And then there was Sunday.

5:15 a.m.: Riley's up. He wakes me up. He wakes Maddie up. I try to sleep a bit more, but he and Maddie proceed to argue about anything and everything until I give up, give in, get up, and lecture them both about being respectful of people who are sleeping.
6:15 a.m.: I take a shower.
6:30 a.m.: I lecture M&R more.
7 a.m.: Breakfast. More lecturing. I can't stand to listen to myself even as the words come out of my mouth, yet I seem unable to stop myself. The kids excuse themselves and I actually fall asleep with my head on the table.
8:15 a.m.: Riley does something so minor that I can't even recall what it was, but it's enough to cause me to have a Total Parenting Meltdown that includes yelling. I close myself in my room for a bit.
8:30 a.m.: We do some chores, get ready to go to church. I apologize for my behavior and we agree to restart our day. I warn the kids that I'm exhausted and having a hard time today. I think they've already noticed that.
9 a.m.: We head for church. Riley runs around in the sanctuary, nearly knocking over a few elderly members of the congregation. Then it turns out the kids have chosen seats that had been reserved by someone else, so we had to shuffle around a bit to make things work. Not a big deal except on a day when everything felt like a Big Deal to me.
9:30 a.m.: Church turns out to be just what I needed. The sermon is awesome, about Ralph Waldo Emerson and our place in the world and what we learn from loss and about being true to ourselves. I feel more in control of a decision to be positive about things, more open to yes instead of no, etc. etc. etc.
11:15 a.m.: We head out for a few glorious hours of fun. We see Phantom Meanace in 3D, we eat frozen yogurt, we play at a park. This part of the day is truly great.
5 p.m.: I decide to stop for sushi on the way home. Uh-oh: restaurant's closed. We go to Mexican across the street instead where Riley knocks over a display of soda cans at the register ("Riley, please don't touch those. Riley, please keep your hands off the soda cans. Riley, I've asked you twice now to please not touch those cans." [as I study the menu: CRASH! Sigh.]), Maddie spills a huge glass of water and nearly topples our entire table, and both children complain bitterly about the food. I feel myself getting progressively more annoyed.
5:45 p.m.: We get in the car. I've lectured them the whole way from the restaurant to the car about good restaurant behavior (again, cringing the whole time but yet NOT STOPPING.) Once we're in the car, I yell again for good measure.
5:50 p.m.: I have closed myself in my room to blog and calm down.

I suppose if you average the goodness of yesterday with the mix of good and not-so-good from today, we're still ahead, but the bad of today has just been so very bad that I'm having a hard time not letting it drag me down.

Deep breath. Time to go hug and apologize. Time to read some Harry Potter 4. Time to think back on church this morning and the good things I heard there. I don't like to think the lecturing and the yelling are my true self. Time to go be true.

This, my friends, is a Saturday.

4 a.m.: Still somewhat-sick (since Thursday) Maddie gets in bed with me. She's sick enough to want some comfort, but not so sick that I'm overly worried about her or that she can't sleep. We're both glad for the excuse to snuggle.
5:45 a.m.: Riley joins us. Maddie continues to sleep. I doze.
6:15 a.m.: I kick Riley out because he's clearly not going back to sleep and he's keeping me up. He ambles off and I hear him start in on the LEGOs.
6:50 a.m.: Maddie's up. We all get up. We poke around.
7:15 a.m.: We're downstairs. Coffee's brewing. Maddie and I make cranberry/orange/pecan scones.
8:15 a.m.: Breakfast! Scones, eggs, fruit.
8:45 a.m.: Let Reading Day begin! We are on a mission to finish Harry Potter, book 3.
10-ish: Bathtime for the kids.
11-ish: More reading.
12-ish: Lunch.
1-ish: Bike trip to the park.
3-ish: Home from the park. Cookies and milk. More Harry Potter. Book 3: complete.
5-ish: Movie time: My Neighbor Totoro. So cute.
6:30 p.m.: Dinner. Totally random. Dumplings and fruit for Maddie, PB&J and fruit for Riley.
7:30 p.m.: First chapter of HP4.
8 p.m.: Sleeping twins.

And the last step will be . . .
10 p.m.: Sleeping mama.

We rarely have days like this, that are totally unstructured and involve no one but the three of us. I remember times not too long ago when such unstructured time overwhelmed and intimidated me. Now these are all of our favorite days.

Pent-up

Maddie and Riley are no different from most kids in many ways, one of them being the way they store up negative emotions for release with a safe person: ME. This means that while yes, they were very happy to see me this morning when they got up from school and yes, we had a lovely time telling each other about all the great things we'd done while we were apart, the proverbial shit hit the fan tonight.

It was the perfect storm:

• Saving up of lots of big emotions during our time apart.
• The arrival of a package from John's parents, which is super fun, but which always contains toys the kids want to play with Right Then when there's no time for much of that in the evenings.
• Exhausted kids, exhausted mama.

We opened the package before dinner (dumb move #1). Riley got this totally awesome LEGO kit from which you can build all kinds of Star Wars stuff. He got settled working on that while I got the delayed dinner ready (dumb move #1a, consequence of dumb move #1). Riley quickly got frustrated (tired child = child who has difficulty with LEGO directions). I advised him to wait for help after dinner. He plowed ahead. We had dinner. After dinner, I cleaned up and he plowed ahead some more. Then he waited for some help, but when I got there to help, things had become, uh, rather interpretive in the LEGO department and attaching the cool robotic arm was not really going to happen in a satisfactory way without some backtracking and redoing.

The world pretty much stopped turning for Riley at that point.

He proceeded to rail at me, rail at Maddie, rail at the universe. I told him that I was happy to help when he was in a state in which he could receive help. He railed some more. I repeated my offer of help, to either continue in the interpretive vein and figure something out, or backtrack and redo. More railing. I advised that it was getting into story time and perhaps it would be wise to put the LEGO decision off until morning, opting for some fun! Harry! Potter! instead.

More railing.

Finally, after much sitting and waiting (and a lot of patience from Maddie), offers for snuggles, and reiterations of help, I let Riley know that it was time to head upstairs for pajamas and bed and that there was time neither for finishing the LEGO project nor for stories.

Not really the first night home I wanted. It ended with brushed teeth and pajamas and two quick songs and big, big hugs and reassurances of love, but it was still a very rough evening.

I hate to see Maddie or Riley frustrated. I hate knowing that the frustration is from tiredness and other overwraught emotions, but knowing that such an explanation seems hollow to the frustrated child. I am proud of myself for not getting upset in this situation, but still feel like I wasn't much help. Would it have been better to just calmly go upstairs and let Riley know I'd be reading with Maddie and that he could join us when he calmed down? I feel like she suffered unjustly. I wanted nothing more than to just wrap Riley in a huge hug, but he wasn't ready for that until the very end of it all.

Oh, poor sweet baby. I missed them so much. I am grateful that the vacation gave me the grace to handle that situation kindly if imperfectly, but wish that it didn't feel like the vacation was indirectly responsible for the behavior in the first place.

Ah, the romance.

Hot (and unsurprising) news just in time for Valentine's Day: Maddie and Riley seem to have no understanding of what a romantic relationship is.

I have not consulted The Literature to see what five year olds typically understand about the different kinds of love people have for each other, but Maddie and Riley are particularly and charmingly clueless about romantic love. They know I love them, and they could probably articulate some of the ways I express that: through direct speech (we are a big "I love you"-saying family), through physical contact (we are also big huggers, kissers, and general snugglers), through actions (although this might be too abstract for them to articulate even if they feel it, this notion of taking care of one another). M&R also see how I act much the same with other people I love: members of our extended family, close friends. But Maddie and Riley have never seen the day-to-day interaction of a partnered couple, which for many children is their first resource for understanding a romantic partnership.

This leads to some funny conversations. We've had plenty of talks about who you can and can't marry and why you'd want to or not want to marry any given person. To be sure, this comes up for all children, not just single-parent kids. Maddie and Riley have both expressed a desire to marry me, to marry their grandparents, to marry each other, to marry their friends, to marry their teacher. They've also expressed the feeling that it would be great for me to marry my dad (who is, admittedly, awesome). I've asked Maddie and Riley about why they want to marry certain people; they don't have a very clear answer on that, but it certainly relates to how much they care about the person in question. I've asked them what they think it means to be married to someone, and that's a mystery to them, but their explanations come back to an understanding that many—nay, most—of their classmates and friends have two parents at home, and that those people are, by and large (when the law allows and when then choose that option) married and that it's a thing for parents and grown-ups. For them, the notion of marriage seems to be grounded in a decision to want to spend a lot of time with someone, rendering age, sex, and bloodline insignificant. For now, I've told them that getting married is for grown-ups who love each other so much that they want to be a part of each others' families; that explanation seems to satisfy them and also helps them in some way to understand why they can't marry people who are already a part of their family of origin (no need to get into the genetics just yet, methinks).

Where Maddie and Riley's charming ignorance about romance intersects with our family life is clear: what does it mean for the twins that I am dating someone whose presence in my life—our lives—is slowly become more significant? When, why, and how do I explain that to them?

We are blessed to have many, many friends. We have people over to our house a lot, and we spend a lot of time visiting others. Maddie and Riley have had the good fortune to meet and love many people already in their first five years of life, and they've dealt many times already with the effects of moving, transitioning from one caregiver to another, death. Perhaps because of all this, perhaps because of their general nature, both Maddie and Riley are fairly quick to form friendships and are quite open to meeting new people and welcoming them to their lives. They also at this age seem quite adept at understanding that some friends come, and some friends go. They express that they miss people we don't see as much as we once did (hi, Boston friends!) but they have at every turn seemed less broken up about such transitions than I would have expected. There's a resilience to their dealings with the comings and goings of people in their lives that surprises me.

All of this leaves me at a loss when it comes to how to represent T to the kids. To them, he's a friend like any other friend, and I've just been rolling with that. They have said a number of things that clearly indicate to me that they have no clue that my relationship with him is quantitatively different than any other close friendship that I have, and I'm not sure what I'd say to them to explain the difference that would have any meaning to them whatsoever. The potential for that relationship to have significance in M&R's lives that transcends that of our other friends' is great, but for the moment, their rudimentary—if accurate—understanding of the situation is perfectly adequate. I don't want to make a big deal out of something that for M&R is not a big deal at all, but I don't want them wondering what's going on or feeling confused.

As I write this, I'm thinking, "Who am I kidding?!" Anyone who has met Maddie and Riley would laugh to think that those two wouldn't just ask me what was going on if they were curious about something. I can't quite put my finger on why I'm feeling somewhat of a need for M&R to have a deeper understanding of the situation. I think part of it is seeing their nascent attachment to T develop and knowing that there is a potential for the twins so experience loss there—and knowing that the same potential exists for me. Part of it is logistical: T and I are talking about taking a vacation with all the kids—how will that feel to M&R? We've vacationed with friends before, so maybe it's not a big deal, but T's kids are older and have a more nuanced understanding of our relationship. Will M&R sense that or pick up on that? What will that mean to them? What would they think if I told them T was going to spend the night at our house?

I tend to give information about Big Emotional/Adult Concepts to Maddie and Riley on a need-to-know basis. I answer their questions truthfully and completely, but when it comes to these types of constructs, I try to keep things as simple as possible. They aren't pushing me on this, and it's my instinct not to push them. But I want to be ready when and if they ask.

In their charming innocence of societal constructs around love, M&R are thrilled by the idea of Valentine's Day. They are looking forward to exchanging cards with their classmates tomorrow, and have somehow figured out that Valentine's Day and chocolate go together. They each picked out a box of cards at the store yesterday (Star Wars themed for Riley, puppies and kittens for Maddie) and painstakingly write "to my friend" and "from Maddie/Riley" on each of them. So sweet. I'm planning to make them heart-shaped toast with strawberry jam for breakfast, and I have a card for each of them. T and I aren't doing anything tomorrow, but are going out for a nice dinner on Wednesday. You don't have to know me very well at all to know that I'm not much of a celebrant of Big Days. But I confess that it's nice to be in a relationship that gives me a reason to enjoy the parts of this Hallmark holiday that appeal to me, like the excuse to go out for a nice meal and spend time with someone I care about. Not that I need a reason to do that, but if one presents itself, seems a shame not to take it.

And then almost a month goes by.

It's no use, really, to try to update on a month's worth of activities, so I'm just going to jump right in with what's on my mind now. I continue to stew in my contentment and moments of discontentment (those continue to be mostly work-related). But the satisfaction of being where I am seems to be here to stay, and it's most welcome.

One of the last times I posted, I mused about my lifelong lack of long-term commitments. That theme has continued to be on my mind during my radio silence. As someone who married late-ish, then as someone whose spouse died, I've given my fair share of thought to the long-term commitment that is marriage. I have deep admiration for those who sustain a life-long partnership, to be sure, but also the realist's understanding that some of that longevity is circumstantial; if you meet someone later in life, biology prevents you from reaching the milestones that are within the realm of possibility for those who marry at a younger age. Wonderful partnerships meet untimely demises. Other marriages end more by choice or necessity. I proceed with caution in revering those with long marriages/partnerships as somehow inherently more worthy or generally better than those who have shorter partnerships, but understand all the while that to make any relationship work over years and years takes work and commitment and dedication.

It took me a long time to be ready to be in a long-term partnership, and I felt ever the more wronged by having that readiness mocked by the universe when John got his terminal diagnosis. Since John's death, my lack of long-term commitments has continued to grow, and I speak her not only of dating but of life choices in general. I moved out of our condo less than a year after John died, moved to Oregon months after that initial move, and have changed jobs twice in the 4.5 years since he died.

Making the commitment that John and I made to each other was the last time I felt the kind of settled contentment that I've been feeling over the past months. It's no surprise, I don't think, that the experience of John's death made me skittish. But here I am, 4.5 years later, getting it back again. Feeling settled enough to buy the house was certainly huge, and continues to be huge, and welcome, and wonderful. And my job is a commitment in a way, too; it's not perfect, but it's a long-haul kind of job that work every day to have peace with, and I make work decisions with the idea that I'll be there for the long haul, not with one foot out the door.

I'm getting there with the dating, too. I have a loooooong history—a lifetime, really, minus John—of dating Perfectly Fine but Wrong for Me people. To put a finer point on it, before John I dated either Smart, but Emotionally Unavailable or Dumb, but SO NICE! Then there was John who was smart, emotionally available, and nice: I finally got it all. Then he died, and since he died I have really dated Just for Fun. Which has been, uh, mostly fun. But I have found that Fun also gets Unfulfilling pretty quickly, so I've also dated Briefly. I've made nods at finding something real in the Fun, but nothing has been a natural fit to be sure.

But now I'm in this situation that is Fun, but also Real. Or that could be Real. This is a genuine person, not a career-focused guy who's about to move overseas or a bitter, recently divorced guy or a consultant in town short-term. No, this is a guy who like me saw the untimely demise of his partnership (although under different circumstances) and who understands how that feels, but also focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. He's ridiculously smart, incredibly generous, and funny to boot. Things are just meandering along in a lovely and happy way, slowly and sweetly. We are spending more and more time together, and talking about what that means, and musing about meeting kids. It's really great.

It's in fact great enough that I have been loathe to blog about it or talk about it much. I felt the same way about buying the house. I selfishly wanted all that goodness for me. Plus, I have that jinx-y feeling that comes from talking too much about a good thing and somehow thus causing it to implode. But it's what's on my mind lately, a lot. So I've said what I feel like I can say right now and hopefully it wasn't enough to hex it.

But just in case, I'll end by changing the subject. Halloween was awesome! Maddie was a Pegasus unicorn (thank you, eBay), Riley was a Jedi knight, and I was Princess Leia. Kindergarten has settled down and both kids seem quite content. Both of them are really into art projects now, Riley preferring to work in 3D and Maddie with a love of coloring/writing/drawing. We're going to Michigan on Saturday for our traditional Thanksgiving trip to see John's family; I always approach that with mixed emotions, but I'm always glad we go. We've been to the beach a bunch lately, and there's nothing but good about that. And then almost a month goes by, and we're still boringly happy and living our life or normalcy and about that, I have no complaints.

Language

It was Maddie's turn this weekend.

Like her brother, she was more quiet on this trip than she typically is when in Riley's company. Part of that can be chalked up to not feeling well—she's had a cold to varying degrees since starting school in early September, and this weekend things hit a particularly low point—but some of it also seems to be a phenomenon of not being so chatty when there's no one to compete with. Or maybe when I'm listening to half as much talking it just seems quiet. Hmmm.

We had a really nice, relaxing time. We started with some shopping on the way out of town, stocking up on spices at Penzey's (Maddie is very olfactory and loved sniffing all the sample jars) and then picking up some fun bath stuff at Lush (I'm addicted to the Grass shower gel and we got Maddie a super fun bath bomb. We arrived at the beach to dismal weather, but chose to hit the pool, try out the bath bomb, eat some dinner, watch a movie, and snuggle up in bed together for an early night.

Maddie fell asleep almost immediately. It had been a long day, she was not feeling well, and we stayed up "late" for the movie. As she fell asleep and then throughout the night, her sleeping habits called to my mind the 5 Love Languages. OK, I know: SO HOKEY! I had never heard of the 5 Love Languages until, oh, over a year ago when a guy I went out with a few times mentioned them and the idea kind of stuck with me. I've still not read any of the books, but I tend to like these overly simplistic ways of categorizing emotions, actions, and feelings; I find these broad ways of categorizing behavior useful when trying to identify what's important to me and for gaining perspective on actions of others that seem otherwise without any identifiable motivation.

So the love languages, for those not familiar, are: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, and receiving gifts. I put them in the order for which they resonate for me. The first two are pretty much tied as far as I'm concerned, with the second two being also tied and totally meh, and the last one (gifts) a distant, distant last. But that's neither here nor there. What I started to wonder about, as I was all snuggled in with Maddie, was how early a preference for one language over another might start to manifest. It's clear to me that for Maddie, as for myself, physical touch is very important. Even in sound sleep, that child could seek me out and needed contact with me even if just with a finger. I kept waking up to find a hand on my shoulder, a foot on my leg, her whole body pressed against mine. If I would move away (HOT!!!), she'd fling out an arm, searching for me, or scootch closer, closer, closer, until she made contact.

Riley's pretty sunggly, to be sure, but not at this base even-while-sleeping level. In fact, I'm not sure what I'd say his primary love language is at this point. Maybe quality time? I think all kids love some quality time; that's certainly big for Maddie, too. And receiving gifts! What child does not love to receive a gift!

I'm sure the Love Langauges people have something to say about when and how these preferences develop and how they change, or don't, over time. I haven't bothered to look into that. But it was nice, for two of us who feel emotionally fulfilled by that physical closeness, to snuggle up together and listen to the waves. As another example of that, we sat right up next to each other at dinner, on a bench on the same side of the table rather than across from each other as the menus had been set out.

The Love Languages people say that we are often drawn to partners who do not share the same linguistic priorities. I have seen friend couples for whom this is true, and it can be quite stressful. John and I were totally on the same page about this. We always held hands, and he was especially good at doing things for me that he knew I didn't enjoy doing for myself (acts of service). We were slightly out of phase on quality time (he needed more alone time than I did, which I sometimes took too personally), but we never gave each other gifts and that was fine with both of us. Whew. This all strikes me as a morning person/night person kind of thing: it's super helpful when both people in a couple are on the same page, and when not, it's way more stressful than it seems it should be. Insurmountable? Probably not, but nice to have an awareness.

And so I had a special appreciation of my time with my snuggly girl last night. I reminded myself of how important that touch was to her as she did that typical small child thing of turning herself completely around more than once in the night and connecting to me physically by kicking me in the face. It comes from a place of love, right? It comes from a place of love.

One

Last weekend, I took Riley to the beach. Just Riley.

I think perhaps I had mentioned that I was planning to do this, to take just one child at a time on an overnight trip. This is the first time I've done this. I've long wanted—and still want—to regularly spend one-on-one time with each of the twins, and as they have gotten older, I've started to grab hours here and there during playdates and such. But this was the longest stretch of Mama-Riley time I've ever had, and the longest stretch of hours the two of them have ever spent apart.

It all went swimmingly. Maddie stayed with my mom and stepdad, and by all reports, she was fine and thrived on the attention she got. The same is true of Riley. Both M&R had been a little nervous about the idea, and both felt like the one who was with me was getting the better end of the deal. Riley was more nervous than his sister about it all, and she generously offered for him to be the first one to go to the beach when we initially discussed the idea. I think, in the end, she now sees that she hardly drew the short straw (although she's very excited about her overnight with me this coming Saturday).

A few things about the trip surprised me:

1. Riley was so quiet! He is normally a really loud, talkative kid, but on this trip he was fairly reserved and quiet. Maybe he actually has a deep appreciation of silence but never gets a chance to experience it since he's always competing with a sibling for a turn to talk and have my attention? Dunno. It sure caught me off guard, though.

2. I am a much more relaxed parent when I'm only caring for one child.

3. That said, the things that Riley does that annoy me are still annoying even when there's not another child around.

In other, unrelated, news, I'm still going on dates with the same guy and it's still slowly and steadily great. I still love my house. My job is still chipping away at me, but I'm not completely and totally overwhelmed as I was for a couple of months there. I'm getting an iPhone 4S! Woo! Now that's news.

What's really news, actually, is that I've become a person for whom it is in fact big news to be getting an iPhone 4S. Big news is no longer that my spouse is going on hospice or that I haven't slept in weeks because my babies wake up every 45 minutes. Big news is no longer a cross-country move or a job change months after my spouse died or a six-figure loss on selling a condo.

No, no, no. Big news is getting a smartphone, going out with someone kind and smart and thoughtful, planning our au pair's birthday party, making the decision to let Maddie and Riley watch Star Wars. There is a deep contentment in big news being the stuff of everyday life. I was out to lunch with a colleague yesterday, and in the course of our conversation, it dawned on me that I've never stayed in one place or done much of anything longer than a couple of years for my entire adult life. Sure, I lived in Boston for 10 years, but in 5 different apartments. I did have one job for seven years. Eight? Something like that. But that's the longest I've stuck with anything: a job, a home, a partner. John and I were together almost exactly four years from our first date to his death, my longest relationship by quite a bit, but in sheer time a blip on the radar. Even Maddie and Riley have only been a part of my life for five years (six if you count the pregnancy).

I've been an emotional late bloomer my whole life. I'll be 40 in January. It's just now, after a whole hell of a lot of change and lightning-quick living, that I feel thrilled by the idea of being here, where I am, for the long haul. I know that change will come, and I don't wish to stagnate. But I wish to be rooted and grounded, and I wish to know the contentment that can come from being still.

Upswing

After my latest series of posts in which Everyone Was Out of Sorts, I'm pleased to report that we're all on the upswing.

Maddie is settling into school. It's clearly still tiring for her, both physically and mentally, but she seems more like herself, more settled. She gives positive reports about her days and hasn't asked to bring her lovey to school. She did completely lose her mind on Friday night, falling apart about something tiny and absurd, and she is still seeking control over any and everything in her sphere. But I can see the shift happening, and I'm glad for her (and, selfishly, for me).

My work is evening out. As many kind commenters picked up on and offered suggestions for, the issues at work run deeper than just things being busy right now. Much of the deeper issues are not appropriate blog fodder, but I'm working on them now that I have time to think about something beyond staunching the flow so that no one bleeds out. I think my job is fundamentally good for me, but it's the most difficult job I've ever had and I can find it hard to put the effort into it that it needs. Also, I've learned from this job that management does not come naturally to me, nor does leadership. I'm a slow learner about a lot of things, and those areas seem to be no exception. The growing pains are difficult, and I'm far from hitting my stride, but I want to give it more time. I love many things about my job, and I'm an optimist, an optimist who finally has a few minutes to catch her breath during the work day.

I don't know at what point you say that you're dating someone, but over the past couple of months I have gone out on a number of dates with someone and we plan to keep going out on dates, so maybe we're dating? I don't know. We are certainly enjoying getting to know each other. Past experience would indicate that blogging about dates is often a death knell, so I hesitate to say much, but I'll say this: he is a smart, thoughtful, interesting, and kind person. Being around him makes me feel good about myself and about my life, and it makes me happy. So I'm enjoying that, although we both have busy, complicated lives and so we don't see each other all that much. But when we can, it's nice, and unhurried, and just positive.

In other positive (if totally random) news: Spotify is genius; I've been running more often, faster, and with more enjoyment; I continue to love, love, love my house; I'm not ready for the transition to fall and winter; I'm hoping the recent, more regular blogging settles back into a trend. I don't know that I'll ever have as much need or desire to write as I did during my more intense periods of grief, but I miss the regular practice of writing. May it be so.

And now: gratuitous kid pics! M&R got haircuts over the weekend. Here they are, in all of their five-year-old glory. Riley looks kind of surly, but the notoriously hard-to-photograph Maddie is looking quite sweet and lovely, if I do say so myself.

She's not alone.

Maddie's not the only one with adjustment issues these days. I'm having issues myself.

I hesitate to blog about work because, well, duh, it's dumb to blog about work. Some of my coworkers occasionally read my blog, what I write is intended for public consumption, and I'm not anonymous, so caution is warranted. But I can say this much about work without it being too much: for the past month or so, work has been totally kicking my ASS. I've made a ton of dumb errors (and been called out on them by people as high up as the president of the college. Niiiiice.) I manage seven people, morale in the office is low, and I have not done a good job of helping to bring morale up. I haven't felt good at what I do in quite a while. I wake up at night and think about work, then when I'm actually at work, I'm distracted and distractable. It's just been hard.

I'm not a person who ties a whole lot up into my professional identity. That is to say, I don't feel like I define my success and worth through my job. That said, I spend 40 hours a week at work and it's wearing to feel like I'm spending that much of my time doing things poorly. Especially when I go home and deal with the fallout of adjustment to kindergarten and such.

Boo hoo blah blah. Instead of whining about it, I should be working on fixing it, right? Alas, my recent work-related mishaps are for the most part not a result of slacking off but rather a result of well, I'm not sure what. I'll think I've done a good job on something only to have mistakes pointed out to me by all kinds of people. I'll think I'm on top of something and then find out that I've overlooked something major.

Where is my brain, then? How can I get my head back in work? How can I do a better job of being empathetic to those I manage to help them to feel better about their work? How can I do all that and have empathy left for my children?

As Maddie and Riley get older (and their lives get more complex) and as my career grows longer in the tooth (and thus also more complex), I feel the squeeze of work/life balance more and more. Some might find that invigorating; I find it stressful, exhausting, and untenable. I think my recent mistakes at work are the result of simply not having the capacity to do all that I'm supposed to do. When forced to choose—work or family?—family wins, and work, which has needed a lot of attention of late, has not gotten all it needs.

There's no easy answer here. I'm doing the best that I can, just feeling frustrated and as though my best is falling short of the mark. We just wrapped up a big event at work, and this week is thus far all about figuring out just how many things got lost in the shuffle of event prep. With any luck, things will even out here on the work front in a couple of weeks, and on the school front, too. I've learned a lot about patience, at least as applies to situations, but patience with myself is a different matter entirely and getting practice in that area is just not very much fun.

Back to School Night

I loathe back to school night. Loathe it. Last year, my loathing caught me by surprise; I was quite excited by seeing the classroom and going to the book fair and being courted by the PTA. Seriously! I was! But then I went and it was mayhem. No place to sit for dinner; crowds and lines and stuffy libraries; crazy activities; utter and complete chaos. I do not say this to fault anyone involved in organizing the event as that was all done well. This was the usual chaos of an elementary school, and it's the kind of thing that makes me totally nuts.

This year, I felt like I went in with the right attitude, but I was still snarly by just after dinner. Really snarly. Like, I'm-the-mom-who-yells-in-public kind of snarly. Maddie got separated from me and Riley on our way to the book fair, which made her sob (who can blame her?), but she found an adult who helped her find me and what do I do? Neglect to thank the adult and lay into Maddie about how she needs to stay with me.

Really. I did that.

Then, as we crossed the playground to the kids' classroom, Riley turned sharply and without warning directly in front of me, causing the both of us to flail our arms, teeter unsteadily, and regain footing (me) or do a face-plant (Riley). Here's what I said, in this order:

"Riley! Don't walk in front of me like that! It's crazymaking!"
"Are your new books OK?"
"Wait, are you OK?"

Once at their classroom, I was irritated by the relatively small number of conference appointments available at hours that work for working families, then realized that we're out of town the week of conferences anyway. Got that worked out with the teacher, who was very accommodating. But don't even get me started on how generally working-parent unfriendly public school is. Wow. I mean, I know there are lots of issues to fix in the U.S. educational system and this is not a top priority, but it is a problem.

After my rant regarding conferences, I managed to calm down. The chaos in the classroom was at a manageable level, and I enjoyed being shown around the room by Maddie and Riley and meeting the other parents. We had fun reading the new book club books before bed, and it all turned around. But there were some moments there when I was about to lose my mind.

I'm rarely bothered by being a single parent anymore. Oh, sure, for a bunch of reasons, I'd like to have a partner. But it used to be extremely hard for me to attend events where two-parent households were the clear majority. That's much easier for me now. But somehow, tonight, with two kids talking nonstop and parents talking to me, too, and only one me to take it all in, I felt overwhelmed. It doesn't help that work has been utter insanity. Sigh.

But my best friend will be here soon and we shall have mojitos and debrief, and a big event that has been consuming much of my time and energy at work will take place tomorrow night and then it's OVER and work can go back to normal levels of crazy, and we have fun stuff planned for the weekend.

It feels so wrong to feel so bad about back to school night. I've got lots of years for it to get better, I guess. I hope.

Nature

There are certain things I'd worry about a lot more if I had only one kid. To put a finer point on it, there are certain things I'd blame myself for more if I had only one kid, or if I had two kids who were more alike.

Take food, for example. Tonight's dinner was smoked salmon (served cold), steamed white rice, nori wrappers, corn on the cob, and sliced watermelon. Upon seeing the dinner, Maddie exclaimed, "Oh! I LOVE seaweed!" She proceeded to eat a good number (four or five?) of salmon and rice wraps, most of her corn, and two slices of melon. Riley ate at least ten slices of melon, two servings of white rice, and, when asked to choose some kind of protein, a SmartDog. He's a vegetarian by choice, and his go-to proteins are any and all dairy, SmartDogs, hummus, raw almonds, eggs, and peanut butter.

My point here is that Maddie is an adventurous eater and a combiner. She'll try almost anything and likes all kinds of somewhat unexpected things. She has an especially keen taste for sour and bitter things. She loves to mix things together. When we go out to eat, my best strategy is to just order a meal for myself and share it with her.

My best strategy with Riley is to ask for a refill on the bread basket. He loves carbs, which Maddie could totally live without. He won't eat meat, Maddie's favorite food group. Grapefruit is his least favorite fruit, Maddie's top choice. He's a pretty healthy eater, Riley, but he's adverse to trying new things and he has a fairly limited repertoire.

If I had just Maddie, I'd be all about taking credit for having fed her a variety of foods from the very beginning and for not having catered to her whims when mealtime comes around. If I only had Riley, I'd wonder what I'd done wrong to create someone who is so limited in his preferences and so generally nervous about eating anything new.

As it is, I have them both and they've been presented with the same offerings. My only catering has been to accommodate Riley's preference not to eat meat. Otherwise, what's served is served, like it or lump it. And yet, two totally different palettes, one adventurous eater and one who falls somewhere on the spectrum of "picky."

I choose to draw the conclusion that I didn't have much to do with this outcome. I think Riley could be pickier if I let him dictate his meals and Maddie would try even more things if I were willing to take the time to broaden my quick meals repertoire. But in the end, I deserve no credit nor do I feel any failing.

Sleep is the same. Oh, how I wish Riley would sleep more, or at least later in the morning! But I've tried everything, and in the end, Maddie has always tended to need more sleep and sleep later and Riley has an internal clock like mine, which means he thrives on predictable to-bed and wake-up times.

It's easy as a parent, at least for this parent, to feel guilty about every little perceived negative or problem with one's kid. And it's sometimes equally easy to feel pride for every little positive and success. I certainly think that how kids are parented has some influence on their behavior and certainly on their world view, but having two rather temperamentally different children who have been parented in largely the same way at the same times in their lives has taken off some of the heat for me.

People often say that I'm lucky to have twins, and in many ways, I agree. This is one of the more selfishly practical ways in which I find having twins to be a boon.

And on that note, I shall now go assemble two desks from that pinnacle of consumerism: IKEA. I would make a lame joke that double the furniture assembly is a negative about having twins, but the truth is that I am one of those nutters who actually enjoys putting together IKEA's wares. So I guess it's just another reason to be happy about the twin situation.

Now just don't ask me about the first two years of the kids' lives. Those stories, at least the ones that were not already documented on this blog, are for another, perhaps less positive, day.

Struggling

John's dad has said of John's birth, "He had a hard time to come out." It hardly seems like a memorable quote, those ordinary words, so slightly syntactically off. But something about the expression on his Dad's face, his eyes squeezed shut, his head shaking slightly no from side to side, his hands squeezed into fists at his sides, made the difficulty of John's 10-pound, large-headed entry into the world so real. John and I used to say that to each other when we were dealing with something difficult, "This is a hard time to get through," "I'm having a hard time to deal with this," and so on. I wish John were here today so that I could say it to him, so that he could help me with my hard time, because I am, indeed, having a hard time of it right now.

I make no excuses for my hard time. Plenty of other people out there are having harder times, or would at least like a change of pace in the difficulties they are experiencing. I have my health, I have Maddie and Riley, I have a gorgeous new house, and I have a great job. I have lots of friends, I don't struggle financially, and the sun is shining.

Things are just hard lately. Work is overwhelming. There are projects and people and changes, to the point that it is hard for me to focus when I'm there and it invades my brainspace when I'm not.

It affects my parenting. I don't feel like my best self. Maddie and Riley continue to not sleep enough; they have dark circles and crabby attitudes and whiny voices. Melatonin has been a mixed bag; it seems to help Maddie go to sleep, which is good, but it has no effect on how late they do (or don't) sleep. I'm tired, too. We're all tired, and we take our crabby attitudes out on each other with our whiny voices.

Riley is engaged in an experiment called Truth versus Lie. More accurately, it's called Lie All the Time about Totally Dumb Stuff. Some of it is funny, like when he talks as though he's an expert on some totally random subject, but all of it is disturbing on some level. It's crazy frustrating to me to say, "Riley, did you dry your hands on a towel?" get the reply, "Of course, Mama," then look up and see that his dripping-wet hands by his sides. To my knowledge, he hasn't lied to me about anything big, but I feel like I can't trust his answer on anything, and it's an awful feeling. I've tried to talk to him about it, but he's unable or unwilling to articulate why he is doing this, and I'm flummoxed as to what it's all about. Attention-seeking? Maddie does tend to dominate my time, by sheer force of will. Normal, five-year-old experimentation and button-pushing? Maybe. Something else entirely? Could be, or a combo. It's exacerbated by the fact that my reaction to it appears to be out of line with what is happening, insomuch as it makes me fly off the handle and completely lose my cool.

Meanwhile, Maddie is very clingy and demanding with me. Despite the fact that, to my knowledge, I have never given her reason to doubt that I will return from anywhere I have been, she is obsessed with the idea that I might leave or not return. After she went to bed the other night, I took a bag of trash out to the can outside our back fence; when I got back inside (after an absence of under a minute, with the door left open) she was downstairs, panicked, looking for me. She'd heard me unlock the door and thought I was leaving her and Riley alone. She can't get enough of me; Riley, too, to a certain extent. After spending their whole lives in daycare and/or school, they both in the past month or so beg me to stay home every day.

I don't think it's any coincidence that all of this behavior coincides with our trip to family camp almost a month ago. We spent a week up on Orcas Island in the San Juans, doing nothing but spend time together. We slept in a sweet little cabin, ate meals in the dining hall, went to the beach every day, played games on the lawn, did crafts, stayed up late for campfire, and took naps every afternoon. We'd never in our lives had time like that together before. No work, no chores, no obligations. The night we got home from camp was miserable; I had a migraine, we were all super-tired, and on some level, we all knew that the next day was back to the endless logistical machine of life that seems to allow us little time to enjoy each others' company.

As a person, it can be hard for me to be in the moment; I'm always thinking about the chores that need to be done, what's coming next, what appointments need to be made, what food needs to be cooked, how I can prepare for what the next day will bring. Being a single parent exacerbates this tendency as I'm, for the most part, the only one who can take care of these things. Don't get me wrong: Zulma, family, and friends help out a lot. But the logistics of life fall to me, and Maddie and Riley get the short end of the stick. I'm constantly multitasking and trying to make chores fun. While this is not inherently bad, it does mean that I rarely feel like I give the twins my full attention, and often the attention I do allocate to them is not my best self.

This is not me beating myself up. This is simply an acknowledgment of our imperfect reality. And, to a certain extent, my wish that I could shift to an alternate, if equally imperfect, reality. I'm at a point where I wish I could be home more. As the kids start full-time school, I wish I could be the one who dropped them off and picked them up each day. I love the thought of taking them to their lessons and sports practices, of having more than 20 minutes to cook dinner together on the nights we don't have something else scheduled, of just getting more breathing room than the two hours at night and the two hours in the morning. I don't doubt that part of the reason they get up so early is that they want to spend more time with me. It saddens me that they crave that time even though I'm not much fun at that hour, despite my best efforts.

It's just a hard time to get through. We all seem to be unhappy with our current arrangement, but I haven't taken the space to see how I can try to fix it. My hairdresser said to me last night, after acknowledging similar struggles with her kids, that her mom has called this age the "I hate you, don't leave me" age. Yes, they can be sweet as pie, but they also seem to simultaneously not want you to go anywhere, but want to use you as their outlet for negativity. The literature would say that this is because they feel safe. Great. Age appropriate, perhaps. Combined with other forces, likely. It's just a hard time, a hard time.

Daily Double

Two posts in one day!

I'm back for an update and a question. First, an update on the Leapster2: thanks to all those who provided input/advice. In the end, I downloaded Rabbit River for Maddie and Chicken Coop for Riley, plus I purchased the "Kindergarten Readiness" cartridge for Riley and the "Pet Pals" cartridge for Maddie. Those were about the only games available that did not have a marketing tie-in of some kind: WTF??? Anyway. My issues with marketing tie-ins and marketing to kids in general shall be saved for another post. Ahem. So. The Leapsters have been wildly popular with both kids, and the solution to limiting access ended up resolving itself: they live in the car. Not only has it solved the Leapster access problem, but it has also made car rides with Maddie and Riley so much more pleasant. They have always been relatively awful car companions as they simply require so much physical movement and conversational engagement that we tend to be at each others' throats after trips of much more than 15 minutes in any kind of vehicle. Enter the Leapster: problem solved! They like helping each other out and playing each others' games, too, so those interactions have been positive as well.

Now the question. I never thought I'd *still* be writing about kids and sleep by the age of five, but here I am, wondering about kids and sleep. Maddie and Riley go to bed between 7:30 and 8 p.m. (Early, I know.) They sleep until 6 a.m., for an average of 10 hours of sleep per night, although often they don't go to sleep until later and/or they wake up earlier, so I think they actually sleep about 9 hours/night. Data points on other five year olds? M&R have been begging for naps during the day after two years of no napping, and while in theory I'm happy for them to nap, when they do, they are up awake (albeit in bed) until 10:30 or 11 p.m., then still up at 6 a.m., so that seems like a poor solution and will certainly not be ideal when they start full-day kindergarten in the fall. How much sleep are your five year olds getting, and between what hours?

Bursting

I am bursting with blog content. Bursting! But I have a problem.

I've been sucked into a horrible vortex powered by the forces of a too much work, stressful work, and Netflix instant streaming. So, you see, I work all day, feel behind all the time, get home, get the kids to bed, and collapse in a Netflix-watching heap, thus leaving the blog neglected.

I'm not sure how I managed to remain out of Netflix instant's clutches for so long. I can watch it on my TV via my Wii! On my iMac! On my iPad! On my iTouch! Anywhere! Anytime! It's crazy. I think it will be at least a little better when I get all caught up with Friday Night Lights as many of the next things in my queue are only available on DVD. Maybe then I will blog. Only 14 more available episodes to go.

I really do have a lot of things on my mind, though. So many I can't keep track. Many of them are parenting-related as somehow Maddie and Riley got all growed up and out of nowhwere they are doing things like being totally sassy and refusing to go to sleep and lying and pushing limits and my buttons and WHOA. Of course, they are also doing lots of more positive things like riding bikes without training wheels and scrambling eggs all by themselves and putting together crazy complicated LEGO projects.

We've been in our new house for almost two months, we've been to family camp, the kids have turned five. Five! Five. I've felt myself pulling away from many of my online activities (Netflix excepted), sometimes because I've been forced (no Internet access at family camp), sometimes because I've made a choice. But there's a lot to say. So very much to say.

Leapster2: Input, Advice, Thoughts

Just a quick post/poll/solicitation of advice; apologies to my FB friends who are seeing this twice.

Do any of you have a kid or kids with a Leapster2? M&R got them for their b-days (although they don't know that yet) and I'm just wondering what to expect. Is it actually educational? They each get one free download from the list below; any recommendations?

1. Dragon Kingdom. Teaches: letters, numbers and drawing.

2. Chicken Coop. Teaches: letters, matching and memory skills.

3. Rabbit River. Teaches: letters, numbers and shapes.
4. Shape Shop. Teaches: shapes and matching skills.

I'm not very excited about entering the world of videogames, handheld devices, and high-intensity marketing to kids, but M&R have seen the boxes for these devices on our bookshelves and know that *something* is up. In addition to tips on what to expect in terms of educational v. entertainment value, I'd appreciate hearing what your experiences have been in policing use of devices like this and what kinds of ground rules you've set. I realize that much of that is kid-specific; I can tell you already that Maddie will be self-regulating on something like this whereas Riley will be completely obsessed to the exclusion of everything else until one day he moves on to something else. But general guidelines/impressions/thoughts are appreciated.

Cliché, but true: they grow up so fast. I'm not ready for this!

Blessings

[Scene: I'm in bed with Maddie; it's her turn to snuggle with Mama until she falls asleep. All is cozy, warm, and dozy.]

Maddie: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I am counting my blessings."
Mama: "Oh, that's a nice thing to do. Do you want to tell me what they are, are or just think about them in your head as you count?"
Maddie: "One, my money."
Mama: [?????]
Maddie: "Two, my daddy, who is already dead."
Mama: [heart busting into a thousand pieces; brain wondering why he comes after the money]
Maddie: "Then, my toys, my school, my window, my breath, everything I like in the world. That's not ten. Wait! Sleeping with my mama. The girls at school. Some of the boys at school. Being outside."

I'm not actually sure where she was introduced to the concept of blessings, or counting them; if it's something I taught her, I do not remember doing so. And it's curious to me, that on that whole largely random list of things, her dad is such a real and prominent feature. I stand by my assertion that she remembers him, and not just the idea of him. The real him. That is indeed a true blessing.

Four Years

John died four years ago today.

This is the first year that his deathiversary snuck up on me. I have been preoccupied with other things (buying a house! work! general life!), and it was not until yesterday at church that I remembered. Last year, I shared the three year anniversary during joys and sorrows at our church service; I was a weepy, emotional mess, but there was no better place to be in such a state. As I sat in church yesterday, it came back to me, and I realized that today was The Day.

By this morning, I'd forgotten again, and it was not until I had to write the date on a paper at work that it came back to me. It felt good, in a way, to be caught unawares, like some sign of "progress," whatever that's supposed to mean. I wrote about it on Facebook, asking for people to share memories of John. And as the memories rolled in, so did my emotions. People had the sweetest, funniest things to share. It's not just 20/20 hindsight that casts John in such a flattering light; he was a truly great guy who was loved by many.

I was pretty useless at work today, weepy a few times and forgetful and unfocused otherwise. Frankly, for the past few weeks, I've been in a similar state. Not so much the weepy, but the forgetful. I have forgotten a bunch of things lately: birthday parties and gatherings with friends and bill payments and meetings at work. I'm generally a much more forgetful human as a parent and since John's death, but the past weeks have been particularly acute. Coincidence? Likely not.

Upon arriving home, I ended up yelling at Maddie and Riley, really yelling, about something mostly trivial. I hadn't yelled at them in a long time. It felt horrible, yet freeing. That rage still lives in me about John's death: rage that he's gone, rage about how he went, rage about the injustice of life, rage about not having something I want. It's totally inappropriate to take that out on Maddie and Riley; I know that, and I berate myself mightily for it. Afterwards, when the rage had died down, we talked about it, and we all cried a bit, me more than them.

I miss John when I don't expect to. In general, I miss him more now that our life is, relatively speaking, so steady and even keel. I'm content with my life. I'm sure things would not be perfect if John were here. But he'd be here, and I miss him, and when I imagine what it would be like, it's happy.

One, Not So Lonely

I wonder, sometimes, what life would be like with one child. I can't imagine which one it would be, of course. Maybe it would be neither Maddie nor Riley, given that I don't think either of them would or could be who they are without the other.

When John and I found out I was pregnant with twins, the doctor told us at the very first ultrasound (six weeks?) that it was quite likely that one of the two babies would be gone by the eight-week visit, a vanishing twin. One embryo had a disturbingly low heart rate, a seemingly likely indicator of demise. But no, whichever one of them it was came back with a vengeance, and by eight weeks everyone was right on track and stayed there until the scheduled c-section.

I don't want to imply that I wish I didn't have twins. I have them, and I can't imagine my life without them. But I do wonder, sometimes, if I would be a better parent if I had only one child. Would I be more patient, more loving? If I had half as many questions coming my way, half as many demands, a way to always be one-on-one? There are times when I would love to crawl in bed with Maddie or Riley when I tuck them in, snuggle them to sleep, maybe doze off myself, but I know that whoever I didn't get in bed with would fret, feel less than, cry, whine, unconsoled by the idea that he or she would get a turn tomorrow. I wanted to be the parent whose kids had stamps in their passports before they could talk; traveling on my own with two kids is just now getting to a point where a passport-required trip could be considered. I rarely eat out with Maddie and Riley alone as there is too much logistical crazy and too little enjoyment. I can only take so many hours of having two people talk to me nonstop at the same time while I try to make dinner before I lose my temper and snap at someone.

Of course I'd sometimes lose my temper if I only had one kid. And yes, having kids makes things like travel and eating out harder whether you have one or multiples. That logistical stuff is what it is; what I find troublesome is how much being outnumbered seems to affect my parenting. It's so hard to give Maddie and Riley the individual focus they deserve. I often feel bad about how poorly I handle it. I need to find time to spend with Maddie and Riley as individuals, for all of our sake.

And so it Goes

I was going to go to bed early and read, but then I thought, "No, I'll blog!" So here I am blogging and I have no idea what I'm going to say.

I've been exercising a lot, although mostly not running. I started a staff Pilates class at Reed, and it feels good to do something totally different for my body. I've also been doing the Jillian Michaels 30-Day Shred video every night with Z.

So, yeah, things are really exciting. Tonight I cleaned off the top of my fridge. See why I haven't been blogging?

We are, for the most part, navigating through each day with a good sense of routine. Z continues to be a stabilizing presence for us. Maddie and Riley enjoy school. I've been more productive at work, although I remain woefully behind on a few projects. I'm still poking around looking at houses online, still a little obsessed with the one I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. I guess I'm not obsessed enough to talk to a realtor or make an offer, though.

The wintertime Endless Cold finally caught up with us and there's been a lot of coughing among the four-year-old set. There has, however, been no sign of the popcorn kernel, so hopefully that situation is well and truly resolved.* We're considering going to family camp this summer; Maddie loves the idea and Riley is concerned that wolves might be hiding in the woods, waiting to eat us while we sleep in our cabin at night. The kids had the first of four skiing lessons; both seemed to love it, especially Riley who was on a total adrenaline high at the end of the day. Riley enjoyed his first Superbowl; interest in football remains high.

And so one day merges into another. Maddie is coughing now; I don't know how kids sleep through that. Tomorrow promises more of the same: hectic morning, work, school, hectic evening, an attempt at nighttime productivity, sleep. And so it goes, and so it goes.

*See post from January 11 for more on Kernel 2011. Short version: Riley put a popcorn kernel into an orifice that should not have a popcorn kernel in it and that while the indications were that the situation was resolved, no actual confirmation was made, so parental concern has lingered.

Then There Are the Evenings

The mornings are no picnic. But then again, the evenings have their own challenges. It all gets back to that endless cycle of weekday logistics. That seems to be what's stuck in my craw these days. I've discovered in my 4.5 years as a parent that the conventional wisdom about changes taking hold with kids is true: give it two weeks. Quitting the pacifier? Two weeks of rough times, then you're good. Daylight Saving Time? Two weeks and the adjustment is complete. Hopefully my surface-level frustration with the weekdays will return to its normal level after two weeks of fretting; by my count, I've then only got a few days left.

I got home tonight to a scene of tranquility. The kids were playing Zingo* with Zulma, the chicken pot pie was in the oven and already smelling good. I was greeted with smiles and hugs, which was lovely. But I had not even the time to set down my bag, in fact, I was barely through the door, the door which had yet to even be shut, when I got hit with, "Mama, can I play Angry Birds? Mama, can I play Angry Birds? MAMA CAN I PLAY ANGRY BIRDS????"

Jesus, kid, can I set my coat down?

Of course, I have no one but myself to blame on this front since I introduced Riley to Angry Birds. Now I'm in a position of having to negotiate media time when I'm not really ready to do so since I have yet to determine what I think is appropriate.

So for tonight, I first said no, let me get my coat off please and figure out where we are with dinner. Well, in doing that (with nonstop running commentary/input/feedback from two kids talking at the same time), I had my back turned on Riley for an instant in the kitchen, and he did something we have talked about not doing at least fifty thousand times. He moved the cleaning lever on the oven door into the locked position and the oven thus entered self-cleaning mode. With the pot pie in it. Which wouldn't have been such a big deal except it was seriously stuck.

Did I mention that I was so hungry I was about to rip off Maddie's juicy leg and eat it raw?

I turned the oven off. I mentally ran down a list of other options for dinner (pats of butter? slices of cheese? apple wedges on the side?) while I yanked on the handle of the oven and tried not to yell at Riley, who was clearly feeling plenty bad about what he'd done. It just slays me how I'll tell them not to do stuff, explain why doing the stuff I'm asking them not to do is bad, and it takes it happening for them to believe it. Why am I surprised by that? I'm often the same way.

So Riley's out in the living room sobbing on the couch, but begging to play Angry Birds through the tears. Maddie is in Best Behavior mode to make up for Riley's transgression with the oven. I'm still starving and yanking on the oven, which, miraculously, gives in and releases. I cheer and announce victory. I reset it at the right temperature. I go to console Riley. He curls up on my lap and hugs me hard. I hug back. I settle in for some snuggles to make us both feel better. He struggles to get free, still sniffling. "Let me hold you a bit," I implore.

"But I just want to play Angry Birds," he says. "Not snuggle."

Now I really want to scream, at myself. I let him play, but make him take it into his room where the music won't taunt me with my own foolishness. He's only 4.5 and he wants to play a videogame rather than snuggle me, even in a time of emotional distress! FEH. It always surprised me how much things like this truly hurt, truly get down deep for me emotionally, even though I know perfectly well what it feels like to be so obsessed by something, so engaged by something, and on top of that, he lacks the emotional maturity to think beyond that obsession to how his actions could have an effect on me.

Things turned around a bit from there. Maddie helped me with dinner. Riley complained bitterly about what was being served, but didn't cry, and heated up his own Smart Dog rather than eat pot pie. What a nutter. Oh, yeah, well, then there were the tears when we had a "race" to get into our pajamas. I started the race before Riley had his sweatshirt off! There's still progress to be made in the dealing with competition.

It's just the same thing over and over, some evenings with fewer crises, some with more. Some with none! Some with nothing but. Tonight was somewhere in between, as most of them are. It wears me out, all this, these days.

And now it's on to the chores of the evening. The trash needs to go out! The laundry needs to be folded! This is the stuff of life. It comes off as so whiny and complaining, but that's truly not the spirit in which I log it. I write it just as a record of where things are these days, how so very much there is to do, knowing it's the same for most all of us even if the exact stuff of our lives varies from person to person. It seems in a way pointless to chronicle, but for some reason, tonight, I really needed to write it all down.

*Games have gotten much better. Guess what? It took about two weeks for the serious tantrums about winning and losing to settle down. We still struggle with competition, but at a level that seems more appropriate for a child than the insanity of our first forays into competitive gaming. Also, we played some cooperative games in Utah with great success and much enjoyment by all.