Dear Magdalene,
I'd spent the whole day (and I mean the whole day!) trekking from store to store, hunting down all the things I need for my sweet girl's birthday party next weekend. I feel kind of like a brat for saying how exhausted I was from shopping, because it sounds like fun. Shopping all day! Poor me! But I'd waddled my pregnant self through so many stores and obsessed about so many options, and was planning so many projects, and I was just tired.
The boys (the high school boys who board with us because they need extra help) had been busy with their weekend work project all day, painting the baby's room a sunny Goldilocks yellow while my husband split his time between supervising and helping them and taking care of the little girls. He was horribly frustrated by the time I got home because every time he turned around to make lunch or put the girls down for a nap, the boys were spilling paint or taking lengthy video game breaks. But they were pretty pleased with themselves, sprawling contentedly around the living room, spattered with yellow from head to toe.
And the baby's room? It looked...awful. The most badly-painted room you ever saw, with great big uneven patches of gray showing through two coats of yellow paint, big drips all down the walls, paint splotches all over the ceiling, just as many paint splotches all over the carpet in spite of the big tarp they had been told to lay out. And all through the rest of the house were traces of Goldilocks yellow. Shoe prints in the hallway and on the stairs, smears on the living room furniture and the X-box controllers, the glasses in the kitchen, the screen door, the back doormat, the bathroom sink, a huge puddle on the back deck near a pile of brushes and rollers happily baking the left-in paint into their fibers.
I carefully put my shopping bags away, biting my lip and thinking rapidly. This was one of those tightrope moments, you know? Where there is one response that is exactly right, but not only is it a terribly narrow path, it is awfully easy to teeter off the edge and into a very wrong response after you've chosen your course and set out.
Crying, which is what I really felt inclined to do, didn't seem like it would be useful. A harsh scolding was also tempting, but didn't seem quite right. Picking up a roller and climbing onto the stepladder myself seemed ill-advised at seven months pregnant, and meekly thanking the boys for their hard work and then staring at gray-yellow streaky walls for months while rocking the baby wouldn't really benefit anyone.
Is it silly that I was fortified by the fact that I'd been re-reading Little Men and the Bhaers are constantly giving their boys Earnest and Serious Talks to help them grow into good, useful men? Because I really kind of drew on that.
(and incidentally, would you like a completely random side note here? I never realized before that Jo actually named her youngest son Teddy Bhaer in that book. And it wasn't to be cute, either, because Little Men was written thirty years before Teddy bears were even invented.)
So I had to call the boys in and ask them if they had hired someone to paint a room, would they feel like this job was worth the money? And they said no. And then we had to talk about developing a work ethic and doing your best and taking pride in a job well done and how much less time a task takes if it's done correctly the first time. And about how there would be no more video games until the room was painted (and the paint messes all cleaned up!) to my satisfaction. Then they spent the next two days working at it.
I just wonder... can they ever know how difficult it was for us, having to keep on cheerfully pointing out the mistakes and missed spots, time after time? Do they have any idea how much we would have preferred to let them off the hook, or that we only persisted because it seemed like an important lesson for them to learn? It was a tightrope-walking weekend and continually searching for the perfect toehold between being so harsh that they feel bad and so lenient that they don't learn, it's left me a lot more weary than the shopping did.
But the nursery is a beautiful Goldilocks yellow and the ceiling is a crisp new white and the carpet is all scrubbed clean again. And the boys are awfully proud of themselves, deservedly so now.
All my love,
Beatrice
Dear Beatrice,
Yet another tally-mark for the goodness of reading: as help for our parental struggles. Oh, fine, I realize you aren't these boys' parents, but you're doing a parenting job so it still holds true. Perhaps I should read Little Men, not only because I've never done so (don't throw a shoe at me!), but because I need some lessons on saying the right thing and holding back all the wrong things. I'm certain I would have started crying and then fuming and then caught some boys' hair on fire with my wrath.
It's terrible how little I know about being a mom right now. My oldest is in her most difficult phase yet -- a phase that has seen me crying in bed more nights than I remember -- and if I saw it in another child, I would simply chalk it up to a social learning curve, but since she's mine I worry incessantly. I think I'm projecting my own childhood fears onto her strong little frame. But she is not me. She is something different and wonderful. For some reason it's harder for me to separate myself from her, my first, than from any of my other kids.
Or maybe it's just that since she has the dreaded honor of being firstborn, she also gets to walk me through all of my biggest mothering missteps. Congratulations, daughter: you win the hard road. Step lightly, and beware your mother's arm trying to carry you over all of the most exciting character-building boulders and puddles.
But your restraint bolsters me. I need more deep breaths and clear-thinking. Less rushing-to-doubt. Fewer lengthy lectures. More bonding over ice cream.
Always, more ice cream!
And since ice cream is a natural segue into breastfeeding (right?), listen to this, Beatrice: I think my baby is done. I won't say it out loud because it makes my heart clench in an uncomfortably broken way. I've never yet run out of milk in all of my four-plus years of breastfeeding, but this time, I think it's happening. There appears to be nothing left, and the boy won't sit still long enough to find out. I snuggle him close and think deep thoughts about wells and poured-out pitchers and will myself to flow, but the let-down is gone. I will him to relax into me, but he doesn't want a mere, empty suckle. I don't blame him. It's not what I want for us, either. But even if I weren't out of the main ingredient for nursing, I still think he would be winding down. I've lost a few tears over this, the most natural of transitions away from babyhood. He's talking and running and just about ready to go to college and get married and leave me forever...
but as long as we were cradled into the rocking chair with our eyes locked together for a few milky minutes, he could stay my baby.
Bah! I say to the hormones involved in motherhood. Bah! I say to heartstrings. And bah! to change. I'll simply have babies upon babies so that this feeling will not have the last laugh.
The thought makes me fall instantly into a comatose exhaustion. There's no pleasing me, your vacillatory and weepy friend,
Magdalene
I'd spent the whole day (and I mean the whole day!) trekking from store to store, hunting down all the things I need for my sweet girl's birthday party next weekend. I feel kind of like a brat for saying how exhausted I was from shopping, because it sounds like fun. Shopping all day! Poor me! But I'd waddled my pregnant self through so many stores and obsessed about so many options, and was planning so many projects, and I was just tired.
The boys (the high school boys who board with us because they need extra help) had been busy with their weekend work project all day, painting the baby's room a sunny Goldilocks yellow while my husband split his time between supervising and helping them and taking care of the little girls. He was horribly frustrated by the time I got home because every time he turned around to make lunch or put the girls down for a nap, the boys were spilling paint or taking lengthy video game breaks. But they were pretty pleased with themselves, sprawling contentedly around the living room, spattered with yellow from head to toe.
And the baby's room? It looked...awful. The most badly-painted room you ever saw, with great big uneven patches of gray showing through two coats of yellow paint, big drips all down the walls, paint splotches all over the ceiling, just as many paint splotches all over the carpet in spite of the big tarp they had been told to lay out. And all through the rest of the house were traces of Goldilocks yellow. Shoe prints in the hallway and on the stairs, smears on the living room furniture and the X-box controllers, the glasses in the kitchen, the screen door, the back doormat, the bathroom sink, a huge puddle on the back deck near a pile of brushes and rollers happily baking the left-in paint into their fibers.
I carefully put my shopping bags away, biting my lip and thinking rapidly. This was one of those tightrope moments, you know? Where there is one response that is exactly right, but not only is it a terribly narrow path, it is awfully easy to teeter off the edge and into a very wrong response after you've chosen your course and set out.
Crying, which is what I really felt inclined to do, didn't seem like it would be useful. A harsh scolding was also tempting, but didn't seem quite right. Picking up a roller and climbing onto the stepladder myself seemed ill-advised at seven months pregnant, and meekly thanking the boys for their hard work and then staring at gray-yellow streaky walls for months while rocking the baby wouldn't really benefit anyone.
Is it silly that I was fortified by the fact that I'd been re-reading Little Men and the Bhaers are constantly giving their boys Earnest and Serious Talks to help them grow into good, useful men? Because I really kind of drew on that.
(and incidentally, would you like a completely random side note here? I never realized before that Jo actually named her youngest son Teddy Bhaer in that book. And it wasn't to be cute, either, because Little Men was written thirty years before Teddy bears were even invented.)
So I had to call the boys in and ask them if they had hired someone to paint a room, would they feel like this job was worth the money? And they said no. And then we had to talk about developing a work ethic and doing your best and taking pride in a job well done and how much less time a task takes if it's done correctly the first time. And about how there would be no more video games until the room was painted (and the paint messes all cleaned up!) to my satisfaction. Then they spent the next two days working at it.
I just wonder... can they ever know how difficult it was for us, having to keep on cheerfully pointing out the mistakes and missed spots, time after time? Do they have any idea how much we would have preferred to let them off the hook, or that we only persisted because it seemed like an important lesson for them to learn? It was a tightrope-walking weekend and continually searching for the perfect toehold between being so harsh that they feel bad and so lenient that they don't learn, it's left me a lot more weary than the shopping did.
But the nursery is a beautiful Goldilocks yellow and the ceiling is a crisp new white and the carpet is all scrubbed clean again. And the boys are awfully proud of themselves, deservedly so now.
All my love,
Beatrice
Dear Beatrice,
Yet another tally-mark for the goodness of reading: as help for our parental struggles. Oh, fine, I realize you aren't these boys' parents, but you're doing a parenting job so it still holds true. Perhaps I should read Little Men, not only because I've never done so (don't throw a shoe at me!), but because I need some lessons on saying the right thing and holding back all the wrong things. I'm certain I would have started crying and then fuming and then caught some boys' hair on fire with my wrath.
It's terrible how little I know about being a mom right now. My oldest is in her most difficult phase yet -- a phase that has seen me crying in bed more nights than I remember -- and if I saw it in another child, I would simply chalk it up to a social learning curve, but since she's mine I worry incessantly. I think I'm projecting my own childhood fears onto her strong little frame. But she is not me. She is something different and wonderful. For some reason it's harder for me to separate myself from her, my first, than from any of my other kids.
Or maybe it's just that since she has the dreaded honor of being firstborn, she also gets to walk me through all of my biggest mothering missteps. Congratulations, daughter: you win the hard road. Step lightly, and beware your mother's arm trying to carry you over all of the most exciting character-building boulders and puddles.
But your restraint bolsters me. I need more deep breaths and clear-thinking. Less rushing-to-doubt. Fewer lengthy lectures. More bonding over ice cream.
Always, more ice cream!
And since ice cream is a natural segue into breastfeeding (right?), listen to this, Beatrice: I think my baby is done. I won't say it out loud because it makes my heart clench in an uncomfortably broken way. I've never yet run out of milk in all of my four-plus years of breastfeeding, but this time, I think it's happening. There appears to be nothing left, and the boy won't sit still long enough to find out. I snuggle him close and think deep thoughts about wells and poured-out pitchers and will myself to flow, but the let-down is gone. I will him to relax into me, but he doesn't want a mere, empty suckle. I don't blame him. It's not what I want for us, either. But even if I weren't out of the main ingredient for nursing, I still think he would be winding down. I've lost a few tears over this, the most natural of transitions away from babyhood. He's talking and running and just about ready to go to college and get married and leave me forever...
but as long as we were cradled into the rocking chair with our eyes locked together for a few milky minutes, he could stay my baby.
Bah! I say to the hormones involved in motherhood. Bah! I say to heartstrings. And bah! to change. I'll simply have babies upon babies so that this feeling will not have the last laugh.
The thought makes me fall instantly into a comatose exhaustion. There's no pleasing me, your vacillatory and weepy friend,
Magdalene
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