Outfits Liv was wearing whilst mistaken for a boy

Three things right away:

1. When Nils was a newborn I struggled mightily with breastfeeding. Things eventually worked out and I was grateful - grateful to start out mothering with what I knew was the illusion of control. Even if it was false and I knew it was false, I wanted that illusion.

2. "Men are people and women are women. Always." That line keeps going through my head.

3. A friend and I were chatting about how much of a non-cuddler Liv is. "That's so great," said my friend. "Because the world is going to beat it into her: "be nice! You're nice!" Maybe if she's really, really tough, she'll be able to keep some of that intact."

*

Liv wears a lot of gender-neutral clothing. Reds, oranges, greens, yellows. She wears nothing boyish, but I am also not in the habit of doing bows or barrettes, or head-to-toe pink. She is a crawler, and that means that dresses will just get in her way right now. I like dressing her each morning. She wears vintage sweaters, sassy little shoes, striped leggings. She has this kickin' little green hat with a knot at the top.

"What a beautiful boy!" All the time.

*

I have a boy and a girl. Gender and its consequences color a fair amount of my parenting. "It's okay to be scared," I told Nils last week. "Sweetie, you're always so kind and gentle with your friends," I told him just the other day. "That's why they love playing with you." Our world puts a lot on boys as well as girls... but the talk I picture having with Nils someday is along the lines of "with great power comes great responsibility." He's a man. It's all there for the taking.

It feels so much different with Liv. I've always been a "women's issues" kind of person, but having my daughter ups the ante dramatically. Steubenville. Maryville. Delhi. Tahrir Square. Much less extreme: Be beautiful! ... but don't spend so much time shopping and primping, you shallow fool. Be sexy! ... but NOT sexual. Minifigs. Sexist kids books. Google searches. And so on.

And smile! Would you like to know how many times in my life I  have felt entitled to approach someone and tell him/her to stop looking so serious? Yup. Zero. Would you like to know how many times I have been approached by a man and told to do just that? Many. Many. I have my father's demeanor; we both tend to look a little stormy while just thinking regular thoughts. Get over it, random guy. I don't owe you cheerfulness.

All these things are on my mind every time I look at Liv. This ridiculous world and all the things it will try and do to her. I want to build her a shield and teach her to call bullsh*t whenever she needs to, and to never, never look to someone else for validation. And then I walk into a Baby Gap and see a wall of pink. Hearts, princesses, "so sweet"s. Men are people and women are women. You are a woman.

Liv owns some wonderful pink stuff. I want to stress this. We've gotten some lovely gifts. I've bought her some little pink things. There is nothing wrong with being feminine. It's not even the clothes I'm really talking about. That's obvious, right?

That wall of pink tulle... the hearts... it reminds me of how little control I have. Who am I versus that whole world?

I'm her mother, that's who. If any one person can be a powerful influence, isn't it me?

Ah, that illusion of control.

Lately

Oh, those two. Update?

Liv is mobile. Mobile! God help us all. Especially Liv. She started crawling about two weeks ago, moved on yesterday to pulling herself up to standing, and actually stood in place, look-ma-no-hands, tonight. I swear she'll be walking by Thursday. She is growing up way too fast (cliche, anyone?), but still manages to do painfully sweet baby things like fall asleep in the baby carrier with a finger in her mouth.

She is smiley enough that we occasionally get comments like "how old is she? Wow, she is really smiley for an 8 month old." Whatever that means. She still wakes up every three hours at night, but dangit all  if she isn't so sweet and accommodating about going right back to sleep. She also still refuses to cuddle, which I think is just fabulous. Shine on, you crazy diamond! We love your independence.

And Nils? Such a little card. He continues his passionate love affair with vehicles. Time for a shirt? Make sure it has a bus on it. Put together a puzzle? How about the puzzle of a cement mixer. Sidewalk chalk? Hey, let's draw a dump truck. People say toddler boys have such short attention spans... I beg to differ. Come watch my son play with his trains.

Such a little builder, he is. Tunnels, towers, cranes, etc. Puzzles, too. He can do some pretty big ones with assistance, and simple 12 piecers? He does those with his eyes half closed... that is, while he's supposed to be napping. Hard to chide him - "Now Nils, you're supposed to be laying down" - look at all those little puzzles! So sweet.

The days are such a blur. I looked at Liv recently and felt like I had blinked and missed months of her life. Quiet moments alone with each child are rare, so I'm doing my best to give each of them all of me in whatever small way I can. The "all of me" is usually doled out in 30-second parcels, only to be abruptly snatched away when a sibling does something that requires immediate, emergency-level attention. All in good fun.

Choices, consequences, root beer floats

     

                                                          Leaving for work in 5 minutes... time for a quick bulldozer puzzle

I put the kids to bed most nights. I get them ready in the morning too, with the exception of Oliver and Nils's ritual of Rice Krispies and cups of milk / coffee at the breakfast table. I do just about all childcare solo throughout the week, and Oliver often comes home, tired, after Nils and Liv are asleep.

It's strange to think that this is a choice we have made, to have almost nothing of a family life during the week. It is a choice though, and we made it, long before the kids were born, with an eye on future financial security. "Why are we doing this?" I ask myself sometimes when Nils asks if we can call "Papa" at work, or when Liv follows Oliver everywhere with her eyes in those 20 minutes they have together each day.

Oliver came home early one night the other week just as I was turning out the lights for Nils. "Let's go out," he said. "It's so beautiful outside."

I wasn't interested. It was already after 8, they were both just about to go to sleep, I had so much to do to get ready for work the next day...

But no, we had to go out. This was our chance to steal a little time. To walk across the neighborhood with a cool breeze on our faces, to get hamburgers and root beer floats. Nils wore his monster truck pajamas and lined up all the condiment bottles on our table. Liv stared at the baseball game on the screen above us and tried to eat a napkin. Oliver shared his fries. I tried to convince everyone else to try malt vinegar instead of ketchup. The restaurant's other patrons probably thought Oliver and I were terrible parents (sugar, fat and salt at 9 pm!), but good lord. We could not care less.

Every choice has a consequence these days. I am constantly balancing the cost of one decision against another. We had a family hour and treats, but that meant I rushed around frantically the next morning filling bottles and packing bags. If I decide to make a nice-ish dinner, that means I will have to sit with a kitchen full of dirty dishes overnight (the joys of a light sleeper who goes to bed shortly after eating!). If I want to restore order to my living room, it means I play less with the kiddos.

It's a mental thing, too. Nils and Liv take up almost all of my bandwidth, so any attention turned to any one thing (eating carefully to shed some baby weight) means other, random things fall to the wayside (clipping tiny fingernails, studying a bit of German). I say "yes" to one thing and know that it means saying "no" to a half dozen others, just because there's no room. 


Thank goodness there is still room for root beer floats.
   

Good to be here

  
About 6 months after Liv was born I read a book. A real book. Hundreds of pages and full of things that had nothing to do with either of my children. I stayed up late three nights in a row while we were in Vermont, glued to the book. After we got home I started looking up videos on YouTube of speeches and events detailed in the book. It was just about the best book I have ever read... possibly because it was the first "real" book I have read in what, a year and a half? Doesn't food taste that much better when you're starving?

Some weeks back I also started noticing that I was thinking again. Nothing earth shattering of course, but it was like I had rejoined the world. I watched chess players in Washington Square Park and had this little epiphany vis a vis I can stop feeling bad, deep down in the place where feelings are never clearly articulated, that I'm not a part of all New York's wonderful subcultures. Old guys who love to play chess. Chinese immigrants who dance in Chinatown's parks. The West African guys who play soccer on the weekends in Prospect Park. No one can have every experience. Knowing that these other groups are here, that's enough.

I woke up a couple Saturdays ago and a voice was screaming in my head: "Make all the food! Make it!" I've got a list on my fridge now of things I want to cook. Because I want to cook again! Who knows how much I can actually do (a teething Liv does not usually make me more productive), but who cares. It no longer seems hopeless. It seems do-able.

Oliver and I went out on an actual date too, which was, just like Passage of Power, mind-blowing. We had a conversation. We didn't rush off in two different directions to take care of two different problems. First date in um, 8 months? And my goodness, there's a whole city out there! Stuff happens at night! Stand-up comedy, jazz concerts on side streets, Katie Holmes sightings. Food... better... starving.

Good lord, my children have owned me these past few years.  Hormones? Nature? Just me? Whatever the cause, those first 6 months or so (and the nine that precede them) just wipe me clean. Greatly diminished mental capacity, no familiar sign posts. Just babies and some weird, primal drive to serve. It's lovely and I'm glad I can drop everything to care for them... but maaaaaan. Is it good to be coming back.

What should they see

Sometimes I miss doing nonprofit work. I miss doing good deeds for a living. I miss feeling like what I am doing matters.

Sometimes I wish I was home with the kiddos every day. They're so small and there is no one else who can give them what I can give them right now.

Every day. Every day I wonder if I'm doing the right thing.

I am one of those wickedly lucky people who can let happiness guide them through this uncertainty. Am I happy right now? (Yes, I am.) Then I should stay on this path. Simple.

But happiness... is that the right way to look at this? Sometimes, as I drift off to sleep at night and all the day's chaos finally fades to silence I ask myself: this life I'm living, is it the life I would want for Nils and Liv? The answer is always no.

I want them to join the good fight!  I want something to be important to each of them. I want them to chase it, and to do something good with it.

I should be leading by example, shouldn't I. That's the only way this parenting thing works, right? And more than anything - more than eating right, avoiding gossip, respecting the outdoors - I want them to do something to change the world. Big or small, it doesn't matter. So, uh, is that what I should be doing?

Shouldn't they at least see me try?

How quickly you forget

         

6 weeks old? 5? Fast asleep the only way she would do it... in someone's arms.

I took Liv to her six month pediatrician's appointment earlier this week (98th percentile in head circumference! Where did that come from?), and she screamed for the entire 40 minutes of our walk home. Raged.

Poor thing, it wasn't her fault. The walk to the pediatrician came smack in the middle of what should have been her morning nap. Then the vaccinations and general prodding by the doctor certainly kept her awake. By the time we were ready to head home she was at the end of her little rope. Every bump on the sidewalk set her off. Every ray of sunlight that made it past her stroller's sunshade enraged her. Once we made it home I literally ran up the stairs to our apartment and headed straight for her crib.

Poor thing.

Did I mention that I spent the final 10 minutes of that walk repeating "God, give me patience. Give me compassion. Make me a stronger person" over and over again? I had to keep reminding myself that she was just a little thing and she needed my help, etc. Such a sweet thing - the noise! It's making me crazy! - Poor darling.

I also mentally composed a facebook rant during our walk home, one I wisely decided not to publish once we had all calmed down. Something about "the next stranger who stops me on the street and tells me to "enjoy this time with your little tiny ones... it goes by so fast" - I'm going to come to your house at 3 in the morning and cry loudly for half an hour..." There was also some stuff about demanding food but refusing all offerings, taking all their possessions and throwing them in piles on the floor, yelling at them when they didn't run fast enough to the fridge to get me a cup of milk... 40 minutes of screaming never brings out the best in me.

My two are, without a doubt, the best things in my life. No question. Additionally, I am grateful for every day I can spend at home with them. The days are rewarding and exhausting and the positives so greatly outweigh the negatives... but there are negatives. Of course there are negatives. And every time an older person with fully-grown children (and free time!) tells me to "enjoy this time", I sense a rebuke. An unintentional one, but a rebuke all the same. No negative. All positive. How dare you.

I felt this most keenly when Liv was in her first two months. Two small ones, one of whom would begin howling the moment you tried to put her down ... there wasn't even space in my day to make a cup of tea. Getting out the door was such a struggle. Being outside was a struggle. Getting back in the door was a struggle. Struggle struggle struggle. You get the idea. I shut myself in the bathroom a couple times and just cried. I think that's pretty common.

I counted the days until Liv would hit the three month mark and things would ease up. And every time someone saw me trying to hold it together and said "Oh, enjoy this time!", I did my best to keep my smile polite. Easy to remember the good stuff, lady. Would you like me to remind you about the hard parts?

And then it happened. Yesterday I uploaded photos from my camera, some of which were taken way back when Liv was wee wee tiny. Awwwww, so cuuuuuute! I miss tiny baby Liv! Look at her, napping on my chest. Those were the best days.

                                                                                        

Things I learned on my summer vacation

   

Our vacation this year was different. There were no passports, foreign language phrase books, no culture shock. There wasn't even a plane - Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont are perfectly accessible by (rental) car. Our goals this time were different, too. Instead of exotic places and the thrill of "discovery" we hoped for time together and pleasure in timeless activities. Ride a boat. Walk in the woods. Swim in a lake. See some stars.

As always, I had all sorts of little thoughts and came to all sorts of new conclusions while on our trip. The big ones:

1. My identity is pretty fragile, apparently. I slip into a new one every time I leave home.

It happens every time. In Bavaria, I dreamed of owning a vacation cottage there and skiing every winter. This time, in New Hampshire, I decided that we need to have a vacation cottage someday. Something small and simple on a quiet lake. We'll furnish it with rummage sale finds, eat on a plastic dinner table. We'll escape! Weekends at the lake! No internet, no to-do lists. In Vermont I decided that we need to live in Vermont. Small towns and solar panels! Mountains and cool, quiet mornings. We could go hiking every weekend. Imagine that.

2. Escape is just as important as experience

We are normally cut off from our world when we travel. We had the option to stay plugged in this time... and I yanked that power cord as quickly as I could. Turns out I need to drop off the face of the earth from time to time.

3. The simpler we keep things, the happier I am.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss our old way of traveling. Every time I saw a pack of young, childless people setting off on some long hike, tents on their backs, I sighed to myself. Embracing this new way of vacationing though, I discovered real joy in slooooowing down. Keeping things simple and thrilling in simple things. Playing in sand under the sunshine.

Walking in the woods.

Plopping down in the grass and exploring at leisure.

Just being together. No interruptions. Nothing else we "should" be doing.

Swimming. Nothing beats swimming.

Tire swings. Those are wonderful, too.

We will never see every place under the sun. We can never have every experience. The moment I let go of these ideas, ideas I had never even realized I was holding on to, I freed myself up and learned how to just be where I am. What a wonderful feeling.

4. That being said, I'm still not going to do NOTHING.

My favorite quote is from Goethe. "Do not hurry, do not wait." While I think I did a good job with the "do not hurry" part this vacation, I also saw no point in waiting around. Carousel rides!

Rainy day science museums! (Body heat camera)

Hikes up mountains!

River bed exploration!

Climbing lighthouses!

Testing out the water!

Horse rides!

Milking cows!

Yeah, kid. You've earned that nap.