Reasons Like Seasons

I'm at the park, again, and the breeze is soft and warm. Boy Two is wandering around with only one shoe, a green monster truck clenched in each hand. Boy One is climbing on the outside of the play structure, showing off for an older girl in pink tennis shoes and a cat helmet with ears. The girl's grandmother watches her from a nearby bench, occasionally saying something in a language I do not understand. The girl speaks a mile a minute, peppering Boy One with questions. "Can you ride a two-wheeler? Can you climb on the top of the monkey bars? Have you ever been to a pool with a high-dive?" She's said more since we got here than he has said in a lifetime. Boy Two finds his shoe under the slide and waddles over to me, shoving the shoe in my face. I pull him into my lap and put it on his tiny foot. In a moment, he's off again, chasing Boy One as he rides around the blacktop on the little girl's scooter. When Boy Two finally catches up, the three of ...

Boy One is being an uncooperative punk, and my husband is mad. Boy One is five, and my husband is an adult, but at the moment, it is hard to tell the difference. Both of them need a time-out, but instead they yell at each other, locked in conflict, for longer than I would wish, neither willing to back down or retire. After far too long, they are calm, and I venture to speak. "Why don't you call your mom and ask her what you were like when you were five?" I suggest. "Why don't you call your mom?" he throws back. "She said I didn't listen until I was thirty," I replied, "and with that, she's being generous." "I'm not calling my mom," he declared. "Have it your way," I respond, grinning. (I bet he was exactly the same.)

I feel as though I am on the brink of something. The brink of what, I can't tell you, but I hope it is something good, something rewarding. I could use something rewarding. Maybe it's the usual excitement of the new school year. As one who longs for routine, the comfort of established daily expectations, I certainly picked the wrong profession. Months of unstructured summers tear me apart, and the despite my constant vigilance, there is too much variation for my liking. I spend more time thinking about what I should do than actually doing it, and the stress builds more than it is relieved. I feel like the only person on the planet who gets stressed out by having too much time off. Maybe it's the promise of finally going back to work. Maybe it's the culmination of the steps I managed to take during my time off to put myself in a better position in my body. I got glasses, so now I don't have to squint and strain to read or write an email. I started going to the chir...

A passing conversation in the hall at school went something like the dialouge as follows. School Professional: I was over in the preschool today and I got to spy on [Boy One] a little. Me: I hope you didn't see anything wrong with him that I don't already know about. SP: No, no. It was really interesting. He seems to be the only one who really "gets" [a little girl from his class]. Me: Yes, he really likes her. He talks about her all the time. Is there something different about her? Why did you notice that he "gets" her? SP: No, no, not like that. She is just completely no-nonsense, time to get down to business. [Boy One] seems to really get that. Me: You have met his mother, right?

The ER doctor was rugged, handsome, sharp. He looked tan like the rich get tan, not tan like those who work the land or sell their wares on the sidewalk. He was Greek god tan, I spent last weekend on my yacht tan. I bet he made the softball team swoon. I found it hard to focus when he was talking. "...going to push fluids and get him on some steroids. That should put him in better shape while we wait for the ambulance." "The ambulance? We just came in the ambulance." "No, the CHOC ambulance. They send their own people for transfers. We are just waiting for them to call us back." "A chalk ambulance?" I felt like an idiot and a moron. "We don't have a pediatric wing, so we can't keep children overnight. CHOC specializes in children, so you will be in good hands there. I'll have the nurse come in to get that IV started." I must have been staring as he spoke. Perhaps I didn't even blink. "Do...

One of the first orders of business once we were set in our room was placement of the IV in my tiny baby's arm. This entire enterprise was an unqualified disaster. On the first effort, a forty-something bleach-blond nurse with a ponytail and bright red reading glasses on a chain tried three different times, twice on one arm and once again on the other. I held B2 as he screamed. After the third attempt, she lifted her glasses and smacked her mint gum. "He must be dehydrated," she said. "I'm going to get someone to help you hold him down." "I'll get someone to hold you down," I thought. My better self responded instead. "Could we get him something to drink first?" I asked. "Sure, honey," she replied. She left, and B2 and I together both cried and struggled to breathe.

I once read that families are comparison machines. In the story, it was argued that the close proximity of one sibling to another drives innumerable comparisons to the surface, often with life-long implications for those compared. For years, during the formidable childhood years, kids are told they are this one or that one: this sister is the smart one; this one the outgoing one. This brother is the funny one; this one is good at math. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if both sisters are outgoing and smart in comparison to the rest of the human beings on the planet. It only matters that this one seems smarter than that one, that this one seems more outgoing than the other. In this way, brothers and sisters learn to carry these beliefs like widgets, widgets of judgement and self-limitation. Widgets that help define who they are and how they see themselves in the world. So, of course, I compare my boys. Boy One was an articulate speaker almost  immediately ...

I cut the baby's hair yesterday. It wasn't the first time, but it was the most significant. Previously, I had simply trimmed, shortened his baby curls in a formation that allowed for at least cursory containment. But now, I have done the irreversible. His baby curls are gone, likely to never return, and with this unique action, with the use of a simple machine to trim and cut and shape, he has irrevocably left the baby world for the world of an older sort. He has become, with no reservations, a toddler. In the conservative Jewish tradition, a boy's hair is not cut until he is three year's old. Once he has arrived at this ripe old age, there is a ceremony called an  upshernish , an event in which members of the religious community ceremoniously cut the child's hair, a symbolic cutting away of  infancy as the small human enters into childhood and the beginning of his formal education. It is at this point that the boy...

(Spoiler Alert) This blog post discusses details of the plot of the movie Inside Out .  If you would like, please feel free to come back to it after you have seen the film. In an attempt to have a constructive discussion with Boy One over lunch, I asked him which emotion he would want to be from the movie, Inside Out. “What's an emotion?” he asked. “The different feelings,” I replied. “All together, they are called emotions. Joy, Disgust, Sadness...” “Anger!” he interjected. “I would be Anger!” “Anger? Why?” “Because he's so awesome!” Puzzled, I asked, “What do you like about him?” “He's so GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!” Thanks for that articulate clarification, Dude. It has taken me awhile to get over myself enough to watch animated movies with my son. I was never one of those girls who loved the princesses or dreamed of a “Whole New World”  or looked forward longingly to trips to Disneyland. But, admittedly, parenthood has messed me up softened me enou...

Dearest Reader, Tonight, I would like to amuse you with a long, detailed description of my near endless adventures with not one, but two steam-cleaners. Similarly, it would bring me great joy to regale you with my mis-adventures trying to make sense of the gluten-free print-out I brought with me to Trader Joe's. In the same vein, I long to wax poetic about the drama that unfolded as my husband came home, tired and over-worked, to find the boys using a bike lock as a grappling hook from atop our piled-up belongings (see steam-cleaning in sentence one). However, tonight, the best I can do is this lowly paragraph and a new page on my blog documenting my meager attempts to feed my younger child food that does not exacerbate his breathing and skin problems. Watching a child unable to breathe is torture of the cruelest kind. May my efforts bring him, and me, some relief. Sincerely, RL

Yesterday almost killed me. It was Tuesday, which is supposed to by my day with Boy One, but Boy Two has been really sick, so he was home with me as well. Clearly, I am not cut out for having any more children, and may the universe bless the Stay At Home Moms out there, because my people had driven me to the edge before ten-thirty in the morning. Boy Two was up at 6:00, because apparently he did not get the memo about it being summer vacation. He also missed the one about not requiring two doctor's appointments in the same week. Man, I really have to teach that kid how to read his email. Order your own at http://shop.lego.com/en-US/ByCatalog Boy One slept until 9:00, by which point B2 was bringing me my shoes and banging on the apartment door to be let out for the day. B1, cooperative as ever, refused to get dressed and replied to all requests for progress with some variation of, "I'm reading my magazine!" by which he means he is pouring over his Lego catalog...

"Mommy, watch this!" he yells from across the pool. Jump. Splash. He disappears beneath the surface. One-one-thousand. I remember bringing him home from the hospital, wrapped up tight like a blue baby burrito. Two-one-thousand. On his first birthday, he was running down the sidewalk with Grandpa trying (unsuccessfully) to catch him. Three-one-thousand. When he first started preschool, he cried when I left him there and cried some more when I picked him up. Four-one-thousand. He stared at his baby brother when he was born, wrinkled his face, then asked if he could go home with Noni to watch Netflix. Five-one-thousand. Splash! He shakes his head, erupting from the water. "Mommy, could you see me?" "Yes, baby. Of course I could see you ."