boxes of treasure and a shout-out to re-ewes gear...

Every so often in my life a box arrives from my Aunt M. From these boxes, amazing treasures are revealed, one by one, adorned with unique ribbons and beautifully penned notes. There is something mysterious and delightful about each item--my family gathers around in wonder as we remove and examine these surprises.

There were boxes in my childhood, but the one I remember most clearly from my adulthood showed up on Christmas Eve, the very first Christmas that David and I were parents. We had journeyed north to visit the family with our tiny, ten-day-old son cradled in his precious car seat, and the trip home through the snow in the dark was especially nerve-wracking for us because we were still quite new to the concept of transporting something so valuable. Also, I'm pretty sure he cried the whole way home.

When we arrived at our little crumbling cottage of a rental home, we found a gigantic box sitting on the back porch--a fine dusting of snow on top giving us an idea of the time of its delivery. A package, arriving late on Christmas Eve? It had to be...Santa Claus, right?

We hauled the package in, and, while Jabber nestled hungrily into my arms and I sank into the permanent divot on the couch (formed by the endless hours of nursing him there and of holding him while he slept and simply staring at him in wonder and amazement), David unpacked it and placed each beautiful box under our pathetic little Christmas tree. It was the most magical box in the universe. It was from Aunt M.

Recently we found another such box (thank you so!), and in it the usual supply of eclectic awesome. Included was a note, in which she expressed her mission to "redirect the society's excesses and rejects: recycling!"

Yay!

And this brings me to my friend Ellie and the business she's been growing--the business that is all about recycling those excesses and rejects...recycling them into the softest, snuggliest, and most amazingly beautiful mittens! Her newish business is called Re-ewes gear, and it makes me so happy to hear about her successes. If I reach for something made of styrofoam, it's Ellie's voice in my head that stays my hand. (I still smile thinking of the day she brought a tub of real dishes, silverware, and cloth napkins to the staff training to protest the use of those throwaway lunch trays and soup bowls!)

Check out her new website to read about her mission, or go to her facebook fan page to look at her inventory...all lovingly made from recycled wool and fleece.

I got my mom and another aunt mittens for Christmas, and I got my Lovely Daycare Provider one of her fantastic oven mitts...though LDP says it's too pretty to use! (I insisted she use it anyway...)


So here's my mom, thrilled with her recycled treasure!

MINE NUMMIES!

It turns out that two-year-olds are excessively concerned about possession. Not of the demonic type, though I do sometimes wonder as he throws himself into a thrashing heap of screaming, writhing tantrum.

No, Monkey is mostly worried about ownership--specifically, what is, “MINE.” Sometimes he just wanders about the house, listing off his belongings.

“My car. My table. My froggie. My crayons.” He peacefully pats each item as he walks past.

“My monster truck.”

“NO! That’s MY MONSTER TRUCK!” Jabber pushes, shoves, body slams. There is wailing; there are tears. This scene is replayed many times throughout the day, as the toddler and preschooler negotiate ownership of all of the toys and such a million times. It turns out five-year-olds are just as concerned about these things.

Along with this is Monkey’s demand to “SHARE!” which is just a variation on, “GIVE IT TO ME! IT’S MINE!”

Which brings me to the topic of my breasts.

What? You didn’t catch the segue?

So I find myself nursing a two-year-old. All right. I support this. I have been saying since Monkey was born that I’d like to nurse him until he was two, which is a few months longer than his big brother nursed. Jabber gave it up cold turkey at 20 months, after I had something going on for three nights in a row and missed his bedtime session, which was basically all he was interested in at the time. On the third day, he solemnly patted my breasts and said, “Nummies gone bye-bye,” and after that, he wasn’t interested.

Not so with the Monk. Even after I went to Florida for five days, he is still going strong. He’s pretty flexible about nursing if I am not around; he stays overnight with the grandparents without a problem and never asks for it once. However, if I’m around, if I’m sitting down, he wants to nurse. About half the time he crawls up in my lap, showers me with kisses, and then just tips over on my lap and smiles at me sweetly, patting my shirt lightly and asking, “I have nummies pleeeeeeease?” He’s adorable and irresistible, and I have no problem nursing him.

Sometimes he’s downright heart-melting in his nursing bliss, such as several nights ago when David and I were going to bed, and he woke up halfway and made this seriously happy sighing sound. “Ahhh, nummies,” he whispered, followed by a couple of happy sleepy little chuckles. There was nothing to feel but love as I crawled into bed beside him and snuggled.

Other times, it’s not so cute, to be perfectly honest. Back to possession, demonic and otherwise, the two of us have yet to come to agreement about who owns the nummies. My reaction to his terrorist demands of “MINE NUMMIES NOW!” accompanied by shirt-tugging and tantrumming is to shut off supply indefinitely. My heart is hard. I do not negotiate.

“You are being a bully,” I say. “The nummies are closed.”

His reaction to the sudden cut-off is pretty consistent to that of any addict: he cries, he shakes, he begs, he bargains. He tries to sneak a quick slurp as I wash my hair over the tub. He promises to change.

“I be nice nummies,” he says, crawling up into my lap.

“These are Mama’s nummies,” I say.

“No. Mine.” His jaw is set in stubborn baby persistence.

“These are Mama’s nummies. But I may be persuaded to let you share them from time to time, if you are very polite and respectful of them, and if you agree to let go and leave me be the first time I ask. Also, I require you to keep your feet out of my mouth. And no pinching.”

He listens carefully to my conditions, lying across my lap with his hand just barely touching the hem of my shirt. “Okay,” he says, nodding solemnly. “I share.”

“All right then.” We begin to nurse, both of us on our best behavior, gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes. It is wonderful nursing a toddler!

Monkey detaches, just a little, just enough to speak. “Mine nummies,” he says softly, and then closes his eyes and gets back to business.

In the Kitchen with Elissa

So last night I was standing in the kitchen, and I had a sort of introspective moment. Ordinarily, those moments are not so great because they involve me making a realization about myself, like that I’m essentially lazy, or self-centered, or that quite possibly that last time I lost my temper with Jabber was the time that will mess him up irrevocably.

But this realization was about cooking.

I always say that I can’t cook. It’s true, I don’t cook. I don't usually tell people that when David is going to be gone from the home during a mealtime, he sometimes leaves a meal ready for me to heat up. That sometimes means always. That he also gives me detailed instructions about the heating.

(To be fair, David likes giving detailed instructions. He’s very helpful like that.)

It’s also true that cooking meat is difficult for me. For one thing, I won’t eat or let the kids eat ground meat (ground beef primarily, but I really can’t eat too much of any kind of ground meat), so there goes the primary source of meat from my childhood. Hamburger in everything, you know? But I just can’t eat it, not thinking about how it’s all ground up and who knows what is in it. I cooked a pound of ground beef once, it must be ten years ago now, and I looked at it, cooking in the pan, and just knew I wasn’t going to eat that ever again. I dumped it out in the garbage, and I don’t think I’ve eaten it since, at least, not on purpose. I won’t get into the e.coli chapter in Fast Food Nation that made me vow to keep the kids away from it until they are older and more…I don’t know, durable.

But still, when we lived in Oregon, I often cooked. I had a vegetarian cookbook, and I made soups, side dishes, full meals. I often substituted ingredients because we were poor and only had a few staples in our kitchen most of the time, but I cooked a lot.

Then we had Jabber, and I went back to work, and there it began. I didn’t get home from work until 5:30, and before I could even get my coat off, the baby would be reaching for me hungrily, with his little baby bird mouth opened wide. We’d settle into our perch on the couch, and there we would stay…both of us exhausted and hungry and a bit cranky.

So David had to cook.

And essentially that’s the reason he continues to cook: I work late, and the kids are hungry much sooner.

But last night I realized what my real problem is. It’s not that I’m a bad cook; it’s that I’m a bad meal planner. I look at the cupboards, and I truly can’t figure out what to make out of it all. I can sometimes think of one part of the meal, but then I’m at a loss as to what to do for the rest of it, or how any of it would go together.

Like a couple nights ago, when I went grocery shopping, the store bakery had these enormous loaves of garlic bread on sale, so I bought a loaf and set it on the counter. While David was asking me what I we should have for dinner, all I could think was, “Well, we should eat the garlic bread because it was probably not fresh to begin with, so…garlic bread. Goes with spaghetti. But we only have alfredo sauce made. And Jabber won’t eat that. Because it’s cheese. And he’ll only eat orange cheese, that’s not melted. Unless it’s on pizza, when white cheese, melted is okay. And Monkey won’t eat noodles at all. What kind of a kid won’t eat noodles, for crying out loud. Why the hell do my kids have to eat the complete opposite, anyway?”

And at this point, I think I wandered out of the kitchen. It was just too much for me.

David, on the other hand, turned on the oven and stuck the garlic bread in, a plan forming around in the back of his mind. He threw some chicken into a pan, melted some cheese, steamed some broccoli, tossed some chickpeas, and made us grilled chicken sandwiches on garlic toast with two side dishes.

I’m not completely helpless, though. I mean, sooner or later I would have poured us each a bowl of cereal.

Fever In, Fever Out

Just in time for the first week of school, I kissed Monkey's sleeping face two mornings ago and immediately thought, "Uh-oh."

A quick trip to the linen closet to fetch the ear thermometer confirmed what a mother's kiss had diagnosed: fever. A dose of tylenol, a call to David at work, and off we rushed to daycare, where Lovely DCP took Monkey in her arms and snuggled him in a way that made my broken heart heal up a little bit. There really was no way for me to stay home with him, not the first week of classes, and it's so nice to have someone like DCP to take care of him!

That night, his fever climbed up to a scary 104.2, which we have learned is just Monkey's way of dealing with sickness. He has been up over 105 more times than I can count, and it's just about the saddest thing on earth to see him like that, feeling so wretched.

My scariest parenting moment to date was fever-related, when Monkey had a febrile seizure in the Target parking lot, just after his first birthday. I can still see the way he looked, sitting there in the cart that night, with his little green fleece jacket and his red striped hat on. His hands were snug in little blue mittens, and we ran in for some post-Christmas necessities, late in the evening--past everyone's bedtime. He seemed normal the whole time we were piling diapers and pacifiers and whatever else in our cart, hurriedly sweeping the aisles to get out of there before the kids melted down.

Then I noticed him sort of staring blankly while we were checking out. He seemed like he was in a little zone, and even the cashier said something like, "Wow, he's about to fall asleep, isn't he?" I feel bad now because I laughed and thought it was so cute the way he had the dreamy stares, and because I had kept him all bundled up in his hat, coat, and mittens.

We got out to the van, and I remember that David loaded Jabber into his seat and gave him a Pop-Tart (yes, I know, no Parent-of-the-Year Award) while I dropped the cart into the corral and started tucking Monkey into his seat. I had his arms inside the straps when I noticed he was staring even more blankly than before. Somehow it just registered that he was not right, that he was not actually responding to his surroundings, and I began calling his name, trying to get him to look at me.

David was already in the driver's seat, and he knew something was wrong as my voice started getting more and more frantic, and Monkey didn't stop his fixed stare off to the left. Then, while I watched, his eyes rolled backwards and his whole body started convulsing stiffly. I screamed to David, "He's seizing! He's having a seizure!"

It was the scariest thing ever, the way his little face was instantly gray, like all the life was gone, and how little bits of foam frothed out of his mouth, and how his body was so stiff while it was jerking that we couldn't pick him up because we couldn't get his arms out of the straps of his seat.

David was so calm and reassuring the whole time, and I was crying and saying, "He's not breathing!" over and over again. It was terrible. I called 9-1-1 and told them my little baby was having a seizure, but by that time it was over and he was sort of sleeping in my arms in the front seat, making a little gasping cry with every breath. A fire truck came, and David talked to the paramedics so calmly, telling them exactly how long the seizure was and everything. I can't imagine what I would have done if he hadn't been there.

They wanted us to go the ER for a CT scan, so we had to put him back into his seat, and he woke up and cried so hard the entire way to the hospital. I rode the whole way standing next to his seat, trying to hold him and comfort Jabber at the same time. He cried nonstop the whole time we were getting him checked into the ER, until finally I jumped up on the examining table and nursed him. He would not stop nursing the whole time, so they drew blood, checked his temperature, everything--all while he was focused on nursing like his nummies were the only thing that existed in his universe. I was prepared for someone to make a stupid comment, but the doctor assured me that his wife had several children and nursed all of them, and obviously everyone preferred a baby happily suckling to a baby screaming like the world was over.

In the end, everything was fine and normal--it was "just" a febrile seizure and wasn't likely to do him any harm. I'm still certain that it was a reaction to his MMR vaccine, since it exactly fit into the timeline of the febrile seizure reaction in the paperwork from the CDC, but two doctors insisted it wasn't so. It's sad that doctors have become so afraid of vaccine criticism that they are pretty much unable to admit that a bad reaction could happen.

Luckily, though they said he will have a higher risk of having another seizure until he's like five or so, we haven't seen another one yet, even with about a zillion fevers in the meantime. I sure hope I never have to witness another one!

You Think This Is Funny? HUH???

Ack, I feel like the worst mom ever today. So yeah, if you looked at the last post, you probably have figured out that it's been a bit of a challenging weekend with the two little ones.

So this evening, an hour or so before bedtime, which is always the worst time because everyone is at their limit and tired and cranky but there is still like a half hour before the routine is set into motion and things start their smooth wind-down to sleeping, Monkey decides he wants to nurse. Actually, he climbs up on my lap while screeching and trying to pull off my shirt. Tears, snot, the works. Not really endearing, you understand.

So Jabber, I suppose because he wanted some of my disgruntled attention, too, comes over and starts climbing on top of Monkey and I, which I hate. Not only does it hurt, it distracts Monkey from the nursing business and makes the whole process uncomfortable and like I kind of just want to run screaming into the hills. So. There you have us, an hour before bedtime.

In the process of scaling Mt. Mama, Jabber "accidentally" kicks me in the back, hard. My back has been sore all freaking day, and I just go right over the edge. I scream at him about how he hurt me and this is why I don't want you climbing on me blahblahblah.

He laughs. Laughs. Right in my face.

So I teach middle school. Kids laugh all the freaking time when they get in trouble. Does it push my buttons when they do it? Not usually, not unless there were a lot of extenuating circumstances, including but not limited to a certain monthly experience that causes a slight lowering of my tolerance for crap like that. No. Usually, I will say something in a calm tone of voice, something like, "I know you're just laughing because you're uncomfortable right now, but..." and go on with my talk about respect or whatever. I don't take it personally, and life goes on as scheduled.

But my son? For some reason, I am completely and utterly unable to be rational when he is involved. We're like...oil and water, but a better simile, something that has a flash point and oxygen touches it and everything explodes. That's us. Anyway, so he laughs, and out of my mouth comes that line from everyone's mother. "You think this is funny? Huh?" And he's shaking his little head no but laughing harder all the time.

"You kick me in my sore back, and now you think it's funny? You're going to sit there and laugh at me because you hurt me?"

Monkey joins in now, doing the dreaded finger wag and the "NONONONO!" David comes in from the other room, says, "I've heard enough," and scoops up Jabber from the chair and carries him up to bed. No story, no love. Just bed.

The three of us hang out for a while longer, and finally I can't stand it. I tell David that I have to go upstairs and say goodnight to my little Jabberwock, even though I'm afraid he must already be asleep.

So David takes Monkey from me, and I go upstairs to find that Jabber is already sleeping, but I can't help it. I crawl into bed and snuggle up next to him. "Can I snuggle with you?" I whisper. Jabber shakes his head a little, but I'm not sure if it's yes or no.

"Please, can I just cuddle you a little?" He shakes his head, again ambiguously.

"Well, I want you to know I love you. And I'm sorry that things got out of hand down there. I felt hurt that you would kick me in my sore back and then laugh about it. Then I got angry. But I shouldn't have yelled at you."

He whispers something, in a tiny little tired voice, and I have to lean in and ask him to repeat himself.

"I said, I laugh when I get scared," he says. "Not because it was funny."

My heart breaks in fifteen thousand pieces. "You were laughing because you were scared, honey?"

He nods, this time clearly a yes. "I laughed because I was nervous. That you would be mad at me. I was scared that you were going to be mad because I kicked you."

God. And that's exactly what I was, too. Mad and scary.

I squeeze him tight and pray that the next time he laughs at me I will check with him if it's scared laughter or funny laughter. And I hope that someday I actually get the hang of this being a mom thing.

Mom, I just ate a peanut!

I went back to work when my oldest son was eleven weeks old--tiny, vulnerable, floppy-necked. It was terrible and heart-wrenching to leave him, even though I was leaving him in the capable (if nervous) hands of his wonderful Daddy, who cut his schedule down to half time and picked up little Jabber from my school every morning just before classes began.

At the time I started back, Jabberwock was still nursing hungrily every couple of hours, and I had not had very much luck with the pump in between feedings. So we had very little milk in the freezer for him when I started working, but I was determined and pumped for most of my prep time and through my lunch for the first few weeks back. I eeked out just enough so that if I nursed him right before David came to get him and just as soon as I rushed home after school, he was mostly satisfied. Then something happened; I can't remember if it was a normal growth spurt, a bad day of pumping (sometimes it seemed like no matter what I did I couldn't get much milk, especially like when some kid was having a tantrum/screaming fit in the special ed room that my tiny pumping bathroom was located in, or if I had to, say, write a test and get copies made before I could be ready to teach my next class), or what. We ran out of milk.

No problem, we thought. We had been given free cans of formula, and although I knew all the dangers that supplementing can cause, I didn't really see any other options. I already was waking up in the middle of the night not only to feed the baby, but an additional time to pump, and I couldn't see any way around this. So David fixed Jabber a bottle one day while I was at work.

I remember I was teaching a class of seventh graders that was particularly challenging. The bright side of this is that they had just spent three months terrorizing my sub (so sorry, Lisa!) and were so delighted to have me back that it was still a honeymoon period when I got this panicky call from my husband.

Jabber, it seems, had taken about a half ounce of the formula bottle before David noticed some strange red bumps forming around his mouth. He took the bottle away, and before long Jabber's whole head was covered in hives, his ears were swollen, and he looked pretty sick. David called the emergency room or maybe 9-1-1, I'm not sure, but they told him to take Jabber in to the ER. Instead, he called me in the middle of class. I started to cry, and agreed that David should bring the baby into the hospital. I was beside myself with fear for this tiny little guy.

Something like five minutes later, there was a knock at my classroom door. By this time, I had explained the situation to my students, and they were suitably worried for me. David was at the door, with Jabberwock in his little bucket. His ears and mouth were still red and funny-looking, but he wasn't crying anymore, and he seemed alert and breathing just fine. David said he had improved so much in the last few minutes that he thought maybe they didn't need to head to the hospital. I agreed, although nervously, and instead he called the family doctor.

He pronounced a likely allergy to milk proteins and advised us to keep Jabber away from all dairy. Then he said probably we should keep him away from wheat, too, since that's another common allergen.

Okay, no big deal. We also got a sample of soy formula. Except that Jabber won't take even one sip of the soy.

So eventually we got him allergy tested, and we found out that he wasn't allergic to wheat (YAY! No more rice flour!), but he WAS allergic to soy and eggs, in addition to the dairy. The doctor didn't test him for peanuts, since it takes too much blood to test for multiple things, and we weren't planning on feeding him peanuts at that stage in his life anyway.

A year later, we got the news that peanuts were also on the forbidden list--in fact, his numbers were high enough for both peanuts and dairy to warrant an epi-pen to carry around. The first thing I did, of course, was research peanut allergies in children on the Internet.

Not a good idea. The very first article I found was all about this incredibly high percentage of children with peanut allergies who died withint an incredibly short period of time that the study was carried out. I began to cry with a kind of paralyzing panic. Instantly I remembered all the times I had eaten peanut butter toast or a big tasty handful of roasted peanuts right before kissing him or handling his food. I could have killed my son!

My mind raced forward to daycare, preschool, and oh, god, real school, where his ever-present epi-pen would be locked up far away in the nurse's office instead of in the backpack next to me ready to spring into action at the tiniest sign of respiratory distress. I was (and still am, to tell the truth) terrified of letting my son enjoy the simplest of pleasures--eating.

I became an expert label reader. We carried food for him everywhere we went. We had to ask a million probing questions at every restaurant we ordered at, and usually found them unwilling to say anything beyond, "Well, we can't guarantee that it doesn't have any of that in it." I banished all peanut products from our home. We began baking with oil and vinegar instead of eggs. I became an expert on cross-contamination, examining the jelly jar at other people's homes with a skeptical eye. I carried that little epi-pen backpack all over.

One story I read made me go cold every time I thought about it. It was about a boy who died on a class field trip after accepting a peanut butter cookie from a classmate. My husband and I drilled it into Jabberwock's head that he must never, ever, ever, EVER accept food from anyone without asking us first. And if we weren't around? Then he should not eat it. Period. No chances. I was convinced that he wouldn't ever do what that poor, poor boy did. The grandparents, other adults I know, even other kids have commented about how wonderfully aware Jabber is about his allergies, how he always double-checks, asking questions about the "ingweedients" of food he is given.

And for the last year, he has been cleared of all allergies except the peanut one. He has still not ever had an actual reaction to peanuts, and I hope to God he never does, since we have no idea what form that reaction could take. Hives? Stomach ache? Anaphylactic shock?

So because we have been so careful, and because we have explained his allergies so fully, he never puts anything in his mouth without asking first.

Until today.

Tonight we were hanging out with Mary at her summer home, many miles away from my hometown and hospital and husband, and Jabber walks into the room in a bit of a panic because he just took three bites out of a cookie that my friend's daughter offered him. She didn't know about his allergies. He took the cookie and didn't ask me. I can't really figure out why he didn't, except that he was just so comfy with her and that he really loves cookies. The cookies were made with peanut butter chips in them.

I quickly gave him a dose of his prescription antihistamine, which we carry around with the epi-pen. He didn't have any kind of reaction that I could tell, but my heart has been all constricted and crazy ever since it happened, several hours ago. What if he had taken a different bite, one with a chip in it? What if my friend hadn't seen him, hadn't known about the allergy and said something? He didn't give it a thought, my little boy who always thinks about this. What happened? And how can I keep it from happening again?

God, that was scary.

Good News Abounding

Well, after my pissy little post tantrumming about my home, I thought I'd put together a bunch of good news, for the record.

Monkey's vocabulary is rapidly expanding. Although he is far from meeting or exceeding Jabber's huge vocabulary from the same age period, he has expanded a bit from his typical "dis," "dat," and "uh-oh" to include a few more words. For one thing, he has resumed saying "mama," and it even means other things besides "I'm hungry!" It makes me melt every time I hear him say it. Another vocab addition has the opposite effect on me: he has started saying "HIT!" which is followed by an enthusiastic smack, usually right across the face. Niiice. More constructive is his use of pointing to his mouth and saying "me eat," even though it does sometimes (humorously) come out as "eat me." :)

Jabberwock had a playdate, which is unusual, since I wasn't good at the whole dating thing the first time around, and since few of my friends have kiddos in his age range, it follows that he doesn't have a huge array of friends, either. But yesterday the two of us went to a local park to meet with a couple of siblings from his old daycare, and we all had a very nice time. Without Monkey along, I actually found myself able to converse with the other mom, which was super nice, and the kiddos played like crazy. We went for a little hike, had a picnic, and shared a sand cake, among other things. Jabber fell into the river a little bit (just his feet and one leg) while throwing stones and filling his bucket with water, and then he played in the sand for another hour or so. The result was a seriously happy kid with shoes I may just have to throw away.

Monkey took a blissful two-and-a-half-hour nap today, which allowed me to grade a bunch of papers and read a bunch of blogs.

We all ate a healthy lunch, which is wonderful since last night David brought home a pizza and jelly beans and I could not come up with a single reason on earth not to eat everything in sight.

Also, I found out today some interesting (to me, anyway) tidbits about Monkey's food preferences: Strawberries win out over all other food choices. Matchstick-cut carrots are second on the list, even winning out over string cheese and apple-cinnamon rice cakes. He will have nothing to do with meat of any kind (which we pretty much knew already, and since Big Brother is all about the meat like his dad, I have proposed a dual system of food preparation that made my husband almost threaten to ride off into the sunset alone. So I guess until I'm willing to do all the dual-meal cooking, I will continue to eat venison and poultry, or go hungry. Monkey still has his nummies, so he can take it or leave it.) Broccoli, even with yummy red pepper hummus on it, gets tossed onto the floor after one bite.

I was reading Parents magazine, an article about the sex lives of mothers (I know, I know), and it was about four moms who kept a five day journal about their sex lives (which seemed to me an awfully short period of time for a mom to document her sex life...but perhaps we need to step it up a notch around here, lol!). ANYWAY, both of the moms of infants were breastfeeding (yay!), and the mom of older kiddos said it wasn't abnormal for the kids to sleep in their bed. The fourth woman was still pregnant, so who knows. Anyway, good to see this in a really mainstream mag.

And Edited to Add: My last good news of the day was when I came downstairs in a little sundress, trudging reluctantly over to my stack of Shakespeare essays that need to be graded, and Jabberwock came skipping up to me and whispered in my ear, "Mama, do you know what? You look just like...a princess!" Then he kissed me on the cheek, without any begging from me or anything. This was especially nice since about an hour earlier he had informed me that he thought Daddy was the best daddy in the whole world, and he was pretty sure that his best buddy's mom (the one we saw yesterday on our playdate) was the best mommy in the world, and he was going to take Daddy and go live with her and his best buddy. Gosh, thanks, kid. I asked him what I was supposed to do without my two guys, and he shrugged. "You'll think of something," he said.

She Isn't Still Nursing, Is She?

I love my husband. This weekend he got the very first "She isn't still nursing, is she???" comment for this child, and David handled it flawlessly. He smiled at Grandma and answered, "Why, yes she is. Monkey still enjoys nursing, though he doesn't do it all that often. He eats full meals of normal food and drinks regular milk, but he likes to nurse, too."

And he does, too, even though sometimes it's literally only a minute. Sometimes he's just cranky as all get-out, really having a tough time of things, easily frustrated, battling with everyone's wills, and all it takes is three minutes of nummies to make him all back to smiles and calmness. Jabber was just a little bit older when he weaned, and David and I were talking on the drive home about how the Jabberwock didn't seem nearly as connected to nursing as Monkey is at the same age. But I guess I should start expecting the comments to sneak out here and there now.

And you know what? Let 'em comment. I will just smile and say yes, we are still nursing, and I was thinking about how maybe when he goes to college I'll pump for him and send him little care package coolers of breastmilk, since the follow-up question always seems to be, "Well then when ARE you going to wean???" as if there's a magic cut off date, and if you miss it, well, you're screwed. Whatever. With Jabberwock, I was a little more eager to cut him free, since I had to eliminate dairy from my diet while he was nursing. But with Monkey, I'm happy, and he's happy. So what's the big deal?

I was thinking about how much more confidence I have in my parenting decisions with number two than I had with my first son. With Jabberwock, I knew that there were things that made sense to me--like breastfeeding or "co-sleeping" (though I hate that term)--that weren't always supported in mainstream reading material or from family and friends. But I was hesitant, too, unsure. What if he never was able to soothe himself to sleep, like the books said? Am I going to still be nursing him when he's six years old? It helped, though, that everywhere I went, people mentioned what a nice kid he was, how well-adjusted. It helped that he was so happy, that because I had tried above all to foster a secure attachment with him, he feels like he's on pretty solid ground today, at age four. All of this helps me to feel sure of myself and my methods with Monkey now on round two.

I know that Monkey will sleep just fine in his own bed someday, that he'll wean without trauma, that just because I carried him in a sling for much of his babyhood doesn't stop him from venturing out into the world to bravely explore. And beyond just feeling more at ease with defending myself from other people's judgment, I feel like I should also be an advocate for others who may have interest or need support to parent in a way that is a little off the beaten track.

Nursing You Now

Here's a first draft of a poem I "wrote" this evening while driving and while working out at the gym, for my son Monkey, age 17 months. I have a feeling it's not finished at all, but since this is like a journal, I'll post it and then rework it later if it works out that way!

nursing you now

nursing you now
can feel like embracing an earthquake,
taming a tangle
of limbs grown
suddenly, startlingly too long--
knots of knobby knees
and your daddy's long, elegant toes
(no, no, baby, they don't go in my nose!)

nursing you now
has become a dialogue
full of jokes and surprises--
your mouth, full of mischief,
chug chugs like a train
through your latch,
then pops off smiling
for a quick Choooochoooo!

nursing you now
can feel like holding a hurricane,
my wanderer waylaid
and wiggling away,
pinching and prodding and pawing
until this moment,
this instant--
now

nursing you now
is a fleeting island of calm,
your clear eyes locked with mine,
your hands softly circling my breast,
and the sweet perfect sound of you suckling--
the syllables of your satisfaction.

Monkey nursing back when a camera
wasn't so much more interesting than nummies!

"Extended" Nursing on NPR

It's an all-too-common situation: Elissa indulging in her NPR addiction, parked outside her destination with the van running and her hand on the key, unable to shut the car off until the fascinating interview or commentary or whatever is over. I am a public radio addict. I listen compulsively, and then I talk at length to anyone who will listen about my thoughts on the programs I listen to. Unfortunately, I also don't really have a very good memory for names, so it usually goes like, "Yeah, there was the guy on, and he was talking to this other guy...I think the second guy climbed a mountain or wrote a book about climbing a mountain, or something like that, but anyway, I can't remember exactly how it started, but..."

Today I was listening to "Weekend America" on my way home from grocery shopping, and I heard this segment from Bill Radke. The story itself is relevant to parenting, and interesting to me because his daughter is a month or two younger than my son Monkey. It is all about the anxiety that parents feel about our own parenting abilities--how we want our kids to feel self-confident and secure, but yet we don't always take our own advice when it comes to relaxing and having confidence in ourselves as parents. Instead, we compare ourselves and our children to our friends, neighbors, and preschool cohorts.

But what really got my attention about this segment was when he was describing the home visit that the clinical psychologist did with his family to determine the things they were doing right and wrong in the raising of their first child. The psychologist asked Radke's wife, Susanna, to describe her morning routine, and the first thing she talked about was snuggling together in the glider, nursing! Yes, nursing her fifteen-month-old toddler! Hurray!!!

I realize this is not huge news, but just the fact that it wasn't news is terrific. I dream of an America where breastfeeding, and even breastfeeding beyond infancy, is just so much a part of our cultural norms that it doesn't get any special mention. Now that would be huge news.