Dad chuckled. “That boy,” he said, “talked nonstop the entire time he was in the tractor, up until he fell asleep.”

I nodded. “That’s my life every day. It’s exhausting! Mentally exhausting, I mean.”

He nodded thoughtfully in turn. “Yes, it is. You could just let him talk…but the problem is, he expects a response!”

To get an idea of what Nicholas is like, the best illustration I can think of is that 1990s Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory. “Jerry” is a cab driver in New York who talks nonstop all day, even as his voice grows more and more hoarse, until by the end of the day he can barely talk at all.

Nicholas talks even when he has a sore throat. He talks whether or not he has anything to say. If he runs out of words, he simply hums or says nonsense syllables. And he virtually always expects a response.

I reiterate something from yesterday’s post: the word “noise” comes from the word “nausea.” This is what noise does to me. It unsettles me, sets me on edge, which is why I seek out stillness, and why I hardly ever play music around the house even though I have two higher degrees in music. So you can imagine the soul-growth my third child requires of me. Some time I should count how many times a day I say some variation of “Be quiet!” to him. Frequently I have to remind myself he’s not actually doing anything wrong.

He’s singleminded as only a three-year-old can be. For example:

N: “I want a movie.”

Me: “Finish your lunch.”

N: “I want a movie, Mommy.”

Me: “Finish your lunch first.”

N: “I want a movie, Mommy!”

Me: “Finish your broccoli right now, and then we’ll talk about it.”

N: “I want a movie!”

Me: “Look at me. What did I say?”

N: (A beat, then): “I want a movie?”

Julianna doesn’t talk much. Remind me why we’re pushing so hard for her to speak? …

(That’s a joke. Chill. )

“Yah!” she said happily, and Alex, beaming with pride, led his two younger siblings out of the church with the rest of the kids.

He returned fifteen minutes later, wearing that long-suffering expression that means little siblings are a pain in the neck. “Did Julianna try to run away?” I whispered.

“Well, a couple times. I had to take her to the bathroom.”

Oh, my. That’s way above and beyond the call of duty for a seven-year-old.

Big surprise: the next week, Alex decided he had outgrown children’s liturgy. So I followed the other two at a distance, giving them the space to go on their own. I sat at the back and kept an eye on Julianna. (Why the 5yo, and not the 3yo? Hm. Keep reading, and thou shalt understand.)

For a while, she did great. But then she saw two boys crawling under the TV cabinet and thought that looked like more fun than stories about Jesus. The leader redirected her, and she settled back down. Two minutes later, she clambered to her feet and began circling the outer rim of the crowd, bopping people on the head: duck…duck…duck…duck…

I intercepted her before she reached “goose.” I made her sit down, and I retreated…but not far. Three minutes later, she looked around, stood up, wiggled her bottom, and plopped down in the lap of some poor little girl two years younger than herself. By the time I got there, the girl had the shell-shocked look of one whose personal space has been summarily violated.

Julianna sat with me for the remainder of Children’s Liturgy.

Aside from the speech delay, the thing that sticks out the most about parenting my daughter with Down syndrome is how difficult it is to teach her limits. She doesn’t “get” it. No, I take that back. She understands that you have to take turns with toys. But when she sees something belonging to an adult, or something left unsupervised, she thinks it’s free for the taking. If she’s thirsty, she’ll go grab someone’s glass, even if it’s a complete stranger. If she sees someone’s purse (oh, how she loves purses…thank the Lord I don’t carry one!), she will stealthily and swiftly empty its contents to the far corners of the room. She chooses random people in any crowd and gives them huge hugs.

Adults deal with it well. They think it’s cute, and sometimes I think she has a sixth sense about who most needs something. How else to account for all those touch points?

But kids are another matter. Kids don’t have the understanding and tolerance their parents do, because those are learned skills, acquired values. I can hardly fault them for regarding with suspicion a person who steals their food, and then the adults yell at them instead of her. She doesn’t exactly fit in anywhere. She’s too old to play with the toddlers, and she can’t keep up with the big kids–those her own age. They tolerate her presence, they take her in stride…but she’s clearly not a part of the group.

It is sad, and unfair, that those I most want her to be able to connect with are the ones least equipped. Yes, it’s great that she creates warm fuzzies with people who can influence her larger future, but that’s a global thing. As far as she’s concerned, her peers are more important.

Understand, I’m not going for a “woe is me” theme. Yesterday I got to meet several self-advocates and teens with Down syndrome, as well as children of all age ranges. I’m still on a high, seeing the community I knew had to be in my area, even if we couldn’t find them for the first several years. But I have to keep it real, too!

Later this week, when I’ve fully processed everything, I might share more about our DS group kickoff event.

When Christian saw this picture, he shook his head and said, “I’m telling you, we’re gonna have trouble with that one.”

That was a year ago. When Nicholas was barely two years old. Now just imagine what life is like with this child at three.

“Mommy, I a goofball,” he says to me as I’m putting him down for nap, his eyes dancing. It makes me want to chew him to pieces, which frankly is a much nicer desire than the desire to pull my hair out, which follows me around most days as he refuses to eat and turns everything into a battle with me and with Julianna.

In the post-baby fog, we got to a point of running through rote prayers without catechesis or depth, and just this week, I’ve taken a deep breath and stopped settling for “good enough.” So we’ve been taking time to do petitions and thanks this week. Nicholas doesn’t quite get it. “I pway for Awex and Juweanna and Michael and Mommy and Daddy and the pwaygwound,” he says, pointing around the room.

“You want to pray for the playground?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay, what do you want to say thank you for?”

“I want say thank you for my ear infection.”

(Um, kiddo, I don’t think you’ve quite got that distinction clear.)

And then, the Mischief Eyes come out. “And…I want say thank you for PICKLE!”

Christian, who is flopped face-down on the bed, raises his head and looks at me as if he’s not sure he really just heard what he thinks he heard. And then starts laughing.

Perhaps I need to explain. I’m sure everyone is familiar with this book:

Front cover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The last page, with the list of all the junk food he ate? It takes us five minutes to finish that page, because the kids point at every food, sometimes in order, sometimes not, while I say them over and over. And I always yell “PICKLE!” because it makes them laugh.

Yup, that’s my son, turning bedtime prayers into an opportunity for clowning around.

I have to echo my husband. We’re gonna have trouble with this one.

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When we came in the door of his classroom that afternoon, Alex greeted us with a passion partly due to the surprise cupcakes we were carrying, and to our presence in his Other World–but also just because that’s who he is. Maybe all children are like this with their own families. I don’t know. All I know is that every day, in almost every interaction, I can see Alex’s love for his family, particularly his little siblings. His fierce adoration can’t be contained. You can see how much their presence completes him.

It occurs to me that this is the essence of my firstborn: he’s 100% heart. Although he’s got a good brain, his thoughts are formed by his heart. I love that about him. He watches the news, worries about the people and situations he sees. Perhaps worry isn’t the right word. He lets it go, but returns to it later, turning over the pieces in his head, trying to make sense of a crazy world. Weather, politics, crime, pop culture–he process his world through a mind formed by his heart. He’s old for his age, that way. It lays him bare to the earthier, more worldly souls among his peers.

He rides himself hard, gets frustrated, and takes criticism deep within, justified or not. Among his peers he often looks frustrated, a little lost amid the alliances and unspoken understandings the other kids get instinctively.

But here at home, among his family, he knows who he is. He doesn’t do as many activities as his peers, and he doesn’t have as much Stuff as many of them do, partly because we choose to live differently, but partly because there just isn’t enough to go around in a family of this size. That is one reason many people don’t have more than the standard two children–this feeling that they’re doing wrong by their kids if they have to split the finite resources of the family more ways. Yet I hold up Alex against that fear. His life is formed and defined by love–by people, not by accoutrements. And he’s such a beautiful soul.

I love that about him. God grant he remains that way into adulthood.

I shaded my eyes against the yellow heat of the sinking sun and saw Alex, his big brown eyes simultaneously wide and droopy, pressed against chain link as if trying to squeeze through the backstop and draw comfort from me. I hitched Michael up onto my hip and got up from the bleachers, thinking fast. A first grader’s perception doesn’t necessarily equal reality, but neither can I discount the look on his face.

“Did you say something to him about it?”

He shook his head, looked down at his baseball glove. “He told me I was stupid,” he said again.

“I know it’s hard, but when somebody says something mean, you have to tell him ‘please don’t say that.’”

Coach called the boys then, and Alex returned to practice. But the name calling had sucked all the energy out of him. He didn’t catch one ball all night, and instead of scampering around the field after the missed throws, he trudged, as if the core of his being, that beautiful heart, had turned from brilliant radiance to cold lead.

When practice was over, he returned to me. I hesitated to bring it up again–mountain out of molehill, you know–but he saved me the trouble. “Another boy said ‘I hate being your partner.’”

I sighed and hugged him as we walked toward the car. Cleats and Keds tapped softly against asphalt, our twin cores hurting in unison. Although mine goes deeper, through thirty-seven years’ layers of slights both real and perceived. You think you develop a thick skin, but you don’t. You just hide the pain better. Pain is necessary, I reminded myself, and whispered a prayer for inSpiration.

“You know,” I said, “when people say mean things to others, a lot of times it means they don’t like themselves very much. If you say, ‘Please stop saying mean things,’ they’re going to realize you’re stronger than they are.”

He didn’t answer, but I’ve learned that lack of response from Alex doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t get it. I wanted to tell him it doesn’t matter if he’s not as good at baseball as the other boys, because his heart loves and his ears hear music and his fingers obey, and he’s intensely, beautifully creative and reads at nearly a third grade level. But dumping ointment upon salve until the wound on his soul is a gloppy mess doesn’t help. Kids can tell when affirmation is really just meant to distract them from their own weaknesses.

So we walked the rest of the way in silence, and I put my faith in the future. And I prayed I can shepherd him safely there.

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I don’t believe in letting them cry.

But.

When Alex was about four months old, it became impossible to put him down. He could not transition from breastfeeding to the crib without waking. Couldn’t do it. For a while I laid down with him to nurse, and that way when he finally conked out (45 minutes later), I could cautiously slide away, leave him on the bed, and go on with life.

It worked. I listened to my baby and met his needs.

But 45 minutes takes a real chunk out of married couple time. After a few weeks I realized I wasn’t leaving the house, because if he needed to nap and we weren’t somewhere I could lie down with him and leave him there, we were in trouble. Before long, I was falling apart.

Finally I gave in. We let him cry. Of course, we went in and soothed him every five minutes, then ten, but oh my goodness, it felt wrong. I was a mess. But then–Hallelujah! In less than a week, he learned to put himself to sleep.

Fast forward three children. At 4 1/2 months, Michael is in a totally different environment than Alex was. With big siblings grabbing him by the head and yelling in his face, picking him up, playing with him, he’s perpetually stimulated. All last week, he refused to nap. He would nurse to sleep on the breast and wake up the instant I put him down. If I got lucky, he’d sleep twenty minutes. At night, sometimes he would go down at 8, but often he’d get a six-minute snooze at 7:30, only to be zinged awake again by the chaos of three other kids getting ready for bed, and then he’d be up until 9:30 or 9:45 with us–wiggly, hyper, and wearing us out.

I’m no baby whisperer, but after four kids, I can intuit a lot more of what’s wrong with a child than I could seven years ago. Michael was tired, and he couldn’t get to sleep. He was too dependent on me. That much I knew. What I didn’t know was what to do about it. I was trying to avoid the “let him cry” solution. But when I started to fall apart, it was clear what had to be done.

I believe in attachment parenting. But these days it seems there’s never enough of me to go around, and everything’s getting broken (the baby swing, the CD player, etc.). I raise my voice far more often than I would like–another thing attachment parents DO NOT DO. You never, ever yell at your children. You find ways to discipline positively, without shaming them. So between losing my temper and letting my baby cry, I feel I’m betraying my convictions.

But that’s the trouble with absolutes. They become codified and inflexible, and life involves too many variables. I totally believe in teaching children good behavior by reason and by empathy. And with Alex, that’s primarily what I do. But you can’t reason with a two year old–or a three year old, for that matter–and you can’t have your eyes on your kid at every moment, especially if you have several children. Sure, it’s a worthy goal to distract them before they get in trouble, but when they go around hitting their sisters, or taking toys from their brothers, a calm, reasoned approach is like taking a Rembrandt and throwing it in a blender. Sometimes, they need to see Mommy and Daddy angry, because it’s the only thing that sinks in. I wish that wasn’t the case, but in my experience, it is.

And when a baby’s showing you he needs to sleep, and every other possible solution has been tried without success, is it reasonable to take crying himself to sleep off the table? Is it better to let him teach himself to go to sleep by crying for a few days, or is it better to let him drive himself to utter exhaustion because he can’t sleep at all?

(That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.)

As much as I hate the process, I don’t believe I’m damaging my children. As I have said before, some of the most important lessons of my life were learned, not in joy, but in suffering; not in affirmation, but in shame. Sometimes a good parent has to allow her child to suffer; that truth isn’t going anywhere. As kids grow, they’ll have to suffer through broken friendships, heartbreaks, failures of all kinds, academic and personal. If I try to shield them from all pain, I’ll deprive them of the richness of life.

I don’t ignore my children’s needs for my own convenience, but there are lessons they need in order to become healthy adults. Yes, I fail sometimes, and when I do, I apologize. And I hope from that, they learn another important lesson.

___1___

Early this week, in the middle of the night, Nicholas woke me up with his wailing. He’s been having epic nosebleeds again lately, so of course I rocketed out of bed and tore across the hallway, but it soon became clear there was no blood on him. “What’s the matter, honey?” I asked.

“I jus’ want a…BAGEL,” he sobbed.

“Oh,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. What I wouldn’t give to have a bad dream involving nothing more than frustrated Bagel Desire! “You can have a bagel for breakfast, honey, but right now it’s time to sleep.”

“Okay,” he whimpered, and conked right back out.

___2___

Then there’s the thrice-daily mealtime fun. Nicholas sits and plays with his belly button, knocks his milk over, basically does anything to avoid eating his meal (there’s a reason he’s been in the 25th percentile on growth his entire life), and spends his time instead yelling at his sister to EAT YOUR FOOD JUWEANNA. Hypocrisy, thy name is…oh, never mind.

___3___

Yesterday morning, I heard motion in another room as I was getting dressed. “Nicholas, you awake?” I called.

“No, I jus’ asweep,” he said.

Um, yeah.

___4___

On Monday this week, we had Julianna evaluated for assistive technology. At Nicholas’s naptime. It was torture for that boy to sit here and watch her play with an iPad to choose real toys off the shelf to play with. They took mercy on him and gave him a Cookie Monster toy to play with, which kept him amused for a while, but when Julianna pulled out the Wiggles electric guitar, it was very nearly too much for him.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the wheelchair ramp wall, I was trying to nurse the baby to sleep while staying awake myself. Michael was desperate for sleep–hadn’t had a good nap all day. Somewhere in my half-trance, they finished with Julianna and invited Nicolas to play. I dragged myself back from my near-catatonic state and went to put the sleeping baby in his seat. At the very moment of greatest danger for waking, Nicholas saw me return and leaped up with the guitar. “LOOK MOMMY!” he shouted….and tripped. And flung the guitar at the baby’s head.

___5___

One of these days, man...one of these days, that tree is MINE.

But hey, the other kids have their comic strip moments, too. Like when Julianna lay on the floor all morning, whimpering pathetically and patting her tummy to say it hurt. “Do you need to throw up?” I asked anxiously; she made her “no” noise. “Are you hungry?” YAH. More attempts to show herself cruelly starved by mommy who won’t let her eat till she’s dressed. Whimper. Quiver. Pat tummy. “Maybe,” I said unsympathetically, “it’s because you REFUSED TO EAT DINNER last night!”

___6___

And then there’s yesterday’s story about Alex. ‘Nuff said.

___7___

Christian brought me this comic strip out of the Sunday paper last week (as you can perhaps see, it now holds a place of honor on my refrigerator door):

That sealed it: my life is DEFINITELY a comic strip.

(***Incidentally–I also published a fiction prompt today, if you’re interested.***)

(Please excuse my mess.)

Wait a minute…What the…? The laundry pile just MOVED. What the heck kind of bugs are we growing in this house?…

Cackle, cackle, cackle.

And a head pops up:

“Alex?” I can’t help laughing. “How long have you been in there?”

“A while,” he says. “I was playing Spiderman and the lizard.”

“Man! I wish I had the camera!”

“I’ll do it again,” he says obligingly. And he does.

Gotta love that boy.

Am I laughing or crying? Crying. Definitely crying.

I’m typing these up on Thursday night as I listen to my poor baby crying upstairs. He’s got the family cold, and is so, so tired, but he won’t nurse, and holding him is like holding a cranky, squirmy, unhappy child who will.not.go.to.sleep, even though that’s all he wants. It wasn’t supposed to be this way…he was almost asleep, despite the noise of siblings crowing as Mommy read them good night stories…but in the last five minutes of his night feeding, Nicholas’s nose started bleeding. I held a tissue to Nicholas’s nose while Alex moved the baby off my lap, and…well, that was the end of that. Poor baby!

(Poor Mommy. I don’t know if I’m going to make it. Surely he’ll nurse now? Surely? Surely?)

(In case you’re wondering, Daddy was not at home to help during the drama.)

Anyway, a few fun stories for your Friday….

___1___

An Easter Story: On Easter Sunday, I sang the psalm at our church–a Gospel setting of Ps. 118 by Grayson Warren Brown. The kids recognize it because we have it on video from Nicholas’s baptism, and before Mass Nicholas was humming it softly: “Be gwad, we-joice.” On this particular setting, the music ends pretty much with the last note of the final refrain, so the whole church was poised in silence as the sound died away, and my daughter, nestled in the congregation with one of her babysitters, shouted, “YEAH!” 850 people cracked up. It was awesome.

___2___

An Easter Image: Speaking of Easter, here’s the Easter Tree, adapted from my book, from the first grade hallway of our school–on the first Sunday of Lent…

and on Easter Sunday:

___3___

Light at the end of the tunnel Eastern end of Newchurch No2 Tunnel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The light at the end of the tunnel: Nicholas is beginning to be trustworthy to go outside by himself. He will do as directed and stay in the garage for five minutes while I go change a diaper or get other kids ready to come out and play, and I no longer feel like I have to watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t vanish. I’m not ready to let him out on his own the way Alex does…but I can see the light.

___4___

The light at the end of the tunnel, 2: Julianna has been going to the bathroom without being told. This is huge.

___5___

That light at the end of the tunnel…is sometimes an oncoming train: Lest we get too excited, however…I thought Julianna had finally outgrown trying to kill her baby brother. Then I found her smashing his face into the Boppy, such that he truly could not breathe. I swear that girl is giving me gray hair.

___6___

Motivation and Inspiration: My grandmother gave me a book for Christmas called Rediscover Catholicism, by Matthew Kelly. For the first hundred pages I was skeptical; it seemed he was talking in generalities and never getting to specifics. But the chapter on fasting really convinced me. I can’t do justice to the thought process behind it, but in a nutshell, the he says that in order to truly be free, we (mind/soul) have to be in control of the body (WANT! WANT! WANT!). Otherwise we’re just obeying physical cravings. The way we achieve discipline is through fasting. He suggests that at every meal, you should deny yourself once. Not a huge thing, just a tiny thing. I’ve been doing it this week, and talk about redefining meals as a spiritual exercise! It really resonates with me, because in the post-Easter return to sweets, I always have trouble with self-control.

___7___

Photo by wstera2, via Flickr

A Seasonal Muddle: Not long ago I was shaking my virtual head on Facebook, reflecting on the weird mixture of seasonal projects I had underway. But I don’t think I fully processed it until yesterday. Early in Lent, I was doing radio interviews on Lent, finishing an Advent bulletin insert, brainstorming a Christmas bulletin insert, writing a rough draft of a book on Ordinary Time, and rehearsing a choir for Easter. I didn’t know which way was up. All I can say is…I have a healthy new respect for those in the liturgical publishing industry. How do they keep their heads on straight?

Scene: 8:30 Mass on a Sunday morning. We’re sitting in the front pew–taking up the whole front pew– and it’s time to kneel down. Only I can’t. There’s only room for one knee at the very edge of the kneeler, because my three ambulatory children have decided they all need to inhabit the end where I’m sitting. I have to physically push children farther down the pew to make room for myself.

Scene: my nursing chair in the corner of my bedroom, with a baby who can’t decide if he wants to eat or play. Nicholas climbs up on the Medela foot stool and leans over top of the baby, who grunts and lets go the breast in order to concentrate on, I don’t know, BREATHING. Julianna takes flank position, leaning over the arm rest and putting her weight on my arm–the one trying to support Michael’s head at the breast. “Guys!” I say, exasperated. “Back off!” Michael wiggles and laughs.

Scene: Good Friday services. Christian is out of town, so I’ve called on my cousin to sit with us and help me wrangle children. They like my cousin. They’ve stayed at her house several times while I’ve had professional commitments. But they want nothing to do with her. As the service goes on, there is a silent but ongoing wrestling match for who gets to sit by Mommy. The end result is that between my cousin at the end of the pew and us there is a dead space of almost three feet, followed by five bodies piled on top of each other. When at last I hand the baby down to her–the only one who can’t move himself–Nicholas lights up and dives for my lap.

Perhaps I have a magnetic personality.