Several days ago, in the throes of one of Ransom’s purgatorial downswings, I was bouncing Esther on my knee, just happy to have and hold her smiling round pink self.
“You are such a little gift!” I told her.
“Ransom is a gift, too,” Nathaniel said, “But he’s like that thing people give that makes the recipient say, ‘Thaaaanks.’ Ransom is the fruitcake.”
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Time for more pictures of things I’ve made. Somehow, it made sense to me to take my precious quiet after the kids have gone to bed time to make Esther an Easter dress. It was very simple, so that helped. … Continue reading
My last living grandmother died last week. She was five days from her 93rd birthday, and it was a mercy God took her home at last. The past several years of her life can hardly be called so.
I write that by way of introduction to my thoughts, not to spark sympathetic comments, because truly she is now perfectly happy and was previously grievously ill. Death, for her as for all God’s own, was a blessing. Continue reading
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I do not know how I manage to craft while not managing to blog about it. It must be that crafting puts me at my limit and blogging runs over. At any rate, I wanted to post a blanket I … Continue reading
Today, I was set to record a podcast over the phone with a guest at 3 p.m. Ransom takes his afternoon nap from 2:30 to 4:30, so is usually quieted down by 3 and it’s a favored recording time.
At 2:50, Esther is sleeping. But I hear noises from Ransom that are loud enough to make me think he’s playing downstairs. Weird, I think. Nathaniel usually has him in bed by now.
I go downstairs, and it’s like a tornado hit the floor. Books, CDs, toys. Almost covering the floor. But Nathaniel and Ransom were nowhere. So I called Nathaniel. He was out in the garage, and Ransom was supposed to be in bed.
Supposed to be. At that, I went upstairs to check on him, because I still heard squeaks and blocks clashing, which isn’t supposed to be possible in his bed. I look under the door, and I see little socked feet wandering around the room. Awesome. How did he get out of his crib? Continue reading
Posted in children, family, humor, practical life, vignettes
Tagged children, Esther, happy insanity, Ransom, working, working mom, working mother
While pregnant with Esther I wondered how having a daughter would change me and create a different relationship than with our son. Here is one discovery.
One of the obsessive worries I and many women have is to be attractive. For me, that usually means not “looking nice enough” but perfection. Which, as you can guess, is impossible. Even so, it’s something I worry about. So, of course, pregnancy is rather a terror. It makes you fat, slow, and have weird medical-hormonal-body…issues.
While pregnant and post-pregnant, I continually monitor body fat levels and appearance in the mirror and fuss about if my skin will ever shrink back (so far, so good) and my minor stretchmarks fade. And always I sigh at the little scars on my cheeks and wish my skin would stay clear and my hair at least not heinous.
In ten years I will probably start to see actual wrinkles, and by the time I’m a grandmother have lost all pretense at having something nice on me to look at.
What does this have to do with Esther?
When I look at her, I think she is beautiful. Even if she has a temporary birthmark smack in the middle of her face. As I fade, she will blossom and, far from making me feel jealous, I actually feel proud and happy.
When I first read Shakespeare’s progeny sonnets, or the early ones where he’s always urging his love to preserve her beauty by instilling it in a child, I thought they were weird, and not really the thing to say to win a woman’s affection. “I love you so much–too bad you’ll be wrinkled and worn soon.” But now they make sense to me. (Perhaps he was wooing a mother.)
It delights me to look at how pretty she is, even if it’s not a perfect beauty. And it quiets my self-obsession. I feel like I can relax more about getting old because I can just admire her instead of trying to make myself admirable.
Not too much pressure or anything, Esther. Perhaps momma will keep these thoughts hidden from you.
Dear Esther,
This letter is to inform you that you have repeatedly violated the UN Convention on Human Rights. It quite clearly states that extreme sleep deprivation* is a form of human torture. You must cease and desist immediately, or face the terrifying consequences of seeing blue, helmeted peacekeepers sing kumbaya on our lawn.
Either that or you risk losing your primary food source.
Sincerely,
Mom and Dad
*This letter was written a few days ago, before Esther began sleeping through the night. Now we feel like singing the Hallelujah Chorus. She had awoken 6-8 times a night for nearly a week.
Image bu BlatantWorld.com.
I know—and probably will continue to know for some time—gobs of pregnant and new mothers. Since I’ve also gotten several asking for advice, I thought I’d condense the vitamin and gadget recommendations into one nice little Amazon list and post it here for easy reference and sharing.
These are simple, natural things I found immensely useful for managing this uncomfortable, mad, and exciting season of life. My comments are embedded in the list. Many are also great shower presents. The next list will be devoted to what clothes you actually need for baby’s first year (far fewer than the grandparents think).
Posted in children, family, health, practical life, womanhood
Tagged babies, motherhood, new baby, new mom, pregnancy, pregnant mom, what to buy
Waking every two hours at night with Esther has altered the cycle of days for me. Watching the street and heaven’s lights fade and brighten in their slow waltz means each morning seems no longer a fresh dawn but the old dawn renewed. I am more conscious of this cycle, though I would rather be unconscious.
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
I wonder about what seasons were, if they were, before the heavens poured onto Earth in the Flood. Seasons seem a heavenly thing, births and rebirths. Can you have a rebirth without death?
Sometimes, when I am alone at night, awake, I wonder.
(But, mostly, I wish I were asleep.)
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Posted in family, thinking, vignettes, writing
Tagged Ash Wednesday, cycles, moon, motherhood, seasons, sleep, T.S. Eliot
Long, long ago, on a farm far away, I knew that being a mother was hard. I didn’t know experientially that everything about pregnancy sucked except the baby (which, when it gets out, almost exclusively wants to suck), that the weeks after the hardest thing I have ever done in my life (getting that baby out) would make me look back on college insomnia fondly as a comparatively restful time, and that Ransom’s whining is infinitely more annoying than I occasionally thought my parents, but I had deep premonitions of all these things.
What I did not understand was the difference between hard and hardship. I previously considered mothering the latter, as if comparable to scrounging through the Great Depression or a dear husband’s early death.
While actually having children has ingrained exactly how tiring and demanding they are, it has also made me realize that these apparently negative attributes pale in comparison to the deep meaning with which these children fill my life. Rather than a degrading hardship to which my randomly female body and constricting cultural-religious values have subjected me, motherhood is the most rewarding challenge I have ever struggled through and enjoyed.
I have usually thought of myself as a more brainy, career-oriented woman, not one of those pink- and teddy bear-loving saps who has few other fulfilling life options so might as well bear children as check out customers for Target. And, at 25, I’ve already had a lot of related success in non-family fields: nationally competitive debate careers, national speaking opportunities, scholarships and honors classes, top-level internships, and now a job still a bit too big for me that I find thrilling, intriguing, and inspiring. But, you know what? The kids are better.
Yes, I often feel like I’m going to lose it if yet another shirt gets spit upon or I have to come downstairs to clean up Hurricane Ransom for the seventh time (not an exaggeration) that day, or if I have to scramble around again for something not candy bars to hand that family for dinner while one kid screams for no reason and the other whimpers to nurse. But at the end of the day with them, I’ve trained all of our tempers, done more work in any day at the office ,and taken care of eternal souls. Can’t say that after writing a particularly good op-ed or snapping up the perfect quote for a story.