The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children, Redux

(or, how to make sure you keep on doing that thing that landed you with children in the first place!)

Two Hearts

Ambitious title, but I bet I’ll deliver. Tell me afterwards. Two caveats. First, if you’re currently childless, don’t read this. It will either depress or embarrass you. Especially if you’re a guy. It’s the weirdest thing, really: when it comes to talking about sex and bodies, there is no creature more uptight than the childless male. Anyway, if you’re one of those, go read How I got deprogrammed and learned to love video games or Math + Gun = or … (I’m not being sexist, am I? You can read this if you really want to. But I know you’ll be mortified… Here’s a test: let me tell you about the time my bestest male friend first saw me breastfeeding. Where are you going? Come back!)

Second, if you’ve got young children and you’re having all the sex you want—really? Honestly?—you probably don’t need to read this. But you should anyway, because maybe at the end of it, you might be having more sex. And what could be better than that?

And thirdly—I said two caveats, right? Oops—in case you haven’t noticed, this post is going to be about sex. That’s how you get children. If reading about sex makes you squeamish, stop here and go read… how about It’s not about balance: creating your family’s harmony or 10 habits for a happy home from the house of permissiveness and chaos. Or that fabulous, famous They tell you, “It gets easier.” They lie post.

Also, mom, dad, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother—um. Yeah. You’re excused. Go read how Cinder and Flora became Greco-Roman Pagans. And never, ever mention this post to me. OK.

The rest of you, come with me.

English: 3 of hearts.

OK. Here are the three assumption I’m making:

1. You have kids. Babies, toddlers, preschoolers, sentient school age kids. The babies need to be breastfed and rocked to sleep at all hours of day and night, the toddlers and preschoolers exhaust you, and them older kids stay up later and later and open doors and need help with homework and need you to feed them and take them places and…

2. You don’t have enough sex. Define enough as you will. You’d like to have more.

3. You’ve got a partner to have this sex with (if you don’t, I canna’ help you with that, but I hear there’s these dating sites…). The partner would also like to have more sex. The will is there. What’s lacking is time and opportunity AND STRATEGY. (If the will’s not there… well, I can help you with that a bit. There will be an addendum about that at the end.)

With me so far? Want to. Don’t have (enough) (at all these days). Don’t worry. There’s hope. Really. You’ve just got to rethink a few things.

Two Hearts Beat As One

First, there are three principles you have to internalize.

1. Sex is more important than sleep.

2. Sex is more important than cleaning.

3. Sex is more important than work.

Somewhere between child one and two—or maybe it was two and three?—my partner and I made the following pact: either one of us was free to wake up the other at any other time for some quick love making (stress on quick: I’ll come back to this point shortly)… unless the sleeper had a 6 a.m. appointment with the client from hell or some other such situation. We made this pact after the following conversation:

Jane: Dear God, do you realize this is the first time we’ve had sex in… oh my god, has it been three weeks? Four?

Sean: Well, by the time I come to bed, you’re always asleep. And I know you’re going to be up half the night with the baby, and then up super early with the toddler, and…

(This is why I love him so, by the way. What a guy.)

Jane: You can wake me up.

Sean: Really?

Jane: Yes.

Sean: You can wake me up anytime, too. I mean, if you’re ever awake after me. Well, unless I have a 6 a.m. shoot. Don’t wake me up then.

Jane: Deal.

Sean: Deal.

(And we draw the curtain so we can have some privacy.)

two hearts

So. Make this pact with your partner. Sex is more important than sleep. (Or watching that 10 p.m. show on HBO. Turn on your PVR, and romp. If you’re not drowsy after, then watch your show.) Agree to wake each other up when you’re horny. Agree to say yes—at least 4 out of 5 times. (I’m assuming you’re going to show appropriate discretion in when you’re doing the waking up. If partner’s got strep throat, you know, let the guy sleep. If the baby’s been going through a particularly tough phase—let the mama sleep. Find a different time for sex. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

Next: what do you do when that most miraculous thing of all happens and all your children are either simultaneously asleep, totally mesmerized by a movie or activity that doesn’t require your presence, or (gasp!) out of the house?

If you’re a mama, I bet in 9 out of 10 cases you clean. We can’t help it: the little monsters are messy, and if we clean when they’re out of the house, then at least we have the satisfaction of a clean house for a few minutes… an hour.

I’m not going to tell you to stop cleaning. But have sex first. The children are asleep—quiet—gone. Put down the vacuum cleaner, turn your back on the kitchen floor, and go fuck.

You can scrub the bath tub afterwards.

This is really easy for me, because I hate cleaning. However, if you derive some pleasure from the cleaning process, this may be harder for you. Do this: tell the messier partner to grab the initiative. When the children are asleep—quiet—gone, it’s his or her job to drag you to the bedroom, bathroom or living room rug. All you have to do is say yes.

Say yes.

Happy Valentine's day!

Sex is more important than work. In our case, we both work from home, so this is how it goes—one or the other or both of us is always on deadline. There’s always one more thing to write, edit, produce, revise, research.

There will always be one more thing to write, edit, produce, revise, research.

Have sex first.

Then go back to the computer. Have a project you took home, memos to revise, report cards to mark? Fine. They’ll still be there in fifteen minutes. Five, if you’re both properly motivated. Two, if it’s been as long as I think it’s been… Have sex first. Then work.

Now before you quote Dan Ackroyd at me,* it really is that easy. If you believe that…

1. Sex is more important than sleep

2. Sex is more important than cleaning

3. Sex is more important than work

…you will have more of it. Maybe not as much as you’d like to… but more.

To have even more, embrace the next three principles:

4. Foreplay is icing.

5. Beds are optional.

6. Matinees rule.

Valentine

Remember those hours and hours and hours of sensuous, languorous foreplay that went on and on and on and on…

Yeah, I don’t really remember either. It’s been 10 years… eleven. Well, there was that one night we sold the kids to the grandparents for the entire night exclusively for those purposes… but that might have been four years ago. Anyway. You now have kids.

That means foreplay is being alone in a room together.

Agree with your partner that foreplay is icing. Frankly, when you’ve got toddlers, it wastes precious time. You can after-play if the kids don’t barrel into the room. When you’re in one of those “OMG we never have time for sex” phases, this is your modus operandi:

A. Hey, we’re alone!

B. Clothes (but only the essential ones) off!

C. Coitus.

Everything else is icing.

Bed

Note how nowhere in the above did it say we’re alone in bed. Beds? Who needs beds to have sex? We’re alone in the bathroom. We’re alone in the kitchen. We’re alone on the landing. In the living room while the kids are in the bedroom… If you’ve got a family bed, the kids are always in the bed. Have sex somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just draw the curtains first.

Finally—especially when you’ve got teeny ones around—break the sex/night association. No law. Not mandatory. Repeat after me: you can have sex in the morning. In the afternoon. When the baby’s napping. If one or both of you has a regular Monday-to-Friday job, you’ve got less flexibility—but you’ve still got weekends. The hour before supper. You got the baby and toddler down for a nap on Saturday afternoon? Cancel the visit to Joe and Marla, and screw.

Be late for dinner at Mom and Dad’s. Don’t clean, don’t nap, don’t work until after.

“But Jane… you know… the truth is… I don’t really want to. I feel blah. Unattractive. Unsexy. Touched out.”

I know. I think every mother—and many a hyper-involved father, frankly—has been there post-partum. Babies and toddlers take a toll on you. (This part’s mostly for the mamas, boys, but read along to get educated.) Your hormones might be out of whack, and you might simply be exhausted. I’m going to send you to kellymom.com or Dr. Jack Newman’s breastfeedinginc.ca to look for some evidence-based research on how pregnancy and lactation might affect your libido, because I’m no doctor. From personal experience I can absolutely tell you this: I love my partner dearly and I love making love with him—and with each child I’ve gone through stretches where it’s just not been a priority and desire’s been hard to scrape up.

Here’s what’s helped me:

1. Exercise and sunshine. Bonus: if you do the Pavlovian “I have an orgasm after exercise” association, the motivation to exercise spikes.

2. Going to Mom’s Nights Out. Really. How does hanging out with a bunch of women help your sex life? Simple. You dress up and spend an evening with adults talking adult stuff and enjoying a meal without anyone throwing up on you. You go home—and if your partner played things right, the children are asleep. S/he’s not. Woo-hoo.

3. Put it on the schedule. OK. Least romantic thing ever, right? It sounds awful. Sex Saturday. You know what’s worse and less romantic? Not having sex at all.

4. Make it a habit. Here’s the weird thing about thinking you don’t want sex when you’re not having sex–as soon as you start having sex, your priorities shift. You think, “Sweet Jesus, this is great! Why don’t we do this more often?” Hold on to that thought… and do it more often. In the afternoon. Instead of cleaning. Before working on that work project. Quickly if you’ve only got five minutes. Hey, if it turns out you’ve got more time, you can always do it again…

Heart

Photo (Heart) by mozzercork

All right then. That’s it. To recap:

1. Sex is more important than sleep

2. Sex is more important than cleaning

3. Sex is more important than work

4. Foreplay is icing

5. Beds are optional

6. Matinees rule

Get off the computer, and go wake up your partner. And if you’ve got other tips for reigniting your sex life post-children, share them.

xoxoxo,

Jane

PS Veteran mamas, can you tell I just weaned the third? I bet you can…

PPS Play carefully, eh? Seems every time we have a frank sex post-children discussion on one of my groups or lists, someone gets pregnant. Once it was me…

English: Pregnant Elf

*(That’s Jane, you ignorant slut, the best SNL quote of all time, read about it here if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and no, it doesn’t show you how old I am, I saw it in re-runs.)

PPPS For a different point of view, visit my brilliant friend Dani at Cloudy, With A Chance of Wine and read Having kids kills your sex life, but then, pop over to when she changes her mind and tells you the 5 ways sex gets easier once you have kids. And then pop over to read Julie De Neen spew coffee all over her friend in Lying to your kids about sex toys.

PPPPS “Woman, I need an antidote to all the sex talk, cause I ain’t getting any.” I’m so sorry, babe. (But you know there are toys, right?) Go visit Wonderland by Tatu and read Hi, my name is T. & I am a screamer. Get your mind out of the gutter! Not everything’s about sex–she’s talking about something else. And, do pop on by The Sadder and Wiser Girl as she celebrates the one year anniversary of her blog–good on you, Sarah, and write on!

PPPPPS One more. The funniest thing from my over-crowded in-box this week so far comes from The Book of Alice: Wrongly Accused. It’s about boogers. And children. So you know it’s worth clicking on.

Jane out.

“No, we were just being normal”

A67

Jane: ARE! YOU! TRYING! TO! DRIVE! ME! CRA-ZEEEE!?!

Cinder: Um, no, Mom, this is just us being normal. If we were trying to drive you crazy—Flora! Ender! Come how Mom what it would be like if we were trying to drive Mom crazy on purpose!

Flora: Moist. Moist. Moist. Moist. Moist. Moist.

Ender: I pooped my pants. And you can’t clean my bum. I pooped my pants. And you can’t clean my bum. I. POOOPED. M-AAAAAA-YYYYY…

Cinder: I know a song which will annoy, which will annoy, which will annoy / I know a song which will annoy, which will annoy, which will annoy / I know a song which will annoy…

Jane: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Cinder: Now do you see the difference?

Jane: Fine. Yes. You were just being normal. Today, your normal is driving me crazy. Go and be unnormal—and, I don’t know, quiet. Repressed.

Flora: Here, Mom, chocolate? And, I think Ender really did poop his pants.

Happy Friday.

xoxo

“Jane”

P.S. Dear future girlfriends, boyfriends, and perhaps spouses of my children: I’m sorry. Yes, it’s all my fault. And if you think you can fix them—ha. Good luck with that. You’ve just got to love them as they are, you know.

P.P.S.  “What the hell is this? I heard you were this profound, sagacious, over-flowing with widsom mama. I mean, last Tuesday’s post on the “It Gets Easier” Lie was brilliant! That’s why I’m here!” Um. Sorry. I’m only ever insightful and wise on Tuesdays, and then, honestly, not every Tuesday.  On Fridays, we laugh, always. Or at least try not to cry. But if you want serious, have you read my almost-viral (she has delusions of grandeur) Tongues Off My Facebook post? If not, you might want to. Cause it rocks. And if you want hard-core attachment parenting ranting, I refer you to Why Isn’t It Natural? a heart-wrenching wail about why no little about parenting seems to come to us :naturally.”

P.P.P.S. Some things from this week’s blog box I really enjoyed:

Rachel at Tao of Poop reveals she has a past!

Kimberly at All Work And No Play Make Mommy Go Something Something confesses that she’s a snail killer.

Jenn at Something Clever 2.0 tells you how to cure writer’s block.

P.P.P.P.S. And thank you for Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday’s delusions of viral grandeur. I enjoyed them immensely. Now back to web obscurity…

 

They tell you “It gets easier.” They lie

So there she is, stumbling down the block—walking circles around the playground—sleepwalking through the mall. The mewling baby inside a sling—a car seat—stroller. Glassy eyes, cause she hasn’t slept more than 45 minutes—no wait, two days ago, she got three hours in a row, score!—in four months. Wearing ratty pants—because they fit. And her husband’s sweater—because all her tops have been puked on and laundry, she was going to do laundry yesterday, but then the baby had a fever and…

So there she is. The new mom, the first-time mom, and she’s so exhausted and she so clearly needs—what? A hug, help, empathy, reassurance. And you—you’re a good person, and so you want to give it to her. So there you go. Run up to her. Smile. And you want to say, you’re going to say:

“It gets easier.”

Don’t. Just fucking don’t. Because, fast-forward two years, three, and there she is. Running down the block. Maybe another baby in sling. Toddler in stroller or running away. And maybe she’s getting more sleep—but maybe not. Maybe the toddler has night terrors, and wakes up screaming for hours on end in the night. Or maybe, even if Morpheus has been kind to her and the children sleep—she doesn’t sleep nearly was much as she should, because when they sleep, that’s the only time she can be free. To… think. To read. To be… alone.

The toddler makes a break for it and tries to run into the street, and she nabs him, just in time, and pulls him back, and starts explaining how streets are dangerous and he must hold Mommy’s hand, but he really, really, really wants to be on the other side, and he’s two, so self-will is emerging with a vengeance and soon he’s screaming and tantruming, and you, you can see she’s on the edge, about to lose it, because maybe this is the seventh time today—this hour—she’s had to deal with this, and you want to help. You want to give her a hug, help, empathy, reassurance. And you want, you’re going to run over to her and you’re going to say:

“It gets easier.”

Don’t. Don’t. Because a year later, there she is, with her three-and-a-half year-old. Before they left the house this morning, he put her iPhone in the toilet, cut his dad’s headphone cord into shreds, and threw $30 worth of grass-fed beef off the balcony in the compost pile. And now, his pants around his ankles, he’s chasing a flock of pigeons, penis in hand, yelling, “I’m going to pee on you, pigeons!” at the top of his lungs. And she’s trying to decide—should she catch him? Or should she take advantage of the fact that he’s distracted for five minutes, so she can change the new baby’s diaper? Because she hasn’t had a chance to even check it for the last five hours… And I swear on any of the gods that you may or may not believe in, if, at that moment, you come up to her, and you say—because you’re an empathetic, loving person who wants to help—if you come to her at that moment and say,

“It gets easier.”

she’s going to rip that diaper off the baby and throw it in your face. Followed by the tepid remains of her coffee (you’re lucky that she hasn’t had a hot, scalding hot, deliciously hot cup of coffee in three and a half years). And then she’s going to sob. And she’s going to say…

“When? When the fuck does it get easier? Because I’ve been waiting for it to get easier for two three five six years.”

I’m sitting in the middle of my living room—11 years into motherhood—and I’m in a brief picture-perfect postcard (Instagram for those of you born post-1995) moment. I’m stretched out on the couch, coffee cup beside me, laptop on my lap—and, for a few minutes at least, I’m chilling. Three feet away from me, my 11 year-old is building worlds in Minecraft, and Skyping with a friend. My eight-year-old is running with a pack of her friends just outside—I hear their voices, hers most distinct among them to my ears, through the balcony. Tucked under my arm is the three-and-a-half year old, taking a break from wrecking havoc and destruction on the world to play a game on the iPad.

I’m messaging with a friend a few years behind me on the parenting path. And she asks me, and I can hear the tears in her words even though she’s typing them (people who think texting lacks nuance do not text enough; she is weeping through the keyboard),

“When does it get easier? People keep on saying, ‘It gets easier.’ When? When?”

So, I wonder, is she ready to hear this? Is she ready to hear: It doesn’t get easier. All the people who say this? They’re all liars, every last one.

But I won’t say that. First, because I do not wish to make her despair. Second, because it’s not true. It does get easier. It really does. But when people say it, what you, first-time mother, hear it is not ‘It gets easier,” but this:

“Things will get back to the way they were before, soon.”

And that, my lovely friend, will never happen. Things will never be the way they were before. Never. Things have changed forever. Things will never get back to “normal”—as you defined normal when you were single—when you were childless. Never.

And so I tell her this, and again I hear tears in-between the words she types to me.

And now I have to deconstruct the lie to her. I have to explain. That they don’t mean to lie. It really does get easier—sort of. The stuff that’s killing you now—be it the lack of sleep, the aching nipples, the endless diapers-laundry-is-she-sick-is-he-teething or be it the toddler tantrums, potty training regressions, “She won’t leave the house!” “Getting him in and out of the car seat is hell”–all of that, it will get easier—and, in fact, end. They all wean. Toilet train. Stop drawing on walls (unless they in this house). But see, then, other stuff happens that’s really hard too. Ferocious Five. Sensitive Seven. Bullies on the playground—social issues with friends and ‘frenemies.’ Broken hearts. Explosive anger at things and issues much, much bigger than all those daily rubs that cause toddlers angst.

“It gets easier”: yeah, I suppose it does, because you figure it out, and adapt, and get coping strategies. But every time you “master” a phase—they change. Grow. Face new challenges. And you’ve got to change, grow and adapt with them. If only you could do so ahead of them…

But you can’t. And so, you see, “it gets easier” … it’s a lie.

And it’s the most destructive lie, the most life-damaging myth you can buy into. See, because if you keep on waiting for things to get easier—if you put living, changing, adapting, figuring out how to dance this dance, walk this path as it is now, with all of its bumps and rubs—if you put all that on hold until it gets easier…

Well. You’ll be fucked. Totally. And completely.

So. My dearest. It doesn’t get easier. It changes. You get better. You grow. Learn. And that little squealer—that awesome toddler—that slightly evil three-year-old—he grows. Learns. Changes. It gets better. When you learn and change and grow and all that—it all gets better.

But. Easier? No.

So. There she is. Frazzled. Exhausted. So fucking tired. And she sees you coming, and you have empathy poring out of your pores. And you want to help her. Offer her empathy. Support.

What are you going to tell her?

Hey, all, wow, thanks for all the sharing and massive Internet love. Bad day for my RSS feed link to break — this is it: RSS Feed https://nothingbythebook.com/feed/ — and even though there are a bazillion comments, I am reading and responding to every single one. Thank you so much, beautiful people. You can also email me privately at nothingbythebook@gmail.com. Or find me on Twitter @nothingbtbook. You know the drill.  xoxo “Jane”

♥

Two great things from my weekend in-box, from the #FTSF blog hop, that fit in beautifully with the theme of today’s post:

Kristi Campbell’s post on FindingNinee.com:  I blog because of you, I blog because of us, and

Katia’s post on I Am The Milk: Closest to Me

Flora Space Art

“I Give The World To You,” by Flora (May 2013)

I blog because… #FTSF

I blog because moments like this need to be immortalized:

Cinder: Mom, I just shot Ender in the balls. Now, under normal circumstances, you’d probably be mad at me. But as he was peeing off the balcony at the time, you should just say, ‘Good job.’ Full story here.

I blog because the world needs more Cinder and Ender penis stories. I mean, is there such a thing as enough? OK, maybe. But just one more…

I blog because I think attachment parenting is an amazing, amazing thing… but I want AP moms to know that this is perfectly normal:

I make no resolutions to yell less. Or discipline more. I will lose my temper, and I will yell, and there will be days when, as I survey the destruction wrought by the whirlwind in the kitchen while I absented myself from his side for five minutes, I seriously ponder just how wrong it would be to put him in the dog’s kennel. Just, you know, for a little while. And there will be days—and weeks—when I’ll be counting the hours until bedtime from 11:15 a.m. And days when, as soon as Sean comes home, I will hand over the entire parenting business to him, and lock myself in the bathroom with a bottle—um, glass, I meant to type glass, glass—of wine. (From Embracing Chaos: unParenting unResolutions)

I blog because I want Flora—and other Sensitive Seven and Emotional Eight girls out there, and their mothers—to know how loved she is (they are). And how amazing. And also, how exhausting. I want her to look back at these moments, these days, when she’s a mother. I don’t want her to put me on an unachievable mothering pedestal. I want her to see I struggled. I want her to know it was hard. 

But, worth it, Mom? Was it worth it?

Fuck, yeah.

I blog because I had a toddler who beat the crap out of other children—and his parents—and he’s grown up to be the most amazing, caring, sensitive, responsible pre-teen… and I want you—you, exhausted, petrified mom of a mini-Caveman—I want you to know that you’re not raising a psychopath. It’s a stage. It’ll pass. You’ll survive.

And maybe, I blog because I don’t want to wait until I’m dead and famous before the world reads my diaries. (While the odds are excellent that I will indeed be dead one day, that famous thing? Not so much. And let’s face it, boys and girls, be you Susan Sontag, Jane Austen or Anne Frank, if you write something down, you’re secretly or not-so secretly writing for a reader. If you really wanted to keep it secret—you wouldn’t write it down. You know it’s true.)

I blog because I want to. And so I do. Reason enough.

##

This post is part of the Finish The Sentence Blog Hop, co-hosted  by, inter alia, Janine Huldie of Confessions of A Mommyaholic, Stephanie Sprenger of Mommy, for Real and Kristie Campbell of Finding Ninee. The sentence—obviously–is I blog because. More answers here…

Finish the Sentence Friday

Why do you blog? And for beautiful, usually silent majority of non-bloggers in the audience—why don’t you? Tell me.

xoxo

Jane
Marzena 1 - jpeg-1

P.S. This week, on Undogmatic Unschoolers, I quote John Holt (again, I know, what can I say, he rocks) and take you on a little walk through my house as I confess that there is, indeed, a secret reason as to why I’m so chill about my late reader.

P.P.S. Meanwhile, my professional alter-ego is dreaming the future landscape of Calgary for Avenue magazine, prognosticating on the future of Husky Energy under Asim Ghosh, and trying to convince people that greener oil is the key to Keystone XL at Canadian Business.

Tongues off my Facebook

English: This is a tongue

I’ve been filling an unusual role the last few days: holder of the Facebook password for a friend who needed a bit of a detox/distance from the social media platform… but neither want to complete total Facebook seppuku nor felt she had the self-discipline required to just stay off—if she knew she could go on.

I give her access back today, and we’ll debrief afterwards to see what she learned from the experience… if anything. Thus far, all she’s learned is that I’m a “fucking hard-ass bitch,” who won’t give her access early, no matter how much she joneses for it. Ha. I’m mildly shocked she didn’t know that about me before. But. The experiment wasn’t supposed to be about the strength of our relationship—I’m pretty much it will survive the name-calling of the last few days—but about her bumpy relationship with Facebook.

Ironically, as my friend has been struggling to figure out how to make that relationship functional, I’ve been crafting a post about how much I love Facebook. Because I really do. And it massively ticks me off when people dis it—and the social connections people make, have, and preserve on it. It particularly ticks me off when people are contemptuous about how stay-at-home moms and parents of young children use Facebook—and how much time they spend on Facebook.

Time that the detractors believe would be more productively spent—oh, any other way. Cleaning, cooking. Hyper-focused on the children. Knitting. Reading. Canning. Blogging? Maybe not so much blogging…

Now, I won’t deny that some folks run into trouble with the role social media in general, and Facebook in particular, plays in their lives. Others have documented that up the wazoo; my friend’s recent decision to detox is a specific example from my own bubble.

But I find it quite disturbing that much of the dialogue and criticism around mothers and women on Facebook—in the blog world—in social media and cyber-space generally—has this undercurrent:

Be alone. Be isolated. Don’t talk to others.

It’s there. Ponder it the next time some expert, Luddite or just run-of-the-mill jack ass takes you—or someone else—to task for Facebooking, texting, tweeting or blogging.

This, really is the subtext, almost always:

Be alone. Be isolated. Don’t connect with others.

Oh, they might fake it by saying “Instead of Facebooking, foster real life relationships.” They don’t mean it.

See, they—you know who ‘they’ are, right? ‘They’; it’s always ‘them’ who do this sort of stuff—have always done this to women, to mothers.

Before Facebook et al.—they took exception to the amount of time women spent on the telephone. Flip through any cartoon collection from the 1940s-1980s, and you’ll see images of women gabbing on the telephone—wasting time—neglecting their duties.

Not connecting, communicating, building community.

No. Always negatively depicted. (Think Sybil on Fawlty Towers. “Oh, I know…”)

Before the telephone… women wrote too many letters. ‘tis true. The novels of the 18th and 19th century—many of them epistolary novels, which is such a beautiful irony—are filled with slags at lady letter writers. Even my beloved Jane Austen, letter writer extraordinaire, engages in this slag-fest (I hope, unconsciously), mocking Lady Bertram’s letters in Mansfield Park even as she describes what a critical lifeline to the people she loves these letters are for Portsmouth-stuck Fanny Price.

Before letters—gossiping in the town square, the market. Getting together to wash clothes in the river—and talking, sharing. Talking while gathering nuts, roots, berries together.

‘They’ have always come down on women talking. Sharing. Communicating.

Think about it.

Be alone. Be isolated. Don’t connect with others.

A medium without its problems it isn’t, for sure. And because it’s so new—as is so much that we have deal with these days in the communication world—many people will struggle with it, abuse it, suffer as a result. And we have to figure out how to control it and make it work for us, instead of having it control us and make us miserable.

And we ought to be critical of it, absolutely, if we think its effect on our lives and the lives of those we love is negative.

But for me, as the primary care giver for my children and someone who works from home, Facebook is, very often, a critical antidote to this:

Be alone. Be isolated. Don’t connect with others.

It keeps me connected to people I love who are in different cities, different countries, different continents.

It continues to nurture important friendships when people get busy, get into incompatible phases that make getting together difficult.

It lets me answer an SOS when a friend needs—a meal delivered, a child chauffeured, a pair of size 7 rain boots. Or, just a brief sanity break or a cyber-hug.

It lets me send out an SOS when I’m out of eggs, milk or salt, and stuck at home with a sick toddler. Invariably, there’s neighbour who’s en route to the grocery store who can help.

It means I get to see and share my nephews and nieces’ milestones as soon as they happen.

It allows me to get a hit of sociability when circumstances force me to, physically, be trapped at home alone.

It helps me build community.

It helps me break isolation—be connected. It’s a tool. It’s powerful.

It helps me ask for help when I need it. Be it a real, physical “do this for me” need–or a more intangible “I’m going crazy here and I need to vent!” kind of crisis.

And it ticks me off when ‘they’ dis it—because I think they dis it because they want me—us, women, mothers, parents—to be alone. Isolated. Disconnected.

They always do that, you know. They always have.

Don’t let them.

I’m tempted to end with a list of 10 ways to make Facebook (and social media generally) be a positive and not soul-sucking experience. But I’m sure scores of these already exist out there. So let’s just end on this note:

Washing clothes on the riverbank together. Chatting in the market. Telephone conversations. Facebook exchanges.

All examples of women—mothers—striving to make connections, build and maintain community. Break out of solitary confinement.

Which these days, too often, is a perfectly comfortable, beautiful suburban home.

♠

“Wow, what’s with the heavy? I come here to laugh!” OK, babe. Then go read House Rule #713, or why we don’t hold a lot of dinner parties or He’s not evil, he’s a toddler. Or last Friday’s post about penises.

♥

I supported my friend during her detox by staying off Facebook, Twitter and Gmail and Google+ through the long weekend, so I have no idea what cool and fascinating things the blogosphere put forth this weekend. But I’d like to introduce you to my blogging friend Deb at the Urban Moo Cow (awesome blog name, awesome mama, awesome writer) whose last post, The Asshole Brigade Coming Soon, is sort of about building community. The challenges of building and maintaining community. Anyway, that’s the spin I’m putting on it to make it fit with my Facebook rant.

P.S. Was it hard staying off social media for a mere 72 hours? Yes and no. No pain, no shakes, no jonesing… but it made a few things harder. Had to walk around the neighbourhood looking for someone for the three-year-old to play with on Sunday, with not much success, instead of posting a Facebook SOS/play invite… Couldn’t invite random people to share a meal with us Monday night… couldn’t share this awesome link from BrainPickings.org on Good Writing versus Talented Writing even though I really wanted to… didn’t find out that my neighbour had a washing machine meltdown and needed to use someone else’s washing machine in time to help her… and I’m sure there’s a new puking cat video out there that I need to see to make my life complete.

They live for these moments

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta, is one of the most amazing places on Earth. It is now Ender’s favourite place to humiliate and shame his mother.

I don’t mind so much that he keeps on calling the dinosaurs dragons. Really. He’s the child of an anthropologist; he’ll understand the theory of evolution better than 98 per cent of the American adult population.

The penis obsession–“Is that the dragon’s penis, Mom? Wow!” “No, that’s the hip bone. See, that’s one of the really cool things about dinosaurs, how their hip bones…” “I think it’s a penis!”–is starting to wear a little thin.

Just a little. (Girls don’t do this, by the way. But as Flora is saying more and more often these days, “Girls are just better.” Sssh. Not in front of your brothers. To resume the narrative:)

So there we are. Rubbing shoulders with prehistoric giants, and then strolling down to the Cambrian Period, and experiencing the microlife of the Burgess Shale. Except the microlife is presented in 12x in its real size. And includes this:

English: Reconstruction of Ottoia, an extinct ...

and this:

English: Reconstruction of the fossil priapuli...

and as one group of high school Japanese tourists comes around from one corner, and a group of white-haired senior citizens from the rural Alberta Bible belt rounds the other one, Ender howls, at the top of his lungs:

“Penises! The most giant penises ever! Is this why they are in a museum, Mama? Because they are so big? Cinder! Cinder! Look! GIANT! PENISES!”

As his mother tries to decide whether this is a moment where you boldly meet the eyes of the 70-year-old grandma whose grandchildren would never ever ever say the P word in public (actually, they don’t know what it is, “We call it a wee-wee in our family, thank you very much”) or giggle with the 16-year-old Japanese boy who never thought he’d get to hear a native speaker pronounce penis (“So the ‘i’ is actually an ‘uh,’ why?” “Latin root word. Guess what the proper plural should be?”), his elder brother decides to do the only thing that could possibly make this situation  more embarrassing for her:

“That’s right, Ender. Giant, giant, giant penises. Aren’t they cool? Too bad yours will never get that big, eh?”

And then, to me:

“I suppose you’ll use this as another reason to not take us to the penis museum in Iceland. You’re so lame, Mom.”

You’d think I’m not that easily embarrassed. And you’d be right. Yet every once in a while, they manage to make me blush redder than… um, delete totally inappropriate metaphor here. Sigh.

More like this (God, there are so many more like this): And, of body parts again; and, on Undogmatic Unschoolers, Sometimes, what they know is embarrassing.

♥

And a lovely thank you to Stephen Greene at Head of the Herd for naming Nothing By The Book for a Sunshine Award. I’m terrible at passing these on–I think I’m in two-digits-worth-of-arrears already–but it’s always lovely to get the nod from a fellow writer. Stephen writes a great blog about expat and bilingual parenting–and all sorts of other stuff–as he lives with his family in Curtiba, Brazil.

♥

And if you’re leisurely strolling through the blogosphere today, these are my three favourite parenting posts from this week:

Don’t Get Upset When Your Five-Year-Old Acts Like a Five-Year-Old from Leah Vidal at Little Miss Wordy

Don’t Be a Judgy Wudgy from Stephanie at When Crazy Meets Exhaustion

and

Reassessing Happiness Research: Are New Parents Really That Miserable? by Jessica Smock at The Her Stories Project, part of the Evidence-Based Parenting Carnival

Secret to raising healthy eaters: don’t feed your kids crap; don’t force “good for you food” down their gullets

Cauliflower photographed in Woolworths store i...

True story: the 3.5 year-old is rooting around his plate, and then looks up at me in anger.

“There is no more cauliflower here!” he hollers. “I want more cauliflower!”

I give him more cauliflower. Our dinner guest blinks, and not at the unique brand of rudeness that belongs only to 3.5-year-olds.

“How did you do that?” she asks. “I mean—he just asked for more cauliflower. How did you do that?”

And as I open my mouth to answer, the 11-year-old does so for me, by catapulting his cauliflower onto his little brother’s plate.

“Here, eat mine,” he says. “I’m not so into cauliflower these days.”

And I shrug, and look at my friend, and wonder if she needs me to extrapolate? And I think perhaps she does, and while food remains pretty much the only part of the parenting puzzle that I feel confident soapboxing about these days, I’ve boiled down that particular lecture to two very succinct points. Very short, brief—did I already say succint?—points, which, alas, aren’t actually heard by most of the people who ask me to elucidate them.

So to my friend, I just shrug, and I change the subject.

But to you, to you I’ll tell my secret.

It’s two-fold.

1. Don’t feed your kids crap.

2. Don’t force your kids to eat good food.

There you go. That’s it.

Do these two things, and your 3.5 year-old will scream for more cauliflower. Your 11-year-old might not even want it on his plate. But he’ll eat it again. When he’s 12. Or maybe not until he’s an adult. And maybe he’ll never love it—I’ve never learned to love brussel sprouts or celery, although I have now become one of those obnoxious people who can’t get enough kale (I know! Who knew?). The point: he’ll have a palate for good food. He won’t eat crap (much). And he won’t associate good food with battles, torment, cajoling and Mommy going on a power trip.

I think #1 is actually easier. However you define crap (in my world, if it needs a list of ingredients, it’s probably crap)—just don’t feed it to your children. Parents make this difficult for themselves because they’re—what’s the word I’m looking for… oh, yes—hypocrites. They don’t want their kids to eat chips, store-bought cookie dough and sodapop… but they want to eat it themselves. So it’s in the house. Available. Taunting. Forbidden.

If you don’t want your kids to eat it—don’t eat it yourself. Don’t have it in the house.

Sidenote: I let my kids eat crap at other people’s houses (with minor exceptions—there are things I will not let them put into their bodies. No discussion allowed). At parties, fairs. I don’t make it a forbidden, madly desired fruit. It’s just never in the house. If it’s in the house, they can eat it—whenever they want. It it’s not in the house—it’s just not an issue.

Sidenote 2: I don’t call crap a treat. Sometimes, when life falls apart, and the only way the children will get any calories into them is if I whip through an A&W or Wendy’s on the way home, we do it. It’s not a treat. It’s Mom-doesn’t-have-her-shit-together-today-so-you-have-to-eat-crap-I’m-so-sorry. The children: “We love A&W hamburgers!” Jane: “I know, but I feel so terrible about feeding you such bad-for-you-crap!” The children: “It’s okay if it’s just once in a while, right, Mom?” Jane: “It won’t kill you immediately.” Yes, I’m mildly insane. Back to the post proper:

So, see, not feeding your kids crap—really, pretty simple. Not forcing your kids to eat good food—a little harder. But just as important. It’s there. In the house. On the table. Available. Never forced. Don’t ask the reluctant two-year-old to take one bit. In a couple of weeks or months, he’ll reach for it on his own. Don’t threaten the five-year-old that she can’t leave the table until she eats her broccoli-carrot-chicken whatever. Just don’t. Trust that in a house full of food, full of good food—the children will eat as much as they need, and they will learn to eat and love good food. Eventually. Not on your schedule. But as their taste buds develop and as their willingness to experiment grows.

Trust that in a house full of good food—they will neither go hungry nor choose crap.

Yeah. That’s it.

1. Don’t feed them crap.

2. Don’t force them to eat good food.

Do those things, and there are no battles, no issues. Just kids who eat when they’re hungry, and only as much as they need to. Kids who leave desert unfinished because they’re full, too. Kids who prefer to ask Grandma to make them her special soup for lunch than get taken out for fast food.

“Mom! Why did you let Ender eat all the cauliflower before I came to the table?”

“Sorry, Flora. Next time I’ll save you some. Cinder? Do you have any left on our plate?”

Kids who fight over the last piece of cauliflower.

♦

More like this:

Picky eaters: how can he know he doesn’t like it until he takes a bite?

The family the eats together: “Help! I can’t make my kids sit still through a meal!”

I’m not gonna tell you

Flora: Why’s Mom dancing?

Cinder: She either filed a story–got a new story that doesn’t suck–or got paid.

Jane: I’m that predictable, am I?

Cinder: Possibly something really bad happened to someone she hates, and she’s happy about that.

Jane: Jesus. This you think of me?

Flora: Well, what was it? Did that Lord Voldemort guy die?

Jane: I’m not gonna tell you. Beasts.

♥

I’m not gonna tell you either. But I’m deliriously happy. Fulfilled. Stoked. Thrilled. Various other adjectives of excess, preceded by excessive adverbs, that, were they usually to appear in my prose, would get ruthlessly slashed out even before they got to an editor.

What? You almost all said that it was better not to know.

English: Classic ballet-dancer Español: Bailar...

In case you’re in Cinder-and-Ender-penis-stories withdrawal, pop over to Undogmatic Unschoolers and read Sometimes, what they know is embarrassing.  

Teaching kids about money, sort of

An example of a cheque.

You know the kids have been raised in a self-employed freelance household when you hear this:

Flora: Mooooom! The mail’s here, and it looks like it could be a cheque!

And you know they really pay attention to what’s inside those little envelopes when you hear this:

Cinder: Fuck, no, it’s the visa bill. Mom? Are you ready to look at this or should I hide it for a while?

And you know they really, really understand much too much about your finances when you hear this:

Cinder: So, is it a big enough cheque to zero the line of credit, or just big enough to cover rent? Or, like, cover rent and go out for sushi and something?

But when you hear this from the three-year-old, it’s probably time to tone down on the finance discussions before the children:

Ender: Mom! Mail! Cheque! Maybe from those fucking bastards who haven’t paid you for seven months!

♥

To all of my friends, online and real-life, who lust after the life of a freelance writer… it has its high points, I won’t lie. I wouldn’t trade it for a 9-5 office job for the life of me. But sometimes, the idea of a regular, predictable bi-weekly paycheque is beyond intoxicating. And dental benefits? Oh, god. Dental benefits. I’m swooning…

Turning No into Yes: Jane gets played big time

Semi-sweet chocolate chips

Setting, foot path in our off-leash dog park. Actors: Jane. The kids. Dogs in background. Random stranger on foot path.

Random stranger on foot path: Are those dog treats?

…and I look at her, and I look at the metal bowl in my hand, and I chew and swallow, and say:

Jane: Um, no, chocolate chips.

RSOFP: Oh. You feed your dog chocolate chips? I thought chocolate was bad for dogs?

Jane: Um… yeah, these are for me.

…and this is the moment where she gives me The Look, and I feel the urge to explain that we were all out of all other chocolate in the house, see, no bars, no individually wrapped Hershey kisses, nothing left in the Hallowe’en or Easter stash, nothing except for baking chocolate chips, and it’s sort of warm out, and if I had just taken a had a handful of them on the walk, they would melt and be all gross and squishy, so of course I’m carrying them in a bowl…

…but then I realize that there is nothing I can tell her that transforms me from the “the crazy lady with bowl of chocolate chips I met on the hill,” a central character in a story she’ll be telling all and sundry soon. In fact, if she’s a blogger, she’s already composing the story in her head. And if she’s not, she’s trying to encapsulate me in 140 characters for Twitter. Or for her Facebook status update…

So I just keep on chewing and walking.

Question: But why were you going for a walk with a bowl of chocolate chips?

You really want to know? Perhaps that’s the point of the story, in fact. See, it started like this:

Cinder: Mom? Can we go out for burgers at Peter’s Drive-In tonight?

Jane: No, baby, not tonight.

Cinder: Why not? What were you planning for supper tonight?

Jane: Um… planning… um… well… let me think about it, ok? I’m not saying yes–but let me think about it.

Cinder: And see, Ender, this is why, whenever an adult says, ‘No,’ it’s worth your white to ask, ‘Why not.’ But it can’t be a whiny, high pitched ‘Why not’ like you use when you usually say you want something. It has to be this very calm, reasonable ‘Why not,’ and then you kind of make Bambi eyes while you do it…

Jane: Jesus, Cinder, I’m right here! If you’re going to give your brother lessons in how to manipulate his parents, shouldn’t you wait until we can’t here?

Cinder: It’s kind of more fun to do it in front of you. And then, Ender, if you really want to seal the deal, you offer the Mom some chocolate…

Flora: One step ahead of you, bro. There you go, Mom. Sorry, we’re all out of the good stuff, but I found the chocolate chips. And I even put them in a bowl for you.

And that’s why I was on the foot path, with the dog and assorted children, and a bowl of chocolate chips. Which they didn’t attempt to share at all.

And as we are nearing home:

Cinder: So, what do you think, Mom? Peter’s–where, even if we all get milkshakes, it’ll be less than $40 or so, and no need to tip, or sushi? The last time we had sushi, it was like $102 with tip and tax, wasn’t it? So, what do you think?

Goddammit. Little manipulative beasts.

What do you think they had for supper that night?

♦

Some fun recent stuff from Undogmatic Unschoolers:

How wrestling, Lego and Star Wars all help raise readers

Growing readers, organically

♣

A sample of what I’ve been doing for a living lately: Making productivity measures sound sexy. Or at least… funny.

♥

P.S. I might have a chocolate addiction. Fine. So be it.

P.P.S. Bloggy friends, I will be back in commenting form as soon as it starts raining from the sky, and not from the clients. I’m going to try to hop here today:

…cause some of my favourite people hang out there, so if the world cooperates, I will see you at your cyberspaces today. Fingers crossed… xoxo Jane

It’s better not to know. Right?

Mistake number one: I don’t look for the tongs until after I heat up the oil past the point of no return and toss the battered fish in. The timer is ticking and I can’t find the tongs. Not anything that would do the job in their stead. Tic-toc-tic-toc. Panic! Yell:

Jane: Has anybody seen the tongs?

Cinder: The kitchen tongs?

Jane: Yes!

Cinder: The ones you use for cooking?

Jane: Yes! For godssake-where-the-hell-are-they?

Cinder: I think I’ve seen them the bathroom.

The timer is ticking, the oil is boiling, the fish is frying—I race. Up the stairs. Bathroom. Yes! There they are, on the floor beside the bathtub. Grab ‘em. Race them the stairs. Stand at the stove. Pause for a minute. Because, after all, this is my house. The house of Ender and his penchant for grossness.

Jane: Does anyone know why the tongs were in the bathroom?

Flora: What?

Jane: Why were the tongs in the bathroom? Did one of you take them up for take bath toys out of the bathtub or…

I pause. I don’t want to say it. Thinking it.

But  the clock is still ticking… and I say…

Jane: … or were they used to fish something out of the toilet?

A horrible silence answers me. A silence that, in not denying, affirms. A silence that pounds in my ears like a drum—the timer on the stove is now counting down seconds—until Cinder says:

Cinder: Does it matter? I mean, you’re going to wash them really well anyway, right?

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is proof, by the way, that while they possess 50 per cent of their father’s genetic material, 90 per cent of their behaviours and habits around food and cleanliness, anyway, come from my modelling and not his genes. Were Sean, the man who will not eat floor peas, in the kitchen right now, the conversation would go like this:

Sean: Jesus, give me those—no, I don’t want to touch them—just put them in the garbage, I’m going to run to Safeway and get a new pair—I’ll be back in 20 minutes—just turn the oil off—we can eat supper 20 minutes later—I can’t fucking believe you were going to use those to flip our food!

…

Later:

Cinder: Delicious fish.

Flora: Mmm, really good.

Cinder: Do you like the fish, Daddy?

Sean: So good.

Jane: I’m so glad.

And it’s all fine. Until:

Ender: There are my pinchers! I’ve been looking for those everywhere!

…and he stomps off. Upstairs. Where the bathroom is.

Cinder: We could follow him. Then we’d know.

Jane: But do we want to know?

Sean: What are you guys talking about?

Flora: Wasn’t the fish delicious, Daddy?

Sometimes, it’s better not to know. Don’t you think?

However, because I really, really love him, I am buying a new set of tongs. Which I will hide in the same place I keep the meat mallet.

Pair of food tongs.

Sometimes it goes like this…

Don't worry, you'll always be my friend...

Sometimes, it goes like this:

Ender: I don’t want to help build it. I want to sit here and you build it all by yourself.

Sean: I don’t want to build it all by myself.

Ender: Why? Because you’re ugly?

And the adult can’t decide whether to throttle the child–“Don’t! Remember, we love him! We made him! He’ll grow out of this!”–or to cry.

And sometimes it goes like:

Flora: Mom? Do you want me to make you an egg?

Jane: No. I’m not hungry. I’m just going to sit here and be cranky and miserable. And resentful. And just generally pissed off at the world.

Flora: That’s it. I’m making you an egg. You so need some protein.

… and the adult wonders who the heck is the adult here?

And then it goes like this:

Flora: There you go. Don’t you feel better just looking at it?

Jane: Oh, my sweetness. Yes, I do.

Flora: I always feel better when you make me something delicious to eat when I’m feeling cranky.

… and the adult decides she’s clearly doing something right at least some of the time. Not all of the time, mind you. But, you know, enough of the time.

♠

Q: What’s with the goat picture?

A: I don’t know. My brain hurts. I’m analyzing deal trend data, drinking too much coffee, and practicing excuses for all the deadlines I’m planning to break next week. Goats. Cute. Like Ender. Plus they lay eggs. No, wait, they don’t. Um… look! Shiny thing!

Photo: Don’t worry, you’ll always be my friend… (Photo credit: 2-Dog-Farm)

♦

Q: And what colour is your hair now?

A: Wouldn’t you like to know…

Have a great week everyone. Me, I’ll be breaking deadlines. And a few hearts on Bay Street. Apologies in advance.

“Jane”

He really will eat anything

Never, ever take advice from me on potty training. Or dealing with a biter. Or household organization. But on food… I really think I got food right. I don’t think any of my children will have eating disorders. Certainly none is a picky eater. To wit:

Ender: I want some of that!

Cinder:  Really, Ender? Do you know what I’m eating? It looks like chocolatey-cereal, but it’s actually rabbit poop.

Ender: Really?

For the record–no. It really was chocolatey cereal. Koala Crisps. We may eat with vermin at the table, but we’re not that gross.

Cinder: Really.

Ender: I never try rabbit poop. I want some!

Cinder: Well, we’re all out. If you really want some, we have to go the Common and gather some up. That’s what I did.

Ender: OK!

This is the point at which a good normal mother would say, “For heaven’s sake, Cinder, just give your brother some of your cereal!” Or, better yet, get the poor three year old some cereal. But not this one. This one just sat there and took notes:

Cinder: OK, dude. Go put on your coat and shoes.

Ender: I hope rabbit poop is delicious.

Wait, did I say I got the whole food thing right? My kids are going to need therapy, aren’t they.

Sigh…

Rabbit ! / Kaninchen! (Photo credit: Robobobobo)

Rabbit ! / Kaninchen!

It’s good to be loved. Sob.

File under “It was supposed to be a compliment”:

Flora: Mama! Look at this picture I took of you, it’s really, really great!

Jane: Wow… that is actually a really good picture of me. Except for my tired, puffy eyes…

Flora: But your eyes always look like that, Mom.

And we both look at the picture for a while. And then she looks at me. And back at the picture. And at me. And:

Flora: Wow. Imagine how beautiful you’d be, Mom, if you weren’t tired.

It’ll happen. It’ll happen soon, I know. There was this one day last week…

File under “Please, add insult to injury”:

Ender: I do not want to hold your hand! You wash my bum with your hands, and they smell BAD!

Sob.

In possibly related news, if I wash and moisturize my hands any more, I might be diagnosed as having emergent OCD. Or something like that…

And finally, to everyone who contributed to “I Just Want To Pee Alone,” and in particular the brain trust behind the title:

Jane: I don’t care! Go whizz off the balcony! Take a dump in the yard like the dog! Water the neighbour’s tree! I don’t give a flying fuck what you do, just let me have the bathroom to myself for fiiiiiiiiive minutes!

Cinder: Geez, what’s up with Mom?

Flora: I think she wants some privacy.

Ender: Does she want to be alone together with me? Mama? Do you miss me already? I’m right here!

It’s good to be loved. Right?

♥

A self-indulgent moment to chastize the blogosphere: I can’t believe you all sided with Flora on the pink hair. What’s wrong with you people? Good thing I didn’t say I was going with majority vote. (Although I did sort of promise Jenn at Something Clever to go pink, didn’t I… Oops.)

Today, the hair looks like this:

Photo on 2013-04-09 at 16.36

And that’s its boring au naturel shade, with a rather frightening amount of grey-white replacing the platinum blonde. I’m trying to love it. I don’t even mind the grey-white, not really. The boring brown, however, is just not doing it.

Stay tuned.

Emotional Eight

I’m sitting on the couch with Flora curled up in my lap, her tear-stained face crushed against my chest. I’m not sure what she’s crying about—she does not want to tell me. I’m not sure she remembers what she is crying about, now. But this much I’ve learned from by Emotional Eight—as I watched her struggle from Inarticulate One to Tormented Two to Traumatic Three, Fragile Four to Ferocious Five, Struggling Six to Sensitive Seven—all she needs from me now is quiet acceptance. All she needs is for me to hold her. All she needs is for me to shut the fuck up.

It’s hard, it’s so hard. To not say anything, you know? To not press. To not find out. To not offer a solution. To not—repress. To not say, “It doesn’t matter.” “Why on earth are you crying about that?” “Get a grip, get some perspective.” So hard.

I hold my Emotional Eight a little tighter.

“I’m calming down,” she whispers.

“Good,” I whisper back.

“I’m so sad,” she says.

“It’s all right,” I say. And that’s so hard for me too. To give her permission to be sad, to feel, to suffer. I rarely grant myself that permission. Flora’s the child of mine who I feel I fail, if not quite constantly, than certainly more often than her brothers—and it’s because she feels, she feels so fully and so acutely, and she’s been cursed with a mother who has severe intimacy issues.

(You, reader-who-knows-me-only-from-my-writing, I see you scoffing. You’ve perhaps told me that you read me because I’m so naked, raw, honest? Lies, all lies. I am a competent writer. That means I control the narrative. You see only what I want you to see. And, you, reader-who-knows-me-in-real-life, that glimmer, glimpse of what’s behind the curtain? I meant for you to see it. I’m that manipulative—and that skilled.)

Flora is my opposite: so open, so vulnerable, so transparent. It terrifies me, because oh-god, will she suffer. Suffers. And every time she is torn open, every time she feels too much—I need to combat my desire to arm her, repress her, wall her off, turn her into me.

Because, you know, she is such a gift. It is people like her—not people like me—who will save the world. So I hold her. Say nothing. And later, when she is calmer and the immediacy of the wound recedes into the past, discuss coping strategies that may protect her—help her react and process—but not wreck the power, depth and fullness of feeling that make her who she is.

I so suck at this.

So thoroughly.

But. I try. I keep on trying. And when I know I’m absolutely failing… I call in her Dad.

(Do you want to deconstruct with me what I’ve done here? How I’ve played you? I dare you. Do it.)

Crying emoticon

How you know you get the kids you’re raising

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How you know my kids are brilliant:

Flora: Who invented swearing?

Cinder: Shakespeare.

How you know I’m kind of insufferable:

Jane: Actually, it was probably the first caveman who ever dropped a large stone on his big toe.

How you know my kids take it in stride:

Flora: Mom, not everything has to be about evolution.

Cinder: Shakespeare invented the word “puke.” That beats “ugh ugh ugh my toe” hands down.

How you know that they are just as annoying as your kids; maybe more:

Ender: Cinder! You suck! You suck, suck, suck, suck, suck! You all suck. Except me. I! Do! Not! Suck!

Cinder: Are you sure, Ender? Are you really, really sure?

♥

An Interlude for Blogosphere love:

1. The inimitable Julie DeNeed at Life According to Julie 2.0 1) invented the most awesome new blogging award and awarded it to Nothing By The Book and five other bloggers way funnier than me. But the reason you should meander over to her blog and read that particular post is because you will never, ever be able to think of  elevators in churches the same way again. Enough said. Just… go.

2. While I wasn’t paying attention, Nothing By The Book clicked over the 100 mark and how has 110 Facebook fans. Sweet! Thank you. And welcome! And as I do not have 110 mothers, I know at least some of you like NBTB purely on merit and not as a result of consanguineal or affineal obligation. Score for me.

3. I’m scaling down to one or two posts a week these days. Which means I’m only visiting your blogs once or twice a week. Because the sun is coming out and I’m Vitamin-D deprived. But I’m still reading. Especially you. You know who you are.

P.S. In purely personal and irrelevant news, I’m cutting off the last bits of platinum blonde, and crowd-sourcing a new hair colour. What do you want to see? Blonde, brunette, or redhead? Flora’s voting pink…

And if you didn’t read Tuesday’s post, unLessons from The Posse, get thee over there now. It’s one of the best things I’ve written in a while.

Persevere,

“Jane”

 

 

unLessons from the Posse

Biking in Waterton Lakes National Park

Photo from the newspaper "Nogales Herald&...

As we come around the corner, the crowds scatter, jump, recoil. First one–two–three–flying like the wind, silver scooters carrying them along like lightening, legs pumping–and then four–five–bent lower over the handle bars, legs pumping even faster to keep up with the vanguard–and you think they’re all through, but no, here comes six, working harder than everyone else because he has to keep up. And me, at the end, with number seven in the bike. Calling out, “High traffic area! Everyone keep to the right!” But they don’t hear me, of course; of course, they don’t, because there is only speed, wind, the path, and the posse.

I love the posse. Three are mine, four are borrowed for the day. Four people have the temerity to ask, as we zoom by, “Oh-my-god-are-they-all-yours?” and sometimes, I would punish them with The Look, but today I am happy, so I just smile. One-half of one couple is so appalled by the procession that is us that the beautiful young woman turns to her husband-boyfriend and says, loudly, fully intending me to hear, “And this, honey, is why we always use condoms.” I’d give her The Look, but then I catch the husband-boyfriend’s look, and it is one of such joy-envy-lust that instead of giving her The Look, I give him The Grin, and we have a very quick, secret psychic conversation:

Him: Seven, eh? Six boys? Man. My own fucking hockey team.

Me: Imagine the soccer games you would have.

Him: Basketball. Camping!

Me: You’d just sit in the chair, and they’d set up the tent.

Him: The littlest one would bring me beer.

Me: You’d build them the best treehouse ever, right?

Him: Oh, fuck, yeah. Would I ever. So… um… you wanna have more kids?

Me: No, I’m done. Sorry.

Him: Okay then. Well, have a good day

Me: Good luck with her, eh?

Him: Yeah… not sure this is going to work out.

We move on. Along the river. Over this bridge. That one. I don’t even attempt to tell them to stick with me–they are a posse, The Posse, and The Posse don’t wait for no Mom. But I am wise in the ways of The Posse, so I don’t ask. I command. “Meet me at the Dragonfly!” I yell to their backs. “Go ahead–and wait for me at the crossing! We all cross together!” It doesn’t matter how fast I go–they go faster. It’s all about being alone, really. I can read the fantasy, in the three eldest anyway. As far as they are concerned, they are alone.

We stop. Regroup. Do a headcount.

Me: Fuck. Five. Who’s missing?

They: The twins.

Me: Your mom’s going to kill me. Where are they?

They: Who knows?

Me: Dudes! No man left behind! Find them!

Phew. Just fixing their helmets by some bushes. Onward. But now I have given them a new war cry. They push off:

No man left behind!

Flora scoots beside me. “Did they leave me behind because I’m not a man?” she whines. “They didn’t leave you behind,” I point out. “You came to visit with me.”

Up ahead on the path: wipeout!

Me: Blood?

Him: I’m okay.

You don’t show weakness in The Posse.

The Posse fractures. Its members fight. When we stop at a playground and they play a mad game of tag with rules so complicated it makes my head spin, my eldest gets his nose out of joint. The twins think they’re picked on. Flora feels left out. Mostly, I stay out of it. Sometimes, I nudge towards a solution. But mostly–I let them be The Posse. I’m there to make sure there is no real injustice … but they know most of the rules of engagement. They are learning how to work things out. This is not Lord of the Flies.

My final test as Mom-wise-in-the-ways-of-The-Posse comes when we hit an ice rink. The ice is melting, sloppy. But still slippery. I see the desire in their eyes. The two eldest look and do a risk analysis. Then decide to try to break their bones on the nearby playground instead. The littles dump the scooters and go to slip and slide on their feet. But he-who-will-test-me comes up to me and says,

“Can we scooter on that?”

It’s a test. Any mother in her right mind would say no, and he knows this. And I know that he knows this. We look at each other, take each other’s measure. And I say,

“I can’t fit seven kids in my car if we have to go to the Children’s Hospital… Look, keep your helmet on, and no whining or crying at all unless there’s massive amounts of blood, and you’ve lost more than two teeth.”

He looks at me. Mildly appalled. His mom would have said no, outright, his eyes tell me, and I’m clearly irresponsible. Criminally so. But I’ve just given him permission. Really. If he doesn’t go on the ice, I’ll know it’s because he’s afraid. Of blood. Losing teeth. He’ll lose face.

He puts the scooter on the ice. Scoots.

“It’s not slippery enough to be fun,” he tells me. Drops it. And goes off to join The Posse.

We pass another couple on the last block home. This time, I have a quick, secret psychic conversation with the girl:

Her: Is it hard?

Me: Fuck, yeah. But so worth it.

When The Possee’s split up, and four-sevenths goes home with Fishtank Mom, they are all exhausted. And not-a-little tired of each other. But next time–next time, they’ll gel together again. Feel the wind, the speed. Be the pack. Fight, fracture, learn. Is it hard? Fuck, yeah. But so worth it.

Photo from the newspaper “Nogales Herald” dated July 20, 1922 showing an American posse after capturing the Mexican bandits Manuel Martinez and Placidio Silvas (middle of back row) who killed or wounded five people at or around Ruby, Arizona in 1921 and 1922. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

♥

And a thank you to the fabulous Tatu from Wonderland By Tatu for including Nothing By The Book in the shininess of the Sunshine Award. As you may have noticed, I truly suck at passing these on adequately. Not out of any better-than-thouness, truly, just out of… what shall we call it… laziness.Pure laziness. But thank you muchly, Tatu, you made me all smiley and sunny on a hard day. Here’s the link to the last one of these that I’ve paid back “properly,” which includes some irrelevant facts about myself and some of my favourite bloggers.

And, of body parts again

Child-proofing fail of the month, perhaps year:

Flora: Cinder! I found Daddy’s penis in Mommy’s bed. Is yours going to be detachable too when you get bigger?

Shoot me. Shoot me now. This one’s for you, Julie DeNeen.

Sales pitch fail of the month, perhaps year:

Cinder: But Mom!

Jane: For the last time! We are not going to Iceland to go visit a freakin’ penis museum!

Cinder: But Mom! They have a whale penis bone! A whale penis! Think how much Ender and I would learn!

Thanks, Iceland. Thanks a lot. (And yes, there really is an Icelanding Pallalogical Museum. On Cinder and Ender’s bucket list.)

Goal for April

Less anatomy talk. Please, children? Please!

… but while we’re talking anatomy, Here’s King Missile, with Detachable Penis:

It’s 4:30 a.m.: do you know where your children are?

sleep

You know this Calvin & Hobbes comic panel, of course you do―it’s a cultural meme embedded on all of our memories: Calvin, climbing out of his bedroo
m window and racing over to a payphone. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep, he dials. And, the punchine:

“Dad? It’s 3 a.m. in the morning. Do you know where I am?”

Flora loves this strip, and she reads and quotes this over and over again.

“Mom, you know I’m going to do this to you one day, right?” she says.

And stupidly, tears circle in my eyes, and I say, “Oh, baby. You’ll do worse. Much worse.” And she stares at me confused, because, after all, what we are sharing here is a joke, and I’m ruining it. But I finish it.

“You WON’T call me at 3 a.m. And I WON’T know where you are.”

She doesn’t get it, of course, nor, at age eight, should she. But this night, tonight―it is 4:30 a.m. and I know exactly where my children are. The elder two are asleep in their beds, and if I still my head and eliminate the creaking noises of the house, I hear their breathing.

The 3.5 year old is sitting on my head.

We’re in a prolonged “phasing out the nap” stage with the Ender, which on this day manifests itself by the boy not napping at all―and then crashing for the day at 6:45 p.m. I do the math as he falls asleep and figure if I’m lucky, very very lucky, he’ll sleep until 5 a.m.

When you’re the parent of a toddler-preschooler, 5 a.m. is almost morning. You can wake up for the day at 5 a.m. It sucks ass, and it means it’s a four-pot (coffee, ladies gentlemen, coffee) day. But you can do it.

Ender wakes up at 4:15 a.m. What a difference 45 minutes makes…

By 4:30 a.m., I give up trying to get him back to sleep. And I give up playing co-sleeping parents’ roulette. If you share your bed with the kids at least some of the time, you know what I’m talking about―which of you can take more of the rolling and poking and singing? Who’s going to break first and get up with the little dude? Neither of you is sleeping―but at least you’re both horizontal… and that’s almost like sleep…

I break. I take the Ender downstairs. Change his soaked night-time diaper. Wrap him up in blankets and give him milk, oranges, avocado and an iPad. Kiss him.

“I don’t want to be alone here!” he wails.

And were he child number one, his mother would sigh, and curl up on the couch beside him, and fade in and out of sleep for the next three hours, with Pinky-Doodle-Doo or another Nickleodeon-show blaring in the background, and the Ender occasionally asking for snacks, hugs, the moon.

But he is child number three, and I have two other children who’ll need me conscious when they wake up, plus plans for the day that require at least some of my brain to be working. So:

“You’re not alone. Mama and Daddy are right upstairs. I will leave the stairwell light on, and if you want to come back to bed, you climb up the stairs and very, very quietly climb into bed. Flora will be down very very soon, and then you won’t be alone down here.”

He acedes for he must. And I think―it’s 4:30 a.m., and I know where all my children are, and this is good. It doesn’t feel good, mind you, at this particular moment… and I look at the Ender, and I wonder if, when it’s 4:30 a.m., and I won’t know where he is, whether I will be able to sleep?

Probably not.

Sigh.

Maybe I’ll become a little more hardass over time.

♠

It’s 5:27 a.m., and I know where all my children are. One of them is sitting on my head, singing, “Maaaaay-peeee-niis! My! Penis!” Quite quietly, actually, but still.

Sean loses the co-sleeping parents’ roulette. “Get off your Mom!” he howls, because he’s a good Daddy (and good Daddies, have I mentioned, are so hot?). And he drags the dudling, protesting and howling back, back downstairs.

When sleep comes, I dream that I don’t know where my children are at 4:30 a.m.

Sigh.

But when I wake up at 8:30 a.m., there is a tousled little redhead tucked under my arm, snoring the way only three-year-olds can snore.

I forgive him everything, instantly.

 (Photo credit (Sleep): Sean MacEntee)

Why your children should never, ever learn the facts of life from their peers

Egg

Cinder: And that’s just how you were born, Ender, hatched out of an egg just like that penguin.

Ender: Cool!

Cinder: I’ll show you the egg shell after we finish the show.

Ender: Did you sit on me to hatch me, or just Mom?

Cinder: Mostly Mom. But we all helped.

This is the point at which I should interrupt. Right?

(Photo credit: John Loo)

Blogosphere Love Interlude

Ute at Expat Since Birth is passing the Liebster Award onto Nothing By The Book, and I gratefully accept with my usual disclaimer that I am terrible, terrible at fulfilling the requirements of passing these things on. But let me introduce you to Ute if you do not read her already, and encourage you to wander over to her blog. She lives in the Netherlands, speaks too many languages, has three marvellous children, and writes beautifully about, well, life, really. You’ll like her.

Back to regularly scheduled programming…

Ender: Waaaaaaah! Waaaah! Waaaah! I! Never! Want! To! Grow! Up!

Jane: What the heck happened?

Flora: I told Ender that if he’s a good little boy, his penis will grow into a vulva.

Cinder: That’s just evil. Really, really evil.

If you’re laughing and want to laugh more, you should go read Poisonous Volvo.

If you’re appalled and wondering if my children ever talk about anything other than their body parts… um. Sure. Yes, they do. Sometimes they talk about the apocalypse and potty training. Also, World War II. But, yeah, mostly they talk about their body parts. Even when it sounds like they’re talking about geography.

Sorry.

“Jane”