Then I came up with one. And another. And another. And the more I thought, the more I realized I do have them, they’re just more practical in nature, and less easily summed up in a pithy title. But they’re all aimed toward one ultimate goal: independence. I guess I’d have to call myself a middle of the road kind of free range parent.

I think I will probably address some of these in individual posts, so today I’m just going to share what I came up with. And then…then, I’d like to know what your philosophies are.

• Telling kids no.
• Letting them fight their own battles and ask their own questions.
• Being willing to admit I’m wrong.
• Moderation: in food, in toys, in TV, and related to that…
• Giving the gift of family instead of Stuff.
• Loving touch.
• Tolerance: Not stopping them from doing things that aren’t wrong, even when it’s annoying.
• Allowing them to suffer. (I have a lot to say on that subject, so as horrible as it sounds, bear with me. I’m not talking about making them suffer, just allowing it when it happens.)

What all these have in common is this: letting go. As parents, we are often urged  not to “rush” children to grow up. But at the same time, we feel anxious if we don’t have our kids in one sport every season, music lessons and speaking three languages. Most of my music students have more than one extracurricular activity every day. If that’s not pushing kids to carry an adult’s load, I don’t know what is. And I think we feel that instinctively, which is why we end up doing things for them that they should be doing for themselves–to try to offset it. And that’s how we get helicopter parenting.

I want to be the anti-helicopter parent…but still nurture and love them. My goal is for my children to leave–even Julianna, my little girl with the magic chromosome–to fly the nest, to leave me free to do all the things I’ve put off in the service of my children–but to love them so thoroughly and completely that they’re happy to return.

Most days, I think I fall far short. But every once in a while, when I’m loving them so hard my body almost can’t stand the force of it–every once in a while, I’m sure I’ll succeed.

It’s almost Lent, folks! I know, I’m ahead of the game, but I have a good reason: I am hosting a giveaway for my new book, Bring Lent To Life. If you’re a Catholic mother with young (or youngish) children, click over and leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy!

Okay, now that I’ve done my shameless self-promo…moving on.

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I was poking around online, doing magazine market research yesterday, and an ad for “Molexit” caught my eye. Considering the helpless rage with which I am consumed every time I walk across my big lawn, my ankle twisting on the maze of mole hills, you can imagine I clicked. A little browsing led me to THIS. All I have to say is: These are people after my own heart.

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I teach flute and voice lessons in my basement, which you might imagine can be a bit of an adventure with three small children and, uh, a nursing baby. Alex used to be very quiet over in the corner, humming vocal warmups along with the students while he bent over a Lego creation or a rescue hero. (Precursor to the autopilot humming he does All.The.Time now.) But Julianna? Julianna takes it to a whole new level. This week in lessons, she turned her back to us, planted her feet shoulder-width apart, and sang to the sunny window with arms out Broadway-finale style, “Eee-AAAAAAAHHHHaaaaah!”

Ah, how I love that girl, despite her selective deafeness to anything she doesn’t feel like hearing…

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Speaking of Julianna, or rather, Julianna and Michael…my baby is 8 weeks old already. I cannot believe it. I’ve been anxiously watching for his first smile, and we got it this week–a few, fleeting, absolutely adorable smiles. But incredibly hard to catch. I spent twenty minutes making a complete, blithering fool of myself while the dish water got cold one night. Once–once–I hit the button at exactly the right moment….and the camera turned off. I had my finger on the power instead of the shutter. Sigh. In the end, this was the best I got:

While Julianna, who torments him ceaselessly, turning him sideways in his bouncy, soundlessly and sneakily rolling him over onto his tummy (and here I thought I was making a big joke when I said she was destined to be a superspy), dragging him by one arm when my back is turned, lying on top of him…what, you think I’m kidding? Look at this! Caught in the act!

Julianna is the one Michael smiles for most often. What is this, some freaky variant on Stockholm syndrome???????

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Smiles aside, Michael adores all his big siblings. He can’t smile with his mouth yet, but his whole face smiles. Moms, you know that look, right? Heart-meltingly bright eyes, arms and legs kicking, face alight? He does that often for us. And it makes me happy to see how much Nicholas loves him. I was worried about Nicholas, because he’s such a drama king, and so needy. I was afraid we’d be in for all manner of resentment and tantrums. But the transition has been remarkably smooth, and he absolutely adores his baby brother, asking to hold him at all times of the day. Of course, he lasts about ten seconds, but hey. He’s a boy.

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Alex was home from school two days this week. And now we have piles of homework to catch up on. Actually, he did most of it while I was teaching yesterday, but it’s a wakeup call, reminding me that whew, we are entering a new phase of parenthood!

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Well, I’m officially back to that phase of my life: the obsessed with sleep stage. It’s cyclical, and varies in cause and style. Right now it’s the “how many times did he get up last night?” strain. The Shangri-la of sleep for me right now would be getting to that stage where the baby wakes up around two and then sleeps till five or six. My babysitter keeps asking, “Is he sleeping through the night yet?” I’m like, uh…no. Is he supposed to? I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had a child who slept through the night until he or she was three years old.

Whatever, dude. Sleep is for wimps.

But that makes me wonder–how many of you actually have kids who slept through the night consistently? And at what age?

Enough from me. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway!

Julianna’s the ringleader of this little comic group, and her repertoire of jokes consists of one: She signs “eat” and points to random objects–the baby’s nose, the pillow, the wall, my jeans, the phone–and giggles hysterically.

The first time, I admit, I was slow on the uptake (as I often am with jokes). “You’re gonna eat the phone?” I said blankly, and she fell on the pillow, overcome by mirth. Now that was funny. You poor people out there in the e-verse have no way of comprehending how magical Julianna’s laugh is. I was powerless against it. The first time, anyway.

Nicholas found it so hysterical, he couldn’t even sit up. Instantly, he adopted the joke as his own, wholly forgetting that he can talk.

Although–and I hope you’ll permit me the tangent; my story’s finished anyway–Julianna actually is talking now. She almost always asks for “milk please” and names a whole bunch of colors, as well as counting one to ten. You have to know the context; you wouldn’t just recognize the words automatically–but she is saying them. Yesterday her big speech therapy task was to learn to say “go home.” I’m so proud of my little girl. Except when she’s sitting motionless, pretending she can’t hear me issuing instructions, that is. That girl can use her disability to play stupid when she doesn’t want to do something. We really have to stay on our toes to try not to get manipulated. I know she’s winning some of the battles…like the chores battle. Nicholas is way farther than she is on the “complies with instructions” continuum. I know I have to fight that battle eventually, but I don’t have the time and emotional energy to deal with them simultaneously. Let’s just hope I manage to do it before Michael gets old enough to need the lesson!

(By the way–I’m well aware that today is Wednesday, not Thursday, but I have a special post prepared that requires editorial approval, so I’m doing Motherhood Moment a day early today to make room for it! Stay tuned!)

Last night was one of those nights when I think we really ARE as crazy as people think we are for having four children. Nicholas (AKA drama king) is sick, and you know what that means. If you don’t, let me enlighten you: it means he got up SIX TIMES between ten-thirty and six a.m. Add two nursings and one scream from Julianna, who was convinced that there was a thunderstorm outside her window, and you can imagine I am one seriously cranky mommy this morning.

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Cranky mama status is especially troublesome as I intended to focus this post on my cute kids. They’re not looking so cute to me today.

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Which means, since my attitude shapes my reality, it’s even more important today than it would have been otherwise. So why don’t I focus mostly on Nicholas, the bane of my nights light of my life, the perpetual “why”-asker and camera ham? Now, when I say camera ham, don’t think I’m overstating. In the home videos from his babyhood he couldn’t seem to do anything but pose and give silly, goofy giggles. Now he says, “Mommy, wi you take pi-euh of me?” It’s hard not to oblige when he gives me pictures like this one:

(Those eyes are murder. Murder, I’m telling you. High school girls, beware.)

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 Or this one:

The moment I snapped this picture my heart almost stopped, because I realized I was looking at a teenage Nicholas. I know now exactly how he will look.

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 He’s also the klutz of the family. Wednesday night he tripped and smacked his head on the metal base of a schoolroom desk while we were at choir practice, and now sports a knot you can see from across the street. Thursday morning he hit his head six times between getting up and breakfast time. I’ve known for a long time that he was going to be his mother’s child in that regard. I was the one in our family who had to have stitches, who broke her arm, the only one who had to have surgery…there’s gotta be one in every family, and in mine Nicholas is it. You know what? That doesn’t jive well with drama king status. Ugh.

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 You haven’t seen much of Michael lately. How about one of him? Better yet, how about one of him and his brand-new cousin?Except you can’t really see Michael’s face, can you? How about this one?

Power to the people, man!

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Julianna got her own post and pictures yesterday, so let’s leave off with a picture of Alex doing what Alex does best these days: being an awesome big brother.

Now, how can I be a cranky mom after those pictures??????

(I’m sure I’ll find a way. Just give me time.)

Christian & the kids were at a concert on Saturday night when I walked into my kitchen and stopped dead, staring at the piles of papers waiting to be filed, gifts and school projects no one had had time to sort and put away, and toys—the toys that are supposed to stay in the basement—on every level of the house.
“Oh…my…gosh,” I said.

My mother went upstairs to start folding more laundry. My dad pulled Michael out of his car seat and started goo-goo-eyeing him. I hung up my coat and tore into the mess. It didn’t really look any better when I had to cease and desist for the night, in part because of the extra clutter my homecoming had brought into the house, but I did as much as I could.

What a difference six days can make. Every previous baby homecoming has involved a two-hour drive on a very sore abdomen, every bump causing me to wince and hold my incision. It’s involved the panicky not-feeling-good of engorgement. This time? This time I lit into the household tasks with an energy that amazed even me. All I could think was I had to do as much as I could before the kids came home and I needed to minister to the people in my household instead of the household itself.

I am way more interested in nesting now than I was in the last two weeks of my pregnancy.

Transition is tough every time. Thirty-six hours in, I’m already almost wild; Nicholas looks hurt when I shush him—because he never, ever, EVER shuts up. He just keeps repeating the same things over and over, right in my face while I’m trying to concentrate on making sure Michael is actually nursing and not simply tearing my breasts to shreds without getting anything out of them. Why is it that every baby is a stellar nurser in the hospital and then decides to be a fit-and-start-er upon arrival home? Julianna wants to breathe her runny nose and phlegmy cough on him, and everybody wants to hold him all the time. And ten days of hospital stress and nursing in a cramped corner beneath a vitals monitor that was beeping every minute and a half finally took their toll; I woke yesterday with the crick in my neck to end all cricks. Splitting headache, agonizing pain in my back.

Let’s just say it’s not conducive to house cleaning.

Transition, I whisper to myself. Just keep your cool. This, too, shall pass.

Besides, there’s this to counterbalance it. I just have to discipline my attitude.

Alex has been waiting for the chance to jump in the leaves. Julianna has been waiting for the chance to plunge through them and kick them up, just like her mommy loves to do in the fall. Nicholas is ready to follow his siblings’ lead, wherever it takes him.

The sun shines warm, tempered by the chill of a wind waiting to steal the warmth as evening draws near. The smell drifts upward as I crouch close to the ground with the camera.

Time to dig small hands in the leaves, to crinkle them beneath fingernails, and fling them skyward.

Yay God, indeed.

Shared with Wordful Wednesday at Angie’s Seven Clown Circus.

So I have been somewhat circumspect about this pregnancy. But I do expect it to be the last. Four C-sections take a toll on a body. I’ve never been sick as much as I have been the last five years. Right now I seem to be on a schedule: sick for ten days, healthy for fourteen.

Last week, my mother went with me to St. Louis for my 33-week appointment; she visited her mother and watched my kids while I saw the doctor and had meetings at Liguori Publications. On the way home, she gently chastised me for the close spacing of my children, and how much of a toll it takes on the body. She wanted us to stop planning everything so much, and just let God give us children on His own schedule.

We have chosen to have our children close together because infertility got us off to a very late start, and because we wanted our children to have built-in playmates. But now we have a child with special needs, sandwiched between two boys who have their own needs and concerns. These three and the baby they already love on in utero are a gift to each other, and to us as parents, but they need time and attention from us, too. They have gifts that need nurturing, too. I need to have time to teach them all about responsibility and chores, to teach them to cook and bake and clean, not to mention how to love God and others through what they do from one day to the next.

As an NFP teacher and a writer for our magazine, I feel terribly conflicted. Many of the families I encounter have six and seven children and thrive. Many of the women I interview show such grace as full-time mothers. They don’t try to write (or anything else) from home. They pour all their energies into the tasks I outlined above, and are at peace with that as their calling. And it’s beautiful. It truly is beautiful.

I always thought I would be one of those mothers, but I’m not. There’s this restless need in me to make an impact on the world through the gifts I’ve been given. That’s actually what I was aiming toward when I began writing today, but it’s becoming clear that the two are separate posts. Are not all the gifts God gives us meant to be used, even if we are the only ones who can bear children?

Yet when I think of the women and men out there who long for children and haven’t been blessed—when I see the great beauty that comes with every baby and the way he or she expands the capacity for love felt by the older siblings—I think, “How could any other concern possibly justify not doing this again, if we can possibly manage it?”

But then I spend a week barely functional because of low-grade nausea. And my entire pelvic girdle aches at every step after walking two miles in the morning. And I spend five minutes on my feet in the middle of the night three times as round ligament pains rouse me from slumber and force me out of bed to walk them off. And I realize that I can’t do it all. At some point, I have to take care of me, too. And it makes me a little sad. But at the same time, I look forward to graduating from this phase of life and into the next.

I know many of you are beyond this point. How did you discern when it came time to move on?

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“We’ve got tonight, who needs tomorrow?…why don’t you stay? …” Christian came up the stairs singing in his most cheesy, melodramatic voice, inviting laughter. But my 33-week hormones had turned on the sniffles. Who knew it was such a romantic song? I put my arms out to him, and unexpectedly—because after all, it was bedtime, and a very cheesy song—he reciprocated.

We danced for all of twenty seconds…my swollen belly smooshed against him, a shuffle of rusty steps from a forgotten era when we took ballroom dance every week. We danced cheek to cheek, boxed in by children on two sides and a stairwell on another. The most uncomfortable dance I’ve ever danced with my husband, and perhaps the most precious by virtue of its unexpectedness, its spontaneity.

Julianna, stark naked and giggling, ran forward to demand her turn in Daddy’s arms. He swayed and stepped her back and forth in front of the bathroom, laughing because the front window blinds stood open, and with the lights on, anyone passing by could see our daughter dancing in all her birthday suit glory. Nicholas, not to be outdone, came running—naked too—yelling “my turn! My turn!” But he settled for Mommy.

The four of us danced to the strains of Bob Seger, two little naked bodies waiting for diapers and jammies, and two parents who can’t decide if they love each other or their children more.

It takes longer for you to read about it than it did to live it, this one perfect moment. When it was over, we finished brushing teeth and putting on clothes and reading books. And when we all converged on Mommy and Daddy’s bed for bedtime prayers, I thought about how different this same scene might look a few months from now, minus a few pounds, plus another child. My heart welled over with gratitude: for spontaneity, for my children and my husband, for the gifts waiting to be unwrapped in the most unexpected moments; for the sweetness of sibling love and the sweetness of parent-child love and the awesome power of a family that can’t love each other hard enough. In between head bumps and hurt feelings and toys wrested away, tempers lost and harsh words instantly regretted, and who wants hugs and who doesn’t…amid all that, there’s so much love. How did we get so lucky? When so many crave the tiniest sliver of affection…how is fair that our house can’t contain all of ours?

You’d think that a mother approaching the birth of her fourth child in seven years (well, 7 ½) wouldn’t be floored by the sheer tininess. But as I pulled out our trusty cloth diapers, counted them, stacked them in the drawer, I couldn’t believe it. Every single baby diaper fit in one drawer. After close-on four years of double diapering, it just blew my mind.

I have to admit, I’m kind of freaking out here. People get out of the habit of having babies around, and then they feel a tug in the heart to have another, but they think back on the intensity of the experience, and they get scared off. When we started trying for #4, we were still in full-on Baby mode. But it took us six months to conceive. A lot can change in six months. And a lot more in the nine months that follow. We are no longer a baby household. We are a nighttime-and-nap-time-diapers family. A my-youngest-child-is-talking family. An everyone-has-chores (although they don’t always do them) family.

But seven weeks from now…

Well, let just say it’s making me think about how many more things than diaper drawers are going to change.

Some nights, I already get up seven times in six hours. How in the name of all that is holy am I going to comfort Julianna after a nightmare, the drama king when he has a runny nose, AND nurse a baby during the night?

How am I going to exercise? And post a blog? It’s already a delicate balance to do those two things and still get Alex off to school.

How am I going to chase down the munchkins when they run in opposite directions and I have a baby attached to the breast? (Is it possible to run and nurse simultaneously?)

I’m well aware that the writing is going to have to simmer down for a while. A good long while. But, um, I can’t even get the house clean now. How can I add the time commitment of a newborn on to the kid commitments I already have? The last time I had a baby, Alex was in preschool for a whopping two mornings a week. I freaked out when he had eight weeks of baseball once a week. And now it’s all-day school and piano lessons and homework, and Julianna on the bus, and Julianna’s speech homework, and…

Folks, I’m a little intimidated by what my life’s about to become.

Don’t get me wrong. It’ll all be worth it. The back shot, the surgery, the two weeks without driving and six weeks without lifting, the sleepless nights. It’ll already be worth it a week in—a day in. But there were plenty of times in Nicholas’s first six months when I lost all semblance of cool. And as I begin to contemplate the change to come, I’m kind of scared.

Pour some loving on me, folks.

Image via Wikipedia

I know this will come as no surprise to those who know our tendency to plan, plan, plan, but we have already started Christmas shopping. In fact, we’re well into the process.

And you know what? It is awesome.

See, here’s the thing. Every year, Christmas shopping gets more stressful. We can always come up with a long list of things Alex would like, but Julianna’s desires remain very simple: books and music. But we have hundreds of books, and she’s deliriously happy with the music we already have. And Nicholas? Nicholas loves everything, but thanks to Alex we already have everything: Duplos, trains, superhero action figures…

For the last couple of years, we’ve brainstormed, made lists, and hired a babysitter to go shopping. But let me tell you, those shopping trips are anything but fun. We feel under the gun. Nothing ever seems like enough; we feel compelled to have equal amounts of gifts for each child, but the inequality listed above makes it really tough. I spend the whole buying process feeling anxious and under pressure to get it done before the babysitter bill racks up too much. Not enjoyable at all. This is a perfect illustration of why I wrote a book about reclaiming Advent in the first place.

And it was really expensive. (Disclaimer: if you know us at all, you know we are collectively the cheapest people in the universe. I’m sure many people would roll their eyes at me calling it expensive, but as far as I’m concerned, having to pull money from savings instead of covering out of the budget qualifies as EX.PEN.SIVE.)

Plus, there’s this factor. Last year, the kids loved their toys…for a month or two. But they haven’t touched them for the last four months.

It’s time for a change.

So this year, we’re taking a little different tack:

1. Start early. Really early. As in making lists in early September.
2. Spread out the expense. The last couple of years, we’ve panicked at the last minute, realizing we’ve forgotten gifts for teachers and the like. That’s never a recipe for getting something they’ll actually use and appreciate. This year, we’re starting to collect Panera gift cards via the local SCRIP program (one each ordering session), and gift boxes from Penzey’s.
3. Limit the toys. I know we can’t avoid toys altogether, but we’re scaling way back. Why waste money on things they aren’t really all that interested in? My kids are experiential kids, not toy kids. Alex even said a few weeks ago, “I like toys that help me play. Like Wolverine claws.” (If only we could find those.)
4. Think creatively. Guess what? We desperately need pillows and bedsheets. Why not get some fun ones and wrap them up? And the kids, fighting over the Spiderman bath sponge? Sounds like a Christmas gift to me!
5. Check the bargain aisles. So far, bargain shopping has netted a book for each child (a fairy counting book, not Tinker Bell; a photo book of trains; and a car game book, total about $20), and we picked up two containers of sidewalk chalk for $.50 each.
6. Go handmade. I’m planning to make a couple of headbands for Julianna, and enlist Alex’s help. Being my artistic one, I know that will be right up his alley.
7. Go with time-gifts instead of Stuff that’s just going to lie around making more clutter. My work list is getting so long that it’s tempting to try to plow through the mornings and not spend time with the little ones. But they love to help me bake. Why not get some fun cupcake decorations and give them to the kids as Christmas gifts? Use them up, make a memory, and consume it. Sounds like a perfect gift to me.

That’s our plan for this year. But I would love to hear from others. How do you deal with planning Christmas gifts your kids will like without a) stressing out, and b) spending money on things they aren’t going to care about?