The Materialist Explanation

They both have ear infections. In both ears.

Bitch or chump?

Am I too strict or too lenient? Am I disregarding my kid's deep anxieties, or am I being taken for a ride by a manipulative three year old? It’s the maternal equivalent of “virgin or whore” and the organizing dichotomy of my parenting psyche. In times of ease and equilibrium, I don’t worry about it, but when things start to go pear-shaped I always feel like I'm on one awful end of the spectrum or the other—or sometimes, impossibly, both at once—and never in between.

Ingrid is still worried that her diaper is going to fall off. Last night the out-loud worry started a good half-hour before bedtime, making me think this is an actual fear and not just a stall tactic. So, bitch. Right?

But then I decided to go to bed myself just when I put her down (8:30), and guess what? There was no crying in bed, no getting up. Seems like she knew the party was over, so didn’t need to try to stay up for it. Chump, then.

Of course, my screaming on Wednesday put me solidly in bitch territory, no matter what the real story was on her end. If I step back and look at this like a nicely put together piece of literature, it seems like that’s my real, deep-down reason for yelling: To get out of the uncomfortable ambiguous zone and solidly into territory where I can hate myself. (Then I step back into my actual shoes and think: Nope. It’s just because sometimes I’m frustrated as hell.)

A is back (yay!). He volunteered to do the bedtime routine, even after I whispered the story of the past three nights’ antics. Knock yourself out, I said. He came down the stairs about three minutes ago, and all seems to be normal and peaceful up there. We'll see if it lasts. If she comes wandering down the stairs wailing, she will find me on the couch reading a book, and she will not see me move except to blow her a little kiss.

To Chew On

Ingrid finally went to sleep without me in the room last night. We went upstairs together and she cried a little bit in her room while I brushed my teeth. By the time I was ready to get in bed, she was asleep. It was 10 o'clock.

I can rant alot about this on a small, immature, micro level: I need a break in the day! I can't stand to sit there waiting for her to fall asleep! The sheer demand on my time and energy is significant.

But the thing that really stresses me out about it is the weirdness. One night she goes to bed just fine as usual; the next night (and the night after) she's terrified about something a) unlikely and b) harmless, and inconsolable about it to a degree that makes me really alarmed about what's going on in her head. I don't understand. Am I doing something wrong that's driven her to this? What have I done? Is this normal? Is she losing her mind? Not understanding makes me feel so helpless, and I feel doubly helpless being alone with it. With A away, I'm the only one around who knows Ingrid as well as I do. Friends can commiserate but no one can really help me get perspective on what's happening, not like A could.

There's been other stuff during the day, too. Things she'd usually be able to deal with (e.g. shoes) that she completely melts down about. It's frighteningly similar to last winter's shitstorm of horrendous helpless clinginess. I am in a far better mental state now than a year ago, but the last couple of days of shenanigans have worn me down and I have not always been kind. I've yelled, and not with nice words.

I miss the summer so much I could cry.

Her ears are still pretty plugged up, and I am close to blaming it all on that and very close to going ahead with getting ear tubes. Which could be an awful can of worms all its own. But if fluid-filled ears is what's causing all this wretchedness, I'm ready to give it a shot. It seems possible: She can't hear well; we both get frustrated; she feels fragile and strange and doesn't quite know how to express it; and we get into an awful spiral of clinginess, meanness, and exhaustion that eventually just keeps itself going even between colds.

Also, I'm considering taking my therapist up on her repeated offer of a low-dose antidepressant. Honestly. I'm not sluggish, sad, or hopeless, but the past week I have felt like punching things / people, and there is no way I'm going through another winter channeling a rabid mama wolverine. Something has got to change.

.

The thing she made to chew on was exactly as weird as it sounded. According to the teacher, several kids in the class are having trouble "organizing their bodies", and apparently one thing that can help is ... chewing on something. Not wanting to single anyone out, I guess, they had all the kids use surgical tubing and brightly colored yarn to make things that look to me a lot like doggie chew toys (yarn strung through a few inches of tubing, then tied up like a bracelet), and apparently they pass them out at story time and hope that it will help kids settle down. This seems deeply weird to me, and when I have time I will probably start worrying about what might be in that plastic tubing that shouldn't be chewed on (not to mention what sort of behavior prompted this—I hadn't noticed or heard about any real problems). But I have a lot of trust in these teachers, and for the moment I'm going to reserve my worrying energy for other problems.

Afraid her diaper is going to fall off.

Second night, same as the first. Except without any yelling from me, and with more of a general "I don't want to go to sleep all by myself" vibe.

Wise friend here for dinner pointed out there's probably some larger, unspoken worry or fear. I brought Ingrid down from the initial storm by talking about missing Daddy, about growing up. About how Daddy is coming home soon, and however big and old she gets I'll still be her Mama and love her like no one else in the world. Sent dinner friends home early to sit in her room, reading, to be there as she fell asleep.

When she was still awake at 9, I told her I had to come downstairs to get things cleaned up and ready for the morning, and she freaked out again. Cried in her room for fifteen minutes, then came down and watched me do the dishes. Now she's pooping in her diaper. When she's done, I'll clean her up, put her to bed, and go to bed myself. She may scream. If she does, I'm not sure what I'll do. I need to get to sleep. Iris wakes up before five some days, and I'm on a sleep deficit anyway. I can't sit in Ingrid's room for another half hour waiting for her to sleep, and I can't sleep with her in bed with me.

Disconnect

Two funny conversations and one not so much.

On the way home from day care, Ingrid said, "I got to make something to chew on today." Apparently it was made of rubber. With strings in it, and with her name on both sides like the tag on her lunch bag. She made it, then she put it in her mouth and chewed on it, and she didn't get to bring it home, she just left it on the table. It wasn't food. She couldn't remember if it had a name.

If you have any idea what this object could be, please tell me. I'd love to know.

Also, her ears are a bit plugged up from this cold, so we got to have a conversation like this after dinner:

Ingrid: Mama, did Iris wear this hat to day care?
Me:      No, she wore a different hat today.
Ingrid: What hat?
Me:     The fuzzy green hat.
Ingrid:What?
Me:      The fuzzy green hat.
Ingrid: WHAT?
Me:      THE FUZZY GREEN HAT.
Ingrid: What are you talking about?

And then at bedtime we had more or less the worst interaction ever. She was Worried Her Diaper Was Going To Fall Off, which is sort of like a Yahtzee or a Bingo or insert your favorite games of chance and skill metaphor. Part sensitive kid, part thoughtful kid, part manipulative three year old wanting to postpone bedtime, all turned up to top volume, literally and figuratively. Add mama who Just Wants a Fucking Hour To Herself Before A Decent Night's Sleep, plus little sister already asleep and needing relative quiet, and obviously we were headed for misery.

Ingrid could not be reassured by my sympathy, consoled by my logical suggested coping strategies, or influenced at all, it seemed, by my calm and firm (and then less and less calm) limit setting, and she expressed her ongoing discomfort and worry by crying loudly. I ended up ranting and crying on the phone to my mom while Ingrid wailed upstairs in bed, then, after Ingrid came downstairs again, yelling some really lovely things at her about how there was nothing I could do and she really had to just get over it and go to sleep. This after many, many rounds of calm-but-firm, I swear. There is only so much fucking calm-but-firm in me, I'm very sorry to say. Her face turned pale and blotchy as I yelled.

For a horrible many minutes after I stopped yelling, I couldn't see how we were going to get out of it. Call someone to stay with the kids while I drove out for some better fitting diapers? Unnecessary giving in, I thought, and crazy-seeming. Have her sleep without a diaper? She'd already thought through how to be anxious about peeing the bed in that case. Tape her diaper on? She refused for unknown reasons. I thought about calling A in the middle of the night in Addis Ababa and just letting Ingrid wail into the phone. The thought of that sound leaving the house and fading across the continents was calming, but I decided, barely, to spare A the pain. I thought, as usual, about breaking dishes. I stepped into the backyard for a moment and screamed, without words, as loudly as I could. I worried, vaguely, that someone might call the police. Then I came back inside, made seven or eight more failed attempts at calming conversation with Ingrid, walked her, still sobbing (her, not me) up the stairs, and sat by her bed singing our lullaby while she kept moaning and crying. When my voice got tired I stopped singing and sat with my hand on her back until she fell asleep.

When I finally came downstairs, my dinner was long cold. And now it's way past my bedtime. I hope we've forgiven each other by morning. Tomorrow could be a long day.

In need of a sick day.

Possibly you've noticed how well I followed through on the idea of posting every day in November.

This isn't really a writing time, I guess. A is in Ethiopia for a week. My mom has just left after a three-day visit, and, while she's really not a high maintenance guest and is even marginally helpful, it was still tiring to Have Someone Here. Meaning, to prepare adult meals other than cheese sandwiches and frozen potstickers, and to keep up some semblance of household order. Plus, I had this awful cold where for two days I was hot and shivery and full of stunning amounts of snot and leashed to the neti pot. I used one and a half boxes of Kleenex in two days. I took a Sudafed that somehow kept me from sleeping for a four-hour chunk in the middle of Saturday night, and am still trying to catch up from that.

So yuck, and yuck. The girls have been spared the completely miserable symptoms so far. They've been kind of sniffly but in good spirits.

My mom brought them each a "pretty dress" and they are both totally, hilariously into wearing them around the living room, which is fine because the number of fancy dress-up occasions this family is likely to attend before the dresses are outgrown = zero.

This morning we went to the zoo. Do most children like zoos? Ingrid doesn't. She was into looking at a couple of the animals (Japanese snow monkeys, tropical fish) but spent much of the visit politely asking when we could go home. Iris, on the other hand, was beside herself with excitement about all the weird creatures and was an ace at spotting small or motionless animals. (Then she would shake her pointer finger in the air like she was making a little proclamation about what she was seeing.) They did both get a lot of running-around time in, which made for a good nap and a calm afternoon.

Anyway. Sickness + Absent Husband + Present Mother + It Fucking Gets Dark at 4:30 p.m. = (Haven't Been Writing Much + I Drool When I Drive By Motels, Thinking Of All Those Quiet Empty Clean Rooms) / Daughters Are Adorable and Clever. That's all I've got.

Grappling

In Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, she describes working in the clothing department at Wal-Mart. All day, she's responsible for cleaning up the continually unfolding mess, sorting, folding, and hanging clothes that customers have removed from the racks. Of course, her job is never finished. There are always more t-shirts in the changing rooms, sweaters unfolded, jeans carried off but not purchased. And the customer—you know, the one she's "serving"?—the customer begins to look like the enemy in her Sisyphean slog toward making things neat. She cringes when she sees one coming. In a workplace with little freedom, flexibility, or opportunity for creativity, the customers aren't the point of her job; they're her opponents, existing only to set her even farther back on the unending road to ever feeling finished.

I'm horrified to realize how often, lately, I've thought of the little people in our house just that way. I crave a sense of completion. I crave the moment when everything is done and put away and quiet. And from that point of view, the people who poop and throw sweet potatoes and upend baskets of toys and need stories read and hair combed and medicines administered...they start to look, in my messed up, overtired mind, a lot like Barbara Ehrenreich's customers. "Please," I think, as I wipe one's nose while the other clambers up my shirt. "Can't you please stop needing things so that I can get on with..."

But get on with what, exactly?

Like everyone, I have a list of things I'd do with a quiet hour: sort old clothes, wrap wedding gift, vacuum stairs, shave legs. And beyond that: learn Spanish, run intervals, write poems. But is any of that enough to make up the life I really want?

Lately I've been in this little house of parenthood, pressing my face up against the glass, staring out at the free, free world. Why am I in here? Why?

This is nearly impossible to write about, because I fear I'm creating something my daughters will one day be able to read but not understand. Let me be clear: our children are fantastic and deeply loved. There is no chance I'd wish either of them away. I think you understand, though: I love my children fiercely. And sometimes I wish, equally fiercely, that I were not their mother.

Years ago, without children, dreaming of parenthood, I got a lot wrong. I missed, totally, how much I could sometimes not like it. But I was right (and I'd forgotten, until recently, that I'd even anticipated this) in looking forward to our child-raising years as a time of happy chaos. Of things being in disorder, always messy, a bit out of control, exhausting. I even craved the mess and rush, fearing, as I headed into fertility treatments, a constant life of dry, plain neatness.

I've come to know the chaos of my dreams well. The library books are overdue, the dishes aren't done, and when did I last have a haircut? I've been letting the chaos get me down so much, though, that I'd forgotten happy could come in the same phrase. That I wanted this. That, really thinking about the alternative, even knowing what I know now, I'd make the same choice again.

I have thought so often about the alternate universe in which A and I were not able to conceive and have children. I think that some people who've been through infertility experience it as a great magnifier of gratitude. But when I think, "What if we hadn't been able to have them?" I feel only a kind of rote gratitude, plus a heap of guilt for not liking it enough. And I forget that something came before the fear of not having this: the decision that we wanted it.

When I think, "What if we'd decided not to do this?", that's when I see that, however much I'd love to have more breaks from this life to do all of the necessary and fulfilling things on my list, the quiet and calm—the unending space and time for just me or even just A and me—wouldn't be enough. Wasn't, and still isn't—no matter how much I crave the better parts of it—what I want for my life, for our lives.

Last week I read The War of Art. It's about about what keeps us from doing the creative work we want to do, and one of its big themes is: Do your work. He means: You know what you're here to do. Don't waste time thinking about it, complaining about it, talking about it, or trying in a million ways to avoid it. You'll never get it done if you don't do it.

Somehow it helps me lose my awful attitude when I think of my kids as my work. Work in Pressfield's sense: what I'm here to do, what only I can do.

I've never quite been one to think of motherhood as my calling. And I have other work in this world, too—fitting that in is a whole other story. But, indisputably, for a good chunk of my days, the care and love and education of these two great girls is it.

Thinking of it this way quiets me, somehow. I am not here (it is not possible) to quell all of their needs and finally arrive at some nirvana of peaceful, completed family life. I am here to see what my family needs from me, and to do it. And to find enough respite from this work so that, during the times when it's mine, I can do it well, rather than pedaling fruitlessly toward its nonexistent end.

Whether this makes any sense or not, it's what I'm using today to claw my way out of the hole.

Miracle Ear Fruit?

What I want is one of these that works on the ears instead of the tongue, turning whining into normal, reasonable talk and a full-throttle tantrum into delighted giggles.

Miracle

(Two days ago, near the breakfast table.)

Ingrid: (Stands near Iris wearing pink felted slippers.)

Iris: (Pulls at flower ornaments on slippers, tries to put in mouth.)

Ingrid: (Yells.) NO, IRIS! (Bats Iris’s hand away.)

caro: You need to find a gentler way to tell her no. You could just step back and say…

Ingrid: (Interrupts.) Here, Iris. (Sits on floor and removes slippers one at a time, handing each to Iris.) You can play with these now, and then I’ll have a turn when you’re done.

More on That Girl

Thank you for all of your thinking and commenting about the Ingrid situation. It was hugely helpful to write all that, and even more so to hear your perspectives on it. Especially since so many people seem to have eerily similar daughters, which makes me think that, as Emmie mentioned, development (age 3) and situational (new big sister) stuff has got to be exacerbating, if not creating, a lot of our current troubles.

It is hard to sort out what causes what, though. Some of this does seem to have been going on for a long time, like the shyness (really intense since Iris was born—and that's nine months) and the need for every ounce of my attention every moment of the day (pretty much since birth. Ingrid's birth, that is), which makes me think of it as a more enduring temperament issue. I do think there are solutions, and times will get better.

I don't have a lot of coherent things to say about what's working, because frankly right now not a lot is. I do seem to have found a tone of voice that will occasionally talk her down from a tizzy. I convinced her the other day that instead of letting the feeling of oatmeal stuck on her teeth make her whole body feel weird and bad, she could step back and look at it "like a puzzle to work on". (The girl loves puzzles). She's even repeated that strategy on her own a couple of times. Huzzah!

But most of the time I feel nowhere near that successful. One tantrum seems to just pile on top of the next, and in between that there is endless whining, weird smells, questions to which I have no good answer no matter how many times she asks me, pushing the baby over, etc. etc. etc. And being, I am discovering, immature and lacking in inner peace, I have a really, really hard time just letting all that tantrum and discontentment wash over me. I get all riled up. Worried, mad, unhappy, etc. etc. Bad.

The 24 hours that A and Ingrid were away did us all some good. Iris and I had never had that much time alone together, so that alone was wonderfully sweet. She learned to play peek-a-boo (by covering one eye with the back of her hand, then taking her hand away and chuckling) and to open the fridge, a skill I believe Ingrid still has yet to master.

And, in addition to a lot of adorable baby snuggle time, I GOT THINGS DONE. I did a ton of stuff around the house, and Iris and I went for a run and ran errands and everything went so quickly and smoothly. It was like I'd been driving around with the brakes on all this time without knowing it.

To be fair, there is alchemy when both girls are around and awake. Ingrid is easier on her own, too. I just hadn't realized how very much easier it would be with only the baby in the picture.

So that was validating, and a good break, and now A is fixin' to leave in the morning for two weeks for work. My mom is coming for a good chunk of that time, but I've got two solo days at the beginning of the trip and four at the end without her, and I feel like an utter wimp for being so worried about how hard it's going to be, because I know people do this all the time, but I am worried and have already lined up various friends to relieve me for an evening run here and there, and warned certain people to expect random midday phone calls from me when I need to speak to another adult before I lose my shit. Perhaps you should expect some random and even less coherent than usual posts from me, as well.

Any dating service would warn us off each other, I'm sure.

A lot of people say that as a child progresses from two and a half to three years old, she enters a period of relative calm and equilibrium—a sweet haven between dictatorial two and discombobulated three.

Those people are not familiar with my daughter. Or maybe she is just precocious, already acting three and a half?

I want to write about what's hard with Ingrid right now, but I want to be careful. I know that I have a bad attitude a really bad attitude about her right now. I know that I'm often unfair to her, that she needs and deserves more patience than I've been giving her, more flexibility. I know that almost all of the things I'm frustrated and mad about are things neither she nor I can help right now; it's my reaction that's wrong, and my slowness at figuring out what makes her tick and how to keep our relationship happy.

But at the same time, even trying really, really hard to keep all that in mind, there are many, many hours when I can't think that charitably about it. Yesterday I screamed at her. Screamed. I didn't use any words that I regret. But I regret the volume and the tone. I don't believe in yelling at kids. It was horrible. I was horrible.

She and A are at Grandma's for the night, giving Iris and me some quiet time together and giving Ingrid and me a break from each other. And I'm trying to think through what I know about her, why it's so hard, what I could do better. There are lots of parts:

She is sensitive. Small things bother her a lot. Socks with any sort of wrinkle or seam. Tags in shirts. Sleeves that are the tiniest bit too small. Underwear that is "sticking to her." Having a piece of oatmeal stuck to her tooth. Slight changes in temperature. There is almost never a time when everything is right. I, on the other hand, am the sort of person who might (ahem) not notice for a day or so that my husband got a haircut. I'm farsighted! And, apparently, insensitive. I try to understand, but it's a challenge to remain empathetic after the seventh sock adjustment.

She is dramatic. Those discomforts? She almost never just takes them in stride. She very, very often reacts intensely. When I brush her hair, she cries as though I am peeling off her scalp. When A clips her fingernails, he might as well be removing her fingertips. And I react with similar intensity when I find myself in a situation that's hard. (Example: A thousand pieces? Come on! All I'm doing is raising children!) So if when I forget I'm the grownup, we get into awful cycles of struggle and egg each other into a total, unreasonable state that's almost impossible to get out of.

She's pretty serious. I think that a lot of kids this age express glee often. Not so much with her. Not outwardly. And it puts me on edge. I know it's just how she is. In fact, it's how I am too. I sometimes miss jokes because I'm so busy taking everyone seriously. But I have the twisted and wrong belief that seeing her happy is the reward I deserve after (cue violins) all I do for her. She does have times of silliness and big smiles and excitement about things. For some reason, though, these don't often happen when just she and I are together, and often they feel too few and far between for me. In sane moments, I know my worry and anger about this are wrong, but in the thick of things it just becomes another part of the tangle.

She's cautious around people she doesn't know well. And by "doesn't know well" I mostly mean "doesn't live with." This shouldn't surprise me; A and I are both the reserved sort, as are most of our family members. In theory, I value shyness. But also, I deeply wish, for her sake, that she weren't shy. I guess that on some level I believe it is a lousy quality to have. It's something I don't like about myself. I wish she didn't have to be this way too, and for all my practice learning how to be a relatively successful shy person in the world, I often feel I'm just not up to the challenge of helping her manage it in a way that lets her enjoy herself.

And yet: I think she might be an extrovert. At least, she has a very strong need for social interaction. When she comes home from day care she's content, full of ideas, more ready than ever to talk with A and me and tell us long, complicated stories. I think if she were a genuine introvert, she'd be exhausted and want to just be alone at the end of a day full of other kids. But no. I think that in spite of her initial cautious reaction to people, she really needs and craves social life. And me? I have a super intense need for lots and lots of time all by myself. Do you see how that's the perfect storm? Her small social circle plus need for relationship, my limited social energy...exhausting.

I miss the relationship that she and I had before Iris was born. I miss it a lot. I remember even then feeling I didn't have enough energy for her, couldn't give her enough. But it was enough so that, if I got enough breaks, we could really enjoy each other. I felt connected to her. I felt like we knew each other. Right now it feels like we are lost to each other. It feels rotten and sad.

I do have some solutions and some ways to think about it that help. I'll write about some of those next. It helps just to untangle it enough to describe it, rather than be caught in it all the time.

A's suggestion last night at the end of a long discussion about this was that I "take some type of meditation course to learn about inner peace." Which is funny because I am the one who brought all the Thich Nhat Han books to the relationship. I am the one who's spent years and years reading about the gazillion types of enlightenment, and, oh yeah, I'm the one who's been praying by accident all year. And he is the one who refuses to go to church because all he needs is to walk in the woods. And he tells me I need to work on inner peace?

Of course, he's probably right. Jerk.

Have you read this whole thing, Internets? Does it sound to you as though my daughter and I are doomed? Have you got anything to offer me besides "work on inner peace"?

Eye

I'm having a hard time with Ingrid right now. Is that new? Somehow it feels most decidedly, tiringly not new. More on the practical bits of that later.

For now, just let me say, all the images in my mind are about getting through very tiny spaces. This story keeps popping up on my gmail headline banner, and I keep thinking about how it feels to raise my arms and make my shoulders as narrow as possible, make my armpits disappear like Ingrid does mid-tantrum when I'm trying to pick her up and there's suddenly nothing to hold on to.

And IUDs and tampons, serving out their little lives inside small spaces, and equipped with handy strings for removal. Are they the only things like this? It's such a useful feature, that string. What else could we use it for?

And I read Malcolm Gladwell's article on big ideas earlier this week, and what stayed with me is this:

One rainy day last November, Myhrvold held an “invention session,” as he
calls such meetings, on the technology of self-assembly. What if it was possible
to break a complex piece of machinery into a thousand pieces and then, at some
predetermined moment, have the machine put itself back together again? That had
to be useful. But for what?

What, indeed? I'm thinking it would be useful for birth. Do you suppose any of the learned men (men only) in the "invention session" brought that one up?

In a more metaphorical and less gory sense, I feel like no stranger at all to self-assembly, to being in a thousand pieces. I picture my arm shoving my foot through the eye of a needle, then scooting back through for a handful of hair, a breast or two, an ear. I see us all, all the parts of me, on the other side, reassembling. Do I have everything I need? Did we all make it?

Mmm. Green beans.

I put three dapper little foil-wrapped chocolate bunnies in Ingrid’s Easter basket. They were so cute in their striped suits and bowties—and she is so fond of small, animal-shaped toys—that I assumed she’d be far more interested in playing with than eating them.

I was wrong, and holy shit, do I ever now know why we don’t usually give her sugar. She ate two yesterday and the other (unauthorized) this morning, and both times (but especially this morning, without Grandma around to channel the energy) it turned her into a crazed, wiggly, defiant, impervious creature.

The worst is it exacerbated our parenting problem du jour, which is that Ingrid squishes, hits and pokes Iris in ways that, while not always intentionally harmful, are clearly Not Safe. We’ve tried Be gentle, and we’ve tried No. That’s not safe. And we’ve tried You must be feeling very mad at Iris and What were you feeling when you did that? and Why don’t you use this doll to show me how you’re feeling? and You can tell mama you feel mad instead of doing that. We’ve tried time outs. We’ve tried telling silly stories about little girls who turn their baby sister into an orange and eat her up. We’ve tried Do this gentle thing with Iris instead. And we’ve tried (ahem) bat shit crazy freaked out mama screaming and running into the other room to get ahold of herself before she does harm.

Nothing works. She does not react to anything we say to her about it. She won’t talk about it, either in the moment or after. And if we give her a time out (which, for a while, we were doing with absolute regularity around this issue), she waltzes into it happily, hums and sings as she sits on the steps, refuses to engage in discussion afterwards, and then, often, goes right in for another round of squish the baby. Gah.

The morning was pretty intensely full of that. We finally got ourselves out the door to take the cat to the vet, and it turns out the cat has a six hundred dollar dental problem that is almost certainly painful and most certainly not in the budget.

Then when it was time to leave Ingrid refused to either put on or carry her coat, and I, with baby in sling, cat in cage, and diaper bag over shoulder, decided the best natural consequence would be to leave the coat behind at the vet’s office. So we did.

Later we walked to the coffee shop, and I’d thought the sidewalks were clear but there are some pretty big snowy stretches, so we mostly walked down the middle of the street.

By lunchtime, I think the bunnies had worn off; we were all calmer, and when Ingrid, standing next to Iris’s booster seat, began gently trying to lick pureed green beans off of Iris’s face, I was so relieved to see something even halfway resembling sisterly affection that I just let her.

P.S. Felted bag pics coming. It turned out ok. A says he'd like to use it as a stocking cap and put his ears through the handle holes.

With My Pants Down

I haven't written about the girls' constantly overbooked pediatrician's office and its awful time suck of a phone system, but it—and our resulting lack of a consistent person to look into the kids' ears when needed—has been a major pain and occasional near medical disaster this winter. It's the sort of large bureaucratic mess that, every time I deal with it, makes me want to speak to the person in charge, tell them exactly the nature of the inconvenience their establishment is causing me (and probably all of their other clients as well), and extract from them specific and realistic promises about how and when it will all be made better.

So a couple of weeks ago, in my spare time, I hammered out a ranty yet respectful letter to the clinic manager and medical director expressing my concerns.

This morning as Iris was napping and Ingrid was bopping around the living room taking stuffed animals from the airport to the library, the phone rang. It was Smeldon Smirkowitz, MD, Medical Director of the clinic.

The good doctor was completely sympathetic, graceful, and articulate. He gave a long and somewhat convincing spiel about their sincere efforts to rectify the situation. He said that they do not, as I accused in my letter, want patients to rely on M*nute Cl*nics for care; I countered that someone in his office had, not two hours earlier, suggested I go to such a place for the infant flu vaccine that Dr. Smirkowitz's clinic had apparently understocked.

As he continued with his spiel about supply and demand this and hospitalized patients that, I found myself in the most dreadful mommy-brained state, using every neuron to block out the Music Together and the toy-covered carpet, follow what he was saying, and make the slow, fatigued shift of gears from You can have a banana or a pear; those are your choices to formulating some sort of articulate response.

As the gracious doctor wrapped up his final point, Ingrid climbed onto the dining room chair next to me. Is there anything else, asked Dr. Smirkowitz, that I can tell you? Do you have any further concerns?

Just as he said this, Ingrid put her arms around me, looked into my face, and said, Mama, I peepeed in my pants.

I thanked the dear doctor for his time, hung up the phone, and went to find the girl some clean undies.

Sigh.

Span (Last)

Someone mentioned knitting, and that helps, too. It induces the kind of meditative attention that happens in nature. And it feels good to make something, even if it's just a wonky sweater or some weird scrap that's destined for the bottom of the toy bin. I spent some peaceful minutes in the past several evenings doing rows of seed stitch with scrap yarn. I like the nubbly feel of it and the sense that I'm pulling something along with me. Sitting and basically doing nothing, but leaving something behind, too.

Writing is important in the same way and more.It's a way of keeping track of where I've been. If there are words put down somewhere, typed quickly here or scrawled in a notebook with the idea of someday becoming poems, then I haven't just floated through the week without leaving any footprints. It seems to matter, even though it's hardly ever clear what on earth I've made.

Span (Next to Last)

I don’t know how it felt to her, but from my point of view this—way back in December—was one of the bravest blog posts I’ve read.

Churches have been important to me—as communities, as places for questioning and reflection and discussion and activism—for most of my life. Reading, thinking, and writing about religions was essentially my job for many years (as a student and graduate student), and exploring spiritual life has been high on my list of occupations for many more years than that. My closest friends often end up being people of deep faith.

But even after all that, I’m not generally someone who prays. At Ingrid’s day care, they sing Blessings on the blossoms / Blessings on the roots / Blessings on the leaves and stems / Blessings on our food before lunch, and that’s lovely. But when it comes to saying Dear God, Thank you for this day, and by the way could you also please help me keep from screaming at my daughter this evening, I normally can’t quite get through it. I get tripped up somewhere around the word God.

Except. Except for sometimes lately. Since Iris was born, I have been praying sometimes, without even intending to. Even though there is nothing I can firmly say I believe that would account for prayer—let alone a response—being possible, I have been praying: Help. Help me be good enough for them.

That’s scary to say: I’m doing something I don’t understand. Even scarier: Sometimes—not always but sometimes—it seems to work in a way that I can’t even pretend to get. One minute I don’t have any peace, or patience, or compassion, and then, suddenly, I do.

The cliché is that parenting changes us. This, though, I did not expect: My children are driving me to religion.

Span (4)

One day last week we were in the usual start to the spiral: Iris was fussing, Ingrid was balking at getting dressed to leave the house. I couldn’t concentrate on one or the other, I was just trammelled by both.

I started to sing a song to calm Iris down: Tum bala, Tum bala, Tum balalaikaThen, hardly thinking about what I was doing, I changed the words to talk to Ingrid: Get your shoes, get your shoes, get your shoes, Ingrid. I don’t know that I expected results to this. But Iris quieted. Ingrid did a double-take when she heard the new words, and smiled, and kept listening. She found her shoes while I invented new verses, silly ones. She sung along.

Sound—which for days had felt like my enemy—was on our side. Calming Iris. Entertaining Ingrid. Smoothing the air so I could breathe it again. Connecting us.

It wasn't—by far—the first time I'd used singing to be heard, to soothe, to entertain. But it was the first time I noticed how much music does to get me through those moments.

And singing is the one thing I can do that sometimes meets all of our needs at once. I've done a a ton of singing since that day. Iris needs the tune, the rhythm. Ingrid needs the word play and the unexpected. I need to hear something orderly. And it feeds me, just a little, to be creative with words, even in that fleeting medium. (What a rush it is to rhyme Daddy with spaghetti. Huzzah!) I don't have much of a musical education, but as far as I'm concerned this is what music is for.

Span (3)

I’m reading Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods.

He talks about two kinds of attention: directed attention, and fascination. Directed attention is what we use up in our lives, focusing on work, solving problems, speaking and being spoken to. Fascination is a break from that. We are alert, but we are resting. This is what we find among the trees or walking through the desert. We are aware of our surroundings, but we emerge from it clear-headed instead of spent.

This makes complete, whole-body sense to me. In those bad moments, I am out of attention. I can’t focus because there’s too much happening, and because whatever part of me is in charge of maintaining focus is too pooped to go on.

I knew this instinctively, without having the words for it, before. I’d say I needed rest, and I didn’t (mostly) mean I want to be on the couch with my eyes closed, or staring at a flickering screen. I meant I need to do something restorative, something that replenishes what’s been used up. What would that be?

Louv's project is to show how important contact with nature is—for everyone, but especially for kids. So he writes a lot about how time in nature restores us. I can’t disagree. I’ve spent some joyful time in close contact with nature and come out as restored as I can imagine being. And my most frequent fantasy escape would certainly count as a natural place.

I will get us all outside more, and use some of my rest time, when I can, to be where things grow. And it helps, always, to have new words for a problem and a new kind of solution to look for.

But what, again, about 10:30 on a Tuesday morning? How can I sneak that kind of restoration into my life, into a house where the sound is already taking up all the space?

Where do you find it? What fills you up again?

Span (2)

Lately, sometimes, it feels like I can hear every sound in a room at once. At the indoor playground, it feels like every mama-conversation and every childish screech and crash is happening inside my head, and it’s impossible to pick out the words of my friend, who’s sitting right next to me. At the pharmacy, the music seems so loud I pace around wondering how I can get them to turn it down so I can concentrate on what I’m looking for.

And I feel rage. Rage. I picture myself ripping the arms off the polite pharmacy employee who informs me they don’t carry breast milk storage bags. At home, listening to A and Ingrid negotiate the bedtime routine, I want to break one pint glass after another and fill the sink with glass shards. Alone, still wound up from the last round of non-cooperation, I find things to slam my fist into: the kitchen door, the counter with a stack of potholders on it. My rage seems cartoonish in hindsight, but from the inside it is scary. I’m not afraid I’ll act on it; I’m afraid of feeling it.

Sometimes Iris fusses all day. Nothing’s wrong, it’s just the classic six-month-old discontent. Normal. I am gentle with her, always, but the sound of it fills up my whole body, and small-voiced why questions and requests for snacks pile in there, too, and before long I am made up of nothing but other people’s sounds. I am impatient and unkind with Ingrid. I snap at her. I don’t have any interest in her questions. I speculate that I could handle this all better, more calmly, if I were deaf. It’s the sounds that make it impossible, some days, to be more than mechanical. Their voices. The hours and hours and hours without silence.

I talk about this to A, to my mom, to my counselor. They all say it will help for me to have more breaks, more time away. We find ways for that to happen, and it helps, a little. But what about 10 a.m. on a Tuesday? What about 2:30 p.m. when everyone’s up from their nap already? What gets me to the other side of that, to the time when I can even think of a break?

I wonder about medication, but sometimes—this week, almost all the time—I am better than fine, all clear-minded and full of energy and ideas. I make an appointment with the MD who could prescribe something, just in case. The next available: May 6. What would get me all the way to May if things got rough again?

This isn’t new; this happened when Ingrid was a baby, too, and I waited it out without even as much support as I have now. I suspect there is a colorful bouquet of causes: hormones, stress, a little native anxiety, general temperamental ill-suitedness to the mothering of small children. I rode it out before, and I suspect it will get better soon. Right now, things are better. I feel like I've sent out a bird and am scanning the horizon for a flash of white and green. Is this the end? How much longer? And, in the meantime, what do I do with this? How do I get us all to the other side of it whole?

Span (1)

In the past several months, Ingrid has asked me a few dozen times for a name for that stretch of skin between her thumb and forefinger. I don't know one, but I don't think she believes me. Three days ago, she held hers up and said, This is the bridge of my hand.

The ear—which (Did you notice?) is shaped like Alaska—also has a bridge: that curved rim inside. And the thing under your tongue, too, the thing that holds your tongue down. That’s the bridge of your mouth.