Sister-ated

In an optimistic move, I elected to take both children hiking to the top of Pinnacle Mountain a week or so ago.  I love hiking, and I particularly love hiking my local "mountain":  a 1.25-mile trek up 1200 feet that allows a view of most of Little Rock, and more importantly this time of year, beautiful fall foliage.  The children amazed me; Jackson only had to be carried once, on the way down, because he refused to actually go back down, repeating, "My want to go back to the top!"  to every stranger we passed, hoping for sympathy, I guess.  Emily hopped up and across rocks so quickly that grandmotherly types eyed me warily and voiced concerns for her safety.

Three hours later, when we got back to the car, I could tell the trip had had the desired effect on the children:  they were both exhilarated and exhausted.  Jackson stared wearily out his window, but then finally put his thoughts into words as we drove through a rural area.  

"Mommy, is chicken made from roosters?"  I asked him to repeat the question as my mind zoomed through all kinds of birds-and-bees scenarios:  do I tell my two-and-a-half-year-old that yes, roosters do have a role in "making" chickens?  But Emily immediately understood what he was asking, and came to my rescue.  

"No, Jackson.  Chicken is made from chickens.  And if you eat steak?  That's from cows."  

Sibling communication.  Even 3.5 years apart, the children seem to have a way of communicating with and understanding one another that only they comprehend.  And several ways of tormenting one another.

"I am just a susterated!" Jackson tells me, not noticing my blank look.

"Sisterated?  Frustrated?"  I ask.

"No, susterated!  I am soooo mad!"  he replies emphatically.

But as frustrated as they often become with one another, it thrills me to note the genuine affection that they show one another most of the time.

"When my get big, my go to Ah-eee's school with Ah-eee."  Jackson has told me several times.  I ask Emily if she'll walk him to his preschool classroom.  

"Of course!" she responds.

"Will you kiss him goodbye?"  

"Probably not.  Probably I'll just give him a hug and then tell him [lowers her voice to a whisper] 'have a good day!'"

Caillou and the Missing Memory

Although we live in a fairly suburban area, I want, like most parents, for my children to experience the best of all possible living environments. I want them to know the urban privilege of walking to the grocery store alongside the rural experience of growing and picking our own food for dinner. (Still, we may have taken the " eat what we grow" idealism too far. Last week at dinner, Jackson announced clearly, "I want a butterfly sandwich." The other three of us looked at one another in amusement and bewilderment--"Emily, what does he mean?"--until I finally figured out he was referring to the bowtie pasta Emily was eating.)

Despite the 100 degree temperatures, I'm determined to give my children as much time for outdoor activity as possible. Tim and I love being outdoors and we're really happy that our children seem to enjoy it just as much. So as part of my desire to create for them quintessential outdoor summer fun, the children and I set out last week to pick blackberries near our house on what used to be a dairy farm and what is now being rapidly developed as a church/apartment complex/retail property.

Keeping the heat in mind, we prepared to go early in the day (although early for us is about 10 a.m.). We loaded up the bike-trailer-converted-to-a-double-running-stroller with water bottles, sippy cups, toys, several plastic containers for the dozens of berries we were bound to pick, and both children. Now, the children together at this point weigh in at about 72 pounds, and when you add in the weight of the stroller and its amenities, I figure the entire contraption, human and mechanical combined, is upward of 100 pounds. For the uninitiated, it tends to be hilly around here, which only serves to increase the concerned looks and comments I garner from friends and neighbors when I run alone. When I saddle up the big stroller, I try to do so as furtively as possible.

We had run no further than a quarter of a mile from our house when I spotted a DVD in the gutter in my path, sitting in some slimy water. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was Caillou's Holiday Movie, an all-time favorite of my children (and therefore, a favorite of mine. Anything that occupies my children for 90 minutes in the car is a designated favorite, no matter how whiny the main character or how ingratiating the narrator). How funny, I thought, and it's in perfect condition! I backed up a bit and tossed it into the stroller right next to the kitchen sink. We'd find out which of the neighborhood children had lost it later and return it to its rightful owner.

An hour or so later, our bellies full of blackberries, our arms scratched from thorns, and our composure nearly lost in the sweltering heat, we made our way back home. As I was being dragged by the stroller and its contents back down the big hill, I remembered something...spotty at first...but then with the details filling themselves in: my cleaning out the Honda the day before, Jackson wanting to watch Caillou, my placing the disc and something else from inside the car on top of the Honda...oh...and then all of us getting in the car to run an errand...

While it's not the first time I've driven off with something on top of the car, it is the first time I've found said object in the road and not even realized it was mine. It's also the first time I can't remember what else I left on the car's roof. My memory is definitely not right these days.

Luckily, I have two children with memories that function well--even perfectly. And really, it's only the day-to-day minutiae that I have trouble remembering--and they do that for me! "Mommy, remember you said that if I stopped pulling Jackson across the floor by his toes, that we could go to the pool?"

Yes, I can do without the daily details--that's what my calendar is for (when I remember to write on it). But long-term memories: those are the ones I want to hold onto--the good and perfect ones we create every day as a family.  And as for our blackberries, I'll remember that experience every time I find a container of smooshed berries in the toy box or see the stains under the couch cushions.

Home

"Jackson, did you hit Emily with the baseball bat?" I ask wearily and not for the first time. "Yes!" he confesses so readily and happily that I have to stifle a laugh, my face a mask of non-expression. Then I tell him, "It hurts people when we hit them with bats. I will take it away if you use it to hit. Please tell Emily you're sorry and give her a hug." Although he didn't hit her hard (this time) and she's not really injured, Emily begrudgingly accepts his affection and apology.

And I think, Wow. This one is going to take me for a ride.

You see, there's just not a malicious bone in that little 27 lb. body. But he goes at/into/up/around everything full-force. If it can be thrown, eaten, smeared, climbed, or flattened, Jackson is interested in it. Bonus points are given to items that are wet or sandy. The mud and rocks on the construction site next door have provided him with unending entertainment.

Indeed, Jackson is most at home when he's outside; he spends the majority of his time outdoors catching "pets" these days. To Emily's horror, he brought his pet slug upstairs to meet her while she was still in bed last week. Unfortunately for Emily, Jackson mistook her fear and disgust for ignorance: obviously, Emily did not realize what a fun pet he'd found for them! "Slug, sllluuugg!" he enunciated for her benefit, crawling after her on the bed, one hand tightly gripping its slimy form.

Luckily for all of us, Jackson's affection for animals met a more acceptable object this week, when we visited a friend's house where 3 newborn kittens were recently born.
"He like me!" he exclaimed, as the tiny cat struggled to free himself from Jackson's overbearing embrace. "My bring him home?"

But where is home? "Want go home," Jackson would often tell me a few weeks ago, as we pulled into our driveway. "We are home," I'd explain at first, trying in vain to find a way to define such an abstract concept to toddler, "this is our house."

"Want go home," he'd insist, dragging me back to the car or down the sidewalk, looking intently into my eyes. "Home."

"Where is home?" I asked. He stared at me blankly. Ah, yes, he's inherited my sense of direction. "So...who is at home?" I finally asked. Jackson's face brightened. "Nana! And Grandaddy! See Joy!"

Of course. Home is where the heart and the horsies are.

Almost Famous

Have you met the amazing Dr. Ethelyn Smith? I set out to post about her birthday today, but my sister Joy beat me to it--and summed up why she is so amazing much better than I could. Ethelyn is our great-aunt and she's 87 today! Click here to read Joy's post about her. Happy birthday, Ethelyn!

The American Way

In what now seems like another life, I was a college recruiter and later, a corporate recruiter. Each fall, I'd spend roughly 12 weeks traveling from Sunday through Friday. While my Hendrix colleagues spent most of their time driving around Arkansas, I spent mine in major cities in Texas, Georgia, Kansas and the like, holding a map across the steering wheel of a rental car, rotating it so that the road was facing the direction that it appeared in front of me, hoping to somehow find the next high school. That, and I spent my time sitting in airports.

Obviously, then, I am a person accustomed to the inevitable drudgery that is air travel, right? Well, let's put it this way: I have trouble doing anything for more than a couple of hours at a time. I don't even watch 3-hour movies. And unfortunately, waiting in the airport alone or with other adults has proven to be vastly different from waiting in the airport with young children. Last summer, we watched a woman, who apparently had never had a child, realize that she'd become so caught up in her book that she'd actually missed her flight. Ah, I remember those days, when my only issue in getting on the plane was figuring out how to carry my magazine, my purse, and my 20 oz. drink at the same time. It's a hard life.

So, I try to keep my family's airport waiting time to a minimum. Arriving an hour before a flight takes off seems to me to be a terribly responsible adult thing to do, so when we were scheduled to depart Little Rock at 8:55 a.m. on a recent Saturday, we found ourselves standing dutifully in the American Airlines line at 8ish.

Now, if you haven't traveled by air recently, you may not be aware that, like their Kroger counterparts, the airline powers-that-be would prefer that you self-check. Unlike Kroger's, however, their process is not streamlined--it's inefficient and counterintuitive. We were able to check in only Tim, since he was the only member of our little family carrying a credit card with his name on it; Emily, Jackson and I were left to stand in The Line. From the moment we queued up, the situation began to deteriorate.

8:10 a.m.* Line does not seem to be moving. At all. Man in front of us looks like one who has slept in the airport. Possibly in The Line.

8:15 a.m. Children restless, begin habitual hanging from my pants. Chose not to wear belt, so as not to get stopped by security; as a consequence, several passengers have now seen my underwear.

8:20 a.m. That's not the only underwear they'll see of mine--Jackson is bored and tired and begging to nurse. I put down the four bags I'm carrying to hoist him up.

8:25 a.m. Wait a minute, doesn't our plane leave in half an hour? Vague panicky feeling sets in.

8:28 a.m. The Line hasn't moved. Apparently, American Airlines personnel only help those who help themselves...in the self-check lane. They have yet to call a single person from our line. Run out to curbside and beg the man to check us in. Too late...it's now less than 30 minutes until our flight, and I hear the popular phrase of the day for the first time: "There's nothing I can do" (not to be confused with another very overused saying at American, "It's not my problem").

8:33 a.m. Momentarily distracted from our predicament: What is that under Jackson's fingernails?

8:37 a.m. Begin pacing frantically around check-in area. Politely coax passengers ahead of us to allow us to skip ahead, but Line still has not moved. Approach woman at desk out-of-turn, only to be told it's too late, "We've already given your seats away," and, without a hint of irony, "You didn't check in in time."

8:41 a.m. Pack up scattered luggage, deciding vacation is over, it's easier to go home. But wait, a factor we didn't take into account: We have a 5-year-old! Who was promised a Sea World/zoo/Disneyland vacation! The crying begins, and Emily and Jackson join in.

9:48 p.m. (the same day!) We're in San Diego, having luckily encountered American Airlines' single competent employee, who routed us through Chicago, where we (get ready for this) spent nearly 6 hours waiting in the airport!

*times are approximate: my watch is broken.

The remainder of our big travel day passed without incident. By midday, the children were happy and fed and even I was managing to sit through the long flights without too much restlessness. I admittedly kind of enjoyed the uninterrupted lap time (complete with 19 inches of leg room) with my two babies. At one point, I asked Jackson, "How are you today?" He thought about the question for a moment, then looked at me and grinned. "Twenty-one months," he replied. It was just the reminder I needed.

Call a Child

Perhaps you've heard Timbaland's hit song, "Apologize"? Yes, you've probably heard it, but what you probably haven't heard is Emily's version of that very song, with its alternative lyrics.

"It's too late to call a child...it's too laaaaate! I said, it's too late to call a chi-hild, it's too late, hey, hey," she croons.

Stranger still is the fact that she would be under the impression that it's ever too "late" to "call a child." Where has she been living for the past 5 years? Certainly not in our house, where children are routinely up and about after 10 p.m.

Actually, that's not quite true, not anymore. Emily was such a night owl, and I think we probably encouraged that. Tim and I knew that we could simply put her to bed twelve hours before we wanted her up. Since I am not, by nature, a pre-9:00 a.m. person, we thought it prudent to have Emily up around that time. Oh, those days of sufficient sleep! I could stay up and work, read, clean--until midnight!--and still wake up at nine, refreshed and ready to go.

Sweet little Jackson. He was born easygoing, happy, and loving the early morning hours. Last week, I awoke groggily (as usual) to find his diapered bottom aligned with my head in the bed, his cheerful face smiling down at me. "It time to get up!" he announced. So we did, only to find ourselves halfway down the stairs with Emily lagging behind, still lounging in her room, unwilling to start her day. "Come on, Em-wee!" No response, then, "I coming to get you!" He's back in her room, climbing up onto the bed, falling into her arms, his head on her chest. "Hi, Ah-eee," he waves excitedly. Even Emily has to smile, and then they're together, holding hands, walking slowly down the steps, a morning ritual. An early morning ritual, at least by my standards and hers, but nonetheless, one we've grown to love.

Running On...Anyway

A couple of weeks ago, three friends and I teamed up to run the Little Rock Relay Marathon. Now, the most important word in that phrase is the word relay.  I ran 7.8 miles, not the 26.2 miles that the full marathoners endured, or even the 13.1-mile half marathon that my fast, fast sister Joy ran and took second place overall (and won cash!).

No, I staggered through the 7.8-mile third relay segment, and it felt something like cheating when I detoured from the full marathon course to go through my little relay chute and collect my medal and bag of post-race treats (Little Debbie cakes, mostly.  Who knew a healthy, post-run snack could be so tasty?).  It also felt something like necessary.  

You see, there was some doubt that I would even start the race.  The day before, I felt off....like I was catching the virus my children had had for the past couple of weeks.  "It's all in your mind," my do-an-Ironman-even-with-the-flu sister insisted.  "You've just got to focus on something else."  Right.  So I promptly began focusing on finding out how many Ghirardelli chocolate squares one person can eat in a day.

It didn't help.  By that evening, when Joy's friends arrived to stay at our house before the race, I had a high fever and was huddled under three blankets asking, teeth clattering, "Is it just me, or is anyone else freezing?"

My running partner, Holly, came up with a plan.  "Just have Joy jog over to your starting line after she finishes her half marathon, then she can run your segment with you.  If it looks like you're not going to be able to finish, you can just put your race number and chip on her, and she can finish your leg."  So, with a prayer, a codeine pill, a few extra blankets, and a fever of 102, I went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up feeling great!  Well, maybe great is an exaggeration, but I did feel determined to run, so I ran.  I even met the (rather modest) goals I'd set forth for myself:  I kept my average minutes-per-mile at 8:something, I kept my fever down (until later that afternoon, when it returned with a vengeance), and I kept my breakfast in my belly.  

Joy caught up with me and ran the last five miles of my run alongside me, which was helpful. Helpful, that is, if your definition of helpful is having a sadistic athletic machine run with you, talking incessantly, insisting you don't have to answer, then constantly asking, "What?? What did you say? What do you mean, you're tired??  Let's pick it up for these last two miles.  Of course you can go faster.  Did you know VO2 max is increased when you...."  

Yes, Joy was definitely helpful, and I mean that sincerely.  After all, I perform best when a race closely mimics my training.  "Faster, Mommy.  Run up the hill.  Where is the park?  When are we going to be home?"  Did I mention I used to train with a Babyjogger?

Snow: The (Temporary) Cure for What Ails You

Snow! And in March, no less. The unexpectedness of it made it, I think, even more delicious.

I was slowly getting out of bed this morning--Jackson was attending to his daily, first-thing-in-the-morning ritual, finding Tim to "take glasses to Daddy"--when I heard children's voices and laughter outside, and then, distinctively, the word, "snowman!" At that, I leapt out of bed and raced (well, walked much more quickly than I usually do before noon) to the window. Snow, and a couple of good, sticky inches of it, had fallen quietly in the night.

Now, part of the reason why I was getting up so slowly this particular morning was due to my dreading the morning's planned activity: a trip to the pediatrician. Both children have been sick for the better part of a week, and now the high fever was back, and it appeared Emily also had strep.

But when I opened the blinds for the rest of the family, our troubles were momentarily forgotten. Jackson exclaimed (and I wrote this down, so I wouldn't forget it), "Look at all that...amazing!"

We'd been looking forward to a snow this season since, oh, November. You see, we'd made all kinds of plans with the neighborhood children--plans that involved sledding down the huge hills near our house, making snowmen and throwing snowballs, ice skating on the "lake" at the end of our street--well, you get the picture. (For any grandparents who might be reading, I won't dwell on our plans to sled behind the neighbors' 4-wheeler.) And it was kind of looking like we might not get that snow this year. And when your children are under six, next year sounds just about like next century to them.

Well, as it turned out, both children were sick (just when you think you've heard of all of the nasty-sounding throat viruses out there, and believe me, I thought we'd had them all by now, they throw a new one at you. Herpangina, anyone? Oh, don't look disgusted...you're over four, you've had it). We were glad (well, as glad as a germaphobe can ever really be to visit a microbe-infested superbug breeding ground) we schlepped it over to the clinic after all. But it also turned out that we thoroughly enjoyed our snow day! The schools were not closed, so our neighborhood friends couldn't join us, but we discovered that whether you're eating it, throwing it,














or some combination of the two,













snow can make you feel well again.

The Marsupial in Me

To those familiar with my parenting philosophy, it will probably not come as much of a surprise to learn that I have wished, for a couple of years now, that humans had pouches.  How much easier would it be, instead of manipulating an unwieldy ring sling, to simply tuck your newborn into your pouch and head out the door?  Public nursing becomes a non-issue; strangers no longer caress your baby's tiny cheeks; the baby stays warm and happy, and consequently, so do you!  Of course daily, monotonous tasks would be easier--you now have two hands!  two arms!--but the real freedom would lie in all of the other adventures you could undertake with your baby safely ensconced.  An evening out?  No babysitter, no problem!  Want a little exercise?  No running stroller required.

But the reality, I suppose, is that holding a baby in your arms, to your chest, at eye-level, is what humans are made to do.  Although I'd definitely have been poked in the eye a lot less, I'd also have had fewer little hands patting my cheeks, had my babies not been held.  

When she was a toddler, Emily wanted to be held constantly.  She liked the closeness, certainly, but she also depended on my reactions to new situations to develop her own.  Upon encountering something new, or scary, she'd stare deep into to my eyes as if reading my thoughts, gauging my insecurities, following my lead.

Tonight, after their baths, Tim was dressing Emily and I was drying Jackson with his towel, when Emily started her late-evening-sick-for-two-days-can't-take-anymore meltdown in the next room.  Jackson looked into my eyes, quizzically, then asked, "Crying?"  "Yes, that's Emily, she's crying," I told him.  He sat there thinking for a second, then looked up at me.  "I go hold you."  Then, running toward Emily, his chubby arms outstretched, anxious to hold the sister who outweighs him by fifty percent, "I go hold you, I go hold you!"

Could a pouch do that?