Babies, Bird Babies, and Flower Babies: a 7QT post

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Today is the last day of school. The kids have been bringing home treasures all week, including these two pictures from Julianna’s school:

Julianna Kindergarten       Christian Julianna Kindergarten

Christian has taken a couple of days off this year to participate in their program for dads–hanging out in the classrooms to model father participation in kids’ lives. I adore that picture of them.

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Speaking of Julianna, she is trying to communicate everything by speech now, which makes life a bit exhausting and daunting, because it’s hard, hard, hard to understand her. There are improvements–I was over the moon last night to hear her say “Sthully Mah-ee!” (Silly Mommy!) Not Bah-ee! And a recognizable S! But here’s the point of this QT: are you ready? Take a wild guess which family member understands her speech the best. Not the parents. Nicholas. Three times this week, he’s understood something I didn’t. “Wye Shim!” she kept saying insistently, as I tore apart my brain trying to figure it out, and Nicholas, in next room, yelled, “No! I’m not watching Fireman Sam! I’m watching Bob the Builder!” (Which he later interpreted for me as “Boh-Bee-Boh.”)

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I’m having another Wildlife Mama and Baby Moment this week. Early this spring, Christian discovered a birds’ nest in the gutter outside our bathroom window. This week we have had a new obsession: watching baby birds. I’ve never managed to get a picture of Mama Bird actually putting the food in the babies’ mouths, but it is fascinating. I don’t hear any squalling, but they look like they’re squalling! I’ve blown over a hundred pictures this week. Mostly I’ve gotten lots of picture’s of a bird’s butt:

birds, flowers 026a

and

birds, flowers 022 small(Why yes, she is sitting on her babies’ heads. I haven’t figured that one out. She sat there for fully five minutes on his head at one point. Maybe this is Robin Discipline, to keep Baby from dying by hurtling out of a nest that is three stories off the ground. It’s a mystery to me.)

But last night, at last, I got the money picture.

birds, flowers 054a___4___

And since we’re talking about mamas and babies, it’s Mommy and Michael time. I was playing ball on the floor with him the other day when he threw the ball away from me instead of toward me, and then, thinking himself tremendously funny, crawled after it, around the corner out of my sight. I listened to his progress across the kitchen floor: ki-DUNK, ki-DUNK, ki-DUNK, ki-DUNK, and thought how long it had been since I had heard that sound. At the far end, he retrieved the ball, got to his feet, and ran back, bare feet on the Pergo: slap-slap-slap-slap.

Not two hours later I was putting him to bed and chewing on him, reveling in the giggles and wishing I could get it on video, when I realized why the videos never satisfy my desire to hear that sound again: because the sound is only a sliver of the enjoyment. The enjoyment of a baby is a full-body experience, engaging all the senses, not just sight and sound. In this case, the feel of skin against my lips, and the smell of cinnamon graham cracker embedded in his face. This revelation has made me experience all my children differently. I’m really thinking about the feel of them when we’re interacting these days. I’m dreading Michael getting bigger. I just love babies, and nobody else wants me chewing on their babies. :(

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I talked to a genetic counselor about my family’s history of BHD this week. We didn’t quite get to the level of a blood test because of insurance questions that have to be worked out, but we spent over an hour talking through the family history. She had an 8 1/2×11 piece of paper with a family tree in the middle. We got done with my siblings–each of them with a line and extensions for how many kids and what sex–and then she said, “Tell me about your mother’s family.” I looked at her piece of paper and said, “There are ten siblings.” Her pen paused as she, too, surveyed the 5 1/2 inches’ space she had to make that happen, and I laughed. “Yeah, I want to see how you fit all that on there!”

Midway through the process, when we hit a bunch of questions I didn’t know the answer to, I said, “That’s okay, I know there are a bunch of documents on the family’s website.”

Again, this poor woman’s eyes got round. “Your family…has a website?” she said blankly, and I started laughing, because in all the years my family has been having mass political, ahem, debates, via email and coming up with more and better ways to keep an ever-expanding group of people in the know, it never occurred to me that it was weird for a family to devote a website to themselves.

And that got me thinking: later, as I was digging up .pdfs of people’s diagnosis letters, and contacting my cousin for information about her medical history…I realized how amazing, and how beautiful, it is that I’m part of a family that, despite their strongly-held and deeply contrary opinions, is willing to lay out their personal history for each other’s benefit. I feel very blessed, very privileged. Big families rock.

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birds, flowers 003Nicholas makes me laugh.

My FB status from last night:

Nicholas is the king of killer funny sayings lately. Today he heard the Alma Mater playing on the fake-o carillon at the Alumni Center, and he said with a sigh, “I used to play that song. When I was in college, I played it.”

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And here’s what else is making me happy these days:

birds, flowers 038And just for a bonus, here’s a link:

“Keep Bad Theology Out Of Oklahoma“. Hear, hear.

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 218)

Published in: on May 24, 2013 at 5:30 am  Comments (6)  
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Catholic Family Fun (TLL Blog Tour Finale)

It’s the last day of my blog tour, and guess what? I’m going to do something different! If you’ve been around my blog for a while, you have seen several reviews of books by Sarah Reinhard. Sarah and I are both write-at-home Catholic moms writing resources to help parents raise kids with a vibrant faith.

CathFamFunThe difference is (well, okay, it’s not the only difference), Sarah is a whole lot funnier than I am. :) Which makes this book, Catholic Family Fun, entirely appropriate.

Sarah doesn’t think religion has to be so darned serious all the time. Everybody needs to blow off steam sometimes, so from chapter one–”Silly Things to Do Together”–she makes it clear that families need to enjoy their time together, and the faith formation should be tied to what’s taking place in real life.

The first three parts of the book offer lots of ideas for basic fun activities both at home and “abroad.” The vast majority of these activities are not actually religious activities. Rather, they’re things you would do at story time at the library. The “faith angle”–blocked out in boxes after every section–suggests ways to tweak the activities or talk about them afterward to connect them with faith concepts.

Some of my favorite ideas:

  • Silly stories (think mad lib)
  • “Opposite season”–a living room beach party in February, for example
  • An unbirthday party–so if your February birthday girl loves the pool, have a pool party in July
  • Fun with saint feast days: a scavenger hunt to honor St. Anthony, a nail driving contest for St. Joseph
  • Christmas ornaments made from canning lids

Part four is more specifically focused on matters of faith, and Catholic faith in particular. These are more in-depth–having the whole family pitch in to build a Mary garden, for instance, or sorting clothes at the crisis pregnancy center. She also challenges parents to take the kids along for adoration and stations of the cross, and honestly? That makes sense; if it’s important to take your kids to Mass even though they aren’t “getting” it yet, then the same is true of the other opportunities for prayer that enrich Catholic life.

I think the hardest part for me is making the leap from “fun” to the religious lesson. Faith matters need to be tied into what is passing in an ordinary day, but even when we recognize the connection, it often feels forced if we draw the lines out loud. But guess what, folks? We’re the parents, and if we don’t draw the lines between ordinary life and faith lessons, the kids will never hear it. We’ve got to get over ourselves.

giveaway-triooCatholicbooksI’m going to leave you with this little gem of a quote, which I highlighted thinking of myself, and only in retrospect realized was probably intended to be about the kids themselves:

“Sometimes, ‘fun’ is something you don’t realize you’re having until you look back on something, especially if you’re in a certain age range.”

So why exactly am I touting someone else’s book on the last day of my blog tour? Because Sarah’s giving away not one, not two, but three books for Catholic families: This Little Light of Mine: Living The Beatitudes, Catholic Family Fun, and Vinny Flynn’s 21 Ways to Worship. Look at that: in one giveaway package, you’ve got faith in action, faith in fun, and faith in prayer. I think we’ve got you covered. Head on over to Sarah’s place to enter the giveaway!

Published in: on May 22, 2013 at 7:13 am  Comments (1)  
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The Grass Is Always Greener

Picnic, playground, Pinnacles 123aHaving wrestled anxiety for most of my young adult life, I don’t often go plumbing the depths of my psyche too much anymore. I may be emotionally and psychologically healthy these days, but I’m far from immune to causing myself anguish. Doubt is an inevitable part of the human experience. We doubt God, we doubt those who lead us, those we love, and of course, ourselves. The decisions we’ve made, especially the big ones, sometimes lead us to places that don’t look like what we envisioned, and we start thinking if we’d chosen another path, things might be easier.

This happens to me most often when I’m ticked off at the world, i.e. husband and kids, although the net can certainly be cast wider. But they are my vocation, and so when family life seems really hard, a niggling thought will sometimes come to mind, wondering if I heard the call wrong. I have always been drawn to silence and stillness. Why didn’t I ever consider religious life? A life of prayer, of contemplation, without the familial demands that wear me down, the unceasing noise that shreds my inner peace, the constant busyness that makes it almost impossible to dip into the well of the Spirit. Wouldn’t I be a better disciple if my life was devoted to solitude and prayer?

I learned long ago not to waste time or emotional energy pursuing these thoughts. I’ve realized that they are a) usually related to cyclical crankiness, b) based on an idealized version of religious that is no more realistic than the idealized vision of family life I am comparing mine to, and c) only half the story. After all, the very richness of the life I record on these “pages” is counter-argument enough.

This weekend I finally finished reading Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain. Right at the end, he said this:

“You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again: ‘Solitude, solitude.’ And you have turned around and thrown the whole world in my lap. You have told me, ‘Leave all things and follow me,’ and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?”

Look at that: a contemplative monk, questioning his vocation because–gasp–it’s not contemplative enough. Because he’s got distractions. Because his mind is rattling like a piggy bank. (Oh, that is so me.)

When I first read this quote from Richard Hogan: “Usually, in refusing such a gift from God, a person finds his or her path to heaven more difficult. … it seems that God calls us to the best possible vocation suited to our personalities and talents…”, I interpreted it to mean that I will be a better disciple if I am in a situation that challenges my weaknesses least. But I’m beginning to think that the very soul stretching required by my vocation is what makes me a better disciple. After all, if we’re never challenged, how in the world can we grow? If patience, pride and self-centeredness are my weaknesses (and believe me, they are), then family life, in which patience is tried every moment of every day and self-centeredness is forced by virtue of necessity to give way to self-emptying–family life seems ideally suited to make me a better disciple.

In other words, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence…until you get there and realize what you’ve left behind.

Published in: on May 20, 2013 at 7:59 am  Comments (5)  
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We Are Not Lemmings. Are We?

About 2/3 of my mother's family, eight years ago

About 2/3 of my mother’s family, eight years ago, before all my cousins started having kids. Note: some of the kids in the picture ARE my cousins.

Can I just say how annoying I find the American obsession with poll-taking? They’ve become so institutionalized, we have come to regard polls as truth: not a reflection of people’s opinions, but a representation of reality.

For instance, last week I ran across an article about a survey in which parents identified their own stress level. The conclusion? The most stressful number of kids is three. This was not a scientific study–just a survey.

There are so many problems with this survey. A friend blogged a whole bunch of them last week, and did a fabulous job, but I have others.

1. This is completely useless “information.” How does it help anyone to know that people with three children self-identify as more stressed than parents of other numbers?

2. It undercuts anyone who is not in the “most stressful” category. Obviously they should just chill, because their life isn’t as bad as they think.

3. Because we are lemmings, we will use useless information like this to “help” us make important decisions on family size. Obviously we should quit at two children, because if we have a third our life is over. We are doomed to be a bundle of stress all the time. (Yeah, I know. You think other people’s opinions don’t influence you, but be honest. When you see a poll that relates to some decision you’re contemplating, course it weighs into the decision!)

4. There is stress in all stages of family-building.

Those who don’t have kids yet are stressing because they are trying to have them, or trying not to have them, and worrying about whether their decision is the right one: is this the right time? What if I put it off too long? Why can’t I get pregnant NOW?

In short: stress.

When you have one child, you’re obsessively worried about said child. You have to do everything right, and you know for sure if you screw up, your kid’s entire future will be shot, permanently and irretrievably lost. You worry about whether you’re reading the right number of minutes, teaching enough signs and attending the right enrichment programs. Why? Because you’ve never done this before, and it’s a big responsibility!

In short: stress.

When you have two kids, you have to split yourself in two for the first time. All that energy you devoted to one now has to make do for two. There’s guilt, because the older child took a hit in Mommy (or Daddy) attention.

In short: stress.

When you have three children,  you are always outnumbered. At least one of the older kids is virtually guaranteed to be going through some really hard stage while you’re also dealing with the time-intensive baby stage.

In short: stress.

When you have four or more, all the above applies, although you’re used to it. But you get so busy helping older kids with homework and driving them to activities that the youngest gets a paltry shadow of the intensive parent interaction that child #1 got. Kids bicker: there’s the “he’s touching me” “she’s watching me play” bit, the minding everyone’s business but their own, the every time you turn around the thing you just put away is out again, and there isn’t enough of you to go around and you know it’s your own fault that the house is a mess because you’re not willing to take the time to make the kids clean up themselves but for Heaven’s sake, it’s just easier to do it yourself most of the time, because you know what battles ensue in getting kids to do it!

In short: stress.

The point is, it doesn’t matter whether you have no kids or twenty, you’re going to be stressed, because that’s what human beings do to ourselves. Asking people to identify their own stress level, with no further breakdown of situation, is nonsense. Certain stages are more stressful than others, and sometimes it’s a shift in type rather than intensity. All these people have kids of different ages, and a different spread between their kids.

Besides, each person’s unique life circumstances play into the stress dynamic. Your mood on a given day affects how you answer those questions, for crying out loud–to say nothing of job stress, house hunting, kids’ projects, health, whether your kids are having trouble in school or sailing through–even whether toilet training is going well or poorly on the day they asked. To reduce all that complexity to a simple, bald statement like “three is the most stressful number of children”…that’s just a load of crap.

Opinion polls tell you nothing about reality. They tell you only people’s perception of it. I just wish we’d all keep that in mind, instead of running over the cliff of public opinion like a bunch of lemmings.

(Note: yes, I know lemmings don’t actually follow each other over cliffs. It’s a figure of speech.)

Published in: on May 13, 2013 at 7:43 am  Comments (5)  
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Did Mary Suffer From Powdered Butt Syndrome?

Mary

Mary (Photo credit: aphotoshooter)

Financial guru Dave Ramsey often talks about “powdered butt syndrome.” Once you’ve changed a kid’s diaper, he says, you aren’t interested in being lectured about sex or money by said kid–no matter how much of an expert they grow up to be.

I’d hazard a guess it’s not limited to sex and money, though. A parent spends so many years being the authority figure, it must be really hard to let your kids grow, and then let them go, to make their own decisions and, at length, to recognize that they know more than you do on some subject they’ve studied and you haven’t.

Maybe this is why most people are called to the vocation of marriage: because we need to become parents. Parenthood is a constant stretching of the soul, an unending lesson in humility. Who doesn’t need that?

I wonder if Mary had to deal with powdered butt syndrome. It seems almost inevitable, raising God Incarnate. But if she did, she handled it with tremendous grace.

Moms are used to serving, to fixing whatever’s wrong, to being hostess. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone else’s party: if a mother is there and realizes there’s a problem, she wants to do something to fix it.

So Mary goes to a wedding with her grown son and realizes the hosts are out of wine. This isn’t modern New York, where you can just run to the corner liquor store. I’d imagine the bride and groom were pretty much out of luck. Mary’s heart swells in empathy; she wants to fix it, but she’s helpless. So what does she do? She turns to her child, the baby who nursed at the breast and probably blew out a few diapers, who had diaper rash and teething crankiness and got into things, pulled down shelves in the name of exploration, the whole nine yards. (I am not one of those people who believes the child Jesus was exempt from normal little kid mischief. Being human means you have growing pains to get through, even if you are also God.)

Anyway, Mary is able to recognize that her child has far outpaced her in holiness. She turns to him and says, “Honey, they need help, and I can’t do it, but you can.”

I pray that as my children grow, I may be humble enough to admit when they know better than me. When they can do something I can’t. And to give way gracefully when that moment arrives.

Published in: on April 29, 2013 at 8:01 am  Comments (8)  
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Mama Rabbit And Me

English: Rabbit nest found in playground wood ...

English: Rabbit nest found in playground wood chips, O’Fallon, Illinois 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There’s a rabbit under the red maple in front of my house. It’s standing in a funny position, back legs on the grass, front legs up on the mulch. I’m about to turn away when suddenly there’s a flash of gray under its belly. A wiggle. Another flash.

You know that cliché about hearts stopping? Ridiculous, of course. Nobody’s heart stops beating–not when shocked, not when hurt, and not in moments of exquisite perfection, either. But at this moment, my insides flip over as I realize I’m looking at a nursing mother.

Enter Cliché #2, the one about tugging at heart strings. Also ridiculous–except there’s a deep, visceral pull, as if something is trying to yank the center of my chest out through my rib cage. I’m standing at the picture window in the upstairs hallway, scarcely able to breathe, and thinking how weird this reaction is.

To understand why, you have to know that I hate rabbits. The war began when they ate my tomato plants, lovingly grown from seed the first spring of our marriage. I used to throw things at rabbits. Chase them. Yell at them. Try to scare them to death. Once, I even ran over a nest of babies with the lawn mower. That one was an accident, though. They were hidden so well, I didn’t realize it until the damage was done, and I was sick about it.

In this moment, though, with Mama Bunny perched in watchful stillness while her wiggling babies nurse themselves to sleep, I can’t think what I was so bent out of shape about. They were just tomato plants, for crying out loud. After a decade of kid drama, tomato plants hardly seem worth mention.

“Guys! Look!” I call. “It’s a mama rabbit nursing her babies!”

The boys come running to the window. “WHY DOES THE BUNNY HAVE A SCARED LOOK ON HIS FACE?” asks Nicholas in his usual tone of voice, which could be heard somewhere in the vicinity of Mars. They’re fascinated, until they get distracted by play and bickering. I drift downstairs to get a closer look from the living room window. I kneel there, looking out into the coming twilight. Mama rabbit keeps constant vigilance; the only part of her body that moves is her head, which jerks toward every suspicious noise. Her default position faces the cul de sac, where half a dozen kids are playing basketball, but when Alex joins me and taps the window with a pica stick, she whips around and stares directly at us for a full five seconds.

Newborn, nursing babies. The longing catches me off guard, so strong it wants to crush my breath, and yet it’s exquisitely beautiful. I don’t understand how so many women can have a baby or two and then say with finality bordering on hostility, “That’s IT! I’m done.” Don’t they ever ache for more of that sweetness that comes only with those fresh from Heaven?

My rational mind is yelling, “Whoa, girl!”, reminding me of my beaten-up, scarred insides, of Michael Mayhem and Nicholas the strong-willed, of Julianna’s homework, the completion of which frequently is like pulling teeth, and five nights out of seven committed to work or child’s enrichment activity. And yet as I watch that mama rabbit, I don’t care. I want what she has. Oh, how I want it.

At length, the wiggling subsides into stillness. Mama rabbit stays in place, but she grooms her leg, nibbles at the grass. I’m the only watcher now; Alex is playing Star Wars with a pica stick, and upstairs the little ones fight and giggle by turns. Methodically she pulls mulch over the nest, and soon, the babies are invisible. We would have no idea they were there if I hadn’t happened to be looking out the window at the right time. Then she hops away, across the driveway and down the side of the house, and the moment is past.

Over the weekend, the kids play outside. We mow the grass, plant flowers. I venture no closer than four feet, afraid to taint the nest with a human smell. I know what I’m feeling is cyclical–my womb recognizing there is no baby in it this month, and mourning the loss. Maybe I’m making more of all this than there really is. And yet I know that in the years to come, when I pull out the box of motherhood memories to turn them over and ponder them in my heart, this moment will be among them.

Published in: on April 15, 2013 at 7:52 am  Comments (10)  
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Poor In Spirit? (TLL Review & Excerpt)

ThisLittleLight_Beatitudes_CoverThis Little Light of Mine: Living the Beatitudes is written for use with children, but it’s also at least as much aimed at forming the faith of the adults who work with them. Today’s excerpt, from Chapter 1: Blessed Are the Poor In Spirit, comes from the section for adults.

Humility is not tolerating circumstances we can’t change while complaining about them through gritted teeth. It is an act of will, a choice to be at peace when our gut reaction is to choke on helpless rage. It means accepting what we don’t want to accept, being gracious when we want to complain, and trusting that God has a plan, even if it makes no sense to us.

And at these times, Jesus says, we’re blessed?

Well, yes. …. Being poor in spirit, learning to accept humbling circumstances without angst, rescues us from self-righteousness and pride. It’s easy to be thankful when I’m on top of the world…at least, for  a while. But soon … I start to forget that everything I have, right down to the very breath of life, is a gift from God. … I act as if I have all the answers. And from there, it’s a short step to judging everyone else’s circumstances based on my own. In other words…I start to regard myself as God.

Just Live It:

4. Think of a specific act of self-sacrifice or service you can offer to a specific family member, coworker or associate. Write the person’s name, the act, or a phrase to remember on a piece of paper. String it around your neck, put it in a billfold or a pocket. For instance, if you are prone to self-righteousness and judgment, you might write, “I do not know anyone’s whole story; it is not my place to pass judgment, only to live my life as I believe God is calling me.”

(Excerpts from This Little Light of Mine, Chapter 1)

Today, please visit RAnn’s This, That & The Other Thing for a review  (and giveaway!) of This Little Light of Mine: Living the Beatitudes.

Published in: on April 3, 2013 at 8:18 am  Leave a Comment  
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Because It Never Was About Just Being Mom, Anyway

A six-part fugue from The Musical Offering, in...

A six-part fugue from The Musical Offering, in the hand of Johann Sebastian Bach. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of the time, my brain clicks along like a 6-part Bach fugue on steroids, all angles and gears turning, pushing forward without a pause for breath.

What I aspire to is a brain that works more like a Gregorian chant, or one of those “music from the hearts of space” pieces with long, sinuous lines that slow you down and soothe you to peacefulness.

In reality, I think I’d settle for a brain like a two-part invention.

There’s so much going on these days. So many different motifs to catch and develop: the sharp forward thrust of Alex’s interest in science, the straining tenor of Nicholas’ desire to be bigger than he is. The dissonance of Julianna’s delays, which add color to the mix, the earthy rumble of Michael beginning toilet training. Plus there are the work threads: the steady rhythm of nonfiction assignments, the crazed treble of book publicity and all things that spin off it, and of course the soaring, otherworldly lure of novel publication.

Sometimes I think I surely have to drop something altogether, rather than just pick up and drop motifs  in turn as time allows. But when I talk to my friends who are staying home with their kids, not working, I hear the same sentiment:

Just spent 1 full hour combing through emails, writing things in the calendar, and making a shopping list. All for my two big kids’ activities in the next two weeks. Lord, help us. (from a friend, on Facebook)

It would be nice to think otherwise, but life is picking up and dropping threads, and weaving them into the tapestry of something larger than the threads themselves. This just the reality of life–especially life with kids. It’s easy to go looking for a reality in which this is not the case, but it’s a chase after wind. There is a constant tension between the kids’ needs, our needs as a couple, and our personal needs. Between our responsibilities to them and our responsibilities to other things–and to ourselves.

Working mothers often feel guilty, as if we are choosing wrongly to do anything other than raise children. I didn’t used to feel this, because I used to consider myself a stay-at-home mom. Now that I’ve recognized I am a “work-at-home mom,” I feel it all the time. Surely I’d be holier, a better wife and mother, if I didn’t do anything else.

But even in the days when all moms stayed at home, they did other things too. They volunteered at church; they grew gardens and made jams and canned vegetables. There has never been a time when mothers were only mothers. And that’s as it should be. God didn’t put us on the earth to raise kids and bury every other talent He gave us. We all have gifts the world needs.

I can’t work in the parish nursery or volunteer in the school kitchen or at the food bank, because this is what I do: I write, when I can, what I can. Some of you do prolife work, some of you do ministry to mothers (or fathers); others teach Sunday school or clean the rectory or mow the neighbor’s lawn, or watch someone else’s kids so they can work at the art museum or teach dance or keep the library open.

And you know what? We need all these things. Life is poorer without them. We need each other, because no one person can do it all. The tapestry of the world would be much different if we all did nothing but raise children. Its timbre would be duller, the texture coarser. Yes, it’s a precarious balance, requiring constant adjustment. But it always was, and no matter what we do it always will be, world without end, amen.

Published in: on March 19, 2013 at 8:22 am  Comments (5)  
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How Do You Power Down Your Brain?

Spiralstorm

Spiralstorm (Photo credit: Stuck in Customs)

I’ve said before that I’m obsessed with sleep. This is because i don’t get enough of it, though not for lack of trying. I go to bed at 9:30, I take naps during the day when it gets bad…but I don’t sleep well. In these latter days, I can blame it on kids (last night’s count: Nicholas, 4; Michael, 1; total 5), but the truth is I never have slept well. When I was a kid I used to have long discussions with God, my head wedged up against the screen so I could see as much of the sky above the north pond as possible.

I don’t know if it’s a gift of nature or a learned skill, but my brain just won’t shut down. Ever. In many ways this is a benefit to my crazy lifestyle; my mind is always working in the background–not efficiently, of course, while I’m making grocery lists, cooking dinner or waiting for a child to turn a page–but nonetheless, the gears are always spinning. When I have a moment to work, I’m rarely starting from zero.

But the down side is this constant sense of urgency. I seem to have lost the ability to stop thinking. And so I’m not really living in the moment.

It came home to me this weekend when my sister visited. She loves little kids. She’s so good with them, too. Nicholas lights up whenever she arrives. He’d play with her for hours, and she’d oblige–happily. But me? Well, this weekend we were at last pulling clear of the Infinite Intestinal Virus. In other words: there was a LOT of cleaning to do. And I had this conference call for our Down Syndrome group, so I spent the first two hours of the visit closeted in my room, folding laundry and making beds while I listened to the discussion. (In case you’re wondering, my sister did know before she came that I had to do this call, and how long it would take. I’m not that much of a jerk.)

Later, I watched her play with Nicholas, the two of them obviously enjoying each other. And then it was nap time, and I groused about having to take the time to put them to bed. I had kite string to untangle, and I wanted that job instead, because that I could do while chatting with my sister.

It wasn’t until late that night that all the pieces clicked. Michael was lying across the Boppy, playing with me in between nuzzling the breast. You can’t really call it nursing anymore; he just wants to cuddle. He likes the one-on-one time with Mommy, and he doesn’t want me multitasking. Even my neck stretches sometimes raise objections. He wants me to play with his hand, tickle his ribs, and trade silly proto-words with him.

For once, I was doing it. No reading Thomas Merton, no reading Eragon to Alex, no brainstorming or making mental lists. I was simply there.

And it was fun.

This Lent I’ve been Powering Down along with my critique partner and blog friend Amy. It’s been very good for my writing: closing Gmail, closing Facebook, turning off the internet altogether if the temptation grows too strong. My fiction productivity has soared, and I fully expect this week, when I’m on deadlines, that it’ll serve the nonfiction side of things equally well.

The part I haven’t figured out is the personal powering down. The part where I nourish my family and spousal relationships, and my soul. I can’t simply stop doing everything else. I’ve tried cutting back, doing less work-related stuff, passing off volunteer commitments to others in the local organizations, but somehow the monologue inside my head doesn’t seem to diminish. When I’m with my kids I’m always thinking about how much I still have to do. And not just “me” things, either; some of it is about responsibilities to them. Grr! I still haven’t done homework with Julianna! We’ve got to be better about that! She needs our help to excel! Man! I still haven’t helped the kids finish their dream catchers. Oh, crap! I promised I’d listen to Alex play his festival pieces!

But I can’t turn off Michael, either. He’s always clinging to my leg, wailing if I put him down because I need both hands to use the salt grinder or carry plates with food. (Because I know what will happen if I try to carry him AND the food; he’ll simply smack it and the food will be on the floor.)

This is life with four kids close together.  There’s so much to do, I’ve placed my top priority on multitasking to try to get through as much as possible. But what am I giving up, with my brain powering through every day, all day, and every night, all night? I even struggle when I wake up to use the bathroom, to force it not to start up again.

The answer is: I’m giving up Presence. Presence in my own life.

It’s not an acceptable trade. There’s all the platitudes about kids growing up fast and regretting what you didn’t take time for…but there’s also the part where their overarching memory is of a mom who was never really fully present to them. They are so important to me. It’s time to act that way.

So although I don’t yet know how–the busyness isn’t going anywhere–I now at least know what I need to do. I have to learn to Power Down my brain.

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Published in: on February 25, 2013 at 9:50 am  Comments (7)  
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It’s Here!

Oh, what it takes to get a not-quite-four-year-old to take a usable picture…

books 1

…while the baby invokes his Right To Wiggle All Over Mommy’s Lap Any Time She Sits Upon The Floor….

books 2

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books 3

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books 4

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books 6

Oh, there they are!

This Little Light of Mine: Living the Beatitudes, coming soon from Liguori Publications!

The point of this book is to take faith, which we tend to approach from an internal, heart-and-mind perspective, and bring it down to the intensely, mundanely practical level: the actions and the words of the everyday. Are you ever going to kill anyone? Not likely! But that doesn’t mean you’ve got the 5th commandment covered. It has implications for the way we interact with others every day. Unlike my other two books, I really wrote This Little Light of Mine with adults’ faith formation in mind as much as that of their children. During the penitential and high seasons, we’re at least nominally focused on religious topics. The rest of the year is make-or-break time for our spiritual growth. During ordinary times, we’ll either choose to be committed, or we’ll slip into “me first, God when I have the time and inclination” mentality. I wrote this book to help you think about the specific actions that underlie the religious concepts we talk about all the time.

Published in: on February 12, 2013 at 8:12 am  Comments (8)  
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