Ups and Downs

On any given day at home with the kids, I run the emotional gamut from total joy to total frustration. There are times I feel so touched I want to freeze the moment forever, and times I am so frustrated I wish I could get out of the house and scream.

Sometimes she spontaneously hugs me and says, “mommy, I love you!” Or, “mommy, are you sad? It will be okay.” Today after I got home from work, she muttered quietly to herself while playing nearby, “mommy, miss you.” Sometimes she puts two-and-two together and says something so clever, or insightful, that I am momentarily speechless. Sometimes she will giggle hysterically, or throw her arms in the air and dance, or lie quietly with me.

But sometimes she drives me up the wall. She will keep yelling what she wants, over and over and over, completely ignoring my responses, as if she hasn’t heard me say no, and why. She will whine all day. She will say she wants to eat something, then change her mind and refuse to touch it once I’ve gone to the trouble of getting it ready. She will do a million little things that I technically can’t discipline her for, but which build up gratingly on my nerves.

He is the same. Sometimes he’ll pull himself up and wiggle his butt, or clap on command, or grin so big I feel like my heart splits open. Sometimes he’ll cry every other hour through the entire night. Or be so fussy he starts wailing the minute I try to set him down.

And it’s the same with the two of them in combination. Sometimes he’ll shriek in happiness and crawl towards her, or she’ll hug him and stroke his hair. She’ll take care of him when I’m preoccupied, wiping his drool, jiggling toys in his face, distracting him from a dangerous situation by stuffing Cheerios in his mouth. Sometimes they will both have a meltdown at the same time, or her meltdown will wake him from a nap just when he finally fell asleep.

This is why any given day at home is so exhausting. This is why I don’t know what to say half the time when D asks how the day went. Um, it was exhilaratingly cute and inexpressibly frustrating? You had to have been there? This is why work is so much easier. It takes a lot for someone to upset me in the clinic or operating room, and even then it doesn’t nearly approach how frustrated the kids can make me. Marriage certainly has its emotional highs and lows, but they happen more like once a month instead of five times a day.

I think this is why parenting is a spiritually formative experience. You either rely on God, or you go crazy. There’s no room for middle ground, for getting by. No space for idle torpidity. There’s no looking good at church or small group, no hiding your bad mood from your spouse at the end of the day. Either you operate in the Spirit, or your natural selfishness and weariness emerge with flying colors. Kids don’t have filters. They let out all their joy; they push all your buttons. Going along for the ride with perspective, helping the best and worst moments count towards something meaningful and build towards something bigger—that’s not something you can do on your own.

An Omer of Manna

“And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. … It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.”

When she got out the Bible for lesson time, E turned randomly to Exodus 16 and said, “tell me this story!” and it reminded me how much I like that chapter. It’s like reading a fantasy novel, where things seem pretty ordinary until you stumble upon the part with the magical stuff on the ground. I love the tone of curious wonder. I love the sense of the mist lifting, the nothingness of hot, dry plains transformed into something wondrous. The imagery of pure white blanketing a Wilderness of Sin. I like how God made it a bit sweet, and very fine. How it was malleable, boilable and bakeable. How it was the perfect buffet: those who gathered much had none left, and those who gathered little had no lack.

And it happened every day, I told her, every day for forty years. For longer than I’ve been alive, they ate the same thing. Every night, they had nothing left. Every morning, they had to trust that the same, inexplicable miracle would happen again. Only on the night before the Sabbath did they have enough for one more day, so that once a week they rested. Can you imagine living on faith that long, for something as basic as food?

There was one exception: the omer that was stored for the generations, so they could see, feel, smell, taste the evidence of God’s daily faithfulness for those forty years, of his people’s dependence on him alone for their sustenance. So their children would know, would remember this song in the night, this daily bread.

It makes me think: where is my omer of manna? How much of my life is lived in daily faith and dependence? Am I spiritually consistent? Am I intentional about displaying evidence of faith for my children? Am I wandering where God wants me to be? Am I noticing what he provides before me?

The people tested every instruction. If I keep a little extra, will it really get infested with maggots? If I go out on the seventh day, will there really be nothing to gather? Each directive had to be repeated twice. But I test things all the time too: do I really need to be fed by God every day? Can’t I hoard spiritual capital? Get lazy about spending time with God without consequence? Get along pretty well on my own? Do I really need to suffer in the wilderness? Can’t I just seek a comfortable life?

The things that are outside of natural order and self-will are hard to remember, hard to be consistent about. I guess we all need our omer of manna. To remember.

Chubby Little Fists

When I recall E in a highchair with Cheerios, the words “delicate pincer grasp” come to mind. Less dexterous if no less determined, he has figured out how to achieve the same result by stuffing his entire fist in his mouth—if only by osmosis, as the bits dissolved by saliva squeeze their way through clenched fingers. I’m more impressed by his will than his way, but well, I’m impressed.

Two Together

When I’m feeling down or aimless, I look at these pictures. Wish I could say I meditate on the Bible, but nope, I look at pictures of them together.

They are so cute together. He flaps his arms in his excited way when we first see her in the mornings. She helps give him a bottle, she chews off and de-peels pieces of peaches to stuff into his mouth. When she sees him crawling towards dangerous spots she gets in his way and distracts him with toys. She wipes his drool and reads him books. She’s never mean or violent to him no matter how much he disrupts her life.

Her crib is her special space; everything in it has been hand-picked (typically by being stuffed in when she thinks we’re not looking). She loves it when he gets in. It’s one of the few times they are both contained enough for me to get some pictures in.

Summer

This is the first year in a long time I feel like I’ve been able to appreciate summer. For the last two out of three summers, I was pregnant, sweltering my massive way through high-banded maternity pants and seeking air conditioning whenever possible. For the last say ten years before that, I was in the clinic or hospital. I don’t really remember summer. I sort of remember it being hot as I walked to my car.

This year, we’ve gone to the beach and the community pool. E adores water and would stay in there forever if I let her. I’ve visited friends. Made popsicles. Got a tan. Worn lots of summer dresses. Chopped my hair short. Enjoyed my regular clothes (strangely I am cumulatively losing weight with each pregnancy, though I chalk it up to being too busy with childcare to have a significant interest in food). Barbecued. Gone on walks. Ate lots of watermelon. Picked blueberries and strawberries.

This is also the first year we have a garden. While the children napped today I picked a bunch of cherry tomatoes. I typically don’t like tomatoes, but these aren’t tomatoes—they melt in your mouth, taste like candy, and are still warm from the sun. I mixed them with fresh sage, mozzarella, aged balsamic, olive oil, fresh cracked pepper and salt. I ate it, alone in the quiet, and could only think, thank you, God, for summer.

Thank you God, too, for having a summer this year. A breather, a time we’re not moving or working all hours or expecting a baby. A time just to be, the four of us, and me alone, with sun-kissed vegetables and the bright day outside.

Parenting

“Never before have parents been so (mistakenly) convinced that their every move has a ripple effect into their child’s future success.” –Madeline Levine

“Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval.” Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, professors of psychology

I was reading this New Yorker article entitled “Spoiled Rotten: Why Do Kids Rule The Roost?” which contrasts American kids with those in societies where children are better behaved and take on more responsibility at an earlier age. A six-year old in the Matsigenka tribe sweeps every day and catches and serves crustaceans for meals. Children in France eat adult meals rather than snacking constantly, behave well in restaurants, and don’t live in houses where toys have overtaken every room. Parents in America are too much at the whim of whatever their children want to eat or play with. They don’t discipline or say “no” often or well enough. They try to control and monitor every aspect of their children’s lives. Their kids must eat organic food, learn five instruments, and go to a top college.

There is a lot of truth to this, thus the emergence of books like “Bringing Up Bebe” and blogs like “Confessions of a Mean Mommy” (neither of which I’ve read completely but both of which I so far mostly agree with).

My parenting inclinations have been influenced a lot by my mom, and our own personalities. I ate sushi while pregnant (as I hear women in Japan all do?), and had the occasional glass of wine. Not to mention the fact that I chewed sugar-free gum and ate deli meat. We let both our babies cry it out (my mom says it’s good exercise). I expect E to be able to have a thirty-minute quiet time, help with simple chores and with her brother, and be polite. She knows she is not allowed to scream (she gave herself a time-out for this once) or throw.

At the same time, there are things I’m working on. I used to give her snacks during the commute to childcare back in Baltimore, and it took me a while to wean her, and myself, off the idea that she needed food in the car to stay quiet. I habitually held her in restaurants and stores until I realized I could expect her to sit quietly in grocery carts and high chairs. I sometimes do things for her that she ought to do herself, because it is easier and faster; my first instinct is often to mollify her, rather than expect her to accept a “no” without fussing.

On the one hand, parenting a certain way is a matter of ideology, of realizing what you believe, in the context of how you were raised and what society assumes. I don’t think my every action will determine her every outcome. I don’t think my giving in to every cry or demand shows her constant love; quite the opposite. I don’t think she is the one in charge of our lives or our moods, though she has obviously changed how we live. I believe the better I expect her to behave, the better she behaves. The more I teach her, the more she absorbs. The more I repeat positive things rather than nag her about negative ones, the more she repeats positive behavior. I don’t believe her worth is based on achievements or comparisons, any more than I believe mine is.

On the other hand, parenting is a matter of practical endurance. The strongest beliefs can be worn down, and following through with them requires time, energy, forethought, and a supernatural amount of patience. Otherwise you end up doing what is easier, which is often not what’s best.

So it’s good to read things, to get advice, to regularly remind myself of what I believe. It’s easy for parenting habits to succumb to societal trends or my own selfishness and laziness, like anything else that no one else is closely watching. But I suppose the things that no one else sees are often the things that are the most important in the end. Funny how life works like that.

Journal Excerpt

She is all talk and noisy business. She’ll be at the play table, explaining at great length to me what flavor drinks she is serving her animals and what she just bought at the supermarket for them. Meanwhile he is like this silent land rover in the back. No noise, just a determined glint in his eye while he goes for whatever object in the room has caught his interest, leaving a trail of drool in his wake. He feels like the harder one to watch these days, because he’s more silent yet more prone to injury. She announces everything she’s doing and feeling so it’s easy to spot mishaps a mile away. If in doubt, she asks: mommy, do you think I can walk down the stairs without holding the railing? Do you think I can put the cup of water on the table without the coaster?

He grins and looks happy and rarely cries, but don’t be fooled: if he wants it, he gets it. He is not distractible. He does not announce his intentions. He does not heed advice. If he wants that large bottle of hand sanitizer, he will slowly crawl, face-plant, drag and push his way there. If he wants to be fed in the middle of the night, he will cry for two hours until he is. If he doesn’t want to eat those nasty carrots, he will shrink his mouth into a little dot that cannot under any circumstances be nudged open. While smiling and pretending nothing is the matter.

Dee-Dee

It is well and truly amazing how much he smiles. He smiles at the slightest provocation, in the middle of crying, at strangers across the room. When people look at E, she stares back with her eyes widened, her nostrils flared, and her mouth closed. When I attempt to illicit any other facial expression for the camera, she scrunches her eyes shut and bares her teeth in a strange grimace that makes her look more like she’s getting ready for a root canal. When people look at him, he grins so hard he dimples his cheek fat, drools down his shirt, and squeezes out any food in his mouth.