A little death

As I wrote before, things around here are changing quite a bit. And what better way to ring in a new era than with a little death? Ends and beginnings and ends again, you know?

Oh don't be upset. It was a pet death. We haven't had one around here for quite some time. Not since our hamster Oreo Lazarus Strong broke free in our backyard and ran to a better life.

 I was fumbling around the kitchen Saturday morning, in a clumsy pre-coffee way, when I heard Chris yell from the basement.

PUMKIN'S DEAD!!!!

Only it was Mama Mia.

Poor Mama Mia. She laid down to sleep in her cage of filth and died in the night. As I was preparing myself for Bela and Mae's storm of sadness, I started to feel really uneasy myself.

 I have been semi-silently waiting for the mammals in our house to die. It's a cold and callous thing to say, but I have been. I'm tired of cleaning up all the poop. The pee. The cage. Taking care of so many aging animals.

But when she died I felt truly sad and sorry for her. Such a lonely death, it seemed. And the girls were sad too. But you know? Only for a minute.

Bela did the whole "Can we go get another guinea pig today?" routine. I said no way.

And the tears subsided slowly, we got on with our day - circus class, soccer game, sleep over. And it struck me: not only were they okay, they were kind of sort of cold and callous themselves.

There was a funeral. Mae wrote a note (a very sweet one that ended with "we loved you very much and that's why we chose to put you to sleep"), Bela did a google search for "Funeral Song" and came up with some weird pop song about breaking up. And sang it.

The girls and their friend painted a tomb stone, dressed for the occasion, held a ceremony. And that was it.

I watched them all day for signs of true sadness, and I couldn't find it. Had so many pet deaths made them immune to this? Was there something wrong with them? Why did Mae keep trying to dig Mama Mia up ? (She wanted to see her bones).

I was working in the front garden and found a big fat worm. Mae grabbed it, looked at it with her face all screwed up, and said in an evil little girl sort of way: "you're gonna die today!!!"

And proceeded to toss it to the chickens.

You missed the weird little funeral. But you can re-live part of it here.

Day 1

Do you know that feeling you get when you realize you made major decisions in your life without intending them to be major decisions?  Is that how most major decisions work? Do they sneak up on you? Do you make a decision, say, because you're a new mom, because you're a mom-to-be, because you just need to make a little extra money and provide your family with benefits like insurance... And then 10 years later you wake up and realize that, oops. That was one of those major life decisions. The kind that shape you for decades. And you made a huge, impactful, life-altering decision by choosing not to make a conscious decision?

Have I been watching too much Neil DeGrasse Tyson?

No matter. Today is day 1. MY day 1. New job. New me. And you know what? I made this one on my own. Not as a Mom, or someone who needed to insure her family, or as someone riddled with responsibility guilt. I just made it. 

So this is me on Day 1. And I'm a little scared, but feeling adventurous. And happy. 

Easter bunnies

We spent a very beautiful two days with family last weekend, full of sun and laughs and baby bunnies and ham. And eggs. More eggs for Gill.

My mother-in-law came down with a stomach flu, and was out of commission ever so briefly from mid Saturday until mid-Sunday, but being the trooper that she is, she was up and about, cooking and laughing on Easter Sunday.

The girls ate repulsive amounts of chocolate, cleaned out Grandma's pool in the hopes of getting a swim in (gross!), and played in the drainage ditch per tradition. (double gross).

We got home late, got our filthy, exhausted children off to bed, watched a bit of Game of Thrones, and called it a night.

Until 3 am. Bela came stumbling down the stairs and I immediately smelled trouble. She muttered some incomprehensible words and then started to throw up the remains of many small and 'krispy' chocolate Easter bunnies.

I've written about Bela and throwing up many times before. And each time I've found it necessary to let you know that she has terrible foresight and worse aim when it comes to vomiting. And last night was no exception to that rule. Most of her body made it into the bathroom, and from the pattern on the floor and wall and cabinets and garbage can and wall convector and bathroom towels it seemed like she was facing in the general direction of the toilet. But the inside of the toilet had but a drop, crusted to the side of the bowl.

I didn't get out of bed. Chris went to her immediately and I felt that three might just be a crowd. He rubbed her back and wiped her tears and got her back upstairs with a pot under her arm, and I thought he was doing a bang up job all on his own.  Really super. I rolled over and pulled the covers over my shoulder.

Now, he's not the kind of guy to say "Can you help me in here?" He is, though,  the kind of guy to make a lot of noise as he gags and sputters his way through the cleanup.

I didn't get out of bed.  I was busy doing some mental math. Some co-parenting weighing of options. Stay in bed and play the "overcome by exhaustion" card and risk being an asshole? Get out of bed and clean up what was sure to be a nasty little mess? And exactly how long can I remain motionless, not helping, before I cross some line? What would I, Katie, say to me if I didn't get up and help?

And then I knew I had to, I had to help, because if he were lying in bed I'd be throwing dirty vomit towels in his face while I listed off every reason it was extremely unfair that I was managing the situation on my own.

Oh but it was a nasty little mess. We tied pleasant smelling t-shirts around our faces and stuffed bits into our mouths and nostrils while we mopped up the chocolate sludge off of every surface in our bathroom. and giggled and gagged like little kids. We used an entire roll of paper towels; filled an entire paper grocery bag.

I'll never eat another Easter chocolate for as long as I live.

And tonight, the girls are tucked into their beds - large, wide-mouthed metal bowls by their sides, surrounded by kitchen towels - slowly digesting (or not?) the Costa Rican take out meal I thought was such a great idea to order tonight.

And my stomach is burning as I sit here and write this.

The good stuff

Toddlers are pretty great. Aside from the sometimes violent temper tantrums and the fact that poopy diapers from a 2 year old are far nastier, in my opinion, than the poopy business of a 2 month old, pretty much everything about them makes you smile. Makes you enjoy mundane moments all the more. Adds humor to your life when sometimes it feels as though it's lacking.

Gill does this for me. She does it for all of us.

I heard her call out for me this morning as I was stepping out of the shower. And when I went to her, she said:

"Hi mommy. I wake up in the morning. Oh! Are those your boobies?"

She insisted on packing a well-loved-but-starting-to-smell hard boiled Easter egg in her "packback" to take to play group this morning, along with 6 pull ups with monsters on them., and a tube of cheap chapstick.

And in the middle of my students' oral exams today, I remembered that Gillian had been rummaging through the bathroom cabinets while I dried my hair. I had intended to relay an important message to the play group teacher when I dropped my babe off, but in my haste had forgotten. I had to send her the following text:

Oops! My goodness! I meant to tell you that Gillian *insisted* on wearing that maxi pad inside her diaper. It's there for no other reason. I promise. 

Oh man, sometimes this all just feels so good.

Grocery store

The very worst part about working out a lot is what happens when you stop working out a lot. 

After every marathon, every mega event I've "trained" for, gotten really fit for, I like to sit on my butt for a good one to two months after, doing just about nothing. Because I earned it. 

And then I look in the mirror and I think, hey. Not fair. I worked hard! I don't get a free ride for, like, 60 days?

Of course, I've turned this on its head and come up with this rationale for my "in-between-events-laziness". If I worked out hard all the time, and then I felt out of shape... Well, I'd have to find ways to work out even harder just to maintain that level of fitness. 

And I'm not embarrassed to say that I'm not the kind of person who works out hard, just to work out harder. So sitting on my butt for 2 months is my way of getting out of shape just enough so that any level of activity still does its magic. 

But it's not exactly the same with nursing.

See, what I knew deep down but was refusing to acknowledge on a daily, conscious level, was that I was having my cake and eating it too. Twice a day.  And the only reason I wasn't gaining gobs of weight was because I was nursing Gillian.

Except that I'm not nursing that much anymore. And I never will again (!). And with freedom comes pounds. And fast. Sheesh.

But you thought this was going to be a long entry about post-nursing weight gain and body image. Don't worry. I'm not going to talk about my few extra pounds. I'm going to talk about the grocery store.

Because as soon as I decided that I needed to lose a couple pounds and drag my butt off the sofa, I took it straight to the grocery store. It's the first place I always go when I decide that I've been eating too much. I ask myself, what can I eat that will make me feel thinner?

This is a post about taking trips to grocery stores with hilarious 2 year olds.

Mine is called Gill. After a couple of days of icky sickness, we ventured out of the house to buy some asparagus and dandelion greens, avocados and yogurt. She had an immediate breakdown in the floral department, spurred on by a particularly fetching pink balloon. 

Crying fit number 1 over, she finally sat in the cart clutching her new bawoon and we headed for the produce department. Many shoppers, drawn to her cute, tear-stained cheeks and chubby little face, greeted her as we ambled along, but she refused to speak.

"Gillian, you should say hi to people when they say hello to you," I lectured.

Lesson learned, as we cruised aisle after aisle, any "hello!" by a stranger brought on a "Hi People" by Gill.

By the time we hit the canned tomato aisle she was clearly bored and not interested in staying in her seat. She swung her legs over the side and tried to get comfortable. "I'm sweeping, mama. I'm sweeping." 

I turned the corner and headed for the granola and she farted.

"I farted! I farted! I farted! I farted!"

I tried to acknowledge it and move past it, but she wouldn't stop chanting her secret. An innocent store clerk, unloading boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios, mused aloud "I wonder what she's trying to say?"

We had a melt down in front of the salami; the bawoon broke over her head when it touched the cold case holding the hummus, and everyone in the elevator was serenaded to the tune of 'Let It Go' from the movie Frozen.

And in the car ride on the way home, I treated us to a cookie. But just one :)

Diet schmiet. We deserved it.

Alone together

An unexpected plot twist found Mae and me traveling alone together over the weekend.

As we zipped in and out of Whole Foods for dinner for the car, as we sped quietly along the highway listening to non-pop-music, as we snuggled closely in the guest bed usually reserved for children only, I realized that we'd never done this before. 

My family and I remarked on this repeatedly over the course of the weekend: Mae and I had never taken a trip alone together. 

It was lovely. It was harmonious. It was restful and peaceful and fuzzy and I felt like a good person. Like a decent mother. Like all the doubts I have about myself were based on nonsense.

We checked activities off our list. We enjoyed most of them. We had our favorite breakfast at our favorite spot; we went shopping for clothes; we went swimming, went out for tacos, saw some college gymnastics. We caught a movie, we rode our bikes. We napped. I napped. There was knitting. There was even wine, even adult company and conversations. And pie. Two kinds. 

My middle child is on middle ground - that peaceful lull, the eye of the storm? Between toddlerhood and pre-teen emotion. Middle Mae.

Tonight we found ourselves alone together again. With Gilli passed out on the couch after work and Bela on a trip to the DePaul Women's Basketball game, Mae and I read two chapters in Harry Potter. We ate fish sticks for dinner. We snuck ice cream. Gill woke up and we all took a strangely pleasant walk in the dark to the girls' school, to wait for Bela's bus to return from the game.

We stomped in mud. We splashed in puddles. SOME of us kicked off our boots and rode the teeter totter in the snow.

And the bus came, and from the bus descended Bela and her cloud of tweenage drama and all slowness disappeared in a puff of dramatic smoke. Things got loud and fast. There was crying and yelling and talk of skipping school due to embarrassing posters and presentations gone wrong and no one, just no one liking her. 

And I became mean mom. Tired mom. Doesn't know how to handle 9 year old drama mom. Needs a good self-help book mom.

Oh dear, sweet, dramatic Bela. I love you so. Maybe we could use some time alone together.

Signs of spring

The girls have been pestering me about Spring for days on end now, as though I had it in me to magically turn the seasons - or at the very least, to know the specific day this incredibly long winter would change its course.

Mae has been especially persistent.

How many more days? This, she asks every morning.

My response is aggravating: Same as yesterday. Minus one.

But MOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!

Same as yesterday. Minus one.

And yet there have been signs. Robins. Yes! Robins! And we're above 20 degrees. And the sun, it's different, has more power to it. More glowy warmth, more gold in my living room after 5:00pm.

 And who can forget the Spanish Compositions?

Every Spring semester, just when I think I can't take one more day of cold and gray and drear, my students turn in their first drafts of their first compositions.

In the moments of my life when the professional burdens pile high, you will be sure to find me head first in my wool cabinet, going through my yarn. And so this too, this retreat into my wool stash, it serves as a harbinger of Spring around these parts.

How many discarded projects I came across I don't care to admit. The dollar amount in yarn alone is embarrassing, not to mention the hours spent knitting something that was never worn. Never even finished.

I brazenly scooped up all the half-finished lace scarves, the single socks and the worsted weight sweaters missing sleeves and yokes, along with the impossibly tangly and knotty bundles of unusable yarn, and I marched them into my sewing room.

And instead of grading, instead of tallying, instead of planning, I did this.

A mess of mercerized cotton.

Cotton, wool, silk. Impossible.

Winding, winding, winding.

Making progress! 

Over the course of the last week, I have spent several hours just sitting in there, untangling yarn, unwinding sweaters, winding them back into usable yarn, for a second life.

And I have been happy. So, so happy.

The sun illuminates our living room in the most beautiful of ways these days, for 13 minutes each late afternoon.

Gill shadow head

Here it comes.