Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 104

Busted

The words leaped off the page, preventing me from skimming through the last few pages of the magazine I was supposed to be going through so we could get rid of it: FIRING THE BUTLER AND THE MAID, it said.

I tore through the article, and phrase after phrase made me wince:

…choosing clothing and dressing their children…doing the laundry and putting clothes away…grabbing coats and jackets for every outing and taking them to the car…pouring, stirring, cutting, opening and even getting all food items from the refrigerator or cupboards to save time…ignore when their child leaves personal items on the floor, takes off shoes and leaves them in the middle of the living room or empties out toy boxes and book shelves…

All I could think was, BUSTED.

I don’t know that Karen Kaplan was writing about me: a mother of a five-year-old with Down syndrome. But I do know that what we require of Julianna is considerably less than what we ask even of Nicholas, because she’s less cooperative. And I know also that with the younger siblings, it is ten times easier (although quite resentment-building) to do it all myself, because if I try to have them help, it takes longer and cause more messes. You practically have to bully Miss Julianna to do a job, and if you’re not on site, i.e. breathing down her neck, she’ll just quit and read a book or something. Frankly, Nicholas is also at that stage. And with a baby who needs to nurse and/or be spoon fed (which takes even longer than nursing), it would not be hard for my entire day to consist of chore supervision.

And yet I know they’ve got to learn. And I know Julianna is past mistress of manipulation. In other words, she’s capable of doing more, if I will only take the time, and put in the effort, to make her do it.

I’d rather put this job off until I can focus on her and her alone–in other words, after Nicholas reaches the independence Alex has already achieved. Only trouble is, by then it’ll be Michael’s turn to learn. Teaching her is not going to get any easier. I realize I really have no choice but to grit my teeth and dig in.

Not the most glorious motherhood moment I’ve ever been privileged to write.

Let’s Talk About Fathers Day

One of my favorite images of Christian as father, watching over us. This is Alex.

(Stepping onto my soapbox)

You know, dads really get shafted, compared to moms.

Mothers Day happens during the school year. We bring home potted flowers, little crafts showing hand prints, booklets extolling our virtues, sculptures and who knows what-all.

Fathers Day? Middle of summer break. In other words: nothing.

Mothers Day, we get bombarded with ads reminding us that moms need diamonds, flowers, clothes and perfume to make our day special.

Another of my favorite images, also of Christian with Alex in 2006.

Dads? They get a barbecue. Candy. Maybe a power tool, if they’re lucky.

News flash, people: it takes two to make a baby. Women are not the center of the universe. Men and women may be different, but both sexes have lessons to teach that the next generation needs.

I’m posting this four days in advance of Fathers Day this year in order to issue this challenge: find some way to make this Sunday truly special for the man who raised you, for the man who is your partner in raising your children. If you, like me, are grasping for ideas, check out that awesome little tool called the internet.

(Stepping down from my soapbox now. Have a nice day.)

Related Posts:

7 Things I Learned From My Dad

7 Things I Learned From My Mom

Slobbers When Happy

Adorable, easygoing six-month-old seeks baby-loving companion susceptible to flirting.

Best qualities: starry brown eyes, long eyelashes, killer smile, and the best belly laugh ever heard. Bonus: rolls of fat are a plus at this age.

Likes: latching onto any convenient body part, being pummeled with own hand, big brother’s most annoying baby voice.

Loves: Mommy, Alex, Mommy, Daddy, Nicholas, Julianna, Mommy, any convenient pair of arms. In that order.

Favorite foods: avocado, milk, paper.

Skills: rolling over, sitting up (sometimes–don’t mind that permanent red spot on the forehead), playing peekaboo.

Slobbers when happy.

In Defense Of Flyover Country

This weekend, we took a trip to Iowa City. It was the first trip in seven years in which we got to choose our destination. Yes, I can see your reaction right now. You’re thinking, Iowa?  You chose Iowa?

As enlightened and tolerant as we think we are these days, we still view certain destinations as intrinsically better than others. Times Square: the center of everything. Rural Iowa: cornfields, with no culture at all. I won’t even go into the way the Midwest is portrayed in the movies.

I’ve lived my entire life in “flyover country,” and thanks to my grandparents, who took me on long RV vacations when I was a young elementary schooler, I’ve traveled quite a bit too. I’ve been to Chicago, New York, Washington, L.A., Florida. They’re great places to visit, but all you folks on the coasts who think the only things worth seeing in the great interior are the Grand Canyon and the ski slopes of Colorado–it’s time to open your mind.

Iowa, for instance, has its act together. It has five minor league baseball teams, countless professional and semi-professional symphony orchestras, more than two dozen state parks, plus lots of trails, local parks and recreational lakes with summer and winter activities (snowshoeing, cross country skiing, etc.).

We spent three days in Iowa City visiting friends, and for every block of time we had to fill, we had to choose one option from among many. Friday morning we went to Coralville’s Devonian Fossil Gorge:

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Saturday we visited the Iowa Children’s Museum. Our friends apologized for it being small–small, at least, compared to one big-city museum which boasts a carousel inside it so big that you can’t see the whole thing at once. But bigger isn’t necessarily better. It doesn’t take long to cross the line from “great” to “overwhelming for the target population.” This museum kept our kids completely occupied for three hours. Plenty of time.

(Julianna and I even got our faces painted.)

Saturday afternoon while the little ones napped, the older kids went to the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History.

I’ll grant you there’s something exciting about visiting the big cities, the historic sites and landmark images that permeate the culture. But there’s so much more to the world, and so much of it you can’t get on the coasts. The vast expanse of this country is beautiful and diverse in its geography. Just look at the national park system. It’s so much more than a handful of big-name attractions.

I learned this weekend that digital cameras have twice as many green sensors as they do red or blue. This is because the human eye sees more variations in green than in any other color. As we drove home, I realized anew how truly wired for nature we are. I marveled at the array of green all around me, framed by the brilliant gold of wheat under harvest: thick carpets and rippling waves of fields growing in strips of  pale lime-yellow and primary green, deepening to near-blue beneath the wide shadow of a cloud–to say nothing of the variation in texture and color of the woods beyond. I watched with wonder the puffy cumulus clouds stacked upon each other, tried to guess their height and superimpose cityscapes on them. Why haven’t I ever seen clouds like these swirling around skyscrapers? Are the clouds higher than I think they are, or does something about the buildings disrupt the flow of air and prevent such clouds from forming in a downtown area?

The cities, the coasts are great, and I will enjoy them to the fullest when the time comes to take those stereotypical vacations. But everybody’s been on those trips. Everybody has the same pictures, the same stories, the same experiences. I’m going to go looking for places to enjoy in flyover country. Because this is where the untold story is.

Your turn: I know a lot of my readers also live in Flyover Country. What should we all be going to visit, see or experience?

Two Weeks’ Worth of Field Trips (a 7QT post)

I know you have all been dying to find out how our summer plan is going, right? Well, chores are a mixed bag; the gratitude list went great for four days and then we got busy, but I am determined to persevere. And field trips? Ah, field trips.

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Week one: reptiles and a picnic with Daddy

Skeleton of a sea turtle, and three children who look like angels, even though two of them are trying hard to escape Mommy.

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We went to see snakes, mostly, but somehow turtles just photograph better, don’t you think?

(the picnic pictures weren’t all that great, thus their absence)

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Week two: Mommy-Alex date with Venus

The observatory dome open at rush hour, in preparation to watch Venus cross the sun

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Bonus field trip: picnic and playground

Michael’s first time in a swing! Good thing Nicholas is around to push, so Mommy can man the camera.

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Alex, AKA Iron Man, chased down the waterfall by Super Girl

 Bonus Take: when you have a priest friend over for dinner….

That Android is MINE, Padre. MINE.

In Which My Daughter Becomes Me

After my sister and I drove my parents to the brink of insanity with our bickering, my parents finished the basement and moved her downstairs, and I had my very own bedroom in the northwest corner of the farmhouse. From then until I moved out of the house, the double bed was shoved into the corner, and most nights I spent a lot of time looking at the Big Dipper, the North Star, and Cassiopeia, having long conversations with God and myself until at last I fell asleep. Sometimes I woke up with the first blush of dawn on my face, the breeze blowing across the north field to cool me.

I miss those days.

Since Julianna got her new bed, she’s discovered the joy I once knew. I don’t think her view is nearly as inspiring–rows and rows of taupe houses and streetlights simply don’t compare–but when we come back from running in the morning, we’ll often see a heart-shaped face resting on a chubby arm, and we get a smile and a “haaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiii!”

Two nights ago, we came upstairs to go to bed and discovered this.

My darling girl. So often I have no idea what is going on in that little head of yours. And yet here is the proof that you are indeed your mother’s daughter.

What Happened After Venus Crossed the Sun

Alex and I had a date last night. At 4:30 we all loaded into the van and went down to the university to meet Christian, who took the younger three (even the baby!) back home so the two of us could have some quality time with several hundred other people crowded onto a rooftop with telescopes and cool crazy glasses that let you look directly at the sun.

Our only job was to stop to pick up pictures before we came home–a job easier said than accomplished, as I had never actually been in this particular camera store and I didn’t know exactly where it was. It took ten minutes of circling blocks to find it, and we had to park two blocks away and walk. As we rounded the corner, I vaguely noticed two men crouched in the shade at the corner. I thought they were homeless.

We picked up our pictures and started back toward the car. I tried to inspect the men without being obvious. They sort of looked homeless, but they didn’t have the signs, the backpacks, the signs that would make them unmistakable. Besides, I had no cash on me at all–well, I had about three pennies in my wallet. Besides, Alex and I were talking about astronomical stuff. I was halfway down the block before it occurred to me that the men were sitting across the street from Panera. How hard would it have been to run inside and grab a couple sandwiches for them?

English: A homeless man in Paris Français : Un sans domicile fixe à Paris. Tiếng Việt: Một người đàn ông vô gia cư ở Paris Polski: Bezdomny mężczyzna w Paryżu See below for more translations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I very nearly stopped, turned around, went back. Visions of Matthew 25 flashed before me. But my inhibitions took off, swirling like a circle of bats. What if the men weren’t homeless after all, and I insulted them by asking? Besides, Michael had been crabby when I left him with Christian, and it had been almost two and a half hours since he’d nursed.

You will perhaps not be surprised to know that I neither stopped nor talked to Alex about them. We just came home.

I begin to despair of ever reaching peace with how to interact with the poor among us–what is truly the Christlike way of treating the homeless. I’m really trying to live my faith by simply doing things in the presence of my children, and not always talking about it. Two weeks ago, for example, we were flying from piano lesson to baseball game and stopped by HyVee for salads and chicken fingers for dinner. I splurged on two crab rangoon, and as we sat at the stoplight off the interstate, I saw a young man sitting in the corner. I couldn’t give him much of our food without making someone else go hungry, but I called him over and gave him my crab rangoon as the light turned green.

In an earlier stage of my life, I kept peanut butter, plastic silverware and packages of crackers in the car so I could hand them out to people begging at intersections. But I haven’t done that in a long time. We take food to the homeless shelter a couple times a year. It’s something, I suppose. It just doesn’t seem like enough.

I suppose I’m grateful that they’re there, like a thorn in my side, popping my bubble of self-righteousness before it gets too bloated. Keeping me aware not only of the suffering of the world, but of my own weaknesses.

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(P.S. In case you’ve never witnessed me wrestle with homelessness before, read here and here.)

Help Us Choose Michael’s Six-Month Portraits!

Let’s talk kids’ portraits today, because after yesterday we need a change of focus. Right?

Show of hands: do you love or loathe going to get your kids’ pictures taken? I loved it for a while, but the process got frustrating–policies and procedures in those department store studios are a pain in the neck, and after Julianna passed beyond the baby stage, it got very difficult to get good pictures of her. They would never snap the picture at the right time. I wanted to grab the clicker out of their hands. Plus, I want outdoor pictures.

So we started borrowing a DSLR and taking our own portraits, and after a couple years’ worth of product research (and a whole lot of saving), we bought one . (It’s a Canon Rebel T3i, in case you’re wondering. Love it. Love.It.)

Michael’s six months old now, and I snapped about two hundred shots on Saturday. And today I would like you to help us choose his official portrait. So (are you bracing yourself for some serious cuteness?):

Exhibit A: Just before he decided to eat grass

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Exhibit B: Swimming and Smiling on the Kitchen Floor

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Exhibit C: Lovin’ the Picnic Blanket

So, now you vote. (Won’t you? Pretty please?)

Take Our Poll

Mothering Seems Hard Right Now

Photo by kalavinka, via Flickr

(WARNING: This is another one of THOSE POSTS. Read at your own risk.)

Before I was a mother, going to the grocery store used to be dangerous to my emotional state. It seemed like every trip, I’d see some mother ream her kid out, hollering and scolding for no good reason. Every time, I wanted to grab those women by the arm and shriek, “How dare you speak to your child that way? She’s not doing anything wrong! Appreciate the freaking gift you’ve been given! I would give ANYTHING to have what you have!”

These days, I try not to take the kids to the grocery store. Because I turn into that mom.

Four kids later, I realize it’s not just about what happened at the store. It’s about the behaviors and attitudes that pile up through hours and days. It’s about mom being worn down by constant barrage of kids taking each other’s toys, pushing each other, disobeying, making everything a battle. All the reasons why the age 2-4 is my least favorite.

On the way home from the store Friday, following Julianna trying to appropriate half a dozen people’s carts as push toys and Nicholas opening every door in the refrigerated/frozen cases even after being told four or five times to leave them alone…following that, I let out a comment I couldn’t believe I’d voiced. For a moment I had a surreal half-out-of-body moment in which heard my own voice and thought, Did you really just say that? What if THAT is what they remember?

I apologized, but the experience shook me.

I remember this phase and the beginning of its resolution with Alex, although the catalyst moment with him was different. I can feel us hunkering down on opposite sides of the Battle Of Wills. Every day I feel more worn-out by dealing with it in duplicate. Nicholas answers every question with No! (isn’t that supposed to be a two-year-old thing?), even when he means yes, as if testing whether I’ll ask again. And Julianna lowers her head and rolls her eyes up to make sure I’m paying attention–her defiant look. She knows if I say “look at me, please,” and she does, she has no excuse to pretend she didn’t hear.

I doubt myself constantly. I say she understands everything but likes to pretend she doesn’t. But then I think, Does she, really? Am I demanding obedience when she doesn’t even understand the instruction? I remember that little smile while I’m counting down from five, the way she waits till one to comply. Yes, she gets it.

But I’d hate to be crushing her spirit by imposing demands she’s not ready for.

But I don’t want her to be a brat who thinks she can get away with anything she wants, just because she has a disability.

This is my all-day, my every-day right now. And it’s exhausting. I don’t handle it with the grace I want to. I know this is an inevitable stage of childhood, not a reflection on poor parenting. I also know the stakes are high, and I have to handle this right. I have some successes. Nicholas helped me cook all afternoon that day, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. He was a great helper. (Hint: slow, methodical, lengthy hand-stirring yields amazing pumpkin pie.) But it seems like those moments are scattered and hard to catch among the shrieking and shouting and throwing things and breaking things and disassembling things just because they’re there.

At times like these, my mother’s (and grandmother’s) worries that we had our kids too close together seem well-founded, indeed.

But other people have had kids 2 years apart through the generations. Many others. Why does it seem so much harder now?

When I confess these difficulties, I feel like I’m providing fodder to the multitudes who insist they can’t possibly have more than two kids. I want to ask my (other) grandmother, who raised ten, if she felt this way. Surely she did! But I have a feeling if I asked she’d frown and say, “I don’t remember.”

You know, maybe mommy brain is a blessing, after all.

I’d like this to be a little better organized, a little more upbeat. But darn it, we have chores to do this morning. Time to quit navel-gazing and be a mom. Prayers welcome.

Sunday Snippets

Time for another roundup of Catholic bloggers at This, That and The Other Thing, where RAnn does terrific, thoughtful book reviews. If you’ve never browsed her blog, you should.

My contributions for this week:

Organizing Summer Break

I contributed a guest post this week on special needs parenting, in which I synthesized two global points I haven’t really reflected on before on my own blog.

Thursday was all about bonding with babies.

I won’t post my whole 7 Quick Takes post, but here’s a link from it you might be interested in: I have a new song available from WLP.

Fiction Friday: Rage, featuring the same character as last week, only at a much darker period of his life.

Head on over to check out everyone else’s week!