The Darndest Things

Last night, in the middle of the Fourth of July fire works, Birdy craned her head around to tell us something. "What?" we yelled. "What?" It was impossible to hear. Backward-shooting stars were exploding in the sky into balls of glittering rainbow, and the noise was deafening. "I said" — Birdy was yelling now — "I don't really like to eat rotten food." Indeed.
I keep waiting for the part where the inadvertent comedy wears off — when we stop laughing, every day, about the absurdly hilarious things the kids do or say. I know it will be different with, say, teenagers. "Mom, I dented your Subaru," just isn't that funny. Although I actually just pictured Ben saying it and it was kind of comical. But tell me: Does it stop being funny?
Then there was the morning last week when we were driving into town, Ben pointing out the various trucks on the road in his sweet/pedantic way. As we were passing a Drake's truck: "There's a pastry truck, Birdy! It sells pastries." A Lay's truck: "There's a chips truck, Birdy! It sells chips. Oh — and there's a tow truck!" A long pause, then an earnest Birdy: "Does it sell toes?"
The thing is, I am forever snapping at my kids, and am always exasperated. I come after them in my awful, neurotic way with wet washcloths and hand sanitizer and sunscreen and bug spray and I ruin their lives. I nag them to finish their milk and brush their teeth and clean up the living room and be careful on the stairs and stop scratching my back with their revolting toenails. I wiggle teeth and dig out splinters and turn an appraising eye to their moles and scalps and infected bug bites and red throats. They are too loud and too wild and too whiny and too bickery and too hot to be crawling all over me like that. But still I can't get over the miracle of having them here.
There just aren't enough ways to tell these kids how much we love them.
Catherine Newman -Ben and Birdy - babycenter.com

Dalai Mama

As the Kabat-Zinns remind us, "Love is expressed in how we pass the bread, or how we say good morning, and not just in the big trip to Disney World." I am constantly reinventing myself -- my forever fledgling Zen self -- as one challenge gives way to another. There is no after the winter, I tell myself. There is no after the kids fighting about the sippy cup with the dolphins on it. There is no after the flu. "Forget somewhere over the rainbow," I imagine the Kabat-Zinns saying. This here is the pot of gold. This now.
When people say, "Kids are so Zen," this is what they mean: the way they appreciate every tiny miracle of the here and now. And, ironically, it's this very quality that tends to drive parents crazy, even wannabe Zen parents like me -- the way kids stop to play in the sand on the path even as you're trying to herd them to the beach itself. But where was I rushing to now?
In these moments, when I am stressed out or stretched thin or when my very last button has been pushed, awareness can feel like yet another demand on my strained multitasker, even though I know better. Life unfolds only one moment at a time, whether or not you're paying careful attention. And, as the Kabat-Zinns remind us, "Such moments count. They add up to a childhood, and a life."
Catherine Newman- Wondertime Magazine

Take a Break from Yourself

Believe me, I would like nothing more than to take a break from myself; check into the all-inclusive resort of somebody else's tranquil mind, maybe sip a few Dr Pepper's around the pool. Many of you keep diaries or blogs yourself, and so you understand how, in this particular moment in life, we're working and/or raising our children, arguing with and/or adoring our spouses, remembering and forgetting all we have to be grateful for, and there may just not be that much to say. And yet we can't stop saying it.
I mention this today because of ye olde division of labor with my spousal componant. I went on and on like a terrible screeching train that you just keep watching, and you're waiting for it to end, but there are always more and more cars behind the one you assumed had to finally be the caboose. I groaned and raged and wept and gesticulated wildly with my hands, and woe is me, and aargh, and when, at long last, there was a moment of silence, stained as it was with all of the venomous yuck still hanging in the air around my horrible ungrateful person, He nodded and said, "Okay. I'll try to dust more." Which is a good start, no? But I don't really want him to dust more. I want him to pull me into his arms at the end of the day, look me in the eyes, and say, "Love of my life, I can't believe how much you do." It's so stupid — I mean, all of us are doing so much, and he is so selfless and lovely, and I know he appreciates me. I love my life so passionately. But I'm just such a big crybaby right now.
Ben and Birdy- Babycenter.com

Love in the form of Torment

Sometimes I wonder whether I would've done this — become a parent — if I'd known. You know, Really KNOWN about this kind of love. Mostly, and obviously, I think: Of course. Don't be silly. But sometimes my love for these children feels almost like an affliction: Like my heart is within the fist of a beast, and I'm utterly helpless -and that love feeling will scare me, startle me as it bangs around inside my chest like a huge, flapping bird.