Every night, we help Isaac brush his teeth and supervise Suzannah brushing hers. We read stories; sometimes we all start together, but then usually Matt reads with Isaac and I read with Suzannah, or she reads to me. We coax them to go to the bathroom one more time. If we manage to wrap up dinner and get everyone in jammies early, sometimes we have a Family Dance Party and rock out to the Ramones or Black Keys. (Last night, we did not wrap up dinner particularly early, but it was Friday night, so when our kids donned their puffy vests and sunglasses over their pajamas and requested music, we left the kitchen messes along and bounced around in the family room.)
But tucking the kids into bed is the point at which their routines diverge. Since the very day of his birth, Isaac has generally been quite agreeable about going to bed. People who insist on labeling babies and children as either “good” or “bad” sleepers would probably put him solidly in the “good” category. When he was only a day old, Kyanne asked in an e-mail if I’d gotten any sleep, and I replied, "Hey! I actually DID get sleep -- snuggled the kiddo next to me and we slept really well in between feedings. I feel pretty okay this morning, just sore and very grungy.” A far cry from Suzannah’s first few days, which found us both crying all night long. (Although lest you think I’m romanticizing Round Two of motherhood too much, later that day I wrote, “My house is a wreck and I haven't eaten anything except Suzannah's leftover fishsticks and my hair is all greasy and I'm crying all the time.”)
When Isaac was born, I didn’t even try to get him to sleep in his crib. We had a crib when Suzannah was born because I thought all babies were supposed to have a crib, and then she wound up sleeping in our bed every night because the crib apparently came coated in battery acid and scorpions. After awhile she consented to taking naps there, but we co-slept every night until she was easily a year old or so. I didn’t mind, because I figured the time would pass quickly enough (and I was right; the fact that my baby girl is in second grade is mind-blowing to me) and also because I sleep better when I am curled up against someone, too, and I am an adult. I just couldn’t quite bring myself to think of it as something we needed to fix.
(Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to categorize adults the way we do babies and children. We talk about “easy” babies and “high needs” babies and “highly sensitive” babies...what kind of adult am I? Most assuredly not the “easy” kind.)
When Isaac was born, I thought I’d just skip those first desperate nights of trying to put him down and crying because he wouldn’t sleep anywhere but in my arms, and we did quite well. I was tired, sure, because Isaac also liked to eat at three o’clock in the morning, but rolling over to feed a hungry but not-quite-awake baby is much easier than getting out of bed to do it. I thought I was doing myself a huge favor by figuring this out so much sooner the second time around, and I was ready. I was in it for the long haul. But then Isaac decided, at six months of age, that he rather preferred his space -- he slept soundly when I put him down in the early evening hours, and he didn’t demand to come into bed with us. He was content to sleep alone for most of the night. It was quite an adjustment; where Suzannah had always required elaborate bedtime routines, Isaac was clearly done with the day and seemed to want us to just go away already and leave him alone. And while I realized this was something I was “supposed” to celebrate, in truth I grieved a bit.
Now, as a four-year-old, that child will run over to hug me goodnight and I’ll hold on a little too long, and he’ll say, “Mommy, let me go! I have to go to bed now.” When I creep into his room before I go to bed, to kiss him and make sure he’s breathing (will I always do this?), sometimes he says, sleepily but firmly, “Mommy, I need to go to sleep now.” Last night, he hollered through the wall during storytime with Suzannah. I poked my head into his room to ask what in the world was wrong, and he said, “Stop talkin'. I’m tryin’ to go to sleep."
By contrast, I’m not one hundred percent convinced that Suzannah goes to sleep at all. After we read together, she negotiates for reading time on her own. I suspect that even after we tell her it’s Lights Out, Young Lady, she fakes us out and after we go to sleep, she pulls out her book again. She doesn’t like her room dark. Isaac insists on sleeping with his bedroom door closed, and while he does like his Yoda Christmas lights, I think that’s more about the fact that they’re Yoda Christmas lights, which, yes, we let him keep up around his window. Suzannah not only needs the Yoda lights, but she requests the lamp on as well, and only recently did she begin to allow us to turn off the hallway light before she fell asleep. And she leaves the door open. It’s rare that I’m home alone at night, but if Matt is at a show or traveling for work and I go to bed alone, I leave the door open and the hall light on, too.
Isaac hugs me hard, gives me a sweet sloppy kiss, and then lets me go. This is exactly why I always wanted to write about what it felt like to hold him in the dark as an infant, rocking him to sleep -- as if reading about it later could return those moments to me.
Suzannah clings to me still, makes a game of bedtime. There is always too much giggling. One of us says, “Let me go!” and the other pretends to consider: “Hm...no.” This can go on for a long time. Finally, I untangle myself from her grasp and say, “Okay, seriously, go to sleep.” But half the time we wind up giggling in her bed for five more minutes after the last seriously.
I’m quite sure this is not a good habit; I’m also quite sure I don’t care.
Last night she was up too late, and we were both tired, so when she asked if I would snuggle with her for awhile I said, “Okay, but no silly snuggling tonight, okay? Let’s just cuddle for awhile. It’s so late.”
“Okay,” she said. She moved over to make room for me on the bed, and I crawled in next to her, slipped an arm over her. She tossed her leg over mine. I closed my eyes and just basked in this rare still moment with my girl. She fell asleep almost instantly. She’s so big now, so grown, but she’s also small enough that her body still thinks of mine as home, digging her toes into my shins, flinging an arm across my stomach. In fact, when she does sleep with me, she’s more likely to sleep with her limbs splayed, twining with mine. (Alone, she prefers to cocoon herself in covers with just the tip of her nose poking out. I’m the same way.)
We stayed like that for awhile. And I remembered nights of gazing at her face, finally asleep in the crook of my arm. I felt crazy with exhaustion and love so often, but even at the time I knew those moments would pass and that I would miss them. We romanticize so much of babyhood, I think, editing out the fatigue and sheer drudgery of parenting. But even now, far away from the days of rocking my babies in the dark, of sleeping with them against my chest, there are moments that take me right back. And they are gifts -- a little bitter, but very sweet.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
Optimism and Cherry Blossoms
I normally hang out in my classroom for awhile at the end of the day so students can come and see me for help -- or just to check in and say hi and eat chocolate from the not-so-secret stash I try to have around. I know exactly when I need to head to my car to pick up my daughter at her classroom door; I have it timed almost to the minute.
Today, though, when no one appeared in my room after the last bell, I thought briefly about catching up on a few details for Monday -- and then I shoved everything haphazardly in my book bag and dashed to the parking lot. I think I beat a couple of the kids leaving school, even. The afternoon was cool and irresistibly sunny, and I decided in that moment that I would drive home, throw on my running clothes, and jog for thirty minutes before Suzannah was let out of school.
It was the right decision.
I’ve spent the entire week recovering. Last week I felt the beginnings of allergies, the telltale sniffles and phlegmy cough, and instead of resting sensibly over the weekend I chaperoned an all-night lock-in at my school. I felt pretty terrible the next day, stuffy and wheezy and exhausted and disoriented, but I was running on pure adrenaline for the entire night, and it was actually a really phenomenal experience. I spent all of my blurry waking hours on Saturday yapping about it to my husband. Was it worth the weekend I lost? Absolutely, because what I lost in sleep and brain cells and productivity I gained in newfound awe of the kids at our school and pure love for my job.
But then in the midst of all this renewed energy, I coughed and sneezed and took a lot of Nyquil, and I completely lost my voice by Tuesday. I drank a lot of tea. Today I felt more or less normal again, and the beautiful sunshine called. The cherry blossoms are bursting along the streets. I’m a girl who loves the winter, but I am so ready for spring.
A year ago exactly, I was serving on a jury for two weeks following a seemingly endless stretch of fevers and colds and senior IB orals and lots of time out of the classroom. Two years ago, my daughter was sick with a flu that kept her limp and listless and refusing food for several days. Three years ago, my son had a kidney infection that kept him feverish and frighteningly ill for well over a week. I’ve been a little afraid of March, but so far, this year, I’ll take the cherry blossoms, the cool afternoon sunshine, and the general optimism that hits me right around this time.
The truth is that March can seem like a long, draggy month in which we still worry about colds while we’re trying to shake off the last remnants of winter. At heart I’m still a Montana girl, so in my memory it’s all about dirty, melting snow and deceptively beautiful days, followed by a last blizzard or three and more melting snow -- the earliest spring days in the mountains are not the loveliest. I’ve traveled home over Spring Break a few times in the last decade, and sometimes it’s lovely and warm -- last year I jogged up the highway in nearly seventy-degree temperatures, matted brown grass at my feet -- and sometimes it snows. We spent Matt’s April birthday several years ago pulling our daughter around my parents’ yard in a sled.
But no matter the weather, late March is a turning point. Spring Break is just barely around the corner, and the rest of the year just flies after that. March is the month in which sophomores undergo the magical transformation from crazy little minions into cool, thoughtful humans who can have sophisticated, insightful conversations but who are still willing to play. They stop testing every little thing I say, but they don’t have Senioritis yet. Today I thought about my most challenging class of the year, about how three months ago I had to step outside just to breathe a few deep gulps of fresh air and put on my game face and as much of a smile as I could muster before they all came charging into my room every afternoon. And today I realized I haven’t felt like rushing home to frantically drink wine straight from the bottle or just skip that and run screaming into the woods in...awhile now. In fact, I told my husband tonight that it’s sad that we’re so close to the end of the year, relatively speaking, and I’m just now getting these kids where I want them. A week or two ago they were, frankly, acting like little shits, and I threw up my hands and said, “You know what? You guys make this hard. I’m trying. And honestly, when you act like this it really sucks to stand up here and care this much when you obviously don’t.” I wouldn’t have bothered with that line four months ago, but they’re at the point now where they might act like little shits but they really don’t want me to be unhappy with them. I sort of stormed back to my desk and said, “I can’t make any of you work. So it’s up to you. Work, or don’t -- it’s your choice.” They spent the rest of the period swarming my desk, literally pulling at my sleeves, and doing dumb things like telling jokes just to get me to smile. It wasn’t like they were suddenly on fire to write literary analysis, but they seemed to not want me to be sad. That’s something.
Last semester one of the kids in this class did quite literally nothing. He made no secret of hating school; he let me know within the first week of the first semester that he’s always hated school. He can be a smartass and a pain in the ass, but he also has this goofy little smile and an endearing sort of mischief without real malice. This semester, for some reason, he decided to see what would happen if he did an assignment or two. Just for kicks, I imagine, or because he’s been in enough trouble outside my class that he actually has to be on pretty good behavior. What happened is that he found himself with a passing grade. When I showed it to him, his eyes widened.
“I’ve never had that grade in English before,” he said.
And I’ve had a really great month or so with him. I am eternally optimistic, which is the reason I can keep doing this. But then we had a day in which he reverted to his maddening first-semester behaviors and acted like a little shit, and finally I said, “Look, if you can’t manage to be respectful for ten minutes while I explain your final project, which, I might add, is actually fun and creative, then you can find someplace else to be.” He shrugged, all attitude. “I’ll just wait outside,” he said. “Whatever.” And we glared at each other and he flounced out.
And it was easier to teach what I needed to teach to everyone else in that room, but I knew right away that I’d handled it badly. I was in a bad mood; he was in a bad mood. I can almost always redirect (or at least temporarily quiet) mildly assy behavior. I don’t really need to kick anyone out of my room. But I let him go. I let him opt out. And I let him hear that I didn’t need him, and that it wasn’t important for him to be there. Of course, that wasn’t my intent -- I was merely impatient and frustrated -- but his body language was pretty easy to read.
I didn’t see him for the rest of the week. When he came slouching through my door today, I pointed to my desk and said, “Pull up a chair -- let’s chat!” He did, without arguing, because I think he still knows I like him. Right away I said, “Look, I’ve been bothered by this all week.”
He interrupted me. “Because I didn’t do my essay?”
“No,” I said. “Because I made a bad call last time you were in class. I sent you outside because I was frustrated and, frankly, a little mad at you. But here’s the thing. That was a mistake, and I’m sorry. Because it’s more important that you’re in here, even when you don’t want to be, and it wasn’t okay for me to let you opt out. That’s not happening again.”
He pondered this, still trying to figure out if he was in trouble or not.
I pulled up the gradebook on my computer. “Look at this,” I said. “Look at what you’ve got. It would be ridiculous. Ridiculous. If you quit now. You’ve put in half a semester and you’ve got this. It’s just not acceptable to be done now. You’re going to finish the semester with a passing grade.”
He started to smile in spite of himself.
“And,” I continued, “I don’t care how much you bitch about reading. I don’t care how much you bitch about writing. I don’t care how much you bitch about school. I don’t care how much attitude you give me. I don’t care how pissy you are with me, or how much you grumble about what I’m making you do. This is my job and I care about it and I care about you and it’s pretty much all I know how to do and you are stuck with me and you are going to do this. Opting out isn’t an option. I’m going to be here, and you are too. Are we clear?”
He had an ear-to-ear grin at this point. I could have hugged him. I didn’t. I kept my Very Stern Face on.
And honestly? I don’t know if he’ll come through. I can’t control that. I can’t control much of anything that goes on in my students’ lives once they walk out the door of my classroom, and that’s part of the constant, daily heartbreak of this job. The thing is, though: I really, truly believe he just might, and that, more than the sunshine of this beautiful afternoon, is what propelled me through the blossoming streets of my neighborhood after school.
Today, though, when no one appeared in my room after the last bell, I thought briefly about catching up on a few details for Monday -- and then I shoved everything haphazardly in my book bag and dashed to the parking lot. I think I beat a couple of the kids leaving school, even. The afternoon was cool and irresistibly sunny, and I decided in that moment that I would drive home, throw on my running clothes, and jog for thirty minutes before Suzannah was let out of school.
It was the right decision.
I’ve spent the entire week recovering. Last week I felt the beginnings of allergies, the telltale sniffles and phlegmy cough, and instead of resting sensibly over the weekend I chaperoned an all-night lock-in at my school. I felt pretty terrible the next day, stuffy and wheezy and exhausted and disoriented, but I was running on pure adrenaline for the entire night, and it was actually a really phenomenal experience. I spent all of my blurry waking hours on Saturday yapping about it to my husband. Was it worth the weekend I lost? Absolutely, because what I lost in sleep and brain cells and productivity I gained in newfound awe of the kids at our school and pure love for my job.
But then in the midst of all this renewed energy, I coughed and sneezed and took a lot of Nyquil, and I completely lost my voice by Tuesday. I drank a lot of tea. Today I felt more or less normal again, and the beautiful sunshine called. The cherry blossoms are bursting along the streets. I’m a girl who loves the winter, but I am so ready for spring.
A year ago exactly, I was serving on a jury for two weeks following a seemingly endless stretch of fevers and colds and senior IB orals and lots of time out of the classroom. Two years ago, my daughter was sick with a flu that kept her limp and listless and refusing food for several days. Three years ago, my son had a kidney infection that kept him feverish and frighteningly ill for well over a week. I’ve been a little afraid of March, but so far, this year, I’ll take the cherry blossoms, the cool afternoon sunshine, and the general optimism that hits me right around this time.
The truth is that March can seem like a long, draggy month in which we still worry about colds while we’re trying to shake off the last remnants of winter. At heart I’m still a Montana girl, so in my memory it’s all about dirty, melting snow and deceptively beautiful days, followed by a last blizzard or three and more melting snow -- the earliest spring days in the mountains are not the loveliest. I’ve traveled home over Spring Break a few times in the last decade, and sometimes it’s lovely and warm -- last year I jogged up the highway in nearly seventy-degree temperatures, matted brown grass at my feet -- and sometimes it snows. We spent Matt’s April birthday several years ago pulling our daughter around my parents’ yard in a sled.
But no matter the weather, late March is a turning point. Spring Break is just barely around the corner, and the rest of the year just flies after that. March is the month in which sophomores undergo the magical transformation from crazy little minions into cool, thoughtful humans who can have sophisticated, insightful conversations but who are still willing to play. They stop testing every little thing I say, but they don’t have Senioritis yet. Today I thought about my most challenging class of the year, about how three months ago I had to step outside just to breathe a few deep gulps of fresh air and put on my game face and as much of a smile as I could muster before they all came charging into my room every afternoon. And today I realized I haven’t felt like rushing home to frantically drink wine straight from the bottle or just skip that and run screaming into the woods in...awhile now. In fact, I told my husband tonight that it’s sad that we’re so close to the end of the year, relatively speaking, and I’m just now getting these kids where I want them. A week or two ago they were, frankly, acting like little shits, and I threw up my hands and said, “You know what? You guys make this hard. I’m trying. And honestly, when you act like this it really sucks to stand up here and care this much when you obviously don’t.” I wouldn’t have bothered with that line four months ago, but they’re at the point now where they might act like little shits but they really don’t want me to be unhappy with them. I sort of stormed back to my desk and said, “I can’t make any of you work. So it’s up to you. Work, or don’t -- it’s your choice.” They spent the rest of the period swarming my desk, literally pulling at my sleeves, and doing dumb things like telling jokes just to get me to smile. It wasn’t like they were suddenly on fire to write literary analysis, but they seemed to not want me to be sad. That’s something.
Last semester one of the kids in this class did quite literally nothing. He made no secret of hating school; he let me know within the first week of the first semester that he’s always hated school. He can be a smartass and a pain in the ass, but he also has this goofy little smile and an endearing sort of mischief without real malice. This semester, for some reason, he decided to see what would happen if he did an assignment or two. Just for kicks, I imagine, or because he’s been in enough trouble outside my class that he actually has to be on pretty good behavior. What happened is that he found himself with a passing grade. When I showed it to him, his eyes widened.
“I’ve never had that grade in English before,” he said.
And I’ve had a really great month or so with him. I am eternally optimistic, which is the reason I can keep doing this. But then we had a day in which he reverted to his maddening first-semester behaviors and acted like a little shit, and finally I said, “Look, if you can’t manage to be respectful for ten minutes while I explain your final project, which, I might add, is actually fun and creative, then you can find someplace else to be.” He shrugged, all attitude. “I’ll just wait outside,” he said. “Whatever.” And we glared at each other and he flounced out.
And it was easier to teach what I needed to teach to everyone else in that room, but I knew right away that I’d handled it badly. I was in a bad mood; he was in a bad mood. I can almost always redirect (or at least temporarily quiet) mildly assy behavior. I don’t really need to kick anyone out of my room. But I let him go. I let him opt out. And I let him hear that I didn’t need him, and that it wasn’t important for him to be there. Of course, that wasn’t my intent -- I was merely impatient and frustrated -- but his body language was pretty easy to read.
I didn’t see him for the rest of the week. When he came slouching through my door today, I pointed to my desk and said, “Pull up a chair -- let’s chat!” He did, without arguing, because I think he still knows I like him. Right away I said, “Look, I’ve been bothered by this all week.”
He interrupted me. “Because I didn’t do my essay?”
“No,” I said. “Because I made a bad call last time you were in class. I sent you outside because I was frustrated and, frankly, a little mad at you. But here’s the thing. That was a mistake, and I’m sorry. Because it’s more important that you’re in here, even when you don’t want to be, and it wasn’t okay for me to let you opt out. That’s not happening again.”
He pondered this, still trying to figure out if he was in trouble or not.
I pulled up the gradebook on my computer. “Look at this,” I said. “Look at what you’ve got. It would be ridiculous. Ridiculous. If you quit now. You’ve put in half a semester and you’ve got this. It’s just not acceptable to be done now. You’re going to finish the semester with a passing grade.”
He started to smile in spite of himself.
“And,” I continued, “I don’t care how much you bitch about reading. I don’t care how much you bitch about writing. I don’t care how much you bitch about school. I don’t care how much attitude you give me. I don’t care how pissy you are with me, or how much you grumble about what I’m making you do. This is my job and I care about it and I care about you and it’s pretty much all I know how to do and you are stuck with me and you are going to do this. Opting out isn’t an option. I’m going to be here, and you are too. Are we clear?”
He had an ear-to-ear grin at this point. I could have hugged him. I didn’t. I kept my Very Stern Face on.
And honestly? I don’t know if he’ll come through. I can’t control that. I can’t control much of anything that goes on in my students’ lives once they walk out the door of my classroom, and that’s part of the constant, daily heartbreak of this job. The thing is, though: I really, truly believe he just might, and that, more than the sunshine of this beautiful afternoon, is what propelled me through the blossoming streets of my neighborhood after school.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Decluttering
Last weekend I passed along our entire stash of cloth diapers to Kyanne’s sister and her husband, who are expecting their first baby in a few months. Twenty pocket diapers plus inserts, plus a handful of Thirsties covers in case they want to try prefolds too (we gave away our prefolds to another friend several months ago). I threw in several wet bags, a couple of boppy covers, an extra boppy, and our pack ’n play, since my baby is four years old and I am just not terribly motivated to sell all of these things online or whatever.
It is bittersweet. I remember researching cloth diapers for months before I actually gave birth. I remember the softness of the fleece linings the first time I rubbed them against my cheek. I loved the whole process of preparing them, washing them and organizing them in drawers in the baby’s room. I loved pinning them to the clothesline in the backyard, letting them dry in the summer heat, the sun bleaching them clean -- those diapers were pooped in every day for two years, and they’re pretty much spotless.
At the same time, I love decluttering. It’s not always easy to get rid of things, but in the end, things are just things. (I remember going through boxes and boxes of Suzannah’s baby clothes when Isaac was only a month old. I’d stored them away in her closet but decided to save only a few special things and give the rest away to a single mother who needed a little help, and after all, our second child was a boy. And also, memories turn into clutter when they’re merely boxes on closet shelves. I’ve never regretted getting rid of any of it.) Isaac’s diapers have been stashed neatly in his room for a long time now. I loved them because I loved his babyhood, so much. But he’s growing into this wonderful boy, this kid who sleeps with both a stuffed bunny and a light saber, who wears his sister’s old purple bike helmet and loves having his fingernails painted, who wants to wear his Iron Man costume while he eats dinner and loves his “Inja Turtles” and space station. He has skinny legs and knobby knees and bony ankles and gives huge, fierce hugs and sloppy kisses.
(Lately he thinks it’s hilarious, when I’m tucking him into bed, to wrap his arms tightly around my neck and say, “You’re just gonna sleep with me.” I make a show of falling asleep against him, and for a moment I listen to the sweet sound of his breathing, feel the rise and fall of his chest. Then he screams in my ear. I am supposed to jerk upright and shriek with surprise. He laughs and laughs.)
He can get himself dressed. He can pick his own clothes -- and throw a pretty impressive tantrum when his Inja Turtle t-shirt is in the wash because, no, he may not wear it every single day. Probably I should go right back to Target and buy five more; all our ears will thank me.
He does not need those diapers any longer. And without his formerly chubby thighs with those delicious rolls, without that big squishy belly (although he does still have a delightfully round tummy), without that big padded butt I used to love to pat while I rocked my son in the dark before I put him down, they’re really just -- diapers. It’s really just stuff.
(But I admit I can’t quite manage to give up my Ergo. Yet. It’s the one thing. I wore my son in that every single day for well over a year -- well into his toddlerhood. He napped on my chest while I watched his sister play, while we took walks, while I cleaned the house. When we road-tripped for two weeks, to Montana and Minnesota, we didn’t even pack a stroller; it was just so much easier to wear him everywhere, and it saved so much space in the car. Somehow, that Ergo is the quintessential symbol of Isaac’s babyhood.)
I do love the extra space, and all week I’ve been planning to rearrange Isaac’s room. Tomorrow morning I plan to get up, pour myself a cup of coffee, and move some things around. Isaac isn’t a baby anymore, and while I deeply loved every moment of his babyhood, I can’t get enough of the goofy, affectionate little boy he is. Last Saturday, as soon as I waved goodbye to Kyanne and her sister and brother-in-law, I turned around and saw a project. Matt convinced me to wait until this weekend -- my plan involves touch-up paint and moving some tightly-secured shelves -- but I’m ready.
And anyway, Lent is the season for letting go. It seems appropriate.
It is bittersweet. I remember researching cloth diapers for months before I actually gave birth. I remember the softness of the fleece linings the first time I rubbed them against my cheek. I loved the whole process of preparing them, washing them and organizing them in drawers in the baby’s room. I loved pinning them to the clothesline in the backyard, letting them dry in the summer heat, the sun bleaching them clean -- those diapers were pooped in every day for two years, and they’re pretty much spotless.
At the same time, I love decluttering. It’s not always easy to get rid of things, but in the end, things are just things. (I remember going through boxes and boxes of Suzannah’s baby clothes when Isaac was only a month old. I’d stored them away in her closet but decided to save only a few special things and give the rest away to a single mother who needed a little help, and after all, our second child was a boy. And also, memories turn into clutter when they’re merely boxes on closet shelves. I’ve never regretted getting rid of any of it.) Isaac’s diapers have been stashed neatly in his room for a long time now. I loved them because I loved his babyhood, so much. But he’s growing into this wonderful boy, this kid who sleeps with both a stuffed bunny and a light saber, who wears his sister’s old purple bike helmet and loves having his fingernails painted, who wants to wear his Iron Man costume while he eats dinner and loves his “Inja Turtles” and space station. He has skinny legs and knobby knees and bony ankles and gives huge, fierce hugs and sloppy kisses.
(Lately he thinks it’s hilarious, when I’m tucking him into bed, to wrap his arms tightly around my neck and say, “You’re just gonna sleep with me.” I make a show of falling asleep against him, and for a moment I listen to the sweet sound of his breathing, feel the rise and fall of his chest. Then he screams in my ear. I am supposed to jerk upright and shriek with surprise. He laughs and laughs.)
He can get himself dressed. He can pick his own clothes -- and throw a pretty impressive tantrum when his Inja Turtle t-shirt is in the wash because, no, he may not wear it every single day. Probably I should go right back to Target and buy five more; all our ears will thank me.
He does not need those diapers any longer. And without his formerly chubby thighs with those delicious rolls, without that big squishy belly (although he does still have a delightfully round tummy), without that big padded butt I used to love to pat while I rocked my son in the dark before I put him down, they’re really just -- diapers. It’s really just stuff.
(But I admit I can’t quite manage to give up my Ergo. Yet. It’s the one thing. I wore my son in that every single day for well over a year -- well into his toddlerhood. He napped on my chest while I watched his sister play, while we took walks, while I cleaned the house. When we road-tripped for two weeks, to Montana and Minnesota, we didn’t even pack a stroller; it was just so much easier to wear him everywhere, and it saved so much space in the car. Somehow, that Ergo is the quintessential symbol of Isaac’s babyhood.)
I do love the extra space, and all week I’ve been planning to rearrange Isaac’s room. Tomorrow morning I plan to get up, pour myself a cup of coffee, and move some things around. Isaac isn’t a baby anymore, and while I deeply loved every moment of his babyhood, I can’t get enough of the goofy, affectionate little boy he is. Last Saturday, as soon as I waved goodbye to Kyanne and her sister and brother-in-law, I turned around and saw a project. Matt convinced me to wait until this weekend -- my plan involves touch-up paint and moving some tightly-secured shelves -- but I’m ready.
And anyway, Lent is the season for letting go. It seems appropriate.
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