Does Tu Plus Tu Equal Trouble?

Music coaxes them off the couch, smiles pulled from furrowed brows.

“Dance!” Dylan exclaims, making Abbey laugh with his now infamous “squat move”, deep knee bends with an ear-to-ear grin on his face.

Abbey’s movements are more erratic, soft and fluid one moment, frantic and silly the next.

“That’s a pirouette, Mommy,” she informs me, spinning on one leg, unbalanced and giggling, her pronunciation slightly more impressive than her technique.

Our dance parties spontaneously add life to our days, rainy mornings when we’re stuck in pajamas for too long, afternoons when Dylan’s nap crowds into the slight space between rest and the craziness of dinnertime.

We dance with abandon, spinning and shimmying and falling in laughter.

“I learned that at dance, Mommy,” Abbey confides every once in a while, and my heart sighs in happiness that she enjoys her classes, that she looks forward to them, that she walks into the dance studio comfortably and with only a slight hint of shyness.

Later, I settle down to watch a train wreck of a reality show I should be ashamed to admit watching. 

Dance Moms might be the first reality show that has actually induced nausea as I watched, and I watched the entire first season of Jersey Shore. 

Something about the combination of the overbearing dance teacher, the competitive moms, the little girls in full make-up and earrings at their dance classes, not competitions or performances,brings tears to my eyes.

And while I realize this show is an exaggerated version of some crazy reality designed to invoke strong reactions, a sliver of doubt pushes into my consciousness.

I loved my dance classes as a child and teenager, but despite dancing at a non-competitive studio, there were jealousies and body image issues, hurt feelings and worries of inadequacy.

I can remember fervently wishing I could reverse my body’s earlier-than-average development, uncomfortable in a body that wasn’t the sleek and lithe ideal of my dance teacher.

Thinking of Abbey ever feeling that way makes me cringe in pain.

But she expressed an interest in dance, and I thought it would be a perfect activity for her to ease into socializing with other kids without me present. 

At dance, she can work alongside other students, quietly getting comfortable with the other girls.  She can smile shyly and link hands and dance around the room without saying more than a word or two.

She always asks to go to class and always reiterates how much fun she has with her beloved teacher and her friends.

For now, I will choose to turn off Dance Moms.

I will focus on this season’s dancers on So You Think You Can Dance, young women with powerful legs and unbelievable extension and the ability to transform music into something tangible and magical.

I will focus on my own positive memories of my first pointe shoes and going to dance camp on a college campus and the way I still remember little bits and pieces of music and body positions and the feeling of a swirling skirt on stage.

I will focus on our afternoon dance parties, when music twists impatience into laughter.

For now, we will dance.

dance moves 

my first dance recital

I'm on the far right

the girl on the far left?

that's my roommate, both at dance camp and our freshman year of college

we never went to school together and wouldn't have met without dance

and I never would have traded her friendship, not even for slower developing breasts

The Other Side of the Door

Summer winds down and school looms on the horizon, sharpened pencils waiting to etch names onto crisp paper, colorful Flair pens doodling in the margins, backpacks overwhelming small frames.  The first day of school holds the promise of a fresh start, anticipation and excitement hanging in the air, hiding behind shy smiles and jokes between friends.

I’ve faced the first day of school as a student, moving from decorated cardboard supply boxes and kitten adorned Trapper Keepers to overpriced college textbooks and reams and reams of lined paper soon to be covered in notes and doodles and office hours.

As a teacher, I started a few weeks before the students, carefully choosing fabric for my bulletin boards, buying supplies in bulk, rearranging my classroom too many times in anticipation of group work and testing and access to different areas in the room.

This year, the first day of school looms, and I’m wavering between excitement and denial from moment to moment.

This year is the first year I am facing back to school as a mother.

Abbey is going to preschool.

She is beyond thrilled to be starting school next month.  A small smile spreads into a grin on her little face when she talks about it.  Lately, she wants to play teacher and student, a game that works out better when she doesn’t try to include Dylan as a student.

I am thrilled for her.  She loves stories and writing and playing games and dress-up and pretend.  I watch her attempting to write letters and carefully counting, and I can picture her in a classroom, sitting at an impossibly small chair, a pencil clutched in her hand.

My mental picture expands, seeing the other children in her class, and I feel my stomach tighten with worry.

Slow to warm up to new people and new situations, will her new classmates be kind?  What if they mistake her hesitation for disinterest?  Will her teacher understand that she grows quiet and retreats to the periphery out of shyness and not defiance?  When her voice drops to a whisper, will someone lean in to hear her, encouraging her lovely voice to speak more confidently?

Helping her make this transition is part of my job; I know I need to happily urge her forward into this new phase.

Yet as the summer days drift closer to fall, I find myself reaching for her hand more than necessary, catching her eye to bestow an extra smile, reminding her of how much I love her, hugging her eleventy-billion times each day. 

I yearn to envelop her with all of my love, to make that love tangible to tuck away in a pocket of her backpack, comforting her throughout the day.

I have been a student.  I have been a teacher.

This year, I am a mother, and for the first time, I will be on the other side of the classroom door when the bell signals the beginning of class.

But I will be waiting for her at the end of the day, my arms and heart ready to welcome her home.

going to dance with her little backpack

she's going to look so funny with a regular backpack!

today I'm pouring my heart out about Abbey starting school

come back tomorrow when I talk about a part of back to school that ALWAYS gets me excited...the shopping!

Too Many Cooks

Rumbling constantly, the air conditioning attempts to keep both the heat and humidity at bay, but they manage to seep in through the tired bones of our eighty year old home.  My narrow galley kitchen absorbs the heat like a sponge, challenging me to attempt a meal in the oven.
 

Carefully strategizing, I plan for the week, grasping for ideas that use the crock pot or waffle iron or any other appliance that doesn’t add to the thin layer of sweat that follows us inside after a killer game of hopscotch.

Even lifting the crockpot to shred the chicken filling for our tacos emits enough heat that I rewrap my hair into a ponytail.

Abbey and Dylan are pulling pots and Tupperware out of cupboards to cook at my feet, carpeting the already-miniscule floor with an obstacle course of stainless steel and brightly colored lids.

Abbey pulls open the refrigerator for her water.

I twist around her to grab the salsa.

Dylan pulls open the drawer for a box of macaroni and cheese to shake around and hide in an unrelated cupboard.

I step over him to pull out the taco shells.

Irrationally, my eyes fill with tears.

I dream of an open kitchen, flowing into a dining room or living room where Abbey and Dylan could play, within eyesight but safely out of the way of the hot stovetop.

I dream of a fenced-in yard, far from the main street on which we’re now situated.

I dream of a little desk in a little cubby, where I can write and plan and organize my thoughts when the kids are in bed and Ryan is studying.

I wipe the tears before they fall; these dreams are out of reach for now.  With the plummeting house values and my lack of income, moving won’t be a realistic “to-do” on our list for at least a few years.

Weeks go by when I don’t worry about the shrinking walls, though the overwhelming amount of kids’ stuff needs to be addressed soon, but there are days it consumes me.  I worry that I’m being selfish, sacrificing a job that may have helped us to move sooner. 

Will they resent our miniscule backyard?  Our cramped kitchen?  The way I freak out the moment they get a little too close to the street, cars dangerously close to the curb?

Then Abbey pulls me over to her easel, dragging her little stool in her other hand.

“Mommy.  I LOVE our house,” she exclaims dramatically, without cause or explanation.

My worries will return, but in that moment, I am at peace with our home, even if our house could use some work.

because there's nothing like crushed Cheerio dust to add a little fun to a crowded kitchen

two oven mitts - she means business

pouring my heart out with Shell!

The Rubber Band

As I prepared to leave my teaching job to stay home with Abbey, eight months pregnant with Dylan, I was so certain that some of my mommy guilt would be alleviated.

I just knew that after spending so many waking moments with them, I would be comfortable, if not eager, to leave my children with Ryan, with my parents, with the mailman if necessary, to spend time with other adults, to enjoy dinners with my girlfriends, to have some alone time.

I was wrong.  As silly as it may seem, it’s more difficult for me to leave them now.

Ryan and I occasionally have date nights; we’ve even left the munchkins overnight with Grandma and Grandpa.  Regular runs keep my sanity and sugar junkie tendencies in check.  However, most of the time, the kids are sleeping during those outings.

During the day, I may close my eyes and think about how lovely it would be to sit alone at a little table, my laptop in front of me, my tattered writer’s notebook next to my (still warm) coffee.  I may close my eyes and think about how lovely it would be to close the bathroom door when I use the facilities.

Excited to have a few hours to myself a few times a year, I schedule my hair appointments and thumb through magazines looking for hair inspiration.

Monthly dinners with girlfriends are scheduled over e-mail, and I mentally evaluate my closest for something appropriate to wear.

Walking to my car, I feel light, literally, without snacks and straw cups crowding my purse, only myself to buckle safely into the car.

I turn the radio a little louder than I would with the kids in the car, not worrying about what comes out of the speakers.

Backing down the driveway, I feel it begin.  An uncomfortable feeling, housed somewhere between my heart and my stomach.  The lightness I feel suddenly seems too light, wrong, disorienting. 

It’s as though there’s a rubber band connecting me to Abbey and Dylan.  When we’re at home, I don’t feel it, but as we’re separated, it begins to stretch, and I feel as though part of me is missing.  That invisible band is what drives me to check my cell phone obsessively when I’m away from them, what made it impossible to stop the tears as our plane taxied on the runway on our way to Vegas.

I know, rationally, that part of raising our kids means developing independent little people.  Independent little people who do not bring their mommy with them to pre-school or their first school dances or their first fraternity party.

I need to work on stretching that rubber band.

Soon.  I’ll work on that soon.

He's Full of Surprises

Pregnant, coloring at the dining room table with Abbey, I worried.

Somehow, I had made it through the ultrasound without caving and begging the technician to tell us the sex of our healthy baby.  After finding out with Abbey, Ryan and I had agreed that this baby would be a surprise.

But now, coloring at the table with my relatively calm daughter, I worried.

I was scared to have a boy.

I wanted a son.  A little guy to look up to Ryan and wear preppy clothes and tattered baseball caps.  A grown man to dance with as a mother of the groom.

Still, I was scared to have a boy.

My own childhood was filled with dance classes and days spent at the library devouring books and playing school in my room next to my canopy bed.  I loved skirts that twirled in circles.  I didn't like bugs or dirt.

What would I do with a boy?

Of course, I fell in love with him the moment I met him.

There's nothing sweeter than the ten times a day he stops what he's doing to come hug me and bestow one or two or seven slobbery kisses on me before returning to wreck havoc on the house.

Little plaid shirts and sweater vests and khaki shorts catch my eye nearly as much as tulle skirts and hand-crafted headbands.

Still, he proves daily that my fears weren't unfounded.  He presses every button within reach and loads the DVD player with any CD or DVD he manages to find around the house.  We've strategically positioned three gates and could use at least one more.  Our chosen cupboard locks stop him for approximately eight seconds when he decides to open them.  He gleefully runs anywhere he shouldn't and has an inner device that leads him to drinking fountains and doors he can open himself.

I worry when I take him places, because he's notoriously unpredictable and not quiet about his preferences.

Waiting for Abbey's recital to start, he climbed up and down and up and down the wide steps of the auditorium.  Ryan and my dad were on alert that they would likely spend the majority of the show in the hall with Dylan.  Trying to get him to sit on my lap when the lights dimmed elicited his loudest vocal protests, and even his beloved Cheerios did little to distract him from the thought of climbing those stairs again.

Then the music started, the lights shone on the dancers, throwing rainbows off their sequined costumes, and he leaned against me, mesmerized.  Later, as Ryan held him, snack cup still clenched in one hand, I was amazed.  He craned his head to get a better view.  He spontaneously clapped during performances.  He didn't have to leave the theater until he went home at intermission.

Maybe boys aren't so scary after all.

not scared of Colleen's play structure at all

The Shop is Closed

A year.

Before he was born, I made a conscious decision to breastfeed Dylan for a full year if at all possible. 

My breastfeeding experience with Abbey went as well as could be expected, considering my pumping option at work was a dirty supply closet attached to a friend's classroom or under my desk, with the blinds closed, posterboards on the windows on my two hallway doors, chatting with a friend whose desk was housed in my classroom.

I ended up supplementing with formula for daytime feedings.

Since I wouldn't be working outside of the home when I had Dylan, exclusively breastfeeding until he was ready for cow's milk seemed like a reasonable goal, a good fit for our family.

There were times I questioned the decision.  He (mostly) rejected bottles and always rejected nursing covers or blankets or anything that might have added discretion to his feedings.  Since we were often out and about, I was a virtual National Geographic mother (sorry Metro Detroit.)

But in the chaos of having a two-year old and an itty bitty baby, nursing became the eye of the storm for Dylan and me.  It was the time when we were able to carve out some mother-child alone time, even in the middle of a playdate or a shopping trip.  Abbey would sometimes share the moment, listening to a book on the couch with us or just snuggling into my free side, her head on my shoulder.

As his one-year birthday drew near, and he discovered the wonder of solid foods, his feedings naturally decreased.  I groaned about his middle of the night feeding but privately cherished the moments we had alone in a silent house, his sleepy gulps of milk comforting him back to sleep.

It hurt to drop that feeding.

I held onto his final feeding, before bed, until he was fourteen months.  I used his follow-up appointment to his surgery as an end date, and shed tears at that final feeding.

He's our last baby, so that final feeding was truly the final feeding.

He is still a hugger and a kisser and a snuggler and a giggler, so there are plently of moments of closeness to savor and appreciate.  I try to remember that when I look back on those early feedings, when I was the only person who mattered for just a few minutes.

This milk buffet is closed, and some days I feel a little sad about that.

his daddy 

his favorite books 

his sippy of water