You Are Enough

Like all of us, I've had my ups and down. More than I needed in the past few years. I went through a divorce that upended every facet of my future that I'd once counted on. I had to let go of all of those hopes and expectations, all of those future memories I was looking forward to, and embrace the now. A very different now than I'd wanted, but a perfectly valid, honest, and significant now just the same. I had to rebuild from the ground up. And I did. Because that's what I do. I've been taken down before, and I get up every time. Because what's the alternative?

I'm a little thing: petite, soft-spoken, and kind-hearted. But I'm tougher than I look. Beneath my lofty standards for myself, my perfectionist nature where I exceed every goal without troubling another soul, lies a very hard, stubborn core. I know who I am. I always have. And sometimes, when I wish I could be somebody else, someone braver or more social or more forgiving or less likely to be taken advantage of when I'm in an overly generous mood, being who I am feels like a liability. I'm stuck, you see. And this inability to morph into someone shinier and more impressive than who I am, who I've always been, this flaw of mine? It turns out it's actually my greatest strength. That has been my real journey these past few years. Learning that who I am, right now, flaws and all, is enough.

It started with being alone. I hadn't been single since I was sixteen years old. I'm not afraid of being alone. I like my own company. It just happened that way. As one relationship ended, a new one bloomed, over and over, my whole adult life. But not after my divorce. For the first time in decades, I was alone. I spent a year scrambling to care for two young kids and trying to remember who I was without a partner in life. Then I spent a year in a relationship where at some point I lost myself again. Then I spent another year alone, remembering all over again. It wasn't a fun time. But it served a purpose. Because after the house of your hopes and dreams blows down, you have to rebuild it. And if you build it alone, you get to design it to suit you above all others. I had never done that before. Built my life around me. It was hard and scary and involved a lot of sleepless nights worrying about the future that I couldn't see anymore. And it was amazing and promising and full of infinite possibilities as well. Who would I choose to be, if I could choose to be anyone, without anyone else's input? I'd choose me. Just as I am.

So I did. I let my kids in on a little secret: that I wasn't perfect, that I didn't have all the answers, that I was making it up as I went along. And a very cool thing happened. My oldest, a perfectionist herself, relaxed her ridiculously high standards, just a little. My youngest, even a shade more stubborn than her mother, stopped digging in quite so deep and hard whenever she was challenged. And we laughed, and we cuddled, and we told each other stories, and we made messes and cleaned them up, and we hurt each other's feelings and apologized and forgave one another. And we dreamed up limitless futures of endless possibilities together. 

And I wrote. I wrote every thought in my head down, because without a partner to tell it all to, I had no choice. I wrote a book-length journal about the failure of my marriage, as I tried to figure out what had gone wrong. I wrote stories about heartbreak. Novel attempts about loss. I wrote blog posts about single-motherhood. I put it all on paper, because that's also who I am, who I've always been. A writer, in secret, afraid to own the title. Worried that I wasn't worthy of it somehow.

But in my new house, built just for me, I let those worries go. It wasn't about anyone else, my writing. It was me putting my heart into words. And as soon as I stopped writing to please anyone but myself, I finally had it. A book worthy of an agent, a book deal, a new career.

I'm still learning, still faltering, still making mistakes as I stumble along. And still dreaming of bigger, better futures. I'm still building my house, filling it with myself, owning who I am.

And I can see now how many of us are doing the same thing. Struggling with the idea that we need to be bolder or more successful or funnier, sharper or more sophisticated to get the approval we so desire from those around us. So as this new year rolls out before us, I wanted to share with you what I've learned, and what I personally think of you. That right now, the person you are today, you are already enough. The next step isn't chasing some better version of yourself. It's owning who you already are. Loving that person. Giving him or her a house, or a room, or any safe place, to simply be.  You are enough.

The Publication Waiting Game

I have five months to go. The publication date for The Art of Adapting is July 29, 2014. Which means that this is the lull before the lifelong dream comes true. I'm not an impatient person by nature, and I'm not in a rush to skip all of this lovely anticipation to get to my release date. Mostly.

I'm enjoying waking each morning and realizing all over again that this is no dream, it's really happening. I'm living in the moment, awash in gratitude and pride and possibility. And yet, it's a strange place to be, waiting for months on end to see how my novel will be received. The ARCs (advanced reader copies) of The Art of Adapting have been printed and are ready to be sent out to authors for blurbs and for reviewers to get a crack at. That alone is enough to cause some jitters. Will they like my characters? Will they feel the heart of the story? Will they find the family dynamics believable? Will they be able to tell I've never set foot on the college campus that I used in several scenes?

It's a good kind of limbo, I keep telling myself. I spend my quiet days working on my next book, caring for my daughters, visiting with friends and family, walking the dog, doing yoga. I have a balance going now that may shift come July, when book promotion kicks into high gear. I don't want to take a moment of this quiet phase for granted. But some days I think the waiting is just as distracting as the flurry of publication will be. That's when it's good to be a mom to young kids. Because as excited as they are that I have a book coming out, they live in the immediate present like no one else. When they are tired or hungry or desperate to show me the dance they've just choreographed, nothing else matters.

We were walking into school the other day, talking about the various jobs that people do, and my youngest daughter said, "Only you don't have a job." I felt my former stay-at-home mom hackles rising, in which I sometimes had to remind people that taking care of two little ones 24/7 is an exhausting non-paying job, and that I also did editing work on the side. Then she said: "You have a career." I asked her what the difference is, and she said that a job is work you do for money. A career is doing something you love for life. So, there's that. I would've loved to to teach my daughter that valuable lesson, had I thought of it. I'm glad she learned it on her own.

I get to experience this launch into authordom twice: once by myself, and again through the eyes of my kids. They get that this has been a lifelong dream. That I started writing stories when I was the same age they are now. That there were a lot of starts and stops along the way. And that the most important thing is that I never gave up. But they also get that having a book come out doesn't change my role as their mom one bit.

Sometimes I'm teaching them, and sometimes they're teaching me. I've shown them that no dreams are too big, that nothing is impossible, that the only obstacle between you and your dream is you. And they are teaching me that today is a day for watching the rain come down the window, or for teaching the dog to jump through a hula hoop, or for dreaming up the next story. The waiting game can be hard. I'm grateful to have my girls here to wait alongside me, and to pull me out of the waiting mindset as often as possible. Right now they're calling me into the other room, because they have finished their homework and want me to check it, and after that they need their nails painted. Right now. This is the moment I'm in. A quiet afternoon with my girls, who think I have any idea what they're talking about with open number lines and division pictographs. And who need blue and pink nails. Desperately. So off I go. One day closer to publication.

Vision

So, it's 2014. This is the year I've been waiting for. My vision-board-come-true year. Just over a year ago my sister, dad, step-mom, kids, and I got together with a stack of poster boards and a heap of magazines to make our first vision boards. Mine sits on my desk just behind my computer, where I see it every day as I work: Hawaii images, yoga poses, chocolate, coffee, lavender bouquets, and Ganesha, the patron of letters, who keeps me company as I write. Scattered throughout are words like breathe, play, success, wellness, and joy. I put all of my dreams up there, too: agent, publishing contract, travel, balance. And as the year went on I had to keep adding new words, because the wishes all started coming true. I got an agent. I got a publishing contract. I got two trips to Hawaii. I found balance. The board, now framed, still sits in front of me at my desk, a reminder of how far I've come, how much possibility still lies before me.

I've always been a pragmatic dreamer, which means that I daydream up these outlandish notions of where my life could go, all the while working like hell to make a dent in whatever pile of work I've given myself for the day. I rarely need to be pushed by anyone, I drive myself harder than anyone else ever would. This is a great attitude to have when trying to get published. Keep dreaming that it's possible, but never lose focus on the blank page in front of you. Keep coming at it until you get it right. Most days I still have the same attitude. I am aware that I have a novel coming out in six months, which is so ridiculously exciting that I can barely sleep if I think about it too much, but I also know that if I spend too much time thinking about it I'll be too distracted to write more novels. And I want to write more novels. Tons of them.

It also helps to have young children. Nothing keeps you humble like two kids doing cartwheels and walkovers in your office, asking an endless stream of questions about when they were babies, how exactly you chose their name, why there are so many irregular verbs in English, whether they can have a pet chinchilla. My seven-year-old likes to read my writing notes over my shoulder and question every one of them: "But why does she want to move? I think if she liked her house she wouldn't want to leave. Maybe you need to write something about why she doesn't like her old house anymore." My eight-year-old sometimes comes downstairs at midnight and tells me to go to bed. She knows as well as I do that sleeping in is not part of a single mom's life.

My girls have been off school a lot lately. A week for Thanksgiving, a week in Hawaii to celebrate my book deal, then two weeks off for winter break. I haven't gotten a lot of writing done in the past six weeks, and I miss it. But I've gotten to spend a lot of mornings with my girls, sipping coffee while watching them play. They have vivid imaginations and create elaborate games that involve singing, dancing, drawing, creating new forms of currency, granting wishes, punishing evil-doers, and traveling the world. They are my blank page, too.

I already know that this is going to be a great year. The one when I finally see my name on the cover of a novel. The one when I finally take the leap to author. My girls will continue to grow taller and master new gymnastics skills and learn new things and wake me up way too early on Saturday mornings. I expect it to be my best year yet. Maybe it's time to make a new vision board, and dream up some even bigger dreams.

My Wellness Coach: Frances McDormand

So, one thing about being mid-divorce and, ahem, unemployed, is that money can be tight. Like: no we can't get a pizza tonight, but I can maybe make one with these bagels and pasta sauce tight. That's fine. I'm not a materialistic girl, and my kids aren't either. But while trying to find gainful employment, I have been on the lookout for quick and easy ways to make a buck, trying to resurrect my old freelance editing contacts, that kind of thing. When I came across an offer for a "wellness coach" through my health insurance, I jumped at it. Because it paid $75! The wellness coach would be calling me three times over the course of a couple of months, to help set some sort of health goal that I was sure I'd ignore as soon as I had my money in hand.

On our first appointment-call, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my wellness coach sounded exactly like the actress Frances McDormand a la Fargo. She was full of "you betchas" and "dontcha knows" and quirky midwest charm and she instantly made me feel at ease. So I rattled off my various health challenges (stress, divorce, lack of sleep, lack of money) and listened to her sympathize. She'd divorced when her children were young, and understood completely. Then came the coaching. "Ya know, the most important thing to remember in times of stress is to take care of yourself. Ya got kids. Ya got stress. Ya got endless demands. But if you don't take care of yourself first, you're no good to them." And the weird thing was, my Frances McDormand-sound-alike was exactly right. It was the same message I'd heard from my Reiki Master friend Heather. The same thing my doctor had said. The same thing my 8-year-old told me on occasion. But if the universe was sending me the message yet again, then maybe I still wasn't doing it.

Frances wanted me to do one thing: schedule a half-hour of "me" time every single day. She wanted me to tell my kids about it, so they'd (1) hold me accountable to myself, and (2) so they'd see me not just as mom, but also as a human being with actual human needs. She wanted me to set a reminder/alarm on my phone so I'd never forget. She wanted me to spend my half hour doing something that benefited no one but me. And with Frances' permission, I set my reminder. I had lofty notions of hiking and reading and taking yoga classes and doing things that involved not having children around, but that's just not my life. Due to their dad's travel schedule for work, I have my kids about 90% of the time. Daily alone time is a fairly distant memory. So instead, I settled for listening to half hour meditations in my room while the kids watched a half hour of TV and ate their after school snacks downstairs. A totally unproductive half hour for myself every day? Prescribed by someone my own health insurance sent to me? Such indulgence! Frances was my new favorite wellness coach, therapist, best friend, caller, and benefactor, all rolled into one.

About two weeks into it, my six year old came to me as I was working on my computer one afternoon and said, "Shouldn't you go upstairs and rest now?" Because here's the thing: not only is it a half hour of me time ensconced in my bedroom each day, it's also a half hour of kids-behaving-well-unsupervised time. It's a test for all of us. And somehow, we're passing. That's not to say that I never get a kid walking in during my half-hour meditation-time to ask me to open a stubborn package of snacks or wanting to know where her favorite headband is. I'm a single mom. That's the deal. But the fact that I can say to my girls: "Okay, I'm heading to my room for a half hour," and they give me hugs and settle down to do something quiet until I'm done? That's amazing. And the realization that it might not take them 40 years to realize they get to come first, for at least a half hour each day of their lives? That's the best part. Thank you, Frances.

Scrambling

So, my girls have exactly 7 days of school left this year. That means 7 days of writing left for me. Not that  I won't write at all this summer, but it won't be the same daily affair that it's been lately. I've been on a mission to get my latest novel done and revised so that I can send my second (or third, or fourth) draft out to my trusted beta readers for feedback. While they have the novel, I'll be hitting up local parks with my kids and trying to read a few of the dozen books sitting on my nightstand waiting for me. I might also try writing a few new short stories. And a screenplay or two.

The truth is, I'm terrified of losing the momentum that I've built up this school year. I'm ready for summer: for play dates and homemade snow cones and sleeping in and no more late-night lunch prep when I just want to go to bed, and no more standing over my kids forcing them to do tedious homework assignments. But I'm also sad to give up my daily block of a few hours to myself, and my guaranteed daily writing time.

My dad and step-mom have graciously offered to watch my girls a couple times a week, for a few hours each time, so that I can have some dedicated writing time. I intend to use that time well. Discipline hasn't really been an issue for me. I work well under pressure. Often, the less time I have, the more effectively I use that time. That's been one of my most important lessons to learn as a writer: carve out the time, and guard it. No phone calls, no internet, no email, no texts. Just write, for however long I can. I'm frequently at the tail-end of my three-hour writing block, watching the clock, counting how many minutes it'll take me to get home to relieve my babysitters, typing those last few words as fast as I can. And that's my happy place, racing the clock with my words.

Two writing breaks a week is a lot less than I've had this school year, but that's exactly what I started with when I got back to writing a few years ago. And at that pace I wrote a novel in four months. Two and a half years later I have five novels plus twenty-something short stories done. They aren't all good, and they won't all make the cut of revision rounds and beta-readers and agent/literary journal submissions. But they all mattered. Every single word, every second of time I gave to myself. I've had nine stories published or accepted for publication, and nine agents are currently looking at one of my novels. It isn't just a dream anymore, this writer thing. It's actually happening. And I don't want to let it go.

I'm almost ready for summer. But first I have 7 more days of writing. And I'm going to make the most of each of them, watching the clock as it gets closer to pick-up time at school, scrambling to get those last few words down before I have to go.

Vacation

One of the hardest things for me to master as a single mom has been vacationing. Not just the epic packing battles with two little girls who only want to bring 3 swim suits and 5 sundresses even when it's a snow trip, but the logistics of traveling alone with two small kids, and frequently a dog as well: all of those contingency plans and nerve-wracking crowded airports or hopes that the car doesn't break down en route to some hours-away destination.

Last summer was my first time driving to our family's cabin, 4.5 hours away, through hot valley towns and up into the Sierras, finishing with a 45 minute trek along a rutted dirt logging road, with two girls and a dog. There were bathroom breaks, dog water breaks, snack breaks, general runaround breaks for two girls who could only be happily confined to their hot pink car seats for so long. I stressed about the the possibility of having car issues, about the dog overheating in the car as I ran the girls into the next rest stop, about getting too tired and fed up with the back seat fighting and having no one to help me out.

I caravanned with some family friends that first time up, just in case anything went awry, and during the long drive I realized something invaluable: I had it down. This single-motherhood thing had already become second-nature to me. The girls had a bin of books and games wedged between their car seats that kept them busy for much of the time. We blasted music and sang together when we needed to perk up. I had a mini-cooler of food and drinks on the passenger seat, full of pre-cut, single-serve portions I'd readied the night before. I had a clear view of the dog sleeping on top of our pile of suitcases in the back, and could see when he was getting restless. When we had to stop in hot towns I blasted the A/C to cool off the car, then found a shady parking spot and made a game out of rushing the girls off to the bathroom and back to the car as quickly as possible. I lounged on random lawns outside fast food restaurants while the dog trotted around and the girls picked dandelions. I let go of my usual travel timetable, any expectations, and relaxed. And it was fine.

That's not to say I haven't had any travel or vacation hiccups in my year of doing it solo. We've been stranded with a dead car battery. We've had throwing up children traveling with borrowed bowls on their laps in the car. We've had the dog get into some sort of insect nest and end up with a face swollen with three baseball-size lumps and had to rush him to the nearest emergency vet. We've had a cross-country flight just days after Peanut fell and knocked out her front tooth and loosened up a handful of others, juggling her all-liquid diet on an airline in this no-liquids-through-security era. And we've made it through it all. And got some good stories to boot.

So today I'm packing up for our first big trip of the season. I have lists of all of the clothes, food, meds, toys, and dog supplies I will need. And I have the confidence, that even if some disaster befalls us mid-route, we'll get through it, we'll make the best of it, and we'll still have a good time.

And if it's really bad, I'll end up with a great story out of it.

The Post-Divorce Phone Tree

It’s a familiar sight at the elementary school: a mom saying goodbye to her kid in line before the bell rings, reminding him that his father, or his father’s girlfriend, or his father’s girlfriend’s mother, will be picking that kid up after school, saying farewell for the next few days. The look of anxiety in the mother’s eyes as the child heads into class, her hope that it all works out. It’s hard to share your child with someone you rarely see, even harder to trust that the fringe family members of that person, often people you’ve never met, will remember to show up, on time and in the right spot, to get your young child after school. And so began the post-divorce phone tree.

I’m one of the moms that lives at school. I didn’t intend for it to be that way, but between volunteering in Peanut’s class twice a week, String Bean’s class twice a week, chaperoning field trips, helping out with in-class projects and parties, having two separate drop-off and pick-up times each day for my two kids, and lingering around campus for after-school play, the parents, step-parents, even teachers have come to know me as one of the moms who can be counted on to be standing there when the bell rings.

As a result, I now have several phone numbers of moms/dads/grandmas who sometimes have to rely on virtual strangers to pick up their beloved children from school. That way, whether or not the ex-husband’s new girlfriend’s younger sister, or whomever, shows up on time and in the right place, the child is covered. My job, when it’s one of those days, is to hang around the kid until they are safely picked up, then discreetly text the mom/dad/grandma to let them know the child is safe, and who the child is with. It’s a whole new game, this modern, fractured family, but I’m learning fast. And I’m happy to do it.

I had a week where my mother and mother-in-law took turns picking up my children from school, and I had a back-up list of about five contacts just in case anything went wrong. That was easy, because I have a good relationship with them and they weren’t annoyed when I texted them every day to make sure all had gone well. But when it’s the new love of an estranged ex, or some even more distant relative from the new family tree, someone you do not have an amicable relationship with, it’s nice to have a little reassurance that your child is covered.

My closest group of mom-friends at school are all similar phone tree monitors, with their own lists of kids they keep track of for the peace of mind of divorced moms and dads, and the safety of children who sometimes fall through the cracks of divorced parents who no longer communicate well. Like minds have drawn us together. We’re easy to spot. We’re the ones on the playground after school, cell phones in hand, obliviously happy kids gathered around us, watching the gate for your arrival.

The Non-Mommy Parts of Me

Here’s the thing: I hate dating. I’m not a dating kind of person. All of that posturing and fake smiling and hair-tossing. It just isn’t me. I’m a jeans and t-shirt mom with princess band-aids, hair ties, and hand sanitizer at the ready at all times. Need a tissue? I’ve got a whole pack for you right here. Splinter? I can fix that. Monkey-bar blister? No problem. But get dressed up and head out to sit across from some guy and impress him? Not my strong suit. That, and I haven’t been on a date in over a decade. So you might say I’m rusty. Except even back then I wasn’t a good dater. So can you really be rusty at something you never learned to do in the first place? Probably not.

Anyway, all of these things led me to one conclusion in my year of being single: I probably had another few years of being single to come. I mean, when would I even meet someone? I have my kids most of the time. And I’ve noticed that nothing spooks a handsome young guy who has just smiled at you like the two little girls traipsing along behind you calling you “mommy.”

My girls’ dad keeps them for a couple hours on days he can knock off work early, and he has them overnight on Fridays when he’s in town, but he does travel a lot for work, and that means I’m a three-bodied, six-armed, six-legged person most of the time. Which is fine. I adore my kids--probably to a borderline-unhealthy degree. I fully accept and am honored to hold the role of being their mother, solo or not. And honestly, I think I’m pretty good at it, this single motherhood gig.

I didn’t mind being single. I needed that year of solitude. My year alone gave me time to grieve the end of my marriage, to let all the negative stuff go, to get back on my own feet, to push myself harder than I ever have as a writer, and to find a balance that doesn’t just feel like surviving, but like thriving, like moving in the direction I was always meant to go, like pure, unrestrained joy with two adorable little sidekicks cheering me on in the sidelines. But, still, there was a part of me that wondered: is this going to be it, forever?

It’s not that I need a man around to fix stuff. I can fix stuff. I work out. I can lift my own heavy things. I don’t miss cooking for someone else (I don’t even like cooking) or doing someone else’s laundry or tripping over big man shoes in the hallway. But sitting on the couch at night, girls tucked into beds they refused to stay in, watching TV before prepping school lunches, checking homework, folding the endless laundry of two girls who love outfit changes the way I love sleep, I found myself thinking: meeting someone would be nice, right? Someone who saw me as more than just a mom? It seemed unlikely, though. I travel between my house, the kids’ school, and my favorite table at Starbucks where I write and ignore all of the other patrons. My quiet cocoon of an existence doesn’t really invite others in. Especially not single men.

But lo and behold, the universe has a way of listening, even when you aren’t sure you’re really asking. A year after my husband and I set up separate residences, an old acquaintance from high school, a film producer looking for new material, asked to see some of my writing, and a conversation started. After a couple months of exchanging short stories and comments on them, we met for dinner—not a date, so I didn’t dress up or get nervous—to talk shop. And sometime between dinner, the bookstore we visited, the cafe we ended up in, the business meeting started to feel like a date. I didn’t have my kids for the night, and he didn’t have his, which meant hours of uninterrupted conversation about utterly grown-up topics. I had my princess band-aids and pink hair ties and hand sanitizer right there in my purse, but I didn’t feel like a mom for a few precious hours. We didn’t know much about each other, except that we’d passed one another in school hallways twenty years earlier, but he’d read a lot of my writing, so in a way he knew more about me than most people do. The inside of me, the vulnerable parts and sharp edges and restrained anger and hard truth-seeking part that doesn’t posture or hair-flip or tolerate any fakeness whatsoever. And even with all that, he liked me.

I guess you could say we’ve been dating for two months now, except that I hate dating, so I wish I could think of a better name for it. We’re taking it slow, getting to know each other and trying to maintain the balances of our own careers, our own relationships with our kids, our own fears of getting hurt. To call this new territory minimalizes the wonderful oddness of the whole thing. It’s new territory the way an entirely new solar system would be, when someone you barely knew in your past can come back around and help the present you feel, well, more like you. The non-mom part of me is now a bigger part of me, which is strange and scary and, ultimately, good. It makes the mommy moments more special, when they aren’t the only moments I’m having all day. So maybe dating isn’t so bad.

Hiking

Before kids, hubby and I used to spend a lot of time hiking. After we got our dog, the always energetic vizsla, we spent even more time hiking, even opting for cold, pouring down rain hikes, where we’d all end up soaked and mud-covered, anything to keep ourselves active and wear out the dog. When he was just a hyperactive puppy, all long floppy ears and gangly legs, we used to hike him for so long that at some point he’d just give up, maybe after seven or eight miles, and we’d have to carry him the rest of the way. As he matured, covering three miles to every one mile we hiked, with his need to explore every trail, stream, hillside, and meadow we passed, we kept adding more distance to our outings to end up with the same quiet, tired dog at the end of the day.

After having kids we kept up modified versions of these hikes, but with babies in Bjorns, then backpacks, then jogging strollers, with diaper changes and feedings to factor in, we weren’t able to cover the same amount of ground, and we had to be more selective about the weather we were going to expose our kids to. This past year, with neither child able to hike far, and both refusing to ride in a stroller, the poor dog has hardly been on any long-distance hikes at all. I have to admit, it’s been unfair to him, to set up this expectation that every weekend he’ll be hiked to exhaustion, then suddenly scrap the routine.

Yesterday, I decided to try a hike alone with the two girls and the dog. I feel a little wary of going without hubby, and minding the dog off-leash in a large area full of grazing cows while monitoring the girls as they totter along bumpy, hilly paths, but they’ve both recently had growth spurts, and their long legs gave me hope that maybe they’re finally ready for some real hiking. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the outing. The dog roamed and explored far and wide, encountering several other off-leash dogs to play with, including two other vizslas. The girls basically ran the entire time, their new longer legs handling the uneven terrain like pros. We went full out for an hour, and when Peanut started slowing down, I asked if she needed me to carry her the last stretch back to the car. Without a word she took off running again, quickly catching up to her sister. It was the first hike I’ve taken since having children where I never carried a child or had to push one along.

With bad weather on its way, we might not have ideal conditions for a lot of these outings, but I’m glad to know that when time and weather allow, we’re all equally game for it.

Yoga Kids

I’ve been trying to get back into doing yoga regularly, much to the joy of my kids. I love how excited they get at the sight of me putting the Rodney Yee DVD into the player. They scurry around, kicking toys out of the way, clearing a space for the three of us, chanting “Yoga! Yoga!” Do other kids do this?

They’re actually ridiculously good yogis. The way they carefully adjust each pose until it matches mine, then put me to shame by folding themselves effortlessly in half without things like bones or joints seeming to get in the way. They get bored with the simple poses, and start throwing their own complications into it, standing on one foot while balancing a toy in one hand while waving their other arm around in circles (a la Cat in the Hat, before he falls off the ball).

At some point it always devolves into contact yoga, with me fighting to maintain a warrior II pose, with a kid hanging from each arm, or doing downward dog while the girls see how many times they can crawl beneath me before I change poses.

Sometimes after we’re done I feel extremely exercised, without feeling particularly relaxed, which isn’t really the point of yoga, and I’ll decide that next time I’ll wait until the kids are napping to do yoga. But when, a few days later, the girls are flipping through their vast DVD collection, trying to decide between an early Disney classic or modern Pixar favorite, and stumble across the yoga DVD and turn to me and say, “Mommy, can we do yoga instead?” how can I possibly say no?

Dead Worm

This afternoon, my girls begged me to take them outside to see a dead worm. It had shriveled up and died on the driveway, turned into a blackened “C.” They were fascinated by it and wanted to see it again, so that they could repeatedly ask if they could touch it, only to refuse to do so once I’d granted them permission. I’ve learned by now that the best way to keep kids from doing something is to tell them it’s okay to do it. There’s no challenge in that, so they soon lose interest.

Instead, they decided to poke the dead worm with a couple of sticks. When that got old, they hit it with the sticks until it was smashed into smithereens. Then they took turns asking me what had happened to their worm. I pointed to the flecks of black dust scattered around and told them that used to be the worm. Then the game was finding all of those specks of worm-dust.

It’s really amazing how entertained two kids can be by the simplest of activities. Investigating something, destroying it, then trying to recognize the original thing in the wreckage left behind. It’s the same thing they do with their Legos, or with food, or with a container of eyeshadow I didn’t even know I had (we’re still cleaning the “investigation” of that one from the bathroom cabinets). I like watching their scientific minds blossom, and can appreciate that things need to get a little messy in the process. Although, I do think we’ll limit the dead animal explorations to dehydrated worms, and I’ll try harder to hide forgotten make-up from burgeoning artists.

Carpet Envy

My dad and step-mother recently had new carpet installed. When they told me they were getting new carpet, I smiled and nodded absent-mindedly as I gathered my belongings for my Thursday morning break. But, after my workout in their garage, I found myself gazing wistfully at the roll of carpet remnants in their back yard, dreaming of the day when we’d have a nice, soft, plush, clean carpet in our house. No sippy cup drips running the length of one room, no doggie footprints marking the path from the dog door to the dog’s bed, no memory of those smelly cat deposits hidden in corners.

The carpet we have now came with the house. It’s the cheap stuff that realtors recommend when you’re trying to sell a house. Off-white, so it shows well for a sale, but a terribly impractical color for living with. It’s not just that it’s white though, it’s also that shabbily manufactured kind that looks frayed within six months of use. Throw a couple of young kids and a few pets into the mix, and even steam cleaning it a couple of times a year is just barely keeping it decent enough to live with.

At some point we’ll have to give in and have new carpet put in, but it’s a tough call when to do that. Obviously, we can’t wait until all of the pets die and the children no longer spill a thing. We’ve considered having hardwood floors put in instead of carpet, but every time the girls go stomping through the kitchen in their hard-soled princess shoes or the dog drops one of his hefty cow bones on the tile in the entry way, we realize that it’d be noisy alternative.

So I’ve gone from hardwood floor envy back to plush, clean carpet envy. But next time I want an actual color, and the most stain-resistant variety they make. Something soft, but just shy of Astroturf when it comes to durability.

Stress-free Shopping

There are several reasons that I began to hate grocery shopping: not being able to securely fasten two children down in a shopping cart, all of those whiny requests (and promises to eat) food in brightly colored containers (none of which my children—the two pickiest eaters I’ve ever met—actually ate), the innate ability children have for pulling out the tantrum card when they sense their mother is easily publicly humiliated or in a big hurry. I also got tired of my daughter announcing to the grocery clerk what color underwear I was wearing that day (a fascination stemming from her flirtation with potty training, so while I was glad to have her covet the notion of wearing panties, I didn’t need the old guy scanning our groceries to know that I had hearts on my underwear that day).

Now that I have regular breaks from the munchkins, I save my grocery shopping for those days. What used to take a good hour, with carseats to undo and redo, cranky children to negotiate with, my inability to effectively menu plan while entertaining kids with Wiggles songs, now takes all of fifteen minutes. I sort my shopping list so that items begin on the left side of the store and end on the right. I know which clerks are fastest for ringing up my purchases, and where the best parking spots are for a quick exit from the parking lot. In short, I’m able to function in the highly organized manner that I did before having children. It isn’t much, a formerly epic shopping trip transformed into a brief, painless outing, but it’s something. A precious reminder that while having children has forever changed my life, somewhere in there the old me still exists, too.

Heat Wave

Today is the second day with temperatures in the mid 80s, so I broke down and blew up the kiddie pool. Then watched it quickly deflate before my eyes. Through some miracle I dug through one of our many miscellaneous item drawers and found a patch that looked like it might belong to a blow-up pool. Actually, it looked like a small square of clear tape on a backing, but it had some official writing on it that convinced me it would work better than actual tape. Before finding the patch, I was ready to break out the super glue. My husband was lobbying for duct tape, the MacGyver universal solution to every problem.

I patched the holes I could find, inflated the pool again, and watched it deflate again. But slower this time. After several rounds of this, hindered by the two-year old who kept dive-bombing into the empty pool (probably creating new holes as I patched the old ones), I decided it was deflating slowly enough to give my girls the half hour of water time that they wanted. Well, they want a never-ending stream of water time, blue lips and goose-bumped quaking limbs notwithstanding, but I'm only good for about a half hour of water-fight supervision.

In all it took about 40 minutes for the pool's fun quotient to leak all over the ground, slowly traveling over to the rose bushes (a second bonus! A drip watering system). Then, instead of the tantrum I get when pulling frigid kids from a full pool, I had bored wet children ready to head inside for lunch. What better way to finally get them out of the pool than to have it deflate under them, losing all of its water and its appeal? A perfect solution, really. I'm thinking of patenting the idea.

Dirty Cat

At the height of our menagerie, we had three cats and one dog. Even in a 2000+ square foot house, it was crowded. Once we threw two kids into the mix, well, let’s just say that sad as I was to lose one of the cats to cancer, it was nice to be down to only two litter boxes to police. Two months ago we had to put down another beloved cat. That loss was harder, since our kids were older and the 4-year-old was very bonded with her. It turned out to be a nice lesson in life and death for her, and a nice lesson in children’s pragmatism for me. When I finally broke her the tearful news that our sweet Alley was too sick and had died, she pondered this briefly, then said, “But we still have the dirty cat?” (her affectionate nickname for our cat Fish). “Yes,” I assured her. She nodded, “Okay. Can I have a snack?”

So we’re now down to one cat and one dog. The dog is a vizsla, which, if any of you are familiar with the breed, means that at five years old he only sometimes seems like he’s going to burst out of his skin from the sheer excitement of living. The remaining cat is now fifteen and remarkably spry and healthy. He has one flaw that makes him hard to live with, and that earned him that very sweet nickname “dirty cat.” He poops. Everywhere. This began in rebellion a few weeks after our first child was born. He eventually broke the habit, and went back to using the litter box when she was a few months old. Then a year later we had a second child, and he’s never gone back.

We’ve tried a variety of anti-anxiety meds that made him jittery, snoozy, and spacey, but none of them did a thing to curb the poop-everywhere habit. I looked into cat diapers, but decided that having two kids plus one cat in diapers would be more bottom-wiping than I could handle. At some point I resorted to covering the living room floor with newspapers, which he seemed to enjoy, then reduced the amount of newspaper gradually. Now the only newspaper is next to the litter box. Usually, he poops on the paper, folds it carefully over on itself, pees in the litter box, and crawls back inside the couch to snooze his day away. Usually.

I'm in no rush to get rid of the dirty cat, trying as he is. We've been together for 15 years now, which makes this the longest non-family relationship I've had. But on that sad day when he leaves this world, I plan to pack up the litter boxes for a while, and enjoy living in a one-pet household.