Sweet Dreams. You’re a Good Boy

Monster is starting to talk so much more these days.  It’s amazing to watch him imitate and mimic and communicate.  Last night, as we sat snuggled together on the couch for pizza and a movie night, I gave him a kiss and said, “I love you buddy.”  He responded with a sweet, soft, “I love you Mommy.”  Oh my heart.  He hasn’t said those words strung together like that ever. 

Out of the blue the other day he took my husband’s hand, shook it and said, “Hi, how are you?”  I’m fairly certain he got that from my dad, as Granda shakes his little hand and says “hi, how are you” whenever he comes over.  It amazes me that, days after Granda’s last visit, Monster remembers this detail and tries it out on someone else.

Recently all has been made right in the world by another act of mimicking.  Despite my initialsadness about our silent bedtime routine, I discovered that if I put my mouth right up to Monster’s ear and speak loudly he can hear without his aids.  Thus began our new goodnights.  Now Monster cozies up in his big boy bed and I lean over him with my mouth to his ear and say, “I love you.  Sweet dreams.  You’re a good boy.  I love you.”  Somewhere along the way he has taken to repeating back each phrase.  “Wuv you.  Weet Weams.  Good Boy.  Wuv you.”  It is all enormously comforting to know that he hears me.  That the last words he hears before slumber takes are words that speak to his worth and general loved-ness.

At speech therapy the other day he was playing with a baby.  At one point he rolled the baby onto it’s tummy (his preferred sleep position), patted it’s back and said, “good boy.”  And I know he gets it.  He remembers these acts of love throughout the day.  They carry him beyond the moments before slumber.  They carry him through his work and play and fears and joys.  They teach him how to love others.  They teach him how to love himself. 

He gets it.  

New Look

Inspired (shamed?) by Saturday's post about leaving the house looking like a homeless woman, I set out to change my story.  Truth is the 5 extra pounds I can't get rid of, and the balding/too long hairstyle I've been sporting are taking their toll on my heart and confidence.  Taking a page from the "if you look good, you feel good" playbook I made a hair appointment for yesterday.  Then I went super bold and asked for heavy bangs. Motivated by this and a need to change my part and cover up the bald spots, I told Antoinette to have fun and go for it.  While your at it, chop off 6 inches.  Ugg.  Why do I exist in extremes?

Anyway here's the bangs

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about them.  I'm hoping they just feel a quarter of an inch two short and in two weeks I will love them.  But maybe I'm just not a bangs person.

Luckily my hair has Harry Potter magic growing abilities and in two weeks it will end up looking like it aways does.

Which is to say, the hairstyle of a tired, homeless mom... :)

On Leaving the House Looking Like a Homeless Woman

I distinctly remember the drive home from a babysitting gig at age fourteen when I noticed that the Mrs. Brown* hadn’t shaved above her knee.  Below the knee it was clearly shaven, but her thighs revealed fine blond hairs, shockingly long in my early teenage opinion. 

I remember being baffled and somewhat judgmental.  Why wouldn’t she shave the whole leg?  It takes an extra ninety seconds.  Could she really not have ninety seconds to spare?  And how is she ok with hairy thighs in the summer?  She’s wearing shorts.  People can see.

Fifteen years and two kids later…I totally get it.  To be fair, I probably stopped regularly shaving above the knee before I had kids, but now- let’s just say I only remember to shave the upper part of my legs when it starts looking like I have man thighs.  At fourteen the novelty of shaving my legs had not yet worn off and the embarrassment factor surrounding exposed hairy legs was high. 

Nowadays I sometimes marvel at what I look like when I leave the house.

It starts in college I think.  8am classes give way to the roll out of bed sweat suit look that I was incredibly fond of.  (And really, the multiple “sweat” items I owned emblazed with my sorority’s letters made it so, so easy to do.)  Post-college affords you a few years of career life where it is fun and exciting to get dressed for the work world (followed by some years where it’s not and you push the limits on “work appropriate sloppiness”).  And then, for me anyway, pregnancy and motherhood hits and it all goes to hell.  For the last three years I have been pregnant, post-partum, pregnant and post-partum again.  After Monster’s pregnancy I enjoyed about 5 months at my pre-preggo weight before starting all over again.  Five months after Toots’ entry into the world…I’m still working on it.  Add to that the whole breastfeeding factor wherein I must always wear something that allows for easy access to the boobs.  This means friends that for three years the only things I can count on fitting in are elastic waistband pants and nursing tanks.  Enter my best friend, the yoga pant.

Then there’s the whole showering/hair/make-up issue.  The discovery of dry shampoo has greatly improved my overall look, but still- it’s pretty dismal.  On most mornings the only make-up I wear is the mascara I put on the last time I wanted to look a little presentable (mascara that could be anywhere from 12 hours-2 days old).  My hair is in that awesome postpartum falling out phase, so it’s nice and thin and straggly and I’m in dire need of a bang trim.

So yeah.  You could say I’m looking pretty good.

The hard part is that I think I look ok.  I’m sporting a casual, low-key cute mom look.  I’m just a hip mom out running errands.  In my head I look like the girls who work at lululemon.  But then I catch myself in the mirror on these days and think, “how did I leave the house like this?  Was I so busy that I couldn’t have done something to improve this look?  What do other people see when they see me?”

How do others do it?  I don’t want to buy new clothes for a size that I don’t want to keep, don’t have time to get all done up most mornings, don’t have the kind of job that requires me to gussy up.  Someone please reassure me that this is just a phase that will pass once I’m done birthing and nursing babies.  Please tell me I won’t be sporting homeless chic at my son’s graduation.

*names changed to protect the hairy

Toots

She arrived in her own laid back fashion- two weeks late.  (Make no mistake, it was laid back for her.  Meanwhile her mama was a hot, stressed out mess.)  But as soon as the midwife laid her on my chest I uttered the words I imagined myself saying during those last long weeks, "you were worth the wait."

Because I like surprises I waited all 42 weeks to find out her gender and, while I gave the proper line about just wanting a happy, healthy baby, deep down I hoped for my girl.  Specifically a blue-eyed girl with a head full of dark hair.

She was exactly what I couldn't dare to dream for.  It felt like too much to ask for.  I couldn't possibly be that lucky.  

But God had blessings beyond blessings in store with her.  She came out of the womb eating, sleeping, and playing like a champ.  All that I had learned during the dark days of her brother's first months about getting babies to sleep, eat, and allow themselves to be put down was completely unnecessary. Because she knew intuitively how to be the world's easiest baby.

She is also the world's happiest baby.  She smiles all. the. time.  Laughs full belly laughs at the slightest hint of funny and cries close to never.  She is sunshine.  

 And the nickname, Toots?  Well, like her brother she earned that too.  It started with the 5 am wake up call.  She would grunt and struggle every morning at 5 am ending in the biggest, loudest toot.  Every day.  The morning toots no longer occur daily, but she still passes gas more loudly than anyone else in our family.  She'll love this story when she's 16.

Monster

This is my monster.

He earned this endearing nickname during the very tumultuous newborn months where he basically hated sleeping, eating, playing and being put down.

They were much more tumultuous than this picture indicates.

We had some shining moments during that first year.

like this one

Once he reached his first birthday he had all but shed those monster-ish characteristics (on most days) but the nickname stuck.

play on playa

Somewhere along the way he turned into this sweet, beautiful, tender-hearted little boy.  He has an intuition about people and seems to know when someone needs some extra love.  And then he gives it freely.

He still has a little monster in him, with a devilish grin and a twinkle in his eye when he's being naughty.  When he was younger he used to giggle right before he was about to get into something off limits.  It came in handy as I could always tell when he was causing trouble.  The boy loves to be out and about and gets his shoes on the second he finishes breakfast, ready for a new adventure.

He is his daddy's boy.  So similar to him in both looks and personality that sometimes I question if he carries any of my genes at all.  

Shortly after the monster's first birthday we discovered that he had a severe hearing loss for which he now wears hearing aids.  It explained a lot about the difficulties of his first year of life.  Since then my little monster has fought and worked and thrived.  The things I worried about and lost sleep over when he was diagnosed have proved to be minor hurdles.  There are still things to worry about: being the kid with hearing aids on his first day of kindergarten, the first pool party he will have to navigate without the use of his aids, wondering if his first dose of rejection has to do with the things that help him hear.  But there is time for that.  In the meantime I celebrate how far he's come.   

Room at the Table

I’ve been listening to the Oprah Channel on Sirius XM Radio whenever I’m in the car lately.  Which is a lot.  I’ve always preferred words to music, lyrics being the dominating factor in choosing songs I love.  My iPod is loaded with audio books and podcasts.  Anyway, these days Oprah and I are besties.  The Oprah channel runs a lot of stuff from her new network, and old episodes of the Oprah Winfrey Show.  It has that Oprah “live your best life” stamp- lots of self help and words to live by. 

Recently she had on some life coach lady who will have her own show on OWN in the fall.  The topic was on “hurting others” and Oprah was talking about why women in particular seem to hurt others.  The life coach lady said it was because women, unlike men, tend to view success as a finite entity.  There is only so much success to go around.  As she put it, “if you get yours, if you get some success, then there won’t be any for me.”  As a result we tend to sabotage each other at our very worst, deny each other joy and congratulations at the very least.

Oh my word did that hit home.  I do this.  I have a few dreams for my life that feel too good for me.  One of those dreams used to be a career as a youth pastor.  I can vividly remember a journal session with God where I held out that dream and felt like God was maybe calling me to it.  And yet I couldn’t speak aloud that dream or God’s call.  I felt so unworthy of it.  I wasn’t good enough to be a youth pastor!  I wasn’t trained enough, educated enough, smart enough, disciplined enough, Godly enough.  (And yet, here I am, 4 years into a career as a youth pastor.  Silly really.)  Meanwhile I saw green whenever I heard about anyone else going into a career in youth ministry.  Every person obtaining a job as a youth pastor was stealing my job (never mind the fact that I already had a different career and I wasn’t even applying for any of these positions).

When I sense that someone I know is going to try to achieve one of those dreams that feel too good for me I get panicky.  I stress out, worried that their success will take my place at the table.  I find myself miles ahead of the actual situation, secretly hoping they will fail at achieving something they haven’t actually started- I just perceive they might want to start.  And of course they will succeed, they are worthy of the call (unlike me).

I don’t know why that is.  Why do someone else’s’ successes have to threaten my own potential?  Why do I think there are limited numbers of places at the table?

Why don’t I trust that the passions and dreams God has laid on my heart are there for a reason? 

Corks

I don’t really collect things.  But I do have two vases filled with wine corks.  Lest you think I’m an alcoholic, let me explain. 

These corks have dates written on them.  Dates and a description of what happened on that date.  These corks came from bottles of wine that were shared with friends, commemorated an important event, or were consumed on a night I wanted to remember.  Some traveled back in my suitcase from vacations to Arizona, New York, Nashville.  These weren’t corks from you average bottle of wine, opened on a random Tuesday and stretched out over a week or two.  No these bottles mean something, celebrate something, remind me of something.

I recently looked at a few of these corks.  There was one from the Halloween dinner party we had on our porch.  It was the first year we had made a conscious effort not to do the Halloween scene (you know, at a bar, in a silly costume, with lots of strangers).  A few friends sat around my favorite table in the house, handed out candy to the little ones that came by, laughed at the teenage boy who mooned us later in the night.  It was one of those nights that made me feel like I was living the grown up life I wanted- full of laughter, community and love.

There was one from the first holiday I “hosted.”  I use the word hosted loosely as my mom still made all the food.  In this instance hosting means everyone had to come to my house and I had to clean up the mess.  I used my fancy china for the first time (even though I only had 5 sets and most of the guests had to use my mom’s fancy china).  I had a sweet seven-month-old baby who was celebrating his first Christmas.  My family drank a little too much around our dining room table.  It was lovely.

There was one from the night my two closest girlfriends came over for dinner.  It was a middle of the week dinner and Tommy was gone.  We had just learned about Monster’s hearing loss.  I remember emailing my two sweet, wonderful friends needing to be with them.  Needing to unravel all the chaos swirling around in my head.  Needing to unload some of the burden.  And, as always, they came through.  They listened and supported and loved and helped.  I remembered marveling that nearly ten years later, these friendships still carried weight.  These girls were still the ones I turned to.  We had come a long way from late-night conversations about boys in our shared room at the sorority house, but they were still the ones I needed when the load was too heavy.

I love these corks.  I love that sifting through them can bring back so many memories.  I love the reminder they give me about the importance of life lived in community.  I love the hours of laughter and happiness; tears and support they represent.  I love the reminder they give me of the beautiful life I have lived and the hope they bring of many more memories made around the table with a few bottles of wine.