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Bipples and Shit Towels

We have some new words and phrases around here. Some are common words that we never really used before, and are now regulars, and some are special just to our family. I thought I’d share some with you all.



Spit rag~ A cloth diaper used to clean up baby spit up. For our purposes, we decorated them, sewed some pieces of flannel onto them to make them cute, cause you know, we’re girls and we do that. I’m glad that I did, especially because Brice seems to be getting kind of attached to the spit rags. This could be because he spits up a lot, and so there is always one under his head, in his car seat, or across his eyes (I don’t know why, it helps him sleep when he’s crabby.) Or he could have taken a liking to them because Georgia and I did such a great job sewing them and making them pretty. Either way, if the spit rags become the item that he can’t leave the house without, I’ll be happy that we took the time to spruce them up a bit.

Shit towel~ A towel whose sole purpose in life is to be placed under the baby when he is audibly pooping. First off, we didn’t name it this on purpose, and I realize I’m kind of a bad influence on my older two kids by calling it a shit towel. The truth is though, I’m a realist, and my girls are in high school and middle school, so I’m fairly certain they hear worse things in homeroom. We were actually using receiving blankets for the eruptions, but I’m kind of short on those and he has a tendency to explode, and ruin whatever is near him with a paste of mustard yellow. If I’m diligent and do a bunch of rinsing, spray’n’washing, scrubbing and immediate washing, nothing stains. But c’mon, like that’s going to happen…I’m lucky if I get to shower everyday. So I just picked a couple towels, and then I can wash them, and who cares if they stain. You know, cause they’re just the shit towels…



Bipples~ Baby nipples. As in “Are his bipples purple because he’s cold?” I don’t know why we call them that, we just universally agreed.

Beekit~ Baby blanket. Specifically, the quilt I made for him that is super soft and that he seems to like. He sleeps with it around him and smiles when I rub it on his face. My niece Riley always said “beekit” for blanket, and I loved it, and it stuck in my head. And somewhere in my sleepy mind, I started calling it that in the wee hours. Now it’s stuck.

Lucky~ A small yellow giraffe we got for Brice to cuddle with. Lucky is also a good luck charm, because Brice seems to be a head trauma magnet already in his little life, and we thought a good luck charm couldn’t hurt.

Pacifier~ Brice only likes one kind, and even then, sometimes he doesn’t like them at all. The jury is still out on this one. Still, we don’t leave home without one.

Penis~ We pretty much never said penis before, because, well, why would we? But now we do. I think we’re all kind of fascinated, to be honest. We think it’s especially funny when it visibly shrinks when we open his diaper. It is not so funny when he uses it to pee over the changing table and onto our feet.

                                                                                                                                                                   

I can't put a picture of his penis up here. I want him to still talk to me when he gets older...

Baby trade offs

We used our last newborn diaper on Brice yesterday. They still fit him, but barely, and they won’t fit long enough to justify buying another package. I set one aside when I decided to move him up to size 1’s, to keep with his baby items. I looked back at pictures of him in them when he was 5 days old, so incredibly small, just swimming in that diaper. His little naked body is scrawny and bony. You can count his ribs; see his sternum like a button sticking out of the middle of his chest. He looks like a baby bird that fell from a nest. And now those diapers don’t fit. And he looks more like a Butterball turkey.

I put away the outfit he came home from the hospital in. Like the diapers, it still fits, but barely. His feet stretch at the ends, and he fills the middle. I don’t have the heart for trying to put it on him and seeing that he’s outgrown it. It felt better to take it off of his little body, warm and smelling like him, and put it in the Ziploc baggie on top of my dresser designated for such memorabilia.



I’ve been bathing him in my blue bread bowl. It’s shallow and fits in the sink, and his little body curls into it. It takes mere seconds to fill, and the baby tub my friend Holly gave me was way too big for his 6 pound frame. But his body fills the bread bowl now, and I know that he is sturdy enough for the actual baby tub now. I will have to get the tub out of storage, and put the bread bowl back in the cupboard soon.

I set aside a bag for clothes that he’s outgrown that I’m not keeping for posterity. It only contains one Onsie right now. But that will change. I know it.



Even towards the end of my pregnancy, I kept thinking that I had to wrap my brain around the idea that a baby was coming. I kept telling my friend Holly that it still felt so surreal. I believe she told me that it was real and I better get used to it because the baby was coming, believe it or not. The pregnancy always felt real, it was the fact that it would lead to a baby that I couldn’t quite grasp. I did the whole nesting thing, got all the things that I needed. I washed and organized and was prepared, but it didn’t feel real. Not until he was born, in which case the reality of his existence, and how much I loved him, both proceeded to hit me like a Mack truck.



Maybe that’s why I feel this need to absorb it all as it happens. Or maybe it’s just because I know that it goes so very fast and this is the last little person that I will grow in my body and call my own. Either way, I would rather stay in the moment with him in my living room than be out anywhere showing him off. He is still the baby that I can’t put down.



But with this growing, with these stages that are left behind, come new blessings. When my daughter Holly was six, she grew out of the last few things that made her seem little and hands on. She started climbing out of the huge Jacuzzi tub by herself, brushing her own hair, getting ready by herself. She had been my little one, and probably let me help her longer than she truly needed it. But one day, out of the clear blue sky, she was doing it on her own. I felt like she didn’t need me anymore. I felt sad for days, trying to adjust to how life would be with just “big kids”. And then, that very week, Holly learned to do a back flip at gymnastics. And then, like 12 back flips, all in a row. She was asked to join the team, and from that moment on my life became more about being a cheerleader and chauffeur than a nose wiper. I settled into it, still needed, only in a different way. If life is a trade off, then parenthood defines it.



So Brice grows by the moment. I swear he wakes up bigger than when he went to sleep. The girls never grew this way; it must be a boy thing. But just as I was ready to get myself good and upset about him growing so fast, I found the tradeoff. A smile. And then another. And now these gummy smiles come when the dog licks his arm, or when Grandma talks to him, or when he sees my face as he wakes up. We can’t elicit them on command, but they are right there beneath the surface, showing up as little surprises.

And if the smiles don’t make up for all the things that are already in the past now, I’m pretty sure that the new dimples in his chubby elbows and the rolls on his neck more than make for an even trade.

Brice Eli

                                                   "Our lives are made
                                                    in these small hours,
                                                    these little wonders,
                                                    these twists and turns of fate.
                                                    Time falls away,
                                                    but these small hours,
                                                    these small hours still remain."
                                                                              Rob Thomas

                                                                                          

Our lives truly are made from small moments, and piece by piece they are strung together to create our realities. I am going to try to remember it all as clearly as I can. The wrinkles on your knees, your scrawny little neck that can’t support your head. Your dark knowing eyes. Your little old man face. Your expressions. I am going to take these moments and stitch them together in my heart, and let them become a part of me, and change me forever.

When you were born, the Tiger Lilys were in full bloom on front lawns and all over the Wisconsin countryside, blazing orange. The corn on your Uncle Joeys land was shoulder high rather than knee high, thanks to a hot and humid spring and early summer. The fireflies still came out at dusk each night, and everyone was getting ready for the holiday weekend.



It was two weeks ago last night, I was at the festival in Columbus with your sisters. We knew you were coming soon, so we planned to spend the 4th of July weekend doing things together, the three of us. We were going to go swimming, watch movies, check out my cousins softball tournament, watch fireworks, go to a parade. Friday night was the festival, just the start of our girl’s weekend. We shared a huge soda, an order of cheese curds, and then a funnel cake. Your sisters rode the Tilt-a-Whirl, and I sat on a bench and watched. I was so pregnant with you that I had to keep sitting down to rest. Obscenely pregnant, that’s what I kept saying.

I woke up the following morning to my water breaking, just as the first streaks of light stretched across the sky. I knew that it was the day that you would be born, but I was in labor for hours. More than twice as many hours than when I had your sisters, combined. At one point I rested, napped lightly, and I dreamt that I was telling you a story. You were still high up in my belly, and I told you stories about how everyone has to find their way. How baby birds have to peck and fuss to break out of their eggs. How caterpillars have to wiggle and squirm out of their warm and safe cocoons, and baby kangaroos have to find their way right after birth to a warm pouch to grow in. That everyone has a journey to make. And that I loved you, and would still be right there when you got to the other side.



Even after so many hours, and so much time pushing, you stopped at the door. You gave everyone a scare. But as soon as you were born, I knew that you would be fine. I looked at you, still a purplish blue color, your head swollen and bruised, and I could tell that everyone else was worried, but I knew that you were fine. You were just taking your own time, doing things your way, just like you had done all along. Your sister Georgia cut the cord between us, and you turned pink within a few minutes.



After you were born, when they handed you to me, you looked up at me with the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen. We had just officially met, but I knew you already. We passed you around the room, to your sister Holly, who passed you to your sister Georgia, who passed you to your Grandma, who handed you off to your Aunt Holly. If life is made of small moments, they create circles that come back around again and again. We had all been waiting just for you.

Two weeks ago right now you were still in my belly. And now you’re here. In my living room, in my bed, in my arms. And now, I can’t imagine a time that you weren’t here. That you weren’t a part of our family. I know that there are people who don’t like the tiny baby stage, who can’t wait for real little smiles, heads that don’t need to be cradled, goofy little belly laughs. But I love the tiny baby stage. I find myself whispering “Stay little. Don’t grow too fast,” into your tiny little ears, almost begging. Already, two weeks of life have passed in the blink of an eye. Already, without leaving my sight, you have grown a quarter of an inch and gained three ounces. Already you are getting bigger right before my eyes.

You are the baby that I didn’t know I wanted, that came to complete our family, where no baby will come after. I know this, so I try to soak it all up like a sponge. The only sadness I feel in all the world right now is the knowledge that you will only be this tiny right now. That you have grown and changed already. I want to push a pause button, so that I can memorize your noises, your little bird mouth, your long toes and fingers.

Between your sisters and I, we have taken over a thousand pictures of you in the past two weeks. We pass you back and forth, a constant stream of kisses and cuddles and loved ones for you to nap on, and you almost never even fuss. I’ve heard that third babies have often “gotten the memo” that the world does not revolve around them. Maybe it’s that, or the fact that you are so fawned over that you have no reason to cry or complain. I’d like to think all babies are loved, but I can’t imagine a baby being more loved that you are.

You are an unbelievably mellow baby, fine with lying on your own, but I lay you down only when I have to. When I pick you back up, I whisper “I missed you. I missed you…” into your tiny little ears. You are the baby I don’t want to put down.

So in this moment, I won’t. Not until I absolutely have to.

Welcome to the world, Brice Eli Roth. 6 lbs 7 ounces, 19 ½ inches long. Born July 3rd, 2010

his things

Little tiny hats. Cotton sleepers made for babies that weigh less than ten pounds. Impossibly small socks. Handmade quilts, receiving blankets, fuzzy towels with hoods. All of it, covered in little ducks, miniature baseballs and footballs, and puppy dogs. And all of it bought and picked out with love.




We wash it all in special soap made for a baby’s skin. We fold all the little pieces, one by one, and pile it carefully into drawers and closets, and a few into an overnight bag for the hospital. And it suddenly occurs to me: a baby is going to fill these things.

It’s not like I’ve forgotten that I’m pregnant, cause at 37 weeks along, I guarantee you that I never forget that. Never. But I seem to forget the part that links this very uncomfortable and tiring state to the arrival of a person. But that’s exactly what it means.



As I went through his clothes and belongings tonight, I realized I was thinking of him. Because this is his car seat, his breastfeeding pillow, his toys, his clothes. I will put his tiny little feet into the impossibly small socks. I will put the little cotton hats on his tiny head to keep him warm. I will slip little cotton nighties around his neck. I will wrap him in the quilt I made for him. These are his things. I’m not even sure of his name yet, and I don’t know what his face looks like or what color his hair is, but he has this little place in our home already. Piece by piece, we prepare for his arrival, and it becomes so very real. I am having a baby. The girls will have a baby brother. We will have a new person in our family so very soon.

The Swan House Lions

Across the street and kitty corner from us is the Swan House, a big beautiful yellow Queen Anne built in 1899. The residents leave small candle lights in all the windows, and all year long it looks festive and reminds me of Christmas. I've heard that tours are occasionally offered, although I've never been. The house is enormous, and the third floor is rumored to be a ball room. It stands proudly near the top of the hill on the main street into town just before reaching downtown, surrounded by the historic well kept old homes.

As a girl, I visited my cousins in Beaver Dam often, and have always loved the Swan house. When I moved to town with my daughters, they fell in love with something else about the Swan house. The lions.

Out in front of the Swan house, lining the walkway to the front door as if they're protecting the front porch are two large concrete lions. Even set against the large three story Queen Anne, the lions looks massive. They stand on all four, muscles rippling, facing the street as if they are ready to pounce. I have to admit that I love the lions too. They look just as home in the snow as they do now, with bright red tulips growing in front of them. For reasons I can't explain, I want to pet them. If the Swan house were my house, I would name each of them, for sure.

The other day I was out running errands around town with Holly and her friend Catie. On our way home from the pet store, we took a back street home that I don’t often take, and drove past the side of the Swan House. As we came near the stop sign, I noticed that on the outside of the picket fence near a side door is another set of lions. These lions are significantly smaller, and they're sitting down less imposingly. I was shocked, mostly at their existence, and the fact that I didn’t know about them.



"Holly! There are more lions! Did you know this?"



Duh. Of course she knew this. She's 11 and in 6th grade, so she knows almost everything. Plus, this is the way she walks to school, and to her friend Laurins house. She was not nearly so surprised or impressed.



"These lions are really small though," she tells me.

"They are small. Way smaller than the ones up front. And scrawny. I don’t think they feed them as well as they do the ones up front," I tell her.



"Yeah. These probably just get scraps and stuff. The ones up front are all muscle. I bet they feed those steaks everyday. They wouldn't be so big otherwise."



"Probably because the ones up front are their favorites. The side lions are probably like Cinderella. They keep them around but they obviously don’t take very good care of them. They almost look sick..." I tell her, somewhat concerned.

We're home now, parked in the driveway but still sitting in the car, talking about the lions, when Holly's little friend Catie finally chimes in.



"Umm...Excuse me. What are you guys talking about?"



At first Holly and I are confused, wondering why she couldn't keep up. Then we realize that most people probably don't spend much time contemplating the well being and care of the neighbors’ concrete lions. Holly fills Catie in, who does not seem any less confused once she's informed.



I call my mom later and tell her about the set of lions that I discovered, as well as how Holly and I think that they aren't very well fed or cared for. My mom doesn’t question our sanity at all. In fact, she jumps right into the conversation that Holly and I were having earlier, and offers a reason we hadn't thought of.



"Maybe they aren’t malnourished, Michelle. Maybe they’re just younger."



Younger. Yes, I like that a lot better.



Photos provided by Holly Roth

Sushi

I baked the new fish that we just bought for the fish tank. Well, not baked like on a pan in the oven for dinner. It happened in the tank, so I guess the appropriate term for what I did to him would be “poached.” I feel really badly about this. I’ve wanted and waited for this fish for a while. The tank was set up and ready for so long that regular visitors finally stopped asking “You still don’t have a fish in that tank?!?”






Green Spotted Puffer fish are my favorite fish, the only ones I’ve kept for years. I stumbled across them years ago when I was working part-time in our local pet store. They seemed so friendly and fun, so I did a little research. What I found is that they are brackish fish, meaning that they live in partial salt water. The fish originate in estuaries off of rivers that feed into the ocean, and gradually migrate to the sea.



Unfortunately, many stores sell these cute little fish as non-aggressive freshwater fish. They can survive for a while in fresh water, especially when they’re small, but they don’t thrive. And though they don’t look it, they aren’t friendly. I know of one man who bought a puffer thinking it would be great for his community tank. He woke the next morning to find all 20 of his fish lying at the bottom of his 50 gallon tank, with their fins all chewed off. The puffer fish was swimming by his owner’s face, happy as can be to see him. I used to stick my fingers in the tank to say hello until I got a chunk bit off one day. They are just weird fish, which is actually why I like them.



I started out with two, and they lived together peacefully for a year and a half, until one started to get possessive over food and got larger than the other. Then he knew he could dominate and started to take bites out of his tank mate. I immediately created a new tank for him, a “timeout tank” is what I called it, thinking it might make him feel bad. It didn’t work. And he was pissed. He didn’t like the new tank, or being alone, or something. He took to beating himself against the filter. A few weeks later I found him lodged behind the filter, blown up to nearly three times his normal size. It was incredible, and really icky. My brother asked my why I didn’t dry him out and keep him, hang him up somewhere in the house. I told him I flushed him, because I don’t dry out and keep my dead pets, fish or not.



Incidentally, the beat up little fish lasted another year, scars and all. He ended up getting into it with the filter, too. Puffers are jumpers, and somehow he figured out how to jump into the filter. He came back out in pieces. His name, ironically, was Flips.



I haven’t had a puffer in a while. I had to clean out the tank completely, and then get it set up again. I finally did that, and then I couldn’t find a puffer anywhere. I ordered them and they didn’t come in. The tank has been up and running for months, waiting. A puffer finally came in last week.



He seemed to like his new home. He swam in front when we came by, ate all his blood worms, nudged the hydrometer/thermometer around the tank for fun. I posted a picture on Facebook and asked for name suggestions, and the girls and I tossed them around. Then he died. I figured he was sick when I got him, since the tank was healthy and everything seemed fine.



I found him floating near the back of the tank, looking less colorful. I went and got a plastic sandwich bag and opened the tank and noticed the heat. Not 78 degree fish tank heat, but hot tub heat. I pulled the thermometer out of the tank. It read 110 degrees. I didn’t even know the thermometer went that high. I used the thermometer to pull the very warm dead fish toward me and put him in the Ziploc baggie.



Maybe its pregnancy, but poaching my new pet makes me question my abilities at care taking. The poor little guy got cooked on my watch, in a tank I’ve spent months perfecting the salinity and bacteria levels. I’ve had the tank heater for years, but thought it worked fine, mostly because it’s never baked anyone before.



The ironic part of all of this is that the name we finally decided on for the little guy was Sushi. Raw fish. Yeah, right. Not even close. Poor little guy even had a burn mark on his belly…



I probably will order another puffer, after I buy a new heater. I’m sure by the time the fish actually comes in, I’ll be over the guilt.

Smart Kid, No Common Sense

I’m having computer woes. This is not fun, especially because I am not at all computer savvy and I have officially used up all of my knowledge on fixing the problem. I am enlisting re-enforcements, and will hopefully be up and running soon. In the meantime, I’m using other people’s computers, and my phone, hence the lack of blogging. But I had a few minutes on this beautiful afternoon and thought I’d give everyone a quick peek into our lives.

I was sitting on the couch this week with the girls. I didn’t used to sit down much at all, but my disproportionate belly has changed that. Resting is not an option anymore, it’s a requirement. So were sitting on the couch watching the Disney channel. Both girls are dividing their attention between the TV and the constant stream of text messages that keep ringing into their phones. Some kid on a commercial says “Is it possible for a human being to lick its own armpit?”

Not even two seconds go by and I hear Georgia say “Ewwwww. I just tasted my deodorant!” I turn to look at her beside me and notice that she still has her arm straight up in the air. Her face is wrinkled in disgust, almost as if she isn’t the one who just licked her own freaking armpit. Both Holly and I move away from her on the couch, and I tell her that she should never try drugs or drinking. Ever. I mean, this armpit licking thing was a sober decision. Can you imagine her on mind-altering substances?

Did I mention that Georgia is THIRTEEN? Or that she’s been a straight-A student all through middle school? Or that she’s president of the Student Council? Or that she can use Microsoft Excel better than I can?

Smart kid. No common sense.

60 seconds

My friend Elizabeth writes in her blog, Boy Crazy, that she is going to try to make each minute last 60 seconds. I like this, because I often let life fly by me, and then I turn around and realize that I’ve been missing out on so much of it. I don’t sit in the moment and let it be what it is. Instead I think about how I got there, or what I could’ve done differently. Or I think about what I’m going to be doing, or should be doing, and I miss the moments that I’m living in. I’ve been doing this a lot lately, and I live less peacefully because of it.




I’ve been feeling like life is going on without me. Part of it is that this particular space in my life is not what I thought it was going to be. My daughters are growing up, and are so very, very busy. They bury their no-longer-little noses down into homework, and continually stay after school for meetings and practices. They have practices for sports, or they are with friends at movies or just goofing off. They are texting on their phones. As middle school students, this is how it should be. And being that they are both honor roll students and so responsible with their time and commitments, I give them the freedom to text and hang out with friends. What amazes me is that they keep track of their own schedules; they are prepared for school and extracurricular activities without my nagging. They go to Valentine's Day Dances in fancy dresses and dance with boys. They run student council meetings without even needing my input. They are growing up, making their own way in the world for themselves. And they’re doing all of this successfully. This is all as it should be. I am blessed to be their mother.



What I thought this meant, however, was that I was going to be able to take some of this time for myself, and explore things for me that time didn’t allow when their needs were more hands on. Instead, in the process of trying to do just that, I feel like I ended up back at the start of it all. Only I’m not even at the start of it yet. There is no baby here yet,  in need of constant nursing and wiping and rocking. I am in a holding pattern, feeling very much like life is merely going on without me, and as if I might have been left behind.



I had a talk with an old friend in Colorado many years ago, when the girls were very little and my life revolved around the constant daily work that raising small children entails. I told him then that I missed my life. He looked at me strangely and said “But this is your life.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot, about how regardless of what I had imagined or perceived my life would be at this juncture, right here is where I am. This is my life.



So rather than think about what I thought my life would be right now, or what my life will be in July once this baby is here to hold and kiss and touch, I will let the minutes now last 60 seconds. And when I started to adopt this philosophy and stopped living in the past or the future, something miraculous happened. This baby started to move. There were little kicks and taps before, but now the baby is squirming and stretching and moving. It reminded me that this part, this holding pattern, is part of this child’s life too. It’s an everyday miracle, I know this. Still, it’s all mine. And it’s happening now, right in the 60 seconds I’m living in. I just needed to slow down and stay in the moment long enough to notice.

Looking for Love...

Life always surprises me. I try to map it out in front of me, but it seems that there is more often than not a detour, or road block, something requiring an alteration in my plan.

I don’t think that this is just my life. I think that everyone has this. The circumstances come in different shapes and sizes, but they come for all of us. Maybe God is up there, giving us only what we can handle. Or maybe fate hands us what we need, even when we think that we don’t need it at all. I’m not sure. I just know that wrenches get tossed in to the workings of our lives, just when we thought it was all running so smoothly.



On October 25th, I was just finishing a weekend in Kenosha with my best friend Holly, her husband Neal, and their daughter Riley. I got up early to run along Lake Michigan, which I always want to do when I visit and have never taken the initiative to get out of bed early and do. It was cool and windy, the lake full of white caps. The sun kept trying to peek out among the clouds, casting spectacular rays out over the water. I ran along the sand, and then the path.. The morning felt magical, as if there was some answer looming in the sun’s rays, the miniscule sand pieces, and the water worn rocks. I had no idea what was to come. I just kept running until I finished my 4 mile route, pausing to take pictures, as if the feeling could be captured.



Riley is a busy bee, but took some time out of her day to cuddle me. She climbed up onto the couch with me, toting her favorite blanket, and snuggled up on my lap for half an hour. We watched Barney. I was thinking about how long it had been since I had lived in the Land Of Barney, with sticky, chubby little fingers, constant milk refills and sweet toddler babbling. I kissed the fine hairs on her head, rubbed her back and bird like shoulder blades and listened to the songs I still knew by heart, but hadn’t heard in years.



So far removed it all is from my own life with my children. My daughters don’t even need to be reminded to shower. They crack intelligent, funny jokes, and we talk about concepts and ideas that the school teaches them, as well as the things about life that I feel they need to know. At 11 and 13, the girls share my books and can discuss them with me. I sat there that morning thinking how strange it was to be back in the Land of Barney, and about how far away it seemed, but that it must not be if I still knew all the songs by heart.



I was invited by a good friend to have dinner at my cousin’s church. A group of us sat together, eating and laughing. I was happy to be there; acutely aware of how full my life is of family and friends. I was thinking that I didn’t want anything more, didn’t need anything more. That I live a blessed life.



After dinner, a man I’d been dating for a couple months invited me to come over and watch Sunday Night Football. We never did watch the end of that game…

I found out two weeks later that I’m pregnant. Yep, that’s right, pregnant. This is not something I was expecting, not even a little bit. My first reaction to the first of three pregnancy tests I took was laughter, the sort that comes from “Are you FREAKING kidding me?!?” But I knew. Somewhere inside I knew. I’d been hungry for the first time since April, and though its been quite a few years, I’ve been pregnant before. A strange side ache a week before left me lying on my couch wondering why it was vaguely familiar, until I remembered that I had only had this side ache just before I found out I was pregnant with each of the girls. Still, the tests knocked me back. Made it all real and true, I guess.

I wish I could write everyone some encouraging words about the guy I was dating. All I can really say is that it is not the sunny days of summer that define our character, it is the storms of life. It’s easy to be a good person when days are primed for barbeques, but it’s a different story when we are forced to stumble blindly through an unforeseen storm without a clear path. What I also know is that by the times we hit these storms of life with someone, were usually “in it.” I have learned a lot the past couple months about my own ability to weather storms, as well as the fact that it’s an amazing measure of the people who will remain with you, riding it out, and still be standing by your side when the sun comes out. Everyone of consequence in my life, with the exception of that man who helped me set this storm into motion, is still standing by my side. I’m not very mathematically minded, but those are fabulous statistics. I am grateful for all of the support that I do have.



If you have faith - as I do- that things truly do work out the way they are supposed to, then you have to believe that all the time. Not just when life is easy and going your way, but when surprises come in and knock you back for a bit. All the things in my life, good and bad, have been a path of stepping stones, one leading to the next, inevitably leading me to this amazing life I live, that I wouldn’t change or trade for anything. Plus, I don’t think we get to choose the shape or timing of our blessings. And I, for one, do not piss on my blessings.



My daughters are ecstatic. They think this is the best thing ever. They have been letting me nap, making me dinner when I wake up, walking the dog and letting me be emotional and hormonal without complaint. They have shown me how grown up they are in all of this. They act as if this is the most natural and obvious thing to have happen. I couldn’t be prouder of them, because they aren’t just good kids, they’re good people.

As soon as I found out, I called my best friend. And in true best friend fashion, she immediately packed up her daughter and drove the nearly two hours to my house. We sat on my porch overlooking my backyard and talked. I think that even then, just hours into knowing, she wrapped the whole thing up best…

“Well, you were looking for love,” she told me. “I guarantee you that you found it…And who knows? Maybe it’ll even have a penis…”


The newest member of our family will be joining us somewhere around July 15th, 2010...

Waiting for Riley

I am often astounded at the passage of time. I’m not sure how the very same two years can at some times feel as if so much has happened, and in other moments, as if two years ago was only yesterday.




Two years ago, Riley was born. Riley is my niece, the daughter of my best friend Holly. Holly and I have been friends for over 20 years. Regardless of where we’ve lived and what we’ve had going on, there has never been a time that we haven’t talked almost every day. She is my sounding board, my biggest cheerleader, my touchstone. She knows me better than anyone, can talk me out of being crazy without pissing me off, and makes me laugh harder than anybody. She is one of my favorite people, and I am grateful for having her. I know that I’m lucky.

I was waiting for her to have a child for a long time. I had my children years ago, and seeing her with my children made me yearn to have that relationship with her kids. In 1999, when my daughters were only 2 ½ years old, and 9 months, we took a trip out to California and visited “Auntie Holly.” She had met the girls, but these few days was going to be the longest amount of time that she’d spent with my kids. We ran around Los Angeles all day, and were figuring out in what order we’d make dinner, get everyone a bath and watch the kids. Georgia, two-and-a-half and strong willed, instantly voted for a bubble bath with Auntie Holly. Always a good sport, she agreed. I went into the bathroom to check on them and Georgia shouted me out of the bathroom from behind the mounds of bubbles, only their little faces showing with grins “GET OUT, MOM! This is me and Auntie Holly’s bath!” Auntie Holly laughed, and agreed, so I let them be. They came out clean and happy, and I handed baby Holly (just 9 months, and Auntie Holly’s namesake) off to her and went to take my shower.



Auntie Holly, then, was not the most domestic girl. She done some babysitting, but wasn’t terribly proficient with kids. She didn’t really cook. But when I came out of that shower, she was standing in her kitchen trying to make Mac and Cheese with her namesake comfortably on her hip like a monkey, and my two year old yammering at her in only her underwear from a chair she was standing on to supervise. I stood there in my towel watching Auntie Holly smile at them, and make dinner, the three of them so comfortable and happy. I could see that they loved each other now, these people that I loved so much separately, coming together on their own. I will never forget the sweetness of that moment. And in it, the wish for Holly’s children to come into the world, so that I could love them that way.



Riley was born two years ago today, December 18th, 2007. When I first saw her little face, not even cleaned off yet, I thought “Oh, there you are. Its you.” Not just because I’d been waiting for her, but as if I knew her, as if I recognized her somehow. The room was a flurry of activity, and after an hour, when everyone finally headed out to get a late lunch, Holly and I sat on her bed with this baby we’d both waited for.



“Can we unwrap her?” Holly asked me.



“Of course we can. She’s yours! Let’s check her out.”



So we did. We took off blankets and the funny Onesie’s the hospital puts on newborns. We counted toes and fingers, kissed her belly and her feet, looked into her eyes, talked about her hair and the birth and how well her husband Neal did. We watched her startle, listened to sneezes and smiled at yawns. We giggled and laughed and discovered this amazing little gift that had suddenly arrived after so much waiting.



I stayed a night in the hospital with Holly while Neal went home to take care of the dog and get the house ready. Holly was exhausted, but wanted the baby in the room, so I took her with me on the sleeping cot, and would give her to Holly when she needed to eat. We lay in our beds and talked like teenagers, like we always do, only now there was this whole other person with us.



Like most newborns, Riley had a strong startle reflex. Somehow, it got both Holly and I going, and we spent a good part of the night falling asleep and then startling as if we were going to fall out of bed. Over and over we all did this, until I finally said “Okay, this is ridiculous. The baby can’t help it, but we can. NO more. We need our sleep.”



We talked on and off through the night, during feedings and while we fell back asleep. I laid on the little cot, with tiny six-pound Riley curled up to my chest, staring at her face. I had nearly forgotten how easy it is to fall completely in love with someone that you just met. She stared up at me with these beautiful dark eyes and I sang to her softly, her tiny baby breath no more than a whisper. And I loved her more than I even thought I would.

I don’t know how two years have gone by. Two years since I first saw her face, and knew her already. Two years and my best friend has become this unbelievably capable, confident mother. She cooks well now, and handles the grossest parts of parenthood better than I do. She has grown leaps and bounds as a person from raising this baby into a child, from becoming a mother. I’ve never been more proud of her.

And Riley, she is talking and busy and amazing. She scoots through a doorway that Holly and I are blocking, and as she touches our legs to part the way for herself, she says “BEEP BEEP,” without so much as a giggle. Her mothers’ finely tuned twisted sense of humor is coming out already.



She climbs up on the couch with me, with her favorite blanket and a baby, settles onto my lap for a miraculous half an hour cuddle. I miss the times of walking the floor with her and holding her tiny body to my chest, but she’s so busy now. Still, there are moments when she wants Auntie Michelle, and I get sticky fingers grasping for me and wet kisses on my face and tight hugs where she squeezes so hard back. And with that comes the knowledge that she loves me, too.

Happy 2nd Birthday Riley. You were so totally worth the wait.

On being thankful

More than anything, I am thankful for my family. When I say this, of course I mean my children, my parents, my step mother, my brother, and all my aunts and uncles and cousins. All of the people that make up what are considered family to me. But usually when I refer to “my family,” I’m meaning my cousins on my dad’s side, the nine children who were born to my fathers’ brother, John, and his wife Patsy. The people who now make up such a large part of my daily life.

I grew up with them. As a child, they would wrap me in a blanket and two of them would swing me. They played “ghost in the graveyard” and tag and told me stories. I watched them play in every sport imaginable. We were together on holidays and camping trips and countless weekends. And they were my favorite place to be, always. I felt happy and lighthearted and safe with them. I felt home, and by the time I was old enough, I started spending extended time in Beaver Dam with them. By the time I started to drive, I chose to spend much of my free time with them, doing whatever they were doing at the time. Just enjoying them. Whatever bond or closeness I felt with them, they always reciprocated. I think I was eight or nine years old when my cousin Greg told me that I was his favorite cousin. We both have a lot of cousins, and even at that age I knew this was an honor. He told me that I was like a little adult and we just got each other. I remember thinking “Yes, we do get each other.”

I left an amazing mountain life in Colorado and returned to Wisconsin so that my children could be raised within the safety of this family, so that they could come to see and know this unconditional love that I was raised with and that has been such a pivotal part in making me who I am. My daughters have blossomed in the richness of this love.

It’s been suggested that our family may in fact be “unhealthily close,” as we are so enmeshed into each others lives. Nearly anything is suitable for open discussion at the dinner table, and while this is sometimes uncomfortable, this closeness and communication comes with a moral compass that breeds accountability. We don’t have to agree, but seeds get planted, and we love and support each other regardless.

The oldest of my nine cousins is named John after his father, and was nicknamed Butch. Everyone in my family gets a “y” sound added to their name at birth which remains regardless of education, age or station in life, so he’s Butchy, even now that he’s a grandpa. Greg is Greggi. Joe is Joey. I’m Shelly. My little brother, who has his Masters degree, is still Marky. This just is how it is.

Butchy is my godfather. He graduated high school on the day I was born, was married shortly after and his oldest daughter Jen is just a few years younger than me, so we grew up as playmates. Butchy is the patriarch and leader of the family now, since his father and his mother passed away in 1994 and 1995. It’s a large brood to lead, but he’s taken it on with a strength, maturity and poise that he seemed to always have possessed instinctively. I go to him for advice on big and small questions in my life, because he always makes me look at things in a way that I would’ve have otherwise. He is one of the wisest people I know, and he provides something of a fatherly/ big brother/ friend role that I never forget to be thankful for.

My family probably isn’t like most families. First of all, there are so many of us that any sort of gathering always resembles an invasion. Second, we aren’t small. Genetics always plays some part, and our particular family has a predisposition to obesity. I never give it much thought, not when I was young and not now. One of the best life lessons that I’ve learned from them is that appearance doesn’t mean a thing. They are the kindest, funniest, and most loving people that I know. They show who they are with their selflessness and their moral convictions by living their lives well. They taught me that beauty, which fades and is fleeting, doesn’t matter to begin with. They taught me by how they live their lives that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. I know that it’s because of them that I don’t look at people the way most of the world does. Physical beauty doesn’t mean anything to me. I fall for honesty, kindness and sweetness, in friendship and in love. Because those things always matter.

Two of my cousins from this family are gone, both Paulie and Frankie leaving us too young due to heart problems. Paulie passed in the early 90’s before even his parents, at 34 years old, and Frankie just five years ago at 45… I wouldn’t say that the void will ever disappear, but it seems to me that it takes up less space now. Maybe it’s that we continue to fill it up with new members of our family.

So for our Thanksgiving, we cram into my cousin Diane’s house in Milwaukee, a tradition for over a dozen years. We have “cuddle puddles,” which refer to all of us cramming into small spaces together. Part of this is necessity, because there are so many people and only limited space, but even when we have room to stretch out, we’ll all still squeeze onto the same couch together on purpose. It’s funny, because I don’t even like movie theatres due to the inevitable close proximity to strangers, but I will press into a tiny spot with my cousins, and feel at home. We all like our cuddle puddles.

The girls and I head to Diane’s house early to help her prepare the imposing amounts of food it takes to feed so many for one meal. Anyone who does this gets named her “kitchen bitch” and there is a general good-natured jealousy about who is and has been the best kitchen bitch. But I’m not particularly competitive, I just come early to have more time with my family. Georgia and Holly clear things in the garage to make space for serving later, they decorate the tables and get to work peeling mounds of potatoes.

I’m tired this Thanksgiving. Two days earlier, I had to go to the doctor for some strange vague symptoms that turned out to be a nasty bladder infection. I curl up on a small love seat in the midst of the cooking and organizing, thinking I’ll feel better if I rest for a bit. Diane takes a moment out from of her monstrous job to gather a pillow and a blanket for me. Without a word, she lifts my head and tucks the pillow beneath me, and lays the handmade afghan over my curled up body. Without meaning to, this simple act reminds me of her mother, but also of Diane herself. I feel bathed in safety and love in a way that money could never buy. She makes me feel precious and cared for like a child, magically without saying a single word, and then just gets back to her daunting task.

Dinner varies from someone yelling “Dennis! The gravy is not a beverage!” and meaning it, to being tucked in so tightly at table that no one can get up to reach the rolls on the far table, and the solution being to throw rolls across the room to every person who wants one. Yelling is fine, even encouraged, because it’s always for fun. I almost never hear anyone in my family yell out of anger, it just isn’t our way. Plus, we seem to live by the philosophy that almost everything is funny eventually, and that laughing makes life way more fun.

The youngest of my nine cousins is Joey. He’s just over 4 years older than me, and his son Willie and my daughter Georgia are 8th graders at the same middle school. Georgia and Willie are wrestling after dinner, running around playfully beating each other their own shoes. They chase circles around a table, each hopping on one foot because the other foot is bare. When Joey asks why they do this, Georgia tries to tell us but is laughing too hard to make any sense, and has to keep her attention on her elusive cousin Willie. They remind me of myself and Joey when we were young, tormenting each other in the name of fun. I silently pray that they will be this to each other forever, like how I’ve always had Joey.

Holly and Georgia play with Jen’s three year old daughter Nora, the baby of the family. It reminds me of myself playing with Butchy’s youngest daughter Nellie when she was small, although she is now married and has already done a tour of duty in Kuwait. A stream of family members hoist my tiny eleven year old around, jokingly locking her out of the garage, or dumping her into a cuddle puddle across the house. It reminds me of my cousin Chrissy putting me onto her back when I was little, taking me for a brief ride down the stairs, a quick and efficient show of affection before she headed out to one of her many softball games.

Our lives are such a circle, especially if we choose to stay within it and watch it grow and change.

A tradition for Thanksgiving is standing in a circle in the garage (which is where we serve the food because the whole house is taken up by the seats needed for 40 people.) We all join hands and Butchy leads us in a prayer. I’m very spiritual, though not religious in any organized sense, but I love this tradition. Some years we go around and say what we are each thankful for, but some years we are just blessed with too many at dinner and we merely stick with Butchy’s words. It’s one of those years.



This year, Butchy talks about how special it is that we all still join together on this day. He says that he thinks it would make his parents proud, and their parents, and their parents before them. That this is where we come from, and why we’re all here. I think of my aunt Patsy and Uncle John, who I loved almost like grandparents and still miss, and I have to bite my bottom lip to hold back tears. I can feel how proud they are of our group, who don’t just gather for one or two days, but are in each others lives so closely all year. I feel them as if they are there holding my hands.

Butchy reminds us that this is rare, that we should be thankful for the type of family that we have. And he says that we should “Give it back. Pass it on to the kids, and keep it going…” I looked around at all of these people who I know and love so well, gathered here because we are so thankful for each other. I look to my right and I think that my cousin Frankie is still with us in some ways, as his youngest son Mark, whose hand I hold in mine. I looked down to my left at my daughter Holly, who is already looking up at me with green eyes so much like my own. She squeezes my hand tighter and I pull it to my abdomen and clutch it to me. And I pass it on.

blessings...

We don’t get to choose the shape or timing of the blessings that we receive in this life. They come to us like the weather, and we merely choose our clothing accordingly and get on with our day and our lives. Or we don’t, and we end up soaking wet or freezing because we believed so surely in the forecast that we refused to be prepared for any alternative.




This concept is hard for me. I like to try to shape the world around me as if it’s Play-Doh. It doesn’t work. I know this. I’ve learned this lesson over and over in my life, but I still try. Which I suppose means that I haven’t really learned this lesson yet, or that there is still more there for me to understand.



I’m not saying that there aren’t choices to be made or that those choices don’t have an impact, because at times, they do. We are beings that can choose. We can get up and do the next right thing. We can use kind words or hurtful ones. We can take care of our bodies or harm them. In daily moments, there is always a choice.



Even big moments, we can choose. We can pick up and move away, or stay put and ride it out. We can attempt to leave important people or moments behind us. But in my experience, the important stuff chases us from within anyway, refusing to let go or become party to failed relations.



For the big stuff, I often feel like life is just a speeding train. And when we think that we are shaping the outcome, we're merely riding inside, touching the window with our own unique fingerprints. We're trying to change things, but in reality, all we’re doing is smudging up the glass, and obscuring our own view.



So I’m setting the Play-Doh down, and only listening to the forecast that I see and feel outside my window. I’ll set some comfort items aside for contingencies. I will sit down inside the train and keep my very own unique fingerprints to myself on my lap. I will look out the window as this one life of mine flies by, and I will try to see the world around me for what it is, and not what I wanted it to be.



I will be thankful for the blessings, exactly as they come.

A Part of the Whole...

There are a million tiny stepping stones across the river of my life, and if I hadn’t chosen or been placed on this path, this exact one, I would be somewhere else entirely. I would be a whole other version of myself.

I can think of moments when I did choose. Moments that I stood at a clear crossroad and made a choice that impacted my life in some monumental way. I moved out west to Colorado. I didn’t move to California. I moved back to Wisconsin. I chose to return to school. Those moments had an obvious and instant impact.



But so many of the moments were not so clearly defined. They were merely me living my life, and little by little the choices that I made each day changed the shape of the outcome as a whole. I’m sure these smaller moments had just as much impact, but I didn’t notice them. I didn’t pine or stress or worry over them. I simply lived my life, and the changes came, like how the seasons turn. One day I just noticed the difference.

So often we hear the analogy that life is a highway that we travel. We talk about the things and places and people that we’ve left behind, as if that’s even possible. As if the important events and circumstances of our lives are merely temporary, and that they can be cast off and then forgotten. As if once we’re finished with them, these things and people and emotions are no longer with us.

But I don’t think that life is a highway. I tend to think that life is more akin to how a tree grows. And that every storm, every season of sunshine, every drought and spring freeze and warm summer night becomes a part of us. A part of the whole. The storms of our lives leave their mark, sometimes they even make parts of us come crashing to the ground. Sometimes we can pick up the pieces and sometimes we just have to clean up the whole wet, ugly mess and do something with it. But inevitably the warm windy days of summer, gentle spring rains and hot humid days come, so startlingly fruitful that we can watch leaves grow by the minute.

Regardless, it all resides within us, like rings within the tree. These moments, whether painstakingly awful or unbelievably beautiful, grow within us, in every branch, through every limb. They don’t leave us, because they are a part of who we are.