Emma's Room

Emma, 14.

Her bedroom, as she left it when the bus pulled up across the street. My dear, sweet girl. She loves her bed and likes all the blankets and pillows to be crazily swirled into a messy, cozy pile. She snuggles down in the middle. She calls it her "nest."

There are lots of moments when I miss the tiny Emma. So much. Sometimes my heart breaks with the missing of her. But then I watch her from a distance or pause a moment to watch her face while she's sleeping and I catch glimpses of that same little person . . . it's still her. She's still the same Emma.

She's becoming her own person. Making her own choices, finding her own style, figuring out what it is she loves, what she dreams of, what she stands for.

The note to herself on her mirror makes me smile every time I walk by her room.

    Every night:

•  50 jumping jacks
•  15 push ups
•  100 crunches
•  1 minute plank

I remember when I started writing myself notes too. Making lists. Taking charge.

Oh, what a precious, joyous time. 


p.s. I refrained from showing you the clothes strewn all over the floor. Something strange happens every morning while she's trying to figure out what to wear, and the entire closet ends up on the floor.

O Holy Night

Saturday night I sat snuggled in bed, swimming in flannel and cotton, reading, and waiting for the phone on my nightstand to bring me some news. My brother and sister-in-law were clear across the country, in a birthing room, nearly 8 hours into labor. 

The deep darkness of night settled all around the house and snow fell quietly outside my window. I waited. I waited. I made last-minute pleas for the health of my sister-in-law and for that new little person, trying to be born. I wondered, boy? or girl? big? or small? sooner? later?

Finally, around 10:30 a text popped up from my other brother, "Baby here. Dan will call you with the details. Yay!" I held my phone and waited. A few minutes later it rang and my brother let me know that I had a perfect new nephew, Parker. Yay, indeed.

~

Later, as I thought of the birth and its juxtaposition to the Christmas season I remembered a quote I once heard.

"Each night a child is born is a holy night."

These lovely words are part of a song written by Sophia Lyon Fahs. (You can read about her here.)

~

Just hearing that a baby is born can send me right back into the delivery room, to the births of my own two children. The wonder and deep awe comes right back to the surface and I can feel that same golden dreamy feeling again. I wonder if parenthood is such that once you've witnessed the miracle of birth you can always easily revisit that sacred place. I hope I always can. There's no place like it.

Congratulations to my brother Daniel, his wife Jennifer and big brother Cooper. Parker is a lucky little guy to have the three of you!

 

20,500 SCREAMING Girls

{or how I took my daughters to see Justin Bieber} 

How to go to a Justin Bieber concert:

1. Buy tickets in May

2. Watch daughters scream, jump up and down and CRY when you tell them 

3. Wait for many long months, plan, make a purple poster to take along

4. Drive 8 hours to Tacoma, Washington 

5. Stay in hotel next to the Tacoma Dome

6. See tour buses the morning of the concert and . . . 

7. Spend all day standing outside with a large group of girls hoping he'll come out to see the fans (he never did) 

8. Get dressed in Bieber shirts and purple hair ribbons, scream/dance a lot 

9. File into Tacoma Dome with 20,500 people 

10. Scream/cry/cheer through a really fun show

11. Moms - look around at thousands of darling, elated faces and wish they could all be chosen as the "one less lonely girl"

12. Lose hearing for a while after show 

13. Stand in a ginormous claustrophobic mob for almost an hour to buy t-shirt 

14. Go back to hotel, talk it over 

15. finally sleep 

16. Drive home 8 hours, sleep (if you're a kid) and listen to Justin's CD 

17. Give your mom a sweet card saying thank you and how it was the best day of your life and you'll never forget this

18. Lay in your own bed with JB songs stuck in your head until you finally sleep


I'm so tired.

When things go a-'wry'

Have you heard of Wry Neck? Me neither. Until yesterday morning when Kate woke up with her head turned to the right side, crying because it was   . . . STUCK THAT WAY! 

She couldn't move her head and when she tried to move at all she was in excruciating pain. I mean, we couldn't even figure out how to get her to a sitting position because any use of her neck muscles or movement of her head made her scream. Of course I immediately got on WebMD and to try drumming up some answers. Gary phoned a doctor/friend and the eventual diagnosis: Wry Neck. Wry Neck (or Torticollis) is just a spasming of the muscles in the neck and apparently it's not that uncommon, even in kids. It can be brought on by strain on the muscles from a fall or whiplash or even by stress. Kate had slipped in some mud the day before and fell on her bottom and had also been feeling really stressed (about all the things that feel really huge when you're eleven-years-old). Then she also informed me that the night before, while pool swimming with a friend, she had performed dozens upon dozens of back flips in the water. Bingo.

We applied the recommended home treatment:

1. apply heat to area

2. take ibuprofen

3. try to slowly begin moving the head/neck as much as possible to loosen the muscles

4. turn body sideways so you can watch TV to get your mind off the fact that you're immobile

5. have your mother spoon-feed you foods of your choice and help you drink from a straw

Within five hours Kate could turn her head to the front and sit up with help (and walk to the restroom thank goodness!). She suggested that perhaps things would improve even more with some Taco Bell food (Hmmm. Methinks she's working the situation a bit?) so we had Taco Bell for dinner. It must have helped because she was almost fully mobile this morning when she woke up although her neck is very sore. I imagine it would be like having a charlie-horse in your calf for a day straight. I used to get those cramps at night when I was pregnant. They only lasted a few minutes but my calves would be quite sore for a while after. 

Needless to say, she's home from school today, resting up from her ordeal. Now hopefully I won't get it due to the stress of her having it. Although I don't have any plans to do dozens of back flips today so I should be okay.

EmmaBean turns FourTeen

Remembering the birth of my firstborn:

August 8, 1998

1. It was a Friday night, more than a week before my due date

2. I ate an Eggo for dinner

3. We started watching the movie "L.A. Confidential"

4. Gary didn't believe me when I said the contractions started at 3 minutes apart

5. She was born in four short hours at 4:19 a.m.
6. It was a girl! (I had thought so all along!)

7. She was 5-1/2 pounds and looked like a whispy baby monkey
8. The nurse said "Her hair is the color of gingerbread!"

9. We named her Emma Claire
10. I kept thinking we had just witnessed a miracle

artwork by sarah jane studio on etsy 

 

They're home!

My children are home from camp! They are oh-so-tired, but happy and tanned, and telling lots of fun stories about their time away. I missed them soooo much.

(Top photo - Kate's cabin mates - Kate in pink : Bottom photo - Emma and her besties at camp - Emma in Nike shirt)

Holiday Road

Time to vacuum out the ol' family truckster, load up the suitcases and pack the cooler – tomorrow we're hitting America's freeways and making our way to a family gathering at Lake Tahoe, California.

It will take us two full days of driving to get to Tahoe. We'll leave Missoula tomorrow around noon and head south on Hwy 93 through Idaho, through the top half of Nevada, then cut over to Cali. The girls are already dreading the long ride. Little do they know that thirty years from now they'll laugh and reminisce together about family roadtrips. It's a rite of passage I wouldn't dare deny them.

Besides, my kids don't know how good they've got it. Rear air conditioning vents, iPods, prepackaged snacks. In my day it was a steamy hell (pardon my french) in the back of our mini-van. As the oldest of six kids I was always in the way back. The air conditioning never even reached that area. You could cook a 20-pound turkey back there. I clung to my walkman (trying to keep those cheap headphones perched on my head) and dined on sweaty cheese sandwiches (you know how cheese gets when it's warm). As a matter of fact, that is one of my most vivid childhood memories – eating sweaty cheese sandwiches from a lukewarm cooler on family vacations. My parents (bless their hearts) in an effort to keep us healthy and grow our little bodies to the fullest potential, were part of the health food movement of the 1970s. We ate the grainiest of breads, with chunks of cheddar, or spread with oil-on-top peanut butter and a swath of honey (which soaked into the bread for a soggy/sticky effect). It was during one of those childhood trips that I said quietly to myself "my children will never know the warm, squishy taste of sweaty cheese." I think I've upheld that commitment mostly for my own sake though. The mere thought of those sandwiches makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Oh! Just so you know I'm planning to take you all along with me as we journey. I've got my laptop, my camera and I'm ready to report to you from the road. I'm hoping to have Wi-Fi along the way and at our house in Tahoe but of course there are no guarantees. So if I disappear for a few days do not assume the worst. We're fine, and I'll fill you in when I hit a "hot spot." (Worst case scenario I will be back home to my iMac next Saturday.)

Vamos!

Here's some music to get you excited!

Sun in Montana & Monet in New York

The sun has returned and we are all busy as bees this week, the closing week of school for Emma & Kate. There are Track & Field Days and Rootbeer Float Parties, Field Trips, yearbook signings, and stacks of papers coming home in their backpacks each day. Whew! I'm struggling to keep in step with it all.

This morning Kate forget a bag of popcorn she wanted to take to school for "Movie Morning." She called home tearful, begging for me to bring it and I told her I'd try but I was trying to get a little work done for a client this morning. But after hanging up I decided to be a good mom and I raced out to the school, corn in tow.

The school is bustling and there's a hum of excitement – just one day until Summer Vacation! You can feel the electricity in the air. All that pent up childhood energy, forced into desks for nine months is about to bust into the warm air and grassy hillsides.

I was glad I had my camera with me. I stopped to snap a few pics of the school and the views that the children enjoy as they swing and run on the playground. They don't know how lucky they are to have views like this every day.

It's a beautiful time of year in Montana. The green of the low areas screaming Summer while the mountains are still just coming into Spring. When it rains in the valley, the evergreens in the mountains receive fresh blankets of light, Spring snow. The contrast is breathtaking.

As I drove home I heard a bit on NPR about a new exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens. They have recreated Monet's horticultural work for an exhibit that includes photographs, videos, rare documents and two of the impressionist's paintings. The exhibit is meant to show visitors how Monet's love of gardening served as a huge inspiration for his work as an artist. 

You enter by stepping through a facade of Monet's house, with its salmon walls and green shutters, and out into a long corridor of flowers. All of the flowers, more than 150 species, will change as the exhibit runs through three seasons, now through late October. They've all been grown from seed by the conservatory's gardening team. 

You can read about it and see photos from the exhibit here. (Whoa - those delphiniums and the water lilies, and little old man Monet - adorable - painting on those really large canvases!)

Doesn't that sound DREAMY! I so wish I could see this in person (if not the real place in Giverny, France). *big sigh*

Neurotic Freakout Alert

So, tomorrow we roadtrip to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for a weekend of soccer tournament fun. I am really excited for some family windshield time, scenery photo ops, fun activities in the town, and watching the games . . . but I am not looking forward to the hotel.

I don't know what happened to me. When I was a kid staying in a hotel was on the top of my "best things in the world" list. The ice machines. The bouncy beds. The cable TV. The long hallways. The POOL! Then suddenly, somewhere in my twenties everything changed. All I could see was the germ-infested door knobs. The nasty beds with those horrid paisley coverlet thingies (thank goodness The Hampton's starting a trend of white duvets). That ultra-nasty booger-pee-dirty-flithy dark carpet. The threat of bringing home a herd of bed bugs in your suitcase. Aaaack! I don't care if it's a 4-star hotel, the whole thing just nauseates me enough to make me consider sleeping in my car. 

Honestly people, if Gary would allow me, I think I would sleep in the car.

I know this isn't normal. I mean sure, no one's really super comfy in a hotel room. But I think my infliction is borderline looney and I fear I'm passing it on to my kids. "Shoes ON at all times," I yell when I see one of them has kicked off their flip-flops. "Eeeek - do NOT set your duffel bag on the FLOOR!" I yell as I whip the bag up onto the credenza. Poor girls. I try to relax, really I do. But I just can't stop myself.

And don't even get me started on gas pump handles, the elementary school door handle, or public restrooms. There's a whole LIST stuff you can't touch or do in a public restroom. I'm just glad I birthed girls so I can be there to show them how it's done. If I had boys they would be running amok with Gary in the men's restroom and I would have to slather their entire bodies with hand sanitizer when they came out. Have you SEEN a men's bathroom? I have and it scarred me for life.

These Middle Years

I've been thinking a lot lately about what life will be like when my children go off to college. I know it seems premature – they're only in 5th and 7th grade right now - but there are days when I get little glimpses of days to come. At thirteen, Emma is a social butterfly traveling in a large gaggle of girls, roaming the neighborhood in flip flops, plotting sleepovers every weekend. Kate is pulling away a bit more too, closing her door to listen to music, and refusing to wear clothes that just aren't her style.

It seems like mere weeks ago that they were playing Polly Pockets together in the living room (and I kept threatening to vacuum up all those little Polly shoes if they didn't pick them all up!) and watching "Aurthur" on PBS while I made dinner. Now here they are – on the cusp. Two teenage girls, swapping nail polish and bringing home math homework I can't even begin to help them with. Life speeds by at such a frenzied pace sometimes I wish I had a pause button. I know that it won't be long and I'll be waking up to silence – just Gary and I showering and poking around the house. The girls rooms will sit frozen in time, high school memorabilia on the bulletin boards, outgrown clothes in the closets. It makes me feel sad and alone, but I know when it happens I should feel happy. It's all good, it's normal, it's as it should be. They are my dream. Someday they will go live theirs. And so it goes, on and on.


But tonight . . . we will dye Easter eggs, eat dinner around the kitchen table, snuggle under blankets on the couch and watch a movie together. I'll tuck them into bed and tell them I love them and I'll treasure their perfectness and the time I still have.

Girl, Thirteen

 

Later today I am going to go watch my daughter Emma play in a middle school volleyball game. It thrills me to no end to see her out there on the court whacking that ball, or missing it completely – but at least giving it a good try.

When I was her age, thirteen, I had an incident with volleyball that ruined the sport for me for life. I haven’t touched a volleyball since. Must have been tragic you say? Well, I’ll let you decide but I will say that when I told my girls about the incident they were like “Mom! You let THAT make you never play volleyball again! GEEZ!” So, maybe I am a little more sensitive than most. Anyway . . . the story…

So, there I was. Thirteen, small for my age, quite shy, and brand new at this Junior high school having moved to the area the summer before. Now throw me in to a coed unit in P.E. and we’ll see how I do (seriously folks, why do they this to 13-year-old kids? It’s just not kind). The square dancing was tolerable and then we started volleyball. 

I’d never played before but I could usually hit it over the net with minimal bruising on my arms – still I wasn’t a stellar player and I was feeling very self-conscious about that. The last day of the unit we divided into our coed teams and started a game. The ball was back and forth and back and I was just mostly trying to defer to the stronger players when someone yelled “heads up!” and the ball came down from quite a height and whacked me squarely on the head (and super hard I might add). Because he was thirteen and loud and popular Kelly Green, a boy on my team started laughing up a storm. I mean he was doubled over slapping his thighs and punching other guys in the arm as if to say “wasn’t that awesome?!” I think he even said something to me like “Way to go idiot.” Anyhow, as everyone stopped and laughed along with Kelly Green I could feel the blood rising in my face and I told myself that I sucked at volleyball and then swore I would never play volleyball again. And I haven’t.

Now, as someone who’s had nearly 30 years to ponder this event and who has a thirteen-year-old of her own, I feel a little miffed at my younger self. I mean the guy’s name was Kelly Green for pete’s sake! Why didn’t I say something like “Shut up you big 'Crayon'”  – or . . . okay, maybe not THAT, but something! I could’ve even gone with a more grown-up approach like “Excuse me but your comments are hurtful and mean.” But I didn’t say anything darn it. 

The crappy part is that Kelly Green undoubtedly has no recollection of me or of this event but I’ve let him keep me from enjoying this beachy sport, which my daughter, by the way, says is tons of fun! Shame on him for being so unkind – but mostly shame on me for letting him win.

Now off to the game. May my daughter (and all thirteen-year-old girls everywhere) always feel strong and capable and confident – even if the ball hits her squarely on the head.

Guilty Mom Thought of the Day

Am I a bad mother if I am really happy (completely giddy actually) that both my girls opted out of the voluntary school Science Fair? Those things stress me out.