No more suggestions

KK and Teresa cannot be pried from their room.  It's clean, for one thing, inspired by the thought that Mema would want to see it when she came Friday to celebrate Christmas.  Poof!  Months' worth of clothing, precious drawings, and pieces of paper disappeared.  I'm still not sure where they went, but the floor is clean and vacuumed, and they love all that space.  Mema did, in fact, want to see it, and were they pleased with all her praise!  Their giggles have continued in a steady stream all day as they listen to Teresa's new Michael Buble CD and make up dance routines together.

Last week I wasn't sure we would ever be here again.  When I picked the girls up for Christmas break they were snippy right away.  Just the picking and snitty stuff kids do when they are tired.  After a few snarling exchanges between the two, I suggested, "OK, girls, when we get home you go straight to bed and don't get up for at least half an hour."  That's usually enough time for them to fall asleep and wake two hours later, cheerful and pleasant once more.

This didn't go over well.

"I'm NOT tired!"  "It's just that she...."  "Why do I have to go to sleep?"  etc.
Then I shot straight.

"OK, you don't have to go to sleep, but you DO have to stay in your bed at least 30 minutes.  I think you are tired from all the fun we've been having and from staying up late, but whether you are tired or not, I am tired and I WILL get a nap without anyone disturbing me."  They know I mean business when they hear the nap speech.

I went straight to MY room when we got home, with Teresa coming in after a few minutes to join me.  She argued a bit that being tired wasn't the problem.  It didn't help that KK, across the hall in their room, kept running down the hall to do this or that before she got to the "staying in your bed" part.  I really was tired, which means I was cranky, and it didn't take long for Teresa's wheedling to wear me thin.

"Teresa, here's the deal.  You don't have to take a nap.  Just leave so I can, but when I get up I don't want to hear one unkind word."  Silence.

"OK, fine.  I will take a nap."  She turns over on her side.  More silence.  I'm just about asleep when her little voice says, "Mom?" 

"Whnnn?"

"I'm just checking.  If I do take a nap, that means I CAN say an unkind word? "

Silence on my end.   Now I'm not sleepy.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning Teresa was the first child downstairs.  I was enjoying my first cup of coffee, and she sat on the steps and put her chin on her hands.  "I just can't figure out what to get KK for Christmas."

"What do you want to get her?"

"Well, something she would like."  Now, KK is nothing if not enthusiastic.  Very easy to buy for, thrilled about most everything.

"Teresa," I suggest, "pick anything you think.  KK likes everything!"

Teresa ponders a bit.  "She doesn't like pineapple." 

It's not even 8:00 on school break.  "Yeah, she doesn't really like pineapple, or me sometimes, or baths.  Well, actually it's me who doesn't like baths and she does if there are bubbles."

Trying to be helpful here, I look at the new bracelet Teresa just made me.  "Would you want to make her a bracelet?  We could get beads the color you think she'd like."

"That's not big enough."

"Well," I say in my wisest mom voice.  "You know, dear, Christmas isn't about getting big things.  God became a little tiny baby at Christmas, so it's not about getting her something big."

To which she replied,  "Jesus was bigger than a bracelet."

Yes, yes he was.  I'm going to stop giving suggestions.

A Shrew, a Mouse, and a Chicken Sandwich

As you might be aware, we have had some recent dramatic, traumatic experiences with  family pets.  Namely, Teresa's chicken, happily minding its own business in its new lidded cage, was abducted and presumably consumed by something evil in the night this week. 

The funeral was Kennedy-esque, minus the face veils.   It was raining, so big brother James provided an umbrella for the bereaved Teresa, who carefully held the only feathers we could find.  Roy, KK, Mary, Teresa, James and I slowly walked to the cemetery out where strawberries used to grow.  We  found an empty baking soda box in the recycle bin to contain the feathers.  Roy had prepared a deep hole, and it was Teresa's job to place the "remains" in the hole, then cover it with the first shovel of dirt.  We stood in a circle around the hole looking very serious, then Roy filled in the rest of the dirt and led us in prayer. 

The walk back to the house was noticably easier.  Teresa had a spring in her step.  We realized she wasn't carrying a lot of grief when, a couple of hours after the funeral, she and KK happily shouted to us, "Hey!  We found the chicken's head!"  Roy and I weren't sure whether this was the beginning of a tearful meltdown or simply the glee of successful detetective work around the cage.   Apparently it was the latter, because right after that they started singing and playing on the swings just like any other happy day.  Whew!

That afternoon Roy brought in a tiny furry animal with tail and whiskers.  He found it in the garden.  It was clearly a baby thing, and given the recent sadness I was not anxious for the girls to be disappointed by another death in the family.  We went over our "babies need their mothers" speech, not  unlike the one I recited when they came home with birds.  I might just as well have been speaking Chinese.  Since Teresa thought it was a mouse, and since Mary has been baiting our humane mouse trap with peanut butter, Teresa smeared several spoonfuls of peanut butter on a paper towel for it to eat.  Like, enough to trap its tiny little feet if it had been strong enough to walk.  Then into the plastic bin it went, lid on just in case Sophie the cat wanted to help "take care of it."  The next morning, not surprisingly, it was huddled into a little rodent fetal position.  Mary realized there had been no water, so carefully gave it a drink with drips from her fingers.  It was difficult to tell whether it was drinking or whether it was choking.  Either way, it was dead by the time we identified it with Google images as a baby shrew.

The glad news was that we had a resident in the humane mouse trap.  The official plan was that Roy would take it across town to work, and let it loose there to live a full happy life in the surrounding fields and forest.  The girls made other plans.  Before I knew it KK was scooping peanut butter into a feeding dish and putting the mouse into a spare aquarium.  Is this a little girl version of maternal instinct?   So we have a mouse we lured into the trap with peanut butter now getting all the peanut butter he wants.  There was uncertainty among the girls about whether the spoon went back into the peanut butter jar after the mouse had touched it.   If you come for lunch I promise not to serve peanut butter and jelly.

Apparently Teresa is still thinking about the chicken, though.  She announced today, in the context of a possible road trip to Chillicothe during which a stop at Sonic in Carrollton for lunch would be in order, "I am NEVER going to eat chicken again!  Except the chicken sandwiches at Sonic, because, well, they actually look like fish."   : )

Teresa's Story

Teresa loves to write stories.  Stories about school, about her sisters and brothers and mom and dad and how much she loves them.  Sometimes just listing all the people in our family takes up half or more of the story. 

She and KK both love to draw elaborate wedding pictures, where my hair falls to the floor and Roy and I are kissing with lips larger than our heads.  The lips always look like sideways hearts glued on top of our faces.  Sometimes I even get a tiara. The royal wedding will never be so enthusiastically remembered as ours, at least until they have little girls who love to draw.

When we got back from Mary's trip I looked forward to seeing school papers, etc.  Riffling through a whole stack of stuff, here is one of Teresa's, complete with an original illustration of two ladybugs with very large lips.

I am LoveD By Teresa Elfrink

 A grl Coms up to me    she is hot    I Love her    We kissD   we got marYD    we haD kiDss    the Boy is the wun Wat has spots the grl is the Wun wat hass no spots

Okaaaaaayyyyy.  "She is hot"??!!!  This child is six years old (which, as she patiently explained to her Papa last weekend, is the reason she hasn't REALLY learned anything this year in kindergarten.  Because she is six.  You know.)

Now let's be clear that I don't often hear people described in our house as being "hot".    "Cute", "sweet", "adorable", yes.  "Hot"?  um...no.

Priests are bound by a "Confessional Seal" or something like that, ensuring that they will never EVER discuss with anyone--even the individual who made the confession--what they have heard during sacramental Confession.  I'm thinking all kindergarten teachers should be bound by something similar.  In the meantime, I'm waiting from a note from the teacher asking us to come in for a conference. 

Thankfully, Teresa's teacher has two older children who likely spilled their family secrets during kindergarten.  I'm hoping she's sympathetic.

Paris Miracles

Mary and I arrived safely in Paris, and since I'm still on Missouri time and am wide awake at 2 a.m., or whatever time it is, thought I would blog a little about the trip so far. We are finding all sorts of miracles this week, of varying significance. Now, I define "miracles" the same way I translate French, which is rather loosely. What I mean by miracles is, things that are pleasant and unexpected--unlike the things we were expecting that could have been not so much fun.

Here they are in temporal order:

1. The weather is terrific. Weather Underground warned me before our trip that the last several years this particular week in April has been rainy and in the 50's. We even got matching raincoats, because the motto for every (even old ) Girl Scout is: Be Prepared. So we came prepared. Maybe that's the reason it's sunny and upper 70's. It does, however,cool off enough to need a coat in the evening, which is frankly about when our day begins. But the coats look great, I must say.

2. Everyone in Paris actually speaks English. It's true! I'm coming to realize that this is a closely-guarded secret, only used after the second or third sentence in French. Or at least in my French. It goes something like this typical cafe conversation:

Bonjour, Madame. (Hello young, beautiful woman. --- I warned you about my French translation.)

Bonjour, Monsiuer. Je veux bien un croissant amande. Et ma fille veut un crepe avec fromage et jambon. (Hello, Sir. I want an almond croissant, and my daughter wants a crepe with ham and cheese.)

Do you want coffee?

(Wait a minute....awww. The fun French speaking is over, I think.)

(He thinks, maybe if I smile she will speak English rather than make French sound that bad.)

(He smiles.)

3. Everyone we have met in Paris is very kind. They smile all the time. Mary thinks it's because they assume we are Irish rather than American (maybe a result of our matching green raincoats?). I think,...well, you know what I think. (see #2, above.)

Saying Good-bye

We have a tradition in our family that when you turn 13 you get to choose an exciting destination and go there with mom.   I love to travel, having inherited the traveling bug from my dad.

As a kid, I always wanted to go along on dad's annual fishing trip to Canada.  Every year he'd say, "You're not quite old enough.  Maybe next year."  I heard this when I was eight, and again every year until I turned eighteen.  I suppose he realized then that I was about to leave for college (and if I recall my attitude, he might have been glad about that), and surprised me by saying that THIS year we were going to Canada. 

We didn't go all the way to Reed Lake in Manitoba, but compromised by just driving to the Boundary Waters in MinneSOHta.  It seemed like a great idea.  The ride up I think we had lots to talk about.  We stayed a week, saw hardly anyone.  Hardly anyone. It wasn't long until I found myself thinking how very nice the trip could be if I was, instead, with a nice boy, all alone.  For a week.  Pretty soon the heat, headwinds, and the biting flies took their toll, and I got--shall we say--crabby.  I don't remember a lot of conversation on the long drive home.  I do remember that we eventually agreed that we had waited a few years too many to travel together.  I always regretted that.

When my own children came along, then, I hoped to travel with them while they still thought it was a good idea.  Before the adolescentsies got in full swing, when it's still OK to hug them goodnight, stuff like that.  The three oldest are boys, and we have taken some terrific trips together full of nice memories; I've enjoyed them all:   Ireland, Disneyworld, Greece.  Now my first daughter is 13 and it's her turn.  She, too, loves to travel, and so tomorrow we head off to Paris.  Paris!! 

The trips have a similar rhythm.  We plan, try to learn things about where we're going, pack for the week in a backpack (it's a personal challenge).  Then the reality hits of leaving other sweet ones home, missing out on the stories and reports from kindergarten about who is still friends with whom (and who is not!), hearing about the lunch menu and how much fun they had in art class.  For several days I won't hear that with someone sitting on my lap.

The day before the trip, then,  I'm pretty teary-eyed as I print off the itinerary, see beautiful photos of the places we'll see, and tick off each item on the packing list.  I know we'll communicate with everyone at home, thanks to the internet.  And the first few days I will love being able to have grown-up conversations without interruptions, doing things the little kids would be perfectly bored with.  Mary and I are about to see beautiful cathedrals in Paris, go to the Eiffel Tower and eat ourselves silly with real Parisian croissants.  We're even planning to go to daily mass so she can truthfully report that she enjoyed French wine every day.  But I know that in about five days I'll start noticing little children whose tired parents have about had it, thinking how precious they are and wishing a high-pitched voice was giving me a breathless narrative about getting the swing closest to the fence at recess. 

This has been a week full of tender good-byes.  Good-byes,  final or only temporary, are full of change and separation and not being able to touch.  I feel such a thin veneer separating this life from a real, active, and living world of saints and angels who can almost be seen out of the corner of my eye on occasion; being part of that is what I hope for my beloveds when the time comes.  Which will be a very good thing, for them.  BUT... not being able to hug my parents or my children,  not being able to feel Roy by me in the night, or my sweet little girls snuggled close--that's what keeps me grounded and tearful when I know a good-bye is coming.  Is here.

A Restless Night

Last night wasn't a good night for restful sleep in our house.  At the end of a long, cold winter when each room needed a humidifier and each bed an electric blanket, yesterday was actually hot.  The kind of muggy air that hints it's gonna be a hot one, and it is, and everything feels sticky and we wonder how we could have wished for winter to end.

I took the electric blanket off our bed two days ago.  Winter nights in our house the thermostat goes down to 55 degrees (although for visitors we set it up into the mid-60's), and I love to sleep in a cold room with an electrically warmed bed.  Perhaps that is why our bed nearly always has at least one "extra" by morning.

As  a new doctor before I had children,  spouting my sage wisdom to moms about how to raise their kids, I often scolded the softies who wound up with children in their beds.  "Bad for the marriage!" I'd say, knowingly.  "They need to learn how to sleep on their own!"  Don't remember the reason for that one.  Gosh, I was so smart, so sure.

Then I had children.  Jacob, delivered two months early on our final "BK--Before Kids" vacation together in the Bahamas, was less than 5 pounds when we got home.   In the midst of two busy residencies and my natural optimism, it hadn't occurred to us to get prepared for a baby early.  It was unseasonably cold when we finally arrived in Columbia again. All I wanted as a new mom was to keep my baby warm and fed, and if he slept close to me, I could do both.  Very cave-womanly, I suppose, but it worked for me.  I didn't know how to do anything else--he was so tiny!--but by golly I could keep him warm and fed at the same time.  So I did.

There are some things I look back on with pride, some I look back on with wonder, and some I just shake my head about.  My mothering is one of the latter, especially my first baby.  I was finishing my stint as Chief Resident in Family Practice at the time, so had a lot more administrative hours than during my earlier rotations.  The faculty in our residency was terrific, and they adjusted my schedule so I could keep Jacob close by.  There were still meetings, though, including regular appointments with Dr. Colwill, our chair and a truly inspiring man.  A pioneer in medical education, respected by all.  But he was also grandpa to a new baby then, and we had this red-head connection, so I guess that's why he tolerated my bringing Jacob in tow to every meeting.  And keeping him warm and fed at the same time.

The intensity of my protectiveness for my kids was unexpected then, and it's sometimes unexpected now.  In the beginning it was about time, which was always insufficient.  Now it's more about knowing who or what they need to be shielded from.  What is, say, too much information for a six-year-old?  ("Intruder alert" practice at school drives me completely crazy.)  What part of politics is simply confusing for a ten-year-old?  (Or for anyone else, if we're expecting it to make sense?)  What advice about the challenges to a good marriage need to be shared with children as they get closer to those relationships themselves?

In contrast to a time long ago when I was 26 and wise, I no longer know the answers to those questions.  But this I know:  when the night is muggy and hot, and my sweet kids are restless or have nightmares, my bed is a safe haven that they are welcome to take hold of.  Waking to kids sprawled across my side of the bed, on my floor, and in front of my door is a sight I love.  And I got to see it this morning.

Hot Chick

I always know that Spring is around the corner when the kids begin asking for ducks and chicks.  This weekend I was out of town with Mary when the call came--two sweet girls asking if it was pleeeze OK to get a chick, because Dad said it was OK with him if it was OK with me, and they'll take really good care of it, and clean their room, and never drink and drive, and if I'll say OK then I'll be the best mom ever.  Sigh.  They didn't hear me say "No," which I did.  Somehow they ended the conversation squealing and telling Roy I said it was OK.

How did this happen?

So 2 chicks, a heat lamp and bulb, and bag of chick food 100 times bigger than two chicks combined (and a free chick guide!) came home.  We had "the talk" about how fragile birds are and how they're probably not going to make it very long, because we don't know anything about taking care of chicks, so try not to be disappointed if they die soon.  They didn't hear a word.

So it was that KK's chick--the one that looked so small and sad they felt sorry for it and brought it home--was the first to go.  We had a funeral, putting the plot in the garden right in the midst of several other dead pets with unremembered names and little wooden markers.  KK's homily was brief, "She was very small."  Mmmm hmmm.

Today girls were ready for school in no time, sat down on the kitchen floor (it's easier to wipe poo off there) and played with the remaining chick and the duck.  Yes, a duck Teresa bought Mary so she wouldn't feel left out.  One hour after they left for school I peeked in.  Oh, dear.  Chick on its side breathing twice per minute.  Not good. 

As a last resort I brought down the heat lamp, and what do you know if an hour later the little thing isn't starting to peep and open its eyes?  !!  Soon it even starts walking--saved by the heat lamp.  Brings a new meaning to "hot chick," which is I guess exactly what every chicken must be to survive.