Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 42

More Moments of Maternal Pride And Joy (and sometimes giggles)

Alex.

Alex brought this home from his gifted program last week. They were supposed to make a list of nine items, three in three different categories, and choose one from each to write a story. He said they had about ten minutes to do it. He was so nonchalant. He didn’t spare a moment thinking about the agony has always been pulling thoughts from his head and putting them on paper.

The other project he brought home was a house. Here’s a video.

(The sound is a little hard to hear, so here’s the abridged version: “I like to be inventive, so I put an elevator in. There’s a drawbridge, and there’s a water slide, a library–the first library–and the second library, then a rock wall, and a telescope, and a satellite dish. And then I put in a glass tunnel.”)

Nicholas

Nicholas came home from his last day of school and said, “Mom, guess what happened to me at lunch?”

“What?”

“THIS.”

What a way to celebrate the last day of kindergarten!

Last night I wiggled the rest of his teeth and I think we could have several more by the end of the summer. I told him I was going to call him Toothless.

Toothless, by Brett Jordan, via Flickr

He was worried about how he was going to eat. I told him he’d have to go on a liquid diet. It was a nice mother-son moment. ;)

But he didn’t only lose a tooth, he lost the tooth. Like, literally. Because it was Field Day and he was too busy playing to keep track of it. So he wrote a note to the tooth fairy last night, all by himself. And it’s too cute, so I’m inflicting it on you:

What, you can’t decipher that? It says: “Deer tooth faeree, can you plese fide my tooth at our late of loers in the luch room.” And I’ve blocked out the address and phone number he included at the end, because even I don’t want that info plastered all over my blog.

Julianna

I don’t think I’ve shared how amazingly Julianna has come along in her math ability in the last couple of months. I’m pretty sure they never modified her homework this year–in any case, last year we were counting backwards and forwards and filling in missing numbers the entirety of first grade, and this year we are doing addition and subtraction and regrouping and +/- by tens. I have an iPad app that puts up ten-frame boxes, and we painstakingly count by tens and then singles, moving colored dots in and out of the boxes. It would be nice if she could conceptualize the numbers, but the fact that she can even do math at all makes me weak with relief. You have no idea how much I have dreaded her math homework.

But this is her big deal in the past week:

Michael

And Michael. Oh, Michael. He’ll be a peer model next fall in an early childhood sped classroom (a multicategorical, much like Julianna’s was), and his new teacher is one of Julianna’s dance helpers. So yesterday at dance, she said, “Hi, Michael!” on her way into the studio. Michael stared at her suspiciously. I said, “Michael, that’s your new teacher.”

His face cleared instantly, and he started peering through the studio window, watching every move she made. I kissed his cheek and said, “Does that make her more interesting?”

He whispered, “Yeah.”

But this is the real Michael moment you need. He’s giving an instrumental music concert. He was stealing my flute peg every day until I made him start using one of Julianna’s empty green tea bottles instead.

Happy weekend!

Sex Always Has Consequences

Photo by Selbe

When I heard the story on the news this morning, I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or do a face palm. There’s a new study out saying that women taking the newer-generation mini birth control pills have 3x higher risk of blood clots compared to women who don’t take oral contraceptives. But, they hasten to add, that doesn’t mean you should stop taking them.

I’ve come to a realization lately that I think all women, and frankly all men too, need to come to terms with. For me, it was a long time in coming, considering how obvious it is.

There is no such thing as sex without consequences.

Proponents of natural family planning and proponents of artificial means of birth control both seem unable to grasp this simple truth. The NFP community likes to harp on the side effects of birth control and its potential to damage human relationships. Those who use birth control deride NFP as ineffective and contrary to human nature because it requires people to fight their instincts to come together at women’s most fertile time.

We would all like to think there’s some magic bullet that takes away the sacrifice and, dare I say it, suffering that is part and parcel of reproductive life. We want to be able to enjoy the coming together without the side effects/consequences. There are basically three courses you can take: you can impose artificial controls on nature (contraception); you can work with nature (NFP); or you can do whatever you want and let the chips fall where they may.

Photo by einalem, via Flickr

But every one of those paths has consequences.

If you use natural family planning, you have to deal with occasional (and for some people, frequent) ambiguity in the signs and the need to abstain when the woman is most interested in sex. There’s no question that requires sacrifice and, sometimes, suffering.

If you use chemical contraception, though–assuming it does what it’s supposed to do, and fools your body into thinking it’s pregnant already–you’re giving up that increased sex drive altogether. Which is why I find it puzzling when proponents of birth control criticize NFP for the abstaining when the sex drive is highest. I mean, it’s not like contraception solves that issue. And besides, there’s that whole thing about side effects, and environmental impact, and blood clots. Again: sacrifice, and sometimes, suffering.

Your third option is to let the chips fall where they may. You get the best of both worlds: sex whenever you feel like it, without side effects, without increased risk of blood clots. But there’s a natural consequence to that, too, and it involves bigger cars and bigger houses and a humongous grocery bill, to say nothing of college costs. And a lot of time pregnant and breastfeeding and exhausted. So again: sacrifice, and sometimes, suffering.

The reality is that sex does have consequences, no matter what you do. You can gnash your teeth all you like, but that’s the reality. Our job is to make the most responsible choice we can, based on as much information as we can. And the longer I’m involved with natural family planning, the more thoroughly convinced I become that NFP, while not without consequences, is the best option. It’s not the easiest, but it is the best–for women, for couples, for the world.

What’s Up With My Babies This Week (a 7QT post)

1: Horse or Purple Unicorn

Almost every day, Julianna’s bus driver has a story to share about my daughter when I come to get her off the bus. Wednesday of this week, on the heels of Julianna’s first horseback riding lesson of the year, the story was this: “Julianna told us that she rode a purple unicorn. We couldn’t understand his name, though. We think ‘interval’?”

(For the record, the horse is a bay, and his name is Richard.)

2: How To Motivate A Slow Child

Every day, getting Julianna off the bus requires that I, her driver, the other kids, and whatever poor schmuck is stuck behind the stop sign wait while she stretches luxuriously, hugs every child on the bus, admires her reflection in the rearview mirror, and stumbles through some deeply exciting story that neither I nor anyone else can entirely decipher through her enthusiasm. Wednesday, though, my cousin and her family were waiting in the house, and I knew just how to get her moving. “Julianna, guess what? There’s a BABY in the house!”

Julianna was off the bus in ten seconds flat.

3: Duets

It’s been another crazy week, as all of them are during Little League season. About the only claim to productivity I can make this week is that I self-published a set of flute duets for upper-middle-school and high school players, called “Childhood: Six Progressive Duets for Flute.” The great thing about duets is that students can learn them in full, including ensemble, with their teachers. I always hated playing duets where one person got the fun stuff and the other person was stuck with low notes and boring stuff, so I wrote these so the parts would trade back and forth. The titles give you an idea of the style: Night Lights, Swing Sets, Bike Riding, Afternoon Tea, Superheroes, and Roller Coasters. Know any flute players or music teachers who could use such a thing? ;)

I rehearsed them yesterday with my undergrad flute teacher. He has always been a very supportive human being, but one can’t help but blossom when someone who’s had that kind of influence on you uses words like “delightful!” to describe your music.

4: Star Wars Artist

Alex has been growing as a baseball player this year, which is beautiful to see. He’s been catching quite a bit and pitching a little. However, my favorite Alex share-able right now is this, which tells so much about him:

(We told him he needed to stop drawing TIE fighters on his spelling tests until they start coming back perfect scores. But we hung the paper on the display wall, too!)

5: Good Sport

Nicholas gets a shout-out today for being an incredibly good sport. He’s glorying in being in baseball, and he has a maddening self-confidence in his own ability, especially given that he’s, yanno, in kindergarten. But he gets full marks and then some for spirit, not only at his games but his brother’s: he’s the loudest cheering section at Alex’s games by far. He does “Let’s go Pirates!” cheers and yells “Good job!” with a complete lack of self-consciousness that shows how big a heart he really has.

6: Speaker Extraordinaire

Michael? Michael is on summer break already. His preschool did a “circus” last week in which the kids introduced themselves before doing a trick. Michael’s trick was a balancing thing I can’t even describe, but the introduction was very revealing. He’s spent the second half of this school year in a speech-language classroom with other kids who have apraxia, but he progressed so quickly that his teachers finally began questioning whether he really does have apraxia. Michael’s introduction, that night, was way more clear and comprehensible than any other child, including the “peer models” who are there to model typically-developing skills to their classmates. Next year he will be in preschool as a peer model himself, but in a classroom right here in our neighborhood, which means we can ride bikes up there when the weather is decent.

7: Pickpocket

But I digress. The story I really wanted to tell about Michael is this:

Last week, we were walking back and forth across the street at the Little League complex, dropping Alex off, dropping Nicholas off, coming back to watch Alex catch, then going to watch the end of Nicholas’ game, and all coming back to finish the night back at Alex’s. As the last inning of Alex’s game was finally wrapping up, I started collecting the spread-out remains of dinner and entertainment in preparation for going home, and I felt in my pocket for my keys….and they weren’t there.

Including the key to the van, the only vehicle big enough to get the whole family home.

The friend I was sitting beside offered to keep an eye on the kids while I retraced my steps back and forth to find them. But just as I got off the bleachers I had this Holy Spirit moment that told me, “Check Michael’s coat.” That’s the only explanation I can give, because the impulse was so irrational and so strong. I mean, his coat pockets aren’t big enough to hold that rack of keys….

And yet there they were. Michael picked my pocket while I was watching the game.

7QT posts always get so wordy! But I hope I at least entertained you. Have a great long weekend, and head over to This Ain’t The Lyceum for more.

I Need Your Help!

Most of the time, I blog to inspire, to make you think or smile. Most of the time, I’m here to give to you.

But today, I need your help.

I’m starting down a new path this spring. At the request and under the direction of two flute-teacher friends, I have written a set of flute duets.

(I know–most of you aren’t musicians. Stick with me, here!)

The collection is titled “Childhood.” (Appropriate, don’t you think?) The individual duets are:

Night Lights
Swing Sets
Bike Riding
Afternoon Tea
Superheroes
Roller Coasters

The great thing about duets in general is that students can learn them in full with their teachers. They can practice ensemble–leadership, pitch, and phrasing–within the context of a weekly lesson, without having to find a pianist and schedule rehearsals.

The great thing about these duets is that they’re tuneful and fun, and the parts are equal–meaning there’s not one interesting part and one boring accompaniment. They’re constantly trading roles.

“Childhood” is available through J.W. Pepper, where you can listen to excerpts and view the music.

But the hardest thing about self-publishing is getting the word out. And that’s where you come in.

Now, I’m well aware that the vast majority of my readers aren’t musicians, but I’ll bet you know people who are: school music teachers, kids’ band directors, church musicians, parents of kids who play flute in band.

I need you to share!

Share this post. (I’m working on getting “share” buttons, but WordPress and I are having a breakdown in communication right now. I told it to display them, and it’s not. Beats me. I’ve asked support for help.)

Share the link to the music directly to Facebook, Twitter, email et al. (Here: I’ll even make it easy to cut and paste: http://bit.ly/1L1Rq9F )

And even easier: Here’s a Tweet you can use:

Childhood: Six progressive #duets for #flute. Tuneful, intermediate/upper-intermediate #music by @kathleenmbasi. http://bit.ly/1L1Rq9F

I know this is outside the comfort zone for most of us–myself included. I would normally rather crawl in a hole than risk being big-headed and bragging. But I’m asking for your help, because I can’t do this without you. I don’t have fancy giveaways for motivation–just a sincere request for your help on a rainy Wednesday morning. Hey, what else do you have to do today? ;)

Of Walking Bean Fields And Mowing Lawns, and Teaching Kids A Work Ethic

Photo by infomatique, via Flickr

There’s a repertoire of “farm kid” stories that country kids have to have: loading, unloading and stacking straw and hay bales is on the list (check), and some great animal stories that are not universally appropriate to share (check). For a lot of people, detassling corn is one of Those Stories. I never did that, although I heard about it a lot.

We did, however, walk bean fields. You don’t walk just any bean field. We walked bean fields because my parents were growing soybeans for seed, and the seed companies wanted the product much cleaner—i.e.., weed-free—than the average. The row cultivator helps, and so do the herbicides, but sometimes there’s nothing to do but pound the dirt.

My parents hired us—actually, “hired” is probably not entirely accurate, as we were not given a choice in the matter; on the other hand, they did pay us—to go out on hot summer evenings and spread out, each of us covering three to five rows, depending on the density of the weeds, and pull weeds. Our main enemies were cottonweed, cuckleburr, and shattercane.

Oh, that shattercane. Shattercane is like dandelions, only with a slower life cycle and a whole lot bigger. And it looks a lot like corn. Let one plant go and next year you have hundreds. Sometimes we had to abandon our own rows and go help someone else who had a patch. Some days the ground was wet, other days it was really dry. Sometimes things uprooted easily, sometimes they didn’t.

I complained a lot. In my head, I complained almost nonstop.

I remembered this on Friday evening because Alex had to mow a neighbor’s yard. You would think, based on his reaction, that he’d been sentenced to life in prison. We didn’t give him a choice; a job is a job is a job, and we had a break in the rain. And to his credit, once he got that initial “tween” reaction out of the way, he didn’t complain out loud. But I could see the complaints in his head. They were voluminous.

It got me to thinking that when we’re kids we always think we’re being better behaved than we really are. I figured my parents didn’t know how bad my attitude was while walking beans, because I was hiding it out of respect. But on the other side of the parenting coin I am certain that they knew very well how bad my attitude was.

In any case, I’m grateful to my parents for the early lessons in work ethic, because they’ve served me well, however much I loathed them at the time. (Gardening, canning, processing chickens, loading hay, weeding garden, mowing lawn…) Now the trick is, to find the opportunities for my own city-dwelling kids…

Things I’m Loving Right Now

Books:

A Marginal Jew. This is a series of four books, actually, and I’m on the second. They are dense reading, with the end notes to each chapter taking more space than the text, and it is ponderous and takes real mental effort to get through. Yet the level of detail in Meier’s analysis brings to light connections I’ve never seen before in the Gospels. Brace yourself for some heresy. :) I’ve often felt like Jesus is kind of tiresome and deliberately obtuse in the way he talks (an impression that really is underscored this Easter, listening to the entire Last Supper discourse in John day after day after day after day). But as Meier sifts through history and context in order to determine what parts of things were actually said by Jesus, and which were later additions, he ends up distilling the essence of passages in a way that brings humor and emotion and exasperation to the front. It helps me see Jesus as, well, a real person.

The Language of Flowers. Just enchanting, and heartbreaking, and mesmerizing.

Music:

Love. This. Song.

Food:

Steel cut oats. (Thanks, Kelley!) With dark chocolate. Although I’m less than enamored of the way they overboil in the microwave.

Miscellaneous:

Manual Mode on my Canon Rebel. The pictures have so much character. They’re often not worth much, while I’m learning, but I’m newly cognizant of just how bland and generic that “auto” setting I’ve been leaning on is. I went out to the Pinnacles again this week. The last time I went, it was still late winter, and I hadn’t started playing with manual yet when I took the pictures for that slide show. Here’s a sample of this week’s pictures.

(Can you guess which ONE of the above pictures was taken with the camera’s auto settings?)

My new novel. I am in love. Is it naiveté to whisper in my head that I really, really think this might be The One, at long last? Or is that still second-draft talking, before I hit the “love-hate” stage? The above song is my theme song for this book. And I’m using the Pinnacles for a setting. I just feel like everything is coming together. If I could sit down and work on it all day, I would be a happy woman indeed. But it’s probably fresher and more efficient because I have to stop and think. Stare at your own words too long and you start to get in love with the sound of your own prose. Distance helps me ask questions that need asking.

There are my happy places for this mid-May Friday morning. What’s making you happy today?

Handling Change With Grace

June 2005

One of the things I’ve always admired about my parents is how gracefully they have passed from one stage of life, of parenthood, to the next. They moved quietly and without drama from being parents of littles to parents of school kids and then teens, and then college kids, and then finally into the empty nest, and I’ve never once gotten a sense that they regretted any of those changes. They’ve embraced each new stage for the opportunities unique to it, and even the aging process lies lightly on them.

I aspire to be like them.

March 2009

There is a shift in self-image going on in me these days. From the time we began trying to have kids in 2001 right up until Michael was born, we were in a constant cycle of discernment, planning, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and return to fertility. About the time the baby hit fourteen months, we started that cycle over again. My identity was: having babies.

Michael is closing in on 3½ now. Above half of the time, he’s too big to snuggle, let alone have Mommy blow raspberries on his tummy. He’s in school four mornings a week, reading stop signs and playing with Transformers, and he’s desperate to play baseball like his big brothers.

November 2014

I am no longer a mother having babies. I am a mother working from home, figuring out how to juggle dropoff and pickup at three different schools, get kids to horseback, piano and baseball when they all happen in the same two-hour time span. I am logistics mom now. Have laptop, will travel.

There are times when I shake my head and think, How did I get here? My vision of parenthood never saw beyond pregnancy, childbirth and nursing. Well, and toilet training.

We’re a year and a half past toilet training.

I still have a baby longing, because I’m a baby person, but contrary to threats during the having babies years, I do not miss those days. My back and shoulders hurt a whole lot less now than they did when I was lugging a car seat around and having to work one-handed while holding a baby.

The kids are helping with housework. Not always willingly, hardly ever without supervision, and never, ever as well as if I did it myself–but still, they’re helping.

I have practiced my flute three days in a row this week.

I don’t always have to hire a sitter to go out and sit in nature.

I went to the library by myself.

There’s always a period of adjustment. (The blatantly obvious things you put into words,when you’re writing a blog!) I was talking to a mother of one of Nicholas’ Little League teammates, who was rather perturbed at the plethora of games scheduled at 7p.m. on school nights for kindergarteners, and it occurred to me that this year (unlike the last couple), I hadn’t even blinked an eye. I just wrote it down and planned around it. Just like this week, I’m planning around Michael being up late and not being at home for naps two days in a row because of the convergence of a) a med student presentation on DS, b) baseball games, c) choir practice and d) early dismissal.

I have the flexibility to do that now. I didn’t have that two years ago.

It would be ridiculous to pretend that the meltdown of two weeks ago didn’t happen. I don’t handle everything with as much grace as I would like. Still, I’m taking time to acknowledge what is unique and beautiful about this stage of life and parenthood. This new stage is out of control, and it needs whipping into shape, but it is rich. And I intend to enjoy it while it lasts, and be ready to let it go when it, too, passes into something new.

Love Speaks The Truth (a No Easy Answers post)

It seems to me that people come to blogs looking for one of three things: answers, inspiration, or solidarity.

I have my moments for providing answers–at least, as they have revealed themselves in my life–and inspiration. But the truth is that I often wrestle with questions that have no easy answers.  This is my place to think through my fingers and figure things out…and sometimes to conclude that there’s no solution at all, only the need for awareness.

I decided it’s time to codify that into a formal series: “No Easy Answers.” Not something regular, but at least something recognizable.

It begins with a half-remembered quote heard at a convention last summer. It went something like: “Friendship is the birthplace of conversion.” (Or was it the catalyst, or the crucible, or the garden of conversion?)

When I heard that quote, my heart whispered, Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Because I have a friend who calls me to be better than I am now, who meets my rants with a challenge to step back and look through things  from someone else’s point of view–someone whose love for me, in short, allows her to speak the truth to me, and helps me bend toward others and become a better human being.

This is true within my marriage, too. Love not only allows us to speak truth to each other; it compels us to do so–to lead each other along a path to betterment. Put another way, speaking the truth is how we bring each other closer to God.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately, because if this is love, then it speaks to all relationships that we approach out of love–which is all of them. English really only has one word for “love,” and we shy away from using it outside of the romantic or family context, but the truth is we care about people because we are human and we are built to be in relationship. That is love.

Given that, the ability to speak truth is an ideal we should strive for in all our relationships: parent, child, friend, colleague, sibling, cousin.

But that’s where the hard part comes in. Because not all our relationships are strong enough to handle the speaking of truth. Sometimes love is twisted. Sometimes love is damaged by repeated instances of another person lashing out from their own pain. Love is still there, but the connection lines are not solid, and if we speak truth through those damaged lines, conversion gets twisted into something much less healthy.

In those instances, when we see someone we care about doing, saying, or holding attitudes that we can see are damaging to their emotional or physical or relational health, we have a choice to make: how to respond.

But there are no good options.

Option one is to speak the truth as gently as possible. But when relationships are damaged, this will only cause further division.

Option two is to ignore the elephant in the room–just not to address it–in an attempt to avoid sounding judgmental. But affirmation is built into human interaction, and the withholding of affirmation speaks volumes on its own. The person on the other end always knows he or she is being judged, whether you say it or not, so this, too, widens the divide.

Option three is to bury your own integrity and shower them with insincere affirmation. And I think we can all see what’s wrong with that one.

Christian has been reading Dave Ramsey’s book on leadership, where he talks about the root relationship between the words integer, integral, and integrity. It had never occurred to me until Christian read a paragraph to me, that these three words were all related to wholeness. Integrity is when everything you are is everything you are, and you don’t set some of it aside in different circles, because you can’t. This is what I have been trying to put words to for quite a while, my hope and my goal for passing the faith on to my children: that it becomes so integral to who they are that they can never fall away, because it would mean abandoning their very identity. And yet at the same time, it is not a facade polished up and worn like a jewel that you have to show off, but instead it’s something so integral that you don’t really have to talk about it all that much for people to know it’s there.

A beautiful vision for my children, but it does create this impossible situation when relationships are not strong enough. Because the reality is I have to make a bad choice between looking (and maybe being) self-righteous and failing to be true to who I am and what I believe.

And I think that everyone has faced situations like this. Which is why I bring it up. (There’s that “solidarity” piece.) We’d like to think there really are solutions to every problem we face, but the reality is, this one doesn’t have one. There are no good solutions. Only picking the one that seems the least damaging at any given time.

No easy answer.

The Obligatory #MothersDay Post

This week has involved three baseball games, two concerts, a performance, a funeral, a preschool screening, a field trip, a sprained ankle, a sick daughter, a couple emotionally-charged school-contact moments, and yesterday, lying on the couch all day feeling like dying.

I think I have earned the right to re-post rather than come up with new content. Here is a post I wrote about Mothers Day a couple years ago:

In case you missed the memo, yesterday was a big day.

Happy Mother’s Day (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mothers Day is one of those holidays that bears the weight of impossible cultural expectations. I’ve had some doozies of Mothers Days in the past few years. There were three in a row, in the infertility years, when I tried to pretend the day didn’t even exist. But the mother of all Bad Mothers Days was the one I spent in the PICU with Julianna. She wasn’t in any danger by that time, so all my emotional energy went into feeling sorry for myself. After all, I’d asked for only one thing for Mothers Day: brunch at one of those wonderful buffets. Instead,  I was sitting under fluorescent lights being bored out of my skull and trying to keep a baby entertained while his sister slept…or didn’t.Since then, I’ve kept my expectations for Mothers Day pretty low. The whole thing is a crock, anyway. You should appreciate your mother all the time; this is just one more way to separate people from their money. As a stay-at-home mom, the best Mothers Day gift I can imagine is for someone to take them off my hands for a whole day so I can just relax! And, um, that’s not quite the point. Ahem.

This year, by the time the weekend rolled around, I was in not in a great frame of mind. Witness my Facebook status:

These are the days that make me want to engage in some serious theatrical drama. In an attempt to get naps coordinated, I force Michael to stay awake for an extra half hour till I get lunch on and the others are half done. Then I put him down, get them finished with lunch, and upstairs they go. Julianna goes in and wakes Michael up.

1 1/2 hours later, I despair of getting him back down by nursing, so I put him in his room and pray he’ll go down before he wakes Julianna up. After ten minutes of him crying, NICHOLAS wakes up wailing in the other room. I comfort him, tell him it’s not time to get up yet, and go back downstairs.

Ten minutes after THAT, Michael wakes Julianna up. I carry her into my room to finish her nap. Michael settles down at last. Three minutes after THAT, the @#$%^&*( neighbor turns on some jack hammer-sounding piece of lawn equipment…which won’t work. So he starts it again. And again. And again. And every time, Michael screams AGAIN.

Three minutes after THAT, Dish Network pounds (I don’t mean “knocks,” I mean “pounds”) on the door. “I’M NOT INTERESTED,” I say, and slam the door in their faces.

And Michael is crying again.

Michael did not sleep for FOUR AND A HALF HOURS on Friday afternoon. I spent the whole evening composing a long, foul blog rant in my head.

But Christian has been on a multi-year campaign to redeem my faith in Mothers Day. Last year, he took us all to a brunch buffet–quite an investment with our then-three children. It was wonderful. This year, he came home with a crabapple tree for me (I adore crabapple trees, and he hates them), and we bought a new outdoor table and chairs, which he and my parents put together at great inconvenience and time expenditure so we could eat our dinner outside yesterday. (Babe, you rock!)

It’s human nature to hug the extremes, I suppose. We get into a negative funk and look for things to get P.O.’d about, and then someone hears us and goes to the opposite pole: “Just enjoy it! It goes so fast!” I defy you to enjoy a baby who’s mad and refusing all forms of comfort for four solid hours. Please. Be real.

The reality, and it’s an uncomfortable one, is this: “Motherhood is the only time you can experience Heaven and Hell at the same time.” You can’t deny either part; to do so devalues the whole. In contemplating this humble post, less than a blip on the radar of the blogosphere, much less the sum total of human history, I traveled from borderline murderous rampage to blissful transcendence to grace-filled tolerance and back to pulling my hair out. (Fussing baby + preschooler who is physically incapable of closing his mouth while awake + clumsy daughter knocking over the marble run for the tenth time in half an hour = Mommy Meltdown.)

I think I would be less jaded about holidays like Mothers Day more if those trying to separate us from our money were a little less rosy about the whole thing and acknowledge how darned tough it often is. We all need affirmation. That’s why the card Christian gave me last night was so perfect:

The inside reads: “And that was all just since yesterday!” Did I mention my husband rocks?

Wordy Wednesday….

But not my words. Michael’s words, about his dad. Which are a riot, because he clearly has no idea about his dad. At. All.