Bryan and Barbies

 I am spending the last few unscheduled days of our Vermont vacation in a state of dizzying denial and angst about our return to Los Angeles. I am in a panic about the packed schedule that awaits our return. I think the paranoia of our flying back has caused a cerebral bleed. Bryan, my responsible hubby who’s returned to the world of work and rigid deadlines, flies back here to spend July 4^th weekend with us and then escort all 5 of us safely home. He was tasked by our 7-year-old daughter to bring two of her barbies with him when he comes (1 Ken doll and 1 Blond Barbie. I don’t want to dwell on the reasons for the doll with a preferred hair color).

During one of our phone conversations, he says, “None of her Barbies had clothes on. Should we be worried?” Like all of my children’s slightly alarming behavior, I respond with the “self-soothing, but-secretly-worried” response of “I’m sure it’s just a phase, Sweetie.” He goes on to talk about how he won’t be bringing anything other than his carry-on backpack with him since he has clothes here and it will mean he can travel back with an extra suitcase of ours. I am only now half listening because somewhere in the normally closed-off “pent-up crazy, she’s lost it” room of my brain, I have now connected a stoic, solemn Bryan with two naked Barbies in his travel backpack. My imagination fills in the pictures. Bryan at TSA pre-check delicately removing the Barbies from his backpack so they can lie in a grey x-ray trey of their own and responding to the incredulous look on the security guard’s face with this strait-faced retort “they get claustrophobic in x-ray machines.” It gets worse. I’ve now pictured him sitting on the plane and buckling the Barbies into the seat next to him. When he’s approached by the person whose seat they’re taking, he says “Let me check how Ken and Barbie feel about changing seats. “ Then, I imagine him working through his in-flight emotional problems by using the dolls for role-play.  

Barbie: “Ken, sometimes we can’t always have the drink we want. There’s no reason to take our anger out on the nice flight attendant”

Ken: “It’s not fair! You let me have a rum and coke with cookies last time!”

Barbie: “Perhaps Ken, if you used your inside voice, I would listen to a more reasonable request.”

This is actually a method parents are asked to use when dealing with an irrationally explosive child. At this point, I imagine Bryan luxuriating quietly in a remote seat of the plane or wearing a straight-jacket in the security offices at LAX.

When Bryan finally breaks me from my reverie, I tell him I’ve devised a payback plan for all those times we’ve been judged and found lacking as parents traveling with 4 small kids. If only he had the same twisted sense of humor my spiraling-back-to-reality brain has. I’d pay good money to see the look on that security guard’s face.

Motherhood- It will change your life

For an end-of-year inspirational that I had to give at a preschool Parent Board meeting, I wanted to write a letter to my preschooler telling her about all the things I had learned as a Mom. I wanted to tell my daughter how much I had changed by being her Mom and how it was important for me to be committed to constant improvement as a parent and person if I was going to expect the same from her. The letter kept getting longer and longer... I have learned a lot...and then I came across this essay by an Anonymous writer, which quite poetically summed up the extent of my feelings on Motherhood whether it be to a toddler or grown woman (I made a few minor adjustments to the original text to be more in line with my experiences):

Motherhood- It will change your life

We are sitting at lunch when my daughter casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of “starting a family.” “We’re taking a survey”, she says, half-joking. “Do you think I should have a baby?

Carefully, I keep my tone neutral and say,  “It will change your life”.

“I know” she says, “no more sleeping in on the weekends, no more spontaneous vacations….” I look at my daughter and think, “I wish it was that simple”. I try to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw she will forever be vulnerable. I consider telling her that she will never read a newspaper again without asking, “what if that had been MY child?” That every plane crash, every fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub, that an urgent call of “mom!” will cause her to drop her soufflé or her best crystal without a moment’s hesitation. I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for child-care, but one day she will be going into an important meeting and she will think about the smell of her baby’s skin and it will take every ounce of discipline she has not to run home and check on her. I want her to know that she has not experienced unconditional love until she hears the exuberant call of her name and feels the headlong, messy leg hug of a toddler welcoming her home on an otherwise crappy day.

I want my daughter to know that routine decisions will be called into question. That no matter how decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess everything she does as a mother …constantly.

Looking at my daughter, I want to reassure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of far less value to her once she has a child. That she would give up her life in a moment’s notice to save her offspring. She will also hope for more years – not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs.

I want her to know that her relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks. I wish she can understand how much more you can love a man who is always careful to powder the baby or never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic.

I wish she could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried desperately to stop war and prejudice and drunk driving. I want to describe to her how she will suffer her child’s every friendship, break-up and accomplishment as though it was her own. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or a toddler who is being chased and tickled by Dad.  I want her to taste the joy that is so real it actually hurts. My daughter’s quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes.  “You’ll never regret it, “ I finally say. Then I reach across the table, squeeze her hand and offer a silent prayer for her, for me and for all the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings. This gift, this blessing. Being a Mom.

You are not alone in this battle. I am in the trenches with you. Fight on, baby mama, fight on.

I had a bad parenting moment the other day at Costco. Let's be honest, who doesn't have a bad parenting day at Costco with small children? For a child, that place is like Disneyland crack without ride lines, height restrictions or $20 burgers. This one visit, though, where I may have temporarily "misplaced" one of my 4 kids in the parking lot, reminded me of the pressures we feel as parents to be more than who we are, to be better than the sleep deprivation and round-the-clock triage we call parenting will allow. Every time I leave the general safety of my house with my kids,  I fear the fishbowl status my herd commands. We are on display for an often unforgiving and judgmental society. 

I have sought commraderie from other mothers who I would hope could share in my less-than-perfect parenting adventures, but, mothers, I have learned, can be like a pack of wolves. We are at our strongest when we stand together, but are often prone to bouts of inter-squabbling and "fur-biting"as we draw comparisons between our lives and that of others. 

I once traveled alone on plane behind a woman I had too often been: short-fused with her posse of young, inattentive children. Her middle child was asking to watch a show on the iphone, but because she'd just hit her younger brother in anger, was being denied access. She was screaming her frustration and while it would've been easy for Mom to give in, hand her the phone and pacify a plane full of annoyed, "it's going to be one of those flights" strangers, she stuck to her guns and refused the child's escalating pleas. 

As a mom to 4 vocal kids, those noises are easy for me to tune out. They are white noise and, to be fair, I was probably working on my 2nd Bloody Mary of the flight. I don't get to travel alone often. I did tune in to the commotion, though, when the guy next to me said "some people should never have children." Matt Walsh said it best in a recent blog, "parenting is the easiest thing to have an opinion about, but the hardest thing to do." Parenting will strip you raw. It's like that dream you had in High School about walking the hallways naked. That's what parenting makes you feel like every day: vulnerable and exposed. And nobody knows how to target that soft underbelly like your own children. So, we need a line of defense. We need each other as parents, as Moms to stand together against those who would judge us harshly. One of my favorite quotes from Katrina Kenison's book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, is this:

"One of the greatest challenges I've faced as a mother-especially in these anxious, winner-takes-all times-is the need to resist the urge to accept someone else's definition of success and to try to figure out, instead, what really is best for my own children, what unique combination of structure and freedom, nurturing and challenge, education and exploration, each of them needs in order to grow and bloom.”

We are taught to re-enforce good behavior in our children. As parents, we should also re-enforce it in each other...especially when well-intentioned parenting brings on the most difficult of public moments. That Mom on the plane could've caved. She could've quietly handed the phone to the child to make the screaming stop. I probably would have. In fact, I know I have. But she was stronger than I and she could've used a show of solidarity, a fist pump for her strength of character in the face of extreme social pressure to make the problem go away. So, I leaned over the back of her chair and said "You are not alone in this battle. I am in the trenches with you. Fight on, baby mama, fight on."

Parent Ed speech

I have missed writing about my parenting exploits. As busy as this last year has been, the closest I've gotten to putting pen to paper about parenting was for a speech I was asked to give this morning.

 I have been involved in a Parent Education program for over 7 years with my 4 children. They asked me to speak briefly to the church congregation with whom the program is associated about my experience in Parent Ed:

The last time someone asked me to speak into a microphone, it was to officiate at my sister’s wedding. When the vows were said and I had to relinquish the mic, it was harder than I expected. It was the only time my voice carried louder than that of my children’s. So, if I get carried  away, you have been warned.

Long before I started picking up the occasional wedding gig, though, my last big speech in front of a group this size was in college.  It was for a public speaking class and I was emphatically discussing  the increasing cost of living in New York, an irony not lost on me considering I knew even less about the cost of living as an NYU student than I do now about both marriage and parenting combined.  What I did know in college, what I’m sure every cocky college student claims to know, was how I would one day parent my unborn children. I had it all figured out.  Grocery store shopping with whining kids: Easy. They’d never whine because I’d be that good at saying “no”. Long car rides with the inevitable “Are we there yet’s?” Impossible. I’d be too cool a Mom to ever let them get bored.  The coup de grace: Plane rides with screaming kids. No problem. A stack of attention-diverting books and magazines would always be at the ready.

Fast forward some or many years and I’m that mother with the whining child in the grocery store, the one in the car answering the redundant question about when we’re going to get there and the one on the plane sifting through the useless pile of books and magazines to appease the screaming child. If you've ever taken a 5-hour plane ride with 4 kids under the age of 6, you understand what I mean when I say integrity is off the table and no bribe is too small.

It turns out I know far less about a lot of things now than I used to in college and my cockiness has long since been replaced by humility. Survival is my watchword these days and since parenting doesn't come with a manual, I rely on a network of "been there, done that or going through it “ mentors. The most vital of which are my Parent Ed teachers. I have been a parent for over 7 years and in the Parent Ed program with all 4 of my children for just as long. Never have my parenting questions or concerns been better understood or accepted than here.

You know that plane ride I took with 4 kids? On our descent into Boston, my 3 year-old awoke from a nap cut short by painful eardrum pressure. She screamed for the entire 20-minute descent. 1,000’s of bribes and 100’s of threats into her hysterics, I remembered something a Parent Ed teacher told me about how anxious children can be reassured by a simple touch. So, I leaned over and held her. I said nothing. I just held her. I don’t remember landing, but I do remember that after she’d stopped crying, I was still holding her, rocking back and forth, and she was patting my back and saying "It's okay, Mommy. It's over.”  

 When I told my LCPC class that story, I expected an outpouring of support and sympathy. And there was some of that, but what I heard the most was, "Tell me about it. I remember the time I took the kids to Disneyland…” or “Reminds me of Christmas with kids at the mall."

For over 7 years, the message from Parent Ed has been the same. No matter how many times I think I get it wrong more than I get it right, it doesn’t matter. I’m not alone. My stories, my questions, my concerns are felt and are or have been shared by every parent in the program. To this day, when I see my wonderful LCPC teachers out and about, they still say "if you need to talk, I'm happy to lend an ear.” And what I say to them is "Thank you. I will always remember that."  And I will. I will always remember their support. What they don’t know I'm thinking is, "Give me a second to tell Trader Joes my kids will work for free and I’ll meet you at Starbucks in 10.”

The Parent Ed program has been a huge resource for my family and one without which I couldn’t be raising my kids sanely. I hope, if you haven’t already taken advantage of this wonderful program, you will or, at the very least, take pity on that poor, frazzled Boston-bound Mom and tell her about it.

Addie and the dentist

 Addie, my 4 year old, has cavities. We brush, but apple juice and hard candies seem to have gotten the best of us. Since the cavities threaten the health of her adult teeth, yet to come in, her baby teeth cavities need to be capped; no simple procedure considering it requires a 4-year-old’s complete cooperation and the patience to lay still. Prior to agreeing to this procedure, we had been given 2 options: use an anesthesiologist to put her completely out or try to relax her enough with in-office medications to make her cooperative. The second option requires a sleeping pill taken in liquid form followed by sleeping gas. All this is to prepare her body for the shots of Novocain they’d inject into her gums. While I knew deep down the only real option for Addie, who is headstrong and vocal, was to be totally unaware of the procedure, to be knocked out, I preferred the choice that was the least extreme of the two. So, I ignored my gut and what I knew of Addie’s extreme personality and agreed to the sleeping gas. 

Half an hour after they gave her the sleeping liquid, she was slurring her words and leaning heavily against my side. Her happy, drunk demeanor lured me into a false sense of security. When they strapped the gas mask over her nose, she started to show signs of restlessness and angst. She inhaled gas for at least 20 minutes and it seemed, to me, that she was groggy, but not subdued.  She turned away from the mask and kept trying to take her pulse oximeter off. The dentist made some success scraping the temporary fillings off of her molars, but when he lifted the needle to inject her gums with Novocain, the whole world slipped into slow motion for me.  Addie quickly realized what he was doing, processed the pain she should be feeling and exponentially amplified it in her mind. She started with a low moan. She must have heard how poor an effort her declaration of outrage was because the next moan to escape her mouth came not from a slightly put out place, but from the depths of her outraged soul.  She pitched forward in the chair to continue her soulful screams and the dentist’s efforts to subdue her meet with not just restraint, but outright panic. As the drugs were taking slow effect, I had been reassuring Addie, telling her she was fine and holding her hands.  I am no stranger to Addie’s tantrums and screams. And if you have not had the happy occasion to witness, let alone hear it, be grateful your eardrums are still intact. Of all my children, Addie is my dojo. She is the child with whom I must always put my most instinctive responses in check and rise to a better place so that I can bring the chaos to a quicker close. She makes me feel both frustrated and protective at the same time. Addie’s will is indomitable and while I know it will be her greatest strength one day, right now it is regularly my greatest battle. It is also a source of my begrudging admiration. That isn’t a view everyone shares. I’m familiar with the looks and unwelcome comments about her disposition and temper needing to be controlled and smothered. But I know early what my battle would be: instead of controlling it, I’d need to harness it; instead of smothering it, I’d need to cultivate it.  I knew she would test all of patience, all of my will, all of the time. 

 So, when the dentist persisted in his efforts to inject her with novacaine despite her drugged protests, my protective instinct ignited. It was like a Mama cub watching her baby cub being cornered. I was prepared to gather her to me and barrel my way to the door. When she started to fight against the drugs, I started to panic, too. Not because her behavior was always so unwieldy, but because it was like watching a wild horse being broken. I started asking the nurses if all this was necessary, if we couldn’t just be done. I wanted them all to leave the room, so that I might re-assure Addie not just that it was going to all be fine, but that I would never let her be broken. At one point the dentist turned to me and said, “This is about lack of control. The response is either fight or flight. She’s fighting it.” As her screams grew louder and more frantic, I thought I heard him say, “How she responds to the drugs is an indication of how she’ll respond to alcohol. She’s likely to be a mean drunk.” To this day, I’m not sure I heard him correctly. Like any parent, I am defensive of people making negative comments about my kids and I am overly sensitive to their implications of my parenting ability. It’s as though he said not only are you raising a terrible child, but also that your child is pre-disposed to being terrible and it’s out of your control.  What I do know I heard was this “She’s fighting it.” I was not defensive about that. I was proud. Addie’s a fighter. That’s her personality and I should never have to make excuses for that. It didn’t help me feel any less helpless, though, or any less wrong about my decision to try the procedure without an anesthesiologist.

Every parent who has ever flown long distance with an energetic toddler knows the feeling of hopelessness I was feeling at that moment. Listening to the dentist’s response to Addie’s screams, I felt that same sensitivity and hopelessness in the face of this stranger’s judgments. They had to clear the back office of patients Addie’s screams were so loud. When I finally convinced them to stop and they had cleared the room, I gathered Addie to me. We sat there for a few minutes before a nurse dared to re-enter the room. If possible, she screamed louder at the sight of her approaching.  Walking through the dentist’s waiting room was like walking by a car crash only to realize you are the victim everyone is so perversely interested in viewing.

I was totally unable to calm her.  She screamed the whole way to the car. She screamed as I put her in her car seat. She screamed the full 10-minute drive home. When she wasn’t screaming, she was catching her breath to scream again. As we pulled up to our house, she spoke her first words since taking that fateful sleeping pill. “Mommy” she said between hiccupping sobs, “you’re not beautiful.”

I had run the gamut of all emotions: frustration, anger, helplessness and finally just resignation and tears. Addie loves dress up. She loves watching me get dressed in the mornings and she loves helping me pick out my outfits and jewelry. When I’m ready to leave for the day, she says, “Mommy, you look beautiful”. Telling me I wasn’t beautiful was her way of saying “I don’t love you. How could you let me get hurt?” It was my turn to catch my breath.

It took 2 more hours for the drugs to wear off. She couldn’t control the use of her legs or the enunciation of her words, so each time she tried to stand, she’d fall and each time she tried to speak, she’d slur her words. It was a shadow of her normal, vibrant personality and I was the one who felt broken for having made her go through it.

Being a parent is at once the most exalting of feelings and the most crushing. It is a constant wonder to me that I don’t do irrevocable damage to my kids everyday. I always feel unsure of my decisions, my handling of each situation. More often than not, I feel totally unequipped to be a parent. It is a job that has no end and forces you to adopt life-changing lessons every single day. You will learn more about yourself as a parent than you ever will in any other occupation of life. I don’t always like what it reveals, but I am always grateful for the lessons it teaches me. There is one thing for which I am the most grateful. Our children have short-term memories. This experience will scar me more than it will scar Addie.

We haven’t been back to the dentist in the last 2 months, but each time we pass the hospital where her dentist’s office is located, Addie points to it and says, “that’s where I go to the dentist. They give me a new toothbrush and a pink balloon. Mom, when do I get to go back?” 

Motherhood progression from one child to four

My motherhood progression from one child to four:
Stage 1/ Child 1:  Still put together, still have my "single and rockin'" body. My child wears all the latest trends in clothes and sits in all the newest gadgets, which, as a first time Mom, I have carefully researched and obsessed over. I take long, 3 hour lunches with all my new Mom friends where we complain about the lack of sleep and whether our babies are hitting their milestones at the same time as their classmates. I maintain willpower and restraint when I walk into my latest charity organization and bypass the fresh bagels and cream cheese for a plate of the freshly cut fruit. I feel good. I got this parenting with balance thing figured out.
Stage 2/Child 2: Still fitting into half my pre-baby outfits and worrying about whether my kids coordinate or not. I still linger over long lunches, arrange for all day play-dates to Disneyland, keep strict naptime schedules and refuse to be daunted by the grocery store experience with 2 kids in a cart. Tired, but enthusiastic about parenting.
Stage 3/ Child 3: I'm ignoring the bulging waistline threatening to relegate my favorite pair of pre-baby jeans to a life at the back of the closet. I snag that bagel and cream cheese and wrap 2 more for the road at the one charity meeting I've managed to attend in the last 4 months. My laugh sounds a little high pitched and my conversational efforts slightly alarming probably because of the barely noticeable twitch I've developed in my right eye.
Stage 4 /What's the child count?: If it's not spandex, I'm not wearing it. If it's not online, I'm not buying it. If lunch last 3 minutes with butts in seats, I can count the day victorious. I'm wondering if my kids know yet that the doors to get back in the house are locked and if it will buy me enough time to shave my legs. It doesn't. I put the diaper bag over one shoulder, my purse over the other, the baby on one hip and grab a bite of leftover waffle in syrup with my teeth from Kenzie's breakfast plate still on the Dining Room table.  Three children, self-dressed in mismatched, clashing outfits from Target or the "hand-me-down" store, race for the tank of a minivan that has recently replaced my sporty, cool quotient MDX.  I shake off the haze of sleeplessness that has settled into my head and bones over the past 5 months and think about my favorite pair of pre-baby blue jeans sitting at the back of my closet.

I am perfect

I am perfect..if your definition of perfect is a mother of 4, rarely on time, still carrying 5 lbs from each of her 4 pregnancies (you do the math), lets her son wear his sister's clothes to the neighbor's house, often offers unfiltered, awkward commentary in front of other mothers and just looked up how much it would cost to prime ship a bulk pack of Mike and Ike's from Amazon (that's not normal. I'm not still pregnant). 
I am also perfectly honest about being imperfect. I come from a long line of perfectly imperfect women and we'd be the first to publicly list our shortcomings. I meet many Moms who would never admit to their imperfections. In fact, most find it hard to acknowledge they may not always have it pulled together. I do not understand this unwritten rule of superficial over-achieving. There are entire days when I don't think it wise that I get out of bed, let alone engage my children in our daily routine of warfare. But, now, in addition to suiting up for my at-home combat, I find I should also steel myself for the away-from-home interactions with other mothers.

When I was 14, I jumped at the chance to attend high school 3000 miles from home because I believed it would provide a refuge from the social cliques of junior high school girls. Now I know, high school is high school regardless of where you go and our many insecurities undergo constant transformations in the name of conformity and materialism regardless of our age.  I thought graduating to the world of motherhood would be different. Aren't we all relegated to the same 9 months of discomfort, bodily dysfunctions and general gracelessness that comes with pregnancy? Shouldn't we all be humbled by the lack of control we exert over our body at that time and continually defeated by the emotional imbalance of parenting at all times? I am not promoting we all abandon social propriety, but whatever happened to a little humility? Why would you choose to carry a Louis Vuitton diaper bag instead of a sense of humor?

PTA meetings these days are filled with enough mothers who avoid the open box of glazed donuts, who just showered from the 5k they ran that morning and texted their manicurist that they need an emergency appointment to fix a snagged nail that got caught closing the zipper on their designer jeans. Where's the PTA with the women who fight for the last of the glazed donuts, chalk up their sprint to the coffee line as their only source of exercise for the day and proudly admire the crayola colored manicure their 3-year-old gave them after they had to hide the nail polish so she wouldn't paint the ottoman again? Put me in a room with women who introduce themselves with a little honesty. "I'm Patty and this morning while my kindergartener screamed 'I hate you, Mom, I hate you!' I wondered why they make muzzles for dogs, but not toddlers." I would raise tons of money with those women any day.

Since perfecting how not to look imperfect is the reigning mindset, I should be better about what I say and how much I reveal. Withholding my imperfections has never been my strength, though  (4 kids should tell you that) and the rules of social protocol should stay squarely on the shoulders of those mothers who can balance being perfect in addition to being a Mom. I'm not one of them.