Time apart

My favorite thing about kindergarten so far: Kes and Elly have time to miss each other! This has meant far fewer fights between them this week! It's fabulous to once again watch them have productive and cooperative playtime.

Easy to forget...

how important I am to the kids.

Tonight as I was giving Eliana her bedtime backrub, Kes started rolling around in bed, still asleep, but frowning and said, "Mama!" I teared up. She has been testing limits with me so much lately. But there it was, laid out by her subconscious: I'm the one she needs, whatever the pain, fear, uncertainty. She's still a baby, still so vulnerable, still so entwined with me.

Even Eliana. This transition to kindergarten, as well as it is going, has been a window into Eliana's needs. Last night, she couldn't settle down at bedtime. Finally I said, "Is there anything you are excited about or nervous about?" She said, "I'm nervous about my new friends." I said, "What is it about your new friends that's making you nervous?" And she said, "I don't know them very well yet." So we talked about how she'd been through this before with preschool, how the other kids don't know each other either, and that she's good at making friends. And then she fell asleep. And when I picked her up today, she yelled, "Mommy!" in a way that she's never done before with preschool. There's just a little more connection there right now, connection that she initiates. I hope that we can keep it up even when the transition is over.

I thought about all this tonight after I left Elly's bedside. So much time is spent at this age in a struggle for them to be able to assert themselves as independent people. Our interactions are so often about them distancing themselves from me: power struggles, testing limits. It makes it so easy to lose sight of just how much they still need my approval, my reassurance, my presence. I've never lost sight of how much they need my love and I don't believe they've ever had even a sliver of doubt of how much I love them. But it's easy to forget that for all of their forging their own identities, I'm the mirror that they look in at the end of the day to see who they're becoming. It's a big responsibility to be that mirror and I need to keep it in mind. And I need to treasure their vulnerability and my place in making them feel rooted, while it lasts. This is such a precious time.

I've earned it.

You know, when I was a teenager and a college student, I identified as counter-culture but I couldn't have told you what would have made me that way. Yes I was a liberal. Yes I did theatre and played violin in high school. But that just made me "arty" I think. Other than a general sense of self I can't say why I would have felt that I was marching to the beat of my own drummer. After all, I followed the mainstream way of doing things... I did my best to excel in areas that were valued by society, such as school. I even felt guilt about not majoring in a highly-esteemed specialty.

And now? I've earned it. And I have parenthood to thank. There's nothing like maternal instinct to get a person to make individual choices instead of society-based ones.

It started small, with the simple (and yet beautifully complex) act of breastfeeding. Add in a little cloth diapering and unhappiness with the experience of having had an epidural. Then an inability to feed my child regular (read: non-organic) baby food. A decision to continue breastfeeding past a year... into pregnancy... self-weaning. Walking out of Elly's first pediatrician's office when I read the flu shot insert and discovered that unlike what I had been told on the phone, it really did contain mercury, and not just trace amounts of it. Deciding to birth outside of a hospital, in a birth center, with midwives. Giving birth in water. Spacing out vaccinations. And now, planning a homebirth and beginning midwifery school myself. And through it all, feeling whole. Feeling true to myself.

And not, exactly, having a tribe. Certain things have not moved over to the counterculture parenting movement. Eliana just started public school. This baby will be circumcised, even if only for religious reasons. I do vaccinate my kids, almost fully, despite the fact that I do it on my own schedule and not the AAP's. And as much as I believe in birth, I also can not really wrap my head around unattended childbirth (except for parents who want to put birth entirely in G-d's hands, I completely respect that). So sometimes I get backlash from both sides.

That's okay. I'm fortunate enough to have friends to bond with despite differences in parenting style - whether I'm the "crunchy" one or they are. And more importantly, I'm finally who I am, unashamed, just when it matters most... for the future of my family.

Email

Tonight, without help from me, to my parents.

subject: frum elly gldsen

hi gramo and grapo i luve you as much as 1001000
luve elly
my frst oreintashshin day at kindrgrdin toomoro

Elly did get some of my genes...

Tonight, Eliana had just finished reading a book and I told her it was now time for bed.
Elly: "Just a minute. I want to feel Donovan kicking just like you were doing."
Me: "Well he's not really kicking. He might move around a little bit for you though."
Elly put her hands on my belly. Nothing happened. She gently pushed in one spot. He shifted position a little bit.
Elly: "Your belly is slobbery. Did you put something on it?"
Me: "Yes, that's oil. My skin hurts from getting so stretched out on my big belly, and the oil helps it feel much better."
Elly (pushing gently in a circle around my belly): "I have to practice pushing on your belly to feel the baby just like Miss Mason does. So, when I grow up I'm going to go to doctor school just like Aunt Katie."
At this point, Donovan really woke up and started moving his legs a lot, and kept it up for the rest of the conversation.
Me: "OK. Aunt Katie is going to be a doctor that takes care of people's eyes. What kind of doctor do you want to be?"
Elly: "A doctor that takes care of people's babies, like Miss Mason."
Me: "Miss Mason is a midwife. There are doctors that take care of babies in bellies too. Do you want to be a midwife or a doctor?"
Elly: "A midwife. Look, here's something hard. Maybe it's his head. Or maybe it's his foot."
Me: "He's so big now that his head wouldn't feel so little or be able to move around so fast."
Elly: "Oh, then it's definitely his foot. And here's his other foot, because I feel something hard over here." (I didn't check, but she was probably feeling his butt... or just the fact that my uterus is pretty firm at this point.) "Here's another hard part and it's really big, so this is his head. Mommy, look how big your belly got. It used to be so little with a little baby in it and now it's big with a big baby in it."
Me: "Yep. I'm 33 weeks now."
Elly: "33 weeks pregnant?"
Me: "Yep. Babies can come out anytime between 37 weeks and 42 weeks. They get to choose though, so we don't know when he's going to come out. It's over a month of time that he could choose to be born. But it's still too early. Babies can be born early but then they're sick and have to stay in the hospital."
Elly: "I think he's getting too big and he should come out now or he might be sick and go to the hospital."
Me: "No, he's pretty big but he's still not big enough to come out. We all have to wait a while longer. I know you are enjoying feeling my belly and playing with Donovan but it's your bedtime. Give him a hug goodnight and give me a hug goodnight, and Daddy will give you your first cuddle."
Elly: "But Mommy, I have to do this again tomorrow so I can learn how to feel babies and so when I grow up I can go to doctor school and be a midwife."
Me: "There's different school to be a midwife, so you can choose what you want to do."
Elly: "I want to go to midwife school."
Me: "OK. Tomorrow you can feel Donovan some more. Night."
Elly: "Night. Hey Daddy," (pounces on him) "did you know that lions eat meat? I learned that when I was reading Sammy the Seal tonight. And Mommy has oil on her belly to make it not hurt from getting so big."

Early sleep

I came out from putting Kes to sleep to find Elly asleep on the living room floor with her blankie wrapped around her head. I waited for her waterproof mattress pad to be dry, made her bed, and carried her to her bed (I haven't carried her in months because she is too heavy, but I figured I could do it since Kes is only 7 lbs less). When I put her into the bed she started crying and saying over and over "but I don't want to go to bed! I was just taking a little rest!" Finally she said, "But I want to go to bed at 20 o'clock!" I said, "Honey it IS 20 o'clock" and she immediately stopped crying, put her blankie on her nose, and was back asleep within seconds.

Miraculously Kes slept through the whole thing.

Dang they're cute.

Your Children Are Not Your Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so
He loves also the bow that is stable.
-Kahlil Gibran

3 years old...

Hard to believe, but Kesenia is three today! She remains the sprite she's been all along, and her healing spirit becomes more evident all the time - many other moms from preschool, and my friends, have mentioned it to me despite barely knowing her. The past few months the fiery side of her personality is showing up more often - I suppose that's to be expected at this age. She is excited to be a big sister (perhaps because she has such a great big sister) and tells me every day that my belly is getting bigger but that baby brother is not ready to come out yet. She still has quite the hair fetish and remains a thumb sucker. (She was a mess on our trip to the snow earlier this year... the mittens kept her from self-soothing with either!) She is thrilled to be three because I have been telling her for the past year she couldn't have gum until she turned 3 - she now says, "I'm three for gum!" Oh, and "K, E, two S's (etheth) and a A, that sounds like Ketha!"

Baby update, 30 weeks

Baby is healthy. After spending an unnecessarily long amount of time sideways in my belly (in my opinion anyway), he's finally moved to vertical, and better than just vertical, head-down. He's more active than Kes was in utero, but less than Elly (phew!), and I think he's very strong for his size. Every midwife visit, he checks out fabulously for growth and heart rate.

And, he has a name. Unlike my other two pregnancies, when I felt I needed to see the baby first to confirm the name, and when I couldn't understand why people called their babies by name before they were born, this pregnancy I have had the urge the entire time to name him and talk to him using his name. Scott and I chose this name a number of weeks ago, and since neither of us have changed our minds since, we've started using his name and are ready to share: our little boy is Donovan Charles.