will start to speak better. And when he's communicating absolutely perfectly in the fall, nobody will ever need to know how I completely dropped the ball until hour eleven.

PS. This is how I think Emily will sign her own library card in three years. There are already signs.

Food, Folks, and Fun!

2017-01-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

These are the foods I loved eating when I was growing up. Rice-A-Roni. Nothing was better than a big heaping salty side of Rice-A-Roni; it even sounded vaguely international since it was the San Francisco treat (yes, I am aware that San Francisco is in THIS country- that's why I said "vaguely.") Tater tots. Oh man, were tater tots delicious. I had a ritualistic way of smashing each individual tot into a small patty and then dressing with a little ketchup before eating. White bread. We didn't buy white bread very often, but when we did it was a treat, and I would savor toasted slices slathered with margarine. I had a steady love affair with ramen noodles and condensed chicken noodle soups. Once I got old enough, I was in charge of making the instant mashed potatoes, another weeknight staple. We ate a lot of refrigerated biscuits, too. You know the kind- you have to peel the cardboard cylinder and wait for it to "pop." I still wince every time I open one of those things, fully expecting a to scale reenactment of the Hindenburg in my hands.

My mother didn't cook meals as much as prepare them. Most foods were from the box or bag. My dad is the cook and he was the chef when he was home. I really liked his chili, and I used to swirl in whole slices of yellow cheese product to really amp up the flavor. This was my special gourmet touch. He made a good clam linguine and humored me the one day that I decided to go red meat free with a tuna spaghetti. Sidenote. After twenty-six hours, I found myself accidentally eating three Whoppers from Burger King. Once again, a bout of healthfulness was easily defeated by beefy, flame-broiled deliciousness.

The food that we ate growing up was ok. Not great, but not terrible. Sometimes I wonder what my kids will remember about our meals. I know I'm a better cook than my mother, and honestly I think I might be better than my dad, too. I would cook a full meal every night if I could get even a small amount of appreciation out of the three young beings that rule my life. Alas, most nights we're eating pasta with jarred sauce, frozen pizza, or a bag of nuggets and some microwaveable corn. No Rice-A-Roni though. I haven't had any Rice-A-Roni in twenty years, and I'm afraid if I make some now, the last of my childhood illusions would dissolve up the kitchen exhaust fan.

There are certain things, though, that my kids really do love eating. There are items that they may one day list semi-nostalgically in their own blogs, or maybe just tweet about in a concise, adjective free 140 characters. Here they are. Non-concisely.

White Trash Casserole. I don't call this White Trash Casserole in front of my kids, because I have a great deal of class, so they know it as Beefy Macaroni. It's the macaroni and cheese I might have eaten as a child but it's so much better. I mix it with ground beef, tomatoes, and extra shredded cheese and bake for twenty minutes. It's the heartiest, yummiest dinner, and all the kids love it. However, I am very close to having to make a double batch of this stuff just to get us through one meal. When the boys get bigger and Emily is eating full servings- jeez, I'm going to be running a full on catering company.

Baked Tilapia. Alex and Emily are less than complimentary about the fish, but Andy loves it. He likes to help prepare it, too. Tilapia fillets are seasoned (a little randomly) and then baked with some olive oil and lemon. Delicious!

Meatballs. My kids think I make the best meatballs! I've tasted better, but I love that my kids hold
such high praise for them. We usually make them together, which might be part of the appeal. Of course, then I serve them after they've simmered in a jar of sauce, which to me is perfectly fine and delicious but to Chris is a travesty. "You should make your own sauce!" he often declares, by which he means opening eight cans of tomatoes instead of popping open the one, perfectly delicious jar that I used.

Beef Tacos. Not to be confused with my chicken tacos, which have been boldly and loudly declared as disgusting. Andy gets excited about beef taco night, and although he only adds cheese to his, I excited await the day when the children eat the tomatoes, lettuce, avocado, and sour cream I painstakingly put out for them. One day. One day.

Pork Tenderloin. This is a grab and go item from the grocery story that I literally cut open from its plastic, drop onto a sheet pan, and stick in the oven for 40 minutes. Pork is the meat that everyone will eat. It was Emily's first solid meat last winter, and even though she had explosive diarrhea afterwards, I still counted it as a success. Even picky Alex will eat all of his pork, and sometimes- just sometimes- he'll ask for MORE. This is a rare occasion in my house, and I have to remind myself to act cool.

Meat loaf. I am definitely falling into the kingdom of pre-packaged godsends with this one, but I have to give a shout out to the fine people at Stouffer's for making a truly amazing frozen meat loaf. The gravy, the beef, the little to no effort I have to excise. Yet another meat that all of the kids will happily eat. And bonus, it's preservative free. #stillagoodmom.

Cheeseburgers. Andy especially loves cheeseburgers. He says that Red Robin has the best cheeseburgers followed closely by mine, which are absolutely nothing special and are fried up busy mom style in a skillet. The patties are sold four to a pack, which is fine for now. One for me, one for Chris, one for Andy, and Emily and Alex share. This is one of those times, though, when I think to myself, "The world is truly made for families of four" and cringe to think of how I will feed my family when Emily and Alex are eating full burgers. Do I buy two four packs? Then I have eight? Five for one night, and then three extras? Or do I hope that Emily will transcend on some misguided no-red-meat journey, so it's just the initial four burgers plus a helping of tuna spaghetti? Only time will tell how I solve this particular riddle.

Crescent rolls, garlic toast, saltines, buttered toast. We love carbs.

Lobster. I'll add this last one only because Chris insisted on giving the boys their own lobster tails the last two times we scrounged up enough money to go buy some. This angered me. "You're going to give the CHILDREN their own LOBSTER?" I fumed. "You might as well throw the money directly in the trash! These kids won't appreciate it! Sometimes they eat hardened fruit snacks from beneath the couch cushions! They do not have refined palates."

Of course, spoiler alert, turns out they love lobster. LOVE lobster. Too bad we can only afford it once every two years, otherwise I'd find myself fuming even more frequently. It's our lack of disposable income that truly keeps me grounded.

Next week's post: A complete list of all of the baked items I have completely ruined, and the subsequent tears of children.

Fear and Loathing in The Burbs!

2016-12-08T11:14:00.002-08:00

This morning, I walked into Andy's bathroom to find him brushing his teeth while wedged into a corner, facing out semi-bravely while scanning the tiny room and both doorways to check for predators. "What's going on in here?" I asked, strolling in and still managing to startle my six year old despite his stature of high alert. "Are you... are you scared?"

"You know I don't like being up here by myself," he replied, dislodging the glob of toothpaste that had become stuck fearfully in his throat. It's true that Andy has developed a fear of being upstairs alone. Emily, however, at 18 months, relishes the thought of getting upstairs alone, as she will clamber up the stairs, into the boys' bedroom, and straight up the bunk bed ladder onto the top bunk at the very first opportunity of parental neglect. Alex, he's always been pretty fearless, but I guess I can understand how Andy feels, since my heart pounds at the thought of going down into the basement alone ever since I found a fricking chipmunk down there. Chip. Munk. Aw. Ful.

Despite the lack of visible wild life upstairs, Andy doesn't even like sleeping in his room, and he will burrow himself deep under his comforter in order to feel safe. This is despite Alex's reassuring snores from the lower bunk. After Andy gets out of the bath, he doesn't like me to leave him alone to get dressed- he hurries so that he can hold my hand to go downstairs for stories and nighttime iPadding. In the morning, after breakfast during our third (of five) ten minute segment- in which I am usually mopping up spilled milk on Emily's high chair tray or arguing about crust on toast with Alex or looking at Andy's poorly composed lunch of cheese sandwich, yogurt, and chocolate milk and wondering if I'm maybe missing a food group or two- Andy usually insists that I go upstairs with him while he gets dressed. This morning, we were running out of ten minute segments, and since I knew we'd eat up at least half of one putting on all of our winter gear, I snapped at Andy to just go upstairs by himself.

I've been snapping a lot lately. I snap because the boys are constantly running around or fighting or breaking things or talking about private parts. I snap because Andy was whipping around headphones and tore a hole into the screen of our year old TV and because Alex threw the tablet at the wall and put a dent in it. I snap because I don't want a six year old hitting me on the butt when I bend over, and because Alex's constant snacking after not eating any actual meals means the pantry door is always open and yesterday Emily consumed eight bags of fruit snacks because she's always in there now, too. I snap because what starts as a well meaning game of ring around the rosy between siblings ends with Emily's head getting bashed into the coffee table. I snap because I can't have nice things, because I can't hear myself think, because you give them an inch and they take a mile, and every other mom cliche there is. I recently became friends with another mom who is a counselor, and she started talking about her patients with anxiety. Trying to keep it cool and suppress my excitement at some potentially free therapy, I casually asked what she tells the mom patients who are always snapping and getting mad. "We talk about expectations," she replied. I guess what she's saying is that you have to expect a shit show. This sounds like disappointing advice, to be honest with you, and I'm not sure I want to continue this friendship.

We were at Hobby Lobby last week, me and the three kids, which I should have expected not to go well according to my new friend/ free therapist. Emily was satisfied with sitting in the cart for exactly the length of time it takes to consume one fruit snack bag, and then she was out with the boys, free in the world and ready to cause havoc. Alex got excited about glitter glue and ran off to find some before I could stop him. Andy immediately asked for ten different art project sets, and Emily looked up, calculated the directions that everyone else was heading, and promptly hauled ass to the opposite end of the store. While I tried to quickly pick out the things I needed while attempting to rein in the kids, Alex managed to snap an arm off of a $20 Nutcracker, which I chose to ignore in favor of resigning myself to buying the pack of Sour Patch Kids Emily had torn into. By the end of our shopping trip, I was teetering on the brink of sanity, barking at the boys to stay next to me and stuffing Emily under my arm like some kind of Sour Patch Kids chomping football.

On the way home, I gave them the talk. The talk about staying next to Mommy at the store and behaving because sometimes bad things happen. Kids get kidnapped, which sounds ludicrous even to my own ears. Who wants to kidnap somebody else's kids? Don't they realize how much it costs to feed these buggers? "That's why we stay together at Hobby Lobby," I finished up. "Because you might get kidnapped."

"Mommy, did you ever know anyone who got kidnapped?" Andy asked soberly.

"Yes, as a matter of fact," I replied, and then I launched into the Jaclyn Dowaliby story. "She was another Jaclyn JUST LIKE ME and she lived IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD when I was a kid. She was kidnapped and they still don't know who did it! Thirty years later! Do you believe that?"

"Was she taken at Hobby Lobby?" Alex asked.

"Nope, she was kidnapped out of her bedroom while she was sleeping," I nonchalantly replied before realizing my critical mistake. Oh crap. Oh man. I looked into the rear view mirror in time to see Andy's face go white.

"But actually, that was a very special case and most kids aren't taken from their house," I back pedaled, feeling the quick sand pulling me down as I pictured a decade of hand-holding Andy around the upstairs of our house, of standing over him while he brushed his teeth as a fifteen year old trembling about cold case kidnappings.

Andy had a hard time going to sleep that night, shockingly. He told me that I had really scared him, and even though he managed to let me tuck him into his bed and leave the room, he was thoroughly cocooned in his blankets when I checked on him an hour later, balled up tensely with his head touching his knees. I'm such a bad mom, I thought to myself. Then- this will teach 'em. Maybe they'll stay closer to me next time we shop. Maybe this crippling fear will somehow translate into less rowdiness around the house.

No such luck, of course. They are wild children through and through, which I have to accept (and expect). Yet the fear is still there in Andy, upstairs alone, standing in the corner listening to his heart beating frantically in the quiet while he thinks of strangers popping into the window to take him. I forget about it sometimes in all my snapping, in my parental anger of broken things and crying babies and wasted dinners. They are still little kids even if they seem part animal. They are scared of things and need reassurances and to feel safe. But really, boys, Mommy would be much better at that part of mothering if only I wasn't so busy spackling the living room wall and watching my shows around the TV's broken white spot.

Strange November!

2016-11-09T11:29:00.001-08:00

The Cubs won the World Series. Donald Trump is our president-elect. I keep waiting to hear the sound of snorts and fluttering pig wings go past my open window. Or at least the galloping hooves of the four horses of the apocalypse.

My kids (at least the ones that can talk) were pretty interested in both events. I'll start with the presidential election and just get that out of the way since it's an ugly topic even in civil conversation. If you voted for him, I totally respect that. It's the beauty of democracy, et cetera, et cetera. I, however, did not vote for him. Not only did I not vote for him, but I spoke about him to my six year with the kind of candor and confidence of one who fully believes the accuracy of polling data and the correctness of my own convictions. And now this guy- the one who I basically told my six year old to fear, the one that I said is an asshat, is mean to girls, disrespectful to people of different cultures, and will likely cause World War 3- well, we woke up today, and now he's the president elect and I had to tell my six year old that he'd won. "This will be very bad!" Andy replied in horror. To which my first thought was not, "Hell yeah it will" but "My bad." Because now I have him believing that the world is suddenly on a collision course to nuclear war and that the men we believe to be bullies are the ones who will triumph over (the perception of) good. These are appropriate feelings for a grown up perhaps, but not a child. I'm reminded of a joke by Mike Birbiglia, one that begins with "What I should have said was nothing." But because I did say something instead of nothing, now Andy is all worried about something that really and truly has no bearing on his life. Again. My bad.

But I tried to apply damage control. Those who voted for him believe that he is best for the job. Many, many people believed this. So hopefully he is an effective, wise, and strong leader and never again logs onto Twitter or gives dating advice to Billy Bush. We really want him to be a great president. Now who wants Pop Tarts!?

Definitely the year for something.

Shall we talk about the Cubs now?

At least there was some joy in this household over events that we ultimately do not control and/or people that we do not personally know. I mean, not from me specifically, since I don't give a shit about major league sports and I spent most of my formative years in a White Sox stronghold. Hashtag southsider4life. But yeah, I was happy when the fireworks in my neighborhood woke me up from my slumber after game 7, indicating that either the Cubs had won or World War 3 was starting a couple weeks early. That morning, I had great news for Andy, who did not make it to the end of the game either. The Cubs are the World Champions! First time in 108 years! Of course, this was bad news for Alex, who had decided to root for the Indians, taking after his father perhaps not in team choice but at least in being contrary for the sake of being contrary. The boys put on their Cubbie blue, sang a couple of bars of Go Cubs Go, and off they went into a beautiful Chicago day.

I learned a lot about Andy for the couple weeks that Chris let him stay up late to watch the games. First of all, he knows a lot more about baseball than I thought. I'm going to be honest, I really did not think he was absorbing anything out there on his Little League field, other than running when someone yelled at him to run and how to avoid getting stung by bees 9 out of 10 times. But, watching him watch the games, listening to him call out strikes and balls and fouls- holy cow. This kid really knows about baseball! I also learned that Andy IS interested in baseball. He would watch the games without flipping on his iPad or wandering away or losing interest. He would just sit and watch, which is something that I do not see too often in this rowdy household of running feet and wiggling bodies and damaging drywall. Finally, I saw how he bonded with Chris over the excitement of the games. There it was, the real reason people like sports. Hanging out with dad. Uniting over a common goal. Oh yeah, and staying up late.

Had the Indians won, Alex may have had his half-hearted, preschool style moment of joy, but Andy would have been crushed. He put a lot of his heart into rooting for the team, much like I put a lot of his same little heart into rooting for Clinton. Here I see both the joys and flaws of parenting. Going forward, perhaps it's best to instill more interior, personal goals into the souls and minds of my young children. Win YOUR baseball game. Be the best person YOU can be. Root for your team, vote for your candidate, but in the end, just be proud of what you personally can do. There's only so much we can control and my children should not have to worry about anything beyond this household and the feather-like weight of their own small decisions. So again. My bad. But yeah. Go Cubs Go.

Emily's One Thing!

2016-09-27T11:08:00.001-07:00

"But I hate story time," Alex declared as we backed out of the driveway. "Let's just go to Wal-Mart instead and buy three toys. Three isn't a big number, right, Mommy?"

"We're going to story time," I replied. "It's Emily's story time. It's literally the only thing that Emily has just for her. Andy has school and baseball. You have preschool and trips to the Dollar Store. All Emily has is a lousy half hour story time once a week. That's it! That's all she has."

A lie, of course, since Emily has everything. Emily's world, although filled with activities primarily for her brothers, is rich in secondary events that she finds just as thrilling, if not more so. She loves waiting at the bus stop! She relishes in banging her feet on the bleachers at baseball games. She ADORES trying to rip off the preschool art hanging in the common area outside Alex's class. I often look at Emily and think, "Well, this one's got it pretty good." I yell at Andy for grumbling through his homework, unfairly barking at him, "These math problems are your JOB. If Daddy complained this much while doing HIS work, he would be FIRED and we'd be HOMELESS but we all wouldn't fit in the BOX so you'd probably have to sleep on a CURB." I ignore Alex's babbling sometimes completely, every once in a while murmuring a, "That's right, Alex," whenever I feel like he's waiting for a reply. But Emily? She doesn't get yelled at. She captures all of our complete attention whenever she wants it. And if I hear her start to whine, I call out, "Just give her what she wants!"

"But she wants my lollipop!" Alex might complain back.

"It's hers now, Alex! Hand it over. Andy, give her that dollar in your pocket. NOW!"

Emily taking the maraca seriously
at story time.

Alex has to sit with us in story time, too, and he's never too thrilled about it. Alex simply isn't a fan of story time, much preferring activities that don't involve an authoritative adult but instead a mini-figure of some sort. So Alex lounges lazily next to me and Emily while we win at story time. That's right, we win at it. Of course, story time is not a competitive sport, but parenting as a whole can be depending on the type of friends you have. I kid, of course, but Emily really loves story time. She dances, she claps her hands, and when she sees them pull out the felt board, she walks confidently up there, puts her finger on it, turns around, looks back at me, and seems to say, "When do I get to stick something on this?" Last week, they did bubbles at the end, and Emily practically lost her mind. She squealed in delight and shoved her way right up to the front to get as close to the bubbles as possible. I love her age. It's hard, and she's trying, but I love watching her enjoy the world as fiercely as she does.

And Emily knows that she's part of our world and that she deserves just as much as the boys seem to get. She is part of the team, and if I pour a little ranch onto Andy's chicken nugget plate, Emily is quick to yell out, "HEY!" and point where she wants HER ranch. The other night, I gave Emily a bath while Chris took the boys out to the front yard to play. While getting dressed in her bedroom, she heard their voices float up into her window. She ran over to it, looked out, and saw them. Immediately, her little feet started stamping, her finger pointed, and she looked at me, betrayed. "HEY! Outside! Out-side! Out-SIDE!" We dressed as quickly as possible and I set her loose through the garage door, where she ran out into sunshine and fun and brothers yelling, "YAY!"

Don't tell Alex that I've lied to him, that story time isn't the only thing that Emily has. It's one of the countless things, but it's fun and free and part of the toddler landscape. Plus they have a felt board.
HEY!

9/11

2016-09-11T19:33:00.001-07:00

Sep 12, 2008

It wasn’t long before they decided to close the mall. We’d been listening to the radio since we’d arrived- the little, plastic radio normally reserved for Sunday football games and FM rock. In the laboratory where we made the glasses, we all hunched around the tinny speakers, and nobody but Margie, the eighty year old part- time optician, had anything to say. We were all in shock, each of us having found out in our own separate flashbulb moments. There was talk that the terrorists might target Chicago next, and the gorgeously ethereal skyscrapers were in the midst of emergency evacuations, their well-dressed occupants running out in the streets with cell phones attached to their face. That the Metra trains had abandoned their schedules and were all running out, not in, at top capacity. “Chicago,” Margie had murmured in her shaky, old lady voice. “That’s not far from here!” And it was funny, hearing her say this about the city that was the nucleus to our suburban atom, and we all laughed a bit too loudly.

The morning that would scorch itself into all of our memories started, for me, with dismissal. I had awoken to an alarm clock that rang with news of a plane having hit a building in New York, and as I climbed into the shower and thought about the things that I would do that day, this news slipped away from me like the water on my skin. Accidents happened all the time, and, after work today, I would maybe see if Gail wanted to go grab a drink at the bar. Classes were starting up again soon at my college; I only had precious few days of freedom left.

After stepping out of the tub and lazily brushing my teeth, I’d turned on the living room television for company. There it was, the hiss and sizzle of a burn. I stood in the living room in a grey towel, holding a comb to my tangled, rapidly drying hair, and I couldn’t walk away or sit down or breathe. I watched as the towers crumbled into ground, a mighty ocean of grey smoke rolling into the sky. The news reporter was at a loss for words, and for what seemed like an eternity, there was only silence. And then he managed to choke out something about not knowing what to say. There go the towers. That’s it, gone.

What a beautiful, sunny morning it was- a solitary vision of perfection if not for the deserted streets and the deathly quiet and the cop cars perched on corners, their lights flashing a helpless red and blue. I drove to the mall in a daze, wondering why I was bothering and what was going to happen next. The country suddenly seemed so small to me as I made the usual turns and stops. New York, DC, Chicago, LA, Seattle- I could be in any of those places in under a minute, if I really tried. I could be there right now if I just swerved right instead of left; I could be standing in New York covered with the remains of buildings and bodies and fire if I just closed my eyes and opened the door.

Our only customer of the day walked in just as we’d received the instructions to shut down and close. Businesses and lives and high finance had all screeched to a halt. Airplanes were grounded, doors were being locked, and anyone who could go home was already on their way. Nobody was thinking about acting normal or going about their business or whether or not they would make their appointments or have a pot roast for dinner in the evening. I will never forget the one customer who walked into our optical at eleven o’clock on that Tuesday in September, the one and only non-employee any of us had seen at the mall during our hour of remaining open. She wore a blue T-shirt, jeans, white sneakers, and gold-rimmed glasses. She had dull red hair cut into a bob, with wispy bangs. She was in her early forties, with rough skin and a thin, pale mouth, and she had a voice that might have been comforting during any other moment, a voice that I might have otherwise liked.

“I’m here for my appointment,” she told me, checking her watch. She was here to see the eye doctor, to sit in the doctor’s chair and choose between lenses one and two for clarity and crispness. To discuss the differences between bifocal and progressive multi-focals, to pick out new frames and have her glasses delivered and fitted within an hour, as promised. She was here to do this perfectly normal, everyday activity right now while the world was ending and while thousands of people lay dead underneath so much rubble and ash. She was going to speak calmly of not being able to read street signs in the same morning that desperate office workers had chosen to jump to their death rather than go down with a fiery building. After four planes full of people had been violently wrecked by terrorists , after everything we thought we knew was turned upside down and emptied out, she might decide to purchase sun glasses, just for fun.

The news reporters were saying that America was under attack, and this lady had driven here for her eleven o’clock appointment, checking her watch to make sure that she wasn’t late.

But that wasn’t what did it for me. I might have been able to forget this woman had she simply turned around and left after I managed to tell her that, due to what had happened today, and due to what might happen, we were being instructed to close up and go home. I might never have involuntarily memorized her face and her body and her clothes and her voice if she had just turned around and left while murmuring that she understood. Instead, she spat a reply into my face, throwing her arms up in the air in a gesture of great frustration. She said to me, “I can’t believe this. Every time I try to get stuff down, something like THIS happens.” Her day was ruined. She was pissed. And not because her husband had been in the World Trade Center or her daughter had been on a plane that crashed into the Pentagon or that no one knew what still lay ahead for the day. But because she’d have to reschedule her eye appointment. And, clearly, that was going to be a gigantic, almost unbearable, pain in the ass for this horrible woman.

After she left, we left, turning the locks behind us and mumbling that we’d probably see each other tomorrow. Our manager gave Margie a ride home; the old optician normally took the bus, but today was no day for sitting on a bench, waiting and craning a neck down the street. Everybody was so nice to each other that month. For the rest of September, and maybe part of October, we were all so kind and giving. We loved and wanted to protect our neighbors. We wrote checks and donated blood and waved American flags and volunteered and sent our fire fighters up east. We called everybody we knew. We hugged and kissed and held hands.

The following weekend, I drove into Chicago with two friends, Rob and Gail. I was thinking about my father as we headed up I-94 into the city that popped up like a cardboard cut-out. My father and I had gone for a walk around our sleepy suburban neighborhood on Tuesday night, and I’d told him how I was afraid for the future, how I couldn’t comprehend why this had happened. I looked up at the sky as we walked, and I had never seen it that way before- cloudless and blue and incomprehensively still. Word for word, I couldn’t remember exactly what my father had said to me as we cut through an empty park, but I found myself wearing the sentiment like a gown. Tragedies and attacks and disasters and secondhand losses and heartaches- these events that truly affected us only in the most peripheral of ways were the events that could change our lives, if we let them. For better, for worse, for simply taking and moving ahead.

Rob drove the car into a city that could be destroyed seemingly on a whim, that night or any other night. Gail and I were still talking about Tuesday. There was a good chance that we'd talk about Tuesday forever, about what we had seen and heard on the news. There was the newly minted widow in her twenties whose husband had sweetly looked at her on Monday night and told her that he loved her, less than twelve hours before he was gone forever. There were the images fed into unsteady, handheld camcorders, the screams in the background, the running, the wreckage, and the hazardous dust that refused to settle. And while Gail and I talked, Rob issued a harrumph, the first casually apathetic noise I’d heard in days. “Stuff like this happens all the time in other countries,” Rob had said, rolling his eyes as he pressed on the pedal. “And people think about it for about a minute and then just finish what they were doing. It’s not a big deal. Shit happens all the time.”

We drank in the city, holding our beers and staring out the windows at the buildings dressed in red, white, and blue. Gail and I were on high alert, ready to jump up and run at the first visible threat. We knew we were likely being absurd, but we’d been shaken all week, and aside from Rob and a few other blissfully unencumbered patrons, the other drinkers seemed apprehensive as well. And so much nicer than usual. There were so many more smiles and handshakes and lingering touches on shoulders and arms, and I wondered when things would get back to normal and people would start being assholes again. It wouldn’t take long, of course. Rob belched when he was ready to go, and instead of fiddling with the radio on the ride home, he slid in a CD and asked if we wanted to stop for hamburgers.

It’s been seven years. I didn’t remember that today was the day until the radio announcer on my ride to work accidentally talked through what was to be a moment of silence, of remembrance. I found myself thinking of how the path of my life didn’t really change after that day seven years ago, how my experiences and memories of the attacks are completely internal and so physically removed from my personal reality that it might very well have been a movie for me. I still did everything I would likely have done anyway- finished college, got a job, married, moved, furnished a house. I didn’t lose anything, and in the events and years that followed, I haven’t been close to anyone who went to Iraq or had an anthrax scare or had known somebody who had died that day. It was all just news and talk and fear and pictures; it was all just other people.

And yet, I couldn’t sleep that Tuesday night, or the nights that followed. I looked up at the sky for no good reason on too many beautiful blue days afterward, and sometimes when I saw a recycled image of the towers on television, I looked down thinking I might be in a towel holding a comb, my skin grown cold and my legs made of stone. I visited Ground Zero a year after the attacks, and it was terrible and actually real and made me feel ashamed because my connection to the spot was so thinly tenuous that it was, in all practicality, nonexistent. A few times in these past seven years, I thought I saw that lady whose eye appointment was frustratingly canceled due to what Rob might have called “some bad shit happening out east.” And every time I thought I saw her- two years later, four years later, six years later- I wanted to slap her across the face and say, “How could you be so awful?”

But then she might reply, “How could you?”

I might tell her that my dad was right, and that it is the events that we aren’t actually a part of that have an unimaginable power to quietly change us. A bridge collapsing in Minneapolis, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, a mass shooting at a Virginia Tech. They are absorbed by the observers, and we hold them and hide them somewhere inside us for reference and for feeling human and for better or for worse, for taking and moving ahead.

Ball In The Toilet!

2016-09-07T11:28:00.001-07:00

"Daddy, I dropped a ball into the toilet and then flushed it, and now the toilet's broken, so we can't use it anymore, okay?"

At least Andy had the sense to tell a grown up what he had done. You'll notice that the grown up was laid-back Daddy, not HOW MUCH IS THIS GOING TO COST ME Mommy. The answer to that question was $93. The ball "fell" into the toilet, Andy decided to flush it (WHY!??), and the water came up and swirled around like it was waiting for Noah's ark. Since we couldn't plunge the ball out, we figured some guy would have to come over, detach the toilet, flip it upside down, and pluck the ball out like a cherry from a kiddie cocktail. Turns out, the guy comes over with his super plunger / snaking tool (three hours late) and just shoves it further down into the house pipes. I fully expect to see that ball float up to my drain during a future shower. Followed by an explosion for some reason.

Andy "broke" the toilet the week we decided to start giving him an allowance. He gets up to $3 per week, and he earns his $3 by doing his homework and reading without complaint and helping with the occasional chore, such as table setting, playroom cleaning, or laundry folding. Although it pains me to watch him fold the laundry. It's a two hour process involving slow, careful folding of underwear and individual socks, and I have to physically restrain myself from jumping in and just taking the thirty seconds to just finish up.

Alex was pretty ticked off about Andy getting an allowance, especially because he loves money. Specifically, he loves the things that money can buy, and he's extremely annoyed by the first item that Andy has so sweetly chosen to save up for: a doll for his little sister. Emily is lacking in girl toys, and my little fifteen month old is reduced to babbling along to Batman figures and creepy looking dinosaurs. However, if you've seen the disaster that is our playroom, crammed full of crap and always in disarray, you will understand that I am actively seeking to get rid of toys, not gain more toys, gender orientation be damned. Emily will have to learn to cope with the glut of boy toys and the one girl toy she does have, a pink picnic basket (because men hate picnics). I fully expect her Barbie (the one that Andy has committed to buying her) to slut it up with a bevy of superhero men. She may be the luckiest Barbie in town, actually. She'll be thrilled to date Batman, Superman, and Iron Man. The only amazing thing Ken ever did was to buy a lifelong supply of flesh colored briefs.

Alex, the consumer of the family and the one voted most likely to file for chapter 13 bankruptcy, constantly rattles off lists of toys he wants to acquire. As he spends about a quarter of his day glued to toy demonstrations on You-Tube, he's kept current in the latest toy fads. His speech also reflects this devotion to toy videos. "Check out the features of my Bat-Cave," he said to me last week. "Would you like to see how many power discs it has?" Mumbling to himself one day while setting up the car race track, I heard him say, "Actually, this is a pretty deluxe set." He will also tell me the recommended target age for various toys. "I'd like the Bat-Cycle, with two power discs. Don't worry, it's ages four and up!"

When he's not scouting out new items to purchase, Alex is pretty content to just sit and set up his superhero sets, mumbling little conversations to them. Emily is good at this, too. She'll grab a Spiderman and start talking to it in that sing-song way of hers, bobbing her head up and down in agreement. Emily, at fifteen months, likes toys. She likes her pink teddy bear. She loves to sing along to Baa Baa Black Sheep. She adores Andy, annoys Alex. She is quick to anger and is the queen of temper tantrums, but she is also a champion snuggler, hooking that little thumb of hers into her mouth and hugging in close. She loves shoes, hates hats. And she's probably the most amazing dancer in the family. She shimmies, she shakes, she nods to the music. She's so perfectly adorable, it's easy to see why Andy wants to buy her that doll.

This is a standard plunger. Worthless.

But, of course, Andy broke the toilet, and now that we're giving him his own money, it's only fair that some of that money be withheld to help cover the cost of child-induced household repairs. I threatened to keep his allowance every week until the plumber was fully paid off, but that would be 31 weeks, and even I don't have the heart to do that. "I'm keeping your allowance this one week to help pay for the plumber," I finally decided, aloud, after the plumber had left, merrily swinging his super plunger/snaking tool and patting his fat wallet. "I hope you learned a lesson."

"I did," Andy said morosely. "I really, really learned a lesson."

And, of course he did. So, ultimately, payday rolled around two days later, and I approached him with a single dollar bill in my hand. A little something since we all make mistakes and he was an exceptional kid otherwise. A little something since his teacher emailed me to tell me how wonderful he is. Since he jumps in to help without being prodded. A little something since I spent half my childhood avoiding my uncle after accidentally breaking the door to his laundry room. We have to get past our mistakes. Unless that ball comes to haunt me during a shower, it's over, and I'll let it go.

Alex watched very carefully as Andy tucked his dollar bill into the tupperware container he's using as his money bank. We all trust Alex not to steal, and in my heart of hearts I don't think he would. But if you see him rolling around town with a new deluxe Imaginext toy set
featuring power discs, then you might want to ask if Emily ever got her doll.

The Tooth, The Whole Tooth, And Nothing But The Tooth!

2016-08-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Right before kindergarten ended, Andy's front tooth got wobbly. "He's going to lose it today or tomorrow!" I whisper-yelled on the phone to Chris. "Print out this official tooth fairy certificate I'm sending you. How many singles do you have in your wallet? I've heard that some parents use glitter. Crap! We're out of glitter! Do you think it would be weird to use elbow macaroni instead?"

Flash forward to today, Andy's first day of first grade. He flashed a winning smile on this day for his First Day of School picture, and the smile contained all of his teeth. Honestly, it looked like he might have even grown an extra baby tooth or two in the last twelve weeks. He certainly didn't loose that one tooth that is still hanging in there. Today, I came across the wrinkled up tooth fairy certificate in my desk and just threw it away. I've watched Andy carefully bite into sandwiches without using that one wiggly tooth. I've seen him sip neatly through straws on the side of his mouth. That tooth ain't going nowhere.

He gets that from me, you know. The fear of losing a tooth. One evening, when the boys were feeling especially rude and interested in hurting my feelings, they peered at my face in what seemed like a mixture of disgust and confusion. "Why is that one tooth a little whiter and bigger?" Andy asked, pointing out my Tragic Flaw #63. "What's the deal with that?"

I told them the long horrid story, the one that spawns eras. The diving board accident as a pre-teen that chipped my tooth, resulting in a most unattractive cap. Then, years later, the careless bite into my favorite sandwich that resulted in the losing of said cap and feelings of gross betrayal by something I'd considered so perfect, beautiful, delicious, cheesy, meaty. The month long root canal five years later that finally resulted in the third, whiter, bigger cap. Today, things are starting to feel unpleasant around that tooth again. So I have made it my mission to keep Sensodyning that thing to numbness and, much like Andy, figure out ways to eat AROUND the offending tooth. I can still lead a quality life this way. I can. This is what I am thinking, and I can tell that this is what Andy is thinking. He is apprehensive about the loss of his little tooth and what may or may not grow in afterwards. He is my son, through and through.

Alex, however, did almost lose his tooth this summer. I have commanded him not to wiggle it, to try to wiggle it, to even go near it with the slightest of wiggling intentions. He is too young to lose a tooth. We had been at Great America one day and Alex, blue arm cast glinting in the sun, accidentally ran into some horror-stricken lady, who watched as Alex crashed to the solid black pavement, breaking his fall with an already broken arm (sigh) and then his front little tooth (super sigh) which was stained black and super wiggly for a couple days afterwards. "The tooth will tighten back up," Chris told me calmly when I started freaking out. I'm fairly certain he had no idea whether or not this was, in fact, true. But it's six weeks later, and Alex's tooth is still stuck in his face, even as he chomps down into things Andy and I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Whole apples. Hard lollipops. Big delicious crusty sandwiches.

Emily's teeth have grown in nicely. A little crooked, maybe, but if teeth can tighten in gums, then perhaps they can straighten themselves out as well. I have already lined all three children up and given them the cold hard truth. We can only afford braces for one child. Whoever has the worst teeth or perhaps the most potential to become a face model will get the braces. The other two are looking at living the life I still live. Smiling only guardedly and in certain dim lights. Mild depression over a weak jaw line. A cloud of disdain forever directed at my oblivious parents. Et cetera.

I don't know how many teeth Emily currently has. I've never been the kind of parent who counts teeth or anticipates or discusses teething or really gives any kind of thought to anything that goes on in there. One day, your baby shall have teeth. You will probably notice them after they are huge and fully grown and slightly crooked. Only after they potentially get knocked out on the pavement of an amusement park do you really start to care about said teeth. This was once my fortune cookie fortune.

The worst part is that I don't even really brush Emily's teeth. Oh sure, sometimes I steel myself up for some screaming, crying, tantrum throwing, and all out thrashing and I try to take a couple swipes at it with her toothbrush. Sure, I have those nights when I'm feeling up for it. But, mostly, I let her chew on Alex's toothbrush whenever he's not looking (she prefers his), and just keep my fingers crossed that everything's going to work out fine, dentally.

But I am a tooth brushing soldier in the war against cavities with Andy and Alex. I hope we are winning. This morning, we scrubbed those teeth hard and then took Andy's first day of first grade picture. The summer did not go by particularly fast or slow. I am not shocked one way or another that he's entering first grade. Today felt perfectly normal. Perhaps it was that tooth that helped. If that one tiny tooth can hang on in suspended childhood for a little bit longer- well, maybe we can too.