Montana Momoirs

Before Mike’s teacher announced his name at his preschool graduation, she said to the audience, “This child is intelligent, kind, gentle, careful, and gifted.” At which point Mike ran into the room, flopped to the floor, rolled around, and pretended to bang his head.

“Why did you act like that?” I hissed at him through clenched teeth after the ceremony was over.

“Because I’m not careful,” Mike said, shooting me a look of defiance that I didn’t expect to see until he was 17.

People laughed at Mike’s antics, but good heavens – how embarrassing. And how completely unlike my child, who is normally intelligent, kind, gentle, careful, and gifted – not exactly the kind of kid who is going to act the fool for a cheap laugh.

But Mike has been working hard at testing boundaries lately, trying with all of his five year-old might to figure out who he is and how he fits into the world around him. Instead of growing more comfortable with his own gentle and quiet self, Mike seems to be testing out the personality of a loudmouth, smart-alecky show-off.

As a result, he has made a rather seismic shift from issuing thoughtful diatribes on the universe and inquiries into evolutionary biology to making toilet jokes and farting noises under his armpit. While this is, I suppose, perfectly age-appropriate, it is not exactly easy to live with. I’ve been trying hard to accept Mike’s soul-searching and support his experimentation with being this boy I just never thought he would be, but I am reaching the end of my limits.

So when Mike strolled through the living room the other morning, banging on his naked chest as he announced to no one in particular, “You have giant poopy boogers in your giant poopy butt crack,” I just thought that enough was enough.

“We don’t talk like that in this house,” I said to him.

“What do you mean? We don’t talk like that?” he asked, flapping his arms up and down like a giant dodo bird. “Or like this?” he asked as he shook his head furiously.

Ugh. I bit my lip and took a deep breath.

“You know what I mean,” I said to him. “We don’t say words like poop and butt and booger. They’re not exactly polite words.”

“You just said them,” Mike announced gleefully.

“I’m saying them to make a point,” I said. “I’m not just walking around saying, ‘How’s your poopy boogerbutt today?’”

This, of course, turned Mike into a collapsible human being as he fell to the floor in a fit of laughter, choking out, “Oh mom! That’s a good one! I’m going to have to remember that one!”

This has pretty much been the way of life at our house lately. Mike says or does something that I find to be offensive or just completely out of character. I provide a gentle reminder of what is expected of him in the behavior department, and it just turns out to be more fuel for the fire.

It has all made me wonder, “Where is my boy? Who is this person who calls his brother names and burps at the dinner table and talks incessantly about butt cracks?” Because, and this sounds just terrible, I’m not particularly fond of the poopy booger boy; I find him to be, in a word, annoying. And I’m all for pushing limits and testing boundaries, but hasn’t everything been pushed and tested?

Just when I think all is lost, there is light in an otherwise darkening tunnel. One morning, when a surprise rainstorm sent us running inside, Mike realized that he’d left a rubber snake outside on a bench and announced he was going out to get him because he didn’t want the snake to get cold.

“Mike,” I said, preparing for a fight, “it’s a rubber snake. He doesn’t get cold. I don’t want you going outside and getting all muddy.”

But instead of arguing, Mike lingered by the door for another minute, worry stitched across his face as he asked me again if the snake would be o.k. out there in the rain. Then he retreated to the couch where he sat cradling another snake, this one a plush toy, in his arms.

“It’s o.k. Mom Snake,” he whispered as he stroked its head. “Your baby is out in the rain, but he’s going to be just fine. It’s a warm rain, and I already see a clearing in the sky.”

And in that simple moment, I caught a glimpse of my sweet and gentle boy, the boy who carries bugs outside instead of smashing them, who still likes to sit on my lap and bury his face in my neck, who sheds tears if he hears a sad story about an animal that has been hurt. And I realized: this is the boy he is, who he always will be. No matter how much he is testing and pushing, hopefully we’ll always get back to this. In that simple moment, I saw a clearing too. And it was beautiful.

Montana Momoirs Column

Shortly after Peter was born, my neighbor asked Mike how he liked his new baby brother.

“Mikey doesn’t,” Mike replied, matter-of-factly.

And that about summed it up. Peter was born and ruined Mike’s life. End of story.

Prior to Peter’s birth, Brent and I were very aware of the possibility that Mike would have a difficult time with the arrival of his new brother. Mike had, after all, been ruler of the roost – king of the castle – for nearly three years.

So we did everything we could to ease Mike into being a big brother. We went to the library and checked out books that tackled the topics of babies and new siblings. We encouraged Mike to help us prepare for Peter’s imminent arrival by getting clothes, blankets, and diapers ready to go. We bought Mike a doll that he could take care of while Brent and I cared for Peter.

And in a final stroke of what we considered to be sheer brilliance, we even bought Mike some presents that Peter would “give” to him at the hospital. I mean, really – what better way to win over an almost three year old than with gifts?

When Peter finally made his appearance one cold winter evening, we thought we were ready to go. We were sure Mike was ready to be the best big brother in the world. But if I’ve learned one thing over the course of parenting two kids, it’s that you’re rarely, if ever, ready for what your kids can dish out. And Mike’s reaction to Peter’s birth was certainly no exception to that rule.

Mike, who is by nature an exceedingly curious, loving, and gentle child, at first pretended Peter didn’t exist. It was as if Mike was testing the theory, “If-I-do-not-look-at-him-he-is-not-there.”

But Peter was there. So then Mike moved onto a new tactic – testing his venture-capitalist skills by attempting to sell his brother to anyone who showed remote interest in our new baby. When that failed, desperation settled in and Mike then just tried to give his brother away – a free baby – to anyone who happened to come within ten feet of us.

Of course that didn’t work either. So there we were – stuck with this new baby who, by anyone’s definition, could not be considered easy. Like most new babies, Peter rarely slept. He wanted to eat all of the time, practically every hour on the hour. And if he was awake and not eating, Peter occupied himself with crying, though full-on, ear-drum-rattling screeching might be a better description of his favorite activity.

When Peter screamed like that, Mike would retreat to the couch where he sat with his ears covered and sobbed, “Pee-tah! Why did you ruin my life?”

Of course I was wondering the same thing. Because not only had I just given birth to the spawn of Satan, but my once happy-go-lucky, relatively easy three year-old was miserable. And as a result, he had evolved into a toddler-sized version of his baby brother.

All of the books we had read, the presents we bought, and the doll we had purchased – which I later found in a compromising position shoved under the kitchen skink – had proved worthless. All of the advice from doctors and child behavioral experts was not working in our house. Which meant I was on my own.

Which is not a very comfortable position to be in since I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing when it comes to parenting.

My first attempt at remedying the situation involved taking the hard line and telling Mike to just get over it; Peter was here to stay. But, and I didn’t think this was possible, that just made things worse.

So I turned to what I do best. I started telling stories. I talked with Mike about how I remembered when my brother, his Uncle Matt, came home from the hospital and how much I wanted Uncle Matt to go back to the hospital to stay. I told Mike about how I spent years of my life alternating between playing with Matt and doing things like giving him whitewashes and pushing him off of everything, from the tops of slides to our garage roof. What I emphasized in each story – no matter the drama or high jinx involved – was that his Uncle Matt and I grew to become the best of friends, which we remain to this day.

I don’t think Mike believed me but amazingly, things got slowly better. Two years ago, I never would have guessed that I’d be saying this, but Peter and Mike are now the best of buddies, playing together, helping one another out, and backing one another up. I hope that this early friendship continues to evolve for the rest of their days and that they will always be good friends.

I’m willing to wager a large sum of money that the dramatic improvement in their relationship had less to do with my stellar parenting skills than with the passage of time and a person’s ability to adapt to new situations. Even if that situation originally makes you want to retreat to the couch and sob about your life being ruined with your ears covered.

Montana Momoirs

Last August, I sent out a desperate email to nearly everyone I knew – and to some people I didn’t know well at all – that said something to the effect of: “Please, please, please help me find someone to come to my house to take care of my kids. For cheap.”

There were some specifics in there as well, like I needed someone who had reliable transportation and who could work certain hours to accommodate our family’s work schedule. Also, the potential child care provider should not have a criminal record or have a habit of drinking on the job. I imagined being overrun by calls and emails from people, begging for work.

But I got…nothing. Actually, that’s not true. I did receive an occasional email or phone call from someone who couldn’t work the hours I needed or who didn’t have their own transportation or who wanted to bring my kids to their house. Another person told me she’d watch my older son, but she “just couldn’t deal with kids under two” so she wouldn’t watch Peter.

Then one day, the clouds parted: an email arrived from an honors student at Carroll. She knew one of my friends who is a professor there. She had her own car. It appeared that she could read and write. She could work the hours I needed. She said she liked kids, even really little ones. And she would work for the pittance that my husband and I could afford to pay her.

It seemed almost too good to be true. So I invited her over to our house so we could all meet each other. And it just got better from there. As a child, she had loved space, one of Mike’s big interests. When I told her we didn’t let our boys watch much television and that we wanted her to interact with them while they were in her charge, she said (and I quote), “Of course!”

Caitlin has worked for us since last August. In short, she is amazing. Not only is she an all-around delightful person, she also keeps my kids safe and happy. If she is on vacation, my boys miss her and ask about her. This week, she baked cookies with Mike so that I could bring dessert to an event at Mike’s preschool. But that’s not all. She also reads books, does craft projects, conducts science experiments, goes on walks, takes the boys to the museum and the park and the library, and even draws works of art with sidewalk chalk.

For years, Brent and I have juggled our work schedules so that we need very few hours of childcare a week. But finding someone for those few hours is no easy task. High school kids are all in school. Adults, at least the ones you want to watch your kids, are all working. And most college kids have better things to do than hang out with the preschool and toddler set.

Of course even for those few hours, I want nothing but the very best for my kids; I’m basically looking for someone who is both a pediatrician and a certified early childhood educator. But the very best is hard to find when you can’t offer much in the way of pay or hours.

Over the years, we’ve had some lovely people watching the kids, but we’ve also had some real humdingers. One sitter was so busy on her cell phone that she didn’t know where the boys were when I arrived home. Another sitter left Peter on his changing table to come to the front door to greet me. And yet another sitter told me that Mike, who at seven months old had consumed only breast milk and some rice cereal with applesauce, had appeared hungry so she had given him a peanut-butter sandwich.

When Caitlin mentioned that she was thinking of moving away from Helena for the summer, a sense of dread washed over me. I envisioned some faceless babysitter so engrossed in texting her boyfriend that she didn’t notice my boys were shooting down our very steep hill at the speed of light stuffed into the back of their Tonka dump trucks. Or attempting to climb the giant tower they had constructed out of rickety lawn chairs. Or eating sand. Or strangling one another with the garden hose. Or worse.

But Caitlin decided to stay, and I think everyone in our family breathed a giant sigh of relief. Leaving my kids to go to work is hard – even if it’s just for a few hours – but having Caitlin at our house makes it infinitely easier.

I know that Caitlin will eventually move onto greener pastures that don’t involve building with Lego’s and having philosophical discussions about who would win in a fight – a shark or a killer whale. But I hope that I don’t need to send out any desperate emails pleading for help finding decent childcare for a long time.

Happy Mother's Day!

My five year old, Mike, has this very endearing habit: he tells me throughout the day that he loves me. Perhaps this sounds like no big deal, but it is the way that he says it, with his voice just dripping with love, that makes it so special.

He tells me that he loves me when I’m helping him do something, such as tying his shoes. But he has also been known to pour out an “I love you, mom” just because I walked into a room.

Mike is especially full of love when I have been gone for awhile, whether that means being out of town for several days or even if I’ve just been at work for a few hours. My absence results in declarations of love that are punctuated with hugs, kisses, backrubs, hair stroking, and snuggling.

“Why do you love me?” I asked Mike one afternoon after receiving a barrage of wide-eyed ‘I love you’s.’ I expected an answer that involved my attempts to meet his incessant needs, or my delicious macaroni and cheese, or my unwavering commitment to read him “Captain Underpants” on a nightly basis.

But instead, Mike looked at me with his eyebrows raised with no effort to hide his disbelief at the stupidity of my question and then said pointedly, “I love you because you’re my mom.”

Of course it’s not that simple. A relationship with a mother, especially as you get older, is a very complex thing after all. So I made my own list of some of the reasons I love my mom. Here goes…

I love that my mom unfailingly showed up for every one of my middle school basketball games even though the only points I scored all season were for the other team.

I love that my mom never blinked an eye when I came home while in high school with a purple Mohawk or when my brother came home with eight earrings in one ear and a tattoo. I love that my mom loved me when I was fat and pimply and wore thick glasses and had very bad 80’s hair. I love that my mom loved me when I failed, got fired, quit, or just generally couldn’t get my act together. She always believed that I would.

My parents gave me a very strict curfew in high school, operating under the theory that the only thing a teenaged girl could do after midnight was to get into trouble. But while they insisted that I be at home, they threw open our doors to my friends – many of whom had no curfew at all. I loved that my mom would then stay awake with us all – making pizza, listening to our stories, or watching movies – until the last person left for home. Even as a 16 year-old girl, I loved this about my mom.

I love that my mom is game to hop onto a plane to anywhere and that she’s a great travel companion. I love that when I told my mom I was going to travel around the world by myself, including a visit to a war zone, she said she wished she could go too. I love that she never asked me to call her. And I love that when I got home, she started sobbing as soon as she saw me and told me that she had worried incessantly about me for months.

I love that even though I am an adult with my own children, my mom is still so proud of my accomplishments. She probably carries copies of each of these articles with her in her purse and shows them to anyone who makes the mistake of asking her how I’m doing. I know she is armed with pictures of her grandchildren.

I love that my mom sends me handwritten notes in the mail or articles from my hometown newspaper that she thinks I might find interesting or recipes she thinks I will like. I love that she calls to see how I’m doing or how something went or just because.

And while these things all might sound specific to my mom, they’re not. They’re every mom because what it boils down to is nobody will love you like your mom. Nobody will be a bigger cheerleader. Nobody will be a better friend. Nobody else will cry right along with you when your feelings are hurt or when you’ve been defeated. Nobody will think of you more often. Nobody else will love you no matter what. Nobody else will think that you’re the best – THE BEST – at whatever you attempt. Nobody will believe in you more. Nobody.

Maybe Mike, in his five year-old way, was onto something big. So to my own mom, I know you’re reading this – even though you’re 2,000 miles away – and I just wanted to say in a voice dripping with love, “I love you because you’re my mom.” It’s just that simple. Happy Mother’s Day.

Montana Momoirs

My husband, Brent, and I bought our current house when Mike was just a couple of months old, knowing full-well that it was, to put it mildly, a fixer-upper. We reasoned that with a new baby, we’d be staying home a lot more and would have nothing but time to fix the house up to be what we wanted.

Flash forward to five years later. We’ve accomplished a lot, but what is more glaring is what we haven’t finished. The stair hallway that is only half-painted – a project I stopped about a week after moving in. The laundry room floor that we stopped tiling with just a few feet left to go – three years ago. Our home’s foundation, which remains a different color than the rest of our house, which we painted long before Peter, our two year-old, was born.

But that’s not all. There are, of course, all of the projects that we’ve been meaning to start, but for which we just haven’t managed to find the time or energy to actually begin. For instance, our back deck is in desperate need of being refinished. And there are the shutters and window boxes we’ve been talking about putting up – since moving in. There’s also that playroom we want to make in the basement.

None of these projects would take a huge amount of time, but it’s still time that we don’t have. I used to think I was busy before I had kids, but now I am constantly overwhelmed by that feeling of running around like a headless chicken, putting out fires that can no longer be ignored until I move onto the next catastrophe.

The list of things I don’t start or perhaps worse, upon starting, don’t finish, is awesome. Take the laundry. I once was the type who sorted laundry into darks and lights, folded it as soon as the dryer buzzed, and put it away in its rightful place.

Now I throw everything in – delicates in with winter coats, jeans in with white shirts – all at once, shut the lid, and hope for the best. I only unload the dryer when I have to put in another load. And I take our stacks and stacks of clothes upstairs to be put away only when they have reached Mt. Everest-sized proportions and threaten to topple over, burying anyone below.

And then there’s what I have come to call “the office issue.” Once upon a time, I had carved out a little writing nook for myself in the back room of our house. We have a mammoth antique desk on which I put my computer and nothing else. Today that very desk is piled high with old newspapers that I haven’t gotten around to reading, books that friends have sent me and have yet to be read, a video camera that has needed its batteries recharged for the last 18 months, piles of paperwork regarding Peter’s various therapies, and issues of the “New Yorker” dating back to the middle of last summer.

Every time I walk into my home office, I cringe. My writing nook, now a disaster area of stacks and stacks of various kinds of paper, serves as a physical reminder of how far I’ve fallen. And there are far too many of those cringes in my life.

It used to be that I would think to myself, “If I can just make it to Christmas, then things will calm down.” Or, “If I can just make it through that conference, then I’ll have time to get organized.” Today, those holidays or conferences or whatever marker I decide to use come and go with alarming frequency and I never get any further ahead on the other side of them.

I am starting to think, five years after this level of craziness began, that I am no longer that person who was hyper-organized and timely, who, in seven years of college and grad school, never once pulled an all-nighter because I always worked steadily along. I am starting to think, in fact, that maybe I am now a person who is in a constant state of triage, who is, in a word, failing at nearly everything I should be doing.

The one thing I’m doing well right now? I’m spending time with my kids – lots of it. Nearly every one of their waking minutes is spent with Brent and me playing games, building with blocks, reading books, working on craft projects, or playing outside. And of course, that brings me incredible joy and satisfaction, real delight – even when I’m thinking about my to-do list, which seems to reproduce itself at rates faster than rabbits could ever hope for.

There’s that old saying that nobody ever wishes they spent more time at the office when they die. I suppose that’s true. I just hope they can find me in it.