I am not a morning person.

This is perhaps an understatement.

But I get up early to beat the child-rush and to quietly come to grips with consciousness, and after 15 minutes and a cup of coffee I’m good. Sometimes I even like being up.

I sit at the table (coffee in hand) and watch the deck get brighter as the sun comes up. And the daylight brings the birds to the feeders. And if I’m really lucky, Evan will creep down the stairs and crawl up on my lap and watch with me.

“Mom,” he’ll whisper, “there’s a mother red-bellied woodpecker.” Except he says, “muddah wed-bellied woodpeckew,” and part of me hopes he never corrects his pronunciation.

Evan is my bird boy.

With Jensen, it’s football. We sit and watch football for hours and may not even speak a word and we are content. Together. I used to do the same with my dad. I didn’t even understand the game. But I sat next to Dad and watched him watch and I was satisfied. The memory still makes me smile.

I don’t know what Caleb will be. But I know that we will share something that will make us both happy to the center of our beings.

And if whatever he is requires me to get up early, so be it. I will do it.

Because that is love.

I know. I said no posting. But here I am, well-rested. (Thank you Ambien.) And feeling better than I’ve felt in over a week: so far I haven’t been tasered one single time this morning and only my left hand is numb and I was able to make it out of bed this morning without falling against a wall or a doorjamb. (Thank you steroids.) And my children are still sleeping. (I don’t know whom to thank for this minor miracle.) So. A good morning.

And now I’m getting ready to peel and braise a big pot of sweet potatoes. Last night before bed (but after the Ambien) I took the second batch of dinner rolls out of the oven. (Well, technically the third batch. But one of the many joys of MS is that sometimes it makes me unable to concentrate enough to, say, follow a recipe. Even one that I know by heart.  I had to throw away a sodden mess of bread dough on the first attempt which seemed pretty pathetically symbolic at the time.) Tomorrow will be pumpkin cheesecake and pecan pie.

Thanksgiving Friday is almost here!

No: we are not Communists or heathens or just a little slow on the uptake. Thanksgiving Friday. My husband has a job that doesn’t necessarily stop on holidays or weekends or during the night, so he will leave us Thanksgiving morning before 6:00. He’ll be back sometime Friday morning and we’ll trek the eight miles over the river (creek) and through the woods to Grandmother’s house. Together. If we can’t be together, I’d rather not do it.

I’ve been cooking a lot lately, with a compulsion that was almost confusing. Until I stumbled across this lovely blog: The Kitchen Witch. The food, the family, the love… she brings all the perfect imperfections together in a beautiful way in her posts. And, probably, in her life. I’ve always loved to cook. But this is why I’ve been going about it with such reckless abandon in the past weeks. It’s been a sad, scary year. Now I’ve finally recovered enough that I (well, except for this week) recognize myself, and I recognize how much I love these people who live in my house and I recognize how badly I want to stay well enough to keep giving them all of me. I want to spend hours preparing their meals, treating them and nourishing them and every once in a while making them turn up their noses at me or at what I put on their plates. Letting them snitch tastes out of the mixing bowls. And hugging them. And, just maybe, yelling at them a little. Oh, and hugging them. I have the energy to do it right now, and I have to do it while I can.

So Thanksgiving Friday. And the sentiment is this: I will be with people that I love (though not all of them, sadly). I am thankful for them. I want to pour every surge of love, quiet or heart-rending, that I can find in my body into the food I prepare for them. The cooking will take several hours over a few days. One ruined batch of bread dough, two extra trips to the grocery store, one great big burn on my right hand, about 600,041 calories. And hours and hours of love.

It doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope you are as blessed as I am.

At the risk of sounding completely self-pitying, I must say that it was not awesome to cancel vacation on my kids last week. It was not anywhere close to awesome. It was a parenting failure of epic proportions.

But what did feel awesome? When my sister and her husband showed up, baby and dog in tow. I didn’t feel very good while they were here. But it was a whole new kind of happiness to watch them have fun. I cannot feel terribly happy right now. But I want my kids to feel happy. I want my husband to feel happy. I want the people I love to feel happy.  And I will settle for that right now, and hope that I will soon be able to rejoin them.

It is an imperfect perfection. Or maybe a perfect imperfection. I don’t know. But I’ll take what I can get.

And I promise I’ll get the rest of the staycation pics on my Flickr photostream just as soon as I can stay awake long enough to do so.

[steps up on soapbox. clears throat. meekly begins speaking.]

Shortly after my sister adopted her son, she called me. He was almost nine months old and he wasn’t sleeping. Aren’t babies who are that old supposed to sleep all night? What were they supposed to do? Some books said they should go in and comfort him when he fussed. Some books said they should go in but not pick him up. Some books said they should sleep with him. Some books said they shouldn’t go into his room at all. And each book not only offered its own method, it said that other methods were wrong. Just plain wrong.

Thus began my sister’s hazing into the cut-throat and slippery world of parenting. It is a judgemental world revealed in pediatricians’ offices and at playgroups and in hot-topic parenting books that outline a clear path to a perfect child. Parenting is easy, if you follow the advice you read and are told. But there is a catch. There is something that no doctor or book or well-meaning experienced mother will tell you. It is impossible to do it right. It is impossible to be a good parent.

When I had one kid, I read some parenting books. When I had two kids, I kept a couple of parenting books around for reference. Now that I have three kids, I’m not sure we even own a parenting book. We get by on children’s Tylenol, occasional phone calls to the doctor, our own judgement, and maybe a drink when things get dicey. There is the occasional day when my kid misses the bus and I have to drive him to school while I’m still in pajamas and I forget to brush my teeth and I take my other son to preschool looking like a freshly-bathed cat and the baby has crayon all over his face and other parents look at me and think I am incompetent and then later all the kids simultaneously start whining before dinner and when Jeff finally comes home I don’t even bother to say “hello” because I am too busy heading to the beer fridge to get a drink or three. There are days when I slam my kid’s hand in the car door. There are days when I have to take the baby to the emergency room. There are days when I am a bad mother.

And I have been judged. I have been judged for breast-feeding for too long. And for not breast-feeding long enough. For letting a child share our bed until he was quite old. And for making all of our kids sleep in their own beds. And for shopping at the natural foods store. And for not shopping there enough. And for swearing. And for not swearing enough (because, you know, that means I’m uptight). For letting my kids eat too much junk food. And for being too strict with what they eat. For working and putting my kid in daycare. And, later, for being a stay-at-home mother. I have been criticized for all of the above. And more. Much more. Just as everyone feels free to pat a pregnant woman’s belly, everyone feels free to comment on a mother’s mothering choices. My parenting is, apparently, everyone’s business.

I make some bad choices. And I make some good choices. And some days I feel so defeated that I don’t make any choices at all. No different than just about anyone. It is life. It is parenting.

And so the media has identified this embracing of “bad” parenting as a trend among parent-bloggers. I don’t know anything about it except that, as usual, the journalists are a little late to the party (and so am I, with this post). And as far as I’m concerned, I’m following a much more significant trend. I am a mother in a sea of mothers. We dare to hope for the best for our kids, try to find our way to that goal, and hope to survive until we get there. It isn’t always pretty and it’s almost never perfect, and maybe– just maybe– we should focus our energies on something other than criticizing each other’s choices. In the end, I am a mother, trying to identify the mother in myself and hoping to also recognize myself in motherhood. Good, bad, or in between, this is what I’m doing.

[steps down from soapbox. tells kids it is time to turn off tv.]

Am exhausted.

And not in a “oh, life is just so busy and I’m just plumb wore out and so happy and isn’t life good?” way. I’m exhausted in a “life in the form of three children wrestled me to the ground and sucked all semblance of motivation out through my nose and left me for dead” way.

Can. Not. Move.

This weekend we went to Pediatric Lollapalooza (that wasn’t the name of it, but that’s what it was, minus the intoxication and tattoos) and got really hot and played in fountains and ate ice cream and watched They Might Be Giants and some other fun bands* and stayed too late. And the next day we layered more sunscreen onto our sticky bodies and went back out into the sun to a gigantic barbeque competition where we ate our weight in pork ribs and beef ribs and brisket and chicken and some other meat and washed it all down with snowcones and somehow managed to drag our stuffed and burned selves home.

Throw in an extremely fun aunt and a pathologically energetic uncle (but I mean that in a good way, Greg) and an illegally adorable cousin and me losing my cell phone and me contracting a food-borne illness (shocking, I know, given our eating patterns over the weekend) and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting, and you know what?

It was awesome. Sure: today I feel defeated and lifeless. But I would do the weekend again in a heartbeat. Because that’s what parenthood is.

________________

*Fun bands to which middle-aged, suburban fathers who used to fancy themselves iconoclastic danced with reckless abandon, using their toddlers as excuses to get down. These are the same fathers who were too cool (or uptight) to dance with their brides at their own weddings, even after many bottles of champagne. I am not bitter. I am just saying.

**There is no second footnote, but because I included the first footnote I feel like I need to give credit to Literal Dan, the (exceptionally witty) parent-blogger who actually invented the asterisk. It’s true. I read it on Wikipedia. Or something.

I’m liveblogging Mother’s Day. I have no idea why. I guess because liveblogging the presidential debates was funny? Anyway. The first few entries will have to be after-the-fact, until I get caught up. (And I’m totally not blogging about the fact that our neighbors had a party last night and after we tucked the kids in we went over and played drinking games until midnight.)

Mother’s Day, 2009

8:31 pm: Off to bed to read a book and fall asleep after two paragraphs and wake up in two hours to wipe the drool off my chin. (Adults do not go to bed at 8:31, do they?) (Am I really the only one?!) (Am completely okay with that, actually.) Mother’s Day. Over. Which is fine. I have no reflections. Because (aside from the precious metal writing utensil) it was shockingly no different than any other day. Because I’m a mother every day. And sometimes my kids are grateful for me. And sometimes they’re not. Again: okay with that. If I’m not, I’m totally in the wrong profession.

8:10 pm: Kids in bed in record time. They even brushed their teeth because I’m an awesome mom. Or whatever. And Evan also managed to sneak in several somersaults wearing not a stitch of clothing, which is a sight to behold. And nobody said “Happy Mother’s Day” as I was tucking them into bed because the day’s novelty wore off sometime between breakfast and immediately after breakfast. But I am okay with that.

8:03 pm: Back from in-laws’. As suspected, no masseur.

4:40 pm: Off to my in-laws’. Bet they don’t have a masseur either. But: gin! and pizza! and I feel no obligation whatsoever to wear make-up, so that will have to do in the place of Juan.

4:14 pm: The day has become dangerously dull. Dangerously like any other day. You know what Mother’s Day is missing? A masseur named Juan.

3:21 pm: Evan just popped his head in the door long enough to prove that yes, he does have a pulse and to clarify that Brother’s Day gifts should include toys, not flowers.

3:16 pm: Haven’t updated in a while because it’s been so quiet around here. Which, first of all, means I need to make sure that everyone still has a pulse. And if they do, it means that it’s a perfect afternoon. (If they don’t, this will probably be my last entry and Mother’s Day will go down in infamy.) Still haven’t showered though, which means the cleanliness problem is obviously with me and that I shouldn’t blame the kids. But I think I already knew that.

12:32 pm: Evan just called for a paradigm shift. He believes the rest of the day should be called “Brother’s Day” and that we should all gift accordingly.

10:57 am: Jeff has taken the big boys to visit Great-Grandma. Baby is asleep. Blessed quiet.

10:13 am: Just told Jensen and Evan they may not play Wii right now. They got mad and stormed off to the toyroom where I’m pretty sure they’re plotting my untimely demise. Which would put a damper on Mother’s Day.

9:50 am: Mother’s Day phone calls: check. And my sister and I are both still in our pj’s, neither one of us slept, have not brushed our teeth, and have fussy babies. There is something poetic about this state of affairs on Mother’s Day.

8:05 am: Holy hell. Mother’s Day gift: platinum and rose gold fountain pen. (This? is impressive. My husband loves me.) And a water bottle for my bike. And hand-drawn Mother’s Day cards. Evan drew me with gray hair and wrote, “Sorry” across the front. Jensen made his at school and wrote, “Mom, I love you very much.” But crossed out the “love” part because he didn’t want his friends to see it. I want to frame these cards.

7:47 am: Jeff laughs and says, “No!” when I ask him if I should anticipate a lovely breakfast in bed.

7:37 am: Older boys are wrestling in my bed. Jensen just yelled at Evan, “Quit kicking me in the nuts!” and punched Evan in the crotch. Evan is rolling around moaning, “Oh, my nuts!”

7:30 am: Kids got up a while ago. Now they are all back in my bed jumping up and down. “Happy Mother’s Day!!!” Lots of hugs and kisses. I love them.

4:44 am: I look at the clock for the last time before falling asleep. Children are in my bed. Jeff is on the sofa trying to look intimidating in case it wasn’t a false alarm. I’m tired. Shouldn’t have stayed up playing beer pong. Stupid alarm. Stupid keg.

3:07 am: Security system detonates. I think I just got killed, but once I realize I’m still alive I panic. False alarm. Jeff fixed the problem. He also panicked. Kids up and panicky. Mother’s Day Panic. Awesome.

I’m a girl. Sure, I like sports. (Just this weekend I watched golf, baseball, NASCAR, and some NBA.) And beer. And I freely admit to having a 17-year-old boy’s sense of humor. But still: girl, with girl sensibilities.

And I’m the lone girl around here. Mostly this isn’t an issue. I mean, sometimes when I get the Hanna Andersson catalog I wish I had a daughter. That’s usually as much as I think about it. But this past long, rainy weekend we were all cooped up indoors together and I had many occasions to reflect on the sheer boyishness of my housemates. The juvenile testosterone was so thick that it practically dripped off the walls.

For starters, I realized that we have a lock on the scatalogical humor. The boys fart. A lot. And when they’re not farting, they’re killing each other by pretending to fart. Want to render a four-year-old helpless with laughter? Ask him to pull your finger (or, more accurately, have his dad do this). Or belch. Even the baby knows how to fake-belch, which he finds hysterical. Oh, or they tell pee jokes. Or poop jokes. All. very. funny. Especially for 48 hours on end, with breaks only for sleep. (What’s funnier than a good poop joke at dinner? Oh, I know! A poop-puke combination joke!)

And (unfortunately) the smells don’t end there. The kids aren’t old enough to make our house smell like a locker room yet but they just smell… funky. Little boys smell like puppies. (Do little girls smell this way too? I wouldn’t know. Pretty sure I didn’t.) But then there’s something else. Something about sweat and an aversion to soap and perhaps an unhealthy disdain for toilet paper. (Oh, don’t judge. You know your kids are the same way.) A long weekend in a closed-up house with these kids and… we needed a good airing-out by Monday morning.

Oh, and then there are the battles. The play battles that are just for fun until somebody actually makes contact, and then it’s game on until somebody bleeds. Somebody is constantly jumping on/off/over the furniture in battle. I’d venture to say that someone in our house is airborne about 68% of the time. And if someone isn’t in the air, he’s crying because he had a bad landing or his brother just totally nailed him. Our house is like one gigantic mixed martial arts cage.

If it’s a really good brawl, somebody gets knocked in the testicles. Balls. Nuts. Nachos. Jewels. There are eight of them under this roof, and the boys are obsessed with them. I swear somebody is constantly adjusting himself or scratching himself or saying “Ow! My nachos!” or snickering when I ask Jeff if he got any nuts at the store. I have no doubt this ball-banter will continue until they’re old enough to realize that they should be embarrassed. And then I will not want to know what they’re doing with them, so all things considered I’m okay with these discussions.

Shall we talk about Bionicles? Legos? Hot Wheels? (All of which, by the way, hurt like royal hell when you step on them barefoot.) Cleaning the bathroom (gag)? The staggering volume of milk and food these kids consume? (The oldest eats twice as much as I do. Easily. I buy four gallons of milk at a time now. How many will I buy in eight years?) Playing ball in the house? Knocking holes in the wall? (That actually happened this weekend.) I have no argument about whether this is nature or nuture, something essential to the Y chromosome or how we’ve raised them or societal roles. A combination, most likely. All I know for sure about it is how things are around here.

Gah. Boys. They’re weird. I think today I’ll wear pink. Pink everything. It’s a pink day. I need it.