While the weather was still fairly cool, I tried to take the boys hiking a couple times as a different way of challenging them physically and getting them out in nature. On the first occasion I was rather too ambitious and took all three of them to Papago West on my own. While the hike up was enjoyable for everyone, I ended up carrying both Aubade (obviously) and a screaming Limerick all the way back down to the car… he had fallen and hurt his leg, and was crying because he wanted to hike back but was too hurt and too scared of falling again to actually do so. Poor kid. Rondel surprised me with his independence and bravery, though! It was quite slippery coming back down with all the loose gravel, and although he was afraid and also fell, he summoned up his courage and managed to hike all the way back down on his own (it helped that he was willing to scoot on his bottom over the steepest parts… Limerick refused to try that).
Anyway, for our next hike I took full advantage of the adults in our life and convinced both my parents and my husband to try out Falcon Hill Park with us – because, as challenging as it can be to hike with babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, I believe it is worthwhile to accustom them to hiking and hopefully help instill in them a love for getting out into the wild outdoors (at the very least, it is worthwhile for me with my children because hiking is one of my favorite activities! So there may be some ulterior motives here… 😉 )
This is really a neat little park – there is a playground with three different playscapes, large grassy fields, and this small mountain tucked away in the back, still in its native desert form. We played at the playground for a while, waiting for my parents:
This time, Limerick decided to be the intrepid hiker while Rondel was intimidated by the steepness of the trailhead, and ended up playing at the playground with my mom the whole time instead. And honestly, while the mountain is low enough that the hike isn’t too taxing for a small child, the trail is not well-marked, is often steep and gravelly, and often involves climbing over boulders and around bushes. It was doable because we had at least one adult for each kid, so that my husband could carry Limerick down while my dad carried everyone’s water. (Never hike without water in the desert!) I wouldn’t attempt it on my own for another few years though!
In short, we had a great time at the park but I’d advise other moms with young kids to be prepared with extra helping hands if attempting the hike, and make sure your kids (and you) are wearing good shoes.
We started with leftover pancakes and stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible. The boys got so excited by the stories that we built Jericho from couch cushions, marched around it seven times, yelled as loud as we could, and watched the walls fall down! We all took turns being inside Jericho and being the Israelites marching outside. (The Jesus Storybook Bible, oddly enough, omits the story of Palm Sunday, as does the Children of God Storybook Bible, so we read other stories this morning instead – most of Holy Week and several from the OT).
I really wanted to take the kids to church but we were all exhausted and slightly sick so that didn’t happen. We did sing together though! From somewhere in the far reaches of my brain I recalled some simple, happy praise songs and in the spirit of the day we sang Ho-ho-ho-hosanna and Praise Ye the Lord several times each.
For the same reasons that church didn’t happen, I knew that naps had to happen, so I told the boys that if they stayed in bed for quiet time until their lullaby CD was finished, we would make Palm Sunday cookies together (the CD is long enough that they usually fall asleep before it’s over). Rondel is extremely bribable these days, especially by sugar… I don’t want to make it part of our regular routine, but I needed them to rest so I could help the sick baby be comfortable and rest as well.
And then we made the promised cookies!
I’m not sure if the boys had used cookie cutters before, but they got the hang of it fairly quickly and only had a few mishaps even with the crumbly shortbread dough! Rondel helped me roll it out once also, and did a pretty good job considering how young he is and how infrequently he’s used a rolling pin. And whenever something didn’t work perfectly I just said, we can fix it! or, we can roll it out another time and try again! So we were able to get all the cookies made with minimal stress on anyone’s part, although I did have to strictly enforce access to the unrolled dough to prevent them from eating it all as fast as humanly possible.
During dinner I found our Bible Animal Stories book and read the Palm Sunday story from the perspective of a donkey (we have a lot of kids’ Bibles floating around our house…). It captured the excitement of the event really well, how everyone would have been so caught up in the enthusiasm and carried away in the emotion. It always amazes me how just a few days later those same people would be caught up in the storm of accusation against him.
I hope you all had a wonderful Palm Sunday! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
Today is my mom’s birthday and I didn’t get to see her. We’ll be celebrating tomorrow though! My mom has always been one of those people who makes special days (like birthdays and holidays) really feel special and significant, so for her birthday I wanted to write a little bit about her, and some of the memories I have of her through the past twenty-odd years. Because it’s also a Friday I’ll give you seven snippets and link up with {SQT} at This Ain’t the Lyceum.
I don’t have an earliest memory of my mom. She just always was, and always was making life good, in unseen, taken-for-granted sorts of ways, all through my early childhood. So nothing specific stands out in my memory, unfortunately.
I do, however, remember how much she loved to garden in our home in Pennsylvania – how she had strawberries and peas along the fence, and tiger lilies all along the back so she could see them from the back porch or the kitchen window, with soft mossy patches around them. I remember how excited she was the year she planted blueberry bushes, and how we hoed the ground together to make it ready for their tender new roots. My love for gardening largely comes from those early memories of her making our small yard beautiful and fruitful with life.
Hmm, there was also the time when I stepped on a bee as a toddler and couldn’t explain what had happened, my mom thought I had broken my toe and took me to the ER, and was rather frustrated with me after the X-rays when the whole situation was finally explained. I remember feeling rather confused and small, just caught up in the whole event without really understanding what was going on. She was just being a caring and slightly over-anxious mom 🙂 Have I struggled with her worry? Of course. Has it helped me in countless unexpected ways? Also of course.
Many of my best memories of my mom take place in the kitchen, either cooking or cleaning together. She taught me how to bake bread, crack eggs, and prep a raw chicken; she taught me fractions with measuring cups; she showed me how fulfilling and meaningful it can be to do everyday things well for the benefit of the people we love. We also had a lot of fun – for instance, one day for lunch we made pancakes and stacked them up with brown sugar and butter like they did in the Laura Ingalls books, assembly-line style, and then devoured them joyously. I still remember our excitement, as kids, about getting to do that!
My mom is not a sensitive person, and that served me well growing up. I could argue, complain, protest, debate, attack, be moody, speak sharply, and know that she would be able to let it go, not take it personally, and keep loving me. It wasn’t that she made me think my bad attitudes and unkind words were ok – but she always made sure I knew that I was ok and loved, even when my actions weren’t acceptable. She often said that she wasn’t empathetic or compassionate, as if those were her weaknesses, but I think that her thick skin and realistic attitude were great strengths in her parenting and allowed her to love her thin-skinned, sensitive children well. She neither gave in to our emotions nor allowed them to hurt her. Or rather, as I see now that I am older, she didn’t allow that hurt to change how she loved and cared for us, and she didn’t let us see the hurt because that is usually too great of a burden for a young child to carry.
My mom filled our lives with books. She would read to us, she would read the same books as us and talk about them with us, she would leave books scattered around the house for us to find and read, she would give us books for every holiday, she would take us to the library every week – books of information, books of stories, books of poetry, picture books and chapter books and classics, all had a place in our home because of her efforts. I wouldn’t be who I am today without those books, and I will always be grateful for that.
Now that I’m a mom as well, I see my mom with new eyes. I see the love and pride and fear in her eyes when she talks about my brother’s illness and future. I see the boldness it takes to be proud of her children even when their accomplishments are invisible to a world that sees only their struggles. I see glimpses of the vulnerability that she has always hidden so well, the tears that come equally from seeing her children create something beautiful or from watching them suffer in the fight with their internal demons. If having a child means having part of your heart live forever outside of yourself, as the quote has it, then part of my mom’s heart is with me, and my sister, and my brother, and I suddenly feel as if I ought to treat it gently, and with great reverence. It was this heart that showed me how to love, and taught me how to live, and which still treasures me in its embrace.
I love you mom, on your birthday and every other day. You were and are an amazing mother to me, and now you’re an amazing grandmother to my kids as well. I could never thank you enough for everything you have done and are doing for me.
When he is so upset about a broken cup that he can’t enjoy one of his favorite playgrounds…
When he asks “why?” in endless loops that don’t even make sense half the time and doesn’t even seem to listen to the answer…
When he wants to have long and challenging books read to him but gets distracted on every page by something different – and then cries if you stop reading…
When he wants help building his Duplos but gets frustrated if he isn’t doing it all by himself…
When he deliberately pushes the limits and disobeys in the “one finger across the line” sort of way…
When he is so big and sweetly thoughtful and fiercely independent…
When he is tired and whiny and just wants to snuggle…
When he is angry and unreasonable and tells me he’s going to break things and hit people…
When he laughs that crazy laugh that just about knocks him over…
When his mouth turns down in the frown that’s melted my heart since his infancy…
…then, it is up to me to remember that he is being three and a half years old, dealing with so much internal transition and growth, and adjusting to a new baby and my return to work, learning more about himself and the world every day. He is not an adult yet; he isn’t going to act like one, and it isn’t fair to expect it of him. What he needs is for me to love and accept him for who he is right now, and gently guide him as he grows into the fullness of who he will be.
Learning to love ourselves, to be humble enough to admit our limitations, to truly appreciate the gifts our differences bring while also being willing to accept help and healing for the most painful ones, gives us greater mental, emotional, and spiritual health. […]
We are so often encouraged to fit into the boxes of academic achievement, intellectual prowess, recognizable achievements, personality profiles, status, money, power, external significance—to perform, to fit in the box, to be acceptable. Yet our wonderful God loves us unconditionally, now and forever. We do not have to work to please Him. He values us for what is inside our hearts—our character and integrity, our ability to love, to be faithful, to help others, and to show compassion. Our individual personalities are a gift of His design so that we might add color and variety to the world. And He can use our unique combination of circumstances—even the painful ones like mental illness—for our good and His glory.
Sally Clarkson, Different
One of the most romantic and wonderful things about my husband is that from the very beginning of our relationship he has valued me for my character and heart more than for my intelligence and knowledge. I’ve always been smart and been perceived as smart, and while it wasn’t a difficult appearance to maintain (because, at least when it comes to academics, I am quite smart), it always left me feeling somewhat empty when that was all people would see. Intelligence was a gift, a talent, but not me. So when I found this man who loved me for who I was, who saw all the other aspects of my character and personality and delighted in them, I was profoundly and deeply touched. It helped me understand God’s unconditional love; it helped me begin to love and accept myself as God made me; it is helping me now learn to love my children with that kind of acceptance and delight in all their uniqueness – even when those unique traits are difficult to understand or tame.
Different is a book written by a mother and son together, telling the story of a different and difficult childhood and the love and acceptance that carried their family through their struggles. After reading the first chapter (available here) and listening to an interview with both authors on the Read Aloud Revival podcast (available here), I’ve decided that I need to get my hands on the whole book and read the rest of it! I want to learn how to love my children as they are, while still guiding them towards maturity; I want to learn how to help them flourish best without coddling or overprotecting them. I want to stop listening to the critiques and judgments of the ignorant world and start listening to the needs and dreams of my children’s hearts: it was God who made them with those needs, God who gave them their deepest longings and most beautiful dreams, and I am only His steward, raising these children for a time, so who am I to ignore their truest selves or demand that they be other than He created them to be?
On Monday, I took the kids to a park near our house and let Aubade sleep in the stroller while the boys and I played on the playground. It was a challenging playground, a bit above their skill level, and it was fascinating to watch them attempt the various ladders, steps, and climbing walls. They would climb up as high as they were comfortable, then climb back down, then come back and repeat the process, over and over again, until they finally made it to the top – and then they would climb it still more times, until that piece of equipment was no longer a daunting challenge but a mastered skill.
I’ve noticed the same things when the boys are building Duplos, or drawing, or various other activities – if they have a goal in mind, they don’t want to stop trying until they’ve attained it, and once they’ve attained it they’ll repeat it countless times until it is so easy and familiar that they lose interest and move on. (Right now, for example, our home is filled with large 3’s made out of Duplos… it was 8’s for a few weeks but those are no longer challenging for them to build.)
Seeing that drive for mastery and motivation to persevere has made a big impression on me. The boys aspire for perfection in the sense of having a goal and working towards full accomplishment of that goal, but they are more than ready to fail countless times along the path towards their goal. Each failure, each unsuccessful attempt, is seen as a part of the learning process rather than as a setback or a sign of inadequacy – which is radically different from the way I, as a dyed-in-the-wool perfectionist, tend to view my own failures, but much healthier and more rational! So as I struggle with the techniques my therapist has given me, to retrain my brain into more positive habits of thought, I am going to try to keep those playground ladders in my mind: as I climb toward joy, it’s going to be hard, and I might get scared, and I will probably have to come back down and start over a few times – but that’s no reason to give up! Every attempt will make me stronger and bring me closer to mastery of the skills I desire, and maybe someday I’ll be running up from my depressive triggers just like those boys were scampering up rope ladders and rock walls by the end.
Taking advantage of the overlap between my husband’s last spring break and my maternity leave, we went on our first vacation ever as just our own little family this week, renting a cabin up in the mountains. It’s been a bit cold for us desert rats, but overall really great. So my seven quick takes this week are from our trip!
I’m lucky my husband is a logistics master 🙂 He found the cabin online, he contacted the owner and scheduled the rental, he bought and packed all the food for the trip, and he calmed me down and gave me specific tasks to complete when I melted down in the overwhelming mess of packing everything for the kids and worrying that I’d forget something essential.
The drive from Phoenix to Payson is gorgeous. I had forgotten just how beautiful the Sonoran desert can be, especially in the spring time when wildflowers are popping their vibrant heads up in every corner and the mountains are shaded green among the saguaros. And Payson itself, perched just below the Mogollan Rim with the high pine-covered, snow-topped ridges behind it, is breath-taking even when the deciduous trees are bare. It has been reminding me that, despite all the brokenness in the world, there is still quite a bit of beauty in it as well.
Our cabin backs up to a creek!
The simplest things are full of wonder and joy to a child. The boys have spent hours throwing rocks and pinecones into the water, digging in the dirt, and lugging sticks and logs across the yard. It is that pleasure in the everyday and elemental that I strive to hold on to as an adult, now that the cares of life are capable of dulling my senses entirely to the beauty of the small and mundane.
(Limerick is wondering, in this picture, why he can no longer see the other pinecone he threw into the water. It took him a few trials to understand how the moving water carries the floating pinecones away – what a good way to begin understanding the physics of the natural world!)
A two-year-old in a hoodie is one of the most adorable things in the world, especially when he sticks both hands in his pockets and wanders aimlessly around giving things sideways glances…
A baby who happily lies there watching her brothers play, gazing at the interplay of sun and shade, observing the trees stark against the blue sky, is also high on the adorableness scale. As long as it isn’t too cold and windy, she’s quite content to just take it all in.
Lying on the wrap by the river
(Aubade is rediscovering her favorite sucking hand after having lost it to the IV bandages during her second hospital stay, and can get very focused on it!)
Time away from normal routines and away from all the other people we normally see during the week seems to have brought Rondel and Limerick even closer together as brothers. They’ve begun to play much more interactively, instead of just in parallel: they deliberately make sounds or movements that they know will make the other one laugh; they make plans for digging or building and help each other with them; they prefer playing with each other to playing alone; they fight, but are figuring out how to make up and keep going together. They follow each other around, entertain each other, and generally fall apart laughing at each other most of the day. And one of the nights here we found them both snuggled up in the same bed ❤
I realized how beautiful it is to watch a child explore the natural world, in his own way, at his own pace: running, jumping, climbing, digging, building with sticks, baking mud cookies, collecting pinecones, or throwing rocks into the river.
Aubade has been a very different newborn than her brothers were (which is probably a good thing for the peace and sanity of our home). Aside from her bout with RSV earlier this year she’s been a remarkably easy baby – she sleeps 4-6 hours straight at night, she doesn’t need to nurse to sleep, and she is able to find comfort in a variety of different things (as opposed to just walking or nursing, which were the only two options with the boys).
sleeping peacefully all on her own 🙂
These sources of comfort have included, in part because of her hospital stay and the no-food-by-mouth rule she had to follow when her breathing was over 70 breaths per minute (or when the high flow oxygen was over 4 liters), the pacifier and its accompanying hippo.
Neither of the boys ever showed interest in the pacifier, so I am new to its ways, but the medical aide during our second hospital stay showed me how a beanie baby can be used to help hold the pacifier in while they’re still learning how to keep it there, and sometimes I think Aubade likes the hippo just for its own soft snuggly weight. And even if she doesn’t, it’s pretty adorable to see her cuddled up with it.
His name is, I think, the perfect name for a hospital gift of encouragement to travel home with a girl so joyful and content: Happy.
Well, it’s been a busy few weeks here. To be honest, it’s been harder since Aubade’s birth than I expected it would be, considering that this is our third baby (so we should have more confidence and experience by now) and that she is a significantly easier baby than the first two. It seems like life just keeps throwing curveballs at us…
To begin with, my physical and emotional recovery from the birth has been a bit more complicated this time around, what with the severe tear on the physical side and the postpartum depression and anxiety on the emotional side. Those baby blues I wrote about last month escalated into depression and anxiety so bad that they were making it hard for me to get out of bed and be present with the kids every day; I would get up and shower because I wanted to keep the tear clean, and force myself to get dressed in presentable clothes, because if I didn’t I would just curl up under the covers and feel horrible. My husband would get home from school and I would take Aubade up to bed with me and hide from the world, so overwhelmed from the few hours of parenting on my own. I wasn’t interested in anything at all, really, but I was devouring books just to keep my mind off of real life and to drown out the thoughts of fear and guilt that kept pouring in. And the anxiety – of being left alone with the kids, of driving, of leaving the house, of talking to people outside my family, of letting everyone down, of being “crazy”, and so on – was so strong (despite its obvious irrationality) that I would have waves of pain course through my chest.
My OB treated me with a series of progesterone shots, operating on the principle that the sudden decrease in progesterone at the end of pregnancy can throw the whole hormonal system out of sync and cause PPD/PPA. Fortunately my husband was able to take care of some of them at home so I didn’t have to set up an appointment every other day for the whole series! And they definitely took the edge off of the negative emotions. The first day it felt like I was on a high – much better than normal – and I thought maybe that’s how things would settle in… but no such luck. I’m still in a hole, but it’s not as deep as it was, and some days I feel like I might be climbing out of it.
In the middle of all of this, we started getting sick. Apparently it had been a mild winter here in the illness department, but February brought all the germs with it and everyone across the valley is catching and spreading disease. Naively I thought that Aubade would be safe from anything going around because her immune system would be bolstered by mine since she’s exclusively breastfeeding, but it didn’t work out that way. Last Thursday I took all three kids to their pediatrician and after prescribing albuterol, antibiotics, and steroids for the boys she told me to take Aubade straight to the ER at the children’s hospital by our house. I was in shock. The boys had never been sick as newborns, so I didn’t realize how differently a serious illness could present in a newborn as opposed to an older baby or toddler. But because they have fewer energy reserves to draw on, and because they don’t know how to breathe through their mouths, an upper respiratory infection that might just cause a cough and a runny nose in a toddler can accelerate a baby’s breathing rate to the point of exhaustion.
The ER took Aubade’s symptoms as seriously as our pediatrician had; we were in a room within 30 minutes, which is quite impressive for a busy urban emergency department, and within another 30 minutes a respiratory therapist had evaluated her and hooked her up to a high-flow oxygen machine. (The high-flow machine pushes air gently down the baby’s airways, so that they don’t have to work so hard to pull air in past all the congestion in their nose and lungs; the oxygen concentration was originally set twice as high as normal air but they told me it was really the pressure more than the oxygen that she needed.) May I note in passing how much I appreciated the ER nurses? Fast, competent, and caring without a hint of saccharine, they inspired confidence and relieved my anxieties without minimizing Aubade’s condition. Even before the respiratory therapist arrived, they had suctioned out her nose and lungs, and did so again a few hours later when her breathing began to worsen. The pediatric nurses we had after transferring out of the ER that evening were not so wonderful by comparison, though they weren’t bad by any means.
Aubade in the ER
So… she ended up being in the hospital for the next two nights. The boys slept over at my mom’s house for one of those nights and the first night we had her back home; my husband fought off a stomach bug and tried to keep up with school and job applications and laundry; I sat in the hospital with Aubade and held her and watched movies and tried to sleep. It was rough, even though I could tell she was slowly improving the whole time we were there. RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) usually peaks around the fifth or sixth day, which is when we were in the hospital, so we were able to adequately support her breathing through the worst of it.
Rondel and Limerick caught the same virus, and both presented with coughs and ear infections, but since they are older it wasn’t as dangerous. Rondel is now on a preventative steroid inhalant, though, as every cold he gets turns into a cough – he’s been on Albuterol at least four times just this winter. I’m hoping it will help, and I’m also hoping it isn’t a sign that he’ll be officially diagnosed with asthma at some point in the future. I suppose the silver lining of all this is that my prayer life and relationship with the saints are both growing… that daily shower is a good time to maintain spiritual health as well as physical and emotional health, with a morning prayer thrown in with the shampooing and all. Better that than nothing, anyway, and I know the kids won’t distract me then.
But hopefully the rest of my maternity leave goes a bit better! We’ve still got a spring break trip up north, summer internship applications, physical therapy, and maybe a visit to a psychiatrist to fit in to these next five weeks, on top of the regular demands of school, parenting, and running a home… so if we can stay healthy (physically and mentally) it would be great 🙂
One of the less pleasant aspects of Aubade’s birth was that it resulted in a 4th degree tear (baby girl was coming fast and needed to come fast as each push caused her to have pretty significant decels, indicating potential hypoxia – they actually had me on oxygen and made sure we waited in between pushes to get Aubade fully oxygenated before each new push, and she was quite big!). While it’s been healing as well as can be expected, it’s put some limitations on what I can do, which is really frustrating for me.
But! Today I pushed the boys in the stroller, while wearing Aubade, all the way to the Museum of Natural History two blocks down from our house! I’d been building up to it: I’ve walked with them to the children’s museum one block from the house with no stroller, just carrying Aubade and the diaper bag, since the boys can walk that distance fairly easily; and I’d taken all three of them to the grocery store and pushed them in the shopping cart (which in retrospect was rather stupid because I lifted Rondel in and out of the cart and he’s quite a bit above my lifting weight limit right now). But this was my first solo outing with the stroller. And it went really well! With the weather so frigid, gloomy, and drizzly these days, it is especially nice to have broadened the scope of where I can take the boys when my husband is at school – and it makes me feel much more like my normal self: confident, independent, and quite capable of planning and executing fun outings with my children!
I guess my whole point is that even when you know rationally that recovery takes time but will eventually happen, it’s easy to get discouraged and feel like you’re never going to be yourself again, until you have those little moments of normalcy that help you see that you are coming back. It’s true physically with the recovery from a tear (or C-section, as I learned with Rondel), and it’s true emotionally with the hormonal transition from pregnancy to postpartum; in either case, you might need some extra help getting there, but recovery is totally possible, and you will find yourself again.
little thoughts 