Litmus Test

I am sitting here contemplating the difference between the past two days. Yesterday, it was one trial after another with the kids. I had stayed up too late reading an unedifying novel and woke up tired. E seemed to continuously whine and be picky, and I nearly lost it a few times. Perhaps as a result, she became clingy, wanting to sit on my lap permanently the whole morning. Dee-dee threw several tantrums. At one point I just sat back holding them both in exhaustion while they were trying to push each other off my lap so they could get it for themselves. Neither of them seemed to eat well; I finally put on Dumbo to get them both to be quiet enough for me to prep dinner and do a few chores before leaving for work.

Today, we all went to Bible Study Fellowship. After we came back, there were the usual moments of whining, spills, accidents, clinginess, but we got over them quickly. The fridge seemed empty but I threw together some pasta, tomatoes, cucumbers and peas that they ate with relish, then chopped some fruit. We invented some naked games: naked sit-in-the-brown-box-with-the-packaging-paper (E: “something wet is on my hand. I think dee-dee peed”), naked Cheerios games, naked dancing time, naked bath time. Boy, does he love airing out his bum.

Parenting is such a spiritual litmus test. You are what you eat, spiritually speaking. There are the usual variables like amount of sleep, health, etc, but in general I find that when I’ve been feeding myself spiritual junk, when I live a grubby thought life, I tend to find the kids annoying and difficult. When I have spent time with God, or talking or hearing or thinking about the bible, then the kids tend to be pliable and enjoyable. Whatever’s in me, the reserve that doesn’t get tapped under usual social norms, gets squeezed out around the kids, good or bad. It comes out in what I say, in my tone of voice, in what I mutter under my voice, in my expressions and body language. And I think the kids not only react to my speech and actions, they reflect my internal emotional moods and spiritual state. I would go so far as to say that the entire mood of the home, the atmosphere of the house, reflects it.

It’s high stakes that way. What I do with the rare hour or two a day I get of free time, and what I think about when I have spare mental space, is important. If I fill that time with mindless leisure, selfish or sinful thoughts, then I tend to get days like yesterday. If I spend some time with God, enjoying nature or music, writing or crafting, thinking about someone else, praying, then I get days like today. Before, this stuff just meant I had a moderately crappy or pretty good personal day. Now, it means I have two bawling kids and a husband who comes home to complaints, or two laughing kids and a cheerful, peaceful space for said husband to enjoy. 

And Then There Were . . .

Checking In Again

It’s been a long time since I’ve written. So long I’m almost not sure where to start.

It’s been a hard winter for us. Dee-dee is basically perpetually sick, in continuous cycles during which he manages to infect the entire family, till we’re all dropping like flies. Once he threw up a couple times, and boom, I’m in bed with the worst GI bug I’ve had since internship, lost to the world for four days. Last week green snot started to run down his upper lip again and boom, I get a cold so bad I stay up nights trying to breathe and lose my voice completely.

As a side note, an interesting discovery I’ve made since losing my voice is that E does not actually require answers to her now-endless series of “why” questions. Typically I try to provide accurate, scientific answers. If I have to guess or don’t know, we go into a discussion about the definition of faith (this topic is very disturbing to her. “I have to know the answer to everything!”). Today I discovered that while she will repeat her question about five or six times if she can’t hear a response, she’ll eventually start to make her own guess and then move on. “Ma-ma, do fish have gums?” “Do fish have gums?”… “well, everyone has gums, whether they are old or young. Teeth come from gums. Fish have small teeth, so I think they have small gums.” Etc.

A less exciting discovery I’ve made is how badly he takes being sick. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde. He turns from a smiling baby happy reading books in a corner by himself into a screaming ball of tantrums. He kicks and flails while I hold him, but if I put him down cries harder while holding onto my pant leg, tears mixing with snot and drool and his whole face getting so puffy and red I don’t know if I feel bad for him or mad at him.

Work has busied to the point where I’m seeing forty patients in five hours. D has gotten busier at work, directing two districts with high-profile events and endless meetings. We continue to host weekly small group, lead missions and outreach, and play for worship at church. It’s a lot. And when we’re all sick, when the kids are not themselves and I’m not feeling myself, it’s hard. I’ve been able to do some processing lately, which maybe I’ll write about more if I get the time, but mostly just trying to take it day by day.

Quote

“Back then I could leave him all day in the resort’s child-care program. This time he was clingy and heavily Oedipal. I began to call myself Jocasta; he began to call me darling.

“Every afternoon when I’d pick Sam up at the kids’ club, it was as if he’d spent the day in a workshop on Surviving the Loss of Your Mother. When I’d appear Lazarus-like to take him back to our room, his joy was huge.”

- Lamott, Traveling Mercies

He is reaching that particular kind of clingy stage where this really resonates. Every time he sees me, he acts like I’ve been gone for a year instead of five minutes.

Messy Christmas

Taking care of two mobile kids is a study in entropy. Now that he can walk, he loves grabbing random objects and toys around the house and dropping them off in a completely different place. He likes digging into our recycling bin and redistributing empty cartons and bottles around the house. She is always moving toys from one room to another. I'm constantly battling the clutter of plastic kitchenware, books, doll house furniture, empty Tupperware, stray wrappings and stickers.

Life is messy in more ways than one. The day doesn't always go as we predict. They don't always sleep, eat or act the way we think. Sometimes, like today, we find ourselves spent. We're helping to plant a church, which means I show up before dawn to set up the band and play for worship; D gets the kids ready his own and then ushers. We stay afterwards for lunch. We all come home pretty exhausted. And it's darned hard to be patient with each other and two fussy, irrational kids.

I was reading Mary's story to E today and it struck me how messy the whole journey to Bethlehem and labor in a stable must have been. Somehow we have romanticized the whole tableau; turned it into something with cute barnyard animals and soft lights. The last time I went to a barn, it stank. The last time I was pregnant, I had a hard time sitting on the floor of our new furniture-sparse house, much less on the bony back of some donkey. It would have been easy to be grouchy, to wonder why a reservation wasn't made, to think things were going all wrong, when instead it was exactly how it should have been.

So yeah, things are not all perfect around here. There a shoe under the couch because dee-dee fished it out and was walking around with it in his mouth; there is a plastic purple fork on the sofa because I was lying there pretending to be E's patient and that was my "medicine." But Jesus began his life in an unexpected place, in the dirt and hay. I think when he told the little children to come to him, he must have been someone who didn't mind their loudness and clamor, their untidiness and stickiness. So it's okay. Sometimes I get so stuck on wanting the day to go my way, on fighting all the spills and messes, that I forget the point of it all. I forget to be present. This Christmas, I want to be present in the unexpected. I don't want to be so intent on the inn room that I miss the king in the stable. I don't want to be so irritated by the mess and unpredictability that I forget to see my family for what it is and be grateful.