Welcome to the August Carnival of Natural Parenting: Creating With Kids

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how they make messes and masterpieces with children. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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I’m not the mom who knits during parent meetings or makes her children little felt figurines all the time. The latter I’ve done twice, practically under duress. Knitting makes me cry. Someday it won’t, but I can’t predict when that will stop.

Likewise, I stand in awe of people who actually make clothing their children wear in regular life, like this mom from my son’s preschool. Getting my children dressed in relatively clean clothes is enough of a victory for me; I doubt I will ever celebrate much in the way of self-styled schoolwear.

But Halloween costumes? Those are a project I will not outsource. Mine were almost always homemade, and while my mom was a superb seamstress the likes of which my kids will never see from me, I am proud to throw off my perfectionism when it comes to forcing a needle and thread into a costume.

My son’s first getup at age seven months was inspired by a friend’s adorable gift of a knitted acorn hat. I found him some brown pants at Old Navy and a green onesie at a consignment store onto which I sewed felt leaves. Volia, a tree! Daddy and I got craft store fake leaves glued onto craft store green tees, so we were a whole family tree, a bi-arboreal Maple-Oak mix.

My son’s second year I let him lead with his hair, an orange mullet

Halloween 2007 - Clown

Halloween 2008 - Leopard

perfect for a Bozo look, and his third year he got to wear the homemade leopard costume I’d worn as a child. So those were quiet years for craftiness.

But when he said he wanted to be a frog at age three, I took up the challenge. I found green pants he could wear again and paired them with a green shirt onto which I glued and then sewed brown swatches in a froggy design. Styrofoam eyes got sewn into green felt that got sewn onto a green hat, and the look was topped off with green gloves that got worn by yours truly later in the winter. Decidedly homemade, clearly not fancy or perfect, but thoroughly fun for him and full of heart.

Halloween 2009 - Frog

This past year, the boy got in his head that he wanted to be a scarlet macaw when it was still summer. Apparently this is the real name of the bird always just called “parrot.” It has a lot of colors. And wings. With my newborn in my arms, I told him that was fine if he still felt that way closer to Halloween. He did.

So I cast around on a local moms list for a red shirt and red felt, and I scored. One mom even left her castoff on my porch for me, and the other pickup we made on the way to preschool. My husband scoffed at first at my efforts but then joined in a late-night feather gluing session with supplemental store-bought felt.

Halloween 2010 - Scarlet Macaw

It might have been the day of the neighborhood parade that I sewed the eyes and red head onto one of three faded U of M baseball caps my husband had littered around the house and that I sewed the feather panel onto the red shirt. But whether at the last day, hour or minute, it all came together in a fashion that seemed to impress the parents at the park. Little do they know this is the only sewing I do all year.

Almost three months now before Halloween, my son is asking to be a firefighter, and I haven’t gotten any lightbulbs of inspiration for the baby, who just turned one. So if you check back in November, I can’t promise exactly how much of a Jessica original or two I’ll have to show for myself. But I do know that I will make a good faith effort to show my kids once again that the process of creating a look is part of the whole fun. And I do hope that I can keep up a tradition of keeping my sewing needle from getting rusty by at least putting it to some use when the leaves start to fall.

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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• Family Draw Time Art Show — Kate Wicker shares art (and inspiration!) from her family’s cherished tradition of family draw time.
• The Rules of Creativity: Learning to Create with the “Non-Creative” — Zoe at Give an Earthly shares how she learned to accept her “non-creative” child and claims that anyone, child or adult, can be creative given the right handling and environment.
• Creating With Kids: 4 Ways That Work For Us — See how Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings nurtures creativity with her kids through craft projects, outdoor creative play, celebrating the creative process, and setting up “little spaces of beauty.”
• Creating memories, not things — Mrs. Green from Little Green Blog reflects on life with a ten year old and how ‘creating together’ has evolved from ‘things’ to memories.
• The Gift of Creation — It may be hot, but Kellie at Our Mindful Life is already thinking about winter.
• Hidden Talents — Sylvia at MaMammalia describes how providing the opportunity for creativity sometimes means learning to look for hidden talents in unusual places.
• Creating Joy — CatholicMommy at Working to be Worthy shares how she and her one year-old son create joy for their community.
• How to do Crafts with Kids — Gaby from Tmuffin guest posts at Natural Parents Network and describes how to keep things simple when doing crafts with kids for magical (easy-to-clean, and tantrum-free) results.
• Sugar & Spice & Baking on the Kitchen Floor — Carrie at Love Notes Mama enjoys making a mess in the kitchen with her daughter.
• Young Scientist Makes Purple Potion — Hannah at Wild Parenting loves being a lab assistant for the young scientist in her life.
• Making a butterfly house — Lauren at Hobo Mama demonstrates the proper way to build a wooden butterfly house with a preschooler.
• Nurturing Creativity — Amyables at Toddler In Tow shares the enjoyment she feels in nurturing the creativity of her children.
• Home School Music – Sparking A New Generation Of Musicians — Based on her musical background, Chante at My Natural Motherhood Journey talks about how she creates with and teaches music to her children.
• Creating (im)perfectly Together — Mudpiemama shares some of the highlights of a summer spent building everything from ships to hoops but most of a lesson on letting go of perfection.
• Family Soccer Kick Around — When her children wanted to play soccer, Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children helped organize something that would work for her family.
• Creating Memories Together on Skype — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells how you can create memories online with adult children or anyone who lives in another city or country.
• We’ll always have Halloween: Creating costumes for kids — Jessica Claire at Crunchy-Chewy Mama is not the craftiest mom on the block, but she does make a mean homemade Halloween costume.
• Let’s Make Juice! — Wendylori at High Needs Attachment shares about the benefits of juicing with kids, as well as a quick recipe.
• Everything’s Better When It’s Homemade — Amanda at Let’s Take the Metro praises the art of homemade goods.
• Creating the Opportunity for Art — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction shares how her family has created an environment conducive to art.
• 10 Easy and Functional Crafts Preschoolers Can Do with Minimal Assistance — Dionna at Code Name: Mama offers ten easy crafts preschoolers can do while sitting near parents — but they don’t need a lot of parental help. Added bonus: all of these ten ideas double as something functional (gifts, decor, educational).
• Creating with Kids: Singing Together — Ana at Pandamoly details the important role music takes in her household and provides a quick (and easy!) tutorial for creating fun songs to sing together!
• Create This — jessica at instead of institutions considers different aspects of creativity including those without an end product.
• Make Your Own Pocket Bib — A tutorial from Amy at Anktangle on how to make two simple and quick bibs to keep your little one clean at the table.
• Creating Together in the Kitchen — Despite not feeling “crafty,” Momma Jorje finds a way to create and connect with her toddler.
• An Artist-Mama’s Perspective — In this post, Shannon at The Artful Mama discusses the differences between her choice of artistic outlet and her son’s, and how they embrace those differences together.
• Heart of the Home — Jona at Life, Intertwined shares some highlights of cooking with kids.
• Getting creative with kids — Isil at Smiling like Sunshine shares how much she enjoys watching her daughter getting creative.
• Creating with Children – The Nature/Seasonal Table — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama celebrates the rhythm of the natural world with her toddler through the creation of a seasonal nature table.
• How Involving My Kid Saves My Sanity — The Happy Hippie Homemaker explains how involving her toddler in projects allows her to get more done, while providing valuable opportunities to teach and to bond (added bonus: amazing oatmeal raisin cookie recipe!).
• In the Kitchen with Kids — Cooking with Real and Pretend Food — Terri from Child of the Nature Isle engages her kids in the kitchen with culinary creations of both real and pretend food.

When I wrote this essay, “Attemptus Interruptus,” about having to postpone conception to deal with Graves’ Disease, autoimmune hyperthyroidism, I had no idea that the woman I referenced in the second-to-last paragraph would face the same disease. I was best friends with S in eighth grade and spent most of the summer of 1987 on her boat, watching her waterski.

Today, S was scheduled to have surgery to remove her thyroid, which was 2-3 times the normal size due to Graves’ Disease.

We hadn’t seen each other since 1994, but we were friends on Facebook, where she saw my birth story, read a reference to thyroid problems, and reached out to ask me about my experience. She had just been diagnosed with Graves’, she said, and she was exploring her options since she wanted to have more children.

I told her I had the same disease. In 2004, I was on anti-thyroid medication for almost 11 months. I’d rejected the standard treatment of radioactive iodine (RAI) to ablate my thyroid. For one thing, my uptake was only 45%, so I’d have to have had double the dose of someone whose thyroid would soak up 90%. But regardless of the rates, I didn’t want to kill such an important gland.

I wanted to get better.

So I spent a ton of money and time on complementary treatments including acupuncture, energy work, lots of supplements, detox protocols, eventually a major diet change (going gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free), and some spiritual inquiry as well. I saw an endocrinologist and a naturopath regularly and got blood drawn every month, sometimes more frequently.

When S told me she felt pushed around by her doctor and didn’t want to pursue RAI for a variety of reasons (you can’t try to conceive for 6 months, and you have to stay away from young children for a week and flush the toilet at least two times every time you use it for that week, if I remember correctly), I found an alternative care center near her home for her to check out.

But that much enlarged is a whole other story. I can’t imagine how she’s coping with the symptoms of the disease and with a toddler. I am hoping that things go well today and that she can find the right balance of medication or iodine or whatever to keep her from falling into depression, which can happen when thyroid hormones are too low.

I have to wonder about all the time we spent together engaging in various typical teen and some not-so-healthy behaviors or if anything about the neighborhood we lived in had any role to play in this coincidence. Her cousin, who also lived nearby, wrote me on Facebook asking for natural fertility advice.

It’s bizarre to be reunited with someone by symptoms. This is one of two people who came to my brother’s funeral in 1987 and with whom I spent untold hours at a very formative time in my life. We were never destined to pursue the same academic or career paths, but it did bring a smile to my face when she said that she watched a post-Homecoming Dance video of us when visiting her parents this past Thanksgiving, and boy, did we have big hair!

Having not actually seen anyone from high school in real life since running into her in 1994, and facing a possible 20th high school reunion this year (if anyone organizes it), I’m feeling both very old and, at the same time,  like someone must have just pushed a fast-forward button.

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How has Facebook surprised you?

I remember the first time I got a message from the Bradley Method® of Natural Childbirth after my son’s c-section in 2006.

The subject heading — “The World Needs More Bradley® Instructors!” – didn’t exactly feel warm and fuzzy to my tender belly and the emotional guts beneath it.

But it was the contents of the message that just about ripped my heart in two:

“If The Bradley Method® helped you to have an unmedicated birth, perhaps you would like to become an Instructor? Space is limited! Sign-up now and become part of this exciting program to help more babies have a Happy Birth-Day!

The World Needs More Bradley® Instructors! What a Great way to help others and to help your family too!”

When you’re reeling from an unwanted c-section, a message like this is more than unwanted. It’s a slap in the face, a reminder of what you can’t do, what you can’t be.

Or that’s how I chose to see it, licking my wounds as I was.

I’ve gotten messages like this periodically for the last 4+ years. Now they start with “Thank you for contacting us in the past” or something that tells me I’ve made it onto the old mama list. Only just now did I feel like I could unsubscribe myself from the list, now that I have had a successful homebirth after cesarean (HBAC, or home VBAC).

Before, it felt like tempting the fates. “Well, maybe someday I might want to do that,” I thought. If I deleted myself, it seemed like I’d be saying I didn’t believe I could give birth naturally.

But now I know I can. I did. I regret spending so much of my energy while pregnant doubting myself and my body. I know it was part of a journey I had to take, but I wish I could have just enjoyed the pregnancy. Inhabited it.

I put on this Mommy Goddess tank top for sleeping and had the baby the next morning!

Our new family of four

And while I think most everyone should take the Bradley Method before having their first baby, and while I got a lot out of attending a “Belly Talk” led by a Bradley teacher about 8 weeks before I gave birth, I know I needed more. And different.

I didn’t use much of the Hypnobirthing techniques in labor, but I needed to have refreshed the training and have relaxed to the CDS.

I needed to have done some Emotional Freedom Technique to let go of some of my fears and anxieties and do to work through my thoughts on birth, to imagine a visual representation of the birth I wanted and the birth I didn’t want.

And then I needed Birthing from Within to take those insights further and put them on the page, in art, and into discussion with my partner.

Making belly cast as part of Birthing from Within private class

Painted belly cast

Day of motherblessing after having my belly painted, having a birth necklace strung for me and having a yarn bracelet woven through my circle of friends

There was art and love with motherblessings (with belly henna and beads), and bellydancing, and yoga, and a Mommy Goddess tank top, and I could go on about other help and healing modalities, but the point is: It took a village to have a VBAC. I drew probably a lot more than I realize on what I learned in Bradley, but I am not a one-approach kind of gal. Not for birth prep, not for bodywork or healthcare, not for nuthin’.

So goodbye, Bradley list. I wish you well, and I will speak highly of your owners. But I’m on my own path.

Make that paths.

There are a lot of emails I haven’t responded to and much more interesting posts I’ve written and never finished getting list to and so never posted. There are a million books I could read while I’m nursing, but at this moment, I feel the need to shout publicly that I am going insane!

Yesterday my son and I watched some video from when he was two. I had to cry to see myself getting a such a kick out of every little thing he would say. That’s because now he will not. Shut Up. I’m sorry, but I cannot stand the incessant stream of commentary. He asks questions about any particle of dust that falls or any grunt the baby makes. He offers unsolicited opinions on everything including activities he wants or doesn’t want to do (today or next summer),  food he wants to eat or doesn’t want to eat (now or for his next birthday), musings on when he’ll see again a child he played with for 20 minutes once at a park that is not in our neighborhood.

There are also mini-tantrums of “No!” and “I want it now!” and the regressive “Uppie!” (pick me up), and yes, those are annoying. But it’s the constant barrage of words coupled with his omniscient physical presence that is maddening. He will not leave us alone. All the baby has to do is sigh, and he is up in her grill., kissing her, stroking her head. Scratch that; she doesn’t have to sigh. She just has to be in the vicinity. No, wait; that’s not right either. She just has to be in the house and, like a heat-seeking missile, he must find her. Yes, I know this is sweet. But all good things in moderation, right? Moder-who, my boy would ask? Screw that; he’s all about intensity.

I wish I could chuckle at it all, but I’m tired. The most common phrase around here lately is “I’m just going to look at her” said with a faux-reassuring tone and raised eyebrows for added innocence factor. He also likes to state reality a lot, as in, “Oh, she’s (fill-in-the-verb)ing.” Other less intelligible sounds include “Bleah!” “Vrroom!” and “Raarr!” accompanied by scary faces and claw hands. This is where I start to remember being a little girl and thinking that boys were kind of bizarre creatures. When you’re holding a crying being who weighs less than 10 pounds, and a 40-pound freak comes charging at you with rival volume, well, it’s a little hard for this mama to remember what she learned in Playful Parenting.

So can I be blamed for counting the minutes until preschool starts on Thursday? My very social kid has a mom who, though extroverted, too, has a strong need for quiet thinking time. And since I am now a nursing mom of a baby that is getting increasingly awake, the minutes I have of quiet that do not also involve me leaning forward to offer my breast or my body supporting baby weight in a sling are numbered. The fact that those minutes are supposed to serve multiple purposes of house chores and cooking and anything-more-than-tolerating my son is posing a challenge for me.

His afternoon playdate just picked him up! Quick! Back to the laptop, Bat-mommy! Strap on the Breast Friend pillow again and nurse the baby into a milky coma, then go get the diapers from the washer that just beeped and hang them out in the sun. Then try in vain to do some of cleaning that the preschooler is so good at quickly undoing when I attempt it in his presence… Okay, forget getting the baby to sleep and instead change a newly poopy diaper while fantasizing about re-posting the stuff that didn’t go the first time on Craigslist or Freecycle or just putting it in my husband’s car to go to Goodwill. At some point — maybe after successfully initiating a sling-induced nap and then setting the baby down with crossed fingers that she’ll stay asleep — take a shower and get ready to pick up aforementioned loud boy-creature to take him to friend’s BBQ where I thoroughly expect to feel small and jealous in the presence of real working moms.

Add clean up baby’s first puke to that list and that takes us up to the present!

So, I wrote about sex, and I wrote about my family. Not in the same piece. One in a poem at Exhale zine and one in an essay in the Journal of Attachment Parenting International. The latter disclosed some stuff I’d never shared with my mom. I happened to be talking her around the time I submitted it last fall. She asked if I’d be open to sharing it with her, and I said we should wait and see if it was going to be be published.

It was. I’ve had other moms I’ve known since my son was born tell me they’ve read it. I’ve shared it on purpose with some people. And, after prepping her a little, I sent my mom a copy.

It was kind of like Facebook — it feels like there is so much pent up stuff you could never possibly get over the issues you had with someone 20 years ago. But you can.

My mom left me a very sweet message telling me it was painful to read in parts but that she thought it was well done, and she was proud of me. I wanted to call back at a good, quiet moment. But then I had a super challenging day with my son and figured, since I’d written about my having a tough time in my childhood, I should be honest with my own mothering challenges and call her in a low moment. See, Mom, I don’t think you suck and that I’m perfect! I think the word I used was “humbled.”

Maybe someday when my son isn’t whining to nurse or to grab the phone and tell her about his adventures from the day, maybe she’ll follow up. “So, you were smoking?” I expect I might hear. But maybe not. I don’t know that either of us thinks getting the details straight is the point. The point of the article is that I had a bumpy ride but came through it, and that I know I’m a better mom for having had to learn some tough lessons. So even if it’s something of a criticism, it’s a credit. I think she gets that. She said, “I can take it,” when I told her about the piece, which discusses growing up as the child of a depressed mom.

It’s pretty cool that she was right. She can take it. Not that I think she knows about this blog (unless she followed a link from DC Metro Moms once), but Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today was the first day I’d had any childcare in two weeks. There was snow, then a fever, then my boy’s dad got sick and needed tending. Today’s four hours of babysitting went fast, but when they were over, I had a supremely lovely time with my son. It was a chilly rainy day, and I decided I was just not going to leave the house. E had had a mini outdoor excursion with the sitter and the other little girl who came over, so we just hung out. After spending a week nursing him like he was a newborn and hearing “can you hold me?” and “can I nurse” in that weak voice punctuated by a cough, it was great to have my buddy back.

I have a journal I’m developing to help me record developments and special events month to month, but I don’t often sit down and just write to my kid. A friend gave me The Mommy Journal, and I almost picked it up tonight, then thought about writing his “birthday letter” a month early (I did one at one year and think I never did year two – yikes!) but somehow I feel right now like I can get so much more down through a keypad.

So here’s part of the letter I’d like to write to my son today.

Dear E,

I write a lot about you, my dear boy, some for blogs, some for essays that will probably never make it into print, some for poems and essays that have. If something happened to me, you’d have a lot of insight into my mind. But every once in a while I realize that it would be wise to tell you to your face and to write directly to you simply how I feel about you in a way that is not skewed to the side of frustration or mommy-self-exploration. So this is the long version of my looking into your eyes and saying, “You are so much fun.”

In fact, you are a rock star. Your dad and I cannot believe the things that come out of your mouth, except that I keep hearing myself or him or some cosmic combo of what we’d say if we turned into one person. This morning, your dad left late for work because he was still a little sick, and he was still here when W got here to watch you and S for the morning. You were telling W about the valentine that D made for you the other night, describing in detail the cute flowers that pop up. I thought your story needed illunstration so W could appreciate how spot-on you were, so I fetched the card off the mantel.

You then went on to point out to W that behind where the card had been was a photo of Barack Obama. It’s actually a photo your grandma took on Inauguration Day, of you looking at Obama on the television screen, and it’s pretty cool. (In case you haven’t heard the story enough, your dad biked down to the Mall that day, and I left early, before either of you was awake, to go with a friend to see the ceremony from seats right in front of the Capitol. It was amazing, but it was a long day, and I had a hard time fully appreciating the privilege I had. In fact, you’ve heard so much about my tale that you‘ve been telling me, “Then the Metro was broken and you had to get out and get a taxi cab. And you were frustrated!”)

Anyway, W asked you, “Who is Barack Obama?” You answered in the clearest voice imaginable for a child who is not even three years old, “He’s our President!” Your dad and I were wowed that you responded that way totally unprompted. (And, lest you wonder about my politics if I should turn colors in old age, underneath our pride and astonishment in you was a deep relief that this reality has come to pass and that you will know this man as your first memory of a president.)

But we really shouldn’t be amazed by your sharp replies. They come out of your mouth all the time, with joy, with exuberance, with delight at the ability to express yourself. You were telling me today about someone “offering” you something — maybe it was when T peeled you an orange the other day at your dad’s band practice. Sometimes I wonder if the Waldorf education police are going to come after me for talking to you too much or making you get too big a vocabulary for your little stature.

But it’s not all fancy words. You know how to work it with slang, too. Yesterday I wrote on my other blog about how you said to me “C’mon” to get me to rethink my complaint. But when I wrote that, I’d forgotten that you used that phrase earlier in the day looking for a colorform/sticker of Murdoch, one of the Thomas trains (whose names you suddenly know after I relented to just one of your many desires in Staples last month and bought you that goofy workbook). You said, “Where are, Murdoch? Come on, Murdoch. Oh, there you are. I found you.” There are big and small stickers of the various trains, and you call the big one the “mama Percy” and the little on the “baby Percy.” Often when we talk about real babies, you ask or tell me whether or not the baby is crawling yet. “He doesn’t walk. I think he just crawls. Yeah. He does.”

Your hand gestures are opinionated and intentional. You point, you show us a serious two (one index finger on each hand), you put your hands up for not knowing. We recently watched old video of you babbling with crazy, meaningful gestures at around a year old; now those gestures elaborate clear-as-day words. You seem to have just about perfected your “R.” I caught you on video at the zoo a few weeks ago (our first diaper-free outing!) talking about a “funny biRd.” You slow over the R’s as though you’re making sure you’ve gotten it out and have been heard. The L’s are not so defined but are still highly intelligible.

We had a nice afternoon today after W and S left. You played well while I ate lunch, and then we worked on a puzzle before having a quiet nursing time and then moving on to make rolls for school (after I got a chicken in the oven). Even when I had you on the other side of the kitchen gate so I could deal with raw meat unfettered, you happily chatted with me. What a treat!

Two weeks ago you were so ill, you would hardly let me leave your side. We were nursing on the couch most of the day. If you weren’t asleep, I had to have you on my back in the Ergo. You had a fever for a full week, went back to diapers (new pull-ups, which you took to calling “undies”) and were so pale and quickly thin, we hardly recognized you. One night you showed enthusiasm for eating whatever random food we had but then, in the hour I was out tutoring, threw it all up, your shrunken tummy too overstuffed. Then you ate nothing for two days and when you finally told us to see how your rice tortilla was a plane a few nights later, we knew you were back.

I was kind of stressed out and busy before you got sick, so I was not fully present to your coolness for a while there. Having had to pause to deal with illness, now I’m having so much fun watching you learn about the world and get excited to show me things you’ve come up with. Normally I try to acknowledge what you’ve done without judging or heaping empty praise, in line with what I’ve read of Alfie Kohn and Unconditional Parenting. But when I videotaped you today, I was trying to capture some of your verbose essence and so kept prompting you to make you talk. I asked you questions and said, “Good!” when you shared a response. (Your father assures me this does not sound like the normal me.)

Even though I hate listening to myself, I’m glad to have captured a long convo for your part. I asked what else you ate with rolls at the Waldorf school (thinking butter), and you said, “Enzymes” (as in digestive enzymes, which we’ve been taking for the last few months). “But you forgot to bring my enzyme yes-ter-day,” you added, using the word that has come to mean “at any time in the past.” I asked you what the weather was like today and you said, “Well, it stopped raining!” To my inquiry about it being cold or warm, you replied “It was freezing!?!” and then proceeded to describe your time outside this morning running down the hill in our back yard.

I know from watching that older babble video the other day that I really will forget what life was like at this point in time. The more I write, the more I can hold onto. And I hope for you that all this time I’ve spent writing — while mostly for me to keep me sane — will possibly tell you something about yourself that you’re glad to know.

I sure do love you. Thanks for teaching me so much.
Love,
Your mama, Jess

My husband was really trying to do something nice. In fact, he was trying to do exactly what I said I wanted: take initiative to get us out together as a couple. And he was thoughtful about it, purchasing Indigo Girls tickets after a drive in a borrowed car to the beach in Maine had me moved to tears. The music was bone-humming nostalgia for the early days of our relationship, for my youth, for the time I spent on the coast of Maine as a college sophomore. It felt good to emote. Visiting Maine some 15 years later (can that be true? fifteen?), carting our almost-two-year-old son in a caravan behind my brother-in-law’s other car with his wife and two kids under two, the music took me back to longhaird unshaven non-mommy days, even pre-professional and pre-grad school days.

So it was super sweet that my husband noted when the Girls would be performing in our neck of the woods and got online to get pavilion tickets just 13 minutes after they went on sale. So why did I have such a hard time accepting this lovely gift? It was to come the night before we were leaving on a morning flight for a week-long trip — again, to see his brother’s family in Maine. Leaving my son to be put to bed by a sitter for the first time didn’t sound appealing if we needed him to be in decent shape the following day for travel. I wasn’t exactly gracious in my expressed disappointment, and he was a little sad. But he got my point.

We were going to sell the tickets but never got around to it. I asked the teacher’s aide at my son’s school if she could do it, thinking that she might have a chance at getting him to sleep. But she’d need us to pick her up and take her home, and it just sounded like a lot of hassle.

Then a friend from playgroup said she was looking for folks to go see Ani DiFranco with her as a last hurrah before baby #2 came. My relationship to Ani and to the Indigo Girls was similar — the music of both had been intensely powerful for me at one time in my life, but I hadn’t followed the musicians’ careers after the late 1990s. “You wanted to go to Ani. You should go,” said my husband, who remembered my knife-twisting comment in non-acceptance of his gift.

So I said I was in and coordinated to transfer cars and baby to get to the concert in time without making my husband leave work super early. I then piled in the car with three other mama friends — two of them pregnant — and one just-graduated-college youngster who had been listening to Ani since she was 12, essentially never knowing a world without the righteous babe. We recounted our experiences with the music of Ani and also of the Indigo Girls, whom one friend said she had a problem calling “girls,” especially after the last time she saw them up close. I recalled how I used to bristle at the sexist, belittling use of the term “girl” but that, now that I feel so old, it seems like a compliment.

It was a great night and a powerful coming-together of past and present. Sitting with a picnic on the lawn on a lovely evening, it seemed silly to sell the Indigo Girls tickets. “Maybe we should just go; what’s one night that E goes to bed late? The flight is only a little over an hour and it’s not super early.” My friends cheered me on, encouraging me to rally and go ahead with our night out, which would be just a few days after our sixth (six years? can that be right?) wedding anniversary.

So we did. The short version:
It was fun.
The “girls” did look like they’d seen better days and better bodies, but their music still moved me and their harmonies still sounded great.
The place was packed. Lots of people like these women. It’s not just me.
My husband and I held hands and I remembered for a few moments what it was like to do things together back in the day.
We listened for 65 minutes and then left before the encore or even before the “you’ve been great” announcement to avoid post-concert traffic and to get back to our boy. I said I was hopeful that if this worked out, maybe we could go out more often and leave him with a sitter to go to bed.
Our son was still awake when we returned home at 10:45 p.m. I nursed him to sleep while my husband drove the sitter home, then I stayed up until 1 a.m. getting things ready for the trip.
Our flight was on time and we were in Portland by noon the next day. E did fine on the flight, was a little manic having lunch at a park, and then fell asleep in the car in the middle of a thunderstorm.
I’m glad we went. And I’m glad we’re here.

The way I talk about my sleep with other moms reminds me of being in 7th grade, or in college. A friend saw a message I sent late last night to a group, around 2 a.m. As we gathered for a craft day at next year’s preschool – about eight hours later – I admitted that, yes, I had gone to bed at 2:15, and my son had woken to nurse at 5:45 and then decided he was up for the day. I usually just decide to call it an early morning day, especially on a nice cool morning like this. But I had a hunch it might border on dangerous to care for my son all day on three and half hours of sleep. Two of the days this week I apparently missed his nap window, and he went from lovely and fun to a mini monster who was grabbing my hair, my cheek, my nipple, gritting his teeth and smiling with glee. He’s pretty strong for someone who weighs less than a third what I do. Hmm, now that I type it, a third doesn’t sound so scrawny considering he’s two and I’m 35.

At any rate, I was scared of him! Yesterday I got him down for a nap early, right as his flip was being switched, and things were much better. But I still didn’t manage to catch up on all the things I’d planned to do during his non-existent naps. And I drifted a little myself while putting him down, both for nap and, because my husband had the night to exercise, for bed, too. Oh, and I had a little bit of weak tea during the day.

So when my husband finally went to bed around 10:50 p.m.., I was just getting started. There was laundry, email, the kid’s blog with lots of photos to post for the relatives (and for us, since my son is now his blog’s biggest fan). Oh, and I had to mix the flour for the coconut flour pancakes for today’s gathering at the Waldorf school he’ll go to next year. The irony of telling tales of multitasking and ignoring my body’s needs while attending a school that respects rhythm and intentionality is not lost on me.

But my friend, too, was up late. Then, while picking up my farm food — grassfed beef, pastured eggs, real milk for my husband — I ran into another friend whose daughter had protested her nap earlier in the week, too. These cconversations — coupled with my having viewed some late-night emails from other moms and a recent after-midnight mama chat at weekend retreat with four other families – recalled for me days when I stayed on the phone late into the new morning, complaining the next day at school about my lack of sleep. Or, in college, after closing down the computer lab at 2 a.m. during finals week, smirking a sleepy hello in the cafeteria the next morning to the guy who’d been waiting for the printer behind me.

I know lots of folks who keep perfectly normal hours, laughing that they turn into a pumpkin after 10 p.m. especially now that they’re parents. I’ve been trying to get myself back on this kind of schedule, and I do think it’s healthier, but I sure miss my quiet solo time when I don’t get it. Even though being alone is part of the draw to see the clock past 12, it seems comforting to know that there are plenty of us mamas breathing length into the thinning hours of the morning, hoping to finally feel some sense of accomplishment to take to bed with us like the security blanket that got lost behind the couch.