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Six words that changed the way I’ll talk about my body

August 29, 2018

There are certain phrases that come from the mouths of our babes that stop us dead in our tracks. Phrases such as …

“Uh oh …”

“Shut up!”

“Don’t be mad …”

“I can’t hold it.”

“Whoops!”

Late last week we added a new one to the list.

I am a sad, snooze button-slapping sloth. My intent is always to workout in the mornings but, because of my aforementioned condition, I typically have to cram it into the evenings, right between stuffing dinner in my face and washing a child’s butt.

On one seemingly uneventful evening, I was in the basement, 10 minutes into 80 Day Obsession’s Booty day when the chicks came down. JoJo set up a ninja obstacle course and was pushing her sisters to “Jump higher!” “Run faster!” and “Do it like this!” They were running around in their sports bras (hand-me-downs from a work friend’s daughter and their latest obsession) and giggling and burning off energy and radiating innocence.

After about 20 minutes, Spike came running over, panting, and put her hands on her hips.

“Look how much weight I lost!” she declared.

I set my weights down and spun around, propelled by the sobering gravity of the statement spilling out of my 7-year-old’s lips.

“Whoa! I mean, I think you look really strong,” I said, grasping desperately for a solid, child psychologist-endorsed rebound. “And that’s what I like to see.”

She raised her eyebrows, looked over at her biceps, shrugged and went back to the course, pleased by the exchange. That made one of us.

With every squat, every leg lift that followed, I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into a sinkhole of shame. I finished my workout and went up to tell Hank we were big, fat failures who could not use the words “big”, “fat” or “failure” anymore.

“We have to stop talking about our weight!” I announced. He barely turned from the dishes. “I mean it. Spike just told me she’d lost weight, and I don’t like it. We gotta get it together. Only stuff about being strong, from now on. No more rubbing our bellies, or complaining about how much we ate, or any of that.” He nodded in the agreeable way he does when I make such profound proclamations out of nowhere.

Body image is a struggle handed down from the women before us, who put their eggs in the basket of Jane Fonda, Weight Watchers, Slim-Fast and Oprah. Women who inherited the same battle from the generation that came before them. A generation that sought resolution through grapefruit, diet pills and belt massagers. It is a conflict as old as humankind – the epic tussle between vanity, health and self-acceptance.

Thinking back on my childhood, I can fondly recall my own mother’s affinity for peanut M&Ms. At night, after dinner was cleared and the children had scattered, my mom would sit down on the floor next to her bed and watch L.A. Law with a bag of the multicolored candies in her lap and make me scratch her back. At the time, I thought nothing of her evening ritual. It was endearing and just something she did, like dying her hair or snapping her fingers when she danced.

But in my house now, when I reach up into the cabinet for my after-dinner treat of two pieces of 72% cocoa chocolate, I see my daughters watching. Sometimes they’ll even say, “Watch the sug, mama.” And they’re not saying that because they’re judgmental turds. They’re saying that because I’ve unintentionally conditioned them to say that. I, along with a million forms of media and mixed messages, have formed their thoughts and placed phrases in their minds by vocalizing my own food shortfalls over and over again, in conversations that I thought were benign or far enough away from little impressionable ears.

And now, despite all my best intentions, the thing I always feared is happening. It’s being held up to my face in the form of one innocent little statement: “Look how much weight I lost.”

I naively thought I was following the protocol for bringing up healthy, well-adjusted girls. To their faces, it’s always about nourishing our bodies, getting stronger, treating ourselves well. But it hasn’t been enough. The fabricated shortcomings of our mothers and our mothers’ mothers are infiltrating my adorable chicks and I so desperately want to stop it.

I was talking about Spike’s declaration with a friend at work and she mentioned that even her oldest son, who is 6, has been talking about his “belly” and comparing himself to the other little guys in his grade. He’s 6!

What the hell? Where did it all get so screwed up?

Maybe time has quickened the affliction, but I don’t remember worrying about my body until middle school, around the time the dreaded locker room came into play and sixth graders with C cups started ruining everything. I had a short pixie haircut above my ears, braces, freckles and a chest as flat as an Indiana cornfield. That was when I started comparing myself. We all remember when we started comparing ourselves.

That same friend told me about a project her class did in first grade. They were doing some experiment with pumpkins and the teacher had the students step on a scale, first holding a pumpkin, and then without it, in order to get the weight of the squash. “I still remember pretending to be sick so I wouldn’t have to weigh myself in front of my class,” she shared. “And I wasn’t even that much bigger than the other kids.”

We all carry some of the responsibility, I suppose. For my part, I’ve been known to rub my food baby after a meal or let out a regretful groan after going for the second cinnamon roll or saying stupid shit like, “Oh, I shouldn’t,” when offered an amazing homemade pastry. I think I’m counterbalancing it by screen grabbing inspirational quotes on Instagram like, “Exercise is a celebration of what your body can do. Not a punishment for what you ate.” I think my perception is off.

How do we break the cycle? How do we convince the next generation that as long as they are using their bodies and treating them well and they feel capable in their bodies and they feel at home in their bodies, that they are doing exactly what they need to be doing? How do we make them feel proud not embarrassed, motivated not defeated, informed not passive?

Caring for yourself is a massive responsibility. It’s composed of a thousand decisions in a day and, as any mind-body guru will tell you, the body keeps score. There has to be a shift away from succumbing to the suffocating complexities of the weightloss noise and toward the beauty of caring for this precious gift we were given, this phenomenal space we get to occupy on this planet.

I’m not saying I have the roadmap to get us there. But, thanks to six little words and the mirror only a child can hold up to you, I feel like I’m waking up to the urgency of the issue at our children’s’ feet. The shift has to start somewhere. Let’s lean in a positive direction.

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Kids

From trigger to tantrum: The 3 stages of parent-child confrontation

August 1, 2018

When our JoJo started popping her top back in 2015, we chalked it up to the age. It’s just a phase, we thought. All kids develop a short fuse during that challenging transition window between toddler and child. But the tantrum tide hasn’t rolled back out to sea. The triggers can be anything from a sister getting too much attention (a spark one might categorize as irrational) to a container of 25,000 rainbow loom loops flipping and raining multicolored chaos out across a patterned bedspread (warranted).

While the tantrums once rumbled in like a summer storm you could spot 50 miles away, now they’re more like an F4 tornado that seems to drop down out of nowhere and elicit mass destruction for all in its path. We go from 0 to fury in 5.2 seconds, and no one is safe from her wrath. I once looked on in horror as she reprimanded a baby – a baby! – for stupidly sucking on her pretend smartphone. It was then I questioned how those nurses ever let me take a human being home from the hospital.

We’ve tried some things to remedy the rage. But in the end, the tantrum cycle always comes back to the same three phases. Picture a bell curve with a crescendo of contempt right at the top.

Level 1: Psychospeak

I love me some Brene Brown, I do. I worship the woman like a Vegas bride worships Elvis. After I read her gospel, “The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting,” I thought I had it. I got cocky. I was going to stop leading my children and instead embark on a journey of growth and discovery beside them. We would learn together, always with love and truth at the heart of our endeavors and conversations. I was going to be a different kind of mom. I even printed her parenting manifesto and framed it. It’s on my dresser. I’m looking at it right now.

My thing with Brene isn’t exclusive. I like to toss in a little Gabriel Bernstein, John O’Leary, Glennon Doyle, Shauna Niequest, Shonda Rhimes, Dalai Lama, Oprah and Tony Robbins for extra flavor. You might say I’m a bit of a self-help junkie. I like to hit the bong of Super Soul Kool-Aid on the regular. And perhaps that’s all to say that my mind’s a little restless, but also, I have an insatiable hunger for perfection and happiness, whatever that means.

When Hurricane JoJo comes ashore, I always reach for my favorite reference guides first. I attempt to tackle the tantrum through reason and empathy. This begins with a simple question:

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Now, where this goes wrong is that it’s rooted in the assumption that a reasonable question will elicit a reasonable response. In reality, it’s met with such sentiments as:

“Spike said I’m writing my 9s backward!”

“She called me a ‘geck’.”
“What’s a geck?”
“I don’t know! But it’s bad!”

“I was the teacher and then she said it was her turn to be the teacher and then I tried to show her how to grade the papers but she said she didn’t want to draw stars and then she took my pink marker and told me I had to be the nurse, not the student, and no one is listening to me and Sloppy Joan always gets everything she wants always because she’s the baby and everybody hates me because I like green jello!”

And so, as anyone would, I pause and consider what to do with such weighty tribulations. I remind myself that, to her, this is a big deal. It is upsetting. It is a reasonable excuse to completely lose her shit and scream-cry and throw things and slam doors. I remind myself that her tantrum is valid, because her feelings are valid, because she is a little human.

Depending on the day, the weather, the circumstances, I might be able to remind myself of these things several times. I might be able to recall Jo Frost, the SuperNanny, the Godmother of meltdowns, and remember I need to invite my daughter to share her feelings, not project my own onto her. I might even share a story from my youth. Perhaps a time when someone didn’t like the same flavor of jello as me and it resulted in emotional distress. Perhaps I’ll sit with her on a pillow of patience and we’ll sort through the whole misunderstanding peacefully, Brene and all her friends smiling over my shoulder.

This is the stage in the game when I redirect. When I send JoJo to her room to collect herself – “an emotional timeout” I call it – which looks like bracelet making or reading or meditating. Hypothetically, this is when her heart rate comes down and she regains composure and we establish resolution.

Hypothetically.

Level 2: Detonation

I try. Really, I do.

But when someone is howling within a sealed enclosure for more than 10 minutes, it can be difficult to keep your cool. I’ll confess that I’m a yeller. It’s not something that I’m proud of. But in my defense, the voice that I was born with – the pitch, the volume, the tenor – doesn’t seem to resonate with my oldest unless I turn it way the hell up. At least not when she’s in full conniption mode.

These fits always reach a pitch where inevitably I need to turn up the dial to be an active participant in the conversation. It just works out that way. In the moment it feels like a necessary element for communication, though one might argue as an observer that, from their perspective, it looks a lot like an adult tantrum.

This was an honest-to-goodness exchange I had with my daughter last week.

“What is wrong? Huh? Tell me, please,” – me, yelling.
“I’m tired!” – JoJo, crying and yelling.
“Then go to bed.”
“I don’t want to go to bed.”
“Then stop crying.”
“But I’m tired.”
“Then go to bed!”
“I don’t want to go to bed!”

To read it now, it seems like a riddle. A joke, at least. And maybe that’s the humor in it. The fact that afterward you can recognize the absurdity of a 35-year-old woman and a 9-year-old girl screaming at each other to stop screaming at each other.

And where is my tribe in these moments, huh? I don’t see Oprah or Tony anywhere in this steaming pile of mess.

This is often the stage in which I resort to threats.

“Do you want to go to Sophie’s party on Saturday?”
“Do you want to go swimming tomorrow?”
“Do you want to start American Ninja Warrior classes?”
“Do you want to make it to 10?”

[Of course she does.]

“Then get it together and knock it off!”

These threats can range from a few hours in her bedroom to a canceled family vacation. Of course, as punishers, we know that the higher the threat, the less likely it will actually be executed, but sometimes you have to go big for effect.

I’m not proud of the things that happen in the Detonation period. I’m just not. Often, it concludes with me slamming her door, which, coincidentally, I likely just yelled at her for doing a few minutes before I jerked the brass knob myself (I know, that sounds dirty).

Level 3: Repentance

It usually hits me like the rancid air 2 miles outside a hog farm. Regret. Lots of it.

Once I’ve walked away, I realize that that was where I went wrong. I turned my back. The instant replay in my mind starts when I hit the steps and turns into a full blown highlight reel of my failures by the time I reach the kitchen. She needed someone and I dropped the ball.

I blew it.

I missed the mark.

I’m worse than a person who kicks puppies.

I let down Brene and Jo and all of the people who tried to coach me to avoid this exact parental calamity.

I breathe on it for a bit, collect my thoughts and go back to her room to apologize. Dr. Dave, a dear friend who specializes in mindfulness, talks about how important it is for us to ask for forgiveness, even from our children. Sometimes especially from our children. But I struggle with the “but”.

My apologies typically sound something like:

“JoJo, I’m sorry I just yelled at you, but you have to understand …” or “Honey, I shouldn’t have raised my voice, and I want to apologize for my behavior. But when you lose it like that …”

Nothing matters after the “but”, we all know that. My 9-year-old knows that. And yet, I can’t break away from the “but”.

The saving grace is that resilience is the ingredient that distinguishes young souls from the middle aged ones. I will feel the aftershocks of a good tantrum for at least 24 hours, while JoJo will be asking for chocolate ice cream after 1. For me, it has to mean something. It has to be a smoke signal that there is trouble in her heart, and we must form a five-part plan to help her channel her aggression immediately. But really, the longer these go on, the more I think she just gets pissed and wants everyone to know. She’s onto the next episode of Little Lunch before I’ve metabolized the emotional post mortem.

And perhaps the most defeating facet of the tantrum cycle, is the inescapable certainty that it will all happen again at any moment. There’s a whole world full of triggers out there, and we’re just waiting to hear the first shot.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe I’ll be better. Maybe it’s just a phase.

Wanderlust

Vacation: All I’ve ever wanted (to trap in my basement forever)

June 22, 2018

Last week, Hank and I loaded up our family wagon and our three little chicks and headed east to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It was a real vacation. The kind where you let your hair go frizzy and read a full book, cover to cover. The good kind. The slow kind. The transformative kind of vacation.

We left right after work and Hank drove into the night. I fell asleep to the mesmerizing passing of the reflectors in the center line and sporadic headlights somewhere in Ohio and awoke around 2 a.m. in West Virginia. Sloppy Joan was in and out of sleep, thrashing and whining every 5 minutes or so. The timer had popped; our little turkey was done. After we pulled her and the others out of the car and stumbled into our double queen room, she shocked us all with an allstar rally, positively giddy at the excitement of a hotel room.

We walked out to the car Saturday morning to discover our surroundings. It was like falling asleep in the depths of tall grass only to wake up in a field of towering sunflowers. We were in the mountains now. Beautiful, lush green Moana mountains. A soft fog was settled in between the peaks, with the morning sunlight piercing through the smoke. It was breathtaking. I held my lukewarm morning coffee, sipping and soaking in the unexpected beauty, crests enveloping us on every side.

More than 9 hours and 15 potty pit stops later, we arrived at our home away from home for the week. Sure as an army of ants will follow a trail of tacos, a curious child will take a flight of stairs as far up as they go. So was the case with our chicks, as they flew up to the eagle’s nest deck before we even went into the house. This third level structure was constructed solely to twist and torture my fears of a child tumbling to their doom, but redeemed itself by providing a view that drained my lingering stress pangs. As they turned to run back down the way they came, I closed my eyes as my ears found what they’d been seeking since we crossed the south bridge onto the island: Waves. The rolling crescendo was punctuated only by the chatter of carefree seagulls. To the east, blue waters. To the west, the sun setting over the sound. There, standing on the treetops, I took a true breath for the first time in two months.

The house was perfect for our little crew. Bunk beds for the girls, a king-size mattress for me and the Mr., a fully functioning kitchen, living room and cool blue color palette. We stayed in Hatteras, which was the southernmost area of the Outer Banks, and much less commercial than some of the other sections. This was what the doctor ordered. There was a market with a friendly grocer just up the street, a handful of eateries, a nature center and a Wings, brimming with cheap ocean crap. We required little more.

It took me until Monday to really feel it. Sitting in a lowrider beach chair, cold beer in hand, watching my girls building a sand castle with my husband beside me, I realized I was light. Nothing mattered. We had nowhere to be and no one to answer to. We were five souls set free for at least six more days, though I tried not to count them. There’s a weightlessness that comes with severing the tethers to your everyday life that can’t be described or replicated. It’s the closest one can come to true peace, I think.

That afternoon, a sweet gal who’d been coming to the area since she was a child – one of the many kind people we encountered on our trip, which also included a 55-year-old nurse who loaned Spike her kite that Hank eventually had to chase through sand dunes and up telephone poles – became our personal Hatteras insider. For starters, at our new friend Kim’s advisement, I began putting coconut oil in the girls’ hair in the mornings to avoid those pesky beach tangles. Game changer! Aside from grooming, and among other dining and sea creature pointers, she also gave us a tip that would change our agenda for the remainder of our vacation.

“Oh! And you have to come out at night to see the ghost crabs,” Kim said.
“OK,” I nodded, feeling sceptical but unseasoned.

And so, one evening after dinner, I stayed in with Sloppy Joan as Hank and the older two dug up flashlights, doused themselves in bug spray, and trotted down to the shore in the dark in search of these special night creatures. When they hadn’t returned after 30 minutes, I assumed our tour guide might have been off. But no. I was distracted from my fourth consecutive episode of Chopped (We don’t have cable anymore) when I caught a tunnel of light on the porch out of the corner of my eye. It was Spike, pressing her face against the glass sliding door, shining the light up her nose like a camp counselor unwrapping a juicy tale about escaped serial killers. She stormed in.

“Mom! You won’t believe it,” she exclaimed. She was sorting through the words scattered and sprinting through her little head.
“Tell me!” I urged.

JoJo came in, Hank trailing behind her, a fog of Off! aggressively, offensively penetrating my nostrils.

“There were these white crabs everywhere!” Spike said.
“Really?” I exaggerated my enthusiasm.
“Really,” JoJo took over. “And there were big ones, and small ones and they were so fast – right, Dad – so fast!”
“So fast,” Hank agreed.
“That’s so cool! We should have gone with you,” I said.
“Yeah! But we’re going to go every night. Dad said we can go every night,” Spike said.

And we did.

Each night, drunk on a heavy dinner of fried fare, senseless carbs and some form of ice cream, we would change into long sleeves and pants and walk under more stars than we’d ever seen back to the beach. We’d wait until the last possible second to turn on our lights and once we did, we’d be met with hundreds of sets of beady little black eyes. Hank would try to catch them, an endearing glimpse of him as a curious child. Their mechanical legs were deceptively speedy. The girls would move from one to the next, screeching while proclaiming they weren’t afraid of them one bit.

But it was Sloppy Joan who confronted their master. One evening, our fearless third born took the end of her flashlight and poked at a particularly large crab repeatedly, until the crustacean was forced to raise up on his hind legs and point his pinchers toward his opponent. The four of us stood around her, shouting like drunk 40-year-olds at an MMA fight.

“Oh my gosh!”
“Get ‘em SJ!”
“You’ve got this!”
“Back up!”
“Poke him!”
“Put the flashlight down!”
“Hit him! Hit him!”
“Stop it! Stop it!”
“Oh for–!”
“Yes! Yes!”

Eventually Hank grabbed her and pulled her out of the ring as the giant crab scurried away, one eye on the insane family from Indiana, and one eye on the freedom of his sand hole. We stood there for a few minutes, watching lightning in the clouds somewhere far off over the ocean, and let the adrenaline wash away with the tide.

Spike had her sights set on a conch shell. It was all she wanted, and let me tell you, when Spike wants something, she’s going to make that shit happen. Speculating that the most prized shells came ashore first thing in the morning, I set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. I went in to find her nestled next to JoJo, her mouth gaping open in complete surrender to sleep. I shook her gently and asked if she wanted to go sunrise shell hunting. She was dressed in 3 minutes and we were quietly slipping out onto the porch.

It was a first for both of us; Sunrise on the beach.

I let my brunette beauty walk on ahead and, because they were so sweet, I committed the moments to memory, so I could always remember her that way: The golden ball of the day’s first light at her shoulder, rising above the sand dunes and illuminating her bronzed cheeks. The toothless smile and unbridled joy when she finally found her shell. The surprising size of her footprints in the surf staggered next to mine, proof my baby’s growing up too fast.

By Thursday, I was starting to feel heartsick over the thought of our week coming to an end. I had become accustomed to our lazy routine. Our days consisted of hours on the beach, interrupted only temporarily every few hours by food and sleep. Our girls, only one of which had been to the sea, had become uninhibited mermaids, in spite of two jellyfish stings for Spike and a traumatic crab pinch.

Watching them in the waves, because they were so sweet, I committed the moments to memory. So I could always remember them that way: SJ standing in the surf in a neon pink bikini, her piercing eyes beneath the brim of her matching sun hat. Her browned skin. Her smile. The relaxed waves in her hair and a stormy sky behind her. My JoJo running confidently across the tide, surfing and splashing and begging me to watch as she does it all over again.

Reality is a force greater than any magnet. It is a gravitational pull you can only outrun for so long, and soon it was time for us to leave. As the miles between our little sliver of paradise and our home, our jobs, our responsibilities grew smaller, the nagging circumstances we’d temporarily abandoned returned. Texts and emails started flashing on our phones. The older two started arguing in the back. The universe knew the sand was running out in our magical hourglass.

Why is it so dang hard to hold onto that vacation nirvana? Retaining that calm is like trying to hogtie the wind or stand in a rainbow. Impossible.

When I meditate now, I picture the waves. I picture myself sitting in that chair staring into the horizon with my daughters’ freckled cheeks and soaring birds peppered in. I try to smell the saltwater air. I grasp at the peace, but it evaporates in my desperate hands.

How do we carry it home with us? How do we bottle up that zen so we can sip from the vessel a little at a time as needed, buying time until we can replenish the contents all over again?

When I was on vacation, I had ideas. Ideas for books. Ideas for our home. Ideas about how I was going to change our lives and be less short-tempered and seize every second. I was all juiced up on joy and high on leisure. Now I’m frantically sniffing out a source for my next hit. It feels like our traditional roles are rigged to favor routine. Like we walked into an arranged marriage with monotony.

Eight summers. I have eight summers left until my JoJo is 18 and no longer obligated to be around me. Do I want her to remember me as list-loving Mommy or wave-riding Mommy? Ideally I could be like an Oreo. A sweet, enjoyable layer of happiness sandwiched between two essential spheres of structure and stability. I want to inject enough of my vacation self into my life that, overall, they remember me being pretty darn enjoyable overall.

Ah, vacation … you beautiful summer fling. I’ll never forget you.

Some Kinda Superwoman

Some kinda Superwoman: Kirsten

March 31, 2017

Almost 15 years have passed, but I can still call back the moment I held my first niece, all big-eyed and unassuming. It was the first time I felt comfortable holding a baby. Like, my brain and my body just knew she belonged to me in some small but important way. I remember thinking our family would never be the same, which turned out to be true. Our dynamic shifted on that day. My parents became grandparents, I became an aunt, my brother an uncle and so on. But moreso, the light that had, to that point, shined down on me and my siblings dimmed on our faces on that rainy August day and illuminated this fresh little soul, instead. We had a new axis. And I didn’t care one bit, which is rare for a baby-of-the-family type like myself. I was happy to step aside and let this tiny love nugget soak up all the attention that she so deserved and earned by being offensively adorable and blowing the most endearing spit bubbles.

A few years later, my sister told me she was pregnant again, and just after Christmas, she gave me my second niece. Then a few years later, my third niece. Then we were pregnant together and neither of us found out what we were having, and wouldn’t you know, spring brought a pair of chicks; one for each of us. Then, she got pregnant about four years after that and it was, you guessed it, another girl. At this point, it’s starting to get crazy, right? Well, unbeknownst to any of us, including my sister, she wasn’t quite done. In a surprise turn of events, this past fall Kirsten welcomed her sixth little bambina.

They’re beautiful, each of them. My sister’s husband is Mexican and Kirsten is tall, pale and blonde, so it’s a fun little genetics recipe to play with. Some are blessed with the beautiful olive tone and big brown eyes that will just straight up level you, Disney princess style, and others get to be curly towheads with our family’s signature blinding white complexion. The teams currently stand at Brownies: 2, Blondies: 3, TBD/Mashup: 1.

Sometimes I forget just how sensational my sister’s harem is. And then I have a moment of drowning in my own personal kiddie pool (by comparison) of estrogen. Three girls is a lot of emotion, I tell people. We’re never short on tears, drama or clogged toilets. And then I think about doubling down. I think about that feeling when you finish a half marathon and no way, ever, would you consider turning around and doing it again. But that’s my sister’s life. When I tap out and take my melatonin at 9, whipped and tattered from 13.1 miles complete, my sister is a short highway drive away, winding down from a full 26.2. She is a hardcore, badass marathon mama.

It earns her a bit of grace, I’d say. But she’s built for it. She’s my opposite in most every way. She knows when to just roll around in the sea of torn wrapping paper rather than frantically scoop it up and risk missing the moment. And that, I’d say, makes all the difference. Dancing rather than disinfecting. Laughing rather than laundry. It can all wait, and it will. I mean, the mess is multiplying by six at her house as we speak. But she is the perfect woman, partnered with the perfect man, for bringing a big ole gaggle of gals up right.

The stories that come out of her house are gold, as you might imagine. Someone’s always drawing on someone else’s face with permanent marker or painting themselves from head to toe in Desitin cream. Once a mouse got in the toilet. Her oldest, Olivia, who was much younger at the time, unknowingly sat down to go potty and, upon discovering the rodent clawing and frantically swimming beneath her bottom, screamed, “I pooped a mouse! I pooped a mouse! Mommy, Daddy, I pooped a mouse!” She wouldn’t sit on the can for weeks after that. There are self-administered haircuts that will live on in infamy and scars from sister-on-sister war crimes. But all in all, it’s pretty organized chaos.

People always ask me how she does it, and the truth is, I honestly don’t really know. But like any good journalist, I’m always willing to go straight to the source for you guys. So, settle in for this lovely little testimony from one of my favorite tired, brutiful mothers, who happens to be my big sister.

SOME KINDA SUPERWOMAN: KIRSTEN
– Written by the woman herself

December 26, 2015. I’m brushing my teeth and watching the screen of a digital pregnancy test. I say I’ll never forget it, but does anyone ever really forget those moments? The screen showed a clock flashing, then suddenly a “YES +”. I froze. My heart began to race and I felt hot from the inside out. This was not part of the plan. This was not on the family calendar. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but the reality is that in that moment that was not what I wanted. Two thoughts ran through my mind: First, “What will people think?” and then, “What does this mean for my plans and my dreams?” I had no idea how this surprise would fit into our already crazy family.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let me introduce myself.

I’m the manager of this circus. I’m the one who attempts to hold this show together while delivering an appearance that resembles anything even near the neighborhood of normal. My fearless husband is our ring leader, and, doing various acts and flips and stunts in rings on either side of us, you will find six beautiful, intelligent, strong-willed, persistent, messy, hilarious, challenging little girls. Yes, I know, I know … SIX GIRLS! No, we were not trying for a boy. No, we aren’t Catholic. Each one of these little tyrants can take us from gut-wrenching laughter to the edge of a cliff in a matter of seconds, and to say it’s like a rollercoaster ride would be a laughable understatement.

On any given day, there will be at least one room (usually more) that I walk into and then immediately turn around, walk out, and shut the door. Today that would be Sloan’s (our fifth) and Izzy’s (our third). I truly believe that I would have better luck trying to teach those pigs to fly than I would have keeping this place clean. If you come over, you’re going to stick to my counters. You’re going to find more apple cores around my house than in the pages of a Berenstain Bears book. There’s no guarantee that a little surprise won’t still be lurking in the toilet when you go into our bathrooms. (WHY WON’T THEY FLUSH?!) I’ve also seriously considered just giving up and telling people we run a fruit fly breeding program. I mean we’ve got reproduction down in this neck of the woods. In other words, if you stop by unannounced and miss the very tiny window where I have tidied enough to present my pretend house to planned company, please bring a hazmat suit.

The truth is, whenever anyone asks me how we do it all, my answer is easy … we don’t! Hang around for 20 minutes and you’ll see for yourself.

I am not supermom. Mass chaos is considered the routine. I forget things all the time. I can’t tell you how many rolls of toilet paper we go through because, honestly, it’s too frightening to keep track. I yell. A lot. I go to the grocery store more than the bathroom. And you should see us all in the car. It’s like a clown car, only instead of men-children with their faces painted in freaky patterns, it’s grumpy, needy little gremlins fighting the entire trip over who looked at who first. (Did I mention they all suffer from extreme motion sickness? That’s right. Envy me, people.) Someone always feels left out or let down. Someone is always hungry. Someone always has to pee at the worst possible time. I’d love to tell you I’m Carol Brady reincarnate. I’d love to say that I’m patiently and calmly helping them learn to solve their problems and hug it out, but I’m not. I’m human. I’m reactive. I’m selfish.

This brings me back to the little surprise I mentioned earlier.

Two days after finding out I was pregnant I started bleeding. I wholeheartedly thought I was having a miscarriage. That was such a strange moment. Strange because I was terrified, and strange because just hours before, I’d felt so much uncertainty about what this baby even meant. This was one of those moments when I had to stop and get my poop together. (Yes, I said poop. I’ve adapted to censorship.) I had to start reevaluating what family means. I had to realize what I would be losing in this new adventure (plans, so-called dreams, schedules and calendars) didn’t amount to a hill of beans, as my dad would say, compared to this new little life.

Having a large family is extremely uncomfortable. That’s the honest-to-God truth. Nothing is easy. Nothing ever goes as planned. As I’m writing this, my husband is picking blue slime out of our three-year-old’s hair. We weren’t put on this earth to be comfortable, though. I truly believe we were put here to be challenged. That’s how we change and grow. I know it’s cheesy, but I often think about diamonds and how much pressure it takes to transform them from a nasty lump of coal into something beautiful. Challenges do that. They teach us. They mold us. I pray that when this journey of motherhood slows down, and my little gremlins are grown, I will see that I have helped mold my kids into loving, God-fearing women. I hope to accomplish that for them, but I know they are doing that for me.

We always talk about our responsibilities as parents and how difficult they can be. God help us all, it really is difficult. But what we don’t discuss enough is what we get out of it. Each and every one of my babies has a totally different personality, and each one of them teaches me something different about myself. It’s like being in a fun house and having six images, all different, but all reflecting me. They are my mirrors, pointing out everything beautiful in my life, but also every flaw. Sometimes what I see is hard to swallow, and even harder to accept, but without them I’d never unlock that piece of myself. I wouldn’t challenge myself to keep growing, and keep going.

Everyone tells you that your kids grow up fast. I have a 14-year-old! Trust me, it does go fast. Every day with them is a gift. I won’t pretend for one second that I appreciate this gift the way I should on a daily basis. I won’t pretend that there aren’t times I think, Man, two kids would have been so much easier. What I will say, though, is that I will be eternally grateful for the moments I laid in bed feeling like the biggest failure in the world (and there are a lot of them), because those are the moments that humbled me. The ones that built and are building me. Those are the moments I had to pray for strength and step outside my comfort zone. I can’t quit this gig. I can’t give up. I have to become more. I have to keep pushing myself. The stakes are too high. I have to keep running, knowing each day I’m a little more equipped for the marathon. Eventually, I will get to a finish line and all the inconveniences and all the mistakes made and lessons learned will amount to something so much bigger than me.

When our little surprise baby was three weeks old, she gave her mama another big scare. She came down with a pretty serious infection. What followed were months of uncertainty. Months of stress. Out little seven-pound gift from God once again brought me a reminder: Life is so precious and makes you no promises. When I look at her, the reflection is one of gratitude and appreciation for what God has entrusted to me.

I used to worry about what everyone thought of me. I used to strive for the façade of perfection, or even normalcy. My large family may look like an inconvenient mess to many, but I just don’t care anymore. God knew it would take six girls to get through my thick skull that His purpose is so much bigger than anyone’s opinion. Love is not some beautiful fairytale. Love is hard. Its fabric is flaws and mistakes, discipline and tears. It’s laying in bed at night feeling like you can’t do this anymore only to get up the next day and try again. That’s the gift my large, insane, beautiful family brought me. The gift of love.

Kids

My daughters’ differences

March 20, 2015

 

As I watch the ladies in my home grow and transition, and bicker and prod, I realize with absolute certainty that my frazzled, thirty-something mind will never comprehend the ancient complexities of how two human beings, created by the same two human beings, can be so completely, drastically different. Hank and I are opposites, no argument there. It is frequently pointed out to me that the older two pull their dominant qualities from the maternal side, but it’s hard to tell with such a sprawling spectrum of genetic attributes in both directions.
JoJo is inquisitive. She worries and ponders and seeks the truth. She cries often, and asks about things that people my age don’t understand or only contemplate when they’re really, really stoned. She has concerns and she likes to direct action and take the lead when she feels comfortable.
Spike is my wild card. She, too, is emotional, but it’s more for dramatic effect and from frustration. She demands to be heard and she doesn’t have much patience for parenting. I don’t worry about Spike when it comes to friends or the pursuit of her dreams. I think all that girl needs is a compass and she’ll be on her way.
While I celebrate these beautiful, mystifying differences between my babies, they are often the culprits for our sibling domestic disputes. The girls are the only players in a tireless game of tug-of-war … the yin and the yang … the opposites that often don’t attract. They would move mountains both to defend each other and to defeat each other. The fights. The crazy, yelling, name-calling, remote-throwing, door-slamming fights. About whose turn it is, or who was telling the story, or who gets the green plate. It’s exhausting, but common. I’ll catch myself tiptoeing toward losing it before I plant my feet, take a beat and remind myself that my actions become their reactions. That sisters fight. That this is life in our house right now, and it looks like this sometimes in ours and all the other houses with little firecrackers running around.
But a shaken soda settles eventually, and bitterness dissolves with distraction. And that’s what I adore. It’s then I like to slow the narrative and commit it to memory. It’s in the moments when, unprompted or pushed, they hug, or tickle or have those amazing conversations when you turn your back and laugh from your heart, out through tiny tears in your eyes. And my soul feels so full and I think,
I love these little humans. And I love that they have each other. They talk about the planet and God and monsters. They solve the day’s problems and only ask for my confirmation at the very end. “Right, Mama?” Sometimes I correct them, and more often I let their little imaginations govern the day. Because, really, wouldn’t we all be a little better off with thoughts of smiling moons and horses named Kiyango at the front door?
I simultaneously dread how quickly the time will pass, and eagerly anticipate the day when Sloppy Joan joins her sisters at the kitchen bar. If my predictions are on point, she will be her father; the calming rhythm that steadies the noise. I’m sometimes wrong about these things, but I see a peace and joy in her little eyes that reminds me of the man I married, and also why I married him. And it’s reason No. 5,986 why I love her so much.
So, this post is dedicated to the slower, happier moments. To dancing to Beyonce’s “Girls” in the basement, and imaginative time playing mermaids in the tub. To saving each other from the top of the slide and falling asleep holding hands. To reuniting after school and smothering hugs. Here’s to my delightfully different, dynamic, amazing girls and the perfectly imperfect sisterhood they share.