How many times a day do I hear my name? I can't even begin to count and if I knew, I think seeing that number would blow me away. I often think that it's a habit for Hudson. He can hardly start a sentence without saying "mom." Sometimes Jason will get home and while at the dinner table he will get annoyed at the number of times Hudson says mom in a short period of time. I give him (Jason) a look of disbelief that he can be aggravated after only 15 minutes of this. Try all day. I'm pretty much used to it but there are some days that it does begin to wear on me. Would I change it? No, especially not the fact that I have my son in front of me, wanting to talk to me. I might take away the number of times I hear "mom" but I'd never take away the time we spend together.
How many times a day do I pick up the bucket of Tinker Toys? Too many to count. I believe Cooper has developed a little game with me. He can be across the room or in another room for that matter and he can hear me or catch me out of the corner of his eye, picking up the Tinker Toys and he comes right over. I will get them picked up and put away and no sooner do I walk away and they are dumped out again. I swiftly turn my head and this is what I see......
The most precious face in the world. Now, how could I be upset with him? He knows this and totally works this angle. Not only does he find satisfaction in turning the Tinker Toy bucket over but he loves to wallow in them. He gets them all spread out and rolls around on them, kicks his hands and feet every which way in order to send pieces all over the floor and under my couch, never to be found again. Would I change it? No, because the day my baby doesn't like Tinker Toys is the day that he will no longer give me that smile. For now, I'll just deal with constant mess in my living room.
How many times a day do I get to use the restroom by myself? None. I usually have at least one of them in there with me. Sometimes I'll just shut the door and even lock it but then I have Cooper pressed against the door screaming because he wants in.......so technically I'm not alone then either. Would I change that? Well, pretty soon I'll have to because as my boys get older there will need to be some privacy for me since I'm a girl and........well, you know.
The list could go on and on about how children have changed my life. Would I change any of it? No way. My friend Laurie sent me an email today and it got me to thinking about my life and how it is right now and how different it will be when they are gone. Here is a copy of it:
Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author: All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too. Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. T hey have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When- Mom-Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking? But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
So for now, I'll be thankful that God has blessed me with two healthy children and I'll continue to ask for guidance in how to raise them.
This time he had his head tucked down too far and he got stuck. It scared him pretty bad.
One night, a while back, we were watching TV. Jason and Hudson were on the 2 couch and Hudson put his foot up in the air and started talking about his foot and pointing to the wall. I didn't hear this so I didn't look over. Jason looked quickly at the wall and then back to the TV. He didn't see anything or didn't connect what Hudson was trying to tell him. Hudson kept on talking about feet and finally Jason looked over and realized what he was talking about. He told me to look up towards the mantle to see the "foot" that Hudson had been talking about. We started cracking up (Hudson was relieved that we finally saw what he was talking about) Other than the multiple toes, he was right on!
