Lawyer Kids

I know that to become an actual lawyer you have to complete several years of extra schooling and pass a couple of tests. Dave and I lived through that together. However, I do think some people are born with certain personality traits that make them more suited to the profession.

I suspected that Dave was one of those people after spending several years debating with him, and after hearing the stories of how he used to argue with his mother until she was absolutely defeated. Now that I'm raising his children, I absolutely know this to be fact. I don't know if they will be lawyers, but they definitely have the personalities for it.

At the ripe old ages of 5 and almost 3, they already do a lot of hair-splitting, and I often have to award them points for a technicality when I didn't clearly state all of the boundaries of a situation.

Case in point - I have a rule about the front porch. They are allowed to walk around the brick wall like it's a balance beam, but they cannot step on the flowers. I don't know how many times I have said, "Don't step on my flowers!" They know this rule. Luke especially knows this rule because he is the main person I have to say it to - him and the dog.

Over the long weekend, I was standing at the kitchen sink and happened to look up and see this.

He wasn't stepping on the flowers.

After awarding him points for the technicality, I made him get off of the lantana and I clarified that he cannot sit on the flowers either.

Between these experiences and their willingness -  passion, even - to argue to the death (and I don't mean whining and repeating a request over and over again, I mean actual, rational, often very logical arguing), I find myself just shaking my head and walking away. They are just like their father in this way.

In fairness, my mothers would tell you that I have always been stubborn and willing to argue with a wall. I don't deny this fact; I'm passionate when I get my heart set on something. However, that is not the same thing as arguing just for the sake of arguing, or just for the fun of it. It's different than being able to disengage from the point at hand and swap sides just to keep the argument alive and trap your opponent with their own words, and that, people, is where Dave Roper is very, very good. I fear that in a few more years, these children will be arguing with the same skill.

You can't win an argument with any of these people, so I don't even try anymore.

Paid Chores

Ella and I have had a few conversations in recent months about her opinion that I never buy her anything. It's true that we don't buy them things every time we go to a store, or even most times. It's pretty rare that we buy them anything outside of the normal gift giving occasions. She has everything she could possibly need and most of what she wants. She doesn't need, or really even want, whatever piece of junk toy strikes her fancy in the toy aisle. I typically handle these requests with a simple, "I will put it on your list for your birthday or Christmas." I keep a list for both of them in my phone so they can see me add to it while we stand in the store.

She also really has no concept that it takes money to buy things. We've taught them from the time they were able to feed whatever change we bring home or money they are given to their piggy banks, and they LOVE feeding their pigs. They don't even realize they could take that money to the store and bring home some piece of junk in exchange for it. They know that we go to work to get money to pay the bills and buy the things we need, but that's really the extent of their understanding.

One of the things that is so important to us that they learn is money management and all of the things that go along with it - check writing, reconciliation, saving, planning, tithing, debt retirement - all of it. We want them to be smart about their money by the time they leave our house. We needed to provide a way for them to earn money so that they can learn how to tithe, save, and spend it. Dave and I have talked about how to approach it, consulted Dave Ramsey's web site, our own experiences, and how other parents plan to or have taught these lessons. Neither of us were comfortable with just giving an allowance, and we weren't comfortable paying them for things that we expect them to do anyway - like keeping their rooms neat and putting their stuff away instead of leaving it in the living room. We finally decided on an approach that we hope will work in our family. It's a commission system, similar to what Dave Ramsey suggests.

I talked to Ella about it a few months ago and she loved the idea. We told her we would start it after she turned five, and I finally set it up for her this weekend. I had to put a lot of thought into what chores I am willing to pay her for because I expect her to be responsible for herself and her stuff without payment, and because I had to figure out what she is capable of doing mostly unassisted. The things that I previously set out for her in her daily lists will remain unpaid, and we settled on seven possible jobs that she can do or help with each week. Some of them are daily and some of them are just once or twice a week. I wrote them all out on a piece of scrapbook paper and framed it so we can mark them off with a dry erase marker.

Ella's Paid Jobs

She has the potential to earn $7 a week and of the $7, she will tithe $1 and save $1 (we've set the expectation that she's saving for a car, so it's a long-term savings project). We will pay her on Saturday morning so that she has money for the offering at church on Sunday and money to spend at the store when we do our shopping, if she chooses.

She is very enthusiastic about it right now, and I'm hoping that that will continue as she learns about spending.

When Ella was Lost

It took 4.75 years for me to lose one of them, but I finally did. It was quite a feat, considering that the one I lost is the one I would have voted Most Likely to Never Be Separated from Mommy.

Luke? He'd be easy to lose. Unleashing that child requires constant vigilance. Ella? Well, let's just say there's a reason I recently spilled hot tea on her head, and it's not because I'm careless in the kitchen. She is the Moon to my Earth. Blessedly, the gravitational pull has relaxed quite a bit over the last couple of years, but I still don't have to worry about her wandering too far ahead of me in public places. Half the time I have to force the child to go into the bathroom stall without me while I stand directly on the other side and wait for her. She just doesn't wander freely in public. Blessedly.

We went on a play date to the zoo over the weekend with another mom and her little girls. The other girls went into the lorikeet exhibit to feed the birds, and Ella decided to try it, too. She followed them in and their mom helped her by holding a bird on her hand while it drank out of Ella's nectar cup. Luke accompanied us to the zoo, but he could not abide any lorikeets that day. I had to take him out of there, so I told Ella to stay with her friends' mom because I was going to take Luke outside to wait. She agreed and I left through the Exit door, on the opposite side of the exhibit.

Luke and I waited and watched, and we finally saw the mom and two girls come out to wash their hands, but no Ella. I asked where she was and the mom told me that she got scared when one of the birds landed on her and she decided to leave the exhibit.

Immediately, I knew that she had gone back in the Entrance door and into the little store, and that she must be freaking out because she didn't find me there. I hurried Luke around the building as quickly as one can hurry a meandering toddler, and poked my head in the door just as one of zoo employees was telling another employee, "This is Ella and her mom is lost." I said, "I'm Ella's mom!" The employee asked Ella if I was, and let her come to me when she confirmed. She was very upset.

We stepped to the side and I knelt down in front of her to hug her and let her cry. When she calmed down I said, "A bird landed on you and you got scared." She nodded. "You went back inside and couldn't find me." She nodded. "You thought I was lost and told the lady who works here." She nodded. "You were really scared." She nodded. I hugged her harder and promised her I had not left her; I was just waiting at the other door. She took a deep breath, a drink of water, and she was ready to continue her play date.

As I was telling Dave about it later, I realized how very proud I was of her handling of the situation. She and I talked about it again that evening and she told me that when she realized I wasn't in the store, she found the lady who worked there and told her her name and that she had lost her mom. She said the lady told her her name, too. I reiterated that she did exactly what she was supposed to do in that kind of situation and that I was very proud of her. 

She was never really lost, but she absolutely thought she was and for a few brief moments between realizing what had happened and seeing her with my own eyes, I had The Fear. I'm so glad she remembered all of the instructions we've given her in case she gets separated from us.

Potty Training Blues

Luke has decided to learn how to use the potty. Actually, he started this venture last Labor Day, and he's sort of piddled with it (pun intended) since then. It picked up steam again over Christmas, then fizzled when we went back to our normal schedule, only to flare up again Sunday morning as we were getting ready for church. I'm starting to think he's serious now.

Perhaps you can tell I'm less than enthusiastic? I am.. less than enthusiastic. I can't wait until I don't have to buy diapers anymore, but I don't love potty training. It's a lot of work and I'm pretty bad at it.

He's driving this project, which is just fine with me.

My philosophy is: The more he can do for himself, the smoother it will go, so I'll just follow his lead.

My failure is: Once he becomes interested, I forget the philosophy and try to control all the things in an effort to avoid mess and force his success.

It goes something like this past Sunday.

Luke: I wanna wear choo-choo underpants.
Me: We are about to leave for church, so you can wear a Diego pull-up. We'll tell Mrs. Kim, and you can try to use the potty during Sunday school.

After church, I breathed a sigh of relief that he had momentarily forgotten about the choo-choo underpants and put a diaper on him for nap.

After nap...
Luke: I need to potty. I wanna wear choo-choo underpants.
Me. (assembling the potty because the bottom half is also our step stool) Ok. You sit on the potty, I'll get the underpants.
Luke: (sits for approximately 15 seconds) I all done.
Me: No, you aren't. You didn't do anything. If you are going to wear underpants, you have to tee-tee in the potty.
Luke: I all done.

Continue that conversation for another 7 minutes until I give up and put the underpants on him. Unfortunately, I can't control his bodily functions, nor can I magically make him able to control them.

TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER, as he climbed into his chair at the table to practice cutting with scissors, he forgot he was wearing underpants (and so did I) and peed in them.

Cue Crazy Mommy swooping in with a swiftness to contain the mess and get him undressed and on the potty in hopes that he'll finish there and make a connection. Because he still cannot make himself pee on command - not his own command, and certainly not mine. He did not.

Enter the second pair of underpants. He wanted to watch football, so I brought the potty to the living room.

Then, 20 minutes later without my prompting, he jumped out of his chair, exclaiming, "I need to tee-tee!" and ran to the potty, pulled down his own pants, and sat on it. Yes, breakthrough! No... he forgot to point his penis downward so he peed on the carpet instead of the potty. The carpet part is fine - whatever, it will clean, that's why they made Resolve - but he was so upset about peeing on the carpet that he couldn't finish on the potty.

Enter the third pair of underpants, because the second pair got caught in the crossfire. Several more times he sat on the potty and did nothing, but he told me he did. Then he picked up the little bowl and told me it spilled. Cue Crazy Mommy rushing to clean up the mess. There wasn't a mess. There were some forcefully spoken sentences about potties and germs and not wearing them on our heads. Then he actually did pee just a little, and three drops got on his underpants.

Enter the fourth pair of underpants. He ended up in Ella's room, sitting on her rug to play, and he relaxed enough to pee enough that I needed to wash the rug. And the underpants.

Enter his second Diego pull up, because I only have seven pairs of underpants and he had already created a load of laundry by himself in a matter of hours.

Standing at the table to eat supper, he peed again. He always pees at the table. I guess food is distraction enough that he forgets to hold it? Because the good Lord knows he won't stop long enough to empty his bladder any other time and he can hold it longer than a kid that age should be able. Since it was a pull up, I tried to make him wait until after supper to change him (because sometimes I just want to eat my food without getting up over and over again), but he couldn't handle it. This time, he chose a diaper. And he promptly emptied his bladder. Finally.

He hadn't said anything else about underpants until this morning, when he insisted on wearing them to Grandmother's house. He doesn't have school today, and he wouldn't be convinced otherwise, so I took him and his underpants and five more changes of clothes to Grandmother's house. When I told Dave about it, he said, "Your mom is going to kill you," to which I responded, "Yeah." Or, maybe some magic will happen today. We'll see.

I was kind of hoping he'd wait a couple more months before trying again because he just doesn't seem to be physically ready to use the potty yet. He doesn't want to stop long enough to sit long enough to potty. He won't empty his bladder when he does sit on the potty, then he has an accident. That freaks him out, so he holds it again, and we enter into a vicious cycle. And he can hold it a really long time. His teacher just sent a note home yesterday to tell me that he is always dry all day at school, but he won't use the potty. I know this. He stays dry overnight, at school, and most of the day when we are at home. I do think he's on the brink, but he hasn't had the big breakthrough yet. Maybe this means that once it clicks, it'll just be done?

I hope so, because he really wants to wear choo-choo underpants. I just need to try to control myself and let him do it, and then I'll spend $20 on carpet cleaner instead of diapers and that will be that.

P.S. Nothing desensitizes you to the use of the word "penis" like potty training a little boy. Penis, penis, penis, penis.

Day 25 - Lunchtime.

Because Christmas is about Jesus, we celebrate him on Christmas day with cake and gifts, as is proper for a birthday party.

It has four layers because we couldn't reach consesus
 on a flavor this year; thus, two cakes in one.

We don't actually have lunch on Christmas day because we have late breakfast and early supper, but we do usually eat birthday cake in the middle of the day.

Earlier this season, while we wrapped presents for our family, Ella asked me if we should leave a gift for baby Jesus. I ran with it.

Me: Hmm, I like the idea but how would it work?
Ella: We could just leave it by the manger set.
Me: We could. Do you think we've already given Jesus a present this year?
Ella: (head shaking, eyes questioning)
Me: Well, you know that the baby Jesus was born as God's gift to us so that he could grow up and die on the cross to save us from our sins, right?
Ella: (Nodding affirmation)
Me: And one of the things that Jesus teaches us is to take care of other people who need things, like the little girl we filled a shoebox for and the kids we bought stocking stuffers for? I think that by taking care of other people, we have already given Jesus a present.
Ella: (Thoughtful, then decisive) No, I don't think it works that way.

She has always been very literal. She wanted to leave an actual gift by the manger for the baby Jesus, just like the wise men did, and that's okay because the seed is planted. At the suggestion of her preschool teacher, we did create an ornament for our tree to give her something tangible that represents her gift to Jesus.

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’" - Matthew 25:40

I Could be the Moderator

Or A Comparison of Preschool Conversation with Presidential Debates


On the drive to Grandmother's house this morning, I had an epiphany. I might be qualified to moderate the presidential debates. After all, moderating is one if my motherly duties. One of my major parenting projects of late has been teaching them the basics of polite conversation: 1. Acknowledge the speaker, 2. Respond respectfully, and 3. Don't interrupt. I get a lot of practice at moderating.

This morning's topic: Butterflies - Where do they fly and what color are they?

Let's review the transcript.

Luke: (upon backing out of the driveway) Mommy! I saw a butterfly!
Moderator: You did?
Luke: Butterfly way up high!
Ella: Butterflies don't fly way up high -
Luke: (interrupting) No! Mommy! Way up high!
Commence sixty seconds of loud, nonsensical talking over each other.
Moderator: STOP! We are going to take turns talking so that we can hear each other. Ella, please finish what you were saying.
Ella: Butterflies don't fly way up high. They fly low to the ground. (Continue a rather long-winded dissertation on butterfly flight patterns until she took a breath.)
Moderator: Luke, it's your turn.
Luke: (Driving home his point) I saw a butterfly way up high!
Moderator: (Attempting to move the conversation along) Cool. What color was the butterfly?
Luke: (Evading the question) Ummm - a baby butterfly..  umm..
Ella: (Interrupting) I saw a butterfly -
Luke: (Interrupting the interruption) No! My turn!
Moderator: Ella, it's Lukes turn to talk. You will have a chance in a minute. Luke, please continue. You saw a baby butterfly?
Luke: Baby butterfly (followed by additional nonsensical jabber until he took a breath).
Moderator: Ella, it's your turn.
Ella: (With an air of complete superiority) I saw a butterfly that was brown, black and yellow.

At that point, we arrived in Grandmother's driveway, thus ending round 587 of this year's Preschool Debates.

And it occurred to me that that conversation wasn't so different from the recent sparring I've watched on prime time television between two polished, prominent politicians. Maybe I'm due for a career change...

Original photo from www.huffingtonpost.com.

A Paradigm Shift

There's been a paradigm shift in my house. The child who has always been challenging is less so, and the child who has always been easy is not right now.

I was quite surprised recently when I discovered how very easy it is to have 4 year old Ella around the house when Luke isn't there. He spent the night at Grandmother's by himself for the first time ever, and Ella was home with us. It was so easy! I was so amazed that I told my sister and her response was, "Duh. I've been knowing she is the easier one right now for a while."

Of course she has. She's had the Luke-free evening experience with her a few times when Ella spent the night at her house. Until just a few weeks ago, I had not had an evening with just Ella in the house since before Luke was born. My how she's changed since then! She played by herself in her room until supper, ate, showered, read books with me, and went to bed. It was quiet. There was no yelling. She's almost entirely self-sufficient.

When did this happen?

Apparently while we've been wrangling the wild beast that is the most recent version of her brother.

Since turning two, he has fully embraced The Tantrum Phase of Independence. But you know the story, right? He wants to do everything by himself, he thinks he can do everything by himself, but he really can't yet. "No!" means no, except when it means yes - and that is often because "No!" is the default answer to everything. He wants to make his own decisions by himself, but he makes them so impulsively, they're often wrong. And who's fault is that? Mine. Because of course I should know that when he picked the Piglet cup he really wanted the Pluto one.

He's defnitely in that place where he needs lots of time and space to practice his independence. Dave and I are in the midst of a refresher course on the intricacies of toddlerhood - distractions and redirections and choices and transitions and time-ins.

He is a sweet, funny, loving, enthusiastic little spirit trapped in a frustrated toddler mind and body. It's rough on him. It's rough on us.

He wants so badly to play soccer, on the team, with the other kids. He tells me about it all the time. "I wanna play socter." He's too young; he can't play until he's 3. For a whole year, he'll be too young.

He wants to get on the balance beam and race across it by himself like the older kids. While he's physically capable of running on a 4 inch beam, he isn't mentally focused enough to do that yet.

He wants to tell us when he's feeling really mad or slighted, but he lacks the self-discipline to do that with his words.

His will is strong and his intent is generally good, but he is limited by his own development. His physical and emotional maturity will catch up with his will eventually, but until then, we have our work cut out for us. At the end of it, we'll have another confident, self-sufficient four year old. But you know what  they say about sausage - it's good, but you don't want to watch the making of it. Toddlerhood is the sausage-making of a four year old, and it's not for the faint of heart.

Father's Day: I blew it.

This is the way I pictured Father’s Day weekend.


Saturday morning – Take the kids shopping to pick gifts for Dave, Papa, and Pop the Pop.

Saturday afternoon – Go to a birthday party.

Sunday morning – Make breakfast for Dave and go to church.

Sunday evening – Have supper with my dad.

This is how it really happened.

Friday morning – Yes, that’s right, Friday, 4:30 am, Luke threw up in our bed. While Dave cleaned up the floor (complimenting me on my cat-like reflexes as I jerked Luke up and suspended him over the side of the bed so that most of the vomit landed on the floor instead of the sheets) while I calmed Luke down, cleaned him up, took his temperature, gave him Motrin, and settled into the recliner with him. He threw up again. I calmed him down, cleaned him up, wrote off going to the office, moved to his bed for a couple more hours. Again, Dave cleaned up vomit from the floor and chair. I worked from home with two kids, and mostly held Luke all day. Aunt Becca came to help me for a little while by holding Luke so I could do some work and going to get us some lunch. While she was gone and I was holding Luke and listening to him breathe rapidly, I decided he needed to go to the doctor. His fever was still climbing despite a dose each of Motrin and Tylenol.

Friday afternoon – I took Luke to the doctor while Ella went home with Aunt Becca. He was running 101.8 fever in the office, tested negative for strep but had a blotchy throat. Doc thinks it’s hand, foot, and mouth disease and prescribed Tylenol with codeine to manage the pain while we wait for it to run its course and keep him hydrated, and oh, by the way, he can run fever like this for the whole 4 -5 days. I started shoring myself up for a long weekend of pain/fever management, toddler holding, and coercing him to drink.

Friday evening – Dave ran the errands to get the medicine (and shouldn’t have bothered since liquid narcotics are too nasty for a child to swallow) and brought me supper from Pop the Pop and Grandma’s house.

Friday night/Saturday (wee) morning - I slept with Luke because he started crying every time I moved from his side. Ella got up at 2:45 and got in bed with Dave. And I didn’t even know about that until mid-morning. That’s a miracle.

Saturday morning – Luke’s fever was gone and he was well enough to play in fits and spurts between needing to be held. Any tiny thing ruined the moment and made him inconsolable again. That went on all morning until he was just a melted down mess at nap time.

Saturday afternoon - I got Ella ready for the birthday party and she took Dave as her date while I held Luke for three hours while he napped. He woke up grouchy and stayed that way until supper when he finally decided he was hungry enough that he had to eat through the pain. After that, bath and bed.

Sunday morning – I woke up in Luke’s bed again, though I’d only been there half the night this time. He was ready to play but sill drooling buckets and crying, “mouth hurt.” Dave was already outside working on a project. I got Luke stabilized with Motrin and juice and went to the fridge to scrounge up breakfast. There were no eggs. No milk. No muffin mix. Nothing to make for breakfast. Why did I expect otherwise? I had not left the house in days. Luke and I went to the store for eggs. He ran barefoot through Lucky’s in a t-shirt and diaper, celebrating being out of the house, and I let him. At home, I cooked breakfast as fast as I could so Dave and Ella could eat before church. They left for church and I took my little petri dish to the grocery store, for real this time, and only because I had to.

Sunday afternoon – Papa and Grandmother came over for lunch. Luke slept another three hours and woke up happy. Ella was a complete grouch until I forced a nap on her. She woke up from nap still grouchy. I was at my wits end with being touched and needed and listening to crying/whining/grouchiness and it was oozing out of me. Dave left to go to Lowe’s for more things for his project and probably because we were unbearable. I put one kid in front of one TV and the other in front of the other TV and went to the shower – for the first time that day. At 4 in the afternoon. I sent my dad a text saying we would be there for supper because I had to get out of my house. After that, I put Ella in the shower, thinking it would improve her mood. It didn’t. She came out crying and complaining of a headache. I took her temperature and it was 102.2. I put her nightgown on her, gave her Motrin, and put her on the couch. Sent my dad another text, “Not coming. Ella’s running fever.” Changed into my pajamas and sat on the couch with Luke. He was grouchy again. I nursed Luke, patted Ella, and tried not to lose my mind.

Sunday evening – My dad brought us supper – happy Father’s day to him. I fed the kids and put them to bed, and then put myself to bed.

It was awful. The worst weekend we’ve had in a very long time. Thankfully, I'm learning to be flexible. And, thankfully, today is a new day. And, thankfully, Grandmother is willing to tag team with a feverish child so I could go to work today for a much needed break.

Babywearing Just Makes Life Easier

I've had conversations this week about babywearing with two different friends who have young babies. It took me back. I still wear Luke with some regularity, though that phase is coming to an end as fast as his babyhood. I wore him in the Spring during soccer games to keep him contained. I wear him at the grocery store if he's sleepy or anytime we are out if he falls asleep in the car. That's about all he will tolerate at this point because he is very busy. And he likes to "balk"  - that means "walk", if you don't speak Luke. He still likes the cuddliness of the Babyhawk, but he likes to "balk" more.

When they were tiny babies, I hated lugging the carseat everywhere. It takes up too much room and it was too heavy. When Ella was less than 6 weeks, I wore her in an Infantino sling. I wanted to love it, but I didn't. It didn't fit me right; then it got recalled because it didn't fit the babies right either. I stopped putting her in it at 6 weeks because she had to wear the Pavlik harness to correct her hip dysplasia. That's when I started working in earnest on learning to tie and put her into my homemade Moby-style wrap. I wore her everywhere in that thing until she was 6 months old. At that point, she was getting a little heavy for it and Dave gave me a Babyhawk mei tai for Christmas. I wore her everywhere in the Babyhawk until I was 5 months pregnant with Luke and it got uncomfortable to tie it around my belly (because we know how large I get when I'm gestating).

I didn't wear Luke in the Moby-style wrap as much because I learned how to put a newborn into the Babyhawk safely, and I just found that easier. However, I did resurrect the Moby-style wrap for his first beach trip. I bought 5 yards of chiffon off the clearance rack at the fabric store, tied it on, put him in it, and strolled into the ocean - baby contained safely on my body and able to play in the water. The chiffon was lightweight and dried super fast. It was perfect. I still keep my Babyhawk in the car so I always have it if there's a babywearing emergency (i.e. an energetic toddler in a crowd of people).

Here's my real-life list of reasons for wearing my kids.
1. Inconsolable crying - wearing and walking was often the only thing that made Ella stop crying.
2. To facilitate naps and bedtime. Sometimes I wore them just until they were asleep and sometimes I wore them for the entire nap.
3. While shopping.
4. Instead of holding - at events, church, parties, anywhere I would have been holding them or would have had them in the carseat or stroller.
5. On walks instead of pushing a stroller.
6. While cooking, cleaning, working.
7. To contain them in crowds or at the pool/beach.
8. To get through the witching hour - it's why I call it the Grouch Pouch.

I think that generally covers everything.

Since retiring the Infantino sling, I've stuck to alternative carriers (things you couldn't find at Target - though now they carry Moby!), because of the way the baby fits in them. I learned with Ella that it's much better for their hip development if the fabric of the carrier spreads their hips wide, as if they are sitting with their legs wrapped around your waist, rather than letting them dangle straight down, like some of the more mainstream carriers hold them. I also very much prefer a carrier that goes over both shoulders instead of a sling that just uses one shoulder. Double shoulder carriers are just more comfortable for me.  I love both my Moby-style wrap and my Babyhawk so much that they are of the few things I'll be keeping so I can wear my grandchildren one day.

My favorite resource for information and instructions for different types of carriers is The Babywearer. There's even a forum where you can swap or buy used carriers and ask questions. You can also find patterns for making your own carriers. It's a wealth of information.

For fun, I rounded up all the pictures I could find of my kids being worn. Sadly, I don't have one of Luke as a toddler in the pouch. I'll have to get one ASAP, before this phase is gone completely.

Luke, 6 months old, at Ladies' Night Out

Luke, 8ish months old, during the witching hour

Ella, 2.5 years, wearing her baby



Luke, 3ish months old, when he was fussy.

Ella, 4 months old, ready for a walk to the park.

Ella, probably 8 weeks old.

Ella, 6 months old, during Night In Bethlehem.

Ella, 14 months, in the museum at Ft. Morgan

Ella, 14 months, on top of Ft. Morgan

I made Aunt Becca a babywearing believer before she even knew there would be a Jake. This is her very first babywearing experience. She loved it. She wears Jake everywhere now.

Luke, 2 months, at Target.

It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Breaks a Nose

It's not broken, but we thought it might be for a few minutes.

We were all assembled in a circle for game time in Grandmother's living room last night - criss-cross applesauce, hands in our lap, mouths closed, eyes watching, ears listening. Shoes to the side. Ella was giving instructions.

Luke was wearing her purple Tinkerbell crocs and jumping like they were jet-powered moon shoes. Over and over again. Landing hard on his butt/back every time. Ella was slightly put out that he would not follow her instructions and sit quietly.

When it was time for our water party, we needed a slide. There was some discussion of using the little plastic slide as the water slide or - we could just use Mommy. Naturally, because I was on the floor, Luke started climbing me. Immediately the game changed.

No longer were we sitting quietly in our circle. The wanted to play Mommy Mule. (That's our version of riding a horse where I try to buck them off while they count loudly and laugh hysterically. It really should be called Mommy Bull Riding.) Because I was sitting criss-cross applesauce with my hands in my lap, I wasn't prepared for giving Mule rides, so I just flipped Luke over my shoulder instead.

The game was on.

Ella lined up for her turn, climbed on my back and I flipped her.

She's too tall for that game.

She landed on her nose.

It was dramatic. I felt horrible. She cried until she managed to choke up a little vomit. I held her and tried to convince her to breathe.

When she finally calmed down a little, Aunt Becca said, "Is it turning blue?" It was. We iced it and gave her a cold rag to wipe her face - and because cold rags make everything better. It wasn't crooked or bumpy, so I knew it wasn't broken.

It was a little swollen but no longer blue when I left her at Grandmother's house to spend the night. (A plan she had already put in place before I almost broke her nose). When I came back a few minutes later to drop off her pajamas, she was running back and forth accross the living room so that Papa could catch her and trap her in his arms so she could use her super strength to break free. The nose was forgotten.

This morning, it looked fine. I was certain she would have two black eyes, but they looked normal.

We play hard around here. Sometimes we get hurt. Then we count teeth, clean up the vomit, and play some more.

Reconciliation: When You Break the Rules

I posted the other day about our rules for fighting, and then I went home that night and broke rule number 1: Be respectful.

It was bedtime. I could hardly hold my eyes open. Dave had already retired to the couch and crashed, after giving up in the middle of a reading of The Berenstein Bears Go Out to Eat. Ella was still flopping all over the bed. I tried all my usual tricks of getting her to calm down and be still, but she was persistent. I even tried just going to sleep while she wiggled, but she has an annoying habit of waiting just long enough for me to doze off and then asking for water, needing to potty, covering my mouth and nose with her hand so that I snort awake dramatically. You get the idea.

I finally lost it and snapped at her. I can’t tell you my words; I just know the tone was U.G.L.Y. What was even uglier was her reaction. She hunkered down into her pillow with her blanket up to her ears and whimpered.

Now, while quiet, still, and calm was the end I was going for, neither of us liked the means to get there.

I laid there for a few minutes, enjoying the peace, and feeling like the speck on top of chicken poo. I could feel her feeling like that, too, and I knew I had to fix it.

I leaned over and whispered, “I’m sorry I talked to you in my rough voice. I love you.”

She said, “Mommy, next time, at bed time, can you just use your regular voice?”

And, so here I am again, in this place where I publicly wander through parenthood, trying not to screw up my children, with the reminder that even when you break the rules, you can still make it right.

Conflict doesn’t have to be THE END of a relationship; it’s a crossroads where decisions are made and growth happens. Sometimes it sucks deep and wide to admit your shortcomings and apologize for something you did or said (or didn’t do or say), but it’s the next step, the thing you have to do to move forward.

And, you know what else? Following those rules takes practice. Lots of it, especially with those who really know how to push all the right buttons and raise your blood pressure – you know, the people you love most. But they are the most important ones, see? Love for someone isn’t a free pass for behaving like a donkey’s behind and then pretending like it never happened. Just because that person will probably forgive you in their next breath, doesn’t mean you don’t owe them some follow through - an acknowledgement of your bad behavior and an apology.

So, despite the fact that – no, because she’s an adult-in-training, I apologized for my bad behavior. She needs to see me mess up, and she needs to see me make it right. How else will she learn?

Ahhhh...Balance.

Lately I've been feeling like if I have to brush one more little mouth full of teeth, I might lose it.

Like, if I have to say:

"Sit down in the tub."
"Take your vitamin."
"Go potty."
"No you can't have a snack, it's almost time for supper."
"Be still."
"Chairs are for sitting."
"What are you eating?"

...one more time, I might lose it.

Like if I hear one more screaming protest about "I want Diet Dr. Pepper!" I might just lock myself in my bathroom.

Then I started thinking and I realized it's been 6 weeks since I had a break. A real one, I mean. More than the 20 minutes I finally get to myself right before bed when I shower in peace. More than a hard won nap with my children. More than staying up way too late to finish a book (The Help - oh so good!). More, even, than my regular lunch hour that I often share with friends.

I mean a break where I get to do something I want to do while my children are having their needs met by someone else. A break where I come home and the things that need to be done are already done.

So when the opportunity arose to have dinner with a friend after work, I jumped at the chance. I set up the crock pot so supper would be ready. I laid out the Prevacid and a syringe for Luke's antibiotics, so the medicine would be ready. I prepared Ella for the fact that Daddy would be picking them up after work, feeding them supper, and putting them in the tub (Luke doesn't care).

And I went to dinner, where I spent 2 hours eating a meal that I didn't cook (or clean up or portion out into kid sizes) and having an uninterrupted adult conversation.

I feel like a new person.

After just 2 hours, out of the last one thousand and eight.

When I got home, I was greeted at the door by a sweet dog and a freshly bathed toddler. The kitchen was almost completely clean (Dave was finishing up when I came in), and Ella was playing in the tub. I still had to brush her teeth, but in my new frame of mind, it wasn't irritating at all.

At bedtime, Ella peppered me with questions about my "grown-up time":
"What did you eat? What did you drink? What did Ms. Kathy eat? What did she drink? What was your waitress's name? What did you talk about? What else did you talk about?" I felt like I was reporting after a first date.

This morning, Dave filled me in on the details of their evening, and it made me feel even better to hear how well it went.

And, now that my sanity is restored and my nerves are calmed, it's time to schedule a date with my husband. A real one. Without kids.

So, balance. It's really important.

The Poop Whine

It goes like this:


“Mo-oommmmyyyyy. I don’t feeeeeeeel gooooooood.” And “My tummy huuuurrrrrtssss.” Over and over again while following me around in such close proximity that, by all rights, she should just be in my body with me.

Then, we have the same conversation over and over again about if she needs to use the potty, interspersed with a few “attempts” to poop. Then she whines some more, and clings some more, until I finally go into the bathroom with her, bodily put her on the toilet, and stand there, and make her sit there, until she poops. Sometimes I have to coach her to breathe and relax. Sometimes I have to hold her hands so she can squeeze mine. Sometimes I have to talk her through pushing the poop out.

I feel like a midwife.

This is not because she’s constipated. It’s been a long time since we’ve dealt with constipation because I am anal about her fruit/vegetable/juice/probiotic intake. I honestly don’t know what triggers The Poop Whine because it doesn’t happen all the time. Most of the time, she just goes into the bathroom, poops, then yells for me to come help her wipe. But sometimes, sometimes she carries on about it for hours.

And it drives me freaking nuts.

Why? Why don’t they want to poop? Pee? Sleep? Eat? Why do little kids fight so hard against basic bodily functions that will make them feel better when they are done?

My intellectual self is whispering in the back of my mind that there are lots of fear/control issues at play in these situations, but the self that just received the phone call at work to tell me: “Mo-oommmmyyyyy. I don’t feeeeeeeel gooooooood. I want to go hooooome,” because she needed to poop, is just irritated.

The exhausted self that would give anything for a nap in the middle of the day, just doesn’t understand the refusal to be still for the 20 seconds it takes to fall asleep. The self that catches the sharp edge of her wake up attitude nearly every day because she has a full bladder, cannot comprehend the Big Dramatic Deal that peeing is first thing in the morning.

What is the big freaking deal?

(And now, I’m going to the lactation room to pump milk and lay my little head down on the table to sleep for 15 minutes, because I obviously need a nap.)

Beasties, of the Monkey Variety

I've decided I'm raising a pack of howler monkeys, given the amount of communal screeching that goes on in my life right now. My monkeys like nothing better than to screech back and forth at each other until my nerves are frayed and my hair is standing on end - but, at least when they are screeching together they aren't touching each other, like they did last night in what was quickly evolving into a full contact scramble in the bathtub.

Ella had Pooh, Piglet, and Tigger all lined  up nicely on the side of the tub, waiting on something, probably a good scrubbing. Luke swooped right in and grabbed all three of them while her back was turned. She turned back around with a startled look when they weren't where she left them. Luke, not fully understanding the rules of the game yet, was just gleefully waving them around in front of her, so she snatched them out of his hands and turned her back to him. Instead of letting out the customary howl, he proceeded to try to climb over the back of her to reach them. At that point, Dave and I intervened and removed him from the tub before one drowned the other. He protested the unfairness of it all, and was still trying to launch himself out of my arms and back into the tub until I got him out of the room. She might outweigh him by a solid 20 lbs, but she has no idea what's coming in her near future.

He is strong and mobile in a way that she never was as a baby. I feel like I've had a full body workout when I finally get him to bed at night. Saturday morning, he was playing in the bedroom by himself when I heard his distress cry. I found him stuck inside the toy box. He couldn't figure out how to get out again without falling on his head. Sunday morning, he was playing in The Big Room when I heard the "Come see what I did!" cry. He was sitting, correctly, and rocking in the little rocking chair. A few minutes later, he came crawling back into the living room, having gotten himself out of the chair without help. He tries to climb into the bathtub by himself, and we've had to remove the step stool from the bathroom because on more than one occasion we've found him leaning head first into the tub. He's not afraid of the dark - at least not when the toilet lid is open and he wants to play in the water.

We rearranged our living room last week (to keep him from sticking his head through the one banister space that is open), and now the furniture is spaced just far enough apart that he's walking all around instead of crawling. The walking started with a few steps here or there about three weeks ago, but just in the last week it's become his primary mode of transportation. It makes me so sad to see the crawling phase going away so quickly, but it's cute when he gets so excited about walking. He wants to run, tries to run, so it won't be long before I add sprinting to my parenting toolbox.

He finally cut is top two teeth, so now he has four. I think he'll have a few more coming in right behind these, since his gums are still swollen and his nose is still runny. He tries to sing the ABC song, but I can only make out A and E. I know he's singing the song because the first note is perfect and because he sings it as he's reaching for the Fridge Fonics to push the button to play the song.

He is 11 months old today.

Beasties, at Aunt Becca's baby shower over the weekend

No Kids Allowed!

There's an artcle floating around the web right now about a restaurant that has banned children under the age of 6.

As you can imagine, it's caused quite a stir - some are rabidly opposed, some are rabidly supportive.

I've read the article and given it some thought, and I've decided I fall on the side of support for the business owner who made this decision.

Why? Because I know that while I love my wonderful, amazing children, everyone else does not. And, being kids, they are often loud and rowdy - especially when you try to contain them in a loud, public place, and especially because the littlest one contributes to the dinner table conversation with ear piercing screeches.

We do take them out to eat with us - often - but knowing what we know about them, we eat at places that are set up to accomodate them. Places that have kids' menus, high chairs/boosters, minimal wait times (both for a table and for the food as Ella always asks as soon as we sit down, "Where's my food?"), and a generally loud atmosphere. We choose places that present themselves as family restaurants because we know that kids are going to act like kids - they will squirm and talk and squeal and make a mess. I would not dream of taking them anywhere fancy because it would be absolute torture for all of us.

Even when we are in a family restaurant, we remove them from the dining area if they become inconsolable or out-of-control. The general noisiness of such a restaurant might make me feel better about their noise, but it also has a tendency to overstimulate them to the point that they need a break. So we take one. I'm okay with my kid making happy noises, even if they are loud, happy noises, but angry/sad/hurting noise is quickly addressed and if they can't calm down at the table, we take them out. I also cannot tolerate them standing in their chairs or looking over the back of the booth behind us. And, we keep them contained at our table - even the uncontainable Luke gets held if he climbs out of his chair (and he always does, chanting "alldonealldonealldone").

For the most part, they are well behaved when we eat in public, but we have had two negative experiences recently that really influenced my opinion on this "no kids allowed" rule.

The first happened about a month ago when we met Aunt Becca and Uncle Nate at Buffalo Wild Wings for supper one night. The kids were happy and sitting in their chairs, but this was the night that Luke really debuted his new screech. He was squealing and screeching like a mad man - but happy. As it is always very loud in BWW, I wasn't concerned about the screeching because it really didn't register above the general noise level in the dining room. I was trying to quiet and distract him, but he still occasionally let out a screech. Unfortunately, the lady at the table beside us was apparently bothered by it - just judging from the number of times she turned around and gave me a dirty look. I decided that I didn't give a rat's tiny behind what she thought about it because she made the decision to come to a very loud sports bar/family restaurant for dinner, a place where the 115 televisions on the walls were much louder than my happy child. I was prepared to tell her so if she complained, but luckily for her, she did not. For patrons like her, I'll gladly support a restaurant owner who posts a no kids allowed policy. Maybe if she knows she won't have to chance dining with little beasties, I won't have to deal with her insufferable, snooty attitude.

The second negative experience happened last week, but I heard the story second-hand from Grandmother. She took the kids to different family restaurant after gymnastics and shopping last Tuesday. It was 11:30, and they were one of the first groups in the place for lunch that day. Luke woke up prematurely from his nap while they were all in the bathroom so Ella could potty, and he was fussy. Just fussy, not exceedingly loud or inconsolable. Grandmother was tending to him, but she said at the first sound he made there was a member of the wait staff standing at the table asking what they could do to help. That would have been fine, except that a parade of wait staff then continued to the table - even bringing a high chair she did not ask for - to the point that they were attracting more attention to them than the fussing baby. It culminated in one of them asking her if they could bring her a to-go box - when she'd barely gotten Ella's plate set up for her and had only taken 2 bites of her own meal. They brought her the check less than thirty minutes after they sat down at the table. She was embarrassed; I was angry. For situations like this one, I'll gladly support a restaurant owner stating directly that children aren't allowed. I'd much rather know it before I take them in a place than be humiliated by the wait staff once I'm there. (I did log a complaint on this company's website, and the manager called the next day to apologize for the incident, stating that children are always welcome there and they obviously need to do some training with their wait staff.)

So, I'm okay with a restaurant telling me right up front that my children are not welcome there. I'm okay with not taking them to a fancy/quiet/expensive restaurant.  I'm perfectly okay with eating in one of those restaurants in peace without my children (and without going to the potty five times, trying to eat my food while hanging onto a baby monkey, picking up the sippy cup 22 times, cutting up tiny bites of food, asking for three more cups of ranch, and pre-cleaning our area so that it's cleanable when we leave). I'm really okay with that.

I do hope that this does not become a trend for all restaurants because I don't know how else kids will learn to dine in public if they can't actually dine in public.

A Letter to Fisher-Price

Dear Fisher-Price,
I greatly appreciate your Biblical Little People playsets; they provide a wonderful way for my children to play through what they are learning about in the Bible. My daughter loves her Little People Nativity set, and I love that she can play with it all over the house without worrying about breakage or choking. Even the Baby Jesus deserves a ride on the Christmas carousel occasionally, right? It always makes us sad when we pack them up and store them under the house until next Christmas, but we can relax knowing that Mary will take good care of the Baby Jesus during the long hot summer, stuffed in a cardboard box.

Last week, on our family vacation, we acquired the Little People Noah’s Ark set. We love it, too. The animals come in pairs, even the ladybugs painted on the zebras’ behinds and the birds roosting on the elephants’ heads. The ark is large enough to hold all of the animals and Noah inside, or a few of them can snap onto the deck so that they don’t fall off and drown in the First Flood. However, there is one flaw in your design. It was brought to my attention by my (almost) three-year-old daughter in the following conversation.

Ella: Mo-o-om, Noah needs a wife.
Me: (thinking she was on another cleaning spree) A wipe? Okay, I’ll get you a baby wipe in just a minute. Will a wet paper towel work?
Ella: No. A wife.
Me: A what?
Ella: Noah needs a wife.
Me: Oh. A wife! Hmm. Well, there wasn’t a wife in the box.
Ella: Why?
Me: I don’t know.
Ella: He needs a wife.

And so it went as I tried to find something to fill the wife’s place in the ark, but alas, I had not packed even one Polly Pocket or miniature princess in our four bags of toys that we brought on vacation with us. I even offered up the new Weeble to stand in as the wife, but that was unacceptable.

Then she brought to my attention the real flaw in the ark. There was a picture stuck inside it – of Noah and his wife. Now, I’m willing to overlook the technological inaccuracy of the suggestion that a photograph of Noah and his wife actually existed and hung inside the ark at the time that the Lord told Noah there was going to be a floody-floody, but did you really have to include a picture of the wife you failed to include in the playset? I can’t even substitute another toy for her because we don’t have a princess with gray, curly hair and head band.

So, Fisher-Price Toy-making People, I appeal to you: Please, please create a wife for Noah. If you’ll do that, I promise to donate my set to the local church nursery and buy a new one, wife included. Better yet, could you just mold one extra while you are re-engineering the set and send her to me? I don’t think I can continue to have the “where is Noah’s wife?” conversation for the next five years.

Sincerely,

Amanda

Kumbaya? I doubt it.

Frequently, in my morning rush to get out the door, I reach a point where my nerves and my hands become too full to hold anything else, so I strap the kids into the car and run back inside to grab the last few things and lock the door. Luke has a squeaky monkey that stays in his carseat to ease his transistion from freedom to tied-down-dom. He plays with it every day, squeaking it from our house to Grandmother's and back again in the evenings. I strap him in, hand him the monkey, then strap Ella into her seat. This morning, she was walking to the car at the pace of an arthritic, 115 year old, so I left her door open and told her to just climb in there and I'd be right back to do her buckles.

I raced around the house, locking up the dog, grabbing The Magic Blanket, turning out the lights, locking the door, etc. and when I returned to the car three minutes later I noticed the squeaky monkey was not in Luke's hand. He appeared to be patting all around his seat, trying to find it, so I did the same - and came up empty. The following conversation ensued as I strapped Ella into her seat.

Me: Did you take it from him?
Ella: No.
Me: (noticing it was stuck in the cup holder in her door, well out of his reach, grabbed it and gave it back to him)
Ella: He just gave it to me.
Me: Oh, did he?
Ella: We were sharing.
Me: Well, I'm glad he was sharing nicely.
Ella: (really getting into the mood of it) Yeah, we shared and singed songs....
Me: What songs did you sing?
Ella: (thinking hard and fast) All the songs.

Right. Luke does frequently share his car toys with her, handing them into her space for her to hold the reaching for her to give them back to him. He certainly may have given her the monkey, but I seriously doubt they went all scouts and campfires in the backseat first thing in the morning. It's just not her style.

Suppertime is Rife with Material

As a general rule, we eat supper at the table together every night (that we are home). While I sometimes miss the days of vegging with a plate of food on the couch in front of the TV, supper at the table, as a family, without the TV is important to me. It hasn’t let me down. Every one of us seems to be full of things to share with each other at the end of the day. It’s enlightening and entertaining, and I can only imagine it will get better with time.

Last night, Luke was fuss-potting all over the place, letting me know he was too tired and too hurting to be content with supper for more than a few minutes (he still managed to shovel in a whole chicken finger). As Dave tried to stuff an ice sock in his mouth to help with the teething pain (and, er, shut him up), I had to explain to him that Luke no longer tolerates help with things he thinks he can do himself so he needed to offer the sock into his hands, not his mouth. He won’t let me feed him anything with a spoon or my fingers anymore. This started Sunday morning, with oatmeal. (See exhibit A, below.) So, I was explaining about Luke’s new quest for independence and how he’s learning how to do all kinds of things by himself, and Ella was sitting in her chair at the table, contemplating. Then she asked a question that gave me a glimpse into the workings of her mind.

“Can he nurse himself?”

Hmm. Thoughts were bouncing all around my own head like a little super ball as I formulated a response. I stifled my laughter at the mental image of him nursing himself, and told her no, but he can latch himself on.

Exhibit A - Fiercely Independent

Later, as she ate a plate of seven layer salad and potatoes left over from Memorial Day, she asked, “Mama, is this like church salad?” I said, “Yes, it is like church salad.” Then she asked – guess what she asked? “Why?” Thrilled at being asked a “why” question that had a new answer, as opposed to the standard “because that’s what her mommy named her” or “because that’s how God made it/her/him”, I said, “You want to know why? Because, I know the answer to this one.” She grinned and nodded, so I whispered, dramatically, “Because I make the church salad that we eat at church.”

Supper leads immediately to bath time, during which she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed her little body last night. (I put out a new bottle of baby wash.) As I was prodding her to finish up so we would have time to read books, she stuck her foot up in the air, five pretty little piggies wiggling at me, and said, “Mama. Smell my feet.” And so I did.

And, because I cleared of f the camera, here are a few more pictures.
 
Dying Eggs, before he tried to climb out of the Bumbo (which is not supposed to be used on elevated surfaces)

Swimming in the front yard

 Napping on the front porch

Bedtime is exhausting



She's giving out her phone number.

My sweet, beautiful, almost-3-year-old daughter is already giving out her phone number. And, to older men.

True, it's not a real phone. And true, it's not a real number, but still.

She and Luke went to the vet's office this morning because Lucy, the Golden Retriever, won't quit scratching her hair all over the house. While they were there, EGR told Dr. Parker all about her "new" cell phone that she got for Christmas. (Short aside: The fact that she even talks to a man, whom she sees only every few months, is enough to make me raise my eyebrows. But, Dr. Parker is a cutie, and he's very good with the kiddos.) She put her phone away in Grandmother's purse, and then Dr. Parker asked her if he could have her number. She went digging in Grandmother's purse, saying she had to find her number. Later, as they were leaving, Dr. Parker told Grandmother to give him a call in reference to something with Lucy, and Ella responded with, "Okay, I will."

Fast forward a few hours to my midday chat with Ella over the phone. She was asking me the normal barrage of questions, and in a brief pause I said, "I heard you gave Dr. Parker your cell phone number." Silence. She never said another word to me. Grandmother said she hid her face. I think she might have a crush on the good doctor. (So do I, but don't tell my husband.)

A New Stack of Books

The Amazon Fairy (deliverer of Amazon.com orders, not an oversized fairy) left a new stack of books on my front porch this week, and I’m itchin’ to tear into them. BUT, I’m already in the middle of two books so I really need to finish one of them first.

I’m nearing the end of Playful Parenting, by Lawrence J. Cohen, which discusses how children learn and process their world through play. After watching Ella, and now Luke, play through their worlds since birth, this isn’t news to me, but it is very insightful and it offers a lot of good ideas for using play to connect with children and overcome troubling behaviors, power struggles, etc. It also explains a lot of psychology behind how children think and why they behave in certain ways. I read one of the most enlightening passages just this morning. It made me say, “Yes! This!” (And, then I marked it in pen with an exclamation point and folded the page a la 12th grade English class.)

“Oddly, even though children demand so much attention from us, they often tune us out when we finally put everything else aside and get on the floor to play with them. This can be confusing and even annoying, but it actually makes perfect sense. They are feeling locked away in the tower of isolation. And they are a bit mad at us for that. When we give them our full attention, they show us what’s going on in their hearts. They don’t say it in words, they say it in play, by pretending we don’t exist or don’t matter. When we were busy, they felt as if they didn’t matter to us. So don’t give up or walk away; be persistent. Our job is to take the initiative and push (gently) for a connection.”

This particular passage is in the context of taking the lead in play with children, and it was an epiphany for me because it’s one of the most frustrating things about my daughter during times when we are clashing – or disconnected, as the case may be. “Tower of isolation” is a term he uses throughout the book to describe the emotional place a child gets into when he is disconnected from parents/caregivers. It’s an easy read, and I’d like to finish it before I switch topics all together with my new stack. I also have one other parenting book that I haven’t started (Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, by Naomi Aldort), but I’m putting it on hold for the present.

The new stack is the beginning of a library of resources that includes the following titles.

The Doula Book: How a Trained Labor Companion Can Help You Have A Shorter, Easier, And Healthier Birth, by Marshall H. Klaus, et al

The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers: The Most Comprehensive Problem-Solving Guide to Breastfeeding from the Foremost Expert in North America, by Jack Newman M.D. and Teresa Pitman

Gentle Birth Choices, by Barbara Harper and Suzanne Arms

Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn (4th Edition): The Complete Guide, by Penny Simkin, et al

I’ll start with The Doula Book, reading with pen in hand, and decide where to go from there. My sister and brother-in-law, Nathan, are giving me the honor of attending the birth of my nephew as a support person, so I’m doing what I always do – reading everything I can get my hands on about the topic.

I didn’t hire a doula for either of my deliveries but as I read more about the role of a doula, I realize that I was surrounded with them. Both of my mothers and my sister were around me in the days and weeks following my children’s births, helping me and Dave with whatever things needed doing. Even my sister-in-law, Jessica, unexpectedly stepped into the role when she ended up alone with me in my hospital room the night Luke was born. And thank God for her, because I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been completely alone in the room, holding my baby skin-to-skin, unable to bend at the middle, when that first horrible wave of nausea hit me. Her presence alone helped me breathe through it so as not to vomit on my newborn or rip out my fresh stitching, but she was standing ready with a cold rag and a bowl for me to puke in – not blinking an eye. Bless her. I love that woman.

I’m so excited to step into the same role for my sister. In addition to plain old help with whatever needs doing, I want to be educated enough to help her and Nathan make decisions regarding their care during the birth and weeks following. I also want to be able to help her troubleshoot any issues that might come up in her nursing relationship with Jake because I know that is really important to her.

I am passionate about birth and breastfeeding, mothers and babies, and I’m so excited about the opportunity to put my passion and my knowledge to work.