Last Day

Today marks Liam’s last day of summer school.  I’m excited to have four weeks ahead of us to finish tackling our Summer Fun List and go back to lazy mornings that don’t involve catching a 7:30 bus.

But I’m anxious today, my stomach jumpy like I drank too much coffee.  Today marks Liam’s last day at Child’s Voice, the only school he’s known, the school which, at the risk of sounding overdramatic, changed his life.  

Liam on his very first day at Child's Voice

Liam has been attending this miracle of a school in Wood Dale, IL since January of 2012.  He’s been working with its therapists for even longer.  Way back when we started going two mornings a week to their group therapy program I’d drive the 30 minutes to school, stay working on things or chatting with other parents, attending his speech therapy, and then drive him the 30 minutes home in time for lunch and naps.  Sometimes, after Ryann was born, my dad would take him.  Or I would drop him off and my dad would pick him up.  My dad always liked picking him up on Wednesdays because he got to attend music class with him.  Liam held a low level of distain for music class, refusing to participate for the most part, which I think my dad thought was funny.  

I remember feeling so conflicted when Liam started that two day a week class at 19 months.  He was so little and I was leaving him in a classroom with teachers and other kids neither of us knew yet.  He wasn’t talking much, he’d only been hearing for maybe 6 or 7 months at that point.  I knew this was what he needed, to be in a program that was going to help him learn to listen and speak, but I kind of hated that this was what he needed.  I wished he didn’t need so much to find his voice.  

And then he started to soar.  At one and a half years old he was able to stand in line to wash his hands before snack.  He knew the routines of the day and participated in them willingly.  He could follow directions and play well with others.  He was listening and starting to speak.  School was doing it’s job.  I got my first taste of the parent side of parent/teacher conferences and before I knew it 18 months had passed and Liam was ready for “big school.”

Liam on his very first day of "big school."

Taking him to school a few hours twice a week (while I stayed in the building) was nothing compared to the heart wrenching act of faith it took to send my three year old on a bus with a stranger to school all day, five days a week .  I send my heart to that school each day and each day it came back home, a little more verbal and a little more independent.  He was finding his voice.

another first day of school.  he was so excited about that backpack with wheels

One cochlear implant surgery and three years of “big school" later, Liam was done.  His teachers, Tommy and I all deemed him “ready for regular mainstream school.”  At his IEP meeting this past spring you could sense the pride and almost warning in the voices of his Child’s Voice teachers as they described Liam’s progress.  He had done about as well as any kid could at this school, so don’t mess up our success story.

In May Liam participated in the graduation ceremony for Child’s Voice.  While I usually tend to think pre-school/kindergarten graduations are kind of silly and unnecessary, I will admit that for Liam this graduation meant something.  When he walked in the doors of Child’s Voice four and a half years ago he spoke only a handful of words.  At the graduation ceremony he confidently walked up to a podium and delivered a 48 second speech to a auditorium full of people.  He had found his voice.  It was beautiful.

Liam at graduation.  Cap and gown and all.

In just under a month Liam will start first grade at the elementary school just a few blocks away from our house.  This is a big deal, a turning point for him.  It’s the end goal we had when he started at Child’s Voice all those years ago: to go to the mainstream school with all the regular mainstream kids.  To be able to do what they do.

When you parent a kid with any kind of disability or differing ability there is always a fine line you walk when it comes to others’ expectations of him or her.  I never wanted anyone to underestimate Liam because of his hearing loss.  He isn’t dumb, or incapable.  He doesn’t need you to yell or speak in simple sentences to him.  But, I also don’t want anyone to overestimate his abilities.  He still has hearing loss and hearing aids and cochlear implants don’t work like eyeglasses.  Liam still has to work twice as hard to hear and he still may need some modifications, particularly in the classroom.  It was important to me that people recognized the both/and of his hearing loss.  He can do anything AND he has to work harder to do it.  

At Child’s Voice I didn’t have to worry if people knew how to walk this line.  They set the bar high for Liam AND they gave him all the extra tools he would need to achieve it. 

But even more then that, they loved him well during the process.  I wrote a letter to the staff last month to share our appreciation for all they’ve done for Liam.  In it I said, 

“At the age of three Liam started spending as many of his waking hours with you all as with us.  In so many ways you have helped to raise him these past few years.  And for this we are so incredibly thankful.”

He was taught well at that school but more importantly he was loved well.  This afternoon he will walk out the doors as a student for the last time.  He’s ready.  We all are.  

Today is a good day and a sad day.  We are ready to head into the next chapter but we recognize that we are closing another significant chapter.  Liam’s voice is ready to take on the world and today I’m feeling extra grateful for the place that helped him find it.

Little Sister

Sisters.

At ages two and four Louisa and Ryann have become quite the playmates.  Liam is still often at school and Rory is still too young to join the fray.  As I type this Ryann is outside trying to learn how to roller-skate and Lou is helping her.

My sister and I once wore these dresses.  Now we bestow the honor of dressing like members of a polygamist cult down to the next generation.

I can’t help but flash back to my own sister and I when I watch the two of them.  For one, visually they are identical versions of us; Lou is the spitting image of my ginger headed sister and Ryann my mini-me, long brown hair and all.  My sister and I were three years apart, Ry and Lou just two.  It’s funny to watch Lou watch Ry.  She is always watching and copying her behavior.  Ryann has always had a penchant for books.  From an early age she would sleep with them, snuggled up with one as though it were a stuffed animal.  Now she is often found carrying around a chapter book she cannot read, stopping to thumb through the pages, appearing for all intents and purposes to be reading a book intended for a much older audience.  Lately I’ve noticed Lou has taken to the same behavior.  Yesterday I saw both girls playing side by side with two pink purses, two toy phones and two “chapter books.”  

I’ve also found Ry holding court while Lou attends to her like a lady in waiting.  They are content to play in imaginary worlds Ry creates.  If Lou is unintelligibly pleading for something with a panicked fervor I can usually figure out what she wants by looking to whatever Ry is doing at the moment.  Little sister wants what the big sister has.  Always.

It’s really funny to watch all this as a mom who was once the big sister.  I keep waiting for Ryann to get frustrated with the copycatting as I once was.  Every time I go in search for the other pink purse or toy phone I hold my breath expecting Ry to lash out against her sister’s need to do everything like her.  So far it doesn’t seem to bother her.

I’m also gaining some fresh insight into little siblings.  As the oldest I didn’t have anyone at home to copy and draw a self from.  Don’t get me wrong, I sought out a guide for how to be from my friends, looking to their actions and choices to copy and model a self (I still find myself doing this).  But I didn’t have that one person in my home who I could watch at all times.  When I look at Lou with her chapter books and toy phones I wonder if she really likes those things or if she just thinks she should like them because Ryann does.  Because I drew my “inspiration” from a plethora of people growing up I wonder if I was a little more free to choose things that aligned more with who I actually was.

My youngest brother talks about how growing up he assumed he was supposed to like sports because his older brother did.  Tim was his example of what it meant to be a boy and according to Tim boys play sports.  And so it wasn’t until Jack had participated in many, many years of rec sports before he realized he didn’t like it and he didn’t have to do it (and also, he might not be very good at it).

I think of this as I watch Lou watch Ry.  I wonder when she will find her own freedom to be who she was created to be apart from the example her older sister sets.  And I wonder how I can help guide her to this freedom.  Because she’s not the same as her big sister.  And I’d rather save her from years of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole if I can.

But I will enjoy these years of watching her imitate and copy.  Yesterday Ryann animatedly told me some nonsense story about something or other while Lou stood right next to her babbling her own story, imitating precisely Ryann’s tone and inflections.  I bounced my eye contact back and forth between the two of them, dying with laughter on the inside at the lengths Lou was going to mimic her big sister.  Ry may someday hate this copycat behavior, but, if she’s anything like me, when she is an adult she will begin to copy Lou, who, if she is anything like my sister, will develop her own cool sense of self that will definitely be worthy of imitation.

A Few Good Books

                                     

I’m on a reading kick of late.  I find that if I’m reading, I’m reading and if I’m not, I’m really not.  Which is to say, when I’ve got a good book going or a stack of good books going, I’ll fly through them and keep looking for more.  But if I’m in the middle of something that is not holding my attention, or I don’t have anything on my book plate I stop reading (or looking for good books) all together until something sparks my interest enough to try.  It’s feast or famine around here and right now I’m feasting.

I’ve finished a few in the last month or so that I feel like are worth recommending- some purely selfishly because I need someone to talk about them with!  Special thanks to Modern Mrs. Darcy who has kept me afloat with book recs of late.

How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon

This is technically YA, and I really loved it.  A black teen is shot dead by a white man who is claiming self defense.  It’s unclear whether the boy was robbing a convenient store and holding a gun or if it was a misunderstanding and a snickers bar.  Either way his killer is quickly released and the young boy’s community is left reeling.  This book is told through a number of different perspectives, friends of the boy, members of the community, and outsiders looking in.  It is certainly relevant for our times; you can’t help but think of Trayvon Martin while you read it.  I thought the author did a brilliant job incorporating a number of different voices.  You the reader can to see the full picture of “how it went down,” while those who lived it cannot.  

Out of Sorts by Sarah Bessey

This one was finished piece by piece during the hour of 6-7am.  I’ve enjoyed Bessey’s blog over the years and have started, but not finished her other book Jesus Feminist, but this one was the right book at the right time.  My soul needed her words and the promise that the uncertain time out in the wilderness of faith is exactly where you need to be sometimes.  I had the chance to hear Sarah speak when I was about 2/3 of the way through and I stayed afterwards, waiting in line to meet her.  Once it was finally my turn I sobbed ugly tears and thanked her for making my time out in the wilderness a little less lonely.  And then, when I got to the end I copied about 3/4ths of her benediction in my journal because I needed to be able to take those words with me wherever I went.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

This book man.  I hesitate to recommend it on one hand because it’s content matter is not for the faint of heart.  But on the other hand I haven’t been so engrossed and engaged in a book in a while.  It’s long (800 some pages- which is why I listened to it on audible) but it is some of the most captivating and beautiful prose I’ve read.  The book revolves around the friendships of four college roommates, young men that turn to older men through the course of the story.  It highlights the life of one in particular and his story is not easy.  I had to stop reading (or listening, I guess) more than once because I couldn’t bear the weight of his story (and then I had to go back and face it again because, though this is fiction, his story is true for too many children).  And while there is so much heavy sadness in this book there is also so much beauty.  I can’t explain it, other than to say it is, in the words of Glennon, “brutiful.”

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

This one was entertaining, interesting and delightful.  Reminiscent of This is Where I Leave You (in that it's a book about adult sibling relationships) The Nest is about four dysfunctional siblings.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It came together incredibly satisfyingly in the end and it’s a great “beach” read.  Not too heavy, but still thought provoking.

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Oh man, this was my surprise hit of the year.  I don’t know what I expected when I requested this book from the library.  I’m not a huge Shondaland TV fan, though I’ve held on to Grey’s Anatomy all these years (watching when it hits Netflix).  I’d heard good things, and I love a good “woman writer memoir” (see Tina Fey’s Bossypants and Amy Poehler’s Yes Please) so I figured it would be an entertaining peek behind the TV world curtain that would also be a quick read.  I did not expect it to rock my world as much as it did.  I quite literally could not put it down, finishing it in a little over 24 hours.  It was the entertaining peek into Shondaland that I expected, but it was so much more.  Spurred on by her sister’s observation that she “always says no to everything” Rimes decides to spend a year (and then more) saying yes to all the things that scared her.  She started this challenge at the height of her “Shondaland power”: Grey’s and Scandal were huge successes and she was developing How To Get Away With Murder.  But she realized she was living this small, scared life where she was unhappy and not truly alive.  It was fascinating and inspiring to watch what happens when you start saying yes to the things that scare you.  And man, can Shonda Rimes write.  I mean seriously, couldn’t put it down.  I am still thinking about some of the things that she wrote about and contemplating buying the book so I can read it yearly as a little inspirational kick in the pants.  It was so good.

That’s just a taste of what I’m reading.  I just picked up Modern Lovers and I’ve got a request in for the next Liane Moriarty book that’s coming this month.  When it rains it pours I guess.  I’ll take it.

(Edited to add- I just finished Modern Lovers- solid B.  Interesting story but not the most captivating thing I’ve read recently.)

What Happened in Colorado

Liam and I had to fortunate opportunity to attend the A.G. Bell convention in Denver, Colorado this past weekend.  AG Bell is an association for the deaf and hard of hearing and their convention draws mostly educators of the deaf and hard of hearing, but also members of the community and their parents.  I got to go with Med-el, the company that makes Liam’s cochlear implant.  This is my second year as a part of Med-el’s patient support team, where I travel occasionally to connect with prospective CI candidates and parents of pediatric candidates, sharing our story of Liam’s cochlear implant.  For the convention Liam and I were presenting as part of a panel on “Self-Advocacy through the Ages” talking about how Liam advocates for himself with regards to his hearing loss.  

It was three and a half days with my guy and our Med-el family.  As we made our way through the Denver airport on our return trip Liam kept saying, “I’m going to miss Colorado so much.”  I don’t think he necessarily meant the state of CO, which is lovely, but rather the experience he had there.  He’s six so he doesn’t understand that the people we hung out with for three and a half days don’t all live in that space and time forever.  He didn’t understand that the Med-el booth we worked in was torn down and packed away mere moments after we finished our shift on Sunday morning.  In his mind if he were to board a plane tomorrow and fly back to Colorado everything and everyone would be just as he left it.  

To him Colorado equals Mom saying yes to pretty much everything.  It means treats throughout the day and multiple trips to “It’s Sugar,” the candy store down the street from our hotel.  Colorado is the place where he got to be “one of the guys” with Jeff and Joel, Max and Garret.  Where Max and Garret, two older boys with cochlear implants, played catch for hours on end and gave him a million piggy back rides.  Colorado is where he could go from booth to booth collecting all the free goodies his arms could hold.  Colorado is the place where he and mom got to have a lot of fun together, just the two of us.

To me Colorado now equals three days with people who spoke the same language, the language of hearing loss and cochlear implants, electrode array and MRI capability.  It’s the place where I was reminded again and again just how lucky we are that Liam is doing so well with his implant.  It was the place where Garrett and Max and Rachel, three teens with CI’s gave me a glimpse of what will be possible for Liam in just 7 years.  It was where I got to connect with the people who know, who know the journey we’ve been on and who can tell me what’s ahead.

I’ve gotten so used to Liam’s hearing loss that I almost forget he’s deaf.  (I should qualify this by saying I “forget” his hearing loss in the same way that I can “forget” my dad is dead, which is to say that I never for a moment actually forget.   It’s just become the normal in a way that I’m not continually reminded of it’s reality.)  We’re out of the woods, so to speak, in so many ways.  Liam is listening and speaking.  Clearly.  He’s reading and writing and carrying on full conversations with adults and his peers.  This is the goal when you are first diagnosed with hearing loss.  This is the thing you are not necessarily guaranteed.  

And so it wasn’t until I was with a group of people that were a bit further ahead on the path that I realized how much I still needed to be reminded of what’s in store.  To talk to those teens, watch them interact with each other and the adults on the trip, witness their composure and their self-assuredness.  Oh man, did my mama heart need it.  They are teens, doing the normal teen thing, with friends and confidence and humor and just all around awesomeness.  Which, this side of the journey, is all I hope for Liam.

I sent an email to one of the boys, one who had been particularly kind to Liam during our stay.   I told him that we really know any older kids with cochlear implants and that I was so thankful Liam now had a role model in him.  I remember hearing a parent of another CI wearer talk about a turning point moment in their life.  Like Liam her son went to a deaf school where all of his peers wore implants and hearing aids.  But also like Liam, there were not really any older children and adult users in his life.  One day she realized that he thought he would no longer be deaf or have to wear CI’s when he was an adult because all the adults he knew were hearing.  It was in that moment that she realized she needed some role models in his life asap.

I’m thankful to be able to create that for Liam.  I’m thankful for Max and Garrett and Rachel who give Liam a peek into middle school and high school life.  And I’m grateful for Mr. Chuckie and Mr. Jeff who show him that CI wearers can be police officers or creative directors.  In Colorado we both got a peek at what’s possible still and let me tell you, it’s pretty exciting.

The Fire I'm Refusing to Ignore

I started this post yesterday but couldn't finish it.  I woke up this morning to the news of the Dallas shootings and my heart is heavier still.  I don't really know if I have any words of wisdom or if I'm just another white girl who is more clueless than not.  But my reasons for not posting this had more to do with my own self-preservation and fear of judgement which felt small and selfish.  I can't pretend there isn't a fire anymore.  

I’m heavy hearted this morning, unable to shake the feeling that something is wrong.  My Facebook feed is filled with #AltonSterling and #PhilandoCastile and pleas for our country to wake up and see that for some the world is on fire and the people with water are denying the flames’ existence.  Because they can.  Because they live in safe, fireproof houses and they don’t even realize that those fireproof houses allow them to chose blindness and that is privilege.  I can’t stop thinking about Alton Sterling’s fifteen year old son.  I was going to post something dumb about the books I’m reading but it all feels trite right now.

I don’t like feeling like this, heavy hearted with the burdens of others.  I don’t enjoy lamenting and feeling angry at God for not doing something already.  And I suppose you could say that I bring this on myself.  In an attempt to see and hear I’ve started following more people of color, those in the LGBTQ community and civil rights activists on social media.  Which of course fills my feed with more hashtags documenting the names of men and women whose lives were taken unjustly.  I’m forcing myself to look at the problems and that in turn makes my heart break.  

I could stop looking.  I could easily unfollow all those voices on social media, take Facebook and Instagram off my phone all together and never open another news outlet site again.  I could easily pretend like those injustices don’t exist.  Because of my white privilege I have the choice to look the other way.  But I can’t un-know what I know.  My eyes were opened when I was fifteen and I read “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and “Black Boy.”  They were opened again when I was 19 and I took my first African American Studies class.  And again when I was 21 and took the Social Justice track at Intervarsity’s summer camp.  I can’t un-see what I saw when I taught at George Westinghouse high school in Brooklyn, New York, a stone’s throw away from the projects that raised Jay Z.  I could feign ignorance, but the truth is I know.  I’ve seen the injustice and one day I think I will be accountable to God for what I did with that knowledge.

So I keep looking.  I keep reading.  I keep feeling heavy and helpless because it feels like the least I can do.  To not look away.  To see it and bear just a fraction of the burden my black brothers and sisters bear.  

And maybe that’s the hard part for me.  It feels like the absolute least I can do, but I don’t know what else to do.  I’ve been reliving this cycle for years now, since the Trayvon Martin shooting.  I feel the burden and the grief, I lament and post articles and like posts on Facebook until the media coverage dies down and the death becomes a little more removed.  And then I can forget (I have the luxury of forgetting) for a little while until the next shooting, the next unarmed or unaggressive black man or boy dies and the cycle repeats.  It feels so… worthless and unhelpful.

I heard on the Liturgists podcast (episode 30: Prophet or Ass, around the 18 minute mark) that in order to bring about real social change two kinds of people are needed.  We need the prophets, the ones who are outside of the power structure and who decry injustice loudly and clearly.  For the others outside the power structure these prophets are affirming and life giving.  They are leading the cause, giving a voice, pointing to the injustice and spreading the message needed for change.  Martin Luther King Jr. would be an example of such a prophet.  Those most empathetic within a power structure are also affected by the prophet’s message.  What happens though is that as human beings it is essential to our cognition to identify as a good person and so we subconsciously filter any information that undermines our self identification as a good person.  When a prophet brings forth evidence that our way of life oppresses another group of people we get defensive and we tune out because it challenges our identity as good.  For most within power structure we are unable to hear the message of the prophet.  Mentally we shut down.  And so a second group is necessary.  I like to think of them as allies.  An ally is someone within the power structure that can present the message of the prophet in a way that clearly and specifically calls out oppressive behavior while still speaking in a language that affirms the goodness of the identity of those within the oppressing groups.  An ally can take the prophet’s message back to the others and gently educate and inform.  Allies can have lower stakes conversations about the structure of white supremacy and its damage with those who have benefited (whether they realize it or not) from that structure.  They can call it out in a way that acknowledges that most of these actions are unthinking and affirm the basic goodness of those inside the oppressing group.  Both groups are needed to bring about social change on a large scale.   

I’m beginning to understand my role as an ally.  I need to speak up, to have hard conversations, to call out oppressive behavior.  And I need to do it in a way that still affirms our basic decency.  Without this approach it is scientifically proven that cognitively those in power will shut down, tune out, and forget. 

So I’m trying that today.  I’m refusing to look away and I’m being brave and kind with those around me.  In person I want to keep quiet because it’s hard to have difficult conversations face to face and point out someone’s conscious or subconscious bias.  Online I want to be cutting and snarky because I’m angry at myself for being so quiet and impatient with those that I think just don’t understand.  It’s easy to be bold and harsh online when you don’t have to see the effect of your words.  I’m raising my voice AND I’m doing it in love.  Because my role in bringing about social change is to be an ally, and this is the best way I know how.

For what it’s worth, this podcast is an excellent listen.  It’s another one from The Liturgists, called Black and White: Racism in America.  I think it’s a great entry point for those of us within the power structure to begin to open our eyes and learn.  

Little Actors Club

On Tuesdays this past spring Ryann and I ate dinner early and then hop in the car.  We made our way to the community center, the same one where I spent so much of my own youth.  We headed upstairs, down the hall to Arrowhead room 2.  Toots joined a group of other 3-6 year olds for a 45 minute class titled, “Little Actors Club.”  It was a drop off class, so I couldn’t watch, and because she’s three and her reporting skills leave something to be desired, I don’t exactly know what went on during those 45 minutes.  From what I gathered, they acted out a different story each week.  The teacher brought makeshift costumes and props.  Laced in their play acting are theater games and vocabulary lessons.  It seems to be a popular class; this one was more full than any of the others we’ve taken at the community center.  

I came across this class ages ago and knew I wanted to sign my girl up.  I hesitated though, questioning if it was because I thought she would like it or because I would have liked it at her age.  I worry about becoming a stage mom, pushing my three year old into acting classes.  Still though, something in my gut knew she’d love it.  In the end it was her brother’s hockey class that tipped my hand.  If he was signed up for another session of something, she would want to be too, and I hadn’t been impressed with the dance class last fall.

Every Tuesday at 6:15 I was so very thankful I followed my gut.  She skipped out of class each week, animatedly chattering about the past 45 minutes.  She’d be on a high for the rest of the evening, so excited about life and her place in it.  Little Actors Club made my girl come alive in the purest and truest sense.  

One week as I walked through the community center with Ryann, inwardly glowing as I watched her outwardly glow, I marveled at how innate our wiring is.  I had peeked in the window as I waited for the end of class.  Ry had a smile a mile wide as she acted out whatever story they were doing that week.  I could tell how happy she was in that moment, how “in her element” she felt.  And it’s amazing to me that at this young age Ry has an element.  There is a thing that makes her come alive, a thing she was created to love and do.  This doesn’t feel like the normal kid joy that comes from doing normal kid fun things.  There is a different energy about her after Little Actors Club, an exhilaration that radiates from her.

And as I watched my girl radiate and come alive I was struck by how long it’s been since I’ve felt that way.  When did I stop doing the things that make me come alive?  Why did I stop doing them?  If you asked me today, I’m not even sure I know what makes me come alive right now.  What brings me exhilaration these days?  What has me skipping and buzzing like Ryann after Little Actors Club?

I don’t know, but I want to find out.  I don’t know if it will be something that has always made me come alive, or something new, something I’ve never tried.  I just know I want to make space to explore the things that make me come alive again.  Watching Ryann every Tuesday in the spring has me longing for that spark.  It’s inspiring me to try and find it again.  

I’m tempted to think it’s selfish of me to search for my own “come alive” moments.  But when I watch Ryann, when I observe her pure joy and excitement I think about how much better she would be if I, as her mother, operated out of a similar place of happiness.  If I mothered out of a sense of being alive and exhilaration.  Wouldn’t we all be better off?

So I’m searching for my own Little Actors Club.  I’m exploring and wondering and dreaming.  I’ll let you know if I figure anything out.

What makes you come alive?

Things I've (finally) Learned After Four Kids

These kids are nuts.

Ya’ll.  I have four kids.  It’s kind of a lot.  I’ve spent the last eight months feeling a little bit like the stereotypical crazed mom of lots of littles.  You know, manic eyes, unshowered, yoga pants and spit up covered shirt.  (Can we talk about the spit up?  Rory is still spitting up after pretty much every meal.  Now that she’s eating solids her spit up is a rainbow of colors and it has stained every article of clothing I own.)  Now, though, it’s summer and I’m slowly crawling my way out of the hole.  The weather is better, our schedule is a little more relaxed but also defined.  Rory can handle a shorter morning nap and a few more excursions.  I’m feeling more like myself.  It’s kinda nice.

And over the past eight months I’ve learned some lessons that I’m slightly embarrassed to admit took me four kids to figure out.  So I figured I should share them, if only to allow you to benefit from my stupidity/wisdom sooner than later.

And so, without further adieu: A few things I’ve finally learned after four kids…

1.) How to remove a onesie after a blowout.

Those shoulder slits do more than just get the onesie over the kids head...

You guys.  You guys.  This one will change your life if you’re like me and you cleaned up countless diaper blowouts without figuring this out.  You know how onesies have those funny shoulders with the slits?  I always thought it was just so you could get the onesies over babies’ huge domes.  But you know what else you can do with them?  Pull the onesie down over their shoulders in the event of a blowout diaper.

I mean, all those years of trying to get poop filled onesies over my kids heads without getting crap in their hair and it wasn’t until kid number four that I finally figured out I could just pull it down.  Life changing I tell you.  And it came just in time because for a while there Rory was only pooping once a day and it was a disaster every. single. time.

2.) Sometimes, like when you serve chili to a 6 month old, its just best to strip them down to their diaper.

so much mess.

Rory loves ground beef.  Taco Tuesday is her favorite.  Chili mac makes her heart soar.  Pasta sauce with meat in it is her love language.  And I’ve finally learned that when she is eating messy meals like this I should just strip her down to her diaper before we eat.  Because there is not a bib in the world that will protect her clothing from that mess.  Somehow she manages to get pasta sauce on her toes.  Her clothes don’t stand a chance.  So it’s hillbilly style dining around here and I’m fine with it.

3.) Some toys are just not worth it.

I’ve developed what I call the “Out of my hair to clean up ratio” when it comes to toys.  I think that the primary function of toys should be to entertain my kids so I don’t have to.  But after four kids I’ve realized that not all toys and activities were created equal in their ability to do this job.  And I’ve become ruthless in eliminating/hiding toys that don’t meet the proper “Out of my hair/clean up ratio” standards.  In order for a toy to remain in good standing around here it needs to occupy my kids for at least three times as long as it takes to clean up said toy.  This is why I will let my kids remove every costume in the bin, turn any and all boxes into robots/computers/airplanes/sea creature, and drag their laundry basket to the basement so it can be an elevator (I still can’t figure out what they were doing with that one).  Because these things occupy my kids for hours.  Or at least 45 minutes.  It’s why I leave crayons, markers coloring books and pads of paper at eye level on the closet shelf and don’t complain when every crayon ends up on the floor.  They’ve spent 25 minutes coloring one scribble on each page in the book and not whining at my feet to be picked up (side eye to you Lou).  If it takes me 7 minutes to clean all that up I’ll still think it was worth it.

Things that do not make the cut include play dough, arts and crafts projects and legos (kinda).  Play dough occupies my kids for approximately 3 and a half minutes and then I spend the next three weeks finding dried up dough inside every crevice, on every surface, and under every fingernail in my house.  Arts and crafts project kits don’t make the cut because it is decidedly not an “out of my hair” activity.  I have the help with the gluing and the cutting and in the end my kids have a paper owl that looks more like a disfigured snake and I’m supposed to treasure it always.  And also the whole time I want to stab my eyes with the scissors.  Liam is just starting to be able to assemble legos on his own, but for years it required me trying to access the non existent engineer in my brain to figure out the instructions.  

And finally number 4:  I don’t have to be all the moms 

Some moms are great “arts and crafts” moms.  Some are “play with trains for hours” moms.  Some are “chase you around the park for hours” moms.  These are examples of mom-ing things that I am maybe not great at.  I remember once taking Liam to the park when I was 17 months pregnant with Ryann.  There was a mom there who was the quintessential “cool mom.”  She was young and fit and obviously so fun.  She chased her kid around the park, running up the equipment and sliding down the slide, laughing with seemingly endless bounds of energy.  I watched her, hand resting on my gigantic belly vowing to be like her as soon as this kid was evicted from my womb.  But the reality is I’m just not that mom.  I would like to be, but I’m really not.  When I do it I feel unnatural.  Like I’m playing a character.

I am the kind of mom that sings show tunes in my kitchen with the girls.  The mom that takes the kids on the train or to the pool.  I’m the mom who reads their favorite books a million times and uses my full arsenal of accents and voices.  I’m a “dance party when everyone is melting down” mom.  I’m a “get out of the house” mom.  I’m the “scratch your back forever” mom.  I’m finding that when I am intentional about focusing my energy in these ways with my kids I don’t feel guilty about not being the other moms.  I can love it when my friends are the kind of moms they were built to be without feeling all the “I should do that too” angst.  And my kids don’t care.  They just want me to be their mom, whichever kind of mom that is.  

So, there’s a few things I’m (slowly) learning.  What about you?  Anything 2 or 3 or 4 kids are teaching you??