Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

            When I was in the 8^th grade my best friend was a storyteller, by which I mean I could sit and listen to her tell stories for hours.  We were in plays together and liked to listen to Broadway musicals.  She had an amazing voice, could draw beautifully, honestly there wasn’t anything about her that wasn’t artistic.  They say people are drawn to their natural opposites, and Tess was mine.

            Tess gave me books to read that completely changed the person I was becoming.  I am the tree hugging, flaming liberal I am today because my best friend in middle school had more common sense than most of the adults I have known.  She is an old soul.

            When I read Blood Magic I could hear her voice inside my head reading it to me.  There was so much of her in it that I could recognize, and the best part is that it was really well written.  I will be honest, the genre she is writing in is not my cup of tea anymore, hasn’t been for years, but when I started reading her book I couldn’t put it down.  I can’t say the same for The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo or any of those Twilighty books.  While their content might be interesting to some, I find myself cringing when I read the dialogue or internal monologues of the main characters.  Tessa’s book is different.  She has a rich sense of language that comes from having read voraciously since she was a child.  Her setting, which is as much a character as the protagonists, is beautifully rendered without being cheesy or boring.  The book also has a natural flow, which is a difficult feat for most writers.  Instead of stopping and starting, staggering along as she unfolds each event, there is a real sense that every chapter, each line is planned and specifically placed.

            I might be biased as a reader because I really care about the author, but I am generally more inclined as a person to be critical of literary endeavors.

            I am truly looking forward to the next installment in this series

Life Post-Irene…

           Last week my son started kindergarten.  I didn’t think I would cry, but there I was, blubbering away in the car line.  Ford turned to me and said, “Don’t worry Mommy, I’m still little.” I smiled at him through tears as he got out of the car wearing his uniform and big backpack and wondered where the last five years went.

            Last week I was working on a new system for getting ready in the morning.  I have to have all of the kids dressed and ready and in the car by 7:30am so that Ford can be in his classroom at 8am.  I have a 4.2 cubic ft fridge, two bar sinks, and a microwave to work with for breakfast.  Imagine feeding your family with the equipment you would find in your average dorm room.  I am lucky that my in-laws have been taking care of dinner, but I am going to get creative soon.  I am sure there is a toaster oven dinner cookbook out there. 

            Last week I was alternating between being grateful that my family has been given this opportunity to hit the reset button, and missing my house.  We are putting our priorities in order and learning to live with fewer, more important things.  But I really miss my house.  There is just a dull ache when I think about it, rather than the sharp pain when we were moving, but it still feels like a wound that hasn’t healed yet.

            Today I am writing in a room at the Great Wolf Lodge.  Our suite is actually bigger than our apartment in Hampton, so I am really enjoying the king sized bed and all the extra space.  The kids have LOVED the water park, well Lily hates it, but she doesn’t like the water much to begin with.  We are here because we evacuated the day before Irene hit.  We live on the water now, and the threat of a category 2, 3, or 4 hurricane was just not worth the risk.  We stayed with my parents in Williamsburg for the storm.  The wind really sounded like it would blow the entire house down.  The water crept up in the yard at my in-law’s house, but thankfully did not even reach the same level as Isabelle.  A few more miles inland and the storm could have caused serious damage.  Being without power in 90 degree heat we decided to take a little vacation.  So here we are….   Our room has wi-fi and air conditioning, which seems like a little slice of heaven.  We will head back to Hampton tomorrow, power or not, but for now we are comfortable.  I will be more grateful for my little apartment this week than I was last week.  The kids will be more grateful for their beds and toys.  After all of the damage I have seen on television and Facebook I am so grateful that we were spared.  My prayers go out to the less fortunate.  We have been there….  This is our house near Fredericksburg after Isabelle.

Moving...

You know when you get that feeling in your gut, where you know life is going to change in a huge way and you don’t know if you are ready? I am there right now.  We are moving in two weeks, well less than two weeks really.  We have had our house up for rent for 2 months and we had resigned ourselves to the fact that it just wasn’t going to work out this summer, and then, when we got back from vacation, we had an offer.  The renters are perfect and they will be great to the house.  I have no worries there.  I just can’t stop crying… I NEVER thought it would be this hard.  I moved constantly as a child and I don’t remember it ever bothering me.  Every corner of this house has a memory of my children.  I brought two babies home from the hospital and laid them in cribs here.  I decorated my daughter’s room with butterflies, and she still tells me it is perfect for a princess.

You might wonder where we are moving.   My in-laws have an apartment above their detached garage.  It has two very large rooms and a bathroom.  There isn’t a kitchen, but, let’s face it, I make most of our meals in the microwave anyway.  We will be living there.  Our plan is to live there for two years.  We will save money, pay off the rest of our debt, and buy a new home, closer to them, putting down 20%.  We will be closer to Ford’s school in Newport News, and about the same distance from Paul’s office.  Right now, Ford is 5, Grace is 2 ½ and Lily is a year old.  When we move Ford will be 7, Grace will be 4 ½, and Lily will be 3.  I know they will barely remember this whole experience, so if it turns out to be less than ideal, it will be just a minor blip on their radar… so the problem isn’t them… it’s me.

We built this house with our growing family in mind.  We picked out the flooring and fixtures.  Paul and I spent an entire day debating on the siding color and how it would coordinate with the window shutters.  I had the nursery painted yellow. We fenced in the back yard and put in a swing set for our active son. Each time I found out I was pregnant I planned a room for my child.  I sat in that room and dreamed of their little faces, chubby knees, and sweet smiles.  I feel as if some of that love and anticipation is stored in these walls, like I can touch them and get some of it back. I remember exactly where Grace learned to walk, and where Lily learned to crawl. I nursed Lily in the same chair in her room every night for the first year of her life. I think that if we were going to have more babies this wouldn’t hurt so much, but it seems like the closing of a beautiful chapter and I desperately wish there were more pages.  I know the next chapter is going to be wonderful and exciting, but it is hard to let go of what I love so much.(cue crying here)

Ok.. so in addition to all this sappy emotional turmoil I am also realizing that we have accumulated an enormous amount of crap in the last 4 years.  I have parted with the better part of the baby stuff, but there is a lot of other “stuff” that I have to decide THIS WEEK if we are going to keep, toss, or store.  My brain is about to explode with the enormity of it all.  The apartment is about 1600 square feet and mostly furnished, and we live in a 2700 sqft house.    Normally I would actually enjoy all of this sorting, but Paul is out of town, of course, and I had food poisoning yesterday, so I am less than thrilled about all of the sorting.   

I know all of this falls into what Paul jokingly refers to as “rich people problems”. I mean really, there are so many really important things going on in the world right now.  We are so incredibly blessed, not only with wonderful opportunities, but fabulous supportive family.  I am going to put on my big girl panties and take an inventory of all I have to be grateful for…  gazelle-like intensity isn’t easy, but I am sure the payoff is going to be fantastic.  In two years we will literally not have to worry about money again, barring some kind of disaster, and that is worth a lot of heartache now.

People Who Steal Your Money… or Write Books on Parenting…

            I have literally spent HUNDREDS of dollars on parenting books.  I bought books about getting my children to sleep, ADHD, discipline, and how to care for your baby/toddler/preschooler.  With my second child, Grace, I think I bought seven books about sleep techniques. (She didn't sleep more than 2 hours at a time until she was 6 months old.) Some of them promised me that my child would sleep in days; some stated that if I let her cry she would be damaged forever.  One book, The Baby Whisperer, implied, rather snarkily I might add, that I was a lazy parent because I could not do the method she swore would work, and didn’t.  The "pick up, put down" method, according to this book, ensures that your child always feel safe.  So every time they cry in the crib you pick them up, and when they settle down you put them down.  Supposedly, after time, the child finds confidence that you are there and sleeps.  Or you pick them up and put them down until you cry, which is what I did.  I have to honestly say I tried this method for three days and did it until I cried, so for two and a half or three hours each time, and my child never gained confidence, but I certainly lost sanity.  The author's next suggestion was that I actually sleep in the crib with her, so that book was permanently put down.

           I am sure SOME of these books work some of the time, but my opinion, as a mother of three kids who has read most of the books on the market is that they are full of sh$t.  I do not use that kind of language lightly, but I would like my money back.  What many parents do not understand is that most of these books are not written to help parents, but to make money.  They imply that you are stupid, incompetent, or worse so that you feel you “need” the advice they have given.  What parents should realize, and what I didn’t understand until I had spent the money, is that you really don’t have to have ANY qualifications to write a book on child rearing.  I was surprised to see how many of the books I purchased about discipline were written by PhD’s who used lab experiments to prove their methods.  Seriously. 

            Here are some books that I WOULD recommend.

Raising your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

Sleepsense by Dana Obleman

I could write the list of books I thought were rubbish, but there are too many to name.  Some of them might even work on different kids, but not on mine…

The ONLY ingredient that I think will help parents to get through difficult situations with their children is humor.  I ran across a fabulous book today entitled, Go the F*ck to Sleep.  It really addresses the stress and frustration most parents feel when they are sleep deprived.  If sleep deprivation doesn’t make you very angry, this book will not be nearly as funny for you.  The best part is you can find it on youtube.com  read by Samuel L. Jackson. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeKxIaG_f_c

Make sure your kids are asleep before you turn this on though.  The language is terrible.

I looked up Go the F*ck to Sleep on Amazon.com and it recommended other titles I found equally amusing and lighthearted.  I will also be reading, Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation by Elizabeth Beckwith.  I am Catholic after all…

My advice, and this comes completely free, is that you know your child best.  Don’t buy a book to give you permission to do what you think will work with your child.  We live in a day and age where EVERYONE has an opinion about how you raise your kids.  Before the deluge of parenting books, moms fed their babies how they wanted to, potty trained when they wanted to, and didn’t worry about what the “experts” would think.  Guess what? The experts never raised your kid…

Please don’t say…

Here are my top 10 things NOT to say to a mom, stay-at-home or otherwise in no particular order:

1) You have the hardest job in the world.

There are VERY few people who actually say this sincerely, and it is patronizing to pay lip service to a woman who has chosen to stay home with her children.  Trust me, I have a couple of degrees, I know what a hard job is.  If someone truly understands the 24-7 nature of parenthood, the demand on parents today to give their children everything, and the complete lack of unaccompanied potty breaks then they don’t really use this phrase.  They usually say, “I remember having  ___ kids under 5. It was tough, but totally worth it.”

2) Boy you have your hands full.

Thank you, I know that I have several children with me and they may, or may not, all be paying attention at the same time.  I don’t know if you have ever tried to herd cats, but it is roughly the same concept.  If you want to tell me I have beautiful children, or that you think they are smart or funny, please do.  I can take a compliment any time, but responding to your comment just about hits the limit of my multi-tasking abilities.

3) You look great for having three kids.

CRINGE!  I don’t know how to take this comment.  I know that it is usually sincere, but comes off as a back-handed compliment.   Do you mean that I look a little fat, but that is OK because I have had three kids? When I hear this comment a little voice inside my head says, “Now that I know you have had three children it seems acceptable that you look the way you do.”  Every time I hear it I want to go buy a gym membership I can’t afford and some really sexy high heels.

4) I don’t believe in medicating children.

I think it is FABULOUS that you don’t feel the need to medicate your children.  Please feel blessed that they do not have any difficulties that require medication.  However, until you have walked in the shoes of a woman who has made the decision to medicate her child, I would suggest that this remain an unspoken opinion.  You have not cried with her on a particularly bad day, or felt her exasperation when every other child is able to do something her child cannot.  You have not read every book on the disorder in question and tried every parenting technique to the point that your bedside table looks like the childrearing section at Barnes and Noble.  Because if you had done all of these things I am pretty sure you would at least have enough compassion not to make this statement.

5) I hate it when people post everything their kids do on Facebook.

First of all, I am not interested in everything everyone else posts on Facebook either.  Once you become a mother your life revolves around your children, especially if you are a stay-at-home mom.  From 8am-7pm most days I spend about 30min total with another adult.  I can’t talk on the phone much because the kids go crazy.  Play dates are great, but I spend most of my time taking care of the kids rather than visiting with other moms.  The same goes with the park.  I am starved for a little adult time, so if my pathetic attempts to “talk” to my friends on Facebook are ridiculed by those who think my day is boring, t,hen I suggest those people with more “important” lives remove me from their friends lists.

6) Are those all YOUR kids?

I never know why people feel the need to ask this question.  I am talking about strangers now, not people I am having a conversation with.  Most days I have four children under 6 with me.  I don’t think that is a crazy number of children, though it is out of the ordinary, especially in Williamsburg.  Why people need a lengthy explanation of which children are mine and how old they are in the middle of the supermarket I will never understand. 

7) How old are you?

When did it become appropriate to ask a lady her age?  Seriously… why in the world does the random guy at Chick-fil-a want to know how old I am?

8) Are you STILL breastfeeding?

This is usually prompted by my one-year-old frantically pulling at my shirt yelling, “May may”.  Yes, is apparently not a good enough answer.  People then want to know when I am going to wean her.  I usually tell them that I am aiming to have her off the breast by college and then they shut up.

9) Are you done having children?

Why do people want to know about my husband’s vasectomy or the status of my uterus?  I can understand a friend asking this question… but it is kind of personal for people to want to know about my sex life after having talked to them for 5 minutes.

10) And you still had more children?

I don’t have the easiest kids in the world.  They aren’t blobs; they aren’t particularly good listeners and they are very active.  But YES I had more children even though my first was active and not a good sleeper.  I had more children even though my second was difficult to breastfeed and milk protein intolerant.  I love EVERYTHING about my kids, even the stuff that drives me crazy… and I would have more children if it weren’t for that damn vasectomy….

Supermom Has Left the Building….

           It seems to me that every mom I know is harried.  It doesn’t matter if she works or stays at home, her life has some element of chaos.  I find myself standing in the shower, when I am able to get one in the morning, contemplating all the things that I need to do during the day, and then during the week, and it is just impossible.  Some days I don’t want to answer the phone or check my email because it might contain just one more thing I need to do, or forgot to do, and since I am teetering on the edge, I might fall over.   I don’t know what is over the edge exactly, but if it is less chaotic than where I am standing now, I might have to take the plunge. 

            My mornings this summer are much easier than when I have to drive a child to preschool.  By 9am I have 3 kids dressed and fed and another one dropped off at the house.  If I want to get any housework done I have to do it while Lily is napping around 10am until she wakes up.  When she does get up I have about an hour to an hour and a half to run any errands that need to get done or take the kids to the park or library.  At 12:30pm I make five lunches, feed four kids and put three down for naps.  Ford takes a rest and I am exhausted.  I clean up after three meals a day, make three, try to do laundry, clean the bathrooms, go grocery shopping, dust (well not really, but in theory), vacuum, clean the hardwood floors, run errands...

            As I write it all out it doesn’t seem like a lot of work.  I can’t add in the countless interruptions, both good and bad.  Grace wants me to play tea party. Ford needs some help with his pirate ship.  A child is having a melt down because something is not going the way they want it to (I must admit sometimes it isn’t the child but mommy having that meltdown). 

            Lately I have been wondering what it would be like not to be harried.  If things just got done when they got done and I just stopped worrying about doing everything “right”.  I wonder what it would be like to just let go of that last little scrap of control I have been holding on to, trust that everything is going to be all right, and fall.  I want to remember my time with my kids as something really special. 

            When I look back on my week I can add up about 3 total hours that I spent on myself.  This does not include sleeping or eating, but pure ME time.  I get this time, usually in 10-15 minute spurts, sometimes it is just a cup of coffee before the kids get up in the morning.  Last night I went to the movies with my sister.  That kind of time is the most precious.  Usually my ME time out of the house is at Trader Joes or Target.  The movie wasn’t fantastic, but the company was… and it made me feel like an adult again.

            There are big changes coming… super big… (and no I am not pregnant again, so don’t ask).  Hopefully our lives will move towards that not-harried, peaceful, Zen-like experience that I need for our family.  The theme of this year is: Simplify… I have a herd of gazelles grazing in my yard (if you don’t understand this reference that is OK, but you might want to check out Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover) and a serious plan to peace….  I don’t want to be Supermom anymore.  When I tell people about my life their eyes get wide and they say, “Wow… I don’t know how you do it.”  I don’t know how I do it either, and it is usually a survival of the fittest situation.  Instead I want people to say, “Wow… that sounds like a great week.” … and mean it…

What not to wear, or what to wear…..

            I come to you, valued readers, for some really important advice.  I have been pregnant or breastfeeding since March of 2008, and here we are, in 2011, and I find that I am almost 30, the mother of three small children, with no idea how to dress myself.  Grace, at 2, has more fashion sense than I do.  She knows exactly what she wants to wear every morning.  “Mommy, I wear a princess dress- a pretty dress for a princess.”  When I got married I dressed primarily from Ann Taylor Loft since that is pretty much the young teacher’s uniform store.  Every time I walk in there now I shudder a little to myself.  My husband thinks I dress like a child, but caring for babies is hard work, and I don’t know how to do it in a skirt.  My uniform is usually a tank top, jeans and flip flops… sometimes sneakers if I know I will be walking a lot.  This is not a sexy uniform.  I am not interested in being sexy most of the time, but now and then I would like to look a little more “put together”.

            So the question is…. Where do you shop as a 30 year old mother-of-three?  I have lost all the baby weight from #3, so all of my “fat” clothes are too big.  My clothes from before all my children look ridiculous.  I basically need an entirely new wardrobe.  I really wish there were a service out there that could just tell me what to wear.  I am not interested in being creative or standing out of the crowd.  I just want to look pretty.  I guess my only option is to go wander around the outlets going from store to store… too young, too old… and then buying my kids some new clothes because at least they always look cute…